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Is there anything that Vice President JD Vance hasn’t messed up? From political messaging, to lecturing the Pope about theology, Vance’s public appearances are often cringe inducing. But this week, Alex digs into the pernicious actions he’s taking behind the scenes. First she’s joined by California Attorney General Rob Bonta who reveals how much damage Vance’s anti-fraud task force is doing to legitimate businesses, and impacting those who need their services like hospice care. Then Alex speaks to Majority Report host Sam Seder about what it means to have a dishonest and bad actor like Vance waiting in the wings to be the next President.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD BREAK] 

 

Alex Wagner: Hi, everyone. There is an emerging truism in these Trump years. How do you make a bad situation even worse? Throw J.D. Vance in the mix. This week, as President Trump tries to spin his apparent surrender to Iran and capitulation to economic reality as the beginning of a deal to end the war, the administration is sending its most reliably smug and utterly shameless representative to do the hard work of pretending that this is all a good thing. In theory, the vice president is making the rounds to promote a new book about his relationship with Catholicism, we’ll have more on that in a second. But in practice, it’s been a lot of defense on a supremely vague agreement that the president himself described thusly.  

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: It’s a very strong deal. Nobody knows what it is, but it’s very strong. And most people seem to be very happy.  

 

Alex Wagner: Okay. Here’s J.D. on CNN with Jake Tapper this week, explaining how and why the Iran deal is a positive.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: If you think of the last 47 years of American relations with Iran, we have never had this level of direct or indirect coordination, we’ve never had the level of communication between the highest levels of their society and the highest level of our political leadership. So something has fundamentally transformed. Can I say with 100% certainty that they’re going to meet every obligation of this bargain? No, of course not.  

 

Alex Wagner: No, of course not. To some degree, defending a page and a half memorandum that may, in the end, put $300 billion in Iran’s pocket, give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz, and possibly allow Iran to charge fees on every ship that crosses the waterway, for what? It’s not clear? To be fair, selling that is an uphill climb for just about anybody. But it is a particularly steep challenge for J.D. Vance, who has a remarkable track record of screwing up. Almost everything. Remember Hungary?  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Viktor Orbán has been the single most profound leader in Europe on the question of energy security and independence. I’ve seen a guy who has ferociously advocated for the interests of Hungary. I’m here to help him in this campaign cycle.  

 

Alex Wagner: That’s the Vice President endorsing Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at a campaign event back in April. One week later, Orbán was voted out in a landslide. Then there’s J.D.’s relationship with the Catholic Church. Remember that Pope Francis died just hours after meeting the Vice-President last year, and the Vice-President followed that up by insulting the deceased pope in his new book. Meanwhile, Vance is in a very public feud with the current living head of the church, Pope Leo. Who Vance consented to in truly remarkable fashion this April.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s almost as if J.D. Vance has no aptitude for this sort of thing. As if his profound lack of humility and shocking lack of charm and non-existent sense of humor aren’t serving him well. If you need more examples of that, here he is at the Munich Security Conference in February of 2025, making what I guess is supposed to be a joke. Spoiler, nobody laughed.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Thank you, Mr. President, very much for your leadership, but also for the kind words about me personally. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but then after the President said that I was so smart and that I didn’t want to repeat our congresswoman who froze for 20 seconds over in Munich, now I’m tempted, sir, just to freeze for 20 seconds and just stare at the cameras. And maybe they’ll say nice things about me like they do about Congresswoman Cortez.  

 

Alex Wagner: On matters both big and small, Vice President J.D. Vance has proven to be profoundly out of touch. And maybe all of this would be funny if he weren’t, you know, the vice president of the United States with ambitions to be the actual president come 2028. And while J.D. Vance has said a lot of very questionable things in front of cameras and at podiums and in his book, it may be what Vance is doing off camera that is the most damaging. J.D. Vance is not only a bad messenger, he is a bad actor. And the way he’s wielding the power of the federal government isn’t painfully awkward. It’s just painful. [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, the other war that J.D. Vance has been fighting, the war on blue states. Under the guise of fighting fraud, what exactly has the vice president been up to? Well, if Stephen Miller is a fan of it, then you know it can’t be anything good.  

 

[clip of Stephen Miller]: Because of the Vice President’s leadership, you are seeing the most muscular, robust, aggressive, dedicated, determined, and speedy effort to shut down criminal fraud that has not only ever occurred in the history of this country, but in any developed nation.  

 

Alex Wagner: We are going to get into the Vice President’s public messaging on what may be the dumbest war in American history, as well as his less public actions in the Trump administration’s battle against blue state America, with Majority Report host Sam Seder. But first, what happens when the Vice-President and his second-generation DOGE dogs set their sights on your home turf? J.D. Vance has been helming the administration’s anti-fraud task force. Which has conveniently found lots of alleged fraud in lots of conveniently blue states. But according to new reporting this week, it may really just be sweeping up legitimate businesses with the goal of scoring political points. I’m talking to California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, about what he thinks of the vice president’s fraud crackdown, the administration’s very specific interests in California and its leaders, and what this all means for 2028. Here’s our conversation. Mr. Attorney General. Where do we even begin? So there’s a lot of interest this week in the vice president who’s out there selling both a book and an apparent deal to end the Iran war, but less discussed is what he is doing on a very real level to blue states in this country. There was a piece in the Washington Post that actually caught our eye, which is where I want to begin. Reporting that the vice president’s fraud task force, which is something he I think is shepherding through with Mehmet Oz, Dr. Oz. The fraud taskforce has started targeting legitimate businesses in your state. And they focus on a particular business in Los Angeles that’s accredited and has zero complaints. It’s a hospice. And the Fraud Task Force effectively sort of shuts down this business. Can you talk to me a little bit about what is happening in California and what you’ve seen unfolding as the vice president focuses on fraud in your state?  

 

Rob Bonta: Well, what’s happening in California and what should be happening is appropriate, precise, committed, comprehensive, thorough enforcement of the law and rooting out of fraud. And that’s what my team does. We’ve done it for years. We’ve done it for decades. We have some of the top outcomes when it comes to indictments and convictions and recoveries we’re top ten across the country. It’s hard work, it’s detailed work. You have to be precise, you have to honor due process, you have target the fraud specifically and not sweep in businesses that are acting appropriately and lawfully. And when you’re focused on the work, you’re… Your head is down, your sleeves are rolled up, that’s what it should look like. Now, here’s what shouldn’t happen. And this is exactly what the vice president and his fraud unit and Dr. Oz are doing, which is they’re politicizing fraud. They’re using it as a cudgel, as a weapon to attack their enemies. They’re going after blue states in a completely inappropriate partisan way to suggest. Or even explicitly state that the states, the state leaders, the governors, the elected officials are in on the fraud or part of the fraud, and it’s completely outrageous. And they are late to the party. They’re welcome to the part to enforce fraud if they’re gonna do it right, but not if they are gonna politicize it like they are. So we’re interested in tackling fraud here in California. They’re interested and politicizing fraud. And so what they’re doing is they’re sort of flipping the script. They’re saying you are guilty until you prove you’re innocent, completely inappropriate. And they’re saying, let’s throw the baby out with the bathwater. And they are catching in the crossfire and making collateral damage good faith, law-abiding businesses that are providing a critical service. Let’s talk about what hospice is. It’s end-of-life care that’s dignified and gives dignity in the last years of life for someone to have independence and be at home and be surrounded by loved ones. And they’re stopping those legal. Non-fraudulent businesses from practicing and providing care in their unquenchable thirst to own the Dems and get the libs, and it’s completely inappropriate.  

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, to be clear, your office has been, in fact, focused on fighting fraud and specifically in the hospice industry. But I mean you know, you started this conversation by giving a sense that it takes a long time to actually find the businesses that are truly committing fraud and that if there have been any gains made in fighting fraud, it’s the result of some real longstanding efforts to do so. But it sounds like the vice president is sort of sweeping in. And A, trying to take credit for the fraud investigations that predate even this second Trump administration, but also getting so aggressive as to vacuum up businesses that are operating legitimately. Can you give me a sense of the number of businesses that appear to be legitimate that have been swept up in all of this?  

 

Rob Bonta: It’s hard to tell, but what we’re hearing from businesses and what you see in the important investigative journalism is that some of these businesses, it’s tens, it’s hundreds potentially, they’re reaching out to CMS to say, turn our funding back on, we’re legitimate, we’re not the bad guys, we are providing care and they’re getting told to pound sand or they’re not getting a response, it is too slow. Some of them have to, as the article said for us, they have to shut their doors. When they’re providing appropriate care, lawful care, non-fraudulent care. And so, one is too many. You should not be turning off the funding for legitimate businesses. That should be a no-brainer to be able to do that. And so we’ve been doing this important work. You have to do it right. We recently… And by the way, every state has what’s called an MFUCU, a Medicaid fraud control unit.  

 

Alex Wagner: Right.  

 

Rob Bonta: And ours is the division of Medicaid fraud and elder abuse, and ours is one of the highest performing in the entire nation. We deliver time and time again. Of course, they’re also, you know, as you say, taking credit for our work. They’re also suggesting, despite the facts, because they’re inconvenient for their political narrative that California is the bad guys, that elected officials are in on the fraud. And it’s just outrageous. We recently just did the biggest hospice fraud takedown in the history of California. My office did it, soup to nuts. We did the investigation, we did the arrests, we’re doing the prosecution. We have the whole case from beginning to end and it’s the biggest ever in the state of California, so their politicization of this space is very unfortunate and good care is getting stopped.  

 

Alex Wagner: Well, yeah, I mean, there’s the inherent cruelty of what they’re doing to California’s healthcare industry. We’re not talking about shoe repair shops that they’re accusing of fraud. We’re talking about hospice centers, which as you point out are end-of-life care. And you look at that in combination with the, what is it, $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding that they froze for California. There’s one part of it that’s obvious partisan targeting, but then there’s this inherent cruelty. When you’re talking about the health and welfare of innocent citizens who are just caught in this crossfire. What do you hear from the businesses? Are they freaking out? Are people freaking? This just seems like this nebulous threat that could come down and have profound consequences on the people that seek services, but also these businesses that are trying to do, some of these are smaller hospices that don’t have the same access to lawyers, as big hospice, these are just independent operators who in some cases are doing the right thing and trying to provide empathy in a really critical time.  

 

Rob Bonta: I agree. Yeah, some of them are small. They provide hands on care, you know, person to person, you know, I’ll say love and compassion, sympathy, care at the end of life, try to make it as painless as possible. And that’s a beautiful and important thing to provide. And they are they are the victims and they shouldn’t be. And it’s because of the hard charging, clumsy, overly aggressive approach fueled by politicization of the Trump administration And look, fraud is. It exists. And whenever there is large amounts of money flowing as it flows in Medicaid and in Medicare, there will be bad actors who try to get access to ill-gotten gains and profit from it. They are the perpetrators. The states and the public taxpayers are the victims. And we need to protect ourselves from the perpetrator. The bad guys are the criminals who are trying to take the money, not the government that’s providing the support and the infrastructure definitely not. The good actors who are providing the care. And so they have, instead of focusing on the perpetrators, they’re getting the good guys, the care providers that are providing end of life care for those who need it. And so… You know. How you, we do need to protect and harden our systems from the ability to be defrauded. And so there’s a moratorium that we have in California for any new licenses on hospice fraud. We’ve so far removed licenses, de-license that the state of California has from 350 targeted hospice care providers that were not meeting the requirements and meeting the standards that was specific, that was individualized, that targeted in an appropriate way. And those are the right things to be doing. But this overly broad effort to just say, you’re all fraudulent and maybe we’ll listen to you if you want to come forward and suggest that you’re not this guilty until proven innocent approach is cruel and bad for healthcare and bad for human dignity.  

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah, that’s the essence of it, right? I think that shouldn’t be lost in all of this. This is really truly about human dignity and the cruelty inherent in stealing that dignity from people as they’re dying is beyond, I think, a partisan machination. Let me ask you, because first of all, you’re in this fight against the Trump administration and you’re in multiple fights, I should say, multiple lawsuits against this administration. You’re one of the leading sort of plaintiffs, if you will. Have you interfaced with the Vice President on this task force at all?  

 

Rob Bonta: I haven’t personally interfaced with him. We’ve watched their conduct and their actions, including Dr. Oz doing a drive-by in California for some direct-to-camera videos and trying to allege that California government and officials are in on the fraud and then leaving. We’re here before the drive by, after the drive by, during the drive, by doing real work, digging into the fraud, investigations, arrests, takedowns. Um, we, the, the vice president a couple of weeks ago did, um, have a convening invited, uh, state attorneys general. We understand that he invited for public and state attorneys general with quite a bit of notice, maybe a week or two weeks or even more. They invited, ah, democratic AGs with one business day before the meeting. Um, and we sent, um the head of our, um. Medicaid fraud control unit and, uh she was turned away. And it wasn’t allowed to participate in the meeting. So it was just gamesmanship. It was performative, it was theater. They didn’t really want a conversation. They didn’t really want engagement. They wanted to suggest that they invited us when it was really a hollow invitation. And then when we surprised them and accepted their invitation to engage, they turned our lead staff person away at the door. So that speaks volumes to us. That’s what engagement with them looks like. It’s all political, it’s all theater. They don’t want real good faith engagement.  

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, we talk about this talking about partisanship and political theater, the week that the governor of the state has announced that the feds, the Department of Justice, is looking into the actions of him and his wife. First of all, I mean you know that California is enemy number one on this administration’s list. What was your reaction to that announcement?  

 

Rob Bonta: Sadness, in part, that it’s gotten deteriorated to this level, but also, while shocking, not surprising, this is what this administration does. They’ve done it time and time again. They’ve turned the United States Department of Justice into a political weapon where they go after political enemies. They’re engaged instead of engaged in good faith, objective criminal prosecutions where you apply the law and apply the facts. They are involved in political persecutions of their enemies, whether it be New York Attorney General Tish James or James Comey. Now it’s Governor Newsom. It is only because they are his enemies that he has sicked the attack dog of the US DOJ on them when there is no evidence of any crime. He’s telling them to try to find crimes or manufacture crimes because they’re his political enemies. And that’s not how blind justice is supposed to work. You’re supposed to just follow the facts. In good faith, to where they lead, if there’s a violation of the criminal law, then you objectively ap˜ply the criminal out of those facts, but that’s not what he’s doing. And, you know, I was disheartened, but not surprised to see what he was doing to Governor Newsom and the first partner. And it was wrong with Tish James and Comey and others, it’s wrong with Governor Newsom, but it is who he is. He is corrupt, and he, the president, is corrupt and he is on a vengeance tour, going after his political enemies.  

 

Alex Wagner: Do you, I mean, you mentioned Tish James, New York AG, you have, I mean, the California Department of Justice has launched, I think, is it 68 lawsuits against the Trump administration? Is that right? Is that number the right one?  

 

Rob Bonta: 71 now sorry [laughter] it goes it goes up in real time. So 68 was it was absolutely accurate recently, but we— 

 

Alex Wagner: But it’s Wednesday. But it’s Wednesday. That was the numer on Monday. Do you worry that that makes you a target? 

 

Rob Bonta: I don’t worry, but it probably does make me a target. We have 71 lawsuits in almost 71 weeks, so it’s about once a week. Our position is if Trump violates the law and hurts our states, we’ll sue him. If he doesn’t violate the law, we won’t sue him, it’s pretty basic. We think it’s completely unremarkable to take the position, and not a lot to ask, that the President of the United States follow the law and comply with the Constitution, and if he doesn’ we’ll hold him accountable, hold his feet to the fire. So California was always a target from, you know, before Trump was elected to after he was elected and before he was inaugurated to after it was inaugated to today. He’s going to go after us, and he has. He has tried to take $200 billion from us. We’ve protected that money with our lawsuits. He tried to strip birthright citizenship and voting rights away from our He tried to unlawfully deploy the National Guard in our state, and we were able to push them out through our lawsuits. He imposed unlawful tariffs that raised the prices for Californians and Americans. We had those struck down as unlawfull. We defended our Prop 50 lawful, partisan redistricting clap back to Trump’s efforts to create five new seats in Texas. We defended that at the U.S. Supreme Court. So we are not just suing, we’re winning. And we’re wining regularly, 80% of the time. And If that makes me a target, so be it. But the people of my state deserve an AG who’s fighting for them, who is holding this unlawful president who is so blatantly and brazenly, consistently and frequently unlawfully accountable. And we will continue. We got a full tank of gas and a ton of energy and we’re gonna keep doing it.  

 

Alex Wagner: I feel like you should really just say your electric battery is charged since you’re in California, tank of gas, come on now. 

 

Rob Bonta: Oh yeah, it’s at 100%, my electric battery.  

 

Alex Wagner: You just had a primary this month. It takes a long time to count ballots in the state of California. We do not have to litigate that here, but Republicans have taken advantage of that window to claim fraud, Spencer Pratt, Donald Trump, others in the administration. You kind of could have seen this one coming a mile away because the Republican candidate in the days after went from being a viable runner up to not being in the general in November and that has raised Republican hackles and what do they do when they’re upset about the outcome of an election? Often they cry election fraud. Um, how are you guys given the realities of like the way elections work in California and the inevitability of these. Cries of fraud. How are you preparing for November? And I would say 2028.  

 

Rob Bonta: Yeah, you know, first I’ll say counting ballots is not fraud. We do have a desire for immediate gratification. And I think everybody wants full, comprehensive, accurate, reliable voting information and election results as soon as possible. But it’s important to do it right. And we have vote by mail ballots that come in late that are eligible to be counted. We have provisional ballots that need to be authenticated. We need to authenticate signatures and make sure that they match. So this is all important work. We have 58 registrars of voters throughout the state of California. We’re the largest state in the nation with 40 million people, nearly 40 million. So we’re counting ballots. And just because it takes some time doesn’t mean it’s fraud. Just because you don’t get the outcome you want doesn’t means it’s a fraud. LA is a deep blue city in a deep, blue state. There was never… A possibility that Spencer Pratt was going to make the top two. It’s completely unremarkable that he hasn’t. It’s exactly what you’d expect. The same is true of Trump losing three times, getting thrashed three times in the presidential election in California. Steve Hilton, the Republican nominee, will get thrashed by the Democratic nominee Xavier Becerra. And we are a deep blue state. We reject this MAGA approach and Trumpism. So not a surprise there, but they’re crying foul, saying that they’re cheated. They have this red mirage. They think they’re always on the. On the precipice of turning deep blue California red and love them for their optimism and hope, but it’s just not based in reality. We are very worried about interference from the Trump administration. I have said time and time again that if Trump wants free and fair elections that are reliable and accurate, the best thing he can do is nothing. Do not interfere, do not create harm. Do not do what you did in Fulton County when you seized ballots. Do not engage in these unlawful executive orders that seek to add new proof of citizenship requirements or don’t count certain vote by mail ballots or try to create a citizenship list so that you can filter out certain ballots from the mail based on a list that the president has. Don’t. Deploy the military or the Marines or ICE at or near polling stations. That’s against federal law. We think he might do all those things.  

 

Alex Wagner: Wow.  

 

Rob Bonta: And so we’ve been tabletopping and engaged in exercises, what our responses are, how we go to court, how we get immediate court orders to disperse military from polling stations, to make sure that ballots are preserved and not taken away from the registrar or voters and not seized and tampered with. So we have to be prepared. We owe our people readiness, preparedness. This is more and more the most. The biggest issue that my constituents raise with me in my office, concern about the elections being free of interference from Donald Trump.  

 

Alex Wagner: Wow. Well, here’s where we’re at. I got to say though your track record to give people confidence 80% success rate Californians must be tired of all that winning. [laughter]  

 

Rob Bonta: All this winning. It’s exhausting.  

 

Alex Wagner: Exactly. You can reclaim that along with the term a witch hunt. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, it’s really great to have you on Runaway Country. Thanks for joining me and giving us a shot of hope as far as the road ahead. Great to have you. 

 

Rob Bonta: My great pleasure. Thanks for having me, Alex.  

 

Alex Wagner: After the break, we will put all of this into context with Majority Report host Sam Seder.  

 

[AD BREAK] 

 

Alex Wagner: Sam Seder, what a pleasure it is to have you on Runaway Country in your very professional looking environs. Thank you for joining me to talk about our psychotic vice president.  

 

Sam Seder: No, it’s my pleasure. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.  

 

Alex Wagner: So it’s Vance week, which much like infrastructure week hasn’t been that my whole opinion hasn’t been that successful. I’ll get your opinion. He is out on— 

 

Sam Seder: But it did happen, which is different from infrastructure.  

 

Alex Wagner: That is actually true. Although wasn’t infrastructure week, much like time is a dimension, infrastructure week was a dimension where it’s constantly happening.  

 

Sam Seder: Yes, exactly.  

 

Alex Wagner: The Biden years. Okay, so my question to you is this, he’s out on spinning the deal, the vice president is spinning the president’s deal, which of course no one has seen, the page and a half memorandum of understanding, and is on the airwaves talking about why nobody has seen the deal. This is the Vice President of the United States of America on CBS Mornings, responding to Norah O’Donnell, asking why the text of this deal has not been made public yet.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Yeah, so there are some frankly diplomatic protocols that I don’t fully understand. The Qataris and the Pakistanis who have been helpful in mediating this agreement with the Iranians. They’ve asked us not to release the full text for a little while.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s the reason, Sam, that nobody’s seen this MOU is because of the Pakistanis and the Qataris. That’s why. Because you know how deferential this administration is to what the Gulf States wants.  

 

Sam Seder: There, it’s it’s diplomatic things amongst very exotic countries that he can’t possibly decipher. Who knows what these, you know, the Pakistan, like, look at the way that [both speaking] I mean, the irony is, I think as he was saying this, the MOU was being leaked. At that moment. And, you know, its interesting. They are at once terrified of, the bottom line is the war is lost. We lost the war on their terms, on people who wanted to wage this war, we lost it. And there is a sort of a dual set of conflicting terrors I think that the administration has. One is they can’t get stuck in this. And I think like the timing of this with the Fed meeting, It’s a signal to war saying you don’t have to signal that we’ve got to raise rates because we’re going to bring inflation down because energy costs are going to come down. And I think the other sort of terror they have is that people are going to realize they lost the war. And that these terms, I mean, frankly, from my perspective, these are type of terms that we should have accepted 20 some odd years ago when the Iranians essentially went through the Swiss. And said to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/ 11, we’ll help you, we’ll you find Bin Laden, we’ll do all of these things, provide a sanction relief and we will enter the world community and the Bush administration full of neocons and desperate to hold on to their axis of evil ended up sanctioning the Swiss for bringing them that deal. So from my perspective, like this is actually, I think not a bad deal from the perspective of people who don’t want to be continually waging war against Iran in some fashion or another. But from the prospective of all the people who wanted to go to war, it is a nightmare.  

 

Alex Wagner: Well, in the perspective of the 152 children who were killed and the 7,000 civilians who’ve been killed and the people all over Asia who’ve not been able to go to work five days a week because there’s not enough energy. I mean, the chaos that this president unthinkingly spun the globe into for results that could have been had decades ago is just but to the J.D. Vance of it all. The other part of this, in addition to just like throwing, I don’t know. The Pakistanis who’ve been negotiating all of this with the administration, because they haven’t been talking to Mojtaba Khamenei, for sure. He says, the reason you’re seeing gas prices go down is because the strait’s opening back up. And it’s like, hey, no, you’re saying the markets respond and the companies respond, but be aware, dude, that the strait isn’t gonna be operating at full capacity for months. That to me, I guess does the, this is, I think I know how you’re gonna answer this, but. The the ability to just manipulate the truth and to just be so— 

 

Sam Seder: Liar, it’s just a liar.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s unbelievable. He really he’s quite talented at it because it hit he has a kind of I doesn’t have a kind of populist bent. I mean, it still comes across as quite slick. But he clearly has no compunction about lying through his teeth to the American public.  

 

Sam Seder: No, there is absolutely that’s funny that you say that because when I was thinking about coming on talking about like his capacity to lie without any sort of like hesitation or I mean he doesn’t get he doesn’t get thrown off by tough questions. He because he has the capacity, he is so shameless. He will lie right through it. It is fascinating. I mean, A, we were told the Strait of Hormuz was already open two weeks ago. [laughter] Right. B, we are also told that they were only like a week away from developing a nuclear weapon. Now both those things are not true. There’s a new narrative for all of this. The world has already, at least, at a minimum, a billion point five less barrels of oil. That have been circulated in the world. Now, I just read an interesting piece suggesting that China more or less saved the world economy by both manipulating their need for oil and releasing some of their stockpiles, which I think sounds right to me. But this whole thing has been a complete, Just… Waste of resources of like a moral abomination. You mentioned the killing of, well we’ve killed thousands of Iranian civilians. There are millions perhaps who are going to suffer from the vaporized oil essentially that spread through Tehran or in the air in Tehran in the early bombing campaigns. And so we’ll see. I mean, who knows if this is even going to end up happening on Friday.  

 

Alex Wagner: Well, that’s always we should timestamp this. We’re recording this on Wednesday afternoon. Anything’s possible. I mean, I think it’s highly possible that they never even come to an agreement on uranium enrichment, that this is just all of this is a bandaid to get the president to have gas below $4 a gallon, but definitely not.  

 

Sam Seder: Of a wound that he created. 

 

Alex Wagner: A gaping wound that remains bleeding. That’s such a gross, I’m sorry that I have to say that in the context of Trump. No concealer can cover this up, Sam.  

 

Sam Seder: No, exactly.  

 

Alex Wagner: Vance, so Vance you make such a great point, which is there are no tough questions for J.D. Vance when you will lie about anything and everything. And I think you saw that on display also this week when he’s answering broader questions about the Trump agenda and its concern about American financial pain. Here he is on The View talking about the president’s comments on inflation.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: And we’ve done some things and made some good progress on that point.  

 

[clip of Joy Behar]: He just said he loves the inflation.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: What he said, Anna, what he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That’s that’s what he said.  

 

[clip of Whoopi Goldberg]: That’s not, that’s not what he said— 

 

[clip of Joy Behar]: Are you his interpreter or are you his vice president? [laughter] 

 

Alex Wagner: It’s the laugh at the end for me.  

 

Sam Seder: Yeah, exactly.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s the laugh at the end, what did you make of that Sam?  

 

Sam Seder: Well, I mean. It’s on some video. We all saw Trump say, I love the inflation. Now, he’s—[laughter] 

 

Alex Wagner: But he hates the inflation, Sam.  

 

Sam Seder: But deep down, he hates it. But one, you could argue that just Trump is just not capable of articulating what he means at various times because he’s slowly sort of degrading his mental capacity is degrading. I actually think what that was, and he said the same thing, he said a similar thing about the midterms, like I don’t care about the Midterms. I think Trump was trying to signal to the Iranians I’m not fazed by this inflation at all. In fact, I love it. And the irony is, I don’t know if you saw the reporting by Jeremy Scahill at Drop Site, the Iranians were, had brought in like their top psychiatrists in the country to figure out how they should deal with Trump. And Trump’s out there literally functioning like, I have a 13 year old who is more sophisticated in their negotiations than Donald Trump is. Like the idea that the Iranians are like, oh, well, Trump said he loves inflation. So he must not be concerned about any of the stuff. I think that’s what happened. And I think Vance, he just knows like, look, I’m in front of a somewhat hostile audience. Nobody’s gonna check. These guys are not prepared to play the video of Trump. And so he just lies. He just, I mean, he lies over and over again and then just chuckles his, I think he does this really well and very often. I still think he’s incredibly unappealing person, but his capacity to lie is really, I think in many ways unmatched. He just does not get flustered when he has to just tell a very basic lie.  

 

[AD BREAK] 

 

Alex Wagner: What surprises me is like, okay, on some level, it’s like, you’re the vice president for an increasingly mentally unfit president, right? So you’re gonna have to do some obfuscation. You’re gonna to have to paper over some of this stuff in the broader, I’m giving him the longest runway possible here, right. You’re going to have make this okay in some ways, right, so lies are built into your posture as the vice-president of the United States in a moment like this, where the president is saying. Unfucking believably. I don’t care about Americans’ financial situations. I love the inflation. Which by the way, I’m convinced he genuinely thinks. He like actually, it wasn’t some war, maybe it was war gaming with the Iranians, but I do think the only thing he cares about is his reputation. Like he doesn’t particularly care about the pain of the American voter or the American citizen or American resident. He just wants to make sure it doesn’t redound to his disadvantage, setting that aside and setting aside the sort of excuse I will give. J.D. Vance for lying to the public. He will lie even on matters that are deeply ethical ones. And I think the best example of that is his relationship with the Catholic Church, where he is so diametrically the values of this administration, the values of J.D. Vantz are so clearly at odds with those of Pope Leo as head of the Catholic Church. And J.D. Vance, the reason he’s doing all this press, Sam, is because he has a book coming out. The sequel to Hillbilly Elegy, which is called Communion, Finding My Way Back to Faith, which was all about his… Path to Catholicism. Norah O’Donnell asked J.D. Vance about his relationship to the church, given the statements from the church and the statements from the vice president suggesting that the pope doesn’t know theology. This is what J.D. Vance had to say this morning.  

 

[clip of Norah O’Donnell ]: It has been a little bit more than a year since the election of Pope Leo, our first American pope. He’s been highly critical of your administration. What have you learned from Pope Leo?  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Well, I think that Pope Leo is trying to balance a lot of competing factors. And for example, you say he’s been critical of the administration and he has been. He’s also said, for example that a nation is allowed to have secure borders. He said that newcomers to a nation have a duty to integrate. He’s also encouraged the administration to treat migrants humanely, and I think that what Pope Leo is trying to do is encourage all of us, whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, to strike the right balance between law enforcement and being charitable to others. We’re trying to that in the Trump administration. Sometimes we’re not always going to agree with Pope Leo’s criticisms, but what I take from the Pope as a Christian and as a Catholic is he’s a very important moral voice. His goal fundamentally is to preach the gospel. And even if I don’t agree with him, I try to listen, I try understand, and I try learn something from it.  

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, I call bullshit. Let’s just say 50 people have died in detention since the Trump administration started their dragnets. We all know about the murders of Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good. There are thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of children whose families have been broken apart by these immigration dragnet. There are thousands of children in detention. There are parents whose children have been stolen from them. And there are people living in subhuman conditions in these detention centers. We interviewed the lawyer for one of them on Runaway Country a few weeks ago. And yet J.D. Vance is out there saying, even though he doesn’t always agree with the Pope, he listens to him, Sam.  

 

Sam Seder: Yeah, well, I mean, I think even frankly, my sense is based on what little I know about J.D. Vance’s Catholicism is that his brand of Catholicism does not comport with that of the popes. And despite the fact that he was a rather, you know, like a latecomer to Catholicism. And I don’t know for sure, but I have talked to some writers who suspect that he’s somewhere around like Opus Dei. And there’s a big, honestly, there’s the big Opus Dei contingency in this country.  

 

Alex Wagner: There is.  

 

Sam Seder: And they tend to be in positions of power. And there’re not many, we’re talking like literally a handful of thousands in the five figures Opus Dei in the country. But some of them end up being Supreme Court justices, some of end up be senators and economic advisors and whatnot. I just don’t think he has any type of actual genuine moral compass. And I think his brand of Catholicism is really sort of like intertwined with all of the Peter Thiel, not to get too in the weeds about this, but these are Straussians. These are people who believe that they are anti-democratic. Peter Thiel has been very explicit about this. That democracy is a problem. He had a problem with the women’s right to vote because he felt that it would lead to socialism. He said in the run-up to the 2024 election that we’re living in Weimar Germany and people are tired of democracy. I mean, he is going around the country right now on a Antichrist tour. I mean this stuff all sounds nuts, and it is, but, and Peter Thiel is relevant to J.D. Vance insofar as that he has essentially created J.D. Vance in a test tube. Provided him his first work out of law school. He provided him tens of millions of dollars to run as a Senator in Ohio, and then ended up delivering tens of millions of more to the Trump campaign when he picked J.D. Vance. And so this guy’s worldview is, I think is very it’s influenced by a lot of very, very strange people. And so, but yes, it’s impossible to reconcile. We now, a new report came out today, 780,000 children kicked off of food assistance. There’s no, I’m sorry, you know, to maintain some semblance of a religious piety and be part of an administration that is doing this simply for tax cuts for millionaires, I mean, it’s just I don’t buy it.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s antithetical to the message of Christ, I’ll say that much.  

 

Sam Seder: It seems like I don’t know that much about the message of Christ.  

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, I’m a Catholic— 

 

Sam Seder: From what I’ve heard, it is—  

 

Alex Wagner: It is. I feel confident in saying that. You brought up the Thiel connection and it’s interesting because Vance is trying to sort of craft himself or cast himself as a populist. He’s been in his book, he rails against conservative donors. He is kind of, you know, trying to get the backdraft of the Hillbilly Elegy story. But really, he was created in a lab by Peter Thiel. He was the first tech venture capitalist to be in the White House. Do you think, I mean, how much do you think that’s the stench of Silicon Valley follows him as he moves forward with greater ambitions to be president? Because I think we don’t talk about it, I think, enough. [both speaking] We talk much more about Trump’s association. I mean it’s obviously public because he takes them on field trips to China and is constantly seen with his tech courtiers at his knee. But Vance truly is the original bro-ligarch. If, you know, if he didn’t make that much money, he’s in that bro sphere in a much more authentic way than Trump is.  

 

Sam Seder: Oh, totally. In fact, I’m convinced, if you go back and look at the timing of when Elon Musk endorsed Trump, ostensibly it was because of Butler, but it really was, I think, centered around when the reports came out that he was gonna pick J.D. Vance. I mean, I that was a big project for all the tech people, the Sachs, David Sachs and the crypto people. And no, I don’t think that stench actually sticks on him nearly enough. And I think part of it frankly, was just like the way the media responded to Hillbilly Elegy, there is a just a deep, deep. Um, defensiveness, I think in a lot of the media that because a lot of them are situated on the coast, that we don’t really know what’s going on in the Midwest and in the flyover countries. And if we have someone who can translate for us, somebody who both went to Yale and then, but also ostensibly is from, uh, you know, the, the Appalachian, uh stock, uh then we’re going to uh, promote this guy and have really uncritically. And, um, and I think that whole idea, the, the, that, you know, the Hillbilly, uh, Elegy where it, it didn’t, you, you somehow his VC, um, um days did not follow him into office in any way. Um, and I, I think part of that was also like, the Democratic Party, over the course of the past 15, 20 years, well really, maybe 40 years, has been so tied in, in many respects, to that money that it’s harder to campaign against it.  

 

Alex Wagner: It’s harder to police the bad behavior when you’re part of the same circles.  

 

Sam Seder: I think the problems that Vance are gonna have are more the stench from the Trump administration. When I talk about 2020, because that’s what this week is. The past couple of weeks have been his sort of pre-launch. He’s gonna start to really run after the midterms. But this is a way to set the table. And what I find really fascinating about this is that he is being given the credit and the critique for this Iran deal. Like Trump today, Wednesday said, well, if it works out well, I’ll take the credit. If it’s a bust, I give it to J.D. 

 

[clip of Donald Trump]: This way, if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D. You better be careful, J.D. he’s going to turn his plane around and get the hell out of here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think it’s a good idea.  

 

Sam Seder: But, I mean, I track a lot of this conservative media, Ben Shapiro, Kilmeade on Fox and Friends. They were all saying this is J.D. Vance. And I suspect there’s, you know, that concept of the humblebrag. I think J.D.Vance is out there. This is his way of appealing to the anti-war, to the extent that there is a war [both speaking] American firsters and really in many respects the sort of the anti-Israel elements of his base. And so he’s going to try and get credit for this if it actually happens. And I find that it’s interesting. He’s decided what lane he’s gonna run in. And you know ostensibly probably against Marco Rubio. Who has been completely sidelined from this entire—  

 

Alex Wagner: The Secretary of State.  

 

Sam Seder: Yes.  

 

Alex Wagner: The Secretary of state. I don’t know. Little Marco may be onto something. The New York Post is calling this deal a love bomb. You know, J.D. Vance clearly thinks he has room ground to make up with America Firsters. He was on Megyn Kelly’s podcast trying to sort of align himself with her and Tucker’s brand of isolationism. He’s trying to woo them. But at the end of the day, I don t know. I think a lot of people are going to be skeptical of this deal once the details are finally released insofar as there are details. I’m not convinced it’s a W. And if you’re Marco Rubio, maybe it’s good thing to be the viceroy of Greenland in the end, as opposed to the architect of this surrender to Iran.  

 

Sam Seder: He wants to be the prefect of Cuba.  

 

Alex Wagner: Well, that’s probably what he will end up being at some point.  

 

Sam Seder: Here’s the other thing, I don’t think there is a constituency, an anti-war constituency. I don’t think he’s going to get rewarded even if he is considered responsible for ending the Iran war, which I imagine he’s setting himself up for the option to herald that six, eight months or in the campaign. I’m the one who actually ended the Iran war. And he’s setting the predicate. He’s basically like, you know, tilling the ground right now. And I think he’ll decide six to eight months from now, do I wanna take credit for that? And so he set himself up in that way, I think in a fairly good way. And the same thing with the Epstein files. That was a big piece in the New York Times this week, which was an excerpt from a book from Haberman and Swan, I guess it was.  

 

Alex Wagner: Regime change.  

 

Sam Seder: And reportedly, they also have audio. And this is from the most secure location, theoretically.  

 

Alex Wagner: The sit room. Which should really reassure all of us who are concerned about our national security apparatus.  

 

Sam Seder: And you read that piece and it’s quite clear that Vance or Vance-ites are the ones who are leaking a lot of that material. And he wants to be seen as the guy who also was like, I want to get the Epstein files out. He’s very much aligned with Tucker Carlson, I think in terms of politics. And it’s unclear to me. How much of a constituency Tucker Carlson has when it comes to voters. I mean, it might be good if you wanna launch a podcast to be able to, I mean honestly, like, you know, there’s a difference between a popular podcaster on the right and how many people you’re actually speaking to in the context of the voters, but maybe from a primary perspective. You know, aligning with Tucker Carlson could be fairly powerful. But it’s quite clear, like he is setting up the his post Trump narrative. This is not a situation where like, he’s going to be saying there’s no daylight between me and Donald Trump. And also, I got to think like, there is a decent percentage that J.D. Vance may very well be the incumbent in 2028.  

 

Alex Wagner: Oh my god. 

 

Sam Seder: Or that in the context of, you know, running for that primary, Trump just won’t be in a position to refute the claims that J.D. Vance makes, like, I was the voice for peace in the administration. I was The Epstein Whisperer, and you know I did my best, but I was a vice president.  

 

Alex Wagner: You’re totally, I completely agree with you that we’ve seen two kind of seminal pieces from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. One is the TikTok on how the US was led to war. And that features J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio prominently as the voices of reason in the sit room. You can only assume that’s leaks coming from J.D. Vance’s camp to preemptively rebut ideas that he betrayed his ethics of not wanting America to be involved in military adventurism. And then the other one is the background on the Epstein files and how the White House scrambled to contain the fallout. Again, with some choice sort of words of wisdom from J.D. Vance. Again a strategy to distance the vice president from the worst actions of the president while also not publicly having to do so, but laying the foundations for his inevitable, you know, space creation when he runs for president in 2028. I mean, we have talked. At length on here about his shamelessness, his opportunism, his, I would say cowardice and being unable to stand up on any kind of principle. And yet, Sam, I feel like on some issues relating to nationalism and specifically white Christian nationalism, J.D. Vance, like if he has convictions on that stuff, I think they might run deeper than Trump’s. Like I think he is a true believer, ironically, having an Indian wife and multiracial children. But I think he is a true believer in this, in that sort of most toxic forms of blood and soil nationalism. And I think you have to look no further than his speech he gave at the Claremont Institute last summer, last July. And if you haven’t listened to it, you should, because I think it’s the closest we get to the real inner workings of J.D. Vance and which direction his moral compass points in. Here’s a clip.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence, that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong. Because America is not just an idea where a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.  

 

Alex Wagner: I mean, I watch that. I mean it’s very hard for me. Like I’m the child of an immigrant. My mother is Buddhist. My dad was Catholic. I went to Orthodox Jewish nursery school. Like I am like the upside down of that vision that J.D. Vance is proposing. But I mean so is his own family. Like where does the Hindu religion fit into the particular set of beliefs? Where do Indian ethnic traditions fit into a particular way of life? Like, I know your people are from Kentucky but what about the other half of your family? What did you think about that? And do you think, I mean, I guess, am I overstating it when I say, I think Vance’s core convictions about white nationalism and the supremacy of white Christianity in American life, those convictions run deeper than maybe even Donald Trump’s.  

 

Sam Seder: Oh, I think without a doubt, and I remember that era where he went to the Claremont Institute. I mean, he was doing that speech, a variant of that speech for a while at that time. And I think that was like, I think this is a really good indication of who J.D. Vance would be if he sees daylight. Like if he, like, you know, like I think at that they thought they were ascendant. That there was going to be no slowing this roll of ICE. And Stephen Miller was, you know, feeling his full bravado, and Elon Musk is still in the fold, or at least explicitly. And I think the, I mean, he’s getting into real fascistic territory. And I, I think. They got a little cut off at the pass, and you see a much more reasonable, at least attempting, sounding like when he was on the view.  

 

Alex Wagner: Sanitized.  

 

Sam Seder: Yeah, sanitized. And having to lie, because the facts are the facts, 75% of the people that ICE has rolled up have no criminal records. And if they were going after the worst of the worst, you would imagine we would have heard about one shootout.  

 

Alex Wagner: Totally. [laughs] 

 

Sam Seder: Like honestly, like they travel with like three different cameramen at any given time. If there was any sort of like dangerous situation for ICE, we would be fed that 24/7. And yet we don’t see that. So, I think that was a moment where a lot of like… That Peter Thiel stuff, which I do believe he genuinely believes. They were feeling like this is an opportunity for us. I mean, you know, this is a guy who has also praised Curtis Yarvin, who was a Mencius Monk, Monk Bagger, I can’t remember his, his— 

 

Alex Wagner: Handle?  

 

Sam Seder: His blogger handle. But this is a guy who, aside from, you know, constantly taking acid and, I don’t know, reading J. R. R. Tolkien Books, has this vision of, and this same, and this is where Thiel reportedly got some of his ideas, too, that democracy is over, we need to have a king of sorts. And the whole idea is that there are people who are the elite will decide for rest of us. And having a nation that is homogenous is, is there a strength and is the project. I mean, and so, and I think at that time he was really happy to get out in front there. And I think now he probably feels like my peeps know where I stand.  

 

Alex Wagner: Yeah.  

 

Sam Seder: And now I’ve got to start to sort of like— 

 

Alex Wagner: Stand back and stand by.  

 

[AD BREAK] 

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, if there is one thing, when I look at that speech, I really do get shivers. It makes me very worried. But then I remember what it’s like to actually see J.D. Vance on the campaign trail. And I wanna close out this part of our conversation.  

 

Sam Seder: I know what it is— 

 

Alex Wagner: You know what it is right?  

 

Sam Seder: Is it the diner, the donut shop?  

 

Alex Wagner: The donut shop. Let’s just play, I mean, it’s for one more time for old time’s sake, just a reminder of Mr. Populist, J.D. Vance, when he comes into contact with an actual person or people, how cringe that situation is. A reminder, a throwback to the campaign in 2024 when J.D. Vance as a candidate goes to what is called an OTR, it is an impromptu stop that is planned in advance by the campaign. Where it is to showcase the candidate skills as a normal average guy in the world. This is what happened with J.D. Vance when he tried to order some donuts.  

 

[clip of donut shop employee]: I would get a couple dozen, sir.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: A couple dozen? Okay, yeah. She doesn’t want to be on film, guys, so just cut her out of anything. Appreciate that, man. I’m J.D. Vance, American Vice President, good to see you.  

 

[clip of donut shop employee]: Okay.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Um, how long are you working?  

 

[clip of donut shop employee]: I’ve been here since the beginning of July. 

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Okay. Just everything, yeah, it’ll be a lot of glazed here, some sprinkle stuff, some of these cinnamon rolls.  

 

Alex Wagner: Okay. I mean, the best is like, I’m J.D. Vance. I’m running for vice president. Okay.  

 

Sam Seder: Okay.  

 

Alex Wagner: And then, and then, then he can’t even get the donut order. Sam.  

 

Sam Seder: And then at one point he asked like.  

 

Alex Wagner: How long this place been around? 

 

Sam Seder: Yeah, how long this and and has no follow up to it. The answer could have been 15 minutes.  

 

Alex Wagner: 2 years, one hundred years? 

 

Sam Seder: We just opened up 15 minutes or we’ve been here for 50 years and he’s just like, okay.  

 

Alex Wagner: Okay.  

 

[clip of JD Vance]: Anyways, Uhhh… Just so uncomfortable. 

 

Alex Wagner: This is what we, but in your darkest moments, when you worry about this individual, maybe taking the reins of our democracy, you just play that clip. It’s a reminder that he has no aptitude for politics. He really just doesn’t.  

 

Sam Seder: I absolutely agree, I don’t worry about him as a candidate unless he ascends to the presidency before the 2028 election. I mean you know. If I was an actuarial, I could tell you exactly what the chances of that are, but I think it’s greater than zero.  

 

Alex Wagner: Okay, well, we’re going to focus on the donut shop, Sam. I’m going to hold out. I’m gonna pin my hopes to a glazed donut or whatever.  

 

Sam Seder: The sprinkles, sprinkles.  

 

Alex Wagner: Sprinkles, glaze, whatever. And I want to close out by asking you about people who do have aptitude for this, namely you. You have aptitudes for political conversation and shall I say debate for people who have missed the Jubilee video you did in March of 2025. Yeah, baby. It went. Mega viral. I think how many is it? 7.5 million views on my last count. It’s called one progressive versus 20 Trump supporters. These things are like, give me agita. Like I get like acid reflex watching them, but yours is very good. Let’s just play a super cut of you doing yeoman’s work in in this forum.  

 

[clip of progressive]: In Trump’s cabinet, there are people of color that Democrats pretend don’t exist, like J.D. Vance’s wife, and there’s the— 

 

Sam Seder: J.D. Vance’s wife is not in the cabinet.  

 

[clip of progressive]: Raising the temperatures by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius in the next 150 years isn’t necessarily a detriment to society— 

 

Sam Seder: You don’t think so?  

 

[clip of progressive]: No, human beings are very good at innovation and we can build sea walls and we can create carbon technology— 

 

Sam Seder: What kind of seawall are you gonna build for Miami? Are you allowed to fire them if you find out they’re trans?  

 

[clip of progressive]: If you need to, if you need too, then you should. If you need to, then you should.  

 

Sam Seder: Okay so we have a disagreement. I don’t believe people should be discriminated against.  

 

[clip of progressive]: Like what’s the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don’t you think that’s better for Americans in general?  

 

Sam Seder: To be xenophobic, nationalism is better? 

 

[clip of progressive]: We should have a coherent culture. Everyone should be a part of the same culture. We should have assimilation.  

 

Sam Seder: Which, do you get to choose what the culture is?  

 

[clip of progressive]: We already have a dominant culture, based on European and Christian values and identity.  

 

Alex Wagner: I think you’re making my argument for me.  

 

Alex Wagner: I think she’s making J.D. Vance’s argument for him.  

 

Sam Seder: Side note, she became a sort of right wing talker for a while and then had to drop out of politics when it came out that she had an affair. She was a trad wife, but slightly different tradition, I think. [laughter] 

 

Alex Wagner: Maybe untrad wife, you’re not allowed to do that in the trad wife world. Do you feel like you, well, first of all, how did that feel? It’s my nightmare. [laughter] And do you feel, I am constantly asked, what do we do about the divide that exists? How do you bridge it? How do we get at the things that separate us? And I wonder what those forms make you feel about the sort of reckoning between our two.  

 

Sam Seder: I mean, I think there’s like 35% of the country. There is no bridge to them. I just, I don’t think there is a bridge. I think You can, if you reach the five or 10% who don’t pay attention really to politics that much, I think it comes down to getting those people on board. And then I think there has to be a follow up with actually like real material. I wouldn’t say radical, but maybe in the context of the way that things have worked, radical change in terms of legislation and the structure of our society. And then I think the worst tendencies of people are not expressed by sort of like that margin between 55 and 35, if their material lives are easier. And so, you know, I mean, I think ultimately that’s what it comes down to. I mean like this country was in many respects built on racism and has never really gotten past the specter of racism. I mean now we’re back to, you know, like where we were arguably 60 years ago when when it comes to voting. 

 

Alex Wagner: I was going to say post-reconstruction era.  

 

Sam Seder: Yes, very much. I mean, people, you know, Jim Crow and really, the, the you know 19 teens in 20 when like, you the KKK was at 6% of the country were card carrying members of the KKK. They were going to, you they were involved in the 150th celebration of the country’s birthday. I mean, this was and so I think there’s a certain percentage of people you just will not reach. And it’s not just about race, but that’s a big, big part of it. And so I don’t worry about bridging the divide. I think as a political matter, it is reaching people who are really not that engaged and then providing enough material benefits when you’re in power. I’ve been doing really two things. One is consolidate power. And when it comes to Democrats, it’s really ends up being sort of democratized things. Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, voting rights.  

 

Alex Wagner: Abolish the filibuster.  

 

Sam Seder: Abolish the filabuster. Any way you can democratize things, you do so. And Supreme Court reform for that matter. And then, allowing that structure that you have worked on to facilitate providing real material benefits for people and durable ones. Because when people’s lives materially improve, when they’re not feeling worried about whether their kids are gonna have healthcare or food for that matter, or whether they’re gonna have a decent retirement, it the racial prejudices and religious prejudices and just the need to otherize diminishes. It’s not gonna diminish. There’s always gonna be, I think like a portion of our society where that’s not going to make a difference. I mean, you know, you have some very wealthy people who went to crash the, you now, Congress. On January 6th. You’re not going to reach everybody, but I think you can reach a solid majority of people with that material benefit. And as a political matter, I think that’s what we need to do as just simply a moral injustice matter too. But I think that’s the way. I don’t, you know, bridging the divide. I think if people are materially well off. There’ll be more politeness, but I think there’ll be a certain portion of people who will still harbor a parochialism and a resentment that we’re not going to get past.  

 

Alex Wagner: TLDR, give people healthcare, raise wages, and you won’t need as many Jubilee videos out there in the world.  

 

Sam Seder: Let’s hope.  

 

Alex Wagner: You did a great job, Sam.  

 

Sam Seder: Thank you. 

 

Alex Wagner: On that and on this. Thank you for joining Runaway Country. It is a real treat to have you here. I hope you come back.  

 

Sam Seder: I’m happy to. Thank you, Alex. It was a lot of fun.  

 

Alex Wagner: Thanks, Sam. That is our show for this week. Please don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. And if you’re not sick of me yet, take a look at my Substack, How the Hell with Alex Wagner. Last but not least, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, send us an email or one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.