GLENNIS: 0:00

Vibes Only is back, and we have primary results to talk about. This week, we'll get into El-Sayed's win in Michigan and how creators helped make that happen.

BRIAN: 0:09

We're also gonna introduce Oath's Anti-Dirtbag Slate, your chance to donate to some races where we are unseating the worst of the worst Republicans.

GLENNIS: 0:17

For Clickbait or Double-click… Gen Z can't afford a date, but can Brian? Billionaire tax and the reflecting pool saga.

BRIAN: 0:25

Plus, the S&P 500 is way up because companies are robbing us blind, and they're using Trump's tariffs as a way to do it. We're gonna talk about that and Todd Blanche folding like an umbrella on the January 6th fund Glennis, I hope you brought some coffee.

GLENNIS: 0:48

Got it right here, Brian.

BRIAN: 0:49

Hot coffee?

GLENNIS: 0:50

There's no good soundbite with hot coffee. It's just like glurp, glurp. As you know, I'm on the road. I'm in Texas, and I thought I could handle the heat. No, I cannot. Texas in August- No … is a different type of- beast. And the restaurant isn't open yet, so the only thing that I had available to myself was hot, hot, hot coffee. So do I have my coffee? Yes. Is it hot? Yes. Am I in Texas? Yes. But we have a lot to talk about.

BRIAN: 1:16

Yeah. Let's get into it right away. We got election results to break down for y'all.

GLENNIS: 1:20

Okay, Brian, you're the guy for this. But my too long, didn't read as after skimming the news this morning is everyone kind of got what they wanted.

BRIAN: 1:28

Or did no one get what they wanted?

GLENNIS: 1:30

Mm. Okay, let's talk about it.

BRIAN: 1:31

All right. So the banner headline race last night, of course, is the Michigan Senate primary for Democrats. This is Haley Stevens versus Abdul El-Sayed. We've talked about it on the podcast before. The most high profile progressive versus center battle of the entire cycle. It ended up being super close. Yeah. If you looked at bad polling heading into the race, Abdul was up by like 10 to 13 points. Some decent polls, but a lot of bad polling. I gave a briefing in the two weeks before the election saying that he was two to three points up, was our average- Mm … of the really high quality polls, and so it was not super far off from that. Right now, I think the margin stands at like one to 1.5%.

GLENNIS: 2:21

Yeah.

BRIAN: 2:22

And he's been called the winner by NBC, but nobody else yet.

GLENNIS: 2:26

Hmm. Not Decision Desk?

BRIAN: 2:28

Decision Desk does NBC now, so-

GLENNIS: 2:30

Oh, I didn't know that… BRIAN: that's like one and the same. Wait- Yeah … maybe I did know that. Sorry, sorry. Okay. So, okay. So it's legit.

BRIAN: 2:37

What does it mean?

GLENNIS: 2:38

It means that we have a really tough general in November. He's up against Mike Rogers. Michigan, to me, doesn't scream super, super blue. So I guess now we have a real, as Democratic Party with Abdul El-Sayed as the candidate, a real messaging and narrative opportunity to land his policies to the Michigan population at large. The more liberal progressive wing of the party is thrilled.

BRIAN: 3:02

Yeah. So first of all, just according to the math, Michigan is a must win if Democrats want any shot at flipping the Senate. I think we have, as of, uh, right now, the best shot that we've had at flipping the Senate all cycle. That is still a lower probability than anyone would care to admit. That's why the House is so important. The stakes are very high. I don't wanna downplay the stakes, and you are correct. The available data tells us that El-Sayed is going to have a harder time winning the general election than Haley Stevens. In the environment that we're in, where Dems are up by anywhere from six to eight on a generic ballot, that might not matter all that much. He might win despite those challenges or that extra hurdle. But even if he does, it's by no means a guarantee that Dems are flipping the Senate. Let's talk about more election results, and then we'll bring it back to, like, higher level progressive versus moderate stuff. Does that work?

GLENNIS: 3:58

Yeah. Cori Bush defeated again. I was looking at the money on this one, Brian. It was $8.4 million spent on this race, 7.2 of it was spent for Wesley Bell. That's an uphill battle, truly. So that means, you know, Cori had such a small amount of money versus her opponent, but this was the opposite result in terms of what the progressive wing of the party was looking for in Missouri.

BRIAN: 4:20

Yeah. Outside of the Michigan Senate primary, progressives had really mixed results. They won in Michigan's Seventh Congressional District, where there were two moderates and one progressive running. Will Lawrence, one of the co-founders of Sunrise Movement, emerged victorious even though the moderates combined had a larger percent of the vote. They also seem poised to win in Donovan McKinney's race. I think that's Michigan 13, which is a bluer district, but was someone who campaigned really heavily with El-Sayed. So overall, solid night, but not overwhelming, I think, for progressives in Michigan. Outside of that, more mixed results. In Virginia, moderates swept all of the relatively competitive House primaries there. As you noted, in Missouri, Wesley Bell beat Cori Bush. There was more of a mixed result overall. I think that what this does is it sets up the experiment that we've sort of all been looking for. Progressives are feeling a lot of energy and momentum after both 2025 Mamdani and 2026 primaries around the country, and this is time to put up or shut up. It is general election time. We still have a few primaries to go, Wisconsin and Minnesota being probably the most important. Really when the rubber meets the road is the general election because winning primaries means little to nothing if you cannot win generals. So to your point, what we know so far says that Abdul El-Sayed's gonna have a potentially challenging general election But that's what people thought about Mamdani as well, and they were wrong. I was wrong. Like, that was, like, one of my big misses, right? He immediately- Yeah … consolidated support and cleared the general. So that's a big test. But if you are on the left or identify as further to the left, you should be booking a fricking plane ticket right now to go knock doors for Will Lawrence. Will Lawrence, Randy Villegas in California, Matt Dunlap in Maine. These are going to be the test as to whether people believe that progressives have a path in 2028, whether we're talking about the presidential or congressional races. There actually haven't been any districts flipped from red to blue by a left-wing populist candidate since 2016, whereas there have been dozens flipped and re-flipped and flipped again by moderate candidates. That- that's just what the historical trend is. If progressives want the control over the party that they're aiming for, then they have to prove that they can win purple places. And so this is the ultimate test, and there will be no excuses, or they spent this money, or they rigged this. Like, there's none of that. It's literally just win and prove it or lose and shut up.

GLENNIS: 7:15

Yeah. Lose and go away. I have some questions for you about Trump because it looks like his endorsements across the board, they won. What does that mean? I'm just looking at these results here. John James, Ty Masterson, Rick Bratton, Amanda McKinney, John Braun. There were really no Trump losers last night. So this is hard for me to reconcile with because you see what's happening on Capitol Hill, which we should talk about also, you know, with Todd Blanche, and now it appears that he will in fact get confirmed. Is the Republican Party simply just Donald Trump saying, "This is who I appoint as the candidate"?

BRIAN: 7:49

Yes. I mean, the Republicans have lost any sense of identity. They're this weird mashup of MAGA and conservative warmongering and billionaire economic policy. So when you don't have any guiding philosophy, then what else can you do other than just look to what Donald Trump says? The sort of cult of personality that he's developed means that he dictates when it comes to Republican-on-Republican crime, like who the good guys and bad guys are.

GLENNIS: 8:29

Yeah. As you look towards the general, right, there's so much of the populace saying, "I, I don't wanna hear that you're just anti-MAGA. Like, what are you for? What are you for?" And I think this is part of the reason why the lane has really opened up for these more progressive candidates, 'cause not only are they anti-MAGA, they're anti-establishment, and they are speaking about what they are for and how they are going to help the American people and advocate for their best interests over MAGA and corporate interests. So I'm getting more and more ready for the general, Brian. I know I said that I was not as tapped in as I was before, but as I've mentioned on the pod many a times, I am kind of a workhorse when it comes to who's the candidate? What do I need to do? So now that more and more candidates are getting locked in post-primary, the narrative and messaging begins, and the door-knocking, to your point. And if you can't afford a plane ticket, the power of your digital media is real. Do relational organizing. Text your friends and family that live in these key states, and get to organizing for these candidates.

BRIAN: 9:27

Well, let's talk about who can afford a plane ticket because I think that's the unspoken part of the progressive surge that's going on in Democratic primaries. Whether we're talking about Mamdani or Kiros or Lander or Abdul El-Sayed-

GLENNIS: 9:45

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: they're doing really well Like, that is who the base for these candidates is. And although the politics themselves are much more about, like, a working class- Mm-hmm … empowering labor mentality, the places that these campaigns are excelling are wealthy, are, like, doing much better than the average American right now. And so that is a bit of a problem or paradox, at least, for some of these candidates because they have to figure out how to do well with working class, particularly- Yeah … Black voters in the Democratic Party in order to have a winning coalition in November. That's kind of where I'm like, well, a lot of the Abdul El-Sayed people can afford a plane ticket- Yeah actually to fly to Michigan or go campaign for Will Lawrence. A big portion of that coalition actually isn't necessarily directly impacted by the types of economic policies that they're building campaigns around. And that doesn't mean that they're wrong, right? It doesn't mean that the values aren't real or anything like that. But it is a electoral reality of the returns that we're seeing. If you go look at heavily Black or heavily lower income voting precincts in Michigan, you will see that Haley Stevens did better. I wanna talk about this at a later date, but I'm just like, I don't know if you saw the creator house that Abdul El-Sayed had, uh, the day before the election where he spent about three hours with a bunch of primarily out-of-state creators promoting his campaign dot, dot, dot.

BRIAN: 11:23

That I actually didn't have as much of a problem with as you might expect, given what I just said, because what Abdul understands is winning campaigns is about controlling attention. He gave this incredible interview. I hope that we can find a clip and add it in here.

ED O'KEEFE: 11:43

You know there's one other guy that you've campaigned with who's Raised eyebrows, uh, Hasan Piker

ABDUL EL-SAYED: 11:49

His eyebrows went up. Did you guys- you guys see that?

ED O'KEEFE: 11:51

Was campaigning with him a good idea?

ABDUL EL-SAYED: 11:53

He has a three-million-person platform, and there are things that Hasan and I disagree with, and there are things that he and I agree with. On the question of whether or not we should be guaranteeing people healthcare or sending our money abroad to drop bombs on other people, we agree. I think we should be providing healthcare here.

BRIAN: 12:08

He gave this incredible interview about how the drama over Hasan Piker campaigning for him was so helpful to his campaign, that every major news outlet for days and days on end had his name in their mouth and had people saying, "Who is that? What is he about?" And all he was saying in response everywhere they looked, "I wanna get money out of politics, get money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for All."

GLENNIS: 12:34

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 12:34

Like, th- those are the only three things that he wanted to talk

about: 12:37

money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All.

GLENNIS: 12:40

Yeah. Message discipline.

BRIAN: 12:42

He gets that in order to be relevant in 2026, you need to be able to break through a scrolling environment, and he gets people to stop scrolling. Haley Stevens couldn't pay people to stop scrolling. I'm sorry. That's just, like, true. Whether you like her politics or not, the only time that she did have any kind of breakthrough moment, it was her being cringe enough that her haters made it viral.

GLENNIS: 13:12

Picked it up.

BRIAN: 13:13

Right?

GLENNIS: 13:13

Yeah, no.

BRIAN: 13:13

Like, it was-

GLENNIS: 13:14

For sure… BRIAN: it was an attempted attack and a little bit of stick it to 'em- Yeah… BRIAN: with a little bit of It wasn't good. I don't disagree

BRIAN: 13:24

that- No, but it worked for her. No, no. No, it worked for her, though. Like, that's what I'm saying. What people need to understand is that having people attack you is helpful in 2026. Abdul El-Sayed understood that and worked that to his advantage.

GLENNIS: 13:37

Yes. In the attention economy, 100%, I think the criticism of the Creator House a day before the election was where are the more state-based creators, the state-based digital profiles that would be amplifying his campaign? This is my whole job is getting national attention on campaigns and narratives and stories. I think he is excellent, excellent at that. There could be a horseshoe effect with some candidates of if you're putting too much energy into the national attention economy, at what point do you potentially ostracize online voters in your state or district? We're gonna see a lot of it, so we're only gonna learn more towards November.

BRIAN: 14:17

Yes, we are.

GLENNIS: 14:18

Brian, I wanna pivot, and I don't wanna ask you for the Oath Candidate of the Week. You have a new slate that I think is very smart and effective. Not even issues-based, it's character-based. It's called your Defeat the Dirtbag slate. Because of the year 2026 and are elected, there's a lot of them that we need to defeat. One of them defeated himself, Chuck Edwards, North Carolina 11.

He, at 3: 14:44

32 this morning, I don't know what he was doing at 3:30 in the morning, but he said, "I'm out." For those who don't know, Chuck Edwards was being censured by the House for inappropriate advances towards young female staffers. Did you read any of this that was in the report?

BRIAN: 15:04

Yeah. Yeah.

GLENNIS: 15:05

It's crazy. It's outrageous. It's outrageous, like the- That was crazy … the pints of ice cream, the fact that he went on a trip to Las Vegas with one of his staffers when the government was shut down and people were losing access to their SNAP benefits, the text messages, the letters, the crying when one female staffer was leaving the office He's not well

BRIAN: 15:26

No, he's such a creep. He's such a creep, and he's one of many, right? That's sort of the point of the slate is to really point out there's all this news coverage day in and day out, week after week over DSA candidates. This person posted this on Twitter in 2020. This person said this thing to their friend when they were in college, or wrote this op-ed. Meanwhile, the media is virtually ignoring, up until the last, like, 10 days, the crop of candidates and electeds that Republicans are, are working with who abuse their wives and children, who are accused of criminal activity like fraud and sexual assault. Yeah. Like- Yeah … there are all kinds of, what we would say, dirtbags. There are all kinds of dirtbags running as Republicans this cycle, and we just wanted to call that out and highlight the really awesome Democratic candidates running against them. By now people have- Yeah … definitely heard more about Max Miller. We talked about it. It is exploding. It's a huge thing, and we have, we have a great candidate running against-

GLENNIS: 16:29

So wasn't he supposed to resign by now? Like-

BRIAN: 16:31

Here's the thing. We're political animals up in here. We don't want him to resign. I don't want him to resign. I want him to run.

GLENNIS: 16:37

Mm. Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 16:37

And I wanna beat his ass with Brian Poindexter-

GLENNIS: 16:39

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: in Ohio. And- Mm-hmm… BRIAN: Chuck Edwards, like, I'm now gonna be less competitive. That's rough in that general. Jamie Ager running in NC 11 against Chuck Edwards had an amazing shot at flipping that deep re- that's a red-ass- Mm-hmm… BRIAN: district, y'all. That is a Trump district, and we were about to flip it, and now, mm,

BRIAN: 17:02

Republicans are gonna pick somebody else to do it. It's unclear who they pick, so we'll see, but probably somebody better, more electable.

GLENNIS: 17:09

Yeah. Yeah.

BRIAN: 17:11

Than the guy handing out pink guns.

GLENNIS: 17:13

Right, the personalized guns to his staffers. Insanity. Insanity. Yeah, and the Max Miller of it all-

BRIAN: 17:21

Such a creep… GLENNIS: I hear you. It's just scary to think that people like that are, one, fathers and husbands, but also getting paid with our taxpayer dollars to abuse their family. And- I mean, we knew. Look at Epstein, right? Like, we knew that these, these people are in places of power. These people think that they're untouchable, and it gets worse. As of recording, he refuses to step down or drop his re-election bid, so I hope that he stays, and I hope that he gets fricking whooped at the ballot box.

GLENNIS: 17:58

Yeah, and there's plenty to work with. He keeps going-- Like, his video direct to camera explaining why it wasn't abuse was absolutely horrendous and abhorrent.

BRIAN: 18:07

It was crazy.

GLENNIS: 18:08

It was crazy. He said, "Why would she cook me dinner six days later?" Because she was scared for her life and the life of her children because you're- a predator and a violent man. I wanna stay on the predatory track, but this is economically predatory. You brought up to me the S&P earnings were quite good. When you lift the hood on why they're quite good, Brian, do you know why? Is because these huge companies are getting their tariff refund, and the majority of them are pocketing it. The tariffs that you, the American people, paid when you ordered some china from Germany off of Etsy, and you got hit with a tariff bill, and you paid it. Trump said-

BRIAN: 18:54

Wait, did you say ordered china from Germany? Is that what you just said?

GLENNIS: 18:56

Like china, like, like you can get like fine china, like Etsy. A lot of my friends who got hit-

BRIAN: 19:00

But why are you ordering china from Germany?

GLENNIS: 19:02

Because maybe it's a piece of china, like a limited edition that was only manufactured in Europe. You're just clearly not on the-

BRIAN: 19:10

Wait… GLENNIS: the fine china game. Okay? When you're ordering china from Germany, I love that sentence. Okay.

GLENNIS: 19:17

But no, but like, you know what I mean? And last name? Like, like fine china. Like-

BRIAN: 19:21

I know. I get it… GLENNIS: you know, fine china. Okay. I got it.

GLENNIS: 19:23

Yeah. Okay. Teacup. Anyway, this, I think, should chap everyone's ass. People are struggling to get by, and as you have said, and the hill that we are dying on, Trump is making your life more expensive, less safe. This is an example of just how rigged everything is. Chief Justice John Roberts is the one who wrote the decision that this was illegal. These are illegal tariffs. It's just crazy. It really just is crazy.

BRIAN: 19:56

Yeah. I have to keep my tinfoil hat on at all times with this administration because they've proven that there is a conspiracy. There is a conspiracy-

GLENNIS: 20:05

Yeah

BRIAN: 20:05

to rig the economy for billionaires and Donald Trump personally. Like that is- And corporations … a real thing. We see it in-

GLENNIS: 20:12

Yeah… BRIAN: in real time. We see people coming and kissing Trump's feet and handing him gifts and writing him checks and buying his crypto. And then we see American policy change to give them special chips, change to exempt them from tariffs, change to give them faster access to, to information. It's so transparent that I feel like a nutcase. I feel like a- Uh-huh

… BRIAN: 20:36

a conspiracy theorist. And so I'm standing at my whiteboard with the red string pointing-

GLENNIS: 20:42

Yeah

… BRIAN: 20:42

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, look at the real estate deals, look at the map, look at the policies. What is essentially happening is Trump passed tariffs that gave the green light for companies to raise prices on all of us, on everything.

GLENNIS: 20:56

Yeah.

BRIAN: 20:56

They claimed that they were doing it to cover their own costs. And now the government, with our tax money, is refunding them for-

GLENNIS: 21:05

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: the alleged costs that while Americans don't get a dime. And while- A dime … S&P 500 companies report a 50% increase in profit year over year. It is absurd. It's the biggest financial crime that's happened in generations. Like, this is like Enron, but every single company. It's insane. Yeah. The average American household will have to have paid $900 to $1,200 on tariffs, money that you're not gonna get back. Okay, I'm just looking at some of these numbers. Nike, their entire quarter was saved because they got a $986 million tariff refund, okay?

BRIAN: 21:50

That's crazy.

GLENNIS: 21:50

Ford got a $1.3 billion tariff refund. Americans, we paid $166 billion in tariffs. Where's, where's our refund?

BRIAN: 22:07

Where is our refund? I want a check. I want my refund check in January 2029.

GLENNIS: 22:14

I do wanna shout out FedEx. They're returning $800 million to shippers. BJ's did cut grocery prices when they got $20 million back. They said, "Okay, we're gonna reduce grocery prices." And apparently, Walmart and Costco are saying they're gonna do some rollbacks, but let's see.

BRIAN: 22:30

But the tariffs went away. Those tariffs, right? There are, like, different tariffs now. But there's more, yeah. Those tariffs went away forever ago. That's like old news.

GLENNIS: 22:39

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 22:39

And so I'm, I'm kinda like, all right, we can debate the refunds for the price hikes that you did last year, but where are the price drops because you're no longer facing the tariff? Like, you're not, you're not paying the tariffs that you were paying last year at this time. So why is everything still the same price as it was? Everything's more expensive than it was last year. Inflation is still up at, like, three and a half percent-

GLENNIS: 23:04

Yeah

… BRIAN: 23:04

four-something percent. Where does the price drop? I don't want, like, a one-time check. I want to be able to afford beef. Like, hello?

GLENNIS: 23:14

Period. The Trump administration, and Trump has been since day one of him even, like, thinking about being a politician, is so efficient at flooding the zone. At first, it was just with headlines and soundbites and, and these crazy things he was saying, and now it's just with, like, actual trauma to United States people, whether it be a war, an unconstitutional war, or unconstitutional tariffs, or the fact that we still don't have common sense gun laws, or, like, the fact that these dirtbags are being protected by Donald Trump administration and will only be further protected when Todd Blanche gets confirmed, which is now going to happen. We've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Todd Blanche, the Epstein class protector in chief, Donald Trump's personal lawyer. There were two Republicans who were saying, "You know, the J6 fund was not cool. I think we're not gonna back this guy." This weekend, I get a news alert… their spine was removed from their body, and now… Did you see the headline on, like, one of those, like, faith calls, what he said he's gonna do? His goal is to make abortion illegal in every state in the United States of America

BRIAN: 24:26

I did see that. I did see that. It's not a surprise. It sounds like Susan Collins is voting no, Mitch McConnell's voting I'm dead, and every other Republican's probably voting yes, which is enough to get him through, which should happen within a day or two. It's not shocking because once you've voted for Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, like-

GLENNIS: 24:46

Right

… BRIAN: 24:46

what bar is there anymore, right? We, like, we have a-

GLENNIS: 24:49

Mm-hmm

… BRIAN: 24:49

drunk news anchor running our military. Like, what's-

GLENNIS: 24:54

Yeah

… BRIAN: 24:55

what's a personal attorney for AG? Like, uh, he's, he has-

GLENNIS: 24:59

I know… BRIAN: he's passed the bar. You know what I mean? Todd Blanche… I don't- it's just, like, add it to the list and I wanna create, like, a, a cheat sheet for every American to show you how much Donald Trump has personally cost you based on where you live, and how all of these Epstein class protectors are wild, wild hypocrites and bad people that do not represent you or the American people or American values.

BRIAN: 25:27

You could literally vibe code that in half a day, I promise.

GLENNIS: 25:30

I j-

BRIAN: 25:30

That is so doable

… GLENNIS: 25:31

I just learned what vibe coding means. I, I thought it just meant, like…

BRIAN: 25:36

It's coding, but with natural language. You literally just say, "Build me a landing page that has an image of Donald Trump on a toilet on the left side, and a list of everything he did to cost average Americans money on the right side," and it would just do it immediately, and it would just create a new website. It's crazy. I do it all the time. I've vibe coded many things. I have a dashboard that I use that allows me to filter any race in the country, federal or state, by margin, uh, of the race in 2024, 2022, by how much money the candidate has, the Democrat, the Republican, by our rating of the race, somebody else's rating of the race, just anything, and I can drill down. It has a map. It's super interactive. I'll send you it.

GLENNIS: 26:23

I feel like you've just created a monster. I didn't realize that's what vibe coding was. I thought you actually had to know how to code a little bit.

BRIAN: 26:31

No.

GLENNIS: 26:31

Brian and I, this was, we were early AI adopters in that we were taught how to use it.

BRIAN: 26:38

We went to that thing. Is that what you're talking about? That's-

GLENNIS: 26:41

That was like before anyone was-… BRIAN: are you talking about Yeah. That's before anyone used any AI, and we kind of got a behind the curtain-

BRIAN: 26:48

That's true

… GLENNIS: 26:49

peek of, like, how to use it. And I found it-

BRIAN: 26:52

I forgot about that,

GLENNIS: 26:53

to be honest … the person who organized that, I still tell them to this day, I think that was one of the more transformative, like, weekends in how I work because I learned so much. And I think it was, like-

BRIAN: 27:03

So true

… GLENNIS: 27:03

a, an ex- exceptional use of that organization's time, energy, and resources. But-

BRIAN: 27:10

This is such a sketchy conversation. Okay. Clickbait or Double-click?

GLENNIS: 27:14

Oh yeah, let's do that.

BRIAN: 27:15

All right, Glennis, with as many headlines as we have to parse through every day, we gotta help people out with some Clickbait or Double-click.

First headline, New York Times: 27:25

Gen Z can't afford a first date. Rising costs are officially impeding dating because of the financial strain where over half of unmarried adults report that a lack of money is their biggest barrier to dating.

GLENNIS: 27:40

I could go both ways, because one, you can do the whole framing of Republicans, you know, put families first and, and have people procreate and, you know, have these lives together or to be married or whatever, and the economic reality of being a young American is stopping people from doing that, whether it be buying a house, thinking about retirement, all of these things. And then part of me is like, it's clickbait. You can go to Central Park, you can go for a walk, you can get a coffee, you can brew the coffee at home and go for a walk.

BRIAN: 28:12

That is some married lady bullshit. That is some married- For- … lady privilege talking right now, and I'm-

GLENNIS: 28:19

Don't-

… BRIAN: 28:20

calling bullshit.

GLENNIS: 28:22

Don't even… I was dying on the hill of the singles tax for many, many, many, many years. I could talk about the singles tax ad nauseam, okay?

BRIAN: 28:30

Well, well, well, Glennis gets married and doesn't give a shit about the rest of us anymore. Got it. I see how it is. I see how it is. Okay.

GLENNIS: 28:39

Okay, so you think it's too expensive?

BRIAN: 28:40

Meanwhile, out here shelling out $300 a dinner. It's ridiculous.

GLENNIS: 28:46

It is expensive.

BRIAN: 28:47

It's so… Dating is so expensive. I'm a- I'm all about this. I'm, I haven't read-

GLENNIS: 28:53

Okay

… BRIAN: 28:54

the whole thing yet, but, like, this is a double-click for me, or it's clickbait-

GLENNIS: 28:57

Mm-hmm

… BRIAN: 28:57

that's so effective that it's-

GLENNIS: 29:00

It's

… BRIAN: 29:00

literally targeting me, and it's working.

GLENNIS: 29:03

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 29:03

Let's say that at least.

GLENNIS: 29:04

Okay. But what did you just say? Is it because, like, a walking date? I mean, I, I, I never really liked walking dates, but is it because you wanna go do something nice and, like, make a kind of a ceremony of the date?

BRIAN: 29:16

No, that's, that's fine for a first date, and so I guess it's like bullshit on, on a first date, sure. You're gonna have a drink, and it's$22 for a cocktail, or you're gonna go on a walk, uh, in the park-

GLENNIS: 29:26

It's $30

BRIAN: 29:26

which is free, or what- whatever.

GLENNIS: 29:28

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 29:29

That's fine. For a second, third, fourth, fifth date, you're going to dinner-

GLENNIS: 29:33

Right

… BRIAN: 29:34

homie.

GLENNIS: 29:34

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 29:34

Like, you're going out. You're doing stuff. You're gonna go do activities. It's so expensive, especially when it doesn't go well.

GLENNIS: 29:44

Oh, that's the worst.

BRIAN: 29:44

That's when it feels very expensive. When it goes well-

GLENNIS: 29:46

That, that's a-

… BRIAN: 29:47

it doesn't feel expensive

… GLENNIS: 29:47

hole in your pocket. Yeah. Yeah. I do also think, obviously, like, New York is astronomical, like the prices in New York City specifically, but it's not just New York. Everything, everyone's life is expensive. If you're trying to order some china from Germany for your sweetheart, and it's costing you extra money 'cause of the tariffs

BRIAN: 30:08

I also just saw this whole man on the street thing, which obviously is empirical scientific data, uh, about how Gen Z is very anti-splitting the bill too. And maybe that's just like-

GLENNIS: 30:22

Hmm?

… BRIAN: 30:22

Where the culture is generally. I'm very anti-splitting the bill. I never wanna split a bill. That's, like, one of my hot takes. I'm like, "You're gonna get it or I'm gonna get it."

GLENNIS: 30:30

Right.

BRIAN: 30:30

But that also makes it way more expensive, obviously.

GLENNIS: 30:34

Yeah, 'cause you're paying for two, and what if someone's having, like, three glasses of wine and you're like, "Ugh."

BRIAN: 30:40

Yeah. Oh my God, did I tell you about that time that I went on a date and the guy had four glasses of wine while I had one drink, and then I paid?

GLENNIS: 30:46

Ooh.

BRIAN: 30:47

And it was horrible.

GLENNIS: 30:49

Ooh.

BRIAN: 30:49

It was a setup. I'll tell you about it another time. It was so awful.

GLENNIS: 30:52

Ugh. Let, just buy the bottle, dude. Just, like-

BRIAN: 30:54

But-

… GLENNIS: 30:55

be real. Buy the bottle.

BRIAN: 30:56

Oof. It was-

GLENNIS: 30:57

Say, "I'm gonna have a bottle"… BRIAN: outrageous. It was… Ugh.

BRIAN: 31:00

Uh, okay, you go.

GLENNIS: 31:01

Yeah, okay."California Democrats support billionaire tax. Infighting lingers." This is The New York Times again. So what do you think about that?

BRIAN: 31:12

Okay. Clickbait? No, it, ugh.

GLENNIS: 31:19

It's tough.

BRIAN: 31:20

I'm gonna say double-click. I'm gonna say double-click. I have said before that I think that it's a bad state-level policy, that this i- in general, I'm very pro state-level legislation, state-level regulation. We have to make progress where we can. For big wealth-based tax policy, I think that federal is the solution, and so I'm a little bit frustrated by that. But I've done polls on it on my Instagram and stuff. Democrats are broadly so on board with anything to try to make billionaires pay their fair share. So with that in mind, I would say double-click.

GLENNIS: 32:01

Yeah, I agree. We have to continuously call out billionaires and expose their tax profiles, and do the math for people to show how little they actually pay.

BRIAN: 32:12

Okay, last one."Prosecutor in DC, Pirro, moves-" Oops … "to dismiss reflecting pool cases after acknowledging in court that it was shoddy construction-

GLENNIS: 32:24

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: not vandalism, that die. I, I think the reflecting pool is emblematic of, like, everything r- that's wrong with the Trump administration. The fact that there was, like, only one bid on the job. Again, I'll reiterate, it is, like, the rule of the government, you have to get three bids on any project to get the fairest price for the American people who are paying for it. This is stupid. Trump is stupid. Trump's even now saying, like,"Uh, did he do the best job? No." But-

BRIAN: 32:58

This is Jeanine Pirro, that psycho Fox News lady. We definitely don't f*ck with her. I think the whole thing is clickbait. I don't really care about the reflecting pool. But at the end of the day, all the people should be talking about how expensive your grocery and gas bills are-

GLENNIS: 33:14

Yeah… BRIAN: and how much money Those are the only two things that anyone should ever talk about. So the reflecting pool- Yeah

… BRIAN: 33:21

same as the helipad, which, like, there's all these headlines this week about the helipad'cause Trump is just redoing it. He, he just had it done. He's redoing it 'cause he doesn't like it. It's all clickbait.

GLENNIS: 33:32

It's clickbait, but this is how Donald Trump is laundering money to his friends. So I think we have-

BRIAN: 33:37

For sure

… GLENNIS: 33:37

like, yeah.

BRIAN: 33:38

Let me do a Good Vibe Goodbye, and then we can leave.

GLENNIS: 33:40

Okay.

BRIAN: 33:41

Our good vibe for the week to send you guys off with, two really important wins last night where we defeated Republican amendments to state constitutions. In Missouri, they tried to make it way harder for citizens to initiate ballot measures, and in Kansas, they tried to basically overthrow the state Supreme Court by making the races partisan instead of the current structure of the Kansas Supreme Court, which has blocked their gerrymandering moves. So in both situations, it was Republicans trying to change the state constitutions to make gerrymandering in their state easier, and in both, the voting populace overwhelmingly said, "Get f*cked," and-

GLENNIS: 34:29

Yeah

… BRIAN: 34:29

we dominated in both of them with, like, 80% of the vote. It was amazing.

GLENNIS: 34:33

Okay. We love to see it.

BRIAN: 34:35

That's your good vibe for the week. People are still fired up. We have only 90 days to go until the election, and we're gonna be taking you guys through every step of the way. Please make sure to review wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back here same time, same place next week to talk about more elections.

GLENNIS: 34:58

See you then.