LIVE: MAGA CIVIL WAR ERUPTS: Vance Throws Trump UNDER THE BUS as GOP MELTDOWN Deepens

Welcome to Raing. Hey Jess, how are you?

Good. Where are you? Are you in Midtown?

And uh, you're uh, so I went to college with one of their heroes, Reggie Miller. And I didn't know you went to college with Reggie Miller. I did. He was the star of UCLA when I went to college. Um, or I was an athlete. Granted, I was on the rowing team, which wasn't the highest of high-profile sports, but...

Oh, no. I was easily... There's a guy named Dave Williams, and thank God for Dave because rowing is all about metrics. Your ergs, your running time, your lift, everything. They're very metric driven. And there were 32 men on the rowing team and I came in 31st every time. And thank God for Dave Williams because he always came in 32nd. And it's so much less psychologically damaging to come in second to last versus last every time. But no, I was not a star athlete. But where I was headed with this was the athletes used to do a lot of stuff together. And talk about a great era. Reggie Miller, I didn't get to know him well, but I, you know, I got to know him a little. I knew him. Troy Aman was there when I was there. Three Super Bowls. Uh, Steve Bono, who was backup to Troy Aman, who went on to be Pro Bowl. Anyways, it was a great, a great age for UCLA athletics. That is not why we are here. Before we get started, Jess will be live streaming. Notice how I turned this to me. Let's go back to you. Who are you speaking to or in front of? What are you speaking at?

Well, I don't know how you're going to fare on stage with Republicans who are hostile. You're not very good at that. You're not very well.

Um, so that's good. Now, back to you to the Midwest. There you go. So, before we get started, Jess will be live streaming with Aaron Parnes, our friend, tomorrow, 1 PM Eastern time, to break down this wild week and get his perspective. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. We'll also take your questions at the end of the show, so drop them in the chat as we go. Please, again, we'll be taking your questions, and we love them. All right, let's bust right into it. The GOP's blame game is underway as the party faces what could be an extinction-level political moment. I love that, extinction-level political moment. The Democratic gains are still coming in. Jess, Democrats flipped three more House seats, putting them on track to win at least 250 seats in Mississippi. Democrat Scott Column. Am I saying that right? Is it Column?

Okay, we're good.

As long as we're wrong together. Anyways, uh, Mr. Column is also leading Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by just over a thousand votes. I mean, could anything go more our way right now with thousands of ballots still outstanding? My understanding also is that the ballots, the provisional ballots or the absentee ballots, whatever they call it, tend to skew blue. So, it's looking pretty good. I think Kelsey had him at 93% at this point. After an election that was too big to rig, Republicans are being forced to reckon with just how badly things went wrong or just how wrong they went. 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 Kelsey 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.

George Washington would have lost and like maybe actually... Yeah, it's really one of the things I started thinking about today and I'm curious to get your thoughts is that, okay, so when you think about who is likely, I mean the Democratic bench is just so deep right now. You could go six or seven people deep on the bench and find the person who's eighth most likely to be the nominee on the Democratic side and you think, I think a lot of people think, well, that person's probably a viable candidate. On the Republican side, it's been Rubio, Vance, occasionally Vance, Rubio, and then the seven dwarves and like, okay, maybe Tucker Carlson or maybe, you know, yesterday, not only yesterday shuffles the deck for who is likely. 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 the election infrastructure. I do think you learn a lot. It's like 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 red down here. I did my part.' And he's got the infrastructure. He's from a big state. He's a young man. Um, you know, it doesn't index that high on the likability component, but I would argue he was, if there were Republicans that were winners yesterday, he was one of them. What are your thoughts? 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?

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 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 Kinsinger. Um, yeah, but I mean like not the one who also continued to serve and voted against him and would continue to do interviews and speak out against him. I think that there's the resist never-Trump generation and then there's something else going on now. People who continued to be in office and figured out a way to chart a path where they still cared about democracy and norms and the Constitution but weren't just on the interview circuit or working to win elections for Democrats because a lot of these folks are still Republicans, right, who like you said that we were leasing or renting votes for this election. We certainly don't own them. And you know, I 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. Um, 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.

I think Brian Kemp is certainly an interesting one. You know, like held to values but also a good Republican. I'm sure there are some folks who lost their elections this time that might be thinking about what the future holds. Maybe that's Greg Abbott, um, who would want to get back into politics after Gina and Yosa's upset win. Um, I don't know. It feels too early to have a comprehensive list of this because I feel like basically everybody is sitting there thinking now this is a wide open field at this point 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 it just, 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.'

No doubt. But my sense of parties is I see all these articles around GOP imploding. I get it there. I feel like there is no GOP. They're just MAGA. MAGA is imploding. But if you look at history, typically parties don't die. They just change landlords. There's a vacuum here and someone's going to fill it and reimagine, I think, the Republican Party or the GOP. And anyways, I think rumors of the death of the GOP, or I do think MAGA is probably at an extinction level of debt, but the rumors of the death of the GOP in my opinion have been greatly exaggerated. 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 advisers 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?

Um, yeah, it feels as if that at a minimum the market wants a blood offering and Trump needs to show that. Maybe it just strikes me. I mean, what's the over-under? Do you think Hegseth is still around in 90 days?

Yeah, I think he would enjoy that. That's some fun. That's his gold watch going away party. So last night we were in Minneapolis doing a live Pivot and our guest was Senator and Governor-elect Amy Klobuchar. By the way, I can't, I literally... every once in a while the moons line up in your life to be in Minneapolis last night, yesterday was just, I can't, I said this, I can't imagine, and a lot of it was just happenstance. I was trying to take a lot of pictures because I'm like, this is, it's one of those moments where you're like, there's no place I'd rather be in the world at this moment than here right now. 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 one and a half percent, the S&P up two and a half percent. And wow, uh, 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 braced for tougher AI regulation and a potential slowdown in data center expansion under Democratic control. There were something like 45 data center moratorium initiatives on the ballot to constrain data center growth and 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, okay, the compute, the people selling compute, Microsoft and Apple have had great days, but the people using compute have done okay with diversified businesses. The people selling compute seem to be getting whacked. The neocloud companies, Nvidia got whacked pretty hard. Uh, and if you tried to put an explanation on what happened yesterday versus today, it's that there's been a rotation out of the pure-play levered AI guys because a CoreWeave 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 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?

Well, if it happens, it means we have less capital formation, less economic growth, and less tax revenue to pay for food stamps. And I think this is a mistake that Democrats make over and over. And that is we would rather tickle the emotional sensors of upper-middle-class Democrats than actually focus on the hard decisions around economic growth that help pay for the social services that low-income households need. Nobody wants the factory, the chicken processing plant, or the nuclear power reactor near them. But thoughtful regulation around, all right, it's got to be closed-loop water, 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, maybe this is the wrong move, but our economy has become sort of a giant bet on AI. And one of the questions I asked soon-to-be Governor Klobuchar last night in Minnesota was, okay, 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 US over the last [decade] to warm, low-tax states. And Minnesota is 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 ton of land, and they have access to a lot of power. I'm like, 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 that has the most data centers, Virginia, and they love them and thoughtfully legislated, protected, responsible approval of data centers. They don't call the cops. They don't call the fire department. They pay property taxes. They don't create a lot of employment. But they do create employment. I interviewed the former deputy prime minister of Canada and I said, 'Where would you run data centers?' 'All along the border with the US, around the industrial manufacturing hubs in the Midwest, and the financial centers on the East Coast.' But something again I worry about with Democrats is that we need to be more than the party of indignance. We need to be a pro-growth party. Now, should there be, there's good legislation and moratoriums saying no NDAs, no under-the-table deals, you know, fine. And I think it's a real mistake for Democrats. I mean, for example, the states, there's four states that have almost half of all compute and they all went red last night. 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 this, 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, okay, 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 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 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 Souljah 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?

accomplished a ton in DC, and now coming back to Minnesota to be governor.

Look, the cynic in me is that she's coming back to be governor to run for president or hoping she gets drafted because an executive role makes it much easier to run for president. We've drafted many more presidential candidates from governorships than from the Senate, right? I think it's actually fairly unusual to elect a senator president, is my understanding.

Yeah. So I think it's a good platform for her. My guess is she's probably exhausted by the partisanship that she's had to endure and the lack of power. You know, she was one of the few people that really understood antitrust and she just ran up against a wall of PAC giving and big tech lobbyists. She got almost nothing done despite heroic efforts. She wrote a book on antitrust. I tried to read it. I got through two chapters, which was pretty impressive. It was like the Musk documentary. I'm super interested in it. I just can't go that long. But she was a really thoughtful, robust, respected senator 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, madame 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 she's a good politician.

I hadn't thought about that actually, like her trying again, because I just feel like especially looking at the midterm results that people are not going to be going backwards. You know, the midterms was a terrible result for Kamala Harris. Like the idea that we are going to revisit something, especially something that didn't end up winning, I think is now completely out the door. So I hadn't thought about Senator Klobuchar or Governor-elect Klobuchar going back there to then be able to mount her presidential campaign.

Let me edit that. I pause. Let me just edit that. I think she's positioning herself to be a top three candidate for VP.

Yeah, it strikes me. And she's still young enough that would be a path to presidency for her. I don't know. Or maybe she just wants to be home.