I mean, Mo, were you stunned that he shows up on screen at this big Republican party?

I don't think there's very much that John Fetterman does that stuns me anymore.

Look, John Fetterman was ahead of the curve a little bit in 2022 on this whole outsider populist message.

Not the first, obviously Bernie Sanders, right? But Bernie Sanders, who ran as a populist in 2016, wasn't really seen as an outsider.

Fetterman kind of was seen as that.

And a lot of people made the mistake that I keep beating my head against today in conflating progressive with populist.

Those are two different things.

Mo, is this thoughts?

And

It's not in the news as much as it was at the start of the administration, in part because there's fewer ICE-related killings going on.

So that knocks it out of the headlines, especially when there's a war going on.

But what's really interesting is you would think, by the laws of political gravity or whatever, that once it wasn't as prevalent in the headlines— that the polling would stabilize.

The polling has stabilized.

People still do not like this administration's immigration policies and approach to immigration enforcement.

That hasn't changed.

I mean, is it even conceivable to address a problem like this, Mo, without a crisis?

What does it mean that in in Tarrant County, there are neighborhoods in that county where they don't have a polling place? What's the practical implication of that?

Yeah, it makes it harder for people to vote.

Now, I think it's important for us all to remind people you can still vote.

You can see if you're registered to vote, you're still registered to vote.

If you get your paper ballot, you can send it in and you can still go vote.

But you might just have to do a little bit more planning now.

What Republicans are hoping is that it creates enough of a sense of chaos and questions about it and confuses people.

When you're having conversations with folks about the way in which these conversations take place, about where their polling locations are, what do you urge them to be watching for and to engage in?

Mm

... at the outset of this.

E- every day there was sort of a different goal.

But if we look at each of the different objectives that he laid out, I, I, I guess I have a less rosy outlook than Jason does.

Have we degraded their military capabilities? Yes, but de- degrading is different than eliminating.

But is it mutually exclusive? Is it, is it either you support them not having nuclear weapons or you can complain about not having the articulated reasons and an end date in mind? Because a lot of Americans are looking at the impact of our troops having to do so and, of course, the expense.

The families of the troops who are serving bravely overseas are suffering with higher gas prices as well, right? I mean, we all are.

And this is a president who says it's worth it because we're eliminating Iran's nuclear capability.

I mean, if this tougher stance with Canada is a way to force Canada to have a different approach to China, do you see some positives here potentially? I guess there's a couple of ways to look at this.

Yeah, I want the United States to have the best trade terms with everybody that it can.

That comes from actual negotiations.

But one thing that has become somewhat evident since Donald Trump returned to office is is a lot of our trade partners don't see us as a reliable trade partner anymore.

And so they feel forced to begin looking elsewhere.

One way to look at it that I've heard is that the Canadians are looking more towards China because they no longer feel that we are a dependable trade partner because of just the willy-nilly way that this president has gone about tariffs since he returned to office.

And so I'm all for if we truly feel that there are areas where Canada or any of our trading partners are being unfair, let's talk about it.

Mo, are flight cameras crossing a line for you?

Mo, if the hits haven't been as bad on Republicans, given where Americans are, is that on Democrats? Have they not seized this moment well enough when you do have a war that a lot of Americans are deeply concerned about and are feeling the pain from, you know, at places like the gas pumps?

Yeah, actually, I think the single best messenger Democrats have right now is President Trump when it comes to the war in Iran.

I mean, everything he has said has proven to be wrong.

He doesn't seem to care about the frustrations that Americans have over the war and its impact in their lives.

and then turns right around to give reporters a tour of his latest renovation of the white house the more he does that the more he makes the political argument for democrats look i think mike's right congressman flood is doing the best that he can but this line that you deal the hand you're dealt i mean congressman the president's the one who dealt this hand we are no further away from iran having a nuclear weapon than we were before We ceded control of the Strait of Hormuz to the Iranian regime, which they did not have before.

All of the pressure points and leverage points right now seem to be controlled by Iran.

american service members have died countless iranian civilians including innocent school children have died americans are paying more at the gas pump in the grocery aisles all of this because of the hand the president dealt And there's no off ramp in sight.

But, Diane, raising a concern that in a state like Florida, in the South, turning more red, is this the right candidate for Democrats?

As of July 31st, Republican Party, 5.6 million registered Republicans, 4.4 million registered Democrats, and then 3.3 million folks who have no party affiliation.

That's the race.

That's the race, right? That third category.

And that number keeps going up every year, while both of the others are going down.

Look, one of the things we've learned about politics in the past decade of Donald Trump is that when times are good for him, his popularity is not necessarily transferable to other Republicans, but his unpopularity always is transferable down ballot.

And so now we're walking into an election season where it's not the best of times for the president.

He's got 33 percent approval rating and people are going to do one of two things.

What can folks expect?

Yeah

...

it is something that people are now watching, uh, the way they, they hadn't before.

And so you're gonna start to see it get some of the same kind of attention that other major sports leagues have gotten.

The NFL

NFLThe NBA, where they've had star players who've got pulled into some controversies, where they've had players use their new platform to talk about social issues because that platform now exists in a way that it didn't before.

So a lot of this is to be expected, and I'm not sure the, the conversation about whether or not sports and politics should be intertwined.

But yes.

This

is such an interesting point.

Well, Because you're absolutely right.

Right.

I mean, the definition of socialism is that the government should take over the means of production.

And this is a president, a Republican president who, as you put out, bought all the stake, federal government buying all the stake in all of these private companies to the point where even his allies in the Senate were like, guys, isn't this taking over the means of production? Hello.

We are doing socialist things.

Like when do allegations themselves sound so awful that we as people in a society and as people involved in politics need to sort of take some kind of action? When is that being unfair to someone who is being accused of things, even if they're terrible?

Mo, are you OK with this opening the door to a further conversation about this?

I mean, I feel like a lot of doors are always being left open these days on a lot of issues.

So whether or not I'm OK with it, I mean, this is the new normal.

Look, I think the birthright citizenship ruling was a good one.

I hear the anxiety that people have that because it was so divided, it does open the door to finding a backdoor way to overturn it down the road.

But to me, just as a casual observer, it feels like it came a lot closer to settling this than we were before.

I'm not too freaked out by it.

I mean it's –

Mm.

And in the purple districts, they're not chasing that shiny new object.

They're kinda going with what, with what's tried and true.

But that doesn't mean that there's not a big warning light flashing for the establishment Democrats.

I think there is an anti-establishment energy that's driven by two big desires among primary voters.

One, fight.

Fight harder.

My question to you about Democratic socialists, is this a Tea Party sort of faction of the Democratic Party, or do you think this is the future of the Democratic Party?

Mm-hmm

... those, that was not an ideological split.

That was not a left versus center.

Those were two establishment Democrats, but one was seen, the attorney general was seen as the bigger fighter than Senator Bennet.

And the other is be bold.

They're tired of incrementalism, and right now the progressive wing of the party sounds bolder.

The moderate wing of the party, the centrists, the establishment wing, seems more incremental.

My question to you about Democratic socialists, is this a Tea Party sort of faction of the Democratic Party or do you think this is the future of the Democratic Party?

Why did they lose?

Well, I think you see the energy in the Democratic Party splitting.

In those races and in a number of other races, primarily safe Democratic seats in large urban areas, which tend to skew more progressive and younger, the energy is certainly with the left, but more importantly, with the insurgents.

But in the competitive races, the races that will be competitive in the general election, the swing districts, they are far less successful in most of those.

And if you look at the numbers nationwide over the course of this primary season, in those safe blue districts, the insurgent candidate won about 80% of the time.

But in the more competitive, the swing districts, only about 25% of the time.

So it seems like in blue districts, they're getting bluer.

My question to you about democratic socialists, is this a Tea Party sort of faction of the Democratic Party? Or do you think this is the future of the Democratic Party?

Are Democratic socialists taking over your party?

Yeah, they might at some point.

They're not yet.

New York got a lot of attention, and those were pretty remarkable races.

But if you look nationwide at the competitive primary landscape, you see a tale of two different stories.

That clip we just played about the road to 218 is 100% right.

Those races in New York were going to go Democratic in the general election no matter who won them.

Mo, let me let you jump in here.

Go ahead

... yeah, the difference is President Obama gave that money after we had already verified, right? After we'd gone in and checked to see if they were living up to the terms of the deal.

Donald Trump just gave it to them beforehand, before we even began the negotiations, right? We're now supposed to have...

The, the, the memorandum that we signed simply said, "We're now gonna spend the next 60 days talking about it." Iran has said, "We're not...

You know, w- we'll talk about nukes.

We'll talk about the straits after you pay us." That's a very, very big difference from the situation that the president's been attacking.

He thinks that they, that they have no right to tell his, his agents-

He believes this entire term has been him flexing, saying, "The executive branch has absolute power.

Big moment, as the president is suggesting? Yeah.

I will start with a positive.

If this memorandum, I refuse to call it a deal because there is no deal and we'll get into why.

But if this memorandum of understanding means that there's less hostility in the region for a little bit, that's a good thing.

But it is so unclear that we are in a better position than we were before this war.

I'd argue we're not.

We're actually in a worse position than we were Because the reality is, according to what the White House has said, which is different from what the Iranians have said, which is problem number one, right, that the two signatories are interpreting the document in very different ways.

Is that fair?

Mo, I mean, you were talking about some of the positives of Plattner and kind of his messaging being, you know, aside from some of these, you know, very personal things that Sarah's talking about, that his messaging is in some ways been what you're hoping to hear from a lot of Democrats.

Yeah, look, I think Sarah and I have both actually been fairly consistent in voicing our concerns, to put it lightly, with both Paxson and Plattner.

But I think what this shows is that, yes, Graham Plattner is very effectively articulating the message I would love to hear more Democrats deliver.

And what I think the state of our politics is showing right now, whether it's Paxton in Texas or Plattner in Maine, is that it is that negative energy that is driving most voters, at least at this point in the election cycle.

People aren't voting for, right? They are voting against.

This listener notwithstanding, what you see more and more coming out of Maine are a bunch of people who are begrudgingly, as Sarah put it, begrudgingly voting for Plattner.

I don't like him.

And it's like part of the question that voters need to be asking themselves today is, what kind of Congress do you want? What kind of politics do we want? And that has to be something that you weigh as well.

Mo, did we just get played by President Trump in, in the way Sarah's describing?

A thousand percent.

Everything Sarah just said, underline three, four, five times.

They didn't guarantee that this thing is dead.

It can come back at any time, and the president keeps teasing that he's gonna bring it back, right? Within minutes of the acting attorney general saying, "We are not gonna do this," the president's like, "I still love this.

You never know.

We may do this." Number two, a thousand percent what she said about the IRS piece of this, the fact that, that he has given himself blanket immunity from both criminal and civil penalty when it comes to his taxes.

You could take down.

Like, what, what should we make of this whole data center conversation?

Yeah, I don't think this, I don't think this is the, a, a dark horse issue.

I think this is going to be a major issue this cycle, and I think this is the first big political battle in sort of this whole AI war that we're talking about.

Um, for most people right now, it is primarily a cost of living issue because these data centers come into a community and put tremendous pressure on the local grid, uh, that jacks up everybody's utility rates, uh, in the, in the area.

And so that's sort of the beginning of the conversation in a lot of these, in a lot of these, uh, places.

I have never seen an issue where public opinion moved so rapidly.

I used to think that the, the speed, and Sarah, we've talked about this before, the speed at which marriage equality shifted in the pu- in public opinion was remarkable.

But like what, what do you tell Tom to do with his, how to fuel his anger over stuff like this?

Which Republican president has been more – I mean I said Republican, right? Like you think Reagan and Bush

are – But look, to the bigger point, the point you're asking, David, it's going to be part of the conversation.

Should it be the entire conversation is where the tension usually is.

In past elections, particularly in midterms, particularly in a lot of competitive suburban districts, this has been the sole conversation.

Right.

But I think there's also a feeling among some Democrats that they over relied on it as an issue in 2024 and ended up getting punished on the economy.

I don't think the lesson here is that we should make this the entire argument, nor do I think we should drop it.

Mo, do you agree with that?

Mm.

Uh, they feel like the system isn't gonna be there for them, and that's true politically, economically, even socially and culturally.

Um, they think that the system is rigged.

They think the system is broken.

Uh, and so they're looking for whatever it is that will cause disruption.

That's right.

And, uh, people start in these eras from an angry place.

It takes a very special kind of political leader to pull them over into aspiration and hope.

Yeah

... been conspiracy theories, going back to the early days of the republic, but the speed and scale at which things move now is different.

Uh, just how fractured the, the information ecosystem is.

The algorithms that act as our own personal assignment editors that tell us what news we should and sh- or what information we should and shouldn't consume, uh, make it incredibly difficult, so that you're right, Aunt Sally from, you know, Wichita, who isn't very political, isn't radicalized, but saw something on her Facebook feed and decided to share it, becomes suddenly one of the tools for this sort of thing.

And the, frankly, the mistrust that the public has in traditional media, in legacy media, means that they are more open to information from other sources.

So it is difficult, and when, you know, I'm sort of talking with people in my life who share these sorts of things, I used to wanna put my head through a wall, because they would say it with such certainty and such belief.

I would try to engage with them and ask them, "All right.

Mo, did you make of it? I mean, the King is obviously just a figurehead, so what does a successful trip here look like to the UK?