Latest / Pod Save America / “Biden’s Lawless Raid on Biden.”

Transcript

“Biden’s Lawless Raid on Biden.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Jon Lovett just didn't show up today.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: That's so mean. He's not feeling well.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: He's not feeling well. Yeah, he's okay, but he's just,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: he wasn't ready for a pod today.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: He's a little hoarse.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: A little hoarse.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You probably couldn't understand him. On today's show, Joe Biden
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: says goodbye to his chief of staff and hello to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: more FBI agents. Donald Trump plots his Twitter comeback and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: struggles to get endorsements. Ruben Gallego will run for Kyrsten
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Sinema's seat. We recorded an interview with Democratic House Minority
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Leader Hakeem Jeffries here in the studio on Friday. that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: will be running today as well. Still smells like power
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: in here. Yeah, I mean, it's a big deal.
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Big deal having Hakeem Jeffries here. And later, Elijah tests
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: our skills with a new game called Take Take Don't
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Tell Me. I'm excited for a new game. But first,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: if you haven't tried Crooked Coffee yet, now's the time
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to do it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: It's very good.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It's very good. Every order supports Vote Save America's Every
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Last Vote Fund to make sure every voice can be heard.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Head over to crooked.com slash coffee. Give it a try today.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. President Biden celebrated
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the two-year anniversary of his inauguration by welcoming federal agents
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: from the Justice Department to his home in Delaware, where
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: they recovered.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Do you think you make them take their shoes off?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: He wasn't there. He was in Rehoboth.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So he, yeah, who knows? Who knows? Mask up, shoes off.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: He said, you guys walk in, whatever you need.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Bring your own snacks.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: You can use the bathrooms. He was very gracious. Anyway,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: they recovered six additional sets. of records that contained an
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: unspecified number of classified documents. So that's fun. New polling
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: shows that about two-thirds of Americans are both aware of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and troubled by Biden's actions. But most voters don't believe
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: he should face charges. Thankfully, voters don't bring charges, but
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: it's good to know they don't think he should face them.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: The system would be bad. And more people do believe
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: that Trump's case is more serious, which is good because
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: it is. Nevertheless, Democrats in Congress continue to ding Biden
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: on the issue. Senator Dick Durbin said on Sunday it
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: diminishes Biden's stature, while Joe Manchin said that the president
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: should have a lot of regrets. Republicans are, of course,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: having a field day. We're the mansions less annoying there. Yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I know. Stature?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about? What is that?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Anyway, Republicans, unsurprisingly, are having a field day. Here's a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: sampling from Sunday show interviews with Representatives Mike Turner, Nancy Mace,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and James Comer. Clearly, he's become a serial classified document hoarder.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Why did he have these? Who did he show them to?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, the only reason you can think of as
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: to why anyone would take classified documents out of a
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: classified space.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: At home is to show them to somebody.
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: No, there's very little information about Biden. These documents were
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: hidden for five years. We have very little information, whereas
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: with the former president, everybody knows that those documents existed.
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: They knew where they were. They knew where they were located.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: There was information that was presented.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: To the public about the number of documents, for example.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: We didn't know where they were located. They defied a subpoena.
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: It took a search warrant.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: In fairness, they didn't know.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:35
  Speaker 7: We need to know now who had access to those
• 3:38
  Speaker 7: documents because our national security could be at risk.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I, this is, is this treason? I mean, I
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: just want to applaud our editing team there for those cuts. Like, yeah,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: it was hilarious.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, to argue, that was Nancy Mace, by the way.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: She is not like super MAGA. And to argue that,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: she was trying to argue that Donald Trump's is actually
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: better than Joe Biden's situation because we all knew he
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: was hiding the classified documents in his beach house. And
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: we knew that because he refused to give them back,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: which is why FBI agents raided his house.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Today, we learned that a former Philadelphia mob boss was
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: at Donald Trump's beach club, and he took a picture
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: with the president. So I think it's safe to say
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: that those documents were less secure than the stuff at
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Biden's house.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I am glad that the team
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: ended the cut at Maria Bartiromo asking, is this treason?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: What happened after that was even James Comer, who is
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the head of the Oversight Committee, Republican head of the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Oversight Committee, was speechless after Barrow was questioned. He couldn't
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: even bring himself to say, yes, it's treason.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She is nuts.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: She's chardonnays away from being Judge Pirro, unfortunately. So, Tommy,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Biden said last week to reporters about this, there's no
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: there there. I know you guys covered this last week
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: on Pod Save the World. But as someone who has
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: dealt with a lot of classified information.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Never at my house.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I know that it's scattered across your multiple residences.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: You were over there.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: What do you think of this most recent discovery? And
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: how serious is the situation? We'll get to the politics
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: in a second. Just from a national security standpoint.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I think you mean the 13-hour unconstitutional raid by jackbooted feds.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland's thugs. FBI stoppo.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: That didn't quite work.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: By the way, have you heard that they probably planted
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: documents at Biden's house?
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: They gave them time to plant five more pages over
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: the weekend. Those takes were for my Tucker Carlson reel.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So what we know, right, is that the White House
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: said that DOJ found some classified records from Biden's time
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: as vice president and from his time in the U.S.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Senate.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So if we're talking about this from a national security perspective,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, like a big chunk of classified material. is
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: supposed to be automatically declassified after 25 years.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're getting there.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: So not like a ton of risk. There was some
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: like pre-Iraq war documents sitting around the house, right?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Can I ask you something? I would imagine that Biden
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: would have had access to classified documents while he was
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in the Senate because he was chair of the Foreign
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Relations Committee.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: For a while.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Do other senators? Everyone has a clearance.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I think that if you're on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: you probably get access to more stuff. Although they all
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: look at it in a skiff in some office down there.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: The Intelligence Committee people have access to much more highly
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: sensitive stuff, the compartmented covert action programs, CIA budget, et cetera,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: et cetera. So I don't really know what was found.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: On the previous tranches, I think I read that one
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: document was top secret. The rest were secret level. So
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not ready to say there's no there there quite yet.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: It seems like there was some there, some over there, a.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Little more over there. There were multiple there's.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: There was a little bit there.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And multiple there's, yeah.
• 6:52
  Speaker 7: But.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: secret level papers from 2006 are not as risky as
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: what we know was in Donald Trump's house, which were
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: hundreds of documents, special access programs, human intelligence, like really
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: sensitive stuff at this club full of grifters. Foreign intelligence
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: agents have been arrested at Mar-a-Lago. We got the Philly
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: mob boss guy. So I look, I'm not trying to
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: both side this, but it is, it is very distinct
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: set of facts. And I'm more concerned about the papers
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: at Donald Trump's club, his golf club. Although I do
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: agree with all the sort of critics in Washington who
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: are saying the way that these reports have dripped out
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: about more and more documents in Biden's residence has muddied
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: up everything.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And apparently one of the reasons why this is
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: sort of just dribbled out over the course of several
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: weeks now, Charlie Savage had a piece in the New
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: York Times about this. Biden's lawyers initially told the Department
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of Justice in November that They had no reason to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: believe that official records from Biden's time as vice president
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: or for that matter, when he was in the Senate,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: ended up anywhere else but the Penn Biden Center. So therefore,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't have checked everywhere else because the lawyers were like, oh, no, no,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: that all the records were shipped right to the Penn
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Biden Center. And so that's it. Now, it turns out then.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: But there was also some reporting in The Washington Post
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: that maybe the Department of Justice said, hey, stop your searching. Like,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: we're going to take this from here. And the Biden
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: lawyers tried to comply and do everything by the book.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: And that, in the end, I think probably screwed them
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: a little bit.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I mean, to Mike Turner's question, why
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: else would you take classified documents out of a classified
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: space other than to show someone? Like, yeah, so Biden's
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: plan was to take classified documents, show a bunch of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: people that he wasn't supposed to show, and then have
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: his lawyers voluntarily let people know that he had classified documents.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: That was the whole scheme.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: That was the treasonous scheme.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I suspect it was just mistakes, poor record keeping, poor
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: organization more than anything else. It was probably staff level work,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: if we're being honest. I'm not trying to point fingers
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: at anybody.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: None of it's good. None of it's how you want
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: to run a railroad. But again, the reason that the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: FBI agents descended upon Mar-a-Lago without an invitation, unlike the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: invitation they got from Joe Biden to come to his
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: house in Wilmington, was because the National Archives and the
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice said, hey, Donald Trump, Looks like you
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: have some classified documents. And he said, fuck you, they're mine. Well,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: first he said, no, I don't. Then he said, they're mine.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Then he said, you can't get them. Then he said,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I'm moving them.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And then he said, I mentally declassified all of them,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: which again is another avenue Joe Biden could go down
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: since he's currently president. If he wanted to be a
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: complete idiot like Donald Trump, he could be like, I
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: magically declassify all of this. But he would never do
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: that because that's making a joke.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Of the system.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And I realize the media keeps harping on the fact
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: that like, well, most Americans won't know the difference. Well, OK, well,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: let's tell them the difference because it seems like there's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a big one.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I hate when they yada yada yada
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: over the difference, although I think the media has done
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a pretty good job of that. The one other thing
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: that I think is really unfair in a lot of
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: this reporting is people who are pointing fingers at the
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: White House press office. and the press secretary and saying,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: look at the way their answers have shifted. Look at
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the way they didn't answer questions at the White House briefing.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: You know, Ben and my advice on Pod Save the
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: World when we talked about this was stop cutting out
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the communications people. Stop keeping things close hold. Try to
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: get everything you can together and get it out as
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: fast as you can. And just like read everybody on
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: your team in who needs to be read into this stuff.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's so hard when you're dealing with an
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: ongoing investigation or discussion of classified information because you're so
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: constrained about what you can and can't say. But I mean,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: that's the clear mistake here is, you know, things dribbling
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: out piecemeal.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, hearing Bartiromo say, maybe this is treason, hearing
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: them say like, obviously he did this to show them
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to people who donated to the Penn Biden Center, who visited.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's a little danger of Republicans overreaching here?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Or is just this what they do to try to
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: gin up a scandal and go down a whole bunch
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of investigative rabbit holes?
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like there's a pretty obvious rejoinder
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: to a Republican member of Congress who says the only
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: reason you would take classified documents to your house is
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: to show someone.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, then that must apply to Donald Trump too.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: That's true. That's not a tough pushback from a Sunday
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: show host. But I mean, look, that's why I think
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: even when it came to Trump, I've been pretty reticent
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: to buy into those conspiracy theories that he was taking
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: them to like sell them to somebody or, I just
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: think he's an asshole who wanted to keep a bunch
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: of stuff that was his and is completely reckless.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Well, and at least with him, nothing would surprise me
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, which I think his history shows us.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: So any of those theories could be true. With Joe Biden,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it's a more limited set of circumstances.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we know him a lot better.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Right. I do think the Who did he show them
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to is clearly an attempt to make their Hunter Biden
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: obsession more legitimate.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like the Free Beacon or one of those conservative
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: publications found some old picture of Hunter Biden in Joe
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Biden's Corvette, which is allegedly parked in the garage where
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the classified documents were in Wilmington and suggested that that
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: was some sort of aha, gotcha, which is.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: One of the most embarrassing things. pieces of investigative journalism
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: i've ever heard i mean they have this oversight committee
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: now they have a special committee on the weaponization of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the federal government whatever right and they can't figure out
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: a topic right there's like we're going to look at
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the origins of covid we're going to look at uh
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: hunter biden's laptop we're going to look at chinese connections
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and business dealings and now i feel like at least
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: they have they have something which is these classified documents
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: that they're now going to hang all of their other
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories on I don't think they'll be very adept
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: at this, but it'll be grist for the right-wing media
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: for the next however many months.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it could become the Christmas tree upon which they
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: hang all their little mega ornaments. I think the minute
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: that the Republicans won the House, we knew that oversight
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: was going to become a big problem in sort of
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: digging for whatever they can find, whatever dirt they can
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: find for any investigation. This definitely, as you said, I
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: think provides the Republicans a path that at least seems
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: interesting and newsworthy to the press. feels new as opposed
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: to just like, I don't know, yelling the same things
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: about the border. Although I think at the end of
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: the day, for most voters, like an issue like immigration
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: and the failure to fix our, you know, the border
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: or immigration policy is probably like a more salient topic
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: than any of the stuff we're talking about. And that
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: goes for Donald Trump too.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I agree with that as well. So in other Biden news,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: we learned over the weekend that White House Chief of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Staff Ron Klain will be leaving sometime after the State
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of the Union and that he'll be replaced by our
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: old colleague, Jeff Zients. who ran the Office of Management
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and Budget in the National Economic Council in the Obama
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: White House in the second term, and most recently ran
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the Biden administration's COVID response. What do you think about
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Ron leaving and Biden naming Jeff as his replacement?
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think Ron Klain, I think about this
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a lot. You and I worked for two or three
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: White House chief of staff. I think Ron broadened and
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: changed the job more than anyone else I can think
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: of in that role. And that's because I think historically
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I've thought of a chief of staff as someone that's
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: kind of mysterious, that breathes rarefied air.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: You're behind the scenes.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? You're like negotiating things with senators.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Ron did that, but then also found time to like
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: get in the weeds. I mean, he was pushing White
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: House messages on Twitter. He was hosting progressives, doing cable hits,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: like painting mansions houseboats when necessary, whatever it took to
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: pass legislation.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: That agenda.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: And like you could DM Ron on Twitter and get
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: a response. And I literally don't know how he had
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the time. I remember thinking like, this guy is burning
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: the candle at both ends. This feels unsustainable, but he
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: managed to do it.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Shockingly responsive.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Shockingly responsible. And I think he deserves a ton of
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: credit for managing that team, managing the government and getting
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: a ton of stuff passed legislatively. It really is remarkable.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And also like you and I are both, this jumped
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: out at both of us in our prep we were
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: doing for today. Ron started working for Joe Biden when
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: he was 28, 28. He knows that guy inside and out,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: you know, that's an amazing tool to have at your
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: disposal as chief of staff.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I will say as, I mean, I've always liked Ron.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I got to work with him closely during debate prep
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: for when Obama prepped for his, the reelect debates. And
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I was like super impressed with how he ran that
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and ran debate prep and have been impressed with them
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: ever since. But like, I think as chief of staff,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: he's got excellent political instincts, excellent communication skills, and also
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: really fantastic people skills. And combining those three things, it's
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a really hard thing to do. And I don't know
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: that there's been a more influential... successful, beloved chief of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: staff than Ron Klain. And as long as I can
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: remember combining all those things.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I was thinking that too. And listen, that's not to
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: say I didn't like love and really like working for
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: all the people we worked for. But, you know, I
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: think of someone like Jim Baker, sort of larger than life,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of huge impact. I think Jeff comes
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: in with a different role shaped both by who he
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: is and by circumstances. They know now that there's nothing,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: nothing's coming out of the Republican House of Representatives. And
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: there's no legislative agenda now. So I think your focus
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: is make sure you're, one, effectively managing oversight requests from Congress.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: That then frees him up to just kind of to
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: run the government. And part of running the government that
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I think people don't get is, you know, you have
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: laws that were already passed. You have to make sure
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: they're implemented properly, right? So when you pass the IRA,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: the big climate change bill that they eventually got passed,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: that's not the end of it. The executive branch needs
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: to make countless decisions and create all these regulatory frameworks
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: to to make it workable, right? You need to determine
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: what kinds of cars are eligible for the tax credit
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: that you can get in the next couple months if
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: you buy an EV. So I think he'll focus on that.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: He's a management expert. You mentioned his time at OMB.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: He's a crisis fixer, right? He came in and fixed
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the botched rule out of healthcare.gov. There's the criticism from
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: progressives are saying Jeff is too close to the business community.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: He made money in healthcare and the private sector. they're
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: concerned about that focus. I think those are very fair
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: things to raise and to point out. But I also
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: know that when we worked with him, he fought for
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: increases in minimum wage, overtime pay. And I also think
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: that Jeff will think that his job is to implement
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the Biden agenda. He's not coming in there with some
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: determination to advance some corporate interests that is more important
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: to him. No, he's there to serve Joe Biden.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: If Jeff Zients ends up helping Biden make a bunch
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of pro-corporate decisions, then the criticism is well warranted. I
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: generally have a problem with criticism that is only about
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: someone's past and resume and not about the actual decisions
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and policies they have implemented during their time in government.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I think those should be a subject of criticism. And
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: in terms of Jeff, not only did he oversee the
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: NEC's during some of Obama's most progressive economic policies, the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: push for some of the most progressive economic policies. He
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: ran the Biden transition and helped hire some of the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: more progressive people in the Biden administration. Pramila Jayapal, who
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: runs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she talked to Semaphore about this.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: She said, we really appreciated Jeff's collaboration on COVID policies,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: on the American Rescue Plan, which both included bold and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: progressive policies. So you see the actual progressives in Congress
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: are feeling pretty good about him. You know, you get
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: some lefty activists and media types who are upset, but that's,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: you know, to be expected.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Listen, I think it's good, you know, like voice these
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: things now and then hold them accountable. I also, you know,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the job will also change in that there will be
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: people in the White House who are really focused full
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: time on politics and on the reelect in the same
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: way when Rahm Emanuel left as Barack Obama's first chief
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: of staff, Jack Lew comes in, Jack's really focused on
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: managing the government, but then you have David Plouffe coming
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: in to run the reelect essentially from the West Wing.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the man who, as of right now,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: is still Biden's most likely challenger in 2024, our old
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: friend Donald Trump. NBC reports that he's officially petitioned Facebook
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to unblock his account and that he'll be returning to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Twitter soon. His advisors have apparently been workshopping ideas for
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: his first tweet.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: So that's exciting. Trump is also set to hold his
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: first post-announcement campaign event in South Carolina this Saturday. though
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: he's having trouble getting endorsements from the state's Republican officials
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: who were looking at potential rivals like Nikki Haley and
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Tim Scott, among others. He's also having some trouble with
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: evangelical leaders who were annoyed that Trump recently blamed Republicans'
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: midterm performance on their abortion stance and then called them
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: disloyal for not supporting him yet. Speaking of loyalty, here's
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a clip of Trump eulogizing Diamond of Diamond and Silk
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: this weekend right after Silk says that Trump treated them
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: like family. Let's take a listen.
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: For President Trump, I just want to say thank you
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: so much for believing in Diamond and Silk. He treated
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: us just like Laura. He treated us just like the
• 20:13
  Speaker 7: other children, Eric, Don Jr., Tiffany. He treated us just
• 20:20
  Speaker 7: like when we came around, when Diamond and Silk came around,
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: it was like we was part of the family.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You know, the world has lost one of its brightest stars,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: real star, but I see that we have another star
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: who is equal too but she stepped up and she
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: is different i'm serious i thought i knew them both
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: i didn't i knew i knew diamond but i didn't
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: know silk at all i just learned about silk you're fantastic.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And finners that is treating her like he treats tiffany.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Well played well played i mean can you imagine he
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: also complained about the length of the ceremony several times
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Imagine going to a funeral, speaking, complaining about the duration.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like, we probably should use that clip too,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: but he was like, yeah, they told me 15, 20 minutes,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: but I got to be back in Palm Beach. He's like,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the Bengals-Bills game is unbelievable. Anyway, just had to play
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: that clip because it was so much fun. Do you
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: think that Trump being back on Twitter and maybe Facebook,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: they should make a decision any day now, I guess,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: will help him in the Republican primary? And do you
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: have any good ideas for a first tweet? Well, should
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: we start with the second question first?
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wrote, I got a couple for you.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I wanted to see what you think of it. I
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: was thinking, they peg it out here? It was an
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: all-time great tweet by Reverend Solomon Missouri.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: That may be for a small audience, but I'm one
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: of those people.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the best. Actually, I guess the problem
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: was that was a long Twitter thread in defense of
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: marriage and monogamy.
• 21:50
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: So maybe not.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe not. Another great one. was just Ed Balls.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: When the former member of the UK parliament named Ed
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Balls thought he was searching for himself. Not involved in
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: human trafficking t-shirt. Let's experiment on that. Ray Allen had
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: some doozies. There's a good one. In 2013, a woman
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: named Patricia Lockwood tweeted, at Paris Review, so is Paris
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: good or not? And I thought that was a very
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: funny one.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I think he should just start attacking Elon Musk. I
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: think he should just go to war with Elon on Twitter.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: just to sort of kick up some, to really sort
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of split the scene.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Like when you go to jail, you gotta shank the
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: toughest guy.
• 22:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Kind of like Alpha Dog on Twitter.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Which I could see him doing.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Alpha Troll.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm hoping for.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: That's really good.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know, do you think it'll help him in
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the primary? I asked Sarah Longwell this on our last episode.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: She's smarter than me, so what was her take? I mean,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you mine first. Another Kenyon College grad. That's right,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think getting back on Twitter will greatly
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: improve his ability to shape media narratives. but that Facebook
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: is ultimately more important in terms of reaching that base.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Just because look, the guy truths up a storm and
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: they're very funny and weird. And I never hear about them.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Like there's a bunch in the, in the research we
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: were doing for today. I just couldn't believe that they
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: were real.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I texted you when you're like, is that real?
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Like it's in our research.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I can't believe that's actually real. He technically has more
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Twitter followers and Facebook friends by a long shot, 88
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: million to 34 million on Facebook. But I bet way
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: over half of those Twitter followers are bots or dead
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: accounts or just garbage. Yeah.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But I do, I think he, he's just not getting
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the attention he craves, uh, from truth social. His interviews
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: aren't even going as far. Like I do think the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: power of Twitter in general and in a Elon Musk
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: world is sort of ebbing a little bit, uh, in,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in terms of like the media's assignment editor, you know,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I think there's, there's a, we can do a whole
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: nother episode on that. Um, but I think that for him,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: he needs attention right now. And if he's on Twitter,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: And he's tweeting all the time. By this spring, the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Republican primary will be in full gear. And then, you know,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I think he'll get a little bit more attention. It'll
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: probably help. I don't think it'll help him in the general.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: If he gets that far. But I do think in
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the primary, it'll help him get attention.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think it helps him drive the narrative,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: make the conversation about him. And his opponents are still
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: these mealy-mouthed idiots like Mike Pompeo, who's polling at 1%.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: He'll tweet things like, character and leadership are the same
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: thing and think that that's some sort of like subtweet
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: that's going to help them. And it's just, it's not.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: We've talked about DeSantis. We've talked about DeSantis a lot,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: but like the non-DeSantis other potential Republican challengers in 24
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: are really a pathetic bunch.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: They're very lame.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Like, I don't know what they're thinking. I watched Nikki
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Haley clips on Hannity from the weekend. I just saw
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: them on Twitter pop up and she just sounds like
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: It was very like Jeb Bush, like 2015 kind of
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: here's my talking points and my prepared lines that my
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: consultants gave me that I'm going to drop right now.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Like she's like, you know, like what you know what
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: they say, may the best woman win kind of thing.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: And then she's like Republicans lost seven of the last
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: eight presidential election popular votes, which I thought was interesting.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: But she just it just I'm like, what do you
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: where's the Nikki Haley base of support?
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: I think Trump.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Proved to everyone that he, I think in the 2016,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: 2015 primary, proved to the base that he was the
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: one who would own the libs the most by doing
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: it all the time. He would attack everybody as hard
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: as he could from the very beginning. He would punch
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: his opponents in the mouth on debates. When normally in politics,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: you kind of like baby step your way into really
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: going after your opponents. He's like, no, I'm just going
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: to go at them as hard as I can. And
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: no one else really threw a punch back at him
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: until the very end. And it feels like they're all
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: kind of Walking into that same strategic mistake again, I
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: think like if someone wants to beat Donald Trump, you've
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: got to fight him and go at him and go
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: hard and be relentless and no one's doing it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, what do you make of his challenges with
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: evangelical leaders and South Carolina officials? You think it's indicative
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of a broader problem or do you think these folks
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: will just come around if the base stays with Trump?
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I just think that these so-called faith leaders worship at
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: the altar of power and they might say they're sitting
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: it out for now. But once they see some momentum
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: gathering behind somebody, any candidate, that's where they will go.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure they all think Trump is a bad person,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: but they only care if he advances their agenda of
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: white Christian nationalism and banning abortion and targeting LGBTQ people
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and yelling about gay M & Ms or whatever like
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: culture war thing is on Hannity tonight.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm just not going to be looking too closely
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: at the endorsement primary on the Republican side. I'll be
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: looking at sort of the polls of Republican voters. Trump
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: is in the rare position of being a former president
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: who will probably not have the support of his party's establishment.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: But remember, last time he.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Didn't need it. No, he beat them.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And if I was, you know, if I were Trump,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I'd probably embrace being the outsider again and attack the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Republican establishment that's maybe coalescing behind Ron DeSantis or whoever
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: else it does, you know, and be the outsider. Yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: The only person he seems to be worried about is
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis. If it's Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Nikki Haley, they're weak. None of these people. They're just
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: tepid candidates. And again, like they're not running hard. And
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I just think that all these evangelicals, all the faith community,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: they all rally behind Trump. I mean, look at what
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the right wing is doing for Matt Schlapp, the head
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: of the American Conservative Union.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I haven't even talked about Matt Schlapp. He's a right
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: wing creep. They put on CPAC. He runs this organization.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: This man was accused of grabbing the genitalia of a
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: male campaign staffer on Herschel Walker's campaign staff. This was
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: like a few weeks ago. And the Republican establishment is
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: completely rallied around him. They don't care at all.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was down in Mar-a-Lago. with Trump for an
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: event after this whole thing broke. Speaking of evangelical values,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the National Pro-Life Summit took place, and DeSantis won. They
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: took a straw poll. DeSantis won 54% of the vote
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: to Trump's 19%. Now, it's only 2,000 votes. It's more
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: than a couple officials, but it's still not big. It's
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: very interesting, though, that DeSantis won by that much.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting, although Trump had just recently told
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: that specific group of people that they were at fault.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: For losing in 2022. You're at fault, and then because
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: you didn't endorse me, that's just loyalty. That was his
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: one-two punch with that. It wasn't great politics. All right,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: so finally, some 2024 Senate news. Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: of Phoenix announced Monday that he'll be running for Kyrsten
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Sinema's Senate seat. The newly independent Sinema hasn't yet announced
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: whether she'll seek re-election. and Republicans Carrie Lake and Blake
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Masters are both considering running as well.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: They're back.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip from Gallego's announcement video.
• 28:54
  Speaker 9: The rich and the powerful, they don't need more advocates.
• 28:57
  Speaker 9: It's the people that are still trying to decide between
• 29:00
  Speaker 9: groceries and utilities that needs a fighter for them. There
• 29:04
  Speaker 9: is no lobbyist for working families. We could argue different
• 29:11
  Speaker 9: ways about how to do it, But at the core,
• 29:14
  Speaker 9: if you're more likely to be meeting with the powerful
• 29:18
  Speaker 9: than the powerless, you're doing this job incorrectly.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the announcement and Gallego's chances
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: in general?
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Great. I love the score on the video.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It really came through in the audio only version. I
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: didn't notice it when I was watching the video.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Great video. I've been reading his book, Geiger's book, because
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I'm a.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Do you read 10 books?
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I'm a DC Insider, John.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: You're a new parent. What's your reading schedule?
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't say I finished this book. I've been reading
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: his book because I'm an incredibly well-sourced DC Insider. This
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: announcement was coming, like everybody else in the country. He's
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: an incredible story. I mean, he grew up dirt poor.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: single mother with four kids, not only absent, but an
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: abusive father. The guy just like willed his way into
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Harvard somehow.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Didn't fit in culturally because it was too many Kushners
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: and basically kind of like an ass to leave for
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: a semester, signed up for the Marine Corps, served in Iraq,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: served in a unit that's unbelievable casualties and just horrific
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: combat and has come out. You know, the book leads
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: with him talking about like going to find a friend
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: who's really struggling with mental health disorders. He's dealing with PTSD.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, It's an amazing bio. I think the thing
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: I like a lot about Ruben Gallego is he talks
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: like a human being. Yeah, that's good.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: He's a regular person, for better or for worse, politically.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying he seems like a very cool guy
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: who would be fun to get a beer with, which
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: was the old test. And the contrast of that video
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and who Ruben Gallego is with Kyrsten Sinema strutting around
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Davos with the mooch or whatever, doing whatever they do there,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: or Carrie Lake still on her weird I-didn't-lose-campaign- Blake Masters
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: being the single most repugnant human being ever focus grouped.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, I like his chances. What about you?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it. Look, I think that if it's
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: a three way race.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: And we don't know about cinema if she's going to
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: run yet. But if it's three way race, the math
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: is unforgiving for either cinema or Gallego. Not impossible, but
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: really tough. But there was a public policy poll from
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: December that Gallego's campaign in waiting at that point put out.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And it had Lake, Carrie Lake at 41%, Gallego at 40%,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Sinema at 13%. And they argued, I think persuasively in
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that memo, that the spoiler here would be Sinema if
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: she runs.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Because she has no path to win. And I think
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that is true. I think if there's a three-way race
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and it's Gallego, I mean, I don't think another Democrat's
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: going to run in the primary, at least a serious challenger.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: But if it's Gallego... is the Democratic nominee, Sinema is
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: the independent, and the Republican, like, I don't think there's
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a path for Sinema in that situation. I think it's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: either the Republican or Gallego.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, I hope you're right. I mean, I
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: think clearly Gallego's going early because he wants to clear
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the field and raise a ton of money.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: That primary is in August of 2024.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, is it? Yes, it's so far from now.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: That's a long time.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: But Kyrsten Sinema, I mean, she... Left the Democratic Party
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: and she became an independent because she knew she would
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: get smoked by Geico in a primary. So I think
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: there's eyes and questions like what does the DSCC do here?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Are they forced to help her in some way or
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: at least not get involved to keep her from completely
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: leaving the party, not caucusing with the party so we
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: lose our majority?
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: It's tough because and I think they asked Durbin this
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: when he was on the Sunday shows talking about Joe
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Biden's stature. He was like, oh, it's too early and blah, blah, blah.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: But if it's in August of 24, then the, like,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many other Democrats will run in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the Democratic primary, but you could see the DS being like, okay,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: we're going to hold on because we don't want to
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: get in the middle of a primary. But if it's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: just Gallego and he clears the field on the Democratic side,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. If I was the DS, I'd be like, yeah,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: we're the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. We are here to
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: support Democrats. Kyrsten Sinema, well, it's nice that she caucuses
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: with the Democrats. nothing against her she's just not a
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: democrat and so we're going to support the democratic candidate
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in the race now i think that will also depend
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: on other polls if they if they come in similar
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to the ppp poll and how much money guy yoga
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: races now i would i'm going to go on a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: limb here and say he's going to raise plenty of
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: money she has a ton of money right now she
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: gets it from all the hedge fund people that love
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: her but i think that he will have no problem
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: raising money because i think Progressives not just in Arizona
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: but all across the country will want to donate to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: this campaign.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm right there with them.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I just want to like sit down with her and
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: just be like, hey, what do you want to do
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: in life? What gets you fired up in the morning?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I think we saw what she wants to do in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: life at Davos. I think like hanging around rich people
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and opining on like deficits and debt is– that's what
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: she likes. I really think that's what she wants to do,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: which makes me think that I think there's an outside
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: chance that she doesn't run.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't seem very fun. I don't think
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: she's held a town hall in the state in like
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: two years. It doesn't seem like she likes the job.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't like the job either if I was getting
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: criticized by everybody all the time. But some people just,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: I guess, want to be in elected office.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: There's always been something like, obviously, her and Manchin have
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: been pains in our ass, our being the Democratic Party
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: for the last couple of years. But there's always something
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: about Manchin where I'm like, you know what? it's very
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: possible that this is just like, it's who Joe Manchin is,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: it's what he believes, he's representing West Virginia, he's a
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: conservative Democrat, that's it, you know? And I don't have
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: to like that, I don't, but I think that is
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: who Joe Manchin might be. With Kyrsten Sinema, like, she
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: was a Green Party person, she's gone back and forth
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: so many different times, like, I really do think she's
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: more in it for Kyrsten Sinema than she is for
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: any kind of, like, I don't know that her beliefs
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: are really I'm confused by them.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: That's for damn sure.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I'm very confused.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I'm certainly confused why you'd be a Democrat if you
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: don't want to help working people with lower prescription drugs or,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know, raising taxes on super, super rich hedge
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: fund people. I mean, look, if I were to sum
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: up the number of times that Manchin and Sinema turned
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: me into like a red-faced, rage-filled monster, I think Manchin
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: wins in a landslide. But to your point, I get
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: his politics. He's in a Trump plus 39 state.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: He's in a Trump plus 39 state, and I don't
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: know why I'm going on a Joe Manchin appreciation for it.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You love the guy. Yeah, but the guy is now
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: one of the least popular senators in the country. he's
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: facing reelection in 2024, and then helped Joe Biden. He
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: cast the vote for the biggest climate change legislation in decades.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: So I'm just saying, it's weird. And then the Shiva
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: staff left to become an oil lobbyist. Right, yeah, exactly.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: So it's all weird. It all kind of makes sense.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: But back to Gallego, you were just talking about why,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: you know, Sinema's embrace of the wealthy. I do think
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: every time you read a story about Gallego, it's like, oh,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: he's a progressive challenger to Kyrsten Sinema. I think he
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't want this to be an ideological race. And you
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: can tell because that whole video, And the part we
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: played was all about she standing up for wealthy interests
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and I'm standing up for people. And it's going to
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: be very, you know, and our friend Rebecca Katz, who
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: worked for John Fetterman, is on this campaign as well.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: It's going to it's going to remind us of the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: way that Fetterman ran against Dr.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Oz.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Which is not in an ideological way, but much more
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: in a economically populist way. And I think Gallego is
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: very good at that.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. And with a ton of bio to sort of show,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of credential those values. Like this is
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: who I am. This is where I'm from. That's why
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I believe these things. And I think that's the strongest
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: message you can have.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And like you said, he talks like a normal person.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: When he was on, I remember when we interviewed him
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: on Pod Save America in like 2017, he finished the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: interview with me and Dan, and I was like, he
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: could be like a fifth Pod Save America host. That's
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: how he talks. And he's going to come back on
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the pod this Thursday. He's going to be on, we're
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: going to interview him this Thursday. And Dan's going to
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: grill him.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Fingers crossed. We'll see.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: So Sherrod Brown and Tim Kaine have both said they're
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: running for re-election. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan has said she's retiring.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and then Manchin and Jon Tester still haven't decided. Knowing
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: all this, plus the Gallego news, how are you feeling
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: about the Senate map in 24?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's hard, right, Jon? I mean, it's never great. Again,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: we have to defend an R plus 39 state and
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: an R Trump plus 16 state, which is Montana. Now, luckily,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Jon Tester is wildly popular. Yeah, that same poll that
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: I said, Manchin's very unpopular now. Tester, 60% approval, 30% disapprove.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: That's Wild for being a Montana senator, Democrat.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: I think 538 had the stat. Only five senators out
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: of 100 occupy seats that the other party's presidential candidate
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: won in 2020. Three of those are red state Democrats
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: who are up in 2024, Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: So numerically, it's a very difficult year for us because
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: we're defending, Democrats are defending 23 seats. Republicans are defending
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: nine seats. The only thing The only thing that really
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: counts as a pickup opportunity for Democrats is Ted Cruz
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: again in Texas. Now, hope springs eternal with that asshole.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Or Rick Scott in Florida, who is, you know, just
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: a singularly repellent human being.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: So, again, you know, Florida's tough.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: There's a tough story at the Washington Post over the
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: weekend about the utter lack of organizing infrastructure in Florida.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: That was so tough that I skimmed it. Cruz is, yeah,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Cruz is also underwater, as he has been for a while.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: That crew, like, I'm actually most worried about Manchin keeping
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that seat. Or Manchin even, I mean, Manchin might not
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: even run again. You know, Chuck Todd asked him about
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: that over the weekend. And he ruled out running for governor.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: He did not rule out running. for Senate again or
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: running for president, potentially, which is interesting.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Well, he gives you one and then he takes one away. Right, yeah.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But you could see if he does run for president
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: or he just doesn't run at all, it's because he's
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: going to look at that. He's at 40% approval, 53%
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: disapproval in West Virginia. Governor Jim Justice might run, who's
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: very popular there. So I think that'd be a really
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: tough race for him. Sherrod is a fantastic candidate. Obviously, like,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: we were all disappointed when Tim Ryan didn't win. And,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you know, in fact, lost by a similar amount than
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: to Biden did in in 2020. But Sherrod Brown is
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: an incumbent. And Sherrod Brown is a survivor and has
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: won many times in that state before when it has
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: still been a reddening state. Look, and Tim Ryan, he
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: ran a great race. He deserves a lot of credit.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: He outperformed what I think a lot of pundits, myself included,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: thought he could do.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did a few points better than Biden, I
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: should say.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That said, I think Sherrod Brown has proven to be
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: a singularly talented politician in terms of forging and keeping
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: a connection with working class union voters in Ohio. And
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know, he seems like he's been able to
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: fend off some of the culture war focused fights that
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Republicans draw other candidates into. Now, it's a tough state.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Trump carried it by eight, I believe.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: So it'll be very hard.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: But, you know, it's sort of like putting one of
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: your best fighters out there.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: And for all of these races, it depends on who
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the Republicans nominate. Exactly. As we've seen and as we
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: just saw in 22, in addition to Ohio Republicans perhaps
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: nominating another very extreme candidate, the other two Democratic senators
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: with tough reelects, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Pennsylvania haven't exactly been putting up mainstream Republicans. No,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: they have not. In recent times.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: And again, two incredibly good candidates there. Yeah, Casey, I know,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: is dealing with some health issues, but I think Pennsylvania
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: is also trending in a better direction. In Nevada, Jackie
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Rosen will be up. Oh, yeah.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I forgot about Jackie Rosen in Nevada.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: She is excellent, though.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: God, there's just so many races that are tough.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Because you don't have to worry about her for a second.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: She's that good.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Remember, we ran into her at the... Yeah, on our
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: way out of Nevada. We were leaving Nevada. We went
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: to grab some food. We ordered every single tater tot
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: or tater tot adjacent menu item, and then we ran
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: into you, Ascender. Yeah, she's fantastic.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And Debbie Sabino, there should be some really good Democrats
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: in Michigan that could run there. And again, Michigan Republican Party,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: also a fucking mess. So they might nominate someone pretty
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: extreme as well, hopefully. Okay. When we come back, we'll
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: have our interview with Democratic House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Joining us now is the minority leader of the House
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of Representatives, New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, welcome
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to Pod Save America.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: Good morning. Great to be here.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: So minority party in the House doesn't usually have that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: much power. This majority can barely find common ground with
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: each other, let alone Democrats. Their plan seems to be,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: you know, launching investigations and creating crises. What's on your
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: to-do list for the next two years? And what do
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you think you can accomplish in an environment like this?
• 42:14
  Speaker 10: Well, You know, we're committed to trying to find common
• 42:16
  Speaker 10: ground whenever and wherever possible with the other side of
• 42:19
  Speaker 10: the aisle to make progress, right, for the American people.
• 42:21
  Speaker 10: That's why we were sent to Washington, not as Democrats
• 42:24
  Speaker 10: and Republicans, as Americans fundamentally, to do a job for
• 42:28
  Speaker 10: the American people. So, you know, we continue to extend
• 42:30
  Speaker 10: the hand of partnership to the other side of the
• 42:33
  Speaker 10: aisle to do reasonable things to advance the ball for
• 42:37
  Speaker 10: the American people. And we can get into the specifics
• 42:39
  Speaker 10: about what that could look like. But we will combat
• 42:43
  Speaker 10: extremism whenever and wherever it's found. And I think the
• 42:47
  Speaker 10: first issue that's going to be in front of us
• 42:49
  Speaker 10: is to make sure we don't default on our nation's
• 42:52
  Speaker 10: debt for the first time in American history. And we
• 42:55
  Speaker 10: know that there are Republicans who want to essentially hijack
• 42:59
  Speaker 10: the debt ceiling issue in order to extract painful cuts
• 43:05
  Speaker 10: to Social Security and Medicare. We're going to draw a
• 43:07
  Speaker 10: line in the sand. Social Security is not negotiable. Medicare
• 43:11
  Speaker 10: is not negotiable, and we are not going to negotiate
• 43:14
  Speaker 10: with hostage takers. So that has to be done. We
• 43:16
  Speaker 10: hit the debt ceiling yesterday. And so we need to
• 43:21
  Speaker 10: deal with this issue quickly and efficiently, and then we
• 43:26
  Speaker 10: can get on to doing other things in pursuit of
• 43:29
  Speaker 10: common ground with the other side of the aisle.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Have you or your team had any discussions with some
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: of the more moderate Republicans in the House who are
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: maybe sitting in Biden districts about a discharge petition?
• 43:44
  Speaker 10: We haven't had those specific discussions yet. Although, as you
• 43:47
  Speaker 10: point out, a discharge petition is one possible avenue. I
• 43:50
  Speaker 10: think the most important thing that can be done is
• 43:52
  Speaker 10: that Kevin McCarthy should just bring a straight, clean debt
• 43:58
  Speaker 10: ceiling bill to the floor of the House of Representatives,
• 44:02
  Speaker 10: confident that every single member of the House Democratic Caucus
• 44:05
  Speaker 10: would support it.
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: But we would.
• 44:07
  Speaker 10: Need five, six handful of reasonable Republicans to do what
• 44:15
  Speaker 10: has consistently been done for approximately 100 years in terms
• 44:22
  Speaker 10: of dealing with the debt ceiling issue. It's been done
• 44:24
  Speaker 10: on the Republican presidents, whether that was Reagan, Bush, the father, Bush,
• 44:29
  Speaker 10: the son, Trump, two or three times. I believe Democrats
• 44:33
  Speaker 10: helped do it. And this relates to debts that the
• 44:37
  Speaker 10: country has already incurred has nothing to do with future
• 44:42
  Speaker 10: spending issues. Let's have that debate. But we're not going
• 44:45
  Speaker 10: to allow that debate to unfold with a gun being
• 44:48
  Speaker 10: held to the head of the American people.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy kind of seems like a guy who drove
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: off a cliff and he's still like turning the wheel
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: like it's going to help. Does it help that Trump
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: is out there this morning saying, Republicans should not cut Medicare.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Republicans should not cut Social Security as part of the
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: debt ceiling hostage taking.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Do you think that will influence House Republicans?
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: It's possible.
• 45:10
  Speaker 10: I think the most important thing is that the American
• 45:13
  Speaker 10: people have earned Social Security and Medicare, paid into it
• 45:18
  Speaker 10: their entire lives, worked to get to a point where
• 45:21
  Speaker 10: they can retire with grace and dignity. And there's just
• 45:25
  Speaker 10: no circumstance where we should be even having a discussion
• 45:29
  Speaker 10: about particularly as it relates to the full faith and
• 45:32
  Speaker 10: credit of the United States of America. Specifically to your question,
• 45:35
  Speaker 10: I do think that as it relates to some of
• 45:38
  Speaker 10: the extremists on the other side of the aisle, perhaps
• 45:42
  Speaker 10: what Trump has to say on this issue could be meaningful. Although,
• 45:45
  Speaker 10: as we saw, you know, during the opening week of
• 45:49
  Speaker 10: the 118th Congress, even Trump's perspective as it relates to
• 45:53
  Speaker 10: McCarthy didn't fully sink in until after 15 votes.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And they wouldn't take his call.
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: Well, so.
• 45:59
  Speaker 8: Didn't he just go through a whole fight where Kevin
• 46:01
  Speaker 8: McCarthy promised he will never do what he should do?
• 46:03
  Speaker 8: You just said this is what Kevin McCarthy should do.
• 46:05
  Speaker 8: He never does what he should do. And he just
• 46:06
  Speaker 8: promised he won't do it. So what happens then? I mean,
• 46:10
  Speaker 8: he said he won't do it. So then where do
• 46:12
  Speaker 8: we go?
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: Well, Kevin McCarthy says a lot of things and then
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: does something else.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 46:16
  Speaker 10: And so, you know, the reality is on this issue,
• 46:21
  Speaker 10: I think perhaps the business community has consistently weighed in
• 46:27
  Speaker 10: and suggested that a default on our debt would be catastrophic,
• 46:32
  Speaker 10: highly problematic, unprecedented, and could collapse the economy, send it
• 46:38
  Speaker 10: into a tailspin, a deep recession, if not worse, not
• 46:40
  Speaker 10: just the U.S.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: Economy, but across the world.
• 46:43
  Speaker 10: My suggestion is he's not necessarily going to do the
• 46:45
  Speaker 10: right thing, perhaps, as it relates to preserving Social Security
• 46:50
  Speaker 10: and Medicare. But there are other reasons why people come
• 46:53
  Speaker 10: to a conclusion. And perhaps in this instance, the business
• 46:57
  Speaker 10: community can prevail upon my friends on the other side
• 47:01
  Speaker 10: of the aisle.
• 47:02
  Speaker 8: Didn't those friends ever come up to you kind of
• 47:03
  Speaker 8: quietly and be like, I'm really sorry about these freaks. Like,
• 47:06
  Speaker 8: I just, I can't believe it. I just, this is
• 47:07
  Speaker 8: not what I ever wanted. I can't say it publicly,
• 47:09
  Speaker 8: but man, these are freaks.
• 47:11
  Speaker 10: I haven't heard the word freaks being used, but I
• 47:15
  Speaker 10: understand why you might characterize some folks using that type
• 47:21
  Speaker 10: of colorful language. They certainly, you know, in my view
• 47:25
  Speaker 10: are extreme Yeah. And I think the American people have
• 47:29
  Speaker 10: seen that over and over again. And we've been very
• 47:31
  Speaker 10: clear on a variety of issues. We believe in a
• 47:35
  Speaker 10: woman's freedom to make her own reproductive health care decisions.
• 47:39
  Speaker 10: They're extreme on abortion care. They want to criminalize abortion,
• 47:42
  Speaker 10: impose a nationwide ban. We believe in Social Security and Medicare.
• 47:46
  Speaker 10: They're extreme on it. They want to blow it up.
• 47:49
  Speaker 10: We believe in democracy. Apparently, many of them don't. They
• 47:53
  Speaker 10: coddle insurrectionists. perpetrate the big lie.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, we're going towards the alphabet.
• 48:00
  Speaker 10: But, you know, the reality is, I think, in my view,
• 48:05
  Speaker 10: what best captures the moment that we're in is a
• 48:10
  Speaker 10: level of extremism that the vast majority of the American
• 48:15
  Speaker 10: people are not comfortable with. And our job moving forward
• 48:19
  Speaker 10: is to continue to contrast that with who we are
• 48:22
  Speaker 10: as Democrats, people who are committed actually to making a
• 48:25
  Speaker 10: difference in the lives of everyday Americans on issue after
• 48:28
  Speaker 10: issue after issue.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: So you've said no negotiating over the debt ceiling. Biden
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: has said that. Schumer has said that. A lot of
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Democrats have said that. Some of the Republicans who have
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: said we can't breach the debt ceiling, like Congressman Fitzpatrick,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: he's saying he still doesn't want a clean increase, right,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: even though he thinks we shouldn't. He also said the
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: other day that he has been in discussions with Josh Gottheimer,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: representative who's in your caucus, about a possible bipartisan deal.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: What do you think about what Gottheimer's doing there? And like,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I do think one way you guys could get pulled
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: into negotiations is with people in the Democratic Party, like
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Manchin's been saying this in Davos, and Gottheimer could be
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: like pulling you guys into negotiations. What do you think
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 49:12
  Speaker 10: Well, and I haven't had a conversation with Josh about this,
• 49:14
  Speaker 10: but I think he also understands generally, as do all
• 49:20
  Speaker 10: of the members of the House Democratic Caucus, that you
• 49:23
  Speaker 10: cannot have a legitimate negotiation with hostage takers, people who
• 49:29
  Speaker 10: are trying to leverage a moment that could result in
• 49:33
  Speaker 10: catastrophic consequences for the American people, a default on our
• 49:37
  Speaker 10: nations that for the first time in our 247-year history
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: as a country, can't have a negotiation about anything in
• 49:46
  Speaker 10: that context if you don't have responsible people on the
• 49:49
  Speaker 10: other side of the aisle. I think at the end
• 49:51
  Speaker 10: of the day, Kevin McCarthy probably understands, as Mitch McConnell understands,
• 49:57
  Speaker 10: that we can't go down this road. But I think
• 50:01
  Speaker 10: what the Republicans are working through is that they've got
• 50:05
  Speaker 10: a very small majority, as we've seen, with some very unruly,
• 50:11
  Speaker 10: extreme individuals who are intent on sort of driving their
• 50:17
  Speaker 10: own ideological perspective, even if that means the American people,
• 50:22
  Speaker 10: the economy, or other things that we care about being
• 50:26
  Speaker 10: tossed over a cliff.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: So Kevin McCarthy, we know he cut a bunch of deals,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: some public, some private, to get the job. The White
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: House is calling on him to come clean about them,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: to release like this secret three-page memo that apparently exists.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Do you think this memo exists? Do you think we
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: know the full extent of what he promised?
• 50:44
  Speaker 10: We definitely don't know the full extent of what has
• 50:46
  Speaker 10: been promised, but I do think that that will begin
• 50:48
  Speaker 10: to come to light. Many of Kevin McCarthy's own members
• 50:52
  Speaker 10: have expressed an interest in trying to figure out what
• 50:56
  Speaker 10: was promised to some of the more extreme elements. Now,
• 51:00
  Speaker 10: I think at the end of the day, the reality
• 51:05
  Speaker 10: is we can either figure out a way on issues
• 51:09
  Speaker 10: like the debt ceiling, on government spending, avoiding a shutdown,
• 51:15
  Speaker 10: the farm bill, reauthorizing the FAA. These are things that
• 51:19
  Speaker 10: we have to do this term. And we've got to
• 51:22
  Speaker 10: find a way to find a reasonable group of Republicans
• 51:27
  Speaker 10: interested in governing, not burning down the house, uh, so
• 51:31
  Speaker 10: that we can advance the ball for the American people.
• 51:34
  Speaker 10: And hopefully, um, Kevin McCarthy will be able to corral
• 51:38
  Speaker 10: his folks to try to find that kind of common ground.
• 51:41
  Speaker 10: But that remains to be seen because of the extreme
• 51:45
  Speaker 10: nature of so many folks on the other side of
• 51:48
  Speaker 10: the aisle.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Jamal Bowman, your colleague, has suggested that maybe Democrats could
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: use some of the things Kevin McCarthy gave away to
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: get the job, like the motion to vacate, which allows
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: any member of Congress to force a vote on basically
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: firing him as Speaker. Do you think, is that the
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: kind of good trouble that the Democrats want to get into,
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: like putting forward the motion to vacate?
• 52:09
  Speaker 10: Well, you know, the motion to vacate issue, we had
• 52:12
  Speaker 10: a very different process that was in place. Once the
• 52:15
  Speaker 10: House elects a speaker, the House should elect a speaker
• 52:19
  Speaker 10: for that term. That's kind of my view of it.
• 52:23
  Speaker 10: But different decisions were made in terms of the motion
• 52:26
  Speaker 10: to vacate, and we'll see how that all plays itself out.
• 52:28
  Speaker 10: I do think that there are areas of the rules
• 52:32
  Speaker 10: package that that perhaps will provide some of our members
• 52:37
  Speaker 10: an opportunity to advance issues that could be debated on
• 52:40
  Speaker 10: the floor of the House of Representatives in an open way.
• 52:43
  Speaker 10: For instance, I think Speaker McCarthy has suggested that there
• 52:47
  Speaker 10: will be legislative Wednesdays from time to time where bills
• 52:53
  Speaker 10: that have been voted favorably out of a committee would
• 52:57
  Speaker 10: automatically be brought to the floor for a vote. Not
• 53:00
  Speaker 10: necessarily just Republican bills, but Democratic bills. that actually is
• 53:04
  Speaker 10: an area where there could be opportunity, uh, even though
• 53:08
  Speaker 10: we find ourselves temporarily in the minority, uh, for our
• 53:12
  Speaker 10: members to advance priorities similar to, um, some of the
• 53:16
  Speaker 10: things that representative Bowman may be talking about.
• 53:19
  Speaker 8: So speaking of, uh, uh, uh, Bowman, there's been a
• 53:24
  Speaker 8: lot of, uh, questions about some of the decisions being
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: made by, uh, Democrats in New York, uh, The governor's
• 53:32
  Speaker 8: judge just got rejected by a Senate committee. There's been
• 53:34
  Speaker 8: a lot of anger about what happened with redistricting. In fact,
• 53:37
  Speaker 8: a lot of people think that some dumb decisions by
• 53:39
  Speaker 8: New York Democrats are the reason you're leader instead of
• 53:42
  Speaker 8: speaker right now. Are you frustrated? Are you frustrated by
• 53:45
  Speaker 8: what's been happening with New York Democrats? Well, Democrats in
• 53:49
  Speaker 8: general are a noisy group of people, and certainly that's
• 53:51
  Speaker 8: the case back home in New York. I do think
• 53:55
  Speaker 8: that we need a serious after-action report, which is underway.
• 54:00
  Speaker 8: Right now, I think both the DTRIP, DCCC is looking
• 54:04
  Speaker 8: at the New York situation, as well as the state
• 54:08
  Speaker 8: Democratic Party.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: What happened? Why did it happen? What went wrong?
• 54:14
  Speaker 10: What needs to occur to put ourselves in a much
• 54:17
  Speaker 10: stronger position in 2024? Speaker Pelosi, who's been an amazing, giant, heroic,
• 54:25
  Speaker 10: iconic legislative leader, has always said, don't agonize, organize. And
• 54:29
  Speaker 10: at the end of the day, my view is we
• 54:32
  Speaker 10: can't agonize over what happened and what may have occurred
• 54:35
  Speaker 10: had things gone differently in New York and a variety
• 54:37
  Speaker 10: of different factors came into play. Certainly, the fact that
• 54:41
  Speaker 10: there were challenges at the top of the ticket in
• 54:44
  Speaker 10: the governor's race, which was much closer than many of
• 54:48
  Speaker 10: us have expected, and the closest governor's race, I think,
• 54:53
  Speaker 10: since 2002. and had some challenges in suburban Long Island
• 54:59
  Speaker 10: and in the Hudson Valley, there were consequences for our candidates.
• 55:03
  Speaker 10: And that may be a starting place to figure out
• 55:06
  Speaker 10: how we can improve upon our performance.
• 55:08
  Speaker 8: And someone like, say, George Santos was probably beatable. Probably
• 55:12
  Speaker 8: could have figured out a way to come up with
• 55:13
  Speaker 8: an argument against George fucking Santos.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Which version?
• 55:17
  Speaker 8: Just one last question about this. So it's been this
• 55:20
  Speaker 8: strange fight over this judge. You have Hochul basically going
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: up against unions now. A lot of progressives being angry
• 55:26
  Speaker 8: about having this fight. You got drawn into this fight.
• 55:29
  Speaker 8: Can't imagine you're happy about it.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Is it time to move on?
• 55:31
  Speaker 8: Is it time to just put a new judge up here?
• 55:33
  Speaker 8: Or should we keep this fight going, you think? Yeah, well,
• 55:35
  Speaker 8: you know, hopefully back at home, they're going to be
• 55:37
  Speaker 8: able to work this out.
• 55:38
  Speaker 10: You know, both the Senate Democratic Conference in partnership with
• 55:42
  Speaker 10: Governor Hochul. Part of the challenge, I think, is that
• 55:46
  Speaker 10: it's a convoluted process by which Governor Hochul can actually
• 55:51
  Speaker 10: choose and nominate someone to be a chief judge. She
• 55:55
  Speaker 10: can't just figure out who's the best person and put
• 55:58
  Speaker 10: that name forward. There is a committee. Most of the
• 56:03
  Speaker 10: membership of that committee was controlled, as I understand it,
• 56:07
  Speaker 10: by the prior chief judge and the prior governor. And
• 56:11
  Speaker 10: then they recommend, I think, seven names. And then Governor
• 56:14
  Speaker 10: Hochul has to choose from that group of people. And
• 56:21
  Speaker 10: she chose a judge, and my view was, all right,
• 56:24
  Speaker 10: he should have a full and fair hearing, which has
• 56:27
  Speaker 10: just occurred, and then an up or down vote on
• 56:33
  Speaker 10: the floor of the New York State Senate.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: And it's going to be what it's going to be.
• 56:37
  Speaker 10: And at that point, he either is voted favorably by
• 56:41
  Speaker 10: the body, or he's rejected by the body, and then
• 56:44
  Speaker 10: we can move on.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Your A to Z speech where you handed the speakership
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: to Kevin McCarthy has gotten quite a bit of attention.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Two questions on it. How long did you take to
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: come up with the word Xenial and can you use
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: it in a sentence?
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: Well, Xenial was the toughest word.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: The whole time I was waiting for it, I'm like,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: what's he going to do with X?
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: That was the only option that seemed available to me.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Xerox.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Xerox. Xerox. That's all I got.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Xerox.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: Xylophones in schools.
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
• 57:15
  Speaker 10: But, you know, I mean, I think we as a
• 57:17
  Speaker 10: country should adopt a zennial approach.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: There we go.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: To welcoming people in pursuit of the great American dream.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Nailed it.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Nailed it.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know if quality of life issues is that
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: good either. I like that one.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: You can run it by Lovett next time for edits.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Best piece of advice Nancy Pelosi gave you about this job?
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: Take it day by day, you know, decision by decision.
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: Have a plan.
• 57:41
  Speaker 10: Always be prepared to make a decision, but have a
• 57:45
  Speaker 10: plan and then go out and execute it.
• 57:47
  Speaker 8: Is Schumer texting you? Is Schumer calling you a lot?
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: He doesn't text.
• 57:50
  Speaker 8: He doesn't text. Is he calling you all the time already?
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: We speak a lot. Is it frustrating? No, it's not frustrating.
• 57:57
  Speaker 10: Well, you know, Leader Schumer has always been a very
• 58:01
  Speaker 10: active senator, even back at home in his capacity as,
• 58:05
  Speaker 10: you know, initially the junior senator and most recently the
• 58:08
  Speaker 10: senior senator. So I'm used to regular communication. This is
• 58:10
  Speaker 10: now a different level. because of the implications of what
• 58:15
  Speaker 10: we both are navigating.
• 58:16
  Speaker 8: Pelosi wanted to try to get him to text. She
• 58:18
  Speaker 8: said in an interview with him, like, if you texted,
• 58:20
  Speaker 8: we wouldn't have to talk so much.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: He still rocks with a flip phone.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: I respect that.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: You got to respect that.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: You're a very powerful guy. You know a lot of
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: powerful people.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Can you talk to someone about these email and text
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: fundraising ads from the Democratic Party? It's always the end
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: of a quarter. They're always trying to scare me. There's
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: got to be a better way, right?
• 58:43
  Speaker 10: Well, I mean, I do think that there's an urgency
• 58:46
  Speaker 10: that we've all been dealing with. And so we can
• 58:50
  Speaker 10: have a discussion about the appropriate level of communication in
• 58:54
  Speaker 10: terms of trying to raise the dollars necessary in the
• 58:57
  Speaker 10: moment that we're in. And I understand why you would
• 59:00
  Speaker 10: raise that. But the reality of our journey in this
• 59:04
  Speaker 10: country is this is a next level situation that we're confronting.
• 59:08
  Speaker 10: I mean, just the last few years, the transportation presidency, Trumpism,
• 59:11
  Speaker 10: longest government shutdown in American history, two impeachments, an insurrection,
• 59:17
  Speaker 10: a once in a century pandemic, a shutdown of the economy.
• 59:21
  Speaker 10: And then, of course, Democrats being able to come together
• 59:24
  Speaker 10: to actually deliver for the American people in a big way,
• 59:27
  Speaker 10: American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: Chips and science. He's not stopping these texts.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: No, he's really nice to these fundraising people, these fundraising consultants.
• 59:34
  Speaker 10: Gun safety legislation, first time in 30 years. Inflation Reduction Act.
• 59:38
  Speaker 10: My only point is, a lot's going on. There's a
• 59:41
  Speaker 10: lot to talk about. There's a lot to communicate on.
• 59:44
  Speaker 10: And there's an urgency to the moment.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Me, I would donate more just to get fewer texts.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: To get less.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there should be a Schumer option where you don't
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: get texted. It's like ad-free Hulu.
• 59:52
  Speaker 8: It's like there should be Democrat Plus and then they
• 59:55
  Speaker 8: never fucking talk to you. I'll give you whatever you want.
• 59:57
  Speaker 8: Just leave me alone. Quick question, no wrong answer. Do
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 8: you have any classified documents in your house?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: Okay, cool. Good stuff.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Speaking of fundraising, George Santos, your colleague in New York,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: we recently learned that he stole money from a veteran
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: raising it to pay for care for a dying dog.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Is there anything we can do about this guy, George Santos,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: who made up an entire life, career, everything to get
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: into Congress?
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, George Santos is clearly not fit to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 10: serve in the United States Congress. He's a complete and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 10: total fraud. Now, we're constrained to some degree by the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 10: constitutional requirements. One, basically, someone has to be seated if
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 10: they meet the age requirement, the residency requirement. and a
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 10: citizenship requirement. Remains to be seen whether he's actually a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 10: citizen or not. I mean, I think his whole life
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 10: actually is under exploration and examination right now because he's
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 10: basically lied about everything. But there are multiple investigations. Federal
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 10: government appears to be investigating U.S. attorney from the Eastern
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 10: District of New York, Nassau County District Attorney, Queens County
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 10: District Attorney, Ethics Committee.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Brazil wants in.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: Brazil wants in.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: He may be on Drag Race next season.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: And so a lot of people want him.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 10: And so, you know, I mean, I think we'll be
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 10: through this Santos situation sooner rather than later. But we've
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 10: got to let these investigations play themselves out. They'll follow
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 10: the facts, apply the law, and let the chips fall
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 10: where they may.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Fair enough.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Leader Jeffries, thank you so much for joining Podsafe America.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Come back again.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: All right. Before we go, Chief Take Officer Elijah Cohn
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: is here. And he's got another Take-inspired game that we're
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: calling Take, Take, Don't Tell Me. Great show.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: Yes. When I was describing this game to my wife today,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: she said, I guess I should say hi first. I'm
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: all over the place today.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: Hi, guys.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: Leave it in. When I was describing this game to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: my wife today, she said, how is this different than
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 6: Take Appreciators? And I said, there are five instead of three.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: But you know what?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a, but there's a ranking system.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Use material difference. Explain the whole.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 6: Explain the ranking system. There's a twist.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: So there's a ranking system. I'm going to read you
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 6: guys five news stories, five takes. You have to rank
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: them from best to worst with the worst being number one.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: You can use our political scale as an aid here.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: Here's the catch. You guys don't know the takes that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: are coming. So you need to be careful not to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: fill that number one slot too early. And listen, I'm
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: going to be responsive here. I have like an order
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: that I'm going to read them. But if you're like
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: clearly going like five, four, three, two, one, like I'm
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 6: going to mix it up and throw in the spicier ones.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: So, so. I think I'm ready.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I have to think. So, so the, the, the worst
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: take is one. The best worst take is five.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: Least offensive.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Least offensive take is five.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Okay. Got it. That's a tough one.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: And I can't repeat. There can't be three twos. No,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: that's the whole, that's the whole trick of it.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: Then at the end, we'll grade how we did, see
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: if we want to reevaluate. It's Frankie.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: We're going to grade our ranking.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: Okay. Let's start here with NBC News. Not normally an
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: offender in our take pieces here. This is a piece
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: from Jeffrey Bellin, who wrote a book about mass incarceration.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 6: The headline is, The Road to End Mass Incarceration Could
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: Begin with Mercy for Some January 6 Rioters. This piece
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 6: argues that Biden should pardon thousands of prisoners, including some
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: of the January 6th rioters, because it could jumpstart an
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: era of mass decarceration. Among these arguments includes, quote, Biden
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 6: would push his primary critic, Donald Trump, into a corner.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 6: Trump vowed to pardon all the January 6th defendants by
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: commuting sentences for at least some of those who didn't
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: interfere with police. Biden would force Trump, who claims to
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: back the blue, to either endorse his action or narrow
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: his talking points. pushing for pardons for prisoners who assaulted police.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: What do we think?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: It's just a convoluted one. I'm going to give that
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: a four because I think I'd love to see President
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Biden do more pardons and commutations. I think that our
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: prison system, our justice system is terrible and needlessly throws
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: way too many people in prison for way too long.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: And pardons are good. So we have to both agree
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: on one, right? Yes, you guys need to come to consensus.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 6: You guys need to come to consensus.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: And I would say... Don't you agree?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: Honestly?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: You made a persuasive case. I think I'm there with
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: you for four. No, because I think it's a terrible idea.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: I think the political idea behind it, too, the political
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: strategy behind it, that Trump is going to outflank Trump.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: It's ludicrous.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Is very silly. Assuming there's logic.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know that pardoning A bunch of, you know,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: violent rioters is somehow going to kickstart the era of
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: mass decarceration. I don't see how that's going. One leads
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: to another. I think these things should be evaluated on
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: the individual merits of if each individual rioter like makes
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: a case that they should get a pardon, that's one thing,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: but I.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: And some is doing a lot of work here. I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: assume it's some smaller proportion of a rather large number.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: I think there's probably some people that are just straight
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: up stone cold morons who wandered in there and are
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: getting like 30 days in jail or something. And maybe
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: you let those folks go. Right.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I think it, yeah, I, I use the term violent.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: So I think the ones who were there, there was,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: there's some obviously who were, uh, uh, lost, committed greater
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: offenses than others.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: In the rioters.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: Tommy Vitor thinks January 6th rioters should be free. Got
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 6: it right there.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: God damn it.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: This is his plan the whole time.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: So this is four.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: So we have a, all right, so we have, we
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: have one, we have room for one more that can
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: be not as, that can be even less offensive than that.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: And then they all have to be worse. Okay.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 6: Well, let's see about this one. This one's a little
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 6: bit of a curve ball. This next one, it's attacking
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump from the right. We were talking about Trump
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: earlier and how you do in a Republican primary. This
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 6: is a piece. from Town Hall, extremely right-wing website, called
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 6: Trump's COVID Vaccine Blind Spot. Here's a quote from the piece.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: Pride is a hell of a thing. It's making Trump
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: run for a third time. Trump's pride has unfortunately extended
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 6: to another point, Operation Warp Speed, a Trump-initiated endeavor that
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 6: began early on in the pandemic and ended up with
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: big pharma delivering several under-tested COVID vaccines to market. These vaccines,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: as we all know now, turned out to not only
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: fail to do their primary thing, which has stopped the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: spread of the disease, but they also arguably hurt and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 6: even killed far more people than they saved.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: Ugh.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's got, yeah, this is. The question is
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: if we leave room for worse.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 9: I know.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like Elijah's going to, he's, he's, he's got
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: something up his sleeve. I think we should to it.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's, it's pretty bad though. First of all,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: killed more people than they saved is madness. It's just
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: fucking nuts. That's not true.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Please look at China where they don't have all the vaccines.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I'm also very sick of the like, they were supposed
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: to stop the transmission. Like, yeah, when it was the
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: original Wuhan variant, they did stop the transmission. When it
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: fucking mutated to Omicron, they couldn't do it. That's not
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: the fault of the people. That's the fault of the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: fucking virus.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 6: What do you guys make of what Trump has to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: deal with here in his reelection? that this is his
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: base here.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: No, I think that cynical folks like Ron DeSantis are
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: going to purposely try to run to Trump's right on
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: this issue because they think that's the.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Well, he already is, right? I mean, he won't say
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: if he got boosted, I think, or he wouldn't put
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: out footage of his vaccination. I'm still sticking with two
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: because I think you got one more nastier take up your...
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Your brownie man sleeve there.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: But any take that vaccines killed people or were under-tested
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: or bad is just a ridiculous take. It's got to be.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner did nothing wrong.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: Okay. Yeah.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 6: Oh, off to a hot start here. Let's mark the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: halfway point with a clip. We have a clip teed up.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: I will go ahead and set this up here. Tucker
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 6: Carlson has been on a heater in defense of heaters recently.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 6: This is a clip from a Fox News host last
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 6: week defending big tobacco and big nicotine. Have a listen.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 11: Why do they hate tobacco? And it's not because it
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 11: causes cancer. They don't care about your health. They closed
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 11: the gyms during COVID. Anyone who closed a gym during
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 11: a pandemic that killed people who were fat clearly doesn't
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 11: care about your health at all.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 6: They hate nicotine.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 11: They love THC. They're promoting weed to your children, but
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 11: they're not letting you use tobacco or even non-tobacco nicotine
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 11: delivery devices, which don't cause cancer. Why do they hate nicotine?
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 11: Because nicotine frees your mind and THC makes you compliant
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 11: and passive. That's why they hate it. It's a real
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 11: threat to them.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: This guy's just out of his mind.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: It's just.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: It's a very Tucker way of doing it, you know?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Because he's like, the nicotine does it. You know, the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: smoke causes lung cancer, but not the nicotine. And it's just,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: it's elitism. I'm actually comfortable with it being a three.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: With.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I could make it a three or I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: could make it a one.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: I think convincing another generation of people to smoke cigarettes
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: and die from cancer in service of your culture war
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: moment is one of the most disgusting, cynical things you
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: could ever do. And I hope Tucker Carlson never gets...
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: cancer and dies, but having watched someone do it, it
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: makes me very, very mad.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: On a deep level.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have to listen to it again to
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: be sure, but I think it was a very typical
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: slimy Tucker way of talking about it. And that he,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: he noticed he didn't just come out and say that
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: like smoking doesn't cause cancer or smoking is safe. Like
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: he sort of. It frees your mind. It frees your mind. Well,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the nicotine frees your mind. What about the smokeless products?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: And then he started saying, look, they don't care about
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: your health because they closed gyms during COVID. He doesn't
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: directly say it, which is why I'm kind of.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: He's such a schmuck. Have you ever seen the picture
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: of Sean Hannity, uh, jeweling between commercial breaks? No. It's
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: very funny. That's cool.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Um, all right, let's, let's, let's three it. Although now
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: we're really going to need a bad take.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah. You guys are, you got a one and
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 6: five left here.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: Uh, all right.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: That's a tough place to be.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: All right, buddy, bring it.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: Hold on.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: I'm just going to recap the list real quick cause
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: I'm writing it down. Uh, and number two, we have
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 6: Trump vaccines kill people. Number three, nicotine freeze your mind.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 6: Number four, January six rioters should be freed.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: I'm okay with that so far. So far, so good.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: Here we go. Number four, a piece from Yahoo News.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Why'd you say it like that?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but I liked it.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 6: I'll tell you why I said it like that after
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: I read it.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 6: The piece's headline is, Senator Kyrsten Sinema dressed as a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 6: sheep at Davos and made everyone else look like fools.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 6: This piece describes Davos as, as you guys just said earlier,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 6: this piece describes Davos, which is an economic forum of
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: the super rich, as a colorless throng of left-wing conformity.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 6: I said Yahoo News like that because I didn't expect
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 6: this much of a right-wing take to be on Yahoo News.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 6: It notes that Kyrsten Sinema contrasted the rest of Davos
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 6: by wearing white when they were wearing black suits. Here's
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 6: a quote. Sinema represents the old left. that once celebrated
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 6: originality and nonconformity. For it, she was censured by her
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 6: own party and then driven out because she did one
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 6: of the most radical things you can do in American
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 6: politics today. She reached across the aisle.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: I hate this person.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: I hate him about this.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: This is a tough call because you could argue it
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: as a five because... while absurd and stupid, it's not
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: quite as offensive as some of the other takes that
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: we've ranked. Or you could argue for one just because
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: it's so fucking ridiculous.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: Was this take defending or criticizing Davos as an institution?
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: That's sort of what I couldn't suss out.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 6: It was criticizing Davos for being too left. It represents
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: the conformist left.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: It's the right-wing populist critique of Davos, right? A bunch
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: of globalist elites.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, okay, yeah, sure. Davos, a place where, you know,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: You can host a panel on press freedom with Mohammed
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: bin Zayed or some Gulf autocrat.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: But sure, tell me more. I don't know, man.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: Five or one. I could go either way on this.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: Much like sort of the leftist horseshoe theory thing with
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: the far right. I don't know what to do with
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: this one.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: What do we think? Do you think he's saving the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: heat for the end?
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: He's got to be a heater by the end.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 10: All right.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Let's do a five. Let's do five. Give us our
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: number one.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: I'll do a cinema at Davos at five. All right.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 6: Your last one. I think you're going to be happy
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: that you waited for this one. So obviously that you've
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 6: got that one spot open. Um, this is by far
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 6: the most requested take I've ever gotten in doing any segment, uh,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 6: about takes for the show. Uh, it's a tweet from
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: Steve Malloy, a Fox news contributor. Uh, he was responding
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 6: to a piece in the New York times from Ezra Klein,
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 6: who was writing about clean energy, uh, And then he
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: was refuting using clean energy with these two points.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, so far, this seems pretty banal.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: Random contributor hitting back at Ezra Klein over clean energy.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Let's hear his counter arguments.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: He's got two. Quote. Number one, wind power made the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 6: transatlantic slave trade possible. Number two, modern clean energy has
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: been a disaster. It's really for that number one.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: That's number one. We succeeded. I'm glad we waited. Holy shit.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we waited.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: That is.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: That is.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: Well, like any good Elijah game, you come for the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: laughs and you leave disturbed.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: I'm really proud of our list.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: I think we nailed the rankings.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 6: Let's look back at that. I mean, in defense of
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 6: Stephen Boyce, spot the lie. The ships are powered by wind.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: That guy is a terrible person, whoever he is.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 6: All right, our final list here. Number one, when powered
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: the slave trade. Number two, Trump vaccines kill people. Number three,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 6: nicotine frees your mind. Number four, January 6th, rioters should
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 6: be freed. Number five, cinemas are radical at Davos.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Honestly, fantastic.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: There we go. How do we think this segment works?
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I loved it. So far, so good. I'm excited to
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: bring Lovett in next time because I think he's going
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: to have some.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: Some thoughts.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Some opinions.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Some opinions. Some strong opinions. Elijah, chief take officer, you
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: did it again with another great take game.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: Oh, it was a great time.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: I can add it to the pantheon. Hakeem Jeffries, thank
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: you so much for joining us, and we'll talk to
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: you on Thursday.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Hayley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: slash podsaveamerica.