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Matt Gaetz: Venmo Money, Venmo Problems
01:08:45
The problems dogging attorney general pick Matt Gaetz don't seem to be going away, as new leaks expose a history of thousands of dollars in Venmo payments to two women at the center of the complaints against him. Meanwhile, newly unearthed video of RFK Jr., Trump's choice for health secretary, shows him speculating about whether the Covid pandemic was planned by the government. Tommy is joined by Democratic strategist and media expert Lis Smith to unpack all the chaos, plus what the Dems are missing, what needs to shift in their media strategy, and the big questions driving the race for DNC Chair. Then, Dan sits down with Sen. Jon Tester to reflect on his re-election battle in Montana, how Democrats can win in the heartland again, and the best way to connect with voters in red states.
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- [00:02]
Tommy Vitor
Tired of scrolling through a newsfeed and still feeling overwhelmed and uninformed? Sounds like you need a single source for all the news that's fit to pod. Check out Crooked's new social destination at Real Crooked News. It'll help you stay in the know, but not so in the know that you have all of RFK Jr. S animal corpse stories memorized. Leave that to the terminally online folks here at Crooked. Put Real News back in your newsfeed. Follow Real Crooked News eal crookednews on Instagram threads and Twitter x. Today's presenting sponsor is Simplisafe Home Security. As holiday shopping begins to pick up, so does the risk of package thefts. Simplisafe's cameras and professional monitoring makes sure that even if you're not home, your deliveries are always safe. With Simplisafe you can shop confidently knowing your home is protected against thefts and break ins. You guys know that John Lovett set up a Simplisafe himself. It has kept him and Pundit safe for many, many years. They have top flight sensors. It's easy to turn on and off just from your phone and you're going to love it. SimpliSafe is a new way to protect your home that stops intruders before they break into your home. Old school systems only take action once someone is already inside your home and that's too late. Simplisafe's Active Guard Outdoor Protection changes the game by preventing crime before it happens. If someone's lurking around or being weird, those agents see them in real time, talk to them directly, set off your spotlights, or even call the police before they've had a chance to break in. Plus, there's no long term contracts, no cancellation fees, and it's around a dollar a day for all this protection. SimpliSafe is offering our listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale this week only. You can get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is their best offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com crooked that's simplisafe.com crooked there's no safe like simplisaf. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor and guest hosting with me today is my friend Liz Smith, one of the smartest Democratic strategists in politics. She spent most of the Cycle at the DNC heading up their efforts to deal with third party candidates like our buddy RFK Jr. Liz, welcome.
- [02:22]
Liz Smith
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Tommy. I wish it were under better circumstances, but look forward to talking about the dumpster fire in Washington, D.C. with you.
- [02:32]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, it's really, it's bleak. It's bleak. Speaking of bleak, on today's show, we're going to talk about the latest in the Matt Gaetz for Attorney General saga, how the race for DNC chair is shaken out. And listen, thoughts on how Democrats can shake things up to win again, especially when it comes to media strategy. Then Senator Jon Tester stops by to talk with Dan about his tough race in Montana, how he outperformed the national ticket and how Democrats can win again in the heartland states. But first, we have a flurry of new Cabinet picks that are a continuation of the theme of Donald Trump picking his unqualified friends to run huge important agencies. Wonderful. We talked on the Tuesday pod about the race for treasury secretary. Apparently the transition co chair, Howard Lutnick eventually lost that race because he's now been named to be Commerce Secretary. Well, here we'll still have a big role in implementing Trump's tariffs. Trump also picked Linda McMahon, his other transition co chair, to run the Department of Education. McMahon is a longtime ally and donor of Trump's. She served as SBA administrator during Trump's first term alongside her husband, Vince McMahon. She's the co founder of WWE. She is apparently doesn't have a lot of qualifications to be in the job, but we'll get to that. But the biggest Cabinet head scratcher headline to date, or at least in the last couple of days, is that Trump nominated Dr. Oz to be the head of CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It's worth just spending a second to unpack what CMS does because a lot of people probably don't know and how absurd it is to put Dr. Oz in there. The CMS was described by the New York Times as, quote, probably the most challenging technical policy and political job in government. CMS provides coverage to about 150 million Americans. And by some estimates, a quarter of all government spending flows through CMS. While Dr. Oz is a heart surgeon who also plays a lifestyle guru on daytime TV where he hawks dubious weight loss, cures and analyzes different shapes of poop, his government experience is limited to losing a Senate race to just John Federman in 2022, where the lasting mark he made on the electorate was this clip.
- [04:43]
Dan
Thought I did some grocery shopping.
- [04:44]
Tommy Vitor
I'm at Wegner's and my wife wants.
- [04:46]
Jon Tester
Some vegetables for crudite.
- [04:48]
Tommy Vitor
Right.
- [04:48]
Jon Tester
So here's a broccoli.
- [04:50]
Tommy Vitor
That's two bucks, not a ton of broccoli.
- [04:53]
Dan
There.
- [04:53]
Jon Tester
Here's some asparagus. That's $4.
- [04:56]
Tommy Vitor
Yep.
- [04:57]
Jon Tester
Carrots.
- [04:58]
Tommy Vitor
That's four more dollars.
- [04:59]
Jon Tester
That's $10 of vegetables there.
- [05:01]
Tommy Vitor
And then we need some guacamole.
- [05:04]
Dan
That's $4 more.
- [05:06]
Tommy Vitor
And she love.
- [05:08]
Dan
Yeah, there's salsa there.
- [05:10]
Jon Tester
$6. Must be a shortage of salsa, guys.
- [05:13]
Tommy Vitor
That's $20 for crote. And this doesn't include the tequila.
- [05:16]
Jon Tester
I mean, that's outrageous.
- [05:18]
Tommy Vitor
And we got Joe Biden to thank for this. No one has ever made a veggie plate sound weirder. Liz, any thoughts on this kind of latest group of picks or just on this Trump team, generally, how it's shaping up?
- [05:29]
Liz Smith
Yeah, I mean, fuck, it's fucking terrifying. I really don't want to sugarcoat it looking, and I do work for Adam Schiff, and he had a really good point on this sort of crop of candidates is that, yes, they are all unqualified. But that's sort of the point here, because what Donald Trump is trying to do is to show that he can roll the U.S. senate, that he can get these completely unqualified people through the Senate. And if he can get them to do that, they will do literally anything for him. And what I think is troubling for most people, for me, is, yes, seeing these people are unqualified and that the main qualification is their loyalty to Donald Trump, the fact that they won't say no. And we know from people inside the White House during the first Trump term that you had people like Mattis, you had people like John Kelly. Not perfect guys, whatever, but they were sort of bulwarks. They sort of pushed back on him. And now it doesn't look like Donald Trump will have any checks on the White House, any checks on his worst impulses. And I think that's something that should be really scary to people.
- [06:34]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, this is, by and large, I mean, shaping up to be a team of just loyalists. There are some kind of hawkish establishment types. Marco Rubio at the State Department, Elise Stefanik at the un But I kind of think Trump doesn't really care about those agencies he's focused on, like Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense, Tom Homan as his border czar, Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff. These are hardcore ideologues who believe first and foremost in maga, and they will do what Trump says when it comes to punishing his enemies. There was a great quote in the bulwark that said all these other Attorney General picks came to Trump and they Started talking about, like, grand legal theories. And Matt Gaetz was like, yeah, I'm gonna go over there and chop off some heads. And Trump was like, cool. I want that guy. So, you know, not. Not great stuff, as you noted. Pretty scary.
- [07:23]
Liz Smith
Yeah. And I mean, I think with Matt Gaetz especially, that was the first one where we were like, my God, this is like, this is real. This is what's happening. And, you know, remind people that when we looked at the exits from the election, voters, top issues were inflation and the border, not like, whatever the hell this is. And this is sort of. This is not acting on any sort of mandate. And, you know, there's no indication that these guys are being put in to lower the price of eggs or even necessarily to secure the border as much as do mass deportations. And that is, you know, ultimately probably some backlash that Trump will have to deal with. But, you know, a lot of us were out there warning that Trump 2.0 would be on a vengeance tour. He would be all about chaos and doing things for his own personal benefit. And choices to date certainly seem that way.
- [08:17]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, certainly does. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's a lot of voters who'll be like, I didn't vote for a military purge of generals who weren't Republicans. That's weird. And just to hammer this CMS and Dr. Oz thing a little bit, just because I think it matters. I mean, cms employs about 6,000 people. According to the Wall Street Journal, the head of CMS oversees the operation and administration of Medicare, Medicaid, the chips, children's healthcare programs. It's just this massive management job. And they also issue regulations to insurers, state governments, healthcare providers that reverberate throughout the entire industry. And so lest you think, well, certainly Dr. Oz will have some adult supervision, no, the guy's going to report into the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who is supposed to be RFK Jr. So a wildly technical, important job that oversees the healthcare of 150 million Americans, and the biggest goober imaginable will be running it. He can't even figure out how to buy crudite, as he calls it, without sounding weird.
- [09:15]
Liz Smith
Yeah. And the RFK Jr. Stuff, especially, I think, is really, really troubling. I could go on forever about that.
- [09:25]
Tommy Vitor
Let's dig into that. I think you're right. That's very important. So before we get to rfk, I mean, there is this drip, drip, drip of Matt Gaetz news that is driving the news cycle. Apparently, a hacker got access to a bunch of Secure files from lawyers representing witnesses in the Gates case, including testimony from someone Gates is said to have slept with when she was 17, as well as a corroborating witness account. ABC News reported this morning that Gates paid more than $10,000 via Venmo, PayPal and good old fashioned checks to two women who later testified to the House Ethics Committee. That report is based on committee documents that ABC was able to get a hold of. And in a fun little side note, a lawyer who represented women who testified to the committee about Matt Gates said he flew them to New York to sleep with them, watch him go on Fox News, and then they all went out together to see Pretty Woman on Broadway. Liz, first question, do we think Matt Gaetz fancies himself as like the political Richard Gere or had he not seen the movie? What do we think happened here?
- [10:26]
Liz Smith
I mean, could he be more of a cartoonish villain? I mean, I think the first rule of like, you know, hiring sex workers, hookers, whatever, is don't write a check to them. Second rule, don't, don't Venmo them and, you know, put the memo as tuition assistance. And maybe the third rule is don't take them to the Broadway adaptation of the all time classic Pretty Woman about the hooker with a heart of gold. I mean, you can't, you really can't make this stuff up. And it shows that this guy really has no regard for anything, for doing anything appropriately. And this is someone whose only interactions with the Justice Department are being investigated by it. And it is such a slap in the face to the process. And honestly, it's a real slap in the face to all the Republicans in the U.S. senate that Donald Trump is going to ask them to approve someone who is not only unqualified but on every level is a red flag for running the doj.
- [11:28]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. Top law enforcement position in the land. And he's a creep and a scumbag and they all hate him. But hey, you're going to have to vote on him. So the harder question, beyond how he scored the Pretty Woman tickets, is how much do you think Democrats should focus on this set of allegations that we just talked about versus all the other ways Gates is unqualified for the job and could do damage.
- [11:48]
Liz Smith
Well, you know, I heard you guys talking about this the other day on the show I think was about Pete Hegseth and his tattoo, right? Like, why on earth, out of all the things we could talk about, are we obsessing over his fricking tattoos? And this is just generally the problem with Donald Trump, it's generally the problem with people he puts up is that there are so many different things you can go at. I think what's gonna be really important with Matt Gaetz, with any of these nominees, is to really, really, really try to stay focused and bring it back to, okay, yeah, like, all the taking, you know, a couple sex workers to Pretty Woman on Broadway. It's absurd, it's ridiculous. But focus on the ways that what he's gonna do is actually gonna hurt real people and make it about the impacts and, like, the chaos that he would bring to the doj, the hookers, all that stuff that will get the headlines. But we really need to make sure that people understand that this isn't just a partisan back and forth about people's, you know, very obvious personal failings. It should be a back and forth about why this would make their life worse, their life harder. And Matt Gaetz as Attorney General of the US Is a complete vote for chaos. He's a chaos agent. He's going in there, as you said, to chop off heads for Donald Trump, and that should be terrifying to people. And so I think generally my advice there and across the board is we really gotta triage, focus on the important stuff. Don't just go down every weird rabbit hole with these people.
- [13:21]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, you know, as you and I know, because we did communications for so long, I mean, the hardest part in these fights is getting it covered and reaching people outside of Washington and reaching actual voters and, you know, creating a political cost for the people who, you know, will have to vote for Matt Gaetz. Because I think this story, I think, is useful because people are not going to flip past this one when it gets served to them by, like, the daily mail on TikTok.
- [13:46]
Jon Tester
Right.
- [13:46]
Tommy Vitor
Like, you want to know more about what Matt Gaetz was doing in New York on this trip. It's got the details. There's drugs, there's sex, there's all of it. There's the funny details about. Yeah, I think he put in some of the Venmo comments to these women. He put in Being my Friend. And then one time he wrote being awesome. So thank you for that, Matt. But you're right, I think you have to use that. Use that interest in coverage to raise a whole set of broader issues about why he could do damage and actually harm real people. The weird thing about this, Liz, is, like, there is this report this morning that some of these files from an unrelated civil case against Gates were gotten by a hacker And I'm a little worried about that part of the narrative, confusing things. I mean, like, we don't want him to look like a victim. We want him to sell a narrative that the deep state is going after him. We also don't know who hacked these files. I mean, it could be someone who decides he or she wants to dox the women who are victims who apparently gave video testimony. So I don't know. I'm hoping this Ethics Committee report will leak, but I am a little worried that this sort of hacking piece of. It confuses things.
- [14:49]
Liz Smith
It always does. It always does. But I'm with you. I hope they release the ethics investigation. It would be nice if they released it. It didn't have to be leaked so that we could look at all of this. But, you know, during the hearings, all that. I think it's just really important to focus on, you know, the really dangerous things that he would want to do as Attorney general. And he's picked because Trump wants someone who will not check his worst impulses and do all the things that he said he wanted to do to his political enemies in his first term.
- [15:21]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, that's right. All right, let's go to our buddy, RFK Jr. Deep breaths for both of us. So the Bulwark reported yesterday that in a speech given in 2020, RFK seemed open to the idea that the government might have created the COVID pandemic. Let's listen to a clip from that speech.
- [15:39]
Dan
Many people argue that this pandemic was a pandemic, that it was planned from the outset, that it's part of a sinister scheme. I can't tell you the answer to that. I don't have enough evidence. A lot of it feels very bland to me.
- [15:55]
Tommy Vitor
I don't know.
- [15:56]
Dan
I will tell you this. If you create these mechanisms for control, they become weapons of obedience for authoritarian regimes, no matter how beneficial or innocent the people who created them.
- [16:12]
Tommy Vitor
So does Trump not notice or care that Robert F. Kennedy is accusing him of unleashing the virus? That can't go over well.
- [16:20]
Liz Smith
Right, I know. How weird is that? And, you know, what you saw and what you heard in that clip. It's sort of vintage RFK Jr. And I think you talked about this with Brandy on the podcast, which is that, you know, one, he's full of shit. This guy manipulates facts, thinks he hears, says whatever. But two, he always tries to frame it in a way of like, hey, just asking questions, just. And, you know, he's someone who said, just raise questions about whether 9, 11 was an inside job. Whether the 1993 World Trade center bombing was an inside job. You know, whether the pandemic was an inside job apparently perpetrated by the Trump administration and the deep state. He says water turns tap, water turns kids gay and transgender, that no vaccines are safe and effective. And you know, the most troubling thing about, to me about him is, again, what I was talking about with you before is the real life impacts of this. Right. This isn't a guy who just goes out and says irresponsible things. This is someone who was a lead spreader of misinformation during the pandemic. He profited widely off of that. But if you go back to 2018, he was someone who helped stoke this really bad public health crisis in American Samoa where he spread propaganda that was against the measles vaccine. And you know what the end effect of that was? Dozens, dozens of people there died, most of them kids. And if you scaled that up for the U.S. that would be, I think I saw online, 130, 140,000 people dead. So what he is doing would have really, really real life effects.
- [17:58]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think that's the most important point. I mean, he could, at the bare minimum, he could make people more hesitant to get vaccines and reduce the uptick in measles vaccinations and lead to a massive outbreak. It's always interesting to me how Trump is never held responsible for the things the government did. When he's in charge, it was always the deep state. His supporters simultaneously want him to be seen as this all powerful strong man, but also the constant victim. And it drives me nuts. But you're right. I mean, I do think these comments, it tells us more than just about RFK's vaccine views. It's just a guy who sees conspiracies everywhere. It's like antidepressants, SERB Mass shootings, 5G towers are controlling us. HIV doesn't cause AIDS. And for that person to be in charge of kind of like collating and understanding and releasing medical research is very dangerous. And correct me if I'm wrong, Liz, but I do think that the anti vaccine cause does seem to be like the first, second and third thing that he cares about. It's like his primary motivation.
- [18:58]
Liz Smith
Yeah. And you know, that's why it's. It was really, really, really frustrating to me in the last week when I saw Governor Jared Polis, Democratic governor from Colorado, saw Cory Booker, Democratic senator from New Jersey, coming out and praising the pick and largely focusing on how RFK Jr wants to take on chemicals in the food and agribusiness. And it's like, you are so freaking naive if you think that RFK Jr is being picked to take on agribusiness. And you are more than naive, you're frankly an idiot if you think that Donald Trump is gonna allow anyone in his administration to take on big business, to take on agribusiness. This is sort of a smokescreen that he uses, right? He goes out and he talks about Make America healthy again, let's reduce childhood obesity, all of that, but that's not what he's about. He's not about raw milk. The thing that animates him, the thing that has enriched him, the thing that he has made has biggest mark on is on being an anti vaxxer and it's extremely dangerous. And so like, I'm begging Democrats, get their stuff together. Don't go out there and fall for his Make America healthy again shtick. Children will get sick, children will die if this guy brings his anti vax mentality to Washington D.C. and that should be the focus.
- [20:24]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, I think Robert F. Kennedy has just been like a spokesperson who does a lot of podcasts for many years and now he's in charge of something. And so we got to watch what he does, not what he says. And I think you're right. I mean, all of these, there were all these articles in the campaign about Trump going to massive corporate interests and saying, cut me a huge check and I'll advance your agenda. Whether it was, you know, the people who wanted to undo the work Biden was doing to go after monopolies, all the crypto people were thrilled to get rid of Gary Gensler and have no rules. Never mind that, you know, some crypto companies collapsed and a bunch of people got hurt. I think this is going to be replicated in every single industry and agency. Agriculture, GMOs, oil and gas. I mean, the incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles is a lobbyist. Seems to tell you a lot.
- [21:09]
Liz Smith
Yeah. And just generally going back to how Democrats should handle this, you had Cory Booker, Jared Polis on one side. Then I saw Jake Auchinclass, he's the congressman from Massachusetts, his parents are scientists. He went on, he's been going on tv, going on Twitter, thread storms, all of that, just really hammering all of RFK Jr's most anti science views and dangerous views. And I would love to see that sort of discipline from Democrats on this. And I'm a broken record about this, but like, Democrats have a great bench, we never use them we always talk about our bench, but we never use them. And like, we know that with these picks, it's gonna be an opportunity for Democrats to come out of the woodwork and speak out against them. So, like, when it's a pick like RFK Jr. Have Jake Auchincloss, have Lauren Underwood, who is a nurse, talk about this, why did someone like Pete Hegseth, have Pat Ryan, who's already been out there on this, and have Mikey Sherrill go out and speak out about it. But I really, really would love to see a coordinated strategic communications plan around this that is not just treating everyone, every candidate, like it's a five alarm fire and where we're putting out some voices who I think would be really respected.
- [22:20]
Tommy Vitor
I think that's really smart. I think we ought to be very focused on the messengers and their credibility and, you know, have the impact of their words on the voters. But also, to your point, be strategic about the fights we pick because, like, the end goal, the real goal is to get four Republican senators to vote against a pick or to privately tell Trump to pull the nami. I'm pretty skeptical that will happen. So the secondary goal is create a process and a narrative and a bunch of stories that create some political damage for Trump. And like you said, I think it's a trap to just go nuts on every nominee because we sound hyperbolic and like, I think we also can't frame our arguments as we're the defenders of the status quo and he's a disruptor because a lot of people want that. And we also have to focus on things that people care about. I mean, you mentioned the tattoo thing with Pete Hegseth. My other hobby horse on this is Tulsi Gabbard, who should not be the next Director of National Intelligence. But everyone's calling her like Putin's puppet and astute and this and that. And it's like, I don't know, that sounds very like 2017 Mueller. It's Mueller time.
- [23:24]
Dan
Shit.
- [23:24]
Tommy Vitor
Like, let's talk about how she has no qualifications, she's never managed a big organization, she's never worked in the intelligence community. I think, like, we gotta be a little more substantive here.
- [23:33]
Liz Smith
Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I mean, look, she's done stuff like met with Bashir Al Assad and has said things that do mirror some of Kremlin talking points, but there's no evidence that she's a Kremlin asset or anything like that. And I think the second we start saying things like that, we lose Credibility. And what we saw during the first Trump term is if everything is a viable alarm, fire. If everything is World War 3, then like nothing ends up mattering. And like when World War three actually comes along, people will just be like, yeah, sure, sure, you're the boy who cried wolf. And so I really, really, really would like to see a much more disciplined approach this time around and not just throwing out, you know, the worst accusations against people, the most incendiary language just because it will get you on cable. Right. Let's be strategic about how we handle these things.
- [24:27]
Tommy Vitor
Exactly. We don't want to go into just full time MSNBC voice. I mean, I think it's enough to say, like Tulsi Gabbard flew to Syria to meet with Assad in 2017. That was six years into him massacring his people. She doesn't have to be a Putin stooge. I mean, like, it's okay to meet with people you disagree with. But then she defended him and claimed that Assad didn't.
- [24:46]
Liz Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That in itself enough, right?
- [24:49]
Tommy Vitor
It should be disqualifying. You know, the Russians invade Ukraine. She blames the Ukrainians for NATO expansion. We can debate whether NATO expansion was a good idea, but like, certainly this was just an act of naked aggression by the Russians. Tired of scrolling through a newsfeed and still feeling overwhelmed and uninformed? Sounds like you need a single source for all the news that's fit to pod. Check out Crooked's new social destination at Real Crooked News. It'll help you stay in the know, but not so in the know that you have all of RFK Jr. S animal corpse stories memorized. Leave that to the terminally online folks here at Crooked. Put Real News back in your newsfeed. Follow Real Crooked News eal crookednews on Instagram threads and Twitter. X Pod Save America is brought to you by Bilt Rewards. Listen up, renters. Ever feel like you're stuck in this loop of rent payments just watching your money vanish into thin air? It's time to turn that rent game around and start earning some serious rewards. That's where the Bilt Rewards comes in. Bilt is Breaking Ground is a neighborhood rewards program that hooks you up with points on your rent every month. Pay your rent and watch the Bilt points roll in. Put your points towards a flight or a hotel. Stay with 500 plus airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties. You can also use your points to book fitness studio classes, redeem them towards a future rent payment. They're designed to meet your lifestyle, pay rent hassle free through the Bilt Rewards app. Your rent game just got a major upgrade. Bilt points have been consistently ranked the highest value point currency by the points guy and bankrate earn points by paying rent. Right now when you go to joinbuilt.com crooked, that's J O I N B I L T.com crooked make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you joinbilt.com crooked to start earning points with your rent payments today. Let's turn to the Democrats because you had a ringside seat to this whole cycle through Biden, through Harris. I wanted to talk to you about your diagnosis of where things went wrong broadly, but also there's been this kind of media debate. There's this dumb thing about Democrats need their own Joe Rogan that's a little silly, but clearly we need a new strategy. What in broad strokes do you think that strategy entails?
- [27:03]
Liz Smith
First and foremost, meeting voters where they are and means meeting them where they are on issues and meeting them where they are in terms of where they're getting their news. On the matter of issues, I worked on Tom Suozzi's special election in February of last year and I thought it was going to be like sort of a good harbinger of like where things would go. And he was able to win a tough race that national Republicans poured millions and millions of dollars in and that Democrats probably should have lost because the number one issue was immigration. Rather than just changing the subject and saying, no, let's only talk about abortion, let's only talk about democracy, Tom leaned into immigration and he went on the offensive on it and flipped the script and said, you know what? I want a bipartisan border bill. I'll give you some stuff, I'll give you a little bit of a wall if you want, and then I don't need everything in return. But then the Republicans went along with Trump, said, no border deal, no border bill. And we just hammered her every single day and said that Tom wants a secure border. His opponent wants chaos because she, Donald Trump, think will help them at the border. And he ended up winning by eight points. Crazy blowout. And at the time people were saying, okay, this is going to be a model for what Democrats should do. It was disappointing to see that people didn't take that, A lot of people didn't take that. And what we saw in the exit polls are top issues for voters writ large were inflation, costs and the border and national Democrats who didn't talk about the border Paid a price. National Democrats who were going around talking about bidenomics like it was a good thing and everything is great. What are you talking about? Gdp, stock market, everyone's employed, the economy is great. Like couldn't have sounded more out of touch. And what I would do and what I would encourage people to do, I did work with a lot of these candidates is to look to the people who won. You know, Tom did the great stuff on immigration and the special in general. But then look at Pat Ryan, look at Marie Glusenkamperez, look at Angie Craig in Minnesota, look at Jared Golden. These were all of the top over performers of the cycle. What are the things that they all did? One, they all ran ads saying we need to secure the border. They all ran ads on costs and how they want to lower them. They all made sure to try to localize the race versus getting trapped up in national stuff. And some of them did a really, really good job. And it's a fraught debate of really blunting Republicans attacks on trans issues. And that's something I think that we need to figure out going forward is how we do not let the Republicans use that as a cudgel against Democrats, but more so than just like criticizing Democrats. I want us to look at these candidates who overperformed in these Trump districts. And let's also look at Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, let's look at Ruben Gallego in Arizona. How are they able? Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan. And a lot of the things I mentioned with the candidates that I did some work with apply to them as well.
- [30:08]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean Alyssa Slotkin is one I was thinking about as you were talking because she was repeatedly attacked as Kamala Harris was over the policy of the electric vehicle mandates. So basically phasing out gas powered cars and going to EVs. Slotkin put up this ad in October at some point who was like, look, I don't support an EV mandate. I want to build EVs here in Michigan, but I'm not going to force you to drive one. And she, I think pretty successfully blunted those attacks. But at the presidential level I'm not sure that they ever responded directly on that issue. Similarly, anyone who watched football or sports generally saw millions of dollars worth these disgusting anti trans ad. There was no response from the Harris campaign in terms of paid media and there's a lot of reporting about why apparently they cut some ads that didn't test well. But also she never took the issue on directly or made the affirmative case for what she believes and why she's fighting for trans rights. And I think when you leave a vacuum like that, you get hurt. Similarly, like, Ruben Gallego did some really smart things to over perform the Harris campaign with Latino voters. And you're right. I mean, I do think you have to look to these successful races to learn something.
- [31:19]
Liz Smith
And you know, part of the issue I think with the trans debate is a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about it. They're uncomfortable that they're gonna say something wrong and like get canceled or it's just something that they don't feel comfortable talking about. And I really do think that there is a playbook for Democrats here that doesn't involve throwing trans kids under the bus. I saw it in 2022 when I worked with Mallory McMorrow in Michigan, and she became sort of an overnight star on this issue. There the Republicans really, really overreach on trans issues. You had the Republican candidate for governor running like 100% ads on this. Then when reporters went to her and said, okay, can you identify any trans girls playing in girls sports in the state? She couldn't find a single one. So what Democrats were able to do there was to say, one, it's super weird that this is what you're focused on. And two, you're only doing this because you don't have any solutions you want to talk about on lowering healthcare costs, on inflation, on any of those things. And then this cycle, I saw Marie Gluzen Camp Perez handle this very well. Her opponent, Joe Kentucky tried to attack her for not supporting a federal ban on this. And she was like, joe, you know what? I'm not the weirdo. You're the weirdo. You're the one who supports a bill that would require genital checks on girls as young as five years old. And let's leave this to local governments, let's leave this to local school districts, to parents, to communities to figure out, like, let's not have this big government overreach that is going to end up with genital checks for young girls. And I feel like the more we can make it like they're the weirdos, they're rationally obsessed with it, the better when they make it that we're for they them and not for you. That's where I think we lose.
- [33:10]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think that's right. There's a libertarian argument that's like, the government should stay out of my kids locker room. There's also just a cruelty argument, like, why do you spend all of your time, tens of millions of dollars, focused on attacking kids what's the upside in that? And you're right, though. I just do think we have to join the fight, be a part of that conversation, make an affirmative case, point out how craven and politicized what they're doing is, and make that part of the argument. But I also want to talk to you about this media piece of it because I know you obsess about it. I was reading this Wall Street Journal, Pete. I obsess about it too. I was reading the Wall Street Journal the other day. They reported that Trump's interview with Joe Rogan had 25 million listens on Spotify, in 45 million views on YouTube. So while we Democrats were debating whether or not it was okay to go on his show, Trump was there putting up like super bowl numbers for his interview. And so it just, it speaks to the fact that, like, we don't need a new Joe Rogan, but we need to rethink our media strategy and go on Joe Rogan and debate him and push back on him when he advances, you know, anti trans views. Right. You fight him, you argue and you win, you win the debate. And I also think, like, we need to shift away from cable news a bit, or at least not. I feel like a lot of politicians don't feel like they actually achieve something unless they have a cable news hit about their topic. And the reality is the viewership is going way down. People are spending more time on TikTok and social platforms and yes, podcasts. Our friend Peter Hamby wrote up some interesting polling for Puck news that said 14% of voters said they learned information about Kamala Harris from a podcast. 23% said they heard about news about Trump from a podcast. And those who heard about Trump on a podcast, 55% said it influenced their vote. So again, like, clearly this is a podcast we're talking on right now. I'm a self interested person at Crooked Media. But like, we have to think of these alternatives and build out these ecosystems because we're losing cable. Social media is tilting towards the right. Right. Like Elon's fully magafied Twitter, Facebook, Instagram threads, they all deemphasize political content. God knows how the TikTok algorithm works. So like, we have to find people probably on YouTube going forward.
- [35:26]
Liz Smith
Yeah. So we can build our own ecosystem. I think that's part of it. But when I hear people say we need to our own Joe Rogan, I want to be like, have you? Like, what the hell, man? It's so clear you have never listened to Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan it's not a political show. You know, before I had a kid, I used to listen to Joe Rogan a lot. Like, his interviews got me through the pandemic. Like, if you've never listened to his interview with Mike Tyson, like, you really haven't lived. It is gold. But I listened to it because I wanted to, like, listen to stuff that wasn't political. And so I could hear him chopping it up with, like, Mike Tyson or with, like, I don't know, Miley Cyrus. I'm Andrew Schultz.
- [36:07]
Tommy Vitor
I heard the Miley Cyrus one, actually. That was pretty good.
- [36:09]
Liz Smith
Yeah, right. And so, like, I would be in the pandemic, I'd be going for walks in the woods, and that's what I would listen to. And. But like, the SO one, I think it's a problem that people on our side don't listen to Joe Rogan. Don't understand that sort of. That sort of, you know, that sort of sphere. Right. And they think that, okay, we need someone on the left. It's not a political show. What I think we need is people who can go on shows like Joe Rogan. What does that mean? That means people can have actual conversation. And sometimes I think this is a challenge, especially for older politicians. Donald Trump is a little bit of an anomaly, but they're so used to talking in, like, talking points and policies that it's hard for them just to go on and, like, chop it up and have a normal conversation. And I thought that was a little bit of a missed opportunity with Kamala Harris when she went on Call Her Daddy is that it was like, so policy focused. And it's like, it should have been more what the usual programming of Call Her Daddy is. And obviously you're going to tame it down a little bit. You're not going to be asking her a lot of the questions that Alex Cooper asks, asks her guests. But I do think we need to people who can go in there and not to, like, play purity politics with the podcast. Right. Like, just because you go on Joe Rogan, it doesn't mean you endorse his positions on, you know, trans girls in girls sports. You know, just because you go on barstool, it doesn't mean that you endorse everything that like Dave Portnoy or whoever has said. When you try to purify yourself like this, you just end up cutting yourself off from a huge audience that you would never otherwise reach. And if you look at the demographics of who listens to Rogan, Right. It is very diverse, very diverse ideologically. It's about a third, a third, a third Republican, Democrat, independent, very racially diverse. And it's a lot of young men. And these are people who will basically do everything in their power not to have to listen to msnbc, consume political news. And so, like, this is the only way you're gonna reach them. And why on earth are we not trying to reach them there? But to do it and do it effectively, we need candidates who can go on, have those conversations. And to me, it speaks to the need for like, younger, fresher, more normal voices. I always say. More normal Democrats. You know, people who can go beyond just like policy talking points.
- [38:34]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah. The diversity of experience, race, gender. But also, like, you know, some people that didn't go to college. Right. Like people like Dan Osborne. Right. Talking from a different perspective. I mean. Yeah, you're right. Trump is an anomaly. His superpower is that he can talk about himself nonstop, all day, every day. I heard Rogan joking that Trump walked in, didn't use the bathroom, talked for three hours, left without using the bathroom, and that was the most shocking thing he'd ever seen. But like, like, broader, more, more broadly, there is this big kind of rolling fight about why Kamala Harris lost. And people are pointing to their different things. And I think ultimately, like, everything points to anger about the economy and inflation and Joe Biden being very unpopular, being like the main cause. But that doesn't mean that Harris couldn't have done things differently. And I do think it's probably a mistake to wait so long to do long form interviews. That also seems to have kept Tim Walls from doing things early on. And you're right, it means going on shows where people disagree with us. It also means, like, we can't spend another cycle spending half a billion dollars on TV ads that don't work.
- [39:35]
Liz Smith
Oh, my God. Yeah. And one other thing I would say. I mean, I could go on about this for hours. It's like my passion. I wrote a book that any given Tuesday that went through a lot of this. But this was how we got people to judge, to go from obscurity to a top tier candidate. Like, we. But like, what it was was like, people sometimes focus on the go everywhere aspect, like sort of the non traditional stuff that we did, like Desus and Marrow, the Breakfast Club bar stool, all of that. But what we really actually did was an all of the above strategy. And I do think that that's something that I saw a little bit left behind with both Biden and Harris is that by the end they were complaining. So Much about the refs, like the New York Times, Washington Post, all that. You've got to work the refs as well, you know, throw some stuff their way. Like what's the harm in giving New York Times a five minute pull aside or Washington Post a five minute minute pull aside, Give them that, do a little cable, do a little network news, hit all the local stuff that you can, hit the non traditional stuff. And like, if you do all of those things together, that is how you're most likely to reach people. People who are regular voters, people who are not regular voters. People have different political persuasions and it's also how you're more likely to get the press off your ass. And I really think it's important, as much as we roll our eyes at the declining influence of the mainstream media, it's really important that, to understand, yeah, you still gotta work those refs a little bit.
- [41:03]
Tommy Vitor
You gotta work those refs. And boy, you and I have been on the campaign plane where you have a press office or a press plane full of really pissed off reporters. And it does not help you win. Last thing I wanna talk about was the race to succeed Jamie Harrison as DNC chairman. The former governor Martin O'Malley, who currently runs the Social Security Administration, who you worked for forever ago, has declared as a candidate. So has Ken Martin, who's the head of the Democrat Farm Labor Party in Minnesota, state party chair there. Other potential candidates include Ben Wickler, the head of Wisconsin Democrats, who we've talked to a million times on the show and is great. Earlier you mentioned Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, who is a rising star in the party and someone you've worked for. And then former New York Congressman Max Rose. So, you know, you just mentioned that you worked with Pete, including when he was running for DNC chair. Question is like, how important do you think this job is and how important do you think, you know, the position will be going forward?
- [42:01]
Liz Smith
You know, every four years or every eight years we spend a ton of time on this and there's so much attention. This is about the future of the party and then the DNC chair sort of fades away. But I think it's a healthy debate for us to have. But I do think a lot of people, like people who don't live in breathe politics, don't actually know how the process works, which is like, this is not like the bigger, broader Democratic Party. This is not voters who get to vote on it. I think of this as sort of like the most consequential student body election that you could have. It's 440 insiders. And when you're running for chair, you're mostly making calls to a lot of these people, state party chairs, DNC members. And the conversations you have with them aren't necessarily about the future of the party and strategy. It's like, okay, are you going to get this funding from my state party? Are you going to get this staff? And all of that? And that stuff is very, very important. But I, with this chairman election or chair woman election, I should say I was enthused to see Mallory in the conversation. I don't know if she'll actually run or anything like that, but I think it gets to, you know, what kind of face we want to put forward for the party, what's the kind of vibe we want to put forward for the party. And like, again, I'm broken record. We need more next generation leaders, younger people for sure. Like Gerontocracy has not been kind to the Democratic Party. We need people who are badass communicators. She is so good at this stuff. Like, we need someone like her who I don't know if you guys have seen this, but and I would encourage listeners to check this out, is she's been doing this series of Q and A on Instagram where she just takes whatever question and then answers it. And it's direct to camera, no bells and whistles. And it's not a lot of spin, it's not a lot of talking points. It's just like talking about why, yes, you should have Thanksgiving dinner with your family members who voted for Trump. Why yes, Democrats do need to go on Rogan and I think it is sort of a breath of fresh air and like having someone again who is like more of a normal person, can talk like a normal person who's younger, who has been in the trenches and I think could lead the party in a different direction would be good. I also think, yes, there's the media money piece, but we do need someone as well who can sort of manage the guts of the dnc, the staff, all the meetings, the state parties. And it could be interesting to have more of like a dual chair system like we've had in the past versus just putting it all on one person.
- [44:38]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, like an executive director and then a chair. I mean, yeah, I totally agree with you. I want someone young. I want someone who doesn't look like they're learning about TikTok for the first time as they record one. We will probably figure out this race in late February. So you're right. It'll be a contest until then. And then I agree that it will just sort of be someone who operates in the background and does media. I mean, the DNC race, similar to what you been described to me as like a tiny city council race where the voters are all Democratic Party institutionalists. Your win number is like 225 people say.
- [45:09]
Dan
Right.
- [45:10]
Tommy Vitor
It's very small. The thing I think everyone just needs to remember is the DNC is not a policymaking organization. They're the organization that keeps the voter file up to date.
- [45:22]
Liz Smith
Yeah.
- [45:22]
Tommy Vitor
And they acquire technology that lets us model voters and reach them in better ways. They raise a ton of money for that infrastructure, but then they also make sure that money gets to state parties. I also think, you know, there will be this big communications push to deal with Trump, and I want the next chair to be someone who's thinking about communications in a different way and not thinking that going on Meet the Press once a month is how you combat Trump. It has to be this, like, digital first focus. But yeah, I mean, it'll. I'm glad there's a bunch of people jumping in the race. I'm glad there's some outsiders. But this person's going to have to be respected. They all have to be able to bring everyone together, convene everyone, make real decisions, be creative, and then just raise a shitload of money.
- [46:07]
Liz Smith
Right. And be strategic. And I do want someone who's thinking about the longer term Democratic brand, how we, and specifically how we respond to Trump. We voters send a message. We cannot just be an anti Trump party. So I don't know, let's see how the field shakes out.
- [46:24]
Tommy Vitor
Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you're going to hear Dan's conversation with Senator Jon Tester about his race in Montana that unfortunately went the wrong way, but also about where the party is headed and how we can win states like Montana going forward. One quick thing before we do that. Listen, if you're new around here, I also do a show with Ben Rhodes called Pod Save the World where we focus on foreign policy. We've been doing the last couple weeks on Trump's national security picks, what they say about the direction his administration is going on national security, what's happening in Russia and Ukraine, the stakes for Gaza. And just this week, we interviewed Bernie Sanders about his effort in Congress to ban some offensive weapons sales to Israel. So check it out. Pod Save the World drops every Wednesday. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Or on YouTube. When we come back, Jon Tester. Tired of scrolling through a newsfeed and still feeling overwhelmed and uninformed? Sounds like you need a single source for all the news that's fit to pod. Check out Crooked's new social destination at Real Crooked News. It'll help you stay in the know, but not so in the know that you have all of RFK Juniors animal corpse stories memorized. Leave that to the terminally online folks here at Crooked. Put Real News back in your newsfeed. Follow Real Crooked news at Real CrookedNews on Instagram threads and Twitter X.
- [47:57]
Jon Tester
Joining us now is Montana Senator Jon Tesar. Senator, welcome back to Pod Save America.
- [48:01]
Dan
It's great to be with you, Dan. Thanks for having me on.
- [48:03]
Jon Tester
Senator, I've been a longtime fan of yours. Many of us here at Crooked are. We were heartbroken by your loss. How are you processing this election?
- [48:11]
Dan
Well, look, you know, it's part of the democracy. If you're on the ticket, you can win, you can lose. I mean, it's just a fact of life. Every one of my races have been very, very close, and I anticipated this one would be close. But I did anticipate I was going to win this, but it didn't turn out to be. Look, and it's for a lot of reasons, and we may get into those reasons as we have our conversation here. But in the end, I can tell you that things in government don't happen without good people in government. And this is the greatest country in the world, not because of the work that I've done, but because of the work that previous generations have done to give me opportunity to be successful. And that's the same perspective that I gave to this job, was to make this country remain the greatest country in the world, which it is the greatest country that's ever existed, and make it so our kids and our grandkids could have the same opportunity that my grandparents and parents gave me and my generation. And I think that that's it. Now I was finally to a position where I had enough experience, where I was chairing key committees and making really important decisions for how the country was going to proceed forward. But the voter spoke, and that's the way it is. And I had a very, very good run. The United states Senate, spent 18 years here, met some great people, both inside government and outside government, people that I wouldn't normally meet if I had not had this job, had an opportunity to do some great things for our veterans, for infrastructure, for conservation, for our public lands, for our financial system that I think is important, that will stand the test of time. But in the end, and I think I may have told you this or you may have read this, the best job I ever had is being a farmer. And that's the job I'm going back to. And so don't feel bad for me, I get to go back to something that I really love. And we're going to continue to do moving forward, and hopefully, God willing, we'll be able to do it for a number of years, if not decades, moving forward. And then we'll monitor government and try to hold people accountable the best we can. From my ability being a farmer west of Big Sandy Montana, going from the.
- [50:24]
Jon Tester
Senate to farming is probably the only transition too far being where you're going to have less shit in your life.
- [50:29]
Dan
Than, well, not unless we get. Get some more livestock. And then.
- [50:33]
Jon Tester
That's right. Fair enough.
- [50:34]
Liz Smith
Fair enough.
- [50:35]
Dan
Shit will go up.
- [50:36]
Jon Tester
That's right. Let's talk a little bit about your race. This was always going to be a tough race. Montana is an incredibly Republican state. Trump ended up winning by about 20 points. You did very, you know, you won a big chunk of Trump's voters. What were sort of the big issues in the race and what were sort of the headwinds you were facing?
- [50:55]
Dan
Well, I think the first one, well, the issues people were talking about were inflation, cost of living. They were talking about cost of housing, they were talking about the border and the fact that it should be secure. I think those were the big issues that I heard as I went around the state of Montana for the last. For the last two, three years, actually. It didn't just happen in the last year. It's been that way for a bit. And I think that those are issues that we could have done a better job addressing at the national level. We tried to talk about the things that I was doing specifically in housing and in food, whether that message got through. Obviously, it didn't get through as much as I wanted it to because we lost. But we talked about that and we talked about my positions on the southern border, which was different than the administrations for, you know, for the first two, three, four years of the administration. So. But the bottom line is that's. That's what people were concerned about. They were concerned about the cost of living and the border, I would say more specifically.
- [52:06]
Jon Tester
Now, you obviously were a very influential senator. You delivered a lot for your state.
- [52:11]
Dan
Yeah, it's.
- [52:11]
Jon Tester
Particularly in the first two years of the Biden administration, the president and Congress did a lot to help the economy and Montana, you know, was it hard to break through sort of the national issues to be able to talk about the stuff that mattered to Montanans 100%?
- [52:28]
Dan
It was, it was very hard to break through the national brand. And, you know, I was. I was asked, you know, you know, you ran 13 points. How did the president, how did you do that? And we did that by talking about who I am as an individual, not who I am as a national Democrat. And in fact, you know this, Dan. We did not bring anybody to the state of Montana. Now I haven't. That's the way it was in virtually every election with the exception of Jim Webb and my first reelect in 12. But we didn't bring national Democrats to Montana. Why? Because we didn't want this to be about the national party. We wanted this to be about John Tester and Montana and how we keep Montana the greatest state and the greatest country in the world. And that's why we focused. I think if we'd have focused on bringing in national Democrats, I don't think our margin would have been where it is now. If you lose by one, you still lost. But the truth is that we knew that the national brand of Democrats right now was not something that was going to work for me in Montana. And we knew we had to make sure that folks saw me as John Tester, the. The third generation dirt farmer from Big Sandy Montana. And by the way, you know how much money was spent in this election? Probably, I mean, it was gobs. It was over a quarter of a billion dollars. And I think they were able to make me into something I wasn't. And I've told people from the beginning they can't beat John Tester, the farmer from Big Sandy, the guy that believes on our liberties and, and our privacies. But they can beat the guy that they talk about. Well, that guy's for an open border, which I wasn't. Or that guy's for illegal immigrants from wanting them to vote, which I wasn't. And these guys are for making sure that white farmers don't get benefits. These were all ads that were run, by the way, and ad nauseum, which I wasn't. But they were able to pound that message through. And it's one of the reasons I believe strongly, and I think this is a bipartisan issue that we need to do something with the amount of money that's in these damn campaigns because it allows candidates to go into bunkers for months before an election and not even go out and see people. Allows them so they don't have to do town hall meetings. And quite frankly, it allows a message, by the way, which TV stations used to take down if ads were found patently false. Now they don't. If you give them the money, they'll put anything up virtually. And quite frankly, it allows them to make the candidate into something that they're not. And I think we suffered from all those things. The national brown stuff, the amount of money coming out. Look, we had a ton of money on our side, too, so I'm not complaining about that. But the truth is, it would have been much better to have many, many more debates. It would have been much better to have more town hall meetings that weren't by invitation only, but allow people to come out and ask questions. And so you can justify positions and justify where you stand. None of that was done. But TV stations made a ton of money.
- [55:31]
Jon Tester
I mean, the fact that a quarter billion dollars was spent in Montana is wild, since that's like a little less than a third of what was spent in all of Barack Obama's 2008 national campaign, which had all the money in the world. We are in a different. I mean, I couldn't even imagine how you would spend that much money in Montana, given the cost of TV there. It's truly wild.
- [55:49]
Dan
Well, we did a tv, we did it on digital, we did billboards, we did direct mail. We had people knocking on doors. I mean, we had everything. And so did they, by the way. They had all that and more, and that's what happened. But in the end, I think, Dan, where the problem really is is that the old system forced candidates out into the people so the people could ask questions. So you had to meet people eyeball to eyeball. Now you're meeting people online or meeting them with commercials. And by the way, the number of commercials that were on TV was almost voter abuse. So it'd be great. It would be really good. And I know it's going to be very difficult to change, but the Citizens United decision, the McCutcheon decision, all those decisions just allow for a lot of money to come in. And it really does not only affect elections, but it also helps paralyze government, which is also very, very negative. Probably, probably more important than anything else is the paralysis that's gone on here in Washington, D.C. because of these Supreme Court decisions.
- [56:47]
Jon Tester
You brought up the national Democratic Party branch. Since you first started running, you've obviously been running in a traditionally Republican state. You've always been an independent voice. You haven't spend a lot of time Campaigning with national Democrats, you've carved out your own very unique place in our party. How has the party brand changed or become maybe more burdensome to you over the time you've been in the Senate?
- [57:08]
Dan
So it's, you know, I've been at this since 2006, and I can tell you it's never been. It's never been that great, actually, for the last 18 years. I do think that, you know, the party needs to focus on some things that they used to really focus on. I'll just give you one.
- [57:33]
Jon Tester
Please do. Please do.
- [57:34]
Dan
Yep. You know, Democrats always pride themselves in being the party of the working man and woman. We might be trying to sell that, but they ain't buying it. And so I think that, that things like giving away money to people who really didn't do anything to earn it is not something that people buy, and it's not something that I personally buy either. By the way. I think you appreciate the money you've earned. You don't appreciate money that's given to you. And I think that hurts the party. I do think that the issue on the border was a killer. And, you know, I tried to make the point that Congress has to do their job. And we had an opportunity to pass a bill, but the damage had already been done with the previous three and a half years. And so, and I'm going to tell you that I'm not telling. I'm not saying Republicans walked up to me and said, you know, do you believe in a secure border? Rock rib Democrats, generational FDR Democrats were coming up to me going, where are you out on the border? I'm seeing all these ads. Do you want an open border? I said, no, I believe in an absolute secure border. We need to know who's coming across there. There's bad people want to do bad things in this country. We need to know who's coming across this border. They need to follow the law. They need to get in line. They need to learn language just like my ancestors did. And they would go, well, that's good to hear. And these aren't Republicans that are asking this. These are Democrats. Okay. And so the border was certainly a big issue. And then I don't know that we did enough to really. And I'm talking we the Democratic Party as a party to lower costs. And look, I don't want to get back into campaign mode here, but I will for a second. I mean, look, there are four companies that control 80% of the meat in this country. That is not competition. That is collusion we need to figure out ways to enforce the packers and Stockyards Act. I've been saying that since I was a farmer only wasn't even involved in state or federal politics. But the truth is that message didn't get through. And I think that would help both people in production, agriculture and the consumer. But the message didn't get through. We've done some things on housing and housing and Montana. It will ebb and flow. But the truth is that if wheat can do some things, particularly for first time homebuyers, I hope this happens after I'm gone. By the way, do some things for first time homebuyers. It's a positive thing for all of us. And by the way, instead of giving loan forgiveness for college education, let's figure out how to reduce costs for college education for everybody. You know, lower the rates so you get the bank rate on all our, all our college loans and make it retroactive for everybody that's got a college loan. So you're not just picking out a select few at this moment in time and saying, you know what, you guys are going to get your loans forgiven and everybody else that pay for their loans or people who are going to come up later and have loans aren't going to get advantage of that. I think people see that as patently unfair and I think it hurts Democrats.
- [60:37]
Jon Tester
There's been this debate in the party because it's everywhere, right? Ohio, across the nation. One of the reasons Kamala Harris lost is Donald Trump made huge gains with what had been the core of the Democratic base, as you point out, working class voters. Right. Of all races, all backgrounds, everything. But there's this debate in the party about do we have a policy problem or a message problem. It sounds like you're saying we might. We have both, perhaps.
- [61:00]
Dan
That's exactly what I would say. We have both. We, we don't message what we are doing very, very well. And I can give you some concrete examples.
- [61:07]
Jon Tester
Please do, please do.
- [61:08]
Dan
And, and, and we need, we need to modify what we're doing. Okay, I can give you several. So we passed the largest infrastructure bill since the year I was born. I'm 68 years old. 1956 is the last time we had an infrastructure bill this, this big, this generational. And the minute we passed that bill, which was classified as some, as a small infrastructure bill by people. Democrats are saying this is just a small infrastructure bill. There's a bigger one coming later. Well, that's kind of shooting yourself in the foot right off the bat. And then we didn't spend any time telling people what it did. And then by the time it started going, it's too late. I mean, you know this.
- [61:49]
Liz Smith
You.
- [61:50]
Dan
You're a guy that understands communication. You have a moment in time to get that information out, and if you don't utilize that moment of time, you lose it. And that's just one example of many things that came down the pipe. Every bill, every you want to talk about working people, every bill that this administration and Congress did had a component in it for union members, every one of them. And I thought at the time, I thought, wow, this is pretty amazing. I believe if you want the job done right, best way to do is go get a union member to do it. I believe that in my heart. I think if you want to expand the middle class, the best way to do that is span the union movement in this country. But the truth is, the union members didn't know that happened. Their leadership did, but the rank and file didn't. And I think we lost a lot of them because of that. They didn't understand who really was fighting for them back in Washington, D.C. so I do think it's both a content issue and a messaging issue.
- [62:48]
Jon Tester
You know, my roots are in South Dakota politics. I work for Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle in their elections.
- [62:53]
Dan
Personal heroes of mine, by the way.
- [62:55]
Jon Tester
Tim Johnson, rest in peace. Great, great American senator. One of the ways in which those Democrats and Democrats like yourself were able to win in these Republican states was there was a very vibrant, in these states, local media. So your constituents could actually get to know you. They would get to know the things you did. That's obviously changed dramatically, particularly over the last four years. I imagine that was probably a real challenge for you in the selection.
- [63:15]
Dan
Yeah, I think if you want to talk about one thing that's changed dramatically in the last 18 years is local press has gone away. I mean, it really has. We've got a few TV stations, but in Montana, most, they're young reporters. They're still learning the ropes. They're looking to move up the old days of the newspapers that had the reporters that asked you tough questions and held you accountable. Those days are all but gone. There's still a few of those folks around, but they're all but gone. And I think that that has been a huge, huge. Had a huge, huge impact on who people are voting for, because they really don't. Their candidate, the public officials aren't. And I'm talking not only at the US Santa limb, I'm talking county commissioners and city council. None of those folks are being held accountable to the level they once were. They don't think everybody's watching them. And if people think they can do stuff and get away with it, I don't think it adds to a better government. It adds to a much worse one. It's a huge problem. And I don't know how to solve this one, Dan. I really don't. Because the Internet has kind of taken those birds over, and there just isn't any money in papers anymore. And I get it, and it shows. I mean, we just got a few papers in the state that are just a shadow of what they once were. And it's unfortunate, but that's probably the biggest change in the last 18 years, quite frankly.
- [64:39]
Liz Smith
Yeah.
- [64:39]
Jon Tester
It just makes it so hard for constituents to actually get to know their election officials as people. As opposed to the caricature, right?
- [64:46]
Dan
Absolutely. I've got to tell you the first. I remember when I got in the state legislature, I did an interview with a guy by the name of Mike Denison, and Mike denison was a good guy, and I read his papers for years and years sitting on the farm, and I thought his articles were great. I'm going to tell you what, he ripped me one end to the other because I wasn't prepared when I went into the interview. And it taught me a really important lesson. You know, I don't care how well you like that reporter. If you're not prepared when you go in for that interview, they're going to. They're going to take you apart. And so consequently, folks don't have to prepare anymore. They don't have to justify their position. Why did you vote this way or why did you vote that way? Because there's nobody there asking the tough questions anymore.
- [65:25]
Jon Tester
As you mentioned, you're. You're a farmer. The farmers were. For a very long time, the ag community was a core of the Democratic base. It's one of the reasons why, even though they were Republican states, we had Democratic senators, oftentimes two Democratic senators in places like Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, not too many years ago. How have Democrats lost farmers? And what can we do to get them back?
- [65:49]
Dan
Once again, I don't think it's any different than the working folks. I think Democrats do a lot of things for folks in production ag, and we don't talk about it with folks in production ag. You know, the stuff that's been done in crop insurance, the stuff that's been done in the different farm programs that are out there are pretty Important. I will tell you this, though, too. Farmers have changed. When I was growing up, my folks told me, never depend upon the federal government. You ever depend on the federal government, you're going to lose the farm. Now, I think if you took away the farm bill from these farmers, they'd go broke in wholesale fashion. I think their whole farming plan is based around federal subsidies. I'm going to tell you, and I still believe this, my folks were right. You want to talk about socialism, that's socialism. And we've got to start making it so the farmers and ranchers can get their paycheck from the marketplace. And the only way you do that is to insert more competition into that marketplace so you get a fair price and the taxpayer then doesn't have to subsidize those multinational agribusinesses that are out there putting the boots to farmers and ranchers every single day, because they can. And so farmers have changed. They have. It didn't used to be this way, but now I'm not so sure that there aren't a lot of farmers who say, hell, you know, if Trump puts on a bunch of tariffs and the prices go to hell, who cares? I'm still going to be okay because I'm going to get a subsidy from the federal government. That is absolutely the wrong way to think about it. Same thing on things like climate change. So if the climate gets worse and I don't get as much rain, what the hell, you know, I've got crop insurance to back me up. That's the wrong way to think about it, because those programs could end tomorrow and they might. By the way, the Project 2025 said we're going to do away with the Department of Agriculture. And so folks need to really understand that who they have in public office makes a difference, because things don't. Things aren't on autopilot here, although they might seem like it. They're not.
- [67:56]
Jon Tester
Before I let you go in, I want to get just your reaction as a longtime member of the Senate to Donald Trump's Cabinet nominations that he has made or his purported soon to be nominations and the idea that he might actually recess appoint them. Could you see that possibly happening in the Senate?
- [68:12]
Dan
I don't see how that meets the Constitution of our ability to confirm. I just don't see. I can tell you that there are a lot of really good people out here. Some of them are Democrats, some are Republican, some were independent, some were Libertarian. I think there are a ton of people that he could appoint to these Cabinet positions that are really, really good that hold his values, by the way, and are really, really good. It scares me when you put somebody like Matt Gaetz as a head legal person in the United States. Look at him, look what he's done. I mean, really, is the idea here to build this country and really keep this country the greatest country in the world, or is the idea here to destroy, destroy the institutions? Because I'm telling you, you put somebody that doesn't know what the hell they're doing as Secretary of Defense and China will be running this world. Listen to what I just said. If you don't have people who understand what's going on, Department of Defense, the Attorney General, the intelligence community, and go down the list, by the way, Department of Treasury, all of them, China is sitting there and they're licking their lips. They've been playing this long game. And the long game just got a hell of a lot shorter if you don't have good people in these departments. And so when the President puts forth people, we have an advise, a consent function here in the United States Senate. We damn well better take that seriously, put politics aside and say, is this the right person for the job? Can this person actually run the Department of Defense, which is over half the money that we expend in this country, or is he going to put us at risk? Because there's a lot of bad people and a lot of bad countries out there that want to see the United States go away. And if we don't understand that going into these positions, these are not our friends, they never will be our friends. And we need to have people that understand the threat because the threat is real and it's happening to us every day. And so the people he puts forth, he has every right to put it forth. But there are really, really, really good, well qualified people out there. Those are the folks you need to put forth. Those are the folks that people at Senate needs to confirm. Not somebody who's a serial rapist, for example. Okay.
- [70:42]
Jon Tester
Senator Tester, thank you for joining us and thank you for your service. And I will just say that the Senate is less without John Tester in it. And as a party, we need to be thinking about how we get more John Testers and the people who have supported you over the years in our party. So thank you so much for joining us.
- [70:55]
Dan
It's always a pleasure. Dan, thanks for having me on.
- [71:02]
Tommy Vitor
Well, that's it for us today. Liz, thank you for joining us. And of course, thank you to Senator Tester for stopping by. John and Dan will be back with a new show on Friday, and until then, talk soon. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the pod community@crooked.com friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safaree, Reed Churlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kieffer Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taff is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelaviev and David Toles.