Latest / Pod Save America / Rachel Maddow Talks Trump, Biden, and the Speaker-less House

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Rachel Maddow Talks Trump, Biden, and the Speaker-less House · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And joining us in studio is a special guest host,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the host of The Rachel Maddow Show and best-selling author
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: whose new book is called Prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Rachel Maddow. Welcome back.
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: Hi, you guys. It's nice to see you.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Great to see you.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: Last time I was here, I was on crutches, Jon remembered.
• 0:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: That was my last book tour. I did the whole
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: thing on crutches.
• 0:44
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: It was October of 2019.
• 0:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: Before it all began.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Before everything got interesting. All right, we're going to talk
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: about your book a bit later. We're also going to
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: talk about President Biden's growing number of political challenges and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's growing number of legal challenges. But first, we
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: are now on week three of House Republicans' failure to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: agree on which of them should be speaker. A clown
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: show that has paralyzed the government just a few weeks
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: before it runs out of money and just a few
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: days after President Biden asked Congress to pass $ 100 billion
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: in additional funding. to defend Ukraine against Putin, Israel against Hamas,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Taiwan against China, and beef up security along our southern border.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So since Jim Jordan went down in flames last week,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: eight House Republicans have declared their candidacy for Speaker. Actually,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: nine did, but we lost one tonight.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: What do you mean? We lost one tragically? No, we
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: just turned up. I thought he'd been in my pocket.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Some guy, his name is from Pennsylvania. Dan Muser. There
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: you go, Tommy.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Muser?
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Mazer? He went down. Anyway, none of these people are
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: well known to anyone outside their districts who isn't a
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: political junkie, including the leading contender, Majority Whip Tom Emmer
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: of Minnesota, whose face I couldn't pick out of a
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: lineup if my life depended on it. All I know
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: is that there was rumored to be some bad blood
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: between Donald Trump and Emmer after he voted to certify
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the 2020 election. Though here's what Trump said when he
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: was asked about Emmer on Monday. Do you endorse Tom
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Emmer for Speaker? He hasn't historically been your biggest fan,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: but he is the most likely candidate right now. Well,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I think he's my biggest fan now because he called
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: me yesterday and he told me I'm your biggest fan,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: so I don't know about that.
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: I said there's only one person that can do it
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: all the way.
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: You know who that is?
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: Jesus Christ. If Jesus came down and said, I want
• 2:28
  Speaker 6: to be Speaker, he would do it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: The funny thing about that is Tom Emmer tweeted that
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: clip of uh trump's non-endorsement of tom emmer and said
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: thank you mr president.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: Thank you for putting my name in your mouth even
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: that way.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: In a way that was not too mean so do
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: you think there's any reason to believe that the internal
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: dynamics that have republicans without a speaker will change with
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: any of these candidates and can you name more than
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: two of the candidates.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Oh More than two of the eight.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Of the eight.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Well, Tom Emmer, thank you.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: There you go. Okay, you got one.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: Pete Sessions.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, there you go.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: Pete Sessions is actually a recognizable figure from previous eras
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: of Republican scandal.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: Yes, because there was a time where you had to
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: learn that it was a different Sessions than Jefferson Beauregard.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Yes. So, Jeff Sessions.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: You passed.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: You got it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: You got two.
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: I did? It was more than two.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: It was more than two.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: It was the one that you and I both half named.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I was going to say.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: The Pennsylvania Mazer. Muser or something like that. Is it
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Musar or Mazer?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: M-E-U-S-E-R.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: He was Home Care Magazine's Home Caring Award recipient in 2006.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I can give you guys one more. And that's all
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I know is Byron Donalds.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Yes.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Other than that, I don't have any of the rest.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: He occasionally appears on The Fox.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yes. That's how I know him because he's
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: on the TV.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Anyway, John had another question.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry. My serious question. Any reason to believe
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: that these internal dynamics change this week?
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, there's nothing in, there's nothing, unless there's
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: some great reveal about an incredible set of leadership qualities
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: among one of these candidates who we can't name, who
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: we couldn't pick out of a lineup, who we probably
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: couldn't name even if we had their names in front
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: of us. Like, you know, I'm not sure we would
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: get their names pronounced correctly. I don't think it's a
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: personality or a personnel problem that the Republicans have. I
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: think the problem that they have is that there's no
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: good job in government in a party that doesn't want government.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: So there's being like the highest ranking job you can
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: get is still the worst job ever because anybody with
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: a job in government is obviously suspect. And so I
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: think being anti-institutionalist when it comes to the federal government
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: just means there's not, I mean, they'll have to, I
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: guess they'll finally have to figure something out about how
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: to get somebody in there. But I also feel like,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know how much any of them fear any
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: of the things that we think rationally would put pressure
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: on them. Oh, the government will shut down. Well, that's
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: the reason they fired McCarthy is because he stopped that
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: from happening. We won't be able to fund our allies. Oh,
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: that's going to keep them up at night.
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I feel like they've been hoisted by their own anti-majoritarian baton.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there it is.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Because it's like now that a couple people can stop
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: someone from being speaker, then every incentive is for the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: most extreme members of the caucus to continue doing that
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: because- As you pointed out, most of them don't care
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: about all those things you mentioned. Certainly, Matt Gaetz and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the eight people or seven or eight people who successfully
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: ousted McCarthy don't give a shit about any of that.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: I think, I mean, for me, I see this as
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: sort of, it's the Venn diagram of hilarious and scary,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: which has been a lot of our lives in politics
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: for these past seven or eight years. But it is
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: funny that they can't just among themselves come up with
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: somebody to be the next person they fire. You know,
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: even if it's just for a month, like it is,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: it's ridiculous. And at the same time, I just keep
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: thinking about all of the legislatures around the world that
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: used to be a real thing that became rubber stamps
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: or that got watered down or became Potemkin legislatures when
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: those governments changed from democratic forms of government into strongman
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: forms of government. I mean, one of the things that
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: happens is that every other form of governmental authority has
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: to wither or be refashioned so that it is in
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: service of the strongman in order for the strongman to
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: lead an authoritarian government. And obviously, you know, I don't
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: know if you polled Republicans in public office as to
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: whether or not they want that, but by hook or
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: by crook, that's the project they're part of right now.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: And I don't know that they want to fix it. Yeah.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't seem like that. And I mean, the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: only thing I can think about is the government's going
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to shut down in a And there's at least, you know,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: 12 members, Republican House members who are sitting in districts
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that Joe Biden won. And if this chaos is paired
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: with a government shutdown and they start hearing from people
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: at home that there's a government shutdown because these clowns
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: couldn't get their act together and elect a speaker. And so, therefore,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it's actually hurting people that maybe those Republicans in the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Biden districts either say we're going to reach out to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Democrats or to try to get something done, or they're
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: going to cave and say, all right, we'll let one
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of the crazy right-wingers become speaker.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: They seem equally likely and equally unlikely. The Democrats have
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: done a good job, and Hakeem Jeffries has done a
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: good job at making sure that Democratic fingerprints are off
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: this mess. The Republicans, I think, were counting on a
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: government shutdown, and maybe they're counting on this legislative shutdown
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: now as somehow being blamed by the average man on
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: the street on the Democrats because Joe Biden is president.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: And so therefore, anytime something goes wrong in government and
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: there is a president of the Democratic Party, you can
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: blame that president, you can blame his party, even if
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: you yourself caused the problem. In this case, I think
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: Hakeem Jeffries, even for people who aren't paying very close attention,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: has created an environment in which it is obvious that
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: this is the Republicans' own problem and not Democrats'. So
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: that maybe creates more of a path for them to
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: come up with some power-sharing agreement.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Tommy, Joe Biden hasn't said too much about this mess. Understandably,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: he's got a few other things on his plate. Do
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you think it's worth him getting involved in a bigger
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: way if this keeps going? Or is this a not
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: my circus, not my monkey sort of thing?
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think political polarization is such that
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: anything he does or says will probably have the opposite
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: impact within the Republican Party. It will not be perceived
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: as helpful or will be twisted to be unhelpful in
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: some way. So, I mean, Trump keeps jumping in and
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: endorsing people. That hasn't seemed to help. He's their dear leader.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: And again, I like what you're saying earlier, sort of
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: the Viktor Orbanization of government, right, where you just sort
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: of the state withers around it, whether it's the judiciary
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: attacks on the freedom of the press. Ironically, though, the
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: legislature did this version of it to themselves. Matt Gaetz
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: came forward with a motion to vacate and made it
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: so any one member can take down the speaker. And
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: now the entire institution seems to be withering on the
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: vine and unable to fix itself.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: But I don't know.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden getting in would seem to me, I don't
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: know that he's got a lot of swat here.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: I worry, though, that it is the MAGA wing of
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: the Republic. I mean, is there another wing? It's the
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: MAGA-ist members of the party who did this to the Congress.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: And that seems to me very worrying. I mean, it was,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: you know, when it was the Duma withering in Moscow, right,
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: it was United Russia that was helping that to its end.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: And I just think that the party that is part
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: of a strongman authoritarian takeover project will see individual members
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: of that party do themselves out of jobs to serve
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: the larger purpose of installing their leader and so that's
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: just i mean again that's like the doomsday look at
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: it but i don't know how.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: This ends well yeah i don't think biden would help
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: anything by getting involved right now i do think if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: we get close because i also think that for most
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: of the country this is like inside baseball and they
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: don't know what's going on right now i think.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: Most of them hate Washington and they see dysfunction in
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Washington and they don't like it and they don't really
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: know who to point their finger at, unfortunately.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So I think as we head towards a government shutdown,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: then I think that Biden could go out there and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: say just what I was saying earlier, which is like
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: these clowns can't get their act together. And because of
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: their own heady grievances, their own ambition. People are going
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to be put out of work. People aren't going to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: get government benefits that they, there's going to be women
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and children who don't have food assistance. There's going to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: be air travel delays. And it's all because these assholes
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure out how to elect a speaker. And I
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: think that's probably a useful message as we get towards November.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: So how does he make sure that that lesson is
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: sort of heard in those terms rather than what you're saying, Tommy,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: in terms of people hate Washington, they blame Washington for
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: They don't differentiate between who it is. I mean, I
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: was sort of arguing that the Democrats have done a
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: pretty good job keeping Democratic fingerprints off this problem and
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: making it a pure Republican problem. But it sounds like
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: you think that people are going to blame everybody, even
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: if only one side is involved.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: I just think there's a Pew survey that went around recently,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: which showed like the average voter just hates Washington. It
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: has no, the approval of the institution of Congress is
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: like 6%. It was really terrible.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: But also, I mean, we've seen, we've been through a
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: round of this. And even if, poll after poll shows
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: that we've made this argument well, and most people don't
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: blame Joe Biden, and most people hold Republicans accountable. It
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: still goes on the ledger of America, kind of a mess, uncertain,
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: the kind of sour mood that contributes to Joe Biden's
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: low approval ratings, concerns about the economy, a world that
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: is in crisis, that whether or not any individual issue,
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden may have support or may have less weakness
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: on the whole, people having a sense that the country
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: is moving in a wrong direction, becomes blame for him.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I think you could keep Democratic hands off the problem
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: by having Joe Biden go out there and say, look,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: this is, we had a deal. I had a deal
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: with Kevin McCarthy, a bipartisan spending deal that we both
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: agreed to. We both compromised a little bit. He went
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: back on his word. Then they fired him. Then there
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: was complete chaos. We are very willing to work with
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Republicans on a bipartisan deal on a bipartisan spending deal.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I got Mitch McConnell over here in the Senate. He's
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: willing to do it. Some Republican senators seem to do it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But this MAGA extreme wing of the House can't even
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: agree among themselves on a speaker. And everyone's hurting because
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: of it, because the government's going to shut down. And
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I think that keeps him as the bipartisan dealmaker, but
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: still lays the blame on Republicans. And probably he'll get
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the chance to have a bigger audience for this as
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: we get closer to the shutdown.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's another Venn diagram, which is the Venn
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: diagram that Republicans have to smash together to get to
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: the 217 votes that they need, right? That has to
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: be an overlap of the people who want to govern
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: or just want this problem off their plate and the
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: people who love this fight and love this mass, right?
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: Gotta smash those people together and to get to 217.
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: They couldn't do that with Jim Jordan, even under incredible
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: amounts of pressure. There were still, you know, two dozen
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: roughly people that were willing, even in the face of
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: all that pressure, to say no. I think that that's
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: like a heartening sign, but it is really worrying that, yeah,
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: we don't know which way this is gonna go, But
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: if you were looking back on the last six or
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: seven years and said, hey, what are you going to
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: bet on? Are you going to bet on squishy Republicans
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: are going to be brave or going to be cowards?
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: Being cowards means going along with whoever the last person
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: is in front of their podium before the government closes
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: or does something kind of slightly daring. And they decide
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: to go be legends and and come over and figure
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: out some kind of a deal. Like it's a scary
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: thing to bet on, to bet on bravery with these people.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think in general, I think in politics,
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: trick plays do not work. Anything that, like a discharge
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: petition never works. And the January 6th shenanigans, like even
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: if you subtract all the violence from that, like, I know,
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: we'll pretend they're secret other electors and then Vice President
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Pence will be shocked and won't know what to do
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: and then it'll end up in the House of Representatives.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Like all of these stupid trick plays that some... anybody
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: as a 1L in law school could invent as a
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: way through the Constitution. It just never works. The straight
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: up stuff is always the way it ends up getting
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: hammered out.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: Yes, we didn't mint the coin.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Someday we will. Impeachment Eagle.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: There are exceptions. The Impeachment Eagle.
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: There isn't like Obamacare, Ted Kennedy dies, we lose the
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: supermajority in the Senate. And they did come up with
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: a trick play, which is like, wait, if we pass
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: the House bill, even though it's got lots of typos,
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: which we'll be dealing with for a decade, We can
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: do reconciliation and we can find a way through it
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: once in.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: A long while.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: Yes. Once in a long, long while. Well, with legislation,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: it can every once in a while it can happen.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Speaking of President Biden, his political challenges keep piling up.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: His polling isn't great, but even if you don't believe
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: all the polls, he is an incumbent president who's asking
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: an extremely grumpy electorate to stick with him. And now
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: his plan to spend another hundred billion dollars supporting foreign wars,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: one of which is currently dividing the Democratic Party. The
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Washington Post also reported that over the weekend, Biden, quote,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: continues to express frustration in private conversations about the state
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: of his polling in battleground states. And on Friday, Democratic
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota is expected to announce a
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: primary challenge to the president in New Hampshire.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: I thought Dean Phillips gave it up.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, it's happening.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Apparently all the reporting said he hasn't made the final,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: final decision, but everything's prepared. They're going to New Hampshire.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: They're printing the signs. They're printing the signs.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: They don't want to let it leak out in advance
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: because they don't want to take away from the excitement.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Again, Dean Phillips, if you showed me a picture of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Tom Emmer and Dean Phillips, I would not be able
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: to tell you who's who. But they're both from Minnesota.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe they'll kiss.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Wow. Let's start with Israel. Tommy, there have been quite
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a few stories about Arab-American and Muslim-American leaders saying they
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: will not vote for Joe Biden in 2024 because of
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: his support for Israel. How big of a problem do
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: you think that is for the president? And is there
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: anything he can do to fix it short of calling
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: for a ceasefire or withholding aid to Israel, which he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: does not seem inclined to do at this point.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I do think there's some real political risk here.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: I think that battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, we
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: won by some thin margins. I mean, Michigan was like 150,000 votes,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: but Pennsylvania was pretty close. If a bunch of Muslims
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: or Arab American voters decide to stay home when in
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: the past cycle, they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, I
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: think that could really matter. I also think A lot
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: of people are talking about this like this is the
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: first time that these communities have voiced frustration with Biden's
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Gaza policy.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: That is not true.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: There were protests in 2021 during a previous bombing campaign
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: to Gaza. And so I think the first thing Biden
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: should do is more outreach, I think, to some of
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: these communities. Like he's incredibly empathetic. He did this meeting
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: with the families of victims who were killed or taking
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: hostage in Israel. Something similar would be good for folks
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: with family in Gaza. I also think there's a real
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: risk of losing young voters for along similar lines, like
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: people who are just less supportive of the war effort
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: in polls or less supportive of arming Israel. You know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the supplemental generally, like 106 billion to foreign countries is
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: not going to be very popular, I don't think. You know,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: we've all watched the polling on Ukraine support tick down
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: over time. So I think there's a lot of risk
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: here politically from much different angles.
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: Was there any parallel situation like this in the Obama
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: administration in terms of Obama worrying about the same types
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: of support in the same parts of the country?
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think. I mean, there was less, you know,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: maybe in 2014, there was a pretty intense war in Gaza,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: but I don't remember it being, having the same political overtones,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: probably because it was after the reelect.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, the reelect was all, there wasn't a lot. Well,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I guess there was Benghazi was right around the reelect.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: But mostly it was a campaign waged about the size
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and role of government and the economy, right? And so
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you didn't have, except for those crucial last couple months
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: after Benghazi, right before the election, you didn't really have
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: an election that was fought on foreign policy issues.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: I was thinking about President Obama's statement that he put
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: out on Israel and Gaza today and the measured tone,
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: the length of it, the measured tone, the sequencing of
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: it and everything, obviously it all very, very carefully calibrated information.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: to convey exactly what he wanted to convey. And I
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: was just wondering if there was anything to read there
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: that is either an attempt to nudge President Biden one
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: direction or the other, or even just to nudge his
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: messaging around this issue in a way that's more seen
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: as more responsive to more communities.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I think he wanted to weigh in.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: I think he wrote this himself from everything we understand.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I think he like cares deeply about this, sort of
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: wants to guide the conversation a little bit. He probably
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: watches the discourse online being particularly toxic and it bothers
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: him and he's trying to bring people together. I would
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: imagine if anything, he's trying to not piss off or
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: nudge Biden publicly with this messaging, anything like that he
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: would do privately. I think they probably ran it by
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: the White House first before putting it out would be
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: my guess.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I read it and I thought it was very thoughtful.
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: And what I took it to be was someone who
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: views himself as like a person who understands how to
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: narrate some of the most difficult issues that we face
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: as a country and trying to just lay out an
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: articulation of what a democratic position that is both supportive
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: of Israel and concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: would sound like as a reflection of what the Biden
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: administration policy is, right? Like kind of an articulation of
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: what a democratic vision for a pro-Israel but humanitarian American
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: foreign policy.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Would look like.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's also sort of two strains of his thinking
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: that I noticed in that statement. One, which is like,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: he's never been a big fan of Bibi or his policies, right?
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And also there was shades of his 2002 speech, uh,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: against the Iraq war and saying, you know, obviously in
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: that speech, he talked about going after terrorists and going
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: after Al Qaeda, but, and he's not opposed to all wars,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: but he's opposed to dumb wars. And you really got
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to think about before you go into, you send troops
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: into battle and the consequences. And so I saw that
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: a little bit in that statement as well.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: The other thing that I was just thinking, reading that
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: today is, um, going back to the decision-making in the
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Obama administration about Syria. And that was one of these
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: things where I just felt like the punditry in the
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: moment was so wrong. Like the year of punditry we
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: had around decision-making on Syria was just inane. It was
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: just bad, bad takes left, right, and center. And I
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: felt like he was actually, in some important ways, trying
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: to do a very principled, very nonpartisan, very 30,000 feet thing,
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: which was Congress should be involved in decisions about the U.S.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: military use of force. And everybody likes to throw proverbial
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: bombs around here. But if we're going to throw real bombs,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: we should commit ourselves as a country to what we're
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: going to do here. And Congress needs to be involved.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: This is not something that the president should be doing
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: on his own. And everybody attacked him for all his
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Syria decisions. But I just felt like there was this
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: moment where he was trying to say there's a way
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: to deal with this structurally and in principled terms. that
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: ought to guide us both for this conflict and in
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: the long run. And he didn't go back to that idea,
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: but I feel like that's the kind of nudge that
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: he can give, which is look at it from, it's
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: not just about being really good about talking about people
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: and talking about human suffering, which he is very good
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: at talking about that and talking about recognizing people's full humanity.
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: It's also, I feel like he has the capability and
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: I feel like as president, he had the capability to say,
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: there's a bigger responsibility that we have here, which is
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: to who we are as a country and how our
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: system of government works and how we speak on issues
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: like this. So we're still sort of waiting for some
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: breakthrough like that on Israel and Gaza that makes people
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: feel like we can have a substantive fight that's about
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: who we are and how that can be reflected in
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: our national response.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: And I think, you know, interestingly, well, when you look
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: at Afghanistan and the Iraq wars, obviously the original sin
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: of the Iraq war was invading in the first place, right?
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Never should have happened.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: But in terms of how both ended, Both required some
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: sort of political resolution to end them correctly or with finality.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: And in Afghanistan, obviously, that didn't work out. Similar challenges
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: in Iraq led to an unstable government and a security
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: situation that quickly deteriorated when our U.S.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Troops left.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: So I think that's part of what he's thinking here.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: It's like you can roll troops into Gaza, but unless
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: there's a two-state solution or at least some sort of
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: viable path to one, we're not going to get to
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: a peaceful end state for anybody.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Wars are easy to start and hard to end. And
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: usually they don't end with military might alone.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: And for the U.S. to have generals, you know, per
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: today's news, advising the IDF on what not to do
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: and how not to do it right now, it's just,
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: it's a really, this is a really precarious time. Yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: In terms of what, I mean, this time next week,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: who knows where we're going to be in this war.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: What did you guys think of the Post story, which
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: was mainly about the Biden campaign potentially expanding its $ 25
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: million advertising campaign? Anyone have any thoughts on?
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: So I could argue it both ways. Anyone want to
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: pick a side? Good idea, bad idea?
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: What's the bad idea argument?
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Bad idea would be like spending $ 25 million a year
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: before anyone votes is burning cash. No one's paying attention.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Similar efforts that were run by this super PAC in
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: the story, Future Forward, haven't paid any dividends. ultimately the
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: winning message is probably going to be some sort of
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: contrast with Trump. So don't spend your hard dollars, your,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: you know, the most challenging to raise money that gets
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: you the best rates on advertisements down the stretch today. Now,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not necessarily believe that, but like that would be
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: the argument against.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't, I guess, you.
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: Know, they started running that sort of economics ad and
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: we talked about at the time wondering, so what is
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: the value of doing that right now? That's not the
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: kind of like, is there something that they're seeing in
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: focus groups or in polling that basically says long before
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: we get to the fall when there's a real contrast,
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of work we have to do to
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: kind of strengthen the general sense of what Joe Biden
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: has done in the economy. And I just, I don't
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: know anymore what the value, like I just, I truly
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: don't understand how to think about the value of television
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: advertising now when media is so fractured, when a lot
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: of the people that are most important to reach, like
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: young people, aren't necessarily going to see them. Like, how
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: do we think about that And I just think it's
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: a campaign facing not just a political problem, but a
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: cultural problem of we really don't know how to reach
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: people who don't pay attention to the news. We know
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: how to talk about the news in this sort of
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: noisy maelstrom of conversation. And we know how to reach
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: those people and engage those people. We know how to
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: engage the people listening to get them to go knock
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: on doors. And I think that's really important. But there
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: are millions and millions of people who are not paying
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: attention at all who get the news in a really
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: attenuated way and reaching those people, changing their minds is
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: getting harder and harder.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I think part of what they're doing is testing not
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: just different ads and different messages, but different ways of
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: breaking through to precisely the people that you're talking about
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: right now. So I think the benefit to it, the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: other side, well, I guess you had the benefit to it.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Oh no, you had why it was a bad idea.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: I had a bad idea, but I don't really believe that.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that it sounds like they're just,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: it's a relatively small ad buy early on to sharpen
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: your message for your much bigger ad buy down the road.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're collecting all kinds of data that I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: don't think was even available to us in 2012 or
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: even in 2016 to the Clinton campaign about like exactly
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: how different demographic groups, different audiences are responding to different
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: kinds of ads. So I think it's like more of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: a testing phase. I think the bigger debate here that
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you see in that story is how do you convince
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: people or should the purpose of the ads be to
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: convince people that actually Joe Biden has accomplished a lot,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that the economy is better than they think, or is
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that just telling people what they don't actually feel? And
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: on that note, I still think that It is really
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: hard to convince people if they are grumpy about the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: economy that actually the statistics say differently and we're doing great.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And if I just repeat it enough, then you'll believe it.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And I think you've got to set up the contrast.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I think the more effective way to do it is,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and I'd be interested in seeing how the audiences react
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to this, but setting up a contrast with Trump where
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: you're saying, all right, if you elect me again, here's
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: what I will do to help people who are struggling
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: with costs. And here's how I'll do it. And by
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the way, here's what Trump said he'll do if he
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: gets elected. And not just on the economy, but on
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: every other issue.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, it sort of feels like the answer is yes.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Like they need to deal with sharpening their message. It
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: is going to come down to contrast with the Republican nominee.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: And they need to change the prevailing perception of Joe Biden.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: And I don't think that the prevailing perception of Joe
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Biden is impenetrable by advertising. Just because, I mean... What
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: spaces are people going to to get their information now?
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: It's very fractured. TV is one of those spaces. Social
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: media is itself actively fracturing as we speak. The other
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: forms of information that people get are sort of evolving constantly.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I don't know that in that environment that there's any
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: better choice than advertising. There's nothing else that emerges in
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: its place, and you can't create a different news environment.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: But because the news environment on the right has been
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: so negative on the economy, particularly, you do need positive
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: messaging about being constructive on the economy just to stand
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: up against that. And why not do it through ads?
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I believe two opposite things. One
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: is that... It's a sign of intelligence.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, sure.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you for saying that. But I believe it is
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: always a mistake if you're.
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: Trying to convince people that their lived experience is in
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: some way wrong and we should just take at face
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: value all of this polling that says people don't believe
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: in the economy right now.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: They have a lot of frustrations. They're very worried. They're
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: very anxious.
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: And that if what you're trying to do is tell
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: them they're wrong, you're making a big mistake. And then
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: I also think, on the other hand, we also see that, yes,
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: there is partisan bias in polling on the economy. When
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: Trump is president, Republicans think it's doing better. When a
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: Democrat is president, Democrats think it's doing better. That polarization
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: is not equal. Republicans are better team players when they're
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: answering questions about the polling. And I do think there is,
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: you know, we talked about this all the time, the
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: kind of hand-wringing and self-flagellation we did as speechwriters during
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: the Obama years to always make sure we said things
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: are getting better, but they're not good enough. You always
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: have to do the first part to make sure you
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: weren't getting ahead of where people were on the economy.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: But if you do that for long enough, you don't
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: get to the part where you tell people in a
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: way they believe that things are actually getting better. And
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: then you see someone like Trump, when he is in charge,
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: things are fucking gangbusters. When things are not, they're in
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: the toilet.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: It's pretty simple.
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: And I don't know how to put those two things
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: together because there's a part of me that thinks, well,
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: if we don't think we're winning, people watching aren't going
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: to think we're winning either. And we have to be
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: our own booster sometimes. And I just don't know how
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: you square that circle.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: I think that in part, talking about jobs, just making
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: it like, what do people mean when they mean the economy?
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: They mean lots of different things. And you can personalize
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: it or you can think in sort of fake macro terms.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: You can talk about it in terms of what your
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: cousin's personal circumstances are or whatever. But being able to
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: talk about the one metric of jobs seems to me
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: to be something where they can create a narrative that
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: ought to stick because it's so overwhelming in terms of
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: the jobs numbers. And the contrast is there and the
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: raw value absolute numbers are there. Yeah.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I also think you've got to show that you are
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: fighting to improve people's lives and that you have a
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: plan to do that. And we did that in 2011.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Obama gave that job speech before Congress. And obviously, unemployment
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: was the big problem there. Now it's inflation. Unemployment's not
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: an issue. And he had this refrain, which was like,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: here's my jobs bill. Republicans, you've been for this policy.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Democrats for this policy. Send this to my desk. I'll
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: sign it right away. And it was like a lot
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: of we intentionally made it a lot of action. And
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: then he could take that out on the road and say,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: these Republicans are blocking progress. They won't have a vote
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: on these bills that are very popular and bipartisan. These
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: are the kind of things that will create jobs. We've
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: created so many so far. We're climbing back from the recession.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: But this is what we need to do. And this
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: is why you need to send me back to the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: White House. And I do think that I'm sure he'll
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: probably do that in the State of the Union, I
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: would imagine, and then have the State of the Union
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: be sort of a blueprint for the campaign this year.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: But I think that's the piece that's missing in the
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: message right now.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: What you were describing about him saying, you know, it's
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: not that we can't get things done. Look at all
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: these bipartisan things I've gotten done. It's just this MAGA
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: wing of the Republican Party that they're the ones who
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: have now shut down the legislature and then all these other.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: I just feel like that's it is I just feel
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: like it's almost inarguably the correct message. And it is.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: inarguably his constant message. Like it really is all he does.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: And he gets no credit for it at all. And
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: I think the prescription is just to keep doing it.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: I don't think it works on people who are discussing politics,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: but I do think it works on people who don't
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: listen very often. And every once in a while, they're
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: going to hear some line from some speech. And if
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: that's it, it's the best possible thing for them to hear.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And it's just hard because the more he has, like,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: all of these challenges that he hadn't expected, like all
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: these foreign policy challenges and everything else, he doesn't get
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: to do that message or deliver that message as much. Like,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: when you have to be president and you have to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: go out to the podium and to the Rose Garden
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and talk, like, you can't be as political. So I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: think some of this is Joe Biden gets back on
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the campaign trail. The ad campaign cranks up. more people
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: are paying attention to Biden versus Trump, then he has
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to deliver that message like he has been
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: for the last four years. But right now, I think
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: not enough people are hearing it and he doesn't get
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to say it as often.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: I'm wondering also, and this is petty, so you will
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: forgive me in advance, but I have always felt like
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: there is a little bit of a boy version of
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: a beauty contest that happens in presidential general elections, which
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: is the person who seems physically stronger tends to win.
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: which is gross, but it's often the case. And so
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: I felt like that's why the, you know, define Joe
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: Biden as old and doddering and all these things has
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: been such a focus on the rights that they know,
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: like with lizard brain, that that's really the most important
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: thing they can do. But we have been in this
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: circumstance for the last, I mean, you could say for
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: the last eight years, but, or the last seven years,
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: but really for the last few months in which Trump
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: Physically seems like he's falling apart and in which he
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: makes a lot of false statements, not just false statements,
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: but like he gets things wrong and he slurs his
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: words and he doesn't seem well and he seems unhealthy.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Obama was president three times last week, I think.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: And Jeb Bush was president and Viktor Orban is the
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: head of Turkey. And I mean, and all this stuff
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: and just not being able to pronounce things and everything.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: None of that is very important unless we're going to
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: define the contest between these two men as an arm
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: wrestling contest, as some sort of test of stamina or
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: physical strength, which I feel like the right has really
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: been staking out as their preferred ground. And so I
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: don't know what happens there with Trump himself starting to— I.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Think the left's doing a good job clipping those and
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: sharing them.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Started better than we used to.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And I, but I think the message behind when we
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: share those has to be, this is, if it's, this
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: is a clown and an unserious person versus Joe Biden,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: who is a serious person who's trying very hard. I
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: think we win that fight. If it's, You say Joe
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Biden's old, but Donald Trump's also old. Or you say
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's flubbing words, but Donald Trump's also flubbing words
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: because then it is that contest of like who can
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: seem less old. Yes. Anyway, let's talk about Donald Trump.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: He's not exactly in the best political position either. He's
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: dominating the Republican primary, but the rest of his polling
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: is quite bad. He keeps getting bad legal news about
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the 91 criminal charges he's facing. Last week, two of
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: his former lawyers and co-defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheesebro,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: great name, decided to plead guilty as part of the
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: corrupt scheme to overturn the election in Georgia. Powell pleaded
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: guilty to six misdemeanor counts, Cheesbrough to a felony count
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: of conspiracy to commit filing false documents, i.e. the fake electors.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Both have agreed to testify in their co-defendants' trials, including Trump,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: who was asked about all of this on Monday.
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: Mr.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: President, you said Sidney Powell wasn't your victim.
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: Are you concerned that you.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Won't be covered by a pretty client early?
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: No, not at all. We did nothing wrong.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: This is all by yourself.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: All of these.
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: Indictments, as you say. I was never indicted. Practically never
• 35:01
  Speaker 6: heard the word. It wasn't a word that registered.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: There was no such thing as indictments before this.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: And by the way, I wasn't indicted. Prove I was.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: It's fake news. Hoaxy hoaxy.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: That's all Biden was indicted. I'm not indicted. He was indicted.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: No puppet, no puppet.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where we're at right now. All right. So
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: I've seen some people say that Powell and cheese bros, please,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: are very bad for Trump. I've heard others say we
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: don't yet know if their testimony will be all that damning.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: What do you think, Rachel? What was their involvement in, like,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: could what they know be potentially damning for Trump?
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: You know, it remains to be seen in terms of
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: what kind of witnesses they're going to be. Because it's
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: not only what you know and what prosecutors know you
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: know and they can compel you to testify to because
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: you've done it. You've agreed to testify in exchange for
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: lenience for yourself. It's not just that. It's also kind
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: of how the trial's going. In terms of how a
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: witness lands. I actually think that the most important thing
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: about Powell and Cheeseboro pleading is that it means there's
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: not going to be a trial in Fulton County in October.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: And the reason that's important is because Fannie Willis kept saying,
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: I want to put them all in the same courtroom
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: all at once. It's a conspiracy. It's a RICO conspiracy.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: I'm happy to try them all at once. Now, I
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: just wrote a book about the 1944 Great Sedition Trial
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: where they put 29 defendants in the same courtroom and
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: And it was so stressful. Not only did it end
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: in a mistrial, it ended in a mistrial because the
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: judge died. So I don't want 19 defendants in the
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: same room. But the fact that Fannie Willis wanted it
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: and has argued for it tells you something about her case.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: And she did not want Sheisborough and Powell to go
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: first because that would mean previewing her case for the
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: rest of the defendants. And them both pleading out means nothing.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: that there's not going to be some dry run where
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: the defense counsels for all these defendants get to see
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: what it is she's got. And that's better for her prosecution.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Strategy.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: I think there isn't a preliminary case.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: I also think that I saw someone say that for
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: her to offer a deal to both of them that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't involve any jail time, you would think that they
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: have some kind of valuable testimony, maybe not about Trump,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: but at least about, I mean, Cheeseborough was dealing not
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: directly with Trump, but with Rudy and a couple others.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: So it seems like they must have something valuable if
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: she didn't give them any.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: But again, how does what does the jury think of
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: them as witnesses? What does the jury think of that
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: part of the seriousness of that part of the allegation?
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: I just feel like it just I don't think there's
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: anything that we can say. I don't think there's any
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: witness in any of these cases where we can say, oh,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: that person's going to testify. That means X is going
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: to happen.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: In the case.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I just feel like when I've looked at big
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: landmark cases of different kinds, it's never that simple. Surely
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: having your co-defendants plead guilty in exchange for a promise
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: to testify against you is not good news.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I just don't.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: Know that we know how bad it is.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It's either bad or neutral, probably. There was also a
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: New York Times story and a 60 Minutes Australia piece
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: about the Australian billionaire Mar-a-Lago member who Trump allegedly spilled
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: secrets to about America's nuclear submarines. Apparently, they got their
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: hands on some new recordings of Anthony Pratt talking about
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: his conversations with Trump. Let's listen.
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and Trump said, you know, that Ukraine phone call,
• 38:23
  Speaker 6: that was nothing compared to what I usually do. He
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: knows exactly what to say and what not to say
• 38:29
  Speaker 6: so that he avoids jail, but gets so close to
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: it that it looks to everyone like he's breaking the law.
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: All of these guys are like the mafia.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Trump, Rupert, Rudy... You want to be a customer, not
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a competitor.
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: Rudy is someone that I hope will be useful one day. Plus,
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: I just think he's cool. It's not all just sort
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: of like sit-in-the-pants shit. I think that him and Rudy
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: are like that, and they're plotting all this out. Melania,
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: who was sitting next to him at dinner, he said,
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: I asked Melania to walk around the pool in her
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: bikini so all the other guys could get a look
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: at what they were missing. Then Melania said, back to him.
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: I'll do that when you walk around with me in
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: your bikini.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I like the music there.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: That guy offered Rudy Giuliani a million dollars to come
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: to his birthday party.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Why does he think Rudy Giuliani's cool? That was the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: most troubling thing that guy has said.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know if a Mar-a-Lago member is like
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: the best judge of class, taste, character. I didn't realize
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: they let people with that accent make a billion dollars.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: That's cool.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: So the mafia thing that he said, he says the
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: thing there, I like the mafia. You want to be
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: a customer, not a competitor. Is that like a mob
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: movie thing that I don't know?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that. I love that one. I thought
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that was a great line right there, but I was like,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: I was like, is this a mantra that people who
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: are operating adjacent to the mafia tell themselves every morning? Customer,
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: not competitor.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Customer, not competitor.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I've never heard that before.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe the subtext that they'll kill you, I guess.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Pretty nice kangaroo. Be ashamed if something were to happen
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: to it. Jesus Christ.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: The headline news out of this report was that Trump
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: gave this guy accidentally or wittingly, I guess, a bunch
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: of nuclear sub secrets about the number of warheads, etc.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: It is interesting, though, that this comes out in the
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: middle of this ongoing impeachment effort that's trying to tell
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: a story about the Biden crime family. And you have
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: this Australian billionaire being like, yeah, I bought into Mar-a-Lago.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: I paid Rudy a million dollars to come to my
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: birthday party. I like grifted and all these. I rented
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: all the rooms for election night.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Like this is a pay to play scheme that was
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: this entire Trump administration scheme. All laid out in this
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: fun little accent.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: And what he got for it was, well, let me
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: tell you about how many nuclear submarines we have. And
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: let me tell you about that Ukraine call. Come on.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I did worse than that. And it's not even like
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: it's an exchange for like you pay this money and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: I'll give you these secrets. It's more like you pay
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: this money and I'll brag to you about how great
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: it is to be president.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Well, Trump also like did events with him, toured his factory,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: would like praise him at events and stuff. So it
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: was just sort of like a back padding competition.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: It's really small. So it's like PR. This guy has
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: like tens of billions of dollars. He's very, very, very wealthy.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: And you just think like, okay, if I ever became
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: a person who had $ 34 or $ 24 billion, whatever he had,
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: would I be like, if I go to Mar-a-Lago on
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: that day, is he going to be there that day?
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: And can I hear the swimsuit thing? I want you
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: to say the swimsuit thing in front of me. And
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: then I'm going to tell my friends. Yeah.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like- Bored rich people. And one
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: of them was president with access to the nuclear front.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: It's also how small Trump is. I mean, he walks in,
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: he treats being the president like he won a silver
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: at Nagano and he walks into the bar and he goes, this, oh,
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: this old thing, it was cold and windy.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you the story.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: It's like he wants, he just so desperately wanders around
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: these weddings.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: He just wants to talk to people.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: The submarine thing, which I didn't totally grok at first,
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: So there's obviously, we don't talk about submarines, right? So
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: they're nuclear powered, nuclear armed submarines talking about their stealth capabilities,
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: talking about their weapons. But then once he told the
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: cardboard magnate billionaire guy, that guy told 45 other people.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Including journalists.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: Including a half dozen journalists and multiple former heads of
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: state and other foreign government officials. So what, I mean,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: so what happens to the classified documents case? I mean,
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: this stuff isn't implicated directly in the classified documents case.
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: He is listed as a potential witness in that case.
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: But the promulgation of that kind of information to all
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: those people, like, wow, what do we do about that?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Well, it makes you think that the evidence in the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: case has got to be really strong if this stuff
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't implicated.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: Well, and also just that, hey, no matter what we confiscate,
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: no matter what we do, The information inside of Donald
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: Trump's head, which he is not protecting, is at risk
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: of being released if we don't do.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Something to punish him.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: It's all for sale.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: And the only way to actually make sure that he
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: hasn't shared this information is by sending him to jail.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: The only way to... Or.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Just making sure he doesn't get to be president again.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Well, that's... Sure, for sure.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that... That's a big one.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: We can't do that in the courtroom.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Because if we don't stop that, no jail... There's a
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: men in black in one of those things. Yeah, and
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: he'll have all the secrets. He'll be able to do
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: whatever he wants. He's got nothing to lose. Nothing to
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: lose in the second term.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, I don't think there is
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: a solution to it.
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: I mean, if he goes to jail, he's not going
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: to go to jail forever. He'll then get out. Also,
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: he can make phone calls from jail. Like, there's no...
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: The problem that we are in right now as a
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: country is that the only solution... to our problems is
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: to go back in time and not put somebody that
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: criminal in that big a job. And unless you can
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: undo that, I mean, once you've done that, once you've
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: done somebody who is implicated in this much alleged criminal
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: behavior and they've had that kind of a job, there
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: just isn't an easy way out that doesn't hurt the country.
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: What if someone did that, fucked up, accidentally left a
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: gold bar in Bob Menendez's car?
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: Good point.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: We saw your segment on Menendez in your show tonight.
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: What did you think?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: And we were all yelling at the TV. We were like, yeah,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with you, Democrats? It's crazy to me. I
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: don't know where, like, why doesn't Chuck Schumer get him
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: off the committee?
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: They took him, when you took him out of the
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, why'd you do that?
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: Because of his federal felony indictments?
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:30
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: And so then when the superseding indictment came out and
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: it turned out what he was accused of by the U.S.
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: Justice Department is being a foreign agent, did it occur
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: to you at that point that maybe it was time
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: for another step? How is it that he is still
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: on the committee?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's wild.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: And it was just like an arrangement of convenience that
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: he didn't receive the last classified briefing on what's going
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: on with the war. It wasn't some sort of formal
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: thing where they were like, no, Bob Menendez, no more
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: classified briefings to you. It was just like, oh, he didn't. Yeah,
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: he didn't do that one. They just sidestepped that.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: As an issue.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Where the country that was paying him off and, as
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: far as I can tell, running him as a spy
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: is directly implicated in what's happening currently. The Egyptians are
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: one of the other borders of Gaza. He's like, I'll
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: skip this briefing.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: This is a problem. A lot of problems are hard, right?
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: What do you do with the classified information in Donald
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: Trump's head? Like, I really don't know that there's an
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: answer to that. This is not a hard one. If
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: the Republicans want to take Bob Menendez off the Senate
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: Foreign Relations Committee, here's what they do. Bob, you're no
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: longer on the Foreign Relations Committee. Instead, this other person is,
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: and that's it.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: That's all they have to do.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: It's completely within their power. Yes, the Republicans could rise
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: up and try to stop them from installing somebody new,
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: but they're not going to because they don't want to
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: fight over Bob Menendez because they're not willing to say
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: that Menendez should resign. Right.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: That's why I don't quite understand. We were talking about
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: why the Democrats wouldn't do it. Are they worried that
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Bob Menendez will change parties and start caucusing with the Republicans?
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: No.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Like, I don't know. Even that wouldn't cost them the majority.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I guess it would shave it down one more, but
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: it's still like.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: But if he's holding national security hostage for that kind
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: of a threat, we ought to know about that. They
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: can't just handle that by like backburning.
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: But that's the fucking move. You go full Trump. Trump
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: pardons you. You go full Trump. What else are you
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: supposed to do? You go full fucking Trump. You go
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: full Trump.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: You do Blagojevich. You do Blagojevich. Oh, you do Jeff
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Andrew right in Jersey.
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: Blagojevich was pretty smart when he was walking out of
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: that jail pretty early.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: Smart was the word?
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: That day, that day he was a smart guy.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Well, let's not get Bob Menendez any ideas here.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Hey, nobody, Bob, chill out.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's a listener.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: But also, Democrats in the Senate leak to us. Like,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: explain yourselves.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, leak to Rachel.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: Leak to me. Call me.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I asked Fetterman this because he's been really forward-leaning on this.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: And I was like, what's with all your colleagues? He's like,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I don't speak for them. I can't speak for them.
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: But who does? I mean, this is just unconscionable. Yes,
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: you can talk about the Republicans and everything's wrong with them.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: That's fine. But at the end of the day, the
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: thing you have to answer to, to whomever you answer,
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: is for your own actions. And in this case, the
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: action of leaving him on the Foreign Relations Committee, when
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: you have the power to remove him, is it's, it's
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: beyond the, it's beyond.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. Uh, before we get to break, uh, just two
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: quick housekeeping notes. Pod Save America will be live in Louisville,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Kentucky in Cleveland, Ohio on October 28th and 29th. We
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: will be joined by journalist Perry Bacon, Kentucky Congressman Morgan McGarvey,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: co-host Alyssa Mastromonaco, abortion rights advocate Kelly Copeland, Congresswoman Amelia Sykes,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and more. Uh, head to crooked.com slash events to get
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: your tickets now and see where else we're headed this year. Also,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: quick shout out to our Friends of the Pod subscription
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: community who are probably listening right now on our ad-free feed.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I want to let you guys know that I'm stopping
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: by the Friends of the Pod Discord on Thursday, October
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: 26th for a round of Ask Me Almost Anything, where
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I'll be chatting with subscribers and answering your burning questions.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: If you haven't subscribed to Friends of the Pod yet,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: now's the time. Head to cricket.com slash friends to sign up.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll talk to Rachel Moore about
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: her new book prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism. I
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: want to talk about your new book called Prequel, which
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: is based off your fantastic award winning podcast, Ultra. Both
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: tell the story of a homegrown fascist plot to overthrow
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: American democracy just before we entered World War Two, a
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the U.S. government.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: For people who haven't listened to the podcast or read
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the book, could you talk about how serious the threat was? Yes.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: Thank you. First of all, thanks for asking me about it.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: So we had, at the same time that Germany went
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: to Hitler and Italy went to Mussolini and Spain went
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: to Franco and the French fascists overran parliament in 1934
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: and ousted the democratically elected government and the British had
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: the British Union of Fascists. When this was rising everywhere
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: in the world, we had our own problem. And we
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: think of Americans' confrontation with the Nazis as having been
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: the military confrontation when We were good guys and they
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: were bad guys and we went over there and beat them.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: But here in the United States, the... just that people
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: didn't want to go fight World War II by very
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: large numbers. In 1940, it was 83% of the public
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: didn't want us to fight. It was that there was
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: a big fascist movement here, virulently anti-Semitic, associated with right-wing
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: paramilitary groups, And associated with the Nazi government in Berlin
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: to the point where there was a Nazi agent. He
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: was the senior Nazi propaganda agent in the United States.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: And he was running a huge multimillion dollar propaganda campaign
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: in the United States, like at the behest of the
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: German foreign office. And he had two dozen senators and
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: members of Congress working for him. running all this mail
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: out of their offices so that the postage would be
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: paid by the American taxpayer.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Franking privilege.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: The franking privilege. I'm trying to make the franking privilege hot.
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: So it's always been seen as a kind of obscure
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: chapter in American history, I think, for obvious reasons, because
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: we had World War II and we won. And that's
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: a very comfortable tale to tell. It's more uncomfortable to
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: think about us Americans having been on that side. But
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: it was more well-connected and more radical and more successful
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: than I think previously understood. And that's what I'm trying
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: to just help us learn that, not because it's a,
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's any analogy between Nazism then and
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: our ultra-right today, obviously. Only Nazis are Nazis. Only Hitler
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: is Hitler. But there is an analogy, I think, that
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: we can learn from in terms of Americans who fought
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: that surprisingly effective, surprisingly well-connected movement and beat them and
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: shut it down.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: You draw a lot of parallels, obviously, in the book.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: They're sort of unsaid parallels between then and now. I wonder, like,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: what is different about the threat that we face today?
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: What feels different? Not just in, like, the non-actual Nazis,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: but just in the general sort of larger context. context, political,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: social context?
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: I think that there's basically like four things that you
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: look for for a democracy that's at risk of becoming
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: an authoritarian state. And lots of experts smarter than me
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: have different lists. For me, it's four. One is that
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: you see not just targeting of minorities, but scapegoating of minorities.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: So you get Baroque evil conspiracy theories about how they're
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: secretly to blame for all of our problems, because then
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: you've got a common enemy that you need a strong
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: man to unite the country against. Then you've got, oh,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: we can't have democracy because those evil people would participate
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: in it. Democracy is weak and makes us pray to
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: these bad people.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: So you got that.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: You've got don't trust information. Don't trust journalists, science experts
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: only believe the dear leader. Go with your gut. Trust
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: your prejudices. And we've got the intrusion of violence into
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: the political space so that the political space becomes a
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: place that normal people kind of can't play. If you
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: want to be a poll worker, but it means you're
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: going to end up having death threats and people storming
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: your house, then normal people aren't going to be poll workers.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: So you watch for that. But the last thing is,
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: is actually the most boring and most important, which is
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: technically is your democracy functioning. In order to hold on
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: to your democracy, you not only need to defend it,
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: but you need to believe in it and you need
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: to use it to solve the problem of rising authoritarianism.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: And so people need to believe that the election process
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: and that the democratic process writ large is what we
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: use to solve our problems. And the good news in
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: this book, in prequel, is that all these members of
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: Congress who are all hooked up with this Nazi agent,
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: almost to a one, they all got voted out. When
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: the American public, through good journalism and good activism and
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: the Justice Department exposing them, told the American people what
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: was going on, even people who are household names who'd
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: been in Congress for 25 years who were seen as
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: presidential timber, the president's best friend, all this stuff, all
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: voted out because the American people did not like that idea.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: The thing that's different now that worries me is that
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: election denialism and don't believe in elections and your vote
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: doesn't matter. I mean, Trump's saying today, don't worry about voting.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: We've got all the votes we need.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Just monitor voting.
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: Just monitor voting. Monitor the vote count and monitor voting.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: That stuff is... They didn't get far enough with it
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: in the 30s and 40s. They were trying to, but
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: they didn't get that. And they're much further along with
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: that messaging. And that's not just bad for people who
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: believe it on its face because they like that side
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: of politics. It's bad for Americans who might try to
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: fix this because all of us need to believe that
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: voting out people who are close to these sorts of
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: plots and movements is the solution to these plots and movements.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: When you think about that scenario and how it played
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: out in the past, and you think about today with
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk saying, don't listen to these lying journalists, listen
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: to these blue checks that gave me money. We think
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: about the withering of local news, gerrymandering of districts that
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: would make it incredibly hard to vote out some of
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: the individuals you're talking about. Do you worry more that
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: repeating that kind of systems and good guys and women
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: winning wouldn't maybe not happen?
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: That's the part of it that I'm so worried about.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, to the extent that You've got people who
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: are part of an anti-democratic project who are telling you,
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: don't believe election results. Don't think that the vote is
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: the way we're going to fix these problems. Don't think
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: that democracy is the way our country should run. That's bad.
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: But it's really bad if it's true. It's really bad
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: if your vote doesn't actually count because either the elections
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: are being stolen somewhere or because... you're gerrymandered out of
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: essentially ever being able to have a legitimate say in
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: what governance is that applies to you. And so the
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: weakening of just the technical aspects of democracy takes away
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: the best weapon that we have to fix this problem.
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: And so it's just, it's not abstract.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: It's urgent.
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: Are there strengths that we have or lessons we're having
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: gone through this in the 30s that we now draw
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: on that put us at an advantage as opposed to,
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: I mean, what you just described is what's the difference
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: between now and the 1930s? Oh, here are four ways
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: in which things are a little bit worse. But like,
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: what are the ways in which right now you look
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: at the way Americans are responding or the way our
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: country is reacting to a far right threat that you
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: say speaks to having learned from this?
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: Very good question. And nobody asks me that question in
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: that way. I'm talking about this.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: I'm really happy.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: You still got it.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: Go on.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: We didn't get a fucking very good question.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: What the fuck's happening?
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: I'm out of here. It's so hot in the studio.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: I can't even think, let alone form another question.
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: There was a good question that was asked.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Sorry. Somebody had asked a question.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: I would say two things. One is the Justice Department
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: knows not to put 29 people on trial in the
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: same courtroom. Like, that's good. There's two big sedition trials
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: that I write about in the book, one in 1940.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: And in that case, the FBI really thought this Christian
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: Front militia was seven days away from a plot that
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: was supposed to start with the murder of 12 congressmen.
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: And they had lots of National Guardsmen and NYPD and
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: lots of bombs and US military machine guns. And it
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: was a serious thing. And when those guys were put
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: on trial, the trial did not succeed in convicting any
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: of them, and they were all let go. And then
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: in 1944, we've got the even bigger sedition trial. There's
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: 29 of them. It was 17 defendants in 1940. It's
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: 29 in 1944. That trial also, no successful convictions, and
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: those guys melted into the sauce, which is a very
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: dangerous and bad thing. And I feel like the Justice
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: Department has learned from some of those things. The other
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: thing that I don't know whether or not they've learned,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: but I really hope they have, is that part of
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: what went wrong with the effort to deal with this
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: through the criminal justice system in the 30s and 40s
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: is that implicated senators like Burton Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana,
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: pressured the attorney general to fire the prosecutor who was
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: leading the investigation and leading the prosecution. And the attorney
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: general caved and did so. That's really bad. President Truman
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: then in 1946 said, caved and fired another Justice Department
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: official who was trying to expose this because among the
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: people who are going to get exposed were his best
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: friends from the Senate. So the political pressure on the
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: Justice Department, I hope, is something that has a red
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: flag on it. I think people like Jeff Berman from
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: the Trump-era Justice Department raising a red flag about those
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: things and having gone through that is a little bit
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: of hope there. But that's, yeah, that's one example of
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: something that I think we're doing better.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Do you think that the pro-democracy forces in this country
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: are doing a good enough job making the case about
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: why democracy is a better system for most people in
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: this country? Like people, our audience, your audience, people who
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: pay close attention to politics, like we get all the
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: arguments about democracy. We're passionate about it forever. Most people
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: in the country who don't pay close attention to politics,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: who barely consume the news, who are worried about more
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: things close to home. I wonder if like we're making
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: a good enough argument.
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: It's hard because you don't want to scaremonger, you know,
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, you don't want to. And I mean, the
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: thing that I try to convey is like. we'll really
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: miss this when it's gone.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. That's when you say we get dumped.
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, most democracies don't last. And most countries that
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: have lost democracy never get it back. And we are
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: a standout example of a country that has held on
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: to a robust democracy for a long time, but there's
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: no reason to think that it is inevitable that we will.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: And to create that sense of, I think, honest precarity
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: around us being a democratic system. Just listen to what
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: Trump says about voting. Listen to what Trump says about elections.
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: Why is he describing the election that he won in
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: 2016 as stolen? Why is he describing the next election
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: in which he's not yet a competitor as already stolen?
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: He's doing this because he wants people to believe that
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: elections are fake and so therefore we shouldn't bother having them.
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: It's a challenge of imagination. Can you imagine what a
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: country is like that looks like this except has a
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: president who never leaves office?
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, last week while President Biden was traveling to
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: Israel and lowering taxes, prescription drug prices and, you know,
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: putting the brakes on people having to pay back their
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: student loans. Vladimir Putin, in his 24th year of office,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: went to China to go to a summit hosted by
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: President Xi, who's president for life, so he could meet
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: with Viktor Orban, who's in his 14th year in office.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: So they could talk about how they want a new
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: multipolar world where the United States doesn't lead the way anymore.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: That's That's the other way that this goes.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: And I think that we have to, the next step
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: is to draw a line from that sort of system
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: of government to the consequences it has for people in
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: those countries and other countries. Because also like, look what
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin's doing with his country right now. Look at
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: how many people he's sending to their deaths and how
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: many people he's responsible for slaughtering, right? Because that's life
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: in an authoritarian government. And by the way, life in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: a democracy can be wonderful. And- And also frustrating and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: people can struggle and it's infuriating at times, but it's also,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, what does it mean to be in political
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: opposition in the United States? Frustration and agonized podcast conversations
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: and occasionally having, you know, bad things happen in the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: legislature in which you are torn between whether to make
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: fun or be seriously concerned about the other people who
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: can't get it together. I mean, that's what political opposition
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: means in this country. But if you are Alexei Navalny
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: in Russia, your lawyers just got arrested. You're in a
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: penal colony and your lawyers just got arrested for the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: crime of representing you while you are trying to be
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: an opposition politician. I just feel like the more we
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: learn about what else our situation could be and what
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: one side of our politics is driving us toward, I
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: think the argument makes itself, but your mileage may vary.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Well, Rachel, before we let you go, I'm going to
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: open my laptop.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: That's how you know we're getting serious.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: I'm getting fired.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: Rachel, in your new book, prequel.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: There we go.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: Woo! Thank you very much.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: You track the fight... I didn't... It's an audio medium here.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: You track the fight of those inside and outside the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: government to repel a takeover by right-wing extremists who are
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: enamored with fascism, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and an all-out assault
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: on the left. I don't think it would have come
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: as a surprise to you that there are parallels to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: what we see playing out on the far right today,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: not that you draw an equivalence, but nevertheless... So we're
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: going to read an actual quote. And the question is,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: is this a quote recounted in your book? Or is
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: it from the unwritten book called A Present? Is this
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: fascism original formula? Or is this fascism the new batch,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: which is a reference to a film called Gremlins 2
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: that you have not seen?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: I bet.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: You are correct.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: Question one, here's the quote. We all know for whom
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: we're voting if we vote for blank. For the communists,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: the socialists, for the Mexican lovers. Was this about President
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: Franklin Delano Roosevelt or President Joseph Robinette Biden?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: I know that it was about Roosevelt. Was it also
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: said about Biden?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: It has been, but this was about Roosevelt.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Correct. The whom gave it away. The whom. No one's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: used whom.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: This was Father Charles Coughlin. And I know he also
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: included Russian lovers in his list, which had given it
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: away because today the right. wouldn't speak the same way
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: about Russia.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Next question.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: As a far right figure warned that a certain group
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: wanted to corrupt youth through subversive teaching, destroy family life,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: dominate people through their vices, and undermine the respect for religion.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: Was this about gays and theys in the 2020s or
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: Jews and Jews in the 1930s?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: It was about Jews and Jews in the 1930s.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: And do you know who it was? Do you remember
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: who it was?
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: Is it Pelley?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: This was Pelley.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Who started a right-wing anti-Semitic paramilitary group. Question three. Scott
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Pelley did that?
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: It was Scott Pelley. Wow. Which Pelley was it?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: It was Scott Pelley.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: You know, in Australia, the 60 minutes clock goes the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: other way. A candidate warned that the sitting president had
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: joined with, quote, a band of his closest thugs, misfits,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: and Marxists to destroy American democracy and and we must
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: Was that a candidate in the 30s or a candidate
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: in the unfolding present?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: It was Trump in June of this year.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I was going to say that sounded like a Trump quote.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Next quote.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: I have an idea this is still a Christian country,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: but there is an objection to use the word Christian.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: They want to take it out of my mouth, the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: word Christ and Christian, and they can't do it. Is
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: that about a manufactured war on Christians or a manufactured
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: war on Christmas?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: Yes. The answer is yes. But is that Smith or
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: is that?
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: It's Mosley.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's General George Van Horn Mosley. He's one of
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: my favorite bad guys in the book. Why? Because, so
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: he wanted, a lot of the different fascist groups wanted
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: George Van Horn Mosley to be the Fuhrer. He had
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: been deputy chief of staff of the U.S.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: Army.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: He thought that and campaigned on the idea that all
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: Jews in America should be forcibly sterilized. Like he was really,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: he was that guy. And the army came to him
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: after he testified in Congress in 1938, I think it was.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: And they said, General Mosley, we understand you are auditioning
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: for the role of American Fuhrer for once you and
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: your friends overthrow democracy and install the type of Hitlerite
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: government that you're looking for here. You have rights as
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: an American to advocate anything you want. You have free speech. However,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: we are the U.S. Army. And this is awkward for us,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: and so if you want to keep doing that, we're
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: going to stop paying your pension. So it's your choice.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: You can keep trying to be the American Fuhrer, or
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: you can keep your pension. And he was like, I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: think I want the pension. Wow.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: What a story.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: What a brain.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: I could trump that choice.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I was going to want to pay him a little more.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Wasn't there some offer?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: Michael Lewis says SBF was going to pay him.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: A bunch of money. Five billion dollars or something.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Steal twice the price. Last one.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: I would build a wall about the United States so
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: high and so secure. I say we should stop and
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: stop now the refugees who are seeping into this country
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: by the thousands to take the jobs which rightly belong
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: to the native and natural born citizens of the United States.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: Here's a hint. Their motto was about putting America first.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 5: The person who said this was divorced twice and had
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: children with three different women.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, that is Carolina.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: That is correct. Yes in 1941.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a monster Yeah, but yeah He wanted
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: his big idea was to build a wall to keep
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: out Jewish refugees because they were gonna take all our
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: jobs and corrupt our Christianity Yeah, so we've been up
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: against worse, right? I mean having an ultra right movement
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: ascendant in this country that is very anti-semitic that is
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: anti-democratic at its core and that is in love with
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: foreign dictators, that is connected to very popular people, including
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: the most powerful industrialist in the country, Henry Ford, and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: Father Coughlin, who was the most powerful media figure maybe
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: in American history. People like Charles Lindbergh, who was a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: consensus national hero. I mean, all these people are pulling
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: in that direction while Hitler is steamrolling Europe. And Americans
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: whose names we have forgotten and who are not famous
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: stood up against them and prosecuted them and infiltrated them
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: and did amazing exposes of them and ran against them
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: and ousted them from office. And they gave us a gift.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Well, that is a very hopeful note to end on.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Rachel, for joining the pod again.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: The book is Prequel. An American Fight Against Fascism. It
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: is fantastic. Everyone go buy it.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Great cover art.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: It's great cover art. Thank you very much. And also
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: go listen to Ultra also. It's just a fantastic podcast.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for stopping by. Next time, let's not make it
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: four years until you come by again.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: Love you guys. Thank you very much.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Pot Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers
• 1:07:43
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• 1:07:46
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• 1:07:50
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• 1:07:53
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