We Polled 1,417 Americans About Sports, Politics and Everything in Between

Is LeBron a better role model than Trump? Are the attacks on trans athletes working? And could Stephen A. Smith stop Democrats from taking back the White House? Pablo teams up with Tim Miller and Sam Stein of The Bulwark for a survey of "the sports election" — and some eye-opening data about furries. • Read more takeaways from our poll at The Bulwark https://www.thebulwark.com/p/new-poll-bulwark-pablo-torre-finds-out-survey-americans-politics-sports-masculinity-betting • Subscribe to The Bulwark Daily https://pod.link/1447684472 • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut • Full poll results from YouGov https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/The_Bulwark_x_Pablo_Torre_Finds_Out_poll_results.pdf ytghn (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Stephen A., no [bleep] way.

• 0:12Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:17Speaker 02

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• 0:52Speaker 03

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• 1:24Pablo Torre?

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• 2:08Pablo Torre?

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• 2:32Pablo Torre?

  What is Tim Miller furiously typing right now?

• 2:37Speaker 04

  I like just a million things.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Who are you angry at?

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Are you guys ready for me?

• 2:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43Pablo Torre?

  We're podcasting right now.

• 2:44Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry. It sounds multitasking.

• 2:50Pablo Torre?

  So you may have noticed that we take finding out extremely seriously on this program, but that sometimes, especially, say, the week before the pivotal midterm elections here in the United States, good information can be hard to come by.

• 3:08Pablo Torre?

  And so for this episode, we decided to draft two sports fans as part of a particularly ambitious political project. And The Bulwark's Tim Miller, in case you haven't seen him on PTFO before, is both an unhinged Denver Nuggets fan and also a former Republican operative who helped run presidential campaigns on the ground for the likes of John McCain and Jeb Bush, only to eventually realize that his future was in independent media.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  So The Bulwark started as Never Trumper Ex-Republican Commentary Outlet, and, you know, we started to see some success on YouTube. And my old buddy Sam calls me, and he's like, "You know, I think we could make this a real successful news operation instead of, you know, just you farting out your thoughts."

• 3:55Pablo Torre?

  And as for that aforementioned Sam, now The Bulwark's managing editor, you may remember him from his previous life as a White House correspondent.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Where's Sam?

• 4:08Speaker 05

  Here. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm from Connecticut, like, right on, sort of on the dividing line. So I'm Red Sox, New York Giants of all [bleep] teams. But a big UConn Huskies basketball is my pride and joy.

• 4:23Pablo Torre?

  Sam, you and our Slack channel...

• 4:25Speaker 05

  Oh, I love it.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  I was honored to be in the Pablo Torre Slack channel. I was hoping that somebody would accidentally put something in on one of your other investigations in there, and I could get a little heads up.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was hoping for that, too.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  You might be looking into that LeBron fanatic stuff, you know?

• 4:39Pablo Torre?

  And we will get into LeBron later in this episode, I promise. But what you should know is that the bipartisan project that all of us have been working on together on Slack is something considerably more ambitious. I do want to just wave the stack of papers in front of everything here, because we don't settle for mere theory and takes on this show, as you guys both are aware. And we also, at any given opportunity, want information and evidence and data.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 5:09Pablo Torre?

  And the theory of why The Bulwark and PTFO have sort of, for this collaborative effort, join newsrooms for a second is because, of course, I believe that politics is downstream of culture, and culture is dominated by sports. This election, you may reasonably argue, is a bit of a sports election.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  Poll show: Republican former NFL sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya does appear to be gaining some serious ground. Former MLB players Mark Tishare and former NFL kicker Jay Feely, why are they running for office? Texas Senate race. Democrat James Tellerico is taking a page

• 5:48Speaker 01

  from the Friday Night Lights playbook. We are in the fourth quarter. It's time to leave it all on the field. We're gonna get some wonderful people elected. This is Iron Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson, he came to our last round. And a guy named Jake Paul. His name is Todd Gurley, and everybody knows. We like Sophie Cunningham. Ohio tends to like football.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Make fun of me on Buckeye Football. All you need, so long as we get out there and make Mike Rogers the next senator from the great state of Michigan. Alabama Republican senator and gubernatorial nominee Tommy Tuberville. Before he was elected to the Senate, he was a college football coach. Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community.

• 6:35Pablo Torre?

  And so if you're asking yourself, in this stack of papers, did PTFO and The Bulwark spend the last few weeks conducting and analyzing a bipartisan poll of 1,417 American adults with the experts at YouGov? Shout out to YouGov. Asking 42 custom questions, one of which is about furries?

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Can I just say, you can sometimes learn serious things from silly questions.

• 7:14Pablo Torre?

  I just think it's really important to explain for people who aren't familiar with the furry community why former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville was so entranced by the premise. Do you guys have a way of explaining furries to people? Or do you want me to read from Merriam-Webster and the dictionary?

• 7:30Speaker 04

  I think it's part of the...

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Tim can handle that, yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's part of the LGBTQIA+ community. That one is for me.

• 7:37Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the plus has an F in it, definitely.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, the plus, yeah. The F kind of fits in the plus category. And the furries are people that get dressed up into costumes. I think most people wear pup masks and little puppy tails. And then, you know, you hang out together. You dance, you frolic. And then, there's some sexual stuff that happens between the furries. And sometimes, it's a human with a furry.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  And then you go fly the airplane the next day, right?

• 8:14Speaker 04

  I don't know about the pilot.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Oh, you don't? You're part of the cover-up?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:19Pablo Torre?

  Who amongst us doesn't at some point consider, what would it be like to be an anthropomorphic animal or creature attending perhaps a convention of like-minded individuals?

• 8:28Speaker 05

  I, among us, have never thought that, but yeah.

• 8:31Pablo Torre?

  The answer, of course, brings us to question number 42.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville recently said...

• 8:37Speaker 06

  Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  If accurate, do you think this would be a good thing, a bad thing? Neither a good thing or a bad thing? And not sure?

• 8:54Pablo Torre?

  And Tim, America said?

• 8:57Speaker 04

  6% of patriotic Americans said it would be a good thing for the pilots to be furries. And God love you. 20% said it would be a bad thing. 42% of regular folks said neither a good thing or a bad thing. Don't care whether the pilot is interested in furry material. And 31% weren't sure how they felt about it.

• 9:21Pablo Torre?

  And so just to be very clear about this, that means that 73% of Americans we actually surveyed, I can't stress this enough, we did an actual poll, they remain open minded.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:33Pablo Torre?

  A super majority are open minded about furries, which remains very encouraging, even with the margin of error, as we go through this, of plus or minus 3.6 points.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  I want to talk to the 6%ers. I do. I'm curious.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Well, you're talking to one right now. I think it's great.

• 9:47Pablo Torre?

  But one of the things that we get to as we see these results is that, yeah, we have 100 plus pages of objective polling data. And there's also, for instance, Tim, this question.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Do you think that if a political candidate had the following background, it would make you more or less likely to vote for them?

• 10:06Pablo Torre?

  And the options here were a state legislator, a member of the military, a mayor, a business owner, a professional athlete, or a TV commentator. And Sam, the official top line poll analysis we received from the experts at YouGov suggested this.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  Athletes and TV commentators are the worst resumes for a candidate. And they're even bad among sports fans. 41% say being a professional athlete would make a candidate less likely to get their vote. And 43% say the same about being a TV commentator. I, that's tough for Michelle to say, I guess.

• 10:44Pablo Torre?

  It is just funny that we're living in the time of sports, but Americans are also just like, look, what the [bleep] man? Like, we don't actually want athletes and TV commentators. That's kind of interesting here to me, just off the top.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  It is, but sometimes there's, you know, revealed preferences versus stated preferences. And that's why it's interesting to do the research, to go through the polls, see what people want. And like, on the one hand, I think people want to be serious people, you know? And you see this across this poll. They like, they desire to see themselves as serious people. And then sometimes it doesn't turn out as much in real life. And I think that the thing that athletes have right now in our politics, and the reason why we're seeing so many of them, is because campaigns are all about being able to control the narrative, being able to get attention. And there's a connection with people. And so they're able to kind of get over that first hurdle. And so then we end up in this hellscape where we're in, where we have, you know, these minor celebrities taking over our political space, particularly from sports.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  That's, that's my take.

• 11:45Pablo Torre?

  The revealed preferences point, Sam, that Tim is raising, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from The Simpsons, in which Sideshow Bob says, "Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king."

• 12:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have to agree with Tim here, and Sideshow Bob.

• 12:06Pablo Torre?

  But the other part about being an athlete, of course, is that you get this credibility in terms of your manhood. This brings us, Tim, to the other question that we wanted to ask these 1,400 Americans or so earlier this month. Because I suppose part of the inspiration here was our secretary of, and I guess I will say it because he says it, our secretary of.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  You don't have to say it. You don't have to say it.

• 12:31Pablo Torre?

  No fanny, no fatties, no [bleep], no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. No fannies, he started to say, before realizing, no, we do want fannies, I guess.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, a difference, a difference in the administration on the topic of fannies.

• 12:47Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely, absolutely. The anus is a wedge issue in its own right.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  That's good.

• 12:54Pablo Torre?

  Sam, will you please read question number 40?

• 12:57Speaker 05

  How strong a role model do you think the following is?

• 13:01Pablo Torre?

  And Tim, if you look at the charts that we got back, in terms of how are the American male role model power rankings looking? This is, we're gonna rank this from least strong to strongest male role model here in our large bipartisan sample, we get.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  I was really excited about this question in particular because of how focused Pete Hegseth is. I was just, I was hoping that I'm not out of touch, you know? Because I look at Pete and see a guy in a lot of makeup with an obviously tiny penis. And I'm like, I hope that my fellow Americans do not see this as a strong male role model.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  This next Pablo Torre investigation.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, what we found, what we investigated was, it seems like the American people are with me, and at least most of that. The number nine, the lowest ranked person as far as being a strong male role model, was Bluey's dad, only 24% strong.

• 13:49Pablo Torre?

  I agree. Banded healer suffered from recognizability issues. 64% were not sure who that is. And to them, I say, be a better parent.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Eighth place, Pete Hegseth, eighth place, only 28% strong.

• 14:04Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, which is, again, a bipartisan sample, which is why this is all especially meaningful. But it continues.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Seventh place, Joe Rogan. So he just, he's like a five foot four man that just sits in a podcast studio and people see him as more manly than Pete Hegseth. That's notable. Gavin Newsom, number six, a better male role model than Pete Hegseth. Jon Stewart, fifth, also a better male role model than Pete Hegseth. Donald Trump finished fourth. 37% saw him as a strong male role model. And he came in right behind Mr. Taylor Swift himself, Travis Kelce, 42%. In the number two slot, there was a tie. The McConnaissance continues. Matthew McConaughey and LeBron James were tied for the second biggest male role models. And who might number one be, Pablo?

• 14:56Speaker 04

  There he is, Barack Hussein Obama. 59% see him as a strong male role model. But I do actually think this is pretty meaningful because the Trump and Hegseth administration have really tried to, you know, center a lot of their arguments on how, you know, they represent strong manhood and how they represent strength and that young boys should be looking out for them and that we want warfighters, we don't want fatties and [bleep]. And simultaneously to that, there was like a very long effort by Fox and folks, me, back when I was a Republican, to kind of make fun of Obama's manhood. You know, there's a picture of him on the bike where he looks a little effeminate and, you know, he's an arugula eater, like all that kind of stuff.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  So there's been like a decades long campaign by people on the right to position their leaders as, as the examples of strong men and the Democrats as these, being these weak girly men. And, and yet, the poll reveals like that campaign hasn't worked at all. So that's kind of encouraging.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would just add to that, it's not so much like, so we listed the numbers that showed them strong, but actually I thought it was kind of more interesting, the numbers that showed them to be not strong, in all seriousness. So like, Donald Trump actually had a 37% strong, but he had a 55% not strong. So that was like, that was the biggest delta actually of anybody. It was a negative 18 point delta. And then Hegseth was a negative, was a negative 11. He was the second worst of all, of all these people. So it's not so much that they failed to prove their point that manliness is, you know, no fatties, whatever it is.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  It's that people actually recoil at it and think it's, you know, antithetical to being a role model, which actually is a little nice, a little data point.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  It makes you think that the James Tarrico's gay campaign might not be as effective as they think.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:55Pablo Torre?

  Well, the questions of what does masculinity look like? It takes us to our next focus of the polling, which is the transgender athlete debate. Kamala's for they/them, President Trump is for you. They told me to shut up and swim. I don't support biological men playing women's sports. And boys should not play in girls' sports. How do you define socialism personally? I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls' sports. Where's freedom? I saw a man here as the largest human being I've ever, where the hell is freedom? All right, let's stand up, please. Look at this guy. He dreams of playing against women. He wants to.

• 17:40Pablo Torre?

  And so this is the culture war wedge issue of our time, perhaps. This specific topic, and what Trump there is referring to, of course, is former NBA center and recent would be WNBA finals attendee, Enos Kanter Freedom, who has seized upon the opportunity in ways that I think are beginning to be boring, but perhaps are born of a strategy that, of course, has been empirically proven by the far right at this point.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, but Enos is a loser. He tried to go to the game, he couldn't.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  He called security.

• 18:21Speaker 06

  Is the suite.

• 18:23Speaker 07

  Do you know everyone, every media that is going to hear about this, right?

• 18:28Speaker 06

  We understand that.

• 18:30Speaker 07

  Okay, well, guess what? I guess they have to drag me.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Like, oh, poor Karen Ennis. He, I guess in some ways he is becoming a Karen. Not a woman.

• 18:40Pablo Torre?

  A person for whom a private suite with security was not enough.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:44Pablo Torre?

  By the way, there in that very little case study is the difference between you can be there, you can even be protected and supported and catered to, but you're just not going to be on camera as much. And that is, that's the line beyond which it's unacceptable.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  I'm being silenced.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Totally.

• 19:01Pablo Torre?

  And so what we did here in our poll was we asked 1,400 plus American adults if they support or oppose allowing transgender student athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identity. This is rather than the sex they were assigned at birth. And Sam, what does our poll tell us here in terms of supporting trans athletes?

• 19:21Speaker 05

  So strongly support was 12%. Somewhat support is 11%. Somewhat oppose is 11% and strongly oppose is 51%.

• 19:32Pablo Torre?

  Tim, 62% oppose this, right? Which I just want to be very clear eyed about this. This validates exactly why Republicans and Enes Kanter and his associates, that's why they keep running the playbook, right?

• 19:46Speaker 04

  They see it as a winning issue and they're right. It's interesting in the montage you played, one of the ads that you highlighted was a Democrat, actually, is Annie Andrews running in South Carolina, talking about how she opposes allowing boys to play in girls' sports. And she's running for the Lindsey Graham seat that he's trying to bequeath to his sister Darlene Graham. We had her at our Bulwark event last week. And so even, you know, Democrats running in red states see kind of where the public is on this issue. There is a little bit of a countervailing element of this brewing though, that I think has been interesting. In Texas in particular, where they're trying to make this the central issue against Talarico, and it's not really sticking to them. And there's like, there's this viral

• 20:28Speaker 04

  post going around from a conservative poster on Reddit, talking about how like, my kid didn't even know what transgender was until you started playing this ad constantly during commercials of the Texas A&M game. And, you know, this thing has switched where Trump used it successfully against complex. It was like, it's just like, it feels like the left is really obsessed with this issue and I'm going to care about issues you care about. And now that has kind of flipped where you're in the situation where even conservative people in Texas are like, the only people talking about this are you guys, like the politicians, like the rest of us are concerned about, you know, cost of gas, the war, other stuff that's happening. And so while I don't think that the Democrats and kind of transgender

• 21:09Speaker 04

  sports activists are winning the argument, obviously, they may be kind of winning a broader battle.

• 21:15Pablo Torre?

  And so one thing I want to add is that we also asked David Montgomery, who was not unfortunately the Texans running back, who you may have drafted in fantasy football, but a senior data journalist with our pollsters at YouGov. And he observed that, look, empirically speaking, support for trans athletes, this specific category, it is tanking pretty much across the board.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  We've been asking this fairly regularly since 2022. There's always been more people who opposed transgender athletes being able to play on the, the team that matches their gender identity than who support it. But it's become less popular. Back in 2022, about 50% opposed and 30% support. And now overall, it's more like a 60/20 issue. Republicans are already almost all opposed to this, so there's not really any room for that line to move much. Democrats have become also slightly less supportive. What we've seen with independents is they've fallen from moderately opposed, sort of minus 25 or so, down to minus 40, minus 45, that neighborhood, which is very close to what Americans overall

• 22:21Speaker 07

  have done, sort of as it go independents, so goes the country to a certain extent.

• 22:25Pablo Torre?

  So the ongoing fascination, guys, as we are presented with data, which we do not argue with, is sort of like, how did we get here? And this brings us, Tim, to another poll question.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  What share of athletes currently competing in NCAA sports do you think identify as transgender?

• 22:46Pablo Torre?

  And the results of our survey, Sam, say what?

• 22:49Speaker 05

  This is, this is depressing. A combined 15% of Americans think more than 5% of athletes are transgender. Ridiculous.

• 23:00Pablo Torre?

  We got to translate the math here, right? So there are more than about half a million NCAA athletes. And so by this math, more than 5%, our sample thinks that there are at least approximately 27,500 trans student athletes in America. And for those not familiar, the reality, according to the 2024 testimony of NCAA President Charlie Baker before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was this.

• 23:28Speaker 07

  How many transgender athletes are you aware of? Less than 10.

• 23:34Pablo Torre?

  So just like the delta between 27,500 and less than 10, we wanted to actually just even further drill into this. And so we went to the NCAA and we asked a spokesperson to give us the best last available data. And this is what we were told, quote, "The NCAA's policies fully align with the Trump administration's 2025 executive order," end quote, which brings us to the fact that the number of student athletes currently competing in women's sports who identify as transgender is now effectively zero. The gulf between there are none of them anymore, according to the NCAA, effectively zero, which only

• 24:15Pablo Torre?

  3% of Americans said in our poll. The fact that that's reality and the politics are winning on the back of fiction.

• 24:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:26Pablo Torre?

  That's why we're here.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  It's crazy, man. Think about how much money this cycle will have gone to ads about trans sports in all these races. We're talking like, what, tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars spent litigating an issue that literally doesn't exist anymore and may decide the course of several races. It's wild [BLEEP].

• 24:49Speaker 04

  It also just shows like what the purpose of this was totally, you know, which is to win the culture war, which is, you know, to advance political power, right? It's like, the MAGA's don't have a ton of W's lately. Started one war, lost it. You know, gas prices are way up. Economy's bad. Trump's approval's down. People don't think he's manly. This was a W for them. Like, they started this culture war and the results of it is there aren't any transgender athletes in women's sports. They're spending more money on ads on this topic this cycle than in '24.

• 25:22Pablo Torre?

  Because the entire theory actually of this political position is we are losing. We are losing our scholarships. We're losing our girls to these, these boogeyman. We are victims. And if the victimhood actually is a blowout win for you, well, then that's not as animating from a turnout or a culture politics perspective. But look, I'll remind people here, we are also the podcast that did this whole episode about Riley Gaines, who, by the way, was in that montage somewhere, talking about being told to, quote, "shut up and swim," and her menacing slash trolling of Simone Biles. There's a lot more on this issue for you to get to if you're interested. But I want to now just keep it moving because

• 26:03Pablo Torre?

  when it comes to the question of trolling and the trans athlete debate, we asked another question.

• 26:09Speaker 05

  In August, former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom challenged transgender inclusion policies by declaring himself eligible for the WNBA. Do you approve or disapprove of Freedom's, what do we have to call him then, of Freedom's actions?

• 26:25Pablo Torre?

  To which our otherwise, again, majority anti-trans inclusion sample, Tim, said this.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  30% approve of Enes Kanter's troll, 47% disapprove. Imagine like how stupid and pathetic your gambit has to be to take a sample of people where there is, where there is like a plus 50% agree with you.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Plus 60.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  On the merits of the issue. And then you engage in a troll to appeal to those people and they look at you and you seem so pathetic and annoying that by a 17% margin, the people who agree with you on the issue say that your gambit is stupid and you should go away. And that is what has happened to Enes Kanter. He's managed to turn off like a plurality of the country that agrees with his stated position. And I salute him for that.

• 27:23Pablo Torre?

  A true bipartisan issue is that Enes Kanter.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  And Kanter being annoying.

• 27:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, he's kind of a loser. Dude, kind of sucks.

• 27:40Pablo Torre?

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• 28:23Pablo Torre?

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• 29:08Pablo Torre?

  You don't have to sacrifice looks for warmth. It'll become the jacket you grab every time you leave your house. And with ski season almost here, make sure to gear up now the way the locals do. Go to stio.com/ptfo for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash P-T-F-O. Stio.com slash P-T-F-O. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Pablo Torre Finds Out is a show built around going down the rabbit hole. It is the thing that is in our logo, if you want to look very closely. But there is one place where I can go to find people who have already taken that plunge. And that place would be the Reddit app.

• 29:50Pablo Torre?

  Whether it's r/sports, r/television, r/askreddit, or any of the thousands of other subreddits, there is always a topic that feels like it's catered to my interests. And it's actually super informative. It really is the first place to go when you have a random question or interest and want to read or exchange ideas with other like-minded people. One useful answer on a thread tends to attract more context as fans compare notes and challenge assumptions and add the missing piece. It is a great place to start with, of course, important claims still deserving of verification. And that's why I turned to my favorite subreddit, and no, I'm not going to say r/pablo torre finds out, although shout out to everybody who's on there.

• 30:32Pablo Torre?

  My favorite subreddit is r/wales. You just go on there and people are whale watching. It's great. Because when your question goes beyond the game, Reddit is where the people who have been there have the answers. Download the Reddit app today. And do not forget to follow r/pablo torre finds out.

• 30:56Pablo Torre?

  So I want to explain that we also didn't just poll Americans about, like, politics, sports stuff. We also asked them about sports. For instance, I'd like to just formally apologize to the Brewers and the Rays, but it's very clear that football, by far, this is the least shocking result, is obviously America's favorite sport. This according to our bipartisan poll of the 1,400-plus adults that we gathered information from. Soccer and basketball, in that order, by the way, they actually lead among 18- to 29-year-olds?

• 31:26Speaker 05

  That feels right.

• 31:27Pablo Torre?

  But another thing you may have felt--

• 31:29Speaker 04

  You guys, [bleep] okay, I'm sorry. You, this is where my former Republican needs to come in. You libs have been trying to force soccer down our throats for decades now.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  I don't--

• 31:40Speaker 04

  The Pablo Torres of the world are like, "The next generation's gonna love soccer." Well, here we are. We're all 44 now, and soccer's still in fourth place. Okay, so like, let's just be real, all right?

• 31:53Pablo Torre?

  I will point out that among conservatives, Tim, among conservatives, we did get some interesting data about what their other favorite sports are after football.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Second place was baseball. Third place was checking out John Husted's ass. And fourth place was basketball, 32%.

• 32:12Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  It's really just baseball and basketball.

• 32:14Pablo Torre?

  Baseball and basketball, in that order. And among the libs, Sam--

• 32:19Speaker 05

  We got basketball at 38% and baseball at 33%.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  A little bit surprised, I guess.

• 32:26Pablo Torre?

  Conservatives like baseball more than basketball. Libs like basketball more than baseball. I think this all feels like about what you might expect. That kind of tracks. But in terms of the individual athletes that Americans love, this is where I want to get into some of the granular data. Because for this big bipartisan sample that we have, we presented a handpicked group of 16 superstars across a range of sports and ideologies as quote-unquote "favorable." And so here is a list, starting with the least to most popular in our top five.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  Tiger Woods.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Hmm, that's tough.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Brought it on himself.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Number four was Travis Kelsey.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Number three was Patrick Mahomes.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  And second place, we had a three-way tie between Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Katelyn Clark.

• 33:15Pablo Torre?

  Which is pretty astonishing, given where women's basketball used to be.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:20Pablo Torre?

  But now, perhaps as eye-opening, is that the number-one most-liked athlete in America, Sam, is--

• 33:28Speaker 05

  Simone Biles. That actually did surprise me.

• 33:31Pablo Torre?

  And I'm sure was dismaying to the aforementioned Riley Gaines.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  It's interesting because this contrast-- can I flag somebody that did not even finish in the top five? My girl Angel Reese, Bayou Barbie.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  She was like, had a really randomly very high unfavorable, at 21%. And I went into the cross tabs to figure out what was happening there.

• 33:56Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  And you'll be not surprised to find out that among Trump 2024 voters, she has a 24% very unfavorable, and only a 5% very favorable. And so we can see what's driving that there. Seems like racism to me. But, you know, Simone Biles, I think was maybe able to overcome that with her Olympic gold and maybe after Angel Reese wins the WNBA championship.

• 34:22Pablo Torre?

  Is she paying you to run her Super PAC? Or is that just a volunteer position for you?

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Dude, I want [bleep] justice for Angel. Like, this is crazy. Like, there's all these Twitter posts about her missing layups, and now I get this poll back, and it's like, she's less popular than Tiger? It's like, what? And Tiger's out there drunk-driving all over the place, you know, like, screwing around and his wife. Why is Angel unpopular? Katelyn Clark, last I checked, just like me, no rings. Angel has a college championship ring. She is now up, as we tape this today, to get a WNBA championship ring. And we've got all these [bleep] rednecks who are like, "Don't watch WNBA." "Oh, like that, oh, like that Angel Reese." I was just like, [bleep] that. Justice for Angel, right now. Next year when we do this, I want to see her skyrocketing.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Chart go up for Angel.

• 35:13Pablo Torre?

  Sam, I do want to dig into the cross tabs, though, to Tim's overall grievance, because--

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:19Pablo Torre?

  Let's break them out among libs and conservatives, right? So among the liberals, here are the top five favorite athletes.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  I've been going five to one. We got Katelyn Clark. This is just among the libs. Then Travis Kelsey.

• 35:32Pablo Torre?

  Which is, by the way, this is just Taylor Swift's luxury box so far. Incidentally, it's number five and number four.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. Then we got Steph at number three. And we got Bron at number two. And then Simone Biles again at number one. This is just among the libs.

• 35:45Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and so among conservatives, the top five most favorable athletes are the following.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Number five is a tie between Simone Biles and Aaron Rodgers. Number four is Sophie Cunningham.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  Naturally.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Which, I mean, is not even on a team right now in the WNBA.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  Naturally.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  I challenge the people that offered a positive view of Sophie Cunningham to name another women's basketball player besides Katelyn Clark and Sophie Cunningham. Like, name a team besides the Fever. Anyway, whatever. Number three is me and Sam and Pablo's old friend, Phil Mickelson, Lefty. All Lefty had to do to get the cons to like him was sign up with Saudi Arabia and get fully on board with Sharia law.

• 36:28Pablo Torre?

  And send a group chat message that got leaked to me and Sam Cobbleman, which read, quote, "Big Daddy Trump ready to swing his 14-inch [bleep] in front of Newsom's face," end quote. But I digress, that's a separate episode.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  So there you go. That's how Phil Mickelson got--

• 36:44Speaker 05

  That's how you get a good approval.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Fantasizing that Donald Trump's [bleep] is 11 inches longer than it really is. Number two--

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Patrick Mahomes ties with Kyle Busch.

• 36:57Pablo Torre?

  The late, great NASCAR legend.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Number one favorite athlete among the conservatives. Not LeBron, not Steph, Katelyn Clark.

• 37:06Pablo Torre?

  But Sam, you were quick to circle a particular cross tab on this subject in the Slack channel we're in. What does this one say?

• 37:15Speaker 05

  Sophie Cunningham is favorably among Trump voters, somewhat favorable 16%, very favorable 39%, which is like off the charts if you think about it. They just love her.

• 37:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and again, she had talked about trans inclusion. That was the ESPN quote that helped sort of skyrocket her culture war stuff.

• 37:34Speaker 05

  But there was another thing I put in that Slack channel that I don't want to gloss over because I take some joy in it.

• 37:39Pablo Torre?

  Which, which, which one?

• 37:41Speaker 05

  Bryson DeChambeau.

• 37:42Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  Can we talk about Bryson?

• 37:44Pablo Torre?

  What did the data say about Bryson?

• 37:46Speaker 05

  Well, all I cared about was how few people actually knew who he was. He was the least known athlete of anyone we polled. 72% were like, who is this guy? He's a YouTube sensation. He hits golf balls over his house, tries to make hole in ones, and yet no one knows who Bryson is.

• 38:01Pablo Torre?

  Even though Saudi Arabia paid him $125 million.

• 38:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:06Pablo Torre?

  Apparently in June of 2022.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  Poor guy.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Sophie thing, I'll offer people a silver lining about the Sophie positivity. It really drives home how much of a stupid loser Enes Kanter is. Ostensibly Sophie and Enes have been arguing about the same thing, and they've been centering the same issue as part of their brand. And for Sophie, it has yielded high positivity.

• 38:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  And for Enes, it has yielded negative 17 approvals and widespread mockery.

• 38:36Pablo Torre?

  It is a remarkable continuing pantsing of Enes Kanter's cultural impact that we are really finding out about today. But I now want to get to our gambling section. Because these next two questions.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  This was devastating.

• 38:51Pablo Torre?

  I think this was as eye opening as anything among the data from our 2026 State of the American Sports Fed survey polling 1,400 people, bipartisan sample. Because this was our question.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  Do you think legalized gambling is having a positive or negative impact on sports?

• 39:08Speaker 04

  7% says it had a positive impact on sports. 34% say gambling's had neither positive nor negative impact on sports. 44% say it's had a negative impact. So 37% more people say that gambling's had a negative impact on sports than positive.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  What's the case for positive?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Sure, easy, easy.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  Like, some play the case. Go for it.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Me in college, okay, nothing to do, Tuesday night, don't want to study, don't want to study, you turn on ESPN and it's like Hofstra versus Dartmouth. And I'm like, [BLEEP] if I just throw 20 bucks on this right now and have two beers, this is a great evening. Like, this is a game I couldn't care about otherwise, and now I'm having a good time and I've got some great memories gambling on that when my daughter was born. You know, you're staying up all night and I want to let my husband sleep. So I would go down, when it was my turn to do the overnight feedings, we'd go downstairs to the living room. She was born in January, so it was Australian Open. Throw some cash

• 40:10Speaker 04

  on one side or the other, who cares? And now I'm locked in. Now I'm staying up. Now it's, now I'm not even tired the next day. Like, my blood, my blood's pumping. So I'm, just like I'm the 6%, I want a free pilot. I'm on the 7%, gambling has helped sports. That's just me.

• 40:27Pablo Torre?

  It is also interesting to note that among gamblers and hardcore sports fans like Tim Miller, apparently, the impact among that sample of legal sports gambling does rate as a bit more neutral than that negative.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're telling me gamblers are supportive of gambling? Whoa, holy [BLEEP]. Okay, wow. That's the lead of the poll right there.

• 40:48Pablo Torre?

  But according to our pollsters at YouGov, there is no demographic in our survey in which more than 25% of respondents think that legalized gambling is having a positive impact on sports.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  You gotta keep going down to different demographics. Like, if you just get down to like.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  You gotta get to the gay Norlans.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  Sports fans in New Orleans.

• 41:13Pablo Torre?

  Who's currently podcasting this very second. You'll get.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  100% support.

• 41:19Pablo Torre?

  Which brought us, though, to this follow-up question.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  How often do you think active professional athletes alter the way they play to help sports gamblers win bets? We did not cue them up with the name Terry Rozier, unfortunately. So actually, that made it cleaner as a question.

• 41:34Pablo Torre?

  By the way, this is, in some sense, the question of the utmost concern to everybody drinking from the trough of gambling, right? If you're a league, if you're a team, if you're an executive, if you're a coach, if you're a broadcaster, this is the thing that you're trying and hoping and praying doesn't undermine your business, which is otherwise, when it's not gambling centric, is integrity centric.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:03Pablo Torre?

  And here, Tim, were the results.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  4% say they never alter the way they play because of gambling. 20% say they rarely alter the way they play. 37% say athletes sometimes alter the way they play because of gambling interests. 14% say they do it often. So doing quick math here, that's over 51% of majority say that athletes sometimes or often alter the way they play because of gambling. Wow.

• 42:28Pablo Torre?

  I mean, a majority of Americans thinking that pro athletes are manipulating games for gambling reasons, every commissioner should be turning in their grave. Like, that's [BLEEP] wild, man.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  Well, I assume most of the commissioners are alive.

• 42:45Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  So, you know, turning in their office.

• 42:47Pablo Torre?

  I don't want to be so dramatic, but like, this is jarring to me. And I'm cynical. I'm a cynical guy. And the fact that a majority of Americans think this now already, I mean, this is a big [BLEEP] deal, in my view.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  It's crazy because basically what we're saying is that the majority of Americans think that the sporting events that they're watching are being subtly impacted by athletes who are betting on the games. And then those Americans are still betting on the games. They're just betting.

• 43:18Pablo Torre?

  That is a key connective piece of logic here.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  I can find this, like, what was kind of formative for us, like millennials, right? Is the steroid stuff in baseball, you know?

• 43:27Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  And like, why did that end up becoming a big crisis, right? Because you eventually end up a point where you like can't disbelieve your lying eyes, you know? It's like Barry Bonds' head is huge. You know what I mean? It's just like, this is crazy. Like, something is happening. And so like there, it feels like they're kind of on the precipice of that right now with gambling, right? Where it's like, people are cool with it or fine with it now. Maybe they don't like elements of it, but they're still watching. But it's like, if it tips over into a place where that many people think the games are being manipulated or rigged, I do think it's a real threat to the businesses.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's worse. It's worse because at least with the steroid thing, they were injecting themselves for the purposes of doing better and winning.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 44:09Speaker 05

  And this one, they might just be throwing the games. And that's.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Or not getting rebounds or whatever. Cause I, cause I'm under three, you know? I wanted, I wanted to get under the three rebound.

• 44:19Speaker 05

  Over/under, yeah.

• 44:20Pablo Torre?

  The idea that you can't take incompetence at face value anymore. But look, so just in case you're wondering, right? Well, maybe this is just speculation from non-sports fans who don't really know the games, and they're just assuming all of this stuff is happening, moral panic stuff, blah, blah, blah. You should know that this number gets even higher among gamblers and sports fans.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Wow, wow.

• 44:42Pablo Torre?

  So those paying attention are even more cynical or skeptical.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  That's meaningful, actually, because it doesn't really matter if some good E2 shoes person that does it, that calls it sportball thinks they're cheating, right? Like, that doesn't matter to their business, really, right? And so like, that, that makes it more meaningful, for sure.

• 45:02Pablo Torre?

  I should say, for the record, that 25% of the total sample, they said they're not sure, which means that there is a swing vote possibility here. We're at this moment in history in which, by the way, the NBA, just last week, they and the big betting companies all agreed to restrict, quote, "low likelihood, high payout bets." This is including those in the genre, in part, that have some of these NBA players headed toward federal trial here in New York, which we've also separately been investigating. So I should point out as well, for comprehensiveness's sake, when we crunch the cross tabs on the actual number of survey respondents in the South who self-identified as gay men, there are nine of them. 80% think gambling is bad.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  Come on, that cannot be real. You actually pulled that cross tab out of your ass? Come on.

• 45:54Pablo Torre?

  We are a data-driven show. We rely on empirical evidence.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  I'm in the minority.

• 45:58Pablo Torre?

  And speaking of investigating, we also just crunched the cross tabs on this. Among the two survey respondents out of more than 1,400 who live in the South, who self-identified as gay men, and who also specifically know who Tim Miller is, 100% think that gambling is bad.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Well, I could win those two over. That's a little bit of a teaser.

• 46:33Speaker 07

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• 47:03Pablo Torre?

  33 presidents.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I called the president at 4:30 in the morning, and he answered.

• 47:07Pablo Torre?

  Seven decades in space.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  We want to see what's beyond the next star.

• 47:11Pablo Torre?

  60 Super Sundays.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  They were probably the best team in the league every single year.

• 47:14Pablo Torre?

  53,500 puzzles.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  I use a different starting word every day.

• 47:19Pablo Torre?

  25,000 recipes.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  And I love a one-pan recipe because I don't love washing pans.

• 47:24Pablo Torre?

  The New York Times, celebrating 175 years of helping you understand the world. Subscribe now for a special offer at nytimes.com/subscribe.

• 47:42Pablo Torre?

  You may recall that one of the very high-level findings we got from our pollsters at YouGov in this 2026 Bulwark/PTFO survey of the American sports fan was this.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  Athletes and TV commentators are the worst resumes for a candidate, and they're even bad among sports fans.

• 47:59Pablo Torre?

  Right. And so that is our setup for the derby that is the vice presidential nominee race. And so, look, I want to start first with the incumbent party here.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Seventh place for the person that Republicans or Republican leading independents would be most excited for as a VP candidate was Pat McAfee. And to say he was in seventh place a little bit overstates it, since 0% were excited about him. We could not find a single American that was excited about Pat McAfee being the vice president.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  Three-way tie for sixth place. This was all at 4% excited. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Aaron Rodgers, who did score high, but again, sports figures not exactly lighting up politically. And our girl, Sophie Cunningham. Only 4% would be excited if she were the VP.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  In fifth place, we had Dana White. People were more excited about him than Aaron Rodgers.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  And in fourth place, we had Nikki Haley.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Third place, Joe Rogan.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  The second place, he'd have to step down from the boards of two major betting markets to do this, but, or maybe not, maybe he could just do it all at the same time. Donald Trump Jr. at 24% excited to be the running mate.

• 49:15Pablo Torre?

  Man.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  That's pretty alarming.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  I'm not, it's expected. That is totally expected for me. I'm surprised not to hire.

• 49:22Pablo Torre?

  Man, I had the under on that one, admittedly.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  The person that the Republicans were the most excited about to be VP was Big Ear Little Marco.

• 49:31Pablo Torre?

  45% excited about Marco Rubio, blowing out Don Jr. at 24%. Okay. As for the Dems, their VP power rankings, drawn again from our handpicked list of running mates. Who do we have bringing up the rear, Sam?

• 49:46Speaker 05

  For the Democrats, right now, seventh place is a tie at 3% excited between Steve Kerr and my guy, Charles Barkley.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Dang, I thought Chuck might be a good Chuck. You know, I thought he might be, the Dems might be interested in him as a VP. No, sixth in the power rankings was another tie. 7% were excited about Matthew McConaughey or Stephen A. Smith.

• 50:10Pablo Torre?

  Number five?

• 50:11Speaker 05

  We got Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Number four, Jon Stewart.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Number three, Gretchen Whitmer, the retiring governor of Michigan.

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Above Gretchen Whitmer.

• 50:23Pablo Torre?

  Wow.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  Friend of the show, number two in the VP power rankings, Mark Cuban, who was asked for paperwork by the Harris campaign, I can tell you.

• 50:34Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  They did vet him. We discussed this on the Bulwark Podcast a while back, so who knows? Mark Cuban, number two.

• 50:42Pablo Torre?

  Yep. And the top VP spot goes to, yeah, yet another former podcast guest of PTFO, but also of you guys. Sam?

• 50:51Speaker 05

  It would be Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Wow.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  Makes sense. Astronaut. It's a very, he has a very VP kind of man.

• 51:01Speaker 05

  He does, I guess, yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  He kind of feels like a Dick Cheney good wolf. You know, they're both bald, you know, both kind of military guys.

• 51:08Speaker 05

  I don't think an astronaut is military for what it's worth, but yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Whatever.

• 51:12Pablo Torre?

  Wow. Oh, okay. Now, I hadn't thought about this debate.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  I didn't want, I don't want to throw NASA under the bus.

• 51:16Pablo Torre?

  Another poll question. Do you consider astronauts members of the military? Do you thank an astronaut for their service? Sam Stein says no, and that is anti-American.

• 51:26Speaker 05

  Look, I watched, what was the Bruce Willis movie where they had to go and blow up the asteroid?

• 51:31Pablo Torre?

  Armageddon?

• 51:31Speaker 05

  Armageddon, yeah. Okay, so maybe I should take it back. Sorry.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, take it back.

• 51:35Pablo Torre?

  I should clarify that Mark Kelly was also in the Navy for like a quarter century.

• 51:40Speaker 05

  Okay, okay, I take it back.

• 51:41Pablo Torre?

  All these things are relevant, perhaps, to his number one poll position. But here's the thing. We also asked Democrats, which of these handpicked fantasy draft vice presidential candidates would not be acceptable? Okay? And the biggest loser, clearly, according to our polling, Tim, was who?

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Oh, devastating. I was really hoping it was going to be SAS. No, Charles Barkley, 41% unacceptable.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  I find this number to be, like, appalling. How could you not like Chuck? He's just, like, universally loved.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  How could you not want him to be the vice president?

• 52:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:17Pablo Torre?

  Well, there is someone else who found this number appalling, according to our reporting, and I'd like to hear from him now.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Okay, Pablo, you know I got love for you. First of all, Matthew McConaughey is one of my favorite people. I think he'll make a great VP. I love Jon Stewart. I think he'll make a great VP. I got a lot of respect for Steve Kerr. He'll make a great VP. Stephen A., no [bleep] way.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  I mean, if everyone could watch that video, you could see him, you could see him going up in the polls. I think he's got room to grow.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  Clearly.

• 52:58Pablo Torre?

  As Charles is also saying.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  And as for me, I'm not looking for another job.

• 53:03Pablo Torre?

  He's not looking for another job himself. That is Charles's official position, if you're wondering, is Charles Barkley running? And if you're just curious, because we also asked Charles for his own personal power rankings for a celebrity vice president, he then provided some more data.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Matthew McConaughey, Jon Stewart, Steve Kerr, and no [bleep] way Stephen A. Smith.

• 53:27Pablo Torre?

  Very clear.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  I don't know how I feel about Stephen A.

• 53:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, we got to do some more polling on that question. But look, guys, we hear Pablo Torre finds out on the Bulwark, of course, and the effort to do yet more polling. What we did was ask 1,400-plus Americans about the 2028 presidential election. And what we found is that in head-to-head matchups, J.D. Vance, who was last seen outside an NFL locker room getting, we counted one dap from the entire Cincinnati Bengals roster, is losing to Gavin Newsom, AOC, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, each head-to-head. But if

• 54:18Pablo Torre?

  you add an independent to the race, like, for instance, Stephen A. Smith. I'm a registered independent because I don't trust either side. What happens? Tim?

• 54:27Speaker 04

  Some alarming things happen. Gavin Newsom still leads over J.D. Vance, with Stephen A. Smith coming in at just 6% of the vote. In the hypothetical with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's now a tie, so Stephen A. would be a spoiler for AOC, 35, 35 to 6. And in a race with Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Pete would go down to 34%, J.D. would stay at 35%, and Stephen A. would take 7% of the vote. That would obviously be a devastating result for millennial homosexuals, for the country, couches.

• 55:10Pablo Torre?

  It does leave us, though, with one more sports candidate here. The one non-political creature who happened to perform the highest in our vice presidential survey.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  Who would you be more likely to vote for in the 2028 presidential election if the candidates were Mark Cuban, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican?

• 55:29Pablo Torre?

  And the former Dallas Mavericks owner slash PTFO frenemy, Mark Cuban, performs how?

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Cuban mogs the [bleep] out of J.D. Vance. Cuban, 39, J.D. Vance, 34. Cuban is winning by five, significantly better than the traditional politicians.

• 55:47Pablo Torre?

  Again, plus or minus, 3.6 percentage points is the margin of error, but...

• 55:51Speaker 05

  Data's data.

• 55:52Pablo Torre?

  And when you add in the independent candidates, Stephen A. Smith, Cuban as a Democrat, he does tie with Vance, for the record here.

• 56:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, but this is before Chuck goes harsh negative on Stephen A. in the campaign, right?

• 56:06Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 56:06Speaker 05

  Chuck's gonna put a super PAC together and just take down Stephen A.

• 56:11Pablo Torre?

  Now, when I requested comment from Mark Cuban about the results of our very serious polling, and whether he would actually consider running for president in 2028, he said this. Tim?

• 56:23Speaker 04

  No chance. My family would disown me.

• 56:27Pablo Torre?

  Looking at the cross tabs, again, by the way, in the YouGov software here, it does appear that the favorability ratings for Mark Cuban are pretty evenly split among demographics. And so there's just a lot I think we can learn from all of our research.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  I didn't ask him for... You're a real journalist, investigative journalist, so you talked to Mark. He knows it's on the record. Mark and I DM'd on this as well. I did not ask him if it was on the record, so I'm not gonna share everything. I'll just say, he was pretty adamant that he thinks a door would be open for him in the Republican primary.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:02Pablo Torre?

  Oh!

• 57:04Speaker 04

  I don't concur.

• 57:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could not.

• 57:07Speaker 04

  The data does not concur, but while Mark said that his family would disown him, and I didn't, you know, and again, I didn't put it on the side about whether he would. We were speaking more in a hypothetical term, but he saw the lane through the Republican primary as like a reform type of capitalist. I think he misunderstands the Republican base a little bit, but what do you know? I've been wrong before.

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Does he wanna cage immigrants? Yes or no?

• 57:35Pablo Torre?

  Just the idea that Tim Miller just soft-launched Mark Cuban as a Republican candidate on this show is a bit much for me to process at the moment.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 57:45Pablo Torre?

  But it brings us to the fact that we did, in fact, poll the aforementioned Tim Miller as well.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 57:54Pablo Torre?

  And so let's conclude, as we were always destined to, by talking about ourselves. What's the data here saying about how 1,400 Americans felt about gas bags like at least me and Tim here?

• 58:08Speaker 04

  You know, Pablo, I think it'd be better podcast if you read the results.

• 58:13Pablo Torre?

  What do we got? Throw it up there. From most to least favorable this time, number one, Charles Barkley, 45%. Number two, Joe Rogan, 36%. Number three, Stephen A. Smith, 22%. Number four, Pat McAfee, 20%. Number five, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, 16%.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  Right on his heels, though.

• 58:35Pablo Torre?

  Number six, Tim Miller, 13%. And number seven...

• 58:41Speaker 05

  Ouch.

• 58:41Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre, 11%.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  That's tough.

• 58:44Speaker 05

  Too small. This is what happens when you take down the Clippers.

• 58:51Speaker 04

  I did dominate you, and the data's the data.

• 58:53Pablo Torre?

  That hurts.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  I will say this, either there were a lot of twinks in the poll, or that maybe some of the younger men thought we were asking about Tim Miller, the director? The movie director?

• 59:04Pablo Torre?

  You're wondering if your own polling advantage is because people thought you were the executive producer of Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  We'll never know, and so all we know is that I beat you by two. Scoreboard.

• 59:27Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Arc Media production. And for more on our poll, please check out thebulwark.com, and also you can listen to me over on the Bulwark Daily Podcast. And yes, be sure to stay tuned for more updates about the election and our ongoing investigations over on our YouTube channel. And please do not forget to vote. I'll talk to you next time.

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