• Thursday night kicked off the start of week two of the NFL season. And after years of ceding the proverbial playing field to Republicans, Democrats are trying to take back football! Drew Magary, columnist for Defector and SF Gate, explains how adopting the language of football became a winning strategy for Dems heading into November.
• And in headlines: Former President Donald Trump insisted he won Tuesday night’s debate during his first rally since his chaotic performance, a state judge in North Dakota struck down the state’s near-total abortion ban, and the first ballots for the upcoming general election are officially in the mail.

• Check out Drew’s work – https://defector.com/author/drew-magary
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, September 13th. I’m Jane Coaston. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And I’m Tre’vell Anderson and this is What a Day where once again, we are asking J.D. Vance to be quiet. 

Jane Coaston: He suggested that Republicans shut the government down if they can’t manage to pass a new budget, saying, quote, “Why have a government if it’s not a functioning government?” I’m sure congressional Republicans loved hearing that. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Did he get approval for this comment? 

Jane Coaston: But Trump loves government shutdowns. He loves chaos. He’s a messy bitch who lives for drama. [laughter] [music break] Now, let’s start with some of today’s top stories. 

[clip of Donald Trump] So because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate. [cheers]

Jane Coaston: Former President Donald Trump held his first rally since his chaotic at best debate performance. Speaking to supporters in Tucson, Arizona, he said he wouldn’t debate Vice President Kamala Harris again and offered an account of Tuesday’s debates that few people not named Donald Trump would agree with. 

[clip of Donald Trump] But when a prizefighter loses a fight, you’ve seen a lot of fights, right? The first words out of that fighter’s mouth is, I want a rematch. I want a rematch. And that’s what she said. I want a rematch. Polls clearly show that I won the debate against comrade Kamala Harris. [cheers]

Jane Coaston: Those polls do not exist. Thursday was also a rough one for the former president because the New York Court of Appeals declined to lift a gag order connected to the New York criminal trial against him. The gag order prevents Trump from speaking publicly about prosecutors and court staff involved in the hush money trial, and it will now stay in place until Trump’s sentencing in the case, which is currently scheduled for November 26th. But in Georgia, Trump did get a win. The superior court judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case in the state threw out two charges against the former president after determining that they belonged under federal, not state jurisdiction. Trump still faces eight charges in that case, but it’s currently paused due to challenges from Trump’s legal team, which is trying to have Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis removed as prosecutor. A state judge in North Dakota struck down the state’s near-total abortion ban on Thursday, saying it was too vague and calling it a violation of medical freedoms. The law, which was enacted by the legislature last year, only had exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s life prior to six weeks, which is before most women even know they’re pregnant. It also made providing an abortion a felony for medical professionals punishable by up to five years in prison and a maximum $10,000 fine. Courts have now overturned two abortion bans passed by North Dakota lawmakers. Under the judge’s order, abortion would be legal. But the state no longer has a single abortion clinic, since the last remaining provider moved to Minnesota in 2022 after Roe versus Wade was overturned. Republican State Attorney General Drew Wrigley has said he will appeal the decision because, of course, he will. The first ballots for the upcoming general election are officially in the mail. That’s right. It’s happening. On Wednesday, Alabama started sending out ballots to absentee voters. It edged out North Carolina, which was supposed to start sending out mail in ballots late last week. But officials there had to delay mailing after a former independent presidential candidate turned Trump best friend and lackey, Robert F Kennedy Jr, successfully sued to get his name removed. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of state election officials warned Wednesday that problems with the U.S. Postal Service could create delays delivering ballots. In a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, both the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors expressed fears over, quote, “inconsistent training” and, quote, “exceptionally long delivery times,” issues that could lead to the disenfranchisement of voters. In a statement, a spokesperson for the USPS said the agency would be, quote, “ready to deliver.” That’s inspiring. New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, signed a restrictive voter ID bill into law on Thursday. The legislation requires anyone voting in the state to provide a photo ID and also forces anyone registering to vote to show proof of citizenship. The same requirements Trump is pushing for the GOP to be included in the federal budget in order to get it approved. The law will not go into effect until after the upcoming election. But voting rights advocacy groups worry it will confuse voters and election officials. And finally, an update to a story we brought you yesterday. The New York City police commissioner Edward Caban has resigned. Caban was one of a handful of officials in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who had their phones seized by federal investigators last week. Though details about the investigation remain scant. And that’s the news. 

Tre’vell Anderson: All righty, Jane. We are now in week two of the NFL season. And I got to be honest. It’s not necessarily my favorite sport, but you know, who has been making it their thing this year? The Democrats. 

[clip of Tim Walz] [crowd roaring sound] It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Not only is vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a former coach, but the Harris Walz ticket is working to get Harris into the game. According to Politico, some of Harris’s advisors are recommending she expand beyond traditional outlets with her interviews and appear on some sports shows to meet voters where they are. 

Jane Coaston: That’s right. And while Republicans might be trying their best to criticize Tim Walz for being an assistant coach, I will not stand for defensive coordinator slander. So far, those weak attacks have not worked. So how did the GOP fumble their hold on the sport so badly? And is adopting the language of football a winning strategy for Democrats? For answers to those questions and more, I spoke with Drew McGarry, columnist for Defector and SFGate. Drew, thank you so much for joining me. 

Drew Magary: My pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: So we’re just over a week into the current NFL season. So far, we’ve seen Aaron Rodgers make his return to the field, and yet the Jets are still bad. 

Drew Magary: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: I am wearing a Bengals sweater. Despite the fact that the Bengals lost to the Patriots while using a doomed screenplay in fourth and two because they hate me. 

Drew Magary: Sorry. 

Jane Coaston: There was also Tom Brady’s broadcasting debut where he sounded pretty much as awkward as I had expected. What did you learn about the NFL writ large in week one? 

Drew Magary: Okay, so I’m a Vikings fan, so I was very much about my team. But in general. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Drew Magary: Like I’m watching the quarterback play, right? I don’t think that anything changed at the top, right? It’s still the Chiefs and then everybody else. In fact, the Chiefs are probably better than they were a year ago. It’s a scramble for second underneath that, in the event that the chiefs dip in quality of play or Patrick Mahomes gets into some sort of bus accident or something like that. Anything can happen. Any given week that happened with Jordan Love, you know, he had a very terrifying knee injury that looked like for all the world that he had torn every seal that he had in his knee. But he didn’t. And you just you never know when that’s going to happen week to week. So week one is always a good reminder of how tenuous everything is and how stupid your predictions were going into the season. 

Jane Coaston: So the Harris Walz campaign and other Democrats have been making football a part of their messaging this year in a way I haven’t I don’t think we’ve seen before. What’s happening here, Drew? 

Drew Magary: There’s a couple of things. One is that I think it’s Democrats realizing a couple of decades too late as Democrats tend to, that liberals watch football, too. I’m as  liberal as they come. I’m a diehard NFL fan. 140 million people watch the Super Bowl. It’s a pretty good chance that not all of them are going to vote for Donald Trump. Right? That’s just not statistically that’s not going to happen. And what they found in Tim Walz was someone who was a football coach who was, I think, a more accurate reflection of actual current coaches, particularly, you know, if you look in the NFL, guys like Sean McVay, Kevin O’Connell, coaches who are interested in making their players better and aren’t just excited to be coaches, like in the old Bob Knight style, right? That sort of idea of coaching I think is very antiquated and something that conservative Americans are holding on to because they are the type to hold on to the past, right? You know, I live in a blue state and I have found in my comings and goings with youth sports and stuff like that that the coaches that I have dealt with are generally sane people. They’re not Jon Gruden. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Drew Magary: They’re normal people, whether or not they’re liberal or conservative, I don’t ask them that. I don’t have a litmus test for them or anything like that. But they are reasonable. And in a election cycle where one side is really representative of just insanity and not being reasonable at all, it makes perfect sense to get someone who likes football and has coached football and is normal in there to get people say, oh yeah, yeah, we’re like you too, and we’re not trying to be like you. We just happened to be. So that’s kind of nice. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. In this case, does football just mean normal? Just like doing normal people stuff? 

Drew Magary: Yeah, because football’s normal shit. Everybody goes and watches games on Sunday and eats too much and all that stuff. That cuts across a lot of divisions. 

Jane Coaston: I think a more interesting question to me is why did Republicans stop performing a love for football? You know, you see a lot of jokes online about how Democrats got football in the national divorce, but how did it happen? 

Drew Magary: Well, first of all, I don’t know that it’s necessarily true, right? Like this was true when Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee and other players were following suit. You know, you had a lot of conservatives being like, sir, please cancel my subscription to the NFL. [grumbling]

Jane Coaston: Yeah. All the same people who were like super, super mad all the time and said they’d never watch another game and then had a lot of thoughts on the Super Bowl. 

Drew Magary: Right. 

Jane Coaston: We can see you. 

Drew Magary: When Kaepernick gets blacklisted. They see it as triumph, but then they’re mad Michael Bennett takes a knee. Other players take a knee, whatever. Doing even the most general acknowledgment of racism and police brutality that the NFL can do. They don’t want that. And so what I’m seeing from conservatives is not that they dislike football anymore. They just like it as a good vessel to complain about whatever they’re complaining about because they were like there were insane theories last year when Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelce that, oh well, it’s a conspiracy with Taylor Swift and Joe Biden to rig the election in Joe Biden’s favor so that Trump can lose. You know, and you could see it reached its apex at the debate earlier this week when Trump started openly talking about eating dogs. It’s not that, you know, one side owns football or one side likes football and one side doesn’t. It’s that football is the most useful political football that these people can have because it’s the most popular sport in America. It’s the most omnipresent cultural force in America. So it makes sense to try to conduct your politics through it without much regard as to like the actual results on the field. 

Jane Coaston: You’ve been writing about the NFL for years. 

Drew Magary: Yes. 

Jane Coaston: And as you mentioned, the NFL is America’s most popular sport, and I would argue America’s real pastime. 

Drew Magary: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Jane Coaston: If you look at like most watched broadcasts, and it’s always like some AFC championship game that got like 40 million viewers or something like that. 

Drew Magary: Right. 

Jane Coaston: How has your relationship with the league and the sport changed over time? 

Drew Magary: There was like a stretch a few years ago. It was during the Ray Rice thing and it was during Kaepernick. And I was you know, I loved the sport, but I was completely disaffected with the league, disaffected with Roger Goodell, the hypocrisy, the greed, the stadium grift, all that stuff. I was disgusted by it all. You know, I think there were people in my end who on the liberal side did the whole I’m going to cancel my subscription thing. And they like, I’m not going to watch it anymore and all of that. And I loved football too much to ever do that. You know, you’d watch it, but you’d have like a bit of a guilty conscience, like, oh it kills people. And, you know, they’re greedy and all that stuff. And then I got old. And when you’re old, you let things go. There’s nothing I can do about NFL owners and people running the NFL being greedy, insane, dicks, Right? Same as I. If you loved soccer, you can’t do anything about FIFA being as awful as FIFA is. If you like watching the Olympics. And I liked watching the Olympics. You can’t do anything about how shitty the IOC is. It’s the price of doing business if you happen to like a sport and you happen to like watching these athletes and all that stuff. So when I watch it now, I’m just excited for the football part. I understand the back room fuckery that goes on and I cover that and I point it out as best I can, but it doesn’t seep into my enjoyment of the sport. I don’t watch it with a guilty conscience, I think is is this the best way to say it. I probably should have a guilty conscience, but what good is that going to do me? Nothing. It doesn’t do any good. If I really wanted to effect change in the NFL, I’d stop watching it and then, like, go stage a protest outside of league headquarters or something like that. But I am too old and too lazy and I like my team too much. 

Jane Coaston: Right? There really is something about the beauty of football and that those moments where there are times, even on Twitter, even when people are yelling about Nazis and cat eating in which someone has a crazy pass that everybody stops and wants to talk about it. 

Drew Magary: Yeah, A.R.’s pass. It was insane. 

Jane Coaston: Ah. I have not moved on from Anthony Richardson’s arm. I will never move on. 

Drew Magary: No, I mean, that’s always been the story throughout my whole life, is that the people staging the games are crooked, no pun intended, but the people playing them always find a way to redeem those bad actors in the background. That’s been true in baseball. Baseball has more than its fair share of problems, it’s been true in the NBA. Even though the NBA likes to present itself as the white knight of leagues. It’s not true. That’s true of soccer. It’s true of the Olympics. It’s always the athletes redeem the sport, whether or not the sport actually deserves it. 

Jane Coaston: Drew Magary, thank you so much for joining me. 

Drew Magary: My pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Drew Magary, columnist for Defector and SFGate. We’ll be back in a moment. But if you like our show, make sure to subscribe. Check us out on YouTube and share with your friends. We’ll be back after some ads. [AD BREAK]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is, to put it lightly, bonkers. She’s a conspiracy theorist who said that the 911 attacks on the Pentagon were a hoax and that California wildfires were caused by a space laser controlled by Jewish people. As a side note, it is wild to me that virtually every conspiracy theory eventually ends in antisemitism. So when Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks something someone else said is, quote, “appalling and extremely racist,” well, it’s definitely not going to be good. Is it Tre’vell? 

Tre’vell Anderson: I can’t imagine it will be. 

[clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene] I do know this, that her rhetoric and her tone is is does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match much Republicans I know. And I am completely denouncing it. I’m over it. 

Jane Coaston: What it was was a tweet from far right activist Laura Loomer in which she said, among other insane things, that if Kamala Harris won, the White House would smell like curry. You know, because Kamala Harris has Indian ancestry. 

Tre’vell Anderson: You were right, Jane. That is not good at all. Oh my God. 

Jane Coaston: Laura Loomer is a self-described white nationalist. I could not possibly tell you all of the weird and racist stuff she has said and done. From obsessively hating Muslims to celebrating the deaths of migrants to chaining herself to Twitter’s offices back in 2018 while wearing a Star of David, comparing being banned from the platform to the Holocaust. Getting banned from Twitter is not, to be clear, like the Holocaust. But she likes to attack other Republicans, too. She accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s wife, of faking breast cancer, and has picked more than a few fights with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. But one very important person thinks she’s great. Donald Trump, who brought her on as planned to Tuesday’s debate and took her along to a 9/11 remembrance ceremony in New York on Wednesday. Despite the fact that Laura Loomer believes 9/11 was an inside job. But Trump? 

[clip of Donald Trump] The great Laura Loomer, some of you know, Laura is a fantastic person, great woman. 

Jane Coaston: This is, to be clear, the same person who celebrated, quote, “taking over the Republican Party” with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who once said that interracial relationships were the same as a man having sex with a dog. If there has been anything we’ve learned about Donald Trump, it’s that he likes people who like him. And Laura Loomer has based her entire life on loving Donald Trump. She told The Washington Post she lost weight to try and increase her chances of getting a job with him. She even believes that if Donald Trump wins this election, she could get a job in his administration, even as press secretary. And honestly, she’s probably right. Which says a little about Laura Loomer and a whole lot about Donald Trump. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Watch the Bengals versus Chiefs game on Sunday and tell your friends to listen. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And if you’re into reading and not just the list of Sunday’s Emmy nominees like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Tre’vell Anderson. 

Jane Coaston: I’m Jane Coaston. Thanks for listening. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded by Jerik Centeno and mixed by Bill Lancz. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Tyler Hill, JoHanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Collin Gilliard and Kashaka.