Is the USPS Helping Trump Rig the Election?

0:00I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now, but home projects I second guess everything is that noise normal is that water damage and who should I even call? That's where thumbtack comes in. Upload a photo or voice note and their AI powered search helps diagnose the issue and match you with the right top rated local pro. Instead of second guessing or searching for hours, you get clarity and can hire the right pro with confidence for your next home project, try thumbtack. They know homes. Hire the right pro today. I'm Anna Garten. I'm my new podcast Happy Hour with Anna. I'm inviting really interesting guests to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with chefs, actors, comedians, musicians and writers I admire. So grab a snack, pull up a chair and join us.

1:02Subscribe to Happy Hour with Anna on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be available every Wednesday, starting September 16th. Say you're an aspiring pop star. How do you know if your song's a hit? It's getting harder to tell. I think that something is going on where the machinery of popularity has changed under our feet and we don't really know why or what it means. This week on Explanage Me, How To Avoid Being A Flop. Find new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. What's up? You guys are new here. Jessica Tarlov has a big book coming out in just two weeks called I Disagree. It's a good book and it mentions me so you should pre-order it.

2:04I disagree out in two weeks or just less than two weeks. Is that crazy? Yeah, that it's less than two weeks. September 15th, links, pre-order, like, subscribe. This is the raging perspective. Yes. And you know who doesn't want you to pre-order a Donald Trump? He does not want you to pre-order it. He has attacked Jessica left and right. I think you should go pre-order it. I am a hero of the resistance. In case you didn't know that. For those of you watching on Sub-Zack and YouTube and, you know, like and subscribe to the Parnas perspective, raging moderates, pre-order the book, fight like hell for what you believe in. Yes. Is that what I was supposed to say? And you have an avatar. If you are in DC on September 15th. Oh, yeah, we got something else. Number 24th at 7pm at politics and prose. Jessica and I, I'm going to be interviewing Jessica for her book. So you guys are going to come out. Everyone should come out and say hi. I'm really excited about that. I, the amount of people who have asked me, like, how did you get Aaron to do this with you? I'm like, I mean, you're a big deal.

3:06And I totally get that. But I'm like, are you unaware of the fact that we have a long standing relationship. But I didn't like slide into his DMs and be like, I love your TikToks. You guys come do my book talk with me, but also like a little bit insulting. Where they're like, how did, how did you get him hang out of you for an hour? I got asked, how did you get asked? Because Jessica did that. Was it by Jack? Did he ask you that? And now moving on to the news of the day. He mad. Okay. We're still at war. Did you know that? My constant didn't. I know. It's so good. He's such a little, a little dweeb troll. Okay. Military attacks between Iran and the US continued. Oh, you can put questions in the chat. Well, answer them at the end. I should have said that. Okay. Back to the war. Military attacks between Iran and the US continue to intensify this week after a long period of relative quiet. Trump continues to refer to Iran as a failed nation. I hate it when failed nations make life so difficult for us.

4:06Okay. The renewed fighting sent the markets tumbling yesterday. I checked my accounts. It was not great. The Dow closed down nearly 500 points, oil closed at $100 a barrel again. We're also seeing that the US private sector added just 38,000 jobs in August, lower than forecasted. One of those moments like when you're watching the the morning round tables and they look like they're going to cry, but they're like, we can't cry on air. So yeah, like Maria Marderoma likes to. Yeah. I got. All right. Here's my Johnson explaining Congress's role in the Iran situation. On Iran, you said repeatedly that this war was going to be over soon. You said that this would be a temporary blip on short-term, on gas prices. It is more than six months. People are getting hurt still at the pump. Should the American pump people not also judge you on your projections here that were clearly off base? Manu, that is one of the stupidest questions you've ever raised. Why? I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe. I am. You are responsible.

5:07You are selling this to the American public, are you not? So should the House Speaker be held responsible for their duration of a military conflict around the globe? You answer that question. I mean, you call this a short-term scrimmage. It is costing billions of dollars. It's not alleging that you are going to. Uh-oh. But it's so rude also. That's like Southern hospitality. No. That's a guy who monitors his kids porn accounts. Isn't that what they do? Did I do? That's a real thing. The idea that the Speaker of the House shouldn't be held responsible for any of the comments that he makes which are supposed to be rooted in things like briefings and relationships with the people in the administration up to the president who he definitely has on speed dial is like a ludicrous beyond ludicrous. And I don't like the root-ness. I mean, my favorite part about it all is like he's saying, I have nothing in like an unemballed and prosecuting the war. I'm not a... Isn't the Congress's job to approve a war? Like we're forgetting that that is what Congress's job is is to have oversight over war.

6:13And well, we don't have a Congress that is functional right now to provide that oversight. I will say this. I don't like the root-ness either, but I think the root-ness is really evident of kind of where things stand for the GOP. I don't know if you saw the first ad that Trump cut for Maga Inc for the midterms that came out this morning or yesterday. It only talked about Donald Trump. It didn't mention congressional Republicans once. I think Mike Johnson is realizing his tenure as speaker of the House is coming to a quick end. And the last thing he wants to do is be in a minority and have Donald Trump breathing down his neck when Trump faces impeachment because that's what's going to come. I'm getting excited about that. Do you have any... I mean, it's hard to say because obviously people have a lot more information than we have. Don't know what's going to come next here, but it really does feel like they have nowhere to go at this point in dangerous schools resignation as Secretary of the Army. It's a really big deal.

7:14One thing that I hadn't been paying attention to is how many Vance allies are leaving and how much Rubio is consolidating support within the folks that are hanging on. And there's an argument that you could make that these people like Driscoll could be more effective for Vance on the outside. Caroline Levit is not going to be a stay-at-home mom. She's going to be a campaign surrogate and doing everything she can to make sure Republicans win in the midterms and then whatever happens for 2028. But what do you think is next for Dan Driscoll and do you think that he turns into a quiet whistle-glower type or he becomes a little messy and a little out? I think it'll be more quiet on his part. I will say the one that I'm more interested in is Rubio personally. I think we're getting to a point where if Rubio is going to run for president, he's going to have to leave this job soon.

8:15I don't think he can be Secretary of State and also run for president at the same time. I mean, crazier things have happened, but that job is more demanding than the vice president's job. Way more demanding. He does. He's also the national security advisor and he's, well, I mean, according to the memes, he's also Caroline Levit and like everybody else. He's everyone. He's, yeah. He's dropping bombs on Iran right now. No, I think that's the more interesting one is seeing, after November, I predict that Rubio is going to leave with the next six months after November, like April of 2027 to launch a presidential if he's going to run. And then you're going to see a shift, I think, in the Rubio wing and the Van Swing. And I think Trump is going to be caught in the middle of it. And I don't know what the president's going to do. Yeah, he already seemed uncomfortable with the Hague South angle. Yeah. Because Pete Hague South was in Iowa. He was running for president. Yeah. He was running. He took a day off to run for president because we're not in the middle of a war.

9:16So he had to show off his biceps and insult trans people, which seems like a requisite for doing that job. But it does feel like Trump is very conflicted about what he's going to do. And I think the stage will be enormously crowded. You think so on the Republican side? I really thought it's going to consolidate pretty quickly. Like I think you'll have like Ted Cruz run. You'll have the Santa's potential. You'll have Rubio. And Tucker Carlson. I think you'll have. I don't think so. I think by the time we get to Iowa, it'll be a two person race. I don't think you'll have a crowded stage once we get to Iowa. Oh, that's interesting. I thought that both sides were going to be crowded. And then it was going to be more reminiscent of 2016. And I think Trump to some degree would enjoy that because it'll be asking competition, right? Like who can try to appeal to him the most so that Ellen get his endorsement or he won't be terrible. You know what I totally think. Trump hosting a debate.

10:20For all the Republican. But on truth social. Unlike truth social or something. We're already hosting the Small Business Administration's hosting Shark Tank, but with Nicki Minaj as the lead judge. So that's happening. Are you messing with me? No, 100% a $1 million competition tax fair dollars. The best five small businesses in America. Nicki Minaj as a judge and Dean Kane as the host. I'd say get out of here, but we have another 20 minutes of the show. I hate life sometimes. But I did enjoy greatly watching Howard Lutnik squirm on CMBC this morning. Joe Kernen, fan of the president. And big boy pants on going at Lutnik hard. So let's play a clip of that. You ran Canter. You ran it well. You had a relationship. You did their IPO before you became a Commerce Secretary. So I know a surprise there. You put it in a trust and your sons are now running Canter. And you know, there was a pipe financing deal done where to get I think the financing

11:27from the Commerce Department. Canter was involved with raising some of the equity. And obviously, they get a fee. So the perception is that you're sitting now at Commerce and you're able to control what Canter is getting in terms of fees with your sons running that company. It looks like a conflict of interest. How do you respond to that? It's just not. The company, the deal was brought to me by Ken Molyce. Someone you know well. I had no idea that Canter was involved with the company at all. It never came up to me. I then passed it to my team. And I had nothing to do with that decision. And if this is minor stuff anyway. It's minor. I mean, maybe versus Eric and Don Jr., but I'm very happy that this happened. And in one of their favorite forums to hang. And you can tell that Latin like as a Wall Street guy

12:28feels at home with with Karnan, right? Or he's like, you know, you became a Jeff Molyce, you know, and while like were the same. And Karnan's like, she's not so much the same on this. Yeah, I think Latin. For some reason, he's like the middle child of this administration. That's the best way I can describe him. He's always put in the worst positions. And he kind of gets himself into the worst positions, whether it's on Epstein, whether it's on the Kennedy Center. And now it's this and his canter. Or with trade war with Canada. Or trade war with Canada. I mean, everything Latin like touches is like dying for this administration is bad. And Trump doesn't put him in a good position ever. Well, he doesn't deserve it. Obviously, it feels like so many people want a scalp and this would be the easiest one to offload. Yes. Like who's going to miss him? Right? He's never given an interview that anyone's felt good about. He was actually banned from TV early on because

13:29his interviews were so bad, even with friendly interviewers. Yeah. So I would just like to say, before we move topics, headline Mike Johnson admits he and his son monitor each other's porn intake and resurface video. I did not make that up. I know you weren't thinking about it anymore. But I have one headline then since we're just going to drop headlines now is welcome to the end of the 2020s. Yesterday was a official start of the end of the 2020s. And if you didn't think you were old before, we are now nearing 2030. I did think I was old because I came out with you. Which is a choice that I mean. I'm like, I feel very elderly. I was born in 1999. And I'm almost 30 years old. That's scary. You just want to hurt me. Okay. Hey, what's up guys? It's Babish and on this week's episode of In the Booth, I'm joined by chef cookbook author and food network legend Alex Goura Shelley. We're talking about shops,

14:29the Hamptons and what it takes to make a cry worthy pasta. You can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. So like any good millennial, I have a love hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves, lifestyles, a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists. That is just not the case. Yeah. Yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jem Faza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like,

15:33young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Every living cell in every living thing is related. We're all part of the same tree of life. Now scientists are trying to make a new tree of life, building their own cells out of non-living chemical parts and hope that it comes to life. That will help our economy. That will help the climate. But they have to navigate the risks. There is the potential in what we do to be mad scientists. If you have a cell that can be engineered to do whatever you want, you could make something harmful. Suddenly we're talking about something which could be a catastrophic threat to life on this planet. So do you fear us more than the people who made nuclear weapons? Life from scratch is a new three-part series from unexplainable.

16:36Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch us on Netflix. Let's talk about something that hurt Hakeem Jeffries. Let's see what I did there. How Democrats are threatening to punish two of their own after representatives Jared Golden and Marie Gluson-Campares broke with Democratic leadership to help advance a key Republican procedural vote. Golden said the vote cleared the way for a bill he co-sponsored, which benefited fishermen in his district. Gluson-Campares says she voted for the procedural measure because it included Golden's bill. A faculty saying she was just backing him up. Hakeem Jeffries says the move was a significant breach of trust and as Assa Cawke's role is committed to consider consequences, including potentially stripping them of their committee assignments. We should know so this was a Republican special where they crammed a ton of stuff into it, including Jared Golden's fishermen and lobstermen bill, but it also condemned socialism and had positive language around the Save America Act, which the Democratic Party is unified in opposition to.

17:41I think it's a pretty bad look for leadership that they hadn't done the work to go and ask Golden who is plenty happy to buck leadership whenever he pleases anyway and is leaving office on top of that, but his own bill was part of it. Oh, it's a terrible look for Hakeem, terrible look for leadership in the House Democratic Caucus. I don't believe in just like throwing leadership under the bus and attacking members of Congress just to attack, but I do look back to the Pelosi times. This would have never happened with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and she said that herself, which I also thought was pretty interesting. This is usually just so supportive. She loves Hakeem. This is partially what I've been arguing for a long time. Nancy Pelosi is hurting Hakeem Jeffries by staying in office this long. I think that Nancy Pelosi should have left office when she left the Speaker ship. I think she had an amazing run. She was

18:45a great leader, a great speaker, but the moment that she handed off the baton to Hakeem and then stuck around in the background, anything she does that's against what Hakeem is doing makes him look bad. Purposely, not purposely, whatever it may be. I think this was a bit of an egg on the face moment for Hakeem and I think he's got to get it together if he's going to be Speaker in a new Congress because he may have maybe only a two or three vote margin, right? It may not be a massive wait. You don't know what's going to happen. If he can't keep his caucus together, the last thing he wants, the last thing he needs is to have a Mitch McConnell moment with the Affordable Care Act repeal and have his members vote him down on the House floor. Not with the ACA repeal just in a separate type of bill. I think this is going to be a real learning moment for Hakeem Jeffries. I think her shadow is log wide, however you're supposed to say it. She's a tiny person, but obviously

19:47the fact that she's still around makes it easy to make comparisons between how Jeffries is doing it versus how Pelosi would do it. Her actually making comments, I think, is a real shot across the bow and she's very specific and pointed when she does choose to speak out about something and what she stays quiet on. I think I was not someone who was bothered by him having that meaning with Jared Kushner. We don't know what the contents of the conversation were, but I think it is incumbent on people in leadership positions to take meetings. That's not that politics, necessarily. Obviously the leak made Kushner look better and Jeffries look worse. But the fact that this is happening just a few days later, I feel like is adding to this pile on and the new Congress and hopefully the margins are bigger. I want this to be too big to rig because you know thereafter we're going to talk about the USPF and what's going on there with the whistleblower.

20:49But there are going to be a lot, hopefully, of new incumbents who are going to be against traditional leadership. There are people all over this country running in races saying, get Chuck Schumer out of here, not committing to being part of the normal Democratic infrastructure, whether they're targeting how Kim Jeffries himself or just businesses usual. And so Jared Golden may be leaving, but there will be a new cadre of Jared Goldens. Hopefully if we do well coming in. And that concerns me. Well, I mean, I think we're going to have to see what happens next. I think that the good thing for a Kim in all of this is that no one's going to remember what happened yesterday tomorrow. I mean, like this is just kind of a wipe the slate clean type of thing. The rule at issue wasn't a big deal. In the grand scheme of things when it comes to all the other craziness that's happening. By the time November comes around, no one's going to remember this. I doubt anyone's going to even remember the Kushner meeting a few weeks from now. I mean, this

21:52new cycle moves so quickly and there's so many things happening. I just think that I think I think I think a king needs to take a playbook a lesson from Mitch McConnell's playbook a lesson from Nancy Pelosi's playbook. You got to get your people in line. No more of this like should they should he punish golden and closing camp for us? I mean, I mean, what does punishment mean? Like strip them up. Like losing committee assignments. I think I think yes, I do. I mean, I think he should I think he should. I mean, I think he should roll with a bit of an iron fist here and kind of follow up on us. Like, it would have been different. The problem I have with what MGP and Jared golden did was not because they voted for with Republicans. Fine. If you want to do that, that helps you great. Whatever. It's they didn't tell leadership. That's the problem with me. What would that I have? They go and tell Hakeem and say, Hey, we need this or we have this problem. We have this problem. Like, let's figure out a solution. They didn't do that. And that's why I do think that they should

22:53be punished by leadership. I'll just add that communication is a two-way street. And I understand there was some attempt to shift blame also on to Catherine Clark onto the whip. Like, she, you know, she should have known this is happening. But it seems pretty obvious that if someone's own co-sponsored bill is in this and on top of it, they're happy to be a maverick quite regularly that you should you should reach out. And you should have reached out to and just been like, heads up, this is going to happen. And I mean, they wouldn't have been able to get around it, but at least you wouldn't have been stunned by the cycle. Yeah. I already mentioned this a little bit with my, this needs to be too big to rig. And that's because we now have a USPS whistleblower who, oh, I know what you knew. I got it. It was for a fact. You didn't know that the story exists, obviously, and did a video on it. The whistleblower's words that there's a secretive rush chaotic and fundamentally flawed approach now going on to how they're going to deal with

23:56mail-in ballots. The nitty-gritty matters here are the plan requires states to upload lists of their mail voters to USPS, along with barcodes on ballot envelopes. If USPS scanners find even one mismatch in a batch, the whistleblower says the whole batch potentially tens of thousands of ballots get kicked back to the state instead of delivered. I yeah, yeah. Yeah. I yeah, yeah. I mean, I spoke with Congressman Robert Garcia who interviewed this whistleblower yesterday, and he told me it's like worse than we could even imagine. I mean, you're just trying to change the rules 70 days before an election. We can't do that. If you want to do this for 20, 20, eight, have the conversation now two years in advance. Doing this 70 days before, you're going to have complete mess left and right. And this poison post situation of like if one ballots miscanned and thousands of ballots were thrown out, that is voter suppression. That is throwing out someone's right to vote. That is a violation of the First Amendment that is taking away your

24:57voice as a voter. I don't know where things go from here. I really don't. Well, good news. This is just a trend line because they're on particular fans of the First Amendment anyway. You could ask anyone from students who wrote op-eds to law firms, universities, whoever else they're cracking down on. So this is on par. But I felt like this was a bit of a bait and switch that there had been a little bit of good news. These of emailing ballots with this report decision. And then you had General Kane, I think writing in a letter or at least told Senator Slokkin, you know, there are no plans to send the military to polling places. Obviously, that can change on a dime depending on how many hours of UD Rust even Miller got. But this feels like the real war footing that we are on with this administration when it comes to people being able to vote and have free and fair elections. And I don't know if they can execute something like this. There were questions around their plan with the Postal Service anyway because they had to build

26:02a big database that they couldn't do in that amount of time. But you can see a world that they're literally haphazardly just taking ballots and throwing them all the stuff, frankly, that they falsely accused Democrats of doing and Fulton County and until it L.F.I. and Detroit. We're going to be seeing in reverse. Well, by the way, I think the biggest, I mean, I have been screaming from the mountain tops ever since the Supreme Court gave that victory to Trump on this USPS issue. And every liberal came out and they were like, it's not that big of a ruling. It's just on technicality. I have been screaming the mountain top. It was a much bigger deal than they're trying to downplay it. It was the same type of response that liberal legal analysts had after the Virginia Court struck down redistricting efforts. And they were like, no, no, no, don't worry. The Supreme Court's going to overturn it. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. I was like, no, like this is not as clear cut. I like, you want to give people hope, but you have to be realistic here. If this issue gets to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, there's no guarantee it's going to just say, no, no, we're going

27:04to throw it away. That's not what the Supreme Court's willing to do. If that were the case, Trump's ballroom construction would be blocked. But they did on that front is scary to me because it's said that the group that's responsible for overseeing the preservation of the East Wing doesn't have standing concerning demolition of the East Wing. Who else would have standing it, but for them? I have a lot of problems, but I'll ask. You've reigned on my parade. I guess I had the wrong sorry, or legal tape. It's fine. Not a lawyer. I just played one on TV sometimes. You good? No, it's it's good for you to be class half empty. I'm like a quarter full at this point. Anyway, this is a very bad and devastating story. This tragic knife attack at the heart of Times Square and knife wielding suspect killed a 32 year old Aaron Pietchentie, a bank of America vice president and lawyer from New Jersey. She recently celebrated her two year wedding anniversary and it just completed her first day back from maternity leave.

28:07Graphic video of the alleged attackers, confrontation with NOIPD was all of her social media is showing a 49 year old woman lunging at cops after wielding two knives, then being shot and killed. As she also attacked another man who was expected to survive a tourist who's in town visiting his son. I can't imagine this especially first day back from maternity leave. Super bright young woman went to Penn, Fordham Law, where she met her husband, you know, life in front of her and life in front of obviously her little baby girl. The thing that stuck out to me or I wanted to talk to you about specifically was the justification and then to celebration that you're seeing in some corners of the internet of this talking about oh well she's a vice president at Bank of America and it had echoes of the Luigi Mangione discourse that you know some

29:07people are a part of corporate America. They had it coming and I don't know how we fix that. I don't I mean listen I when you texted me that yesterday I like look to kind of just see where it's coming from. I couldn't really find too much of that discourse thankfully on my on my screens. I mean I do think this is something that Fox is going to run with for several days if they catch on to the discourse to make it a little bigger than it has to be. I think it's just I think listen no one deserves to lose their life or no one should lose their life for working at Bank of America or working at a health care or health insurance company. And I think that this been vigilanteism the Luigi Mangione in this case completely different. Luigi Mangione. I get that. Well just made me feel that way and perhaps my algorithm was gining it up but there is definitely a current with young people that feel like corporate America or the elites or whoever it

30:10is are everything is rigged against them and they have a coming. Yeah no I hear you I hear you I mean listen it's I'm just very sad for her family. I agree with you and then we're going to have to move on faster because you don't want to talk about like there's a lot of polling to back up that younger people feel like violence can be more justified and as you get older even like elder millennials into genuxers and boomers etc it's much less. I can have a whole 30-minute conversation with you about why that is and why I think that is so maybe for another okay we'll do it next week then. But Jessica before we go I want to get your thoughts on a single AOC and on single AOC and how she's been showing up I don't like that framing but on AOC. Okay let's wait for the clip. Would you ever date a conservative? Would is that anything you'd ever been to date? I have to say it's probably not.

31:17Don't date across the aisle? No you know but I think a lot of politics sometimes that least for me is about values and being aligned with in values I think is tremendously important. AOC girl summer. AOC girl single summer but she's making an important point which is born out by the data on this. People now do not want to have relationships or get involved with folks across ideological lines. Yeah you want to do the story that's all you have to say true? It's very dramatic. I will say when my wife and I first started dating I was conservative and she was Bernie Bro Liberal and we would not have lasted if we remained on those ideological playing fields. So you guys just like met more in the middle? I think I moved further to the left and she kind of just stayed. Okay so you can like have a look. We still have our disagreements but it's just not

32:19as pronounced. Yeah my husband who is probably to the left of me in general loves to troll me about Bernie Sanders because I love Hillary so much. It'll just be like Bernie 101 and then I lose it and go crazy and don't not like you think that that's true. But eventually. Yeah to add a here. Okay we've got questions. Let's go. Sharon Bernad asks do you think Congress will move forward to impeach Pete Hacksass? I think they'll try. I don't think they'll be successful. Like in even getting the votes for it or I think they'll be a push. I don't think they'll be successful because I don't think Hacksassass is lasting all four years. Okay how quickly do you think he might go out? How quickly? Post-mit terms maybe. Post-era? Oh and they just do like a full poster on board. There's going to be an end to the Warner on. New slash. You heard it here first.

33:20Okay Max Little wants to know what are the top three things Democrats should focus on after the midterms. Investigations, investigations, investigations. Investigate the hell out of them. Affordability, housing, education. Boom. And investigations. That's it for this episode of the Region Persective. See you next Wednesday.