Latest / Pod Save America / “Get These Incels to Work” (feat. Hasan Piker)

Transcript

“Get These Incels to Work” (feat. Hasan Piker) · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett and guest
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: hosting with me today is the massively popular streamer, leftist dumbass,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Tim Self. You just self-described.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: That's okay.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Sure. Fair.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I say himbo, but damn.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. Hasan Piker, welcome back.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: It's good to be back. Thank you for having me.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: After my conversation with Hasan, you'll hear my conversation with
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Seth Moulton. We talked about the Democratic Party. We talked
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: about the controversy over his comments around trans athletes. Also
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: on the feed right now, you can hear Dan's conversation
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: with Jen O'Malley, Dylan Quentin, folks, David Plouffe, and Stephanie
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Cutter about what went wrong in the Harris campaign. We're
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: having a bunch of different conversations about what we learned
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: from the election, where we go from here, with a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: bunch of different voices, one of which is here today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So people are mad that we talked to the Harris campaign.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: People are mad we're talking to you. People are mad,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and that's okay. But let's start with this.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's a big tent.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It's a big tent. It's a big tent.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: It's got Dick Cheney in it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: It's got Dick Cheney in it. It's got Hassan Piker
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: in it.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: It's got Dan Osborne in it. It's got Seth Moulton
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: in it.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You know, Tent shouldn't maybe feature Dick Cheney
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: in it, but, you know, everybody else we can, I
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: can have a conversation with.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Great. All right. Now, look, the main pastime on the left,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: other than being mad for the last few weeks, is
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: everyone saying how right they were all along about Democrats
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: being out of touch and bound to lose.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Arrest me.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: So we had a, I sat at this chair. Well,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: maybe not as a chair, but I had the offline
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: interview with, uh, with John, uh, I think a month
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: before the, uh, the election and a lot of the things,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of the concerns that I brought up to him,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: it seemingly came across as a somewhat prescient where people,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: people went back to the, uh, to the footage and I've,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I've been seeing comments that were rather positive about, like,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: you know, okay, he said a lot of stuff there
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: that was objectively correct, it's seeming.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's... I want to talk about one aspect of that,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: which is that you were saying, others were saying that, hey, like,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Trump going on Rogan, Trump going on Theo Vaughn, like,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: something is happening here, and we need to understand it,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: we need to address it, it's real. And I remember, like,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: my experience... it's like seared in my mind of, of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Trump being on Joe Rogan because of how, like my
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: path of understanding it, because what I saw first were
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people taking clips and saying, wow, Rogan
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: really didn't like Trump. Trump is a mess on this show.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: He comes across terribly. Rogan was like giving Trump space
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: to hang himself rhetorically. And then I watch it and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like, Trump did fucking great in this interview.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very telegenic. That's the thing that a lot
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: of people, I guess, refuse to factor in for some
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: weird reason is that, yeah, he definitely rambles on. He
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: likes to call it the weave. And even Joe Rogan
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: made fun of him for that a little bit in
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: the process. But there is something to be said about
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a relatively telegenic person who is able to portray himself as,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I like to call it, honestly dishonest. where like everybody
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: knows he's a bit of a scumbag, but he's your scumbag.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And he's able to get that across to a lot
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: of people. And, and, uh, I don't think that there
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: is really anyone with that level of, of television presence
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: on the democratic party front. I think like the most
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: skilled order in the democratic party's ranks in the last, uh,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: you know, last couple of decades was obviously Barack Obama. And, uh,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: and outside of that, I don't, I think like in
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: a lot of instances, purely from an optics point of view,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Democrats track is like technocratic elitist too serious about everything
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: that they talk about. And there's certainly a lot of
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: that on the Republican party side as well. And we've
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: seen failed initiatives from establishment Republicans that tried to recreate
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: the Trump phenomenon with, uh, the likes of Ron DeSantis.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And that was a massive failure, but, uh, Ultimately, I
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: think this goes beyond podcasts. This is something that I've
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: been talking about quite frequently. I know the podcast thing is, like,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: the most... Yeah, yeah. Like, that's the one that got
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: everyone's attention, but I said this on CNN last night,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: that you can't really podcast your way out of this problem. Like, having,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: you know... There was that one tweet saying, like, oh,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: we just have a hundred pot-save Americas, but they all
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: have to look like Hasan. Like, that's not how this works.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, you think that one tweet might have been wrong?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: But the, uh... Yeah. Like, I guess, so I agree
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: with that. You know, it became this, the couple, the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know, like just have had
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: this devastating loss to Trump and everybody's looking for these
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: sort of little explanations that all feel, they just feel silly. Like, oh,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: we need a Joe Rogan of the left. And even
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: saying like, I don't even want to talk about how
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: stupid that is anymore because even that has become stupid.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: But I'm like, I do agree that like people are like, oh, well,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: she should have gone on Rogan. All right. Yeah, sure.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I think so too.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: That would not have changed the outcome of this election.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: There's a larger problem to what you're getting at, which
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: is like, why don't we have figures and where like,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: we think they would do great on that show. And
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: why is someone like Joe Rogan now who was four
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: years ago, open to Bernie now suddenly open to Trump.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Like that's the deeper problem. Like you look at like
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: successful democratic messengers or progressive messengers over the last like decades.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And you think, all right, well, Bill Clinton obviously was
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: successful and he like, ran against the Democratic Party in
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: some way. Barack Obama did the same thing. Bernie does
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the same thing. AOTC does the same thing. Not on,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about on policy.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: But just- You don't mean it like also in the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: same direction of running against.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no. But running against the establishment in
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: some way. And just saying, and the reason I connect
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: them is because they all did something which is demonstrated
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that they were not part of the Democratic establishment, both
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: like on policy and rhetorically, right? Like that's what they
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: all did. And I'm just wondering like what, there's a
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: place where there's like kind of an alignment of like
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the Seth Moulton critique of the Democratic Party and the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: lefty critique of the Democratic Party, which is just like,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: it's fucking annoying and like kind of, I don't know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: like pedantic in some way.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing. I think it's an incorrect interpretation, an
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: incorrect autopsy, to look back at a thing that the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party did not do at all and then say,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: it's actually that reason. It's not anything that we did
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: so far. It's not that we tacked to the right
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: over and over again, despite people like myself and many
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: others saying like, don't do this. You're going to hemorrhage
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: the base. You're going to hemorrhage the base of support.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: You are going to cut away at your turnout. You're
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: going to cut across many different constituencies that you rely
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: on to create an effective coalition. And it's a very
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: dangerous gamble to assume that you can decouple a lot
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: of these people in the suburbs, a lot of white
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: women specifically, away from the Republican Party and vote for
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: you instead. I know that they're high propensity voters, but
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. There's still plenty of low propensity voters
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: that you have to rely on to win. And that's
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: precisely what the Democratic Party did. They hyper-focused on these
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: key constituencies, despite the fact that polls were seemingly deadlocked
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: after $ 30 million of ad spend in key suburbs, right?
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Like it showed at least for, I said this time
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: and time again, it showed someone from the outside looking
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: in that the message was not working and you can
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: have the best ground game possible. You can have, you know,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people all across the country door knocking.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: But if the top down message that you're communicating is
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: not resonating with people, then you're not going to be
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: able to win an election. You're not going to have
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: the effective turnout necessary to win this election. And that
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: is precisely what happened. Now, does that mean that Trump's
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: messaging was good? Of course not. It wasn't. It was
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: actually pretty bad. And I would even go so far
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: as to say the anti-trans ads were actually a distraction
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: and not good. It was only effective in the DC bubble,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I think, and the consultant bubble and the media class
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: that saw those ads and were like, oh my God,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: this is an incredible ad. They really ruined Kamala Harris.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Kamala Harris had a silly answer to an ACLU questionnaire, okay?
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: That just shows that she is not the most experienced politician.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: This was all the way back in, I believe, 2020, right?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: She literally had to drop out of the primary anyway
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: at that time. That's one thing, okay? But that should
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: not be a campaign killer. If you personally think that
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: that's a campaign killer, then your campaign is weak. This
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: message across the board should never be able to end
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: a single campaign. Then Teflon Don is real. I mean,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: the man had the grab him by the pussy tape
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: come out as the October surprise in 2016, and he
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: still won. And since then, there's been a litany of
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: different controversies, including but not limited to straight up undermining
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: American democracy by doing January 6th. And yet people are
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: still voting for him. And one must ask the question, why?
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And I think overall, the same exact problems that persisted
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: in 2016 when the economy was seemingly very good, right,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: especially as opposed to like the post COVID economy and
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: its recovery. People were still very frustrated with what was
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: going on. The notion that in the wealthiest nation on earth,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: we have 600,000 people sleeping outside every night. The idea that,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: you know, we have a, we have the concept of
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: medical bankruptcy is an insane phenomenon that doesn't exist in
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: any other OECD nation. Like the, the fact that 60%
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: of the American public doesn't have $ 400 in emergency spending, like,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: These are all very real economic anxieties. I'm using that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: term specifically because it's one thing that people like to
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: hyper focus on that creates volatility, that creates instability, and
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: it creates a base of angry people. And if the
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party is not addressing that anger and addressing their
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: material problems, and earnestly telling them, like, we're going to
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: fix that shit, okay? And the other side is looking
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: at that anger and saying, we're going to channel your anger.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: You have every right to be angry. And you know
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: who you should be angry at? Those who have less
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: than you. You know who you should be angry at?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: The working poor, the homeless people that are doing crimes
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: left and right, black and brown people, undocumented migrants that
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: are doing incredible amounts of crimes. They're killing hundreds of
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: thousands of Americans and trans people. And the Democratic Party
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: only cares about those people and they don't care about you.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And that message resonates with a base of support, not
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: because they are intrinsically evil. That message resonates with a
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: base of support because they're angry. And one of the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: two major parties is not even remotely interested in addressing
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: that anger and trying to tell them what the solution
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: to that anger actually is and what the real problem is.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: So I.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Want to like break that into kind of how we
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: like the democratic brand, how we message and all, but then,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: but also like on the policy front. So Joe Biden wins.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: He tries to kind of build consensus with, with Bernie.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: He brings an AOC. He goes to the left on,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: on antitrust. He does the inflation reduction act. He does
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a post COVID relief bill. He cancels as much debt
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: as he can legally, even though the court is trying
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: to stop him. Before the last year, what my view
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: of this was is Joe Biden, this consensus Democrat, actually
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to the right of the consensus for most of his career,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: somebody that had to be pulled to where the party
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: was going, did something extraordinary, which is he adapted, he changed.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: He governed in a much more progressive way And I
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: think probably like I certainly that I expected, I hope
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: that you expected.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And whether it's because people didn't feel it or people
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: didn't believe it or the way Democrats talk about policy
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is ineffective, like it didn't seem to matter in terms
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of how people viewed like the Democratic response to the economy.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: They were so angry about inflation. They were angry about
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other issues. And it really didn't matter
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: what Joe Biden said or what Kamala Harris said. They
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: were held responsible. And I'm just wondering what how you
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: explain that, right? Like it seems as though Joe Biden
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: tried to listen to this exact critique and it didn't matter.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: So yes and no. I do agree. There are plenty
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: of things that Joe Biden did like beefing up the
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: NLRB and letting the FTC rain hell upon these monopolies.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: There's two issues there though. One is I think something
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: that you will agree with as well, that the Democrats
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: don't campaign year round in the same way that Republicans
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: do on key issues. And they do have a massive
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: communication problem that could potentially be solved by having a
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: more robust ecosystem and more collaboration with even the likes
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of yourself and maybe even someone like myself as well.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And they need to always be on. They need to
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: always be counter messaging against the anti-immigration sentiment. I went
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: back and looked at my commentary from February of twenty
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: twenty one. when the story of the Customs and Border
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Patrol Haitian migrants getting whipped by horseback, Customs and Border
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Patrol people, officers was in the news. And I remember
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: talking about how the Republicans are going to keep hitting
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the immigrants are doing crime note over and over again,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: because that's the one thing that they have. And it's
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: built around a complete falsehood that undocumented migrants are responsible
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: for incredible amounts of crime. It's not correct. There is
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: no data to suggest this. The data actually shows the
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: exact opposite. Undocumented migrants are your neighbors. They contribute to
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the economy in very meaningful ways, and they very rarely
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: take anything in return. Why is the Democratic Party not
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: pushing this counter-narrative? And they never did. Instead of pushing
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: that counter-narrative, which is based in truth, and talk about
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: how undocumented migrants are responsible for less crime per capita
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: than natural-born U.S. citizens are, or that fentanyl being trafficked
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: across the U.S. borders are actually not coming in the
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: knapsack of an otherwise law-abiding abuela, But instead, it's coming
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: from regular points of entry, trafficked by American citizens. 90%
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: of the people that are being apprehended for chemical compounds
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: necessary for fentanyl or direct drugs that they're trafficking across
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: the border are American citizens. This does not track with
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: the narrative that people believe because the narrative is dominated
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: by the right on this issue. They should have been
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: counter messaging against that and they should have been putting
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: bills forward in defense of the moves that, for example,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Governor Greg Abbott was engaging in in Ron DeSantis. I
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: said this even back then, that this is actually a
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: fantastic opportunity for the federal government to show that there
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: is a more tolerant approach, that one, they should have
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: immediately pursued Governor Greg Abbott legally and arrested him for
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: human trafficking and tried to prosecute him for human trafficking.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I don't care if it's a constitutional crisis or not.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: All of this stuff was insanely messed up and the
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: federal government dropped the ball i think the biden administration
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: dropped the ball by not adding additional funds immediately sending
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: additional funds immediately places like chicago and new york and
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to to figure out a a better way to transition
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of these people uh and integrate them into
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the american labor force and instead they just got stuck
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: in this like legal limbo for no reason.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: So yeah i mean look why is it that okay
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: so republicans say uh They sort of lay all these
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: problems at the feet of undocumented immigrants. They say they're
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: responsible for crime. No, they're not. But there are obviously
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: undocumented people. There are people, and some are committing terrible crimes,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: which they then exploit. But for the most part, these
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: are people that not only are committing crimes at a
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: lower rate, but actually are unable to go to the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: police when they're victims of crime. Whether that's a domestic violence,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: they can't go to the police, or whether that's just
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: sort of the quotidian mayhem of living in America, or...
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a boss taking advantage of you. They can't go to
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the police, right? Then they say, oh, well, they don't
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: pay taxes. Actually, that's not true. They pay into Medicare,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: they pay into social security and they don't get the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: benefits of it back. And then they say, well, they're
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: driving up the cost of housing. I do not believe
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that undocumented people are the reason a house costs $ 450, 000
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: where you just cost $ 350, 000.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize there were executives at BlackRock. The
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Guatemala migrants are mass purchasing houses and making sure that
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: everyone's a permanent renter. That's the point, though. But it's
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: not a trans person that's your landlord. It's not an
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: undocumented immigrant that's your landlord that's raising the cost of rent.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: It's not your manager is not an undocumented immigrant.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: There are two big problems. One is there are a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: lot of people saying this and and it doesn't break
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: through because there is this right wing media system that
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: puts out this one story. And the second problem is
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Democrats really don't have trust on this issue with the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: people that they're trying to persuade to see it are. way,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: which I think goes to the point you made before, right?
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Which is why is it that Donald Trump can meander
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: around the country rambling, committing what in any other era
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: would be, if not like campaign ending, like campaign harming,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: ridiculous statements, gaffes, sure, that he can basically be in
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: like a strategic mess. But Kamala Harris has to hit
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: every point exactly right. She, if she, she she says
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the wrong thing on the view, or there's a bad
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: interview from 2020, those things can be campaign ending. And
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I think to your point, it goes to something deeper,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a kind of a lack of a, like kind of,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know, core vision or, or, or motivating mission
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: for the current democratic party.
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Something that is an understandable, easy to communicate, simple policy
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: that you can put your campaign around. So So we
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: agree on the messaging front a little bit, at least,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: or the asymmetry of how much right-wing media dominates the ecosystem,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: the media ecosystem in general, all the way from independent
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: outlets down to traditional media, where as far as I understand,
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: it's 73% now, I think, of all news watchers are
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: watching Fox News. 73%. That's an insane percentage. That's an
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: insane number, right? So outside of that, though, I think
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: here is the disagreement that we will have. that while
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden did a bunch of stuff that I agree
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: was positive, it was simply not enough. And that was
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: something that I was always very critical on as well.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: If you see a homeless person and you chuck them
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: two pennies and they're sitting on the corner of the street, like, yeah,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: technically their material wealth improved by a percentage, a decent percentage,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: but he's still going to be mad at you because
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: you just gave him two pennies. Why doesn't the homeless
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: person understand that their situation is much better? That is
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: not an effective way to communicate to Americans that like, no,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: you don't understand inflation is actually under control, that the
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: economy is rebounding, even if it's objective truth, because most
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Americans don't understand what inflation is and they don't understand
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: that prices are not going to go down in that,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: in that circumstance. And besides that, and I, and I
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: factored this is not just the, the, the vibe session communications,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: but I'm also talking about specifically like even the IRA
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: or many of these other parts of the legislative agenda that, uh,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: that Biden put forth that was more progressive than I
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: expected from more progressive than even the Obama administration in
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: many respects. But one, they didn't do a good job
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: of communicating any of those victories in my opinion. They
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: did not actually go to the media regularly to show
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: these victories and to showboat and gloat a little bit. Two,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of that was also held up in gridlock
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: because we didn't whip votes well enough within our own party.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: And I think that there was a lot of punishments
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: that should have been dished out to the likes of
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Joe Manchin and the likes of Kyrsten Sinema rather than
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: offering a Green senator an opportunity to be a prominent
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: fixture of the Democratic Party. I think that a lot
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: more punishments should have been issued towards these people that
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: use the moment in the spotlight to specifically play the
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: role of a rotating villain in the Democratic Party, which
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: has happened time and time again, all the way from
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Joe Lieberman to the Maggie Hassans of the world, the
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Kyrsten Sinema's, the Joe Manchin's of the world, and the
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: problem solvers caucuses within Congress in general. These guys need
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: to get whipped into shape. Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I just like, I wish, I wish I believe that.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I just wish I believe that. Like, but I just like,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much more you could have gotten
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: out of Joe Manchin or, or Kyrsten Sinema. Like Joe
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Manchin basically was telegraphing the whole time. Like, like I'll
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: walk away. And Joe Biden kept him in the tent
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that got judges through that got the inflation reduction act through. Like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I just, I do not believe, like, I think we
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: agree on a lot. Like, I just don't believe that
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: there is a version of the Joe Biden presidency that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: could have been more successful on legislative policy.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: I don't see that. You're not going to appreciate what
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: I'm about to say then.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Hit me.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Use the IRS and also the SEC and maybe even
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: the FTC to investigate as to why Joe Manchin's brother
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: owns a coal mine and whether there's a conflict of
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: interest there. Investigate why Joe Manchin's daughter is selling pharmaceutical
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: products to the state of West Virginia when Joe Manchin
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: is directly at odds with any sort of bill that
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: would lower the cost of pharmaceuticals.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: So you want the president to politicize these agencies and
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: use them to go after people.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Because you want to know why? Tell me why.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Hey, tell me why.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Because they're doing it at the behest of not only
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the American people, their interests, but they're also, and this
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: is probably going to frustrate everyone in this audience, but
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: here's the thing that I get very frustrated about.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: We have a wide range of listeners across a broad
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: ideological spectrum.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Here's what really frustrates me. What frustrates you? the way
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party operates. They love norms. They love institutions.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: They love civility. They care about bipartisanship for the sake
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: of bipartisanship. There's no doubt.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Some do, some don't.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. But for the most part, the broad communication
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: coming out of the Democratic Party is that these are
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the things that they care about. These are the top
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: line issues. We've got to protect democracy. We've got to
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: preserve our institutions. The problem is the other side doesn't
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: give a shit about that. So I think I want
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: a Democratic Party that fights for me and others who
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: are marginalized, other people that like desperately need help. And
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I know that the Republican party is never going to
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: do that. I'm not one of those guys who's like, Oh, well,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: you know, at least I, at least the Republicans are
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: kind of listening to what I have to say or,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: or are, uh, you know, uh, communicating, channeling the anger
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: that I feel like I don't care. They're, they're charlatans.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: They're significantly worse than the democratic party. I don't like
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: the democratic party for their closeness to the Republican party.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I want them to be a party that actually fights
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: for the working class, for all Americans unconditionally, regardless of ideology.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And you can't do that through bipartisanship with an otherwise
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: hostile entity that is the Republican Party. And I think
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: there is a lot of hypocrisy there and hypocrisy that
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: people can see. Hypocrisy is the easiest thing that they
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: can understand. You can't say that these guys are fascists.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: These guys are racist for eight years. for wanting to
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: build a wall and then turn around and straight up
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: tell Anderson Cooper in that town hall, well, maybe the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: wall is a good idea and I want to build
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: it myself. I'm going to be the border czar. I'm
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: going to be the border party. You can't do that.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Americans look at that and go, so you're admitting that
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: you were just lying for the past eight years.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like, again, though, it's like, I think actually,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: like you look at somebody like Dan Osborne, right? Who
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: ran so far ahead of the Democratic Party, ran as
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: this economic populist. But one of the things he had
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: to do to get there was- kind of be tough
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: on immigration. And actually like, I think part of it
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: goes back to like, if people felt like they knew
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: in their bones, like Bernie Sanders being to me, like
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the signal example, like, you know what Bernie's about, you
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: know what he's for, you know what motivates him, you
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: know what he cares about. Same thing for Trump. You know, like,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you know, when there are issues he doesn't give a
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: fuck about and there's issues he really, really cares about.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Immigration is one, trade, right? Like, you know, the things
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: that like, that have been anti-crime, whatever, that there are
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: things that have been in Donald Trump's, like kind of
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: brain slowly losing plasticity that are like kind of solid
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: in there. And for Bernie, you know, like we know
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: why he's in politics and that gives a politician the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: space to kind of challenge orthodoxies in the party or
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: kind of run counter to it to signal to the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: people you need to signal to. Now, like, you know,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you say, oh, you can't call them fascist and then
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: also work with them. Like, yeah.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, Joe, again, like it's like
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I just don't know what to do with this nuance.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, like I am glad Joe Biden did the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Inflation Reduction Act and an infrastructure bill and a gun
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: bill and the CHIPS Act and a bunch of other stuff.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he was able to do all of those things.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that he was able to use his kind
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: of like moderate brand, whatever. to kind of bring people
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: in and get some stuff done. I don't think the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: country is better off if he didn't do those things.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: So you describe it as hypocrisy, it's compromise. Politics requires compromise.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: The Republican Party rarely ever compromises. They're uncompromising. You only
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: have to beat them.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: But that's not true, though. I agree with that on Trump,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: but that's just not true. They did compromise, right? There
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: are plenty of people on the Republican side that were
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: furious at Republican senators for going along with some of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: these Biden bills, right? Those are people that did compromise.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There is a million examples, however, of Republicans that
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: are obstructionists that I'm sure you also love presenting that
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: go back to their town halls and lie about all
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the money that they brought back home from the bills
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: that they voted against. So ultimately, we now know that
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: political polarization is set in a way that never really
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: existed in American history until the last couple of decades, right?
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I think that parties originally were more, um, uh, geopolitically
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: focused on their immediate needs, like statewide needs. So you saw,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you saw this dramatic shift and now the Republican party,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: especially with Mitch McConnell, uh, under the Obama administration, uh,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: showcase that like permanent obstructionism is not punishable and that
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: gridlock is always considered, uh, the, the, the administrative party's problem.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: If there's any sort of gridlock, it's the fault of
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: the leadership. And Americans hate gridlock.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: That's kind of the reason why I was talking about
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, because there was a massive,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: massive moment where like they actually ended up protecting the
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Republican Party because they were never going to vote for
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: these bills anyway. And now the entire conversation was about like,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: you know, madness within the Democratic Party's caucuses. Like, oh,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: they can't get their ducks in a row. Right. Like
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: that was. Genuinely frustrating to me because it's like, if
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: you don't, if you had whipped your votes immediately, then
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: you could showcase that the Republican party is standing in
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: the way of progress. But that's just like, that is
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: legislative minutia. What is more important to talk about is
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: broad sweeping legislative changes or a agenda that might even
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: come across as bold and radical in the interest of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the American working class. Joe Biden said he wanted to
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: do the public option. Everybody knew that wasn't real. He
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: never talked about it after he just used the public option.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: He slotted that in, in the primaries when the party
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: was primed to the Bernie left and everyone was like,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: you know, trying to communicate their own populist version, uh, of,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: of what Bernie was doing. And, and, you know, Joe
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Biden won the primaries and effectively tabled the discussion about healthcare.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: This is still a major problem regardless. Like, yes. negotiating
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: pharmaceutical prices and ensuring that insulin prices are capped at $ 35,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: which is now going to be looking like a Trump
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: victory when he's in office. It doesn't matter. It's still
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: good for the American people. So that's great. But that
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: is good, but that's not enough. And I think that
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: when you don't do that, when you have this very technocratic,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: third-way neoliberal approach, but you sprinkle in a little bit
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: of anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism that Joe Biden certainly did, You're
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: a rudderless ship. You're not communicating effectively like what you
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: are about. And when you don't have a North Star
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: that every single person can point to and say, this
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: is what the party is about, your enemies can portray
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: you as whatever they want. And that's why the anti-trans
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: ads are even remotely effective. Because you can make the
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party look clownish and inconsistent and even silly and
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: hyper-focused on whatever key issues there are, because one, they
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: rarely ever focus on universality in programs. Everything has to
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: be means tested, which I think is both on the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: policy front and on the politics front, garbage. Focus on
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: universal programs because that way you can cut across every
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: single group and you can disproportionately target marginalized populations, black populations,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: brown populations, and trans people. These people do not exist
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: in a vacuum. They're not magical, mystical beings that are
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: not experiencing the shocks of the market. They still have
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: to pay rent. They still need workplace protections. They still
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: need the cost of medicine to go down, right? So
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: universal programs capture the attention of all Americans, including this
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: majority white angry population that is uh finding themselves in
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the throes of the uh republican reactionary movement so they
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: need to do that and if they don't do that
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: then the subtle populism of the right is always going
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: to be the only only game in town and they're
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: going to be able to present themselves as anti-establishment while
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: they have billionaires yeah parading around uh all of the
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: All the campaign stops like Elon Musk trying to do
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: that X logo every time he jumps like a child.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: I hate Elon Musk.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: That is the trick though, man. They're like– so if
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you listen to the Harris campaign's advisors talking to Dan Pfeiffer,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I know you did and you had problems with it.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: But one place where they agreed is that like, hey,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: like everyone is saying, oh, this trans ad, oh, this
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: trans ad. Like it actually might not have been their
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: most effective ad.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: It's not.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And they were trying to, and what Quentin Falk said
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: was that like, they were actually really trying to target
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: it to get at black men. And it looks like
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: maybe that didn't work.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: That's what that, that sort of, we'll see, like, we're
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: going to get more data, but like the, the point
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: that the ad makes is just that like, Democrats are weird.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Democrats are strange.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: And like they use trans people as a cudgel to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: do that. But like to the larger point you have, billionaires,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: just the wealthy, literally the wealthiest man in the world.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: The top seven, the top seven donors, uh, this election
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: cycle all donated to the Republican party and they were
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: donating like a hundred million, $ 200 million. Like it was crazy.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: How do you think about the fact that in right-wing
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: media right now and like right-wing adjacent media, they are
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: managing to be both the party of the wealthiest oligarchs
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in the world, and the kind of traditional moral set
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: trying to impose a specific way of living on people,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: and anti-establishment, kind of rebellious politics.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It's Nazi Germany, straight up. It's just pure fascism. That's
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: all this is. It worked. It worked 100 years ago,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: and it's seemingly working right now. And it's not just
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: the United States of America. It's all across Western Europe.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: The only country that bucked the trend of the incumbency
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: disadvantage seemingly was Mexico. One must ask the question why
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: an old doddering man who was still, you know, relatively telegenic,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: even though he believed in wood elves, duendes, was able
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: to get a tremendous amount of popularity and then become
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the transition candidate that actually passed the torch to a
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: younger woman. Claudia Scheinbaum. I'm of course talking about Mexico.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about AMLO is the old man. Claudia Scheinbaum
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: was his spiritual and ideological successor in the Moreno party.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Why did that happen? Why was AMLO so popular? And
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: why is Claudia Scheinbaum also incredibly popular? Why did Claudia
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Scheinbaum win the election with even larger margins of victory
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: than AMLO did? It's because they expanded the welfare state.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: They increased minimum wage. And they made a whole bunch
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of decisions that genuinely improved the material conditions of a
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people in Mexico. And that's something that people
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: will never forget. We talked about the black vote for
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: a second. As far as voter patterns goes, older black populations,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: like older black voters as a voting bloc, is a
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: more reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party than younger
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: black voters are. One must ask the question, why? That
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: is because people remember the last time the democratic party
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: did something for black people, did something bold, expended social
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: and political capital for black people. And that is something
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: that people do not forget. If you give people things,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: they will not forget that. That's why there was a
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: lot of dummies who thought, Oh, Trump's back. We're going
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to get some stimmy checks. It's not going to happen,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: but they still remember that because they think, Oh yeah,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Trump gave us stimmy checks.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, Well, Joe Biden expanded. I mean, like, I know.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm not pushing back on any
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: of this because I don't agree with the sentiment. I
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: just like I am trying in the weeks after this
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: election to just like just like question these these sort
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: of statements, because then it's like, well, well, Joe Biden
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: expanded the child tax credit, made a huge difference for
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: millions of children.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely. The child, the expansion of the child tax
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: credit was fantastic. But. it didn't continue. It was so
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: successful and it didn't continue. Like, do you think American
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: people know why that happened?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Who's at fault if American people don't know why that happened?
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: It's a, well, that's a, that's a, I think some
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: of it is Democrats. Some of it is the mainstream media.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Some of it is the right wing media. And some
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: of it, by the way, is the left. It is
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the media of the left, right? Like I, the first
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: couple of years, there were, there's been so many moments where,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: My great frustration, I think, in the way politics is
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: talked about is often people do not want to to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: do the work of figuring out who's actually responsible.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Like Republicans will shut down the government and mainstream sources
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: will say Washington gridlock continues. Right. Or. Joe Biden will
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: be stymied in some way or Barack Obama will be stymied.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Why didn't Barack Obama do this? Why didn't Barack Obama
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: do that when he had a majority?
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Is it well, because it's actually, you know what, in
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the Senate, having 49 votes to get rid of the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: filibuster and having 50 votes to get rid of the
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: filibuster is a difference between doing a ton of shit
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and not being able to do anything. That's not the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: fault of 49 people. That's the fault of one person.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Can I bring in something really quick? This conversation
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: that you and I are having, have you ever heard
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: a Republican have this conversation?
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean?
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Have you ever heard a Republican go, sorry, we couldn't
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: get this done because we simply did not have the votes?
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Is that ever a real, significant, front-facing, public conversation that
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: the Republicans have?
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like you want the answer to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: be no, but do you think the answer is yes?
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I can't recall a time. Maybe, no, I'm asking you.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: No, I think on their side, I think the, I mean,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: they have over the last decade slowly but surely gotten
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: rid of the people who are pointing out the actual
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: things that stand in their way, right?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: They went after Kevin McCarthy.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: They went out, well, yeah, and sometimes that works. Sometimes
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that leaves them pretty well stuck. I mean, Donald Trump
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: was president for four years. He wanted to repeal the
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act. He didn't have the votes, right? There
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: was a big conversation about why he didn't have the votes.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: The Republican base was furious with spending bills that were passed, right?
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: What did Donald Trump do after when John McCain struck
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: down the Affordable Care Act?
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: What did he do?
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: He took out the individual mandate regardless. He did.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Well, he did what the same thing a Democratic president
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: would do. Do as much as you can legislatively, and
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: when it fails, use your executive power, which is what
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Biden has done on student loans and a bunch.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Of other issues. Yeah, so my point is, he still
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: got the most significant aspect of his agenda across, and
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: in the process, he utilized the bully pulpit to laser
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: John McCain nonstop and effectively bully John McCain in a
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: way that I've never seen a Democratic president turn around
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: and communicate about Joe Biden. I'll hear it about the left,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: about how they're naysayers, how they're spoilers. I never hear
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: it about conservative Democrats. And I think it's the coalition.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Well, we talked about that.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: It's the coalition that you want to have, is my point.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And I think Democrats, win or lose, want to win
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: by their own established policies and the way that they
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: want to win. And they're willing to lose if necessary,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: as long as they still maintain... the overarching attitude that
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: they have.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I just think that is.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Or maybe they're just bad and wrong.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I just think they're like... I think people need
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to be persuaded. I think people need to be persuaded.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Like David Plouffe talking to Pfeiffer yesterday. He's like, look,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: you go to a swing state, you got a certain
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: percentage of liberals and progressives, you have a certain percentage
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of conservatives, and you got this vast swath of moderates.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: You need them. You need them. Now, I think where
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: you're right... is like there is something about a democratic
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: establishment establishment figures that feel more comfortable with a liz
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: cheney sitting at the table than with a leftist sitting
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: at the table it's gross and that the disagreements with
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: liz cheney are are more kind of um are acceptable
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and the disagreements to the left are less acceptable.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: But one must ask the question, why is that acceptable?
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Liz Cheney is anti-LGBT. Liz Cheney is anti-abortion. Liz Cheney
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: is anti-Democratic Party. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a rabid,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: warmongering terrorist sociopath, Dick Cheney. And yet there are Democrats
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: who are more comfortable with her than people who also
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: would totally be on board with the Democratic Party. But
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know. have maybe sometimes identical opinions of Liz
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Cheney on even LGBT issues. Joe Rogan is a great
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: example of this. The Democratic Party has consistently utilized and weaponized,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: in the most cynical ways possible, identity politics. And I
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: say this as someone who is infinitely more progressive than
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: the average Democrat on these issues. They just use it.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: They use it against Bernie. They use it against every
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: single person. And now they're dropping it themselves. That makes
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: every democrat look like a silly fool that makes it
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: does in the eyes of americans they go you called
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: us racist you called us transphobic you called us crazy
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: and now you're saying okay my bad we got to
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: drop this woke shit like of course people are going
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: to go all right i guess like i'm primed into
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: now believing the republicans like you're pushing your base towards
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: being more open-minded and to right-wing policy is the only
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: thing you're doing. And that's how, and that's the only
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: thing you're doing when you don't actually claw back a
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: lot of the things that the Republicans, the former Republican
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: administration engages in. Like Democrats are very good at, you know,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: trying to fix the deficit. They're the only real deficit hawks, right?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Republicans certainly don't care. They only use it as a
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: weapon to wield, to communicate against the Democratic agenda. But
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: outside of that, like, On foreign policy, Joe Biden said
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: he was going to be an effective foreign policy leader.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: He did NATO. He kept talking about, you know, NATO, Jack, AUKUS,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: as though that was going to be.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Then when Joe Biden was still in the race and
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: he did that press conference and he was like, he
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: talked about AUKUS. It's like, no one knows what the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: fuck AUKUS is.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Five eyes, AUKUS. That's a deep cut.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: That is a deep cut.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: But like Joe Biden was like, I am, I'm the,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: you know, adult in the room, Jack, I'm going to
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: bring back America into the global stage. The way that
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: the American public sees that is like, there's a war
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: in ukraine right and that's not even joe biden's fault
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: like i understand that that's vladimir putin decided i'm gonna
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: do the insane thing i'm gonna invade ukraine that's psychotic
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: right but the way that people see it they're like
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: why are we giving money to ukraine when we're not
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: fixing the potholes why are we giving money to ukraine
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: when the isp suck here what the hell's going on
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: why are we giving money to ukraine where we don't
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: have health care we have homeless people everywhere And then
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: on top of that, they see that instability as something
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: that is Joe Biden's fault. Fair or unfair, it doesn't matter.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: They attribute it to Joe Biden. Same thing with Israel-Palestine.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: They look to what is going on and they're like,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: this is insane. Biden will come out and say, or
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: used to come out and say, You know, we're going
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: to do a two-state solution. Benjamin and I, the next day,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: we'll be like, fuck the two-state. What do you mean?
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: How about no state? Literally, the next day. And Biden
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: kept trying to do this thing where he was like
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: finger wagging, where he's like, oh, I'm really, I'm going
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to give him a heart to heart, you know, real
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: man to man. For a lot of Americans, they saw
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: that as like, you're weak, you're old, you're weak, you're feeble,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: and you're getting dog walked by an American ally in
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: a very public and very embarrassing way. And there's a
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: metric ton of violence that's happening on top of that.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: He ironically destroyed the goodwill that a lot of people
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: had coming in to his administration with the last, I guess,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: post-Afghanistan withdrawal. Everything was bad after that with respect to
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden's foreign policy.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: It's also tied to....
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: I still defend the Afghan withdrawal, by the way. And
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I think the Democrats also dropped the ball on that, too,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: because they should have stood 10 toes down and said,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: that was the right thing to do. We exhibited political courage.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: And for the record, Republicans tried to do a 13,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: you know, the 13 of our best soldiers died in
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Afghanistan thing over and over again, the cynical thing that
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: they tried to do.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the Republicans are shameless. Democrats are less so. No,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: they should be shameless. I'm just describing what the issue is. Yeah,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, part of this, though, too, like I... like
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: huge policy problem in how the Biden administration has responded
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: to the war in Gaza. But on that issue, on
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: a bunch of foreign policy issues, a bunch of domestic issues,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: some of the problem has been Joe Biden gave a
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: state of the union, which was good. And everyone's like, okay,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just, that's what happened. But other than that, he
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: has been such an ineffective communicator. And it has gotten
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: so much worse over the last year.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because he's old as fuck.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I know. I know. But we're in this moment where
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: we're kind of trying to like, what went wrong? What
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: about this? What about that? People are so mad. The
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: people are like, the answers that Kamala's advisors gave were unsatisfying. Yeah,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: they are unsatisfying. But so much of this is just
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: like there was a giant anti-incumbent fervor around the world.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden was completely unable to to articulate a defense
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: of his policies, right? Like the fact that there is
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: inflation and people are mad about inflation is not a
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: reason alone. Like that does, like that can explain why
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: we lost if you accept that we had no agency
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: in competing against that argument. But like Joe Biden certainly
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: had no, like just could not communicate effectively.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I think you'll see what happens when someone effectively bullies corporations,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: regardless of being a right-wing Republican in the upcoming Trump administration.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: things are going to get significantly worse for every single person,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: including the people that voted for Donald Trump. One of
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: the funniest aspects of the tariffs conversation that's happening right
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: now is that Donald Trump is going to implement wide, uh,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: you know, broad tariffs on 45% of all trade that
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: comes in and out of the United States of America, Mexico, Canada,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: and China comprise 45% of all trade. He wants the tariff,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: every single one tariffs are obviously an entry fee that
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: like the, the, the American corporations are going to be
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: paying none of the, None of the countries are gonna
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: be paying for these tariffs. It's a policy that's going
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: to destroy Drop shippers which overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: and the Trump merchandise industry So that's pretty funny. But
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: having said that it's gonna be devastating for the economy
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: now What do I think Trump will do in the process?
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: He'll obviously use tariffs to to basically get corporations and
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: industries and sector leaders on board with his agenda so
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: when he says jump they say how high and Or
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to slap you with tariffs and it's going
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: to actually punish you. It's going to hurt your bottom line.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that's part of the reason why they're
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: going to do that. The other reason is it's a
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: regressive tax. It's a broad sales tax on all consumers that,
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: you know, disproportionately affects the working poor. And Republicans love
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: that shit. But he also, at times, I think, will just,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: you know, institute the Defense Production Act or something. Like,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: we'll see it. We kind of saw it in COVID
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: as well when it was a necessity. But that's the thing. Like,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: The American government is powerful. All governments are powerful, but
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: the American government is especially powerful. It's the wealthiest nation
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: on the planet. And the way that it runs is basically,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: it's like 50 companies in a trench coat. We are
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: working at the behest of corporations. We feed them with
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: our tax dollars that turn into subsidies for them. They
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: utilize those subsidies to, I guess, lower production costs, but
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: then they use that to increase their profit margins. And,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: and engage in what used to be illegal pre Ronald Reagan,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: you know, stock buybacks and the like market manipulation of
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: all different sorts. And we're constantly deregulating the economy. And
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: I think that it's not just about having like a,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: a populous message is about actually implementing said populous message and,
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: and show who your real enemies are. Like not be
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: afraid to say these people are fucking your life up
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: and If you are truly the pro working class party
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: is the Democrats want to be as they claim they
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: were historically.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And there were certainly times when they were, then you
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: have to say these corporations and the wealthy that have
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: given us money as well as the Republican party and
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: always have been hedging their bets are the real reason
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: why you're feeling this economic anxiety, the real reason why
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: you feel hopeless. that you will never be able to
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: own a home, that you'll never be able to retire.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: And the Republicans are always in defense of them. They
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: will distract you with lies. They will say your fellow neighbors,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: you know, your God-fearing Christian, Muslim, whatever, Jewish neighbors are
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: your enemy, when in fact, we know what the problem is.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: So we're going to bring them to heel. This kind
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: of messaging is terrifying, obviously, for many different reasons, and
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: it will never happen within the Democratic Party. But in
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: the absence of that.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's true.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: We'll see. No, I think you'll just get focus-grouped messaging
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: and means testing about the opportunity economy, which Kamala Harris
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: presented at a time when people were... When wage growth
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: had never actually caught up to the cost of living.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: And cost of housing. Yeah. Which, by the way, is like,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: you need to be... But this is.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, you need to deflate housing. That's a.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: You need to build vast amounts of housing.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: The.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: The federal jobs program. Get these fucking incels to work.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Well, we got to get these incels to work.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: No, get them to work. Give them, give them, whether
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: they like it or not, they're going to get good,
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: well-paying jobs with good benefits. They're going to get socialized medicine.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Got to put the incels to work.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: And they're going to, and they're going to work. None
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: of this neat stuff anymore. They can't, they can't be
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: online all the time. They're, they're too online.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: It's your business. Now you're going to, now you're coming
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: after your own business.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: It's fine. I'm, I'm happy for like it. I would,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I would drop everything if we got universal health care
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: and a federal jobs program and and we're building public
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: housing all around the country. That's fine.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: What do you.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Think the like kind of you're you're in the kind
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: of I don't know, there's like the there's a place
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: where the. left the online left and the online right
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: meets and it kind of meets a little bit of
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: people who think rfk has some good ideas a little
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: bit a little bit what do you think what do
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: you like what is the appeal there cranks just cranks.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah anti-establishment cranks um there's a lot of them there's
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the uh the tulsi gabbard uh constituency which is like
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: marginal it's not all that significant But yeah, I think
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: that the online left is not as robust a media
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: ecosystem as people think it is in general. And besides that,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: they don't have any sort of political motion regardless, right?
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I have disagreements with the closest Congress members that are
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: ideologically as closely aligned with myself as possible, but I
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: still have many disagreements with them. And outside of that,
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: I think... Like these guys that, you know, like RFK Jr.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: because they think he's going to make America healthy again.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: You know, they're just they just like the crank stuff. Yeah,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: that's what it is.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you talk to like when I'm
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: really like four years, eight years ago, Jesus. I remember
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: after Trump won the first time. What I was feeling
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: at the time, which I'm still feeling now, is that
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the two challenges.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Is that like at a moment where someone like Trump
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: is ascendant? Like, how do you keep this big left together,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: this big tent together from, yes, it includes the kind
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: of pro-democracy, anti-Trump right, runs all the way to the
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: far left and leftists. How do you keep that big
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: group of people together? And I do think, like, you're right. Like,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: there is just, in part because there's just so much
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: money behind it. Like, the online right is, I think,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: it's bigger and more influential. But it also knows how
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: to get on board right? Like it knows, like it fights,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: it has disagreements, it pushes, but then it knows like
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: for our ends, for our goals, we all need to
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: get behind, whether it's Trump or in previous elections, it
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: was getting behind like Romney-like figures, McCain-like figures, like they
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: get behind those figures. And sometimes it feels like on
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the left, like there's no moment at which we say,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: all right, we've had the fight. We've had the debate.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: We disagree on a whole bunch of stuff. Hey, everybody,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: we're going to get together. We're going to make sure
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: that we stop Donald Trump We elect Joe Biden as
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: much as we elect Kamala Harris. Like that moment doesn't come.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: And like, I'm not saying that Democrats in power aren't
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: in part responsible for that. I think part of what
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: we need to do is figure out a politics that
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: brings people in. But it is, it does require, it does,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: like everyone is responsible.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think just as I was very critical of
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders's campaign, despite, you know, still loving Bernie. because
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: he was nowhere near as aggressive as he could have
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: been in the primaries. And, you know, definitely should have
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: probably gone on more like independent media route in a
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: similar vein to Donald Trump. I am still, because I
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: blame the fault on Bernie's campaign strategies in the primaries,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: despite recognizing the structural hurdles of like a left-wing populist
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: coming out of a democratic party primary where it's like
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: the laser focused audience that goes out and votes at
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: those things are like the MSNBC watcher base that is
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: like objectively terrified of someone like that because people are
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: saying he's going to, you know, start executing wealthy people.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: It's still his fault. And it's still the campaign's fault
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: in this regard as well. And that's why I brought
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: forward the point that like, you can have a billion
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: point five, right? Uh, you can have ground game. None
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: of that matters. If the message is not actually addressing
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the real issues that Americans are facing, uh, And the
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: reason why I think the Republicans can go out and
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: vote for the Republican party and, and don't usually sit
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: it out, I guess, and, and instead are able to say,
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: suck it up and say, yeah, we're still going to
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: vote for Donald Trump. Is because there are a single
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: issue voters out there and Trump, they know that Trump
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: is going to protect it. People that like guns are
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: going to be like, I like my guns. I want
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: my guns to be protected. I want to be able
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: to marry my gun. I want to be able to
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: have sex with my gun. I know Donald Trump is
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: going to be the guy that lets that happen. And
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I know the Democrats are going to, you know, shun
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: me for wanting to have sex with my gun. So
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: that guy is going to go and vote for Trump regardless. Right.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: On the other side, though, if your top line communication,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: your major policy prescriptions are like, we have to preserve
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: these institutions, we have to preserve civility and we have
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: to preserve democracy at a time when Americans are like,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck about democracy. Just lower the
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: price of eggs. Then. There's no way that I could
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: outflank the Democratic Party and get people to vote for
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Kamala Harris in a way that sticks, in a way
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: that is going to be successful, no matter how much
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: influence I wield.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not even just talking about... Yes, take your point.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Most people are just not voting. That's the problem.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: But the challenge, right, is that there are these three...
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Let's say you say there's these three kind of media ecosystems.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: There's the right-wing one, there's a kind of mainstream one,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: and there's the left one. The one on the right
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: is built to attack Democrats. The one in the middle
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: is built to attack Washington and politics. And the one
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: on the left is built to attack Democrats.
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: It is.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, I don't, I think they're trying to
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: pressure Democrats to be a more moral and just version
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: of itself.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: I think I probably spend more time shitting on the
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Republican Party than the Democratic Party, but yeah.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: But I'm saying when we're talking about, like, when the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: right is talking, when right-wing media, it is trying to
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: be a team player. and it is attacking Democrats and
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: supporting Republicans. The middle is attacking both, and the left
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: is attacking Democrats and Republicans. There is no place, right?
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: There is no big, kind of fun, exciting media environment
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: outside of, I guess, fucking this table, where you have
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that are critical of the Democratic Party,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: annoyed by the same things we're talking about, but ultimately,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: it's just like, we got to win, and we have
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: to get behind these people.
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Well, but again, it is because... for many people on
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: the right-wing ecosystem, like, they have their toys, they have
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: their treats, and the Republicans are giving them those toys
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: and those treats, whereas the Democrats are offering what?
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: No, I agree. Like, what are they offering? Well, yeah, no,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I know, we gotta fucking.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Figure it out. It doesn't matter to me, I'm rich, okay? Like,
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, I probably might go to prison if Project
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Esther gets kicked in, or if they denaturalize me or something,
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: but Hey, come on. You know, I mean, who knows?
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: We'll see, but You can, but I mean, you can
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: be rich abroad.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: That is true. But my point is, but I like,
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I like being here. I like, I like trying to
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: solve some of the problems in America, at least. But overall,
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: the point is not that I'm rich. The point is
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: that the point I'm making is that like, I, I
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: care about my fellow Americans. I care about them, their
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: lives getting better. They're, they're improving their material conditions. And
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: I recognize that if Democrats keep losing, then Republicans are
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: going to keep ruining this country further. And I want
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: the Democrats to win. I want to be the most
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: regime-pilled propaganda minister you've ever seen.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: That's what I want for you.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: But I can't do that if the Democratic Party is
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: not offering anything.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I guess what I, here's what I, and I think
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: that's all fair. I guess like where I'm, like what
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to see is like, what is the path
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: to the Democrats creating the kind of story that's backed
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: by candidates, that's backed by message, that's backed by policy,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: that's backed by having the right enemies, telling that kind
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: of story, right? And then in concert with that, we
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: do need a kind of virtuous circle where then more
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: and more people in left media start to accept that
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the vehicle for changing this country for the better is
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: If we were consistently critical, I mean, I can't speak
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: for everybody else on the left. I don't know who
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: you're talking about when you say this, but I can
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: speak to my friends that are over at Dropsite News,
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: former Intercept guys like Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grimm. I
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: can speak to a majority report that was way more
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: in the tank for Kamala than I was, for sure.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: They were very openly more excited at the prospect of
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Kamala Harris. I was definitely a lot more depressed by
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: no matter who wins, we are still cooked. uh, was
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: my attitude, but like certainly understanding and recognizing that John
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Trump is going to be far worse than Kamala Harris,
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: of course. Um, and, and, uh, chopper trap house, right?
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: So these are some of the largest media companies out
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: there on the left, right? Outside of the orbit of
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: the democratic party, every single one of these outlets, myself included,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: talked more about the Biden administration's accomplishments with the NLRB,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: with Lena Kahn at the FTC, with like, you know,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: trust busting, and numerous other accomplishments that the Democratic Party
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: actually brought forward than they did. And it didn't matter.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: My point is, there was, we always defended, we always, always,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: always defended the Afghan withdrawal unconditionally. You barely saw that
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: on MSNBC. We always defended that. We always defended Lina Khan.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: We always defended the NLRB. We always defended the symbolic
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: move that Joe Biden made when he went to the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: UAW picket line. We didn't forget that. We talked about that.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: It didn't matter. It's not enough, especially when there's so
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: much that Joe Biden did, I think, outside of the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: economic pressures that Americans were experiencing that was certainly going
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: to play a pivotal role in the election. But there's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: so much that he did in the month of October
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: in 2023 that just completely wiped that, that made it
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: impossible to defend him because it became the major focus
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: of a lot of people. And there's nothing you can
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: do in that moment when people are, you know, seeing
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: exactly what's going on and getting frustrated. He unveiled the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: right-wing immigration bill on October 5th, 2023. If I'm, I
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: might be getting the date wrong, but it was like
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: literally two days before October 7th. He did that. And
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: then October 7th happened and he went and he bear
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: hugged Netanyahu and, and kept giving, you know, unlimited weapons
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: to Israel over and over again, never restraining Israel. Everybody
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: knew exactly what was going to happen. It had happened
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: before and it was going to be much worse. And
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: yet no restraint whatsoever. And it has, I think, diminished
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: America's soft power capabilities on the global stage further. It
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: has eroded America's influence and soft power capabilities in the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Western world. Obviously the global South already knew what was up.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: They've always known, but they have no power. They have
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: no voice. It doesn't matter. But the populations in Western Europe,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: recognizing what was going on and actually starting to protest
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: against it, I mean, that's different. I'm saying this as
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: someone who's been an advocate for Palestinian emancipation for the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: past 10 years publicly. I've never seen this groundswell of
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: this massive sea change, this attitude shift in such a
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: dramatic fashion over the course of the last 12 months,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: and they did not address that at all. And instead,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: they hugged and kissed neocons and talked about, even in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: the VP debate, like, Israel having the nuclear first strike capability.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: What an insane conversation we're having after 12 months of genocide.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: Americans fancy themselves to be peaceful people. It's a lie.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: America's foreign interventions are anything but peaceful. Even then, the
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: media ecosystem usually just shelters Americans from the genuine devastating
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: impact of America's actions globally. But for that reason, Americans...
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: can at least feel like they're peaceful does, which is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: why Donald Trump, despite never being a peaceful dove, was
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: able to effectively communicate that he was actually anti-Iraq war
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which was a resilient message
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: that actually showcased them as more moderate than Hillary Clinton
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: in the eyes of many Americans. He did four years
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: of no peaceful dove shit whatsoever. And then he turned
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: around and after October 7 was still able to effectively
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: outflanked the democrats on this issue despite the fact that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: he got a hundred million dollars from miriam adelson sheldon
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: adelson's wife to potentially annex the west bank and put
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: rabid evangelical freaks like mike huckabee as the as the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: uh you know israeli ambassador like these guys are insane.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: That's why it's like it is like it's like very
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking for me to like i like Look, like I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: think one of the reasons people will be mad that
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: you're on the show is because you're like a proud anti-Zionist, right?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Like you've said that. I've gotten shit for saying.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say anti-Semite. I was like, damn.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: Joining us today, anti-Semite dumbass. Yeah. No, but that, but
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: like I actually, like a couple, like two or three
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: years ago, I said on Ponce in America, like that
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: I described myself as a Zionist, which got people upset.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: But what I said then and what I still say
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: now is, and I actually had the same conversation with Bernie,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: is you ought to denounce the destruction and death in Gaza.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: You ought to denounce the moral abomination that is taking
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: over the West Bank on its own terms because it
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: is morally reprehensible. It is despicable. These are war crimes
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: being committed against innocent Palestinians who are paying the with
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: their lives for the crimes of Hamas. Like, you don't
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: need to go further than that. But I actually do
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: go further than that.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: And what I say is- You're saying dismantle the Zionist entity?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not. And so what I'm saying is, well,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: what I- Peace by peace, inshallah. I'm not saying that.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is, it is also terrible for Israel.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: And you don't need to care about that.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: No, I agree.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: No, I know. I do care about that. And like
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: what Bernie said, like I- always appreciate what he has
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: to say on this issue. And he said is that
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: basically even Israel does not understand the way in which
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: they're becoming an isolated pariah nation. And so people will
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: be mad to have someone who is a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: on this show. But like, I am someone who has
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: called himself a Zionist and I am against this because
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I believe it doesn't serve Israel's interest either. And that
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: to me is what is so devastating about the outcome
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of this election, in part because of policy, in part
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: because Joe Biden is such an incomprehensible messenger on one
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: of the most delicate and contentious topics in American politics.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: We now have Donald Trump who is able to kind
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: of allied what his actual views would be on this issue.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: And like, you know, we have seen what happens Israel
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: when you have someone like Trump in power at a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: moment of crisis and now there is Trump back in
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: office Here and if you are concerned about the lives
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: of Palestinians if you're concerned about continuing instability and violence
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and death In that region this election has just made
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: everything so much fucking worse.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: I think American foreign policy being so uniparty on this
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: issue is Genuinely frustrating and it's genuinely damaging for Israel
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: because I We recognize how our fellow Americans are becoming
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: more reactionary every single day, especially with this new Trump election.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: You see people that formerly maybe had different opinions go,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: you know what, maybe it is good to deport 20
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: million people violently by utilizing the military potentially. This is
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: something that the Donald Trump administration has said they're going
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Well, at the very least, even if people don't believe
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that'll happen or didn't understand, like, The expectation that Donald
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Trump taking all of these extreme positions would be enough wasn't.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: That just wasn't true. Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: So what I'm trying to explain here is that before
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: you know it, people can succumb to reactionary feelings and
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: reactionary sentiment and find themselves in the throes of a
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: fascist ideology without even recognizing it.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: And I think examining that is important in an academic setting.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: That's why we have Holocaust studies, right? That's why we
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: have genocide studies as an entire field to specifically understand
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: exactly how Nazi Germany got to that position or fascist
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Italy got to the position that it got to. And
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, you might even disagree with
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: me on this, but like, that's where Israel is. That's
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: where Israel is at right now. They have become an
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: incredibly angry culture, an incredibly angry country that, has succumbed,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: especially since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, who wasn't exactly
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: a great guy for Palestinians either. I mean, he was
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: known as the guy who, who, uh, deliberately tasked the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: Israeli security forces in breaking the hands of children for, uh, for,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: you know, stone, uh, for stone throwing right in the
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: first Intifada. That guy was the like off ramp for,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: for peace negotiations with Palestinians and they assassinated him and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: his assassins, and people who are backing his assassins, like
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: Itamar Ben-Givir, like Bezalel Smotrich, are now firmly a part
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: of the Israeli establishment, the current governing coalition.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I also, there are also hundreds of thousands
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: of Israelis who have protested this government.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for different reasons, but yeah, no, for sure. Yes.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: I just think it's important. Yes, like, Israel is responsible
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: for Israel's actions, but we do need to separate Benjamin
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu and his conduct from the Israeli people. That doesn't
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: mean they're not responsible in the same way that America
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: is not George W. Bush, right? But America is responsible
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: for what George W. Bush, when he is in command
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: of our armed forces. But we understand that distinction.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: No, no, of course. The problem is you have to
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: also look at the Overton window though, in any society,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: in any culture, in any country, right? And I think that,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: um and i come from i'm turkish like i come
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: from a country with a with a conscription like i
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: i understand how what ultra nationalism is i've lived through
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: it i've experienced it i know what it's like when
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: turkish people hear me say like that the armenian genocide
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: is real for example like that's like a non-starter right
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: that's like you can't say that what are you talking
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: about I learned in school that it wasn't real, right?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Like I understand how a country can become more and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: more right-wing where even the liberal position is still committed
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: to the maintenance of an apartheid. And I think that
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: that is where we're at with, with Israel. And we
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: have to restrain Israel as, as we are the number
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: one partner of Israel, uh, whether it be uh, the,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: the weapons that we give to Israel, whether it be
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: the financial support that we give to Israel or whether
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: it be the, the trade partnership that we have, or, uh,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: you know, the, the, the financial, uh, partnership that we
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: have with Israeli companies, we have a lot of influence
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: over what Israel does. And I think over the course
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: of the last couple of decades, especially with Benjamin Netanyahu, um,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: Israel has become a more and more right-wing nation.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: But see, but like, yes, because it is a country
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: that now views itself as being isolated and under siege, right?
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Like this has all gotten to be so kind of
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: hopeless and Israel faces recrimination from around the world, feels isolated,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: feels like it needs to turn inward to protect itself,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: views itself as being under attack. Well, it's like the question, right,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: to me is like, how do you break that cycle?
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I agree it requires a ton of, of American pressure,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: but it also, I think, anti-Zionist fervor. To me, anti-Zionism
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: itself is not a path to where we ultimately need
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: to go, which is peace, peace and Palestinian self-determination. That's
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: what I believe in. That's what I care about. That's
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: where I want this. Israel as a country that no
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: longer feels constantly under threat, Palestinians being able to live
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: in peace and safety without being under occupation, uh, in
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: control of their own destiny. And to me, like that,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: like it's become a kind of like, that is a
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: two state solution. And anything that drives towards that, I
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: think is, is ultimately the direction we need to go
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: right now. We're moving in the opposite direction, which is
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: why this all feels so hopeless to me.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, look, I, I used to be of
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: that same mindset, uh, uh, uh, maybe like a decade
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: ago as well, where I, uh, I resort to the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: likes of Avi Schleim on this or Ilan Pape on
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: this in terms of my analysis of it, but the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: settlement operations and the so-called peace process that were, again,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: funded by America as well and still funded to this
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: day by the likes of Kufi, Christians United for Israel,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: which is the oftentimes not talked about part of this
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: equation that is significant and, dare I say, more significant
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: than whatever... Jewish Americans think about Israel. Like, it's the
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: right-wing evangelical Christians that are the number one funders of
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: the settlement project in general.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: But it's also, like, the consequences for the expansion of settlements. Yeah, well, that's...
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: And the use of settlement, like, what was once expanding
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: settlements as part of a negotiation tactic towards what would
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: ultimately have been a solution is now just a plan
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: to take over the West Bank.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's developing bantustans, which they did. And my
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: point is that... that has made it virtually impossible for
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: a two-state solution to exist, which is why I think
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: that Israel already maintains sovereignty, and that as an apartheid state,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: what needs to happen is to abolish the apartheid, which
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: is something that, unfortunately, many Israelis refuse to reckon with,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: at least right now, because that would mean 5 million Palestinians,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: including the 2.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, would now
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: constitute a demographic majority in this area, in this uh,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: in this land that Israel enforces sovereignty over. And that
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: is terrifying for, uh, it's, it's demographic destiny, it's demographic
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: goals in general.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Well, just also, it's, that's something to add. Like you
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: can point, like, it's also something that Israel has never
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: gotten to ascend to.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: No, I understand that. Which is why, which is why
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: I think like the pressure campaigns, uh, albeit, uh, you know, minimal, but, um, the, the,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: the change in attitude and the way that like a
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: lot of people, uh, see this dynamic is, is, significant.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: And I think that inevitably things will change and we're
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: seeing it right now. We're seeing it with the ICC decision.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: Like this is, uh, this is a truly unique moment. Uh,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: we're seeing it with the ICJ court case. Uh, we'll
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: see where it goes, but I think that, uh, I
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: understand why even members of the state department that I
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: would directly be at odds with in the way that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: we examine the world, uh, have, have from the start
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: tried to say, this can't happen, that we need to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: use the liberal Zionist off ramp immediately. We need to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: just like, you know, put Benny Gantz in charge or something.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: Like we need to just like single out Benjamin Netanyahu,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: say he's the bad guy and then move in the
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: direction where like a more manageable, more liberal person, a
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: more moderate person can be left responsible and restrain Israel
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: in some way in order to continue Israel being an
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: unsinkable aircraft carrier in a resource-rich region. And they didn't
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: even listen to that. Like the top of the administration
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: just didn't even listen to that.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Well, because Netanyahu is an obstacle to any kind of peace.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a, like we have been in
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: moments in the recent past where Palestinians and Israelis were
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: at the table and peace seemed within reach, right? And
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: that seems very far away right now. We were, we were,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: we were. And that seems very far away right now.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: But to me, that still seems closer than a single state.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: And to me, there's that, that in that sort of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: a future of heading towards that is a future of
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: a lot more chaos and violence and.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: Terror and horror.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: And so I like come back to my, my view
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: remains that like the, the future that they, the only
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: hope is some kind of a two state solution. As
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: far as that seems right now, people want to say
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: otherwise fine.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: Uh, but, uh, I think they're going to annex the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: West Bank. I think that's what I think is going
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: to happen. And Trump is going to let it happen. Well, Trump,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: this is the thing. And it's not even because Trump
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: is ideologically committed to the Zionist project in the way
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: that Joe Biden was. It's because Miriam Adelson gave him
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: $ 100 million. That's it.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Trump doesn't give a fuck.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about anything. He's just like, yeah,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: these guys gave me money. I'm going to listen to her.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: And that's it. And that was really funny because that's
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: what he's talked about in the anti-Semitism conference that he
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: put together. If you recall, he was like, I've done
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: so much for you Jews. Why won't you vote for me?
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: That's what he kept saying. He's like, if I lose,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: it's because of you Jews.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: And it was insane because in his mind, he thinks...
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: that's the only thing that American Jews care about. Like
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: it's the, it's the dual loyalty trope, but you also
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: can't do that trope in a, in a woke way
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: on mainstream media either. When you are, you know, not,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying you're doing this. I'm just saying like,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: you also can't do that in a, in a more
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: woke way when you're talking about Israel in, in as
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: many liberal outlets do sometimes when they talk about like, well,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: you know, you just want Israel to perish, I think.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: And you're probably antisemitic and that, you know, it's just,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Israel has demographic concerns. It's like, okay, well, that's, America
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: has demographic concerns. America has white demographic concerns. That's not a,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: that's a non-starter for me. You know what I mean?
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: I don't care.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I mean, there is also a ton of anti-Semitism. Oh,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: I know, I know, you know, I know, like, I
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: just make sure, yes, and, yeah, it's skyrocketing. And like that,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: but like, again, like, I just, we got to move
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: on from this, but like, It's just that you see
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: it in our politics, you see it in politics around Israel,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: like this kind of vicious circle of people feel under threat,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: they turn inward, they become less and less empathetic towards
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: their neighbors, that leads them to be more and more isolated.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: And to me, it's like the question is not like,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: I don't like, I'm not even interested in like philosophical debates, ideologically,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: it's like, how do you break that human cycle, right?
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: And I think on our side, it starts with, a
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: policy that recognizes that it is in Israel's interest to
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: stop the violence and to stop the killing. And that
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: moving towards something like the annexation of the West Bank
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: or the permanent occupation of Gaza or whatever it may
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: be is ultimately not in Israel's interest. I know that
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: that makes me sound like a neoliberal, but that is
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: what I think.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: No, I understand where you're coming from. I don't disagree
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: with you. I think that that's why I was trying
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: to bring it back to like American politics. And I
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: don't think it's an accident that In the past three decades,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: every single Western capitalist nation firmly planted within the heart
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: of empire, firmly within the comfortable bosom of American imperialism
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: has shifted dramatically to the right. And in that process,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: I think, or leading up to that, there was a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: lot of austerity, a lot of clawing back of social
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: safety nets, a lot of, privatization that took place that
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: some people call the inshitification of the economy or the
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: inshitification of everything. And in that process, I think people
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: got more and more angry. And the only people that
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: benefit from that anger are always going to be far
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: right figures that can point to people that are defenseless
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: and people that are less powerful than you are. Uh, and,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: and they were able to successfully use the anger to
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: redirect that towards nationalist sentiment, to redirect that towards racism
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: and homophobia, bigotry of all different sorts. And that's why
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: you're seeing the reform movement grow in the UK, uh,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: with Nigel Farage, who now has a higher approval rating
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: than the, the very conservative, uh, Tory adjacent labor leadership
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: when Keir Starmer, that's why you're seeing the AFD grow
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: in momentum in Germany. That's why you're seeing the Le
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: Pen's party grow as well. Even if she goes to jail,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: her movement will not, you know, go away. And in
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: every single instance, you have centrist, moderate, moderate to like center-right,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: neoliberal party leadership constantly trying to maintain the hegemonic status
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: of neoliberalism and losing out to populist, far-right messaging every
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: step along the way. Because when material conditions worsen, okay,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: And you might look at the technological improvements and say,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: what do you mean material conditions are worsening? Like I
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: can order a Uber Eats and immediately have it in
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: my doorstep. But like overall, the important things like educational attainment, healthcare,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: public transit, if we're talking about Europe, we don't even
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: have that here in America. We can talk about it
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: here too. You know, home ownership, these sorts of things
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: are just getting worse and worse year over year. And
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: it truly ruins people's lives and it leaves them angry.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: and confused and right-wingers like Donald Trump or fascists like
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: those in Europe, like Maloney's party in Italy as well,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: or Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, like these guys use
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: that opportunity to say, you know why you're mad? Because
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Muslim refugees came in and they ruined your beautiful European culture.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: It's, it's the challenge, right? Is that like things aren't
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: getting worse on every metric. They're not. And if you
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: were to look at the last, I don't know, 50
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: years of American politics. And if you just showed people
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: the economic data and you said, I want you to
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: find on this chart where the United States elected a
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: fascist dunce, you would not pick 2024. You might pick 2008.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: You might pick 1992. You might pick after the stagflation
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: of the 70s. There are a bunch of times you
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: might say, well, if it's someplace here, it must have
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: been then. And so I do think like we have to,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: I think housing is.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: A big part of it.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: I think people being furious that life didn't seem to come,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: like people are, I think, traumatized by the pandemic in
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: ways we're still kind of, it's hard to see and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: hard to find in polling, right? I think there's like
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: a deep anger about like, hey, wait, things never got
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: back to normal. I don't feel normal. Costs didn't come
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: back down. Life seems worse in measurable and immeasurable ways.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: And I do think part of it is like, yes,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it's material things. But it's also, I think....
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Spiritual?
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: It is. It is. There is something... I think that
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: there was a bargain people were making when all the
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: restaurants where they knew the owners closed and they were
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: replaced by fucking Panera Breads and Subways and chains. And
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: when their supermarkets became chains and the Walmarts came in, right?
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: And people like to blame Walmart, but Walmart is both
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: a symptom and a cause, right? I think there was
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: a bargain people made. And the bargain was, I'm going
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: to give up on the kind of dignity and community
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: and sense of place and belonging that I used to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: experience in my town for this cheap stuff. But it
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: better be fucking cheap. And it's not. But I think
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: people are very bad at understanding what they want. And people,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: I do think that there's this collective feeling of like, hey,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: we traded something away to these corporations. And some of
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: it we did unwillingly, some of it we did willingly,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: but we're not happy with the outcome. And I do
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: think that that's about community. I do think that's about meaning. Yeah.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: What you're describing, I mean, you're describing alienation, but.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I am. But like, but, but that is a
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: big part of it.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: But in the Marxian sense, not like alienation in the
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: normal understanding of it, but like, yes, you're right. Americans
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: feel isolated. Everyone feels isolated. Everyone feels alienated. They feel
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: alienated from their labor. And, uh, and, and besides that,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: there is no, there is no sense of identity. And
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: I talk about this quite frequently, actually. Our, our consumption
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: is the only marker for identity.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: Even guns. is a very important political identity for a
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: lot of Americans. That's consumption. That's no different than an
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: expensive Gucci bag, okay? It's actually more expensive in many instances.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: And the culture that surrounds it is still ultimately at
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: the point of consumption. And when there is a hurdle
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: in front of that, whether it's cost or because you
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: just simply can't go and buy it at the store
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: or whatever during COVID and the shutdowns, everything falls apart
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: because we're a very fragile nation that is built on
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: this idea that, like, as long as I get shit
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: for cheap, I'm fine. I don't really care. As long
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: as the cost of eggs will go down, you know,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: 20 cents or a dollar, I don't care if 20
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: million migrants get deported, is the calculation that some people made.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: And many people said, it's not going to happen anyway. Now,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: there is the other side of this story.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: I want to hear the other side, but I just
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: want to just.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: The other side is, what I was trying to say is,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: this is what Kamala Harris did wrong, in my opinion.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 6: She.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: she could have gone up there and said, I am
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: going to arrest the Walton family. And if she was
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: able to successfully say, I'm going to arrest the Walton
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: family and they're going to stand trial, okay, in a
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: military tribunal, and that is going to make egg prices
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: $ 5 cheaper. Eggs are going to be 10 cents again.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: Americans would have voted for that. That's my point. I
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: So you don't have to go that crazy, obviously.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: No, I know. I know. Well, I guess it just
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: like this to me, like these are the twin problems
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: of dealing with a fascist threat. One is keeping a big, fractious, progressive,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: small L liberal movement together. The other is how you
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: defend the value of institutions that don't do that. And
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: I know you're being.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: I'm being hyperbolic. I'm exaggerating. But like, I think that
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: for far too long, you know, deregulation and unconditionally supporting
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: corporations and even having what you just described as the
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: formative opinion on antitrust. As long as the consumer is happy,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: as long as the prices are low, we don't care
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: if you monopolize.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: That's the right's view. Democrats are now fighting. Some of
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: this is like, we're fighting back on that stuff.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: That was the right's view, but that was kind of
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: uniparty for a very long time, at.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: Least since the 90s. This is, I think, conservatives had
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: an ideological view of this. The Bork view of this.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: They came in and they said, antitrust doesn't mean what
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: it says in the law. It doesn't mean what it
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: says in people's experience of what a monopoly does. It's
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: this one specific definition, which makes it really hard to
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: stop mergers. And Democrats said, wait, hold on. Like kind of,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Democrats just didn't have a strong view on this. It
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: just wasn't a motivating, it wasn't. It wasn't a motivating-
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: I know, but why didn't they? Well, I think they,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: first of all, I think that like, I think the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: intellectual academic left had to catch up to the damage
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: this was doing. I think Democrats just didn't focus on it,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: didn't care about it. I also think there is money
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: from donors. Of course, of course, I'm not, I know
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: you don't need to rhetorically cue me up, I know.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: But that's like, I think sometimes it is, I think
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: it is not people saying, oh, I wish we would
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: go after these giant monopolies more, but I got this donation,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: so now I'm not. But it's a culture, a kind
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: of pro-business culture, right, that like kind of pervaded Democrats
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: since the 90s that made conversations about this kind of
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: thing harder to have which is different now because lena
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: khan is now the chair of the ftc right elizabeth
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: warren created this consumer financial protection bureau right like there
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: has been a shift but it but it is both
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: a not enough and not a shift in people's actual
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: understanding of what the democratic party.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Because there's no there's no immediate gratification that comes from
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: that i know and the immediate gratification that that is
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: supposed to happen could happen potentially with uh wide-sweeping legislative
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: agenda changes overall, or clearly communicating a pathway towards a
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: more just outcome for healthcare, for example. That's not something
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: that we're invested in. Things that touch people's lives immediately
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: is going to yield very positive benefits. I will say this.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: I think as far as Lena Kahn or the Consumer
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: Financial Protection Bureau These are fantastic things that happened under the,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: you know, the watchful eye of the Biden regime.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: Well, Barack Obama.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: And Barack Obama as well. The problem here, however, is that,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: once again, I think out of genuine fear, maybe, that
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: they would disrupt or upset the Tony West coalition of
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party or the, you know, all of these, like,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: major donors that donate to the democratic party they didn't
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: do a good job even explaining what they were doing
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: and i'll tell you why just real quick i just
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: want to give you an example of the irs right
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: joe biden funded the irs every dollar that goes to
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: the irs i think is like what seven extra dollars
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: or 30 up to 35 if i'm not mistaken i
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: don't know the exact numbers but like every dollar that
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: you spend on the irs you get 35 in return
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: in america's coffers right mm-hmm That's massive. That's fantastic. Republicans
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: hate that. They hate the IRS. And many Americans also
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: hate the IRS as well. They hate paying taxes. partially
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: because they don't see anything in return for it. Even
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: though the IRS getting more funds actually retrieved a lot
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: of tax dodgers that were refusing to pay taxes and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: And on top of that, their investigations concluded that I
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: think Coca-Cola had avoided taxes to the tune of $ 16 billion.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: One company. I never heard that from the Biden administration.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: They never went out and said, this is why we
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: funded the IRS. Not because we want to come after
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: you and your trailer in the trailer park with our
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: armed agents or whatever. Republicans, on the other hand, were like, 85,000
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: armed agents are coming to your house. They're going to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: kill you. They're going to take away your children. And
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: they're going to take your guns. And they're going to
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: take your trailer park.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Look, I think we paid for not having an effective
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: communicator in the president. Like, I think we paid dearly
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: It's not just the president.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: I know it's not just the president. P.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: Buttigieg is an attack dog. Sick him on every television show.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: I think part of the challenge is a lot of
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: people are talking about what these agents would actually do.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't get covered. It doesn't get attention. It
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: just doesn't matter. People don't cover this kind of stuff.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: That's part of it. I'm not saying there aren't Democrats.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: I like I agree with you. Like Democrats need to
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: have a kind of combative like that's anything we take
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: away from Donald Trump becoming president. Is that like clearly
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: we need somebody.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: People want a fighter.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: They want a fighter.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: They want a fighter. And like and you can't fight
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: for opportunity economy and fifty thousand dollars in tax credits
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: for startups. That is not something to fight for. You
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: need to be a fighter and you need to fight
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: for democracy. things that are universally good and that people want, healthcare,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: fixing the housing market, things like that.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Well, she did do that. Yeah, I just like, I
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: agree with you.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: But again, even her communication on that is like, so
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: much of the Democratic Party is now officially captured by
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: what we would look back in the past as like
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: unimaginably right-wing economic policies, like tax cuts and tax cuts
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: in a public-private partnership When I hear those words, I'm like,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: I'm not regime-pilled. I want to be regime-pilled. I want
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: to champion the social democratic regime. I want to make
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party make Olaf Palme look like a fucking
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: revisionist right-wing reactionary. That's what I want. I want trains.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: I want trains.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: I want better public transit.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: Better transit. I want more. I want socialized housing.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: See, but you're stopping it.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but what do you mean? We can't
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: get into it.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: We can't get out of time. We've gone so long.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is like- I am for building millions
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: upon millions of houses everywhere. That's what I'm for.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but no public-private partnership. Build it with federal publicly
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: funded employees and build it as a mechanism to claw
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: back the insane housing market prices to lower them by force.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: That's what I think.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: I think if you said that, a lot of Americans
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: would be like, I like that idea.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: I think if a Democratic politician got up there and said,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: we are going to employ millions of Americans, we're going
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: to have a national jobs program to employ millions of
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Americans building millions of houses, I think that would be
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: very popular.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: You're regime-pilled as well.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: I am regime-pilled. Now, I did go on your feed. uh,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: yesterday to see what you've been up to.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: And, um, can we just, can we just put this up?
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: I think I know what you're going to post.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I was looking for what your reaction was to the, uh, uh,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: Harris campaign podcast. And I just found this and I,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: and I just thought, is this what the Joe Rogan
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: of the left would post?
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: I think, uh, Joe Rogan posts.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump wins. And you're like, I think I know
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: what I need to do. I need to, I need
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: to post whole. Yeah. You getting good reactions to this?
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: Is this getting you what you need?
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to show my progress. It's been a while.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: You know, that's like from 2021 until now. And I mean,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: I do talk about my fitness journey quite a bit.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: You do Pilates? What? You do Pilates?
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: No, I train. I weight train and then I play basketball.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: What do you do for cardio?
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: Basketball. Basketball? Yeah, I play basketball three times a week,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: sometimes four. And that's been very good. I also track
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: my macro nutrients. I track all my calories.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: What does that do for you?
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: What do you mean? It's that right there.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: You think that's what it's doing?
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: Picture on the right. That's how I got there. Oh. Yeah.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: I use Manjaro. It's awesome.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice. I have family members that use it as well,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: and it's been very helpful.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have to think about it anymore.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's fantastic. Do you feel
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: like it's stopped your other addictive tendencies as well? I'm
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: a better driver.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird?
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe because you're not on your phone or something?
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: No, I think it's because I'm not spending so much
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: of my mental energy on diet. And so I'm just
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit less kind of spent and kind of,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, impulsive around other things. And so I
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: don't feel some need to get home two minutes faster.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: It's hard to explain. Like, I don't feel as much
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: of a need to find justice on the roads.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: I understand. Does that make sense?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: You asked me... No, I 100% get it. You asked me, like,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: why you track your calories or whatever. Like, I get
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of comfort from the rigidity of my schedule,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: my regimen. And I don't even think about it because
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: it's just a habit that I have at this point.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: And for that reason, it's not even a thing I
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: think about at all. It doesn't weigh on me. But
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: when I was, you know, when I was... eating in
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: a very unhealthy way uh it did constantly weigh on
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: me i was like oh i'm but it feels so
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: good but also it's so bad for me but then.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 5: You know you get like a little bit hopeless yeah
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 5: yeah yeah it's true politics too for sure i mean
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 5: definitely but you know you gotta you gotta focus on
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 5: whatever small victory you can have and it's the same
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 5: for fitness and like i said going back to the
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 5: joe rogan of the left.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: Conversation i i uh, you know, this is definitely something
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: that I talk to, uh, my community about quite a bit.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of people in my community that
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: have also gone on their own fitness journey. I've been
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: able to inspire them to, to do this as well.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: And I think it's, it's important to, to be physically healthy.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: I do like just to make one, just to close
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: this out, cause we've gone on too long, but like,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: there is something about like, like in terms of meaning
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: and like a spiritual Christ, like, I think there's, there's
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: a reason that, that, There's been an appeal of people
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: like the Jordan Petersons of the world and some of
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: the kind of more like self-help right wing types.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: And like, I do think there are a lot of
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: people out there looking for not just sort of answers
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: in politics, but like answers about like, why does like
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: I feel unfulfilled working, not working, whatever it may be. Like,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm missing like community and the kind
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: of leadership that would come from community. And like, I
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: don't think that I do think that's why sometimes you see, like,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, like even on like the shows we do, like,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: I do feel like there's like a hunger for like
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: something broader than just a political program, but like more
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: of a kind of way of grappling with the fact
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: that this version of modern life kind of dares us
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: to ruin our own lives.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I, I offer that. Uh, in, in
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: my broadcast every day. Uh, I mean, I, I talk
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: about my own personal journeys and I offer advice that
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: I used to have an advice segment as well. I
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: haven't done it in a while, but like, uh, you know,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: I'm going to bring it back. And that's why I
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: also like collaborate with other content creators, even if I
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: don't align with them politically, agree with them politically at all. But, uh,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: you know, there are plenty of people that I know
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: who are my friends, who I think as long as
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: they're like relatively charitable and good and kind people, even
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: if we don't agree on everything politically, it doesn't matter. Um, and, and, uh,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I, I find myself in these bro spaces
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: a lot. I've been on every single, almost every single
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: podcast that Trump has been on.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: And, and many of them are, are run by my friends,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: like impulsive. Uh, my buddy, Mike Malak is, is Logan
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: Paul's goals. Not the biggest fan of Logan Paul, but
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: I love Mike. Mike is a fantastic human being. Uh,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: he has an incredible journey of, of overcoming, uh, addiction. Uh, and,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: and he wrote about it as well. He had a
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: New York times bestseller. Bradley Martin with the Nelk Boys.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: I don't really know the Nelk Boys, but Bradley Martin
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: I like a lot. He owns Zoo Culture. He's a
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: real meathead. And Andrew Schultz as well have been on
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: that podcast too. A lot of these podcasts I've been
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: on as well. And these guys and their audiences are
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: receptive to what I have to say. And I think
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: optics play a role in that for sure. The way
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: I carry myself, the way I am naturally, authentically, I
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: think is a package that young men are, are not
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: immediately dismissive of. And I'm very aware of that. And
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: I try to use that for good. And I try
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: to use that to like explain to people that like,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: it's not cool to, you know, shit on random people
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: for no reason. They're like, let them live. Like, what
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: the fuck is this to you? It's not going to
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: fix your life.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: You're being a kind of a loser, an entitled little loser.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: And it's not good. And that does work.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Boss baby energy.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: It works. And I think my, the size of my
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: community now and, and the makeup of it, uh, is, is,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: proof of that reality. A couple of years ago, I
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: didn't have the numbers that I have now. And every
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: single person, virtually every single person in my audience will
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: tell you that there is one key issue that I
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: have dramatically changed their opinion on, whether it be American
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: foreign policy, whether it be the way that they you know,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: view trans people and we're transphobic. But now they're not
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: or even racist opinions. So, yeah, that's that's what I
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: try to do to the best of my ability in
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: my little corner of the Internet.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: It's Tom Piker. Good to see you. Yeah.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Congressman Seth Moulton. Joining us now,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: he's represented Massachusetts' six districts since 2015. Welcome back to
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America. It's Congressman Seth Moulton.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 6: John, it's great to be here. Thanks so much for
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 6: having me back.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: All right. So if you look at the map, it's
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: a sea of arrows pointing red, including in Massachusetts. Nearly
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: every county in Massachusetts shifted right. Both of the counties
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: in your district did. Everybody loves after we lose an
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: election to know why we lost the election. Did you
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: see signs before that made you think this was that
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: we were in trouble.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, this didn't surprise me at all. I've actually
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 6: thought for the past year, year and a half, that
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 6: we were likely to lose. And listen, I wasn't just
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 6: sitting back. I was working hard on a winning strategy.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 6: I've been campaigning all over the country. And I have
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 6: this group of veterans called Serve America that who've been
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 6: running in some of the toughest House seats across the country,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 6: to try to flip seats that we need to win
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 6: to win the House back and to hold the tough
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 6: seats that we have. We had an 89% win rate
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 6: as of there's still a couple elections that haven't been called.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 6: So I've actually been working on a really successful strategy.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 6: But by and large, it just felt like a lot
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 6: of Americans thought the Democratic Party was out of touch.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 6: And I remember being in Pennsylvania just a week before
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 6: election day, and I did not have a good feeling.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: How much of that do you explain by people were
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: just really fucking pissed about inflation, didn't believe they were
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: seeing the benefits of Joe Biden's policies, had a really
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: negative opinion about Joe Biden. And as we've seen all
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: around the world, there is just an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment fervor.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: And The fact that Kamala Harris got so close to
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: winning actually speaks to the fact that we mitigated what
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: was a trend around the world.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 6: I mean, look, there's definitely an argument there. But I
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 6: think too often Democrats use that as an excuse because
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 6: look at the opposition here. We are running against the
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 6: first convicted felon to be president of the United States.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 6: We're running against a party that's got a civil war
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 6: playing out across the country between traditional Republicans and MAGA Republicans.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 6: I mean, they couldn't even elect a Speaker of the
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 6: House for three weeks. That's never happened in American history either.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 6: Never in American history have a president's senior advisors, including
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 6: military officials who usually don't get involved in politics, come
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 6: out and said, this guy's unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. So
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 6: my argument would be, I get there's anti-incumbency problems. I
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 6: get there's inflation. But we were essentially running against half
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 6: an incumbent himself. And this should have been easy. We
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 6: should have been cleaning up from school board to President
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 6: of the United States and And so the fact that
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: we lost it all is real cause for concern.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the wake of it, I like have
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: these two competing instincts. One is to want to be
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: open and just listen to all the different perspectives on
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: what went wrong. But at the same time, I end
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: up feeling pretty suspicious when people say what they've always said.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: You know, and I and I include in that Bernie
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: Sanders puts out a statement after saying that Democrats have
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: abandoned the working class. I don't believe that's true. I'm
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: sure there are ways in which it's true. But Joe
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: Biden was an incredibly progressive president and did a lot
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: of what Bernie Sanders had advocated for him to do.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: So obviously the answer is going to be more nuanced
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: than that. Then I see Democrats like Alyssa Slotkin saying
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: that it's identity politics. But we've been through news cycles recently.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: about more center-left figures blaming identity politics. Then I see
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you talking about how, you know, Democrats need to have
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: a debate about how we talk about trans issues because
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump ran this ad about trans issues. And I wonder, like,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: wait a second, like, Are people going to the explanations
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: that they have had in the past for the parts
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic coalition that they just find annoying? And,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: you know, when we lose an election, I blame the
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: people that I don't like or that I have a
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: disagreement with or that I, in some ways, find irritable.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's a really fair question and
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 6: we should always be suspicious. I mean, literally, we should
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 6: have these debates about these tough issues, right? But what
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 6: I would say is, you know, look, you don't have
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 6: to agree with Bernie Sanders, but you can't say that
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 6: we have followed his economic plan. I mean, I think
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 6: there's actually a really legitimate argument for a more populist
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 6: economic policy, and I don't think we've adopted that. I
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 6: think Alyssa Slotkin raises identity politics because a lot of Americans,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 6: not just Democrats in tough seats, but a lot of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 6: Americans think that the Democratic Party is obsessed with identity politics.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 6: So I'm not sure we've put that issue to bed.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 6: And I'll tell you, a lot of, you know, independents
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 6: that I hear from, including Marines that I serve with,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 6: for example, overseas, who really don't like a draft dodger
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 6: to be commander in chief and don't really want to
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 6: vote for Donald Trump. But they say to me, you know,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 6: you guys are obsessed with identity politics or some other
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 6: reason why we're just sort of out of touch. That
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 6: is something that I hear. And I think also on
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 6: contentious issues, like, look, I did this 20-minute interview with
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 6: the New York Times and talked about a lot of
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 6: places where I think the Democrats are out of touch
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 6: or just not trusted on issues. And they picked out
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 6: this quote about trans women in sports. But I do
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 6: think it was a problem that Harris really just didn't
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 6: even have a response to this vicious, hateful ad that honestly,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 6: Republicans clearly had data to say it was successful because
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 6: they put $ 200 million behind it or something. And when
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 6: you can't even respond to that, then A, it's bad
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 6: politics because they can just clobber you over the head
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 6: with it and win. on issues like that. But also
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 6: it does a real disservice to the communities that only
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party will be there to protect. Because if
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 6: we just cede the ground to Republicans and let them
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 6: get their hateful policies through because we don't even have
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 6: a reasonable response, then they win. And that's dangerous for
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 6: our party politically, but it's also dangerous for exactly the
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 6: folks like trans people and trans kids who genuinely need
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 6: our support and protection.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: So, You know, everybody's come back to this. So, you know,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: the ACLU does this questionnaire, then she's asked about it.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: That answer becomes the basis for this ad. And there's
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: clearly a choice, and not just on this issue, but
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: when she was asked about the policy changes she's had
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: since 2020, tried to make it about values to avoid
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: kind of creating a new cycle of she has changed
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: her position. And when she was asked about this issue
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: in an interview, she said some version of that was
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: just the Trump administration policy. And it was a way
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: to kind of get out of it. Now, you can
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: say that that should have gone a different way. But
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: more broadly, you know, the Biden administration puts out a
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: compromise policy on trans athletes to try to answer some
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: of the concerns that people have and some of the
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: attention that it gets while trying to stave off outright
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: hateful Republican bans, right? That was an attempt to kind
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: of do, I think, Joe Biden did what I think
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: you are asking Democrats to do, to try to kind
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: of enter this contentious issue, try to have the debate
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: and try to kind of signal some kind of compromise.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: The problem, right, is that like Democrats aren't obsessed with
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: this issue. Republicans have a strategy of elevating, drawing attention to,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: making salient this issue to try to make us talk
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: about this issue. Sarah McBride, about to start in Congress.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: She didn't come saying, I'd like to talk about where
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the bathroom, please. That's Nancy
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Mace and Republicans are thrusting it upon us. And so
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: how much of when you say, oh, voters think or
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: people think, independents think that Democrats are obsessed with these issues,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: how much are you kind of blaming Democrats for living
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: in a broken media ecosystem?
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 6: Well, look, I mean, you're right, John. There's no question
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 6: that Republicans are the ones bringing up these issues, badgering
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 6: us over the head about it, right? I mean, we
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 6: never had a problem with bathroom policy until Nancy Mace
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 6: makes a huge issue of it, and it's obviously an
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 6: effort to just attack this one path-breaking woman who's coming
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 6: to Congress. But the problem is, again, that if we
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 6: just don't even have a response, then they're going to
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 6: keep doing this because it works for them. And if
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 6: we don't engage in this issue or refuse to debate
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 6: it unless it's exactly on our terms or have an
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 6: absolutist position that the majority of Americans don't agree with. Remember,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 6: there are a lot of Democrats who just think the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 6: only answer to trans women in sports is not the
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 6: Biden's administration's compromise policy, but it's just an absolutist view that, no,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 6: there's no restrictions whatsoever. Which, of course, I mean, the
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 6: Olympics doesn't even agree with that, right? So it's totally
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 6: reasonable to have this debate. And yet the people, I mean,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 6: the fellow Democrats' response to my even just raising the
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 6: issue was no, there's no there's no room for debate here.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 6: You can't even bring that up. I mean, the backlash
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 6: really proved the broader point that I was trying to make.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 6: But I also think that, you know, this was exactly
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 6: what the Republicans were able to do with immigration. I was,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 6: I remember being on the House floor last year, and
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 6: there are some people, colleagues running for this, this position
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 6: of Democratic messaging, like chair, committee chair. And so supposedly
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 6: in charge of democratic messaging for the House. And I
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 6: asked one of the candidates how she thought we should
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 6: deal with immigration. And her answer was, we should not
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 6: talk about immigration. I said, well, I actually think a
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 6: lot of people are concerned about it because it does
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 6: seem there's a real problem with the southern border. It's
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 6: just dangerous. It's dangerous to talk about it because it's
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 6: used against immigrants. And I just don't think that strategy
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 6: has worked. It's why, even though we do have a
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 6: reasonable bipartisan immigration policy, in part represented by the bipartisan
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 6: deal in the Senate, Trump and the Republicans have just
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 6: been able to clobber us over the head because there
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 6: was a period where Democrats were just denying it was
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 6: even a problem. So totally legitimate concern. Like, yes, Republicans
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 6: are the ones weaponizing these issues. But if we want
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 6: to win the debate, settle it, and then focus on
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 6: the things that we want to talk about, we have
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 6: to do that. We can't just cede this to the Republicans.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 6: We have to win.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: So on immigration, though, it sounds like what you're saying.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think what we're doing is saying, boy, we
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: made a bunch of mistakes in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: that we have rectified but have not successfully drawn attention
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: to that in the public imagination. Most Democrats in the
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: House embraced a pretty conservative bipartisan border deal. Kamala Harris
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: embraced that deal. Joe Biden embraced that deal. It's, you know,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: if the problem is a bunch of people running for
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: president shouldn't have raised their hands about decriminalizing the border
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: in 2020.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 6: Great.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: But I can't, we can't go back in time and
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: change what happened then. But it seems like a lot
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: of what you're saying has been addressed. The problem is,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: is it that people don't believe it? Because you just,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: you're pointing to, yeah, there are going to be some
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Democrats that disagree with what you're saying, but that's the debate.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: We're having it.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 6: Look, look, well, I don't, I actually don't, I think
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 6: the backlash against me was not, we should have this
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 6: debate and here's my opposing view. It was literally, you
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 6: can't talk about this.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you did, I have to say, you did say
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: it in a pretty dickish way. Like you said it,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: you said it, but like, and you said, you said,
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want my daughters overrun by a man on
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: the football field. Like that sucks. Like that, you didn't,
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: you didn't exactly invite the best version of the debate yourself.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 6: But this is the problem, John. Like, You step back
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 6: from this discussion, right, and just hear two Democrats talking
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 6: about the precise word choice and whether it was sensitive
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 6: or not, which I agree, it wasn't the most, perhaps
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 6: the most sensitive words. Like, this is exactly how a
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 6: lot of Americans feel that the Democrats are out of
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 6: touch and that we are obsessing on these things rather
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 6: than just having a reasonable discussion. I mean, yes, we're
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 6: not always, not everyone is going to get the terminology
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 6: exactly right, even, you know, fellow Democrats. And I'll take
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 6: that criticism. but we got to be able to take
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 6: on the issues. But look, the broader point here, right?
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 6: The broader point is that, you know, I mean, just
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 6: to go back to immigration, right? Because you're right. I
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 6: think the broader point you're bringing up is in some
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 6: places we have fixed our problems, right? We are talking
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 6: about the border. We do have a reasonable immigration policy.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 6: And so therefore the question is, if we have a
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 6: reasonable immigration policy, And Trump's immigration policy is both unrealistic
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 6: and just hateful. I mean, it's going to tear apart
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 6: families and communities across the country if he's able to
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 6: deport millions of Americans, not to mention it will raise inflation,
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 6: which obviously people don't want. Then why is it that
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 6: the American public trusts Republicans more on immigration than Democrats?
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 6: Why is it that we have a great economic policy?
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 6: Harris's plan would not only continue to bring down inflation,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 6: but would actually reduce the deficit, something that Republicans used
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 6: to care about. Trump's policy would triple the deficit and
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 6: dramatically increase inflation because deporting Americans, raising tariffs, and tax
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 6: cuts for billionaires all contribute to inflation. And yet, the
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 6: American public trusted Republicans more on the economy. And I
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 6: think my personal view, and I don't know if I'm right,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 6: the view I'm proposing is that this is a place
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 6: where people just feel like we might have the right policies,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 6: but there's a cultural mismatch. Like, we're too preachy. uh,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 6: rather than listening to Americans or we're standing in our
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 6: ivory towers and we're not hearing the problems of, of
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 6: working people, especially in rural communities. There's a sense that, that,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 6: that people just don't trust us even if we do
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 6: have the right policies. And that's where I think we've
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 6: really got to look ourselves in the mirror. I mean,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 6: I'm saying I'm sitting here in Massachusetts with three Harvard degrees, right?
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 6: Like I'm part of the problem.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: That's offensive.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 6: But like it's, but here's the issue, right? Um, I
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 6: got into this whole business because of my time in
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 6: the Marines and feeling that I saw the consequences of
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 6: failed leadership in Washington when I was serving four tours
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 6: in Iraq. And I worked hard. I worked hard to
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 6: get through school and to get to Harvard. I'm living
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 6: proof that C's get degrees, so I didn't have a
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 6: stellar academic career at that august institution. But when I
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 6: showed up to my Marine platoon, my biggest liability was
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 6: that Harvard degree because these guys, some of the best
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 6: Americans I've ever met, 18, 19, 20-year-old kids, really, from
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 6: across the country who wanted to serve, they looked at
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 6: me and said, he might be book smart, but he's
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 6: probably not street smart, and he's liable to get us killed.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 6: And so when I show up with this degree I've
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 6: worked so hard for much of my life to earn,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 6: and it's literally my biggest liability, what I quickly learned is,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 6: that's not going to get their trust. And standing here
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 6: and saying, well, let me tell you what I know
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 6: because I went to Harvard and let me tell you
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 6: how we're going to do this is not the way
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 6: to earn the trust of those Marines. And I think
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 6: it's similar for us in the Democratic Party, especially where
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 6: we're concentrated in cities and urban areas, we're concentrated on
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 6: the coast. We just can't have this cultural arrogance of
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 6: always telling people, oh, we're right and you're wrong. Not
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 6: only you're wrong, but you're a bad person if you
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 6: don't agree with us. That's what a lot of Americans
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 6: here From Democrats. I had to say these fellow Marines,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 6: I respect you. I hear you. And that's how I'm
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 6: going to earn your trust. Not by trotting out my degree.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that's smart. I think nobody from
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: Harvard should ever trot out their degree. But I think
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: you're right about that. And by the way, I also think,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to issues that I think we
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: have backslid on LGBT issues, specifically on trans issues, right?
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: And I think it's worth thinking about how that happens.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: And I think part of it, to your point, is
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: we need to not assume people have a lot of knowledge,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: not assume people are approaching it with bad faith. The
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: reason I'm criticizing you and I'm talking to you about
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: this in this way is because I'm holding you to
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: a higher standard. If there are people that are new
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: to this issue, I genuinely believe that the more people
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: know trans people talk about this, I think that that's
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: good for this debate. I think we will win this debate.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: I think there's a difference, though, between how we talk
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: about this with people we're trying to persuade and help
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: understand that, no, this bathroom issue... What AOC said about it,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: I thought was perfect, basically saying that, hey, this is
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: just a crazy thing that makes women and girls unsafe.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: That was one way to talk about. But I think
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: people want a member of Congress and a Democrat who's
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: introducing a debate about a sensitive topic to be to
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: be someone that they can trust to lead that conversation
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't make them feel like he's
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: not on their side. And I think that was the problem, right? Like,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: I think you're right. Like, we need to talk about, like,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: I think that there's completely a conversation that has to
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: be had around sports specifically. Right-wing Republicans, other people, they're
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: obsessed with the sports issue. And like, I want, like,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want sports. Like, I just want trans people
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: to be safe and not to be afraid to go
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom at the airport. Right. Like and just
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: to be able to live their lives. And if there's
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: any way in which the issue around sports is a
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: distraction from that or that there's legitimate questions and nuance
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: that needs to be addressed, like we should have that conversation.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: But to the larger point that you're making, yes, like
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: Democrats have this front of the classroom vibe.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: That like we are hand raisers. We are teacher. You
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: forgot to assign us homework types and we need more
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: like back of the classroom energy. One of your colleagues
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: who talked to John also did a conversation with the
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: New York Times, Marie Glusenkamp-Perez, and she said we need
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: to keep it local and that we shouldn't be represented
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: by any more lawyers. Where's your head on the lawyers?
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: Are we done with lawyers? Yeah. I guess, you know,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, some of your best friends are lawyers.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: Some of your best friends are lawyers.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 6: Oh my God, who am I going to offend by
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 6: this comment?
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: She's not afraid. She's not afraid.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 6: Gosh, if you know me, I mean, you know me
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 6: a little bit better. I'm always railing on lawyers.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easy to go after a trans quarterback, but
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: now lawyers, suddenly you're skittish.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 6: I think that this is part of the problem with
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 6: the Biden administration. You know, look, I'm like a foreign policy.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 6: Everyone asks me, like, what do you think about the
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 6: Biden administration's policy on Ukraine? And my answer is I
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 6: think they've done everything right three to six months late.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: And why?
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 6: Because rather than being an administration filled with decision makers
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 6: and executives and people who've run companies and whatnot, real leaders, right,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 6: it's filled with a lot of lawyers who are just
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 6: obsessing over every detail and hemming and hawing and I
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 6: don't know, is this going to cause this or that?
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 6: And what about the particular legal restrictions? Like, just get
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 6: them the guns. Like, just get them the artillery. Just
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 6: get them the tanks.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: Fuck Harvard.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: Fuck lawyers. That's where I'm at.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 6: Well, at least we can all agree on that.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 6: But, you know, look, there are a lot of Americans who, like,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 6: we do have to, if we want to be the
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 6: majority party, if we want to win, to me, this
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 6: is all about winning. We can't advance any of our agenda,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 6: any of these issues that we believe are so important
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 6: if we don't start winning elections again. And you just
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 6: simply can't, by definition, win elections if you're not in touch,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 6: if you're not relatable to the majority of Americans. And
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 6: so we have to pay attention to what the majority
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 6: of Americans are thinking and meet them where they are,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 6: have a discussion on their terms. And then, you know what?
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 6: We can try to bring them around to ours.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: I agree with that. Democrats are preachy. I feel like
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: everybody's right. Bernie has a point. I agree with you
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are pretty annoying. I'm pretty annoying. I'm a
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: pretty annoying Democrat myself.
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 6: Look, I can be pretty damn annoying myself, too. But like, look,
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 6: can we talk like, OK, what's the action plan here?
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What are we going to do?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 6: What are we going to do?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: What are we going to do?
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 6: First thing is, I think we need to like we
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 6: can't just say we need to listen more. We need
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 6: to preach less. Like we need to actually very publicly
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 6: go out and listen to Americans and make that a
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 6: very public thing where leaders of our party like Chuck
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 6: Schumer sitting at, you know, Cafe in Ohio. Like if
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 6: he wants to be the leader of the Senate, if
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 6: he wants to be the face of Democrats in the Senate,
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 6: he needs to get down with farmers and sit on
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 6: a tractor and just not to make a photo op,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 6: but actually to listen to what they're saying, listen to
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 6: what their concerns are. So I think that we need
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 6: to actually practice that idea. The second thing is you
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 6: brought it up actually, these interest groups, right? I mean,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 6: another word for it is lobbyists. And we always rail
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 6: against Republicans for being beholden to the gun lobby and
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 6: the oil lobby. Totally true. They totally are. They're afraid
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 6: of these folks. But we're afraid of some of our
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 6: own lobbyists. And we are beholden to these candidate surveys
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 6: and we stress over them. Like we would just, you know,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 6: not do that. Like just, you know, listen more to
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 6: people outside of Washington rather than inside the beltway folks
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 6: who sometimes don't even represent their own interest groups.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 6: They're more extreme than many of their constituents.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 6: And then the third thing is we've got to elevate
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 6: more leaders in our party who know how to win
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 6: in these tough districts. Like you look at some of
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 6: the Serve America guys like Pat Ryan, Abigail Spanberger, Alyssa Slotkin,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 6: Jerry Golden, who won the most Trump district in the
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 6: entire country. I mean, these men and women who are
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 6: true leaders in the Congress, they don't get to be
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 6: chairs of committees. They don't get to be leaders of
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 6: Democrats in leadership positions in the House, because those all
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 6: go to people in safe districts. Everyone in a leadership position,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 6: almost to a person, is in a safe district. And
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 6: so we never hear from the perspectives of people who
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 6: do have to talk to independents, who do have to
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 6: earn every vote, because they might lose an election. And
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 6: they only win by, you know, a sliver, like Slotkin,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 6: like Golden. we need to elevate more of those leaders
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 6: in the party. And I think those are three concrete things.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 6: More listening, less preaching, and actually show it. Actually elevate
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 6: leaders who can actually tell us how we need to
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 6: win across the country and do these things. And then
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 6: pay more attention to them and the people rather than
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 6: the interest groups and lobbyists. Doesn't mean that they don't
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 6: matter and that their views aren't important, but we can't
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 6: be beholden to them.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: What do you think about ranked choice voting?
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 6: I love it. I love it because, I mean, it's
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 6: a tricky concept to understand. I believe that if someone
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 6: had just sat down with the founding fathers and explained
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 6: ranked choice voting, we would have it because it just
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 6: ultimately results in candidates who are more representative of the
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 6: majority of people. And you're smarter than I am, so
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 6: you can probably do a better job of actually explaining
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 6: why that's the case. But that's the bottom line. You
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 6: actually tend to get people who are more representative of
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 6: the broader electorate as opposed to just, okay, you win
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 6: a primary by running to the extreme right or the
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 6: extreme left, and then you get an extreme conservative and
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 6: extreme liberal in the general election, and people feel like,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 6: wait a minute, I'm kind of in the middle, and
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 6: I don't know which way to go, which way to choose.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 6: And that's how we get these very polarized elections. districts
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 6: and these very polarized members of Congress.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: And I agree with all that. And I just until
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: I think people are brave enough to really take on
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: the lawyers publicly, I think we're going to be I
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: think we need to start an anti lawyers movement. I mean,
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: it's begun. It's begun. I mean, I checked I checked
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: your I before I was like, I was actually and
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: this is I'm sorry, maybe this is slightly insulting. I
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: was like, is Seth a lawyer? I got to look
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: it up. I'm sorry, but you do have three degrees
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: from Harvard. Are there no other schools? You don't speak
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: like a lawyer. You don't speak like a lawyer. Were
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: there no other schools you thought you might want to
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: check out? No other quads? You got to go to
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: Harvard three times? They didn't let me in once. I've
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: been rejected by Harvard as many times as you've gone there.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: That's something that happened to me.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 6: Well, Harvard makes mistakes too, John.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: And that's important to keep in mind. Congressman Seth Moulton,
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 6: Been great. Great to be here. Thanks.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Seth Moulton. Thank you to Sam Piker for
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: joining us. Now, as I said at the top, there's
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: a conversation Dan had with Jenna Malley, Dylan David, Plouffe,
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter from the Harris campaign. Afterwards,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: Dan took questions from listeners about the interview. and had
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: a bunch of really interesting thoughts on what he learned,
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: what more there is to learn. That is now available
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: as an exclusive bonus episode for subscribers on the Friend
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: of the Pod feed. Reminder, when you subscribe to Friends
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  Speaker 1: subscribe now from this feed on Apple Podcasts. That's our show.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: On Friday, we'll be dropping our annual Thanksgiving mailbag episode.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: With tons of great questions from you all. And then John, Tommy,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: and I will be back in your fiends on Tuesday morning.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. We're recording this on Wednesday. I already
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: spatchcocked the turkey. Cut the backbone right out. It was
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: a whole procedure.
• 2:04:47
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