Latest / Pod Save America / “Katie Porter’s stock tips.”

Transcript

“Katie Porter’s stock tips.” · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: Thank you.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
0:22
Speaker 4: I'm Tommy Vitor.
0:23
Speaker 2: On today's pod, we'll talk about how Republicans have made
0:26
Speaker 2: Joe Biden an offer he can refuse, the race to
0:29
Speaker 2: vaccinate America, and the new face of the Republican Party,
0:31
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then Lovett talks to Congresswoman Katie Porter
0:35
Speaker 2: about why the GameStop drama should lead to tougher Wall
0:39
Speaker 2: Street regulations. Lovett, how was your show this weekend?
0:44
Speaker 3: Great, love it or leave it. Alice Wetterlin joined, talked
0:47
Speaker 3: to Brian Boitler. About bipartisanship in Congress. And we were interrupted.
0:53
Speaker 2: Good person to talk to about that.
0:54
Speaker 5: Yeah.
0:54
Speaker 3: He was like, what is that? And then we were
1:00
Speaker 3: interrupted by the filibuster.
1:02
Speaker 2: Oh, very good. Also, if you aren't subscribed already, be
1:05
Speaker 2: sure to check out our What A Day newsletter written
1:08
Speaker 2: by the brilliant Sarah Lazarus, who gives you a quick, accessible,
1:11
Speaker 2: hilarious recap of the day's news. Some people are even
1:15
Speaker 2: saying it's funnier in the Biden administration. So subscribe to
1:20
Speaker 2: What A Day newsletter today at crooked.com slash subscribe. And finally,
1:26
Speaker 2: Crooked Media's own Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, host of America Dissected,
1:30
Speaker 2: is out with a new book today. It's called Medicare
1:33
Speaker 2: for All, A Citizen's Guide. It's a no-nonsense guide to
1:36
Speaker 2: America's most debated policy in waiting. Order yours today at medicareforallbook.com.
1:43
Speaker 3: Check it out.
1:44
Speaker 4: There's really a glut of nonsense-filled guides to Medicare for
1:47
Speaker 4: All out there. I'm glad we kind of shaped up here.
1:50
Speaker 2: Don't be fooled. Don't be fooled, friends. Great to have duels.
1:55
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the news. On Sunday. 10
1:58
Speaker 2: Senate Republicans wrote a letter to President Biden that basically said,
2:01
Speaker 2: we see your $ 1. 9 trillion COVID relief plan, and we
2:05
Speaker 2: would like to offer people a lot less relief. The
2:08
Speaker 2: $ 618 billion counterproposal includes $ 160 billion for fighting the virus
2:14
Speaker 2: and distributing the vaccines. That's like Biden's plan. Everything else
2:17
Speaker 2: is different. They do $ 1, 000 checks for individuals making $ 50, 000
2:21
Speaker 2: a year or less, a smaller expansion of unemployment insurance.
2:26
Speaker 2: That also cuts out three months. No funding for state
2:30
Speaker 2: and local governments. No increase in the minimum wage. No
2:34
Speaker 2: subsidy for child care. The Republicans also asked for a
2:37
Speaker 2: meeting with Biden. He said, sure. So they're gathering at
2:40
Speaker 2: the White House today for a, quote, full exchange of ideas.
2:44
Speaker 2: What fun. So Joe Biden campaigned on a promise of unity.
2:49
Speaker 2: He said he wanted to work with Republicans. Now, 10
2:52
Speaker 2: of them have brought him a counteroffer. which would give
2:55
Speaker 2: Democrats the 60 votes they need to pass a regular
2:57
Speaker 2: piece of legislation.
2:58
Speaker 4: Love it.
2:59
Speaker 2: Why not sit down and hammer out a deal? Make
3:01
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill proud.
3:03
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anything wrong with sitting down. I
3:06
Speaker 3: think there's nothing wrong with having the conversation and then saying, well,
3:10
Speaker 3: this isn't enough because of the crisis, the big economic
3:13
Speaker 3: crisis that the economists all tell us we need to
3:16
Speaker 3: put a huge amount of money in to fill the
3:18
Speaker 3: whole state and local, help people with unemployment, help people
3:21
Speaker 3: with these checks. And, you know, what you're proposing is
3:26
Speaker 3: not nearly enough. Halfway between what you're proposing and I'm
3:29
Speaker 3: proposing is not nearly enough. You're not addressing the crisis.
3:32
Speaker 3: And so in the spirit of unity, I will respect
3:35
Speaker 3: you in good faith, bid you adieu, pass a bill
3:37
Speaker 3: through reconciliation, and then trust you not to burn the
3:40
Speaker 3: Capitol down. Again, the three-step process for unity.
3:44
Speaker 2: Tell me, how do you think the Biden folks should
3:46
Speaker 2: handle this? Because now that the Republicans have reached out,
3:50
Speaker 2: You know, here's the headline in Politico today. How serious
3:54
Speaker 2: is Biden about bipartisanship? We're about to find out. Some
3:58
Speaker 2: Biden advisors are starting to argue that Biden can pass
4:00
Speaker 2: the bipartisan test without Republican votes. You read that right.
4:04
Speaker 2: There's a lot of skepticism in the media.
4:06
Speaker 3: You read that right.
4:07
Speaker 2: You read that right.
4:08
Speaker 4: Add a record scratch.
4:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's going to be forced into this corner now
4:13
Speaker 2: where everyone expects him to be bipartisan and they're going
4:16
Speaker 2: to call him a failure if it's not bipartisan. How
4:18
Speaker 2: should the White House handle this?
4:20
Speaker 4: I just, let's, let's go back to the beat him
4:22
Speaker 4: like a drum Joe Biden. Cause he also said that
4:24
Speaker 4: a lot. I mean, right. Like to love his point. No,
4:26
Speaker 4: no one, I've not heard a single economist, not a Republican,
4:29
Speaker 4: no experts say that 600 billion meets the moment and
4:31
Speaker 4: does enough. Like you said, it's about the same amount
4:34
Speaker 4: for vaccinations and PPE and that kind of stuff. But
4:37
Speaker 4: the unemployment insurance example, I think is very important because
4:39
Speaker 4: Biden wants to take the amount of unemployment insurance per
4:42
Speaker 4: week and go from 300 to $ 400. And he wants
4:45
Speaker 4: to extend that program through September and The new proposal
4:48
Speaker 4: keeps the rate at $ 300 and extends it through June.
4:53
Speaker 4: No one thinks we're going to have the pandemic under
4:55
Speaker 4: control by June. We certainly won't have it under control
4:58
Speaker 4: if we force people to go to work at jobs
5:01
Speaker 4: that put them at risk and continues the spread of
5:03
Speaker 4: the virus. And I think that's why the coverage in
5:06
Speaker 4: Washington of this has been so frustrating. I think the press,
5:10
Speaker 4: a lot of folks, a lot of pundits spent a
5:11
Speaker 4: lot of time worrying about bipartisanship. is if that is
5:14
Speaker 4: an end in and of itself, it is not. Joe
5:16
Speaker 4: Biden was elected to handle the coronavirus. If what's required,
5:20
Speaker 4: according to experts, is closer to $ 1. 9 trillion, then they
5:23
Speaker 4: should go for that. I think the real risk is
5:26
Speaker 4: that you construct some small bipartisan bill that includes the
5:30
Speaker 4: popular stuff. And then when you try to do a
5:33
Speaker 4: second bill through reconciliation, you might even lose some of
5:36
Speaker 4: the more moderate Democrats and can't get that done. So
5:39
Speaker 4: I don't think he has a choice. But to take
5:41
Speaker 4: this meeting, it's good to have conversations. I just think
5:45
Speaker 4: the risk is getting bogged down in a negotiation with
5:47
Speaker 4: these guys, losing time. States are starved of money. We
5:51
Speaker 4: don't have vaccination set up. That's the disaster.
5:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
5:57
Speaker 2: And I will say it doesn't seem like, at least
6:01
Speaker 2: from everything we're hearing from the White House and also
6:04
Speaker 2: from Democrats in Congress, that they're going to waste much
6:07
Speaker 2: time on this. They're all talking about how they need
6:09
Speaker 2: to move fast. So clearly a lot of lessons have
6:12
Speaker 2: been learned from 2009. I am grateful to the Republicans
6:16
Speaker 2: for this offer because I think it does a great
6:18
Speaker 2: job of spelling out the differences between the two parties.
6:21
Speaker 2: Like in 2017, they were all willing to spend a
6:24
Speaker 2: lot of money on a pretty unpopular partisan Republican only
6:27
Speaker 2: bill that gave a huge tax cut to the rich.
6:30
Speaker 2: Now they're unwilling to spend a lot of money on
6:32
Speaker 2: a very popular bill that gives economic relief to the
6:35
Speaker 2: whole country. And so like that's it. I also think
6:38
Speaker 2: by the way, So there was eight Republican senators that
6:41
Speaker 2: had been talking to the White House. They tacked on
6:43
Speaker 2: two more so they could make it 10 to show, OK,
6:45
Speaker 2: if you if all these 10 were on board, we
6:47
Speaker 2: could pass through through a regular bill. But like these
6:50
Speaker 2: 10 Republicans, they're like you got fucking Shelley Moore Capito,
6:54
Speaker 2: Jerry Moran, Todd Young in Indiana. Like, Mitch McConnell's not
6:58
Speaker 2: letting these people vote for a bill. It almost would
7:00
Speaker 2: have been funny for Joe Biden to be like, yeah, accepted.
7:03
Speaker 2: Now let's vote on it. Because probably you wouldn't get
7:05
Speaker 2: those 10.
7:06
Speaker 4: John, I just want to say, you could have thrown
7:07
Speaker 4: in a fake name there and it would have just
7:09
Speaker 4: blown right by me.
7:11
Speaker 3: Yep. I was vulnerable to that.
7:14
Speaker 2: Honestly, if you had quizzed me on the two senators
7:17
Speaker 2: from Indiana, I would not know. Or Mike Rounds. Who's
7:22
Speaker 2: Mike Rounds? Senator from South Dakota. Fun fact.
7:25
Speaker 5: Okay, so.
7:27
Speaker 2: I also think that when Biden ultimately decides to go
7:32
Speaker 2: the reconciliation route, he needs to just continue talking about
7:36
Speaker 2: how this piece of legislation has both bipartisan support in
7:39
Speaker 2: the country among voters, which we've seen in our poll
7:42
Speaker 2: shows about 70% of people supporting it, including 4 in
7:45
Speaker 2: 10 Trump voters. It also has bipartisan support among governors
7:49
Speaker 2: and politicians outside D.C. You had the Republican governor of
7:53
Speaker 2: West Virginia today saying we need a lot of money spent.
7:55
Speaker 2: Even if we spend too much money, that's not the danger.
7:57
Speaker 2: The danger is spending too little. There's bipartisan support for you.
8:01
Speaker 2: Like he should talk about how the bill has bipartisan
8:03
Speaker 2: support everywhere except among Republican politicians in Washington. Those are
8:07
Speaker 2: the people on their own.
8:08
Speaker 3: And, you know, I would say like there was like
8:11
Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer put out a statement over the weekend that
8:13
Speaker 3: like said it so plainly. He's like, we're not going
8:16
Speaker 3: to not do enough because that dragged out the recession
8:19
Speaker 3: in 2009. And we're not going to get dragged along
8:22
Speaker 3: for a long process with Republicans because that's what we
8:24
Speaker 3: did on Obamacare. And they abandoned us right at the end.
8:27
Speaker 3: So it's like, yeah, we're not going to do a long,
8:29
Speaker 3: dumb process to try and get your votes for Hapalov.
8:33
Speaker 2: Fool me once or twice or three times or four
8:36
Speaker 2: times or five times.
8:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's it.
8:37
Speaker 2: But eventually.
8:38
Speaker 4: That's it.
8:39
Speaker 5: And then after the sequester, no more fooling. Now we
8:43
Speaker 5: figured it out. Ten years later, we are onto your
8:46
Speaker 5: game a decade later. Hey, better late than never. So
8:51
Speaker 5: Biden doesn't need a bipartisan bill. He does need all
8:54
Speaker 5: 50 Senate Democrats on board, including more moderate senators like
8:57
Speaker 5: Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia's Joe Manchin. Last week,
9:02
Speaker 5: Vice President Kamala Harris did interviews with local news stations
9:06
Speaker 5: in both those states as a way to sell Biden's
9:08
Speaker 5: American rescue plan. This did not sit well with Joe Manchin,
9:13
Speaker 5: who told a reporter, quote, I saw the interview. I
9:16
Speaker 5: couldn't believe it. No one called me. We're going to
9:18
Speaker 5: try to find a bipartisan pathway forward. I think we
9:21
Speaker 5: need to, but we need to work together. That's not
9:23
Speaker 5: a way of working together. Tommy, what was the White.
9:26
Speaker 2: House's strategy in sending Kamala out to do those interviews?
9:30
Speaker 2: And what did you think of Manchin's reaction. Poor Joe Manchin.
9:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
9:34
Speaker 4: I didn't know they were manufacturing fainting couches in West
9:37
Speaker 4: Virginia now. Look, this is politics 101. Like the White House,
9:41
Speaker 4: you do local TV interviews to build support for a
9:44
Speaker 4: legislative priority. I saw some of the reporting on this yesterday,
9:47
Speaker 4: like specifically Politico referred to it as an effort to
9:50
Speaker 4: troll Joe Manchin. I was like, oh my God, what
9:52
Speaker 4: happened in this interview? Did she read an opposition research
9:56
Speaker 4: file on him? And then I watched it. And admittedly,
9:58
Speaker 4: it wasn't the cleanest interview Kamala Harris has ever done.
10:02
Speaker 4: She was asked about Biden's climate change plan and what
10:05
Speaker 4: it would mean for coal jobs and misspoke and said
10:07
Speaker 4: something about clearing abandoned landmines instead of coal mines, I think.
10:11
Speaker 4: So it was a little clunky, but mostly she focused
10:13
Speaker 4: on job creation, how the COVID relief bill would work,
10:16
Speaker 4: how the White House wants to prioritize vaccine distribution and
10:19
Speaker 4: how they want to open up schools. It was substantive.
10:21
Speaker 4: And she talked a little bit about West Virginia-specific stats
10:25
Speaker 4: on poverty or small business closures. But it was not
10:28
Speaker 4: about Joe Manchin at all. I don't think his name
10:29
Speaker 4: was even mentioned. And so it seems like a wild
10:32
Speaker 4: overreaction by Manchin in the media.
10:35
Speaker 3: He's a senator from West Virginia. He's not the viceroy
10:38
Speaker 3: sent by the queen's regent.
10:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's his position? Blow off my local press? That
10:43
Speaker 4: doesn't make any sense.
10:44
Speaker 3: You can't do local news in West Virginia without first
10:46
Speaker 3: getting the say-so from the boss?
10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:52
Speaker 4: So like the fair question, right, is like, is this
10:54
Speaker 4: a smart way to build support in West Virginia for
10:56
Speaker 4: the policy and make it easier to get Joe Manchin's vote?
10:59
Speaker 4: Judging by his reaction, clearly it was not. But if
11:02
Speaker 4: you really look at what Joe Manchin is saying about
11:04
Speaker 4: the legislation, he's being pretty positive. He seems focused on
11:08
Speaker 4: targeting the direct checks. He thinks that maybe a married
11:14
Speaker 4: family that makes $ 300, 000 getting a check is too much
11:17
Speaker 4: and he wants to lower it. Joe Manchin's reaction is,
11:35
Speaker 4: It was ridiculous.
11:36
Speaker 2: I will say, I would bet that the White House
11:39
Speaker 2: legislative team was not super psyched about the strategy of
11:43
Speaker 2: sending Kamala out to swing states for that. Because like,
11:47
Speaker 2: you're right, like building popular pressure in West Virginia is
11:50
Speaker 2: not the way to get Joe Manchin on board. It's
11:52
Speaker 2: probably calling him and making sure like everything is wonderful
11:56
Speaker 2: with fucking Joe Manchin. Look, the fact that Joe Manchin has...
11:59
Speaker 2: all holds all the power here and Kyrsten Sinema holds
12:01
Speaker 2: all the power here is an indictment of the fact
12:03
Speaker 2: that we have like a shitty political system, but it sucks.
12:06
Speaker 4: Right.
12:06
Speaker 2: But like, that's the reality we're living in. Joe Manchin
12:08
Speaker 2: has an enormous amount of power and you like have
12:11
Speaker 2: to keep Joe Manchin happy all the time or else
12:13
Speaker 2: a whole agenda that could help a lot of people,
12:14
Speaker 2: you know, can, can die, which we don't want. Um,
12:18
Speaker 2: it sort of reminded me, love it. Were you still
12:21
Speaker 2: in the white house when we wrote, um, the famous
12:24
Speaker 2: budget speech about the Paul Ryan budget, um, And.
12:28
Speaker 3: He was in the front row.
12:30
Speaker 2: Barack Obama was going to deliver a speech at American
12:33
Speaker 2: University on Paul Ryan's budget.
12:35
Speaker 3: I do remember this.
12:35
Speaker 2: And we had a great time in the speech just
12:39
Speaker 2: attacking Paul Ryan on everything by name. He's killing grandparents,
12:43
Speaker 2: all the good stuff. And the legislative team did not
12:48
Speaker 2: make us aware until the speech that Paul Ryan was
12:50
Speaker 2: going to be sitting in the front row. And so
12:54
Speaker 2: Barack Obama goes and delivers all these hits about Paul
12:57
Speaker 2: Ryan's budget to Paul Ryan's face at the event, which
13:01
Speaker 2: was not a great way to earn bipartisan support just
13:04
Speaker 2: as a lesson that we learned there.
13:06
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, yeah.
13:07
Speaker 3: He would have been all for the agenda otherwise. One
13:11
Speaker 3: other thing, though, Tommy made this point, but it's like
13:14
Speaker 3: for years now, the Republican tax cut punished blue states
13:20
Speaker 3: that are more expensive to live in. Their proposal to
13:24
Speaker 3: lower the threshold for where the checks would go to
13:26
Speaker 3: are designed to punish states with a higher cost of living.
13:29
Speaker 3: And it is a reminder that even when you see
13:32
Speaker 3: someone like Joe Manchin force some policy like that, that
13:35
Speaker 3: the warping that the Senate does in the way that
13:38
Speaker 3: it's anti-democratic happens all the time. Sometimes it's partisan, sometimes
13:41
Speaker 3: it's not. But it's interesting that, of course, a group
13:44
Speaker 3: of Republican senators don't have a problem lowering the threshold
13:48
Speaker 3: to where it would not help people in a ton
13:51
Speaker 3: of places that desperately need that help.
13:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
13:54
Speaker 2: But like, you know, and Tommy, you were saying this too,
13:56
Speaker 2: like for all the concern about Joe Manchin on this
13:58
Speaker 2: bill and Joe Manchin on a whole bunch of things
14:00
Speaker 2: like filibuster, other shit. He does seem like he was
14:03
Speaker 2: in an interview even before this interview with the Kamala
14:08
Speaker 2: Harris interview thing happened saying a million times, because they
14:11
Speaker 2: were like, would you vote for the bill for reconciliation?
14:14
Speaker 2: Do you support this? And he said like 10 different times,
14:16
Speaker 2: I'm going to make sure that Joe Biden is successful.
14:19
Speaker 2: We want to make sure Joe Biden is successful, which
14:20
Speaker 2: tells you like what you need to know about where
14:22
Speaker 2: Joe Manchin stands.
14:23
Speaker 4: He's just doing his politics. He's doing the right thing.
14:25
Speaker 4: He's doing his politics.
14:27
Speaker 2: Is Manchin and Sinema and maybe a few others going
14:29
Speaker 2: to like take the price tag down a little bit
14:31
Speaker 2: from 1.9 trillion? I hope not, but they might because again,
14:35
Speaker 2: they hold all the power. You need their fucking votes.
14:37
Speaker 2: So hopefully, hopefully, though, he comes through and supports the
14:41
Speaker 2: bill as is. So One of the Biden administration's main
14:44
Speaker 2: arguments for the size and speed of their plan is
14:47
Speaker 2: the urgency and magnitude of the crisis. So, yes, cases
14:51
Speaker 2: and hospitalizations are falling and we now have a bunch
14:53
Speaker 2: of highly effective vaccines. But we are also racing against
14:57
Speaker 2: the spread of a number of covid mutations that are
15:00
Speaker 2: much more transmissible and at least one case more resistant
15:03
Speaker 2: to the vaccines. So we can still control these new
15:05
Speaker 2: variants if we vaccinate everyone as fast as humanly possible.
15:08
Speaker 2: But we learned in a few stories over the weekend
15:10
Speaker 2: that the Biden administration has inherited a bigger vaccine distribution
15:13
Speaker 2: mess than anyone thought. Under Trump, the federal government failed
15:16
Speaker 2: to coordinate with states on almost every level, from helping
15:19
Speaker 2: them staff vaccination sites to literally tracking vaccines. Politico reported
15:23
Speaker 2: that the Trump administration communicated so poorly with states that
15:26
Speaker 2: that the Biden administration is now trying to track down
15:29
Speaker 2: 20 million doses that are unaccounted for. 20 million. They
15:34
Speaker 2: also found out after inauguration day that the companies producing
15:37
Speaker 2: the shots were nowhere near capable of churning out as
15:40
Speaker 2: many doses as the Trump folks had projected. So, Tommy,
15:43
Speaker 2: we spent a lot of time in the Obama administration
15:46
Speaker 2: talking about the crisis we inherited. How much and for
15:49
Speaker 2: how long should Biden do the same thing with regard
15:52
Speaker 2: to how badly the Trump administration screwed this up? What
15:55
Speaker 2: can he get away with there?
15:56
Speaker 4: Should we just blame it all on the Iraq war?
15:58
Speaker 4: Is that what you're suggesting here?
16:00
Speaker 6: Yes.
16:01
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you can't really talk about where
16:04
Speaker 4: we are and what you're doing to manage the coronavirus
16:07
Speaker 4: without talking about some of how we got here and
16:09
Speaker 4: some of the stuff Trump screwed up. For example, the
16:13
Speaker 4: money for states would be less urgent if the Trump
16:15
Speaker 4: team hadn't actively lobbied against giving states money for vaccine
16:19
Speaker 4: distribution in the last couple of COVID packages. So I
16:22
Speaker 4: think there's relevant context, right? Like our testing regime wouldn't
16:25
Speaker 4: be a disaster if Trump hadn't decided that more testing
16:28
Speaker 4: was bad because bigger numbers made him feel bad. But
16:31
Speaker 4: I think that's more context than it is pointing fingers,
16:35
Speaker 4: if that makes sense. I mean, I think he's going
16:38
Speaker 4: to eat a lot of political fallout for the conditions
16:42
Speaker 4: that occurred before he became president. But I think every
16:45
Speaker 4: single president does that. I think his focus has got
16:47
Speaker 4: to be on what we're doing now. They want to
16:50
Speaker 4: hear about incremental progress. We all want to hear about
16:53
Speaker 4: light at the end of the tunnel. I'm speaking for
16:54
Speaker 4: myself now. That would be my advice, not to spend
16:57
Speaker 4: a lot of time about the Trump era. And like,
16:59
Speaker 4: you know, if you look at Jen Psaki's briefing today,
17:01
Speaker 4: she got some question about Trump on social media. And
17:04
Speaker 4: she was just like, you know, we don't spend a
17:05
Speaker 4: lot of time thinking about him, to be totally honest
17:07
Speaker 4: with you. And I think that is exactly the right tone.
17:10
Speaker 4: Love it.
17:10
Speaker 2: To Tommy's point, Biden administration is trying to fix a
17:13
Speaker 2: supply issue, a demand issue, a distribution issue. At some point,
17:18
Speaker 2: they have to figure out like a way to get
17:20
Speaker 2: people booster shots that can help protect against the new variants.
17:22
Speaker 2: So they got a lot going on. From a communication standpoint,
17:27
Speaker 2: how should Biden balance the need to be honest and
17:30
Speaker 2: realistic about how long and hard this might be with
17:33
Speaker 2: the need to offer some hope and optimism to a
17:36
Speaker 2: country that is tired of this shit?
17:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.
17:39
Speaker 2: Something we also had to deal with in the Obama
17:40
Speaker 2: White House. I remember like we had to calibrate every speech.
17:43
Speaker 3: Every speech has to be like, we're not out of
17:45
Speaker 3: the woods yet. Yet we've made progress. We've seen strides. Trump,
17:48
Speaker 3: of course, threw that out the window.
17:52
Speaker 6: Yeah.
17:52
Speaker 3: I mean, look, first of all, it's worth pointing out
17:54
Speaker 3: that January was the deadliest month we've ever had.
17:58
Speaker 1: Right.
17:59
Speaker 3: We're at like 100,000 deaths. So the full consequences of
18:03
Speaker 3: the failure of the past year are still kind of
18:05
Speaker 3: coming into relief. not just in terms of what the
18:08
Speaker 3: Biden administration is learning behind the scenes, but in sort
18:11
Speaker 3: of the ongoing economic devastation, the ongoing sort of spread
18:15
Speaker 3: of the pandemic. I do think in terms of what
18:21
Speaker 3: they've been saying about what they're learning is really just
18:24
Speaker 3: about establishing a baseline, right? They're trying to say, we're
18:27
Speaker 3: going to do our best to get the vaccines out
18:28
Speaker 3: the door and get them as many people, but we
18:30
Speaker 3: do want to make sure there is an accurate accounting
18:33
Speaker 3: of the baseline when we came in. that all the
18:35
Speaker 3: talk about Operation Warp Speed, here's where we started from.
18:38
Speaker 3: And I imagine that there's some spin in there, right?
18:40
Speaker 3: They're going to go hard to try to make the
18:41
Speaker 3: case that they inherited an incredible mess, which I am
18:43
Speaker 3: sure they did. First of all, on the variant front,
18:46
Speaker 3: I think that there's a lot of very sensationalistic reporting
18:51
Speaker 3: and it's hard to parse what's really going on. One
18:53
Speaker 3: thing that does seem clear is even as we learn
18:56
Speaker 3: that some of these vaccines are less effective against some
18:57
Speaker 3: of these variants, they are still above the threshold by
19:00
Speaker 3: which we would have declared them a success had we
19:02
Speaker 3: not heard about the incredible success of Moderna and Pfizer
19:04
Speaker 3: at whatever it is, 94, 95%. I do think it
19:10
Speaker 3: is really hard when an administration spent a year poisoning
19:15
Speaker 3: people's minds about the best way to respond to a
19:17
Speaker 3: pandemic as a society, not from the government. I think
19:20
Speaker 3: that's an incredible challenge that they've inherited. I do wonder
19:23
Speaker 3: if now isn't the time, especially because people are giving
19:26
Speaker 3: up on the ways in which they can help prevent
19:30
Speaker 3: community spread right at the moment in which the vaccine
19:32
Speaker 3: is being rolled out. Like, We've just now crossed the
19:34
Speaker 3: threshold where more people have the vaccine than have had
19:37
Speaker 3: the illness. We were at a million, then 1.3, now 1.5.
19:41
Speaker 3: It's rising. Things are changing. Things will get better. And
19:44
Speaker 3: I do think that like, I see them not wanting
19:49
Speaker 3: to over promise and under deliver. Biden goes out there
19:52
Speaker 3: and says, we'll get it to people by spring. And
19:53
Speaker 3: the White House is like, well, we don't know about
19:55
Speaker 3: spring and Johnson and Johnson. Well, we don't know how
19:57
Speaker 3: it's going to come out. But I do think kind
19:58
Speaker 3: of a saying like we're almost at the end of this,
20:01
Speaker 3: just hanging there. Just hang in there.
20:03
Speaker 4: There's way too much doom and gloom bullshit about these
20:06
Speaker 4: new strains. Like, look, we're talking about- I was terrified.
20:09
Speaker 4: Some of these stories were terrifying. Then let me un-terrify you.
20:13
Speaker 4: We're talking about reduced efficacy rates on some of the
20:16
Speaker 4: vaccines against the South African strain, but we're still talking
20:18
Speaker 4: about a shot that's 50% effective. That's like a standard
20:21
Speaker 4: flu shot. So the bottom line is- All the vaccinations
20:25
Speaker 4: that we've, all that data is reducing hospitalizations and deaths
20:28
Speaker 4: to basically zero and then preventing 50% of the transmission.
20:33
Speaker 4: That's a miracle. Like we should talk about it accordingly.
20:36
Speaker 4: It's going to be a long couple months, but I
20:37
Speaker 4: don't think that has as much to do with the
20:38
Speaker 4: new strains than like variants and booster shots and all
20:42
Speaker 4: this stuff we're hearing about now than just the logistics
20:44
Speaker 4: of manufacturing and disseminating the vaccine. If we get that
20:47
Speaker 4: part right, you reduce deaths, you reduce infections and You
20:51
Speaker 4: stop the virus from mutating so we won't have any
20:53
Speaker 4: more of these conversations because it's not like running rampant.
20:56
Speaker 4: Get the economy going, right? And then in concert with that,
20:58
Speaker 4: you give people economic relief that they need to hang
21:01
Speaker 4: on through the summer. Like all the pieces are there.
21:04
Speaker 4: It's like, it sucks to read this stuff.
21:06
Speaker 2: Johnson & Johnson is 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and death,
21:12
Speaker 2: which is huge, even against the South African variant, right? Look,
21:15
Speaker 2: I think when you talk to people at the Biden
21:17
Speaker 2: White House, it's not just... expectation setting. It's not just spin.
21:23
Speaker 2: Their concern is, you know, the CDC has already said
21:26
Speaker 2: that in March, the UK variant would be the dominant
21:28
Speaker 2: strain in the country here. It's 50% more transmissible. If
21:33
Speaker 2: a critical mass of people were vaccinated at that point,
21:36
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have to worry as much about it, right?
21:38
Speaker 2: Like a critical mass of people are vaccinated in a
21:40
Speaker 2: country like Israel, the UK strain is all over the
21:42
Speaker 2: place there. It's still working. I think what they're concerned
21:45
Speaker 2: about is over the next six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks,
21:48
Speaker 2: The UK strain takes over here. It's more transmissible. We
21:52
Speaker 2: still haven't gotten the vaccinations up yet. And so we
21:54
Speaker 2: will see another spike. That's what they're trying to prepare
21:57
Speaker 2: us for, which I think, you know, is a real
22:00
Speaker 2: genuine concern. Again, though, it all and Tommy, you mentioned
22:03
Speaker 2: it all comes back to. We just they just got
22:06
Speaker 2: to get people vaccinated faster and they got to move
22:08
Speaker 2: heaven and earth to do it. And I think Biden
22:10
Speaker 2: doesn't have to go out there and be a barometer
22:13
Speaker 2: every day about whether things are good or bad or
22:16
Speaker 2: in between.
22:17
Speaker 4: Right.
22:17
Speaker 2: Like we I think we made this mistake with Obama sometimes.
22:20
Speaker 4: It was.
22:20
Speaker 6: Yeah.
22:20
Speaker 2: Here's exactly the state of the economy every single day.
22:23
Speaker 2: Like the president doesn't need to be talking about that.
22:24
Speaker 2: What Biden needs to be doing is talking every day about.
22:27
Speaker 2: what they're doing to fix it, right? And like, he
22:30
Speaker 2: needs to get pissed when things don't go right. And
22:33
Speaker 2: he needs to show us that he's fighting like hell.
22:34
Speaker 2: And he needs to show people that he's running through
22:36
Speaker 2: a brick wall for people and keep announcing progress, right?
22:40
Speaker 2: Like today they announced $ 30 rapid at-home COVID tests that
22:44
Speaker 2: are 95% accurate that they're shipping to, you know, incremental
22:47
Speaker 2: progress like that is going to be important to talk
22:49
Speaker 2: about every single day.
22:50
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I guess like, I think we're
22:52
Speaker 3: combining two things. Like one is the, Messaging around what's
22:57
Speaker 3: actually going on that's realistic and honest that doesn't overpromise.
23:00
Speaker 3: And I think that's really important. Look, we're not in
23:05
Speaker 3: control of what strains emerge. We don't know what the
23:08
Speaker 3: future holds, but here's what we know what we can do.
23:10
Speaker 3: But the other piece of it to me that I
23:11
Speaker 3: think is important is everybody's fucking sick of this and
23:17
Speaker 3: people are giving up. And so what is the best
23:20
Speaker 3: thing to tell a country that has been lied to,
23:23
Speaker 3: that the people who have sacrificed feel let down by
23:24
Speaker 3: all the people who haven't? You have healthcare professionals who
23:27
Speaker 3: are at their end. You have a mental health crisis.
23:29
Speaker 3: You have a financial crisis. All of this happening at once.
23:32
Speaker 3: And I do think that there is some space for
23:33
Speaker 3: just some... like lighted, we're almost, we, the end is
23:38
Speaker 3: in sight if we do these things because the vaccine, yeah,
23:40
Speaker 3: we need to roll the vaccine out, of course, but
23:42
Speaker 3: like masks and social distancing still fucking work and we've
23:45
Speaker 3: abandoned them, you know, to large parts of the country,
23:47
Speaker 3: we've abandoned them. So, um, I think that's, that's what
23:51
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. It's just like, if you can, if
23:53
Speaker 3: there's value to just signaling to people that, that, that
23:56
Speaker 3: the time is short and that, that if they sacrifice
23:58
Speaker 3: a little while longer, because this seven or eight week period,
24:01
Speaker 3: that's the other piece of this, that like the next
24:03
Speaker 3: few weeks matter even more than the weeks that follow, right? Like,
24:06
Speaker 3: If we can do something for the next four to
24:07
Speaker 3: six to eight weeks, whatever the numbers are based on
24:09
Speaker 3: these studies, like a huge amount of death and a
24:11
Speaker 3: huge amount of pain is prevented if we do it
24:13
Speaker 3: right now as the vaccine is ramping up.
24:15
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the future of the Republican
24:25
Speaker 2: Party and specifically whether it looks more like Liz Cheney
24:29
Speaker 2: or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
24:30
Speaker 4: What a choice. Speaking of diseased variants, here we go.
24:34
Speaker 2: This week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, just a courageous
24:38
Speaker 2: hero in his own right, will help decide the fate
24:40
Speaker 2: of both women. He'll choose whether or not to block
24:42
Speaker 2: a resolution kicking Cheney out of leadership because she voted
24:45
Speaker 2: to impeach the guy who incited a violent insurrection. He'll
24:48
Speaker 2: also meet with Greene, who's facing calls to be expelled
24:51
Speaker 2: from Congress after CNN and Media Matters surfaced some old
24:54
Speaker 2: social media activity where she liked a Facebook post calling
24:57
Speaker 2: for the assassination of Nancy Pelosi and FBI agents. heckled
25:01
Speaker 2: Parkland survivors, and blamed the California wildfires on a space
25:04
Speaker 2: laser controlled by a Jewish family. Green also believes the
25:08
Speaker 2: QAnon cult is worth listening to, that Muslims don't belong
25:11
Speaker 2: in government, that 9-11 was an inside job, that the
25:13
Speaker 2: Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were faked, and that the
25:16
Speaker 2: Zionist supremacists are encouraging Muslim immigration, is what she said. So,
25:22
Speaker 2: most of these comments were known when she ran and
25:24
Speaker 2: won election to represent the 14th Congressional District in Northwest Georgia. Tommy,
25:29
Speaker 2: what can be done about her now? Already, freshman Democrat
25:33
Speaker 2: Cori Bush has asked for her office to be moved
25:34
Speaker 2: away from Greens for safety reasons.
25:37
Speaker 4: I mean, it seems like there's three options. You can
25:39
Speaker 4: expel her from Congress. That takes a two-thirds vote, so
25:42
Speaker 4: it seems unlikely. You could censure her, which would just
25:46
Speaker 4: sort of condemn her. I think that has some bipartisan support.
25:49
Speaker 4: And then Democrats are now saying, if you don't strip her,
25:53
Speaker 4: saying to Kevin McCarthy, if the Republican Party won't strip
25:55
Speaker 4: her of her committee assignments... they will do it for them.
25:59
Speaker 4: I think she's on the House Education, Labor, the HELP committee, right?
26:03
Speaker 4: She's on the Labor Committee, Education, and then the Budget Committee. So,
26:07
Speaker 4: you know, some powerful places.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw, I think I saw in Politico today,
26:13
Speaker 2: they said if the Republican caucus in the House ends
26:16
Speaker 2: up stripping Liz Cheney from her leadership post, but doing
26:20
Speaker 2: nothing about Green, it'll be a real black eye for
26:23
Speaker 2: them heading into 2022.
26:24
Speaker 5: Yeah.
26:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:27
Speaker 2: No, I would say so.
26:29
Speaker 3: Two demerits for you, Kevin McCarthy.
26:34
Speaker 2: So, Lovett, a broader question here. Greene got a lot
26:38
Speaker 2: of coverage and attention last week. She's bound to get more.
26:42
Speaker 2: What do we do about this going forward? Should we
26:44
Speaker 2: ignore her? Should we make her the face of the
26:45
Speaker 2: Republican Party? How do you balance that?
26:49
Speaker 3: You know, look, it's the same problem we've had in
26:53
Speaker 3: dealing with Trump for years. You know, what do you
26:55
Speaker 3: do when this person feeds on attention and outrage, and
27:01
Speaker 3: yet also speaks for a huge percentage of the Republican
27:05
Speaker 3: Party at this point. And as you just pointed out,
27:08
Speaker 3: is more ascendant than the group of 10 House Republicans
27:15
Speaker 3: who had the audacity to tell the truth and vote
27:18
Speaker 3: to impeach Donald Trump. To Tim Miller wrote in Rolling
27:23
Speaker 3: Stone about what these 10 Republicans are doing to try
27:28
Speaker 3: to start fighting against this radical, rabid, conspiracy-minded wing. Well, really,
27:34
Speaker 3: the Republican Party itself. And you read it, and man,
27:38
Speaker 3: it just has some very strong Alamo vibes of just
27:41
Speaker 3: a group of people facing this.
27:47
Speaker 3: Racist, anti-Semitic, conspiratorial group of people and the huge mass
27:55
Speaker 3: of cowards unwilling to take them on. I imagine Kevin
27:58
Speaker 3: McCarthy would be quite relieved if Democrats remove someone like
28:02
Speaker 3: Greene from her committees because it spares them the embarrassment
28:07
Speaker 3: and headlines that she will surely create when she's on
28:09
Speaker 3: those committees. That said, I think it's morally irresponsible to
28:13
Speaker 3: treat this person as she just has, you know, different
28:15
Speaker 3: set of beliefs and teach the controversy. So I think
28:18
Speaker 3: we have to condemn it. I think we have to
28:19
Speaker 3: use all of our power to condemn it. I think
28:21
Speaker 3: we have to isolate it and try to get rid
28:24
Speaker 3: of it. I have not against, I don't know why
28:26
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have a vote to expel them and get
28:28
Speaker 3: all these Republicans on record as to whether or not
28:30
Speaker 3: they want this kind of person in Congress and speaking
28:32
Speaker 3: for them, especially if they're about to get Liz Cheney
28:34
Speaker 3: off of their leadership committee. So, you know, I don't know.
28:38
Speaker 4: That's it. That's what I got.
28:40
Speaker 2: Tommy, I'm inclined to make her the face of the
28:41
Speaker 2: Republican Party. What do you think?
28:43
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I think the question of how you deal
28:46
Speaker 4: with trolls is complicated. And to be clear, that's what
28:49
Speaker 4: she is. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a troll. She's doing
28:52
Speaker 4: this for retweets. She's doing it to raise money. So
28:54
Speaker 4: is this Madison Cawthorn guy, right? The other famous Republican
28:57
Speaker 4: freshman who says he's basically structured his staffing around communications
29:01
Speaker 4: and not policy. I've been reading a lot about the
29:04
Speaker 4: alt-right crew from like 2015 and 2016. So they derived
29:08
Speaker 4: money and power influence by saying inflammatory things and then
29:11
Speaker 4: getting well-meaning liberals to get outraged and react to them
29:15
Speaker 4: or share their stuff. And it was effectively a strategy
29:18
Speaker 4: enabled by social media because Facebook and Twitter helped people
29:22
Speaker 4: like Milo or Mike Cernovich go from running blogs that
29:24
Speaker 4: no one ever looked at to getting their views in
29:27
Speaker 4: front of a lot of people. But when they got deplatformed,
29:29
Speaker 4: when they got kicked off of Facebook or YouTube, people
29:32
Speaker 4: like Alex Jones or Milo, it hurt them a lot.
29:35
Speaker 4: And I think the damage was done because they built
29:37
Speaker 4: an audience and they filtered their views into the broader
29:40
Speaker 4: MAGA world and they shifted the boundaries of the discourse
29:43
Speaker 4: and politics. But ultimately, that was the right move. I
29:47
Speaker 4: think that Marjorie Taylor Greene has to be deplatformed. She
29:51
Speaker 4: has a platform called Congress. They need to draw a
29:53
Speaker 4: line in the sand because it's the right thing to do.
29:55
Speaker 4: But also, I think it will work. When the Republicans
29:58
Speaker 4: stripped Steve King of his power, it helped eventually lead
30:02
Speaker 4: to his defeat in a Republican primary. It took too long,
30:05
Speaker 4: but it also embarrassed the party. And not having Steve
30:08
Speaker 4: King in Congress is a good thing. Not having Marjorie
30:11
Speaker 4: Taylor Greene in Congress would be a good thing. To
30:13
Speaker 4: your broader point of the face of the party, Trump
30:16
Speaker 4: constantly accuses the Democratic Party of being anti-Semitic because of
30:20
Speaker 4: comments by a few individual members. I think we should
30:22
Speaker 4: do the same thing. We need to up the cost
30:25
Speaker 4: of being associated with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and draw a
30:28
Speaker 4: line in the sand and say, this person shouldn't be
30:30
Speaker 4: making laws. I have no faith in the Republicans to
30:34
Speaker 4: do the right thing. Trump is injecting himself. He called
30:38
Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Greene. He's on her side. Kevin McCarthy is
30:43
Speaker 4: a coward and a moron. He just went and groveled
30:45
Speaker 4: at Trump's feet at Mar-a-Lago. Mitch McConnell won't provide any
30:48
Speaker 4: leadership on the impeachment vote. I'm sure he won't step
30:51
Speaker 4: in here. They are stuck in this same cowardly Republican loop. But,
30:56
Speaker 4: you know, someone needs to excise this political cancer because
31:00
Speaker 4: we can't hide from people like her. It's going to grow.
31:02
Speaker 4: Like she is the new face of the party. She
31:05
Speaker 4: is the norm now. It is not Paul Ryan. It
31:07
Speaker 4: is not these like country club Republicans. It's people like her.
31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, no. And I think and I think that's an
31:13
Speaker 2: important point to make. Like, you know, just from a
31:17
Speaker 2: pure political standpoint, pure political perspective in 2020. like most
31:23
Speaker 2: Republican candidates ran ahead of Donald Trump. Donald Trump was
31:26
Speaker 2: seen as more extreme than most Republican candidates. That wasn't
31:30
Speaker 2: necessarily the case in 2016, which is why we got him,
31:32
Speaker 2: one of the reasons we got him as president. In general,
31:35
Speaker 2: if a party is viewed as more extreme, they do worse.
31:40
Speaker 2: That's just, that's what the data shows. And if the
31:43
Speaker 2: Republican Party is viewed as the party of Donald Trump
31:45
Speaker 2: and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, They're going to
31:48
Speaker 2: do worse in a lot of parts of the country. Obviously,
31:50
Speaker 2: not all. There's some deep red parts, but in a
31:53
Speaker 2: lot of parts of the country where it matters, they
31:54
Speaker 2: will do worse than if the party is seen as
31:56
Speaker 2: the party of Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.
31:59
Speaker 6: Right.
31:59
Speaker 2: Like that's it sounds basic, but it's true. So you're right. Like,
32:02
Speaker 2: I totally agree, Tommy, on all the stuff about like
32:05
Speaker 2: she should be deplatformed. And it's good to think about
32:07
Speaker 2: that in Congress as well as on social media. But
32:09
Speaker 2: I do think the Democrats should let it be known
32:13
Speaker 2: that she is the face of the party now.
32:16
Speaker 6: Yeah.
32:16
Speaker 4: I mean, the Republican Party is the cult of Trump.
32:19
Speaker 4: Without an intervention, that will be the case, right? Matt
32:21
Speaker 4: Gaetz is in Wyoming for some reason, campaigning against Liz Cheney.
32:25
Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Greene is growing in influence. Like, I don't
32:28
Speaker 4: like Liz Cheney's politics, but I do like her position
32:31
Speaker 4: on reality and that she is tethered to it. You
32:34
Speaker 4: know what I mean? It's not just them. It's Ron Johnson,
32:37
Speaker 4: the senator from Wisconsin, who's using his position to elevate
32:41
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories, including about vaccines and attacking social distancing and masks.
32:45
Speaker 4: So yeah, there's like There's a real problem within that party.
32:48
Speaker 4: It's not good for Democrats to have an opposition party
32:51
Speaker 4: be that diseased.
32:53
Speaker 3: It's worth remembering too that like, man, Liz Cheney, Liz
32:57
Speaker 3: Cheney spread the most noxious, toxic right wing propaganda for years.
33:04
Speaker 3: It just, it was the Bush, it was the Bush type,
33:06
Speaker 3: not the Trump type. You know, she was a, she
33:09
Speaker 3: was a, you know, post 9-11 right winger who attacked
33:13
Speaker 3: Democrats in the most pernicious ways. ways to try to
33:17
Speaker 3: undercut their patriotism and all of that. We dealt with
33:19
Speaker 3: it for a year. She was heinous. And it's a
33:21
Speaker 3: testament to how, not just how far the party has moved,
33:24
Speaker 3: but how people like Liz Cheney contributed to that movement,
33:27
Speaker 3: that they are responsible, that they set the tone and
33:29
Speaker 3: they moved the party right. And they ignored the worst
33:32
Speaker 3: voices in their party for years that put them in
33:34
Speaker 3: this situation.
33:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a, There's a lot of talk about the
33:39
Speaker 2: Republican Civil War. There's no Civil War. The reality-based side
33:42
Speaker 2: is losing badly and almost done.
33:45
Speaker 4: Because they're not fighting. It's like Adam Kinzinger is the
33:48
Speaker 4: only one on TV. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, congressman.
33:52
Speaker 4: I don't agree with him on a single policy. He's
33:54
Speaker 4: the only person who has had the guts to stand
33:56
Speaker 4: up to Trumpism. and lies and conspiracy theories for years.
34:01
Speaker 4: And like, odds are he's going to be attacked and
34:03
Speaker 4: someone's going to try to primary because the rest of
34:05
Speaker 4: the people who know he's right, don't have the guts
34:08
Speaker 4: to say so. I guess they would rather just cling
34:10
Speaker 4: to power.
34:12
Speaker 2: He gets credit and Mitt Romney gets credit in the Senate.
34:14
Speaker 2: And I don't think there's too many others.
34:17
Speaker 3: I would say, I think that what I would like
34:18
Speaker 3: to see though, just about extracting costs for what they've
34:22
Speaker 3: been doing. So, um, Scott Beagle is one of the
34:25
Speaker 3: people that was killed in Parkland. I actually knew him.
34:27
Speaker 3: I grew up with him. And his mother called Marjorie
34:30
Speaker 3: Taylor Greene and basically said, are you willing to tell
34:35
Speaker 3: me right now that my son wasn't killed, that there
34:38
Speaker 3: was a false flag? And she wouldn't. And she said, well,
34:40
Speaker 3: will you come on television with me and say it?
34:42
Speaker 4: Will you apologize?
34:43
Speaker 3: Will you admit that Parkland really happened, that my son
34:46
Speaker 3: and his heroism is real, that our pain is real?
34:48
Speaker 3: And she refused to do it. And as long as
34:50
Speaker 3: people like Kevin McCarthy aren't willing to do that, I
34:53
Speaker 3: would like to see these clips paid for these people.
34:57
Speaker 3: For so long, Republicans were like, oh, the media treats
35:00
Speaker 3: us like the away team and you're the home team.
35:02
Speaker 4: And there's some truth to that.
35:03
Speaker 3: But one of the ways in which it benefits Republicans
35:06
Speaker 3: is that the press treats Republicans like McCarthy is. It
35:10
Speaker 3: treats them like antagonists. It treats them like people that
35:12
Speaker 3: can't change, that don't deserve to be confronted, that don't
35:15
Speaker 3: deserve to be held to the same standard that Democrats
35:17
Speaker 3: are held to. Hold them to the standard.
35:19
Speaker 4: Show them the clips.
35:20
Speaker 3: Embarrass them on television. Make them pay for what they're
35:23
Speaker 3: endorsing by not standing up to these people.
35:26
Speaker 4: Yeah. All right.
35:28
Speaker 2: When we come back, we will have Lovett's interview with
35:31
Speaker 2: Katie Porter. They're just going to give you all some
35:33
Speaker 2: stock tips.
35:43
Speaker 3: She's the Democratic congresswoman representing California's 45th district. Katie Porter,
35:47
Speaker 3: welcome back to Pod Save America.
35:49
Speaker 6: Thank you.
35:50
Speaker 3: It's good to see you. So we have a lot
35:52
Speaker 3: to cover. So today, President Biden is meeting with 10
35:55
Speaker 3: Republicans to discuss their counterproposal of a $ 600 billion relief
36:00
Speaker 3: plan versus the Biden plan of $ 1. 9 trillion. It's obviously inadequate.
36:06
Speaker 3: How should we be thinking about this process? What to
36:09
Speaker 3: your mind is the most likely way to get from
36:11
Speaker 3: this meeting to to the most help for the most
36:14
Speaker 3: people as quickly as possible.
36:17
Speaker 1: Pass the Democratic plan. I mean, I think it's important
36:20
Speaker 1: that Biden meet with these senators. I think this is
36:22
Speaker 1: an important opportunity to set a tone of more collaboration,
36:27
Speaker 1: of more listening, of more dialogue. But ultimately, these Republicans
36:32
Speaker 1: need to be told, because obviously they're not listening to
36:35
Speaker 1: their constituents, so it's up to the rest of us
36:37
Speaker 1: to tell them that $ 600 billion will only cause more
36:43
Speaker 1: economic harm in this country and create a deeper recession
36:47
Speaker 1: that is ultimately much harder to get out of and
36:50
Speaker 1: creates much deeper consequences. And This, by the way, is
36:54
Speaker 1: something that's being said by economists from all different kinds
36:57
Speaker 1: of backgrounds. The only disagreement on this really is coming
37:00
Speaker 1: from a handful of politically motivated people who, as we know,
37:05
Speaker 1: have no problem running up the deficit with tax cuts
37:08
Speaker 1: for their corporate donors.
37:10
Speaker 3: So did they just start with a tiny number and
37:14
Speaker 3: then backfill what they cut from the Biden plan to
37:17
Speaker 3: get there? The economists aren't calling for it. There's an
37:21
Speaker 3: option for Democrats to pass it through reconciliation without any
37:24
Speaker 3: Republican votes. What is motivating these Republicans to try to
37:28
Speaker 3: kind of jam Biden in this way? Is it purely
37:31
Speaker 3: just to undercut the new administration? Do they genuinely have
37:34
Speaker 3: concerns about doing enough to help people in this crisis?
37:39
Speaker 3: What do you think is actually going on here?
37:41
Speaker 1: These are some of my favorite questions. What do you
37:44
Speaker 1: think is going on in Ted Cruz's empty head?
37:47
Speaker 6: How would I know?
37:49
Speaker 3: I'm not at Ted Cruz. He's not at the meeting.
37:53
Speaker 1: These other people, I can't say what they're thinking or
37:56
Speaker 1: what their motivation is because I'm not there. But let
38:00
Speaker 1: me just say this. This is not the smaller package
38:05
Speaker 1: with the kinds of cuts that they're making, including to
38:09
Speaker 1: state and local funding, including to some of the support
38:13
Speaker 1: for working families. This is fiscally irresponsible. The fiscally pragmatic,
38:21
Speaker 1: responsible thing to do here is to meet the needs
38:25
Speaker 1: of stabilizing our economy.
38:28
Speaker 6: So I just want to say it's really important.
38:29
Speaker 1: That we as progressives champion this and set the record straight.
38:34
Speaker 1: The plan that we are putting forward, the $ 1. 9 trillion
38:38
Speaker 1: plan that meets the scope and need of what COVID
38:41
Speaker 1: has done to our economy is fiscally responsible.
38:45
Speaker 6: What these Republicans are doing is is not.
38:49
Speaker 1: It is going to only deepen the recession and set
38:51
Speaker 1: our country on a path to being not globally competitive
38:54
Speaker 1: with other nations who have dealt with this situation, both
38:57
Speaker 1: COVID and the economic fallout much better.
38:59
Speaker 3: So I want to dig into that for a second
39:01
Speaker 3: because I think, so they're obviously trying to do this
39:04
Speaker 3: because they're blanching at the price tag, but you're basically
39:07
Speaker 3: saying that if we don't spend enough now, the hole
39:10
Speaker 3: it creates in the economy over time creates a much
39:13
Speaker 3: bigger fiscal problem than spending enough now Exactly.
39:18
Speaker 1: And I'll just offer you a couple of examples. If
39:20
Speaker 1: we do our office recently, you released a report on
39:23
Speaker 1: the way that women are exiting and being squeezed out
39:26
Speaker 1: of the workforce as a result of COVID-19 plus the
39:29
Speaker 1: economic crisis.
39:30
Speaker 6: Fallout that it's created.
39:31
Speaker 1: If we don't find a way to, for example, invest
39:35
Speaker 1: in child care, invest in getting schools open, make sure
39:38
Speaker 1: there are deeper cuts in state and local government and funding,
39:42
Speaker 1: then all we're going to see is more women stay
39:44
Speaker 1: out of the workforce for longer.
39:45
Speaker 6: What does that mean?
39:46
Speaker 1: It ultimately means we're draining talent out of our workforce.
39:50
Speaker 1: We're making women, and particularly single women, women of color,
39:53
Speaker 1: low-income women, more likely to experience financial hardship, to need
39:57
Speaker 1: to borrow, to go bankrupt, to not be able to
39:59
Speaker 1: save for retirement. That is backwards. So what we need
40:03
Speaker 1: to do here is try to right-size the relief for
40:07
Speaker 1: the scope of the problem. And the longer this problem
40:09
Speaker 1: has gone on, The fact that President Trump did not
40:12
Speaker 1: deal with this well, did not get vaccines out, did
40:15
Speaker 1: not prioritize health and safety. The fact that we've chronically
40:19
Speaker 1: underinvested in public health is a great example of how
40:23
Speaker 1: this costs.
40:23
Speaker 6: More in the long run.
40:26
Speaker 3: So one piece of the crisis that you've been talking
40:28
Speaker 3: about is the toll this has taken on mental health.
40:31
Speaker 3: That there's a lot of people, we've failed to provide
40:36
Speaker 3: mental health services to enough people long before the pandemic.
40:38
Speaker 3: Now we have people in isolation. We have people who
40:40
Speaker 3: have long struggled with addiction alone and without their sort
40:44
Speaker 3: of support system. What are you trying to do to
40:47
Speaker 3: address the mental health crisis that we're in?
40:50
Speaker 6: Yep.
40:50
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we did was pass
40:52
Speaker 1: at the very end of last year as part of
40:55
Speaker 1: the COVID relief bill, a bill that we have, bipartisan bill,
40:59
Speaker 1: to create more accountability for insurers to follow the law. Now,
41:04
Speaker 1: this sounds simple, but big companies, newsflash, don't always follow
41:09
Speaker 1: the law. It's cheaper just to break the law and
41:11
Speaker 1: see if you get caught. So the Affordable Care Act
41:14
Speaker 1: had a provision called mental health parity, meaning that mental
41:17
Speaker 1: health treatment should be treated the same way as other
41:20
Speaker 1: kinds of health treatment, whether it's for orthopedic care or
41:22
Speaker 1: something else. Insurers have not been complying with this. Anyone
41:27
Speaker 1: who's tried to make an appointment for mental health, there
41:29
Speaker 1: are no providers in network. The providers don't take insurance
41:32
Speaker 1: because the reimbursement's terrible. There are unclear benefits. So this
41:37
Speaker 1: bill would try to make sure that we're enforcing, we're
41:39
Speaker 1: delivering insurance. on that promise of mental health parity. But
41:43
Speaker 1: we have to do more than that. We also have
41:46
Speaker 1: to address the fact, as you said, that COVID has
41:48
Speaker 1: only deepened some of the mental health needs. This is
41:51
Speaker 1: coming through grief and loss of life. People have lost
41:54
Speaker 1: loved ones in this and lost them in ways that
41:56
Speaker 1: don't allow them to process.
41:58
Speaker 6: It's isolation. It's anxiety.
42:00
Speaker 1: And so we're also calling for increased funding in our
42:03
Speaker 1: bill stopping the Mental Health Pandemic Act. And I'm hearing this,
42:09
Speaker 1: by the way, on the ground from providers as I'm
42:13
Speaker 1: going about my day, seeing neighbors, you know, talking to
42:16
Speaker 1: people in my community. They are all telling me, that
42:19
Speaker 1: this is a huge problem, that there have wait lists
42:21
Speaker 1: for appointments, that there's a shortage of mental health care, including,
42:24
Speaker 1: and this is really important, the mental health needs of
42:27
Speaker 1: our health care workers, many of whom are being traumatized
42:31
Speaker 1: by what they're having to work with and through right now.
42:34
Speaker 3: You've been tackling so many facets of this that I
42:36
Speaker 3: think don't get the attention they deserve. Another piece of
42:39
Speaker 3: this that you've been talking about is the pharmaceutical industry
42:43
Speaker 3: and the consolidation that we've seen there, uh, Look, we've
42:47
Speaker 3: spent a year watching this failure unfold. It was an
42:49
Speaker 3: economic failure to provide people the resources they needed so
42:51
Speaker 3: they didn't have to work. We've seen the failed response
42:55
Speaker 3: by the previous administration. But science and the vaccine development
42:59
Speaker 3: was extraordinary. It happened incredibly quickly. It's a great testament
43:02
Speaker 3: to basic research investments from the public sector. It's a
43:06
Speaker 3: testament to these incredible.
43:12
Speaker 3: These incredible scientists and what they did. But you've been
43:14
Speaker 3: looking at the way in which consolidation in pharmaceuticals might
43:18
Speaker 3: raise costs for prescriptions but also stop innovation. Can you
43:22
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about the kind of consolidation that's
43:25
Speaker 3: been going on that may make developments like this in
43:27
Speaker 3: the future harder?
43:28
Speaker 5: Yep.
43:29
Speaker 6: So we all agree that we want to have innovation
43:33
Speaker 6: in health care. We want improved treatments. We want improved outcomes.
43:37
Speaker 1: And that means that we need to create the conditions
43:39
Speaker 1: for innovation. one of those conditions is competition. And what
43:44
Speaker 1: we found is that what's going on in pharmaceuticals, as
43:47
Speaker 1: in many other areas of our economy, is an increasing
43:50
Speaker 1: problem with monopoly behavior and monopoly problems. So to the
43:56
Speaker 1: extent that these large pharmaceutical companies are gobbling up smaller ones,
44:00
Speaker 1: what they do is acquire the thing, the one thing
44:04
Speaker 1: they want, and then dump and cut all of the
44:07
Speaker 1: culture of innovation.
44:08
Speaker 6: And many of these smaller.
44:09
Speaker 1: Companies are the very entities that are willing to take risks,
44:13
Speaker 1: who are investing in things that are further out from
44:16
Speaker 1: market development. And so it's really important that we have
44:19
Speaker 1: companies of different sizes with different levels of risk in
44:23
Speaker 1: our pharmaceutical community. And so what we show is we
44:26
Speaker 1: give a really couple powerful examples in the report of
44:30
Speaker 1: exactly what happened when a small company making powerful innovations
44:36
Speaker 1: was acquired by a big company.
44:38
Speaker 6: It's not good.
44:39
Speaker 1: The big pharmaceutical companies are going to focus on the profits,
44:43
Speaker 1: on their shareholders. They're not going to focus on those
44:45
Speaker 1: long-term research and development initiatives. Big Pharma spends more money
44:51
Speaker 1: on lobbying every year than they do on research and development.
44:55
Speaker 1: Really important for people to understand that we should be
44:59
Speaker 1: pushing big pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R
45:02
Speaker 1: & D. Don't take them at their word. Make them
45:06
Speaker 1: show that that's in fact what they're doing. None of
45:08
Speaker 1: this is to take away from the amazing work that
45:12
Speaker 1: scientists are doing.
45:13
Speaker 6: In fact, we want to support and encourage more of that.
45:18
Speaker 3: I mean, it used to be right that there was
45:20
Speaker 3: Bell Labs, that these companies had these kind of long-term
45:25
Speaker 3: aspects of what they did, basic research, higher risk things.
45:28
Speaker 3: And that's sort of gone by the wayside. The federal
45:31
Speaker 3: government has cut back in terms of by percentage what
45:34
Speaker 3: they invest in basic research. And now what you're saying
45:36
Speaker 3: is basically these small companies that pop up to do
45:40
Speaker 3: something really risk-taking, to do something really innovative, to try
45:43
Speaker 3: to make something new, that they get gobbled up by
45:46
Speaker 3: these big pharmaceutical companies. And then the only thing they
45:49
Speaker 3: keep is the one thing they've already made, making it
45:51
Speaker 3: impossible for them to make something new.
45:53
Speaker 1: They shelve and actively hold back the culture of innovation
45:58
Speaker 1: and the actual innovative projects that were going on at
46:01
Speaker 1: the small company. They're basically just purchasing the entire thing
46:06
Speaker 1: to get that one thing that may be profitable, but
46:09
Speaker 1: then the rest of the initiatives die in the pipeline.
46:12
Speaker 1: We've seen big pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money
46:17
Speaker 1: making minor adjustments to existing therapies to try to hang
46:21
Speaker 1: on to patent protection and continue to make profit rather
46:25
Speaker 1: than investing in research and development to identify new drugs
46:29
Speaker 1: and new treatments.
46:30
Speaker 3: And so what is the way to stop them from
46:33
Speaker 3: doing that? Is it more aggressive oversight by regulators around monopoly?
46:39
Speaker 3: What's the way to intervene? What legislation is needed?
46:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, we put several things in our report about what
46:46
Speaker 1: we can do in this regard. But part of it
46:49
Speaker 1: is before we can even get to that point, we
46:51
Speaker 1: have to educate the public and educate our elected officials
46:55
Speaker 1: that this is a problem. We are also grateful to
47:00
Speaker 1: have development of vaccines by these large companies, but we
47:04
Speaker 1: can't take them at their word that everything they're doing
47:07
Speaker 1: is always about innovation.
47:08
Speaker 6: They are companies. They have shareholders. What are they doing?
47:13
Speaker 1: They're doing what companies do. They're delivering profits to their shareholders.
47:16
Speaker 1: And I'm a capitalist. There's nothing wrong with that. But
47:19
Speaker 1: healthy capitalism means that you have that market competition. So
47:23
Speaker 1: in our report, we lay out a number of policy
47:26
Speaker 1: things that could be done. But a lot of this,
47:28
Speaker 1: the real barrier isn't that the policy solutions are so complicated.
47:32
Speaker 1: It's that politically, pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars every
47:37
Speaker 1: year to convince the American people that if they are
47:40
Speaker 1: subject to any market forces or any regulation, that they
47:44
Speaker 1: will stop innovating.
47:47
Speaker 3: So speaking of innovation, Speaking of capitalism, before we let
47:50
Speaker 3: you go, I did want to talk about GameStop. And
47:54
Speaker 3: I say that as one of their largest shareholders.
47:57
Speaker 4: I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
48:01
Speaker 3: So a lot of the coverage has been about this
48:03
Speaker 3: being like the sort of ordinary person versus hedge funds.
48:07
Speaker 3: It also seems to be about risk and where risk
48:09
Speaker 3: is hidden in our system when it's working supposedly smoothly.
48:15
Speaker 3: What are the lessons you're taking away from this about
48:19
Speaker 3: what it says about the sort of health of our
48:22
Speaker 3: financial system.
48:23
Speaker 6: Yeah.
48:23
Speaker 1: Well, first, and I'm sounding here just like my mentor,
48:27
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren, but she's dead right. The stock market is
48:31
Speaker 1: only one measure of economic well-being or activity. Elizabeth and
48:36
Speaker 1: I have both seen this. You can have a sky-high
48:38
Speaker 1: stock market and also have consumers with sky-high debts who
48:41
Speaker 1: are filing bankruptcy in record numbers. So let's not conflate
48:44
Speaker 1: the stock market with an actual economic fundamental. Similarly, let's
48:50
Speaker 1: not confuse the price of a stock like GameStop, which
48:53
Speaker 1: was run up by manipulative practices, by kind of pumping
48:57
Speaker 1: up by retail investors coming together to flood the market,
49:01
Speaker 1: with actually GameStop being a good investment or not. And yes,
49:07
Speaker 1: some of the hedge funds that were involved, they were
49:10
Speaker 1: in trouble.
49:10
Speaker 6: They had a run.
49:11
Speaker 1: They couldn't make the requirements. They got bought by another company.
49:14
Speaker 1: They got a capital infusion. They had to basically sell.
49:16
Speaker 6: Part of their company.
49:17
Speaker 1: There are also hedge funds making a ton of money.
49:20
Speaker 1: on this GameStop thing. And there are regular investors who
49:24
Speaker 1: are going to lose a lot of money on GameStop.
49:27
Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, this is a
49:29
Speaker 1: company in trouble. This is not a company with sound
49:33
Speaker 1: economic models. And the real issue here is making sure
49:36
Speaker 1: that we're having regulators, an SEC that is doing its
49:40
Speaker 1: job of understanding the risk. This is not, despite the
49:44
Speaker 1: name Robinhood and however much I don't like the particular
49:48
Speaker 1: hedge fund guy on the other side of it, this
49:50
Speaker 1: really isn't a big versus small problem. This is a
49:53
Speaker 1: problem about risk and the fact that smaller investors are
49:57
Speaker 1: less able to bear that risk.
49:59
Speaker 6: And they've taken an awful lot of it on here.
50:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it seems like we do want a
50:07
Speaker 3: system where individual people have access to markets in the
50:12
Speaker 3: same way that big institutional investors do. But it seems
50:15
Speaker 3: that what would be the worst outcome is if all
50:17
Speaker 3: the bad practices and gambling and casino-like behavior of these
50:22
Speaker 3: large entities then trickle down to everybody, right? It seems
50:25
Speaker 3: like what we want is we want to be open,
50:27
Speaker 3: we want it to be fair, but it's this strange
50:29
Speaker 3: situation where The more people behave like it's a casino,
50:32
Speaker 3: the more it becomes one and the more risky and
50:34
Speaker 3: dangerous it becomes writ large, like for everybody.
50:37
Speaker 6: Right.
50:37
Speaker 1: And look, to short a stock, you're basically betting on
50:42
Speaker 1: the direction of the stock share. You're betting that it
50:45
Speaker 1: will go down. And if you're wrong, the consequences on
50:49
Speaker 1: the other side are huge. You can owe way more
50:53
Speaker 1: money than you put at risk in the first place.
50:55
Speaker 1: And this means you need to have a lot of liquidity.
50:59
Speaker 1: You need to have a lot of cash on hand
51:01
Speaker 1: to be able to meet that. You need to have
51:03
Speaker 1: other kinds of counter risk strategies. This is not something
51:06
Speaker 1: that individual investors are going to be able to do.
51:09
Speaker 6: So look, if you have $ 100.
51:10
Speaker 1: Or $ 1, 000 and you want to see what happens, by
51:14
Speaker 1: all means, short a stock.
51:16
Speaker 6: Maybe you'll win. Maybe you'll lose. But understand, you.
51:19
Speaker 1: Might be on the hook for way more than that $ 1, 000.
51:21
Speaker 1: And let me tell you, in all my years of
51:24
Speaker 1: dealing with families in bankruptcy and in financial trouble, I've
51:28
Speaker 1: never seen a hedge fund step up.
51:31
Speaker 6: And say to a family.
51:32
Speaker 1: To a mom and dad driving a minivan with a
51:35
Speaker 1: kid or two, hey, we'd like to buy part of
51:38
Speaker 1: your household and give you this money and invest in you.
51:41
Speaker 6: It's not going to happen.
51:43
Speaker 1: These consumers are just going to end up holding the
51:45
Speaker 1: short end of the stick. So I think your point, John,
51:47
Speaker 1: is exactly right. We want an even playing field. We
51:50
Speaker 1: want everyday investors to have access to strategies that will
51:55
Speaker 1: make them money and give them the opportunities to get
51:57
Speaker 1: the upside of capitalism.
52:00
Speaker 6: But the risk is also there.
52:03
Speaker 1: And we need to make sure we have a regulator
52:05
Speaker 1: who's doing the job of understanding the risk.
52:08
Speaker 3: So two ideas that have been talked about recently. One
52:15
Speaker 3: is sort of addressing this more acutely, which is basically
52:17
Speaker 3: just making sure companies have more money if they're going
52:20
Speaker 3: to be engaging in short selling. But the other is
52:22
Speaker 3: something that's been talked about for years, which is putting
52:26
Speaker 3: some kind of a tiny tax or fee on on
52:29
Speaker 3: trades to stop the high frequency trading that some of
52:33
Speaker 3: these hedge funds have made a ton of money on,
52:35
Speaker 3: on the other side of these transactions. What do you
52:37
Speaker 3: think about, what are some of the ways we should
52:39
Speaker 3: be thinking about this in terms of what Congress can do?
52:41
Speaker 5: Yep.
52:42
Speaker 1: So with regard to making sure that there's adequate liquidity,
52:46
Speaker 1: that these entities have backstops, I mean, that's the job
52:49
Speaker 1: of the SEC, and it's as true for Robinhood as
52:53
Speaker 1: it is for any other entity, right? And if stock
52:56
Speaker 1: prices are going crazy, there's always the ability to stop
52:59
Speaker 1: the market, to freeze trades. What happened with Robinhood is
53:02
Speaker 1: exactly what happens in other contexts with other companies when
53:06
Speaker 1: there's stock manipulation. Whoever is doing pump and dump, whoever
53:10
Speaker 1: is manipulating the market, whether it's big or small, it's wrong.
53:13
Speaker 1: And there are market mechanisms to try to stop that.
53:15
Speaker 1: So with regard to the financial tax, I think there's
53:18
Speaker 1: a couple points here.
53:19
Speaker 6: One is we just need.
53:21
Speaker 1: To think about where do we want to create the
53:25
Speaker 1: revenue that we need to invest in economic growth, right?
53:29
Speaker 6: And we have different places we could put that. Right now, we.
53:32
Speaker 1: Have an effective tax rate on middle-income families that's a
53:34
Speaker 1: lot higher than it is on many millionaires and others
53:38
Speaker 1: because of difference in capital gains rates and different deduction rules,
53:42
Speaker 1: things like that. The financial transaction tax is one place
53:46
Speaker 1: that we could look to raise revenue. And the larger issue,
53:50
Speaker 1: I think, is, you know, Because it's only large entities
53:54
Speaker 1: and complex entities that can engage typically in the kind
53:58
Speaker 1: of really high liquidity, high frequency, excuse me, trading that's
54:01
Speaker 1: going on, we might think that that tax would fall
54:04
Speaker 1: more on those big companies. But I think those are
54:07
Speaker 1: really two separate questions. There's a risk question and then
54:11
Speaker 1: there's a tax question. I don't think we should be
54:13
Speaker 1: using the tax to try to deter the risk taking,
54:17
Speaker 1: if that makes sense.
54:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
54:20
Speaker 3: Before we let you go, you ordered vanity license plates
54:25
Speaker 3: that say Oversight for your minivan. Have they come? And
54:29
Speaker 3: will they qualify as a waiver to get you back
54:31
Speaker 3: on financial services?
54:33
Speaker 1: So the license plates have not come, but they have
54:35
Speaker 1: been ordered.
54:36
Speaker 6: And I'm very happy to report it's very tough in California.
54:39
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other people that nobody else
54:42
Speaker 1: wanted the license plate, O-V-R-S-I-T-E.
54:44
Speaker 6: So it's on. It's been submitted. It's being made. It'll
54:47
Speaker 6: get to me.
54:48
Speaker 1: I'll put a picture up as soon as I can
54:49
Speaker 1: figure out how to get the plates and get them
54:51
Speaker 1: on my van. With regard to the committees, I am
54:55
Speaker 1: thrilled to be on Natural Resources and to be on Oversight. And,
54:59
Speaker 1: you know, part of it is we lost seats in
55:01
Speaker 1: the House. So I was the most junior member on oversight.
55:05
Speaker 1: I could have lost my spot. So I reallocated my
55:08
Speaker 1: committee preferences. I ranked them one, two, three. And in
55:12
Speaker 1: the end, there were, you know, I think 13 or
55:14
Speaker 1: 11 members who got waivers.
55:17
Speaker 6: I didn't.
55:17
Speaker 1: I was one of two who didn't. I'm disappointed not
55:19
Speaker 1: to be able to serve on financial services.
55:21
Speaker 6: But there's– I think one of the things this.
55:23
Speaker 1: Whole thing has illustrated to me is how much– confusing
55:27
Speaker 1: and how not transparent some of these things are. The
55:31
Speaker 1: inner operations of Congress are to the American people. Like
55:35
Speaker 1: the rules of the caucus are so complex that people
55:38
Speaker 1: can't even understand how we get on the committees we
55:41
Speaker 1: get on.
55:42
Speaker 6: And in that being very.
55:46
Speaker 1: Opaque and difficult to understand, then there's the potential for
55:50
Speaker 1: people to get confused and not understand what happened. So
55:53
Speaker 1: I would love to be back on financial services. There
55:55
Speaker 1: may be another opportunity, either in a future Congress or
55:58
Speaker 1: later in this Congress. But in the meantime, I'm going
56:01
Speaker 1: to keep working on these issues. I spent my life
56:04
Speaker 1: working on issues of consumer protection, on capitalism. I'm going
56:08
Speaker 1: to keep working on this, whether I'm on the committee
56:09
Speaker 1: or not.
56:11
Speaker 3: Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you so much for talking to
56:13
Speaker 3: us today.
56:14
Speaker 6: Thank you.
56:18
Speaker 2: Thanks to Congresswoman Katie Porter for joining us today. And
56:23
Speaker 2: we'll talk to you guys later.
56:25
Speaker 4: Bye, Lowe.
56:26
Speaker 3: So hi, everybody.
56:29
Speaker 2: Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
56:32
Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
56:36
Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
56:39
Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
56:43
Speaker 2: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
56:46
Speaker 2: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
56:50
Speaker 2: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
56:53
Speaker 2: every week.