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Has Anyone Seen the Democrats? · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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  Speaker 2: How many days left?
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  Speaker 3: So late.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: 14, about 14, about 1399, something like that?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: We're in the 13s for sure.
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  Speaker 1: How many days?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Are you asking the new China AI or the?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Inauguration day 2029. Seems like that should have just been
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  Speaker 1: something Google gave me the answer to.
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  Speaker 2: Google's broken.
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  Speaker 3: The Google AI. 14, oh.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Gotta use chat GPT for everything.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, you're right.
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  Speaker 2: You're right, I'm being stupid.
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  Speaker 1: There won't be an inauguration day in 2020.
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  Speaker 4: 1454.
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  Speaker 2: 454 days. I thought we were at 1406 when we
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  Speaker 2: talked about this.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe that's till election day.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, that's what it was.
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  Speaker 2: That's till election day.
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  Speaker 1: 1454 till inauguration day.
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  Speaker 2: Nothing much happens between the election and the inauguration as
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: we've found. This is good content. We should use it
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  Speaker 2: for the show. All right.
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  Speaker 3: I think we're rolling.
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  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Detour.
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  Speaker 2: On today's show, Trump is making good on his promise
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  Speaker 2: to go to war with the federal government. From loyalty
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  Speaker 2: screenings to dismantling diversity programs to pausing cancer research, we'll
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  Speaker 2: talk about which moves are more performative and which you
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  Speaker 2: should actually worry about. Democrats are finally beginning to talk
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  Speaker 2: and argue more openly about how to respond to all
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  Speaker 2: this craziness. We'll go through what we think is productive,
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  Speaker 2: what's a waste of time, and how the race for
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: DNC chair plays into all of it. Some news on
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that front. Stay tuned. Then Dara Lind, longtime immigration journalist
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and now a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: stops by. to talk to Tommy about what's really happening
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  Speaker 2: with deportations and immigration policy and why it matters. But first,
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  Speaker 2: let's talk about the brief skirmish our president got us
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: into with the Colombian government on Sunday, one of our
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  Speaker 2: biggest allies in South America. Basically, Trump tried to send
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  Speaker 2: a few military planes carrying deported migrants to Colombia. Colombia's
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  Speaker 2: leftist president, Gustavo Petro, said not so fast. His country
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  Speaker 2: would stop accepting these flights until the U.S. could guarantee
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  Speaker 2: a process where the migrants were treated with dignity. Apparently,
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  Speaker 2: this was all in response to Trump's use of military
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  Speaker 2: aircraft for these transfers. Colombia has allowed hundreds of flights
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  Speaker 2: carrying deported migrants on civilian aircraft under the Biden administration.
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  Speaker 2: Trump was not too happy about this, so he announced
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  Speaker 2: that the U.S. would be retaliating with a 25% tariff
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  Speaker 2: on all goods coming into the U.S. from Colombia, which
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  Speaker 2: would rise to 50% in one week. Just a reminder,
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  Speaker 2: we buy a lot of coffee, a lot of flowers,
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  Speaker 2: oil from Colombia. So that would likely mean higher prices
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  Speaker 2: on those things. Petro then threatened retaliatory tariffs of 25
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  Speaker 2: percent on U.S. goods imported to Colombia in a very
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  Speaker 2: long post where he also referred to Trump as a
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  Speaker 2: white slaver, said that he'd rather die than give in
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  Speaker 2: and confessed that although he finds the U.S. a bit boring,
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  Speaker 2: he does like Walt Whitman, Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky.
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  Speaker 3: It's an okay list. It's a good list, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And then on Sunday evening, he did give in. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt put out a statement
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  Speaker 2: saying Colombia had completely backed down, that the tariffs would
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  Speaker 2: be held, quote, in reserve, and added, quote, today's events
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  Speaker 2: make clear to the world that America is respected again.
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  Speaker 1: Love it or love it.
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  Speaker 2: And included... No, no, no.
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  Speaker 3: Get her on the show. Get her on.
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  Speaker 2: Included a warning to all other countries not to make
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  Speaker 2: the same mistake. I think the Colombians did say we
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  Speaker 2: did get some promises for better conditions for the migrants
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  Speaker 2: coming back.
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  Speaker 1: They got nothing.
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  Speaker 2: They got nothing. What did you guys make of this
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  Speaker 2: as a governing strategy, a foreign policy strategy, and a
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  Speaker 2: political strategy?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like classic Trump, right? He's the arsonist
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  Speaker 3: and the firefighter. Petro's an interesting guy. He joined a
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  Speaker 3: Marxist guerrilla group as a teenager. and then transitioned to politics,
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  Speaker 3: so he's not someone who's scared to fight.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: We all did crazy things as kids, you know?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were wild. Wild group this table.
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  Speaker 2: A couple left-wing gorillas right here.
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  Speaker 3: Something in my mentions I sometimes have. I do think
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  Speaker 3: Petro screwed up here. He gave Trump a win. He overreacted.
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  Speaker 3: I think he claims that there was a video.
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  Speaker 2: You don't think he should have named Chomsky?
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  Speaker 3: Well, there was a deportation flight to Brazil... that went
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  Speaker 3: viral on social media where people were handcuffed. And then
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  Speaker 3: there was the news that the U.S. is going to
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  Speaker 3: use military aircraft to fly these deportation flights. And I
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  Speaker 3: think a couple of Latin America experts I talked to
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  Speaker 3: think that Petra decided he could pick a fight here
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  Speaker 3: and it would help him politically. And then when people
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  Speaker 3: in Colombia realized that this might mean economic damage from
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  Speaker 3: tariffs or no visas for them to travel to the U.S.,
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  Speaker 3: they decided that was way worse and he backtracked very,
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  Speaker 3: very quickly. But I do think broadly from Trump, like,
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  Speaker 3: We're going to see a lot of this picking fights
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  Speaker 3: with Democrats or leftists on immigration, bullying small countries to
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  Speaker 3: get little wins, and then acting like that wasn't a
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  Speaker 3: strategy available to every U.S. president ever just to be
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  Speaker 3: a dick to Colombia. But ultimately, I think it's counterproductive
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  Speaker 3: and it raises questions about the U.S. as a long
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  Speaker 3: term ally. The Chinese are already trying to capitalize on it.
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  Speaker 3: So it's just stupid.
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  Speaker 1: Nerd shit from Tommy. Oh, they're going to capitalize it?
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  Speaker 1: This was Trump at his best?
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 1: When I saw it unfolding, when I saw it unfolding,
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  Speaker 1: what my honest first thought was, it was like, this
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  Speaker 1: couldn't have been scripted better for Trump if Trump hadn't
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  Speaker 1: paid this guy in Trump coins.
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  Speaker 2: I thought that too. At the White House, they must
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  Speaker 2: have been like, are you fucking kidding me? This is awesome.
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  Speaker 1: Because trade wars, tariffs, a lot of what Trump is promising,
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  Speaker 1: it's much easier to promise as a candidate because in reality,
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  Speaker 1: there are terrible, terrible tariffs trade-offs. And by the way,
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  Speaker 1: there are also terrible trade-offs in having a capricious American
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  Speaker 1: president upending our reputation as a stable and safe ally.
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  Speaker 1: There is incredible value for Americans day to day in
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  Speaker 1: having a president that is seen as a reliable partner.
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  Speaker 1: Because yes, it may mean there are times we have
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  Speaker 1: to compromise and give with your partners, but you're a
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  Speaker 1: trading partner they can count on. You're a country they
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  Speaker 1: can count on. Uh, but he doesn't give a shit
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  Speaker 1: about any of that. So he gets this incredible easy win, right? Like, obviously, like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I saw people on social media be like,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, our coffee is going to be more expensive,
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  Speaker 1: but like, this is bullying. You can bully a small
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  Speaker 1: country because they need us more than, than we need them.
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  Speaker 1: He knew that from the jump. This guy caves. It's
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  Speaker 1: just another great news cycle for Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 2: I did see some people on social media, various social
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  Speaker 2: media platforms, like cheering on the Colombian president and quoting
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  Speaker 2: from his statement and being like, uh, oh, he's throwing
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  Speaker 2: down with Trump and look at this. I'm here for this.
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  Speaker 2: This is great. And it's like, guys, let's not, this
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  Speaker 2: is not the way to, this is not the way
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  Speaker 2: to respond to this. I do want to talk about
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  Speaker 2: it in the context of like Trump using tariffs as
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  Speaker 2: a threat to get what he wants from other countries, which,
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  Speaker 2: you know, this situation made me realize, oh, this is
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  Speaker 2: why he loves tariffs so much because he, yeah, it's leverage.
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  Speaker 2: And he thinks he's going to, this is how he's
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  Speaker 2: going to get his foreign policy objectives achieved. According to
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  Speaker 2: Trump advisors who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, Trump is, quote,
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  Speaker 2: very serious about hitting Mexico and Canada with 25 percent
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  Speaker 2: tariffs this Saturday, February 1st, even before any negotiations. Just
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  Speaker 2: wants to hit him with the tariffs just to prove
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  Speaker 2: that he's not bluffing. Apparently, the journal also reports that
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  Speaker 2: Mexico and Canada, quote, are quietly expressing confusion and bewilderment
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  Speaker 2: because they aren't even sure what Trump wants. What do
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  Speaker 2: you think's going on there?
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie Marathon Man?
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  Speaker 2: No.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: In the movie, Marathon Man, an evil Nazi dentist kidnaps
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman to demand answers. And the movie is chilling
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and terrifying because Dustin Hoffman actually genuinely does not have
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  Speaker 1: the answers. He thinks he's part of this plot, but
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  Speaker 1: he's not. And that's what I thought about.
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  Speaker 3: That's what happened to Canada?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's currently what's happening to Canada.
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  Speaker 3: Oh no, Justin Trudeau.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Dustin Hoffman could be Trudeau in a movie. You see it?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little short.
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  Speaker 3: Grow your hair out. Get some lifts.
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  Speaker 2: Look enough like Castro.
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  Speaker 3: The Journal story mentions also that Canada has already pledged
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: to spend nearly a billion dollars to harden its southern
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: border with us, which is one of Trump's big demands.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Then Claudia Sheinbaum, the new president of Mexico, has cracked
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: down on migration through Mexico to our southern border and
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: done a bunch of high-profile drug seizures. So Trump is
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  Speaker 3: getting what he wants from both of these presidents already,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: and I guess, and he's just going to tariff them
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: as a negotiating position. I guess my reactions to this were, one,
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  Speaker 3: We probably shouldn't underestimate that there's a bunch of people
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  Speaker 3: in the white house that are bullies and assholes and
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  Speaker 3: want to wield power for the sake of just showing
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  Speaker 3: that they can. And that could be what's happening here.
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  Speaker 3: How else would you explain, you know, not telling someone
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  Speaker 3: what you want from them before you punish a sovereign country.
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  Speaker 3: I also think it sounds like Trump is going to
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  Speaker 3: try to renegotiate the USMCA agreement, which was what they
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: called the renegotiated NAFTA.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just, you know, renegotiated by a horrible president.
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  Speaker 2: Who let that get renegotiated?
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  Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 3: And I think they're mad about it because they feel like,
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  Speaker 3: I don't think Jared Kushner got that much out of
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: that deal. And then finally, it's probably not a coincidence
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  Speaker 3: that we're talking about Trump messing with leftist and liberal
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  Speaker 3: governments in Colombia, Mexico, in Canada. In Canada in particular,
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  Speaker 3: Trump is trying to soften up the liberal party as
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  Speaker 3: much as he can because they have an election.
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  Speaker 1: My like serious reaction to all this is like, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's probably be good if the Canadians knew what we wanted.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It would also be good if America knew what we
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: wanted as well, because the question I have around what
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Trump has promised to do, we'll talk about it later.
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  Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of places where Trump has hit
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the ground and just sort of like putting in place
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: big policy changes, but actually hasn't really done that on tariffs.
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  Speaker 1: He's promising an announcement on tariffs as soon as February 1,
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  Speaker 1: and he's threatening big tariffs on China, on Mexico. On Canada,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: on Russia.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: More sanctions on Russia too.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And then you dig into it and it's like, well,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you want to support American car manufacturing. One problem with
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: that is a lot of parts that are involved in
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: manufacturing cars in America come from Canada and come from Mexico.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: How will that impact our ability to make cars in
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the United States? There are very real implications and the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: details really matter and we don't have.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Any of them.
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  Speaker 1: And so the broader question is, whatever he announces on
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: February 1st, if he announces anything at all, is it
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a big show with targeted tariffs, more like what we
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: saw in the first term, or is he serious? I
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: just think we don't know.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: My reaction is I wonder what's going to happen when
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: someone calls his bluff, says like, all right, let's do it.
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  Speaker 2: Tariff us and then we're going to do retaliatory tariffs.
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  Speaker 2: And Trump's bet is the political pain that he will
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: face here from all of us having to pay higher prices,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: because that's who'll pay for a trade war, us, will
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: be not as great as the political pain faced by
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: the other leaders at home for the higher prices and
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: the economic damage that they'll have to deal with from
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the trade war. And that maybe the political pain here
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  Speaker 2: that he'll face will be short-lived because eventually those other
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: countries will give in because they're probably smaller countries or
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: at least have a smaller economy because most countries in
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the world do, right?
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  Speaker 3: Or the people just want to see him fight. They
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily care about the impact.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: It's also given to what, right? Like this is just
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: like tariff, taking off tariffs that aren't in place.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Whatever weird thing he asks for, right? Like who knows
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: what he's going to ask for, but I think he just,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: it's just a show, it's a show of strength. But
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: I do think like, I think at some point when
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you start pushing, you know, all of these allies and
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: countries around, you start like beating the shit out of
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: them on tariffs. Like you're going to like Push them
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: into the arms of China, into the arms of other countries.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: At some point, losing a bunch of allies is going
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: to come back to bite you in the ass. It
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: is the type of thing for Trump that, yeah, maybe
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: not short-term. Short-term, everyone would be like, oh, this is funny.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: He won a news cycle against Colombia, right? But at
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: some point, you're going to need those allies.
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  Speaker 3: You're beating up Colombia. You're going to try to annex Panama.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: You're going to try to steal Greenland. I mean, people
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: are going to notice this stuff. They don't love it.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: You know who's going to notice it? The Chinese.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And then I just... Long term, my question through all
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of this is, how bad do the impacts of what
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing on America have to be to overcome
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the advantages he has in how news is distributed and received, right?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And how much his team will be on his side
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: to argue that either things aren't happening or they're not
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: his fault or whatever it may be.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's going to be limited by people paying
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: higher prices, right? If suddenly this gets out of control
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: with one of these countries and people start paying a
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: lot more for whatever good uh, has, is, is affected
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: by the tariff, then that's going to, then, you know,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: it doesn't really, it matters less what the, what the
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: media environment is. Right. And, you know, as we just
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: found out over the last four years.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And beyond, and beyond tariffs, right? Like, you know, everyone's,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: everyone's like, how's this going to help the price of eggs?
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: They're killing tens of millions of chickens now. That's hard. Like,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: like there's a real, there's a genuine, uh, bird flu
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: crisis unfolding that is going to affect prices. And like
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is president, he owns these things.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Well, we also pulled out of the world health organization
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and can't even, well, work with the World Health Organization anymore.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we're not going to
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: get anymore is alerts from around the world about the
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: developing avian flu pandemic in other countries.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Well, the good news is we're the epicenter.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Well, as it mutates, that's what you get. You get
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: memos from other countries and you get alerts and we're
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: not going to get those anymore.
• 14:54
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• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Trump's also fighting a war at home, mostly against the
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: government he now leads. He capped off his first week
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: in office by meeting with hurricane survivors in North Carolina
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and inspecting the fire damage in California, a trip where
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: he floated eliminating FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. On Saturday,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: he held a thank you rally in Las Vegas, where
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: he congratulated himself and the MAGA faithful on everything they
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: were accomplishing together, including notably this.
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: I signed an order that will end all of the
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: lawless diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: All across the.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: Government and the private sector. We abolished 60 years of
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: prejudice and hatred with the signing of one order, all
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: approved by the United States Supreme Court. We're allowed to
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: do it because we are now in a merit-based world.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: We're a merit-based country.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: It just feels so merit-based.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I feel it every day. I just see the press
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: releases come out of this White House, and I think,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: that's the fucking best.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: At the keyboards.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: All those billionaires sitting behind him, all merit-based. So that
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: seems to be a reference to both the Supreme Court
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: decision banning affirmative action in 2023 in college admissions and
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Trump's promise to eradicate diversity, equity, inclusion programs, also known
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: as DEI, wherever they exist, but especially in the federal government.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: On Monday, Trump signed more of these anti-DEI executive orders,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: this time targeted at the military. which is now led
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who squeaked by in a
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Senate vote where J.D. Vance had to break the tie
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: on Friday night. Those EOs included one that looks like
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it will ban transgender Americans from serving in the military
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: based on military readiness. This is according to The New
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: York Post. Dan and I went through some of the
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: executive orders from the first week on Friday's show, but
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: there's some other moves we should mention. On Friday night,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Trump also fired more than a dozen inspectors general. Those
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: are independent watchdogs whose job it is to root out waste,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: fraud and abuse in government agencies. He has frozen most
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: foreign aid, even aid in the process of being handed out,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: with the notable exception of military aid to Israel and Egypt.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: He also said of Gaza that we should, quote, clean
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: out the whole thing and have Gazans move to Egypt
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and Jordan. Trump also put a pause on all travel
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: communication and meetings at the National Institutes of Health. including
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: grant review panels that greenlight funding for critical research into
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: cancer and deadly diseases. Though apparently the acting NIH director
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: sent an email today and a memo trying to clear
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: things up, said that clinical trials are still ongoing and
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: that the restrictions don't apply to clinical trial participants or
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: purchasing supplies for ongoing research. But there's some confusion among
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: researchers over what that means. So there's a lot of
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: just mayhem going on at the NIH. Was this incompetence?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Were they trying to put a pause on this? No
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: one knows, but I guess it was a really rough
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: week for NIH researchers who were doing everything from, you know,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: looking into cancer research and all kinds of other diseases,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: and they had to sort of pause everything during this chaos.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And the CDC, as I just mentioned, has also been
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: ordered to stop working with the World Health Organization, which
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: we pulled out of thanks to Donald Trump. Trump also
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: fired or reassigned hundreds of government officials and is making
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: others take MAGA loyalty tests in order to keep their jobs.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: bunch of people who did not pass the loyalty test,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: all of the people involved in investigating him for both
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: January 6th and the classified documents case in the Department
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: of Justice. They were all fired just today on Monday.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: You think it would be that hard to just make
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: it through one episode of Gutfeld?
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Is that the test? Your eyes just pried open like
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: clockwork orange?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Tommy passed the loyalty test through a Jesse
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Waters interview.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: With that bone structure?
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: He's a Hegseth guy, this guy.
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: Get on that team.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: You can sneak Tommy in.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Where to begin? What's most alarming to you guys of
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: all that?
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're ranking? We're choosing our favorites?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Just something that stuck out at you. When you read
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: it all, something was like.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So when you look at the... There's a great episode
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of Strict Scrutiny about some of these orders that you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: should listen to. But what jumped out at me and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: what they talked about as well is they're calling it DEI.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: It's obviously going much further than that. People have talked
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: about that. It's going deep into just the rules that
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: have been in place since Lyndon Johnson died. to protect
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: basic civil rights. This is going after civil rights rules.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: There's an EO that was about federal contracting and making
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: sure there's no discrimination in federal contracting that was signed
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: by Lyndon Johnson that was part of the Equal Opportunity
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Employment Act.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: But what really jumped out is the ways in which
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it is empowering government agencies to, and by the way,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: private citizens, to go after private companies that may have
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: DEI policies. Because if you're going to become a federal contractor,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you have to assent to certain statements in these EOs
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: that could make you liable. And it's going to make
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of these companies afraid that their diversity policies
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: run afoul of this. They're a government contractor. A private
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: citizen can claim this is an abuse of the federal
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: contracting system, which they're legally allowed to do. And it's
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: another example of trying to kind of... It's a part
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of an ideological trend, right? It has to do with
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: the same as like the don't say gay bill in Florida,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: which is you empower private citizens to be a watchdog.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And you basically.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Try to intimidate private individuals, private companies for fear of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: being sued and dragged into courts. The bounty law in Texas,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: there's just other examples of this, and they're implementing that
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: now in these federal contracting rules.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I think why the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling comes
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: into play here, too, is that some of these companies
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: that are now sort of rolling back DEI programs are
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: and have been concerned for a little while since the
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court decision, which was about universities and colleges and
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: admissions process, that maybe their policies run afoul of the
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court decision. And now Trump doing this only strengthens that.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Did you see the Trump team set up like an
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: email account where you can snitch on whatever, entities, companies, whatever.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: In fact, you're encouraged to.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: That are still promoting DEI, but now it's getting mass
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: spammed with just nonsense and bullshit. Love it. Yeah. That's great.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: It's more of that.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: DEIA truth at OPM. A is accessibility as well. It's
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: DEI and.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's DEIA.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Disabled workers catching fucking strays.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Jesus. It's also, it's like you have to, they are now,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of people on the right, including a lot
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: of people in the Trump administration, you know, they've started
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: to like, it's a slippery slope on how they're defining
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: DEI now. Now it's like, oh, the head of the
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Coast Guard.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Is a woman?
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: She's too focused on DEI. Get her out of there.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Well, they hated that California lesbian fire chief until she
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: started making fun of Mayor Bass, and then they were like,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: we're back in.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: We're back in.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: The lesbian fire chief said something we agree with, so
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: everybody chill out. The U.S.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Military, though, is a good example of an organization that
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: needs an effective DEI program, because if you look at,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: across the U.S. military, the proportion of black service members,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: it well over-represents the total U.S. population, but they are
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: wildly underrepresented at the general officer level, especially like the three-star,
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: four-star level. It's extremely white and extremely male at the
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: very top. And that's because of overt racism in some
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: cases or just like structural problems or cultural challenges in
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: other cases and should be fixed and could be fixed.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: But like Tom Cotton is mad that an army unit
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: had to read a Robin DiAngelo book one time and
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: they are just like throwing out the entire program. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: the result is, We're not allowed to teach people about
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: the Tuskegee Airmen anymore for like 24 hours. It's just
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: a stupid overreach. Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe no more Robin DiAngelo books is probably.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: It's just like.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, look, this is, but this is.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Throw them at the enemy.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: It is clear that in workplaces, in government, that people
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: of color and women are just, have not been represented
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: because of historic racism and structural inequality, right? That we
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: have faced for decades and decades. And then I think
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: what happened is a lot of these DEI programs, not
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: only So it focused on making sure that there were
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: diverse workforces and that we're focusing on diversity in hiring
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: and pay and promotion, but also these like unconscious bias
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: training programs, which I think is what rubbed quite a
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: few people the wrong way who aren't just mega.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: For sure. It's just the proportion of time spent on
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: those programs in the U.S. military compared to everything else
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: they're doing is zero. And this is just a wild overreach.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And it's very stupid. Well, Chris Ruffo and all those assholes,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: they decided to highlight all that stuff. And so they
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: made people think the DEI is that and not just
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: trying to have equitable workforces, which we've wanted to have
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: for a long, long time and have it.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: You see this, right? Like they ban DEI, then all
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of a sudden the Tuskegee Airmen are out of some training.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Air Force training.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: We should explain that a little bit because you just
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: kind of mentioned it quickly, but it's the Tuskegee Airmen,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: because of the just let's eliminate all DEI, there was
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: a directive sent out that people in the military could
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: no longer even learn about the Tuskegee Airmen or other
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: groups of underrepresented people who have done, like, you know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: heroic things in the military.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: World War II heroes.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: World War II heroes, right? There's also the Women Air
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Force Service Pilots, or the WASPs. That video was gone
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: for a while, too. And then, after like 24 hours,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: everyone was like, oh, I guess... I guess that's okay
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: to teach. I guess we could bring that back.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, when I saw WASPs, I was like,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: they've banned teaching about WASPs? I thought those weren't minorities.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I thought this is America. You can't teach about Tommy?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Finally, Tommy's hit hard.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Tommy's taken out of the training video.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Talking about catching strays.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: But over and over again, you see these executive orders
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: are political documents. They are not written to govern. So
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they put out this overreaching rule and nobody really knows
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: exactly how to implement it. They're afraid of getting on
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the wrong side. and getting drawn into Trump's evil eye.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: You see the, this rule about nobody at the NIH
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: being allowed to communicate. Like, does that mean we can't
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: pay our bills? Does that mean we have to stop research?
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And it's all kind of now, is it intended to
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: make people feel intimidated on shore? Is it just incompetence?
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter. It shows a lack of care.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It's a fecklessness.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Well, but importantly, I think the effect is that it's
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: going to make people feel like here's the long-term, it's
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: a It may be invisible to most Americans in the
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: short term, but long term, this is going to bite
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: us in the ass because who's going to want to
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: work in government now? Who's going to want to work
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: in the federal government? Women are going to feel like
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: they're not included. People of color are going to feel
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: like they're not included. Black people, Latino people, this is
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: going to go. But also, there are people at every
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: level of the federal government who are being fired right now,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: who are experts in their field, but because they're not
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: MAGA loyalists, they can't work in the federal government. Who's
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: going to want to work at the National Institute of Health?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: A lot of these people They can go get private
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: sector jobs, pay them a lot of money. Like, who's
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: going to work? We're going to hollow out the federal
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: government now, which a lot of, you know, I realize
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of voters think, eh, federal government, what does
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: it do for me? It's big and bloated and wasteful
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: and blah, blah, blah. These are people who are, like, funding.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: These are people who are doing, like, important research, medical research.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: These are people at the lawyers at the Department of Justice.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: There was a program where people out of law school
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: were getting really good law school students in their third
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: year at law school. They got grants and they had
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: jobs in the Department of Justice, and they just froze
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: all of those jobs and all those people are out
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: of work now.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I saw a doctor talking about this on social media,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and I found it really heartbreaking, which he said— You know,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: if you have a member of your family who has
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a very serious illness that they may not survive and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you're at the doctor's office and you're saying you have
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to try something, you have to try something, isn't there
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: anything you can do? And it's like the anything you
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: can do, the last-ditch thing you can try are the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: kinds of research that happen at the National Institutes of Health.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And like Trump doesn't care about that. These people don't
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: care about that. They just want to destroy these institutions.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Like even the trans ban, like I remember when the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: first trans ban for military service went out. And at
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the time, it just talks about how much things have changed.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Everyone was outraged, in part because it was done so haphazardly.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It was just issued. It wasn't clear how it was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: going to be implemented. It wasn't sure what it would
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: mean for current service members. You look at this document
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that they've put out, and it's still not clear what
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: they're talking about, right? Because they say, oh, the military
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: will no longer, for readiness, you can't have people who
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: are in transition. And oh, by the way, you can't
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: use the pronouns of your choice. But what about service
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: members who transitioned long ago and have been serving their
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: country with distinction this entire time? Is it because they
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: were using the wrong pronouns? What if they use the
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: pronouns that you demand for them? Are they allowed to stay?
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: How does this get implemented? They don't care. They don't
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: care what this does because they don't care about service.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: They don't care about these basic values. And so they
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: throw us all, they throw these soldiers to the wolves
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: because they're ideologically inconvenient.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just broad. They're just sweeping everything off the table.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: They're freezing all foreign aid except for things that directly
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: support Israel's security. Well, that means that the Times had
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: a piece over the weekend about how the State Department
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: office that funds the cleanup of unexploded bombs all over
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: the world now has to cease operations. So what happens
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: usually when you have a cluster munition and 10% of
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: it doesn't go off, it's called a dud, they just
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: sit around, and you know who finds them? Little kids.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: And they pick them up and they fucking play with
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: them because they look interesting and they blow off their arm.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: And that's who's going to get hurt by these programs.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: And it's like, why did we need to pause on
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: uh the the cleanup of unexploded ordinance like there's no
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: there's no ideological viewpoint on that.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It's crazy how about everything we're funding overseas for like
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: helping with disease and and hiv and all this like.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah the pep fires just have yeah frozen all
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: just frozen and like successful republican initiatives.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Ever Who knows? You know, it's early and maybe this
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: all gets started back up and the pause ends in
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: like a couple of weeks. But what was this for?
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: We're just going to hurt a bunch of people in
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: the meantime.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: No, it was. I forget what it was. Some U.S.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: senator found out that like some tiny fraction of money,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: like six grand out of like tens of billions of
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: dollars was used for abortion services. And I think that
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: led them to just unravel the entire program. It's crazy.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Apparently they just put all the top officials at USAID
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: on leave. Just got rid of all of them. Like
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: career people, not even political appointees.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was Jim Risch of Idaho figured out that
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: something like $ 4, 100 had been spent by the government in
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Mozambique on abortions. That money was all refunded, but they
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: put the entire PEPFAR program in jeopardy.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we were going to pick out the worst,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: but it's pretty much all of them. It's pretty bad.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: It's pretty bad, the war on the government. It's so
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: frustrating and infuriating because I do think this is a
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: hard one to break through to most people, right? Like,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: you know, in the what's going to be most effective
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: to talk about politically pile, right? Like his war on
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: the federal government, I don't think is going to be
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: high up there, but it is extremely damaging. And again,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: next time there's a pandemic, what's going to happen? What's
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: going to happen?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Or some other crisis or some other disaster where we
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: need the federal government to protect Americans.
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• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Apparently there is another political party in this country. They're
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: known as the Democrats. Democrats.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I've never heard it said.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Though we haven't heard much from them lately. Politico had
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: a good piece about how much more low-key the resistance
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: to Trump is this time around. It noted that almost
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: none of the top early contenders for the 2028 Democratic
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: nomination had put out statements about the January 6th pardons
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: or Elon Musk's salute, whatever it was. Lots of quotes
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: in the story, mostly from anonymous strategists. Great. About how
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Democrats are, quote, rudderless and overlearning their lessons. In general,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: there is still a lot of backward looking recriminations about
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: what we did wrong in last year's election, as evidenced
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: by this viral clip of Stephen A. Smith on Bill
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Maher the other night. Let's listen.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Here's the deal.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: The man was impeached twice.
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: He was convicted on 34 felony counts. And the American
• 33:55
  Speaker 6: people still said he's closer to normal than.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: What we see. Exactly. That's what they're saying.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: He's close to the normal.
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: Because something that pertains, when you talk about the transgender community,
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: for example, and you're talking about the issues that pertain
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: to less than 1% of the population, the Democratic Party
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: came across as if that was a priority more so
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: than the other issues. And so he comes into office.
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: Now you're talking about childbirth, citizenship, and what have you.
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: He knows that's not going to pass the mustard. But
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: he knows that he made that promise. So when he
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: shows up week one on Capitol Hill, he says, this
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: is what we're going to do through an executive order,
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: even though it's going to be shot down through the
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: courts and what have you. He's saying, I kept my promise.
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: A lot of other things that he's going to point
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: to that he's going to try to do, I kept
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: my promise. Then you turn around and you look at
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: the left and you say, what promises did you keep? Now,
• 34:41
  Speaker 6: you might know the answer to that. I'm certainly not
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: questioning your knowledge about that at all. What I'm saying is,
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: what resonated with the voter? What voter out there can
• 34:48
  Speaker 6: look at the Democratic Party at this moment in time
• 34:50
  Speaker 6: and say, there's a voice for us, somebody that speaks
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: for us, that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: the fights that we.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Want them fighting on our behalf? They didn't do that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: And that's why they're behind the home. And that man
• 35:02
  Speaker 6: is back in the White House. And they want to
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: sit up there and talk. You look at the networks
• 35:05
  Speaker 6: right now.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: They're talking about it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Look at it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: This is the latest.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Look at him. Here he goes again.
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: Well, you know what here he goes again means?
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: He's doing what he said he was going to do.
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: He promised you he was going to do these things,
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: and he walked into office week one, and that's exactly
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: what he's doing. And he's saying, y'all do something about it.
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: And when you try to do something about it, he's
• 35:23
  Speaker 6: going to say, look at them now. Now they're concerned
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: about these issues. Were they talking about that during the campaign?
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Hell no. That's really it.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: So what did you guys think of Stephen A. 's
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: argument there? I get.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Why this went viral, I get that it resonates on
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: an emotional level for some people because we're all mad
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: at Democrats because we got our asses kicked and we're
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: mad about the election. We're mad about Joe Biden. But
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: he's just so wrong on so many different levels. I mean, Republicans,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Democrats didn't make the whole election about trans rights. Republicans
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: ran tens of millions of dollars of attack ads on
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: TV attacking Kamala Harris on this issue. That's why it
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: was salient. And then Stephen A.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Well, because of what she said.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: In 2019, not in 2024. And then Stephen A. 's
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: definition of Trump keeping his promise is putting forward an
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: executive order on birthright citizenship that he knows will get
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: struck down in court. That is not how Joe Biden
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: was judged. Like when Biden put forward a student loan
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: forgiveness plan and it got struck down by a Republican
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court, everyone got mad at Joe Biden and said
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: he was feckless. Like I'm not here to make excuses
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: for Democrats or Biden or Harris or say the campaign
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: was good, but it's like it's a 50-50 electorate. There
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: was an anti-incumbent wave. Trump is not delivering for the
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: American people in some profound way right now. It's just
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: all vibes. And like, I get the vibes and the
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: anger driving them, but it's just like, he's like, he
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: points to Ro Khanna's like, you might know all the
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: details of the things Joe Biden promised and did deliver on.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't bother to Google them. And it's just like,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: come on, man.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I, It's so frustrating, right? Because you see that
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: clip and you're like, well, let's break it down, right?
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Let's explain all the ways that this is wrong, right?
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: All the ways in which actually Joe Biden delivered on
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of his promises. And Donald Trump is going to,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and has all, Donald Trump failed in his first term
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: on virtually every promise that he made other than cutting
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: taxes for the richest people. That Joe Biden had more
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: deportations while he was president than Donald Trump had while
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: he was president, right? There's a lot of ways to
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: break it down. What was interesting to me about the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: clip is like, you see like a kind of conventional
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: wisdom kind of taking hold in real time. And you
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: see like this kind of this, like Bill Maher says, exactly.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: And the whole audience applauds. And I've tried to think like,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: if Kamala Harris had won, like, what is the list
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: of big executive orders she could have signed in the
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: first day that would have had like rapturous applause? It's like,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: she's fucking doing it. She's delivering on what she said
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: she's going to do. It's happening. It's happening. And like,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that's not to say that like, that part of that
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: is just the failures of incumbency, right?
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Like, Well, I was going to say it would feel
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: different because she would have taken office not after four
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: years of the other party.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: You just unravel what the other guy just did. That's
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: what all these EOs are.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: And there was a little bit of that when Biden won, right?
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, tons.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And then remember the first week?
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: He got back in Paris. Whee!
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: And boy, did that make a difference.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fixed it.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: No fires.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: But the reason I bring that up is only to say, yes,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it is different when you're trying to run to replace
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: someone in your own party versus replace someone in the
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: opposite party. But I think back to 2006, and I
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: remember all the Democrats campaigning for the house. And they
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: had their like checklist of the things that they were
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: going to do if they won and the things that
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: were going to stop it. They did the anti-corruption measures,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: raising the minimum wage. There's a whole list of simple
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: to understand policies and like forget.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Look, we asked, we have asked and answered. We paid
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: in blood for Joe Biden giving up the bully pulpit.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Like, yes.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about all these Democrats kind of overthinking, like,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: how are we going to respond to this? Let's get
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: out the abacus and like move the, move the, move the,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: move the beads around to figure out the perfect response.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And I can't possibly start speaking until I know exactly
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: what my overall vision is for the future of the country.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And it's like, is that the lesson you draw from
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the last four years? Get the fuck out there. Get
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: out there. Start responding.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: Tell the truth.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: How about that? You're asked about what you think about
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the January 6th pardons. Tell us what you think of them.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: You're worried about what's happening at the National Institutes of Health.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Tell us what you're thinking about it. You don't leave
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the field and build some playbook for how to respond
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and defeat Donald Trump. You get out there and you
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: start doing it. You see what works, you see what doesn't.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Like that whole piece was just a bunch of people
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: kind of trying to like, we're going to crack the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: code finally at long last. Yeah, the political piece was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: just all about how we're going to crack this fucking code.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: And it's like, guys, everybody's applauding Stephen A. Smith for this,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: rant of basically easy to refute nonsense. Where are we?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Here's what I found frustrating about the Stephen A. Smith
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: thing is it sort of pulls you in And your
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: first instinct is to tick off why all the reasons
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: it's wrong.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Like you were saying, because you want to defend.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: And then suddenly you find yourself like defending Joe Biden's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: record for four years, which, by the way, there was
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of good things. We've said this and also
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: saying things like, guess what? Joe Biden didn't really couldn't
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: really control inflation.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: That was that was, you know, and also Republicans picked
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: out a bunch of culture and identity issues that, yes,
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Democrats gave them some ammo on. But they get more
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: attention in this information environment, culture and identity issues than
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: the fights that we want to pick as Democrats. Right.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: So you can explain away why this happened. And yet
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: that perception is real about the party. And so you
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: don't want to just be like running against the perception
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: that's there. And so, like, I don't know. All you
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: can say to Stephen A. Smith is like, you know what? Yeah,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: we want people want Democrats. People don't want excuses. they
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: want politicians who are going to actually go out there
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: and fight for them and like, and give a damn
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and look like they give a shit and not look
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: like they are reading, I said this on Friday's pause,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Dan's line, but like reading the fucking stage directions already.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: I feel like, I feel like sometimes giving messaging advice
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: to Democrats is like giving fucking kids matches. You know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: it's like, You say something about like inflation and the
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: cost of living and suddenly they're all out there being like,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: that's not going to do anything to lower the price
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: of eggs. It's like, come on, make it fucking believable, guys.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: It's not believable right now. No one is out there
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: thinking that Donald Trump was going to lower the price
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: of eggs or lower the cost of everything after a
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: fucking week.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: I think that what was annoying about some of the
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: statements you guys talked about was you're right. You don't
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: have to combine the cost of eggs and January 6th pardons.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: It's bad to pardon insurrectionists that beat up cops. What
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: I think I found so annoying about Stephen A's kind
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: of the end of his rant is he was criticizing
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Democrats for criticizing Trump or trying to block Trump or
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: being an opposition party. And it's like in 2008, when
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes, did the Republicans just
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: like lay down arms and give up? No, they filibustered
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: every single thing we did. That's the role of an
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: opposition party. You're going to disagree with the president and
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: you're going to talk about it. And he's in, he
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: like makes them sound like they're just out there carping
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: when the reality is that they're not really actually saying much.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Saying anything, yeah.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Trans issues keep coming up, and then people are like,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: it's 1% of the population, it's 1% of the population. Yeah,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it's a tiny group of people that are scared to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: go to the bathroom at the airport. And, like, Republicans
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: have made trans issues the center of our politics. But
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I will say, like, you know, John made the point, like, well,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: it's based on something she said in 2019. But I
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: do think it's more than that, and it is a
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: larger credibility issue, right? Like, if Democrats had more credibility
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: broadly with the American people on the big issues, the economy,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: on like the cost of living, on education, on healthcare,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, if Democrats had earned credibility, if they
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: were seen as fighters, as champions for the people we
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: need to be fighters and champions for, there would be
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: more space to say, and you know what? We may
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: not agree on trans issues. You may not be where
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I'm at yet, but I'm going to fight for trans
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: people every goddamn day.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: And this has been the case for decades. This used
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: to be the case with abortion, right? When abortion was not, when,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: when the pro-choice position was not as popular as it
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: is now. And there were Democrats who would be in,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: in red or rural districts. And they'd say to, Sherrod
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Brown always would tell stories like this. He would tell
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: you about guns, right? He has a story in Ohio
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: where he was talking to these people and they're like,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: you know, well, I don't like your position on, on guns, right?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I want to keep my gun,
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: but I like you because you're for me and you're,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: and you've been fighting like hell for me, you know?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And so like, you're, you're absolutely right about that. It's
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: like right now, It is overthinking every single thing.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And I want to just, and I think like sometimes we,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: you know, let's do what we say people should do,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: which is like, we're like, let's explain why that's bad, right?
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Like we say that all the time. Oh, you sound
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: like you're reading from a message document. You sound like
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: you're reading from a message document. Like, why is that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: so bad? Well, it's because if people don't believe you
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: when you are talking about the economy or issues they
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: really care about, because you sound like you're reading from
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: a script, you sound like you sound like a normal politician.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: They're not going to come along with you when you disagree.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: They're not going to trust you when you see things
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: a different way.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I also think that part of the whole price of
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: eggs thing is Democrats aren't saying what like we want
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Trump to do or what we would do. And, you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: when they spent four years attacking Joe Biden for all
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: kinds of bullshit, they would say things that, you know,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't believe like Trump would say, I'm going to
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: do tariffs and that's going to fix this. I'm going
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: to drill, drill, drill. If we cannot go around for
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: the next year just saying that did not lower the
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: price of eggs, that is not fucking sufficient. And you
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: know why it's not sufficient? Because people aren't going to
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: believe it because it's not believable to just go around
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: saying that all the time. Like have a have a
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: story you tell about what working people are facing in
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: this country, what we should do for working people, how
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: we're going to make sure that everyone who works and
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: actually like pay their bills and like have a whole
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: fucking story about it.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: It just sounds bitchy. It does. It's like people are
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: not stupid. He's been president a week. You know, it's
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: going to take a minute. Like I have a little
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: more sympathy for Democrats. he just took office. We're probably
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: not hearing like Pat Ryan has did a bunch of
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Twitter threads, talked to playbook over the weekends, Congressman from
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: New York saying some smart, thoughtful, interesting things, good framing,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: good focus, right? People are saying the right thing. There's
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: just no leader. There's no megaphone. Nobody's getting picked up.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: No one's getting hurt. It's just the Trump show all day,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: every day.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: But there's also not a lot of emotion, you know,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: like I've seen Democrats, you know, or you give like
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: a floor speech in the Senate. That's not going anywhere.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Or you're doing a video where you're talking about why
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: this is, it's like, It was interesting, even the way
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the Politico story was framed, how it's like they didn't...
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Democrats didn't do statements on the Elon Musk thing or
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: the J6 pardons because they connected those both. And I'm like,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: those are nothing alike.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: It's like one matters and one doesn't. That's what I was...
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: The Elon Musk thing, it's like, we're going to say
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: you did a Nazi salute. He's going to say, no,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't. The conversation dies there.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: It's like, you're going to win the great debate about
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: whether he did the Nazi salute or not. And then
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: what happens? He goes away, he disappears.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: Talk about his AFD rally. That's a lot more relevant. Also,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: I just saw a Times story. The Trump administration has
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: instructed organizations in other countries to stop dispersing HIV medications
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: purchased with USAID, even if the drugs have already been
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: obtained and are sitting in local clinics. What are we doing?
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Atul Gawande, who led the health programs for USAID, he
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: tweeted this long thread about all the consequences of both
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: freezing foreign aid from a health perspective and having the
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: CDC not work with the W with the world health organization.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: And that was, that was part of that. This is
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: just PEPFAR.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: PEPFAR saved 25 million lives and we're letting these drugs
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: just sit on a shelf.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I do want to say like the, the January 6th
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: pardons though, like not speaking about that is crazy to
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: me because like, most importantly, they are, dangerous and that
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: they give right wing extremists a green light to go
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: commit political violence, even against law enforcement, because, hey, Trump's
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: got their back.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: But they're also extremely unpopular, even if you just want
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: to be political about it. They're unpopular. So why wouldn't
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: you go out to the microphone somewhere and be outraged
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: about that? And then I know that I'm glad all
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the Democrats are signed on to a resolution. condemning the, the, uh, the,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: the pardoning for the J six. It's like, it's Monday.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: It's a week. It's a week after this happened.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: What were you doing guys? And there's an insurrectionist that
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: was already arrested on gun charges before recorded today. Jokes aside,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: there was one killed, uh, by, in a, in a, uh,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: in an incident with police resisting, or these are dangerous
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: people that don't, don't forget politics, forget ideology. Donald Trump released, uh, 1,600 people,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: many of whom are very dangerous, and they're out there
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: being arrested and causing mayhem right now.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: The QAnon shaman tweeted, time to go buy some guns.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Well, also, you know, when they had this story this
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: morning about the resolution, every Senate Democrat had signed on
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: except John Fetterman, and at first there was a lot
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: of criticism, and I was like, what the fuck? What's
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: wrong with him? He's not signing on to this? So
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: then he signed on, so it was fine, and then
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: someone asked John Fetterman, I guess just a couple hours ago,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: why didn't you sign on at first? He's like, no, no, no. Look,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: he was like, I've been against pardons for january 6th
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: insurrection is forever i've been on record he goes but
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: i do think what we need is another another performative
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: more performance art where we pass another resolution that'll really
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: that'll really get them and it's like yeah.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Okay okay buddy you your life is performance art you
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: wear shorts and hoodies to like the senate floor to
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: like send a message come.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: On but i do get where it's like i would
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: rather have democrats have gone to the mic the morning
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: after it happened with the January 6th thing and like
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: all of them with, with Capitol police officers, with everyone
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: else and like shown some real emotion, then I would,
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: an official resolution that passed.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I just think it's very easy to do both.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the problem though is it's like really
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: what you're saying is not, so therefore our strategy should
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: be to look for opportunities to show emotion. And really
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: what we're saying, it's like what we want.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: And it's reading the stage directions. Just fucking do it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: Well, right.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: What we want is somebody who sees this happening, unfolding,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and is like, fuck, I got to get out there.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: This is terrible. I'm going to go to the microphones
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: and bring some people out.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Is that too much to ask?
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And you know what? Let's get, hey, get a couple
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of Capitol Police officers to stand behind me because this
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: is so outrageous. I'm furious.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Not everything has to be planned, perfect, thought out. Just
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: go fucking do stuff, guys. And, you know, forget it.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: It's just, ugh.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: We probably hammered this point a little.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're just.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm clapping.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I do think one of the other very funny things
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: that I just want to bring up before we go
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: is CNN did a story on this, and they talked
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: about how this was all in the... They had this
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: meeting in the Senate Democratic Caucus about how to go
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: viral in the media environment, all that. And this CNN
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: story said one of the... They called this a bright
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: spots the Democrats highlighted, according to a source familiar. was
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: a viral video from the pandemic of Mark Warner making
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: a tuna melt in his kitchen that led to the
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: lawmaker being cheered and jeered by people who questioned his
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: culinary leanings. That was the bright spot.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: That's the Senate.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Going back to 2020 and being like, hey, remember when
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Warner had that viral tuna video or grilled cheese tuna
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: melt video?
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: It was a warm tuna. That's where we're at. That's
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the bright spot. The bright spot is hot kitchen tuna.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Well, it was just such a badly made. tuna sandwich.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: It was a microwave, right? Wasn't it a microwave tuna melt?
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: He did such a bad job making this thing that
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: people got excited about it.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: So all these questions loom especially large in the DNC
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: chair race. DNC members will vote for the new chair
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: on Saturday. As you all know, we here at the
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: show Big Ben Wickler fans and supporters for a long time.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: We've talked about him in this pod a million times.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: But we wanted to talk to any of the candidates
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: who wanted to come on. I interviewed Ken Martin and Ben.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Dan interviewed Faz Shakir on Friday's show. I personally think
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: all three of them would make great DNC chairs. But
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: maybe unsurprisingly, we were all most impressed with Ben's vision
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: and his plans. And maybe we're all just hopelessly biased
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: because we have known him and worked with him now
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: since basically we've started this podcast. But even putting that aside,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: I think Wisconsin was the most Republican-leaning blue wall state
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: in 2020, the third most Republican-leaning swing state of all
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: in 2020 after Arizona and Georgia. Everyone was worried about
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: it in 2024 because it's a very rural, non-college-educated state.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: It ended up to the left of the national vote.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: That means that Kamala Harris did worse in the national
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: popular vote than she did in Wisconsin. And the operation
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: that Ben built was a huge part of that. So
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: if we were voting members of the DNC, which they
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: will probably never make us, he would get our vote.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: But what do you guys want to add?
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Siren. Pod Save America endorsement. Add the siren in post.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: First of all, I also like was just based on
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: our conversation. I also just think all three of them
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: had very smart things to say in the conversations that
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you had with them on Pod Save America. In particular,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I thought Faz talking about what it means for uh,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: the democratic party to look, uh, like it's fighting for
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: people and, and it was very smart. And like, regardless
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: of who's the DNC chair, I think that is really
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: important and kind of goes, and it actually fits a
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: lot with what Ben was talking about as well. And
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: what we've been talking about, that it's not just about
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the right words or the right message. It's about picking
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the right fights. It's about breaking through and figuring out
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: how to do that in this messy and noisy environment.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: But like we, we talked about this a long time
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: that if that, that if we could duplicate Ben Wickler
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and put him in all 50 states, we'd be much
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: better for it. And I think we've felt this personally
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: just over the years of going to Wisconsin, that Wisconsin
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: was this warning about what could this omen for what
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: could happen in the country when a group of radicalized
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Republicans tried to do unpopular things and strip away Democratic
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: accountability for it. And as he said in your interview,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: that they've been kind of on the edge of a
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: cliff this entire time. But what's been exciting having gone
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: to Wisconsin starting when we first did the show all
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: these years later is watching them slowly build this operation
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and figure out how to respond to that kind of
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: a threat and do it in a way that's successful.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: And like, there are so many lessons from what Ben
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: has done in Wisconsin that are valuable nationally.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're biased. I met Ben in 2006, so
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: it's like, I had nothing against anyone else in the race,
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: but I think one thing that we've all noticed about
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Ben is he has no off switch. You're getting texts
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: from him 24, seven, 365 days a year about races,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: big and small across Wisconsin. And he was able to
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: raise money and awareness. and build a state party organization
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: that was always doing work, always organizing, always building and
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: trying to get power back. And they started from a
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: serious deficit in Wisconsin. And that doesn't mean they won
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: every race, but that's not a fair expectation, but they
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: didn't sit out any races. And I think like that's
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: the kind of mindset you want at the DNC. And
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: it's also just like a vibe and a tenor and
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: a tone. Like Ben, we went to lots of events
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: and organizing sessions with him and trainings. He's always preaching
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: like an inclusive, empowering form of politics. that I think
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: would help out the party and translate well to the
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: DNC and make people want to be a part of
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. So I think he'd be great at it.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Well, and you know what? If you're listening and you're
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: a DNC member and you're going to be voting and
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: you like Ben or you think that Ben should be
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: the chair, then, you know, I think it'd probably help
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: in this last week to go public and, you know,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: make it probably more helpful than us because we're not voting.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and probably has turned off a few people. No doubt.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I think hopefully net positive. Hopefully net positive.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: But if you're out there listening and you're thinking the
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: same thing, you know, go with Ben. Go with Ben.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: After the break, you're going to hear Tommy's conversation with
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council. But two quick
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: things before we do that. Latest episode of Assembly Required.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Stacey Abrams is joined by Strict Scrutiny's Melissa Murray to
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: dissect the impact of Trump's sweeping executive orders from renaming
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Denali to ending birthright citizenship. and what we can all
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: do to protect our democracy. New episodes of Assembly Required
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: drop every Thursday. Find them wherever you get your podcasts
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: or on YouTube. Also, we're out with our first post-election
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: episode of Polar Coaster, Dan's subscriber-only show. In this episode,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Dan takes a look at the early polling from Trump's
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: return to office, unpacks the chaos that got us here,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: and tackles listeners' questions. To access this exclusive subscriber series,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: enjoy ad-free episodes of Pod Save America and more, subscribe
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: now at cricket.com slash friends or directly on Apple Podcasts.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: When we come back, Darland.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Patsy of America is brought to you by Fatty 15.
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  Speaker 3: slash crooked and use code crooked at checkout. So the
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: Trump administration has been firing off executive orders left and right.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: Many of them seem extremely consequential. Some are glorified press releases.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: but many of the more consequential seeming EOs focus on
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: immigration policy, which is why I am so excited to
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: have Dara Lind on with me today. She's a senior
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: fellow at the American Immigration Council, an immigration policy expert,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: an excellent journalist. Dara, welcome to the show.
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: Thank you. It is, I mean, I can't say it's
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: great to be on, right? But it's like, it's certainly
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: the kind of moment that people with my expertise are
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: in demand.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, very much so, because it is quite confusing.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: And we're going to talk through some of the complexity
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: and uncertainty of this moment, especially when it comes to immigration.
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: So first question is just big picture. I mean, what
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: do you think are the most important things that Trump
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: has done so far when it comes to immigration policy?
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: I think that the most salient thing, and this is
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: not just the day one executive orders, it's a lot
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: of stuff that has come out since then. in the
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: form of like departmental or agency memos, or just in
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: what people are seeing on the ground, is a really
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: aggressive ramp up of interior enforcement against people who have
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: been living in the United States, many of whom were
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: given some form of protections under the Biden administration. We
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: know that the Trump administration has changed regulations so that
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: Anyone who is apprehended anywhere in the U.S. who cannot
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: prove to an immigration agent's satisfaction that they've been here
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: for more than two years could be deported without a
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: court hearing.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: Huge change.
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: We know that they are making an effort to strip
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: parole protections from people who came under the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan,
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: and Venezuelan parole programs, other Biden parole programs, when they
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: encountered them. Not that We don't know how broad that's
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: going to be, but that those people will be considered
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: vulnerable for deportation and that there might be efforts to
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: take people who are in immigration court, close the immigration
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: court case, and try to deport them without a court hearing.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: And we know that they're stepping up the use of
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: agents from other agencies, whether that's DEA, ATF, that they're
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: stepping up the use of military assets, including planes. And
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: so given that most of the biggest impediments to deporting
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: 11 million people were not legal, but logistical, that kind
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: of force multiplier could be a very big difference in
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: how many people they're ultimately able to deport.
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: I want to ask you about that logistical point, because
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: you wrote in this Great Times op-ed after the election,
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: but before inauguration, that the largest constraint on mass deportation
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: is logistical and that deporting 1 million people per year
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: would cost an annual average of $ 88 billion. Can you
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: kind of unpack those logistics for us And explain whether
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: you think there's kind of anything in that insight that
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: opponents of Trump's immigration policy could use to fight it.
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: Sure, absolutely. So there are essentially four major... steps that
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: are generally taken to take somebody who is in the U.S.
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: without authorization and move them to being somebody who's been deported.
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: The first is arresting them. The second is finding somewhere
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: to keep them in custody, given that this administration doesn't
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: particularly like releasing people pending their court hearings or pending
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: further action. There's the court case itself, which, you know,
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: they're trying to kind of abridge by using this expedited
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: removal provision more aggressively, but like, you know, so, so
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: that's kind of an optional one. And then four, you
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: have to physically deport them. You have to have the
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: seat on the plane and you have to have a
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: country that's willing to accept them. So even if you
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: look at what they've done over the last week and say, okay,
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: in general, they're really trying to get rid of this
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: third stage of the process wherever possible because that still
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: leaves arrest, detention, and deportation. So the more agents they
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: have on the ground who are not just ICE agents,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: but other agencies that are being tasked with immigration enforcement,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: and the more they're able to enlist state and local
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: police to do immigration enforcement, the easier the first one gets.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: The more they're able to build temporary facilities, especially using
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: military money under the emergency declaration that was one of
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: the day one executive orders, the easier the second of
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: those is. And the more that they can both use
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: military planes and bully other countries, and we saw some
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: of this over the weekend with a standoff, a very
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: brief standoff with the country of Colombia over the use
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: of military flights to deport Colombian nationals. The more they
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: can bully other countries to take back military planes or
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: to take back a lot of ice air flights, the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: easier the deportation part of that is. So those are
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: kind of where I'm seeing the big variables right now.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: But ultimately, all of those are still resources. And even
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: if you're tapping the DOD budget for a lot of things,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: Congress still has to, at a certain point, you're going
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: to either run out of ICE budget or Congress is
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: going to have to appropriate in the future the kind
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: of money that anticipates that you're going to be running
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: a Department of Defense that is also engaged in immigration enforcement.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: And so While in the short term, they're acting really,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: really aggressively. How long they can keep this up is
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: going to depend on whether Congress is writing them a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: blank check or whether they're going to start asking questions
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: about just how much can be spent on it.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: And just your point four, I think, like we don't
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: have the best relations with Venezuela, for example. There are
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of folks who have left Venezuela over the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: past decade or so and made their way north to
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: the United States. What happens if Venezuela just says, no,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: American C-17s will never set down in our territory? I mean,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: do we have to get to a point where we're
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: like having to coerce that militarily? Is that what Trump
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: is threatening here?
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: We're not quite to that point yet because immigration law
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: doesn't technically require you to deport somebody to the country
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: where they came from. And this is where the diplomatic
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: aspect of this gets very complicated and very important. In
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: the recent past, under the Trump and Biden administrations, Mexico
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: has agreed to accept some non-Mexicans, whether that's temporarily while
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: they await court hearings in the United States under the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: Remain in Mexico program, which the Trump administration is now
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: trying to restart, or whether that's actually taking people who
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: are essentially being deported, but deported to Mexico. Whether and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: how many people they're willing to accept in that is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: going to be a very important variable because it's so
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: much easier to deport people back to Mexico than it
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: is to fly them Other places, it's just so much
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: cheaper that not only is that going to be a
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: help on the logistical end, but also, as you mentioned,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: for countries like Venezuela, where it's not really foreseeable that
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: you're going to have some kind of breakthrough where the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: Maduro government is going to say, yes, this is awesome.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: We love the US now. Having other places you can
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: return them to starts to become a really important variable.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: We've already heard rumors that the government of El Salvador
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: is very gung-ho about signing an agreement with the United
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: States that will allow people to be deported to El
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: Salvador who aren't from El Salvador. That sort of thing.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: You know, the more options that they have, the easier
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: it's going to be for them to get around the
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: recalcitrance of any one country.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Of course, Bukele is willing to take whatever number of
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: people Trump wants to send to El Salvador. It seems
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: to me that a lot of what's happened so far is.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: PR and for show, right? I mean, I think the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: Trump administration is talking about the number of deportations over
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: the weekend that may or may not be all that
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: much above kind of the average you might have seen
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: in terms of total deportations under the Biden administration. I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: suspect part of it also is they want to pick
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: fights with like Democrats in liberal cities. I mean, what
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: kind of strategies do you think these progressives can take
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: to push back that doesn't play into this sort of
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: PR effort? but actually is impactful for people in communities
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: that are being harmed.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: So I tend to think about this as like a,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: you know, coordinate plane, right? One axis is how likely
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: is this to get a lot of headlines, to generate
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: a lot of B roll, that kind of thing. The
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: other axis is how much does it increase scope? You know, how,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: like how much does it make it easier for them
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: to harm, to like, to put more people into the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: process and move them through the process. And you're right.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: A lot of the things, you know, like, things like
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: putting out a press release every single day can imply
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: that more is being changed than actually is. That said,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: one of the reasons that we're not really seeing movement
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: on the numbers yet is because some of the authorities
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: they're tapping into haven't really, you know, scaled, like they
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: haven't really been able to make plans for what does
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: an ICE raid look like when everybody's getting put into
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: expedited removal proceedings, that sort of thing. So I think
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: that the biggest reason that picking fights with blue cities
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: is you know, it's, it's a big PR showdown is
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: because in jurisdictions that don't have a lot of local
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: cooperation with federal law enforcement, where like, if they call
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: up the city and say, you got to give us
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: the addresses of everybody, you know, who doesn't have legal
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 5: immigration status in cities that have laws requiring that information
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: not to be shared, it's a lot harder for them
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: to arrest people to identify who is removable and take
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: them into custody. And so when they have these big
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: raids on blue cities in the past, what we've seen
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: is the numbers of actual arrestees they get out of
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: them are very low. The biggest impact is in terms
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: of freaking people out, getting people to not leave their homes,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: to not go to school, that sort of thing, which
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: is a real harm. But it does mean that in
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 5: kind of holding the line on lack of cooperation and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: lack of information sharing, and certainly not offering like state
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: and local resources to help with immigration enforcement, that the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: amount of money that's being spent and time that's being
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: spent is going to be greater proportionally than the number
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: of people who they are getting out of it who
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: can then be arrested and deported, which means that those
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: resources are then being taken from other things.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: Right, right. Because a lot of the cooperation you've seen
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: in the past has been federal officials going to local, state,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: and county jails, right, and then picking people up there
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: for deportation. One other element of this is Trump is
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: trying to end birthright citizenship. So that would end the
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: practice of giving automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born kids of
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: undocumented immigrant parents or to the kids of foreign workers
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: or students. So I think it's important to note that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: that latter category is people here legally. When I talk with,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: you know, smart lawyers about the birthright citizenship EO, they
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: say this is clearly unconstitutional, but if it gets to
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: the Supreme Court, like, God help us. Does that sort
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: of jive with your sense? I mean, I.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: Have a general rule against engaging in Supreme Court punditry
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: because I do think that to a certain extent, the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: law is whatever the judges say the law is. And
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: heaven forbid they take that, they actually seize the reins
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: of that power. But I do agree that, I think
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: that the way that this executive order was done, which
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: is just saying, as far as we're concerned, this is
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: not who birthright citizenship applies to. And we're not going
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: to be honoring the citizenship of anyone who was born
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: in the U S under, you know, to these two
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: parents who like have these particular, you know, this lack
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: of status or temporary status after February 19th, that that is,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: we've already seen one preliminary ruling against it. Um, I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: would be very surprised if it goes into effect as planned,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 5: you know, like, in a few weeks. That's not to
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: say that the Supreme Court won't ultimately rule in favor
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 5: of the administration on this one, but it is worth
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: noting that there's a pretty explicit century-old Supreme Court precedent
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: that even if the parents of the child cannot become
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: US citizens, the child is still a citizen of the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: United States. And so they would be... It's not really
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: a reasonable people have disagreed on this for decades kind
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: of situation. It is an effort to innovate the law
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: in a particular direction. And so there's reason to believe
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: that the Supreme Court is going to be a little
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: more skeptical of this than they would be of other
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 5: Trump administration policies. Yeah.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, you mentioned there was this one ruling already
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: from a judge who I believe was a Reagan appointee
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: He said, I've been on the bench for over four decades.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: I can't remember another case where the question presented is
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: Order.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he was steamed. And, you know, the other thing
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: about that case is the plaintiffs were extremely ready to
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: file a complaint. And the administration, despite the fact that
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: it was, you know, that it was their government, filed
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: all of three pages in reply that were basically, nah-ah,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: So like they're not doing, at least so far, they're
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: not doing a tremendously robust job of if they truly
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: believe this is what the law says, they're not doing
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: the most aggressive, like the best job of showing up
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: in court and saying that.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: Got it. Congress is also getting in on the act here.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: So they just passed a piece of legislation called the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: Lake and Riley Act passed on a bipartisan basis. The
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: bill got 64 yes votes in the Senate, 263 yes
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: votes in the House, including 46 Democrats in the House.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: Can you give us just like a quick overview of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: what the Lake and Riley Act does?
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 5: So there are two fairly separate parts of the law
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: that are, one of which is kind of, it expands
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: immigration enforcement in a way that's that Congress often acts
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: to expand immigration enforcement, and one of which is totally
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: unprecedented and could unfold in very unpredictable ways. The first
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: is that the Lake and Riley Act requires that the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: federal government expeditiously take into custody anybody who is arrested
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: or charged with or convicted of a certain set of crimes,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: including theft charges. Now, by saying you don't have to
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: be convicted, you can just be like, accused essentially certainly
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: does raise due process concerns. There are also prioritization concerns.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: Like if you're saying that somebody that, that there's somebody
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: in custody in rural Georgia and you have to get
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: in your patrol car and go immediately to go get
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 5: that person, there are other enforcement actions you could be
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 5: engaging in. But the other part of Lake and Riley
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: says that states can sue the federal government to force
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: the federal government to deport somebody. who they've chosen not
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: to execute a final order of deportation against to detain somebody,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: or to stop visas for a category of visa or
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 5: a country if they believe the country is being recalcitrant
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 5: in accepting deportees. Because there is on the books, the
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 5: federal government has the power to take sanctions. And so
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: if the federal government isn't taking these sanctions, the thing
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 5: we're all thinking about is, okay, so what is stopping
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: Ken Paxton? from suing the federal government to force it
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: to stop issuing H-1B visas to China because China doesn't
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: take quite as many deportees as the US might like.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: That's kind of a real wild card and we don't
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: know how it's going to play out yet, but it
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 5: certainly adds an interesting wrinkle to the dispute that we
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: know is going on within the Trump administration over H-1B
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: and high-skilled visas generally. Because if the Trump administration goes
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: in a more dovish direction than, say, the Bannon wing
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 5: would like, they now have this legal tool that they
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: can use to try to stop them. Yeah.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: And just to dig in on those two sort of pieces.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer, but I thought
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: that undocumented people had due process rights under the Fifth
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: and the Fourteenth Amendment. This bill says if you're just
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: accused of basically petty shoplifting, you can be deported. I mean,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: that does not seem like due process to me. Am
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: I wrong?
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: The fundamental thing you have to remember about immigration law
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: is that deportation is not a criminal penalty. It is
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: a civil penalty and it's one you incur potentially simply
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 5: by being in the U S without authorization. You don't
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 5: have to have committed any other, any crime or anything
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 5: else in order to be deportable. So what this does
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: is say this person's already deportable by getting arrested. They're
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: now an enforcement priority, which is not something that you
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: really have a due process claim against. Now, if you're
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: not in fact removable, well, You can try to get
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: yourself out of ICE custody. And yes, of course, there
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: are due process concerns in the sense of you're saying
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: this person's a priority because you're classifying them as a criminal.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: But they're not concerns that are legally actionable.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: God, that's terrible. Part two, I mean, so like the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: attorney general in Oklahoma can tell Marco Rubio, the secretary
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: of state, that he's no longer allowed to issue visas
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: to a random country because- I don't know, it helps
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: this attorney general in Oklahoma politically to demand that the
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: federal government, even the Trump government, be tougher on immigrants.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: That seems completely unworkable.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: It absolutely could be unworkable. This was originally part of
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 5: the bill when it was introduced under the last Congress,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: which is to say under the Biden administration, which might
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: go some way in indicating why it was added to
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: the bill to begin with. I think that the assumption
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: to a certain extent is that you know, state AGs
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: are going to not necessarily want to embarrass members of
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: their own party. But I think the other part of
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: the assumption is that judges are not necessarily going to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: be super eager to weigh in on this stuff. Judges
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: tend to have a pretty narrow construal of like this
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: sort of their ability to weigh in on this sort
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: of thing. And so that would, you know, I think
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: that there's a certain kind of adults in the room
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 5: understanding that this, that that would prevent it from being
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: entire to entirely disruptive. I don't know that that's merited,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 5: but I think we'll see what combination of kind of
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 5: political pressures and, you know, just, and, and judicial professional
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 5: pressures exist to check this.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: You're going to get to liberal attorney generals in blue states,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: just suing the state department over nothing for fun. I
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: also saw the, I said the bill would cost 26
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: billion to implement in the first year. So back to your,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: resourcing and logistics question. It seems wildly difficult to do
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: this without, I guess, an appropriation of new money.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 5: Well, so the way that usually ICE has operated over
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: the last several years is they keep spending the money,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 5: which is usually faster than they're budgeted to spend it.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: And then they write Congress letters of increasing alarm of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 5: tone saying, if you don't give us more money before
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: the end of the fiscal year in a supplemental, we're
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: going to have to start releasing criminals. And usually Congress says, fine, fine,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 5: here's the money you asked for in the supplemental.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, so you mentioned also, you know, temporary protected status.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: On the way out the door, President Biden granted an
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: extension of temporary protected status or TPS to nearly a
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: million immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan, which
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: should protect them from deportation through I think the fall
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: of 2026. I know the Trump administration is not a
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: big fan of TPS or lots of you know, pathways
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: of legal immigration, can they just rescind that extension? Or like,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: what do you think happens to TPS?
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: This is where we get into some really uncharted territory,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 5: both legally and policy wise, because the Trump administration said
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: in one of its executive orders that it is going
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: to review grants of TPS given under Biden. So we
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 5: don't know whether that means they're going to say that
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 5: some of these, you know, 11th hour TPS grants are
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: shouldn't have been issued to begin with and try to
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 5: argue that they shouldn't be forced to honor them or not.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: That's something that's not clear. We don't know what happens
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 5: to people who have applications for TPS who, you know,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 5: if you were paroled in under the CHNV, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 5: Venezuelan parole program, but you were here as a Venezuelan
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: when the Venezuela TPS extension was issued and you've applied,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 5: What is that, you know, can you be removed once
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: your parole expires, even though you have this pending application?
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: Are they going to try to do that? There are
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 5: so many open questions about this. And it's really, it's
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 5: concerning because frankly, a lot of these are folks who
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 5: are not the most tapped in to, you know, they're
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 5: like to high information news sources anyway. And so, The
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: uncertainty that they're facing and the potential legal complexity of
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: what they're facing is really difficult to predict. But we
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 5: absolutely could be seeing a pretty aggressive clawback front on TPS.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: And it's just going to depend on what they decide
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: to announce from here and how much effort they're willing
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: to spend on the USCIS side in sending individualized, no
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 5: thank you, you don't have status anymore, notifications and defending
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 5: it in court.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: Man, I mean, just to underscore how cruel it would
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: be to start sending people back to Sudan, which has
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: been in the middle of a horrific civil war for
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: well over a year now. There's accusations of genocide against
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: the rebel forces and even some of the Sudanese armed forces.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: I think half the country is at risk of starvation,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: millions of people being displaced. I mean, the idea that
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: you would just put someone on a plane back to
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: Khartoum right now is just like unthinkable from a moral level.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is, I mean, it's worth underscoring, even
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 5: though we've been discussing it, that there is a difference
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 5: between saying that somebody is legally vulnerable to deportation and
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: actually taking the effort to deport them. And with TPS,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 5: you know, it is, there is a certain extent to
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 5: which the Trump administration has made it pretty clear that
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 5: people who arrived under Biden are in their crosshairs. But
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 5: in general, it is not necessarily true that somebody who
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 5: had legal status And is going to have it sunset
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 5: is going to become a target, but even just putting
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 5: them in that pool make puts them more risk and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 5: it also makes it harder for them to plan their
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 5: lives with TPS in particular because so many of these
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 5: people have had, you know, so many of these countries
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 5: have had TPS for years and decades. These are people
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 5: who have been making their lives in 18 to 24
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 5: month increments to begin with. And now you're giving even
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 5: that assurance away from them. So it's a fairly profound
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 5: change for the circumstances in which these people are living.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Do you think, is it now kind of
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: all about enforcement and, you know, the kind of memos
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: to agencies about how to implement these policies? Are you
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: expecting more executive orders and major policy changes? We just
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 5: We absolutely do not know. When Russ Vogt got caught
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 5: on a hot mic last year, well, it wasn't a
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 5: hot mic. It was essentially a sting operation. The now, again,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 5: head of OMB who was running Project 2025, he said
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: that there were a lot of things that they were
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: working on that were very close hold, that they weren't
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 5: putting in Project 2025. A lot of memos and policy
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 5: guidance that they were pre-drafting. And so we just don't
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 5: know what the volume of those is. We've continued to
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: see things going out that almost certainly were developed before
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: inauguration because it would just be a tremendous amount of
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 5: effort to get them done after that. But we don't
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 5: know how much there is. And it is, you know,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 5: there are some things in the executive orders that kind
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 5: of hint at future action. There is, for example, one
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 5: executive order that says that within 90 days, there should
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 5: be a review of whether the Insurrection Act is necessary
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: to invoke. So that is something that they've actually flagged
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 5: could be coming. But for the most part, the MO
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 5: of this administration is and was during the, you know,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 5: the end of the first term, defined places in federal
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 5: law that can be used to ramp up immigration enforcement
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 5: that have kind of lain dormant for decades. So we
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 5: don't know how many of those other places they've found.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: The one thing I just haven't heard much about is
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: any kind of increased penalties or scrutiny of employers versus individuals.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, for a long time, that was kind of
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: the approach of a lot of immigration policy, right? Which
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: is to make it really hard for people to work
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: by punishing their employers if they hired undocumented people. But
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: I don't feel like I'm hearing much about that.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 5: The primary way that they... would be going about this,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 5: would be just engaging in enforcement. And usually when there
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 5: are large-scale workplace raids, those are associated with some form of,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 5: you know, prosecution or sanction or something against the employer
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: who they're raiding. You know, that's a kind of stochastic thing, right?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 5: You're not, like, you're not auditing an entire sector. And
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 5: so the extent to which it's going to really shape
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 5: employer behavior is unclear. But yeah, the... The biggest tool,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 5: the biggest thing that kind of hasn't been done on
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 5: employer sanctions is legislative. It's mandatory nationwide e-verify. And that
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 5: has not been as much of a priority of this
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 5: generation of immigration restrictionism as it was like a decade ago,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 5: in part because there are employers who would, who are
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 5: willing to stay quiet even as it becomes harder for
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 5: them to hire people legally. But if you try to
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 5: go after their workforce, or if you try to prevent
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 5: them from hiring anyone who doesn't have authorization, then they'll
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 5: get mad at you. So I think it's still to
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 5: be seen. It's certainly not a rhetorical priority for them
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: unless you start talking about the economic benefits of immigration,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 5: in which case they start talking about how exploitative employers are.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 5: But there hasn't been a whole lot of effort to
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: make it you know, for example, Department of Labor priority
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 5: to go after employers for exploiting unauthorized labor.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: Got it. I mean, just finally on the politics, I mean,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: curious how you think or why you think the politics
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: on immigration policy changed so much over, I don't know,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: let's say the past decade or so. I don't know
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: if it was just generally more migration, Biden's policies, like
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: the relentless busing from states like Texas to blue states.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, what's your big picture sense of that?
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 5: I think that You know, for one thing, the thermostatic
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 5: effect of public opinion swinging in favor of immigrants under
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 5: Trump and then swinging against under Biden is really, really
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 5: hard to, it's hard to overstate. And it's also hard
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: to disentangle anything else from that kind of basic, oh,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: the government is doing some things I don't like. I'm
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 5: going to make this more salient. in general, immigration isn't
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 5: salient for a whole lot of people. And so it's
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: very easy to swing them from one direction to the
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 5: other based on opposition to who's in office, based on
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 5: seeing B-roll of people coming in, that sort of thing.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: I think it's kind of not clear whether what we're
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 5: seeing is an increase in the number of people who
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: are really, really activated against unauthorized immigration or against immigration generally,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 5: or whether what we're seeing is the culmination of the
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 5: fact that this is the signature policy issue of the
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: man who's been the standard bearer of the Republican Party
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 5: for a decade. And so anyone who's affiliated with the
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 5: Republican Party has decided that this is a more important
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 5: issue to them. But I think the other side of
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 5: this is, a lot of people who were in solidly
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 5: blue jurisdictions saw strains on state and local governments responding
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 5: to recent arrivals. And so we're forced, or, you know,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 5: I think, I think we're like put in a space
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 5: where they were considering that actually there was a certain
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 5: amount of zero sum trade-off between investing in people who
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 5: are already here and investing in new arrivals and that
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 5: the Biden administration by kind of not doing a whole
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 5: lot to ensure that new arrivals were coming in an
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 5: undisruptive way didn't necessarily help with this. But you know,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 5: whether that was something that's going to like really change
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 5: a whole lot of people's opinions permanently, or whether it
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 5: was a reaction to a moment under an administration that
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 5: is no longer in office is something that remains to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 5: be seen.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very good point. Well, Dara, thank you so much
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: for coming on the show. Final, final question. You got
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: the band back together. With your old crew from the weeds,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: with Ezra Klein and Matthew Iglesias the other day on
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: Ezra's podcast, is there any chance of a comeback tour
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: where you hit a few kind of the nerdiest cities?
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: You know, we could sell out some stadiums.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 5: I am entirely on board with this. If and only
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 5: if we can at least start talking to a venue
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 5: in Stockholm. Because if I have to talk about Swedish
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 5: administrative data one more time without being in Sweden to
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 5: do it, it's going to be very upsetting.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: I'm not even sure what you're referencing, and I love that.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: We're going to leave it there. That is perfect. Dara,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on the show. I
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: That's our show for today. Thanks to Dara Lynn for
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: coming by, and Dan and I will be back with
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: a new show on Friday. Bye, everyone. If you want
• 1:25:43
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  Speaker 5: You