Original subtitles

post-election audience, and the election... I'm taping it, so don't tell

me how it came out.

No, we had a midterm election. Midterms are different, right?

It's like a midterm. It's like checking in with your partner when you're

lovemaking halfway through to say, are you all right?

And...

And this time they said, I think I want to see other people.

Yeah, Republicans... Well,

Republicans lost bigly. There's no other way to put it. And great, fuck, now I'm

never going to get that check for $5,000.

So, I'm getting over that.

But, hell, you know what?

In 2016...

Lindsey Graham said, if we nominate Trump, we're going to get destroyed and

we will deserve it. And it just shows gays are always 10 years ahead of

everybody.

Well,

look, I hate to gloat, but sorry,

I have to do a little of it because everybody was hedging about this

election.

Don't count your chickens. It's going to be closer than you think. I never bought

into that bullshit.

My prediction that this will be a historic thumping. That is bold that

it'll be historic.

Okay, well, that's what I think it will be. It's going to be a classic

historical ass-whooping. I would bet the house on that. The midterms are going to

be a blowout. I think they're going to kick ass.

Then they're going to kill it in November. Your party is going to get the

dog shit kicked out of you. This election is not about them. People are

like, we'll get to them in 28.

This election is about Donald Trump, and we don't like him anymore.

Well, I'll tell you something.

Here's something I could not have predicted, which is Trump's reaction to

the election.

He said, did you see this? He said, congratulations to the Democrats. They

did a good job.

Don, are you okay?

We've been feuding.

You sound unwell. You're not even going to fake it was rigged? I mean...

And let me tell you something. Even with the attempted rigging, and they did try

to rig it in every different kind of way, mail-in balloting, intimidating the

voters, all that shit.

Democracy, man.

Kind of fucking awesome.

The system stood... The system stood in place.

And also, we found out no place is solid red. You know, we get so used to that

forever. Writing off four-fifths of the country, solid blue, solid red.

Texas?

I'll tell you, for Republicans, losing Texas is like finding out your

girlfriend is dating a lesbian.

You knew they were unhappy. You didn't think they'd go that far.

Texas went, South Carolina, Kansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Alas... Well, we

don't know about Alaska. They're still counting Dan Sullivan's.

But that probably will be Democratic. I mean, all these states.

Ohio. I remember four years ago, they said, Ohio, no longer a purple state,

solidly red.

Well, it turns out, even the power of John Houston's muscular ass...

Could not turn Ohio.

Remember that?

But I looked at his ass, and I said, his ass is like a pile of muscle.

Yeah. And he lost to Sherrod Brown, a Democrat with a flabby ass.

That's politics.

No, I mean, every demographic group, and some of them by huge.

Hispanics, 29-point flip from the last election.

And they say, the experts say it's because of the fuel costs, grocery

prices, and oh yeah, they didn't like being systematically hunted like

animals. That's the other thing in the mix.

Lost.

Trump had always won white women.

Lost them now.

His appeal at the end, a little tone deaf, he said, fake it like I'm on the

ballot.

And not just women. He lost

the bros. The bros, dude.

Young white men, huge swing, like 28 points. Taylor Swift hasn't lost this

many white guys.

I think the rebuke for him that hurts the most is, as always, money.

Crypto coin. A year ago, Trump's crypto coin was selling at $75.

Today it's $1.24.

If you put $10,000 in it a year

ago, today it's worth $170.

It went from with one coin you could buy a used car to now you can get gas.

and Ali Batali are here. But first up, he is the man behind such movie classics

as Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom and Lone Survivor. His new one is called

The Mosquito Bowl, out now in select theaters and streaming on Netflix

starting November 25th. Peter Byrne. Peter.

I wouldn't burn you with talking about the election, I know. A little bit,

because I was just listening to your predictions about the butt-ass whoopin'.

How are my New York Giants gonna do?

Can you tell me, like, how much money? Well, they're my New York Giants, too.

Well, how are we gonna do? You're on it. Well, they're not gonna go all the way.

Okay, so don't bet the farm.

I wouldn't bet anything.

Fair enough. You know, you can bet they'll do better than the Jets.

But your resume has some of my favorite movies of this century on it. I mean,

like The Kingdom and that thing you did, American Primeval, I thought was one of

the greatest Westerns I've ever, or any kind of series I've ever seen.

And, you know, your stuff, including the new one, of course, it is a lot about

manly men doing manly things.

And I'm very okay with that. I just feel like it's gotten very politically

incorrect, you know, to manly men doing manly things. But you know what? Some of

us watch the History Channel and we're tired of apologizing for it.

You know, do you feel that backlash?

I mean, I don't really feel a backlash.

Like, I like to refer to myself as a trauma filmmaker.

Most of my films have a lot of trauma in them. The Kingdom, Friday Night Lights

didn't have a very happy ending. They lost at the end.

Lone Survivor wasn't an actual entirely uplifting film.

Deepwater Horizon, Patriot's Day about the Marathon bombing.

I'm kind of drawn to intense events because intense events just provide a

lot of drama and emotion and opportunity for character.

And I like to try and find the themes of love and brotherhood and compassion.

that can come up from those kind of stories. Well, this new one certainly

has all of that in spades. I mean, Mosquito Ball.

Why don't you just tell them briefly the story, because it is a true story.

Right. So Mosquito Ball is a true story written by my cousin, Buzz Bissinger,

who wrote the book Friday Night Lights.

And when Buzz kind of gets on one, like he did with Friday Night Lights, he

writes a book.

that you think is about football, but if you read the book it's really about kind

of life and family and community and love and hatred and all the things that

make us human.

And that's why I did, you know, responded to a lot of Friday Night

Lights. Mosquito Bowl is a war story. It's about four all-American football,

college football players who on Pearl Harbor went down. They quit football,

joined the Marine Corps, and they all went and fought in the Battle of

Okinawa. College players.

They were college, yeah, very young, incredible players.

And it's the story of their experience in World War II in the Pacific Theater.

It's really meant to be a very strong anti-war film.

I believe that you can admire and support troops.

My dad was a Marine in Korea.

I know your father was in the military.

Yeah, World War II.

mosquito ball you can very much support the men and women who serve this country

and at the same time really question our leaders and think about why we're asking

them to go where we're asking them to go how the fuck we're going to deal with it

when it's over these are kind of important questions that the mosquito

ball sort of has on its mind underneath this pretty sad story of these young men

well i mean

They made anti-war movies before Saving Private Ryan. Right.

That was the first one I thought was a really effective one because it actually

showed what war looks like. This one does, too, in the same way. There's a

storming the beach scene. Any movie that is an anti-war movie should have a

storming the beach scene because you just see this... Carnage.

The terror, how anyone could think.

under those conditions, and you have to.

People have asked me, you know, like, why would you do another war movie? Why

a World War II film? There have been some really fucking good war movies.

And my answer was, yeah, but I never got to try one.

And when I was researching the film, I went to Okinawa, which is where the

final battle of our film takes place.

And the Marine Corps gave me some historians, and they toured me the

entire island, from where it started to where it ended to where those suicide

cliffs were that women were throwing themselves off of and their children.

And it was harrowing.

And then the Marines took me back to their current base. And I didn't realize

that we have hundreds of thousands of military on Okinawa right now. We have

warships and attack aircraft and tens of thousands of Marines.

And I met with the general of the base that they were touring me, and I said,

sir, can I ask you a question?

And he said, yeah. I said, what the fuck is going on here?

Like, what are these guys, what's going on here?

He said, oh, that's a good question. And he pointed to a map of the South China

Sea, and he goes, see, it's all about this. And he pointed to this little

island, Taiwan.

He said, they want it, the Chinese, and I'm here to make sure they understand

they can't get it.

And this is now 88 years after 350,000 people were killed on

Okinawa. I'm thinking.

We don't need another war movie.

We've learned a great lesson as a culture.

Hmm, didn't really feel that way to me. So that was part of my kind of calculus.

Another thing that really resonated with me with what's going on now is there is

a little brief conversation that two of the guys have when they're over there.

Yes. And it's about oil.

One of them is like...

Why are we here? Why did this war start?

And the other guy kind of hips him. Well, you know what? We cut off Japan's

oil. Correct.

It's always about oil. Isn't that crazy? It's always about oil and Jews.

Everything.

Those are the two things that always keep coming up. I don't know how.

I mean...

I had to be honest with myself when I started researching it, and I'd be

curious how many people in this room are really clear on why, what happened that

led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I'm like, well, the Japs attacked us,

the Japanese, you know, dry-gulched us, they blindsided us.

I'm like, in my research, well, why? What was happening?

And then I realized, well, Japan didn't have any oil.

They were invading China, doing horrible things to the Chinese.

Horrible. Horrible, horrible things.

Japanese were as brutal as anybody.

I mean, I've heard people say... Hitler got his playbook.

Wars happen because, you know, men just like to fight.

That's not true. I mean, sometimes they do, and men do like to fight. But wars

happen because men have to fight. Yes. And this war had to be fought. It must

be a little easier making a war with this kind of carnage.

when you know it was a just war?

I can't say it's easier.

I mean, when I really looked at the carnage, I looked at the fact that...

And I don't mean to get too heavy on a show that's so funny, and you're one of

the funniest people I know. Oh, I'll make up for it later. Good.

I'll get him back. Go on.

Sorry.

Can you guys indulge me a little bit? Yeah. Indulge me a little bit, right?

75 million people were killed globally in World War II on this planet.

Right? 75 million people were killed globally.

And you look at World War I, 18 million people were killed. So you go 18

million, 75 million.

I don't want there to be a World War III. I truly do not want that for my

children, for everybody's children.

And so, you know, yes, World War II, we needed to fight that war.

But we really need diplomats. We need diplomacy.

We need people who aren't monetizing peace.

Yeah, but when all that... We need peacemakers. Yeah, I know, but... We do.

No, but we do. We do. Okay, but nobody knows better than you.

That's kind of bullshit because it doesn't work when one side of the table

doesn't want peace.

And there are plenty of people who have taken over countries in this world and

they don't want peace. And then all that list of things you said that are lovely,

it doesn't work. And that's when you call in the Marines. Yes, it is. Yes,

sir. Yes, sir.

Yes.

We 100% need Marines.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, my father, who I love very much most of the time,

My father's buried in Arlington, and during the making of this film, I would

go down there and have these conversations with him, which were great

conversations because he had to shut up and listen to me.

And I could tell him about, you know, Dad, the world is really fucked up,

right? There's some real problems, and there's some horrible actors out there,

and we do need Marines, and we do need Delta and Special Forces.

Don't want to use them when we don't have to? No.

No. Okay. That's my point. All right. We agree.

And I think the next movie, I think you should make a romantic comedy. I'll try.

Would you? Would you?

Okay.

Thank you very much. Peter Berg, it's a terrific movie.

Thank you. Everybody should see it.

All right, let's meet our panel.

hey how are you okay she is ms now senior political hill reporter and the

host of way too early ali vitale great to have you here with us for the first

time and he's the host of the conversations with coleman podcast and a

contributor to the free press coleman hughes back with us all right oh my gosh

I want to get everybody's takeaways.

There's such a fun show always after an election because the deck gets shuffled.

Things are new. New cast of characters. It's like a new season to TV.

Let me start with the thing I mentioned in the monologue, which I think is

underreported so far.

Nothing is solid red.

We got so used to so long living in this country where we just wrote off that

whole part of the country. We knew it was going to be red. Those people, come

on, there's toxic D.

They'll never vote. No.

Elections are like people saying, you know what?

You haven't checked in with me in a while.

We kind of lost touch, didn't we?

Here I am.

I'm a little different now.

People grow.

They change.

Things change.

It's amazing.

It's affirmative.

It's inspiring to me that the places that went, no, we're not hicks.

We're not hicks for life.

You speak now.

So look, I think we all have a little bit of recency bias, right? Because when

you say these places have been solid red, since when?

Right? For a couple decades.

Okay, that's a good amount of time, but, like... Kansas?

Let's, like, zoom out.

All the plain states. Hold on. Let's actually zoom out a little bit more and,

like, look at this historically.

Basically, all black people used to vote Republican, like, in the 1930s. Correct.

That was a pretty big change. It happened in a couple decades. That was,

yes. As late as the 1980s and 90s, you could be a Southern American Democrat.

There were Southern conservative Democrats that would never dream of

voting Republican. And Northern Republican liberals. In my lifetime,

when I was a baby. Yeah. So, you know, it's not quite as, um... You know, we're

living through a historic moment, right?

Historians are gonna write about this as a major tectonic sh... shift in the

geopolitical structure of our two-party system.

It's going to be similar to, you know, talking about how black people used to

vote Republican, now we vote Democrat. It's going to be one of those things.

Republicans are going to get a signal. They're either going to respond to it

and shift, pivot.

towards the center, pivot away from extremely corrupt candidates, pivot away

from whatever candidate is loyal to Trump is the one we're running, pivot

away from all this nonsense.

And if they hear that loud and clear, then all these states could go red again

in two years, right?

None of this is permanent. I mean, you're right, I think, to talk to the

fact that some of these places that ended up flipping, the Rio Grande

Valley, for example, in Texas, so crucial to Tallarico and Hinojosa being

able to flip it together, right? There is Democratic DNA.

some of these places.

I do think other of these places, though, a place like Kansas, a place

like Mississippi, I mean, even my most optimistic Democratic sources were never

trying to sell me on the idea that these were going to flip and that Chuck

Schumer and Democrats would have a 54, 55, potentially 56-seat majority.

I mean, I think we coined a new professional term of politics, like,

bonkers weird. This map was so bonkers weird. I didn't know what to make of it.

I'm standing at the big board. Three... o'clock in the morning getting on TV.

And every race that I looked at was like, whoa, that flipped? North

Carolina's congressional delegation in the House completely flipped. From 10 to

4 Republican to Democrat, they are now likely to be exactly opposite. It is

very much the election consequences.

And it was a total backfire. Completely. Because they gerrymandered it, thinking

they were going to get 10 to 4 Republican to Democrat, and they got the

exact opposite.

To me, this is another great thing about what happened this week.

Trust.

restored. People think, oh, voting does matter. They do count it.

And it does make a difference. I mean, we almost lost that.

And when you think about all the things that people were so worried about that

was going to fuck up this election, the Musk money, fucking with mail-in

votings, gerrymandering, closing polling places, the intimidation outside polling

places, the Republicans did all that.

Democrats found one other guy named Dan Sullivan.

That was their cheat. But all that didn't make any difference.

I mean, a little shout-out to the Founding Fathers. I know they're

terrible, awful Caucasians, but, I mean, they...

They... Somehow, this system, which I had much less faith in ten years ago,

when Trump was first there... Not only a shout-out to the Founding Fathers, but

also a bit of a poo-poo on the media that is constantly trying to terrify us

in order to get us to click.

on whatever the latest, yes, threat to democracy, okay, challenge, right? But

when you see that there's a challenge to democracy, that doesn't mean democracy's

over. That doesn't mean it's Weimar Germany, right? And a lot of us have

been taken in by this over the past few years, and what's good about this

election is that actually the system works. Except for the fact that it's

beautiful that the system works.

I cover campaigns for a living because there is something so amazing about

watching democracy in action, and I love when voters teach us something. And

also, after January 6, 2021, I do not think that we can take our democracy for

granted. It's not fear-mongering. It's listening to what the then-outgoing, now

-current president of the United States said and did and reacting to that in a

serious way that doesn't tell people, be afraid to vote.

Certainly, that wasn't the message that I would give to people who watch my

show. when I was on MSNOW, anywhere.

But it's—be vigilant about it. Take it seriously.

Know that it is your right, and know that it is not the federal government

who can send ICE to a polling place or tell you that election results are

invalid. And that's the lesson of Jan.

6.

It's always been a republic if you can keep it. So vigilance has always been

necessary. But when you go too far and people lose faith in the system, they

get seduced by the extremists.

And there's certain extremists on the left, especially the DSA, that if you go

to their website, they say, we need to abolish the Senate.

Democracy has failed. And that's not going to happen.

There are people on the left, I agree with you, who are threatened by

progress.

You'd think they're progressives. You'd think they would like it.

No, because it's like, no, they have to be, there's always more work to be done.

And there is always more work to be done. But they don't acknowledge the

work that is, they don't acknowledge where we are. Let me tell you where we

are. First black woman governor.

First, first.

Anywhere.

Anywhere.

First black Republican governor. First Muslim senator.

First gay male senator, openly.

I'm not naming names. I'm just saying openly.

The 10 most populous states, not one of them has a governor who's a white

Christian man.

It's just, well, we're not against white Christian men, right?

We're just saying that things have changed a lot.

This Scott Cullum in Mississippi, he flipped the county that's named after

the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, I read.

In 2003, gay oral sex was outlawed in Texas. Now the Chief

Justice of the Texas Supreme Court is a lesbian.

It's just...

This country changes, and that's why elections are awesome. Check in with me.

See who I am now.

Okay, here's the other thing.

My other takeaway, the power of money.

Not in elections, as Musk found out always, and certainly Hillary spent a

lot more than Trump with that. Okay, what I mean is, what you can get away

with as president when the people are flush.

You know, last election, he was talking about Arnold Palmer's giant penis.

And people had money. It was funny. Now the stuff about men's asses, not so

funny. Things are not funny without money. You know, when people are feeling

good about their wallet, I made a little list. You can be vulgar, cruel.

These are all things, kind of racist, egomaniac, corrupt.

Greedy. Indulge your eccentricities like loving tariffs and loving dictators and

just crazy.

Renaming things.

You know, his closing argument at the reflecting pool, if that wasn't a Louis

XIV moment.

Like, the closing argument the day before the election talking about the

sluice duct and the fucking, you know, algae in the pool and people going, hey,

crazy man, we've had enough. You know what?

It's...

We can keep renaming things after yourself.

But, you know, the crazy just goes so far. And you can lie to me about a lot

of things. Can't lie to me how much money I have. And you took it out of my

pocket. It's all very let them eat cake.

Right? And I think this public, every time I go out and talk to voters, they

are talking about on data centers. The reporting that I did there was, why

hasn't anyone checked in with me, asked if they could put this in my community?

There was a deep feeling that these systems don't work. And so I think

that's also part of why this wave was so big.

Yes, it was completely a referendum on Trump. This is consequences of your

actions. Tariffs hitting Michigan, the anti-Canada sentiment in New York and

Michigan as well.

Diesel costs for farmers everywhere from Iowa to Kansas.

We want to talk about real consequences of your own actions. Scott Colom in

Mississippi didn't have to be a candidate on the ballot. In 2023, Joe

Biden nominated him to the courts.

You know who told him? You know who said, no, I don't want that person

serving? Cindy Hyde-Smith, the person who could lose her seat now because

Scott Colom came back and said, okay, I'm going to run for Senate.

This is all consequences of your own actions.

And I think the other thing about progress...

People used to say all the time, you know, I don't like his policy, Donald

Trump. I mean, his personality.

But I like his policies.

Nobody says that now. Well, what was the policy? Nobody says that now. What was

the crowning policy of the last two years for Republicans who controlled

both sides of Congress and the White House? I covered it, and the big

takeaway was getting rid of health care subsidies that people needed to stay on

health care, cutting SNAP.

and making it more difficult for Americans to receive things that help

them with safety nets in this country. So we would agree that more Trump 2028

is not a winning slogan, right?

More MAGA.

Okay, so if the Republicans, I think they already know that. We're only three

days after. I think they already know that. So are they liberated now from

MAGA? Because to me, the litmus test for them is...

Are you going to go back to conceding elections?

Right. I see Ron DeSantis is out there.

I said some nice things about Ron DeSantis. I thought he did something

good. I thought he handled the COVID thing better than they did in lots of

places.

He's not an idiot at all.

No. But he did campaign for election deniers a few years ago.

Okay. To me, that's my red line. Yeah.

Trump used to say about immigration, if we don't fix this, we don't have a

country.

Me, my, we don't have a country, is this.

Elections. We don't have to go back to 2020, but you can't be the guy who

always, how they always were with Trump.

We know he's watching, and we have to pretend 2020 is, at best, well, we don't

know. They've got to get over that, or else...

My vote is not in play for them.

MAGA has always been held together simply by Trump's, you know, if you want

to call it charisma, you can. To his base, it's charisma, certainly.

And when he's gone... Look, there's a reason he won twice, right? I'm just

trying to explain it.

When he's gone, there's no actual philosophy there outside of Trump's

hold over these people. So what are Republicans going to do? J.D. Vance, I

think he's trying to take a lifeboat off of this Titanic by appealing to the anti

-Semitic wing of the party. I don't know if that lifeboat is big enough to

sustain him. I don't think it is.

Um, but, uh, this is... this is a... It's gonna be a remarkable election,

because both sides are up for grabs.

Both sides have a chance to... to put someone forward that's fundamentally

new, fundamentally different. Uh, and we haven't seen that in a while. I think

Vance is toast.

I think the only person... I think the only person,

potentially... who had a worse night than Trump on Tuesday was J.D. Vance.

Because he is the guy who will always be the second part of the bumper sticker

that says Trump-Vance. And you can never get enough distance if you're trying to

run for president on your own from that...

space. And so I think, yes, pay attention to DeSantis. You pay attention

to someone like Senator Ted Cruz, who, when I interviewed him a few months ago,

I knew you just had him here as well. He's clearly running for president.

And it's clear that there is going to be a robust discussion for what it means to

be a Republican in the post-Trump era. And I put an asterisk on post-Trump,

right? Because...

I don't know that the party is there, because I watched the time after January

6th where all of them were done and they were disgusted. And then all of a

sudden, a few weeks later, Kevin McCarthy was down at Mar-a-Lago with a

thumbs up.

And so I was even talking to a Republican in the Senate recently who

said, I'm done. I'm not listening to anything he says anymore. And I said, is

that true?

And they said, yeah, fine.

Right? So I think they are trying to figure out in real time, are they done

with the president, who has had a political expediency around him? Because

you're right, every election I've followed him in, and my first one was

15, on the road with him everywhere.

He is a skilled person at reading the emotional tenor of where the country is.

And he seems to have lost that in this most recent term. He seems uninterested,

according to sources that I talked to close to him, in the ins and outs of

governing. When I interviewed former Vice President Mike Pence, he himself

described Trump as politically agnostic.

You're right that there's no core ideological belief that underpins him.

And I think the party got lost in that. And so they are at a real reckoning

moment with some real questions to answer about what they stand for going

forward. But I'm just not convinced three, four days out that they are fully

ready to untether.

No, you're going to have to tap dance like they did with Reagan for a while.

You know, he was the great forefather of the party, the great patriarch that

we... And, you know, now does anybody give a shit about Reagan? No. Over time,

it goes away. But, yes, you're going to have to do that little dance. He did

great things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, he closed the border. Yes,

he did. You know, he did have some accomplishments.

Let's remember how Trump got his mojo back the first time, too, because the

crucial piece of the story is he was losing in the polls to Ron DeSantis

until when?

until the first indictment came.

And the second indictment came. Oh, yeah. And then he started going up and

up and up as the Republican Party rallied around the candidate they viewed

as persecuted.

That's a very important lesson for Democrats to learn right now. Just, you

have a mandate for something, for sure. But it's not for political prosecutions.

It's for non-crazy politicians.

All right, let's talk about that in a minute. But first off, there is other

news.

Other important news that happens, not all about politics.

Disney has been in the news this year.

I take no joy in it, just because they fired me once.

I could not appreciate it. Now, twice this has happened. In May, 27 cruise

ship workers of the Disney line were arrested for child porn.

Yeah, I know, ugly stuff.

And then, this is just last week, 13 Disney World...

workers arrested for human trafficking, child predator operation.

One was dressed as Mickey.

He was a Mickey in the park, and he had a diaper fetish. I'm not making this up.

It's always the people who are most wholesome who, you know, Mormons. You

know what I'm saying.

Anyway, I don't know what's going on at Disney, but it looks like it might have

infected the movie division because...

We see some of the new slate of movies. It's a little over-sexualized. Would you

like to see what the... I thought you would.

For example, this doesn't sound very Disney. Seeping Booty.

I... Leslie

Maguire.

Finding Nympho. I... These are...

Not the Disney I know.

101 ejaculations.

Deeper by the dozen.

Freak-off Friday.

Herpy the love bug.

And my favorite, the hunchback of OnlyFans.

Back to the

Democrat.

We were talking about the pitfalls of the party. I mean, the Republicans have

already fallen in the pit.

We can't talk about their pitfall. They're already down there.

The Democrats. What's going on there? What is their...

Achilles' heel, because I think we agree on this, that it's catering to the left.

To me, one of the great results of this election was it gave moderates a big

stick to beat them off with. I think they've got to cut them loose

completely, but I don't know if they're going to do that. Well, let's see, who

has the guts to say, this is the Democratic Party. You are doing a whole

different thing. And no tent is big enough.

I mean, now there's eight DSA. Now, if we're talking about socialism, yeah,

look, I always say this. We already have a lot of socialism, and I'm for most of

it. We need most of it.

But these people want communism.

I mean, if you look at what they say, I try to sell this all the time. I don't

think people know it. Just read what they say.

It is communism. I'm not down for that.

Now, some of these people who ran said things that are very encouraging. A

couple of them ran ads that said, No guys on women's sports teams.

We need more of that, right? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the danger for Democrats is that they take this massive success as a sign

that they can just go all the way. They can run hyper-progressive candidates.

The country's so much on their side that they can go as extreme as they want.

But actually, if you look at the results here, the moderate Democrats did better

than the DSA-backed progressive candidates across the board, right?

I'll say it in Michigan.

Did significantly worse than most of the moderate Democrats in that state, right?

And that's just one example. This was a pattern we saw So the real lesson for

Democrats is Americans prefer moderate Democrat and he's a guy who says I'm not

a democratic socialist He's endorsed by them, but he says he's not and on most

issues He's not as far left as they are his main issue is Israel, right? And of

course that to me is going to be the fly in the ointment for the Democrats I mean

a lot of their candidates

Perfective candidates are Jewish 20 I was out last night briefly playing a

little hooky for somebody's birthday party before a night before the show But

people everyone wanted to talk about the election and what do you think? It's

interesting the name that was on everybody's lips. This is only two days

after the election John Ossoff mm-hmm See a murmur This

this is only LA who knows but there

was a feeling I felt among people last night who were up on politics and wanted

to talk about it, that this is the guy they see. I mean, he did win Georgia by

18 points, I think.

That's a pretty big number for a Democrat.

And the other guy we just had here, Andy Beshear, he's the other guy who wins big

in a red state.

This is not good news for somebody like Gavin Newsom, who has the California

baggage, right?

But we don't know, right? I think about everyone looks at the field as being

open. We haven't had a truly open field on both sides in 10 years. It is going

to be fascinating to see how these parties sort through themselves for

someone like me, who is just a total nerd for how all of this plays out. I

think for Democrats, though, what I have heard from Democrats in Washington who

are parsing through this, everyone is looking for a tea leaf for the kind of

candidate that they want to see. They sound a bit Oprah-esque at this point.

Electability in every paradigm that you can find it. They look at an L-site. and

they say, see, a progressive can win in a swing state. They look at a Tallarico

and say, see, you need moderates. There is proof of purchase for everyone until

there isn't. This is the season of everyone can have a good take because

you don't know what kind of candidate you're going to have.

Bashir will run.

Ossoff, maybe. I'm not personally convinced.

Pritzker, Newsom. I mean, the names on the list that I keep in my office are

like 30 people deep at this point.

Democrats are going to have options.

When you come to the next two years, though, this is a period where there's

no... clear Democratic leader. And that means that for Schumer and Jeffries, the

two twin pillars right now, New Yorkers who are leading this Congress, yes, I

think that they have to walk a tightrope on not overstepping. And, look,

Democrats do this often, right? It's like snatching victory from the jaws of

defeat, or whatever the saying is supposed to be.

However, I do think when we look at what the accountability side of this looks

like, it's going to be...

Not impeachment of a president, at least not in the conversations I've had, but

it is going to be people like Pete Hegseth, Todd Blanch, and others in the

administration where the laws of political gravity do apply.

And I think every Democrat I've spoken to is keenly aware of that.

I like what Rahm Emanuel said.

What Rahm Emanuel said is we don't need impeachment 2.0. We need ethics

investigations, right? Yes. And I think that's a responsible way to go.

Well, of course, because impeachment, they tried it twice. If you're talking

about with Trump, even with how many senators are they going to have at best?

56? Yes. How many do you need to convict? 67.

No, to convict. Oh, you're right, two-thirds. Two-thirds.

You're never going to get that.

They're not going to do that. He is still the patriarch of the party. He is

still the Abraham of this desert.

Okay, that's not going to... Can I... Can I...

Can I quote, just apropos of this, the new Texas governor, and I'm still

learning to pronounce her name.

And it's not Hinojosa? Hinojosa. You were right. Hinojosa. Yeah. No H.

Yeah, silent H. Okay.

Two days before the election, she said, my pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon-to

-be governor.

More of that. Yeah. We need more of that. And also,

Josh Turek.

Is he the first openly gay senator?

That's Chris Pappas. Okay, sorry, Josh.

Or if you like it, Josh.

I'm not that... Wonderful, whatever you want to do, Josh.

He said, he opposes males competing in female sports. I am against taxpayers

paying for sex changes, too. And I think this is so important.

Democratic... Special interest groups. And of course, he's already gotten

criticism from the LGBT community and other people.

Democratic special interest groups, they're the biggest Karens in the world.

They're just always complaining to management.

They are... I'm right. They're always complaining to management. And you

need... To me, the Democratic politician who wins, or I would want to vote for,

is the one who stands up to that.

The one who doesn't raise his hand when somebody at the debate, because you know

they're going to go, who says Gaza is a genocide?

And the guy who doesn't hold his hand, what are you talking about, asshole?

And to me, that's just a big litmus test for me. Or even worse than that...

And no one's been talking about this since Adam Hamowy from my home state of

New Jersey. I'm from District 11. He just won District 12.

And there's a great piece in The Atlantic about how he was hanging out

with a blind sheikh in the 90s.

He was in the blind shakes posse who was convicted of attempting to blow up the

World Trade Center, the Holland Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel, UN building, and was a

jihadist preacher.

And he was driving around with this guy on cross-country trips for 12 hours, and

he's never really given a good account of...

What he believed then and kids look you can have a past Everyone can have a past

as long as you can tell me a persuasive story about why you're not that now and

he hasn't done that That's the kind of person that is going to be poisoned to

the Democratic Party that the fastest way They're gonna lose this momentum is

to not marginalize the the people who can't credibly claim to be moderate and

talk to the whole American people that's so they have to they still have to get

their house in order and not not fall into hubris at this moment.

It's interesting that it's only three days after, and we're hardly talking

about Trump already.

I mean, it's a little weird that he's still there. He just had this giant

rebuke. Now he's literally a lame duck.

It's like trying to cancel your subscription, but you're still on the

plan for another year.

But... But, you know, he's been amazingly humble, I thought. I mean, I

thought by this time he'd be suing the voters by name, individually, and

arresting the poll workers. Instead, even he was like, you know, even I'm

sick of me a little bit.

You know, and he just... But here's... He said...

When you say my legacy, I'll be a block.

I'll end up being a blocker. I'll block all their bad stuff for two years. It

won't be the same, but I'll be a blocker. He said block four times in two

sentences. I think he wants to block.

But he also said we're going to work with the Democrats.

They have already called.

Well, we all know that that's probably not true. But even if he thinks it, they

have already called and they want to work with me.

I have a lot of friends in the Democratic Party.

Well, I might get to go again. Look at that.

This guy has no... So, given all that, what do you

think of the fact that he fires Susie Wiles? That was his longest-serving

chief of staff, and by all accounts, you know, obviously a Trumper and a

conservative, but an adult in the room, replaced with Stephen Miller, who was

the deputy...

Chief of Staff.

But Stephen Miller, known to be, certainly reputed to be, the hard-assest

of the hard-asts in that administration.

I don't know.

I mean, Hakeem Jeffries said his presence, talking about Stephen Miller,

in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor.

Way to take a victory graciously.

Way to cool the temperature down right after. But it tells us everything about

both the challenge for Democrats, certainly, in having the authentic

reactions that, frankly, their base very much wants them to have. The idea of

compromise, I think, is going to be really difficult to sell a base that

only wants to hear about fight and accountability. I do think that's a

central tension point. But this, to me, in Trump's very...

uncharacteristic quiet after such a shellacking in an election for a man who

never wants to be called a loser ever. The idea that he's sticking by some of

these candidates, I mean it's all very atypical from the man that I've covered

up close for a decade.

But this is the clearest signal of the kind of person that he's going to be

over the course of however long the Miller tenure actually lasts.

Because for as long as I've covered Trump, Stephen Miller has been seen as

someone who will lean in to his most base intentions.

And he's also the architect of the immigration and deportation plan that

was maybe not the top issue because that was affordability. But you look at these

voter polls and it's right up there in the top three. When I was texting

Republicans before I came on this show, many of them who. used to work for Trump

said to me, what are we thinking putting in the guy who was the central cause of

the thing we got repudiated over at the polls in as the guy who's running the

show now? But if that's what the president's doing, it tells us

everything about where we're going in the lame duck. Well, I think your point,

I think it's so right about their base liking the conflict. Yeah. I think

secretly.

Not the politicians in the Republican Party, but the people on the podcast and

so forth. They love this. They like being out of power. It's so much more

fun. You can bitch about everything. Everything now is the Democrats' fault.

Every conspiracy theory takes on new life because you're not in power. They

secretly kind of love it.

All right. Thank you, guys.

It is time for a new rule, everybody.

Okay.

New rule, we don't need to write any more glowing stories about a celebrity's

weight loss journey.

There's no journey anymore.

It's the same five-minute story every time. I went to CVS, had my prescription

for Ozempic filled, the end.

New rule, headline writers can go ahead and leave out the word unsolicited when

it comes to dick pics. We can assume they were unwanted, no...

No woman has ever DM'd a guy, Hey, it's Julie. Remember me? We met at Steve's

party last week. Can I see your dick?

New Rule props must be given to Clifton Emerson, the employee of a Pennsylvania

factory who asked for more hours on the job.

At a time when this country has grown increasingly soft, Clifton, your can-do

work ethic is greatly appreciated.

Up until the point that you murdered your boss when

he didn't give you those hours.

That's too much ambition.

And definitely leave it off your LinkedIn.

New rules. Speakers at socialist gatherings have to explain

Why are you still wearing the mask?

What does that have to do with making rent?

You know, the pandemic, it's over. It was in all the papers.

Still wearing the mask? It's as stupid as being a Civil War reenactor, but even

they only do it once a year.

At this point, the only thing you're stopping from spreading is socialism.

Well, now that the crossword bandit, yeah, the so-called crossword bandit

because he left crossword puzzles at restaurants that he stiffed, now that

he's been arrested, someone has to tell him, stay alert in prison.

You don't want to get fucked in the three letters starts with A.

And finally, new rule, now that the election's over and Democrats are the

big winners, they must take a cue from the other recent big winners, the

Milwaukee Brewers.

Now, I... Exactly.

Exactly why I'm going to say this. I don't want to dwell on it because I know

to many people baseball is about as interesting as C-SPAN, but...

Suffice it to say, the Brewers shocked the world when, as literally the

smallest market team in the league, they won it all. It was like if the AI race

had got won by Radio Shack.

Everyone thought the Dodgers would win because their approach is to just spend

more money than anybody, mostly in Asia.

But...

But the brewers know how to deal, and it's actually not a secret.

Let fellow small market general manager Andrew Friedman explain.

He said the only reason we got good players in return is because we traded

really good players.

Yes, that's the lesson I want Democrats and Republicans to learn. Do you want to

get something done?

Then you also have to give up good players.

Do I love the idea of a wall on the border? I really don't. But would I give

it up?

Would I give up on that one to get a pathway to citizenship for people who

came here illegally but have contributed?

Yes, because you have to give up good place.

Most people who are

not on the fightin' fringes don't want the endless warfare and endless lawfare.

What they want is what the president himself so eloquently identified years

ago. We want deal.

Exactly, Tarzan. We want deal.

But that's hard to get if your political philosophy is also... Shove it up their

ass.

Yeah, well...

You know, after this week, I think the shove-it-up-your-ass option is off the

table.

And wait a second. While the Democratic politicians are generally too polite to

ever say out loud, shove-it-up-your-ass, the way America has been governed in

recent decades is exactly that. One party wins, the other gets drunk with

power, kowtows to their fringe, and shoves their ideological agenda up our

asses when all we want is to be governed effectively.

Congress, you may have heard, is kind of unpopular. I mean, like Martha Stewart

Halloween costume unpopular.

Their approval rating is 14%. Now, right now, now is one of those

rare moments when that can change, when we have the opportunity to get out of

this death spiral we've been in with each other. But it depends on both

parties being willing to make deal.

A good... A good

deal is like a marriage. Both parties end up a little unhappy, but you do it

because... Well, I'm not sure why you do it.

But in politics, you do it because if you don't compromise, nobody gets

anything. So, liberals, stop pretending that everyone who crosses the border is

Anne Frank with a leaf blower.

And Republicans, you're the party of white people, otherwise known as people

who don't pick strawberries.

So cut the crap about throwing people out who actually undergird the whole

economy. I could do this all day. Name any issue, and it really could be solved

if everyone would just go back to McDeal.

Let's... Let's... Let's try the lightning round on this.

Guns. Owning a gun doesn't make you a gun nut.

But... When you pose with one on your Christmas card?

Yeah, we have a lot of gun nuts in this country.

Supreme Court, stop trying to pack it. I'm not that happy with the nine people

who are there.

I'm not sure 15 would make it better.

But when one of them croaks?

The president who's in office, even if it's one you don't like, gets to pick

the next one. No more of this, we can't do it now because the election is a year

away or Mercury is in retrograde or the vibe isn't right or there's an El Nino.

None of that bullshit.

Environment.

Conservatives. Stop acting like wind and solar are a plot to trans the earth.

But also, paper straws suck, because they... Because they don't

suck.

And making laws about straws is not going to affect if the planet survives

or not. How about no more plastic straws or paper straws? You're an adult.

You shouldn't need a straw at all.

If you do, we'll get you a sippy cup.

Trans. It's rare, but it's real.

It's not Bigfoot.

Women with big feet, yes, but...

But

it's rare. If a newborn has a penis, put male on the birth certificate, not beats

us, we'll ask later.

Ten commandments in schools.

I'll give you five.

No, but how about

the left will allow the commandments to be displayed as a historical document as

long as the right admits they don't follow any of them.

Also, I will give in on, I will trade allowing the Bible to be read in public

schools, but only by a drag queen.

You see all these issues I'm dealing here. Pot, pot.

We get to smoke it, you get to tax it. Done.

Homeless, they're human beings who should be treated with dignity, but they

also can't be allowed to just shit on the street in front of America's

greatest monument, the Cheesecake Factory.

Okay,

one more.

Going to Mars. You've all heard me on this one. I really think it's stupid to

try to live on a planet that's 200 below zero with no air. But fine, I will. I

will make the trade. We can send people to Mars.

But Elon has to go first.

That's our show. I want to thank Ali Vitale, Coleman Hughes, and Peter Berg.

Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your

podcasts. Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.