Latest / Pod Save America / “Joementum.”

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“Joementum.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On the pod today, our interview with Senator Brian Schatz,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: who stopped by Cricket HQ on Friday and joined us
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: for some listener Q & A. with what a day's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: priyanka arabindi we talk about impeachment we talk about the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: senate and a lot of other issues in the news
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Boy did we have some cues for his a you know.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Okay but before we get to that uh we're gonna
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: start by talking about 2020 and how joe biden's front-runner
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: status is affecting the primary race also some housekeeping New
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: episode of Love It or Leave It dropped over the weekend.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Our Texas tour has come to a fitting conclusion. I
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: don't know. But we had a great time in Dallas.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: We had a great time in Austin. The Dallas show
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: is out right now. I spoke to Julian Castro, presidential candidate,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Texas native. He played queen for a day. The latest
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: candidate to face the gauntlet. We had Emily Heller, Colin Allred,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: member of Congress from Texas. Christian Hernandez, an activist with DSA.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It was a really great show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: On the latest hysteria, Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco talk
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: about the frightening fetal heartbeat bill just signed into law
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: by Georgia's governor. And check out our latest candidate bonus episode,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: where Tommy talked with California Congressman Eric Swalwell. Finally, we
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: are on the road this week in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Instead of a Thursday pod, we'll be releasing the Brooklyn
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: show on Friday morning, and you'll hear the D.C. show
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: on Monday. All right, before we get to our conversation
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: with Brian Schatz, let's talk about the Democratic primary.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Since Joe Biden entered the race a little more than
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: two weeks ago, he has only increased his polling lead.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: The average national polls show he's got a 27-point lead
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: over Bernie Sanders, the next closest candidate. He's about 13
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: points ahead of New Hampshire, and a new poll out
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: this weekend showed him up more than 30 points in
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: South Carolina. Two big caveats here. One, we have nine
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: months until the first votes are cast. We haven't even
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: had the first debate, and... If we all recall, Donald
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Trump did not even enter the race until June in 2015.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Second big caveat, Biden's lead in Iowa, where many of
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the other candidates have spent a lot of time, is
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: an average of only four points. Guys, some pundits predicted
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that Biden's best day in this race would be the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: day before he entered. That has not come true. What
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: do you think explains his current strength as a candidate
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: at this moment in time?
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Because.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: like we like to say over and over, it's only
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: a snapshot in time.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: That's our classic phrase. It's only a snapshot in time.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's not predictive. It's just a snapshot.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: I think part of it is probably the fact that
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: he is basically a celebrity. I think 2016 taught me
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: a lot about how celebrity can overwhelm all the things
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: we think we know about politics. Remember that guy Trump
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: got elected, and Biden is the closest to that level
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: of fame. You know, I also think that electability is...
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: been his core argument and it's something people are looking
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: to hear and because no one knows what electability means
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: you just have to say it a lot and people
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: assume therefore you are electability the question we all will
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: be asking ourselves is will this be 2016 where Trump
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: shot ahead to a big lead early and just maintained
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: it or will this be like every other election before
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: it where people.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Rose and fall throughout the race I don't think we know.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: That yet yeah I also think I mean Joe Biden
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: spent eight years as vice president to the most beloved
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Democrat in the entire party. Barack Obama has a 95%
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: approval rating among Democrats. And when people see Biden, they
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: think he's the guy that not only Obama picked, but
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: he supported Obama's policies and Obama's presidency lockstep for eight years.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And most Democrats are very happy with Obama's presidency.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: They're also very happy with the fact that he won twice.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: That he won twice.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: And.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I think we also have learned, and we've said this before,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: most Democrats are not as ideological as you would assume
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: from reading Twitter, which is why also you have people
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: who say Biden is their first choice. A lot of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: them say Bernie Sanders is their second choice, and vice versa.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: People who say Bernie Sanders is their first choice, they
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: say Joe Biden is their second choice. So that does
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: not fit well with... the wars that rage on Twitter
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: every day.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Biden has sort of defanged some of the loudest
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: voices on Twitter, at least so far. I think a
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: lot of people assumed that they would surface old quotes
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: and votes and statements and that that would immediately hurt
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: him among key constituencies. In fact, the opposite occurred. He
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: got a six point some odd bounce from his announcement
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: until today. So, you know, all of this is likely
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: to change when these questions are raised at debates or
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: in paid advertisements or, you know, Routinely, it stops in
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: early states, but it is notable.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do think, Tommy, too, what you said
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: about celebrity is a very smart point. Like, people feel
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: comfortable with Joe Biden because they know Joe Biden, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: they don't really know. Here's the candidates they know right now.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: They know Joe Biden. His name recognition is, like, off
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the charts. Bernie Sanders' name recognition is approaching 100% as well.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And then the next candidate that they know is Elizabeth
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Warren because she's been in the national spotlight for a
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: little bit too, though her name ID is not as
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: high as Bernie or Biden, but it's up there. But
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: beyond those three, most Democratic voters in the country are
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: not very familiar with Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Beto O'Rourke or Pete Buttigieg or all these other candidates.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: A lot of the people that we talk to are
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: people who are active on Twitter, who are paid close
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: attention to politics. Of course they know all these other candidates.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And with a lot of those people who pay close attention...
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the race is actually closer.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, it's a little bit
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: like right now we're at kind of a self-serve yogurt place,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: and we know we like plain tart, right? We like
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: plain tart, maybe with some gaff chips in it. We
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: know that that's something we've had before. I hate the
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: plain tart. I love a plain tart. It's my go-to.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: But now we're like, you know what? This is our time.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: So we're trying a little gay mayor. trying a little
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Vermont socialist. I was going to say cake, vanilla cake flavor. We, we,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: we kind of stuffed our faces on Texas Congressman and
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: now we're not sure if we're just sick of it
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: or actually if we truly love it, but we just
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: haven't tried it in a cone yet. You know, we're
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: giving things a try. Who are the little white cups here?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I guess caucuses. I don't know.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Fill them up.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Uh, I also think there's a difference in what kind
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: of race it is in 2008. For example, George W. Bush,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: no matter what happened, was going to be a distant memory.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: He was not going to win again. And so a
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: lot of Democrats are open to, okay, what's next for
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the party?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: What's next?
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Let's experiment. Maybe we'll take a shot on this black
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: guy named Barack Hussein Obama, who was a state senator
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: before that. I think in this race, Democrats are, for
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: good reason, scared to death of a second Trump presidency.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And so I know we've been talking about electability. Electability
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: is hard to measure. But I think it does explain
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: gravitating towards someone, at least initially, who you know, who
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: you feel comfortable with.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: If you're not totally sure you're going to be happy
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: with some complicated cheesecake flavor, you just fill your container
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: with vanilla, and you walk out, and you're like, it
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: may not be the perfect thing, but I know I'll
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: eat the whole cup of it. Just cover it in
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: cookie dough. But also, I do think that's like... I
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: was thinking about the polls about Hillary versus Obama in 2008,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: and one of the things that happened among black voters was...
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: there was a long period of time where Hillary was leading.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: By a lot.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: By a huge margin. Among black voters. Among black voters.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: And there was a kind of shift that happened when
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden people got a real look at
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama and they were like, this isn't just a fluke.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: This isn't a pie in the sky idea. Like, we
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: believe in this person and we think he can win now.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And once the idea of him winning became a real possibility,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden people got behind him. And I
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: think there's, I don't know what's going to play out
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: in the polls, but to your point about how fearful
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: people are, I think that when I mean, I think
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: it's actually an important moment to look at polling that
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: shows white voters versus people of color, because right now,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I think a fair argument for why Biden is leading
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: is you see the people who feel most threatened by
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the Trump presidency and who are most worried about Trump
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: winning before he won, saying we want to go with
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: the safe bet. Now, other candidates can make the same
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: argument Barack Obama did and said, this electability argument isn't fair.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I'm the electable one. I'm the one who can appeal
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: to the people who Trump has lost. I'm the one
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: who can appeal to the broadest base of this party.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I think one of the biggest
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: challenges Biden is going to have is people who say,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I'm the one who's going to appeal to young people
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: who you need to knock on doors and get out there.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: But right now, I think there's a kind of, to
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: your point, there's a kind of readout to safety because
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the stakes are so high. Yeah.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: And also you notice, Harriet of CNN pointed this out,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: that non-college educated Democratic voters, white, black, and Latino, are
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: more likely right now to be gravitating towards both Joe
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Biden and Bernie Sanders because they are not paying as
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: close attention to politics and the ups and downs of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the news cycle. And Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: people who they know. Now, I love what you said is,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: you know, Obama's support among African Americans changed dramatically once
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: he won Right.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: The key to winning South Carolina was winning Iowa.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Which we always which we always plan on the campaign.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Why do you think so, Tommy? You know, his Biden's
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: lead in Iowa is only four points and we actually
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: haven't had an Iowa poll in a little bit. So,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it could either go up or down. But
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: what makes you think it might be closer?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: So Biden has never done well in Iowa. In 2008,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Biden's Iowa numbers never went above six percent. He finished fifth.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: He didn't win a single county. So he performed very
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: poorly in Iowa. He has no staff. He has no
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: organization in the state. Other candidates have been there, you know,
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: half dozen times less. They've been a bunch of counties.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: I think that Iowa voters are likely to remain undecided
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: for a longer period of time too. So there's not
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: going to be as many low information voters who are like, yeah,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: I'm for Biden now. I think they're going to say,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know. But I mean, the interesting thing to
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: watch in Iowa is the number of people who say
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: a given candidate is their second choice as well as
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: their first choice. Because in a field this big, the
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: way caucus math works is you have to meet a
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: certain threshold to be viable and to be eligible to
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: get delegates and people below that threshold are if you're
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: supporting a candidate that isn't viable, you can then go
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: to your second choice.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And so it's something to watch.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: And it's also part of the, you know, tactical considerations
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: when you decide whether to take a shot at the.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Front runner or not. Yeah.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And I think the fact that more candidates have spent
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: more time in the state of Iowa than any other
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: state shows that when voters get to know people more,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: get to know some of these candidates, they might think, okay, well,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I started off knowing Joe Biden, knowing Bernie Sanders, but
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I've been seeing Elizabeth Warren a lot, and I really
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: like her. I've been seeing Kamala Harris, and I like her.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So I think that's one dynamic at play. How does
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: his frontrunner status change the dynamics of the race, of
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the primary race, the fact that he has right now
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a commanding lead? What do you think that does to
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the other candidates' strategies?
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: I think it helps out Bernie for a while. I mean,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: I think you're a lot less worried about having people
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: take shots at you if you're sitting in second place
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: and you're sitting at first.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, see, I was going to say, I actually think
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: it might hurt Bernie in this crowded field because I
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: think Bernie's bet is, okay, he's got near universal name
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: recognition and he's polling at about 20% in a lot
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: of these states. And you think, oh, that's not that high.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But in a crowded field, 20% could be enough. But
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that's only if the rest of the vote is spread
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: out fairly evenly among all of the other candidates. To
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the extent that Biden is taking support away from Kamala Harris,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and the rest of them. If
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Biden gets if Biden's support gets too high, then Bernie's
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: 20 percent. isn't going to get him.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: But I mean, that's assuming a static race from now
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: through the caucuses. I'm saying that in the near term,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: if you're ahead, you're likely to get shot at. And
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: if you're in second or third place, you are not.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's beneficial.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I think I, I would bet that, uh, the dynamic
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: in this race is going to change somewhat over time.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: And so I would like to not be the front
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: runner right now.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's, I think that's a good point. Yeah.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not really sure. I'm more, I'm just thinking like,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: what is, what are the kind of ideological implications for
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: what we're seeing? Right. Because you have, Joe Biden, who
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: represents Obama politics, right? And in some sense, I think we'll,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: I expect to see him in some places give to
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: the kind of the moment and shift to the left
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to kind of recognize where the base of the party is,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: while at others trying to articulate a message about appealing
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to people in moderation, right? Well, which will drive some
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: people crazy. Then you have Bernie and Elizabeth Warren staking
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: out this more kind of structural critique not just the
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party, but of the economy and American politics. And
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: then you have, I think, a mishmash of other candidates
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: who are in some sense doing what Biden is doing
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: while trying to more appeal to the Bernie and Warren
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: wing of the party. And so Bernie really was rewarded
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: in 2016 by a clean ideological debate, right? Hillary Clinton
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: represents the establishment. I represent a left change movement. And now,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know who Bernie's arguing against exactly. In some ways,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: he's won. In some ways, with Biden, he's not winning.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It just puts him in a tough position, and it
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: makes the ideological debate harder to find. Now, to your point,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: it's not as important to Democratic voters, but it is
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: important to me.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Well, we've said this before at the beginning, which is
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the big question in 2016 was, was Bernie's vote, a pro-Bernie,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: how much of Bernie's vote was a pro-Bernie vote, and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: how much of it was an anti-Hillary vote in the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. And if it was.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Do some quick math.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: If it was very pro-Bernie, then he's in a strong position.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: But if there were a cohort of voters who decided
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to vote for Bernie Sanders because they did not like
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, and now that they have a bunch of
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: other choices of candidates who, like, namely Elizabeth Warren... who
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: have similar policies to Bernie, or some of these other
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: candidates who said, yeah, yeah, Bernie was right. I'm for
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: $ 15 minimum wage. I'm for Medicare for all. And then
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: you have this choice. Then it becomes a little trickier
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: for Bernie.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: There was a great moment. Bernie had an interview and
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: they asked him, you know, in 2016, you represented what
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of people consider the fringe views of the
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party. Now, all these years, now just four years later,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: you have all these candidates kind of adopting your worldview.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Doesn't that mean you don't necessarily need to be in
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: this race? And he goes, excuse me, I can't do it.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You can do it, Tommy. You have a great voice.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But why are they in the race? And I think
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: that's sort of the sticking point for him. How much
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: of the vote was anti-Hillary versus pro-Bernie? Or how much
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: of the vote was anti-Hillary versus pro-Bernie politics? And now
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Bernie politics are divided amongst six or seven candidates, mostly
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: amongst two, but also trickling down through the rest.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Tommy, you said something that I totally agree with, which is,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to be, or it's dangerous
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to be the front runner this early because people start
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: taking shots at you. The question for the field is
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: who is the, who takes shots at Biden, right? Because
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you also know that in Iowa, if Bernie decides that
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: his role in Iowa is going to be to start
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: taking shots at Joe Biden.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Iowans don't usually like that.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: That's the risk.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: There's a real risk to being seen as negative in Iowa.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: Iowa caucus goers notoriously, historically, do not like negative politics
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: before January, whatever the caucus is, February 3rd this year,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I mean, there might be a prisoner's dilemma.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Just like we saw in 2016, where everyone's like, who's
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: going to attack Trump first?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Could be Biden. Who's going to attack Biden first?
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: You know, that said, Elizabeth Warren took a pretty tough
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: shot at Biden early on about donations from lobbyists. You know,
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: you could see them starting to mix it up on
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: climate policy over the weekend. So, you know, it seems
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: like they're itching to have a substantive debate about policy
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: that could veer negative.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Is that a prisoner's dilemma or is that a tragedy
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: of the commons?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I leave it to the internet to decide.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about how some of Biden's opponents are handling this.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I do think just to, One more point about Bernie.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Bernie's first comments about Biden that could be construed as
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: a contrast, right, were, I don't want to talk too
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: much about Joe Biden. Joe Biden's a friend of mine,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: but he voted for NAFTA. I voted for against it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: He voted for the Iraq War. I voted against it.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I think that's, by the way, completely fair. Completely fair
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: and legitimate. Let's talk about how some of the other
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: opponents are talking about him. Last week, Reuters reported that
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the vice president, will be releasing a climate change policy
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: that might not be as ambitious as the Green New Deal.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: One of his advisors, Heather Zichal, who we all know
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and worked with in the Obama administration, said, quote, I
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: respect where the activists are coming from. What we learned
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: from the Obama administration is unless we find middle ground
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: on these issues, we risk not having any policies. Now,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: no details of the plan have been released yet. And
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the Biden campaign says that Reuters mischaracterized its policy. But
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: in response to the story, Bernie Sanders said, quote, there
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: is no middle ground on climate policy. AOC called the
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: middle ground comment, quote, a deal breaker. And the Sunrise
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Movement said that Biden's middle ground policy is, quote, a
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: death sentence for our generation. What do you think of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the back and forth there, guys?
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: We can wait till we see it to have an opinion.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: And by the way, you know, maybe the critics are right.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: I'm totally open to that. And I am also very,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: you know, I am. I think Heather Zichal is incredibly
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: smart and she knows this issue better than anyone else. Um, I,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I just want to, I want to see the plan.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't, I don't know how we
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: can all reach such stark conclusions without having seen it. Yeah.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess my reaction to the plan depends
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: on what we think it is. So with the caveat, again,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: that we haven't read the plan, but a so-called middle
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: ground climate change policy probably won't deal with the magnitude
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: of the problem. And I, and I would not love that.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: And I also don't think that Democrats have made any
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: progress on climate change policy over the many years we've
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: been talking about it by trimming our sales. in advance
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: in the hopes that Republicans will meet us halfway. We
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: make progress by winning elections and then doing things. Now,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: if it's a political strategy, I think the jury is
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: still out. I mean, if Biden thinks that this is
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: the best framing and the best way to talk about
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: climate to win an election, then they have to prove it. But,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: you know, the one thing, again, that we know for
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: sure is that the way you get action on climate
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: policy is by voting for Democrats. It's a binary choice.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Republicans will do nothing if not make it worse.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Democrats will do something. So we'll see.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, the best thing the Green New Deal proponents
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: did is they've completely changed the left flank of the debate.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: And they've also forced every Democrat to say, this is
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: the first thing you will do when you get into office.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I don't think that was true with Obama. We did
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: health care first.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: So I think they've really shifted the way we prioritize climate.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the problems we had is we actually
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: had a cap and trade vote right around the same
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: time that health care was happening, a bunch of Democrats
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in the House walked the plank, basically, by taking this
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: vote and doing what they thought were right. And then
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the Senate just left them all fucking hanging there. Because
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of red state Democrats who wouldn't
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: even go for a cap-and-trade process which for those who
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: don't know, cap and trade is like, talk about green
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: new deal is way less ambitious than the green new deal. Okay.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And so we couldn't get a bunch of red state
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Democrats to support that in the Senate. Democratic house members
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: voted for it. And a lot of them lost their election.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was that, maybe it was healthcare, maybe it
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: was just a bad economy. You know, we can argue
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: about that. But two questions on every Democratic policy in
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: this primary. Is it big enough and ambitious enough to
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: meet the magnitude of the challenge? And do you have
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a plan to get it done? And that can be
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: non-ideological at times, right? Like, is Medicare for All ambitious
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: enough to meet the challenge? Absolutely. Do you have a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: plan to get it done? Well, if you're not willing
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the filibuster, no, you don't.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, and also part of this, The ability
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: to get something big done on climate, part of that
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: may depend on staking out a claim further to the
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: left than where you ultimately plan on being, because you
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: want to have room to give to some of those
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: moderate Democrats, right? So it's a little bit of a
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: non-sec word to say we want to propose something more
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: moderate because we want something that we can get done.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Maybe part of what we're trying to do right now,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: especially in this primary, is stake out our vision, stake
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: out the truest vision. version, the most ambitious version of
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: what we believe in. And then if we have to give,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: if we have to compromise just to get something done,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: that's politics. But I do think that part of the
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: criticism coming at Biden, even before we see the plan,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: is not acceding to that mindset around Democrats, which is,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: I think, one of the things that the left flank
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of the party has shown to be effective. I mean, look,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: AOC talks about a high marginal tax rate, and then
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: the whole country's talking about it for a few days.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And lo and behold, it's popular amongst independents and moderates.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Same thing with Elizabeth Warren and her wealth tax. You
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: stake out this ambitious position and then all of a
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: sudden you've made it mainstream and maybe you don't ultimately
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: get there when the final votes are tallied, but you've
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: actually given moderates a way to win, right? By saying, look,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I made this less, I made this more conservative. I
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: made this more moderate.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So I agree with that. And I think, I think
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: there's a difference between the policies you propose, which I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: agree with you, love. It should be very ambitious because you,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: as we learned in the Obama administration, you end up
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: giving a lot and the politics you use to build
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: support for it. And I, you know, credit the Sunrise
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Movement for incredible activism and putting this on the national agenda.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I think when you respond to a Reuters story that
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the detail planned with, this is a death sentence,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: this would be a death sentence for our generation, you
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: potentially turn off people that you need. Like, I think
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: there is a way to, like, so Jay Inslee criticized
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: this report as well. And he said, he praised the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Obama-Biden administration on climate policy, but said, the times and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: science have changed We simply cannot go back to the past.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: We need a bold climate plan for the future. I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: actually think if you're running against Biden, that's a fairly
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: effective message. You start by recognizing that a lot of
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: people in the Democratic Party, most people in the Democratic Party,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: like what Barack Obama and Joe Biden did. But you said,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you know what? Times have changed. The situation has changed.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We need something better. We can't go back to that.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I like that Jay Inslee said it from a scooter.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: That was.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, I think that... I do like that.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Look, the activist groups like the Sunrise Movement, I mean,
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: their job is to criticize everything to the right of
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: what they want.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Now, I don't know that accusing a politician of mass
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: generational murder is the.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Way to do it. No, you do that after the
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: white paper comes out. Yeah.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: But, look, I think the reality is what these guys
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: run on on climate policy is important, and it's important
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: to try to build a movement for policies you think
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: are going to be your key priorities.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: When you get there. But what will happen.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: when the next president walks into the Oval Office, is
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: you will figure out what is doable. You'll figure out
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: what support there is. And we talk about the filibuster
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: It's important. It doesn't fucking matter if we don't win
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the Senate.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: We're a long way away from giving a shit about
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the filibuster. We need to win elections in some states
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: where we don't have candidates yet.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's exactly right. And that's another big problem because, like,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: let's remember Arizona in 2018. Kyrsten Sinema is the senator.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: She is pretty conservative.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: For a senator.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: She is, like, she is middle-of-the-road centrist to, you know, like,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: she did not glom onto a lot of those positions,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of liberal positions. So we do have now
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: a Democrat out of Arizona, but I bet she's not
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: going to be on board with a big, ambitious Green
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: New Deal, and we're going to have to figure out
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: what that means, you know? We should pressure her. We
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: should pressure other people like this, but as we pressure people,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: we've got to make space for them to sort of
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: come on board, right? Like, it has to be a
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: mix of pressure and also, like, okay, come on board now.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Because, I mean, part of this is if we don't
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: address this issue, it doesn't matter what ice cream we pick.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: It's going to melt. That's exactly.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Well, there's another good political argument for this from Julian
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Brave Noiscat, who's the director of Green New Deal Strategy
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: at Data for Progress, obviously a very lefty group. He said, quote,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Biden appeals to white middle-class suburban voters, and that's great,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: but he's not doing so well among young people. We
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: do have a policy out there designed to build a
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: new climate coalition. It's called the Green New Deal, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: he needs to jump on board. That's a very good argument.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I think that, like, to me... We can talk about
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: where the polls are now, but obviously everything depends on
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: what these candidates do in the next nine months. And
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: to me, what I am looking for, not just as
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a Twitter pundit, but as a person, is I want
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: to understand where the kind of old-fashioned folksiness of Biden
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: that has come with, I think, some old-fashioned positions along
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: the way meets the moment that we're in, and in
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: a way that's not only good policy, but also good politics.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Because to their point, he is... his great challenge is
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: going to be to appeal to young people. And it's
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: not going to be with memes. Luckily, I don't think
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: they think that. It's going to be with policy. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to me, it's about college, it's about healthcare, and it's
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: about climate and among other things. So I think that
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: to me is actually a really good sign for Biden
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: because sometimes candidates are presented with a problem. They don't
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: know how to appeal to a group of people and
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: they don't have a way to do it. There's a
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: clear path for Joe Biden to maybe cement this nomination
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: by adopting some pretty good policy.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what I want to know from Joe Biden is
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: does he recognize how politics and power relations and partisanship
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: has shifted over the years that he's been in politics,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: even since he's been in the Obama administration? Because if
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: he believes that back-slapping Mitch McConnell is the way to
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: change this country and get progressive policies passed, I think
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: he's sorely mistaken, and I worry about that. I want
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to see candidates, and this is about whether they can
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: win and whether they'll be good presidents. It's both an
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: electability and a president thing. Like, Do you not only
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: just have a plan to get things done, to change things,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: but do you have a way to get that plan passed?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: And it better not include like Settlers of Catan with
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: fucking Tom Cotton.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And like you said, Tommy, if we
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: don't get the Senate back and we're not even thinking
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: about the filibuster because we didn't even make the Senate,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: now what are you going to do? Because Republicans probably
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: still aren't going to compromise with you. So do you
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: have executive actions ready? Do you have other things that
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you can do ready? Are you going to focus on
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: foreign policy? You know what I'm saying? Like there's... How
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: are you going to staff your administration? You know, I mean,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: there's there's a whole bunch of things you can do
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to figure out a strategy to get your plan passed.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And I want to see that Biden. And if I
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: was if I was Biden's opponents, that's sort of where
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I would go. Like, have you have you recognized and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: understood how politics has changed in this era?
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And so far. Time will tell.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: So one person who's taking Biden quite seriously is Donald Trump.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: He said in an interview with Politico on Friday that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Biden is a frontrunner. and that the other candidates in
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the primary, quote, aren't registering with the public. Meanwhile, Trump's
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: TV attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was planning on going to Ukraine
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: in order to persuade that foreign government to move forward
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: with bullshit investigations into the origins of the Mueller investigation,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: as well as business dealings between Joe Biden's son and
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a Ukrainian oil company. He ultimately canceled that trip after
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the New York Times reported it, but Trump told Politico
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: he thinks it'd be appropriate for him to talk to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: his own attorney general about opening an investigation into either
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Biden or his son, And Giuliani said it's fine for
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Trump's team to meddle in a foreign investigation. What does
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: this tell us about what we can expect from Trump
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: in 2020? And how do Democrats handle this shit?
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're just going to run the dirtiest race
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: they can possibly run.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Including using all of the levels of levers of power
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that they have.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Including things that would normally be seen as beyond the pale,
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: like flying to another country. to try to urge their
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: law enforcement to reopen an investigation because it might damage
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: someone you're running against and then bragging about it to
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: the New York Times. That was the craziest article I've
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: ever read in my life. I do sincerely wonder how
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: many martinis Rudy Giuliani had before he took that call
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: from the New York Times because it was batshit crazy
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: and he canceled the trip.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: I do like the idea of Rudy Giuliani traveling around
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: the world trying to make trouble. Because I do believe
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: it will be ineffective on the whole.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Much like the Stephen Miller hair dye he used on
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: his Fox appearance over the weekend.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I didn't see it. Oh, that's going to be a
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: treat for me after we finish recording.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Before and after, there's Rudy with all of his very
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: few gray hairs. And then the next scene, there's Rudy
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: with just jet black hair.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Look, here's the thing. Rudy is genuinely going through something.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: And he's doing it in front of all of us.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: And actually... One of the things that happens when you
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: have someone like Trump in office is that because he's
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: such a primitive kind of creature in his habits, he
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: attracts people who are really kind of tapping. This is
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: not a lot. We don't have a lot of frontal
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: lobe decision making going on right now. So you get
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of real base shit and it plays out
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: on television. But one other part of this is, you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: it is incredibly nefarious. It is incredibly dangerous, this idea
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: of investigating your opponents. But it's worth remembering why this
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: is happening and one of the base level risks of
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump from the very beginning. When you have someone
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: who is so fundamentally corrupt, someone with so many foreign entanglements,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: someone with so many illicit dealings over the years, one
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: of the only strategies they can take to win is
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: to try to make the other person look just as dirty,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: whether it's true or not, whether you're latching on to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: sort of corruptish behavior. as we've seen in the past,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: or just trying to invent something out of whole cloth.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And so because Donald Trump is so corrupt, the only
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: way he can win is by making the other person
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: look so corrupt, and that requires doing things that further
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: corrupt the institutions of our country. And again, it boils
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: down to, it comes back to the Republicans who have
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: forgiven so much along the way to make someone this
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: low require so much additional viciousness in order to win.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I also believe that one of the reasons they're starting
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: this now during the primary is is because they know
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: we have a potentially divisive primary on our hands among Democrats.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: And so if you're one of Joe Biden's opponents and
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you're looking at Giuliani and Trump opening up investigations into
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Biden and thinking, maybe this is going to be good
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: for me, I think every Democrat should stand up and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: condemn this kind of shit because it's Joe Biden today,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: it'll be you tomorrow. He's going to do this. If
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: you think that Hillary Clinton, like we've said this before,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: She had a long history and a lot of baggage
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that she had to deal with in this race. But
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: don't think for a second that Donald Trump and all
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of his goons and a giant conservative media apparatus can
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: paint any Democratic candidate as a corrupt, awful asshole. They
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: will do it to every single one of them. And
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: so when stories like this come out, every Democrat should
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: stand up and say, that is fucked up.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: First, they came for Joe Biden. Right. But I did
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: not speak up because I was at 3% in Iowa.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: But no, it's right, you know, because I think part
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: of the challenge in 2016 is they used the foundation
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: and made shit up, but then also used little bits
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: of truth to generate incredibly explosive and unfair stories, whether
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: it was emails or, you know, double dipping by members
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: of her team and what have you. And so... But
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: then again, you go look at that Uranium One story,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: and it is basically fabricated out of whole cloth. And
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: they will still run with it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Much like this Ukraine story.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Benghazi turned into a multi-year fiasco, a political fiasco, because
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: it was expedient and for no other reason.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And reporters are going to play along, by the way.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: They are not our friends. They are not on our team.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: They are trying to take people down left and right
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: because they see themselves as holding people in power accountable,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: regardless of party. So we should not expect reporters... to
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: be the ones who stand up and say, no, this
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: is wrong.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: So. I think it's, you know, how much of 2020
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: is going to look exactly like 2016? And let's just
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: hope it's just enough that we win.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And that is something to be hopeful about. Okay. When
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: we come back, we will have someone who is quite
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: hopeful about the state of politics. Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: On the pod today, we have his official title is U.S.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Senator from Hawaii, but he's known for his good tweets.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Brian Schatz is with us in studio. And, you know,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to take some questions. Priyanka's here. We got
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: some questions from the online crowd. And then we're going
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: to do a little chatting, too.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Senator, how do you feel about having your position as
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: one of 100 U.S. senators in the Congress side by
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: side with the fact that you're a good tweeter?
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: I have mixed feelings about that.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Okay. We'll dig into it later.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Let's start with our latest constitutional crisis. Are you in
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: favor of impeachment hearings? How do you think?
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: Oh, we're getting right to it.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: Listen, I actually listened to the debate that you're having
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: in a way amongst yourselves, but probably across the country
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: among progressives. What do we do about all this? Here's
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: the thing that I think defines the how we ought
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: to move forward. People want to take impeachment off the table.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: I think that's super unwise. But I also think it's
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: unwise to move forward with impeachment if we don't have
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: the votes. I'm talking about on the House side. I
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: think it would be not a good look for us
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: to sort of move to impeach and then we lose
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: 30 or 40 Democrats.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: Do you think we need all of them?
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: I don't know the answer to that, but I think
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: that there is no harm in building the case. And
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: I think there is no harm in doing what Jerry
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: Nadler is doing, doing what Adam Schiff is doing, and
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: sort of pursuing what your colleague is calling Watergate-style hearings,
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: which may end up arriving at a point where we
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: decide that articles of impeachment need to be brought to
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: the floor, or it may be that the timing is
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: such that we've essentially made the case to the American
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: public and the election is upon us. So I'm sort
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: of undecided on where this all lands, but I don't
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: think there's much differentiation on where we should start, which is,
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: you know, Robert Mueller has to testify, these subpoenas have
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: to be honored, and we have to do aggressive oversight.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Do you think what you've seen so far in the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Mueller report is impeachable? Like, do you think that he's
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: committed impeachable offenses, or are you still waiting for.
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Listen, I think there's a couple ways to look at this. First,
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: there are impeachable.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: Obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense, but it's important
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: to remember that when Nixon was impeached, it was the
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: abuse of power that was the first article of impeachment, right?
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: It was It was Nixon trying to interfere with the
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: Washington Post through his Federal Communications Commission, which sounds kind
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: of quaint, right, looking back on it. And so one
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: thing we need to remember is that it's not just
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: a matter, and I think we screwed up a little
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: bit and allowed the whole question to be defined as
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: whether or not there was collusion, which, of course, there's
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: no statute against collusion. But the use of presidential power,
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: even if it is consistent with constitutional law or statutory law,
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: If it is the abuse of that power, that's what
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: the Congress is for.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: That's what impeachment is for.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: And so I look at whether or not this president
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: is abusing his power, not whether or not specifically he's
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: violating a statute. And one that I think rises to
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: the level that everybody should be concerned with is the
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: emoluments clause. I mean, he is very clearly taking money
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: from foreign governments through his enterprise. And the constitutional framers
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: were very, very worried about this and they explicitly banned it.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: And we've actually been successful in clearing the first hurdle
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: of summary judgment in the DC circuit. We were the
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: plaintiffs and we're basically saying we're the legislative branch, any emolument,
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: any gift to the president of the United States from
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: a foreign government has to be specifically an individually approved
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: by the Congress. And they're not presenting any of these
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: emoluments to us. So we do have standing and we
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: got over summary judgment and now we're into discovery and
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: things will get very interesting.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: So we're obviously this impasse right now where Trump is saying,
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: giving the Heisman to all oversight efforts. He's exerting privilege
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: over things that make no sense for him to exert
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: privilege over. If we move to impeachment, do you think
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: it would make it easier somehow to make, to bring
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: forward documents to testify and otherwise.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Give testimony?
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question because
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: I think that's a question of both the law and
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: the complexion of the courts.
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: And I'm not a lawyer.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: There is an argument that if you're doing things pursuant
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: to an impeachment inquiry, then it has more legal weight.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: But I just don't know how that would play out
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: through the court system. I will say that the White
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: House strategy, and I don't think they started this way,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: but they are stumbling into daring us to do it, right?
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: And I just wouldn't underestimate House members and how much
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: they jealously guard their prerogatives. So they're just starting to
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: get increasingly pissed off at this. So people who sort
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: of said, let's move cautiously, if they're just not going
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: to cooperate, then I think you're going to get more
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: and more momentum in the direction of aggressive oversight. And
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: one other thing that I'll say, and this is the,
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: I think it was the Mnuchin refusal to turn over
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: the tax returns. He basically said this is not pursuant
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: to a legitimate legislative purpose. There is no more legitimate
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: legislative purpose than the legislative branch trying to determine whether
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: the head of the executive branch is corrupted. And so,
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: and that's one point. That's the substantive point. The other
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: thing is that's our call. We get to determine what
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: a legitimate legislative purpose is.
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it's also, this is not a situation where there's
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: no clear law and there's just an argument as to
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: whether or not it's Congress's responsibility. There is a law
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't say if there's a legitimate legislative purpose
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: as determined by the executive. There's just a sentence that says,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: give it to us. Shall furnish. Shall. Shall furnish.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: Listen, when I first got to the Hawaii legislature in 1998,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: one of the first things you learn is shall or may, right?
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: If you have a bill that's that you think is
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: a great idea, but you don't have enough juice to
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: get it through, then they turn shall to may, and
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: then you can claim credit.
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: Shall means shall.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: That's a good tip. Shall means shall. And look, I'm
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: not a lawyer, but I do have a really good
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: LSAT score, and so I sort of approach it to
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: that perspective. Release a long-form record. There's no need for that.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Claiming executive.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: It's 2019. You can say whatever you want about what
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: you did in your past. So you made this point
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: that some of this is just about people getting angry.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Do you think that explains what's happening in the Senate
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Intelligence Committee, where now we have a bipartisan effort to
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: subpoena Donald Trump Jr.? I'm not.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: Exactly sure what Chairman Burr is up to. I'm pleased
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: that he seems to be continuing to work on a
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: bipartisan basis. The most alarming part of this is not
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: that you have a couple of United States senators on
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: the Republican side who are saying, you know, unlawful and
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: cowardly things.
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: That's sort of par for the course.
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: The alarming thing from my standpoint is that there's like
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: deep reporting from a caucus lunch, right? Where it's, you know,
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: twice a week, Democrats and Republicans go to separate lunches
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: and sort of strategize their politics for the week or
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: the month or whatever it is. And they had this
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: conversation about the operation of the Intelligence Committee in caucus lunch.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: And I just feel like Is that not the place
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: for that? That is not the place for that, John.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: What do the Democrats do during theirs? Do they just
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: talk about Game of Thrones?
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: We talk about Game of Thrones, you know. There's actually.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: The one complaint I'll make about caucus lunch is everyone's
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: just constantly applauding everybody else.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Literally.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: There's just a lot of wasted time going, you're doing great.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: How's the food?
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: The food's actually pretty good.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: You know what? A lot of participation trophies being given out.
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: You can tell.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Great forespeech, Chuck. Great chart, Chuck.
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: You can... That's funny. You can tell who.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Sort of income levels by whether or not people like
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: the lunch, right? So, you know, like if it's your
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: two square meals a week, then you're, you know, just
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: got to the Senate. And if you're sort of complaining
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: that this lunch is gross and they got to provide variety,
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: maybe you've been around a little bit longer.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Mark Warner brings his own. Not going to force you
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: to respond to that.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: What do you want to hear from Mueller?
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: Mark's great and he likes the lunch.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: What do you want to hear from Mueller? What would
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: you ask Mueller if, when he finally testifies?
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: I actually think it's important to just let him speak.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: Because I think we just have to have some uninterrupted
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: time to hear from Robert Mueller.
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: And there's some pretty obvious questions, right?
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: Like sort of the spin on the ball that Bill
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: Barr put in the first instance and in the second
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: instance and then sort of on an ongoing basis. But
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: my view is that this person, we've like, a lot
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: of people have not even heard his voice. And I
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: think that you want to avoid the kind of like
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: Zuckerberg's here on the hill. Everyone's going to try to
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: have their viral moment and put on social media. We
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: just want to basically give him a half hour, an hour,
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: however long it takes for him to explain himself and
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: to explain how he came to the conclusions that he
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: came to. There's some obvious questions like, the decision that
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: he made not to charge, it seems to me, was
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: based on the OLC opinion and not that there was
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: insufficient evidence, right? And that I would like to confirm
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: what is written, which is that he clearly intended to
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: kick it to Congress and Barr clearly sort of intercepted
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: that play. But my view is that if he goes
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: to testify today, He wants to say certain things and
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: we should probably do less talking and more listening.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Can I ask a question about the process there? Sorry
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: to interrupt. When you guys have a big blockbuster hearing
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: like that, it sometimes can feel like there's a series
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: of four minute speeches followed by one minute of maybe
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: a question. Is there an effort to coordinate and slice
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: up important things we want to get to so that
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: we hear from the witness?
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: Obviously not.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's something you could do during the caucus lunch,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: maybe between rounds of applause for not being in the majority.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: You could maybe say, hey, everybody, skip the preamble.
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: Well, there are sort of two things.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: First of all, don't chew up your five minutes with
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: four minutes worth of pontificating.
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: Yes, fair enough.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: But also the sort of coordination of sort of how
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: you follow each other's line of questioning. First, you can
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: do some kind of pre-planning, but sometimes what you have
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: to do is be in the hearing and listening to
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: your colleagues. I think Sherrod Brown is the ranker on banking,
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: does an excellent job. I mean, different members do more
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: of an aggressive job of coordinating, but when it's a blockbuster,
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: then members just say, I don't care what the play is,
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have my moment. And that's when we,
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: you know, that's when everybody starts to tweet, oh, everybody
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: should give all the questions to Kamala or whoever's doing,
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: or Dick Blumenthal, or Or whomever. And it's not so
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: much that any individual is better or worse at sort
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: of the interrogating process, although they're obviously well.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: But of course they are.
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: Some are better and worse.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: But the point being, we just need some uninterrupted time
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: to kind of follow a string. And people are, as
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: you know, kind of blowing in, blowing out, so they
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: don't even know what was talked about.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: And then once they're done, they leave, right?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Cool system. Super cool system. How are you feeling about
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: the Senate recruitment efforts and our efforts to... flip this
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: thing in 2020?
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there's a lot of anxiety out there.
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: And I like anxiety.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: I think people should be totally like on edge about everything,
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: including winning the Senate, because we're sort of imagining a
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: universe in which we, you know, win the Senate and
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: win the presidency and hold the House. And none of
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: those are for sure. So I like that people have anxiety.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: But I think we're doing very well in North Carolina.
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: I think we're doing well in some states that, you know,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: you may be surprised by. Colorado, a couple of candidates
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: are looking at running in Maine. Um, but, uh, it
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: is a little bit early and I've just sort of
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: gone through the coverage of the sort of Politico or
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: Hill or roll call. Here's how everyone's doing on recruitment.
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: And it literally has, if any correlation, it's an inverse
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: correlation with how successful you are in the coming cycle.
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: So I just don't know.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: One other thought I'll offer is that there is a
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: tendency to think that the person who is polling the best.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: you know, in May of the odd-numbered year, is the
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: strongest candidate. So that has caused us to get a
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: lot of former statewide elected officials in their 60s and 70s.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: And I just don't think that that is necessarily who
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: we want. I mean, there may be instances where that's
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: the best candidate, but I think we need a candidate
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: who represents this growing movement. And I don't think we
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: necessarily need a, an actually young person, but like a
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: Senate young person like me, like 46, 58, 62. But
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: I don't think just because somebody was governor and popular,
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: you know, in the eighties or nineties means that there.
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: Are like star recruit.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: You're basically a Senate tween.
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm basically.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: How does this recruiting process work?
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, we were, we talked about this the other
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: day and John was trying to be less anxious and
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: I was just emoting on a live stream. Like, is it,
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: Is it Schumer and the DSCC recruiting people?
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Are others helping out that process? How does it work?
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: It depends state by state.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: So, you know, there are certain states that you sort
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: of go through whoever is at the.
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: Top of the food chain. Right.
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: And and so there's a fair amount of that. And
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: then I think maybe because I come from Hawaii and
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: we have primaries and that's, you know, that's the way
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: we roll that I think, you know, probably the best
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: way to figure out who's the best recruit is to
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: just let them run against each other. And whoever wins
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: is by definition, the best vote getter. So I think
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: we should do a little more of that. Um, but
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: certainly Chuck does a fair amount of personal recruiting and
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: is very persuasive. I just had this conversation with Kirsten cinema, uh, and,
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: and a bunch of others. Um, Catherine's doing an extraordinary job.
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: I think we're going to have a bunch of, uh, uh,
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: female candidates that are going to be, uh, inspirational. Um, but, um,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: but I also think that we shouldn't try to select
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: who's our best nominee, any more than we should do
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: that on the presidential side.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: If we do take the Senate back, what are your
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: feelings on the filibuster?
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so, you know, I knew you were going to
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: ask me. Impeachment and filibuster.
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: Listen, I think that we ought to look at all
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: of the Senate procedures and all the ways in which
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: Mitch McConnell has sort of rigged the game.
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: And that's one of them.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: I think the way you do reconciliation is another one
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: of them. I also think we ought to look at
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: Puerto Rico statehood. And so all of these kind of
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: structural reforms are important and serious and have to be
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: part of the conversation. My own judgment is this just
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: causes me anxiety because I just remember in October of 16,
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: like sitting down with my staff, trying to figure out
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: what good people we knew that would be interested in
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: populating the Clinton cabinet. And so this just reminds me
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: of the way we put the cart before the horse.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: But your point is a reasonable one, which is we
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: are talking about a sort of vast array of progressive priorities.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: And we're going to have to make some structural changes
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: to the way the country works if we want to
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: actually implement them.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess like follow up to that, win the
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Senate or not. Is this a point where like, do
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: you see Republican senators, you work with Republican senators where
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: you're like, you know what? on a big issue, maybe
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: it's not a progressive priority, maybe it's not a really
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: ambitious proposal, but I might be able to get, we
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: might be able to get 51, 52 votes or even
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: 60 votes for this sort of medium range proposal that's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: not quite so ambitious.
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: Doubling money for the senators for disease control.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a middle class tax cut. Sure, okay. Like,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: do you think you could find Republicans to work with
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: in the Senate or how broken is the Senate and
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: how partisan is it at this point, I guess?
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: It's not the old Senate.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: And I think part of what we're dealing with is
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: that it's such a strong institution over time that everybody's
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: trying to recreate the Senate of the 70s and 80s
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: and 90s. First of all, it wasn't that great for
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: people who were not in power, right? So this idea
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: of comity and civility, it's important and it does characterize
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: the institution, but it's also... that it was comity and
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: civility among people who were in power who were primarily
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: older white men. And so people were getting screwed during
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: those periods of civility pretty deeply. So that's one part
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: of this. The other part is that underneath the battles,
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: we've been able to do pretty well on appropriations where,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: you know, there's an old saying, there's three parties in
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: the Senate, Democrats, Republicans, and appropriators. And so we've been
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: able to reject most of the most draconian things that
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: Trump and Mulvaney have proposed as it relates to EPA,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: the National Park Service, I mean, they wanted to eliminate,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: or not eliminate, but drastically cut CDC and NIH funding.
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: And we just went ahead and not just rejected those proposals,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: but massively increased medical research funding. So there are glimmers
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: of hope, and I still want to cultivate all of that.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: But the ability to be an effective senator, in my view,
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: is contingent on your ability to compartmentalize and be super
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: disappointed with someone and then collaborate with them the following morning.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: It's like parenting.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: OK. So there's a lot of loose talk among some
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: of your colleagues. Private Rubio speaks openly about he acts
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: like he commands the armed forces and that if Maduro
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: moves to take military action against the opposition in Venezuela,
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: he will lead the charge like the rough riders into
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: the country. Do you think there's any appetite for Trump
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: to actually take military action in someplace like Venezuela where
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: there's clearly no legal authority and you guys would have to,
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know, pass a bill?
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we'd have to do an authorization of the use
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: of military force. That's number one.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: Number two is Maduro's a bad guy, and we hope
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: there's a transition in leadership. But what you have to
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: do is use all the tools in the toolkit. And
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: I think you really ought to take military action off
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: the table.
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: That's what I think. As bad as.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: This leader is, we do not need another war, and
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: certainly not in this hemisphere. But John Bolton is behind
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: all of this stuff and he's he's cooking intelligence on
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: Iran and he's banging the war drums And I think
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: Trump sort of likes it to the extent that he
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: thinks it's got electoral punch and maybe in Florida And
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: he doesn't want to look like a wimp But now
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: he seems to be like well, you know, I wanted
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: to rattle a few cages But I I and I
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: and I think he thought that you know There was
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: talking there was talking about he was on a target
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Maduro was on a tarmac.
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: And it was good You know, it was basically gonna
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: be a coup. It was done. I And now that
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: it's not done, he's thinking, well, what's our next play, Mr.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Bolton?
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: And so but I think we should understand that John
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Bolton is driving the bus on foreign policy.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: And for, you know, I would say.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: Half of your listeners who don't remember John Bolton, he's
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: the guy that his whole thing is cooking intelligence and
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: getting us into wars. That's his whole shtick. He's been
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: doing that for a very, very long time. And he's
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: he's very effective at it. I mean, he's not a
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: clown in that way. And he's now doing it in
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: multiple countries.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Branca, we got some questions?
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we got lots.
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: Okay, so everyone here loves you on Twitter. Something you
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: tweet about a lot.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Climate.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Climate.
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: So people want to know what your top three specific
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: policy proposals that you want to see in any Green
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: New Deal style legislation.
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: Oh, it's a really good question.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: First, I believe we need a carbon fee or carbon tax.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: And the reason for that is that it's just been
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: proven to transform the economy quicker. Places that have done
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: that have been able to make quicker progress on clean
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: energy than anything else. Second, I think one of the
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: most brilliant parts about the Green New Deal is is
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: that it recognizes that you can't just do a carbon
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: fee or a cap and trade or some kind of
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: renewable portfolio standard as much as all those are effective policies,
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: because what you end up doing is creating the sense
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: that this is an elite project and this is another
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: thing that can be sort of traded as a derivative
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: on Wall Street. And that was, you know, Macron's problem
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: in France. And I believe that's why the ballot initiative
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: in Washington state failed. There's a saying a good friend
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: of mine uses in Hawaii, paint a picture and paint
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: me in it. So if we're gonna build a climate movement,
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: it has to not just be coastal liberals who are
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: sort of configuring some technocratic solution. And that's essential. So
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: we do need investments in communities. And the last thing
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: I'll say is we really have to be very serious
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: about bringing in organized labor because coalition politics matters. because
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: the Republicans do it sometimes better than us, but also
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: because that should matter to us. If people who who
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: represent the workers that we purport to represent and fight
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: for are uncomfortable with aspects of what we're talking about,
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: then that isn't about, hey, you're afraid of this and
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: you're not truly progressive.
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: That is the truly progressive thought process.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: And next step is, OK, let's sit down. and let's
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: figure this out together, and let's charge up the mountain together.
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: So involving organized labor, I think, is essential to implementing
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: a Green New Deal.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: That was the original line in Titanic.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: Is that right?
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Paint a picture and paint me in it.
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: Is that right? Oh, God, I was super embarrassed.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: Can I just follow up real quickly on Priyanka's question? Because,
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: you know, you get all this praise for being great
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: on Twitter, but your colleague Chris Murphy tweeted, those of
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: us who follow the Brian Schatz Twitter feed know that
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: he is consistently both grim and humorless.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, that was shots fired from Mr. Murphy.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: So I took, I did a little examination of his
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: Twitter to see how, you know, lit it is. And
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: here's a couple examples. Turn on C-SPAN 2. I'm heading
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: to the Senate floor now.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Excited to have U.S.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: DOL Secretary with us in Connecticut today to showcase the
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: success of our Eastern Connecticut Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Happy Easter, everybody. Ralph Wiggum Giff. Do you think that
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: he's winning the battle?
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: Everybody unfollow Chris Murphy.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: That's one thing you take from this live stream.
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: No, Chris and I have a lot of fun on Twitter,
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: and I think.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: And I think we're a book or two, but there
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: are very few of us who actually operate our own accounts.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: You're at the controls.
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're at the controls.
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: And that means periodically I say a jackass-y thing, but
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: I think that's fine.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: Were you about to say more than periodically?
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: No.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: That's funny, but I wasn't. I was actually going to say,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: why are so many of your colleagues afraid to operate
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: the machinery?
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know how afraid they are, but some of
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: them are getting... Sheldon Whitehouse is tweeting his own stuff.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: And it's getting... And by the way, Sheldon has his
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: own voice.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: I was excited for converts.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: So more and more people are getting interested, but also
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: everyone's communications team is against it.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, interesting.
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: Including mine on an ongoing basis.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: Mixed feelings, let's say.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Is that true? We're getting mixed messages from your own
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: people about this, Priyanka.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: All right. We have more questions.
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: People want to know, what issue do you think is
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: not being covered enough right now? And then are there
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: issues or news stories that you think are getting too
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: much coverage?
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: Let me just take the first part of the question, housing.
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: We have an affordable housing crisis across the country. And,
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: you know, I thought it was in sort of just
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: high cost, high density housing. places like Hawaii and big cities,
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: but it's actually all the way across the country. And
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: it's a huge middle-class issue. And I think the extent
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: to which this trade war is harming manufacturing in the
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: Midwest and causing the bankruptcy of farmers sort of gets
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: only talked about in the context of whether the Dow
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: went up or down. And I think if your farm
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: went bankrupt, but the Dow's at 26,000, none of that matters.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: So we need to talk a little bit more about that.
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to get into what gets too much
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: coverage because I think that's just a little bit obvious.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Two follow-ups. One, as a patriotic American who respects the
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: institutions and the pride we take as citizens of a
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: country that ended the age of royalty, do you think
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: it's embarrassing, if not shameful, that Americans care that a
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: royal couple in some place in Europe had a baby.
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: I feel like I'm going to get in deep trouble
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: for this one. No, I think it's cool.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, listen, if I like basketball or if I fall,
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, I follow basketball.
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: I follow game of Thrones.
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: If there's a, if, if there's a Royal baby, like
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: you get to be excited about whatever you want to
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: be excited about.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: Senator shots. I'm going to forward you something called the
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Federalist papers. After we're done here, you can take a
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: look at that. I have a serious, I have a serious,
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: I have actually a serious question about housing. So there's been,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of talk about the fact that
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: we have a housing crisis. People can't afford to buy homes.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: We see that all across California. It's a huge problem.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: How much of the housing crisis is actually a sort
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: of symptom of an economic inequality crisis? Do you worry
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: at all that efforts to target housing is an effort
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: to avoid the larger structural forces that are preventing middle
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: class incomes from rising?
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it's an income problem, but it also
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: is a supply of housing problem. And one of the
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: things that we liberals, I think, have to get straight
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: in our minds is that planning and zoning has its place.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: But planning and zoning was the original redlining.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: It was the continuation. of discrimination, especially against African-Americans. So
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: all of these laws about minimum lot size and what
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: you could build where was to preserve the segregation of communities.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: And now it's not so much, it's not totally racial segregation.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: Now it's economic segregation. And lots of liberals still sort
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: of haven't wrapped their mind around the idea that if
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: we really want everybody to be housed, that you're going
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: to have to see it. I mean, we had this
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: conversation in Hawaii when we were moving towards a higher
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: and higher percentage of our energy being generated from clean
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: sources that people said, well, I'm for clean energy, but
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: I don't want to, that windmill is too big and
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: it's near my house. If we're going to generate a
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: hundred percent clean energy, we're going to see a lot
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: of windmills. And if we're going to house nurses and
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: firefighters and young people and the elderly, you know, we're
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: going to have housing in places that might make us
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: initially uncomfortable.
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: So I feel very strongly about this.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: I take your point that we need to deal with
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: income inequality sort of as a more general proposition, but
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: housing is an urgent matter now.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: So people in the live stream want to know about
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: the heartbeat bill that was signed this week in Georgia.
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: Do you think this will survive? And then what do
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: you think about ideas like stacking the Supreme Court, things
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: like that?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: Well, on the heartbeat bill, I think it's just important
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: to say reproductive choice abortion services are health care. So
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: when we say they're coming after your health care, it's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: not just they're coming after eviscerating the ACA through the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: courts and through legislation and through administrative actions, but they're
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: coming after women's health care in a very straightforward way.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: And I think the most sort of apocalyptic claims about
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: what the Republicans want to do over time are turning
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: out to be true.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: So that's number one.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: I have no idea if it'll survive the court process,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: but certainly they think it will.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: And they think it will for the.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: Very simple reason that Mitch McConnell has declared the United
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: States Senate to be a legislative graveyard. And basically every
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: week we go in and we process nominations to the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: circuit courts and the district courts. And they believe that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: they will succeed not just on this, but on other
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: sort of anti-progressive legislation all the way through.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Not great.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Not great.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: Kyle from YouTube wants to know, what's the advice for
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 6: those of us in red states that are trying to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 6: flip them blue or at the very least purple?
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: Oh, uh, first of all, run for office campaign. I mean, look, uh,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: California used to be purple. California used to be purple. Um,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: Texas is turning purple. Uh, Georgia, um, is turning purple.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: And so one of the reasons that we have failed
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: in places is that we just literally haven't even tried.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: And I mean, this is a funny thing, but the, the,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: at one point the state house of Hawaii, uh, was, uh,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: within four seats of being flipped to Republican rule in 19,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: I think it was.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: A year 2000.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: And there were some districts that we thought were solidly Republican.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: And over basically 20 years, we've systematically taken those seats back.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: And now the balance of power in the legislature is
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: 46 to 5 in the House and I think 25
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: to 0 in the state Senate.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: I almost say that sheepishly, but so be it.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: But the point is you have to compete everywhere and
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: don't give up because it may not be this election
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: cycle that you're successful.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: But eventually it'll succeed.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: And one other thought I had is I just remember
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: what a star Jason Kander is and was. But one
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: of the reasons that he was such a big deal
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: is that there were no other Jason Kanders, right? And
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: that's because we hadn't done any work on building our
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: bench and having members of the legislature and school boards
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: and small town mayors. And now you have a whole
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: generation of House members, Stacey Abrams and others, who are younger,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: who have served in legislatures or as small town mayors
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: or lieutenant governors, or city prosecutors who are our next
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: up when there's an opportunity for them.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: Can I ask a question about that? We've seen incredible
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: candidates like Jason Kander come close. We've seen some defeats
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: in states like Missouri. We've had trouble in the Midwest.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: And yet, When ballot initiatives around democratic priorities, whether it's
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Medicaid or the right to work or, well, preventing the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: right to work laws from passing or minimum wage, they
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: pass in places like Idaho and Utah and Missouri and Arkansas.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: What do you see as the difference between between a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Democratic policy and a Democratic candidate right now?
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is a tough one because I know
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: what I want to say and I probably shouldn't say it,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: but I'll just go for it.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: Nobody's watching, it's fine.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: I think people like Democratic policies, but they don't always
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: like Democrats. They just don't like us. They feel that
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: we are being condescending. That we do feel like we
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: have answers. So they love these policies.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: And, you know, in Florida, when when Andrew Gillum loses
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: and my good friend Bill Nelson loses, there's this ballot
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: initiative that that decisively wins that that gives back the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: franchise to vote to people who are incarcerated. And so
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: you're right to point out this phenomenon. I don't have
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: like a I don't have like a magic solution for it.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: But Idaho Medicaid won.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: And I'll also just say that if if we know
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: that there's that kernel of truth, then we have to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: find those progressive priorities. And they are progressive, but they
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: also happen to be compelling to independents and a lot
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: of Republicans and run on those next year. There is
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: no shame in saying I care about these 10 things.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: But these six things are the best vote getters.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: And I don't, I mean, on Twitter, it's like, if
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: you talk like that, you're some big sellout, but winning
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: is very important and winning is, is maybe the most
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: important thing. It's not that you sacrifice your, it's.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Important for a majority of people to like your proposal.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. And the country, it's okay.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: If one of your ideas is unpopular, you can still
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: be for it, but you don't have to put it
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: in a TV ad. And if, and if you, and
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: if you find out that Medicaid expansion, um, and bread
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: and butter issues are the ones that will cause you
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: to be successful in the election, That's good, not bad.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I called Jason this morning.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: Did you?
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: He sent me the voicemail.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: He's got one of those very millennial voicemails that's like,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: don't leave me a voicemail.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Text me. Oh, really?
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: Isn't the most millennial voicemail the voicemail is full?
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That's mine.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: That's mine.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to have to try harder to get me.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Because a voicemail is just someone saying, I wanted to
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: talk to you on the phone. You didn't want to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: talk to me, but I just had my half of
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: the conversation anyway. It's incredibly rude.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: How is that different from a text?
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Well, a text is, I guess it's not. I've been
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: Defeated again from the greatest deliberative body. Wow, I love this.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Can you be here always?
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: We have more questions from Twitter. Christina wants to know
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: if you are lonely in the Senate now that half
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: your colleagues are in Iowa.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: Great question.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: You know, half my colleagues are in Iowa. And it's
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: kind of exciting.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: I send texts to them and try to be as
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: personally supportive as I can. And, um, and it creates
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: an opportunity for those of us who are not running
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: to kind of dig into the policy piece, because listen,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: when you're running for, even if you're running for the
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: state house, it's like not the time to be doing
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: policy development.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: If you're out there trying to get votes.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: And certainly if you're running for the United States Senate
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: or the presidency, there's like no time anymore to sit
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: down with your like ledge team and try to solve
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: a problem.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: You're already off to the races.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: And so some of us have to, and I don't
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: mean this facetiously, some of us have to do the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: legislative work so that if and when we take power,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: we're ready to roll. When the Republicans took power, sort of,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: I think to their surprise, legitimately, they were not ready
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: to roll on health care, and that's one of the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: reasons that they failed.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: If you were a campaign manager on a Democratic presidential
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: campaign right now, what would your big piece of messaging
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: advice be? What would you want your candidate to be
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: talking about?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 5: For the general?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: For the.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Uh, both. Because we know we don't want to pivot
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: too much between the primary and the general.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: So I think, um, I think the, the, first of all,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: let's start with the general.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: I think it's healthcare, healthcare, healthcare. And I think we
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: have to make, we have to prosecute the economic argument.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: And I think, I don't think we should be so
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: afraid of the stock market that we can't make the
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: case that people are struggling because people really are struggling.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: And then in the background, there's going to be a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: drumbeat of, hey, this is the most corrupt administration, certainly
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: in generations and maybe ever, right? And I don't think
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: you necessarily have to be the candidate articulating all that.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: Maybe in a debate, you kind of have an exchange,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: but that's not going to go into ads. But I
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: think we would be unwise not to mention, oh, by
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: the way, right? This is terribly corrupt and awful. And
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt and all the rest of
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: these guys are literally enriching themselves. And they're not just
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: enriching themselves in the abstract. They are enriching themselves at
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: our expense. On the primary side, I don't know the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: answer to that. I mean, listen, I've been to Iowa
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: once and it was like I had to like disabuse.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: I'm not running. I'm just trying to be helpful, whatever.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: But you were thinking about it.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 5: No, I was not.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: But if somebody asks you the question, aren't you thinking
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: about it?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: Well, however I can best serve, John.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 6: No.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: That was a joke. That's two in a row. We
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: got Abrams yesterday. We got shots on the hook today.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: We got potential candidates coming through here. Not running.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: Never will. Thank you.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: Never will? Wait.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: Come on.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Hey, why are you doing that? Why say never?
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because what we really need is it anyway.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: So on the primary side, I actually do think that
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: we're going to those debates are going to be more
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: important than your average debate, because I think, you know,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: probably 80 percent, whatever they're telling you, my guess is
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: 80 percent of the voters are totally undecided.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: You may have locked into your specific preference, but if
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: someone has a good moment, you'll be like, yeah, I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: like her done. And so part of what we're going
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: to measure is sure is whether or not someone lines up,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: you know, on your issues, on your core issues. Are
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: they good for climate? Are they good for civil rights?
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: Do they have a good background? Um, Do you agree
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: with them on X, Y, and Z? But a lot
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: of it is an audition for the general. And I
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: think it's okay for us to look at someone and say,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: how does that person match up against Donald Trump? So
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: this electability question can very easily turn into a proxy
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: for basically whether or not you're a white dude.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: That's terrible.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: But I think lots of voters really are trying to
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: figure out who's our best, who's our most talented communicator,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: who's our best leader to marshal the resources of what
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: we hope will be the biggest grassroots movement in American history.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: And I think it's okay for a voter to evaluate that,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: but we should just remember that the traditional analysis of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: electability is mostly always wrong.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: When senators text, are there emojis? Are there gifs? Like,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: what's the vibe with your colleagues?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: No, it's like full punctuation, capitalization. Oh, like signs.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: You're writing an email.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: Like, love, Chuck.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: That's how my mom texts.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 5: There's no texting with Chuck.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: I mean, not with me.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: He has a flip phone.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: I mean, I guess he could text from it. I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: think he can receive texts.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: What is the latest or earliest time Chuck Schumer has
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: called you?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, I mean, there's a six-hour time difference. So, yeah,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: it would be 3 a.m. Hawaii time, and I just go, hey, Chuck.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: You know, it's a blocked caller.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Hello?
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: I know it's Chuck. Who else is calling me at
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: 3 a.m. in Hawaii? But, you know, hello, Mr.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Leader?
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Sweet.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 6: Okay, so there are so many good ideas out there
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 6: from all these 2020 candidates. What legislation proposed by a
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 6: candidate would you be most interested in seeing getting passed?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: Oh, gosh.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, let me list a few because, you know,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: this is one of those things where it's like I
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: love all my siblings exactly the same. Elizabeth has plans
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: for everything and I sit on the banking committee with
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: her and I think that she has an extraordinary ability
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: to understand not just the problem as a general proposition,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: but what pathway could be taken to fix it. Bernie,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: I think, has diagnosed part of our problem as a society,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: which is that we really do need to do movement building,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: not just like the sort of technical aspects of legislation. Um,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: I love Corey's, uh, a baby bonds idea. I love
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: what Corey has done on environmental justice. I think that's
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: quite overrated. I mean, not overrated, excuse me, Corey underrated
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: because he's done these environmental justice tours and nobody has, um,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: really paid, I think enough attention to it. Uh, uh, uh,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: Kamala's lift act, um, what Kamala wants to do, uh, for,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: for teachers, Jay Inslee just signed probably the second best
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: climate bill in the country after Hawaii.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: Um, And I'm sure I'm leaving someone out and that's
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: going to cause me to get in trouble.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: We're going to be here a while.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah. But I do love all my children equally.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Really hearing that, uh, you despise John Hickenlooper.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: I like Hick. I met him when he was a mayor.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: And I, I'll also say that, um, I'm excited about
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: climate plans coming out and I'm going to personally make
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: an effort to just see to it. I'm not going
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: to get into the technical aspects of it because you
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: guys know probably better than I do that once you
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: get into an administration, it becomes, okay, we're going to
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: do climate. Now what's possible, right? But Beto's plan is serious.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: Jay's plan is serious. And I anticipate all of the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: major candidates will have a major climate plan. My litmus
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: test is, do you have a sufficiently ambitious climate plan?
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 5: Not, does it look like mine?
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 6: Okay, this is a little bit different from the 2020
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 6: question asking about your Republican colleagues. So who is the
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 6: most unlikely collaborator you've ever had in the Senate? And
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: can you tell us about a time where someone surprised
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 6: you with wanting to team up with you on an
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 6: issue or to work on a bill?
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Jim Inhofe.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: So Jim Inhofe, for those of you who don't know,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: wrote a book called The Great Hoax.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: About climate change.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: And I got to the Senate and ran for the
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: Senate because climate is my lifetime passion. But Jim and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: I did a bill together to honor Native American veterans.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: And frankly, on this bill, he was a prince and
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: a very skilled legislator. So this is the problem of
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: the Senate, which is that you if you're not able
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: to compartmentalize, then you will be totally ineffective. Because, I mean,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: I could have very easily said, listen, you think climate
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: change is a hoax. Not just that, but you wrote
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: a whole book about it. I can't deal with you.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: But if you if you operate that way, especially in
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: this environment, by process of elimination, you will find no partners.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 6: Well, we'll switch to some fun questions because we have
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: a lot for you as well. First off, this I
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: think was asked at least 20 times. How do you
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: kill time on your flight, deal with jet lag flying
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: from Hawaii to Washington all the time?
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: What are your tips for us?
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, tweeting obviously is how I kill my time
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: on the airplane. I don't really have any good advice
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: about airplanes other than it's super dehydrating and people don't
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: really think that way. So get an aisle seat and
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: then drink lots of water.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 5: But I'm grouchy a lot.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, Mondays are bad and You know,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: Fridays are, I'm a little jet lagged, but at least
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: I'm home.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: So that takes the sting off.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: Google Wi-Fi, can you do something about those people?
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: I cannot.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: Is there any accommodation made for people from Hawaii or
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: Alaska who clearly have a more challenging time getting to
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: votes on Mondays and Thursdays than Delaware?
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 5: Whatever. As well as Sherrod says, no whining on the yacht.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 5: It's fine.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: Got it. Okay.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: The guy who's never been on a yacht.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 6: All right, what's the best time of the year for
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: people to visit Hawaii?
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 5: Oh, gosh. There are no bad months.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of people, especially on the East Coast,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: think it's like super muggy and terrible certain times of
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: year and all the rest of it. It's pretty great
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: all the time.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: Spring's fine. January, December, there's not a bad month.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, whale season in the winter.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, whale season in the winter.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: With all the humpbacks. Surf in the summer.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: We went in February.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: It was wonderful.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: So cool.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Beautiful.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: It's pretty much always great.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: It's paradise.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 5: No one is disappointed when they go to Hawaii.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: When you're in D.C., so not at home, what is
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 6: your favorite thing to go eat?
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: Where do you go?
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: What are your spots?
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: Oh, my eating habits are very depressing. Sometimes district taco,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: but that's like just B plus. And then I moved
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: to the side of the hill where I'm like across
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: the street from a grocery store. So like my meals
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: are sad. Sardines on rice. Sort of like wheat thins, cheese, salami, fruit.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: Sardines on rice. Are you a prisoner?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 5: I like sardines on rice.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Like a rail car hobo. That's a sad meal.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 5: Hot sauce?
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Did you get off the rail car
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: and take your bindle and go to the Senate?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 5: I don't know what a bindle is, but yeah.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: It's that like ball on a stick.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 5: Oh, I got it.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: The rotisserie chickens are good because they'll last for a
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: couple days. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: It's fine.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: But I basically, I don't eat very well.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, got it.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 6: Something we've also been discussing a lot in this office,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 6: Game of Thrones.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 6: Do you watch and do you have thoughts on how
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: this should end?
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't have any thoughts about how it should end. Well,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: I want Tyrion to be on the Iron Throne.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: Tyrion, all right.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 5: Good, you finally got an answer. This is kind of
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: a weird.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: It's the correct answer.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 5: What's that?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: It's the correct answer to want Tyrion.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: I like short, cerebral guys.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Right back, same, same. But I.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 5: It's such a bad.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: So I'm on the red eye at 8 p.m., And
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: so I could watch it live at, like, 3 in Hawaii,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: but that's kind of a waste of a good Sunday
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: afternoon with my family. So I end up watching last
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: week's episode, like, tonight or tomorrow during the day.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: So you haven't seen last week's episode yet?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so... How do you deal with that?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: You're on Twitter so much.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 5: I get off Twitter for about 24 hours.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: Smart.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: Wow. Not 24 hours.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Now, if your tweets are important for the messaging of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party... Is the fact that you're not keeping
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: up with Game of Thrones hurting our chances to win
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: in 2020?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it hurts.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: It's called Benioff.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 6: Another thing that's very important to Crooked Media fans, do
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 6: you have a dog?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we have two dogs.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: I have a tiny little lap dog, a Bichon Shih
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: Tzu named Shumai, and then we have a Great Dane
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: called Jupiter.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: Variety.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: Were you going for sort of a comedic walk?
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, kind of.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: We have a Christmas picture where like, yeah, it looks,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: it's a funny picture. But what we wanted was a
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: big guard dog that wasn't actually dangerous, but terrifies people
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: who may be up to no good.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: Were they like a buck 80?
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: No, she's not.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, she's small for a Great Dane. She's like 130.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: But she's, you know, on her hind legs, she's a
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: good seven feet tall.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 6: That's cool.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Senator shots. Thank you for joining us. And please always, uh,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: you know, feel free to use crooked media as your layover.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: Whenever you want.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 5: Nice to see you guys.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: It's great to run out the shots clock with you.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 5: Oh no, that's well done.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Brian shots for joining us today. And, uh,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: What did we think of Game of Thrones last night?
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Love it as a pin to him.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: Give him your spoiler buffer.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: Spoiler buffer. This is a spoiler buffer. You're driving. Turn
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: the volume down. If you're on a bird scooter, pull over.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: You're hitting pause.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: That means you, Jay Inslee.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Jay Inslee. Take your AirPods out while you're scooting around.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: All right. You ready? Shut it off. Shut it off.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: Shut it off. Thrones.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sad.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: Loved it. Unbelievable. Look, I've loved Game of Thrones from
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: the very beginning. In fact, I remember a time where
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: sitting on my couch at 13 Bro 9 and turning
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: to my friend Jon Favreau and saying, hey, I got
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: something I think you should watch. And he's like, what's
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: this shit? Fuck you. But I got up to watch it.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: And you know how he said, it's all about the map.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Let me just show you a map. And I said,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: that's how you're going to get me to watch it?
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: And it worked. It did work. You know, what can
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: be said that hasn't already been said online? I would
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: direct you to my Twitter to understand where I'm coming from.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: I just believe they didn't have the time. And it
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: makes me, you know, I have no joy in saying this.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the time to tell the story they
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: needed to tell. And I just think... That's a bummer.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: It's a bummer.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Tommy, you have thoughts?
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's a TV show. No.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: And that everyone needs to calm the fuck down.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: I don't want to calm down. Yeah, take it seriously.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: And I enjoyed last night.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed watching Khaleesi's pretty, you know, obvious, likely transition
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: to a psychopath. Seeing the dragon mow down all kinds
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: of innocent civilians. It got a little tiresome. I didn't
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: need to see the third burned child's charred body on
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: the ground, but it was in service of a broader point,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: I think, about power corrupting absolutely.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know. It was a fun episode.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much more we needed about Daenerys'
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: turn that hadn't already been there. From the day she
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: arrived at Westeros, she had wanted to just... There's episode
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: two of season seven. She gets to Dragonstone, and she's
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: looking at the board, and she's got the three dragons,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: and she goes to Tyrion. You know, if my brother
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: was here, and he had three dragons, he would just
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: be going after King's Landing right now. He would just
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: be burning it right now. And Tyrion says, you don't
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: want to be queen of the ashes. He says it first.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: And then she looks at him, and she goes, okay.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: And so the next time that she's meeting with Lady Elenna,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: and Elaria Sand, and all the rest of them, and
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: they're plotting everything, and they say, burn King's Landing to
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: the ground. And Tyrion says, what do you mean burn
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: it to the ground? Tens of thousands of people will die.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: All these innocent people will die. And Elaria Sand says,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: it's war that happens all the time. And Lady Olenna
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: looks at Daenerys, and she says, listen, she's like, these
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: people are like sheep, these lords, these people of Westeros,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: they only respond to fear. You are a dragon, act
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: like a dragon. And, and, Daenerys looks at her and
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: is sort of like, you can tell she's like, well,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: I like that advice, but she'd just been listening to Tyrion,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: so she's like, no, no, I don't want to be
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Queen of the Ashes. So she listens to Tyrion. She
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: does what he says. Tyrion has stupid plans. Causes her
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: to lose two dragons. Causes her to go north for
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: some fucking, I'm going to capture a wight to show Cersei.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: It's all about negotiating with Cersei. And finally, Daenerys is like,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: What is trying to negotiate with this woman got me?
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, the hole in this explanation is she could
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: have flown her ass over to the tower and torched
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: Cersei and been done with it and not killed literally
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: every person.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: This is the problem.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: Right, but I think she was like, I want to
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: send a fucking message. These people will only like me
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: if they fear me because otherwise they love Jon Snow
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and they're about to know that Jon Snow is the
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: true heir to the throne.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: Look, everybody knows that if the person who's not true
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: to the throne murders everybody in the city, that's how
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: you get them on your side.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: I That's a tyrant. That's what a tyrant does.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: Fear. This is the problem. Everything you're saying is true.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: The broad strokes of her transition are all there. The
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: problem is, I don't think they did the work to
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: set it up in that moment.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: What would we have needed, do you think?
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: I don't understand why, after all these years, we've built
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: up these two characters. Cersei, the supervillain of the show. Daenerys,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: who is a merciless, ruthless person who after one child dies,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: locks up her dragons for a year, right? Someone who
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: contains both good and bad. They set this up for
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: years and years and years. We have two episodes of conversation.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: We have a massive battle. We have last week's episode
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: that I don't know what it did. And then we
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: have this confrontation. Cersei's basically watching the episode with us.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: She's sitting on her couch, you know, turning on HBO
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: Go to see what happens to King's Landing. She has
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: absolutely nothing to do. And then Daenerys wins the Not
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: challenged by Cersei, not pushed to be evil, not taken
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: to her extreme. She wins. The bells are ringing. And then,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: looking up at the Red Keep, by the way, set
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: up for episodes of a place where Cersei has surrounded
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: herself with human shields, a place where if Daenerys really
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: wanted to do what you're saying, prove that she's ruthless
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: and instill fear, could have gone right to the Red Keep,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: killed everyone around Cersei, and killed Cersei, which still would
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: have resulted in this debate, or, well, I just think
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: this undoing we're about to see of this person who
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: was too ruthless. to be supported by someone like Jon.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: But instead, she looks up at the Red Keep after
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: the battle is won, and then she kills everybody.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: And I just don't buy it. How many times has
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: Cersei tricked her? How many times has Cersei played? For
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: all Daenerys knew, going right to the Red Keep is
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: exactly what Cersei wanted her to do. I think at
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: some point she was just like, fuck this shit. I
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: have been so screwed by my advisors, by everyone else.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to burn this place to the ground because
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: that's how I know I can rule through fear.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: And that is reading into her facial expressions a bunch
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: of motivations and understandings mixed together that may together make
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: sense but aren't shown by the show. And I know
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: it's not shown by the show because they had to
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: do something which I had never seen a show do before,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: which is in the previously on... In the final moments
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: before the episode begins, they show you a scene from
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: last week in which we see.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they added all the voices. That was cool.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: They added voices from years and years of the show.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: And I believe something that hasn't happened yet, maybe. I'm
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: not totally sure. They added voices behind her to make
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: the argument for what we're about to see because they
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: knew they hadn't successfully done it through the actual episodes.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: They invented a scene.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: They knew everyone wouldn't fucking remember everything because people's memories
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: are like fucking two days old.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: They gave her a motivation. They put a motivation behind
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: her eyes, which we had not seen before. And they just...
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: It was there.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Fire and blood is her fucking family motto is fire
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: and blood.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: Another episode and they could have done it. They made her,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: I don't agree with either of you. I just think
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: they made her look like she turned crazy and the
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: whole flip of the coin, all the family, like you're
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: either crazy or not, it's 50-50. They made her look
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: insane in those moments and then she heard the bells
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: and she went nuts.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: But this is the point, right?
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: We don't know. I think it was less madness than
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: political calculation.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: But I guess it's all, to your point, love it,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: John thinks what he thinks. I think what I think
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: neither is grounded in anything that we learned from the show.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: It's all just an instinct. Totally. And like, this is my,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: my problem because I, I just think they could have, look,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: I understand not wanting to be in Iceland and making
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: more episodes. And I understand being done with the show.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: But to me, what I'm seeing is basically characters. And
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: in part, I don't even blame them. In part, I
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: blame the fact that we're outside of the books, the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: books that maybe never will be wrapped up because it
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: was too sweeping, too big, too broad. I mean, George R.R.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: Martin is, It's like, see you next Christmas, eight Christmases ago.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I think it's unfair to say that this is all
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: about them wanting to finish early. We don't know. Like
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Tommy just said, it's sort of whatever you read into it.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Good storytelling does that sometimes.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, who knows?
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: We could be right. Maybe they just wanted to finish.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: But this could be exactly how they wanted to finish
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: the series.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: These characters are being rushed around the map.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's plenty of.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: They're flying around.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: There's so many silly devices, for sure.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: Finally, the confrontation between Euron and Jaime we've all been
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: dying to see since he washed up on the shore
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: by coincidence five seconds earlier.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: That one really didn't make any sense.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: Why are they fighting?
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: Well, to your point, I would have liked one more
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: scene of Cersei... being evil or doing something. I would
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: have liked one more scene of Cersei for sure.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: She literally scoots by the hound. She is so extraneous
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: to her own undoing that she's like, this is what
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: Dan said last night. He's like, if you'll excuse me,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: I just want to get.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: I would have loved to have seen the Hound just
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: bust out a sword and hack her head off. It
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: is so out of character that he would wait and
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: let Arya take care of it or whatever the thinking was.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: Arya, years and years, she gets within 100 yards of
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: her final mission and she's like.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think that was totally within her character. I
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: think it was totally earned.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: What Arya did. I actually agree. I agree it was earned.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: I take back what I said.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: I'll give you Jamie and Euron meeting. What are you
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: doing on this beach? I'll give you them meeting. I'll
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: give you Circe walking by the Hound for sure. I'm sorry.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: I was going to try to get by.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: You guys look like you have... I don't want to
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: get in the way of a brother conversation. I feel
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: kind of out of place.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: I'll give you that for sure. I'm all in, though,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: on the Daenerys thing. I think it was well done.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: But anyway, we'll see what happens when, you know, Samwell
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: Tarly's on the Iron Throne.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: I just... The other thing, too, is I'm just not
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: going to have my hopes up anymore. I said this
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: to Tom here earlier.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: A random Dothraki guy is not going.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: To be here. Every time I think this final season
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: has a trick up their sleeve, a dead dove falls out.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: So I am bummed. I'm just going to admit it.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I loved it.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: But I will tell you, my prediction for how the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: series ends right now, I still believe in. Me, too.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: Democracy rants.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. John's got the happy ending.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think it was pretty happy to get.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 6: Oh, no.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Democracy Reign should not be taken as a happy ending.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: It should be taken as we had to endure years
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: of mass slaughter to get to this point where we're
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: sort of going to now fucking... get by.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: Democracy going really well over here in reality.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: Right, that's exactly right. I didn't say that was a
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: happy ending. I said that was an ending.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: Chernobyl, you know, after the Soviet Union falls, right, a
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: bunch of American scientists go over to Eastern Europe and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: the former Soviet states to kind of secure the nuclear material.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: And as I was watching Chernobyl, I was like, Who's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: going to come to America to secure our nuclear material?
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, can't wait until next week.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 5: Bye.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: Bye.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 5: Thank you.