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TACO Tuesday in Tehran · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 5: Welcome to Pod Save America.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Levitt.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitori.
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  Speaker 1: On today's show, we got Trump seemingly making up stories
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: about negotiating with Iran to calm the stock market after
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  Speaker 1: he threatened to blow up their power plants. ICE agents
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  Speaker 1: being deployed to airports because Trump refuses to fund TSA
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  Speaker 1: unless Congress passes a law making it harder for people
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to vote. Democrats fantasizing about a Schumer-less future and hotter candidates.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And the president celebrating the death of Bob Mueller. Then
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Lovett talks to strict scrutiny's Leah Lippman about the Supreme
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Court's latest assault on mail-in voting. And lots more. But first,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: some exciting news, guys. Thanks to all of you listeners.
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  Speaker 1: about supporting one of the few independent pro-democracy media outlets
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  Speaker 1: left in Trump's America.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: And you're saying that, Tommy, at 50,000 you'll show feet?
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: That's right?
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  Speaker 2: I do have a wiki feet. I could add to it.
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  Speaker 1: Add to it?
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  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Tommy will show feet.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say they're my best feature. I was going
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: to say... It's an ugly-ass feed.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: We'll give the 50,000 subscriber Trump's phone number.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, should I go get my phone? Should we call him?
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Ask him about his tweet?
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Let's check in.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Or should we ask him if he thinks the new
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Ayatollah's hot?
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  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: This is probably like he's getting to the witching hours,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you know?
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  Speaker 2: He's sundowning. Probably calling during his favorite show or something.
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  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Is this Hannity?
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  Speaker 2: Fuck, you're right. No, Hannity 8, right? Oh, yeah. Maybe
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: this is Ingram. I don't know who this is. He
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: likes the moon. He hates Newsmax.
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  Speaker 6: Please leave your name and number.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I got a little excited for a second.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I get a little nervous. Me too.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I get a little nervous.
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  Speaker 1: I know that I feel comfortable that Tommy has a plan,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: but I don't.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: I do.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I have to do the Tom Beecher on
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  Speaker 2: a recorded line. I was going to tell him how
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America, we're bigger than Ben Shapiro. And then
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ask him if the new Supreme Leader
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: is Robin Williams from the Birdcage Gay or Nathan Lane
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: from the Birdcage Gay. Oh, wow.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Or Scott Bessigay or Lindsey Graham Gay. He's more Lindsey
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Graham Gay than anything. If Lindsey Graham is gay, which
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: we can't know for sure.
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  Speaker 2: Which we can't know for sure. But we could ask Trump.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe he'll call us back.
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  Speaker 3: We could ask Trump.
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  Speaker 1: All right. Let's get to the news. Roughly 36 hours
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  Speaker 1: after Trump threatened to obliterate Iran's power plants unless they
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  Speaker 1: reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which caused oil prices to soar,
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  Speaker 1: as Iran threatened to retaliate by destroying energy, water, and
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  Speaker 1: communications infrastructure across the Middle East, the president backed down
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  Speaker 1: just in time for markets to open, claiming that negotiations
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: to end the war are underway, which Iran said isn't
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  Speaker 1: true at all. Here's Trump talking to reporters about this
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  Speaker 1: Monday morning.
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  Speaker 4: Tomorrow morning sometime, their time, we were expected to blow
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: up their largest electric generating plants ever.
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  Speaker 3: That costs over $ 10.
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  Speaker 4: Billion to build.
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  Speaker 3: One shot, it's gone.
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  Speaker 4: It collapses. Why would they want that?
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  Speaker 3: So they called.
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  Speaker 4: I didn't call. They called. They want to make a deal.
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  Speaker 4: We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes.
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  Speaker 4: And if it goes well, we're going to end up
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  Speaker 4: with settling this.
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  Speaker 3: Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
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  Speaker 1: You said there's many points of agreement with Iran right now.
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  Speaker 3: Many.
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  Speaker 4: What?
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  Speaker 1: Can you give us a.
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  Speaker 4: Many, like 15 points. 15 points.
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  Speaker 3: Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's
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  Speaker 3: number one.
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  Speaker 4: That's number one, two and three.
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  Speaker 3: They will never have a nuclear weapon. They've agreed to that.
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  Speaker 3: Who's going to be in control of that? That will
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  Speaker 3: be opened very soon, if this works.
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  Speaker 4: How soon?
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  Speaker 2: And who's in control of it?
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  Speaker 1: Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil?
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  Speaker 4: Be jointly controlled.
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  Speaker 5: By who?
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  Speaker 3: Maybe me.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe me.
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  Speaker 4: Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the
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  Speaker 4: next Ayatollah.
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  Speaker 3: Me and Ayatollah TBD.
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  Speaker 1: They're calling it the Tehran taco, guys.
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  Speaker 3: Are they calling it that?
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  Speaker 1: No, no, I hope not.
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  Speaker 2: I bet they are.
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  Speaker 1: Somewhere. I realize the simplest answer here is nobody knows
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  Speaker 1: because the president has undiagnosed mental disorders. But what do
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  Speaker 1: you guys think is going on here? How did we
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  Speaker 1: get from Trump... Threatening an escalation that would likely constitute
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  Speaker 1: a war crime just on Saturday night to a seemingly
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  Speaker 1: fabricated story about a possible deal to end the war.
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  Speaker 2: Tommy? Yeah, we went from zero enrichment regime change to
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  Speaker 2: joint custody of the Strait of Hormuz. Is that where
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  Speaker 2: we're at?
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  Speaker 1: Maybe Marco, that's in Marco's new job.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe Rubio will be the chairman of the Strait of Hormuz.
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  Speaker 2: He's the bridge.
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  Speaker 3: He's the troll that sits and collects the toll at
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  Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormuz.
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  Speaker 2: That's a good Pete Hex's job. He does like a
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: kind of a rhyme scheme speaking stuff. In between, the
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  Speaker 2: price of oil exploded. The stock market fell way off
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  Speaker 2: its highs. And I think Trump woke up Monday morning.
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  Speaker 2: He saw the Asian and European markets in, you know,
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  Speaker 2: way down. S & P futures were way down and
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  Speaker 2: decided to set up the old taco bat signal. And
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  Speaker 2: it's predictable, right? I mean, we know Trump cares about
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  Speaker 2: two things. It's TV coverage and bad moves in the
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  Speaker 2: stock market. And the only criticism he probably gets in person,
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  Speaker 2: at least, is from billionaires and CEOs and bankers who
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  Speaker 2: can afford to go to his country clubs who will
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  Speaker 2: see him and be like, I'm worth a billion less
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  Speaker 2: than I was yesterday, sir. And so I think that's
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  Speaker 2: what happens with the move. That's why Besant was out,
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  Speaker 2: Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary over the weekend. Like that's not
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  Speaker 2: normally the guy that you'd have talking about airstrikes on
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  Speaker 2: IRGC targets, right? It's only about market manipulation. And so
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  Speaker 2: this will get him through the short term. Longer term,
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  Speaker 2: I don't believe a word he said in that clip.
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  Speaker 2: Like the Iranians know they have leverage. They're going to
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  Speaker 2: use it because they don't want to wake up in
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  Speaker 2: six months with the Israelis once again bombing them, bombing,
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  Speaker 2: going for regime change, trying to kill off their leaders.
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  Speaker 2: Iran has denied that there have been substantive talks. And
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  Speaker 2: I've also seen a list of demands from Iran that
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  Speaker 2: could include a simultaneous ceasefire in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.
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  Speaker 2: Iran continuing its missile program. Iran codifying its right to
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  Speaker 2: nuclear enrichment. Iran getting payments for damages in the war reparations, reparations,
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  Speaker 2: and then some sort of de facto recognition of their
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  Speaker 2: control of the straight, which Trump kind of preemptively grants there.
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  Speaker 2: So I don't know, man, JD Vance, maybe he's going
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  Speaker 2: to lead these talks. I think that'd be a good thing.
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  Speaker 2: Like we should get Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner away
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  Speaker 2: from these talks because they're morons, but also the U
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  Speaker 2: S Marine contingent gets there on Friday. So yeah, I
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  Speaker 2: see about that.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I have a question. Cause I, I read some reports that, uh,
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  Speaker 1: they're all headed to Islamabad and, uh, in Pakistan for
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: talks and JD Witkoff and Kushner are going to meet the,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: I guess the speaker of the Iranian parliament there. I
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: saw Pakistani officials said this to Reuters too, but like,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: question about this. If you're the speaker of parliament in
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  Speaker 1: Iran and you're probably next on the Israelis list for
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  Speaker 1: targeted assassination, you're just popping your head up now, hopping
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: on a plane and going to Islamabad. Is that something
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that you think the.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Probably safer out of the country than in.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a moment when Trump was asked who exactly
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: he is negotiating with. It's actually very similar sort of
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: geometrically to when he was asked which ex-president he was
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: talking to and then didn't want to say, and then
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: they all denied it. So Iran saying these talks aren't happening,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Trump saying they are, but he won't say with who.
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  Speaker 2: Why?
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Because he suggests if he says who the U.S. is
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: talking to, Israel might kill them, which also gives you
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  Speaker 3: a little bit of a concern about what the negotiating
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: posture can be about promising an end to the conflict
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  Speaker 3: when you can't promise that you're chief ally won't step
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: in and escalate when you choose not to.
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  Speaker 1: But this is, I mean, I was like kind of joking,
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  Speaker 1: but like also they have killed a bunch of top
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Iranian officials now, assassinated them. Every time the Iranians have negotiated,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: we have bombed them or attacked during the negotiations. if
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: you're the Iranians, why do you try to go negotiate
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: at all at this point?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: They were complying with the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement,
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  Speaker 2: when Trump pulled out of it in 2018. Then the
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: US and Iran were negotiating when the Israelis started the
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: 12-day war, and then we were negotiating again. Apparently, the
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: last round of talks before the most recent war was
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the most productive yet. Then we bombed them. And then
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Trump in the press has bragged about how we use
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: talks as subterfuge to trick the Iranians. Right. So now
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: the Iranians are not dumb. They know that there's 7500
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: plus Marines heading to the Middle East right now. And look,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, the Israelis have killed a lot of people
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: who have been our interlocutors in talks. They can kill the,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: you know, the speaker of parliament. The power structure in
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Iran is the IRGC. It's the military. And like, so
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: that's who's going to be calling the shots here. And
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: so I just, I don't know, Trump could be like, oh,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I have a secret source of Delcy Rodriguez of Iran.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I just don't, I don't buy it.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I saw that a bunch of Trump officials just told
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Politico too. They're doing the Delcy Rodriguez thing again with
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the speaker of parliament. They're like, this is, this is
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: what he's looking for. And one official said that this,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the speaker of the Iranian parliament, he's a hot option
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: right now. That's the quote. He's a hot option.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: People are talking about him a lot. They think he's
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: someone that they can deal with. He's a hot option,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: but they got to test him out. They got to
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: test him out first. That's what they said.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Is he hot? Did we look?
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: We're not at that part of the show yet.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Don't skip ahead to our hot candidate section. Hot Iranian?
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Hot Iranian section, yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: The administration has gotten several Iranian generals up to like 3,000
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: or 4,000 degrees. Jesus.
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: Tough.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: So there's that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I do think that the trouble for Trump here is
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: that like, taco speak aside, like he doesn't just get
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to cancel the war. Like he canceled some of his tariffs, like,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: like the Iranians and the Israelis kind of can do
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: whatever they want and keep this thing going in a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: way that really wreaks havoc on the global economy and
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: our own for as long as they want.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Look, what an extraordinary, uh, couple of weeks this has been. First,
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: a war launched without Congress, without clear goals. Goals that
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: evolved basically over the course of that weekend. They didn't
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: really land on... If there's one set of goals that
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: kind of landed on repeatedly, it's the Rubio version, which
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: is no nuclear capabilities to destroy the Navy, et cetera.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: But they had talked about regime change, the regime's inability
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: to project power. Then they closed the Strait of Hormuz,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: at which point Trump began begging our allies to join
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: the fight after the fight had already begun. And they said, no,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: thank you. We'll continue to not be part of this
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: war we weren't consulted on and want nothing to do with,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: especially after you've been bullying us for a year. And
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: then Trump said, actually, we don't need you because it's
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: going so well. And then he saw the markets tank
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: and is now trying to end it this way. And yeah,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: he's not in control of events and he wants to
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: be in control of events, but really there's no, I
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: saw a piece of analysis about this, which is it's
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: actually ironically a place where there's not much nuance. Either
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormuz is open or it's not. If
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: it's not, you have a huge set of knock-on consequences
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: that Trump is not able to solve. He has to
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: get it open. Iran has a say in whether or
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: not it's open. And that's what puts him in this position.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: And you can kill a bunch of leaders over and
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: over and you could create opportunities for promotion, but it
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: doesn't deal with the underlying problem.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I want this a war over today, and
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: if not today, tomorrow. I think that's the best outcome,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the sooner the better. But we should just be clear,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: if the war ends today, it is a failure. We lost.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Like the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium, still sitting
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: in Iran. The regime is still in place. In fact,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: their position is hardened because we replaced an 86-year-old named
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Khamenei with a 50-something-year-old named Khamenei, who is apparently much
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: more angry at us because, you know, Trump killed his dad,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: his wife, his kid, and some others.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And by the way, 86-year-olds tend to die on their
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: own accord and create power vacuums that are not made
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: by the United States.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: He was going to regime change himself, and then maybe
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: the protesters who were out in the streets in December
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: and January could have helped exercise a better option. And
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: then Iran has now fully realized its economic leverage through
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormuz, and it sounds like they intend
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: to continue to exercise that leverage. Why wouldn't they? Why not?
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Trump was also asked about his decision to lift sanctions
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that's already sitting
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: at sea. which could be worth about $ 14 billion to
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the Iranians. The move was intended to ease what has
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: now become a global crisis that the head of the
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: International Energy Agency said is worse than the 1973 and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: 1979 oil shocks combined.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: U.S.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And Israeli officials have also started forecasting a battle for
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Hormuz that will likely involve the 2,500 Marines headed towards
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the Middle East right now, though there doesn't seem to
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: be much clarity on what that would entail, at least
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: based on what various officials are saying in public. Here's
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: soybean farmer Scott Besant and horny warmonger Lindsey Graham on
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the Sunday shows.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Is the president in the process of winding down this
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: war or escalating the conflict?
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Again, they're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: to de-escalate, Kristen.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: The sanctions were in place to prevent Iran from getting
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: any of the money.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: They will have access to some of the money now.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Again, Kristen, you're missing the point. In essence, we are jujitsu-ing.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: The Iranians, we're using their own oil against them. Here's
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: what I tell President Trump.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Keep it up for a few more weeks.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Take Kargalin.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: We did Iwo Jima.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: We can do this. They're really sending their best. I
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: guess we're funding both sides of this war now. $ 14
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: billion for the Iranians.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: I don't totally understand how this brings in the art
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: of jiu-jitsu. Uh, and who's doing jujitsu. I don't, I
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: don't even understand what the, is it that.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Or even the type of speech that he was referring.
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Was it a, he was jujitsu-ing them.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: With their own oil.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: I guess it's that the idea being that if you,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: if you, Remove the sanctions you lower the price of
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: oil and therefore lower the amount of money Iran gets
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: but the Ron was currently getting zero dollars But 14
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: billion is more than zero dollars and what the the
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: pellets of cash that the Obama gave Iran in the
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: nuclear deal that was what 1.5 billion altogether and it
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: was just their own assets unfrozen.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the the pallets of cash was 400 million as
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: part of the bigger settlement the dated back to don't
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: apologize and Yeah, it dated back to the 1970s. It
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: was the Carter administration. There was an arms deal with
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: the Shah of Iran that obviously ended when the Iranian
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: revolution happened, and then it wound its way through these
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: various courts, and we had to pay them back, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: that's how we ended up doing it, and that became
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: the biggest deal ever Donald Trump talks about to this day.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: But yeah, that pissy cadaver they put out fucking on
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the Sunday shows, Scott Besant, he had a tough, tough interview. Yeah,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: because he's suggesting that giving Iran $ 14 billion that they
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: can use to fund a war against us or new
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: nuclear infrastructure, or more weapons for Hezbollah or the Houthis
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: is jujitsu, which I would disagree with. He gets very
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: angry at Kristen Welker for suggesting we should talk about
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: how to pay for the war as they're primed to
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: request $ 200 billion in funding. So like everything about his
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: interview there, he was just fucking terrible.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: That just seems like a lot of money. Also, I
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: don't know if you saw that when they're talking about
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: like the Iranians want reparations as part of any negotiation
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to And the war Trump official was like, well, obviously
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: we're not going to give them reparations, but maybe we
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: can just like unfreeze some of their assets. And it
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: just depends on what we call it. And I'm like, oh,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: so you might unfreeze some of their assets and then
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: say that, oh, interesting.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: For a nuclear deal.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: For a nuclear deal.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: But it's different when Trump does it. It's different when
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Trump does it.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Trump's giving them even more money.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know who is receiving less money. genuine feedback
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: more donald trump or lindsey graham at this point he's
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: out there frothing at the mouth comparing karg island to
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: fucking iwo jima are you out of your.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Mind about 7 000 americans at iwo jima 20 000 wounded.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Oh i are you saying what your goal is to
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: have one of the great battles of fucking world war
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: ii in the middle east right now like that's your
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: goal that's what you think we should be that's the
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: that's the good analogy.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Here yeah we're just gonna well we got to give
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: them we first we got to give them the Let
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: them sell their oil so they can make $ 14 billion
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: so they can fortify their defenses on Garg Island against
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the invasion that we're about to launch.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: For what?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: For oil.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: For more oil to sell, I guess. So then we
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: can sanction it again?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Who knows? I still want to take the over on
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: corruption being the way out of this thing. You've got
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Wyckoff and Kushner. They can make some kind of a deal.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: suddenly the Strait of Hormuz is open and everybody's making money.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: And that to me is, and that all of the
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: escalation talk is a threat towards some kind of a deal.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: It's not impossible to imagine we live in that world.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Suddenly you can play 18 holes on Karg Island.
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Genuinely, the Strait of Hormuz is beautiful. It actually is.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Go look at pictures. Go look at pictures of Strait
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: of Hormuz.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful mountains. You were in the Strait of Hormuz
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: in March. You're never going to want to come back. Oh, yeah,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: and by the way, two weeks ago, Megyn Kelly was
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: saying Lindsey Graham is a homicidal maniac with a bloodlust
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: that is insatiable. That was before that interview.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's been satiated at all.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: No, not satiated.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Shout out to representation, though. Look at this administration. Scott
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Besson out there, Lindsey Graham out there.
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: Huh?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Marsha P. Johnson threw that brick, and here we are
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: all these years later. It's a beautiful thing.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Why do you think.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: This brings up a good question. Why do they only
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: have Besson... Like you said, the Treasury Secretary is out
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: there on the Sunday shows. They got Graham out there.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: They have Hegseth doing his briefings. They're all selling the war. Like,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: you know, is the White House really sending their best?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Where's Marco?
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Where's JD? No, I mean, I do think that Besson
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: is out there purely to talk to the markets because
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: they were freaking out. And it's just like his lack
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: of answers is just a sign of how poorly they plan.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Like I read over the weekend that the strategic petroleum
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: reserve was only 60% full at the start of the war.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Like they clearly all thought this was going to be
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: quick and over by now. But I heard from somebody
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: over the weekend that– Trump is basically the only one
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: who likes Pete Hexeth anymore. And everyone else thinks he's
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: a clown and an idiot and that he sucks on
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: TV and that he's doing badly at the job. So
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: they're like happy to throw him to the wolves. That's awesome.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: And have him just kind of own this policy. And
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: it sounds like Trump's kind of there too, right? You
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: heard him Monday at the policy. He was like, Pete,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: you're the one who told me.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: To do this war. Pete, I think you were the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: first one to speak up and you said, let's do it.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Pete was sitting next to him in Tennessee today.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: At an event.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: I have to say, that's actually to me the most
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: revealing and chilling thing I've learned in quite some time
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: about the way this decision was made. Because so the
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: first person to chime in to say we should do
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: this is Pete Hegseth. And we were off to the
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: races from there.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you're counting like U.S. officials, I'm
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: sure I think we got Bibi. Well, probably inside the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: administration is Hegseth. And then you got Lindsey Graham. And
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: then you got Netanyahu. It seems like those are the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: big warmongers.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I think over the course of the first four years
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: and then the first, you know, 100 days of the
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Trump administration, 2.0, a lot of people try to talk
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Trump into going to war with Iran. And he waved
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: them off or he got waved off it. And then
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: he saw the Midnight Hammer operation. And then he saw
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Venezuela and was like, we're invincible. We can do anything.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: And here we are. And so, look, I've watched all
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: these Hegseth briefings. He's actively harmful. He's like the reading
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: war crime limericks. And then poor Dan Cain, the chairman
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of the Joint Chiefs, is like, let me try to
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: be a fucking adult here. Admiral Cooper from the CENTCOM
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: is pretty good. But Rubio and Vance are in witness protection.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Remember Marco Rubio after Venezuela? He did Meet the Press.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: He was doing press conferences. He was everywhere. Have you
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: guys seen him on TV?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: He popped up to say, Israel made us do it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And then we haven't heard from him since. And then J.D.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Vance just sort of runs around trying to talk about
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: anything else. And then when anyone asked him about the war,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: he was like, I'd go to jail if I told
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you about the classified info, the advice that I gave
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the president about this war. There is one more person
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: I saw reported over the weekend that convinced Trump this
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: was a good idea.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Rupert Murdoch. Bloomberg reported.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It totally tracks that you've got Netanyahu, Murdoch, Lindsey Graham,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and Pete Hegseth. That seems like the right crew for this.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Anson Rubio, this is sort of a non sequitur,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: but I just thought you guys would like this. You
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: see the St. Anselm poll from New Hampshire that just
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: came out? They started doing 28 primaries on the Republican side.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So they did their last one in October. Since then,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Vance is at 46, but he's down 11 from October.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Faves?
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: No, no.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: This is the horse race on the Republican side. 46?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: 46%. He's down 11 because you know who's at 27.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Marco Rubio up 18 points. That makes me happy.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And then DeSantis is at five.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Fight it out, boys.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: DeSantis.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Down two from the October poll and everyone else is
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: in single digits. But that is interesting that the Vance
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: and Rubio have switched a little bit. Trump also said
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: on Monday he still wants Congress to send him another
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: $ 200 billion of our tax dollars to fund this war.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: We've talked about why this should be an easy no
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: vote for Democrats. Now it seems like some Republicans are
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: also balking at the price tag. Senator John Kennedy says
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: he won't vote for any amount of funding until Congress
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: holds hearings on the war. Tom Tillis said that a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: $ 200 billion request would need to pass the Senate with
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: 60 votes. And over in the House, Lauren Boebert said
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: last week she's already a no on any additional war funding.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: So Trump and, you know, various pundits keep saying that
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Republican voters are fully behind this war. You think these
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Republicans in Congress are finally reading some of the same
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: polling we are?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: I just I was struck by the Boebert statement. because
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: she said, I will not vote for a war supplemental. No,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I am a no. I have already told leadership I
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: am a no on any war supplementals. I am so
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: tired of spending money elsewhere. I'm tired of the industrial
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: war complex getting all of our hard-earned tax dollars. And
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: I was like seeing that, I was like, wow, that
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: is better than a lot of Democrats have been able
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: to come out with and say clearly that there are
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: no any supplementals. All these Democrats seem to be playing-
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Gotta hand it to her. Gotta, but all these Democrats
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: that are talking themselves into believing- That this is a
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: nuanced situation or it's complicated or you're not supporting the troops.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Lauren Boebert managed to find her way to a statement
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: that I agree with. I'm wondering why it's so hard
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: for some of these other Democrats to do the same.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: But I didn't mean to take your question about Republicans
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: and turn it to Democrats. But it was what was
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: on my mind.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: It sounded like authentic and emotional and real. It was
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: a good answer. Why don't we just drop it in
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: right here?
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: I will not vote for a war supplemental. No, I
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: am a no.
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: I've already told leadership I am a no on any
• 24:31
  Speaker 7: war supplementals. I am so tired of spending money elsewhere.
• 24:35
  Speaker 7: I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all
• 24:40
  Speaker 7: of our hard-earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado
• 24:43
  Speaker 7: who can't afford to live. We need America first policies
• 24:46
  Speaker 7: right now. And that, I'm not doing that.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, look, this funding request went from
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: like a rumored possibility to Politico had a leak of
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: $ 50 billion. Now it's up to $ 200 billion. And I
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: was very worried from the very beginning the Democrats would
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: view this through that kind of like Iraq war lens
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: about supporting the troops. And you heard Jake Tapper literally
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: say that to Chris Murphy, won't you be accused of
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: not supporting the troops? But now we've gotten to the
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: point where I think the war is going so badly,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the number is so high, that I think this is
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: a political opportunity for Democrats and that we should not
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: only loudly oppose it, but we should make it a
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: big thing. Because voters do not want to spend $ 200
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: billion to drop bombs on Iran. There was some recent polling.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: about funding. 56% of voters oppose more funding for the war.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: 41% strongly oppose versus only 15% who strongly support. 61%
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: of independents oppose more funding. And then CBS in their poll,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: like 60% disapprove of the Iran war. 67% of Americans
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: say we should not be willing to pay more for
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: gas during the Iran war. So like people are not
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: feeling the time for collective sacrifice message.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Also that CBS poll, like, you know, they had recently
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: polled on March 3rd. So just a couple of weeks ago,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: war approval was 4456. Then now it's 4060. Also, it
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: mirrors Trump's approval and disapproval. Now Trump's job approval in
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: that poll was 40 disapproval 60. The argument just also
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: released a poll as well that has very similar numbers
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to the CBS poll and all the other polls, but
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: they also did a generic ballot test for the midterm.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And they have Democrats leading 5446. And if you do
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: probably definitely vote likely voters 5545. That's 10 points. That
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: would be Larger than the vote in 2018.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: The Pentagon budget's already over a trillion dollars. Stories recently
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: about at the end of the last fiscal year, they
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: were racing to spend what money they had because there
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: was more than they knew what to do with, including
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: buying grand pianos and Herman Miller chairs for people. You
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: also have Sean Duffy out there. We're going to talk
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: about what's happening at security at the airports. You had
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: a collision at LaGuardia of FAA problems all across the country.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: You got Sean Duffy walking around begging for another $ 20
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: billion to fix the FAA. to modernize air traffic control,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: recruiting of air traffic controllers. You can't get that money
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: through Congress, but Trump's going to get $ 200 billion to
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: pay for his war, basically to legalize it and authorize
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: it after the fact. What are we doing here?
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're already, I was thinking they would do this
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: last week, and I think Besson started it over the weekend.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And then Trump today was talking about it too, which
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: is like, oh, we need the $ 200 billion to sort
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of backfill for all the munitions that we've already used
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and for future threats. And we always need the money
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: for our defense. And they're going to try to decouple
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: this $ 200 billion war funding request from the war that
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: they're asking for.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: The idea that this several weeks requires a basically upping
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: the Pentagon budget by 20%. It's outrageous.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: It's outrageous.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And the thing you mentioned a minute ago that The
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: administration will try to argue that this funding request vote
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: is de facto congressional authorization of the war. And everyone
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: should just know that that is how your vote will
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: be viewed by history. You will be like all these
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Democrats after 2004, 2003, trying to explain how, oh, actually,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: we just voted to authorize George W. Bush to go
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: to the UN to put more pressure on the Iraqis. No,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you will be seen as voting for the war and
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: for the funding. Fucking vote against it.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I will say, hearing Lauren Boebert say that, knowing that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: there are other Republicans who are going to be no's
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: on this, I now feel more confident that Democrats are
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: going to vote the right way, even if some of
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: them at the very beginning of this process were thinking
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: of maybe supporting it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, explaining your vote is tough enough for a
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: $ 200 billion war funding request for a war that's not
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: going well that no one asked for. But supporting that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: when Lauren Boebert voted no and a couple other Republicans,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I just don't see it.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: I hope so.
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• 31:27
  Speaker 1: If you're traveling in America anytime soon, here are a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: few fun developments you should probably be aware of. One,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: flights are much more expensive because the war in Iran
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: has spiked fuel prices to obscene levels. So your ticket's
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: going to cost a lot more. Number two, you might
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: end up waiting in the airport security line for more
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: than four hours because Trump is now refusing to pay
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: TSA agents unless Congress passes a bill that would require
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: showing a passport or birth certificate to register to vote.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: And three, while waiting in that security line, you may
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: see armed ICE agents in full tactical gear milling about
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the airport, looking for something to do or someone to arrest.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: This last stroke of genius came from the president himself,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: who couldn't stop bragging about it to reporters on Monday.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: What idea was it? Mine.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That was mine.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: That was like the paperclip.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: You know the story of the paperclip? 182 years ago,
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: a man discovered the paperclip. It was so simple.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: And everybody that looked at it said, why didn't I
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: think of that? ICE was my idea.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: They're able to now arrest illegals as they come into
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: the country.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: That's very fertile territory.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Now, you know, I'm a big believer that they should
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: be able to wear masks when they go and hunt down,
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: you know, murderous criminals and others. For purposes of the airport,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: I've requested that they take off the mask.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: I don't like it for the airport. We wear masks
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: not at the airport, but they need to do it.
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: When they're out in the country.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: The people coming into the airport, typically speaking, aren't murderers, killers,
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: drug dealers, etc.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: There may be a few of them, but there are many.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But they are coming in illegally because that is the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: easiest way for people to come in illegally to the
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: country is to just book a plane ticket, show up
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: at the airport.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Well, I think he is, in his brain in there
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: is some sort of a fact about how this one
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: criticism of his border policy is that a lot of
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: people who come in through the country illegally are people
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: who overstay their visas after coming through, flying it legally.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: You have to stay a while.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Skipping the overstaying part.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying it's a smart point that he's making.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So backstory here is that Democrats have been trying to
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: fully fund TSA and all non-immigration parts of DHS for
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a week now, over a week now. Senate Republicans initially
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: said no. They were blocking these bills. But then over
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the weekend, John Thune reportedly called Trump and said, you know,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Republicans are ready to join Democrats in like funding everything
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: except for ICE. And then Thune said maybe that just
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans would try to fund ICE with like a party
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: line reconciliation vote or something. You know, let's end this crisis.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: The airport lines are getting long, whatever. Trump says no
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to John Thune. He says that he will keep TSA
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: and all of DHS closed unless Democrats pass the SAVE
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Act and that he's deploying ICE agents to the airports.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: This seems like both a terrible idea and terrible politics.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Did you guys hear the CNN report on the backstory
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: of the ICE agents thing? Apparently it was literally a
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: random woman, a radio caller named Linda from Arizona, pitched
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: the idea to Clay Travis on his radio show Friday.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Then Clay went on Fox News to talk about it.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Trump must have seen that because he then announced his
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: plan the next day. So that's inventing the paperclip.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: And now we have ICE agents just milling about the airport.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: The lines today are still just as long as they were.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Because they're not trained to be TSA agents. And so
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: they're just walking. You see these AP photos of them
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: just like sitting there looking with like nothing to do.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just there preventing the floors from flying up
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: and hitting the ceilings. The- This is sort of like
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: we're at this place where, oh, no, no, no, don't
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: do that. It's too stupid. That's too stupid of a
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: thing to think would help. They are not trained. They're
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: not going to be able to do anything at the airport.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: They don't know how to use the machines. They haven't
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: taken the training to scan what's in the documents. They
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: don't even know how to read, do the ID machine.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Those machines seem complicated to me. They probably have to
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: learn something for a while. They're just going to end
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: up standing there. So we shouldn't do that. That's too stupid.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: But nobody is going to tell this guy no. No,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: it's like, oh, great idea, sir. Great idea, Mr. President.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: They're on their way. You say it's Sunday. We'll have
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: them out there at the airports by Monday. Doing what?
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. It's what you wanted and it's an
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: image of the ICE agents there. And that's cool. You're
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: doing something.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: It's to own the libs, basically. Trump said it drives
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Democrats crazy. That's what Jim Comer said, Republican in the
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: House on the Sunday shows too. This is like a
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: line that we're hearing now that it's, where it's driving
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the Democrats crazy, having the ICE agents there.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: It's like- I'd rather they be in airports than terrorizing communities.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: It's like- There's not gonna be no harm, but like- Yeah, no,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: it's- So it's like- Let's get them doing all kinds
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: of tasks unrelated to their duties, road cleanup, whatever you want.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: So Democrats have been demanding- to take ICE agents off
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the streets and to take their masks off. And that's
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: what you did.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: It's like, dude, we're getting Starbucks at LaGuardia now? Like, okay.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Do a donut run for the TSA, guys. Like, great. Like,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: stand there. Fucking, what are we doing here? The other, like,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: we're in this, like, purely symbolic fight, too. Because what was,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: before Trump added on top of it, and we got
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: to do SAVE Act, and the trans people can't do
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: sports if I'm not going to reopen the government.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: What was happening? Mutilization.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: What was actually happening? The DHS was shut down.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: But the reason Trump can deploy ICE is because ICE
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: has this other pool of funding, a 75 to 80
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: billion dollar pool of funding that they're just going to
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: run off of.
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: So this is a symbolic effort to say we're not
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: sending any more money to ICE. That's why the government
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: shutting down. Then the negotiations are we'll open everything up.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: But ICE.
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Even that will have no impact actually on ICE. Democrats
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: came out in favor of that. Republicans fear that Trump
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: doesn't want to do that. He wants to add all
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: these things on top of it. ironically, right, like any
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: resolution that would have a positive impact on what ICE
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: is able to do or not to would be the
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: result of even more concessions on both sides over a
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: negotiation of actually funding ICE. The only way to actually
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: limit what ICE will do in the next few years
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: is through a negotiation that's not about not funding ICE,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: that's actually about getting to funding ICE, which is so
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: far from where we're at right now because we're having
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: this sort of purely symbolic conversation about ICE in the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: airports and whether or not we'll let TSA agents get paid.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Well, now it's just, I mean, now Trump has just
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: decided to own the whole thing. He's just decided to
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: torpedo any chance of blaming anything on Democrats because he's like,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you know, John Thune, Ted Cruz was out there saying
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: he would just fund TSA.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: Like I love to travel.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz out there. And then Trump's like, no, you
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: got to pass the SAVE Act, which the Republicans, John
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Thune in response told a reporter, it's just not real.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: He's like, look, we all like the SAVE Act because
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: they're all supposed to say that, even though some of
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: them probably don't want to pass the SAVE Act because again,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: it would probably prevent a lot of Republican voters from
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: registering to vote. But he said it's not realistic to
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: tie the SAVE Act to this funding battle. And you're
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: actually seeing a couple, like I saw one of the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Ohio senators say this, Ted Cruz is saying it. So like,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: I'm actually surprised, pleasantly so, that some Republicans are like, okay,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: this idea from Trump, a little crazy.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: But I don't know.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it goes anywhere.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: I just keep thinking back to the Politico story from
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: January about how Donald Trump's going to travel the country
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: weekly ahead of the midterms, touting affordability. Now we're debating
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: whether or not we're going to co-own the Strait of
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Hormuz with the Iranians and have ice agents in the airport.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It's like $ 500 extra to fly to Cincinnati, and you're
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: going to wait for three hours at the airport. Welcome
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: to the golden age.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Did you guys watch the Tennessee thing today, the Tennessee
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: event he did?
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Just the beginning.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: It was like a cabinet meeting in that like there
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: are all these staffers just kind of doing their ritualistic
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: dick sucking. And like at one point, I forget who
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: it was. It was it was Stephen Miller, like really
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: went to town. And Trump was like, well, I don't
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: know if you can top that cash. And then Cash
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Patel was up and he did his little, you know,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: glazing session. It was just terrible.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Trump said that.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: Tommy refers an ad hoc blowjob. As opposed to the
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: more ritualistic and official type. He likes it off the
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: books blowjob.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: It's a ritual. That's the whole deal.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Trump also said that the Senate should kill the filibuster
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to pass the SAVE Act. They should cancel their Easter recesses.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: if necessary because this one's for Jesus to pass the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: SAVE Act.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: Have you heard the good news?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: This one's for Jesus.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: Pass the SAVE Act. Did he actually say this one's
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: for Jesus?
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said do it for Jesus.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Do it for Jesus.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Jesus would want you to present your passport or birth
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: certificate to your local election office in order to register
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to vote by these midterms, which, again, is something that
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: would probably disenfranchise not just Democratic voters, but plenty of
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Republican voters, which is probably why most Republicans in Congress
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: don't really care that much about passing it.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: So that's where we are.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know how.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Trump's just going to have to back down on this
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: one because there's going to be pressure at the airports.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: The lines are going to be crazy. He doesn't have
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the Republicans in the Senate with him.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: I think he caves. He'll find a way to cave.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Look, like, IRGC guys are doing TSA security work in
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: the next quarter.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I was talking to the Ayatollah. They got
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: some great ideas for what we can do to get
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: these airports running more smoothly.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: There's some security guys.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: They can loan us.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Un-fucking-believable.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: Reigning revolutionary guy. And honestly, I think we'd all make
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: sure there's no liquids in our backpacks.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would do what they said. I would not
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: lie after this.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: The welcome message goes from Kristi Noem at the airports
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: to the new the speaker of the Iranian parliament.
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Hot option. Funded or not, speaking of DHS, appears that
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: they're going to have a new secretary in place shortly.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Rand Paul's the only Republican voting against Mark Wayne Mullen
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and two Democrats are voting for him. We talked about
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: John Fetterman voting yes. And as of Sunday, Martin Heinrich
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of New Mexico said he's voting yes. He said Mullen
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: is a friend and will stand up to bullying by
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller. Heinrich also noted that in Mullen's confirmation hearing, he, quote,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: recognized the necessity of judicial warrants, which also supports reporting
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: from The New York Times over the weekend that before
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: his nomination, Mullen had been working behind the scenes with
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer to hash out a compromise on
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: reopening DHS that included requiring judicial warrants in most cases.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering what you guys make of Mullen's relatively easy
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: path to confirmation and not just the yes votes from
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Fetterman and Heinrich, but just not a lot of intense
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: opposition from the Democrats, seems to be based partly on
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: a belief that DHS will be slightly less chaotic and
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: more humane under Mullen's leadership than it was under Noem
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and Lewandowski. What do you guys think?
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Heinrich statement has a real kind of bros
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: before hoes energy to it. So you got to assume, right,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: Mullen's getting through with Republican votes because Rand Paul was
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: the only no. His vote mattered on the committee. Fetterman
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: helped him get out of the committee, but he would
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: have had the votes to get through. So I suppose
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: the argument would be giving him a yes creates a
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: relationship in which you have kind of a better opportunity
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: to put pressure on and have real conversations with someone
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: you've worked with closely.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: But that also, I think- Works so well with Rubio.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: I was about to say, it depends on sort of
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: ignoring what the actual reality is of the Trump administration
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: and what happens once people are in there and the
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: pressure they're under. Because whatever relationship you had before, they become,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: no matter what they're saying behind the scenes, beholden to
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, the inability to be publicly
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: critical of them, the inability to defy them, and all
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: the consequences after that. And so you have people that
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: have expressed their regrets about voting for Noem, and you
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: have people that have expressed their regrets about voting for Rubio,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: yet not learning that lesson from their colleagues when they
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: decide they're going to vote for this guy. So I
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: think it's, I think you, not holding the line against
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: these people is always something people regret.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The consensus is that Kristi Noem was a disaster.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: And I think there's kind of an anybody but her vibe,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: even with Republicans. Also, senators tend to kind of coast
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: through in these settings. So we'll see. I mean, I
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: do think it's part policy, part personal. Mark Wayne Mullen
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: does sound like he was genuinely willing to be more
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: moderate than the Trump administration on judicial warrants. And also,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: it sounds like he has some genuinely good relationships, which
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: is surprising because he did try to beat up a
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: guy from the Teamsters at a hearing one time But
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: now that guy from the Teamsters is sitting behind him
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: at his confirmation hearing because they're boys. Also, you know
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: who else was there? Josh Gottheimer. Yeah. Democrat from New Jersey.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: And so, like, this sounds ridiculous, but he runs a
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: popular workout group. He does? For members of Congress and senators. Yeah.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: He's teaching a Pilates class. I've heard members talk about
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: this and that it's really good.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Exhale through the drive phase. Through the drive phase.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: That's a reference. Don't even worry about it. Just for
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: the three of us. Literally no one else.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Christy W. There's some personal politics here.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: You're right, though.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: He's going to be a disaster.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's going to be a disaster, but he's spotted them.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: He's helped them really kind of crush their lats and
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: their delts.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: It's not even a personality thing why he could be
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a disaster. When he's a DHS, there's... one way to
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: lose his job, and it's by pissing off Stephen Miller
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump. And the senators can't hurt him anymore
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: once he's at DHS. Right now, they can. They can
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: cost him the nomination, right? But once he gets there,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. But look, I think if you
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to make the better argument for why you don't
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: put up a fight is you can only fight so
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: many things. He has the Republican votes anyway, and so
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: what are you going to do? It seemed impossible to
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: strike down this nomination. I do think what you can do,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the more important thing is in these negotiations to reopen
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: DHS and as Mullen's getting confirmed, you try to codify
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the rules about a judicial warrant or all this other stuff,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: which is the reason that the Democrats tried to use
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: DHS funding as leverage in the first place. As you mentioned,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: now we've come so far afield that we've got ICE
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: agents running around the airports. Speaking of Lewandowski, Dan and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I briefly mentioned the NBC story about him openly demanding
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: bribes from a private prison company. On Saturday, the Times
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: also published a big investigation into Lewandowski's time at the
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: department that is just full of enraging details. On Monday,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the bribery allegations.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: What do you guys think?
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Good use of time and energy if Dems get the
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: House back?
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: It's a shocking, brazen corruption scheme where people are either
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: obliquely or directly suggesting that if you want a government contract,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: Corey Lewandowski has to get his bequeathed. They all deny it,
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: but they have a lot of sources, including sources at
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: the White House, that are validating this story. I don't
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: remember if it was NBC or in The Times, but
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: I thought one telling point was people inside the White
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: House or inside the administration, considering whether or not to
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: do an investigation or take some kind of action, are
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: worried that if they do, Trump will publicly come out
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: in defense of of Lewandowski.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: This was my concern that I expressed on Friday's pod.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: It's crazy.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I was like, let's not, maybe let's not
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: talk about it until after Trump leaves office if we're
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: going to go after Lewandowski. Maybe everyone should just quiet
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: down until he can't pardon him anymore.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Right, the pardons loom over the whole thing. And then
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: there's the fact that Lewandowski seemed to be getting the
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: presidential daily brief. That is absolutely nuts. That blew my mind.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: He's basically a volunteer government employee getting the PDB.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: He's not a full-time employee and he's getting the PDB
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: and he's holding meetings in Kristi Noem's office when she's
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: not around. Doing a lot of things in her office
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: when she's around. I think go after him. Like whether
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: or not we're able to prosecute this guy, I don't know.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Maybe there'll be a state charge we can go after.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: But like put a fucking head on the pike, man.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Like do some oversight. Try to scare some other people
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: out of doing this shit. Because like we've talked about
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of newfangled corruption here. There's the Emiratis buying
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: your barely existing, you know, crypto company or like selling
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: some Melania shit going to somebody for.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: The Qataris giving you a jet?
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: The jet.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Didn't get the return on that investment, did they?
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: No, they did not. They could have used that jet
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: to evacuate. Here's a jet. Make sure everything goes our way.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Heads up, by the way. Hope it's bulletproof. Yeah, we'll
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: send some caulk over to fix the fucking Rosewood Qatar.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Can we get a fucking refund on that now?
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I got some good guys for countertops to fix the Fairmont.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. The Lewandowski stuff, it's such old school corruption. Like,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I need a kickback. I need to be a special
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: advisor on the contract for this. Like, fuck that.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: You know when Trump White House officials are going on
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: background to NBC and being like, this was brazen and crazy.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: We didn't like that for sure. And even Trump is
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: apparently annoyed with Lewandowski.
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Which maybe he won't give him the part.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: That's why.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: It's like, let's not assume he's going to pardon everybody. Like,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: maybe he will, maybe he won't, but like, make him
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: do it. Oh, yeah.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: I think you're right. Like, If he does pardon him,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: he pardons him. But we gotta just... We have to live...
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: That's a concession to him before we've even begun. You
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: gotta go into it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Get the documents.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Whether you're dealing with anxiety, depression,
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  Speaker 3: Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com. On the
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: topic of Democratic strategy, Wall Street Journal has a big
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: story about a possible revolt brewing against Chuck Schumer from
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: within the Senate Democratic Caucus.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: It leads with an anecdote about Chris Murphy musing over
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: a dinner about the number of senators who want new leadership.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: It goes on to say that Murphy, Tina Smith, and
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren are part of a group known as Fight
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Club who complain about Schumer on a signal group chat,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: particularly his strategy of favoring more centrist candidates in the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: midterm primaries. What do you guys think of this piece?
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: So Murphy then says, actually, that's misremembering what the conversation was.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: In fact, what I was simply saying is while there
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: are people that are frustrated, Schumer has supported the caucus
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: and I support Schumer. There's something- Elizabeth Warren was less so.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Less so, no, for sure.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: She was like, I'm not gonna say whether I.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Support him or not. I'm not a fan.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: Here's what, I got to the end of it, right?
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: And I think like, the idea that he's supporting more
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: centrist candidates, I do think is like a new line
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: of criticism or newer than some of the others. But
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: the rest go back to the shutdown and his ability
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: to communicate. And what I can tell is, according to
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: people that have a problem with Chuck Schumer, would a
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: different leader produce different outcomes or would a different leader
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: be a better communicator about the same outcomes? And I
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: think the inability to like kind of clearly answer that
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: question is why whatever friction there is or desire for
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: a new leader culminates in just people bitching in a
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: signal group chat.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like the inside game and the outside game, right?
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Like the inside stuff, we don't really see. It's like,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: how he keeps members on sides and organizes things and
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: deals with the caucus. Like there are Democrats, there are
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: senators who we like and respect who will call you
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: after this episode probably and say Chuck's really good at
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: that stuff. The outside stuff like we see, the media,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: the candidate recruitment, the fundraising, clearly Chuck Schumer is not
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: the best messenger. I think he would concede that. And
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: he's tried to put forward other younger leaders, but that
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: kind of leads to the question, well, why not just
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: have one of them be the leader, right? The fundraising
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: is clearly off I think that the candidate recruitment is
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: a thing that's bothered a lot of people because it
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: feels like he's thumbing the scale in ways and states
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: that is unnecessary, if not antagonistic to voters, like let
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: those voters in those states decide. And it makes you
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: wonder if this is about who can really win in
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: these states or who will endorse Chuck Schumer as leader
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: in these states if they win, because a lot of
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: the new members are not doing that. And so There's
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: also the basic like gerontocracy issues. Like the guy's really old.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: And like he was able to recognize that with Joe Biden.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer famously, right, drove to Delaware, told Joe Biden
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: to drop out. H was the reason behind that. But
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: he's not willing to look in the mirror there. And
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: like I do think you're right, though. The counter argument
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: is people are really mad about Donald Trump. They want
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: someone to blame. So you blame the leaders we have.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't necessarily take into account Trump. their actual
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: capacity to stop Donald Trump when he has a trifecta?
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Could someone do more with the same cards? I don't know.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: To me, this boils down to one question, which is like,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I do not expect anyone to oust Chuck Schumer between
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: now and November, nor do I think ousting Chuck Schumer
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: between now and November would lead to any kind of
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: appreciable difference in any of the outcomes for Democrats. I
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: do think, and I remember having this conversation with Dan
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: on some pod probably many times, Like, you know, if
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the Democrats don't take back the Senate, then you almost
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: expect Democrats to have a new leader, right, between 26
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and 28. But he was like, Dan said, oh, but
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: if we win, if Democrats somehow win the Senate, then maybe, like,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Schumer stays on and is majority leader one last time
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: until he potentially retires in 28 or something else. That,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I think, is worth a serious conversation about even if
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats win, even if Democrats win the Senate, is
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer really the guy that you want to be
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: leader between the midterms and the presidential? Because like, I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: think that is a perfect time for a new leader
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and you don't have to, and you don't have to
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: go back and, you know, debate whether you could have
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: had this outcome or that outcome based on the various
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: shutdown things and all that. All I have to say
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: is like, look, we are heading towards 28 is the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: most important thing to elect a democratic president. We need
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: our best messengers out there as leaders and, And Chuck
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Schumer is getting up there. And do we really need
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: two more years, let alone six more years of Chuck
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Schumer as Democratic leader at that point?
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's like a no brainer. We do
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: not want to go into the most important presidential election
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: since the last one with a leader that represents, we
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: need to be representing change. He will not represent change. Ironically, though,
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: I think it's Democratic Senate candidates in at least 13
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: states have either come out against Chuck Schumer or refuse
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: to endorse Schumer, the more successful we are in these midterms,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: the more people that will be in the Senate that
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: have either explicitly said they will not support him or
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: even under pressure, knowing that they want Schumer's support, people
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: like Tallrico, have refused to say they would endorse him. Now,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: I think at a certain point, you want people that
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: are willing to just say, no, I'm not going to
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: be for Chuck Schumer. We need somebody different just because
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: that's the kind of, like, I don't know, want people
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: that are already worrying about how to kind of keep
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: everybody on side. But at the very least, he has
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: a huge problem in success or failure.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And look, I think that the complaints about the recruitment,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: you know, it goes both ways. Like I think Chuck
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: Schumer getting Roy Cooper to run in North Carolina when
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: maybe he didn't want to at first was like a
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: big win. Getting Mary Peltola in Alaska to run. Great. Now,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: if he wanted to recruit Haley Stevens in Michigan and
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Janet Mills in Maine, like that's fine. It's not the
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: recruitment necessarily. It's the putting your thumb on the scales,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: which he may not be explicitly, but kind of is.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Certainly for Mills he is.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Janet Mills, like, yeah, I think actually recruiting Janet Mills
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: is great and a coup for him and credit to him.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: But yeah, they formed a joint fundraising committee with the DSCC.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: And Haley Stevens is similar. Like, I think there's a
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: lot of good candidates in that field. It is not
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: clear to me that she is the strongest candidate by
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: any means, but I'm almost positive that there have been, like,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: DSCC or party events and fundraisers that have included her
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: or her campaign. And you just have to wonder why.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: And I will say that this is not, I mean,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, it gets a lot of the blame for this,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: but you know, You wade into the online wars, and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of Democratic strategists out there who are
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: just assuming that Mills and Stevens are the most electable
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: candidates and the strongest candidates in those races. And it's
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: like not even a question to them.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, really?
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Are you that sure?
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: And that's my take. Like everyone's going to be like, oh,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: you guys are endorsing Graham Platter. No, like we're saying
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: let the voters of Maine vote. Let people in Michigan vote.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: That will help us determine who the strongest candidate is.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: If you can't win the primary, you're probably not the
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: strongest candidate.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Have a, just have a, just a, just a dose
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: of humility after, uh, you've worked on several of the
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: presidential campaigns over the last decade that haven't come up
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: a little short is what I would say. Speaking of
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: giving a democratic leadership a glow up, uh, Lauren Egan
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: at the bulwark is out with a piece headlined thirst
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: traps over think tanks. Dems want hotter candidates on the ballot. Uh,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: she has a bunch of Democrats musing to her about
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: how we need more, uh, Lookers? We need hotter candidates
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: like John Ossoff and AOC on the ballot. Tommy, you
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: recently referred to Ossoff as a piece of ass on
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: the show.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Agree with Lauren? I stand by that. I'll say it again.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: He's a piece of ass. Look, the man's way taller
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: in person than I expected. He's got a jawline that
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: you could use as a ruler. Great hair. Great demeanor.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Great hair.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh. Legs that go all the way up.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: Legs that go all the way up. Is the key
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: to winning, quote, run more hot people, like the article says?
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: Maybe.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Look, counterpoint. Donald Trump. I know, I know. Not hot.
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: Not hot.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: Look, I think there's a big space between someone between, say,
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: a Hollywood 10 and a Delaware 86. You know what
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: I'm saying? And the problem, right, like.
• 57:35
  Speaker 8: there's like talk about dan like that there's a strange
• 57:38
  Speaker 8: there's a strange like like the way like hotness and
• 57:41
  Speaker 8: ideology like there are like the the like bernie uh
• 57:45
  Speaker 8: beloved figure right i'd say he's look you know i
• 57:51
  Speaker 8: don't think you would call it traditionally hot you know
• 57:52
  Speaker 8: right now where he's at now maybe he's a young
• 57:54
  Speaker 8: man still handsome.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: He's handsome yeah he's seen some of those pictures.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: He's handsome he's handsome But Pete Hegseth would be traditionally
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: considered to be good looking, one would say. I don't
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: find him particularly hot. He's not hot to me.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's like one asset out of many, right?
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: It's nice to have. Clearly, you can win the presidency
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: without being hot, Donald Trump. But I do think.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because he's so fucking charming.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: You know, and I think Lauren cites in her piece,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: there's like political science around this that attractiveness does help candidates.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: You know who is hot? Saddam Hussein.
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Google young Saddam. He could get it. Uh, Castro famously hot. Yeah.
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: You could, it can help you guys as his son
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: in Canada elected.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Or, uh, now with Katy Perry, take the coup,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: but maybe you're a bad leader. I don't know. I,
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: there is some truth to this, right? I mean, like
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: how many times have you had friends in your life
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: or just normies who would be like, Oh yeah, Gavin Newsom,
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: he's the good looking one or whatever. Many have said
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: that about Gavin Newsom. Barack Obama clearly benefited from being
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: perceived as young and good looking and cool. And that
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: was part of the appeal. Bill Clinton as well.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: John Ossoff has, clearly has had a glow up.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: No doubt.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Over the last several years.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: It is funny that no one in the story would
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: go on the record saying that AOC is hot.
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: There's sort of a reverse gender thing. People are so
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: worried about it. Clearly she is beautiful. Yes. And I
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: don't know why it's like weird for people to say that.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: It's just a compliment.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: I get that people don't want to like objectify her
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: and there's gender.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Like she's beautiful.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: I'll objectify John Ossoff and I have no problem with that.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: What does that say about me?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's sort of. in the context of our conversation,
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: but I think if you don't know what the article
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: is and someone's like, talk about, hey, hi, I'm a
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: journalist from the bulwark. Talk about AOC's appearance. Oh, no,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: thank you. Let me know how the piece goes. That
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: is a really funny press call again. Yeah, we could
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: talk about it here because we're giving ourselves the context
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: of saying all the guys are hot.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Until it gets clipped.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: All the guys are just, look at all these eminently
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: fuckable guys.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Bernie's best ass.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: How did you feel sitting across from Josh Shapiro?
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: What?
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: Look, I'll just say, you know, I asked him about this.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of Jewish mothers that would
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: love to have their daughters bring home a guy like Josh.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: Handsome.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Knows how to dribble a basketball.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: Does he?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Okay. Did you guys play hoops? No, it's obviously- Play
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: a quick game of horse?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: Obviously, it came up in the book. It did not
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: come up in the actual experience.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: It would have been the interview, though.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: When I was on the fourth grade basketball team, I
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: didn't have the arm strength. I could get the ball
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: high enough- To hit the hoop, I can obviously pitch
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: it forward, but I couldn't get that parabola going.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Probably because you were thinking you needed to get a
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: parabola going.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: And that's our March Madness coverage.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Did you guys see that JB Pritzker spoke at the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Gridiron dinner?
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: And he's on the shot.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: I got it. Did you hear his joke?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: That he puts the gov in Wegovy.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he puts the gov in Wegovy.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Good for him.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Good joke.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: Good for him.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Every time I read an article about
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: the Gridiron and it's like, And then the journalist did something,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: something set to the something from Chicago. I'm like, how
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: is this a thing that still exists in the world?
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: The sketches part of that event is insane.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: It's crazy. A bunch of journalists get together with politicians
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: and they make up skits and songs and they perform them.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: It's like, what the fuck is happening?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: It's also, it's white tie.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: What is white tie even?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: It just means tails, I guess, right? What is tails?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: It's the most. It's a longer coat with tails.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: Never.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: You're supposed to have a different kind of shoe. You
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: can't just wear a tux. It's not a tux.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: It's not a tux.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: That's a dinner jacket.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: You would have to drug me to go to that event.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: You'd have to Maduro me to go there.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you just wake up in white tails and a tux.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: What's going on?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: That's a Maduro me. How did I get here? Don't
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: the Force guys kick down your door and all of
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: a sudden you're a gridiron? Here, put this on.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, watching.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: You're fucking John's hog tied. You're going to watch Lynn
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Sweet sing. Worst of all, we're a pro Lynn Sweet podcast.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Everyone loves Lynn Sweet. She's the first person who came
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to mind.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: The gridiron queen.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: A lot of these traditions began before.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: And it used to be at night. It just got
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: dark in your house. And maybe you'd read a book.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: And so people went out more. Yeah. You know?
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: Gridiron.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get yelled at for this. My segue
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: to this next section was ruined by our conversation. So
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to say, on the subject of the midterms.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Hey, if we can't find hot candidates, this is not
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: to say that we don't have plenty of hot candidates
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: running in the midterms.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: It's a good time to remind everyone about Project 218.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: which is Vote Save America's big push to help take
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: the House back again with candidates who are hot, not hot,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: anywhere in between. To recap, we're asking you to get
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: five people you know to sign up for VSA so
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: that they can get the best info about how to
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: make the biggest difference. We've had more than 3,000 signups
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: so far, but we need more. Head to votesaveamerica.com to
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: learn more. And while you're at it, one more plug here.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Do you know the next No Kings Day is this Saturday,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: March 28th? There are thousands of events to attend, and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: as we've seen, it's very, very important to show up.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: and be counted and be heard. So head to knowkings.org
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: to find an event near you, make a plan to go,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: bring friends, post some pictures, send us some pictures.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: I have told you so. That'll be a sign.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Good sign.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: We'll see some of that.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: I have told you so.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: Regime change begins at home.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: If you've kept your sign from 2004 about Bush and
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the Iraq war, you can dust it off and bring
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: regime change begins at home. I still think it's like
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: a bumper sticker, I think, that my in-laws have it.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: It's a sad thing. But very true statement.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: It's been around for a long time. All right.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: One last thing before we get to Levitt's conversation with Leah.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: We got to talk about Donald Trump dancing on Robert
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: Mueller's grave.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: We do.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: After the news on Saturday that the former FBI director
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: and special counsel died at 81 after a fight with
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Parkinson's disease, Trump and his White House posted the following statement.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: Good.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people. Incredibly,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the only depraved comment Trump made involving death
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: and one of his perceived enemies. When he was asked
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Monday morning about the resignation of his former counterterrorism chief,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Joe Kent, the president said, quote, I'm not a fan
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: of the guy. His wife was killed. He remarried fairly quickly.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I feel like Trump might not be a good person.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Have we all just grown numb to this now?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: Just real quick, Joe Kent's wife was killed while serving
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: the U.S. military in Syria by a suicide bomber. So
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: that's the context in which he made that comment.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Got married too quickly, just like he said that about
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Thomas Massey. This is from a guy who would bring
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: a date to Melania's funeral.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Gladly, yeah, for sure. 100%.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, walk her by the golf course grave of his
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: previous wife. That's where I put that one.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: I saw Trump's comment, and I was like, my first
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: reaction was, you know, Bob Mueller died, and now, like,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: All of the stories about his death have to include
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the president of the United States issuing this jackass fucking comment.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: So his family and friends have to all deal with that.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Number two, and now everyone's going to do like the Charlie.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Of course, we all lived through the Charlie Kirk thing.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: And J.D.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Vance just told people to fire, you know, people who
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: work for them and who, you know, said celebrated Charlie
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Kirk's death and. You know, there was a whole government-wide
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: effort to hunt down people and cost them their jobs
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: over potentially celebrating or not grieving properly for Charlie Kirk.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: And now we're doing this again.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I feel like it's actually been quite helpful
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: to be consistent through all of this, which is not
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: celebrating any deaths.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: And by the way, not celebrating death is not an
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: act of civility. I'm not saying I feel happy when
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: my enemies die, but I pretend not to. as a
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: means of projecting the morals I think we should have.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not judging people for what they're actually feeling. My feeling,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: what I see when people kind of celebrate someone's death
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: is actually like when someone dies and they did bad things,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: I'm not talking about people that are actively in the
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: midst of doing horrible things, their death relieves people of
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: pain and abuse and tyrants, whatever. But like to celebrate
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: someone you don't like dying is to act as if
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: dying is a kind of justice. that they're getting justice.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: But that can't be true because everybody dies. And what
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: you're really doing when you celebrate the death of your enemies,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: you're actually just avoiding facing the injustice that happened when
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: they were alive. You're coping with the fact that you
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: don't believe they faced what they deserved when they walked
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: among the living. And so I think about what happens
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: when Donald Trump will inevitably die and there will be
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: a crazy debate befitting Donald Trump in which our whole
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: country is caught up in this very kind of notion
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: of it's okay that people are happy that he's dead
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: and celebrating in the streets.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I feel like that Bob Mueller tweet from Trump will
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: be back on the rotation when this happens.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: But the truth is, I think a lot of what
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: people will be feeling will be a kind of a
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: grief about all the damage that was done and our
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: failure to stop it and to get justice when somebody
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: was walking around. And so to celebrate death is to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: act as if it won't come for all of us.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: And That's just bad for the soul and it's bad
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: for the world. And so I just want no part
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: of it. Whoever dies. That's my that's my take on this.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: And they might they might express that feeling with like
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: a party hat and one of those like, you know,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: but like that's what they're thinking.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not. Look, I'm not gonna say I'm gonna
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: go out.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Look, you've been consistent on this. Like you took a
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: day off when the Ayatollah was killed and you didn't
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: come in that day. And I think that's, you know,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: that's commendable.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: You were grieving. I laid.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm stopping myself.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: I'm stopping. You see those tweets go through and you're
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: just like... You just know the cycle we're all going
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: to go through.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: It's so exhausting. It's exhausting. He... You know what? I'm
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: at this point where I'm like, say what you want
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: to say, I guess. He's the biggest... He's the worst
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: person in the world. He happens to be our president.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: He's dancing on the grave of a Purple Heart winning
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: American citizen who served as FBI director. That self-evidently terrible...
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: you know, the hypocrisy is exhausting. Like, you know, Fox
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: News did a month of coverage of Charlie Kirk insults.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: And yet Fox, as far as I can tell, like
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: did not air a single story about Donald Trump's tweet.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, the Daily Wire today unironically had
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: up a story with the headline Red Hen Deja Vu.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: Sarah Sanders kicked out of Arkansas restaurant flipped off by staff.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: For those who aren't as terminally online as we are,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: in 2018, a restaurant called the Red Hen asked Sarah
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant because there were a
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: bunch of, I think, LGBT employees who didn't want to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: serve her. And this became a huge thing, right? So
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: like the civility police come out whenever Democrats do anything
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: to Republicans and they're silent when Republicans do things to Democrats.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: And it's just like, it's so exhausting and frustrating to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: even have to call out hypocrisy. And I just, I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: The thing that I thought was interesting about this one,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: and this is similar to one about Rob Reiner, is
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: it is so, indefensible. So what you end up with
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: is a lot of anger and outrage at Trump's direction
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: and all these people deflecting. But I saw like Brit
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: Hume said something which was like, this is what makes
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: people not just oppose Trump, but hate Trump.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: And I think that's true. It is true.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: But but even that is kind of like this is
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: bad strategy this is bad politics and it's actually what
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: this also does is prove all the people that oppose
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: him and hate him that they're right and that really
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: you've done something terrible by embracing someone so obviously morally
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: unfit so so kind of broken in his soul.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: I've forgotten about the rob reiner thing jesus there's so
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: many examples like this and it's also like it is
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: um i think it is tempting for those people to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: be like oh he says things and he's an asshole
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: but like no no the the same thing in trump
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: that makes him post.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: That about bob muller or about rob reiner is the
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: thing that makes him talk about war right now in
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Iran is like, we like sinking the ships. The Navy loves,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: it's fun to sink the ships. And we'll bomb them more.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. And we're going to kill another one.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: And like when you, someone who devalues human life, like
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: Trump obviously does, who has the power that Trump has,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: who has his finger on the fucking button. Yeah, that's,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: it's all connected, guys.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Can't separate it.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: How many of you have quoted Margaret Thatcher saying character
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: is destiny? I stupidly internalize that. I've come to believe
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: that there's truth in that. That character is destiny. That
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: over time, your character reveals something important about you and
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: becomes what your life amounts to. I actually stupidly thought
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: you agreed.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: Quoting the Iron Lady.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: For some reason, the thing that got me even angrier was,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: did you see Scott Besson getting asked about it on
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Meet the Press?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, incredible.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Welker asked him about it and he's like, well, I
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: think people have to understand what Bob Mueller put Donald
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Trump through. And she's like, I'm sorry, but do you
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: agree with this statement? He's like, I think that people
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: just need to, all he could say is he put
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: through Trump a lot. Like the fact that you're like
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: a fucking grown man who had a real, like, and
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: this is what you're reduced to sitting on meet the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: press and like, just, just dismissing this.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: The Trump administration made Bob Mueller the special counsel. You
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: guys selected him. It's just, you know, look what, what
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Trump said about Bob Mueller, what he said about Joe Kent,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like equally despicable. And the common thread is, uh,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: those were people who opposed Donald Trump in some way.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: And Joe Kent, uh, as of like five days ago,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: was Donald Trump's employee. And just like, you know, it
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter what Bob Mueller did to Donald Trump over
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: the course of several years of an investigation. It's binary.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: It's like you're with me or you're against me. I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: got a little excited.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't, but thinking about someone, some journalist sitting
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: down with J.D. Vance and starting the question by reminding
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: him of what he said after Charlie Kirk died and
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: what he said about people who were celebrating and then
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: asking him about Trump. And Bob Mueller. And seeing what J.D.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Vance says.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: See how he gets out of this one.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: He'll just be a slippery prick.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: He'll start scolding.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: This is what you want to talk about with everything
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: else that's going on.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: It can't just be a shouted question because he'll just,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I want like a good sit down with
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: someone where he's like stuck for 20 minutes.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: With the interviewer. You're right that it kind of needs
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: to almost like you. Maybe it does at this point
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: need to be actually. explained why rooting for people's death
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: is bad. Maybe we do need collectively to actually talk
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Or no, I like, I'm with you. I think it's
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: bad too.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: No, I know you do.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: And that's what, yeah, we were, we were all there
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: for Charlie Kirk and we got.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: Plenty of shit. But it's almost like, I actually want
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: the conversation. I want someone to talk to JD Vance
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: about like the worth of a human soul and like
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: what happens after we die and what we root for,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: like what is the purpose of being alive and like
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: who gets to be celebrated and what lives are worthy.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: It's just that we're at like a kind of first
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: principles thing because the president of the United States is
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: a moral fucking monster.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: A whole bunch of people are working for him. All right.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: When we come back from the break, strict scrutinies, Leah Lippman.
• 1:12:35
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• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: Joining me now to discuss today's Supreme Court hearing on
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: mail-in voting is Strict Scrutiny's Leah Lipman. Leah, welcome back
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: to the pod.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: So the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today for Watson v. RNC.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: It's an elections case where the Republican National Committee is
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: arguing that federal law prohibits ballots received after Election Day
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: from being counted, even if they're postmarked before or on
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: Election Day. Can you tell us a bit about how
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: this case reached the court and what the RNC is arguing?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 6: So the RNC brought this case challenging a Mississippi statute
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 6: that allows the state to count ballots that are cast, i.e. postmarked,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 6: on or by Election Day, so long as they're received
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: within five days of Election Day. A lower court trial
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 6: judge said, get the fuck out of.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: Here, right?
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 6: That argument is ludicrous. It would literally call into question
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 6: early voting, election law practices for the last 200 years, etc.,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: And then the geniuses on the U.S. Court of Appeals
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 6: for the Fifth Circuit, three of Donald Trump's Court of
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: Appeals appointees, said, you know what? Actually, federal law does
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 6: make it illegal to count absentee ballots that are received
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 6: after Election Day. That theory would work. destabilize election laws
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: in more than half the states, I think 29 some states.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 6: And so because their ruling had such sweeping implications, the
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 6: Supreme Court basically had to take this case. And that's
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 6: how it got up here. The argument is federal law
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: that just says the Tuesday next after the first Monday
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 6: in November is established as the day for the election.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: Their theory is that federal law makes it illegal for
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 6: states to count ballots that are cast by Election Day
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: but not received until a few days after.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: And part of this is grappling with whether or not
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: that would also mean votes cast before Election Day would
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: be counted. Also, it's not clear whether If Election Day
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: is the day, if you can count votes, say, after midnight,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: if you turn into a gremlin, if you count votes
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: after midnight.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 6: I mean, they are gremlins, so I think that's kind
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: of non-unique, but sure.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: Now, are the officials in Mississippi defending this case not
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: also Republicans?
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: They are.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: And part of what is so striking is that you
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: have the prospect that both the federal government and I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: think at least three justices, three Republican appointees, if not more,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 6: are more anti-voting rights than the state of Mississippi. That
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: is the state of our union.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: So there was some dissensus between the conservative justices. What
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: was the kind of arguments you were hearing from, say,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: Alito and Thomas versus what you were hearing from, say,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Kavanaugh and Barrett?
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: So Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch seemed to be totally magapilled,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 6: like their brains had just been marinating in Fox News
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 6: and were regurgitating. anti-absentee ballot talking points. So Justice Alito
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 6: referred to the confidence you can have once you turn
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: your ballot over to the Postal Service and whatnot. Honestly,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 6: Justice Kavanaugh sounded like he was more in that camp
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 6: than in the middle. So he was throwing out concerns
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: about If the apparent winner the morning after the election
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 6: ends up losing due to late arriving ballots, won't that
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 6: undermine confidence? And shouldn't we fashion a rule based on that? Again,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 6: eating up the kind of talking points from the 2020
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 6: presidential election. And then you had Justices Barrett and the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: chief saying some of that, but then also saying, well...
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 6: federal government, RNC, wouldn't your theory also call into question
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 6: the ability of people to cast early ballots, early in-person voting?
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 6: Wouldn't it also call into question why states can even
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 6: continue to count ballots after Election Day, even if they
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 6: were received on or before Election Day? Like, why does
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 6: it have to be that receipt happens on or before
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 6: Election Day, but nothing else has to happen then? Like,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 6: that's just nonsensical. So they seem to be the ones
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 6: that are going to dictate the outcome in that case.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 6: And I will breathe a sigh of relief if they
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 6: end up rejecting the federal government and the RNC's theory.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 6: But it is just so scary that we are living
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: in a world where it is possible that the Supreme
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: Court at the end of June is going to announce
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: this decision today. that could again nullify voting laws and
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: practices just a few months before the midterms in over
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 6: half of the election and craft a rule that would
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: have disenfranchised almost a million voters in the 2024 election.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: Didn't Kavanaugh, though, question whether doing that would be feasible?
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: Didn't he raise some concerns about that? Or am I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: being too optimistic? Tell me.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 5: I think.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 6: Your interpretation is very generous. I think what Kavanaugh was
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: doing was a tell me why I'm right, tell me
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 6: why this isn't a concern question, because what he asked
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 6: the lawyer for the RNC was, would there be a
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 6: problem under the so-called Purcell principle if we announced this
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 6: decision for the upcoming midterms? The Purcell principle is this
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: idea that the court has selectively invoked that suggests courts
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 6: shouldn't change the the rules too close to an election,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 6: lest they risk voter confusion and whatnot. But The advocate
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: for the RNC said, no, no problem, right? Just like
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 6: hand out this bad boy at the end of June
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 6: and upend election rules for an election that's going to
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 6: happen in November.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: No big deal.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: And Justice Kavanaugh didn't push back on that. And the
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: reality is this court has really selectively invoked that principle.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: So it has invoked Purcell when courts try to protect
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 6: voting rights. Basically, it's always too close to an election
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: to do something that protects voting rights. But it's never
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: too close to an election to do something that would
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 6: help Republicans get They allowed the 11th Circuit to change
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 6: the voting rules in Florida almost a week before that
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: state's primary. They have allowed other decisions to go into
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 6: effect that, again, were likely to benefit Republicans, but not
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 6: decisions that actually improved multiracial democracy or made it easier
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: to cast a ballot. So it's hard for me to
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: think that he's actually going to apply that principle in
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 6: a more even-handed way.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: So- I agree that when California takes forever to count
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: ballots and during that process, suddenly you go from a
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: Republican winning to a Democrat winning, that that creates an
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: impression that leads people to question whether things are fair,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: even if they are entirely fair. And there is no
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: evidence to suggest they aren't fair. But presumably it's a
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: bad policy. It's a bad policy. But presumably the Supreme
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: Court doesn't believe federal law should be made to assuage
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: false concerns. They're trying to interpret what the law says.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: Are they suggesting... that the elections we've been running have
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: all been afoul of federal election law? Or are they
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: just ignoring this all together?
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 6: John, you sweet, sweet summer child.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: I am a summer child. I'm going to spring out
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: in LA here.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: So yes, I mean, this theory would suggest that many
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: elections over the last 200 years have been conducted in
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: illegal ways. And you expressed surprise at the idea that
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 6: they would indulge the that these false claims or false
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 6: notions of voter fraud could actually alter the election rules
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: when the reality is they've actually embraced that idea before.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 6: You know, in a decision from seven years ago about
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 6: the Voting Rights Act, Justice Alito, writing for all of
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: the Republican appointees, said, States have an interest in protecting
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 6: the appearance of legitimacy in an election, even if there's
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 6: zero actual evidence of fraud. And that was the same
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 6: idea that you had, Justices Kavanaugh and Alito, reverting back
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 6: to a bunch during this argument about absentee ballots. Well,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: isn't it fair for the state to basically adopt rules
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 6: or the federal government to adopt rules in order to
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 6: combat the appearance of impropriety, even, again, if that's not
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 6: rooted in reality. But, you know, that's not how you
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 6: usually interpret federal statutes. You know, under our constitutional system,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: states are supposed to be able to be the primary
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 6: rule setters on elections. And they seemed willing to kind
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 6: of abandon federalism, to abandon textualism, you know, in favor
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 6: of something like whataboutism.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: Well, because if the state has an interest in making
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: their elections fair, the state would be the one trying
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: to protect their electoral interests. Perhaps one way they're trying
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: to make sure the elections are fair is by counting
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: the votes carefully. Allowing people to vote.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: And that would be their, that would be, right, this
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: is about usurping the state's prerogative to oversee the elections.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: But you basically, what you saw today leads you to
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: think that this is right now on the edge, but
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: there could be five votes to protect the counting of
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: absentee ballots. And the fact that it's close is incredibly terrifying.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 6: That's what I heard. I think that's what other Supreme
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 6: Court watchers also heard. And just to pick up on
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 6: one thing you said, you know, of course, the fact
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 6: that states take so long to count ballots, that's not
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 6: a good thing. But the reality is in validating these
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 6: state rules that allow the counting of absentee ballots, that's
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 6: not going to fix the problem because it still takes
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 6: states a lot of time to count ballots that are
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 6: received on or before Election Day. You know, we need
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 6: to be able to invest more resources in in order
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 6: to give states the ability to process the counting of ballots.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 6: Some states don't even allow officials to begin counting ballots
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: until a certain point. And so this decision is not
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 6: going to address all of the bogeyman and the fears
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 6: they're trotting out. It is just straight up voter suppression.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: Speaking of straight up voter suppression, the president's on a
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: tear here. He's trying to get the Congress to pass
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: the SAVE Act, a restrictive voter ID bill, to require
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: Americans to provide proof of citizenship. At the moment, it
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: seems unlikely that the bill can pass Congress. Even as
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: of today, Trump was trying to get some of the
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: funding measures tied to the SAVE Act, trying to get
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: everything all together. The Senate leaders are throwing cold water
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: on that because there aren't the votes to pass this.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: One part of the contention has been around what this
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: would do to, I believe it's pronounced women, women who
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: are married, Now, on one side, they say, well, there
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: are Democrats are spreading misinformation about this. On the other,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: it's truly not clear what happens to women whose birth
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: certificates and legal name are not the same because they
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: got married. What actually happens if this becomes law? And
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: what would be the odds that it would face a
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: lot of legal hurdles to actually going into effect?
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, happy Women's History Month, ladies. You might
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 6: not be able to vote very soon. But yeah, so
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: various provisions of the law require you to be able
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 6: to present an identification that matches.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 6: Your name when you go to vote. And so married
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 6: women who change their names when they get married might
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 6: have an identification where their birth certificate or their passport
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 6: doesn't align with their married name. And so they would
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 6: be prevented from voting under the SAVE Act. But it's
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 6: not just married women. A lot of people change their
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 6: names for a variety of reasons. Same-sex couples, you know,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 6: they change their names when they get married. Individuals, you know,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 6: change their names for family, personal reasons. And this law
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 6: just threatens to disenfranchise large swaths of the population. And
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 6: that seems to be the goal. You know, I'm glad
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: you put the SAVE Act together with this case because
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 6: I think we should understand this as really all a
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 6: coordinated effort to suppress voter turnout, make it more difficult
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 6: for To vote, you know, this is part of their
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 6: mid-cycle redistricting. Write a set of rules that allows them
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 6: to retain power. The SAVE Act is part of that.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 6: Suing for voter data and potentially deploying ICE agents, right,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 6: those are also voter suppression tactics. The pending case about
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 6: the future of the Voting Rights Act, that's another voter
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: suppression measure. And so they are trying to throw everything
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 6: they can, you know, at the wall in order to
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 6: hold on to power because they recognize that nobody fucking
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 6: likes them.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: Speaking of people who are not being liked, I wanted
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: to talk to you about this story. So last weekend,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 3: and you talked about this a bit on strict scrutiny,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: a federal judge Biden appointee absolutely tore into some DOJ
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: attorneys in New Jersey in a courtroom, basically had a
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: Trump lawyer removed from court, threatened to have him dragged
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: out of the court, then gave that lawyer a second
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: opportunity to leave on his own volition, an opportunity he took.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: What happened? And is it now resolved because of what
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: took place today?
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 6: I cannot begin to convey the insanity of what has
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 6: been happening in the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 6: Imagine GTL but like on ketamine, and it's like the
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 6: legal version of that.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: So, you know, they appointed- Jim Tan lawyer, you know.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 6: Exactly, yeah, Jim Tan lawyer. They appointed Alina Haba, U.S.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: Attorney.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: Federal judges said, no, that's illegal. Then they created this
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 6: new leadership structure that they referred to as the trifecta
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 6: or the triumvirate, where three individuals were supposedly running the office.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 6: Another federal judge said, no, no, no, that's illegal. And
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 6: the problem with making all of these illegal appointments is,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 6: If you have an illegally appointed prosecutor, then the cases
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 6: that they bring have to be thrown out. And so
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 6: it was jeopardizing public safety, law enforcement, law and order.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 6: And so all of these judges were like, guys, just
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 6: fucking get your act together and accept the lawfully appointed U.S.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Attorney.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 6: Because under federal law, the judges basically have the power
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 6: to select a U.S. attorney for a district after a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 6: certain period of time. And that was what the Trump
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 6: administration was resisting. So in this particular case, it involved
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 6: a defendant who had been indicted for a child pornography offense.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 6: And because the U.S. Attorney's Office is just not functioning, apparently.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: The U.S.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 6: Attorney's Office entered into a plea deal with this defendant
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 6: without actually searching the defendant's phone. They agreed to a
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 6: sentence before actually looking at all of the defendant's phone.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 6: And once they looked, it had even more child sexual
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 6: abuse material on it. But because they had entered this
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 6: plea agreement... They were kind of stuck to it. And
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 6: this judge was pissed off.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: He was like, what are you doing? And also, why are.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 6: You insisting on imposing a sentence when you are running
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 6: a U.S. attorney's office that might not even be lawfully structured?
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 6: So this transcript was basically my ASMR. I would strongly
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 6: recommend to people reading it for themselves. You know, at
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 6: the end of the transcript, the judge basically says, in
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 6: a single year, you have squandered all of the credibility
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 6: that the Department of Justice has built up over decades.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 6: And it does seem to have been resolved in the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 6: sense that the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey is
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 6: now being run by the individual that was selected according
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 6: to the statutory procedures by these federal judges. And so
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 6: what that would mean is now there's a lawful appointment.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 6: structure in place. And so all of these plea agreements,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 6: all of these criminal cases aren't going to be called
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 6: into question, um, you know, as to whether the individuals
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 6: who stayed at the U S attorney's office, including, you know,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 6: some individuals who came in under Trump, you know, can
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 6: dot their I's and cross their T's and do law
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 6: remains to be seen. Um, but this does actually solve
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 6: some of the problems at least.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Just so people understand basically if, uh, the, the
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: role of U S attorney is vacant, uh, because it's
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: a confirmable Senate confirmable position, uh, the law says that
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: if it's open, there can only be a temporary appointment
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: by the administration for so long before the judges appoint
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: someone in their stead, because there are real powers that
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: are associated with job and they have to go somewhere
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: and you have to know who that person is. And
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: Trump was trying to get around this by kind of
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: continuously appointing temporary people. And the fear would be that
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: those prosecutions, uh, not only was this usurping Congress and
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: the role of the courts and what Congress has assigned
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: to the courts, but it would mean that these prosecutions
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: could ultimately be in jeopardy. They were fighting and fighting
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: and fighting. It seems like they've, as of today, as
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: of this recording, basically given up the fight. It does
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: seem like a genuine victory for the federal courts over
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: the Trump administration. It really does.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 6: And this is an area where the federal courts held
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 6: the line and basically refused to back down. And you know,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 6: in a game of chicken, the chicken always loses and
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 6: the Trump administration lost as they should have. And so
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 6: hopefully they actually stick to this and are willing to accept,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 6: you know, the statutory procedures and other U.S. attorney's offices
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 6: as well.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: Leah, before we go, one last question. Donald Trump over
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: the weekend said that he was happy that Robert Mueller
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: had died. He said good because he didn't like him.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: Do you ever allow yourself to root for the death
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: of people that you don't like? Or do you know
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: how bad that is for the human soul? Where are
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: you at?
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 6: You know, I have some sense that that is bad
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 6: for the human soul, because basically when I saw that tweet,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 6: I forced myself to think about, OK, when Donald Trump
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 6: inevitably dies, like, what will you say and what will
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: you think? And nothing remotely like the truth he posted
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 6: about Robert Mueller. remotely entered into my lexicon, even though
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 6: this is someone whose policies and behavior have affected vast suffering,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 6: untold deaths, human consequences. And still, I just don't think
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 6: that is a normal human reaction. It's sociopathic.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Death isn't justice. We all die. That's
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: how I feel about it. It comes for everybody. So
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: how do you celebrate it?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 6: That's a delightful note to end on.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: But while we walk among the living, subscribe to Strict Scrutiny.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: Because these cases are coming down. They are huge cases
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: that will affect the elections, that will affect all of us.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: And if you want to know what's happening, if you
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: want to be prepared, if you want to understand and
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: do it in a way that is entertaining, even joyful
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: at times, even in these dark moments. please, please, please
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: subscribe to Strict Scrutiny. Leah Lippman, thank you so much.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: Good to see you.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks to Leah for coming on.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: Dan and I will be back with a new show
• 1:32:25
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