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Transcript

“You’ve got (no) mail.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: If you guys hear a baby crying in the background,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: that's our son Charlie.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: That's Lovett.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Charlie was born two and a half weeks early on
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: July 23rd. He is a healthy, happy little baby. So far,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: sleeping well, eating well. shitting like a champ uh emily
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: emily's also doing well continues to be the hero of
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: our family um and and thank you to everyone who
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: subbed in for me last week metty alissa dan from
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: vacation tommy who did like five pods in a row
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: uh really appreciate that charlie listened to all of last
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: week's pods so now he is learning all of your
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: voices uh and also listen to uh taylor swift's folklore
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: about 100 times so he is he's off to a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: good start guys did he have any notes anything you
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: change he did Yeah, we're going to send you all
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of his notes.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Higher pitch, higher pitch. He wants higher pitches.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Had a few quips. On today's pod, Lovett talks to
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: our friend Kara Swisher about Donald Trump's threat to ban
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: TikTok and last week's big tech hearings on Capitol Hill.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Before that, we'll talk about the Trump campaign's attempted reset,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the latest on the congressional stimulus negotiations, and the final
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: week of Joe Biden's veep stakes. But first, Lovett, how
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: was the show this week?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Great, Lovett, or leave it. Latasha Brown came by, got
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: everybody pumped, talked about what we can do, talked about
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Biden's VP pick. Brian Safi and I pretended to be
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: straight again to canvas with voters. It was a delight.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We got to talk about that straight impression.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know that we do.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Just lowering your voice a couple octaves for no real reason.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: I thought it was hilarious. I mean, I don't know.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know how else to do it.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So I think you nailed it, Brian, too. Also, we
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: have a brand new Crooked Media pod to announce from
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: our pal Ben Rhodes. Missing America is a limited series
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: about what happens when Trump's America stops leading the free
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: world and starts trying to dismantle it. Ben talks to
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: leaders and activists around the world about what's happening in
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: their countries, how they're taking up the slack and America's
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: absence and what the U.S. needs to do to repair
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the damage. The first episode drops next Tuesday, August 11th.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: You can listen to the trailer now and subscribe wherever
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Exciting stuff. A quick programming note
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to mark the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Vote Save America is hosting a virtual screening of the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: new documentary about John Lewis's life. It's called Good Trouble.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It's a fantastic doc. You should check it out. It'll
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: be on Thursday at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Eastern.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And afterwards, we're going to have a panel discussion with
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Crooked's political director, Shaniqua McClendon, me, and a few special guests.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: $ 5 from each ticket will go to our Every Last
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Vote Fund. So visit crooked.com slash goodtrouble to get your
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: ticket today. Finally, speaking of voting, last week, Vote Save
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: America kicked off the Every Last Vote Week of Action.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And thanks to your help, over 300,000 people were able
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to use our vote by mail tool. You guys also
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: helped send over 3.5 million texts. and made over 54,000
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: calls to young voters in 11 battleground states on National
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Vote by Mail Day. And 2,212 of you signed up
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: to volunteer as poll workers. You can still request your
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: vote by mail ballot and sign up to volunteer at votesaveamerica.com
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: slash everylastvote. Truly impressive numbers there.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, amazing.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Incredible.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Incredible. All right, let's get to the news. So the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign couldn't even get its candidate to pretend that
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: he gives a shit about the pandemic for longer than
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a day or two. So now they are forging ahead
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: with a new strategy that is yet another attempt to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: make the race about Joe Biden. After pulling down all
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of their television ads for six days, the campaign is
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: rolling out a new series of negative ads that the
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Washington Post reports, quote, will aim to brand Biden as
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a tool of liberal extremists. The negative ads will initially
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: target swing states that have the earliest mail-in voting dates.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. In North Carolina, you can mail your ballot
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: in as early as September 4th, and other swing states
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: will start voting that month as well. As for the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: new Trump ads, here's a clip of one that went
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: up today.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden has embraced the policies of the radical left.
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: Trillions in new taxes, crushing middle class families.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: If you elect me, your taxes are going to be raised,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: not cut.
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: Amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: Citizenship for 11 million undocumented folks.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: Reducing police funding.
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely.
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: The radical left has taken over Joe Biden and the
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: Democratic Party. Don't let them take over America.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I'm Donald J.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Trump, and I approve this message.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Spooky.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: A couple of Trump campaign folks told Axios that their
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: internal polling is now showing that the, quote, puppet of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the left attack on Biden is beginning to resonate with voters.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Do you buy this? Is there anything about the strategy
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that makes you nervous?
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, a lot of the pieces
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: that looked at this new strategy, first of all, I
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: don't know how new it is. I think that they've
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: been floating versions of this for a long time. They
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: really have two things they're playing with, which is that,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: you know, Joe Biden is demented and Joe Biden is
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: a tool of the left. Like those are the two
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: That's the core pillars of the Republican agenda. He's a
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: demented tool of the left. He's a demented tool. Well,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: why are you helping? Why are you tightening? And I think,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: you know, you can draw some reassurance from the fact
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: that this is on track with what they've been saying
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: for a while. And it's been hard to leave a
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: mark that said, you know, elections are overdetermined. We're not
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: doing double blind tests. Is it possible that buried in
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: the data, you find evidence that these attacks have mitigated
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Trump's decline over the last few weeks and months? I
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: don't know the answer to that. You don't know if
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Trump wouldn't be performing worse if these attacks weren't resonating.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: That said, they've been trying to figure out how to
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: land a punch on Joe Biden for a while. And
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: this is the latest version of that. I I find
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the like pulling down of ads for six days and
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: then going back up, like I don't find that particularly
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: like a hopeful sign that they're really sort of not
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: sure what to do. Because again, I don't find this
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: line of attack that different from what they've been doing.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I think it may be just a new campaign manager
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: coming in and taking time to assess what the previous
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: lunatic was up to.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think? I mean, every time I
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: see the Trump campaign do something, you know, my first
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: reaction is, well, that's pretty dumb. But then I think, okay,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: What did they think was smart about doing this? Because
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: clearly it's like some kind of a subtle shift. So
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: maybe they're seeing something in the research. What do you think?
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like I am baffled by the decision
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: to pull down ads for nearly a week. And I
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: still don't think they're back up in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan. Meanwhile,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Biden and all the super PACs are on air. So
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: you're just like leaving that space uncontested.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I just don't get it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: In terms of the content of the ads, like I
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: think the hardest thing for for political junkies like us
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: who are members, that most people don't know who Joe
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Biden is. They're not paying any attention to the election.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: And so maybe you know Biden was Obama's VP, but
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: that's it. And the concern is these new ads are
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: filling in basically a blank canvas. The conventional wisdom is
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: that Joe Biden is harder to vilify as the mayor
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: of Antifa because he's old, he's Catholic, he's relatively moderate.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: And there's probably some truth to that. But I do
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: think any campaign should be worried about millions and millions
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: of dollars in attack ads, even if The frame might
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: seem silly because if you pull apart the radical left frame,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: the specific attacks are taxes, immigration, amnesty, and police funding.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: And those are areas that Republicans historically are good at exploiting.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: They love blowing up cultural issues and finding sort of
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: racially divisive ways to split the electorate. The thing that
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: gives me some comfort is that I do think the
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: answer to this narrative is just telling Joe Biden's story.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you know about his like blue collar
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: roots in Scranton and the way he persevered through tragedy and,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: you know, stories about his kindness and his decency, like
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: the way he served President Obama as a loyal VP
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: and their relationship. I think that fills in the gap
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: of Biden as a person. And it makes it a
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: lot harder to argue that he is like running around
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Portland in all black trying to burn federal buildings down. But,
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: you know, you can't let attacks like this go unanswered. Like,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: I do think they should be concerned about it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that it is very similar to their
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: overall message about Joe Biden, but it is a bit
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: more subtle. And sometimes subtlety works better in politics. Like
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: saying that Joe Biden is like the mayor of Antifa
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: and is going to destroy the suburbs. It's just not believable, right?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: But if you get down to an ad that just
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: says he's going to raise your taxes, and of course,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: what he was saying in that ad is he was
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: going to raise taxes on rich people, not everyone. And,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: you know, he's going to provide a path to citizenship
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: for 11 million undocumented immigrants, which is true. It's a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: true thing that, you know, I think most people in
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the country support, but again, they're going for a very
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: specific group of swing voters who might not. You know,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: they're trying to do, like you said, Tommy, a more
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: issue-based attack, which I do think is probably more effective
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: than saying just insane things about Joe Biden, like he,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you know, he loves Antifa and all that. I do
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: think The challenge is, is Trump's problem something that can
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: be solved by ads or is it something a little bigger? Like,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it seems to me that their big problem is still
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the candidate, even if they have an ad strategy that's
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: now firing on all cylinders, which I think that remains
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to be seen. You know, no sooner do they release
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: this ad this morning than Donald Trump's out there attacking
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Deborah Birx for basically saying that the pandemic is bad.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: And then we get a New York Times headline that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: he's under criminal investigation for bank fraud. So like, it
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: seems like their problem might be bigger than that.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Their biggest problem, if they could run an attack ad
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: that would make COVID go away, I would be really,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: really worried. But until that happens, I think they've got
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: a big fundamental challenge that they're not addressing.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's also true that like, you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: we've also seen what happens when Trump is the messenger,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: even on this specific line of attack, right? Because he
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: sits down with Chris Wallace and he's like, I checked
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the charter and it's an Antifa charter. And Chris Wallace
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: is like, there's no, it's actually not in there. And so,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, like there is some truth to the fact
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: that Biden, who is not instinctively like a far left
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: candidate at all, has been pulled to the left by
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the primary and by these sort of policy processes. But
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: what's coming out of those are consensus democratic positions that
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: avoid some of the biggest lightning rod pieces of rhetoric
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: or policies that Trump is trying to paint forward. Biden
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: as having adopted.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think where they're spending the money is
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: kind of interesting. The AP story about this says that
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: they've basically pulled the plug on Michigan altogether and acknowledged
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: deficits in Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, though the campaign insists it's
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: closer than public polling. But it is interesting that they're
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: not up in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania with these new ads yet.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: The campaign says it's because They want it to go
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: up in states that are voting, that will start voting
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: in September and that they'll be up in Wisconsin and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania soon. But it sort of strikes me as weird.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Like they have a ton of money. Why not start?
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: You have three months left. Why not? What are you
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: saving for? There's three months left. It's husbanding their resources.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, they just, we just don't know, but it
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: sounds like they were throwing money against the wall and
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: nothing was sticking.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So the other key part of Trump's strategy to win
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the election is by stealing it. Even though the president
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and the White House have backed off from last week's
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: suggestion that the election should be delayed, they have since
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: ratcheted up their attacks on voting by mail, with Trump
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: saying that it will lead to the greatest election disaster
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in history and complaining that he doesn't want to, quote,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: wait for three months and then find out that the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: ballots are all missing and the election doesn't mean anything.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So obviously many states have held elections entirely by mail
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: for years without any major issue. But I do think
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: that Undermining confidence in mail-in voting during an election where
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: more people will vote that way than ever before could be,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: at least in my opinion, just as dangerous as suggesting
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that you delay the election. But, Tommy, what do you
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: think about this? I think there's a lot of risk
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: in undermining confidence in vote-by-mail. There's also a lot of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: risk in what Congress is trying to do, what the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: country is trying to do, which is stitch together sort
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: of a hybrid vote-by-mail and in-person voting system on the
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: fly during a pandemic. So like if you look at Oregon,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: they've conducted elections entirely by mail since 1998. There have
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: been 15.5 million ballots cast since that time and only
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: 14 cases of fraud.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It's a better system.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Their percentage of people tend to be higher, like 77%
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: of voters in our eligible voters in Colorado voted in 2016.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: That's the highest rate in the country. So it's obviously
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: a great system. But what we're also seeing now is
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: you have states like Texas where Republicans have pass laws
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: that say you can only vote by mail if you're
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: 65 or over and have some sort of medical condition.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Because as we all know, 64-year-olds are totally safe if
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: they get COVID, right? I mean, the answer obviously here
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: is there's scoping rules that make it easier for normally
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Republican voters.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: To exercise their right to vote.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: So yeah, him undermining our entire system of democracy is infuriating.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: It's especially galling when you know that 16 Trump officials
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: have voted by mail, including the president, vice president, his daughter,
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Kellyanne Conway, the new campaign manager, Bill Steppenwolf, or whatever
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the fuck his name is.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So I know it's Steppian.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a very annoying, constant drumbeat that undermines
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: the process.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Well, what do you think? I mean, there's no real
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: issue with fraud with mail-in voting at all. But there
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: are issues we've seen with mail-in voting. New York is
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: still counting ballots online. from their primary that was like
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a month ago. It is easier for some states to
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: reject absentee ballots for bullshit reasons like the signature not
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: matching the signature on your license. And we also know
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: that just about every swing state except North Carolina will
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: reject ballots currently that arrive after election day. Yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So it's, I think it's actually, I think it's worth
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: thinking about it as sort of three distinct problems that
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: are intersecting because they're all big problems. And I think
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: it's pretty overwhelming. So I think it's helpful to break
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: it down. One, you have the genuine challenge of standing
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: up vote by mail in places that haven't had universal
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: vote by mail. That is a true logistical challenge, a
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: financial challenge, an expertise challenge. That's real. Then two, you
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: have political efforts to delegitimize vote by mail and to
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: make vote by mail harder, like what we saw in Texas.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the Texas situation is incredibly sinister
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: because a bunch of people had already requested ballots based
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: on the presumption that coronavirus would be an acceptable excuse
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: because if you're not immune to the coronavirus, it is
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: in some sense a disability. And you see versions of
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: that playing out across the country. And then the third
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: piece of it is the targeted effort by Trump right
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: now to undermine the post office, right? To get in
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: there with a political crony, stop overtime, let mail pile up.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: You know, Trump is basically pushing the post office down
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: a flight of stairs and then like yelling down to
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the staircase, you idiot, you're getting blood
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: all over the mail.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And so- Wow, that was graphic.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I played with some less and more graphic versions. So
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: and I think we need to basically, though, I think
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: we need to attack each of these problems individually. Some
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: of them take money. Some of them take political pressure.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Some of them take just a concerted political effort on
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the part of people who want everyone to be able
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: to vote to make sure that people start getting in
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: their ballots early, maybe like, you know, October 13th or whatever,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the couple of weeks before the election. We declare it
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: vote by mail election day, try to get as many
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: ballots in early as possible to try to defeat their
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: efforts to undermine the election by just getting the ballots
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: in early.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is astounding that in an effort to undermine
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the election, the president's also taking away your mail. The
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: new postmaster general, who is this Republican donor hack, has
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: already implemented these cuts that are leading to slower and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: less reliable delivery in certain areas of the country. People
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: aren't getting their mail. They're getting their medications. I mean,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: it is it is un-fucking-real. And like when you combine
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that with Post office delays with the fact that these
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: states aren't going to count ballots that that come after
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Election Day that arrive after Election Day. That's a huge
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: that could be like hundreds of thousands of voters disenfranchised
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and in a close election could easily tip the race.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the delays too, like this isn't a holiday, right?
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: This isn't like, oh, we didn't get the Christmas packages
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: on time because we denied overtime. When you systematically don't
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: let the mail deliver, it's not going to get better.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Not allowing the postal workers to have overtime to finish
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: the deliveries on time doesn't make the problem go away slowly.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: It just keeps building up. You have delays in Pennsylvania
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: of like three weeks. And if you don't let them
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: work overtime to deliver the mail, there's no way to
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: catch up. The mail keeps coming. It just doesn't stop
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: because it's the mail.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what can be done about all of this?
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, in terms of.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: The post office, I mean, the problem here is that
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: the post office is self-funded by the sale of stamps
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and what they charge for their services. But they are
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: hamstrung by decisions made by Congress, specifically one that requires
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: them to pre-fund their retirement benefits for any new employee
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: 75 years into the future, which is this massive amount
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: of money that they have to set aside. And they've
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: never recovered from that. Congress also sets the rate for
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: postage and things so that they can't catch up by
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: increasing prices. So the post office needed, they said, $ 75
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: billion to help fix their finances and modernize some systems
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: in advance of this election. For a while, it seemed
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: like there was some bipartisan agreement on some sort of bailout.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: But instead, the Trump folks said they're going to veto it.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: So they got offered, I think, like a $ 10 billion loan.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: And so I think Congress needs to solve that problem
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: with some funding or else we are going to have
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: ballots that are showing up incredibly late. I also think
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: just like stepping back, this conversation is so frustrating because
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: it's a debate in Washington where the discussion is treated
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: as if it's in good faith and honest about like
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: how to limit voter fraud. That's just not the case.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Republicans pretend voter fraud is an issue when it is not,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: especially in vote by mail states. They use it as
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: a scare tactic to pass laws like voter ID laws
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: that make it harder to vote, especially if you're black
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: in America. And we know this because Trump has said
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: as much publicly, right? He went on Fox and Friends
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: in March and said that the Democratic proposals to increase
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: funding for absentee and vote by mail would lead to, quote,
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: levels of voting that if you agree to it, you'd
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: never have a Republican elected in this country again, end quote.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: So he is stating as fact why he doesn't want
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: to fund the post office at a sufficient level. And
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: I'm not exactly sure what has to happen here. Hopefully,
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Pelosi can really go hard and get more funding for
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: the post office.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: But it seems like we are on a.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: Path that could potentially be catastrophic if we have millions
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: of ballots just not showing up in time to be counted.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: So I think Democrats in Congress need to hold firm
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: on funding for the post office and election security in general,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about in a second. I think,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you know, Mark Elias, Democratic lawyer and a bunch of
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: other groups are, you know, they have lawsuits that they're
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: filing almost every day, it seems, against some of these
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: voter suppression schemes. that Republicans are engaging in. I think
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: for everyone who's listening, one of the most important things
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you can do is get your ballot early and mail
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: it early. Go to votesaveamerica.com. Um, we have all the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: tools there to help you figure out how to get
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: your ballot and not just you, your friends, your family,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: people who maybe who haven't voted before that, you know, um,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: if you're going to vote by mail, do it early,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: get the ballot early. Uh, This was always going to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: be a hybrid election where there's going to be a
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: lot more vote by mail than usual, but there's still
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: going to be a lot of in-person voting. I think
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: volunteering to be a poll worker if you're young and
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: healthy so that older people who might also have underlying
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: conditions don't have to do it. That will be incredibly important.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Early voting is incredibly important there too, because if there's
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: more early voting, then we don't have like really long
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: lines where people are getting too close to one another.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So I think making in-person voting safe as well is
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: going to be super important. The last thing I'll mention
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: on this is Ben Smith in the New York Times
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: had a good piece last night about sort of the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: media preparing everyone for the fact that it's highly likely
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: we will not know if it's a close race who
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: won on election night because they will be counting mail-in
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: ballots for so long. even if they're not rejecting a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of ballots after election day, it's still going
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to take, like it does here in California, maybe a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: week or two to find out who's going to win.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And the networks and the media sort of have to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: prepare people for that because when we don't have, I mean,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump just said that in that quote, when we
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: don't have a winner in some of these swing states
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: on election night, Donald Trump's just going to declare victory
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: if he's ahead and then say all the ballots counted
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: by mail are fake. And so I think it's going
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: to be up to the media to sort of prep
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: people for that. And we should all be prepared now.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the negotiations in Congress over
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the next COVID relief bill. The extra $ 600 per week
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: that more than 20 million unemployed Americans had been receiving
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: since the beginning of the pandemic has now expired, which
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: will force people to make a lot of very hard
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and sad decisions starting right away. Republicans refuse to extend
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the benefits through the end of the year. And we
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: still don't know what kind of unemployment benefits extension they
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: will accept. Republicans also refuse to provide funding to help
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: people vote safely or open school safely. And they don't
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: want to provide any money to state and local governments
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: at all. But at least as of now, both parties
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: are still at the negotiating table.
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: Love it.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the unemployment insurance extension. Republicans say they
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: floated a proposal that would maintain the $ 600 per week
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: for maybe a couple months. They floated $ 200 per week.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: They floated 70% of wages, 66% of wages per What,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: if anything, does this tell us about what they might
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: ultimately accept?
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: It's they're all over the place. They've been all over
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the place for a while. You know, they floated a
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know, like a one week extension briefly
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: thinking that they could get some leverage over Democrats. So
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: it's again, because this is all done so haphazardly and
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: so last minute, it's not clear that people would even
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: be able to get that money because of the way
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: it's all administered. It's all just a complete mess. And
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: so you have literally tens of millions of people sort
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: of waiting to find out what comes out of this agreement.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I think you have a genuine disagreement among Republicans, some
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: who are, I think, saying truly sociopathic things about unemployment insurance,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: like a mix of just heartlessness and also complete denial
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: about what's happening in the country as if the problem
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: right now is the $ 600 is making it too cushy
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: for people to stay at home as opposed to what's
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: really going on, which is The pandemic destroyed the economy
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: and we actually need people to stay home so that
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: they stay safe and we can get out of this
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: fucking mess. You know, that said, it does seem as
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: though Democrats have been extremely clear that they want six
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars. They don't want to cut it. They don't
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: want to they don't want to legitimize these Republican attacks
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: on it. And they have all the leverage. And I
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: think Republicans are flailing to try to come up with
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: something that Democrats will go for. But Democrats have held
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: pretty firm.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Tommy, I saw this morning that Pelosi just suggested
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: that Democrats will not negotiate on the $ 600 per week
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: unemployment benefit, which I thought was an improvement over old
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Steny Hoyer last week, saying that maybe it was negotiable.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a weird posture to take going into negotiation. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, Pelosi has said, I think, even more recently
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: than this morning, that you could maybe tie the $ 600
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: payment to the unemployment rate. And if that unemployment rate
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: goes down, maybe the number can go down Maybe that's
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: more reasonable. I'm not entirely sure. But I mean, I
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: think the thing people need to know is that we
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: are not in this position because of partisanship or congressional
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: dysfunction or all these sort of things that the press
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: reports that I think obscures the truth. The Democrats passed
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: a bill months ago and Republicans refused to negotiate throughout
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: the entire summer. That's why we're getting this last minute bullshit.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: And like, The thing that is driving me crazy is
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: what Lovett mentioned, which is, you know, you have Ted
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Cruz and other just soulless assholes out there suggesting that
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: this unemployment benefit is somehow preventing people from working when
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: there is literally no evidence that the expanded unemployment benefit
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: is leading workers to stay home at all. In fact,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: there have been studies that prove that. And so, you know,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: now we're in this tough position where this has become
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: conventional wisdom. I don't get how that's the case because obviously, like,
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: we should be incentivizing workers payments. We should be creating
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: payments to workers to keep them home so they don't
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: get the coronavirus. That was the whole point of this thing. Now,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: this morning, you read that the White House is considering
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: executive actions to maybe do things on their own. One
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: idea that was floated was instructing the IRS to stop
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: collecting payroll taxes so.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Then people can keep that money.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that does for the 30 million
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: some odd people who are laid off, but it's a
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: complete mess. It's a complete mess. And it is a
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: you know, Mitch McConnell, Republican Party created mess and people
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: are really hurting.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: What do you think? What do you think the red
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: line should be for Democrats? And where do you think
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: it's okay to compromise? In addition to unemployment benefits, we
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: got the the mail security, election security, the state and
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: local government funding, Mitch McConnell still high on his corporate
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: liability shield, because, you know, big thing is protecting corporations
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: from getting sued that they force people to go back
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: to work and then get sick.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's his pet issue. Cool guy.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: That's his fetish.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Cool priority. Yeah, I mean, like one thing that I
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: thought was good, right, is that like Republicans proposed doing
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: some of what Democrats wanted and said we will keep negotiating.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: But Democrats said no, because I think they saw what
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: happened last time. I think it's a uh, pretty, uh,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: you know, I think there's a likelihood that whatever comes
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: out of this is it. All right. And it is
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: for through the election, through the inauguration of either Donald
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Trump or Joe Biden. And so I think making sure
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: that whatever comes out of this, uh, helps people through
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the election and ideally through like the early part of
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: next year, I think it has to be a red line.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: We cannot be setting up another one of these negotiations
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: in December or January. I think it's crazy. Uh, especially
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: if we have a, uh, um, a new president and
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: they try to hold that president hostage. You know, there
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: is now a fight over whether that we can get
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: $ 4 billion for election security. Meanwhile, in the current version
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: of the Republican proposal, there's over $ 2 billion to rebuild
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: the FBI and renovate the West Wing because Trump finds
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the FBI building ugly. Now, in fairness to him, it
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: is an ugly building. That's certainly true. It's a real eyesore.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Not a priority, obviously, in a pandemic. but he's not
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: wrong about that. I guess he also is interested in
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: some marble upgrades in the West Wing. But again, if
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: we can find the money for that, I think we
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: can probably find the money for, in a $ 2 trillion package,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: you're talking about 0.2% for election security. You're talking about
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: maybe a percent for supporting the post office. These are
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: small parts of a big package. And one other thing,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: just the state and local government stuff, it's, we have
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: to do it. If we just do, if we don't
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: provide aid to state and local governments, all the good
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: that would come out of a stimulus will be undone
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: by the cuts that come at the state level, the
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: chaos that happens at the state and local level.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: That's all.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about cuts to first responders, teachers getting
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: laid off, schools, education, college, public services. I mean, it
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: is catastrophic. Look, I think what we're seeing in these
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: negotiations is the Democrats have all the leverage right now, right?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Like Nancy Pelosi going out there saying they're not negotiating
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: on $ 600 while Republicans have about 10 different positions on
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: unemployment insurance between the Senate Republicans, the House Republicans, and
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the White House tells you who has the stronger hand here.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I think what you said, Tommy, is going to be
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the challenge for Democrats, which is They're going to have
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to fight through the both sides bullshit in the media,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: because as these negotiations drag on, the media will cover
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: it like, why can't anyone in Congress get together and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: fix something? And, you know, pox on both their houses
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: for doing that. And I think Democrats just have to
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: look at the long term, which, like Lovett said, is,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you know, there's no there's not going to be another one,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: a package between now and the election.
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: So.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: If we don't get help for the Postal Service, if
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: we don't get election security, if we don't get state
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and local government funding, we're not going to see that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: till maybe January of 2021. You know, when hopefully Joe
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Biden is president, but who knows?
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And so this is the last chance to get everything in.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And I think Democrats also have to realize is if
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: the bill fails and they don't get anything done and
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the economy continues to suffer, like guess who's going to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: get blamed for that on election day? Probably the guy
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: who's in the White House and the party that's in power.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: More than anything else.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: My concern is that a shitty bill is actually harmful
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: because of all the things you mentioned. It just means
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: that there will be no chance to pass anything else
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: between now and God knows when. And so like the
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: bright red lines for me are this idea of just
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: providing blanket liability protection for companies is insane. The pandemic
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: is worse. Now is not the time to let companies
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: force workers back into unsafe conditions as they're already trying
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: to gut OSHA and all these other worker protection agencies.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: They cannot let Republicans pass a unemployment insurance benefit that
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: creates a new system with a massive bureaucratic hurdle, like
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: calculating the percentage of your former income and We literally
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: have people camping, sleeping out in front of unemployment offices
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: in states like Oklahoma, Alabama, and Kentucky because the state
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: unemployment benefit systems have proven to be unworkable. They can't
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: deal with this influx. Creating a new massive bureaucratic hurdle
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: and a bunch of paperwork to go through is a disaster. Obviously,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: we need the election security funding. That should have come
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: months ago. If Trump wants the economy to reopen and
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: he wants schools to reopen, he needs to provide some
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: sort of funding to to help teachers, states, municipalities deal
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: with it. So I'm not exactly sure how they would
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: do that, but it does seem like they are completely
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: screwing themselves both politically and screwing the country over by
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: not moving on this quickly because it's just holding the
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: entire economy hostage.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and just one last point on that, on the
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: school funding. You know, there's a signal example, I think,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: in the Republican proposal that sort of points out just
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: how naive and kind of ideological they've been throughout this
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: entire pandemic and how it's made things worse their current
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: funding proposal incentivizes not health, not protecting kids, but actually
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: reopening schools to create pressure on school districts and localities
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: to reopen schools. And as always, their priorities have been
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: about short-term reopening, short-term economic gain, when the real crisis
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: has been our failure to kind of shut down for
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: long enough to get a handle on this disease. And
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: that's what they're doing across the bill, trying to just
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: get out of this with less than the bare minimum.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: And of course, it just makes everything worse. Because by
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the way, one of the things that economists say is
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: failing to provide the UI benefits hurts the economy and
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: hurts the recovery and makes the pain last longer. That's all.
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit about the veepstakes.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden will reportedly hold a final series of one-on-one
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: meetings with candidates on his shortlist and announce his running
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: mate next week. That shortlist appears to include Senators Kamala Harris,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren, and Tammy Duckworth. former National Security Advisor Susan Rice,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: and Congresswoman Karen Bass. And because everyone who's waiting for
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: this process to finish is bored and impatient, we got
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: leaks from donors, we got speculation from people who have
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: no idea what they're talking about, and now we got
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a Dems and Disarray narrative from reporters who've been dying
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to write it. Here's Annie Linsky of the Washington Post, quote,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: the dynamic threatens to undermine Biden's effort to use the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: vice presidential search to spotlight some of the party's brightest
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: female stars, pitting women, especially black women, against one another.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: First question, Tommy, you've been on quite a few campaigns
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: that have gone through this process. How typical is what
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: we're seeing right now?
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, as that's the ticket fans with Dan and
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Alyssa know, like the Obama selection process was pretty quiet
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: and locked down. I think it leaked a couple hours
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: before the announcement because others who did not get it
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: were finally told that they didn't get it. So you
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: could just do a process of elimination. You're always going
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: to have donors and annoying outside advisors talking to the
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: press about things they know nothing about. The who's up,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: who's down bullshit, the posturing. I do think this has
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: been pretty bad the last couple of weeks. I mean,
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: there's like two parts.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: To it, right?
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: There's the leaks sourced to campaign aides or people like
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Chris Dodd, who's on the VP selection committee that were
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: very bad. And that shit I know drives like actual
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: campaign staffers crazy because they don't want to deal with
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: this stuff either. And they want to shut down those
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: kinds of conversations. The other piece is just sort of
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: general positioning and like oppo research dumps from people affiliated
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: with potential vice presidential candidates like that video of karen
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: bass's speech to the scientology church crowd that doesn't show
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: up by accident someone is out there digging that up
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: and pushing it around and you know that stuff sucks
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: for karen bass people on her team others who are
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: getting oppo dumped on them but ultimately i think like
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: for the biden campaign it's okay to have that stuff
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: out there You want it out there before he makes
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: the choice and not after, right? So it's all going
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: to get vetted eventually. I have been personally surprised at
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: how many shots have been fired at Kamala Harris. It's
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: pretty untoward. It wasn't just that political piece talking about
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Chris Dodd. There were people telling the New York Times
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: that her polling wasn't great in African-American communities. There was
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: a campaign aide that reached out to Jonathan Martin unprompted
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: to say that some of Biden's aides... don't like Kamala Harris.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: If I were the campaign manager, I imagine General Malley
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: Dillon is very, very angry about this shit because it
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: does a disservice to Biden and everyone involved in the process.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: And you're right, John. I mean, that Washington Post story,
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: I think, is overstated and annoying. But it's also the
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: case that Biden is about to make this historic selection.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: And what he does is critical, not just for the
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: country and the campaign, but the narrative is now that
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: he's going too slow or pitting candidates against each other.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: And that's bullshit. And I think it sucks. I mean,
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: I think Biden is going to take his time, pick
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the person he likes the most, and that will be
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: the end of it. And everyone just needs to take
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: a deep breath until then. Yeah, I mean, the too
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: slow narrative is complete bullshit. Joe Biden was announced as
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: vice president two days before the convention in 2008 in
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: late August. Tim Kaine was announced two days before the
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: convention in 2016. So the idea that this process is
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: taking too long, it's like everyone fucking calm down. I
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: do think, like Tommy said, Some of the leaks coming from,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: you know, the someone close to fucking Chris Dodd or
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: let's go to fucking Ed Randell for a quote who's
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: been hanging out in a green room for the last
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: five years just waiting for his chance to shit on Democrats.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: You know, that that stuff is rather annoying. I totally
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: think that the Kamala stuff is completely bullshit. Like you
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: want to talk. You haven't have an issue with someone's record.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: If someone's policy position, that's fine. Throwing out fucking quotes
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: like I don't like her and she give me the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: give me a fucking break. I mean, it is very sexist.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: It is very gross.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, too. I do think that there's
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: been a lot of kind of normal. people desperate to
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: find something to write about this. And so you go
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: to a, it's always like a Biden ally or people
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: close to Chris Dodd. It's like, I don't know who
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Chris Dodd is close to, and I don't want to know.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: And I will say- Imagine if that's your sourcing, your
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: source to someone close to Chris Dodd.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Well, we're now in a, you know, like it's so harmful, right?
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: So we are now talking about The Times reporting on
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Politico reporting on someone who talked to Chris Dodd, who
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: is someone talking to the campaign, right? Like that is
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: very attenuated. That said, all these leaks that are attempting
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: to like undermine Kamala Harris by saying she's ambitious, saying
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: she wants to be president, saying that she's not remorseful.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: for an attack during a debate, I think are doing
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: an incredible disservice to Joe Biden. And by the way,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: doing an incredible disservice to Kamala Harris and the other
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: women in contention. Absolutely doing damage to it because they
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: are completely illegitimate attacks. And John, to your point, it
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: seems like there's some kind of unspoken set of critiques
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: about Kamala Harris that aren't in the stories, right? And
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: aren't actually being referenced when they say they're bothered by
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: a sentence in a debate during the primary. So there's like,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's a like kind of an anonymous campaign
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: that is then like twice removed in the press because
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's saying they don't like her. They don't
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: say why. And they offer a bullshit misogynist excuse. So
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: it's just, I think that part of it has been
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: extremely frustrating.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, Tommy, you mentioned Karen Bass. She's a congresswoman,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: represents part of Los Angeles. She's emerged just over the
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: last few weeks as a serious contender. We haven't really
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: talked about her much. She's the 66-year-old chair of the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Congressional Black Caucus, the former speaker of the California State Assembly.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: She's the first black woman to fill that role in
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: any state. She's a former nurse, former community organizer on
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the streets of LA. What do we know about why
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: she's risen to the top of Biden's shortlist?
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think she's got a lot of experience.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: She's someone who, I mean, California doesn't really get its due.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: When you talk about someone in the state legislator there
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: in a very senior position, you are making decisions that
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: impact the lives of 50 million people at a time, right?
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: So that's a big job. And then she's been in
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: Congress for a long time. I think she's extremely well
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: regarded by colleagues. There's reports that, you know, Pelosi is
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: making calls on her behalf, talking her up even to
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: President Obama and calls with him. So I think, you know,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: they were, I think it sounds like someone who, through
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: the vetting process, has come out stronger and stronger and stronger,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: as people who know her are having conversations with the
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: VP Selection Committee.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: It does seem like Biden, through some of these various leaks,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and what he said himself, what some of the campaign
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: saying is sort of looking for like a consensus candidate,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: someone who is broadly accepted throughout the party. And it
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: does seem like Karen Bass is a person who is
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: very well liked by almost everyone. I saw in the
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: New York Times, like, you know, Josh Gottheimer, who's sort
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: of a center-right House Democrat, and Ro Khanna, who was
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: a Bernie Sanders supporter, and both said glowing things about
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Karen Bass, right? So I think she's very well liked
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: in Congress by people across the political spectrum. And that
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: might be one reason And of course, she's got governing experience.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And that might be some of the reasons that she's
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the top of the list. What do you think?
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's a reminder that there's a bunch of
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: people in consideration and the people talked about the most
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: aren't always going to be the candidates that Joe Biden
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: is thinking about the most. We just genuinely don't know
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: what he's thinking. The only thing I think you look
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: at what Biden has said and you say, all right,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: he ran for president because he believed that this was
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: an existential threat and he's going to want to do
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: two things. One, pick someone safe, just safe, someone who's
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: going to make it so that there's no risk of harm,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: that there's no surprises because he views the stakes as
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: being total. And the other is someone who can take over. Now,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: I think there's two ways you can think about that.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: One is just someone who fits his idea of A
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: bridge to a new generation, a younger candidate, someone who
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: can be the standard bearer of the party if Joe
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Biden doesn't run again. Or it's just someone who he
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: believes is simply ready to be president. And I think
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: that there's a bunch of women that sort of fit that,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: fit either one of those versions of what it means
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: to kind of be his second in command.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I also think, I mean, every single one of these women,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: if they are selected, there will be something that someone
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: will say is a drawback, right?
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: But I also think he has like an embarrassment of
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: riches right now. You know, like lost in all of
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: this process and all the sniping right now is the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: fact that he is seriously considering some incredibly qualified women,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: all of whom would make a fantastic president. You know,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and so and we haven't talked about Tammy Duckworth. There
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: was like a long profile of her in The New
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: York Times over the weekend that, you know, every time
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you really read one of these profiles of one of
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: the women who might be a little lesser known, like
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: a Tammy Duckworth or a Karen Bass, you're like, wow,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: she's impressive as hell. You know, and it's like it's
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: actually and since Susan has been seriously considered to start
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: looking into Susan's background and her story and even knowing her,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: there's some things that I didn't I didn't realize about
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: her background that are really inspiring. So it's I think,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the reporters right now and other people are
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: like bored with the race as it is. They are
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: looking to write a narrative that Joe Biden did something
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: wrong with the VP selection. And I think we have
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to be somewhat careful that we don't fall into that bullshit.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And it's not just reporters fault, because like we said,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people leaking and it's their fault, too. But,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the rest of us shouldn't buy into the bull.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: I just think like there's a fundamental disconnect between how the.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Biden camp is looking at this and how the media
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: is looking at it. Biden is thinking about four years
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: and he's thinking about a governing partner. He's thinking about
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: someone he's going to need to ask to do enormous things.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: The press is fundamentally looking at potential hurdles in terms
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: of getting elected. Like, is there oppo research out there?
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Could you harm them with a gaffe? You know, are
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: they known for Benghazi, right? Like every article you read
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: about Susan Rice leads with a discussion of Benghazi. which
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: was a controversy that was manufactured by Republicans in Washington
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: as a way to harm Obama, as a way to
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: harm Hillary Clinton. Susan Rice, as the U.S. ambassador to
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: the U.N., had literally no substantive role when it comes
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: to protecting an embassy in Benghazi. That was not her
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: job in any way. She just went on Sunday shows
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: and pricks like Lindsey Graham decided to attack her. So
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: that mismatch between what's reported on and what's discussed and
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: what the conventional wisdom is versus what the job actually is,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: is very frustrating. I'm sure it's frustrating for Biden. I'm
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: sure it's frustrating for the candidates. If you step back
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: and you think about all of these people, let's take
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: Susan Rice for an example. When you're a national security
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: advisor and you're in the Oval Office every single day,
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: multiple times a week, you have a pretty good sense
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: of what it takes to actually lead. You know how
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: to rebuild the country. Kamala Harris has had huge jobs,
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: both in California and And in the U.S. Senate, like
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: she would be she's an incredibly accomplished politician. Like all
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: these all these shots fired about potential risks or downside
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: hurdles you might face if you choose them are just
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: so overstated to me. It's very it's frustrating.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: It's stupid.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Answering like why shouldn't Susan Rice be the pick with
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Benghazi is fucking pea brain analysis. Yes. Answering why Kamala
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Harris shouldn't be the VP because, like, she lost the
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: primary is pea brain analysis. Like, it's just like it
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: is so lazy to just like a lot of the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: people that have mentioned Benghazi are like, and we know
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: that Benghazi was a manufactured controversy by the Republicans, but
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: it's out there. No, it's not. You're just repeating it.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: I will also say, too, one other, you know, as
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: people have talked up Karen Bassett, like who is an
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: incredibly serious. candidate, there's been this odd like kind of
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: pro-bass sentence that something's like, and she's never been that
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: ambitious about being president. And that makes her a great contrast.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: What is like Kamala Harris wanted to be president. Elizabeth
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Warren wanted to be president. It's actually not a bad
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: thing to have a vice president who wanted to be
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: and might want to be president in the future. That's
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: not a bad quality in a politician to have them
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: want to seek the higher office and seek to build
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: the democratic majority over the time that they're in the job.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: It's just a.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: It's also a quality that is inherent in about 95%
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of politicians.
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden's been running for president since before computers.
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: That is the incredibly absurd part of the attacks on
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden. I mean, people are saying Kamala Harris is ambitious.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: She might be running for president down the hall. Well,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden was vice president for eight years and then
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: he ran. And then people say, well, she did not
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: run a good campaign. She underperformed everyone's expectations. You could
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: also say that in his previous runs for president, Joe
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: Biden underperformed expectations and didn't run great campaigns.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: So it's all of this is a look where he
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: is now. Yeah.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: He waited us out.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Now he's mayor of Antifa.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look at him.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Anyway, well, check out if you want to hear more
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: about the Veep Stakes, check out and you haven't yet.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Check out Dan and Alyssa's fantastic series. That's the ticket. And,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll be tuning in next week for the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: for the final result. Won't it be exciting? All right.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we will have Lovett's conversation with
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Kara Swisher.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: I'm now joined by the co-founder and editor at large
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: of Recode, the host of the podcast Pivot and contributing
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: opinion writer for The New York Times. Kara Swisher, always
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: a pleasure.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: It's me.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: So excited to see you.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: Here I am.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got your Ricoh shirt on. Now, I did
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: see over the past couple of days on Twitter, though
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I was on a brief, mostly a Twitter hiatus, I
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: did see that you were posting some pretty wild early haircuts.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: And I just want to applaud you for the courage
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: that that took.
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Let's start by talking about TikTok. So Trump says he's
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: going to ban TikTok. Now we find out that Microsoft
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: is in negotiations to acquire TikTok. Trump's now saying, oh,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: they have till September 15th or I will use some
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: unspecified power to ban TikTok. What's happening?
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: Well, everything was OK and they've been in talks to
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: do this. There's been a lot of pressure about TikTok,
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: whether it should go public and become a U.S. company
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: or someone should buy it because of the concerns around
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: its security because of China. They're valid concerns, not the
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: most valid considering all the other issues with China. But,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: you know, Trump has zeroed in on TikTok for reasons
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: unknown and focused on the idea that American teens are
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: unsafe because China is sucking up all this data about
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: them or whoever is the 100 million people using it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: You know, it leaves out the fact that most of
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: our phones are made in China. A lot of our
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: technology equipment is made in China. China is making incursions militarily,
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: technologically with 5G, with algorithms, with facial surveillance. But let's
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: focus on TikTok. That's really pretty much. And in doing so,
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: he also screwed up the deal because there were ongoing
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: talks between Microsoft and ByteDance, which is the owner's Beijing
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: based owner to buy TikTok. with with Microsoft and and
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: then he jumped in here and started to say ban
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: and nobody really knows and it screwed up the whole
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: Talks and then Microsoft pulled out sort of or said
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: we're gonna wait until we get clarity from the White
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: House They talked over the weekend when cooler heads prevailed
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: to remove Trump from the equation and Peter Navarro must
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: have been standing behind him yelling at him in some
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: fashion and Um, and, uh, and I guess Steve Mnuchin
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio got involved and said,
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: this is a good outcome. This is going to be
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: bad if you look like you're attacking the TikTokers. Uh,
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: and then they're, they're in talks again. And so they
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: have till September 15th to talk. And then Microsoft had
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: to write a hostage letter to Trump saying how great
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: he is otherwise.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: So, you know, you wrote a piece about TikTok that
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: I think captured my own ambivalence about it, which is
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: that like, it's a really fun, interesting, creative space, uh,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Then on the other hand, there are these legitimate privacy
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: and security and surveillance questions. But a lot of that
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: does seem twinge with sort of assumptions about what a
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Chinese company would do while ignoring the actual reality of
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: what American companies do through their apps every single day.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Do you think the fears about TikTok specifically are founded?
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: And do you think that those fears are answered by
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: transferring ownership to Microsoft?
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: I think there's no proof that they are doing this. So,
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean that they aren't doing it. I
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: am much more concerned about China than I am about Facebook.
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: I hate to say that, but the fact of the
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: matter is it's Facebook selling or Amazon selling toilet paper
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: or whatever. I'm very concerned about all these companies sucking
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: up all this information, but I'm more concerned with the
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: state government doing so always. That's always going to be
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: the case. So it's not really comparable. Like it's not
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: a comparable thing. I think what the issue is, is
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: that do we wanted the next internet age to be
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: dominated by the chinese with their with the values they
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: have and as as damaged as we are the democratic
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: values around the internet have been really great for the
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: Development of a lot of the internet not all of
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: it Um, and what's happened is that it's become this
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: sort of monopolistic space now with a few as you
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: saw last week in the hearings and so I'm concerned
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: with two different things and they're not the same. You
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: can't say I'm unconcerned with Facebook, but I'm really concerned
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: about the Chinese. You have to be concerned about all
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: of them, but for different reasons.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about that hearing because actually one of
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: the arguments against efforts to regulate Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: is if you break us up, if you hamstring us
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: in any way, you're just sort of seeding the field
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: to China. Let's talk about the hearing. You had these
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: four big companies. And what I was realizing and just
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: thinking about talking to you about this is these are
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: four companies with incredibly different businesses, incredibly different goals, incredibly
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: different influences on the economy. What brings them together is
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: that they're huge. That's really huge and powerful. So what
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: did you learn from the hearing about, I guess, first
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: of all, stepping back tech generally, and then I think
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: we can talk about the individual companies.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, look, first of all, tech is not
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: a monolith. And by the way, everyone's not concerned with China.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: It was Mark Zuckerberg talking about that because that's his argument,
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: is that I have to be this big, look away
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: from the Russia issues, look away from the hate issues.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: I need to be big in order to fight the,
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: you know, the Asian villains, essentially. And I think it's
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: just a feint by Facebook, even if he's concerned. And
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: there are issues around China, which is doing rather well
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: in proliferating its technology around the world. And a very
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: big foe. So let's not take away from that. But
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: I think it's a talking point for his PR. Like,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: look over here, you know, it's either she or me.
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: And that's what I call the she or me argument.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, I don't like either of you. Like,
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: I don't like him more than I don't like you,
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: but I don't like you that much. You know what
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: I mean? It's really kind of a weird, it's a
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: weird argument that he's making. But of course, it's a
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: good one for him to make. And especially it was
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: followed this weekend by this activity around TikTok. He aimed
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: at TikTok and TikTok aimed back at him too by
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: Kevin Mayer. the new CEO, American CEO. So I think
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: each of them are individual. Let's start with that. It's
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: not a monolith. There's issues around Apple's App Store, very
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: different from the issues around marketplace at Amazon, around whether
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: buying and selling and controlling marketplaces, very different from search
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: dominance at Google, YouTube hate speech and stuff like that,
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: which is also owned by Alphabet, which also owns Google.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: very different from hate speech and propaganda and allowing all
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: kinds of lies to proliferate on Facebook and the dominance
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: of social media. So every one of them has to
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: have a different answer, right? And so that's what's difficult here.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: And the answers and the solutions and the way we
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: fix these things are very different. Overall, there needs to
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: be a privacy bill that's passed. This will affect all
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: of them. Secondly, we have to look at each individual company,
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: decide whether they should be allowed. Say Amazon, should it
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: be able to sell things? And there was some very incriminating, Mr.
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Bezos had to, Jeff Bezos had to admit that they
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: were using some third-party data. He said, I can't say
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: it hasn't been violated, which they're supposed to keep separate.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: There was some very incriminating emails for Mark Zuckerberg, who
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: was talking about buying Instagram as a land grab and
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: that they wanted to neutralize the company. Those are words
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: that monopolists use. So- That's a different issue, sucking up
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: all the innovation, hurting Snapchat just because they can, copying
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: their ideas. And then there's the App Store, which is
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: a lesser problem, but a problem for a lot of developers,
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: which can be fixed through regulation or fines or something.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: And so it's got to be a multifaceted approach by
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: our government. There's been no legislation by our government whatsoever.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: So maybe one traffic law for them would be good,
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: would be nice. I would like that.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Red lights, green lights. But yeah, I mean, one of
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: the other things, it wasn't just that that Facebook was
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: saying they wanted to swallow up their competition. It was
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: that they were suggesting that if they didn't go along
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: with the deal, they would just create their version of
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Instagram anyway, and basically squash them by copying them, right?
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Which is an incredible anti-competitive act, no?
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: But you know what? Good luck, because they're the most
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: non-innovative people on the planet.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: Good luck.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: They've tried lots of copy, what happened to their dating service?
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: What happened to their video service? What happened to their
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: They're not very good at creating new things. They're good
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: at buying them. And I think Instagram, which was created
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, is a wonderful service,
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: but it was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: and not Mark Zuckerberg. And so what he's really good
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: at is copying. And I think that has a limit,
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: just like it did with Microsoft. Microsoft couldn't play that
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: game for that long.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: It ends.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, isn't the argument basically against this Facebook pitch
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: like we need a giant behemoth basically utility version of
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: a social media giant. Otherwise, China will eat our lunch
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: when actually, it seems to me, our advantage has been
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: born of the ability of people to innovate in the space.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but if he wants to be a utility, let's
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: regulate him like a utility then.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, great.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: That sounds good too. Like either way, you either get
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: regulated as if you're a utility or you allow innovation
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: to flourish. I think the reason we beat China and
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: we were ahead in every way is because of innovation,
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: because of small startups. because of their fear that if
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: they go into social media or search or e-commerce, they're
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: not going to get crushed. Small businesses get crushed in
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: this environment. And no matter how you slice it, we
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: have two companies making phones. We have one company doing
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: social media. We have one company excelling in e-commerce, as
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: much as they say there's lots of competitors. Amazon dominates.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: We have one company that does search. And by the way,
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: in this pandemic, Did you notice their results? Everybody else
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: is like gripping with their fingernails before they fall into
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: the abyss. Not these companies. These companies are flying high
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: and their stocks are flying high. They've never been richer
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: as people. They've never been richer as companies. They have
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: advantages in the pandemic. Amazon does, Google does, all of them. Yeah.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, it does seem as though, I think one
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: thing people have remarked on is that the pandemic has
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: accelerated a number of processes, right? It's accelerated some problems
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: really serious long-term problems for brick and mortar stores, but
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: it's also accelerated the growth of these sort of digital platforms.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: What happens now? So we had this hearing. It was
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: a pretty substantive hearing. There were actually some really interesting revelations.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Not as many questions as you... A little bit. A couple.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: There was a couple of anti-Americanism, talking to the only
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: person of color, Sundar Pichai. That was interesting, calling him anti-American.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Jim Jordan going down the alleyway of conservative bias, that stuff.
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: but otherwise it was good.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I would say, though, there was fewer questions that presume
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: things like the internet is made of pipes and my
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: grandkids set up my email stuff. There was a few.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: A couple. But we're always going to have to accept
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: some of that. That's the price of doing business with
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: a bunch of right-wing zealots and septuagenarians. But what happens now?
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: So we had this big hearing. There seems to be
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: at least some kind of beginnings of a consensus that says,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: hold on a second. These companies have way too much power.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: They are incredibly powerful entities. Um, it seems like what
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: happens next is we have to now do what you
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: were saying is right. Go at them, go with the
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: problems individually, right? Not treat this like a behemoth. What
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: happens on Amazon, right? Right now we have Amazon it's
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: doing it's, it has, it is this incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: It is able to sell stuff through its own shelves, right?
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: That's very different than what a supermarket would do, right?
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Supermarket doesn't run up to you as you're heading to
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: your car and says, get this, you know, get this
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: version of it. It's better. And they don't hide Coca-Cola
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: behind four or five rows of Amazon brand soda. But
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: so what happens next with Amazon?
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: Or price it below.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Price it.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: That's what they tend to do. I think they should
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: separate the marketplace from things they sell. I just think,
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: you know, and make sure that data is in a
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: lockbox of other seller's They are the marketplace in commerce.
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: They'll argue they're not, but they really are in delivery.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: They're so good. They're so good. And people like them
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: so much in terms of the result. They're forgetting, just
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: like getting in an Uber and it costs $ 4, it
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: doesn't cost $ 4. It's not that price. There are they're
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: living off of other people's dimes essentially. And so I
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: think separating the marketplace from what they sell and same
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: thing at the app store, if Apple's going to get
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: in the music business, they don't get to have any
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: say over music pricing, right? You know what I mean?
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: Like that's like you move away. It's going to be,
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: that's a harder problem, but if they're going to get
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: into direct competition and services with people that they also serve,
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: there has to be some sort of a buffer between
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: them so that these groups that are making these decisions
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: are making, Good economic decisions, not Apple economic decisions or
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: Amazon economic decisions.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Facebook. So, you know, as you mentioned,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: you know, one of their challenges distinct around misinformation spreading
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: on their platform. You've interviewed Mark Zuckerberg many times. Did
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: you learn anything from Facebook during this hearing? Did anything
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: surprise you?
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: No, I thought those emails were exactly what I thought
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: they would be. And I'm sure there's dozens more like it.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: The idea, instead of talking about innovation, he's talking about
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: land grab. Instead of talking about competing, he's talking about neutralizing.
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: That feels very Bill Gates-ian, circa 1997. That's what it
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: feels like to me. If you remember, he was going
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: to crush them. But I had a quote in one
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: of my books in the 90s where Bill Gates said,
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: we're going to buy you, bury you, or copy you.
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: That's what it felt like. I was like, oh, he's back.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Actually, Bill Gates is great
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: these days. Thank you for the vaccines, Bill Gates, someday.
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: But it feels very monopolistic. So no, I think he
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: did fine. He's been there a couple of times, and
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: he's sort of the one they beat up on. But
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: he sort of escaped. There was no Katie Porter or
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: AOC to, I think there was a lot of, I
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: think Jeff Bezos got more of it from a representative Jayapal,
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: which I thought was great. I thought it was amazing
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: from Seattle.
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was great. So let's close by talking about TikTok.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: So I did download it to my, you downloaded to
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: a burner phone. Yes, that's over there.
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Which I respect. I did briefly download it to my
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: real phone until without ever setting up an account, it
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: really did discover that my interests were new ways of
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: making grilled cheese and hot guys.
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: Well, their algorithm is great. Their algorithm is wonderful. That's
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: an amazing algorithm they've got going. Yes.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: So, you know, put TikTok aside.
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: The growth of this sort of incredibly sophisticated algorithm, whether
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: it's what Facebook is doing, what YouTube is doing. what
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: TikTok is doing, where basically the algorithm is smarter than
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: the people making it. It is smarter than us. It
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: is able to know what we like in very sophisticated
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: ways and ways we might not understand, right? That actually
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: don't make intuitive sense because it's not drawing on human intuition.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: It's actually just looking at hard data and hard science.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: What do you see as the long-term risk of how
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: much of what we see and what we hear is
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: born of these kinds of algorithms, regardless of what happens
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: with these individual corporate entities.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, there's a lot of talk around AI
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: lately because OpenAI released some versions of AI that are
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: making people nervous. Everyone's talking about it. I think the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: question is, how do we aggregate our decision-making? Or we
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: give it off to these systems? When do we stop
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: doing that? When does human decision-making begin? And when does
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: that begin? Now, some of their decision-making is good. Like,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: it's smarter, it's faster, it's quicker. Most of our disinformation
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: is based on anecdotes and bad data. They have good data.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: The question is what data goes in there, right? What data, what,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: you know, crap in, crap out is the way I
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: look at it with data. And so if you have
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: a lot of policing data that show more people of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: color get arrested, the algorithm is going to think people
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: of color are more criminal, right? Like, why wouldn't that?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: It would make sense in a lot of ways. That's
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: a simplistic way of doing it. But It's just a
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: question of, one, regular people are making this AI. They're
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: creating it and then putting in regular data that may
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: be flawed. And then as it becomes ever more sophisticated,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: how do we know how it comes to conclusions, say,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: about loans or jobs or whether you can get in
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: the country or not? There's something good about human fallibility, right?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: They can go, oh, oh, I see what happened here.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: This is whatever.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: But the minute those, they can go, oh, that's what
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: the data says. That's the way it's going to go
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: for you. And so I think that's a stupid way
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: of saying that we're giving over, we're in the middle
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: of the Terminator movie, you know, right before they blow up.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: That's not the case, but it's just that it creates,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: and then who controls it? Like, what if China gets
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: really far ahead? What if it's used for facial surveillance?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: These are questions our Congress of elected officials needs to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: be talking about. And us as citizens, just like what
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: happened in Portland, where they were taking in all kinds
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: of text data and it's, you know, drone data and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: it just can go on and on and on. And
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: that's the issue. And it's not just that you like
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: grilled cheese sandwiches. It's so much more. There's so much,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: you're so much more complex than grilled cheese sandwiches, John,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: I think. Yeah.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: I like French toast.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: And it's delightful.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: Oh, okay.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: All right. Well then, but it's, that's delightful and that's great.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: And that's, you know, when you're on Netflix and they
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: give you something you like, that's great. The question is,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: think of the worst, I always say, think of the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: black mirror. I've told you this, think of the black
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: mirror episode on this and then organize yourself around that. Right.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: What's the black mirror episode to the cheese problem that
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it is, but there is a
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: black mirror episode about you and grilled cheese. That is not,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: doesn't end with a delicious sandwich for you.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: No, but I like the, the first act I think
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: is pretty fun. Uh, last, last question. Um, I sent
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk some Bitcoin over Twitter. Do you think I'm
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: going to get that back?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: I don't. I don't think. I think that was hacked.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you know that.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not going to get that back. But Elon,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: that stock is killing it. Boy, is he doing well. Man,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: that guy, whatever.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: Get him off Twitter. He's better off. He does better
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: on Twitter.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: He landed that spacecraft, honestly, after the past couple of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: weeks when everything's going to hell and he lands that
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: spacecraft with the cool suits.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: I was like, thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: On impact. I was like, Oh, he did it. Thank God.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Did you see that a bunch of, um, unauthorized boats
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: got too close? Oh, did they?
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: They didn't, uh, they didn't cordon off the area enough.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: So a bunch of people, a bunch of gawkers got
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: up there. It's like, um, A bunch of people in
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: boats being like, hey, America used to do stuff like this.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: Let's go check it out. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Probably were they wearing masks? That's all I want
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: to know.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think the boaters wear masks. Kara Swisher.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: So good. So good to see you. Thanks for doing this.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Good to see you.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: All right. Thanks.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Kara for joining today. And we'll talk to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: you guys soon. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: videos every week.