Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?

Summary

Pod Save America — "Can Dems Put Woke to Bed?"

Episode Date: August 11, 2026
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett (Tommy Vietor out)
Key Guest: Sam Forstag, Montana House candidate

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the current state of Democratic messaging and strategy in light of the 2026 midterms, the backlash and evolution around "woke" politics, crises foreign and domestic confronting the Biden and Trump administrations, the new push by Republicans to resurrect culture war attacks, and an extended interview with Montana House candidate Sam Forstag about the practical challenges facing working Americans and the Democratic Party’s path back to power in rural America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Foreign Policy: Middle East Quagmire

[04:08–12:48]

• The hosts dissect President Trump’s ongoing war in the Middle East, specifically the standoff with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz.
• Media characterizations compare Trump to Hoover (economic woes), Carter (Iran), and Nixon (Justice Department abuses).
• Trump is seeking an exit strategy after Iran refuses to give up control, and military options are exhausted.
• The hosts argue that Trump’s maximalist stance has boxed him in, leaving only unattractive exit ramps.

Notable Quote:
“Now Iran has proven that the US Military, despite all its might combined with Israel, cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway. Trump looks weak. The country is not behind it...it's still a total capitulation by Trump.”
— Jon Lovett [07:30]

• Jon Favreau and Lovett debate what Iran's rulers want—dragging out Trump’s pain versus negotiating with a weakened Trump post-midterms.
• Bibi Netanyahu is striking an ever more defiant stance, rejecting the US and precluding a Palestinian state.
• The hosts lament Israel’s rightward shift, ongoing military occupation, and lack of realistic peace negotiations.

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2. Domestic Policy: Vaccine Panic and Culture Wars

[18:20–31:13]

• Discussion of a Trump executive order splitting up childhood vaccines and removing multiple vaccines from the federal recommended list, grounding it in autism fears.
• Lovett is outraged at the pseudoscience and political cowardice, especially Republican senator Cassidy's capitulation on RFK Jr. nomination.

Notable Quote:
“Vaccines are a miracle. This is all based on false science...Being alive is already challenging. We don't need to put it on hard mode.”
— Jon Lovett [22:00]

• The hosts debunk right-wing claims of COVID vaccine risks, especially the revived myth of a “miscarriage epidemic” tied to vaccines.
• Jon Lovett jokes about Trump’s claim he personally took his kids to separate vaccine appointments.

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3. Congress and the New Attorney General

[31:13–36:57]

• Coverage of Todd Blanche’s confirmation as Attorney General, the fecklessness of Senate “moderates” (citing Cassidy, Cornyn, Tillis), and the lack of safeguards for DOJ independence.
• Critique of predictable, performative opposition votes (e.g., Susan Collins’ “no” when it no longer matters).

Notable Quote:
“He is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility...his whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool and a stooge for Trump.”
— Jon Lovett [33:20]

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4. Midterm Strategy & the GOP’s ‘Communism’ Messaging

[36:57–48:03]

• Republicans launch the “Contrast for America” campaign, describing Democratic policies as “communism.”
• AOC pivots on past leftist rhetoric, acknowledging “Woke one was crazy” and moving to centrist messaging.
• Hosts discuss whether painting Dems as “extreme” will work, concluding it’s much less powerful than the real-world impact of losing reproductive rights after Dobbs.
• Emphasize that messaging about past “woke” positions is less effective than the consequences of Republican policy.

Notable Quote:
“It is from the right is an effort to make extreme Republicans seem reasonable and reasonable Democrats seem extreme.”
— Jon Lovett [42:25]

• Discuss the challenge for Democratic candidates in unwinding old labels and showing authenticity about evolution of positions.

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5. Reflections on ‘Woke 1.0’: What Went Wrong?

[51:10–64:21]

• Hosts and guests unpack the “woke 1.0” moment of 2020–2021, including maximalist protest messaging, linguistic overreach, and the excesses of social media-fueled activism.
• Acknowledge that both the rhetoric and certain policy slogans (“Defund the Police”, “Abolish prisons/borders”) were maladroit or counterproductive.
• Emphasize the lasting damage of inflexible slogans and punitive language to the Democratic brand.

Notable Quote:
“I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing something they didn’t totally understand or believed and they would leave the criticism to others because they just weren’t going to take on that work.”
— Jon Lovett [52:08]

• They reflect on lessons learned: empathy, authenticity, and moving past just “saying the right things online” toward practical persuasion.

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6. Midterm Races: Wisconsin & Minnesota Primaries

[65:03–69:41]

• Final primary polling in Wisconsin shows Francesca Hong leading but with a messy primary leaving Democratic unity in question.
• In Minnesota’s open Senate race, Peggy Flanagan (progressive, likely first Native American woman senator if elected) faces off with more moderate Angie Craig; neither likely to dramatically shift the seat’s competitiveness.
• Discussion of intra-party drama and the risk of focusing on purity over electability, especially in purple states.

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7. GOP Culture Wars: Women's Sports and the Right’s Obsessions

[71:24–74:39]

• Far-right figures' performance-art campaigns to “enter the WNBA draft” as men in wigs lampooned as indicative of the right’s obsessions and the manufactured nature of the sports & gender debate.
• Jesse Waters complains he is tired of covering the WNBA culture war segment.

Notable Quote:
“They really like talking about women's sports. And I suppose they can keep doing it...You know how many trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League at that time? Zero.”
— Jon Lovett [73:07]

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8. Hunter Biden’s ‘Truth-Telling’ Tour on Right-Wing Media

[74:39–80:34]

• Hosts lampoon Hunter Biden’s narcissistic and non-confrontational appearances with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, questioning the value of this exercise and mocking the “contrarian truth-teller” side hustle.
• Critique Hunter’s lack of candor or willingness to challenge anti-Semitism or right-wing conspiracies when given the mic.

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Extended Interview: Sam Forstag, Montana House Candidate

[83:41–112:48]

About Forstag & Montana’s Challenges

• Forstag is a first-time candidate and former smokejumper (firefighter who parachutes into wildfires) and union organizer.
• Lost his job and saw massive layoffs of the lowest-paid workers as part of “Doge” (billionaire tech) cost-cutting and privatization push.
• Montana now faces extreme affordable housing shortages, privatization of public services/lands, and crises in health care and childcare.

Notable Quote:
“When I reached out to Ryan Zinke, the Republican in the seat who should be the person you can reach out to when your members lives are being turned upside down, I got crickets. So I decided if he's going to take my co workers jobs, I'm going to come take his.”
— Sam Forstag [84:23]

• Discusses the disconnect between national Democrats’ optimistic messaging and the grim material reality for working Montanans.

Democratic Brand Troubles

• Montana, despite its rural-conservative reputation, recently elected a Democratic senator (Jon Tester) and remains competitive.
• Forstag believes national Dems have neglected working people and failed to make tangible life improvements despite holding power.
• Criticizes both the party and media for fixating on “woke” rhetoric and divisive issues, rather than material concerns.

Notable Quote:
“We hold these truths to be self evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad and they got us into this situation.”
— Sam Forstag [93:01]

Social Issues & Credibility

• Forstag describes the need for directness and authenticity; recounts how progressive advocates and “working men” both ultimately want self-determination and social support.

“You don't start a conversation by telling [working-class voters] they're wrong...It's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's going to make your life worse a little slower than the other guy.” — Sam Forstag [97:21]

• Contrasts personal experience of scraping by in Montana with opponents' privileged backgrounds and lack of urgency.

Data Centers & Tech Billionaires

• Montana is targeted by massive data-center investment (with outside money and concomitant power/water strains).
• Forstag advocates for strong regulation ensuring public benefit and environmental sustainability, not just corporate profits.

Senate Race Drama

• Discusses Montana’s hotly contested Senate race, where Democratic and independent candidates are deadlocked; pleads for one to drop out to maximize the anti-Republican vote.
• Denounces both local and national egos for “manufacturing” a crisis with millions in outside money.

On Montana’s Real Character

• Montanans love public lands, value gun rights, and are frustrated by both parties’ failures.
• Forstag calls for Democrats to recapture their connection with rural working-class people—emphasizing policy, results, and material benefit over posturing.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On progressive slogans:
  “Well, defund was actually just a slogan and abolish is just an aspirational...Well, then don't use the fucking slogan.”
  — Jon Favreau [46:23]

• On authenticity and evolving:
  “There's a difference between saying...these are my current views and I've said things in the past and I don't stand by all of them...versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking shit in the past. I don't really think that anymore.”
  — Jon Lovett [63:49]

• On Montana’s political prospects:
  “This is a place where we just had turnout in the Democratic primary up 17%. It was down 4 on the Republican side. This is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like western Montana or the Rocky Mountain west or rural America.”
  — Sam Forstag [107:26]

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Key Timestamps by Topic

• Middle East/Iran Foreign Policy: 04:08–12:48
• Israel and Gaza: 12:48–16:54
• Vaccine Executive Order: 18:20–31:13
• Attorney General Todd Blanche: 31:13–36:57
• GOP’s “Communism” Messaging: 36:57–48:03
• Reflections on "Woke 1.0": 51:10–64:21
• WI & MN Primaries: 65:03–69:41
• Women's Sports, Culture Wars: 71:24–74:39
• Hunter Biden’s Media Tour: 74:39–80:34
• Sam Forstag Interview: 83:41–112:48

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Tone and Style

Throughout, the hosts deploy their signature mix of irreverence, exasperation, caustic humor, and candor. Lovett’s rants on vaccines and failed Dem messaging are particularly fiery; Favreau presses for nuance and real-world results; guest Sam Forstag delivers a grounded, working-class perspective focused on solutions and reconnecting politics to lived experience.

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For Those Who Haven’t Listened

This episode is a frank, often funny, and at times biting rundown of the challenges facing the Democratic Party—internally and in public perception—as they attempt to evolve past the excesses of “woke 1.0”, counter the GOP’s culture war onslaught, and reconnect with their working-class roots. The interview with Sam Forstag offers a rare inside look at life in rural America, the consequences of political neglect, and a hopeful path forward for pragmatic, authentic progressive politics.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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

[Jon Lovett]

I'm Jon Lovett.

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy's off today. On today's show, the White House tries again to limit the number of vaccines for kids based on unprove conspiracies about autism. Todd Blanche officially becomes the attorney general, thanks to the Republican Senate. AOC says Woke one was crazy. As Wisconsin and Minnesota Democrats head to the polls. Jesse Waters does not want to talk about women's sports. And Hunter Biden sits down with Tucker Carlson. Then Montana House candidate Sam Forstag, a former smoke jumper, stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about his candidacy and the politics of his state.

[Jon Lovett]

He's really interesting. I really recommend listening to that conversation. This is a person who decided to run for office. He literally is jumping out of planes to put out wildfires and then spending the rest of his year like organizing and doing union work. And he's just a really interesting person, a firefighter.

[Jon Favreau]

My kids would love this.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Big into firefighters right now.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, they're going to listen. I think a lot of our listeners are gonna be big into fire riders after this conversation brought it up.

[Jon Favreau]

Excellent.

[Jon Lovett]

All right.

[Jon Favreau]

All right. But first, let's check in on how the president's war in the Middle east is going npr. Here's a headline from npr. Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an end game in Iran. CNN decided to go with Trump has a Carter style Iran problem as the economy drags before the midterms. We got a Hoover. We got, we got a Carter. What else?

[Jon Lovett]

It's more Carter.

[Jon Favreau]

It's Nixon for the trifecta.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, no, he's definitely doing, yeah, he's definitely doing Nixon. Nixon at the Department of Justice, Carter in the Middle East, Hoover on the bread lines. I mean, he's really, it is really all of them. And in fairness, the comparison to Carter is even more apt than that because the Strait of Hormuz is a hostage.

[Jon Favreau]

That's the context for lots of reporting over the weekend that the president is desperately looking for a way to accept defeat in Iran after the regime made it clear they're not giving up control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is also weighing dropping his demand for a nuclear deal. Told Axios that he is, quote, low keying it with Iran and only semi negotiating at this point. And then on Monday responded to Iran's demand for reparations by demanding reparations from Iran.

[Jon Lovett]

Take that, a lot of neocons losing their semis. Sorry, I don't think Tommy's not here.

[Jon Favreau]

They were never semis.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, no, that's right.

[Jon Favreau]

What are you talking about? Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the Iranian regime is intentionally dragging the war out so that Trump loses the midterms. Probably because they're watching clips just like this. You said in June that this was, quote, the strongest job market in your lifetime. By what metric? The bottom line is that if you look at the overall economy, then things

[Jon Lovett]

are really, really booming.

[Jon Favreau]

Trump administration has only added 548,000 net jobs so far, which is considered very slow growth. It's growth, but very slow. Two million jobs were created in the last 18 months of Biden's presidency. Are you really arguing that your numbers

[Jon Lovett]

are better than that? Well, I disagree with your number.

[Sam Forstag]

We'll have to follow up on email.

[Jon Favreau]

I know you don't negotiate with the Iranians, but you do talk about the economy and you said you're bullish. There's going to be a heck of a lot of traffic moving through every single day. I wouldn't call it a head to go.

[Jon Lovett]

How do voters feel about the president's work on jobs? You know, these are the types of numbers that will make a lot of

[Jon Favreau]

Republican members of Congress lose their jobs come November. You can see it right here. I mean, just look at this trend line. Trump's not approval rating on jobs.

[Jon Lovett]

He is now 22 points underwater.

[Jon Favreau]

Swimming with the fishes. Swimming with the fishes.

[Jon Lovett]

What kind of that was like. What kind of code switching was Harry doing at the end there? It's like, extra New York.

[Jon Favreau]

How does old Donny wriggle his way out of this one? Lovett.

[Jon Lovett]

If from the beginning they hadn't said they were going for unconditional surrender, that they were gonna prevent Iran from being able to project power in the Middle east, that they were gonna fundamentally reorder the power in this critical part of the world. And what he had done, not unlike what he had done when he had Midnight Hammer in the past, or killed Soleimani, like, done a series of strikes and then claimed that the nuclear program was set back in a way Barack Obama could have never dreamed through his deal, maybe they could call bombing the nuclear sites and incapacitating a large percentage of Iran's military as some kind of victory if they reopen the strait. But now Iran has proven that the US Military, despite all its might combined with Israel, cannot stop it from controlling this vital waterway. Trump looks weak. The country is not behind it. There's all these reports about our depleting military capacity. And now at the End of it. The best he's gonna accept is we're back to where we started. Now, to be clear, I hope that happens. I would rather us get back to the strait being open and not having this on again, off again war in the Middle east and all the instability and danger and chaos that that entails, but it's still a total capitulation by Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

And I don't think this trade is going to be open because Iran has recognized, correctly, that this is their sole point of leverage now. And that's why there was all this reporting last week that Iran and Oman were heading towards a deal. And I guess they have negotiated it, but Iran's basically like, yeah, we negotiated this with Oman, but we're not opening the strait until the US Ends the blockade. US forces out of the region, compensation for the war, sanctions relief, they're asking for all of it because they don't really want the deal, because they actually want to lord it over Trump. And from Trump's perspective, he does it like he keeps going. They talk about exit ramps. He keeps going past different exits on the highway. Each time he goes past one, the next exit is worse than the last one. Because now what can he actually do? He can't. He doesn't want. He's not talking about a military strike, Remember, he was talking about horrible, the worst military strike since World War II, and we're gonna destroy them. As early as last week, we were just talking about that. And today he was asked, and he's like, you'll see, you'll see. But we don't have the munitions. We're running out of munitions. There is no intelligence that said that any further US strikes would bring them to the negotiating table or do anything or cause them to change their behavior in any way. So basically what he wants is for the strait to reopen and then say a nuclear deal will happen some other time, but he can't even do that because they're not going to open the

[Jon Lovett]

strait and they're not cooperative rhetorically. Right. Like, he really, really, what he wants is for this all to just go the fuck away.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Jon Lovett]

Like, everyone just shut up about Iran or I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to think about anymore. We won, I'm done, It's over. Everyone stopped complaining.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And so he does these threats to say, they're coming back to the table. They don't cooperate and say, we are back to the table. They have this annoying way of not helping him with his PR problem.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Cuz they can read the news.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And watch clips like we just did. The Guardian says that there's two factions in Iran arguing about their strategy on this. One thinks that if Trump is weaker after losing the midterms, he'll have less reason to deal. The other thinks that losing Congress will force Trump to negotiate. What do you think?

[Jon Lovett]

My instinct on this is that it is no easier for Iranian political factions to predict Trump's conduct than it is for us to predict Trump's conduct. I think that there's a third door, which is, and this is, by the way, something that some of the neocons have been wishcasting for, which is Trump is a little bit constrained by the politics right now because all of these Republicans he's dealing with do not want to be saddled with an ongoing war in the midterms and the cost of gas and the anger from the part of Trump's base that convinced that they were voting against far and wars. So they want all this to stay pretty quiet. If Trump, whether he wins the midterms or loses the midterms, there are those who believe that will give him the flexibility to finally do the escalation that they're desperate for him to do. He won't be running again. Other Republicans can criticize. There can be a debate about it in the 2027, 2028 Republican primaries. But there's a version of this where losing the midterm may weaken him politically, but might put him in a position to do something drastic and quite terrible.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I was thinking about it the other way in that, like. Because I don't know that escalation does anything at this point, because I don't know that he can bomb them into submission since they've hit all the targets. I do think he could give them more.

[Jon Lovett]

There's that, too.

[Jon Favreau]

He could capitulate more. And you could see him doing that again after the midterms just to get it off his plate and to go around saying that he ended the war and he's a peace president and, like, it's a terrible deal, and everyone tells him it's a terrible deal, but he doesn't care because he just lies.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes. And then he gets, you know, he's doing his big kind of president at the end of his term. Yes. Doing his sort of, like, big diplomatic achievements that he can kind of put in his museum tower. Part of this is a wish that the elections are somehow a hinge on which there could be some change in the dynamic. The other argument is the Trump we have today is that Trump will have six months from now. He doesn't give a fuck what happens to these Republicans for the most part, other than how it affects him. He's already said that in many interviews. What's driving him is what will drive him then, which is how his ego is reflected in the embarrassment of losing a war, being able to claim that he got a better deal than Obama, what have you. That's the case in January as it is today.

[Jon Favreau]

One person who seems less afraid of pissing off Trump these days is Bibi Netanyahu. He just rejected the U. S Backed peace plan for Gaza, saying that the IDF won't withdraw any forces until Hamas completely disarms and that they're not afraid to, quote, stand up to the US that would be Israel. What did you think that's all about?

[Jon Lovett]

Yes. He also said again that as long as he's prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria is what he says, but the west bank, and that's regardless of whether Hamas is in charge. So they can negotiate and deal with what it means for Hamas to be disarmed. And there may be legitimate disagreements inside of that, even though Benjamin Netanyahu is not a good faith actor. And there is no disarmament that would be acceptable to him, obviously. But there is an actual policy question in what it looks like for Hamas to be disarmed when you're sort of leaving those weapons inside of Gaza, fine. But if he's saying there will never be a Palestinian state, which he's been

[Jon Favreau]

saying for a while.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, but he's saying even now, after they've leveled Gaza, even as Hamas has agreed to the terms of this deal, which means handing over power, even in a deal in which there will be an international force, all of these steps, the steps that would have to happen, and that should be what determines the creation of a Palestinian state that Israel recognizes, he is saying that that cannot happen on his watch. So you have Trump now saying, you know, on the, the Trump administration kind of quietly saying he's got an election in October, he's trying to protect his right flank. Let's wait till after the election, which by the way, is a largesse. He does not afford people like John Cornyn and, and Cassidy and the rest. But okay, he gets, let's say they, they then Yahoo manages to stay in power. He gets the other side of this election, then what he is saying he will never agree to a plan in which the Palestinians have a state, which means he will never agree to a plan in which Israel is not the sovereign in Gaza and the West Bank.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Which means that he'll never agree to a plan where Palestinians and people who are living in the west bank in Gaza are anything but second class citizens with fewer rights than Israelis. Which is if people, you know, people who are pro Israel get upset when you call it an occupation or that it can act like an apartheid state. But when you're talking about the west bank in Gaza, like what, what, what do you call it? If there's never going to be a Palestinian state and Israel is just going to control both areas the entire time, are they going to make them full citizens of Israel and probably doesn't sound like it.

[Jon Lovett]

And you have Israel taking more and more of Gaza for this security perimeter. They no longer even really recognize the original border of Gaza is where a Palestinian state would begin. You have settlement expansion going on at a pace. They are doing everything they can to make any kind of a Palestinian state both politically and practically impossible. Meanwhile, you have those who I think are rightly incredibly disgusted and critical of Israel saying that a two state solution is now ridiculous and stale and dead talking point because of what's happened. They want a one state solution in which every which Palestinians have equal rights. Those that are pro Israel, that is anathema to them because they believe in a Jewish state. If you believe in a Jewish state and you find it repellent at the idea of Israel being an apartheid state, then the answer is a state in which Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis have equal rights. But there is a Jewish majority that requires a Palestinian state in which they can govern themselves and live in freedom and autonomy. And that is the reality. And Benjamin Netanyahu is the obstacle to that possibility and everything else. You can blame all the rhetoric you don't like. There's tons of anti Semitism, but it is this Israeli government and the Israeli people backing it that are now making Israel this pariah nation around the world.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, and I don't know that an election even that gets rid of Netanyahu is going to fundamentally change too much about that scenario that you just described.

[Jon Lovett]

So let's see. But by the way, I just think we should just keep arguing. I think we keep arguing about social media and accuse each other of all kinds of things.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. No, no, no, we do it.

[Jon Lovett]

We're very close, very close to the solution.

[Jon Favreau]

There's

[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

Large amounts of, like, vats of vaccine are currently pumped into your child's body.

[Sam Forstag]

You know, there are some groups that

[Jon Lovett]

have virtually no problem with autism and they, you know, I have to say, they say they're groups that aren't big into the world of vaccines and nothing bad can happen from what we're doing. Nothing bad can happen. It's possible. It doesn't work. I don't think that's much of a possibility, frankly. We're going to learn a lot.

[Jon Favreau]

The U.S. passed all of 2025's measles total by July. So far of this year, 2,371 cases, 37 new outbreaks versus 2,000 for all of last year, a little over 2,000 for ALL of last year. MMR coverage among kindergarteners has fallen from 95.2% in 20, 19, 2020 to 92.5%. So good job everyone. And now we're going to be telling kids and families to split the shots up somehow, which will mean more missed visits.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I mean, what do you think happens if you tell everybody they have to go to the doctor three times instead of one time? You can answer the question. There are countries that have done this. I think Japan split up the MMR vaccine. And what do you end up with? You end up with outbreaks of mumps and rubella. That's just what happens. This is all. And we'll talk about Bill Cassidy and his capitulation on Blanche. This is somebody who is in a position of power. He is a doctor. He believes in vaccines. He had a moment where he could have stood up to this and he took the ridiculous false assurances from RFK Jr at face value because he wanted to be convinced by RFK Jr. So he could avoid the hard vote and voted RFK Jr. Out of committee. And now we have as destructive a health secretary as you could imagine in this job. Being alive is already challenging. We don't need to put it on hard mode. Like, that is what this is like. Vaccines are a miracle. This is all based on false science. This idea too, like, oh, we give our kids 72 jabs or whatever number of jabs that is a number based on giving kids the flu shot and that they're not counting the shots. The other countries also give their kids, just not real. And then on top of that, because they think of vaccines as somehow harmful, even though there's no evidence that they are harmful. In fact, they are one of the great miracles of modern life. They have changed the world. They've made being a parent a very different experience than what it would have been a hundred years ago. When other countries don't give kids vaccines, they react by saying, can you believe it? We're giving our kids more vaccines. Yes, that's cool. They're not willing to spend on some of those vaccines. They're not willing to add them to the schedule. They're rationing fucking health care over there in Europe. The Danes are rationing the health care. We're giving more vaccines than they are. And part of the reason we have to do that is because our health system is so much fucking worse that we don't catch a bunch of stuff that they might catch in a universal system. And so when you remove some of these vaccines and say, what could happen? Well, what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a bunch of kids that get hep B, there's gonna be a bunch of kids that don't get vaccinated for rotavirus or what have you. And they're gonna get sick in that window because the doctors that recommend these vaccines and recommend them happening when born or early on are not fucking malicious. They're not looking to harm kids. They're not sadists. They know that if you increase the window, if you cause more delays, if people don't show up to the doctor, inside of that group of kids are people that are gonna get hurt, maybe permanently injured, maybe die. That is what's gonna happen. I'm bummed about it. Wow, I'm really mad.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm gonna need a hearing check.

[Jon Lovett]

Makes me really sad.

[Jon Favreau]

It's. I mean, the CDC in their own website still says that there's no published evidence of any benefit from separating mmr. It's just. And the way these things get, like, sort of seep out into the public consciousness, we're getting Another example of it. We got one just today because they have. They're still, you know, trying to do a number on Fauci. And so they got his phone, his government phone, and they released all the texts.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And there's one text where he's like, oh, one thing we should look at as we're developing these Covid vaccines is if there's any effect on miscarriages. Right. Cause there's like, throwing out a hypothesis like, that's something that we should look at.

[Jon Lovett]

These are new vaccine. It is a new technology. Let's make sure that if it causes some kind of response by the body, that there isn't a higher incidence of miscarriage. We need to know that about this vaccine, a higher, completely reasonable question for Fauci to ask.

[Jon Favreau]

So it was January 2021. He said that the second dose of the COVID shot theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. So that's something to think about. Then they tested it. Of course, it was like, by the time it was widely available, like, it was fine. And they had all the right recommendations.

[Jon Lovett]

They withheld approval, by the way, for pregnant women for a while.

[Jon Favreau]

For a while. Because for this reason.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

So they did, like, everything they were supposed to do. Now everyone is like, Meghan McCain is like, put him in jail.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm serious, put him in jail.

[Jon Favreau]

And then now they're recirculating this debunked theory where there's this study that apparently shows that.

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, I know it's. You don't. They are numerically illiterate. They're numerically.

[Jon Favreau]

Katie Pavlich, the mandated and doctor recommended COVID 19 shot for pregnant women was effectively an abortion shot. According to new documents just released by Senators Johnson and Paul, the authors of this study claimed a miscarriage rate of 12.6%. But the raw data revealed an 82% miscarriage rate. Is that what happened? An 82% miscarriage rate? No, they read the study wrong. They read the numbers wrong. They're all fucking idiots. And every single right wing, not every single one, but all these right wing accounts now are putting out that there's an 82% miscarriage rate for the COVID shot. So completely irresponsible and fucking dumb.

[Jon Lovett]

Also, we all live in the world. A lot of pregnant women got the COVID shot. If there was some 80% chance of miscarriage because of the COVID shot, that would be one of the worst health catastrophes that would be. It would be like fucking children of men out there. And they're just, first of all, to get to. They're just misreading the number. Even that 12%. That might sound like a lot, right? If you're just casually consuming this information. The point is, like a lot of first trimester pregnancies end in miscarriage. That's why people don't tell their family until they're through the first trimester. What they found is when you looked at all the data, there wasn't a spike, it didn't go above. There wasn't a statistically significant increase in miscarriages. That's all that. And they look at it and they do the best they can. They weigh the data against the safety that the COVID vaccine provides. And these are scientists and doctors doing their best to try to protect pregnant women, to protect children, to protect people from all kinds of viruses. And because of the conspiracy addled minds of the people in that room, they

[Jon Favreau]

can make none of them doctors, none

[Jon Lovett]

of them doctors, none of them with medical degrees, and forget even the recommendations. Forget.

[Jon Favreau]

So maybe that J guy, the C1, whoever, J. Bakar, whatever his name is.

[Jon Lovett]

But okay, these are recommendations that would harm people 100%. Just the way they talk about vats of vaccine injecting the little ones, the jabs, the 70. It's all meant to, it's all meant to make people question, be afraid of these vaccines. Meanwhile, the vaccines we give today are so different than the ones that were given even 20 or 30 years ago. They have much less of the antigens in them. They're much more precise. We've learned a lot about vaccines because science is amazing. And so the dozen or so vaccines that kids will get in early childhood today actually have less, far less, like a tenth as much of the kind of antigens that was in one pertussis shot 30 years ago. We have figured out how to do this in a way, because the people doing this research care so much because they didn't become, you know, become. They're not researchers in vaccines because they're what, like power mad Covid mask people? No, they're doctors trying to provide us, do the best care, do the research for the reasons they got involved in medicine in the first place. And they're. These people are like decided it's a fucking conspiracy to give kids autism. Meanwhile, I don't know, given the state of our fucking, our education system, our health care system, our infrastructure, maybe we could use a little more autism. Get people on these fucking spreadsheets figuring this stuff out.

[Jon Favreau]

Don't laugh at that. Don't Laugh at that staff.

[Jon Lovett]

God forbid we have a. We have more people in this country that don't like that. Like staying inside and doing fucking math.

[Jon Favreau]

This seems like a little bit of a self interested.

[Jon Lovett]

I got every vaccine and look at me. I know how to make eye contact. It's not that hard looking at John right now. Right in the eyes.

[Sam Forstag]

He can't look at me.

[Jon Lovett]

Who has autism now? Neither of us.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Well,

[Jon Favreau]

one lighthearted moment in this whole thing was someone, one of the reporters asked Trump afterwards, you're a proud father. Would you have vaccinated your children differently? And this man with like straight face just doesn't even skip a beat, just says, I did. I did. I took my children for five different vaccinations. I went with my wife and we took each of them for. We separated out all the vaccines. Do you think that man has ever taken any of his children to a doctor's appointment ever? Do you think he knows that they. Do you think he ever knew who their pediatrician was?

[Jon Lovett]

Can you imagine Donald Trump in the same room as one of those toys where you move the little things along the wires? Imagine him sitting against the wall and there's just like a kind of big red stripe behind him, you know, and

[Jon Favreau]

he's walking in his suit and tie to. He's got to take work off because he's got to take Don Jr. To get a vaccine.

[Jon Lovett]

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

[Jon Favreau]

He and Ivana were just going together to the doctor, pediatricians. I would have loved someone to follow up on that question. Be like, oh, when did you do that? What pediatrician? Where did they go?

[Jon Lovett]

Famous hypochondriac Donald Trump sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of coughing children. Inconceivable. Inconceivable.

[Jon Favreau]

He just missed his son's wedding. What are we talking about? Anyway, right before the vaccine event, Todd Blanche was sworn in as the next Attorney General. In a private ceremony in the Oval Office on Saturday, the Senate voted to confirm Blanche and the only nos were Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. But three yeses from the three members of the so called YOLO caucus of Republicans, John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, who had this to say.

[Ad]

And on giving his family protection from IRS probes.

[Sam Forstag]

That's totally wrong. Totally wrong.

[Jon Lovett]

And so I will go back. This is not a black or white decision. That is wrong. And no American should be targeted by the law.

[Sam Forstag]

But no American should be above the

[Jon Lovett]

Law and that frankly, almost weighed to vote no. Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Actually, it's quite a black and white decision. There's a yes vote and there's a no vote. He's either confirmed or he's not confirmed. I will say that in that Oval, the vaccination event, some reporter was like, so, is the weaponization fund dead? And he said, well, that's up to the Attorney General now, just like we thought.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The fecklessness of Cassidy and Cornyn and Tillis, three people that Trump's personally ruined their careers. He got involved to get them out of office. He successfully did it. He has now put forward as his Attorney General nomination someone who's oversaw the politicization of the Justice Department unlike anything before in American history, which is a tough category. RFK was the Attorney General who personally met with Ghislaine Maxwell, oversaw her transfer to a Kushier prison, has overseen a Justice Department in which they've gone after Lisa Cook and James Comey and fucking the sandwich thrower all the way up and down in any like, so beyond the pale. So obviously unfit. So clearly a moment to just stand up and say no, as you could ever imagine in the Senate. And then this guy has the audacity to then claim it was a hard decision. He talks about tearing up in this interview, given the incredible amount of responsibility on his shoulders to have stood in those hallowed halls and been responsible for such big decisions, much like he always imagined it could be to be in that storied Senate chamber. And he is saying it as someone who completely failed his moral responsibility, that he completely gave up that power to Donald Trump in a way that is pathetic and that defines him. His whole life is defined by his decision to be a tool for Donald Trump, a stooge for Donald Trump. And he's giving interviews about how weepy he was having had the opportunity.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, look at it this way. Sometimes we say these people do this for Donald Trump because all they want is their job and their title, and they're afraid. Honestly, it was none of those things. He lost his job, lost his title. He doesn't have anything to fear anymore. He just thought, okay, sure, Todd Blanche.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a kind of laziness.

[Jon Favreau]

He said something about, like, well, it wasn't about, like, the perfect Attorney General. It was just like, maybe another one would be worse. What are you talking about?

[Jon Lovett]

I really think they've sorted Todd Blanch, the serious guy who talks honestly behind closed doors, and that's what they've convinced themselves. But this is where this is how

[Jon Favreau]

they all, like, love Rubio still, right? In their mind. Rubio is like the adult in the room, even though he is, like, capitulated on just about everything that Donald Trump has asked him to do.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

And says crazy things in public now. Same way they can see Doug Burgum as a serious and reasonable person, even though he's out there saying that the Reflecting Pool was destroyed by vandals. The other part of this, too, is they're acting so powerless. They had so much power. Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, Cornyn. They could have come together and said, we want to ban by law any kind of insurrectionist fund. We want a public assurance from Todd Blanche that he won't consult with Donald Trump about ongoing cases. They could have in law. They could have passed a law that said no settlement with the IRS could carry forward into the future. That it can only be. There's all kinds of things that they could have done with their actual power. That was not impossible. It just required some work, like actually getting together and figuring it out and caring enough to do something without acting. Like every vote that happens to you is the. Like, there's no forward planning to it. It's like, well, that's the vote today. Nothing I could do. He's acting so. It doesn't fucking matter.

[Jon Favreau]

It's really wild. I would love someone to really. I mean, this is. No, I wouldn't. Because what's gonna happen is Todd Blanche will continue to do horrible things. And then someone will ask them, you know, what did you think about Blanche doing that? And maybe they'll say, oh, I'm so disappointed that he did that. I never thought he would do that.

[Jon Lovett]

I was reassured. You know, he gave me his assurance.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And, boy, am I. It's like, you know, it's like how Susan Collins talks about Brett Kavanaugh and Dobbs, you know.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. That is the. And like, Susan Collins now gets to have this vote. No. And as everyone. The point people have made again and again is that she only votes against Trump when it doesn't have a consequence. This is what's happening here. But I do think there's, like, an alarm that's not going off. A dog that never barks with Susan Collins, which is what kind of fucking non leader is she? She has all this power in the Senate.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. She's head of the Appropriations Committee. She could have gotten some out of this.

[Jon Lovett]

There's so much she could have done with this group of people. She still could. They could do it right fucking now. They Never will. He is desperate. It is a close Senate. Mitch McConnell is, quote, unquote, recuperating at home. You know, his. His doctor, Jonas Salk says he's getting better. Clara Barton says he's doing quite well. So there's that.

[Jon Favreau]

He's working from home.

[Jon Lovett]

Mm.

[Jon Favreau]

Some kind of home. All right, so that's it. Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche is our new Attorney general. He was the old attorney general. We're not gonna notice much of a difference. He's just gonna continue doing whatever Donald Trump tells him to do. Personal lawyer. Now the Attorney general, but still the personal lawyer. All right, let's get to the midterms. On Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson launched an exciting new messaging effort called the Contrast for America, inspired by Newt Gingrich' Contract with America, which most of the people alive don't remember anymore, aiming to reframe the election as a fight against actual communism. That's not a joke. If you go to the website, which I don't encourage you to try, but if you go there, it shows the history of communism and different milestones in different communist takeovers. And then it compares Democrats wanting to raise taxes to that. This calls that communism. Now that's communism raising taxes. Republicans are betting that their only chance to win the midterms now is to capitalize on the Democratic infighting over a few DSA candidates and also more progressive Democrats like Abdul winning their primaries this cycle. Here's AOC giving her theory of the case to ABC's John Carl on Sunday in response to questions about Wisconsin frontrunner Francesca Hong. And Abdul doing his best to pivot to a general election message.

[Sam Forstag]

What do you make of those controversial statements I'm sure you've seen? I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that, but, you know, the. Abolished prisons, abolished police.

[Ad]

My understanding is that. Is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her election.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, she's moved away from a lot of people.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Right.

[Ad]

She's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this saying, woke one was crazy. And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.

[Jon Lovett]

When asked about Hasan piker's comments on

[Ad]

9 11, Senator Bernie Sanders called it a dumb.

[Jon Lovett]

Do you agree?

[Ad]

Do you disavow those comments that America deserved 9 11?

[Jon Lovett]

Of course. Of course it was a dumb statement. And of course, I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement, he disavowed it.

[Sam Forstag]

I want to be held accountable for

[Jon Lovett]

what I say and what I do. Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with, a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to.

[Jon Favreau]

So Republicans are hoping that Democratic, quote, unquote extremism will be for this midterm cycle what the Dobbs decision was for 2022. Sort of a way to change the subject away from a deeply unpopular incumbent. What do you think? You think it could work?

[Jon Lovett]

I don't. Because one is a fear mongering message about Democrats trying to make every Democrat sound like the craziest thing people saw on the Internet. The other is a real decision having real negative consequences on people's lives that the Republicans actually did. I also think it is part of they can't, there's no campaigning that they can do to diffuse the fact that they overturned Roe. They did that, they wanted it. And in fact, a lot of the people who were very happy to see Roe overturned also supported abortion bans at the six week mark or with no exceptions for rape or incest or the life of the mother. So they were saddled with their actual position. This is fear mongering about Democrats to make people think that they can't have, I don't know, universal health care and a tax code that was as high as they were in the communist days of America in 1993.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think it could work. I mean, it could work, but I think that it'd be one thing if Republican candidates in an alternate universe were out there being like, you know, Donald Trump, we break from him sometimes cuz he can be extreme and these Democrats are extreme too. We're the only thing holding, holding the line between crazy Donald Trump and crazy Democrats. Of course that's not what they're gonna do. They're all in for Donald Trump. So I think that, I think it's gonna be tough. And also it depends on like most people when you are, I mean, we saw this in the New York Times Sienna polls of the Senate battlegrounds from last month, which is you'll get a majority of voters in that poll. In the Senate battlegrounds at least said Democrats are too far to the left. They think the Democratic Party is too far to the left. But when you ask about the Democratic Senate candidate running in their state, they don't necessarily think that that Democratic Senate candidate is too far to the left. And so in midterm, this goes race by race. And if, you know, if you're a Democrat running that race and they try to tag you as a DSA candidate or they try to say, you want to abolish prisons, like you just say, no, that's not what I believe. Yeah, this is what I believe. I have this agenda that is not my agenda. And so, you know, they'll, I mean, on the margins for, you know, voters who aren't paying attention until they go cast a ballot. Could this work? Maybe. I don't know, but I think in a midterm for most voters, it's probably going to be. Going to be tricky when you get down to the individual race level.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I guess. Will it work? Well, yeah, it's going to work on some people. This is, they're trying to make Democrats their job, fundamentally. Look, what is American politics today? It is from the right is an effort to make extreme Republicans seem reasonable and reasonable Democrats seem extreme. And to pretend that politics is ultimately not about what the tax rates are and who gets health care and who doesn't. That's what everything. That's why they got a fucking former NBA guy trying to get into the wnba. It's like it's all part of one big thing. I was thinking about Francesca Hong because I joked about it, love it or leave it, and I went through the tweets and they are quite silly. And this is the moment where we're going to talk about these things because the primary is wrapping up. We're having an intra party debate right now. This is the moment where Abdul pivots to the general, where there's the most sore and hurt feelings, where we're trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. You're trying to reconcile all these things in Wisconsin. Whatever happens in the election, let's say Francesca Hong is the winner. Maybe she is, maybe she's not. Either way, Tom, Tiffany, right? Like, oh, my God, I can't believe she tweeted that about Thanksgiving. Tom Tiffany objected to Wisconsin's electors. He signed on to the, to the, to the Ken Paxton lawsuit to try to overturn the election. He continues to say that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes in Wisconsin. He said that Trump should cut off funding to Madison, that Wisconsin, the state he's trying to lead, should get less money because it is not going along with Trump's immigration policies. He did not. He refused to say that Trump shouldn't invoke the Insurrection Act. He sponsored a resolution in Congress to support Trump for sending people to fucking Sakat in El Salvador. He's an extreme and radical person. And if you ask people, do you want a governor who was in a bad mood in Christmas in 2020, or somebody who believes in deporting people to a foreign gulag and supports sending more money to ICE and cutting taxes for billionaires, like, where do you actually come down on this? I think people, if given the choice faithfully, would choose somebody who maybe said some kooky stuff in the past. And that's our job, is to, like, get back to that.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think there's voters who are gonna be like, well, her Thanksgiving tweet was crazy. Of course not. It's gonna be. They're gonna think, oh, she wants to abolish police, or she wants to. And I'm afraid about crime. And so she's gonna have to do, if she's the nominee, reassurance of people that she cares about public safety and do it in a way that is convincing.

[Jon Lovett]

I also. This is my own. Maybe this makes me a bit of a neolib shill, but there was a time when Democrats really enjoyed hating communists and really kind of got into it about how stupid and deadly and dumb an ideology is, that there was a kind of consensus that fascism and communism were programs for morons and losers that were deadly and stupid, and we should fight them with everything we've got. Because we believe in a democratic and liberal order in which we protect people from the worst kinds of destitution and have a safety net and give everybody opportunity, but also support the freedom to say what you want and pray how you want, but also start a business and create products and try to build things and innovate. Like, that was sort of what we all used to believe. And one way to deal with the communism crap is to have Democrats out there who are willing to say, like, I believe in free markets as long as they're fair and give everybody a chance. Which is something a lot of Democrats used to be a little bit more comfortable talking about because they were less afraid of being attacked by people on Twitter.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I mean, I think Abdul, even in the primary, towards the end, was talking about, like. Because he would be asked, aren't you dsa, too? And he was like, no, I believe in free markets. I like free markets.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, and look, Francesca Hong, in fairness, she's like. She's been saying, like, well, I'm a. I was a small business owner. The challenge is, when you call yourself a socialist, it is like, well, what does socialism mean? And this is the whole thing With. Well, defund was actually just a slogan and abolish is just an aspirational. Abolish police and abolish prisons. That's just an aspirational thing. That's not real. Well, then don't use the fucking slogan.

[Jon Lovett]

No, it's just an extremely unhelpful way of achieving my vision.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. It's like, then you're. Then you're upset that people don't understand that you actually have a nuanced view of public safety because you embrace the slogan abolish police. Like, of course they're not going to understand that you have a nuanced view if you use that slogan or you just say you're socialist. That's why you probably shouldn't call yourself a socialist.

[Jon Lovett]

Right. Because I think there are plenty of people that are democratic socialists who are socialists, but a lot of people ascribe to it because they think being a Democrat is correctly cringe. The word liberal was actually maligned by Republicans for a long time. And they're really social Democrats. Right. That's what they are. They are social Democrats. Which. And I really do think there's a lot of people that have convinced themselves that Democrats are just sort of incremental socialists. Right. In both directions. But I think there's socialists that believe that about Democrats and I think there are people that there's a kind of. And there are lefty Democrats who believe that about that somehow we're. That really. To be a liberal is just to be afraid to say what you really want, as opposed to having a framework for viewing the world in which government helps to address inequities and solve problems. But fundamentally, you do believe in all kinds of freedoms, including the freedoms that go along with the free market.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's just if you believe in Medicare for All and wealth tax on billionaires or abolishing ICE or whatever it is, just say you believe in those things and just talk about those policies. Like, the labeling doesn't seem like it's helpful in any way, shape or form, but I don't know. That's just me.

[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the uk.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

to talk about and there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to, journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling Bee. We've also had Tommy Vitor on who may be our boss.

[Jon Lovett]

We still we own.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. I don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Some of our listeners call Us irreverent, but not stupid.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

I object to that. I'm deeply stupid.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Favreau]

How do you feel about Woke one was crazy As a way to explain the excesses of. I guess it's just 20, 20, maybe 21, whatever that time period was.

[Jon Lovett]

First of all, I think it's. It has the benefit of just being kind of true. And I saw a few people talking about this, which is, okay, we're now saying kind of more publicly what we were all saying to each other in private. Like, boy, we've lost our minds a little bit, haven't we? And to me, what's interesting about it is I care less about what people were saying on the Internet and more about what our candidates were doing. And I think about everyone raising their hand about decriminalizing the border or kind of taking kind of more lefty positions. It's what saddled Kamala with the sort of. That questionnaire is from the height of this moment of woke 1.0 images like

[Jon Favreau]

the probably the Pelosi kneeling with the kente cloth was maybe that was a little much.

[Jon Lovett]

But what was happening then was, first of all, we were dealing with a once in a century pandemic. We were having a genuine and important conversation nationally about systemic racism and policing. It did lead to a lot of important conversations about reform. But I do think that a lot of people felt like they were performing something they didn't totally understand or believed and they would leave the criticism to others because they just weren't going to take on that work. Right. And so everybody kind of went along with certain parts of it that they weren't totally sold on. Right. Or they, maybe they didn't say it themselves. Right. But they didn't want to get in the muck. They certainly weren't going to go out there and saying, I actually don't believe in defunding the police. There wasn't a lot of equity. There was a lot of value in poking your head up above the trench line there.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, I mean, when you think back to like what was Woke one, right. Because now we're just saying, oh, it was all crazy. And you're right, people, like, at least people on the left kind of instinctively know what that means. But it's like worth talking about what it is, what it was. And I do think it's like, like three different things we're talking about here. There's policies, right? And so there was. Defund the police was the big one. But there was also abolish the police, Abolish prisons, which I don't even. I didn't even remember from then. But now we're. Now we're seeing all the tweets from back then. Abolish borders or open borders or decriminalize.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

All that.

[Jon Favreau]

So there was that. Then there was language that was used, and there was, like, there were words that no one actually uses in real life that were chosen to replace words that had been deemed offensive but weren't always offensive.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, even in your interview with Francesca Hong, she talked about justice impacted individuals.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Which is a funny thing, because I remember when I interviewed Andy Beshear, and I was like, what did Democrats do wrong? Or whatever. I asked him some question about Democrats and what he would change, and he's like, well, we use language that people. I don't know if he said faculty lounges, but it's that kind of idea. And he said, you know, like, justice impacted individuals. I remember when he said that to me, I'm like, is he just saying that phrase to, like, pick out something to mock? Because I'd never heard that. I was like, what is he talking about? And then she said it to me, and I was like, oh, oh, I guess that is something. Justice impacted individuals. So there's a whole bunch of language that made the left and Democrats seem, like, completely out of touch and that they don't speak the language that most people speak. Right. Then there was the public shaming. I won't say cancel culture, but public shaming, which is. There was a tendency, and this was mostly on the Internet, though it did bled into the primary a little bit in 2020. Responding to someone's statement or position that you disagree with by trying to yell at the person, label them bad, shame them, instead of persuading them that they're wrong or calling their idea bad or their statement bad. Like they were bad.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, like, that's. And it's like, also the difference between, like, that statement seems a little racist versus, like, you are a racist.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

For making that statement or sexist or whatever it may be. And so there was a little. There was, as we were discussing, real problems to be solved. Systemic racism, police violence, a brutal way of treating immigrants, whatever it may be. There was this belief that if you yelled loud enough or took a strong enough stance and called out the people who were taking the opposite stance loudly enough, that that would be the way that you fight it. And I think that since then, people have learned that maybe the most effective way is to try to bring people along, to persuade them and then, you know, if you can't vote against them or organize against them. Right. But it's just there was a. There was like a substitution for real politics because the discussions were happening online and people were just doing a lot of yelling and name calling.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. It also, like it was, it followed so. So Trump wins in 2016. The meat MeToo happens in 2017. You have a series of terrible killings by the police that follow. And then into the end, into the pandemic, and then the death of George Floyd. And it was this moment of saying, look at what we've tolerated. Right. Look at how much injustice was sort of baked into all of these systems. Look at how much we were ignoring that was in plain sight all around us. Now is the moment we're going to tear these things down. We're going to tear these systems down. And that was exciting and it was exhilarating, I think, for people, especially for activists who suddenly found that there were millions of people in their homes seeing their messages. They weren't out at bars, they weren't at work, they weren't in an office, they weren't living, they weren't at a park. They were home watching their screen. And all of us collectively were taking in a lot more of this and more receptive to it. I remember we were doing pods from our homes and you just knew that you'd put. Everyone was seeing it all at once. There's a lot of people going out to do jobs that they had to do. But as a site, our culture was being made by people fully paying attention all the time from their couches. And all of that was. It meant that everything was heightened and you lacked the feedback loop of being in the world. Right. You lacked the feedback loop of talking to someone face to face and trying things out and also, by the way, stepping away for a little bit.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Well, there was also a thing too where, so, you know, George Floyd's murder and a very important discussion afterwards about reform, reform policing systemic racism. And then, you know, there would be some vandalism and, you know, windows being broken and, you know, people spray painting a cab. All cops are bad. And then some people will be like, well, that's not great, you know, to do that kind of stuff. And then the response you get is, how can you care about that when there are these bigger issues? And the truth is, the reason you care about that is because the rest of the country is watching as well, and there's a. Most people, a majority of people who think police brutality and police killing is a problem and very bad, but also they like police in general as a concept. You know what I'm saying? And so, like, for those people, if you tell them, no, no, no, it's also okay. Looting in vandalism and saying that all cops are bad, that's okay, too. They're just not gonna agree with you.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, I do think that there was an impulse, especially in a political show like this or political debate more generally. There was a. I don't remember what the book was called, but the thesis was something like Looting. A. Okay. I work for a major news organization, and my book is called Looting. Yes, it's terrific. But it's sort of written in some academic speak, like looting and the praxis of freedom or something. And I remember feeling this at the time because it was so heightened and the Internet was such an intense place that you would say, like, well, hold on a second. These things are counterproductive, right? Like, this leads to backlash. We're trying to avoid that backlash. Because the cause is so just. Right. Because the cause of accountability for. For violence against people by the police is so important because.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, but because the cause is so just and important. That's why you have to be careful. That's why you have to be extra, extra. Like, think harder about persuading people.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, and. And so then you say that's. And so, therefore, because the looting or the damage will be taken out of context, even if the vast majority of people are peaceful, it will be. It will cause a backlash. But even in that moment, there was a kind of social pressure against simply saying, because looting is wrong. Because that business being destroyed hurts the people that work there, the people that own that business, even if it is a big company, by the way. But it hurts the people that work there that aren't for a big company whose jobs depend on it, but a lot of them are going to be small businesses. And that is just simply morally wrong. Even if the ultimate cause for the anger, what led to the protest itself is just. It is just wrong. Even if it weren't counterproductive, and there was very little space for that. But here we are years later, and actually the failure for more politicians and people in authority to remember those lines and assert those lines in the same way, by the way, a Bill Cassidy or a John Cornyn are afraid to draw those lines. They are paying because they went along with a kind of style that the country has now looked back on with

[Jon Favreau]

a lot of disdain, I will say. On the other hand, after AOC made those comments, I saw a lot of center left folks who sort of always thought that the woke one was a little crazy, just not being very thrilled that she was just laughing it off. And they want a more serious explanation about what actually was crazy and what progressives have learned and sort of like more of a mea culpa on this. And I understand that. But also, it's like political leaders on the left moving away from some of the fringier unpopular positions that they took in the past is a good thing. And one way to incentivize people changing their minds like that is to welcome it when it happens and not complain about it. Because I think changing your mind is good. Apologies are good. Recognizing that past positions weren't the best is good. You sort of want us. It's almost like in a different way. It's when a Trump voter is like, oh gosh, I didn't think the deportations were coming to my town. And instead of being like, well, you're an idiot, that the response should actually be like, great, well then welcome. Welcome to our movement.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, look, the term woke was stolen and turned into a pejorative, but one of the ways it was used at the time was it doesn't matter when you got woke up that you are right. Like, it's just like that you've woken up to what's happening in our society and that's a good thing. To me, the other part of the woke one is crazy is part of the problem is, okay, fine, time is flattened on the Internet and in political ads that the fact that now people are walking away from certain styles of rhetoric or positions that were more extreme than they want to take right now. Good. Those old clips are still coming out. Kamala paid in blood for what she said in 2020. We all are for what we are all paying in blood for what Kamala said in 2020. So part of this.

[Jon Favreau]

And it wasn't just her, to be fair. Of course not most of them that ran.

[Jon Lovett]

Of course it wasn't just her, it was everybody. It was a cultural kind of like whatever, an acute cultural moment of people kind of in this sort of reverie. But regardless, one way to get past it, it's not just disavowing it. I appreciate Abdul now saying that was dumb, but people can smell when someone wants to say something. And there's a difference between saying and Hong did this. Well, there's difference between saying what I'm running on is what I'm saying right now. And these are my current views and I've said things in the past and I don't stand by all of them. And people evolve versus just being like, look, I said some stupid fucking shit in the past. And like I looking back on it, I don't really think that anymore. And you can trust that. I love that as a governor of this state, that I will support the police. I believe in policing the people. That the people, some of the most vulnerable communities in our society depend on having good, responsible community policing that they can trust. That's what I want to build. I don't want to abolish the police. I think that that's dumb and I regret embracing it as a slogan because it doesn't actually capture what I think. Like, there is a way of talking about this that is going to honor your values that doesn't just, you're not just going to get past it. No one's just going to get.

[Jon Favreau]

You can't do the robot. Like, these are my positions now. I will never talk about what they were before.

[Jon Lovett]

And by the way, like, AOC knows that, of course. Like, I'm like AOC like that.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, she, I think she, I, I liked it.

[Jon Lovett]

No, I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I thought it was great.

[Jon Lovett]

But no, but I think she's trying to signal showing like this. There is a way to talk about this in a kind of honest and authentic way that helps people see past something you may have said a few

[Jon Favreau]

years ago, you know, where people are going to be able to hear a lot more about the best path forward for Democrats. And maybe we'll even have a conversation about whether woke one was crazy or not.

[Jon Lovett]

Where John Crooked Con. Crooked Con.

[Jon Favreau]

It's happening in D.C. the weekend following the midterms. And we've said this before, there's a special rate for Friends of the POD subscribers. But those tickets, they're running out, running

[Jon Lovett]

out of those special front of the POD tickets.

[Jon Favreau]

So you gotta head on over to crookedcon.com to grab your tickets and if you haven't subscribed already, become a subscriber, get ad free episodes of all of your favorite pods and support independent media.

[Jon Lovett]

And a bunch of episodes you can only get on our subscription feed.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, all kinds of secret episodes missing out on only all your friends are talking about them.

[Jon Lovett]

That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

So before we move off this, it's election Day. As you're listening to this, both in Wisconsin, where Hong has been in a commanding position for a while now, and in Minnesota where the Democratic primary for the open Senate seat that Tina Smith is vacating is happening between Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, she's been on the show, and Congresswoman Angie Craig. We tried to get around the show and it's tightening more than people expected. Any final observations on either the Wisconsin gubernatorial race or before we move on to Minnesota, I did notice there is one last state navigate poll that has Hong at 44, Crowley at 22. He gained 7 from their last poll. Undecided at 9, Keldaroy's at 11, Brennan 5 and Barnes is still at 6 in that poll.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, we'll see. I do think the fact that the Republicans have gone behind Tom Tiffany has meant they haven't had any kind of fractious primary on their side. We've had one on ours. I do not think we have shrouded ourselves in glory in this primary. I don't think it looked particular. You have the lieutenant governor dropping out because of some sort of alleged campaign malfeasance by the campaign manager. Didn't reflect very well, especially in a state that's been dealing with a scandal around fraud and Medicaid. You have Crowley who got out, then got back in at the behest of Tony Evers, the governor who could have run again. People thought he would, then he decided not to. And so the end result is people feel like, oh no, we ended up with somebody that has these kind of crazy old posts and has sort of been mired in this sort of right wing scandal for a few days. And all of that I do think has obscured the stakes in this election. The next Wisconsin governor may oversee the presidential contest that could be close. That person will be responsible for certifying the election. Tom Tiffany is an election denier. And Democrats, we have these big emotional, anxious debates about our candidates. We worry about them saying the wrong thing. We worried about them having extreme positions that are out of step with the voters. The Republicans are not doing that. Tom Tiffany, the voters of Wisconsin do not want an election denier. They believe that. They believe in free and fair elections and they believe in a society in which when you lose an election, that's okay, you live to fight another day. You don't claim Donald Trump won and try to tell a bunch of your fellow citizens that their vote doesn't count. They don't believe in using the Insurrection Act. They don't believe in deporting people to foreign gulags. They don't believe in this mass deportation scheme in which our cities are overrun by ICE agents. And so we have to Remind our. We have to focus on painting the extremism of Tom Tiffany as the real threat to Wisconsin. And after the Wisconsin, after this primary, we have to like, get our heads in the fucking game.

[Jon Favreau]

We haven't talked a lot about Minnesota. Angie Craig, I would say, is the more moderate candidate. She has been. Peggy Flanagan has been sort of attacking her on her vote for the Lake and Riley act, which Craig first defended and then backtracked on. Craig is more pro Israel. She's called off or she said she doesn't want AIPAC money even though AIPAC was still doing some fundraising and some spending for her. She also won't commit to not voting for Schumer. Peggy Flanagan is committing to not vote for Schumer as leader. Peggy Flanagan said she would have supported that vote to cut off military and financial aid to Israel that they took. Angie Craig didn't vote for that. And Peggy Flanagan has wanted to reform ice. She has not gone as far to say abolish ice. So it's what we've seen in some of these primaries, but not, I would say the differences aren't as stark as they maybe were in Michigan or some of the other ones. What do you think about this race? The polling's sort of all over the place. We don't know.

[Jon Lovett]

It reminds me a little of the old saying about why is the fight so contentious? Well, because the stakes are so low. I'm not saying the stakes are low. They're actually quite high. There are big differences between them. But I think in part because people think can win in Minnesota and because I think Peggy Flanagan is. She's not sort of a DSA City council person. She's a lieutenant governor that a lot of people really respect. Whereas Angie Craig is maybe a little to her right or more, you'd say a lot to her right. Whatever. It feels a little bit less. It's gotten a little less certainly national attention and honestly a little less attention for me. I've had Peggy Flanagan on the show. I really like her. I really like her. No knock on Angie Craig, but I just. Peggy Flanagan is just a really inspiring person to me. She also be the first woman Native American to be elected to the Senate. And just a really dynamic and interesting person.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it is because like you said, whoever wins, I don't know that it changes the race rating. I don't think it makes it more of a toss up if Flanagan wins versus Craig or vice versa. The other reason it might have gotten close is Angie Craig's been going after Flanagan for her connections to the state's fraud crisis that Walz has been dealing with that the Republicans have been all over. Remember, it's what originally led Trump to send in ice to Minnesota and all that. So she's been trying to tag her with that. So that might be. And basically saying. Making an electability argument, saying that if Flanagan wins that Republicans will spend the whole race tying her to the fraud crisis as well. Now, you could argue that they'll probably do the same to Angie Craig, even though she's not the lieutenant governor, because they'll just say any politician in Minnesota is part of the fraud crisis. But that's one argument they're having there. All right. Speaking of the Minnesota primary, I don't know if you saw the story about Royce White over on the Republican side. He is a former NBA player who has run before for federal office and is now trying to get in on the discourse about the WNBA and Trans rights by declaring that he's entering the WNBA draft. Enes Kanter Freedom has also made this. Another NBA player has also, a former NBA player has also made this announcement as well. White even put on a wig in interviews with Alex Jones and Benny Johnson. Cause that's what we're doing now. Most folks on the right are eating this up. It's also causing some conflict because it's forcing them to talk about women's sports. Here's our boy, Jesse Waters, struggling with this very problem.

[Ad]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

This is week three of the five covering the wnba. Right. And I have to say I am done. I hate the wnba. I mean, I don't mind women's basketball.

[Sam Forstag]

My girls play basketball. But I don't want to cover women's basketball.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't want to be a WNBA analyst. We get paid to have an opinion about everything. And this is something I don't care about. Every time I open up the rundown and see the WNBA in it, I feel like Jessica must feel every day we have to do this again.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Really?

[Jon Lovett]

This again.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know.

[Jon Lovett]

Points for a second father of daughters. A father of daughters. You know, as you know, John, that I'm a season ticket holder to Angel City. That's.

[Jon Favreau]

That's right. That's right.

[Jon Lovett]

The women's soccer team here in Los Angeles. That is because I am married to someone who, who used to basically be a lesbian. And they just kept the women's sports when they transitioned. So we'd go to the games and we have a great time. And there was a little dust up about this a couple months ago. A Player wrote an op ed about this and believing that people that were born as biologically male shouldn't play in women's sports and that there should be a regime of testing. And this led to the debate we've had ad nauseam about. Well, if you have a. A regime of testing that just punishes women who are forced to be examined when this ends up putting more power in the hands of the men. And it really kind of creates a situation in which women have to prove that they're women. And all of this debate is happening. Do you know how many trans athletes there were in the National Women's Soccer League at that time?

[Jon Favreau]

Zero.

[Jon Lovett]

Zero.

[Jon Favreau]

Same as the wnba.

[Jon Lovett]

Right now it's zero.

[Jon Favreau]

Same as the wnba.

[Jon Lovett]

And so they really like talking about this. They really like talking about women's sports. And I suppose that they can keep doing it. And if these guys. And there are people who believe that if you've gone through a transition that doesn't give you any advantage, there are others who simply say if you went through male puberty, you have an advantage, doesn't matter what happens. And I'll leave that up to experts to decide. However, if they would like to play in the wnba, they better fucking transition. Let's get them on some fucking hormones. Let's get them in the. Let's get for a couple years. Let's see it, boys.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, not to get into it, but they seem to think that it's just based on self identification, that if you just say I identify as a woman, that you are eligible for the WNBA draft. And nothing in the rules says that the league is going to have to figure out what the rules do say or what the qualifications are. Because it says you have to be a woman. But what does that mean if someone ever wanted to. Who has transitioned or someone ever wanted to play in the wnba that they're not dealing with, that they're dealing with a couple of men who have not transitioned and they're just saying that they're women and putting on wigs, which is a very different thing. But yeah, that's what we're doing right now. Just two men who really want to get attention is where we're at.

[Jon Lovett]

And even Jesse Waters doesn't want to give it to them. Even Jesse Waters is bored by this. Yeah, I don't.

[Jon Favreau]

That's what's happening. That's what's happening.

[Jon Lovett]

Good luck, fellas.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, they're getting some attention. All right. Last thing before we get to Levitt's interview with Sam Forstag. Tucker Carlson's new coalition includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and maybe Hunter Biden. On Monday, Carlson released a highly anticipated, I guess, two hour interview with Hunter Biden, who he is just making the rounds. Hunter Biden. Here's a clip. Here's a, here's how it went.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti Semite and he's this.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

I know you're not.

[Jon Lovett]

You're not an anti semite. I'm 100% know you're not. Yeah, no, that's what my point being is that I would just say so. My point being is, is that like, if it's anti Semitic to point out that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then you know what? I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say to people anymore.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you think? What do you think about all this? He started by talking about how much he loves Candace Owens because he did Candace's show too.

[Jon Lovett]

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

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it was very. He's just doing like a pander thing, right? Which is like, it's a little Biden Y where he like wants to be sort of nice and gracious to the person he's sitting down with, but he does it in a way by being like, oh yeah, everything you say is amazing and great. Oh, I have disagreements with you, disagreements with you, but like, I don't think you're an anti Semite, blah, blah, blah. And it's like also going after BB Net and Yahoo like that too. And I'm like, where's your dad on this one?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, it's also, it's so fun to only argue with the dumbest version of your opponents. That's true when you put a wig on and try to join the wnba. It's also true when you say it's anti Semitic to say that Bibi Netanyahu is evil. What are we doing? Well, actually, I'd say why don't you have a maybe sort of interrogate a less stupid version of this and see how far you get there. Like, Tucker Carlson has had Holocaust deniers on his show. He has embraced a whole host of anti Semitic conspiracy theories. He has been flirting with all kinds of antisemitism. He has accused so many people of having dual loyalties. He has engaged in a ton of anti Semitic tropes. He has used antisemitism in how he makes his arguments. Whether you want to sit there and be the arbiter of whether or not Tucker's an anti Semite for whatever reason. White people tend to be circumspect about saying to other white people, you're not a racist. Right. But somehow when it comes to anti Semitism, there's a lot of people that aren't Jewish that are allowed to be like, I've checked and you're not. Well, okay, buddy, great, thanks. Thanks for letting us know. We were waiting for the Hunter Biden imprimatur on Tucker Carlson to let us know whether Tucker Carlson is an anti Semite or not. And now there's one less thing to worry about.

[Jon Favreau]

Here's my thing about the whole Hunter Biden media tour on all of the various right wing hosts and all the different places he's going. I'm not like, this is not a debate for me about the platforming. And you can't go on someone's show that you think is awful or whatever. It's like, if you're gonna do that, have a discussion that is about the places where you disagree, have a little debate about it. You don't have to be screaming at each other if you don't want. But if you're just gonna go there to be like, oh, you're actually awesome, and then wait for Tucker or Candace or whoever to be like, and I'm sorry that I went after you so hard, Hunter, when your dad was president. What is the point of that? Who gains from that other than you? That's my question. Like, what? What kind of good are you doing? Are you introducing Tucker's audience to Hunter Biden's views on the situation that are different than what Tucker Carlson believes in? Because if that's the case, that's one thing, but that's not what he did there. That's not what he's doing with Candace Owens. That's not what he did with. He fucking sat with Nick Fuentes. Like, what are you doing, man?

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. So like, to what end is all of this exactly? You know, to what end?

[Jon Favreau]

To what end? Aside from like your own attention? Yes, yes, right. That's the thing. And again, I don't want to assign motivations because maybe there is some other motivation, but I don't know what the intention is other than sort of just because all he keeps doing is just going in these shows and pandering to the host.

[Jon Lovett]

It also, like, there's a certain kind of sort of broken brain person on social Media that's been just really eating up the Hunter Biden tour. They love it. They love it. Like he's some kind of sort of world weary truth teller, you know, like he's trying, like he's traveling around kind of telling these sort of forbidden truths. Like, the forbidden truths being that like, I guess Mike Johnson's gay and Tucker Carlson loves Jews. Like, that's.

[Jon Favreau]

I forgot about the Mike Johnson. Yeah. Forgot about all these Republicans are in

[Jon Lovett]

the closet thing and that the closetocracy he called it is like the. Is actually the bigger threat than oligarchy, which is like, okay, man. And just it's this weird.

[Jon Favreau]

But I guarantee if he sat down in one of those interviews with one of the Republicans that he had accused of being in the closet, he would be like, oh, not you. I think you're great. No, I think you love pussy.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

No, no.

[Jon Favreau]

We definitely, we disagree on a lot, but you're amazing. Yeah, you're amazing. It's just, it's just very predictable what's going to happen every time we see these people.

[Jon Lovett]

And like, you know, I agree. Like, actually, like, boy, politics sure seems not like no fun when you talk about hard issues and get into the nuance of things and question Tucker Carlson about his views and actually sort of interrogate some of these difficult and thorny issues that we're facing. Or why the right has become so radical and conspiratorial and extreme. Or what actually drives politics to not work for people when you're not saying it's because Josh Hawley is secretly gay and actually anti Semitism isn't connected to what's happening on the right. Whatever you want to say, like, yeah, it's almost like becomes like work. You have to really focus on it and spend a lot of time on it, and it sucks. I agree.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, come on, pod. Save America anytime. All right, when we come back, Montana House candidate Sam Forstag. Pod Save America is brought to you by bilt. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out bilt. Becoming a BILT member means earning points on every housing payment, no matter where you live. BILT points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments, and more. Some other things that you can, that you can redeem built points for parking with Metropolis gift cards at over 120 brands. There's some restaurants, student loan balances, fitness classes at SoulCycle or Barry's. Heard of it Love Berries. Bilt's new AI neighborhood concierge doesn't just answer questions. It executes tasks from paying your rent and hailing a lift to booking dinner reservations across 50,000 plus partners. It handles your to do list while automatically applying your member benefits. First, download the Bilt app. Second, link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spots become even more rewarding. And third, ask the neighborhood concierge in the app pretty much anything and it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the Bilt app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com crooked that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com crooked use our link so they know we sent you. Now at McDonald's everyone can get more of what they want when they want it. With McVow, you can choose your wake up call, you can choose your study meal or even your drive through dinner.

[Sam Forstag]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the uk.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

to talk about and there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to, journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling Bee. We've also had Tommy Vitor on who may be our boss.

[Jon Lovett]

We still we own.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. I don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Some of our listeners call us irreverent but not stupid.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

I object to that I'm deeply stupid sound.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Lovett]

Sam Forsag welcome to the Pod thank

[Sam Forstag]

you so much for having me, John.

[Jon Lovett]

So first of all, let's just give people some background on who you are and what led you to run for Congress. You're a smokejumper and this is your first time running for office. Just tell people about yourself.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, it's my first time running for anything higher than vice president of my union local. Until seven months ago, I worked as a smoke jumper for the U.S. forest Service. So the short version of that is we parachute into remote wildfires to put them out while they're still small. And I was a leader in my unions local when all the Doge cuts began. And what that looked like in Montana is in large part they said it was all about government efficiency. But the people we lost were the lowest paid workers we've got in our agency. I mean when they fired 360 Montanans just in the Forest Service just on Valentine's Day two years ago, 85% of them were GS6s or below, making 1970 an hour or less. In my agency it was the people who swing the tools and conduct the science to maintain our public lands. And when I reached out to Ryan Zinke, the Republican in the seat who should be the person you can reach out to when your members lives are being turned upside down, I got crickets. So I decided if he's going to take my co workers jobs, I'm going to come take his.

[Jon Lovett]

Just so people understand like how just to get when Doge comes in and makes cuts to save money.

[Sam Forstag]

Sure.

[Jon Lovett]

What happens when you're trying to say put out a fire quickly before it gets bigger. Like walk people through what happens if say the equipment you used to rely on is no longer available, like day to day. What did it mean for them to try to make government more efficient?

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, I mean I think it's pretty clear none of this was about efficiency. It was about power and consolidating that power in the hands of a select few, including the richest man in the world who happened to be at the helm of this thing. But on the ground, what it looked like even last year, and I know it's worse right now, is public safety was hampered. I mean I jumped a fire in early July last year, a time when usually you are not in a state of resource scarcity. Resources being the manpower and the people you need to help fight a fire. If you don't catch it with those first eight jumpers on the ground and I'm setting up a task force and I get told, hey, I know you're Requesting three hotshot crews. There are none available in the region, so we're gonna order six contract hand crews instead because they don't have the same capabilities. So we're gonna need more people, and that's the only way we get any help to you in the next few days. What it means on the ground is we all pay so much more for so much less, and it takes longer to fight those fires. And I mean, those stories are endless.

[Jon Lovett]

And so you're making. I know you've been doing this for what, seven years, and you're making $19, $19.75 an hour, seven years in. And because of these cuts, they have to bring in contractors and private companies that are going to make much more money and cost a lot more than what the trained people would have done.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, the real goal here was cuts and privatization to turn it into another source of profit. Another story is last year I jumped a fire outside of Steamboat Springs in Colorado. As jumpers, most fires we catch with the first 4, 8, 12 smokejumpers on the ground. But when you don't, you step back and you set up a large incident to make sure that you can save houses. We had hundreds of houses at risk in the immediate vicinity. This fire, we ended up catching at around 500 acres. And on the second day, I put in an order for pumps and hoses, which is a pretty basic firefighting implement, just to get water to the line. And they tell me, well, we used to have a gear cashier and steamboat last year, but they shut that down with the cuts. So you're not going to get those pumps and hoses until the end of next shift because we have to overnight air mail the pump and hose kit from Denver, and we gotta drive it up to the line, and then we gotta get it up to you. So you're not getting it till the end of the day tomorrow. So not only is our firefighting hampered, I mean, I cannot imagine a more expensive way to deliver hundreds of pounds of water pumps than that.

[Jon Lovett]

So you're a smokejumper and just that basically, you're going to the places where cars can't reach, vehicles can't get to, to try to solve problems before they get bigger. What does that look like? If there's a smokejumper in Congress, what do you see as the problem you're trying to surge to that you view as failing to get enough attention right now?

[Sam Forstag]

Really smoke jumping, like a lot of firefighting. Right. We're not so different from hotshot crews or engine crews. You're trained in crisis management. And whether it is the housing crisis that we're dealing with in western Montana, where we have the least affordable housing market in the country, that's a surprise to a lot of people this year.

[Jon Lovett]

Montana, Yeah. I didn't realize that until learning about this. It's, you know, you're making 19, say, $19 an hour in a area that we think of as rural, so it must be cheaper. But the average house is what, like $500,000?

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Yeah.

[Sam Forstag]

Nowadays in Missoula, it's just shy of 600K. You go to Bozeman, it's around $900,000. In a place where a decade ago it was probably closer to 200,000. The Flathead Valley in Northwest Montana, not so different. So, I mean, the crises are, you know, it's in housing, it's in health care, it's in childcare, where, again, median wage is $60,000 in Montana, the average cost of childcare is just shy of 19k, if you can make it through a waiting list. And these are all crises that so many people have felt like our elected leaders at the federal level aren't dealing with any sense of urgency with. We had leadership nationally not so long ago telling us the economy is better than you think it is. Meanwhile, yeah, me and a whole lot of my coworkers, well, at the end of four years of Democratic control, I'm running as a Democrat. Well, yeah, we're making 19 bucks an hour, and you're in a community where you'd be lucky to find a home for less than 500,000 bucks. And life did not get better. If you're in a situation like that over the preceding four years and people felt like the folks in power at the national level are not listening to us quite clearly. I mean, what better articulation of a disconnect than to tell people things are better than you think it is, while homelessness just doubled or tripled in every major city in Montana over the preceding five years.

[Jon Lovett]

What's interesting is when you say we've had leaders saying the economy is better than you think it is. I genuinely don't know if you're talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. One thing you said recently is that the national party did everything they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win in places like western Montana. What do you mean by that?

[Sam Forstag]

What I mean is we had people at the national level who quite literally were not listening to us. And we have people who are dealing with a housing crisis 20 miles away from what you and I were talking about earlier, places like the Yellowstone Club, where you gotta be a multimillionaire just to be considered for membership. And you go 20 miles up the canyon, you're in Bozeman. Well, we have homelessness that's doubled or tripled. You have people living in the back of their cars or trailers and people who felt like, rightfully their problems were not being solved at the national level. And when that's the case, when things are that bad, process is not an adequate excuse for not dealing with those things. And I want to note, I would offer the national party did all they could to make it hard for a Democrat to win. A Democrat did just win the seat I'm running for. It's Montana's 1st congressional district. John Tester won western Montana while he lost the state last year by just shy of a point, even in a tough environment like that. So we know we can win this thing. And the project here is to win in a meaningful way and rebuild the coalition we used to have when we could win statewide and when Democrats could conceive of ever having a meaningful majority in the U.S. senate.

[Jon Lovett]

You've seen people talking about abolishing the Senate. It seems like for a lot of people, it's easier for them to wrap their minds around fundamentally changing the Constitution than winning in places like Montana, statewide, again, even though Jon Tester represented Montana in the Senate. Max Vaccus, what do you think right now is if I went to Montana and asked a bunch of people, when you think of a Democrat, you think of blank. What do they think when they hear about a Democrat?

[Sam Forstag]

I think right now, people think about John Tester, who was our senator until a year and a half ago. And not so long ago, Democrats had serious power in a place like Montana. I mean, 2009, we had a 50, 50 split in our state Senate. We used to have. In 2016, we had a Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who was reelected on the same ticket as Donald Trump. 2018, Jon Tester reelected again in our state. Democrats have found a way in Montana to win even when Donald Trump is gaining power. I mean, 18,000 Montanans voted for Donald Trump and Jon Tester in 2024. Those are the people who deserve a candidate who's actually going to speak to our experience and talk about how government needs to be a thing that can make your life materially better when the market is not meeting that need. And government has also been failing on that job for a long time. And I think, clearly, you look at what's happening around the country or even in our race where I started this primary, nobody knew who the heck I was in December of last year. And we had a crowded, competitive primary that included a candidate who was the Democratic nominee for governor last year, people who'd been running for a year. And what we saw is that people are really hungry for candidates or for just anybody who can actually reflect our experience and say, it's not just your problem the fact that people can't afford a house. It's not just your problem that when your car makes a funny noise, well, that might mean you can't afford rent next month. Because I've lived it too. It is our problem. And of course people are going to address problems with more urgency if you've lived them.

[Jon Lovett]

How much do you think? So the way Democrats, obviously there's a huge problem with the Democratic brand. How much of that do you ascribe to, say, right wing media sort of hammering people, kind of pulling the most extreme versions of a Democrat and then how much you actually laid at the feet of the Democrats themselves?

[Sam Forstag]

John I would say we hold these truths to be self evident. The Democratic Party messed up pretty damn bad and they got us into this situation. We had four years of power. People were facing massive issues. I mean, between fire seasons, I helped put together the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness. We pulled a dozen homeless shelters together from around the state and we ended up getting some legislation passed in a Republican supermajority, the first one in state history. And the reason that was able to happen is because the problems were so damn bad. I mean, quite literally, I'm not exaggerating. We have triple the number of unhoused people in a place like Montana. We're in the Northern Rockies. It is not a hospitable place to be living on the streets. People die every year. And I mean, if you were working two or three jobs at a time like I was the entire time I was going to college and still graduating with debt, and you look up and people are telling you the institutions, they just need tweaked a little bit. That does not inspire faith. Yeah. And that doesn't give anyone a reason to be hopeful or to engage with politics. And so what happened? A lot of young people did not engage with politics last year. They did not turn out and vote. And we are now quite literally not the party of working people. Most working people, most folks making under 100k just voted for Republicans or shoot unions. Right. I come from a union background. We have the Gibraltar of unionism in Montana. It's Butte, most incredible town you can go to Western Montana. Well, half of union members voted for Republicans last year, and a lot of young people didn't turn out. Those are all the people that are the base of the Democratic Party I want to be a part of. And if we can't give those people a reason to actually engage and we can't show them that there's a place in this party for them, not just for the people who are rich enough to make it through these processes that we create for federal candidates, well, then we don't deserve their support. So let's win it back.

[Jon Lovett]

So Joe Biden, he's this, I think, longtime centrist figure. He wins in 2020, and he actually tries to bring in. Bernie, brings in Elizabeth Warren. He puts in a trust buster at the ftc. He governs much further to the left than anybody would have expected. Joe Biden to govern. Still, not as far as some people would have wanted him to go. Has some. And Democrats are largely punished in part because of all the obstacles, like the filibuster in the Senate, the Supreme Court. Democrats are in some ways punished because he's unable to fully achieve his agenda. And then who wins? The Republicans, who then immediately deregulate, pass massive tax cuts to the rich, overturn, put on judges to overturn Roe and environmental and union regulations.

[Sam Forstag]

They got it all.

[Jon Lovett]

And so when you're talking to people in your union that voted for Zinke or voted for Trump, how do you talk about this? What's your argument?

[Sam Forstag]

My argument is that I understand why a lot of people, like my coworkers and union members, some of them voted for the schlubs who were tearing all this down all around us. And, man, does it piss me off as somebody who spent a year and a half working with members who, I mean, I had a member, Kara, who lost her job in one day with no cause, no notice, 15 years into her federal service because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer that year to do more remote work during chemotherapy. Members who are getting texts in line at the airport to go to their grandmother's funeral saying they lost their job, they were only making 16 bucks an hour in the first place. But you know what? I also work with a lot of people who, well, if you're making 16 bucks an hour and you're working for the federal government and housing costs have just doubled or tripled in your community, and you can't conceive of ever owning a home, well, your life just got worse. And as far as I'm concerned there are two primary roles for the federal government. First and foremost, it's to protect your constitutional freedoms. Right. A lot of those in the Bill of Rights are freedoms from the government. Second, it's to make sure you can meet your basic material needs when the market is not meeting them. And the market was meeting them even worse after four years of democratic control. And you know what, if you are working two or three jobs at a time or if you're working 1,000 hours of overtime like I had to just to scrimp by through a winter on my mortgage for a 980 square foot home, you might not have the time to follow the intricacies of policy making or politics. You shouldn't have to, to be able to judge the people in power on what sort of results they delivered for you. And so I, I would just say like the people we need to win back are a lot of the people who got these folks elected. It's a lot of working people, there's a lot of union members and it's folks who you don't start a conversation with by telling them that they're wrong. Because it frustrates me so much to hear people's what I hear often say like, well, do they see like why are people voting outside of their own, their own self interest, their own material self interest. It's not more in your interest to vote for somebody who's gonna make your life worse a little slower than the other guy. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Also don't tell people what their interests are, presumably. So there's also been a part of this debate about sort of how did the Democratic party lose the men? What happened to the men and the working class. And a lot of people tend to.

[Sam Forstag]

What better place to address it than a podcast studio? Two white guys.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, two guys in a podcast studio. This is where we're supposed to. To solve it all. But I think Tester has talked about wokeness as being part of this. You said something interesting the other day, which is just that basically if you have a member of Congress who's worth millions of dollars trying to be a tribune for the working class, that person may feel a little bit more afraid to say, push back on trans issues or have a position that might not have a majority, but actually they want to be supportive of trans people. How do you think about this? But do you think that the social issues are part of Democrats problems Bernie has because he's such a kind of. People understand what Bernie stands for. He's had on the other hand, more room to say you know what? I don't think we should defund the police or we do need to have a strong border.

[Sam Forstag]

I think a lot of it comes back to credibility. And I had this fascinating split screen for the last eight years of my life where I'm doing Wildland fire in the summer's six to nine months out of the year. And then I was doing organizing and advocacy in the winters. Between that, I worked for the coalition of homeless shelters I mentioned for the state library association, even for the aclu. And when I would be in the middle of fire season, there's not a lot of other jumpers who go do policy work. And so you bet your tail everybody wants to ask me about whatever they might have seen on the news. Maybe it was on Fox News. And if we got time in between digging line or cutting line, I'd tell them that story. Well, here are the people that I know in the winters who are just trying to live their life with dignity without government telling them how to do it it. And I think that that's a piece that has been lost. And I'll tell them what else I saw when I'm at the state legislature is, well, we just saw in 2017, deep cuts in a dismantling of our mental health services in the state when we had a budget shortfall and over the following eight years when we had surpluses, did they reinvest in all those basic public health care services that they cut? No. They invested in tax cuts to cut the top income tax bracket year after year after year. And that's the same thing we see at the federal level. And what it is, is it is Big Brother not watching you because they don't need to now, even though they can. They're singing and dancing. Well, they pick all of our pockets as working people. And by the end of that conversation, a lot of my coworkers are pretty pissed. And they weren't pissed about what they saw on the news. They were pissed about the fact that that is why I am poor. And that is why I am poor in a world where we just minted the first human trillionaire. That's something that should make us angry. And that's the sort of grievance of all the festering, misdirected grievances, that kind of economic grievances, what government's supposed to be here to help address.

[Jon Lovett]

So let's talk about your opponent. Zinke won this race most recently by 8. You said Jon Tester won more votes there even as he wasn't able to Eke out a victory. It's very, very close right now. What is the case you're trying to make in the closing days to try to get more people to understand why your opponent just sort of a Trump back talk radio host is not exactly what Montana needs.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah. The contrast here could not be any better if you ask me. I mean, yeah, the fellow I'm running against, he was the hand pick successor for Ryan Zink. He dropped out of this race about four months ago in good riddance. And he dropped out because he saw that it wasn't going to be easy for him after a whole year spent gutting basic public services that people like me might have depended on as a kid. Someone whose belly was full thanks to food stamps. Sometimes gutting our public lands where if there's a consensus issue in Montana, it's our public lands. And so what did he do? He dropped out with 48 hours until the filing deadline and immediately endorsed this fellow, Aaron Flint, who was a far right talk radio host. He spent the last 10 years in an air conditioned recording studio spewing hate in hot air. Nothing against air conditioning.

[Jon Lovett]

What's wrong with it? I think you're sort of losing me a little bit. There's nothing wrong. You do a lot of good work in an air conditioned recording studio. Sorry, continue.

[Sam Forstag]

Well, and we got the guy is a political pundit and we have plenty of pundits and political puppets in Washington right now. I would offer there's no dearth of those. We got enough of them. What we do have a lack of is working people who know what it's like to be working three jobs at a time and still paying your rent on a credit card. I know what that's like. People who actually know what it's like to have your belly full because of food stamps or thanks to food stamps when your parent falls on a hard time. And like people who don't have that perspective are going to perhaps fight with a little bit less urgency when SNAP benefits get used as leverage during a government shutdown like they did this last time around when half of my members were furloughed at the end of those six weeks. And a lot of them are showing up at local food banks that are also having to curtail food benefits because some of that comes from snap. It just feels like across the board there has truly been a lack of urgency when we had the political will to pass really big important legislation like you mentioned, like the ira. Right. Well, a whole lot of that money never actually got out the door and people are hurting right now. I mean if you were on the edge of not having your home like Kathy, whose house I was at. Kathy lives a mile from my house. She's in now one of 4,000 mobile home lots that are owned by out of state private equity firms in the state of Montana. And Kathy's lot rent has gone from 370 bucks a month to over $800. Kathy doesn't have 10 years to wait for all these resources to propagate through the system and for half of them to go to large corporations so that maybe her life gets better. Like Kathy needs help right now and it feels like we did not deliver that help to people who really desperately needed it. And well, what happens? The party out of power gets elected and it turns into something really scary and dangerous.

[Jon Lovett]

There's also a big fight in Montana now over data centers. There's a lot of outside money. They seem Montana, it's cool. It's a lot of land. You can build a lot of big facilities.

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Where are you on building data centers in Montana? And how does that contrast with the Republicans?

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, well, my opponent got the better part of a million dollars from American mission, one of OpenAI's super PACs just in the month of May to get him through his primary, even though they tried to make sure no one could run against the guy. So what we're up against is a pretty terrifying amount of money that this industry is planning to leverage in this election. I think 150 million they're planning to drop on elections just this year for us. Well, we have a proposed center that is in theory going to use more electricity than every residential home in the state of Montana. And our power rates have already gone up 30 or 40% in the last three years. So what I would offer is we need to pass a damn law at the federal level saying they can't build these things until unless they show that they're going to provide all their own power. It doesn't have to be on site. Off site's even better. Put power on the grid, we need it ideally carbon neutral power making sure that they're not going to dirty our air and water. I mean you see these terrifying videos of dirtied water. Well, there are more water efficient cooling systems. They cost a little bit more. But this industry, they can afford it. They're planning to spend 4 trillion bucks on data center development in the next seven years. Right now we have none of that. All we have is an executive order trying to preempt state regulations on AI and where I am too. I'm coming at this. I'm also a. A relatively young candidate. I think that this technology is perhaps the biggest existential threat that we've got as a country. I mean, we've read the sci fi novel before. We're all living in it right now. If their promises are true. Well, this is a technology that could. It could cure cancer or it could kill all of humanity. And we.

[Jon Lovett]

That's a big delta too. It's a big difference. Yeah.

[Sam Forstag]

And right now it seems like we're only using it for all the bad stuff. And what in the last two weeks you're probably tracking. We had two instances of these models breaking out of the system and hacking into other outfits and they're under a full scale cyber attack from an AI system. And nobody knows. There's no oversight or regulation of this right now, functionally speaking. And if we can't get our arms around it and have real federal oversight and make it so, we're ready to pull the plug on this thing. If it poses a threat to the future of our children and our country, we're going to be in a tough spot.

[Jon Lovett]

One other issue that's been roiling in Montana is because in part for all the reasons you're saying, the Democratic brand can be pretty toxic. You have an independent that has a lot of backing from.

[Sam Forstag]

This is the first I've heard about.

[Jon Lovett]

This is the first you've heard of it. So for people that don't know about it, basically there is an independent that's running with the backing of a lot of Democratic politicians. There's also a Democratic candidate on the ballot today. As we're recording, this is the last day for that Democratic candidate to drop out so that everyone can coalesce around the independent candidate. Do you believe that Bankman should drop out right now?

[Sam Forstag]

Yeah, today's the deadline. I think they just had a press conference in the last couple hours. I think it was the third or fourth in last week between the two of them. Yeah. Each one announcing, I'm still running, I'm still running.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, they're both still running.

[Sam Forstag]

They're both still here.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. It's an interesting, like, game theory problem because they're like, there's been a brinkmanship. But what do you want to have? What do you want to have happen before midnight today?

[Sam Forstag]

What I want is to make sure Kurt Almi, who's the Republican running in that race, is not our next senator. And I will be entirely honest. I am so deeply frustrated with the entirety of how this thing has played out. Yeah. I mean, probably north. $8 million has been spent to manufacture this situation we're in right now where neither candidate's gonna have a chance of winning against the Republican as long as they're both in this race. That's obscene.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Sam Forstag]

Like, that is actually disgusting. We have all. Whichever angle you're looking at this from, we have all swallowed a spider to kill a fly. And I mean $8 million, again, that is pearls before swine in a state where people are being pushed out onto the streets because they can't afford the basics at this point, a coin flip would be better than what they got going right now. And what I've been telling the both of them is that I really hope that they will both sit down in person in a room and sort this out. Because a lot of how we got here as a country is a lot of our national leaders were putting their own ego before the good of the country, and it feels like nothing changes. And, well, the reality is nothing changes unless we go change it ourselves.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it seems like, God, a coin flip would work. Can we just do that? I mean, like, basically, that's what you're.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

You.

[Jon Lovett]

We want one candidate to go up against the Republican, and one of them would have to drop out, but neither one of them wants to do it. It's basically where we're at. And so it sounds like you just want one of them to drop out. And by the end of the day,

[Sam Forstag]

yeah, that would be better than the situation we're in, this standoff. But I will tell you, to do that Senate race, you know, I have faith in them to sort this out and to do the exercise the basic skills that my dad, who's a kindergarten teacher is teaching his students. Right. Sit down, look at each other, have a conversation. But if they. Whether or not they do that, Western Montana, Montana's first, is where we have a chance to win. This is the place a Democrat just won by. Just by almost 1%. And I think there's a real temptation to just spend all your time talking about whatever. Yeah, if it bleeds, it reads, wherever the controversy is. But this is a place where we just had turnout in the Democratic primary up 17%. It was down 4 on the Republican side. This is a place where we can have a foothold in a place like western Montana or the Rocky Mountain west or rural America. Something that Democrats don't really have right now. So, yeah, we're spending all our time talking about that. And whichever way that race goes, I think both of those are Very different kinds of candidates. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And whatever happens, by the end of the day, that's what will have happened. And then we have to focus on doing whatever we can to win your seat and the Senate.

[Sam Forstag]

And people can go to samformontana.com if they want to help out.

[Jon Lovett]

They can go to Sam from Montana if they want to help out. And you're going to have a lot of money coming up against you. And in a state like Montana, a million dollars dropped in that race can have a huge, huge impact. What do Democrats not understand about Montana? Forget even just the politics. Just as a place, what people care about. I think there's a lot of kind of assumptions people make about rural voters, how they view the environment, how they view public lands. What do people miss?

[Sam Forstag]

I mean our public lands are a way of life, truly. I mean you're protecting your gun rights and protecting your public lands. Those are the two consensus issues in a place like Montana because, well, that's what people depend on to keep your freezer full if you go to your public lands and use them for hunting. That is how people find sustenance. That's what people depend on. If you can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon between your three shifts just to go hiking or skiing, that's what makes it worth living. And that is not a Democrat or Republican issue. I mean, part of what pushed me into this race in November when I was thinking about is it worth leaving behind smoke jumping, which is the only retirement, the only healthcare I had, the only career I really had to run for this office. Because whatever the administration tells you, the Hatch act exists and you cannot run for public office. Federal employee. I got a mailer from Ryan Zinke saying that he's the Teddy Roosevelt of public lands. A year into all of these cuts where my members lives are being turned upside down, where we're down 20%, we've lost 2,000 red carded firefighters. We're all seeing what the consequences of those are. Right now we got smoke choked skies in Montana and less people to fight all those fires. And he's sending out a mailer with his little Teddy Roosevelt hat on and his Boy Scout outfit. Everybody claims they're for public lands, but it's a lot like these other issues. Public lands aren't just lines on a map. There are a lot of people, most of them not making a lot of money, who work their tails off to make sure you can make it up a road to the trailhead or up a trail to access your forest. And a lot of those people are core to the rural economies. If you go down to Hamilton, well, you got Rocky Mountain labs who's lost 30 or 40 employees so far. You have Forest service outposts. These are a core part of our community and our economy. And we all just got gutted. So people are pissed and they should be pissed. But being pissed is not enough. And when people say, well, are your friends who might have voted for these guys ready to see they were wrong, that's not what it is. I think right now people are just angry at both parties because you're paying 420 a gallon at the pump for unleaded. And we're in another war that this guy started this time that none of us wanted and we're spending billions overseas and all of our lives are worse. So we got to move past being pissed and being angry and talk about reimagining a lot of the programs that Montanan's helped pass. Like Mike Mansfield was the leader of the U.S. senate from Montana who ushered through the Great Society and helped create Medicare and Medicaid and NPR and pbs. And these are all the things that are under attack. They're all the things we're called on to reimagine and expand so people can meet their basic needs and have time for the kind of empathy and compassion that your neighbor deserves.

[Jon Lovett]

Sam, I am 43. I'm about to turn 44.

[Sam Forstag]

Your skin looks great.

[Jon Lovett]

My skin fantastic. Thank you for saying that. Could I be a smoke jumper athleticism? How much is required? Am I past my prime? Is it possible?

[Sam Forstag]

You know, I fella rookie that 47 a few years ago looking at you, I mean you look pretty darn fit just from across the microphone. But no, what's required is it's a six week rookie training program. Most people got five or six years, five to 10 years of fire experience before you get picked up and about 40% of people make it through. So it's six weeks of getting the hell beat out of you and PT and learning how to pilot a parachute.

[Jon Lovett]

I want to know what a parachute. No, I can't do it. I forgot about the jumping part. I want to know what the like phys. I would like to know what those like what is like the physical requirements that I would like to do a smoke jumper training and maybe I don't think I can jump out of a plane. I actually struggle from a high diving board to jump into a pool. So I think that's like probably not for me but maybe I could do the training. Sam forstag, thank you so much. I keep forgetting the website. What's the website again?

[Sam Forstag]

The website is samformontana.com or you can find us on socials. It's just amforesteg across platforms and I need all the help I can get. It is a rare thing to see a working person in the halls of power. And if everyone pulls together and helps out, well, we can actually make this happen and we can start changing our country for the better.

[Jon Lovett]

Thank you so much.

[Sam Forstag]

Thank you, John.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Sam Forstaff for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. 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 Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelaviev, David Towles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the uk.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

to talk about and there's lots of fabulous guests to talk to, journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on who May Be Our Boss. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. I don't know if it's Jon Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

Some of our listeners call us irreverent, but not stupid.

[Pod Save the UK Host 1]

I object to that. I'm deeply stupid.

[Pod Save the UK Host 2]

It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Lovett]

You okay? You've been slowing down the last few blocks. Yeah, it's just my knee. It's been getting worse lately. Have you tried Signal Relief? What is that? It's a drug free patch. It has these micro antennas built in that work with your body's own electrical signals to quiet the discomfort right at the source. There's no pills, wires or hormones. Nothing is entering your body. Nah, that sounds like a gimmick. I thought so too until I tried the patch. I wear it every day. I don't even think about my knee discomfort anymore. Alright, alright, I'll give it a try. I really need the relief.

[Jon Favreau]

This is gonna blow your mind.

[Jon Lovett]

Just place the patch above the knee. Wait a second. My knee feels so much better. You're not getting the patch back. Don't let knee discomfort hold you back. Visit signalrelief.com that's signalrelief.com the Signal Relief Patch is a health and wellness product. The product is not a medical device and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease or medical condition. Use the product only as directed.