Dan Pfeiffer (3:22)

Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.

Yasmin Raji (3:30)

No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

Jon Favreau (3:34)

Look, I think the music was a little much, but I wouldn't call for them to be hung over it. So that video set off a wave of hysteria among Republican politicians and Fox hosts, which eventually made its way to Trump, who called the Democrats, quote, traitors who should be, quote, arrested, locked up, and tried for, quote, seditious behavior punishable by death. All caps mentioned seditious behavior in three separate posts. Wanted to make sure everyone also knew that it was punishable by death. And then, for good measure, he reposted someone else saying, all caps hang them. George Washington would. George Washington. Catching strays here. It all sounded quite similar to the reaction from Trump's second in command, Stephen Miller, who appeared on Fox a day before and said this.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:27)

It is insurrection. Plainly, directly, without question, it's a general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States by Democrat lawmakers. These lawmakers should honestly resign in disgrace and never return to public office again.

Jon Favreau (4:52)

So when we say that Democrats are communists, we don't.

Dan Pfeiffer (4:54)

We don't just mean that, well, they believe in the state control of property. We mean they've adopted a method of thinking in which any use of force.

Jon Favreau (5:03)

Is justified for their end state of power and control. It's pretty bad when Stephen Miller sounds like the calmer one between him and Donald Trump. Gee, Dan, I wonder why those Democrats thought it was a good idea to remind the military that they aren't obligated to follow unlawful orders from the guy who then called on them to be hanged. Why would they do such a thing?

Dan Pfeiffer (5:28)

You raise an important point, John. You raise an important point. I got a couple of thoughts here. First, this is beyond the point. It's not really what we're here for. But Stephen Miller, obviously a very dangerous human being, but it's impossible to take a word he says seriously in the way he speaks. Yeah, it's just like. It's so. Like he is the Saturday Night Live skit of himself, I guess. But just.

Jon Favreau (5:51)

It's a. It's a very. Yeah, it's like a. Like an angry, like, fascist tone, but.

Dan Pfeiffer (5:58)

It'S like, also with a weird accent and like, with this staccato, like. Yeah, it's just.

Jon Favreau (6:03)

It's from Santa Monica. You're from fucking Santa Monica, dude.

Dan Pfeiffer (6:07)

Yeah, you should say dude is what I think you're supposed to do in that case. Yeah, Very, very strange. But let's be. Let's. There's a lot to unpack here. So, one, there's. Why did these members of Congress do this? And it's because, oh, I don't know, the administration is bombing boats in the ocean without any real explanation of what legal basis by which they are doing it. There is no. There's no authorization for use of military force for it. There is no. It's not clear who the enemy is. It's not clear what the evidence is to support this. When, as Alyssa Slotkin has pointed out in the wake of all of this furor is they've asked repeatedly for what the legal basis is, and they basically get, like, the shrug emoji. It's like, we don't have to really tell you. And third point, these people are all fucking snowflakes. Trump Miller, the rest of the Republicans. These people, all these members did in this video with the dramatic music and vertical videos was to remind members of the military and the intelligence community not to do illegal things. That's all it said. Didn't say, don't follow legal orders. It didn't say, don't listen to the commander in chief. It said, we are reminding you as the co. Equal branch of government who is part of the system of checks and balances put forward in the Constitution, reminding you that if you get an illegal order, you do not have to follow it. And you come to us and we will protect you. Like, that's. That is the point here. And you do protest too much, because if you're not giving illegal orders, why do you care if you are giving legal orders, you care passionately.

Jon Favreau (7:37)

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Venezuela, just as one example, or the, the extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela and in the Caribbean that have so far no legal basis that at least the administration can provide. I don't know if you saw in the news, the Attorney General in the UK has told the government in the UK that maybe they should stop sharing intelligence with us because we as the United States are carrying out illegal killings based on no legal justification. The top lawyer at southcom, which is the part of the military that's overseeing the strikes, has resigned reportedly because this lawyer was telling people, like, there's no legal justification. And like you said, every letter that Democrats in Congress have sent to the administration asking for some evidence that these are combatants, some kind of legal justification, some kind of evidence that they're a threat to us, the people that they're killing in these boats, some kind of evidence of legal justification for this. They won't provide it. And in the New York Times story about this video, both Alyssa Slotkin, Mark Kelly and others tell the Times that the genesis of this was like some folks in the military, in the national security apparatus were coming to them and saying, like, I'm concerned that we are killing civilians and could someday be held legally liable for that. The Uniform Code for Military justice lays out very clearly that you should not obey unlawful orders. Now the standard here is like, if it's clear that it's unlawful to you, like if someone says, go kill that civilian or go take that non combatant prisoner or torture that person. Right? But still, we're in quite a gray area right now. And all they said was a reminder of what the law already states. That's it. They're not trying to say anything else but what the law states. So anyway, that's that because it caused a whole if. If Trump never did any of this today, it would still be a story just because of the fucking hysteria it caused on Fox News yesterday. And you know, Jason Crow, who also served in the military, is Democratic member of Congress. He did an interview with Martha MacCallum of Fox News. Very contentious. He did a really good job. Pushed back so hard that by the end she was on the defensive. But then, you know, we saw Stephen Miller with Will Kane. They were talking about it all day. And Republican, like Lindsey Graham is all upset about. So they're all upset. But again, say you didn't like the video, say you disagree with the video, say you thought the video was inappropriate. All things that you can Just say, if you're a Republican, don't have to necessarily call these people traitors that should be hung. The six Dems released a statement saying that they're not backing down, calling on all Americans to unite and condemn the president's call for their murder. Jeffries and Schumer both asked the Capitol Police for special protection for these members in anticipation of the death threats that are probably already coming or worse, targeted at those members. Caroline Levitt, at the White House briefing, she did say, no, the President does not actually want to execute Democrats.

Dan Pfeiffer (10:53)

Phew.

Jon Favreau (10:54)

Thank you. Thank you for. Yeah. Which led to a Reuters headline, an all caps Reuters headline that's been sort of bouncing around the Internet. White House says President does not want to execute Democrats. Which is a real headline for the ages. And she also said, of course, that Democrats. She also falsely claimed the Democrats in the video urged the military to disobey legal orders. The opposite and the opposite, which, you know, Kaitlan Collins yelled to her as she left the briefing room, like, you misquoted Democrats. Nancy Cordes in the briefing room tried to push back and say, like, well, they were trying to say if they were illegal orders. And Levitt's like, well, all of our orders are legal. Oh, okay. Which actually does fit with their mindset. Right?

Dan Pfeiffer (11:35)

That is the point. If Trump says it, it's legal. This is why they don't have to revise. They don't need a authorization for use of military force from Congress. They don't need a declaration of war. They don't need anything. They don't even need some of the very sketchy legal rationales that administrations of both parties, including ours, use to justify all kinds of things post 9, 11. They don't even need that. If it comes out of Trump's mouth, it is therefore a valid order. And that is the exact point that these members of Congress are making.

Jon Favreau (12:04)

Yes. And I do think it's interesting what gets the administration really angry. And it is when either courts or now Democratic members of Congress are. Or the press push back against grave abuses of power and executive overreach, because they really do believe, particularly around immigration and national security, that literally anything the President does goes. And when you challenge that, when a judge challenges that, when a Democratic member of Congress challenges that, they can't take it and they go berserk because they want to have this power that's core to the rationale for this presidency.

Dan Pfeiffer (12:42)

Do you think that Trump. I believe Stephen Miller is genuinely upset about this because any questioning of Trump's power causes him to do it. And any honestly excuse to threaten Democrats with death is high on his list of things to do. Do you think that this is something they're legitimately worked up about or a fight they're looking for to kind of change the subjects in the midst of this very, very bad week that they're having that we're about to talk about?

Jon Favreau (13:10)

Could be both. I could see, I mean, I could definitely see Stephen. Stephen Miller's obviously worked up about it. I could see Stephen Miller spinning up the President about it because I do think he's a, one of his main primary sources of information, which is partly why we're in such trouble. And then I could imagine if I had to bet the next time we see Trump and he speaks about it, he doesn't sound as crazy as the posts because sometimes he does that in real life. He sounds a little, I mean, he sounds crazy, but he sounds less bellicose than some of his posts.

Dan Pfeiffer (13:44)

Well, I mean, imagine what sounding in real life as bellicose as these posts would be. It would be to stand in front of the nation and threaten Democratic members of Congress with state sponsored execution. So that would be notable, I would.

Jon Favreau (13:57)

Say, I will say as I was prepping for the pod and right after this happened, like I was looking around for the story, it was all over Twitter, of course, and it was on cable. We were watching Fox. Fox did mention it, though. The way that Fox framed the whole thing was that, you know, Trump lashes back at Democrats for urging military to disobey orders. You know, but it wasn't like leading the New York Times or the Post. And I've long stopped my media criticism because I think a lot of journalists work and you know, tomorrow's headlines may be different, but I don't know if it's just a reflection of how much news there is or how inured we are to Trump saying crazy shit like this. But I don't know. The President, United States calling for Democrats to be hanged seems like should be the top story everywhere.

Dan Pfeiffer (14:44)

Yeah, I mean, you're right. I think this is as much a media problem as a cultural problem where we just have gotten, we are sort of uncomfortably numb to Trump. And this is not, this really is not 2017 stuff where he would say, you know, he called people like, he would just say back then, guilty of treason. And then we would say, treason is a crime punishable by death. He's calling for the execution of this person. Because back then, as much as we worried about it, there was no follow through. There actually were people Trying to prevent him from following through by just distracting him, like a small child or a bird with a shiny object. But just. We are, like, 72 hours away from the President telling the Attorney General to investigate a bunch of Democrats for no reason as a distraction ploy from the Epstein files and the Attorney General doing that. So, like, these words should carry more weight in how they're thought about and how we worry about them. And I'm not saying that these people are going to be executed, but the President's words matter, and they matter when we know for a fact that the Justice Department will do what the President wants, no matter how ridiculous, how illegal, how unconstitutional, how unethical. And so, yeah, it should be a big, huge, important topic of conversation, which is why we're leading the podcast with this.

Jon Favreau (15:57)

Well, and not going to.

Dan Pfeiffer (15:59)

Not going to criticize us out there, people.

Jon Favreau (16:01)

Right. Like, just to be clear, even if he. Even if the Justice Department says tomorrow they're just opening an inquiry, an investigation into these Democrats for that video, fucking constitutionally protected free speech.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:15)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (16:16)

That is, again, them restating what the law says.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:20)

In vertical video.

Jon Favreau (16:21)

In vertical video with unfortunate music again. But, like, other than that, totally legitimate. Legal, legitimate. Totally fine.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:30)

Yeah. There's some poor Senate digital person who put together a video that was so newsworthy that it has caused a major news cycle, and you have two assholes like us criticizing the music.

Jon Favreau (16:42)

You know what? I'm proud of you all for doing the video. I just. We need some levity here.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:46)

You need levity? You need some levity in the illegal orders video.

Jon Favreau (16:50)

Oh, we need levity.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:50)

We need levity.

Jon Favreau (16:51)

We need levity.

Dan Pfeiffer (16:52)

I thought you wanted to put some jokes in the video.

Jon Favreau (16:54)

I'm not looking for a fucking punchline in the video. No, no, don't worry about that. Fair enough. All right, so even before Trump called for executing members of Congress, it's pretty clear he's been going through something this week.

Dan Pfeiffer (17:03)

Wait, before we move on, I think it's. You can't leave this without pointing out that it was only a few months ago that the entire country, led by the Republican Party, had a massive conversation about how rhetoric could lead to political violence and how Democrats saying things like Trump is an authoritarian or Trump is a fascist has led to violence against Republicans. And now you have the President of the United States calling for the hanging of members of Congress. And all These same people, J.D. vance most prominently among all of them, has been quite quiet about this. Now, not that we are going to be surprised by hypocrisy. From these people. But I just think you can't leave the subject without pointing out just how short the Republican concern with political violence actually was.

Jon Favreau (17:50)

And that's why, like, again, I don't, I don't really care about pointing out the hypocrisy at this point. I hope that all of these Republicans, media figures, politicians who said that political rhetoric can incite violence, who wanted to con, wanted everyone to condemn violence, condemn calls for violence, condemn language that could incite violence, will now condemn this. This is their chance to show that in it was not just a partisan motivation to saying that, but that it was genuine. And so if it is genuine, then you should call that out. I think, for example, that J. Jones's texts were fucking gross.

Dan Pfeiffer (18:29)

Yes, absolutely.

Jon Favreau (18:30)

And crazy and bad. And I would like to hear, I don't know, a handful of Republicans say this about Donald Trump. I heard John Thune say that it was over the top.

Dan Pfeiffer (18:41)

His response, I'm paraphrasing response, was basically like, I, I agree with his criticism, I disagree with how he handled it, or I disagree with his solution to the problem.

Jon Favreau (18:49)

I think Lindsey Graham also said he was a little over the top, but he's never been more upset by anything than the video. So they're all, you know, they're all pivoting to the video. But I would like a real condemnation. I guess. Like Don Bacon said the video was bad and then he said what Trump did was worse. That's like the, that's, that's the right, that's the right zone. That's the right zone. Don.

Dan Pfeiffer (19:08)

I would say in fairness, it's 321 on the west coast is recording this right now. Not very many people have done it. It is possible that they all have an epiphany between the ending of this recording and when you all hear it on Friday morning. And this will look foolish, but if.

Jon Favreau (19:21)

Not, fingers crossed, finger cross.

Dan Pfeiffer (19:23)

But if not, hypocrisy noted.

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Jon Favreau (22:29)

So even before Trump called for executing members of Congress, it's pretty clear he's been going through something this week. Per usual, he tends to go full mad king when he feels politically cornered, which is why he spent the week lashing out at reporters and selling the rest of us extra hard on his demented version of reality. Here's a sample.

Yasmin Raji (22:52)

Mr. President, why wait for Congress to.

Dan Pfeiffer (22:54)

Release the Epstein files?

Yasmin Raji (22:55)

Why not just do it now?

Dan Pfeiffer (22:56)

Well, it's not the question that I mind. It's your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It's the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who's highly respected and asking him a horrible insubordinate and just a terrible question.

Jon Favreau (23:13)

They came up with a new word, affordability.

Dan Pfeiffer (23:17)

And they look at the we are all about affordability.

Jon Favreau (23:21)

And everyone assumes that that meant that no, their prices were high. They said, sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came back from the dead and they aligned and they went for.

Dan Pfeiffer (23:32)

The president, vice president as a combination.

Jon Favreau (23:35)

You'D be beating him by 25 points. So true. So true. Lots to unpack there. For those who couldn't hear the the first clip, that was Trump on Air Force One telling a female reporter, quiet piggy. So that was, that's something that happened this week. Then he was in the Oval yelling at another female reporter for asking a very respected man a tough question. That would be the Saudi royal prince who had Washington Post columnists brutally killed and dismembered. You're just, you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to ask someone with that kind of reputation such a bad question.

Dan Pfeiffer (24:21)

In that question, the most notable word is he calls her question insubordinate, which is very telling about how he thinks about the power dynamics here.

Jon Favreau (24:28)

Yes. And like the irony is not lost that he's sitting next to the guy who ordered the killing of a journalist and Trump is the one who really can't fucking handle journalist questions. Because you know what? Trump and then, and then we haven't even talked about this. I know Tommy and Ben cover on Pod. Save the World, but just the fucking disgusting way that Trump handled the question about Jamal Khashoggi that came to him in that meeting in that pool spray with mbs. And he said, well, he's a controversial. He was a controversial guy and things happen. Things happen.

Dan Pfeiffer (25:03)

Do you know any other controversial people? Donald Trump. And if so, might you be careful about suggesting that that would be justification for, I don't know, being bone sawed? Like what? Just, I mean, it was honestly the whole, this is not the topic here again, but the entire MBS celebration in the White House. All the business leaders and tech billionaires who went and took the fucking Fox News anchors like Brett Baer and Maria Bartiroma who toasted with MBS after this. It's just the whole thing is so gross. It is so gross. All of them, some of them are not capable of shame. And Bret Barry may be one of those people is not capable of shame, but the rest of them, Tim Cook, et cetera, should absolutely be embarrassed by the way they handle themselves in this situation. You don't have to toast a murderous dictator. That is not a required part of your job.

Jon Favreau (25:50)

He respects power and money and nothing else. And people with power and money, no matter how they behave, no matter how disgusting they may be, no matter what crimes they commit, you have the respect of Donald Trump if you are powerful and rich. And if you are not, it doesn't matter how you're treated. So clearly, this is him. He's lashing out everywhere. He's pissed. Let's talk about all the things that are causing him to lose his shit and then we can talk about how bad the polls have gotten for him and his party. First up is the Epstein files, the release of which is now required by law, thanks to a bill passed by both houses of Congress in a near unanimous vote and signed by Trump himself. He wasn't happy about it, though, and promised in a very long and rambling post that the Epstein files would backfire on the Democrats who were just using the issue to distract from all of Trump's incredible victories on things like bringing down costs and inflation. The question now is which files Trump's Department of Justice will actually release? And when Pam Bondi was asked about this and would only offer variations on we will follow the law. We will follow the law. How do you think Bondi and crew are going to handle this?

Dan Pfeiffer (27:01)

I think you have to go back to the fundamental premise here, which is that Donald Trump is deathly afraid of something in the Epstein files. Now, whether he knows what that thing is or he just generally has a vague recollection of his conduct in the Palm BEACH in the 90s, I don't know, but he thinks there is something very bad and very embarrassing in there. And we know that Pambani will do anything she possibly can to protect Donald Trump from things that are bad and embarrassing. And so my suspicion is that she will use the very understandable provision in the disclosure law which says the Justice Department does not have to release files that are related to an ongoing investigation as a way to not release some files. Notably, as we mentioned earlier, she started a bunch of new Epstein investigations over the weekend, which could be a way in which a putative reason to prevent disclosure of some of these files.

Jon Favreau (27:55)

And I have to imagine that if she just does that for too long, there's gotta be a. A chance for a lawsuit there.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:04)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (28:04)

Justice Department. Or for someone to say, like, hey, this is the law. We don't know. There's no proof that you're engaging in any kind of investigation. You already said that you investigated everything and there was no reason for any additional charges. Now she's saying, oh, new information came to light. Okay, what's the new information? I guess potentially the emails from the estate that we've all been pouring over the last couple of weeks, but I don't fucking know.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:28)

And I think those would be in the files, too.

Jon Favreau (28:30)

Yeah. Maybe, though. Why weren't they released?

Dan Pfeiffer (28:32)

Because they didn't release the files. That's the thing.

Jon Favreau (28:35)

Well, they released thousands of pages to the Oversight Committee, but not anything had.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:40)

Donald Trump's name in them. The difference here is these had Donald Trump's name in them and a bunch of other people. Maybe they have, maybe they don't. It would seem.

Jon Favreau (28:46)

It's just weird that they came from the estate and not.

Dan Pfeiffer (28:48)

Well, the estate complied with the subpoena from Congress and the Department of Justice did not, which has gotten lost in this. Yeah, and there will be political pressure here because Republicans now have all voted for this and they've broken with Donald Trump on the Epstein files. Once they think this matters to their base, and if he really drags his feet in a way that is, like, embarrassing to them, I think you will see bipartisan political pressure be put on him.

Jon Favreau (29:16)

Believe it or not, there is reason to doubt the basic competence of a Justice Department.

Dan Pfeiffer (29:21)

No, not this Justice Department.

Jon Favreau (29:24)

I mean, I know Pam Bondi. It's. You know, she's. Consider the news this week that the DOJ's transparently political prosecution of James Comey may be falling apart. Surprise, surprise. Not exactly shocking when you remember that to get the indictment, Trump had to fire the. Trump appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and install one of his lackeys, Lindsey Halligan, who had never previously ever tried a case in front of a judge, which shows. And she had to bring the case against Comey because no other prosecutor in the office out of a couple hundred employees would sign the indictment, so she had to do it herself. Then in a hearing this week on Comey's motion to dismiss the case as politically motivated, Halligan admitted to the judge that she never showed the full grand jury the updated version of. Of the indictment after they had to toss one of the counts. Then her second in command admitted that his predecessors had drafted a memo outlining why they didn't bring charges against Comey when Trump ordered them to do so. The first time, he admitted on top of that, that the Deputy Attorney General's office had told him not to acknowledge the existence of that memo in open court. Right before we recorded, these two morons were filing some paperwork to clean up the indictment issue. But all of these disclosures make it seem much more likely, and the judge made it seem much more likely in his comments, that the case could be thrown out altogether. You know, for a team just dedicated solely to retribution, does it surprise you they just. They couldn't even pull that off yet?

Dan Pfeiffer (31:04)

No, it doesn't, actually, because this is one of those things where the. The job to be the patsy who is supposed to engage in this prosecution that every career attorney already said there was no evidence for. Anyone who would accept that job is obviously someone so lacking in competence, skill, intelligence, and dignity to actually execute the job well, even as hard as it was. So the fact that Lindsey Halligan was willing to accept this offer is proof that she was gonna fuck the sun. Like, that's. Like it. Is that so? Yeah, I mean, could they have. I guess maybe it is surprising that they were unable to find a person in the entire Trump administration who had actually presented evidence in a court of law before to take this job. Like, there, I mean, I assume there are just attorneys running around everywhere like there is in every government, but instead they end up with this person who had even less experience, basically, was that they took a person off the street to do this, and that person failed. And I guess that should be encouraging to everyone who's spending a lot of money and going into debt to go to law school.

Jon Favreau (32:07)

I mean, I think even if they. I think even if they got the most skilled attorney you could find on this case, maybe it doesn't get thrown out at this stage. And, you know, you don't. You don't forget to show the grand jury the updated indictment. But it seems like the facts of the case are the real problem here.

Dan Pfeiffer (32:28)

Yeah, it's just. It's the. It's the embarrassing way in which this happened. Like, there's a world in which you truly get the best prosecutor alive, send them in there, they take the bad evidence and present it, but they dot all the I's and cross all the T's, and then it just gets tossed or you lose a jury trial. But the fact that you've failed to show them the indictment that you had to admit, basically lying or lying by omission to the court about a piece of exculpatory evidence is just so embarrassing, it makes this whole thing look even dumber than it already was. And that is, frankly, enjoyable to me personally.

Jon Favreau (33:04)

It is enjoyable. And it's not to say that people shouldn't be worried and that this all isn't dangerous, because I do think there are plenty of examples of cases that are borderline. Should they be charged, should they not be charged? And then the desire to prosecute your perceived enemies is what puts it over the line. I think the John Bolton case, let's just pretend, let's imagine, because we actually don't know all the facts. We haven't seen the case yet. But you could imagine a case where the Biden administration looked into this. They decided not to prosecute, not to bring an indictment against John Bolton. Now the Trump team is maybe there is enough evidence there to convict John Bolton, and it would be because, you know, it wouldn't have happened without a push to politically prosecute his enemy for Trump's enemy, you know, and so there is a lot of danger there. But I do think when some of these cases, like a Comey Letitia James, where we're starting to see more and more of the facts of the case, and it's just like there is just no wrong. There's not even any illegality. There's just like, not even wrongdoing. There's not even, like, ethical gray areas here. It's just. It's just nothing.

Dan Pfeiffer (34:13)

There is a difference. When it is someone as prominent and powerful and presumably well off as, like a Jim Comey or. Or has the resources of a Letitia James or as a United States senator. Where it gets scarier is when it's people further down the food chain. Right? Like Lamonica McIver, who is a member of Congress but is not as well known and is in a very precarious position when it starts being immigration.

Jon Favreau (34:37)

Kat Abou who's running for Congress.

Dan Pfeiffer (34:40)

People who have just simply protested or argued against or defended immigrants or done something again to upset the ICE people, the political prosecutions. Because even if you don't get the conviction, you can do tremendous reputational financial damage to someone just by pursuing the case to begin with. And some of the people who are going to get off the front are the people who had the best opportunity to survive that even if they had not fucked up the indictment and possibly enter the case, you know, sort of in the, you know, at the outset.

Jon Favreau (35:07)

Yeah, like Michael Dreeben is. James is Jim Comey's lawyer who's like one of the best lawyers, like, practiced before the supreme, you know, tried cases before the Supreme Court and everything. So, so, related story about the goobers at the doj. A federal grand jury in Maryland appears to be looking into whether Trump's mortgage fraud czar, Bill Pulte and his retribution czar, Ed Martin, may have brought in unauthorized people to go after Adam Schiff for mortgage fraud, potentially Tish James as well. It's very confusing what they're looking into here because it seems really hard to believe that Trump or Bondi would let a federal grand jury investigate Pulte or Ed Martin. But what do you think's going on here? It's also possible that they may be looking into people who tried to say they were Pulte or Ed Martin or worked for them who were unauthorized, so. Because I can't imagine the government going after the government.

Dan Pfeiffer (36:02)

Yeah, well, I mean, I can in.

Jon Favreau (36:05)

A normal administration, but not this one.

Dan Pfeiffer (36:06)

So I think there are a couple of different things, sir. One, as you say, we don't really know. All we know is that we've is the press have seen subpoenas that have been issued to some conservative activists and congressional candidate, which includes Pulte, Martin and some other names of people who may or may not have claimed to have been part of. They seem to want to know if there are certain people who would not be involved in the investigation who may be claiming to have had authority to be involved in it.

Jon Favreau (36:31)

Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer (36:31)

In terms of how this could happen, I think there are two ways it could happen. One is it just slipped through the system. Right. Just this is not the crackerjack team over here at the Department of Justice. And so it's just sort of happened. Pam Bondi didn't read an email and went forward. Or the other way is there's a fair amount of reporting that various members of the Department of Justice leadership really hate Bill Pulte. It's like the one thing we all have in common and Ed Martin. And so it's sort of, you could see maybe it's about this.

Jon Favreau (37:01)

Also soybean farmer Scott Besant, who's almost punched him in the face.

Dan Pfeiffer (37:04)

Yes. Lots of people are, you know, you could sort of see a world where maybe this came and like the one time Pam Bondi was like, I don't know, just proceed, do as you would do. I'll stay out of this and let that go. So I'll be interested to see where this goes. But either way, it seems quite enjoyable and fun and like we're having kind of a we started off with potential execution of Democratic members of Congress, but the rest of this podcast is pretty light and fun. And this is light and fun.

Jon Favreau (37:30)

I will say I did look at they named the US Attorney who signed the subpoena in panel. The grand jury from the, from the Eastern District of Maryland did get that job in 2022. So I'm sort of wondering now, like that's to maybe didn't get to Pam Bondi's desk. And it was actually someone working in the Justice Department who's not a, a Trump lackey. But I don't know.

Dan Pfeiffer (37:54)

That person might be finding a new job soon.

Jon Favreau (37:55)

Yeah, no, exactly. Well, we shall see then. Then, then we'll really know that, you.

Dan Pfeiffer (37:59)

Know what's going to happen to that person. They're going to get investigated for mortgage fraud.

Jon Favreau (38:02)

Yeah. Yeah. Hope you only hope that guy only has one house. So anyway, in the midst of all the chaos we just talked about, one thing seems crystal clear. The president is focused like a laser on affordability. Dan. And guess what? The American people have started to notice. Allow me to read you a Fox News headline about their newest poll. Hot off the presses. Poll was out Wednesday. Quote, voters say White House is doing more harm than good on economy. That is on fox news.com 76% of voters have a negative view of the economy in the Fox poll. Worse than the 70% who said the same at the end of Biden's term. Twice as many voters blame Trump instead of Biden for the current state of the economy. Three times as many voters say Trump's economic policies have hurt them versus help them. And the president's approval rating is 41%. 58% disapprove. And it is record high disapproval among men, white voters and those without a college degree. Obviously, Trump's core demographics. It is just one poll, but most of them are saying the same thing. I could have read any of them, Nate Silver's average has Trump sitting at 41.5% approval, easily the lowest approval of his second term and close to the lowest of his first term. In fairness, Dan, these polls were taken before Trump spent the week glazing the Saudi royals who've made his family billions of dollars richer and the tech billionaires who are building him a $300 million ballroom. You think that'll move the numbers once that information is absorbed?

Dan Pfeiffer (39:44)

I think that was an excellent use of glazing. Curtis Lewis, good job.

Jon Favreau (39:49)

For Elijah.

Dan Pfeiffer (39:50)

It's a very. If you know that joke, you're trumbling online.

Ad Host (39:54)

That's right.

Dan Pfeiffer (39:56)

No, I don't think that's gonna help, John. I do not. I think he is in a very, very, very precarious place politically. And the fact that he is a lame duck president makes it that much harder to get out of this place. Because when you get to this place, and Obama got in his first term not this far down, but he got into the low 40s. So you can come back when it becomes as your reelection camp, as the reelection race ramps up, as the primary on the other side gets up and you start doing, to quote Joe Biden, the voters compare you to the alternative, not the Almighty. But when you're a lame duck, this is why you're a lame duck, you very rarely come back from that. Right. This is like you were in George W. Bush territory here. You were on the precipice of the bottom falling out. And maybe he can come back. Trump has come back from the political graveyard many, many times, but he's in a very, very bad place and he doesn't have a lot of good solutions to get out of this.

Jon Favreau (40:47)

And I will say, I think the bulk of the, the disapproval is around just the state of the economy and how people are feeling about the economy. Right. Like, and I think, you know, Joe Biden was not doing all the corruption that Donald Trump is doing and was not, you know, building the ballroom and taking Qatari jets and all that shit. And he still had a very high disapproval around the economy. Because people, whatever they thought about Joe Biden, they were just pissed that he didn't bring costs down. Right. Trump is adding to people's anger over high prices by every time people look at the news or even, even casual news observers, what are they seeing? They see, and it's very funny that after the off year elections, they were like, well, you know, even the White House political advisors were acknowledging, like, you know, he's just so focused on foreign policy and every time there's an event at the White House, he's with all these, like foreign leaders or, you know, he's talking about these deals with like CEOs. So what does he do this week? Of all the foreign leaders, he's got this. He's got the Saudi royal family, who has just made his family so much money. So talking about deals with them, he's got fucking. He's got Elon and the besties and the fucking AI guys at the White House with the Saudis and they're all fucking taking pictures together. And there's the gold everywhere. What are you doing?

Dan Pfeiffer (42:19)

I will say this one small thing in defense of the White House staff, which is, I'm sure the MBS state dinner or whatever you call it and meeting was planned far in advance. Because I would say many times in my life in the White House, I'd be like, man, we are in a tough place. We gotta focus on the economy. Let me break out the old week ahead, block schedule and see what's happened the next couple weeks, motherfucker.

Jon Favreau (42:39)

But you know, what has Ben Rhodes.

Dan Pfeiffer (42:41)

Put on the schedule this week?

Jon Favreau (42:42)

But true, true, but guess, guess who shouldn't have planned a fucking state dinner for Mr. Bonesaw.

Dan Pfeiffer (42:48)

Well, yeah, that, yes, that, that, that is nothing. That is a different question. But the problem here is they can say that they want affordability to be their message. Affordability can never be their message because Donald Trump, somewhat like Joe Biden, is chemically incapable of saying the things you need to say to appeal to people in affordability. Because to say for different reasons, no, it's for the same. I think it's for the same reason. It's pride. Because to say that costs are too high is to admit you have failed and that this was Biden's problem with the economy always as he was all even, it was the White House talking more to say the right thing. The written statements would say the right thing. The parts on the teleprompter would say the right things. And then Joe Biden would start saying how great the economy was. And Trump is the same way. And it's actually magnified with Trump because they put in place a policy Biden just kind of lived, failed to solve a problem he probably couldn't solve anyway. Trump has taken a problem he can't solve and made it much worse. And you saw this with. You guys talked about this on the Tuesday pod. But when Kevin Hassett was on the shows, he was like, I mean, just truly one of the worst messengers in the History of messaging, but they were like. He's like, I got good news for people. We're bringing, we're eliminating the tariffs on groceries and food and all of this. And they're like, oh, so you're saying the tariffs raise the prices? And he's like, no, I'm not saying that at all. He's like, no, but if the prices are coming down, how's that going to help? He's like, prices are down. I know what you're, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, John, Carl, whoever he was doing the interview with, it's like, you can't do it. Trump cannot be a good message on affordability. It is impossible for him to do.

Jon Favreau (44:25)

Even J.D. vance, who's supposed to be the smarter one, I guess between him and Trump.

Dan Pfeiffer (44:30)

Yeah. Well, congratulations.

Jon Favreau (44:32)

He tried out a version of a better message at an event on Thursday with Breitbart's Matt Boyle, where he was like, look, you know, we've made some progress, but there's a lot more to do and we really think the economic boom is coming and we're going to work harder for that. And then he's like, what I would ask of the American people right now is patience. I was like, what? What is that you're asking people? Patience. People have been, you have been in the White House for a year. You have raised prices based on your own tariff policy while you're asking everyone else to be patient. The President and his family have made billions of dollars flaunting it in front of everyone, accepting gold bars, literal gold bars from the Swiss.

Dan Pfeiffer (45:23)

That's the other thing here.

Jon Favreau (45:24)

And other gold plated things from fucking Tim Apple and all the rest of. I mean, it's just like anytime you look at Donald Trump in the White House, you are seeing gold. You are hearing about deals, you were reading stories about his family making money. He's fucking focused on renovations at the White House. That's his, like, main focus. So he can build like a $300 million ballroom paid for by the oligarchs. And then they're telling everyone else who is struggling to just like, make ends meet to be patient.

Dan Pfeiffer (45:54)

Yes. And this is the, this you, you hit on the exact other point why he cannot succeed with an affordability message is because voter, like people are mad about the economy. Absolutely. And they would probably, probably be willing to give Trump a little bit of that patience that J.D. vance is asking for, except for two things. One, he keeps saying he already solved the problem. And we know from focus groups in circa 2009, that will cause people to flip the fucking table over when you tell them you solved the problem. And they're still upset because in that Fox poll, majorities of Republicans believe that the costs of groceries, healthcare, housing, all of these things are up over last year. Not up over Trump, 2017 or 2020 pre Covid. Since Trump got into office, these things are up. Majorities of Republicans believe that. Then the other issue is that they turn and they turn on the TV or they open up their phone and Trump's doing everything but solve this problem. You're right. He's piling around these rich people. He's given $20 billion to Argentina. He's building the ballroom. He's doing all this. He's doing. He's like. He is rubbing it in people's faces at the exact moment. He's doing everything you possibly can.

Jon Favreau (46:58)

They're talking about how people on food, they're gonna cut food stamps, and people on food stamps are lazy. And. And Russ Vogt is talking about how he's like, he's just delighting and here comes the reaper, remember? And he's like delighting in cut. And fucking cutting jobs and firing people and laying people off. I mean, it's just. It's wild how little they fucking care.

Tommy Vietor (47:28)

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Jon Favreau (48:11)

The.

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Jon Favreau (48:58)

Hey weirdos, I'm Elena.

Yasmin Raji (49:01)

And I'm Ash and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast. Each week we dive into the dark.

Jon Favreau (49:06)

And fascinating world of true crime, spooky.

Yasmin Raji (49:08)

History, and the unexplained. From infamous killers and and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Jon Favreau (49:20)

It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Yasmin Raji (49:24)

Two new episodes drop every week and there's even a bonus once a month.

Jon Favreau (49:28)

Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dan Pfeiffer (49:31)

Yay.

Yasmin Raji (49:32)

Woo.

Jon Favreau (49:45)

So Trump's stink is starting to rub off on Republicans in Congress. A new NPR Marist poll has Democrats up 14 points on the generic ballot, their largest lead in the marist poll since 2017. That is a bit of an outlier. A national poll from Marquette has Democrats up 5. I think the overall average right now is about Democrats +6, which is still pretty significant lead this far out and and larger than it has been over the last several months or last year. Even Trump and Republicans have been hoping to hang onto their majority through some last minute gerrymandering, though that scheme also hit a roadblock this week when federal Judges threw out Texas's new map, which was intended to deliver five extra Republican seats. In a 2 to 1 decision in which a Trump appointee joined an Obama appointee, the panel said the new district lines constituted an illegal racial gerrymander. Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court, but Trump's redistricting blitz already wasn't going well. A judge in Utah ruled against Republicans and implemented a map that could give Democrats another seat. Probably it will give Democrats another seat if it stands.

Dan Pfeiffer (50:47)

It absolutely certainly will.

Jon Favreau (50:48)

Yeah, it's like a, it's like a Harris plus 3 or 24 district 23.

Dan Pfeiffer (50:53)

24.

Jon Favreau (50:53)

Yeah. And Republican holdouts in the Indiana state legislature appear to have sunk redistricting there even Though Trump has been going after them by name and threatening to fund primers against them. Meanwhile, here in California, we passed Prop 50 in response, and Democrats in Virginia are now attempting new maps that could add two to three Democratic seats there. It looks like, in total, Democrats could pick up as many as nine seats, while Republicans, best case scenario in places like Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, would give them about four. If Ron DeSantis succeeds in Florida, it could give them another two to two to five. Yeah, it's probably two or three, maybe.

Ad Host (51:27)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (51:28)

And then we'll see what the Supreme Court says about Texas and whether or not they overturn a key part of the Voting Rights act in time for the midterms, which could net Republicans even more seats throughout the South. Particularly if it happens and they change. They're allowed to change the maps before the midterms. What is your take on this Texas situation and. And overall thoughts about how the math is netting out right now or could net out?

Dan Pfeiffer (51:52)

The Texas thing is legitimately funny. Like, I'm going to stipulate that I'm going to presume the Supreme Court's going to come to Trump's rescue here in some way, shape or form. They are pretty. Even before Trump, the Roberts court has been very anti Voting Rights Act. And so I'm operating the assumption that they will get their five seats. But the thing that's funny about it is we had Gavin Newsom on the podcast right after he announced this thing, and one of the big arguments was, we're putting in a provision that says if our maps only go into effect if Texas does it, well, then Texas did it like, a week later. So they took that provision out of the law. And so the California maps stay no matter what Texas does. And it just will be. It would be just so goddamn funny if after all of this, everything Trump did, they come out of this down a few seats. Very amusing on the math.

Jon Favreau (52:45)

Wait, before we get off that. Cause I thought you were gonna say something else is amusing about it, which is how fucking stupid Texas was in giving the reason.

Dan Pfeiffer (52:53)

Yes.

Jon Favreau (52:54)

For the gerrymander.

Dan Pfeiffer (52:55)

Yes. Well, they. Because Trump also, like, told them to do it. And, like, it's not a good fact pattern for them.

Jon Favreau (53:02)

So if people. So just so people know, Partizan redistricting is allowed because the Supreme Court has said that what they haven't done yet is overturn redistricting because of race. So if Texas had merely said, we are redrawing the maps because we want to help Donald Trump get five seats, the map would be legal. Right now.

Tommy Vietor (53:24)

Yes.

Jon Favreau (53:24)

But instead Trump's Department of Justice, again, a real theme today.

Dan Pfeiffer (53:29)

Yes.

Jon Favreau (53:30)

The Department of Justice sent a fucking letter to Texas that was like, hey, we want you to racially gerrymander, basically. And then when they had the case, they kept saying, no, no, we didn't. And they're like, what about the letter? Like, it's the fact pattern is clear that you did racially gerrymander. And I think the. I agree that like, I would not be surprised if the Supreme Court stepped in here to save them. But remember in the Voting Rights act case, what the Supreme Court, or at least what the majority could argue is by drawing majority minority districts, it is ensuring in the south that black voters have representation, that by drawing districts that are heavily filled with black voters, that that is racial gerrymandering and that you can't be doing that. So that's, that's what Rob. I mean, we disagree, but that's what Roberts and Kavanaugh and them potentially could be arguing here or could decide in Texas. And I think this is why you had a Trump appointee say that this was illegal in Texas. They are basically saying, we did this to. For racial reasons.

Dan Pfeiffer (54:38)

Yes.

Jon Favreau (54:38)

Which I think even if the Roberts court strikes down the Voting Rights act would say is wrong.

Dan Pfeiffer (54:45)

Yes. As I understand it with my non law school basis, the issue in the case is not the that you're in the Supreme Court case. It's not that you're allowed to racially gerrymander. It's that majority minority districts are not a constitutional solution to racial gerrymandering. Yes. And so you would now to be clear, you would still people racial gerrymander out the wazoo if this, if it struck down, they just would not put it in a letter. That's the difference.

Jon Favreau (55:13)

Right. You can easily try to, you can easily gerrymander, say that it's for partisan reasons and it could be very racial in nature.

Dan Pfeiffer (55:19)

Yes. It would have to be like that. Like given, given the demographics would have to be.

Jon Favreau (55:25)

So. All right, let's. Considering the direction the polls are headed, how are you feeling about the House in general in a scenario where Republicans do pick up a bunch of seats, but maybe not as many seats as we thought they would. Right.

Dan Pfeiffer (55:37)

Let's take section the strike. Let's take striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights act happening on a schedule which would really have to be in the first couple months of next year because south has primaries in like March and April. And to make this really work, you kind of have to do it before the Primaries because you have to redraw the maps and all of that. So let's just pretend like that's not going to happen. Before the 2020 elections. The, you know, Nate Cohn went through and did this math about like all the different paths of what could happen is. And let's say everything goes the way we thought. Texas maps come back, Democrats get some seats in Virginia, Republicans some in Florida. We really only have to win the popular vote by like three points, I think, to very likely take the House. We win the generic ballot by three points. I think we're well positioned either way. But obviously we want to build as big a majority as possible. And so you need to use the phrase we've used before. Too big to rig. You want to get to a bigger number. Republicans are not, I do not think, absent the Voting Rights act, able to rig this in a way in which it is out of reach for Democrats. We are in a political situation where a majority is very, very viable. It's harder than it should be because of some of these gerrymandering. But we can win it.

Jon Favreau (56:50)

And even if the Texas map goes into effect, we've said this before, but if there is a large Democratic wave, it also though gerrymander may have backfired in that they may have drawn districts where they think that they are going to be safe Republican, but in a way of election, they are not Republican. They are not.

Dan Pfeiffer (57:10)

Yes. And this is like there might be some Republicans in Texas who are actually quietly grateful about these maps being struck down because they really drew these maps based on Donald Trump's 2024 performance with Texas Latinos. And as I pointed out on this podcast before, if you look at Beto O' Rourke's 2022 performance with Texas Latinos, he actually won Latinos in a race he lost by a lot. And then that's in the past. Look at sorry in Beto's 2022 governor's race. But then if you look at what happened in New Jersey in particular, where the two most Latino heavy cities moved 50 points in Mikey Shell's direction compared to where they were in 2024, that should really scare the shit out of Republicans like they, they might have built. You're really building levies when you build a, when you do redistrict, when you draw districts and the more you, you dilute your, your base by trying to pick up more seats, you lower the levy. So, so you don't need as big a wave to go over them and win. So it's like they're at risk here. If we have a big enough wave, it doesn't have to be 14 points, which would be a net gain of about 65 to 70 seats, I think. But something that looks like 2018 would be very worrisome for Republicans and things, at least at this point, are kind of heading in that direction.

Jon Favreau (58:26)

So Reasons for Hope Reasons for Hope One of the many reasons Congress is about as popular as herpes right now might have to do with did you.

Dan Pfeiffer (58:32)

Look up herpes polling numbers?

Jon Favreau (58:34)

Yes. Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer (58:35)

Okay. You did confirm.

Jon Favreau (58:36)

It's definitely, it's like right around chlamydia, but definitely. But better off than syphilis.

Dan Pfeiffer (58:43)

Okay. Syphilis never a favorite.

Jon Favreau (58:47)

Might have to do with the recent string of scandals in the House this week that range from embarrassing to corrupt to allegedly criminal. First, there was the revelation that Democrat Chewy Garcia of Illinois hid his last minute retirement announcement from everyone except his chief of staff so that she'd be the only candidate who could get the required 2000 signatures in time to meet the filing deadline, a move that led Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluzenkamp Perez of Washington to force a vote rebuking Garcia that passed the House on Tuesday. Then there was a talk of a central resolution against Democrat Stacey Plaskett, the non voting delegate for the Virgin Islands, for texting with Jeffrey Epstein during a House Oversight Committee hearing with Michael Cohen in 2019, which she claims was about getting information from one of her constituents, Jeffrey Epstein, because Epstein island is in the Virgin Islands. And a retaliatory move from Democrats condemning Florida Republican Corey Mills for sexual misconduct and threatening violence, among many other things that continue to come out even as we record the Plaskett measure failed on the floor with some Republican defections and the Mills measure essentially just went away, leading some Republicans to accuse their leadership of cutting a backroom deal, saying like we won't, we won't censure or rebuke Plaskett if you let the Mills thing go. On top of all that, Florida Democrat Sheila Cheerfulis McCormick has been charged in federal court with stealing $5 million in FEMA disaster relief funding awarded to her family's health care company to register people for Covid vaccines, of all things, and funneling that money to her congressional campaign. Cheerfulis McCormick says she's innocent, but House Republicans are pursuing an immediate expulsion vote. Anyway, let's start with MGP going after Chewy Garcia. What do you think of that?

Dan Pfeiffer (60:49)

We can have a debate about whether censure was the right way to do it like, but I think she did the exact right thing to be critical of him for it. I am pretty disgusted by the Democrats who reflexively defended what happened here. We cannot be the party who is talking about democracy all of the time and how corrupt Donald Trump is and then turn a blind eye to what is a very obvious infringement on democracy and a bit of political corruption. He rigged the system for his chosen successor. And the other thing is, just about this that upsets me is that one of the things that separates us from the Republicans is the Trump era, and really the Republicans, even before the Trump era, is that Democrats had been willing to criticize other Democrats for doing wrong things. And if all of a sudden we're going to turn a blind eye to obvious wrongdoing just because the person who did the wrongdoing is on our side is, we are becoming more like the Republicans than I am comfortable with. And now that's not a majority of our party. A lot of people did speak up, but there really was this reflexive defense of Garcia that I thought was just really unfortunate.

Jon Favreau (61:58)

The defense to me was. Was really troubling and kind of surprising, especially from some members that I wouldn't have expected to do that. And the first defense that everyone tried said was, okay, well, this was, you know, he. He announced his retirement last minute because he has health problems, and his doctor, his cardiologist told him that he couldn't do it. And. And also he's just dealing with, like, the recent death of his daughter, and he's raising the grandkids. And I'm like, understood, that's horrible. And, like, retire. Announcing that you're retiring last minute in itself is not the problem. The problem is when he decided he was going to retire, even if it was last minute, he needed to tell everyone at the same time and not just his chief of staff, because she. She clearly then had time to get a couple thousand signatures to file, which means that other candidates who were interested could have had that time to file. And then they were like, well, he didn't really know and he didn't have anything to do with it. And then you look at the petition, and the Chicago Tribune found the petition, and he's the first signature on. On her filing deadline petition. So I'm like, and then. So then that was the first thing. And then the next defense was, well, Gluzen Camperez. You know, she was grandstanding, and it shouldn't have been a resolution, and why are we doing it? Could have gone. It should have gone to the Ethics Committee. And it's like, okay. If you want to say, as a Democratic member or Democratic staff or strategist for all these people who are defending Garcia, if you want to say what he did was wrong and it disgusts me that there's this kind of corruption, blah, blah, blah. Also, I think it shouldn't have been a resolution and it should have gone to the Ethics Committee, fine.

Dan Pfeiffer (63:46)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (63:47)

But most of the people that were complaining about MGP introducing this resolution didn't even say that what Garcia did was wrong. And I don't understand why you just can't say the words it was wrong. Like if you. Because, because otherwise, if you're just making excuses and you're talking about process, we think you think it's right.

Dan Pfeiffer (64:08)

Yeah. There's obviously a moral component to this. And there's also just like political malpractice here, which is just the people think with some good reason that the political system is broken and corrupt. And then when there is an example of corruption in a broken system and we turn a blind eye simply because that person's on our team, we validate everything they think. And if we are going to actually not just take the House by a few seats, but if we're going to take the Senate, win the White House, and actually rebuild the coalition that can govern this country, the American people have to believe that Democrats have the courage and the integrity to change the broken political system. And when we do things like this, it causes people to think, A, we will not do that and B, maybe just throw up their hands and say, fuck this, I'm not even going to get involved in politics. And that is a loss for us. That's a loss for democracy. This just doesn't seem that complicated to me. And just some of the conversations were happening about this on the floor of the House, on Twitter were so mind boggling. Like, yes, I'm sure he is in a chewy. Garcia is going through a tough period in his life. You are colleagues with him. I understand that, but this is not high school. He's not the guy who sits at your lunch table.

Jon Favreau (65:21)

You have to call out, it's the Biden shit all over again. Right? It's like these people have spent so long in Washington and know all of their colleagues and are friends with them. And I get it. I'm like, you know, still friends with all of my friends from Washington. Right. But like you, if you are a public servant, you have to put the country first and your constituents first. And if that means a tough conversation with your friend because you had to criticize Them, even if you admire their lifetime of service, which clearly a lot of people do with Garcia and good for them, then you have to do that. Like, that's just not. And the other defense that didn't. I didn't really buy at all was like, well, no one said anything. When a Republican House member did this last in 2024, I forget the guy's name, and I'm like, okay, we should have thought.

Dan Pfeiffer (66:08)

We should have said something then, too.

Jon Favreau (66:09)

But this is also the problem with taking. We got to fight fire with fire to, like, the logical extreme, because it's like, they do. They don't play by the rules, so we shouldn't play by the rules kind of thing. And it's like, there are times when that's true. In the. In the redistricting fight, that is true because they are making a power grab, and it means that, like, we might not, you know, they might take over the House unfairly. And so, like, we gotta fight back. But with something like this, it goes back to your political point. Like, even if. Even. Even if you put aside the moral and ethical case for it, at least think that if you're a voter and you have to choose between, okay, well, the Republicans did this in 24, and then the Democrats did this in 26. Don't we want a contrast?

Dan Pfeiffer (66:51)

Yeah.

Jon Favreau (66:52)

Don't we want to show people that there's actually a real choice between the two parties? Isn't that how you win? Like, progressives are always saying that on. On ideas and on policy. Why are we going to just be Republican light with some policy? So why would we think that isn't the case when we're talking about corruption?

Dan Pfeiffer (67:10)

Yeah, just. It's so dumb.

Jon Favreau (67:11)

Crazy. It's crazy. What do you think about this whole. So now everyone's like, censuring expulsions, rebukes to Democrat. I think it's Don Bacon and Don Buyer, Don Byers, Democrat, Don Bacon's Republican, are now trying to raise the threshold for a censure because they feel like it's like a race to the bottom with, like, both parties censuring each other. I wouldn't be opposed to that necessarily, but I also really, like, it's such a. Again, such a fucking Washington inside thing. It's like, you are censured.

Dan Pfeiffer (67:38)

It's like, yeah, so sure, raise the threshold or raise the threshold. Who really cares? Like it. Like, this is a little out of control. I'm just. Via tweets, I'm learning about new censures, and honestly, new members of Congress. I didn't know existed before this all at the same time. So that's exciting.

Jon Favreau (67:55)

Yeah. The member who got indicted for the. For that awful FEMA thing for stealing $5 million. Never. Never heard of her before.

Dan Pfeiffer (68:02)

Yeah. Like, if you told. If we were playing, like, two truths and a lie with a member of Congress with three names, I would say that was the lie, like, for sure. But the thing you have to do here is you need the Ethics Committee to work. Like, there needs to be an actual process of adjudication that is viewed to be bipartisan and independent of the leadership. We haven't been in that place for a very long time. But for this to really work you up the other. Because the censure thing is fake, I guess it matters. It obviously matters, but there's no consequences that come with it. Do you wear a scarlet C to the House floor for a while? I don't really know. So it just seems ridiculous. So raise the threshold. Don't. But we need an actual process that holds these people accountable, that you can act, that people, members and the public can trust.

Jon Favreau (68:46)

Yeah. One last thing before we turn it over to Tommy and Yasmine from swing left. On Friday, Trump is set to meet at the White House with his new arch nemesis, Zoran Mamdani, who he referred to as Communist Mayor Zoran Kwame Mamdani, when announcing the meeting. We don't have a lot of details, though we'll probably know more by the time you're listening to this. But Mamdani said in an interview on Wednesday night, quote, I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city. Both men love going after each other, but Mamdani has a lot on the line. The administration froze or at least claimed to freeze $18 billion in federal funding for New York City infrastructure projects during the shutdown. And Trump said before the election that he'd be, quote, highly unlikely to contribute more federal funds beyond the absolute minimum if Mamdani won. Asked about this in the briefing on Thursday, Caroline Levitt said, we'll see how the meeting goes. All right, your Zoran Mamdani, you're going to the White House to meet Donald Trump. How would you advise him to handle that meeting?

Dan Pfeiffer (69:46)

Would I accept an invitation from Donald Trump to go to the White House right after he spent several days with mbs? Probably not, it seems. No. In all seriousness, we can decide whether we want to cut that joke or not.

Jon Favreau (69:58)

But maybe Livestream it. So we're all everyone knows.

Dan Pfeiffer (70:02)

Yes. I think the way for Mondani to think about this is you have to go, but you want to put yourself somewhere between one of these leaders like Kira Starmer, who comes in bearing letters of congratulations from kings or gold bars or tickets.

Jon Favreau (70:21)

No glazing.

Dan Pfeiffer (70:22)

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. No glazing. Do not glaze. But also, you don't want to be Zelensky. Right. I think you want to come in and you want to be an advocate for New York and for all New Yorkers, and that's what you're there to do. And we're going to disagree on things and we're going to where we can work together to help New York. We will be very tough and strong about no National Guard, about ICE raids, about if there are places, areas we can work together to lower prices, we should do that. And you have to come off as tough because you cannot be. You're not like, so tough that you seem like you're performative. But Trump only respects strength. And so if you go in there and you see, which is why I think some of the mistakes these leaders are making, like, it's short term gains by getting through the meeting without getting yelled at, by being so obsequious in the meeting. But you want to seem like you're not a punk. And so, and Zoran should have confidence in this because the meeting's going to happen. Everyone, like I assume some part of it will be, there'll be a pool spray or whatever else. But also after the meeting, when it comes time to spin everything that happened, he can dominate the media space in a way that honestly, Trump can't. Like, he can go out, he can do every podcast, every interview, all the social media, and put his spin on events in a way that Trump really will not have the time or energy to do. And Trump certainly won't get out of his bubble to do it.

Jon Favreau (71:39)

I think the most important thing for him is to be tough and strong on behalf of the people.

Dan Pfeiffer (71:45)

It's all about New York.

Jon Favreau (71:45)

It's all about, do not get into a personality fight with Donald Trump. Do not, like, get into the mud with him on that. You can be tough and strong on, like, hey, I'm representing a city or where people can't afford to live and need help with costs. And, you know, like, and I'm going to New Yorkers, City of immigrants. Yes, yes, you can. Like, he, like, he was on election night about, you know, the city is now run by an immigrant. You're going to have to come through us. And so I do think he can be tough on behalf of the people in New York and should be. But like Trump will try to draw him into just a personal back and forth and I don't think that helps him. I don't think performative toughness so it can go viral online is, I don't think that's Zoran's style anyway. So like, I don't, I actually don't think that will happen, but I do think that's you could imagine, you know, you can imagine that happening. Or at least that's what Trump wants to happen.

Dan Pfeiffer (72:37)

Yeah. You're like, his goal is to be an advocate for New York. He is the, he's about to be the sort of New York mayor he's going to run for election as New York mayor. He wants people to think he's fighting for New York and not trying to. Not trying to fight some national political battle.

Jon Favreau (72:50)

Yep. All right, one quick thing before we go to break. If you love our shows, or even if you just really like them but aren't ready to call it love yet, please consider subscribing to Friends of the Pod to support our work directly. Your subscription helps us keep making the shows, newsletters and deep dives you enjoy. It also unlocks perks like ad free episodes and exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan. Plus, it's a meaningful way to invest in independent, progressive media. And if you need an extra reason to subscribe, we're offering 25% off annual subscriptions through November 30th. It's a great deal. We'd really appreciate your support, so head on over to cricut.com friends now to subscribe.

Tommy Vietor (73:34)

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Jon Favreau (74:54)

I'm Alaina.

Yasmin Raji (74:55)

And I'm Ash. And we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast. Each week we dive into the dark.

Jon Favreau (75:00)

And fascinating world of true crime, spooky.

Yasmin Raji (75:02)

History and the unexplained. From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends. We cover it all with research, empathy, humor and a few creative expletives.

Jon Favreau (75:14)

It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Yasmin Raji (75:18)

Two new episodes drop every week and there's even a bonus once a month. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dan Pfeiffer (75:25)

Yay. Woo.

Tommy Vietor (75:38)

I am so excited to be joined by Yasmin Raji. She is the executive director of Swing Left, an organization I'm sure lots of listeners know about. But Swing Left has recently launched something called Ground Truth, which is this new nationwide program aimed at fundamentally changing how Democrats connect with voters. And we wanted to talk all about it. Yasmin, thanks for being here.

Yasmin Raji (75:58)

Thank you so much for having me. Dami, I'm excited.

Tommy Vietor (76:00)

I'm really excited to talk with you because look, we spent a bunch of time off mic now too together. And what's cool about what you guys are doing is you are experimenting, you are testing and evolving the way we do voter contact and reach voters. But unlike many other organizations in this space, you're actually willing to talk about it publicly, which is so great because how else are we going to learn about it? And I think it's especially important now after the 2024 cycle when a lot of people feel like we spent all this time, we spent all this money and then we lost, like what was the point? You guys are actually iterating and trying to make it better and I think that's just great. So thank you for being here.

Yasmin Raji (76:36)

Well, thank you, thank you. I think it's. It feels really obvious and you and I have talked about this before, but it feels obvious in a moment of such consequence when the stakes are so high and we obviously know that things didn't work, not just because we lost. And the losses have been incredibly painful for so many of us, for all of us as a country, but it's also like we're losing not just elections, we're losing so many of the voters that we used to have trust with. And so I think from our perspective, it feels like a no brainer to try to do things differently. And I think what's been jarring is just how, how little of that is happening. And so excited to talk more with you, but we really believe that we're in a moment of if we're not taking big swings, we're not taking some real risks and we're not trying, well, trying new things, and then also just being brutally honest about things that might not make us look good, but at least are truthful about what we need to do differently, then we're not taking this moment as seriously as we ought to.

Tommy Vietor (77:41)

Yeah, no, I want to get into some of those things that, as you said, might not make, you know, previous efforts look good. But I think when you're asking your most committed volunteers and donors to give you their time, they need to believe that it's worth it. So that's why it's important. So tell me about Ground Truth. What is it and what did you guys learn from this initial pilot program that I think just wrapped up? Right.

Yasmin Raji (78:01)

Yeah. So ground truth is our big swing in this moment. And I think just a little bit of kind of background Swing left. We were founded right around the same time as you, all at Crooked in response to the election of Donald Trump. We have always been about making sure that volunteers and donors are pointing their time and money toward the most competitive elections. Because our overall way of seeing things is that we cannot have progress without power. So that is a constant. That's been constant from 2017 until now. But so many of the things that we've done, whether that's sending thousands of volunteers to go knock on doors in competitive swing districts near them, you know, directing dollars, et cetera. So many of the things that we've done have been downstream of bad decisions and broken infrastructure. And so, you know, with this moment of really high stakes, one of the things that we have felt really strongly about in the kind of post 2024 election period is even with the wins that we just had a couple weeks ago in the 2025 elections, we can't take anything for granted. And we can't take those wins as an erasure of a real trust problem that Democrats have all across the country. And so we think that until we work really hard to rebuild that trust, we are not going to win in the meaningful ways that we need to. And the first step of building trust is listening. And so Ground Truth is our effort to reimagine voter contact, as you said rightly in the framing, really anchoring on deeper listening, more time with voters not two weeks before the election in a sort of handing a pamphlet and keeping it moving every 90 seconds. But starting well over a year before the election. Our volunteers started going out and talking to voters September 6th way earlier than they ever have in a competitive House district. And they are having deep open ended conversations where they are talking not just to ride or die Democrats, they're talking to everybody. So they're knocking on every door. Because again, baked into some of the assumptions that we've made election after election after election are that we know everything about voters and we can predict their behaviors and we know exactly who's someone who's always on our side and we just need to get them out and you know, who do we need to persuade? And those assumptions have not been right. Right. Or else we would be better at predicting elections. So we're talking to everybody and what our volunteers are doing is opening with a question of, you know, saying that I'm a volunteer with Ground Truth, which is a program to help Democrats do a better job of listening. And then they just ask how do you feel about the direction of our country? And I'm excited to get into what we have learned in our pilot, what we've heard. But I think the biggest surprise from our volunteers is just how hungry people are to talk, including people who really disagree with us on policies and on issues. And we can get into the sort of, you know, what that tells us about where we are as a country and the social isolation and so on. But people want to be heard and people have a lot to share. And our volunteers are not policy experts. They're great listeners. So I'll pause there and excited to share more about some of the substance of what we've learned as well.

Tommy Vietor (81:16)

Yeah, no, I do want to dig into the willingness to have conversations because I think it's a bit counterintuitive, at least for me. But also I just want to start with saying, look, anyone who's canvassed before has probably had a very different experience than what you're describing a few weeks before the election, you go to some office, you go to some staging location, you get like a clipboard with some, you know, houses or addresses on it, or you download an app, you get your turf, and then you knock until you run out of houses. Most of the time, no one's home. You put a little leaflet in the door and then you kind of leave thinking, like, was that valuable? Like, did I, Did I do something there? Maybe you have a conversation or two where you feel great about that person. What do you think Democrats are missing when they just sort of execute that traditional kind of field program so much?

Yasmin Raji (81:58)

I mean, first of all, I think we are not being honest about just how broken we all know that process is. And we keep telling volunteers, trust me, trust me, this is the most important thing that you can do. And we're pointing to real research, but not the research that we are following in those canvases, Right? And so, you know, I heard from a state party leader as we were coming up with this program who said, you know, Yasmin, I think voter contact is going to be done in two election cycles in the ways that we've done it. And so there is quiet behind the scenes recognition of the problem. And the problems are intuitive, right? We're talking to people too late, the conversations are too superficial. And again, we are talking to the same voters over and over and over. Something you didn't mention. But I know we hear from almost everybody who's canvassed is, man, I was just talking to someone for the seventh, eighth, ninth time.

Tommy Vietor (82:48)

Yes.

Yasmin Raji (82:48)

And they're really frustrated. Right? And so, you know, for us, what ground truth, the kind of ingredients of what we need to do differently is, first of all, we can talk to people who are very different from us and we disagree with if we have more time. Right? And so that's why we've got to start early. Number two is we have to listen. We can't just say, you know, I'm here with this campaign and I need you to do something that is not how humans do anything effectively. Right? And we just keep doing that over and over again. And then importantly, something that we've heard for years from our volunteers, and maybe you've experienced this too, is sometimes rarely, but sometimes they have a really deep, meaningful conversation with a voter, and that person really opens up to them, and they talk about how they feel about our country, how they feel about their community, et cetera. And those volunteers painstakingly write in the margins of their clipboard or in the notes section of their canvassing app. All of the things that they heard, all of the things that that voter needs to be convinced to vote at all or to vote for the Democrat. And then they walk back to the field office and they hand it over to a well meaning organizer who has nowhere to put that information. And so all that organizer is incentivized to care about is how many doors did you knock, how many people were home. And then the sort of very superficial data there of how many people talked about abortion or the economy or whatever. And what our volunteers are experiencing and what our program does is when that volunteer has that deep meaningful conversation, which is by the way, two thirds of the, of the people who are answering the doors are having conversations of over 10 minutes. So that's just like way outside of the imagination of how we're used to this stuff. When they have that deep and meaningful conversation, the volunteer hits the record after the conversation is done. They've taken notes on paper, they hit record on their canvassing app and they repeat back everything that they just talked about. We give them the guidance of, it's like a doctor would repeat back what they just talked about with a patient during a patient visit. So it's nonjudgmental. You're not editorializing. If there's direct quotes that you wrote down in your scribbles, you repeat back those direct quotes. So that we're really trying to understand, we're really able to understand that voter and then all those notes that usually just get thrown out. What happens on our on the back end is we run AI not on replacing the human conversation, but on making sense of as people are talking, as they're sharing really personal things about their families. I mean, we hear about voters crying on the doors in these conversations. These are really like real and raw conversations that people are having. All of that on the back end. We are not just aggregating to say, you know, how many people are talking about X and Y issues, what are the feelings behind those things? And importantly, those don't live and die in a swing left database. We share all of that data thanks to a new, a new law that passed in the or a new federal election rule. We share that all back with the campaigns so that we are not ourselves just sort of analyzing what does the voter care about? How should we follow up with them on maybe some material needs, like if they can't afford diapers or whatever the case may be. But also how do we make sure that the candidate who structurally most of our candidates are spending way too little time actually going out and talking to voters, not because they don't want to, but because that's not what they're incentivized to do. They're incentivized to spend most of their time fundraising. We get all that back to them so that they have a picture, not just through a poll, not just through a focus group that usually they can't even afford until very late in a cycle of week to week. Here's what voters are saying, here's what they need, and here's where your trust deficit is. That may not even be about the candidate, but more broadly about the Democratic Party and Democratic brand.

Tommy Vietor (86:26)

Yeah, look, it just strikes me as a really smart and additive use of AI technology to. In service of a real problem, which, as you described, which is a lot of members of Congress get elected. You go to Washington, you aren't home in the district much when you are. You're fundraising or you're going on trips like you just don't have. You lose touch with the people who voted for you. And you could see it happening. You talked to a freshman member. They are on it. They are, like, locked in.

Yasmin Raji (86:49)

Yes.

Tommy Vietor (86:49)

Talk to someone who's been there for 20 years. Different story. So, you know, this might surprise listeners a little bit because I talk about politics for a living, but that canvassing is not my comfort zone. I don't like it. Takes me, like, 10 minutes to get warmed up. I'll get there. But I don't love it. Mostly because when I knock on someone's door, I assume that they feel about me the way I feel about people who knock on my door, which is I tend to hate them and I.

Dan Pfeiffer (87:13)

Want them to go away.

Tommy Vietor (87:14)

The baby's crying and my dog starts barking, and I'm just like, what is happening here? But one of the big takeaways from Ground Truth was voters really want these deeper conversations. I think you said, like, two thirds of the people you connected with wanted to talk for up to 10 or 15 minutes.

Jon Favreau (87:30)

Why is that?

Tommy Vietor (87:31)

What's the best way to use that time? Is it just listening? Is there some persuasion? Like, what did you guys learn?

Yasmin Raji (87:37)

Yeah, you know, one of our volunteers wrote to us yesterday. We. We launched a bunch of the results of our pilot, and she wrote back. You know, something that really strikes me is every time people talk about listening, they usually mean, listen to me more, not, I want to listen to you more. Right. It actually is like a very countercultural thing to demonstrate authentic open curiosity. And so I think how countercultural that feels in a moment of real social Isolation, real sense that the problems before us are so overwhelming and so challenging that nobody can fix them. Right. And the system is totally broken, which I want to talk more to you about. But that's the top issue that we're hearing on the doors from folks far, far and above. Affordability. When all those things combine and someone comes to your door who is not running for office, you know, they're not running for office. They don't come with a fancy glossy, you know, paper to drop. And they really are open to hearing your perspectives and they are promising. Not that they can solve them. Right. These are volunteers, they're not magicians, but that they are going to communicate them back because they want to make sure that the party is shaped by that voter. That's something that. It just feels very different from what people have imagined, what they expect. That's certainly what the voter that I talked to the longest this past weekend. I was out in Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district, one of the most competitive in the country. And one guy literally was running away from me. He went. He had a wraparound porch and he was running to the other side. And I just went and I gave my little pitch and he was hysterical. He said, democrats, you're here to help Democrats do a better job of listening. Have you heard the story of Sisyphus? And I cracked up and it was just like the whole thing was. Nothing was computing with what he expected I was there to do.

Ad Host (89:25)

Yeah.

Yasmin Raji (89:25)

We ended up talking for 20 minutes and having a really meaningful, substantive and quite personal conversation.

Tommy Vietor (89:32)

That's great. I mean, it's funny what you're describing just so perfectly jives with sort of my personal experience canvassing. Like when I was in Iowa. I've told this story on the pod before, but my boss used to like to haze us a bit. And so one day, you know, Saturday morning, we all have a meeting and he tells all the senior staff. I was like a press guy, like, okay, you're all canvassing this weekend. I put a bunch of names of counties in a hat. Reach your hand in and pull one out. And slowly we realized that he'd only done like the border counties. So I got Worth County. I basically drove two hours in Minnesota. I knocked on doors in this town. Literally no one was home. I swear to God, not a single person answered the door. And then finally I see a lady on a ride on mower, like mowing her lawn. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna talk to her because who cares? Maybe I'll talk to One human being today. And she turned the thing off. We talked for 10, 15 minutes. By the end of it, she signed a supporter card, which means she was a one such a caucus for Obama was never on anyone's lists, was not on my knock list. It was just sort of a new name we inserted into the system. But it was one of the more meaningful experiences I had doing field work. And it was because I just in that moment talked to everyone and didn't get stuck on this stupid list. So what you're describing, like the reason campaigns usually don't do that is because, as you said, you have limited time, you have limited volunteers. If everyone's talking for 20 minutes, you're just going to hit in aggregate, fewer houses. But there's a real quality over quantity thing that I think you're getting at that will resonate with most people that have done fieldwork.

Yasmin Raji (91:00)

That's exactly right. And you know, something that John Tester has talked about is in his very first run for, I forget if he ran for the state House or Senate in Montana, but a state seat, and he was handed sort of an analysis of the voters that he ought to talk to. And he was just like, I'm going to throw this out. I don't think this targeting understands my people. And he went, he knocked every door. And he attributes that of trusting his intuition about his district. And sometimes candidates shouldn't trust their intuition. Sometimes there is really good research. So we've got to back everything up. Right. But I think we have sort of, we're overthinking some things that we have to do when, as you said, we have limited time. If we don't have the money for field staff until two months before the election, then you better be targeting and you better be using pretty smart and very limited lists. But you know, I think going back to the gravity of this moment, something that we hear a lot from volunteers is they feel like they're in a moment of whether our country is going to be able to get back on track is up to what happens in the next couple of years, not in the next decade. Right. It's really like we're in an urgent moment that is going to take us on some very different paths. And they keep reflecting. All they're being asked to do is to donate $5 by midnight by a whole host of organizations, sign this petition, maybe come join a protest. And then they're looking around and they're like, okay, but what's next? Like, what's the strategy? What do I do? And so A part of this is also inviting people in. Our volunteers are intelligent adults. Folks who listen to this podcast are following the news, care a lot. They're not listening to podcasts like this because they don't care about our country. On the contrary, it's because they deeply care. Let's invite them to be not just sort of people that we say, go do this. Click here, click that, but come be a part of reimagining something together and learning together. And every week in our pilot, our volunteers have given us feedback on the tech, on the scripts, et cetera, to help make it better and better every week. And that iteration is only possible in an all hands on deck moment.

Tommy Vietor (93:08)

Yeah, our voter contact can't just be like an increasingly hysterical series of text messages. Like, we got to get past this stuff. So Vote for, which is an organization that's affiliated with Swing Left, did another really interesting experiment where you guys were sending letters to voters in key states. You did this over the course of several years and then you rolled out some of the findings. I think it was in the Atlantic a couple months back. So we're talking old school snail mail, none of this fancy AI crap you got in this new program. Can you tell us about the Big Send program, how it evolved over time and what that program taught you about voter contact generally?

Yasmin Raji (93:45)

Yeah. So Vote Forward, as you said, Swing Left's nonpartisan affiliate started as a randomized control trial, which, as you know, is the sort of gold standard in really researching whether an intervention, in this case, a letter written by a volunteer to a voter, does it actually move the needle or does it just feel good to write? And the very first letters that were written were for the Alabama special election way back in the before times. And the effect of those letters in turning out voters, voters who, you know, based off of their how frequently or infrequently they vote, their demographics, their age and so on, are likely to be, you know, Democrats, but may not know that an election is happening in a special, et cetera. We had a very significant measurable effect in the multiple percentage points, which in nerd speak is sort of like mind blowing.

Tommy Vietor (94:40)

A massive, massive moving of the needle, like unheard of.

Yasmin Raji (94:43)

Our founder Scott Foreman called the folks at the Analyst Institute that runs a lot of these experiments around voter contact and was like, can you double check my work? It was just really amazing. And so Swing Left and Vote Forward ended up moving under one umbrella in 2019 and in the 2020 cycle, going back to a time where we couldn't really knock on Doors in many parts of the country. We wrote tens, about 10 million letters to voters to again turn them out across the country. And again, we had an incredible effect size. We turned people out. We could measure it. It wasn't a feeling. It was real science. And so we've kept on doing it. Right. It's something that works. People love writing letters. You can do it from anywhere. And every year, every election cycle, our impact has just been getting a little smaller. So we've tried different ways. Okay, well, what happens if you put a. Post it in the letter? The effect size is bigger than if you didn't. All these kinds of ways of, let's not just trust what's worked before. Let's keep tweaking it. Fast forward to 2024. All these letter writers came in, wrote, we hit all our goals for, you know, millions of letters all across the country. We felt great about it. We go back, we run the randomized control trial. There's some impact, but it's kind of. It's within the margin of error. It's not something that we should brag about. We could package it up and brag about it just to look good on the Internet. But the truth is, the efficacy of this tactic that for years and years has been incredibly effective in the same ways that we've been doing it is not working as well as it used to. Same thing happened with text messages. I remember in 2018, I thought text messages, it was the most amazing thing in the world. They were moving voters. We could measure it. Now I don't read a single text message on my phone if it's not from a number that I don't know. Right. And so what we did that you referred to is rather than just share with our hardcore volunteers, hey, this is what we learn.

Dan Pfeiffer (96:31)

We.

Yasmin Raji (96:31)

We're going to sugarcoat it a little bit. We'll do things differently. Trust us. We said, let's be brutally honest about what we saw, which is that this thing that we invested tons of money, tons of, not just our staff time, but volunteers all across the country who painstakingly, every night, and we would hear from people would say, every night when I put my kids down, I'd make sure I wrote at least one letter. This is really, like, meaningful stuff for them. We shared the results to that we knew would break some hearts to say, we can't measure that we had any impact with those millions of letters. And the reason that we did that is because not only do we think that's the right thing to do, but if we are serious, that we are in a moment of tremendous, again, tremendous gravity, and we just pretend like everything's fine and that the things that we did were effective, which is, unfortunately, what a lot of the ecosystem is doing, then we either are lying that we think this moment is really serious, or we are going to keep losing. Right. And so, rather than just put a sort of buried page on our website, we pitched to the Atlantic, can you cover a thing that didn't go well for us? And the feedback that we got from folks who honestly, the advice we got is, don't do this. You're never going to raise any money. People are never going to volunteer for you. Again, the feedback that we got was, thank you for your honesty. It is so refreshing. And count me in for whatever's next. Right? And so I think that to us, that is not just a few moment. It is a confirmation of what we know, which is that volunteers and donors are adults who really, really give a shit about this country. And if we infantilize them by not being honest with them about what works and what doesn't by just asking them, click $5 by midnight, then again, we're either not serious about the gravity of this moment, or we don't think that they're serious people. And I think either of those is a total misunderstanding of the all hands on deck moment that we're in.

Tommy Vietor (98:25)

Totally agree. And this is honestly why I love your approach. And like, just for listeners, like, this is actually the second time I've interviewed you on Mike. The first time I was trying to put together an entire Sunday episode about, like, learnings like this and experimentation that's happening. And, like, you were one of only two people that was willing to talk to me. Everyone, everyone else says, like, oh, no, we can't. We can't disclose our research because we don't want to give that secret sauce to the Republicans. And I guess, look, I mean, I take them like, these are good people doing hard work. Like, I'm not trying to, like, minimize it, but, like, why. Why isn't that a concern for you? That you're somehow, you know, giving up the. The code for winning elections or the formula for winning elections to Republicans?

Yasmin Raji (99:03)

I mean, I think our customer at Swing Left is the volunteer and the donor. And so with. They are who we care about, who we wake up every day thinking about everybody who is listening to shows like this, who's reading the news, who, you know, cares a lot and isn't sure what they can do to help. If we take seriously that our job is to help bring them on the journey of using their time and dollars in an effective way. We cannot lie to them and we also can't steer them towards ineffective tactics or ineffective programs. And so again, going back to not just on the vote forward side with our sort of honesty about what didn't work, but with ground truth, we were like, okay, we could just keep having people canvas the same ways we've always been doing, even though we know it doesn't work, but that's lying to them when we say we're directing you to the highest impact actions. So again, I think this stuff is. It is actually quite intuitive. It feels countercultural because the incentives of our world are the way that they are. It's not bad people, it's bad incentives. And not to sort of leap back to the voter side, but I do think there's some important connective tissue which is, you know, as I mentioned to you a little bit earlier, the top issue that we heard in our ground truth pilot canvases, which is in 25. It was 25 canvases in congressional districts across the country. I expected the top issue would be affordability. It was not the top issue. The top issue with Republicans, with independents, with Democrats, every district that we were in was a feeling that the system is broken, that both parties suck, and that nobody actually gives a about that person, that community, their district, their town, whatever the case may be. And you know, that is not a reaction to a specific news story. It's not a reaction to like a specific moment. But people do read the news. You know, swing voters, maybe a little less than your listeners, but when they see story after story, like I was just, as I mentioned, in Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district, the Republican representing that district, Rob Bresnahan, he's someone who ran his campaign last cycle on an end corruption. You know, members of Congress shouldn't do stock trading platform, which resonated with people who were upset about the system. Turns out he is one of the top stock traders in Congress. Turns out he used his winnings to buy a helicopter in a district where people can't afford grocery prices. Right?

Tommy Vietor (101:21)

It's so crazy to buy a helicopter.

Yasmin Raji (101:23)

It is bananas. It's also like, are you not aware that people are looking at you and can see what you're doing? But whatever, don't get me started. It's. The Republicans are not really caring about the hypocrisy that they embody. So of course we need to talk about that and of course we will attack that. But we also need to have a mirror to ourselves too, which is it's not like Democrats have perfectly clean hands either. Right? It's not like there's not. I can't think of a Democrat who has bought a helicopter with insider stock trading. But you know, I mean, just this week, a story that's been looming large in my imagination is this Chuy Garcia story of.

Jon Favreau (101:55)

Yep, yep.

Yasmin Raji (101:55)

You know, Chewy Garcia is someone who for swing left members is. He's a champion on the issues that they care about. He is centering working people. He's done incredible, incredible work in Congress. And for listeners who are not dorks like you and me who followed this story very closely, you know, he, he on the very last day of the filing deadline for his district, years and years representing this district, he suddenly bows out and turns out only his chief of staff had filed. And the kicker was, as you well know, Tommy, she had filed days earlier with a document showing that Chewy Garcia had been the first person to sign her nominating petition. So I say that because, you know, it is, I think the contrast of buying a helicopter and doing some sort of funny business of maybe it's not insider trading, but it's like some kind of inside maneuvering. There's some contrast there. But when voters say the system is broken, both parties suck. And what we hear over and over again is voters, even Dems, really strong Dems will say, I'm sorry, what do Democrats stand for besides being anti Trump? We've got to do a much better job of re anchoring candidates on those feelings because even if they talk about grocery prices all day and night, if they don't get, first of all that voters feel like the system is broken, and second of all that even strong Dems do not feel like the Democratic Party has clean hands, then they are not going to be able to be effective at making the case for winning. And by the way, I don't think that we're going to have the most amazing, talented, magical communicators in every single frontline in red to blue district in the country. And I think that's okay with a program like Ground Truth. What volunteers can do is make sure that even a candidate who is not the best messenger, who is not amazing on TikTok is able to be anchored in what people actually care about and just why they care about it. And I think that again feels really intuitive but is a pretty dramatic culture shift and is pretty countercultural in a party that is increasingly not just in a party, in a politic across party lines that is more and more removed from the ground.

Tommy Vietor (104:04)

Agreed.

Jon Favreau (104:05)

Final question.

Tommy Vietor (104:05)

If people want to be a part of this, how can they get involved in Ground Truth or Swing Left generally? What can they do?

Yasmin Raji (104:10)

Yes. Well, we would love for them to go to swingleft.org ground truth. They can get involved. You know, and most folks listening who don't live in a competitive congressional district might think, this is not a program for me. I live in LA or in DC like me and Tommy. Every, almost every American lives within 90 minutes of a competitive congressional district. So starting in January, you'll be able to join us in the closest district to you. So again, swing left.org ground truth. And then coming up on December 9, we are having a call for anybody, whether they are new to Swing Left, whether they are longtime volunteers, first time canvassers, never canvassers, whatever, or, you know, people who've been knocking doors forever and ever. They can come learn more about the program and also about our strategy and what, why we're prioritizing the districts that we are. And then last thing that I'll just say that's on the kind of brass tacks, but I do want to kind of just like, not to be overly pessimistic, but to be sobering. I think a lot of the mood and seeing you at CrookedCon, I saw this a lot among the attendees. There is like, we won in 2025. We won back all the voters. Everything's good. Like, we've got everything on lock.

Tommy Vietor (105:22)

And so the blue wave weren't gate done people.

Dan Pfeiffer (105:24)

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yasmin Raji (105:26)

And I think, you know, as someone who is very daily, I'm anxious daily about the stakes of this moment and are we doing everything that we can. We just have to remember what we remembered back in 2018 and subsequent elections, which is blue waves do not happen on their own. And so if folks come and join us with Ground Truth and come and knock on doors with us, we think that that is a way to not just do a one click, but really sink their teeth into the project of reshaping our party, reshaping our politics, and whatever folks do. It's important that all of us do something and not wait too long because the clock is ticking and we live in very unpredictable times. So we gotta control what we can control.

Tommy Vietor (106:06)

No time like the president to get involved. Yasmin, thanks for the great work you're doing. Thanks for the great work Swing Left is doing and for talking about. Appreciate it.

Yasmin Raji (106:12)

Thank you so much, Tommy.

Jon Favreau (106:18)

That's our show for today. Thanks to Yasmine. Raji for coming on On Sunday, you'll get Alex's great Crooked Con panel with Ruben Gallego, Brian Schatz and Pramila Jayapal about what a Democratic Congress would deliver and Tommy's conversation with former FTC chair and current Mamdani transition advisor Lina Khan. Talk to everybody then.

Dan Pfeiffer (106:36)

Bye everyone.

Jon Favreau (106:38)

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 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 Ilick 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 Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kiril Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Yasmin Raji (107:38)

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