Always Test Your Hopium

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1:01And when you order, please write in PodSafe America and how did you hear about a survey to let them know we sent you? Don't forget, there's no safe like simply safe. Welcome to PodSafe America. I'm John Favre. I'm Dan Fyfer. Alright Dan, on today's show we're going to talk about the brand new time Santa Poles that the polling gods have blessed and cursed us with. Whether we think the overall political environment for Dems is too good to be true, Republican candidates finally running away from Trump and the latest development in one of the many wars Trump is losing this one against the media. Then you'll all hear Tommy's conversation with activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Cabernick, who was in the studio yesterday.

2:03Very cool. I know. And you're in the studio today, which is great. Also cool, not as cool, because right after this we're getting on a plane and we're going to Austin for the Texas Tribune Festival. Very cool to be a live show there Friday night. It's Friday night. Yeah, today's Thursday. Who would be in your feeds on Sunday? Well, not. It will. Thank you Dan. All right, let's start with Donald Trump's plan to make his Chinese Communist pal Xi Jinping feel right at home during his visit to America. A crackdown on journalists who report news that Trump doesn't like. On Thursday morning, Trump appointed Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to restore the press access. Trump tried to revoke for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, at least while the lawsuit plays out. Judge Kelly said the outlets would probably succeed with their claims and was not swayed by the administration's argument that the ban was really about protecting national security, probably didn't help that the White House made their case by citing a Politico story. The source for which turned out to be, according to Oliver Darcy at status, JD Vance.

3:05JD Vance risking national security by leaking to Politico with an administration approved background briefing. That's how you get away with it. That's how you get away with it. By late Thursday morning, after initially getting turned away again, even after the judges ruling, reporters from the offending outlets were finally back in the briefing room. Still some confusion about when and whether network pool coverage will resume. That's contingent on the White House allowing CNN to participate. First amendment principles aside, since the White House is putting them aside, why not us? As a former White House communications director, how much do you think access to the building matters these days? I don't want to put them totally aside because it is just worth, we just should say, that it is absolutely essential that the federal government cannot bar media members of the media from accessing government property based on what they report. That is, that's a cut and dry case. The state department, if that was having it in the other country, the state's department would send out a warning about how democracy was falling in that country.

4:08Like it is a, it is a blaring red light. Yeah, you know, to be sure, according to previous court rulings, the White House could decide we're not having any press at all in the White House. Like we're just not granting access to anyone. Once you open it up to some press, you got to open it up to everyone fairly. Now in terms of like how much it matters and like the day-to-day capacity of the press to scrutinize Trump, it matters. Like having the right people in the room who can ask questions of the White House press, if we ever have press briefings again, matters. I think the decision to kick the wire reporters out of the pool is much more consequential in terms of actual scrutiny of the president and the capacity to hold them accountable than in barring individual reporters, as far as I know, is because it's those pool reporters who are in the room in intimate settings with the president who are able to ask him questions directly, even when he doesn't want to take those questions. But it's also, you know, they kicked the reporters out of the Pentagon and there's still

5:10been a ton of great reporting about the war in Iran, about a bunch of corruption and problems in the DOD. And like the reporters that we know who do the hardest reporting on Trump, like Maggie Haber and Jonathan Spocknier times, they're not hanging on the White House, right? They're doing that. I'll think it's not even from Washington, DC, sometimes they're in New York, they're wherever they are using the phone. So you can still hold them accountable. He's not going to escape it, but it is quite bad. What do you think the political effect has been? It doesn't seem like this was a plus for Trump. Yeah, I don't know. I think to the, this is not a thing that gets voters worked up about. Trump has benefited from that for many, many years. And the press, I think, is fair to say, is paying a price for not having stood up in a collective way to Trump during his first term when they had more leverage and Trump had fewer ways to get his message out on his own. But it's just one more thing. Like in all the polls, he's, in most of these New York Times, they asked voters whether Trump is focused on the right things, the wrong things. Yeah.

6:10And it's like two thirds of voters or six and 10 voters say he's focused on the wrong things. There's one more wrong thing, right? It's the ballroom. It's the hell of a pad. It's, you know, caring about your pressing, kicking them out. That's all the wrong stuff. It's one more example of the thing he's doing other than lower people's costs. So before we move on, you know what, outlet never gets banned from the White House? Kirk and media. I was going to say Fox News. Now we haven't gotten banned yet. That's because we haven't been given access yet. Well, but you know the best way to support us so we can become a growing and even bigger independent pro-doocracy media company that may someday get access to the White House. You can subscribe today at Kirk and dot com slash friends and become a friend of the pod subscriber. Where do you, how do you do that? You go to Kirk and dot com slash friends. Okay, time out. That pitch sucked. What? Let me tell you how to do this, all right? Okay. Do you, if this is not give us money so we can be closer to Donald Trump. That's a terrible fucking pitch for this. I said someday. I meant like in a future. Here's the thing. Do you want to see Kirk and media on that list of the banned media companies?

7:10Yes or no? If the answer is yes, subscribe today. How's the, how's that going to help us be? Because they're going to help us build up the resources to do the things it requires, to cover Trump in the way that will piss him off to the point. The Natalie Harp will be showing newsletters from the Kirk and media sub stack or clips from this podcast to him, which gets us banned. Because you know, it was Natalie showing him an MS now segment that got them banned. And like, we don't know who the segment was, but it could have been us. It could have been a late Saturday night MS now segment from Kirk and media. Our goals to get our content on Natalie Harp's iPad and the way you hope us do that is by subscribing right now, becoming your friend of the pot. And if neither of these pitches were persuasive enough to you, you also get added to the add free episodes of all your favorite cricket pods, subscriber-only podcasts, and you get all our sub stack newsletters too. Yeah.

8:10So there's a lot of reasons to it. It's a menu of plugs. Kirkah.com slash friends. All right, let's get to the politics. For the first time in any election during the Trump era, we are witnessing a veritable stampede of Republican candidates running away from their wildly unpopular leader. In the last few days, Florida Goominatorial candidate Byron Donald's hardcore Trump satellite basically removed any mention of Trump's endorsement from his campaign website, newly vulnerable Kansas Senator Roger Marshall distanced himself from ice deportations happening in his state. We got a Republican Senator from Kansas just distancing himself from Trump on ice in Kansas. Texas governor Greg Abbott imposed a data center ban. And Utah Senator John Curtis called for an investigation into a Russian oligarch paying for Don Jr.'s wedding. But the area where you're seeing the most flip-flopping unsurprisingly is the Iran War. Here's Michigan's Mike Rogers, who's been an Iran War Hawk for decades, basically an

9:13any kind of war hawk for decades, in a video released on social media this week. Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Rochries cost too much. You have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. I think Mike Rogers is doing a lot of grocery shopping. That is the first time he's been in a grocery store. Now was that a, maybe that was a public's in Florida? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe he's in Florida. Maybe he gets someone else to do a shopping. Yeah. It seems like the, why were the vest? Yeah. That's a, that's really, that's giving some, some Dr. Oz. Yeah, for its very, it's very, it's very, it's going to, but he's going to buy some, some, some cruditech. Some cruditech. Some cruditech. What do you think? You think these distancing maneuvers will work? I do not, a little too late. I do not, John. Just, they look craven, cynical, desperate. It's so obvious who else were they doing that a finding characteristic of, of Republican politicians in this area is complete and total field tea to Trump.

10:15So all the sudden, 40 days before an election to decide that you're against the, the things you've been saying, you're a four, that you're against the person you were saying, you were four. Butters are not going to believe it. We know that they price authenticity or everything else. And this looks quite, quite inauthentic. But even more so, the, we know that the swing voters who decide this election are the ones who are most cynical about politicians. And so this is, this is not, do we really think those voters who distrust everything that any politician says is going to believe that all of a sudden these Trump alcolytes have come to some sort of deathbed political conversion? I do not. I guess the other side of it would be if you are the type of voter who's going to go to the polls in November, doesn't pay much attention to the news, doesn't like Trump, isn't happy with the war. And, but is the kind of person who's like, well, I want to check on Trump. But even though I don't like him, maybe this Republican candidate seems like they're

11:16not on the same page as Donald Trump. And so maybe I'll give them a try. I mean, that is possible. And I'm sure there is a person or two like that somewhere in America, but it's just where do these people going to see this stuff? Like they're not even like leaning into it. At least Congresswoman Cellsar, who's had we looked at last week, she at least did it in an advertisement. Who's going to, this is not an ad from microtards to the video. Who's going to say the video? What, that is weird. What, who's the video for us? Yeah. It's so, it's so they can write a bunch of stories, people write a bunch of stories that they'll see saying he breaks with Trump. You know, like who was going to read Rodgers Marshall's tweet? You know, so I like this, this is too little too late, it's weak. Are you surprised they just held another vote on a Rand War power's resolution? And it passed the House over to the Senate and Collins, soon Collins voted for it. But on the no side, Dan Sullivan and Alaska, Roger Marshall, the Kansas Center, we talked

12:18about, and John Hustet in Ohio, all in tough races, competitive races. And all voted no. Are you surprised? I think they're still afraid of angrily Trump. This was a very close vote. They basically had to hold Cassidy in commissive vote to keep it from passing. Cassidy, who fucking voted no. Yes, exactly. Has nothing to lose, just doesn't care. It's just like, you mentioned, like there is a potential price to pay on a micro level for angrily Trump. Like you mentioned, Byron Dalynsick, all the Trump references off of his website. Yeah. He put them back on when someone told Trump. So you know, in these candidates are become more and more dependent on magge ink superpack money. So I, you know, you can see that they are betwixting between here and in the end, they're going to stick with the person who has the millions of dollars in superpack money to spend. Conservative radio host Steve Deese, who's from Iowa, wrote a long thing on Twitter about how the war is, is unpopular with conservatives right now in the state of Iowa as COVID lockdowns

13:22and the tarp bailout. Deep cut tarp bailout. He also said, quote, we need the president out on the stump ASAP and that Republicans need to quote, stop running fake and gay ads about how often so and so shows up for votes. Agree or disagree with this prescription. Are the ads fake and gay? I feel like this question is a trap in so much of reform. I think. I think Steve Deese is a very smart person, very smart person. So I don't want to jump ahead. Everyone should follow in the White House. You listen to him and Trump should campaign. He should campaign everywhere all the time. There was a report I saw that Trump was planning to campaign in 35 districts. Yeah, he's got to get on that. And I saw that in national journal and I haven't seen it anywhere else. So very busy with rolling out the red carpet literally for Xi Jinping right now and and bragging about how much he loves granite and his new helipad. That was what was going on today was not a lot of campaigning message of the day. Message of the day. He likes granite just like me.

14:23Trump's response to the rest of his party pulling the fire alarm has has not been to campaign so far or to end the war. In his UN speech on Tuesday, he again threatened to annihilate the Islamic Republic. I don't know if that helped him with farmers in Iowa. Instead he says he's considering a ban on diesel exports. Here you go is a way to bring down prices for truckers. A move that a lot of business groups think would backfire. Certainly wouldn't bring down the price of diesel globally. And we are of course in a global market as much as Trump and Mago folks, which we weren't. And Trump is also maybe using taxpayer money to run this ad, which has been seen on newsmax and at least here in the LA market on Fox. Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America. America will never be a communist country.

15:37Okay, so there's a little tagline there at the bottom that just said paid for by the US government. In case you couldn't hear what they were singing, it was just love me over and over again with images of Trump. A little on the nose if you will. I thought this was fake. Yeah, at first because I feel like this has to be illegal. It seems to be illegal. Yes. I think more than I didn't say like vote Republicans. So I guess there's that. But it did just sort of like glaze Trump for 30 seconds while being like we're going to fight the communist. Definite violation of the anti glazing provision of the hatchback. But the other thing is this ad looks almost exactly like the those mega ink superpec ads that we watched on this podcast, including the use of Dana White. That Dana White's voice doing it. So it's almost exactly like here's the thing. Is it illegal? Probably. Are all the laws around this largely unenforceable in the president of most laws? Yes. But you know what that really is. I was going to say fucking embarrassing.

16:38Oh, I was going to say, yeah, maybe it's illegal because it's an in kind contribution to the democratic party. Well, because I would like I would like that ad saturating every single market. Well, here's the thing. It's not on every market. It's the according to ad impact data. They spent $14,000 on it to error only on Fox Newsmax. IE the programs that Donald Trump is watching. So this is obviously about making this sad man feel better about himself. Do you see that Washington Post story from last weekend? We talked about it on Tuesday's pod about like Trump getting the sads and being upset that like no one's thanking him for anything and he's losing a small street journal story to about it. But in one of the stories, it had him around that his wildly successful convention in Dallas, looking himself at each ad and each video and like trying to say making edits to the video and saying like, this is good because they were all about him and how great he was. So that does fit with that sort of larger scheme to like make him feel good about himself. This is the digital equivalent of what has happening campaigns for years,

17:42which is you put yard signs on every block between the office and they can't at its house. So they believe that the campaign is going great and this is that. That's a great idea. All right, Dan. Let's talk about the polling. It is of course that time of year when the mornings get darker and the air gets crisper. And we warn people about paying too much attention to the avalanche of polling, despite talking about nothing else in our group chats with the exception, of course, of the viral globe story about the lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts that just dropped its mask mandate. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I still haven't read it. I can't. I'm saving it. I'm saving it for the plaintiff. I want. Yes. I want you to read the plan. I want to I want I want while you're reading it on the plane. I want to know your reaction. I'm going to watch a reaction wherever we're sitting each line. Okay. In fact, maybe you should read it out loud to the plan. Oh, that's a great idea.

18:42It's amazing. Anyway, the dominant story over the last week or so has been how the bottom seems to be falling out for Trump and Republicans after a ton of polls that seem too good to be true for Democrats, especially in red states, have been released. Nate Silver's flipper model. Nate Silver, still counting. Who Kirk had media podcasts. You have to check out. Excellent. And Gaelin Druke, check it out. It's, you know, it's going like gangbusters right now. Only a couple episodes in. It's excellent. Anyway, Nate's flipper model now puts Democrats chances of winning the Senate at 69 percent. Nice. And about 91 percent chance of winning the House. His likely voter, generic ballot has Democrats up nine points. And Democrats leading in all of the competitive Senate races. But then just as I predicted slash feared in our, I think our Wednesday meeting, I said, imagine if we wake up Thursday and we're trying to figure out what to talk about on the pod,

19:42and we get a New York Times poll. Sure enough, we did. So I think I told you that the rumors were swirling that the New York Times was in Michigan, conducting a polls we speak. That was just a tweet that both of us saw because our algorithms are set up. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is true. I'd also heard that from several people. Oh, you did. Okay. Well, you got real reporting there. Anyway, other Nate and his New York Times, Santa Poles dropped of Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine, and they brought us back to Earth. Good news is Abdul is up 49-44 over Mike Rogers and Michigan, although this was probably taken before that social media video of Rogers in the grocery store came out. Yes, that's true. Who knows? He could be taken lead now. Chris Papis in New Hampshire is up 50 to 45 over Johnson, New New. But in Maine, Troy Jackson is behind Susan Collins by 3.46 to 49. Now, just as we sat down over the last couple hours, there've been two additional main polls. There's a UNH poll where I think it was 51-47.

20:51And then there's a UMass Lowell poll, which is 49-43, and they're both the Jackson Leads and both of those. Now, they are not as high quality as the New York Times poll, which is the best, but there you go. What the hell do you think's going on in Maine? Well, let's stipulate a couple things. One, as you said, the New York Times is the best of the public pollsters. Does not mean they're infallible, but they are the best. I think Nate Cohn does the best. We once thought that J.A.N.S. Holtzer at the Des Moines Register was infallible. She was. Everyone's infallible till they aren't, John. That's the thing. So that's one. Two, the average, these before these two polls that you mentioned came out according to Nate. So, versus is Jackson plus 2.8. And so it's worth just remembering that in polls like this, Jackson and winning by 2.8 and Collins and winning by three points are both within the range of

21:51outcomes. What the poll, what all the polls are telling us is that this is a very, very close race. It is a toss-up race. If I had to pick which side I would rather be at this point, I would rather be Trey Jackson and Susan Collins, as Hardin is she is to beat just because the political winds are so much at Jackson's back. I can go through here and it's interesting to look at this Nate Cohns poll and the other polls and see what wise is one difference. It's the only one that has shown Collins winning of all the polls we've seen in for weeks. Yeah, and I know you've been doing some unscuing of that poll today because you're a big proponent of poll unscuing. Now, as I wrote in the message box today, poll unscuing is loser shit. You shouldn't do it. But I do think when you get two polls with different results, it's worth trying to understand what that difference is. And notably, this is not a more Republican sample than other polls. That's not the problem. Nate Cohn looks through and it looks exactly like a CNN poll that came out recently that has Jackson up three. A couple of things that I would point out from this poll that I think are noteworthy, which is Susan Collins is a big image advantage here. She has a net positive

22:58rating of three points. Jackson is I think about seven or eight points underwater. But what's most I would say on that one before you go on like that. I was not surprised that I was maybe a little surprise, but not really surprised that Susan Collins had a favorable image in the poll, right? I think she was like 5148. Yeah, she was a little higher than I thought. She was underwater last time. There have been a lot of ads. She's had a big spinning advantage. So it's not shocking that she would get to that. That's all with it. That's possible. The more shocking result was Jackson's favorability, unfavorability, which is 4149. Yeah. And what is most notable of that, like Jackson's much less well known. He has, it took him a long time to get up on air. People don't really know who he is. He was just a legislative leader who had run for government and relatively low profile race. Is this poll has 18% of 2024 Kamala Harris voters. We have an unfavorable impression of Jackson. Yeah. That's kind of just, you know, maybe people in me can tell to otherwise, but that's hard to see how that's possible. It just runs against the basic trend of polarization where people support, you don't naturally have a reflexive favorite opinion of the

24:02people in their party. And Jackson is not a controversial candidate. He's more of blank slate. So it would be one thing if he had a lower approval, but there was a large number of Democrats who did not know who he was. That's not really what's happening here. So that's the other thing that I think is just very interesting about this sample is, and these are small subgroups that are going to have large margin of errors. But this poll has Jackson only winning Jackson endorsed by Bernie Sanders progressive winning voters under 30 by two points. That was great. It's like his worst demographic in 2020 according to exit polls. When Susan Collins was winning by almost nine points against the regidion, she will host voters under 30 by 16 points. So like if you just move those things, just sort of normalize you get to what I think this is, which is a incredibly close race against a hard candidate. The pro colon side has a $25 million spending advantage going forward. If you look at all the reserved at spent money spent and money

25:02at time reserved, that's a huge advantage in the state. The size of Maine that can have an impact here, but this is the state that wants Democrats to be in charge of the Senate by 11 points. Yeah. And those two things, it's so important. 12% of main voters who want Democrats who told the New York Times they want Democrats to control the Senate said that they will vote for Susan Collins in this in this poll. And again, like you said, it's not just say that the poll is wrong. No, no, no, I'm not saying it all. But if you're the Jackson campaign and you're reading this poll and maybe your private polling also has it maybe maybe not a three point deficit, but you're close, what do you do differently? You have to go at the point you just made. Regarles of how you feel about Susan Collins. Regarles of how you have voted for Susan Collins in the past. If you think that Donald Trump should no longer be in charge of the Senate, if you think that there should be some sort of check on Donald Trump, you have to vote for Trojaxon. That is exactly what you're maybe a Democrat. You voted for Collins in 2020. Maybe you've voted for Collins before that. Maybe you think Collins is different than these other Republicans.

26:03But if you care about who controls the Senate, if you're angry about what's happening in this country, the way to express that anger is a vote for Trojaxon. I wonder, and now again, I don't know what's going on in the state of Maine because we're not on the ground there. But from where we sit, I can say that like that race has not been nationalized in any way. We don't hear much about that race since Platon or dropped out. It's interesting to me to compare it with Michigan, where obviously a dual has gotten a ton of attention. That race has gotten a ton of attention. There's obviously a very divisive primary there. If you asked a national audience, a national audience of political junkies who talk about this all the time, they might tell you, well, it dual is pretty polarizing. Maybe it was tough after the primary to get Democrats on board with them. Maybe he still needs more Democrats. Who knows? Mike Rogers is boring. It seems like

27:04an old school Republican. Maybe he'll do well. In that poll, and we can talk more about it in a second. But if dual has got 95% of Democrats, he's got a better favorability rating than Jackson, for sure. Even after he's been beat up on Fox News and elsewhere all the time. It does make you wonder to someone who is more unknown nationally or even in their state. I've dual somewhat known in his state, but also, Tred Jackson was Senate Minority Leader there. Do you need to be out there everywhere all the time? Either doing events or doing press that it's going to reach a lot more voters who don't pay close attention to politics to get your name idea up there? You absolutely might. I think this race was a Bout Graham Platner, not about Susan Collins for a long time. It became about neither. Maybe a little bit more about Tred Jackson than Susan Collins, or at least 50-50. You've got to make it more about Susan Collins. You have to be the candidate that you can be. I don't know Tred Jackson.

28:05Abduals obviously a very specific candidate who can go on every... Ken and Will and once go on every single podcast in the world and be everywhere. And when Oswald is a certain candidate who is on MSNBC every night, that may not be Tred Jackson, but I think he has to do... It's actually interesting because it's not even that this poll suggests that people don't know who he is since we need to be out there more. I just don't buy that. I just do not... I could be wrong in Nate Cohen wrote in his... I really think I appreciate about Nate Cohen is when his polls don't match what everyone else thinks. He doesn't hurt his polls. And then he will explore and take on the idea that maybe it's an outlier. In fact, Nate Cohen in the column he wrote about the poll raised the question, is it an outlier or an omen? So he may be telling us what's coming. But as we sit here today, I am very just skeptical with the idea that Democrats do not like Tred Jackson. Yeah. Well, we'll see.

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31:15Nutrifull's hair growth supplements are peer-reviewed NSF certified for sport and clinically tested. Adding Nutrifull to your daily routine is easy. Order online, no prescription needed with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus with a Nutrifull subscription, you can stay up to 20% and get added perks like free headspace membership to support your hair health journey. See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months. Right now, Nutrifull is offering our listeners 10 bucks off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit Nutrifull.com and enter the promo code Crooked. That's Nutrifull.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code Crooked. One caveat on that main poll, almost all of it was conducted before a fairly explosive propeldica story alleging that the FBI was investigating whether a major Susan Collins donor, former Navatex CEO Martin Cow, a defense contractor, had essentially participated in a paid-a-play

32:15scheme. Campaign money in exchange for Collins helping secure federal defense contracts. And that the investigation was still active when Trump's purge of FBI and justice department officials ended it in 2025. Particularly notable piece of evidence in the piece and they have these emails. In 2019, Cow met with Scott Reed who ran a Susan Collins Superpack, then told him via email that he was writing a $150,000 donation through a shell company, put it in writing. And then seven days after the money was deposited, Collins asked for cows number so she could thank him. Here's Collins pretty angrily denying the whole thing. It is so offensive, legally false. And it is so offensive. It really offends me. And I'm offended for myself too. Code red, we have gone from concerned to offended.

33:16Multiple times offended. So offended. That's like as exercised as Susan Collins gets. What you read on the story and its potential impact, we should also say by the way that all the denials afterwards from Susan Collins' interstaff, Republican ran another story the next night that some of those were just lies. She was like, oh, well, the Biden administration investigated this. They found no wrongdoing. It was closed. She was talking about like an earlier investigation into cow. And then there was a later investigation. And that's where she and her Superpack and her staff and her office, whatever they were part of. So she wasn't, they're not telling the truth, even in their denials already, which is easily proven. But so who knows. But anyway, what do you think? You generally do not want your candidate's name donor FBI investigation in the same sentence ever. Shell company donation. Yeah. Just a ton of words. You don't want. Yeah. How much is it going to matter? I don't know the answer to that. It, you know, there has been a lot of advertising spent trying to tell main voters that Susan Collins is corrupt. There's a

34:20Democratic Superpack ad that's up right now from the, I think it's the arm of the Senate majority pack that it, you know, talk about donations from Epstein donors and votes about the Epstein files and all of that. Obviously, there are a lot of smart people working on this race. We're looking at a lot of data. I just have remained skeptical that you're going to convince main voters after all these years and all these years of voting for Susan Collins that she is corrupt. I just, that may, I did a lot of work by pre-packaging days in very small states like South Dakota, where everyone has relationship with their politician. And they have it, you know, this is, this was Joe Biden and Delar before his vice president and same thing. I think it's just very hard to convince people that she's corrupt. And then that's the reason to it. And doing it easier to convince people that Susan Collins is just MAGA and is going to mean, you know, that she's just going to let Trump do what he wants. I think you have a better chance of that considering the track record

35:25that that's like we're going to finish this podcast. It's going to come out tomorrow morning and I'm going to get probably a lot of texts from people working in the effort. You're going to show me data that says otherwise, but yeah, no, I, I genuinely, I'm asking the question because I genuinely don't know because the point is not she's MAGA. Like that's also not credible. It has to be the real thing, which is if they tell, it was a, this was a good exercise. You have to tell a story. What is the story of Susan Collins where she was an independent vote? You're, you're for a main. And you maybe don't like her or maybe you're a Democrat or you're maybe, you know, but you have voted for Susan Collins in the past. Maybe you didn't last time. Maybe you're undecided. And you do think that she's someone, as you can see in this poll, who has delivered for Maine and she breaks with Donald Trump and other Republicans once in a while. What's the story you tell that voter? I think the story is that she has voted with Donald Trump, whatever it is, 92% of the time. She has supported him when Trump has needed her. There are, we have incredibly high stakes decisions, including Supreme Court justices. They're going to come up for the next few years and

36:25do you want someone who agrees with people of Maine or someone who's going to vote with Donald Trump? Yeah, I might, I've been thinking about this. I might, it's a little more subtle, but I think you can run an ad campaign around this, which is like, she's been there forever. And she has been in Washington too long and the longer she's been in Washington, the more she's gotten like Washington. And she went there and at one point, maybe she was an independent voice who delivered for Maine, look at the cost of living in Maine, home heating oil, just hit its highest price ever in Maine. Like for all that she's delivered for Maine, has she done that much for your life right now? And now she's got this lobbyist issue and she's now voting for Donald, voting with Donald Trump 95% of the time. Like what happened to Susan Collins? Don't we want to change right now? I mean, which combines a few of those things, but often times when, and I've been on the losing end of this, when I work for Tom D'Aschron South Dakota, oftentimes the way you beat a well-liked politician with a long history in a state is you tell a story about how they've changed. And usually how they've got Washington. I think that what you're hitting on the right way, I just did not, but I can be convinced

37:28people with internal polling data. I can't make events going to reach me. But I am not, but as of yet, prior to that point, I'm not convinced that the way that the change is she's corrupt. You know, like you can go Washington. Like the way they took Dashel down a whole bunch of other ways was that he became more liberal than the state. Yeah. And the proxy for that in this case, and he was, is the voting with Trump 90% of the time. And that he had gone Washington and he lived in Washington and he had a Washington lifestyle. I think when this one I think it's more she goes along to get along in her public and party. And that is rural consequences for me. And she has done that throughout the Trump era. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the two less psychologically destabilizing times polls. Michigan and New Hampshire. On one hand, we love a five point lead, especially where the dem candidates are at 49% in the case of Abdul and 50% in the case of Papis. On the other, both Abdul and Papis are underperforming the generic ballot in their respective states.

38:30What do you make of these polls and these two states? I think the explanation for the Michigan result is easier than the New Hampshire result. Yeah. When you look at the polls, you can see it, which is as you point out, two Abdul's credit and frankly to the credit of Kaley Stevens and Kretchen Whitmer and just almost everyone in Michigan. Team players all around. They got a board and they have united the Democratic Party. The damage to Abdul has lingered among independents. In a World War Trump has absolutely putrid appropriating with independence. It's essentially a tie among independents between Abdul and my graduate switch explain, which is why this race is five points, not ten points. Although 8% of Trump voters back Abdul, which is more than back Trojaxson or which we're going to have a Reagan's conversation about the horseshoe effect. If that happens in the end, the other reason why Abdul is winning my five, not more. This is hard because they did not include the governance race in here. So there was not, you don't have this other

39:32baseline. In previous polls, we talked about this race. We've showed that the delta between what Jocelyn Benson was getting of the group in Trojaxson and what Abdul is getting in the Senate race. That gives you a sense of whether it's underperforming the state. On the question of whose more extreme, there's by 14 points voters see Abdul's more extreme than my graduate. That is what that is bleeding into the independent numbers. I think which is why it's five points, not seven points, eight points, nine points or ten points. Now I'll take a one point win. I don't get to share. Right. See, we will have this discussion afterwards about how he does, because this is going to matter so much to this battle of narratives heading in the 2028 about the currency of a candidate with Abdul's progressive values and positions. And not just a battleground state like Michigan, but also a top tier primary state now. Yeah. And the other thing is of all these three states, Michigan is the swingiest state, more conservative state. So he is doing the best of the three polls. That is the best poll,

40:35which you might not have guessed heading into it. He also is the only Democrat of the three who beats his Republican candidate on cost of living. That is also deeply concerning. Plus nine for the other two. Yeah. But yeah, Abdul's plus nine on who do you trust more on cost of living plus 24 on health care, which again, I think speaks. I think all three of these polls scramble a lot of narratives on all sides of the Democratic discourse. But the idea that's you know, Abdul's cost of living economic populist message is earning him more trust among voters on the most important issues for voters than the other two candidates is notable. And then he has not paid a price for Medicare for all. Right. No, the Republicans have not litigated Medicare for all because they're afraid to do so. Right. Right. So what's going on in New Hampshire? I will say, you know, also, I've come a little bit by six. Right. It was 4842, I think. In New Hampshire? Yeah. She won by two point eight points. Two. Oh, it was less. Yeah. Okay. So I'm so much correct, but I'm pretty sure that's right.

41:36Okay. So it's better than that's better than she did in New Hampshire. But what's going on? It's it's once again below the generic ballot, which is like a leaven in New Hampshire. The I think this is really about the two candidates. When you dig in the polling, it doesn't make it to any sense. Papas is doing better with independence than Sanu Ngu. There is less enthusiasm among Democrats for Papas, although he's mostly consulted the party. The thing really is is that Johnson, you knew, is part of a, and we do not talk about Alex last week, is part of a well-known, well-known, like, political dynasty in New Hampshire that is associated with being anti-Trump. You remember his governor brother in moderate politics. In moderate politics and always has been, right, his father was chief of staff in the White House for Reagan. And but Chris Inunu, who was the governor for many terms, very, very popular and was the Republican's top choice to run for the seat, was a very, very outspoken, aggressive Trump critic. Remember, he went to the mattresses for Nikki Haley until Trump became an nominee and then he

42:40just backed Trump. But like, he has that credibility. So it, this is a case where Papas is like, he's not a bad candidate in any way she performed. We think he's sort of a generic Democrat in this case. And Sanu Ngu is a Republican plus candidate. That is one where I can see the, because it was all very late primary, the closer we get, like if the Times pulled this again or there's a bunch of other polls in New Hampshire, I could see him doing better, like actually improving. What's, I mean, I think that's where he's also at 50. Right. So it's like, there's not that much room to run there. You're right on the money. It was 2.8. Yeah. I'm going to go to 2.8 in Kamala one in 2024. Zooming out from all these polls, which are overall take on the political environment right now. Too good to be true for Democrats, too early to tell, or you know, throw the time, Santa pulls and the average and keep on huffing the hope. I think you throw them on the average always. And that's that's that's honestly the real answer. Well, I mean, you throw in the average. The average still shows a slight advantage for

43:43Jackson, which as I said, is basically a toss up race. I think when you look at that, they like, do we all sit here and worry about a systemic polling error like 2016, 2020? Yes. Of course. We absolutely do. Now can I give you what Nate Silver's doom scenario is on that? That's, that's going to have. I know what I know. I know. Well, I feel like we should let tell everyone because one of the things that Nate describes, both Nate's describe this, is it possibility is in a lot of these polls, it's the red states where Democrats are doing best in these polls and specifically among demographic groups like younger voters, Latino voters, and now working class voters, right? Who obviously were more Trump in 2024 and so the swing is biggest among those groups. And so when you get to states with older populations, with wider populations like Maine, then you don't see as much of a swing, right? And maybe that explains, there was a New York poll out this week that showed Kathy Hokel only up nine in New York.

44:46There was a couple of Minnesota polls we talked about a while back that has Penny, Peggy Flanagan shows her in a tighter race. So it's like, what's with these sort of northern bluish states that are not as good for Democrats as like, Kansas may be in play and some other red states. So that's one. So maybe there's like a geographic thing going on. And then Nate Silver said, now those same voters, working class voters, Latinos voters in red states are also some of the groups where polls have tended to overestimate Democrats in recent election. So are we looking at like maybe all those good polls in the red states that are showing those swings are a mirage and it's a polling error and that these bluish, these bluer states that are showing it tighter are the real polls. Now that's the scary. That's the scariest. So let's take that. Let's take that a couple of different ways. One, like it is possible there's this sentiment polling error, right? And as you say, that polling error would be disproportionately taking place in the states you mentioned. The ones where we are most excited about right now, the reasons why that may not be happening. Yeah, and look, if they've

45:49polls are off by two points or two three points, that's not a polling error. That is a historically normal poll. One, the polls have been accurate in the midterms. No one ever believes the polls are accurate in 2022, but they're they're quite very much worse. Just the vibes were wrong. Right. The at least in the Trump era at least. Also this time, we have other data points that point towards a blue wave. Right. You have special election performance, you know, which in and of itself is not super predictive, but it's much more and this is some research Amy Walter has done the crypto crypto prices mean the special election results are much more predictive in midterms than presidential years for all the obvious reasons that it has down in 24. Well, it's just because the the larger the greater the proportion of lecture that is first time or less engaged less frequent voters, the greater the distance between the special election electorate and the actual electorate, that's that gap is less in midterms. Yeah. And we also have primary voting data where Democrats have been outfitting Republicans even in red states are just the total number of Democrats just saying

46:50primaries is way up. It's down for Republicans. And so those all contribute here and you can see that in and we were what we were with the Latino numbers, but in actual precinct results both in New Jersey and Virginia 2025. And then in the special election, we seem particularly in Texas. And that special Senate election that was on many months ago. You're seeing dramatic more than 20 point shifts among Latinos in Latino heavy precincts. So all of that indicates that I don't think this is like 2020 was a systemic error where everything the polls painted a picture of the world that did not exist. Now, maybe these polls are not painting maybe the blue wave is not as big as the polls suggest for all the reasons you mentioned, but there are all these other data points that would support the idea that this is very good Democratic Democratic. And then say you don't believe any of the polls, the price of gas, the price of groceries, the fact that mortgages hit seven, mortgages hit seven percent today. All of that are things that historically are very, very better than I'm part of. Now, I got a lot of theories about, you know, I've got I got bull cases,

47:53I got bear cases, I got things in the middle. And there are a couple I think the red state thing is really interesting. Like why are we doing better in red states and blue states? I think there are a couple of there's the potential polling error. So that that's obviously very real. Another one is in the Senate races, we have better candidates in the red states. Like I'm just Tallerico, Sherid, Paltolva, Turek, these are all truly excellent candidates. Cooper, were Cooper, John Assoff, for example, I've doled a very talented candidate, but like there's real reasons to believe he could underperform the environment there. Trey Jackson and I tested Chris Papis, you know, sort of not particularly well known candidate. The other one, which is the flip side of the polling error is we have squeezed every bit of blood from the stone of college educated states. Yeah. And where there just aren't that many people, you know, there's that much more. There's not that much swing left. We're swing remaining in like a new Hampshire. And you know, if you look at Trump's approval rating with, so Trump won

48:59non-college educated voters, which are disproportionate in these red states we're talking about by 34 points current examples. In the New York Times Bowl, he's only plus eight with them, nationally, in the number one first of temper. So if those, you know, non-college voters, non-college voters, particularly non-college white women are moving towards Democrats, that's going to have a much bigger effect. It's the inverse of what happened 2016. Right. And like that's the question, that's what we're really going to have to see. The only other doomer scenario is I got another one too. Yeah. Well, this is, and this is what the main result would show, which is, Trump ends up being quite unpopular. And, you know, we see an exit poll on the night of the election. It's like, Trump's approval was 38%, 40%, right? It would still be, that would be very low comparison. But all these Republican candidates were just able to convince people that they're different than Trump and that in your Republican, and you don't like Trump or you're an independent, you don't like Trump, but you can still vote for Republican Congress. And then you can just,

50:03you know, just be mad at Trump. And he's not going to be present anymore in a couple of years anyway. Okay. So somehow we've started to depolarize the electorate. Well, I think that there's, I don't know that it's depolarized in the way to think about it is, and this is different between 2018, my 2018 was great for Democrats, and 2022 was not great for Republicans. Yeah, right, right. And this is Ron Brownstein's thing that he talks about all the time, which is our success we dictated by the percent of people who disapprove of Trump we vote for a Democrat. We got, you know, high 80s, in some cases, 90% of those people in 2020, is 2018, and 2022 Republicans got much fewer. And so that's why we were able to win in Pennsylvania, Georgia places lay at now. You know, it's obviously these are small sample sizes, but we also had Republicans had Bikinets in 2022, which maybe why that is. Yeah. And then the other thing to think about here is, because I was struck by this cook political battleground report where they, Paul, I think we talked about last week, where they did 37 districts that are the, all the toss-up mean Democrat, lean Republican districts in their ratings that has those districts all together

51:11have a Trump plus five, Trump won them by five points. The generic ballot has, in that poll, has Democrats won him by two, which is seven point seven points, but it's the bottom half, you know, it's the floor of the range we're seeing in the polls. Like you see a seven-point generic poll that he kind of like, yeah, not that great, we're used to these 11s and 12s. And one possibility there, but in, but in battleground. Well, right. But the way to, the reason why it could be more, the battlegrounds would be more at the floor than the ceiling is, or under their, under the national average is because the campaign is being wage there. So if you are just in a non-competitive state and not competitive district, all you're getting is Trump bad news. Right. And so you look at then 2024, the swing in the battleground states. Oh, yeah, this is like the Kamala. The Kamala argument is, I think it was like two point something, and the national swing was 4.8. So where there's, you're actually voters, right? She did surprisingly worse in blue states in 24. And the campaign made the argument afterwards

52:11that no one cared about because she lost that like actually where they waged the campaign and spent a whole bunch of money, she did better than she did nationally. And so like that does, in a national that does, does you know good in a like losing by less in a battleground state, could you know actual electoral points? But narrowing the margins there is going to take some of these districts, there could be like plus 12, plus 10 get a lot harder if it is actually the case. If we actually see that Republican spending money, politics is a focus, can narrow that what the generic ballot is nationally. Anyway, the upside of this is Democrat candidates need money because we're being outspent and they need help. And how can they get help, John? Then go to votesafeamerica.com. And we can send you out to a state, we'll give volunteering shifts and you can donate to the Senate fund or the House fund and we'll split it up between the most competitive races. I do feel like before we move on here to our very important last topic that I just want to say

53:15this because I know I have this brand as a doomer, as someone who wades through Silver Council for Darklinings, but even my worst case scenario here that I'm laying out, other than this is Stamac Pulling Air where everything is fucked, is consistent with Democrats winning the House and potentially winning the Senate too. These are questions of margins. But like the worst case scenario, the worst real realistic bear scenario is so optimistic and apparent to what we thought of a possibly way. That's true. That is true. We do have one more Senate race to talk about before we get to our final. That's right. Well, I think this is the important topic too, which is the New York Times report on Mary Peltola's campaign in Alaska. For those who didn't read it, the Times described Peltola's political operation during the campaign and in Congress as being chaotic and not a great place to work and gave a few examples, including quote, angry and profane outbursts from the candidate who allegedly at one time shoved an aid and frustration, which Peltola's campaign said was being mischaracterized. Times also

54:17wrote that one of Peltola's demands was quote, requiring aides to feed live crickets to her family's pet, chameleon, meatball. The campaign pushed back on the story and cited Peltola's grief over her mother and husband's deaths over a few months in 2023 is being partially responsible for any outbursts. What did you make of the story? It gave me no political concern for Mary Peltola. Like this is clearly an attempt to sort of do to her what happened to Katie Porter? Yes. And sort of have this or that was done to Amy Klobuchar in the 2020 Democratic primary. I look at this and I cannot see a world in which this story makes it less likely that she wins the Senate race in Alaska. Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I will say this, like I feel like I have been spoiled in my life and politics because we worked for a boss who was unbelievably nice to us. Not y'all and always patient. And I do not have a lot of patience for bosses and politics or elsewhere

55:18who are mean. And if one of them was mean to me or bullying, I would fucking get out of there. I just can't, but I don't have an experience with that. And I have no idea what it's like to work from Mary Peltola or Katie Porter or any of these people that there's been stories about. I will say it is hard to imagine that even if I have had a horrible experience with a boss in politics or especially in politics or on a campaign that I would leave and then a month before an election for a seat that could determine control of the United States Senate would ring up the New York Times and complain about it. I just can't get there. And I'm like, who know, I could not put myself in the shoes of someone who would do that. Not at least I can put myself in the shoes and I wouldn't do it. I think it's fucking nuts. I have, I've worked for great bosses, absolutely great bosses. Brock Bob was one of them. I've also been a river of that. I also work for Senate leadership. So I've been yelled at by lots of centers that I didn't even work for all the time.

56:19It's not. I still get yelled at by center. Yeah, I still I still have everyone so all that still happens. And you know, that is it is terrible. And there are some really shitty bosses on Capitol Hill and in life like that it that is absolutely true. The there are some there's some context of some of this, which is right after Mary Paul Tova had lost her mother in her husband. And was dealing with grief. And some things are like there are definitely cases where bosses do ask things of their employees. And this is true. I truly remember some Congress that are not appropriate in the said, they go behind just duties like, you know, pick up the dry cleaning, babysitting our kids. You hear those stories and that is bad. I don't think feeding the pet while your thousands of miles away or running for reelection is that's probably annoying. And I think kind of gross. So a lot of people to feed life crickets to an animal like my wife would not like that at all. Yeah, which is why we'll never fulfill my son Jack's dream of having a pet tarantula. Oh boy. That's what he really wants.

57:24Okay. But it's also not something you think like, you know what? That is so bad. And it's got like some text from her too. Yeah, like, like, you know, has a few, you know, the word the effort. They're bad. They're bad. But it's like also the idea that again, that a former staff member would be like, hey, New York Times, here are the texts from my boss when she was really angry and said something awful. I think if you like, that stuff was quite it was quite inappropriate. But you sort of have to and like, we shouldn't mesh stuff should not be tolerated. But you have to weigh that against the consequences of Republican Senate that confirms a Supreme Court justice in 2027 or like the rest of her career in personality. Like, people have bad fucking moments. That's the other thing. I was like, I just can't, I can't tell at the like the one thing that comes out about you were going to use it to like, and you know, yeah, fuck off. Yeah, like, I don't know her. So I have no context. Some of these other politicians you hear this about, we have met before. Right. I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I think

58:30from a political perspective, like, I don't see this as is hurting her at all. She's very, very well liked in Alaska. Yeah. Okay. One last thing before Tommy's interview with Colin Capernick, according to Alabama Senator Tommy Turraville, I have a new reason to be worried when I get on the plane this afternoon. Let's watch. We're excited. Many airline pilots flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. When you walk on to a commercial flight, it's possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetus of dressing up like an animal. Also, transgenderism is a mental disease blown up emoji next to him on an easel. So like, I don't even want to know what the rest of the speech was about. I think it's best we don't. Yeah. So a bit of context there because clearly that needs context. That came from Turraville's, it's a 20 minute floor speech on Tuesday where he warned about the dangers of gender confusion.

59:34There you go. That's about that he did gender confusion. That was probably the first section of the speech that he moved into the furry section. That's one. Yes. Turraville is currently squaring off against Doug Jones in the race for Governor of Alabama. On Thursday, Turraville tweeted a link to a recent furry migration convention, which he said featured an aviation furs meetup before posing the question, would you be comfortable with a mentally ill furry being your pilot? I mean, well, now you're saying mentally ill furry. Yes. Like, I don't want to I don't want a person who's mentally ill as a pilot. No. But I don't know if they're whatever they do when they're not safely flying me to my destination, I'm fine with. I know you are. And look, you and I have gone on many fights together over the years. And I've honestly ever since we watched this clip this morning or Edge for many, never seen you more excited to get on a plane. Like, we're doing this podcast early. So you can get the airport early. And I'm like, can I get, look, I'm not, I'm not, getting off this plane unless I am assured that our pilots, at least one of them could be the

1:00:35co-pilot for a furry. Do you think there's some sort of flying the furry skies? So do we have a, we have a pod title? Is that what that is? Woo, Tommy's, that guy has has to be the dumbest motherfucker in the Senate for sure. Right? Yeah. I mean, that yeah, I was not say Congress, because you just don't know. Check out the house. Yes, Senate. I can buy that. I think Senate. He's, he's it. He's the dumbest one. Anyway, but God, it would be nice if if Alabama was a different state and Doug Jones could win that one. Maybe he will. Maybe he will. Maybe this is it. Maybe there's a giant pro furry vote that we don't know about. Mary Peltola, that story doesn't out matter. The furry story takes down Tubergill. That's what I'm going with. When we come back, Tommy's interview with Colin Kaepernick. Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice.

1:01:36Every year, professional sports pumps roughly 350 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Most pro teams put sustainability on the bench for Mont-Green Football Club put it in the starting lineup. During the pandemic, Vermont Green FC co-founder Patrick Inferna and his friends got on the Zoom call and asked themselves a simple question, what if a soccer club could actually mean something and how it runs, how it travels, and what it does with its waste, how it treats the community, and what it asks of the young players who wear its jersey. Today, Vermont Green FC, two-time USL-2 champion draws thousands of fans every week with a model that puts community, climate justice, and belonging at the center of the game. They've proven that sports can be joyful, affordable, and deeply connected to the issues shaping our future. This week, on Into the Mix, host Ashley C. Ford sits down with Vermont Green FC co-founder Patrick Inferna to talk about environmental justice, compassionate masculinity, and building community over franchise. Find Into the Mix wherever you get your podcasts. Pots of America is brought to you by Wilda Laskin Company.

1:02:37The difference between low and high-quality seafood is enormous, but it's also one of those things that's tough to accurately assess for yourself in the grocery store. Wilda Laskin Company offers the best way to get wild-cut, high-quality seafood delivered to your door on your schedule. Each Wilda Laskin box comes with individually-portioned fillets, vacuum sealed, easy to prep, and great for any meal no matter how quick or elevated. All fish is quick frozen, fresh from the Alaskan waters, which helps lock in its freshness, texture flavor, and key nutrients like omega-3s. Its fish you can trust with no GMOs, antibiotics, or other additives. Every order supports sustainable harvest practicing, and Alaskan fishermen whose history is tied to the region and practice. We love Wilda Laskin at our house. We've gotten a bunch of shipments. The fish is always super high-quality. It tastes great. I've made salmon fillets. I've made fish tacos out of whitefish. There's a million different things you can do. It tastes great. It's super fresh. You know it's healthy. Your family will love it. We highly recommend it. Wilda Laskin Company is so confident that their fish is the best that they offer a 100% satisfaction and money-back guarantee,

1:03:41so you can try your first box risk-free. Go to wildaLaskin.com slash crooked for $35 off your first order of premium wild-cott seafood. That's wildaLaskin.com slash crooked for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wilda Laskin Company for sponsoring this episode. My guest today played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers. He's the co-founder of the Know Your Rights Campaign and the author of the new book, The Parallels Fight, Colin Kaepernick. Great to meet you. Great to meet you too. Excited for the conversation. Thank you for coming in. It's amazing to have watched you played and to have read about you for so long. But then to read the book and to get to hear you tell these stories in your own voice and correct the record in a lot of places, I think, is really important. It's a great book. Congratulations on the getting it done. Thank you. It was a lot of corrected the record. A lot of process in there. But I'm excited to sound in the world and hopefully people are able to take that. Run with it. Hopefully gives them some new insights, some new perspective and gives us a pathway

1:04:46to be able to discuss how we move forward. Yeah. So I bet a lot of listeners, look, my show's, my audience is like, they're obsessed about politics, probably not so much sports. Yeah. They probably heard your name around 2016 and are aware of kind of the quote-unquote controversy. But they don't know how much success you had on the football field before that. Like, can you just tell folks about the 2012 season? Because that story alone could be a book. It was just like this incredible, right, moment. Yeah. So the 2012 season, this is my second year in the NFL. At that point in time, I'm a backup quarterback behind Alex Smith. Alex gets hurt. I've been training, preparing, waiting for this moment to step on the field, take over for him. My first start was a Monday night football game against the Chicago Bears. Went out, played really well. And during that time period, Jim Harbaugh, who was our head coach,

1:05:49made the decision, we're going to stick with you. And Alex was playing incredibly well. So the change wasn't, hey, he's playing bad or anything. But on the back of that, then became, we're going to the playoffs. My first playoff game against the Green Bay Packers. We go up, we go out, we put up, I think it was 45 points. It's crazy. Said a NFL record, 181 yards rushing. My first playoff game. And then ultimately went to the Super Bowl that year. And 263 passing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You were busy, man. And that came. We were busy. It was a good love for us. It's crazy. Yeah. I think you made it all the way to the Super Bowl. The first season you started. And that's like, two, two, for folks listening, that doesn't happen very often. It's like you and Tom Brady and like a couple of folks. And it was, the Super Bowl was my 10th NFL start. It's crazy. So it wasn't even a full season, jumped in in the Super Bowl. And then the following year went back to the NFC championship.

1:06:53So like it's not only that you were one of 32, you know, starting NFL quarterbacks, like you were playing at the highest possible level, which I think is just relevant when we get into the conversation about the NFL blackballing you later. Yes. So let's fast forward to 2016. There's this like a series of very high profile horrific cases of black men being essentially executed by police. Yeah. Freddie Gray and Baltimore, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Flindo Castile, just name a few. Can you describe how those stories impacted you and kind of like built on what you've been reading and studying throughout your life? Yes. So those those killings directly impacted me and directly impacted the protest. But prior to that, I've been I've been reading. I've been researching a lot of the material insights in history that I wasn't giving growing up in school. And that what kicked that off was the autobiography autobiography of Malcolm X that my wife Nessa gave me. And that then took me

1:07:58down a path of reading Fanon, reading Huey Newn in Angela Davis in Steve Beekle in Garvey. And all of these black revolutionary leaders that have looked at systems and why are these systems producing these outcomes and how do we actually work to be able to address the systems. So have been doing that also in advance of this, we've seen we've seen Mike Brown be killed and the Ferguson uprising. We've seen Tamir Rice. We've seen Eric Garner. So this has been going on for years and there's there's a whole history behind it. And a lot of the conversation that was happening in 2016 in the the groups that I was talking with are what we have to do something. And we have to do something significant to address this. And that ultimately led to the protest at the beginning of the NFL season. And it's also an important context. This is a little bit of a new

1:09:03era for us where social media is much more prominent. As we have these police killings happening, they're traveling. And we're traveling across the country. We're all watching it. I think the the direct comparison here is, I mean when we look at Rodney King being beaten by the police, there were riots. We're at a place now where we see black people being killed with such consistency that we're being desensitized to it. It's being so normalized that it becomes like, oh man, another one. And then people go about their day. As opposed to we have to take action to stop this. And we need to do it urgently. We need to do it definitively. And so you you decided to protest. You you sit during the anthem for a couple games. Finally, a reporter notices. I think seems to Steve Weish. You tell him, quote, I'm not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a

1:10:05country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football. And it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid to leave and getting away with murder. You I think you mentioned this conversation to your partner, Nessa. She says, how hard do you go? You said four out of 10. Turns out a call and four is like a massive global story. It breaks containment from sports media. Everyone's got an opinion on it. I'm like, Fox News and shit. Did it surprise you how how much the story sort of blew up right away? It did. Now I I had an expectation of I thought there would be a certain response. And in particular, from white people. Now that statement, I thought was just pretty straightforward. In factual. So I didn't think it was something that would would blow up into the story that it was. That's why my mind I was like, that was a forot. There's a whole lot

1:11:06about it. Exactly. I said that go a lot further than that. But I think what it what it got to the crux of is how fragile this this persona or or facade of justice and liberty and freedom. And when you actually poke at that. And is this actually being applied to everyone? Is everyone actually in a space where they're able to get they're able to have safety. They're able to walk the streets and not be targeted. And the response on the other side of that was so aggressive and so loud. To me, it was in many ways it was curious as to why it was so controversial to say police shouldn't kill black people. I think that was very, very revealing. And I'll also say in response to it, there was also overwhelming support as well. So I want to make sure that that both of those

1:12:12are covered because what we really saw was two sides of America in that response. And some of that being significant pushback and some of that being no, we're seeing this every day in our communities. We have to address this now. Yeah. So there's this massive debate. I mean, you're right. There definitely were supporters and then people like loudly criticizing you. It was like it was hard to read that your family wasn't initially very supportive of you. They were like, we know cops. You're kind of embarrassing us. I mean, that must have sucked and tough. Yeah, not not the response you want or I expected. Yeah. And it's, again, I have gotten to a place that whatever people's responses are, that's what it's going to be. But to me, I want to stay focused on the issue. And I have to keep moving towards addressing that. And in that moment, as much as

1:13:12that was like shocking to me, it also, in many ways, it validated a lot of the experiences that had prior. And also was very similar to the responses that we were seeing across the country. So I think the parallels there, not that made better, but it made it less shocking in that regard. But obviously not the response that you want to get. Yeah. Debates about free speech in America always seem to get hung up on how someone is protesting and not what they are protesting. That is very stupid. But just like, let's entertain that debate for a minute. Like when you look back at, I was just trying to think about it. I look back at your protests. You're not trying to distract from the anthem. You're not trying to call attention to yourself. You're like a big, you're six four. You're physically making yourself smaller in the moment, right? By like sitting or kneeling. And every other context kneeling is respectful. Right? If a guy

1:14:15gets hurt on the football field, everyone takes a knee, when you go to church, you pray, you get on your knees, right? Like, so, but the debate becomes, this is disrespectful to our troops or some should or like no one's talking about peace, brutality. And it just like, it feels like that was, I don't know, was that incredibly frustrating? Did you expect that? Oh, it was very frustrating, but it, there was a realization that all of the conversation was used as a distraction or deterrent to actually addressing the issue. It was the, the form of protest. It was the flag. It was the military. Then it became, you know, the conversation with the NFL. All of the conversation and where a lot of the media ran with it was two spaces other than the actual issue of police killing black folks.

1:15:17And for us, we tried to approach it from a space of, well, anytime we're asked, we're just going to bring it back to this, this issue. But you, you can't control the whole media landscape. And it's also interesting. We're also in a new media landscape where views and clicks in the business models are changing during this time period. So it becomes what we need eyeballs. And what's the thing that's going to get us more eyeballs becomes part of that conversation as well. In addition to some of the, I would say some of the reporters or outlets that may be taking a little more nefarious approach to try to redirect the conversation to gain political points or try to rally people around political parties. Right. And so, you know, the NFL, again, the FESF wrote a little bit, they collude to black

1:16:18ball you and prevent you from playing again. You file a legal action against a league for collusion. You eventually settle with them. I hadn't realized until I read the book, how much politics influenced the outcome of a legal process. And frankly, like the options available to you, can you explain that to listeners and how the Supreme Court in particular factored into your thinking? Yeah. Well, first within the grievance process with the NFL, we tried to avoid going down that process. We reached out to the NFL in advance, tried to ask to have a conversation and they were like, no, file it. Good luck. Really? So it was a surprising response to the phrase. So, and this is on the back of NFL coaches saying, like, oh, he's a starter in this league. So it was very obvious what was happening. And we're like, look, just like, let's just cut this out and get back to what we should be doing.

1:17:20But that ultimately led to the grievance process. Now, the the jurisdiction that we have to operate within is the arbitration process that's in the collective bargaining agreement. So that's laid out. Now, as part of that, we did look at options of, can we get outside of that jurisdiction? And if so, how do we go about that? And as we did that analysis, part of it became, if we go to a federal judge and try to go to federal court, they're going to kick it back to the jurisdiction of the CBA. The other part that became a factor is because Donald Trump had aligned himself and the NFL owners had aligned themselves with each other and had shared interests here. We see as Donald Trump is nominating Supreme Court just, Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, we also see NFL owners and organizations backing these candidates.

1:18:23So Michael Bidwell from the Arizona Cardinals, John L. Way of the Denver Broncos, backing these candidates in the process. The Supreme Court flips. It's now six three Republican. And we're in a space where at this point in time, it's very, very much a loyalty to Donald Trump. And the analysis is even if we get to the Supreme Court, and we have the best case, and it is, it is obvious, and they explicitly stated. It didn't seem like there was a scenario where they would ever rule in our favor. The business interests just weren't there. And I get that point in time. The conversation was also, is the Supreme Court actually going to operate in the way that was intended to? And we see some of that playing out. Your hesitation was well-founded.

1:19:23It turns out. Yeah. So, and that was early stages of this, but we have sent see that play out. So that led us into the traditional grievance process. We had to go through a special arbitrator on the back end of that. If you win there, then you can go to an appeal, which is a three-person arbitration board. But the structure is, if any one of those arbitrators makes a decision that NFL doesn't like, they can fire them and replace them. This process is so rigged. They've been lying there incentives to be like, well, you're going to rule in our favor. And we see this play out. And it's very rare that the NFL even gets to a place of settling a case. So that the evidence there was overwhelming. But it is a process that you have to navigate to your point. It is very much rigged. It's set up in the NFL's favor. And the NFL PA, the players union,

1:20:30isn't strong. So they haven't put the right safeguards in place for players and protections in place for players. And that's a whole other conversation. And also the politics of this. I mean, the issue got picked up by Trump so quickly. I mean, I think it's called protesting players, sons of bitches in a speech in September of 2017 in Alabama. Very subtle venue for that. I mean, how did his involvement in the conversation kind of change your experience of it? Well, we his involvement put much more of a political spotlight on it more than it already was. And then we see the NFL owners align to that as well. When we see him say get the sons of bitches off the field, we see the NFL owners follow suit. We see Bob Kraft who's the owner of the New England

1:21:30Patriots on Air Force one with him. We see Donald Trump calling Jerry Jones saying this a winning issue for me fall in line. We see Jerry fall in line. Woody Johnson became his ambassador to the UK. Exactly. So and this is in addition to NFL owners donating millions of dollars to him, his inauguration. We see Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, hosting a fundraiser, raising millions of dollars for him. So the alignment of their interests, we see become so closely connected that essentially their operating does one in the same. Speaking of NFL collusion, Nakamura was just pulled off of Ed Sheeran's tour. I'd have any of you the Bob Kraft's, throw to the Patriots you just mentioned by Oema Patriots fan. I don't feel great about it in this conversation, but I should just be honest. Bob Kraft calls Ed Sheeran. He says he's going to cancel your concert at Gillette Stadium in New England if Mackamore isn't dropped. According to the

1:22:34Wall Street Journal, Kraft was in touch with other team and stadium owners who were also going to cancel concerts if Mackamore wasn't dropped. Kraft was offended by comments Mackamore made in support of the Palestinian people in Baghazah. The collusion there sounds very similar to your case, but I wondered what your reaction to reading about all this was. The, they're just openly colluding now. To me, we have gotten to a place where in 2017, when we filed the collusion case, it was, no, we're not doing this. That's not what's happening. They're trying to deny it. All of the facts and evidence says otherwise. But as we sit here today and we're talking about Mackamore, we're seeing them do it openly. We're seeing them do it publicly. And brag about it to the Wall Street Journal. They're bragging about it and they also know or have

1:23:35a high degree of confidence. There's no repercussions. There's no accountability to them or for them. So I think for me, it gets me to a space of we collectively have to decide, are we okay with this type of collusion? Are we okay with this oligarchy operating in this way? Where they're able to attack and target individual citizens? And also, was that mean for everyone else that follows? So I think there should be very definitive action that people are taking to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah, I mean, look, Bob Kraft, he's got free speech too. He can be offended by whatever offense him. He's entitled to his opinion. I guess he's entitled to, I guess, who gets to play his venue. I watched the Mackamore speech. I thought it was entirely inoffensive. I know that Mackamore did wear a costume in 2014 that was really bad and he apologized for that

1:24:35of this anti-Semitic kind of like a mask. But I also went back and I looked at some acts that recently played at Gillette Stadium. And I think it's interesting to think about which artists get canceled or dropped in which don't. So Morgan Walland did a show at Gillette in 2025. In 2020, he was arrested for smashing a bunch of stuff in a bar when he was asked to leave. In 2024, he was arrested for throwing a chair off the roof of a bar in Nashville, which landed right next to a bunch of cops. And then in 2021, he was filmed screaming racial slurs. And then last month, Chris Brown played at Gillette. In 2009, he played at Guilty to felony assault charges for beating up Rihanna 2013. He punched Frank Ocean over a parking spot. I didn't even know about that. It's crazy, right? Later that year, he was involved in hit and run. Another assault, another assault in 2016. He was arrested in 2018, 2025. I saw belaboring this. But I'm not calling on Bob Kraft to cancel

1:25:36their shows or cancel them big picture. But again, in your case, it's like in your case, physical violence, including assaulting women, was not a deal breaker for Bob Kraft, but speech was. I just think that's interesting and worth noting. Well, we see that across the NFL as well. We see players that have legal issues and they they're welcome back in. And I can part, I look at those as it gives them it gives them leverage in many ways, the NFL owners and organizations. Because then in in helping navigate a legal situation, it's almost a it's almost a sense of you are now indebted to us. And you're going to take the actions that we want you to take. And we'll have requests that come along with that. Now, I think the threat to the the NFL owners are the people who are willing to to use their their voice. And also are not bought and paid.

1:26:44If they can't control you, that becomes a threat to them. If you're advocating for people that they view as counter to their interests, then it becomes a threat to them. And they will do everything they can to try to squash that and tamp that out. So I think there's a major issue there in the power that is wielded. And again, collectively as people, we have to look at this and say, well, are we okay with this? Or are we going to take action to try to make sure that this doesn't happen? Pots of America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. As the seasons change, your phone bill shouldn't go up. Free yourself from big wireless gimmicks this fall with Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas and switched to Mint for high-speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G

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1:28:53is owns all his own music and is independent from any label. So he's not facing the kind of control that you were just mentioning that players deal with. Yeah. So fast forward to 2020, George Floyd is murdered in front of our eyes. It explodes the conversation that you've been having for years now. This time the NFL is forced to respond to Roger Gidele post a video where he says, quote, we the National Football League condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black people. We the National Football League admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. He doesn't mention your name, which is pathetic. But do that feel like vindication because it's sure they mean sounds like vindication. No, because the only reason he did that video was because there was a video put out by some of the star players in the NFL calling him out and calling the NFL out for not doing anything. Over the last four years, but then also specifically in this moment in the wake of George Floyd being

1:29:54killed by police. And if you go if you go back and look at the video from the players and you look at the video from Roger Gidele, he says everything verbatim in that video with the exception of he changes. I think the players video said we apologize to the protesting players for not for not supporting them or something of that nature. And he says, well, we should have listened earlier. Even in this moment of national protests, international protests, the position is always to protect their own interests. And there's legal ramifications for them. If he's saying we apologize, admitting wrongdoing, which is why there's the kind of slight of hand there. But it again, they are always going to look out for their interests. And they will

1:31:01only take actions if it is in a space that they are forced to. They're never going to be proactive and say, Oh, you know what? We know this is an issue. We're going to go out and address it. They will always be looking at what's most profitable for us and how can we keep control and keep things out of the way. And I bet our minister don't know how much money Roger Gidele makes. I think it's like 64 million, 65 million that the kind of tail end of his contract. He is making it a saying about him, buddy. To do what? To fly in a private jet to games. Like a lot of people would love that job, Roger. I mean, to protect the owners and make them as much money as humanly possible. Well, that that's the protecting the owners and being the shield for the owners is the number one responsibility that right. And not the players. No, it has nothing to do with the players. Like, that's not where his allegiance is. That's not where his responsibility is. And again, when we look at when we look at contracts and agreements with executives like this, typically it is in the

1:32:05framework of you have a fiduciary responsibility. So they're always going to be looking out for their own financial interests. Now, to me, the part that becomes interesting in my case is the financial interests actually say otherwise. Because my jersey went to number one, we have the campaign that we did with Nike in 2018. We see a jump of $6 billion in their their valuation during that time period. So this also becomes one of the moments that we see them working counter to the business interests of the NFL. And more so, our focused on power and control than just the financials. Yeah, they wanted to show that they could silence you to silence future critics of the league or about whatever I guess. Exactly. And all of the ripple effects that come with that. Right. And power of players, stronger union, if players organized guaranteed contracts. So on the

1:33:06tail end of that, that could have financial implications for them. And a lot of those actions are we're going to try to protect this now and protect the power and control that we have to make sure this doesn't ever happen. It's crazy. The NFL of all leagues, like the most violent sport on the planet does not have guaranteed money or guaranteed contracts for players. Like if you always read the headline number at some agent leaks, but it's all bullshit. Like the guaranteed money is so low. And if you blow out your knee, you're just you're done, right? They cut you and you don't get paid. Yep. It is, we've seen one, I think two instances, a fully guaranteed contracts, extremely rare. And we've seen the NFL owners also be very critical and try to push on each other to make sure that doesn't happen. But NFL, NFL contracts or NFL lifespan is typically three and a half years on average. So you have a very short window to try to earn as much as you can

1:34:07the NFL before you're going to be out. That also misses where the union has to be stronger. Most of your long-term benefits as a player don't kick in until after year four. Or at least that was the case while I was playing. So you see this, you see the interest of the NFL show up in ways of that nature where they will try to maximize the profitability and their retention of dollars to the expense of the players. Right. College sports have changed. It's an entirely new scenario. I mean, they're changed completely since you were at the University of Nevada. Back then, a college player could get tuition, room, board, books. Now athletes can get paid for their name, image and likeness. It's easier to transfer. Some schools can they're paying athletes directly. What do you think of the evolution that we've seen? I think the evolution is needed.

1:35:11We've seen college sports for generations now exploiting athletes and exploiting their talents and not paying them for the labor and positioning as student athletes so they aren't employees so they don't have to go down this path of paying players. NIL helped open that door for players to get paid. I also think there should be more work done to be able to get them directly paid from the universities across the board for the players. Now some of the new legislation that is coming out. Tuckers is bill. That is essentially trying to recreate structures that professional organizations have, limiting players' ability to earn, creating non-competitive environments for teams. It's fascinating to me in a capitalist society

1:36:11where the position is, well, it should be meritocracy and the best person wins and, hey, if you have the best product and the best thing and you can pay for it, like you have to, everybody else just has to compete with that. What we see in these organizations, professional organizations and at the college level, is more so a collective that is built around socialism. We want to share our resources and we want to make sure we're doing revenue sharing and we all get an equal portion that, hey, if we're the Cleveland Browns, we're not making as much as the New York teams or LA. We need to balance this out to make sure there's some equity within this. Then when you get to the player's side, it's like, well, no, no, this just has to be pure competition. We're also going to cap. We're going to cap how much you can make because we need to protect our interests to make sure that we're making as much as we can.

1:37:12To me, it just becomes, it becomes insidious in the sense of why not just be open with what you're trying to accomplish and say it and let people address, hey, we agree with this or we don't. And the reality is the overwhelming majority of people don't agree with the approaches that they're taking and want people to be able to go out and earn as much as they can. Yeah, I mean, it's cartel, right? You and I couldn't go start. We can start a business. We can start a juice stand. We couldn't start a new NFL team. It scares the need. The values go up. Yeah, the owners make out like bandits, but the players aren't getting paid. Exactly. And they also have to become an NFL owner, the structures around that are to be able to make sure that that stays the good old boys club. I believe a significant portion of the purchase of an NFL team has to be in cash. I believe it's a 75% majority vote that you have to have to get approval.

1:38:17So they have created structures to be able to insulate themselves to make sure are you actually politically aligned with all of us? And there aren't going to be any mavericks out here. There aren't going to be any people that go rogue on us because we're going to make sure that we ensure that every person at Wastor's door to become an owner of an NFL team actually is aligned with our interests and it's going to take similar actions. That's crazy. In the book, you write about your approach to politics and voting and how it evolved over time. You just talk about how you're thinking change and what changed it. Yeah, so going back to 2016, a lot of what I had seen in politics and also looking at some of the historical perspectives around politics was politics hadn't changed a lot for the black community. There are pockets where you see this show up but largely

1:39:17see people's needs being unmet and also getting into a space of constantly talking about like where are the lesser of two evils and that's a very typical conversation. And in 2016, I was like, well, I don't want to throw my support behind people down, believe in fully. And so 2016, I didn't vote. I've since changed that perspective and look at voting as a tool for us to be able to use. But that shouldn't be the only lever that we're utilizing. And part of this understanding was also the work that we were doing directly in communities, understanding the policy impact and how that affected that work. But also looking at the long-term impact and implications of this. We had not, or at least in my lifetime or in my memory, seen a president like Donald come in who is willing to just throw rule of law out the window. Any practices, processes,

1:40:25decency out the window and just try to do whatever he wants. So I think the extreme came out of 2016. The other part is being able to see and understand the generational impact that has been had. So just looking at the judge's side as we're looking at the Supreme Court, also getting more insight on all of the federal judge appointments that were happening. I believe at that point in time when I was looking at the numbers, it was like 46 out of the 54 federal judges that were appointed, had come out of the federalist society, which just to be able to have an organization, essentially train and breed judges to their politics and have all of those appointments become lifetime appointments. It then becomes a space of the impact and significance here is well beyond

1:41:25just who is on the ticket, but all of the areas of influence underneath that. And that was the area that I had to grow in politically. I didn't have that understanding in 2016. Again, post voting, I think there's still a ton of work that we have to be doing and we have to be leaning on politicians aggressively to actually pass policies that support communities. But that's been some of the evolution of understanding and has now led me to take a different approach. Are there any candidates out there running now, maybe just in office that you're excited about? Yeah, the ones that have been interesting to me, I mean, obviously Mamdani in New York, he is one that has been very interesting to me. Abdulla, Said, in Michigan. It's a buddy of ours. We used to do a show with him here. Oh, Rhett, yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah, I'll give you his number. He's great. I really like the approaches that they're taking because they're staying very focused on the needs of the people. They are at least thus far, it doesn't seem like they are able to be to be bought or swayed

1:42:35within those conversations. I think that's incredibly important. I also think how they have been able to navigate the attacks that have come their way and be able to redirect that and stay the course that has been impressive to me. So I'm excited about where we're headed with some of the the candidates that are out there. I also think this is representative of what we've seen over the last 10 years and people being fed up just with the establishment. Now, we need something different. We need people that are actually going to come in and serve our needs and get things done. I think this new wave of candidates is exciting. We'll see how this plays out over time. But I think this is refreshing to be able to see candidates take the positions that they've taken and move the way they have. Yeah, I mean, Zoran's campaign was like your 2012 season. He just pulled you up. It's amazing because he is a brilliant guy, like Rhodes, scholar,

1:43:41public health expert, but also is just a great communicator. I was out in Detroit two weeks ago. I went to a town hall and I watched him just like interact with people and it's like he's giving people some hope and inspiration at a time when not a lot of that run around. So it's been great to watch. Last question for you. So you write in the book that you no longer watch the NFL and that quote, whether to watch the NFL or not as a personal decision for each football fan. I understand that, but it also immediately tells me a good amount about the character the person I'm engaging with. I winced when I read that because I love the NFL. I watch football. My team's a fucking Patriots, Bob Kraft is the owner. Yeah. I felt like the interpretation is maybe you think I'm a shitty person, but I don't want to speak for you. No, I think if we are, if we're going down the path of we want to live our principles, we want to live our practices. We have to take the best practices and the best approaches possible to support the things that actually support us. And the things that don't align with our values, I don't think we should be supporting those.

1:44:48Now there's there's always nuance within that because I mean if you go across corporations, there's always going to be something in there and people aren't perfect people. So like there is nuance within that, but overall I think the position that I've seen is hey, I'm supporting and I want to do the things I can and at the same time we'll take actions that may be counter to that. And my hope is that people will take more consistent actions because on the other side of that is actually accountability to those organizations. In the collusion whether it's me, whether it's Maclamore, whether it is Donald targeting private citizens, all of these are spaces that we have the opportunity to be able to show up and say, no, we don't we don't believe in what you're doing. And we're going to take actions to show you as such to make sure on the other side of that we can create change, whether that's policy, whether that's processes, but those become opportunities for us

1:45:53collectively to have influence on those institutions. Yeah, I mean, look, I struggle with this. Like the concussions and stuff you read about CTE, like it makes it hard to watch the game, Bob Kraft as we discussed is a big Trump fan. Like that makes it suck on a bunch of levels. I also but I also have these issues with like a lot of things I do in life. Like I don't love Amazon's labor practices. Like use prime every day. You know what I mean? And so I don't know it's I think it's a challenge to wrestle with like our own hypocrisies and where we're falling short on this stuff. And to know actually what's effective. Like, you know, people who really believe in climate change and want to take steps to combat it always have shit thrown back on their face. We're like, well, you flew on an airplane and it's like, you know what, me not flying an airplane is not going to do shit. You know, and it's like, I do wonder if I don't watch the NFL. Does that hurt the owners that hurt the players? Does it just not matter? I don't know. Well, I think these have to become targeted. And we have to be intentional when they'll show up. We know boycotts are extremely effective. I we're seeing this with target right now.

1:46:58They they've rolled back their D I D E I practices to be in alignment with Trump and capitulate. We've seen black community collectively boycott them. Their bottom line has been hit. And now they're they're having to rethink their approach around this. So I think it is hard to say, hey, we're going to do everything all at once. And that's not effective approach. But in the moments that we have the opportunity to say, no, here's a clear example. We're going to rally around this and behind this. Those targeted actions become extremely valuable because it also sends a message to every other corporation in the NFL's case, every other owner. That becomes an effective way for us to be able to put pressure and apply pressure and have influence on their practices and ultimately making them change where you might not be another executive sitting at the same table with them. But that collective power of our dollars, that is very valuable. Yeah, money talks. I mean,

1:48:00I think you pulled your book from target, right? Yes. Yeah. But book is not in target. Children's books aren't in target. We have pulled everything out. Yeah. Well, look, everyone should buy the perilous fight. It's a great read. It's super interesting. There's a million stories in there that we could not touch on today. So I'm really grateful for your time. Thanks for coming in. It was great to meet you. Oh, thank you. It's been a pleasure and big fan of your work. And please continue. We'll try until we're all arrested by Trump. That's our show for today. Thanks to Colin Kaepernick for coming on. We'll be back in the feed on Sunday with a special episode of Pazav America Live from the Texas Tribune Festival. Bye, everyone. Pazav America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed, Charlene, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East.