Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov react to the Democrats' sweeping 2026 midterm results, which they describe as a blue tsunami that flipped Senate and House seats and produced a string of historic firsts. They examine the demographic shifts, especially a sharp swing among young men, and debate whether the economy, gas prices and rural turnout drove the outcome.
The hosts also discuss Hakeem Jeffries' plans to become the first Black speaker, Democratic leadership and 2028 contenders, and Republican fallout after the losses. In audience questions they weigh the party's agenda on healthcare, Ukraine and ethics oversight.
Listeners will hear the hosts' competing readings of what the results signal for the next two years.
In this episode Jessica Tarlov, Scott Galloway
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So I say Sue, you say—
Nami!
That's right.
Okay.
I say Sue—
Nami!
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Fascism, bitch, go away! That's right, Jess! America showed up today. America showed up and had brothers kill brothers when 1% of the population decided that owning slaves was the key to economic growth, and we came back stronger. America showed up after we interned Japanese for no other crime than being Japanese and kicked off a huge wave of, I believe, civil rights. And today, I think, is of that magnitude.
Today, who showed up? Answer: America. I'll ask you: I really don't know how to process this. How are you processing this? Like, what did Jess Tarlov do this morning?
I did Fox and Friends, where I got to do some of my processing on air and talk about, you know, the key themes that I think drove this election: costs, corruption, cruelty, and data centers and AI, which is under-discussed. And I know that we're going to get into that. But it was unbelievable being here last night, watching this unfold. And from the moment that the Indiana votes started coming in, you knew it was going to be a good night.
And then, you know, me and my obsession about Kentucky 6th, as stuff kept coming in for that, for Zack Dembo, which didn't get called until later in the night, but it was always there that I was focused on that. And then South Carolina, I think that's when everybody just said, "Holy shit, let's pack our toys and go." Annie Andrews is going to pull off the impossible. And I saw Semaphore just had a piece that went up that the Andrews camp knew that this was going to happen last month, and they had internal polling showing her ahead, but they didn't release it to the public because they didn't want to draw attention from the National Republicans, which is such a smart move.
So they got there late, to this idea that Darlene Graham was in a crisis situation. But I, you know, when I think about what the results last night mean and what it's going to mean going forward, it feels like this incredible era of possibility is upon us. And we talk a lot about, you know, the old folks who won't get out of the way. And you saw this new generation of unbelievable political talent just beating down the door.
And they knocked down that door in red and purple states. I mean, these margins in Texas and Kansas—it's like, it's mind-blowing. What was it like? Because you had your show last night in Toronto.
In Canada, yeah. So it was very exciting. But I'm going to back up a second just because I let my emotions get the better of me. What Jess is referring to—
I like Sue. Nami.
Sue. You say Sue. I say Nami. The blue tsunami we've been predicting is here. Democrats swept across the country, taking control of both the House and Senate, flipping seats in South Carolina, North Carolina, Maine, Kansas, and Texas, and turning longtime Republican strongholds blue, incandescent blue. Some are calling it the Democrats' best election night since 2008. I would disagree. I think it's the best. The data shows we haven't seen a pivot like this since the time in between Nixon being suspected of masterminding a break into the DNC headquarters and his resignation.
This is a 50-year earthquake. As Trump repeatedly asked voters, he got what he wanted. People acted like he was on the ballot. This was—and this we'll come back to this—this wasn't "we love the new patient." This was organ rejection. This is a devastating repudiation of his second term agenda and a message Republicans can't ignore. Trump says he's absolutely willing to accept those results, quite frankly, because this was too big to rig.
And he even claims he's prepared to work with Democrats. Okay, thanks for that. Let's get a taste of how America was living out last night after the results.
Today begins the great American comeback.
We just took back Texas. Iowa, we have done it.
I think we just made some history. Because tonight, we here in South Carolina sent a clear message that this Senate seat does not belong to one family, one party, or to Washington, D.C.
This win is for every Ohioan who has longed for public service again, who do not mistake kindness for weakness.
I think I got elected after getting in the race just six months ago. I think I got elected because Kansans were saying, "We're tired of the bullies. We're tired of the chaos. We're tired of the people."
And so to all the kids who watched this last month, to all the parents who struggled to explain why the president openly mocks someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guy's lost. Let them know that we together, fighting for something bigger, we won.
You know, Donald Trump and the billionaires need to understand one thing very clear, something about your new senator. I don't owe them a damn thing.
And I think the Democrats did a good job. I really do. I think they did a good job.
So in terms of surprises, and I want to come back to what you find, I mean, all right, Kansas, first time in 100 years, they've sent a senator. Two things struck me. Well, a bunch of things, but the two I'll reference and then I want to hear what struck you. Is that, one, South Carolina, what the data shows is that if they had had—if they just put up someone and put an R next to their name that no one had ever heard of and did not have Trump endorse this person or get near this person, that that person would have handily beat the Democrat.
That it was Trump's association with Darlene and her de facto association with Trump vis-à-vis being Graham's sibling that basically sunk her. That if they had just said, "Bob Smith, you've never heard of him, but he's a Republican," and Trump got nowhere near it. I mean, this is such a clear—I mean, we call it a blue tsunami. It was a tsunami, riptide. The other thing that I want to point out is that—and this has been a big thing—young men are theme of mine.
Young men are the swingest swingers in voting. And that is, they vote mostly on economic issues. And economic issues, you know, on crime and immigration, Republicans are steadfastly seen as the better or the more serious party. On things like, sometimes around what I'll call empathy, better tax policy, whatever you want to call it, the Democrats pull stronger. Young men go with the economy, and the economy flips back and forth. Sometimes people think that Republicans are better for the economy.
Sometimes they think Democrats are better for the economy. And I'll come back to that because I have data on that. But if you look at what happened, if you look at who pivoted the hardest in this election, it is just striking what happened. And that is, if you look at white women, they went—they swung 11 points towards Dems this election. White non-college swung 14 points. Black men swung 16 points back towards Democrats versus 24.
Hispanic people, 28 points. Young people, 32-point swing. And then the biggest swing of any group, and arguably the biggest swing we have seen in any cohort in recent history in an election, is males age 18 to 29 swung 38 points. So for those of you who have this lazy thinking that young men are just Neanderthals, not worth saving, who drag their knuckles along the ground, they're paying attention.
They're focused on economics so they can form households. They're less socially minded or less concerned, I should say, over geopolitics or social issues. They want to know who's going to give them the prosperity that their parents had. 38-point swing. What shocked you, Jess?
Everything.
Everything.
Everything.
There's that.
I mean, first of all, I hope they had all seen your social clips about how they were going to have more money in their pockets if they go with Democrats. And if that was the only reason, that'd be good enough for me. But we also know that they are socially liberal and didn't necessarily want to be part of a cohort that was talking about, you know, pulling back reproductive rights.
Majority support bodily autonomy.
That always sticks with me, that they get lumped in with older Republicans or, frankly, the ones who are just in office that are talking about this stuff. When you talk to, like, normal people on the ground, like, you know, about trans bathroom bills and stuff like that, they say, "Just go ahead and pee. I don't—I just don't really want to talk about it."
I don't care.
I don't care what you're doing in there. The rural vote was one of the most interesting facets of this race that was a particularly big deal in South Carolina. And once those numbers started trickling in, folks knew that it was going to be a very bad night. Those are core Donald Trump voters. And JD Vance has posted this long, long tweet about what happened and saying, you know, it was the war in Iran, and even the president says this. He did some Israel blaming. It's very interesting to see, you know, those voices kind of converging.
But he talked about traditional Republican voters leaving the cohort and what a shot across the bow this is for Republicans. And by no means does last night's results indicate to me that this coalition is now enduring on the Democratic side. I mean, there are, you know, people who definitely showed up to vote yesterday who may have no interest whatsoever in the Democratic ticket come 2028, if there are normal people on the Republican side of it.
But the collapse of the rural vote was a huge storyline, that every gerrymander ended up being a dummy mander. Those Florida numbers, as they came in for Kathy Castor, for Jared Moskowitz, looking at North Carolina, didn't pick up one seat out of that. Like, they cheated so badly. How embarrassing to be that low and that corrupt and not even be able to pull it off. Another plotline, and you're a Florida voter. I would say the one mistake that Democrats made: we did not invest in Angie Nixon and David Jolly.
They could have won those races.
They didn't plot for us, I guess.
No. And everyone—I was on the panel in the 8 o'clock hour, and everyone is talking about the Florida results and saying, "Oh, Angie Nixon, socialist, blah, blah, blah, pulling down the ticket." Angie Nixon's organizing power. That's her background as a union organizer. She lifted everybody up on that ticket from top to bottom, David Jolly down to, you know, state legislative races—huge here. We got new state legislature, trifecta's in seven states and chamber flips in five.
Nine of the 10 most heavily populated states in America now will have Democratic governors, under-discussed, on the Amy Acton front. And I'm glad that we chose that particular part of her speech because she was talking about feelings. And Annie Andrews talks about it as well. You know, women, I think, generally speaking, we'd say better at talking about feelings. But there was so much emotion driving this election and such an aversion to the coarseness and the cruelty that the Republicans have been leading with, certainly in Trump 2.0, but I would argue, since he came down that golden escalator and led with, "They're bad hombres and we're going to do a Muslim ban."
And I'm so happy to see not only a groundswell of support for candidates that talk about humanity and emotion—I put Reverend Hamilton, James Tallarico, all of them in this bucket—but to see these enormous wins for these women was really exciting to me. And to think of the pain that Amy Acton has gone through throughout the course of her whole life, considering what her stepfather did to her, and then Vivek Ramaswamy making that ad with her mother, then doubling down on it, Trump, JD Vance, all of them falling in line with this.
That was a huge heartwarming facet of this election to me, where I thought, they've been yelling at me about how no alpha male would ever back these whiny betas and you're a bunch of gay vegans or whatever, and real men show up and support people with good policies and who care about one another and who believe in the Constitution and the American dream and the promise of a better future. And that's what last night symbolized to me.
You know, people across the spectrum coming together to say, "We can believe in a better tomorrow." And I don't know exactly what that looks like. We'll get into the nitty-gritty of, like, what does the agenda look like, et cetera. But it was an enormously hopeful night for me.
Yeah. So just some additional data here. With two races unresolved, we have 54 Senate seats have gone to Democrats. The House were up 28 with 64 unresolved. That's 35 flips against about 29 in 2008. So easily the best night since '08. And if this holds up, it might be the best night.
It's since '74. You're right. It's the Watergate era that it's the best night.
Since '74. And so the Senate swing is the outlier since plus seven is the biggest in a decade. Kansas, South Carolina, and Texas aren't safe anymore. So taking the metaphor even further, a tsunami is the ripple of an earthquake or the second-order effect of an earthquake out at sea. I think the earthquake that created a super tsunami here, quite frankly, and this is a lesson for Democrats that it's better to be lucky than good and recognize that we have these folks on a lease.
We don't own them yet. But the earthquake out in the middle of the ocean, I think, was $6 diesel a gallon. I'm a—you know, my background's in branding. It's just when you have hundreds of thousands of gigantic dynamic billboards every three blocks called the gas state, the diesel price, and every day people go buy it, and it's, again, under the notion of luck, the swing states happen to be the states where people drive more.
You had more of the swing voters, our men drive 30% more. The economy, in terms of job growth, has mostly gone to professions, healthcare, and education that tend to be more female-dominated, and females more reliably vote Democrats. So the swing voters were, again, that young men plus 38. Men disproportionately populate manufacturing and transportation. And by the way, those are the two industries that have been hit hardest. So you take the billboard plus the industries that hurt or have the most impact on men, it's literally like every moon lined up in the world.
This is one of those astronomical events where all these planets and moons, you know, it seems like every one year there's a century, there's a once-in-a-hundred-year somehow astrological event that we're supposed to go outside and stare at. So it's just some more data. Voters 18 to 29 went 65% Democratic to 31%. Latinos were 61%. Black voters 90%. And this is my favorite. Moderates, about 80%. And for all of your colleagues at Fox shitposting about how fucking crazy the DSA is and everything, the vast majority of the people who won last night would logically be called moderates.
White men were 55% Republican to 45% DN. White women Republican share fell from 56 to 47. So white women actually came out, or for the first time, older white women went Democrat. Latinos plus 32. I mean, just in crazy. The coalition, again, the term for Trump, but it's also the term that applies to us now, is rented, not owned. These people didn't convert. They were just waiting, in my opinion, to someone to talk about rent and gas prices and just some first-year, and I'll get your reaction.
First Black woman governor. What was shocking to me is that that hasn't happened already.
Yeah.
Bottoms. Holland, first Native American female governor. Hina Hosa, first Latina governor of Texas. By the way, that shocked the shit out of me.
Yeah, I thought Abbott was going to win.
So did I. Flanagan, first Native American woman elected to the Senate. El Sayed, first Muslim senator. Pappas, first openly gay man. And Kansas, first Democrat elected since 1932. Donalds, just to nod to the other side in progress, Donalds became Florida's first Black governor. Both parties produced first. Voters are rewarding people who look like the country and who talk about what it cost to live in that country. Let's talk a little bit about underperformance. The unresolved Alaska race, Florida, the DOJ suit to block certification in Alaska there is now live.
And then data. Kalshi Favorites won 479 of 487 races, 356 of 360 in the House. So most seats were safe. So the real test was in the toss-ups. And so it's crazy. Basically, I think I would listen to The Daily Today, and one of the journalists there talked about he had a graphic metaphor of where stuff went blue from red, and it just had a blue circle.
The whole place looked like a paintball tournament where the blue team just annihilated. I didn't see a red dot.
No, that was like the reverse of the 2024 graphic that haunts our dreams. That was all red except suburban Atlanta. That was the only area in 2024 that went in the blue direction and now is the whole country.
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Hi, I'm Neil I Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week, as part of our special series on the future of business, I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
We pulled all that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic has now passed human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.
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What's interesting also, and I want to get your view on this in terms of the media, as the results were rolling in, Trump began attacking or picking a fight with one of his biggest allies in conservative media, Fox News. By the way, I just think it's really tacky for any man on air to read disparaging texts about his female co-hosts. At some point, I hope real men show up to your panel over at Fox. That's all I'm going to say about it. But Trump attacked Fox's polling. Think about how insane this is, and think about what a relevant voice you have become.
The president on the biggest loss for Republicans in the last 50 years found time to text your co-host and criticize you. That's what was on his mind. Just think about how pathetic and weird and borderline ick that is in terms of priorities and what is occupying. I'm just, we benefit from you and Caitlin Collins living rent-free and this guy's brain such that he can't focus on things like affordability or things that Americans actually care about.
So to a certain extent, you're the distraction that you and Caitlin, to a certain extent, are the distraction we need to convince Americans that this guy just has absolutely the wrong priorities. Trump attacked Fox's polling and election coverage, accusing the network of giving Democrats too much airtime. Even as Republicans suffered major losses across the country, the president even, as I said, specifically targeted you. And this afternoon, in his first public remarks since the historic Republican losses, Trump ignored the results. And we've got some footage of both of those events.
Let's take a listen.
We're talking about getting political texts. You wouldn't believe this one I got from somebody called the president. Greg. Greg Tel Tarlov, who is the worst, and worst is in capitals. Gas prices are lower than they were for Biden and Obama, and they allowed Iran to have the nuclear bomb. President DJT, you can see that data.
I got you. Just press stop.
I doubt there's a ballroom in the country with a 50-foot ceiling, and you'll be able to have dinners for as many people as you want. We had King Charles here, and we were very restricted. He said, "Could we have about 350 of our people?" I said, "We don't hold 350. We hold about 98. So having 350 is a little tough."
So there's a lot of sad stuff going on there. I will say, the text had come in earlier, and Greg read it not on air and was like, "What are you saying?" And I was like, "Go for it. Like, this is a fill out."
You did give him a hot pass to talk about it.
Yeah.
Okay, fair enough.
Yeah. And Trump had posted about me too. So he called me dumb as rocks and said that he couldn't stand my voice and so that he had to turn it off. But then he said, "I'll be back later," which he definitely was because he called into the coverage later on and had gone after the poll. But it was such a perfect endorsement of my book since one of the rules of it is if you're being criticized on style, you've won on substance. So the president fell right into my trap. But, you know, all in all, pathetic rating for the president.
And I know he's out on this conciliatory tour where he's like, "Oh, we want to work together." And yeah, if you could get the president to sign off on something, all the more power to you. I am not against that. I think you should absolutely do it. But he's going to wake up tomorrow on one and not want to do anything with Democrats and say, "We're going to launch an investigation into, you know, someone who threw a sandwich." So you can't trust him as far as you could throw him, which is like nowhere because he's a very big, heavy man. And, you know, I guess it's a good thing that they're, as of now, not doing any of these huge legal challenges to it.
Too big to rig. Nancy Pelosi said it. She was like, "This is what it's got to be if we're going to end up being okay." I think Alaska will be close. My expectation is that they will not push it that far, especially considering that it doesn't matter for control of the Senate at this point and that Dan Sullivan has said that he'll accept the results. But I could be surprised, obviously, in the negative direction by Republican behavior. I thought it was very interesting that Mike Johnson said that he's not going to run for minority leader.
He's like, "I'm out."
Yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. I'm going to miss him almost as much as I miss Lauren Boebert. And I actually am going to miss Lauren Boebert. I was hoping she'd go out with my teenage son. As I said, I think she was the ultimate virtual.
She's in the like, "Oh, I don't want to say something weird about your son and handjobs."
There we go.
Anyway, moving on. You read a list of firsts, and I wanted to add one because it looks like Scott Collum is going to win in Mississippi, and he will be the first.
How close is that race, and how monumental would that be?
They just got a new dump of votes, another 2,000 for him.
The provisional ballots usually break blue, right?
Yeah. So it looks like he's going to be the first Black senator in the South since Reconstruction. And what's so perfect about it is that three years ago, Cindy Hyde-Smith voted against making Scott Collum a federal judge. He was nominated a blue slip by Joe Biden, and now he's going to take her seat. And the, you know, karma, whatever you want to call it, moments coming full circle. And we already talked about, I don't even know if it was the best ad of his cycle because he has that incredible closing ad playing off of Sinners where he has her as a vampire.
But the ad making fun of her about pick another protein when she was asked about the rising price of beef and the idea that you would tell Mississippians that maybe they should just have chicken or turkey, I think was, I mean, definitely going to go down as one of the best ads of the cycle. You know, other plot lines that I loved, one of the Navy admirals that Pete Hegseth fired flipped Nancy Mace's South Carolina seat to blue. Adam Hamilton, I had actually not heard this before.
I think he told Tim Miller at the Bulwark the reason that he ran was that he was tired of arguing with Roger Marshall in his head. And so he figured, "I might as well go out there and actually argue with Roger Marshall," and picked it off. And then one more emotional than anything, I don't know if you saw this, but if you in Minneapolis go to the memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretty, they are covered in I-voted stickers.
You stole my thunder. I'm in Minneapolis, and I took a run, and the Alex Pretty memorial is two miles from here, and there are I-voted stickers. I mean, it is so moving. There are I-voted stickers all over his and Renee Good's memorial. And if there's anything that summarizes, like, what this means, I think it's that. It is just so, you know, when you think about, I mean, we all have low points emotionally in terms of relationships, in terms of people we love, professional low points.
I think for a lot of us, Karen and I were in Minneapolis. We decided to come here about, I think it was six or eight months ago right after the shootings of Renee and Alex. And when we had a cabinet member describe the murder of Alex Pretty as, and describe him, an ICU nurse who took care of veterans, describe him as a domestic terrorist. That was my low point in America.
As long as I've been cognizant of what America means and how fortunate I am, that was, for me, the low point. I have never felt that bad about America. That was the trough. That was the low. And to see today all those I-voted stickers at his memorial, it does feel like the arc of American justice is crooked and jagged, but it does bend towards justice.
But was there a moment for you where you thought, "Wow, we have really hit. It feels like rock bottom?"
I would certainly put that in that and then add to it that I was engaged in arguments with people about this who were defensive of the actions that those ICE officers took or even saying that a past policy could be a justification for what happened to them. No, I think it was horrible. And Kristi Noem decided to, like, you know, check in on the Twitterverse and write, you know, about how well it was going at the beginning. And it's like, I get it that it's easier for Trump to fire women than men, but she will go down in history as one of the worst cabinet secretaries that we've ever had.
And even though it might not have shown up in the polls in the same way as the costs and the corruption, the cruelty with which this administration carried out immigration enforcement and their crassness, you know, thinking about the video that Kristi Noem made at CCOT when she's like dancing around in a tight white T-shirt and a Rolex in front of people, some of whom are innocent of anything in a foreign torture prison, and that we were supposed to co-sign and be okay with that is beyond any pale that I have ever been asked for my mind to be able to embrace.
And I hope that that is one of the lessons that eventually, because it feels like right now Republicans are not taking that lesson because you don't get this surge specifically in Latino voters if you are not considering the way that their communities have been terrorized and how many, especially with the young folks that turned out who hadn't voted before, that they have seen their elders, maybe parents, grandparents, you know, folks that they've known their entire lives rounded up while they're just going about their business, you know, on their way to work, dropping off at school, all of the hideous ways that Stephen Miller concocted for us to, quote unquote, you know, create a deportation force.
And, you know, maybe this is the moment that we could actually get some bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform and that James Langford should pop up again and say, you know, "Senator Murphy, when you are feeling better," and we continue to wish him a speedy recovery, "let's get back at it," because this is a clear signal that immigration enforcement cannot go the way of Stephen Miller, that the people will not stand for it, and they will take to the streets.
So first off, with respect to Secretary Noem, worse than anything, I don't think anyone is going to remember her. I think she's a fucking trivia question. I think she's, when you have Thanksgiving, you always make the mistake of inviting someone who doesn't have a family, and then they get drunk and act like assholes, and then you don't invite them and you just forget they even live down the street. Secretary Noem's legacy will be indifference and, yeah, like a wince and a trivia question. I don't think anyone's, quite frankly, in 10 years going to remember who she was. So let's talk a little bit about leadership moving forward on the Democratic side.
Hakeem Jeffries is set to make history and become the first Black speaker. In the first 100 hours, Jeffries is planning to pass legislation to undo Trump's most unpopular policies. Good for you, Speaker Jeffries. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer earlier this year predicted a Senate majority and, you know, let's be honest, has redeemed himself. I have not been a fan of Schumer, and I think he deserves a lot of credit here. Cauchy has the odds of him returning as leader at 93%. Let's listen to what he said this morning.
Oh, what a night. Against all odds, Democrats have won the Senate, and we have five words for the American people. Relief is on the way. In 2025, when I said we could win back the Senate after we had lost the presidency and the Senate, people rolled their eyes. But we never wavered.
Okay, maybe. Let's go back to talking about some of the new people who.
Sure, we're going to get to that, and there are going to be, you know, real.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Look at the map.
Okay, okay, sorry.
I get it.
What a great note to retire on. What a great note to say to announce that he's leaving. But anyways, go ahead. I don't mean to be a bummer. I don't mean to be a bummer.
No, it's not about being a bummer. That is obviously, like, a realistic response to this because you also just even look at the swagger of these new candidates. Like, I get it that I am programmed to be into watching Senate majority PAC thirst trap videos, you know, set to music that I grew up with. Everything is very millennial coded, and I'm watching, like, you know, Abdul and Jon Ossoff and James Talarico and Chris Pappas. I mean, they're, it's so hilarious. They've, like, managed to make Troy Jackson into a.
Being poised to Senate.
Yes. Well, the internet also had one of its best days, like, ever.
It's on fire. I woke up this morning not being able to do anything, but I literally don't know how to process this, so I just do what I always do. I started posting memes of Niagara Falls being illuminated blue, of the Eiffel Tower being illuminated blue. My favorite thing I saw this morning was that Susan Collins' reign of concern is over. I love that. The internet wins. Well, no, the Democrats win today. America is the big winner today, but the internet is a close third.
So Mike Johnson joked during the campaign that if Republicans lost the House, he'd head home to Louisiana and start a lawn care business. Today, he announced he won't seek to be minority leader. Cauchy has the odds of Jim Jordan becoming the leader for the House Republican at 95%. Polymarket's a little bit lower than that. Lame duck, SCOTUS confirmation is possible. Okay, who cares?
That would be so shitty. And I don't think.
Okay, you just described the Republican Party. What did Mitch McConnell do?
No, but this is like, I would be so curious to see what Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, like, you know, the.
Now?
Right. Well, if they're going to try to jam through a Supreme Court justice in the next 60 days, if those folks who are either retiring or got their butts kicked dare to vote for Eileen Canon or some other 40-year-old lunatic that they're going to try to put on the court, like, I don't know what I'll do. Sorry, the sun is, like, beaming in, so I'm going to be really weird and, like, hold my hand like this for a while.
That's, but that kind of comes down to personal psychology, and is it, are they angry at Trump and feel like they finally get to have a backbone and not worry, or are they going to stick up their middle finger on the way out to the people who kicked them out of office? I think a lot of that just comes down to human psychology. It's like, just as they say, power reveals oneself. I always thought the two looking glasses into a person's soul are how they treat their pets and how they behave when they're drunk, or that's two of them at least. But.
And what they tip.
I think that's a good one. And, but this, someone said that power, when you get real power, that kind of reveals who you are. But also, when you lose your, when you no longer have anything to lose, you know, how does it, on the other side, power reveals who you are, but a lack of power, meaning you're on your way out, look at what a baller Tom Tillis is. Look how reasonable Tom Tillis is. Look how reasonable and courageous Tom Tillis has become.
But they would have, that's one of these big plot lines, which we didn't go over, that in the Republican Party right now, you can't win a primary without Trump, but you can't win a general election with him. And if Tom Tillis hadn't been driven out, we probably wouldn't have Senator Roy Cooper, right? This is someone who knows how to run and win in North Carolina, and he, Trump did a terrible job picking these folks. I mean, Ken Paxton for sure, but it's across the board what's going on here.
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What do you think these results mean for the presidential cycle that's about to begin? How does this, obviously, it props up, I mean, it gives a, I would think it gives obviously a lot of the Democratic bench real win going into the cycle. My understanding is Ambassador Haley, or Governor Haley, has said she doesn't want to run because she doesn't think there's any chance of, not because she wants to spend time with her family or all the other bullshit excuses they make, but because she said there's no way a Republican is going to win in '28. How do you think this, how does this impact the presidential cycle, which quite frankly is, I mean, it's kicking off today.
Yeah. I think in all positive ways, frankly, on both sides of the aisle. I think these things are wide open at this point. And you look at, you know, what Jon Ossoff pulled off, and I don't want to at all, you know, dismiss the strength of Keisha Lance Bottoms' campaign. Like, Jon Ossoff didn't pull her over the finish line. She sprinted across that herself and did an awesome job. Obviously, it helps when he's winning by double digits like that.
But of course, I mean, some of the names that we're going to see for 2028 were on the ballot tonight. Like, well, going to be on the stage, shouldn't say ballot. Like, Jon Ossoff, JB Pritzker was reelected last night. You know, Gavin Newsom is now going to have a lot of free time on his hands. I'm sure he's going to be thinking about what comes next for him. Andy Beshear, leading the Democratic Governors Association, with an insane night. That's another feather in his cap on top of being the most popular governor in the country. Josh Shapiro.
Oh, this is something I wanted to talk to you about. So Josh Shapiro in, you know, in, I think he was, like, 100% likelihood of winning this anyway. Pennsylvania, obviously, pivotal state. But there's a little bit of competition now because it used to be that the blue wall, right, it ran through the Rust Belt. But the Sun Belt, if you look at these new winners, is where the future of the Democratic Party may lie. And you've asked about underperformances, and I would say in Maine, that actually it was a Susan Collins overperformance. Like, she was still strong because she's Susan Collins, and she just has a base of folks there that like her.
Well, she's delivered for Maine, is what they would say.
Yeah, and time for a change. Right. I don't think this was, in all of the interviews that I saw about it for the folks that voted against her, most of them said, I'm a Democrat. I've always voted for Susan Collins. But I realize now that we can't have anyone that's going to side with the administration at this point. And then Abdul, who had predicted that he was going to win by seven points, he did win by seven points, but it was predicted that he could win by 11 points, for instance, in the New York Times Siena poll. So you're looking at Rust Belt versus Sun Belt. And if you have Senator Hamilton, Senator Cullum, Senator Andrews, Senator Talarico, I know that's not technically Sun Belt, like, life looks a little bit different, and South Carolina is going to go first in the primary calendar now.
I just can't get over the political orgy that's going to happen when the Democratic campaign goes. I mean, there's just so many. I think there's no less than eight or maybe a dozen Democratic candidates who arguably feel viable. What I think will be more interesting is that, is Vance and Rubio, are they sort of infected with this Trump virus that is incurable? And if so, I believe that's the perception right now.
Yeah.
And that a lot of Republicans who are sort of what I'll call old GOPers or younger GOPers are going to start making noises and bubbling up. I would imagine the prediction markets and Pew will come out with polls citing, saying that Vance and Rubio's likelihood of being the Republican nominee is going down, and that some, we're going to start to hear some new voices start to make noises on the Republican side. Do you have any idea who those voices might be?
Well, Ron DeSantis, it's not a new voice, but he's been talking, and he's been out there calling out cost of living problems. He called out the war in Iran before JD Vance got around to it this morning. I think he's definitely going to be a player in this. And I'm, I think the question will be how fast some of these guys exit the government like a Marco Rubio. JD Vance can't go anywhere, right? Like, he's in for the next two years and is going to be inextricably linked with the president. How much distance folks can make between them and the president for 2028, I think, will be determinative.
And I'll be interested to look at the field of who's left standing on the Republican side and could be viable, or maybe it'll be someone that we're not paying attention to, which is the most exciting opportunity in all of this, right? That people come out of nowhere and suddenly you got Barack Obama, right? Not, there's no Republican Barack Obama, but.
I'm just trying to think Pompeo or, like, who.
I think that's done.
That's done. I'm just trying to think who emerged. It feels to me like the lane, is it a Tucker Carlson? Is it.
Well, that will be a lane, a scary one, but that'll be part of this, especially if the former.
I think he jumped the shark when he decided that maybe Hitler wasn't wrong or was, I mean, my sense is that he's jumped the shark. But I wonder if there's a business person or a personality that would, that's going to all of a sudden get traction. Anyways, it'll be interesting. Vance said today, speaking of candidates whose presidential hopefuls, whose likelihood probably went down yesterday, he said today, the reason we lost is the war.
Is he potentially, this is a thesis, is he the single biggest loser from last night? I mean, obviously, the second biggest.
No.
Trump is the biggest loser.
Trump is.
Yeah, but Trump, I mean, I hate to say this. I don't think Trump is that bummed because I don't think he gives a shit about the Republican Party or these ideals. I don't think it's going to, I don't think he's going to lose any sleep. I think he's going to retire to Mar-a-Lago, play a lot of golf, play golf with Tiger Woods or whoever's in town or, you know, or Orban or, and I think he's going to just go about his life. I don't think, I don't think he's going to, he'll be angry here, he'll be aggrieved, but I don't think he'll have, you know, I would imagine that a lot of candidates after they lose like this think, wow, what could have been if I'd only pulled this off, right?
What could have been?
Yeah.
I don't, I think he's going to sleep really well at night. I think Vance is probably thinking, what does my future hold for me right now?
Oh, definitely. And that was his, why he posted that long thing about what happened and Don Jr. retweeted it. So you have a co-sign from the president's side. And so I imagine this was all workshopped and everyone, you know, signed off on it. But I do think that Donald Trump is not as chill about this as you think because.
I don't think.
Well, he was living the life because he was insulated from everything between the Supreme Court and a neutered Congress. He had his run of things. He could do anything. He could take money from anyone he wanted. He could start whatever war he wanted. It could be a trade war. It could be a hot war. You know, he could send folks over to Hungary to help try, you know, to influence the elections there. All of that's going to be a lot harder without control of the House and the Senate.
And these investigations are going to be a big facet of what goes on over the course of the next couple of years. It doesn't, you know, take more prominence than a legislative agenda, but there are going to be a lot of headaches for these people who are going to have to open their books and answer uncomfortable questions about the ways that they have abused the Constitution, have abused the power of their offices. You know, how did you get a couple billion dollars while you were a public servant like this? So I think it's a very uncomfortable period coming his way, and he knows that.
So let's move on to questions from the audience. Question number one, or question one, comes from @m.melnick. Asks, what will the Democrats elected today need to do to help set up a Democratic presidential win in a couple of years? I'll go first. Look, this is a lease, not a mortgage. This is, you're dating, not married here. The Democrats, the Republicans lost this. What I will say, I forget who said this. Ambassador Haley said this, and I think she was right. Democrats didn't win. Republicans lost last night.
Granted, we had some great candidates, but the swing voters here that pivoted hard to us, they're on loan. I don't think we can take them for granted. And I think Speaker Jeffries is right. I think we should immediately, or the Democrats should immediately propose legislation around rolling back the tariffs, around proposing massive additional military intelligence and financial aid to Ukraine. I think that would be the strongest symbol we could send to the rest of the world and basically say, we are a $30 trillion economy.
Russia is a $2 trillion economy. We have the best weapons in the world. NATO is arguably one of the best fighting forces in the world. And I'm not suggesting NATO get involved here, but in the Ukrainian army has shown itself to be one of the most capable fighting forces in history. A very singular message to Putin. We have more resources, intelligence, and technology than you have young men to sacrifice. And until you leave Ukraine, we are steadfast in our support.
Yeah, I agree with all of that. I throw in affordable housing and restoring the Obamacare subsidies to the list. I was dropping my younger daughter off at school, and a woman walked by on the phone and was talking about the election. And she said, you take away people's healthcare. What do you think is going to fucking happen? And I was like, that's it, right? You take away people's healthcare. What do you think is going to happen? So I want to make sure that we deliver on the promises of working on this healthcare problem because that was one of the primary drivers of people's tough times with their cost of living.
My God. Okay, I'm going to let you answer the next question then.
No.
First, Erica Tapper asks, do you think there's a chance the Dems make a deal with Trump to lay off his, to lay off his family legally if he doesn't veto good legislation? That's an interesting question, Jess.
Interesting question. Absolutely not. I think that Democratic leadership knows exactly what would be coming to them if they pussyfooted around a reckoning. And it's an accountability reckoning. It is not about going after someone just because you have a vendetta for them. There is very good evidence already of these abuses that have gone on. So I think no. I mean, Trump's going to pardon a bunch of people, which will help. But no, I don't think so.
Just some interesting things about a pardon that Secretary, or Madam Secretary Clinton, brought up when we interviewed her on stage on, when was it? Two days ago?
Monday.
I don't even remember. Yeah, thank you.
You're tortoising saying. I don't know. I can't even, I just wait for you to tell me which hotel, where you are in your hotel, depending on the tour.
Yeah. I literally woke up, I had one of those mornings, so I woke up this morning. I wasn't sure exactly where I was. Anyways, what she said was, what's interesting, a lot of legal scholars say if you're given a pardon, you can't take the fifth because the whole idea of a fifth is you don't incriminate yourself. And if you have a pardon, you can be held in contempt of Congress potentially if you try to take the fifth to avoid questions. The other thing is states, states can still prosecute. These are federal. This is a federal exoneration or absolution, whatever the term is, not state.
I can, I mean, you saw the new head, I forget his name, his comment when asked he's going to be head of the, I forget what subcommittee it is, but basically said lawyer up. Who was that, Jess?
Robert Garcia.
So give the people some color there because I love this.
Well, so this happened last night, mid-election results coming in where everyone is kind of licking their wounds or everyone I was hanging out with. And then that comes in and they're like, oh, see, this is all they're obsessed with. I was like, just give us a night, okay? Like, this is some fun on the internet. It doesn't mean Robert Garcia is not serious about it. And he absolutely is. And we'll be looking at everyone from Elon Musk to the Trump family, you know, under the hood of what Doge did exactly. And there are probably so many scandals that we're not even aware of, right? Like, there aren't enough journalists in the country to be able to grapple with how messed up this administration has been in terms of, you know, how they do their jobs, the ethics violations.
That's something we didn't mention earlier in the episode, and we absolutely have to. Top of the agenda for Democrats an ethics package that includes banning stock trades, taking on age limits, like everything that normal people tell you that they care about, you have to do. And you have to do it right away so that they know that you weren't lying on the campaign trail, that you took these complaints seriously. And that's going to be some tough work because there are a lot of old powerful Democrats that are still floating around Washington with committee heads.
Anyway, Robert Garcia, head of oversight, he has a lot ready to go. Epstein files, also big piece of that.
Yeah, one of my, I was thinking about predictions for tonight. I think, I actually think Elon Musk is going to leave the country. I think he's going to decide, I would rather just be.
Brazil?
No, I don't think he's going to go on the run, if you will, but I think he's got very savvy lawyers, and I think he'll find a place to hang out that'll make it more difficult to haul him in front of Congress. I just don't think he's going to stick around. I think he's going to, I mean, it'll be interesting. I'm just trying to think of knock-on effects here. He's got to be number, pretty much him and Jared Kushner have to be kind of numbers one and two or two and one of people they're going to haul or try and haul in front of Congress.
I think he's one.
And his companies and economic power are so substantial that I would imagine there's a lot of nations that would love to say, well, what if you put SpaceX's headquarters here? We could, I just think there's going to be some maneuvering. He does not, I mean, he's going to need literally three months if he, if his lawyers say there's no getting out of it, you got to go in front of Congress, he's going to need 90 days of prep to try and answer those questions without perjuring himself.
Or wean off ketamine.
Or there you go. But anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So Kim Springer asks, what's the reality of how this election will impact ICE functioning, our support of Ukraine, and the Iran war? A lot to cover there. I'll let you go first, Jess.
I think all in the good direction. I mean, ICE is funded to the, it's the Hilts, the Tilts, you know, like the ICE amount, the Hilts.
The Tilts, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well-funded.
Which did not help us.
Spend more on ICE than we do on children in this country.
Yeah.
That's a good reflection of our values. I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, co-sign. But like Scott already said, it's going to be top of mind for Democrats that Ukraine is getting the support that it needs and that we find some ways to effectively wind down the war in Iran. We obviously can't just like pack our toys and go, and you can't get into a position where you're quote unquote defunding the troops, but we need to be realistic of the prospects of actually winning this, whatever that looks like now.
So Drew hit it. That's right. Who showed up? All caps, democracy. What did we say to Trump? I'll tell you what, we're all a tiny cell on the hand that bitch slapped you last night. Did we say no to depravity? Yes, we did. Did we say no to corruption? Let me think. En español. Sí. What does this mean? It means that America occasionally gets it wrong.
Occasionally we get addicted to meth. But last night we were in our 12-step, baby America is back. Jess, these are the moves I had in the fraternity back in the '80s.
That's how you got so many girls?
That's how, virgin, lost my virginity at 19, Jess. True story. That's right. I would roll out on the dance floor and think it'd be unfair not to share a little Scott. That's the danger of life. The editors are freaking out right now. Everybody.
Totally.
Thank you for voting. Everyone showed up. I'm in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti and Renee Good and your families, we showed up. We voted. Thank you, America. Who's back? Big D, Democracy America. Jess, thank you for being steadfast on Fox News. Thanks for everyone. Let's get to work on bringing back the amazing nation this is. Thank you for showing up today. We will see you later in the week. What a wonderful day to be in America, in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, in Tribeca, where Jess is.
This is a wonderful day. Let's take pause to appreciate how fortunate we are to take part in this amazing experiment called America. Thank you, everybody. We will see you later in the week.
See ya.
Hi, I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
We pulled all that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it'd be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.
This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
This series is presented by EY.
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Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov break down Tuesday’s historic political earthquake.
The “blue tsunami” we’ve been predicting arrived. Some are calling it the Democrats’ best election night since 2008 — others are looking back even further into American history for parallels. Is this the beginning of the end of the MAGA movement?
Young men overwhelmingly swung blue. According to the New York Times, men ages 18 to 29 shifted 38 points toward Democrats—a stunning reversal. Scott and Jessica analyze these and other surprising demographic trends that, in some ways, make the 2026 midterm elections the mirror image of the 2024 presidential election.
As consequence to a night of many historic firsts, Hakeem Jeffries is set to make history and become the first Black speaker. In the first 100 hours, Jeffries is planning to pass legislation to undo Trump’s most unpopular policies. What will Democratic leadership look like?
Finally, Scott and Jess answer questions from viewers. They discuss the future of the Democratic party, and how party leaders will take on Trump, Musk, and other MAGA figures.
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