Impeach Pete Hegseth?

Pod Save America

The episode examines the growing disconnect between Donald Trump's claims of a thriving economy and the reality of rising diesel prices and

Key takeaways

• Trump's claim of the 'best economy ever' is challenged by diesel prices reaching $6.58 a gallon in parts of Iowa.
• Republican Senator John Husted faces political pressure due to $2.5 billion in tax breaks given to data centers in Ohio.

Main topics

• Trump's economic messaging
• Data center energy costs

Notable quotes

The White House is trying to limit the damage of what they've done in the last couple of years with an assortment of gimmicks now.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a critique of political rhetoric and corporate i

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Today's presenting sponsor is SimpliSafe Home Security. When it comes to something as important as your home security system, you don't just want promises, you want results. Sending you one notification after a break-in is already underway. That's not cutting it. SimpliSafe's live agents intervene in real time. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break-in is already underway, SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI-powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live U.S.-based agents to step in. SimpliSafe's agents assess the threat, intervene through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers, and call for 911 dispatch. Our CEO, she got SimpliSafe recently. She heard us talking about it so much, she was like, I should try to get one. She installed it herself, said it was super quick. It was running in no time. She loves that the app's easy to use. She can arm or disarm the system or check the cameras right from her phone. So she is very satisfied with her SimpliSafe. Right now, you can get 50 % off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked for 50 % off. And when you order, please write in Pod Save America. in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like Simply Safe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's last-ditch effort to convince voters Republicans care about the cost of living, Democrats' big decision on a Republican data center bill, Pete Hegseth facing GOP critics and a possible impeachment over the Iran war, and the White House spending your tax dollars on Trump campaign ads. All right, guys, we are five weeks out from Election Day, and the numbers that may end up being more predictive than any poll are these. $4.50 a gallon for gas, $6.50 for diesel, and consumer sentiment now at its second lowest level in history, lower even than the height of the pandemic or the 2008 financial crisis. And it isn't just Democrats. Republican consumer sentiment is now down. 20 % since January, which does raise questions about whether this kind of messaging from Donald Trump is moving the needle. Speaker 3 (2:55) And that's because of me. Have a good time, everybody. Speaker 5 (2:59) You're twice as wealthy, and that's because of me. Have a good time. That's it. That's the closing argument. So the White House is trying to limit the damage of what they've done in the last couple of years with an assortment of gimmicks now. Trump's reportedly still weighing an export ban on diesel. And in that appearance on Monday in the Oval. That was an announcement that a Minnesota company will spend $15 billion to build a new steel plant in Iowa that could create 1,700 jobs when it opens in 2030. You Speaker 6 (3:35) think that'll do it? Speaker 7 (3:36) We'll have the midterms in 2030 maybe. Speaker 6 (3:39) I think it's Speaker 7 (3:40) a Speaker 6 (3:40) smart idea in the short term in Iowa. I Speaker 7 (3:42) mean Speaker 6 (3:42) I was talking to a friend in Iowa today who said like the democratic reaction is – do you guys remember when Trump brought the CEO of Foxconn to the White House and announced they would open a plant for like 13 – to make 13,000 new jobs in Wisconsin in 2017? They're going to make like LCD screens or something. Shocker. A decade later. Didn't pan out. Didn't really pan out. It's more like I think Microsoft now owns the land and it's just data centers. So it's kind of exactly what you'd expect. But my buddy in Iowa said that this was getting a lot of press, making headlines, like the public statements from people like Rob Sand or like it's a promising idea. I want more details, stuff like that. So they're kind of welcoming it. But ultimately, I think the price of diesel is what people in Iowa are really. focused on right now. It's like 658. It's about double what it was this time last year. They're about to go into planting season. So Iowa farmers are really, really pissed about that. I don't think an announcement of one potential factory by 2030 is going to deal with that. Speaker 7 (4:38) Yeah, there's a poll about how many people believed they were going to get the $5,000 check. Speaker 5 (4:45) Turns out not many. Speaker 7 (4:47) Not many, right? So you got to assume... Speaker 5 (4:50) People aren't really idiots. Right. People can look and be like, hey, it's really cool that we're going to have a new steel plant in Iowa. What a great idea. But it's not till 2030. And also, why do I think that that's something I should thank Trump for? Speaker 7 (5:01) Right. And I think people don't believe Donald Trump anymore. Even people that we would say, oh, like we wish they'd been credulous for far less time. Like it is happening. And so just like you can. say that's like the floor, right? Like how many people are going to believe his promises at this point? It's just sort of vanishingly few. So I'm sure people would appreciate a new steel plant, but it's a kind of believe it when I see it situation. It certainly doesn't change the fundamental economic conditions, which are not just, by the way, like precede this election. Like Donald Trump promised not just to kind of not have diesel prices go through the roof, but to address like, you know, decades of decline and years of rising prices. He's done the opposite. Speaker 5 (5:43) How excited do you think Ashley Hinson was to be standing right behind Donald Trump for when he said he gave her one of his famous out-of-touch sayings for the record books, best economy ever, as she's running in a tight race against Josh Turek in Iowa. Now she gets a video of her in the Oval behind him where he said, best economy ever, you're all richer. I Speaker 6 (6:02) think she said something funny too, like, we support your agenda, sir. Thank you for your agenda, sir, or something like that. He also promised, I think, to go to Speaker 5 (6:10) Iowa to campaign for her, which she was like, Speaker 6 (6:12) white Speaker 5 (6:13) knuckling it. He's going out. Yeah, he's like, hey, everyone, this is Ashley. She's in a tough race. She's awesome. Best economy ever. I'm going to go out and tell everyone in Iowa that when I campaign with her. Speaker 7 (6:22) Donald Trump giving rally speeches at this point is the equivalent of like when a dog brings you a bird. You know, it's like for these Republicans, he's like, look, look, I'm here with that bird you want. It's like, fuck, I don't want that bird. Get out of the house. Speaker 5 (6:36) You know, what about this diesel ban? Pros, cons. And does it have any impact? Political impact, do you think, before the midterm? Maybe Speaker 6 (6:47) short term. I mean, it sounds like they're preparing or proposing a 90 day export ban, which would in the short term would mean there's more supply. which presumably would bring down prices in the short term in the U.S. But long term, it creates a bunch of challenges that could increase prices permanently or not permanently for the long run. So I don't know. I think most of the industry hates it. People think it's kind of bullshitty. Maybe it'll work and drop prices a little bit. But again, like I was about to go into a month long harvest season with diesel prices at six. 58 a gallon in Sioux City, Iowa. Like if they're going to do this, why didn't they do it a month ago? Five weeks we got until the election. Five weeks. Speaker 7 (7:28) And like I don't – I'm an expert enough to know what the like short-term effects of a diesel export ban would be. But why are we in this mess? Well, because the president is a capricious buffoon who has introduced incredible instability in trade, in the Middle East, in the supply of oil. Just adding one more layer of unpredictable market forces, long-term help, of course not. What it does in the short term, who knows? But it's all being swamped by the fact that there is an ongoing war in the Middle East he can't get us out of. So whatever gimmicks he tries to pull in the next five weeks, I can't imagine it making that much of a difference. Speaker 5 (8:10) Yeah. I mean, look, we've all been there. You're trying to solve. problem that people don't perceive that you've succeeded in fixing the economy or that you're fixing it fast enough and so you go to the policy people and you're like what can we do to sort of move the needle here and they perhaps Speaker 7 (8:29) with a phone and a pen they Speaker 5 (8:30) throw a bunch of stuff well yeah ideally you'd start these things a year in advance of the election Speaker 3 (8:35) and Speaker 5 (8:35) you'd also do something that maybe actually made a difference And at the very least, you do stuff where you're like the way that you frame it is, you know, we're not there yet, but we're fighting hard to bring down costs. We're going to take on these companies, their price, or whatever you say. This message is so inconsistent that it's like we're going to do this thing. We're going to diesel ban and we're going to open up this thing. But also it's the best economy ever and you're all rich. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. Speaker 6 (9:00) Yeah, he's always selling. It's always marketing. Like a lot of people listening are like, well, how do I care about diesel? Like diesel increases the price of everything. It's trucking. It's freight trains. It's ships, meaning like small boats. It's farming and tractors and construction. It's home heating prices in the Northeast. It's military vehicles. Like this is touching all these different parts of our economy. And we export like 1.25 million barrels a day. So you could, I guess, stop doing that. But it's not going to increase supply that much. Speaking of fuel. Speaker 5 (9:32) You know what powers Crooked Media? What powers Crooked Speaker 7 (9:35) Media, John? Our subscribers. Speaker 5 (9:37) Oh, yeah. Yeah, which is a good reason to head on to crooked.com slash friends to become a subscriber today. You get ad-free episodes of all your favorite podcasts and you help support independent pro-democracy media, of which we are one of the few outlets left. Speaker 7 (9:52) And that engagement, it's a renewable resource. Speaker 5 (9:56) Republicans in Congress are also hard at work at... Pretending they suddenly care about the cost of living. This week, the Senate will vote on a bill that would direct states to, quote, consider requiring data centers to pay for their own energy costs. Just think about it, you know. Ponder whether you might be willing to gently nudge AI companies to maybe possibly pay for the vast amount of electricity that they consume. That's what this bill does. It's brought to you by Ohio Republican John Husted. who has been getting hammered by Sherrod Brown for giving $2.5 billion in tax breaks to data centers in Ohio alone, which the Republican Senate campaign committee has said is an, quote, anchor hanging around Husted's neck. They said it's the biggest threat to his reelection in a very close campaign. Would love to hear what they think about this new data center soundbite we just got from the Republican speaker of the House. Let's listen. Speaker 2 (10:54) I've had several tech executives and lawmakers, to be clear, say that the information against data centers, that pushback against data centers, that is coming from China. Yes, Speaker 4 (11:03) it is a Chinese psyop. I really Speaker 5 (11:04) believe that. It's not a conspiracy theory. I think they're pushing those ideas. Speaker 6 (11:08) It's not a Speaker 5 (11:08) conspiracy theory. Speaker 6 (11:09) How, like, someone unpack this for me. If he sincerely believes that, what is like one of the pieces of evidence that this is a Chinese psyop? Where is this coming? Where do they think this is coming from? Speaker 5 (11:19) This is just a guess, but I think what they would say is... So there's some people who are upset by data centers, but then, you know, the Chinese are pushing like fake accounts, sock puppet accounts. They're like making things go viral. I don't know. Maybe they're – It's crazy. Like bot farms, I guess. I guess Speaker 7 (11:38) there's like – The word psyop, like we just got to – everyone stop using it. It could become just sort of like – just the things you don't like are all psyops now. Fine, whatever. I think Speaker 5 (11:48) people got like – I think Speaker 7 (11:48) people got bored Speaker 5 (11:49) of Speaker 7 (11:49) using the word Speaker 5 (11:49) conspiracy and they just said it's a psyop. Speaker 7 (11:51) Yeah. So – Sounds Speaker 6 (11:53) cooler, I Speaker 5 (11:53) guess. Speaker 7 (11:54) Greg Abbott has shifted on this. We were just in Texas talking about this. A lot of Republicans realize like there's headwinds against it. Maybe it's true, right, that – In the same way that Russia didn't invent American political dysfunction, but took advantage of it by fanning the flames of it, maybe China does see advantage in kind of... drumming up antipathy towards AI in the United States. It wouldn't change the fact that these companies have gone about this in the most ham-fisted and kind of arrogant way that dismiss the concerns of people and that they've tried to buy and sell politicians to get around persuading people that they might want these data centers in their communities. The objections are very real from people who, A, don't want these things in their backyard, and B, have come to expect that the benefits that accrue to the largest and most profitable corporations in the world do not kind of redound to the benefit of the broader community. And that is not something China can convince us of whatever he is seeing or claiming to see or wanting to believe is true. Speaker 5 (12:54) So Republicans, they have recognized that they have a data center problem. Many of them were championing, you know, data centers for years now and offering all kinds of tax breaks and incentives also. to be honest, some Democrats too. And now everyone realizes there's a problem because all the polling has come back and it's unbelievably unpopular. And so they're deciding they're trying to do something belatedly. So the House passed a version of this Husted bill and it passed almost unanimously, 417 to 3. But the Senate Democrats then blocked John Thune's effort to pass it by unanimous consent. And Chuck Schumer called the bill a fraud, though as of now, we're recording Monday, the caucus still seems to be mulling over whether to try to deny Houston the points and open themselves up to being labeled obstructionists. So what do you guys think? What do the Senate Democrats do here? So Speaker 7 (13:54) first of all, it's not clear that this would do anything for Ohio, right? Ohio has a different set of rules that already go beyond what these voluntary rules would. So he's just trying to do a stunt messaging win that he can go campaign on. And I don't see why you would help a Republican. fighting for his life in the final home stretch before an election, get a fake victory that he can go run around the state pretending proves that he's some advocate. So like, that's where I would start if that's about trying to have an alternative bill about just voting this thing down and trying to tell the story. I actually like I don't know what the right thing to do is, but it is clear that the idea that you like whatever the vote in the House, because this bill doesn't do much. So it's an easy yes, whatever. Like the question is what you do right now. And if sure. It certainly wouldn't be helpful to Sherrod Brown, so I don't know why we do Husted's politics for him. I just find it hilarious that the Speaker 6 (14:47) Husted campaign thinks that voters are ever going to learn about a procedural vote on a Speaker 5 (14:52) bill that does nothing Speaker 6 (14:53) in the Senate about a data center. It just feels like such a dated view of politics when you could really actually inform people about these issues or votes and make it salient and care. I think people are really mad about the economy. They're really mad about data centers. They're pissed at the people in charge for allowing them to get there. And they know that some bullshit vote in Congress is probably not going to help them one way or the other. I think you're right. Democrats should not give him a win here. But like it's it's like feels like a bit of a Hail Mary. Speaker 5 (15:20) Yeah, I guess I guess the argument would be if