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“Sedition: Impossible.” · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Levitt.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: On today's pod, the Republican Party's last-ditch effort to overturn
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: the presidential election for a man who was just caught
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: on tape trying to steal it again. We'll also talk
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: about the state of the Georgia Senate races a day
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: before the election and what Joe Biden can do to
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: fix the federal government's bungled vaccine rollout. Then you'll hear
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: from former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, friend of
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the pod, Alyssa Mastromonaco, who's going to talk all about
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: what to expect in a presidential transition campaign. in her
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: crooked YouTube series, Let's Break It Down. But first, but first,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: check out the latest episode of Gaining Ground, The New Georgia,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: where Jewel and Rembrandt talk all about what to expect
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: on election day, which is tomorrow. Go download that pod
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: if you haven't listened over the break. It's a fantastic
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: series about how Georgia got to this point, how it's
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: turned blue based on what the organizers on the ground
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: have been doing and the hard work they've been doing
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: over the years. It's a fantastic series.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: Check it out.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: The election is tomorrow. There will also be volunteer opportunities
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: available right up until the polls close on January 5th.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: So sign up for a shift today at votesaveamerica.com slash
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Georgia and send a link to your Georgia friends so
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: that they have access to valuable voting information tomorrow. Super important.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Can't believe we have another election already.
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Jesus.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: It's too much.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It's too much.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Let's get to the news. When we last spoke, Donald
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Trump had just finished losing 60 legal challenges in about
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: imaginary voter fraud and irregularities in the courts of dozens
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: of judges that he appointed, including a unanimous rejection from
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. He also failed to stop a single
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: state he lost from certifying its election for Joe Biden,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: despite publicly bullying countless Republican election officials and state legislators.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And yet, the soon-to-be ex-president is simply not tired of
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: losing and has set himself up for one final humiliating
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: defeat with the help of some of America's worst people.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: On Wednesday, January 6th, during what has always been a
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: fairly routine counting and certification of the electoral votes in Congress,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: most House Republicans and at least 12 Republican senators plan
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: to formally object to Joe Biden's win, citing more imaginary
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: fraud and irregularities. Unfortunately for them, the only recorded instance
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of fraud came on Sunday when the Washington Post released
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: the full audio of a call where Trump told Georgia
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that he'd be criminally liable
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: if he didn't find Trump enough votes to overturn the
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: thrice-certified election in that state.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: Here is a clip.
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: what I've heard, and they are removing machinery.
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: And they're moving it as fast as they can, both
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: of which are criminal fines, and you can't let it happen,
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: and you are letting it happen. You know what I mean?
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: I'm notifying you that you're letting it happen. So, look,
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: all I want to do is this. I just want
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have,
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: because we won the state election.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Love it. I saw on Twitter last night that you
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: said you listened to the full hour.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Of the call.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I listened to the full hour.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: I did too. It was great. It was an hour
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: well spent.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: Wow, guys. I'm so impressed with both of you.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: In the streaming era, there's really been a blurring between
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the traditional half hour comedy and the hour long drama.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes that's led to like comedies that
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: aren't funny, but this was a drama with great, great
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: jokes in it.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: And I just- What did you learn from the full hour?
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Love it. So- So I feel like there's a lot
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of people saying, oh, Trump is delusional.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Trump is delusional.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: But if you listen to the tape, first of all,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about Axelrod calling Trump a feral genius,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: which I think is both too kind and too unkind.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: He's not that feral and he's not that smart. And
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: you listen to this tape, and what he's really saying is, look,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I'm giving you plenty of certified fake numbers. They have
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: specific commas in them. They have digits. You can just
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: take these numbers. Just take them. I'm giving them to you.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And it's enough to stir enough doubt to throw out
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the results. Why don't you understand that? I endorsed your guy.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: We're both Republicans. And he throws it in the call, right? Like,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I got other states on the blower, too. And they're
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: going to do the same thing. Now, that's obviously not true,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: but he's trying to get something going, right? He needs
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Georgia to help him so that something crazy can happen
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: in Michigan. He needs Michigan to help him so something
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: can happen in Georgia. And he's just spinning his wheels
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: and spinning his wheels and spinning his wheels. And throughout
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the call.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: There are these interjections from sleazy lawyers and Mark Meadows.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And I think the call culminates in Mark Meadows basically
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: at a moment of awkward silence saying, so I think
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: what I'm hearing is- I love that part too. I
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: think what I'm hearing is- I know, that's good. We're
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: all going to meet and look at some of this
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: information and figure out if there's a way forward. Just
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: trying to get out of this call with a do out.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And the lawyer is just like, no, we're recording this.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not giving you anything.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: What Meadows said is, so what I think we all
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: agreed on is you're going to give me a bunch
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: of data that you cannot legally give me. And the
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: lawyer for Raffensperger is like, no, absolutely not. I did
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: not agree to that. Mark Meadows is not very good
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: at shepherding along the process. That much is clear here.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, here's here's one of the many thoughts I
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: had is like, what did Trump think he was going
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: to get from this fucking call? Like he has not
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: had a great history with Brad Raffensperger as he's been
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: publicly berating him for like the last month. Did he
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: not think that Raffensperger was going to think about taping
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: the call? Did he not think that Raffensperger was going
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: to tell him to go fuck himself and not give
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: him what he wanted? Like, what about his relations with
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Brad Raffensperger made him think that? This is the call
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: that's actually going to do it, that this guy's going
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to say, you know what?
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go fucking steal the election for you
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: and go find the votes. Like, that's what makes me
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: think he is pretty delusional.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Look, this is for once this question isn't just sort
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: of like, you know, psychological in nature. It might have
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: legal ramifications because, you know, there's a legal debate about
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: whether this call was illegal or not. And a lot
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: of it might boil down to sort of some sort
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: of proof of his knowledge or intent to. that he
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: would be defrauding the Georgia electorate if he got Raffensperger
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: to do this. So it's very hard for me to
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: tell whether he is just spouting a bunch of nonsense,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: trying to give Raffensperger a pretext to finally overturn the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: election just because he's that desperate, or whether he has
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: created this cocoon of bullshit around himself that involves OAN,
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: and actually not even Fox News anymore, Newsmax, and these
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: increasingly insane lawyers like Lin Wood and others who are
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: just telling him what he wants to hear. And, you know,
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: instead of reading the PDB, he's just getting every like
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Reddit conspiracy theory put on his desk and he just
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: wants to believe them. I have no idea. But clearly
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: the call is unethical. It is beyond the pale for
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: a president to threaten.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: I would say not ethical.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: No, definitely. Definitely flag in the, it's definitely a more
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a violation.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Throw the flag. Look, he threatens Raffensperger and his lawyer
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: with some sort of criminal offense TBD. And then he says,
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: I just want to find 11,780 votes. I mean, he's
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: threatening to punish them if they don't do his bidding.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: I thought it was interesting.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I think Ben Collins pointed this out on Twitter, who's
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: usually on the QAnon crazy beat. He was saying that
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: everything that Trump said in the call was just mainline
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: straight from The Reddit threads, 8chan, fucking, you know, Parler, right?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Like all of the way beyond Fox News, way beyond
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: right wing media at this point, just like all of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: the darkest, craziest corners of the Internet now go have
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: a direct pipe to the president of the United States
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: who then spouts these conspiracy theories to the secretary of
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: state of Georgia in an effort to overturn the election.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: Just straight up.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And, you know, it's first of all, to your point, right?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: This is someone who Trump views as hostile and this
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: is how straightforward he's being in his demands. Imagine the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: conversations going on with people he views as more friendly
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to him, the Lindsey Grahams of the world. I mean,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I was appreciating how direct these Georgia Republicans were in saying,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: we decided to tape him because Lindsey Graham did a
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: crime on the phone and nobody believed us. And so,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: first of all, you have to imagine what those conversations
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: are like. What was that conversation in the Oval with
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: those Michigan elected officials? What are these conversations that we
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: don't know about been like? And the other piece of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: this is, again, everything is very stupid and very important
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: because- yes, these are ridiculous, baseless conspiracy theories and we'll
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: get to it. But, you know, Trump promulgates these conspiracy theories.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: They spread on right-wing media. It's a doom loop. They
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: come out through Trump again. And then all of a sudden,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: all these Republicans say, there's a lot of questions about
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: this election. We're just following these questions. They fabricate the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: questions and then they use the fabricated questions as a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: justification for delegitimizing the election.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So the question is like, what should be done about
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: this call? You know, Tommy, you noted that, you know,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: there's sort of debate among legal experts and lawyers, whether
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: it was illegal. You know, I think we leave it
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: to the lawyers to sort of handle that, figure that out.
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Like, I think there was some the DA in Georgia
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: said they were going to look into it, investigate this.
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: So that's fine.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: You know, there's been calls for like he should be
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: impeached again, which I'm just like.
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Like, should Donald Trump be impeached again? Of course he
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: should be impeached again. He should be out of the
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: fucking office as soon as possible. But like what? Like,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: let's play this out. So the House, the House gathers
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: together today, the new House. They vote to impeach Donald Trump.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Great. It passes.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: He's impeached again. Mitch McConnell doesn't take it up in
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the Senate or he does. It immediately falls. He doesn't
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: get convicted. And so I guess we all feel pretty
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: good that there's like two impeachments on his. on his
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: track record when he leaves office that he's got two
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: black marks against him and we all cheer?
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it does. In the short term,
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: hopefully the audio of this call makes it a little
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: bit harder politically for Ted Cruz and then blow-dried Ted Cruz,
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Josh Hawley, and some of these other senators and representatives
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: to go along with this scheme because they can spin
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: this however they want. They can pretend they're creating a
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: commission or they want people, their constituents to be heard.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: That is all bullshit. You are helping this guy. try
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: to get random state election officials to steal votes for him.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: That's the end goal. You can't pretend otherwise after hearing this.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: So that's the short term. Long term, this may have
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: violated a federal statute. It may have violated a Georgia statute.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: We don't know. It's not our job to really speculate.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: We'll see what DOJ says or Georgia prosecutors say down
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: the road. In the near term, I mean, look, I
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: think my takeaway from impeachment is that there was a
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: sort of a bipartisan sense that voters didn't like it
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: very much. And I think in the midst of a
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: global pandemic, when they were just promised another $ 2, 000 check each,
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: when the vaccine rollout is slow, when Biden's trying to
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: get in there and use the DPA to move things
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: forward and enact a bunch of priorities, another impeachment seems
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: like something that would be wildly unpopular to me. I
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: know there are some who think that we need accountability
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: and results. Just the problem is, if you impeach him,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: I don't believe he's going to be removed. Because the
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Republican Party is a cult and they will refuse to
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: remove him. So we'll be in the same exact place.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: We'll be in the same place.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: He won't be removed at all. A thousand percent.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Even my thing is, even if impeachment, I don't know
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: how it pulls. Maybe the second impeachment would be 75-25
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: in favor. Maybe everyone would be for it. Tell me
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: how it would materially change anything about the current situation
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: we're in, even a little bit.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: Only if he's removed.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: What effects would it have? Only if he's impeached, removed,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: and then he can't run for office again. But again, but.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Right, and he will absolutely not be removed anyway. We
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: have a bunch of Republicans in the Senate who won't
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: certify the election results for Joe Biden, let alone convict
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: the president of a crime.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Are you fucking crazy?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I also just think it's like, okay, take a step
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: back from this one question. I think a lot of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: these Republicans are going along with this for completely cynical reasons,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: and they just think their primary voters may have a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: longer memory than general election voters. The next election is
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a lifetime away for all these people. The odds that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: we're reflecting on this moment in November of 2022 seems
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: unlikely to me. Maybe it's part of how we tell
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the story of this moment. That said, I think there's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: two big questions for us beyond Trump. One, how do
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: we disincentivize criminal behavior on the part of a president
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: moving forward? And I think that means he needs to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: be held accountable after he leaves office. And I hope
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: prosecutors at the state level and at the federal level
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: look at every violation without partisanship, with no politics, because...
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: this law breaking is incredibly dangerous. I don't know if
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: this call specifically is criminal, but there's so much criminal
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: conduct that we've observed over the last four years. That
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: should be looked at.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: But beloved, I think it's important to say that like,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: that is the job to me. I don't know if
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: you think this too, like that is the job of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the prosecutors and the people at Justice Department, stuff like that.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Like it is not a job for pundits and politicians
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: even to be talking about what should or shouldn't happen afterwards.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Like He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the law if people who are, you know, that's their job,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: find that he should be prosecuted.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: That's it. It's their judgment. One ad, though.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: I would like to see Congress, House or the Senate,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: or both, continue to investigate his crimes. It doesn't have
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: to be impeachment. They should keep digging into this stuff. Sorry,
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: No, no, I totally agree. So and I think I
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: think there was a moment where Joe Biden was, I think,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: hinting he's been saying the right things lately, which is
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: it's not my job. I'm going to leave it up
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to career prosecutors, because I think one of the most
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: damning things I've heard some politicians and some pundits say
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: is we need.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: To look forward.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: The only way to look forward to protect the country
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: moving forward is to make sure there's accountability for the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: crimes of the past or we'll just invite more criminality
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in the future. And then, so as part of this,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: making sure we disincentivize criminal behavior on the part of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a president, Congress needs to investigate. Congress needs to make
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: sure they strengthen laws against self-dealing, look at restraining the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: pardon power, look at ways to prevent corruption in all
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the different forms, look at making into law what were
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: norms that have been violated over the past four years.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So that's preventing criminality on the part of one person.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: The second part, and this is, I think, a harder
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: part to figure out what to do is We need
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to attack the incentives that lead people like Ted Cruz
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and Josh Hawley, completely cynical mercenary actors, to view being
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: for Trump as more valuable than being for democracy. And
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: that to me is, I think, a really hard question.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And Democrats do a lot of self-flagellation, but we need
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to look at the media ecosystem and the ways in
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: which this kind of behavior has been incentivized. Because politicians
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: will be cynical. They will do what they view as
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: in their best interest. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: in a competition to be the most disgusting because they
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: think it's their path to becoming president.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And my beef with that, you're right, but that is
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: such a large meta question that is so far beyond
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: the power. You know, I saw some people saying like
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden needs to drop his talk of unity and
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: bipartisanship and Joe Biden needs to come out and start
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: screaming about this. Number one, Joe Biden gave a pretty
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: forceful speech on the day that all the votes were
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: certified where he called this an attack on the democracy
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: and said everything.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: He should say.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden can come out today and scream about sedition
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: into a microphone and I'd share it. I'd fucking RT
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: all those quotes.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: In a second.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: With your good arm.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: With my good arm.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be RTing everything. But like, do we think,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: so again, I go back to the question about impeachment.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: What is the effect on the situation? What does that
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: materially change? Does that convince people? Does that change the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: incentives for Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley?
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: Does that change them?
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: Does that convince a single Republican? Mitch McConnell could not convince.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell got on the phone with all of the
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Republican senators and said, please do not object to these results.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: This is going to be bad for us. Do not
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: do this. And 12 senators said, fuck you, Mitch McConnell.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Are those senators going to listen to Joe Biden go
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: out there and start screaming about this?
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Of course they're not.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: The majority of the American people don't want this to happen.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: They voted for Joe Biden. Of course they don't want
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: this to happen. So we've got the majority of the
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: American people on our side. Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: are on our side. Like, what else are Democrats yelling
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: about this going to do?
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Look, this silly conversation is pretending it's impeachment or nothing.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: There's lots in between, right? Impeachment seems like a bad idea.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: There's not time. Joe Biden won the election. There's a
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: pandemic raging. Let's focus on those things. I think we
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: need to let Joe Biden and other smart politicians— like
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: have a public message that is focused on big issues
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: that people care about. And then when Joe Biden takes over,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: the wheels of government will turn. DOJ will do its
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: thing based on whatever technocrats decide. Prosecutors in states will
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: do their things. Committees should investigate. But like screaming for
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: impeachment right now seems like not the best use of
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: time to me.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: The literally the most important thing that we could possibly
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: do right now is to amass more power, to do
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: all the things that Levitt said, to turn norms into laws,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: to pass laws about corruption, all this kind of stuff.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: It requires power, requires us to be in power. And
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: that requires us to win these two races tomorrow in
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Georgia and maintain the House in 2022. Why did we
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: lose a lot of Democratic House members in 2020? It's
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: because there was a bunch of people who voted for
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Democratic House members in 2018 who either didn't come out
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: or voted for Republicans in 2020 in the House. We
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: need to get those voters back. That's the only path
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: to power in 2022 and beyond. And to make sure
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: that we save democracy by passing a bunch of laws
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that that aren't just norms to stop all this bullshit
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: from happening again. We need power, you know, and like, that's,
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: that's what we should be focused on. How do we
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: get those people to vote for us?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I also would say too, like, this isn't just a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Republican Democratic divide. There is an intro Republican fight unfolding,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: like Pat Toomey and Mitt Romney, like Susan Collins, there
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: is a fight going on inside of Republican politics around
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: democracy and integrity and about whether there is such a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: thing as truth anymore. And I'm not saying, you know,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that makes Susan Collins and Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey heroes,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: but it does mean that when Republicans are fighting amongst themselves,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: our job is not to give them a unified thing
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: they can argue.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Against, right?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Let them fight. Godzilla and Mothra, let them fight.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: I do want to know, like, back to the beginning
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: of the conversation, there's no way this is the only
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: call of this nature that he's made. How do we
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: investigate that? And figure out what he said to PA
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: state officials, Michigan officials, etc. And then, you know, in
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: terms of McConnell, like Ted Cruz and blow dried Ted
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Cruz are the most annoying because they're smart enough to
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: know better and they're smart enough to know how cynical
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: what they're doing is. But like. I would like every
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Capitol Hill reporter who has lavished praise on Mitch McConnell
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: for years and talked about his iron grip on the
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Republican caucus to just eat a little shit in this moment.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Like a dozen Republican senators are giving McConnell the finger
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: and he kind of deserves it, right? Like he tried
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: to play footsie with Trump in these conspiracy theories. Not
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: one of these guys in Washington has stood up to
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Trump and shown strength in the way Brad Raffensperger has. Instead,
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: they all made a cynical calculation of about how to
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: help turnout in Georgia and these runoffs and, you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: how to like mollify Trump for a few weeks or months. And,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: you know, now they're living with the consequences, right? So
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: like we're all disappointed, but no one should be surprised.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: This is what happens every time Trump does something crazy
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: and slowly the majority of the Republican Party warms to
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: it and it becomes their position. It's just how it works.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Because this is way more fun than talking about what
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Democrats should do. Let's talk about the inter-Republican fight here. Because,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: so- You know, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, this is going
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: to fail on Wednesday. We should have said that from
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: the outset, right? Why is it going to fail on Wednesday?
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Because if a senator and a House member, and now
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: there's multiple senators and multiple House members, object to a
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: certain statement. electoral college certification, then they both go back
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: to their chambers, both the House and the Senate, they
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: debate it for two hours, and then they all have
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: to vote. Democrats control the majority in the House, so
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Democrats will vote every single objection down. And now we
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: have a pro-democracy majority in the Senate, meaning all the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Democratic votes plus Romney, Collins, and all the other Republicans,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: now 15, I think, who've said that they will not
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: object to the certification, is a healthy majority in the
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Senate to vote all the objections down.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Including like raging right-wingers like Tom Cotton, by the way, right?
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: Like this is a broad majority of the Republican Party.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Mike Lee, Ted Cruz's buddy, Mike Lee just came out
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: right before the pod and said he's not going to
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: object either. So they're going to be all shot down.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: So now the question is, why do you guys think
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: that Holly Cruz- And that crew has decided to object
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: and do this. And why do you think not just
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: people you'd expect like Mitt Romney, but Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Tom Cotton, Mike Lee have decided not to object? What
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: do you think the various calculations are on both sides
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: of this fight?
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think Ted Cruz and blow dried Ted Cruz,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Josh Hawley are cynical pieces of shit and they want
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: to run for president again. And they think that this
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: is how you will get to the Trump base when
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: push comes to shove in the next primary.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: This is what happens.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Every time a rabid right winger loses a presidential election,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: whether it's Nixon or Goldwater or others, like the politicians
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: who cling to them until the bitter end usually get
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: some benefit from it in the next primary. I think
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: that's the calculation here. Yeah, it was funny.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It was funny when so so Josh Hawley did his
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: press release kind of solo and then Ted Cruz came
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: out with his Dirty Dozen. And Josh Hawley was like,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: welcome to my plan. Ted Cruz is like, no, no,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: this is my plan. You're part of my separate bigger plan.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I think they're seeing where the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Trump base is going so that they might lead them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I also think they want to continue to sow doubt
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: about election integrity so they can pursue voter suppression over
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the next two to four years.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: Definitely.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I think some of these House members genuinely believe this shit.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of low information voters in the House.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: It is, I think, also- There's one in the White House.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one in the White House. I also think it's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: pretty chilling how many Republican senators elect are part of
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: this 12, right?
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Tells you something- Almost all of them.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Tells you something about the future of the Republican Party
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: because it's people like Toomey who have said they're retiring.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It's people like Mitt Romney who have embraced this sort
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of old sage persona, finally discovers how to be a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: person after giving up running for president. So I found
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that pretty, pretty sad. And I think some of them are, again,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: it's what I said at the top. They think that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: their base voters and the people they raise money from
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: have a longer memory than general election voters. And they're
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: counting on avoiding a fight with Trump and the base
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: now and not paying a price for it in two years.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I do think that, you know, Tommy, you're right, that
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: they are trying to figure out where the base is
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: because they want to run for president in 2024. I
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: think it's also true that where the base is, at
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: least where the right wing media ecosystem has led them,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: is not being for democracy, right? Like I think some
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: of these Republicans literally don't care about sacrificing democracy anymore.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I think that they are sliding very fast if they
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: have not already gotten there towards autocracy. I am very
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: concerned that if 2024 rolls around and the Republicans are
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: in control of the House and they're in control of
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the Senate, especially with some of these more radical members
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: in the Senate now, and we have an election, whether
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: it's Joe Biden running, whether it's another Democrat running and
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: the Democrat wins the election, that next time we come
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: to a certification in the Congress, in the House, that
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: there'll be enough objections to overturn an election. I'm genuinely
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: worried about that.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: You should be.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: And I think that a lot of these Republicans just
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: think like, we believe in our bullshit so much. We
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: believe that we should be in power so much that
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: democracy really doesn't matter. It's actually a nuisance. And that's
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: happened in other countries throughout history. Like, I'm very scared
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: of that.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Most dictators, most autocrats, tyrants don't start that way. They
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: started as freedom fighters or elected officials and they cling
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: to power over time. And, you know, they do increasingly
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: frightening authoritarian things. But the one like, I don't know,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: maybe this is a silver lining. I was trying to
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: think of any silver lining. This is clarifying for Joe Biden, right?
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Like it was smart of Joe Biden and it was
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: right of him to run on unity and to run
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: on working together, to run on bipartisanship. That's what voters
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: want to hear. Clearly it worked. He won the election.
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: But.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: None of us had any faith that Mitch McConnell or
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: anyone else in the Republican party would actually be constructive
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: once he got into office, especially if Trump is still
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: pulling the strings with these idiots via Twitter, which is
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: clearly what's going to happen. So at least now, like
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: he can point to this as an inciting incident and say,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: this is the break with the GOP. I tried, they
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: wouldn't even let me take office before, you know, mainlining
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: these conspiracy theories. Like I look, it's, it's not a
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: great silver lining. If we win Georgia changes everything, but.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons it does change everything
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: is the reason I think McConnell looks so weak in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: this moment is McConnell's power as majority leader is not
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: preventing his members from voting the way they want to vote.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It's preventing votes from happening at all. McConnell can't prevent
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: this vote. And so they're going to vote the way
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: they want. The control over the floor, the preventing of
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the voting on $ 2, 000 checks or what have you, and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: anything over the Obama administration, that's his power. And so
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: right now we can draw comfort in intra-Republican divides. But
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: if a majority of Republicans do not want to pass
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: anything while Joe Biden is president, it doesn't matter as
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: much in the Senate after these votes what Mitt Romney
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: or Susan Collins ultimately want to do if McConnell won't
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: go along with things.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I think Joe Biden's demeanor and how he works with Republicans...
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: like Georgia matters more than what Joe Biden decides, right?
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Like if we lose Georgia, then even though Republicans are
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: maniacs who tried to overturn an election, Joe Biden's only
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: path is to still try to work with them on
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: legislation and have been forged by pirates and compromises because
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: he doesn't have the power to pass things himself outside
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: executive authority, which he should try to do and then
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: see what gets struck down by the courts. We've already
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: talked about this. But if we win Georgia- tomorrow and
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: now he's got a Democratic majority, then I think there
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: there should be pressure applied on Joe Biden because now
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: he has a Senate majority and not just Joe Biden,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: but the Joe Manchin's of the world, the Kyrsten Sinema's,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: the Mark Kelly's, like some of the more conservative Democrats
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: that are in the Senate, because if Joe Biden doesn't
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: pass H.R.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: One.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: The democracy reforms, make D.C. a state, Puerto Rican statehood,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: you know, gerrymandering, like all the other good stuff and
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: democracy reforms. If he doesn't get that done fast, then
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: we are at real risk of this, of them, the Republicans,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: succeeding and overturning a future election. They still may, but
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: at least passing a lot of these democratic reforms will
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: reduce the chances. And he has to get that done
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: if we win Georgia. He has to get a whole
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff done if we win Georgia. And also
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: if we win Georgia, by the way, every one of
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: these objections that have been raised to any of these nominees,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: near as mean tweets or someone being upset about this.
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: Like I would just tell them to fuck off.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Like they don't need them. You can object all you want.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to just ram every single nominee through the
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Senate and you're going to like it. And we're going
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: to fill a bunch of judicial nominations too. And he's,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: he actually has to exercise that power if we win Georgia,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: because then all the criticisms of him and the bipartisanship
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and all that stuff will be completely valid.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: It's just amazing to be on like year five of
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: a failure of any Republican to take collective action and
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: stand up to Donald Trump, right? Like they have, they
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: watched themselves get steamrolled in the primary because none of
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: them would push back on this guy. And they, like
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Ted Cruz specifically sucked up to him until the very
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: last moment, thinking he could then make it a one-on-one
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: race and pull it out. And he got his ass
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: kicked and he got humiliated. And now he's right back
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: where he started, just kissing Trump's ass.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz had one moment of conscience four years ago
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: at the convention. It lasted about 12 and a half
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hours and it has not been seen since.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: So one of.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: McConnell's various henchmen that just sort of populate the dark
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: corners of the internet and just tweet shit from their
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: K Street offices. Um, he said, uh, you know, Holly
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: and Cruz will live to regret this. I guess Josh
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Holmes did that. There are so many of them. Holly
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: and Cruz, Holly and Cruz will live to regret this. Um,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: and all the other Republicans who did this will live
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: to regret it. Do you think he's right that they'll
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: live to regret it? Because I look, I would love
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: for him to be right on this. I would, uh,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: in this fight as a, as a citizen of this democracy,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: I am on the side of the Mitch McConnell's Lindsey
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Graham's Tom Cotton's about this.
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: But, I don't know if if Holly and Cruz will
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: live to regret this. I think this could be politically
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: for them beneficial.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of the other side of it.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're sort of in predicting. So, yeah, I
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: obviously don't know either. I think it's going to take
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: some work to get to that. Like, I'd like to
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: be at that place. I'd like to have Trump viewed
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: as Nixon, right? A disgraced loser. But it's going to
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: it's going to require these Republicans standing up to him
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: forcefully now and not letting him. pull the strings or
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: tweet the agenda for another two, three, four years.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You know, look, Trump emerged from decades of rot in
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Republican politics. Hard pressed to point to any facet of
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that problem that got better over the last four years.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: If you think we're going to get to a place
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: where someone like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley pay a
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: price for what they just did, you have to show
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: me where there's going to be some positive change in
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: this media ecosystem, in the spreading filth on Facebook via
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Newsmax and OAN. You have to show me some place
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: where you see a sign that things in the Republican side,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: inside of that debate, is getting better.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: I don't see that. I don't see that anywhere.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: In fact, they've abandoned Fox News and gerrymandering. They just
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: abandoned Fox News because it wasn't telling them what they
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: want to hear. Yes, we have a supply problem in
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: terms of what these media companies and billionaire-backed institutions are
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: pumping out, but there's also a demand problem. People are
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: going to where they find the news that tells them
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: exactly what to hear before they get in their car
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and drive to Ralph's to do YMCA without a mask.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I think the one place that may hurt Holly and
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Cruz's personally and their personal ambitions. And this is what
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't quite know what the calculation is
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: on this. Donald Trump could run again in 2024. He
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: may run again in 2024.
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: So if you, if you, if your story is Donald
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Trump had this election stolen from him, but otherwise he's
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the rightful winner, then why are you running against him
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: in 2024? Why if, why should voters choose you, Josh
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Hawley and Ted Cruz, when you just told us that
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the last election? Well, something,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: something's not going, Something's not right there.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: This is what I've tried to understand all along. It's
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: almost like they didn't believe that he was going to
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: run in 2024, but you need to be able to
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: call him a loser and say it's time for someone else.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: All right, let's talk Georgia. The Senate special election is tomorrow.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: After months of campaigning and hundreds of millions of dollars
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: spent in advertising, the races between Senator Kelly Loeffler and
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Reverend Raphael Warnock and Senator David Perdue and John Ossoff
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: are still neck and neck. with the polls moving ever
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: so slightly towards the Democrats in the final days, far
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: more important than the polls are the actual votes. Over
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: 3 million Georgians, nearly 39% of all eligible voters have
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: already cast ballots, which is already the highest turnout in
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: a Georgia special election ever. If there were no more
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: votes cast, it would be the highest turnout in a
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: special election. Just like in the general election that we
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: just went through in November, it's hard to predict what
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: the early vote means for who will win on Election
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Day because we don't know exactly who will turn out
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: on Election Day. There is a denominator we're missing. But
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: what can the numbers in Georgia tell us about who's
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: voting and who each side needs to turn out on Tuesday, Tommy?
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: So like you said, this is closer to a 2020
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: general election turnout right now than it is a runoff,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: which hopefully is good for us. It seems to be
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: favoring Democrats. There's higher black turnout by, I think, three
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: to four percentage points. And then turnout in white rural
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: areas is down so far, especially in northern Georgia, which
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: is where Trump is going today.
• 31:52
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: And but so that's why they're sending him there tonight.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: But who knows if his message is going to be
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: go out and vote or if it's going to be
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: the state Republican Party in Georgia voting. is stealing your votes.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: Why even bother? So we know in November, more Georgians
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: voted early in person than by mail. That trend seems
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: to be continuing. The question is always whether there's a
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: huge Republican turnout on election day. So look, I don't know.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: As always, it's good to know that you've banked a
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: lot of votes, but it's hard to predict things based
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: on this data, especially a runoff election after what's now
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: described as a disputed election in in a pandemic. It's just,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: who knows?
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, you know, so all the number crunches have
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: been looking at this and Nate Cohn did a couple
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: interesting threads on this. I think what we can say
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: is for Republicans to win these runoffs, they will need
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: to improve their turnout on election day by even more
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: than they improved their turnout between early vote, absentee voting
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: and election day during the general. So they have to
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: do even better on election day than they did.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: In November.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: And it's not impossible. People just could change the way
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: they vote. But it's a tall order. And it is,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I think, better than a lot of people expected. Look,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Republicans had an advantage in this race in that in
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: the general election, David Perdue did win more votes than
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: John Ossoff, about 88,000 more votes. When you tallied all
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: the votes in the jungle primary, Democrats did slightly worse
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: than Republicans in the special election now that's between Loeffler
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: and Warnock. So and in special elections, turnout often goes down.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So that is sort of the hill that Democrats had
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: to climb. And now it's looking like they are climbing
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: that hill. So it could be very close.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: But love it.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: You were saying we were talking, we've talked about this
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: for a long time now that Georgia, the dynamics of
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: this Georgia race, and you were saying that a lot
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: of voters are cynical and not stupid, and that they
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: might come out anyway, even though you know, Donald Trump
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: and everyone else has been sending messages, Lin Wood and
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: all the other crazies have been sending messages that the
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: election is rigged. But it does look like turnout is
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: lagging in some of these areas so far. Maybe they'll
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: make up for it on election day. I don't know.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we don't know. And I think, look,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: we're recording this Monday afternoon.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it's all going to come down
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to turnout. And, you know, we will see tomorrow. I
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: think there are some heartening numbers. And also one thing
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: we've kind of started to consider is that maybe our
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: gut instinct on higher turnout is better for Democrats may
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: be changing as the electorate shifts.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: We just don't know.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: That said, it's a completely unknown. We're running two Senate
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: runoffs for control of the Senate after the biggest turnout
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: election in a presidential contest. As the president says that
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: elections are illegitimate, they're running incredibly vicious right wing hits
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: on these two Democrats to try to stir up their
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: base to get people out. That cattle prod has worked
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: for them in the past. Maybe it's going to work, right? Like, oh,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: they need a bigger turnout than ever on Tuesday. Well,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: we could wake up on Wednesday and they got it.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: We just really have no idea. And as to whether
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: or not what Trump is doing is going to kind
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: of depress turnout, maybe.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: I just don't know.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I just, I never wanted us to count on it
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and I still don't think we should.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: One thing, last I looked, almost 80,000 votes have been
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: cast already who didn't vote in the november election and
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: that like and that is disproportionately who is that guy
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: it's more that is.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Give me give me a profile on those what were
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: you doing a.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Month ago some of it is some of it is
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: young people who weren't of age yet and then it
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: is if you look at the racial breakdown of that
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: cohort it is um there are more black voters than
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: there are in the larger cohort of voters uh so
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: that's good news for democrats both those things And I
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: just like, you know, some of those could, of course,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: be Republicans who are turning out for the first time, too.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: I'm sure a bunch of them are. But that is
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: a testament, by the way, to a lot of these
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: organizers on the ground. Stacey Abrams' crew, Fair Fight Action,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: all of the other Georgia organizers and activists that have
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: been doing this work for years. Latasha Brown, that have
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: been doing this work for years. To get that many
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: people registered and out to vote between the general and
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: now is astonishing.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: There was a great piece in the New York Times
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Magazine yesterday. about LaTosha Brown and Fair Fight and the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: efforts to change Georgia.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: And it's really worth reading. Yeah, that was in the
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Daily this morning too. But like, you know, if you're
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Perdue or Loeffler, like you can't be happy that Trump
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: is dominating the news cycle as a general matter and
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: questioning the value of voting itself as a closing argument.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: On top of that, clearly the coronavirus is a key
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: issue for everybody just because it is. And Trump really
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: did help clarify that Republican control of the Senate was
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: preventing additional stimulus and direct payments from people as part
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: of that stimulus. So like, again, I don't want to predict,
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: but this is not how I'd want to close. Now,
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: what's clear is that they, Loeffler and Perdue are going
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: like hardcore racist base only messaging. Like they're not looking
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: for a lot of swing voters when they're running a
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Reverend Wright ad about Warnock, right? Like it's a gross,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: gross campaign.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: The Republican strategy from the beginning has been to, it
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: was their strategy in 2020. And they think that it
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: at least worked on a congressional level. Democrats are radical socialists, right?
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: We all saw the debate and Kelly Loeffler repeated Raphael Warnock,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: radical socialist a million times, right? Like that's been their strategy.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: They have driven that strategy with their own message. They
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: have driven it in paid media the whole time, right?
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: The Democrats message from Ossoff and Warnock has been these
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: two are basically corrupt senators who've profited off the pandemic
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: at a time when they're blocking relief for you. And
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: here's what we're for. They have a very positive message, jobs, justice, healthcare, right?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: They've been repeating it over and over again. Then that's
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: their message. So whatever happens on election day, I think
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: if you look at who has had more luck driving
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: their message, not just through their own paid media, but
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: through the media, through the shape, who has had a better,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: who has been better at shaping the media narrative in
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: these final weeks. And I think like, I think Warnock
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: and Ossoff have, by a mile, partly helped by Trump
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: and Mitch McConnell in this whole fucking stimulus debacle. Like
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: when Donald Trump came out for the $ 2, 000 checks, I
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: was worried because I thought what was going to happen
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: is Mitch McConnell was going to put it up for
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: a vote, knowing that it wouldn't pass the Senate. A
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: bunch of Republicans would vote against it. Loeffler and Perdue
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: would vote for the $ 2, 000 checks. And then they could
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: go back and say, look, we voted for this, blah, blah, blah.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: And instead, McConnell blocks the vote. They sort of mealy
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: mouth come out for it. Trump starts screaming about how
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell blocked the relief. And now Ossoff and Warnock
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: can campaign last week by saying, we're for $ 2, 000. These
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: guys couldn't get it done in the Senate. This is
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: the kind of Senate you're going to get if you
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: send them back. You're going to get a Senate that
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: doesn't help working people.
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: Like, I don't know. You can't ask for much better
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: than that.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, it's a, you know, it's an
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: intellectually honest and sincere, positive message. While I'd say like,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Purdue is awful on the stump. Leffler, man, just this complete,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: just like you see Purdue and Leffler and you, they like,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: why do you even want this job? You don't seem it.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: It's just like, you're, you're up there. She like, this
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: is left Leffler's, you know, she's, uh, she's pulling out a, uh,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: a David Boies donation to try to tar Warnock.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: As a fucking, it's like as a- It's QAnon light, yeah.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: It is despicable, despicable, despicable stuff.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: I think for Loeffler, this is just cheaper than a
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Bloomberg terminal. So she can kind of trade stocks ahead
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: of the curve. That seems to be different. primary motivation here.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I will say too that like, I think that Warnock
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: has handled these attacks in a very smart way. Like
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: instead of getting down in the mud and going back
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: and forth on them with her, she accused me of this,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not this, she's that, blah, blah, blah. Like he has,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: you know, it started with the puppy's ad. And then
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: he's out there just talking about what he's for, what
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: he's going to do for Georgians. And that's what John
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Ossoff has. And their negative message about those two has
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: been these are two corrupt fucking assholes who are emblematic
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: of everything that's pissing you off about Washington. And like
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: that's the Senate that you're going to get if you
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: send them back. Like I think it's good to say
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: this now because who knows if they lose, they lose.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: But like I think they have done almost as well
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: as they can with on the message side. in this race,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: I think, that Ossoff and Warnock have.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: And look, it's harder for Warnock, right? When you're running
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: as a black candidate, you have to worry more about
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: being called angry or divisive or all the bullshit that
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: was lobbed at Barack Obama, who was out of the
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: same side of their mouth. They were calling him professorial
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: and aloof and all this stuff. And I think he
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: is- running sort of an Obama-like strategy of trying to
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: rise above a lot of these attacks. Now, obviously, they're
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: punching back on the stocks, the insider trading, all that stuff.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: But I do think they're tying that to substance, like
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: you said, when it comes to the stimulus.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I also just really, I also just liked how they
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: both call out the game, right? Like it's not, they're
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: not just punching back. They're saying, you know, Asif has
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: a version of like, they want you to believe you
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: can't do better than this. And you have Warnock saying like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: they're trying to make you afraid of me because they're
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: afraid of you. And they're both just sort of, it's
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: compelling and inspiring. And you know, in the face of
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: so much misinformation, I think they're doing the best that
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: they can.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: And a lot of money.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: I think win or lose, there will be lessons from
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: their campaigns in how to attack Republicans and also run
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: campaigns going forward. All right, let's turn to Operation Definitely
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Less Than Warp Speed. The first coronavirus vaccine was approved
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of December, but out of the 40
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: million vaccines delivered last month, only 5 million have been administered.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: At this rate, experts say that it could take 10
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: years to vaccinate the entire country. The Trump administration had
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: publicly set the ambitious goal of providing 20 million Americans
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: with their first round of the vaccine by the end
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: of December, end of the year. That obviously hasn't happened. Lovett,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: why is this process taking so long and whose fault
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: is it?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So basically anything that the Trump administration touches turns to shit.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: And so when, you know, obviously the response and there's
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: a great, very, very in-depth report look at the response
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: to the virus by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: I suggest everybody read it.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Set aside a few days for it. It's quite long.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: And basically what you see here is once the development
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of the vaccine, as quickly as it was developed, is
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest achievements in scientific history. It's an
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: incredible achievement. But now it is not just about science.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: It is a practical logistical question. What is clear is
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: this administration is not capable of planning ahead and putting
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: in place the process that will make it so when
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: this thing got to the states, when it got to
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: public health departments around the country, when it got to hospitals,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: when it got to doctors, that there would be clear guidelines,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: clear plan, clear funding in place to help them get
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: it from deep freezers into people's arms. And so there is,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: wherever you look, there is chaos, there is confusion, there
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: is public health departments that are completely strapped, there are
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: hospitals that are completely strapped. These people are exhausted. They
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: are exhausted and they have been going hard for months
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: and months trying to deal with this pandemic without enough resources,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: without the PPE. And then all of a sudden the
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: vaccine is here. There is no procedure. There is no plan.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: There are 50 different sets of rules, 50 different ideas
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: of how to distribute it. And all of this, look,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: there was always going to be challenges. There were always
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: going to be problems. This is a once in a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: century event.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: It is difficult.
• 43:16
  Speaker 7: It is complicated.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It takes incredible ingenuity and resources, not just to develop
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the vaccine, but to get it.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: To people.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: But all of this, I think, would have been so
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: much different under an administration where the president could focus
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: on something other than voter fraud for more than an hour.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: Tommy, what do you think?
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean, I'm trying to keep from losing
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: my mind by allowing for the fact that there are
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: some mundane and understandable reasons, right? Like if you got
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: your batch of vaccines right before the holiday, you then
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: went away for a couple of days from Christmas, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: that could have slowed it down. They're all trying to
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: figure out how to work with vaccines that are stalled
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: stored at these ultra low temperatures, right? So I'm sure
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: that's all challenging. But there is a part of this
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: that I just think is a deliberate choice that is
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: directly attributable to Trump. They haven't given states clear guidelines
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: for how best to distribute doses, right? Congress has not
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: given them enough money to pay for that infrastructure. And
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: so you also have this hesitancy that is among some
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: parts of the population to take the vaccine. It's very
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: worrisome How many healthcare workers are rejecting early access to
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: the vaccine? In California, where we are, the vaccination process
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: is colliding with a massive, really dangerous outbreak. But I
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: do think this is part of the strategy that we've
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: heard about forever, which is Trump basically wants to say,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: I get credit for the vaccine production, but the rest
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: of it is on the states. They didn't want to
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: own testing. They didn't want to own sufficient use of
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: the DPA to ensure there's enough PPE and other vital
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: materials for health care workers. So they just push it
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: all to the states without giving them any of the
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: funding they need. And it's not going well. I think
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: we can catch up. I think that's the key. I
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: think they can catch up to this. All these stats about, oh,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: at this rate, it'll take 10 years to vaccinate the
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: whole country. I think that's a little bit clickbaity alarmist.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: We can catch up. Fauci talked about this over the weekend.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's based on like if everything is going exactly
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: as it is now. And like the idea is we
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: speed it up and then suddenly those timelines change dramatically.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: You know, one big issue is that different states have
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: prioritized different groups of people. Again, it's not a centralized approach.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: After health care workers and residents of long term care facilities,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: some states have decided to prioritize frontline workers and people
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: 75 or older. Others have decided to prioritize elderly people
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: over frontline workers and a sort of a broader swath
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: of elderly people like 65 and older. Members of Congress
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: had early access. Now, apparently, two staffers from each congressional
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: office can get it, too. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo said that outrageous.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Governor Cuomo said that New York would institute a one
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: million dollar fine if anyone gives the vaccine to someone
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: out of order. Also, I also think is.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: Also stupid.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: There was a story that was floating around today in Washington,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: in Washington, D.C., where there was a pharmacist who told
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: two people, hey, I got to throw this vaccine away.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Do you guys, do you two people who are just
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: standing here want some vaccine? Because otherwise I'm going to
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: throw it away. Like, how are we in a position
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: where we're throwing fucking vaccines away in the middle of
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: a fucking pandemic when everyone's home and millions of people
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: are sick and dying?
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: And we're like, Florida.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: This is inexcusable.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: Florida was doing first come, first serve.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: And you had like senior citizens camping out on the sidewalk.
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: Together in crowds.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: And so like all of this, right? Like there was
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: always going to be I mean, we don't need to
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: talk about, but that person who's just like, I'm going
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to throw some vaccine away because I suck. But like
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: there was always going to be, this is a fast paced,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: difficult thing. There's going to be lost vaccines. There's going
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to be vials that hit the ground. There's going to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: be things that go bad. There's going to be grabbing
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: a pizza guy off the street and giving him the vaccine.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: That's great.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Like that's life. Like that should be happening. But if
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it was in the context of a clear, forget even,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: you can let the states do it the way they
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: think is best, but a clear.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: A calm, consistent message from the top that said, everyone
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: will get a vaccine. It will take about this length
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: of time. You can trust what we are going to say.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: There's no need to race out. We're going to make
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: sure everybody has it. We're going to do it fairly.
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: We're going to do it faithfully.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't have all of this uncertainty and panic and
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: people racing to get in line if people just had
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: a sense of where they were in the line, when
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: they were going to get it. There's so much communication
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that would have happened if you had an actual presidency
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: and an actual group of people committed to informing the
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: public about what was going to happen and the steps
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: to get it done.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: And a president who hasn't taken it, by the way.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: But like, yeah, give them military infrastructure. They don't have
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: to be uniformed. It doesn't have to look scary. I'm
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: not saying like inject it from the top of a tank,
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: but like give them all the infrastructure they need to
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: get this thing out there. And like it's It's maddening
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: to hear stories that, you know, some of these doses
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: might be wasted. It makes no sense.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Emily made the point.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: She's like, the National Guard was out here on Larchmont
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: in L.A. during the the Floyd protests.
• 47:54
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: For like no good reason. And yet, like now there's
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: like a mass vaccination program that we're trying to get underway.
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: Like, where are they now?
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Why isn't every resource of the federal government being deployed
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: to vaccinate people as soon as humanly fucking possible? Now,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: we're talking about the Trump administration, which. Plenty to criticize,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: as we've done. Joe Biden's going to take office soon.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: He has pledged to ensure 100 million vaccines are administered
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: in his first 100 days in office. We're nowhere near
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: hitting the million vaccinations a day on average needed to
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: achieve that goal. Like, what can Biden do to speed
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: things up? Because, you know, I'm torn here. Like, we've
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: all been in government, right? Like, we've seen, you know...
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: promises of speed and efficiency, you know, fall to bureaucracy
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: and lawyers telling, you know, and people in the bureaucracy telling,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: you know, like it is hard to push even with
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: the best intentions, the machinery of the federal government and
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: the bureaucracy to act and act quickly during an emergency.
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: It just is. We've all seen it happen, right?
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Like we didn't want fucking healthcare.gov to fuck up, but
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: it did even with the best intentions. And I do
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: think that like, This is a moment for the Biden administration.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: This is going to be maybe the most important thing
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: they do in the first 100 days or the first
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: year or maybe the presidency, right, is to get this done.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: And he has to act quickly and break all the
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: China he needs to break in the federal government to
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: get this done.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: I thought Mitt Romney had some good ideas in the
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: statement he released criticizing the vaccine rollout, which was, you know,
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: lead some major effort to get retired doctors, retired nurses, veterinarians,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: like military medics, people who are no longer in the
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: health care field, get pull them in, pay them, have
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: them be a part of this process.
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: So that's something that Biden could do if he wants
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: a bipartisan idea. He's also said that he's going to
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: use the DPA, the Defense Production Act, more often to
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: give private industry more production of materials needed for vaccines,
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: as well as more PPE. I read that Operation Warp
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: Speed has used the DPA 18 times, including to make
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: glass vials and syringes. So I'm not sure what else
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: specifically they need. I mean, the other good news for
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: Biden is that in late January, Johnson & Johnson is
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: going to release clinical trial results for a single shot vaccine.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: So that will help. AstraZeneca's results will come in February.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: So hopefully there will just be more supply. And then maybe,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe you're just getting to a point where
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: you're just sending big shipments to CVS and people like
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: us who are not in any of these at-risk profiles
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: are just getting in line and just getting the thing.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: But yeah, this is, you know, competence will go a
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: long way.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Competence will go a long way, but I think the
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: creativity point is it matters a lot too, because competence
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: will take you so far. But I think the federal
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: government's going to have to get really creative in even
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: the things you were saying, Tommy, but like the holidays, right?
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Like there should be 24-hour vaccination centers, right? Like if
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: there's a 2.30 a.m. shift for a vaccine, I would
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: stand in line at 2.30 in the morning to get
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: the fucking vaccine. A lot of people would, right? And
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: if we have to pay people to work those shifts
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: around the clock, let's do it. Money should not be
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: an object here. Like it should be like very ambitious,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: like sky's the limit on what we think about here to.
• 50:56
  Speaker 7: Get this done.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: There was a brief flickering moment where Trump was like,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: this is a war and I'm a wartime president. And
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: then it went away. It never happened, right? And there
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: are so many aspects of it. Yeah, it's resources. It's
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: also something that I think a competent person administration would
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: have done, which is best practices. Hey, what states are
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: doing it? Well, let's get that information. Let's get that
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: information to other states, right? That's something that the, the convening,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the power to convene, get people together, talking about the best,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: best thing to do to get this into people's arms
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. And the other thing that has
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: just been completely absent is patriotism. You know, when another,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: I've just, I've been thinking about this, this piece by,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: but this right piece, which And it talks about how
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: one thing that, that, that helped New York so much
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: in the early days of the pandemic was that people
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: really responded from across the country. They came to help
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: that they, they came to help and people are willing
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to help, but there's no, there's no message like that.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: There's no leadership.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: There's no, there's no PPE being sent to everybody's homes built,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: you know, as part of a patriotic kit to every
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: have everybody wear a mask, like all of that, the
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: kind of the, the, the soft power of the presidency
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: has just never been employed by these people. And that's
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: part of why we're paying this price, too.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: The good news is that Biden's incoming chief of staff
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: is Ron Klain. Ron Klain was the coordinator for the
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: Ebola response, right? So he knows how they deployed the U.S.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: military to set up basically hospital infrastructure in Africa so
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: that workers were safe. There's lots of creative ideas that
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: I think were probably bandied about during H1N1, during Ebola
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: that Ron can bring to bear. And in a lot
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: of ways, it's probably already road tested.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, the team... really heartens me
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: that Biden has selected the COVID team. And in addition
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: to Ron, Jeff Zients, who's going to be the COVID czar, right?
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Like Jeff came into the Obama administration to fix healthcare.gov
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: when it was broken, did that, and then had a
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: lot of jobs in the White House that was like
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: involved managerial experience and expertise and logistics, right? So like
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: he's good at that, the new search in general, like
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: there's just a really good team coming in that is
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: both competent and creative that I feel confidence in. I
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: just hope that they are, you know, they're willing to
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: move fast and break some china.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: No more cushions.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Overcome the fact that the most important work that could
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: have been done should have been done three, four or
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: five months ago.
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right.
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: So, OK, when we come back, you will hear an excerpt.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: When we come back, you will hear Alyssa Mastromonaco in
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: her YouTube series. Let's break it down. Talk about presidential transitions.
• 53:26
  Speaker 6: We gamed out what we thought would be the three
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: most likely scenarios that they would face. We flagged a hurricane,
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: we flagged a cyber attack, and we flagged a pandemic.
• 53:38
  Speaker 8: Welcome to our third episode of Let's Break It Down,
• 53:40
  Speaker 8: where we go behind the scenes at the White House
• 53:42
  Speaker 8: to reveal how campaign events are planned, choreographed, and executed
• 53:46
  Speaker 8: to prevent things from going terribly wrong. I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco,
• 53:49
  Speaker 8: former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Barack Obama.
• 53:52
  Speaker 8: Joining me today is Chris Liu, former White House Cabinet Secretary,
• 53:56
  Speaker 8: Deputy Secretary of Labor, and Director of Transition after the
• 53:59
  Speaker 8: 2008 election. I've known Chris since he was the legislative
• 54:03
  Speaker 8: director for then-Senator Barack Obama. Chris Liu, welcome to Let's
• 54:07
  Speaker 8: Break It Down. Thank you for being here today. It
• 54:10
  Speaker 8: is so good to see you.
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: Listen, we've been in the trenches for a long time together,
• 54:15
  Speaker 6: so it's great to be on here with you.
• 54:18
  Speaker 7: I mean, for like 15 years at this point.
• 54:20
  Speaker 6: It feels like 15 years.
• 54:22
  Speaker 8: I know!
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: We were much younger back.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: In the day.
• 54:25
  Speaker 8: Okay, so Chris, knowing what you know, being an expert,
• 54:28
  Speaker 8: if you will, looking at the transition thus far, what
• 54:32
  Speaker 8: major actions are delayed or have been delayed because of
• 54:37
  Speaker 8: the Trump administration's denial of the election outcome?
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: Let's just do a little bit of concept. Back in 2008,
• 54:44
  Speaker 6: there were 77 days between election day and inauguration day.
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: This year, there are 78. And mind you, you work backwards.
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: At noon on January 20th, 4,000 political appointees leave. Basically,
• 54:57
  Speaker 6: the entire senior leadership of the U.S. government leaves, the
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: most powerful, largest organization in the world. You would not
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: do this in any private sector company, university, whatever.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: But we do it.
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: But you also have to understand, in 77 days, to
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: prepare to take over the US government is no easy task.
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: It's one of the reasons you start early. But it's
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: also the reason why every single day matters. So if
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: you lose days, those are days when you're not interviewing
• 55:30
  Speaker 6: and vetting potential nominees. Those are days when you're not
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: inside the federal agencies trying to understand the policies and
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: the budgets. It's days when, most importantly, security clearances aren't happening,
• 55:43
  Speaker 6: which means you can't put people into the national security agencies.
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: Those are days when you're not having, you know, communications
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: with the outgoing administration about whatever, you know, homeland security
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: risk or national security risk you're trying to cover. And again,
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: it's hard to quantify what that means, except to say
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: that 11 weeks isn't enough time. And if you cut
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: that down by three weeks, which is what happened here,
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: that's going to have an impact. Hard to say what
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: that impact is, But I think given the challenges that
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: the country faces right now around the pandemic, around the
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: economic recession, you would want as much time as possible.
• 56:20
  Speaker 8: I remember very clearly in my office, the small office,
• 56:24
  Speaker 8: not the bigger office, when you came to see me,
• 56:27
  Speaker 8: I think it was like July of 2012. And you
• 56:31
  Speaker 8: and I started, it might have been June, and you
• 56:33
  Speaker 8: and I started talking about preparing the Romney transition.
• 56:37
  Speaker 7: Now, people don't really talk about this.
• 56:39
  Speaker 8: Yes, we were the sitting president and Barack Obama, I'm
• 56:43
  Speaker 8: sure you had this conversation with him as many times
• 56:45
  Speaker 8: as I did. He said, we will never do any
• 56:48
  Speaker 8: less than the Bush team did for us.
• 56:50
  Speaker 7: We will do more.
• 56:51
  Speaker 8: We will try to do even more than they did
• 56:53
  Speaker 8: because the transition of power is so important. And so
• 56:56
  Speaker 8: you and I started talking about making sure all the binders,
• 57:01
  Speaker 8: when you transition, most departments pass binders on to the
• 57:05
  Speaker 8: incoming administration so they understand what certain templates, what documents,
• 57:10
  Speaker 8: what decision memos look like, what different kinds of like,
• 57:14
  Speaker 8: I mean, I didn't.
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: Know how you order a military aircraft. I found out
• 57:18
  Speaker 7: in my transition binder.
• 57:20
  Speaker 8: And so you and I made sure that across the campus,
• 57:23
  Speaker 8: everyone had their binders updated and we worked with the
• 57:26
  Speaker 8: Romney folks to get ready working with some of them
• 57:29
  Speaker 8: on their clearances because, as a reminder to everyone, Benghazi
• 57:32
  Speaker 8: happened in September of 2012. And so our national security
• 57:37
  Speaker 8: team wanted to make sure that the Romney folks had
• 57:39
  Speaker 8: clearance to be able to get updates, much like President
• 57:42
  Speaker 8: Bush made sure that both us and John McCain were
• 57:46
  Speaker 8: able to get the briefings on the financial.
• 57:47
  Speaker 7: Crisis at the same time.
• 57:50
  Speaker 8: So knowing all that, I left onto much greener pastures
• 57:55
  Speaker 8: in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And you ran the transition for Trump,
• 58:02
  Speaker 8: the Obama administration lead for the transition for 2016, which
• 58:07
  Speaker 8: ultimately ended up being Trump.
• 58:09
  Speaker 7: Can you give folks all the color? How did you prepare?
• 58:14
  Speaker 7: What did you hand over to them? How did they respond?
• 58:18
  Speaker 7: Tell us all.
• 58:19
  Speaker 6: So let's start in 2012. I mean, first of all,
• 58:22
  Speaker 6: this is one of the more uncomfortable projects you will
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: ever take on because you know, notwithstanding, you know, our
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: boss had made this commitment that he was going to
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: be as cooperative with his successor, whether that was after
• 58:36
  Speaker 6: four years or as eight years as his predecessor was
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: to him. So he had made that commitment. He believed
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: in it.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: He tasked us with that.
• 58:44
  Speaker 6: But again, it's this horribly uncomfortable thing because, you know,
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: we're trying to win an election at this time. And
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: yet we also understand that you have to put that
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: partisanship aside, and focus on continuity of operations and what's
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: good for the country. So you're right. We sat down
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: with all of the federal agencies or the major ones.
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: I remember we brought them into one of the big
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: rooms in EEOB and had this conversation. made sure they
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: had their binders together.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: And we were ready.
• 59:13
  Speaker 6: And obviously, we didn't want to have to have a transition,
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: but we were ready in case we did. Fast forward
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: to 2016, I was the Deputy Secretary of Labor. And
• 59:22
  Speaker 6: so I was managing our transition on the way out.
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: This time, you knew you were going to leave, but
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: you were hoping you were going to hand the reins
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: to somebody else. who was from your own party, but
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: obviously that didn't work out. But we had all the
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: binders ready. We had, you know, the room that they
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: could work in. We had computers. We had a whole
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: set of briefings that we were going to suggest that
• 59:44
  Speaker 6: they do. And election day happens. Obviously the result is
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: not what we wanted. There's a lot of, you know,
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: understandable grief among the political appointees, but we're ready to
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: do the handoff and we wait. and we wait, and
• 59:59
  Speaker 6: we wait, and nothing happens. And it's funny, because when
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 6: we ran the transition in 08, I made sure, election
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 6: day is a Tuesday, I made sure that we had
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: people in the federal agencies, certainly by the following Monday,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 6: six days later, but in many cases by that Friday.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 6: So three days later, we had people in. I don't
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 6: remember when the Trump people actually showed up at the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 6: Department of Labor. I think it was like the Friday
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: or Monday, it was probably like the Monday of Thanksgiving week.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 6: And one person showed up. It wasn't 10 people. It
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: wasn't 20 people. It was one person, very nice person.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 6: We had a nice conversation. I gave him a bunch
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: of binders. I suggested he do these briefings.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: He said, sure.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 6: And then he did some of them. He brought a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 6: couple more people in. They did some more. But it
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 6: wasn't kind of the organized thing that you would hope
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 6: would happen when you're taking over a federal agency. And
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: when you look across the whole government, this was happening
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: across the place. And it's subsequently been written about, but
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: obviously they had Chris Christie planning their transition before election day.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 6: The day after election day, Chris Christie was fired. All
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 6: of the materials that he and his team had put
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 6: together were thrown away and they started all over again. Now,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: we started this by saying, even in an optimal world,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: 77 days isn't enough to plan a transition. And it's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: certainly not enough when you start the day after election day.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 6: And I think in many ways, the chaos the dysfunction
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: of the Trump administration, certainly over the first year, can
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: be traced back to the fact that they just both
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 6: didn't expect to win, and once they won, didn't think
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: through clearly how to do this handover, this takeover.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 8: Because it goes to show that, like, Governing is actually
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 8: really hard and really important. And it's almost like when
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 8: they had Chris Christie run transition, it was like, let's
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 8: give Chris Christie something to do. Like they didn't totally
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 8: understand that he probably was in their orbit, one of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 8: the best people to have been running the transition for them.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 8: Another just to your story, we talked about this a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 8: little bit before, but one of my favorite Trump transition
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 8: stories can be found in Susan Rice's book, where she
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 8: talks about meeting with the national security staff Michael Flynn and,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 8: and his deputies. And of all the questions, Chris, that
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 8: I know I brought to my transition meetings, they asked
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 8: her if she had ever considered working in shifts with
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 8: her staff, because this whole idea of we're being on
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 8: 24 seven seemed unnecessary to them.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: They're like, there must be a better way. And she
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 7: was like, Oh my God. And then Michael Flynn tried
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: to hug her. Just imagine that whole thing in your head.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: Can I, can I tell you though, I mean, again,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: this is why these things matter. Uh, in January of 09,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: we did a tabletop exercise with the outgoing Bush administration
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: to walk through potential things that would come up. In 2017,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: and again, now this has been written about, we did
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 6: a tabletop exercise with the Trump people the one week
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 6: before inauguration day, where we gamed out what we thought
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: would be the three most likely scenarios that they would
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: face in terms of a homeland security thing. We flagged
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: a hurricane, we flagged the cyber attack, and we flagged
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: a pandemic. And I remember sitting there in one of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 6: those big rooms in EEOB where we used to do
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 6: these tabletops. And one of the most awkward meetings I've
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: ever been in, where they had the outgoing cabinet person
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 6: sitting next to the incoming cabinet person around the table.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 6: So I was the deputy secretary of labor. Tom Perez
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: was tied up. So I'm sitting with Mnuchin on one
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 6: side of me. And the person that he originally nominated
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: for labor, Andy Puzder, And you're looking around the room
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 6: and it literally is, you know, it's Scott Pruitt, it's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: Wilbur Ross, it's Elaine Chao. And there sitting there is
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: Susan Rice next to Mike Flynn. One of my, the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: most searing visuals was over in the Justice Department corner.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: It was Jeff Sessions, Sally Yates, and Jim Comey sitting
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: right next to each other. And you're like, boy, that's,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 6: it's quite a thing to see I don't know if
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 6: it was Josh Earnest sitting next to Sean Spicer. It
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: was one of the most uncomfortable meetings I've ever been in.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, my God.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 8: I mean, and the thing is we had such rules
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 8: mostly because you and I were assholes. But it's like
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 8: I wish that we had had– that we had okayed
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 8: more photo taking in the West Wing. We did not
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 8: allow like personal picture taking. We were like, no, but
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 8: you hear some of this stuff and I'm like, fuck,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 8: I wish I had a picture.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 7: Pete Sousa can't be everywhere.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 8: Okay, so here is something that I know people know
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 8: very little about, and Trump has really sort of butchered
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 8: people's understanding of this specific group of people.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 7: Career employees.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 7: Career employees are.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 8: Who Donald Trump has vilified as the deep state, in quotes,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 8: deep state. Meaning that in some way, shape or form,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: he was trying to tell America or at least his
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: supporters that career employees were trying to have like a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 8: coup d'etat. Can you explain who career folks are and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 8: why they matter to the peaceful transition of government?
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 6: I mean, this offends me to my core. My father
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: was a career federal employee at the Defense Department. I
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: have three aunts and uncles who worked at the federal government.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 6: What Donald Trump calls the deep state are two million
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: career civil servants who ensure that you get your Social
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: Security check, you get your veterans benefits, that the air
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: that you breathe is clean, that the food you eat
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: is inspected, that we're not attacked by people overseas. It
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: is the people that enforce our laws. I mean, I
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 6: tell people you literally cannot walk from your house to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: your curb. And I can tell you 10 different ways
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: that the federal government affects your life. Again, we can
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: stipulate whether government's too big, too small. We can have
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 6: that argument. But these are people who are underappreciated, who
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: are not well-paid by and large. I mean, they have
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: a lot of other benefits, generally not well-paid, and labor
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: under challenging work conditions to provide service to the American people. Now,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: of course, we want it to be better, and that's
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: something we should strive for. But these are not the enemy.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 6: And when they're standing up to Donald Trump, often at
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 6: considerable personal cost to themselves, they're doing it because like
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: all of us, they swear an oath to the constitution.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 6: The oath is not to the president of the United States.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 6: It's not to a political party. It is the constitution.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: And they're standing up to protect the laws of our country.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 6: And in many ways, I think the lesson we've learned
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: from the last four years is that a lot of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: the guardrails of democracy haven't held up particularly well Certainly,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: you know, the Republicans in the Congress have not been
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 6: a check on this president. The press has done its job,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: but as importantly, it's federal civil servants. And I think
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: about all of the people that came forward during impeachment
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 6: who were then subsequently fired or demoted or moved to
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 6: other jobs. Those are all federal employees who saw something
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 6: that bothered them to the core and risked their jobs
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 6: in order to protect the laws of our country.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: And not just their jobs. In so many cases, their pensions,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: you know, their retirement. And also, these are people who,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: you know, when we were in office, our career employees,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 8: our career public servants had served both Bushes, the Clintons.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 8: Sometimes they had been around as long as Carter or Reagan.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 8: I mean, these are people who truly put, like, country
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 8: over party in every single way.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 7: And so hopefully not too many of them have fled
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 7: and left.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 8: The Biden folks can restore those seats of people who
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: might have left.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: But the problem, though, is that a lot of them
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: have left. I mean, you know, we know that in
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: the Foreign Service, because it is so difficult trying to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 6: defend this president's foreign policy aims, a lot of the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 6: senior diplomats have left. We know that there's been this
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 6: big exodus of climate scientists from EPA and Interior and Agriculture. And,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: you know, that kind of expertise is not easy to replace.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 6: And so it's, yeah, you're right. It's going to be
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 6: important for the Biden people to figure out how can
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 6: we replenish the federal service quickly.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: Chris Liu, thank you for joining me on Let's Break
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 8: It Down.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 7: This was so much fun.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we'll have to do it again. I mean, it's like,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 6: you know, and to think that was, my God, that
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 6: was 12 years ago.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: That has gone by fast.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: Thanks to Alyssa for filling us in today. And good
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: to be back, guys.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: I feel refreshed.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: I do.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: It was nice.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: That was a solid two weeks off. I'm taking two weeks.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: Off in a long time. I'm going to say no
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: refreshing for me.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: John broke his body.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: I broke my shoulder for all of you who haven't
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: done it.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Thinking about you, just like, The election's behind us. We
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: worked so hard. We did all these podcasts. We were
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: ready for this big, important break.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: You're like, ah, vacation.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Time to take a nice little jog. boom, hit the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: ground just like instantly. And like at the.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: Beginning, at the beginning of the vacation, it was December
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: 20th that I did this. And so I have been,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: December 20th, I fell and broke my shoulder. I had
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: surgery a week later on the 28th.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: So now I'm okay.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: So I have not slept, have not caught up on anything,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: have not helped Emily with our child, which I had
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: been neglectful about during the election. So things are going
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: great here.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: But you know, whatever. It's here we are. We're back.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: I'm on the mend and It's going to be a
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: pretty chill week in news.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, nice and quiet.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Everyone in D.C., just stay away from downtown on Wednesday.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: By the way, there's going to be a lot of
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: Trump rallies and all kinds of Proud Boys and troublemakers.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: Just sort of stay clear.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Stay clear of that. The world's worst people are descending
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: on your city, so that's not good.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 8: Not great.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: All right, we will talk to you guys on Thursday.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: Take care, everyone.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: Bye. Bye.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: Quinn Lewis, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed,
• 1:10:44
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• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: videos every week.