Trump Holds VP Auditions

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Tommy Vico.

On today's show, the prosecution's witnesses in the Manhattan trial, including Hope Hicks, deliver damning new testimony against Donald Trump. We're also going to talk about Trump's donor retreat at Mar-a-Lago, where he compared the Biden administration to Nazis, offered attendees a turn at the mic if they donated a million dollars, and held live auditions for his running mate, including Every Puppy's Worst Nightmare, Kristi Noem. Then later, Vote Save. America's fearless leader, Shaniqua McClendon, will be here to talk about the big launch of Organize or Else, which is the easiest and most effective way to get involved in this election. But first, some big developments in Gaza over the last several days.

Because getting the hostages back is a priority, but not the sole priority, or probably even his first priority. I mean, he said repeatedly that he believes that they need to destroy Hamas and that he thinks that requires a ground invasion into Rafah, because that's where the remaining battalions of Hamas fighters are and where the Hamas leadership is. The more cynical version, or read on this, is that Netanyahu is facing some political pressure from the families of hostages, but he faces even more existential pressure from the right wingers in his cabinet who want a Rafah invasion. For example, Itamar Ben-Gavir, the national security minister, said, we did not attack Gaza and we got October 7th. We didn't attack Rafah and we got a persistent attack, Netanyahu, go to Rafah now.

I mean, it sure seems like he's putting his own political future and his job, maybe his own freedom, I guess, ahead of the lives of hostages. at this point. I saw someone say, well, if you do that deal and then you probably stand the war, it rewards Hamas for taking hostages. But I don't know what kind of reward that is, after this war already has taken so many lives and also destroyed a lot of Hamas. And then, I don't know, I think, that you have a chance, you have a deal to get the hostages back.

I mean, look, it hasn't started yet. I think they've been hitting Rafa targets for a very long time and they've told people to evacuate, but there's no way. They're not evacuating people. You know, you're just told to go somewhere else, essentially. I think it's absolutely critical that they use every bit of leverage they have now to get a ceasefire and prevent this large ground evasion into Rafa.

I also understand the Israelis want to root out Hamas's leadership and defend themselves from another October 7th-style attack. But it does seem like you could do both of those things, or at least you have the chance to do both of those things, particularly, defend yourself, without doing a full ground invasion of Rafah, right? Couldn't you just have a ceasefire, and then there's targeted operations down the road and all that kind of stuff?

Yes and no. I mean, listen. I think a couple of things. One, you just have to imagine... To put yourself in the Israeli mindset, I do think you have to try to imagine how we all felt six months after 9-11..

I hear you on, the White House ought to put as much pressure as possible on getting to a ceasefire. How are they meant to do that when Israel's interests and Netanyahu's interests don't align? I'm not saying you don't understand that, too. That is to me the challenge in this, which is Biden calls Bibi just today to make sure that they open this crossing.

I think what a lot of people want to see is more of a carrot and stick approach where there are real consequences for defying US requests like this. that include conditioning aid or cutting off weapon shipments, or fill in more recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN. There's a lot of ways to put pressure on Netanyahu. None of them are comfortable for someone like Biden, who's a long-time self-professed lover of Israel and supporter of the Israeli project and government, but I think a lot of Democrats want to see more of that pressure track.

Well, and Biden, in the White House readout of the call today, they said he reiterated his clear position on Rafa, which is don't invade Rafa. And when he had said that previously, he also said, or the White House had said, there could be a rethinking of support for Israel, right? So I think if they go through with this invasion, he can't just have drawn that line and then not do anything.

After the IDF struck that World Central Kitchen convoy and killed seven aid workers, Biden made a call to Netanyahu that sounded like it was very difficult. He demanded several things and Netanyahu went out and said that they would accede to those demands. I think a lot of people saw that example and thought, okay, the pressure track has been effective where six months of requests have not. So let's emphasize that more. And I think that is the right path, clearly.

All right. Let's talk about the latest in Trump's criminal trial. On Friday, Hope Hicks delivered some of the most damning testimony yet against her former boss when she revealed that Trump told her that he knew about the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and was glad the story didn't come out before the election. Trump also said that Cohen made the payments on his own, which Hicks said she believed was a lie. She then broke down into tears on the stand.

It's not even close. I'll do that sacrifice any day.

That's why that juror number seven is a real sow.

I've gone from thinking Trump was terrified to go to jail to wondering if he wants to to seem like a martyr for his people now.

I keep going back and forth on it. And today, after that, I'm like, I'm a little more on the side of. I'm where you are, Tommy.

I don't, I still. I still don't believe it. I still think he's putting on a show that he doesn't want to go.

What if he wants to sing in the J6 choir?

Well, yeah, I guess I don't know if they're taking you as a hit maker.

He's also probably asking, you know, he's asking his lawyers, like, well, how long would I spend in jail? Right, right. Would it be like a couple of days?

I think the lack of control over face, hair, body, I think it's like a big deal. I think it's a big deal for him. He wears a hat when it's windy. Now he's going to jail.

He knows he's not going to get thrown in a cell with other inmates, you know?

Right. Tim and his Secret Service buddies.

Yeah. So he's probably... I can't even believe we're talking about this. This is wild.

We're living in a fucking carnival. It's stupid. This whole thing's stupid.

Usually we have guests with actual law degrees with us to talk about these developments, but from everything you guys have seen and read, how are you feeling about how this trial is going for Trump? Should he start measuring the drapes at Rikers or what?

It's not going particularly well. The Hope Hicks testimony is interesting. There's two parts that stood out to me. One was when she first gets the emailed transcript of the Access Hollywood tape, and she goes and she brings it to Trump. Trump's like, that doesn't sound like me.

That's the point of that.

But there's the part where she describes Trump telling her, after it becomes public, about Michael Cohen making the payments, where Trump tells Hope Hicks something like, I just talked to Michael. I just talked to him. Michael did it out of the goodness of his heart. And he did it without my knowledge, he did it out of the goodness of his heart, and that's what Michael did. I just talked to him.

Also, good thing it didn't come out before the election.

And good thing it didn't come out before the election. But just that kind of fucking dime store mafioso, like getting the story straight thing, just comes across. And the fact that she's breaking down, as she tells us, and, I'm sure, is a very compelling witness, I don't think it was a good day for him.

I also like that. we learned that I think Trump apparently asked Hope to hide the newspapers that got delivered to Trump's home to keep Melania from seeing a story about his affair with Karen McDougal, which is a technique that didn't work before the internet.

You assume Melania has a phone? I don't know. I don't know if she has a phone.

But that was interesting.

Whether Trump directed Michael Cohen to do it, or whether Michael Cohen actually did it. out of the goodness of his heart, Andrew Weissman was saying that it doesn't actually matter for this case, because Trump, knowing about the scheme after the fact and knowing about it, like that's all they need to prove, that he knew about it, he knew that falsifying the business records was in furtherance of covering up the campaign finance violation. So that's what they have to prove. It is more damning if what Hicks said is true and what Michael Cohen surely will say is true, which is of course. Trump directed Michael Cohen to do it.

Look, I'm sure that's right legally, because he's the lawyer and we're nothing.

That's why I follow Andrew Weissman.

But just in terms of the story, for people hearing this, I do think it is actually important in terms of the seriousness of it to know that from the beginning he was directing this, that he wasn't just after the fact trying to kind of fuck up the ledger.

And I think that's why they started with Pecker, because they wanted to lay the predicate that this started in 2015, 2016,. Trump was there, Trump entered into the deal with them, said, let's do this catch and kill thing with any kind of story that comes up. And so now you have to believe that Trump wanted to do that with Karen McDougal, the negative stories on his opponents, all this other shit. But when it came to Stormy Daniels, then it was just Michael Cohen acting on his own.

Some people think it's a better strategy to start with Pecker. Some people finish with Pecker. But I think in this case, you were right. I think starting with Pecker was nice.

I think big picture. Hope seemed to confirm that Trump ran a micromanaged. everything that happened in his little family business. And the idea that Michael Cohen would catch and kill an article out of the goodness of his heart does not ring true to anybody.

Well, and today, Monday, was all about the business records falsification. And that seems like a pretty airtight case, not just because of the testimony, but they also have documents. They introduce all kinds of evidence. And it's like Allen Weisselberg writing on it, like, this is for Stormy.

Caught and killed.

So, you know, and it's like, they have this whole thing where Trump signs all the checks and then Trump's telling people, like, I want to look at every invoice. I mean, it's just, it's, there's a lot of evidence. A lot of evidence that he knowingly falsified the business records.

Yeah, well, I also just, we went into this. It's obvious. The evidence was there. The facts were there. It was always just the question about the, how novel the case was, which a bunch of liberal lawyers decided was, it was novel.

So, Trump spent the weekend at his beach club speaking to his richest donors and potential running mates. The New York Times got a hold of an audio recording and wrote that Trump, quote, delivered a frustrated and often obscene speech, lasting roughly 75 minutes, where he compared the Biden administration to the Gestapo, called Jack Smith ugly, mocked Bill Barr, and said that Democrats start off with 40% of the vote because of federal employees, union members, and people on welfare. The intonation there is that Democrats give government assistance in exchange for votes. Jake Tapper asked VP contender Doug Burgum about the irony of Trump making this accusation while promising tax cuts to his rich donors. And here's what he said.

Well, first of all, I just reject the whole premise of this idea of wealthy donors. I mean, the room of people that were there yesterday are all people that were job creators. These are Americans that took risks.

So they're not wealthy? Well, they sometimes risk everything they had to start a business. Well, they're wealthy now.

I was hearing that for the first time, and that's good stuff.

I don't understand why you're using the W word, Jake.

I will just say, there's too many clips, so we didn't use this one. Doug Burgum, just a couple days ago on Fox, when he was getting interviewed by Laura Ingram, he said that, she was asking him about some Trump policy, and he's, like, you know, billionaires? Billionaires should want to vote for Trump because he's going to help them succeed.

Sure, why not?

I'm hoping now. Doug Burgum, he should pick Doug. My boy, Doug.

You're on the Doug train.

Think of how great it would be to have Doug Burgum walking around talking about how billionaires have rights, too.

Big, bushy eyebrows.

Anyway, it sounds like a real fun event. I wish I could have been there. The Biden campaign responded with a statement that hit Trump for the Gestapo comments, but interestingly, they led with the welfare comments. You guys think those are more damaging, or what were your thoughts on all that?

I think Trump has done a version of the Gestapo. It might be new. It's one of those things where I heard it, it didn't shock me for even a second.

It should upset us, but it didn't shock me.

It no longer does, because Trump's killed that part of us. Yeah, the welfare comments to me, I saw people comparing it to the Romney 47% comment. Oh, the welfare stuff. The welfare stuff, and whether or not that comparison is accurate or not. I think anytime Trump is in a room full of ludocrats decrying the welfare state, I think you're kind of in a good zone.

Yeah, I think whenever you have a gaffe that reminds a press corps of a previous gaffe, you have a good shot at leapfrogging a couple stages of analysis to like, oh, this is damaging. You kind of manifest the thing into being a problem. The comparison to Mitt, who said 47% of the country is with Obama. no matter what, I actually think Romney's comments were worse for a couple reasons. He was scathing about the voters themselves.

Yeah, that was the part that really got him.

Yeah, food and housing. People should be able to eat.

People should have food.

Wild. Then he said, my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility, which solidified this narrative that we were pushing, that he was a plutocrat and in it for his donors. Romney, though, has a conscience, and he felt bad about those comments, and he reacted in a way that demonstrated he felt bad. We later learned from his book that he thought about dropping out of the race.

Turns out, Romney was a plutocrat with a heart of gold.

Trump does not have a conscience. I think he says worse things than whatever he said at his donor conference, at rallies all the time, because he's a narcissist, so he'll be fine.

Also, if only federal employees plus union members plus people getting government assistance added up to 40% of the vote, and if only all those people were voting Democrat. They are not.

This is Richard Daly's Chicago.

Much of Trump's base, people who are getting federal assistance, probably a lot of Trump's base at this point, civil service, very tiny percent of the population, union members, wish more people were a part of the union. Not the case right now. It's just such an old-school view of the electorate. It is, to Levitt's original point, so damning to say all this in a room full of fucking billionaires. who then he was like, by the way, if anyone cuts a $1 million check to me right now, you can come up and have a turn at the mic.

Talk to the donors?

What a shitty consult. Oh, you get to talk to the donors, wow.

A million dollars to do a toast?

And apparently no one took him up on it for a little while and then finally, he was like, the New York Times said he seemed annoyed, he seemed upset, and then finally someone said, okay.

Is Jack Smith ugly? Where's this coming from?

What do you think? You're a fan? I wouldn't have brought it up unprompted. I don't have a poster of him in my locker.

I'm not trying to go all Mueller-time on you guys.

He's a good-looking person.

I do have a bobblehead on my desk that someone sent us. One of you wonderful listeners sent us a Jack Smith bobblehead.

I needed a gut check on that.

I do think that the whole million-dollar check thing, it just sort of speaks to Trump's entire approach to politics, which is authoritarian in that if you kiss his ass, you make him richer, he'll do something shitty for you, like you can get to speak to pension donors. It's all transactional. If not, he'll come after you. That's his whole shtick. Trump's campaign team also gave a presentation at the event that reportedly included three different electoral college maps.

Here's what I thought. If we're talking about Minnesota and Virginia, okay, I guess we can. eventually... If we're talking about that, we've got a lot of problems. But I want to focus on their, whatever, their middle scenario.

We haven't talked about it in a little while. It does seem like it is unlikely to happen in Nebraska, because they just don't have the votes. And the governor basically said as much, too. He's like, if we had the votes, we'd do it, but we don't. And then I saw that, I think, one of the Democratic leaders, either in the House or the Senate, in Maine, did say that if Nebraska went forward with it, then Maine would go forward with taking it there.

But that does explain why they were going for it, right? They're looking at this map and seeing that it's not a 270-268.. It's a very reasonable outcome.

Expanded reality is kind of a great term. I know.

It's a good theme for the Trump campaign.

It's actually very Bush-esque. Remember when they were talking about the reality distortion field? Remember that whole thing? Unitary executive, expanded reality, it's all one fucking thing.

I think, just on the general point, I would just approach this with kind of an Occam's Razor common sense view, that this is a rematch of an election from four years ago and the map's kind of probably going to look like the map four years ago. And that doesn't mean Biden's going to win every state he won in 2020, but they'll be contested. And if Trump's team thinks that Minnesota and Virginia are in play, I would expect them to, one, spend money there and, two, go there when you're not in court. But, yeah, to Lovett's point, Biden won Minnesota by seven points and Virginia by ten. So if those states go to Trump, it's a landslide anyway.

Yeah, I was looking into it. I think it's an odd two states to choose. I mean, Biden, like you said, he won by seven. I think the reason they thought about it is because Hillary only won Minnesota by 1.5.. I forgot that it was that close in 2016..

This is the part of the campaign where the Democrats do a little wish-casting. We talk about flipping Arkansas or whatever, and Republicans do the same on their side, and then, you know, we end up battling each other in Pennsylvania for four grueling months or whatever by the end.

Yeah. And, like, right now the polls, you know, in Minnesota there was one SurveyUSA poll that had Biden only up two in Minnesota, but the rest have had him comfortably ahead. In Virginia, recent polls have had it closer than the ten points he won by, but they're still mid-single digits. He's got a mid-single digits lead. In the current reality map, I agree with.

The only good thing about North Carolina is the Republicans decided to nominate Mark Robinson as their gubernatorial candidate, and he is a bona fide, just, nutbag, and he, you know, he called, most recent headline I read about Mark Robinson was he called Beyonce a skank. So that's the kind of press he's getting. So maybe he'll have some reverse coattails.

Well, the polls so far are showing Josh Stein really outpacing Biden, even, in that state, and beating Mark Robinson.

Truly have to beat that man. He's frightening.

There's been some national polls. It's still basically a tied race, but one thing to keep an eye on. A few high-quality polls came out recently where they gave the results in terms of polling all adults, registered voters, and likely voters. And Biden's doing better with registered than all adults, and he's doing better with likely than either of them. And that has now been a pattern where every time they have a likely voter screen, Biden ends up doing a little bit better.

the Nation. You talk about meeting some world leaders, and one specific one, quote, I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor after all. Did you meet Kim Jong Un?

She's an entire dog murder platform.

I didn't realize that part about. I hadn't heard that part about Commander Mead Cricket in hell.

It's not just one proposal. It's a whole thing.

I didn't realize that she had a whole. I'm not retreating, I'm reloading to kill more fucking dogs.

She apparently just went on Fox and said that the reason that she told this story in her book about killing the puppy was to prove that she's, quote, not like other politicians. Mission accomplished. You did it.

Christy Dahmer over here.

Is she intentionally trying to ruin her career?

I like how she acts, offended on behalf of the confidentiality of her imaginary meetings.

I can't believe why she continues to do the interviews.

She only has so many She's in the early. This is training in front of Trump. They're going out in front of Trump and demonstrating that they can handle the press. She had to do it just to get out there. The other thing, too, is it's okay to just say we left it.

What I love about this, you chose to write the book. I know they're trying to blame the ghostwriter now, but she also read the audiobook herself.

I didn't hear that. That's so funny.

Is this our own hubris?

We have a book coming out that we all read.

and we can try to blame, Josh.

Don't put that into the.

I will say in my chapters that I read, I didn't notice anything. I can't speak for you two.

I don't know about you guys. When I read our chapters, I didn't disassociate. I heard what I said.

I caught a couple more typos that we fixed.

If I read about my meeting with Kim Jong-un, I might think to myself, huh, was I one of a half dozen living US officials to ever meet with this guy? Was I the only member of Congress to ever meet with Kim Jong-un? Did I accidentally get on a plane with Dennis Rodman and not realize until I landed in Pyongyang? No? Let's fix it.

It's so defensive.

Her book is called No Going Back.

It is also, I think, wrong. I think it's an over-learned lesson. It's so defensive and kind of politician-y to be like, I've met with many world leaders and we're going to go. take a look at that.

I was interrupted 36 times.

Admitting that, the problem is exactly what Tommy just said. with the audiobook. You can't be like, obviously I didn't meet them. Why did you say it?

Did she confuse Asian leaders? What is the mistake? Are you stupid?

Combined North and South Korea? We've been working on that project for a long time.

Easy to do in a fake book.

Was that in Hard Choices?

I was not being specific.

She tweeted that Margaret Brennan on CBS Face the Nation interrupted her 36 times or something like that. It just turned into this whining, grievance nonsense.

Which is just Mad Libs. Blame liberal media.

She's like, wait, but did you meet with Kim Jong-un? Now? I'm confused.

Politico reported that she wrote a first book, this was her second book, and in the first book her team got her to take the story of killing the puppy out.

She demanded.

to go in the second book. Then she said the reason she put it in the second book is because opponents in past races have used it against her, so she thought she would get ahead of the story.

How did the opponents know she murdered her dog?

Did she call them? Small place. Small place South Dakota. Apparently it's been going around.

They were at the funeral. You tell one person.

you killed your puppy, and then, all of a sudden.

it's a whole thing. They tell two friends, they tell two friends. And then the horses. She's killing everything.

What did you guys think of Trump's reviews of his other potential running mates, based on the audio recording that we read about?

Let's do an impromptu quiz. Don't look at your notes. I'm going to read you what Trump said about them, you say who it was. His name is coming up a lot for vice president. Rubio.

You think we haven't read the prep?

I know, you know them all to my heart.

You're picking up on what I picked up on, which was that there wasn't a single interesting or insightful observation out of the entire dozen or so.

that were listed here. I love your haircut, and he's a good man too. That's Mike Lee. The best one. He said this about Byron Donalds, black member of Congress.

Right out of Veep.

He's having a blast up there. The guy doesn't drink.

Doug Burgum. I didn't know this. He was a supporter of my two campaigns. He's a very rich man.

Again, it's just like he's observations, trivia.

A very smart person. She was in upstate New York when I met her. Little. did we realize she would be such a big factor.

The gnome one also is very much like, she has no chance.

It's done.

He's just kind of throwing her some love.

I love her. He'll be making fun of the puppy shooting thing. He's not going to be able to resist that.

Do you guys follow Magic Johnson on Twitter by any chance?

I don't.

It's like so bad, it's good. He has these utterly. he just tweets about the NBA in ways that are like Celtics shot more tonight, got more points, therefore won. That's what it reminded me from Trump. Anyway, I don't know why I even raised that at this audience.

I thought you were going to say that Magic Johnson tweeted about the puppy killer.

Hopefully he will, with any luck. What this reminded me of when I had Alyssa, when Alyssa guest hosted when you guys were in D.C. the other week, she talked about the VP selection process. she ran for Kerry and Obama and how focused they were on confidentiality and making sure that these people, who you ask to tell you all their darkest secrets and do all this vetting information, aren't humiliated by leaks and things. and then you have Trump, which is, he's doing the exact opposite.

Yeah, I mean I think Trump doesn't need any material to ruin someone's political career. Just makes it up.

She put one of the most damning things I've ever seen a politician get accused of in her own book.

She made it easy, yeah.

Did it to herself.

It is interesting that Trump has sort of steamrolled all these places where we used to have seriousness and I think that's obviously been very damning. but I remember when Kerry was choosing between Edwards and Gephardt. remember the New York Post ran a cover that said Gephardt is picked and they got it wrong and it was secret and it was important and everyone took it really, really seriously and, I don't know.

And they realized that Gephardt killed that puppy.

Right, and then Gephardt killed all those posts. you just non-stop murdering his brain.

It's a libel and it didn't happen.

Didn't happen. And then Trump does this with these people.

What is brilliant about it, though, is he knows that he can distract the press with this until the day he picks. He can just do this little game and dance these people in front of the press corps and his donors and make them dance for him, and he loves it.

Yeah, we'll keep talking about it. If there's new stuff out there.

And by the way, it's free to put somebody on the list and make them feel good, it's free. One note before we go to break, I just want to let everybody know I'm taking a couple weeks off, both on Posse America and Love It or Leave It.

Are you being vetted? It's happening.

I'm working on something, can't say more now, we'll tell you more about it when I'm back, but I just wanted to let everybody know we lined up some awesome guest hosts for Love It or Leave It. Andy Richter, Larry Wilmore, Maria Bamford, Matt Rogers, Louis Fertel, Ian Carmel, Langston, Kerman and Guy Branum. As it turns out, it takes a lot of people to fill these shoes.

but other than that, We'll miss you. Good luck with your Brazilian.

butt lift.

You can get new episodes. still be episodes Tuesdays and Saturdays Crooked.com slash events, go to these special guest shows.

I was laughing.

Go to Crooked.

Awesome, and when we come back we'll have Shaniqua McClendon on from Vote Save America to talk all about Organize or Else, which is our big 2024 volunteer operation.

Hi, thank you.

Boss.

Yeah, man, Fiona came up with something really funny and I can't remember. It's like, something princess. Politics princess. No, you don't know. Politics princess?

I don't know.

We have brought you on today, not just because we like having you here and you're in town, which is always great since you're usually in DC, but because Vote Save America has launched the largest electoral organizing effort, not just of the year, it says here in the year, ever.

Oh, it is big.

Called Organize or Else?

Yes, it's Organize or Else. Most people probably remember Adopt a State from 2020, where we recruited 300,000 people to volunteer and raised $46 million that year. But this year, we're doing Organize or Else, and it's a little bit different, because we should have focused on the House a little bit more in 2020, and so we learned our lesson, and so.

don't blame yourself.

You know, we did consult you all on what we would be focused on, but it's fine.

You know what? And love it was like,

don't pay much attention to New York. New York, California, it's a lot. Don't worry. Look, if I said one thing. I said a thousand times, the New York State Democratic Party, they've got this.

Well, we learned our lesson, but this time we're not leaving anything. We're going everywhere, so Senate, caring about the White House, the House, but we're also going down ballot to state legislatures, gubernatorial elections, anything that matters, but in order to do that, we had to kind of change the way that we're doing the program, and so people can go to VoteSaveAmerica.com slash 2024, and they basically tell us where they live and whether or not they want to do virtual or in-person volunteer events, and then each week we'll send them a high-impact volunteer event, but when they tell us what state they're in, they will be assigned to a team, Team East or West, and we just split the country along the Mississippi River, which I learned is how they do the NBA. Yeah, and so that's how it's all split up.

They do have to do radio stations.

Mississippi. Oh,

YK. I didn't know that. Shaniqua, East Coast-West Coast rivalries have famously ended in tragedy. What's your plan to prevent that?

You know, this could end in tragedy if Donald Trump is elected.

She's on message. We are team captains.

Yes, I was going to ask. You all live here, but what team are you on?

It's the Johns. We're taking the losers.

Team West. I'm on Team East.

And Dan.

Tommy and Dan.

Who else do we have on Team West?

Alyssa is on Team West. No, Team East. She's on our team. She literally lives in New York.

I wish we could have had a draft.

That's a good idea for next year.

Next most important election of our life.

We'll either do that in the studio or in the camps, depending on what happens.

We can draft some other people. We can think about some outsiders we want to draft.

That's a good idea.

Aaron is on Team West.

Nice. Okay, great.

That's a really great idea.

We're playing in 24 different states, 71 target races.

Yeah, I know. It's a lot. There's a lot to do. That's why we need everyone to sign up. If we could get anywhere near or more, it would even be better than 300,000 people that signed up in 2020..

I will also say, volunteers have always been important to campaigns. A good field operation with a lot of volunteers always makes the difference. in very close races. We are headed for another very close race. The country is very evenly divided, which means that, even though that makes everyone nervous, that also means that whatever you do has a bigger impact.

for campaigns. It is central.

This is a hard pitch. You listen, and we love it. We're so glad that you do. But you did not do all this paying attention over the last several years to not do this one step, which is sign up to be part of Votes. Save America.

This is why we podcast.

This is why we do it. This is why we download.

We do 1.

Can't skip ahead to November.

I wish we could.

That's good. You gotta do the work in the in-between.

Speaking of doing the work, is it smart to pick 71 races? That just sounds like you put so much thought into it.

We did. No, we really, really did.

I don't know. You really drew attention to it. Honestly, if you just said it,

it would have been fucking fine.

I hate to be so.

No, we're using this already.

You're not getting an edit.

Was the 72nd candidate Henry Cuellar?

You know, I don't care for that man.

Neither does the FBI. I'm learning that today.

I hope he has fun with whatever happens.

We all do.

Sorry. I want to keep the house, all that.

Anyway, sign up. If you're listening to Pod Save America, and you're not signed up to Pod Save America, unless you're just hate-listening because you're some right-wing MAGA person, that's fine. But if you're listening, and you don't want Donald Trump in the White House, this is going to do a lot more than just listening or posting.

Also, it's really fun.

It's really fun. You'll meet the best people.

You'll have a good time.

And you can do whatever you want. If you don't want to talk to people face-to-face, you can send text messages. Just tell us what you want to do, and we'll send you something to do.

Maybe you say to yourself, but I'm not really political. I just listen because I like to write fan fiction about Dan and Tommy.

You think that's the most popular one?

I think it's up there with the right-wing freaks.

There's me plus. yes, we Dan slash fic?

There is now.

You just manifested it? You just put that into the world?

You just put that into the world on my behalf? Man.

Anyway, is this what you hoped for?

It was a late night at the White House.

Oh, my gosh.

You know what? If people sign up and we win the election, Lovett will finish whatever he started.

That's a deal. Honestly, that's a deal.

There's a joke I'm trying to get at. It's something about how the pee isn't always silent.

Olivia's like, nope, nope. Olivia, cut that. I don't know.

The pee in Pfeiffer.

Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you, Shaniqua, for joining Pod Save America.

Sign up for Organize or Else at votesaveamerica.

slash 2024.

We've got a big URL debate brewing back here, folks. We're letting you in on it. We've got a big URL fight happening. Putting the soft pee in Pfeiffer is the joke? I was thinking the pee in the video.

Olivia, make sure we're recording.

Like Tommy said that late night at the White House. Let's leave that in.

Alright, thanks to Shaniqua for joining us, and we will have a brand new episode for you on Wednesday. Bye, everyone.

And a brand new butt.

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Thank you.