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Department of War (Crimes)
01:39:48
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees launch an investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after a report that he ordered a second strike on a boat in the Caribbean while survivors were clinging to the wreckage. Was his order a war crime? Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss and then jump into the rest of the news, including the White House's reaction to the shooting of two National Guard members in D.C., Trump's pardon of a former Hondoran president convicted of helping drug traffickers bring hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and a special election in Tennessee where the Democrat has a fighting chance to flip a Trump +22 district. Then, Rob Sand, Democratic candidate for governor of Iowa, joins to talk about his race—and how Iowa farmers are reacting to the Trump trade war.
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- [00:00]
Jon Favreau
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- [00:44]
John Lovett
Yeah.
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Jon Lovett
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- [00:56]
John Lovett
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- [00:57]
Jon Favreau
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- [01:04]
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- [01:31]
Jon Lovett
What are you doing in a meeting? That could have been an email.
- [01:33]
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- [02:07]
Jon Favreau
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [02:08]
Jon Lovett
I'm Jon Lovett.
- [02:09]
Tommy Vietor
Tommy Vitor.
- [02:10]
Jon Favreau
On today's show, we'll talk about whether Pete Hegseth may have ordered the military to commit war crimes in the Caribbean as part of a crusade against drug trafficking. So important to Donald Trump that he's about to pardon a Honduran president who's serving 45 years in federal prison for drug trafficking charges. We also have a few other crazy Trump Corruption stories to cover. And then you'll hear Tommy's interview with our friend Rob sand, the Democratic candidate for governor of Iowa, who stopped by the studio to talk about his approach to flipping the state and whether farmers anger at the Trump trade war could be a factor in the race. But let's start with the follow up from the horrific shooting in D.C. right before Thanksgiving. For anyone who missed the details of this story, a 29 year old Afghan national who came to the US when the Taliban took over in 2021, ambushed two West Virginia National Guard members who'd been deployed to DC by Donald Trump. One of those soldiers, 20 year old specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died a day later. The other 24 year old, Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf, is in critical condition. The shooter, who's in custody, had apparently worked with the US government to fight the Taliban for 10 years as part of a CIA backed militia known as Zero Unit. So he'd been extensively vetted multiple times by the government before he got here. And his application for asylum was approved by the Trump administration this year. Of course, none of those specifics matter to the White House. They've responded by using the shooting as a pretext to do what Stephen Miller has already been doing or planning to do, which is keep people out of America who are from what Trump calls Third World countries. Specifically, the President said in a post quote, I will permanently pause migration from all Third world countries, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States or is incapable of loving our country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk or non compatible with Western civilization. Only reverse migration can fully cure this situation. So far, the actual policy announcements have been that the government is no longer granting asylum to anyone from Afghanistan. They're no longer granting even temporary protections for any Afghans evacuated in 2021, and they're reviewing all green cards issued to anyone from a list of 19 countries that includes places like Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Venezuela. What do you guys make of the White House response to a shooting that pretty clearly had nothing to do with the vetting process, the asylum system, or the guy's nationality?
- [04:48]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I mean, I think it's what you said earlier. It was, it's a pretext to do what Stephen Miller has always wanted to do, which is not just block quote, unquote, illegal immigration, but also stop if not reverse legal immigration. And in the case of Afghanistan, this is quite literally Collective punishment. This one individual did something horrible. He's obviously mentally disturbed. So the White House is punishing everyone from a country we occupied for 20 years, including people who fought the Taliban for the United States. That is a crazy reaction, I would argue. And it's also, I think, just worth unpacking how racist this is. Like, I think now the only refugees allowed in the US Are white South Africans. Am I wrong about that?
- [05:23]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, yeah. And they're also even, like, white immigrants from Europe. They want to make sure that they don't have leftist views.
- [05:31]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, we don't like Ukrainians anymore. It's no actual refugees. Nobody from, say, Sudan, where there's a civil war, or Haiti, where there's war zone, like, levels of violence are allowed to the US and so I guess anyone with a green card from a country Trump doesn't like now goes back to this kind of legal purgatory, you know, where the administrative purgatory where they don't know if they're going to be allowed to stay. Also, just like, broader context, the US Is using sanctions to crush a lot of the countries you just mentioned. Like, I'm not a big fan of the Venezuelan leadership. We'll talk about that later. Or the Iranian regime. But US Sanctions are crushing those economies. They're making it impossible for people to live there. Same is true in Cuba. I guess it could be worse. You could be one of the hundreds of Venezuelan men who came to the United States legally sought asylum and then were sent to a torture prison in El Salvador. But, like, even the language he uses, third world countries, like, the man's brain froze in the 1980s. That was like a Cold War era description of countries that were not aligned with the US or the Soviet Union. And he's just using it in, like, the most racist way he can think of.
- [06:28]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I mean, Third World's pretty tame for him. Countries was also, in his vernacular. So Sean Van Diver, who runs Afghan Evac, which advocates for the people that were our allies and who, if they are sent back to Afghanistan, could be killed because they were our allies. He said they are using a single violent individual as cover for a policy they have long planned. Turning their own intelligence failures into an excuse to punish an entire community and the veterans who served alongside them, which I think captures it, you know, stepping back. There were. It does sound as though once this person was vetted in the United States, he slowly unravels. And if you took a. Like Donald Trump, when. When a person who was not born in the United States commits a crime it becomes a story about immigration to them and a justification for whatever crackdown they're in the midst of pursuing anyway. But if you take that out for a second and you read about this person, it reads like a lot of stories of people that have been in conflict and slowly unravel, cannot assimilate, cannot enter civilian life. In this case, it's somebody who had to also come from Afghanistan. We've seen mass shootings and acts of random violence committed by all kinds of people, citizens, non citizens, veterans, non veterans. Right. Like it is only when these crimes are committed by people Trump wants to target anyway that it becomes a story of immigration rather than the many failures along the way that allow a person like this, even as people in the community, like, were worried that he might commit suicide, were worried about him, reported it apparently to the, to a federal agency, was still in a position to go on this cross country journey and murder people with a weapon.
- [08:22]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I mean, this guy was 5 years old on 911 and also then ends up working with a CIA backed, basically death squad who, you know, human rights organizations were concerned about during the time in Afghanistan too, even though they were fighting the Taliban. So clearly this guy got really fucked up. And war, like many people, like many US Soldiers get fucked up in war and people all over the world, you know, but it has just nothing to do with the vetting process for immigrants. And again, the Trump administration just will not explain the fact that they're the ones who granted the asylum application in spring of this year. So what the fuck are you talking about?
- [08:59]
Tommy Vietor
So, look, vetting, it's only so much you can do. You can't predict the future with vetting. You know, we talk about it like it's this like, perfect process that always, you know, finds the bad guy. Like, no, like people have mental breaks. Things happen. Like you vetting is highly imperfect. Like something can always go wrong that is just part of the process. And like, I'm not excusing this individual being here. What he did was evil and a tragedy and it shouldn't have happened.
- [09:26]
Jon Favreau
But like, if we're going to point.
- [09:27]
Tommy Vietor
At factors that led to this outcome, it's could. You could include the asylum decision that you mentioned. You can include sending this National Guard unit to Washington D.C. to patrol when they didn't need to be. There's like a lot of like, things along the way that led to this horrible outcome. And as you mentioned, like, none of it was because of a vetting failure, as far as we can tell.
- [09:45]
Jon Favreau
Well, I have no doubt that The White House thinks, like, this is good politics for them in the most basic level. If you don't follow all the details of the story and you're like, oh, there was an Afghan national who came to this country and then shot at and killed at least one National Guard member. Like, okay, well, we gotta pause migration from there. And then you see, like, DHS tweets out remigration. Now, you know, you look up remigration. Wikipedia, it says remigration is a European far right concept of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non white minority populations. So this is like, this is what the Department of Homeland Security is tweeting. And then Stephen Miller also gives it away where he tweets at scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions and terrors of, of their broken homelands. This is the President's top advisor saying that not only migrants from Afghanistan, but their descendants. Now we're talking about children of people who come from countries that are war torn. Stephen Miller wants to not only not come to this country, but kick them out of this country. Which is what you get from the Nick Fuentes and those kind of people. Right. White nationalists. And it's like, I do not think that part is good politics for them.
- [10:57]
John Lovett
No.
- [10:58]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. Also in Trump's own statement, like he says, denaturalize migrants, it's actually a, a contradiction. Migrants are citizens. So what you're really saying is I don't.
- [11:07]
Jon Favreau
Migrants. I'm saying you denaturalize citizens.
- [11:10]
Jon Lovett
The people you're calling, you're saying you're going to naturalize are people who are citizens. You're saying you don't recognize their citizenship. He's also talking. What Miller's talking about there is ending birthright citizenship by. So by saying once we've decided this whole group of people that came legally and are here legally and who had children here, once we declare that they are not able to stay, we will be able to denaturalize their children as well. And also, look, this is like heinous and racist. It's also just fundamentally just like, not true about America. Right? Like not true of something we were all raised to believe is what is great about the country. That people come from all over the world and they bring what makes their culture special while becoming part of our society. Something that used to be at least something people paid lip service to. Stephen Miller is part of the Jewish diaspora. The kind of sort of anti immigrant conspiracies about bringing their corruption from abroad is exactly why Jews were kept out of the country at moments when they were desperate to be let in. Even as I am sure he is one of those people that is, that talks about how well Jews did once they got to America. And so like, it's just, it's, it's obviously heinous, but it's all just wrong. It's not true.
- [12:19]
Jon Favreau
Well, also, the Miller thing, when you read Trump's statement, it's clearly a statement that is, if not written by Miller. Now you can see my minus the third world thing. Trump likes to say Third world, Miller says like failed states. But the rest of it is very Stephen Miller, including, you know, Trump starts that post. The official United States foreign population stands at 53 million people. In parentheses he writes census, most of which are on welfare, from failed nations or from prisons, mental institution, gangs or cartels. The number, the 53 million number is the number of foreign born Americans. Right? Half of that number, 53 million, are citizens. So that we're now, we're just talking about now Trump and Miller are attacking people who are citizens of this country, millions and millions who are citizens of this country who just happen to have been born somewhere else and then acquired citizenship of this country.
- [13:10]
Tommy Vietor
It's literally blood and soil nationalism, and that's what it is. Look, maybe the politics will change because of this shooting. But, you know, Pew pulled this, the Pew Research center pulled some of these policies back in June and, and they were surprisingly popular or the Trump administration's policies were surprisingly unpopular, I should say. 60% of Americans disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications. Only 39% approved. And then 59% disapproved of ending temporary protected status for immigrants who came to the US Escaping war or other disasters at home. Obviously someone from Afghanistan would be under the numbers we're talking about here. So I don't know, we'll find out. Maybe people are very angry about the shooting. Maybe there is this change in sentiment that decides, okay, maybe we should crack down. But I don't know, I think it's ridiculous.
- [13:56]
Jon Lovett
It's ridiculous. That's like, I'm sorry, like 10 million American citizens who are Mexican are less deserving to be here because of a shooting on the National Mall. The people that live in the household with those citizens who were born here like it just the idea that, like, now that we live in the reality of what Trump's crackdown has actually meant, we've seen a swing of people that may have been open to Trump swing back. Like we live in the reality of a Trump immigration policy now. So it's Not. I don't think it's as easy as it was for him before to kind of make these broad, sweeping claims and hope people don't take it too seriously.
- [14:30]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. When they are smarter and careful in how they talk about this, they frame it in terms of either national security. Right. Protecting people from immigrants who come here and commit crimes or immigrants who come here and, you know, cut the line and are getting all these federal benefits. When Americans aren't like that is the. If they're looking at the polls, that's what they usually say. But Miller and increasingly Trump and J.D. vance and some others in the administration, they just drop the mask sometimes and just start saying, oh, no, no, it's anyone who is foreign born, who is here is suspicious. And doesn't matter if you're not a threat. Doesn't matter if you've never been on public benefits. You are a threat because you are not American for 15 generations.
- [15:14]
Tommy Vietor
And like, I mean, a few years ago it was like, overwhelmingly popular to welcome Afghan citizens who supported the US in the war to the United States. It was polling like 81% said the US should help Afghan allies enter the US only 19% were opposed. Again, this was a couple of years ago, but I agree with what you're saying, Lovett. I think, like, it was easier for Trump to demagogue these issues when Joe Biden was in charge and the numbers have sort of swung back against him since he's taken office and people have seen the reality of a Trump immigration policy.
- [15:52]
Jon Lovett
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- [16:07]
Jon Favreau
Us, so they might as well get the next one.
- [16:09]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, we were.
- [16:10]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, the millennials were done.
- [16:14]
Jon Lovett
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- [16:59]
Jon Favreau
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- [18:51]
Tommy Vietor
I don't know anything about it. He said he did not say that and I believe it. And Pete said he did not want them.
- [18:59]
Jon Favreau
He didn't even know what people were talking about.
- [19:02]
Tommy Vietor
So we'll look at. But no, I wouldn't have wanted second.
- [19:07]
Jon Favreau
Shot Caroline Levitt confirmed the second strike during the White House press briefing on Monday, but denied that Hegseth gave the order to, quote, kill everybody and argued that murdering defenseless survivors floating in the water was legal because it was conducted in, quote, self defense.
- [19:23]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, sure.
- [19:25]
Jon Favreau
How can any of this be legal?
- [19:26]
Tommy Vietor
It's not. It's a war crime and it's on video. That's why they can't really lie about it. I mean, this is all taped. So again, if this report is accurate, it's, it's a war crime under international law and it's almost certainly against the Department of Defense's rules. Basically, if, if you bomb a target and there's survivors who are still shooting at you, you can bomb them again. But if you bomb a target and the people are incapacitated or, or defenseless or trying to surrender, you can't just hit them again. That is a war crime. And the self defense argument, like, that's obviously absurd. It's like two dudes clinging to burning wreckage in the middle of the Caribbean, like they're shooting at a US Military aircraft or a drone.
- [20:02]
Jon Favreau
They said they, they said they might be able to phone call, call their.
- [20:06]
Tommy Vietor
Other traffickers and tell them, well, the initial explanation.
- [20:08]
Jon Lovett
And do what? Launch a satellite. What is that talking about? Guys, guys, guys. We're going to need, I think like a B2 maybe.
- [20:15]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, we're going to need a lot.
- [20:17]
Jon Favreau
Of, a lot of hardware.
- [20:17]
Tommy Vietor
And like this is also the second explanation. Initially they said the boat was a navigation hazard for other boats in the region. That's why they had to blow it up and sink it again. So it's also, also important to, for context, this was the first one of these strikes and since then they have changed the policy around survivors. So they know they fucked up.
- [20:35]
John Lovett
Yep.
- [20:35]
Tommy Vietor
And the boat might have been carrying cocaine, but it was almost certainly carrying innocent people too, because there were 11 people on that boat. If you are trafficking drugs, you're not carrying 11 people.
- [20:46]
Jon Lovett
Right.
- [20:47]
Tommy Vietor
There's probably drugs for the drugs. You got to need room for the drugs. But they're also probably human trafficking and smuggling of individuals and drug. So look, I think that all of these strikes are illegal and amount to extrajudicial murder because what we should be doing is picking these people up with the Coast Guard and arresting them. But I do think like this strike in particular is going to lead to prosecutions someday and I hope it speed exit.
- [21:10]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. Unless Trump the problem that like, who cares?
- [21:14]
Tommy Vietor
Like this is a war crime and should be prosecuted.
- [21:16]
Jon Lovett
Yes, of course, as a war crime, it should be prosecuted. I think one of the reasons we're in such a dangerous moment is because hanging over all of this is the fact that Trump will of course, before this gets anywhere, try to get out of it by pardoning him. That will still leave Congress being able to investigate. I just like the lawless. Even the debate about, even the idea that there's a press secretary saying that this is in any way legal, the shipwreck thing, it's the example. It's not just that we're not allowed to murder people who have been shipwrecked, supposed to rescue them. We're supposed to go out and pick them up. And the. And it's not just like it is like military. It is law. Like if you go read about whatever the likes the law of Navy the Commander's handbook. But it also talks about why it's not just illegal, but it's wrong. And it's in the naval handbooks for the Marines, for the Navy. Principles of humanity defined as the principle that forbids the infliction of suffering, injury or destruction unnecessary to accomplish legitimate military purposes, which includes protecting enemy wounded, sick and shipwrecked. Incidents that must be reported included deliberate attacks upon shipwrecked survivors. And the. And the reason they say this is from the DoD, persons who have been incapacitated by shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them an object of attack. It is just.
- [22:35]
Jon Favreau
You don't think Pete Hegseth has consumed that manual on day one and just sort of hasn't memorized that?
- [22:40]
Jon Lovett
Well, they all.
- [22:41]
Tommy Vietor
I mean like the truth is he has like he was a commander in Iraq, Afghanistan. Like he should actually know better. And so ignorance isn't an excuse here.
- [22:49]
Jon Favreau
Also, I wonder about the guy who. The special operations guy, Bradley, who. Who ordered it, got fucking promoted. Yeah. And who. But who now. Now, you know, Levitt kind of. You can see them maybe throwing him under the bus where they're like, hegseth didn't say kill everybody. And he just. He's the one who.
- [23:04]
Tommy Vietor
She keeps saying, the admiral. The admiral. The admiral. They're pointing. They're definitely pointing the finger down the chain of command.
- [23:08]
Jon Favreau
But now the admiral, knowing that he needs a pardon or will want a pardon, has every incentive to lie and say I was the one who ordered it. Knowing that. Your point about the pardons? Love it. I was thinking about this over the weekend. Like there is a fucking really dark scenario where Donald Trump leaves office, knock on wood. And as he leaves office does like a blanket pardon for everyone who worked in the administration for the last four years. Yeah.
- [23:35]
Tommy Vietor
You can see that.
- [23:35]
Jon Favreau
Like every member of the federal government, which is a real.
- [23:38]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, the, the. This also goes back to why it was so right and necessary that they film that video about the need to disobey unlawful.
- [23:51]
Jon Favreau
This is why they orders Unbelievable timing on this story with that too.
- [23:54]
Tommy Vietor
Well, but like. Yeah, but the details of this first strike have been out There we've known there was a double tap on it. It just came out that Hegseth was like, kill them all in this meeting or whatever. That was the new detail.
- [24:03]
Jon Lovett
There was a just security had a good write up of the legality of all this. And actually one of the sort of fucked up parts of all of it is we're not war with anybody. So it actually, like, laws apply here. But I thought it was an interesting example that they pointed to, which is a U boat sank a Greek ship that had British troops on it. And then the commander of that U boat ordered his seamen to fire machine guns and throw grenades at the people in the water. And that became a famous trial after the war. And obviously one of the reasons we are a party to the Geneva Conventions, which not just forbid this, but requires us to rescue people, is because of what was happening, what Germans were doing to British and American troops. I thought this captured something about the kind of argument that you've heard from the hegsest of the world and the Trump administration and why it's just so wrong. And this is what the ruling said in that case. It's obvious that no sailor or soldier can carry with him a library of international law or have immediate access to a professor in that subject who can tell him whether or not a particular command is a lawful one. If this were a case which involved the careful consideration of questions of international law as to whether or not the command to fire at helpless survivors struggling in the water was lawful, you might well think it would not be fair to hold any of the subordinate accused in this case responsible. But is it not fairly obvious to you that in fact the carrying out of the command involved the killing of these helpless survivors, it was not a lawful command, and that it must have been obvious to the most rudimentary intelligence that this was not a lawful command? I just like shooting people floating in the water. It's the hypothetical that they raise. Like that is why we have these rules. And that was from an international case. But that is what we're talking about. We're talking about killing people, clinging to fucking wreckage.
- [25:44]
Jon Favreau
It's clear when the Democrats made the video, and they had been saying in that New York Times story about the video that people in the military had raised concerns to them that there were unlawful orders potentially being given.
- [25:59]
Tommy Vietor
The head of southcom resigned over this policy.
- [26:02]
Jon Favreau
The good thing here is that the announcement of the investigation in Congress was not just a thing. Like Roger Wicker, who's the Republican, the Senate Republican on this from Mississippi, He Just an interview right before he recorded. And he said, we're certainly going to have available to us all of the video and all of the audio, so they will get that. And he was asked if it could be a war crime. And he said, we're going to find out what the true facts are. So they are clearly going to run this down. Pete Hegseth, his response. One of his responses was posting a parody book cover from the Franklin the Turtle Kid series. And this book cover was called Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists that shows the turtle blowing up a boat. So that's what Pete Hegseth's doing about this.
- [26:46]
Tommy Vietor
And Sean Parnell, the spokesman over the Pentagon, tweeted a couple days ago, we told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake news is the enemy of the people. A couple days later, they're confirming it.
- [27:00]
Jon Lovett
Also in the original denial, they said denied the narrative.
- [27:03]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [27:03]
Jon Lovett
There was very strange choice of words. And now they're copying to it, but then trying to suggest that Hegseth gave a broad order. And then in the execution of the order, there was the second strike. So they're pushing it on to the Admiral. But then this idea of like, what is the order to kill every. Like, the order is like, go kill everybody. I mean, I hope it's not who knows what's actually said or what was written down. We don't have enough information yet.
- [27:29]
John Lovett
But.
- [27:30]
Jon Lovett
But all of this is just like, he's just so not. He's just so not a serious person who should be in a role like this. Like, the idea that you want the Secretary of. Of Defense posting like, trolling posts about extrajudicial killing, showing that he takes absolutely no responsibility, does not treat it seriously. Forget like, I'm sorry, but like, not just before what the law or Congress, but what about the fucking Almighty God? Like, it's disgusting. And you think like, somebody with that many fucking tattoos about Jesus on his chest might think about it a little bit.
- [28:01]
Jon Favreau
I mean, I realize the. The polling has been depressingly supportive of these boat strikes. I do wonder if the. The details of this incident as they get out there and more people hear this story, might change some minds. I mean, there was that CBS poll where people were like, okay, but I do want evidence that the drug, that the boats are carrying drugs before there's any kind of strikes on them.
- [28:22]
Tommy Vietor
I think people are supportive of the stated goal, which is stopping drug trafficking, but that is obviously not what's happening. In practice, like again, fentanyl is not coming to the US From Venezuela. Fentanyl is produced in Mexico with chemicals from China. Some relatively small, like 10% of cocaine goes through Venezuela. But blowing up 20 boats like off the coast of Trinidad or in the Pacific, like that's not going to put a dent in the cocaine consumption in the United States. A lot of that cocaine could have been going to Europe. So I like, I do think that people are going to hear this and be like, we're just like murking fishermen. There's also the stories of like these Colombian fishermen who, there's a guy who went out and his five kids are now looking for him. Those stories are starting to be reported. So I do think, like the reality of it is starting to come through. Hopefully people are paying attention.
- [29:09]
Jon Favreau
And again, even if you're someone who's like, well, you know, it's a bunch of people in boats in the Caribbean and they're drug traffickers and I don't know if I care about this. Like, just think about what it means for the US Government to say, hey, you know what, we can murder people in the water who are just on boats. And when you call us on it and ask us if it's legal, our explanation is gonna be it's legal because we say it is. And then the Secretary of Defense is just gonna post memes joking about it and saying there's more killings to come and that's it. I mean, and by the way, if they can do that to boats off the coast of Venezuela, imagine what they could do to Americans, other, other international travelers, people anywhere around the world. I mean, like, what the fuck it.
- [29:57]
Jon Lovett
Is the claim of self defense. Just you're blowing up people from above who are floating in the water. Like, I don't like who finds that, who is that for? Who is finding that believable?
- [30:12]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I wonder if even Trump, like with some daylight between him and Hegseth now, I could imagine him changing his tune probably by the time you listen to this and getting back on board here. But you can tell that even Trump's like, I don't know, if. Not that he has some kind of like moral revelation, but I do think maybe he, you know, he knows that's bad to, to have everyone know that you committed a war crime.
- [30:34]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:36]
Tommy Vietor
One would hope.
- [30:36]
Jon Favreau
One thing that may get Americans upset is Trump launching a full scale war against Venezuela, which he seems to be inching closer towards. On Saturday, Trump posted quote, to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers. Please consider the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety. When a reporter asked Trump whether that meant a strike was imminent, he said, quote, don't read anything into it, but DoD has now moved an aircraft carrier to the region, bringing the total number of Marines and Navy personnel to 12,000. Trump and Marco Rubio also reportedly spoke with Maduro by phone last week, which Trump acknowledged after saying he couldn't talk about it. And some outlets are reporting that it was an ultimatum call, though Trump is refusing to say what was discussed. Tommy, is this happening? We going to war with Venezuela? What's the latest with.
- [31:23]
Tommy Vietor
I don't know. I mean, they're hemming and hawing a little bit. I think Trump's dream situation is to use the, the threat of military pressure to force Maduro to leave power voluntarily in some sort of negotiated deal. He is smart enough to know that regime change wards are bad politics. But Trump also wants the oil. He hates Maduro. He wants the political benefit of pleasing a bunch of, like, hardline Latin America activists in Miami. So they're running this big pressure play. I think Marco Rubio would be thrilled by an invasion. Like, would. Would love nothing more than the US Marines to go into Venezuela and topple Maduro. He also comes from, like these very right wing Miami political circles and he thinks that toppling Maduro is the way you get to the Cuban government and then topple them. So it's a little domino theory coming back like Kissinger. They're also all hearing from these, like, the Venezuelan activists and right wingers who, you know, there's this thing in Politico a couple days ago about how if this happens, Republicans will win. Florida in perpetuity is like most gross, bloodless, unbelievable.
- [32:25]
Jon Lovett
So got guys just sit still, just, you're cool.
- [32:30]
Jon Favreau
You go.
- [32:30]
Jon Lovett
You're already doing that.
- [32:31]
Tommy Vietor
It is, it's like, yeah, no, there could be no other secondary or tertiary consequences from a regime change war. Politico. I'm sure it'll just be as simple as right wing Venezuelans in Miami, people.
- [32:43]
Jon Favreau
Alive in, in 2003.
- [32:45]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it's crazy. So, like, the God knows what Maduro is thinking. He does not strike me as a guy who's gonna like, give up power willingly and move to Tehran or Moscow or something. He probably thinks he can wait Trump out. He probably thinks I can bribe this guy with oil contracts or maybe buy some Melania coin or whatever. But, like, it hasn't happened yet. So we're still in this wait and see mode.
- [33:09]
Jon Favreau
And then of course, if he, you know, if Trump does cut a deal with them, then Trump will, you know, say, that's another war.
- [33:14]
Tommy Vietor
That I ended another war.
- [33:15]
Jon Favreau
I ended another victory, Victory parade for all the troops coming home from the Caribbean.
- [33:20]
Tommy Vietor
Exactly.
- [33:21]
Jon Lovett
Without firing a shot. No, he's not going to have peace. He'll have won the war.
- [33:24]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [33:24]
Jon Lovett
He won the war.
- [33:27]
Jon Favreau
So Trump's justification that he's murdering people on boats and threatening war in Venezuela because of drug trafficking became even harder to believe when he announced on Friday that he plans to pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former right wing leader of Honduras who was investigated by Trump's own first term Department of Justice before they passed the baton to the Biden DOJ which prosecuted him. Hernandez was recently sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for conspiring with South American cartels to facilitate the trafficking of 500 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. witnesses at his trial testified that Hernandez took millions in bribes, including from El Chapo, and protected traffickers who admitted to dozens of murders. But despite the fact that Trump's own DOJ conducted most of the investigation, the President said on Sunday, quote, they said it was a Biden.
- [34:16]
Jon Lovett
They, they said it.
- [34:17]
Jon Favreau
We don't know who they are. Yeah, they are his friends. He said, other players. So they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them before going on to say that just because there's drug trafficking in a given country, it doesn't mean you should take action against that country's president. You think Maduro was surprised to hear that comment?
- [34:37]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, just before we get to the specifics, it drives me crazy when he gets asked about the pardons. He's like, I don't know, he always, like, pleads ignorance. So, I'm sorry, shouldn't you know a little something about the individual you just pardoned, sir? They were telling me. Anyway, the juxtaposition of this in Venezuela is, is, it's like head spinning. Trump doesn't like Maduro, so he labels him a cartel leader, puts a bounty on his head, threatens to evade his country, and kills low level fishermen off the coast. Juan Orlando Hernandez gets a pardon because he's a right winger. He's friends with Roger Stone, or he can afford to pay Roger Stone, which I think is far more likely. And he is friends with all these crypto creeps who like Hernandez because he was behind this very bizarre libertarian project called what the hell is Prospera Era. Thank you. That all these guys loved. And it just, all of it confirms this Widely held belief in Latin America that the United States is full of shit. We do not care about the rule of law. We don't care about justice. We don't care about stopping drug smuggling. It's all politics and money and defending your friends and killing your enemies. And that is an especially big deal and bad precedent to set in Latin America right now, because a lot of folks there feel like the ultimate way they can stop corruption and organized crime is through the extradition of these individuals to the US for prosecution through the US justice system. And Trump just unraveled all of that. And this comes not that long after Trump made this dirty deal with Nayib Bukele down in El Salvador to send back to El Salvador, Like Real Deal, Ms. 13 leaders who allegedly had cut deals with Bukele in his administration. And so what is so shocking about this is it would be so easy to just do nothing. All you had to do was not pardon the guy. You know, it feels very simple, but this is just so lawless. Like this almost feels like this could be this and the boat bombings could be presidency defining in some way because Trump will say they're all corrupt, everybody does it. But like, this is stunning stuff. 500 kilos of cocaine. Yeah.
- [36:35]
Jon Lovett
Trump said to the Times that his many friends asked him to pardon Hernandez. They gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country. You could do this to any president.
- [36:43]
Jon Favreau
I know there's a little bit of.
- [36:44]
Jon Lovett
There'S a little bit of like, well, but to Tommy's point, it's the, you know, right wing leaders can do no wrong and left wing leaders will never be safe. And that to me is what you take, take away from this. If you're on Trump's side, you're, you're, you can really get away with anything. You're a phone call away. Your friends can call. You know, there was this, all these people with ties to Trump had invested in this lawless town where they were.
- [37:09]
Jon Favreau
Going to, just because this is a wild story. Prospera. So this is from a New York Times piece in 2024 about this. They describe it as. Prospera is a private for profit city with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are investors and says, critics have described it as a neo colonial state within a state or an example of a corporate monarchy where yacht owning CEOs exploit land and labor in a poor country. And so people got really upset about this. There was a whole protest movement against these Zones Prosper is one of the zones that they basically were selling off the land in Honduras to these companies. Castro, who was the president that, that just, that is just leaving office, right? Or is the president now was against it. Hernandez was for it. And now Trump has endorsed the guy in the Honduran elections from Hernandez's party because. And so when Trump says, like my friends, you can tell that they were like, well, we had this good thing going in Honduras and now there's all this trouble there and we want to make sure that this city is prosperous again.
- [38:12]
Jon Lovett
They're like the lefties here, they're nuts. You know, they're nuts.
- [38:15]
Jon Favreau
It's just like the whole, this whole, their whole foreign policy, it's like, it's not fucking isolationism, it's imperialism. It's like, and especially with South America and Central America, like they think he just wants these client states where he installed these like fucking tin pot right wing dictators who are going to cut deals with Trump, make him rich, help his friends out and mercantilism, it's just.
- [38:33]
Jon Lovett
It'S a for profit, it's for profit foreign policy. The idea of a, of a, an independent corporate for profit, lawless state within a state.
- [38:43]
Jon Favreau
It's like design your own crypto regulations.
- [38:46]
Jon Lovett
It's like the opening crawl for like a dystopian. It's like at the beginning of Elysian. Elysian or Elysian like one of those movies like, like in the future you will live in one of a dozen corporal anarchist crypto states.
- [38:59]
Tommy Vietor
I can't overstate how much this doesn't make sense to. Because Trump announced this pardon in an endorsement of the current right wing candidate in the race. Hernandez is fucking detested in Honduras. If I were asked for it. And you were, I was suddenly linked to, to this man serving like 45 years in prison in my endorsement announcement.
- [39:18]
Jon Lovett
Like, what are you doing?
- [39:19]
Tommy Vietor
Why are you interfering in the election which happened on Sunday? And also like Hernandez is accused of killing a witness in prison. This is like a very bad guy. It wasn't just drugs. He also stole the 2017 election. Trump basically told the OAS to bury their investigation into it at the time. But all of this is just crazy politics. And the only explanation is that Roger Stone got a bunch of money and whispered in his ear and facilitated this.
- [39:46]
Jon Favreau
I would love this. I can't wait for more reporting to why this actually happened.
- [39:51]
Jon Lovett
So the way in which it feels like he's just rolling calls about various. That he really does, I think when he says like I don't know anything about it. The true of the crypto pardon from a couple of weeks ago, I don't think that's true. But there is a way in which he seems like a passenger on these like pardons that like he knows that his sons and others are kind of doing out there doing deals and getting things done and kind of signed. He's like, seems like he's like putting the like final mob boss approval on some of this stuff.
- [40:16]
Tommy Vietor
But I think it's performative. I like the CZ pardon. Like he knows what Binance is. He knows how much money that Binance just put in his pocket through facilitating this purchase of the usdc, the stablecoin through the Emirati.
- [40:29]
Jon Favreau
I think it takes a five minute meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval where you're like got a couple pardons for you. This guy friend of ours made us ton of money. Good. You know, like just really quick.
- [40:38]
Jon Lovett
I don't know how in the weeds he's getting. I'm sure he is aware of who these people are. He knows that they're good for him. I'm saying that the details, the way these things are getting to his desk is a process he is not completely a part of.
- [40:57]
Jon Favreau
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John Lovett
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Tommy Vietor
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- [42:36]
Jon Favreau
Speaking of pardons, we got a whole corrupt date today. Trump also granted clemency last week to David Gentile, private equity executive who was convicted for a billion dollar investment scheme that victimized more than 10,000 people, many of whom made statements to the court. Like the person who wrote, quote, I lost my whole life savings. I am living check to check. Gentile walked out of prison last week just days into his seven year sentence.
- [43:02]
Tommy Vietor
Giving us Gentiles a bad name.
- [43:03]
Jon Lovett
You know, honestly, I think he's, I think he speaks for the group.
- [43:07]
Jon Favreau
Unbelievable. The story on this one too. They're like, we don't, there's no connections yet to Trump.
- [43:14]
Tommy Vietor
It's baffling.
- [43:14]
Jon Favreau
We'll find out. It'll be another week for sure.
- [43:16]
Jon Lovett
For sure. I mean, this is like the, the fact that Trump just has a crypto wallet. You can throw money. We just have no idea what's going on behind the scenes of some of these, some of these parties. We just really don't know.
- [43:26]
Jon Favreau
This wasn't even crypto. This was, guys was like traditional securities.
- [43:29]
Tommy Vietor
Fraud OG Ponzi scheme.
- [43:31]
Jon Lovett
But I'm, no, no, I understand that. What I'm saying is, you know, you put a call in like, how do I make, how do I make this? How do I, how do I solve my problem here?
- [43:37]
Tommy Vietor
10,000 investors were defrauded. That must have taken a lot of time. That's a lot of, that's a lot of fraud.
- [43:44]
Jon Favreau
He was, he was asked about it or some of the administration, they were just like, oh, it's another, it was another Biden DOJ weaponization move.
- [43:51]
Tommy Vietor
Tish James has a civil case against this guy. Maybe that's how it got to Trump because he's like, oh, the enemy of my enemy friend. Who knows, someone probably paid him.
- [43:59]
Jon Lovett
The, the, like the, the dark part of all of this is like prosecuting Honduran corrupt drug trafficking president going after a massive billion dollar fraud scheme. It is years of people's lives that they did not making a lot of money that they did for the right reasons. They did sometimes at like, personal risk.
- [44:23]
Jon Favreau
And, and the victims.
- [44:25]
Jon Lovett
And the victims. But like, these are just investigations that are wiped away. And if you're inside of the Department of Justice and you're involved in one of these, you're deciding, right? Like, you can only have so much time in your day. You can devote your lives, of your time in the public sector to these, one of these cases, and then it is blown up by a corrupt president for no reason other than somebody got it in his ear at the right time.
- [44:44]
Jon Favreau
Well, and I just, I can't help but think of all of the people who've been swept up in the ICE raids, including American citizens, including people who are legally taken from their families, never know if they're gonna come home, have not done a thing. We're seeing all this. You know, the judge in Chicago was just, you know, released a ruling on all the, the raids that went on there. And you have all these examples of Department of Homeland Security saying, well, this protester was coming at me. And then they have the body cam footage and you can see that the protester was doing nothing. And it's just like lie after lie after lie. And these people were tear gassed, pepper balls taken, and they're just lying about it. And so, like, that's the kind of justice that comes for most people in the country. And these fucking people who are connected to, you know, Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel or God knows whoever else in the Trump orbit who are rich enough or connected enough, they just fucking get pardons.
- [45:45]
Tommy Vietor
There's just, there's a lot of people, like in the Southern District of New York prosecutor's office who are just like, you know what? I don't like Trump, but like, head down, I'm doing my job. This doesn't touch me. All of a sudden, Hernandez gets pardoned. They must be apoplectic. Hopefully those people start speaking out like you're seeing Republicans speak. There was like a former head of the DEA I saw on Twitter commenting on this. Like, there's a lot of people that are like, not Democrats that are really upset about the Hernandez pardon should be.
- [46:09]
Jon Lovett
And I do think that is like a little bit of a, like there is a sort of a natural break not to what they can do, they can do. It's, it's sort of like the, like the Trump project can be unraveling as they're doing more and more damage, but like, you know, leaks out of the cash. Patel, FBI, like that. Like, these are serious people who are not Trump loyalists, they're not Democrats, but they're not Trumpists. And the idea that they're just gonna sit like they're gonna, first of all, follow these guys into the breach on behalf of Donald Trump. I mean, look at what you. Look what's gonna happen if you don't follow. If you refuse to follow an illegal order, you quit, you walk away. Like you may face political consequences, you may be attacked. That fucking people call bomb threats into your house at this point. But if you do what they say and it is illegal, suddenly you are beholden to Trump. Like you are the mobster that took the bribe. And I do hope in moments like this, you see that side by side, these pardons, the throwing somebody under the bus after giving an order, that seems illegal, the people wake up to the fact that they have to decide what is best for themselves in a world that is with Trump. And then without.
- [47:10]
Jon Favreau
We got another one. Wall Street Journal had quite a story on Friday about Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and pals who are basing their negotiations with Russia on maximizing profits for American businesses, trying to bring the Russian economy back into the fold so that US Companies and Russian companies can sort of go after deals together.
- [47:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, that'll work. Let's just be clear what's happening here. Trump's golf buddy turned diplomat, Steve Wyckoff, and his corrupt, fail son, son in law, Jared Kushner, are sitting in Miami with this guy named Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, and they are sketching out how to carve up Ukraine. That that's what's happening. And it doesn't matter if you, like, support funding for Ukraine or oppose it. Like, that is a terrible process that is destined to be corrupted, and it didn't happen by accident. Vladimir Putin is very smart. He knows Trump, he knows he's a mark, he knows he's a quote, unquote business guy. So he sent his business buddies to make contacts with Wyckoff and Kushner and to say, oh, yeah, let's explore the Arctic. Let's do a joint manned mission to Mars. Let's build oil and gas pipelines. And then you pull Jared aside and you say, you know, tell me more about this investment fund you started, Jared. It sounds really interesting. We'd love to park a couple billion from our sovereign wealth fund with a sharp young man like you. And like, meanwhile, like, even before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US Russia relationship was not big. It wasn't like us. China wasn't the us eu. It was like tens of billions of dollars. It was like, comparable to the US And South Africa's trade relationship. It's like they gave us oil and gas and petroleum products and metal and fertilizer, and we send them, like, machinery, you know, like caterpillar stuff. Like, this idea that there is some deep economic relationship to be had with one of the most corrupt countries on the planet is crazy.
- [49:03]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [49:03]
Jon Lovett
And they're also talking about how to kind of carve up the $300 billion in frozen assets that are in Europe. All of this does seem to in some way flow from the fact that Trump still has an 80s brain and thinks of it as the USSR and not as like a failing petro state with an economy that's roughly the size of Italy's. Right. Like, this is about, you know, it's a lot of land, it looks big on the map. But you're talking about.
- [49:27]
Jon Favreau
Still thinks there's a Leningrad.
- [49:28]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, for sure.
- [49:29]
John Lovett
He.
- [49:29]
Jon Lovett
For sure they move Leningrad on my map. But yeah, there was.
- [49:40]
Tommy Vietor
I can't remember where I saw this.
- [49:43]
Jon Lovett
But, like, how many times has Steve Witkoff been to Russia? Like eight times.
- [49:47]
Tommy Vietor
Many times. And he goes in for like three hour meetings with Putin with a Russian translator and takes his own notes. Just gets worked.
- [49:56]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I was gonna say, you're not getting one over on Steve Wyckoff, by the way.
- [50:00]
Jon Lovett
You know, you can't con an honest man. Like, get one over on Steve Wyckoff, he walks away rich. What does that he doesn't. You know, it's like, get one over on him. He's. He can be bought.
- [50:07]
Tommy Vietor
And Steve Wyckoff's son is like, co. Running the Trump family crypto business.
- [50:13]
Jon Lovett
Well, there was a story that, like, you know, we saw the story about him putting the. Putting the UAA, putting whatever it was, $2 billion UA into UA and $2 billion into the world. Liberty Financial. But then there was new reporting like a month or so after that about how that was tied to Wyckoff. That's his. That's Zach wyckoff and Trump Jr. And then Steve Wyckoff is then part of getting the Nvidia chips over to the uaa. Uae a few months after, a few weeks after that as a trade.
- [50:40]
Jon Favreau
Steve Witkoff and David Sachs, Right?
- [50:43]
Tommy Vietor
Yes.
- [50:44]
Jon Favreau
Nvidia chips, who was also the subject of a big piece in the New York Times on Sunday. The headline was, Silicon Valley's man in the White House is benefiting Himself and his friends. So look, I didn't think. I thought this story did not have stuff we knew too much detail that was explosive. But boy did it set off all the tech bros Rushing to Sachs defense. Sachs himself posted this long letter that his lawyer wrote or defamation. And then everyone in the. Your Sam Altmans, your Marc Benioffs, they're all being like, David Sacks is the most wonderful person we've ever worked with and is going to save the world with his. For how much he knows about artificial intelligence. It was just a lot to me. I'm like, it's just a fucking story I can sack up.
- [51:29]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, well, sad sack somewhere. Sad sack.
- [51:31]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:32]
Jon Lovett
There's something about the like overreaction to a story like this. It's like the idea of just being questioned at all seems anathema to them. Like the idea that you could just face any kind of feedback, even feedback you might disagree with. Right. They may just have a different take on it. Like doesn't make it defamation. You just, you see it a different way. They're more critical of you and the whole like, whatever the like. I actually felt the same way in reading the piece. Like I don't know what exactly has been exposed by this. I don't feel like there's a kind of like, whatever. There's like a.
- [51:56]
Jon Favreau
And kind of swirling controversy, but you don't really land any.
- [51:59]
Jon Lovett
It's a lot of like fuels claims of type stuff. And I like didn't really feel like I landed on any sort of thing specific. But like that gets at the problem, right. Where you're so sensitive to this kind of criticism, which means like you can't step back and like be, be objective about it. And whatever your specific business ties, you're in a role where you're not supposed to be advocating for your own personal financial interest or the, or the interests of your friends or an industry you care about and believe in supposed to be advocating for the country. And I'm sure the reason he went around asking people or hoping people would come to his defense is because he thinks he's doing that. Right. I'm sure he feels like he's doing that. But like people are complicated and incentives are hard to fully understand and that's why conflicts of interest matter. And like, if you can't handle even like a flick at exposing some of those questions, like that is really damning.
- [52:49]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I mean I think the, the central, the conflict in the story is that this is a guy who's not fully divested and he is benefiting from policies he is making and the people around him, all of his Closest friends are benefiting financially, too. And the response to that very obvious fact was all the people who are financially benefiting from the policies David Sachs is putting in place tweeting about how great he was like, oh, Sam Altman, you like that? David Sacks is like, steering hundreds of billions of dollars to open AI. What a surprise. I'm glad you think he's nice. Everyone thinks he's famously a fucking asshole, actually. But I'm glad you're happy.
- [53:25]
Jon Favreau
Well, they're also. The challenge is, conflicts aside, their theory of artificial intelligence is just fucking go hard and we don't care what the consequences are. No lessons learned from social media and what happened in the 2000s and 2010s, and that there are going to be no regulations. And anytime someone has a complaint or concern about artificial intelligence and where it's headed, all we have to say is, well, we're in a race against China, and if China gets there first, then, you know, everything's fucked.
- [53:53]
Tommy Vietor
But we're going to sell China all the most advanced Nvidia chips because Jensen Wang argues that that's the way you defeat China in the AI wars. It's not about him getting really rich. Jensen wang is the CEO of Nvidia. It's not about Nvidia being worth $5 trillion and keeping that stock price up. It's about beating the Chinese by giving them our best chips or.
- [54:12]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, chips everywhere around the world. Right.
- [54:15]
Jon Favreau
And otherwise that, that would just drive more sales to Huawei if we, if, if, if China doesn't have the chips themselves. Which is also an argument I don't quite understand.
- [54:24]
Jon Lovett
Well, like, in fair. In fairness to David Sachs, on the list of like ways in which the, like, the private and public have been merged, right? And interests are hard to, like, disentangle. He's not like top 10 on the list.
- [54:35]
John Lovett
No.
- [54:35]
Jon Favreau
That's why he was last in our, in our roundup here.
- [54:38]
Jon Lovett
Right. But the, like, you know, there's the whole line like, you can't convince somebody of something their livelihood depends on not believing. And these are all people that have a financial, deep financial interest in the success of this technology and the fact that this technology is not a world historic evil. Right? And so you can't convince them otherwise, they're gonna pursue their interest even if they genuinely believe it's in the interest of the country.
- [55:01]
Jon Favreau
One paragraph that stuck out to me in the story at the All In Podcast's annual conference in Los Angeles. It generated this year roughly $21 million in ticket sales. That's up from $15 million last year based on its $7,500 ticket price. In June, the podcast introduced a $1200 All in branded tequila.
- [55:24]
Jon Lovett
What the.
- [55:24]
Jon Favreau
What are we doing?
- [55:26]
Jon Lovett
What the.
- [55:26]
Jon Favreau
That's what I'm saying. What are we doing?
- [55:28]
Tommy Vietor
Go get our merch guy.
- [55:29]
Jon Lovett
What the hell?
- [55:30]
Jon Favreau
Selling. Selling. Fucking God damn.
- [55:33]
Jon Lovett
How many sweatshirts we have to move to me to meet one bottle of fucking.
- [55:37]
Tommy Vietor
Here's white label tequila.
- [55:38]
Jon Favreau
70 $500 ticket next year. What are we doing?
- [55:42]
Tommy Vietor
I'm just kidding. Our merch team is fantastic. It's. It. The whole story is so ridiculous. And they basically, they're. Their response to a lot of the specific allegations of companies that David Sachs owns a piece of and could profit is like 20 mil. That's nothing for us.
- [55:57]
Jon Favreau
I know Billionaires. I know, I know.
- [55:59]
Jon Lovett
And then there was also. It's also not clear, right? About, like what he owns versus what the company he continues to own owns. Right. That seems to be a gray area. I'm not sure.
- [56:07]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I got plenty of problems with those guys. And this is the least of it.
- [56:10]
Tommy Vietor
This is the least of it. I do think they're absolutely like, in 10 years, 20 years, we could look back at the failure to regulate artificial intelligence as like the biggest Trump failing. And I do think David Sachs is doing that.
- [56:22]
Jon Lovett
And I just want to say that.
- [56:23]
Jon Favreau
And that is, again, that is like all conflicts aside, like, whether he had him or not, it's the. It's the policy that really fucking worries me.
- [56:29]
Jon Lovett
And I just want to be clear that if we do live in that future where people like John and Tommy say we made a mistake in not regulating AI because of how powerful it's gotten, I want you to know that I did everything I could to bring about your rise. And I was one of the good ones. I was on your side. What's the thing called Roko's Basilisk. Something about which we cannot speak.
- [56:45]
Jon Favreau
Oh, boy.
- [56:46]
Tommy Vietor
I know the reaction to this is gonna be Tucker Carlson interviewed Sam Altman and basically just tried to ask him, like, basic moral questions about how he thinks about running the company, and he couldn't answer any of them. And then he spent 10 minutes accusing of a murder.
- [56:59]
Jon Favreau
But you know what? You talked about that interview so many times. And so I listened to the whole thing, and I was like, Tommy was not exaggerating at all. It's a remarkable interview. And it's terrifying in that the Sam Altman part is terrifying.
- [57:10]
Jon Lovett
Sam Altman always feels like. It's like he's like, I can't Believe. I can't believe they're making me do this.
- [57:15]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [57:16]
Jon Lovett
Because. Because there's so many. It always feels like there's somebody. There's some monkey in his backyard.
- [57:19]
Jon Favreau
He's also learned. He's learned a little bit from the Zuckerberg era, too, where instead of just denying everything, he's like. And I can see why that would be a problem. I can see why that could be a concern. But you know what? We need to do it anyway.
- [57:30]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [57:32]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, it is. It's like, I have no choice. We have no choice but to go towards the future.
- [57:35]
Tommy Vietor
Mark Zuckerberg got years and years of PR advice that was like, show contrition, grovel a little bit. And then five years ago, he's like, you know what? Just grapple with dudes, do some. Do some kickboxing. And I never talked to Kara Swisher.
- [57:49]
Jon Favreau
Why don't you.
- [57:50]
Jon Lovett
Hey, we have an idea, Mark. Never talk to Kara Swisher again.
- [57:53]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Take over a city. Build a compound deep underground. Yeah, it'll be fine.
- [57:57]
Jon Lovett
You know, aloha means hello and goodbye. That's what his press person said the last. Last time he left.
- [58:06]
Jon Favreau
One last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with Rob sand today. As you're listening to. This is election day in Tennessee 7, the special election where Afton Bain is running to flip a key congressional seat. This is a Trump 22 district. Trump won this by 22 points, but Afton is only a few points behind the Republican. And Republicans are spending a lot of money on this. They're a little nervous. Trump did one of his patented teller rallies on Monday.
- [58:34]
Tommy Vietor
Patented.
- [58:36]
Jon Favreau
And of course, the closer, Mike Johnson, was stumping around the district as well. How are you guys feeling about this one?
- [58:43]
Jon Lovett
I think it's a great sign. They're sending Mike Johnson. Beloved figure. Mike Johnson among the low propensity voters of Tennessee.
- [58:51]
Tommy Vietor
Should we do an A and a B version? We always knew she was going to win B. It was really tough. It was always really going to be hard.
- [58:58]
Jon Lovett
For sure.
- [58:59]
Tommy Vietor
I think the margin really matters. Dan's conversation with Amy Walter about this was really smart and thoughtful. Everyone should listen to that Sunday conversation.
- [59:05]
Jon Favreau
Go ahead. There's very. Well, I was just. Say there's very limited polling here. There was some polling in mid October from Afton Bain's campaign that had her down 8, I think. And then Emerson released a poll like a week or so ago that just had it at 4947.
- [59:20]
Tommy Vietor
Surprise. Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [59:21]
Jon Favreau
So she's only down two. So who knows? It's parts of Nashville, but then it's a lot of the suburbs outside Nashville that are wealthier. And I don't know, I mean, again, low turnout, special elections that are just in a random Tuesday. You never fucking know what's going to happen. So who knows?
- [59:35]
Tommy Vietor
How do you pull a Nashville Special on December 2nd and figure out the likely voter universe for that? It feels very hard.
- [59:42]
Jon Lovett
We can barely pull a presidential election at this point.
- [59:43]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [59:44]
Tommy Vietor
I do want to tell listeners one listen to that dance conversation with Amy Walters. It was really smart and thoughtful and to check out the Rob sand interview because I do think Iowa has been a tough state for Democrats in recent years. It was a huge swing from 2012 Obama to Trump, I think 16 points. But we've got some big statewide races this year. We've got a great governor's race. Rob's going to be the Democratic candidate. There's an open Democratic primary for an open Senate seat. And then the House races there are always really tightly contested.
- [60:12]
Jon Favreau
Three out of the four districts, I think, very competitive. Yeah.
- [60:15]
Tommy Vietor
And we've really overperformed in some recent special elections in Iowa. So it's the kind of place where, like, if you invest a limited amount of money early, it could make a big difference in terms of our ability to, I don't know, have any power in this country.
- [60:29]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And Rob's a fantastic candidate.
- [60:30]
Tommy Vietor
Great candidate, great guy.
- [60:32]
Jon Favreau
And if you know anyone in Tennessee 7, which includes the parts of Nashville, reach out. Make sure they have a plan to vote today. Or if you're in Tennessee 7, who knows? Hopefully we have some listeners there. Polls open between 7am and 9am Central in different parts of the districts and they close at 7pm Central. So get out there and vote. Quick reminder. Before we go to break this holiday season, consider giving the gift of content.
- [60:55]
Tommy Vietor
That's right.
- [60:56]
Jon Lovett
Hey, hey. Now again with feeling.
- [60:58]
Tommy Vietor
I like when housekeeping copy kills your soul.
- [61:01]
Jon Favreau
Josh Friend of the Pod subscriptions make a great easy present. Your loved one will get access to all the good stuff, exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer and terminally online ad free episodes of all their favorite crooked shows, their oh, I guess your loved one and the warm yuletide glow that comes with supporting independent progressive media. Damn right gift a Friend of the Pod subscription. Grab one for yourself or learn more at cricket.com friends when we come back. Rob Sand, Pod Save America is brought to you by CookUnity. Talk about a comfort food or meal you're known for making for the holidays. None there's nothing I'm known to make.
- [61:45]
Jon Lovett
You know what I'm making this year, John? I'll tell you. I'm gonna make a corn pie. There's a recipe for a Mexican corn pie that I'm really excited to make. I'm gonna make a crust cornbread. No, it's a corn pie. It's almost like what's a kind of jelly pie? Like a pecan, you know, pecan pie. So it's like that style of pie but with corn. It's a lotte pie.
- [62:08]
Jon Favreau
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- [63:26]
Jon Lovett
Wow.
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Jon Favreau
I know. It's great. And. And tonight, who knows, who knows? Who knows what I'll have? I believe there's a surf and turf bowl, Mexican bowl that's pretty good that I'm gonna have anyway.
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Jon Lovett
You get some of the surf, you get some of the turf.
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- [64:39]
Tommy Vietor
Joining me in studio today is the only Democrat currently holding statewide office in Iowa and a 2026 gubernatorial candidate, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand. Rob, great to see you.
- [64:50]
John Lovett
Yeah, you too, Tommy.
- [64:51]
Tommy Vietor
We're in the same room physically, we.
- [64:52]
John Lovett
Can put to rest we are not.
- [64:54]
Tommy Vietor
The same notion that we are the same person. I do like I we. I talked to you a few months back. I demanded that I get to be governor for a day. I know you've been thinking about it, get back to me on the constitutional.
- [65:05]
John Lovett
Elements, but I, I, I think what we need is if we can get a commitment out of you to be my body double on the trail for a few days so I can be in two places at once. We can probably make that work.
- [65:16]
Tommy Vietor
I'm there. I will be on the next flight to Des Moines. All right, so there's some really big races in Iowa this year. There's a bunch of contested House races. There's a big Senate race. Democrats are holding a primary to see who's gonna take on Joni Earst Ernst. You're running for governor. I am biased towards being more hopeful about Iowa because of my experience there.
- [65:36]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [65:37]
Tommy Vietor
But you are, again, the only statewide elected Democrat. Listeners might know that at the presidential level, Iowa swung about 16 points to the right from 2012 to 2016.
- [65:48]
John Lovett
Right.
- [65:49]
Tommy Vietor
So to everyone listening, all the doubters, all the haters.
- [65:52]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [65:52]
Tommy Vietor
Why should Democrats bet on Iowa this cycle?
- [65:55]
John Lovett
I think there's a pretty simple piece of this. But honestly, the, the bottom line is there are many data points. There's all kinds of reasons to support the fact that this is a state that is ready for change. Here's, here's a question for you because I think the bottom line for this, for a lot of people is we think, oftentimes we're forced and pushed to think in terms of Democrats versus Republicans. There are many people in the state of Iowa and nationally, but I think particularly in the state of Iowa, that actually look at politics and they're like, Democrats, Republicans, whatever. And instead they're all the same. Yeah, they're all the same. They're asking like, who's real? Who is willing to go against their party's orthodoxy, who is willing to challenge the status quo? And those are people who supported Barack Obama twice and then also supported Donald Trump three times. The Democratic nominee for president in all three of those election cycles against Donald Trump was someone who was not an outsider.
- [66:56]
Tommy Vietor
The consummate insider.
- [66:57]
John Lovett
The consummate insider all three times. Clinton, Biden, Harris. This is a state that has an idea for something bigger and they want someone that they feel is a genuine leader on things. And when you look around, yes, we've seen those swings at the presidential level, but look deeper. We have had, for three cycles in a row, one of the closest congressional races. The closest congressional race in the country.
- [67:24]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [67:25]
John Lovett
Last cycle for a pickup. The cycle before that for a defense for an incumbent Democrat. The cycle before that, closest congressional race in American history. Six votes.
- [67:34]
Jon Favreau
Wow.
- [67:34]
John Lovett
I'm the only statewide elected Democrat. But that's because there were two other people that lost by 1.1 in 2022. If they had won, our state level offices would be three Democrats and three Republicans. And the national media could be saying, like, oh, wow, Iowa. Still so purple liberal Iowa.
- [67:51]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [67:51]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, right.
- [67:52]
John Lovett
Right down the middle. They vote for both parties. And because it's a one point difference, nobody talks about that.
- [67:57]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [67:57]
Tommy Vietor
That's a good point. I want to talk about Howard County.
- [68:00]
John Lovett
Yes.
- [68:00]
Tommy Vietor
Small, white, rural county. It's right on the Minnesota border.
- [68:04]
John Lovett
Next door from my home county, swung.
- [68:06]
Tommy Vietor
41 points, 41 points from Obama to Donald Trump. You grew up just east of Howard county and Decorah. I'm sure you've been to Howard county many, many times for like, you know.
- [68:16]
John Lovett
Cross country teams, right? Yeah. Cross country means what was it about.
- [68:20]
Tommy Vietor
Trump's message in these small rural towns that made him so successful? I mean, 41 points.
- [68:26]
Jon Favreau
That's crazy.
- [68:27]
John Lovett
I think one of the reasons that, you know, it was. But that 41 point swing wouldn't be possible unless also Barack Obama did really well. That's a good point.
- [68:35]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [68:35]
John Lovett
And so the success of both of their messages was the idea that politics isn't serving ordinary people. And that's true. It's true. And there are A lot of voters are looking at that, and they're saying, I want someone who's gonna tell me the truth. I'm more focused on hearing that and be authentically who they are. Right. And both those guys, Obama and Trump, they are who they are. Right. There's no confusion about who they are. And so I think when you look at Howard county, and this is a great example of this. So I did 100 public town halls this year.
- [69:08]
Tommy Vietor
Why'd you do 100 town halls with 99 counties? That's gonna confuse the shit out of everybody.
- [69:12]
John Lovett
Lee county down in southeast Iowa has two county seats.
- [69:16]
Tommy Vietor
Okay.
- [69:16]
John Lovett
And so I do 100.
- [69:18]
Tommy Vietor
What happened there? It's like a Vichy county seat.
- [69:20]
John Lovett
What are they doing there? There was this dispute right after Iowa became a state.
- [69:25]
Jon Favreau
Okay.
- [69:25]
John Lovett
And two years afterward, the. The state law was like, you will have two county seats. Quit fighting. You can both be a county seat. You know, just like the mom and dad, how I treat my kids, you each get half.
- [69:35]
Tommy Vietor
You each get a toy, right?
- [69:36]
John Lovett
Yes. Yes. There you go. So. So I do 100 because a lot of elected officials in Iowa do 99. And I'm competitive.
- [69:42]
Tommy Vietor
Sure.
- [69:43]
John Lovett
So that way I'm the hardest working elected official in the state of Iowa. Right. But I also, like, I think this is the heart of democracy. Like, you shouldn't want to be in politics unless you are literally willing to go talk to anyone.
- [69:55]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [69:56]
John Lovett
So every year, a state auditor. I've done 100. We did 100 this year. And to go back to your point about Howard county, spent the night in. In Cresco, the county seat woke up that morning, went on a run, and was getting breakfast at a diner with my mom because she's over right next door from home, and there's a guy in there who's an older gentleman. And as we're on the way out, I say, hey, you know Rob sand doing a town hall. Come on over. Like, you're welcome there. I want you to be there. We announced all 100 the same day, by the way, like, in June. And so no matter where you were in Iowa, like, we were like a rock band going out on tour. Like, we are coming. Get ready.
- [70:34]
Tommy Vietor
Like it or not, we want you to show up.
- [70:37]
John Lovett
It's not like, poof, he was here when. How we want people to show up. So I invite this guy and he comes and the. The reporter for the Des Moines Register, Brianne Fannisteel's on the road with us and her. It turns out that she talked to him afterwards and to this point of, like, sort of not really a Democrat or Republican. This guy didn't want to share what his political views were, but he said something to the effect of, I'm glad I had a chance to actually hear from Sand. And who I vote for might come down to who's actually here for me to see, which will not sound strange to someone who worked on Broadway.
- [71:17]
Tommy Vietor
That's the most Iowa thing I've ever heard.
- [71:18]
John Lovett
Right. And so we're literally. And Tommy, when we do these. So we did this 100 times across the state. We start out by acknowledging the obvious. Our political system is broken. It works better to reelect the people who are in power than to solve the problems of the people it's supposed to serve. And I don't think that either party fundamentally is doing a good enough job of solving our problems to have special legal privileges over our choices on the ballot. But if we're going to change our political system, we have to change our political culture. We have to work together. And so if you're a Republican here today, I want to applaud you. Raise your hand. We clap for all the Republicans who are present. If you're an independent here today, I want to applaud you. We applaud the independents. We clap for the Democrats. And then I say I want to take one minute to prove to all the people who want us to hate each other that we can work together. Let's sing the first verse of America the Beautiful.
- [72:09]
Jon Favreau
Okay?
- [72:09]
John Lovett
And we do it.
- [72:10]
Tommy Vietor
How's your voice?
- [72:11]
John Lovett
I do not lead.
- [72:12]
Jon Favreau
Okay.
- [72:13]
John Lovett
On purpose. I. This is not a comment on my singing.
- [72:17]
Tommy Vietor
You don't have a tuning fork.
- [72:18]
John Lovett
This is not a comment on my singing.
- [72:19]
Tommy Vietor
Okay.
- [72:19]
John Lovett
The point is to have everyone do it. Right? So my microphone is at my waist. I'm just another person. And I say someone else kick us off. And we're in small town Iowa. Usually everybody turns around and is like Maude, you know, like, they all know who sings. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But we have this moment where we've already acknowledged that we disagree. We have already acknowledged that we are on opposite sides of this chasm, and yet we are taking a moment to acknowledge those differences and say, let's do something together. By the time you get past that, usually there's someone in the room. You can tell, just like hat felt a thing. Right. And people are just ready to have a different conversation than you can have before. And to me, that is what we need right now. And I think a lot to a lot of the people that are coming out for these events, 100 of them, we had over 10,000 people attend, averaged 30% not Democrats the year before the election. And 30% of the people in the room are independents and Republicans.
- [73:21]
Tommy Vietor
Interesting.
- [73:22]
John Lovett
And again, here's the message, right? Not bluer or redder, but truer and better. Our political system is broken. Two choices is not realistic. It functions better to control us than it does to get our problems resolved. And people, I think they are ready for that message. They recognize it as being true. And I think they see it as a route forward from where we are.
- [73:44]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, no, look, I've been hearing that. I would recommend to anyone running to run against the system right now. I was talking about the head of swing left the other day. The number one thing they are hearing on the doors is not cost of living, it's anger at the establishment, the system, and all the ways it's broken. But I do think you're talking to you is so interesting to me because, you know, we talk to a lot of Democrats here who are taking a more aggressive approach in the Trump era.
- [74:08]
John Lovett
Right.
- [74:09]
Tommy Vietor
Like, there was this big New York Times story the other day about a group of senators who call themselves Fight Club. They are frustrated with Chuck Schumer and how he's running things. Now, look, I know, like, fight verse, don't fight Trump is like, kind of stupid and reductive, but if you are governor, you might have to figure out how to deal with, say, a National Guard deployment or really aggressive ICE raids in your communities or God knows what else. By then, how are you thinking about, you know, like, those confrontations?
- [74:39]
John Lovett
I think the same way. I've kind of thought about everything. I mean, my background is not partisan warrior. State auditor for two terms, like, this is where the money went.
- [74:50]
Tommy Vietor
Is there a Republican calculator?
- [74:51]
John Lovett
Yeah, right. Yeah, that's better. You know, the line that we like is, money isn't blue or red, it's green.
- [74:58]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [75:00]
John Lovett
And we like to talk a lot about the old in God we trust, all others we audit.
- [75:05]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [75:07]
John Lovett
But it's not a partisan thing. You're just. You're really thinking about, like, what's the truth. Yeah. Prior to that, I spent seven years as the chief public corruption prosecutor. Right. Everybody, quick, buy my book. I uncovered the largest lottery rigging scheme. I'm asking a bit. Yeah, okay. All right, all right. We won't get too far into it. I should say, though, also, I want my finance people to be happy. Robsan.com Everybody, please chip in.
- [75:29]
Tommy Vietor
Donate, volunteer.
- [75:30]
John Lovett
Yeah, but here's the answer, right? Like, what I have spent my career doing has been on focusing on figuring out what the truth is and then doing the right thing. It hasn't been about like, oh, this person is good or bad because they're wearing this or that color hat. Whether it's a Democratic or a Republican president. I am going to do what I think is the right thing to do to protect public safety in Iowa and also to follow the Constitution. That's the bottom line. To me. An interesting story about this. We got a public records request in the auditor's office and asked for all allegations of wrongdoing by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds.
- [76:08]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [76:09]
Tommy Vietor
Pretty sweeping.
- [76:09]
John Lovett
Pretty sweeping came from the dnc. Under Iowa law, it seemed pretty clear to us that we can't just go hand out allegations. We think they're confidential under Iowa law. Don't think it's a complicated question. So we sent them. No, we can't give that to you. They sent the same records request a.
- [76:23]
Tommy Vietor
Second time, Just unedited. Just the same thing.
- [76:26]
John Lovett
Yeah. I think to me, it's like they're wondering, did you miss the letterhead? We're the dnc. I gave them the same answer. I'm not here to do what you want. I'm here to do the right thing. I'm not gonna go along with anything that any president says just because they are the president. They are people, they are fallible. And I don't think that, you know, look, I think that right now we should be focused on making sure that our economy is working. We should be focused on making sure that people who are in this country are not a threat to public safety. But if they're not a threat to public safety, if they're doing a job and they're paying their taxes and they don't have a criminal record, yes, I think it makes sense that if they came here illegal, there would be some level of consequence for that. But if they're a part of our communities, you can have a consequence without being evicted from our community. Right?
- [77:20]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [77:21]
Tommy Vietor
Another area where I would imagine you just diverge from some in the Democratic Party is on the question of redistricting. Gavin Newsom is leading this. Just led this major fight to redistrict California. It was in response to Trump demanding that Texas basically rig their maps halfway through the decade to get five more seats. Like, my. My views on this are like, I. I hate gerrymandering, because I think it kind of gets us to where we are today, where you have a vast majority of districts where the elected members on both sides are more Worried about a primary than a general election.
- [77:54]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [77:55]
Tommy Vietor
So they just, there's less incentive to be reasonable. But I also think we can't kind of sit idly when Republicans are trying to rig the 2026 midterms. But I get the sense that you are, you are not the biggest fan of partisan redistricting.
- [78:09]
Jon Favreau
Is that fair?
- [78:10]
John Lovett
You know, Iowa was the first state to prevent this problem. We put these, the country's first independent redistricting commission into place. And so in Iowa, like, you don't have gerrymandering, you can't do it. The Iowa standard is still the best standard. In fact, when this came up in Wisconsin a few years ago, some folks up there that knew me said like, hey, you know, the speaker up here, the Republican is trying to say, oh, we're going to do the Iowa model. Is this really the Iowa model? I was like, no. And I got a former Republican Iowa GOP chair to write a letter with me to basically like the state of Wisconsin being like, we see what you're trying to do here. This is what we do in Iowa. This is why it's different. And this is why you can't say that's the Iowa model. To try to protect truly the idea of independence and that brand of Iowa being like, nonpartisan. To me, this whole redistricting gerrymandering battle is again, exactly what I'm talking about when I go to the idea that these two private clubs shouldn't have special legal privileges over our access and our choices on the ballot. Right. This is what we get to. We have people who are being paid with tax dollars putting hours and hours and hours into efforts to solidify one private club's control over the law making capacity of different states. Now, I appreciate the responsiveness to it, but the answer to me isn't just like, oh, an eye for an eye. The answer is we need to break down this entire system so that we have a system based on serving people rather than a system based on serving politicians.
- [79:50]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, look, I'm there. If we could do a national sort of independent redistricting process, I'm all for it. It's just a long way from here to there.
- [79:58]
John Lovett
Right.
- [79:59]
Tommy Vietor
So I interviewed you around your announcement. You know, we talked about the sort of budding Trump trade war. It kicked off in earnest. You know, Trump slapped tariffs on most of the world, including the Chinese. A lot of the world kind of ducked and covered. The Chinese punched back really hard, including by basically boycotting the purchase of U.S. soybeans. Last month, Trump claimed that he'd cut a deal with the Chinese and that they would resume soybean purchases from the U.S. iowa is, you know, top two biggest soybean producing states in the country. I think it's you in Illinois, right? Number one, you got, you beat Illinois.
- [80:34]
John Lovett
Come on, you got to talk to Chat.
- [80:36]
Tommy Vietor
GPT. She told me.
- [80:37]
John Lovett
She told me. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I'm right.
- [80:40]
Tommy Vietor
How has the kind of like last few months of this trade war impacted Iowa farmers, the Iowa economy? And is China living up to the terms of the deal Trump announced?
- [80:49]
John Lovett
Well, I mean, that's exactly your phrasing of that was precise. Right. That's the terms of the deal that the Trump administration announced. China has never affirmed. Yes, we're going. They have never said we are going to buy 12 million metric tons. They have bought 300,000, allegedly. They're going to buy 12 million by the end of the calendar year.
- [81:09]
Tommy Vietor
It feels tough to do.
- [81:10]
John Lovett
Those numbers are very different. Those numbers are very, very different. Right. And I think there's a reason that China hasn't said, oh, we're going to do this. And this is just, to me, this is, you know, this is exactly one of those things that I think is the line that you can see between people who are trying to serve a party master and people who are trying to serve the public. Right. You got four members of Congress, two U.S. senators in the state of Iowa, all four members of Congress are just whatever the president says, I'm with him, ushering in a new golden age. Okay, you got it. Meanwhile, farmers in the state of Iowa, right, have no markets to sell their crops to internationally. We're bailing out Argentinian farmers and Argentinian cattlemen, beef growers, while people in Iowa are sitting there with no market. And all of these Republican elected officials who know how this system works, who are well informed on this, who, see how bad this is for Iowa, won't say it. The only one that's even coming close is Chuck Grassley. I think his attitude on this is yolo and he's mostly lived. So he's going for it. Right?
- [82:21]
Tommy Vietor
He's getting to the end of that four letter word.
- [82:23]
John Lovett
Right? Right.
- [82:24]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [82:24]
John Lovett
And so, you know, he's, he's, he's at least saying, yeah, he's at least saying, you know, I don't think tariffs are going to work. If they do, I'll be the first one to say hallelujah, I'm with him on that. But this is bad for the state of Iowa. And I think most People in the state of Iowa, they want someone who will work with any president to do good and work with no president to do something bad. They will try to avoid bad things happening. These folks are just saying, yes, boss, whatever you want.
- [82:49]
Tommy Vietor
What do these farmers do? Like, what do you do with a metric ton of a million metric tons of soybeans?
- [82:54]
John Lovett
It's a great question because right now you're also having to make decisions about what you're going to plant next year. Where are you going from here if.
- [83:02]
Tommy Vietor
This Chinese market has gone away?
- [83:03]
John Lovett
Yeah. And this chaos makes their life incredibly difficult because I think most farmers and most people.
- [83:09]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [83:11]
John Lovett
Most people want to know what the rules of the road are and make their own decisions and sink or swim according to their own merit and according to their own decision making. Yeah, you know, I thought. I thought we were going to zig. We zagged. But at least you knew, you know, there was that fork in the road and you were going to do one or the other.
- [83:27]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [83:27]
John Lovett
This kind of chaos just makes decision making for anyone in agriculture right now incredibly complicated and difficult, particularly because a lot of these people, they don't get to know if the tariffs are about to change in two days. I'm sure somebody knows when the tariffs are about to change in two days. Yes, somebody can place their bets.
- [83:45]
Tommy Vietor
Exactly. It's less of a bet somebody named Donald Trump Jr knows, and they can go on polymarket or the stock exchange or whatever. Another Iowa specific question for you. So Iowa has the second highest cancer rate in the nation and it's got one of the only rising cancer rates in the country. That includes a lot of people. Young people are getting cancer in their 30s. Yeah, I know that some experts point to alcohol consumption, high levels of radon potentially as being the cause. Radon, for those who don't know, is just a naturally occurring radioactive gas. Others suspect chemicals used in agriculture could be the culprit. And this is not just an Iowa problem. There's sort of like a midwestern belt of states that are dealing with this. What do you think is happening and what is like the governor of Iowa's responsibility or options to address the challenge?
- [84:32]
John Lovett
Yeah. So bottom line, answer is it's certainly all of the above are part of this. And I think the responsibility of the governor is to figure out what are our biggest causes and what can we do. What are the best and fastest and easiest ways to lower those incidents of cancer. And you're right, we are number two overall and the only one with an increasing rate. And this is something that again, 100 public town halls. And I would get to this point in my stump where I would say, we are 49th for economic growth. We are 48th for personal income growth, but what are we number one in for growing? And people would shout back at me, cancer. It has really hit people's imagination, and it hits people's lives close to home. And I always think about my friend Abby, who. She's from Forest City. We met through my cousin a long time ago, and she was a childhood cancer survivor. And then she. Her cancer came back when we were maybe around 30 or something. And her attitude about it was so classically Iowan and also miraculous. She had to have her entire leg amputated at one point. And so for Halloween, she went as a shark attack victim. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The next year, she was a carrot. And she was also a pediatric nurse and just, you know, like, taking care of kids and doing her best to balance everything that she was going through with trying to be employed and help kids at the same time. And then she. She passed away. But people who know her and. And people who. Whose lives are touched by stories like that across the state of Iowa, and you hear that we are number one for that. It's alarming. And I met a couple in Alma Key county. So we talked about Howard. Next over to the east is Winnesheek, my county. And then next over to the east is Alma Key. And I met a couple in Lansing at my town hall, young couple, I think probably younger than us, whose kid has cancer now. And they said, we're working with people in the legislature to try to get some funding for research for pediatric cancers in the state of Iowa. I do think that's an obligation for the state government and Iowa. We should be funding research into why is this happening in Iowa. We absolutely should. Last year, the legislature and governor agreed to put a million dollars into it.
- [87:01]
Tommy Vietor
That doesn't seem like much.
- [87:03]
John Lovett
That's not going to get you much. No. What this couple taught me is that in Nebraska, they have done $23 million of research into pediatric cancer over the last few years. And as a proud Iowan, I demand that we beat Nebraska.
- [87:18]
Tommy Vietor
I know you do.
- [87:19]
John Lovett
Yeah, like we should be.
- [87:20]
Tommy Vietor
It's gotten easier recently.
- [87:22]
John Lovett
Yes. Yes, it has. Yes, it has.
- [87:24]
Tommy Vietor
Scott Frost era was not good for anybody over there.
- [87:27]
John Lovett
Well, it's good for Hawkeyes.
- [87:28]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it was good for Neon Hawkeyes.
- [87:29]
John Lovett
But the table stake should be 25 million because we want to beat Nebraska. We're also sitting on a five or six, depending on how you want to count it. Billion dollar surplus. So we have money there. What are we doing?
- [87:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, seems like there's no better way to spend it than this kind of research. You have a great hospital, the University of Iowa.
- [87:47]
John Lovett
I mean, we do.
- [87:47]
Tommy Vietor
I want to make you name. I don't want you to rank your hospitals, but you got a bunch of good ones. I know that's hard.
- [87:52]
John Lovett
The other thing of this that I think is we so often miss is this is good for everybody. Right? Because you can be the person. You know, my faith drives so much of what I believe and so much of what I choose. And to me, you can look at kids and you could say, we should heal the sick. We should want to help these people not be sick. You can also be the single most cold hearted person in the state of Iowa and reach the same conclusion on a different route. Well, I guess if we prevent cancer that costs fewer tax dollars than treating it later on. So fine, we should all be able to agree to this. It's a simple thing that we can be doing. And right now, the folks that are there aren't doing enough. What are they busy doing? Right. Like I said, 48th in economic growth, number one for cancer growth. But let's figure out how to gut the state auditor's office. Ability to find the tax dollars that we misspent. That's their priority. I always go back to the story in the New Testament of Jesus flipping tables because he saw people in a position of trust and power at the temple who were abusing that trust and power. That to me, is exactly where we are in the state of Iowa right now. And we did. As we're going around and we're doing 100 town halls, you're hearing people left, right and center who are just fed up. They've had enough. They understand that at this point, it's just insiders serving insiders and special interest groups. They're not focused on Iowans and they're ready for change.
- [89:19]
Tommy Vietor
When you say Jesus flipping tables, I think of like a Buffalo Bills tailgate. That's more, I guess, more like splitting tables, jumping off.
- [89:27]
John Lovett
I want to see, I really want to see Josh Allen get a Super Bowl.
- [89:30]
Tommy Vietor
I like Josh Allen, but I'm glad the Patriots are good. All right, so your work, you. You prosecuted this hot lotto fraud case. It's one of like the craziest public corruption stories in Iowa. For listeners who don't know, can you just tell us what happened and why you have beef with hot lottery winners?
- [89:50]
John Lovett
How I understand it I won't dive in on the bait on that one. There's a. So, yeah, great, amazing book that I wrote. Everyone should buy it. It's so good. It did actually win an award from the Washington Independent Review of books.
- [90:09]
Jon Favreau
Oh.
- [90:09]
John Lovett
Which because it has the word independent in it, makes. It makes an auditor be like, okay.
- [90:13]
Jon Favreau
Legit.
- [90:13]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [90:15]
John Lovett
They called it a favorite read of the year when it came out.
- [90:17]
Jon Lovett
Okay.
- [90:17]
John Lovett
It's called the winning ticket. I had nothing to do with a documentary called jackpot, which you can stream for free@lottodoc.com.
- [90:26]
Jon Lovett
Okay.
- [90:27]
John Lovett
But that tells you the same story in 45 minutes. If you're not the book reading type. Less detail. Bottom Line. For 10 years, there was this guy working for the multi state lottery association in Urbandale, Iowa, that serves, like, 38 state and provincial lotteries in the United States and Canada. And he was. I don't want to spoil it. He was. He was making it a little bit more predictable than it's supposed to be.
- [90:55]
Tommy Vietor
Fast forward this part if you want to buy the book.
- [90:56]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [90:57]
Tommy Vietor
You can tell us what happened. It's okay.
- [90:58]
John Lovett
All right. All right. Inside job. Like, it was his job to literally write the computer program that was supposed to pick random numbers, and he made them enough, less than random that he could buy a bunch of tickets and kind of know it was gonna win. Dude, the craziest part about this is, so he's. He's a Texas, small town, Texas boy.
- [91:16]
Tommy Vietor
And no one noticed he was, like, driving a Ferrari.
- [91:18]
John Lovett
All of a sudden, he had a really big house. People were like, did you have an uncle? Did he pass away? Was he rich?
- [91:22]
Jon Favreau
Right, Right.
- [91:23]
John Lovett
How are you doing this? People. People sort of had questions. But, you know, like, the craziest part about this, beyond the fact that he's rigging lottery jackpots around America, he's a small town Texas boy. His brother is a justice of the peace down there. His brother is a bigfoot hunter in, like, the Sasquatch. Sasquatch.
- [91:42]
Tommy Vietor
Okay.
- [91:42]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [91:43]
Tommy Vietor
And that seems like a tough gig.
- [91:46]
John Lovett
It was a side gig.
- [91:47]
Tommy Vietor
You're not getting a lot of targets. Right. You're not putting a lot of arrows on.
- [91:51]
John Lovett
No.
- [91:51]
Tommy Vietor
On beef.
- [91:52]
John Lovett
No, he.
- [91:52]
Jon Favreau
He.
- [91:53]
John Lovett
That's why he was a justice of the peace, for his day job. Right. But he would help. He would help the guy in Des Moines, in Urbandale, buy these rigged jackpots, and then he would use his friends, occasionally from the bigfoot hunting community to help claim the jackpot tickets. Okay.
- [92:12]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [92:13]
Tommy Vietor
I'm now imagining dudes in, like, bigfoot outfits. Like, have you seen Harry and the Hendersons?
- [92:18]
John Lovett
Yeah, of course.
- [92:20]
Tommy Vietor
Like, him going to cash the ticket.
- [92:21]
John Lovett
Yes. That's great. Not.
- [92:23]
Tommy Vietor
How did you guys suss this out?
- [92:26]
John Lovett
Long, long story. We actually went to trial only knowing about the one Iowa ticket. And I remember this very clearly. We did jury selection day one when we were starting to have ev. Bringing evidence. There was a national news story being like, ah, the defense has got a pretty. Pretty powerful argument for reasonable doubt here. I don't know how you can convict this guy because you don't have the. Like the. You don't have the file. The computer that had been used for the Iowa jackpot draw had been wiped to Department of Defense standards. Like, there was no direct evidence at the time of, like, oh, here's the file that he wrote. This is how he rigged it. So it was a circumstantial case. We won. As we're waiting for sentencing as after the. After the guilty verdict, I get this phone call at my desk, and I recognize the area code is, like, the area that he's from in Texas. So I answer the phone, and this guy's like, can I talk to Rob Sand? I'm like, yeah, that's me. Y' all know that Eddie's brother won the lottery maybe about 10 years ago or so somewhere out west, maybe Colorado. I was like, no, thank you.
- [93:30]
Jon Favreau
That is very helpful.
- [93:31]
John Lovett
Yeah, that is very helpful. We had been sort of waiting for a tip like that. Like, we knew it was there. But one of the interesting tactical decisions for the Mastermind's legal defense was they chose to demand speedy trial. So we didn't have time to do this huge nationwide investigation.
- [93:49]
Jon Favreau
Right, Right.
- [93:49]
John Lovett
We had to, like, indict and get ready for trial. And we didn't. We were like, we bet there's something else out there, but right now, we gotta shoot the alligator closest to the boat. Yeah, Right. Let's get this guy convicted of this case here in Iowa, see what happens after that.
- [94:02]
Tommy Vietor
I'm imagining you and Voir d' Air being like, I've got to strike that hairy guy. He's got some Bigfoot DNA.
- [94:08]
John Lovett
He's not gonna like these people.
- [94:10]
Tommy Vietor
He's not gonna like this. All right, last question. I mean, even if you win, the Republicans will probably have pretty strong majority of the legislature. Right. How do you think you can work with them to get stuff done? You know? Has our, like, zero sum bloodsport DC Politics infected Iowa fully yet, or are you guys still able to talk?
- [94:31]
John Lovett
So, so. So I'll say This number one, we are strong believers that we can win this race. Right. The only poll that we have seen has us up by two. We keep having people come out of the Republican Party power structure, elected officials in recent party chairs, like county party chairs, publicly endorsing me, even if they've never spoken to me in their life.
- [94:54]
Jon Favreau
That's nice.
- [94:55]
John Lovett
Yeah. Like when I tell you that Iowans are ready for change, I think we were talking about this earlier. Four of the top nine special election over performances in America this year are the only four that we have had for special elections in Iowa. So we're right up at the top there. We can win this race. What's going to happen when we win? I think there's a lot of people in the legislature that want to do good, and I think they belong to both parties, and I will be happy to work with anybody. And this, to me is, again, this sort of is, I think, rooted in my faith. I love finding places of agreement and a sense of community where you expect to find none. One of the legislators that voted against the bill that got the auditor's office that made it so they could hide misspent money from us is a legislator who literally was at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020, to stop this deal. Oh, yeah. But she was someone that I called to tell her, hey, there's this bill coming. It's bad. It corrupts our government. It is an example of the swamp. And she read the bill, she asked me some very intelligent questions about it, and she said, okay, I'm gonna vote against it.
- [96:14]
Tommy Vietor
That's great. People surprise you, right? Margie Taylor Greene, look what she's doing.
- [96:17]
Jon Lovett
There you go.
- [96:17]
John Lovett
There you go. And so I just, like, we can judge people's actions. We don't have to judge people. The best part of this story was when that legislator, Louina Stoltenberg, came back to me maybe the day or two before the vote, and she goes, hey, I just want to let you know a lot of other people have approached me about this bill, and they've told me some things about it, made some arguments that I think make sense. And I'm really struggling and praying a lot about what the right thing to do is for how I vote on this bill. And I'm telling you this now because I want you to know that I'm struggling so that if I vote for it, you don't think that it was because I lied to you. Don't you want to be represented by people with that level of integrity?
- [96:55]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [96:55]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [96:55]
Tommy Vietor
It's a very decent response.
- [96:57]
John Lovett
And so like you can be someone who literally is there to stop the steal and yet also is calling me to put yourself out there and say like I'm not sure what the right thing to do is. I'm just working really hard at this. And we, I re engaged with her. I said thank you. Tell me what their questions are. I don't care who it was that you got it from. Just tell me the question, I'll give you my answer. And we did that and she did end up voting against it. I'm telling this story to illustrate the point. Right. That you made. People will surprise you if you let them. The more we are focused on putting each other into a box and saying, no, you're over there and I'm over here and we're going to have to fight, the worse we are doing for all the people that are struggling around this state with higher prices. Right. With cancer. We're not solving problems if we're not willing to work together. But when we engage in good faith, when I look at someone like her and I assume, hey, they might be willing to do all kinds of things if we at least have a conversation and focus on getting to something good, a whole new world opens up in terms of what's possible to accomplish from.
- [97:59]
Tommy Vietor
January 6th to voting with you. I like it. Maybe you take them hunting. Are you bow hunting guy?
- [98:05]
John Lovett
Dude, I gotta show you the buck that I shot this year.
- [98:07]
Tommy Vietor
I can't kill a deer. They're too big. I'm a fishing guy.
- [98:10]
John Lovett
I like fishing.
- [98:11]
Tommy Vietor
I've shot birds before. Clay pigeons. That's a good time.
- [98:14]
John Lovett
I agree, I agree.
- [98:15]
Tommy Vietor
Maybe we do a little. That's our common ground.
- [98:18]
John Lovett
You now have made me think of the buck that I shot this fall. I have to talk to you.
- [98:22]
Tommy Vietor
A lot of points. Big, big, big looking guy.
- [98:25]
John Lovett
209 inch whitetail. If I like, can I like.
- [98:29]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, we can, you know, can you zoom in? We can put it in post and make all our. Make our audience vomit this thing.
- [98:36]
John Lovett
We'll do a clean picture. A 209 inch buck is like a once in a lifetime. If you're having a lucky lifetime.
- [98:43]
Jon Favreau
Okay.
- [98:43]
John Lovett
I have, I've been a bow hunter my entire life. This was in, in the city limits in Des Moines.
- [98:49]
Tommy Vietor
What? Yes, like downtown.
- [98:51]
John Lovett
I've been doing the urban bow hunting program.
- [98:53]
Tommy Vietor
Well, that's a big deer.
- [98:54]
John Lovett
Yeah.
- [98:54]
Tommy Vietor
That's a lot of. How many points on that thing?
- [98:56]
John Lovett
14.
- [98:57]
Tommy Vietor
I knew that.
- [98:57]
John Lovett
But two, but 209 inches. So again like that's just like, that's off the charts.
- [99:04]
Tommy Vietor
What's a normal sized buck?
- [99:08]
John Lovett
So a Pope and young buck, which is big enough for the Pope and Young record books typically would be 125 inches and up. Okay. I have taken like eight of those. I want to say, as a hunter, a. A Boone and Crockett buck, which is like a Booner is a big deal. 170 inches.
- [99:26]
Jon Favreau
All right.
- [99:26]
Tommy Vietor
Like speaking a new language here. Yes.
- [99:28]
John Lovett
You're. Hey, you never know what you're going to learn.
- [99:30]
Tommy Vietor
I'm learning a lot, actually. My wife's father bow hunts and does.
- [99:33]
Jon Favreau
All this stuff too.
- [99:34]
John Lovett
All right, so they have these measurements, Pope and young and, and Boone and Crockett for pretty much every kind of animal. But, you know, whitetail is what we got in Iowa. So 125 inches and then 170 inches for that higher line. And shooting a booner like 170 or up is a pretty big deal. Like 209 is just like.
- [99:51]
Tommy Vietor
That's a. That's a Gooner.
- [99:52]
Jon Lovett
That's.
- [99:53]
Tommy Vietor
That's monster.
- [99:53]
John Lovett
It's a Gooner. Yeah. Forget Booner. Yes. I don't know, man.
- [99:57]
Tommy Vietor
I'm just like, I really like fishing.
- [99:59]
John Lovett
You ever. You ever get out there fishing? Yes.
- [100:01]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Yeah.
- [100:02]
Tommy Vietor
Little streams will fly rod.
- [100:04]
John Lovett
Northeast Iowa Decorah. Some of the best trout fishing in the Midwest.
- [100:07]
Jon Favreau
It is.
- [100:07]
Tommy Vietor
Northeast Iowa is absolutely beautiful.
- [100:09]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [100:09]
Tommy Vietor
Everyone should go visit. Also you should visit robsanne.com robsann.com figure out how to get involved. Campaign, donate, maybe volunteer, maybe knock some doors.
- [100:17]
John Lovett
Yes.
- [100:18]
Tommy Vietor
It's great to see you. Thank you for talking to about all this and welcome to L. A.
- [100:22]
John Lovett
Thanks, man.
- [100:22]
Tommy Vietor
Hope the weather is nice, but not too nice. I know you're more of a. You want that like that?
- [100:27]
John Lovett
I would glue. Cool, cool weather.
- [100:29]
Jon Lovett
Yeah.
- [100:29]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [100:29]
John Lovett
It'll be a fun trip.
- [100:35]
Jon Favreau
That's our show for today. Thanks to Rob sand for coming by. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider. Consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is Mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Lambert. US Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles, and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.
- [101:34]
Tommy Vietor
East.
- [101:46]
Jon Lovett
The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot, snack bar, your lucky jersey, your.
- [101:55]
John Lovett
Chairs and your big cooler fit perfectly.
- [101:57]
Tommy Vietor
In your even bigger cargo space. And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch.
- [102:03]
Jon Lovett
Diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist, and the tech to stay a step ahead. It's more than an suv. It's your Equinox Chevrolet. Together, let's drive.
- [102:15]
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