Latest / Pod Save America / “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*cked.”

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“This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*cked.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: In just a bit, we'll talk to Politico's Natasha Bertrand
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: about the Mueller report, which is now out, and we'll
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: talk about what comes next. We're also going to talk
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: today about whether the Democratic presidential candidate should be appearing
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: on Fox News, Bernie Sanders opening salvo against the Democratic establishment,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and then later you'll hear the interview we recorded last
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: week with Chelsea Handler, who has a brand new book
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that's already a New York Times bestseller. Speaking of new books,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: our friend Adi Barkin, one of the most inspiring humans
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on the planet. has written one called Eyes to the Wind,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance. It'll
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: be out this September, but you can pre-order it now,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: so please do so. I can't wait to read that book.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I pre-ordered my copy last night.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Me too, me too.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I'm also prematurely crying over it, because I already know
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: the impact it's going to have on me.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I feel the same way. And don't miss
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Pod Save the World this week. Tommy and Ben talk
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: about the arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and what we
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: know about Bernie Sanders' foreign policy worldview. Finally, we have
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: two new 2020 candidate interviews out as bonus pods this week.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Dan talked to Governor Jay Inslee when we were up
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: in New Hampshire over the weekend, and I spoke to
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Senator Kamala Harris here in Los Angeles. Great interviews. Check
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: them out. We're just rolling through these candidate interviews. Of course,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: now we've got like 500 left, maybe.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: All right, on to the news. A lightly redacted version.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much work the word lightly is
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: doing there. A lightly redacted version of special counsel Robert
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Mueller's report about his investigation into Donald Trump and his
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: campaign has finally, finally been made public after weeks of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: waiting in one last press conference from Attorney General William Barr.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And here to walk us through all the revelations and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: answer all our questions is the brilliant Natasha Bertrand of Politico,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: who's been covering this story from the beginning. Natasha, welcome
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to the pod. Is this the full exoneration we were promised?
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. You know, it's interesting because
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: there's clearly, and I'm still reading through it, and I
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: don't want to pretend to have fully digested all of it,
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: but it's interesting just how many people contacts there were
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: between the campaign and the Russians that we didn't actually
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: even know about that are outlined in this report in
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: volume one, which is the collusion and conspiracy aspect of
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: the report, but which did not apparently, according to Mueller Rice,
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: the level of a criminal conspiracy because there wasn't that
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: kind of, you know, smoking gun agreement to coordinate to
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: win the election. But, you know, that didn't stop the
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Russians from trying. And there's a bunch of new stuff
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: in here about how you know, Vladimir Putin kind of
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: enlisted his oligarchs to, you know, reach out to the
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: campaign and the transition team after the election and how
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: he was very, very eager to establish this kind of
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: direct line of contact with them as soon as possible.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: And then, you know, with regard to the obstruction aspect
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: of this, I also haven't gotten a chance to read
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: through it fully, but it looks like, you know, Mueller's
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: decision was based at least in part on on a
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: decision by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: of Justice, the policy that says they can't indict a
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: sitting president, and there's a line in there that says
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: that it wouldn't have been fair for them to make
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: a decision when you can't bring a charge anyway. I'm
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: just going to point out that that seems to be
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: in direct contrast and conflict with what Barr said during
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: his press conference today, which is that the OLC policy
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: did not factor into Mueller's decision to kind of punt
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: on that question. It appears as though it actually did.
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: And also a lot of really interesting stuff in here
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: about what Don McGahn told the special counsel and how
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: angry Trump was when Mueller was actually appointed.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So I want to dig into all of the obstruction
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: part of the report in a bit, but just back
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: to the conspiracy and collusion part, what were the biggest
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: takeaways for you in terms of the 108 pages in
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the report that described contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: What sort of stuck out at you as new that
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you hadn't really known about before?
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: So, you know, this portion of the report was kind
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: of frustrating because in many instances, Mueller would kind of
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: lay out what witnesses had told him and what the
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: president had said in his written answers, but would not
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: himself draw a conclusion as to whether or not those
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: testimonies were reliable or verifiable. So, for example, you know,
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: there he went through the Trump Tower meeting stuff and
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: he said that, you know, Mueller, that Trump and his
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: he had not necessarily had told the office that he
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: did not know that his kids and his campaign chairman
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: were going to meet with Veselnitskaya and the Russians to
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: get this dirt on Hillary Clinton, but that the office
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: really wasn't able to determine either way whether or not
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: Trump was aware of it. They're just kind of going
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: off of his word there. But But yeah, I mean,
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of other stuff in here,
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: like the fact that AlphaBank's co-founder was enlisted by Putin
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: to reach out to the Trump transition directly in order
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: to halt the U.S. from putting more sanctions on Russia
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: and to kind of establish this better relationship with the
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: campaign and with the incoming administration, which is interesting because,
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: of course, as we all know, there's this weird connection
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: between the Alpha Bank server and the Trump Organization server
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: that's never actually been fully explained. And that is also
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: not really, Mueller doesn't go into the Alpha Bank server
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: stuff in this report, from what I can tell. So,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: you know, that's kind of an interesting role for Alpha there.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: And then, of course, there's also a whole lot of
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: stuff about the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, who
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: reached out to the campaign via various contacts and tried
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: especially hard to get in touch with Jared Kushner and
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump Jr. to facilitate these kind of backdoor channels.
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: Mueller reaffirmed that Kushner wanted to set up a back
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: channel using Russian embassy facilities to talk about Syria. And
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: then another interesting thing that Mueller apparently discovered was about
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: the infamous PJs, which is that apparently... Michael Cohen was
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: told that the tape and any other kind of tapes
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: that might exist of compromising information of Trump were fake,
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: and that he had, you know, an associate over there
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: had effectively stopped those tapes from being disseminated to the
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: media and, you know, more widely. So a couple of
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: interesting things in there. But overall, this is a lot
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: of what we already knew. And again, it's a little
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: bit frustrating because Mueller doesn't actually draw a lot of
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: independent conclusions, including about the Ukraine platform change at the
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: RNC convention, which he says, look, you know, J.D. Gordon
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: told us this. This other person told us this. We
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: didn't find any evidence that it was directed by Russia
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: or directed by Trump directly. But, you know, we still
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: don't really know why this action was taken.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Natasha, there was another element of the Trump movement. team's
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: efforts to collude, I guess, or to participate in a
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: conspiracy that they failed to participate in, where it talks
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: about Trump directing Michael Flynn to try to get Hillary's
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: emails and talks about Trump directing, or Flynn reaching out
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: to two people, Peter Smith, which we sort of knew
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: about from public reporting, and this Grassley staffer named Barbara Ledeen,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: And ultimately, that seems like a pretty big bombshell to me.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: What was your reaction to that revelation in the report?
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're totally right. I totally left that out by accident.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: That's a huge one. That's absolutely massive. You know, I
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: guess it's not necessarily a surprise that the president wanted
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: to find Clinton's emails. He had made that pretty clear.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: But the fact that he actually directed Michael Flynn to
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: do it kind of connects a lot of dots that
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: we hadn't known about before. We were trying to kind
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: of figure out Peter Smith's relationship with Michael Flynn and
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: and we could never determine what kind of communication they
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: had with regard to the Clinton email search. But now
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: we know that it was actually a direct request from
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: Flynn to Peter Smith to keep doing this project, because
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: it's not that Peter Smith initiated the search on Michael
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: Flynn's request, because he had apparently been looking for the
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: emails from December of 2015. And that itself is notable,
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: because that is around the time that that Russia started to,
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: you know, hack into the DMC. It's when, you know,
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: the Russians were kind of preparing to release the stolen
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: emails and figuring out how they were going to disseminate them.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: So all this was kind of happening simultaneously. And I think,
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: you know, when you think about whether or not a
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: crime was committed here, the only saving grace, it seems like,
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: was that Peter Smith was a little bit incompetent. He
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: really wanted to, you know, connect with the Russian hackers
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: and He told a cybersecurity researcher named Matt Tate that,
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: you know, he really didn't have any, you know, objection
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: to connecting with dark web hackers, even if they were Russian,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: because he just wanted to find the email. So that
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: had happened. And, you know, if Peter Smith at the
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: directorial of someone on the campaign was effectively helping and
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: encouraging the Russians to hack the Democrats, then that would
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: have been a very serious crime. But because Mueller was
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: never able to, because Mueller was able to establish that
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: he never actually made that contact, it appears as though
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: they were kind of let off the hook.
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: On this one.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem like in quite a few places,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the behavior of Trump and his campaign sort of walked
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: right up to the edge of criminality and might have
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: gone over that edge were it not for either people
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: deleting communications via secure communications channels like WhatsApp or Signal
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: or their own sort of bumbling incompetence, like you just said.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I thought it was very interesting about the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: famous Trump Tower meeting and they talked about, like, you know,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: a big question has been why wasn't Don Jr. indicted? Basically,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Mueller says, the government would unlikely to be able to
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9th meeting
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful. The
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: investigation has not developed evidence that the participants in the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: meeting were familiar with the foreign contribution ban or the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: application of federal law to the relevant factual context. So
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I guess that means that if Don Jr. and company
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: didn't know that what they were doing was possibly committing
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: a crime, then they didn't commit the crime?
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: Right. And this is one of these weird areas, I think,
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: and Ryan Goodman of NYU was saying this also, which
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: is that campaign finance law is one of those weird
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: areas of the law where ignorance of the law actually
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: is kind of an excuse. And it's, you know, again,
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: the fact that they were so unfamiliar with the machinations
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: of how to run a campaign and And, you know,
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: the ins and outs of campaign finance regulations really, I guess,
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: does seem to have saved them here because it's very
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: clear that they were prepared to accept, you know, a
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: foreign contribution to the campaign that would have been very
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: valuable to them. I mean, if they had been given
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: anything of use by the Russians with regard to Hillary Clinton,
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: then this whole scenario would have turned out very differently,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Natasha, I'm I wanted to, you know, the last time
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: you were on the podcast was right around the time
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: of Barr's confirmation. And now, you know, he's been confirmed.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: He had this press conference today. I wanted to get
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: your reaction to his performance. What was surprising to you?
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Was there stuff that was troubling? It was unique, to
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: say the least.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. That's a generous way to put it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I'm so generous.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: So I'll just say what I've heard from, you know,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: former DOJ officials and legal experts and people on both
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: sides of the aisle who watch this, which is that
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: it was striking to them in the first instance how
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: often Barr used the president's language, like verbatim language, to
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: describe what he considered to be the top line findings
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: of Mueller's report, which is no collusion. You know, he
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: said that many, many times. And he completely neglected to
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: mention any of the many, many Americans who were indicted
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: as a result of this investigation. I mean, if you
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: had been just listening to his press conference and had
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: not been following anything that had happened in the last
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: two years, you wouldn't even know that the president's campaign chairman,
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: deputy campaign chairman, national security advisor, personal lawyer, were all
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: indicted as a result of this investigation. His you know,
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: his categorical statement that there was no collusion, for example,
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: by the campaign completely leaves out the myriad, you know,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: inappropriate contacts that members of his campaign did have with Russians,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: maybe not Russian government officials, but certainly with Russia-linked nationals.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: That's something that you would never know if you had
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: just gotten Barr's version of this and not been able
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: to read the report yourself. You would have never known,
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: you know, that Putin was enlisting his oligarchs to reach
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: out to the transition team and try to establish these
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: back-channel lines of communication to an administration that was very
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: naive and very susceptible to any kind of influence, let
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: alone foreign influence from a country that the president was
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: already very sympathetic to. So, you know, it was clear,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: very clear to the experts, I'll say, that were listening
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: to this, that the main purpose of it was to
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: set the narrative. I think that's very obvious. And to
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: create this kind of PR spin and create an environment
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: where the report might land on a softer cushion. I
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: don't think it's had the intended effect on people who
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: have been able to and who have wanted to read
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: the full report. But, you know, it certainly created headlines
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: for a couple hours. And I think that's what ultimately
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: they were trying to do. But again, you know, this
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: is the Attorney General of the United States. This is
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: not the President's personal attorney. And one former FBI official
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: who left the FBI in 2017 told me any reason
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: to give him the benefit of the doubt has now
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: completely evaporated.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, before Barr's letter ever came out, it
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: seemed like legal experts, the majority of legal experts said,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: here's the deal. you know, Department of Justice guidelines say
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: that you can't indict a sitting president. So if Mueller
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: really finds all this evidence of obstruction, what he's going
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to say or what he's going to try to communicate is,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: this is up to Congress. This is why you have
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: impeachment proceedings, because it's Congress's job to hold the president
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: accountable while in office, because a sitting president can't be indicted.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Isn't that essentially almost exactly what Mueller says in this report?
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And, you know, I also think that,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: The idea that Barr would just go ahead and clear
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: the president of obstruction on this one was obviously a
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: very deliberate move. There is no reason why he should
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: have been involved in that decision. But then again, you
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: have to— no legitimate reason why he should have been involved,
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: knowing the kind of public pressure that this report and
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: the investigation was under and the scrutiny it was under.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: But that being said— the regulations are kind of what
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: they're confined to at this point. So the special counsel
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: regulations were a complete overcorrection from the star era. Right. Right. And,
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: and so what you have now is, is the special
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: counsel is directly accountable to the attorney general and the
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: attorney general, if he wanted to, didn't even have to
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: release the report at all. Now, that would have been
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: politically completely unacceptable, and there would have been a lot
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: of hell to pay if he hadn't released it to Congress,
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: at least. But they are kind of a victim to
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: the regulations, which do not provide a mechanism by which
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: Mueller could go directly to Congress, if that is indeed
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: what his recommendation is. It was clear in the report
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: that he did intend for Congress to make this final determination.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: But the regulations stipulate that he has to go through
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: the Attorney General. And if the Attorney General, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: considers himself to be an arbiter in this, which Bill
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: Barr obviously does, perhaps to an excessive extent, then it's
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: really up to him to make these decisions. So I
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: think maybe what we'll see after this whole thing is
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: over is maybe a tweaking of the special counsel regulations
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: to deal with this problem, because we went from one
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: extreme in the Starr era to another, it seems.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: As you go on and do your reporting, what are
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the big questions you still have that you're going to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: be tracking down answers to?
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: So, you know, I'm still really interested in, you know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: why exactly Mueller decided not to answer this question. I
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: think that we still don't really know why he, because
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: we're getting two different answers, right? So Barr said that
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: he did not rely on the OLC opinion. Mueller says
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: that he wanted Congress maybe to look at it, but
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: we still don't really know what the deliberations were like
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: internally about the obstruction question. You know, another question I
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: would like answered is how the Mueller team has been
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: viewing all of this and whether or not they were
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: even told about this press conference this morning beforehand, how
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: they have viewed the rollout of a report they worked
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: on for two years. And then, you know, just Just
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: going back to the collusion aspect of the report, why
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: none of this rose to the level of a criminal conspiracy?
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: I don't think that that is particularly well laid out,
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: especially because we still haven't gotten to the Roger Stone trial,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: which is going to reveal perhaps a lot about the
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: potential coordination that went on between the campaign and WikiLeaks
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: and potentially even Russia. So why... What is the rationale
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: behind that? Why did he end the investigation when he did?
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: I don't think we've gotten a good answer to that either,
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: especially because of so many outstanding things, including Rick Gates' cooperation.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: So it's a lot of things that need to be
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: farmed out a bit, but those are the biggest ones
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: for me, is just the rationale underlying some of these
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: decisions in greater detail, and also what the Mueller team's
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: reaction has been watching Barr spin this the way he has.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Natasha, one last question for you. It's indicated in the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: report that Mueller's team made a number of referrals to
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: other elements of the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. We
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: know of only a handful of those. Do you have
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: any indication from your sources what else we should be
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: looking for for future indictments or charges to come out
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: of this?
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: Report?
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: No.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, all we know right now is what's been
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: publicly reported, but that's a really good question. I think
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: that we have yet to see just how much he
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: has farmed out from this investigation, especially because there could
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: very well be you know, additional field indictments, not from Mueller, apparently, but,
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: you know, out of the Southern District of New York
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: or in Washington, D.C., stemming from things that Mueller did
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: hand off. I think the Trump inaugural committee investigation is
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: going to be a really big one. Obviously, the Roger
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: Stone trial is going to reveal a lot. But, you know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: maybe some of these unanswered questions that we all have
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: are going to be resolved by the U.S. attorney's offices
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: in various parts of the country. And we also have
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: to remember that there might still be an ongoing counterintelligence investigation.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: And that could be the reason why some of these
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: people haven't been charged, because to do so could disrupt
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: that ongoing investigation. So I think there's a lot more
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: to come on this. I think this is definitely a
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: good start to understanding what happened. But there are still
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: so many threats that need to be pulled.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Natasha, thank you so much for joining us. And we
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: very much look forward to all your continued reporting on
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: this issue.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Dan, I want to get your
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: take on your multiple takes on everything that's happened this morning.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I do want to start with Trump's quote upon learning
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of muller's appointment which is exists in this report which
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: is my favorite quote of the day oh my god
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: this is terrible this is the end of my presidency
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: i'm fucked does that does that sound like the musings
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: of an innocent man yes Yes, it does.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I saw that quote. I think he might even have
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: texted a tweet with that quote in it. And I
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: was sure it was bullshit. I thought it was like
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: onion joke. So I had to quickly start scanning to
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: see that, yes, in fact, it was real. And I
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: think it is A, funny, B, an indication of guilt,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: but also is sort of a Rosetta Stone to understand
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: everything that unfolded afterwards, which is even if in Trump's,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: and we've talked about this a little bit before, but
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: if even in Trump's mind, he believed he was innocent
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: of collusion or conspiracy to defraud the electorate, or however
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: you want to think about what was encapsulated in volume
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: one of the Mueller report, Trump knew that he had
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: been living crime adjacent his entire life. And if you
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: had a super cop like Bob Mueller on your case,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: he was going to uncover all kinds of things, which
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: is why he was willing to engage multiple times in
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: what was obstruction of justice. And that sort of helps
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: us under, it explains what Trump did. It explains how
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: he's been acting from the beginning and says that there's
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: a lot more, there are a lot more threads to
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: pull here as we, as Congress and the American public
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: digest the specifics of the obstruction case against the president.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, let's start with, um,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the collusion conspiracy chapter, right? And so basically Mueller lays
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: out in the report, and this is a quote from
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the report, in sum, the investigation established multiple links between
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the campaign.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: In some instances, the campaign was receptive to the offer,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: while in other instances, the campaign officials shied away. So
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: basically what Mueller lays out in 108 pages, as we said,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, is that
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: multiple times, Russia knew that they were interfering with the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: election to try to elect Donald Trump, and they thought
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: they would reach out to the Trump campaign to see
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: if they wanted more assistance to win. And the Trump
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: campaign multiple times said, yes, give us the assistance, we
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: want to win. But because there was no criminal, because
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: there wasn't an explicit conspiracy against um, between the Trump
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: campaign and the Russians that said, Hey, um, let's work
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: together on this and let's see that to fruition. Um, that,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: you know, Mueller didn't charge anyone with an actual criminal conspiracy.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And also we should say, by the way, that Mueller
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: lays out in the report that what we've been talking
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: about forever, which is this word collusion is sort of bullshit.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Like he basically says, you hear this on TV, you
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: hear the president's people talking about it. It's not really
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a term. What I'm talking about here is conspiracy as
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it is defined legally and sort of cooperation, which is
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: a tacit agreement between multiple parties to sort of commit
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a crime together. And because there weren't those tacit agreements
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: or because Mueller didn't find sufficient evidence to prove beyond
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt that conspiracy, that's why, you know, Don Jr.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and some of these other goobers weren't actually charged. Was
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: that sort of your take on the whole conspiracy part?
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, ultimately, if one day in time, there is
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: a Trump library somewhere engraved on the side of will
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: be saved by his own stupidity, because these people tried
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: to commit multiple crimes. They knew Russia was interfering with
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: the election. They knew Russia was doing so to help Trump.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: They wanted to take advantage of that help. They were
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: just too stupid to commit the actual crime that Mueller
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: felt he could charge. And that's incredibly important because we've
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: talked about this for so long. Collusion is a fake word.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean anything. The president really sort of shifted
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the Overton window on this and the press fell for
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: it hook, line, and sinker. This idea that the only crimes,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the only way in which Trump could be found of
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: any wrongdoing would be if he could be found of
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the ultimate wrongdoing, which was In an always improbable case
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: where there was some explicit agreement between Trump and Russia
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: to steal the election, which was never going to happen
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: because Trump doesn't have the capacity to engage in such
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: a complicated conspiracy. But they were engaged in wrongdoing throughout
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the process. And this report is very bad for Trump.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Whether that will lead to political accountability is a conversation
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: we'll have later in the pod. But it lays out
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of wrongdoing. a lot of lying on Trump
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: and his associates. And we should not, this is not,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: they're not innocent of anything. They colluded all over the place.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: They just were incapable of maximizing their collusion to the
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: point of crime.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the president tried to cheat to win
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the election. He tried on multiple occasions to access stolen
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: documents from his opponent. He wanted those emails. He tried
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: multiple ways to get them. The report lays out, um, the,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: President of the United States ordered Michael Flynn to find
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the deleted Clinton emails. Michael Flynn then contacted Peter Smith,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: who has ended up dead since then. And then Peter
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Smith put together a whole plan about how they were
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: going to try to contact foreign intelligence services, not just Russia,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: but China, Iran, other foreign powers, to try to find
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: these deleted emails. But, you know, it never went anywhere
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: because Peter Smith was kind of a bumbling idiot and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: didn't know how to do it. But Trump wanted those emails. Trump,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: as we all know, said, Russia, if you're listening, find
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's emails. And then Mueller says in this report,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: five hours after Trump did that, said that to the public,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: was the first time that Russian military intelligence hackers hacked
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: into or tried to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails. So
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: we know from this report that Donald Trump wanted stolen
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: documents from his opponents so he could win the election,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: and he knew that getting those stolen documents involved, working
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: with a foreign power that he also knew was trying
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: to interfere with our election. We know this. It's all
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: laid out in Robert Mueller's report here.
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: It's unbelievable.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's truly, I mean, Brian Fallon, former
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton spokesperson from the 2016 campaign, made this point,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: which I think is important, which is, if there had
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: not been really good reporting... from the Washington Post, New
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: York Times, CNN, others over the last two and a
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: half years here, as well as congressional oversight, that if
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: we had learned everything in this report for the first
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: time today, as opposed to a slow drip, if there
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: had been no information and all of a sudden this
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: report comes out, 400-some pages just detailing a massive amount
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: of wrongdoing, whether it reaches a criminal standard or not
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: is an open question, but wrongdoing, lying about wrongdoing, it
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: would be a political earthquake like we've never seen before.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: What happened in this report goes well beyond what came
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: out in Watergate. Well beyond.
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, in addition to trying to find the emails
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: on the front end, Mueller also found that the president
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: himself and his campaign knew that the stolen DNC emails
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: were going to be released before they were actually released.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: They put together a press plan to capitalize off of it.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Trump was in contact with members of his campaign and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Roger Stone. Of course, all the Roger Stone stuff is
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: redacted because that trial is still to come. But it's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: pretty clear that Trump was involved and Trump knew that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: WikiLeaks was going to disseminate these emails. And the campaign
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: was basically putting a plan to help coordinate and disseminate
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: those emails. now the reason so you might say like
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: why weren't any of them charged with this well the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: problem is is WikiLeaks as the intermediary here right so
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Russian hackers stole the emails they committed the crime that's
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the hack right then they gave those emails to WikiLeaks
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to publish WikiLeaks publishing those emails is not itself a crime.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: This is partly under press protections. This has to do
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: with the whole Assange thing that we just saw happen
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: last week too, right? Like if you, you know, WikiLeaks
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: is an organization publishing documents that just happened to be stolen,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: not necessarily a crime. And then the Trump campaign working
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: with WikiLeaks to then disseminate those stolen documents and to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: have a press plan around how they could capitalize off
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: of it and win the campaign, not necessarily a crime,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: but still pretty fucking bad.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Right?
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Like, it doesn't need to be a crime.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: It is not great. And this is, I think there
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: are a couple important points about this, which one is
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: that this is the president of the United States.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: And he, we have to hold him to a higher
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: standard than just the average criminal defendant. There should be
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: political accountability here. for activity that is obviously wrongdoing, but
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: it simply does not meet the threshold for being charged
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: because of technicalities. That's what this is. It's not that
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: this report did not find that Trump in his campaign
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: did not do bad things. It found out that the
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: bad things they did were not done in the exact
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: way in which you would charge a crime. There's a
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: difference between not being charged and being innocent. And this
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: is not a declaration of innocence of Trump or anyone
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: around him. It's an explication in great detail of how
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: they are guilty of trying to cheat to win the election,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: as you put it. That's exactly what they did. Now,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Bob Mueller made a conclusion that the way in which
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: they did it did not meet the technical definitions of
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: a crime, but that doesn't change how both the public, Congress,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and history should render judgment on what happened.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And by the way, this wasn't just cheating and garden
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: variety corruption with people within the United States, like shady
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: characters who want to help Trump win the election. It's
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: not just that kind of cheating. There was a foreign
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: power that attacked our election, right? This is like disloyalty
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: to the United States. And to think back now to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the fucking Helsinki press conference, when Donald Trump is standing
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: next to Vladimir Putin and denies... What's in this report
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: stated as a fact over and over again with a
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: ton of evidence that the Russians hacked into our election
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: denies the fact that Russia ever interfered with our election,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: denies the conclusions of American intelligence, of the American law
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: enforcement and sides with Vladimir Putin in front of the
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: whole world. And all these fucking Republicans now are like, oh,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: all these Democrats who call Donald Trump a traitor or
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: disloyal or all this kind of thing, they owe him
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: an apology. No, it's fucking disloyal to the United States
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: how Donald Trump and his campaign acted throughout the 2016 election.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: The other thing that I did, you mentioned this, I
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: thought was really notable, was that the Trump campaign created
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: a communications plan around maximizing the disclosure of the hacked
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Clinton and DNC emails. And that is notable because this
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: collection of JV Republican staffers and Fox Green Room rejects
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: have not written a plan in their entire lives. The
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: fact that they actually wrote a plan for this is
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: notable for how serious they took it and what an
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: opportunity they saw it was. This wasn't like on a
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: whiteboard with like infrastructure week and our plan to roll
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: out our childcare policy. The only this is the only
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: thing they had a plan on the entire campaign. The
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: rest of it was a bunch of ass backwards freelancing.
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: So now to move on to the obstruction part of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the report. I do think and you mentioned this, the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: paragraph that sort of sums it up here is, you know,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: they talk about the firing of Comey. And the report
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: says the evidence does not establish the termination of Comey
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: was designed to cover up a conspiracy between the Trump
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: campaign and Russia. And we know that to be true
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: because Mueller did not find enough evidence to establish the conspiracy.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He did not indict anyone based on that conspiracy. But
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: then the report goes on to say, but the evidence
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: about the campaign and the president personally that the president
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: could have understood to be crimes or that would give
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: rise to personal and political concerns. So right there, Bob
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Mueller is saying that is the motive behind to obstruct
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: justice that Trump had. So this whole idea that fucking
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: William Barr, when he wrote the four-page letter, said, you know,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Trump couldn't possibly have obstructed justice because there was no
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: underlying crime related to collusion. Well, yeah, that's not the point.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Trump obstructed justice because Trump was worried, as you said,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that Mueller was going to uncover his other crimes. And
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: guess what? Mueller did uncover his other crimes, and so
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: did SDNY, because when he referred the Cohen case To SDNY,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: he found that Michael Cohen committed a crime in relation
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to the hush money payments and that Donald Trump was
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: implicated in that crime as an unindicted co-conspirator. So it's
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: like there was, of course, a corrupt intent to obstruct
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the investigation. Donald Trump was worried that Mueller would find
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: all these other crimes. And guess what they did?
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Long before he was president of the United States, Donald
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Trump was mayor of Crime Town. Because he has been,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: whether it is the tax fraud uncovered by the New
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: York Times, the hush money payments uncovered by SDNY, Trump University,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: rampant fraud, corruption, payoffs, things that happen in Atlantic City,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: all across the board, he had a massive amount of
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: criminal exposure. And he acted just like that and has
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: continued to act just like that. And he has had
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Bill Barr as his willing enabler for the last couple
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: months here.
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, Mueller goes on to list 10
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: different instances of obstruction, everything from, you know, firing Comey.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: You know, the president directed White House counsel Don McGahn
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to fire Mueller and then told him to deny that
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: he directed him to fire Mueller. And that says McGahn then, quote,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: called his lawyer, drove to the White House, packed up
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: his office and prepared to submit his resignation letter and
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: told then chief of staff Reince Priebus that, that the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: president was asking him to do crazy shit.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the McGann thing is really interesting
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: on a couple of levels, because one, that's a fucking crime. Two,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: for the president to instruct a subordinate to lie, which
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: McGann did not do, but the mere instruction to lie
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: is obstruction, and that is something that is one of
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: the reasons I believe that it was pretty clear that
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Mueller was unwilling to To quote unquote exonerate Trump from this.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: But there's also something that McGahn is just like a
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: fucking metaphor for the Republican Party right now, which is
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the president of the United States instructs him to commit
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: a crime and to do something that McGahn believes would
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: be an impeachable offense for the president. He drives to
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: the White House, packs up his stuff, says he's going
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: to resign. Does he resign?
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: No.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: He was instructed to commit a crime on a Saturday
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: and he went to work on a Monday and stayed
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: in the job for another fucking year because he thought
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: it was a great way to put judges on the
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: bench who would rule in favor of corporations and overturn
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Roe v.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Wade.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: So they're willing to hang out with criminals, willing to
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: cover up crimes as long as you get to do
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: your conservative shit. And that is the Republican Party's in
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: the Trump era and why we have a problem that
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: goes long beyond after the individual one leaves the stage.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: So basically, you know, Robert Mueller gives us a motive
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: and a corrupt intent for Trump to obstruct justice because
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: he's worried that this investigation will produce more evidence of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: other crimes that he may have committed or things that
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: will be personally embarrassing to him. So he's got the motive.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And then Mueller goes on in great detail to list
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: 10 different instances where the president of the United States
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: ordered his aides to obstruct justice, tried to obstruct justice himself.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And because the aides refused to carry out his orders,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Mueller basically says that's why Trump's aides weren't indicted on
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: obstruction of justice, because they refused. But he doesn't say
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: that that's why Trump is scot-free, because telling someone to
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: obstruct justice is still a crime. So he has all
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: this evidence of crime and of obstruction of justice. And
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: then now we get to the point where we think
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: about this fucking letter from Attorney General Barr a couple
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: weeks ago that exonerates the president of obstruction of justice
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: because he says, you know, oh, Bob Mueller just couldn't
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: really make a determination on this either way. So I
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: decided to step in and say that he's exonerated. Well,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it turns out that's not what Bob Mueller did at all.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: You know, Ari Mulber in a couple of tweets put
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: this pretty succinctly. He said Barr was wrong. Mueller report
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: states DOJ rules don't allow indicting president. So his policy,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the Mueller probe avoided any approach that would quote result
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: in a judgment. The president committed crimes. Mueller explicitly says
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: as a matter of DOJ rules, quote, no charges can
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: be brought against POTUS. So bar's letter was incorrect in
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: its depiction of muller and then muller goes on to
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: say many different times in the report basically this is
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: up to congress so what the fuck was bill barr doing.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Well i think it's pretty clear what he was doing
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: which was he was putting in the fix for donald.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Trump how do you think he's going to get away
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: with this is the real question because we know what
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: he was doing but like Did he think he was
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: going to be able to fucking get away with this forever?
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, he still might, I guess.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, it depends on what you mean by get
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: away with it, right? What is the accountability that will
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: come to Bill Barr? He got what he wanted, which
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: was he is going to forever be in Trump's debt.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: He wanted this job for this reason. We know this
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: because he auditioned for it by writing a 19-page memo
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: raising questions about the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation. He
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: has played his role exactly through. I think the three Democrats...
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Joe Manchin, Doug Jones, and Kyrsten Sinema, who voted for
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Bill Barr, have a lot to answer for. Or at
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: least Kyrsten Sinema and Doug Jones. Joe Manchin is just
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: being Joe Manchin, and we're sort of fucking stuck with that.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: I think there's going to be a lot of discussion
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: about what Democrats do next and how they take this.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of threads to pull for Adam
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Schiff and Jerry Nadler in the committees in the House
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: with oversight authority over elements of this report. There's the
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: question of when Bob Mueller... will testify and when we
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: will hear from Bob Mueller, which will obviously be interesting content,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: if you will. But I think there's a question about
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: what Democrats do with Bill Barr because what he did
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: here was deeply inappropriate. It was deeply dishonest.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: It was an abuse of power.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: It undermined the traditional independence that an attorney general should
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: have from the president. It will raise questions about any
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: and every decision he makes about corruption and criminality related
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: to Trump and his administration for the next two years here. And,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: you know, God forbid the four years going forward. And
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: so I think that like we like a lot of
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Democrats have called for Bill Barr to resign today, which
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: he's obviously not going to do. But what do you
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: think about bringing up Bill Barr on either impeachment or
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: censure in the House?
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, yes, because he didn't just, I mean, you
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: put it politely, he undermined the independence between the attorney
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: general and the president. He fucking obliterated it. I mean,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: he sounded, the letter was bad enough. The press conference
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: this morning, he basically sounded like a slightly more well-spoken
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Fox pundit talking about, you know, no collusion and the
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: president was frustrated. He basically said that the president obstructed
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: justice because he was frustrated about the investigation. I guess
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: if you get charged with obstruction of justice, that's a
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: new defense now that you can make. Well, I was
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: pretty frustrated. That's why I tried to break the law.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's true. If any of our listeners get pulled
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: over for speeding, Bill Barr has instructed you to tell
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: the cop that you were frustrated by the speed limit.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, and look.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Don't actually do that, people. That's a bad idea.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: No, it's a bad idea. There's a few.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Don't speed. Drive safe.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: There's a few other questions. I mean, before we get
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to barring what the Democrats should do, too, there's a
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: few other questions, you know, from Mueller when they finally
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: get Mueller before Congress, which is Mueller basically says that he,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: in the report, he saw Trump's written answers to his
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: questions as inadequate. And yet he did not subpoena Trump.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: He never actually had a sit-down interview with Trump. And basically...
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: The report says he didn't because he was basically like,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I have enough evidence that he obstructed justice. But then basically,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: you know, leaves it to Congress, partly because of these
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: DOJ guidelines. But I guess my question to Mueller is like,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: why didn't he proceed with the subpoena? Why didn't he
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: try to sit down for Trump with an interview?
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: I think.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: I've wondered this question for a long time, and I
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: thought Preet Bharara had a very good answer when he
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: spoke to you guys on the Monday pod right after
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: the bar letter came out, which is this would have
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: wound its way through the court for years and probably
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: extended beyond Trump's reelection. So if you go down the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: road of of subpoenaing the president, having that go all
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the way to Supreme Court, you can't really conclude the
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: report and send the evidence to Congress until after the election.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: So I think this is maybe the most favorable interpretation,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: I think, is that he was caught between, is it
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: important both for the propriety of his investigation and for
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: the American public to conclude it with enough time for
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: the American public to digest it without dropping it as
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: some sort of bomb the month before the election, sort
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: of pulling a Comey, if you will, and pushing this
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: all the way to the end, which would mean that
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: the Americans would very potentially go to the polls in
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: 2020 without knowing Bob Mueller's conclusions, which Bob Mueller, given
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: what a straight area is, probably thinks that's both unfair
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: to the public and unfair to Trump, depending on what
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: he thought he would find. That's the only explanation I
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: can give, but in taking that path, I think he
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: sort of doomed his investigation, because if you have to
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: show corrupt intent for Trump's actions to invoke obstruction of justice,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: then it's pretty impossible to do that without asking the
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: person to their face what their intent was and not
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: just getting some letter written by Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the Democrats should do, because
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: as we said, special counsel regulations don't allow for Mueller
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: to have made an official impeachment referral like they might
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: have in the past when the previous independent counsel law
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: was in effect. But Mueller basically, this is basically an
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: impeachment referral from Robert Mueller. He basically says in no
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: uncertain terms, you know, this is up to Congress. Congress
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: has the ability to make sure that the president doesn't
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: obstruct justice. He sort of drops a few more than
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: hints in the report that Congress should take this up.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: So now what do Democrats do? They've basically received evidence
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: of the president obstructing justice from the special counsel. The
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: special counsel has basically said in no uncertain terms that
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: he leaves the determination to them. Now what do the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Democrats do?
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the $ 10, 000 fucking question, John. I think the
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: first step, I think we should do this in sequence, right?
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: You don't have to figure out where you're going to
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: go from day one. So I think step one, subpoena
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: all the underlying materials, which I believe that is in
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: process right now.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Yep, Jerry and I have already done that.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Subpoena Mueller, which I think that is also in process.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Presuming Mueller requires a subpoena, but get Mueller in front
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: of Congress and get his answer to these questions about
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: what drove some of the decisions were there. I think
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: it is take as much of the oversight resources within
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Congress and focus it on pulling all the threads here,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: digging deeper, having public hearings with key witnesses to hear
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: what they have to say about these things. That is
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: everyone from Jared Kushner to Don Jr. to Barbara Ledeen,
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: the Grassley staffer who was working with Peter Smith on
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: getting the stolen emails. Let's hear from anyone and everyone
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: and let's do it right now. Let's do it strategically.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Let's do it smartly. And let's do it in a
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: way that exposes it to the public, because there's a
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: lot of work that has to be undone to wipe
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: away the impression that Bill Barr left with his willfully
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: dishonest letter of a few weeks ago. So that's where
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: I would go now, which leads to the question of
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: what do you do about impeachment? And I think you've
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: got to ask the questions that are left remaining in
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: the report before you know the answer to that.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, I think
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: back to the conversation that you and I have had
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: multiple times where you have basically counseled Democrats against impeachment
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: because we know where this goes, right? If the House impeaches,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the House holds impeachment hearings and the House Democrats impeach
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, which would obviously be on a party line
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: vote because it doesn't look like any Republicans are coming along.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Then it goes to the Senate. There's a hearing in
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the Senate. Chief Justice John Roberts presides. There's no fucking
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: way we're getting, what, 13, 14 Senate Republicans on board
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: to impeach. Who knows if we even get fucking Joe
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Manchin on board to impeach, right? And so then, you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: they fail to convict the president. And the president says,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: total exoneration. Mitch McConnell says, total exoneration. And he goes free.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: And now we're, you know, close to the election. So
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: that's all the downsides to impeachment. But I will say
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: there's sort of a middle ground here in that the
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: focus doesn't necessarily have to be on the Senate and
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: whether the Senate convicts the president. We have said for
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: some time that this is going to be decided at
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: the ballot box in 2020, that this is going to
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: be decided, that the American people are going to decide
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: whether the president is fit for office or not in
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: November of 2020. So that's true. Let's keep that in mind.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: But let's, I don't know, provide the American people With
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: all the evidence, all the testimony, all the underlying documents,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: all the witnesses and all the testimony, everything they need
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: to make a determination about whether the president is fit
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: for office or not. And obviously, they'll make that determination
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: also based on the fact that he wants to take
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: away their health care, the fact that their wages haven't
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: gone up, the fact that he's a crazy lunatic. So
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: there's going to be a number of factors in there.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: But why not say part of why we're conducting this
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: impeachment hearing is so the American people have all the
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: information they need to make a determination about this president
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: when they go to the ballot box in 2020.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: I think the challenge with... You did a great job
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: of making my argument, so thank you. I think the
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: challenge with that is that you can uncover that information
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: in two ways. One is through oversight hearings and through
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: the normal course of business, right? Intelligence committee, judiciary committee,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: oversight committee, just like the Cohen hearing of a few
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: months ago or whenever that was, because time's a flat circle.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: But So that's one way to do it. The other
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: way is to open impeachment hearings through the Judiciary Committee
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: to call witnesses for the purpose of having a vote
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: on impeachment at the end of that process. And if
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: you start that process, you're going to end that process
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: with a vote. If that vote were to fail, that's
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: even worse than my alternative scenario, which is possible. There
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: are a lot of Democrats who are uncomfortable with that.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: And so I think you just have to decide whether
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: you do that. The last point I make on this
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: is that you don't get any– like Trump doesn't lose
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: electoral votes if he has a scarlet eye on his chest.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: So this is going to play itself out the same
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: way no matter what. And I am– if it was
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: up to me– I would impeach Trump. I said this before,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: I'd impeach Trump. I'd get him out of the 25th Amendment.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: I'd indict him. There's like any course of legal means
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: to get this man away from our country, I would take.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: But I just, I think we have to be strategic
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: about what our goal is. And our goal is to
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: expose all of the evidence the American people bought, all
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: the things Trump has done wrong in the Russia measure,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: but then in everything else, whether it's the tax cut,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: It's the self-dealing around the Trump Hotel, massive amounts of
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: corruption left and right, the Gulf States investments and Jared
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Kushner's failing real estate entities. All in the above, it
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: is the job of the House Democrats to make that
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: information available to American people so they can make a
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: fully informed decision. I am very torn on this issue.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: I'm just very worried about how it plays itself out.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Look, I am too. And I very much understand the politics.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: I very much understand that most voters out there have
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: not been following this as closely as we have, may
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: never follow it as close as we have. And even
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: those who are, maybe Trump's criminality is baked into their
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: opinion of him. So they either believe he's a criminal
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and we're going to vote against him anyway, or they're
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: ride or die with him to the end, or they're
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: unsure about Trump, but it's not because of potential crimes
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: he committed, it's because they don't know if he's serious
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: about taking away their health care, right? So, like, I
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: get the politics, and I get the potential backlash to
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the politics. I just, I have a real problem with
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: this report coming out with so much evidence that the
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: President of the United States broke the law, that he
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: abused his office, that he abused power, that he committed
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: obstruction of justice in all these different ways, and that
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: because we are worried about the political impact of what
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: happens if we go down the road of impeachment proceedings,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: we're just going to let it go. And, you know,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: they didn't let it go with Richard Nixon and he resigned. And,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: you know, you can argue about the Bill Clinton one,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: but like, it's just, it's so incredible to me. I
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: worry so deeply about the precedent it sets to say
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: that we had knowledge that the president committed a series
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: of crimes in but because we Democrats weren't in the
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: majority or didn't have enough votes in both houses and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: we were worried about the potential backlash and what it
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: would mean for the 2020 election, we just sort of
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: let it go. So I don't know. It's very concerning.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: It's concerning to me. It really is. And like I said,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I get the arguments on both sides of this. And look,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the other thing is here, we didn't even mention this
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: part of the report. Special counsel found evidence of crimes
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: outside its scope and made 14 criminal referrals to other
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: jurisdictions only two of which we know about. One is
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the Cohen thing. So like there's all, I mean, and
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: we've already talked about the inauguration is getting investigated. His
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: businesses are getting investigated. So who knows what other crimes
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: might come to light? And perhaps that makes the decision
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: for us that if one of these other investigations or
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: multiple other investigations turn up more crimes by Trump than
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the political calculus changes on impeachment, who knows?
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I am certainly not arguing to take it off
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the table. I think that would be a mistake to
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: do that because we may only be looking at the
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: tip of the iceberg. And it's very possible that Trump
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: has committed impeachable offenses completely outside of– that Mueller doesn't
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: know about. They're outside of the scope of this investigation
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: that should be looked at. By any normal definition, the
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: hush money payments to Stormy Daniels prior to the election
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that Trump then lied about would at least– would at
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: least like be just in the conversation of an impeachable offense.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: So there, there's a lot more to find here. I just,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: I just like, we just have to be realistic with
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: people because you see this on Twitter all the time,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: which is like impeach him, impeach him, impeach him. And
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: I worry sometimes people think that me, that people think
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: that Democrats in Congress and Nancy Pelosi in particular are
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: not taking a step to remove Trump from office. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: that's not, it is a question of whether you're going
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: to do something to send a signal to to the country,
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: to the history books or to ever about what Trump did.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: But it is not a decision about whether he comes
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: or goes. The only people who make a decision about
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: whether Trump stays or goes are the American people in
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: November of 2020. And that's what we have to keep
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: in mind.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: That is correct. And that is a good transition to
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: our next topic, which is 2020. On Monday night, Democratic
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: presidential candidate Bernie Sanders participated in a town hall hosted
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: by Fox News. It was the highest rated candidate town
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: hall of the primary season thus far. Besting CNN's town
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: hall with Kamala Harris from a few weeks ago. Other
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Democrats may be appearing on Fox news soon. Amy Klobuchar
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: has already signed up for her own Fox news town hall.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Pete Buttigieg is reported to have been in negotiations to
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: do the same thing. Beto O'Rourke said on Wednesday that
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: he'd be willing to go on Fox and Kamala Harris
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: told me she would quote, think about it. Her tone
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: didn't suggest she was very excited about it, but she
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: said she would think about it. Um, The network's number
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: one fan, our current president, took notice of the Bernie
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Town Hall, tweeting, So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Fox News. Not surprisingly, Bret Baier and the, quote, audience
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: was so smiley and nice. Very strange. And now we
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: have Donna Brazile? There's so many great parts of that tweet. Like, we, like,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: you know, he's part of the team on Fox News,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and how did we get Donna Brazile? And also, I
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: loved the shot at Bret Baier, who, as we know,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: only has a 6 out of 10 on the Trump
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: loyalty scale. Probably went down to a 4 after that. So,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: first of all, Dan, did you watch, and how do
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: you think Bernie did, before we get to the big
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: question of whether he should have been there in the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: first place?
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I did watch it. I thought Bernie did great.
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: He did.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: He did fantastic.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: He made strong points. He pushed back really hard against
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: some questions from Brett and Martha McCallum that expose their bias,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: if you will, that sort of, you know, like it
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: really was interesting conversation because they are residents of planet
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Fox and they own, they live within that bubble, even
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: though they're on the quote unquote new side, there are
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: questions happen from this Fox bubble, right? Where like, even
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: in the middle of Bernie's town hall, Fox had to
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: do a huge piece with, which what I assume is
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Steve Doocy's son, Peter Doocy, about how amazing the Trump
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: economy has been for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: try to undermine Bernie's comments about how the economy is rigged.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: And it was just a wild thing. I thought Bernie
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: did great. He had an audience that was very enthusiastic
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: about him. I never found out the exact answer to
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: who that audience was, but I presume... that was an
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: audience of Democratic primary voters as the CNN town halls
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: have been as well, I believe. So he did great.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: From a performance standard, it was a home run for him,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: no question.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: It appears that the audience was Democrats and independents. I
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: read that somewhere. Well, I agree. I think he did very,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: very well for a couple of reasons. One was... he
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: needled the hosts a couple times, right? Like, he was
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: sort of, he wasn't exactly friendly to Brett Baer and
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Martha McCallum all the time. At one point, he said
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: that the Fox News Network doesn't have respect in our world.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: At one point, he sort of joked with them, and
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: he said, oh, the president, I'm told he watches your
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: network a little bit, right? So he was funny towards them.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, he really emphasized... economic issues. He
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: tried to say that a lot of these economic issues
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: and his economic issues shouldn't be partisan, that everyone should
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: want infrastructure spending, that everyone should be afraid of Trump's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: plan to cut Medicare and Medicaid. It doesn't matter what
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: party you are. So I thought that was very strong.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, there was that great moment that
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: went viral where Bret Baier asked the audience if they
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: liked Bernie's Medicare for All plan better than their own
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: private insurance. And they all cheered, which is certainly not
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: something that fought News expected. So I thought it was great. Now,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: the question is, what impact will it have on the campaign,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: if any? What do you think?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: I think it is a huge net positive for Bernie's campaign.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: I think the challenge for Bernie Sanders is He has
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: to demonstrate electability. I think he is winning. He is
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: leading in the polls among the declared candidates by very
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: large margins. He has a massive money advantage over everyone else.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: He has a bigger campaign. He has more staff. He
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: has serious political support around the country, both from important Democrats,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: but also elected officials as well. He is the hands
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: down most likely nominee of the people in the field
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: right now. it is very important for Bernie to demonstrate
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: that he could beat Trump and going into Fox news
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: and walking out with, uh, the heads of Brett Baron,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Martha McCallum is a huge win for him. Yeah.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: And it also, by the way, we know from Trump's
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: tweets and the New York times has reported this as well,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: that Trump and his advisors were nervous about not only
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Bernie getting a town hall there, but potentially other democratic
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: candidates infiltrating Fox and getting town hall. So this did
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: make them a little nervous. Um, So, I know, Dan,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: from reading your tweets and also texting you all day
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: long and also knowing you for the last 10 years,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: that you do not think this was ultimately a good idea.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Not for Bernie to do within the confines of his
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: own campaign, but sort of for Democrats to do in general.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Tell us why.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so... I understand why Bernie Sanders did this. And
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: if I was advising his campaign, if I worked on
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: his campaign, I would probably tell him to do the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: same thing. I understand why Pete Buttigieg is reportedly in
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: negotiations to do this. I understand why Amy Klobuchar wants
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: to do this. It is an opportunity to get attention.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: And it is not about courting Fox viewers. No one
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: is doing that. And if they say that to you,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: they are being willfully dishonest. What it is is a
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: chance to, quote unquote, go into the lion's den, come
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: out looking strong and get all the other press to
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: write about and talk about and tweet about your appearance
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: on Fox. Bernie Sanders on Fox got a hundred times
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: more news coverage than Bernie Sanders on CNN because he
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: was on Fox.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Let me just go back for a minute. How confident
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: are you that there are no gettable voters for Democrats
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: who watch Fox News and whether it's they're Fox News
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: obsessed or just occasional Fox News watchers. Is there evidence?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: There's two ways of thinking about this. One is, are
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: there gettable Democratic primary voters who watch Fox News a
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: year and a half before the election?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Unlikely.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Unlikely.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: There's very little evidence of that. There will be people
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: who tuned into that town hall Who are Democratic primary voters,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: but they are not Fox News viewers, right? These are
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: not people who are just like trying to see what
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: came on after the five and stumbled on Bernie Sanders.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: They're like, huh, I like his healthcare plan. That's not
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: how that played itself.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Right, right. Okay.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: In the context of a general election, Democrats are obsessed
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: about talking about Fox News viewers. We're like, we got
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: to get Fox News viewers. We got to get, you know,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: we lost Michigan because we didn't have Fox News viewers.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: That is a really rudimentary and one-dimensional way of looking
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: at this, which is, In 2012, we did a lot
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: of data analysis of where were the best media outlets
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: to reach undecided voters. Fox was not high on that list.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: It was not from an efficiency standpoint and not a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: good use of President Obama's time. And I have to imagine,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: although I haven't looked at this data since 2012, in
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: the world of Donald Trump, when the Fox News put
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: away the dog whistle and took out the racist bullhorn,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: there were fewer, quote unquote, up for grabs voters for Democrats.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: But let me say my bigger point here, which is
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of very important grassroots work has been done
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: by sleeping giants, media matters, a lot of incredibly important
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: reporting from people like Jane Mayer and Gabriel Sherman to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: expose Fox News for what it is, which is not
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: some conservative version of MSNBC. It is a corporate-funded racial
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: grievance machine for the sole purpose of electing Republicans. It
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: exists to protect Trump. It exists to destroy Democrats. News
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: is the coffee grinds in which they smuggle in the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: cocaine and propaganda. And a great amount of work has
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: been done to make that case to advertisers, to make
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: that case to the public, to make that case to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: other reporters and to take what they say as a
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: grain of thought. We have come a million miles since
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Obama was dealing with Fox when we were in the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: White House in terms of public understanding of the danger
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: of Fox. And if all of a sudden 19 Democrats
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: all go on Fox, it undermines that work, right? It
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: allows Fox's advertising department to go back to the advertisers
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: who have pulled out because of things that Sean Hannity
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: has said, Tucker Carlson has said, Laura Ingraham has said,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: and say, look, Bernie Sanders comes on here. Amy Klobuchar
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: comes on here. Pete Buttigieg comes on here. See, we
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: are legitimate, and to get those advertising dollars back.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Do you think that works? You really think that the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: advertisers would be like, oh, I'm going to second-guess my
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: decision to pull the ads because Bernie's on the channel?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: That's the view of Media Matters, which has been leading
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: the effort to do this. Basically, during the Tucker Carlson campaign,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: Fox has been showing basically dead air because they can't
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: get enough advertisers to fill the inventory for that show.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: And see, money is fungible. So that comes out of
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: Fox's bottom line. So I do think we have to
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: think about the fact that if you do things that
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: help Fox sell more ads, what you were doing is
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: making it easier for them to keep Tucker Carlson on air.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: You were supporting their white supremacist programming, which is incredibly
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: dangerous to America. And I think that is my concern,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: is that if the Democratic Party all of a sudden
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: embraces Fox again, and I think we're doing it for
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: sort of dumb political reasons outside of the confines of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: your own campaign strategy, we are doing a lot of
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: work to rehabilitate Fox in the minds of corporate America
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: and the public writ large. And I think that is
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: potentially damaging the long-term progressive cause of undoing Trumpism in America,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: which requires limiting the influence of these dangerous propaganda networks,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: most notably Fox.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I look at that is a very
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: compelling argument. I agree with all that. I've been, you know,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: one of the people highlighting all the great work that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Media Matters and Jane Mayer and everyone else has been
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: doing to expose how fucking awful that network is. I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: think it's a cancer on our democracy and probably the
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: worst thing that we have going for us in this country.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: even worse than Donald Trump in some ways, because it's
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: a propaganda machine. I guess my question is, what is
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the best way to dismantle that propaganda machine? And there's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: something appealing to me about every once in a while
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: during a campaign season like this, a couple prominent Democrats
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: going on there and calling the network out for the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: bullshit that it is once they're on there. Like my,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I was saying earlier that it was funny
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: that Bernie like needled the hosts, like great. I would
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: like to see some Democrat go on there and actually
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: take it right to fucking Fox when they have the
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: whole audience there and they have everyone viewing, knowing that
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: they're probably not going to convince a lot of Fox
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: News viewers, but that that moment would go viral and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: actually talk about what a disgusting racist network propaganda machine
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: it is and sort of bring receipts. That, to me,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: would be really cool. Great viewing. I would love to
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: see how Fox... I mean, because my problem... The reason
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I always say, like, don't ever fucking go on Fox,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: when you watch these people go on Tucker Carlson... or
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: go on Sean Hannity, or any of these fucking programs,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the whole game is rigged. You don't get to actually
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: communicate to their viewers. It's not a fair fight. They
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: rig the game, they yell over you, they cut the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: commercial break. It is a waste of fucking time to
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: do that, for sure. There is something about the town
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: hall format, where the hosts are minimally involved, and you
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: get to speak directly to the audience, not just in
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: the town hall, but to the viewers at home, that
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: is appealing... about finally piercing the bubble of at least
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: some of the people watching that network and showing them
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: that maybe Democrats aren't the caricature that Fox News always
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: makes them out to be. And I just, to me,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: there's something appealing about that.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will state this is a close call. But
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: I'd like to make two other points. One is I
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: woke up yesterday morning to find out that A lot
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: of people who really love Bernie Sanders decided that I
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: was some sort of massive hypocrite because Barack Obama went
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: on Fox News when I worked in the White House,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: including doing interviews with Bill O'Reilly, and that somehow this
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: meant that I was being unfair to Bernie Sanders. And
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: that was not my intent. And if people had read
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: my book, which I don't expect everyone has, but I
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: talk a lot about this. In the years I worked
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: for Obama, I was a big advocate for a long
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: time of doing exactly what Bernie Sanders did, which is
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: go into the lion's den. I did not give two
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: fucks about Fox viewers. That was not who my audience was.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: We did this in the 2008 campaign. Obama went on
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Bill O'Reilly, the night of the Republican convention, and the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: McCain speech on the Republican convention. And we did it
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: because we knew we'd get a ton of coverage and
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: it would be on all the morning shows the next day.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: If there had been active social media, it would have
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: been a viral moment. Like you were doing it not for,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: it is a setting for a press conference. It is
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: not an actual attempt to communicate with those voters. I was,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: I pushed for that strategy. And my experience from doing
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: that was twofold. One, that it had much less impact on...
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: Let me put it this way. The lessons I learned
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: from doing that, which I talk about in the book
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: a lot, are that I was wrong initially, and that
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Obama's appearances on Fox did more to legitimize Fox than
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: they did to help Obama spread his message to Fox
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: News viewers. And it is based on that experience that
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: I believe that it is a mistake for these Democrats
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: to do this. Not for themselves. I understand why it
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: makes sense for themselves, but why I think it's a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: mistake in the long run in a very important effort
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: to show Fox for.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: What it is.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: Second, this is also not me advocating that we should
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: ignore Fox News viewers. And just to set the table
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: stakes here, Fox shows get on average 2 million viewers.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: That is a fraction of the Fox News problem in
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: this country. The actual Fox News problem is not what
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: people tune into on Tucker Carlson at night, although that
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: is fucking gross and shouldn't be on the air. It
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: is how Facebook has weaponized Fox's content and spread it
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: throughout the internet to groups much, much, much larger than
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: people actually watch Fox. So my strategy for reaching Fox
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: viewers is to go, quote unquote, Fox viewers, is to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: go around Fox, not through Fox. So it should be
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: by campaigning in the community's where in rural communities, it
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: should be doing local media in rural and more conservative communities.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: It should be to use digital advertising to target people
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: who we know are receiving Fox propaganda with countervailing narratives
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: about why Democrats are good and why Trump is a
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: problematic president who has broken his promises. This is not
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: an idea to ignore Fox viewers. It is to find
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: a way to get to those viewers without padding Rupert
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: Murdoch's pockets so we continue to fund a global effort
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: to destabilize the liberal democracies with racist propaganda.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I look, looking back on Obama's interview with
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: O'Reilly and some of the other things he did, I
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: agree that that was a mistake and actually helped legitimize
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Fox because he was the president of the United States
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: at the time. And Bill O'Reilly, Bill O'Reilly was an
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: asshole to him and interrupted him. And I mean, it was,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: it was, it was totally not worth it. And I
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: do think that one.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Is also just for the context of that. is that
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: was actually for Fox, not Fox News, but for Fox's
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: airing of the Super Bowl.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: And we had a big, we hadn't done Fox in
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: a very long time at that point. And we had
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: a big internal debate about whether we should do it
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: or shouldn't do it. And ultimately we decided to do
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: it because it was on Fox, although some of it
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: aired on Fox News. And because we had done every
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: other Super Bowl interview, regardless of the interviewer for six
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: years or seven years at that point, whatever it was.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: I think that we probably made the wrong call, but
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: it was not an easy call. We were not salivating
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: at the opportunity to talk to Bill O'Reilly. We just
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: thought it would be easier to do than not do.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: And that was probably a mistake. And I take responsibility
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: for that because I was there then, but it wasn't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: something we were excited about. I'll tell you that.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I will say like, while I think it's
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: okay and possibly effective for candidate Bernie Sanders, candidate Pete Buttigieg,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: candidate Amy Klobuchar, to go on Fox News during this campaign,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: I do not think it's okay for President Sanders or
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: President Buttigieg or President Klobuchar to sit down with interviews
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: with them once they're in the White House. And I
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: would fucking ban Fox reporters from the briefing room in
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the White House. And I wouldn't think twice about doing that.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: My only consideration is how do we communicate and pierce
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: the bubble of some of these voters in an unimpeded,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: direct way, just with pure messaging and pure communication where
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: you can get right to them. And the second that
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: you have to go through these pundits and these lackeys
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: that work for Fox, it's not fucking worth it. It's
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: just not, you know?
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: I think the thing to track on the Bernie town
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: hall is not what happened in that one hour.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: Right, but is then how has Fox weaponized parts of
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: that content, both on social and the other programs involved Yeah.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: And so to judge the true impact of how Fox
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: did it, it's not just what happened in that hour.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: It's what, how did they use that content, particularly on
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Facebook to, uh, to distort the message and push their,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: push their larger propaganda efforts. I think that's an important
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: thing to look at.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: I have a lot, I have too many, I have
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: too many thoughts.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: I do. No, I know. Well, you know, you wrote
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: a lot about it in your book, which everyone should
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: go by. Um, okay. When we, when we come back,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: we will have our, uh, interview that we recorded last
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: week with Chelsea Handler. On the pod today, we have
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the best-selling author of the brand new book, Life Will
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Be the Death of Me, Chelsea Handler.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: Hi.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: You're finally here.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: Hi.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: I'm very happy to be here, guys. Thank you for
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 7: having me, especially you, Joe Lovett.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 5: Thank you for saying that. You're welcome.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: It's great to have you here. Chelsea, we haven't spoken
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: since Robert Mueller finished his investigation. And since you write
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: about him in this book quite a bit as someone
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: that you're sexually attracted to, take a number. How are
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: you doing since the end of the investigation? Were you disappointed?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Are you waiting for more? How did you feel?
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 7: I am not.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 6: Until I read the full Mueller report, I can't make
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 6: any judgments about where our relationship is going to go sexually.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: So I still have, I, what I've learned through this
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 6: administration and I would have learned through the last two
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 6: years is that I am a naive person and I
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 6: believe that good will prevail. And I'm going to just
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 6: choose to be stuck in that naivete and, and believe
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 6: that something good is going to come out of, I mean,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: a million things did come out of it.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 7: There were how many indictments?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: 37.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: So that's something. And, um, I'm still attracted to him.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: I'm not actually going to pursue it right now because,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: first of all, he's married, and second of all, I
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 6: haven't seen the report.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 5: Can I just follow up on that? Are you attracted
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 5: to him? No, that's not my type. I'm not like
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 5: a G-man. That's not my thing. But I was going
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: to ask that.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: More of like a wayfish award winner. I love a.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 5: I love a sort of a... I would say my
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: type is Lannister. But does his politics and his success
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 5: in bringing down Trump affect how attracted you are to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: Robert Mueller? And would that also apply to Paul Ryan? I.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 7: don't want my love to be conditional.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: And so if I'm judging him solely based on, you know,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 6: he's a T-crosser and an I-dotter. I think he forgot
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 6: a couple of T's, a couple of I's or somebody did.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: But I am going to have faith in the fact
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: that that is a person I am attracted to because
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 6: it's the exact opposite of anything that I've ever been
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 6: witness to in my life with men being responsible and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 6: being like, rule, you.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 7: Know, rule oriented. I like that. I like that.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 6: My dad was a bit of a shyster. So anyone
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 6: who's got their shit together and who looks like they
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 6: have an eight or six pack possibly underneath that white
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 6: shirt when he walks through hallways, which I've known everybody there,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 6: I'm not the only person who has watched him do this.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 6: There's anyone that age that can keep a six or
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 6: eight pack in their seventies.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 7: And that's my message for today. My name is Chelsea Handler.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: You write a lot about your political awakening in this book.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: walk us through your journey here, starting from.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 7: I wish you wouldn't use words like journey.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: Journey.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: Your journey.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 7: The Bachelor ruined that. They've ruined words like universe and gratitude, too.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 7: Words we could have all been using.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: From the moment that I was on your show and
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: I guaranteed you that Hillary Clinton was going to win
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: to election night to the early days with your therapist
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: after the election.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: Well, what happened to me was I had, which I'm
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: sure many people can relate to, I had a major
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 6: kind of mental, I just couldn't understand how something like
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: this could have happened. I didn't understand why, I didn't think,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 6: I thought the adults were supposed to take care of politics.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 7: And that, you know.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: And you weren't like super into politics before that, or
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: were you?
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 6: No, I mean, I was active during campaigns, you know,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: when there was a presidential election. I wasn't definitely running
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 6: out to the midterms when I was like in my
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 6: early 30s voting, I doubt.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 7: I don't think I was doing that.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 6: And once I became a little bit more aware of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 6: politics as I was in this industry, which it's hard
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 6: to not.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 7: You know, be aware of it, I did more.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: But no, this was like a mental, like, what the hell,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 6: how could this possibly happen? And so what I ended
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 6: up doing was going to this psychiatrist who I had
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 6: interviewed on my Netflix show, my last talk show, and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 6: adolescent brain development and when i when after the election
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 6: i thought my outrage was so high and at such
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: a 10 that I needed to harness it and figure
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 6: out why the hell I was behaving like such a
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 6: spoiled brat, because that's how it was. What I discovered
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: through him was that it was I bitched and moaned
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: about Donald Trump for the first three or four sessions
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: at $ 600 an hour, and I would have paid double.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 5: A lot of therapists got to buy boats in those
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 5: early months in L.A. A lot of very begrudgingly happy
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: therapists around the Los Angeles environs.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 6: I like when you use words like that. And I
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 6: loved it.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 7: I was like, this is awesome.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: I'm really getting all this off my chest, and I'll
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 6: leave here.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 7: And I won't have more anger. But what I ended
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 7: up finding out was that.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: What Donald Trump becoming president represented to me was the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 6: world being unhinged and out of balance. And that's what
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: happened to me when I was a little girl. My
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: brother died when I was nine. He said he was
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 6: coming back and that he would never leave me alone
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 6: with these people, meaning my parents.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: And he never came back because he died.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 6: The relationship and the trigger that Donald Trump was for me,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: I think, is a lot of people's, you know, early
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: childhood trauma where you just don't feel like you have
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 6: any control and you don't know what to do.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 7: And I wanted to.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 6: Dive into why I couldn't get past it, why I
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 6: couldn't turn the news off, why I was in the cycle.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 7: Of, you know, kind of like self-abuse.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: Or, you know, it's cancer causing, as you guys well know.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 6: So it was, I wanted to get out of my
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 6: headspace and find a way to find like happiness again
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: while Donald Trump was still the president. So I did
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 6: throw myself into the midterms and that gave me something
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 6: for a while. But once the midterms were done, I
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: was like, fuck, I'm exhausted again. I don't want to
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 6: deal with politics. Like I don't want to, I mean,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: luckily so many hands were on deck that we were
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 6: able to make, you know, so many people were able
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 6: to make so many great things happen. But at the
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 6: same time, you're so burnt out as I know you
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 6: can all relate.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 7: So yeah.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. stuff. It's all the time. It's constant. It's all
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: the time. What have you learned about effective activism? It's
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: now that you're active in politics.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: Um, I've learned that you're really of no use to
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 6: other people until you clean out.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 7: Your own injuries and your own messes.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: And that I've learned to meditate a sentence I thought
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: would never come out of my mouth. I've gotten completely
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 6: like focused on doing good things and not just thinking
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: about how to feed my ego or feed myself or
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 6: take a paycheck and do another thing and do another thing.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 6: Like I really sat with myself and said, what do
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 6: I want to contribute? That's worthwhile because if this is
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 6: where the direction of like, you know, our society is going,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 6: then we need a big opposite tick of things. And
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 6: I'm responsible for putting a lot of shitty messaging out there.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 6: So I wanted to really think about, okay, are you
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 6: just a loud mouth who's getting a bunch of paychecks
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 6: or do you want to be a loud mouth who
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 6: says something of import? And so, you know, I felt
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: like this book, I finally had something to say. And
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 6: if I'm going to make a career oversharing, like at
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: least now I'm oversharing stuff that's helpful to people, not
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 6: just like all the guys I had sex with in
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: my 20s.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, part of the reason we started
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 5: Pod Save America is we felt frustrated with the way
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 5: people analyze politics on television with the kind of stilted
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 5: language people use. Donald Trump is many things, but he's
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 5: not stilted, right? I think he communicates to his people
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: in a way that makes sense to them, that makes
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 5: him seem like them. I think that's something you do well, right?
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 5: I think you're, I don't think anybody believes you're reading
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 5: from talking points. And if they are, we should find
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 5: the person writing them and put them in some sort
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 5: of cell. But I think there's this question, like, do
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: Democrats know how to talk to people? You know, different
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 5: kinds of communities, different kinds of people, do they sound
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: like regular people or do they sound like Washington? And
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: I guess, When you see these 2020 candidates, when you
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 5: see the conversation that we're hearing right now, are there
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 5: any people that stand out, not because you like them
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 5: more than you like the others, but just because you
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 5: think they sound real to you? They sound like the
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 5: way people talk? Well, no.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 6: I mean, some of them, they're totally politicized or political
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 6: or whatever the right frame of reference is there because, yeah,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 6: I mean, Kamala Harris is a politician. Elizabeth Warren, I find,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 6: would be a little bit more grounded. I feel like
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 6: she's a little bit. And Beto is Beto. And Pete
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 6: Buttigieg is a normal person.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 7: Did I say it right?
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: Buttigieg.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: Buttigieg.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 5: Buttigieg.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: And Beto.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 6: Oh, he wants the DG sound.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Beto Buttigieg.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 6: Okay, well, when they become the president, I'll get it right.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 5: And it's Beden.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: You're also working on a project on white privilege. Tell
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: us about that.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 6: I did a documentary for Netflix.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: What did you learn?
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: So for that, it's kind of the same thing as
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 6: the book. I just did a deep dive into like,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: what am I doing with myself and why am I
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: constantly looking in my own lane instead of looking outside
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 6: my lane? And I was kind of embarrassed when I
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: really looked around and thought about all the, everything I've
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: gotten in my career when I, really it's not about
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: talent because there's too many untalented people that are successful
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: and vice versa. So I started to really pay attention
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: to black authors and started to, especially after the election,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 6: because I realized how bad the racism was, another thing
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 6: I was naive to, and wanted to have a conversation
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: about privilege because I did a documentary for Netflix about
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: race on racism where we just kind of slightly skimmed
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 6: the surface. And to me, that was the most compelling
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 6: one for me in terms of learning. So we just
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 6: went down south and we talked to people about the
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 6: issue of white privilege and whether people think it exists
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 6: or not. Because I certainly didn't think about it in
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 6: terms of my own success until.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 7: I was 40.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: And then I thought, wait, why do I keep getting
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: rewarded every time I quit a job? Why do I
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 6: get another offer? And I get to do this and
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 6: I get to do that. I've never struggled for anything.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 6: You know, I've had heartbreak and my brother died and
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 6: that was trauma, but I've never really like been hungry
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 6: or had to, you know, I waited tables for five years.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 7: That was as bad as things got.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 6: And and I felt embarrassed that I'm not as good
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 6: of an advocate or ally as I can be and
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 6: with the platform that I have and the ability that
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 6: I have to focus on things that are actually more
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 6: meaningful I figured why not do it and it was
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 6: a hard conversation because nobody wants white people do not
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 6: want to talk about this issue and I wanted to
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 6: hang out my own privilege to dry to be like
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 6: I'm aware I get it I get this house and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 6: I get all of that you know and And white
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 6: people are just like, you know, again, it's a black
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 6: person's problem, even though.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: It's our problem. So last question. Obviously, we're out of
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: the prediction business now. Is Donald Trump going to win
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: in 2020?
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 6: I don't do predictions either anymore. Honestly, what do you think, John?
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: You look sick almost at the thought.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 5: I thought you just meant generally. I feel great.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 5: Is it something about my skin?
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 6: I wanted to qualify.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 5: Is it my pallor?
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 7: You look flavescent. Yeah, there's a tone of flavescence.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: It's the shirt.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 5: Are my humors out of line?
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: Shirts a lot.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 5: Let me know when you're done.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: Get it out.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 5: I'm done.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: I'm done.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 7: I'm done.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 5: I don't know what's going to happen, Chelsea. I don't
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 5: know what's going to happen.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 7: I don't know.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: Most presidents get reelected. We just got to, you know,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: get to work, guys.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 6: I'm just happy that we're handing this on such a
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 6: high note.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: What's the name of the book, Sean? The book is
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Life Will Be the Death of Me.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 5: Yes. It's fantastic.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going on tour, too. I blurbed it. I blurbed
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: your book.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 7: You blurbed my book. Yes, you did. Thank you very
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 7: much for that.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: You're very welcome.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 5: I'm going to check my email. I don't believe I
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: was asking. Well, you're also just cultivating other great authors
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 5: like Alyssa Mastromonaco.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: You're just bringing them up.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 5: Through your system.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 7: I'm cultivating her. She doesn't need me to cultivate her.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 7: But yes, I love Alyssa.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 6: I'm going to see her this weekend when I head
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 6: to New York.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, fun.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 7: Yes, and I'm going on tour.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 6: LiveNation.com for tickets to be on tour.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 7: I'm going to like 23 cities.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: Cool. All right. Get some tickets, everyone, and go buy
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: Life Will Be the Death of Me. It's a fantastic book.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Chelsea Handler, thank you for joining us.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 7: Thanks, boys.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Natasha Bertrand for joining us today. Thanks to
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Chelsea Handler for joining us. And got John and Tommy here, too,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: because we just wanted to say a special goodbye to
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: one of our very first Crooked Media employees who's leaving
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: us for bigger and better things.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 5: Time will tell if they're bigger or better. I'm not
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 5: ready to admit that yet.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Corinne is one of our very first employees.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: She was with us when our office was essentially a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: one-bedroom apartment with one bathroom that also happened to be
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: in the kitchen. She produced Pod Save America. She produced
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: Pod Save the World for a while. She has gone
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: to Europe with us to do live shows. She has
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: run our development. She's done literally everything you can do
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: with this company.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: This company wouldn't exist if not for the work Corinne did.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: She helped develop Keep It. She helped produce the HBO show.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: She's fantastic. We're going to miss her.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: We're fucked.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: Just kidding. We're so excited for Corinne. Very excited for Corinne.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: Sad to lose Corinne. All kidding aside, we will miss Corinne.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: She's done such an amazing job.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: All right, well, that's our show for today, and we'll
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: see you guys next week. Oh, I should say, there
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: will be no pod on Monday. We're doing it Tuesday.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 5: Monday, the Gillibrand episode's going out.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: That's right. Re-released. It's not new. No one get too excited.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 5: But if you haven't heard it, it's new to you.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: It's new to you. And we will be back with
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: another brand new pod, the three of us, on Tuesday afternoon.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: So have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everybody.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 5: Happy Miller Day.