Dallas Bribers Club

**Jon Favreau** (0:20)
Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (0:23)
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

**Jon Favreau** (0:24)
On today's show, we recorded late, so we could bring you our analysis of every single minute of the unprecedented, first of its kind, world historic Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump bribed voters with $5,000 checks he can't deliver. JD Vance tried to both position himself as the heir to Trump's legacy, but also run away from it. Republicans marked the 25th anniversary of 9-11 by accusing Democrats of supporting terrorism, and even Jon Fetterman made a cameo.
Then, because this episode is dedicated to Republicans trying to sell themselves, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with the Republican candidate for governor of California, Steve Hilton.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (1:12)
That thing still happening?

**Jon Favreau** (1:13)
Not a joke.
Reached out, we said, sure, we'd love to chat. Javier Becerra, if you're out there, call us back maybe. We'd love to talk to you too, we've been trying. Okay, Dan, let's get right into it. On the off chance that you all weren't glued to the special two night run of Donnie Does Dallas, here's a tape of what you missed.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:41)
And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a caretaker. So God gave us Trump.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:50)
God bless the greatest president in the history of this nation, Donald J.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:57)
Trump.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:58)
I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and within in molecular detail.

**Donald Trump** (2:13)
Nobody knows that dumb has a B at the end of it. Most people think it's DUM, and that's fine.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:19)
Democrats, extreme candidates, won't rip that heart out of our chest.
They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American.

**Donald Trump** (2:29)
Please, if you don't mind, don't anybody go to the bathroom. The Democrat Party are advocates for evil.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:36)
I am not going to be in the same party with a son like him.

**Donald Trump** (2:38)
He ran a campaign to beat meat. He called it beat meat. I don't know what the hell he meant by that. Mohammed Al-Fayyad. It's never Mohammed Jones. I think we should call the Hormuz Strait, we should call it the Trump Strait. I should get something out of it. The Trump Strait. As you know, Lake Ontario, we're going to call that now Lake America. New Mexico, we think it should be called New America. Someday there'll be a time when I don't get back to the original subject, and then you can say he's had it.

**SPEAKER_6** (3:11)
These people are sick.

**Donald Trump** (3:12)
So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. Please pretend that I'm running, and get out and vote on November 3rd or sooner, because in actuality, I really am running.

**Jon Favreau** (3:27)
Now, I'm biased, but I think that was a fantastic representation of all the programming from both nights. That was mostly from the first night. If you're wondering what happened the second night, we watched. Same thing.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (3:42)
Yeah, same thing.

**Jon Favreau** (3:43)
Same messages, sometimes the same exact lines.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (3:46)
Sometimes the same people.

**Jon Favreau** (3:47)
You see that supercut, you watch that supercut, you got the gist of the two-day convention in Dallas.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (3:53)
We saved you about 18 hours of Fox News viewing.

**Jon Favreau** (3:58)
Yep. A lot of glazing of Donald Trump, a lot of scaring people about the terrorist, sympathizing commie, Democrats, and Hassan Piker. A lot of Hassan Piker.
That's about it. Dan, you were telling me earlier how much you loved those last couple rhetorical flourishes from Donald Trump in that supercut about how he is on the ballot, pretend he's on the ballot, I'm on the ballot, I'm actually running. He did it, he again, he repeated, there was a refrain tonight. He reprised that in his speech. We're recording this Thursday night because we hate ourselves.
But he repeated that tonight many times as well. So the message is clear. He wants everyone to pretend he's on the ballot.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (4:43)
I think it's important to set the stage here for how all of this happened, which is Trump gave a two-hour speech last night. Which wasn't even on the schedule to begin with.

**Jon Favreau** (4:49)
Just shy of two hours.

**Dan Pfeiffer** (4:51)
On Wednesday night, just shy of two hours.
Tonight, JD Vance speaks for a long time. We'll get into JD Vance's speech. And then Trump gets up there and says, I'm going to be brief. Tired of speaking? I have invited this opera singer to perform for you, and I'm going to stand here, and you're going to listen to his music. And then he gave, I think, about 30 minutes of the same speech from the night before.