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[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Welcome to PotsAve America, I'm John Favreau. I'm Tim Scott's Advanced Man, John Love It. I'm Tommy Vittor. On today's show, Republicans reject a White House compromise that would save us from default. Tim Scott is officially running and Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Chris Sanunu are right behind him. Joe Biden offers new support to Ukraine while Russia bans Trump's enemies and new focus groups give us a clue as to how swing voters would treat a Biden Trump rematch. Then, Senator Brian Schatz talks to Love It about the debt ceiling, and we will cap things off with a look at Ron DeSantis' attempts to play a human on the campaign trail. But first, if you are sick of scrolling Twitter, and you want a quick, smart, funny recap of the day's news, look no further than Crooked Media's What-a-day newsletter. What-a-day newsletter? What-a-day newsletter? Yeah. Both. You love the podcast. Hopefully, you also love the newsletter. Start the day with the pond and the day with the newsletter. You should be subscribed to both. That's what I do. That's basically the deal. In just a few minutes, you'll be up to speed on all the top stories and the ones that may have gone under the radar. Subscribe to the What-a-day newsletter at Crooked.com slash daily. And, happy 250th episode to our friends at hysteria. 250. Man, that's 250. That's a lot of good content. Aaron and Alyssa are the best. They're brilliant, funny. They get some fantastic guests. If you still haven't listened to hysteria, they do an amazing job breaking down the weekly news, topics, trends, and cultural stories that affect women's lives. So, go subscribe to hysteria. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? You will not be disappointed. New episodes release every Thursday, wherever you get your podcast. All right. Let's get to the news. President Biden came home early from his foreign trip to meet with Speaker McCarthy about how to avoid a catastrophic default that could come as early as next week. Oof! That X-Date is June 1. It's not going to be that fast, huh? It sure did. Republicans rejected a White House compromise over the weekend that would have saved about $1 trillion by freezing spending for two years. They want steeper cuts for six years to everything that's not defense-related. Plus, there's still gun hoe on pushing more working people into poverty through work requirements. They love doing that. Not helping the situation is Donald Trump who told Republicans on Friday not to make a deal unless they get everything they want, including, he says, in quotes, the kitchen sink. Right. Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are warning Biden that they may not support the deal he cuts with McCarthy. AOC tweeted that the White House may lose 100 to 150 House Democrats if the cuts are steep enough. So, we're recording this right after Biden and McCarthy were sitting in the Oval. They were about to have their meeting. They said they're optimistic that the meeting may lead to progress. So that's all right. What do you think? Should Biden reject spending cuts deeper than he already offered? Or are we at the point where the risk of default is so dangerous? We just got to get a deal. I think he will draw a line and has to because the goal posts have been changing constantly. If you don't draw a line at some point, you're going to get another, you know, Hail Mary last minute change from the Republicans. I do think he has to draw a line because the latest over the weekend, they're pushing for more draconian work requirements for people receiving food assistance. And they're trying to tell states they have less flexibility in implementing those draconian work requirements. So we'll see. We also saw they're trying to probably get trying to put immigration provisions to part of the bill. You have Trump saying, you know, who cares? Let's default. He said that on CNN. Now he's saying get the kitchen sink. So I think you do have to draw a line or else the line's going to keep moving. Yeah. And McCarthy is all over the place. On the one hand, you have him saying that their ridiculous bill that they passed through the house was the floor and not the ceiling of what they could demand. Then right before he goes over to meet with Biden, he says something like, we need to have spending be less than it was last year, which leaves a lot of room to negotiate. So it's like if Biden has to draw some lines because if you have someone like McCarthy who is beholden to sort of the right wing of the party and ultimately not in control, you have to have Biden drawing some kind of a hard line. Yeah. If you go by what McCarthy and McCarthy's top deputies and Biden and the White has have been telling reporters over the last couple of days, which is you guys pointed out changes like every hour. It does seem like McCarthy is trying to they're really focused now, not on sort of the extra stuff like the work requirements, the permitting reform. McCarthy says he's keeping immigration reform out. But again, we'll see what happens with the rest of his caucus. It seems like they're focused on this top line number, right? How much are they going to be spending? And the White House wanted to free spending from where it is this year for the next two years. Republicans say that's not enough. And McCarthy basically said we have to spend less next year than we did this year. So he wants to go beneath what we're spent this year. Without saying how much? Without saying how much. So like, you know, in a perfect world, you could see a deal where it's a little less than it's somewhere in between those two things. The White House offered a freeze. But again, this is all assuming that McCarthy can find enough Republican votes to pass it. And the Democrats can find enough Democratic votes to pass it. And as the time ticks by, basically they need a deal. We're recording this Monday afternoon. You'll probably listen to the Sun Tuesday. But by Wednesday, Thursday, they don't have a deal. They're fucked. Right. And he's a, he's an incredibly weak speaker. And we've known this since it took him 15 votes to get the job. And it's also, but it must be very frustrating for the Biden team. Knowing that speaker McCarthy will likely lose Republican votes. So he's going to need Democratic votes. But there is no pressure on McCarthy to engage with Democrats in the House to try to bring them along and get those votes to pass a deal. It's all on Joe Biden. And McCarthy wanted it that way because they basically wanted, they thought that there was too many other, you know, hill aides and hill them across the room. So they just want McCarthy Biden. And at that point, it's so close to X-Date that basically then everyone else gets jammed. Because if McCarthy and Biden agree on something, then it's going to be really hard to be, you know, someone who's against the deal and tanks the deal when we're about to hit default. Yeah. So McCarthy and Biden come up with the final thing that it has to be, other than say a discharge position, which seems far-fetched at this point. And the point that shots makes, makes one of the talks, and later is, is, you know, we've gone from, we don't negotiate over the debt limit to, we are negotiating, but we should make sure it is a deal we would have ultimately had to get to with Republicans over the budget because they have the House, regardless of the debt limit threat. And that's, I was thinking that today, like, as soon as the Republicans won the House, it was pretty obvious that there were going to be some kind of spending cuts. Because if there was no debt ceiling, there would have been a negotiation over government funding that could have resulted in a government shutdown if there was no agreement. And while government shutdowns aren't as damaging as a debt ceiling, there's still not something that can go on forever. So at some point, when you have Republicans in control of the House, and Democrats control the Senate, the presidency, like there's going to be some kind of compromise around spending. And the other point that that shots will make is around continuing resolutions, which is basically when Congress can't come to an agreement on some of these harder budget questions, they just passed what's called a continuing resolution, which is said, do everything you did last year, but at either a little bit more or a little less than current spending based on past president, it would probably be less because to get it through the House, you would need to get McCarthy to bring to the floor. I ideally hear, you know, I mean, Republicans were first like, we want spending caps for 10 years and now they're saying six years. I mean, if you're Biden in the White House, you're trying to limit the damage for the next two years and then hope that Democrats win in 2024 and reverse the damage. Yeah, I mean, that's like 10 years from now, it's AI's problem. Right. That's right. It's AI's problem. And AI will be having those seats in Congress. Yeah. Yeah. Better than some of the non-I we have now. Biden said over the weekend, he thinks he has the authority to use the 14th Amendment, but that it won't work in time. Oh, god, right. We need it most more than have not ready. The 14th Amendment, not ready in time. You got to put it in earlier. More Democrats are pushing him to do it anyway. Some folks are starting to wonder allowed how the party let itself get to this point. Was there a better path Biden could have taken here? And we've been unfortunately following this closely. You know, we again, we talked, we pushed shots on this when we talked to him in December. There was a lame duck and there are a lot of people saying, hey, you realize in six months the Republicans are going to walk into the Congress with a fucking vest of, a vest of default strap to their chest. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's six months from now. We'll deal with it then. And it's a real shame that there wasn't a bigger fight when we had the chance to lift the debt limit completely. It just seemed like everybody accepted the votes weren't there. And then we just didn't have a big hard debate about it or even any kind of creative conversation about what could have potentially gotten the votes we needed at the time. I mean, I think the votes weren't there. I mean, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema basically said it much. I think you have a bunch of institutionalists that might have made it hard. Maybe you could have negotiated something with them. Right. But who knows? Joe Manchin is now saying he's going to run against Joe Biden for president on a third party potentially. So, yeah, not a not a great actor here. I mean, there are also the other things I think progressives are frustrated about is not talking earlier or more seriously about printing the trillion dollar coin or the 14th Amendment and using that as real leverage to see if you could get the other side to, you know, I think that he was actually going to do it. I think the structural problem here is that Biden really cares about avoiding defaults. A bunch of Republicans do not care about avoiding defaults. And then the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is like, eh, we're going to default now or later. So who really cares? Get everything you can. So, I mean, it's not like a fair fight. Yeah. On the on the mansion thing, I went back today to look at his quotes from the lame duck and he was, he didn't completely rule out lifting the debt ceiling in reconciliation in the fall. But he was pretty close. He was like, we should do this in a bipartisan way. It does not belong in reconciliation, blah, blah. And we know how he is when he has a fucking, of course, I love it. Be in his bonnet. And it's very easy now to say, oh, we should have done this then. And maybe a big kerfuffle would have led to nothing. But and I don't lay it at the feet of even the Biden administration or any specific Senate Democrats. It's just like, it speaks to something about the Constitution of Democrats as a group that it just like, there wasn't the fight without the looming threat to have that feel real and get it done at the time. Just didn't right. It was like punishing your future self. It's like saying you'll go out to dinner for two months from now. Right. And then when it comes, you're like, oh, it's like, she couldn't wrestle up the, wrestle up the, the willpower. This is Kiana Rees and Speed saying shoot the hostage except they're aiming at the hostage's head and just gleefully shooting. Yeah. I think that's right. Sure. Yeah. It's a great movie. I will say on one more thing on the 14th amendment because I've been talking about this in the last couple episodes as I didn't understand why the Biden administration doesn't like didn't invoke it earlier and then let it let the courts decide before the X state. The problem is we've been using the phrase and so is everyone else on the coverage like invoking the 14th amendment. Like he just runs out, runs out of 600 penn and turns out the white house he goes, I invoke this 14th amendment. Right. So it turns out that's not really a thing that what would have to happen is you'd hit the X state and then the government would start issuing debt anyway. And then then the courts would decide whether that new debt issued after the X state is constitutional or not. And and then you are again relying on dangerous converts, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch as your swing votes. And if they decide that it's not constitutional, then we're all fucked. Well, it's also then it's like, then it's like, ooh, I have a treasury certificate that's a cool souvenir. That's why the market's going away. Right. So it is it's tricky. Anyway, I'm sure they'll figure it out. Okay. Let's talk about the Republican primary. There she is. Rhonda sanctumanius. Right. I haven't heard that in a while. I'm short. Nice. Uh, Senator Tim Scott is officially in the race. He announced Monday in his home state of South Carolina. He picked up a key endorsement from the number two Republican in the Senate John Thune. It's going to ride John Thune's co-tails. That's about that guy in a while. Yeah, he's just popped up to give an endorsement that I'm sure it's just a ground swell of support. He did that Tim Scott just picked up in South Dakota, I guess. His team is making the case to reporters that Scott is the party's best messenger, the most consistent conservative in the race, the most broadly appealing to the Republican electorate, and that he has the resources and infrastructure to win. The guy does have $22 million in his Senate account that he's rolling over to the presidential. Uh, he certainly sounded exciting during his announcement speech as a clip. I'm announcing today that I'm running for President of the United States of America. We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty. In a single parent household, in a small apartment, to one day serve in the people's house. The fewest people in 30 years believe that their kids will be better off than their parents. And the radical life is pushing us into a culture of grievance instead of a culture of greatness. We need a president that persuades. We have to do that with common sense conservative principles, but we have to have a compassion. We have to have a compassion for people who don't agree with us. So have your takes on Tim Scott's prospects changed at all since he launched his exploratory committee? What do you make of his team's case to reporters? The case. I mean, best messenger, that sort of like a Reagan remix. It's not bad, you know, you can dance to it, but it's not that great. Most consistently conservative. He's very conservative on policy, extremely conservative. He has the resources and infrastructure to win. 22 million is nothing compared to what Trump's sitting on. The status is sitting on money wise and infrastructure wise. Then broadly appealing. I think he's pulling a 2%. So I don't know about that. I mean, maybe in the future, you could be. I think like Trump versus Tim Scott, I think could be an interesting race if it was one-on-one. Sort of a optimistic guy, positive vision for the country versus Trump. But Trump versus Scott and Haley and DeSantis and Christie involved a little bit. I don't know that there's anything has changed. What do you think? I thought the speech was really good. I think that the people are pulling out the funny moment. He's kind of goofy. When they pull out, he shouted at the microphone the way he announced. It's like, this is a little bit as a goofy guy. But it was the most compelling and interesting speech a Republican other than Trump has given. And it's, you know, he goes on about victimhood versus victory, grievance versus greatness, and sure he's in this speech directing it at Joe Biden and Democrats. But you don't have to squint very hard to see that it is addressing Trump. And I think to a lesser extent DeSantis in a way that's pretty interesting. The other part of it that I thought was interesting is he does all, he hits all the erogenous zones. He hits the CRT, hits the wall, but he puts it in the context of a broader, more positive values-based message that I just think is more broadly appealing and gets you out of the kind of negativity and craftness and coarseness of DeSantis and Trump. But then at the end of the speech, he kind of, you blink and you miss it, he makes a vague reference to abortion and protecting innocent life. And you sort of see, oh, so here's where his problems are, right? It's Trump and DeSantis. And whether or not this Republican party has any interest in hope and compassion whatsoever. And then the actual reality of his policy positions and the fact that there's a very kind of good nature and positive and optimistic presentation belies, you know, a candidate who has extreme positions on abortion and who had the most embarrassing statement of anyone trying to kind of disemble around what kind of national abortion many would support. Yeah, I think, I think he gave the best speech certainly at the Republican Convention in 2020. I remember thinking so at the time. Again, I think he could be one of their party's best messengers in a general election, but we're running in a Republican primary here. And it's like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are just like running at another time in another place in another universe where the Republican electorate is completely different than it is. And it's, it's all like pre 2016 notions of what the Republican electorate is that just don't reflect the reality of what has driven those voters, which is grievance. The very thing that he's complaining about in his speech. Yes, it does seem like it's like, so first of all, I think that I put him in a different category than any of the rest because whatever I think he's more talented. I think he's more talented. Haley than DeSantis for sure. Yes, I think he's making a cleaner, I think more sophisticated and smarter argument that actually makes sense. Like there's just, there's a coherence to what he's doing that makes him a legitimate alternative in a way that no one else, not even DeSantis can really offer. You watch it though. Yes, obviously he's not doing, he's trying to say, hey, we don't need to do grievance politics to a group of people that have become a neighborhood of grievance politics. But it took someone like Trump to drag them this far down. And whether or not it worked this time, like this is very clearly to me the best and only person I've seen make a case for a way to kind of drag Republicans back over time. And it doesn't work now. It might work in the future. But it and but I'm not it was he did better than I expected. I really was like impressed by it. It's just one of those again, it's too subtle. Like if you're going to to your point, if you're going to drag the Republican voters out of it, you're going to be like what the elephant in the room here is that it's a party in in Thrall to like the fucking cult of personality that is Donald Trump, you know, and he has said before he's thankful for Trump's time and office. If you really think that the party is going in the wrong direction in the country because there's too much grievance stuff like that, then you got to identify the fucking problem, which is the guy that you're running against. Yeah, he seems like a nice guy. Like there's these stories about him as early Senate days. He would like go down to Goodwill, not tell anyone who it is, mop the floors, talk to people like these focus groups. Like seems like a nice human being. But he made the same exact deal with the devil on Donald Trump's administration that they all did. Yeah. After, after he and Haley endorsed Marco Rubio in South Carolina in 2016 and Trump kicked Marco's ass by 10 points. So I think frankly, like the fact that you like the speech that we all think he's kind of like an interesting nice guy is probably why he will not go anywhere. Whereas like Tucker Carlson is outpolling him in National Poles of Republican voters because what they want is that unadulterated like grievance on the other guy viciousness. Like I just don't see an audience for this. Well, and I would respect it if he took on Trumpism, right? If he was doing this message, but taking on Trumpism and the fact that he's trying to have it both ways, which he has with Trump, which he sort of did with the abortion question to, right? Like, you know, he's trying to do the message, but he's underneath it. I think that's the that's the test, right? Like it's like there's two versions of somebody with this kind of, I think, optimistic hopeful tone, like in a debate, right? If this ultimately led to a debate, one is I think the kind of Obama style of like kind of being above it all in a way that makes someone like Trump or Santa just look very silly. And then you have the kind of Jeb Bush style, which makes you look kind of pummeled. Right now, there was something there was a very bad sign. I think for Tim Scott that one of his aides told, I think maybe playbook, like we think the contrast is so obvious we're not even going to have to talk about Donald Trump. It's like, okay. So this is all this is all doomed. I you know, we'll see like, yes, I think the fact that the speech work that I think it's a good speech probably doesn't speak well for him, but I don't know. What do you think 57 year old bachelor with no kids? Yeah, and look, here's a reportedly a virgin until he was 46. Yeah. According to Ben Terrace of the Washington Post who actually had to ask him that question about his virginia. Yeah. I think that's cool. 40-something year old. Very cool. Look, we're never in this country can't have a single president. Single people are freaks. Here's just one last problem. You know, I'm sure you point out that he's at one, two percent in the national polls. His team could say national polls. They don't mean anything. This is all about the early states. Okay. Let's try South Carolina where he's a senator where he has one, two elections and everyone knows who he is. He's only pulling seven percent. I mean, Andy's competing is Nikki Haley, another sort of home state darling. Yeah, he just got in, but it's not a, it's not a name ID problem with him in South Carolina. Everyone knows who he is. So I think it's, I think it's going to be tough. So Ron DeSantis is set to launch his campaign Wednesday. Reports are that Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Chris Sununu are getting ready to announce in a matter of days, weeks, right behind him, which they will not. Sununu. Yes. Sununu. Here he comes. Rounding out a GOP field that also includes Trump, Scott, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswami. I guess Larry Elders in it too. That really, yeah, I know I was reading it today. I just, I realized I needed to add him. You guys think this is, is it Trump's race to lose? Is it Trump DeSantis? Or do you see a path for any of these other candidates? I would like to just share. First of all, the Sununu thing is the, the, the, the, the dumbest one yet. But just, I likely to be sort of like, just, just Sununu have a chance and then dimensions halfway through that he's pro-choice. No, he doesn't. No. Well, he's another one who's an extremely popular governor in New Hampshire. And if you look at New Hampshire primary polls, it's not registering too high. I would just like to read this. This is the most, the most netbo baby paragraph I've ever read in history as an engineering student MIT. Sununu dreamed of Hollywood. He wrote a romantic comedy screenplay about a European man falling in love in Boston. After briefs in an NYU's film school where the chess hustlers of Washington Square part sometimes separated him from his money. Sununu said he experienced an epiphany and a five-month Apple Lachon trail hike from Maine to Georgia. Wow. Yeah, interesting. That is, that is Connor Roy-Shit. Speaking of New England popular governors, I mean, remember Charlie Baker, a governor of Massachusetts, was polling at 73% statewide in Massachusetts, but he couldn't win the Republican primary. Like, that's the task that these guys have. You can be the most, you know, 73% he was like, wildly popular governor of the state. I don't know who knows what will happen. I would say this. My feeling on this is Hutchinson, Nikki Haley, Sununu, Chris Christie. These people are jokes. But, Jim Scott's not a joke. Yeah, I just think that they are. All of these candidates now have given Trump outside of DeSantis exactly what he wanted, which was a big Republican primary field. And the reason you know it's what he wanted is because he's telling us. He says it. He's welcome. Everybody into the field. Welcome, Jim Scott to the race. He said he was a, he's certainly a step up from DeSanktimonius who's completely unelectable. And then he said, the field's getting loaded up with people fast. He's just one of those tries. He's just Danielity's thinking. And this is the problem is like DeSantis, Scott, Haley, Pence, they're all going to be fighting over the traditional conservatives, the evangelicals, Christie, Sununu, Hutchinson, are going to be fighting over the extremely small anti-Trump faction in the party. So like, you go to all these people fighting over each other. They're trying to get each other's votes. 16 again. And then you've got, and then DeSantis, who is struggling anyway right now, needs every last one of those other votes. And if they start taking a little bit from DeSantis, then it's Trump's. But it's not 16 again in the sense that we went through this. It was so inconceivable. People couldn't believe that Trump was happening, that all these people stayed in the field believing that they could potentially be the alternative. I don't know that you can do that this time, pulling at 3% in November before the primaries begins. So you could see it now. I think the people are so, do we do the right thing? What are we talking about here? A lot of them, they don't have enough money to do polling and research. And so they're listening to their advisors, telling them, you never know what might happen. They're probably meeting people at meet and greets who are like, I'm actually for you. And then they think that's great. Mike Pence, what is Mike Pence doing? Does Mike Pence not think that the Republican electorate has rendered a judgment? What if Mike Pence was hanged on January 6th? And we're all on a kind of simulation that's his kind of purgatory to make up for his sins. And he keeps rerunning it until he learns to stop being a fucking prick. It's a groundhog day. Interesting. But for interesting. And sex. He just keeps waking up. Yeah, I think if these people stick around to Iowa, it's like it's a Trump's nomination. I mean, they got to start, they all got to start dropping out by that. So one issue likely to be the subject of fierce debate in both the Republican primary and the general election is America's support for Ukraine. President Biden met with President Zelensky at the G7 in Japan, where he also announced a joint international effort to train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 fighter aircraft. Meanwhile, Russia claims to have captured the key city of Buckmoot in eastern Ukraine and also released a list of 500 Americans who are banned from entering Russia that includes Barack Obama, Rachel Maddo, Brad Rathansberger, Tish James, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Joe Scarborough, and the Capitol police officer who shot Ashley Babbitt. Seth Meyers looks up from the pool at Sochi. He's like, huh, you know, why is he in Sochi? He's on vacation. Oh, it's Russia. Oh, because it's because it's yeah, I got it out of here. All right, before we get to the list, Tommy, what is the significance of Biden's announcement on the F-16 trainings? I think the F-16 announcement is recognition that the White House thinks this war is going to go on for a very long time because over the long term, you're going to have a border that you need to defend and you're going to need a modern air force. The current fighting and even the sort of long-promised, but seemingly not started yet, spring offensive is tanks in open fields in eastern Ukraine and artillery and drones directing these, you know, artillery fire and efforts to cut off supply lines. And so what this does is sort of start the clock on training Ukrainian pilots six, about four months to train you up on an F-16. You'll have to pull pilots who are currently flying missions off those missions to do this. So there is a bit of a cost to this. Then you have to get the Dutch and the Poles to actually supply the planes. And over the long term, it's not just about supplying an F-16. It's maintaining it. It's the missiles are really expensive. The fuels are really expensive. They estimate that one flying hour requires 16 man hours of maintenance for an F-16. So it's just like a massive ongoing undertaking. And they're all integrated into radar systems and other air defense systems. So this to me is just signals that this is not ending anytime soon in the eyes of the White House decision makers. And there have been some concerns about this would be taken as a sign of escalation. Yeah. And then why do you think they got over those concerns? They seem to get over those concerns routinely. You know, I mean, there is, I think there's a very good faith concern about escalation and provoking Putin and any response that might lead to something like a nuclear response. But this happened with the long range missiles. It's happened now with these F-16s. I think they think it's manageable. What's with that sanctions list? It seems like quite a cast of characters. It's a pretty good list. Yeah. You know, it was missing a few. There's a lot of Trump enemies on that list. But you're missing some key ones. Like where's Deb Messing? Where is Deb Messing? Where's a list of Milano? And also Scarborough's on there. Where's Mika? Where's Mark Ruffalo? No Crasensteens. No Crasensteens. No Crasensteens. Are they enemies? Major Biden. Sanction of pet. Make some news. Where's Luis Metsch? I don't know. Yikes. Is Putin basically doing that to just like troll? I don't know. The Biden administration. It seems like there's also a lot of national security nerds on there. So I mean, there's some sort of wonky people. There's a lot of Biden administration officials like the NSE staff, the White House. They've been la bolter friends on there. So I don't know. Like it's childish petting nonsense. You guys feel embarrassed that you and Ben Rhodes didn't make them? Yeah, why don't you want to? Well, I think Ben's on it from the last time they sent some on it. Ben and Dan are still on it from. I mean, I don't think they could take an off. Are you getting a test that proposition? Yeah, the Biden's try to take it. It's, um, yeah, imagine it's it hasn't been like an exciting vacation destination. No, already. If you're a lot more painful if you could have a list where you those people then had to visit your country. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like a mandatory mandatory visit list. Like 20 a year and you're like, all right, come on over. Come to Sochi. You got to be here. We have some some break news about the the White House meeting is over. Okay. And speaker McCarthy, I think the tone tonight was better than any other time we've had discussions. Theater criticism. Great. We are we are excited about the tone. And then the one of the lead negotiators, uh, Republican representative Patrick McKenry said we've had tough meetings. We've had difficult meetings. This meeting was productive. No acrimony. Okay. But that makes me nervous. That means like the probably we can feel like they're getting something. Yeah. So we're so we're really yeah. Great. Every Democrat on the Hill read that thought out. By his dinner first, you know what I'm saying? All right. Finally, we've been talking a lot about the Biden Trump rematch that's currently our most likely future. So the Washington Post just held a series of focus groups with the kinds of voters who made decide the race. People who cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2016 and then voted for Joe Biden in 2020. They got 15 Democrats, Independents and Republicans from swing states. Nine were white, four were black, two Asian Americans. None of them want either Biden or Trump to run again, like most Americans, nearly all of them are worried about Biden's age. But when asked specifically about a Biden Trump rematch, nine said they'd vote for Biden, three said they'd back Trump and three said that they would vote third party or not vote. Uh, just two focus groups, but the posts noted that the findings are in line with what Democratic strategists have been finding in polls and focus groups of their own. You guys have any takeaway from these groups. And if you're the Biden campaign, what do you do with information like this? I'll tell you what my first thought was, it was like nine to 15. Can we do it with nine to 15? Yeah, I mean, I was like, I was like, I was like, I'm sure that I'm right. I'm like, I don't know that we can. I think we need a couple more people. Uh, you know, I talked to shots about this too. You know, it's very clear that that age is a big liability, it's a bigger liability than it was in 2020. I think it has been, I think Republicans have done a very good job spreading it. I think the reality of having a person this old running is not possible to ignore. And we have to not we can't have an abstract conversation about whether or not Biden's tool, he just has to go out there and and be among the people and sort of have moments like he's had at the state of the union and others that that that show that he's vigorous despite his age. I don't know what else you're supposed to do with this. Yeah, it's kind of like this Biden's corpid, right? Like don't compare me to the almighty compare me to the alternative. And when these people did, they were much more likely to vote for Joe Biden. I also think, you know, when you combine this with the catalyst research you and Dan talked about on Thursday that shows in the key swing states issues like abortion access and the extremity of GOP candidates motivated people and they understood the stakes beyond the individuals on the ballot. So that that makes me hopeful. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, this doesn't signal like high, high, high turnout election. Certainly not election. The people are going to be excited about it. It could be a very high turnout election, but it's not something people are going to be like run into the polls. I guess you're right. Two points of high turnout election. It's because you oppose the other guy. That's exactly the negative part of the chip. And to that end, if I was the Biden campaign, and I'm sure this is what they're thinking, but like the best Biden moments over the last couple of years, the speeches about democracy, January 6th, the in the middle of the state of the union when he started ad libbing and basically fighting with Republicans over social security and Medicare, right? They are moments when Biden has both shown energy and painted the contrast with Republicans. And I think you can solve two birds with one stone there, right? People are a little worried about his age. Whenever he's feisty and shows some energy, that helps that. And when he is keeping the focus on what a Donald Trump second term would look like, like paint a picture. And as you said, Tommy, you can also remind people like, Oh, in these red states where Republicans have full control, this isn't the future. This is the present. This is what's happening right now. There are book bans. There are full abortion bans. There the don't say gala and Florida, right? So you can start using these examples and just have Biden out there with like a very fiery, energetic stump speech that's just kicking the shit out of Trump and Republicans and telling people exactly what would happen if he gets a second term. And if that's where he keeps the focus, then you're going to have people just like in this group, or like, yeah, he's a little old, whatever, but we don't want that. We don't want that again. Right. One more thing about those focus groups that I thought was interesting. They tested DeSantis in addition to Trump. And most the majority of participants also chose Biden over DeSantis because they said he was too extreme. Yeah, that's good. That's great. Yeah, man, never someone, you know, only Elon Musk could build a ship that would explode so quickly on the launch pad there, you know. DeSantis really has done it to himself for these voters. Yeah. And when they brought up their criticisms of Trump were, you know, not surprising his characters, social media use, and they brought up the investigations a bunch. That was also interesting. All right. So when we come back, Senator Brian Schatz talks with Love It about debt ceiling strategy and lots more. Joining us now, he's Hawaii's Senator Friend of the Pod and the most popular Senator in the country, according to a recent poll, Senator Brian Schatz, glad to have you back. Nice to be back. Nice to see you, John. You walk around like, you know, like a big swing in Dick now. How am I supposed to answer that question? By the way, that reminds me, the one time I went to your live show, it was, there were like three female comedians in you and it was just all Dick jokes and I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that that happened. Let's get back to work. Speaker McCarthy spoke briefly before going into another meeting with Biden. He didn't say much. We had hopeful signs at the end of the week that a Trump truth sent people into a tizzy. Now we're back at the table. You know, Janet, Janet Yellen is looking under couch cushions. She's going into the bathroom. She's making sure she's alone and that she's screaming at the top of her lungs. We're recording this Monday evening. McCarthy predicts he'll keep his caucus together and says a deal needs to have less spending than last year. What is the latest? What are you hearing? Well, obviously the president and the speaker are meeting in the next couple of hours. You know, I'm not going to take too much from the various public statements. I think, you know, sometimes people make grouchy public statements specifically to soften the ground for a compromise. So I'm hopeful that we will land this and if we land this in a place that unlocks the appropriations process and avoids a government shutdown in the fall, then that's actually all as well that ends well. It's a stupid way to do business. I continue to think that debt ceiling should be statutorily repealed. I have a bill to do that. So I don't want to defend the process. But if the result ends up being something that unlocks the ability for us to do bipartisan appropriations bills, then I'll be able to live with it. So it sounds like what you're saying there is that if it does allow you to move into that appropriations process, are you saying the actual specific lines that are drawn in this specific deal that they're not as important that they're not as significant? What are you saying there? No, I think, look, I think the numbers matter very much. They're called top lines and they're basically exactly how the appropriations committee determines how much money it has to spend. So once those top line agreements are arrived at on a bipartisan basis, they are binding to the committee. So my criteria is, is this the kind of deal we would have gotten under the under normal circumstances if these people were not threatening default? And that's my criteria is that I think it's terrible. I think we should offer no policy or budget concessions. It exchange for not defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States of America. But we are where we are. And so now my criteria is, look, is this the kind of deal that we would have done anyway later because through this speaker McCarthy is the speaker. And if you're going to get a bipartisan budget deal, it's not going to look like the kind of bipartisan budget deal that we had when Nancy Pelosi was speaker. Right. So if what you're saying is a deal in which the thing Democrats get isn't the country not going into financial collapse. Right. Right. What are, what are the places where Democrats are seeing give or what do you want to see? What will make this a bipartisan compromise in which what Democrats are extracting from these negotiations go beyond just lifting the debt ceiling? Well, one of my key priorities is something called parody. And it's a very simple concept, which is you have two categories of discretionary spending and it's defense and non-defense. And for the last 10 years in order to sort of keep the peace and do bipartisan appropriations, regardless of who's president, regardless of who runs the legislative branch, we've kept parody defense and non-defense had been roughly equal as they go up. Kevin McCarthy is trying to straight from that and increase funding for the defense department while decreasing funding on the domestic discretionary side. We're not going to do that. So that was actually what happened in 2011, right. So in 2011, the sequester was basically a kind of a trigger that would cut both discretionary and defense spending, right. That was sort of the the way we keep, but we ended up hitting that sequester and doing the cuts, but then didn't later we go back and undo some of the defense cuts. Yeah, well, we under the defense cuts and we under the whole thing overall because it was nonsense. The idea that like equal pain will bring the parties to the table is not true anymore because I do think that this Republican party is uniquely dangerous and doesn't care about governing. And so I don't think we should assume that if we have a sort of damacles over the defense department and a sort of damacles over say the health and human services department that that's going to do anything for us. What we have to do is have an arrangement where there's a modest increase in spending or a freeze in spending subject to inflationary costs. And then we move forward with a budget because absent a budget agreement, we're going to end up with a freeze anyway, something called a CR. And so, you know, we're in a strong negotiating position on one level because we have the executive branch in the control of Democrats and half of the legislature. But on the other hand, it takes an agreement with Kevin McCarthy in order to move forward on appropriation. So if it unlocks that, that's great. I still think it's a stupid precedent to set. I still think that it's insane that the media in particular has normalized this hostage taking to the point where I think most people who are only paying passing attention think this is another like shutdown clock, another sort of, oh, Democrats and Republicans, cats and dogs. That's not what's happening here. These people are really threatening, you know, the United States dollar as global reserve currency, the possibility of the stock market getting chopped by a third or a half interest rates going up. This is serious stuff. And we have to come to a resolution in the next 10 days. But one of the challenges that it works as leverage because all the polls show, right, that the blame for it would be laid equally at the feet of Democrats and Republicans. So I don't know how we get out of Republicans using it as a cudgel when the media shows them that it works. And we seem to have in this case unlearn the lesson from 2011 that we simply don't negotiate over the debt ceiling. But I'm not saying that saying that that we had any other choice, it does seem like for this moment does feel different. So did something change that forced us to unlearn that lesson? I don't know the answer to that. You know, I've been thinking about that and whether, you know, I want to substitute my judgment for the for the president's here because I can imagine that if you're in the oval, right, and Janet Yellen and everyone else is coming to tell you, you know, interest rates won't just go up temporarily. They may go up for 10 years, right? Stock market won't just take a hit. It'll get cut in half. We won't just lose or temporarily furlough, some number of tens of thousands of government jobs like you do in a shutdown, but we might lose millions and not get them back. And so, you know, that'll get your attention if you're the leader of the free world. I still hate the idea that we're negotiating. I still hate the idea that this has been normalized, but we are where we are. We have 10 days left to avoid default and we have to do whatever we can to land the plane. So when you were last on the show, we talked about this. We talked about how stupid it is to just have this loaded gun sitting on the table every two years. And it just seemed like there wasn't momentum when we had the lame duck when we could have unloaded this gun to get it done. I asked you about this. You said you didn't have the votes. I asked again, basically to no effect. Well, you have been pushing very hard for this, but it just didn't seem like the Democratic caucus was focused on caring about understanding the inevitability of this moment that we're now in. And as someone who wanted to unload this gun, how frustrated are you? How long will it take us to learn this lesson? Why did we not take care of this when they have the chance and does that mean there's a hope to do it in the future? We should have. And I think it's becoming a mainstream position among Democrats that we just need to repeal this stupid statute. And whether that ends up happening by virtue of the courts ruling in favor of the administration, should they pursue the 14th Amendment or that the next time we have leverage in a situation like this that we just decide to repeal the statute, I don't know what the pathway forward is, but I do think the political momentum for repealing the debt ceiling is there because I think initially, people just use a shorthand and say, well, that's a tough vote because I'm going to have, I'm going to look like I'm repealing the debt forever or that I'm for endless spending. But I think most people who pay attention, they're going to hold you accountable for whatever you decided to spend money on in the appropriations process. And there's no getting around that by saying, well, I'm not for the debt, but I am for the spending. And so, look, I think we have an opportunity here over the next several months to kind of recalibrate where the institutional position of the Democratic Party is, I was sort of an outlier saying, hey, this thing is coming down the pike and it's dangerous and we need to defuse the bomb, but I did not succeed. So I want to move on to another topic because the debt ceiling is the most important and most boring thing the country is currently facing. I was like, I can feel your viewers bleeding off while we were talking about this. Get a get them back. So you're leading the charge on banning children under 13 from being able to use social media and requiring parental consent from 13 to 17. You also would ban tech companies from serving miners algorithmically or from like sort of algorithmically generated content. It's a bipartisan bill. What are the prospects for it? What are the, what is the pushback you're hearing either from colleagues or from tech? Well, I think first of all, I think most people nod vigorously when they say, when I say a 12 year old and younger should not be on social media. So I don't think that's even a controversial position anymore. 13 through 17 is a little different, right? Because I talk to staffers of mine who say, hey, in my teenage years, that's literally how we interacted. And my point is, you know, most kids who are online via their phones, their parents are paying for the phone. So we're working. And so parental involvement is already the case for the most part internet access and connectivity is something that your parents have to arrange unless you're, you know, really financially self-sufficient in a way that's unusual for a kid. But my view is that the parents should know what's happening and that the algorithmic boosting is really where the mental health danger is occurring, which is not to say that no algorithms can be used. Like some of our opponents have said, like, the whole internet is full of algorithms. You're banning out, yeah, we understand the internet is full of algorithms. We're talking about the specific part of Instagram or TikTok or other feeds that algorithmically determine with incredible precision, the thing that is most likely to deliver, quote unquote, engagement. Along will you linger? How likely are you to click? And what they have found is that engagement is at a maximum when you are outraged or angry or disgusted or despairing. And so now we have a business model that almost guarantees that a whole generation of people are fed an algorithm that makes them despairing, disgusted, angry, isolated, and all the rest of it. And I don't think, first of all, I'm not sure adult brains are capable of sort of beating the algorithm. But certainly a 14 year old is not capable of doing that. What are the, what's the opposition to the bill? I'm going to take the kind of good faith opposition first. One is, hey, this sounds a little big brother. I think that's a fair enough thing to worry about. I don't think the government should be in the business of picking content. And this thing is content neutral. I think the other concern I've heard is from LGBTQ plus groups about the ability for queer kids in particular to find each other, to find support, to do research, to not feel alone. But I think all of that is important. But remember, we're not banning a kid from using social media. It's just that the social media platform will not have that feed that is algorithmically boosted. You still ought to be able to type in whatever you want, find things that you want, have a feed be on social media. It's just the algorithm that's shoving you outrage bait, which will no longer be permitted for kids 13 through 17. Yeah, I mean, it is, it does seem like there's a lot of evidence, especially around adults, about the harm that being fed this kind of content causes the impact it's having on politics. But it's less clear in terms of the core issue around kids, which I think is focus people on, on depression, self harm, suicidal ideation, suicide threats, suicide attempts, more kids dying of suicide. Josh Hawley has a bill that would just ban kids under 16 from being on social media. That's obviously more draconian than what you're proposing. But it does seem like right now, parents are buying the phones. Parents feel right, I mean, you talked to parents about this. They feel that their kids are dragging them onto social media because all the other kids are on it. Do you see any merit to going further and just saying, hey, this stuff is so right now, this is brain poison. It hurts kids more than cigarettes to do. It's taking their lives. Maybe kids just shouldn't be on this till they're out of middle school till they're in high school at the earliest. I'm sort of sympathetic to the view, but I think that there's more evidence the younger you get. And there are fewer upsides the younger you get, right? As you get a little older, my kids can learn fishing or crochet or piano or there's some cool stuff you can learn from social media. But I didn't see a ton of benefits for a nine year old, an 11 year old, even a 14 year old. So, you know, this sort of age gating stuff is always kind of goofy, right? Because should it be allowed to thrive at 16 or 16 and a half or whatever? And the kind of absurdity of picking a particular age is, you know, presents a bunch of challenges. So, look, we tried to set a threshold that made sense. And I think the word that I have is that the tech companies are now saying, well, we're not really sure that it's us, right? And I guess what I would say is, look, if I'm the, if I were like the principal investigator on some scientific study, I would say, sure, we need two decades of longitudinal research, right? And I'm thinking, kids can't wait that long. We have to be precautionary when it comes to our kids. We have to assume that everything that the data is showing and that our own personal experience, not mine in particular, but all of our collective experiences are telling us, we have to believe our own eyes and our own ears and the indications from the preliminary data and just protect this next generation, not to keep them offline, but to make sure that their online experience is safer for them. All right, let's move on to another topic from the young to the old. Diane Feinsign is back in the Senate. She's on a lighter schedule, but she did vote to move some stall nominees out of judiciary. There's been some reporting that she seemed to not acknowledge or possibly not even remember that she had been absent. What do you say to people like me that believe she should resign? And that's that California deserves to have two full-time senators. Well, the decision to resign is in her possession. And I think that's the main thing to remember is that this isn't a question of, oh, Chuck Schumer should be tougher or something, right? This is in her possession. The law operates. She gets to decide when and if to step down, but I will say that, you know, to the degree and extent that the business of the Senate in particular, the Judiciary Committee is slowed down or stopped. Then it's no longer just a question of whether a particular person enjoys a particular job and continues to think they are good at it. It's a question of what's in the best interest of the country. And I have some confidence that she will eventually come to that conclusion if she's no longer able to serve. I think on the other side, and I kind of understand where your listeners are coming from here, is that, you know, you do want to make sure there's room for someone to be sick and come back, right? Right. John Fetterman, Mitch McConnell, right? Like lots of people have stuff they have to deal with and then come back. And if you have a reasonable level of confidence that the person is going to return to fulfilling their duties, that's a whole different conversation. You know, if they're going to be gone for five years, that doesn't work. If they're going to be gone for two or three months, then I think, you know, they do, they have earned an election certificate and they are, I think, not entitled, but I think it's appropriate to allow someone to get better. If I needed two months to get better, if something happened to me, I would want two months to get better. If I was maybe never going to come back, that's a different conversation. Will you pledge to not seek re-election to the Senate in 2058? That is when you will be in your mid-80s. Oh, yes. Okay. Just that's everybody. Could we just flag this? Just just put a card on this, because we're going to forget, but we got them mid-80s. All right. Senator, you're one of the best messengers in the Democratic Party, which is how we preface our hardest questions. Voters are enthralled about the prospect of a Biden Trump rematch. There was a focus through about the Washington Post today that said there was a lot of concerns among swing voters, but once they were presented the choice between Biden and Trump, I think it was nine to 15 broke towards Biden, and much more worried about the prospects of a Trump re-election. But a lot of concerns about Biden's age and fitness. If this is his biggest liability as a candidate, what does he need to do to address it and to overcome it? I think he's starting to do that. I mean, the White House Correspondents dinner. He made a bunch of, I thought, pretty good jokes about his age. And I was thinking about this. I think Bernie Sanders is 80. Nobody talks about his age. Now, he's not a commander in chief, I understand. But I think that Joe Biden has to demonstrate that he is vigorous, that he is energetic. Because I think seeing as believing the numerical age is, I mean, it's a big number, right? And so the only way that you can persuade people that you are energetic enough, that you have the acuity to do the job is to demonstrate that. And I think he's going to do that over the next year and a half. But I think that's the big challenge is that if you're just arguing over whether 80 as an abstraction is quite old and most people are retired by then, I mean, that's just a fact, right? But I think Joe Biden has to demonstrate is that he's different. One last question. We had Hawaiian food at a company wide lunch last week. It was 10 out of 10. People have been raving about it. People aren't talking about this. They aren't talking about it. It's not going to be attention. It deserves. What can you do as again, the most popular center in the country to get the people outside of Hawaii to understand what's on offer? So I just had a poke bowl for lunch right here. And it's almost fun. But then I had to jump on the zoom. And I just want to make this point. And I know this isn't the question you had asked. You guys are all doing poke bowls wrong. It's not a sell. It's not Chipotle. You don't get to make 100 different choices and put all kinds of different nonsense on it. It's usually pretty simple, cubedahi or cubed some other kind of fish and some seasoning. But don't go to places that spell poke with an eye. And maybe just wait till you're in Honolulu before you get any poke. All right. I mean, I think that's pretty definitive. Senator Brian Shons, thank you so much. Always good to see you. Keep the economy, Brian. All right. Keep it going. Okay. Thank you. All right. Before we go, we wanted to gear up for Ron DeSantis's official campaign launch this week with some thoughtful analysis about how he's handling what will undoubtedly be his biggest challenge as a candidate, being a person that other people like. Here's a clip that made the rounds on social media this weekend after he pressed the flesh in new Hampshire. Okay. I'm wonderful. What's your name? What's your name? I'm Tim. Okay. Okay. I'm wonderful. Where do I go? I'll come in here. There's so much like artifice in politics and you have to be comfortable in these weird situations that are totally fake and manufactured where you're in a diner and there's seven people, but 25 news cameras there filming you and he just can't seem to do it. You don't even have to have so much charisma. Hey, what's your name? Tim? Hey, Tim, how are you? I'm Ron. Try that. I'm Ron. Ask Tim about himself. Don't say okay and then just fucking run away like a widow. It's really funny. It's, you know, we have this incredibly stupid way of picking who our president's going to be and we get it wrong half the time. It's a multiple choice question with two answers. We get it wrong. 50% of the time. But I will say this process of forcing very tired, hyper ambitious lunatics to go into diners when they're at their most exhausted and nervous and have them interact does reveal something. How do we do is exhausted? He's fine. He's barely even running. I'm just saying when they're in there, when they're in the thick of it, when they're in the really thick of it. That's fucking our age. No, no, I'm not talking about it. I'm not taking right now. I'm just saying over the 44 hours wait. That's not the point. I love to santa's. Yeah, this is stupid. No, let me do it again. No, there's much more fun than what you were going to know. That was in the point I was making. I wasn't saying he's exhausted. Okay. I'm not saying that he looks exhausted or is exhausted now. I'm saying over time, this ridiculous way of having candidates interact with normal people ultimately shows us who they really are. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And he is, and this is the beginning of the campaign. Imagine when they were at the end after he's been doing six events a day for months. It is also wild that that brought us someone in the face. We're contemporaries with this man. Yeah, he's only older than us. I want to be something. I don't know. It's already years. Now in fairness, he did have a much deeper interaction in Iowa with a fan who shared how far they'd traveled just to get a chance to meet him. Let's watch. He's already has his back. And what you can't see there is he walks away. So he turned on him as soon as okay is his end of the conversation. Okay, you get one quay. You come up to run to santa's. You say something. You tell him who you are. You tell him where you're from. He says okay. He moves away. He's really already, he's really already falling into the trap of like the stories are that he can't relate to people. And so now he has to relate to people that everybody watches how he relates to people and then he can't do it. You're going to start getting the stories like oh no, the real the you got to get to know the real run to santa's. Well, and when you hear that about yourself because undoubtedly he's reading all this criticism or you know internalizing it in some way, then you get in your own head. And so now you're trying extra hard to be the relatable guy. This is him trying. This is him trapeze. Okay. And the current narrative is like he can't do this stuff but his wife is his seeker weapon. That's why he has her out in stumping, etc. So I'm sure he'll get you know put off by that and feel like no, I can do it myself. You've also I've heard of candidates who have the opposite problem. Like someone who's to work for Al Gore told me that they had to stop prepping him so much because he would go into meetings and meet with like New Hampshire state reps he'd never met before. And he'd be like hey Bruce, good to meet you. How's your wife Sally and your four kids like Orrin Jim Jan and whatever. And it was like okay because he was student who had to use the test. Yeah. That's natural. Yeah. No, he's a Rhonda Santis doesn't have a it's just it's just awkward. A Trump person said about Tim Scott. Tim Scott doesn't have to write likable at the top of his piece of paper. But I think tells you a lot about this. At least Rhonda Santis isn't running against someone in the primary who just has a knack for zeroing in on a person's absolute weakness and exploiting it as much as much as what Trump is just going to it's not like Trump is some great retail politician. He throws toilet paper at people and insults them and then says he's smarter than everybody of the room and leaves. So he's pretty good at charming than this. He's good at talking to people and making them feel listen to and I don't know he slaps backs and hangs out he has nothing better to do. He hates his family. He's got tons of free time. Well, he it's different right because Trump Trump I don't think is great in like the diner. He doesn't do this well because he so he he knows that and so he just doesn't do it and what he does is the performance on the stage and he's really good at that. He does this shit too. He like signs people stuff and hangs out. What he likes to do thing of like he likes to like go into a like a like a he'll go and he likes to go into the diner and then talk to everybody. He wants to do is he wants to do a stand he wants to his type five. Yeah, he wants to do his five. Yeah, like when he goes in the McDonald's as I be never think of his menu. You're like, yeah, yeah. All right. So finally, it's clear that DeSantis has mastered the subtle subtle art of pandering. What's listen? Iowa's like the Florida of the Midwest. They said, but I just want to let you know after watching all the good stuff you've done in Iowa, it may be that Florida is the Iowa the southeast. So we'll see. What do you think Tommy? I was going to eat that up. Oh my god. What? That was so tortured. I know. I know. It's tough. It's tough. Come say it again. Rhonda Santas makes people feel like their needs are met. Donald Trump makes people feel like they have no needs. This guy. This guy. This guy's voice is so annoying. Someone wrote him that line too. He was so proud of him. Sort of proud. Yeah, delivering that line. Very, very cringe worthy. So it's interesting. He's been dreaming about running for president for so long and now he's finally doing it. Mine's me, Rume and I had back in the day who was going to a little school in Northeast DC called Strayer University. And he would meet women and say I'm going to the Harvard of Northeast DC. He would always leave out the DC parts. So he said I'm going to the Strayer. It's the Harvard of the Northeast. And they'd be like I think Harvard's in the Northeast. Sometimes that was a key part of my show. More charming than the rest of the joke. But yeah. Look, this gives me no pleasure. I mean, this is just we're going to get fucking Donald Trump as a nominee again. I don't like like sucks. That's the thing. I wish Rhonda just a little. I don't want Rhonda's head to speak president. But like Donald Trump is a I still can uniquely dangerous threat to democracy. And all these fucking goofs are like just they can't do. And this was an event where this is this fiends the family picnic thing in Iowa. This is the one where he was sort of graded on a curve and people said he did well. Oh, it was. Yeah. This was the one where Oh, because he went to Des Moines and was like, no, no, no, that was this is the first event in Western Iowa. Okay. Yeah. Not that not the big the big shot at Trump when he went to Des Moines and said it's sunny outside. No, no, no, that was that that was a couple of minutes later. It's like slam. Got him. Man, this guy's really fizzling. Yeah. Well, it's really fizzling. It's our time. Yeah. He's going to learn. I'm telling you watch watch watch watch watch my guy Tim Scott. Okay. We're going to watch him. Just keep it all in on take. I'm not all in. I'm in. He's my Ted Cruz in this cycle. You and Mike Murphy of hacks on tap. Oh, really? You and Murf. I'm telling you. You just watch it. All right. Just watch watch watch it. I'm not saying what's going to happen. I'm just saying you want to take a Vivek Ramastwamy. That guy. He's doing a lot of press. Should we all drive? Should we should do a draft? We'll do draft. Yeah. Yeah. This is Virginia. He was 46. That's allegedly. Yeah. Allegedly he lost it earlier. He's not a virgin. He's not a virgin. He's trying not to get sued over here. Allegedly. I think he said that. Yeah. Ben Terris had to ask him because he said he would not have sex until marriage. And he was I think at the time a 46 year old single guy. If there is even a hint that Tim Scott's candidacy might threaten Donald Trump's candidacy, you will see Donald Trump go so fast from welcome to the race to making fun of the 40 year old virgin. It will be it will be relentless. No, it's it's going to I think it'll be worse than that. Let me read this tweet from Ben Terris. Tim Scott will be the first press candidate I've ever asked about the status of his virginity. Initial answer. I'm not talking about my sex life with Ben Terris. Then he stood up and said I have to go potty. Care to revise. I don't know. I don't know. I love its guy. I said that he that that we're not going to elect a single president. You know, so maybe that's still time. Yeah, he just has to meet the right person. Well, that's a story. That's a campaign trail story. There you go. Um, ultimately he implied he did not wait until marriage. Yeah. So okay. There's some. Okay. Well, that's why I said to let to be revealed. Yeah, to be revealed. Uh, thanks to Brian Schatz for joining us. Don't know why you keep coming back on. After hearing some questions. Loving me there. But thank you. We appreciate you. I'm ready to see you. And we'll talk to you on Thursday. Bye. Pots of America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglon in Charlotte, Landis. Thanks to Halley Keifer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefko, and David Tolls. Subscribe to Pots of America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. 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