Transcript of GOP IN CHAOS: Vance Turns on Trump After "Extinction-Level" Election

Let's go back to you. Who are you speaking to or in front of? What are you speaking at?

Democrats got Column. Am I saying that right? Is it Column?

JD Vance went rogue yesterday and cornered Trump to admit it was the Iran war that was the reason Republicans lost. Today, we also got news that Secretary Rubio is now preparing to jump ship and resign from Trump's cabinet. Think about that. Wow. And Ron DeSantis, who Cauchy puts at a 17% chance of winning the next Republican presidential nomination, was also weighing in on the party's future and his own prospects. Let's take a listen.

We really got blasted into oblivion, and Florida's kind of the last one standing because Texas had been our other big anchor. Florida and Texas, certainly for the last 20, 25 years. And now we are really the last one. That's not enough to win a national election.

I mean, I think everyone's going to, if not break, distance themselves from Trump. But I would argue that DeSantis was a big winner yesterday because he's done a pretty good job of distancing himself from Trump. He ran a respectable campaign, if a bit underwhelming, but he has that party infrastructure or that election infrastructure. I do think you learn a lot. It's like it's combat training, right? Who do Navy SEALs pick for their missions? Whoever already has combat experience. He has run a presidential campaign. He's done a good job distancing himself.

He's one of the few governors that can legitimately say, "I held. I held red here down here. You know, I did my part." And he's got the infrastructure. He's from a big state. He's a young man. You know, it doesn't index that high on the likability component, but I would argue he was—if there was a Republican or if there were Republicans who were winners yesterday, he was one of them. What are your thoughts? Who is number—who will all of a sudden bubble up now that Vance and Rubio, quite frankly, might just be a little too close to the Chernobyl political reactor here?

But like, "Who would you want to run?" And I said Ron DeSantis for a lot of the reasons that you just listed. And adding to that, that he not only ran a campaign, but he managed to run against Donald Trump and not end up in the crosshairs.

And he's gone after everything. Not only the hard policies that the administration has taken, especially the war in Iran, ignoring people's cost of living concerns, but also going after the culture war approach and saying, "You just can't yell 'trans' at everything and think that people are going to take you seriously or want to turn out and vote for you." So I think that his stock has dramatically gone up in all of this. And I imagine that there are folks like Don Bacon, who is retiring, and I'm sure he's thinking, "There might be a place for me in this party going forward."

Or would there even be a place for a Republican like a Don Bacon in a Democratic administration? You know, I think that things are going to get really scrambled now. Rob Sand has already spoken about the fact that if he won the governor's mansion, which he did, that he would consider appointing Republicans to important positions. And I think that's, you know, I'm sure there are going to be some folks in the comments right now who say, "Absolutely not. Like, they don't deserve any of this." But there are some Republicans who are decent human beings who actually, you know, stood up for their values and bucked Trump when it mattered, like a Don Bacon.

Because a lot of these folks are still Republicans, right, who, like you said, we're leasing or renting votes for this election. We certainly don't own them. And, you know, they assume, like, a rural South Carolina voter is going to be looking to the Republican ticket for some sort of salvation from this. Maybe they'll end up loving Senator Annie Andrews. I hope that is the case. But you don't change who you are. You know, you're 70 years old, and you wake up one day, and suddenly you're a lib.

That doesn't really happen.

It's got to be deeper than that. There's got to be a lot of Republicans thinking, "This is my moment. Have you thought about who is number, quote-unquote, three, four, and five on the list?"

And yes, Donald Trump will be a factor, and you'll need his endorsement to some degree. But that people are clearly interested in hearing something different. And I do think, you know, you had Nate Silver on the Prof G Pod. He was also with Ezra Klein, you know, talking about the end of the Trump era. And I saw that headline and kind of thought, like, "No, that's not possible." Right? Like, the last 10 years have been so overwhelming that you think it couldn't be. And then you look at the wreckage from the midterms and how Donald Trump can do nothing but say, "I'd like to work with Democrats, and here I am talking about my ballroom."

And you think, "Yeah, actually, maybe this is the end of the Trump era."

But there's such an enormous 180 from how they were behaving just last week that you know that this is seismic for them.

Let's move on and talk about the fallout from the election, which could reach all the way to the Pentagon. Trump has been privately asking advisors whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should keep his job following Republicans' catastrophic losses. And the House vote could be as soon as next week to impeach Hegseth. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, is even calling for the impeachment, claiming, "There is one contingency in which I won't reintroduce the articles of impeachment. Hegseth resigns." Though Trump publicly insists he has full confidence in him.

By the way, typically, full confidence is a metaphor or is code for you should start packing your boxes in Washington when they have to respond. I love what you said the other day, that when you're explaining you're losing or you're defending. And when you're forced to say you have full confidence in someone, that's pretty much a negative-forward-looking indicator. What do you think happens with Hegseth, Jess?

And that was one of the considerations or rumors previously that a Ron DeSantis would be considered for Secretary of Defense. But how he's behaving and how tarnished the administration is, you can see that it gives him no advantage to come and be the Secretary of Defense if he's thinking, "I could actually end up being president in this." So I do not think that Pete Hegseth will resign, certainly on Thomas Massie's clock, because Massie only has a couple months left in office anyway. So I don't think it's going to move that quickly. And we've been covering earlier this week that there is more going on in the Middle East than we have enough ink to spill about.

And folks have been, you know, really focused on the election here, so haven't been necessarily paying as much attention to the fact that Iran is not quiet, what's going on there, and that we're still getting more information about how much damage they've been doing to U.S. bases and to our troops, the numbers of, you know, folks getting wounded, going up and up. So my guess would be right now that they are going to bring the articles of impeachment. He's not going to get his head on a stick.

Massie will be gone, but once everyone is sworn in, the majority is going to be so enormous that you won't need that many Republicans. But I could see, like, do you think Tom Tillis would love anything more than on his way out to get to vote to impeach Pete Hegseth?

It was so wonderful. And I made this big speech about how the markets have realized that Democratic policies are good for the markets and good for the economy. And look what the markets did yesterday. Brent crude down 8%, the NASDAQ up 1.5%, the S&P up 2.5%. And wow, speaking of predictions, where I got a sobering reminder that I get it wrong all the time. And granted, two trading days is not a pattern yet. But the political fallout is already hitting Wall Street, particularly the AI sector.

After Wednesday's rally, the S&P plunged more than 3% Thursday, and the NASDAQ fell 5%. Nvidia dropped 7% as investors brace for tougher AI regulation and a potential slowdown in data center expansion under Democratic control. There were something like 45 data center moratorium or initiatives on the ballot to constrain data center growth in 44 of the 45 passed. And if there's one kind of signal that the market seems to be taking today, as it's had some time to digest what took place on Tuesday, it's that, OK, the compute Microsoft and Apple have had great days, but the people using compute have done OK with diversified businesses.

The people selling compute seem to be getting whacked. The neocloud companies, Nvidia got whacked pretty hard. And if there's if you tried to put an explanation on what happened yesterday versus today, is that there's been a rotation out of the pure-play levered AI guys. Because a core weave is a levered AI play. Massive debt focused on compute to the more diversified companies that are also getting some of the great taste of AI. But if this ends up being like the railroads or the electricity grid where there's an overinvestment and a correction, they have PowerPoint and YouTube and Google Search and their, you know, Amazon's retail.

They have so many unbelievably diversified businesses that there might be it seems like there's a bit of a flight from risk around, well, what if the Democrats get in the way of AI growth? Do you think, Jess, that a Democratic-controlled Congress is going to pump the brakes on the AI boom or maybe even bring it to a bit of a screeching halt?

So my argument still stands, not in a place that I would expect, certainly the way that it was being discussed, that, you know, it was showing up and taking over more rural places and the quality of life, you know, fear of taking jobs, what happens in the economy. And I think that it's going to be up to leaders. Like if you look at the more nuanced position that Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania has taken on this, where you kind of marry up folks' concerns, which are very real and not this isn't about just pacifying them with the fact that we can't surrender to China, essentially, in this AI race.

This is also part of the reason that I think having these enormous majorities is going to really help Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot, you know, leadership and if there are going to be any sort of changes. I do not see that happening in the House, much more likely in the Senate, that that's pushed. But it's going to have to be a middle ground position, even if you have these ballot initiatives to have moratoriums on data centers. And that's what I wanted to ask you.

You know, I was talking yesterday to a progressive commentator who was like, "Yeah, stop it all." And I was like, "What does that really mean?" Like, how does that work, this idea that you can just put a, like, big flashing red button and say, "No, no, no, no more AI"? Like, you can't magically go back to a life from two decades ago. We've already litigated that. Remember the coal miners conversations that we were having in the 2016 election?

So what do you think that means to people when they go in there and they vote yes on this moratorium on data centers in practical terms that someone in government can legislate on?

It can't raise electricity prices, or the data center is on the hook for any perceived increase in electricity prices. It needs to be in an area where there is less environmental impact. But to just slow down, I mean, in all of our economic growth, our economy, unfortunately and maybe this is the wrong move, but our economy has become sort of a giant bet on AI. And to not one of the questions I asked soon-to-be-Governor Klobuchar last night in Minnesota was, OK, look at Minnesota. If you were to describe migration, where people go, the economy goes.

So goes people, so goes the economy. Generally speaking, the way you would reductively describe migration in the U.S. over the last 30 years, 20 years, has been people are leaving high-tax cold states and moving to warm, low-tax states. And Minnesota's no different. They've had some good growth recently, but they have lost people and they've lost economic growth. And I said to Governor Klobuchar, you know, these populist movements feel good, but at the end of the day, you have to have a plan for economic growth.

And when I look at Minnesota, it's cold. They have a shit ton of land, and they have access to a lot of power. You know, don't you want some of that AI mojo? Don't you want some of that trillion dollars in CapEx? Isn't this the perfect state for data centers? Because the state the state that has the most data centers, Virginia, and they love them. And thoughtfully legislated, protected, responsible approval of data centers.

And but I think it's a real mistake for Democrats. I think the worst thing Texas could do right now is to turn hostile on data centers or turn hostile on SpaceX. You need to be thoughtful. You need to be sure that the benefits to the local community far outweigh the downside and the costs. But I already feel like I mean, the problem is data centers have become a vessel for our frustrations around income inequality and our mistrust of big tech.

And all of those sentiments are valid. But I worry that unless we it's great to stand up and say, "I'm putting up a moratorium against all data centers." It's like, OK, they'll find another home. And if it's not in the South or a red state, they'll find it in another country or, you know, Netherlands, that out-of-control red place. Their economy has done really well. They're a bright spot in Europe because they have welcomed compute and data centers. So I think I think some of this rhetoric, thoughtful regulation that ensures local communities are winners, hands down.

But what Democrats never want to acknowledge is that without growth, we can't pay for tax credits for new housing. We can't pay for food stamps. So I'm I'm of the mind that this populism, as expressed through a moratorium on data centers, is not good for Democrats and that I hope that a lot of these new Democratic governors recognize and more generally that we hold on. We go from dating to a marriage with some of these swing voters who are very economically minded, specifically young men, and say, "Look, we are a responsible party.

We're about accountability. We're about ethics. We're about ensuring that we put people first. But we need growth and AI, quite frankly, a trillion dollars in CapEx. We're going to push that to the red states or offshore." Anyways, I think this is a sister-soldier moment for a newly elected Democratic governor to say, "We are pro-growth, we are pro-business, and we are going to responsibly embrace the growth that AI offers." Your thoughts?

She comes at an opportune moment because, unfortunately, Minnesota's brand used to be cold weather and nice people, and now it's cold weather, nice people and fraud. So she has an opportunity to come in and, quite frankly, clean it up a little bit.

But she she was a really thoughtful, robust, you know, respected senator. She's coming home to be governor. I can't help it. I think all of these people wake up in the morning, Jess, and look in the mirror and say, "Hello, Madam President." I think they all, from the time they were five years old and they were told, "You can be president," they believed it. So I don't and I got I think the senator is very good. She's pretty vague. I asked a we asked a lot of questions that we got a lot of just populist, you know, the great people of Minnesota.

And it's like.

I thought it was.

AOC also had a viral message for Gen Z. Let's take a listen.

That hits generationally. Like you are chasing that feeling ever since. And because you did it the first time you ever voted, you're like, yeah, we can change the world. Like, yeah, why not? Like we did it first time. Let's just do it again. Yeah. Exactly that.

So I was glad that she put it in those terms. And I hope that young people are feeling their power because the role that young people played on Tuesday night is massive in all of this. And now they're a key player. They're not just a cohort that's part of a Democratic coalition. They'll get 2024 and 2026. And you're a swing category. That matters a lot to politicians, to the consultants that are going to make bazillions of dollars from those politicians and all of their donors trying to track you and trap you to some degree.

And you're a difference maker. And there's an enormous amount of power that comes from that and an enormous amount of positivity and possibility that comes out of it, too. So I loved how she put it as an elder millennial myself.

You're going to see and it's overdue and it's wonderful, the following theme. And it's an important theme that's overdue. And that is for the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old is not as successful as his or her parents were at 30. And that needs to end. And we need to reduce or reverse the flow of the river from owners to earners and consumers. We need to reverse those flows. As a percentage of GDP, corporate profits have never been higher and wages have never been lower. And we need to reverse that.

And also, you have to give Bernie props. He was talking about the billionaire class a decade ago and said that this fetish of billionaires has gone way too far and they're sucking the oxygen out of the room. And at the time, that seemed crazy left. And a lot of Republicans, a lot of Republicans have embraced that message. And I think that was a big part of the reason we had such an overwhelming win last night. What's interesting, though, also is that the proposition in the tax tax on billionaire proposition in California looks like it's not going to happen.

Essentially, affordability populism wins, but wealth tax populism is harder. And so voters like take on billionaires, but bock at specific what feels like class warfare against them. Voters will still cheer the eat the rich, but they'll still vote against them being on, if you will, the menu, if you will. Any thoughts on Bernie's impact?

I think it would have been better for all of us if Hillary had been able to pull that out. And I do think it caused damage. But the way that he's seeing the world and the top versus bottom, the elites versus the everyday, you know, Joes and Janes is definitely spot on. And it was in everybody's campaigns. And I think it's really healthy. And I know we're going to talk about this in a little while to get rid of these buckets and saying this is about moderates versus progressives because these candidates are so heterodox.

Right. When you look at what James Talarico's platform is and how he's, you know, defending the oil and gas industry or El-Sayed talking about the border, how John Ossoff, you know, is one of a few Dems that votes for the Lincoln-Reilly Act, for instance. So they're all over the place. But what I wanted to say on AOC's point that I don't think that we really even discussed much about yesterday in our first recap is how much the 2008 election felt like a moment in civil rights history with our first black president and then how much this election was about civil rights, especially in the South.

And democracy and corruption were, you know, number two issue for a lot of folks. And it relates directly to this. But I just wanted to highlight that, you know, the Calais decision, the Supreme Court decision for Louisiana. There was also a Supreme Court decision that messed with a district in Alabama. And Hakeem Jeffries made his last battleground district visit to Alabama with Shomari Figueres, whose dad was a civil rights attorney and his district was gerrymandered.

He ended up holding on to it. But the gravity of that moment certainly wasn't lost on Hakeem or the congressmen, you know, where they're going to the place where the civil rights movement originated, you know, Dr. King and Rosa Parks and how meaningful that is. And then I was watching an interview with an elderly black woman voting in Mississippi, talking about how she remembers paying a poll tax that she used to pay $2 to be able to vote, whereas white people paid nothing and that they are now hopefully sending Scott Collum to the United States Senate as the first black senator since Reconstruction.

And I was, you know, watching the votes come in and which counties we're going. And he just won Forest County named after Nathan Bedford Forest, who founded the KKK. And the symbolism of that, it just I feel like I could explode from it, you know, that we're still doing this, that this fight continues. And sometimes I'm rough on electeds for using, quote, unquote, you know, Jim Crow language in discussing what's happening when the Supreme Court rules on something.

And I say, OK, you know, we don't need to be hyperbolic, but you look at things like this and you realize that it's actually an app description of some of the actions that have been taken to disenfranchise black voters in this country and how exciting all of this is. And I wanted to add also to the list from yesterday, we were talking about investing in Florida and how that was a missed opportunity. But Jamie Davis in Louisiana came within 1.8 points of winning that Senate seat and was not getting money from Washington down the stretch.

And I mean, we could have had we could have had Florida, we could have had Louisiana. And I don't know, big missed opportunities. And I just wanted to highlight how important this election was from a civil rights perspective.

She actually had a shot. And so, look, it's it's easy to go back and say where we went wrong in terms of underinvesting and overinvesting. One thing that I think is misleading is that I think Fox, look, the media is like a Tyrannosaurus rex. It's drawn to movement and violence and it wants friction. And when it seems when it sees people on the far left kind of embracing what are typically seen as more socialist values or saying fairly what feel like incendiary things or having what feels like almost anti-Semitism is a litmus test for whether you qualify to be on the far, far left, it the media just eats it up.

And my sense is if you really look at what happened yesterday in terms of this Democratic wave, I would argue it was very much a wave towards the middle. And that is while voters overwhelmingly backed abortion rights in states like Virginia and Nevada, passing protections by at least 24 points. I mean, this was a good day for bodily autonomy. They also supported more conservative positions on other issues, affirming voter ID requirements in Ohio and Nevada and restricting transgender rights in Arizona and Washington State. And in California, again, the proposed billionaire tax was behind by 11 points.

So it feels like it is what the exit polls say. And the exit polls yesterday, 60% of respondents consider themselves moderate. So I think the media has very much dramatized the, quote, unquote, takeover of the Democratic Party. My sense is this was this was a pivot towards the middle. And while a lot of energy and a lot of youth and quite frankly, some of the more attractive candidates are from what is considered, you know, the the the progressive left or the DSA, I think they have some of the most energy, some of the most compelling candidates.

If you look at actually who was elected yesterday, I would argue that this was a moderate. This is what I'd call not an incandescent blue wave. It was a, I don't know, I don't want to call them powder blue, but a nice navy, a nice, a nice moderate.

And, you know, we say this is people with a podcast called Raging Moderates. We have the rage in there. We also have the moderates part of it. But yes, that's certainly the big wins of the night did not come from people, you know, on the left, on the far left. I mean, Abdul won in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine, but Troy Jackson either underperformed or Susan Collins overperformed, I think, is a better way to say that, considering the tide against the Republican Party.

And it was an enormous night for like the Roy Coopers of the worlds and the James Talaricos and John Ossoff. You know, if you're talking about winning by double digits in these purple and red states. So the like the cohorts in Congress, the moderate ones are getting a lot fuller. The Blue Dogs, the new Democrat coalitions, the Problem Solvers Caucus. But people also now have they participate in a bunch of different caucuses and they can be part of the progressive caucus and they can also be part of the new Democrat coalition.

And that's just fine. And I don't want to have these fights anymore. I want us to continue to pick the best candidates for the constituency and to not live in this framework that I think is exceptionally limiting, considering how heterodox these candidates are. Like I was saying, El-Sayed tough on the border, Talarico pro oil and gas, Annie Andrews is a deficit hawk. Reverend Hamilton is a mega church pastor who also on after October 7th released a statement talking about Palestinian kids and, you know, what's happening to them.

So we need to be a lot bigger and bolder in the way that we think about this. And we know that economic populism is what works. We also know that some degree of cultural conservatism, if you want to call that, on, you know, voter ID, transgender athletes, is also necessary to be able to win. And I think the billionaires tax thing, because, you know, Gavin Newsom is in for it. And part of that is looking at, you know, how much money comes is in his state and how many people are going to leave from it.

But the problem with billionaire taxes is they fail. Look at all the wealth taxes across Europe that they've had to get rid of because people leave and they don't even generate money from it.

The Make America Measles Again is is a movement. Essentially, I think of the 21 MAHA-backed Republicans, only five of them were were elected or reelected. I think this is a wonderful thing. Any thoughts on this before we go to questions?

This is an attempt to say, okay, one one person, one vote. And the way it works, is my understanding, is that approximately 220 of whatever it is, the 540 electoral votes that's represented by states have said, we'll sign up for this. You need 270. And a lot of Republican states have said, no way, because in 2016, while Hillary won the popular vote, the Electoral College nominated the Republican or elected the Republican, seated the Republican, Donald Trump. Last night, the three Republican states that went all blue in terms of their legislature and their governor needed to go over 270 elected Democrats across the board, meaning meaning the Electoral College may have died yesterday.

And we may find ourselves in a position sooner rather than later where the election for the president of the United States is actually one person, one vote, regardless of where you are. And we stop obsessing over and spending $3,000 for every soccer mom in some town in Wisconsin. Any thoughts here, Jess?

And it will be a real test for the folks running for president on the Democratic side, how open they are to this kind of sweeping changes to our system. But I think it seems great and it's also logical, which would be a good thing to be able to be logical in the way that we elect people.

And I think that Chuck Schumer is going to have a battle on his hands here. But I actually wouldn't even expect from the left flank of the party on the House side that folks are going to say that it shouldn't be Hakeem Jeffries. And whatever you think of his dynamicism, you know, especially compared to a Nancy Pelosi, this is an enormous win. And I think that he very much has.

I think that they're very different. And I'm sorry that we piss you guys off with this, but he went, he flew to Ohio several times to personally get Sherrod Brown to run. He got Mary Potola to run. He got Roy Cooper to run. He's been obsessed with Mississippi, by the way. Well, like who would have thought, oh, we're going to win Mississippi or we even have a chance in Mississippi? And Chuck Schumer was like, we can do this. That has to be worth something to you. I'm not saying it has to be that he stays and is Senate majority leader, but it's it's a big deal.

And all the money, I mean, spending tens of millions of dollars.

You know, Rahm Emanuel yesterday had a real had a had a really powerful moment, I thought, on Fox. Let these people cook. And I think Anthony, I've gotten to know Anthony and I find him to be very thoughtful, very pragmatic. I think he has almost no shot, but I think he'd be a great voice in the race. And I won't I what I would say is the following. Almost every man who hears somebody say, I think you should run for president is inclined to believe them.

And so I don't I think if Anthony gets any momentum or a donor who calls him, I think he would probably consider running. I don't think he should run as a Democrat. I think he should run as a Republican. Again.

And he would just be a shit ton of fun. So, Anthony, run.