Latest / Pod Save America / “Pierre Delecto, Welcome to the Resistance.”

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“Pierre Delecto, Welcome to the Resistance.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: And joining us as a guest co-host for the day
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: is the host of the podcast, Why Is This Happening?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: And the Emmy award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Chris Hayes?
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: Hey guys, I like the fact you led with the podcast.
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: You know, we're on a podcast and you led with
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: my podcast.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: It is an outstanding podcast too, so I want more
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: people to listen to it. It really is. It makes
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: you smarter. So we have a lot of news to
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: cover today from Trump backtracking on his decision to hold
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the G7 at Doral. To updates on impeachment, to all
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the latest primary news. And later we will have an
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: excerpt of the interview that Tommy did with Susan Rice
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: on Friday about her new book.
• 0:56
  Speaker 5: Ben and I, Ben Rhodes and I spent some time
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: with Susan on Friday. You can hear part of it
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: today and then the rest on Pod Save the World
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: on Wednesday.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Love it. How was Love Your Leave It?
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: It was fantastic, John. Thanks for asking.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Had Michaela Watkins and Moshe Kosher who were so fucking
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: funny I love Moshe Kosher.
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: So much they were both so funny you know his
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: background is amazing it's wild yeah he's like orthodox.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah no we began the show by remarking on the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: fact that the three of us were in Temple together
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and and then we made a joke about something that
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: happened in Temple and then the Temple official Instagram messaged
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: it to their basically saying like we're everywhere you know
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we're everywhere And then also John Gonzalez from the Ringer.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Seems a lot more chill than the Catholic Church.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Famously.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I will say.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Famously, Temple's very chill. And then we had John Gonzalez.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: From the Ringer who walked me through the NBA China fracas.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Did you do the 2.3 point foul shot thing too? Yeah, no.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: I went over all the details about that.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: It's a full primer.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: LeBron's whole thing.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: LeBron's whole thing. Some of my other favorite teams.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: The Spurs. Spurs. Big Admiral thing.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Knicks.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Nice. Okay. Finally, some big news from us on the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: podcast front. We can finally announce that Crooked Media has
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a brand new daily podcast, What a Day, which you'll
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: be able to hear starting next Monday, October 28th, every morning,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Monday through Friday, with new episodes available at 5 a.m.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Eastern.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Our new hosts are comedian Akilah Hughes and politics reporter
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Gideon Resnick, who will help break down the biggest news
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: of the day, help you understand what matters and how
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: you can fix it, all in 15 minutes or less.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: You can subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or go
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: to Crooked.com slash whataday. Very excited about this.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: That's a tough production schedule to get that out of
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: 5 a.m.
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: Eastern.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going to do it at night. Overnight. That's
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: that West Coast advantage.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: My first thought is like, what's the workflow there?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: Who's ours?
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Is that a 1 a.m.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Wake up?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: No. Really good point, Chris.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are working very hard, some weird
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: fucking hours to bring you this awesome show.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. Subscribe out of guilt.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: We've been listening to all the test pilots. They're fantastic.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Very funny. All right. Let's get to the news. About
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: a month after the Ukraine scandal broke, the Washington Post's
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Phil Rucker summed up where we are in a piece headlined,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Trump's Season of Weakness, that said the president, quote, whose
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: paramount concern has long been showing strength, has entered the
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: most challenging stretch of his term, weakened on virtually every front,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: in danger of being forced from office as the impeachment
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: inquiry intensifies. So some people might see this and think,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I've read a version of this before.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: I've read a version of this like a hundred times before.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: A hundred times.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Several hundred times before.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: But then on Saturday, he backs off his decision to
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: basically give a government bailout to his failing hotel in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Miami by hosting the G7 there. And then you wonder,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: is this time different? What do you think?
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: So I'm torn on this, as I think a lot
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: of people are. I think that when the impeachment inquiry
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: started around Ukraine, I felt like there was a little
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: bit of people felt like the outcome was overdetermined. Like the,
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: the smart thing to think was like, well, the Senate
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: will never remove him as if like the future is foreordained.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: And I've always thought that it's a more, it's more
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: dynamic than that. Like it is just not a fait
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: accompli that this all goes like the impeachment in the
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: house and they acquit in the Senate and then everyone
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: moves on. Like that's not to me a fait accompli
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: at the same time. It is the case that I
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: have read 200 articles about that. And like, I look,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: his approval rating is, basically the same like what's happening
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: right now in the polling is so fascinating to me
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: which is that the impeachment question is essentially approaching asymptotically
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: the uh approval question where it's like there's literally no
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: middle ground so it's like you know 52 41 is
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: his approval and it's that's what like should he be
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: impeached removed from office it's like there's no no one
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: in the middle it's like you either think the guy
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: is a menace and needs to go tomorrow or Or
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: you like him. And that's it. Those are the two positions.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Were you surprised by the Doral reversal?
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: I was. I was surprised.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Why do you think it happened?
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: It's really interesting.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I guess, like, you know, stepping back, I am always
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised when the old political rules apply to Donald Trump.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: Totally agree.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Now, one thing that we have learned over the last
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: three years is that the old political rules apply to
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of people around Donald Trump.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You can ask.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of various cabinet secretaries who've had to resign in disgrace.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: You'd have, you could ask Mick Mulvaney, uh, who spent
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: the weekend in a barrel, but it's been surprising at
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the moments where, uh, the political rules apply to Donald Trump.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And this is an example where they do. And I think, uh,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it is true that we've read story after
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: story where, you know, Donald Trump's season of weakness, you know, he's, uh,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the, the, the white house is, uh, once again,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you know, unraveling to the barricades, what have you, but, but,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's sometimes too cynical to say, oh, we've
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: read this story before. We have read this story before,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: but each time it gets a little bit worse for them.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And this was a period of time where Donald Trump
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: is acutely weak.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I can't remember the last time he has backed
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: off a decision that has been so heavily criticized.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: You know, the thought I had was child separation, which
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: was another one of those moments I completely agree with
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: you were like, oh, gravity exists. It's like, oh, you're
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: ripping children, you're kidnapping children, and the nation is just
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: horrified by it and you have to walk it back.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: There was also a court suit which sort of forced.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Them to do it.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: But the reporting from the Times and the Washington Post
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: both indicate that like there was this, you know, get
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: together Camp David of moderate, so-called moderate Republican congressmen like
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: the Tom Coles and your Peter Kings and those folks
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: who were like, no, no, we can't defend this. It's,
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: utterly indefensible and like that was and again that's like
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: yes it does matter like he understands he's about to
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: get impeached like the political calculations here are have.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: Changed yeah the galaxy brains that said he would support
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: impeachment and welcome it and see it as politically beneficial
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: are like you can't pile this many scandals on top
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: of each other and it does seem like a bunch
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: of moderate senators said you know esperanto why don't you
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: come to your senses you know what i mean Took
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: you a minute.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Particularly strong intervention from Senator Pierre Delecto.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: How fast can someone get a Pierre Delecto reference?
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: To your point, Chris, there is an interesting Twitter thread
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: by Nate Cohn over the upshot where there is actually
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: a little bit of a delta in swing districts between
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: those who support an inquiry into President Trump or those
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: who support impeaching and removing him.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: So like. Maybe he's still hoping for that. Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: And there is I mean, again, all the margins matter,
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: as we learned in 2016, when it's seventy seven thousand
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: votes across three states out of, you know, one hundred
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: and forty million votes cast. So like the margins do matter.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: But I just think that like the the Doral thing
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: is also just fascinating because Mulvaney came out and it's
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: like every defense of this guy revolves around two ways
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: of defending. One is like he literally can't control himself.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: That's the defense. And then the other defense, which is
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: always given in this kind of petulant, aggrieved manner, like,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: why are you asking me these questions? It's like Marco
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: Rubio's real strength. It basically comes down, he cannot, in
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: the same way that I can't speak Arabic, he can't
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: understand the difference between right and wrong. You can talk
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: to me in Arabic all day long, and it will
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: go nowhere. I don't speak Arabic. He doesn't understand Arabic.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: There's no malintent here. It's just Trump being Trump. That's
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: who he is. Do you think this increases the chances
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: that Democrats will add some of this corruption and emolument
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: clause violation stuff to the articles of impeachment? Because my
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: thought was, now that they have backed off this, they
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: have basically admitted that this kind of self-dealing is wrong,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: and yet there is There are so many other examples
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: of him doing this. We just had the fucking Scotland
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: controversy a couple weeks ago, which we've, you know, already.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Trump Hotel in D.C. How many times has he visited
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: these properties? There was another story over the weekend about
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: how he can't stop bragging to foreign leaders about his
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: hotel properties in private.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I would say I actually I I don't know.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the right strategy is in terms
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of what how how narrow impeachment should be in terms
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of the specific crimes. I do believe that in terms
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of how they're described, they need to be described properly.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in the broadest possible terms of Trump's corruption and abuse
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: of power. But what I do think we are, what
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: is being validated is the theory of those who supported
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: impeachment for a long time, which is if you don't
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: do this, he will be unbridled. Because imagine what would
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: have happened if Trump announced that the G7 would have
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: been at Trump Doral while we were still in the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: kind of murky semi-impeachment world four months ago.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Nothing would have happened.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: It is showing you that the lever of impeachment is
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: actually making a difference and making our society less corrupt.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: And it was actually to me, like when they, I got,
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: I was really taken aback by that Doral announcement precisely
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: because it felt to me like, whoa, this is, this
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: means these guys are just like whatever we want to do.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: And Doral is gross and to me clearly unconstitutional and
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: criminal and corrupt. But then it's like, there's a lot
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: of way worse things they could do if they just
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: say to themselves, we're doing whatever we want to do.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: And that, got this sort of like panic when I
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: saw this like and to me It's I completely agree
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: with you that like the presence of the impeachment inquiry
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: to me The strongest argument for impeachment was always that
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: it is some kind of restraint on his behavior and
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: and restraining him is a It's almost a kind of
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: like collective social and political project for the entire country
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: right now.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, at the time was a hard
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: argument to make. Because making the argument that we will
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: do something that will restrain Donald Trump is going to
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: get you laughed at by people all across the political spectrum.
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: It creates a process and a context through which you
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: can actually do it. Because if they have no shame
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: and they're refusing all oversight, there's just no way to
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: hold them to account. I just want to, on top
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: of the emoluments issue, I just want to just note
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: that it is insane to try to have a G7
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: in Miami.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Can you talk about.
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: You're securing seven of the most important world leaders on
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: the planet. They have massive footprint security. Sometimes like they
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: do them at Camp David because it's entirely secure. They
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: did it on Sea Island. So you could take over
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: an entire island.
• 11:01
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 11:01
  Speaker 8: Like.
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: Plopping a G7 down in Miami, it's impossible to do.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It's insane.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: It's also, it was so funny because what was so
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: funny about that announcement, about the Melvania announcement was, at
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: one level, it's like, we're doing this and we don't care.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: But then at the other level, he had to pretend
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: there had been this rigorous process where it's like, we
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: looked high and we looked low and we looked east
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: and we looked west and we set these teams. And
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: then it was like, Miami in June. Miami in June
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: is crazy.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: He was still doing that defense. He was still doing
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: that defense.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Like even while saying they weren't going to do it,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: he was saying like, look, we, we looked and I
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: know it's kind of seems like a coincidence, but.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: It's the best place to have it.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Famously, the hotel right near the airport is always... I.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Also like that it was... Yes, exactly.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: He was touting that.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Right near the airport. It's the only one, by the way.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: It's like the Hilton Garden and this.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: You can't find a hotel near the airport other than
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Trump Doral. But the other piece of it, too, is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I like that it was... The ball was in the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: air long enough for Marco Rubio to catch it and
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: defend it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: And then the sort of.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: The Marco Rubio defense of like, oh, you know, I'm
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: strong on Syria, but I don't, you know... You're all
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: angry at me for not not picking a fight under all.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: But I'm right on this other issue. And it's like, OK, man,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: what percentage of the time do you need to show
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: integrity for us to be quiet?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I will say the Trump second order excuse now about
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: how well it was going to be free. I wasn't
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I was going to do it. I was going to
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: be free. Like, why do I need to do this?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: That's his argument.
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Which you can see some people being like, oh, well,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: that's interesting. But like. First of all, it was clearly
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: a branding and marketing opportunity for this.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: Also, I don't trust him to tell me what's it cost.
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: There was a report that they were charging $ 18 for
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: a glass of bourbon that cost $ 55 a bottle.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: These are grifting fuck.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: I don't trust him on hard costs and I don't
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: trust him on soft costs.
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: To your point earlier, I really do think Mulvaney's appearance
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: expedited the downfall of this thing because Trump has managed
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: to stay at this same level of gravity. Mulvaney is prickly.
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: He's disliked by a lot of people within the caucus.
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: And when he goes out and says something stupid, they
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: wanted nothing more than just.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: A slap in the face.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: It also was a reminder to me because I feel
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: torn about, you know, there's this kind of, oh, what
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: happened to the presidential daily, you know, the press conference,
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: you know, where the press secretary would come out. And
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: I'm ambivalent about that because it's like, it was a
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: waste of all of our time, but there is a
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: kind of transparency interest in doing it. That's the argument
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: for it from a sort of first amendment, like civics perspective.
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: It was a reminder, like there's a reason they don't
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: come out every day. I mean, what the hell are,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean? So like, The one time
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: they send someone out to do what that press secretary
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: person would do, which is kind of defend indefensible decisions,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: that's what happened. No wonder they're not coming out.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's why Trump does all of his press
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: conferences with helicopter blades behind him. He's always like, I'm sorry,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I can't hear you. I miss it, I gotta go.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna scream some crazy shit.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: He's also right that he's the only person who can
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: be his spokesman because you see in Mick Mulvaney's eyes
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: the lingering part of him that used to not... And
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Spicer felt shame, Huckabee Sanders did not.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Which is why she was good.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and now this new person's like, I can't go
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: out there.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: Well, and I'll never forget the moment when we were
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: talking about when the rules of normal politics apply and
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: they apply to other people. There was a moment in
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: the Tom Price scandal when that was blowing up, right?
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: He was taking all those flights. And I remember he
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: had some event that he had to do that day.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: And he's sort of walking off and getting chased with questions.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: And I saw in his eyes... the human experience of shame.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: I was like, he's done. I just saw shame in him.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: He's out. Gotta bury that deeper, my friend.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: A day or two later, he's gone. It's like, if
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: you feel that.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: You know who else was dead-eyed this weekend? Sorry, I
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: don't know where we're moving on. It was Mike Pompeo.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: If you ever want to see a human balloon deflate
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: on air, it happened in this question that he got
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: from George Stephanopoulos. It was just, I've never seen him.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Great interview by George. There's a pause in that, which
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: is a fantastic pause. Five-second pause, followed by like, oh, It.
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: Sounded like there's a clip we always play, always play,
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: which is Paul Manafort talking about whether they have relation
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: or not.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: That's what I said. That's what we said.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: That's obviously what our position is.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: What we actually said, I said, I said. That's what
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: I did say.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Classic of the genre. We do have the clip of
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Mick Mulvaney attempting and failing to walk back his remarks
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: from the White House briefing room on Chris Wallace's show
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: on Fox on Sunday. So let's play that. Why? Here's
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: my first question.
• 15:26
  Speaker 9: Why did you say in that briefing that President Trump
• 15:30
  Speaker 9: had ordered a quid pro quo that investigating the Democrats,
• 15:36
  Speaker 9: that aid to Ukraine depended.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: On investigating the Democrats?
• 15:39
  Speaker 9: Why did you say that?
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: Again, that's not what I said.
• 15:41
  Speaker 7: That's what people said that I said. Here's what I said.
• 15:43
  Speaker 7: I'll say it again. And hopefully people will listen this time.
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: There were two reasons that we held up the aid.
• 15:49
  Speaker 7: We've talked about this at some length. The first one
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine, by the way, Chris,
• 15:55
  Speaker 7: is so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed
• 15:58
  Speaker 7: a law requiring us to make sure that corruption was
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: moving in the right direction. So corruption is a big deal.
• 16:05
  Speaker 7: Everybody knows it. The president was also concerned about whether
• 16:08
  Speaker 7: or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with
• 16:11
  Speaker 7: foreign aid to the Ukraine as well. We've talked about
• 16:13
  Speaker 7: that for quite a while now. I did then mention
• 16:16
  Speaker 7: that in the past, the president had mentioned for me
• 16:18
  Speaker 7: to time to time about the DNC server. He mentioned
• 16:21
  Speaker 7: the DNC server to other people publicly. He even mentioned
• 16:24
  Speaker 7: it to President Zelensky in the phone call, but it
• 16:27
  Speaker 7: wasn't connected to the aid. And that's where I think
• 16:28
  Speaker 7: people got sidetracked this weekend at that press conference. Two
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: reasons for holding back the aid.
• 16:33
  Speaker 9: Let me pursue that, though.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 16:35
  Speaker 9: Because I believe that anyone listening to what you said
• 16:39
  Speaker 9: in that briefing could come to only one conclusion. Let's
• 16:42
  Speaker 9: play what you said.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: Did he also mention to me in the past the
• 16:46
  Speaker 7: corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 7: But that's it, and that's why we held up the money.
• 16:52
  Speaker 9: This is a quid pro quo.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the Democratic server happens as well.
• 17:03
  Speaker 7: We do that all the time with foreign policy.
• 17:06
  Speaker 9: You were asked specifically by Jonathan Karl, was investigating Democrats
• 17:11
  Speaker 9: one of the conditions for holding up the aid? Was
• 17:14
  Speaker 9: that part of the quid pro quo? And you said
• 17:17
  Speaker 9: it happens all the time.
• 17:18
  Speaker 7: Go back and watch what I said before that. I
• 17:20
  Speaker 7: don't know if you guys can cue it up or not.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: I guess my question is, what do we think Mick
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Mulvaney thought he was doing when he came out to
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: the briefing and started talking about like what was the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: strategy in his head?
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Well, there's two there's two things happening. One is that
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: he got confused. They have they've oscillated between two messages.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: We didn't do it and we did it and it's fine.
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: And he just forgot which one they were on. Like
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: he because because they Rick Perry did that the other
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: day in an interview in the same sentence almost like
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: this has been the like the call is perfect. And
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: also it's a witch hunt, whatever. So he got confused
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: between those two. He was trying to offer a plausible
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: cover story. One thing I will say that drives me
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: a little crazy because this is like this doesn't even
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: crack the top 1000 of what's crazy here. It's statutorily,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: the money, it's not theirs to uphold.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: The money has been passed by Congress and signed by
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: the president. You don't get to sit around and just
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: be like, oh, we think they're too corrupt. Like, that's
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: not the way it works. DOD actually did a legal
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: analysis inside the Pentagon and found it was unlawful to
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: do so. Like, this idea that the premise here is
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: whatever gets passed into law, we just sit around and decide, like,
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: are they corrupt or not? It's just bullshit.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Two things.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: One, it seems like this whole thing could be solved
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: if someone just explained the concept of the cloud.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: To Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Honestly, I was just going
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: to say this. It's not a physical server, dude. There's
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: no server.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: It's like Amazon Web Services, right? So that's one.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Do you know how email works? Maybe a piece of
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: it is in Ukraine. In 2019. What do I know?
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: Two, right, like Mulvaney's right that quid pro quos are
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: at the heart of diplomacy, but the quo has to
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: be something valuable to the United States of America. I
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: can't say, I'll give you a military aid in exchange
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: for a million dollars.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: That is corrupting as is the promise of dirt on
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: Biden or future super PAC. Like it's, it's just so
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: like they're, they're little linguistic games don't pass even a
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: tiny bit of scrutiny.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: They treat voters like they are stupid. Yeah.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I actually think, I think like, so when I, when
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I first saw the clip, I thought, Oh, maybe they
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: have a new strategy, which is to concede that he
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: was doing a sort of political interference of some form
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: looking backwards. That what he was, that, that, that, and
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: that they were kind of, They were seeking a tiny
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: bit of shelter in the last part of their kind
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of whatever, misinformation hut that was, okay, yeah, there was
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a quid pro quo. Yeah, we can't deny that part
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: of it anymore. But there was nothing about Biden moving forward.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: It was just about looking backwards. And I think what
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: he fucked up is the way that he could have
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: maybe gotten away with that and say, like, of course
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: there was a quid pro quo. we are our quid
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: pro quo was corruption in Ukraine for the money we're
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: not giving you money unless you investigate corruption and one
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: example is the conspiracy theory Trump brings up but he
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: but he but he but he didn't wasn't able to
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: kind of land the plane.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Well the other thing he's doing there and I this
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: is what they're moving towards is the Attorney General William
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Barr is running this investigation into the origins of the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Mueller investigation to try to see if everything's on the
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: up and up to track down all the conspiracy theories.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: And because this has some air of legitimacy to it
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: in their mind and in the press, in some parts
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: of the press, they keep going to that by saying, well,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: When he was talking about this, they don't want to
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: mention what the server was or CrowdStrike because they know
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: that's fucking nuts.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: Too nuts.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: But they want to just say, oh, this was part
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: of the bar investigation, which then was ruined by the
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Justice Department saying, we have no idea what he's talking about.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he got too specific. Because he said, at one point,
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: he said, cooperation. Too loud and too specific. It was like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: cooperation with the Department of Justice is one of the
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: things he says. And then DOJ is like, That's the
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: first we've heard.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: And I think it was Aisha Roscoe at NPR also
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: pointed out at the briefing that if you're investigating the
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: DNC in 2016, there's still a relevant entity in the
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: 2020 election.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: Like they're still your opponent. You're still investigating your political opponent.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: There were a bunch of stories saying, like, oh, the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: White House, very unhappy with Mick Mulvaney. In a lot
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: of ways, he was probably on the way out. Jared
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Kushner deeply disappointed his performance. Which honestly, if I were
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Mick Mulvaney, I'd be like, you fuck you, you little turd.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: The idea that you could have gone out there and
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: handled this. You disappeared because you're garbage. But I also
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: think they're trying to act like Mick Mulvaney, he's just
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: some guy. Mick Mulvaney was the golden boy that they
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: had run two agencies at once because he was one of.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: The- Still is. Still is, technically. He's still the head
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: of the OMB.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Mulvaney was one of the people that they viewed
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: as their serious adult character. that was willing to stick
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: around and do Trump's bidding, and so they put him
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: into everything. So the idea now that Mick Mulvaney is like, ugh,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: you know, that classic Mick, this guy nobody likes, is ridiculous.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Well, apparently he got a round of applause at the
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: morning staff meeting this morning at the White House, too. Yeah.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: I don't know why.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Dead man walking. It's like Green Mile or whatever.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Round of applause.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Way to go, Mick. How much strategic or political benefit
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: do you guys think there is in the Mulvaney campaign?
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: get over it defense. Like you said, there's two different
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: strategies here.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: I think that's the only thing they have.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: It actually worries me because I think that's the more.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: I think that's all they have, A, and I think
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: it's also, it's what Trump's instincts are, and I think
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: his instincts on this are probably better than the people
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: around him in some weird way just because he has
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: that shamelessness that almost no one can replicate. The problem
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: is the facts are they've got locked into a situation
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: where They admitted the crime. It's like the first I said,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: like the first page of the novel is like the
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: crime is committed and we know who did it. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: then the novel is told in flashback of like, oh,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: how do we end up with this like at the
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: crime scene? And so they're in this weird place where
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: they're they're trying to kind of deny things that keep
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: coming out. We keep seeing how big and expansive this
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: entire effort was. The only thing they will end up
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: being able to do and what the Republicans will take
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: shelter in is. it was inappropriate but not impeachable. Or, like,
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: the Rob Portman statement is the way to sort of
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: thread the needle if you're a Republican, particularly in the
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: Senate and not in a crazily plus-25 Trump state, is
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: to say, this was not appropriate, but the money did flow,
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: they didn't actually dig up dirt on Biden's, and everyone
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: learned their lesson and it's not impeachable. The problem is,
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: if you say that, you incur Trump's wrath.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Right. So.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: they're sort of stuck because the smart thing, I think,
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: the argument to make is just concede the facts. Stipulate
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: the facts of the facts and the behaviors of the
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: behavior and then argue over in the same way that
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Democrats did with Bill Clinton, a very different infraction. But
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: the argument with Bill Clinton wasn't, it was awesome and
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: perfect that he had this relationship with an intern. It was,
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: this was not cool, but not impeachable.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Which I think is an argument for the Democrats to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: broaden the impeachment inquiry to various impeachable offenses by Donald Trump,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: because I do think part of what's hurting him here,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: as we saw the last couple of weeks with Ukraine
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: and then Syria and then Doral, is the continuing development
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: of these events over and over again of Trump's wrongdoing.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: You have to prove a pattern here. And I do think, like, Tommy,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: you mentioned Nate Cohn and the New York Times polling
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: in these six swing states. And one of the numbers
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: that sort of gave me pause was I think 46%
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: of people said they believed this kind of what Trump
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: did with Ukraine was bad, but it's the kind of
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: thing politicians do all the time. And 42% said, no, no,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: it was uniquely bad. And I think there's a danger
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: that people could fold this into people who are very
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: cynical about politicians in both parties in general saying, yeah,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: it's bad, but everyone's corrupt and he's our corrupt guy.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And that's that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: I also just think another difference.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: It's funny to look back at the Clinton impeachment is
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: one thing that Democrats had that, that Republicans don't is, uh,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton had some really inappropriate conduct that wasn't criminal,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and then obstruction and perjury to kind of cover up
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that misconduct that, to varying degrees, everybody said was wrong,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: but there was no crime. With Trump, the underlying conduct
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: is criminal and incredibly dangerous. And then the cover-up is
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: also a process crime to keep that concealed, which makes
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: it much harder for them to go back to the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: kind of Clintonian.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: avoidance.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: To Chris's point on Trump's instincts, I think that's exactly right,
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: because his starting place is, I'm corrupt, you're corrupt, we're
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: all corrupt, who gives a fuck, right? But he is,
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: I think, struggling in part because he's staffed by the
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: D team that is overworked, that are not being replaced.
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: And so they released the Ukraine transcript. They released a
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: letter from Trump to Erdogan that made him sound functionally illiterate.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: They released.
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: a Nancy Pelosi photo that will be hung at her
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: memorial service in her home, in her speaker library, right?
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: It's like their political instincts are off right now.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: And that's why he is, I mean, every time a
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: surrogate gets sent out, he's the only one who can
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: do this. He's the only one who can pull it
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: off because he's the only one, again, It's it's it's
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: not it's like it's biologic. It's constitutive who he is.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: It's like there's no other place in his mind that
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: thinks that like everyone isn't as corrupt as him. Like
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: he and so he can pull it off in a
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: way that almost no one else can.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So final question on this, you know, Mulvaney's comments cause
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Republican Congressman Frank Rooney to say he won't rule out
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: impeaching Trump. He then later announced he's going to be retiring.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: John Kesa called for impeachment. McConnell's out there writing an
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: op ed, very critical of Trump on Syria.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: pierre delecto uh... formerly known as mit romney has been
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: obviously heavily critical uh... cnn report over the weekend that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: many republicans they talk to have used the phrase turning
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: point uh... the republicans they talk to to talk about
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: what's going on right now do we buy this or
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: is this just like.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I think we don't know but to go back to
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: something chris said earlier and something that i thought for
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: a long time it was i think too cynical for
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of democrats to say i know what republicans
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: will do i'm from the future i can predict how
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: this will end out and i end up, and I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: think one thing that is just generally important for our posture,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: is don't do the Republicans' work for them.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: Let's be surprised by what they do.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Well, and let's not sit back. I think it shows
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: that political pressure works here.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: There's also the fact that in this whole mix, because
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: you just mentioned it in the Syria policy, is I've
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: just found it so fascinating because to me it's like,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: it's so revealing with someone like Lindsey Graham. It's like, oh,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: this is your project. Lindsey Graham's project is maintaining a
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: certain form of American... military hegemony throughout the world, and
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: particularly the Middle East. And he believes in that project
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: with his very fiber of his being. And that project
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: is being betrayed before his eyes. And he is genuinely
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: pissed about that. And a lot of other Republicans are.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: I think like some, I think for legitimate reasons, like
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: we're betraying this ally that fought side by side with
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: their soldiers. And I think some for illegitimate reasons, the
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: Lin Cheney's of the world who see this as a
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: sort of American retreat and we're pulling out. But to
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: the extent that doubts begin to be sown in the
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: minds of Republicans, about what this individual with this baggage
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: and this judgment and this staff is doing with the
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: American ship of state in this sort of grand sense,
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: that to me is extremely worrisome and dangerous for them politically.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: I sadly believe that a lot of voters don't care
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: that much about foreign policy and they're probably the rank
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: and file. People in the world don't know much about
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: the Kurds and aren't as worried as we wish they
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: were about what Trump's doing in Syria right now.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: But what Syria.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: was, was the first moment a Fox only viewer saw
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: criticism of Trump that was real and sustained and personal.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Yes. And from voices that they were like, wait, wait, wait.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: I thought he was our team. Yeah. And I think
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: that matters. That matters a lot.
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: And that's where I think the Trump weakened story in
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: the post was great and smart. But they said at
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: one point that he lost the media. And I just
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: don't think that's true.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It's, you know, we, the Trump media, there's a, there's
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: a dirty deal that the Republicans have made, which is,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: We'll tolerate all of these abuses. We'll tolerate his inhumanity
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and vulgarity and criminal abuses and deception and racism, as
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: long as we get our list of things. And for
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of these Republicans, yeah, that's taxes and deregulation.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's judges.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: But there's a foreign policy code, like a shibboleth for
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: them that this violates. And I think like, okay, let's
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: say Trump was a... A Democrat who is just as corrupt,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: but he campaigned on Medicare for all and he campaigned
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: on cutting taxes for the middle class and he campaigned
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: on all the things we believe in. Then he comes
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: into office and he starts denying climate change. And all
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like, hold on a second, man.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Hold on a second. I'm on the take here, but
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I need my fucking cut. I'm not going to be
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: corrupt and not get my bequest.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: The other thing is, at the end of the day,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: every one of these Republican senators is going to make
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: a purely political calculation in a way, which is, Is
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: the public pressure on Trump? They're going to look at
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the polls. They're going to look at the polls in
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: their state. They're up for reelection, at least the ones
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: who aren't retiring.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: The problem with that, I mean, that I totally agree with.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: But the problem is if you if you ask me
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: and I'm not a political consultant and I don't think
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I'd be a particularly good one. But if you ask
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: me in an alternate universe in which I was paid
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: for advice to Republicans, I would say the Benjamin Franklin quote.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: during the revolution, we almost hang together or we will
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: surely hang separately is true. Like, you will, in the
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: short term, it would be a political disaster to vote
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: to remove, for the Republican Party to vote to remove
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump. Now, the second thing I would say is,
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: Watergate was a disaster. And, you know, 74 and 76
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: were disasters. And then it was like Ronald Reagan four
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: years later. Like, nothing lasts forever. And there's an argument
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: to be made to like.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: You need a cleanse.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. No, really.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: Like, there's an argument to be made to just take
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: your medicine and cleanse. But in the short term, I
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: don't think, I don't see any argument on the other side.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: Purely amoral, just talking about political strategy here, that turning
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: against Trump would be anything other than a just, like,
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: extinction level of that for Republicans.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the only thing I wonder is when you see
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: that Joni Ernst town hall and how difficult it is
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: for some of these Republicans when confronted by non-Trump media
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: reporters or constituents to defend this, does that figure into
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: the calculus of a Susan Collins, a Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Martha McSally, some of these Republicans that are up in 20. Now,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you can, you need to get
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: to 20 Republicans there. And I don't know if you
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: can count to 20.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: And I think there's a universe. I mean, it's, that's
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: a fascinating like micro version of the political question. And
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: that is, I think a really hard call. Like if
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: you're paid to advise them how to vote on this trial,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: like that's a tough, first of all, we can all
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: agree it's a vote they don't want to take.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: They do not want to take that vote. That's a
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: tough vote. Like if you're Cory Gardner, like What's the upside?
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: What's the downside? If you, you know, like you, you, you, you,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: the people that you need to turn out for you
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: are going to be furious at you and probably view
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: you as a traitor, but also you're in a state
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: that is, you know, he's underwater.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: You can't win with your base.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Let me, let me, let me rephrase the question. Think
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: about this question. Okay. So hang together, hang separately.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Fine.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: If all the Republicans removed him, they would be protecting themselves.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: If all the Republicans vote to not remove him, they're
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: protecting themselves. What would you rather be? Would you rather
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: be a Republican Senator who voted to remove and he
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: stays in office or Or would you rather be a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Republican senator that voted for him to stay while he's
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: removed anyway?
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: Oh, definitely the former. You don't want to vote. No, yeah,
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: definitely the former. Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: So that tells you something.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Although, again, like part of part of what's so weird
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: about the way our politics work now in just in
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: terms of like how deep the sort of structural polarization is,
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: is like we're talking about two different universes of people.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: You know, if you're a senator from Alabama, like none of.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: This is not a hard one.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: You're just dealing in a different universe. If you're Richard Shelby,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: then if you're Cory Gardner and like the world in
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: which like this sort of question at the margins in
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: the middle like apply is such a narrow set of people,
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: particularly in the House where all of those people are
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: Democrats now. I mean, the 40 seats that are those
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: kind of seats, most of them are now occupied by
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: Democrats making these judgments. There's maybe another 10 marginal seats there,
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: but Everyone else is just living in a world where
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: this stuff is just.
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: There's collective and individual breaking points. And I don't think
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: that there will ever be a collective breaking point as
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: a party where they decide that politically it's beneficial for
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: us to get rid of Trump, even though I think
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: you could probably argue that a cleanse at this point
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: is needed. But for individuals, there's Cory Gardner, right? He's
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: looking at polling. But to your point about Lindsey Graham
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: and his global military project, today the Trump administration announced
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: that they had secretly brought 2,000 U.S.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Service members out of Afghanistan.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: That's an interesting thumb in the eye of Lindsey Graham
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: in this moment of maximum tension with him around Syria.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: There's also this amazing little human drama that's happening, which
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: is a Gulf War between Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham.
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: You can literally see it. They have both invested so
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: hard in flattering this guy into getting what they want.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: And Ted Cruz, when I spoke to Ted Cruz recently,
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: the first thing he said, he had said this to
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: me once before, and then he said it again. He said, look,
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: he's not a complicated guy. if you flatter him, you
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: can get him to do what you want. And if
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: you criticize him, he hates you. And he just said that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: I was like, right, this is the, and so you've
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: got Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham who have both just
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: been like, you know, just throwing themselves at Donald Trump,
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: golfing with him to get him to buy their vision
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: of American foreign policy. And like now Rand Paul's winning
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: and he's like these sort of celebratory treats and poor
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: Lindsey Graham, all his golf is for naught.
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: Yep.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Well, it's very slippery to try to, to try to
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: nail down Trump.
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: Well, that's the thing.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, but I do think like, One political benefit
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: of impeachment, we may not get him removed, but I
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: do think all of these senators who are up in
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: 2020 in these purplish states, their plan has always been
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: to try to distance themselves from Trump at some point
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: in the general election to show some kind of independence.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And if they have to vote on impeachment and they
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: vote to exonerate him, then they're never going to be
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: able to separate themselves from Trump. And I think it's
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: going to make life even if he stays in office,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: it's going to make life much harder for Susan Collins
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: and Cory Gardner and all of them. And if that's
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: all we get from impeachment, then that is very much
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: worth it.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean, when you
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: think through this sort of psychology, when you game it out,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: you keep gaming it out, right? It's like, so what's Trump,
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: what's the Republican Party going to do with Cory Gardner
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: in Colorado? Like, you can't send Donald Trump to Colorado.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: Like, you know, it's not Texas.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: He can't handle it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: He's probably not going to Maine. He's probably not, I mean.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: No, I don't think he's going to Maine either. So
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: it's like, again, that, yeah, the base only gets you
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: so far. And for the people for who that doesn't
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: carry the day, they're not in great, they're in a
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: bad position.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the Democratic primary. Big news
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: this morning is a new Suffolk USA Today poll out
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: of Iowa that shows Biden at 18%, Warren at 17%,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: and Pete Buttigieg surging seven points since their June poll
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: to 13%. Bernie Sanders is at 9%. Everyone else is
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: between 0% and 3%, and the winner is undecided at 29%.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: So only one poll, but we do know that Iowa
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: polls in general have been better for Buttigieg than the
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: national polls. We have seen a slight bump for him
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: in several polls since the debate. What do we think
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: accounts for the surge here for Pete? Obviously, he's been
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: spending a lot of time in the debate and since
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: the debate recognizing you know, drawn contrast with Elizabeth Warren
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: on Medicare for all.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, it has always seemed to me
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: the case that, um, and I think the, like the
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: lane metaphor really collapsed and didn't work in 2016, but
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: it does seem to me that like Bernie Sanders and
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren both have, you know, both have strong ideological stories.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: They both clearly believe them down to their toes. Like that,
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: you know, like they, they believe in what they're saying
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: and they have a vision for the project. So there's
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: those two at the top. And then there's Joe Biden,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: who is Joe Biden.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:39
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: Like, that is why... Joe Biden is Joe Biden.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: You know him.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: You love him or you don't love him. He was
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Obama's vice president.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: He has a clear story, whether he's articulated that story
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: or not. Yes.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: So those... And that gives you the top three. There's
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: always been a question of, like, who is telling a story,
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: the primary field, a story, a vision, a kind of
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: camp of, like, I'm the person who's not... Does not
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: have this ideological vision that these two others have, which
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: maybe some people in the primary... you know, grassroots don't like,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: but I do have another vision and I could be
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: a kind of like essentially a non-Biden centrist to be
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: overly reductive. And I think there is clearly a space
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: for that in the race. And it just seems to
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: me that Buttigieg is like that in a sort of
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: remarkably abrupt way. That was what I was going to
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: get to. To just be like, just like swerve the
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: car over to do that. But from a tactical perspective,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: it makes sense.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Just blowing up a blow-up doll so he can use
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the HOV lane. I'm using his lane whether you fucking
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: like it or not.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: So that, I think, is what accounts. That's what I think.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: And he's a pretty good retail politician, I think.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I guess that's my question, and it's
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: been my question since the debate is, Is it too abrupt?
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And maybe the answer from this poll is no, it's
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: not too abrupt because he's getting some traction. I just
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: think that this surge has actually been a long time coming. Yeah,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: that's the other. It's showing up in multiple polls now.
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: I mean, when I was in Iowa in August, like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: he had a pretty big crowd for a Tuesday afternoon
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: at the state fair, bigger than others, and people were
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: sort of noticing.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: He got hot early, right?
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: And, like, who the fuck thought that a CNN— town
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: hall super early on was going to lead to sustained
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: momentum and money over time.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: It was the Dan Pfeiffer interview. Sorry, the Dan Pfeiffer interview.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Cut that. Just kidding.
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: The Dan Pfeiffer interview was going to lead to all
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: this money. But like, you know, they have been building
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: and organizing and they've been on TV in Iowa and
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: it's actually mattered. And he's been in the national mix
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: through the duration, which has been, I think, a reason
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: that people like Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker and Beto
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: O'Rourke have had a harder time.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: Two things I want to say here. One is that,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: you know, the race part of this is a huge
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: part of it, too. Like, why is he doing, he's
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: at zero with black voters. And so, like, I was
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: a place that he can perform. But, like, unless that changes,
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: he's not going anywhere. The second thing I would say
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: is that it just seems to me, and again, I'm, like,
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: sort of talking about this not in terms of my
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: own ideological commitments, but just sort of a descriptive sense.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: It's like, if you're looking for, like, who would be
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: a person who's not Sanders and Warren because I think
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: they're too far left or whatever, and who isn't Biden,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: who I think doesn't seem like he's at his sharpest.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: Like Amy Klobuchar is a United States Senator. She, in
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: terms of an electability argument, just looking at the numbers,
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: probably has the best argument in the field, just in
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: terms of how she performs in Minnesota, the Republican districts
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: in which she over-performs in, she over-performs in rural parts
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: of that state. I don't think anyone's like right now
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: getting like super fired up about Amy Klobuchar the way
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: that there are some people about Pete Buttigieg. But let's
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: keep in mind, Pete Buttigieg won his last election in
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: a race in which there were 10,000 votes cast.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: I mean- That's like a large housing development in the
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: Bronx where I grow up. Amy Klobuchar has won in
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: a state that, remember, Hillary Clinton only won by 10,000
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: votes last time around. That's a competitive state. I just
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: feel like on the numbers and the metrics, if you're
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: making the tactical argument about this sort of centrism combined
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: with electability, she's got a stronger case just in the
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: data than he does.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Well, it's also why I think Pete is leaning so
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: heavily on this Medicare for All argument to draw a
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: contrast with Warren because- He can't really get into an
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: electability argument with Elizabeth Warren for the reasons you just mentioned.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: But what he can do is present himself policy-wise as
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: the more centrist alternative. The difficult part, of course, as
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: he found out over the last week, is he sort
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: of burst onto the scene as much more of a
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: progressive truth-teller. In fairness to Pete, he's been talking about
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Medicare for All Who Want It since February of 2019,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: so it's been there. But he said things like, you know,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, Jake Tapper on Sunday interviewed him and was like, well,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: you know, you criticized her about tax increases, but you've
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: said to me at a debate in the second debate,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: premiums or taxes, it's the same thing. So I wonder
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: how much of a hard time he's going to have,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I think we're also, look, we're in it and we've
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: seen all these sort of adjustments along the way. But
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I also think it's worth remembering, too, that I think
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Pete became a national figure by offering a non-ideological idea
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: of what he was trying to do, right?
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: It was a generational shift. It was what he represented.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: He leaned heavily on democratic reforms, right? Like the Supreme
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Court and the filibuster, which are also in a way non-ideological. Yeah.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Well, they're big progressive ideas, but they're not on the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, left, right, how much do we tax?
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: How much do we spend? Hinge.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And I think so he's sort of, he's, he's now
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: made some really specific statements that put him more in
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the sort of center left of the party, despite what
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: he said in the past. And the other piece of
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: this about Klobuchar, too, is I do think it doesn't
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: speak to what Pete has been doing. It kind of
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: speaks more to what Amy Klobuchar wasn't doing. I think
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: this fourth debate was the first time she really was
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: strong in a way that was sort of made a
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: case for her own candidacy. She was, I thought, energetic
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and emotional in defense of her worldview, which she hadn't
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: done before. And, you know, I think that's partly why
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: she hasn't been able to kind of get a toehold
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: into the into the polling.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: I think it's also hard, though, like making the reason
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: that Biden is sort of uniquely it's still the case
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: that the squishiness of what Mayor Pete was talking about.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: And I agree that it wasn't ideological per se, but
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: it was like big at the same time that the
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: problem for people that want to occupy that space is
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: like how to make an argument that feels big, that isn't.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: big in an ideological sense. Because otherwise, then you're just
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: John Delaney getting his butt kicked by Elizabeth Warren.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: You never want to be the wet blanket.
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: You also don't want to be like, yeah, we can
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: make these little marginal reforms and we can do things
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: at the edges and better things aren't possible. And that
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: is a real challenge. It's a real challenge. And no one,
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: I think, no one yet has figured out how to
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: do that, how to sort of paint a and rises
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: to the scale of the issues that we all see
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: in front of us and sort of fills up the
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: scope of the times that's independent from an ideological vision
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: that Sanders and Warren have a very clear.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Well, for example, like Obama in 2008 in that primary, right?
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Like there were issues. The classic example. The classic example,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: because on healthcare in that primary, Barack Obama was further
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to the right than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. And
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: yet he was seen as.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: Although the thing I will say about that, and you
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: guys lived it, but I covered it, is that like,
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: the war did so much of that work.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: It just did all that work because it was like,
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: that was the number one issue for so long in politics.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: And he was on the right side of it. And
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: the person who's right against it wrong. And he was
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: on the left side of it. And that did so
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: much of the work that Pete doesn't have a thing
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: To point to.
• 43:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think that like, when you look at
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: the distinction between Klobuchar and Pete, I think a lot
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: of it could be boiled down to the fact that
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: Pete broke through into the national conversation early and, And
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: he has a set of qualities that's particularly appealing to
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: the donor class and the people who are really interested
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: in talking about and diagnosing the challenges in our politics
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: and the Democratic Party. Which is why he has so
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: much money, too. Whereas Klobuchar had a harder time, I
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: think she had a great debate recently, a harder time
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: breaking through nationally and was doing the more traditional grinded
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: out in the early states thing. strategy, which frankly hasn't
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: worked for anyone this time yet.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: She also was, I think, more, she was stronger and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: more critical of, she was better at making a sharper
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: contrast with her opponents when she was off the debate
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: stage than when she was on it. She was reluctant
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: to kind of throw a punch in the debates. And,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: you know, we can talk endlessly about whether throwing punches
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: is always a good idea. But for her specifically, it
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: was like, come on, We have seen a center left
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: candidate just fall by the wayside, just getting absolutely brutalized
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: by Elizabeth Warren. I think this was the first debate
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and Bernie Sanders. This was the first debate where you
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: act like Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar are more sophisticated
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: debaters than what the left has faced before. And I
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: think the debate was stronger because of it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, I totally agree with that. I mean, rather than
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: the Delaney sort of stand in. But I also think,
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, and this, I think, this is a more
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: ideological question, but I also think it's the case that like,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: there's a reason it's hard to spell out this vision
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: that feels equal to the scope of the times that's
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: not ideological because politics is about what the ideological vision
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: is for the country. There is a reason that the
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Sanders-Warren vision feels big. It's because it is big. Because
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: they believe that a lot of shit is fucked up.
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: Correctly.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: They speak to the scale of the challenges.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: And if you don't agree with them, the only way
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: around that is through it. You have to make the
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: case that that's not either politically feasible or from a
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: policy substantive standpoint, it's not the right way. But so
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: many candidates, I think, have danced around it because they're
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: afraid of the criticism. And so I think, you know,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Pete's sort of head down charging into the fray.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: And I think, again, I think that like, I have
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: tended to feel like most of the debates so far
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: have largely revolved around like what I would call like
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: clean hits, like substantive fights about things that people haven't, like,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a big difference between universal single-payer health
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: care as proposed or like adding a public option. Those
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: are distinct things that people can make good faith arguments,
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: substantive arguments. The one thing I will say, not to
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: get too policy-y here, but like there's a little bit
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: of hand-waving that's happening with the public option or Medicare
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: for All who want it. And Dave Dayen at The
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: Prospect pointed this out, which is like, so there's two possibilities.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: Either it's a really good option that people want, in
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: which case a ton of people are in it, and
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: then you're dealing with a cost that looks a lot
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: like Medicare for All. Or it's kind of crappy and
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: no one wants it. And then you could be like, well,
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: we don't have to spend a lot of money on it.
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: But it's like, well, what have you succeeded in doing?
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: So David Remnick pressed Buttigieg on this point in an
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: interview they did, I think, over the weekend. And I
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: think the way that Pete thinks he's getting out of
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: that is because there are still premiums, copays, deductibles, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Medicare for All you have to buy. It's not like
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: automatic enrollment and everyone gets, you know, it's not like Bernie's.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: Plan once you're in. It costs less than Bernie Sanders,
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: even apples to apples.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Even if everyone doesn't. That's true. you're right that if
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: everyone loves Medicare for all who want it and everyone
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: jumps in, they're going to have to find a financing
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: mechanism that is greater than what Pete has already proposed. Yes.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And actually it also gets at the argument Pete's trying
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to make against Warren, because what does that mean? Well,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: it means that the government is going to have to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: spend a greater share on healthcare as the amount people
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: spend out of pocket on things like premium slowly starts
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: to fall, which is the ledger math that we've argued
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: about in every single debate.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. Um, Okay, so another big development over the
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: weekend was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement of Bernie Sanders at a
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: rally in Queens that drew approximately 26,000 people. In her
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: endorsement video, AOC said, this is not just about running
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: for president, this is about creating a mass movement of
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: working class people. How big of a deal is this endorsement?
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: I thought, I don't know how much endorsements matter, and
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: I don't think it was necessarily that surprising. I do
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: think that like, I do think there was a little
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: bit of, Bernie Sanders is a 70-year-old man who had
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: a heart attack. And I do think there was a
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: little bit, and I think you saw it in the polling,
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: of like, oof, is he going to be cool? Just physically,
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: not a politics substance, just literally physically. And I do
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: think it was important for him both to have a
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: very strong debate performance where he seemed energetic and not
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: like a man who's weak and just out of the hospital,
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: and then to have this rally to remind people, yes,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: he's in it, he's there. And the other thing I'll
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: say is I just thought the ending of that speech
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: was so beautiful. moving and beautiful very powerful like really
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: powerful but like it just like really I was like
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: right this is the project the project is like look
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: around and find someone that isn't like you and like
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: are you willing to fight for them and are we
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: all willing to fight for each other and I just
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: thought it was like a very beautiful piece of rhetoric
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: that captured what I want the project to be for all.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Of us it was inclusive it was inviting of other
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: people to try to build a movement which I think
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I think Bernie has always been pretty good at I
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: think sometimes his supporters are not as inviting. Some of
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: his supporters, I'd say a lot of people who work
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: for him are different, right? But like, you know, the
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: online conversation. And when you hear him talk like that,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: and then I thought AOC's endorsement videos was one of
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: the best endorsements I've seen. She's incredibly powerful. She's so
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: good at this. So I feel like the case he
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: made and the case that she made is the best
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: case for yes it's like go with.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: That exactly i completely agree go with that.
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: I think this will actually turn out to be like
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: i normally would agree that endorsements don't mean much but
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: i think this is a big deal and it will
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: mean more over time because like obviously she helped him
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: draw this huge crowd in queens and she did incredibly
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: compelling video that i thought made a better case for
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: bernie sanders and bernie sanders often makes for bernie sanders
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: But then like she's a campaign staffer as of like
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: a year ago.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: Like she will she knows how this works. She will
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: hit the road. She'll work for him and she will
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: draw huge crowds everywhere she goes. And the one question
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: I had as I looked at the event was, why
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: do this in Queens? Why not do this in Des Moines?
• 49:52
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: And I talked to some some of Bernie's folks and
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: their argument was basically like one. We kind of give
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: endorsers the respect of coming to them first. So don't
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: be surprised if you see her in, you know, in
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: Des Moines down the road. But also, like, the national narrative,
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: as you said, Chris, has changed a lot over three weeks.
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: It's kind of an amazing whipsaw for them. But they
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: think that the way you show that you're the biggest,
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: baddest grassroots campaign in town is to pull off an
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: event like that. And I certainly, like, that was a
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: brushback pitch to the Warren campaign, to everyone else that's
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: trying to say, you know, this is a movement.
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: And I will say that Warren also doesn't hurt to
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: do something in the national media's backyard. Like, the Warren
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: event in Washington Square Park did that very well. It
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: was like, oh my goodness, like it's right there. You
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: can't ignore it. I will also say, I mean, the
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: funny thing about Western Queens at this point is that like,
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: it's the beating heart of like the words of revived
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: democratic socialist movement in a real way. Like you can
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: lose sight of it in the world of online and Twitter,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: but there are both in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign and
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: then the campaign for the Queens DA, Tiffany Caban. My
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: brother was a campaign manager on that. So I have
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: some insight into it. Like there are just a bunch
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: of people who are just non-political professionals who go knock
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: on doors. Like there's a real organization that has been
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: built there. It's a remarkable thing. It's not just like
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: a bunch of people in people's Twitter mentions. There are
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: people that like get off their shift from work and
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: then they go hit doors for socialist candidates in that
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: part of the borough and throughout the borough. And it's like,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: in some ways, there's something being built there that's a
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: very real thing. It makes sense to go to.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: The heart of it. And I do wonder from this endorsement,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we just talked about Pete Serge and now
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: we've talked about sort of Bernie's sort of mini resurgence here,
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: if the Warren campaign is about to go through sort
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: of a challenging part of the race right now, that
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: they haven't really been challenged like that since the beginning,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: the very beginning. And we, you know, I think we
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: talked about this for the last couple of weeks, like,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: what is it going to be like when Elizabeth Warren
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: faces a real challenge? Because every candidate who does go
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: on to win the nomination goes through that. And so
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sort of wondering now, in addition to what happened
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: at the debate now, you know, for a while, it
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: seemed like Oh, maybe Bernie's not going to be much
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: of an issue, but he's, he's there. He's got AOC.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: He can still pull off a 26,000 person event. He
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: is not going anywhere.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: That's I think the most important part of this.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: So it, you know, if, if AOC had endorsed Elizabeth Warren,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: it might've transformed the race, right? It would have shown
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Bernie would have continued to lose support. It would have
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: meant that the left was now rallying behind one candidate, uh,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: to make sure that Joe Biden or someone in the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden lane, uh, you know, people who just fucking
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: tailgating Joe Biden, honking his horn saying, get out of here.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: With his blow up doll.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: Get out of my lane.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: You get out of here.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I'm fucking clear.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: You're driving 40 miles an hour.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: You're driving 40 miles an hour while telling a story
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to no one. But this, I think, will allow Bernie
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Sanders to find whatever his pet maximum is, right? And
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's been the question from the beginning. Is it,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: You know, what is the Bernie Sanders vote? What is
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the Bernie Sanders vote absent an anti-Hillary vote?
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: Is it 25? Is it 30? Is it 35?
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And I think he's going to get to find out
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: what that is because now he has this incredible kind
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: of launching pad for a revive campaign.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: And here's the thing about the Sanders campaign. It's always
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: struck me that it's like, it's self-testing. Its theory of
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: the case is actually like, will be tested by the primary, right?
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Because the theory of the case is like, there's lots
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: of people that you can, who are marginal or disaffected,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: and you can organize to bring them together to build
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: a political coalition that's powerful.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: If you can, like, you can either do that or
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: not in the primary. Like, if you can do that,
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: then that shows that you're correct and have something really
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: remarkable and powerful. If you can't, then the theory doesn't work.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Right. That's exactly right.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: And I was sort of like, you know, there was
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of coverage of why is AOC doing this?
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: Why is she doing that?
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: And then you watch the video and you listen to
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: what she has to say and you realize, like, because
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders seems to have meant a lot to her.
• 53:53
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: Right. And sometimes it's nothing more. She called Fazz.
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: She called Bernie's campaign manager while Bernie was still in
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: the hospital to say, I'm in.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: I'm ready to endorse.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: That's that's a pretty goddamn principled time to do it.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: And I do think. Yes.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: And I do think also, I think part of the
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: dynamic inside of this primary, I think it's true for
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: some Warren supporters. I think it's true for Bernie supporters
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: is you look at this political landscape and you say, like,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: can we have what we want?
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: You know, is it possible?
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Is it possible to make this time like we made
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the worst person in our country president? Politics was upended.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: What if we can have a person that we don't
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: have to hold our nose to vote for? What if
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: we can have the person of our dreams? And I
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: think for a lot of people, that's Bernie. I think
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, that's Warren. And I think for
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are looking at this and wondering
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: just what does it mean in 2020 to choose a candidate?
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: How much do we get a say, not as pundits,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: but as people who want something from politics?
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: So that brings us to Tulsi Gabbard. We should briefly
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: mention what's going on with her and Hillary Clinton. In
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: an interview on David Plouffe's new podcast, Campaign HQ, Hillary said, quote,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not making any predictions, but I think the Russians
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: have got their eye on somebody who is currently in
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: the Democratic primary and are grooming her.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: John's holding his hands over his eyes. That's sort of
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: how I feel about this entire news site.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not making predictions, but here's something I think is
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: going to happen. And are grooming her to be the
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: third party candidate. She's a favorite of the Russians. She
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: was not talking about Amy Klobuchar.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: No, she was talking about Marianne Williams.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. So Tulsi Gabbard responded with quite a tweet. You,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption and personification of
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: have finally come out from behind the curtain. It's now
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly. It
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: was such a journey following these three tweets because at
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: first she's like attacking Hillary and then you're like, wait,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: she's challenging her to get in the race? Surprised there
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: wasn't a duel.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: It read like what you read to someone as someone
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: lights the pyre on which they are about to burn.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: You, the queen of warmongering.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, was it a, do you think it was
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: a specific reference to Game of Thrones and Daenerys Targaryen?
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: Probably.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Because it seemed very, why do we think, let's start
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: with Hillary. Why do we think Hillary said that? I
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: listened to the podcast before it broke and it's funny,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: it took a little while because, you know, Pluff's got
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: this new podcast and I was like, I was listening
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: to it Wednesday on my drive home and I'm like
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: 25 minutes in and she just casually drops this and
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: you hear Pluff just sort of sits there in silence,
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: doesn't say anything, and kind of just moves on to
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: the next topic, because I think Plouffe's like, what was that?
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: And then at the very end of the podcast, Plouffe
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: comes on himself, and he's just like, so that was
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: an interesting conversation with Hillary Clinton. I do think that
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: bit about Tulsi Gabbard might make some news.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: You think? I mean, I thought, my thoughts on this are,
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: she shouldn't have said that. It's just like, it's, you know,
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: there's a certain part of the discourse that is obsessed
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: with hating on people that talk about Russia.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: But the kernel of the point they have is that
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: it is insidious to the political culture of the country
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: to view everything through the kind of like, as like
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: some marionette puppeteer issue that the, it, it, it replays
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: some of the most toxic insidious tropes of the cold
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: war and all that came with that. And like, it's
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: just not a good way to talk about our politics.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: I think the Tulsi Gabbard's politics are strange.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: Indescribably strange in some ways. Like I literally don't know
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: the term.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Very bad, I think.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: The way I view her as, I really view her
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: as like the Ron Paul of the Democratic Party in, in,
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: in that you can't quite say what, like what is
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: the project as a whole is less well defined for
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: the Ron Paul, but also in the way that like
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: Ron Paul was right about some things and really right
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: about some things and horribly wrong about some other things.
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: And that was the, that was the Ron Paul contradiction.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: Like that was always the case. Like he was right
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: about the Iraq war. that's a big thing to be
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: right about. He was wrong about a lot of other things.
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: And like, so, so Gabbard's sort of political and ideological
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: profile is her own and weird and distinct. I think the,
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: I think the thing that Clinton said was bad and
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: she shouldn't have said it. The response though, is just like, again,
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: what are you doing exactly here is, is really what's
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: at the root of this.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Why are you going on Tucker Carlson to defend yourself?
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: You do not, you are not comporting yourself as a
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: person who is attempting to win a democratic party primary.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: You just are not. So you're building your profile for
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: your ideological movement. Fine. But what is that ideological movement
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: aside from getting out of regime change wars, which again,
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: not wars, regime change wars, which is always an interesting
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: tell because she's for the global war on terror and
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: she is for the use of the authorization to use
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: military force in many spheres of combat in which we have,
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: we're killing people like Somalia, like she thinks that we
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: should keep doing that. She's very specific about regime change wars,
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: and it's like, I just don't get what the actual
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: project you are trying to boost here is fully.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: I don't either. And she's also, I mean, again, she was,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: you know, she's had some weird politics in that she
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: was against the Iran deal. She was criticizing Obama for
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: not saying radical Islamic terrorism. She was against more Muslim
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: refugees coming to the country.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: She was like the lone Democratic vote against increasing the amount.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: Of Syrian refugees. There's plenty on the substance to criticize
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Tulsi Gabbard on for sure.
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: I also just think like I personally find the constant
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: this is helping Putin Twitter, you know, conversation to be exhausting.
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: I also think, by the way, those people are ironically
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: helping fucking Putin by giving him credit for every bad
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: thing that ever happens in this country. I don't think, like,
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: what has now been ascribed to Hillary Clinton that she
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: called Tulsi some sort of secret agent for Putin is
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: not at all what she said. She said she thinks
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: that the Russians would love a third party spoiler in
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: the race the way Jill Stein is. All of this,
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: to me, just understandably boils down to a deep-seated anger
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: about the 2016 election and what happened. And by the way,
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: I think David Plouffe will be the first one to
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: tell you that you're not going to roll out big
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: breaking news on his third episode of his podcast at
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: minute 35, right?
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the people thought it was some plan. It clearly
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't a plan. No, no, no, no.
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: Now, Tulsi, her campaign, smartly, was like, oh, fuck me,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: fuck you. I'm going to lean into this and get
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: the most press I've gotten. But to your point, Chris,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: about winning a Democratic primary, you don't delay your event
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: with Iowa caucus goers to go on Tucker Carlson, right? Like,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: that's not how you win a Democratic primary.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: And I do think the larger... conversation that Plouffe and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Clinton were having, which was about the danger of a
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: third party candidate in 2020. is is a good conversation
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: to have and it's something that is very scary.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: Right but it's also self-defeating to phrase it in this
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: way i mean the point is that like there are
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: people who are not tulsi gabbard who support tulsi gabbard
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: who are gettable democratic party votes that you want as
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: part of the majority coalition to defeat donald trump and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: like this is not a good way.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Well also hillary clinton is incredibly smart right and even
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: if she is very concerned that um that the Russians
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: or Russian bots or right-wingers or whoever it may be
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: are boosting Tulsi Gabbard, right? Are boosting Jill Stein because
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: they want this. And it's true.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: There are weird-ass right-wingers.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: Boosting Tulsi Gabbard. She's right about that, yeah.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: Like Richard Spencer.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: The problem is the word grooming, right? Because groom, it's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: a weird word. But I think if you're worried about that,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: one way that that's going to be more true is
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: if you talk about it and elevate it. Just purely
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: from a strategic point of view, even if Hillary Clinton
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: was exactly right in what she was saying, saying it
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: and making news about it, now we're all living in it.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: I do think, though, too, part of this is, I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: forgot 2016, I think there's so much anxiety about 2020,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: about how the primary is going to turn out, and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Tom Steyer gets the first applause of the night by saying,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: any person on this stage would be a better president
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: than Donald Trump. And I think yeah, people are going
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: to make, you know, Mayor Pete going after Elizabeth Warren
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: on how she's going to pay for health care. It's
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: about Mayor Pete, right? Doing something helpful for him that's
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: hurtful to her, even if she's the nominee, let's say, right?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: But that's politics.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: That's what happens in a primary.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: They duke it out. They try to hurt each other.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: And the idea is everybody gets stronger along the way.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: But Tulsi Gabbard goes out there and threatens to quit
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: the debate for reasons that are kind of strange. You know,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: there are, you know, you wonder, like, how far is
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: she going to take her campaign?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: What are her interests?
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: And I think I think there's a fear that Tulsi
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Gabbard's lack of any ideological clarity that's confusing to people,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: her reputation as a bit of a chaos candidate, leads
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: people to fear that this is someone who doesn't understand
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: or isn't bought into the collective project of Whatever happens
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: is we have to do everything we can to defeat
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump together.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: And that is I think that's that is a completely
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: legitimate fear. I mean, I think I think I don't
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: know even if I've never had the chance to interview
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: her since she started running. I've talked to her a
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: bunch before then. She was much more of a kind
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: of like part of the Democratic Party previously.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: And I say and I say I should say like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: I say that not know like I see. I don't know, right?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: I just genuinely don't know.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: I don't know what that's like. An honest, good faith
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: question of like, do you actually feel that way? Do
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: you feel the way that Tom Sire felt? Do you
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: feel that like the Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: and the coalition that's represented by this, in your mind,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: very flawed, rotten and corrupt party, which, okay, that that
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: is the only alternative to the continued menace of this
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: person and also the ideological project of the Republican Party,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: which is menacing in its own right. Like that's obviously
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: a thing that everyone, I think, shares with, 100% on
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: that stage, and I think it's not a crazy thing
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: to ask if that is her current position.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: There's also just a weird thing this time around where
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: the DNC rules that allow you to get on the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: debate stage mean that support is support for some of
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: these guys. Andrew Yang dealt with this early on, that
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: he had some support from the 4chan, Joe Rogan world,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: and he was constantly asked to disavow these individuals.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: And to his credit, he did.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: But does anyone think that those people kind of liking
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: Universal Basic Income or some interview he did.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: made him a bad guy or an extremist. No.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: So it's like, it's very hard. Just like putting my, like,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: I'm a Tulsi staffer hat on. If you're constantly asked
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: to denounce the people that are giving you TV airtime
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: or saying nice things about you, of course, at some
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: point you're going to, you're going to balk at that.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: The thing I will say though about Yang, and I
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: think it's interesting to compare the two because they're both,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: both of them are people that are in our democratic
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: primary that are carving out a space, I think in
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: their rhetoric, their ideological vision and their support that is
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: different than a standard democratic candidate quite different right is
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: that it just seems to me that like yang has
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: his posture is like additive and coalitional building as just
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: like a rhetorical posture and as a personal posture in
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: a way that it doesn't feel like gabberds is no
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: it gabberds feels like like process of elimination and like
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: who the sort of like and then partly that's populist
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: rhetoric and who the kind of corrupt insiders are but
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: yang strikes me as someone who really is like trying
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: to build something, trying to additively build something out in
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: the Democratic Party that speaks to a part of the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: Democratic Party.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: Friendly to the other candidates. Yeah.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: Tulsi in that moment was trying to go after Elizabeth
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: Warren for supposedly supporting wars in the Middle East. And
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: Warren actually made a bit of a flub. She said, yeah,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: I'd get all troops out of the Middle East. Obviously
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: she meant Syria, but it got, you know, changed to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: mean all these various permanent bases.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: And again, that's a fair, again, that's a totally fair
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: and good debate. And like her playing that role is good.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: It's just that like, I just can never quite, and
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: maybe there's not an answer to it, and it doesn't
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: matter that there has to be some box and label
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: that's wrapped around the whole project of Gabbardism. But when
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: you look at the policies, you look where she's been
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: on a variety of things, it is just very hard
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: for me to just figure out what the project is.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: So before we go. I want to talk about your
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: outstanding podcast, Why Is This Happening? And you have a
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: live show tonight at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're doing a live show tonight at the Ace Hotel,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: which is an amazing venue. I think you guys have
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: done something there. It's a great venue. We got Adam McKay,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: the legendary Adam McKay, head SNL writer, co-founder of Funny
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: or Die, anchorman, Talladega Nights, and then he's on The
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: Big Short and Vice. And part of this originated in
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: a dinner I had with Adam where he– It was
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: after a screening of Vice in which he spent much
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: of the dinner haranguing me about not covering climate enough.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: And I was like, dude, make a climate movie. I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: cover a lot of climate. Why are you.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: You have some pull.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: He is really obsessed with climate and also thinking about
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: how do you represent the climate crisis as film, art, TV.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: And the other guest is a guy named Omar Al-Khad,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: this incredible guy who was born in Cairo, lived in UAE,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: and then he grew up in Canada when he was
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: 16 and he was a war correspondent covering the war
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: on terror for 10 years and wrote this novel called
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: American war, which is set in this sort of dystopic
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: future America after climate change and the banning of fossil
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: fuels and a second civil war. And we're going to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: just talk about like, how do we think about talk
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: about represent as a cultural phenomenon, the central crisis of
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: our times, which is a very hard thing to kind
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: of get your arms around and isn't being represented. I
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: think it's fair to say.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: Like, corollary to the level of import it has.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking of that, I thought one of your most
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: fascinating recent episodes is you talked to, you interviewed Ted
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Cruz in Texas. Your mentor. And you guys, and I
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: thought it was, first of all, that was a fascinating conversation.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: I did think like, you know, a lot of people
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: would be like, why are you interviewing Ted Cruz for?
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: But it's like, he, it was a, it was an
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: interesting conversation. Good for him for sitting with you in
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: front of a crowd that was very progressive and And
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: like having a generally a good faith discussion with you
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: about all these issues. But I do think Ted Cruz
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: on climate change, man.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: That was wild. I expected him, you know, Mitt Romney
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: put out this climate thing the other day. Like there's
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: a way to just be like, yes, this is what
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: the science says in the world. World is getting warmer.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: And then there's a lot of yada, yada, yada. And
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: you can do after that because it's such a hard problem. well,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: but China and India, but we shouldn't, but also there's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: all these jobs in natural gas and what are we
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: going to tell those people? You can do all that.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: But he went with the like circa 2005 Inhofe with
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: a snowball on the floor of the Senate. Like, oh,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: but the satellite data is incomplete and actually we're gaining
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: ice and like he was hitting me with all these
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: sort of like tropes of denialism, which I was just
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: surprised to hear in 2019 because it's just like, I
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: said afterwards on Twitter, I was like, let's make a bet.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: Donated to the, you know, charity of your choice of
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: will there be more record highs or record lows in
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: Texas in the year 2020? Let's just bet on that.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: Are there going to be more record highs or record
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: lows in Texas in 2020? Actually, let's make that bet
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: for 2021 and 2022 and 2023. Like, what are we
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: doing here? Like, it's clearly.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: I thought it was fascinating when you said, okay, so
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: why are all these scientists and everyone all getting together
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: to try to invent this conspiracy of global warming and
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: climate change, you know? And He said that from a
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: political angle, and I imagine a lot of conservatives think this,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: that what this is about is a lot of the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: solutions or most of the solutions to climate change involve
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: the government. And this is basically a backdoor way for
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: liberals and progressives to have a socialist takeover of government
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: using climate as the fig leaf, which I was like, wow.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: But you know what? That makes sense for all of them.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's a complete. widespread view. And to give it
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: a little bit of credit, it's not a crazy view.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: It's a crazy view if you think that's why the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: scientists are doing it, particularly if you've ever met a
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: climate scientist. It's like, oh, I've been tracking the latitude
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: of where butterflies mate in Britain. England for 32 years
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: of my life. And then I looked at the data
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: and like, Oh, it turns out they're meeting higher and higher,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: like lower and lower on the, on the map because of,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: you know, the change in climate. And it's like, that's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: not a person who's involved in some crazy scheme. That's
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: a person who's literally went into it for the butterflies.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: How much does Soros pay you?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: Well, it's the same conspiratorial mindset that they think that
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: all Democrats support immigration reform because we want to register
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: millions more people of color in this country so that
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: we can win.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: Imagine if Democrats were so political.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 7: I know, right?
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: But it goes back to what you were saying, too,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: about the cultural impact of stories about climate change. Because
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: I think one of the challenges, and I think you know,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: people say that to us, you should talk about climate
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: change more, talk about climate change more. But I, and I,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: and I do think we all should be talking about
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: it more. But one of the challenges is you say
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: to yourself, who is getting this information? Because there's the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: consumers of the, of the kind of content that talks
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: about the importance of tackling climate change that is reaching
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: people that already understand that and want to do something
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: and aren't sure how to get the political system to change.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: And then there are Ted Cruz and all the people
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: that support Ted Cruz that we need to figure out
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: how to, uh, change their thinking about this and their
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: behavior about this.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: Although I will say this. I mean, a lot of
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: that change has really happened. I think partly it's just
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: because of what's happened on the face of the earth.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: But it's been two things to me. It's been the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: fact that like the signal has emerged from the noise
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: and the data to the extent that people feel it
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: and see it in their daily lives. I mean, I
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: was in, my wife and I both turned 40 this year.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: We took a little like trip to Paris and we
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: went to the Loire Valley, like an hour and a
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: half outside Paris where they've been growing. They've been had
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: wine and grapes for a thousand years. And it's like
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: these people, this is all they do. This is all
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: they think about for a thousand years. And they're like, yes,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: it's changing. And like this is what's happening. We have
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: to start planting new grapes. They're making a joke about
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: like how everybody's grapes are going to like move up
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: one tier. So like we're going to start growing what
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: southern Spain was growing. And then like England's going to
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: start making wine because like they're going to be warm enough.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: And it's like it's just there. Like the people that
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: deal with the earth every day like see it. So
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: there's that. And there's also I think the activism of
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: the movement has been so profound and powerful that like
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: the persuasion question to me is almost a kind of
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: distant third to those two in terms of mobilizing the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: political constituency you want. But it was still shocking to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: me in that Ted Cruz conversation. I was genuinely surprised
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: that that was the rhetorical route that he was taking.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: He's still arguing about the data.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: All right, everyone. Thank you, Chris, for joining us. Thank you.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: That was great. And everyone go check out Why Is
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: This Happening if you're in L.A. and you hear this podcast.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: Come tonight.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: There's still a few tickets left. Come by the Ace Theater.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: It'll be, I think, 7.30. 7.30. Come by. Buy a
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: ticket at the box office.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: All right. And when we come back, we'll have Tommy
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: and Ben's interview with Susan Rice.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 5: Ben and I are honored to have our guest here today,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 5: Ambassador Susan Rice. She's Obama's former U.S. Ambassador to the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 5: United Nations. She was the National Security Advisor, and she
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 5: is the author of a fantastic new book called Tough Love.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 5: Everyone who's listening is going.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: To buy it. Susan, great to have you here. And
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: she's my boss. Well, come on, man. Both of our bosses, yeah.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 8: It's great to be with you guys.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: I want to separate this into pieces, right, because there's Benghazi,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 5: the incident that happened.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 8: The terrorist attack.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: A horrific terrorist attack. that tragically killed Chris Stevens, Sean Smith,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: Glenn Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, right? And there was, I think,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: a pretty well-documented series of investigations into what happened that day.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: Eight investigations by Congress.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, but a lack of security.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: You know, there are a lot of things that I think,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: you know, were important and real and deserve reckoning, right?
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 5: No one here worked on any of those things, right?
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: You were at the United Nations at the time. We
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: were in the White House. We just, none of us
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: did security. Then there's hashtag Benghazi. which is the right-wing
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: fever dream, the swampy soup of bullshit cooked up by
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 5: Fox News that decided to make you the target of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: all their attacks, all their animosity, all their cruelty. And
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 5: reading this book again, it was really, it was hard.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: It was hard to read those chapters. Hard for me
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 5: having been feeling like, one, we were all there in
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 5: this too, but it was hard for us watching you.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: In the barrel as much as you were in the barrel.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: we were in the barrel too, right?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: All of us trying to like deal with this bullshit,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 5: but like you were attacked so personally. And also knowing
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: that you felt like you were not sufficiently supported by
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: the White House team. Like the only person who was
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: getting your back on a regular basis for a while
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: was Barack Obama. And like, I just think, I don't know.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: It's Benghazi, hashtag Benghazi is a parable about the madness
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: that we're now seeing all day, every day from the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: Trump administration.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 6: And this is why it's important to read, because you
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 6: have to understand Benghazi to understand Trump.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: Right, because Lindsey Graham isn't just a piece of shit now.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 8: He's been a piece of shit.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I said it.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 8: I said it.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: Damn it.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: Finally.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: He's a piece of shit.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: He's lying, lying, lying, lying, and raising money off of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 5: the death of four Americans.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: So anyway, that's my little speech. It was just... it
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: made me so infuriated.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 6: Well, and I guess the other, I mean, one way
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 6: to enter this conversation too is, is one of the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 6: things that's interesting in your book is, okay, so, you know,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 6: I was the guy who called you, right? And said,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 6: I mean, I still remember this, like, Jen Palmieri calls
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 6: me into the press sectors. I was like, hey, we
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: really need someone on the Sunday shows, right? I'm like,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: you gotta be kidding me.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 6: We're, the world is on fire. You know, like, literally, there's,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 6: because of this video, like, I'll say that, you know,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 6: there are protests, there are violent, the anti-Muslim video, there
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 6: are violent protests, there's not just Benghazi's happened, they're all
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: over the Muslim world, and we're all super busy, and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: they're like, well, but it looks like the world is
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: on fire, and we need somebody out there to kind
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 6: of give a steadying message, and also, Bibi Netanyahu, who's
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: booking himself on Sunday shows, preparing to attack our Iran policy,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 6: so we anticipated that we were going to have to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: deal with that, so I said, okay, I'll reach out
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: to Hillary, and, you know, get a That didn't happen.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 8: But let's, because we've talked about this, we haven't talked
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 8: about it much yet. So you called me first after
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 8: you had already reached out to Hillary.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 8: And you said, we've asked Secretary Clinton if she'll go
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 8: on the shows. We haven't heard back yet, but in
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 8: case she won't, would you be willing to do it?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 8: That was the first call. It's like four o'clock in
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 8: the afternoon.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's on like Friday.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: Friday.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: It's Friday. It's close to the day.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 8: It's Friday.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 6: And that Friday is the day that everything is burning
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: in the Middle East because Friday prayers are the days
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 6: that people protest. And so Literally, Tom and I have
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 6: a split screen on in our office that shows like
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 6: there are people torching a Hardee's in Lebanon, black flags
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: raised over our embassy in Tunisia where people were killed.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 6: The perimeter of our embassy being breached in Khartoum.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is scary.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 8: So I say to you why, you know, when you
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 8: call me back a couple hours later and said Hillary
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 8: said no, you know, would you do it? I said, well,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 8: why did she say no? And you said, well, I
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: think they're... She's tired. Yeah, tired. It's been a rough week.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 8: What I should have asked was, did you ask Donalyn?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: So I did.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 8: The National Security Advisor.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 6: But knowing, look, Tom is a great guy. His favorite
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: thing to do wasn't necessarily to be.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: He hated doing press.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: In front of the cameras and interviews. He hated doing
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 6: TV interviews. Going into his office and.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 8: Beginning to raise... He doesn't seem so reluctant now.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: Well, none of them are now. It's very weird seeing
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: John Brennan do an hour of 1 p.m. cable on MSNBC.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: Actually, this, you know what, thank you for saying that
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 6: because I'm going to get a little thing off my
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: chest too, which is like, because I always said to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 6: go out on the worst stuff, you know, you know,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 6: it's like, oh, we need someone to talk about Syria. Like, Ben,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 6: can you do these like five cable hits, you know, and,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 6: All these guys are now like Brennan and Donilon.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: I feel like we're a little down the rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: Let's just talk about this.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: But this is something that is uniquely our conversation.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: So Tom says no.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: So then you said to me, okay, I'll do this
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 6: if you do my prep is what I remember, right?
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 6: And so I think what's important for people to get
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 6: is to us, this is like, because the reason it's
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 6: important to say this is to the right, to the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 6: hashtag Benghazi, we then set about between Friday evening and
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 6: Sunday morning.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: A scheme.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 6: Creating an entire conspiracy theory. Literally, to try to understand
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 6: what Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo and all these lunatics think,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: it said, we invented this, the video didn't even exist,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 6: and we invented it, and we somehow got the entire
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 6: US government to agree to be a part of this
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: conspiracy theory, and we somehow orchestrated the CIA writing talking
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 6: points and When in fact what happened is we asked
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 6: the CIA, hey, can you give us the latest points
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 6: on what you think happened? And they were doing that
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: anyway for Congress. So they sent that to you. I
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: took our press guidance, which is what Jay Carney, the
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 6: White House press secretary, used.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: On other issues.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: On other issues.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 6: Dropped it into a memo, sent it to you. I
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 6: remember we did one phone call. on like a saturday
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 6: afternoon where we went.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 8: After my football game at ohio state.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 6: Yeah yeah you know i remember i was in the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 6: parking lot of a of a liquor.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 8: Store i was in the airport at columbus yeah i
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 8: mean this is so this is my kids running around
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 8: wondering what the hell i'm doing we.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 10: Were very focused on the conspiracy yeah this is and
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 10: the reason it's worth reading this part of the the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 10: book and these are not like we were going about
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 10: our lives dealing with all kinds of stuff multitasking 10
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 10: things at a time.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: And just having to deal with the fact that you
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 6: have to go on these sunday shows you above all
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: and and yet that has become like a creation story
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: of some conspiracy theory well.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 8: My mother was right. That's the moral of the story.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 8: Listen to your mother. Because after you called me and
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 8: I said, you know, reluctantly, I was taking my kids
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 8: to Ohio State for this football game. But, you know,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 8: if nobody else will do it and you're asking me
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 8: to do it as the White House, I'll do it.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 8: And my thinking was, you know, we're a team. We
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 8: had a really bad week. I've been asked to play
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: a role. I thought I could play it and I
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 8: agreed to do it. So I get to my mother's
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 8: house who just had her fourth or fifth cancer surgery
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: and was just coming off of a stroke. And she
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 8: asked me, so what are you doing this weekend? And
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 8: I said, well, I'm taking the kids to Ohio State,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 8: and then I've agreed to go on all the Sunday shows.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 8: And she's like, what?
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 8: And I said, you know, I explained the whole thing
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 8: of how you asked me. And she said, I smell
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: a rat. Where's Hillary? Why are you doing this? I
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 8: was like, come on, Mom, don't be ridiculous. I've done
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 8: this before. Yeah, it'll be fine. And, of course, it wasn't. So, yes,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: always listen to your mother. But she had the intuition.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 8: that I suspect others had, however tired or bad weeks
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 8: they'd had, that whoever's going to be out in the
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 8: middle of a political campaign or any other hot crisis
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 8: and is trying to provide the best current information, which
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 8: inevitably will change, is going to be targeted. And not
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 8: just for the message, but the messenger, him or herself.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 8: And that's what happened to me. And my mom perceived
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 8: a risk that I didn't. fully perceived because I wasn't
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 8: thinking about myself.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 5: So one of the hardest things to read was after
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 5: you left the White House, you had a friend who
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 5: worked for Fox and you asked that individual, I mean,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 5: so much of this Benghazi nonsense was cooked up in
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 5: Fox News.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: And in hindsight, it's even.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 5: More insane to me that people listen to Sean Hannity
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 5: and let him create a narrative given that he lives
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 5: in an alternative universe. But this Fox producer told you
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 5: when you asked, how did I, Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 5: to the U.N., no oversight role over the embassy or
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 5: the consulate in Benghazi or embassy security generally.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: How did I become the villain? And he said, individuals
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: make great villains.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: How did you receive that information? Well, it was really,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: it was fascinating, you.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 8: Know, to have an inside perspective on how Fox operates.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 8: So he was even more, you know, forthcoming than that.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 8: He said, you know, look, Fox has this very deep
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 8: bond with its viewers and it knows how to energize
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 8: and rile up its viewers and making them angry is
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 8: how they get ratings. And a way to make them
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 8: angry is to create villains that they can target and,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 8: you know, and vilify. And you always need fresh villains. And,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 8: you know, the, the, he explained how the original Fox
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 8: villain was in fact, Bill Clinton and then Barney Frank
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 8: and some others.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: And, you know, we were sort of.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: New iterations as a JV villain.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 8: And, and Hillary of course became a major Fox villain.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 8: But, uh, I had given them all the wherewithal, he explained,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 8: to be villainized because I'd given them five different sets
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 8: of video on these shows. And they could loop them
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 8: and they could turn me into a new villain. And
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 8: now on Fox, many years later, they just need to
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 8: say my name and it's like, you know, like people
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 8: start twitching. It's like an automatic, you know, trigger point.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 8: So it was fascinating to learn from that person's point
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: of view how they– engage their viewers. And now you
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 8: can see it playing out. And Trump is the master
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 8: of it. He makes people angry every day.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 5: How cool is it to see Mike Pompeo and Trey Gowdy,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: two of the most vicious, aggressive Benghazi conspiracy theorists who
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 5: demanded oversight all day, every day, now helping Trump cover
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 5: up his crimes?
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 8: It's really rich.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 6: Pompeo in particular.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 8: Yeah, Pompeo in particular.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: One of the things....
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 6: You write about in this book, one of the things
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 6: I was fascinated by was you kind of grew up
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 6: in this Washington that no longer exists where, you know,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 6: people were friends across political persuasions and there was this
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 6: kind of, you know, civility, if you want to call
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 6: it that. You know, the caricature of you is this,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 6: you know, from Fox is you're this kind of obstinate, hotheaded,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 6: you know, partisan person when actually I always, you're very
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: warm and generous and you look out for the people
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 6: around you, including me, even though I asked you to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: go on the Sunday shows. But you've also, I've noticed
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 6: you've been able to work with people who you disagree
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: with very strongly. One of the more interesting things in
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 6: your book in terms of characters and diplomacy is Churkin,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 6: the Russian ambassador of the United Nations. We didn't clash
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 6: with Russia in the first term quite as hard as
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: in the second term, obviously, when you had Ukraine and, but,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: you know, they're still on the other side of most.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: Issues or a lot of issues at the UN.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 6: How do you set about building a relationship with, you know,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: someone who's an adversary, but you have to make a
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 6: partner on some things and you have to be able
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 6: to agree very, you know, very stridently, but still not
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: have that, you know, screw up a diplomatic relationship.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Just talk about that relationship you built.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 6: With Churkin and how that was both personal and also
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 6: allowed you to get things done.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 8: Well, by the time I got to the UN as ambassador,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 8: Churkin had been there five years already, and he was
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 8: sort of a legend. He understood how the system worked.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 8: He knew all the tricks of the trade. He knew
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 8: all the other ambassadors. He was very smart and very
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 8: charming and very combative. He could be a complete asshole,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 8: or he could be a fun person to hang out
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 8: with on Saturday night. And I think what began between
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 8: us when I got there and realized that I was
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 8: either going to allow somebody like a Churkin to bully
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 8: and intimidate me or I was going to do as
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 8: my father always taught me, which was not take crap
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 8: off of anybody. This was a classic case where I
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 8: had to be assertive from the very beginning and let
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 8: him know that I could give it back to him
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 8: as well as he could dish it and I wasn't
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 8: going to be intimidated by him. By the way, I
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 8: could be as funny as he was too. You know, like,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 8: there are two kinds of bullies, right? They're the ones
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 8: that are really insecure and find people who push back
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 8: that much more intimidating. I put Holbrook in that category.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 8: And then there are the Churkins who actually say, okay,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 8: I get this. She and I are on the same page. And,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 8: you know, I respect her. And, you know, and then
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 8: it came to be, and I like her. We liked
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 8: each other. We had a good personal relationship, even as
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 8: we fought like cats and dogs. And even as, you know,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 8: I relate a story in there about how he tries
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 8: to expel my son, Jake, from a security council behind
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 8: closed door meeting where staff and other people can participate.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 8: And he was just sitting there listening because he loved
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 8: just absorbed everything like a sponge at the UN when
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 8: he ever he could get up there. And so finally,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 8: Churkin tries to break up the meeting and saying, you know,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 8: I'm not going to allow this young person to be
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 8: in here. So we take it out into the hallway.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 8: Jake's standing with me and Turkin's yelling at me going,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 8: why do you allow your child to watch Security Council debates?
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: I'm like, why not?
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 8: It's a learning experience. It's the international community. What's the problem?
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 8: He goes, do you let your kid watch pornography?
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: I said, no.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 8: And he's like, well, why the hell do you let
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 8: him watch these debates? I was like, okay. So that
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 8: was like, we were screaming at each other, red faced.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 8: And that was the way we fought.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 8: You know, but also then we could just, you know,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 8: he and his wife and me and my husband Ian
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 8: go out for dinner and have a wonderful time and
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 8: laugh and joke. So the point is that where you're
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 8: dealing with people who are multifaceted as he is or was,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 8: sadly he's passed, you know, he's smart, he's working for
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 8: his country, I'm working for my country. We got to
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 8: get along and work together on some things. We're going
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 8: to fight like cats and dogs on other things. But,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 8: you know, he's a human being. And taking the time
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 8: to understand him as an individual and what animates him
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 8: and moves him is how I think you have to
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 8: deal with people that you're working with, whether you're on
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 8: the same side or the opposite side. And taking it
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 8: back to what you said about my upbringing, you know,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 8: I grew up in Washington, D.C., born in the mid-60s,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 8: grew up in the 70s and 80s. went to schools
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 8: with children who were the sons and daughters of the elite,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 8: people who were members of Congress and ambassadors and all
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 8: of that stuff. But it was bipartisan. And one of
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 8: my very closest friends growing up was the daughter of
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 8: a Republican senator from Tennessee. And, you know, in my
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 8: cohort were the daughters and the sons of people who
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 8: served in the Nixon administration and went to jail for Watergate.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 8: And this was a time when members of Congress brought
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 8: their families to Washington and lived there. People knew each
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 8: other as human beings. And it's really hard to demonize
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 8: and hate people when you actually know them as human beings.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 8: And so that's what we've lost. And it's what I
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 8: argue we really need to try to get back.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: In 2018, you toyed with the idea of running for
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: the U.S.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 5: Senate against Susan Collins in Maine, who, by the way,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: was particularly annoying during the period of time when to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 5: when you decided not to be a candidate for the
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 5: secretary of state job. You ended up not running. But
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 5: I was hoping you could tell us a little bit
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 5: about why and what your thoughts are about, I don't know,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 5: any other future government service.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 8: Well, I impulsively tweeted. from the Phoenix airport, as I
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 8: was about to get on a cross country flight, um,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 8: that I would, you know, some, uh, Jen Psaki tweeted,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 8: who's going to run against Susan Collins. And somehow my
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 8: fingers hit my iPhone and type two letters M E.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 8: And I really, I don't know what it, you know,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 8: what made me do that. Uh, except that I'd been
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 8: watching Susan Collins on the television in the Phoenix airport, uh,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 8: declare her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, which was, In a
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 8: long list, I think of betrayals of the people of
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 8: Maine and the United States of America are most egregious.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 8: And I've long had family ties in Maine and I
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 8: have a home in Maine and I love the state,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 8: but I thought about it quite seriously because I forced
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 8: myself to by having that impulsive moment. And I consulted
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 8: with my family and I consulted with folks who knew
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 8: Maine politics very well. And at the end of the day,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 8: I decided that this was not the time for me
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 8: for very personal reasons. My daughter is a junior in
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 8: high school. She's our last child at home. Our son
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 8: is already in college. And I had spent eight years
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 8: away from my kids, whether I was living in New
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 8: York and they were in Washington when I was UN
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 8: ambassador or when I was national security advisor and living
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 8: under the same roof but seeing them very infrequently. I
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 8: did not want to either uproot my daughter and pull
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 8: her out of high school at that critical point. Or
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 8: leave her again. And so at the end of the day,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 8: of all the factors, that was the most important one
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 8: in causing me and my husband to agree that this
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 8: was not the right time. So future, I don't know.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: We'll see. Future, TBD. I like that. That will leave
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: us hanging.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: The book is amazing.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: The book's fantastic.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 6: You've always been just such a big personality with such
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 6: immense experience and kind of caring about the right things
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 6: for the country and having compassion for the people around you.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: And it's all in this book.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 6: I mean, the history of your family is like a,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 6: for me also was kind of a history of a
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 6: certain African-American experience in this country, the history of your
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 6: government service.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: You'll learn about Africa.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 4: You'll learn how the state department works.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 6: You'll learn also what it's like to become a young mother,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 6: a woman in a man's field, unfortunately, although that's changing
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 6: over time.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: And of course our administration.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: So people should really check it out.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: Learn who Susan gave the middle finger. Learn who the
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: Furies are. All kinds of cliffhangers here at the end
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: of this interview. It's a great book. That's for Susan Rice.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Wonderful to see you. Thank you for being here.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 8: Thank you both. Appreciate you, Tommy and Ben.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Susan Rice for joining us. And thank you
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: to Chris Hayes. And we will see you guys on Thursday.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segwin is
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.