WATCH: Ford Goes On ‘Pod Save America’ To Talk About How He’ll Fight For Nevadans
This is a press release dated September 3, 2026
Earlier this week, Attorney General Aaron Ford went on Pod Save America and spoke with Tommy Vietor about how as Governor he will fight for the entirety of the Nevada family, crack down on data centers, keep pushing Big Tech companies to enact protections that keep children safe online, and end the cost-of-living crisis created by Joe Lombardo and Donald Trump. Ford also responded to Lombardo saying he can’t control affordability, blaming high unemployment on Nevadans being lazy, invoking his name to try and dodge a traffic ticket, gushing that he’s “wholeheartedly in support of data centers,” and saying Nevadans need to “feel a little pain” over Trump’s tariffs.
Ford highlighted how despite Lombardo spending $37 million derived from his big money and data center donors, Ford and Lombardo are statistically tied in the race for Nevada Governor. As we head towards November, the Nevada Governor’s race will be one of the most hotly contested and closest midterm races in America, serving as a referendum on Trump’s cost-raising agenda.
What I think is BS is that he vetoed a bill that would have put $1,000 back in parents’ pockets per child, per year – when he vetoed a bill for guaranteed school lunch for our children. What’s BS is when he vetoed a bill that would have limited the amount you could pay for prescription drugs, putting money back in people’s pockets. You see, these are the types of things that he could have done that we could be experiencing relief from right now. This affordability crisis wouldn’t be as dire right now if he had aligned himself with the people of the state, as opposed to the corporations that are bankrolling his campaign.I was talking to a young lady in Minden, Nevada. And she was telling me she was grocery shopping and she had a basket full of groceries, went over to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription, looked at the price and prescription, and left her groceries in the aisle because she couldn’t afford both. You see, that bill [Lombardo] vetoed – that would have limited prescription drug costs – could have helped her.
Our governor has committed the human resource of our National Guard members to help ICE do their job. And what I have heard, and what I have said, is that people want our state resources – whether they are human, financial, or otherwise – to be spent on state stuff, period. They want us spending our money and our time and our resources on education, on mental health issues, on infrastructure, on things that are helping Nevadans and not doing the job of someone else. When I’m governor, we’re going to spend our state resources on state stuff, not doing someone else’s job.
Now we’re going to get opportunities for children to have better mental health outcomes, parents to have more control. [Children] won’t be able to get notifications during school hours anymore. They’re going to limit their ability to be on these apps from midnight to six. They got rid of the filters that were causing so many self-image issues. And so parents have a lot more control. We get to protect our children and I’m very proud of that.[In response to Tommy mentioning Congress’s gridlock on this issue] I’m not one to sit back and wait for somebody else to do something. If I have to protect my family – and I consider the state of Nevada my family – then I’m going to do it. I’m not waiting for others.
And what I have found, having spoken to Nevadans across two statewide tours in the last ten months or so, is that it doesn’t matter who I’m talking to – Democrats, Republicans or Independents – everybody has a problem with these data centers coming in, taking up our energy, driving up our energy prices and draining our water. And they want us to do something. I am going to halt every single future abatement on data centers until we can actually go back and do something that this current governor has not done – audit the compliance with the terms and agreements in the first place.I’ve said they’re not going to be able to raise consumer rates by one penny. They’re going to have to use clean energy, their own clean energy to power their facilities and build out the grid to accommodate that. And not only that, listen to local input before things are done. If a local community doesn’t want these data centers, it shouldn’t be forced on them. And it seems to me that we currently have a governor who doesn’t really care about local input – in fact has described this data center issue as a gold rush for Nevada. And what I noticed, Tommy, is the only gold rushing right now is from the big data center folks to his pockets.Lombardo aligned himself with Trump in advocating for data centers, saying that he’s wholeheartedly in support of them. See, I’m wholeheartedly in support of Nevadans – and that’s why I’m being responsive to what I’ve heard across every demographic, that we need to address these. Trump is wrong for ignoring the will of the people, Lombardo is wrong for doing the same, and I’m going to be a governor who listens.
The fact of the matter is, we are living in the Lombardo-Trump economy. Joe Lombardo has advocated for [Trump’s] tariffs, essentially saying that we need to feel a little pain from them. And I say we don’t need to feel pain. We need some leadership.We do rely upon tourism. Canadian, Mexican, Chinese, those tourists have stopped coming, right. And at the end of the day, it has negatively impacted businesses and employment all across our state, you know, so I sued over those tariffs.Our governor said that my lawsuit was unfortunate. All my lawsuits against the Trump administration – the ones that I keep winning by upwards of 85 to 90%, by the way – he calls unfortunate. Again, it’s because he’s kowtow, kissed up and capitulated to Donald Trump. Lying Lombardo is what they call him.
I think about this from a personal perspective, though, Tommy – I grew up eating stale candy bars for dinner. You know, my daddy used to work at a grocery store, and he found some stale candy bars at the dumpster behind the grocery store where he worked. Safeway was throwing these candies away because they were stale and they couldn’t sell them. But the Fords gotta eat – so my dad brought home these stale candy bars. And I keep a candy bar from that era on my desk, at home, on my nightstand, on my desk at work as a visual reminder every single day of what struggle looks like.I can empathize with people who are saying that they’re having a tough time surviving, let alone trying to thrive right now. I went from eating stale candy bars, Tommy, to becoming a single dad when I was in college, living on Section 8 housing, living on food stamps. They called it SNAP now – they got a fancy card. I had the fake money you had to tear out the little book. I was on food stamps. I was on Medicaid. That’s what kept my son and me healthy. And so I have a very real understanding of what poverty and struggle looks like. And that’s why I fight every single day to ensure that everyone has the ability to to survive in our state.
Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t scare me. No one scares me when it comes to protecting Nevadans, which is the reason why I have actually led the fight against these prediction markets.I know personally of young boys who are under the age of 21, who have engaged in gambling and sports betting using these apps – and they have spent up their college loans, you understand. They are some of the victims that we’re trying to protect.
People can watch this for themselves, right – they can make their own judgment. And I think most folks I speak to – 99.9% of folks – recognize that Joe Lombardo dropped his name in order to try to avoid a consequence, right? Lombardo intimidated [the cop], of course, and utilized his name to do that. And look, that’s what we saw on camera. Imagine how this man acts when no one’s actually being able to gauge how he’s interacting with other folks, right?We can’t trust him. He already thinks that he’s above everybody, as you can tell by the way he interacts with [the cop]. We also know how he feels about Nevadans, generally speaking. We’ve had one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation under his entire three year, eight month tenure – we’ve had the highest or one of the highest unemployment rates his entire tenure. It’s higher now than when he took office. But he has a theory for that. He says it’s because people are lazy and they don’t want to work. And they’d rather depend upon the government instead of taking a job that’s available to them. That’s what he says. That’s how he thinks about the people who he supposedly represents.And so him abusing his authority is yet another example of him just thinking he’s better, different, set apart, and not representing the working class members of our state, instead aligning himself with his billionaire friends.
Look, this race was always going to be about the money versus the many.Rich people [are] dropping in [for Lombardo]. You know, people who own data centers, right? People who donated Flock cameras. These are people who are supporting him as he unfurls $17 million of negative ads against me – which, by the way, haven’t really moved the needle. We are in a tie ballgame right now. We’re going to win because we have the many on our side.
