193. Trump’s on a Losing Streak - Have Republicans Had Enough?

Welcome to The Rest is Politics, U.S., with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty? I'm well. What's your T-shirt say? World domination, Katty. This is risk again. See? World domination. You mean mooch world domination or just like American world domination? It's more I've decided that Trump probably played the game of risk sometime in the 1950s. And he didn't learn some very essential lessons. Couldn't pronounce the word Kamchatka. Kamchatka. That's the one you want to have, right? You do, because that's how you can attack the United States through Alaska. You see what I mean? But I'm pretty sure his entire foreign policy and his worldview is based on the board game risk. So I'm wearing that today. In honor of? Well, I wish he'd played a bit more risk because it's not going so well. OK, we are going to talk today about the big announcement by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche up on Capitol Hill before members announcing that Trump's anti weaponization fund has been killed, exactly as we predicted on Monday, by the way. We're going to go beyond the fund, really, and look at whether this is a real pushback against Trump ism with Blanche making this admission. And there are a couple of other things that have happened this week that suggest a lot of pushback against the White House as well. So where is that going in the second half? We're going to look at the scandals surrounding the Democratic candidate in the all important state of Maine in the Senate race, Graham Plattner, who has been caught sexting a bunch of women in the early stages of his marriage just before he announced his candidacy for the Senate. And I think the question there is, are the Democrats just going to hold their nose and say character doesn't matter in politics anymore? All that matters is that we win the state of Maine. So a Democrat is going to go and try and play the Trump game. But before we get to that, let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump's health. A lot of rumors flying around just this week about whether the president is OK because he wasn't seen in the White House for a few days. He's now popped up again. But it does put the spotlight on his health. And we are talking about Donald Trump's health in our series, The Truth About Trump's Health. It's now out for our founding members. There's been a lot of scrutiny over the years. But in these episodes, we're really interested in the actual truth behind those theories. Well, I mean, listen, as we pointed out on the first episode, I think his health is definitely an issue, but it would be an issue for anybody that has arguably one of the most stressful if not the most stressful job in the world at age 80. That is a retirement age for most people. But this is the most stressful job in the world. And so so what does that mean? And where is it going? And I think we're going to talk a little bit about how they hide and how they cloak a lot of the issues that an elderly man is going through, which to me are normal issues, by the way. And so look, I think it's fascinating, Cady. I think people need to know about it. And I'm glad we're doing it. Yeah. And we're going to look at not just the physical symptoms, of course, but also his cognitive ability, the questionable doctor's letters, all of these cognitive tests that he claims that he's aced. And really, I think the question there is, is he fit at the age of 80, which is what he's going to be this month? Is any 80 year old fit and is Donald Trump fit to have one of the most powerful jobs in the world? So if you would like to hear that episode, that series that we're doing, do sign up at TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com. You can hear the first episode now and then we will get on to the other episodes next week. OK. On with the news. There was this extraordinary moment on Capitol Hill, extraordinary in Donald Trump's world because he had his acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, go up to Capitol Hill and in front of the committee up there say that this slush fund of $1.8 billion, $1.776 billion that he has created to go to his loyal allies and people who he says have been mistreated by the government in the past, they are axing that, that it's not going to happen. My takeaway from it, listening to it, Anthony, was that there were two things going on. He was talking about the slush fund and I think he did lose on that. He got significant Republican pushback. You've got all of these Republicans in races around the country who decided that this was very unpopular and he lost on the slush fund. But if you listen to Todd Blanche yesterday, Donald Trump won on the tax deal and his family is still going to get tax immunity from investigation from the IRS, which in a way I think is the bigger scandal that is hiding there in plain sight. So Democrats got the optics win. But I think Trump kept the actual prize, which is that him, his family, his organization will not be investigated for tax misdemeanors by the government. What did you make of it? Because you were texting me during Blanche's hearings and I thought what you had to say was interesting. I believe in something called Washington incrementalism. And so just hear me out for a second. I'll talk about Bitcoin for a second. We couldn't get a Bitcoin ETF passed. Then we sued the SEC, won it. And then Gary put all these provisions in the ETF that didn't make any sense. When Paul Atkins became the chairman of the SEC, he changed all those provisions. And so I believe in incrementalism. So the first increment here is ending the 1776 slush fund. So that's over. The second motion will be to wipe out this differential between Donald Trump and his family, which is a monarchical position, which I don't even think King Charles has at this point in the British government. I think he's treated like every other subject in the in the realm. You'll have to tell me differently if I don't know that. But I think that that is actually not constitutional. And I think that's a violation of due process in the Bill of Rights. And so what will end up happening is there'll be a cause of action. There'll be a lawsuit. Norm Eisen, a friend of yours, somebody that I know, won the take the name off the Kennedy Center Donald Trump lawsuit. His group will probably file a cause of action and say this is unfair. Do you think Donald Trump's name will come off the Kennedy Center? Do you think actually there will be a result that comes out of that suit or will it get kicked down the road? No, I do, because I think Trump being the baby that he is already put out on Truth Social that he's walking away from the Kennedy Center. Right. His lawyers have told him you're going to continue to lose these cases. You're going to get embarrassed by it. And so now he's where where you're not going to get my beautiful gold inlaid Home Depot, you know, things that I put all over the wall in the Oval Office in the Kennedy Center. OK, so you're going to be missing out on that, Gadi. So I think the name's coming off the Kennedy Center and I think he's going to be subjected to IRS audits in the future, even though it looks like he's not going to be right now. And by the way, maybe they'll lay off of him. But I think the kids are in trouble. I think the egregiousness of the Whitkoff family and the Trump family in trouble. And I'm not their lawyers, but I'd be like, you know, you probably got to get some preemptive pardons going here. We're talking about Trump's health. I don't wish anybody poor health, not even Donald Trump. But you know, God forbid if something were to happen to Trump before he pardons his kids and the people that he, quote unquote, says the 200 feet that enter the Oval Office. Imagine a scenario. He stuffed J.D. Vance. He is given J.D. Vance an Italian baptism. You know what an Italian baptism is? You take the guy into the men's room. You trip his feet and you put his head in the toilet and you start flushing his head in the toilet. OK. And that's what they've done to J.D. Vance. 100 percent. They've done that to him. So now if something were to happen to Trump and Vance becomes president. He's not going to pardon these people. He's going to be all lovey dovey with these people that have been enabling Trump to put his head in the toilet. Not going to happen. So. So these kids, I think, are I've got to really start thinking about that. I don't see this as anything other than a weakening of Trumpism. So you and I were texting back and forwards yesterday about this, about whether this marks the end of Trumpism, that Trump has had a series of defeats recently. Right. The slush fund is one. Iran is clearly another that's weakened him as well. You're getting pushback on his war powers from Republicans as well. You've got a bunch of we we talked about this on Monday. The YOLO caucus is the people who are leaving, who he has treated badly, who is deprived of their Senate seats. They are pushing back against them. But both of the wins that the YOLO caucuses had actually came after the courts or public pressure had already done a lot of the heavy lifting. I mean, in a way, they are the wounded bears caucus and they're growling loudest now that the fight is already over. So how much spine they actually have, because what's happening here is the American system is holding. I don't think that this is the Republican Party pushing back strong enough. And I also don't know that this is the end of Trumpism, except that the system is holding. The courts are managing to do what the courts should be doing. It's not necessarily that you've got suddenly the Republican Party growing a spine or moving in a different direction. We've had that. You know, that's a premature obituary that we've had so many times before. We had it around Access Hollywood. We had it after January the 6th. We had it after twenty twenty two when they flopped in the red wave, didn't work out in the midterm elections. We had it after the indictments. We thought that was going to be the end of Trump. Every time we mark the end of Trump, it doesn't work out to be the case. So I don't know that this is the end of Trumpism. I don't think that you're seeing the Republican Party say, right, we realize he went too far. He was weakened on Greenland. He was weakened on Iran. We hate the anti weaponization fund. We're finally going to stand up to him. They let the courts do it. The American system is working. But is the Republican Party really actually now ready to move in a different direction, do you think? OK, before I answer that, tell our viewers and listeners who John Thune is. Who's John Thune? John Thune is the Senate majority leader, the Republican, who's who's actually I've met Thune many times. Very decent guy, basically a centrist. I mean, if you had to point to a kind of old school Republican, I think you would point to John Thune. He's no big fan of Donald Trump's, but he got the job even though Donald Trump didn't want him to got the job. He wanted much more of a loyalist. He has the respect of the Republican Party. He's liked by other senators. And he has the job of straddling Donald Trump's whims and getting his party to keep the majority in the Senate. Not a job that I would particularly want to have, I have to say. And he's been meh on standing up to Donald Trump, I would say. To me, John Thune is the classic American North Midwestern gentleman. He's a 60 plus year old guy. I don't know if he was an Eagle Scout like Rex Tillerson or Paul Ryan, but he's that Eagle Scout sort of thing where he did everything right as a kid and he's very well mannered and he's a decent guy and he's a tall basketball playing athlete. And he's kowtowed to Donald Trump, which shocks me because he has a little bit of a Clint Eastwood vibe where, hey man, knock it off. I'm just surprised as sort of this Midwesterner coming, strolling into that neighborhood be like pushing out the bullies. But he's allowed Trump to more or less walk all over him and walk all over the Republicans in the Senate. However, on the slush fund, the anti-weaponization fund, he has spoken very loudly against him. He's also dropping bat guano on Bill Pulte. OK, so let's talk about him. Who is Bill Pulte, Katty Kay? So Bill Pulte is the other story, I think, that is a suggestion that Trump is running into trouble in the Republican Party. Bill Pulte is a uber Trump loyalist who at the moment runs a housing agency in the U.S. government that he has used to go after people who have opposed Donald Trump by looking into their mortgages. He's gone after Senator Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California who led the investigations into Trump's impeachment. He has gone after Lisa Cook, who is on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, again, looking at her mortgage issues. And he has used his position as head of this mortgage agency to go after people who don't like Donald Trump. He has just been appointed by Donald Trump on Tuesday as the acting head of the Department of National Intelligence, which is the top position in American intelligence to take over from Tulsi Gabbard, who is leaving to look after her husband who has bone cancer. Bill Pulte is like, if you wanted a kind of Rottweiler for Donald Trump in human form, it would be Bill Pulte. And he has zero, zero experience in intelligence issues, international affairs, national security, like none. Now, under law, the head of the DNI has to have a background in national security. He has none at all. So John Thune, who is looking around and finds that actually, yes, he does have a spine in his back. So he may as well use it. And he's a very tall, thin guy. So it would help if he used his spine, has suddenly said that we don't need a weaponized DNI. John Cornyn's also stood up, said he's leaving. He's just been ousted by Donald Trump, effectively. No evidence of any qualifications for that job. Bill Cassidy, another person who Donald Trump has axed from his job as senator in Louisiana, has said flatly that Bill Pulte is not qualified for the job. Every one of those senators knows that Trump is going to install Bill Pulte in an acting capacity. And maybe Trump likes having people in acting capacity because it keeps them on their toes. It's the kind of apprentice version of the cabinet. He controls them. Then he can throw them at any time. They haven't been Senate confirmed. But that's who Bill Pulte is. And Bill Pulte, I think, is the other sign this week, along with the slush fund. This is another loss, ostensibly, for Donald Trump. But I think it's an ostensible loss because he doesn't give a damn. He doesn't care that they push back against him. He just puts them in for 210 days anyway, which he's allowed to do as an acting head of an agency. And he can do his damage from there. He can certainly meddle in the midterms, right, Anthony? Which one of your kids would make a good DNI director? Which one? I'm thinking of James Scaramucci. James Scaramucci. You know, I want the Secret Service to pull him out of the third grade and say, James, how we doing? You know, we'd like you to be the DNI director. I mean, you know, this is the stupidest stuff that you can possibly imagine. And this is like Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where you have a very unintelligent guy running the White House, the president of the United States, smart in some ways, very dumb in others, is literally trying to upset the apple cart of decades of policy. So they go to Trump and they say, Kim Jong-un, never going to give up the nuclear weapons. We have a 65-year structured policy in handling North Korea. F you guys, I'm going to flip over the apple cart. I'm going to go visit him. And I'm Donald Trump. He's going to give them up. Does he give them up, Katty Kay? No, he does not. Mr. President, we have our game theory people here from the Pentagon. They're going to close Strait of Hormuz and they're going to induct the mosaic defense doctrine to sustain their power in Iran. That's your 60, 47-year observation of it? Yes, it is. OK, well, I'm Donald Trump. I don't care. They're not going to do that. OK, now we have a 38-year-old home builder with a broadcast journalist degree from Northwestern with absolutely no qualifications and no intelligence background. But he is a faithful attack dog for Donald Trump. He's also the imbecile that came up with the 50-year mortgage. You remember that a few months ago where he went to Trump at Mar-a-Lago and said, you know, FDR was a 30-year mortgage and now you could own the 50. And people are like, what do you want, people in indentured servitude? Tell us wrong with you people. So, Katty, is he going to get confirmed by guys like Thune and guys like Haggerty and Cassidy? Tillis, no, there's no way he gets confirmed. But Trump doesn't care about whether he gets confirmed. He just puts him in as acting anyway. It suits him that he's acting. He likes having people who are in an acting position. It keeps them all on their toes. And he gets to demonstrate every time you get these Republicans coming back and saying we don't need a weaponized DNI, he's not qualified for the job, no evidence of any qualifications for the job. What does Trump get to do? He gets to demonstrate that he dominates the Senate anyway and the party anyway. They can grumble, but nothing changes. And that's the problem. The Republicans have boxed themselves into this position, Anthony, where now after a year and a half of this, and you know, they hate Donald Trump. I mean, I've spoken senior Republicans who are ostensibly allies of the president have disparaged him to me in private. I mean, I can remember the conversations I have with them, but in public they've been all in for a year and a half. They've put themselves in this position and now they find they have a spine. They deprive him of some of his wins this week, of some of his big things that he wants, the slush fund. They don't like Bill Pulte's nomination, but actually he dominates the party so he gets what he wants anyway. He gets OK, so he loses the slush fund. He still gets to keep the tax exemptions that he wanted. He gets to keep that for the moment. Audit immunity. Audit immunity. Audit immunity is a new corruption trick. You got to give him credit for the innovation, right? Yeah. No, it's it's good. I mean, in a way, the Senate objections on a bug in the strategy, they're the feature. Trump can still prove he dominates. I'm going to give you three things to ponder. Please react. Number one, I'm a loyalty maximalist. Yeah. So this is all about loyalty, maximalization. You got looks maxing and now you got loyalty maxing. Yes, we've got loyalty maxing here. And I just want to send a message to everybody. I'm a loyalty maximalist. Number two. OK, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, like Pam Bondi, guys, you didn't get the memo, OK? You have to do exactly what I want whenever I want it. And oh, by the way, if today I want a release the Epstein files. But once I'm in office, we're going with Z, cover that shit up. Well, that's what we got to do. And Billy Pulte, that's my guy. He's going to do that. So I want full control over the situation. And then last thing, Caddy, and this is a very important thing for people. I am flooding, flooding, flooding the zone. I want you guys anesthetized to all the craziness that I'm doing because there's a money grab going on and I need to make money. I was out last night with Scott Galloway and Ed Elson. They did a very impressive show at the town hall in New York. And Ed Elson turned to me and said, hey, we estimate five billion dollars taken by the Trump family. Fifty percent of his supporters do not even realize it. I said, oh, I. Yes, of course. He has a tsunami of distractions that are going to hit the media, hit the Congress, hit the watchdogs so that he could have this feeding frenzy for himself and his family. And those are the things that are motivating this. But I submit to you, he's strong in the primaries. He's strong with his base. But the guns in the party, the Thunes, Cassidy's gone, but he's going to be against them for the next six months till it's gone. Going to be against him the next six months. Even Hagerty, who's been pretty Trumpy and the senator from Tennessee said, whoa, I mean, we got James Scaramucci available to be a DNI or we got Bill Pulte. I don't know. We got to discern who's more qualified. See what I mean? I think you're right. I think it's a little late for the Republican Party to grow a spine. I mean, let's see what happens after the midterm elections if there are serious checks being put on Donald Trump's ability to make money. But you even look at the Iran situation where we have a ceasefire that is clearly not a ceasefire because it's blowing up today. And already the conversation in Washington is who's going to make money from the reconstruction of Iran? Well, guess what? It's not going to be people who are not friends of Donald Trump. You want a piece of that pie? You show your bona fides. And like the ballroom, Trump is going to want a 10 year management contract. You do some loyalty maxing. That's the woes of the Republican Party. We're going to talk about the Democratic Party and whether they're having problems of their own up in Maine. Welcome back to the Restless Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Cady Kaye. Let's talk about Mr. Plattner. He is a senatorial candidate, Democratic senatorial candidate, and I've talked about him before. He had a Nazi tattoo removed from his chest. Is he electable or unelectable? Tell me about this man. So we're talking about Plattner this week because another scandal came up around Graham Plattner, which was that he had been having sending texts to multiple women of a sexual nature in the first couple of years of his marriage, just before he started running for the Senate. These texts were apparently revealed to the campaign, but they didn't seem to think they were a problem a while ago. But then the campaign aide who was told about them has leaked them to the press. And the answer that Democrats keep saying is, well, Trump did worse, that Trump has done so many terrible things. There's the Access Hollywood tape. There's the multiple divorces. There's the E. Jean Carroll story and how a judge found him guilty of sexual abuse in a department store changing room against E. Jean Carroll. And now Democrats are in the position where they have to think to themselves, do we go for somebody who has a great character or do we decide that actually what we really want to do is win the state of Maine? Graham Plattner has got the primary votes of the electorate up in Maine. The party has to go behind him. And if we just keep saying Trump did worse, then maybe that will be good enough. But here, that's not a character defense of Graham Plattner. That is a flaw. And constantly running to the floor, whether it's on the Nazi tattoo, which he says he didn't realize was a Nazi tattoo, whether it's on past kind of lazy misogynist comments about women suggesting that if you want to avoid being raped, you shouldn't get drunk in a bar, which I actually think is one of the more egregious things he's suggested. Or if it's now this, the sexting, is that a way to show that you are the party that has a grown up who's an alternative to Donald Trump, who can be competent and who you can rely on? Or are you at risk of getting somebody in who isn't vetted, who could have a whole host of other scandals who pop up, which is what Democrats are really worried about. It's been the thing that's been remarkable, Antony, is to watch how Democrats have circled the wagon this week. You've had serious senior Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders saying standing by him, Chuck Schumer standing by him. They're not going to jettison Graham Plattner because they want to win the state of Maine. It's all about winning the state of Maine. And they think they've got their candidate. Now they have to stand by him. So I have a very broad question for you. And I want to just give a backdrop for a second. When we were kids, there was a man running for president. He was asked, he smoked pot. And he said, and I quote, I may have smoked it, but I didn't inhale. Who was that person? That was President Bill Clinton. I want to talk about where the culture was. And if you did one picadillo, or if you had a divorce, you couldn't run, you were unelectable. You had to be, leave it to Beaver, the father or the mother on a family sitcom in the 1950s. Now let's fast forward 35, 36 years later. Do Americans, I'm talking about the American culture, as I often refer to it as America. Do the Americans in this NASTAR culture, tatted up culture, where does Plattner fit into that? And what changed, if anything changed? So can I just throw this to two races? Let me relate this to what's going on at the moment. And I think the answer to your question comes from looking at Graham Plattner in Maine and James Tallarico down in Texas. And the contrast between those two candidates could be the most clarifying test of the 2026 cycle. And that's what's going to tell us if character still matters to those American voters. Because if a squeaky clean candidate like James Tallarico loses in Texas, and a morally compromised one like Graham Plattner wins in Maine, it's going to suggest to us that actually American voters have decided, and maybe it was Trump that broke this all down. Maybe it was Bill Clinton and the blue dress and Monica Lewinsky and the not inhaling that started this. But somewhere along the way, in the last 30 years, character has ceased to matter in the way that it did. And I think something else has happened, Anthony, in this quest for authenticity, which seems to be the gold currency of populism, and I'm still not quite clear what it means. Maybe people look at a character like Graham Plattner, and they actually think to themselves, you know what? He's flawed like I am. He has sinned like I have done. He's not perfect like me. It's the argument you hear from a lot of evangelicals who supported Donald Trump. He is a flawed sinning candidate, but I didn't elect a saint. And I think that's what we're going to find out. I'm going to be watching Tallarico and Graham Plattner to find out whether character still matters to American voters. Follow-up question. Follow-up question. We were talking about tax audit immunity, okay? I want some of that. But can I get some tax audit? I mean, you know. Who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't want that? Of course we all want that. And not just for me, but I want it for my kids, too, Anthony. Yes, of course. And your grandkids. I mean, of course. Okay, the whole family. Are we in an age of, again, I'm not talking about the UK, because we know the answer in the UK. And the answer is no in the UK. Are we in an age of scandal immunity in the United States? Or maybe it could be also personality centric, meaning Trump is scandal immune. Is everybody scandal? Is Plattner scandal? Are we in an age of scandal immunity? Well, or do you have to have some kind of connection with voters? Graham Plattner wasn't famous when he ran for the Senate. But he has that kind of adulation factor. I've seen it. My son, who lives in Maine, has been to a Plattner rally. He loved him. He said that was full of young people. Now, this could be a problem for Graham Plattner, because I was speaking to us before the show. I was speaking to a senior politician from Maine who was telling me that the average voting age is 52. So that actually in reality, I don't know if Graham Plattner can beat Susan Collins. We can talk about that. But he's got this kind of aura about him of a fighter who is working class, who is an oyster farmer, who's kind of a vet. And he somehow he's got a ton of charisma. If you have that charisma and you develop a Bernie Sanders type or Donald Trump type slightly cultish following, which Graham Plattner of all of the candidates that I'm seeing out there in the Democratic Party, Graham Plattner comes the closest to that kind of cultish populist following where it's all about that person. And he's making the campaign about Graham Plattner. Then maybe you can get away with scandals. So so, Cady, I'm going to say something that people should really cogitate about, because I do think there's been one major cultural shift and Trump helped to abet this shift. A chunk of the electorate now reads scandal coverage as establishment sabotage. And so therefore, because they hate the establishment, Cady, it's no longer fully disqualifying information. Yes. So right. Yeah. And you know what? When you listen to voters in Maine in the last 24 hours since this story broke, they are saying this is a Washington, D.C. issue. We don't care about it. This is the chattering classes. This is the Democratic establishment who's worried. But Maine voters, we still love Graham Plattner because we're much more focused on cost of living issues, the sort of populist economic message that he is talking about. And we are prepared to overlook this. And look, I am just to be clear, Graham Plattner is not Donald Trump when it comes to women. This was consenting adults. It's as far as we know, consenting adults. I don't know enough about the kick platform that he was using. Maybe we'll find other things. But at the moment, we as far as we know, this was consenting. And that is not the case that Donald Trump was convicted of. OK. Question for you. Prediction time. Anthony, you did this to me on Monday. I'm going to do it to you. Does Graham Plattner beat Susan Collins to become the next senator for Maine? And second prediction, do Democrats then take the Senate because of Maine? Yeah. So I am going to say no. I'm going to predict no. I'm going to predict the 30-year, I mean, heading for now the elderly home, Susan Collins, who shouldn't be running anymore. She should be out to pasture. We'll beat him. Let me tell you why. Because she understands the money game. And he's a good fundraiser. He's raised $4.7 million, but it's not going to be enough. And even the big DJT man, who hates Susan Collins because she doesn't vote with him all the time. If you notice, he's a pretty smart guy. You know, he's not the demented guy that people think because he says, I hate Susan Collins and I'd like to hit Susan Collins with a ray gun. Oh, wait a minute. I've got nobody in Maine that can primary her that's full MAGA. So I'm keeping my mouth shut about Susan Collins because I want her to kick Plattner's ass because I really don't want to go to jail or get impeached that have the Senate remove me from office. However, down in Texas, because I think that's a red state, red eat meeting state, I can futz around with the Paxsons or the Corbins. No problem. OK, so a little bit of hypocrisy there from Trump. But no, she she'll she'll win. OK, but there's something else going on, Cady, and that is the anti woke story of Plattner in the Democratic Party. Now, Federman is an anti woke story in the Democratic Party as well. And he hates Plattner. Well, because they're kind of they're sort of competing for the same lane. Aha. Aha. Aha. I'm just letting you know, you can't wear the same gown at the Met Ball, Cady Kaye. Can't do it. These two men are wearing the same gown. You had all the Democratic grandees coming back and saying, we have to win Maine and we support Graham Plattner and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We forget character. It doesn't really matter. You know, Donald Trump has destroyed that for us. Donald Trump is worse. And then you have Fetterman coming out saying, no, he's a creep. Yeah. And he's still a Nazi. Once you've got a Nazi tattoo, you're always a Nazi. He's a creep because he's creeping into my territory. He's creeping into my brand space that he is swerving right into my lane. And I don't like that. I agree with you, Susan Collins wins. She's been in the Senate since 1996. She always tends to outperform her poll numbers. Yeah. She's going to be very hard for them to beat. And those women in Maine are going to go out and vote for her. And they're turned off by some of the stuff that Plattner's doing. Because they're running the wrong candidate in the wrong state. I mean, you could run a Graham Plattner in somewhere like West Virginia, in Montana, where you're going after the red, red votes. Actually, what you need if you're the Democratic Party in Maine is you need to peel away the centrist Democrats who have always voted because you split the tickets. One of the last places in the country where people split the ticket in Maine. And you got centrist Democrats, more conservative Democrats who have voted for Susan Collins. You want to go for those voters. Those are the ones you need to win back to the Democratic ticket. I don't think Graham Plattner does that. So I agree with you. So do the Democrats take back the Senate? If we're taking Maine off the table, do the Democrats take back the Senate? I think it's going to be hard. I agree with you. You tell me. I don't think Tallarico's going to win. You tell me. I think it's going to be hard. I think Trump's going to lose the House narrowly because of the gerrymandering. And I think he's going to either keep the Senate or it's going to be tied in the Senate and Vance will have the deciding vote. Sort of what happened in the early part of the Biden term, you know, with Vice President Harris being the tie caster. OK, we'll see. We'll see what happens. But I'm with you two for two. Are we are we leaving it there? I think we're going to leave it there. All right. Just just remember this. This is an anti-establishment crowd in this country now. So if you got a scandal, ha ha, that was perpetrated by the establishment, I think it's something that's really going to be out there in the midterms. And speaking of people becoming liabilities, by the way, in their own party, Ken Paxton and Graham Plattner, we may be talking to you. And don't forget to catch that first episode in our series on the truth about Donald Trump's health. It's out now for our founding members. You can sign up at TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com. And here's a clip. The problem with these doctor's statements, Anthony, is that we're not reading the first hand information. Right. And there are noticeable gaps in this. Some people have pointed out that his blood pressure has dropped even though he's gained weight, which for an 80 year old man seems contradictory unless he's taking medication. But we're not reading about the medication in the report. So these these summaries that we're getting from the White House doctors, do you think we're getting the full picture from them? Well, you're definitely getting an exaggerated picture. But you and I know the situation of the stroke with Woodrow Wilson. You know, whether it was the palsy and paralysis of FDR that was hidden from the public. We know about the heart attacks from Dwight Eisenhower, also hidden from the public. Ronald Reagan had colon cancer. Kennedy had Addison's disease, severe back pain, taking injections in his back, cortisone treatments. Nobody said anything about those. So this is, you know, Lyndon Johnson had heart ailments as well. Presidents have a tendency to underplay their health issues and oversell the vitality. But with Donald Trump, I think for me, in my observation of him, and I tell people this, number one, he has no obligation to give you anything. Number two, past practices are mixed. OK, Obama didn't like telling people that he was dragging a cigarette in the what used to be the Rose Garden, which is now like the Rose parking lot. But he would step outside and he would smoke a cigarette to take the edge off. But he didn't want anybody to know about it. So so they're all fudging a little bit. So let's go back over some of the actual medical statements from the physicians, which will give you a sense of why it's a little difficult for us to trust exactly what's being given to us, because sometimes what the doctors are spinning, as you've just said, Anthony, is not actually always the truth. And we can go back and we see this pattern right from the 2016 campaign when you were with him in December of 2015. Donald Trump, when he was running for office before he'd actually got the presidency, his personal physician, Harold Bornstein, released, I think it was a letter. It wasn't even a memo. Right. Praising Donald Trump for extraordinary physical strength and stamina. And the letter went on to assert that Trump would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. And he said a recent medical exam yielded only positive results. It's wonderfully kind of Trumpian language to make it the superlative. Everything about Trump always has to be the superlative. So he's not just a healthy individual running for the presidency. He'll be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. And then a few years later, before he died, Dr. Bornstein actually admitted to CNN that Donald Trump had dictated the whole letter and said, I didn't write that letter. I just made it up as I went along. Was that an issue in the campaign? I mean, it was pretty obvious this letter was written by Trump and not by a doctor. Right. You know, it does. Right. But it's so reminiscent of George Burns, a legendary comedian. He's 93 years old. He takes out a big fat Cuban cigar and he's smoking the Cuban cigar and he's blowing the smoke. And Johnny Carson, the famous American talk show host face and Carson looks at him and says, well, what do your doctors think of this? And George Burns looks over at him and says, all my doctors are dead. You know, he's outliving the doctors. OK, and this is what's happening here with Trump. All right, guys, there you have it. If you want to hear the full series, sign up at the rest is politics. U.S. dot com to become a founding member. We'll see you next week. Thanks, guys. See you next week.