Politics Politics Politics

Happy Thanksgiving!

For your travel Px3 is happy to present to you the only political conversation you will want to hear. Our old friends Tom LoBiano and Michael Cohen breaking down what we have learned in the weeks since the election.

BREAKING:

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his nomination for U.S. Attorney General, citing concerns that his confirmation process was becoming a distraction for the Trump-Vance transition team. Gaetz, a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, had faced intense scrutiny since his nomination due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

The allegations, which include claims that Gaetz paid women for sex and had inappropriate encounters with a minor, have been the subject of investigations by the Department of Justice and the House Ethics Committee. Reports suggest the House Ethics Committee may release a detailed report on these allegations, though its jurisdiction ended when Gaetz resigned from Congress shortly after his nomination.

Gaetz’s decision to step aside marks the end of a short-lived bid for the top legal post in the Trump administration. The move comes amid ongoing investigations and growing political pressure. It remains unclear what impact this development will have on Gaetz’s future in public life, as he continues to face scrutiny over the allegations.

The Trump-Vance team has yet to announce a replacement for the role.

We discuss this and other Florida political stories with Kimberly Leonard of Politico.

Your Guide to the Matt Gaetz Scandal

State of Play:

Ethics report is unreleased as of now, a hacker has apparently obtained parts of the Department of Justice investigation that did not end in prosecution of Gaetz

The iron law of political scandals, as written on the wall of a DC backroom (wash your hands after inspecting): if the public already knows about your dirty deeds and hasn’t totally written you off, keep chugging. But every new bit of information that comes out is an exponential risk.

The Gaetz story has been publicly aired for years. So it is really only a liability if new information comes to light.

So what is already known? That way we know if something new comes along.

Well, it comes down to two main questions.

* Are Sugar Babies w****s?

* Is it illegal to sleep with a minor who misrepresents their age? Can the sex be proven beyond a reasonable doubt?

Let’s start with question number one.

Are Sugar Babies w****s?

Which for the pure of heart will begin with a subquestion, what is a Sugar Baby?

A sugar baby is typically a younger individual who enters into a relationship with an older, affluent partner—known as a sugar daddy or sugar mommy—in exchange for financial support, gifts, or other benefits. These relationships are often characterized by mutual agreements where the sugar baby provides companionship, and in some cases, intimacy, while receiving monetary assistance, luxury items, or experiences in return.

These connections, like much of our modern world, is facilitated by the internet. For example…

Seeking.com is an online dating platform that connects successful and attractive individuals seeking mutually beneficial relationships.

And so it was on Seeking.com that Joel Greenberg, a then-friend of Gaetz who eventually pled guilty to sex trafficking and informed on the congressman, met women to form such relationships. Here is an ABC report of a back and forth between one of the women…

"I have a friend flying in and we are trying to make plans for tonight. What are your plans for later," Greenberg wrote to the woman, whose identity ABC News is withholding for privacy purposes. "And how much of an allowance will you be requiring :)" Greenberg added.

The woman responded by telling Greenberg she has "a friend who introduced me to the website that I could bring" and said she "usually" requires "$400 per meet."

Greenberg then sent the woman a photo of Gaetz taking a selfie with students at Pea Ridge Elementary from a 2017 visit, and wrote, "My friend," indicating that Gaetz would be the friend joining him.

"Oooh my friend thinks he's really cute!" the woman responded.

Greenberg then replied that Gaetz was "down here only for the day," adding "we work hard and play hard," before asking, "Have you ever tried molly," referring to the drug MDMA, or Ecstasy.

As Greenberg was discussing payment for the get-together, the woman asked if Gaetz used the same website Greenberg had used to meet her. Greenberg replied, in part, "He knows the deal :)," referring to the Florida congressman. The former tax collector then said he would book a "suite Downtown" for the gathering.

Sugar Baby websites are built on the idea that wealthy people connect with attractive people. The implication of money or expensive gifts being exchanged is inherent to the concept. But… are the women legally w****s? Specifically, women who are charging money for the act of sex?

This is a very important question. Flying a friend you eventually have sex with across state lines on your dime is a nice thing to do. Flying a w***e across state lines to pay for intercourse is sex trafficking.

We do not have an answer for this. Although Greenberg plead guilty to sex trafficking so he seemingly admitted it.

In general it is a moral and legal question that I am sure many rich men, including possibly some in congress, likely don’t want answered.

However, it gets even more serious when one of those women is 17 years old. Which leads us to our second question.

Is it illegal to sleep with a minor who misrepresents their age? Can the sex be proven beyond a reasonable doubt?

A lawyer for two women interviewed by the House Ethics Committee has said the following:

Leppard told POLITICO on Sunday that his clients had attended between five to 10 "sex parties" with the former Florida Representative between 2017 and 2018. Gaetz was already in Congress at the time.

Leppard also said one of his clients witnessed Gaetz having sex with another woman who was then 17 years old. They were at a house party in Florida.

"She testified [that] in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep. Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17," Leppard said.

A report from The Daily Beast identified two Venmo transactions Gaetz had in 2018 with Joe Greenberg, an accused sex trafficker, for a total of $900. Greenberg then sent the money to three teen girls in transactions labeled "tuition" and "school."

The woman, now in her 20s, reportedly confirmed this during interviews with the House Ethics committee.

In Florida, engaging in sexual activity with a minor is illegal, regardless of whether the minor misrepresents their age. The state enforces strict liability in such cases, meaning that a defendant's belief about the minor's age, even if based on the minor's false representation, is not a valid defense. Florida Statute 794.021 explicitly states that ignorance or a reasonable mistake regarding the victim's age is not a defense to prosecution under sexual offense laws.

And yet… the woman in question also testified about this to criminal investigators and no charges were filed against Gaetz. This might suggest that the case against him is less than air tight. Or that proof beyond personal testimony would not stand up at trial.

So no… you cannot claim ignorance on having sex with a 17-year-old in Florida. But also, there might not be evidence to prove it happened beyond a he said/she said.

Again: this has all been known for years after Greenberg’s arrest and the Department of Justice investigation.

Will there be new information? We have to wait and see.

But it also might not matter, because Gaetz’ higher hurdle to clear has nothing to do with what he did or didn’t do as a military-grade horny Florida Man bachelor… but rather his conduct as a rhetorical bomb thrower who has personally torched members of the Senate whose vote he now needs to court.

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That and more on the show!

CHAPTERS

00:43 Guide to Matt Gaetz Sex Scandal

17:24 Normally Podcast (Karol Markowicz and MK Ham)

49:08 Update: Selzer, Lutnick, Trump's NY Sentencing

58:02 Gabe Fleisher

Things polling get right in 2024:

* Trump had a chance to win the popular vote (he did)

* Trump had an advantage in the Sun Belt but the races in the Rust Belt would be closer (true, Trump still won them all)

* Ticket splitting is real and could save Democrats from a Senate demolition (it did)

But beyond that… we have some real questions.

Carl Allen believed Kamala Harris was a favorite to win the electoral college. Together we go through the results and find lessons big and small.

I am obsessed with how much money the Kamala Harris campaign spent.

Hundreds of millions of dollars per week spent on creating a once-in-a-lifetime glittering election machine only to deliver less electoral votes than John Kerry.

Some FEC reports are available but reporting on the excesses is also bubbling up. For example, Harris recreated the set of Call Her Daddy in a DC hotel room so she didn’t have to fly to Los Angeles.

Videos of a party thrown by the KamalaHQ social media team for Fashion Week have also surfaced.

I believe the Harris ‘24 might be a turning point for donor patience, so we will have much more on it going forward. But to whet your whistle… we have Dave Levinthal to chat about it today.

Combine that with Kirk Bado of National Journal’s Hotline to discuss the future of the Democratic Party and you have today’s episode!

Also, Trump’s cabinet appointments continue.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:39 Kirk Bado

40:32 Update On Trump Appointments

55:00 Dave Levinthal

Much like the Trump Tax Cuts, the $99 Annual Deal for all bonus content is now permanent. Enjoy!

As we sift through the multi-billion dollar wreckage of this election I’ve recruited Evan Scrimshaw to figure out what we know about this election.

First, if you had a Time Machine and your only goal was to increase the vote share of the Biden or Harris campaign, what time would you go back to and what would you say?

Then we carve through the revelations we’ve had since Tuesday including understanding Trump’s popularity and the electoral benefit of putting Jews on the ticket.

Immediate thoughts on the Trump win.

‘nuff said.

Find your polling place.

Enjoy this entirely non-political conversation with Scott Johnson. Literally, no politics are discussed at all. But there is a lot about religion, fast food, parenthood, weed and more.

See you on the other side.

You asked! We listened! The $99 Annual Deal is extended until Election Day. Make sure you upgrade from your complimentary status if you are coming from Patreon!

Here it is… Our conversation with Kevin Ryan on the state of the culture and philosophy that this election takes place in.

With that, my final thoughts.

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you.

That’s a quote from a Star Wars prequel and it’s the final decider on who I believe will win the President, the Senate and the House. 

We will get back to that. 

First, let’s empty the file on my 2024 election thoughts in order. 

First, the landscape…

Donald Trump is a flawed candidate damaged by January 6th and hard capped at 48%

It’s the reason his party tried to overthrow him during the primaries. However, his resilience and ease in overcoming those challenges is telling. 

Donald Trump began to gain and beat Joe Biden in head to head polling after he was indicted and his New York trial had a positive effect on his polling

This was the first moment I believed Trump could have a redemptive arc. If the public did not understand the charges against him and saw the prosecutions as political, he would be a martyr beyond core MAGA. 

The Dobbs decision has been rocket fuel for Democrats

In off-year elections and special elections the present threat to reproductive rights have gotten Democratic voters to the polls. My criticism that they might be punished for not taking the threat seriously enough has not panned out as of yet. 

Joe Biden’s presidency has been broadly unpopular and specifically unpopular with anyone who makes under $100,000 a year

Biden was elected in the panic of COVID to be a steady hand at the wheel. He lost that with Afghanistan and never regained it. The border went from a purely GOP partisan issue to a mainstream winner for Republicans almost entirely because of executive orders Biden made at the beginning of his presidency.

Issue after issue, the same playbook unfolded… deny, deny, deny until you blame it on Trump. 

But nothing was more personal than inflation. A class warfare issue like no other. 

Personal story, my wife and I were driving to dinner with friends. The husband was at the wheel of their new Tesla. The issue of politics comes up. I mentioned Trump was doing well because of the economy. “But the economy is good?” Is the response. And it is a sentiment I’ve heard from many people in my orbit and online. The stock market is booming? We avoided a recession? Inflation is lower here than anywhere else the world? How is this a weakness?

And behind the wheel of a new Tesla, I agree.

Which is where we get to that $100,000 a year figure. Because anywhere below that, inflation gets infinitely worse. It’s persistent and embarrassing. A ritual humiliation and reminder you are not good enough. That kind of stuff sticks with people. 

So that’s the landscape… how about the candidates

TRUMP

To say that Donald Trump has run his best campaign out of his three tries is an understatement. 

I’ll be honest, I stopped trying to fully understand the logic of Trump sometime in 2016. His combativeness, the issues he centered and erratic behavior is impossible to grade. Why did he just send that tweet? Has he discovered a hidden undercurrent in American society? Or did the KFC bucket he had last night make him farty?

In his two previous attempts he often didn’t seem to understand which way was up either. He fired two different campaign directors in 2016. He fired one of them in 2020. 

Both times, election day came with him trailing mightily in the polls. The refrain for his chances became religious. He will pull through… because…

But that’s not the case this cycle. Susie Wiles, a Florida GOP veteran who watched her party take a purple state and drench it blood red and Chris LaCivita a bare-knuckle student of the last era of a Republican dominance under George W. Bush have run the ship from initial announcement to election day. 

Tactically, the boat has pointed in the right direction.

Trump decapitated well-funded rivals in his own party in Desantis and Haley. He ended the political career of the man who beat him in 2020. 

Trump has stayed off Twitter and has largely been able to avoid his habit of turning a bad 24 hours into a bad 3 days because of his inability to concede a point. He has mitigated his worst issue, abortion, as well as anyone who appointed the justices that flipped Roe vs. Wade can and accentuated his strengths with the economy and the border. 

Of course, he is still Trump. He’s an a*****e that viserally annoys 40% of the country. 

He is the loser pissbaby who couldn’t wrap his head around losing in 2020 and did a January 6th. And with that I will now leave space on the page so you can add the pet issue or event that you believe best encapsulates why Donald J. Trump should never be president again.

If you need more space, please open a new window and hit return until you have enough. 

He also got shot in the face and survived. Not really sure how that factors into an election. 

Which brings us to…

KAMALA 

Well… Let’s start with…

BIDEN

Joe Biden is unpopular. This is in part because two of his failures played into both sides of the coin that helped him beat Trump.

His strength, foreign policy, where he sat on the powerful Senate committee for years was telegenically shattered with the Afghanistan pullout. It is impossible to say you did a good job when people are falling off the landing gear. 

His weakness, the border, which he gleefully signed executive orders for on day one of his presidency created another telegenic disaster and supercharged an abusive of America’s asylum system. It’s impossible to say you did a good job when hundreds of Haitians, Chinese and Congolese have found themselves in Texas border towns.

Add inflation, add Gaza.

But it was his age that ended his career. The one thing he couldn’t ultimately shift the blame for.

The depression about his horrific debate created a panic for him to drop out, an unthinkable move as late in the campaign. 

Which brings me to Darth Plagueis the Wise… 

It was at the RNC when I sat in stadium seating talking with a man I would later be told knows everyone in Washington. We were watching something in a stadium in recessed seating which is what reminds me of the Darth Plagueis scene.

I am steadfast and pig headed that Biden won’t drop out. He’s too stubborn, I said stubbornly. Very calmly… he explains to me that Joe Biden will drop out this Sunday. He would have done it during the RNC but he didn’t want to give the most important speech of his career while he had COVID. 

Within and hour Mark Halperin reported something similar.

Sunday morning, I wrote a newsletter about how Biden would never say die. Sunday afternoon, Biden announced he would not seek the presidency.

I looked like quite the a*****e. 

It was Joe-ver. 

My assumption was that taking over a campaign mid-stream was like trying to fix an F1 car while driving it and trying to win a race. Impossible. 

And yet…

KAMALA

The Democrats hot swapped Biden for Kamala and for a shining glimmer of a moment… it looked like something was brewing. 

Brat Summer. Coconut Trees. Unburdned by what has been.

Sure there were some weird moments… why do so many big named Dems not want to be VP? But the vibes! THE JOY! 

When Kamala selected Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro, the leftist base of the party rejoiced! She picked a man who is at his best explaining liberal solutions to normies! Not the polished Obama clone just because he is the very popular governor of a swing state. This was bold! This was new! This was interesting!

And then… she tacked right… 

Wait. Why pick the guy that can explain single payer health care with a Cabelas metaphor if you are going to talk about how Israel has a right to a lethal defense force that can eradicate any enemy it identifies? Why not pick the Jew who is +20 in Pennsylvania?

At least she found a wedge issue to distance herself from Biden… wait… didn’t do that either. 

Did she parlay the buzz of the summer into a series of interviews with friendly media to reintroduce herself? Nope. Didn’t do that either. 

I took a lot of crap from folks when I said she lost the debate. Not because she didn’t rhetorically hold her own, but because she had the most to gain by telling America about herself and she mostly spent her time running down Trump. 

Cathartic after Biden’s disaster? Sure. But not the mission. 

And she hasn’t really done much since then. 

To her credit, her campaign has not been a flaming disaster like her 2019 run was. 

But… one thing seems to be the same as that failure… the more America sees of Kamala Harris, the less they like her. 

Which brings us to…

THE RACE

Do any of my opinions about the Harris campaign matter?

Donald Trump is a one-man Get Out The Vote drive for the Democrats. The specter of him returning to power raised OVER A BILLION dollars since Kamala took over. 

And so we get to the final decision and it is determined by what you believe… 

Do you believe polls that say Donald Trump is more popular than he has ever been?

Do you believe polls that say Democrats are at Obama-level excitement for Kamala?

Do you believe (as our friend Ettingermentum has spelled out) that polls are herding to a stalemate because they are terrified to overestimate Democratic support again and are therefore overestimating Trump support? 

Do you believe that an administration with a 30/60 right track/wrong track environment can win re-election? 

That’s a lot to think about… much like the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise… 

Because in that RNC conversation with the Guy Who Knows Everyone… where he told me the exact day Biden would drop out and I didn’t believe him... He told me something else. He told me Kamala would be the candidate.

And he went further…

He told me that Democratic power brokers know she can’t win. But they know she’s a bad candidate and don’t want her around in 2028 when the party can really rebuild. So this a suicide mission. Raise a lot of money. Give her the old college try. Pat her on the head when it’s over and never have to be in the Kamala Harris business again. 

So, do I believe him now?

I believe that Donald Trump is inarguably the defining figure for a decade of politics, love him or hate him. 

I believe he has run a better campaign than both of his opponents. 

I believe enough independent voters did not have a good time the last four years. 

I believe Donald Trump, the 45th president will become the 47th president. 

Donald Trump will be the 4,547th president. 

I believe the map is too favorable to Republicans to not hand them the Senate. 

But I don’t believe that a shoddy Get Out The Vote operation and reliance on low propensity voters in blue states is enough to win them the house. 

Republican White House, Republican Senate. Democratic House. 

Of our four scenarios…

PAX MAGA - Republican Sweep

Democratic Civil War - GOP White House and Senate, Democratic House

Unburdened By What Has Been - Democratic White House and House, GOP Senate

Roe Sends Her Regards - Democratic Sweep

I believe Democratic Civil War… is the most likely.

You asked! We listened! The $99 Annual Deal is extended until Election Day. Make sure you upgrade from your complimentary status if you are coming from Patreon!

We are in the endgame now. I’ve asked experts from across the spectrum who they believe will win the White House, Senate and House. Now it’s my turn.

But I have a few last trusted advisors to speak to first.

Michael Cohen (Model Political Campaigns) and Tom LoBianco of 24Sight.news help break down the closing polls and model out how the election will finally shake out.