Fake Polls, Real Wave?

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Simply Safe ahead of crime in real time. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

In studio.

Gotta be here for the last couple pods before the election.

Oh man, hey, Ben Rhodes here yesterday for only friends. You were here today. Great to have you. Uh, on today's show, we got more bad polls for Republicans, who are now worried enough to start spending money on the Senate race in Mississippi. Wow. Uh, we'll also talk about Trump and Bibi's not so secret plan to prolong the Iran war with a new attack after the midterms. The president and vice president's full embrace of Vivek Ramaswamy's disgusting ad about Amy Acton that most other Ohio Republicans are running away from.

We'll also take a look at the best moments from the final Senate debates in Michigan and Kansas, and then Lovett sits down with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee in the Georgia governor's race. But first, don't spend election night psychotically scrolling Twitter and refreshing election results by yourself. Come come do it with us.

that was my plan.

Our very own Alex Wagner will be hosting a live stream of the results on the Pod Save America YouTube channel right here in Los Angeles. Starting at nine p.m. Eastern, six p.m. Pacific. Alex will be joined by a bunch of your favorite Crooked hosts, including the four of us Stacey Abrams, Erin Ryan, Kate Shaw from Strict Scrutiny, Aaron Haynes from Longplay, Claire Malone from Still Counting, and many more. Uh, also, friends of the pod will get a chance to have their questions answered live on air, which is yet another reason to become a subscriber at Crooked dot com slash friends.

And you also get ad free episodes and you're supporting one of the few pro democracy independent media outlets left in America that Brendan Carr cannot come after. Technically, yes, Technically, I like to put it out there. I like to tempt fate. Come come at us, Brendan Carr, we could come come at us and all of our friends of the pod who are now subscribers.

we could come to regret that. But so sign up to be friends of the pod and support our legal defense fund. there you That sounds close.

go. Uh, you should also subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube channel now that's free. Uh, and be sure to watch live on election night. And then when you wake up the next morning, you'll have a bonus episode of Pod Save America waiting for you, where all four of us will be going through all the results.

Can I say one more thing on this before

Yes, you can.

we move on?

Yes, you can. A week ago, Hm.

he challenged the people to sign up. If a certain number of them signed up, they would get to Elijah would go to DC. Oh, right. What I don't think I don't

happened?

think we're there yet.

What happened, Elijah? Well, Elijah is still sitting in North Carolina.

Yeah, he's not there, so just

Who knows? a few more subscribers Just a few and more subscribers, and Elijah will go, Oh, cause he's gonna go to DC. And ask a a question at the briefing,

right. At the time we were doing it, Kitty Zakaria was the press secretary. She's no that is no longer the case.

well, and did you also s Stephen Chung, uh, communications director, said there will be another briefing soon, but not like not before the midterms are over. There's gonna be and there's gonna be no new press secretary, like for the rest of the year,

Well, either way, the next time there's a briefing, do you want Elijah there or not? Is the question It's giving you I would ask you it's giving you guys.

guys an extra time to sign up, but you still need to sign up in order for Elijah to drive to DC.

exactly, thank you.

Crooked dot com slash friends. Lots of, lots of benefits, too. All right, Dan, I keep waiting to wake up at four a.m. Uh, with that familiar pre-election knot in my stomach that comes from bad headlines and or bad polls. Um, but it appears that that'll have to wait till next week, or, um, maybe after the votes are counted. Even worse, uh, the final New York Times Siena poll uh of the cycle uh came out Wednesday, Tuesday,

Wednesday yesterday.

Wednesday. Uh, has Dems leading the national House vote among likely voters by eleven points, fifty two to forty one, with Donald Trump's approval rating at just 36%. Uh, silver bulletin average has the generic ballot at around nine to ten points, so pretty close to the average. Uh, little on the high end. Too many new House and Senate polls to go through, uh, but the latest silver bullets and averages have Democratic Senate candidates up by about a point in Iowa and Kansas, two and a half points in Texas, three points in Maine and Michigan, four in Ohio and Alaska.

All good, but all still close enough that an ordinary polling error could fuck us.

Won't won't.

Uh, and if you'd rather not believe the polls, you can just watch where the money's going. Republicans are pouring money into Kansas and South Carolina and are now weighing a last minute investment in, wait for it, Mississippi, where Donald Trump will be campaigning on Monday. Uh, in the Axios story about this, a Republican strategist who likes, uh, beating metaphors to death said, The wall has broken. The enemy is inside the fort. We are now fighting hand to hand.

Uh, Trump's super pac is also reportedly dumping another $25 million into House races. Uh, and the ass man himself was just in South Carolina, uh, delivering his closing argument that men are hot.

As much as I can fall in love with a man, which isn't that much, I fall in love with him. And his name happens to be Tim Scott Darlene and her very handsome husband. Yeah, it's a good looking husband. But I didn't get the Nobel Prize, I didn't get the Pulit. I should have gotten the Pulitzer for writing too. Pew, pew, pew. I only like two oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I'm not gonna put either Trump or America on any other ocean, but these two.

So we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean and I called Google Maps, who are really great with a lake and really great. We're gonna call it the American Ocean. Baby, how good was that tonight? Was that the best? Nobody can do it like me, baby. You see that crowd? The fake news would say he rambled. I don't, I don't ramble. I got, I know everything. I'm the oil.

Any notes on the closing argument?

Perfect, perfect.

No, John Houston's ass did not make an appearance.

But he found other men wandering He found out in that one. other Yes,

Yeah, he's just he's all in on the men.

I I ask this every time. What do you think he's trying to accomplish?

Do you think I think I don't know? I And feel like an

neither does he, John.

I think he knows it's a thing now, and so now it's just fun for him to keep doing it.

Yeah, I mean, he obviously he's like sort of a stand up comic in the sense that he responds to the crowd and when the crowd likes things, he adjusts his routine.

He's also like, you know, I think he's he's confident in his sexuality, unlike his vice president, who's like, I love you back, but not in the gay way,

Yeah, that's true.

not in the James Tellafrico way.

It's just hard to see how any of this is helpful for anyone on the ballot in any of these states.

No, I mean, was it helpful for Darlene Graham, who we didn't have a clip of that? But she is, uh, she wasn't that great at the rally either.

What's the context in which she is great?

Exactly. Well, she's got a lot of experience, which is why she's in the Senate right now making important decisions. Um, so there is that. Um, all right, let's talk about the polls. What are your takes on, uh, Time Siena, since that's the one poll we allow ourselves to nerd out about on the show?

If you'd have let me be in charge, we'd a lot we'd have a lot of different polls, especially here or there. Um, I think there's three main takeaways here. The first is Trump's always been known as sort of a low ceiling, high floor politician. He was never gonna be as popular as some presidents, but he was never gonna fall to Bush like levels because he had this loyal MAGA base. Turns out, the floor is much lower than we thought.

He's now in, uh, the mid thirties. He's down three or four points from the last poll in September from the from Times, and there's not real evidence that it's stopping here. He could continue to go down, so that's one.

not with rallies like that, he's Not with, not not

with rallies like that. Um, what he loses in people angry about gas prices, he will gain from people who also love John Houston's ass. The second point, and I think this is the more politically consequential one, is we talked a lot about how Trump's 2024 coalition has collapsed with Latinos and young voters and all that. And that this poll obviously reflects that, as many have for the last year. But what is changing is that the original MAGA coalition itself is beginning to break apart.

So in 2024, according to exit polls, Trump won white voters who didn't go to college, white working class voters who've been the core of MAGA from the beginning. He won them with sixty six of the vote. In this poll, his approval rating among those voters is now 51%. And more, I think more, even more alarmingly for Republicans, is that his strong approval is 34% with those voters. And so two thirds of white, not white working class voters, either have turned on Trump or just kinda meh about him.

And that does not bode well for the the MAGA movement, either here or in the long term. And then I think the third point is, and the Democratic Party brand, at least among likely voters in this midterm, has recovered. The Democrats are now more trusted than Republicans on every issue, including immigration, and now are seen as the party of the working class, the party that understands problems faced by people like you, the party that can fix problems, the problems faced by people like you.

By double digits, these are all big swings from 2024. So It seems there's,

like they're benefiting by the party's benefiting by comparison with the Republican of course, of Party, because course, only 28% in the poll are satisfied with the Democratic Party.

yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. What was what had been curious to date and alarming to Democrats to date was there had been no seesaw effect. Republicans went down and Democrats stayed down. And now, at least in opposition to this Republican Party, these candidates in this moment, the Democratic Party is looking better. I am not suggesting that is that ex that we've solved all of our problems, far from it. I'm not suggesting that's going to extend to 2028.

But in this election, as you were worried about some of these voters, independent, Republican leaning independents, former Trump voters who'd be unwilling to vote for the party, that's it. Seems like we have a better chance at those voters now because the party is seen better than it was a few months ago.

obviously, like, the big mystery left in this election is the composition of the turnout. And I thought it was interesting in this poll. Um, uh, they split it up so they, uh, if so, it's eleven points on the generic ballot. But if they, uh, just asked voters, if they went by, um, who, uh, the likelihood, um, that someone says they're going to vote, uh, it goes up to fourteen points. And if they just go by predicting the likelihood of someone voting based on their past vote history and identity and et cetera, um, then it goes down to nine points.

So it is interesting that, um, a lot, and I think this is probably the case with a lot of these polls, is w- when people just tell the pollster, yeah, I'm more likely to vote. Um, those screens tend to, um, make the generic ballot lead for Democrats even larger. Um, and then, but but I think pollsters are trying to weight these, um, uh, differently, just to make sure that there's not like a big miss.

Yeah, and and one of the things that causes, maybe not specifically in the times, but other ones, is if you're doing predicted vote, um, young voters are going to be less likely to vote based on past history. Cause either haven't voted before or because they're younger, and that's a big question here is are younger voters going to turn out in the way in which you would want them to? There's some very, very early evidence in early voting There were that that's

a lot of low propensity happening low voters.

preferenc- in young, low propensity young voters. But I think it's way too early to know because we're in the very beginning of early vote. But that's, I think that's a big test, and we're gonna get those voters.

Uh, how real do you think this bigger redder map is, uh, even with these spending decisions?

And would you consider the bigger redder map to be Mississippi and South Carolina? Yeah, I was Cause like

gonna say those are the two that cause now, well, I guess Kansas, too. Um,

Kansas is on the map, but now Kansas right? is really on Yeah,

the map.

yeah, so I think these are we have real shots here. They're long shots, but they're real shots. We have good candidates in both cases. They're very bad candidates, and we're on the Republican side in both of them. It doesn't cost a lot of money to invest in either of them. This is a place where you these are the kind of bets you should be making as a party. Because if you are to win these seats, you have them for six years.

That means you have a South Carolina Democrat, a a Mississippi Democrat, into hopefully the first term of the next Democratic president, increasing our likelihood of a governing trifecta if we're able to win the White House. And so I think it's very real. In both cases, you have very large, um, portions of the electorate that are black voters made up by black voters. There's reasons to believe, based on primary turnout, that black turnout could be incredibly high.

We've seen some of that in some early early, obviously early, early voting data. Um, but if that's the case, it's it's like, it's very, I think these are. This is a place to invest that the party should invest money, it's it's place that, you know, donors should invest money to help these candidates. Cause I think I do think we have a shot here. It may be a bridge too far, but it is not. This is not a fool's errand.

well, cause again, we can't, we just don't, we can't predict turnout, right? Like, you can't get from red to blue in these states with persuasion. At this point, it's not like all these voters are gonna just suddenly who were voting Republican in the past are gonna vote Democrat. But like, if you have an election where the Republican base really is just staying home, or a lot of these voters are staying home, um, suddenly it just becomes more real in in in these states.

Mississippi is either the largest or the second largest percentage of its vote that is made up by black voters. And so you just think on paper, the L if a huge part of the vote is made up by a by a group that is voted for Democrats north of 85% in most elections. If those people turn out at a very high level and Republicans stay home, that's a that's a place where you have a shot.

And in the last time there was a Senate race in Mississippi, the Democrat the Democrat only lost by ten points.

so, and South Carolina's real, too.

Yeah, and there's and the other thing important in South Carolina is there's third party candidates. And this is a because Darlene Graham and so I. This is the way I think about that is, um, Jamie Harrison in 2020, which is I consider 2020 to be basically a fifty fifty year. Uh, Jamie Harrison got 44% of the vote. It was like 43.8% of the vote. So then your question is, can Andy Andrews in South Carolina get to fifty?

Well, if you have five of the vote, or three of the five of the vote that goes to, um, a third third party candidates there. Which I think could be possible because Sterling Graham is such an unappealing candidate, then she only has to get to 47.5. She only has to do three point, three and a half points better than Jamie Harrison in in a year that is, you know, seven to ten points more democratic against a much worse Republican candidate in Darlene Graham than Lindsey Graham, who was an incumbent, uh, and a pretty good politician.

you do wonder if in 2020, it's a presidential year that Jamie Harrison benefited from, um, high black turnout in South Carolina as well. That you would get in a presidential year specifically more than you would maybe in a midterm electorate,

But in on the same time, Lindsey Graham benefited probably even more by higher roll white turnout or a white, with Trump on the ballot.

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Uh, one more thing on the polling, uh, the data site FiveThirtyEight Uncovered, a completely fake polling operation that goes by the name of Wedgewood Polls, uh, which was new on the scene this cycle, but found its way into some of the aggregators. Um, once they got caught, Wedgewood announced that the whole thing was simply, uh, an experimental project, is what they called it, to show the influence that an entirely fabricated polling firm could have. Super helpful project, which has led FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to threaten the license of broadcasters who air fake polls, uh, which seemed like a message designed to please the guy with terrible poll numbers who gave Carr his job.

Um, on Wedgwood, uh, candidates like Mallory McMorro, um, she tweeted this the other day, uh, that the group did real harm, like, specifically to her campaign. Can you explain what happened and why Wedgwood got past so many smart people?

I can't really answer that last part there because, but I think there's important a few things to understand here. I don't think we should take as a given this was some sort of like Nathan for you like social experiment.

No, oh, I think it's well. And e- even if you look into it, it's only after fifty plus one sent them, uh, asked them for the comment because they had done the investigation. That then, instead of giving them a comment, Wedgewood just suddenly posted, Oh, it was just fake the whole time.

so fifty plus one, which is the site that G. Elliott Morris formerly five thirty eight, and now has, uh, Substack, which the numbers is a part of. They saw a poll from Wedgewood they thought was kind of suspicious and looked like it might be fake. They then went and used the same platform to rerun the same poll. This led them to believe that they had faked the numbers. They asked him about it. All of a sudden, they put out this statement.

Hard to know what they were actually trying to do. Um, and Nate Silver did a very good analysis of all their polling. It's there's not not a ton of consistency in it. They did have some of the best polls for, you know, more liberal candidates like Troy Jackson, Abdul Said, and Francesca Hong. They also polled in some places where no one else had polled, like Mississippi early on. Some suggestion maybe that they were trying to help left wing candidates or off from the Republican side, get those candidates nominated.

Or were they, you know, betting on Kulchy or some of these other prediction markets? And do we don't really know? It is not also not true that they weren't vetted because they they had to answer questions from the New York Times and others, they lied in those questions. The two names associated with it were people who had polling experience and had worked for established pollsters in the past. And then, as soon as this happened, and this was a social experiment, you would imagine the people who did the experiment would then talk about the results.

yeah, go ahead, do some press, and yeah,

They've disappeared. I don't know if they, if they, they're off the website, they're not responding to calls. So very sketchy here. We now think there's actually a third site, um, SoCal strategies, SoCal strategies, which I first known as SoCal Strategies in the run up to the Michigan primary. When we were everyone's anxiously looking for results and they were touting a poll they were gonna have. And I'd never heard of them. And I went to their website to see and you couldn't figure out who usually a poll a polling, like a polling website will tell you a lot about their work, their clients, especially if they are a s a strategic firm, cause they want more clients and more work.

This one had nothing on it. Um, I would note for the record that neither Wedgewood nor Media nor SoCal Strategies ever made it through the vigorous, rig- rigorous vetting processes of either Message Boxes or Pollockers. So just just saying that New York Times, um, on the Mallorie McMorro point, um, you know, as you know, I supported her in the primary, consider her a friend. I sort of watched this in real time, and that poll was very damaging.

It sort of cemented this narrative that she was out of the race, that she had lost, that it now become a two person race between Haley Stevens and Abdul Said. I know that her polling showed something different, that it was much closer than this poll suggested. It caused donors to leave political support to sort of abandon her. I'm not saying so she would have won fun. without this poll, like there are all kinds of structural challenges in that three way race for a candidate like her.

However, there's no question that this fake poll damaged her campaign and kind of kicked off a death spiral that forced her to leave the race. It led to people calling for her to drop out of the race because there was this real fear in the political establishment that Abdul could not win. And so all the people who, you know, sort of moved immediately to Haley Stevens thinking, if we're gonna stop Abdul for whatever reasons, they wanted to stop him, either pure electability or other reasons, you had to be for Haley, not Ballerie.

And so money moved political support moved, so it it did real damage to her campaign. There's no question about that.

Nate, uh, Silver and and Claire and Galen, uh, on Still Counting, um, great podcast, everyone, check it out. Um, they, you know, they made the they were making the point that it is especially damaging to have these kind of things in a primary, because in a primary, um, the people who participate in primaries are voters who are, uh, more likely to be political junkies like us, who are looking at polls. And you're trying to make a case as a candidate in the primary that you're more electable than someone else.

So, like in a general election, you know, uh, people are look, you're throwing all the polls into a poll aggregator and it's different. But, like in a primary, it's a real problem to have, uh, fake polling operations like this. I mean, it's a problem no matter what, but I think it's especially da. It's potentially much more damaging in a primary.

especially because there was so little polling data in the primary. Like we were this like, like the Wedgewood strategy poll showed Francesca Hong beating Tom Tiffany by three points. And that became a real argument in that primary that ugh. she was no less electable than David Crowley. Same thing. S. There's a similar dynamic with it with a poll for Abdul at the same time.

There was a fake poll out here for, uh, with Nithya and Yeah, media, Kamara Bas, the show,

media strategies.

yeah, that showed, like, Bass leading by a lot. And then and like Bass's campaign was like tweeting about it and then realized that it was just fake.

It's a real problem that, and I'm a little guilty, I'm guilty. We're all guilty of this. Because there are these bot accounts that scrape the internet for polls, who then tweet them out. I have push notifications for all of them for professional reasons, obviously, only for poll yeah, it's results or nothing else.

real sicko.

And but you get these polls and it does, and you see them like, take off on Twitter. Cause a lot of people who are on Twitter who are like political obsessives like we are, see these polls. If they validate their priors about who they like, then they're tweeting them out. It creates momentum on there, and you know, for all the wrong reasons, every reporter and political person is still on Twitter. And then that it shapes a narrative very quickly.

Um, that is bad, I think, you know, um, our friend caller Carl's audio pointed this out that the DNC in the 2028 primaries is gonna ha- they are gonna have to come up with some criteria about how you make a debate stage, which debate stage you're on. Presuming there's as many candidates as we suspect, obviously, you're gonna need very rigorous standards for the kind of polls that influence those averages. If if folks like Wedgewood can even get into the New York Times average, like, you're gonna have to really think about that.

And I think we're gonna, and then folks in the media and folks like us who talk about politics for a living are gonna have to really think hard about. Like, having a list of the polls that we trust and look at, like, and

The challenge is not gonna be the like. We all know who the gold standard polls are, or at least the the respected pollsters are. It's gonna be like sort of new operations that are legitimate, but now are gonna have to clear a higher bar. Because it's like, are you a Wedgewood, are you a SoCal strategy?

yeah, and I don't it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, and there's obviously there are partisan polling firms, which when they pop up, we know to sort of already take a grain of salt and apply it to the analysis because we know they're a political polling firm. But, you know, could you even could you trust anyone? You never heard? Probably if you haven't heard of the person, you should So not trust. I had forgotten Nate in his column wrote about, um, two firms in the twenty tens, Strategic Vision and Research 2,000 that were fake poll firms, and Research 2,000 was incredibly sketchy.

Cause they actually got media outlets to pay them for polls, like newspapers, and so they were just making money on the red flag side. Yeah,

right there. What do you make of the Brendan Carr threat?

just he's just him surfing the news.

Yeah, I mean, there's noth- like, uh, FCC policy distinguishes deliberate distortion from just an inaccurate report, right? Like, I, if there's a bunch of broadcasters knowingly broadcasting polls that they know are fake, that's one thing. But if we all got scammed and the news, these news outlets just happened to report like, you can't get in trouble for that.

well, it's like, this is also the other problem, which is for ten years now, Trump has called every poll that is not good for him fake.

Fake news suppression poll. Yeah,

And now we have actual fake polls, even though those polls were none of these polls were polling him. But like it, just it, just the whole thing, the whole thing is stupid and counterproductive.

uh, one type of news story that car probably won't be able to cancel, uh, the new report from the Times that the Pentagon is working with the Israelis on detailed plans to launch a new military operation against Iran right after the midterms. The theory here is, uh, and stop me if you've heard this one before, uh, that another few days of intense bombing might push Iran's economy over the brink and force their leaders to the negotiating table.

Pete Hegseth apparently met with Bibi Netanyahu in Israel this week. The Times did say that Trump has not approved the plans yet, uh, and Netanyahu, of course, faces elections of his own this coming Tuesday. I am, like, bewildered, just from a political perspective, what Trump is even thinking here.

Y- Your mistake here is that you think he's thinking,

or that any of them,

Yeah, no one's thinking. Look, they have to solve this problem in some way, shape or form. They don't have what it takes to solve it diplomatically or intellectually. And so the only, you know, when you got a bunch of dumb hammers at the Pentagon, everything looks like a nail. And so this is, I Yeah, the the think,

there's reports that they're thinking about dropping the mother of all bombs on like Pickaxe Mountain, um, which is where they think some one of the, you know, the nuclear facility is. But the problem there is that it's buried deep, deep, deep underground, and the mother of all bombs would not actually touch it,

but also, like, play that out for a second. So let's just say it. They had left it on the third floor of the of the mountain and they could get to it and it's destroyed. Why do we think that would change the calculus of the Iranians who, as we know,

you know what they? But what they wanna say is

well, that's a different thing, right?

what Trump wants to say is we did it. We've destroyed the remain we res- we took, we got rid of the dust, we destroyed the rest of the dust. The strait is open, and by open, it means it takes, uh, you know, billions and billions of dollars. And, uh, like, how many hundreds of, like, armed forces stationed, maybe permanently, uh, around the Strait of Hormuz to escort these ships through,

But we can't even do that because we're not in charge of whether it opens or not. It's just it's really stupid because the one thing that Trump has n- never really realized is the Iranian leadership does not give a shit about the country and the people in the country. And they don't face the will of the voters. So it's like, high gas prices is not gonna lead people. It's not gonna increase the generic ballot in the upcoming Iranian elections.

It's like it's a very different situation.

Idiots? Um, well, that's another reason to get out and vote, because, uh, you know, Donald Trump thinks after the election, he's just gonna go ahead and continue bombing. So,

If you we won this election by enough and we got the Senate majority and the House majority, it's done out of the question. That you're at least sending, it's actually quite plausible, maybe probably. You're sending a war powers resolution to his desk and force him to veto it.

yeah, and he will, and that, and then we'll still have a war. But I I think it's you're gonna have a budget that you're g- they're gonna need money at some point. And if we have a big enough majority in both houses, we're gonna be able to not give him the money he needs to do the war. That'll be a whole fight.

we're just right back into 2006 all over again.

I know, I know, but you know what I but with with a bunch of Republicans, though, whose colleagues just lost their jobs because of this war. And and Donald Trump is on his way out. And so they may be a little more amenable to working with Democrats to, um, to end this war.

I mean, there are parallels here with how Republicans responded to Bush's loss in 2006 in the years going forward. And that the if Democrats can have a great election and make real gains here, it's not just that we'll have more numbers, it's that Trump will have less of a hold on his people on some issues, and this is likely one of them.

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We're gonna see old friends and new. We're packed house here. Look at this, guys. We're ready to do this. Sir, sir, excuse me, excuse me, you're gonna leave this room. Carrying

All right, that's the sound of Vivek Ramaswamy getting heckled at a campaign event for running the most despicable ad I think I've ever seen in politics.

Yeah, it's up there with the Max Cleland, Osama bin Laden ad. But this is pro- I think this is

I think this is worse. worse, this is I thought about worse. that one, I think this is worse. Uh, as you've probably read by now, the ad features the estranged mother of Vivek's opponent, Amy Acton, uh, calling her daughter a liar and unfit for office. What the ad doesn't say is that Acton and her brother were removed from their mother's custody after her second husband was charged with raping Amy when she was ten years old. He then fled the state to avoid standing trial with her mother, who stayed married to him until he died.

Uh, Vivek decided to put $4 million behind the ad, despite many prominent Ohio Republicans denouncing it. Governor Mike DeWine, um, who called on Ramaswamy to pull it down, Senator John Houston, former Senator Rob Portman, and former Ohio Congressman Jim Renacci, who said, quote, The floor may have just fallen out from under the Republican campaign for Ohio governor. And any Republican who fails to distance themselves from this ad risks taking on water as well. Well, the most prominent Ohio Republican in the country has not only declined to distance himself from the ad, but actively defended it.

Here's the vice president of the United States at a rally in Ohio on Wednesday.

And now the media and the Democrats of the state of Ohio are obsessed because, guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.

On Thursday, uh, Trump chimed in, uh, with a lengthy Truth Social post, fully endorsing the ad, calling it quote hitting pay dirt, um, uh, and uh. And then later he spoke to reporters on on his way to his next event and continued to defend the ad, his whole thing as well. If it was my mother saying something like saying that I was a liar, you'd all love the ad, you'd all Lovett.

He's not getting the point here, is he?

No, he doesn't he. I think he has no idea like he, he's been a little late to this.

he seemed a little surprised when the reporter gave him the context.

Yeah, he clearly did not have the cause. At first, he was like, I don't know. It seemed tough, like he, he had some comment where he wasn't all in. And then clearly, because JD Vance went all the way out on the fucking limb by himself, really, um, Trump had to back him up.

Yeah, I mean, obviously Trump will always side with the abuser, not the abused. So he this is his natural place. Um, but it wasn't clear that he knew exactly what he was supporting in the beginning.

I mean, obviously, we all wanna believe the Jim Renacci view that this is, uh, backfiring in a huge way. Um, do you think it is? Are all the Republican condemnations evidence of that? Um, are there other indicators we can look for?

Well, we. There hasn't been obviously any polling that's been done since this ad came out. And I think it's very possible that this will be sort of a object of fascination among the politically obsessed. They've already made their decision in this race. But I do feel a relative amount of confidence saying that. An ad this disgusting that accuses a twelve year old of lying about rape, that even members of your own party, popular members of your own party, are saying is disgusting, is not gonna help.

The candidate whose biggest vulnerability is that everyone thinks he's an asshole. We don't have to overcomplicate this. It is not g- like, is this the thing that's gonna turn the election? I don't know if enough people will know it or see it, but it's not gonna help him. And generally, as a rule in politics, you don't want popular if you're Republican, you don't want popular Republicans attacking you ten days before the election.

who, who, who? And and JD Vance did use the word disgusting, but, uh, when he used the word disgusting, it was about Republicans complaining about this ad. That's what he said is disgusting.

Like, what do you think?

JD Ve- the like. I I know I'm biased because I've hated JD Vance for a long time. Um, but I find myself being more infuriated with him than even Vivek Ramaswamy, which is crazy because Vivek Ramaswamy is complete scum for running the ad in the first place. But JD Vance, that smarmy little fuck, getting up there and being like, Oh, everyone's complaining. And it just it calls it like it i calls her a liar. The ad tells it like it is like the woman in this ad, the mother, is just fucking.

I I mean, I don't know if she's got mental problems, I don't know if she's just pure evil. I don't know what it is, but like, I, I didn't realize this when we talked about it the first time. So this guy that she married, when she married him, he had already been indicted for sexually abusing his own daughter from another marriage. So she first of all married someone who'd been indicted for, uh, sexually abusing his daughter, then he sexually abuses her daughter, ten years old physically, and, uh, sexually abuses both kids, the her brother as well.

And then when the guy gets arrested and charged with rape of her own daughter, she decides to believe him and then flees the state with him. So he can avoid charges for avoid standing trial. And then Amy Acton never saw her mother again. They they had been on the run ever since. The guy eventually dies, and then Vivek Ramaswamy says, Oh, great idea, I'll put her in an ad. And then JD Vance sees that and is like, Fuck yeah, tells it like it is.

And the the guy, the hillbilly, the hillbilly elegy guy who wrote a book and rose to prominence because of his experience as a child, um, in a in a traumatized household, and and he has, like, not a shred of empathy about this. It's like, Uh, he's a fucking sociopath,

He has no self, like he does

true sociopath. not. Yeah, he Calls himself like. like a a a Catholic, a man of God, and goes on and on about how, like, he's one. What the fuck?

His problem is that he only cares about whatever he thinks advances his own ambition. And he has decided that the only way that he can be the nominee of the Rep- of Donald Trump's Republican Party is that he has to double and triple down. He has to prove his loyalty, because he was once an apostate, he has to prove his loyalty over and over again, every single day by doing the most debasing stuff humanly possible.

And you know what he's gonna cause? Like he did this with Childless Cat Ladies. Remember, like, you know, a couple months ago, who knows when it he he gave some interview where he was like, Yeah, I wish I hadn't said that, you know, how much you wanna bet? Like, three months from now, six months from now, a year from now, this will get brought up and he'll be like, You know, once I learned about all the details, which I didn't know at the time, once I learned about that, yeah, that that they shouldn't have run that ad.

I don't know, I'm not sure, because with the Childless Cat Ladies thing, his thing was not like, you know, I offended a lot of people and I heard from them and I thought about it. He realized it was bad for him politically, so that's why he felt bad about it. I think this, Maybe,

I think this will follow him to oh, yeah, I s, 2020.

oh, I think so, I think so as well, and maybe he will realize

It should.

that. But I just don't, maybe he'll admit it, I don't know, but I'd be, I kind of be surprised that he would have enough, like, self confidence and self awareness to see, re realize it's bad for him. Because there are gonna be, you know, the Will Sommer, the Bulwark has a piece out today about how now the right media, after being initially against us, the MAGA media folks are coming out in support of the ad. People like Ben Shapiro, you know, it's like, this is, you know, politics is a tough business kind of stuff.

So I can,

Ben Shapiro compared it to, um, uh, RFK Jr.'s family members coming out, uh, uh, during the campaign and criticizing RFK Jr. He compared it to. He said it was the same thing, missing a few elements of the story. But yeah, sure,

yeah. And the fact that, in this case, this person had not really been involved in their daughter's life for fifty years. So, like, why she's a character witness?

just married to a fugitive rapist pedophile, I mean, just put that's what she fugitive rapist pedophile.

married a pedophile, brought that pedophile into the same house as her children. And then, when that pedophile got caught abusing her children, left her children, abandoned her children for the for the pedophile.

And then a whole bunch of ad makers, staffers Vivek Ramaswamy, JD Vance, I guess Ben Shapiro, all these. They're all like, Yep, this is our woman, this is her, she's a great character witness. It's, uh, it, it's

It's one of the most disgusting things that will ever happen in American politics.

it really is like, I just don't. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's shocking, it's, it's shocking. And you know what, some people are like, it's shocking, but not surprising. It actually is surprising. Um, like I was, I said this yesterday to Rhodes and we did only friends, but I was like, you could have. I could have seen a still very slimy way to handle this, which is would be JD Vance being like, Yeah, I have so much empathy for Amy Acton and I.

That's horrible what she went through. And um, and and and I don't know about this ad, but Vivek Ramaswamy, he's still the guy I want to be governor. And that's one ad, and maybe it was a mistake, but like, yeah, basically what John Houston did, which is still pretty slimy. Because John Houston also appeared with Vivek and Vance and didn't r- actually call for the ad to come down right. So it's like he, he's not a fucking profile in courage on this one, um, but

Just a coward with a great ass,

a coward with a great ass, right? But, like Vance could have gone that route. No, that's not the route he went. He because he decided to go the lowest possible.

he had. That's the only way he can go, cause he's gotta prove that he's truly MAGA.

Speaking of Vance being in tune with his home state, uh, after the rally on Tuesday, he dropped in on a Cincinnati Bengals practice. Um, and uh, there was a video of him attempting to greet the players as they went into the locker room, but it's sort of sucked. It's just him sort of, like, just being his typical doofus, JD Vance,

Well, they all walk past him without acknowledging him, which is the name of the game.

A couple said, like, H- a couple quickly said hi, I was. But here's, uh, star quarterback Joe Burrow getting a question about it, um, afterwards.

Vice President Vance, uh, was here in practice today. Did y'all get a chance to interact at all? We did not, Uh,

we did not. He, uh, came with everybody and left with swiftness and efficiency.

What do you think? What do you think Joe Burrow was thinking there?

do you think this was just for you personally? Cause I know you're a Patriots fan, but you married into a Bengals family. I know, That there's a real relief that the superstar quarterback did not, um, do what many NFL players have done. And

you know what's funny? The the the true Bengals fan, uh, in my life is my mother in law. Uh, I have not. I gotta ask her what she, what she thought about I bet she this, cause I held, she, I think,

I bet she held her fucking breath through that whole thing.

especially cause she's had quite a few things to say about Tom Brady. Yes, I So that's

have, yes. to me, so I'm like, how many MAGA quarterbacks can one guy have in his family? I think this the video itself, which doesn't really play in the for the purpose of this podcast, but is really worth watching. Cause there's something so delicious about the fact that I imagine that most of JD Vance's life was wanting acceptance, but being denied acceptance or acknowledgement by the football team. Just like he was never a cool kid, always a nerd, and the football team.

Best case scenario, pretend like he didn't exist. That's best case scenario. Now he's vice president of the United States. He is one heartbeat away from being the leader of the proverbial free world. He goes to football practice in his home state and they ignore him just like his high school team.

I was gonna. The only enjoyable thing about JD Vance's 2028 presidential campaign is going to be watching him put on the human suit and go out and do culturally expected things that a presidential candidate has to do. And just watch how awkward it is. I mean, if you Like, for all the for all the the mockery Mitt Romney got for every time he tried, you know, like the the who let the dogs out video, where we're all I'm still classic, these are all, yeah,

still a classic.

these are all deep cuts. JD Vance is gonna be a hundred times worse. Yeah, that's true. He He's gonna make Mitt Romney look like a man of the people.

same with R- like he's gonna make Ron DeSantis look like the coolest customer out there.

It's the only thing I'm looking forward I can't, to.

cannot wait.

Um, all right, Trump's continuing flirtations with other men, uh, kinda drowned out, um, the other political events on Wednesday night. But we did get the final debates in the Michigan and Kansas Senate races. Uh, let's start with Michigan. If you didn't tune in, uh, here's a sample of how it went. So being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood, having donors to his campaign from Hamas that support, uh, Hezbollah is not a problem.

To bring in a question, my commitment to the Constitution is really beneath you. I am proud of America, I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud of our Constitution that guarantees all of us the right to pray as we choose to pray. And That means the question you're a time traveler that you would ask

to my head.

that, I think, is actually really quite shameful.

Uh, yeah, so that's how that went. How much of the debate did you get to watch? This actually was not as, uh, a tough a de- like it wasn't as a contentious debate, I think, as the first one,

I was trying to two

which is surprising since so he's talking about being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood.

I was trying to two screen the debate as my family was watching the WNBA Finals game with the Valkyries last night. Um, so I s I caught most of it. It was like it wa- the other ones were quite heated and this you often see this happen when there's multiple debates. It's by the third one, everyone is sort of, um, they've gotten everything they have to say We've out of their chest, unloaded the clip. Yeah, unload the clip.

They're kind of exhausted by it. They've probably seen the focus groups that say that no one liked, uh, what they saw, and so it's a little more chill. I'm not sure that any of these debates had any impact on the dynamics of this race. I thought Abdul, the thing that where Abdul is very good is he responds to the attack that he is anti American, to extreme, a terrorist. By not by saying I'm not a terrorist, not by rebutting the individual facts, although he does that when he has to.

It's that he shows in what he says and how he acts how he loves this country. Like his closing statement is as as has been in all of these debates, is very powerful. He talks about his love for the country, how it's very Obamaesque and how basically only in this country his story could be true. How privileged he is to have the opportunity to be an American, to s to run for office here and what that says about this country.

And so I think he handles that very, very well.

yeah, we talked about the, uh, exchange with the Republican, you know, uh, tracker plant, whatever, in that town hall, um,

The guy with close relationships with CBS News talent. yes, that's right, yeah, Yes,

um, and how, you know, maybe Abdul's answer was part of it was good, but maybe it was like a little condescending, maybe which the questioner deserved, but maybe not the wider audience who might have the questions. I feel like in this was like the the best Abdul, um, handling Mike Rogers attacking this because he was e- I mean, he was even respectful to Mike Rogers, who did not deserve to be.

he did not. He did not take the bait, which is the thing that Abdul tends to do in these cases. And sometimes that works out to his benefit in viral moments, and then sometimes it doesn't. But he was disciplined in this debate. And, you know, you can sort of watch a debate and get a sense of potentially, like, what the internal polls say. Like, I remember watching the last Abdul Haley Stevens vote debate, and it was like, remember, we had no idea what the public polls were saying.

It's like watching that debate. It's very clear that Haley Stevens thinks she's losing this because she's really she was the one swinging at all the pitches. You watch this, you believe that Abdul thinks he's winning, or his poll suggests he's winning, and he's trying to finish strong. And not, um, you know, get dragged into the mud with Rogers and Rogers by with all the Hamas and Muslim you can tell Rogers stuff. thinks he's He's losing.

he. There was also another moment where, um, Rogers did criticize the tariffs, which sort of but but, like, didn't say he would do anything about them, so that leaves him open to that. But when, when you can tell why earlier he hadn't done that, because if you criticize the tariffs, then you have to say, like, well, I'll I'll stop them when I get to the center or something like that. And he, he can't say that, but he was, he was like, Yeah, they weren't well thought out.

So Well, I bet he's, he's

he says something different when Trump comes to Michigan in two days.

can't wait for that. Um, all right, over in Kansas, it was pretty easy to see why, um, Roger Marshall is having such a problem holding off Adam Hamilton. Uh, let's take a listen.

The real problem with the cost of diesel in particular is number one is the Ukraine war,

And because of that, diesel production has gone down.

I just wanna say, see, he just said that the war in Iran is not the problem, the war in Ukraine is a problem. The Ukrainians trying to defend themselves are the reason why we have record diesel prices. Nobody believes that this happened in response to the war in Iran that didn't need to happen, was not a necessary war, and this is why the prices went to record highs. Just curious, with all of those undocumented children that you delivered, did you also call ICE and ask them to be taken away?

You say you've listened to 300 campaign stops, you did not listen to 300 campaign stops, you all right, had 300 photo ops. Let's move on.

Not bad for a pastor.

I was gonna say, How do you think Hamilton did?

I love Adam Hamilton. He's so He's really good, he's good really, really good. He's so thoughtful. I think there is a and he's tough question,

without being an asshole.

yeah, which I think that was a real question, right? It's one thing that, you know, you're a pastor, you're new to politics. Can you mix it up? cause you have to mix it up? And it is one thing to, you know, say tough things in your pot's the American interview or your stump speech at a rally. It's another thing when you're sitting on the same stage as someone. And he, he was aggressive, but in a way completely consistent with his demeanor, consistent with his values.

He was very, very good.

also, um, that might be the first time I've seen Roger Marshall. I like, I think I've probably seen him before, but I really couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

Yeah, he, I've seen clips of him dodging questions about the time that he ordered the arrest of a woman who owed him $50.

This is a, this is a. This is a tough race to figure out how it's gonna go, because, uh, Hamilton is ahead by a little bit, but he's of all the races. He's like, probably the furthest below fifty in a lot of these polls. But interesting enough, Third party candidate there.

well, yes, third party candidate there. But more importantly, it's the one case in that last batch of Times Siena polls where his name ID is lower and that he actually is underperforming. There's a lot of undecideds who pick the Democrats on the generic ballot who are not yet for Hamilton. So he has room for growth that a lot of these other Democrats don't don't have now. Small sample size, et cetera, but he got in this race very late.

Um, he's less he is quite well known for somebody who gets in the race late. He does have a church with 100,000 members that broadcast his sermons on TV every week, but it's clear that he has room for growth with likely Democratic voters. So he also, is a very, very, very real shot. I really do believe that.

well, also, um, you know, I, I know, I think Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator in almost a hundred years.

Ninety four years. Herbert Hoover was president. Donald Trump not even born.

but but, like, has regularly elected Democratic governors.

Yeah, it's it's a very So, like, I like, strange quirk in the history.

like, the, yeah, the idea of a Democrat winning statewide in Kansas is not crazy at all. Like And Kathleen Sebelius, Laura Kelly, current governor, like, it's it's happened,

yeah, it's just it's sort of a weird quirk that there just hasn't been a Democratic senator.

yes, so it's it's real. Um, all right, last thing before we get to Love's conversation with Keisha Lance Bottoms. Uh, we talked on the Tuesday show about the extremely convoluted influence peddling scheme involving Alina Habba, Trump's former personal attorney and former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, uh, her Turkish billionaire husband, the Kennedy Center and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some w- wild mad libs there. Uh, well, here's a simpler, uh, corruption, uh, scheme to get your head around from, uh, a New York Times report on Tuesday.

A Venezuelan billionaire named Julio Herrera Velutini wanted a campaign finance conviction expunged from his record. You don't want that on your record. So what do you do? Uh, he he made a massive donation to a Trump super pac. That didn't work. Uh, I guess no one really noticed. So, he created a fake business, hired Alina Habba as its fake general counsel while she was still working at the Justice Department, and then promised to pay her $50 million over four years.

Just a few weeks later, uh, here's what The Times writes, quote, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon. How about that? Uh, Habba denied that the employment had anything to do with the pardon, but quote, declined to discuss her work for the fake business. Um, I'm sure, uh, Alina Habba believes that as a member of Trump's inner circle, she's untouchable. Counterpoint. She might want to check out the report in the Wall Street Journal today that the DOJ is looking into allegations that former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski profited off his role as a senior advisor slash romantic partner at the Department of Homeland Security.

Counter counterpoint, the Journal also reports that Lewandowski has told friends that if a criminal case is brought against him, he's gonna get a pardon. Counter counter counterpoint.

trying to count the counters here.

Trump was asked about all this, uh, just before we recorded, and said that if his people aren't honest, they have to be prosecuted because they're stealing from me, is what he said. Me. Me, uh, as the president, stealing from me because the taxpayer money is my money and the corruption that I get to do because of my office is my corruption. Um, what do you think about this one? How much how much is he gonna have to pay Alina Hobbit to get that pardon?

Corey Lewandowski.

$51 million.

Is she gonna like, is so she is she g- she got $50 million for this?

I mean, I think she's probably only gotten 10 million cause it's

Oh, yeah, it's over a couple years.

a couple years. So she hasn't fully vested her 10 million dollar corrupt money yet. Also, if I was her, I would have slowed the pardon down.

It's just really obvious.

I mean, it's so like I kept reading that story trying to figure out how it was that she was had 50 million dollar fake job and was working at the Justice Department at the same time. But it turns out she had one of the like Corey Lewandowski, one of those fake special government employee things where you can work for 90 days but also make other income on the side.

And this is what they're invest, yeah, this is what they're investigating Corey Lewandowski for because he was special government employee. So we had this other consulting firm and was just going around, uh, just d approving all the contracts for the Department of Homeland Security. So they were so he was picking the contractors who were, of course, giving him money, giving his giving him paying him for this.

And then there's a lot of questions about a plane purchase that had some relationship to political supporters of Christie Noem, where they overpaid for it. And this is a stunning detail about the private plane. Okay. We've talked about the bedrooms, the bedrooms, the showers, the marble countertops. There is a table with manta ray skin on it.

What is a manta ray?

A manta ray is a very

Like a stingray?

large, it's a giant, uh, ray that is, uh, usually often eight feet, wingtip to wingtip. Just as a side note, I took my kids snorkeling with manta rays, uh, over the summer.

And so people are are like, skinning these things I and using, making it's definitely not countertops

legal. I'm sure. for Christie Noem Yeah, I don't really know how they got

dog killer.

the yes, maybe she had a manta ray pet and supposed to satisfy with it. I don't really know.

These fucking people. Yeah, like, you know what? Yes, they get to be held accountable is is a thing. Uh, did you see the whole thing with Alyssa Slotkin last week? We didn't we didn't even talk about the pod, but like, she was asked, um, uh, oh, it was a sted herndon, and and she was in a at the IOP in Chicago. And he was like, you know, what are we doing with Democrats? Take back Congress? And she's like, Look, well, first priority is we absolutely have to, um, take care of cost of living stuff, um, and we have to work on that.

She's like, you know, I also think there needs to be accountability, and I think specifically around the corruption. And I don't think we can be doing this all the time because we can't just just be focused on corruption. There's a lot of other things to do, but I think we need to take some signature cases and make sure that people are held accountable. Um, and not obviously, she's like, we can't, you know, Trump is Trump, but like, all the people who did his bidding, you know, need to be held accountable too.

And and I wanna make sure that, you know, when people are thinking about joining the Trump administration, they think to themselves, Well, I don't wanna get myself into a bunch of. This is probably more trouble than it's worth because they are gonna see that people who are corrupt and broke the laws are held accountable. And people on the right fucking flipped out. They called it fascism. They said that Alyssa Slotkin is trying to, um, is just promising that she's gonna throw young conservatives in jail or Republicans in jail as as retribution.

It was the hysteria was insane.

Do you know why there was hysteria?

What?

Cause they're all making money off this thing. Yeah, I would if I was also.

That that fucking shit Mike Davis was like, This is what the Sec she's gonna find out what the Second Amendment is for.

Oh, yeah, I did. You're right. You saw that. That's I did, a that's I did see what. that. Yeah,

But like Mike Lee jumped in, Steve Scalise jumped in, like it wasn't just like dick bags on Twitter, it was like real, like elected Republicans going after Alyssa Slotkin on this. It was it was hor- well, this horrifying.

I mean, that's what they're gonna do when we But it's just do all this stuff.

it is this amazing thing where it's like, Oh, now see, Democrats are going back to weaponization. It's like, No, you stole money, you all stole money and profited off your fucking jobs, and you broke a bunch of laws. Guess what? When you break laws and you fucking steal from the taxpayers, you should get held accountable.

Also, not for nothing, the Trump administration has been trying to prosecute everyone I from the head know, I of the Fed know, to a guy who threw a sandwich and everyone in the middle.

right. It's like, meanwhile, this guy's like, you know, Elena Hobbs getting $50 million to get a pardon, and we're like, Oh, don't, uh, stay away. She's general counsel That's lawfare,

of a fake company. lawfare. Also, is it really worth $50 million this dude to get this f- campaign finance misdemeanor office?

I was gonna ask that. I was like, Look, I I, I haven't had a campaign finance misdemeanor on my record, but I don't. I think if I did, I don't know that I would d pay $50 million if I have that money.

He's also not an American citizen, so, like, what is it?

What was he looking for there

Yeah, I don't know.

anyway? That's up, that's between him and Alina Habba.

Well, I guess Alyssa Slotkin, the rest of us will find out next year.

Let's hope so. All right, Dan, when we come back, uh, you'll hear from our candidate for governor of Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Pod Save America is brought to you by Nutrafol. Sometimes upgrading your wellness routine doesn't require a full overhaul. It's just about narrowing in on the one thing you can gradually and sustainably improve. If hair health is something you've been meaning to pay more attention to, now is a great time to make it part of your routine.

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Joining me in studio, she is the former mayor of Atlanta and Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms. Welcome back to the pod.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here.

It has been a it's been a long time since we've had you on. Now, back in 2021, you made the unexpected decision to not seek a second term as mayor of Atlanta. Uh, you were on Biden's VP shortlist, you had turned down an offer to run SBA. Uh, what do you think about that decision in retrospect, and what led you to jump back into politics?

I very much still believe it was the best decision, and, you know, it was difficult to articulate it at that time. Everybody called 2020 the Great Resignation. I call it the Great Reevaluation. And for me, it was, um, making a decision that was very personal, what was best for my family at that time. My kids, uh, were two were in elementary school, one was in middle school, one was a senior in high school. The disruption of life as we knew it in 2020.

And then, um, personally, my dad died suddenly at fifty five, and I w- I was giving a lot of thought in the aftermath of Covid, especially just about mortality. And if I had four years left, what would those four years look like? And for me, it was stepping out of the ring. And, you know, people make changes all the time, career changes. Most people don't do it in the public eye, and I did it, you know, with sixty eight approval ratings at that time in the mayor's office.

So it was unexpected, but a decision I'm very proud of because I put my family first and I made a decision that I know was best for us at that time.

I think if I only had four years left, I'd really focus on, um, gaining as many YouTube followers as I could. Uh, it's interesting that you bring up that that period of time, because a lot of the attacks against you are around the response to Covid and about efforts to protect people during that time, the difficult decisions that leaders were making. And I I sometimes feel as though a lot of people, uh, they want to hold Democrats responsible for the trauma and the hard choices that we were all making.

Like, like, Democrats are mommy, and you're mad at mommy for doing the thing that was meant to keep us safe. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, and if you think back and again, um, people, uh, with a lot of money have the ability to try and erase history and rewrite history. You remember when Georgia opened up very early, we were the first state to reopen, even Donald Trump was upset at that time that the state had opened up so quickly. Um, we were making decisions based on what the science was telling us. Uh, Carlos Del Rio, who was an infectious disease control expert at Emory University, was on speed dial for us.

And we it was all about data and metrics. If our numbers were at a certain point, we'd make certain decisions. So it was never emotional, it was never personal. It was how many people are dying, how many people are infected. At that time, we didn't have vaccines, and Atlanta fared better than most cities just in terms of, um, the number of deaths that we had. And I know it was because we were driven by the science, but also we had the support at that time of our business community.

There were corporate leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs who were helping us make those decisions, university leaders, uh, hospital, uh, leaders. So it, it was, it was never in a vacuum. And when even we talk about the crime numbers at that time, I remember in 2020, preparing March of 2020 to give my State of the City address. And I came across a draft of that speech that got pulled down because we had to shut everything down.

I was touting how our crime numbers were dropping across the city because we were on this trend, uh, seeing the our numbers drop in in all the right areas. And then 2020 came, the pandemic, uh, the the protests of the summer of 2020, and we weren't spared from what the rest of the r- uh, country experienced at that time.

So, uh, now you're running for governor. W What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Georgia right now that the governor would be in a position to address?

Um, the governor can make a lot of decisions in Georgia. It's one of the most power powerful governors, uh, in the country, just by the way the office is constituted. Although we anticipate there may be an effort to strip those powers, God willing, when I win, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But the governor of Georgia has the ability to make 4,000 appointments to boards and commissions. The budget comes from the governor's office.

The governor can suspend the gas tax, uh, which my opponent opposed at some point. So the ability, uh, and the will of the governor has a lot of influence in in Georgia. I want to expand Medicaid in Georgia. We are one of ten states who've not expanded Medicaid, and it's not been done because the governors haven't wanted to do it.

So, uh, uh, I wanna talk about where your opponent is on this question, because, uh, he seems to be a little bit all over the place on Medicaid expansion. In the Republican primary, he seemed to be against it. Now he seems to have moderated, but I, to be honest, I don't know what his position is. He says he wants intelligent Medicaid expansion, but it's not clear what he's talking about. What would you know what he's talking about?

No, I don't know what he's talking about because it doesn't make sense. I describe him like the wiz, whatever the color of the day is, is is what he goes with. One day he wants to be Donald Trump, one day he doesn't. One day he didn't want Medicaid expansion, and the next day he does. One day he says the National Guard is gonna be called in during our election, and then he doesn't remember. One day he owns and invests in for data center companies, and then he doesn't know that he does.

So, you know, I, I, I don't know what this new position is on Medicaid. He's never explained it. I doubt that he knows it, but what I do know is that his entire fortune is built on us having a broken healthcare system. He makes money when hospitals can't retain doctors and and nurses. Uh, he makes money by sending people back in at a much higher rate. In Alabama, he called it venture philanthropy. We call it vulture philanthropy.

It was a failing hospital in Alabama because Alabama is also not expanded Medicaid, and he extended them what he called a lifeline at a fourteen to 19% interest rate. That's a loan shark.

Um, I just want you to know something, which is that when I was a kid, I was in an all-Jewish production of The Wiz, not The Wizard of Oz, but little Jewish boys and girls playing all the characters from The Wiz. Can you believe that? I played a but I wanna see I don't want anyone to see it. No one can see it.

And what was your role?

I was the tin man. Slide some oil to me. I sang it. I sang that part.

uh, well, that's ambu- ambitious and I impressive.

I can't believe that was allowed. All right, we gotta move on. Uh, Georgia, speaking of the arts, uh, Georgia has become a um, I can't believe I was a kid. What were the adults doing?

I Lovett. Cause that's that's I love cr- that's wild, it.

that's wild. Uh, Georgia has become a hub for, uh, film and television production, but, uh, you know, for a long time here in LA. It was like, Oh, Atlanta's taken all of LA's jobs, right? And the numbers went up dramatically, but then there was the strikes and there was a slowdown. And now LA. and Georgia have both lost a lot of production jobs to London and other places

and New Jersey. and New Jersey, which Yes,

is, g- I mean, what are we doing? Uh, how much of a role do you see the governor as having in trying to keep film and production jobs in Atlanta? Cause it was a huge business and that's suddenly declined.

Well, again, a lot of what happens in Georgia through the legislature comes from the will of the governor. So my understanding, and talking with industry leaders, is that at some point, Georgia got complacent. We came out fast and furious with this great incentives package that, uh, that was able to take business from California, Louisiana, uh, North Carolina, New York, and then we stopped there. We never updated our incentives, we didn't tweak them based on new competition.

So this has been an active conversation that I've had because we now, even in Georgia, have a whole generation of students who've now gone through our university system, training to work in the film industry. We've got some great programs, uh, uh, at many of our our schools, and now, uh, the business is not there. So we gotta make sure that we update it as we would with any, uh, industry that we're trying to remain competitive in.

So, right now, if you look at the polls, you have John Ossoff pulling ahead of Mike Mike Collins, and then you're locked in basically a dead heat with Rick Jackson. Which would suggest that there are some people out there that are either voting for Ossoff and undecided in the in the governor's race, or voting for Ossoff and maybe considering a split ticket vote. What is your message to those specific voters, that group of people that are, uh uh, leaning Ossoff, but not on your side yet?

Yeah, and so what I I will say about that and the and s uh, Senator Ossoff is an incredible leader, incredible friend. We did a great rally together just last week. We've done several together. Um, what our data is showing us is that many of these are Republican split ticket voters. Um, but that being said, uh, you know, I'm making my case to everybody Democrats, Republicans, independents, and we need strong leadership in Georgia. We need better in Georgia, and better means expanding Medicaid, better means making sure our schools are fully funded.

Our current education formula was written in 1985 when I was still in the marching band at Frederick Douglass High School, and Dougie Fresh was the halftime show.

What'd you what'd you play in the marching band?

I would play the clarinet.

I, I play the drums, I play the drums in the marching band.

yeah, and for me, it was just a a time to be social. I wasn't that serious of a musician, I didn't have but

I didn't have any friends.

yeah, but I remember that Dougie Fresh halftime show Uh, we and we had do not a lot

do that. That's why I said. There's so a different it wasn't the Wiz, different school, no one but it was was, it was, yeah,

Dougie Fresh. different. But that's when our our education formula was written. Also, support of our small businesses, creating the pathway for free technical and community colleges, and, uh, I'm hearing from our young people loud and clear, expand access to mental health services. These are the things that are on the ballot that I'm talking about, that I've laid out plans for, and my opponent has been silent on. The things that he has talked about, taking credit for the six week abortion ban in Georgia, he's taking credit for Medicaid not being expanded in Georgia.

So he's focused on all the wrong things because he wants to be Trump's favorite governor, in his words. He wants to be Trump Trump with a Southern tone, in his words. He doesn't disagree with a single policy from the Trump administration, in his words.

Do you think there's like a uh, they're they're going after you on crime, they're going after you on, uh, some of the Covid lockdown stuff. It it's clearly about keeping a certain subset of voters on side, right? As you were saying, and uh, like, are you meeting people on the campaign trail that are, uh uh, sort of susceptible to all these ads that are trying to kind of stereotype Democrats as about law and order, about immigration?

Like, do you have a message for those voters to kind of basically say, hey, like, this is this is what the race is about. They're trying to scare you on this, but here's a here's the ways, you know, that you can trust me on these things.

When we find that we are able to put the truth in front of people and remind them of of what actually happened when I was mayor, it's an it's very easy. This is why resources are so important. This guy's put $200 million into this election, 100 million against me alone. This much money has never been spent to try and slander one person, one family than has been put up against my family and I.

And we are still tied in this race. So when I remind people I balanced the budget for four years, I didn't raise taxes. I gave police and fire the largest pay increase in the history of the city. I left $180 million in the bank. We got our employees up to $15 an hour during the fight for fifteen that we we, um, created a child savings account for all of our public school kids, 7,000 units of affordable housing.

We created an affordable housing trust fund. When those facts are put in front of people, then it's it's no match. But when you are up against the largest television buy that's ever been made in the history of Georgia, uh, this guy sends so many mailers to my house. I get like three duplicate mailers a day telling me not to vote for me. It is this unlimited amount of money, and we are tied. Then it is it's this reminder that he has the money, but the people still have the power.

Our challenge is just having the resources to get our messaging out, which, by the way, anybody who wants to support can do that at keisha K-E-I-S-H-A for governor dot com. And and momentum is on our side. The turnout numbers that we are seeing from Democrats are very similar to those, uh, that we saw in May during the primary. We were outspent by 100 million by Republicans, and we still outvoted them by 150,000 votes.

And a poll that came out today from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the newspaper shows that I'm winning with independent voters.

Uh, one of the issues that's been sort of part of this race is data centers. You've come out for a moratorium. Your opponent has said it should be left up to local governments, the counties. Uh, he's also, uh uh, an investor in data centers. Uh, why is why is a moratorium more appropriate than just leaving it up to, say, county commissioners?

Well, let me just, um, touch on what what he That which is what says. he's saying, yeah, Yeah, now that maybe he remembers or doesn't remember, or I I don't know if he's just not telling the truth or if he honestly doesn't remember that he owns these four companies. Um, in Bowie, Texas, right now, there's a community fighting against him where he said, I want community to decide. The community is saying we don't want this data center in our backyard, and it's been clouded in secrecy and and and they're saying we don't want it, and he's still trying to push it forward.

I'm saying pause in Georgia. Right now, we are number one in the country for new construction. We have passed Northern Virginia, the billions of dollars of incentives have been promised. I'm saying, let's take a pause, let's get everybody at the table. From people who can talk to us about our water sources, who can talk to us about property values, who can talk to us about long-term health impacts, who ratepayers who are saying my bills have gone up.

Let's get in a room and then figure out the responsible way that we move forward as a state. So I'm asking for us to pause on new construction until we can get all of the information, because the state of Georgia has never offered that to people in our state.

voting has already begun. Uh, your, uh, opponent has sort of embraced Trump, tried to distance from Trump, but through it all has, again, it's hard to pin down, but has embraced the 2020 election conspiracy theories. First of all, can you just talk about the kind of shenanigans that you could see in Georgia and how you're protecting against them? And then also, uh, uh, the risks of having somebody that has embraced Donald Trump in charge of Georgia in a presidential election.

Yeah, uh uh, thi- this guy has said that that Trump's gonna love him as governor. So what that means in Georgia is that if Trump were to make that call, find me 11,000, however many votes, he would answer it. It's dangerous. Already, as as we sit here today, 260 FBI agents have been dispatched into Fulton County, trying to find some mythical narrative around the 2020 election. This guy, uh, in the one and only debate that he showed up for, uh, when I said that he said the National Guard would be called in, said he didn't say it again.

I don't know if he's lying. Well, I know he's not telling the truth, or maybe he doesn't remember he said it. We we've heard the tape where he said the National Guard will be called in, so it is, um, and and just to remind people, Georgia's been on this path for a while. So when people were standing in line last week and it was eighty five degrees in Georgia, you could go to jail for giving someone a bottle of water in Georgia.

You could be charged criminally for giving someone a bottle of water. We've had our drop boxes removed, we've had the window for early voting reduced. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people purged from the voting rolls. So it's a, you know, Audrey Lord said, Revolution's not a one time event. This has been gradual. And and if this guy is in office, there will be no safeguards in terms of leadership because the governor has to certify the election.

Um, and it's it's frightening, not just as a candidate, but as someone who lives in the state, that this is, uh, we were, we are the cradle of the civil rights movement in America. Congressman John Lewis was my congressman. Uh, Ambassador Young, I is still very vocal about the sanctity of access to the right to vote, that this is what's facing us as a state. And I was with Ambassador Young a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think I've ever seen him emotional.

I was speaking at a church. He stood up to speak and talked about voting, and twice during his remarks, he was visibly emotional. And I can only imagine for someone like him who lived this, who fought for it, who bled for it, um, just, uh, it it, I'm sure it's upsetting and frightening, and and it should be to all of us.

So your dad, uh, was a Grammy nominated R B and soul singer. He opened for the Beatles, Elton John got to start playing piano for his band.

Um, I think he actually played guitar. Oh, guitar, I think I

really?

Elton John has actually told me this story, but I can't remem- he said it was the biggest break he ever got in music. He said he, um, we had moved to Europe, and, uh, there was something called the Northern Craze, Northern Soul, where soul singers like my dad would then move to Europe when their careers started to wane. And Elton John says that he went to audition for Wilson Pickett and he passed on them. And my dad picked the band up and they traveled around Europe.

And he said, at the end of the tour, my dad took his tie off and put it around his neck, and then Sir Elton, uh, serenaded me with one of his songs.

Did you ever think about going into a career in music over politics? Was that ever something that was a draw to you?

It was. I just can't sing or dance. It was what I always wanted to do. So, um, yeah, that was the end of that.

uh, if elected, you would be, uh, the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in America. Obviously, your your campaign follows, uh, Stacey Abrams campaigns to to sort of build and organize in Georgia. Uh, uh, what does that mean to you? How do you think about that?

for me, it is deeply personal. My family goes back at least five generations, at least five in Georgia. We can trace our roots to a plantation in Crawfordville, Georgia. My daughter recently pulled up some, uh, census records from Hancock County, Georgia, and it has one of my ancestors listed as a field hand, one as a house servant. And the fact that I am able to be the Democratic nominee just speaks to what's possible. The other side of my dad's story, my dad was just an incredible person and and a wonderful father, wonderful human being.

Um, my dad's name was Major Lance. My dad struggled with addiction. When I was eight, my dad went to prison, and I say my first tour around Georgia was not running for governor, it was going to visit my dad in all these places. And I go to some of those towns now, like, Oh, I remember when Daddy was in prison here, and it. So for me, it is so much more personal that, given my story and and all the generations of my family overcame and sacrificed, that this opportunity is before me.

And it is, I hope, representative of the possibilities for people all around the state. So when this guy says he wants to be Trump's favorite governor, like, I wanna be the favorite governor of that little girl who no longer gets to go to ballet, but has to go visit her dad in prisons on the weekends.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, good luck in the campaign trail.

Thank you.

Uh, uh, the website is keisha for governor dot com. You should consider putting 60 million of your own money in. I think that that would be a smart way to compete. I don't know why you haven't thought of doing that.

Well, God hasn't seen fit to make me a billionaire yet, but, um, hey, I'm still young. Who knows?

Yeah, yeah, anything is possible in America. Thank Sorry, you so much. Been great thank you, talking to you.

thank you.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Mayor Bottoms for coming on. Alex will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with former Attorney General Eric Holder about election protection and how this year's big gerrymandering push is playing out.

bye everyone.

Yeah, I just don't say anything.

I just don't even know what she was. I'm just waiting I don't for you to say say anything the wrong thing.

either. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Michael Goldsmith, with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroot, Ben Hefco, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kenny Moffett, Adam Lipper, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Farrell, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.