Latest / Pod Save America / “A little noise from Iran.”

Transcript

“A little noise from Iran.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Detour.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Welcome back, guys.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: How are you? Good to be back.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It is good to be back. I was excited to
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: come back here and record today. Lots of news.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, start your new year off with a war.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: On our first part of 2020, Senator Chris Murphy joins
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about Trump's march to war with Iran. But first,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about the global crisis that the president precipitated
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the latest
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: on Trump's impeachment trial, and the state of the 2020
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: race with less than 30 days until the Iowa caucuses.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: What?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: That is a lot, guys.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: This primary has been going on forever.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And now we're under 30 days.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: And it's about to begin.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Two quick housekeeping notes. If you want
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a fantastic primer into what's at stake with the Iran crisis,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: please go listen to the Pod Save the World that
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Tommy and Ben recorded on Friday. It's excellent.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I promise you'll learn a lot.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And one big announcement from me. The second season of
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: The Wilderness premieres Monday, January 13th, and the trailer is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: out today. For the last few months, I talked to
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: all kinds of voters, organizers, strategists, and candidates in some
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of the battlegrounds that will decide 2020, looking for a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: path to victory. And I did find that path.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, good.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: What is it? You have to subscribe to find out.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: I know. Mandalorian over here. Or something.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: A lot of Baby Yoda in this. All right, so
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: check out the podcast. It's going to be six episodes total.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: We're going to release two each week, starting on Monday,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the 13th. So go subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Is it on the Wilderness feed? Is that where I look?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: It is on the Wilderness feed.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So go subscribe and you can just go to thewildernesspodcast.com.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: To go right and subscribe there. And you can listen
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to the trailer on that website as well, wildernesspodcast.com. Thanks
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: for reminding me, Tommy.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Forgot the website.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the terrifying news of the day. President
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Trump essentially started a war with Iran when he ordered
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the second most powerful figure in the Iranian government. In response,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Iran has vowed to retaliate against the United States and U.S.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: forces serving abroad. They've announced that they'll be restarting their
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: nuclear program. The Iraqi parliament voted to expel all U.S.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: troops from Iraq. And we've been forced to suspend our
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: operations against ISIS in Iraq. Meanwhile, Trump has responded by
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: sending another 3,500 troops to the Middle East and tweeting
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that if Iran retaliates, quote, we have targeted 52 Iranian
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: sites representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: years ago, some at a very high level and important
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to Iran and the Iranian culture. And those targets in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Iran itself will be hit very fast and very hard.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Targeting cultural sites is in fact an internationally recognized war crime. Uh,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So lots to unpack here, guys. Tommy, let's start at
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the beginning. What do we know about so far? Why
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: this happened? Why did Trump make this decision? Well, it
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: depends on who you believe.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: The Washington Post reported that Mike Pompeo has been pushing
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Trump to do this for many, many months. And, you know,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: back in the day, there were a bunch of senior
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: officials in the Trump administration like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the secretary of state. who were cautioning a less caustic
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: line on Iran. They didn't want them to pull out
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: of the Iran nuclear deal. But over time, all these
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: reasonable people got pushed out. The right-wing hardliners are in,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: and so here we are. Now, the stated reason that
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration did this is they said that there
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: was an imminent threat from Qasem Soleimani, from Shia militia
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: groups in Iraq that were going to attack and kill U.S. forces.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Everyone who has seen that intelligence so far People quoted
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: in newspapers, people I've talked to said that that does
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: not hold water, that they've seen nothing that indicates there
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: was some imminent threat which would justify this strike legally or,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: you know, rationally. So it just seems like something that
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a bunch of nuts wanted to do.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And it sounds like the sort of what immediately precipitated
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the decision was the fact that there had been– There
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: was an attack that killed an American contractor in Iraq, right?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the problem. The explanation is all over
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the place. One of these militia groups, KH, a Shia
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: militia group in Iraq, killed a U.S. contractor and wounded
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: service members in Kirkuk. In response to that, the U.S.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: military hit a couple of sites associated with KH, training sites,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: weapons depots, et cetera. So you would think that response
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: was to killing a U.S. contractor. But then they went
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: and they killed Qasem Soleimani, and the justification for that
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: was an alleged imminent threat of another attack.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: But even in the way, you know, Pompeo goes on
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: television and lies, obviously, but even in the way he's lying,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: they seem to be admitting that that's not totally true
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: because they, he's, he said something along the lines of, uh, uh,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: he was in the process of, uh, planning attacks against
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: American interests. And two things about that. One, that seems
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: to have been a good part of his job for
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: the better part of decades. And the second part of
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: that is, uh, he's not the actual He's not pulling
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: the trigger.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: He's not wearing a suicide vest.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: He's involved in the chain of command. And one other
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: part of this that no one has been able to
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: answer at all is how does killing this figure prevent
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: those attacks? Why aren't those attacks more likely and not
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: less likely to happen now that this person is dead?
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: It also seemed like there was reporting in the New
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: York Times and Washington Post as well that in retaliation
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: for the contractor being killed, Trump ordered those set of strikes.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And then there were protests outside our embassy in Iraq.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And it said that apparently Trump was watching those protests
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and then got really mad and decided he wanted to
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: do another strike.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: What a surprise that Trump was watching cable TV and
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: it made him angry. Although this time, well, this time
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: it sounds like what happened was Mike Pompeo and Secretary
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: of Defense Esper flew down to Mar-a-Lago and they pitched
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Trump on a sort of menu of ideas to further respond.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: And the New York Times reported that on the menu
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: was killing Soleimani. and that that very extreme proposal was
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: only put on there to make the other ones look
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: more reasonable, and everyone was shocked when he ultimately decided
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: to do it, but no one apparently pushed back.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: That was the craziest anecdote of all in the New
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: York Times, that they were like, we'll just put this
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: on as an extreme. Some people may have seen this,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: but both the Bush administration and the Obama administration basically
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: passed on this option at times as well, and the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: reason they did is because They were too concerned, both administrations,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: even the administration that took us to war in Iraq,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: were concerned that this would escalate tensions in the Middle
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: East into full-blown war. Before we talk about what a
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: stupid and dangerous move this was, tell me, what do
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you think about the debate over whether it was legally justified,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: whether we should call it an assassination, and how much
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: did these debates matter?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, they matter if you care about international law.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So from that, like, it's a complicated case. There's sort
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: of like a common sense, like lexical what's in the
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: dictionary definition of an assassination. And then there's the definition
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: of assassination, which has been banned by the U.S. government
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: under executive orders that date back to like when we
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: used to give Fidel Castro explosive cigars and attempt to
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: take up political figures. Right. You're not supposed to assassinate
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: political figures, period. The debate about... But Soleimani is a
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: complicated case in that he's the number two guy in
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: their system, but the Quds Force, the organization he ran,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. So there's no doubt that
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: he helped play this big role in creating and supporting
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: these militia groups and other malign acts across the globe, basically.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: But there's no formal state of war between the U.S.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: and Iran, so there's no basis to target him on
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: that level. During the Iraq War, the U.S. targeted Saddam Hussein.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Remember the deck of cards, the senior figures that they'd
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: go after, right? So the legality of whether or not
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: it was legal or justified to take out Soleimani hinges
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: on this intelligence that none of us can see because
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: it all is about this imminence question. Got it. But
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think like reasonable people should say this
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: was an assassination.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So I mentioned some of the consequences that are already
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: playing out. What are some of the potential consequences that
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: worry you the most, both in short-term, medium-term, long-term?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I worry about Iran directly targeting forces in Iraq or
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Jordan or Kuwait or a diplomatic post in Lebanon. I
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: worry about these Shia militia groups. Lebanese Hezbollah came out
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: today and said that their targets are going to be U.S.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: military personnel and they're not going to target civilians. So
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: when the head of Hezbollah sounds more reasonable than the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: president of the United States on Twitter, that's telling you something.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: There's also these militia groups that might just sort of
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: pay fealty to Soleimani and not coordinate their actions with
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the Iranians and take action that way just because they're pissed.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And then there's also the fact that we had to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: stop the counter ISIS operations at a time when ISIS
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: has had a bit of a resurgence because of our
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: pullout from Syria. So there's a lot of ways this
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: can manifest.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: How serious do you think the concerns are about cyber
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: attacks against the United States or potentially a terrorist attack
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: against the homeland?
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: It's hard to know. It's hard to know. I mean, look,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: you look at what they've done, what they've said already
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: about their nuclear program. They announced that they're no longer
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: going to abide by the enrichment restrictions in the JCPOA
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: and the Iran deal, but they said they're going to
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: continue to work with the IAEA and allow them access
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: to inspect sites and things. So in that instance, if
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: you're looking at that as a signal, they're sort of
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: tiptoeing out of the Iran deal. They're not immediately announcing
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: that they're enriching the 90% to create a bomb. So
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: It seems like they're sort of an incremental response and
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: not some big blockbuster thing.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: It seems that there's some effort on their part to
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: seem reasonable to the international community, to try to seem
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: as though they are the victims in this.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think you're right.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Well, we didn't mention this yet, but it does seem
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: like the inciting incident for this entire crisis is Trump
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: ripping up the Iran deal back in 2018, right? Yeah.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I thought Ben... Ben Rhodes, on our pod Friday,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: walked through the timeline from the Trump pulling out of
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: the Iran deal to today. And I think it's a
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: very compelling case. He also wrote a piece for The Atlantic.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think we would be in a stronger
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: position today if Iran's nuclear program was being managed by
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: a diplomatic agreement. The fact that it's not makes everything
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: more complicated.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think an important point here is, however
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: you felt about the Iran deal in the first place,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: whether it was a good deal or not, once the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Iran deal was in place, even Trump's own administration, his
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: own national security team, warned him not to get out
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of the deal. People who weren't necessarily fans of the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: deal at the first place said, once we're in the deal,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't get out of the deal. And he fucking
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: did it anyway, against the advice of most people in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: his administration and the whole global community.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And now here we are.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right. By the way, one of the reasons to
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: not pull out was the fear that it might lead
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: to this crisis.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. I mean, look, you... John Bolton, now that
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: he's left the administration, is very clear that his goal
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: all along has been regime change. So they pull out
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: the Iran nuclear deal where Iran agreed to all these
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: restrictions on their nuclear program in exchange for economic relief
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: from sanctions. And instead of getting that relief, they get
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: more sanctions in an effort to crush their economy and
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: lead to regime change. So, of course, over time, they're
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: going to start lashing out. It shouldn't surprise anybody.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about how the administration is responding to
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: all this. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was out on
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: all the Sunday shows when he was asked by Chuck
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Todd about the potential for Iran to retaliate by killing Americans.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Pompeo said, quote, it may be there is a little
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: noise here in the interim, but that America will be
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: safer in the long run. Later, Donald Trump was asked
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the same question and said, quote, if it happens, it happens. Um, Tommy,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I know you have some strong feelings about Pompeo's Sunday
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: show appearances because I was texting you about it yesterday.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Before I melt down, I'm just curious what you guys
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: think would have happened if Susan Rice had said there
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: was a little noise in the interim.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I was saying, like, those statements, both from Pompeo and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: then Trump saying, if it happens, it happens. Like, President
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Obama would have been impeached within a day for saying that.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I just can't even believe.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: There's such a glibness to it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: But it is also....
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: It is their kind of whatever. They're sort of cosplaying
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: as tough guys. And so for them, they're trying to
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: go out there and seem as though they're not worried
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: about the retaliation because they're trying to send a message
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: not only to Iran but to domestic policymakers just to say, look,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: we're in this for the long haul. This is part
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: of a coordinated strategy. We're not going to show weakness.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: We're not going to show as if we are vulnerable people.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: to Iranian counterattacks because we are trying to project strength,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: but because it's been managed in this incredibly chaotic, incompetent,
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: and glib way, beginning with a fucking flag gif and
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: ending with all of these comments, it is, you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: it's frightening.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's too early and too difficult to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: tell how the politics of all this play out for
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and his administration, but I can't, remember a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: situation in history where, God forbid, if there is a
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: retaliation by Iran and American forces or any Americans are killed,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you'd be able to draw such a direct line from
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the president's action to the retaliation itself. I just, I mean, so,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: and then going out there and saying, well, if it happens,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it happens. Like there's some kind of retaliation Most people
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: who woke up and didn't even know who Qasem Soleimani
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: was suddenly see that the United States assassinated this guy.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And then however many weeks later, they retaliated against us.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I think that the blame and responsibility is going to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: lay at the feet of Donald Trump.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Of course it is. I mean, they clearly did nothing
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: to prepare for the potential fallout to the strike, you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: and you could tell that because the press release they
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: finally put out that night misnamed the IRGC. They got
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: the name of the organization wrong. And so Watching these
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Sunday shows yesterday made me despondent because of the media's
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: failure to be tough on these guys. So I dealt
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: with that by accidentally blaming Ellen Pompeo for U.S. troops
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: being pushed out of Iraq.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: No, it's her time on Twitter. It's her time in
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: the barrel.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, she knows what she did. But I
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: guess what I would say is like Mike Pompeo does
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: not deserve to be treated with respect or deference. Right.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, Trump is a pathological liar. Pompeo is his
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: foot soldier. One of the last times we all saw
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: him on these shows. he was lying about Trump's call
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: to Ukraine to extort dirt on Joe Biden, pretending he
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: didn't know anything about it. He's implicated. He was listening
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: to the call. He was on the call.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: In the scandal.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Right. And so like, I was just listening to, you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Chuck asked him, Pompeo, meet the press. Like, are you
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: really targeting 52 sites that are cultural in nature? It's like,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: that's not the question, man. It's like, how are you
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: okay with putting forward war crimes? How are you okay
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: with targeting civilians? And then on CBS, like he was
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: asked if, He really thinks Iran will negotiate. Like he
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: has no idea. They're not, they are not questioning the
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: administration's intelligence basis for this war. They're not questioning the strategy.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: There's not nearly enough scrutiny on the obvious lies these
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: guys are putting forward. And the obvious fact that their
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: own foot soldiers, Lindsey Graham said, this is going to
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: increase the risk to us personnel. So how does that
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: meet the stated rationale of your, of your action?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I was going to say the only person who did
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: a good job of this was Jake on the Sunday
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: shows when he, sort of pressed him on the bullshit
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: statement that this makes America safer in some way. Their
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: administration has been telling people to evacuate Iraq, American citizens
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to evacuate Iraq and leave the embassy because they all
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: think that a retaliation is coming. How does that make
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: us safer?
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: It's safer as a state of mind, John. It's actually
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: what they write. It's that it's definitionally, it's ideologically makes
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: us safer to use force in this way, even if
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: in the short term, which lasts for fucking ever. The
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: short term of our military interventions have now lasted more
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: than almost 20 years since 9-11. The short term lack
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: of safety to achieve some utopia of national security in
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: the future never seems to come. In watching this unfold,
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: you know, I was trying not.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: To tweet and I succeeded.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Good for me.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Good job.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: But I was watching all this unfold and It's hard
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: to unpack all the ways in which what's happening is wrong.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: And I think that's why some of these interviews become
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: such a muddle, because there's the escalation and the risks
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: and danger of that decision. There is the incompetence and
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: chaos of the implementation. There are the glib and ugly
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: and awful tweets that claim the reason, you know, he's
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: retweeting people saying the reason he didn't notify Democrats in
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Congress is because they were on the same side as Soleimani. or,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: you know, just tweeting an American flag as if that's
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: what the American flag is to you. It represents the
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: successful killing of a foreign leader, USA. And then on
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: top of all of that, there is the barrage of
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: lies that go into the defending of this policy to
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: make it all go down smooth. Pompeo has to go
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: on television and lied and lie because the only way
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: to make all of this work, right? You cannot go
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: on a serious television show and speak honestly about Donald Trump.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: It is not possible to be coherent. The only way
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: to be coherent is to lie, avoid the hard truths,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: find different ways to be almost true in your description
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: of what would happen to try to make it all
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: go down.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: He pretends reality doesn't exist. He's like, oh, Trump didn't
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: say he's not really going to hit cultural sites. Then
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Trump gets interviewed on Air Force One. He does a gaggle.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: He's like, hell, yes, we are. It's not fair that
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: they're allowed to kill our guys and torture people and
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: all this shit. We can't hit their cultural sites. That's
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: not how laws work, you fucking sociopath.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Which, how many times has that happened, that Donald Trump
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: says something, then his administration is asked on TV whether
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: he said it, and they say, no, he didn't say
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: what you heard him say, and then they follow up
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, and he goes, oh, no, that's exactly
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: what I said.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Donald Trump's defenders... My people go out.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: And they lie for me all the time, just like
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I lie all the time, and you're all supposed to
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: believe that.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is like, go take a couple steps out
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: on that branch for me. A little bit further.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Further.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: A little bit further.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: He just saws it off.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: But, you know, just... I think that's why it's sometimes
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: hard to kind of separate out the kind of the
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: tweets and what they portend, what he's implying, what the
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: kind of threats he's willing to make in the actual policy.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: But then you see it sort of come together. You know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: I saw a lot of people noting this, that what,
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: two weeks ago, there were massive anti-government protests in Iran.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: And then we kill Soleimani. And then there are massive
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: protests against the United States in Iran. And, you know,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: it's wrong to destroy cultural sites. And there's all kinds
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: of reports as to whether or not the Pentagon would
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: go along with it. You know, the kind of whatever
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Trump says, something insane. And then we find out whether
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: he really means it or even if he really means it,
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: will the people in his government really.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Go along with it?
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: The words matter regardless of what ultimately happens in this case,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: because it sends a message because for for so long,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: our policy has been about trying to signal to Iranians
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: and to signal to places where we have strong disagreements
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: with the government that our our our Our beef is
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: with the leadership. Our beef is with the regime. Our
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: problem is with the regime. And when you tell a
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: country that we are going to bomb your cultural sites,
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: you are telling that country it is about the people.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Totally. I think saying cultural sites doesn't get, I mean, like,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: imagine if there was an attack on, you know, the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty was blown up. Mount Rushmore was blown up, right?
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And like, How would you feel suddenly if it wasn't
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: just I mean, it is NPR.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Had a journalist out on the streets with some of
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: these protesters yesterday and she was interviewed this morning and
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: she said she talked to a travel agent who was like,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I never do this. I never come out to these protests,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: but they killed Soleimani. This is about Iranian pride. This
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: is about like our standing in the world. Right. Like
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: this has awakened all these people who are now enraged
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: at us when previously. they not, they weren't necessarily. And yes,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: imagine if Qasem Soleimani said he was going to take
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: out the Washington monument, we'd all be ripped shit. Right.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And also, and you alluded to this, I mean, we're
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: talking about the Iranian government officials and the head of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Hezbollah saying like, okay, we're not going to target American
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: civilians and we're going to target American U.S. force and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. But Who knows how many people are
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: all over in Iran and throughout the Middle East. This
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: action has radicalized. They may just take action on their
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: own now because of what Donald Trump decided to do for, again,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a reason we don't know. A reason that's not been
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: justified by any intel whatsoever. Like you said, Lovett, we
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: have no idea why taking out Soleimani was what would
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: have stopped the attacks that he wasn't going to carry
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: out anyway as the guy who might have been planning them.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: And you also just sort of step back and you're like,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: all right, we have lost untold trillions of dollars in
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: the Middle East since 9-11. Thousands of Americans have died.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East have
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: been killed and millions more displaced because of the instability
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: that we have wrought. All to put a democracy in
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: place in Iraq. Then as a result of this president's action,
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: that democracy votes to expel our troops. And the first
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: move on the part of the president is to threaten
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: them with sanctions unless they fund our base, because that's
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: what we want.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: How is it?
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: How does this make us safer? How does it serve
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: our national security interests to be in a position now
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: where we have to threaten Iraq?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Pay us back or we'll sanction you. Are you crazy?
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: This is what it's all come to. This is what
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: all that money and fucking death has led to. All
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: the things we couldn't do in the United States, all
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the health care we couldn't provide, the schools we couldn't build,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: the roads we didn't pave, all of it so we
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: can kind of fucking threaten the Iraqi government to keep
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: our troops so we can kill Soleimani to make us safer,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: everybody feel safe.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Of course, they expel the troops and the troops leave.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: You know, Trump will be like, I brought the troops home.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: I know. I know. But this is why I was
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: just despondent watching these shows yesterday, because it's like, what
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: will it take for everyone to recognize that these wars
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: are a bad idea? Do we need another Iraq? Do
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: we need another Vietnam? How many times are we going
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: to fuck this up before we learn something and before
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: we fix some of the messed up incentives that allow like.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: countries to get bloodthirsty and jingoistic and go to war.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: It's not even in the past. We're still in Afghanistan.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: We're still in Iraq. Let's talk about like lessons learned
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: from something that happened a while ago. We're still fucking there.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: And just one other, one other, just to the point
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: about what the legality of it too. It's like the
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: justifications are all over the place. It was an imminent threat. Oh,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: but also it's justified because of the authorization for the
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: use of military force after nine 11 to take out
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Al Qaeda and Soleimani is not involved in that. Iran's
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: not involved in that. It's a different sect of Islam.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: It's a different country. And they're going to try to
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: use that as a justification. So I do think, too,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: one lesson we have not learned is that we need
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: to take Congress's prerogatives back. in control of the military
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: and in control of decisions of war and peace. We
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: have to take the power back from the executive.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: A bunch of people have been trying.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: It's just, well, I talked to Chris Murphy about that
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: for a while. I mean, look, yes, some have been trying,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: but when Barack Obama tried to, uh, get Congress to
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: vote on whether to go strike Syria, everyone in Congress
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: hid in Democrats and Republicans.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't, they don't want the program.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: They don't want to vote. Yes.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: And they don't want to vote now, but to their credit,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, uh, are pushing legislation that would
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: prevent any money from being spent on offensive operations in Iran.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Pelosi came out this morning, said they're going to do
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: something with respect to the war powers. Tim Kaine has
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: been pushing for a repeal of the AUMF for a
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: long time. So there are people trying to do the
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: right thing. They just need our support.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: And you do have some odd allies on the Republican
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: side in some of these issues, right?
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Matt Geitz and Ro Khanna put a bill forward that
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: would have blocked offensive action on Iran. It got attached
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to the NDAA, the Defense Authorization Bill, and then stripped
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: out in conference.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And Rand Paul is one of these guys in the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Senate who's sort of a non-interventionist. So you might have
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: some coalition there.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I just have something nice about Matt Geitz. I know.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: You know how bad that felt?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: It's a fucking human frat paddle.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Is it Gates or Geitz? I don't care. He sucks.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: He sucks. Either way, he sucks.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Let's turn to the second most important topic this week,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: which is that Donald Trump has been impeached by the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: House and is awaiting his trial in the Senate.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: That's the second.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: That's topic number two.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: That's what we covered right before we all left for
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: that six-month vacation.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Feels like six months. Nancy Pelosi has so far held
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: back on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: as a way to highlight the fact that Mitch McConnell
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: is refusing to hold a fair trial with relevant witnesses
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and evidence. Meanwhile, some pretty damning emails about the Ukraine
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: scandal came to light over the break. including one where
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a budget office official tells a Defense Department official that
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: there was a, quote, clear direction from POTUS to hold
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the aid to Ukraine, even after the Defense Department approved it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: An even bigger development broke this morning. Former White House
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: National Security Advisor and Iran bombing enthusiast John Bolton said
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: this morning that he's willing to testify at Trump's impeachment
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: trial if he is subpoenaed by the Senate. Guys, why
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the change of heart from Bolton?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And what happens next here?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Look, I don't... It's actually been... I was going to
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: make a joke. It's genuinely been very difficult to understand
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: what John Bolton's motivations have been. I've sort of operated
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: under a basic assumption that John Bolton cares about two things,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Middle East entanglements and himself.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, money.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: And money, which I put under his self-interest category. Self-care.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe he got his war.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: He's got his warmongering now, and he's like, all right,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that's all set, so now I can go just shiv Trump. Yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: It's, it's, it's baffling.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, apparently, you know, he's also seems he's definitely
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: more interested in book sales than he is in the
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: national interest, but there are places where those may align.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: And maybe in testifying they align.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Tell me, what was your reaction? I mean, look, I
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: think we all were maybe a little confused about this
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: strategy to delay sending over the articles, but now I
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: do think it's been proven to be, to be smart
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: because I don't think you can have a fair impeachment
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: trial without hearing from the people who actually had conversations
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: with Donald Trump. I mean, It sounds so obvious, but
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: of course they need to hear from John Bolton. Of
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: course they need to hear from Mick Mulvaney. That is
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: critical to understanding his mindset and whether he had this
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: aid held up. I mean, we now we have these
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: emails that indicate clearly that he was involved in every
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: step of this extortion effort. So I think that, you know, unfortunately,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I think we are going to have to be relying
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: on some Republicans to vote to do the right thing.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: But Well, and I think to that point, that's exactly
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: what Pelosi's strategy was about, was to, and Chuck Schumer
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: said this over the weekend on television, which I thought
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: was smart, if Pelosi had immediately transmitted the articles of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: impeachment to the Senate, Mitch McConnell could have potentially held
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a vote right before Christmas to shut the whole thing down.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe not, because maybe he couldn't have gotten those, every
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: single Republican on board, but he might have. What this did,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: what keeping this open did, was sort of highlight the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: attempt at a cover-up by Mitch McConnell. And so what
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: happened over those weeks where the spotlight was on McConnell
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and the Republicans? Well, you had Susan Collins come out
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and say, yeah, you know what, even though at first
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I was sort of going along with this, I think
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell working too closely with the White House, that's
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a problem. Use how Lisa Murkowski say the same thing.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Neither of them said that earlier on. It sort of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: took the extra pressure and the extra time for them
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to both say that. And then, of course, you had
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: these emails come out. In addition to the ones we read,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: A New York Times Freedom of Information Act lawsuit unearthed
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the existence of 20 undisclosed emails between top officials in
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the White House Chief of Staff's office and the Budget Office.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So we have those two. And now we have John
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Bolton saying he's willing to accept a Senate subpoena. It
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was interesting because he didn't say he'd accept a House subpoena.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: He said he'd accept a Senate subpoena. Presumably that's because
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the trial has moved to the Senate. Impeachment has moved
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to the Senate. But it does sort of make me
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: wonder if they refuse to call him in the Senate,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: if Mitch McConnell refuses... Can Adam Schiff still send him
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: a subpoena or Jerry Nadler and have him appear in
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the House?
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah. I mean, it seems to me he's saying,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: I will be part of a Senate trial. I will
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: not be part of a House inquiry.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: We don't really know.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he can do that. Well, I mean,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: he can do whatever he wants.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, once you go to court, legally, that would be problematic.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to comply with a Senate subpoena, not a
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: House one.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: And then we're back to, are we going to wait
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: out the courts to find out the outcome? Which is
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: why I think maybe he's saying he's more willing to
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: obey a Senate subpoena because there's a possibility that a
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Senate subpoena is... implemented much faster because Chief Judge John
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Roberts is sitting at the top of the trial. I
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: think the most interesting piece of what's been happening is
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: what Schumer said, which is his willingness to now say
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: that he is hopeful that he can get four Republicans
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: and believes it may be possible to get four Republicans
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: to vote for a fair trial. One thing we said
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: before the break was it seemed like it might be
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: a mistake for Mitch McConnell to be so brazen and
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: go on television.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Clearly was.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: It clearly created distance between him and the caucus. Every
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: day it seems to have gotten harder for people like
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, others, Romney, to just
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: vote for a trial with no witnesses. Just Bolton reminding
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: people he could be a witness does a lot of
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: good work to make a Senate trial more possible.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It's also notable 538 re-upped some polling that they did
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: from December that showed 57% of Americans want to hear
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: from new witnesses. So this is a pretty popular thing.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, it's hard to trust a ton of polling
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: over a break like that. And there wasn't a lot,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: but I did notice because I check it all the time.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: The support for impeachment, which had almost become even right
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: before we left, has now sort of widened a little
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: bit more so that more people are supporting it than
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: opposing it after the vote. And so it's sort of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: ticked up a little bit. It may be stabilized now.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, part of that is people
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: saw that the House of Representatives actually went forward and
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: voted for it, right? They voted for impeach the president
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and people who don't pay a lot of attention to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: politics might look at that and say, oh yeah, the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: president was impeached. Maybe he did do something wrong. And so,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: but I think you're right, Levitt, like it is going
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: to be incredibly difficult. They still might do it, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: incredibly difficult for Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or these
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: people to say, John Bolton's out there saying, I have
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: information about the president. I was the president's national security advisor.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and I have information about what you're impeaching him for,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and you're not going to say that he should testify?
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: You're going to say, no, we don't want John Bolton?
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: We're just going to cover it up and move on?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're Susan Collins running in Maine, you're
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Cory Gardner running in Colorado, that's a hard thing to say.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, a couple of them have consciences.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Consciences are not.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Pure politics.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Talk about running in a purple state. That's what it
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: should be about.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Regardless of the point I'm making is they don't even
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: need consciences. That's the beauty of it.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about 2020. The Iowa caucuses are now
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: less than a month away, and the race remains both
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: oddly stable and wildly unpredictable. There has been way too little.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Like our president.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Unstable. There has been way too little polling over the
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: last month, but we did get a pair of CBS
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: polls over the weekend that shows a Three-way tie in
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Iowa for first with Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Pete
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Buttigieg all at 23%. Elizabeth Warren at 16%. Amy Klobuchar
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: at 7%. In New Hampshire, it's Bernie at 27%, Biden
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: at 25%, Warren at 18%, Pete at 13%, and Klobuchar
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: at 7%. We also got fourth quarter fundraising totals with
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders way out in the lead at $ 34.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: 5 million.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Pete's at 24-7%, Biden 22%, Warren 21%. The next Democratic
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: presidential debate takes place in Iowa on January 14th. Jesus,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: next Tuesday.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So we talked about this a few times before the break.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But if you look at the numbers in the first
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: four states and Super Tuesday, it looks like Biden has
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: held on to his frontrunner status. But Bernie Sanders is
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: now in probably the strongest position to challenge that frontrunner status.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think accounts for Bernie's growing strength?
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And what's his path here?
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, Bernie is the frontrunner.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I think he's winning.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: In Iowa and he's winning in New Hampshire. I don't
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: know how to describe a frontrunner any other way. And
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: he raised $ 34. 5 million this quarter without doing any fundraising events.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It's impossible to overstate how valuable that is to a candidate.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: If you have a strong performance in Iowa and you
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: just get tens of millions of dollars just rolling in online,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: he's a juggernaut.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I would not call him the frontrunner
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: because I still think, at the very least, national polling.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Biden's still, if you look at the average of all
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the Iowa polling, he's up at the top. Bernie's clearly
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: in the lead in New Hampshire.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: We have an early state primary process where it goes Iowa,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and he is winning when
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: you sequence it that way.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Bernie's path. Bernie's path is winning Iowa,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: or at least being right at the top, which is
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: very possible according to the polling right now, winning New
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Hampshire where he is ahead, winning Nevada where there has
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: been Fucking no polling whatsoever, but it is a caucus state.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: It's about organizing. Bernie has the best organization.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Hillary only won it by six.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you could see Bernie doing well there. South Carolina,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden is far, far ahead. So you could see
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden winning South Carolina. Then you go to Super Tuesday.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: The Sanders campaign is betting strongly on a big win
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: in California, which is the biggest prize on Super Tuesday.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: It's like 10% of the delegates.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the polling currently bears that out.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you look beyond that, there's Texas on Super Tuesday. Joe
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Biden has been far ahead in Texas. There's places like,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: there's New York. There hasn't really been a lot of
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: polling there, but there are quite a few states in
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesday that have both heavily African-American and Latino populations.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: And according to the national polling, Bernie is still very
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: far behind among African-Americans and still fairly behind among Latinos,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: but not as much. So the question is, you know,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Bernie's base beyond white voters is probably bigger than any
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: other candidate in the race. It is bigger than any
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: other candidate in the race besides Joe Biden, but Joe
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Biden's is still bigger, which is why I would sort
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of give maybe the edge to him still. And yet
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: it's the, it's the two of them out there. And
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I think the question now is what do, for the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: other candidates, what a Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren do
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: to sort of break their stranglehold on one, two from
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Bernie and Biden and beyond them, look like, maybe, possibly,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to call their campaigns dead at all,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: but like Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Mike Bloomberg, I
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: would say, are like the longest of shots right now.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: They might still do it, but they're pretty long. It's
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: one of those four that is probably going to be it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, you know, Bernie has really benefited, I think, from,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: first of all, he's had just really strong debate performances.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: He's just an incredibly consistent campaigner. Obviously, we've said this
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: from the beginning that he's one of a few of
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: the candidates that's had a clean and easily identifiable message
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: and mission as a candidate from the beginning. But he's
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: benefited from the scrutiny that has been going towards Warren,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: that's been going towards Buttigieg, that's been going towards Biden.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: You know, I think that there are a lot of
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Bernie fans who are critical of the mainstream media saying,
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: you don't treat Bernie like a frontrunner. You don't take
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Bernie seriously. You don't take us seriously. You don't talk
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: to Bernie supporters because the people in your life look
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: more like Warren supporters or Buttigieg supporters or what have you.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: But he's also benefited from that in that he hasn't
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: had the same kind of negative, I think, coverage on,
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: especially on policy that has come for Warren, that has
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: come for Pete, that has certainly come for Biden. And
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: I think in that quiet, when, you know, Warren had
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: her surge, there was Bernie just waiting for that scrutiny
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: to kind of bring her down. And when she faced
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: that kind of healthcare month or six weeks, that hurt
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: her numbers, you know, Bernie was just chugging along and
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: he's sort of peaking at a good moment for him.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: And I think that helped him then. And I think
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: that is now his challenge because he'll get, he'll potentially
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: get more media scrutiny. But certainly I would imagine that
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: at this next debate, Bernie will, there'll be a few
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: contrasts drawn with Bernie. If not, I don't know what
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: people are doing. Maybe they want him to be the nominee.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: The reality is there's a couple states where the campaign
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: has actually been happening. There's Iowa, New Hampshire, some of
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: the other early states. I would rather be ahead in
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: the states where the campaign has been happening than the
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: ones where it hasn't. I think that if Bernie does
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: really well in Iowa, New Hampshire, there's a strong likelihood
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: that the South Carolina numbers shift and shift quickly because
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: of name ID, because people want to be with the
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: winner for a million reasons. Now, the question is, Bernie
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: has this huge field program, apparently, reportedly, like 250 staffers
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: in Iowa, a huge organization back at his headquarters. The
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: question is whether that organization and this group of supporters
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: that he had, that when you look at the Iowa polling,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: his support is just rock solid and consistent over time.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: There's some pollsters that re-interview the same people over and
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: over again. They just are with Bernie. They're ride or
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: die for Bernie and not considering anybody else, apparently. The
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: question is, do those people show up? Are they right
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: about the caucus universe? We don't know. But I mean,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: the thing that would concern me for Biden is whether
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: the money, that organization and momentum can beat out the
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: obvious lingering affinity for Joe Biden in a lot of
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: communities and the overwhelming desire people have to just pick
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: someone that is, quote unquote, electable and can beat Trump.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Like you guys said, a month is
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: a long time. There's a bunch of debates. There's a
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: lot of negative attacks that will happen. No one has
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: touched Bernie strangely to date. That's going to change.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I think on the question of how effective are the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: early states in shaping the rest of the race is,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and this has been the question through the whole primary,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: is this 2007, 2008, or is this more like 2016?
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And in 2008 is exactly what you said, Tommy. Barack
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Obama wins Iowa, and suddenly all the numbers everywhere else shift,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and he gets a huge bounce, and he doesn't sort
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: of waltz his way to the nomination. Then it's a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: drawn-out fight for months and months and months and months.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Worst waltz I've ever seen.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Crawling.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: But anyway, he ends up winning.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Or is it like 16 when Bernie does really well
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, almost beats Hillary, beats her in New Hampshire,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but then the South Carolina numbers don't move, Hillary's demographic
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: firewall stays, and it's just a demographic game for every
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: And so you could tell which states Bernie were going
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to win and you could tell which states that she
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: was going to win.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: I think one difference might be that Bernie wasn't really
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: running hard for most of 2016. He was a protest
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: candidate until they realized, oh my God, something's happening here.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: And then they really dug in. That ain't true this time.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: He's got a big organization. He's putting money into building
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: a field program. He's better equipped to capture that momentum
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: this time.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: And I think on the other side, the other thing
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that's different though is what you pointed out, which is the...
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: fear that has pervaded this entire electorate of beating Donald Trump. Now,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I will say, though, that for Bernie, the Bernie Sanders
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: campaign has been very smart about this from the beginning.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: They have been making electability arguments for Bernie from the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: beginning of this race, knowing, I think, that that is
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: on a lot of voters' minds as someone who can
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: beat Trump. And they show it's very unlike a campaign
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: to just go show polls of you beating Donald Trump,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: especially when you're like a lefty guy like Bernie Sanders.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But they have been doing that from the beginning of
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the race.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: If you look at the three... three leaders in the
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: polls now, right, with Warren slightly behind them. But look
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: at Buttigieg, Biden, and Bernie. They're each offering a prospective
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: electability argument, unproven electability argument, right? Biden's is basically, you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: I have this appeal to moderates. I'm this long, I'm
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: this stable figure. So, you know, I'm the guy that
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: can win. Check out the Wisconsin polls. Those will hold up,
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: trust me, despite the withering attacks I'm going to take,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: despite the fact that deep down you know that I'm
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: not as live a candidate as maybe I would have
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: once been. Stick with me. I'll get us over the
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: finish line. I'm the safe, stable choice. Buttigieg is offering
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: more of a rhetorical and kind of a contrast argument
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: and kind of saying, I'm the smart one. I'm the
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: guy that knows how to do this. I put together
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: this campaign.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Generational.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Generational change. Bernies has been offering this sort of working
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: class revolution argument. But again, it is, I think, now
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: that he is leading in the polls, I think the
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: big question is, for him at the debate, I think
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: for Democrats considering whether to make Bernie Sanders the nominee,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: is are you ready to throw your lot in with
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: that argument? Do you believe the strength of his coalition,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: which is incredibly strong, the passion he brings to the table,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: the new voters he brings in, the young people he
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: brings in, the money he brings in, do you believe
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: that that is enough to overcome the attacks on Bernie
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: as a far-left candidate who might alienate some people and
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: who will be attacked as a socialist every single day
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: if he's the nominee?
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: It's a very easy thing to prove. It's once the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: voting starts.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: If it turns out in those CBS polls, you know,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Bernie had more first time caucus goers in that poll
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: than anyone else. If Iowa comes and he brings out
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a bunch of new caucus goers, if the coalition looks
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: diverse and big, if as other candidates drop out, he
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: can sort of get some of that support from other
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Democrats and doesn't look like a factional candidate. then his
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: case will be proven correct. If not, his case is wrong.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: So we're going to know pretty quickly once the voting starts.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: And until then, I mean, Biden's, I think, been quite
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: cleverly trying to make this electability case for himself. For example,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: this weekend, he had Congresswoman Christy Houlihan, Elaine Luria, and
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Congressman Conor Lamb out there with him.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: And Abby Finkenauer.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: And Abby Finkenauer. Some recently elected Democrats who are far
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: more moderate, who are part of the wave that got
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: swept in in 2018. And, you know, we need those
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: people to stay in Congress to have Nancy Pelosi be speaker. And,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: you know, I think Biden's making an argument that I
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: can win in their districts, which means I can win
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: across the country.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I do want to talk briefly before we go about
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: how the candidates have handled the Iran crisis. Biden was
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: out with a video the next day that played up
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: his experience in foreign policy and with world leaders. Bernie
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: came out very forcefully against the killing and hit Biden
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: sort of indirectly and directly for.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: His Iraq war vote.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Buttigieg talked about his military experience. Warren talked about stopping
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: endless wars. How do you guys think this crisis could
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: affect the primary, if at all? Obviously, it is very early.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, the anecdotal evidence I've seen from following like
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Dave Weigel and other smart reporters who are out in
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Iowa and in New Hampshire is that it's just not
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: coming up very much. It's unlikely to really materially impact things. Now,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: there were some reporters who said that this just upended
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: the entire campaign and And, you know, the question now
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: is whether Biden's experience can outweigh Bernie's better record on
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: not invading places. That may be true. I think they've
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: like I'd like to see all of them make a
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: bigger case against Trump on foreign policy. It should be
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: about how he's not ending wars. He's starting them. And
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: by the way, North Korea just said that they're going
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: to completely pull out of what they pretended to agree
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: to at the Singapore summit and resume their nuclear program.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: So we have risks on all sides. So that should
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: be part of the case. But I think it's fundamentally
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: like an electability argument.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: I just, it's going to be to me also one
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: just determined by events. If, if, if the situation Iran
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: escalates and we are, uh, uh, involved in a protracted, uh,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: some sort of military, uh, uh, engagement, it will become
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: a bigger part of the, uh, campaign. If not, uh, then, uh,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: we have memories like goldfish and it will not be
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: part of.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think where it's going to come
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: up the most is this next debate. And I, and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's, they'll all be asked about it. And,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: what will be fascinating there is to watch the judgment
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: versus experience argument, the redux of 2007, 2008, when Obama said,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war. And
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Hillary said, well, I have the experience to be president
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't. And now Biden is in that Clinton
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: role and Bernie is in the judgment role.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: So they go to Biden.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And then there's Pete Buttigieg too, who's going to say,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: my experience is actually being someone who served abroad and
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I was against the Iraq war. And so he's going
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: to try to you know, he didn't really take a
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: position on this recent strike, though.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Biden is going to ask about it, give a mostly
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: fine kind of halting, but good answer on on Iran,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: followed by Bernie just hitting him on the Iraq war.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, the Biden people really need to
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: be prepared for this, because I think where Biden has
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerability is Bernie hitting him on Iraq and
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Biden becoming very defensive about his Iraq war vote or
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, a little bit of rewriting history
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: of when he was against it, what he said. I mean,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I saw John Kerry go through this in 2004, like,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and Hillary Clinton go through this in 2004, and everyone
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: who's voted for that war. And look, the easiest thing
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: to do was also the right thing to do. I
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: was wrong. I was wrong about that vote.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Redefining that vote is a tough road to hoe, John.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Credit to Bernie, though. I mean, he's put out legislation
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: that would prevent funding from being used to go to
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: war with Iran. And I think that's the most important
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: thing Congress can do. And so he's got a pretty
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: important how to point to point to there. It's also
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: interesting that Warren was sort of making a wag the
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: dog case on Iran and saying the timing is suspicious
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: that this would happen during impeachment and pointing at that.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think all of our minds probably went there,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: but I don't know that that's, oh, look, it's an
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: interesting case to be made. We'll see what voters think.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: I would make a bigger strategic argument as well, which
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: she has also been doing.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And look, I mean, you don't have to be defending
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Trump to say that it's not potentially a wag the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: dog thing. All you have to know is that this
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: guy is fucking childish and impulsive. And if he sees
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: a couple of cable clips of people storming an embassy
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: or protesting outside an embassy and then orders the assassination
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of someone, you can draw the direct line from one
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to the other. Like he's impulsive and fucking just says
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: crazy shit and does crazy shit all the time. He
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't need ulterior motives, this guy.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, it's just OK.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: When we come back. We will have Tommy's conversation with
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Senator Chris Murphy.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: On the line is Senator Chris Murphy. He's a U.S.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Senator from Connecticut. He's a member of the Senate Foreign
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Relations Committee and one of the best in the business
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: about explaining complicated foreign policy matters. Senator, thank you for
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: doing the show.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: So there's been a lot of justifications about the Trump
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: administration's strike against Qasem Soleimani in the past few days.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: The White House said the strike was justified because there
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: was an imminent threat to U.S. personnel. The Washington Post
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: last night, I believe, reported that Mike Pompeo, the secretary
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: of state, has been actually pushing this Soleimani assassination idea
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: to Trump for a long time, for several months now.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Have you seen this underlying intelligence that the administration claims
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: showed an imminent threat to U.S. personnel? And do you
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: buy that rationale?
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: You know, it's four days after the attack. We're talking
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: on Monday afternoon. And I have still not seen any
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: intelligence to suggest that there was an imminent attack against U.S. forces.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: And I can also tell you this. I just came
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: from reading the classified war powers report. notification to Congress.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: And there's two things that I can say. One, there's
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: no reason that it needs to be classified. There's nothing
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: in there that hasn't been publicly reported. But second, there
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: is no intelligence inside that document about this supposed imminent attack.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: So I remain open to being convinced that there was
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: an imminent attack, but the fact that they haven't delivered
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: that information suggests that the information might not be as
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: strong as Secretary Pompeo was suggesting. But of course, their
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: burden is not just to show that there was an
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: imminent attack, but to actually show why the assassination of
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: Qasem Soleimani not only prevented that attack, but will lead
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: to less harm being done to Americans in the long run.
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: And of course, today, we are deeply worried that this
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: ultimately is going to lead to much more harm to
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: American personnel than would have occurred if this attack had
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: not happened. And we are already seeing all of the
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: spillover effects of this massive escalation both in Iraq and
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: through some of these early decisions, particularly the one to
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: walk away from the nuclear program in Tehran.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: So Secretary Mike Pompeo was asked about this increased threat
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: to U.S. personnel, and he dismissed it as a little
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: noise here in the interim. Do you agree with that
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: assessment that the risk to U.S. personnel serving abroad is
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: just a little bit of noise? I'm curious what your
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: reaction is to the Secretary of State's comments, given that
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: he's the person in charge of protecting thousands of Americans
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: serving abroad, and he sounded pretty smug and dismissive.
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: What has happened in Iraq already is not a little noise, right?
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: Let's just go through what's already occurred. Already, we have
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: evacuated all American personnel from a U.S. ally in the
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Middle East, Iraq. We have shut down our counter-ISIS program.
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: NATO has suspended its training mission of Iraqi troops who
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: are out there fighting ISIS as we speak. So what
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: has occurred already is grave to US national security interests.
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: And what you saw today was not tens of thousands
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: of Iranians on the street. You saw millions of Iranians
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: on the street who are not going to allow the
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: Iranian regime to sit on the sidelines. There is going
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: to be a serious and perhaps asymmetric reprisal against US forces,
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: US civilians, or perhaps U.S. political leaders back in the
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: United States. There's a reason why Bush and Obama, as
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: you know, didn't carry out an attack on Soleimani. It
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: was because they feared that ultimately that was going to
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: put more U.S. interests in the crosshairs. And that's not
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: a little noise, right? That's potentially, in the end, hundreds
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: if not thousands of American lives. And what's happened already
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: is not a little noise. It's serious harm to our
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: security interests, in particular, our fight against ISIS.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I'm just trying to imagine what would have happened if
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Susan Rice, had said an increased risk to U.S. personnel
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: serving abroad, including our military, was a little noise. Mike
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Pompeo would have called for her head.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. So I was,
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: you know, in the Face the Nation studio yesterday listening
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: to him say those words on a pre-tape. And the
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: first thing that crossed my mind was there is no
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: way anyone in the Obama administration could get away with
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: that kind of cavalier attitude about U.S. lives abroad. And listen,
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: that's been the case from the very beginning. It's not
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: as if this administration didn't have fair warning that pulling
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: out of the Iran deal was going to ultimately escalate
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: into a military conflict that could get Americans killed. We've
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: been saying that for a year now, and they have
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: brushed those criticisms aside, and now they are reckoning with
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: the consequences of an escalation by choice that started not
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: just a few weeks ago with rocket attacks against U.S. personnel,
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: but a year ago when this administration, against all of
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: the advice from people inside the White House, not the administration,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: when the president, against the advice he was getting from
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: his own Secretary of State and Department of Defense, pulled
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: out of the Iran nuclear agreement.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to talk about Congress's role for a minute.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: So I saw this morning that Speaker Pelosi said the
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: House is going to vote this week on a war
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: powers resolution. that she thinks will limit Trump's action on Iran.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know that the text of that resolution is
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: public yet, but Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin, who served in the
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: CIA and the Defense Department, is apparently going to manage
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: that process. And then I know that Bernie Sanders and
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Congressman Ro Khanna want to, or have dropped a bill
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: that would prevent money from being spent on offensive operations
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: by the U.S. military against Iran. They previously put that
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: legislation forward before it actually got attached to the NDAA,
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: a big funding bill for the Pentagon with, I believe,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: 27 House Republican votes, but got stripped in conference. So
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: I guess my question to you is, what can Congress
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: do to constrain Trump with respect to taking further military
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: action in Iran? And what should listeners do if they
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: want to encourage Congress to take such actions?
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: Both of those initiatives that you outlined are important. A
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: war powers resolution essentially clarifies that the president can't take
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: offensive action without congressional support. The worry, of course, is
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: that the president will, A, veto that resolution or ignore it.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Polling funding is perhaps more consequential because by polling funding,
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: you establish a pretty airtight case in court if the
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: president were to try to go around Congress and use
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: monies appropriated to him to fight a war overseas. Of course,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: the danger here is that the president is going to
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: continue to rely on this absurdly outsized authority he has
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: under Article 2, which he would claim doesn't require him
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: to come to Congress because he's just responding to imminent
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: attacks or attacks that have been launched. And so at
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: some point, Congress is going to have to likely do
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: something that's even stronger than either of the measures that
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: have been introduced thus far. The measures introduced thus far
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: say you can't use U.S. funds to launch preemptive attacks
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: against Iran. At some point, Congress may have to just
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: cut off all funding for any military force against Iran
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: if the president continues to go around us and use
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: this Article 2 authority. And listen, to be honest, a
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: lot of us had reservations about the ways in which
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: the Obama administration used Article 2 authority without coming to Congress.
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: The Obama administration was much more, I think, attentive to
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: congressional authorization, but it wasn't uniform.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: The administration has been making the case for maybe a
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: year now that the 2001 authorization for the use of
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: military force that was passed after 9-11 somehow authorizes military
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: action in Iran. Do you think it's time to repeal
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: or replace the AUMF? It is.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: We should be redoing the 2001 AUMF. We still have
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: al-Qaeda elements that exist in the Middle East and in
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: other places that the United States has to fight, but
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: it is now been bastardized to be able to justify
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: fights against all sorts of enemies that weren't contemplated in 2001.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: You saw Mike Pence just make this absurd argument over
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: the weekend that Iran was providing shelter to elements that
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: attacked the United States through al-Qaeda. So we need to
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: do a new authorization of military force against terrorist groups,
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: but then we need to just repeal the authorization of
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: military force in Iraq and for the Iraq War. That
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: authorization may also be used by the administration to try
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: to justify taking the fight to Iran because Iran threatens U.S.
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: forces in Iraq. But that was an authorization to oust
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: Saddam Hussein. Our interests in that country today have nothing
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: to do with the vote that took place in 2003.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: So that authorization just should be outright repealed.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Senator, have you considered authorizing funds for all members of
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Congress to get memberships to Mar-a-Lago so that you can
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: get poolside briefings from the president about upcoming military strikes?
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: So when my kids were born, I sort of just
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: foreswore golf. I stopped playing. But now I feel like
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: I have to, you know, pick it back up again.
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: And that would maybe allow me to just sort of
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: go down there and linger around the golf course, right?
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: And maybe I'd, you know, find a Trump official or
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: Trump himself, you know, walk by me on the tea
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: to the first hole and I could get the kind
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: of briefing that I thought I was going to get
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: when I, you know, ran a $ 15 million campaign to
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: get elected to the United States Senate.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can get a contract with Fraud Guarantee too.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: You can meet some nice Russian officials, like just something
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: to chew on. I don't want to, you know, tell
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: you how to do your business.
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: I would love to meet those guys. I mean, they
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: seem like fascinating individuals. So at some point in my life,
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: coming across people like Lev Parnas, you know, might be
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: worth a laugh at least.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: So less of a laughing matter. So, you know, the
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: coalition to fight ISIS, you talked about some of these
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: lingering al Qaeda elements in the Middle East. The coalition
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: to stop ISIS has said that we need to stop
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: all of our counter ISIS efforts, stop all of our training,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: because the forces in Iraq conducting those missions need to
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: protect themselves. They need to protect U.S. personnel in the region.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: They need to protect our bases. Can you talk about
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: what this strike against Soleimani and the pausing of that
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: mission against ISIS means? will mean for our efforts to
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: just fully root out the organization?
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: So I was in Iraq less than a year ago
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: in the spring of last year, and what we heard
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: was really alarming.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: ISIS is regrouping.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: We knew that would happen, but it's happening in part
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: because the United States hasn't done enough to help Iraq
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: rebuild from the massive destruction done to parts of that country,
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: Mosul at the top of the list, when we took
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: out ISIS's caliphate. ISIS, of course, is also regrouping in
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: Syria as we speak today, a consequence in part of
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: our withdrawal from that country militarily, also the fact that
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: we allowed hundreds potentially of ISIS fighters to escape from prison.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: And so this is a moment when ISIS is coming
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: back together. It is the worst moment possible for the
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: United States and our allies to stand down in the
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: fight against ISIS. ISIS still has intentions to hit the
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: United States and U.S. targets as well as our allies
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: in Europe. And the fact that we are Now, shuttering
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: that mission in Iraq after having just effectively shuttered that
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: mission in Syria and stopping the training of Iraqi forces,
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: it's just a gift to ISIS at a moment when
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: they were starting to get a little traction again. So
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: this is really dangerous. And I hope that Republicans who
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: today are cheering this execution of Qasem Soleimani will at
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: least find some way to put some pressure on the
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: administration to walk and chew gum at the same time.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: We have to get back to this anti-ISIS mission and
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: we need to do it soon.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Senator, you've mentioned a couple of times President Trump's
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the Iran deal back
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: in 2018. I think back to that time in 2015
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: when Obama proposed and then passed the deal and the
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: amount of scrutiny from the media, from Congress, the amount
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: of fighting and recrimination that happened around diplomatic efforts to
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: stop Iran's nuclear program versus how little scrutiny from the
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: media and Congress there has been to date about an
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: already started war with Iran. How do we fix that imbalance?
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Because it seems like there's a whole bunch of incentives
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: set up for people like Donald Trump to take military
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: action before they will conduct diplomacy.
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know how I feel about this.
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: I is hardwired to understand American strength only through a
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: military lens. And it seeps into the decisions we make
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: about how we fund the U.S. national security infrastructure. We
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: still today have more folks working in military grocery stores
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: than we have diplomats in the State Department. And the
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: responsibility for that imbalance, that imbalance of funding, but that
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: imbalance of emphasis, lies at the feet of both Republicans
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: and Democrats, right? We have all been responsible for making
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: America think that the only way that you protect this
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: country is by firing a rocket. And that is simply
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: not true. And of course, the diplomatic achievement of the
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: Obama administration to take away a path to nuclear weapon
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: from Iran was the seminal of how you protect American
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: interests with diplomatic power. But I still remain confused as
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: to why all of us here continue to celebrate these
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: dramatic increases in the military budget every year while we
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: flat fund effectively the State Department. and both Republicans and Democrats.
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: And the Democrats running for president have to start talking
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: more fulsomely about how you rebuild the State Department, how
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: you rebuild diplomacy, and how that is absolutely essential in
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: the long run to protecting the United States.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: I totally agree. And you've put forward a comprehensive plan
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: for how to do that that I think people should
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: check out, frankly.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: Rethinking the Battlefield, it's a proposal to double the size
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: of the State Department over five years and USAID. And
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: that sounds like a pie-in-the-sky proposal, but doubling those two
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: budgets is less than the annual increase in appropriations that
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: we give to the Defense Department every year. And we
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: just have to recognize that the threats posed to this
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: country today are by and large not conventional military threats.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: The way that Iran throws its power around the region is, yes,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: often through conventional military attacks, but through propaganda, through the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: way in which they use their oil, through the way
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: in which they use information networks. And we just don't
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: have the capacity to meet those capabilities that when Iran
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: uses them, when Russia uses them, when China uses them.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: So at some point we have to step back from
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: this management of U.S. foreign policy crisis by crisis and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: ask ourselves why we're getting beat. over and over again, right?
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: And the reason is, I believe, that we are just
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: badly misresourced.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. Last question for you. So John Bolton this morning,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: the former National Security Advisor, said that if the Senate
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: issues a subpoena for his testimony in the impeachment inquiry,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: he is prepared to testify. For listeners at home, who
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: gets to decide if Bolton is subpoenaed? And do you
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: think that the Senate should call him to testify?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: I wish the answer was different, but I think the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: answer is Mitch McConnell. Now, technically, 50 senators, 51 senators
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: get to decide that question, right? If we have 51
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: senators who agree to vote in favor of a resolution
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: to subpoena John Bolton or Mick Mulvaney or the emails
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: that are still sitting in the White House that I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: think very clearly likely give further evidence to the size
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: of this conspiracy to defraud taxpayers, then those subpoenas are issued.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: But my guess is that Mitch McConnell isn't going to
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: let four of his senators vote with Democrats and that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: ultimately it is his decision and the leadership of the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: Republican Party in the Senate's decision as to whether John
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: Bolton comes and testifies before us. But like Bolton is now,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: you know, this giant blinking red light as to why
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: we can't rush this trial without any witnesses. I mean,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: it would just be criminal. It would be senatorial malpractice
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: if McConnell now, in the face of the offer for
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: Bolton to tell us everything he knows, tries to speed
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: this to an end process. But I thought the same
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: thing about not giving Merrick Garland a hearing. I thought
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: that would be senatorial malpractice. It was, and it didn't matter.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: So nothing is beyond Mitch McConnell.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yes. That's why everyone listening needs to pick a Senate
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: race to volunteer for or give money to and vote accordingly.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: None of this is outside of the realm of politics, right?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, we can all sit here and be scared
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: stiff as to what is going to happen ultimately through
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: this blind escalation with Iran. But the reason we might
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: not be able to check his authority is because we're
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: down three votes in the Senate. And if we correct
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: for that, then everything changes.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Senator Murphy, thank you so much for doing the show
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: and for everything you're doing to constrain this lunatic who
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: lives in the White House.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: Same thanks to you guys.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Chris Murphy for joining us today. And, you know,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: good to be back.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: It's great to be back. Look, as I learned at
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: the Guy Fieri restaurant at the Cancun International Airport, it
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: ain't no thing but a chicken wing. And that's just
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: something we all should just keep in mind.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Wow. I did not expect that. It's a good one.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Still am, John.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: I hope we're all here to watch. Cut that. Cut that.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Leave it in.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: Cut that.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Happy New Year.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Pots of America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segwin is
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.