10/20/26: Wild Potential Midterm Scenarios, GOP Abandons Trump, MAGA Implosion Weeks Before Midterms

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0:10 So head over to BreakingPoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

0:22 Indeed, we do.

0:23 Deep dive into the midterm elections from a variety of angles. Logan Phillips is going to join us momentarily to take a look at the numbers. And OK, let's say we had a polling mess the size of 2016. What would that look like? What about 2025, where actually Democrats were underestimated? What would that look like? We will go through all of that with him. Then we're also going to take a look at the impact specifically of Trump in this election cycle. Some new numbers are out that show Republicans are not running ads with his name in it whatsoever.

0:51 He has virtually disappeared from the Republican side in terms of their ad campaigns. Democrats on the other side are talking about him nonstop, so it tells you quite a bit. At the same time, one of the major issues that has emerged in the midterm elections is concerns over Trump and Trump family corruption.

1:06 J.D.

1:07 Vance once again in the hot seat over this as new revelations have come out alleging a major pay for play scheme involving the Kennedy Center. We'll get into all of that. We got a soccer special here taking a look at the way that boomers are organizing nationwide against paying property taxes. having a lot of success in a wide variety of states. We're also going to take a look at Michigan specifically, where Abdul El-Sayed seems to have had the most viral clip of the entire campaign. Some interesting media commentary around that as well. And then we're going to be rejoined by Daniel Lidd. He's the mathematician that we had on before to talk about the AI revolution in math and whether or not he is feeling

1:48 existential dread over the state of his profession in Actually, he seems to have a more hopeful outlook. So excited to dig into that with him.

1:54 Yes, that's exactly right. Before we get to that, though, we had some interesting exchanges. So we've received some interesting emails over the last couple of weeks. Let's put this up here on the screen. These are from our producer, Griffin. Both of these are from two separate firms who purport to represent CalSheet. And they have emailed us. This is my personal favorite one. We hope you're doing well. We're reaching out to discuss a Q4 partnership between Breaking Points and CalSheet. a federally regulated U.S.

2:21 Exchange.

2:22 They say breaking points is a strong fit for this campaign based on your content and audience. So it appears that these people think that they can just hire these firms and just blast creators, YouTubers, et cetera. First of all, they're obviously wasting their money because they've never listened to our show. But we just wanted to deliver our official response of not only no, but fuck no. We do not want your blood money. And that is why we have premium subscriptions. Not now, not ever. Yeah, not now, not ever. The business will go under before we take your money.

2:53 I'd rather go.

2:53 Bankrupt before we take your disgusting money. And I hope that you people get thrown. into prison. And if I have anything to do with it, that's how we will end up. So because of all of you, BreakingPoints.com, the premium subscribers, we are in a position where we can say, no, fuck you. And so that is our official response to Kalshi.

3:13 So yeah, there you go. And this isn't just a Kalshi thing. This is for anybody who wants us to do an ad read, be it Manscaped or any of these people, but in particular, these literal scum of the earth over at these gambling companies. And then, so with that, we also have, we need your help. So I don't game, I've never played GTA. I hear it's big. Let's put this up here on the screen. So this advertisement was placed in Miami. And apparently in this universe, there's something called Weasel News.

3:47 And it like played. This is according to Griffin.

3:49 This is according to Griffin.

3:50 It plays in the cars that you steal. Right.

3:51 It plays in the cars that you steal. Anyway, so they have apparently for the first time these hosts of Weasel News. Now, a lot of people, many friends, people who don't watch the show like any of that, they're like, dude, this is literally you. So what do you guys think? I personally, I don't see it. I see it in Crystal's case.

4:10 You see it in my case? Oh, I see it so much more in your case. I don't see it.

4:14 I just don't see it.

4:15 So a few things. First of all, they would have been doing the graphics a number of years ago. There's a point that Griffin made. And I used to have that haircut.

4:23 You did have it.

4:23 And I used to wear the big earrings like that as well.

4:26 And I know that you have that dress.

4:27 Now my earrings are a little more tame. I do have a little bit of a bigger pair on today. But my earrings are typically a little more restrained these days.

4:32 That's true.

4:33 The outfits are totally us. You literally have that tie.

4:36 I do own that exact tie.

4:37 And you used to wear it.

4:38 And I used to wear it all the time.

4:39 A lot.

4:39 Five years ago. That's true.

4:40 Talk to me about the glasses.

4:42 Okay, but everybody, a lot of people wear these. Well, obviously, number one, I'm not black. That seems to be like the biggest difference.

4:47 It's not right. Like, obviously, they wouldn't do exactly us. I'm also not, I don't know if that, if she's like Asian or Latino, some sort of like racially ambiguous, but they, you know, it's drawing inspiration. That like, it very much looks like.

5:01 The pocket square and the tie and that shade of blue. I do actually own that exact outfit. So I, I don't know.

5:08 I don't know. All right.

5:09 So when the game comes out, we'll take a listen.

5:11 We'll let us know.

5:12 You let us know.

5:13 You guys let us know what you think.

5:14 Is it us or not? I truly, like I said, I've never played this video game in my entire life. I'm not going to play it. I guess I wish you guys all the best. But yeah, let us know. Let us know in the comments section. If it is, I at least know enough to know that it's a great honor. So thank you. And for increasing the profile.

5:30 Even if it's, yeah, like caricature-ish or mockery, whatever.

5:33 Yeah, whatever.

5:33 It's in the culture. Yeah, it's one of the biggest cultural, you know, I know enough to know that every guy who I know is going to take work off or whatever. There's already an estimate that the U.S. is going to lose like hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity on the day or the week or whatever after COVID. the game comes out. Okay. So with all that preamble, with our screw you to Kalshi, with our plea for whether that is us or not, according to you guys, let's get to our interview with the great Logan Phillips. We're very excited now to be joined by our great friend, Logan Phillips of race to the white house.com. It's good to see you, Logan. Thanks for joining us, man.

6:08 Hey, great to be on as always.

6:10 All right.

6:10 So our weekly check-in, let's go ahead and put a three up here on the screen. Here's what we've got now. So far from Logan's website. Tell us a little bit about where things look in your current forecast, Senate, House and governor's races.

6:25 Well, this is a really unique election in that it's kind of battlefield America. We're seeing places in play all across the map, ranging from Maine to Nebraska and Kansas. And so we have both a chance for historic election for Democrats where they can sweep the map. And there's also a chance here where they don't gain that much in the Senate and they only pick up a little bit in governor races. So that's what kind of makes this race interesting is because they're overperforming so much in red areas, boy, does that increase their maximum potential. But you could come up short. gaining a lot of ground as Hillary Clinton did in places like Arizona and Texas.

6:58 If you don't win, it doesn't get you much.

6:59 Right, makes sense.

7:00 So we wanted to dig into this question of a potential polling miss at this point because we've touched on this with you before, but we wanted to do it in a bit of a more systematic way and say, okay, if we had the polling miss of 2016, what would that look like? If we had one like 2022 or 2025, what would that look like? Let me go ahead and start with a New York Times analysis. This is from Nate Cohn. I can put this up on the screen and we can get your sort of overall view here.

7:22 He says polls show Democrats ahead. Are they, quote, right this time? And, you know, he has proper level of skepticism, as we all should. The polls are not going to be exactly correct. They will likely be off in one direction or the other. He does, however, point out that the polls have been closer in midterm elections. And in fact, at times they have underestimated Democrats in midterm elections and they dramatically underestimated Democrats in the 2025 gubernatorial elections, both in Virginia and and New Jersey. So what is your sort of overall view of your level of confidence in the polls right now and some of the things that you're paying attention to before we get into the specific numbers?

8:02 I would say that you can't just look at the polls here. All of the indicators to me look really good for Democrats. First, they did an outstanding job in these special elections. And I think that's true also if you combine that with what happened in California and Washington. They were outperforming expectations if it were like a neutral cycle by like eight points.

8:20 Wow.

8:21 And since then, the environment has moved in their direction by like a point or two. So you have that and you also have the fundraising. Now, I know that's not going to sound right at first because if you're talking about the super PACs, then Republicans have a big advantage. But the actual donations to candidates. from individuals, which is a better indicator and more predictive of candidate success. Democrats have been swamping Republicans in race after race.

8:43 You mean like small dollar donations?

8:44 Just regular donations that exclude PAC money or self-funding.

8:47 And why is that? Just like that it's voter enthusiasm, it's grassroots?

8:52 I think it's a combination of two things. One, frankly, I think Democrats, that is their bread and butter these days, and Republicans have gotten a little less active on fundraising because they know they're going to get it from the PACs. But it's also separate from that. I think it's a sign of enthusiasm. And this does make my personal forecast a lot more accurate when you take this into account.

9:12 So maybe that's not true anymore with the area of PAC money, but I still think it says something about the quality of the candidates and the quality of their operation and the base enthusiasm that Democrats have, which I think is still important.

9:24 Yeah, well, we were talking before we turned the cameras on about Kansas and Roger Marshall. And, you know, this is a race that going into the cycle, no one, including Roger Marshall, would have thought that this seat would have been in play. He's barely raising any money at all to his Senate campaign at this late date after you very much know that he has a real race on his hands.

9:45 Yeah, this isn't even like Nebraska last year where people weren't taking it seriously to the end. And maybe you guys were on it. Most people weren't. Everyone's been talking about Kansas for months, except it seems Roger Marshall, because I don't know what he's doing. I don't know how he's raised that little. It's baffling to me. Like you'd think someone would come in and just rescue him and bring him along to fundraisers and raise more than the pitiful amount he's gotten. So yeah, he's relying on outside money.

10:10 And to some degree, like we see this every cycle that when there's a huge wave, the people that loses the most on the very far fringes are candidates that have been safe their whole career that have never tried to have to actually win swing voters. Maybe they did their first.

10:25 Time 10 years ago. That's why when you're like, oh, how does he not raise any money? He's never had to. You win the primary and that's it.

10:31 It's over.

10:32 You need a few token million dollars and you get the R next to your name. Everybody checks the box and you get to move on. You buy your house in Washington. You don't think about it. You put your kids in a Washington high school because you're never going to leave. That's literally the mindset of these people. One important part of the Nate Cohn thing before we move on, is the big question to me is these red states.

10:51 Like it's the Kansas, it's the South Carolinas, and it's the others where you had the similar kind of enthusiasm going into 2018. But at the end of the day, the Republicans come home. What meaningfully makes today's race different than that race at the time?

11:06 Yeah, I think it's definitely different. I just don't know if it's different enough for Democrats to win. I think they're going to win Texas. And I think Kansas is a toss up. But voters are really frustrated with the Republican Party. And this includes some genuine Republicans and a lot of our leaning independents. This does not mean that everyone's turn would often be framed as such. That's not true.

11:27 But a sizable portion in a coalition in elections that are as competitive as America, which might be the most competitive in the world, that's massive. And so it's, you know, this is the problem for Republicans that they're rallying call for Donald Trump that everyone and most voters in the party buy into is that The system is not working for them. They already felt that in their lives, but it's been doubled down on messaging time and time again, that politicians are corrupt, that people are not putting them first.

11:55 And then now they're seeing those same things being done by a president that they thought was going to change things. I think that has gotten more people to start to question things. And the thing about Trump is once you start to question him, a lot of the things that you just dismiss because they're Trump being Trump start to really get on your nerves. Yeah, that's true.

12:13 Fair.

12:14 All right, let's dig now into the numbers. Let's put this first graphic up on the screen. Okay, so what we asked you to do here is to take the current polling average in all of the Senate races, that's the column that you see here on the left for Alaska, Florida, Georgia, et cetera, on down the line. And these are all of the races that were even colorably interesting in the Senate.

12:34 And then to apply to it, what if the pollsters are off by the average amount they were off in 2016? Now, 2016 and 2020, There was a very similar polling miss. They underestimated Republicans by what was it? It was about what, three points? Yeah, roughly right about three points. So what do we see if we have a similar polling miss as what we saw in 2016 and in 2020?

12:58 Yeah, what would happen is the Senate would become a battleground of a different nature, kind of flips. Democrats would have about a 30% chance instead of about a 70% chance in the Senate. because Republicans would be on track for basically keeping everything the same. They would lose North Carolina still reasonably cleanly, but they would pick up Michigan, Ohio.

13:19 And when I say pick up, I want to be clear. This would be so close that it basically isn't really even picking up. It just means it's a straight down the middle race. Michigan would be separated by 0.01%. Wow.

13:29 Oh, my God. God forbid.

13:33 Sounds like a horrible situation. And Ohio, you have by 0.1%. So if the 0.01 and the 0.1 holds, you end up with Republicans holding onto the Senate, narrowly holding onto the Senate, even in the realm where you have that level of miss, where Republicans are underestimated.

13:51 Yeah, and that's on paper, right? So you have those two races, which I think are basically tied, right? So they could go either way. And then you have Alaska and Texas, which would be around a percent difference or less. So the thing is, this miss never happens across the same, almost every one of these years. Even when there's a huge polling miss, there's going to be a race where there's an exception that goes the other way and someone's underrated.

14:11 So Republicans would be clearly favored to win the Senate in this scenario, but Democrats would still have a fighting chance.

14:16 Yeah.

14:17 Interesting.

14:17 Okay. So let's steel man this too. So 2016, why were the polls wrong? you know, a lot of our audience is young. They may not even know they were in high school or something like that. Why were they wrong? Give us the spiel.

14:28 You're making me reach into my 2016 brain here.

14:30 I know. Especially for those of us who had to sit through those long New York Times profiles about white people in Ohio or whatever at a diner. But yeah, go ahead.

14:39 Yeah.

14:39 Well, the reason they won is that people under, people miss what was happening in 2016 going into the election, which is that Trump brought a ton of new voters that were disproportionately white, didn't vote too often, didn't have college degrees, who felt they were left behind. And Trump's whole campaign was, you're getting screwed and I'm going to change things. And it motivated a lot of new people.

15:03 You know, they figured that out in 2008 because maybe the first black president made it a little more obvious that black voters were going to turn out at high levels, but they completely missed the ball in 16. And then in 2020, which was also a big miss, you had, I think a lot of this came down to COVID.

15:18 Some of the same problems repeated themselves, but also Democrats were home way more than Republicans in a way that might not ever repeat itself in that type of dynamic. What do you mean by that?

15:28 Like how?

15:29 Who was more likely to answer the phone? The person that was worried about the pandemic.

15:32 Right, right.

15:33 Right. The white collar worker at home. Right. Democrats core base excited to tell pollsters how much they hate Donald Trump.

15:39 Yes.

15:39 And so even though Biden ends up winning, when we were covering that together, I mean, it was looking like, oh, it's going to be a bloodbath.

15:46 Right.

15:46 And it's not going to be anywhere close. And then it was very close. OK, so let's bring our minds forward a little bit in time now to 2022. Economic numbers, Biden's in the presidency. Economic numbers are not looking great. People are dissatisfied. Everyone's thinking, oh, it's going to be a red wave. Now, the polls never showed a blowout for Republicans, but we were all kind of applying our 2016-2020 mind, saying, oh, well, if the polls show Republicans leading, it's going to be Republicans by even more than that.

16:15 So the general consensus was a red wave is coming, and then It did not arrive. And in fact, the polls underestimated Democrats by a bit in that particular cycle, by about three and a half points in that cycle. So here we have the numbers for 2022. What you see here is that if you have that level of a polling miss underestimating Democrats, it becomes quite a blowout on the Democratic side. You have states that are flipping that you never would have imagined before. Obviously, you've got you've got Iowa flipping. You've got Kansas going and not by really that narrow of a margin. You have the Democrat winning by four points in Kansas. You have South Carolina going blue by two and a half points. And

17:04 of course, Texas. James Tallarico would prevail by almost six points. So that is another possibility that is on the table here.

17:12 Yeah, and that's why this is honestly, when you guys messaged me about this last night, it was a brilliant idea because it shows exactly what we're dealing with. The map is so broad. We haven't experienced this before. At least I haven't because I wasn't paying that much attention in 2006 when I was 13. So this is definitely an election where these races could be in play because they're overperforming so much in these red areas. And if they just do a little better than with the poll, so just a little better, they can cash in on a historic level. that would change the next six years of our politics.

17:41 Yeah, so let's talk through the structural things again. What happened with that miss? So with that miss, I mean, generally, I remember I used to say, like, you know, the breaking points rule is you take a Republican number and you add five to it or something like that. You know, I was like, you just, you know, you've seen too much at this point. Yeah, it's like, oh, well, and then, of course, that was the one year the rule completely falls apart. Structurally, what happened? Because I've actually seen some people say, hey, if you paid attention to the special elections, the ingredients were all there. You should have just, if you just looked at that, you could have predicted democratic overperformance.

18:15 That's kind of what I did.

18:16 Yeah. Okay.

18:17 So, all right.

18:17 So, but then what did everybody else miss? What were the structural ingredients for what went wrong in that race?

18:22 I think they missed that the change had happened. And look, this is just part of the human condition. We always overlearn the lessons from the last big thing that happened. I mean, you know, I'm bringing a little broad here, but And mistakes followed from World War I caused World War II.

18:37 Sure, sure.

18:38 Right?

18:38 America always goes from excessively interventionalist to completely losing sight of the world to getting too confident. And then now we're in Iraq. Now we're in Iran, et cetera.

18:45 Right?

18:46 So this is the same thing that happens with people talking about politics. And if you want to be better than the conventional wisdom, that's literally all you need to do. Well, it's not all you need to do, but it will help. is just recognize that everyone else is over-indexing for what they literally just saw yesterday. And that's what happened in 22 because there were really big signs in that Republicans are doing quite well in special elections and they were doing a lot better in the polling. And then the bottom started to fall out after Roe and they started nominating candidates like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania that were talking about kicking voters off the rolls as a central campaign message and banning abortion in places where voters disagreed with that.

19:22 And so that conjecture, that wasn't every candidate, but we had a lot of those candidates disproportionately in swing races, I feel like even more than in just red races. And so Republicans weren't able to take advantage. I also think, and this is a huge contrast with this year, Joe Biden did not force Democrats to stick with him all the time. A lot of them separated themselves.

19:41 He would only complain to them on the phone in leaked audio. Yeah, but he didn't say it in a normal way.

19:48 Which is the president grumbles in his... take it. He's not happy that all these people, especially if this is their second term, that they personally recruited to run and were in theory inspired by him or her. And then now they're like running for the hills trying to avoid them like crazy. Yeah, that probably drives all presidents crazy because they all have egos. But they're at the end of the day. They want to win the Senate. They put it aside. Trump's made it way harder. And you see Ashley Hinson in Iowa, for example, toss a brace, but she was losing earlier. And now it's basically tied.

20:16 And that's because I think in part, she's done a really good job of saying she wants to be bipartisan, creating her own brand that's separate from the party. Michelle Tafoya is doing the same thing in Minnesota. It's a very tough year to run, but she's way overperforming the rest of her party. Susan Collins does that. That's not what most Republicans are doing. And so that could be the thing that sinks a lot of these people.

20:37 Interesting.

20:37 All right.

20:37 So now let's talk 2025. Now, this may surprise people because, well, first of all, there were just fewer elections. It's just basically Virginia and New Jersey have their gubernatorial elections. And because the polls were directionally correct, they showed a victory for the Democrats in both cases. I don't think people really processed how much of a miss it was. But let's put this up on the screen. This of the years we're focused on here was actually the largest polling miss.

21:00 It was about 8.1 percent of a miss, underestimating Democrats. Okay, so now we're getting really wild. Okay, if we had a polling miss in 2026 that was the same as the polling miss in 2025, so just last year with Virginia and New Jersey, you would end up with Democrats having a super majority in the Senate, something that seems impossible, I think is probably very unlikely. But if you did apply that same polling miss from just last year, that is what you would.

21:33 End up with. Yeah, now this type of miss is more likely to happen when it's a special, it's an off-year election. It's sort of like halfway to a special election because the turnout gap can be bigger.

21:43 And so that's harder to estimate. Is that what's going on there?

21:45 Yeah, it's harder to estimate and you're more likely just to have a big miss with two races than you are with like 35, right? That being said, I mean, look, this is like the best case scenario for Democrats. It's unlikely this would be a historic miss, but there's like a five to, you know, somewhere between a five to 10% chance of this type of thing happening. And in this scenario, look, we've incredibly limited polling in this, admittedly, but based off the small polling we have, Mrs. Hippie in Louisiana would, I believe, flip in this map. That's crazy.

22:12 That's totally nuts. Really wild. Yeah, I'm not there yet. It's like you said. But like, again, structural ingredients. I think that's what we got to try to look at. Like when I look at your map, for example, and you have Tossup in Kansas and toss up in Iowa and toss up in Alaska. Already, these are such dramatic problems and a lot of things have to go right.

22:36 So I think the bigger question is how much of this is local or national? Like you've talked previously here, candidate quality, how it really matters in particular for Texas, like Tallarico, right? Like I feel, I personally think if Cornyn was the nominee, he would probably win. And I don't think he would win by a lot, to be clear.

22:55 It would be maybe even less than Ted Cruz and Beto. It might be one or 0.5. I'm just like, yeah, I feel like enough of the traditional people are just going to come home. But I opened the paper this morning, and I'm looking at the Dallas Morning News, who my whole life endorses John Cornyn, is like, we're with James Taylor. Now, is that going to swing a ton of people?

23:14 No.

23:14 But it's indicative of, I know these are upper crust, rich people who send their kids to SMU, they're holding their nose and they're like, I'm going to Tallarico. That doesn't happen with John Cornyn, in my opinion. So that's my question, is how much of this is local candidate quality and then how much of it is national? Because for a lot of years, it didn't really matter who the candidates were by plus or minus two, something like that.

23:35 Because at the end of the day, whoever's in the Senate, you're voting for Trump or you're not. And that really matters, right? In terms of who that person is. What have you seen in your analysis?

23:44 Yeah, I think it's both. I mean, you're not talking about Alaska being in play if- even with Paltola running, if this environment was like tepidly bad for Republicans, but not terrible. Interesting. That being said, look, this is my hot take, and maybe I'm going to look dumb for this, but I genuinely believe that we're getting a little less polarized after a sprinting in the other direction. What I mean by that, to put it in English, is voters have been less willing to break with their party. And so red states vote redder, blue states vote bluer, and we feel like we're long past the era where you saw Democrats representing places like Missouri and South Dakota and Republicans winning a lot of blue places as well. And

24:25 so maybe that's going to change a little bit.

24:28 Yeah.

24:29 Because people don't like either party. They think the whole system is wrong. That is like the consensus across America. And Canada equality might mean a little bit more.

24:40 Yeah, I mean, I could see it. Look, the one thing that you have to accept in politics is whenever you get sort of like a mental frame of what's going on, things shift. So I could definitely see that. You know, I want to talk a little bit more about all of the polling misses and try if we can to put some theories together. So it certainly seems like there is something about when Trump is on the ballot.

25:03 pollsters underestimate his support, his support specifically. Whereas the midterm elections, it's been more of a mixed bag. And in fact, I mean, these two midterm elections, the most recent, the 2022 midterm and the 2025 off-year election, they underestimated Democrats. And look, pollsters are human beings. They want to try to adjust things. They have gotten a lot more shit for underestimating Republicans than they have for underestimating Democrats, ultimately.

25:30 So do you think that part of the reason why the midterm polls have been wrong in the opposite direction is because of pollster overcorrection trying to make sure this time we don't underestimate Republicans?

25:42 Yeah, I think that could be part of it. And also, like, I just want to say on the 2022 map, I forgot to say this before. Part of this is because we're using real clear politics, which does tend to have a Republican bias. I don't know if that's because they were embarrassed about 2020 and trying to overcorrect, because they didn't include some very good polling in New Hampshire. The pollster they called the best that released a poll two days before the election because it would have moved their average to showing Maggie Hassan winning the race. So their miss was a lot bigger than other people that year, to be fair.

26:10 That makes sense.

26:10 Isn't that the year all these random Republican pollsters came out of the woodwork? Yeah.

26:15 You can make adjustments for that and start instituting bias checks. Like that's the downside of RCP versus, you know, myself and Nate Silver is that they don't correct for partisan pollsters and they do like three or four and it's kind of open for interpretation of the most recent polls. And so like if you're just including all of them and two of them are Republican pollsters, you're more at risk of making this type of mess.

26:34 Got it.

26:35 That being said, like I think part of this is that pollsters job has gotten way harder because I think the answer rate for polls by phone is like less than 10% of what it was in 2016. And it was, it was surging down at that point too. Cause people wouldn't get a random call. Like we remember when we were younger, you usually answered it. Now it's well, five years ago, it used to be a scammer. Now it's AI pretending to be your grandma.

26:58 I've gotten six layers before I answer a phone call. Like I went to the carrier to block unknown numbers. I have a screener. I have like, if I'm answering your phone call, You're a real person. I can't be the only person. I've paid money for apps that will block robocalls.

27:16 I answer the random numbers because I need someone to so that these polls are better.

27:19 Oh, fair. You're part of the polling bias.

27:23 Let me ask you this, Logan.

27:26 If we understand the limitations of the polls, we understand that we've had a variety of misses in a variety of directions. What other things are you looking at? What are, when you say the fundamentals, what do we mean here? And is there anything you're looking at? People are starting to parse through the early vote data, which I always think is a little bit of a dicey proposition, especially if you don't know what.

27:48 I mean, I'm looking at it too. Let's be real.

27:50 I'm an early vote crack addict. I just, I can't get enough.

27:53 And we are going to try to do a segment on it. Anyway, putting that aside, what are you seeing right now that you think people should be paying attention to? I'll tell you. I'll put my cards on the table. I was saying yesterday in our planning call that we need to get a graphic that's just like the gas prices.

28:07 Yeah.

28:07 The average today, what it was a week ago, what it was a year ago, what it is for diesel, because I don't know that there's any better indicator of the mood of the country and where we're likely to end up on election day. So that's my simple heuristic. What are the sorts of things that you're specifically looking at?

28:23 Yeah, I actually haven't looked at the early vote this year. And I'll be honest, I'm a little scarred for life from it because in 2016, my friend that worked at the DNC was giving me all this information. He was so confident about how amazing Clinton was going to do after the strong numbers in Miami, which actually went amazing for Democrats. They just did everywhere. They did horrible literally everywhere else in the state. Right. Or at least in the northern parts of the state, I should say. But like, I think it's so easy to see what you want to see. Voting patterns change. Democrats might even be scared about the mail-in ballots after Trump was up to some stuff trying to change the rules and there wasn't Successful

28:57 like this could all change the way people vote cycle to cycle and so drawing these big conclusions from it It literally might be a signal that Democrats have decided How much they're gonna spend in early geo TV? right and trying to bank in some votes in mail or how much Donald Trump is has a decided to encourage or discourage people from using mail-in ballots.

29:18 Well, I remember for Democrats, 2024, the lines were out the door in Northern Virginia. People were like, oh my God, look at all these Democrats. Trump wins all seven swing states. Including, by the way, his margin in Virginia is higher than it is.

29:30 Oh, well, even worse than looking at the early vote data is looking at like, oh, there's a long line in Fairfax County at this point. You know, I mean, that's really... not that i won't do that i was gonna say i'm still that but because we're just so desperate for any sense okay so early vote you're like just don't even look at it yeah but i will.

29:48 So i can answer your question better next time but i.

29:51 Will say i anecdotally looking on twitter you see people cherry picking oh you know, I'll see the same state analyzed in totally polar opposite directions. So putting aside early vote, what else are you looking at?

30:04 Yeah, honestly, I like doing a combination of quantitative and qualitative. And they're just between personal conversations, focus groups I've listened to. There is so much frustration with a lot of Trump voters. And I don't necessarily Like some of this has actually died in the wool Republicans, but especially soft Trump voters.

30:25 Yeah.

30:26 They just are not happy with what's being delivered. It's sort of a crisis for them about who they're going to vote for. And so these conversations are very much reflecting what I'm seeing in all these other indicators. And I genuinely think that means something. I think you got to combine that with the data because you're not going to talk to everyone. You're just not. So you're no person in America unless they're traveling all over. is going to have a proper read of the whole country. Yeah.

30:51 But I'm also really hearing this from folks that both first and second hand, they're in places like southern Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, whose family always votes for Republicans. But this year, like they are just so frustrated with what they've seen from ICE, what they've dealt with with prices that they're going to flip for Tallarico. And so like and some for Hinojosa, like this is definitely happening again.

31:15 It's a question of how much. and how much decides who actually is going to win these races. But I think it's really clear that the movement is real.

31:24 Interesting. Well, if you want another data point, off our YouTube analytics alone, I thought Trump was going to win. And now off of our YouTube analytics, I'm like, it's going to be 60 seats for the for the Democrats.

31:33 What do you mean when you say that?

31:34 Well, you can just tell, like, general, like, what people are looking at, like, oh, what's getting the click rate, what generally, you know, people.

31:40 Are into, what the commenters, you.

31:43 Know, things like that. Don't read them. We don't read them. But it's, in general, you know, in terms of the reports that we get back, and then also the shareable, the like ratio, all that other stuff. I'm like, yeah, I mean, look, people call it the podcast election, so it's like, take it for something, right?

31:57 Yeah.

31:58 In terms of how that looks. So anyway, yeah, a little peek behind the curtain. for everybody.

32:01 Okay.

32:02 Uh, let's get to the next part with the GOP.

32:06 All right.

32:07 Turning now to the GOP, Logan, you were just talking about how Republican voters are sounding off organically behind the scenes about how they're pretty much done. Here is BA is a farmer in Georgia, basically saying I'm done with the Republicans. I'm going to go ahead and vote for John Ossoff. Let's take a listen.

32:21 On his vineyard in Southern Georgia, Gary Polk feels the impacts of many of president Trump's policies firsthand.

32:28 The fuel today is twice as high as it would have been this time last year.

32:31 The president says all the time that he is doing these mass deportations because non-citizens, people who are here illegally in some cases, are taking jobs from Americans.

32:44 Is that the case?

32:45 That's just, that's not true.

32:47 They're not taking jobs from Americans. And actually, a lot of times they are filling jobs that Americans don't want. more ag jobs and more labor-intensive jobs, construction jobs.

33:04 Polk also worries about access to health care in rural areas after his 36-year-old daughter Amy suffered serious strokes that nearly took her life.

33:12 Amy has come a long way.

33:14 She still can't speak very well. She's just now started to eat some soft foods, but she's a fighter.

33:20 After weighing all these factors, Polk has decided for the first time in his life to cast a ballot for a Democrat. incumbent Senator John Ossoff. He doesn't agree with the Democrat on all issues, notably abortion, but it is Ossoff's help in getting federal aid after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on Polk's grape crop that won his vote.

33:41 I'll save my comments for why Americans are taking that job. But nonetheless, Mr. Polk voted for Republicans. Now he's voting for John Ossoff. I also thought one was interesting as the first farmer I've listened to who is not voting Democrat solely because of diesel prices and or tariffs. And so that is an example. Another thing, Logan, which I often find in these things is people are actually very bad at being like, this is why I'm no longer done with Trump. They'll like make something up.

34:07 Right.

34:07 But a lot of the times it's they come back to it's a feeling it's like multifactorial. But Nonetheless, it fits, as you were saying, with a lot of the focus group data that you've listened to. Like, where does that fit in?

34:18 Well, most people aren't like us three.

34:20 Right.

34:20 They're ready to exactly.

34:21 Give their reasons because they just are analyzing it over time. And you can see Biden's numbers dropped after Afghanistan. No one was talking about that in the next election, but it changed the way people saw him. True. Great point.

34:31 That's a great point.

34:32 So what was the question you were saying?

34:34 Just how does it fit with the focus group and other stuff that you've seen? Yeah, yeah.

34:37 I think that is really representative. There's all sorts of different reasons, but above all else, people think they're not delivering. And the difference here is what you said about John Ossoff, which is what he is exceptional and every person in the Senate and House should learn from. You need staff members that are obsessed with making people's lives better in the state or district because that is what everyone says about Ossoff is they call his office and they are the problem-solving center, both in getting individual help and also making changes to bills. And that's what you're supposed to be doing when you're in office.

35:07 Interesting. All right, let's put B1 up on the screen. So this shows Trump's midterm rally schedule. He's headed to Kansas. Never would have thought that one would be on the map. North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Georgia, and Michigan. So some of those are places we would have expected to be battlegrounds, some of them decidedly not, South Carolina, looking at you. However, how excited, Logan, first of all, what can we glean from the schedule reading the tea leaves about how they're feeling about how things are going? Second of all, how excited is, let's say, Mike Rogers going to be to have Trump show up in the state of Michigan?

35:47 He's probably not going to be excited, but there's actually an argument for him doing this, okay? So, Donald Trump is clearly hurting Republicans, but... To some degree, that's priced in. All right. The stronger the linkage, the better for Dems. That's the downside of him coming. The upside is Republicans are a lot less motivated and he is better able than anyone else in their party to stir some excitement and energy. So if they don't have as bad of a turnout gap, they might be able to be safe in places like South Carolina, for example, which I think they're going to win, but is in play.

36:22 Yeah.

36:23 And.

36:25 then it's the persuasion gap which will be real. And this certainly doesn't help. That being said, I did see Ashley Hinson when she was in the White House with Trump. Every quote she said was intended to not be able to be clipped about how great Trump is. It was meant to be specifically about a mill or fat.

36:43 I noticed that. She's like, thank you, Mr. President, for bringing steel to our state.

36:48 Second, if you look at the look in her eyes when he says, and Ashley, we're going to be in Iowa.

36:53 Right.

36:54 She has a pretty good poker face, so you really got to look at the eyes. It's the same look I have if I'm nervous at a bar and not feeling like fully myself and talking to a cute girl. It's like he looks like she looked a little like dead in the eyes and scared.

37:10 Good analogy. I can't relate.

37:12 I can't relate.

37:13 Let's put B2 up here on the screen. Here's what Trump said. is currently focused on, meanwhile. He says, New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico. We are the United States. The name should add great value and prestige to the home state. Home values and incomes would rise, and you would even be prouder while saluting our American flag. Maybe even the crooked elections that New Mexico is known for would become honest again. So, meanwhile, that's what he is focused on. And, you know, this fits very much with B3. We'll put that one on the screen. This is very interesting from the New York Times, where they talk specifically about how there's something missing from Republican ads as the midterms near.

37:54 If you go down and you look, Trump has effectively disappeared from Republican campaign ads. And so they show how Democrats have dramatically spent an inordinate amounts of money, like tens of millions of dollars, with Donald Trump's name in the ads as the closer we get to Election Day. Then they show comparatively that Republican mentions of Trump after September have effectively been nuked, and especially from the time period of before the Iran war. It's basically after the Iran war, his name drops off a cliff with a lot of these Republicans in their ads whenever they're talking about why somebody should elect them.

38:35 Yeah, that's because he's so unpopular right now. And it's also like a strength of support thing. We've talked about this before. People that don't like Trump can't stand him, and people that like Trump are split evenly between liking and loving him. So part of this is the reaction that it's gonna cause. I think his approval rating is a little weaker than the top line number would say for that reason. And I think separate from that, the big message you're seeing, if there's any overall national message, something you're hearing from Abdul El-Saeed and candidates all across the country is twofold. One, Donald Trump has the wrong priorities. Two, they're campaigning on Donald Trump's priorities. But with a different

39:12 set of policies to get there. And it's sort of like a message saying to some people that are Republican, I'm actually going to deliver on the change that you wanted. And we need to refocus on what our priorities are. So I think there's some Trump voters that are willing to vote for the Democrat. or the independent in like a Dan Osborne situation in Nebraska because they want the priorities back to what the types of things Trump ran on, but is mostly ignored since he got into office this term.

39:42 Let's put before up on the screen. This is a new Reuters poll that finds Trump falling to his lowest approval rating for their polling at 31 percent, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. And the midterms, obviously, just around the corner. If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, Logan, I was very much remembering 2018, which was a good year for Democrats. But there were originally some states like this and some districts like red districts that were on the table. And there was a coming home for Republicans where the losses were stemmed. And ultimately, yes, Democrats had a good year, but it wasn't like a catastrophic, error-defining bloodbath of the sort that could potentially be on

40:20 the table this time around. However, as we become very close to the day and Trump's approval rating continues to fall, And I'm looking, gas prices still very high, a lot going on in the Middle East with the Houthis and the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz and all of this. It doesn't seem like you're having quite that same effect as you did in 2018. In 2018, the Kavanaugh hearings really did a lot. And I was working on some campaigns at that time. The polling could see it shift in red districts. Thus far, you haven't seen that same coalescing. There hasn't been a turnaround in the polls, even in these red districts. Is it getting to be too late in the game at this point?

40:59 Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's not like it is too late in the game for a state like Iowa or ones that are really close to shift, but for the whole thing, yeah. I mean, this is such a different race. Let's go back to 2017 for a sec. What happens? I think it's literally the day after, if not a few days after. You have the biggest protest, arguably in American history, for the Women's March, where, like, I think more people came for that in D.C. than the inauguration. At least it felt like it, right? So people who did not like Trump were outraged and outraged and scared and mad from day one. And that wave built so that by the start of 2018, it was like a D plus eight year. And then the car was parked and it was there nationally and Republican individual

41:39 Senate races and governor races and house races. The Democrats were all ready to vote and saying they were decided. And then the Republicans didn't know much about the candidates. And so that gap narrowed and it was a pretty good year polling wise. But if you look at the polling a few months earlier before the election, it wouldn't have been right here. Look, I don't know which direction the polls are going to miss. So maybe it's not going to be as extreme as it looks right now.

42:00 But this is clearly, I believe in the momentum of polls very strongly. If you're seeing a shift across the board, the direction of the campaign is definitely shifting. And here things went from, okay, Republicans are going to have a slightly worse than average year to this could be absolutely terrible for them. And that has happened since like March where Democrats were a little behind the curve. Hell, they were losing in the national polling at a certain point.

42:24 Last year, like up until like halfway through the year, it has been a slow shift away from the Republican Party. So the momentum is not going back to them. I think it's kind of plateaued. But for month after month, Democrats were gaining. And I don't think you're going to have a massive shift back across the country in Republicans direction in the next few weeks.

42:41 Yeah, what's fascinating. I mean, Crystal's point was talking about gas earlier. I'm looking right now. Gas is $ 4. 27 a gallon nationally. I mean, what are we doing here? $ 4. 27 a gallon nationally. It's been over $ 4 a gallon for six months. The price of Brent crude oil, not that anybody should care because what you care about ultimately is refined products. The price of Brent crude oil is $ 111 a barrel. I mean, it's the highest it's been in months.

43:03 So you put those two things together and that means that 427 is only going one direction in the next couple of weeks. When people go to vote, gas will be over $ 4 a gallon. I can say that pretty confidently. And diesel will be well over six bucks if you're in California or in a lot of these other battleground states, like for example, in Michigan, Michigan has some of the higher gas prices around four 50, their national or their statewide diesel prices around, you know, is $ 6 and 42 cents, which is higher than the national average. I mean, at a certain point, like these things, plus the approval rating and all that, they're just, it's going to sink you.

43:38 Like it will sink the type of momentum that you're getting.

43:40 And I think Trump is literally like his biggest weakness comes so into play during an economic challenge that people blame him for. because he is not doing what every other candidate would do.

43:50 I feel your pain.

43:51 I feel your pain. He's not saying I hear you. He's saying you're wrong. I think just yesterday he said the prices are going down, down, down. And people don't want to hear that. They want to hear I'm working on this and I'm going to do my best to make it better instead of saying you're dreaming. It's just insulting for people, and that's part of the reason why some folks are willing to say, trying to grab his attention and say, listen, this is real. That's a way to tell the president that it's real if you're a Republican and you start voting the other way in a red state.

44:17 Yeah, I get it.

44:18 Last one I have for you. Let's put B5 up on the screen here. So we've been talking all about the Senate, right? And that's where the most exciting action is because that's the House that's most in play, the chamber that's most in play. However, if we look at the House, I think most people think, OK, Democrats are going to win the House. But there is a question of how far the wave goes. And so The Washington Post did this breakdown of now you've got some deep red districts that have become house battlegrounds, and they lay out some races to watch here. And we've had a few candidates on who would be in some of these districts.

44:54 We talked to Nicole Laughlin last week in Florida 26. It's the R plus 18 district in Florida, however heavily Latino. It seems to be shifting very dramatically. What are you what sort of outcomes do you think are on the table in the House? Because I ran in 2010 as a Democrat disastrous year for Democrats. And it was a sort of year where you were looking at like, oh, my God, this person lost. That person won. 2008 was the opposite on the Democratic side. There were races that suddenly were in play that nobody was paying attention to that had very little money spent and raised. They were completely under the radar. So what is the sort of what are the sort of outcomes that you think could be on the table here in the House?

45:31 All right. I didn't know that, Crystal. That kind of breaks my heart. You'd be so good at it. Although you're going to do shows. I guess it worked out.

45:36 Things worked out just fine, Logan. Don't worry about me.

45:40 My cousin ran in 2015 in Loudoun County. And as a Democrat, he lost by like 1%. He was outspent 10 to 1. And that was like the last time Loudoun County was competitive. And it was an amazing year for Republicans. Like he would have won easily. He's now moved to Ohio. So unfortunate for him. But it is all about the years.

46:00 Anyway.

46:01 I think the thing that's unique about this cycle is you have a lot of really great candidates. There's a lot we can say about Democratic leadership and failures last year. But one thing they didn't fail at, and maybe this isn't Democratic leaders, maybe this is the infrastructure of grassroots. So many good candidates ran in states, in races across the country, because what happens in waves that is in your tough places, people will run because they've had enough and they want to make change happen.

46:29 Right.

46:30 And on the other side, people won't even, we can't even get a candidate sometimes, right? And so, like, that is what certainly happened to Democrats in spades this cycle. So if it becomes a mega wave, they have a real chance in lots of competitive districts. Like, Elise Stefanik's district, to me, looks competitive. And Blake, his first name starts with G, but like, he has raised so much money from actual donors. He's running against Anthony Constantino, who's been self-funding and When you have these candidates raising these enormous amount of money in places that are supposed to be over r-plus-10 But people are really dissatisfied and it hits, you know that district extra hard now You have a

47:13 chance to build a win, right? So there is like to me the median scenario is like Democrats 233 in the house and part of.

47:20 It could be how much gain is that explain.

47:22 It's not that much because Democrats barely lost the house last two cycles and So it'd be like a gain of like 20 seats. But if it gets bad enough for them, you're going to see some breakthroughs even in a very gerrymandered era, which makes big gains harder. You know, it's really a question of how many of these hard to reach places that have Republicans that have never had to run a competitive race before in their lives that are just not ready for it.

47:47 Yeah. I mean, just to put a finer point on it, you mentioned Elise Stefanik's district. This is the district Donald Trump won by 21 points.

47:53 Yes.

47:54 That's insane.

47:55 It is insane.

47:56 For that to be even talked about as competitive.

47:59 Yeah.

48:00 Yeah. I can't wait to see. Because, yeah, if you move, let's say you win that by five. I mean, that's still humiliating because now you've got to contest it in the future. You can't gerrymander your way out of this. There's only a certain amount that you can do.

48:13 It's true.

48:13 At a statewide. My biggest questions, we haven't spent any time on this, but state legislators do, for the next upcoming map cycle and for what all that, will look like, and especially after what we saw in Virginia and a lot of the crazy stuff the Republicans pulled. If you get legislator sweeps, which I've heard is on the table in some very swing states as well, I'm like, a lot of these maps are going to be gerrymandered right in the other direction.

48:40 Well, for next year, yeah, you're probably going to see mid-district gerrymandering become more common.

48:45 It's going to be the norm now. Why wouldn't it be?

48:47 No, you know what?

48:48 You're making a really good point. And actually, this is where Republicans, I never thought about this before. This might be the biggest mistake Republicans have made.

48:54 Oh, the mid-district thing? I totally agree with you.

48:56 Because now, like 2030, this is me getting ahead of my skis, but whatever, right?

49:00 This is what I do.

49:02 I think in 2028, Democrats will more likely than not win the White House. Obviously, it's competitive, but I think they're going to win, which means in 2030, they're probably going to have a terrible year because it's a midterm. And normally, that means the GOP would be able to like, gerrymandered the heck out of the map again, like they did in the 2010s. But if we're doing, like... mid districting, Democrats can lock in a lot of advantages in places to be able to staunch how much of a wave 2030 would be, which means the Republicans don't get 10 years.

49:31 Yeah, no, that's what I'm that's what I'm thinking. Like my immediate reaction, because that's exactly what happened. People were saying about Obama, remember Obama, like what was it? I forget how many state legislatures.

49:41 A thousand state legislative seats that were lost by Democrats under Obama.

49:45 Yeah, exactly.

49:45 It was a disaster. And the way that structurally screwed them going into.

49:50 Like if you had 08 and 10 instead of 06 and 08. Exactly. Completely different.

49:54 We live in a different world if that happens.

49:55 Democrats control the House in 2012. He comes into his second term with another trifecta.

50:00 Right, exactly. Who even knows?

50:03 Whatever.

50:03 There's so many different things. that we could be living in. Anyway, yeah, nerdy segment, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks, Logan. Thanks for stopping by, man. Appreciate you.

50:11 No problem, guys.

50:14 J.D.

50:15 Vance sat down with Mark Halperin for an interview on a variety of topics, but Halperin pushed him in particular on Trump family corruption. Let's take a listen to how he handled that.

50:25 One thing we hear from the two-way community all the time, and I bet you hear it too, is disappointment and concern that the president's family has gotten much wealthier while you've been in office. How do you feel about the fact that they've gotten wealthier while you've been in office?

50:38 Well, I think they were already a very, very wealthy family. And I think it's a family that suffered extraordinary financial consequences for him being president the first time. And I think if you look at the long sweep of the first Trump administration, obviously that four-year period in between, and the second Trump administration, I just don't understand the argument that somehow... politics has made Donald Trump or his family much better off.

51:03 I mean, their lives were nearly destroyed. Their business was nearly destroyed.

51:07 They tried to throw the president in jail for something like 900 years. So I don't see the benefit there. Now, I do think there's a separate concern that I sometimes think gets muddled with the first concern, which is that is D.C. just too corrupt of a town? Do people get too rich for knowing the right people? Do they sell access to the president? Now, I've never seen any evidence that anybody selling access to the president or certainly selling access to me But like if there's a credible accusation there, I guarantee you the president of the United States is going to be the first person in line to say that's ridiculous and despicable. And I am, too.

51:39 No one is selling access to the president. He's never seen any evidence of that. I mean, I think that is pretty preposterous. Just to give one example. And Pedro Gonzalez, shout out to him, tweeted about this. He says last year, Vance's inner circle opened a private club in D.C. with a five hundred thousand dollar membership fee. Virtually everyone involved is a close fans ally from David Sachs. to Donald Trump Jr. The whole idea is to have an exclusive place for Trump-aligned elites to hang out close to the halls of power. It really is remarkable what a hypocrite Vance is. I mean, we could go through, we could spend the entire day going through the Trump era scandals, some involving directly him, a lot of which has to

52:16 do with his crypto wealth, newly found crypto wealth. Even if you think, Sagar, about all of the schlocky merchandise that he's constantly, the sneakers and the watches and the God knows what else, that they're constantly hawking. And you sit there with a straight face, oh, I don't think they profited off of the presidency. Literally no one buys it.

52:34 Even Republicans don't buy this at this point.

52:36 You actually made a fantastic point yesterday where you should say we find that disgusting and that's why we told Kimberly Guilfoyle to go and we've opened a DOJ investigation. But Trump's not going to have that. He needs you to defend him. I was reading a little bit behind the scenes about that ridiculous woman who became the press secretary, Katie Zachariah. I don't even know if that's her name.

52:55 I didn't have enough time to learn it. Now you don't need to. Now I don't need to. I can forget that she exists completely. Apparently, the reason that she was picked is that she would strategically book herself on television at the moments when she knew Trump was going to be watching TV, like, oh, I don't know, 10 a.m.

53:12 Eastern Standard Time. And she would put herself in a position where she was vehemently defending Trump. Trump went over the chief of staff's head and specifically booked her because he needs people to defend him specifically on television. So when Trump sees a clip and you don't adequately kind of suck up to him enough, you can't have that.

53:32 Like the Kimberly Guilfoyle example we gave is exactly what you would do rationally if you were running, but you're not dealing with a rational actor. It's just funny too because you can see how J.D. will break whenever he wants to. Like for example, in that same interview, Mark Halperin goes, OK, are you going to endorse Netanyahu? And he was like, no, I don't endorse foreign leaders.

53:52 Not true. Other foreign leaders.

53:54 We play a clip on our show of him and Viktor Orban doing a rally in Hungary while he's the vice president, which, you know, you probably should be doing that period because Orban lost, which is pretty humiliating. But beyond that, and Trump is indoors, all kinds of Bolsonaro and all these other people across the world. But it's like he's not going to get in trouble with Trump for not endorsing Bibi. But the one thing is, if you don't say that he hasn't enriched himself It's over, right?

54:18 Side note, but did you see that Bolsonaro is using AI to like change his sort of like schlubby white guy supporters into like hot Latina chicks to make it look like that's who's supporting him?

54:30 Props to him, you know?

54:31 Anyway, new world.

54:32 There's always a humiliation in terms of our actual supporters. Our friend Juan was sending me, he was down in Brazil yesterday. So he's sending me images.

54:41 We should have him on actually.

54:42 Yeah, yeah. Juan, now you're in. He literally sent me this picture of Flavio Bolsonaro 2026 and a Trump was right about everything hat in English together being sold at Brazilian rallies, just so people know. He said it's very 2024 down in Brazil.

54:57 Interesting.

54:58 Side note.

54:58 Anyway, it is a day that ends in Y, which means we have a number of new potential corruption scandals circling the Trump administration, which is also circling the drain. And this one really sort of fits into the lane of It's a pit of vipers and they're all coming after each other now as the wheels come off and everyone is starting to hate one another and the glow of victory and sense of ascendance is gone. The bloom is off the rose, so to speak. Now you have these fights starting to break out. Kimberly Guilfoyle was one of them. And now we have this one. Let's put this up on the screen. This is reporting from Axios.

55:34 They say secret pay for play text rocks the Trump White House.

55:39 Okay.

55:40 So we've got a number of characters involved here. We've got Alina Haba. We've got Rick Grenell, who previously was very involved in particular in some of the Venezuela machinations. And we have this Turkish businessman, Turhan Mildon, who Alina Haba just married. So Alina is alleging that Rick Grinnell sort of put the screws to her now husband, Mildon, to donate millions of dollars, some of which was supposed to go to this sketchy African enterprise and no one's really nailed down what that piece of this was supposed to be. And the other half, which was supposed to go to the Kennedy Center donation, which along with the ballroom is something Trump is very fixated on. He wants it named after him and they're closing and they want

56:26 to renovate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this money was supposed to go to the Kennedy Center as a way to curry favor with Trump and gain this Turkish businessman access to Trump and the administration and get the insider VIP treatment, which, by the way, apparently he did get. He was spotted at the Kennedy Center next to J.D. Vance, etc. However, now Alina is claiming that Rick Grinnell stole this money and never gave it to the Kennedy Center fund. She brought this to the White House, and now it's a whole thing. He denies it completely. I genuinely, actually looking at this, not that I find any of it preposterous to believe that this sort of favor trade is going on, but he does make some good points about the story

57:10 not totally adding up. And her numbers have shifted over time, and they use like a British spelling of the word, I think center, which he wouldn't have used because he's not British. So anyway, there are some holes in the story. But Sagar, first of all, no one would be shocked if this sort of pay-to-play thing was going on. Very similar to what was going on with Kimberly Guilfoyle, where she's promising, hey, you give me this and I'll be able to help you out in this variety of ways.

57:32 But also, now we have a lot of drama and messiness, which is truly breaking out.

57:39 I believe Rick's side of the story, but what I definitely believe is Alina Haba is using this to... Look, this is what people don't get. None of these people have any principles. And at the end of the day, she wants power and she's power hungry and a media like literally like all she wants to do is be linked to Trump. She was his lawyer, personal lawyer, nominated, humiliated, obviously, whenever that didn't work out for her. Now she's married some billionaire who people didn't even know anything about trying to use the money and proximity to Trump. Apparently, you know, there's some allegations around business dealings and things like that.

58:15 But what the Pit of Vipers story kind of shows you is this is what it's all gonna look like come a year from now. A year from now, we will be sitting here and covering some of the most shocking, you know, revelations in terms and sometimes they may not live up to the hype or not, but like every other day there will be congressional investigation subpoenas. These people will be before Congress. There will be an, if you thought the Supreme court stuff precedent that was set previously was crazy, it's about to get crazier. We're going to be at executive privilege and total immunity for official acts.

58:48 All of that will be re-challenged in court as they take them for not fulfilling their obligation to come before Congress, of stonewalling special counsel. I could go on forever.

58:57 You're also going to have more people who, Kimberly Guilfoyle may take this path, who see that the Trump ship is sinking and want to get off.

59:07 Yes.

59:07 And so they offer up what they have and they offer to testify. And so you'll have all of these grudge matches of people who probably secretly hated each other for a long time. playing out in public as well. So we're just beginning to enter that potential era. We also have more reporting from The Washington Post here about Trump's ballroom fund. Let's put this up on the screen.

59:29 From The Washington Post, they dug in here to the full list of major donors, something that has not been previously reported. And keep this up on the screen. Let's tick through some of these names. We'll be familiar to you. Oh, look, who's number one on the list there, Sagar? The Adelson Family Foundation. Surprise, surprise. Coming in number one on the list, $ 25 million donated so that Trump can have his ballroom. Next, we've got Apple sucking up to him with the big $ 25 million. Then we have the co-founder of the Dish Network and Echo Star. Then we've got NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, and all of these people slash entities coming in at $ 25 million donated. Then we drop down to Google. We've got $ 22 million. We've got the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Foundation.

1:00:16 Isaac is the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment. $ 20 million. Lockheed Martin, those defense contractors can always be counted on for some millions flowing into your coffers. And next we have Microsoft at $ 10 million. So a list of players that you would probably expect. Let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen here because this is where the corruption angle comes in. So this is a chart from this same article that shows not only who is paying, but also indicates that about half of the entities or individuals who have donated to this ballroom fund have also received federal contracts during his second term.

1:00:58 So everyone knows this is a big priority for Trump. He talks literally obsessively obsessively about it far more than he talks about your condition, your standard of living, the cost of living, any of that. He is obsessed with this freaking ballroom. And so you've got people who know this is the way to get in his good graces and ultimately to potentially be able to get federal contracts. Now, what the White House responds is that the people who complain about this would also complain if it was taxpayers funding it.

1:01:29 True. True.

1:01:31 I complain about both of these things.

1:01:33 Guess what?

1:01:34 We have a process in place. If you have a priority in something you want funded, You are supposed to go through Congress and get it approved. And then, you know, there is some sort of democratic check on this. And yes, I would oppose that because I think there are far greater priorities than you having this gilded ballroom that you're obsessed with that you want to put your name on. So, yes, you're right. I do oppose either funding mechanisms through the corrupt donor process or through the now taxpayers dollars are not only going to, you know, your various wars. illegal and horrific wars overseas, but are also going to your gilded ballroom.

1:02:04 See, but the real question is whether you support unlimited funds to destroy the ballroom, because that's where I'm at. So no matter what it costs, it has to be razed to the ground and the original East Wing must be built brick. You know when billionaires are like, I shipped a mansion over and- We deconstructed the marble. That's what I want. I want people crawling through the landfills and re-getting the East Wing supplies wherever it is, no matter the cost. That would be a jobs program. Yeah, it would make a WPA program.

1:02:30 I think we can all tear it down as like a community effort. I'm sure. Like as a come a great coming together.

1:02:35 I'll be there.

1:02:36 And then, you know, the restoration can be done as a sort of jobs program for the next administration.

1:02:41 Anyway, actually, returning to the graphic, can we put it back up on the screen, the original C3, just so I can show people, it's very important to actually go down this list so you guys can see. Adelson goes without saying, that's just the Israel pay-for-play screen. But take a look at the other people who are three out of the top five, Apple, NVIDIA, and Google. Well, what do you think all these people have in common? Shall we?

1:03:04 So for example, NVIDIA needs Trump on export controls. $ 25 million is nothing. They print that in a single second over at that company, which has a large... NVIDIA's market cap is larger than the entire European stock market, all right? And then same whenever it comes to Apple.

1:03:19 Why?

1:03:20 Tariffs, because their tariff exemption on China is the only thing keeping that company together and all of its profits. And yet, even with that, remember, if you guys, like me, I was day one iPhone Duo customer. I mean, these things are going for 2,500 bucks now, right? So 3,000 if you want a terabyte. I mean, obviously, I get it.

1:03:39 It's always been more expensive, but that's still pretty shocking. And a lot of that is because of global trade. Tim Cook and now the new CEO have played Trump like a fiddle for years whenever it comes to tariff exemption. And then finally, Google. So obviously, they say it as settlement funds from Trump's lawsuit against YouTube, but you and I both know what this is. This is about antitrust exemption and specifically, with Google what they really need. I was just reading about this. Sergey Brin basically went 20 years without ever being involved in politics. Just didn't give a shit, right? Well, all of a sudden, the California wealth tax comes on, and Sergey, who has some maha girlfriend or something like that now, and is super pro-Trump,

1:04:22 he's never spent more money in politics in his entire life than against the billionaire tax in California. That's what this is all about. It's purely, it's not even ideological. It's greed, like straight up greed. And continuing down, Perlmutter from Marvel, Hollywood. I mean, people have no idea because they probably have never looked. The Paramount merger and everything that's gone on also with Disney, they need significant regulatory approval and everything behind the scenes on Hollywood. I don't doubt that some of this is ideological, but it's not a coincidence that the vast majority have immense business interests before the government. And that's the issue.

1:04:59 Of course.

1:04:59 Of course.

1:05:00 Yeah. Very obvious what's going on here. And it's utterly disgusting. Sagar, you flagged this this morning. Let's put this up on the screen from ProPublica. New revelations about how not only is Trump engaged in all sorts of corrupt schemes, but he's also using his FBI to erase a bunch of investigations that were previously ongoing. You know, there was some reporting about Susan Collins in particular. Now we've got some new information here from ProPublica about a South Carolina alleged bribery investigation. Well, the investigation part is real. The bribery allegations obviously are alleged that may have saved both Lindsey Graham and Jim Clyburn. So a little bit of bipartisanship here.

1:05:41 Not surprising when you're talking about corruption. from this investigation. Sagar, what do we know about what was going on here or what's alleged to have been going on here?

1:05:50 It's kind of complicated. I'll explain it. So Martin Kao, former CEO of the Hawaii Naval Contractor, told the FBI his business model was trading campaign donations for federal contracts. And in South Carolina, he made cash for contracts arrangements, allegedly, with Lindsey Graham, James Clyburn, and Joe Wilson. So this is a bipartisan scheme. each of whom said he asked them for $ 100, 000. Graham met with Cow and one of their lobbyists at a steakhouse here in Washington. Graham's campaign required a $ 40, 000 contribution just for a 45-minute meeting. Cow says Graham agreed to support $ 10 million a year in funding in exchange for a $ 100, 000 pledge. That same week, his office confirmed to the Office of Naval Research $ 10

1:06:34 million should go to the Natick University South Carolina partnership, and the contract was awarded in July of 2020. So the contract timeline and all that stuff basically lines up. Similar thing happened with James Clyburn. LD, specific to this company, had language that appeared in the House Appropriations Bill. Clyburn, remember, is one of the most powerful members of the United States Congress. So these two people basically come together, or these people come out, and in late 2024, they go after them, Basically, they're saying, hey, you guys are subjects.

1:07:06 After Trump returns to office, the DOJ public integrity section loses its authority to bring new cases. The assigned prosecutor leaves. Kash Patel purges the corruption unit. The person who was in charge of the unit then fired in October of 2025. And the agent who originally was looking into this. is pushed out in early of 2026. They now say that the case is dead. So basically, the guy pled guilty in 2022 to illegal campaign donation and loan fraud. He's actually serving prison sentence for 87 months. But they shut the investigation down into Lindsey Graham and Jim Clyburn charges. basically, Clyburn and Graham's office and all these other people are like, oh, he's a convicted felon, he's telling lies, and all that, which,

1:07:47 you know, might be true. But also, you know, if you take a look here, at the end of the day, you know, and to be fair, they're like, he's seeking a sentence reduction and all that. ProPublica has him pretty dead to rights in the fact that regardless of whether it was true or not, it was not properly investigated.

1:08:04 And that's what Kash Patel and the FBI, obviously, they say we looked into it, nothing came out of it. But You know, I mean the story, here's the thing. The details do line up. Like he had the dinner, they gave the cash, the contract flowed. I mean, I wouldn't say it's enough for me, but smoke and all of that, that's around here. So FBI shut it down.

1:08:23 Just wanted to give a shout out to ProPublica These types of stories are so difficult to do, and they actually did all the legwork. We'll have a link in the description if you want to.

1:08:30 Go read it. Yeah, they do fantastic work on this. And, you know, I think some of the most shameful stuff that Trump has done, too, is these, like, pay for pardon things.

1:08:38 Oh, yeah.

1:08:38 All of these criminal fraudsters who have done horrific things and, you know, are let off the hook because they hire the right person and funnel money to the right person and suck up to Trump in the right ways. And it's utterly disgraceful and disgusting abuse of power.

1:08:52 Exactly.

1:08:52 All right, let's get to property tax.