Podcast

Conor Lamb on the Second Trump Term

Former Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) joins the podcast to discuss the first several months of President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

Part of a Series

Former Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) joins the podcast to discuss the first several months of President Donald Trump’s second term in office. Conor and Colin also talk about the Epstein files, Trump’s effective paramilitary force, the economy, and the path forward for the Democratic Party.

Transcript:

[Soundbite begins]

Conor Lamb: Now, you asked about [U.S. Sen. John] Fetterman [D-PA]. … I don’t think a lot of people realize how lazy he is, but … the easier thing to do for a guy like him is to say, “Oh yeah, we should never shut the government down.” And he increasingly takes [President Donald] Trump’s side on a lot of issues anyway, so it’s more comfortable for him to do that.

[Soundbite ends]

Colin Seeberger: Hey everyone, welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Colin Seeberger, your host. That was a very not lazy former [U.S. Rep.] Conor Lamb [D] from Pennsylvania.

Congressman Lamb has been crisscrossing the commonwealth, talking with voters across the state about how they are digesting the unprecedented levels of corruption and lawlessness out of this administration. He’s also talked to them about the financial pressures that they’re feeling in light of the president’s reckless tariffs, and how Democrats can win back the House majority through four crucial contests in the state of Pennsylvania next year. As a former assistant U.S. attorney and a member of the United States Marine Corps, he also had some thoughts about President Trump’s use of troops for political purposes.

Congressman Lamb and I broke it all down. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. And stick around after the interview for a moment of joy, because the weather’s getting colder, and that can only mean one thing: football season is back.

[Musical transition]

Seeberger: Conor Lamb is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He’s now a distinguished professor of law at Duquesne University. He previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice and in the United States Marine Corps.

Conor Lamb, welcome to the pod.

Lamb: Great to be here. Thanks for thinking of me.

Seeberger: So I was really excited to chat with you because I know you’ve been pounding the pavement in Pennsylvania, going across the state to hear from Pennsylvanians about how they’re responding to, I think, what to many of us has been really unprecedented times in the United States.

I’m curious to get a sense for how are Pennsylvanians responding to the lawlessness and the corruption that we’ve seen from this administration? As well as what are things that are really sticking with people? What is living beyond just a few-hour or 24-hour news cycle and really is becoming ingrained in people’s psychology as they’re thinking about who this country is and who we want to be moving forward?

Lamb: Yeah, there’s a lot that you just covered with that question. So I think, in general, obviously one of the big divides in our society right now is between people who pay attention to political news a lot and people who don’t. And a lot of the things that I’ve been going to around the state, it’s filled with people who are really engaged in politics and care about it.

I could say for sure that they are treating this like a five-alarm fire, because it is. And that includes in some very rural and red areas of our state. The people who still do support Democrats and even Independents and former Republicans are coming out in larger numbers than they did in 2018, in most cases. So the overall mobilization of people and energy is pretty strong. They understand the stakes.

When you get beyond that group, I think it’s harder to say. But I feel pretty confident saying that people are aware that they’re not getting much of a benefit of the bargain that Trump offered them. Whether that’s mobilizing people against Trump already or not, it’s hard to say.

But one of the iconic moments of the 2024 campaign was Trump campaigning from a drive-through window at a McDonald’s. And that happened here in Pennsylvania, in the eastern part of the state, in the Philly suburbs. And the whole premise of that was that he was going to be a president for the people that drive through McDonald’s on their way to work or on their way home from work.

And you can just look across everything he’s doing and see that not a single thing he’s done has been for them. You asked about corruption. He has doubled his family’s net worth in the past year, just by virtue of becoming president and engaging in this crypto scam that he engages in.

There’s really no one in Pennsylvania that has doubled their net worth like that. There’s very few people that have increased their net worth all that much at all, especially in the areas that voted for him. There are going to be a lot of people that lose their health care, and there are going to be a lot of people that don’t get the tax breaks that he gets.

And I think there’s going to increasingly be a fair amount of people losing their jobs from the effect that these tariffs, and then again, the effect of the loss of health care. Health care is a big jobs issue in Pennsylvania. So it’s starting to set in that the economic outlook is grim for working-class people especially, and that’s not what they were promised.

Seeberger: Well, I am curious to talk to you about, as well, there’s obviously been a lot of attention over the course of the last few months about the Epstein files. And we know that that has been something that the right has long been animated by. It was a major topic of discussion among the president and figures around his campaign that they were going to get into office, release the Epstein files as they long promised.

This week, the House Oversight Committee in response to a subpoena received documents from the Epstein estate, which found that there was, included in those documents, a lewd note Trump allegedly sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday. And included in those documents was an awful photo of a fake check from Epstein to Trump that implies that Jeffrey sold him a woman for roughly $22,000. Trump, of course, denied all of this. And a lot of the Republicans on the Hill you’ll hear from are saying, “Oh, this is all fake news,” despite the fact that they ran on releasing these files.

What do you make of this issue? And do you think the president and his party could suffer some real backlash from voters, given how they’re handling all this?

Lamb: I do think there could be a fair amount of backlash. Because it’s one of the first times that it finally seems to be breaking through to some of his own supporters just how unbelievably selfish Trump is. You know? And I think they were willing to excuse a lot from him when they believed that it was all generally in pursuit of what they wanted. So the corruption, well, that’s just something that comes with him being a businessman. And he’s using his businessman skills on our behalf. Now, finally, someone’s fighting for us in the economic realm.

That was the, I think, outlook of a lot of these folks on a lot of things. But this is one where there’s just no way to explain what he’s doing other than protect himself and his rich and powerful friends. And so people are finally getting a real glimpse of who he really is.

Seeberger: So I also want to turn to some things that we’ve been seeing over the course of the last few weeks, and that is basically an effective effort by the president to stand up his own personal paramilitary force. We have seen the president send National Guard troops to cities like the District of Columbia, Los Angeles a few months back.

I am, of course, speaking to you from D.C., where Trump has—between taking over the D.C. police, mobilizing the National Guard here in D.C., sending out DHS and Immigration Enforcement officers all across the city—has really driven people into incredible fear. And there is a huge, I think, schism that’s taking place between the public and law enforcement in the District of Columbia.

I’m curious to hear from you as a member of the United States Marine Corps. What are your greatest concerns about how this president appears to be using troops for his own political purposes?

Lamb: I mean, as a military person, I think the dangers are twofold. One is, it’s really important to maintain the military as a nonpolitical institution for a bunch of reasons. But one basic one is recruitment and retention. Getting good people to join the military, and then getting them to stay so that we need them. And if you become a society where the military is a political tool of a partisan president, then what you’re going to end up with, we’ve already seen little warning lights of.

I don’t know if anyone would remember, MTG, [U.S. Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-GA], during the Biden administration telling people not to join the military because she didn’t think they should want to serve under him as the commander-in-chief. And under Trump, you’re really risking getting the opposite, which is when you see him use the National Guard like it’s his own personal tool. Is it an 18- or 19-year-old who isn’t sure where they stand in politics or doesn’t like Trump, do they maybe not join, then? That’s the danger. You’re not going to get the best and brightest.

And then there’s also a whole readiness component, which is we just need the military to spend its time focusing on the biggest threats outside of our borders. And they’re not going to do that if they’re deployed to these cities for a long period of time.

I also just want to say, part of my background is law enforcement, a federal prosecutor that that focused pretty much exclusively on violent crime and drugs, worked very closely with the police and federal agencies. And militarization is a losing law enforcement strategy. I don’t just say that because I’m a Democrat and I want to go easy on people. It just doesn’t work. And that has to do with how you need to have the trust of the community, get them to want to report crimes or take the witness stand in a criminal trial.

And one of the reasons we have such a hard time prosecuting murders is nobody wants to get on the stand and say that they saw someone pull the trigger. Militarization makes all of that worse. It’s not effective at all. And these National Guard troops are not trained as police officers or detectives or forensic scientists. They don’t offer any of the skills that you need to do an effective job in law enforcement. So really, this fails on multiple levels.

Seeberger: Well, as a person who has worked close to the law, I am also interested to get your take on some of the recent trends that we’ve seen from this far-right majority on the [U.S.] Supreme Court. It seems to me that increasingly they seem willing to turn a blind eye to what is just on its face outright lawlessness. We saw this in the case of the birthright citizenship case, where the Supreme Court literally lashed out at a lower court judge for instituting a national moratorium on that executive order.

But recently, just this week, we saw an apparent majority in the Supreme Court effectively gave the green light to the Trump administration to detain people whether they speak Spanish, detain people on the basis of their skin color, detain people whether they work in a day labor job in a Home Depot parking lot, picking up supplies.

You served as a U.S. attorney. So I’m curious, what’s your take on this Supreme Court? And do you think that they, like Congress, seem to more and more be working for Donald Trump versus the American people?

Lamb: My own personal take is they’re just doing what’s easy and what’s comfortable, which is what a lot of people are doing right now.

Whether in Congress or these big law firms or the CEOs of big businesses, even the heads of major entertainment studios, it’s just easier to appease Trump. And if you have some money to throw at him, great. If you’re the court and you want to give him some friendly rulings, fine.

I think they’re afraid of a confrontation with him. Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett is out there hawking her book right now, for which I think she got almost a half-million dollar advance already. And I don’t know, I think the way that I look at it is, apart from any particular decision that you can analyze what they wrote, it’s really obvious that Trump is not trying to obey the law. I mean, that was obvious in his first term, but it’s really obvious now. The law is in no way a constraining force on him at all. Like, at all.

And if that’s the case, the Supreme Court has to be doing more than it’s doing. And I’m not even going to say which case it has to be or how they have to do it. But their job is to help ensure that we have a government of laws and not men—that the people who serve in government pay at least some level of respect and deference to the law, which we’re not getting any of.

And if you think that they’re just waiting for the best case to make their stand, it looks like that’s probably not happening. And I don’t think with Trump one case would do the job, anyway. So I think that they are sitting back because that’s easier. And I think when we finally get through all this, someday, we’re going to look back and see that they just didn’t rise to the occasion like they should have.

Seeberger: Well, if we can turn to the economy—you mentioned tariffs earlier, which very clearly seem to be wreaking havoc on the economy, if you look at recent jobs data showing a major decline since the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs earlier this spring. And we also know that Pennsylvanians in the first five months of this year shouldered $1.6 billion in costs because of those tariffs.

What are you hearing from people on the ground? Are they buying the president’s strategy? Are they feeling pinched still, as voters have long been saying to their elected officials for the last few years? What are you hearing?

Lamb: People are definitely feeling pinched and increasingly pessimistic about where this is going down the road. So people are really afraid to lose their jobs because they think they won’t find another one. They’re noticing that a lot of prices really haven’t come down. And if you pay attention to the news at all in this state, you’re seeing a good amount of headlines saying that the price of some pretty big-ticket items is about to go up, especially health care.

The nine largest insurers in our state have all petitioned the state Department of Insurance to try to get the biggest increase they can get for next year, because of Trump taking away the funds. Electric power, we just had the most expensive electric power auction our state has ever had. And there’s a bunch of examples like that. The median price of a home in Pennsylvania was up over $325,000 over the summer, which it never has been before in this state.

So people are getting hit from all sides. I don’t know that they necessarily are ready to reward Democrats over that, because there’s a certain amount of bad feelings left over from the Biden administration. But it definitely is undermining faith in, again, Trump as the president who was going to be there for blue-collar Americans and make their lives better. He just clearly isn’t doing it.

Seeberger: You see it as an opportunity, not as a bank shot.

Lamb: Yeah. And I hate even calling it an opportunity, because it sounds like I’m glad it’s happening. I’m not, and I think it’s important for Democrats to convey that. We don’t want people to feel like their life is unaffordable.

We certainly don’t want anyone to lose their job and have a hard time finding another one. But there’s just some commonsense things that we need to change if we want to have a better economy here in this state. I mean, this is an older state where these Medicaid and Medicare programs really cover a lot of life.

Health care is our biggest employer by far. And then to the extent that we are still a manufacturing and a gas drilling and even a coal mining state, we’re getting crushed on the tariffs. It’s not helping. Remember, the whole case for tariffs was it was supposed to help domestic manufacturing. If that was happening, you would see it in this state. And we’re seeing the opposite. We’re losing manufacturing jobs.

Seeberger: Well, I’ve got to ask you—you’ve talked about health care. We’ve seen in recent weeks that Trump campaign officials are pushing Republicans to not talk about the Big Beautiful Bill. Apparently, Americans aren’t buying it. Because they now want this thing exclusively called the Working Families Tax Cut, despite the fact that health care costs are going up, electricity prices are going up.

I’m curious, do you think that Pennsylvanians are going to buy this Etch-a-Sketch rebrand that Republicans are pushing for how they talk about this thing? Or do you think that taking away people’s health care, increasing people’s utility costs, is something they’re not going to rally behind?

Lamb: I am pretty confident on this one that people are not going to be fooled. And the reason is because the last time that Trump did a big tax bill, which didn’t even have all these negative health care consequences, was in the end of 2017 when I was a brand-new candidate for Congress looking at a March 2018 special election.

And they kind of tried this rebrand thing in the context of my campaign, and they started running ads with a woman actress, I think, playing a mother and holding up a pair of shoes. And the tax cut that Trump just gave her is going to allow her to buy these shoes, et cetera. And it just fell flat on its face. They had to pull the ads off the air because nobody was buying it.

They all understood that even if they got $200 off their taxes, that people like Elon Musk were getting $20 million or $200 million, whatever number, massive amount. And this bill is so much worse across, like you said, health care, energy, et cetera. I don’t think they can save it.

Seeberger: Not to mention the fact that that $200 is not going to get them very far when their prices are going up because of the president’s tariffs, right?

Lamb: Yeah.

Seeberger: So what people are feeling in terms of net change in their lives—seems like the math is really all pointing in one direction.

So I also want to ask you—we are in September. The government is set to run out of funding at the end of the month. You made some headlines earlier this year, taking on your former opponent, Sen. John Fetterman, who was a very vocal supporter of extending funding for the government despite the fact that the administration was very clear that they were going to renege from their responsibility to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

And since then, we have seen $410 billion has been withheld or frozen by this administration because they’ve unilaterally decided they don’t want to spend those monies. Again, monies that Democrats and Republicans in Congress together passed.

So I’m curious to get your perspective on, how did that vote work out? Who do you think was on the right side of that back in March? And what should Sen. Fetterman and his fellow Democrats in the Senate and in the House be thinking about as they stare down a government funding deadline at the end of this month?

Lamb: Well, I think the part of your question that looks back to the spring—I think it’s hard to look at that and conclude anything else then that [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer [D-NY]’s strategy was a total failure. I mean, they handed Trump the money to do all the terrible things that he’s doing now.

I mean, you’re talking about rescission, which is bad. But even just the way that he has ICE running around the country lawlessly violating people’s rights and just so many ways he’s using that money illegally. The National Guard, even. All that kind of stuff. He clearly feels no constraints of any kind. He clearly doesn’t respect the Senate as a co-equal branch of government at all. And so they haven’t done their job.

As far as looking forward to this budget shutdown, I think now what I thought then, which is they just need to pick one big, important issue and make it really clear to the public that they will negotiate with Trump. They will do their job. They’re not trying to shut anything down. They are going to take a position on behalf of the broader public on this issue.

I think the best one is probably these Obamacare premium supports. And I know I’ve seen Sen. [Chris] Murphy [D-CT] talking about this recently. Just tell the public, “Hey look, we think that he should put back in the money to keep your health care inexpensive.” If he doesn’t do this in Pennsylvania, somewhere around 500,000 people are going to see their health care prices go up by orders of magnitude. Way too expensive.

So in a country where a lot of things are unaffordable, here’s one thing we can control and make affordable. That’s the side of it we’re on. If Trump wants our vote on the rest of the budget, he’s got to meet us on that. And then they can agree to everything else. That’s a reasonable thing, when you are at a negotiation, to insist on one thing. If the other side wants a thousand things, it’s in fact more than reasonable. And if the government shuts down under those conditions, it’s Trump’s fault. It’s not the Senate Democrats’ fault.

Now, you asked about Fetterman. He’s too lazy to pursue a strategy like that. I don’t think a lot of people realize how lazy he is. But a strategy like that would require a lot of extended public advocacy in multiple forums. It’s going to require a long Senate floor speech. It’s going to require a lot to let people know the side of the issue that Senate Democrats are on and that it’s their side.

The easier thing to do for a guy like him is just say, “Oh yeah, we should never shut the government down.” He increasingly takes Trump’s side on a lot of issues anyway, so it’s more comfortable for him to do that. But you only really need a certain number of Democratic holdouts to make a strategy like this work. So hopefully they’ll find it within themselves.

Seeberger: I’m curious to get your thoughts on another flash point in your home state senator’s, senior senator’s, career. And that is, he has really across the board refused to condemn anything that the state of Israel has done and the Netanyahu government have done in executing an aggressive military campaign against Gaza, and has really treated them above reproach.

There’s obviously a lot of Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. I think people are really sickened by obviously what happened on October 7. But how has the senator’s approach to this issue sat with Pennsylvanians?

Lamb: I can’t imagine that it sits too well for a number of reasons. One is which: This is not what he was hired to do. I think he forgets sometimes that the people of Pennsylvania hired him for this job. It’s not a platform that he got on his own to do with what he wants. And this was not really a major issue in the campaign. It wasn’t something that got extended debate and discussion.

There certainly was no moment where he said, “If you send me to Washington, I’m going to hand over my voting card to [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.” You definitely never promised that. And therefore, you cannot say that the voters accepted that promise or ratified it and allowed him to go do it. But that is effectively what he’s done.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong that Netanyahu can do in his view. That’s not even a view that a lot of Israelis hold. I mean, just look at what’s going on in Israel with the protests and everything else. So again, I think it’s a lazy attitude where he doesn’t want to have to discuss the nuances of a lot of this.

I think he knows that it gets him a lot of attention, but beyond that, I can’t really explain it in part because he never has shown us the basic respect of explaining it himself. But he’s never come back to the state and given an extended speech or done a town hall where he answers these kinds of questions. He just started down this road one day and has never come back. And I guess it’s old fashioned, but I think people should expect more of a U.S. senator.

Seeberger: Now I’m curious, we’re just about 13 months out or so from the midterms. Obviously the tip of the spear for Democrats is retaking the House. Pennsylvania has several really close contests in the state.

I am curious, as somebody who has been crisscrossing the state, how do you feel like Democrats in those districts are positioned going into next year? And what ideas should they be putting forward to really galvanize broad support and be successful next year?

Lamb: You know, I hesitate to say this, but I think that Pennsylvania Democrats—we have our act together right now. And I say that because—

Seeberger: Hey, breaking news here. Breaking news.

Lamb: I know, it’s unusual. But we have basically four flippable House districts out of 17. And we have at least one really strong, credible candidate in all of them. People who fit the district, people who are focused on the quote-unquote “bread and butter” stuff—the health care job losses, the health care insurance loss all the negative effects of the tariffs, the Trump corruption, which means him and his family are making a lot of money but people in these congressional districts are not.

You’re already seeing a lot of that basic blocking and tackling being done by these candidates. And I think it’s really effective. They’re all people with solid biographies, dedicated public service. So in the House 2026 campaigns, I think we’re looking good.

Then you add to that, the top of our ticket is going to be Governor [Josh] Shapiro during his reelection campaign. And he’s more popular than pretty much any statewide politician has been here for a really long time. You’ve got to think he’s going to help bring some votes with him.

And so I like where things sit here within our state. And I think that’s a reason to be hopeful. Part of the reason that we’re doing well in the state is we do have one clear leader. Gov. Shapiro’s a good leader of our party in the state. And a lot, I think, happens in reaction to him where people are able to look at his success and then try to mirror it in their own ways.

And I think that as a national party, when we have a standard-bearer like that closer to 2028, a lot of other things are going to click into place that we don’t feel like we have right now.

Seeberger: That leads me to an unexpected question. Pennsylvania Democrats seem to have their stuff together right now, and you’re feeling good about these candidates. Do you think you’ll be a candidate for future office again one day?

Lamb: I think I will, one day. Yeah. I mean, I think what my five years in the raging stream taught me was maybe to pick my targets carefully. I jumped into the Senate race on passion. And I look back, and maybe I shouldn’t have thought I could have even won that race.

So if I’m going to serve again, I want to make sure that it’s a job I really feel like I can both win, because people work so hard to get you there, but then do effectively. So I don’t think I’ll be on the ballot anywhere next year. But after that, if we’re able to do our job and get some of these candidates in and rejuvenate the democracy a little bit, I’ll be looking for a way to serve. I would love to.

Seeberger: Well, I think that’s a great segue to my final question, which is—obviously these are tough times, so I’m curious to hear from you. Who is inspiring you in this moment? Do you have recommendations for folks who want to fight back? How can how can they meet this moment and really push back against what I think a lot of people see is an un-American bent in this country?

Lamb: I think for me, I take a lot of the inspiration from the people that are showing up to all these events I’ve been talking about. Because some of them are in counties that Donald Trump won, like 80/20 or 75/25.

And we’re not just having town halls in a room somewhere where no one can see you. Some of these things I go to, it’s people occupying the most prominent corner of their small town with some pretty graphic signs about Trump, everything that’s going on. And they’re not afraid to take the slings and arrows in their own community that comes with that, because they’re so dedicated to what’s going on.

And I think I mentioned this earlier, but I’m seeing more of that now than I did in the 2018 cycle. So it tells me there’s a lot of enthusiasm and energy, maybe even more than we had in the past. It just needs to be channeled the right way.

When it comes to hope, I think it was St. Thomas Aquinas who defined hope as having to do with a difficult but possible future good. And I think we should just acknowledge that coming back from where we are right now is going to be difficult. Things aren’t just going to magically swing back in the other direction.

But for anyone that remembers how I came onto the scene, I ran in a congressional district in 2018 that was supposed to be impossible to win. It wasn’t even on the swing district map. Trump had won it by 19, and no Democrat ran for it the time before I did.

So I just continued to rely on that experience to say an enormous number of people changed their mind about this guy really quickly. Or even if they didn’t change their mind about him, their minds were open to someone like me at the same time. And I think that remains true based on every interaction I have with people out there.

Seeberger: Conor Lamb, thanks so much for joining us on the pod.

Lamb: Appreciate you having me. Thanks.

[Musical transition]

Seeberger: All right folks, that’s going to do it for us this week. Please go back and check out previous episodes. But here to break down big sporting events and sporting news over the course of the last week is our senior producer, Kelly McCoy. Senior producer, supervising producer?

Kelly McCoy: Supervising.

Seeberger: Supervising. It’s great to have a supervisor, folks.

McCoy: Tomato, tomato.

Seeberger: Yes. So, Kelly—

McCoy: Sports girlie over here.

Seeberger: It was the first week of NFL season this past week. Are you doing fantasy? Do you have a team that you root for?

McCoy: So, I do have a team.

Seeberger: OK.

McCoy: I am a NoVa girly, so I feel like, per my upbringing, I have to root for the Commanders, which is a much more fun affair now that one Mr. Snyder is long gone and the team is looking significantly better than it has been across the past few decades. Got a win in our bag this past weekend, which I know not everyone at this table unfortunately, Colin, can say.

Seeberger: OK, that was salt in the wound. I actually am not sure what I’m more bitter over. Is it the fact that the Cowboys lost 24–22 to the Philadelphia Eagles? Or is it the fact that you no longer have Dan Snyder and unfortunately, I am cursed with Jerry Jones, who will probably be cursing this franchise even after he’s no longer with us? It’s painful, Kelly.

McCoy: So here’s what I think will bring us together. We miss one Daniella Gibbs Léger dearly, but we can both take solace in the fact that the Giants lost—

Seeberger: That is true.

McCoy: —this past Sunday.

Seeberger: That is true.

McCoy: And we assume that she’s still listening to this podcast, and I know she is relishing in the opportunity to not have a microphone and offer her what would be traditional smackdown about the Giants.

Seeberger: Oh, she most certainly is. And yeah, we hate that she doesn’t have the opportunity to—

McCoy: Terrible.

Seeberger: —weigh in here.

McCoy: Awful.

Seeberger: Sorry, Daniella. But that was, of course, not the only news that we got that’s been NFL adjacent over the course of the last week. We also have seen some reports that—

McCoy: Drumroll, please.

Seeberger: —one Ms. Taylor Swift may be a halftime show performer this year at the Super Bowl.

McCoy: Sorry, that may have popped our audio levels, so apologies for your ears.

Seeberger: You sound giddy.

McCoy: I’m so excited. So I assume that you have been following all the various little Easter eggs that she’s been dropping. She’s been talking a lot about sourdough as of late.

Seeberger: Of course.

McCoy: The mascot for the 49ers, which is the stadium where the Super Bowl will be, [is] Sourdough Sam. Lots of illusions to the city throughout past recent interviews that she’s done. And then, I think it was last week, [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell was asked about whether or not Taylor might perform in the Super Bowl, and he effectively suggested that it’s under consideration. I think I’ve seen that her team is allegedly mulling it over.

I would love nothing more than a “Life of a Showgirl”-era Super Bowl performance. Words don’t even describe how giddy I am over the prospect.

Seeberger: I mean, it is the ultimate act for a showgirl.

McCoy: Right?

Seeberger: So we will be keeping tabs on that most important news. We are also now less than a month from release of the new Taylor Swift album. So come back, listen to our episodes. We will keep you posted on our reviews of the album as well as our football takes.

I’m hoping that the Cowboys can pull it together here. I can’t do another season like last year. I’ve got to say, I was decently impressed. We didn’t get a W there, but I was decently impressed with last week. Also Brian Schottenheimer—our new coach, who is juggling both offensive play calling and being a head coach—honestly did a little bit better than I expected him to do. But there’s a lot of games still left to play. So we’ll see what happens. OK.

All right, folks. With that, that’s going to do it for us. I hope you are not licking your wounds after a rough start to the NFL season and are having a great last few weeks of summer. We will talk to you next week.

McCoy: Go Commanders.

[Musical transition]

Seeberger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Colin Seeberger. Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer. Mishka Espey is our booking producer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.

You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify,  Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Producers

Colin Seeberger

Senior Adviser, Communications

Kelly McCoy

Senior Director of Broadcast Communications

Mishka Espey

Associate Director, Media Relations

Muggs Leone

Executive Assistant

Video producers

Hai-Lam Phan

Senior Director, Creative

Olivia Mowry

Video Producer

Toni Pandolfo

Video Producer, Production

Department

Communications

Explore The Series

Politics. Policy. Progress. All under one big tent. Produced by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, “The Tent” is an award-winning weekly news and politics podcast hosted by Colin Seeberger. Listen each Thursday for episodes exploring the stories that matter to progressives.

Previous
Next