Latest / Pod Save America / "2 Impeachment 2 Furious.”

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"2 Impeachment 2 Furious.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: On the pod, one last impeachment for the road. how
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it all went down, what will happen in the Senate,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and what it all means for the post-Trump Republican Party.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Then Dan will talk to Stanford researcher Renee DiResta about
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: online right-wing organizing, the attack on the Capitol, and the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: spread of misinformation. But first, don't miss our other Crooked
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Pods this week. Representatives Karen Bass and Pramila Jayapal are
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: on hysteria to discuss insurrection and impeachment. And our good
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: friend Samantha Power, who Biden just named as his next
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: USAID administrator, is on Pod Save the World. Congrats to Sam.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: We're very happy for you to check out that interview. Also,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: an announcement. Next Friday, Crooked Media's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler, is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: launching the second season of Rubicon, a podcast that will
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: walk you through the Biden administration's first 100 days. The
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: trailer is out now. New episodes will drop every Friday
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: starting January 22nd. So subscribe to Rubicon today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Exciting stuff. Finally,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so join us
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: for the Presidential Inaugural Committee's National Day of Service. We
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: used to have these on MLK Day back in the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Obama administration. For some reason, Trump didn't see fit to
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: have these days of service over the last four years.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Now they're back in the Biden administration. You can find
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: COVID-safe volunteer opportunities and ways to get involved at votesaveamerica.com
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: slash volunteer. And we will be off on Monday, but
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: we'll be back with more Pod Save America on Tuesday.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. On Wednesday... House
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of Representatives impeached Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: against the United States government by a vote of 232
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to 197. Trump makes history as the only president to
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: ever be impeached twice. In fact, half of all the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: impeachments we've ever had have been of Donald Trump. He
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: also received the most votes from his own party of
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: any impeachment in history, with 10 Republicans voting yes, including
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Liz Cheney. the third ranking Republican in the House, who said, quote,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: there has never been a greater betrayal by a president
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: of the United States of his office and his oath
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: to the Constitution. That is Liz Cheney's quote. So, you know,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Trump leaves the White House with quite a few bragging rights. Dan,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it's now a virtual certainty that Trump will not be
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: removed from office before his term ends on Wednesday the 20th.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: We will talk about why in a bit. But with
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that in mind, why was it so important to impeach
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: him anyway?
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to do this often in the history
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: of this podcast, but I'm going to approvingly quote Cheney.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: This is the highest crime ever done by a president.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: And even knowing that you were going to get a
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: small fraction of Republicans to support you, even knowing that
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: the odds of removal before he leaves office are virtually nil,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: and the odds that he is actually going to be
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: convicted in the Senate are long, we think, as we
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: sit here right now, it is still the right thing
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: to do because you said it in your intro. This
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: is a man who incited an armed insurrection that led
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: to an assault on the Capitol, the deaths of a
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: number of Americans, and the potential deaths of an untold
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: number of people, public servants, members of Congress, staff, aides,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: police officers. And this is because this president refused to
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: acknowledge reality, refused to abide by the traditions of a
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: peaceful transfer of power, and people died because of it.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And if we are fortunate enough as a country, as
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: a planet, as a democracy to survive to the point
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: where people can look back on this moment in history,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: there needs to be some marker that this represents– a
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: low point in American political, moral, social fabric. And this
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: had to be done. There was no other option for
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Democrats to walk away from this, even as painful as
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: it is, even if it gives terribly bad faith people
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: a cudgel about how you're being divisive instead of unifying.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: This had to be done because what the president did
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: was so far out of the bounds of what is
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: acceptable and frankly legal in American politics that it had
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: to be addressed.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So I think there's two goals for impeachment that are worthy.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: One is to ensure that Donald Trump is not allowed
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: to run for office again. Uh, that can only happen
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: if the Senate convicts him. Um, which as you said,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: those are long odds. We'll talk about that. It may
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: be able to happen if, uh, under the 14th amendment,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: if you pass legislation, Brian Boitler also has a great
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: op-ed in the New York times this week about that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You should check it out. Um, But so that's one goal,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to prevent him from running for office again. The other
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: goal is to ensure that he does not incite further
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: violence in the coming days. And I think that whether
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: or not he is convicted in the Senate, impeaching him
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: and holding over his head the possibility that he may
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: be convicted or removed from office in the next week
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: actually may prevent him from inciting more violence. And the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: evidence for that is, and we'll talk about this in
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a second too, the fact that he has succumbed to
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: pressure to record videos where he is telling his supporters
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to not commit violence, to not break laws, to not
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: engage in vandalism. There is some evidence already that Donald
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Trump is a little spooked by what the Congress is doing.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And even if he doesn't get convicted... That means that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: impeachment will have been a good thing because possibly it
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: could at least reduce the chance that he will incite
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: more violence, possibly.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I think that's right. I will say that the normal
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: cycle of when Trump does something that is absolutely horrible
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: is massive blowback, followed by contrite teleprompter reading on video somewhere,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: followed by a series of insane tweets that reopen the
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: wound and make things worse. he should be very, he
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: should be very thankful to Jack Dorsey for banning him,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: at least for this period of time, because he has prevented,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: he has, Jack Dorsey has taken the matches away from
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the baby because who knows, you just imagine Robert Trump
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: is watching, hate watching CNN or even Fox or watching
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: some of the insane shit that's still happening on OAN
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: and Newsmax and live tweeting it out. Um, So it's
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: hard to know, like, is he actually going to turn
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: it on? I also think beyond just the.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: He goes to Texas and he gets off or he's
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: getting on the plane and reporters are asking him stuff
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: and he does his usual bullshit, which is, oh, everything
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I said was perfect. I didn't say anything wrong.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't do anything right. And he starts firing people
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: up again. And everyone's like, you know, that made a
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: lot of people say, OK, well, now they've got to
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: impeach him because he's clearly doing his typical shit again.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And then he pulls back again and does that video.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: So he's at least in this push and pull right now.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: because he has some fear of what might happen to him. Now,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I think it's not just impeachment. It is the Trump brand,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: his finances, like his future, the fact that he can't
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: use Twitter now, like he is afraid of a number
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: of different consequences that go beyond impeachment at this point.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I mean, if you were to ask
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Trump to pick between getting impeached or losing the PGA
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Championship at a Trump resort, he would definitely pick the former.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, of course. I think one reason it's
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: so important is because, and we shouldn't lose sight of
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: this throughout this whole conversation, like the danger and the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: possibility of violence are not over. And, you know, we've
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: got 20,000 armed troops expected in Washington for the Biden inauguration.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: We've got National Guard members sleeping on the floor of
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the Capitol to defend that. The Joint Chiefs are writing
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a letter So that the military knows its job to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: defend the peaceful transfer of power and not Trump, which
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: is crazy that they have to do that. The FBI
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: is telling police chiefs all across the country to be
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: on high alert. Like there's new threats and plots being
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: discovered and, you know, what feels like every few hours.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: So we are by no means out of the woods
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: just yet. And everything that members of Congress, people in government,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: everyone can do to sort of reduce the possibility of violence,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I think is important to do at this point. And
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I think impeachment has to be one of those things.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really important because some of the statistics, We
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: are very focused on Trump and the political consequences and
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: what it means about Republicans and what it means for 2024,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: his post-presidential life. But the way all of the authorities
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: are now acting about the danger at the inaugural is
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: very alarming. Closing the mall. There is a very, very
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: real threat. One of the members of Congress who voted
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: for impeachment bought body armor because he's very worried for
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: his life. There has been a long history of right-wing, anti-government,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: white supremacists' violent activity in this country. Much of that
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: has been ignored for the last four years because Trump
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: found it insulting to himself or his base to worry
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: about violent right-wing militias. Then you have a President And
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: an entire Republican Party, to be clear, who has egged
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: them on for much of the last four years, but
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: also very particularly in this post-election period. And just because
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Trump has lost his Twitter account doesn't mean that threat
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: of violence does not exist.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is very important to understand, especially in the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: weeks ahead. So let's talk about Trump's reaction, which thankfully
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: none of us had to read on Twitter. He did,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: as we mentioned, film another hostage video from the Oval
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: where Pence and his lawyers forced him to ask his
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: supporters to refrain from committing any further violence. As usual,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the real Trump showed up in twin stories from the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Washington Post and the New York Times that say he's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: isolated and angry, lashing out at aides for not defending him,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: screaming about Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy betraying him, pissed
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: at Rudy Giuliani for charging expensive legal fees that Trump
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: reportedly is refusing to pay. livid at Twitter, the PGA,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Deutsche Bank, others for canceling him, and is still, was
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: still on Air Force One flying to Texas the other
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: day telling anyone who will listen that he won the election.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So we're going to spend most of this pod talking
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: about what all this means for Republicans, but I do
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: want to start with what this all means for how
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: quickly and hopefully permanently we can get Donald Trump out
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of our lives. They apparently tried to convince him to
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: resign in a few days early so he could possibly
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: avoid conviction in the Senate and maybe run again in 2024.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: He refused. He said resigning didn't get Nixon anything. His
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: lawyers are telling him to be careful what he says
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and does because they say he faces all kinds of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: legal exposure for possibly inciting violence and also civil suits
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: for possibly inciting violence as well, not just criminal exposure.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: He's still talking about trying to pardon himself. So... What
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: are some of the possible ways this ends for Trump
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that are also good for the rest of us at
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: this point?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Other than conviction.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Right. Other than conviction.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: A relatively quiet seven days or whatever it is that's
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: left where he just gets on an airplane and goes
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: and no one pays attention to him and he doesn't
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: say anything. And he has a lot of thoughts and
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: he would tweet out but can't. I mean that– Right.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Without a self-pardon. That is the looming issue here. This
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: is one potential benefit of the sort of Damocles of
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: conviction hanging over him is he said he did not
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: want to resign because he did not believe Mike Pence
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: would pardon him. Implication being he plans on pardoning himself,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: that it would be a massively controversial act that would
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: at least on paper– potentially increase the chances that he
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: would be convicted. And so the best case scenario is
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: he does nothing, says nothing, stays quiet, and just leaves.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: And we don't pay attention to him. There's not a
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: bunch of coverage of him leaving. He just gets on
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: an airplane, goes back to Mar-a-Lago, and lives out his
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: days out of our sight without creating any additional constitutional and.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: So obviously, like the best case is he's convicted and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: he can't run again. And then we really don't have
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: to worry about him that much. But if he's not convicted, right,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: he faces, like you said, he faces all kinds of
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: legal exposure, some that he can try to pardon himself
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: out of, though it's unclear that that will work on
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the federal level. Other legal exposure on the state level
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: is particularly in the state of New York that he
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: can't pardon himself out of, that he will still face
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: when he leaves office. He is in a ton of debt.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: He is losing money left and right because he's losing
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: all kinds of business deals over his conduct. He's got
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: banks shutting him down, saying that they're not going to
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: lend to him anymore. And like you said, he's cut
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: off from communicating via his favorite channels, right? Like via
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Twitter and also Facebook and Instagram. And like how many
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: mainstream media organizations are just going to sit down for
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: interviews with Trump now all the time, right? I'm sure
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: he's still going to. be able to call into Fox
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and Friends whenever he wants. He's going to be able
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to go on Newsmax, OAN. Who knows? He's going to
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: try to do his own media company. But I think
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the good case, the best case here, barring conviction, is
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that he is isolated, broke, and alone for the next
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: couple of years. And like you said, we don't hear
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: much from him, which is a possibility.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: I sort of, you're not going to know this represent
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a thing, but have you ever seen the Simpsons episode
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: where Mr. Burns becomes like Howard Hughes? That's sort of
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: how I imagine Trump is basically by himself, unshaven, wearing
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Kleenex boxes for slippers and living in paranoid germaphobic isolation
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: until the end of his days with just Dan Scavino
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: there to clean the latrine.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, the thing that should make us
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: all feel good is he does seem miserable. he seems very,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: very miserable and angry, which is always, you know, I,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I wish him nothing but suffering for the rest of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: his day.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, my sense is he's, he's been miserable every
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: day of his life. And that's sort of how we
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: got in this situation.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Um, that is true too.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: The picture you paint is mildly encouraging. I would say,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: cause all those things seem real. He has gigantic financial problems.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: He has gigantic legal problems. Um, Being banned from Twitter
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: is a gigantic deal for him. You can already see
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the difference. He is afraid to engage with mainstream outlets
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: or even any media outlet right now, and his ability
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: to just shape the conversation or insert himself there. into
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the political dialogue has been eliminated. He is.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Which, by the way, is why we've been complaining about
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the media for the last four years and not challenging
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: him enough. Because when he is challenged by a reporter,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: he doesn't like it, which is why he uses Twitter,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: because he can get his message out there unchallenged. That's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the whole point. That's why he uses the fucking media.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like it would be, it's my place
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: to defend the media on this. And I think like,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: this is the problem we always have is the media, right?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: We say the media, like, what does that mean?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I was just saying, look, by the end
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you had a Jake Tapper interview, a Savannah Guthrie interview,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: a Chris Wallace interview, a Jonathan Swan interview. Again, those
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: are the interviews where reporters actually challenged Donald Trump and
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: they were disasters for him.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: And even in the press conference situation, traditional mainstream reporters
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: would ask him hard questions, but he just had the
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: home field advantage that he could pivot to the OAN plant,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the fake reporters like John Roberts from Fox. There was
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: always a home base he could go to, but Twitter
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: was where he got to set the terms of the conversation,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and that is not available to him anymore, and you
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: can already feel the difference after just a few days.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the Republican Party. Their relationship
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with Trump But before that, their culpability for the attack
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: on the Capitol. Most of them repeated the lie that
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the election was stolen from Donald Trump. 147 members of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Congress voted to overturn the results of the election just
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: hours after right-wing extremists tried to overturn the results through violence.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Don't want to let that go. Never letting that go.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: One of the extremists, Ali Alexander, has claimed that he
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: directly conspired to derail the certification of the election with
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: three Republican members of Congress who Andy Biggs of Arizona,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Paul Gosar of Arizona. And
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday evening, Democratic Representative Mikey Sherrill of New Jersey
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: made a startling revelation during a livestream with reporters. Let's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: play a clip.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: We can't have a democracy if members of Congress are
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: actively helping the president overturn the election results. And so
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: not only do I intend to see that the president
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: is removed, and never runs for office again, and doesn't
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: have access to classified material, I also intend to see
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: that those members of Congress who embedded him, those members
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: I saw on January 5th, a reconnaissance for the next day,
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd, those
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: our democracy, I'm going to say that they're held accountable
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: and if necessary, ensure that they don't serve in Congress.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Now that is an sort of explosive charge. She followed
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: up with a number of other members of Congress for
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: calling for a full investigation into that possibility, which means
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it was not just an off-the-cuff statement. She made it
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: very seriously. She's a former military official. And so that's
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: not something that she says lightly. What can be done
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: about any of this? I guess ranging from the Republicans
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: who lied about the election being stolen from Donald Trump,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: all the way to Republicans who were potentially collaborating and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: helping the people who attacked the Capitol. I mean, these
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: people are set to be around for years after Trump
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: is gone, at least two years, some of these congressmen.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And most of them, because of gerrymandering and polarization, et cetera,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: are in incredibly safe seats. they are more likely to
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: lose to someone crazier than them than to someone more sane,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: either in a primary or in a general election. And
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: that is a deeply sad and scary statement about our politics.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: There needs to be a full investigation into who played
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: what role in this. And if they actually did do
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: what is suggested here and were involved in helping people
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: gain access to the Capitol, helping people understand where people
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: were in the Capitol. Like Lauren Boebert, is that her name?
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Lauren Boebert?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Boebert.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Who cares? You know what? She's not worthy of a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: correct pronunciation. The gun-wielding conspiracy theorist, new Congresswoman from Colorado.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: From Colorado. Was tweeting out Nancy Pelosi's location during the event,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: according to reports. Well, she was definitely tweeting it out.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And according to reports, she was doing so in contravention
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: of security officials telling everyone not to use social media.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: All of these people need to be investigated. And if
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: there is evidence that suggests they played a role in
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: this as part of the conspiracy to overturn an election
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and take a capital and potentially do harm to members
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: of Congress and the vice president of the United States–
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: they should be expelled from Congress and brought up on charges.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: That absolutely has to be done. And that is not
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: a partisan issue. That is a legal issue and that
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: has to be done. More broadly, and this is always
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: the danger whenever Trump is involved in something is, he
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: is such a giant, shiny object that he distracts from
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the culpability of everyone else. The Republican Party as a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: policy position decided to fuel a series of lies to
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: overturn an election. And we have to hold– we can
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: never let that go. We have to hold them accountable
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: for it. We have to ensure that the– and we'll
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: talk about this a little bit, but the corporations that
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: have said they're going to stop giving to the purpose
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: to do that, that they don't– as soon as the
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: spotlight goes off, they don't go back to it. It
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: has to be that telling lies about an election for
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: the purpose of undoing the mold of voters is outside
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: acceptable politics and that you will pay a price for
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: doing that. It cannot be just yet another tool in
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the toolbox to gaining political power. And Donald Trump has
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: shifted the Overton window in so many dangerous ways. But
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing, if it becomes acceptable practice,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: that's it for democracy. That's where it falls apart.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, you know, Greg Sargent in the Washington
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Post today has a memo from Trump's own intelligence agencies
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: saying that it is the lie about the election. that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: somehow it was stolen from Donald Trump, that there was
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: fraud that gave the election to Joe Biden, that is
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: inciting domestic extremists, violent domestic extremists in this country. And
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: until Republican politicians step up and refudiate that lie explicitly,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: get up and say, Joe Biden won this election fair
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and square. Every Republican politician needs to say that. And
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: if you don't say that, You should not be taken
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: seriously and you should be driven from office immediately. And
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you should be, you know, I mean, that's the lie.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: A lot of these Republicans, and we're going to talk
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: about why they did or didn't vote for impeachment. You know,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: it's like, did Trump actually incite the vote? No. The
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: root of all of this, the root of all of
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: this is the lie that a free and fair election
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: was neither free nor fair. And it is a lie
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: based on a whole bunch of different conspiracy theories that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: have been fed to a large part of our population
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: over the last several months. And if you hear every
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: single day that you went out to vote... And someone
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: stole the election from you that your vote was your
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: ballot was thrown out or that there were, you know,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: machines that did this or that. If you hear that,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you're going to be angry. And some people are going
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: to be angry enough that they're going to do what
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they did last week. That is the lie at the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: core of everything else. And we cannot move past any
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of this until Republicans repudiate that lie. That's it.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: This is like what happened in the Capitol is incredibly shocking,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: but it is also so utterly fucking predictable. When you
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: run– not just a campaign. You spend a decade saying
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: that Democrats are radical, anti-American socialists who are going to
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: destroy your way of life. At the same time that
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: we are telling you to buy as many guns as
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: humanly possible to protect yourself– from a government staffed by
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: a deep state who are in league with socialists or
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: a ring of pedophiles or global elitists. If you have
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: that end of times message and then you tell people
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: that the election was illegitimate and stolen– You're going to
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: end up in this situation. And it is, of course,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: people have been warning about this and warning about it.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: And you're like, oh, crazy, panicky liberals back off. No,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: this is what happened. This is the exact end result
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: of decisions not just Donald Trump made. Rupert Murdoch made,
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Fox News made, Mitch McConnell made, Paul Ryan made. This
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: is the end result of more than a decade of
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: right-wing Republican messaging.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: And it's lie built on lie built on lie. And
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: at first they seem like small lies and then they
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: seem like bigger lies. And the election was stolen. We
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: don't actually live in a democracy is the biggest. That
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: was the biggest lie of all. That was the one
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: that finally did it. When you tell people that they
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: have that an election was stolen from them. It's not
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that's not a small fucking typical political lie. That's a
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: very big lie that has huge consequences. And we saw
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: those consequences last week. So let's talk about the politics
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of this inside the Republican Party. There were 10 House
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Republicans who supported impeachment. Again, most affections from the same
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: party in any impeachment ever, but also less than 5%
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of the entire caucus at the same time. Were you
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: surprised by the number? And were you surprised by any
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of the 10 Republicans? Obviously, much has changed since last
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: impeachment in 2019, when zero Republicans voted in favor of impeachment.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Now we have 10. So what changed and were you surprised?
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's very hard to even talk about this
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: because when you say it's the most Republicans ever, or
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: most people from the other parties supporting impeachment, talk about
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a small sample size. And in part, that sample size
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: is completely skewed because Richard Nixon would have had to
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: face an overwhelming impeachment vote were he to have actually
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: faced that. He just left before that happened. And then
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: you say 10 is a lot, but it's such a
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: small percentage of Republicans doing the right thing in response
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: not to the uncovering of some corruption in the face
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: of an assault on their place of work where their
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: lives were at risk, their staffs were at risk, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: still this small number voting for it is– alarming on
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: so many levels about where we are as a country
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: and where the Republicans are. I mean, is there one
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: that's surprising? It's Liz Cheney, for sure. This is someone
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: who is in a plus 40 Trump district, someone who
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: has designs on an even more prominent role within the
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Republican Party, either in the Senate or running for something,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: maybe running for president one day. But she is a Cheney.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: She is a member of the Republican royalty. And for
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: her to break, not just with Trump, but with her
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: other members of leadership is a big deal. And it
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: gave cover to a lot of these other Republicans who
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: were also in districts that most of them were in
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: districts that Trump won. Some were in more narrow wins
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: by Trump, but it gave some other people cover. And
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: I think if Liz Cheney– the number was 10, which
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: is a small number. But if Liz Cheney had not
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: said she was going to support this, that number might
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: have been closer to three or four. I.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised by 10 because of the way
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: this Republican party is and because of the political incentives
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: they have and they operate within. Um, because like, you know,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: most of these people, every, every one of them, every
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: one of the 10 has to worry about a primary
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: challenger from the right at best, at worst, as you said,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: they have to worry about, um, harm coming to them
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and their families.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: The guy from Michigan is wearing body armor now. Peter Mehar.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And in addition to that, Jason Crow, Democrat from Colorado,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: said that he talked to a number of Republicans who
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: wanted to vote for impeachment, but said they couldn't because
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: they were afraid for their families. So it is, of course,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the least they can do. The right thing to do
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: is to vote for impeachment. I get that. But I
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: wouldn't underestimate the risk to these members of voting for impeachment.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: And....
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: The fact that that 10 did that, I was actually
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I was a bit surprised that we that we got
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: all the way up to 10, even though they were threatened,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: even though their lives were threatened to happen at the Capitol.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I just thought I don't you know, I don't have
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: much faith in this version of the Republican Party, not
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: just because they're cowards, but also because like like you
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: said that I think they're probably worried about their safety.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Which if you are worried. About your own supporters.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're in the wrong party.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's time to look down at the tiger you
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: chose to ride and make another choice.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I totally, totally agree with that. Totally agree. Now, House
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn't whip this vote, meaning that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: he didn't lean on Republicans to vote against impeachment. He
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: told everyone to vote their conscience. He also was critical
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of Trump and tried to weasel out of this with
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: a censure resolution. Why do you think, even from mccarthy
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that is sort of a big deal because he has
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: been one of trump's most loyal foot soldiers henchmen you
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: wrote in the message box today he was uh once
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: upon a time curating starbursts for donald trump was the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: phrase you used um what From curating Starburst to censure
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: resolutions on the floor, the Kevin McCarthy story. So what happened?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: What happened with Kevin McCarthy?
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I think the primary driver with Kevin McCarthy here is money.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Since he was on the Capitol, a number of major U.S.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: corporations have said they're no longer going to make donations
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to the members of Congress who voted to overturn the election. Now,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: that is almost all of Kevin McCarthy's caucus, right? So
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: he– and we can talk about McConnell a little bit separately,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: but both of them are trying to I think show
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: the other part of the party, not the rabid right-wing
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: base part of the party, but the corporate wing that
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: funds the rabid right-wing base that they quote-unquote get it
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: and they're going to offer them an on-ramp to reopen donations.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I can only imagine– Kevin McCarthy is thinking we have
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: this great chance to take the House. Democrats are really
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: good at grassroots fundraising. We're really good at raising large
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: donations from rich people and corporations for our super PACs.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I imagine the calls from the super PACs, the National
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Republican Congressional Committee, to their donor base have gone not
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: well since then. And so this is a way to
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: give these companies or these donors a path back to
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: supporting Republicans, is my guess.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I think it's money. I think that's right. I also
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: think it's the politics of the House races in 2022. Like,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you know, Republicans have a too good of a chance
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: to take back the House in 2022, partly because of redistricting.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: They'll control a lot of redistricting. They'll redraw the map
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: so that it is unfavorable to Democrats. And yet, you know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: McCarthy has a bunch of Republicans in districts that are
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: pretty evenly divided. that we had won in 2018, and
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: then they took back in 2020. So like, say you're
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: David Valadao, right, in California, who took back a seat
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: in 2020 that Republicans lost in 2018. Or say that
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: you're Mike Garcia, right, who beat Christy Smith in the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: California 25th, another very closely divided district that Democrats can
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: easily win or should be able to win. So like
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: either you have two of those incumbents who, you know,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Valdeo voted for impeachment. Mike Garcia voted to overturn the election.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: They took different votes. But either you get those members
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: primaried from the right, which makes the general election Republican
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: candidate weaker because they're farther to the right in a
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: pretty even district, or you get a Republican member who
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: is you get an incumbent who doesn't get a primary challenge,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: but is now unpalatable to a broader electorate because they
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: either voted against Donald Trump's impeachment or voted to overturn
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the election. I think he has some political issues ahead
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of 2022 that does not make this very easy for
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: him to just go on one side or the other,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: but he's basically trying to straddle this by saying, I
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: criticized Trump, but I didn't totally abandon Trump, which... I
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: don't know if that is a move that gets you anything,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: by the way, but it seems like that's what he's
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: trying to do.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think your political analysis is exactly right about
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: these districts. And Kevin McCarthy is also, it should be noted,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: a fucking idiot. He's one of the dumber members of
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Congress who sort of stumbled upwards into leadership by just
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: being simply too dumb to offend most people, or most
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Republicans at least. I find him particularly offensive. But how
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: this vote or non-vote or censure press release, because that's
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: what it is. He knew Democrats were going to impeach him,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: so he could float the censure idea and never actually have.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: To act on it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: And it gives his, the number of Republicans who are
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable with Trump generally, and then particularly what happened, is
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: larger than 10. And this gives some of them a
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: place to say, I'm not for impeachment for, it's divisive,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: it's unnecessary, like whatever reasons, but I would have censured him.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: a place to go. That's the, you know, that's for
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: some of them, whether anyone's remember that care about that
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: in November of 2022. I mean, I'd just be happy
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: to make it to November of 2022 just generally.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: So, um, you know, I will also say like, if
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Trump is still a factor, then like, Donald Trump and
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: his minions are going to go through the list and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: every single Republican, it doesn't matter if you didn't vote
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: for impeachment, but you did say something critical. Any Republican
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: that said anything critical about Donald Trump during this whole
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: episode will be on his shit list and will be
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: eligible for a primary. So it's like, you're not running
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: away from that. You're not trying to pull some move
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: now where you're yes to censure, no to impeachment. You're
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: going to, slip through the cracks here, like you're fucked, right?
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Or like, so that's why I think either you go
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: all in and say, I'm breaking from Donald Trump and
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to impeach him. And I think this is
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: wrong and, you know, damn the political consequences, but we'll see. Or,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: you know, you decide to be one of those people
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: who's just like, no, he's wonderful. I'm supporting Donald Trump
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: till the very end. I think being in the middle
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't really get you much politically.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is a lesson in politics outside of this.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Pick a side.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Pick a side.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: The people who vote present rarely get reelected. Right.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So those are the Republican politics in the House.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Let's turn to the politics in the Senate, which is
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: where this is going next. Mitch McConnell is majority leader
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: until the 20th, which means that he controls the calendar
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: until then. And he said he's not holding a trial
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: until Biden is inaugurated. But on Tuesday, the New York
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Times reported that McConnell, quote, told associates that he believes
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: President Trump committed impeachable offenses and that he is pleased
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are moving to impeach him, believing that it
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: will make it easier to purge him from the party.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: McConnell released a statement yesterday after the story that said, quote,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: While the press has been full of speculation, I have
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: not made a final decision on how I will vote,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: they are presented to the Senate. So not knocking it down,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: not knocking the story down. First of all, what are
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on the timing of the trial and what
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: it means for both Trump's chances of conviction and the
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: first few weeks of Biden's presidency?
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Every day past the assault on the Capitol reduces the
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: chances of conviction. Every day past Trump getting on an
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: airplane and heading to Florida reduces the chance of this conviction.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: It becomes easier and easier. The further it fades into memory,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: the easier it becomes for Republicans to do the wrong thing.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: The calculus simply changes. I can see I don't agree
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: with him. You can see this world where it's like
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: he's gone now. Why would I– the danger– if you're
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: in a situation where this man is an existential threat
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: and my vote could make America safer even if it's
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: for two days, three days, four days, then you can
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: see someone maybe potentially taking a politically risky vote. But
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: if it's just– if the only thing it does is
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: keep him from running for an office that he may
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: or may not run for, then I think the chances
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: of conviction go down.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I think they go down, but I think that's why
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I have been saying that should be the primary message
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: from people who want him impeached is that we should
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: prevent this dangerous man from ever running for president again.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Because I do think it's hard to have a message
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: after he's out of office that says, we want to
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: convict him just to punish him, right? Just to have
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: him mark on history, right? It is the right thing
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to do. I want him to have that bad mark
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: in history as well. I want I believe in accountability.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: But I think you want to frame it as this
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: vote to convict will have an important consequence, which is
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: preventing this danger from happening again in the form of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump running for president. And so I would start
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: making that the main message in the next week or so,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: because you're right. Like everyone has short memories. No one
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: fucking remembers anything ever in this country anymore. And so
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: every single day we go, you can totally see it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's going to give an inaugural address. He's going
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: to talk about the country coming together. Donald Trump's going
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: to be gone. And then we're going to have a
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: trial in the Senate and everyone's going to say it's
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: super important to convict him. Yeah, it's going to be tougher.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: And so the only argument you have is, which I
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: think is an important argument, is that we can't let
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: this guy run again.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: That is the best substantive argument. And it's the best
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: political argument for the country. The problem is, as much
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: as Trump's approval rating has dropped over the past 10 days,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: his approval rating among Republicans is still north of 80%.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And so you are still trying to convince Republicans who
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: almost entirely represent Republican states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: to stop the most popular Republican from running again. Like that,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: like from a political point of view.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Well, this I mean, you know, and we've been we've
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: been doing this over the last couple of days. Like,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: so you look at look at the list of Republican senators.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: You need 17 to convict. You got Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, Toomey.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I listed those five because they've all said. he should resign,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: he should be removed, whatever. They haven't said definitely yes
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: on a conviction.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: None of them.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: But you would imagine those are the first five. So
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: that's five. Getting from that five to 17 is pretty
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: fucking hard when you start looking at that list. And
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: it requires basically, you know, Twelve Liz Cheney's people who
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: are in very Republican red states who say, fuck it,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do this. So which brings us back
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: to Mitch McConnell. How important is Mitch McConnell's vote to
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the final outcome here?
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I think if Mitch McConnell votes for it, you
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: will almost certainly get.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: You get that extra 12.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: That is a decision. That is a party-wide decision to
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: throw Trump overboard because they think that is what is
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: best for the party in the long term. That's what
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: that would be.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Well, so what, I mean, we just talked about how, like,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: you could imagine, I had been imagining Mitch's calculations to
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: play out like we just said. Look, we just got
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to get to the inauguration here. Once Biden is inaugurated,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: people will start forgetting about this. There won't be as
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: much urgency. There'll be other business to do in the Senate.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Biden's going to have his confirmations that we can yell about.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: We can try to obstruct his economic agenda. Do we
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: really need to be, do people really care at that
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: point if we're convicting Donald Trump after he's gone? I'm
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: just going to wait this out. Why did Mitch McConnell
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: decide to let it be known in the New York
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Times that he was happy about impeachment, which was not
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: just some leak. was clearly, he was happy that it
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: was in the New York Times. He did not refute it.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: He sort of gave that statement yesterday where he said, oh,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I haven't made a final decision yet, but we know
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: McConnell and McConnell world, if they didn't like that story
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: and they thought it was wrong, they would have knocked
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: it down immediately. So clearly he was happy that was there.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Why? I think it's connected to the point I made
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: about the Republican donor class is a huge part of it. Second,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: it's a trial balloon. I think he wants to see
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: what the reaction is. Do, does he get beat up
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: from the right? Does, does the parlor crew come after
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: him to do his member? What do his members say
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: to him? You know, it's a, it's a traditional trial
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: balloon because it's done hands off enough that he can not,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: he can, he has plausible deniability to this point and
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: then can decide in the end to do something different. Um,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: If you were to do his political calculation– and McConnell
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: only makes political decisions. This is not– he has not
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: been shocked into understanding the wrongness of his ways. He
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: has not come to some sort of conclusion about the
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: morality of this. He's not doing it because it's the
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: right thing. He's doing it for the political reason. Mitch
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: McConnell wants to take the Senate back in 2022. He
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: has a very real opportunity to do that because of
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: the historical advantage that the party out of power has
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: in the first midterm. The challenge he has is he
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: is going to have to hold a bunch of seats
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania, which Joe Biden won, narrowly but won. Wisconsin,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: which Joe Biden won, even more narrowly but won. He's
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: going to have to defeat a Democrat in Georgia. He
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: has to hold a seat in Arizona, North Carolina, another
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: narrow seat. And we know from 2018 that the– Republicans
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: can win these states with Trump levels of turnout. What
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: does not work is a fired up group of Democrats
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: plus a bunch of former Republicans, independent suburban voters who
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: have soured on the Republican Party and diminished turnout among
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: rural whites. And so if he thinks he's not going
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: to get– because Trump is– that turnout did not happen
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: even in 2018– in these purple states with Trump off
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: the ballot, but Trump in some sort of diminished capacity
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: in legal proceedings, in debt, in hiding, he has to
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: solve the suburban problem to take these seats or hold
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: these seats.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I would not underestimate the role that the Georgia runoffs
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: played in McConnell and McCarthy and other Republican politicians' calculations
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: this week. Because in those runoffs, Republicans saw their future.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: No Trump on the ballot. And yet Trump is still
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: around trying to make trouble for them. The Democratic coalition
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: is energized and turns out particularly because now the Democratic
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: coalition has college educated, uh, college educated people who turn
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: out more than any other group. In addition to in Georgia,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: black voters who turned out more than they ever had
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: in history. And if you combined college-educated voters with black voters,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: you have a formidable coalition that can win in many
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: of these states, in many of these swing states. And
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: you had Republicans divided and turnout depressed because they were
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: divided and because there was this fight between Trump and Republicans.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: And that's why they lost two runoffs that Republicans should
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: have run. And I think Mitch looks at Georgia and
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy looks at districts that look like Georgia and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: thinks to himself, I have to somehow fucking win these
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: in 2022. And you're right. Like, The states that Republicans
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: are defending, also that you named, may all be open seats.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Toomey's retiring in Pennsylvania. Ron Johnson may retire in Wisconsin.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Burr's going to retire in North Carolina. And then Grassley
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: may retire in Iowa. You may have all open seats
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the Democrats could pick up. And then the Democrats have
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: to defend Arizona, Georgia, and maybe Nevada are the three
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: that Democrats have to defend. So it's actually not an
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: easy map for Mitch McConnell in 2022.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: No, no, it's very hard.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Even though, as you said, the big advantage he has
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: is that it's the party in power. It's an out-year election.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: And so the party not in power tends to do
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: well in midterm elections. That's the advantage he has. But
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: other than that, the map itself is not very favorable
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: to McConnell. So I really think that Georgia is one
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: of the big calculations that he's making right now, which
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: is how do we win back some of these suburban voters?
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: That's right. Georgia is where Democrats get the benefit of
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: the type of turnout that we have seen since Trump
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: was elected and Republicans see the downsides of not having
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Trump on the ballot. And if that dynamic is in
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: place in 2022, Republicans certainly are taking the Senate and
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: their path to the House, which is easier than the
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: path to the Senate for map reasons and gerrymandering reasons,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: it gets very narrow very quickly.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: So the other big Republican leader who's had it with
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Trump is Mike Pence. He's may have had something to
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: do with how Trump tried to bully him into illegally
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: overturning the election results by saying in a meeting, according
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: to the New York Times, quote, you can either go
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: down in history as a patriot or you can go
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: down in history as a pussy. The Washington Post goes
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: on to quote former Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, a saying
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: of Pence, quote, he has no future in the Republican Party.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: When the base of the party is not booing you,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: but chanting, hang you, that's a bad sign. That is
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: a bad sign. I do agree with that sentiment from Stuart. Dan,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I can't say that I'm too broken up about Mike
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Pence's political challenges. Can you?
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: No, no. I mean, as is pointed out in that article,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: the Stuart Stevens quote is, he did the bare fucking minimum.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: He decided not to illegally, not to engage in an impotent,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: likely to fail attempt to overturn an election. And his
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: response to the president going to a rally, attacking him,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: firing up his supporters, who then stormed the building in
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: which Mike Pence is working, with chance of hang Mike Pence,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Mike Pence's bold, courageous response is to do nothing. Nothing, right?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Not to speak out publicly, not to invoke the 25th Amendment,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: not to stop coming to work and licking Trump's boots.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: It is to do nothing.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: To be like quietly pissed is basically and to just
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: have quotes from his staff and him to, you know,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: background reporters that he's really angry and doesn't like Donald
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Trump anymore. I mean, so the putting Trump aside, which
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: is hard to do. The question is whether a repudiation
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: of Trump, which, you know, obviously the Republican Party is
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: still mixed on, is also a repudiation of Trumpism. Now,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of course, it's not. always easy to define exactly what
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Trumpism is, but a bunch of asshole Republicans losing their
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: shit over the fact that they have to wear masks,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: but can't bring guns on the floor of Congress is
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: a pretty, pretty good indication of what we're all dealing
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: with here. So, so what do you think? Like is,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: does any of this, does any of the actions, any
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Republicans have taken or anything they've said over the last
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: week indicate any kind of repudiation of Trumpism itself?
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: No, there is no suggestion for that. And the, The–
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: and this is– if– like in that New York Times story,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: the quote about McConnell is about purging Trump from the party.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: If you really want to do that, that is a
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: big project. That involves– you're going to have– it involves
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: de-radicalizing your base. It involves– Stopping to enable all of
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: these right-wing media personalities. It is a conversation with Rupert
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Murdoch to stop the shit. It is about getting Hannity
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: and Tucker Carlson off the air or doing some other
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: sort of performative bullshit than what they are doing. It
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: is stopping going to parlor. It's stopping– like ultimately what–
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: the scary thing here is what it may be is
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Republicans are simply looking for a more capable white supremacist
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: demagogue to run their party. Because Trumpism can only exist
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: in a world where our democracy is so rigged that
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: a minority of the population has a disproportionate share of
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: the political party. There is a path that says we
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: could maybe win in 2022. possibly if we're lucky, win
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: in 2024. But over the long run, because of changes
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: in this country demographically, we are fucked. And so what
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: we have to do is we have to change what
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: we stand for. We have to change who we are.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: We have to change which voices we elevate. We need
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: an agenda that appeals to the majority of Americans. We
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: need to hold ourselves accountable to that by stopping our
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: efforts to stop other people from voting. It requires actually
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: embracing the future of this country. There is nothing that
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: suggests that any Republican– Of any consequence is open to
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: that level of change and what the what the party is.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, that was basically the autopsy after 2012
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: that they wrote.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Which is like what there was a future for the
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Republican Party where you could still be, you know, cutting
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: taxes and getting rid of regulations and still screwing all
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the poor people you love to screw. But you were
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: going to embrace immigration reform. You were going to embrace
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: the changing, diversifying America. And you were actually going to
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: try to go after Latino voters, black voters, not just
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: with some crappy rhetoric, but to actually have policies that
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: would attract those voters to your party. And those Republicans
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: are mostly never Trump Republicans or who've become Democrats now.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: They have been forced from the party. And I do
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: think that even some of the Republicans... you know, who've
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: said over the last week, you know, I saw Nancy Mace,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: who beat Joe Cunningham, right? And she talked about how
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: this is crazy. And, you know, the QAnon members of
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: the caucus are crazy. And she was talking to a
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: newspaper about how voters have been brainwashed by Republicans. And
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: she voted against impeachment at the end of the day,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: because she knows where the future of the party is, right?
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And so she's like, we have to have this I'm
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: watching her say in this story, like we have to
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: have this long conversation about how to not brainwash these voters, blah, blah, blah.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: But like you didn't vote for impeachment.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Because you're scared because you think that's where the party is.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And so I don't think you're right. I don't think
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: it's a repudiation of Trumpism, at least not for 90
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: percent of that party. Um, and that's, that's the real party.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Do you still think it is, do you still think
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: it creates a divide or a split within the Republican
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: party that is problematic to their political fortunes?
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Potentially. But what I think you and I were having
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: this conversation, um, via text about McConnell and McConnell's greatest
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: fear is always a divided Republican party. I think McConnell
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: is betting that opposition to a Democratic agenda will unify
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: various parts of the party and have people put aside
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: their differences, at least until the 2024 Republican primary, as
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: it did for the Democrats.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Right, as it has done throughout history. That's how politics works.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: The Republican Party is a coalition that lives in a
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: state of consistent tension between a nationalist base revved up
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: on racially divisive rhetoric and and a donor class that
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: funds that base in exchange for tax cuts, less regulation,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: et cetera. And this event judges for the conservative policies
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: that benefit them economically. And what has happened since the
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: election sort of started to fray that Faustian bargain. And
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I think McConnell is trying to fix that in the
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: short term on the bet that his party will reunite
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: in opposition to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, all the AOC,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: all the Democrats.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: He's just trying to tread water until then, until they
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: can focus on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So let's
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: talk about where the voters are, because that's one thing
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: that we haven't really focused on yet. On one hand,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Trump's approval rating is nearing record lows. It's between 30
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: and 40 percent, depending on the polls. And a clear
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: majority of voters blame him for the attacks. And a
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: slightly smaller majority want him removed from office. On the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: other hand, his approval among Republican voters has taken a hit,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: but not that much of a hit. He's still getting
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: between 70 and 80% approval. And Frank Luntz conducted a
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: poll of just Trump voters over the weekend with some
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: fairly disturbing results. 91% said they'd vote for Trump again
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: if the 2020 election was a do-over. Nearly 80% think
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the election was stolen. 49%, a combined 49%, believe that
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: either Antifa, Democrats, or the media were responsible for the
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: attack on the Capitol, while only 11% blame Trump. And 64%,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: this is the most disturbing one, 64% agree with the statement, quote,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: that we may have to use force to save it. So,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you're Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, any Republican
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: who wants to run in 2024 or even in 2022
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: for Congress, and you look at those numbers, what's your
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: response to that?
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you can either lead or you can follow. And
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: the recent issue of the Republican Party is the base
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: is the tail that wags the dog. There is an alternative.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: You can take a different approach. You can try to
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: lead them to a more Not just politically palatable position,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: but patriotic position. You can look at this and see
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: the danger of where we are and try to change it,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: or you can try to weaponize it. At every juncture,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party has tried to weaponize that. Is there
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: any hope they will do anything different? I'd like to
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: think so. There's no evidence of that to be the case,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: but that is the challenge. It's not just– like Mitch
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: McConnell is a particularly unpopular person, even with his own party.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: He is– an absolutely horrendous speaker. He basically, if you
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: watch him on television, he's basically just like the embodiment
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: of the congressional almanac with marbles in his mouth. Like
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: he is not someone who is going to lead the
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: party to the promised land from a public perspective. This
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: is a larger project that involves the people who fund
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: the party and involve the Murdochs are at the absolute
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: epicenter of everything that happened here.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I was just going to say like, we, we
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: talk about like the bit, you know, Republican politicians are
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: afraid of the base, right. Or they do whatever the
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: base wants. What the base wants is determined more than
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: anything else, not by what Republican politicians are saying, with
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: the exception of Donald Trump, but by right-wing media extremists.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And in fact, Donald Trump is probably the one, the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: most prominent figure that fuses a right-wing media figure with
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: a Republican politician because he comes from the media world.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: But like, who is revving up this base? Who is
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: radicalizing this base? It's not Mitch McConnell. It's not Kevin McCarthy.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: That's not who these people are listening to. It's fucking
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Rush
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Limbaugh and all the fucking crazy lunatics on YouTube and
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Facebook and all the rest of them. Like that's who
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: is revving up this base. And until you solve that problem,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: you solve nothing.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. That's exactly.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: What is the scenario in which Donald Trump comes back
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: for 2024, right? So in that Luntz poll, he also
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: did a trial heat for 2024. Trump would get 65%
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: in that trial heat. Pence, 34%. Cruz, 14%. Don Jr., 7%.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Nikki Haley, 7%. Mitt Romney, 5%. Rubio and Ivanka at
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: 4% each. That's your fucking nightmare already, just giving it
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: to you here in January of 2021. That's the first
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: trial heat. So, like, it does seem like right now,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: even with all that's happened, Trump is still far and
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: away the frontrunner for 2024, which, again, is.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: The good argument for fucking convicting the guy.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: It is always true that the person who just lost
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: the presidential election is the front runner the next time
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: around in the immediate aftermath.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: It was John Kerry. It was Al Gore. It was
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Mitt Romney. It was Hillary Clinton. That's what polls do.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: He has the highest name recognition. Obviously, people are hepped
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: up on a bunch of lies about it, which boosts
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: those numbers. We're not making predictions. That's not a thing
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: that has changed now that Trump is on his way out.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: But there are lots of scenarios that show Trump just
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: sort of fading into the background. He lost his ability
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: to communicate. He has massive business and legal trouble that
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: prevent him from ever running or thinking of running for
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: president again. He doesn't like work. Running for president would
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: be a lot of work, particularly in this situation. But
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: if you were to say, what's the alternative where Trump
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: returns to the good graces of Republicans? It is a
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: bunch of 2022 primaries between– MAGA candidates and other Republicans.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: A world in which Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: faces a primary from Doug Collins, a Trump supporter. Trump
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: storms the country forum, beats a bunch of people, raises
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: a ton of money, and shows that he still has
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: hold of the Republican base. What happens then is Republicans
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: come back to him. They are now afraid to oppose him.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: He's either a major voice in the party helping shape
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: the agenda, the message through his post on Parler or
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: whatever you call, what do you call a parlay? I
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: don't know what you call those. But, or he runs
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: for president again, right? It is, I think the Richard
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Nixon prior to Watergate, but after losing both the 1960
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: presidential race and then a subsequent run for governor, returned
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: to power by getting deeply involved in the midterms, raising
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: a bunch of money and having a bunch of his
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: candidates win which gave him a clean bill.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the key.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: The key is that they have to not just win
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: the primary, but they have to win the general. If
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Trump goes out and backs a bunch of primaries that
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: take down incumbent Republicans and then The candidates he backed
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: are so far to the right that they then lose
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: the general election. Then he's fucked. But if Doug Collins
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: wins in Georgia, if, you know, he the whoever he
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: backs against Liz Cheney beats Liz Cheney in Wyoming, if
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: this starts happening across the country, then you're right. Then
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: then there's a clear path back to it.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure losing in the general election. It would
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: be as devastating as that, because if he wants to
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: run for president. Because it is a Republican primary. And
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: if he demonstrates his strength with Republican primary voters, and remember,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: what Republicans care most about individually is a potential primary challenge.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: So if the way to avoid a primary challenge is
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: to be supportive of Donald Trump, welcoming Donald Trump, pretending
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: that he didn't almost get all of them killed, then
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: that is likely. Now, and if he is not someone
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: who is traditionally, at least in his first presidential race,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: raised a bunch of money from traditional big donors. If
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: you were someone who needed money from big donors, you
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: didn't have a giant list. Yes, it would be very
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: problematic if you seem unelectable, but he could raise money
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: with all of the various lists that he has stolen,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: scammed from people, et cetera. So I don't think the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: path back to power for Trump is likely necessarily, but
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: that's just what I think it would look like. I
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: think the more likely scenario is he is bogged down
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: in a bunch of legal shit and most people don't
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: want to go anywhere near him. He's just become sort
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: of a sad public figure.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: And you don't hear from him much because he's not
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: on Twitter and you're not watching Fox and Friends every morning.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: And he may not even be on Fox and Friends.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: He may just be on Newsmax and OAN, which most
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: people won't see.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: So one last very important figure in all of this,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, the next president of the United States, who
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: released a statement last night where he urged the Senate
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: not to let impeachment prevent them from also confirming his
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: nominees and passing his economic agenda. And of course, Biden
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: would need at least some Republican cooperation to get non-budgetary
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: legislation passed. Does what happened in these last few weeks
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: change anything about Biden's ability to work with Republicans? Already
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: we've seen, you know, in that New York Times story
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: about McConnell, it said McConnell talked to Biden and said
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: he likes the idea of Merrick Garland as attorney general
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: in support of that. Marco Rubio came out fucking crazy.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: calling on Joe Biden to support $ 2, 000 checks, even though
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden supported $ 2, 000 checks long before Marco Rubio ever did.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: But it shows you what Marco Rubio is at least
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: thinking here that somehow cooperation and, and proposing $ 2, 000 checks
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: with Biden is a good thing for him. So does
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: this change anything about Biden's relationship with Republicans?
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: On the margins? Maybe even more interesting, perhaps than McConnell's
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: comments about purging Trump is the parts about Garland. Um,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: If McConnell's calculation is he has to improve the party's
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: brand to have success in 2022, that could necessitate some cooperation.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: I think we should have very low expectations for this.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: We should just be very– we shouldn't be naive, right?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Like ultimately, Republicans are Republicans. The political incentives that push
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: them towards obstruction are going to continue. I had a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: thought if Republicans had kept the Senate, it would be
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: harder for McConnell to do his step back and let
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: the world burn strategy from 2009 because he would have
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: some agency in it as control of the Senate. Now
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: that is not necessarily the case. I think the key
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: for Biden is this country is divided in deeply and
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: dangerous ways. He ran on a mantle of trying to
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: heal those divisions. It is just absolutely critical that he
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: makes two points in his inaugural and sort of his
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: general approach here is, one, attempting to heal the divisions
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: in the country is not limited to healing the divisions
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: within Washington.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Like that. And I think he can achieve that simply
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: not by being a divisive asshole on a daily basis.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Just by waking up and being Joe Biden, not Donald Trump,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: he is going to help heal some divisions in this
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: country because he will not be exacerbating them like Trump did.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: The second part is he has to make it clear
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: that his pledge is to attempt bipartisanship. But he cannot
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: control whether Republicans agree to that. So he has to
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: get caught trying. And if Republicans agree to things, great.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: But if they refuse, that is not a failure on
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: Biden's part. That is a refusal of Republicans to reach
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: out to an outstretched hand.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: And make it clear that the priorities that he is
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: trying to pass legislatively, that the action he's trying to
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: take on behalf of the country is action that is
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: supported by Americans of both parties. And if Republicans want
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: to work with him, that's great. His door is always open.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: If they don't, he's not going to let their obstruction
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: stop him from working his ass off to deliver for
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the American people, because that's most important. And deliver for
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: every American of every party, right? Like there is a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: tone and a way to talk about this That shows
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: that you don't want to further divide the country, but
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: that also you're not going to let the division stop
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: you from acting. And I think that is the sweet
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: spot where he wants to be. I think that's where
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: he already is.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, we're basically pulling a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Rubio right now, which is suggesting Biden do something he's
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: already fucking doing.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: But I think there's a lot of misunderstanding because I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: think sometimes Biden left his own devices. We'll get into,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: you know, fantasies about like working with Mitch McConnell and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: sitting down with them. People think, oh, he's so naive.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: He thinks he's going to work with Mitch McConnell. And
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I think we both think that the likelihood of Republicans
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: cooperating with Biden is low. But part of this is
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: how you present yourself and your agenda to the country,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: to most voters who aren't paying attention to politics as
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: much as all the rest of us are. and making
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: sure that everyone knows you're trying to act on behalf
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: of the whole country and not just your party is
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: an important message to deliver, even if you use your
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: majority in the Senate and the House to just fucking
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: steamroll Republicans if they stand in the way, which he
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: also needs to do. And so it's like a nuanced thing,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: but I think, I guess what we're saying is like,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Biden is already there, but I think a lot of
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: people think he is in a more naive place than
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I think he really is.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: What is interesting about his comments is, His post-election comments
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: have been much more realistic about Republicans in line with
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: sort of the message you laid out than some of
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: his before-the-election comments about– and I mean obviously having the
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: other party, including Mitch McConnell, deny the legitimacy of your
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: election result and refuse to even refer to you as
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: president-elect for– more than a month probably could. If you
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: had any notions, you could be disabused of them with that.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I also believe like our view that we're talking about
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: here about how to talk about bipartisanship is based on
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: lessons we learned in 2009 and 2010. And Biden was
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: there for all of those lessons.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Well, because here's where the rubber meets the road on this.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Obama had that rhetoric down where he talked about sort
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: of bringing the country together more so than fixing- You know,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the divisions in Washington, though he did talk about the
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: divisions in Washington quite a bit.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: And bipartisanship. We were wrong.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: But his actions also, you know, a lot of the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: negotiations we had were slowed down because we were waiting
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: for some bipartisan support that never came. Max Baucus, how
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: long did the Democrat Max Senator from Montana, Max Baucus,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: wait on the Affordable Care Act legislation for some Republican
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: on the Senate Finance Committee to join and support the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: legislation when they were never going to support it? How
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: long did we delay the Affordable Care Act because we
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: were waiting for fucking Max Baucus to wait for a Republican?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Like Joe Biden shouldn't do that again. Shouldn't be waiting
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: for Republicans to come around, right? He's going to propose
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a package. This is going to happen, you know, in
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the coming weeks. He's going to propose a COVID relief package.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: He wants to hopefully get bipartisan support. Fine. He can say,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I want this to be bipartisan.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: If he doesn't get it or doesn't seem like he's
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: going to get it soon, don't wait around. Fucking pass
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the bill with Democratic votes.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: I have a high degree of confidence that that is
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: the approach Biden's going to take based on what he said,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: based on the people who are working for him in
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: the rooms with us. And the lesson, Obama said most
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: of the right things. And Max Baucus made us wait
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: longer than we would have waited on our own, for sure.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: But you sort of have to swerve out of your
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: lane to make it clear that bipartisanship is a two-way street.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: And you can only walk halfway. And then it is
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: up to Republicans to come the rest of the way.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: And if they don't, that is on them. And then
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: it is coming upon us to hold them accountable for
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: that and not let the media just say– Obama's leadership figure.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Biden failed. Biden couldn't bring the seditionists over to his side.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You got to push back. Like the key is
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: for all of us, everyone listening on this podcast to
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: push back on that notion because they want to hoist
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Biden on his own petard. Okay.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll have Dan's conversation with Stanford researcher,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Renee DiResta.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Renee DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at Stanford Internet
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: Observatory and an expert on the spread of misinformation online. Renee,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: I'm very interested to talk to you about, for a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: while now, but particularly after what happened last week, you
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: are someone who has studied the spread of misinformation, who
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: is very familiar with what's happening in the dark corners
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: of the internet. In this post-election period, in the run-up
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: to the insurrection of the Capitol, what did you see
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: on that you think was related to what happened last Wednesday?
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So first, just to start, it wasn't in the
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: dark corners of the internet, right? It was actually right
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: out there in the open. So we should talk about that,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: I think. For the question of when did it start,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: it's hard to pick a point. But I would say
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: that throughout the campaign, there was a coordinated effort to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: delegitimize the results of the election preemptively. So the president
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: and his supporters began laying the groundwork to claim that
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: the election had been stolen before election day happened. So
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: for months you had influencers, you had the president's preferred
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: sort of media sycophants, you had the president's surrogates regularly
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: out there saying, you know, pointing to any random incident
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: of a ballot being found somewhere saying, look, there's massive
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: voter fraud happening. tying isolated disparate incidents into a narrative
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: of overarching fraud. And then you had certain communities turn
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: those narratives into conspiracies by alleging not only was there fraud,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: but it was deeply coordinated fraud coming from the deep state,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: coming from the Democrats. And so this progression of incident
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: to narrative to conspiracy was was what people who occupy
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: particular highly homogenous echo chambers, that's all that they were seeing, right?
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: So when you are a member of one of these
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: echo chambers, the media that you trust is saying something,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: the institutional authorities that you trust are saying something, the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: president that you trust is saying something, there's a repetition
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: to it. And so over this period of months, people
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: came to believe in this idea that the election had
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: been stolen. Where things began to go really haywire, though,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: with regard to the events of January 6th specifically, was
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: that for some of these groups, there was then a
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: call to respond to that perceived theft, not only in
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: the form of a march and a protest, but in
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: the form of retribution, right? If you sincerely, deeply believe
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: that the election has been stolen from you, that your
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: vote has been invalidated, there was a lot of attempts
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: to kind of gin up responses from people who were
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: inclined to respond in the manner that we saw. There's
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: the mainstream Trump supporters, but then there are also these
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: highly conspiratorial and avowed militia and white supremacist groups that
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: were also at the vanguard of literally breaching the building
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: at that point.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: A lot of questions about that. When you say it's coordinated,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: do you think that There was actual coordination or was
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: people following the lead of the president? How do all
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: these people get on this singing off the same song
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: sheet so consistently?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: Well, that's a function of what is the media that
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: you're consuming, right? So the media and then we live
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: in a time where for some reason there's still this
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: idea that there's media and broadcast media and that there's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: social media and broadcast media and then that there's an
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: online and an offline reality. And that's not true. So media,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: social media is a channel within media. And it's not
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: only these people are not only getting their cues from
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: social media, they're seeing broadcasters that they appreciate. Tucker Carlson
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: had on a guest talking about how there is a
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: color revolution happening a month before the election.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: So they see this on their nightly news. Then they
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: talk about it in their social communities. There's a lot
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: of reinforcement that happens there. Newsmax and OAN are actively
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: promoted by the president. They're just repeating what Trump supporters
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: want to hear at that point. And so the entire
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: media and social environment that they're participating in is saying
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: the same thing. So it's not a, you know, back smoky,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: you know, smoky room, backroom coordinated kind of thing. It's
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: just that you're occupying a space. You're in the same community.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: And so there are different, we can call them factions,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: maybe different types of Trump supporters or different types of,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: you It actually isn't even unique to Trump supporters, just
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: different types of communities that are existing online and their
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: networks between them, members who are interested both in QAnon
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: and in MAGA, for example. Those are actually two distinct communities,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: but there's some overlap between them because there are some
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: people who are members of both. And so information is
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: being carried by people between those different communities. So this
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: is not the head of the Proud Boys is in
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: a Facebook group with grandma kind of dynamic. That's not
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: what I'm saying. It's that the information that they're receiving
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: is very much the same kind of information.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: And in American history, people have believed conspiracy theories long
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: before the internet. Right-wing militias were a part of the
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: political extreme in this country before the internet, Oklahoma City
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: bombing before the internet. How has the advent of social media, Facebook, Twitter,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: et cetera, the internet more broadly changed those dynamics? I'm
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: presuming it has made it worse, but maybe correct me.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: If I'm wrong. Well, there's some, there's some interesting dynamics,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: you know, we're focusing on the negatives, but one, one, this,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: this is the challenge of, um, you know, a tool
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: in somebody's hands as a, as a weapon in another
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: person's hands, right? They're, they're, um, So when you talk
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: about social media, the idea that we would bring people together,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: the idea that we would help people find people with
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: common interests independent of geography, for example.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: So you have then you've created an infrastructure for connection
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: where somebody who has a particular opinion can find other
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: people who have that particular opinion. Whether that's about knitting
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: or conspiracy theories, the infrastructure is the same. And so the, yes,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: there have been conspiracies, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda. I mean, all
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: of these things are centuries old phenomenon. What is different today,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: I would say, is the ability to make those connections, right?
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: And then the second thing that I think is really
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: fundamentally different is the affordances that social media has given anybody.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: And so it used to be that if you wanted
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: to get a message out, create a slogan, reach massive
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: numbers of people, you had to Do the very painstaking
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: work of kind of growing a mass movement over a
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: period of years, sometimes, whereas what happens on social media
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: is there's a. virality affordance right by clicking the share
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: button you yourself can personally participate in amplifying and spreading
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: a message there's a ability to coordinate so groups of people.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: in these online environments can facilitate that virality by saying, okay,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: everybody on this day, at this time, we're all going
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: to tweet the same thing, right? To try to dominate
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: share of voice in a particular conversation. So ordinary people
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: have the impact to shape the conversation today in a
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: way that was not true previously. And they have the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: ability to find others who are like them to participate
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: in this kind of factional activism process.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Renee, we read a lot of reports about how the algorithms,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: particularly at YouTube and Facebook, push people towards more extreme content.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: There was a report that Facebook's own research showed that
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: a high percentage of its users that joined extremist groups
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: did so because Facebook recommended those groups to them. Help
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: us understand how that process worked and what role it
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: may have played in the events of January 6th.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: At the Capitol.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So again, this goes back to the building and
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: bridging of those communities. So I'll use a specific example
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: from my own work. I got into this field of
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: research actually by studying the anti-vaccine movement and how they
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: were coordinating with other groups and using online infrastructure to
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: do it. And again, that's just, you know, you're entitled
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: to be an anti-vaccine activist. It's a freedom of expression question,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: you know, but What the platforms were doing that was
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: interesting is as these groups were starting in the kind
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: of capital G group sense of the word, let's use
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: Facebook as a particular example. The recommendation engine, when Facebook
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: began to prioritize groups and wanting more people on the
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: platform to engage with groups, this was a coordinated decision.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: This was a business decision made by Facebook to try
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: to encourage people to join groups. What it began to
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: do was have this recommendation engine that suggested that people
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: join specific groups. And that was a very personalized set
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: of suggestions based on the things that not only you
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: had engaged with previously, but people who were like you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: had engaged with previously. So that's called collaborative filtering. And
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: what it says is, if I have an interest and
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: someone who is statistically very similar to me has my interest,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: I might be interested in other things that they are
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: interested in. So using the example of the anti-vaxxers, what
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: the recommendation engine was showing them was Pizzagate groups, and
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: then QAnon groups. And that's because if you have a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: particular conspiratorial alignment, or you believe the government is covering
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: up one fact, you actually might be receptive to this
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: other community. And so what we started to see was
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: QAnon in particular, becoming a kind of omni-conspiracy because it
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: was being recommended to so many other different types of
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: people that had so many different types of conspiratorial sub-beliefs,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: if you will. So this is how you start to
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: see if you're interested in flat earth content, you might
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: like QAnon. If you're interested in anti-vaccine content, you might
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: like QAnon. If you're interested in anti-government content, you might
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: like QAnon. And so this is the way in which
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: just those correlations that the recommendation engine is keying off
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: of They're not wrong. And so these groups began to
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: grow in response to these proactive suggestions. So Facebook began
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: to recognize that this was a problem. And you started
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: to see, well, Facebook recognized apparently internally per that document
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: you're talking about in uh, 64% of the people who
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: were joining extreme groups were finding them by way of
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: the recommendation engine. So they knew that in 2016, in 2019,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: they began to take a kind of distinctive public policy, um,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: steps to say, we're going to remove certain kinds of content,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: certain kinds of groups from the recommendation engine to try to, uh,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: reduce the extent of that problem happening. The problem is
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: that by this point, those connections have been formed. And
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: just because the platform is now trying to reduce the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: supply of the content, it doesn't reduce the demand for
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: the content from the people who are already members of
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: those communities. And instead, they see that reduction in supply
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: as an act of censorship.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: So I'm glad you brought that up. You wrote a
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: article in the Atlantic right after the election that I
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: would recommend to everyone. I also found it fascinating, but
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: quite disturbing because you talk, as you mentioned here, there's
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: a two-sided problem to disinformation, conspiracy theories, et cetera, is
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: supply and demand. I will ask you in a minute
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: about policy responses to the supply problem, but what do
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: we do about the demand problem? As you say, people
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: are joining these groups because they're being recommended to them,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: but the recommendation is correct. This is something they actually
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: want to do. What could possibly be done to deal
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: with people's desire for these things? Or is the answer
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: actually reducing supply?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: People have desire for certain things that we do not
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: allow in society that are legally prohibited to reduce demand,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: at least on mass scale.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: There's some questions about, you know, over what time horizon,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: you know, certain platform interventions are effective. You know, this
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: is also not the first time we've had this conversation.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: In 2015, there were some questions about what do you
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: do about ISIS's presence on social media, right? The Obama
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: administration dealt with that. Um, just, you know, how do
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: we think about what to take down, what to leave
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: up or where certain types of, uh, you know, if
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: you've already created the demand for the content through the
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: repetition and the building of these communities, um, and then
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden. You remove that access or you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: dismantle the communities by kind of either kicking the users
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: off or disbanding the group. Um, that, that doesn't just
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: solve the problem. What I think is important to keep
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: in mind here, though, is that that's because the demand
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: is not a function of social media. Social media is
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: maybe the, you know, in this case, we can call
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: it maybe like a pusher almost. But there are kind
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: of deep-seated, very real concerns that people have. There's a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: loss of trust in media. There's a loss of trust
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: in institutions. There are kind of educational gaps related to
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: science and media literacy at this point in the kind
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: of the world that we live in today. There is
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: just so much underlying distrust and anger um and distrust
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: between uh you know people and their fellow citizens at
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: this point also and these are not things that you
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: fix through a social media moderation um you know paradigm
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: these are things that require deep interventions and i think
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: it's also important to note that while the content is
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: carried on social media this is where um Media, media,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: if you will, broadcast media, mass media, you know, have
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: a role to play. The articles that they write, the
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: way that they frame things, the transparency with which they
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: issue corrections is important. And then there's also institutional communications.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: Don't forget that some of the people who have been
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: pushing this idea that the election was stolen or, you know,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: kind of trying to think of a way to put it.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: The Ted Cruz's and Josh Hawley's with the, well, we
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: really just need to ask this question. You know, this
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: idea that the kind of disingenuous, well, I'm just asking
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: questions model of giving credence to a conspiracy rather than
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: telling the truth to these people and saying, no, there
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: is no vast evidence of election fraud and you may
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: be concerned about it, but it has not happened. It
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: did not happen. Instead, you have the, well, we're going to,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: you know, I serve my constituents and so I'm going
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: to air their grievances on the floor of the Senate.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: problem is that that's a kind of a tacit acknowledgement
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: or endorsement or, you know, framing of those concerns is
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: somehow legitimate. And that's just not what the evidence and
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: the facts have borne out. So you do have so
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: many different facets to the problem of how, who people
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: get their information from, how reliable it is, the extent
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: to which they trust it, and then the The willingness
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: to believe that all of these evil things have happened
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: is not a function of something someone saw once. It's
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: a gradual buildup over time.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: As the social media companies make decisions about what content
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: to not allow, what content to penalize, what content to
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: de-emphasize within the algorithm, some people are leaving the platform.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: We've been having this large conversation about since Twitter and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: Facebook banned Trump, everyone's going to Parler. And now, obviously,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: that's a much smaller community. I think I saw a
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: report there's 9 million people who have downloaded Parler compared
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: to the billions who are on Facebook. What is the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: impact of people moving off of the larger at-scale platforms
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: to the smaller, more potentially ideologically homogenous platforms like Parler?
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's always been.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: Message boards and communities that are ideologically homogenous, right? Any
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: given interest group, pick one, Google it, you'll find a
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: message board for it. And so that's not an inherently
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: disturbing or bad phenomenon. What's interesting about, first of all,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: this again is indicative of demand, right? People who believe
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: that the mainstream platforms are censoring them. Even if there's
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: no evidence to back that claim, as a lot of
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: the early influx to Parler in 2019 happened when Twitter
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: began to label the president's tweets. Not to take them down,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: not to prevent them from being amplified, even just to
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: put just a pending a fact check label was interpreted
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: by prominent conservative leaders. Again, let's just point to Ted
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: Cruz here as censorship. Follow me on Parler where I
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: can speak freely. So there was this kind of equivocation,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: this saying that a contextualization label all of a sudden
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: was being interpreted as evidence of censorship. So the demand
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: was perpetuated in some part by this grievance, this claim
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: that even a label was an affront to free speech.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: And so that was where some of the early demand
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: for Parler kind of came out of that. Then it
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: was increased by, in the days following the election, there
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: came to be a phrase, stop the steal. And you
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: may have heard people chanting it on January 6th. And
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: so this phrase, stop the steal, referred to the idea
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: that the election had been stolen. And there were some
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: groups that popped up on Facebook. And one of them
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: was started by Women for Trump, which is not an
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: extremist organization, but Women for Trump. And it amassed several
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand people in a span of about 36 hours.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: I think somewhere upwards of 300 and some odd thousand
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: people joined this Facebook group because they were convinced that
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: the election had been stolen. They were looking to form
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: a community around this. But some percentage of the people
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: who were in that group were using inflammatory and violent
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: rhetoric already, even just the morning after the election. And
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: so Facebook made the decision to take down the group.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: So that in turn became a, again, this, you know,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: folks have been hearing for a very, very long time
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: that social media platforms are biased against them. And so
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: this was seen as yet one more piece in that
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: ever an interior chain that the problem was not the
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: violent speech of that sub community, but that rather it
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: was Facebook trying to silence the voices alleging that the
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: election had been stolen. And so those people moved to Parler,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: where they could continue to talk about the election being
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: stolen over on Parler. But this is what I was
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: referring to kind of in the beginning of our conversation.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: The problem is not that homogenous groups of people form
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: communities online. The challenge is that Parler does not provide
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: any of the contextualization for any of the claims or
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: fact checks or anything like that, and instead believes that
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: people can go and and inform themselves. And that was
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: the belief on social platforms for years and years and
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: years that yes, somebody might see some fake news, but
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: they could then go and Google it and fact check
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: it for themselves. And that just was not what was
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: actually happening. And so belief in conspiracy theories and sharing
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: of conspiratorial content absent any of those fact checks or
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: labels or attempts to address what people were seeing, people
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: were not thoughtfully looking at a headline, reading the article,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: going to Google, evaluating the source, looking for counterfactual evidence
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: to dispute a wild claim to decide whether or not
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: to believe it. Instead, it was, I'm seeing this thing
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: that someone I like has shared, and therefore, I'm inclined
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: to believe it. I'm already primed to believe it. So
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: this is where you get to the idea of echo chambers.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: where there is no opposing voice. There is no marketplace
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: of ideas discussing the wild claims in an article and saying, hey,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: maybe this isn't true. It's just a very homogenous community
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: where no outside kind of counter evidence is going to
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: make its way into the conversation.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: For at least the last six or seven years of
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: my life, almost every universally every time I have watched
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: a focus group of undecided voters, and you hear someone
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: repeat some completely obvious false thing, the election was stolen,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama was born in Kenya, Joe Biden has dementia,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: things that just a brief visit to a newspaper or
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: CNN or whatever would tell you is not true. You
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: ask those people where they learned that information, and the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: answer is almost always Facebook.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: And I recognize that Facebook is in some ways just
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: a proxy for the internet writ large for a lot
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: of people. And then people like me yell, Mark Zuckerberg,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: Sheryl Sandberg, do better. Do you have a view of
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: what these social media platforms could do to, quote unquote,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: do better to stem the spread of misinformation and disinformation online?
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So two things. One, I think curation really matters, right?
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: That is, I think the, that is where this conversation
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: is going to go. What gets seen and when, and
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: there is, I think a misguided belief among people who
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: believe that the algorithms are viewpoint based that have viewpoint
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: based bias. When they say like, well, I didn't see
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: everything that my friends shared or my friends don't see
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: all my posts, ergo, the algorithm is biased against me. No,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: I think people have to understand how algorithmic curation works
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: and And then the platforms responsible for it have to
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: be both more transparent in how it's happening, but also
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: there has to be a lot more attention paid to
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: what is proactively pushed to people. Because that is where
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: it's not, with the formation of things like QAnon, the
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: cross-pollination into other communities, people weren't looking for that content.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: It was being sent to them. And that's a very
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: different thing. So I think sorting out our understanding of
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: how to curate ethically and responsibly so that good information
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: rises to the top is important. And, you know, what
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: the definition of good is even is debatable at this point.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: I think the other challenge, though, is the platform moderation
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: is also quite opaque. And it has a, you know,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: many people feel that it's quite subjectively applied.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: And I.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: Facebook has the ability to do things like temporarily throttling
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: content that is going viral to give a fact check
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: or contextualization time to happen. What we've seen instead is
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: oftentimes it will go viral and then it will come down.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: And that perpetuates the idea of censorship. So rather than
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: allowing it to stay with an appropriate contextualization and kind
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: of a framework around it that puts, you know, that
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: helps people make that decision about whether or not to
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: trust this as a reliable information right there on the
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: platform where they're seeing it at the same time that
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: they are seeing it. That's where I think we need
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: to be going with moderation, not takedowns after 8 million
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: people have seen something because there's a public outcry against it.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: That looks very reactive. And I think that that turns
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: whatever the content was into some kind of forbidden knowledge
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: and in some ways makes it more appealing.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: And this will be my last question. I'll let you
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: get back to your day. But given what you just
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: said there, do you think it was then an error
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: by the social media companies to ban Trump in the
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: sense that it will foment more of the idea of
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: censorship and less trust in the platforms? Or was it
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: a necessary step given some of the dangers?
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: I think there was a very significant trade-off in that
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: moment based on the events of the 6th. So I
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: watched the live stream as that was happening. And one
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: of the things that I recall happening was that when
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: the president made his speech, there were people in the crowd,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: literally at the doors. I was watching a live stream
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: that someone was sending from the doors. Somebody came over
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: with a video and said, Trump wants us to go home.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: Trump wants us to go home. And there was this...
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: some percentage of the people were like, okay, you know, the,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: the commander in chief has given us our order. It's
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: time for us to disperse. And then there was a smaller,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: much smaller community that said, well, I'm not here for Trump,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm here for, and then whatever the, the,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: the sort of more extreme elements who decided they were
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: going to continue to stay and keep trying to, you know,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: bang on the doors and get in the building. But
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: there was this you know, you sort of watched it
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: play out this, people were, they felt that they were
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: taking marching orders. And so the potential for additional incitement
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: in that moment at that time was what ultimately made
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: that determination. And so the, you know, Jack Dorsey put
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: out a thread about the permanent ban last night where,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: you know, they expressed how they felt that it was
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: a very unprecedented thing to do. But at the same time,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: I feel like the decision in that moment at that time,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: and it remains to be seen if Facebook allows the
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: president back on after President Biden is inaugurated, President-elect Biden,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: that's what I think the question becomes, should the ban
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: be permanent? In the immediate term, I think it was
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: absolutely the right call, largely because of the incitement and
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: ongoing violence.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: Rene, thank you so much. I could talk about this
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: with you for Literally days. Super fascinating. Quite alarming in
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways. And thank you for being with
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: us on Pod Save America.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Renee for joining us today. And everyone have
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: a good weekend. And again, we will have another pod
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday. We'll be doing some fun stuff for the
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: inauguration on Wednesday. And then we'll have another pod on Thursday.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: So we'll see you then.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: every week.