Chapter 1: What are the implications of Ken Paxton's victory in the Texas Senate primary?
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America's 250th birthday calls for a history as sprawling and contradictory as the country itself. A history of the United States in a hundred objects produced by BBC Studios and 99% Invisible tells this story one object at a time.
Told over 100 episodes, join host Roman Mars as he reveals the fascinating story behind a collection of often overlooked objects, each of which sheds light on key moments in American history.
From a gold coin found in a shipwreck that triggered financial panic to a tiny screw that kickstarted an industrial empire, every week, one object will open the door into an extraordinary, often shocking story about who we've been, what we've built, and what we've allowed ourselves to forget. New episodes of A History of the United States in 100 Objects are released every Tuesday.
Find it in 99% Invisible wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Plot Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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Chapter 2: How are James Talarico's masculinity and political strategies being questioned?
American troops have lost their lives. People all across the region have lost their lives. And for nothing. The best case scenario is we have a deal that is worse than the one Obama cut 12 years ago or whatever it was. And we are very far from best case.
And now, like, do we think the Iranians really believe that if these negotiations over the next 60 days go poorly, that Trump's going to start bombing them again? Like what? Right before the midterms? No, they know.
Actually, he might.
Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I don't think I don't feel like I don't think this is a great play in terms of keeping any kind of leverage over the Iranians at this point. So they know they can close the strait whenever they want. So and lay mines whenever they want. So that's what's happening there. I'm sure the deal could be announced any minute now. Who knows?
We'll just look for more siren emojis from Axios and look for Scott Jennings to just sort of regurgitate whatever the administration tells him to because that's what he does. All right. So the White House press corps was briefed on the potential deal, as well as the latest bad economic news by struggling soybean farmer Scott Besant, the administration's resident populist.
Besant had to contend with news that inflation has now risen to its highest level in three years. And the GDP grew even slower than previously estimated in the first quarter of this year. Austin Goolsbee, the Chicago Federal Reserve president, told The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. economy is moving in a, quote, stagflationary direction, which would be the worst case scenario.
Scott Besson's response to all of this? Okay, Doomers.
I believe we've already seen oil prices come down substantially. These are short-term challenges that we will get over and I think we'll move forward. Is inflation sticky because the PCE was at a three-year high? Well, first of all, PCE today month over month was 0.2, which was, we're looking at decimal points, but the estimate was 0.3.
Are you seeing signs that American households are dipping into their savings to pay for the higher costs of things like gas and groceries. And does data like that concern you right now?
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Chapter 3: What are the latest developments in U.S.-Iran negotiations?
It would lower oil prices, which will eventually at some point in time lower gas prices because oil futures will come down. But we're not going to see anywhere near the sort of traffic going through the Strait that we had before for six months at the earliest and probably longer. And the true economic damage is done here, right? The growth has been stunted. Inflation is up.
It'll take a while for all of that to come down. The Fed is even thinking about possibly raising interest rates again because of the PCE numbers that Bessette mentioned. And but let's just put aside the economics where I feel deeply uncomfortable talking about them. Focus on the politics where I am mildly more comfortable is look, people's opinions about this economy are pretty set in stone.
People's opinions about Donald Trump's handling of this economy are pretty set in stone. People are going to start voting in a couple of months. And even if things do get a little bit better, which seems highly unlikely, we know from years and years of data that people's impression of the economy lags the reality by months.
And so even if things got a little bit better, it's unlikely to help Republicans this fall.
A CNN business reporter, their business reporter, David Goldman, was asked about when we might see $3 gas again. Guess which year, he said, for $3 gas again.
It's not going to be 2026, is it, John? 2032. 2032. Twenty. Well, that's I would say I was going to guess 2030 just because by the way you asked that question, it was going to be far away. But that's even further than I thought.
That's what your reaction was similar to CNN's Pam Brown, who also was like, what did you just say? He's like, yeah, well, by the time he's like, if you just look at the futures, this is what the futures market say right now. Um, because it would have to be down to like, I think around $70, uh, oil would be, have to be $70 a gallon and up $70 a barrel.
And, um, you know, it's like down to hovering around a hundred now. So it's not at where it was at with like 120, but to get from there to 70, um, yeah, it takes the straight being fully open for quite a while.
Uh, and the other thing about the straight is, is not just boats moving through the straight. It's that Gulf country ceased production because they could not get, uh, oil through the Strait, and so they have to restart production, and that takes time. And that is on top of the facilities that were damaged from the Iranian missiles as part of the war that Trump started.
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Chapter 4: What is the current state of the U.S. economy according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent?
You are weak, woke liberals. You have to do this. Vote for it right now. I can think of nothing, no better use of your time.
I got a better idea, Dan. remember, they all went home before the Memorial Day break because they couldn't come to an agreement on the budget bill that was supposed to fund ICE and all the other bullshit in there, like the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6th rioters. Democrats have the ability to offer amendments in a voterama process.
So if I was Chuck Schumer or a Senate Democrat, I might offer an amendment about this and let's put everyone on the record. And see what they think. See what all the Republicans think about Donald Trump's face on the $250 bill.
I like that too. That's a great idea. You have really aged into a legislative strategist late in life. So that's great. All right, let's get to the meat of your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, do I think voters are creeped out and maybe a little scared by Trump basically cosplaying Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, pick your tin pod dictator?
Look, I think the biggest political problem here is that Trump is focused on dumb, self-serving shit instead of lowering people's costs. That is the fundamental thing. You add a side of pretty blatant corruption to it, that's pretty bad. I think people see Trump putting his name on everything, his face on everything. And I think maybe last year they would have seen that as scary.
I think this year they think it's stupid because the Trump of 2026 and now the Trump of 2025. 2025, he was single-handedly destroying federal agencies, sending mass agents everywhere. He was astride the world. He was bizarrely popular. And now he is a deeply unpopular, doddering old man who can't stay awake in meetings. He is losing wars to Iran. He just looks weak. He seems different.
He just seems smaller now. And you see that in the polling where major pluralities of people and large majorities of independents no longer describe him as strong. They see him as weak and indecisive. And I think so. I think should people be creeped out by it? Absolutely. I think the approach is probably not fear. It's derision.
I was going to say, I probably articulated it wrong. I don't think it's fear like, oh no, scary dictator kind of thing. When I say uneasy, I feel like people look at it and first of all, I think Part of this is me when the ballroom thing first happened, not thinking that the ballroom was going to be a big deal.
And then realizing that the imagery of the East Wing being demolished was more powerful to people than I had imagined. And not just from a corruption angle, because at that point it was just we're going to knock down the East Wing and I'm going to build a ballroom. Right. And and it wasn't just like, oh, he's not focusing because we didn't have the war then. Right.
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Chapter 5: How does Jill Biden feel about her husband's debate performance?
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There's just a bit more corruption to discuss before we move on. This is sort of your standard issue corruption. According to ProPublica, Trump advisor and family friend Peter Navarro, remember Peter Navarro? He did all the tariffs that everyone's enjoyed so much.
And jail time. He did jail time too.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Scott Colom face in the Mississippi Senate race?
We want to depend on the US. And so this is good. It's good for the government to sort of help these startups that are doing this. It was a, they had $1 billion lending authority under Biden. Donald Trump comes in and they increase it from $1 billion to $200 billion. So now it's $200 billion that the government is handing out to these companies. And in the Biden administration, there's a process.
You bid for this. If you're one of these companies, you apply. There's a rigorous process. They decide to take you or not. They reject some companies. They just obviously we want to give loans to the best possible companies because it's taxpayer dollars that we are giving to these companies. So we want to make sure they're the best ones.
except one company, Vulcan, skirted that entire process and, in fact, didn't even apply. The White House, Peter Navarro, calls the Defense Department and was like, you got to give the money to Vulcan. You just got to give the money to Vulcan. And that is the company, the small company in North Carolina that Don Jr. had just invested in just a couple months before this.
And once it got the money, once it got the huge contract, The valuation of the company went from $200 million to $2 billion, a 900% increase. That is how much money Don fucking Jr. made because his really good friend, Peter Navarro, the two of them are very tight, called up the fucking Pentagon and said, make this happen for Don Jr. 's company.
There's so much like this. There is, you know, just for the other day that they about, you know, Trump had a big investment and made investment in Dell right before a big announcement where Dell was going to get a government contract. Same thing with Robin Hood. Just it's across the board. Just everyone is robbing the treasury with two hands at all times.
I was going to say, it's not and it's not just like they're using their office or they're abusing their office and just the fact that they have the office to make money. No, no, no. They're like stealing from you. They are putting their hands in the taxpayer pockets and stealing because this is just taxpayer money that's been handing out and with no accountability or oversight whatsoever.
Is this company going to succeed? Is it a good company? We don't know. Don Jr. owns some of it. That's all we need to know. Money out the door.
taxpayer dollars only it was only a year ago that the government told us that we cannot afford to keep rural hospitals open right yeah we can we can give a favorable contract with a huge profit margin people who put the weird rubbery paint on the on the pool we can give contracts to don jr's company we can encase washington dc-based horse statues in gold where's elon where are the doge bros where's the all-in pod bros with all the fucking uh come on guys
Probably investors in the Donald Trump and the Trump Jr. company.
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Chapter 7: What strategies is James Talarico using to connect with voters?
He does. He looks prepubescent.
The major factor in this race, Greg, is whether Talafrico's vegan.
You say you have a girlfriend. Why don't you name her? Are they going to have a coming out party? Or is she still going to stay the secret girlfriend? And is this totally not fake girlfriend also a vegan?
he looks like such a beta male he was he was beta o'rourke was his big brother in the after school program they'll say they'll say but he's a seminarian how dare you not he put the semen in seminarian uh what do you think they're trying to tell us they dislike his policy agenda I get it. I get the line of attack.
And there is a universe where you can execute that line of attack, maybe in a way that's somewhat effective. Feels like if you're already calling him a gay pedophile in May, not a lot of runway left. Where are you going? Where are you going to be in October?
I am curious about what is driving this attack. Is it in the data? Or are they just echoing the thing that Trump said on Air Force One two weeks ago?
I think some of it is like instinct, right? Like they have, okay, the clips of James Tallarico that have been, you know, all over the internet and right wing media are something, something vegan. He's not a vegan, which clearly these people just actually don't know that he's not a vegan. And they think now he says he eats meat because he's like got caught or something. But
he was never saying he was a vegan. That was not a clip. The clip of him saying that, you know, technically there's six sexes because of chromosome abnormalities with a small fraction of people, which like, great. And like a couple other clips like that. And he looks young, right? And so they're like, yeah, he looks like their go-to is he's a beta male.
But they can't just say that because there is an element of- Well, they can't just say that and like leave it at that because there's an element of, oh shit, we just nominated Ken Paxton and we could lose. So we've got to take everything to a hundred.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential impacts of Trump's actions on U.S. politics?
His speech was interesting because he did ā very Trump-esque in that he was very excited and enjoying doing the Tallarico attacks and responding to the crowd. And then he was reading with no emotion lines about lowering people's costs and
Not where his passion lies. His passion lies, of course, in theft. He likes stealing from people. Sometimes quite literally, he stole someone's pen. So like a thousand dollar pen, someone left lying around. There's like video of him just stealing it, which is... Very friends and neighbors. So Tallarico's out there responding to the beta male line of attack.
Here he is at a rally on Wednesday in Houston. This is his first stop on a statewide tour and his first appearance since Paxton won the runoff.
In a time when there's so much debate about what it means to be a man, my dad showed me. Every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn. And then without telling anyone, without anyone asking him, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn. She was elderly. She was a widow. He never talked about it. He just did it because that's what a man does. He serves those around him.
He takes responsibility and he does what's right even when no one is watching.
So in addition to that, he also did a sit down with CBS with Ed O'Keefe. And, you know, he said that some of his past remarks were cringy and that he would say them differently as well. He's been you know, there's been plenty of photos that the campaign's been pushing around of him eating barbecue because he's said he's eaten barbecue forever. So, you know, it's all of a piece.
But if you were consulting on the campaign, how would you advise him to push back on this? And I think more importantly, like how much time and energy would you be spending on it if you were on the campaign?
Before we do that, I just do want to stipulate that. Team South America has a very, very real chance of winning this race. Yeah. Well, we should talk about that for sure. I get why everyone is skeptical of Texas. We have been burned so many times. But this is our best chance in a generation to win statewide office in Texas. We have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988.
We have not won statewide office of consequence in this century. And obviously the closest that a Democrat has come was Beto O'Rourke losing by 2.6% to Ted Cruz in 2018. This is a different world. 2018 was a good environment for Democrats. 2026 is a great environment for Democrats, as we sit here today, at least.
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