Latest / Pod Save America / “Drunk dialing for kompromat.” (LIVE from Seattle!)

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“Drunk dialing for kompromat.” (LIVE from Seattle!) · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: What's up, Seattle?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: I'm Shauna Thomas of Vice News.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: I'm Howard Schultz.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Boo.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm Dan Pfeiffer. You know, a lot of people have
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: been upset about Howard Schultz's decision to run for president,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: but I'll tell you something that bothered me long before.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: What was that?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It's what he did before. to the basketball team.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: Because.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I saw you not remember live the name of the Supersonics.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Because of what he did.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: What happened? What happened?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Tell us about it.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: There was a team, and he said it would stay,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and then it immediately went to Oklahoma, where, as I
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: told Dan earlier, they immediately got A man named Kevin Durant.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: Did I get it?
• 1:33
  Speaker 6: You're a little off, but it's okay. How close? I
• 1:35
  Speaker 6: will say, you're like 80% there.
• 1:38
  Speaker 7: One of these times when I mention a sports thing backstage,
• 1:41
  Speaker 7: it's not going to be real.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Why did you tell him that?
• 1:46
  Speaker 7: Because I want to be thinking about it every time.
• 1:49
  Speaker 6: Great prank.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Anyway, we have a great show for you tonight. Your
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Lieutenant Governor, Cyrus Habib, is here. Also, we are now
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: over $ 900, 000 raised for Fair Fight 2020. Stacey Abrams' effort
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: to help fight voter suppression. We're trying to get to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: a million. We're going to get there. So hopefully you
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: guys can get us there. Maybe we'll get there. Maybe
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: we'll get there. Well, I'm saying we're going to get there.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Don't they want to be the ones to get us there?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: It could happen tonight. We could say Seattle put us
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: over the top. VoteSaveAmerica.com slash Fair Fight. You can go
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: there and help get us to a million. Just need 100,000.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Don't let Portland beat you.
• 2:40
  Speaker 6: Oh, God.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Here we go. And yet another thing. I don't mean it. Unbelievable.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: They're literally going to throw something at you.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: At least he didn't call you guys the Houston of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: California like he did to San Jose.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: That went over really well.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't go well.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: When you said Oregon, oh my god. They lost their
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: fucking minds.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Lovitz offended people all along this tour. What will he
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: do tonight? All right, let's get to the news. There
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: has been a rapid shift in public opinion over the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: last week as new polling shows that a majority of
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Americans now support an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Wait, were they as loud as Portland when you said impeachment?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Portland was a little bit louder, I think.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Portland may have been a little louder when you said
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: impeachment last night.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: I'm just saying.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: That's a weird catch-up there. According to today's CBS poll,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: that support comes from nearly 90% of Democrats, about half
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: of Independents, and about a quarter of Republicans. So this
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: largely tracks with other recent polling, including an ABC poll
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: that was released today that showed 63% of Americans believe
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: it's a problem, either somewhat of a problem or seriously
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: a problem, that the president asked a foreign government to
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: launch a phony investigation into his political opponent that might
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: help Trump win reelection. Dan, why do these polls matter?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Why should we care about them?
• 4:14
  Speaker 6: John, as I.
• 4:15
  Speaker 7: Always say, the only poll that matters is the one
• 4:17
  Speaker 7: on Election Day, unless it's a good poll for Democrats.
• 4:22
  Speaker 8: I mean.
• 4:24
  Speaker 7: These polls do matter in the short term in two ways. One,
• 4:27
  Speaker 7: the good polling numbers will put steel in the spine
• 4:31
  Speaker 7: of the Democrats who have to conduct these investigations. And
• 4:34
  Speaker 7: that's really important because the fastest way for this to
• 4:36
  Speaker 7: go off the rails is for Democrats to get scared
• 4:39
  Speaker 7: and get divided and start sharing their inner monologue with
• 4:43
  Speaker 7: the poor reporters at Politico about why they're concerned about things.
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: So as long as... So that part is good.
• 4:48
  Speaker 7: The other part why this is important is The media
• 4:51
  Speaker 7: can only, or primarily covers politics through the president of polls.
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: So if the polls are good, then the narrative about
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: these hearings will be good. And that's important because we
• 4:59
  Speaker 7: live in this world, this social media world now where
• 5:01
  Speaker 7: everyone's a pundit, and the meta-narrative really influences things. Like
• 5:06
  Speaker 7: in the polls you mentioned, some of the movement is
• 5:08
  Speaker 7: Democrats moving towards supporting impeachment hearings. And now every Democrat
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: thinks Trump should be impeached, but they were holding back
• 5:15
  Speaker 7: from it because they had decided that as a matter
• 5:17
  Speaker 7: of political strategy, impeaching Trump was bad.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you say Democrats, you mean like average voters.
• 5:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah, average voters. We are a nation of pundits.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: We're all pundits now.
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: We're all making judgments.
• 5:27
  Speaker 7: And so if the media narrative about these hearings becomes bad,
• 5:31
  Speaker 7: then you're going to see those numbers change because people
• 5:34
  Speaker 7: are going to get, not on the substance, but on
• 5:36
  Speaker 7: the optics of having the hearings.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed it today when there was a New
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: York Times story about Democrats, House members going home and
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: talking about impeachment and sort of like the fine line
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: they had to walk. And they started interviewing some voters.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And one voter was like, You know, I support impeachment,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: but I heard that it's very divisive, and even people
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: who think that Donald Trump deserves to be impeached still
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: think it could be politically damaging, so I'm worried about it.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: The person might as well have been on a Meet
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: the Press panel.
• 6:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah, we live in a self-perpetuating meta-narrative.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's what I'm saying. So when voters hear that
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: now more Democrats are for it, it's actually going to
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: move them.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: But part of that media narrative is that that is
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: something that Nancy Pelosi has projected, actually. That she remembers
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: 1998 and Bill Clinton and what happened to the Republicans
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: after that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 6: They won the presidency?
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they won the presidency. But it's... But she has
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: helped craft that narrative.
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: In a certain way.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: And we're not going to not cover the Speaker of
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: the House. And so, yes, I can see what you're saying,
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: but it's also because that is also what some of
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: the politicians are saying to us as journalists.
• 6:44
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: Like, that's the cycle, right?
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: Which is the poll numbers say one thing, the politicians
• 6:48
  Speaker 7: say it, the press reports it, or the poll numbers
• 6:50
  Speaker 7: are influenced by that, and it goes on and on.
• 6:52
  Speaker 7: It's not that the press shouldn't cover it, but in
• 6:55
  Speaker 7: the era of Facebook and Twitter and the way cable
• 6:58
  Speaker 7: is right now, the The political conversation is influencing the
• 7:02
  Speaker 7: facts on the ground in a way in which it
• 7:04
  Speaker 7: never has before.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: So Shauna, not only did the poll show that 90%
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: of Democrats are for impeachment now, it also said 90%
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: of voters who voted for a Democrat in 2018 in
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: the midterms are for impeachment. It also said that people
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: now list impeachment as one of the top issues they
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: believe Congress should prioritize right now. It's tied with healthcare.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: What do you think accounts for this shift And what,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: if anything, do you think those sort of moderate swing
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: district Democrats, Democratic politicians will take away from that?
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Well, so I think there's two things. I think part
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: of what accounts for the shift is journalists like myself.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: And that the way this is being covered now because,
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: and in some ways I'm going to like insult myself
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: while also trying to promote myself.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: That's the way to do it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: The Ukraine narrative is a much easier story to tell.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: And that's the same thing that Democrats are saying too,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: like pretty openly, that it is much easier to say, okay,
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: there's this. And then the White House released something that
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: resembled kind of a transcript. And then people read it
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: and were like, well, this seems weird. Maybe someone should
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: investigate it. I just summed up the story for you.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: That's an easy one to write. And so I think
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: people are seeing that, and it's also people who are
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: paying attention to this, and they're like, okay, maybe we
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: should actually investigate this. In terms of polling and what
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: this says to those Democrats who won in those sort
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: of purple districts, it gives them cover to do kind
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: of what they did, especially the seven national security Democrats
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: who went ahead and wrote that op-ed to say, okay,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: I can go to my district and I can have
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: this conversation and I don't have to avoid the conversation.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: And so that will allow them to sell the idea
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: of impeachment more. But I think the important thing about
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: the polling is, and I brought notes for this one
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: because I went back and looked at the NBC Wall
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Street Journal poll where they've asked about impeachment inquiry. In
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: June of 2019, they were at 27% of Americans were pro.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: But May of 2019, it was 17%. And so the
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: important thing about polling, and I think Dan would agree,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: is trends. And I think the trend going up, that
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: is a good cover for Democrats to go ahead and
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: do this and not think as much about the politics.
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: It's also an ongoing crime.
• 9:17
  Speaker 7: Which makes it different than the Mueller Report. They are
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: actually committing the crime right here, right now, on Sunday shows.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: You're just talking about Rudy Giuliani?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Hiding in plain sight.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Crimes against the English language, crimes against the country.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: But that is different than what happened in Russia.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I also think an important piece of this is the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: flip side to the everyone's a pundit. There's a positive lesson,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: which is, We were banging our heads against the wall
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: for a long time saying, whatever you think about impeachment,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: it is certainly bad politics to have the Democratic position
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: on impeachment be, should we? And so we spent all
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that time where the Republicans said, he should never be impeached.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: He's so good. And the Democratic position was, we're not
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: so sure.
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: Maybe it's good.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's bad. And sure enough, it pulled terribly.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: It strengthened leadership.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: It's very simple. The unequivocal leadership shows up and says,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it's time for an impeachment inquiry. There's unity amongst Democrats
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: by the time you get to three or four days later,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: which is pretty quick for Democrats. And lo and behold,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that unity produces a change.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: In the polling. Also, let's just be careful.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: In two months, the polls may not look like that.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 10:31
  Speaker 7: Let us have this moment, Shauna.
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: Let us have tonight, Tommy.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Trends, that's all I'm saying.
• 10:36
  Speaker 9: None of us know how this is going to play
• 10:38
  Speaker 9: out politically. I've debated it in my own head for
• 10:41
  Speaker 9: months and months now. But what we do know is
• 10:43
  Speaker 9: a couple of things. One, Kevin McCarthy, the leader in
• 10:47
  Speaker 9: the Republican House caucus, was on 60 Minutes tonight and
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: was pressed on Donald Trump's call to the president of Ukraine.
• 10:56
  Speaker 9: And it was one of the worst interview performances I've
• 10:58
  Speaker 9: ever seen in my life because he clearly doesn't want
• 11:00
  Speaker 9: to have to defend this. So suddenly Democrats are playing
• 11:04
  Speaker 9: offense and all the Republicans in the House and the
• 11:06
  Speaker 9: Senate that are vulnerable have.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: To defend what's happening.
• 11:12
  Speaker 9: The other thing that's happening is that this is making
• 11:15
  Speaker 9: Donald Trump lose his fucking mind.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: He, I don't know that we want to cheer for that.
• 11:23
  Speaker 9: He, like, just like an hour ago, retweeted someone saying
• 11:28
  Speaker 9: that there will be civil war in this country if
• 11:30
  Speaker 9: impeachment happens, right?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Like batshit crazy stuff. This morning, he.
• 11:35
  Speaker 9: Retweeted 18 attacks on the weekend anchor of Fox and Friends.
• 11:41
  Speaker 9: That is not the behavior of a, you know, person
• 11:46
  Speaker 9: who feels comfortable.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: About his political situation.
• 11:48
  Speaker 9: A very stable genius. So we're on offense here. They
• 11:52
  Speaker 9: are flailing about for a response there. We're attacking Adam Schiff.
• 11:56
  Speaker 9: We're attacking Hunter Biden. We're attacking the Democratic Party. But
• 12:00
  Speaker 9: this is not good ground for them. I feel very
• 12:02
  Speaker 9: comfortable about where we are vis-a-vis Donald.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Trump right now. So that is right. And I think
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: what Shana and Tommy, what both of you said, I
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: think in this case, the facts are on our side.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: I think that the story is easier to understand. It's
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: more accessible. It's a crime that's happening in real time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: But I also hope that Democratic politicians take a lesson
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: from this, that you have more power to shape public
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: opinion by leading and showing political courage than you think.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: You know, and again, we don't know where we'll be
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: in two or three or four months from now. And,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: you know, facts and circumstances could make it more unpopular.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: But Democrats continuing to pound on one message over and
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: over again, show unity, show strength, be on offense all
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: the time, can help make this successful. It's not a guarantee,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: but it can up our chances.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: And I think even not in impeachment, we are seeing
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: that actually play out in the 2020 election, in that
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: having a message and hitting it, there's a reason why
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Warren is moving up in the polls. And this
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: is a political thing. She has a message. She has
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: a meme. She has a plan for that. And that
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: is something people respond to. So I think you.
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: Have a point.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So on the flip side of this, Tommy, only 42%
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: of people in this poll believe that Trump deserves to
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: be actually impeached, with another 22% believing it's too soon
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to say. And only 41% believe Trump's actions were illegal,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: with another 31% saying they were legal but not proper.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: So what does that tell Democrats about their path forward
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: and the work that we have to do here?
• 13:42
  Speaker 9: First of all, it tells me that we poll people
• 13:45
  Speaker 9: on the dumbest questions. You find 500 non-lawyers across the...
• 13:51
  Speaker 9: Is this legal or not? Well, I'm not a judge,
• 13:53
  Speaker 9: but yes, that's illegal.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right. A lot of lawyers in that sample?
• 13:57
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I think ultimately the answer to your question depends
• 14:01
  Speaker 9: on what your goal is.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: If your goal is.
• 14:04
  Speaker 9: to convince the entire country that Donald Trump is a
• 14:08
  Speaker 9: criminal and thus get two-thirds of the Senate to convict him,
• 14:12
  Speaker 9: we have a long way to go.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: But I don't really think that's our goal.
• 14:15
  Speaker 9: I think our goal is to convince a significant portion
• 14:21
  Speaker 9: of the country that Donald Trump is corrupt and using
• 14:24
  Speaker 9: the office for personal gain. But the slice that we
• 14:28
  Speaker 9: need to really move, like all the Democrats are coming around,
• 14:31
  Speaker 9: but then there are these like, Obama-Trump voters that we
• 14:35
  Speaker 9: know are sort of in the middle here, if we
• 14:37
  Speaker 9: can convince them, or at least a percentage of them,
• 14:40
  Speaker 9: that Donald Trump did something really egregiously wrong and that
• 14:44
  Speaker 9: helps us win the election in 2020, that's critically important.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: I think the other thing you said in the answer
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: to the last question, too, is right, which is this
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: is distracting Donald Trump and causing him to melt down.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: In the more days... between now and November of 2020,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: where Trump is retweeting random shark bots about Ed Henry
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: and screaming all kinds of things, that's fewer days that
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: he's not making an effective case against the Democratic nominee.
• 15:12
  Speaker 9: A thing we know from polling is that people might
• 15:16
  Speaker 9: like a lot of things about him, even like his base.
• 15:18
  Speaker 9: A lot of them wish he would not tweet, that
• 15:20
  Speaker 9: he wasn't so caustic all the time. Even Ted Cruz,
• 15:25
  Speaker 9: coward that he may be, criticized Trump for tweeting too
• 15:28
  Speaker 9: much at the Trib Fest this weekend, right? So, like,
• 15:31
  Speaker 9: it's a well-established narrative that people don't like that he
• 15:33
  Speaker 9: just flails away on the weekends.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, but it isn't great that our president is
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: melting down on Twitter right now. I mean, I do
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: want to just take a step back and be like,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: he is the leader of the free world. and has
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of access to bombs.
• 15:50
  Speaker 7: I think that's an important point, which is he's got
• 15:53
  Speaker 7: a lot of buttons in front of him that he
• 15:54
  Speaker 7: could take his anger out with, and I'm fine if
• 15:57
  Speaker 7: it's Twitter.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Today was one of those days, right?
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Or the Diet Coke button.
• 16:02
  Speaker 9: He said that Adam Schiff should be questioned for treason
• 16:05
  Speaker 9: today because he paraphrased his comments at a congressional hearing.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: He took me out of context. Traitor. Traitor.
• 16:13
  Speaker 9: Any given day, that would be the craziest thing that
• 16:15
  Speaker 9: a president of the United States has ever said.
• 16:18
  Speaker 7: To be fair, Trump has a long-held passion for accuracy
• 16:21
  Speaker 7: and precision.
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: So you can see why this got him.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: But it does.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think those numbers do tell us that
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: despite the fact that, you know, the facts are on
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: our side, that this is an easy story. like, it
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: is a long way between now and an impeachment vote,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: and Democrats have to make a concise, consistent case, and
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: also let people know, to that question about is it
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: legal or proper or whatever else, like, this wasn't just
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: something that was wrong, but what Donald Trump did makes
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: him so manifestly unfit for office that he should be
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: the third president in history to be impeached. Like, and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: that is a higher standard, and Democrats have to make
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: sure we meet that standard.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: Every Democrat.
• 17:03
  Speaker 7: who finds himself in front of a microphone for the
• 17:05
  Speaker 7: next several months has to say the words, Donald Trump
• 17:08
  Speaker 7: abused his office to punish his enemies, help himself, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 7: enrich himself.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: But I think they also have to figure out how
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: to explain what law applies that if he were just
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: a normal person and not the President of the United
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: States who had to go through an impeachment process, that
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: what they would take him to court for. I think
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: they have to figure out how to say that message.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And I'm going to say a name that's probably going
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: to make some people hiss, but I was listening to
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: this week today, and Chris Christie made this point. I'll
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: pause for it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: I love him.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: But he made this point about if they go too fast,
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: and they do kind of, if they're going to do this,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: have to go kind of quickly because we run into
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: election stuff. But if they go too fast and they
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: don't explain themselves well, it could end up backfiring. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: I kind of agree with him.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I do too.
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: I think that's right.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I also, like, we're, you know, We've all, the call
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: is unspinable. We're about to do an okay stop where
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: we see how unspinable it can be. And we've seen
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different messages. The Republicans are all over
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: the place. That won't necessarily be the case even as
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: soon as next week. That number that shows 20% or
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: some 25% of Republicans are open to an impeachment inquiry,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: once this machine gets up and running, all of a
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: sudden they come home and this remains a kind of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: murky 50-50 issue like every other issue in this country.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: That's another.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: less sanguine possibility that we could end up in, and
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: we should just be prepared for that too.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I also think the other important point for Democrats to
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: keep making, and many of them have already made this, is,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: you know, the argument from some people who are opposed
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: to impeachment but still think Donald Trump is unfit for
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: office is, you know what, we have an election in
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: November of 2020. That's the time when we can vote
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: him out of office, and Republicans in the Senate aren't
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: going to convict him anyway. The reason that this scandal
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: makes that different is because Donald Trump has tried to,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: through the crime that he has committed, he is trying
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: to prevent a free and fair election in 2020. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: so the whole hope that 2020 and November 2020 is
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: we can open up, he is going around the world
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: trying to get favors to criminalize his opponent so that
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: he can win the election in 2020. And the only
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: thing you can do to stop that is to, you know,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the best chance you have to stop that is through
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: the impeachment process.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's drunk dialing for compromise. So we've got to
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: admit that.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: He's going to be surprised.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: When Julian Castro is his opponent.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: Love it.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: One piece of news that's not great for Joe Biden
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: in this poll is that only 28% of people believe
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that the allegations against the vice president and his son
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: do not deserve further investigation. Has the media done a
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: good enough job debunking these completely false allegations of criminality
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: on the part of either Joe Biden or Hunter Biden?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: It has the Biden campaign. Like what what happened there?
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I do think what we have seen
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: even in the past few days is a lot of
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: journalists who have learned some lessons, but not all the lessons.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: from 2016, we've seen some pretty antagonistic interviews of people
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: trying to represent the Trump talking points, which is a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: manufactured allegation that Joe Biden tried to get this guy
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in Ukraine fired to help his son, right? It's actually
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: the opposite. We've all gone over this. Everyone can go
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: over it a million times. They will continue to stir
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: up this false story. The reason that they will do it,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and I think the reason you see a poll number
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: like that is, I think, again, a lesson from 2016,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: which is they may hype it up, they may lie
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: about it, the media may do a terrible job of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: holding them accountable for those lies, but the reason they
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: want to do it is because they know that underneath it,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: there's something that's just a little bit squishy and a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: little bit gross, right? Why is Hunter Biden on the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: board of this company? You know, he's not an expert,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: so it's clearly either for respectability politics or influence, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden... is a man of integrity on this matter.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: There is no evidence that Joe Biden ever did anything
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: untoward with regard to.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Any of this.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't stop them because they know that there's
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: enough cynicism out there and enough corruption out there and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: enough of an understanding that Washington doesn't work for ordinary people,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that it is a means of an elite you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: enriching themselves and their loved ones, that they can go
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: into that cynicism and stir it up and use it
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: against Democrats. I totally agree, but you're 100% right.
• 21:29
  Speaker 9: It is weird that Joe Biden's son got a $ 50, 000
• 21:32
  Speaker 9: a month retainer to work for a company in an
• 21:35
  Speaker 9: industry he didn't know well in a country he didn't
• 21:38
  Speaker 9: live in. But Donald Trump just made his son-in-law the
• 21:41
  Speaker 9: fucking Middle East peace negotiator.
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: You know what I mean?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: So it's like, it's a weird, it's a weird path
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to walk for them. Because they're trying to drive, but like,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that's the thing, like, They know that. They know that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: as long as they make everyone look terrible, everyone look corrupt,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: everyone is the worst, everyone is evil, that they can
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: kind of eke out an ugly victory in the mud.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And everything goes back to that.
• 22:04
  Speaker 7: I mean, Trump's strategy has always been, I am never
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: going to convince anyone I'm good. I had to convince
• 22:09
  Speaker 7: everyone that the other guy is just as bad as
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: I am.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think this is sort of overcomplicating it, though. Like,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: you can think that Hunter Biden getting $ 50, 000 a month
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: to be on this board of a foreign company with
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: no real qualifications is sort of scummy sounding. That happens
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: with people all the time who are connected in Washington.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: It's the swampy thing. All you have to know is
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: it is a fact that Joe Biden firing or trying
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to get that prosecutor fired increased the chances that there
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: would be an investigation into his son's company increased the chances.
• 22:50
  Speaker 9: I would just say, if I were the Biden campaign,
• 22:52
  Speaker 9: I would stop telling that story, and I would unload
• 22:55
  Speaker 9: my oppo file on Don Jr.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: Eric.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Right now?
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: No.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I'd leave Tiffany the hell alone. Fuck yeah. I would
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: punch them.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Why are we leaving Tiffany alone?
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: She seems nice.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: I would.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I was just curious.
• 23:09
  Speaker 9: There's a chance she was the anonymous official who wrote
• 23:11
  Speaker 9: that New York Times op-ed a few months ago. Because
• 23:14
  Speaker 9: I think the lesson that Donald Trump has taught us
• 23:16
  Speaker 9: all is that you have to be on offense all
• 23:18
  Speaker 9: the time. And also, if you start bringing his kids
• 23:21
  Speaker 9: into it, he will lose his shit.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: See, I just... I agree with you that they should
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: dump the oppo file, but I think that the story
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: that the firing of that prosecutor increased the chances that
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Hunter's company would be investigated is something that people do
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: not know. And I think what happens now is a
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: bunch of people, the defensive story is there was no wrongdoing,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: there was no evidence. No, not only was there no
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: wrongdoing and no evidence, Joe Biden did the opposite of
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: what you're accusing him of. It is the complete fucking opposite.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Look, yes, they should be saying that. They should get
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: that out and actually, you know, Jake Tapper at Jim
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Jordan said that, right? Chris Wallace gets at that. They're
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: getting at that, but what they're relying on.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Is the fact that.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: We should try to get that out to people, but
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: at the same time, they're relying on the fact that
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: You're not going to always know. They're relying on the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: kind of.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Jake Tapper and them aren't saying that, though, that he
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: acted against his son's financial interests.
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: Jake said that.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Jake did today?
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: He did today. And I think Chris Wallace might have, too.
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: But look, I think.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Regardless, it's just they are counting on a kind of
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: miasma of confusion on this issue. And anything the Biden
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: campaign can do to kind of cut through that is
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do. The point I'm just making
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: is the reason you see those numbers in the polls
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: is because of that underlying cynicism that people have rightfully
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: earned about D.C.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: That's all.
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: If I was sitting in the Biden campaign, I would
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: be very nervous right now.
• 24:37
  Speaker 7: Because even though all the facts are on our side,
• 24:40
  Speaker 7: there's a very real chance he has sacrificed on the
• 24:44
  Speaker 7: impeachment fire. Because we're going to talk about nothing other
• 24:48
  Speaker 7: than impeachment in this country for the next few months.
• 24:50
  Speaker 7: And Biden is going to be a part of that conversation,
• 24:52
  Speaker 7: unfairly so. Democrat says Trump, Republican says Biden, because they
• 24:58
  Speaker 7: know they can't defend Trump. But if they can take
• 25:00
  Speaker 7: Joe Biden down in the process, then that is going
• 25:02
  Speaker 7: to be to Trump's benefit in the end, as the
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: Republicans think about it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, is it that Biden actually needs to do
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: an interview with Hunter Biden? Like, do they need to
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: try to get a little, I mean, they're already behind
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: a little bit, but.
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: So I would do the following things if I was them.
• 25:16
  Speaker 7: I would pick someone on my campaign who was a
• 25:20
  Speaker 7: person with credibility, who knew politics and knew the law,
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: and I would have them become the face of this
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: and have them do TV 24-7.
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: They will move into the CNN, NBC studios.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Basically, every time Rudy Giuliani is on, you should be
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: booking him.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Splitting kind bars with Rudy every single day. Someone like
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Ron Klain.
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: Would be who was buying Superstaff. So that's step one.
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: Step two is I would start advertising now. doing Facebook ads.
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: Because this is where you're gonna get clobbered.
• 25:49
  Speaker 7: Even if Jake Tapper and Chris Wallace and everyone else
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: is fair, you're gonna get destroyed because still to this day,
• 25:55
  Speaker 7: the right wing outrage is what moves.
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: The conversation on Facebook.
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: And the third thing is the way they can help
• 25:59
  Speaker 7: their volunteers and their supporters do this is they should
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: give them tools. Like a 30 to 45 second explainer
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: video of the truth that people could share and post
• 26:09
  Speaker 7: on Facebook or a graphic.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Make it a little entertaining.
• 26:12
  Speaker 7: They are right now in the middle of a modern
• 26:15
  Speaker 7: information war. And they can't fight this with statements and tweets.
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: They have to go all in.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Or like talking to reporters on background. This is a
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: new fucking world. They need to understand that. The press
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: can't win this for you.
• 26:26
  Speaker 9: The biggest problem they have is when you hear something enough,
• 26:29
  Speaker 9: you start to believe it's probably true.
• 26:31
  Speaker 6: And you default to cynicism.
• 26:31
  Speaker 9: People think that Hillary Clinton has a kill list. Because
• 26:34
  Speaker 9: their dumb friend shared it on Facebook fucking seven years ago.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I mean, you could talk to.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: John believes it. Actually, that's what I thought you were doing.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I learned it from him. He was briefly on it.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: When you talk to the people who ran focus groups
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: for Hillary Clinton in 2016, they will tell you that
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the most common thing in the focus group of swing
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: voters was people saying... Not about the email scandals, not
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: about stuff like that. Vince Foster? She had a kill list.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Seriously, because of Facebook shit. I mean, it's that bad.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: On that note. On that note, we're going to play
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a game.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Now it's time for a game we call OK Stop.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: We'll roll a clip. We can say OK Stop at
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: any point to comment. Republicans went to the Sunday shows
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to defend the president like moths to a flame. There
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: was Stephen Miller eating shit on Fox. There was GOP
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: leader Kevin McCarthy failing to speak in sentences on 60 Minutes.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And then Congressman Jim Jordan on CNN who ran into
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a buzzsaw that definitely makes fun of Chris Cuomo's Instagram
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: when no one's around named Jake Tapper. That's true.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Too specific. Let's watch.
• 27:50
  Speaker 10: Zelensky wants military aid and President Trump Asks him to
• 27:54
  Speaker 10: look into the Bidens.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I can't believe that that's OK with you.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: Zelensky brings up he wants to drain the swamp in
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: his country like the president is doing here. The president says,
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: do me a favor. Can you figure out what happened
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: in 2016? I thought we all cared about what happened
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: in the 2016 election.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And then he.
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: Moves on to the Bidens. Wonder what Hunter Biden did.
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: OK, stop.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: We just sort of let go. He wants to know
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: what happened in 2016. That's not what fucking happened at all.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: The president asks the president of Ukraine about a crazy
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: fucking conspiracy theory that the Russians actually didn't interfere in
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: our election, but it was the Ukrainians all along.
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: He thinks Hillary Clinton's email server is hiding out in Kiev.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: That's not a joke, right? He actually thinks that somewhere
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: in Ukraine there is Hillary Clinton's email server. It is
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: so fucking bonkers. But this is what happens. And Jake
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: knows that, and it's not like... you can only stop
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: so many crazy comments, but this is the kind of thing,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: this is getting out there, and because now we have
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: to move on to the next thing, we just sort
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: of let fly the first one.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: It is a... The right-wing machine for pumping out this
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: kind of misinformation are like the chocolates moving in front
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of Lucy and Ethel.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: And.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and Jake's picking them up and he's throwing them down
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: his shirt and he's eating some and he's putting them
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in his pocket and Ethel's coming in and trying to
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: get them out and Media Matters is taking some of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: them and they can't take enough of them and then
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's just fucking chocolate moving down, uninspected,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Why would he just look at his phone, check out
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the sports board?
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: In May, the Ukrainian... But.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: He's getting paid $ 50, 000. And then when the company that's
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: paying him that money is under investigation, guess what? Daddy
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: comes running to the rescue. The Vice President of the
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: United States comes running to the rescue.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Not what happened.
• 29:41
  Speaker 8: Oh, wait, stop.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Just an exaggeration. Jake, that's not what happened.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: I can feel Jake, just his head starting to explode
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: as this interview is going on.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: But I am, this is a good, this is a
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: rich text for the Trump era. Because Jim Jordan has
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: no scruples, right? He is laying down... This is someone
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: going out there and saying, I'm going to lay down
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the misinformation case in full like a freight train.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: I will not be stopped.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: He's good at creating a narrative. He is good at this.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Jim Jordan is.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: Do you think he... I'm sorry.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. That's it.
• 30:19
  Speaker 7: Do you think he knows he's lying or do you
• 30:22
  Speaker 7: think his brain.
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: Is so pickled?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: He might have convinced himself that he believes this.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: So he's being very.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Now, he's doing what Trump is doing in that ad,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: what Republicans are doing all across television, right? He's laying
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: out a sequence of events. He's leaving out the most
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: important detail, which is what John just pointed out, that
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Biden was firing, was seeking on the part of many countries,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: many international organizations.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: The entire world.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: The entire world. The removal of someone who wasn't punishing
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: corruption so that they could have somebody who would go
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: after corruption. It is opposite. But he is laying it
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: out in the sequence with these kind of semi-true sentences
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: to make the most damning indictment of Biden, which is
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: why it requires Jake to say, wait a second, wait
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: a second, wait a second.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I would also say I, you know, I interviewed Jim
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Jordan about probably two months ago and I asked him
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: pretty point blank, was the Mueller report like was the
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Mueller hearing two months ago? I think, like, I interviewed
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: him that day.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: It was the day before this phone call.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: I asked him about whether he thought, was there anything
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: in the second half in the obstruction of justice part
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: of the Mueller report that bothered him at all about
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: the president? And he looked at me and he basically
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: said no. And I believed him. And I did. I
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: think that's what he believes.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's George Costanza, famously.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: It's not a lie. if you believe it.
• 31:45
  Speaker 7: When we think about the damage that Fox News is doing,
• 31:48
  Speaker 7: we often think about our uncle or our grandfather who
• 31:52
  Speaker 7: watched Fox News.
• 31:55
  Speaker 6: But.
• 31:58
  Speaker 7: The huge public policy problem in America is that its
• 32:01
  Speaker 7: Republican members of Congress get all their news from Fox.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: We saw that tonight with Kevin McCarthy on 60 Minutes.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Where Scott Pelley reads him the transcript of the call
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: summary and says, and then Donald Trump says, do me
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: a favor, though. And Kevin McCarthy goes, he didn't say that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: And he goes, yeah, he said, do me a favor, though.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: And he goes, you just added the though. And he goes, no,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't. That's in the transcript. And, like, I genuinely
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: believe that Kevin McCarthy genuinely believes that. That he added
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the though.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: But also, Kevin McCarthy's genuinely a moron.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:34
  Speaker 7: I genuinely believe that Kevin McCarthy thought the word that
• 32:38
  Speaker 7: was spelled T-H-O-U-G-H was a different word.
• 32:41
  Speaker 9: He's genuinely best known for fetching Donald Trump his favorite Starburst.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. But he believes it, you know?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: that prosecutor. Sir, that's not what happened.
• 32:50
  Speaker 10: The European Union, the Obama administration, the International Monetary Fund,
• 32:55
  Speaker 10: pro-clean government activists in Ukraine thought that the prosecutor was
• 33:01
  Speaker 10: not prosecuting corruption. Joe Biden was trying to get a
• 33:05
  Speaker 10: prosecutor who was not pursuing corruption fired.
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: It's amazing the gymnastics you guys will go through to
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: defend what... Sir, it's not gymnastics.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: It's facts.
• 33:14
  Speaker 10: And I would think somebody who's been accused of things
• 33:16
  Speaker 10: in the last year or two.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: would be more sensitive. Okay, stop.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Okay, stop.
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: That is a haymaker.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: That's also classic Jake.
• 33:27
  Speaker 9: Wow.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: Jake? You get Jake annoyed. Jake's going to come at
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: you really hard. We've all been there. We've all been
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: on the receiving end.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not throwing out wild allegations.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: I'm throwing out the facts. He got hired for what?
• 33:38
  Speaker 10: The president's daughter right now is having all sorts of
• 33:42
  Speaker 10: copyrights granted in foreign countries. That doesn't alarm you. The
• 33:46
  Speaker 10: president's sons are doing all sorts of business all over
• 33:50
  Speaker 10: the world.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: That doesn't alarm you.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, stop. I like the come on there because the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: come on is sort of like, Come.
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: On, don't.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: You're going to take this there?
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Don't point it out.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: You know I don't have an answer to that. You
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: know that's not in the talking points. Oh, that's it.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I will say also, too, you notice he keeps coming
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: back to that issue of the $ 50, 000. Why was he
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: getting the money? This is similar to what they did
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: on Hillary and the speeches. It's what they did on email.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: It's what they did on Benghazi, which is You take
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: that little kernel and you ask a question that you
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: know the answer to and you imply that the answer
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: is far more vast and sinister than you could possibly imagine.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: And that is what.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: They're good at. They're good at.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: And that's OK Stop.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: So last night we talked about how impeachment is affecting
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: the Democratic candidate strategies. Tonight I want to talk about
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: how impeachment is shaping Donald Trump's reelection strategy. Already, the
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: president's campaign is spending $ 10 million on a television and
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Facebook ad campaign that accuses Democrats of trying to, quote,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: steal the 2020 election through impeachment. And Trump has a
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: video pinned to his Twitter feed right now with the tagline, quote,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: they're trying to stop me because I'm fighting for you.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: We laugh, but So, Shauna, Trump advisors told NBC, quote,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: we're not going to take this lying down and said
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: they're modeling their response on the strategy they used during
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: the Kavanaugh hearings.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Which was super organized.
• 35:29
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: So what does that say about what we can expect
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: from the Trump campaign? And what is their I mean,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: we went through all of their sort of sad explanations
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: on the merits of the substance of this allegation. But
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: what's their sort of political message here that they're going
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: to use for the campaign on impeachment?
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: That they're the ones under attack, so they're going to
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: attack back. And they did it effectively with Kavanaugh, that
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: it was pugilistic. Everything the Democrats are saying is incorrect
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: about him, and he deserves to be Supreme Court justice.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: They're going to say everything you're saying is incorrect about
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: President Trump, and he deserves to continue to be president.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't, whatever the actual reality is, and I'll
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: leave it to everyone else to decide what the reality is,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Whatever it is, they are going to write their own
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: path and nothing else is going to get in the way.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: And we saw it with Kavanaugh. Now, this is a
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: little bit different than Kavanaugh in that we have something
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: that resembles a transcript and we have Congress saying, okay,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: we're going to dive into this thing. And they're even
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: going to have hearings. They're going to have depositions next
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: week with some of the people mentioned in the transcript.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: and mentioned in the whistleblower's complaint. So that makes it
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: a little bit harder than the Kavanaugh situation. But if
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: you are going to make your own reality in some ways,
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: and they're going to do it, and I don't know
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: if it's going to work or not, but they've been
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: really effective at it. I think the other thing you
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: have to realize is that he's the president of the
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: United States who is running for reelection. And yes, there's
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: a couple of people out there who are challenging him
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: for the nomination sort of on the Republican side, but
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: he's going to get the nomination and run for president again.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: they have the ability and the fundraising prowess to be
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: able to have a singular message right now in a
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: way the Democrats can't because the Democrats are still running
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: against each other. And I don't mean that in a
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: bad way, I just mean like, we're still in an
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: actual real Democratic primary. He can focus, or his campaign
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: can focus, he has a hard time focusing as we
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: see on Twitter, but His campaign can focus on something
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: very singular and putting their message out. And that's the
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: kind of beauty of being the sitting president when you're
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: running for president.
• 37:36
  Speaker 7: I think the Kavanaugh thing is a very interesting parallel
• 37:40
  Speaker 7: because it worked for them. But there are two elements
• 37:43
  Speaker 7: of it that are different. One is the Kavanaugh strategy
• 37:46
  Speaker 7: was not run out of the White House. It was
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: run by the Federalist Society, Mitch McConnell, the Koch Network.
• 37:52
  Speaker 7: And they were the ones who drove it.
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: It was those groups running the ads. It's part of the.
• 37:57
  Speaker 7: More disciplined side of the Republican Party than the Trump side.
• 38:01
  Speaker 7: But it also was very focused on red states. They
• 38:05
  Speaker 7: didn't have to persuade anyone in blue states. They really
• 38:08
  Speaker 7: only had to put pressure on Democrats in places like
• 38:11
  Speaker 7: North Dakota, West Virginia, Indiana, and then keep.
• 38:13
  Speaker 6: Two Republicans home.
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: Which I think is actually a proxy for the strategic
• 38:18
  Speaker 7: decision they have to make, which is, if they have
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: actual concern about Trump leaving office, of being forced out
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: of office, the way in which you prevent that is
• 38:28
  Speaker 7: you hold the 40% Trump base together. But that is
• 38:32
  Speaker 7: a different strategy than winning a plurality in battleground states
• 38:37
  Speaker 7: around the country, where you have to, the strategy of
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: punch back as hard as you can, deny reality, speak
• 38:44
  Speaker 7: to Sean Hannity, praise Mark Levin, that is a strategy
• 38:47
  Speaker 7: for keeping your MAGA base together.
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: That does not necessarily directly get.
• 38:51
  Speaker 7: You to the 48, 49, 50% you need to win
• 38:55
  Speaker 7: in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona. And so what I think
• 38:59
  Speaker 7: matters to us and what we got to think about
• 39:01
  Speaker 7: is what is our strategy to focus on the up
• 39:06
  Speaker 7: for grabs voters in those states, right? Like what is
• 39:09
  Speaker 7: the thing that has there? And it's very interesting what
• 39:11
  Speaker 7: Trump does because it's a different strategy to use this
• 39:14
  Speaker 7: to help you win reelection is to help you survive
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: the moment.
• 39:17
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, I think their strategy right now is
• 39:19
  Speaker 9: to find out the identity of this whistleblower and destroy
• 39:24
  Speaker 9: that person. You saw that on the 18 retweets that
• 39:28
  Speaker 9: Donald Trump did this morning attacking Ed Henry on Fox
• 39:31
  Speaker 9: & Friends. It was in response to a rant by
• 39:34
  Speaker 9: this radio host by a guy named Mark Levin where
• 39:38
  Speaker 9: he said that he wants to know how many dogs
• 39:41
  Speaker 9: the whistleblower has, how many DUIs they've had, how many
• 39:44
  Speaker 9: marriages they've had. They've decided that they are going to
• 39:48
  Speaker 9: stop at nothing to destroy this person's credibility and therefore
• 39:52
  Speaker 9: absolve Donald Trump. So I think that's the kind of
• 39:55
  Speaker 9: maximalist scorched earth strategy that we should be prepared for.
• 40:00
  Speaker 9: And it's not easy to know.
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: How to fight that.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: It's sort of a flip side to what Shauna said,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: which is it is true that there's no unified democratic message,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: but that also means that there's no single enemy for
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump to point at. They're trying to make this
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: about the whistleblower. So they've offered this like laughable spin
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: that oh, the whistleblower's information was secondhand, but wait, we
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: already got this report with the memo that has the
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: quotes that verify what the whistleblower said. But it's because
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: all of their instinct is to kind of find someone
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: and destroy them, and it's why I think Donald Trump tweets, oh,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: you know, the savages in Congress, et cetera, and of
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: course the savages turn out to be two Jewish members
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and four people of color. What a shock. But it's, again,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: he's looking for He's looking for a villain. He's looking
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: for an enemy. He's looking for someone to kind of
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: direct this machine at. And I think one built-in advantage
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: of impeachment versus an election is impeachment isn't one single
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: opposition person that if you vilify and bring down to
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: your level, you've succeeded. There's Schiff. There's Pelosi. There's many
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: other House Democrats.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: You don't think it's Nancy Pelosi? Because it is very
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: easy to make her.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: I think she's one of many.
• 41:13
  Speaker 9: They've been going after Schiff, and Rudy's going after 2016
• 41:15
  Speaker 9: and Hillary and Soros.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: It's like all the familiar boogeymen.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: It hasn't been Pelosi quite yet. See, I think that
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump and the Republicans are in worse shape when
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: they are having to argue the facts and the details
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: of this case. When they're talking about transcripts and whistleblowers
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: and Ukraine and who did what in this, They lose
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: because the facts are on our side and it's just
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: so crazy the shit they're making up. From the re-election
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: campaign standpoint, they have a much bigger canvas to paint on.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: And for them, the enemies are the enemies that Donald
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Trump has always had. It's the deep state, it's the elites,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: it's the media, it's the Democrats.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: It's open borders.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: It's the line that's in that video for him. They
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: are trying to stop me because I'm fighting for you.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: My enemies are your enemies. And his whole reelection campaign,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: the whole message is going to be grievance. It's that, like,
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: look at all these partisan assholes not getting anything done
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: for you because they hate me so much that they
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: want to take me down. And here I am. I'm
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: fighting for you. And I have all these enemies in
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: the media and the deep state and the bureaucracy that
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: are trying to screw around with this. I'm the one
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: that can help you. I'm the one that can fix things.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: That's the larger re-elect message and that's what he's going
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: to try to fuse into the impeachment.
• 42:30
  Speaker 7: I would be very surprised if that is the message
• 42:32
  Speaker 7: in his re-election campaign that is the one they put
• 42:35
  Speaker 7: money behind.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Because you think that's for the 40%? I think that's
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: for the 40% and it is....
• 42:41
  Speaker 7: Very, it's just, Donald Trump has a, he has more
• 42:45
  Speaker 7: advantages in the sense that he's got a head start,
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: he's gonna have more money, he has the bullpup of
• 42:49
  Speaker 7: the presidency, but he's going to have to get to
• 42:52
  Speaker 7: a higher number in these states than he did in 2016.
• 42:54
  Speaker 7: Like he could win with 46%. He's not gonna be
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: able to do that in 2020.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: So what do they put money behind? Do they put
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: money behind economy, jobs?
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: Economy, jobs, and tearing down the Democrat.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: So the one thing I wonder is, You know, Tommy,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: there are still a lot of pundits, including half the
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: New York Times op-ed page, who think the Trump campaign
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: is right about the politics and argue that impeachment will
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: rally Trump's base and increase turnout. How much should Democrats
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: be concerned about this, and what can they do? Because
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I do wonder, at some point in this campaign, if
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: they give up on trying to win over the middle,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: they think, all right, if we can just boost turnout
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: among the base, we can get there.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: I read those op-eds you're referencing.
• 43:41
  Speaker 9: None of us can game out what the politics of
• 43:44
  Speaker 9: this are going to be, right?
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: So it's silly to predict. And it's silly to let worst-case.
• 43:49
  Speaker 9: Predictions drive our decision-making. David Plouffe believes that the turnout
• 43:56
  Speaker 9: in 2020 for Trump is going to be record numbers, historic, high, massive, right?
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: He said add 8% to 10% of Trump's turnout in 2016. Yeah,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: so we should assume.
• 44:08
  Speaker 9: And we should build all our models to assume that
• 44:11
  Speaker 9: Trump is going to have a massive turnout. The way
• 44:13
  Speaker 9: we match that with our turnout is not by trimming
• 44:16
  Speaker 9: our sales and kind of like hoping that infrastructure week
• 44:20
  Speaker 9: comes one day, right?
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Then we cut a deal with this fucking sociopath.
• 44:24
  Speaker 9: We should fight him and stand up for the Constitution
• 44:28
  Speaker 9: and prevent him from welcoming foreign interference into our election
• 44:31
  Speaker 9: while also telling.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: A story about.
• 44:35
  Speaker 9: What we would do differently, and I think the long-term
• 44:37
  Speaker 9: bet has got to be that somewhere in the back
• 44:40
  Speaker 9: of our brains, we all kind of remember what it
• 44:42
  Speaker 9: was like to have a president that was cool but boring, right?
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Like, Barack Obama was.
• 44:49
  Speaker 9: A cool guy who wore dad jeans on the weekends and, like,
• 44:51
  Speaker 9: hung out with his kids and didn't, like, tweet insane
• 44:54
  Speaker 9: things about starting a civil war, right? Like, I think
• 44:56
  Speaker 9: we'd all like to go back to a time where
• 44:58
  Speaker 9: governance was normal.
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: And so that would be my bet.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: But also, I mean, look at the applause you got
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: when you said the word impeachment in this crowd that
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: I assume is mostly liberal. And the applause that you
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: got in Portland. I do think there is something to this.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: I'm making a point. That wasn't to be mean to y'all.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: So sensitive. That was you projecting.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: But I... I find some of these arguments interesting that, okay,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: this idea of impeachment will boost conservative pro-Trump turnout, and
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: I think that that is possible, but I don't know
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: why people think it won't boost Democratic turnout, too. And
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's going to.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Welcome to our.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: We've been screaming this for months.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's going to cancel each other out.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know how hard the boost is going to be, but.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I think that this will also energize this side of
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: the crowd, too. The question is, will it energize them
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: all the way to November? But that's the question for
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: both sides, too.
• 45:58
  Speaker 9: To your point, obviously, Kavanaugh, Lindsey Graham lit himself on
• 46:02
  Speaker 9: fire and cried at a hearing, and it sparked this thing.
• 46:05
  Speaker 9: That helped a bunch of red state senators win or
• 46:08
  Speaker 9: keep seats. But we also won 40 House seats.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Like, it cut both ways.
• 46:13
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: It's like we forget both sides.
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: Of the story.
• 46:16
  Speaker 7: There's a real correlation causality question with Kavanaugh.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I also, like, you know, how the politics of all
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: this plays out over the next many months, I don't know.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody will be able to know for sure. I do
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: know how it played out in the first few days.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: And I definitely would rather be a Democrat this week
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: than a Republican this week.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: So one thing, you know, we can't control what happens
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: with their turnout. One thing we can control is, you know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: inevitably it's already starting. Trump and the Republicans are going
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: to say, OK, well, because the Democrats are obsessed with
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: impeachment and going through impeachment, they're not focused on. other
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: issues that people care about. This is like the Mitch
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: McConnell play. I would have passed gun control if it
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: hadn't been for impeachment. I would have given everyone health
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: care if it hadn't been for impeachment. But these damn
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: Democrats were so focused on impeachment, they didn't want to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: do anything else for the American people, which we laugh at,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: but I guarantee you, we're like 10 media narrative cycles
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: away from some people who are like, should the Democrats
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: be worried that they're not doing other things? And what's
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: the Democrats' response to that?
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It's like Trump.
• 47:22
  Speaker 9: Was in the Oval Office with Wayne LaPierre, the head
• 47:25
  Speaker 9: of the NRA, like two days ago, figuring out what
• 47:29
  Speaker 9: the latest quid pro quo was to block any gun
• 47:31
  Speaker 9: control from happening. It's so cynical, and I know we
• 47:35
  Speaker 9: can't count on the media to tell the story of
• 47:38
  Speaker 9: that cynicism for us, because it's not really their job,
• 47:40
  Speaker 9: but I think we just have to make the argument
• 47:43
  Speaker 9: that they were full of shit on some of these issues.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: But also, let me say something that's cynical. We are, what,
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: we're almost in October today? Are we in October now?
• 47:51
  Speaker 8: Tomorrow.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: No, it's still September. I have no idea what date
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: it is. We are almost to 2020. Let's be honest,
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Congress wasn't going to do anything anyway. Right. This is
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: how presidential election cycles work. They're going to fund the government.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: They're going to make a deal to do that. They
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: did do a short-term deal. They're going to keep going.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: And then after that, once we get to next year,
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: they're going to do the very basic stuff they have
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: to do to avoid a government shutdown because nobody wants
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: to do that during an election year. That was all
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: that was going to happen anyway, sorry.
• 48:23
  Speaker 7: The strategy you mentioned of painting a picture for the
• 48:27
  Speaker 7: American people of the cost of impeachment, the opportunity cost,
• 48:29
  Speaker 7: the things that did not get done because of it,
• 48:32
  Speaker 7: is a strategy that we know can be successful because
• 48:33
  Speaker 7: it's the one that Bill Clinton ran in the late 90s.
• 48:37
  Speaker 7: He painted the Republicans as obsessed with his personal life.
• 48:41
  Speaker 7: He's focused all of his time and energy on what
• 48:45
  Speaker 7: he could do for the country. The problem with that
• 48:47
  Speaker 7: for Trump is it requires a level of discipline. that
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: he is not known for. And you can't argue that.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: We didn't know that today, that's for sure.
• 48:56
  Speaker 6: Yes, right.
• 48:57
  Speaker 7: You can't, like, he can't go out and sell this
• 48:59
  Speaker 7: case that he's focused on helping the American people and
• 49:02
  Speaker 7: if only Nancy Pelosi wasn't impeaching him, we'd do all
• 49:04
  Speaker 7: these things. If he's tweeting 75 times a day about impeachment.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, isn't one of the things they did was
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: sort of separate out kind of the impeachment fight and
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: kind of keep it away from Bill Clinton and keep
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it cordoned off from parts of the White House so
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: that he could do other things.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:21
  Speaker 7: They, they hired a specific press person. The press secretary
• 49:23
  Speaker 7: would not take questions on impeachment. There was another person
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: who would do that. These are not things that Trump
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: is capable.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Of or his organization.
• 49:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I just think the Democrats need to not, I think
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: the operative, you, you can't be afraid, right? Like when
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: people start saying, uh, oh, the Democrats are not trying to,
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: you know, pass priorities for the American people and stuff
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: like that. They just have to say, that's fucking bullshit. Like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump had full control, full control of Washington. The
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: Republican Party did, for the first couple years, didn't do shit.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell has, like, a hundred bills.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Tax cut.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, the tax cut. No, we should bring that up.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell has had, like, a hundred bills passed by
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: the Democratic House that have gone nowhere because he, like,
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: brags about the Senate being a graveyard. A week before.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: this impeachment fight began, they were trying to blame Beto O'Rourke,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: not a member of Congress, for having a policy position
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: as the reason they might not be able to do
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: a background check, though.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: A different policy position. A different policy position.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I also do, just like a serious, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: in 2018, Donald Trump tried to focus the country on
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: this caravan and stir up anti-immigrant resentments. And, you know,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: it is right now, as Dan said, It's nice that
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: the button he's pressing is Twitter. But I do think
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: it's also worth remembering, too, that we are in a
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: period before he has figured out exactly how he is
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: going to respond to this. And he is someone who
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: has shown quite a willingness to use the other levers
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: of the presidency to distract. And he'll do that with
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: immigration policy. He's threatened to do that with homeless policy.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: So I also do think it's worth just remembering the stakes,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: because I've thought for a very long time that the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: most dangerous moment we will ever have with Donald Trump
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: as president will be the time between him no longer
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: being in office after he believes he'll lose. And that
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: is something to be worried about, to think about, to
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: remember that this could get a lot more dangerous and
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: a lot more frightening. And we're We're in the big fight.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: This is a huge, huge fight. And this is the, what?
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Add that to the list.
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: No, but I do.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: The shit you're freaking out about. No, but it's not
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: about that.
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: I know, I'm just kidding.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I'll worry about that one later once we get to
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: him losing.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I'll stay up late thinking about that one. No, but
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I was thinking about it. Adam
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Schiff gave his opening statement. And you do see when
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Adam Schiff speaks, you see genuine emotion when he was
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: speaking about the fact that, like, this is democracy.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: But you know why? You talked about the stakes. I've
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: been saying this, like, We win when we remind people
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: that the stakes are big. Donald Trump is going to
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: win when he makes us talk about small shit all
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: the time. When we get dragged into the small stuff,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: the petty bullshit, the tweets all day long. That's what
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: he's counting on. That's how he wins. We win if
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: every day we're reminding people that there are big things
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: at stake. That's what Schiff does so well. And that's
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: what you're talking about.
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: When we come back, we will have Lovis interview with
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: your lieutenant governor, Cyrus Habib.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: He's the Lieutenant Governor of Washington. Please welcome to the
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: stage my friend Cyrus Habib.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: It got a little quiet.
• 52:47
  Speaker 8: I was back, so it got a little quiet during
• 52:49
  Speaker 8: the second half of that punditry.
• 52:51
  Speaker 11: So I couldn't hear exactly what was going on. Was
• 52:53
  Speaker 11: there bad news for Democrats towards the end there?
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: No? All right.
• 53:00
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: All right, we're in a good mood. So, you recently
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. You were inspired by another climber who's blind,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: who climbed Everest and several other mountains. You did it
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: to raise money for a group that helps people participate
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: in outdoor activities.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Kids, right?
• 53:26
  Speaker 11: Yes, Outdoors for All.
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: Yay!
• 53:30
  Speaker 11: And the state of Washington are creating a program.
• 53:32
  Speaker 8: Called Boundless Washington to help young people with disabilities be
• 53:35
  Speaker 8: able to go outside and enjoy the amazing outdoors.
• 53:38
  Speaker 11: Here in Washington State.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: So this is one of the states in the country
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: where Democrats control the governorship, both houses of the legislature,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the lieutenant governorship. State passed a minimum wage increase, automatic
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: voter registration. Recently passed a public option. And yet, there
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: were a couple attempts at a carbon tax that weren't successful.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: There were compromises it took to get to a public option.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: What are the lessons in Washington, in a state where
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Democrats have control on what it takes to get progressive legislation,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: progressive policy, through the system?
• 54:28
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I think, well, first of.
• 54:29
  Speaker 8: All, I mean, you said the first part, which is
• 54:31
  Speaker 8: that you actually need to control both legislative chambers.
• 54:34
  Speaker 11: That's why it's so important.
• 54:35
  Speaker 8: I know we talk a lot about the presidential race.
• 54:37
  Speaker 8: We need to talk about it. We cannot sleep on
• 54:40
  Speaker 8: these U.S. Senate races this next year.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: That's one of the things that we want to do.
• 54:46
  Speaker 8: I mean, even if we get rid of the filibuster,
• 54:48
  Speaker 8: we still need to have a majority. Particularly if we
• 54:50
  Speaker 8: get rid of the filibuster, we need to have a
• 54:52
  Speaker 8: majority of the seats. So that's number one, that's the
• 54:55
  Speaker 8: first thing that we did, was we took control of
• 54:58
  Speaker 8: the state senate for the first time a year and.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: A half ago.
• 55:02
  Speaker 11: But then, as you pointed out, we have been able
• 55:04
  Speaker 11: to pass a number of progressive pieces of legislation.
• 55:07
  Speaker 8: I think the way that we did that was, first
• 55:10
  Speaker 8: of all, legislators were our greatest advocates in going out
• 55:16
  Speaker 8: and telling the public, look, like, this is why I
• 55:20
  Speaker 8: want to vote for this thing. I know I'm in
• 55:22
  Speaker 8: a swing district, but here's the reason why, and listening
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: to their constituents.
• 55:26
  Speaker 11: And then actually being able to defend their position, and
• 55:28
  Speaker 11: guess what?
• 55:28
  Speaker 8: We got swing district members where people would have said,
• 55:31
  Speaker 8: you should never vote for a public option, or you
• 55:33
  Speaker 8: should never vote for this kind of, you know, carbon
• 55:36
  Speaker 8: zero by 2035. You should never vote for this, and
• 55:40
  Speaker 8: yet we got swing district Democrats to vote in a
• 55:43
  Speaker 8: progressive manner, and guess what? Their constituents are proud of
• 55:46
  Speaker 8: them for doing it. This last year, we didn't just
• 55:51
  Speaker 8: keep the Democratic seats that we gained in 2016, we
• 55:53
  Speaker 8: actually grew the majorities that we had in the Senate
• 55:56
  Speaker 8: and the House.
• 55:57
  Speaker 11: So I do think it's important to be able to
• 55:59
  Speaker 11: take those progressive.
• 56:00
  Speaker 8: Stances, but then also to be good at communicating why
• 56:03
  Speaker 8: you support them.
• 56:05
  Speaker 12: So, we have a role.
• 56:08
  Speaker 11: I heard you guys say it.
• 56:09
  Speaker 8: Earlier too about impeachment that when folks actually get up
• 56:13
  Speaker 8: there and are proud of the position that they're taking,
• 56:15
  Speaker 8: the polling will fall.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Where is your head at on impeachment?
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Where are you at?
• 56:20
  Speaker 11: On impeachment? I mean, look, I think you've got to
• 56:23
  Speaker 11: be crazy.
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, so I will give you, I will give.
• 56:26
  Speaker 11: You some, that's not the scandal you're going to create
• 56:29
  Speaker 11: for me tonight, John.
• 56:32
  Speaker 8: I will tell you, honestly, I mean, some of my
• 56:34
  Speaker 8: constituents may know this, I was not the most gung-ho
• 56:37
  Speaker 8: person on impeachment early on. You know, I was kind
• 56:41
  Speaker 8: of in the mindset that we've got a great speaker,
• 56:44
  Speaker 8: I trust her political instincts, I think she's the smartest
• 56:46
  Speaker 8: politician in Washington, D.C., And I believe to her instincts
• 56:53
  Speaker 8: that an impeachment can be quite divisive, and also that
• 56:58
  Speaker 8: House Democrats have a great agenda, policy agenda to run on,
• 57:02
  Speaker 8: and that we didn't want a distraction.
• 57:03
  Speaker 12: That said, things have changed.
• 57:06
  Speaker 8: And they've not only changed because we have a clear
• 57:09
  Speaker 8: record of what the President said, this is what the
• 57:11
  Speaker 8: White House themselves say that the President said, right? Which is,
• 57:16
  Speaker 8: you know, I'm gonna get you the weapons you want,
• 57:20
  Speaker 8: but we need you to do me a favor and
• 57:22
  Speaker 8: investigate my number one, my leading Democratic opponent. So that's
• 57:27
  Speaker 8: number one, that's just on the record, it's a smoking gun,
• 57:31
  Speaker 8: it's much more clear cut. The other thing is, and
• 57:33
  Speaker 8: I think somebody said this earlier, maybe even you said it,
• 57:36
  Speaker 8: that the difference is this is now interfering with the
• 57:40
  Speaker 8: 2020 election. And there's no way that we can stand by,
• 57:45
  Speaker 8: and I think it does, make no mistake, I think
• 57:47
  Speaker 8: it is a huge lost opportunity for us in the
• 57:49
  Speaker 8: House because I would rather members of Congress be focused
• 57:54
  Speaker 8: on policy, but we cannot let a sitting president of
• 57:57
  Speaker 8: the United States get away with actively rigging an election
• 58:01
  Speaker 8: from the Oval Office.
• 58:03
  Speaker 12: We cannot do it.
• 58:03
  Speaker 8: And so, here in Washington State, we have impeached him
• 58:11
  Speaker 8: and we have convicted him, but we need Patty Murray
• 58:13
  Speaker 8: and Maria Cantwell to get a vote on that question,
• 58:16
  Speaker 8: so I do support.
• 58:18
  Speaker 12: Can I say one more.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: Thing though, John?
• 58:19
  Speaker 6: Say whatever you want.
• 58:20
  Speaker 8: I want to say that about Biden, I do want
• 58:23
  Speaker 8: to say this about Vice President Biden, which is that
• 58:25
  Speaker 8: I know that the audience might be split on who
• 58:27
  Speaker 8: they're supporting for the Democratic nomination, but I want to
• 58:31
  Speaker 8: urge all of us who care about that process to
• 58:34
  Speaker 8: remember we cannot allow ourselves to benefit from these attacks
• 58:39
  Speaker 8: on Joe Biden. Not only because it's wrong and they're lying,
• 58:42
  Speaker 8: but they will do it to Warren, they will do
• 58:44
  Speaker 8: it to Sanders, they will do it to Mayor Pete.
• 58:46
  Speaker 12: Donald Trump will.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Do this to any of them.
• 58:50
  Speaker 8: This game that he plays, this game that he plays
• 58:53
  Speaker 8: where he says, well, Cyrus, did he really go to
• 58:57
  Speaker 8: the top of Kilimanjaro or not?
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 58:59
  Speaker 11: I hope he did.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 59:01
  Speaker 8: You know, but he'll do it to any politician whom
• 59:04
  Speaker 8: he perceives of as a threat, and he will definitely
• 59:07
  Speaker 8: do it to our nominee. So we need to set
• 59:09
  Speaker 8: a a precedent right now of rallying around Joe Biden.
• 59:13
  Speaker 8: Doesn't mean you need to support him for the nomination,
• 59:16
  Speaker 8: but I'm gonna be very disappointed in any candidate who
• 59:19
  Speaker 8: tries to take advantage of this for their own gain
• 59:22
  Speaker 8: in the nomination contest.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Here in Seattle, we're in the shadow of Amazon HQ.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: It's a company that employs tens of thousands of people.
• 59:36
  Speaker 12: Half these people work for Amazon, by the way, the
• 59:37
  Speaker 12: ones that are booing.
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: It's dark.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: They feel safe. No, Alex isn't here.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: There is.
• 59:52
  Speaker 6: Yes, there is.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, there is. So Amazon's a company that employs tens
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: of thousands of people in this state. It's also a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: company that's faced a ton of scrutiny and criticism for
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: how it treats a lot of its workers. What do
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: you think about the role of Amazon right now as
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: a kind of harbinger of the changes we've seen in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the economy?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge with Amazon and similar
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 8: tech companies is, for me, is what they're doing to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 8: the labor market. and it's an acceleration of forces that
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 8: were already there, but we don't have a good answer.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 8: We have not, as policy makers, yet developed a sufficient
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 8: answer to the twin threats of automation and globalization that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 8: the American worker has faced. And I think both of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 8: those are serious challenges. I'm not someone who's for turning
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 8: away from the rest of the world. I'm also not
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 8: for someone who's for turning off the engine of innovation
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 8: and entrepreneurship. But I do think that particularly those who
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 8: have benefited the most, which means tech companies, but also
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 8: means the larger ecosystem of finance and others, have a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 8: particular burden in helping us to solve the problem of
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 8: what we're going to do on the future for the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 8: American worker. Let me give you an example. We're very
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 8: close to the first Amazon Go store. And for those
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 8: who are maybe going to be listening to this who
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 8: don't have one in your community, this is a store
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 8: that has no checkers, right? No one at the checkout counter,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 8: very few employees, if any. You just take your things,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 8: you swipe, and you leave run by Amazon. Now, I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 8: think it is possible that, and it would be unfortunate
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 8: if we live in a world in 10 or 15
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 8: or 20 years where we don't have folks working in
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 8: our grocery stores, but I think there's also an opportunity
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 8: to make sure that, for example, the people that do
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 8: work in grocery stores in the future could be perhaps
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 8: trained to be nutritionists or to be those who help
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 8: and guide and help people. And if you think this
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 8: is a crazy idea, think about apparel stores. The people
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 8: that work at apparel stores, right, a clothing store, they're
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 8: helping you decide what to wear It wouldn't be a
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 8: crazy idea to have folks, instead of just simply checking
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 8: out your groceries, maybe in the future, some of that
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 8: is replaced with automation. You may instead be helping people
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 8: decide what's a healthy thing for your kid, what's a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 8: good diet, what's a good plant-based way to eat. All
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 8: of those are things that they may be doing. But
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 8: in order to get to that point, we're going to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 8: need more education. And that's true all across the entire society.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Economy.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 8: We need to invest more in pre-K, K-12, and yes
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 8: higher education as well to adapt to the changes and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 8: I think that tech companies have a particularly strong responsibility
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 8: and obligation to help us do that which is why
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 8: this year we down in Olympia passed a tax increase
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 8: specifically targeted at tech companies, above all. Software companies and others,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 8: and the money's all going to higher education, particularly for
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 8: financial aid. So we need to do more, we need
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 8: to pass more policies like that, and we need them
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 8: at the federal level.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: How hard did you take it when Howard Schultz dropped out?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 8: I didn't pour my heart into that campaign. That's the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 8: name of his autobiography. I think Howard, pour your heart
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: into it. I think, look, it is easy enough. I
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 8: want to say this for a second because I do
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 8: understand why people kind of mock and make fun of
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 8: Howard Schultz, and I think he does have to answer
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: for the Sonics.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 12: We will continue to hold him accountable.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 8: But that said, all of that said, though, I do
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 8: want to say this in all seriousness. Like, I think
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 8: we ought to view with grace anybody who looks at
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: Donald Trump and says, this guy's unfit to be president.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 8: I want to do something about it. I'm glad that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 8: he made the decision that he made in the end.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 8: But this is not a time for us to be
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 8: sitting around and mocking anybody, whether it's Tom Steyer, whether
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 8: it's Howard Schultz, whether it's Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 8: This is a time for us to be rallying around
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 8: and getting every person, left, center, Republican, to say this
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 8: president is corrupt, he is racist, he is un-American, he
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 8: is a cancer and a scourge, and we need to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 8: remove him from office. So that's what's important. That's what's important.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: You just.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: You just ran right the fuck over me to get
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: to that answer.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: No, but let me ask you this.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: No, it's fine.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: It's fine.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 8: I'm on the leave it side of love it or
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 8: leave it right now, I can tell.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: So, Governor Inslee's out. He ran a campaign focused on climate.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: He had a brief moment where.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 12: Let's get a round of applause for Governor Inslee, you guys.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: Come on.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Now that he's out, now that he's out, what do
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: you think of some of the other candidates?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: Who do you like?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: I'm glad you said now that he's out because I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: would have been much more comfortable with that question two
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 8: months ago because I could give you a very easy answer,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 8: which is Jay Inslee. I'll tell you, I am really,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 8: really impressed with the field that we have.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: And, no, okay, don't, I'm not being, all right.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I'm catching up, I'm catching up.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Come on, all right, all right.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 12: So here's my point.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 8: We need a nominee. Here's what I'm going to be
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: looking for. A nominee, because I've not thrown my support
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 8: behind any candidate, but I want a nominee who can
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 8: demonstrate more than just electability. I want a candidate who
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 8: can demonstrate that they can unify this country. Because I
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 8: do think that this, I think Nancy Pelosi's right, that
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 8: an impeachment process, no matter how.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 12: It ends, is going to be divisive for this country.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 12: It just is.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: And we need to do that.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 8: I mean, we need to pursue this right now because
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 8: he's left us absolutely no choice. We need to do
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 8: it in the name of justice, in the name of fairness,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 8: but it will be divisive. And so we need a
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 8: nominee who can reach out and who can say, you
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 8: know what? We don't hate you no matter who you
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 8: voted for in 2016. We don't hate you if you
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 8: voted for Jill Stein. Well, I don't know, but we
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 8: don't hate you whether you voted for Jill Stein, Donald Trump,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 8: you stayed home, Hillary Clinton, you wrote in Bernie Sanders,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 8: whatever it is, we need everyone. And this is particularly
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 8: important in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. We know what states are
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 8: gonna be battlegrounds, but we need a presidential nominee who
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 8: is gonna be able to do that. So I'm gonna
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 8: be looking at this next debate to see who uses
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 8: these current events of this impeachment process to further alienate
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 8: and divide this country and who instead kind of demonstrates
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 8: leadership in these public forums to say, you know what,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 8: here's why we're doing it, here's why Democrats in the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 8: House are doing this, and here's how, as president, I
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 8: will knit this country back together. So, you know, I love,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 8: I went to grad school with Mayor Pete, I love
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 8: Mayor Pete. I have deep respect for Joe Biden, I
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 8: think he's a deeply honorable person.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 12: I've gotten to know Elizabeth Warren, and I've gotten to
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 12: know Kamala Harris. We've got great candidates. I will tell
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 12: you one thing.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: I would like to see some of the candidates that
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 8: are a little bit lower down in the polls who
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: have done amazing things in Congress, particularly Cory Booker and
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: Amy Klobuchar, who have managed to pass bills.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 12: I hope that they can stay in the race.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 8: We'll see what happens with their campaigns, but I think
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 8: they contribute something really valuable because whoever this president, whoever
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 8: we replace Trump with, they're going to need to know
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 8: how to pass bills through the Senate. And either that's
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 8: going to be an accomplished senator or it's going to
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: be someone who better have some senators as friends.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: Last question.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: So you've overcome a lot to get where you are.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: You lost your vision at age eight. You've overcome cancer
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: several times. You're the first and only Iranian American to
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: be elected statewide in this country. How has that shaped
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: your politics and your approach to seeking public office?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 8: I would say it taught me the feeling of being excluded,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: of being on the outside. I think I've said to
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 8: I may have said it on Love It or Leave
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: It before, but when I was eight years old, that's
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 8: when I became blind.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 12: It was in 89, so all eight years I could
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 12: see took place in the 80s.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 8: All my visual memory is still from the 80s, so
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 8: you all still look like Cyndi Lauper and Boy George.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 8: When that happened, as you can imagine, there were so
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 8: many instances in which I was counted out and excluded.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 8: And the most notable that I often share is that
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 8: when I was in third grade, they didn't want to
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: let me play on the playground with the other kids.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: in part knowing that I'd just become blind, and in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 8: part knowing that my mother was a litigator.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 12: So they kept me on the sidelines while their kids
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 12: were playing.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 8: I went home and told my parents what had happened,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: and my mom told the principal of the school the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 8: next day, I'm gonna take my son to your school,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 8: and I'm gonna teach him how to get around the playground.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 8: He may slip and fall. That's a fear that any
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 8: mother has. But she said, I can fix a broken arm.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 8: I can fix a broken arm. I can never fix
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 8: a broken spirit. You know, I share that story because
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: the experience of being excluded was something that I learned
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 8: early on and it's something that every American has felt
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 8: in one way or another and that entire classes of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 8: Americans have felt in an institutional way since the birth
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 8: of this country. And so what I try to do
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 8: in my politics is always trying to figure out who
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 8: are those who are on the outside? Who's not being
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 8: given access to an education? Who's not being given equal
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 8: access to the economy? Who's not being given a voice
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 8: in our government? And so that's where my political north
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: star is, is that feeling of being a little kid,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: being on the outside of the playground while the other
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 8: kids were playing, and every other time after that. So
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 8: when I, And I just want to say this, that
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 8: I truly think that when the 2020 election, for one thing,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 8: when the 2020 election has come and gone, and acting
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 8: president Mike Pence has been defeated, I think the new
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 8: president is going to be someone, it could be any
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 8: of these nominees, any of these candidates, I think it's
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 8: going to be someone who herself or himself knows the
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 8: feeling of being counted out and being disregarded and being
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 8: viewed as disabled, insufficient, a woman, a person of color,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 8: someone who's counted out, and I think they're going to
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 8: bring that wisdom and that experience to bear to make
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 8: sure this is a country whose economy, whose educational system,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 8: and whose government leave nobody behind.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 12: So let's go get it done, you guys.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 11: Thank you.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: Thank you, John.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 12: Thank you so much.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: Thank you, buddy.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 12: Thank you, guys.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: You guys want to play a game?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah!
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Twitter, it's a fantastic social network where the world's thought
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: leaders and comedians get together with the common man, your furries,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: your incels, to collectively and in one voice proudly call
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Bret Stephens a bed bug, it says here. And our
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: presidential candidates, they're on Twitter too. Some, pretty good at it.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: Others, whatever.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: But they weren't always so adept, especially back when they
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: first started using it. So we went back to some
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: of the first Tweets ever sent by 2020 candidates and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: found some pretty revealing stuff. In a game we're calling
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Early Tweet.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: Gets the Fave.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: Would anyone out there like to play the game? Hi,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: what's your name?
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: My name's Emily.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Hi, Emily. Are you ready to play? Here's how it works.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Each panelist is going to read a real tweet from
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: a presidential candidate, and then I'm going to ask you
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: which one was sent by a specific candidate.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 8: Okay?
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: You ready?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: I hope so.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Question one. Which of the following tweets was sent by
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Julian Castro in 2009? Is it A?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: When grandson Brody smiles, so does everybody else.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: Or is it B? Los Lonely Boys, Cowboys, Dane Hall, Tonight,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: doors open at 7, tickets are $ 20.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Or is it C?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 9: I know a lot of you took pictures of your
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 9: Thanksgiving plates, so let's see them.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Reply to share. Or is it D?
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 7: Everyone feels on some level like an alien in this world,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 7: because we are. We come from another realm of consciousness
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 7: and long for home.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: What do you think, Emily?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go with Tommy.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: No.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: No, that was Marianne Williamson. In fact, it was the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Los Lonely Boys tweet.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: Fitting because I'm also from Texas.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's from Texas.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 6: Mine was Marianne Williamson?
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, sorry. Dan's was Marianne Williamson. Who could have guessed?
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Yours was de Blasio. And John's was Inslee.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: No way.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Question two, Emily.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: Which of the following tweets was sent by Tulsi Gabbard
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: in 2011?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: Is it A? Walking down the street to go buy
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: lunch and a bird just crapped on my arm. Is
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: it B?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: So happy for at Ben Affleck and Argo tonight. We're
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: cheering for you.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: Is it C?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Spoke at invasive speedies conf today.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 9: Except for understandable trauma associated with guys showing up with
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 9: two huge, dead, smelly carp, it went well.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Or is it D?
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: When a woman is pregnant, she can feel a new
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 7: life gestating within her.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: We are collectively pregnant now.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 7: The consciousness of humanity, a womb, wherein is forming a
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 7: new state of being.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 6: As with any pregnancy, there are uncomfortable moments. But the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: miracle of a new life is on the way.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: I feel like there's a pattern emerging.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: You don't think Dee is Marianne Williamson?
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 8: Okay, Dee.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: It was A, it was A. The arm crap one
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: was Tulsi. The Argo one was Elizabeth Warren. The carp
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: one was Klobuchar, and obviously Dan's was Marianne. Question three.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: Which of the following tweets was sent by Pete Buttigieg
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: in 2011 and got a single retweet? Is it A?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: If you want a simple explanation for what's happening in America,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: Watch Avatar again.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: Is it B?
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: I was lying awake in my bed worrying about something
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: when a voice in my heart said, quote, most people
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: in the world do not have beds.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Is it C? Thanks to everyone who came out to
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: walk today in the St. Patrick's Day parade!
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Exclamation point.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Check out some of the photos I've uploaded. Note, there
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: are no photos attached to the post. Or is it D?
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 7: Your body is merely your space station from whence your beam,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: your love to the universe.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: Don't just relate to the station, relate to the beams.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: Is that why you have like four cards and I
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: have one? C.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: You got it.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: You got it. Didn't attach any photos to the post though.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: Do we know who the other ones were? Yes. That's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: part of the fun, love it.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: And they were all Williamson.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, that makes sense.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: You know what?
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe she was right about Avatar. There are five more
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: of those movies coming. Next question. Which of the following
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: tweets was sent by Cory Booker?
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Is it A, At Ashton Kutcher, saw you on HuffPost,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: loved what you, letter U, said about change in way
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: media is distributed, N, letter N, consumed. Thanks for introducing
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: me to a new world for change.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 6: Ah, the 140 character days.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: Is it B?
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: Getting up at 4 a.m., you realize a very important truth?
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: Coffee is a food group, all caps.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Is it C? I used to be a teetotaler.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 9: Being mayor has driven me to drink dot, dot, dot, coffee.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 9: Now I'm like those coffee-drinking aliens from Men in Black.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Or is it D?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Sleep.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: And I broke up a few nights ago.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: I'm dating.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: Coffee now. She's hot.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: I think it's D.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Emily, which one do you think is Cory Booker?
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: All of the above?
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: Emily, though you lacked confidence in that last answer, you
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: were right. You've won the game. Thank you for playing
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: Early Tweet Gets the Fave.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: So, guys, this is our last show of 2019. This
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: is our last live show. And we've had a fantastic
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: crew that has made these shows possible. Our tour manager,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: Belinda Mercer, give it up for her.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: She's back there.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Our audio whiz, Frank Tatick, is back there somewhere. We
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: got Travis Tug-Halwig, who's been on all the tours. Elisa Gutierrez,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: Narmel Konian, Elijah Cohn, the entire Cricket staff. And we'll
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: see you in 2020.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: Thank you, Seattle.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Thanks for coming out.