Storming the Capital (with Abdul and JB)

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We're going to be so big, we're going to win by so much. I think it's going to be a red wave. There's no blue wave. I think Republicans are going to do pretty well. If my math is correct here, then Republicans are going to drop a seat. And that means that right now they have 53 seats in the Senate, that means they end with 52. The blue tsunami that has been promised is not materializing. We just had a a great rally, as you know, in Iowa.

They're always saying the Democrats have great enthusiasm. The Democrat is up more than a million votes right now. James Collarico will win the U.S. Senate seat. Hakeem Jeffries will make history. We just took back Texas. Roy Cooper will win the Senate seat. Are we having a good time tonight, in a huge upset. Adam Hamilton, Amy Acton, Rob Sands, Tricia Jackson will beat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins. We did it! Working people beat Sherrod Brown. Dr. Annie Andrews is going to win the Senate seat. You have shown the nation what is possible.

That Bill Allside will become the next senator. Josh John Ossoff, Keisha Lance Bottoms will become the governor. Georgia, this win is for all of us. CNN projects the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives. Democrats will win control of the U.S. Senate.

Today, of course, is a day of celebration and it's a day of gratitude. What's up, D.C? Welcome to PodSaveAmerica. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Alex Wagner. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy V Or. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

How's everyone's week going? Yeah. That's pretty cool. Uh we have a great show for you tonight. Governor J.B. Pritzker is here.

And Crooked Con is almost here, which is really exciting. Uh but we have some news to talk about first. Uh on Tuesday, Donald Trump and the Republican Party suffered the biggest electoral defeat in 50 years.

So, uh votes are still being counted, but when all is said and done, Democrats are on track to hit about 257 House seats

and 56 Senate seats once Alaska and Mississippi are finished, uh hopefully by next week. More than 75% of Americans will live in a state with a Democratic governor.

More than half of Americans will live in a state with a Democratic trifecta. Uh it is the beginning of the end of the Trump era. Uh

as we know it. And you know what? The president seems kind of fine. It's going to be uh not only one of the biggest, but it'll be the most beautiful ballroom I think in the world. The ceilings are over 50 ft high. That's like a five-story building. And marble is It really makes me to cut the tape that people have been after for 50 years. You can put as many helicopters as you want in the room. It's a very powerful ceiling. And essentially, we beautified Washington D.C.

with 83 monuments, statues, etc. That was his mic feeding back, by the way, not ours. That was his shit. What's that mic? The way he holds the mic. Awful. Yeah. Um So, Donald Trump's answer to electoral annihilation is more ballroom. Um Alex, were you surprised, like not just by that, but he seems very chill so far? Well, Jon, I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me from just anecdotally, the demented mind retreats to areas of safety, early memories, foundational memories. And for Donald Trump, that is being a real estate developer.

He can no longer control Congress, but he can control a hot glue gun. And what we're seeing is that steel rebar is his Rosebud. You know, this origin story is cement. It's a It's a little like how like um Lady Gaga could get Tony Bennett out there. And even though he didn't really know where he was, he still knew all the songs. Can I say I'm fine with it. Like if if this is what's going to occupy grandpa for the next two years, he needs to like have at it.

Focus on the you know, further gilding the Oval Office or a helipad and not more war. Like let him do it. Put him out to pasture in the sandbox. I'm fine with it. Like I am obviously fine if he wants to do his own HGTV channel for the next two years. But just it's worth just taking a moment to think that the first thing the White House did after losing an election where the verdict of the voters was that the president was too distracted to focus on costs was to have him do a press conference about his corporate-funded ballroom.

It's all he's got, Dan. Yeah. It really answers the question of does he not give a shit or did he not know how bad things were going to be? Because the electoral resort results punched him in the face and he still doesn't care. So Tommy, I kind of there's part of me that thinks there's going to be a delayed reaction and that like Natalie has kept him from all the worst news. She's like ensconced him in a bubble and he's only getting some good he's getting like old tweets.

He's like we lost Ohio? Yeah, right. Yeah, he doesn't so he doesn't he doesn't know what's going on in Texas yet. Yeah, like right now he he's probably being told like well they're blaming like Ken Paxton and these bad candidates and it's not you. And he's going to tune in to something. Something's going to slip through and then he's going to blow his top. That's my that's my guess on this. And he also doesn't care about like he didn't lose. He's still president for two years.

Obviously, yeah, he doesn't care. Trump has also been saying uh this about working with Democrats. This is what he told Jonathan Karl this morning. Quote, I think we can get along. It's good for the country if we do. The country has had enough.

Uh Where are you guys on the maybe Trump will work with Democrats and become friends in in his as he sunsets? So, I think I think he actually does mean he wants to get along with Democrats in the sense that he would love to have Hakeem Jeffries and show him the ballroom and point out different things, right? And and to your point, he's not he doesn't really care about Republican priorities and he would love to be celebrated with a couple of bills and be you know get a couple victories and even if it fucks over his former the people that he that that he doesn't that he whose majority he just lost.

But you can't really square that with the fact that they're also also Democrats are going to launch a bunch of investigations, right? So, the idea that he wants to get along he doesn't really care. I think that's true. So, huge oversight fans here. Yeah.

We we probably have some ranking committee staffers here. Yeah. So, I do think it's a little bit of you know, unstoppable force, immovable object problem that's coming. And so inevitably that leads to him losing his fucking shit. Yeah. Right? Where else could it go? Well, this is a nice period right now. Yeah. He said the same exact thing right after 2018. He's like maybe Nancy and I can do beautiful together. Like two days later, he's like storming the Capitol. Or he was shot in the ear.

Also, he was a changed man for a week. Oh, yeah. Say it with me, permitting reform, permitting reform, permitting reform. No? Okay. Going to let that window close, I guess. Do you have something? I just feel like it's his body and mind have dissociated themselves from one another. And it's I mean, I am old enough to remember when he first came into office and there was suspicion that he might be more bipartisan. Now that shit's never going to happen. The question is whether he's so addled now that he doesn't actually realize that he's the president that everybody rejected resoundingly across the country a day ago.

Yeah. It's going to hit him. So, it seems like the rest of the White House isn't taking the loss quite as well. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, other outlets have been giving us some just incredibly satisfying accounts of how they blew it so badly. Um including the New York Times got like from a phone call that Trump aides have and had before the midterms and they were talking about they were joking about cyanide um and whether they could get asylum in Israel. Uh

Tommy, what were your Israel's like we don't want these war criminals. Full House. Tommy, what what are some of your favorite revelations so far from all the the TikToks on what went wrong? Oh, there's so many TikToks. By by the way, it sure seems like someone is recording all their conference calls, right? They like verbatim quotes from these things. So, or someone's just getting off off the call and like calling Maggie or Jonathan Maggie Haberman. She's just like part of the team writing it down. So, I liked the part of the story.

There's a lot of these stories and I liked a lot of parts of them. The part in the Time story where the political geniuses identify that the Iran war is a problem. So, their solution is to have a meeting in the Situation Room and talk about ways to hide all the bombing that's happening and all the fighting. So, that's a good thing for the U.S. military to be doing. It's the CIA's job. There was oh, the Trump gave them so little clarity over how much PAC money he was willing to spend and where to spend it that they had to rush and make all their plans at the end of the day, which meant in practice, there was an anecdote about how the Democrats bought an ad slot in like Anchorage TV news or something like you know the nightly news for $2,700 and the Trump Super PAC paid 30 grand for the same duration

in the same time slot. Clap it up for money. There was a planning meeting at Camp David to plot out the midterms and they forgot to invite anyone from the NRSC. That seems like a bit of an oversight. Um I got like the $5,000 check thing was just Trump riffing. No one knew it was coming. They're all blaming Pete Hegseth. I like that. I think that's on the money. Um It also the joke about them all moving to Israel, it's just funny that they joked about that and then on election day Trump announced that he'd be cutting off aid to Israel, making them all maybe a little less welcome.

Like Cortes burning the ships. I knew you were going to say that. I mean, in the course of all of the of Trump's quote unquote midterm strategy, it's worth noting that he did this rally tour, which then forced every Republican to recommit their fealty to the very unpopular president. And then we've now seen studies which show that in counties where Trump did a rally, Republicans did five points worse than in counties he didn't do a rally. That was that was my favorite one of my favorite stats.

If you want if you want to know the stat that's going to ultimately cause him to lose his mind, it's he's going to see that in that article and maybe it's already happened. It was so good. The other stat is Democrats overperformed by 26 points in counties that have a Cheesecake Factory. Wow.

Yeah. That worked well for them. Um So, speaking of polls and results, let's talk about how and why Democrats won now that we've all had a couple days to just nerd out on all the exit polls and the the county results. Is that just me? No. That's you guys did, too. Dan did, I know. So, our friends at light Institute conducted a really comprehensive entrance poll in the battleground states that they very kindly shared with us first just this afternoon. We got it. Dan, did you have a chance to get a look and is there anything Boy, did I, Jon.

I will say there was eight attachments and the first one was 36 pages. So, I was like I'll I'll read the first one. I would just say that the walk to this theater tonight is the first time I've had fresh air all day. So, um so the it's a really fascinating study. It's going to be on the Crooked Media substack tomorrow and I know all of you are signed up obviously or you wouldn't be here. Um but a couple of key takeaways from it. So, they did a poll of the seven key battleground states in the two weeks before to see what voters were thinking as they went in to vote.

And key like obviously as we know, Trump's deep unpopularity and his and costs are the two issues that drove the election. But it what it really looked at was what can we learn from the Democrats who overperformed the most? And there're a couple takeaways there. One is the Democrats who were able to carve out a brand independent of the Democratic Party did the best. Like Roy Cooper for instance is 20 points more popular than the Democratic Party. James Collarico and Josh Turk are 14 points more popular than the Democratic Party in their state.

Which it makes logical sense that these are red states. These are states Trump won by double digits. The Democratic Party is not going to have a natural popularity there. It also just reinforces the idea that this election was a repudiation of Trump and a validation of specific Democratic candidates but not the Democratic Party as a whole. And you know, it looks they definitely thought that Democrats were more focused on costs than Republicans, but not as focused on costs as they want them to be. And that's really important thing to think about as we think about what Democrats are going to do as we head into Congress.

Something I think is separate and apart from this study that I think is really important to focus on is turnout surges the three groups that drove this election. The first is young voters, voters under 35 turned out in huge numbers. Particularly in the races where the candidates engaged those voters like Texas and Georgia. Two, across the deep south, black voters turned out at a near presidential level. And in states like South Carolina where one in four voters is black and and states like Mississippi where more than one in three voters is black, they made a gigantic difference.

There's no way without that. And then Latino voters. Uh Obviously, there was this huge swing back of Latinos to Democrats in Texas in particular of the Senate seats. But the one what the really important thing is that turnout among Latinos in Texas was up six points compared to 2022, which is why James Collarico and Hakeem Jeffries were able to win by such margins. Yeah.

I just thought it was interesting that the other turnout story was turnout was just really far down with Republicans. Like a lot like and if J.D. Vance, we'll talk about that in a bit. but he had this whole pollster who was like I talked to the pollster and they said our people turned out but just some of them voted for the other party. And it's like actually no. A lot of Republicans didn't turn out and especially the group that didn't turn out that had the worst turnout among Republicans was young Republicans.

And especially some of those people who voted. So, you wonder like did they vote for Trump in 24 and are they lost to Democrats? Did they just not turn out this election? So, it's like a group to watch but they did not come out this time. Especially in rural areas, too. The a lot of the rural counties that have been basically the the engine for Trump's in 2016, you saw real not just their turn they did not turn out high but Democrats won higher vote share there because voters were so mad at Trump over costs, gas prices, etc.

Yeah. Alex, you weren't with us in our our Tuesday night pod, but like what what, if anything, do you think Democrats did to earn this victory aside from just not being Republicans? Um and were there like any campaigns like you thought were good examples? Well, I mean, I think it's meaningful that they they weren't weren't Republicans. Republicans. I I mean, mean, it's it's meaningful. meaningless that there's another party. And I think there's going to be a lot of parsing about whether whether it was a mandate.

What the reality is, and I think this is so essential. For years, if not decades, Democrats have existed in these red states as caricatures. They have not been real people with real governing abilities. And Republicans have been able to caricature Democrats as woke libs or people that are completely out of touch with real Americans. And now, the people of North Carolina are going to see Democrats raise the federal minimum wage. They're going to see Democrats in Texas curb AI data centers. They're going to see Democrats in Kansas and Iowa and disastrous wars that have skyrocketed their fuel prices.

It's no longer the sort of opposition party in the abstract. It's real actual governance from human beings. And you know, we all know this. Like, when a party is just an abstraction and a meme, it's easy to hate it. It's easy to dismiss it. But when it becomes real governance, when it's your real governor and your real attorney general or your real senator or your state senator or your legislator, then you understand the merits of that party, the humanity of that party, and the principles of that party.

So, I think fuck parsing like whether or not they won because they weren't Republicans. What you are seeing is a sea change in how people in deep red parts of the country understand the Democratic Party. Yeah. Um

Love it. There's been a a pretty cut-and-dried debate online um that I'm hoping you can resolve for us fairly quickly. I'm on it. Which faction of the Democratic Party do you think came out ahead after Tuesday? So, I think it's great that there's a sizable group of highly engaged, very smart political watchers that found their groove about how they talk about politics in the 2016 primary. Hey.

Includes us. But, you know, there's this effort to to claim different candidates, right? That like Abdul in Michigan is the candidate of the left and and Annie Andrews in South Carolina, she represents more the old center-left, right? But in reality, I think as if you kind of look at what happened in this election, the truth is, and this is going to be a very takey-take, this election is the kind of synthesis of Barack Obama style politics and Bernie Sanders style politics. These are the two most successful movement builders in our lifetimes.

And I think every one of these victories kind of belongs to the best parts of both of those movements. Like, oh, Annie Annie Andrews is a center-left because she's for a public option and doesn't believe in Medicare for all. But she ran a pretty hard campaign, a populist economic campaign, which really appealed to people. The conversation around Tyler Rico uh is about how he's sort of an Obama-like figure in the way he talks about faith and bringing people together. But he's an economic populist. Even in Michigan, where because of the debate around Israel, it's been sorted as a left campaign, if you listen to his longer conversations, he's a capitalist.

His support for Medicare for all is about building a capitalism that works for people. And so, I think what we're actually seeing is a really positive development because we get to figure out new things to fight about. Right? Like, we get to let's get mad at each other, but not about the stuff we were mad about in 2016 and 2020. Let's figure out new things to be mad about in 2028. Yeah. I mean, I I do want to a point you made there. It's like, speaking of of Michigan, we haven't really dug into those results yet.

And I do think we might be able to have someone here who could help us maybe talk about Michigan a little bit more. Abdul, are you are you out there?

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All right. Thanks for coming. Good to see you. I heard I heard you did a live taping of America Secretary. That's good.

I was going to say what I did I wanted to I wanted to start with, you know, some some pretty significant history that that you made on Tuesday. And I just want to know like what

Like, what does it feel like to know that you are going to be the very first Crooked Media podcaster to serve in the United States Senate? I just I'm so very honored.

You know, it's it's it's funny, but a lot of what is it that politicians do? Well, we market public policy. That's the job. You take the most boring arcane thing and then try to figure out how to market it so that people think, yeah, that's actually what I want. And modern communications has evolved in a way where there's so many different ways to talk about what you do. And I actually think that like somebody's asking me, what's the what is the most essential form of public communication?

I actually think it's podcast. And here's why. Because there is no length, there's no expectation for you to have like 30 seconds and get out. Yeah. You can follow up a question as many different ways as you want. And so, it really forces you to to become an expert on the thing you're talking about and be able to defend it. And so, all that time hosting podcasts, I actually, when I think about it, it was a really really good way to start thinking about how do you start talking about the things that you talk about every day.

So, when you're in a town hall and people ask a question, it's like a podcast conversation. So, in all in all ways, I actually think that like, you know, being a Crooked host was pretty good prep for running for U.S. Senate. There you go. Said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Podcasts are the hero's medium. And we'll be the source of our salvation. Back over to you, Jon. So, long ago, uh you predicted that you would win this race by 7 points. Which which at the time seemed like a pretty cocky and and maybe ill-considered thing to say in the middle of a competitive Senate race.

Then you won the race by 7 points. And you know, people are still calling you cocky. Um I I I keep thinking about the the headline of of Jonathan Martin's Politico story about you when he sat down with you, which is Washington isn't ready for Hurricane Abdul. At at least he didn't call it a sandstorm.

But like, I What's it called? What's that term that for it's it's a haboob. Yes. I knew you were going for it. Yes. There you go. That's that there's literally an Arab name Arabic name for a sandstorm that only happens in the Gulf. At least he didn't go there. That's that's true. But like, it made me wonder cuz I've known you for a while. And like this whole perception of you that has like developed over the campaign, I'm like, he's like, do you see yourself as a Hurricane Abdul coming to Washington?

How do you see yourself? So, you know, we we there is this expectation for decorum that for whatever reason, Democrats seem to want to keep up. And I think it's because all of us all of us came up watching The West Wing.

And then Donald Trump rolls in and is the most unserious fool. And then we're still out here trying to be like, well, he doesn't fit into an episode of The West Wing. Yeah. And I think I think there is a a responsibility that we have to engage with him as the unserious fool that he is. And I say that because if you've ever watched a bully in a room, if you don't stand up to the bully, it's not like the bully will just go away. If you don't stand up to the bully, the bully just gets stronger for two reasons.

Because they think they can get away with it and they always want more. Like, they don't bully because they they take what they want. It's because they like to oppress people. And so, they get stronger and then other people around them who might be willing to stand up too see nobody standing up and say, well, it's impossible to do. And I just think there's a responsibility for us to walk out of the West Wing episode that our politics used to feel like and into the reality of where we are.

And so, I've just made a habit and maybe it's cuz, you know, my name is Abdul and I've seen all the things that somebody named Abdul will see that you you have to stand up to the bully. And so, I think that's the part of things people wanted to fixate on because it's so uncommon in our politics that you're like, you're being crass and obnoxious. So, I'm just going to be crass and obnoxious back cuz you're an asshole. But, it's not to be crass and obnoxious because that's how you want to do politics.

It's that you have to be crass and obnoxious back because otherwise, what happens is that that system of politics will persist. And when you stand up to a bully, what tends to happen is they will back down. And when they back down, we all get to decide where we want to go. I would rather, I mean, you all know me well, I'd rather have an extensive policy conversation about the monopsony power of Medicare for all. But, if we if they want to do schoolyard politics, all right, let's sort it out.

So, one of the ways I'd say they tried to use schoolyard politics was around you being a Muslim, uh turning your criticism into Israel as a way to attack you more broadly. A lot of charges of anti-semitism. But also just a this is a very contentious issue and you've been unabashed in your views. At the same time, you're about to go into the Senate. You know, this is a debate that's very heated, obviously. It's also Last Democratic President was basically incoherent in explaining his policies. A lot of people that I think number of other things.

Yeah. But a lot of people who are I think are sincerely defenders of Israel are kind of stuck in a worldview that I think is pretty old talking points that are pretty old. You're about to be in the Senate. Yeah. Beyond just a change in policy around military aid for Israel. Beyond just trying to figure out how to stop the ways in which the policy has been contributing to something destructive. What do you view as your role in using America's power in the region for actual good, both for the sake of Palestinian sovereignty and human rights and also an ultimate solution?

I appreciate this is why podcasts is the is the queen of all forms. Because you can ask me a nuanced question about this issue and we can step back and ask, what is our goal here? Very simply, but if I have one political philosophy, it's what would we build if we treated all of our kids like all of our kids. If you take seriously that a Palestinian child in Gaza and a Jewish-Israeli child in Tel Aviv deserve the same right to grow up, look forward at their future and think, I'm I have a clear way forward and violence isn't going to curtail my opportunities.

That's what you want to build. What then can we do? And the challenge that we have right now is we've told ourselves a series of lies. We've told ourselves that we are in pursuit of a two-state solution. The problem though is that we've been actively aiding, arming, and abetting the very people who are trying to foreclose on a second state. And even then, their idea of a second state does not start from the premise of equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination. It is essentially unjust.

It is like saying, you know, you and I are going to split a meal. And so, you get the meal first. You eat what you want and then you give me the rest. But we split the meal. That's bullshit. An actual splitting of the meal is saying, okay, we got a burger and some fries. Here, you take half the fries, I'll take half the fries. You take half the burger, I'll take half the burger. And maybe you like the ketchup, so take the ketchup. Sometimes the rule is whoever cuts goes second because the person who cuts chose the size of each side.

And I don't think if you should apply what I'm saying to a very complicated region and I regret Who said a Muslim and a Jew couldn't figure this thing out? Look, sort of a veil of ignorance thing you could do. Sorry, continue. No, but but the point that I'm making is this, right? Is that we are right now in a cul-de-sac where we keep going around and around and around and nobody wants to back out and ask, all right, like, where do we really want to go?

It is an unstable equilibrium because if you start from the premise that both of these kids deserve the ability to live a good life, neither of them have that. One because of state violence and one because of the risk of terrorism. So, I I want to start there and then ask ourselves, where do we go? You have a government that is actively foreclosing on the possibility of a second state that has not been in good faith. We are actively funding their military. We're selling them the equipment that they're using to do genocide, maintain apartheid, and take us to wars we have no business fighting.

The attempted annexation of southern Lebanon. And then we use the argument that if you push back on this state of affairs, it It must must be be because because you you hate hate somebody. somebody. No, No. it is because I love both that Jewish Israeli child and that Palestinian child to the same degree. And so I think we just have to go back to our principles. What is it that we want? How do we get what we want? And then what is it how is it that we want to behave in the world?

We've allowed a certain kind of realpolitik since Kissinger to goad us into thinking that we can somehow dictate the future by just figuring out what's in our best interest in the next 5 minutes. I believe international law. We built a lot of that international law after World War II. And we have become the chief violator of international law. So how is it that we should be engaging with a country that is using our money to do terrible things, war crimes at the minimum, genocide at the maximum, that we are running cover for at all of the institutions that are supposed to enforce international law.

My approach is simple. Treat the government of Israel the way you would treat any other government that did the same thing. And my family comes from Egypt and I want to do the same thing with Egypt. Egypt violates human rights law. Egypt shouldn't be getting $3.3 billion of our tax dollars and I would hate if somebody would be like, well, because you share the ethnicity of 95% of the people in Egypt for us to say that the Egyptian government is doing terrible things must be anti-Egyptian.

No, it is just applying our principles evenly everywhere. So, I feel like the biggest challenge for Democrats in Congress over the next 2 years is that you know, you were all elected because people want you to focus on putting money in people's pockets. Um, and but because Trump is in the White House, it's going to be very difficult to do that. And you can already feel that with this Democratic majority and the way that you won on Tuesday, expectations are very high. And so, like, what is your top priority as senator over the next 2 years in terms of like actually getting something done for the people of Michigan?

The number one most important thing we can do is protect people from the healthcare nuclear bomb that's about to go off in our system with Medicaid cuts. And I actually think we may be able to pass it in a bipartisan fashion. I actually think we might be able to get a get to a veto-proof majority. And here's why. We all know the structural failure of the of the Senate is that it allocates a lot more representation to rural communities. Well, who's going to get hit the hardest by these Medicaid tax cuts?

It's rural communities. So I'd love to sit down with my colleagues from South Dakota and Idaho and say, what do you think is about to happen to your hospitals if these Medicaid tax cuts go through? Why? To give a billionaire basically in Delaware some more money? And I actually think that we need to have that conversation. That's number one. Number two, end this stupid fucking war. Like it makes no sense. We're paying for it in the lives of our serviceman and woman. We're paying for it at the gas station.

We're paying for it in the grocery store. We're paying for it in our tax dollars. We need to have a war powers resolution. We need to hold them accountable. They are not allowed to make war on their own. And this war needs to end and we go back to the diplomacy that had contained the nuclear threat in the first place. And the third one is, how are we picking a fucking tariff war with Canada? Like I'm from Michigan. It's the only place in America where you can go south to get to Canada.

And Canadians are nice people. Like they're the only people who preemptively apologize. Prophylactic apologies. Right? You meet them and they're like, sorry. You're like, for what? They're like, for whatever I'm going to do that's going to offend you. You're like, so if you're picking a tariff war with Canada, you're the asshole. And so, and we're paying a tremendous amount of money for this. Tariffs are taxes that we pay on Canadian goods. And so those three policies alone, right, would improve the quality of healthcare for a lot of people, at least keep it where it is.

Put a lot more money back in people's pockets. And they also highlight exactly the folly of the role that money plays in our politics. This war, I just want to be clear about it. President Obama wrote about this in his most recent book, A Promised Land. There is one person in the world that has been trying to get this war fought for nearly all of our lifetimes. It is the prime minister of a foreign government. Gets invited to the Situation Room where he gets to dupe the dumbest fucking guy whoever was president.

And then and then now we're now we're in a war that everybody could have told you was a dumb idea to fight, which is why every other president was like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. And so I I just want us to understand how that operates. It operates because when you have a $100 million super PAC that will play in every single congressional race, you are able to manufacture a bipartisan consensus about where our public policy should go. It's the truth when it comes to healthcare.

It's the truth when it comes to union rights. And it's the truth when it comes to foreign policy. And I just think it's important for us to connect the dots there. So when they spend $42 million to beat me, AIPAC spends $42 million to beat me, it is because I have the audacity to say what I said, which is that a Palestinian child and a Jewish Israeli child get to have equal rights to peace, dignity, self-determination. And maybe we shouldn't be fighting wars that are not in our best interest so that another country can annex territory of another country inconsistently with international law.

But like most people like, well, you can't say that. Why not? Well, because I don't want AIPAC playing in my next race. Yeah.

So, look, there's a lot of people that have said there's some pretty nefarious motivations going on with you. That there are things about you that we don't know. And I've talked to some people that have known you behind the scenes. And we're just going to get to the bottom of a couple things. Do you disavow? Yeah. I'm not who do we

I wasn't even going to do the joke. Look, I have a brother. He's Muslim. And he and I have a Muslim brother. All right? He's just because we're both Muslim and he's my brother.

Do you have four That's about to show up in the next attack ad and screen. Now we're I just wrote the attack ad. Yeah. Hi Jesse. Like we told you.

Four double shots of espresso a day plus usually some cold brew. Truth. You make your own dangerously strong cold brew in a 5-gallon bucket. Truth. You So funny story on that. I started making cold brew for my staff. And when you make cold brew, you actually brew cold brew concentrate. So this poor guy on my team drinks it straight. And then it's like so he he was my call time manager. And we're we're on phone calls calling folks, asking them for money. And he's like, Abdul, I I I can't get I can't keep going.

I was like, what's wrong? He's like, I can't stop shaking. I was like, what happened? Are you okay? Like what's wrong? He's like, I had some of your coffee and I can't stop shaking. I was like, did you did you cut it with water? He's like, no. I was like, like you may be having a caffeine overdose. Like, you should go lay down, my guy. Should have hooked him up to like a heart rate monitor. So he starts to have like a panic I know I do I think I think Mike Rogers is in my house.

Hey, are you still guzzling Gatorade Zero and Quest Protein Chips? Yes. Hey, we know that those chips are in defiance of sort of science and God's law, right? Like it doesn't actually make sense. Like everything can't be made of protein, right? So what is going on? No, no, no. It doesn't make any sense. So you know what they are? They basically they basically take whey and then and then crisp it and then put whatever the the magic powder that makes chips say like chips on it.

Wow. But like I'm I'm like they're a cheat code. They like really Quest Chips are a cheat code. I mean, they're amazing. They taste delicious. God bless Quest. Thank you. You got me through this campaign. Chips secretly made of milk, antisemitism.

We were almost there. And do you make art in the foamed milk of the espresso or the lattes you make in your own home? Are you capable of doing that? Not well, but I I do attempt to. You you can do that thing. Do the little pour? Yeah. Gay.

Yeah, I think you've been exposed. Over to you, Jon. Okay. That's all we got. Uh, senator-elect Abdul Al-Sayed. Thank you. Thank you for stopping by.

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That's 50% off your first order by using code Crooked or go to cookunity.com/crooked. That was a nice visitor. Young man really going places. It's like he's going places. You could be the next podcaster in the Senate, Alex. Representing the great state of Washington, D.C.

All right. Let's talk about what's on the agenda for the biggest Democratic majority in 15 years. Um, we've already gotten some hints from the man who is on the verge of becoming the first Black Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries. He told Punchbowl that their priorities are to reverse the Medicaid cuts, stop the harmful Trump tariffs, and end this reckless and costly war of choice. Wow, sounds like he ended up They're already on the same page. He also mentioned banning stock trading, going after corruption. Jeffries was also asked about investigations on Morning Joe and said, quote, the American people don't want us to get even, they want us to get things done on their behalf.

Yeah. There you go. There you go. You doubted the audience, love it. I'm sorry. I how many of you were cheering for get even?

I know my country. We can have both. Alex, let' 's talk about it. They're not not everyone has been thrilled with that answer. Yeah. At least on the internet. Um, how do you think Democrats should view what accountability should look like? And like do you think that they can go after Trump's corruption without those investigations overshadowing everything else that they want to achieve? If I were in the room, I'd say, Mr. Speaker, Hakeem, if I might, accountability and affordability are related.

The architect of the disastrous war is Pete Hegseth. It's nominally Donald Trump. Impeaching the architect of a disastrous war is the first step to bringing down the price of gas. Right? You can't think of this as an either-or proposition. The reason the home construction market has bottomed out in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas is because Mark wain Mullin and his ICE goons have been rounding up and destroying the lives of black and brown construction workers. You want that sector to rebound? Hold Mark wain Mullin and ICE policies accountable.

The the idea that affordability exists without policing the corruption at the top levels of the government that have took taken us into this economic spiral is the most short-sighted thing I can imagine. And to allow this to be an either-or proposition is totally foolish and not addressing the problems at its root concern. So Democrats need to do both. Nice. All right.

Dan, if if you were running the message calendar for the new House majority, case in point in the market for a job. Um, I might need one? We'll see how you answer the question. Uh, what does that first month look like in terms of bills you'd want to introduce? And like and what did you think about what Abdul said about the possibility of actually being able to reverse the Medicaid cuts? I think that we have to recognize that voters picked us because they believed with some skepticism that we would do a better job of dealing with affordability than the Republicans.

2 years ago, they picked Trump with some skepticism that he would do a better job of dealing with affordability than the Democrats. He did not deal with affordability, did not try to take it on, and they switched. And if we don't demonstrate right away that while setting expectations that we are not in charge of actually signing bills, but we're going to fight like hell to try to lower your costs. If we don't do that, these voters are going to flip right back the other way. And so, I don't think we should do some giant HR1 affordability omnibus bullshit.

It has to be a series of votes that are spread out over a one a week for a several weeks. And I think it begins with res you can you can do that you can do this in any order. But we like Abdul is exactly right. Repeal the tariffs, end the war, ban stock trading, restore the Obamacare tax cuts, raise the minimum wage, repeal the Medicare the Medicaid cuts, and let's find some ways to and then pass the bill that requires the data centers to pay for all of their own energy.

Right? I think that is an agenda that is directly responsive to the reason why Republican why voters put us in office. And I think to the Hakeem Jeffries point, I 100% agree. Ending corruption should be a part of this because one of the reasons why voters turned on Trump was they believed that his corruption was raising their costs. So we not should not shy away from that. that, But but I I think think it's it's incredibly incredibly important important that we not make investigating Trump our entire personality as a party, because that's one of the things that showed up in focus groups was that the swing voters who came to us, these rural voters, some of the younger voters who were more apolitical or less engaged, is they think we're too obsessed with Trump.

And you see and that's why Democrats other than the ones who were in real in pretty blue states never mentioned Trump in their ads. It was about other stuff. And I think we the Trump era is over, voters have turned the page and we should do the same. Yeah. So, uh as far as what's next for Republicans, uh they already seem to be looking beyond the next two years in a way that's actually been deeply satisfying to watch. Let's take a look. Well, that was a disaster.

I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. If we can't win in places like Texas or Kansas or Iowa, you know, we are not viable nationally. Big picture, the Trump era is over. The American people, young men, white Americans said screw you to Donald Trump, said screw you to the Republican Party in places in the Deep South. Is woke coming back? This is the end of an era. Set the marker on your calendar. Trumpism gone. The coalition has totally collapsed. I mean, we lost some whites.

Whites. I got to say, Jesse Watters is exclaiming in horror, "We lost whites." I got I got Adderall in my veins, Trump Derangement Syndrome in my heart. I'm like, I'm amped. We lost whites? Um, so, what does come after the Trump era? J.D. Vance thinks the answer is J.D. Vance. Uh, he so he post this yeah, no, I know. He sucks. Uh, so he post this 600-word Twitter essay, as one does. Um, and where he blames the midterm loss on the Iran war, calls for a new focus a new focus on cost of living issues and changing our relationship with Israel.

Um, and this is part of his apparent plan to quote forge a new alliance with disaffected Trump voters ahead of 2028. This is according to Fox. This is his grand strategy. Uh, Ted Cruz, who also might run, said we should have attacked Iran even harder. Um, Ron DeSantis hit Republicans for stonewalling on the Epstein files and running too many anti-trans ads. Um, um, and then there are there are now two reports from the Independent and Bloomberg that Marco Rubio is considering leaving the administration, maybe for a possible presidential bid.

He did knock down those rumors, but they said that sources close to Rubio have said that he's been thinking about stepping down. So, that's a lot. Uh, Tommy, let's start with the Marco rumors, uh, because we deserve to have fun. Uh, what do you think about that? And is leaving soon like a good move or a bad move if you're Marco and you want to be president? So, if you're a little Marco, um, which is his legal name now. The the argument for quitting is the Iran war is a historic disaster.

People are really pissed at Trump. His approval rating is in the tank and dropping. Um, so maybe you quit early, you take a couple months off, you like charge your battery to start running in what, two 3 months max, or you know, you just like quit, you go whole hog, you start going to early states, start campaigning, you start raising money, you try to get ahead of J.D. Vance, and you just decide like I need to get as much running room as I possibly can. Now, I think the hole in that argument is that Donald Trump wants to play kingmaker in the primary and probably will.

And so, you know, you probably just want to stay as close to him as humanly possible. There's also just like the practical fact that Trump will continue, I think, to blot out the sun in terms of just like political coverage and TikToks and just like, you know, the ability to get noticed. And right now Marco is at the heart of the action. He's a part of everything. And he I I saw he's doing like a speech at the Federalist Society next week, right? Like that will get a lot of coverage given his current position and because of the assumption that he is going to run for president.

So, you like I guess my if I were him, I'd stick around, I'd stay in the White House, I'd do what he's already doing, which is pretending he doesn't work on Iran policy. You know what I mean? Maybe you pursue one of your passion projects, like toppling the Cuban government or whatever, you know, the things you really care about like Trump does with decorating. Um, and you kind of bide your time and then you just like knife J.D. then. Also, going from like being the National Security Advisor to the Secretary of State and the guy who's in the mix all the time on Air Force One and Mar-a-Lago doing all the things to like leaving your event at a Dunkin' Donuts in, you know, like Ipswich or Peterborough or something to go to your next event.

Yeah, Ipswich, is that what I got? Um, you know, it will feel a little bit small. So, I I think he's going to stick around for a minute. Do you don't you think it's weird and and like probably hard for him to do to act like he's the Secretary of State for Venezuela and like nothing else? Viceroy. Like he's the he's the National Security Advisor. He's not just the Secretary of State, he's the National Security Advisor. Nothing all of these people and and this goes to Vance too, right?

Like they're all trying to pretend like Iran war, how did that happen? I don't who who's responsible for the Iran war? It's not J.D. Vance, it's not Marco Rubio who like No, think about it for a second. It's like, okay, what is our biggest political problem? The the worst conflict going on in the world, the thing upending the global economy, Iran. Who should we throw at that problem? Uh, Steve Witkoff, uh, uh, had a building in Harlem in the '80s and used to go to 54 with Trump.

Have him do it. Yeah, they're just like pretending that they have no like they just want any piece of this. Yeah, but it's like well Marco is not out front on this. It's like, okay, does he work there? Like he's he's got all the jobs. I think he genuinely just wants to topple the Cuban government and then he'll leave. That is his passion project. Um, love it. As for Vance, uh, Trump speculated openly on Wednesday that maybe he won't run and there's reporting that Trump doesn't plan to endorse him at least anytime soon.

Um, what is your overall assessment of this week's unofficial Vance 2028 rollout? Uh, so first of all, I do think it's like an extraordinary document. Like the sitting Vice President a few days after an election, he doesn't say it out loud, he writes it down on a social media platform, basically saying I've crunched the numbers. We've got to do opposite.

Folks, it's opposite time. And I just want to and I have a message to anyone out there who thinks the answer is opposite on the things the base doesn't like. No. That's bad opposite. We've got to only do the things that the base likes and stop doing the things the base doesn't like. And that means doing opposite on everything except immigration. Uh, and one day we will figure out who's responsible for all this, but that's not my job. That was Rubio's job. Rubio did this. Uh, actually you can't run for president while being Secretary of State.

It's very hard. It's why he probably either he can't really go campaigning because his job requires like that's a real job. You got to kind of be in that job. Normally, yes, absolutely. Uh, I mean, he was like three jobs. He's the archivist, he's the National Security Advisor. He's got a lot of jobs. Viceroy of Venezuela. Viceroy of Venezuela. But like what DeSantis is doing, by the way, he keeps this trans that's the trans they're were too anti-trans. Trump's going to call him Ron DeSantis before the week is out.

Just just getting ahead of that one. But they're all still doing this dance, which is that like Trump can't fail, he can only be failed, right? That like it's it was Pete Pete Hegseth's fault. But we all know the truth. Like Donald Trump is responsible. He's the one that that that got bamboozled by Netanyahu. He's the one that wanted to do the tariffs. We see all these stories about how he was making them do these fucking charts with the for for for tariffs where they didn't have time for anything else.

He's the one that's coming up with these $5,000 schemes. Donald Trump is responsible. So, you can play games on social media and you can do these backgrounders with the press, but eventually you have to stand in front of people and talk to them and it's just not possible to stay in Trump's good graces while running against Donald Trump. There's no way to do it. You guys think any of these other yahoo's who are do not work in the Trump administration, Cruz, DeSantis, like have a real chance if they decide to run again?

Oh, yeah, of course. J.D. Vance's strategy for running for president is so fucking stupid. J.D. Vance has run for office once in his life. He underperformed underperformed every single other Republican on the ballot in Ohio at the time. And he thinks he's going to pull off some fucking trick where he serves as Trump's Vice President, but also separates himself. It's like watching a fucking elephant walk on a tightrope. Like what are we doing? It's just like there was only one way in which J.D. Vance can become the Republican nominee.

It is that Donald Trump picks him. That is the only way and the only way he can be president is Donald Trump picks him and he gets fucking lucky and Democrats nominate the wrong person. Well, there's a second way. I I yeah. Yeah. I I thought that's where he was going. That's a Stop it. You're referring to the 25th Amendment, I assume, correct? I am referring to the 25th Amendment. Yes, thank you. But it's just he it it's idiotic. He has no idea what he's doing.

It's so stupid. Okay, I'm done. You should keep posting through it. Um, rest of the field. Any any outsiders that were in the game? Tucker Carlson You think Tucker Carlson says it's the end of Trump and the end of Fox News and the beginning of Trump of Tucker Carlson as a podcaster presidential candidate. I mean, I think that is distinctly on the horizon. Chris Christie sees everybody else. I'm telling you, man. This is the he he was feasting on the returns on Tuesday like a king in a like eating a lamb chop.

I don't even know what that what that means. And then there's, you know, always the Don Jr. Omar Kremelev ticket. Don't boo me. This is what I'm happening in Republican politics. Don't I think the question is can someone else run and win? I think the answer is yes. Yeah. From besides Marco, J.D. Yeah. Especially if both Marco and J.D. run and then someone can absolutely run. Because they're like the same lane. I mean, the the interesting sort of the most interesting thing about J.D. Vance's statements to me, besides seeming to break from Trump on Iran, although the White House is spinning that they did not, is he was like, uh, Iran war was bad, also cost of living, by the way, Israel sucks was like point four in his thing.

He's like this are the the top four things that came up in polling were these four issues. There's absolutely no way that the number four issue from the smartest data scientist he knew was Israel. Like we've all seen the same data. It was like 15 on a list. Obviously, it's wrapped up in the Iran war and inflation and cost of living. This is J.D. Vance trying to play to the Tucker Carlson audience, to the Nick Fuentes audience, the kind of groper far right. And those people hate him.

They hate him and that is not ever going to change. They hate him because of his identity, they hate him because of his ties to Peter Thiel and the fact that Peter Thiel basically created him in a little VC lab and then birthed him onto all of us. Like it's not fucking happening. He could he could have kept him in there for a little bit longer. Yeah, they took him out too early. Bake him. Came out a little undercooked. He came out undercooked, yeah. Little soft, little little raw in the middle.

But I and part of the reason they hate him is they have his number, which is that he's a cipher, right? He's a he'll he'll go where the uh where the the wind takes him. I will say though, you know, S Franco led Spain for a very long time and it was fascist for a very long time and he died and then everyone was like, "Boy, that was crazy."

All right, well, uh, speaking of speaking of 2028 maybe, when we come back, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. How was that?

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Our guest tonight was just reelected for a third time, the governor of the great state of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.

Great to see you. Good to see you. I don't know. We'll sit here. This is fine. Thanks for having me on after Abdul. Listen, they love you. I can see it in their eyes. They're loving it out. Um, okay, big picture. What's kind of your elevator pitch for people who ask you, why did Democrats do so well on Tuesday? Well, interestingly enough, if you go back to the beginning of the season, I think everybody was saying that there was no common message. I kept hearing across the country, what do Democrats stand for?

This is from Democrats. What do Democrats stand for? You know, we we just lost a terrible election in 24. We don't have any message. How are we going to possibly move forward? What does Democratic Party stand for? And of course, we set our message as Democrats in presidential years. That's typically what happens. Whoever it is that runs and wins is really the messenger and um, and that's who we are. And of course, after we lose, nothing. So, coming into the election, that was kind of where we were.

But, as you know, like 2018 when I got elected governor, uh, I think there was a common view that Donald Trump is terrible for the country and that was something that we could all gather around. Um, and uh, and so that was kind of the beginning of 2026 or at least 2025 going into 2026. I think what we all discovered separately, but I think listening to one another is there was a common message that we'd all developed and that the Republicans had no reply for, which is your gas prices have gone up by a buck 50, your diesel prices have gone up by two bucks, uh, grocery prices are through the roof.

We all understand what we can do, which is end the war, which is to make sure that we're ending the trade wars. And we've gone into a trade war with Canada for goodness sakes. These are our friends. So, these are all things I think commonly everybody talked about out across the country and even governors who are like I mean, we're burdened by all of those problems and others coming from the Trump administration taking away SNAP and Medicaid and so on. So, this was kind of a a message that got developed in common despite the fact that we were all in separate states, you know, and dealing with the separate populations of our states and different views.

Yeah. Um, so you've talked about being on team fight. So, I want to unpack what that means. Um, you put out this 200-point national agenda, uh, you've talked about, you know, the need for the people who were just elected to Congress to fight Trump from Congress. What does that look like over the next two years when we know that Donald Trump is going to be able to veto things? Like what are the fights that are worth taking and at what point is there a risk that we, you know, screw up people's expectations if they think that Democrats can deliver them a big policy agenda with Donald Trump still in the office Oval Office?

Well, let's start with the idea that we should not create one bill that has every bit of the agenda in it. And instead, what the Congress should do, the Democrats in Congress, is put one by one, start with raising the minimum wage. Put that on Donald Trump's desk. Make him veto it if he's going to veto it. Um, we ought to put on his desk universal paid leave for every worker in the United States.

And one by one, without going through the entire agenda, and you can start those Those are are easy. easy. I I think think those those are are easy. easy things for us to gather around and get past. And once again, Donald Trump will choose. Is he going to stand against every working person in the United States by vetoing these things or not? Yeah. And so I think that that's the way to go about this. Um I do think that there are fights worth fighting that uh and then there are some that are worth negotiating about.

I can tell you as a governor of a state, I've got 150,000 people that are losing their SNAP benefits. I've got half a million people that will as a result of the Medicaid cuts lose their health insurance. And uh this is not something we can sustain. We can't replace that at the state level. I need the Congress to go deal with that. Trump is not going to reverse his big ugly bill unless we're willing to stand up and fight against some of the things that he might like to have done.

So, and then by the way, it just in December there's going to be a CR related to the you know to to appropriations. Yeah. I think I mean I have never been for backing down in those fights and I think this is a moment when he's got to understand that we are in control of the Congress now. And so he needs to back down on SNAP and Medicaid at least. Yeah. We could do him a huge political favor and end the war too. That'd be another way to do it.

Um there's a lot of chatter right now about Democrats using our wins in states to circumvent the Electoral College by enacting what's called the National Popular Voter I don't know Interstate Compact Compact. They know. Uh it's basically an agreement among states to give all the electoral votes to whoever wins the National Popular Vote no matter who wins the individual states. It only kicks in though once there are enough states to uh in the compact to reach 270 electoral votes. Illinois is already a member of the compact.

Do you want to see other states really fight for this idea and push it forward and and do you worry at all about the constitutionality one, but also a backlash of being a person who who lives in a state when you feel like this kind of gets foisted upon you? I'm not sure how to answer that except that I mean we you you got to start solving the problems that we face, particularly electoral problems, because this is this is a challenge. I mean for those of us who are long enough uh in the world to have seen the the uh Gore-Bush fight.

Um I mean Al Gore won that election. Yeah. And we I mean I should also add that we should be going after uh a nationwide redistricting. We should have independent commissions in every state. But not do it individually by state. And so these are you know not easy problems to solve. But actually that last one is one that should be relatively easy if we elect a Democratic president. The Let me follow up on that I I 'm sorry when we elect a Democratic president. Um another sort of team fight question is about redistricting, right?

Donald Trump, his effort to gerrymander his way to a permanent congressional majority did not work. Um it didn't didn't totally backfire, but they didn't win all the seats they thought they would. Now, there was a map floating around today of the Republican proposal for how they would have drawn up the map in Indiana. Had that passed, we would have won either 9 to 0 or 8 to 1 in Indiana. So, they dodged a serious bullet there. When you see shit like that, does it make you think rethink redistricting at all?

Is it a good idea? Do you still support it? Uh well, we had the option there was a lot of discussion in Illinois about having an independent commission drawing the districts you know in a different way. Um the reality is that you can't unilaterally disarm. And so there was no chance and and by the way when I mean despite the fact that we now could look at that map and say we would have done much better uh in Indiana. At the time, you know, there was a push for in for Illinois to redistrict.

We have you know we have 14 Democrats and three Republicans out of our map. And uh Indiana of course was looking at redistricting. And basically what I said was if they're going to redistrict, I'm going to redistrict. And you know they can maybe find two seats and again we didn't know the outcome was going to be as it was. But but at the time anyway my view was like if they're going to redistrict and take away two seats from Democrats, I can redistrict and do just take three.

And so that was my threat to Indiana. And I'm not suggesting that I was the reason that Indiana didn't actually redistrict. But it was at least a factor. They had to be in their Republican cloak rooms saying like why are we doing this? You know if Illinois's going to just turn around and we could. We have super majorities. I'm a Democratic governor. We could have done that. And I would have done it.

Real bummer they didn't though over We Real bummer they didn't do it over there in Indiana. Oh we Break 9 0. I I do you you you you talk about a team fight. I just want to remind and redistricting. I want to remind you that the uh Texas House Democrats you remember before all the redistricting happened everywhere else, it was the Texas House Democrats who broke quorum in August of 2025.

And and they they came to Illinois and we we protected them in Illinois because I mean they were literally planning to send the FBI, the Texas Rangers and so on. But I I mention this because uh just a FYI, uh James Carrico and Genie Inahosa were in that delegation coming to Illinois.

So I I got to know them when they were with us right in but what we didn't know was they were doing more than just trying to stop the Texas redistricting. They were actually alerting the rest of the country as a result of the attention that they got that this is going to happen all over the country. And so they really are deserving of a hell of a lot of credit for the fact that people stood up and fought back. Yeah. Um speaking of Texas, Genie Inahosa is now the governor of Texas.

Uh the governor-elect. At a time when the National Democratic Party was not giving her campaign a lot of money or resources, um you stepped up. And I talked to him a bunch of folks on her team who were very frustrated uh at the lack of support they got from the DGA. Uh but you wrote a million dollar check and one of them said to me, "Pritzker really threw down for us. I will love him forever." So first of all, shout out to Governor Pritzker for putting some chips on the table.

I know you're a poker guy. Um my question is though, you know, talk about your political strategy, but also when you kind of look at the near misses, the states we almost won, does it make you angry that the DNC fundraising was so anemic that there weren't additional resources to push into the table late? I I I'm not going to give you the answer that you want to hear. Um I I look, uh we got outspent everywhere and we do on a regular basis. It's just true.

I mean when you've got Elon Musk spending 240 million dollars like in Texas, we're we're going to get outspent. He lost. But

And I felt I felt like you know he spent 240 million, I spent a million dollars. I figure like like pretty good a return on investment, right? Yeah. Yeah. But but not taking credit because Genie Inahosa was a great candidate. She didn't get a lot of attention because James Carrico is such a unique talent and he got a lot of attention. But she really was a great candidate and she was doing a hell of a job getting outspent like 20 to 1. And so uh when I think about the the the the challenge, I really think look we Democrats don't we've never been able to raise as much money and they've got the trillionaires.

I mean I realize I'm wealthy and I'm doing my part, but I'm just saying they've got people who can like the turnups that fall off the truck are like hundred million dollar checks for them. And so uh we're never going to be able to catch up in that regard until we have campaign finance reform and end Citizens United. And that would be fair. But but I don't want to place blame because it's really not it's not fair. I I do think that there were places like Florida where you know we could have had that governor's race possibly if more money had been put into Florida.

Um but I I got called about it and like with four days left in the election you know saying can you you know fix it? And you know my view was I I can't be there I can't do all of them. I did you know I was like I I put a million seven into the Kansas you know but I mean I was involved in Kansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina and everybody thought I was crazy.

I I should have played the lottery. Yeah. You should have been on Kelsi. Um final question for you. Uh the Chicago Bears are 6 and 2. You just beat the breaks off of the Super Bowl winning Seattle Seahawks. Yep. You have a quarterback who looks like he could be a generational talent. Will you promise right here and right now that you will not allow the Chicago Bears to move to Indiana?

I will promise you this that we we are working our tails off to make sure that the Chicago Bears have the option of staying in the state of Illinois. And they have to make a good decision because the reality is that they shouldn't be on a slag heap in Hammond, Indiana. They should be either in the city of Chicago or in Arlington Heights or somewhere in the state of Illinois. we are the ones who put the equity into that team. Look, we're going to give them what we do for other businesses.

We're going to build the infrastructure, we're going to build the utilities, you know, the underground utilities, all the things that they need. It's going to cost us a lot of money to do that. We do that for other businesses. You know, we're in charge of infrastructure. Uh but I will say it you know they haven't always made great decisions the Chicago Bears about and and uh although Caleb Caleb Williams was a great decision. Uh so I I do think they're going to stay in the state of Illinois.

But but we need to pass a bill that's actually later this month um and early in December that will get that done. I'm Gary Bears what I'm talking about here. Chicago Bears. Uh Governor JB Pritzker everybody. Now I think the governor has agreed to play a game with us. Hopefully hopefully. We come.

We um We promise we won't bite. Is it a drinking game? Uh you know I will tell you something. We get you a beer. I wanted to force all of us to take a Malort shot. Uh but let me just tell you something the enthusiasm was not there. Oh Malort yeah. I would drink almost anything but that. So now it's time for a game we call two takes and a fake. Uh we have two teams it'll be John and Tommy versus the governor, Alex and Dan.

Uh you got it. I will read you three political takes about the midterm elections. Two of them are real, one of them is fake. I will flag that this game is particularly difficult this time around because uh they are crashing out.

Uh all right. First up, let's start with the governor's team. Uh which of these three takes is fake? A, I'm not trying to crash out, but we nominated Hitler with Down Syndrome and guess what? He lost. He lost. And now he loses a Supreme Court justice. It is a fucking disaster. Or B, it's funny how Democrats spent the last few months crying about how hard we made it for black people to vote. If anything, we made it too easy. Or C, Texas, there is a lesson here.

Don't be so welcoming. The first one is real. Yes. The first one's definitely real. I agree. The Hitler one is real. Yeah. Yep. That was a uh GOP organizer at an election night party at Butterworths. I think I think C is fake. Yeah. Okay. All right. C. C was real. That was Lawrence Jones, Fox and Friends co-host. Sure was. It was a tweet. Next up for John and Tommy. This is going to be they're going to know all the takes. There you guys are up against two of the real real sickos.

A, well that was a disaster and not like a metaphorical disaster, but a real disaster. More like the Lusitania sinking than rain at a wedding reception. This is the end of the Trump era. It may not be what we deserve, but it's definitely what the Republican Party deserves. B, it's it physically hurts me to see the state of Texas colored blue on a map. It actually makes me feel sick. It's like Texas is my strong handsome son and he just came home from school and said, "Hey mom, hey dad, I'm actually a woman now."

Or C, Trump is still your president. Jesus is still lord. Knowledge is power. Maybe now our people will wake up. I think that one's right. I think. I feel like the B one about the Texas the one Yeah. I feel like Lusitania is something Luff it would write. I thought that too but then B also seems like something he would write. You want to go with Lusitania? I don't know. Whatever. Dealer's choice. B. B is fake. You got it. B is fake. It did sound like it.

A was Tucker Carlson. Uh and C was Said you guys are a lot of like. And C where's it? Yeah. And C was Nicki Yeah, we fuck you. And C was Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up. Uh A, I hate to say it but America is over. The communists and jihadists are going to open our borders and replace our votes with votes from illegal aliens. We now have reps who openly speak about their hatred of America. We won't be able to undo the damage they caused to our country.

America 250 was a funeral. B, I agree with President Trump. Conservative media, especially Fox News, bears a hell of a lot of responsibility for what went down. Or C, okay, screw it. I'll say it. This election is yet again a reminder of why we need to seriously revisit the 19th Amendment.

They could all be real. Honestly. They all sound real. You say you think B or C? I Well, I'm not You're going to make me pick this time. You're the governor. I got it wrong last time. Yeah, you know what? You got to call balls and strikes in your job. What do you think Dan? I think B. Yeah, I want to phone a friend. That's what I want to do. What does the audience think? B. You think it's C? B. B? B. B. C was fake.

B was a Newsmax host was Greg Kelly. Wow. Yeah. It's crazy out there. It's crazy out there. I'm sorry, but to figure out the fake ones, I had to challenge like ch I had to channel the we had to channel the darkest part of the human soul just to find something to to to that was extreme enough. Next up for John and Tommy. A, I'd rather have Iran have a nuke than my country be run by communists. B, now I want to read the Quran. I want to try to understand what it is that Michigan and New York and Minnesota find so goddamn compelling.

Or C, I think he's a Democrat. I've tried to salvage Trump. I've not been sure. I've invested so much. Maybe I was blind to it. He's the ultimate Democrat sleeper cell and he works for them. And he was a Democrat before. He's not that our word. I think B is fake. Yeah. A I heard. C just sounds real. Yeah. Uh you got it. You guys are crushing. You guys are crushing. A was Matt Walsh. C was Alex Jones. Oh. And I have to and uh I have to tell you governor, you guys got crushed.

All right. You got both questions wrong. Tommy and John got both questions right. Uh they've won the game. And un we should have put some money on it. I got a billionaire on the fucking stage. We I should have said yes to the Malort because they would have taken the shots. That's the thing. I if you guys had done the Malort shots, we would have done a lot Not bad yeah you're right yeah totally. And that's our game. That's that's our show for tonight. Thank you to Governor Pritzker, thank you Abdul El-Sayed, and thank you all.

See you at Crooked Con. Positively America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fischer, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Golsan. with Reet Trewaling, Elijah Cone, and Andrew Hill. Our team includes Matt Degroot, Ben Heathcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kenny Maffett, Adam Lipton, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Ferrero, David Tolz, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singer. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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