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"Fascist cosplay." (LIVE in Boston) · Pod Save America

• 0:22
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: What's up, Austin?
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Good to be home. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Jon Favreau.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: I'm Heather McGee.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:50
  Speaker 5: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:53
  Speaker 6: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Later in the show, we'll talk to the groundbreaking, history-making
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: district attorney of Suffolk County, Rachel Rollins is here. We'll
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: play some games, we'll have some fun, but first, let's
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: talk about everything that happened this week in the burgeoning
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: banana republic we call America.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: So here's what went down this week.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: First, Trump purged the leadership of the Homeland Security Department
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: because they told him his extreme immigration proposals aren't legal.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And while he was in California, he actually personally ordered
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Border Patrol agents to ignore judges. Then the president had
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: his treasury secretary prevent the IRS from giving Congress his
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: tax returns, which.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: The law clearly states they are obligated to do.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: And finally, Trump's handpicked attorney general admitted to Congress that
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Robert Mueller did not ask him to make the final
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: decision on whether the president obstructed justice and repeated Trump's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: conspiracy that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign, something
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: that the attorney general now says he's looking into. So
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the attacks on the rule of law or institutions have
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: stepped up this week. Heather, how alarmed should we be
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: by these actions and... What are the consequences? Why should
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: people at home actually care about this?
• 2:22
  Speaker 7: That's a really good question because I think in a
• 2:23
  Speaker 7: lot of democratic circles right now, there's like, we shouldn't
• 2:26
  Speaker 7: be paying attention to all of this, you know, corruption,
• 2:29
  Speaker 7: the Russia stuff, the Mueller report obviously didn't go our
• 2:33
  Speaker 7: way because, you know, Olivia Pope, aka William Barr, handled
• 2:37
  Speaker 7: it for the president.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: But it's extremely important. I mean, let's just take one
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: of these issues, right? His tax returns.
• 2:45
  Speaker 7: Now, I don't think that Democrats should you know, sort
• 2:47
  Speaker 7: of Mueller Report eyes the tax returns, right? This idea that, like,
• 2:50
  Speaker 7: we look at the tax returns and it'll show that, like,
• 2:52
  Speaker 7: Putin gave him all his money. Like, that's not going
• 2:54
  Speaker 7: to happen.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: We got him. But, you know, the other.
• 2:57
  Speaker 7: Thing that happened this week is that his sister resigned.
• 3:01
  Speaker 7: It happened a couple months ago, but it, you know, broke.
• 3:04
  Speaker 7: His sister resigned from the federal judiciary so that an
• 3:07
  Speaker 7: ethics investigation into the patently illegal tax shenanigans that had
• 3:13
  Speaker 7: been done in their family to give him and her
• 3:17
  Speaker 7: sister and brother, Donald Trump, about half a billion dollars tax-free,
• 3:22
  Speaker 7: it was coming to get her. And so she resigned
• 3:25
  Speaker 7: instead of, you know, face the music. So these are
• 3:27
  Speaker 7: the kinds of things that, of course it matters.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, who did she participate in that scheme with?
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: Her brother, the president.
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: But he's fine. Yeah, exactly.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I'm amazed they get along. I just think the one
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: thing that's the most shocking is that there wasn't a
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: multi-decade-long fight over Fred Trump's estate. It seems like these
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: people wouldn't have been able to solve this.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: It seems like there was enough to go around.
• 3:50
  Speaker 7: There was enough to go around because when he was
• 3:52
  Speaker 7: three years old, he was getting paid by the Trump
• 3:56
  Speaker 7: Senior Corporation $ 200, 000 a year when he was three years old.
• 4:00
  Speaker 7: He was a millionaire by eight, but of course he's
• 4:02
  Speaker 7: a self-made man.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Dan, what's the ultimate goal of Trump and Stephen Miller
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and senior White House advisor Lou Dobbs on immigration? Because
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like Trump's goal here is to just
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: deal with the influx of asylum seekers at the border.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: It seems like there's something broader going on here.
• 4:23
  Speaker 6: You think? So I think there's a long-term goal and
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: a short-term goal. The long-term goal, to be very clear,
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: is a whiter America. Stephen Miller is a white nationalist.
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: Trump has run on a white nationalist agenda. The goal
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: is to make America as white as possible.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: And we see this from the proposals, right? They want
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: more immigration from Nordic countries, from places like that. They
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: don't want immigration from Africa or from South America or
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: in Central America.
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: Like, turn on the live stream of the Trump cabinet meeting,
• 4:55
  Speaker 6: and by that I mean primetime on Fox News, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 6: that's exactly what they're arguing for. Now, the short-term argument...
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: Their short-term goal here is to create a sense of
• 5:04
  Speaker 6: crisis and fear about immigration in this country right now
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: that will help animate the Republican base for the 2020 election.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I couldn't be happier that Kirstjen Nielsen
• 5:17
  Speaker 8: got canned this week.
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: She is a.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Trump.
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: Trump owns every piece.
• 5:25
  Speaker 8: Of his immigration policy, but she wasn't particularly well qualified
• 5:29
  Speaker 8: for the job, and she oversaw the family separation policy,
• 5:31
  Speaker 8: which was an abomination, and she will live with having
• 5:35
  Speaker 8: overseen that until.
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: The day she dies.
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: And lied about it.
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: And lied about it.
• 5:38
  Speaker 8: But, I mean, it's also, we should just note that
• 5:41
  Speaker 8: he lopped off the top five most senior people at
• 5:43
  Speaker 8: the Department of Homeland Security.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: That is crazy.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: That is like Nixonian... And it's crazy not just for immigration, right?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, it goes beyond... The Department of Homeland Security
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: does more than immigration. He fired the head of Secret Service.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: We have no idea why.
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: And so the stated reason is that he needs people
• 5:58
  Speaker 8: to get tough, or he wants people to get tougher.
• 6:00
  Speaker 8: But we should be crystal clear with what John said earlier.
• 6:02
  Speaker 8: I mean, what he means by tough is he wants
• 6:05
  Speaker 8: them to break the law to keep immigrants out. He
• 6:07
  Speaker 8: literally said in front of a press pool spray that
• 6:10
  Speaker 8: he wants the U.S. military to rough people up, women, children...
• 6:15
  Speaker 8: desperate people coming across the border as they're trying to
• 6:18
  Speaker 8: get into the country.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: He said there.
• 6:21
  Speaker 8: Was someone in the White House who was quoted on
• 6:23
  Speaker 8: background attacking the DHS general counsel as a, quote, a
• 6:27
  Speaker 8: chicken shit lawyer.
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, they're doing this all in the open because there.
• 6:31
  Speaker 8: Is actually a migration crisis that's happening. There's 100,000 people
• 6:34
  Speaker 8: coming every day. But it's getting worse because of Donald
• 6:38
  Speaker 8: Trump's policies and rhetoric. The New York Times had a
• 6:40
  Speaker 8: piece today where they talked about the fact that in
• 6:42
  Speaker 8: Central America, Smugglers are running radio ads with talking about
• 6:46
  Speaker 8: Trump's policies, saying if you don't leave now, you can
• 6:49
  Speaker 8: never get in the United States because he is closing
• 6:51
  Speaker 8: off all immigration. So he's exasperating the problem, like Dan said,
• 6:56
  Speaker 8: I think on purpose to foment a crisis at the
• 6:58
  Speaker 8: border and help get reelected.
• 7:00
  Speaker 7: And let's be clear about why he thinks that a
• 7:03
  Speaker 7: crisis at the border or just the issue of immigration
• 7:05
  Speaker 7: at all is going to help him get reelected. Because
• 7:07
  Speaker 7: it's not like obvious, right? Because so many of his
• 7:11
  Speaker 7: supporters are working class people, working class white people, particularly
• 7:14
  Speaker 7: white older men. And he's saying the reason why you
• 7:17
  Speaker 7: don't have that manufacturing job is not because GM, which
• 7:21
  Speaker 7: is highly profitable, just decided to cut plants anyway to
• 7:25
  Speaker 7: look for cheaper labor. It's not because of the tax
• 7:29
  Speaker 7: and trade policies of the Republican Party and often of
• 7:31
  Speaker 7: the Democratic Party. He's saying the reason why you're not
• 7:35
  Speaker 7: as secure as you used to be is because of
• 7:37
  Speaker 7: brown people over here and brown people over there. And
• 7:39
  Speaker 7: that kind of divide and conquer is the only thing
• 7:41
  Speaker 7: he has because his economic agenda is a mess. And
• 7:45
  Speaker 7: it's been, you know, huge tax cuts for the rich
• 7:47
  Speaker 7: and a botched trade policy.
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: It's also, yeah, and.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: And, you know, one of the things that's come out
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: into research of Trump voters is a lot of them
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: tend to be people that did a little bit better
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: in parts of the country that were doing really poorly.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And there's a There's a quality to what Trump is doing.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: It's fascism cosplay.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: It's a signal, right?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: It's for people that, whether they faced economic hardship or
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: just feel put upon by a changing America in some way,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump goes out there and says, we should
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: rough them up. Don't listen to the judges. It's a
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: signal that he's on their team and that he's for
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: a kind of politics that will protect them against liberals,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: against brown people, against modernity, against.
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: Uppity women.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Uppity women, restaurants with salads on them that don't make sense, like,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: you know, new kinds of dressing, new kinds of lettuce.
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: Iceberg all the way.
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: It's not a wedge.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: You know, you're sitting there in an olive garden, there's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: goat cheese sneaking in, that's Like every restaurant's got beets,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: walnuts on a bitter green and that's not what I
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: grew up with and I don't like it.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: Where are my bacon bits?
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Where are my bacon bits? But I think it actually,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: you know, it is for the cameras because It's amazing
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: that he'd want to make immigration his centerpiece and that
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: he'd want to foment this crisis. He's been president for
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: two and a half years. This is his problem. This
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: is his border. This is his growing asylum crisis. This
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: is his failure to contain the mess. This is his
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: failure to.
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: Build the wall.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: And I think his assumption has to be going into
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: this that as long as he makes it enough of
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: a fight, as long as he makes enough of a noise,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: as long as he picks the right villains and acts
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: tough enough and blames enough people, he can get away
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: with the fact that it's a crisis he owns while
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: claiming he's the one that's going to solve it.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: Well, so, broader question on this.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Are Democrats doing enough to check Trump's behavior, and what
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: other options do they have? Clearly we have seen, you know,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: he's bulldozing rules, he's bulldozing institutions, he is attempting to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: skirt the law, I guess is the kindest explanation, if
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: not outright breaking it in others. What should Democrats do here,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: because it does seem like they have sort of put
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: impeachment aside.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, we've got a House chairman over here.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: He shouts impeach all over town. I saw him outside
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: that hideous city hall of yours earlier today.
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: Unbelievable. Hideous? I mean, I'm fine with Pelosi icing.
• 10:35
  Speaker 8: Impeachment talk for a while because I think she's smart
• 10:39
  Speaker 8: in literally everything she does, and she's probably hearing from
• 10:41
  Speaker 8: a bunch of moderates that they don't want to deal
• 10:43
  Speaker 8: with talk impeachment in their districts, so let's just hold
• 10:45
  Speaker 8: on that for now. But I do think that all
• 10:47
  Speaker 8: the other committees should be going full bore in all
• 10:51
  Speaker 8: their investigative capacities starting now. So obviously we have the
• 10:57
  Speaker 8: sort of William Barr, the Attorney General, is just playing
• 11:03
  Speaker 8: goalie for Trump. He's gonna try to prevent the release
• 11:05
  Speaker 8: of the Mueller report, so we should go ham on
• 11:07
  Speaker 8: trying to get that thing back. But there's also ways
• 11:09
  Speaker 8: and means should be able to get a copy of
• 11:11
  Speaker 8: Trump's tax returns. And if Treasury and Steve Mnuchin who
• 11:15
  Speaker 8: got so pissy at Maxine Waters.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: That was a mistake.
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: About having to sit through a hearing. He just like
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: huffed it. He's like, I have an important meeting.
• 11:21
  Speaker 8: And there's like some two-bit economic minister from the UAE.
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: Such a fucking tool. But they should.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I want to just say something that I'm going to
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: cut from the podcast. This is the most unfuckable voice
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I've ever heard in my life. Leave it in.
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: Leave it in.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Title? Sorry.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: It's okay.
• 11:44
  Speaker 8: But, you know, there's been a couple, there's been some
• 11:47
  Speaker 8: interesting pieces written about how New York State has to
• 11:51
  Speaker 8: keep copies of tax returns. So the Ways and Means
• 11:53
  Speaker 8: Committee could subpoena the tax returns from the Trump, the
• 11:56
  Speaker 8: Trump organization, the Trump family from New York State officials
• 12:00
  Speaker 8: or state legislators in.
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: New York state.
• 12:03
  Speaker 8: Could decide that anyone who lives in New York who's
• 12:05
  Speaker 8: a statewide elected official or higher has to release their
• 12:08
  Speaker 8: tax returns. So the governor releases his, the mayor. So
• 12:10
  Speaker 8: there's a lot of creative ways we could get at
• 12:12
  Speaker 8: these tax returns. Because the story you mentioned earlier about
• 12:16
  Speaker 8: Trump's sister resigning her post was on A19 of the
• 12:19
  Speaker 8: New York Times.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: That's right. There is so much going on in this world.
• 12:22
  Speaker 8: That that is like a huge flashing signal that there
• 12:26
  Speaker 8: is something there.
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: And we've got to figure out what it is.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Well, Heather, what do you think?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, do Democrats... do they have to walk and
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: chew gum at the same time here? Or how much
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: emphasis should be placed on the investigation side, on all
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: these stories that we hear about Trump, and how much
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: should Democrats be thinking? Because I'm sure a lot of consultants,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of polling is telling them what real people
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: care about is their jobs, their wages, their health care.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: All this stuff is a distraction.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And yet, there's part of me that says, okay, we
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: can do that and win an election, but are we
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: setting a very dangerous precedent here by ignoring this and saying, okay,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It's okay for this president and potentially future presidents to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: just do whatever they please, hire attorney generals who are
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: going to engage in a cover-up for them, and that's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: okay because we've got to focus on the issues.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: So I think it's.
• 13:14
  Speaker 7: Really important for the sake of American standing in the
• 13:17
  Speaker 7: world for there to be accountability for this president. And
• 13:19
  Speaker 7: I think that's the job of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• 13:24
  Speaker 7: And I think that fortunately right now we've got a
• 13:27
  Speaker 7: lot of Democrats. We've got 20,000 running for president. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 7: all of those fine men and women can and should
• 13:36
  Speaker 7: talk about health care and the economy and jobs and
• 13:38
  Speaker 7: debt-free college and education and Medicare for all and climate change.
• 13:43
  Speaker 7: But the people who run the committees in the House,
• 13:48
  Speaker 7: they're not passing any legislation that's going to get through
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: the Senate. Their full-time job should be making sure that
• 13:53
  Speaker 7: we know every single crooked thing that this president, his campaign,
• 13:57
  Speaker 7: and his administration have ever done.
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: My personal view is that when the founders were thinking
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: of the impeachment clause, they were imagining someone like Donald Trump.
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: I'm not even kidding in the sense that what they're
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: imagining is, A figure who wants to be a monarch
• 14:20
  Speaker 6: who is lining his own pockets at the expense of
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: American people.
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: So impeach him, indict him, 25th Amendment him. I don't
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: give a shit. That's the right thing to happen. But
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: here's the problem. And this is why this is my
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: response to our friend in the out there who's yelling
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: impeach at every stop is like, let's play this out.
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: So let's say the Democrats start an impeachment hearing. They
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: have the hearings. We uncover a bunch of stuff. The
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: House votes. It's a tight vote. Some moderate Democrats don't
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: do it, but we squeak out an impeachment of Trump
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: out of the House. It goes to the Senate. Mitch
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: McConnell allows the trial to happen. Then the Senate.
• 15:00
  Speaker 6: Gives a not guilty verdict to McConnell, probably bipartisan because
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: our friend Joe Manchin decides he wants to burnish that
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: both sides cred. The New York Times writes a headline
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: the next day, in bipartisan vote, Senate says Trump not guilty.
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: And I know that's what happened because that's just what
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: happened with the Mueller report. So when Nancy Pelosi is
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: resisting it, I don't think it's just moderate angst at
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: the weekly lunch. I also think she's played this out
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: to the end. And we don't know how the country
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: will react to Trump being impeached by the House or
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: what they will discover in that. But we do know
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: how Republican senators and the media will treat that event.
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: And I think that's what Nancy Pelosi is thinking.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And I think part of the purpose here of all
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: these Democrats doing these investigations and making sure that all
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: this information comes out is so that when the American
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: people go to the ballot box in 2020... They know
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: exactly what their.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: President– they know the choice. It's part of the choice
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: that they're facing, right?
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: You can continue on the road with this president who
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: has broken all kinds of laws and bulldozed all kinds
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of norms and institutions in order to enrich himself and
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: his friends, or you can go in this different direction.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like that's part of the choice
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that we're.
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: And beyond the election, it's just their fucking job.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: Right? That is what they get paid for.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: But so that's– I think there's a– I think that
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: there's a gap that can be closed between impeachment and
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: the sense that they're kind of moving slowly. And I
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: think that there's good reason to say, hold on, let's
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: play this out. Let's be strategic about what we get
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: for impeachment. I think that there is no longer a
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: justification for giving the administration time to meet their request voluntarily.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: We should just skip that phase.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: I think there's a little too much Ned Stark and
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: not enough Littlefinger. There just needs to be a little
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: bit more.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Of a presumption that these people are operating on terrible motives.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: So don't give them two weeks to comply before you
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: do the subpoena. Don't worry about the both sides press
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: that might be negative for that. Treat people as if
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: their motives are unpure and be surprised if they meet
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: your demands without being subpoenaed. But don't wait. Because the
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: other thing about impeachment is it takes time. All these
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: investigations take time. Time is Donald Trump's friend right now, right?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: First one he's ever had.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: True.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, we will have more news in a little bit.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: But first.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Now it's time for a game called OK Stop. We'll
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: roll the clip. The panel can say, okay, stop at
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: any point to comment. John Kerry.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Hello.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Massachusetts made it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 9: Brutal.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Do a little better for your guy, John Kerry. Earlier
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: this week, he testified before a House Committee on Climate
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Change when Kentucky Representative Thomas Massey decided to question John
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Kerry's credentials.
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: It was wild.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Let's take a look.
• 18:06
  Speaker 10: It sounds like you're questioning the credentials of the president's
• 18:09
  Speaker 10: advisors currently, but I don't think we should question your
• 18:12
  Speaker 10: credentials today.
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: Isn't it true you have.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: A science degree from Yale?
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Bachelor of Arts degree.
• 18:18
  Speaker 10: Is it a political science degree?
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, political science.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: So how do you get a bachelor of arts in
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: a science? Okay, stop.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: Not the answer he was looking for.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Although, what was?
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: He's a member of Congress. You pay him. Every one
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: of you pay his salary. I also want you all
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to know something because we're here in Boston. Did a
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: little digging on this fellow. He got a degree at
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: one of your mid-tier schools here in Boston called the
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This man's a goddamn scientist.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: That is an MIT grad?
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: Every time. Shame on you.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Ben Carson hits the national stage. I discover that brain
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: surgery is easier than I thought it was. Howard Schultz
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: runs for president. I discover running Starbucks is easier than
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I thought it was. What are they doing over there
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: at MIT?
• 19:24
  Speaker 9: Well, it's liberal arts education and degree.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: It's a bachelor.
• 19:28
  Speaker 10: Okay, so it's not really science. So I think it's
• 19:31
  Speaker 10: somewhat appropriate.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: Okay, stop.
• 19:39
  Speaker 7: Vietnam veteran John Kerry wants to serve his country even more.
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: He gets a political science degree. But it's not science.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I mean poor John Kerry sitting there Vietnam veteran, senator
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: presidential nominee secretary of state and now I'm explaining to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: this douche bag what a liberal arts degree is Because
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: he doesn't understand what a Bachelor of Science is.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: John Kerry has faced down the Viet Cong.
• 20:14
  Speaker 6: President Bush. Now he has come eye to eye with stupid.
• 20:18
  Speaker 8: Now he's a college counselor for a fifth year senior
• 20:21
  Speaker 8: on the lacrosse team.
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: Trying to figure out what the hell he wants to
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: do with his life.
• 20:25
  Speaker 10: With a pseudoscience degree is here pushing pseudoscience.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, stop. Listen, I... I do think it's fair to
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: call a political science degree from Yale pseudoscience. We've got
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: to play it straight. I don't like where he goes
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: with it. I don't like his aims. I don't like
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: this guy, I'll be honest. But we can tell the
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: truth about a BA in political science.
• 20:50
  Speaker 7: If it were as a BA in American Studies, even
• 20:52
  Speaker 7: a little wishy-washy-er than that, I think if he had
• 20:55
  Speaker 7: said a BA in economics, we would say that's a
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: dismal science, it's made stuff up. Political science is, I think,
• 21:01
  Speaker 7: something he should respect as a politician. Every time he
• 21:05
  Speaker 7: looks at his campaign's polls, that's part of political science.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 21:10
  Speaker 10: Our committee today, I.
• 21:14
  Speaker 9: Want to ask you, are you serious?
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: Okay, stop.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: He gets so pissed.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Now you applaud for John Kerry.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: John Kerry's like, that's the line I should have used
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: at that debate.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, that is the funniest John
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Kerry has ever been in his whole fucking life.
• 21:39
  Speaker 8: That's the rudest thing a Boston Brahmin has ever said.
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: It's so harsh.
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: It's also a pent-up, are you serious? I think he's
• 21:46
  Speaker 7: meant to say, are you serious, since he was swift-boated.
• 21:48
  Speaker 7: It's just like, are you serious? Are you serious, all
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: of you?
• 21:53
  Speaker 10: Let's have it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 9: But it's not science. You're not quoting science.
• 22:00
  Speaker 10: Well, you're the science expert. You got the political science degree.
• 22:04
  Speaker 9: We now know that definitively at no point during the
• 22:08
  Speaker 9: least the past 800,000 years has atmospheric CO2 been as
• 22:13
  Speaker 9: high as it is today.
• 22:14
  Speaker 10: The reason you chose 800,000 years ago is because for
• 22:19
  Speaker 10: 200 million years before that, it was greater than it
• 22:23
  Speaker 10: is today.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to say it for the record. Yeah,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: but there weren't human beings. I mean, that was a
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: different world, folks. Okay, stop. That's so.
• 22:36
  Speaker 11: Good.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Really tripped up the MIT grad, didn't he?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: It's, um... Yeah. We're going to boil alive on this planet.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And it's all time we make preparations. No, I think
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: it's also, like, I don't know this Massey fellow, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know what led him to public office, to
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: a career of serving his home, but I don't think
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Massey believes he's a tool of a large corporate propaganda
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: effort designed for moments just like this. Like, an entire
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: apparatus of propaganda has been built over decades to lead
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: to this moment of John Kerry faithfully and honestly trying
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: to relay science to an engineer who wants no part
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: To a lump of coal come to life. Yeah. Come
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: a congressman.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: No, but it's just a reminder, too, that so much
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: of this is not about persuasion of someone like this,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: that there's nothing John Kerry could say in this moment
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: to persuade this someone to believe the truth, because his
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: entire career His entire livelihood depends on making sure his
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: job is to act embarrassed on behalf of John Kerry.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: And that's 2019.
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: But there's a broader point here, which is there is
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: a connection between this gentleman serving in Congress and asking
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: these questions, Donald Trump being president, and Fox News' dominance
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: on the right. It has created an incentive for stupidity.
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: There is not an argument to be made. It is
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: to basically act as dumb as you possibly can, and
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: that will get you plaudits, retweets, cable spots from the
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: dumbest people in America who currently run America.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Not a great situation.
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: It's not good.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: Oh, he's still going.
• 24:24
  Speaker 10: It's a 2,000 parts per million if we humans weren't here.
• 24:27
  Speaker 9: Because there were all kinds of geologic events happening on
• 24:31
  Speaker 9: Earth which spewed up.
• 24:32
  Speaker 10: Did geology stop when we got on the planet?
• 24:35
  Speaker 9: Mr. Chairman, this is just not a serious conversation.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Your testimony is not.
• 24:43
  Speaker 12: Serious.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, stop. I heard you.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, my. That's here for John Kerry.
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: Kerry did great. That was good.
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: John Kerry.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: John Kerry putting a big win on the board, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: that's okay, stop.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: All right, let's get back to the news.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone saw this, but this morning,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: our president proudly tweeted a screenshot from Lou Dobbs' television program,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: where a new poll showed that 55% of Americans hold
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a favorable opinion of the president. But just this once,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Lou Dobbs made an error. And the poll actually says
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that 55% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the president,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and only 40% hold a favorable view. But there's more
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to this poll. The poll also confirms what almost every
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: other poll has found. One of Trump and the Republican
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Party's biggest advantages heading into 2020 is that a majority
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: of Americans, 58%, approve of Trump's economic performance. And they
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: also side with Republicans over Democrats on the issues of.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: the economy, and job creation.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: This is despite the fact that we have record inequality,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: stagnant wages, and huge democratic advantages on issues like healthcare, education,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: even immigration and taxes. So Linda Lake, the democratic strategist
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: who conducted the poll, says that if the party does
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: not rectify this problem soon, quote, it will find itself
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: in serious jeopardy for the 2020 election. Heather, what do
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: you think explains the paradox here? Democratic advantages on healthcare, education,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Republican advantage on jobs and the economy?
• 26:31
  Speaker 7: So I think that for the past 40 years, there
• 26:35
  Speaker 7: has been a concerted, coherent narrative from the right that
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: has not just been from the right. It's on CNBC.
• 26:42
  Speaker 7: It's sort of the mainstream story of the economy. And
• 26:47
  Speaker 7: that is that the free market is best and that
• 26:51
  Speaker 7: government should just get out of the way. And that's
• 26:54
  Speaker 7: something that Democrats have often stumbled into parroting as well.
• 26:58
  Speaker 7: And so when you have a Republican in office who's
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: a business person, who did the things that most people
• 27:06
  Speaker 7: expect Republicans to do on the economy, which is cut
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: regulations and cut taxes, there's just a sort of deep
• 27:13
  Speaker 7: level of common sense, if you're an American steeped in
• 27:16
  Speaker 7: this story, that like, yeah, that's the right thing to do.
• 27:20
  Speaker 7: At the same time, 40% of American families would go
• 27:24
  Speaker 7: into debt or sell something if they got a $ 400
• 27:27
  Speaker 7: bill on their doorstep because they couldn't pay it. So
• 27:31
  Speaker 7: what we need is an alternative story of how the
• 27:34
  Speaker 7: economy grows, who it works for, and it's a story
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: about power. The fact is the government has always played
• 27:41
  Speaker 7: a massive role in creating markets, creating rules for markets,
• 27:45
  Speaker 7: creating public investments. And I think there aren't that many
• 27:48
  Speaker 7: Democrats who are willing to tell that story in a
• 27:51
  Speaker 7: way that isn't just about a government program, but is
• 27:54
  Speaker 7: also about what government can do to make the economy
• 27:56
  Speaker 7: flourish for everyone.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: I think there's also something here that is really depressing
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: in the context of how Americans see America, which is
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: for a very, very long time, the Americans view of
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: the American economy was aspirational. It's that I can, I
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: have a chance to get to the next level up,
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: whether that is to working class or to middle class
• 28:22
  Speaker 6: or even above that. It's one of the reasons why
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: Americans have generally been less sort of aggressive towards wealthy
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: Americans or corporations in the past. But the combination of
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: decades of wage stagnation, of growing inequality, on top of
• 28:39
  Speaker 6: the trauma of the 2008 financial crisis makes me worry
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: that people are willing to accept something less in their economy,
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: which is my wages haven't gone up, but I have
• 28:49
  Speaker 6: a job.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I probably have two.
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: Or two, but it's stable, right? Like after 2008, where
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: everything got turned upside its head, where people were losing
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: their homes, losing their jobs every day, is that this
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: has become a new normal. And Trump is benefiting from
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: that because it's like, well, this is better than what
• 29:05
  Speaker 6: we had just a few years ago. So we'll accept
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: that as opposed to aspiring for something more. And Democrats
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: have to give people, they have to paint a vision
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: of something people can aspire to that feels tangible and
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: not just pie in the sky.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:17
  Speaker 8: I mean, I think there's probably a couple of reasons
• 29:22
  Speaker 8: for his numbers on the economy. One, I mean, there
• 29:25
  Speaker 8: is consistent job growth month over month. Unemployment is low.
• 29:29
  Speaker 8: And so that gets reported out. And that's the mood
• 29:31
  Speaker 8: music of economic news that people see. Two, he says
• 29:35
  Speaker 8: how great the economy is all the time. He drives
• 29:38
  Speaker 8: it into our head and he drives a news cycle.
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: and Democrats have absolutely not figured out a coherent message
• 29:43
  Speaker 8: to push back on that. I do think that Bernie
• 29:45
  Speaker 8: Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are.
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: Circling around one.
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: They have formulated one, but they're one of 250 people
• 29:54
  Speaker 8: running for president. If one of them is the nominee,
• 29:56
  Speaker 8: then they'll go head to head and we'll see how
• 29:58
  Speaker 8: that how that goes. Now, like, I spent too much
• 30:02
  Speaker 8: time in 2016 telling myself things I wanted to hear
• 30:05
  Speaker 8: about why we're going to be okay, and I don't
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: want to do that anymore, but Harry Enten, who's a
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: really smart data scientist reporter for CNN, made the point
• 30:13
  Speaker 8: that he doesn't think that Trump's economic numbers are going
• 30:16
  Speaker 8: to be a huge help for him in 2020, because
• 30:18
  Speaker 8: they haven't been a huge help for him any day
• 30:21
  Speaker 8: leading up to today, right? So his economic numbers are
• 30:23
  Speaker 8: doing well, but his average approval is still 42%.
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: So that doesn't give me hope, but it's context.
• 30:30
  Speaker 8: I also think there's no way in hell this fucking
• 30:32
  Speaker 8: guy is going to run a disciplined economic campaign. He's
• 30:34
  Speaker 8: going to be out there saying crazy shit about everybody,
• 30:39
  Speaker 8: screaming slurs about Warren or whoever it is.
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: That's going to be the campaign.
• 30:44
  Speaker 8: We should be ready for that and have our message
• 30:46
  Speaker 8: and be disciplined when he's not.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: That was my next question, which is basically he had
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the same exact advantage on the economy in 2018.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: All these polls showed the same exact thing. It did
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: not to his advantage at all.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: He didn't take advantage of that because all he did
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: was talk about the caravan, the invasion, and stuff like that.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: And that was.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: To the Democrats' benefit because the Democrats talked about healthcare
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the whole election and Donald Trump talked about immigration and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: this invasion of a caravan.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: And therefore, he didn't make the election about the economy.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Now, do you all think this might change in 2020?
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And what might his economic argument sound like if he
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: or even if it's not Donald Trump, if it's like
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: all the aligned Republican super PACs, right, because you can't
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: trust him to be on message, but there's gonna be
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars spent on super PACs. They're
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: not just gonna be talking about how this is a
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: wonderful economy with low unemployment. They're going to be talking
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: about those Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic proposals. What are
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: they gonna be saying? What are we gonna hear from them?
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And then sort of how do we counter that?
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: So we don't know, but.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I think that there is this, I think you start
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: to see with what Trump's doing now, I think you
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: start to see this shape of what we're heading towards.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: And I think you can look at it as three things. One,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: it is this anti-immigrant base play to make sure his
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: people turn out. The second is just tearing the Democrat down,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: whoever it is, just trying to make the kind of
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: non-voters who would traditionally maybe help us win, who didn't
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: show up enough in 2016, right? Try to make sure
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: people stay depressed, stay confused, stay home. that I'll be
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: tearing Democrats down, attacking Democrats. But I think this, I
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: think you start to see with what he's talking about,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: the economy, is it's almost like, it's this little whisper
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: he's putting in people's minds, and it's this little idea
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: of like, you don't like me, I don't like me.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And the news is crazy, and it's all very noisy,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: and there's all kinds of shit out there. But am
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I so bad? You look outside your window and it's sunny,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: you have a job and there's a car in your driveway.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: The economy is doing great. I'm saying so. The news
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: is saying so.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: Do you think this soothing cough medicine ad is his message?
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I think that implicit in the way he is talking
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: to people is an argument he is making, the same
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: kind of argument that was implicit in his case in 2016,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: which is hold your nose and vote for me. You
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: may think I'm an asshole, but these people are fucking
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: crazy and the economy is doing fucking great. I think
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: that is in there and I think it will be
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: something he is putting in the minds of the kind
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: of white voters that He's thinking we'll put him over
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: the top, the kind of people that we could win
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: but could lose because they're like, my life's great, I'm racist,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I'm in.
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: I mean, Lovett's point is right, which is every re-election
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: is about the battle between displeasure with the status quo
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: versus fear of change. And how that plays itself out.
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: And so that is what the socialism attack is about.
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: That's what getting rid of airplanes and hamburgers and all
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: of that is about, right? That he wants to do that.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: What we have to do as Democrats, both in the primary,
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: right now, during the primary, and with our nominee, is
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: make the argument for change. We don't, like, Trump wants
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: this to be about how the economy, a referendum on
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: how the economy is right now. We want it to
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: be about how the economy could be. and we have
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: to put forward policies and rhetoric to do that, but
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: we also have to define what the economy is right now.
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: Trump says it's doing great, why does he say that?
• 34:14
  Speaker 6: Stock market's up, corporate profits are up. What has Trump done?
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: Cut the corporate tax rate by 14 points, your wages
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: have barely gone up. Democrats are gonna do something about that.
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: That's the message we have to have out there.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So I think, Lovett, you're right, but in addition to
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: everything's great, it's not so bad, They will add this
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: socialism argument to it. So not only are things pretty good,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: but what those guys are going to do if they
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: win is it's going to be socialism.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you what socialism is going to mean.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: They're going to raise your taxes.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: They have all these plans. They're going to raise your taxes.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And they're going to, yeah, all the Green New Deal
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: scare tactics and all that stuff.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: You're going to lose your private insurance.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: 180 million people get kicked off their health care.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: 180 million people are going to lose their private insurance.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: So they're going to have not just things are going
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: great now, but this is what the future is. They're
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: going to try to, Trump's going to try to make
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: it a choice, right? It's not just did I do
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: well this last four years?
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: It's here's the choice.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: So what do you think the Democrats' counterargument to that is?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: And do you have any concern about any of the
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: proposals being floated or is this just purely a messaging
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: issue that we can get through?
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: So I think on the substance, this version of the
• 35:26
  Speaker 7: Democratic Party is the best version of the Democratic Party
• 35:28
  Speaker 7: we've seen since the New Deal.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: And that's exciting.
• 35:33
  Speaker 7: To me as a Democrat who was raised in Reagan
• 35:37
  Speaker 7: and then came into political age in Clinton and has
• 35:41
  Speaker 7: just been looking for a Democratic Party that calls out
• 35:44
  Speaker 7: who it is who's rigging the economy, calls out who's
• 35:47
  Speaker 7: betraying the American dream, and has some answers that are
• 35:50
  Speaker 7: as big as the problems that we face. And that's
• 35:52
  Speaker 7: what this Democratic Party is doing. That said, We, I
• 35:58
  Speaker 7: think the Green New Deal is a phenomenal idea. I
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: think it's what is needed. I think it's ridiculous to
• 36:05
  Speaker 7: think that we can do what we need to do
• 36:07
  Speaker 7: on the climate without addressing inequality and joblessness and insecurity.
• 36:11
  Speaker 7: We have to do it all at the same time
• 36:13
  Speaker 7: or else there will be no political will to transform
• 36:15
  Speaker 7: our economy just on climate and not also on inequality.
• 36:19
  Speaker 7: But we have not defined it, right? Fox News is
• 36:24
  Speaker 7: probably our biggest problem.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: Like, let's just be very clear about that.
• 36:27
  Speaker 7: It is a network that is bought and paid for
• 36:30
  Speaker 7: by corporate special interests and racist demagogues.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: And that's this unholy combination.
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: And they plucked some of our great stars and ideas
• 36:40
  Speaker 7: out and said, you know what we're gonna do? We're
• 36:42
  Speaker 7: gonna define them to our public who may actually be
• 36:45
  Speaker 7: interested in those ideas if they'd ever got a fair hearing.
• 36:48
  Speaker 7: We're gonna define them quickly as ridiculous. I think they
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: did that with Elizabeth Warren. They're doing that with AOC,
• 36:54
  Speaker 7: with the Green New Deal. But the good news is,
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: For example, Warren's wealth tax is popular with the majority
• 37:02
  Speaker 7: of Republican voters. The idea of the Green New Deal,
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: of transforming our economy and a job for everyone who
• 37:09
  Speaker 7: wants one, who can't get one in the private sector,
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: is popular with 80% of Americans, including the majority of Republicans.
• 37:16
  Speaker 7: But we are losing the air war because we're letting
• 37:19
  Speaker 7: the right wing define our stars and our dreams as terrible.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Scary things.
• 37:25
  Speaker 7: And we just have got to be more disciplined all
• 37:27
  Speaker 7: the time, saying what it is that our vision is
• 37:29
  Speaker 7: and not letting the right wing define it before we
• 37:31
  Speaker 7: can get out there.
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: I totally agree with you, and it scares the shit
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: out of me.
• 37:40
  Speaker 8: I mean, so Bernie Sanders re-released his Medicare for All
• 37:43
  Speaker 8: plan today and actually made it more generous. But I
• 37:46
  Speaker 8: was sort of reading through the fact sheet he put
• 37:47
  Speaker 8: out on it, and somewhere in the fact sheet it said,
• 37:50
  Speaker 8: And ultimately, he'll transition everyone off of, or he'll sunset
• 37:54
  Speaker 8: Medicare and Medicaid and put them into this new thing.
• 37:56
  Speaker 8: And my dark, twisted brain went to Bernie Sanders is
• 37:58
  Speaker 8: going to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid, right?
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: Like, that's the Trump ad. And so we should never
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: base who we vote.
• 38:05
  Speaker 8: For or our policy beliefs based off of what the
• 38:08
  Speaker 8: worst Trump lie is going to be. But I do
• 38:11
  Speaker 8: think we should think through the worst thing you could
• 38:14
  Speaker 8: say about some of these policies just as we formulate them.
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: Because 70% of people in this country like.
• 38:20
  Speaker 8: The private insurance plan they have, it may scare them
• 38:23
  Speaker 8: to hear that they will lose private insurance altogether and
• 38:26
  Speaker 8: be put onto a system that the government provides. And
• 38:29
  Speaker 8: so we'd have to think about how we message that
• 38:31
  Speaker 8: to them. But I also, like, I think every day
• 38:34
  Speaker 8: about the way Fox News plucks out and elevates people
• 38:38
  Speaker 8: within our party and demagogues them, right? Like this week,
• 38:41
  Speaker 8: it's Ilhan Omar, who was giving a speech and she
• 38:44
  Speaker 8: was talking about being a Muslim during the 9-11 attacks
• 38:48
  Speaker 8: and how some people did something evil, and how she
• 38:54
  Speaker 8: and her family and her friends had to deal with
• 38:56
  Speaker 8: that fact. These monsters acted like she was downplaying or
• 39:00
  Speaker 8: dismissing the 9-11 attacks and not talking about the trauma
• 39:05
  Speaker 8: that you would feel as a Muslim American watching that
• 39:08
  Speaker 8: unfold in the country you love and being blamed on
• 39:10
  Speaker 8: it because you wear a hijab or have black skin
• 39:15
  Speaker 8: or you came from Somalia. They're doing this demagoguery every
• 39:18
  Speaker 8: day and it's not just that we need to be careful,
• 39:21
  Speaker 8: it's that I think that we need to figure out
• 39:23
  Speaker 8: how we're going to defend people like Ilhan Omar because
• 39:26
  Speaker 8: you can.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: Be pissed off.
• 39:30
  Speaker 8: I think that the stupid, lazy, frustrating thing we do
• 39:35
  Speaker 8: in our political system is she said some things about
• 39:39
  Speaker 8: APAC and how maybe support for Israel is based on
• 39:42
  Speaker 8: donations or there are questions of whether she's suggesting dual
• 39:45
  Speaker 8: loyalty and reasonable people can find those things offensive. But
• 39:48
  Speaker 8: we can't do that thing in politics where we say, oof,
• 39:51
  Speaker 8: you said some things in the past that got you
• 39:53
  Speaker 8: in trouble. So now this thing you said today, which
• 39:56
  Speaker 8: is completely reasonable and being twisted out of context, that's
• 39:59
  Speaker 8: on you for screwing that one up too. That's not fair.
• 40:02
  Speaker 8: And we're stuck in this dark place. It's driving me crazy.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I also think that you can't win a fight that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you don't have. You can't win a debate that you
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: don't join. And there are obviously political vulnerabilities around the
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Green New Deal, obviously political vulnerabilities around Medicare for All.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: but the worst reaction that Democrats can have to those
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: political vulnerabilities is to say, okay, I'm not going to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: talk about those things. What you have to do is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: just win the argument, you know? And you have to
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: look at, like, we have 10 years to do something
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: about climate before it's too late. And there are about
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: 100 companies that emit 70% of the pollution.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Why don't we make those big corporations pay for it?
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And why don't we use the money to create jobs
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and economic opportunity for.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: The rest of the country, right?
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, is it scary to move over from your
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: insurance plan to a Medicare plan? Maybe, but do you
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: like the way your insurance company treats you now? Do
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: you like the fact that your insurance company and your
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: employer can tell you to get rid of your plan
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: whenever they want? They can move you off your insurance
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: whenever they want? Or do you want to have a
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: guaranteed healthcare plan where you can see any doctor you
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: want and not pay premiums and deductibles? Because that's what
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: we're offering. So I do think... And look, and then
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: we can make the.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Fight, and if we lose the fight, we lose the fight,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: but at least we made the argument. I think this just.
• 41:17
  Speaker 6: Heather is so right about discipline and repetition here. So
• 41:20
  Speaker 6: it's like we have 100 people running for president. We
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: have a lot of other Democrats who are not running
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: for president, but still may. And every one of them
• 41:29
  Speaker 6: are talking to voters, are talking to reporters. They are
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: out there. Every one of us is talking to our
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: friends and family about politics. So let's just do it
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: this simply, which is under Trump, corporate profits are up.
• 41:41
  Speaker 6: Corporate taxes are down. Your wages are stagnant. The cost
• 41:44
  Speaker 6: of your health care is up. The cost of your
• 41:46
  Speaker 6: food is up. The cost of college is up. If
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: you elect Trump, that problem will get worse. If you
• 41:49
  Speaker 6: elect Democrats, we'll fix that problem.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: We should fight about the Green New Deal. We should
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: fight about Medicare for All.
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: But we have to define what his vision of the
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: economy is doing for us. If it is a referendum
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: on the state of the economy, Trump may win. If
• 42:03
  Speaker 6: it is a battle between two different visions for how
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: an economy should work, we have a chance to win.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: Still waiting on you to start that super PAC, Dan.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Next, we'll have Tommy's interview with Rachel Rollins.
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: And we're back.
• 42:31
  Speaker 8: John used up all the superlatives in his intro, so
• 42:34
  Speaker 8: I will just say our guest tonight is your Suffolk
• 42:37
  Speaker 8: County District Attorney, Rachel Rons.
• 42:38
  Speaker 7: Sir.
• 42:47
  Speaker 6: How are you?
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: Great to see you. I'm glad you did. Thank you
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: so much for being here.
• 42:56
  Speaker 13: I am so excited to be here.
• 43:00
  Speaker 8: It's great to be home. It's great to meet you.
• 43:02
  Speaker 8: Thank you for doing the show. So I just want
• 43:06
  Speaker 8: to start with some basics. Your job is so, so important.
• 43:09
  Speaker 8: And I think that a lot of people don't realize
• 43:12
  Speaker 8: how much impact a district attorney can have when it
• 43:14
  Speaker 8: comes to increasing or decreasing mass incarceration locally.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Or across the country.
• 43:20
  Speaker 8: Can you just explain to listeners and the folks here
• 43:23
  Speaker 8: tonight how much discretion you have when it comes to
• 43:26
  Speaker 8: handling a criminal case?
• 43:28
  Speaker 11: So I think a lot of people that aren't lawyers
• 43:31
  Speaker 11: think that the system is super fair, right? Prosecutors and
• 43:35
  Speaker 11: defense attorneys have the same amount of power. Judges sit
• 43:39
  Speaker 11: there and are sort of the referee. And I am
• 43:43
  Speaker 11: sorry to ruin your life, but that is just simply
• 43:47
  Speaker 11: not true. Prosecutors, we hold so much power with respect
• 43:51
  Speaker 11: to what it is you're charged with. That can't be appealed, right?
• 43:56
  Speaker 11: What we charge you with can't be appealed, that decision.
• 43:59
  Speaker 11: We hold virtually all of the evidence that we then
• 44:03
  Speaker 11: have to turn over to the defense at any period
• 44:07
  Speaker 11: of time.
• 44:07
  Speaker 13: But if you plea, if you decide, like, goodness, I'm poor, let's.
• 44:13
  Speaker 11: Say hypothetically, and you charge me with something and I'm
• 44:16
  Speaker 11: in jail, for example, and I can't afford my bail,
• 44:20
  Speaker 11: I'm more likely to plea out without even knowing what.
• 44:23
  Speaker 13: The evidence is against me.
• 44:25
  Speaker 11: So what I can tell you is in certain neighborhoods,
• 44:28
  Speaker 11: certainly in Suffolk County, who your DA is is way
• 44:31
  Speaker 11: more important than who the governor is, the mayor is,
• 44:34
  Speaker 11: your state.
• 44:35
  Speaker 13: Elected officials, or your federal elected officials. And....
• 44:41
  Speaker 11: There are certain neighborhoods, I know you're from Norfolk, I
• 44:44
  Speaker 11: did a little research, but there are certain neighborhoods, you know, Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan,
• 44:49
  Speaker 11: Jamaica Plain, Chelsea, all parts of Suffolk County, where they,
• 44:54
  Speaker 11: you can't go, you know, 10 houses without touching a
• 44:58
  Speaker 11: family that has been impacted by the criminal justice system.
• 45:02
  Speaker 11: What I'm really proud of is not only, you know,
• 45:06
  Speaker 11: By the way, I'm a BB & N girl, so
• 45:07
  Speaker 11: we're going.
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: To argue about this.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, who is out there?
• 45:10
  Speaker 13: Yes, I see you.
• 45:11
  Speaker 11: Anyway, so I am fortunate with my background, but I'm the.
• 45:16
  Speaker 13: Oldest of five.
• 45:17
  Speaker 11: I've been a federal prosecutor, had a really wonderful opportunity
• 45:23
  Speaker 11: to learn as a lawyer, but I have a sibling
• 45:25
  Speaker 11: that's incarcerated right now. I'm the mother of a 15-year-old,
• 45:29
  Speaker 11: but I have two nieces that are in DCF custody.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: Due to.
• 45:34
  Speaker 11: The substance abuse disorder of one of my siblings. So
• 45:38
  Speaker 11: I come to this job with a lived experience that
• 45:41
  Speaker 11: I think that's why we were successful in this campaign.
• 45:49
  Speaker 8: You mentioned plea bargains. I think when people think of
• 45:52
  Speaker 8: the criminal justice system, they think like dunk dunk, right?
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: Like juries, judges.
• 45:56
  Speaker 13: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: Law and order. Law and order. 90% of cases are
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: resolved by plea bargains. Agreed.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Does that worry you?
• 46:04
  Speaker 8: I mean, you mentioned how much power that the DA
• 46:05
  Speaker 8: and the cops have versus a defendant or their attorney.
• 46:08
  Speaker 8: Do you ever worry that plea bargains are inherently coercive?
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: Agreed.
• 46:13
  Speaker 13: Yes, they are.
• 46:14
  Speaker 11: They're incredibly scary, right?
• 46:18
  Speaker 13: And for anyone that.
• 46:19
  Speaker 11: Has actually touched the criminal justice system, you are sort
• 46:24
  Speaker 11: of in a situation where you're making determinations without all
• 46:29
  Speaker 11: of the information. So as we said before, if you're
• 46:32
  Speaker 11: poor and when you get arrested you can't afford your bail,
• 46:37
  Speaker 11: that adds 100 pounds to your shoulders with respect to, look,
• 46:42
  Speaker 11: we've charged you with 13 things, we'll knock off 11.
• 46:44
  Speaker 11: If you just pleaded these two, you can be home
• 46:47
  Speaker 11: in 40 minutes. Remember, my job as the DA, I'm
• 46:53
  Speaker 11: the check and balance on the police, right?
• 46:55
  Speaker 13: Ultimately, your motion.
• 46:57
  Speaker 11: To suppress is where we determine what the police made
• 47:02
  Speaker 11: decisions about was that lawful or not. What I get
• 47:06
  Speaker 11: really nervous about is pleas are entered into every day
• 47:10
  Speaker 11: without criminal defense attorneys, whether public criminal CPCS lawyers, bar advocates, or, wait.
• 47:17
  Speaker 13: Was there a CPCS lawyer out there?
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: I heard you.
• 47:19
  Speaker 13: Congratulations, right?
• 47:22
  Speaker 11: They make these determinations without seeing all the evidence, where
• 47:25
  Speaker 11: they might not have pled in the first place or
• 47:28
  Speaker 11: done something different. So yes, pleas are incredibly important, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 11: we hold virtually all the information. We can see the
• 47:36
  Speaker 11: entire deck of cards while you're trying to make this decision.
• 47:41
  Speaker 8: You wrote a 66-page memo outlining the ways your office
• 47:44
  Speaker 8: plans to reduce racial inequality and reduce mass incarceration.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: Wait, do you mean this?
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:53
  Speaker 13: I happen to have this right here.
• 47:56
  Speaker 8: First of all, no memo needs to be 66 pages,
• 47:59
  Speaker 8: but that's just showing off. Can you talk about some
• 48:04
  Speaker 8: of the specific changes in that bad boy and the...
• 48:08
  Speaker 8: incredibly supportive, enthusiastic response you got from Governor Charlie Baker's office?
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 48:13
  Speaker 11: I mean, the governor and I are going away together
• 48:16
  Speaker 11: this weekend. We're going to be.
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: You know what?
• 48:19
  Speaker 11: So why I needed it to be 66 pages is
• 48:22
  Speaker 11: anyone can just sort of mandate something.
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: I wanted there to be data.
• 48:26
  Speaker 11: I wanted there to be things supporting what it was
• 48:29
  Speaker 11: we were saying. It took a little longer than maybe
• 48:32
  Speaker 11: Court Watch had wanted or I promised within 30 days.
• 48:36
  Speaker 13: If you run for office, don't ever promise anything.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: By the way.
• 48:39
  Speaker 11: But I will tell you what I'm really proud of
• 48:43
  Speaker 11: is I am sitting here as the Suffolk County DA,
• 48:47
  Speaker 11: and I am exactly who I said I was gonna
• 48:49
  Speaker 11: be when I was a candidate. And we just memorialized it,
• 48:55
  Speaker 11: and I think there's a lot of people that are
• 48:57
  Speaker 11: nervous about, my God, you put it in writing, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 11: I'm like, correct. So we can be A, held accountable,
• 49:03
  Speaker 11: and B, if you are in West Roxbury, you get
• 49:06
  Speaker 11: the same treatment that you get in Roxbury, right?
• 49:11
  Speaker 13: But what I will tell.
• 49:13
  Speaker 11: You, is I'm excited about the conversations we're having right now.
• 49:20
  Speaker 11: Whether we disagree or whether there are flare-ups or whether,
• 49:23
  Speaker 11: you know, whatever happened in the last week, you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 11: it's not even like I really remember any of that.
• 49:30
  Speaker 13: Stuff, but what I will tell you is we are
• 49:33
  Speaker 13: now moving forward and we're talking about change and we're.
• 49:36
  Speaker 11: Talking about the people that come into contact most often
• 49:40
  Speaker 11: with the criminal justice system are feeling hopeful because there
• 49:44
  Speaker 11: is someone in this role and overwhelmingly DAs are like
• 49:49
  Speaker 11: tough on crime and whatever.
• 49:51
  Speaker 13: We're smart on crime.
• 49:52
  Speaker 11: We are looking at how we can reduce impacting people's
• 49:59
  Speaker 11: lives for low-level, non-violent, non-serious crimes and focus on the
• 50:04
  Speaker 11: very serious crimes that we have in Suffolk County. We
• 50:07
  Speaker 11: have 1,000 unsolved homicides in Suffolk.
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: County, right?
• 50:11
  Speaker 11: We have a 10% to 15% solve rate, and I'm
• 50:15
  Speaker 11: not for non-fatal shootings. I am not good at math,
• 50:18
  Speaker 11: but that is not a very.
• 50:19
  Speaker 13: Good percentage, right?
• 50:20
  Speaker 9: Are you right?
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: No, I'm not good either.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Me neither, right?
• 50:23
  Speaker 11: But 15% solve rate, non-fatal shootings?
• 50:26
  Speaker 10: No.
• 50:27
  Speaker 13: I want my money there.
• 50:29
  Speaker 11: When we incarcerate people for low-level misdemeanors, And they are
• 50:34
  Speaker 11: in the Suffolk County House of Corrections, which is Nashua
• 50:37
  Speaker 11: Street or the House of Corrections.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: $ 55, 000 a year.
• 50:41
  Speaker 11: It costs taxpayers to send people there. Overwhelmingly with misdemeanors.
• 50:46
  Speaker 11: These are people with DSM-5 diagnosed mental health disorders, right?
• 50:52
  Speaker 13: Substance use disorder. Or poverty. Just plain old poor people, right?
• 51:00
  Speaker 13: And I want to get.
• 51:01
  Speaker 11: Them the services they need instead of sending them away.
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: Period.
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: It's just, it's so rare in politics to hear someone
• 51:17
  Speaker 8: talking about an offender in a compassionate way. You know,
• 51:20
  Speaker 8: and like, so I worked in campaigns, I worked in
• 51:22
  Speaker 8: the White House, and I feel like you see this
• 51:23
  Speaker 8: across our political system. Like, diplomacy is seen as weak
• 51:27
  Speaker 8: and politically hard, but like, beating the drum of war
• 51:30
  Speaker 8: is very easy. Trump's immigration policies are an abject failure,
• 51:35
  Speaker 8: but ideas that work, like giving more aid to Central
• 51:37
  Speaker 8: American countries to create a better life for people there
• 51:40
  Speaker 8: so they don't want to migrate, those are politically toxic ideas.
• 51:44
  Speaker 8: Criminal justice reform might be the most, or the criminal
• 51:48
  Speaker 8: justice system might be the most egregious example.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the state that brought us the
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Willie Horton ad. You know, but, so I guess, I mean,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: you have figured out a way to win.
• 51:59
  Speaker 8: Elections talking about more humane criminal justice policies, not minutes
• 52:05
  Speaker 8: or minimums, three strikes you're out.
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: How did you do that and how can we replicate
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: that kind of success?
• 52:09
  Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean, what I.
• 52:10
  Speaker 11: Did was I said, let's start with the fact that
• 52:14
  Speaker 11: no matter whether you are going to have a first
• 52:17
  Speaker 11: degree murder charge and you get natural life without the
• 52:21
  Speaker 11: possibility to parole, I've explained to my office that the
• 52:24
  Speaker 11: Commonwealth versus Rollins, Rollins is part of the Commonwealth.
• 52:29
  Speaker 13: And then their brain exploded, right?
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: Like, what?
• 52:32
  Speaker 13: And I'm like, well, wait a minute.
• 52:34
  Speaker 11: So we represent, of course, the Commonwealth, but we have
• 52:37
  Speaker 11: to understand that the defendant, who is often a victim themselves,
• 52:41
  Speaker 11: and I mean literally and figuratively, we represent their family too.
• 52:48
  Speaker 13: We have to treat people with dignity and respect in
• 52:50
  Speaker 13: the process.
• 52:52
  Speaker 11: Part of what I love about my job is I
• 52:54
  Speaker 11: not only meet with survivors of crime, family members that
• 53:01
  Speaker 11: are picking up the pieces after a loved one has been,
• 53:05
  Speaker 11: you know, murdered, for example. But I also have pledged,
• 53:09
  Speaker 11: if I'm gonna send people away to a place, once
• 53:12
  Speaker 11: a month I visit a correction facility. And I choose
• 53:17
  Speaker 11: not to go to the ones that are like, oh,
• 53:18
  Speaker 11: this is great, it's two minutes from our office, this
• 53:20
  Speaker 11: isn't that bad. No, I'm going to MCI Norfolk, which
• 53:23
  Speaker 11: is a full hour drive And then I go through
• 53:26
  Speaker 11: the process and I sit with people that are overwhelmingly
• 53:29
  Speaker 11: serving natural life without the possibility of parole. And I
• 53:33
  Speaker 11: have to believe that they are people, right? Like if
• 53:36
  Speaker 11: we start with the premise of they are not defined
• 53:40
  Speaker 11: by their worst act, and many of them have had
• 53:44
  Speaker 11: significant impact with the criminal justice system. It's a mindset
• 53:50
  Speaker 11: where when we explain to people that might not understand
• 53:54
  Speaker 11: all of the failures that some of these people have
• 53:58
  Speaker 11: interacted with in their lives, we don't choose who we're
• 54:02
  Speaker 11: born to. You popped out and were like, awesome, I'm
• 54:06
  Speaker 11: going to Milton Academy, right?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I'm a pretty good looking.
• 54:10
  Speaker 11: Guy, you know.
• 54:11
  Speaker 13: I'm going to do.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America.
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: Shout out to my mom who's here tonight.
• 54:15
  Speaker 13: Shout out to mom and dad, right?
• 54:16
  Speaker 11: That's right. Mom and dad, we love you.
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: I don't know if she would describe it as popping out,
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: but you know.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: No, but whatever. You get it.
• 54:22
  Speaker 13: You're popping.
• 54:23
  Speaker 11: But my point is, is that due to no fault
• 54:26
  Speaker 11: of their own, they might have been born in a
• 54:28
  Speaker 11: neighborhood with, you know, horrible schools, public housing, like all
• 54:34
  Speaker 11: these different things. And I am, believe me, you know,
• 54:37
  Speaker 11: Since January 1st of this year, we've had 11 homicides.
• 54:42
  Speaker 11: We've had two kidnappings in Suffolk County. Luckily, we found
• 54:46
  Speaker 11: one of those women alive. But sadly, we found Jassy Carrera,
• 54:52
  Speaker 11: you know, murdered. And we've had hate crimes. I mean,
• 54:56
  Speaker 11: we've had any number of things that have happened. What
• 54:58
  Speaker 11: I'm proud of is when you see women standing up
• 55:01
  Speaker 11: or first-time candidates standing up, I am so excited that
• 55:05
  Speaker 11: as I stood in a sea of men at the
• 55:08
  Speaker 11: Jassy Carrera press conference about the federal government taking that
• 55:13
  Speaker 11: interstate kidnapping resulting in death case to say.
• 55:16
  Speaker 13: Oh, no, no, no.
• 55:18
  Speaker 11: We're not gonna talk about what Jassy was wearing on
• 55:20
  Speaker 11: her birthday or what her friends were doing. We're gonna
• 55:25
  Speaker 11: tell men to stop kidnapping and murdering us and tell
• 55:29
  Speaker 11: people to start raising their children to talk about consent, right?
• 55:36
  Speaker 13: So those are the things. For me, whoever is out here,
• 55:41
  Speaker 13: get involved.
• 55:43
  Speaker 11: Part of what I'm so excited about is there's a
• 55:46
  Speaker 11: new set of lungs that are talking about issues. that
• 55:50
  Speaker 11: we understand virtually every woman in this audience knows what
• 55:54
  Speaker 11: it feels like to have been either harassed or some
• 55:58
  Speaker 11: circumstance like that. And many men have as well because
• 56:01
  Speaker 11: they've experienced the same situation. But I'm excited about the
• 56:05
  Speaker 11: fact that we are speaking out.
• 56:06
  Speaker 13: Loud about it now.
• 56:08
  Speaker 9: Amen.
• 56:11
  Speaker 8: So speaking of getting involved, we have two former prosecutors
• 56:14
  Speaker 8: running for president.
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: We have Senator Kamala Harris. We have Senator Amy Klobuchar.
• 56:19
  Speaker 8: So both have taken some shit for things they did
• 56:22
  Speaker 8: as prosecutor. Senator Harris had, in particular, an anti-truancy program
• 56:27
  Speaker 8: that targeted the parents of kids who skipped school. I'm
• 56:30
  Speaker 8: curious what you think of those criticisms, and if you
• 56:34
  Speaker 8: think a former prosecutor from, you know, just not that
• 56:38
  Speaker 8: long ago can run for president in a Democratic primary
• 56:41
  Speaker 8: in 2020.
• 56:41
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm excited about is
• 56:44
  Speaker 11: as long as they understand that the landscape has changed.
• 56:49
  Speaker 11: I was a federal prosecutor at the US Attorney's Office.
• 56:52
  Speaker 11: I was not the US Attorney, but I was an
• 56:55
  Speaker 11: assistant United States Attorney. The policies were very different than
• 56:59
  Speaker 11: what I'm running on now. I'm happy that they're capable
• 57:03
  Speaker 11: of adapting and realizing that maybe they were not the
• 57:07
  Speaker 11: voice that we are today, but they're recognizing that the
• 57:13
  Speaker 11: landscape has changed and this is the right thing to do.
• 57:16
  Speaker 11: What I think is really hard for people today is
• 57:21
  Speaker 11: to see was I wrong 20 years ago? Was I
• 57:27
  Speaker 11: involved in mass incarceration? I have so many judges, I
• 57:30
  Speaker 11: was fortunate under Governor Patrick to be appointed to the
• 57:34
  Speaker 11: Judicial Nominating Commission. There are lots of judges now that
• 57:39
  Speaker 11: were former prosecutors that believe in what we're doing now
• 57:42
  Speaker 11: but were the very ones that were tough on crime
• 57:47
  Speaker 11: you know, significant sentences for non-violent drug offenses, for example.
• 57:52
  Speaker 11: So I'm excited that they're willing to recognize that there
• 57:56
  Speaker 11: has been a seismic shift into what we need to do.
• 57:59
  Speaker 11: And as long as they're getting on board now, I'm
• 58:01
  Speaker 11: okay with that.
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: All right. Last question for you.
• 58:07
  Speaker 8: You recently did an interview with Jonathan Van Ness from
• 58:10
  Speaker 8: Queer Eye for his podcast.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: Oh my God, yes!
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: Now, I assume you're a fan of the show?
• 58:15
  Speaker 13: I am such a fan.
• 58:17
  Speaker 8: Do you think it's a crime that one guy has
• 58:20
  Speaker 8: to fucking redo a house and Karamo is like, be yourself?
• 58:26
  Speaker 13: That's on my do not prosecute list, actually. So, no,
• 58:29
  Speaker 13: it's not a crime.
• 58:30
  Speaker 9: All right.
• 58:30
  Speaker 13: Yes, I do think it's a crime.
• 58:32
  Speaker 11: Some of them are working way harder than other ones
• 58:34
  Speaker 11: that are like, your hair looks great, but let's part
• 58:38
  Speaker 11: it on the other side.
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: I think Karamo just drives mostly. I think that's sort
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: of like his thing.
• 58:42
  Speaker 9: True, true, yeah.
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: Anyway, thank you so much for being here tonight.
• 58:45
  Speaker 6: You're amazing.
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: Rachel Rollins.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: And we're back. Now it's time for a game.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: Boston.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: The City of Lights. New England's Philadelphia. Boston is a
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: city that said the same thing to bootcut jeans that
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Bob Kraft recently said on camera. Yes, please. But Boston
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: is about more than a handsome quarterback with a red
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: hat and lips made for kissing. His son.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: I don't care.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: You guys are all like, how do these Republicans, how
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: do they support someone like Donald Trump? The shit you
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: tolerate from your fucking teams in Boston. It should teach
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: you something. But Boston is so much more than everything
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: I just said. It's also, believe it or not, home
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: to some of the most important moments in the American Revolution.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: But it can be hard to separate the myths of
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: the revolution from the actual historical record of what took place.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: We can barely do that with what happened yesterday, and
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: we had cameras yesterday. So let's look back at those
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: heady days in 18th century Boston in a game we're
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: calling The Revolution Will Be Televised But in 200 Years
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: by Ken Burns. And until then, wow, a lot of
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: these war poems are not accurate. And how long is
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: it going to take us to learn that you just
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: can't trust poetry? Would anyone out there like to play
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the game?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: Hi.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 10: Hi.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: Hi.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: What's your name?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: I'm Megan.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: Megan. How's it going?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: Are you from Boston?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: I am.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: Whereabouts?
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: Ten minutes away.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: I want you to know something. Somebody last night told
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: me to tell Tommy three words.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: And I'm doing it right now.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: Dedham is in Boston. That's what they told me to
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: tell you, and I waited until right now.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: Of course it's not.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Are you familiar with the American Revolution?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: I think so.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: We're going to read you some questions. You'll answer them, okay?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Here we go. Question one. Which of the following is
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: the real story of Boston hero Paul Revere? Is it A?
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: On a clear Boston night, April 18, 1775, Paul Revere
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: was standing centric when he spied two lanterns burning in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse, a signal that the British had arrived.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: Revere wasted no time.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: He hopped on his trusty steed and rode through the night,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: through Boston and later Concord, issuing those famous words.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: The redcoats are coming. The redcoats are coming.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: Or is it B?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 7: This one's near and dear. Paul Revere was the quintessential Bostonian.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 7: Though he was a genius at math, he worked as
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 7: a janitor at a college. One day, a math professor
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 7: noticed that he drew amazing math shapes on a blackboard
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 7: and said he should do more math and see a therapist,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 7: Robin Williams, to help him be less of an angry
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 7: Boston guy.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: We call those math holes. He did, and it worked.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 7: In the immortal words of Paul Revere, how you like
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 7: them apples?
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: Or is it C, Megan?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 8: Paul Revere was one of about 20 riders. He also
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 8: never finished his ride because he was captured. His role
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 8: in the ride was so minimal it wasn't mentioned in
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 8: his obituary.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: Revere's most noteworthy.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 8: Contribution to the revolution was his role in the Penobscot expedition,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 8: an embarrassing naval disaster that killed hundreds. Revere was placed
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 8: under house arrest and charged with incompetence and subordination and cowardice.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 8: He languished in obscurity until Longfellow's poem gave him all
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 8: the credit for that ride.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Or is it D?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: Before I read this answer, I would note, like, love it.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: I don't have a Boston accent.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: You know what? I'm excited. Or is it D?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: Paul Revere? I haven't heard that name in ages. Paul
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: used to hustle tourists doing three-card Monty outside the bubble gum.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Haven't seen him around, though. Word is he's using again.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Who's asking? I think we'd like to hear that with
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: a Boston accent. Would somebody here with one of the
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: worst ones raise your hand? That woman has a look.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Can I just see that card? There we go.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: Call this audience participation.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: Hi.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: I want it real thick.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 13: Paul Revere? I haven't heard that name in ages.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 6: Paul used to hustle tourists doing the three-card Monty outside
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: the bubblegum.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 13: Haven't heard him around, though.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Word is, Travis, he's using again.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: Who's asking?
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 7: Yes!
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. She was great in The Departed.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: That was amazing.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm really glad we did that. Megan, do you
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: remember the question or anything about it?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: I'm sorry I don't have a Boston accent, but I
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 6: think it's A.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what was it?
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 6: Oh, I'm sorry, it's C.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: It was C, but you know what? You meant C,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: you meant C. I didn't even know anymore. Great job, Megan.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Question two.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 9: Two?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: Holy shit. Benedict Arnold attempted to turn over West Point
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: to the British. How did his plot get foiled?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Is it A?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: In large part, thanks to Agent 355, a member of
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the Culper Ring who was not only one of America's
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: first spies, but also happened to.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Be a woman.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Agent 355 wrote a letter in invisible ink detailing Arnold's plans.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: The letter was delivered to General George Washington himself. As
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: a result, Major John Andre was captured and executed, and
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: she was so good at spying that to this day,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: We do not know her identity outside of her code name.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Or is it B?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 7: When he finally got George Washington right where he wanted him,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 7: trapped in the West Point control room, he made the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 7: mistake of giving a long speech about his evil plan.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: You're never going to trust me. I have all the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: silly ones.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 7: While Benedict Arnold was laughing maniacally and staring out a window,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 7: George Washington, a ropes expert, untied himself and managed to
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 7: reprogram the laser to destroy the supercomputer the moment Arnold
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 7: typed in the key code he stole from Benjamin Franklin.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: Or is it C?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: He accidentally locked the keys inside of West Point.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: Or is it D?
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: Are you so sure it was foiled? You ever wonder
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: why this is America? Yet we're all speaking English? Black Mirror?
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: Netflix?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: Think about it.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Makes you think.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: Wow, that was deep.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: I think it's A.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: You got it. Megan, question three. Which of the following
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: is the true story of Boston hero John Hancock? Is
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: it A?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: John Hancock is best known for his large signature. After
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: he signed the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin remarked, what
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: the fuck is wrong with you?
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: There's not even room for me to sign it now.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson agreed, calling Hancock an asshole and offering to
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: sign a new declaration. But Franklin, chill as hell, said... No,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: let's get this over with. It's no skin off my
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: kite if King George thinks Hancock here is a dipshit.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Or is it B?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 7: John Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in Boston
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 7: who made his fortune smuggling. Hancock instigated and bankrolled the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 7: Boston Tea Party in 1773, but it probably wasn't about
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 7: a high-minded principle. The Tea Act allowed the East India
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 7: Company to sell tea at even lower prices than the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 7: tea Hancock was currently smuggling. And Hancock didn't participate in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 7: the protest himself, Blaming bone spurs. The Boston Tea Party
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 7: also didn't have universal approval at the time. In fact,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 7: George Washington personally condemned it and said those responsible should
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 7: have to pay for the damaged property.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: Or is it C?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 8: He signed his name in giant letters with lots of
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 8: squiggles because he spent all sophomore year practicing it in
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 8: his diary.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: Right next to the.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 8: Part where he kept saying how cool George Washington is
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 8: and how he really, really, really, really wanted to be
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 8: his friend with an intensity Hancock.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: Did not have the words to explain.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: Called autobiographical by the author there.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: Or is it D?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 6: I could tell you who John Hancock is, but it's
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: more fun if you wait to learn all about him
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: in Hancock, Lin-Manuel Miranda's next hip-hop musical on Broadway.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Here's a taste. Anyone have a pen?
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: Hey, Megan.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 7: Hi.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 12: I'll go with Heather B.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: Is that right? Yeah, she got it. Megan's like, I
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: did not know the game would be this long. Or
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: is it?
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, question four. When we tell the story of the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Continental Army, what's one part of the story history teachers
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: often fail to include?
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: Is it A?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: All the kinky stuff.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: The Continental Army was actually an active community for sexual
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: boundary pushing, with one young man from Missouri famously inventing
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: the concept of safe words.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 9: Who knew?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 7: Or as it be, the part where everyone must have
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 7: been so uncomfortable and smelly all the time. I mean,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 7: thick wool coats, pulling on and off those unwashed tights.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 7: Let's finally tell the truth. Being a person was incredibly
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: and unacceptably disgusting until body wash was invented.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 8: Or is it C, the role of a ditch's army
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 8: in many of the major battles. A number of tribes
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 8: formed alliances with the Continental Army, but particularly relevant to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 8: Boston was the Stockbridge Mohican from Western Massachusetts. The tribe
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 8: hoped that, in exchange for their help, the American rebels
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 8: would recognize their sovereignty. The Stockbridge Mohican fought alongside the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 8: rebels in Lexington and Concord in the Siege of Boston.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 8: In addition to building fortifications around Boston and patrolling the
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 8: city's defenses, A member of the tribe was even among
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 8: those killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 8: war was won, they still lost all of their land
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 8: in the state to shitty white settlers.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: Or is it D?
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 6: Historians rarely discuss the meager provisions offered to the starving
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 6: Continental Army, especially at breakfast. But this is how Continental
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 6: Breakfast came to me. Hey, here's an old muffin in
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 6: a fruit salad that's just honeydew and grapes anyway.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: What do you think, Megan?
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: Sounds yummy, but I'm going to go with C.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: You got it. You've won the game. You've won a
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: parachute gift card and a butcher box gift card. Thank
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: you so much for playing. The Revolution will be televised
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: in 200 years by Ken Burns. But until then, wow,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of these war poems are not accurate. And
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: how long is it going to take us to learn
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: that you can't just trust poetry?
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: We have time for three questions. Travis, right there in the,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: what did you call that sweatshirt?
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: Cadbury? No, no, no, no, no. Lavender.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: I think we want to call it lavender.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Cadbury is more of a blue-gray.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Travis will come to you. Just raise your hand and
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: shout things at him.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 14: You guys are terrific.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you for such a great question. Does anybody else
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: have any questions?
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 14: I'd be interested to hear your comments about Nate Cohn's
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 14: article in the Times today, and just is the blogosphere
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 14: leaning left and misrepresenting where the Democratic core is?
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 5: Sure, I'll take it.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, so what Nate found, and he looked at this
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: study that was done about people who use Twitter, the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: people who are overrepresented on Twitter are liberals, white people,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: and higher income folks are overrepresented on Twitter. Who's underrepresented
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: on Twitter, and it's also social media in general as well,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: but especially Twitter, underrepresented are people of color, moderate Democrats,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: and lower income people. So, you know, we say sometimes,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Twitter is not real life. I mean, Twitter
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: is real life, it's just a certain segment of people.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: And so, what you need to know about that is like, Twitter,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: I think, is warping our political reality. If all you
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: do is pay attention to Twitter, then the opinions you
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: see on Twitter, what people say about politics on Twitter,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: is not necessarily representative not only of what Democrats in
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: general think, but what the voting population thinks at all.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: That said, Twitter is also an important place for activists,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: for diverse voices, for people who haven't been heard, who
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: also many times have an outsized influence over political outcomes,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: over media coverage, so there is an important role that
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Twitter plays, and it's important to get in the conversation there,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: but the danger is that if all we do is
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: think that the rest of the country matches the opinions
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: that we're seeing on Twitter, then we will be led
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: very astray.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: Anyone else have?
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 7: Well, this is why I'm really glad that the Democratic
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: primary isn't actually happening on Twitter, it's happening in Iowa
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 7: and South Carolina and New Hampshire, and Nevada, and so,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: you know, there's like the back and forth about this
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: person's getting this kind of coverage, and then we all
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 7: react to that. It's actually not what's happening, right? This politics,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 7: for better or for worse, is still very retail. It's diners,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: it's town halls, and that's where quietly these candidates are
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 7: making their case and connecting with people on a very
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 7: different level than the sort of Twitter takedowns that are happening.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 6: I think the problem with Twitter... One of the problems
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 6: with Twitter, there are many.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: Nazis. Nazis, yes.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: You can get the news, but you have to get
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 6: yelled at by racists and misogynists as the panel is
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 6: the subscription price. But is that a small percentage of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 6: Americans are on Twitter, but 100% of reporters are on Twitter.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 6: And what happens then is it shapes coverage that people
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 6: off Twitter then read.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 12: Right?
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 6: The impressions that are delivered on Twitter about whether it's
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 6: Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or Beto O'Rourke then show
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 6: up in the newspapers of the people who are in
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 6: the diners in Iowa, New Hampshire, etc.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: And that.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 6: Comes from two things. One is laziness on behalf of
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: some reporters who treat. Twitter is a man-on-the-street interview, which
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: is you're just doing a man-on-the-street interview in the meanest,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 6: worst street in America. But also digital advertising being the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 6: revenue driver for digital media.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: Dan, doesn't sound like you've ever been to 4chan Avenue.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: Is it around the corner?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 5: With a magic door where a Russian mob just runs
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: down and pummels.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: You every once in a while.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 6: The dangerous thing about the intersection of media, politics, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: Twitter is it's not that what leads the news trends
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 6: on Twitter. It's what trends on Twitter lead to the news.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 6: And we have to, that has to be reversed if
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 6: we're going to have the same conversation.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen New York Times pieces, analysis pieces
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: that are written entirely based on five tweets from people
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 6: And that's a problem unless it's one of our tweets.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: Then it's cool.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: But so like, this is all, I mean, there's what
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: it means and there's what each of us can do, right?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: And I think obviously because we're all pundits now, that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: makes those things get combined. Like, Twitter is a great
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: way to learn about politics.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 5: It's a great way to hear from disparate voices.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: It is worth remembering that I think put aside ideology,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: put aside the exact people that are there and what
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: they represent. It's a mean place and it's a place
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: that encourages meanness. And just the meanness alone makes it
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: different from how politics is actually practiced and makes it,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: I think, a corrosive force. You know, one thing that
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: was happening in 2016, it's happening now is People had
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: a very positive view of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: They did. But you wouldn't know that on Twitter. And
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: that isn't just because of representation. That is because of
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: the medium itself. The medium is the message. And I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: think one thing that comes out of Twitter is it
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: seems to be an emergent property of the form is cruelty.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: And it's worth keeping that in mind in all of
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: our interactions in that space that at some point in
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: the future they will use Twitter to recreate you via AI.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: And you really want to be a good version of
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: yourself because this is how they're going to know you
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: in a thousand years. It's more you than you realize.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: Keep that in mind.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: On that hopeful note, we'll take another question.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 13: So I have a question that has to do with
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 13: the other side of social media.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: So we have Twitter, but then we also have, you know,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 6: places where fake news proliferates like Facebook.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: Good slip.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: Pretty slip.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 6: You're not wrong.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 11: What kind of answer do we have to that besides
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 11: whatever tools, like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, what tools do
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 11: we have besides what they create to control that?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 13: Do we have an answer to that?
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 5: How do we respond to that?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 8: I mean, one, we all here can vote for lawmakers
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 8: who understand what the internet is.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 5: And can, like, regulate them.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: People like Thomas Massey.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 5: Tom Massey. Ted Stevens.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 9: Right?
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 8: I mean, it's not great when you see Mark Zuckerberg
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 8: go before a committee and someone asks him how the
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 8: company makes money. And he says, Senator, we have ads.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 8: You know, you should probably get briefed on that going in.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 8: So we can have smarter lawmakers who make smarter ads. Two,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 8: they respond to bad headlines and their bottom line. So
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 8: if people organize and protest and hold press events to
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 8: call them out for some of the shit they're doing,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 8: that's incredibly.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 5: Important and valuable.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 8: And it's not just that there is this culture, there's
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 8: this weird proliferation of fake news that happens on Facebook
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 8: in a very dangerous, pernicious way. There's also just the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 8: fact that a lot of the way they keep you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 8: on these platforms is radicalizing sort of inherently. I went
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 8: through a weird phase where I was really into whales
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: and I was looking and my wife and I saw
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 8: some whales and I thought it was really neat.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 5: I'm going to get through this.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 8: And all of a sudden Instagram discovery started showing me
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 8: whales getting killed and then animal like it's like increasingly violent,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 8: radical things. And that is true whether you're searching for
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 8: political content. or anything else.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 5: They need to fix that because their goal shouldn't.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 8: Be to keep us hooked on the line and enraged
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 8: and engaged as long as possible. That is a deeply
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 8: fucked up business model. The last really important vehicle so
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 8: far has been the courts. Alex Jones was kicked off
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 8: a lot of platforms, the guy who runs InfoWars.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 5: Truly, truly, I mean, you know, he is mentally ill.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: There's something very wrong with him, and he has this
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 8: huge platform that's seen by millions of people. He got
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 8: kicked off the platform, his influence greatly diminished, but nothing
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 8: has diminished him the way that having to have his
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: work thrown back at him in the legal system has
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: cut him down, so I think that's an avenue. It's
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 8: not liable, per se, but there are ways through the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 8: courts that I think people are going to start targeting
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 8: people like him.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 6: So I have two more things on this. I've been
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 6: sort of, in the back of my mind, sort of
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 6: workshopping a grassroots campaign to try to convince Mark Zuckerberg
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: to shut the timeline, the Facebook news feed down for
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 6: the last 60 days of the election. It used to
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 6: be in Pre-Citizens United, outside groups could not do electioneering
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: 60 days before the general election. You can't by law
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 6: do that, but if you could put... advertiser pressure, political
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: pressure on Mark Zuckerberg to take that out, he probably
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 6: would never do it.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: I think France has a lot like that.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: In the United Kingdom, because they do public financing like
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 6: any fucking rational democracy would, you can't advertise on television.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: The campaign is shorter.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: Second thing is, everyone always asks this question. It's like,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: what can you do about Facebook? And you means politicians,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: regulatory agencies, the courts. The question is, what can you do?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: I know a lot of us have deleted Facebook and
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: all of this, and I get the incentive to do that,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 6: but here's the problem. All of your fucking uncles are
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 6: going to be on Facebook sharing a bunch of bullshit
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 6: for the next 18 months. So instead of just getting
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: mad about that, Get on there and engage. Every one
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: of you has the ability to push back on the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: fake news narrative. To, as trusted, like the most important
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: validation that people get about facts in this day and
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: age is relational, right? They may not believe it's the
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 6: New York Times or CNN or Fox News or whatever else,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 6: but they may believe it if their friend, their cousin,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 6: their classmate does. So get in there, call bullshit on
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 6: your uncle, post factual rebuttals to things, and engage because
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 6: the right wing is engaged in a massive campaign. from
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 6: the Koch brothers to your uncle to distort the political
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 6: conversations in America via Facebook. And they are doing that
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 6: because not just Democratic politicians, but Democratic voters are sitting
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 6: that conversation out. So we need everyone to engage. You
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 6: have agency here to make this situation better.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: And then we take power, and then we break up Facebook.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 5: All right, one last question. What do you got, Trav?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 12: Hey, so I'm from Madison County, Indiana. And so for
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 12: those of you who don't know, Mike Pence was my congressman. So,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 12: you know, I'm in fifth grade, growing up in a post,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 12: 9-11 post, NAFTA, Indiana town. And sometimes it feels like
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 12: the White Walkers are going to win. So, like, is
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 12: there any hope? Like, what hope? You know, you guys
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 12: laid out some actionable... things we can do, but.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 6: Can the good guys win?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 12: Because it feels like the White Walkers are going to
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 12: win sometimes.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 5: I'm going.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: To take this one.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 7: So, after 2016, a lot of progressive activists who were
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 7: from places like Indiana, a good friend of mine from Kentucky,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 7: another good friend from West Virginia, were like, we need
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 7: to go home, actually.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: Because what we've done is.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 7: We've self-segregated to these urban clusters, and because unions have
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 7: been systematically murdered across the country, there are no more
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 7: places that are organizing rural people, particularly around any kind
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 7: of political awakening about their circumstances that would be a
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 7: counter to the scapegoating and the demagoguery of brown people
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 7: and immigrants and Muslims. And That's what's necessary. We have
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 7: to organize. It's a really weird thing. We're in this
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: moment where tech is mediating everything that we do. But
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 7: every single pseudo-scientific political science study that goes back and
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 7: tries to find out what actually changes people's opinion. We're
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 7: so divided. But there are still ways to change people's opinions.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 7: And you know what it is? It's organizing, which is
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 7: a really basic principle. It's a human being showing up,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 7: asking you what you care about, getting to know you
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: just a little bit. And this thing can like happen
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 7: on the doors. It can happen in church basements. It
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 7: can happen in the workplace. Asking what you care about,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 7: connecting a story of the world to that thing that
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 7: you care about, and then giving them a way to
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 7: take action. It's like a very simple formula, but it
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 7: still works on issues like, you know, like lots of
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: definitions that are very controversial. Like there's a really famous
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 7: door knocking study about trans rights, right?
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: Very controversial.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: People are like, I've never met anybody who's trans and
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 7: yet someone comes to their door and talks to them.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: About their values. What do you value?
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 7: I value love and fairness and commitment. And then transposes
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 7: the issue that is, you know, that you're door knocking
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 7: on to that. So the problem is we just don't
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 7: have enough social infrastructure. We try to do it through
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 7: elections and it's this huge partisan sort of blitzkrieg that
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 7: happens on swing states and small towns, but we've gotta
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 7: do it year round. And so if I were George
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 7: Soros or whomever, or the 50,000 people who are gonna
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 7: be tech billionaires tomorrow when Instagram goes public, I would
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 7: spend that money on organizing, empowering people like you and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: people like us to just go door to door.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, can't improve on that answer. That's the best
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: answer I've heard on that. I will have one last
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: plug before we go. There's been a lot of reporting
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: recently on first quarter fundraising totals among the different Democratic candidates. And,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: you know, despite what they've raised, you hear about how
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: much cash they have on hand.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: And it's $ 10 million, $ 12 million.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: It's somewhere around there for some of the leading Democratic candidates.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump ended last year, 2018, with $ 129 million in
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: his re-election account.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: He was in Texas this week. He did two events.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: He raised $ 6 million in a couple of hours. We
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: are going to have a very long primary where the 40,000
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Democrats who are running are all trying to raise money
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: from everyone. They're all trying to battle each other, and
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: whoever the nominee is is going to enter the general
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: election with an account that is gonna be at zero, basically.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: So what can we do?
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: If you have a candidate that you already love in
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: the primary, great, donate to that candidate. But if you don't,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: or even maybe aside from this, we have partnered with
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: our friends at Swing Left to start a fund called
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Unify or Die.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, there it is.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: And what you can do is you can contribute to
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: this fund, and whoever the Democratic nominee is, once they
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: claim the nomination, they will get all of the money
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: that's in this fund right now. So I encourage everyone
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: to go. You can go to votesaveamerica.com slash unify.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: And you can donate.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: And then make sure that our nominee has everything that
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: they need to beat Donald Trump in November 2020.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 5: Thank you to Rachel Rollins.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you to Heather McGee. Thank you, Boston.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 6: Thanks for coming.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Boston.