Trump's Epstein Doodle Grosser than Expected

Summary

Pod Save America: “Trump's Epstein Doodle Grosser than Expected”

Date: September 9, 2025
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor
Special Guest: Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into a fast-unfolding week in American politics, tackling Trump’s rebranding of the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” the disturbing ICE Supreme Court decision, escalating use of federal power in Democratic cities, the latest on the Trump-Epstein scandal, and the coming midterms. Hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor break down the consequences for democracy, civil liberties, and the Democratic Party’s strategy, with a focus on the New Jersey governor’s race through an interview with Mikey Sherrill.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump Declares "Shypocalypse Now" War on Chicago

• [01:51] The show opens with Trump posting a meme suggesting imminent military action in Chicago, echoing “Apocalypse Now.” The meme—complete with Trump as Colonel Kilgore, helicopters, and fire—signals his most explicit threat yet to send federal troops into a major American city.
• Trump: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.” — (as cited by Favreau, [04:42])
• The hosts mock the absurdity but emphasize the dangerous normalization of military deployments against U.S. citizens.
• Favreau: “No war. Just. That’s why we call it the Department of War… but no war.” ([04:45])
• Lovett, on Trump's condescension to reporters: “Such a condescending way to talk… Hard to get over it.” ([04:51])

2. Crime as 2025’s Central Issue

• [05:09] The White House believes this “tough on crime” narrative is Trump’s best political ground, as economic numbers worsen.
• Lovett: “If you look at his approval on issues, the best issue is crime at negative two... They want to talk about crime.” ([05:09])
• Coded operations like “Operation Midway Blitz” and “Operation Patriot 2.0” echo post-9/11 “War on Terror” language.

3. Media & Right Wing Crime Narratives

• Hosts dissect the recent viral video of a Ukrainian refugee’s murder—used to justify draconian crime policy.
• Lovett: “This is just Trump exploiting a horrible incident for political gain.” ([12:06])
• Favreau highlights the hypocrisy: “Trump pardoned January 6th rioters who then went on to commit new crimes. That’s a direct connection… not what’s happening here.” ([14:06])
• Vietor notes that even Republicans realize most voters do not want National Guard deployments in their own cities—revealing the narrative is more about stoking culture-war fears than effective policymaking.

4. ICE and the Supreme Court Enable Racial Profiling

• [16:09]–[22:43] The Supreme Court lifts a ban on ICE detaining people based on suspicion, allowing broad racial profiling.
• Justice Kavanaugh: “They just promptly let the individual go. That’s what the officers do.” ([16:40])
• Sotomayor’s dissent and hosts’ stories illustrate the reality—U.S. citizens detained for days, forced to “prove” their status.
• Vietor: “Is the advice everyone needs to carry their papers?... A sign of an authoritarian state.” ([22:04])
• Lovett: “This is going to make racial profiling worse… ICE raids at Home Depots and job sites…” ([17:03])

5. International Incident: ICE Raids South Korean Workers

• [23:02]–[26:48] ICE detains hundreds of Korean workers at a Georgia Hyundai plant, creating a diplomatic uproar.
• Trump’s muddled response: “If you don’t have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train…” ([23:02])
• Lovett: “The reason we’re not bringing them here is because your administration has a cap on H1B visas…” ([23:39])
• Vietor: “They shackled them hand to waist to toe and released a hype video… The media and opposition in Korea went insane—a gigantic betrayal...” ([24:49])

6. The "Department of War" Rebrand

• [28:53]–[31:12] Trump signs an executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense as “Department of War” (a throwback to pre-1949).
• Tommy Vietor: “I find myself not caring… It’s really fundamentally not the name of the Department of Defense… It is a nickname…”
• Favreau: “They love calling it Department of War because they want to be bellicose… The whole thing about peace is just that—being big and tough and bombing everyone into submission.” ([30:33])
• Coincides with new U.S. military strikes on “narco terrorists” near Venezuela, with no legal justification.
• Lovett: “J.D. Vance says: ‘I don’t give a shit what you call it.’ Highest and best use of our military is killing cartel members…” ([31:57])

7. Growing Fears of Unchecked Military Power

• The hosts stress the danger of unchecked executive and military force—now applied overseas and at home with little oversight.
• Vietor warns: “Before long, we’re going to be hitting sites in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, not just international waters… The strike was the beginning of an effort that could include regime change.” ([32:13])
• Favreau: “Right now, we’re just doing summary executions of drug runners now.” ([33:59])

8. Democratic Party Strategy & Looming Government Shutdown

• [37:39]–[49:27] With a government shutdown on the horizon, the hosts debate whether Democrats should fund what they increasingly see as an unlawful and authoritarian administration.
• Ezra Klein: “Joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It’s complicity.” ([38:41])
• Lovett: “I’m 100% with him on the description of the problem… then it’s like, what’s the plan?” ([38:52])
• Discussion focuses on Democrats’ lack of clear messaging, authentic leadership, and debate over whether tying the shutdown to ACA subsidies is enough.
• Favreau: “I can see the end now—Democrats declaring victory at a press conference while ICE is throwing more people into a van in the background…” ([48:21])

9. Republican Infighting and MAGA Fight Club

• [69:17]–[76:17] The episode covers cabinet infighting—Scott Besant and Bill Pulte nearly come to blows at an exclusive Georgetown club, highlighting the internal chaos.
• Favreau: “Key party at Executive Branch. During cocktail hour, Besant accused Pulte of badmouthing him to Trump. He then told Pulte he was going to ‘punch him in his fucking face.’” ([71:02])
• The hosts joke about the fascism, toxic masculinity, and absurdity on display at the highest levels of the Trump White House.

10. The Epstein “Birthday Doodle” and Trump’s Response

• [51:30]–[58:49] The House Oversight Committee releases an infamous Trump birthday note to Epstein featuring a crude doodle of a naked female figure.
• Lovett: “It’s a gross doodle. It looks like an under—let’s not call it a woman. Looks like an underage girl. There’s no arms… Debate about whether the signature is intended to be pubic hair. That’s gross.” ([52:38])
• Trump surrogates dispute the authenticity, with hosts noting right-wing influencers split between denial and outrage.
• Favreau, on the spin: “They’re saying someone planted this in the birthday book, thinking maybe someday Trump would become President and this would be a problem.” ([54:05])
• Vance tweet mocked: “Forgive my language, but this story is complete and utter bullshit…” ([58:25])
• Vietor: “He does play on … so little respect for the people that support Donald Trump.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jon Lovett, on right-wing crime narratives:
  “This is just Trump exploiting a horrible incident for political gain.” ([12:06])

• Tommy Vietor, on the ICE Supreme Court decision:
  “Is the advice everyone needs to carry their papers? Are we at the phase… where you need documentation with you because if you can’t prove you’re a citizen, you could be held for hours or days?” ([22:04])

• Jon Favreau, on Democratic messaging around a government shutdown:
  “I can see the end of this now. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries declaring victory… While in the background, ICE is just throwing more people into a van. That sounds right.” ([48:21])

• Lovett, on Trump’s Epstein doodle:
  “Gross doodle… Looks like an underage girl. There’s no arms. Debate about whether the signature is intended to be pubic hair. That’s gross. The fact that we’re having this conversation is gross.” ([52:38])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:51 – Trump’s “Shypocalypse Now” meme and threats against Chicago
• 05:09 – The crime narrative & political implications for the GOP
• 16:09–22:43 – The Supreme Court’s ICE decision and racial profiling
• 23:02–26:48 – International incident: ICE raids on South Korean workers
• 28:53–31:12 – The “Department of War” rebrand and what it means
• 32:13–33:59 – Launching military strikes on Venezuela
• 37:39–49:27 – Debate: Should Democrats shut down the government?
• 51:30–58:49 – The Epstein files, "birthday doodle," and fallout
• 69:17–76:17 – MAGA cabinet fight club: Scott Besant vs. Bill Pulte
• 81:36–109:17 – Interview: Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill on New Jersey, cost of living, Trump’s militarization, vaccines, and corruption

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Interview Highlight: Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill

Focus: 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial race, cost of living & threats to democracy

• Main theme: Voters care first and foremost about the soaring cost of living, while politicians fixate on national drama.
  • Sherrill: “If I’m coming at you with democracy and you’re coming at me with ‘I’m about to lose my house’… that’s not gonna go well. And shame on us, really.” ([82:47])
• On Trump’s threats: “He promised to drive costs down… [now] he’s trying to wage war on one of his own cities. That’s really beyond the pale.” ([83:37])
• On ICE and the military: “I’ve heard from DHS officials that there is a loyalty test.”
  “Now we’re putting more money into immigration enforcement than we are into the Marine Corps… You see him trying to both weaken the U.S. military and strengthen ICE.” ([91:49])
• On vaccine skepticism and public health: “Without vaccines, our state could become very dangerous, especially for kids and for seniors… I don’t think that’s too much for the community to demand that your kid’s safe going to school.” ([94:55] onward)

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Tone & Concluding Thoughts

True to “Pod Save America’s” style, the episode balances incisive political analysis with biting humor, sarcasm, and raw frustration at the normalization of authoritarianism and right-wing propaganda. The hosts refuse to mince words about Trump’s tactics or the Democratic Party’s strategic confusion. Reactions oscillate between gallows humor over GOP dysfunction and genuine alarm about threats to democracy and civil rights.

Favreau, closing the loop on real risks:
“If we think it's an illegal government and an authoritarian takeover and all that stuff, then act like it.” ([49:27])

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Useful For:

• Listeners seeking in-depth, plain-spoken analysis of the Trump administration’s current tactics
• Those wanting to understand the reality behind viral news stories & Supreme Court decisions
• Activists & politicos looking at Democratic electoral dilemmas as 2025 midterms approach
• Anyone following the intersection of authoritarian policies, civil liberties, and grassroots politics in today’s America

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For those craving the larger context of breaking news, brutal honesty, and the inside scoop on Democratic strategy (and comedy about clock-smashing bathroom runs), this is a can’t-miss episode.

Transcript

[Jon Favreau]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Jon Lovett.

[Jon Favreau]

And Tommy, on today's show, we're going to talk about the Supreme Court giving ICE the green light to detain US Citizens who look like they might be here illegally. Trump's new Department of War, which seems to be itching for one in Venezuela. Whether Democrats should fund Trump's government. The release of Trump's birthday doodle to Epstein that he claimed didn't exist. Democratic midterm strategy and the latest episode of MAGA Fight Club. Then you'll hear Tommy's interview with the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill, who stopped by the studio to talk about one of the biggest races of 2025. But let's start with how the President kicked off the weekend by posting a meme where he appeared to declare war on Chicago. That's where we are. Having already deployed the US Military to Los Angeles and dc, which Trump has declared a crime free safe zone despite three people getting shot over Labor Day weekend. He's been hinting that Chicago is next and ICE agents have been staging at a naval base outside the city. Then on Saturday, Trump posted a meme titled Shypocalypse now with an AI generated image of him wearing aviators as attack helicopters descend on a Chicago skyline in flames. Also kind of looks like he's farting fire in the meme. Did you guys notice that? Maybe that was just me.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I mean, he's supposed to be Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. It's sort of him crouching on the beach.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right. Unfortunate. I didn't think of placement of the flames.

[Tommy Vietor]

His face is vaguely Robert Duvall, like in the picture. It is emerged of the faces.

[Jon Favreau]

He's lost the, the swollen hands and the cankles on that. I don't think it's supposed to be him, you know.

[Jon Lovett]

Right, right, right. Big, big cankles. Alex Jones told us in great detail. Did you guys watch that segment? Alex Jones talking. He said, he said that Trump's cankles were the size of Alex Jones's neck. And Alex Jones, like, my neck's like 19 inches. So it's fantastic.

[Tommy Vietor]

Anyway, gotta get compression socks.

[Jon Lovett]

Gotta get compression socks.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, back to the. Back to the terrifying declaration of war against America's third largest city. So the caption reads, I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War, followed by not one, not two, but three helicopter emojis. Yes, the Department of War is as.

[Jon Lovett]

Of Friday, but like the news copter version of a helicopter.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what I mean? You work with what you got and you know, Apache. Take it up with Tim Cook.

[Jon Lovett]

Sorry, you're right.

[Jon Favreau]

The Department of War is, as of Friday, Nobel Peace Prize hopeful Donald Trump's new name for the Department of Defense. We're gonna get to that in a minute. Trump was asked whether he had in fact declared war on Chicago. Here's what he said.

[Tommy Vietor]

Are you trying to go to warfare when you say that? Darling, that's fake news.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, why leave the Department of Defense?

[Tommy Vietor]

Listen, be quiet. Listen. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second rate. We're not going to war. We're gonna clean up our cities. We could solve Chicago very quickly. But we're gonna make a decision as to where we go over the next day or two.

[Jon Favreau]

No war. No war. Just. That's why we call it the Department of War. And that's how Chicago's gonna find out, because I posted this meme, but no war.

[Jon Lovett]

That's such a condescending way to talk to a reporter. It's just hard to get over it.

[Jon Favreau]

I know, I know. White House told Jonathan Lemire at the Atlantic that this entire debate about troop deployments in cities has put Democrats on the defensive and that Trump wants crime to be a central issue in the midterms. What do you guys think?

[Jon Lovett]

I believe it. Yeah. I mean, Harry Anton from CNN did a piece today on Trump's approval rating. The headline takeaway is Trump's been underwater and approval for 181 days in a row, which is not great. But if you look at his approval on issues, the best issue is crime at negative two. And then when you get down to economy and trade, it's negative 14 and negative 17, respectively. So I think they think this is a better narrative, better footing for them politically than the economy, where unemployment is ticking up, inflation is getting worse. US Health insurers are raising insurance premiums by the most in 15 years. You guys see that nice little report?

[Jon Favreau]

75%.

[Jon Lovett]

Massive. Massive increase. Yeah. Up to 18% for people buying on the exchanges in 2026.

[Jon Favreau]

Sorry, it will be 75% if we'll talk about this at some point. But if the subsidies go away, which they're. Which they're expiring.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, sorry. The cost of company health insurance is about six and a half percent increase on average government exchanges. 18% anyway. But yes, I do think, like, they want to talk about crime. They're calling this operation Midway Blitz. You guys see that?

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't see that, but they've named it.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, the bot. You know, the Boston one is Operation Patriot 2.2.0. I don't know what Patriot 1.0 is.

[Jon Lovett]

The team.

[Jon Favreau]

No idea. No. Yeah, maybe they drake me out of this. Patriots continue any. What do you.

[Jon Lovett]

Why do you look terrified?

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't know what the. Oh, you're saying the sports team.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

We also have Patriots Day in Massachusetts. It's a state holiday, not a federal one.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. So when you guys celebrate fighting the desegregation of the schools, or is that a different holiday?

[Jon Lovett]

Different holiday. This is the one with the founding.

[Jon Favreau]

Of the country, birthplace of liberty.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is the day when Whitey Bulger threw that cut that cocktail into The Kennedy House honor that day, you freaks. What fucking Massachusetts. Sorry, I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know what's happening on. Why do you bother? Good. Ever. No, actually. What a wonderful place you're from.

[Tommy Vietor]

I know. It's the. It's the. It's the Boston in New York. I can face that. All right, move on.

[Jon Lovett]

Keep going, Keep going. Charlie Gasparino, what do you think about this?

[Tommy Vietor]

What do I think about this? So Tommy pointed out that it is his best issue. He's only underwater by two. It's. This is a spin about the fact that they're on defensive politically going into the midterms. And there was this. The whole premise of the piece, not from the. From La Meier, but from the Trump people are. In 2018, Trump was too conciliatory, all right? He was. He was too bipartisan. He was too kind. And so now we really need to go on offense, which saw that. Which is. You go like, I'm sorry. Like, I know. We all are. Like, yeah, he's goldfish.

[Jon Favreau]

The lesson he took from 2018 was that he reached across the aisle too much.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right? And I was like. I was like, trying to, you know, you, like. I was like, allowing myself even for a moment, to be gaslit by that. And it's like, well, I remember him calling us mobs, saying we were going to turn America into Venezuela, blaming us for the migrant caravans.

[Jon Favreau]

Crazy man sent a pipe bomb to the Obamas and a couple other Democrats, remember? And he thought that was kind of cool. Caravans. Remember the caravans coming in 18.

[Jon Lovett]

You did do that event with Van Jones, though. So maybe that was the problem. First step act.

[Tommy Vietor]

I do remember. I do remember that now. Yeah. So that was an important moment. But the point being, like, okay, they want to put Democrats on defense because of this. And Republicans, like cbs just had a new poll that. That found that Republicans understand that this is what they're. They're meant to do because they said, what's the most important issue? And it's immigration, the border and crime. Right. But that's not true of what other voters are. Are telling people. But then you look even on, like, who is in favor of National Guard deployments to cities? Not most Americans. Most people don't support it. And it's also very geographic because geography is very partisan. And so what are we talking about here? Who is this popular among. It's a popular among people who are consuming information about the cities that they do not live in and support the policing of by National Guard because of what they're receiving about the cities from Fox News, other television, from the algorithm, whatever. But then if you ask people, do you support having National Guard deployments to your city? Even more people say no. So this is sort of a like, it is a, it is an, it is a very popular thing amongst Republicans. It is not popular among independents. It's not popular certainly among the Democrats who live in the cities where these deployments would take place. So even on this, I don't see it as an issue where we should certainly act like we're on defense.

[Jon Favreau]

It's the same issue we had with immigration after he became president again, which is pollsters were just asking about immigration writ large and getting people's approval or disapproval of him on that issue. And then it turned out after a couple months of mass deportations and ICE rounding up people and throwing them in vans, that if you asked how's Trump doing on the border, he gets really good ratings or some of his best ratings on any issue. If you ask how's he doing on deportations, he's way underwater. Right. So it doesn't surprise me that if you ask people who's better on crime, Donald Trump or those, you know, those weakling Democrats, people are gonna be like, yeah, Trump, Trump's better on crime, he's tough on crime. But now that we're breaking out the troop deployments and National Guard on the street, he's gonna be a little less popular in that. But it is all very, it's very war on terror to me.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Which is like, we can do whatever we want, detain whoever we want, arrest whoever we want, provide no evidence, provide no due process, but if you complain, you're just soft on crime like the rest of the Democrats. Yeah, that's where we are now. So the latest example of Trump trying to make crime an issue is this video that is all over right wing media of a horrific stabbing that took place on a light rail train in North Carolina back in August. A young Ukrainian refugee was killed. And it looks like the suspect has a long list of past convictions for crimes like armed robbery. Not sure why this is Democrats fault, but we got Trump has weighing in on it. He's blaming Roy Cooper, who's now running for Senate in North Carolina. You know, everyone in right wing media is saying, why isn't the real media covering this? Or right, why isn't the mainstream media covering this? And of course, they also didn't cover it back in August 22nd when it happened that much it was a local news story until I guess the video got out and was amplified by Elon Musk and all the rest of them. What do you guys think about this one?

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, the video's horrifying, right? It's getting attacked for no reason by a stranger on a train. That is a nightmare. And that, you know, it's especially awful to know this woman escaped the war in Ukraine to come here and have this happen. Right. So this guy should go to jail for life. Given his rap sheet, I do think it's appropriate to sort of ask questions about why he was on the streets in the first place. Like, Donald Trump is talking about this, because this is exactly the kind of video in imagery he wants to use to justify troop deployments or whatever crime policy. And also because Roy Cooper is going to be the Democratic candidate in a really important Senate race. And they're saying that Cooper did something that might have led to this person's release. Although it seems completely made up and there's no connection. There's obviously a racial component. You know, this is a black man stabbing a pretty blonde woman. As Trump himself notes. He talks about her appearance in his statement. Right. But like, in the. To this meta point about coverage, like, actually, generally speaking, like, stories like this are the kinds of stories that get the most attention in American media. And the idea that there's some liberal media bias against stories about the grisly murder of a pretty blonde woman is crazy.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Jon Lovett]

Like, that's. We. We cover these things for months at a time. So this is just Trump exploiting a horrible incident for political gain.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. So it sort of has half of what they're looking for in a story. Right. Because it does have a black person attacking a white person, but the person who was attacked is an immigrant or someone who was escaping Ukraine, a refugee. And so it.

[Jon Favreau]

Who, by the way, Trump might have had deported because he's considering removing protections from Ukrainian refugees who are here.

[Tommy Vietor]

And so, like, they're kind of making. Trying to make it an issue just about crime or something to that effect. But like, the reason stories, it's a terrible story, it's an awful story. But the reason stories gain national attention, or at least that's why they should gain national attention, is because it represents some deeper policy failure. It represents some larger issue that we're all confronting. Now, they can make some kind of argument that this is like the. Represents the kind of whatever, the decadent left's inability to tackle crime or some. That's what Trump needs to do in our cities, whatever story they can try to Tell. But that's the reason this wasn't a national news story. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible crime.

[Jon Favreau]

The worst crime that this guy served time for was armed robbery. Served a sentence long time ago, was released. The mother tried to get him to be involuntarily admitted to a mental institution because she thought he was a danger. Like, they didn't do that or they let him out. That's the. Whoever did that. That's a big problem, right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And don't know why, but, like, it seems like this person should not have been out on the streets. Hopefully now this person goes to jail for a very, very long time. But like the Roy Cooper, they are really stretching on this. Like, Roy Cooper signed some executive order that basically was sort of toothless, like reimagined. Public called for reimagined.

[Jon Lovett]

There's a racial profiling task force that sought to reduce systemic racism.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And then a few months later, this guy got out.

[Jon Favreau]

There's absolutely no sense connected, nothing to do with it. There wasn't a politician who pardoned a bunch of people who later committed or were convicted of sexually assaulting a child, violent assault, robbery, aggravated DUI and reckless homicide. But that was Donald Trump that was pardoning the. That was just some of the crimes that the pardoned January 6th rioters went on to commit. Now, that is a direct connection from his. He pardoned them, then they went to commit crimes. This one is someone didn't keep this person getting the mental health help that they needed or keep them behind bars or whatever it may have been.

[Jon Lovett]

And this is why the meta media coverage is so stupid. Because if a Democrat did what Trump did with these January 6th, can you imagine criminals and they reoffended like they did, it would be all they talked about. Instead, we're pretending that somehow this is unfair and that all the media talked about was Daniel Penney, who was the guy who strangled a person on the New York subway. But that was because that was like a big vigilante justice case that was novel and it happened in a New York subway and the media is all there and they are biased towards covering things in New York. And so, like this whole.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just, by the way, frustrating. It would be fair if we worked for a Democratic politician who pardoned someone who had been convicted of assaulting a police officer and then for no reason they let them out and then they went and sexually assaulted a child. I'd be like, yeah, bad, big problem. That person shouldn't be in office anymore. Yeah, don't care if it's a Democrat.

[Tommy Vietor]

And everybody universally sees this as a horror. Right. And like. And if there were mistakes that allowed this person to be free, that could have prevented this from happening, that needs to be remedied. That's not something anybody would disagree with. Stories gain national prominence and coverage for days or weeks because of controversy, disagreement, some question that needs to be answered. This is just a horrible, horrible thing. And because there is an image of a, of a black man looming over a white woman, it has sort of taken off on Elon's Internet. And from the rest, it's, it's everywhere else.

[Jon Favreau]

We've talked about how Trump's crackdown is less about violent crime and more about helping ICE roundup immigrants, most of whom have no record of committing any kind of crimes in this country. ICE also got some help on this from the Supreme Court this morning, which lifted a lower courts restraining order that had stopped ICE agents here in LA from detaining people based solely on factors like their race, their skin color, or what job they're doing or what language they speak. Justice Kavanaugh basically said, no big deal. If ICE finds out someone is a citizen or here legally, quote, they just promptly, they promptly let the individual go. That's what the officers do.

[Jon Lovett]

That's what happens.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor said, that's bullshit. One of the US Citizens in this case that Justice Kavanaugh and the other justices in the majority heard was thrown against the fence with his arm twisted behind his back. A US Citizen. The other US Citizen was taken from his job to a warehouse for questioning. What do you guys make of the decision and the implications?

[Jon Lovett]

Kavanaugh putting that line in there that promptly let the individual go. It's just such, like, trolling, you know, like, he knows damn well there's so many examples of American citizens or people with visas or tps who get swept up into ICE systems and then detained for days, if not weeks. We've heard about it a thousand times. And he just decided to ignore that fact. I do think in the near term, this is going to make racial profiling worse. You're going to see more ICE raids at Home Depots and, you know, job sites and stuff, and all the things Trump keeps sporadically telling us he will not do anymore because his business buddies call him up and say, hey, you're killing my construction business, or whatever. But this case is almost certainly going to go back to the 9th Circuit and then get ruled on again and then almost certainly go back to the Supreme Court again. So it's not the end of it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, though it is.

[Jon Favreau]

It seems like they tip their hand. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a really bad sign that Kavanaugh jumped in to make this argument that the. That the lower court overstepped, not for any procedural grounds, but for the substantive argument that he makes here. And just practically speaking, the temporary restraining order had restricted the administration's conduct. When there was that truck, the Penske truck, that opened up and a bunch of guys jumped out. That was. That was novel and newsworthy because it was a violation of the order. But overall, the number of people that ICE was able to arrest had gone down because of the order. Like, the Kavanaugh language is so bloodless. And you just think about how much, like, empathy this court has had for the rights of a football coach who was fired for praying on the field or a student who feels that they were unable to gain admission because of affirmative action. And then it is just this. Well, you just. You just clean it up. You just clean up the mistake, like it's a parking ticket or some sort of misfiled document. And it ignores what happens when people just touch the criminal justice system during an ICE raid. So this. This woman, Andrea Velez, the Guardian reported on this example. One example, she's a citizen. She was born in Los Angeles. She happened to be downtown when a bunch of guys jumped out of an suv in gators were grabbing vendors. She gets picked up. She's thrown an suv. She gets out and runs to the LAPD because she doesn't know who these people are. And she trusts them because they're in uniform. They pick her up again. They throw her in the back of an suv. She's described as an alleged citizen. She's then brought to a jail, where she's held for days and then charged with assault because one of the officers claimed that at some point, she had extended her arm and he had been unable to stop himself from running into it. She's 4 foot 11.

[Jon Lovett]

Okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay. Two days she spent in jail right? Before she's charged. Her lawyers then request the body cam footage. Two weeks later, they dropped the charges. Right. And so, according to Kavanaugh, this is an example of a job well done or the system working. Meanwhile, she had this incredibly traumatic experience. She's afraid now to go downtown because she's afraid that they could grab her again. Her life has been altered by this. She was held in jail because of this. She almost was charged with assault because of this. Fortunately, they dropped it. But, like, that's just one story of all These people that are gonna just be impacted in some way that, remember, there was that story, and these stories continue long after they leave the news. There was that kid who stepped in because he saw it's just a guy he knew from work being arrested. He gets accused of assault. They drop that, they lower it to a different charge. Meanwhile, he lost his job at Walmart. Right? They questioned whether or not he was a citizen. Like, it just, it's wrecking people's lives.

[Jon Favreau]

I did that video for socials about that woman in Massachusetts. Mother, three daughters, saw her get ripped away at the airport. She was gone for like two weeks. Shipped to Maine, shipped to a bunch of different detention centers. She's now, like, not well. She's sobbing every day because they, we talked about this on the show that they like, threw out of the van in the rain by the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts. Like, this is, it's just happening all the time. And it's like, it's one thing. I'm like, first I was like, did Kavanaugh, does he just only consume right wing media? Is he just lying? But then, as Sotomayor said, the two plaintiffs in the case were U.S. citizens. And then he says later, he goes, he goes, well, to the extent that excessive force has been used, the Fourth Amendment prohibits such action and remedies should be available in federal court. He's like, but we're not, but we're not talking about excessive force right here. And Noah Feldman points out in Bloomberg, too, that it is rightly seen as this is going to allow racial profiling in Los Angeles and all over the country. But he said also the way that the ruling is written, it means that they can do this to anyone, anyone, they can make up any kind of category of people that the government, because reasonable suspicion is a very low standard. And so, you know, he was like. And it's weird that we're. He's like, we're talking about it because it's immigrants. And so we're like, oh, well, if you speak Spanish and if you're, you know, your last name, whatever. He goes, but it would be painfully unlawful for the government to stop all young black men in high crime neighborhoods, or for that matter, all Patagonia clad white guys on Wall street in a suite for insider training. But that is now what the Supreme Court has set out. So anyone walking around, they can stop you and be like, well, we have reasonable suspicion based on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's it. And then until you prove that you're a citizen, not until they check it, but until you prove it, then you can be held.

[Jon Lovett]

And they often won't let people provide proof of citizenship.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

There's an example in one of the. I think it was the AP story today where the guy gave his ID to these cops or the ICE agents. They held onto it for 20 minutes before letting him go and then kept his ID.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And even before you get to, like, broader ways in which this could be abused, what is the advice? Is the advice everyone needs to carry their papers? Are we, are we at the phase of the Trump government takeover where, like, you have to carry papers with you? A classic, A sign of, of an authoritarian state that you need to have a piece. You have your documentation with you because at any time you could be stopped. And if you don't have your papers, if you can't prove you're a citizen or have valid immigration status, you could be held for hours or days. Do you know your parents number? Do you know your sister's number? Do you know your friend's number to go into your apartment and go find the documentation? Because if you don't, and it's the weekend, you may be here for a while.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's fucking outrageous. One of the more surprising immigration stories over the last few days was the federal raid on a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia where agents detained 475 people, the majority of whom are workers from South Korea. Trump was asked about this on Sunday. Here's the really detailed, cogent explanation he gave.

[Tommy Vietor]

If you don't have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people. But it's going to be very interesting what comes out. I think we may have learned something, because when they come here and there's nobody that can do what they're supposed to be doing, and they bring people, those people can also teach our people. You know, it's complicated stuff, and something very interesting could come come out of that.

[Jon Lovett]

He's such a idiot.

[Jon Favreau]

So you're saying other people who aren't Americans may have skills that could be useful to Americans and America, and maybe we should bring them here for a bit.

[Jon Lovett]

The reason we're not bringing them here is because your administration has a cap on H1B visas that are used for this kind of specialized work in training. That's what those people, these, these Koreans didn't have, which is why they were arrested for misusing a visa and are now being deported, which you told the.

[Jon Favreau]

Doofuses at the all in podcast that you were 100% for.

[Jon Lovett]

I just. It's like, it's so infuriating. I mean.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, Tommy, you were saying this morning that this is now like a. A full fledged international incident.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's a huge thing. Like, first of all, just roll back the tape. Like, under Biden and then Trump, South Korea was asked to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the US and they did. So this battery plant in Georgia is part of that. And it's supposed to be exactly what Trump wants. It's a way you buy yourself out of some, you know, 40% tariff or whatever. And then these arrests happened and these, like, they don't just arrest these people and, like, quietly send them home. They shackled them hand to waist to toe and released a, like, hype video of it. And that video just exploded across Korea. And the media and the opposition political parties went insane, understandably, because it's a huge insult to these individuals, to the country, to this, like, U.S. south Korea alliance. It's supposed to be rock solid. And all of these, these companies and political leaders are wondering, like, what is the deal we cut with this guy?

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jon Lovett]

I thought we were supposed to invest and, and get. Not favor, but, like, get treated decently. And so what was it? Last month, I think the Korean president was in the Oval Office talking to Trump, and now it's just viewed as this gigantic betrayal. And I think this kind of thing, like, it doesn't go away. So, like, this will bear out over time and really harm the US Korean relationship.

[Jon Favreau]

Did you see one of the politicians in South Korea said they should start looking at Americans who were teaching on visas over in South Korea and, like, maybe, you know, send them back home. It's like, I get that.

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, we have 28,500 troops sitting in South Korea. There's a lot of reasons not to be dickheads.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. The shackling of these people, as if there were, like, some, like, sort of danger. They're there working in a battery plant. We sought these deals, these partnerships to have these battery facilities. Some American companies were part of them, in part because it allowed them to hire people outside of their unions. Right. That's how some of these people come in to do these jobs. The other, the other part of this, too, is when Trump is speaking here, it's just one of those moments where you see him remembering a meeting he was in where he was explained some complication of this. Right. Because he's aware that this is an international incident, and he's aware that they want these plants to succeed and that this looks bad. Right. So he's trying to make some reference to how we really need these jobs. We're not trying to shut down these plants. This is important. This is good. We got to get other people. But he has no familiarity with the context or H1B visas. Can't retain any of this information. So it's a good example of that.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's like a new industry, right? This new EV battery industry. It's specialized work.

[Jon Favreau]

Of course.

[Jon Lovett]

You need people to come in and train you into how to create the factory that will then employ all these people. But like his administration is the one making it harder for these companies to do that. And he just doesn't seem to understand anything.

[Jon Favreau]

No substance or the idea that maybe this is not zero sum. Maybe, maybe that bringing in South Koreans to help teach Americans how to make batteries and then giving them the, the, the privilege of living here as well can benefit Americans and South Koreans and our whole economy.

[Tommy Vietor]

And it's always the, it's always the workers too, who are the ones who get shackled and carted off. Right? Like at the meat packing plants or all these other places. It's like, it's amazing how it's a crime being inflicted on the companies.

[Jon Favreau]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has been helping people find solutions to their problems for over 10 years and have a 4.9 rating out of 1.7 million client session reviews. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 10 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp is fully online and you can pause your subscription whenever you need to and switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's convenient, too. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Therapy's great. You could use it. You might not think you could use it. That's probably most people. But once you go, once you give it a whirl, you're like, oh, this is cool. I get to talk to someone about my problems and they're paid to listen. And if you feel like I don't want to get out of my house and go meet someone at an office, this is what BetterHelp is for. You can just do it online. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of Expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com PSA that's betterhelp.com PSA Monday Sidekick.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

So let's talk about the peace president's new Department of War, which is what the Defense Department used to be called prior to 1949. Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the department, which he can't actually do without an act of Congress. So the EO just says it's a secondary title. This did not stop Pete Hegseth from changing his Twitter handle from ECDEF to eckwar. He also shot a video of the nameplate being changed on his office door. Defense.gov now takes you to war.gov, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What do we think of the rebrand guys?

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't care. I don't. I find myself not caring. I don't. I like, I see people being like, well, I can't believe he's doing this. I find it all pretty confusing because even as he, as he lectured and talked down to that reporter, he doesn't want to be a war president. He constantly talks about how he's ending wars, but yet war seems tougher than defense. Like, the whole thing is garbled and nonsense. It's really fundamentally not the name of the Department of Defense, which it continues to be. It is a nickname. So he can call it whatever he wants. Like I like. I have trouble getting spun up about this.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I mean, the national security Act of 1947 and the amendment in 49 that changed the name, that was, that was not just a rebrand. That was like a fundamental restructuring of the way we do defense and national security. It put the army and the Navy and the Air Force under the Sec Def. And then it created the nsc, the National Security Council, and it created the CIA. So that was a substantial change in our history. This is just, you're right. It's just a nickname. They don't really even change the name to Department of Defense. So I'm with you. Like, I don't give a shit. I do find it just confusing, though. It's like he is going for this peace mantle. He is sending the US Military into American cities. Why do this rename now? I guess they just think it sounds cool.

[Jon Favreau]

I wonder if he started from the war on Chicago meme and then worked backwards to make that work by sh. By saying, now you know what the Department of War is all about. Clearly, they love calling it the Department of War because they want to be bellicose and tough. And the whole thing about peace is just that. The way that you get to peace is by being big and strong and tough and kicking the shit out of everyone else and being able to bomb everyone else into submission.

[Jon Lovett]

They think Vietnam went well for us. Do you think he's seen Apocalypse Now?

[Jon Favreau]

Does he know that it's a. It's an anti war movie?

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, they would say, well, that was because. That was because of the department name change.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Things worked better when it was a Department of Women.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right, right. So the Trump administration did decide to take the Pentagon's new name out for a spin by deploying eight warships to the Caribbean and then killing 11 people on a speedboat who are suspected of trafficking drugs from Venezuela to Trinidad. The administration didn't bother to provide any kind of legal rationale for the killing, though J.D. vance did get into a Twitter fight with a Krassenstein brother over the whole thing. The vice President tweeted that quote, killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military. To which the Krassenstein brother, not sure which one, responded, that killing another country's civilians without due process is called a war crime. To which Vance replied, I don't give a shit what you call it. And then I guess he took the rest of the Saturday off. Here's what Trump said about whether he's planning more military strikes against a country we haven't declared war against.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Are you considering attacking the cartels inside of Venezuela? You attack.

[Tommy Vietor]

What are you going to find out?

[Jon Favreau]

You're going to find out. I'll tell you what, whenever he says, you're going to find out, that's a yes.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, for sure.

[Jon Favreau]

Thoughts on a preemptive war of choice against Venezuela, Tom?

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, it is. When you look at, like, kind of the hardware they're sending down to the Caribbean, it's eight Navy destroyers. Apparently a nuclear sub is on the way. I've read that and I think Newsweek or CNN, 10 F35 fighter jets were just moved to Puerto Rico as part of whatever this new war is. And again, you don't need a sub, you don't need a F35 stealth fighter jet, fifth generation fighter jet. To take out a boat full of drugs like this would be something you would do with a helicopter or a drone. It's unnerving. And so I find it unnerving. Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, finds quite unnerving. He thinks it's the threat of an invasion. He's talking about deploying this kind of hybrid militia he's constructed of, I think, 4.5 million people all over the country in case they are invaded. And other leaders in the Caribbean are all freaked out, too. They're kind of like, you know, what's happening here. Trump, you know, remember, he was. We were threatening to retake the Panama Canal, like two weeks ago. Right. So this is not, this is odd for them. Look, I have felt since the campaign that there was a lot of momentum towards militarizing the war on drugs. Remember, they talked about it all the time on the campaign trail. The polling is surprisingly good for some pieces of this plan. I fear that Trump is going to love looking decisive in the press coverage and releasing these snuff videos of boats blowing up. And before long, we're going to be hitting sites in Mexico or Venezuela or Ecuador or not just international waters. And, you know, a lot of sources told CNN that the strike was the beginning of an effort that could include regime change. So it's pretty scary stuff. And like, none. Look, none of this is going to reduce the demand for drugs in the U.S. it seems unlikely to me that blowing up drug boats is going to do more to stop the flow of drugs than interdicting them would, but I guess we'll see. But right now we're just doing summary executions of drug runners now.

[Jon Favreau]

That's what we're doing. What do you think's gonna happen with destabilized regimes and people who are, you know, desperate? Where are they gonna go? Is that gonna reduce the. Is that gonna reduce the push towards.

[Jon Lovett]

Our border, a nice regime table and toppling of the minor government in Venezuela? Yeah. That will send a lot of people north.

[Tommy Vietor]

They've offered no explanation for why they couldn't just interdict the boat. Right. Why couldn't they just interdict the boat?

[Jon Favreau]

Men with guns jump on the boat, say, give me all your drugs and you're all coming with me. Arrest them. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Cause we were Aware of where the boat was. That's how we killed everyone on board. And look like we just like. To your point about the war on tour earlier, like, we just watched this language come to me, whatever they want. And you just described the people on this boat as narco terrorists. I don't know what that term means. I know what it means in the context of the brutality of living amongst drug cartels in Mexico or South American country. I don't know what it means in this context because I don't. I don't think it's the fucking kingpins on the speedboat running the drugs between countries. And so you're blowing up people that are part of a serious crime that we have a huge problem in trying to address. But these are the people that deserve to die. And they just say, well, they're narco terrorists. So, yeah, they can die. We can kill them. We can kill them from above. Why not?

[Jon Lovett]

And they lay this process where we get to designate you a terrorist if you're part of Trinidair Agua, then we do a secret directive that says the military can kill these terrorists who are part of these gangs. Maduro is connected to the gang. So you just like, you create this daisy chain of legal justification or authority in air quotes, and then you just start killing people.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, no, it's as. It's as simple as we think this person's bad. They did something horrible that you think is horrible because you think drug trafficking is bad and bad people are bad. And so we killed them. And so if you think that it's bad that we killed them, then you must lug drug traffickers. Right? And we can't believe a word that they say. Right. You know, at first, when the New York Times wrote about this, there was an. We talked about this on the last episode. There was an official who used to work on sort of in the government, in our government on narco trafficking and said like, that doesn't seem right, that usually that's probably a boat full of migrants, and maybe not. And then there was actual reporting from the town in Venezuela where it left. And it's like, no, this is probably a drug boat. But it's like they already designated Andre Romero Hernandez as Trende Aragua and shipped him off to Sicot to be tortured, even though he was clearly not trend. So how are we supposed to believe our government now when they tell us who's a narco terrorist that they just murdered?

[Jon Lovett]

This is the Rodrigo Duterte Philippines model of death penalty for drug dealers, which Trump has long pined out love talked, often talked about.

[Tommy Vietor]

Did you see that? What I think was Rand Paul posted in response, I thought was like. Like kind of heartfelt. And from his libertarian side, that I thought was, like, exactly right.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, this is the highest use of our military. Actual judicial killings.

[Jon Lovett]

Jd. Jd I don't give a shit. Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the highest and best. The military. Then he goes, did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that part jumped to Harper Lee so fast. But he's right. Like, did you ever wonder what might.

[Jon Lovett]

Happen if you accuse. If he. The accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? Like, yeah, it seems like a problem.

[Jon Favreau]

And I forgot what the White House tweeted to Rand, but it was something like, you pussy. I didn't see their response, as usual. Oh, yeah, they just. They went nuclear on Rand Paul.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, Rand Paul did recently create an entire media cycle about getting disinvited from a picnic.

[Jon Favreau]

I remember that he was told he.

[Jon Lovett]

Couldn'T come to the congressional picture.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a fair point. Complicated guy. Complicated guy.

[Jon Lovett]

Good points.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sometimes later on with that leaf thing. Remember when he got. He got in a fight over leaves.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I'm not getting that. I'd always wondered.

[Tommy Vietor]

He never found out what happened there.

[Jon Favreau]

No one ever knows.

[Jon Lovett]

Seem bad.

[Jon Favreau]

All right. It's been a while since we've talked about Congress. Once known as a co. Equal branch.

[Tommy Vietor]

A word that never made sense.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

That code did nothing.

[Jon Favreau]

They're back in the news. They're back in the news only because they must soon fulfill one of their only remaining duties, funding the federal government. Money runs out on October 1st, which means a shutdown is officially looming. The shutdown is a loomer. We got a loomer. The question is, will Chuck Schumer's Senate Democrats provide enough votes to fund the government like they did back in March, or will they use their leverage to demand concessions from Trump and the Republicans? Stay tuned. Ezra Klein wrote an essay in the New York Times over the weekend where he said this, quote, I'm not going to tell you. I am absolutely sure Democrats should shut the government down. I'm not. At the same time, joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It's complicity. Democratic leaders have had six months to come up with a plan. If there's a better plan than a shutdown, great. But if the plan is still nothing, then Democrats need new leaders. Thoughts?

[Jon Lovett]

If you shut down the government, it's really hard to. Insider trade and make money off the stock market.

[Tommy Vietor]

I thought he had a serious joke face. Gone.

[Jon Lovett]

How are you going to do high frequency trade if you shut down the government? No, like, I've read Ezra's piece. I'm like, I read ezra's piece. I'm 100% with him on the description of the problem. Yeah, the description of the moment. The idea that we can't do business as usual, that we can't legitimize this lawless administration, then it's like, what's the plan?

[Jon Favreau]

You know what I mean?

[Jon Lovett]

Like, we're going to break out of prison. What's the plan? Because, like, what is our demand? What is the end game? What do we want? What's the political plan to work backwards from there? I truly have no idea. And like, I just he part of what he says. He's like, I think the shutdown would focus the attention of the media on kind of like the merits of what's happening. I don't have a lot of faith in that. Having been through some shutdowns, like, I think they tend to report on it as a fight. I also don't think we have great messengers who would be leading that fight. I'm not. Like, if we're doing a UFC match on the White House lawn and Chuck Schumer versus Trump in terms of, you know, getting the media's attention, I don't think we're winning that one. So, like, I'm with them, but I still think we have some work to do.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, Like, I get to the end of the, the argument and I think, man, this is a great argument for having a time machine and going back six months and figuring out an argument we'd slowly be making up until this moment for why we should walk away. Like, Chris Murphy's been out there and this was in the original reporting about him being the kind of lone vote against compromise in the committee. And I went and pulled it cuz it stuck with me at the time. And he said, every single day there's new evidence that our democracy is failing. Every time that we go along with these appropriation bills, we're putting a bipartisan veneer on the endorsement of an illegal process that ultimately is part of a campaign to destroy our democracy. That is true.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a good point.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's a true statement.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a good point.

[Tommy Vietor]

And you know, we went through this debate.

[Jon Favreau]

Sometimes I wonder if, like, that's all you need. Yeah, it could be that's the only explanation.

[Tommy Vietor]

And I find that I get to the end of this and I feel the same uncertainty. And I worry, too, about the people that are meant to be our leaders through any kind of shutdown. And I think, okay, that makes the right decision uncertain from a strategic standpoint, but the moral argument is simple and clear. And if we don't know the right strategy, we're not positive of what the right thing to do is from a tactical standpoint. Shouldn't we rest on what is obviously the truth about the circumstance?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So I find myself agreeing with everything you said, Tommy, about the challenges with this. Of course, we don't have better messengers. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a good plan to do something that we could declare victory over. I don't know how you get out of it once you get into it. And I do think it's, as Ezra puts it, an intentional event. I don't think it's. I think you're right that, like, it's attentional for a while, like a week. And then who knows now when parks are closed and people aren't getting their checks, then maybe the detention comes and who knows if it's good or bad. And that depends on the messengers. Right. Then I'm trying to play out another step after that. So what are the downsides of the shutdown? Right. So the Democratic Party has the lowest approval rating since we've all been alive, and so I don't know how much lower we can get. We'll show you. Yeah. I was gonna say it's sort of like what Trump always likes to say. What do you got to lose? Right.

[Jon Lovett]

Macron's at 15%.

[Jon Favreau]

And so we briefly contributed to a government shutdown in 2018, which as we're not. He doesn't talk about us, but he talks about the 2018 shutdown over a week, over the dreamers. Remember, we had the Waffle House. We had all this. Those of you who've been with us all this time, you'll know you remember it. And it didn't work. It was a failure. Government shut down. And then it was embarrassing. The Democrats did usual thing, which is like, yeah, we'll kind of shut it down, but now we're nervous, so we'll open it back up. And, you know, it was a loss for the Democrats, but we kicked ass in the midterms. It was fine. And that was closer to the midterms than this one is. Right. So I'm trying to figure out what it's like. We have not taken a lot of risks as a party in the second Trump term, and we have not done any big moves, and I'm not sure how to get out of this one. And I'm not sure that we could declare victory. But I do wonder if now is the time to start throwing a few more things at the wall to see if they stuck. I don't know, but I feel the same.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I don't envy. I don't feel like spitting fire at the people that would disagree either. And part of the problem is what the Democratic message to be. And in a shutdown, Right. What are we going for? What are we fighting for? Where do we think there's any chance of us eking out a claim of victory for the shutdown? Actual practical results, I'm not sure. But part of the problem is that it's not just that we don't think our leaders are going to be up for that fight on the White House lawn. Part of it is that our leadership have the same kind of constituency that Donald Trump has. And I really keep coming back to this, which is like, I think of all the people that don't just like Donald Trump, but love Donald Trump and that are really kind of just enthusiastic, engaged supporters of Donald Trump and his project. And then I think of Democrats. I think of how few Democrats have any kind of base of support like that. I know AOC does. I know Bernie Sanders does. I know Barack Obama did. I know Mamdani is building that. Right. But then I look at the leadership of the party, and I know there are people that support them. I know there are people that are frustrated by any kind of criticism of them we hear about from them all the time. Right. But is there a sizable group of people that love and are ready to fight for Chuck Schumer and Akeem Jeffries and the leadership of the Democratic Party? No. No. And that's partially their fault. It's not all their fault. It's a collective failure to build a kind of collective story that gets people excited to be those kinds of messengers which you need, especially online in any.

[Jon Lovett]

Kind of a shutdown, even just even shy of, of love them or support them, like, have faith in them, that they understand the moment. Because remember the last time we all got very mad at Chuck Schumer about this? He did like a. It was a New York Times interview with. And I think he sort of like was again doing that thing where they talked about how the fever was going to break among Republicans. And you don't know what I say to my colleagues behind the scenes, and you hear that stuff and you're just like, no, man, I don't think that's going to happen. And also to your risk averse point, I mean, I do think like, like you are sending a signal to the Democratic base when Zoram Mamdani wins the Democratic primary in New York for the mayoral race and you will not endorse him. Why? Because your donors are telling you not to. What's happening here, what possible reason could there be for?

[Jon Favreau]

Because we holding out hope for Andrew Cuomo.

[Jon Lovett]

For Andrew Cuomo, right. And it's like, yeah, man, so you're right. There are reasons that are unfair, that people don't have faith in them or aren't excited about them. And there's some reasons that are quite fair that people do not have faith and are not excited by the leaders.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think most of the reasons are quite, quite fair. And by the way, with that too, it's like, I don't even know that it's as logical as, oh, I'm hearing from my donors. I think it is a fear of some segment of their, of the, of the people that elect him in New York. Right. It's like a kind of an instinct against anyone who's outside of like a core Democratic center left message that they just feel unsure about and are afraid of the consequences of getting by.

[Jon Favreau]

We have talked before about how one of the big problems is that Democrats sometimes act like this is an emergency and Trump's dictators consolidating authoritarian power. And then sometimes it's like everything's fine today and whatever. Dan just wrote a message box about this, I think last week, which was like the dividing line is with Democrats is do you believe we're an emergency or not? If they are all in for this, the one thing that's saying we're not gonna fund this government because this is what he's doing. And you know, he's placed an illegal tax on every American with a tariff. He's using our tax dollars to occupy our cities with our own military. He's using our tax dollars to create a secret police force that's rounding people up. Right. And you could say that and be like, we're not funding, like basically what Murphy said, we're not doing this and this is an emergency and we're gonna start acting and we're gonna not start, but we're gonna act like it's an emergency. You know, and I could see that the challenge There is all 47 Senate Democrats and all however many in the House have to go along with that and every governor. And you can't have some being like, yeah, well, now I want to know what you guys think about this. One of the suggestions is, and you can see the Democrats, some Democratic strategists, pollsters, senators, coalescing around. This is. All right, let's make, let's shut it down, but let's make the fight about extending the ACA subsidies because healthcare is the best issue, the best polling issue. And if we have a fight about. Yeah, the reason we're shutting the government down is because they're gonna, if they get their way, everyone's premiums are gonna go up now for sure. Great polling issue. I'm sure we're on the right side of that. Is that, what do you guys think about that as the reason to shut down the government?

[Jon Lovett]

I think on the merits, we're doing a good thing for the American people. On the political hackish political view of it, we're bailing him out. We're helping him avoid something bad that would happen that he probably would have gotten blamed.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, you're saying, like, if we win on that, it's really. Yeah, that's a good.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it has the feeling of, you know, we found our best testing message is we don't. Americans don't want troops in our streets. Americans want more affordable healthcare. Right. And that line polls well. But have we not, like, learned anything from a decade of losing while having the winning argument and the best message and the right policies and the, and the winning polling story over and over and over and over again? Isn't there something missing here? And this one is a kind of an edge. More of an edge case? Because that's a great thing to fight for. That's a great thing that we should fight for. And it's actually something where we could win.

[Jon Favreau]

I see it, in fact, if we do the shutdown, I think that should be part of the message, no matter what. For sure. But should it be the only message? I worry about it, too.

[Tommy Vietor]

I do. It just feels inauthentic. It feels fake. It just feels like you looked for something that felt safe that everybody could get behind.

[Jon Favreau]

I said this to someone this morning, but I can see the end of this now. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries declaring victory at a press conference for getting an 18 month extension on ACA subsidies that are smaller than they were before and means tested. While in the background, ICE is just throwing more people into a van.

[Jon Lovett]

That sounds right.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's. And there's the troops, too. The troops are in the background too. And they're like, we did it.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's a picture and there's a and Trump. And Trump posts AI of himself having Schumer on a leash like the gimp in Pulp Fiction.

[Jon Favreau]

But you know what? But you know what? Then we get the message testing out and everyone's like, boom, Democrats won on this one, guys. Republicans are now 30 points underwater on healthcare, so march off to the midterms. It's bleak. It's bleak. Yes, it's popular. I get it. And you are right, it is the actual right thing to do for people to fight for ACA subsidies. But there's a lot of other risks out there. And this government, if we think it's an illegal government and the that's authoritarian takeover and all that stuff, then act like it.

[Jon Lovett]

We're not going to get credit from the people we need to get credit.

[Jon Favreau]

From on like, yeah, I know, I know. It's tough. Pod Save America is brought to you by armra. Why are elite athletes, business moguls and high performers using Armor Colostrum? Armor Colostrum is nature's first whole food with over 400 bioactive nutrients working at the cellular level to build lean muscle, accelerate recovery and fuel performance, all without artificial stimulants or synthetic junk. Whether you're running a business, training hard or just want an edge, Armor optimizes your body for peak output. Probiotics and other supplements are touted as a gut health solution, but most products on the market are dead before they even reach your gut armour. Colostrum naturally fortifies your entire gut wall system and optimizes your whole body microbiome, which helps guard against irritants that can trigger digestive issues and compromise your immune system. Research has shown that Colostrum also helps to enhance nutrient absorption. Let Amber Colostrum help you reach your goals by promoting lean muscle building and fueling better performance and faster recovery. Colostrum Bioactives have also been shown to reactivate hair follicle stem cells and activate collagen production, promoting hair growth and enhancing skin radiance. We've worked out a special offer for our audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armor.com cricket or enter Cricut to get 30 off your first subscription order. That's a R M R A dot com crooked Hey, I.

[Tommy Vietor]

Had the time.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Mikey Sherrill]

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vietor]

It done and I owe it all to you.

[Mikey Sherrill]

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[Jon Favreau]

One thing, we could shut the government down over the Epstein files.

[Jon Lovett]

Okay, good, good pivot.

[Jon Favreau]

Because as we know, this is all a distraction from the Epstein files. On Monday, not long before we got into the studio, the House Oversight Committee Democrats said they'd gotten a hold. See, who said Democrats can't do anything? They got a hold of the famed Epstein birthday book and other files from the Epstein estate. Shortly after that, they posted the image of FBI informant Donald Trump's now famous letter to Epstein with the figure of the naked woman drawn over it. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Taylor Budwich immediately tweeted that the signature shown in the letter isn't Trump's, even though it looks nearly identical. So all the other times he signed personal notes with just his first name. Separately, Epstein survivor Lisa Phillips told our what a Day newsletter that the Epstein list that she and her fellow survivors are compiling will include 30 to 50 names of Epstein associates. Though she stressed that in a bunch of cases, they don't know whether the people they're naming knew about the abuse going on or whether they were just billionaires who hung around a lot. What do you guys make of the infamous doodle and the chances that Trump can just make the scandal go away by saying that it's just a hoax, just fake. That's it.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a gross doodle. It looks like an under. Let's not call it a woman. Looks like an underage girl. There's no arms. Also, there's a debate about whether the signature is intended to be pubic hair or not. That's gross. The fact that we're having this conversation is gross.

[Jon Favreau]

Also.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't know if you guys saw this. The Wall Street Journal also now has a photo of someone holding up a poster board size check for $22,500, which has been mocked up to appear that it was sent from Trump to Epstein. Beneath it, there's a handwritten caption that says, jeffrey showing early talents with money plus women sells fully depreciated name of a person that's been redacted to Donald Trump for $22,500.

[Jon Favreau]

So yeah, there's a. That was a funny joke, but mocked.

[Jon Lovett]

Up check of Trump selling him a woman. What more do we need to see?

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm learning that from you now.

[Jon Lovett]

It is disgusting.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, they also, they also, the journal also compared the handwriting, of course, to other letters that he signed and it's.

[Jon Lovett]

All including Hillary Clinton.

[Jon Favreau]

And all the fucking asshole MAGA influencers and media types and everyone on Fox probably now in the White House, they're all showing signatures of Donald Trump with his full first name and last name, which of course look different than letters that he signs with just his first name and saying, we got him, we got him.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is so, this is so asinine that the idea that they're going to, that they're going to claim that the signature doesn't match and therefore it's a forgery. So you're saying that the Wall Street Journal in cahoots with God knows who, went into this giant scheme to pretend Donald Trump wrote the letter for a decade and a half?

[Jon Favreau]

No, no, they're saying that 20 years ago, Donald Trump, that Donald, someone planted this in the birthday book, thinking that maybe someday Donald Trump would become President and this would become a problem for him.

[Tommy Vietor]

And so this extraordinary act of sabotage which has been going on for so long that no one involved in this scheme had the wherewithal to go look up, up the way Donald Trump signs his name in personal letters like so they did everything except that last tiny little step. I do appreciate that the Wall Street Journal is really trolling Trump by showing that the, the way he signed his name personally to Hillary Clinton, Epstein and George Conway, which I fucking love.

[Jon Lovett]

Beautifully done. Chef's kiss. I'll tell you what's it what on the media and the MAGA media front though, what's happening here is the MAGA influencers for hire, the ones you can buy and sell, the Charlie Kirks, the Benny Johnson's, they are going along with this spin, right? The more extreme, the most extreme MAGA media people are not buying it. The Candace Owens's, the Nick Fuentes, they are saying this is bullshit, guys, this is crazy. They think you're stupid, you're idiots. And MAGA is over. Let's move on to the next thing and that there's going to be second and third order effects to that too, because those like neo Nazi, anti Semitic voices are gonna be seen as credible or more credible than the kind of even more mainstream MAGA types.

[Jon Favreau]

Benny Johnson before, back when Mike Johnson for a brief day decided to tell everyone that Donald Trump was actually an FBI informant on the whole Epstein affair before he sort of cleaned that up today. Benny Johnson said, you know what, what Mike Johnson said, it's just proving that the real hero in this whole story is Donald Trump.

[Jon Lovett]

Called him the undisputed hero in the FC side. There you go.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you. Undisputed hero. He's the undisputed hero.

[Jon Lovett]

We've all been saying it.

[Tommy Vietor]

What is it like to say something like that and then turn the computer off and go live a part of your day and maybe lay down at night and stare up at the ceiling? What is that like?

[Jon Favreau]

I hope that he at least turns to everyone in his close circle and laughs and was like, did you think they bought that? I hope that he's at least aware of it.

[Jon Lovett]

I think he's living a very inauthentic life in many ways, unfortunately.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a good one. So, I don't know. I mean, for a while I was like, is the Epstein thing gonna go away? But like, we've got after the survivors press conference and after this, the birthday letter has come back and the Oversight committee, Jim Comer has been like, sort of going along with some of this. Like, I don't know. I think he's.

[Tommy Vietor]

I also think sometimes Republicans underestimate how much, much how much Democrats care about other Democrats because I feel like one of the looming threats is that they're going to like, well, they're going to bring in Bill Clinton and I don't think anyone gives a fuck.

[Jon Favreau]

Nope.

[Tommy Vietor]

And. Right. They're going to like, it's. Oh, no, you're not. Not our precious billionaires. Like, they're going to go after the people they're going to go after. Like, great.

[Jon Favreau]

If you were involved in fucking Epstein, Shadiness, fuck you.

[Jon Lovett]

If you were using children.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Go to jail. Who cares?

[Jon Lovett]

Go to jail.

[Tommy Vietor]

And so I guess the threat is that they're going to be like going after Democrats too, in these hearings because.

[Jon Favreau]

That'S how they think about politics and polarization. Right. It's our team. We must defend our team.

[Tommy Vietor]

And by the way, speaking of the Epstein list, one of the things, I don't know if you guys talked about this last week, but Thomas Massie talked about the list that Lisa Phillips and these survivors might generate and saying that because they might be afraid to release it because they could be sued, that Massie and Marlowe Taylor Greene, both of whom we always liked, she spoke at.

[Jon Favreau]

That press conference too.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Could potentially just read the names on the House floor because they're protectors. And Thomas Massie, he doesn't give a fuck.

[Jon Favreau]

No, no.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, he's got a bunch of MAGA billionaires raising like, I think $2 million at this point for super PACs to run against him. And he's like, I don't care.

[Tommy Vietor]

Whatever.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, no, I, I do, I do think there's an open question of how much attention will this get? Because Fox News is never going to touch it. Right. The Benny Johnson's the world, the T, the Charlie Kirks, they've all shown that they're now on Team Trump. They don't care what said. I think there will be these fringe people that are out there talking about. There also be like the comedian space, like Tim Dillon.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

We'll be hammering this. He's kind of like a Trump friendly comedy, kind of hard to pin down. Views guy. I wonder if Rogan will pick this up. Like, hopefully for a few of them they will be like, the scales have fallen off my eyes. Donald Trump is a liar. He was absolutely 100% a part of whatever Epstein was doing. We know this now.

[Jon Favreau]

Can I just do one more thing before we move off this? Everyone on the Internet is dunking on J.D. vance's tweet.

[Jon Lovett]

Well deserved.

[Jon Favreau]

When the Wall Street Journal first broke the story about the letter, the birthday wish, whatever you fucking calling it, he wrote, forgive my language, but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed for publishing it. Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's so.

[Jon Favreau]

He's such a. He's so fucking smug and condescending even when he is so raw all the time.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's really also the like, would you believe that they didn't show us the letter? Like, it's smug and also just. He does play on. He just has so little respect for the people that support Donald Trump. Right. Because no, a journalist doesn't provide you. I'm sure they got a detailed readout of the letter. All the details you could ever need to comment, of course. But he's saying they didn't show us the letter. But then there's the part of it where it's so fucking stupid. Like, like we talked, we did a video about this earlier and it's like, do you not believe that the future will be as real as the past? Like, we're gonna move forward through time, JD and like. And eventually this will come to pass. That of course the Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is not making it up.

[Jon Favreau]

He's learned from Trump that you only have to get through the day. But he doesn't have Trump's skill. Correct. At doing it.

[Jon Lovett]

Correct.

[Jon Favreau]

He's just not as skilled at fucking. He's a doof.

[Jon Lovett]

I also like, look, they are trying to sell him as the MAGA heir apparent, and that he will be the next up for president. Right? And there was all this reporting early on, like, is he a uniquely influential vice president? He's going and giving these speeches, trolling all of Europe, and he's doing this. And now we know that Donald Trump does not respect him. They're like, you're gonna be my human shield in the press on this Epstein thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't do it. It's a fake fucking letter. Yeah, go, Go say whatever gets gunned down on Twitter all day today. Trump has no respect for him. You don't have him, lie for him. They didn't give a shit.

[Jon Favreau]

You go do your long tweet threads to all of your former friends in the establishment that you used to hang out with.

[Jon Lovett]

Give me 800 words of Curtis Yarvin.

[Jon Favreau]

See if you can. See if you can piss them off with your long tweets.

[Jon Lovett]

Good luck, J.D.

[Jon Favreau]

Have fun at Disneyland. All right, let's talk about Democrats in the midterms.

[Tommy Vietor]

I got onto the bathroom so badly, I'm gonna die.

[Jon Lovett]

One or two?

[Jon Favreau]

Wow. Two.

[Jon Lovett]

Two.

[Jon Favreau]

Two.

[Jon Lovett]

He says one, everybody. John and I are just gonna vamp and see how this goes.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, my gosh.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, he just broke the Kamala Whiskey, love.

[Jon Lovett]

It's broken the Kamala Whiskey, everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, that's a bad. Well, it can't get worse.

[Jon Lovett]

Maybe it was number two. I wonder if he's been taking creatine.

[Jon Favreau]

He whipped the door open to.

[Jon Lovett]

Loud.

[Jon Favreau]

Laugh down the hall.

[Jon Lovett]

We got a bedlam here, Kirk and Media hq.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, it's the fucking clock. Oh, Lovett broke a clock.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, Lovett broke the clock.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm assuming we're recording all this and we're gonna release it later.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, yeah, no, of course. This is going in the episode.

[Jon Favreau]

Lovett had to shit so bad that he. He ran from the office. Like, I've never seen him run that fast ever.

[Jon Lovett]

4:05Pm Shattered. Time stops here.

[Jon Favreau]

Shattered a clock in the studio.

[Jon Lovett]

I suppose we could do the red zone part with Adam. He's not going to contribute to that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's true. Let's go low. He's got two sections to go. You know, you got to go. You got to go. I do.

[Jon Lovett]

We've all been there.

[Jon Favreau]

I've been there for sure.

[Jon Lovett]

I have. Breaking news, we have a second JD Vance Epstein tweet has hit the timeline. The Democrats don't care about Epstein. They don't even care about his victims. That's why they were silent about it for years. The Only thing they care about is concocting another fake scandal like Russiagate to smear President Trump with lies. No one is falling for this bs. That's JD Vance quote, tweeting Caroline Levitt trying to pretend that the Wall Street Journal birthday card story was false. So rather than admit he is a shameless liar, JD Vance is digging in. Lovett, how was your daughter?

[Tommy Vietor]

So it was just a fantastic number one. Thank you, Tommy.

[Jon Favreau]

Great.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm not ashamed of. Listen, everybody's gotta go.

[Jon Favreau]

We all gotta go.

[Tommy Vietor]

What'd I do?

[Jon Lovett]

You smash the clock.

[Jon Favreau]

You ripped open the door so hard.

[Jon Lovett]

Been lifting too many weights. Man, lay off the creatine.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wow.

[Jon Lovett]

For two reasons.

[Tommy Vietor]

I just. I can't believe this was painted as a shit. There's no way to not defensively say I didn't take a shit just now.

[Jon Favreau]

I hope it wasn't painted as a shit in the bathroom.

[Tommy Vietor]

Do you remember when we got that all. We got that all staff email that said, FYI, they've closed the men rooms because they have to jet clean the whole pump plumbing system.

[Jon Lovett]

It's tough.

[Jon Favreau]

Should we do the rest of the show?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, let's do it. We're recording.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, let's talk about Democrats in the midterms. Annie Carney at the Times had an interesting roundup of the blue collar candidates running in some of the most competitive districts and how they're resonating with voters by talking about how much Republicans are screwing over working class people like them. Right on cue, Michigan Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow got some social media buzz over the weekend with a video that railed about corporate greed pegged to week one of the NFL season.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Football is back. And seven hours of commercial free football.

[Jon Favreau]

Whopper, Whopper, Whopper.

[Tommy Vietor]

Whopper is not.

[Mikey Sherrill]

This is just the latest example of corporate greed ruining the things we love. Because it's not just commercials on tv.

[Jon Lovett]

It's also your grocery store run or.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Chicken wings are gonna cost you 19 bucks.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you think AD supported NFL? Red zone is the new cracker barrel rebrand. What do you think?

[Jon Lovett]

I like it. I like that ad. Also, Graham Platner, Senate candidate from Maine, tweeted about Red Zone. For those who don't know, Red Zone is supposed to be seven hours of commercial free football. That is the promise of Red Zone. Now, espn, they acquire the property and they're jamming in what they claim will be a few minutes of commercials, but we should not believe them. But also, it's a station you pay for floor. Imagine if all of a sudden game of Throne had commercials.

[Jon Favreau]

Trying to. I mean, you.

[Tommy Vietor]

You don't.

[Jon Favreau]

It's probably coming.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's Atlas. Pay for it. You pay for it and you get ads.

[Jon Lovett]

You're paying for a premium, and then all of a sudden get ads.

[Jon Favreau]

Red Zone is, like, not cheap.

[Jon Lovett]

No, it's expensive. It's very expensive. And so I think her talking about Red Zone and making this anti corporate message with it as the newspag is really, really smart.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's. Yeah, like, I. I didn't understand that. I was confused about the whole football thing because I saw that, oh, no, no more seven hours of football. And I was like. Like, you people have been getting 7 hours commercial free of football. God, what a society they built for the people that like to play for the Red Zone.

[Jon Lovett]

It's not too much. It's like. It's too frenetic.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it was a good ad. I think that there's, like. I mean, here's the thing. It doesn't. We're setting a low bar here with the Democratic candidates. And Mallory McMorrow has always been great at just speaking like a normal human. Our buddy Abdul, who's also running that race also, all his stuff looks just like. It doesn't look as polished as your typical ad that drives you nuts because you've heard it a million times before. He's doing a good job of that. Bunch of other Graham Platners doing a good job of that. A lot of candidates running. I think it's been shorthanded as working class, but it's also just like being a normal human being. And I think there's some Democratic candidates who maybe are not the choice of the D. SEC or the DCCC who are maybe. Maybe out of necessity, maybe out of just the fact that because they're normal human beings who haven't been in politics that long are figuring this out this time. So I think it's a great thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Graham Platner sounds like the name a s' more would take if it became a person and needed to come up with a name super quick. Okay, I like the ad. I do like the ad. I do. Like. I sometimes think, like, when our bar is so low and we're so desperate for people, just that sound like people. And then they do, and it sounds like a person, like talking about something that might bother some people and like, okay, great. But then you think like, okay, corporate greed. That's the problem. And then I think, what is the Democrats view collectively? Like, what's our party's position on how we're going to take on corporate greed. And like, I just, like, I'm sure we have. There's a bunch of like interesting policy proposals and, and white papers out there. But like the other side of it to me is the like, I don't know, like the like fighting the enemy and making more clear who the enemy is and what you're going to. And what, and what. And why corporations need to be afraid of us.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it's fair to say there's not like a clear white paper on sort of like how you deal with the oligarchy. Right. But I do think more like what's happening this cycle is you've got this deliberate effort to run candidates who are mechanics or veterans or oyster farmers and they just, they, they look and they sound and they are working class people. And I just think like your average voter learns two minutes worth of information about someone before they vote for them. And if you look credible and like look like you will fight for them and they believe it. They believe it. From your bio, you're more likely to get their vote than like a lawyer or, you know, a rich guy.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, a lot of lawyers. And you know, I'm sure a lot of good lawyers out there. A lot of good lawyers who are gonna be good candidates. But we got a lot of lawyers at the Democratic Party.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

Too many. Too many. Also, James Talarico, who I believe you interviewed. Love it. That's right up and coming. Texas State Rep is expected to announce on Tuesday that he's jumping into the Senate primary. So it's him and Colin Allred, who was just here as well. What do you guys think is his theory of the case against a more established guy like Colin Allred?

[Tommy Vietor]

I have no idea. I'm waiting to find out.

[Jon Lovett]

I really do.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Got a taste of that. Got a taste of that national press going up there to Illinois wants another hit.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I'm not really sure either. I mean, like, I think, you know, he did well on Rogan. People were. It was interesting to hear a Democrat talk about faith in that way. It felt sort of unique. Although, you know, we've heard Democrats do that before, just not in a little while. But I don't know. I mean, I think in some recent polling it looks like maybe he's behind already. Although it's not clear who did that polling, if it's credible. Right. It was like 500 voters in Texas, which is a lot of people in it.

[Jon Favreau]

So who Knows, I think it's an interesting test case in attentional strategy, which is like. Like Texas is, you know, a huge fucking state to run statewide in. And, you know, he con. Allred has run statewide before. James Talarico has not. And so I'm sure his name ID is not quite as high. Now he did Rogan, huge audience. He's gotten national attention. So can he get the attention necessary to run in a state like Texas and get known in a state like Texas against someone like Allred who has already run once in Texas and who presumably has been running for a little while and has a larger fundraising network? I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see, right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then tension towards what end? Like, why do you. Why are you so. Allred's running. Why are you so. Why are you so pulled into the race? What needs does he not meet that you do? You know what I mean?

[Jon Favreau]

You can imagine him. He'll try to run more of an outsider strategy than all red and maybe take on the. I'm going to fight more. Take on the system more. Because Allred is more, you know, and this is true when he was in Congress too, is more of like a work with the other side kind of guy. But we'll see. We'll see. All right, before we get to Tommy's Mikey Sheryl interview, we do have to talk about the Trump cabinet secretary most likely to beat the ever living shit out of one of his colleagues. Of course. Talking about Scott Besant.

[Tommy Vietor]

What a surprise. That pink housed fairy is gonna be.

[Jon Favreau]

The one I say, are you a homophobe? Is that why. That's what you think? That's why, yes. You're surprised?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. We're a sensitive guy.

[Jon Favreau]

He's a big guy. He's a big guy.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

I would only be surprised because he's like 63 and an economist, but a cursory Google search suggests that Besant is between 62 and 6 3, big guy. And that Pulte is only 5, 8, but also inexplicably 37. Although he looks. If you told me he was 50, I would have believed.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wait, I'm sorry.

[Jon Favreau]

Like the fact that it was 37 years. 37, Miller's, what, 38th birthday too, was the other day. Like, like these people look so fucking old. Fascism ages you. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Also the New York Post, did you see they did a story, sort of a poll, informal poll of White House staffers to see who they'd want to win in a fight between the two of them.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, we Should. I didn't even set. We didn't even set up the. Sorry. I'm just saying people are listening and they have. Unless they. Unless you read Politico playbook and everything Rachel Bade writes. But anyway, so there's a story about Besant nearly coming to blows with White House Chief Mortgage Fraud investigator Bill Pulte at a dinner last week. Rachel Bates sets up the story in a way that will make you want to scream into a pillow. The Wednesday evening event was supposed to be one.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm talking about a fist of cuffs.

[Jon Favreau]

So, yeah, the Wednesday evening event was supposed to be one of celebration. It was both. The much anticipated inaugural dinner at Executive Branch, the ultra exclusive Georgetown club created by and for Trump, world's uber rich, and a birthday party for MAGA friendly podcaster Chamath Palapitaya. It's the worst. It's like the worst couple sentences I've read in a long time.

[Jon Lovett]

Your punishment for being a part of this crowd is hanging out with this crowd. That way.

[Tommy Vietor]

What if that's your Russian doll night? You know what I mean? Fucking sucks.

[Jon Favreau]

Key party at Executive Branch. All right. During cocktail hour, Besant accused Pulte of badmouthing him to Trump. He then told Pulte he was going to, quote, punch him in his fucking face. Then after the club's owner intervened, Besant told Pulte he wanted to take things outside so he could, quote, fucking beat his ass again. Fisticuffs again, Fisticuffs, Right. Yeah, no, those kind of fisticuffs. Anyway, incredibly, this isn't the first time that Besson has gotten in a fight with another administration official. If you guys remember, back in April, Axios's Mark Caputo reported that Besson and Elon Musk got into a, quote, quote, he did shouting match at the White House. I think we had more details that it got even worse than that.

[Tommy Vietor]

But, yeah, no, there was a shoving.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think it was Elon shoved Bessant. And then that's when Elon had to leave.

[Jon Favreau]

But now he. Maybe he made another threat where he said, I'm going to fucking beat your ass or whatever.

[Jon Lovett]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

What do you guys think about this?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, so the New York Post asked White House staffers who they'd want to win. Here's a quote from the story that I think was representative. The general consensus in the White House is that Scott would have beat that little midget's ass and everyone would have paid big money to watch it happen. One person close to the President's inner circle Told me so, apparently.

[Jon Favreau]

Does that person work at Treasury?

[Jon Lovett]

They are. Sounds like. Honestly, sounds like Steve Bannon.

[Tommy Vietor]

Another official said that Besson actually has a surprisingly big cock. But he's not braggy about it. Just gives him a confidence.

[Jon Lovett]

He's a grower, not a shit. Are you sure?

[Jon Favreau]

I think Bannon's a Pulte guy.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't know. I don't know either. It's a good question.

[Tommy Vietor]

The other thing, too, is this dinner. I. I was trying to.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm making it.

[Tommy Vietor]

The dinner took place at a table for. I think it said 30. Like it was a very long table. A very long table. And I was thinking about how to call this the night of the long tables.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, you've been working workshop on that one.

[Jon Lovett]

And I never cracked it since our 9am call.

[Tommy Vietor]

Never cracked it.

[Jon Favreau]

And you know What?

[Tommy Vietor]

Since our 9:00am call, seven hours. Well, I had a. I had to find out about what's going on with that. A lot of news.

[Jon Lovett]

A lot of real news.

[Jon Favreau]

You get a soft launch on a call with five people and then if it doesn't work there, you just go for the full audio.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's.

[Jon Lovett]

That's right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I was gonna say, just in defense of Scott Besant's being a gay guy that wants to fight people. There are two paths for the gay boy, and one of them is to become soft and meek and Hyde in theater. Right. But there is the path of the tough gay guy who's like, I'll take on any of you. I'm Scott Bessant, dammit.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, Bill Pulte.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's also possible. So the piece goes on. They've been fighting these two for quite a while now. It's over. You know, Bill Pulte, when he's not investigating the President's enemies for mortgage fraud that his own family has committed as well, he is trying to like, reorganize Fannie and Freddie. And he's the, you know, he's the federal housing guy and there's some like, turf battles over this. And also he wants Jerome Powell. He was the one who sent the letter to Trump saying that he should fire Jerome Powell and drafted the letter for him. And Bessant's like, that's fucking crazy. It's gonna. To screw up the markets. Everyone's gonna go nuts. And so they've fought about this before. I think that, like, Besant probably has learned how to really appeal to Trump, how to work Trump. And the best way is to look like you're a fucking tough guy. Yeah. That's a good point. And he knows, like, I'm gay Cabinet secretary, and for Trump, I need to play against type and be as tough as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if, like, Besant was very happy leaking this whole story.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a good point. It does make you wonder if third term he's just slapping the shit out of people in the Oval Office.

[Tommy Vietor]

You don't get fire and Trump raw by being sub dom, you know?

[Jon Favreau]

That's right.

[Jon Lovett]

That's right. Fanny or Freddie maybe.

[Jon Favreau]

He's gonna be at the UFC fight on the White House lawn that Trump's organizing.

[Jon Lovett]

I saw someone.

[Tommy Vietor]

What's the undercard? He could be the undercard.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, that's a good point.

[Tommy Vietor]

He beat the shit out of Bill Pulte in the undercard.

[Jon Favreau]

Do you guys remember when there were.

[Jon Lovett]

Like a week or two of news cycles about Elon Musk threatening to fight Mark Zuckerberg? Remember when we did that and they.

[Jon Favreau]

Were like, in the Coliseum? Simpler times.

[Tommy Vietor]

Didn't Zuckerberg say yes?

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, he was really leaning into it because he had been like, like doing karate training.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Thought it was cool.

[Tommy Vietor]

And it is cool.

[Jon Favreau]

We're doing karate training.

[Jon Lovett]

He had a little brown belt, some.

[Jon Favreau]

Yellow belt, making statues of his wife on the lawn.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, you know, he does the karate and then everybody gets a little juice and a little. Little crustless peanut butter and jelly. And then back to coding.

[Jon Favreau]

And he dresses up as Benson Boone, sings to his wife, bring me my stylist.

[Tommy Vietor]

I need another. I need more street wear.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Then he burns the report on how Meta's sex bots are targeting teens or whatever.

[Jon Favreau]

Unbelievable. You know what? I'm really happy we transitioned the Besant fight into just shit on Mark Zuckerberg for a little while.

[Jon Lovett]

It's well deserved.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe Besant will go beat his ass, you know?

[Jon Lovett]

Did you see the clip from last week where Trump's like, mark, how much are you gonna invest in the US And Zuckerberg's like, what do you want me to say?

[Jon Favreau]

600 billion.

[Tommy Vietor]

Then he's, what do you want me to say?

[Jon Favreau]

Sorry. He said the 600. And then he was said, was that the. I don't know what number you wanted? Sure.

[Jon Lovett]

Was that the right number? Sure. Was that.

[Tommy Vietor]

So worst.

[Jon Favreau]

This is it. This is. This is our empire.

[Jon Lovett]

That's who's dining at the executive club with Chamath.

[Jon Favreau]

Chamath. Happy birthday, Chamath.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Just want to make sure he had a great birthday.

[Jon Lovett]

What was a tweet about his penis? Remember that one?

[Tommy Vietor]

You judge a lot about it. You judge a person by. Yeah, Judge a person by their friends.

[Jon Lovett]

Amen.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's what I say.

[Jon Favreau]

Amen. All right. When we come back, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill. But her campaign for governor again, I'm sure right now she's thinking, great choice.

[Jon Lovett]

Another seamless transition on this podcast.

[Tommy Vietor]

Did you ask her about the pizza like I asked you?

[Jon Lovett]

I didn't know how to pivot to that. Cause I'd never eaten it.

[Tommy Vietor]

All right.

[Jon Lovett]

I did ask her about filling up her own gas tank in New Jersey and why we can't do that. Cause you can get hurt.

[Tommy Vietor]

You get hurt in New Jersey.

[Jon Favreau]

One quick thing before we get to that interview. You guys have all heard us talking about how excited we are for CrookedCon in November. Crookedcon.com I can say it now. It's gonna be a day to join some of the smartest organizers and least annoying politicians in America to strategize, debate, and commiserate about where we go from here. They'll also be drinking. We'll be kicking off the event on Thursday, November 6, with a live Pod Save America show at the Warner Theater. Then on Friday, November 7th, we'll be hosting a full day of conversations, panels, workshops, and live pods at the Wharf with all of our favorite National Guard members.

[Jon Lovett]

Have you guys thought about that at all?

[Jon Favreau]

I only thought about it when a couple of our. When I did an AMA on the Discord, and a couple of people were like, are you guys. How are you guys feeling about the security there and doing it in D.C. and I was like, I haven't really thought about that. Gonna be fine.

[Jon Lovett]

Marketing's gonna make us cut this, but the Wharf turns into the largest ice detention facility in the East Coast.

[Tommy Vietor]

Krigan. Once you enter, you cannot exit.

[Jon Lovett]

Leave it in Jordan.

[Jon Favreau]

Anyway, the announcement that I'm supposed to be reading is that we're really excited to share the lineup of folks joining us.

[Jon Lovett]

Who will you be locked up with?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, this is who you get.

[Jon Lovett]

List Q.

[Jon Favreau]

As it is. This is who you're going to seek out with. Ready? Hasan Piker. No surprise there. Faz Shakur, Sarah Longwell, Brian Tyler Cohen, Jessica Tarloff, Senator Ruben Gallego, Governor Andy beshear, Representative Sarah McBride, Representative Janelle Bynum, Ben Wickler, and lots more. It's exciting.

[Jon Lovett]

Great group.

[Jon Favreau]

More names to come. More names to come, guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

Very exciting.

[Jon Favreau]

We'll be there, too, of course, along with Dan and Ben Rhodes and Aaron and Alyssa from Hysteria. And we'll close out the day with strict scrutiny. Live and by popular demand. We just added more tickets because you guys just kept buying the tickets so fast. Now we're adding more tickets, especially with that lineup and who knows whoever's coming next.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, it's funny that just. It's funny that just like, shout out to our marketing team that puts Hasan Piker first on virtually every.

[Jon Favreau]

Of course. Of course.

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, Great. He's like. It's like the Senators, the governors coming.

[Jon Favreau]

The 20, 28 hopefuls. They go at the end of the list.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jon Favreau]

We got Hasan Piker first. Anyway, see the full lineup and buy your tickets before they sell out at Crooked.

[Tommy Vietor]

Crookedcon.

[Jon Favreau]

Ah, you fucked up, Tommy. You want to try Jesus?

[Jon Lovett]

All right, put her out for one strike.

[Jon Favreau]

Jesus is. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Crookedcon.com that's right.

[Jon Favreau]

Crookedcon.com Pod Save America is brought to you by Zip Recruiter Hiring Boy. It's tough. A lot of resumes.

[Jon Lovett]

Takes time.

[Jon Favreau]

Takes time. You're going through all the resumes like, you know, I don't have time to just look at all these resumes. It'd be great if there was someone who could do it for us.

[Jon Lovett]

I want to find the diamond in that rough.

[Jon Favreau]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

Joining me today in studio is New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikey Schrell. Congressman, welcome. Great to see you. Welcome to the pod.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah. Well, this is fantastic. I'm a longtime listener, first time. Yeah. Person on the pod.

[Jon Lovett]

I know the listeners can hold me accountable for all the wrong takes, all the bad language, all the things we get wrong here.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Oh, I'm from New Jersey. I'm gonna hold you so accountable for bad language.

[Jon Lovett]

You're good with that. Well, we did just spend 10 minutes talking about potty training, so you know our headspaces. Right. I have a 2 year old who's doing potty training right now. So a lot of folks are watching the New Jersey gubernatorial race because it's important, but it's also a bellwether. On the one hand, you know, the party out of power tends to do well in off year or midterm elections. On the other hand, New Jersey Democrats have held the governor's seat for two terms and Trump gained a lot of ground in 2024. Why do you think Trump's margins improve so much from 2020 to 2024? What does that say about the Democratic Party and what we were getting wrong? And how are you guys feeling about.

[Jon Favreau]

The state of your race?

[Mikey Sherrill]

So I think we just see election after election after election being a change election. And I would say that's because voters want to be heard and they're not feeling heard in any. So I think the 10 point swing to the right in New Jersey is largely because, as people in New Jersey were saying, I can't afford anything, my costs are bad, inflation is bad, home prices are bad, groceries are expensive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The response from Democrats in many cases was largely, the economy's good, we had a soft landing.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Mikey Sherrill]

And everybody's crazy. I don't know what the flip of soft landing is, but. Right. And so. So, yeah. And it's hard. Look, I have served this country almost my entire life. Like you, I got into public service young. I was 18 when I went to the Naval Academy and then served for almost 10 years. So I care deeply about democracy. It's central to so much of what I do. But if I'm coming at you with democracy and you're coming at me with, I'm about to lose my house and I'm not sure how I'm feeding my kids, that's not gonna go well.

[Jon Lovett]

No.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Right. And we. Shame on us, really.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. It was a little disconnected from the reality over the weekend. President Trump Posted this image on social media. I'm sure you saw it. It was him as Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. There's helicopters flying over Chicago. There's text that says Chicago about to find out why it's called Department of War. And I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Obviously he posted this to get a reaction from Democrats, outraged liberals on social media, etc. But at the same time, like, I think threatening to wage war on an American city with the US Military is a big deal. What was your reaction to like Apocalypse Don in his post over the weekend? And how do you think Democrats should handle these threats to deploy the National Guard to US Cities in the name of fighting crime?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Well, my first thought was that guy never served. And so good old Corporal Bone spurs should probably not be acting as if he's a tough guy when he had I don't know how many deferments. And I also agree with you as countries across the world are holding major meetings and symposiums without the United States and looking to work around the United States and we're losing power daily. And so instead of making sure that we have a full throated response to how we move forward on so many of the key issues, whether it's AI or energy prices or trade, instead he's looking to wage war on one of his own cities. That's really beyond the pale, but kind of par for the course on how destructive this administration is. And I think you're right. A lot of it is very dire, but a lot of it's also performative to sort of be saying like, look over here, I'm going to put these troops on the streets. Don't pay attention to the fact that my tariff program is driving up costs everywhere and that this bill I forced Congress to pass. And look, I'm not crying a river for Republicans in Congress who lacked courage. But force this bill through that is gonna raise costs on everyone. Don't pay any attention to that. So as I'm running, and it's really, as you sort of laid out, a kind of extraordinary race in New Jersey right now, this is the only race that's really been going on super competitively for almost a year now. We had a really competitive primary and now we're into the competitive general. And I'll tell you what I think is, you know, what I can tell you from listening to thousands and thousands of people across New Jersey is people are really upset about the cost of living and they are upset now with Trump because he promised to drive costs down. We've already talked about why they're upset with Democrats. And so it's oddly the least partisan race I've run. I started running in 2018, so I usually go to diners, and especially if I'm in a red area of the state, you know, I'll go up. Oh, I'm Mikey Sherrill. I'm. I'm running for, you know, previously Congress, now governor. And people say, oh, I support Trump, or I'm a Republican, kind of get away. Now they look at me and they say, how are you gonna lower my cost? And I think it's because at this time, they're looking for leadership on the issues that are key to them. And I think this presents a real opportunity for Democrats right now.

[Jon Lovett]

And so what you're saying is all you're hearing, despite all these kind of national stories and trends, are just cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. I mean, similar to the Mamdani race in New York, where the media narrative was kind of like, acted as if he was trying to get elected prime minister of Israel, but it was really like he was focusing on housing costs, free bus, et cetera. You're sort of hearing the same sort of things.

[Mikey Sherrill]

It's both. You know, there's been a lot of people saying, oh, well, this bill that he passed that's gonna raise healthcare costs and energy costs and higher education costs, et cetera, are people really aware that that's coming? And A, yes, but B, it almost doesn't matter because these tariffs are hitting people hard. And so to give you a sense of that, because maybe some people, you know, you hear from economists, oh, this is about to happen. And you kind of think, well, it's happened months ago. What's going on? So what I always find interesting is if the economists are saying something and then people on the ground are saying the same thing, if you have that connection. And so economists are saying, oh, this is about to hit in the holiday season. And now I'm going, you know, I was talking to a coffee store owner, this guy Chuck, who was telling me, look, I used to buy this huge burlap sack of coffee beans for $2.50 now, because. And this is sort of how he put it, because Trump got in some fight with that guy in Brazil. Now I have to pay $6.50 to $7. I didn't change my prices because reprinting menus was expensive, reprinting the signs was expensive, but I think it's here to stay. So I just emailed all my customers and Costs are gonna go up, so.

[Jon Lovett]

He'S gonna have to eat it. Yeah. And the fight with the guy in Brazil is over the Brazilian government wanting to prosecute someone who did his own January 6th and tried to stage a coup that included killing senior political leaders and a judge. So that's why we're tariffing Brazil.

[Mikey Sherrill]

And just to add insult to injury, the only place we grow coffee beans is Hawaii, and that's not nearly enough for the market. So it's not as if there's some industry here that we're somehow protecting. It's horrible that he's punishing the nation for that, and it's horrible that he's just raising costs on everyone at a time when they're already feeling the stress of it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Including health care premiums are about to go up. The other thing we're seeing, though, is, in addition to, like, these National Guard deployments and threats, we're seeing major ICE and CBP deployments to especially cities and states run by Democrats. I know that the Department of Defense gave immigration agencies the approval to use a New Jersey military base to detain between, I think, a thousand to three thousand migrants. I think it would make it the largest immigrant detention hub on the East Coast. And then Newark Mayor Ross Baraka was arrested outside an immigration detention facility back in May, I believe. What was your reaction to this growing ICE presence in your state and DOD signing off on the use of military assets for immigration detention operations like that?

[Mikey Sherrill]

So, as I mentioned, I'm a Navy veteran. I now sit on the House Armed Services Committee. And I can tell you I've been incredibly opposed to this for so many reasons, not the least of which is it's moving resources away from our troops to support a mission that we should not have on our bases, and the military should not be involved in this. And I even, you know, I heard from one military member who said, I'm about to deploy. And I said to him, oh, I'm sorry, because I know he has some young kids. He goes, I'm kind of relieved because I don't want to run concentration camps here at home. I mean, that's horrible. And so we're seeing this push to really undermine a lot of the rules here. And it's really chilling to me because, as I mentioned, with my background, I watched in Trump's first administration as he tried to again and again and again co opt a private militia for himself. And he tried initially, during the Black Lives Matter Protestant, to utilize the US Military, remember? And he was always calling generals my generals. As if they were solely serving him, not the Constitution, and constantly trying to undermine the military. And I thought it was odd at the time because the worst time for his numbers was when he was attacking John McCain. I thought that was an odd thing to do. But in hindsight, I think he was again and again trying to undermine the prestige of the military because it was the one organization that people trusted and that stood against him. And so if you recall, the troops got all the way to Fort Belvoir, but they stayed out under pressure from General Milley. And I think Mark Esper was SecDef at the time and really pushing back. And so then he had troops all over the Mall guarding the monuments. And we didn't know they were in Camis, but they had no insignia, they had masks on. It was during COVID and they wouldn't say where they came from. They wouldn't answer any questions. And we think maybe doc, Department of Corrections, but it was a little bit unclear. So again and again trying to co opt these militias. And then finally January 6th, his private militia. So he still had to leave office, I would say, unwillingly, and then came back into office. And one of the very first things he does is start to fire admirals and generals. He fired CQ Brown, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He fired Lisa Franketty, who is the chief of Naval operations. When I said to Pete Higseth, I think he did it because he was black and she was a woman, he didn't deny it. I think it's pretty clear.

[Jon Lovett]

Quite very specifically, very specifically, Dicky Brown filmed one video about being a black man in America after Black Lives Matter. And I think that led him to being fired.

[Mikey Sherrill]

He fired the head of Special Ops. And, and, and part of the understanding was that that's because he suggested that women, if they could compete, should be able to be Navy seals. We've had multiple three star admirals fired who are women and then others across the board who express anything. I've heard from DHS officials that there is a loyalty test. I've heard some people quitting because they aren't taking, you know, they aren't going to do a loyalty to Trump instead of the Constitution. So again and again, you see him trying to both weaken the U.S. military and then strengthen ICE. And now we're putting more money into immigration enforcement than we are into the United States Marine Corps. And you're seeing the commercials. A lot of people around my way out in New Jersey see them on the football games. There's a lot of ICE recruiting commercials, and they're very aggressive. And so you're seeing him really try to have this. I think it's really dangerous. Which is why governors need to really stand in the breach and demand accountability and understand who these people are on the streets. And that's why in Congress, I'm on legislation to make sure that you have to identify yourself, that you can't go around mad with no insignia, unmarked cars, and then on the streets. I think the courts are where some of the battle is, but you also have to be very careful with your own state police force. So I was talking to someone who said he was a former police officer. He said he was just chatting with one of his friends who's currently a police officer, who spoke to an ICE agent. The guy came up to him and demanded something. He goes, show me. Show me a badge. I don't know who you are. And he goes, I don't have to show you who I am. I'm with ice. And he said, yeah, you do. And he goes, well, I'm taking you to jail. And the guy goes, well, I'm taking you to jail, and we'll sort it out there. But, I mean, this is the kind of lawlessness that's going on. It really. And a lot of our police officers are coming forward saying this is making our streets less safe, and this is not our mission.

[Jon Lovett]

That's tough in Jersey.

[Jon Favreau]

You.

[Jon Lovett]

You have to watch a Jets game and see an ICE ad. That's like a double whammy. You know what I mean?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Sorry, I'm with the H. All right, I'm over. This interview is over.

[Jon Lovett]

My team sucks. Another issue I saw in New Jersey is last week, I saw there's another measles case popped up in New Jersey. I think it brings the state's total to 10 this year. This is happening as the HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He's gutting the CDC. Florida, I think, is doing away with all vaccine mandates. I don't know if you saw this interview they. The Florida health administrator, whatever his name was, did with Jake Tapper over the weekend on cnn. Clearly, they had done absolutely no research or modeling about the impact of these changes before they put them in place. How worried are you about a potential measles outbreak in New Jersey? And as governor, how would you manage this erosion of trust we've seen in public health since COVID Basically, I'm incredibly.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Concerned, not the least of which because I have four kids and I'm a mom, but also because New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation, because we're about to go into the winter months where all of the diseases become much more transmitted because of being indoors. And so it is a really dangerous scenario, especially for our state. Really unique in the country, our state with winter and a densely populated, you know, a dense population, a very international population. We have the airport, we have 95 going through. I mean, we have train stations. We have everyone in and out. And so without vaccines, our state could become very dangerous, especially for kids and for seniors. And so when you look back at the numbers of kids who died of preventable, what are now preventable diseases before vaccinations, you're looking at 2, 3 million kids. When you look at the babies who've already died from whooping cough off, which totally, if you have herd immunity, preventable, like babies can't get the vaccine, which is why we make sure others have it to protect them. So across the country, we are seeing this threat coming back. I mean, I'm almost just waiting to hear about cases here of polio and stuff because of this movement going on. And this surgeon, in listening to RFK Jr. Who seems to get a lot of his information, and I wish this was just a snarky comment, but I think this is true on TikTok and with influencers online. I was talking to one doctor who said he was saying all this weird mitochondria stuff, and she's like, what the heck is this? I don't even think he knows what mitochondria is.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't think he could diagnose people by looking at them.

[Mikey Sherrill]

They were showing some mitochondria damage on their faces.

[Jon Lovett]

Of course, we all. We've all spotted that in the wild, right?

[Mikey Sherrill]

We've all noticed. We've noticed. So I just to think that that's the person then who's not just the head of hhs, but actually making these huge decisions that could impact the nation, which is why governors, again, are so important, because actually there are coalitions now. And in the Northeast, we have some of the best research and development into health and medicine. And so working in the Northeast, New Jersey's been called the medicine chest of the world. So really working as governor to make sure that we're still putting out credible information that we're still getting vaccines to people, still manufacturing those vaccines is something that I'm going to work with other governors in the Northeast, like Maura Healey, who's doing just that right now to make sure that citizens in New Jersey are safe. As you see, I mean, just real nitwits across the country making decisions based off of zero information or at best something they saw online.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Instagram comments? Yeah, I don't know if, Look, I have a 1 year old and 2 year old. When I see reports of like a measles outbreak, I start to think to myself, do I have to move up my own kids vaccine schedule? Right. Like this is. These are the conversations we're having in our own houses. It's terrifying.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Well, there's breakthrough cases, so you vaccinate, you know, you want to get to 95 plus percent vaccines. I think for herd immunity. If I remember correctly, I am not a doctor, so I don't, you know, I use medical experts.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Mikey Sherrill]

I ask for advice to discuss these things with, but I think it's north of 95% for herd immunity so that you don't, you know, so that you can keep people safe. Because even with vaccines you have some breakthrough cases and stuff like that, putting everyone in danger. Which is why we traditionally have demanded if you're going into schools with little kids, you have vaccines so everyone doesn't get sick and die. And I, I don't think that's too much for the community to demand that your kid's safe going to school.

[Jon Lovett]

Did you watch his hearing in the Senate last week?

[Mikey Sherrill]

I did not.

[Jon Lovett]

In addition to just the horrible words coming out of his mouth, he was wheezing in this very unhealthy seeming way. He had a very like Jersey Shore vibe. Like Snooki, jwoww, like the super intense spray tan and juice head. Take a look. There's some good clips on Twitter. You'll enjoy it. Another Jersey question. Alina Haba, Trump's former personal attorney. She was briefly appointed to the Acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey before a judge ruled her appointment unlawful. You were a federal prosecutor. What do you make of that mess and what impact it could have on the integrity of federal prosecutions in your state?

[Mikey Sherrill]

That's my old office. And I have to tell you, I worked there for several years. I knew a lot of the different lawyers and the head of the Public Corruption Office, who I'd worked with quite a few years. You know, we'd eat lunch together occasionally or I'd zoom out the minute I started running for office, would not even.

[Jon Lovett]

Talk to me, just out of fear that.

[Mikey Sherrill]

No, because he prosecuted public officials.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, got it.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Right. And so he was like, look, I don't want impropriety and I don't want the appearance of impropriety. I don't to want anyone to think that I have some relationship with you and that that is impairing my judgment. I mean, that is what a high ethical standard he held.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Like I would walk into a room at some U.S. attorney gathering and he would walk out of the room or he would like, see me and start marching the other way. But that's kind of the level of integrity that many people in that office demanded of themselves and certainly others. And so to think now that not only is that certainly not happening, but she says that she is going to use the office to turn New Jersey red. I think was the comment that she is actually blatantly political. She has now said she's going to prosecute the governor, the Attorney General of New Jersey. She's prosecuting a sitting member of Congress who is doing her oversight duty. She actually had the mayor arrested and said she was going to charge him until the tapes came out, which she had, and showed that he was innocent. And so she couldn't. So then she went after the congresswoman and at every turn she's making these threats and it's, you know, it's a very Trumpian move. He was in Atlantic City going bankrupt all the time and leaving everyone holding the bag and threatening court cases and stuff. Because it's very expensive to go to court and hire lawyers. So it's not as if, oh, you're just innocent. So you go to court and you're like, I'm innocent, so leave me alone. And you're like, okay, no, it's tons of money to hire lawyers and to do this, and then you're living under this. Especially in these times when you don't think things are fair. So several defendants have brought cases saying, look, you can't even prosecute me because she's not even there legally. So that's going through the court system. But it is, again, I think, this total co opting of power at every level as quickly as possible that Trump's trying to do and taking all these levers of power to quell dissent, to punish anyone who speaks out against this and find any means you can to shut down any ability to create a different path forward.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I'm kind of waiting on Bob Menendez to go full Rod Blagojevich and kind of go for that part. And you think we should, we.

[Mikey Sherrill]

I think he's already made suggestions. You know, like you said stuff like Trump is right and stuff. So. Yes. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

No. No gold bars in your closet house anywhere.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Oh, God, no.

[Jon Lovett]

No. Okay.

[Mikey Sherrill]

We can't even keep water After Superstorm Sandy, like, we had, like, these things of water and my kids just drink them all. So, yeah, gold bars would be really behind us.

[Jon Lovett]

Speaking of corruption, do you agree with President Trump that we should reopen the Bridgegate investigation into Chris Christie? He tweeted this the other day.

[Mikey Sherrill]

No, we've already had that investigation. I mean, we've, you know, it's. I deeply believe in investigations into wrongdoing, but to use investigations to go after people that you don't like or that have said things you don't like is really, really troubling to me. And to. To use the criminal justice system like that, I think is, again, a way that you quell dissent. And in these times, it's really dangerous.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, basically. I think he was mad about an ABC News interview Christie did in this case.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Which one?

[Jon Lovett]

Trump was mad. He was tweeting about John Carl's bad haircut and something Chris Christie said. And then he said, let's reopen the investigation. That's how we found it.

[Mikey Sherrill]

So was it the CDC stuff or something different?

[Jon Lovett]

I don't even know what it was anymore.

[Mikey Sherrill]

It was a while.

[Jon Lovett]

It's just Trump watching TV and tweeting like we do at, like, the NFL games. He just sort of flails away. So you were a helicopter pilot, right, in the US Navy? Was it the H3 sea king, is that right? I think you worked with it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, it was.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yes, it was.

[Jon Lovett]

Some helicopter questions. Is it harder to learn to fly a helicopter than to fly a plane? First question.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Depends on the weather conditions. Helicopters are, I think, much more susceptible to high winds and changes in humidity, and it changes the power dynamics of it.

[Jon Lovett]

What's the timeline for learning the process for getting approved to fly on your own?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Now you're testing my memory. So everybody in the Navy, not in the army, but everyone in the Navy, learns to fly fixed wing. So you go through pre flight school, and then you go through flight school primary. I think that takes about six months. And then you go through helicopter school, which is maybe another four to six months. And then you go off into the replacement air group, the reg, and your squadron, and you do that. That's a lot shorter. And then you kind of go right into your squadron. And my reg was kind of co. Located with the squadron.

[Jon Lovett]

So it was like a couple year process.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah, yeah. You could probably speed it up if you were churning people out a lot more quickly, but at the time I did it, it was. It was probably about one and a half, two years.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay.

[Jon Lovett]

That's less than I would have thought so if I were sitting in a Sea King at the sticks, right. There's a meteor coming at Los Angeles. Could you talk me through how to get that thing off the ground or am I dead?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Oh, if it was running, I could get it off the ground.

[Jon Lovett]

Really?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

You just like press this button, do that.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Well, there's a checklist. So we'd have to get all the circuit breakers in the right place and stuff like that. But flying it itself, like lifting up and flying it, looks really hard.

[Jon Lovett]

I've seen my primary experience watching it.

[Mikey Sherrill]

If you were doing it, I would be riding the controls to protect my own safety here.

[Jon Favreau]

But.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yes, but I could because we used.

[Jon Lovett]

To watch the Navy men and women take off and land on the South Lawn. And that was just some high stakes shit, I guess. Cause you're coming in on the South Lawn, you're turning and you're doing it in front of the President of the United States and all these assembled people. And it just looked. It was very cool.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah, very nice. And that was the helicopter I flew.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, really?

[Mikey Sherrill]

So Marine One is the H3? Yeah. So that's the model. And they were always stealing our parts.

[Jon Lovett]

Stuff would break.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah, well, because it was an older helicopter, so there weren't as many parts through the supply chain. And so they had the top priority, as you can imagine. So we were constantly getting parts grabbed from the supply chain.

[Jon Lovett]

Is that the jet engine? It's so loud. Because Donald Trump likes to do his press availables in front of the helicopter while it's on. I'm sure you've noticed. And it's like insanely loud.

[Mikey Sherrill]

It's insanely loud, but it's a great, great helicopter. And one of my favorite things about it is it has a boat hull. So when you're in the military, you have to. If you're flying over water, which, if you're in the Navy, you're flying over water. So you have to go through the helicopter dunker, which is this like total torture hazing situation where you strap yourself into the. This thing, get blindfolded by the fourth round, get dropped into a tank of water, flipped upside down, and then you have to swim out. Yes. And I mean, I've been a swimmer my entire life, but it is just. I hated it. I hated it.

[Tommy Vietor]

I did.

[Mikey Sherrill]

So then after that traumatic experience, I never wanted to go down over water in a helicopter, as you can imagine. No one does. But at least I always took comfort in the fact that my helicopter had a boat hole. So you could Actually land on the.

[Jon Favreau]

Water, Would it float?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

That's cool.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Yeah, I thought so.

[Jon Lovett]

Learn something new here. It's good to know. Last question for you. If you're elected governor, will I be able to pump my own gas in the state of New Jersey or is that just gonna still be a thing you guys do?

[Mikey Sherrill]

That is really, you know, that is. That is a fight right now going on. But that is something that is beloved by New Jerseyans. Why? Well, because if you have like four kids and they're all having a huge fight and you just need gas really quickly and you don't want to get out of the car. Cause you don't know what's going to happen. You just like to pull up and be like, gas. And you can just be in the piece of your car, you know, with the doors and windows closed, yelling at your kids.

[Jon Lovett]

What if you desperately need to escape your kids for just 30 seconds?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Then you might want to pump your own gas. Yeah. You might want to cross the line.

[Jon Lovett]

Just drive to Pennsylvania or something.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Exactly.

[Jon Lovett]

Okay. Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. And good luck in your race. And how can people help you out if they want to get involved?

[Mikey Sherrill]

Thank you for asking. I was told by my team I could not come home.

[Jon Lovett]

I could hear them sighing behind me.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Please go to www.mikeysharrill.com volunteer. We can use all the support we can get. This is a huge race, and it is one of only two statewide races going on in the nation right now, New Jersey and Virginia. I think this one will set the table for all of next year's races as I think we really develop the engagement that we need to see on the ground. Right now. It's been hard. People are feeling exhausted. If we build events, they'll come, but we have to build them. And that takes a lot of money and people on the ground and effort. So please donate. Please come knock on doors or get involved on the phones and the texting. So thanks so much.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a big race. Very, very important, not just for the people of New Jersey, but also to send a message that we're still in this Democrats. We're fighting, we're trying, and we can win in the midterms as well. So please get involved if you can.

[Mikey Sherrill]

I really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

[Jon Lovett]

Thank you for being here.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Thanks.

[Jon Favreau]

That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts. Go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider 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. 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 Sengle 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. America east.

[Tommy Vietor]

The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot snack bar. Your lucky jersey, your chairs and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger car cargo space.

[Jon Lovett]

And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch.

[Tommy Vietor]

Diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist and the tech to stay a step ahead. It's more than an suv. It's your Equinox Chevrolet. Together, let's drive.

[Jon Favreau]

What does possibility mean to you?

[Tommy Vietor]

That's a hard question.

[Jon Favreau]

Something that you can strive for. I'm able to do anything I set my mind to.

[Tommy Vietor]

You're confident in yourself and you believe in yourself.

[Jon Favreau]

Yourself.

[Mikey Sherrill]

Stuff that you could achieve. I feel etsider anything is possible when you're more confident.

[Jon Favreau]

Shoes are a huge part of that.

[Jon Lovett]

They are the most important part of my style.

[Mikey Sherrill]

You can express yourself in the right shoes. Anything is possible.

[Jon Lovett]

DSW countless shoes at bragworthy prices.

[Jon Favreau]

Imagine the possibilities.