233. Trump Just Tried to Rig Alaska’s Election

0:00Trump is trying to overturn the midterm election before it's even happened. In Alaska, two candidates have the same name, and that's all the excuse Trump needs to try and block a result he doesn't like. I have some views on if that's going to happen, but, Caddy, this is part of the pattern. States across the country will be slammed with lawsuits if the whiner-in-chief doesn't win. Just watch. Striking a very different tone, Barack Obama out on the campaign. He was roasting Trump and rolling out the hits. He was good, maybe too good. My question is, are the Democrats still in Obama's shadow? This episode is brought to you by eToro. A tariff, a spending plan, a regulatory change. It can all start just as the first line of a speech.

0:43But it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington and unfold for years to come. That's right, Katty. Markets move on expectations, not just events. Investors are constantly weighing what a decision could mean for company sectors and the wider economy. So eToro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments could affect them. You could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news. As with all investing, your capital is at risk. See eToro.com forward slash trip US for full terms. and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas,

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2:35that there are countless voices out there competing to tell you the what, the who, and the where of the latest news stories. To really understand what's going on, you need to know the why. You get it all in the FT. It's a very objective paper, and it's lots of fun to read, and it makes you smarter. I also loved Janine Ganesh's opinion piece on why must a socialist always be woke? And he's making the point that the socialists in America have compelling economic policies, but cultural policies that many people in the country hate? And is there a lane for somebody who is a more culturally moderate socialist? I love the FT weekend, my very favorite thing to read on a Saturday morning. No, I love the FT. I'm just thrilled that they're a sponsor.

3:17For the Y, Financial Times, listeners of The Rest Is Politics US can save over 40% on an annual digital subscription to the Financial Times by visiting ft.com slash trip U.S. That's ft.com slash trip U.S. T-R-I-P U.S. Subject to terms and conditions. Offer expires October 28th. I want a prenup, Katty. Let me just explain this to you, okay? Because Trump is a total genius. He's got a prenup going with the democracy, okay? So listen, if it doesn't work out in the contract, I want a redo. All right? I'm just trying to explain to you what he's doing. He's found a way to contest an election before anyone has voted. Yeah, we'll have a democracy, but so long as the result is the result I want. Right. I mean, that's effectively what his attorney general went on television and said this weekend. We just want to make sure that nobody's confused. And if a Republican doesn't win, then let's do a redo. He's had a lot of marriages, Katty.

4:26I feel like he's taken the prenup idea and he's brought it into the democracy. He's run this playbook before and he hopes it's going to work again. Okay, so here's what's happened, guys. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska's Senate election. You'll remember we spoke about the Alaska Senate election a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, Trump wants to block the results of that election if the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan Sullivan, loses. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday. It centers around the presence, you'll remember this from our episode, of a second candidate who is also named Dan Sullivan on the ballot, who is running not for any party affiliation. So on the ballot, Alaska voters are

5:11going to have to choose between Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, and Mary Peltola. And basically what the Justice Department is saying is, this is very confusing to voters. If Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, doesn't win, we think it will have been because voters are confused. They were misled by this guy who is now being called by Republicans, Decoy Dan. And we want the election result overturned if we think there was confusion. The Alaska Supreme Court has already ruled on this case back in June and did rule that Dan Sullivan, the retired teacher, otherwise known as Decoy Dan, which is a Republican talking point. Don't worry, guys, I get that. They have ruled, the Supreme Court has ruled that he is allowed to run and that this is all legitimate and that if somebody wants to run and they happen to have the same name, fair game, they are allowed to run in the election. But Anthony, here's what I don't understand. And I reached out to a lawyer,

6:09Norm Eisen, you know, Norm Eisen from Democracy Defenders, who's running a lot of the lawsuits, because this is part of a patent, guys. This is not just Alaska. We're kicking off with Alaska, but we are going to give you the whole spiel on how many suits there are around the country where the Justice Department, aka the White House at this point, is trying to interfere in the elections to lay the groundwork for legal challenges afterwards. Anyway, Norm Eisen, who is doing sterling work in trying to counter this, says this is a totally frivolous lawsuit. It can never win. All they're trying to do is just make voters think that there is something fishy going on. But I thought, Anthony, in your wonderful

6:45election system here in the United States, it was the states that ran the election. So if the Alaska state apparatus, election apparatus, says this is okay, and the Supreme Court says this is okay, isn't it okay? Well, I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, there's no way they'll win this court case because the precedent is grounded in 200 years of whatever the state and local authorities say effectively cures the ballot. Now, interestingly enough, and this is sort of bizarre, but in 2014, this Dan Sullivan was on the ballot with another Dan Sullivan. So the Dan Sullivan that is now the current senator, he won his seat in 2014. And there was another Dan Sullivan on the ballot. He just happened to be running for lieutenant governor.

7:32Not the teacher. How many Dan Sullivans are there in Alaska? I understand what Trump is doing. He wants to ring the bell for his Dan Sullivan. He wants to try to tell people that this is unfair. It's all in that Putin sleeve as well. I have to undermine our own elections. I understand that's on my checklist and I have to tell people that our elections are false and it would have to be the create moral equivalency between the United States and places like Russia. I understand all of that, but that's not going to work here, Katty. Now, I want to just go to the polls for a second, because you love these polls. I love these polls. New York Times, Sienna poll had Sullivan up 47, 45, okay? And then it flipped over. And now, okay, she's up.

8:24Mary Peltola. And she looks like she's going to win handily. Even if there's 2% of the people that vote for retired teacher Dan Sullivan, she's going to win by a very wide margin in the state. So what is Todd Blanch going to do, Kat? He's going to try to sue and block her from standing as the senator? And what court? You think the Supreme Court's going to side with him? Actually, the Supreme Court so far has not sided with the administration when they have tried to intervene in the electoral process. I think what they are trying to do, and I can't get over the fact that there are multiple Dan Sullivans who have run for multiple offices in Alaska. That's just too juicy. I don't know. If you're born Dan Sullivan in Alaska, don't try and think of becoming a fireman or a doctor

9:09because you're going to become a politician. Clearly, that's the message. I think what they are trying to do, and it was a little bit the playbook in 2022, and it was a little bit the playbook in 2020, but particularly in those 2022 midterms, is they're trying to raise all of these legal doubts now that they know have not a chance of standing. I mean, I don't know if you saw Todd Blanche, he was on CNN this weekend, a couple of very combative interviews in which he said that he wanted to stop a fraud and corruption in Alaska. And I think the key word there is fraud. They're trying to say preemptively, before people have even gone to the polls, that the wrong result must be a fraudulent result. It is the old Trump playbook. He used to do it right from 2016. Don't trust the press. Don't trust the election results. If we don't win, it must mean they're trying to do is lay the groundwork so that if there is then an election result they don't like, they can come in post facto and say, look, we told you beforehand there not mean there is fraud. But will it be enough to get a whole load of MAGA supporters, Anthony, as they did in 2020, to believe a big lie that the election was stolen?

10:34I mean, I think that is what's worrying about all of these cases and we'll run through them, is that you can make people believe something in this environment just by saying it's true, even if it's not true? Listen, I think the answer to that is yes. People will definitely believe that. I guess where I'm going with this is Lisa Murkowski, the Republicans in Alaska, and the Alaska Supreme Court set, cured, ratified the ballot. So there's nowhere to go with this thing. I love her reaction, by the way. Did you like her reaction this weekend? Yeah, tell me what it was. She has criticized the DOJ's lawsuit, saying Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates. I mean, basically, she's turned around to Trump and said,

11:19are you trying to say Alaskans are stupid, that we actually don't understand the difference between these two candidates? So she's criticized the latest suit. Well, Trump says yes. No, Trump was on the campaign stump this weekend saying that people don't know he should be called Senator Dan Sullivan. People don't know what the word incumbent means. OK, that's what he said. Now, maybe they don't. I don't know. But I'm just saying to you that this is a test balloon. And this is a warning shot for everybody. Okay, if you can freeze certification over a name, and guess what, Katty, you can freeze it over anything. And so this is a big test balloon for Trump. And he's lost roughly 60 cases since 2020.

12:08And the judges have not gotten friendlier on this stuff. So he did challenge the 2020 electoral process and he got smoked in those cases. And so he'll get smoked here. But what I don't like is the fact that we're going to have to go through this process. You know, I don't like the fact that we're going to be talking about this situation and we're going to be talking about, Katty, trust me, and you know this, push back if you think I'm wrong. There'll be a good 20% of this country that says, oh, that was rigged. Oh, that was not the right outcome. I think you're right. And then mission accomplished for Donald Trump. I think you're right. And I think he is also relying on people around the country who are allies of his, who he has backed, either in the federal government, who he's put

12:56into place in the federal government, in the Justice Department, or who is backed in states to win elections. And they are people in key positions who control the electoral process. So for example, in Alaska, the division of elections for the state of Alaska is overseen by the state's lieutenant governor. The state's lieutenant governor is a Republican. Her name is Nancy Dahlstrom. She ran against Mary Peltola for her house seat. So she has a combative relationship from the past. She's not a neutral election observer. In many countries, these electoral processes are seen by people who are neutral. I think it's important for people to understand that in the States, they are seen by partisans, whether they are Democrats or whether they are Republicans. And I remember going down

13:42to Arizona in 2022, before the last big midterms of this nature, and interviewing the guy who Trump wanted to back as Secretary of State, Mark Fincham, who was an out-and-out election denier. He denied that Trump had lost the 2020 election. Well, Trump has wanted those people, and the Republicans have been much more savvy up until now than the Democrats in thinking, we don't just need the senators, we don't just need the governors, we don't just need the governors, we don't just need the president. We need all of these other people who control the electoral processes in these states who are friendly to us so that if we go back, and you know this from the 2000 election in Florida, how much it mattered having people who were friendly to one side or the other. These are amazingly partisan processes in the States, and that makes them susceptible

14:30to partisan intervention. And you could see the DOJ going back to Nancy Dahlstrom after the election result, if Dan Sullivan has lost and saying, okay, right, you're head of the elections. You can kind of find a way now to massage the result or recount certain votes or take teacher Dan Sullivan's votes and put them in Senator Dan Sullivan's column. I think that's what they are. They are trying to do that this time around, aren't they? Of course. But you have to remember legal precedent. Two state courts said that the ballot is cured and the ballot is proper. So you would have to have this ridiculous novel theory accepted by the judge in a certification lawsuit that says, well, yeah, this two state courts

15:20says it was okay to be on the ballot, but now it's not okay to be on the ballot and I'm going to revoke the certification. I mean, we're going to urban, man. I mean, we're urbanizing. Okay. I mean, it's going to be really bad if we're doing that. I'm sitting here and I'm just trying to remind people, whatever you think he's incapable of doing, he's capable of doing. Or trying. He's capable of trying, because I do think the courts, I agree with you, the courts will throw this out. But the country will have to go through that process that we went through back in 2020, where you have confusion. In confusion, there is room for shenanigans, and there is room for disruption. And I think we are looking at a period after these midterms, unless the results

16:07are very decisive, where there will be challenges. There's three words in this country that resonate with at least a fifth of the country. Stop the steel. He has manufactured this and he has perpetuated this. And there is a group of people that feel that this is part of our story now. This is not just about Alaska, though. Let's have a quick run through of the other things that Trump is trying to do, because some of them came up over the course of this weekend. Of course, he tried to get the U.S. Postal Service to screen mail-in ballots to make sure they were going one way or the other, disrupt basically the mail-in ballot process. The Justice Department has sued 30 states trying to get hold of the electoral rolls. Now,

16:49the electoral rolls contain sensitive information, people's addresses, the last four digits of their social security numbers, their date of birth. Basically, it's your identity. And the Justice Department is saying, we want those electoral rolls. So what? So they can review them, so they can check everybody's voting, which way. I mean, all the kind of stuff that feels very authoritarian in a country where states control the electoral process. There was a case this weekend in Utah. They were trying, deep red Utah, the DOJ was trying to get hold of the electoral rolls. That was thrown out just on Friday. They are trying to send people from the Homeland Security investigators to find evidence of

17:28illegal voting in places where there is no evidence. We've got a case in California where the Justice Department says it has a list of 20,000 people who are non-citizens who are registered to vote. They won't say where the list has come from. That is being challenged. I spoke to Norm Eisen about that. Again, he's the group that is challenging that. There are multiple ways, Anthony, which they are already laying the groundwork. And I think that's what's happening here. They are laying the groundwork for legal challenges after the election in case things don't go their way. Yeah. But there's also, there's intimidation there, right? There's a chilling effect. Okay. They're saying something that they know isn't true.

18:07We're trying to find non-citizens that are registered so that we can claim that these elections are fraudulent. Trump is then saying from the podium, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, Katty. Millions. You've heard him say it, okay? And yet every time DHS or any time someone goes into the system and cures and certifies the system, they can't find the people. There was one situation where they had 185 people that they thought were illegal. Then they did a double audit and then they realized, wait a minute, no, we got that wrong. They had it down to zero. And so now this is doing two things. I want to scare you. You may be eligible to vote, but I want to scare you and I don't want you to show up to vote, particularly if you're not going to vote for me. And then the

18:57other thing I want to do is I want to send a message to everybody. Things can and will get rough from the American government related to the electoral process. And, you know, listen, it's absolutely disgusting. And Todd Blanche, who, again, has aged, Caddy, I mean, this guy has gone into like an aging chamber, okay? I mean, he's gone from young Biff in Back to the Future to old Biff in like 13 seconds because he knows he's ripping up his soul and he's ripping up everything that he learned about ethics in law school and his life to do the bidding of Donald Trump so that he could say he is the Attorney General of the United States. And by the way, the DOJ is hemorrhaging competent lawyers. I heard of another one over the General of the United States. And by the way, the DOJ is hemorrhaging competent

19:46lawyers. I heard of another one over the course of the weekend, a friend of mine who'd worked at the DOJ for years in this kind of a operation, and she quit because you just can't do it. You can't because they know they're being asked to do things that are illegal, and they actually want to stand up for the rule of law, not the rule of dislaw. But I do think the Democrats are more coordinated. They did learn from 2020 and 2022. They've got attorneys generals and the secretaries of state, who in many states are the people who administer election processes. They are now getting together. They are holding tabletop exercises to strategize about how to counter any kind of federal intervention before and after.

20:23So I think at least the Democrats have kind of put their head up against above the parapet and realized we actually have to take this seriously and we have to be ready for the kind of onslaught that will come. In 2020, they were caught totally surprised by this. Let me say something that is obvious to me and hopefully is obvious to everybody, but I think it's worth restating. I want to go through the list. I'm Todd Blanche. I want to go through the list. And if you're a black or brown person living in a certain area, I want to delete you from the list. Okay. And I want to wrongly delete you and wrongly question your right to vote and take you off the list. That's why they're trying to get the voter rolls. That's why you think they're

21:03trying to get the voter rolls. People have to understand that, hey, hey, hey, you're not voting for me. I'm taking you off the list. Okay. And you know, it's like, okay, what did Joe Stalin say? It's not who votes, who counts the votes. But you know what, in this case, if I can stop you from voting, it's like me counting the votes. The courts are standing up, even in deep red Utah, with a judge who was appointed by Donald Trump, they have thrown out those challenges. So 27 out of 30 states where the DOJ is trying to get those lists to do with those lists, whatever it is they want to do, the judges are saying, no, stop. This is not the way democracy works in America. The courts, they're the last line and they're holding,

21:42but it's hard. They're under pressure. They're under a lot of strain. Okay, we're going to take a break, come back and talk about the man the Democrats love back out on the campaign trail. What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand.

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23:43and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Welcome back to the Restless Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci, and Katty Kay. Katty, Obama is 65. He's out of office nearly a decade and he still has better material than anybody on the Democratic payroll. And just for me, the Cheesecake Factory line, I'm a little upset with myself that I didn't think of that myself. I was going with Liberace. I was not going with Saddam Hussein making a Cheesecake Factory, but it's all there, Gaddy. And I got to tell you, I'm impressed with the president and I'm impressed with how

24:30he understands the fight. And I'm going to stipulate this and please push back, but I think he understands the fight better than any other Democrat who I've listened to. Okay. Explain that a little bit more. What do you mean by that? He understands the fight better. You are fighting against an authoritarian white person who wants to call guys like El Sayyad jihadists. He said it 100 times this weekend. He's a full-on racist. If you're a Muslim in this country, you blow up buildings. That's literally what he's trying to do. Think of these young Muslim kids where they have this red-faced, orange-haired lunatic. All they're trying to do is get ahead and live the American dream. And they've got this red-faced, orange lunatic telling them that they're terrorists.

25:21And he said yesterday, people should really listen to it, they tried to do it to me, okay? Barack Hussein, right? He's always got to say Hussein, like Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama. And he said yesterday, because I watched this whole speech, he said, guys, you got to understand what we're up against. You got to understand the disfigurement, okay? This is KKK-like stuff. We're anesthetized to it, but this is KKK-like stuff. He's up there screeding, you're a jihadist. A doctor who got the Democratic nomination in the state of Michigan, whatever you think of him, okay, he's not a jihadist, Caddy, but that's how the president of the United States is talking about him. And Obama is trying to wake people up by telling them where the fight is. Now, what's interesting about this

26:15whole thing is Al-Sayed wrote in the Huffington Post in 2012 that Obama was not the right choice. He wasn't the wrong choice, but he said he didn't think he was the guy. And here's another thing I respect about Obama. No problem. I'm still showing up because I'm the bigger person. You think Trump would do that? You think Trump would do that? Trump had dinner with Bill Maher, the poor 70-year-old comedian. And Bill Maher was actually praising him and brought Caroline Levin on the show because I watch Bill and I do his show. And Trump's lighting him up with a 1,300-word screed last night, which was completely unhinged. So anyway, I'm just saying calling him a jihadist, El-Sayed, is the business of fear.

26:59And Obama speaks about the business of optimism. And these Democrats better wake up and spend a little bit more time during the Obama presidency and after the Obama presidency. And then we got, and I think you and I both agreed with this, he hates people to say this, but we got Donald Trump partly in reaction to Barack Obama because people, you know, you get the first black president and some people are going to kick back about that around the country. But just look at the two people over the course of this weekend. There is Donald Trump calling Abdel El-Sayed a Muslim Brotherhood jihadist who hates Jews and blacks. I mean, he is going for maximum fear. You look at his truth social feed over the course of the weekend.

27:54It is one anti-Muslim post after another. I mean, he went on a total rant about reposting all of this anti-Muslim stuff and then the Bill Maher thing. Well, that was just bizarre. But you really saw it over the course of the weekend. My question to you, Anthony, and my phone was kind of lighting up with Democrats who were sort of giddy. There's Barack Obama back out there. He's so good. But a couple of those Democrats were also saying to me, oh my God, he's so good. Why don't we have anyone like him? And I think he has done two things this weekend. One, he may help get out the black vote in Detroit. He is really their best shot at getting out, being targeted to get out specific communities in specific states.

28:37I mean, everybody loves the feel good stuff. Everybody still loves Barack Obama, even though he's a little grayer now, but they still love him. And you could see that in the crowds. But he needs to be used in a very specific way. What I was hearing from Democratic strategists over the weekend to make sure that he's targeting specific communities. They have a problem with the black vote. And there's a reason that Trump said that El-Sayed hates Jews and blacks, because those are the populations that El-Sayed does have a problem getting out to vote. They didn't vote for him in the numbers that they would normally vote for a Democrat in the primary. So you get Barack Obama out there to target them. But he has reminded

29:14Democrats, oh shit, we don't have another Barack Obama at the moment. Barack Obama is the best natural politician I've seen in America, probably since Bill Clinton. He was a total natural. He was the best campaigner. Certainly, I followed both of his campaigns. And he was the best campaigner, hands down. Nobody gives a speech like Barack Obama. Nobody relates with a crowd like Barack Obama does. Maybe Trump did it in a weird way. But the Democrats, I think, are now sort of thinking. Yeah, different. And a different, less intellectual. But yes, you listen, Trump is a beast. Yeah, you got to give him credit for being the beast that he is. But the nuance here in Michigan, I think, is very important because they ran pro-Stevens

29:54ads in Detroit, okay? This was the adversary to El-Sayed in the primaries, who was the more moderate candidate. And they had Obama praising Stevens in those ads. And so she beat Al-Sayed in Wayne County 51 to 45. So hear me out for a second. They used Obama's face to beat Al-Sayed in that county. They now got to bring Obama back to win Detroit for Al-Sayed. And that's the whole race basically basically, in one sentence, in my mind. And I think Obama is going to do that for El-Sayed. And I don't know who's going to win it. It's too close for me to call it. But that's the stuff that's got to get done in the last couple of days here. Well, I told you, I came back a little more skeptical about Michigan than I went up there,

30:42because I heard about these problems with the black voters, I'll say I wasn't managing to do it. But it's worth a little reality check with Barack Obama. He did campaign in Michigan in 2024 for Kamala Harris and she did not win Michigan. So he has fairy dust, but he doesn't always get the results. Now he did manage to help get Alyssa Slotkin, the Democratic senator who was running in 2024 across the line. And he did manage to get Ruben Gallego in Arizona across the line, Democratic senator. And he did manage to get Tammy Baldwin, Democratic senator in Wisconsin across the line. So he couldn't get Kamala Harris across the line. Even Barack Obama, with those big rallies at the end of the 2024 race, could not get Kamala Harris across the line. Even Barack Obama with those big rallies at the

31:25end of the 2024 race could not get Kamala Harris into the White House, but he has managed to get other Democrats to win. So I guess the question is, can he do it this time around for Abdel El Saeed? I think Abdel El Saeed has a specific issue, problem that Barack Obama can help with. And maybe that's where you use Barack Obama. Maybe that's the good strategic move. Yeah, listen, I mean, let's hope, let's hope, let's hope. For me, I want these guys crushed. They got it. The only way we're going to cure the Republican Party is by killing MAGA. So I want these guys crushed. I just want to go to Sherrod Brown for a second because I find this to be the story. Who we spoke about last week. Yeah, exactly.

32:07But it turned out the October surprise was the Ramaswamy ad where he did probably the lowest of the low for even MAGA people have been turned off by it. He dropped to 20% in the poly markets in terms of his chance of winning this race. Amy Acton is at 80. But I think this is the drag now. They're going to drag Sherrod Brown over the finish line. I think so. Because Husted is just, he's not a good campaigner, Katty. He may have a pile of muscle on his ass, but he's just not a good campaigner. These red states are so interesting because to get a voter in a red state that leans kind of MAGA, leans Republican in the way that Ohio has done recently, in the way that Mississippi, where Donald Trump is campaigning today, most certainly does, you have to get voters to

33:04break a habit. And people like their habits, right, Anthony? They like their voting habits. They're used to going to the polls and ticking the Republican candidate. So you have to get those people who have spent a lifetime ticking a Republican to go into the voting booth on election day and tick a Democrat. That's asking a lot for somebody to... Any habit. You want to quit smoking. You want to start working out. You want to start being nicer to your spouse. You've got to have a habit. You've got to break an old habit and you've got to form a new habit. Well, voting is a bit like that. You have the habit of voting Republican in these red states. Now you have to vote Democrat. I think that the Amy Acton ad that we spoke about last week on the show helps give Republican voters in Ohio

33:51the nudge, you can call it the excuse, to go into the voting booth and tick blue, tick Democratic, break your Republican habit. I think it is that kind of an ad. I think there are enough Republicans in Ohio who have looked at the ad and thought, this is gross. I'm just not going to do it. So if they tick blue at the top for Amy Acton, for governor, will they then feel more comfortable ticking blue all the way down the ballot paper? I think that's what we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get good exit polling results on that. How many people saw that ad and changed their mind, which is going to be fascinating. Let me pin you for a second. Do you think Sherrod Brown's going to win that race? I think he is, yeah.

34:31Yeah, okay. So I do too. And I think in the aftermath, we're going to be doing an autopsy. And guys, we're going to have a live stream, Gaddy and I, and we'll be doing the autopsy. And I think we'll be saying, wow, Bivik really blew himself up with this thing. It was, I mean, how do you go to the estranged mother like that and have the estranged mother call the daughter a liar like that? Oh, my God. I mean. Do you want to hear the little bit of gossip I heard over the weekend about what some Democrats are hoping for? And any gossip that you have, let me just stipulate this, I want to hear. Well, I heard a really good piece of gossip, but I'm not going to repeat that one. Okay, let me just put my finger up while I'm drinking my coffee.

35:10Your little finger. Let me hear the gossip, okay? Okay, so here's the gossip I got from a Democrat who's super plugged in who's saying, the word amongst Democrats is actually they want to pick up five, in their ideal world, some Democrats are saying, they won't say this on the record, they want to pick up five in their ideal world. Some Democrats are saying, they won't say this on the record, they want to pick up five Democratic seats, but they'd be quite happy losing Michigan because they are worried about how much of a firebrand Abdul El-Sayed would be if he comes into the Senate because he is very progressive and they are worried about having a very strong, this is kind of establishment Democrats, are worried about having a super strong progressive socialist aligned democratic

35:50caucus in the Senate and in the House where they'll have a dozen or so progressive Democrats, socialist aligned Democrats, and what will that do to their governing majority and what they can do. Anyway. There you go. I mean, look, that's, but you know, that, again, you know, Bob Rubin just had a great op-ed in the New York Times, has said publicly, and I quote, I've been at this for 60 years, there's no national Democratic Party. Okay, the word unity and Democrats, they just don't do it well, you know? I think they're holding it together now until the midterms. But after the midterms, the dam will break and we will be into civil war territory for the Democrats. Right. And Hakeem Jeffries, if he is Speaker of the House, he's going to have

36:37quite a posse that he's going to have to contend with. Okay, guys, we will be doing a live stream in the run up to the election this week, Wednesday, 28th of October, 6pm UK time, 2pm Eastern, Thursday, 29th of October, 8pm UK time, 4pm Eastern, Friday, 30th of October, 8pm UK time, 4pm Eastern. You can catch us live then. And of course, we'll be taking your questions. See you later, guys. Thanks for listening. See you later in the week, guys. What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes

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