Trump (Literally) Destroys White House

Summary

Pod Save America — “Trump (Literally) Destroys White House”

Podcast by Crooked Media | October 24, 2025
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, Alex Wagner
Special Segments: Tommy Vietor with Denise Ferriozzi (Pipeline Fund)

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Episode Overview

This episode provides a sweeping and deeply critical look at a tumultuous week in American politics under Donald Trump’s second presidential term. The crew discusses Trump’s unprecedented demand for $230 million from the Justice Department, his demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a massive ballroom, ongoing mass firings amid a government shutdown, escalating corruption, and the dangerous appointment of election deniers to powerful federal posts. Alongside these national crises, the hosts break down key races in several states and highlight urgent organizing efforts to build the Democratic bench at local levels. The show closes with Dan, Jon, and Alex’s classic witty banter, balanced by a passionate call to action.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Alex Wagner’s New Podcast & Personal Reflections

[02:51–05:49]

• Alex launches “Runaway Country,” focusing on the human stories behind politicized headlines—her first episode features an immigration judge fired under Trump and DOJ analyst Andrew Weissmann.
• The hosts agree on the importance of narrative storytelling to make policy consequences personal and accessible.
• Alex:

  “It’s really important. I have friends who are like, ‘I don’t even know how to parse it.’ I think one way is just on the human level.” (05:13)

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2. Trump’s $230 Million DOJ “Settlement”

[05:50–13:17]

• Trump filed claims that the government owes him $230 million, supposedly as compensation for DOJ investigations into his crimes.
• He claims he’d donate any settlement “to charity,” but the system is rigged: his own lawyers now run DOJ and will process the claims.
• Trump’s own words:

  “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself, but I was damaged very greatly…” (07:22)

• Legal experts say this violates the emoluments clause of the Constitution; the hosts debate whether the Supreme Court might nonetheless greenlight such self-dealing.
• Dan:

  “He’s put the right people in place.” (07:25)

• Alex highlights the cynicism of using a law meant for Americans wronged by ICE to enrich Trump, while actual victims get nothing.

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3. Pardon for Crypto Terrorist Financier

[13:17–17:35]

• Trump pardons Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”), founder of Binance, after he was convicted of enabling terrorist money-laundering.
• The obvious quid-pro-quo: Binance then invests billions in Trump’s family crypto firm.
• Trump’s response to Kaitlan Collins’s question:

  “He was not guilty of anything. … You know nothing about crypto. You know nothing about nothing. You fake news.” (14:15)

• Dan skewers the corruption:

  “Give billions of dollars to Trump’s family, get a pardon.” (18:16)

• Alex analyzes the broader shift: the U.S. is now openly facilitating terrorist funding for Trump’s personal gain—"full-blown kleptocracy."

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4. Handing Elections to Deniers & Looming Federal Interference

[21:04–26:50]

• Trump installs election deniers in the Department of Homeland Security. Notably, Heather Honey, a “kooky” conspiracy theorist, is now point person for federal election integrity.
• Trump suggests he could declare a “national emergency” to impose new election rules on states.
• Dan dispels legal myths but warns:

  “He can’t cancel elections, but he has great power to cast doubt on them and mess with the counting...” (23:34)

• Alex flags the risk that National Guard troop deployments could depress the vote in blue cities/states in 2026 and 2028.

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5. Destruction of the East Wing: The Trump Ballroom

[28:13–40:03]

• Trump demolishes the centuries-old East Wing of the White House for a gaudy 90,000 sq. ft. ballroom, funded by massive corporate “donations” (Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin, crypto firms).
• Jon Favreau:

  “Every president puts their own stamp…Nothing has come close to what Trump is doing.”

• Dan Pfeiffer laments:

  “It’s not Trump’s house. Not the president’s. It’s the people’s house.” (29:11)

• Alex Wagner:

  “They're putting Confederate statues back up in the name of history and tearing down the East Wing for…a corporate event space. This is a monument to ego. This is his Versailles.” (31:04)

• The hosts demand corporate accountability and transparency, calling for citizen pressure on donors.

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6. Maine Senate Primary Drama: Grassroots vs. Establishment

[41:02–58:33]

• Maine’s Democratic Senate race heats up between outsider Graham Platner (who has apologized for a problematic tattoo and old Reddit posts) and establishment pick Janet Mills.
• Alex and Dan argue over the value of outsider appeal versus establishment security, drawing parallels to the 2008 Obama campaign and warning against reflexive distrust of charismatic figures.
• Dan:

  “Sometimes [the grassroots] will like a candidate who isn’t the best. Sometimes they will like a candidate who is the best one—like, I don’t know, Barack Obama.” (48:51)

• They agree we should let voters decide—no one knows which profile is more “electable” in the post-Trump era.

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7. State & Local Race Round-Up: What to Watch

[60:42–76:51]

• Georgia Public Service Commission, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, California Prop 50 among key upcoming elections.
• In NYC, charismatic lefty Zoran Mamdani faces off against Andrew Cuomo, with unpolled but possibly substantial “silent Cuomo” voters.
• Congressional and statewide races in NJ and VA remain hotly contested; Democratic messaging remains overwhelmingly anti-Trump, for better or worse.

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8. The AI Debate: The Bizarre New Normal

[76:51–78:49]

• In Virginia, a GOP candidate debates an AI clone of his Democratic opponent after she declines to show up.
• The team riffs on the surreal, dystopian future of politics:

  “Stop this train. I want to get off.” – Alex Wagner (77:45)

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9. Building the Bench: Tommy Vietor Interviews Denise Ferriozzi

[82:19–97:58]

• Discussion with Denise Ferriozzi (Pipeline Fund) on efforts to recruit and train Democratic candidates for local/state office nationwide.
• Key takeaways:
  • State-based, grassroots recruitment is essential—especially in red states lacking infrastructure.
  • Virginia & Florida highlighted as success stories.
  • Small investments in local races (e.g., school boards) can yield massive impact.
  • The Republican “bench” is more established, better funded (“They’re playing the long game”), but Dems are catching up with new energy and organizing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Trump on DOJ settlement:
  “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself, but I was damaged very greatly…” (07:22)

• Dan Pfeiffer on White House demolition:
  “To just destroy it for literally no reason… and he’s just going to put his name on it. It says something about his view of everything. He doesn’t care about anything that came before him.” (29:11)

• Alex Wagner on the Trump era:
  “Everybody’s gotta stop thinking about the Trump administration in terms of election cycles. … He’s trying to change the course of American history.” (31:04)

• John Favreau on “Outsider” candidates:
  “On the Obama campaign, it was like, ‘this guy has no experience, has a foreign name, what’s he ever done…’” (51:44)

• Dan Pfeiffer on Democratic messaging risks:
  “The party is continuing to run the same playbook since 2017…” (72:16)

• Alex Wagner on AI debate:
  “Stop this train. I want to get off.” (77:45)

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• 02:51–05:49 – Alex Wagner’s new podcast and reflection on storytelling
• 05:50–13:17 – Trump’s DOJ “settlement” self-dealing and emoluments fallout
• 13:17–17:35 – The Binance pardon/corruption scandal
• 21:04–26:50 – Election deniers, national emergency powers, and threats to democracy
• 28:13–40:03 – Demolishing the White House East Wing: symbolism and sponsors
• 41:02–58:33 – Maine Senate primary, outsider-vs-establishment debate
• 60:42–76:51 – State and local race run-down, Democratic messaging strategies
• 76:51–78:49 – The “AI Debate” moment in Virginia
• 82:19–97:58 – Tommy Vietor interviews Denise Ferriozzi: Democratic “bench” building

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Final Thoughts & Tone

The hosts’ tone throughout is fiercely critical, angry but also grimly amused at the surreal excesses, corruption, and democratic backsliding on display. There’s nostalgia for past Democratic excitement, but also a resolve to fight back, build new infrastructure, and center the conversation on real people—their needs, injustices, and stories. As always, the episode closes with both urgency and characteristic wit.

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Action Items

• Subscribe to Alex Wagner’s “Runaway Country” (Thursdays).
• Check VoteSaveAmerica.com for resources and to volunteer.
• Consider running for local office—see Pipeline Fund or Vote Save America’s “Run” program.
• Watch for corporate sponsors abetting government corruption; demand accountability.
• Remind friends/family in key states to vote in upcoming elections.

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“Everything Dan said. This is a monument to ego. This is his Versailles. This is monarchical behavior. Maybe funded by the taxpayer. … It's so absolutely fucking disgusting.”
— Alex Wagner, on Trump’s White House destruction (31:04)

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For listeners: This episode is an essential primer for understanding the stakes of U.S. politics in late 2025 and the breadth of the anti-democratic strategies now in play, with a strong call to pay attention, get involved, and fight back at every level.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Alex Wagner]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

[Alex Wagner]

And I'm Alex Wagner.

[John Favreau]

On today's show, we're gonna talk Trump's demand that the justice department pay him $230 million. Handing over the keys to our elections to election deniers. The demolition of the East Wing, the latest with Graham Platner in Maine and all the elections coming up in less than two weeks. Then you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Denise Ferriozzi from the Pipeline Fund about building a deeper Democratic bench and why it's so important for people to run for local office. But first, Alex, welcome back to the show.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, guys, I'm thrilled. Now, contractually, Dan is supposed to be in the same room with me, so I'll have to talk to HR about that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, you didn't come to. If you had come to the west coast, then we could have done that.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah. Okay. All right, well, you know, we're more.

[John Favreau]

To have both of you sitting. Sitting around this table with me.

[Alex Wagner]

We would love to be. We would love to be. I'm happy to be here because it's a big day for me and huge day as a cousin to the crooked family.

[John Favreau]

Tell us all about it. You have your new podcast, Runaway Country.

[Tommy Lovett]

Yes.

[Alex Wagner]

Runaway country is live. The first episode is out. For people who have missed my shameless and unending promotion of it, I'll just give you a little, like, taste. It is all about hearing from people who are at the center of these big headline stories that in many ways have become abstract. Cause there's so damn many of them. And this week, we are talking to an immigration court judge who was recently fired because Trump is firing all the people that know about immigration law and who has had firsthand experience dealing with ICE agents in her courtroom and outside her courtroom, has had to adjudicate wrenching cases as sobbing and screaming is heard through the walls. On the other side has a. Had a case log of thousands of cases. There, I think are only 600 of these judges left. They have to deal with 3.8 million immigration cases. And it's really a story from, you know, a human first perspective about what Trump is trying to do to our system of due process. So we have Judge Anand Petit, who's our person, giving us that visceral, emotional storytelling. And then some really high quality analysis from the great Andrew Weissman, who is himself a target of Trump as a former member of the Department of Justice and talks a lot about kind of what we can expect in terms of rule of law and its erosion in the Trump years. It's a very good conversation. I'm proud of it. I hope everybody likes it and you'll leave angry, but maybe inspired to try and do something about it.

[John Favreau]

I absolutely loved the first episode, loved the idea for the podcast and knew that you would crush it. But when I listened to the first episode, it reminded me that especially in the second Trump administration, there's just so much news, so many headlines, and to me, what's broken through and really made me angriest and inspired me are these, like, individual stories of people who've been affected by what's happening, because I think that can get lost in just the discussion of the headlines and sitting down and listening to the judge speak and what she's gone through, what she went through, what's happening in a lot of these courtrooms. It was just. It was fascinating and raging, and it did inspire me to keep going so well.

[Alex Wagner]

And also, maybe I think we just needed some storytelling to help us understand the moment.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Alex Wagner]

It's just like it's also, it's become kind of abstract. That's for those of us lucky enough not to be affected directly by family members getting snatched off the street or losing their health insurance or whatever the issue is. But I think it's really important. I know I have a lot of friends who are like, I don't even know how to parse it. I don't know how to think about it. And I think one way is just on the human level. So that's Runaway Country.

[John Favreau]

Guys, new episodes of Runaway country drop Every Thursday on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. So go ahead right now. Go subscribe while you're listening to this so you don't miss an episode. You'll thank us later. We're excited, Alex.

[Alex Wagner]

Thanks, buddies.

[John Favreau]

All right, let's get to the news. People are paying higher prices thanks to Trump's tariffs. Inflation's on the rise. Unemployment's on the rise. Health insurance is about to get a lot more expensive for millions. And we are recording this on day 23 of a government shutdown that has left hundreds of thousands of people out of work, many who won't get their jobs back because the White House has decided to use the shutdown as an excuse to just fire people. But good news. Thanks to the presidency, Donald Trump has never been richer. And now he's demanding that taxpayers cut him a personal check for $230 million. The New York Times reports that Trump filed complaints against the federal government for investigating his many alleged crimes. And now the federal government run by Donald Trump is likely to settle those claims in Donald Trump's favor. Surprise, surprise, to the tune of up to $230 million paid for by all of us. Trump was asked about this novel arrangement in the Oval this week. Here he is.

[Donald Trump]

I don't know what the numbers. I don't even talk to them about it. All I know is that they would owe me a lot of money. But I don't. I'm not looking for money. I'd give it to charity or something. I would give it to charity with the country. It's interesting because I'm the one that makes a right and you know, that decision would have to go across my desk. And it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself, but I was damaged very greatly and any money that I would get, I would give to charity.

[John Favreau]

It's, it's awfully strange to be making a decision where I pay myself and yet I will go ahead and do it anyway. But rest assure, I'm sure he will be, you know, giving it to a charity that all the America, the American taxpayers probably support. Right. Mind boggling corruption here. We haven't even gotten to Trump's pardon of the crypto terrorist financier who made his family rich. We'll get there. But I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, how the hell can Trump just raid the treasury like this, Dan?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Well, technically he can't. I know this word's gonna feel very 2017, but do you remember emoluments? We all said emoluments.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, boy.

[John Favreau]

Now, old school early emoluments.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I know, but there was a lot of. I mean, Hatch act is no longer going. And people point out on this podcast many times Trump is immune from the Hatch Act. But there was a lot of discussion in 2017 about foreign governments buying hotel rooms at the recently departed Trump Hotel as a way to put money in Trump's pocket that worked his way to the courts. Did not happen. There is another emoluments clause which is very specific to domestic emoluments, which says the President of the United States cannot receive money beyond his salary as designated by Congress, from the federal government or the state government. This would be a very clear and obvious violation of that. So that is one second. I mean, this is. He's going to try to do it. Will. The Supreme Supreme Court would have to twist itself in some relatively unprecedented knots to let him keep this money. They might do that, they might not. But just the process by which this happens is unbelievable because the specific Department of Justice manual says that any award, any sort of reparations award like this of more than $4 million, must be approved by either the Associate Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General. The Associate Attorney General is a man who is a favorite lawyer of Trump allies and defended a lot of them through all of these cases. And the Deputy Attorney General is Trump's personal attorney. So, yeah, seems pretty cool.

[John Favreau]

So it seems like he's got a good chance.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It seems like he's put the right people in place.

[John Favreau]

Alex, what'd you make of this story?

[Alex Wagner]

Well, okay, a couple things. One is, like, if you're one of the stooges that Trump's installed at the Department of Justice, I feel like basically everything you're doing at this point, you know, sort of secretly in back of your head, might be unconstitutional, could actually get you indicted, but you're just gunning for a pardon. So if you're Todd Blanche, you're like, you know, I'm in already, so I can't risk not getting the pardon. So I'm all, I'm all in. If I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound. That's a, That's a bad incentive structure. I'm just gonna stay for people who are the nation's top law enforcement officials. The other piece is, I think people should understand why Trump is even able to do this.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The.

[Alex Wagner]

The law exists for Americans who are all, I don't know, unlawfully detained by ice. They're the victims of uses of excessive force from federal law enforcement officers. And, you know, there are stories, like gutting stories of people who are, I mean, you can imagine in this season of ICE snatching and detention, people who are American citizens who are, you know, pepper sprayed by ice, whose cars are destroyed by ice, whose lives are in some ways traumatized by ice, who then try and use this law to seek some kind of reparations. They're. It is very hard to get any money from the federal government because you were wronged. And the idea that Donald Trump is gonna try and get $250 million from the American taxpayer, which, by the way, John, he suggested, I believe, today, may go to pay for the new 90,000 square foot ballroom at the White House. Yes, great use of taxpayer funds is just, it is appalling even for Donald Trump. Right. It's a mashup of, like, the two worst things he's done this week. That he could be suing the department to pay for a fascist monstrosity attached to the White House residents. I mean, it's just. And, and the, and, and the, the, you know, the asymmetry of who's getting, who could get the money and who doesn't get the money is decidedly un American. I will say I believe, and I'm not an expert in this, he can get the money, he can get the payout, and we won't know until the end of the year when the sort of receipts are tallied effectively and the, the DOJ has to report out its numbers.

[John Favreau]

It can be Basically a secret settlement when it actually happens.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They could theoretically also defer the payment until after his presidency to get around the emoluments clause.

[John Favreau]

Right. The Times did a follow up story, actually talking about sort of the double standard here. And they mentioned George Reddes, who's the Iraq War veteran from out here in California who ice detained for three days. I've talked about him. Tim Miller interviewed him on Bulwark. It was a horrifying story. Just taken away from his family for three days and for no reason, never charged with anything. And he has filed one of these claims and has not heard at all back from the government. And if no one gets back to him within six months, he can sue under the Federal Tort Reform Act. But there is this loophole there where federal agents and federal officers have like pretty broad latitude and discretion to act sort of like in the line of duty here. And it's like, it's basically like immunity and which is why so many, so few people get these claims heard. But Donald Trump's going to get it. He's not going to get it heard. He's just going to just settle it because he's in charge of the government and his former defense lawyers are running the Department of Justice. Just, it's crazy. It's the, it's the, it's the worst example of corruption yet, I think.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, it does bring to mind, like, why even bother with the, like, you know, the, like, why even pretend that this is anything other than stealing from the government? Like Andrew Weissman told me on the podcast this week, like, why not just go for Fort Knox? Just like go in there and take some gold bars. Right? Like, that's basically what's happening here.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, that'll be, that'll be year six. As I mentioned, Trump isn't the only convicted criminal profiting off his connections. Changpeng Zhao, also known as cz, the founder of Binance Crypto Exchange. He'd been convicted of failing to report financial transactions from terrorist organizations like Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS that were using Binance to launder money. Then Binance made a multi billion dollar deal with the Trump family crypto company. CZ tweeted that he wouldn't mind a pardon. And now it looks like CZ and Binance are going to be back in business. Win for Binance, win for the terrorist money launderers, Most importantly, a win for Donald Trump. He was asked about this by Kaitlan Collins of CNN at the White House today. Let's listen.

[Jon Favreau]

Can you explain why you chose to pardon him?

[Tommy Lovett]

And did it have anything to do with his involvement in your. The founder of Binance?

[Alex Wagner]

He has involvement in Eurovision, the recent one?

[Donald Trump]

Yes. A lot of people say that he wasn't guilty of anything. He served four months in jail and they say that he was not guilty of anything that what he did. Well, you don't know much about crypto. You know nothing about. You know nothing about nothing. You fake news. But I've been told by a lot of support. He had a lot of support. And they said that what he did is not even a crime. It wasn't a crime that he was persecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a partner at the request of a lot of very good people.

[John Favreau]

Do you think a lot of those good people were Eric Don Jr. Hamas, ISIS? Like what? Not a crime. Not a crime. Allowing. Allowing your crypto company to be crypto exchange to be to double as a money laundering operation for Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas. Not a crime.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, when you go back and read the files on this and the, and the evidence, it was just they, like they were explicitly trying to hide evidence. I mean, it's like they're obviously guilty here. This has two challenges. Like we can get to the corruption of it in a second, but it's going to. CZ and Binance will be back in the United States and is going to end the Department of Justice monitoring of the program. Almost certainly. And then there's a separate monitoring agreement where the Treasury Department, the people who do terrorist financing there, are monitoring how Binance does his activities. That does not end on its own from this part, but all it requires is Scott Besant to just say it can end. And so they're like fully back in.

[Alex Wagner]

This stand up guy though, right?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Scott Besant, Yeah, I would trust it. He's the bulwark. He'll stand in there.

[John Favreau]

Do we not care about terrorist financing anymore? I thought we were going after antifa. And not just the violent antifa soldiers in the streets, but all of the groups funding them. Right. I thought that was a big part of the Trump Vance agenda here.

[Alex Wagner]

No, Alex, the antifa stuff is just so they can tap your phone, John.

[John Favreau]

That's true. Yeah.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, which I should joke about because. Yeah, you know, a quarter of the FBI agents who used to deal with cybercrimes, counterterrorism, they've been moved over to immigration enforcement. Like you talk about the disassembly of the national security infrastructure and it has been conducted weirdly in the shadows. I mean, even though it's Clear what's happening there hasn't been paid nearly enough attention. This is just another plank in all of that. I mean, like, we're now making it much easier for terrorists to launder money and fund terrorist operations, like on all levels at the same time. The reason Trump is doing this is because, what is it? World Liberty Financial, his crypto company, has been grossly enriched by CZ and co. And like, you know, we talk about what it's gonna look like if and when Trump ever leaves the White House, he's gonna be, you know, at least on paper, a very rich man because he has established a full blown kleptocracy. I mean, that is all this is like. You cannot look at the, you know, corporations that are funding the destruction of the East Wing and the pardon. These crypto bros. And as anything other than just personal enrichment, the DOJ suit, I mean, all of it's just so that he can get rich. It is full blown kleptocracy at this point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, the fact pattern here is stunning, right? Which is Worldly Financial debuts this new coin called USD1Binance, then gets a $2 billion investment that they want paid for in USD1 coins. So that's a. It's a giant boost for Worldly Financial and this new coin. Much of the growth in the USD 1 coin has also come from its presence on a trading platform called PancakeSwap, which is administered by Binance. CZ tweets out that like any felon, he would Welcome a pardon. CZ then hires one of Donald Trump Jr. S best friends as his lobbyist. CZ gets the pardon.

[Alex Wagner]

It's not complicated.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, you don't have to know anything about crypto to understand exactly. What happens is give billions of dollars to Trump's family, get a pardon.

[John Favreau]

Yeah. Have some connections, reach out to the right people. Have enough money, you can commit any crime you want. And yet, if the government treats you poorly, if it abuses you, if it breaks the law to hurt you, then you are screwed.

[Alex Wagner]

Or if you're on a boat in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, do.

[John Favreau]

Not be on boats.

[Alex Wagner]

Don't be on a boat.

[John Favreau]

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[John Favreau]

Now you might be thinking all this corruption might make voters pretty angry and they may take that out on the President and his party in future elections. Unfortunately, the President has thought of that too. Here's another Times story from this week. Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the Homeland Security Department's point person on election integrity and quote. Many of them left alarmed because the official, who is a kooky election denier activist named Heather Honey, talked about rigged voting machines favoring Democrats on This call, during a call with election denier activists in March, right before Honey was appointed, she said that in future elections, Trump could declare a national emergency based on his team's investigation of the 2020 election. That would then allow the White House to force new election rules and mandates on states and local governments. Trump himself alluded to this in the Oval this week. Here he is.

[Donald Trump]

We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again. We just can't let that happen. And so the way we go, I know Cash is working on it, everybody is working on it, but. And certainly Tulsi is working on it, we can't let that happen again to our country. Look at what's happened.

[John Favreau]

So what do you think Cash and Tulsi are working on, guys? Dan, you think the intelligence director and the FBI director, they're working on, what do they have to do with our elections?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This whole story is so bizarre in so many ways. There's like, the very clear, real problem or immediate problem that long before Donald Trump was making up stories about stolen elections, there were people trying to interfere in our elections, particularly foreign governments. And that's why these jobs exist, to try to stop that from happening. We know that Russia, Iran, China have tried to hack into things, interfere with elections. They're going to do that again. And now instead of having actual professionals in the jobs designed to stop them, we have a bunch of fucking morons who believe the dumbest conspiracy theories alive. So that's like a real threat that is bigger than whatever it is they can do. Now, this person's idea that Trump could declare a national emergency and seize elections, that is not a thing. That's not a thing that can happen. That's not a power he has. The elections are very clearly administered by states. Right? They don't have to listen to the federal government on these things. And they can't change the rules, they can't suspend the election. That is not something that Trump has the power to do, whether he declares a national emergency or not. The thing that is alarming, and this is where the Kash Patel piece comes in, is in a world in which the Democrats take the House narrowly or take the Senate narrowly, you can see them, with the help of the FBI and the DOJ and the DHS trumping up, pun intended, investigate claims of voter fraud in investigations like, he wanted to seize the voting machines in 2020. His Homeland Secretary would not let him back then. His Homeland Security Secretary will definitely let him this time. And that's where he can't cancel elections he can't stop the elections, but he has great power to cast doubt on them and mess with the counting of the votes.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, Alex, I heard Andrew Weissman talk to you about this in Runaway country in the episode about his fear that the DOJ could actually seize the voting machines, which seems to me like. Seems like that should go through a court before they get to seize the voting machines. No.

[Alex Wagner]

Is Alien Cannon busy? I don't know. I mean, like, I think there's two things to talk about. One is the 2026 midterms, and already we know that there's gonna be. I mean, with the redistricting shenanigans, which is too flippant to term for what Trump is trying to do. They're already trying to steal that election. But, you know, when you see the presence of National Guard troops, when you see. Laying the groundwork for saying, you know, this is a national emergency, we need to send in security, like, you can see a world in which he. He tries to fuck with blue cities and states on election day and depress the vote. You can absolutely see ahead of 2028 fucking with early and mail in voting. That's already in the list of demands that these psychos that are now installed in the Trump administration to oversee election integrity. That's already something they're asking for. What's so surprising to me in the reporting on this is that after the 2024 election, rather than, like, lay down arms and be like, oh, look, Donald Trump got reelected, like, maybe the system isn't broken. They're newly emboldened to make a set of asks of this president. They're installed in positions of power, and they're working behind the scenes to do what they can. I mean, the time suggests that there could be some kind of federal intrusion into state election results. I'm with Dan. I think it's, like, a little early to panic about that happening, but I don't think anything's off the table, given where we are. I mean, the brazenness of his immigration dragnets and his. The lawlessness of the ICE officers and the National Guard troops trying to foment, literally a civil war between states. Is it like, that far of a stretch to see him doing something on election day in a blue city or blue state? I don't think so. And. And as if we. We've learned from 2020, it's like once you put the PO, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. Once the poison is out in the air and people believe that something wrong has Something wicked has happened in a certain precinct. You know, it becomes very difficult to convince people otherwise and delegitimizing those who are elected to the House. I mean, they're not seating people who were duly elected. Right. Because they're. It's advantageous to Democrats. Like, anything's on the table and people should know Heather Honey's name. Right. Like, we need to inform ourselves about the people who are, I think, soon going to become the tip of the spear for Trump in and around elections. Because we all know Rudy Giuliani. We remember Cleta Mitchell. But there's another wave. There's like Gen 2.0 and they have power and they're at work right now trying to undermine our right to vote.

[John Favreau]

Yeah. I think my first reaction when I read this or I saw the headlines with the story and then some other stories about, like, Trump appointing 2020 election deniers to look back at the 2020 election and do yet another investigation, because I was like, oh, maybe this is a bunch of kooks trying to fight the last war. And Trump just wants to put out some report that says, oh, it was rigged in 2020. And that's just going to be, you know, he's going to make him happy. But this piece, it really gets to the challenge here. And what's really scary is that they are looking ahead to future elections. This is not just about relitigating 2020. This is about 2026, 2028 and beyond. And that's why people, I think, have to really pay attention to it. I will say Trump and his goons aren't treating the White House as a rental these days. Every president puts their own stamp on the historic building, and plenty have made renovations during their tenure. Nothing in our lifetimes has come close to what Trump is doing. Demolishing the entire east wing of the White House to make room for a new 90,000 square foot, $300 million ballroom that nobody needs and nobody asked for. Like most of Trump's construction projects, he sold this one to people by lying about its costs, its footprint, how disruptive it will be. Let's listen to how Trump's explanation has, shall we say, evolved over time.

[Donald Trump]

It won't interfere with the current building. It won't be. It'll be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of. It's my favorite. It's my favorite place. I love it. You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back. You hear that sound? Oh, that's Music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people don't like it. I love it. Josh. I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

[John Favreau]

For those of you just listening, that last clip is just a jackhammer going while the. The last remains of the East Wing are demolished. It's gone now. It's. It is now. The East Wing is gone of the White House. You guys have both spent time in the White House, particularly the East Wing. Initial reactions.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Dan, I am so mad about this.

[John Favreau]

You're really? Okay. Interesting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it's just like. It's obviously not. I'm not saying that it's the. I'm unbiased in it. Like, we worked in the White House. We spent time there. It's a very special place. Right. It's not Trump's house, not the president's house. It's the people's house. Presidents get to rent it for four years, and if they're lucky, they get to extend that lease for another four years. And as you know, it is something. When you're in that house where you're the president or a staffer or even a visitor, you understand the history of it. You take it so seriously. My wife worked in the East Wing when she worked the First Lady. She was telling me this morning about how when they had to move things around for events, you get the White House curator to come, they put on white gloves because the stuff is so historic, it's a very serious thing. And to just destroy it for literally no reason, to build what is inevitably going to be a tacky, massive ballroom that no one but Trump wanted. And he's definitely gonna put his name on it. Like, you know, he looks at the Truman Balcony every day and says, it's gonna be the Trump Ballroom. There's gonna be a plaque there. I look forward to the first, the next Democratic president taking that plaque down. But to just destroy it. And it says something about. Not that we need a reminder, but it says something about his view of everything. He doesn't care about anything that came before him. He doesn't care about anything that came after him. He doesn't view this as the people's house. He doesn't view this as his role in history. It's just about him in that moment. And if he can do this right, think about all the other things he could do. Right. Caroline Levitt was asked today about why Trump couldn't just raise the Jefferson Memorial and put something else up. And she kind of implied he could if he wanted to.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, cool. He can do whatever he wants.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I think it's really sad. There is something about just destroying a national historic landmark for no fucking reason that should, that makes obviously me, as someone who and all of us who have a connection to it, angry, but it should make everyone angry.

[John Favreau]

Alex, what'd you think?

[Alex Wagner]

I mean, these fuckers are the ones that are putting Confederate statues back up in the name of history.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good point.

[Alex Wagner]

What, like flag waving, patriotism, preservation of history, and you're just tearing down the entire east wing of the White House to build a corporate event space to entertain Lockheed Martin executives or, I don't know, have like Mooney style mass weddings. I have no idea. Like, but it doesn't even matter, right? Like, it's everything Dan said. This is a monument to ego. This is his Versailles. This is monarchical behavior. This is maybe gonna be funded ultimately by the American taxpayer. I mean, it's so absolutely fucking disgusting. But the way I think of it is, and the way I've been sort of trying to like, dig in and like, manage my feelings of distress around this, it's like everybody's gotta stop thinking about the Trump administration in terms of election cycles. Like in the same way that they tried to contextualize these renovations by saying, well, Calvin Coolidge redid the attic and Barack Obama put a basketball court in and Nixon put a bowling alley in. We need to think of Trump in terms of history and the institutions he's destroying are going to take decades to rebuild. Everybody's got to dig the in and buckle up because nothing is going to be repaired by like next year. And honestly, we need to think, start thinking about politics like that too. It's like it does. It, it, it's a long term investment and he's trying to change the course of American history. And it's gonna take a powerful citizen led, hopefully with the Democrats on board, movement to undo the damage he is doing right now. And like, you don't need a better example than what he's doing to the east wing. It's like, okay, this is some history right here. Like, it's, it's gonna take a, it's gonna take time to rebuild this and undo it and dig in, you know.

[John Favreau]

It'S not gonna take time, though, demolishing the Trump Ballroom next time, the next time there's a Democratic president, well, it's.

[Alex Wagner]

Gonna be made of like, you know, drywall and like, like fake gold leaf. So, yeah, it's just gonna be like a dump site.

[John Favreau]

I talked about this On Tim Miller's on the Bulwark Pod with Tim Miller this week. And we were talking about Jonathan Van Last. JBL has been on a tear about this. And he's like, I want every Democratic candidate for president to be like, you know, one of the first days in office, I will bulldoze this. And I was joking about it. Tim and I were both joking about it. The more I read it, it's like, I still don't think it's, like, top priority for any Democrat running for president. But, yeah, I do it, I bulldoze.

[Alex Wagner]

That shit, you're gonna be in the seat of the bulldozer just like, sure, why not? You and Charlie.

[John Favreau]

I'm not gonna spend a lot of. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time campaigning on it or running a whole bunch of ads about it, but. But, yeah, I'm fucking doing it for sure. The plaques. Not just the plaque coming off that says it's the Trump Ballroom. No, the whole ballroom's coming down, just bulldozed. Done.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I read JVL's rebuttal to your ridicule of him, and it's quite compelling, I would say it is.

[John Favreau]

He's doing a good job.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He makes a very strong point that you don't need political capital for this. Right. It's not like you. It's not like you're doing the ballroom destruction and passing Medicare for all. You can do both.

[John Favreau]

I will say the reason that it did not. It's not like it hasn't made me as angry as some of the other stories is it is destroying historic monument, and it is doing unnecessary. He's doing it unnecessarily, and he's acting like a king, like all that. But there's so many people being, like, hurt right now. Like, I said this to Tim, which is like, if you. He can demolish the entire White House, just raze the whole thing to the ground if he takes ice off the street, you know, and there's been so much focus on it. And I get why there's been so much focus on it, because it's an image. And boy, when you see that someone just took a. Like a. This was on Twitter, an aerial image. Cause they were landing at DCA of the White House. And so it was like the first image of from afar, the White House, the West Wing, and now just nothing. And you see that image and you're like, holy shit. That breaks through. That definitely breaks through.

[Alex Wagner]

What's the polling on this, Dan?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is that your next question, John?

[John Favreau]

Well, you Can.

[Alex Wagner]

Sorry, I didn't mean to insert myself.

[John Favreau]

I love a good conversation like this. So it doesn't seem as.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, no, I just know Dan has.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The polling numbers I don't actually want. Didn't have it memorized because it was in the question, so.

[John Favreau]

It is.

[Alex Wagner]

Sorry.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's okay. Now you've exposed me as a fraud, I'm supposed to be just rolling out.

[Alex Wagner]

Mr. Polar Coaster, you've been, like, retweeting your polling pool.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Whatever.

[Alex Wagner]

I thought you knew it, my man. Sorry.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, just get yourself a ChatGPT you don't need Dan.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's message box is seven bucks a month. ChatGPT, 20 bucks a month. It's quite a deal.

[Alex Wagner]

Take that $13 to the bank, people.

[John Favreau]

YouGov. YouGov. 53% of Americans are against the destruction of the East Wing, which is what's happened. Or. I think the question was the ballroom.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's two questions. There's the ballroom and there's the East Room.

[John Favreau]

Yeah. And the destruction of the East Wing is even worse.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes. Yes. People are. They are. They don't want a ballroom. They don't think it's a great use of time, energy and resources right now, but they really don't think the President should bulldoze the fucking White House.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, that's definitely because I think when I first heard the ballroom, I was like, oh, that's so Trump. That's so annoying. How much is that going to cost? And I thought it was just going to be, like, tacked on to, like, the end of the East Wing there. Like, I just had a different vision. Who knew that the whole fucking East Wing was coming down?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, you had that vision because he told you that. He told you it would not affect the facade of the White House. So you know how they used to, like, put those tents up that would be for, like, big state dinners. I assumed they were just going to kind of build out that way, but.

[John Favreau]

That'S sort of what I thought, too. I mean, it's truly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I've been going through this with my wife all day. She's very upset about this. They bulldozed her office. Right? They bull. The first they bull. Michelle Obama's office. The like, all.

[John Favreau]

They bulldozed Melania Trump's office.

[Alex Wagner]

Metaphor for a marriage.

[John Favreau]

God and another immigrant that the federal government has come after.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's really. I mean, it's like. Like, you're right. In a world of, like, ice raids and National Guard and people losing their health insurance, like this building and the memories that a lot of people have in it, not just people who work there, people who have visited there. It's obviously second to that, but it's just, it's like a sad thing.

[John Favreau]

So apparently, you know, Trump keeps saying that the taxpayers are not going to fund Mar A Lago on the Potomac, but you know, he's just going to finance it with other money. And I guess that's true because there's a bunch of corporate donors that are financing this thing. Alex, you were talking about this earlier. What's the.

[Alex Wagner]

Sitting in one of their houses right now, Comcast.

[John Favreau]

Who's on the list? Who's on the list here? Who's financing this thing?

[Alex Wagner]

You know, it's interesting because there are people and they're big corporations. None of them are gonna surprise you, maybe, necessarily. But the ones who have explicitly committed money to the ballroom project itself are Lockheed Martin and I believe Booze Allen Hamilton and I believe Google has also pledged 5 million or more for the White House ballroom project. But then you have. We have record of other companies including Apple, Comcast, Coinbase, T Mobile, the Adelson family, no surprise there. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Meta platforms and the Winklevi. The.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Winklevi. Howard Ludnick also giving money. It's a. Like this ties to the CZ thing, which is. It's like a highly disproportionate number of crypto companies and crypto people. The Winklevi are crypto entrepreneurs who have become very.

[Alex Wagner]

And Trump likes them a lot because they're from central casting. As far as what he thinks crypto bro should look like. But, but yeah, I mean it's, it's like the inaugural slush fund. It's like, here's a way for us to curry favor with someone who's powerful in front of whom we have business interest. Because I don't think Sundar Pichai really is that excited to have a space to entertain fellow CEOs. But here, such is the reality in which we live. I would like to see some kind of Color of Change campaign to have citizens contact these corporations and say, are you really for the destruction of this east wing? Are you really for the building of a monstrous 90,000 square foot ballroom? Shame on you. Are you paying for the destruction of our living history? Because fuck off if you are.

[John Favreau]

It is. It is pretty fucking outrageous. It's also like a bunch of the richest companies in the world who are doing just, you know, between Booz Allen and fucking the AI people. It's just, it is, it's like a kind of thing that if a. If a. If a liberal said this a couple years ago, they would be, like, mocked as a cringy resistance person. That Trump is going to bulldoze the White House and a new ballroom's going to be constructed with the help of all of his corporate oligarchs. Like, it's fucking ridiculous. It's happening.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I would also like to see some account. Like, there's no process by which that money is accounted for. Right. This is not a publicly. Like, there's no. It's not like there's an FEC report. So these companies have given $300 million. How do we know where that money goes? How do we know how it's spent?

[Jon Favreau]

Isn't it.

[Alex Wagner]

The Park Service somehow has a tab. There's like a. There is a. Actually a wing of the government that is dedicated to taking in the money that I think is in turn managed by the National Park Service. I could be wrong, but there is some receptacle for this specifically earmarked money. So someone somewhere has a ledger.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But all this. All these privately funded White House things are all slush funds. Where. Like, when you. They're privately funded, like the inauguration was the redecorating funds or slush there. You never really. They don't have, like. We have transparency since we know companies that have done this and individuals who've done it. But there's not any sense of how the money is spent. It's not audited in any way, shape or form. Maybe a Democratic majority can do that if we get one. If Heather Honey doesn't stop us.

[John Favreau]

Bookkeeping is not their passion, Dan.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, no. They have the same approach to bookkeeping as Jason Bateman had in Ozark.

[Alex Wagner]

Nice. Ozark ref?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[John Favreau]

One Democrat who's going through his own renovation project. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. How's that for a segue?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That is perfect.

[Alex Wagner]

That's pretty good. Did you just make that up on the spot?

[John Favreau]

You know, I'm not gonna take credit for that one.

[Alex Wagner]

I'll take credit for it when I.

[John Favreau]

Do it, but I'm not doing it. Nobody knows I'm giving that one to Reed in our. Or maybe it was Saul. I don't know. Sorry. Someone did. Someone did on our team. In our Tuesday episode, Tommy asked Platner about a tattoo on his chest of a Totenkopf, which now we all know. The skull and crossbones image used by the Nazi ss. Platner said he wasn't aware of what it meant when he got it in Croatia as a drunk 23 year old Marine. On Wednesday, after a bit of online chatter, Platner revealed that he got the tattoo covered up. He's also dealing with the fallout from his many, many Reddit posts, including several homophobic slurs and jokes that were reported by the Advocate, which Platner apologized for and said were indefensible. In an interview with the outlet, Platner did speak to a packed town hall in a gunquit Maine this week and got some good news from a UNH poll that was in the field between October 16th and 21st. So after many of the Reddit posts came out but before the Nazi tattoo story, the poll shows that Maine Democrats favor platner over Governor Janet Mills by a whopping 58 to 24%. Mills overall approval rating with Mainers has also taken a dive. Since the last UNH poll in August, she's gone from a plus 4 net approval to a minus 12 disapproval with only 35% of independents and 2% of Republicans approving. Alex, we've all talked quite a bit about this story. Some people probably think more than enough that they never want to hear it again. What are your thoughts?

[Alex Wagner]

I will say this about Graham Platter. I think if there is one residual effect of the Trump administration or the Trump years, it is that politicians can own their mistakes and they can be I think it is a good thing when people in politics admit that they are have erred and that they are human. And I'm not saying that to excuse homophobia or potentially racist tattoos or anti Semitic tattoos or whatever. I just think it is a good development. If people feel like they can own their past, they can apologize for it. They can let the voters decide whether the apology is sufficient. But that we don't pretend that people have lived their lives from the day they were born hoping to gain office and that they have had experiences and they've made mistakes and they've lived lives. Because ultimately I think it serves us as a public to have people who have been in the world and have learned things and have evolved. And I'm again not making excuses for Graham Platner, but I think it is a good thing for us politically to not be so afraid of our past. So I think the way he's approached the sort of scandal here by going out there and talking to people and talking to Tommy and saying like this is, you know, I regret this, I did this, but this was me and it made me who I am today is like that's a good thing. And I Don't know that that kind of, that kind of mea culpa would have happened before Trump, where it's like, nothing. You can do anything. But no, I think that you can be honestly who you are and voters will maybe try not. They'll understand that and maybe it's not going to be a death knell for your campaign. So that part is good. You know, I don't know, Dan and I kind of disagree on this. I don't know. I think, Janet, I guess I think that I understand the concerns about absolutely. Being knighted by Chuck Schumer and chosen by the establishment to be the candidate and why that is distasteful and it is fundamentally anti Democratic. I also think that there is a real difference between someone who's been in the Senate for like six terms and someone who just happens to be old, still wants to fight, has stood up to Donald Trump, said to him in the White House, to his face, I'll see you in court. Like, that's a different kind of fighter than some of the aged, albeit wonderful public servants we see in the upper chamber. And I don't think we should. You know, I don't think it's necessarily fair to put her in the same box as, for example, Dick Durbin. Okay. Not that he's a bad person. And like, last but not least, I just am a little bit with Jonathan Martin on this when it's like, Democrats do get very enthralled with anti establishment outsiders who are very charismatic. And, you know, I'm thinking of Beto o' Rourke and his potty mouth. And, you know, like, I do worry a little bit that he's such. He is, he is good. He's a good, you know, like, he's got a lot to recommend him. But I do worry about, like, whether this is actually someone who's gonna win the weird ass state of Maine. It's a weird state. A welcome to wonderful state. No disrespect, Mainers.

[John Favreau]

Dan, before you go, I'm gonna just read you just a quote from what Alex was just referencing our friend Jonathan Martin's Politico column and then just gonna let you cook.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You shouldn't do that. You should not do that.

[John Favreau]

Alex and I are gonna set a timer. We'll give you.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Are you gonna have to play me? You're supposed to play me off like the Oscars.

[Alex Wagner]

Just let him have the rest of the show.

[John Favreau]

So J Mart says the Democrats need to stop, quote, swooning over, quote, political outsider or mostly new name candidates who rely on Online video and lean quote heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory which cause, quote, out of state liberal hobbyists to fall in love and donate and for journalists to, quote, rush to profile the latest heartthrob before inevitable disappointment when the candidate loses or, well, becomes John Fetterman. Obviously a lot to respond to there, Dan.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay, we like Jonathan Martin. We've known him for a very long time. I think he is a very astute observer of politics. I don't understand a word he wrote in this piece. Okay, first, should we repeat it?

[Alex Wagner]

Should we have Don reread it?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I mean, I understand the like, I know I understand the syllables. I understand the individual words. I just don't understand. The point, I guess, is the way I'd say it. So first, the idea that Democrats are constantly falling in love with these crazy outsider candidates who can't win elections is belied by the fact that our last three nominees were Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris, who may have been exciting or may not have been, but we didn't have a primary to find out because she was handpicked and no one ran against her. And so. And in many of those races, there were exciting grassroots, progressive candidates who ran and lost. And Democrats did not pick those people. So that's 1, 2. The examples that Jonathan and also now Alex have cited I dispute because Beto o' Rourke was an exciting candidate. He did have a potty mouth. He also did better in Texas than any Democrat in a couple of decades and came very close to winning that race. And there is no, I don't think anyone can credibly argue that there was some safe Texas establishment figure who would have done better than Beto did in that race. The other one that Jonathan Martin cites is Stacey Abrams. Exciting, got lots of money from out of state. People were really excited about a very inspiring candidate. She came closer to winning the Georgia governorship than any other Democrat in a very long time. And because of the race she won, Democrats won the Senate seats of John Osloff and Raphael Warnock, and Biden won the state in 2020. And so it's not like once again, we put all of our money and hopes in this losing candidate when there was this winning candidate, Amy McGrath, different story. She is someone who raised a ton of money online because everyone wanted to beat Mitch McConnell. I think in part because Senate Democrats, the D. Sec and Chuck Schumer perpetuated this fiction that McConnell was beatable in order to raise more money for the effort to elect Democrats across the country. Really Kind of bilked donors out of their money. But once again, there was no other. We didn't pick Amy McGrath over some other candidate who would have done a better job to win. In fact, a few years later, when Charles Booker ran against Rand Paul in that same seat, this very exciting progressive candidate, he did just as well as she did, if not a little bit better. And then the last thing I would say, and then let's take the Fetterman thing.

[Donald Trump]

Thing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Everyone keeps saying this thing like didn't you guys learn your lessons from Fetterman? As if Fetterman was some unknown person and everyone just fell in love with his hoodies and tattoos and shaved head. John Fetterman was the two term lieutenant governor of the state. He had been a very prominent mayor for almost a decade at that point. He was the mayor of Braddock who endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. He was not unknown by anyone. He was very well known. Now he changed all of his positions after he got in his attitude once he got in office. But that is not the same. That says nothing about Graham Platinum or any of these other candidates. Last point on this and they have one more thing to respond to Alex on and then I'll be done, I promise. The main thing that bothers me about J Mart's piece, not Alex, J Mart's piece is that is the entire and a lot of the actual anti platinum discussions since the posts and the tattoo came about is this idea that candidates who excite voters are doing some sort of parlor to trick that. It's like they're just, they're tricking people into liking them. And the attitude from the establishment and some of the media folks is like, you fucking rubes, how did you fall for that trick again? You got all excited about this candidate when you should have just taken the boring candidate we tried to shove down your throats instead of like sometimes the grassroots will like a candidate who maybe isn't the best one. And maybe Graham Platner is not the best one. He may not be, but sometimes they will like a candidate who is the best one. Like I don't know, Barack Obama. Because that same attitude was what we heard every single day on that candidate campaign. Ooh, look at Obama and his rallies and his celebrities. But what you really got to do is support Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, one of these other, you know, long term politicians don't do the newcomer. And when that, when people, instead of dismissing the candidates who get people excited and the voters who get excited by the candidates, the establishment try to Figure out why they're getting excited and maybe learn some of those lessons and apply them to their candidates. Maybe Janet. So last point here, I promise, maybe Janet Mills will be an exciting candidate. Candidate like she may be. We don't know. Maybe she is a better candidate than Graham Platner, particularly after all these revelations. I don't know the answer to that. Right. I do not know the answer to that and I don't think anyone else does either. And that's really been my main beef about everyone declaring that he's a worse candidate than her. No one knows because there's a lot of arguments that would show that a two term establishment governor who is 77 and will be in her mid-80s at the end of her first term and is the second least popular governor in America may not be the best candidate either. And so we should just let the voters in Maine figure it out. Okay, I'm done. I'll stop now.

[John Favreau]

It's funny that you mentioned Obama there because, you know, there's people have been talking quite a bit online. People have a lot of feelings about everything over this last week. There's a lot of people like are these guys, what are the pod guys working for Platner? And I'm like, it is. It's less about Platner. I think our reaction is because of like what we experienced on the Obama campaign.

[Alex Wagner]

And I almost started obvious psychology obvious.

[John Favreau]

And I almost started laughing when I was reading the quotes from J Mart's piece. But it was like swooning over political outsider or mostly new name heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory. Like all of that stuff was said about Barack Obama and it wasn't just. And now people will look back at people who you think, oh well, Barack Obama left as you know, he was perceived as this establishment Democrat who you sort of united the party and all different factions liked him when he was, when we were running against Hillary Clinton, it was like, this guy has no experience. His name is pretty foreign. What has he ever done? He's a communist. Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, like there was some people thought that he was like, there's no way this guy can win.

[Alex Wagner]

And his tattoos.

[John Favreau]

And his tattoos which we haven't even. Which he got away with. Which still no one knows about the.

[Alex Wagner]

And his homophobic.

[John Favreau]

In the homophobic.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, all the stuff he did.

[John Favreau]

So it's just like. But it is just to say that I'm talking to Chris Hayes, your colleague Chris Hayes for offline this weekend. And we were just talking about Chris's piece in the New York Times about attention and what's required to get attention in politics today. And his point is, on the list of when you're recruiting a Democratic candidate, what's most important right now? And for a long time, what's most important to the dscc, to the dccc, to the national Democratic Party, is, can you raise money? And then, like, what is your resume? What is your bio? And, like, do your politics fit with the state or the district that you're.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And are you safe? Are you safe?

[John Favreau]

And are you safe? Right? And then way down on the list and sometimes sneered at is, can you really connect with voters? Are you, like, a compelling speaker? Do you know how to capture attention in a very competitive attention environment right now? And, like, can you inspire people? And that is seen as, like, just. It's like something that warms people's hearts or, I don't know, like, to take another 2007 example, that sends the thrill up Chris Matthews legs, remember? So bouncy. And it's like, that is not why I care about someone who's a really good speaker. I care about that because I think it actually helps them win and be competitive in a really tough race. And I think that's even more true now in this information environment than it's ever been. And I just worry again, Graham Platner aside, that, like, the party has not prioritized candidates, regardless of whether they're on the left, center, left, wherever, who can really connect and inspire people. And I just think that that is a. I think that is. I worry most about that than anything else.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's a real problem with the dscc, I think, is, in, like, you can. We can have the same argument about who the most electable candidate in Michigan is between Abdulsi Nali McMurrah and Haley Stevens. Once again, I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think anyone else does either. The DSCC thinks they know the answer. They think the answer is Haley Stevens. And there is absolutely no question, whatever else you think about Haley Stevens, that she is not as good a communicator as Abdul and Mallory, who are excellent communicators and have theories of the case about how you get attention in this day and age. She is a very capable, very typical politician in how she communicates. And so it's clearly not the top of their list. I just want to stipulate what my actual position here is. I do. I just want to say this again because everyone's like. Like, everyone's Pro Platinum. Pro Platinum. I Have. I have liked Glenn Platner. I've been impressed by what he's done. I truly have no idea if he's a better candidate than Janet Mills.

[John Favreau]

Same.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I really do not. And whoever wins that nomination, I will obviously will support them. I will donate to them, all of that. I. My big issue is that people who assume that the outsider candidate is less electable than the insider cannon, I think, do not fully have fully appreciated the changes in American politics over the last 10 years.

[Alex Wagner]

I'm definitely not. I. Just to be clear, I don't write under the pseudonym Jonathan Martin for political. Just in case anybody was like worried.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

About that, I would say there's no chance you two would be confused for each other.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, you never know. It's a weird time in America. I would never argue that the outsider is doomed by any stretch of the imagination. And guys, I hear what I understand that the Obama candidacy in 2008 was, was like, I know, I lived through it too, and I understand that it was, you know, the trepidation and the concern about his candidacy was very real. But I think that this is something a little bit different, right? I don't think it's the same as that. I think the guy does have baggage. He's had to explain a lot early on and you know, with constituencies that are important. I think, as I said at the beginning, I think he's done a very admirable job of that. I think we're falling into, to your point, Dan, about the establishment and how fucked it is and like, fuck that. What we've learned is also it doesn't actually matter what the establishment wants, right? Like, Trump wasn't who the establishment wanted, he was who the people wanted. So like on a certain level it's like, congratulations Chuck Schumer for convincing a 77 year old to run for one term in the Senate. Like, that's the feat. But like whether you're, you know, manipulation or even whether the DSCC funding matter, like, yeah, money matters. But I also feel like money will come. Like if you're an exciting candidate and people feel like you're going to win. I do think like we are in a day and age where if you are in the culture, if your message is resonating, if you are making an imprint on the election, election landscape, like you're going to get the money. And I do think you don't necessarily have to have the framework of the establishment behind you to become the nominee. So like, I guess it's in, in that way. I'm not as outraged by, like, Schumer's attempt to meddle in all of this, because ultimately, I'm not sure that it's actually that much of a thumbnail on the scale. And I could be wrong.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, no, I don't think you're wrong. I think a candidate like Graham Platner, who, I mean, he raised more money than in a similar period of time than Janet Mills did with the help of Chuck Schumer. It's a little bit different in Michigan where you have Haley Stevens showing up at DSCC finance retreats, which Janice Mills will be able to either. But I suspect if Grant Platner survives this period and continues to thrive in this race, he will raise enough grassroots money in his state, as small as main, to compete. There's no question about that. What bothers me even more than just the. It's not just the intervention. It's what it says about their understanding of politics and the lack of humility about what we know about electability in a post Trump era. That bothers me because it says something disturbing about how the people at the top actually have interpreted the 2024 results and how they see politics because they're just running the same play they've run every year, every time, as long as I've been around politics. And things have changed a lot recently.

[Alex Wagner]

The government's still shut down, though.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's, you know what. And kudos to them. They have done a very good job throughout this shutdown.

[Alex Wagner]

By the end, I'm here to defend Chuck Schumer, just also, just not so.

[John Favreau]

Yeah, Alex takes the Schumer position and Dan loves the tattoo is what we are. That is what I'm coming away with.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And you were dealing with, you were dealing with Leighton Obama era trauma.

[Alex Wagner]

Guys, there's a big couch for all of you. There's a big couch for all of you.

[John Favreau]

Good stuff. Well, fortunately, we have till June to keep talking about.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's the best part. Yes.

[Alex Wagner]

Dan's just going to stay here and talk about this race till then.

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

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[John Favreau]

Let's talk about some critical races that are actually happening soon, as in a week from Tuesday. I saw that in the I was like a week from Tuesday. Are we that close? Oh, let's start with the 2025 Face Off. Everyone's talking about the Georgia Public Service Commission. I'm only partly kidding. If you live in Georgia and you don't want to pay higher electricity bills, make sure to get out and vote. This is an important race. It has a lot of ramifications in Georgia. Same for you all in Pennsylvania. In the Supreme Court races there, Republican mega donor Jeff Yass is trying to buy the state's high court. Do not let him go out and vote. Same with all you Californians and Prop 50. Vote yes on Prop 50.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I voted today.

[John Favreau]

I had a couple people texting me and they're like Is it yes? Is it no? What's the good one? And I was like, yeah, proposition. It's tough. The language is annoying. I get that. It's yes on 50. I gotta get my ballot. I don't know where it is. It's supposed to be at my house somewhere. Anyway, that's my point.

[Alex Wagner]

Interesting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I filled mine out today.

[John Favreau]

I know. Well, I got the.

[Alex Wagner]

Where could Jon Favreau's ballot be?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's in Heather Honey's pocket right now.

[John Favreau]

The California State Secretary of State sends a very helpful text to your phone. It's on the way. It says you can track your ballot. So I got all that. I just can't find it. All right, if you don't live in those states, but you have friends and family that do, just give them a reminder. Someone in Georgia, Pennsylvania, here in California, send them to votesaveamerica.com, whatever you need to do. Meanwhile, in New York City, polling shows that Zoran Mamdani is in good shape against Andrew Cuomo. But who knows? Cuomo did land the coveted Eric Adams endorsement on Thursday. After a contentious final debate between Cuomo, Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa on Wednesday night, both Mamdani and Cuomo were out there hammering away the next morning on the platforms where they connect best. Mamdani on the hugely popular Flagrant podcast and Andrew Cuomo on an obscure local radio show. Let's listen to the two approaches.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I also think this idea that, like, New Yorkers are gonna flee because of a 2% increase.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

It's like, I've been everywhere else.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You're not going anywhere. Bill Ackman's not going nowhere. He's gonna be in the Hamptons all fucking. There's only one place to write those tweets. New York City. Exactly. Every character you want.

[John Favreau]

AC Goes out in July in Miami.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He's sweating writing tweets.

[John Favreau]

There's no way he's spending more money.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Against me than I would even tax him.

[John Favreau]

Every day, it's like a million dollars. Like a million. I'm like, I don't even want that. You're going above and beyond. Any given morning, there's a crisis, and.

[Donald Trump]

People'S lives are at stake. God forbid another nine. Eleven.

[John Favreau]

Can you imagine Monda me in the seat? I could.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He'd be cheering.

[John Favreau]

It's another problem. Well, that's lovely. Let's start with our New York City correspondent, Alex Wagner.

[Tommy Lovett]

I hate New York City.

[Alex Wagner]

Sorry. I just, like, barf to all that.

[John Favreau]

Come on into LA.

[Alex Wagner]

I'm ready.

[John Favreau]

We got a bunch of NIMBYs trying to prevent affordable housing from being built. Cool.

[Alex Wagner]

I'm there. Okay. Mamdani's a, like, generational talent. Amazing. No matter what happens, this guy is like, first of all, to the discussion we were having earlier, like, it's just fucking great. It's a shot in the arm for Democrats and progressives to see someone who can so beautifully master the culture and is like a great talker and who's, you know, not just a great talker, but has substantive, new, bold ideas. Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yay. Yay.

[Alex Wagner]

Yay. Check mark, check mark, check mark. But New York isn't all like, bros. It's not all. I mean, I do worry that anecdotally there are some quiet Cuomo voters who are like, in the. In the mid. I. I'm just saying this because I think, especially after the 2024 election, what happened there? Yeah, I'll tell you later. I'm not saying that Cuomo is a shoo in, but I would not be surprised if the race is tighter than it appears to be right now. There is, you know, New York City is a diverse city, and it is a city that is incredibly tough. And there is still, like, there are people I know that admire Mamdani and think he's amazing, but are genuinely worried about his ability to manage the bureaucracy and fight with Albany. And Cuomo was really good at denying New York City funding when he was the governor, but in the inverse, like, Trump didn't. Never paid his taxes, but certainly, like, he knew how to game the system that way. So why not install him as the head of the federal government in the same way like Cuomo will be able to. You know, again, I'm not supporting Cuomo candidacy. I'm just suggesting that I think that there are people in this city and they may not be from, you know, the sort of very online audience that Mamdani is speaking so convincingly to, or even the college educated audience. But I do think that there is a subset of New Yorkers who aren't maybe getting pulled or maybe not being as vocal that are gonna. That could find comfort in Cuomo. And so I guess the only thing I would say in this moment is just like cautious optimism that Mamdani is going to be the next mayor, because I think it might be a little bit tighter than people suspect. That's all I'm gonna say. I could be proven wrong and it could be a landslide, and then everyone will laugh at me, but they're gonna do that no matter what.

[John Favreau]

But if not, boy, do we have a clip.

[Alex Wagner]

Totally.

[John Favreau]

I mean, he is, like, running through the tape here. I'm. Donnie. He is not. And he is doing as many interviews as he can. He's, he's. He was, he went pretty hard at Cuomo during the debate. He's not acting like someone who is 10 points up. And I think that is a good way to run a race, even if you are 10 points up or 15 points up to run like you're 10 points behind. I think that's always great. And he's doing a lot of, I feel like in these last couple weeks, sort of easing the concerns of, of the people that you might be talking about. Right. Which is like, I'm gonna keep the police commissioner and I'm gonna, like, you know.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, I think that that's a different. I almost think that that's like the wealthier New Yorkers who have been reluctant to give him money. You know, he's been tacking more towards the center, at least rhetorically, in terms of not raising alarms around his socialist agenda. And also issues like Gaza and Israel, like, there's. He's definitely trying to play to a larger audience, but I think there's a more. I mean, in the same way that we saw New York, Trump gained in certain areas of the city. Right. Blue collar parts of the city. And I don't know that anything Mamdani is doing right now is something that's even coming across their radar. I think it's going to be maybe as simple as we remember Cuomo, Cuomo can manage the city. We're going. You know, I mean, I think it's just kind of a basic calculation based on name and recognition that is, you know. But I agree. Mamdani's not acting like he's 10 points ahead.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's going to be interesting to see how Mandani does in those precincts that shifted to Trump. Do they just vote for Republican? Was it really affordability and inflation and cost of living that drove them to support Trump? And if that's the case now, maybe it's going to be an apples to oranges comparison because the turnout is going to be so different. But that'll be something I'll look at on election night.

[John Favreau]

Next door in New Jersey, Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill appears to be up about five points against former state Rep. Jack Cittarelli. Reminder that in the last cycle, Phil Murphy won by only three points, but the polls had him winning by more. And of course, in 2024, the state swung 10 points to the right. In fact, Kamala Harris won New Jersey with a smaller vote share than Donald Trump got in Arizona. Dan, has this race been more competitive than you expected?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, I think it's about as competitive I expected. I mean, there's obviously been a shift in New Jersey that is as, as indicated by the 2021 results. And it's not just a, a 2024 Biden border inflation bump. I think it says something real has happened there. And this is what makes this race so much different than Virginia is we live in this state of perpetual change elections. And Mikey Sherrill is replacing a two term Democratic governor and it's always hard to be three terms of the same party. And there's been a lot of concern about her candidacy among Democratic circles. There's been like 15 stories in Axios about panic about this race. And, and part of it is that she has made a couple of mistakes in interviews. One about her, she struggled to name what her top priority would be. Another one where she was on the Breakfast Club and she failed to respond accurately to a very unfair and very inaccurate attack about millions of dollars made stock trading that had been weaponized in ads that are very, especially the one from the Breakfast Club that's very reminiscent of the infamous trance ad from 2024. So it made people nervous. But this was always going to be a close race. It seems like it's a close and we have to hope these polls are accurate, I guess.

[John Favreau]

Yeah. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is up about seven points, maybe more outside the margin of error. But again, who knows? Virginia also has Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races that are very tight. The Democratic Attorney General candidate, Jay Jones, is tied with his opponent after a scandal over disturbing texts with a Republican colleague from a few years ago where he endorsed political violence. He since apologized. National Republicans have been all over this, trying to get Spanberger to fully denounce him. Alex, the delta between the governor and Lieutenant Governor races and the AG race certainly suggests that these Joan texts could really matter. What do you think?

[Alex Wagner]

I just, I guess I can't get over. It's just like, yes, the texts were bad, but like, this is a week when like Trump's nominee for the Office of Special Counsel, Paul and Gracia, admitted last year that he had Nazi tendencies. It's just like, to me, the false political violence, not something anybody should endorse, except that the President of the United States pardoned all the January 6th rioters who are guilty of political violence. Like, it's just very hard for me to even, like, accept that, like the scandal is as big as it is in Virginia and that the national Republican Party is trying to make a big deal of this. Like, it's so reprehensible on so many levels given where their party actually is. But, yeah, I mean, listen, I think Abigail Spanberger, I, I've covered Abigail Spamberger since she was first running for the House. She's an incredibly competent candidate. She absolutely gets it. But what was the question?

[John Favreau]

No, just about the text, which I, like, I tuned in when it first broke. And I do think that there are some. First of all, it's like you're texting a Republican colleague and you are pretty, you're endorsing political violence and then you're like, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. And they're like, you're talking about the person's children. And it's like, yeah, well, maybe sometimes bad things have to happen to someone to change their mind. I mean, I was like, that is some, some psycho shit.

[Alex Wagner]

It's bad. No, no, it's definitely bad.

[John Favreau]

I'm not saying earlier a point about Platner, though, like, you know, he, he apologized. I, I, I think he, the apology wasn't quite as, it could have been better maybe, but he apologized, which is to your other point.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Jones.

[John Favreau]

Jones.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay.

[John Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[John Favreau]

Because first he was like, this is a, he like, tried to blame the Republican, and then, then they had more text, and then he, then the apology was more fulsome. It was one of those things. But to your earlier point, no one's, no one's apologizing on the Republican side. Exactly.

[Alex Wagner]

And it's so much worse.

[John Favreau]

We're Nazis in the group chat. And it's cool. It's just that's, that's the world we live in. The Times had an interesting story about how a big part of the message for both Spanberger and Sheryl is tying their opponents to Trump and how there's some unease in the strategist class about missing an opportunity to present a more positive vision. Dan, what do you think? Is this something you worry about or is this just a story?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I have a meta concern that the party is continuing to run the Same playbook since 2017, which is anti Trump, anti Trump, anti Trump, and presuming the Constitution still stands, and I'd like to believe that it does. We are done running against Trump. So in the, like, we need a message about Republicans, because if you look at, and this says something both about Republicans and Democrats, but if you look at Trump's approval rating on all the key issues, inflation, immigration, crime, healthcare, Et cetera, it's all underwater. But then when you ask them who they trust more, generic Republicans or generic Democrats on almost all but our core issues like health care and climate change, they trust Republicans more than Democrats. And that's in part because Trump has operated separate from the party in a lot of our response. And that's been to his great political advantage because it's made it hard to tag him with a lot of the. The very fair attacks we've done Republicans over the years about cutting Social Security, Medicare and abortion and things like that. But now it's helping the Republicans because it's insulating them from some of his worst transgressions. Now, having said all of that, I think in a off year election where you're trying to generate turnout among a depressed Democratic base, I think this is a totally fine and probably good and effective strategy. They didn't just pick this off the board. They have tested, and that's clearly the most effective. So I understand why they're doing it here. But I think, think we have a broader conversation as a party that we should have on this podcast on a different day, without a thousand pieces of news, which will maybe happen one day, about the right approach, how to balance anti Trump versus anti Republican and positive Democratic messaging.

[John Favreau]

Alex, what do you think?

[Alex Wagner]

I think we have to silo Dan's thoughts about Maine if we want to be able to get to the substantive conversation.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay, June 3, 2026, we will do this. Is that the day after? I think that's the day after the primary.

[John Favreau]

Oh, the primary's on my birthday.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe I have. Oh, man. Talk about your Obama trauma coming to roost.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, my God. It's. The psychology is just at the surface, guys. I don't know. It's hard for me to get. I don't. I mean, I hated that story, actually. I was just like a fuck barf. I don't wanna, like, I don't, like, I don't care. Like, just. Yeah, I guess if that's what's gonna work. It's just he's doing so many bad things. And you can argue that every Democrat in the country is actually, actually a bulwark against. I mean, every elected Democrat is a bulwark against Trump. And what he's doing is affecting people at the local and state level. So why not make it national? I. I don't. I truly don't know. I don't ha. Like, I, I just. I completely agree with Dan that the party has to figure out what it stands for and what issues it's going to own. I think part of the problem, and I've said this before, I'll say it again, is the Democratic Party is the pro democracy party. It is a big, big fucking tent. And right now it's largely a leaderless tent. There's just no person, there's no figurehead that can actually coalesce everybody into having that family conversation. And so I think it's going to be a while. It might have to wait till after your birthday, John.

[John Favreau]

Unbelievable. I think if you are a running for governor, obviously it's good to run on a positive vision because presumably you can do things as governor. I think that most people when they vote in the midterms are gonna be like what you just said, which is Trump's doing a whole bunch of bad things. Democrats can't really promise to do a whole bunch. Right. They'll have subpoena power. Right. They can stop any other Trump legislation. They can't do much more beyond that. So you might as well not over promise anyway. And I think most people who are going to vote in the midterms are thinking, okay, this is a check on Trump, Trump and the Republicans, or it's not. Or we like what they're doing. Right. So I think that that's a different situation. I think once you start looking towards 2028, yes, of course, we need to have a conversation about what we're for and inspire people to actually come vote for something and not just against something.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's a very, it's a conundrum because you can't be a check be seen as a viable check on power if you are not seen as standing for something and being strong. So you're probably going to have to do. The difference between a tiny, slim, barely eked out Democratic majority and a blue wave is a significant improvement in the brand. People have to believe people, even people who don't love Democrats, have to believe that we are a credible, strong, realistic check on Trump's power. And they don't believe that right now.

[Alex Wagner]

Can I just say, I know, like they did shut down the government, which remains true.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm not even saying it's a fair criticism.

[Alex Wagner]

No, no. I'm just putting it out there that they are standing firm on the issue of healthcare. And it's, it is like an important issue. It is resonant with the American public and that is maybe the beginning of the party trying to find an issue that really matters.

[John Favreau]

Finally, we have to take a minute to discuss the most bizarre moment so far in the 2025 elections, which is saying a lot. Tuesday night's debate between Virginia Lieutenant Governor candidate John Reed and Democrat Ghazala Hashmi on Tuesday night. It was a standard political debate with one major twist. Here's a clip from an ad that Reid released right after John Reed showed.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Up for a debate.

[John Favreau]

Gazala Hashmi didn't, so John debated her AI clone instead. Because even a robot version of Gazala has more candor and courage than the real one. Yes. Yes. The entire debate was between John Reed and an AI version of Gazella Hashmi. It included fact checks. It included sources. He. He even asked himself. He had the AI moderator ask himself some tough questions. What?

[Alex Wagner]

Stop this train. I want to get off. I just feel like we'll look back in 2032 and be like, remember when that was novel?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[John Favreau]

Or maybe we'll look back at it like we look back on the hologram of Jessica Yellen in the Situation Room.

[Alex Wagner]

I do miss those holograms.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

I do, too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or John Edwards campaigning in Second Life.

[John Favreau]

Life.

[Alex Wagner]

I don't even know. I don't even remember that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You don't remember. Okay. The real ones remember.

[John Favreau]

Tommy will probably know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Tommy will know. This is post Tommy, but I'm sure he'll remember us.

[Alex Wagner]

I mean, it does raise the question, should we just have AI as governing the country?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Like we're headed. We're headed rapidly.

[John Favreau]

Yeah. The ballroom's going to transition into an AI data center, and all the CEOs are going to be there that tried to pay for it, and they're just going to. And then they're just going to sort of, whatever they do, program the AI to just run the country and kill us all. I don't know. I'm like Trump talking about AI. What are they talking about? That's a big thing. Everyone's talking about the AI.

[Alex Wagner]

You don't understand Bitcoin anyway.

[John Favreau]

We're fucked. But get out there and tell your friends to vote votesave.com because the comebacks.

[Alex Wagner]

We're not fucked till it's over.

[John Favreau]

The comeback starts. We're still a week from Tuesday. That's when the comeback starts. We're gonna get out there and get some votes out and go subscribe to Runaway Country. When we come back, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Denise Ferrazzi from the Pipeline Fund. Before we get to that. Crooked Khan. Two weeks from today, as you may have heard, there are a ton of new speakers added to the Nov. 7 lineup. Lina Khan, Adam Mockler, Tim Miller, Pramila Jayapal. Jen Psaki Simone Sanders Townsend we just posted the full Crooked Con schedule. If you're joining us in D.C. on November 7th, head to crookedcon.com to start planning your day at CrookedCon. And if you haven't made up your mind about coming, now is your chance. The three of us are all hosting panels. Mine's on Democratic messaging. Dan's is about Graham Platner. Dan's is about what the Dan's is about polling. So there you go. You get all the polling stuff. Alex is about what Democrats would do with the majority of if we win it back next year.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's featuring three AI versions of Janet Mills.

[Alex Wagner]

What about Chuck Schumer and Chuck Schumer?

[John Favreau]

No, it's actually going to be Alyssa Slotkin, Brian Schatz and Pramila Jayapal. Great panel.

[Alex Wagner]

None of those names are Mills or Schumer or Platter.

[John Favreau]

That's a great panel. There are limited tickets left. Make sure to take a look at the full [e-mail] and be sure to grab tickets if you haven't really putting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The FOMO and promo here.

[John Favreau]

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[Tommy Lovett]

What are your holiday traditions? Putting up a minimum of six trees. Decorating every room with a different theme. Whatever it is, here's one way to make those traditions extra special. Start the season with Etsy. On Etsy, you'll discover original pieces from small shops to help you celebrate your way. Shop Etsy for holiday decor that makes you feel seen. Special starts on Etsy.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

My guest today is the head of the Pipeline Fund, an organization that recruits, trains, supports the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Party. Denise Ferriozzi. Welcome to POD Save America.

[Jon Favreau]

Thanks for having me. It's so great to be here.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

It's great to, to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you and the great work you guys are doing. So for listeners who have not heard of the Pipeline Fund before, can you just explain what you guys do and how it came to be?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So you know the Pipeline Fund, I think probably those of us who have worked in politics for any number of years have long lamented the lack of a bench in the Democratic Party. I know since I've been doing this work, it's something I've heard over and over. So really, this was an idea kind of after the 2016 elections when we saw. Saw a huge number of folks, I think, for the first time in a long time, looking at running for office as like a real outlet for change and like, wanting to figure out how to do that. And there were all these new groups popping up, you know, like run for something and other organizations. And so we started asking the question, like, how can we use this moment to finally work on building a real bench? Like, how can we make sure that this, this kind of 2018 cycle is not a flash in the pan, but something that we can continue? And so that's how the Pipeline Fund came to be. We basically looked around and said, gosh, now we have this enthusiasm for running. We have all these great organizations, right? Young people are being recruited and supported by Run for Something and women by Emily's List and Emerge. And there's a long list of groups that do this kind of work. And it's not just national groups, it's groups in the states as well. And so we thought, well, what really is missing is how do we actually connect all of that work strategically to make sure that we're getting as many great leaders running in as many districts as possible this cycle and beyond and so that's what we do. We kind of serve as a space to make sure that the national groups are working with groups on the ground in key states to make sure we're recruiting great leaders from their communities into the most important places in this moment and just essentially make sure all that work is scaled strategically so that we have a bench for now and in the future.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

And you guys are focused on creating individual state based organizations, right? Why is that?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we are, we really believe that in order to get someone to run for office, Right. Which, let's be honest, it's not 2017, 2018, it's a different environment. Right. And it can be really challenging in a. What was a normal environment to run for office. But you just add the elements that we're seeing today with, you know, political violence, safety, not to mention like time, people have to have jobs and then they run for office, which can be a full time job in itself.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

So we really think that folks on the ground need to be there to work with people, to identify them, to convince them that they can and should run for office. This to help them plan for that and then to be there right. When they do run, to help them, you know, find staff and navigate the complexities of a campaign. And then also when you become a first time elected official, kind of support them in that new role. Because it's really different from campaigning, I don't need to tell you that. So we really think that the way to make sure that we have a bench for the future is to have folks on the ground who are doing this work, work year in and year out, like we are recruiting now for 26 and frankly for 28 too. And then to be a center of gravity so that they can, once they've got a great person on the line, call those national groups and say, hey, Emily's list, we really need your help. We've got a great woman, but she needs a finance director or she needs to be trained. And so that's kind of the way that we're going to do this, make it sustainable, make sure that we're being really smart. Because recruiting someone in Texas is different than recruiting someone in Wisconsin, where I live. And the folks on the ground know those distinctions, right?

[John Favreau]

Yeah, well, I know.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

And that was actually exactly what I want to ask you. Like in a state like California, where I am, or in Wisconsin where you are, there are tons of Democrats who are elected officials in the state that you can lean on. There's local parties there's basic infrastructure. Wisconsin's got a famously excellent Democratic party, but there are red states out there that are just kind of barren for the Democratic Party. Like there's no infrastructure, there's no muscle memory, there's no institutional knowledge or, you know, people who can help you like, identify the person in the community. In Nebraska that is a big progressive that would like to run but maybe hasn't gotten that push. How do you build a pipeline in a deep red state to both source those candidates and then also kind of steer them to run in the right races and then support them as they go?

[Alex Wagner]

Go?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's a great question and honestly one that we're like navigating right now because we are on the ground in 14 states, but we are actually working with stakeholders and folks on the ground in another 21 states to build kind of pipeline organizations that do this year round work. And you can imagine you don't get to that number of states without working in really kind of deep red states. You mentioned Nebraska, where we are working with folks to start a new organization. And it's really interesting in these states where there's just not a lot of infrastructure and there hasn't been investment folks on the ground know, like the way to start that is actually by starting with developing leaders. Right. We need people to run campaigns, we need people to consider running for office, and we need to help build like the leadership of, of operatives across the state. And so, you know, that's, that's honestly where I think a lot of folks are starting right now. As we recognize we can't just, just play in a set of, you know, eight to 10 swing states. We've got to think bigger. And we are working with people in those red states to say, okay, where do we want to start? What are the unique dynamics of your state? You may not be in spitting distance of, of flipping a state legislature, but we can work on really key county seats and school boards, which are everywhere and kind of show what it looks like to have good leaders who are not these kind of right wing extremists governing as a way to build. So that's what we're doing right now and it's actually really exciting.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, well, can you tell us a success story? Like is there an individual or a state where things are going really well that kind of tells that broader story?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh my gosh, there's so many, you know, I have to say, it's hard to pick. Right. It's like your kids, you can't say which one is your favorite. But let me try. I'll give you one. A new state that we're working in that I think is probably top of mind for everyone at this time in the cycle. Virginia is a place every off year. We're all talking about Virginia because of their state ledge and governor's race. They also have a strong party and great folks on the ground. But we did start a new group there because they recognized that there needed to be more state and local infrastructure. And so we helped launch a group called Build the Bench in January of this year. And they worked with partners across the ecosystem to recruit candidates to run in all 100 House of Delegates seats. And these are amazing candidates. Like, there are majority women, there are lots of women in color, but there's also like farmers, small business owners, teachers. And so. So we're really excited about what that looks like when you are kind of running in different places across the commonwealth. So that's one. But Virginia, everybody knows. The other one that I always like to highlight because people don't think of it as a success story typically on our side of the aisle, and that's Florida. We work with an awesome organization called the Florida Pipeline Project. And back in 2022, they launched this school board protection project to fight back against Moms for Liberty. And also Governor DeSantis who has been super engaged in these local school board races. And it took a while they got folks to run, but in 2024, we had 80% of their candidates win their races at the school board level.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

That's remarkable.

[Jon Favreau]

It's wild. And no one knows about it. Right. So I think that's the thing. It's about finding these places where you can have local success and where those implications are real for people on the ground.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

And it's just a great example of where, boy, you, you, you peel off a fraction of the money that gets dumped into TV ads in the last two weeks of an election to do this long term organizing and you have this massive impact.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I mean, like, if for no other reason, I like to tell folks it's a cheap date. Right? I mean, you can put a little bit of money and have a huge impact. I mean, the investment that we helped make with partners on the ground in Florida to win all those races. Races was a million dollars. Like that's, you know, and I know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Nothing in the Florida regular people.

[Jon Favreau]

That's a lot of money for politics where we spend billions of dollars on federal races, it's nothing.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

And so the Georgia Senate race can be a half a billion Dollar race, like a million dollars in Florida gets you nothing.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right. Statewide and even in a congressional. So, you know, I mean, I think that's the, like, that's the big message here is like we, as a party, we have to stop only focusing on these big federal races. Now I am never going to try to convince someone to not focus on winning back the house in 2026. We have to do that. And we also, if we moved a small fraction of the money that is spent on those races down to the state and local level, we could literally win tens of thousands of races in 2026. And that's not only now, but that's for like the future of who's running for Congress in a couple years.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

And you know, our friends over at Vote Save America have been running this pilot program where we've been telling our audience that lives in Arizona, North Carolina and Texas in particular to go to votesaveamerica.com run if you want to sign up to run for office in those states. And we have, I think 2,500 people have already signed up and taken that initial step. Now some of those people will wash out and they'll learn more and they'll decide to. This is not for me, but that's still a lot of people. 700 of them are from Texas. We've got people in, you know, towns as small as 4,000 people deciding to run. The average age is 38, which is pretty exciting when you think about kind of the gerontocracy challenges the Democratic Party has been facing recently. And the most remarkable thing I learned from our team over at Vote Save America was that 70% of the people that have signed up to run for office have never done anything with Vote Save America before. I sort of thought you would see this ladder of engagement that's like I'm text banking, I'm phone banking, I'm knocking on doors now I'm running. 70% were just like, you know what, I'm taking the plunge. Now's the moment for me, which speaks to the power of asking and then having some infrastructure to support those people. Because it's one thing to say run for office, you can do it, but if you just kind of jump in with no one there to help you, it just, it's unlikely to go as well.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, I mean, we are so excited about this and I also think we're really excited to partner with Vote Save America on this like state based approach. Right. I think there are a lot of efforts that have been launched that are just Kind of more broad national efforts, and those are great, and I. I am a wholehearted supporter of that. But it's really hard to do this state work, and I give you all a lot of credit for trying it with us. And it's working. It's really exciting. You know, those people that you mentioned in Texas, our partners on the ground at Annie's List are literally, like, they have organizers, like, just calling through and talking to these people one on one about what they care about, how that matches up with a potential office that's available or a good opportunity in their area, and then like, really kind of talking through what that looks like and what it means, sending them to trainings, connecting with our national partners at NDTC and run for something for additional resources. It's really exciting, you know, and I think in this moment, it's. It's also really exciting to people, see people stepping up in this way.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, like, in 2017, when you're talking about kind of founding the Pipeline Fund, I mean, there was all this energy. There's all these organizations sprouting up. There were random podcasts sprouting up. You know, like, there felt like a moment when we all felt, like, engaged and inspired, and that's been missing a bit, at least. Least in terms of the protests or the visible effort. So it's great to know that all this work is happening behind the scenes again. VoteSave America.com Run if you want to get involved in the filing deadlines for North Carolina in Texas are in December, so sooner rather than later. Is there a Republican version of. Of you guys that's out organizing us? Like, what's the competition like on the other side? What's the process as far as, you know?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, we did a lot of research actually on this when we first started to say, like, like, what are we up against? And it's really different. The truth is they have a lot fewer, much larger and better funded organizations. So you think about, you know, the, like, Coke network, but really there's this group called the Leadership Institute. Of course, there's, you know, Turning Point, there's all of these organizations, but there are. I mean, I would say compared to our dozens of organizations, there's like, four or five leading ones, and they're all like, like, funded to the tune of, like, you know, 25 to 50 million a year. Whereas our side is, you know, we're lucky on our side for these national groups to have $10 million a year. And so I think the other really big difference is they've just been doing this for a really long time. Like, they haven't just discovered this work. They've been really committed to state and local work for a long time. And they don't. They, they, they. They continue to do it every cycle, regardless of who's in the White House, who's in control of the Senate. And so I think, you know, we are up against, you know, a side that is playing the long game. And we know that. We've seen that that's not just about pipeline and leadership development and state and local offices. It's what they do. I mean, so I think it's incumbent on us to really think about how we can play the long game and not, you know, give up on and really, like, start to focus a little bit more of our resources and time on these state and local office.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Final question for you. I mean, how can people listening get in touch with you guys if they're thinking about running, if this sounds exciting to them, or if they just want to support the organization in some other way? Like, can they donate?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What's the process?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, absolutely. Look, we are. We are at Pipeline Fund. You can go there. You can donate if you are willing. And again, a little goes a long way when it comes to these state and local offices. I mean, school board races can be won by, like, you know, five votes and for $20,000, so definitely donating. And if you're interested in running, go to our website, look at our state map. We can connect you to national and state partners who can help you every step of the way. And we need more folks because guess what? There are. I think it's almost 100,000 offices on the ballot in 2026 alone.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

Jesus, that's a lot of races.

[Jon Favreau]

A lot.

[Guest Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And we will not win any of them if we don't run candidates. So that is the key. Denise, thank you so much for the work you're doing. Thanks for joining the show. It was great talking to you.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[John Favreau]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Denise Ferriozzi for coming on and thanks to Alex for being with us. Everyone. Make sure you subscribe to Runaway country wherever you get your podcast. Tommy Lovett and I will be back back with a new show on Tuesday.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Bye, everyone.

[Alex Wagner]

Bye, guys. That was beautiful.

[John Favreau]

We did it. We did it, guys. 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. Adrian 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, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Kirill Pelaviev, David Toles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Tommy Lovett]

Start the season with Etsy and make your holiday traditions extra special on Etsy. You'll discover original pieces from from small shops that will help you celebrate your way. Shop Etsy for holiday decor that makes you feel seen. Special starts on Etsy. I've never felt like this before. It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy?

[Alex Wagner]

And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it.

[Tommy Lovett]

I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store or dsw dot com.