Pod Save America - Trump's Top General Uses the F-Word

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

"Fascist to the core." That's how Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Donald Trump, describes Trump in a new book—and that was before Trump's new comments about using the military against the "enemy within." Jon, Lovett, and Tommy break down the latest and scariest from Trump, Kamala Harris's big swing state tour, and why she's attacking Trump as weak. Then, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, stops by to talk about why it's so important to beat Rick Scott, and what it'll take to win. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. Tommy Vitor. On today's show, with three weeks to go, Trump's getting crazier, Kamala's getting bolder, and the polls are getting closer. We'll talk about how both campaigns are approaching the final stretch of the race, and later, you'll hear Tommy's interview

with former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Florida Senator Rick Scott, and keep the Senate in Democratic hands. But first, there is a reason that Kamala Harris keeps telling us to watch Donald Trump's rallies. The old man's getting darker and more deranged with each passing day. Real Mad King vibes.

Over the last few days, he promised to liberate the occupied state of Colorado, withhold disaster aid from California just to spite Gavin Newsom, and use the U.S. military to take care of Democrats. Let's listen. And now America is known all throughout the world as occupied America. November 5th, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America. I'm announcing today that upon taking office,

we will have an Operation Aurora at the federal level to expedite the removals of these savage gangs. And I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Think of that. We're going to take care of your water situation and we'll force it down his throat. And we'll say, Gavin, if you don't do it, we're not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the far forest fires that you have. I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,

not even the people that have come in and destroying our country, by the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages, they're being inundated. But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people, we have some sick people,

radical left lunatics. And I think they're the, and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary by national guard or if really necessary by the military. Oof, all right, general question here. Colin Trump rally is dark, almost cliche at this point, but does seem like a bit of a change in tone here.

It's a little darker. I know we're on a sliding scale here. And it's like a fascist wine tasting. You know what I mean? You start with like a little light nativism and you progress to like ruby red, blood and soil nationalism by the end. What do you make of all that guys?

We'll start with the immigration stuff and then we'll move. We'll start with migrant crime and liberating occupied Colorado and occupied America. And then we'll move on to the, having the National Guard handle radical left Democrats. Yeah, so I was also just trying to like check myself because it's like, sometimes it's like,

is Trump getting darker or is it just fresher in my mind? And so I went back and watched one of his biggest immigration speeches from 2016, just to get a sense of what he was saying then. And it's interesting because there's plenty of vague tilting at mass deportation. But what you feel when you go back and watch the speeches he was giving in 2016 is that they didn't know how far

He could go and get away with it in two ways one They didn't know what they would be able to do politically They just didn't have the same people around him but also to they didn't know what they what they could get away with in terms of Bringing out their supporters without alienating mainstream moderates, independents, and Democrats. And so if you look at what he was saying in 2016, it was much more about stopping illegal immigration

and what Hillary Clinton would promise. He did a lot of the, he did the same kind of, oh, these, you know, the murderous immigrants, he did the stories, he did the examples, but then he talked about targeting criminal aliens. If you look at it, there's rhetoric there that could obviously be used to justify a claim that he's promising mass deportations,

but the rhetorical excesses were just more contained. And I don't think that's because Donald Trump didn't believe what he's saying now. It's because I think they did not, I think part of it is the media has gotten so much more fractured and chaotic that they don't worry as much about these remarks reaching the kind of people that would care about them.

But I also think that the people around Trump has changed and their expectations of what he can do once he's president have changed. Yeah, I just think he always gets more inflammatory the closer we get to an election. That's true. There was a quote from right before the 2016 election where he said, quote,

Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors. Very- She not do that? She not do that?

Very- She not do that everybody. From protocols, the other design on there. Sweet hair. But 2018, it was all about the Kavanaugh. I do think though- Caravans? Oh, well actually-

Both. In 2018, it was the election of Kavanaugh, the Caravan Law and Order and Common Sense. So yeah, it was all together. I think though the rhetoric now has escalated to a very different place. He's saying immigrants are animals. He's saying crime is in their DNA. Later he says the FBI doesn't want more information

about the assassination attempts on his life. Like this is really, this is like Infowars, Alex Jones, crazy conspiratorial stuff. It's also very inflammatory. It leads people to take violent acts. You know, I was thinking about what Carlos Odeo, who's at ECCE Research, said to Dan in the episode you should all listen to from over the weekend,

Dan's Polar Coast episode. And when they talked about immigration, he said, look, I think these polls that show a slight majority of Americans want mass deportations, he goes, I can tell you from focus groups, from polling and talking to Latino voters, that people think mass deportations has to do with the border and it has to do with illegal immigration. For people who last checked in with Trump a couple of years ago, or at least paid a lot of attention and now aren't paying a lot of attention to the news, and they tend to be the persuadable voters, they're just checking in. In 2016, Trump talked all about the border, talked about the wall.

Trump's four years of president, he didn't do much about illegal immigration, actually didn't really take care of illegal immigration. What he did do is he cut legal immigration 50%. And when you hear from Stephen Miller, when you hear from some of the authors of Project 2025, Stephen Miller, potential White House Chief of Staff if Trump wins again, what they really want to do is get into legal immigration. They want to get rid of immigrants who are here legally. Trump has already said that he wants the Haitian immigrants in Springfield who are here legally, he wants to deport them. Uh, when he talked about the alien enemies act, that is a law that has

been used in the past to round up and deport legal residents, uh, not American citizens, but immigrants who are here legally, who have legal status deport them. He wants to deport the dreamers who are also here legally. So this is all about, I mean, he's saying migrant crime, but like, if you want to go after migrant crime, police will do that in Aurora. The mayor was like, yeah, we have police here. The Republican mayor. The Republican mayor was like, we had a, we had one gang and one building and the police went after them and arrested most of the gang. And that's what you do all over the country. You send law enforcement out to get people

who are breaking the law, whether they're undocumented migrants or legal citizens. I think there are 10 Trende Aragua Venezuelan gang members in the building and they arrested nine of them. Yeah. That was the sort of discrete this problem was. I'm not surprised by the shifts in tone because I think this is the thing

he genuinely is most angry and passionate about. It like genuinely seems to animate him. And I think in a key makes it ostensibly, this is a conversation about immigration, but it allows him to channel his deeply felt and rooted racist feelings into campaign rhetoric that is shocking and inflammatory, but I think has been deemed acceptable

by a lot of people in the Republican Party. And I'm sure there are people in the campaign that want him to talk about other things, but there's also the Stephen Millers of the world who do believe this is a project about deporting people, limiting immigration. But they kind of make it an economic argument by saying, oh, migrants are taking jobs,

they're taking black jobs, they're overwhelming social services. He tries to backdoor it into an economic argument or national security argument by there's terrorists coming over the border, there's Chinese nationals, et cetera, because I think it's the thing he cares about. And it's also the thing that animates the kind of hardcore base that actually goes to these rallies. Yeah, it also, I think it's also worth pointing out what it's required for this argument to

be politically salient at all. This is a myth, right? Aurora is safer than it's ever been. Colorado is safer than it's ever been. Not occupied. It's not occupied. The sun is shining, right? By Jared Polis.

By Jared, it is occupied by Jared Polis. The gays are taking over Colorado for sure. But what is required for this is that all the people getting in their pickup trucks from the suburbs around Denver and Colorado driving in to go to this rally, they either know this isn't true, don't care, or they don't know it's not true because of the media

they consume, whether it's Elon's internet or Fox News or its satellites. Or by the way, we should say local news will cover an undocumented immigrant committing a crime, which has happened. Of course. Like the cases he's talking about, Lake and Riley and Georgia, wherever else, like they're real cases and they do get blown up

by not only Fox, but sometimes the local news. So he's like pushing on an open door here, but yeah. Yeah. Your point is well taken. Of course, and it also, I think like they are relying on the fact that the kind of way the information is gonna be disseminated by the time it reaches people for whom the actual details would be offensive, it is boiled down to Trump takes strong stance

on border and immigrant crime at a fiery rally in Colorado. Like they are counting on that every day because if the words that, this is why Kamala Harris says, watch the rallies. If people were seeing what was in the rallies, it would be extremely unpopular. It's also, this is, I went back and I looked at his Central Park Five ad from the eighties

when he put this, I think it was a full page ad in Newsday or one of those kind of like tabloid papers. Tough hit on Newsday. Here's some of the language in it. I recently watched a newscast trying to explain the anger in these young men. I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger.

I want them to be afraid. Criminals must be told that their civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins. This is like the longest running thread in the kind of Trump narrative that he wants. He is a racist and he wants to punish people that don't look like him or, you know, curtail civil liberties when he thinks a crime was committed. I think politically, he needs huge turnout among his base.

Voters cite immigration as one of their top issues, maybe the third or fourth, depending on the poll. And they trust him over Kamala by a wider margin on immigration than any other top issue. It's almost like it's comparable to Democrats focusing a lot on abortion, right? Maybe the second top issue after the economy, but up there. But I also think Trump, to your point on me, not only is it what he really believes,

he also knows that it's more of an emotional appeal to people than economic, an economic argument, because it makes people feel threatened. And that's what he wants to do. He wants to go to all these places. And he wants for the people who are in the suburbs, who might go to the city, you don't want to go to the city. There's migrant crime there and now it's coming to the suburbs. It's coming to Aurora. It's coming everywhere. And that's why you got to elect me to stop the border. And like, if you're upset with how your suburbs look and your cities looking, it's the migrants and it's crap, this is what he wants to do.

And this is, he thinks this is his best clothes, better than the economy, even though the economy is, you know, the top issue for most voters in every poll. But I don't know. This is also where the paid and the earned is very different. His speeches focus on immigration, his paid advertising is focused on the economy.

The Wesleyan Media Project, they track TV ads and spending. They said that most of Trump's ads in the last week or two have been focused on economic issues like taxes and jobs. The campaign has also made a big push into paid advertising attacking Kamala Harris on transgender rights. It's that transgender criminal ad that we've all been seeing on football games and stuff.

But it's just interesting that what he wants to talk about is this immigration stuff, and the campaign is focused a different way. Well, that brings up a question. Do we think he's making a political mistake closing on immigration? Because like Tommy said, if the campaign's thinking, all right, the most effective way we can close

is on the economy, but he's out there yelling about migrant crime. You know, I've been wondering if Kamala Harris has been doing a great job talking about the border, Donald Trump killing the border bill. She's going to sign the border bill. She has not, and I'm guessing it's because of some of this polling around deportation, she has not talked as much about Trump's sort of extreme stance on deportations, building camps, deportation camps, which by the way, it's like, it's just a, he is more extreme

on immigration than where the median voter is. It just is. And maybe part of it, the polling is they don't know what his stance on immigration is right now because it has, it's in these rallies and we don't talk about them everywhere. Yeah. I mean, there's two questions in there. I don't know about the wisdom, if there's any wisdom in his focus on immigration

at the rallies. I think the rallies are maybe about turnout. The people coming out to a rally to see Trump have already decided they love him. They believe he's better on the economy. This is about driving his most enthusiastic people to show up and maybe they rely on ads to reach the less engaged people who just remember him as being better for the economy.

I also wonder too, if part of this is the Kamala Harris campaign has done an amazing job fighting back on the economy and it's not as clear a winning issue for him, but immigration really is. I also think it's still, and we'll get to the strength weakness thing, it is still a stand in, I think,

from the kind of connection between chaos at the border and Biden being older as a kind of connection with that kind of overall failure and chaos from the Biden administration. And maybe they're trying to hope that that holds them all the way to election day. I don't know. They really are.

He really is trying to graft the campaign he was running against Joe Biden onto Kamala Harris. You see he demanded she take a cognitive test today. Yeah. He just can trying to graft the campaign he was running against Joe Biden. Yeah. To Kamala Harris. You see he demanded she take a cognitive test today. Yeah. He just can't let go of these talking points. I would, if I were them, think about hitting Trump on this, because I think she can very easily say, look, I want to be very tough on the border. I want to sign this border bill that was with the conservative Republican

Senator, but also the idea that he's gonna run around deporting people who are here legally, who are legal residents, who've done everything right just because they're immigrants. Like that is, you know, there's a lot of talk about trouble with Latino vote. Forget about just Latino vote, white vote. Like people don't want that. Yeah, I also think like when you talk about mass deportation,

you're talking about deporting millions of people who are the parent of or married to an American citizen. So you are talking about the largest family separation in American history. That's what the largest mass deportation in American history would be, the largest family separation in history. Or kids who moved here when they were two years old

and have been here for 37 years. We don't even talk about the Dreamers anymore. Trump claimed at one point that he wanted to do something legislatively or by executive order to protect the Dreamers. And now he's saying that a kid who moved to the US when they were one years old will be sent back to, I don't know, pick a country that they've never been to. They don't know the language. They don't have any connection. I mean, it's completely inhumane. And by the way, if you think he's just bluffing, he has, any president has wide latitude when it comes to immigration enforcement. So, a lot of this can very easily get done. any president has wide latitude when it comes to immigration enforcement. So-

Stephen Miller's DHS. A lot of this can very easily get done. Yeah, like you mentioned the 1798 law he wants to evoke. Yeah. You think that the conservative Supreme Court is gonna stop Trump from using this law any way he'd like? They don't think that, they're not worried about that. I mean, yeah, I was looking into this

just because I was a little frightened by it. And all of the like even liberal leaning legal scholars are like, there's no way the court has shut down people trying to use alien enemies act in many instances. But either this court doesn't, or again, we are, there is the scenario where the Supreme Court issues are ruling and Donald Trump is just like, why would I listen to that?

JD Vance said on a podcast when he wanted to like gut the bureaucracy and said he had, he would advise Trump to gut the bureaucracy. He said, Oh, and then the Supreme court can say no. And then Trump can say, all right, enforce your order. Like JD Vance said that. Yeah. You and yeah, send your battalions.

Right. All right, let's talk about the other crazy shit Trump said, his comments to Maria Bartiromo about deploying the military against quote, the enemy from within, AKA US citizens, came after the news that the Trump administration's top general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, told journalist Bob Woodward

that Trump is quote, fascist to the core, and that quote, no one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. This is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Donald Trump, his hand-picked general. Kamala Harris picked up on the news and mentioned it at her rally in North Carolina this weekend. Let's listen. Or just listen most recently to what we heard General Milley said. General Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Donald Trump.

It was just reported he said, quote, "'No one has ever been as dangerous to this country "'in referring to Donald Trump.'" Think about that. Think about that. I'm thinking about it. Yeah. So Tim Walz also jumped on Trump's comments on Monday.

Just before we started recording, CNN said that they're going, the Harris-Walz campaign is going to run a 30 second ad about this. The Kamala Harris will hit this in her rally Monday night. Certainly seems like the arguments that Trump might actually deploy the military against American citizens

and that his former general, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, thinks he's a fascist should be compelling to persuadable voters. I don't know, what do you guys think? Mark Milley has said these sorts of things to Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic. He's saying it to Bob Woodward in print form.

Hey man, it is 2024. We gotta see your face on video. Like you're saying it, say it on video. My hope is that he's gonna do it at some point, but I don't know. Like why is it, why it's less meaningful, it's less impactful to say it in print, but it's no less true of your view.

You're not avoiding telling people what you think. So why not do it in a way that actually has a chance to reach people who might care about it? He did do that oblique reference in a commencement right after he left where he said, we don't take an oath to dictators or wanna be dictators. And because there's a little too oblique.

Yeah, the 2024 is all about subtlety. Like, and by the way, because Donald Trump's like, the migrants are slitting our throats. He used like, he like, he referred like, there's such a lack of video of Millie saying these sorts of things, that they use that in an ad just the same, even though he's saying far more direct things in other forms.

And I don't understand that. There's an admirable thing you hear a lot from like former three stars and four star generals that they don't wanna be involved in politics and they believe strongly in the military's apolitical role in our society and their commitment is to the Constitution.

But once you blur that line and you say it on the record to Bob Woodward, what are we doing here? You have to sit down and do this on camera. It doesn't have to be a campaign ad. Do it in an interview with a friendly reporter and then the campaign will cut that and put it in a TV ad. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be like overtly partisan necessarily. Also, where's John Kelly, his former chief of staff who has said in a number of interviews,

he's dangerous, he's unfit, he's crazy, or Mattis, Jim Mattis, the former secretary of defense. There's a lot of people. And I also think this helps with, or Secretary of Defense. Like there's a lot of people, and I also think this helps with, one of the big challenges for the Harris-Walls campaign is reaching people who are like, you know what? We survived a first term of Donald Trump and everyone said he was gonna be a dictator

and stuff like that. And January 6th was horrendous and he tried to return the election, but like, you know, we survived, things are okay. And it's like, oh, everyone's got Trump amnesia. Well, Milley says to Wood like, you know, we survived, things are okay. And it's like, oh, everyone's got Trump amnesia. Well, Milley says to Woodward, you know, I glimpsed this when I talked to you a few years ago. This was like right before he left the Trump administration, before everything really went crazy. He goes, but now I know it. No one has ever been as dangerous.

Now I realize he's a total fascist. And I do think that the part of the message in the final weeks is the Trump you think you know, who you don't like and you think is a little crazy, has deteriorated so much more and is so much more unstable and more dangerous than he was before. And all of the guardrails are gone this time. All the only people that are left are like the most, at best, grifters and at worst, fascists. Yeah, the insiders have become detractors

and the passionate, zealous, extreme outsiders have become the insiders. Like the other part of this too, it's not the most important point, but all these people saying like, guys, Trump was president and he said all this stuff, but he actually didn't do it. It's like, what kind of point do you think you're making?

Like he's the worst person in the world saying he wants to do terrible things because he believes the American people really want it, but he doesn't really mean it? Like, what kind of defense is that? That's a character thing. I mean, the John Kelly stuff that you mentioned earlier, who was his chief of staff,

this is like a quote he sent to Jake Tapper. A person that did not, he's talking about Trump, a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because quote, it does not look good for me. I mean, you're talking about Trump, a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because quote, it does not look good for me. I mean, you're talking about a person who is so narcissistic and self-absorbed that he wouldn't be photographed with military amputees when he's the commander in chief.

That's not like a, you know, endorsement thing. That's not partisan. It's just like, you're a bad person. That's just like the guy in 2020, Donald. It's just like, the guy in 2020, Donald Trump had peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park tear gassed, and he asked if he could have them shot. And then he was told no by some of the same people

who are now telling us that he is a fascist. He says repeatedly he wants to use the federal government to punish people who don't support him. He says he wants to use the National Guard and the military against people who protest him. His advisors say that too. They wrote it down in project 2025. And it's like, yeah, maybe he's just bluffing.

You know, maybe there's a chance. Maybe the military will refuse, even though he's going to replace the leadership of the military with his people, with loyalists. Maybe the Supreme court will stop them. Maybe he'll obey their ruling. Maybe it'll all be fine. But it's like, do you want to take that risk? Do you want to take that risk for what?

Because you think that his economic policy of taxing imported goods and drilling for oil and repealing Obamacare is gonna put more money in your pocket, that's the risk you wanna take? Well, roll the dice. You want a lower top marginal rate and fewer environmental regulations. Maybe he's just bluffing. Yeah, maybe, but like why?

Playing Russian roulette now? Well, there was a piece in the Times about Trump supporters don't really believe what he says. And this sentence really jumped out at me, which was, there were rough edges in his remarks and some talk of a stolen election, but mostly he made them feel content in their choice to vote for him.

Some rough edges about stealing the election. And you look at what these kind of economic elites that want to support Trump say, and you can describe it as not really believing him, but really it's about pretending he's not saying what he's saying or hearing what he's saying and saying he's not gonna do it because they don't really care.

They want their tax cuts, they want their deregulation, and they will soothe their own psychology about their morally depraved choice any way they can. Yeah, I read that Times piece. I think that sentiment is true for like a subset of the kind of donor class of supporters, because this was a speech to the Detroit Economic Club. So it doesn't surprise me that those people don't think

that Trump will lock up his political enemies or maybe that they just won't kind of entertain the thought because it's inconvenient for them to think about it. The people who go to your standard Trump rally absolutely want him to punish his enemies. Yeah, they think he will and they want it. They're cheering it on. They've been chanting lock her up for like a decade now.

They're waiting for it to happen. They all saw what happened on January 6th and they're like, yeah, more of that. The question is, the persuadable voters that are left, the people who haven't made up their minds, whether they're voting for Trump, whether they're voting at all, and don't consume that much news, do they even know?

Right. And I think that they don't. Do they care, I think is a fair question. Do they care is a fair question, but like- Do they believe it? Do they care? Do they know? Do they believe it?

Do they care? I was gonna say, and before we get to, do they believe it and do they care, we first have to find out if they know, and I think there has been no concerted effort to make sure they know. And I don't blame the Harris Walls campaign for this. I don't even necessarily blame the media for this because we're just inundated with bullshit all the time. And again, Trump is hiding. We're going to talk about this in a second, but he's hiding from the press. And so what you get is supporters sort of

just either saying they like it or ignoring it, or you get supporters like Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin trying to pretend that Trump never said it in this interview with Jake Tapper. Let's play clip. I don't think that he's referring to elected people in America, but I also- I'm literally reading his quotes. I'm literally reading his quotes to you and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He's literally talking about quote radical left lunatics and then one of those lunatics he addressed, he mentioned, was Congressman Adam Schiff. Criminals should be locked up. Migrants who are in this country illegally, who are violent, should be locked up and deported.

I grant you all of that and I am not denying that it's happening at all. So Jake, so Jake, I would- But I'm talking about Donald Trump saying that he wants to use the National Guard in the military to go after the left. That's what he's saying. I don't believe that's what he's saying, but listen, you and I are gonna argue about that, but I wouldn't suggest if you would also-

I played the quote and I read it to you. If you would also balance that. I mean, you can wish that he weren't saying that, but that's what he's saying. I can't, there is, I have not. All the time it's happening everywhere. People are taking people's, they're taking words. They're playing the words for people.

They're just, they're taking Trump out of context at the thing he is saying repeatedly at multiple campaign stops as part of his closing message. I really don't think I've seen like a better encapsulation of what like quote establishment end quote Republicans have done to get behind Trump than this interview. It's pretending he's not saying the shit he's saying every day, it's doing the intellectual Zamboni work

to say like, actually it's about immigration when he's talking about putting Adam Schiff in prison. It's like send the military after Adam Schiff, he couldn't be more clear. Also, I didn't realize this because it wasn't covered. In the Aurora rally, he says the same thing about enemy from within and the National Guard. It's in the remarks.

It's part of his prepared text. And I guess, if you played a clip of that interview for Donald Trump and then asked him, what do you think about what Glenn Young can say? He'd be like, Glenn Young can's wrong. I meant to go after Americans today. Yeah, he called Glenn Young a fag. That's what he would do citizens. Yeah, he called Glenn Youngkin a fag. That's what he would do.

He says, I mean, he literally says to me about, Bart Rurnow, there's the outside enemy and then the enemy within. And he's talking about Democrats. Yeah, he's specifically saying it's- Very clear. It's, yes. I just, you know, I'm glad they're making an ad,

put it in front of voters, put it in a speech. Put it in front of, I guess the question is like, have they put this in an ad before and have they tested it? And people are like, if you're a low information voter, maybe there's a version where you're like, I don't care what these kind of partisans do to each other. I don't know what they're talking about.

I'm trying to pay my bills. I'm not saying like, I know that to be true. I'm just like thinking aloud, because the people running the campaign are not idiots, right? They're gonna do whatever tests best. And we're not suggesting that. It's just, I'm wondering, I don't know, you have to wonder how it plays and maybe this new ad they're going to do today is

to drive media coverage of this. So I think that it is well known that a lot of January 6th themed ads for lack of a better, uh, description have not moved people as much because everyone's like, it's in the past. Right. It's, or, you know, Joe Biden was out there, you know, John Meacham writing his speeches, talking about democracy and the threat to democracy.

And it's very like up here. And, you know, it's not really grounded for people. I think this is two things about this that I think could make it persuadable, could make it effective. One, it's new information. When you put new information in front of voters, that is more likely to get them to move. They have not heard this exact comment from Donald Trump before. It is new. You can put it in front of voters, that is more likely to get them to move. They have not heard this exact comment from Donald Trump before.

It is new. You can put it in front of voters. And it also is about, it's not like an idea, like saving democracy, like it's an idea. It's Donald Trump, if you don't support him, wants to, or if you go protest him or whatever, wants to send the National Guard and military out into the streets. Like I just, I don't, sometimes, you mean we can pull it for sure, and I'm sure that the campaign will pull it,

but in the final three weeks, who knows if they have 10 to test it? It's like, you know what? You gotta go with your gut on this one. We'll get to the Trump strategy in a second about whether and how they're hiding Trump from the public, but I do think this is not just about persuading people to vote for Kamala Harris or to not vote for Trump or stay home.

I also think that there are millions of Democrats who need to be reminded of the stakes and the people that are gonna be most outraged and may hear about this, they're gonna make calls, they're gonna knock on doors, they're gonna care about this, they're gonna get their friends to vote. Part of this is, this needs to kind of remind everybody

paying attention just to how dangerous Donald Trump will be in the second term to try to get everybody out to do their part. If I was talking to someone I knew who was wavering or I was on a door, I'd bring this up. Yeah. And if it was like a couple of days before the election, I'd talk about abortion bans,

I'd talk about repealing healthcare and I'd be like, oh yeah, and by the way, did you hear him say he wants to send out the military? Yeah, I guess there's just, there's a bunch of people who think he's not really gonna do that. I mean, we just heard some of them. They don't think, they don't believe it. They don't think it's real. The response is always what about ism. Actually, they're going after me. I have four criminal cases. They're trying to lock me up. They're going after my business. So you guys could

be right. I'm just trying to straw man the other side of it, which is there's a lot, there's a constant, you know, endless stream of rhetoric about how dangerous Donald Trump is or will be for the last nine or 10 years. And I think people tune out some of it, even when it's quotes from him. And maybe that's the case here, and maybe why we aren't seeing it more, or maybe this is really compelling

and we're gonna see a lot of this. Yeah, I just, I think it's not, I get it, I have the feeling it's not getting in front of voters, so we just, we haven't tested it yet. So let's talk about Kamala Harris. She is currently in the middle of a campaign swing that's taking her to Pennsylvania, Michigan, back to Pennsylvania, then to Wisconsin, then back to Michigan, onto Georgia, several stops in most places. She's going all over the place. She's

also doing a lot more interviews. She was in the, she did the shade room, she did Roland Martin, and then on Wednesday, she is doing an interview with Brett Baer of Fox News. Weird. One big theme of hers over the last couple days, that Trump is weak and scared. Let's take a listen. But here's the thing, North Carolina, and he's not being transparent with the voters. He's not being transparent. So check this out.

He refuses to release his medical records. I've done it. Every other presidential camp, every other presidential candidate in modern era has done it He is unwilling to do a 60 minutes interview Like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century He is unwilling to meet for a second debate. And here's the thing, here's the thing, it makes you wonder,

it makes you wonder why does his staff want him to hide away? One must question, one must question, are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? One must answer. Yes. One must answer. If you're afraid of Leslie Stahl, how can you deal with Vladimir Putin? So again, Plouffe talked about this with Dan on Sunday's PSA. He was teasing that the strong leader question is something that's popping with voters in their data.

He also talked to New York Magazine, and he said, the thing to think about is his increasing instability, Project 2025, the notion of a Trump with no guard rails, with a desire for unchecked power. We've talked about that. We've run ads on that. We're going to continue to emphasize that in the end,

because that worries all the voters who are remaining out there who haven't decided yet who to vote for. And he said, really raising the risk profile of the Trump second term is a very important piece of business for us to execute well on. Here's the question. It seems that this could be intention, right,

with Trump is weak, he is an unserious person, he is like, whatever, the weak stuff, but then also the risk is great. Like, I don't know how you do both of those. Yeah, I think that's where the unstable piece comes in, and I think they have to do both, right? Like, Trump is a real threat. He's unstable. He's promising chaos.

He's promising all these evil policies, but you don't want that to lean into he's a strong man, right? It's because he's weak, because he's depraved, because he's unstable. He's going to pursue this extreme and radical and dangerous agenda. I also like, you know, it's just true.

Like it's just a very true argument. And like the fact that he's gotten away with being pulling ahead of Democrats, whether it was Biden or Kamala on being strong for so long, it is just a place to attack because it's so obviously false on its face once you think about it and engage with it for even one second.

And like they're beating him on abortion. They're fighting to a draw on the economy. As Pluff pointed out that they're doing better on those questions about who fights for you and who fights for the middle class. Immigration is a tough issue. Character, leadership, strength. That's the last place where they need to fight

this kind of battle and win that battle. She's calling him a wimp. Pluff is saying he might be too strong. What? Maybe the strong man you don't like kind of leader. It is a very different argument. What I heard in her lines there was, I know you're going to hear this,

I think you're a fucking wimp, and I'm going to try to bait you into doing some things that is stupid for you to do. Right. Plouffe's broader point though about strength in politics, I mean, this is a perennial thing. It's a cliche. It's like we need a president who can face down Putin

or Xi Jinping or some autocrat. Understanding what that means manifests in a lot of ways. You know, the part of these talk about height. They used to talk about a military experience. There's obviously, it's like gendered overtones to the whole thing. So I don't know. I mean, I like her argument there.

I like her saying, come out of your safe space, you fucking loser. I'm sitting here waiting for you. Let's do a debate. Let's do 60 minutes. Let's do whatever. I don't know if it's a message that's designed to move voters or just to get him to react like the line she had in the debate.

Yeah, and you know what? These things aren't necessarily neat. Like, it's a campaign. Like you could be trying to bait him and then you do that, but you still got to raise the risk profile of a Trump second term with persuadable voters. Because I do think telling a persuadable voter, Oh, you think Trump's strong? Actually, he's weak. It's not like- Especially when they saw the bloody face fist pump photo, you know? Right. I just think it's, you're just, you can try to redefine strength and weakness.

Real strength is this, you can do all that. But, you know, it seems a little complicated. You might as well just tell people, oh, he's gonna send out the guard to shoot people. Yeah. And also he's hiding. I also think that like- Both are true.

The other part of the he's a wimp, he's hiding thing is it's just catnip for reporters. And I do think that like, I think one place where the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign have a kind of similar theory about how the media works right now is that it's very hard to break through in a bunch of ways, but like the overall like kind of mood music does matter.

It does. Right? And like, I think like the Trump people are counting on that. I think the Harris campaign in this case, it's like a bunch of stories about how Trump's not doing press. He's not out there, kind of sets a narrative that I think is really unhelpful for him. I mean, when it was Biden and Trump, we would always say that when the news is about Biden, Biden's a little down.

When the news is about Trump, Trump's a little down. It was different when Kamala took over because she is a new candidate who was largely undefined. So when it was about her, it was good because we had to define her. I think at this stage in the campaign, we are back to, if we're gonna get a week about Kamala news like we did last week, it was like,

is she gonna do the interviews? Then she did the interviews. Did she have a gaffe in one of the interviews? Right? Like, and I think now it's a question in the final three weeks of like, what are we talking about in the last week of the election? Is it something that Trump did wrong,

something that Trump said, or is it some mistake that Kamala made? And I think that we need it to be about Trump in the final weeks. I don't know, what do you guys think? Yeah, no, I think that's right. I also think that like any time, look, sure, they're in conflict.

You know, she's saying he's a wimp, promising this extreme and dangerous authoritarianism. But at the same time, like, to Donald Trump's base, his rambling nonsense on the stump is his kind of defiant persona. But the more people seeing those clips on television think less like, oh, there's that kind of guy that took on the system,

and more like, there's that rambling old man again. I think the more his strengths look like weaknesses and I think there is like real value to that. Yeah, I don't know if it matters most, if it's the stories about him or her in the closing weeks. I do think there's like a very real thing that happens in the final week or two of a campaign where the vibe help like leads the remaining undecideds

to break en masse. And in 2016, it was the Comey letter where the vibe helped like leads the remaining undecideds to break en masse. And in 2016, it was the Comey letter, and we all felt that, and maybe Hillary Clinton would have lost anyway. And I just, I don't know what- 2020, it would have been Hunter's laptop had they not suppressed,

had they not done election interference. Obsession about that is the funniest thing to me. Like the idea that people were just sitting around wondering what Joe Biden's son was up to anyway. But yeah, I'm worried about that is the funniest thing to me. The idea that people were just sitting around wondering what Joe Biden's son was up to, anyway. But yeah, I'm worried about that. And I think that could be based on some sort of campaign tactic, it could be a gaffe that one of them does, or it could be some exigent event.

It could be the Israelis launching some massive attack on Iran and this scary war in the Middle East that's happening right now gets a lot scarier and everyone's like, oh man, this didn't happen when Trump was in charge and that narrative like takes hold and works. So yeah, it's precarious. Jack Smith jumps out of a bush with another. So one thing that the both campaigns also seem to agree on

is that hiding Trump is the right strategy for Trump. The Washington Post report over the weekend, Trump's team has embraced bravado as it tries to keep its candidate on message fail and encourage him to avoid the sort of high profile national audiences that might motivate Harris's supporters. So Harris wants him in the national spotlight. Trump's team doesn't want him in the national spotlight.

So do we think more Trump, worse for Trump? Yeah, I think more Trump in the form of the Trump we're seeing at Trump's rallies is not good for Donald Trump. Or the interviews. Well, I think the interviews that are less contentious, like the kind of podcast interviews he's doing, those are the places where he is reaching a lot of people, if not millions of people

in a way that is, I think, not as harmful, not harmful or just out and out helpful for him. So I think they're counting on that and then counting on kind of negative partisanship and ad blitzes to do the work for them. I don't know, it's funny, he does his safe space interviews and he doesn't get any tough questions, but he also kind of lets his freak flag fly.

I know. A little bit. You know, like when he's with Maria Bartiromo, he seems to think it's just them talking. Yep. When he talks to Hugh Hewitt, his little right wing foreign policy Nixon goon, he just makes shit up like that he visited the Gaza Strip or that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism

on college campuses, you know, so- He's only- there's risks. He's best actually when it's a, one of those podcasters who's not necessarily like the biggest Trump fan, but is not gonna ask tough questions like George Stephanopoulos or something like that. Those people, he actually is like, oh, I better be on my best behavior

and I'm gonna tell a personal story, right? He's been told before those interviews that this is not a political space. So just like shoot the shit and try to be friendly. Ask Theovon about cocaine. I do think there's a difference between voters hearing about Trump and voters hearing from Trump.

I think that's a big difference because when all the polling and the research is like, oh, people are sick about Trump, they already made up their mind about Trump. Part of it is they have heard people complain about Trump, like us, people like us, for the last nine years. And some of it has gotten a little hysterical and not believable, and people are low trust anyway,

especially the people who are left, don't trust institutions that much. So I think it's much more, this is like the whole, my whole theory of why the conviction and the trial didn't play as well, because it wasn't, we weren't hearing from Trump. We were seeing Trump in a courtroom and a bunch of people saying bad shit about Trump.

When you hear from Trump directly, you're like, oh yeah, that guy's not, he's not all there. He's not a good hit space. Yeah, yeah. There's also like, I think that narrow sliver of people who are gonna make up their minds at the end, like they're not hearing, I mean, they've heard kind of whatever through us,

the kind of endless noise about Trump has, of course, reached everybody. But like they haven't really been engaged yet and they're gonna engage right at the very end. And I think it's a mix. Like I think people, like that's why I think it matters if Mark Milley doesn't add. I think that's why it matters if people are getting

the worst version of Trump in front of them right at the end because- I wouldn't be surprised if the Harris-Walls campaign like does a 60 second big ad everywhere possible and swing states at the very end that's just Trump in his own words at rallies. I mean, she said, watch the rallies, they have the money to put it in front of people.

So again, check out Dan's episode from Sunday. One thing we just wanted to play was when Plouffe gave us this piece of insight about the early vote numbers. We like what we're seeing in the early vote data so far. We particularly like what we're not seeing on the Trump data, which is there's not an army of kind of incels showing up in early voting history. So, you know, maybe they'll show up on election day.

We'll see. Army, what do we do if there's an army of incels? You gotta fuck them. Distract. One by one. You just gotta bang them. Yeah. Turn those frogs into princes.

Yeah, they're not incels anymore. That's how we heal this country. Yeah. Throw, put a PS, put a PS5. It was the most pluff quote because it was just like, it's like in another answer. he just like slips it in there. Yeah. Is he at 1.5x there or is that just him normal?

The other one is- It sounded like 1.5x. That's why I listen to all my podcasts. He slipped in that the reason that Trump is doing Coachella in New York is that he's not getting turnout at his rallies in swing states. One other point that I haven't seen made about like the Trump bravado thing about how they think they're winning

and they're hiding them. It is a little bit of signaling that, look, they don't have a big field operation and yet they're, as Plouffe pointed out, they're relying on these low information, low turnout voters. Their whole strategy is around what happens after the election and trying to prevent votes from being counted. And I do think part of what they're signaling to their millions of hardcore fans is, if we lose on election day, you should be surprised

because it's being stolen. And it sort of contributes to the challenge that comes after. I mean, that, if you, and I only see them because of the fucking algorithm on X now, now that it's X. Yeah, it's just Elon landing rockets of right-wing propaganda. Feeds you all these new blue-checked VC

election analyst experts, and they're like, the early votes coming in, a thousand percent Trump and the polls are amazing and there's no way he could possibly lose. The only way he could possibly lose now is if the election's stolen again. It's the only way. You took a bite, I was like, partner, it's Sequoia.

Right, so they are, they very much believe that he is walking away with this thing. Well, their message to donors in like, establishing people is like, get on board, he's gonna win, and if he wins and you're not on board, we're gonna punish you. And the message to the rank and file is, we're gonna win and if we don't win, we won,

so let's go charge Pelosi's office. And for Democrats, it's just like terror. And Democrats, well, for Democrats it's like, hi, do you care about your democracy? We're here from the Democratic Party, please help us. Well, everyone's worried, and I get why everyone's worried because it's like, hi, do you care about your democracy? We're here from the Democratic party, please help us. Well, everyone's worried, and I get why everyone's worried, because it's like, why are Democrats so neurotic?

I don't know, because Donald Trump is the possibility of a more crazy Trump than we've ever seen before. So that's why we're nervous. Yeah, and also this is a man whose instinct has always been to punish his enemies, right? And now he's gone through this period where he feels, rightly or wrongly, mostly wrongly, that he was unfairly targeted by the courts and by lawfare,

and that Democrats, and he keeps saying that Democrats were behind the assassination attempts. And if he sincerely believed that, and he seems to, imagine what he will do. Imagine what that motivates you to do. And again, all I keep thinking is like, yeah, is it possible that Donald Trump just watches his TiVo and drinks his Diet Coke for the next four years?

Loves TiVo. Possibly, but like JD Vance, Laura Loomer, Stephen Miller, fucking Mike Flynn, we didn't even talk about Mike Flynn. Mike Flynn over the weekend, someone asked him if he was gonna- Lead the military tribunal to execute political enemies of Donald Trump, essentially. Execute, and he was gonna, uh, if he was gonna, uh... Lead the military tribunal to execute political enemies of Donald Trump, essentially.

Execute. And he, and he was like, you know what Mike Flynn said in response? Oh, first we gotta win. He was like, I admire your passion. Let's leave it all out on the field. First we gotta win. First we gotta win, then we'll get to that other stuff later. And Donald Trump has said he wants Mike Flynn back

in another administration. Joe Arpaio, 92, I don't know how well he'd serve, wants him back too. Is he on trial? But these are, like, Donald Trump is one man, and yes, he'd be the president with like a lot of power, but like, just don't, tell your friends who are not worried about Donald Trump again,

the fucking cast of characters around him are just the worst of the worst. And like, is it, yeah, is it possible all this is wrong? That he doesn't ever actually deliver on all this sure Again, what a by the way all the dice you want to roll the dice that word that that Adam Schiff is requesting vegan meals It's some fucking federal institution because you think those fucking tariffs are magic and suddenly you're gonna have more money in your pocket because the tariffs Unimported goods. That's his only economic policy. Let me read this a verbatim quote of the Mike Flynn thing just cuz it's worth Thank you. He was at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival. No among us.

Well, I haven't gone to that. He was asked if he'd quote, sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp and on a few occasions, execute the swamp. Oh, just a few occasions. That was the question.

Flynn, it's a long answer. He says, what your sentiment is about is accountability. And I believe we need accountability. And then he basically ends it with, these people are already light up to no good. So we gotta win first. We win and then Katie basically ends it with, these people are already light up to no good, so we gotta win first. We win and then Katie bar the door. Believe me, the gates of hell, my hell, will be unleashed.

And the questioner was not named Katie. No, it was not Katie. At no point in this answer does he say to this man, sir, extrajudicial murder or political enemies is a bad thing. I've never, you have to go to the gates of hell. You open your own gates of hell, you have a personal gates of hell.

What's up with that? But you stop that through much like the tribunals. So anyway, that's what we're facing. That's why Democrats are nervous, but you know what? If you're nervous, go do something. The only early vote indicator you're gonna get that means something is either from John Ralston or David Plouffe in the incels.

Yeah, right. That's it. Forget about the other votes. The polls at this point, it's tied. Everyone's like, oh, you know, we were up and now we're down. No, no. When we thought we were up, we were tied.

Now people think we're down, we're tied. It's a tied race. That's what Plouffe thinks. Basically the Trump campaign, even when they released their internals last week, that was, it was margin of error tied. Even those internals weren't like Trump having a commanding lead in all those states

So like both campaigns pretty much see a tied race within the margin of error depending on turnout models, and that's probably Most likely that's where we're gonna be on Election Day and early vote can only tell you so much Which is not much of anything and the polls at this point can only tell you so much Yeah, there will be no there will be no reassurance between now and election day, none, nothing. By the way, there will also be likely no reason to have some sudden belief that it's over, right? Like either direction, like this feeling, this terrible anxiety, that's it

between now and election day. And the only question is whether or not you're willing to actually finally do something in these last few weekends before the election, because most of you haven't done a fucking thing. Okay, you know what we say, Katie, knock the door. Katie. Hey.

All right, it's time for everyone listening to this to sign up for volunteer shifts, knocking on doors in the states that are gonna decide this race, even if you live in a blue city. Most common question we get from people at events, at live shows. Brooklyn and LA, Chicago. At the discord, what do I do if I live in a blue state? What if I, at live shows. Brooklyn and LA, Chicago. And the Discord.

What do I do if I live in a blue state? What if I, we got something. Lucky for you and unlucky for your lame excuses. There's now a really easy way to figure out where you can go volunteer at votesaveamerica.com slash travel. Wow. Vote Save America has partnered

with the Harris Walls campaign and a bunch of other groups to organize buses that will bring you from the city where you live to the nearest Battleground where you too can occupy an apartment building in Aurora Where the canvassing shifts will already be arranged and then they will take you back the bus will take you back Lot of these are one you got to stop by do a drag show at a preschool on your way back Yeah, that was the deal we made with the Harris campaign. Yes, yes, yes, right. A lot of these are one day trips,

like the buses from New York to Pennsylvania. Those are easy, just go right to Pennsylvania. You're there and back in about 12 hours. Some of them, including some of the buses from here in LA to Arizona are two night affairs, but lodging is taken care of. How about that? Everything's figured out.

It's no excuses. I'm not a busser, of course. Sure, apple picking's nice, organizing in your closet, yoga, self-care nice, but are they as nice as American democracy? No, we could have both. We could have both if we play our cards right. If we lose this race, yoga's gonna be illegal. Depends on the orchard.

Yeah. Apple farms are gonna go out of business because of the tariffs. Granny Smith, Honeycrisp. That's how it works. That's it, the apples? Don't think too hard about it. Don't think too hard about it.

You're gonna put a tariff on this podcast. Please go to vote save America.com slash travel to see bus routes near you and sign up. Also, hopefully you already listen to Pod Save the World. Like love it listens to every episode. Every episode. The foreign policy- This is a hard pivot. What is this?

The foreign policy show that Tommy co-hosts with Ben Rhodes. We want to let you know that Ben just launched a special Saturday series. Did you know this? Yeah, of course. That Ben's out there doing his thing. It's great that Ben just launched a special Saturday series. Did you know this? That Ben's out there doing his thing. I know, it's great. I did not know this was housekeeping though. It's running through November 5th

and where he's discussing the stakes for global affairs under Harris versus Trump. It's essential listening. And of course your usual episodes of Pod Save the World continue to drop every Wednesday. In essential. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. All right. How about them apples? How wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

How about them apples? How about them apples? Hey. Sorry. When we come back from the break, you're gonna hear- Apples are from Kazakhstan. People don't know that.

Are they? Yeah. Originally? I think so. Fact check that for me, but I believe that's right. Fucking brainy quotes over here. Is that true?

When we come back from the break, you're gonna hear Tommy's conversation with Debbie Mucarsal-Powell about the big Senate race in Florida and what these terrible storms have meant for the campaign there right after the break. ["The Bigger Showdown"] Joining us now, the Democrat running to unseat

America's wealthiest and some might argue creepiest, US Senator, Rick Scott, down in Florida, Debbie Mucarzo-Powell. Welcome to Pod Save America, thank you for joining. Thank you, Tommy, for having me. I'm very excited to talk about your Senate race against Rick Scott, one of my least favorite people in Washington, but I just did want to start by asking how Florida's faring after these hurricanes.

First it was Helene, then Milton. How are you guys doing? Tommy, it's been so heartbreaking to see the devastation all across our state. I had just been in the St. Pete area after Hurricane Helene last week, and I had visited areas where they experienced flooding that they really were not expecting,

and it displaced over 16,000 people that lost their home after Hurricane Helene. And then we were immediately preparing for another devastating storm. Milton was catastrophic. And it wasn't just that it brought storm surge to some of the areas in the West Coast of Florida, but a lot of the tornadoes that hit ground on the east side of our state caused so much damage. I was just today visiting an area in Wellington here in Florida close to Palm Beach where I met with a woman who lost her home completely. She was in my arms crying. She didn't even know where to begin to ask for assistance. And then the home right

across the street from her was cut in half by a tornado. The one that she was in, they had just put up the shutters. They had finished putting the shutters up by 3 30 in the afternoon. And a few minutes later, the tornado came through their home and ripped off trees. I mean, you'll you'll see, we'll post some footage on what we we saw, because I don't think I've seen anything like this since Andrew. I wasn't here for Andrew, but the images that I saw after Andrew, it's exactly like that. And it's just devastating to see so many families

not know where to get help. And that's why it's so important to coordinate at the local, state and federal level and to have officials that are going to do that, that are willing to work together to provide this immediate assistance for families. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, how has the federal response been so far and the coordination you talked about?

And have you guys been dealing with the same problems of misinformation and disinformation that we're plaguing, you know, North Carolina in particular? Well, Tommy, first of all, I'm really glad to see that the director of FEMA was here from the very beginning on the ground, waiting as'm really glad to see that the Director of FEMA was here from the very beginning on the ground waiting as we were preparing to see what Milton was going to

bring to the West Coast of Florida. She was here and we had National Guard, thousands of National Guard men already on the ground to assist. So, hopefully, and what I'm encouraging is for the governor's office, the state officials to coordinate with the federal government because I've seen that there have been some missed opportunities there. But you ask me about misinformation, I cannot believe that we have in Rick Scott, a sitting senator who has been on Fox News spreading disinformation about FEMA. It's highly irresponsible and it's putting survivors' lives at risk.

Here we have people that have lost everything. Some people have lost their loved ones to this hurricane. And he's on Fox News saying that there are not enough funds for disaster relief. And yet the man voted against funding for FEMA. I mean, it can't get worse than that. There has to be, I don't want to, I don't want to be this crass here, Tommy, but really there's a special place in hell for people like that. I'm sorry to be so crude, but we are seeing people in pain, suffering. They've lost their pets. They've lost their family members, they've lost their homes and their businesses.

Then you have Rick Scott lying to Floridians about FEMA disaster relief and also voting against funding for disaster relief. I can't even fight the words to describe what I feel when I hear him saying that. The good thing is that there are a lot of people that are setting the record straight. A lot of our local officials,

whether they're Republicans or Democrats, are a lot of people that are setting the record straight. A lot of our local officials, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, are making sure that people understand that that's disinformation, but it's just shameful to see a sitting Senator here, Rick Scott, doing that. Yeah, to put it in this point, I mean, he just recently skipped a vote on the short-term spending bill that included $18.8 billion for FEMA.

He is one of the many Republicans who seems to wanna continually deny that climate change is manmade and making these storms worse. It sounds like Republicans are refusing to rush back and put forward an emergency spending bill before the election to provide any additional relief. Where is Rick Scott calling for Congress to take action sooner or where is he on that?

Well, he did say that there should be more assistance, more funding for FEMA. He did make that call and he wrote a letter, of course, because he's three weeks away from an election where he knows that he's extremely vulnerable. All of our polling has us basically tied at this point. And so he's trying to do everything to maintain power. I mean, Tommy, this is a very dangerous individual.

He wants to become Senate majority leader. So just imagine what he would do if he gets back to the Senate, becomes Senate majority leader and starts dismantling federal agencies like FEMA. That's part of what Project 2025 has included in those points, in that 900 page document, it's extremely dangerous. And you know, we know that Rick Scott committed Medicare fraud. The man is a thief, Tommy. I have to be strong with my language because people need to understand that we have this

unique opportunity to stop someone that has been stealing from the government to get back into the Senate because he has very ambitious goals of leading the Senate if he becomes Senate Majority Leader and even if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president to lead the nation, she won't be able to build on any progress that has already been done if Rick Scott gets re-elected and then becomes Senate Majority Leader. It's really dangerous. Just imagine missing Mitch McConnell, a Senate Majority Leader. I just want everyone to have that view for a minute. I'm not kidding.

It's scary. Yeah, that's well said. I want to ask you a little bit more about Rick Scott's plans in a second, but just one last question on Milton. I've seen estimates that Hurricane Milton alone could cost between 60 to $100 billion in insured losses. That could further increase property insurance prices, drive providers out of the state. And this isn't just a huge problem.

In Florida, here in California, I know homeowners have had similar challenges getting insurance because of fires. What do you think the federal government should do to help out people in Florida who are gonna have have to rebuild? Yeah, and you know, the cost of inaction is going to be much greater if we don't immediately move on having a federally backed program that's going to expand the risk across all

states. Like you said, the issues of the severe natural disasters are not unique to Florida. We're seeing fires in California, we're seeing flooding in Louisiana, Texas, other states as well. So we have to take some action. And just to give you an example, today when I visited Wellington, this family that lost their home, they did not have property insurance because they couldn't find an insurance company that would provide coverage. So they are devastated because they don't understand

what they're going to do in order to rebuild. And that's why FEMA funding is so critical and it's so important, but also to have a federal program that's going to provide relief. But we need to be smart of how we start rebuilding these communities, particularly along the coast here in the state of Florida.

We have to make sure that we invest in resiliency, something that Rick Scott also has failed to do. We need to make sure that if you're living in a very low-lying area that you understand, even if you build a resilient infrastructure, it may get damaged when we see another storm like Milton. And so we have to have these tough conversations, but you need leaders that are going to have the courage to do that. Rick Scott has been in government for 14 years. We have a property insurance crisis that began when he was governor here in the state of Florida when he gave these sweetheart deals to a lot of insurance companies that came

into the market, taking away from the public option. And here we are paying four times the national average. We really need to change the direction of the state in order to be able to provide those opportunities for our families that are right now just looking at ways to survive in the state of Florida. Yeah, back to your point about Rick Scott trying to be Senate Majority Leader. I remember back in 2022, he rolled out this 11-point plan to rescue America. It included raising taxes on literally half of the country, including some of the most low-income Americans.

He talked about shutting down the Department of Education, and the plan also said that all federal laws should automatically sunset after five years, which it didn't take a genius to point out that it would mean that Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block every five years. I have never seen Republicans run away from their colleague faster,

but is Rick still pushing his 11-point plan? How's that going on the campaign trial? Oh, he's very proud of the 11-point plan, but after almost a year of pushback from Republicans, he said that it would exclude Medicare and Social Security, and the truth is that we can't trust Rick Scott. Anything he says is just to try and hold on to power. I mean, he has also been very vocal about repealing the Affordable Care Act.

And Tommy, you know that here in the state of Florida, we have some of the largest numbers of people that get their health care through Obamacare. It's a very popular program here in the state of Florida, but he wants to completely eliminate that as well. And even Mitch McConnell, if you remember, said that's not the Republican plan, that's Scott's plan. He has not changed any of the propositions of raising taxes to middle-class families. Even some Republicans have said that that's crazy, that they don't understand how he's proposing raising taxes on middle-class families. He's on his own. And I think that that's one of the things

that people don't understand. He is the most vulnerable Republican running for reelection. People in the state of Florida don't, they don't wanna vote for Rick Scott. And he doesn't have any allies here within the Republican party. I can tell you that. No one's really helping him in the state of Florida.

He's on his own. So that's why this is a unique opportunity for us to be able to keep the Senate majority, finally send Rick Scott to retirement and bring back some decency into governance here for the state. So many Floridians deserve that. Yeah, I think there was a lot of reporting at the time

that Mitch McConnell really hates Rick Scott, which is, look, the enemy of my enemy, I guess. I don't know what to make of that, but notable. Last week, the New York Times had progressives like myself kind of breathing into paper bags when they ran a poll that had Donald Trump running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris in Florida. Are things really that bad?

What did you make of that? No, Tommy, that's, first of all, that was one poll out of like eight polls that we've seen over the past few weeks that was a complete outlier. And they didn't do a sample large enough here in the state of Florida. The sampling is just not correct.

It doesn't, it's not aligned at all with what I'm seeing on the ground and what I've seen in many other polls. The reality is that Harris and Trump are probably within four points of each other here in the state. And that's not as that far from what we experienced in 2020. Joe Biden lost the state of Florida by only three points. This is a state where Floridians, this is a swing state. We always go from one side to the next.

Obama won Florida in 2008 and 2012, and then in the last two election cycles, yes, it veered towards the right, but it's coming right back. I've been traveling for almost a year now all over the state of Florida. Independents are voting for Democrats. Republicans, many Republicans, I just met one today that said, I can't stand Rick Scott. I am voting for you and I'm voting for Kamala Harris. That just happened today and it happens to me everywhere I go, almost on a daily basis.

So Donald Trump has lost support from many Republicans in the state of Florida. Remember, Ron DeSantis ran for president in that primary, and there is some sort of infighting between those two groups of Republicans that are living in Florida. He has lost a lot of support. Rick Scott is highly, highly vulnerable, very much disliked.

They know his record of overseeing Medicare fraud. And so, no, I'm telling everyone right now, please don't listen to that poll. Don't go by that one outlier poll that makes absolutely no sense. It's a wrong sampling and it doesn't reflect what is going on in the ground. Come down to Florida. I'll show you. It's incredible the energy that I'm seeing. I haven't seen this in years. All right. That's good pushback. We needed to hear that. And you're right that the infighting between DeSantis and Trump certainly hasn't ended. And that primary performance chopped him down a peg or two or a high heel or two. But the other thing that you hear a lot from Democrats about

Florida is that the party registration is changing. There's just basically more Republicans moving into this state. How do you think the Democratic Party can help overcome that deficit? Because it feels like these can be self-fulfilling prophecies, right? It's like more Republicans move to Florida, so Democrats think they have less of a shot of winning, so they stop investing. And it's a bad cycle. So I'm going to start with this for one moment. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I've been always pushing back on this issue,

because we know that Republicans here have purged voters off the rolls. They don't have a registration advantage because they've been registering more people into their party. No, it's because they've been purging these voters off the rolls. And here's my message to everyone listening to us

today in this podcast. Republicans have been spreading conspiracy theories and lies for years. Why would you believe them now when they're saying that Florida is deeply red? What happened in 2022 is that our voters stayed home. And that is what the Democratic party needs to really work on,

making sure that we're communicating with our voters, talking about the issues and making sure that they turn out. If they turn out in this election, you will see something in Florida that no one will expect. And I can't wait to show you that people in this state care about the issues. When we talk to them, they come out and they vote for us. And that is the work of the party.

My job is just making sure that people know that in the Senate race, they have an option of voting for someone that's going to put their priorities and their families above politics and above everything else. And we haven't had that representation in the U S Senate and we sorely need that. And I think that that's why also when you talk to Floridians, they're done with Rick Scott and they're ready to support me in the Senate race. The other big thing on the ballot this year that is different is amendment four.

Can you tell listeners what that is and how you think it might impact turnout this year? You know, now we're living under one of the most extreme bans on abortion. We, as of May 1st, women in the state of Florida are facing a six week abortion ban with hardly any exceptions to rape and incest. And it's a ban that Rick Scott said that he would support,

that he would have signed into law if he was governor. The good news is that we do have an opportunity to protect a woman's right to choose free of government interference if we vote to pass amendment four. We gathered all the signatures even before the deadline and those signatures included a good portion of Republican registered voters and independents as well.

And so this is not a partisan issue for us in the state and everything that I'm seeing is that we will be able to get that 60% threshold. And just remember, I only need 50 plus one, but this is a decision that as you all know, needs to be made between a woman, her doctor, her family, her faith, without politicians like Rick Scott telling a woman what they can do with their own bodies.

We understand that here in the state of Florida. They've gone way too far to the right, too extreme, attacking our fundamental freedoms and our civil rights because this is not only central to our freedom for a woman, it's central to our healthcare, it's also central to our dignity. And many men in Florida understand that. I've had many conversations with older men that for them, this is a top issue. I met this older gentleman who had lost his aunt before Roe v. Wade, and for him, the abortion issue is the reason why he's coming out voting for amendment four and also voting for Democrats up and down the ballot because it won't mean anything,

right? If we pass amendment four, Rick Scott gets reelected and then he pushes for a national abortion ban. That's part of their strategy. They will be doing that and they will be also pursuing following criminal lawsuits against doctors and healthcare providers that would provide this critical healthcare. So this is a dangerous time for this country, but I really do feel, Tommy, very optimistic of what I'm seeing because I've seen people fighting like I haven't seen before.

And this organizing, mobilizing for Amendment 4 to protect education, to protect teachers. Because as you know, Rick Scott has also been attacking teachers, calling them socialists here in the state of Florida. We've been doing that for quite some time because they just cross the line. They've gone so extreme that Florida has had it. And that's what gives me so much hope and optimism for November. You know, Rick Scott seems to call everybody he doesn't like a socialist. There's a lot of people in Florida

who have left socialist countries who have seen actual socialism, totalitarian versions in some cases, not like the democratic socialist of America, right? It's not like the Bernie Sanders version, like countries that are authoritarian. Do those constant charges from people like Rick Scott, do they work to scare people or do voters who have actually experienced the socialism brush them off?

So those attacks really dig into the trauma that so many families like mine feel when you hear that word because in Latin America socialist dictatorships have really destroyed the political, the social, the economic institutions of these countries. And we have socialist dictatorships right now in Venezuela, in Cuba, Maduro, who stole the election, by the way, and he's destroyed that country. That's why you've seen millions of Venezuelans flee that country. And so they use that fear to confuse a lot of our communities down here who have maybe moved to the United States from these countries and they've only been living here for 10, 15, 20 years. So it's a tactic that has worked

but I think that people now realize that they're using it to confuse our communities and they're pushing back. When Rick Scott calls me and names me with these false attacks, I can tell you that it's also an insult to the legacy of my mom, who lived under a military dictatorship, who brought us here from our home country of Ecuador to give us freedom, to give us opportunities. And so many Latinos that have come here to work. So it's really shameful that he's doing that. I think it is falling on deaf ears though. I think that by now people are realizing that they have nothing else

to attack us on. They're trying to distract. Because Rick Scott, the reality is he doesn't want people to know that he stole from the government, that he's a thief, that he's the wealthiest senator in Washington, D.C., and wants to take away Medicare, Social Security, push a national abortion ban, and eliminate Obamacare. So what does he do? He uses that money to lie about me, but we're pushing back. And I think people are realizing what the truth and the facts are.

Final question for you. Your staff told me that you are a big Post Malone fan. Is that right? Oh, I love Post Malone. Did they tell you that? Well, yeah. So I don't know that I predicted that. Are we talking I love Post Malone. Did they tell you that? Well, yeah. So I don't know that I would predict that. Are we talking like original Post Malone, the newer like country version?

Tell me, why would you not predict that? Come on. I don't know. He's one of the best artists. Oh, I've been a big Post Malone fan for a long, long time. And I'm just starting to listen to his new record. Yeah, it's a little country. I like the one.

His little country. It's a little country. I like the one. His little country. It's a little country, you know, and I can see like the country and the salsa and the merengue like all kind of come together, but yeah, and of course, Fortnite with Taylor Swift, one of my favorite songs, I have to say. Well, you gotta get them both out to maybe do a big show,

big concert for you in Florida near the end of the election. Yeah, that would be like the height, right? Like that would be the height for me. If I get Taylor Swift in the concert and then Post Malone comes out and then they're like, okay, everyone vote for Debbie Moor, Cursel Powell. She needs to be your next Senator.

That's it. That's all I need. From your lips to God's ears. Right. Congressman, thank you so much for doing the show. We just tell folks where they can go if they wanna help out your campaign. Please go to debbieforflorida.com.

I need you to contribute. We need the funding. I know what we need to do to get over the line here. I'm only within a point statistically tied with Rick Scott, but if you support me in this race and if you do everything to help me, text bank, phone bank, wherever you are, debbieforflorida.com, we are going to be able to deliver the Senate majority for Kamala Harris in November.

And for anyone that wants to help and assist the families that have lost everything after Hurricane Milton, please go to volunteerflorida.org or projecthope.org. You can also follow me on social media and we're posting always different links to different organizations that you can help. We also do have pet shelters that need families that are going to be able to foster some of these pets that have been surrendered. So follow me on Debbie4FL

and we'll continue to provide the most updated information there. Amen. Debbie4florida.com. Thank you so much for doing the show. Everyone check it out, figure out a way to help out. Amen. Debbieforflorida.com. Thank you so much for doing the show. Everyone check it out, figure out a way to help out. We really, really need to keep the Senate.

Obviously we need Kamala Harris to win, but if she doesn't have the Senate, she's not gonna be able to do anything. So think about that as well. Thank you, Tommy. That's our show for today. We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow with Tommy and guest host Rebecca Katz,

one of the smartest democratic strategists out there. Talk to you later. That's our show for today. We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow with Tommy and guest host Rebecca Katz, one of the smartest Democratic strategists out there. Talk to you later. Did we confirm the Apple thing? It's actually right. Yeah. Wow. Apple from Kazakhstan.

Actually right. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at Cricut.com slash friends. And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review to help boost this episode or spice up the group chat by sharing it with friends, family, or randos you want in on this conversation.

Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is a crooked media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safaree. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglen and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming, Matt DeGroote is our head of production, Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefkoat, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kyril Pellavive, and David Toles.