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“Free Steve Bannon!” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening
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  Speaker 1: our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on
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  Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's
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  Speaker 1: more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
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  Speaker 4: I'm Tommy Vitor.
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  Speaker 2: On today's pod, Steve Bannon surrenders to the feds while
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump admits yet again an attempted coup.
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  Speaker 4: Did not surrender.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Tommy. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
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  Speaker 2: Also, former Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee talks to us
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  Speaker 2: about inflation and the economy and cryptocurrency.
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  Speaker 4: You guys got into crypto?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because of Tommy.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, we took a little bong hit detour. It was fun.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It was great. And the DC gossip machine has trained
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: its focus on the relationship between Joe Biden, Kamala Harris,
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  Speaker 2: and what it all means for 2024. But first, check
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: out the latest episode of Offlines. which you can find
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: right here in the Pod Save America feed. This week,
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  Speaker 2: I interviewed international soccer star Megan Rapinoe about social media,
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  Speaker 2: mental health, and the pressures that athletes live with in
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  Speaker 2: today's extremely online world. We also talk about whether she
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  Speaker 2: should run for office. It's a fun conversation.
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  Speaker 4: She should.
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  Speaker 2: She should. That's what I told her. Check it out.
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  Speaker 4: She should.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And love it. Tell us about your fantastic show at
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: the New York Comedy Festival.
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  Speaker 3: We did such a great show in New York. It
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  Speaker 3: was so much fun.
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  Speaker 5: We had.
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  Speaker 3: Bridget Everett, Wyatt Cenac, Ronan Farrow, Cal Penn, Busy Phillips,
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  Speaker 3: the Lucas Brothers.
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  Speaker 4: It was awesome.
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  Speaker 2: What a lineup.
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  Speaker 4: It was a really great show. There were a lot
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  Speaker 4: of people on that stage. It was really fun. All right.
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  Speaker 2: Let's get to it. I want to start with some
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  Speaker 2: tough news about Tommy's favorite podcast host via a statement
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  Speaker 2: from the FBI. It's not about Dan. From the FBI.
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  Speaker 2: On Monday, November 15th, Stephen K. Bannon self-surrendered to the
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  Speaker 2: FBI and was arrested and processed on two counts of
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  Speaker 2: contempt of Congress. Bannon was indicted by a grand jury
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  Speaker 2: for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas for testimony and
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  Speaker 2: documents related to his conversations with Donald Trump about the
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  Speaker 2: attempted coup and insurrection that followed the 2020 election. Trump
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  Speaker 2: has directed all his former aides to defy these subpoenas,
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  Speaker 2: and ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may get
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  Speaker 2: charged as well. As for Trump himself, he's busy doing
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  Speaker 2: what he does best. admitting everything he's been accused of.
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  Speaker 2: In an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl for his upcoming
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  Speaker 2: book Betrayal, which reveals new details about how the White
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  Speaker 2: House pressured Vice President Mike Pence to steal the election,
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  Speaker 2: Trump basically copped to everything.
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  Speaker 5: There was a report, excuse my language, not mine, it
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  Speaker 5: was in the report, that you talked to him that
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  Speaker 5: morning and you said you could be a patriot or
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  Speaker 5: you could be a... Did you really say that or
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  Speaker 5: is that incorrect? I wouldn't dispute it. Really? I wouldn't
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  Speaker 5: dispute it. Were you worried about him in that siege?
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  Speaker 5: Were you worried about his safety? No, I thought he
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  Speaker 5: was well protected, and I had heard that he was
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  Speaker 5: in good shape. You heard those chants. That was terrible.
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  Speaker 5: He could have— well, the people were very angry. Because it's
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  Speaker 5: common sense. How can you— if you know a vote is fraudulent, right?
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  Speaker 5: How can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?
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  Speaker 2: What a cool boss.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, really. Did they do the interview in a dining hall?
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  Speaker 4: What was going on back there?
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  Speaker 2: Where was he interviewing?
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  Speaker 3: I'm just glad Carl went for it, you know? He
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  Speaker 3: didn't bleep it himself. He waited for others to bleep it,
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  Speaker 3: you know?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Imagine apologizing to Donald Trump for using the
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: P word. I know. Come on.
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  Speaker 2: Who are we performing for here?
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  Speaker 3: I've called both my sons that twice today, he said.
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  Speaker 2: Let's start with Bannon. Tommy, how are you holding up? Uh, what's,
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  Speaker 2: what's the vibe on the war room podcast? It was
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  Speaker 2: a tough weekend.
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  Speaker 4: Um, a lot of denial, a lot of anger, a
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  Speaker 4: lot of bargaining, um, kind of working through it. Uh, the,
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  Speaker 4: the vibe on the Bannon podcast was defiant. Bannon didn't
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  Speaker 4: host today for obvious reasons, but guest host Peter Navarro's
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  Speaker 4: their newish line. And I've been listening long enough that
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  Speaker 4: I noticed a difference in the line today was that
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  Speaker 4: the January 6th movement was a peaceful strategy that Bannon
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  Speaker 4: came up with. They gave him credit for coming up with,
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  Speaker 4: which is an interesting legal strategy. But the idea was
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  Speaker 4: to challenge the results in the House, send them back
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  Speaker 4: to the battleground states, and then draw attention to election irregularities.
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  Speaker 4: And that peaceful effort was disrupted by violence that was
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  Speaker 4: instigated by, wait for it, FBI informants. And then Pence
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  Speaker 4: betrayed Trump because his Koch brothers plant chief of staff,
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  Speaker 4: Mark Short, wanted to clear the field for Pence in 2024.
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  Speaker 4: That is like It's not verbatim, but that is all
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  Speaker 4: that was said today.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, can I just say that even that giant
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  Speaker 2: sack of bullshit is filled with lies because the actual
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  Speaker 2: strategy now detailed in several memos was to not send
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  Speaker 2: it back to the states to make awareness of what happened.
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  Speaker 2: It was to send it to the House so that
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  Speaker 2: the number of state legislatures in the House represented in
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  Speaker 2: the House is Republicans have more of them and that
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  Speaker 2: they could just throw the election to Donald Trump. They
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  Speaker 2: weren't challenging the election. They were going to steal the election.
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  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's the point, right?
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  Speaker 3: That Mike Pence prevented them from doing that. I don't
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  Speaker 3: think Steve Bannon disagrees with you. I think they wanted
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  Speaker 3: to win the election, you know, in a new way.
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  Speaker 3: And Mike Pence stopped it. Let's just call it a
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  Speaker 3: new way to win. I think they like these memos.
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  Speaker 3: I think the only part they're now trying to create
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  Speaker 3: distance with is the instigation of actual physical violence. That's
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  Speaker 3: the only part I think they don't want to be
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  Speaker 3: associated with. They want to be associated with every other
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  Speaker 3: piece of it, up to and including throwing out the electors.
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  Speaker 2: That's great to them.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like I think Bannon could be in
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  Speaker 4: some real legal trouble. But from a PR and a
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  Speaker 4: personal branding perspective, like he's a pig in shit. And
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  Speaker 4: I think this is what you need to understand about
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  Speaker 4: how the Bannon media ecosystem views the world, like the
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  Speaker 4: territory that's been plowed for this this day. They believe
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  Speaker 4: that the January 6 insurrectionists are political prisoners who are
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  Speaker 4: being held because that's what Nancy Pelosi wants. They think
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  Speaker 4: that Trump supporters were arrested for trespassing or other crimes
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  Speaker 4: are innocent patriots who are basically set up by these
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  Speaker 4: FBI informants. It sounds crazy to us, but that's what
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  Speaker 4: they hear. day after day. The other interesting thing is
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  Speaker 4: that Marjorie Taylor Greene has woken up to the reality
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  Speaker 4: that prison conditions are really bad. And so they're very
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: upset about that all of a sudden. But Bannon's arrest
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  Speaker 4: will be folded into this broader martyrdom narrative. And it
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  Speaker 4: is all framed in these apocalyptic terms. And somehow China's
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  Speaker 4: behind a lot of it in their world. So Bannon
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  Speaker 4: doesn't speak for the entire MAGA universe necessarily. There's all
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  Speaker 4: sorts of slivers of this cult. But a lot of
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  Speaker 4: people are hearing these messages all day, every day.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. David Frum had a good
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  Speaker 2: piece about this in The Atlantic where he was basically saying,
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  Speaker 2: this isn't a smart legal strategy from Bannon, but that's
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  Speaker 2: not the point. It's not a legal strategy. It's a
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  Speaker 2: political strategy. And the other side, all of us need
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  Speaker 2: to recognize that because if we've learned anything from Mueller
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  Speaker 2: or from impeachment, it was like, Mueller will save us
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: or the law will save us. But that's not the
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  Speaker 2: game that they're playing here. And he writes, the fight
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  Speaker 2: to uphold law cannot be won by law itself because
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  Speaker 2: the value of law in the face of violence is
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  Speaker 2: is the very thing that's being contested. The fight ahead,
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  Speaker 2: it is an inescapably political fight to be won by
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  Speaker 2: whichever side can assemble the larger and more mobilized coalition.
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  Speaker 2: That's what Bannon and the rest of them understand about this.
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  Speaker 2: And the legal stuff is all sort of small ball.
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  Speaker 4: It's a powerful political story they're telling.
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  Speaker 2: One thing that people have brought up, Republicans are now
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  Speaker 2: saying is, well, Democrats are doing this now, but if
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  Speaker 2: Republicans take the House... we're going to get revenge. We're
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  Speaker 2: going to start enforcing congressional subpoenas and we're going to
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  Speaker 2: start prosecuting Democrats. You worried about that, Lovett?
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  Speaker 3: Am I worried about congressional subpoenas being enforced? Not nearly
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  Speaker 3: as much as I'm worried about a world in which
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  Speaker 3: congressional subpoenas don't mean anything ever, no matter who's president.
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  Speaker 3: What changed here actually is not who's in charge of Congress.
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  Speaker 3: Democrats were in charge of Congress during the Trump administration.
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  Speaker 3: What changed is who's in charge of the DOJ. And
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: what's happening now is we finally have a DOJ that
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  Speaker 3: is responsive to congressional subpoenas being upheld, basically upholding the law.
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  Speaker 3: Without that, without the intervention of DOJ, Don McGahn's subpoena
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  Speaker 3: took two years to come to a settlement. The Eric
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  Speaker 3: Holder subpoena from the Obama administration took seven years to
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  Speaker 3: play out. We've had this problem for a long time
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  Speaker 3: of the inability of Congress to exert its power to
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  Speaker 3: enforce subpoenas against the executive branch.
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  Speaker 4: This is the first contempt of Congress charge since 1983.
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  Speaker 4: And I believe it's no one has ever been prosecuted
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  Speaker 4: before for contempt of Congress when executive privilege was asserted. Now,
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  Speaker 4: in this instance, executive privilege being asserted is ludicrous because
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  Speaker 4: Steve Bannon left the White House in 2017. But, you know,
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  Speaker 4: it's precedent setting.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and I will say, too, that it's
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  Speaker 2: not like DOJ just did this on their own, right?
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  Speaker 2: There was the FBI investigated, a grand jury was convened,
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  Speaker 2: the grand jury indicted Steve Bannon, and then basically the
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  Speaker 2: DOJ said, okay, we will allow it to move forward, right?
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  Speaker 2: And they're going to try to make this into like
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  Speaker 2: political retribution, but, you know, this was all sort of
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  Speaker 2: followed by the law here.
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  Speaker 3: Right, and it is so egregious. I mean, that is,
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  Speaker 3: I think, where, you know, Bannon clearly had a choice, right?
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  Speaker 3: It was to defy the whole thing, declare it a farce,
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  Speaker 3: be a political prisoner. He could have shown up, answered
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: certain questions, not answered others, invoked privilege in a kind
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  Speaker 3: of completely unacceptable way, but in a less kind of
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: dramatic and glaring and defiant way than he did here, right?
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  Speaker 3: Maybe that would have been a better legal strategy, but
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  Speaker 3: it wouldn't have been a better strategy for him as
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  Speaker 3: a person because he'd still be in the same place
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  Speaker 3: he is right now, which is defying a congressional subpoena.
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  Speaker 3: But now he gets to do it in a fun
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  Speaker 3: way on courthouse steps, calling the whole thing a farce,
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: making content for Tommy. And again, this is all about content.
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  Speaker 3: Keep in mind, everything happening now in this country is content-based.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. It's a content based democracy.
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  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: Democracy on the edge of that.
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  Speaker 4: And the content creation is fully integrated with the monetization
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  Speaker 4: of said content because you create this apocalyptic the world
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  Speaker 4: is going to end and then you sell gold to
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: scared old people. That's literally what happens on the show.
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  Speaker 3: I will say the one thing that does worry like
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  Speaker 3: we are in this position where Bannon has been indicted
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  Speaker 3: because the Department of Justice was willing to pursue this
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: when if it was still a Trump DOJ, they wouldn't
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  Speaker 3: have been. One of the reforms that Congress has been
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: talking about is a way to kind of fast track
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  Speaker 3: subpoenas through the judicial system without having to rely on
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  Speaker 3: the administration. That is probably a power we want Congress
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  Speaker 3: to have, but we should all be really fucking worried
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: about what happens when it's in the unscrupulous hands of
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: someone like Jim Jordan. That is a real tough bargain
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  Speaker 3: we have to decide on. How powerful do we want
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  Speaker 3: Congress to be?
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  Speaker 2: Look, Republicans take over Congress and they subpoena all the
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  Speaker 2: Biden administration officials to testify. The Biden administration officials are
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: going to go testify.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, that's what Jim Jordan is wrong. Like
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  Speaker 4: Ben Rhodes had to testify about Benghazi. They didn't assert
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: blanket subpoenas. They just negotiated. Right. Exactly.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Tommy, what do you think about Trump's comments to John
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Carl about Mike Pence? Basically just admitting that he did
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: pressure him to do this. And then when he was
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: asked about the chance of people wanting to hang Mike
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  Speaker 2: Pence was just like, yeah, whatever, you know, it's common sense.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, deeply chilling. I mean, the takeaway from John Carl's
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: interview with Trump about Pence is that he has no regrets.
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  Speaker 4: Not just that, Trump believes that threats of physical violence
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: and that violence generally that happened that day, it was justified.
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  Speaker 4: It was fine. You know, he understands it. And I
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: think what everyone needs to understand is that the rhetoric
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: around the big lie from the very beginning to now,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: it's getting more heated, not less. It's getting more apocalyptic
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: and not like this is war. This is good versus evil.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: The election was stolen. War with China is inevitable. And
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: I think it's it's setting up a scary situation where
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: violence has happened. It has been defended. Right. Ashley Babbitt
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: is a hero and a patriot. And I think it's
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: going to lead to more violence. And I think it's
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: directly from comments like this.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and recognize the shift as well. At the beginning,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: when it first happened, it was, oh, the insurrection wasn't real.
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  Speaker 2: There wasn't much violence. It was Antifa that did it.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Now it's, oh yeah, it happened and it was good.
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  Speaker 4: No, and it was an FBI false flag. It was
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: good what happened.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: These were protesters and this is what should have happened.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: So here's a response to Trump from Wyoming's John Barrasso,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: the third ranking Republican senator.
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  Speaker 3: So he says, hang Mike Pence's common sense. Can your
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chance against his
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: own vice president?
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  Speaker 5: Well, let me just say, The Republican Party is incredibly
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: united right now.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, love it. I guess that qualifies as a
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: basically true statement. It's just hang Mike Pence, common sense.
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  Speaker 2: What's your take? I think we're united.
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  Speaker 3: We all want to kill the guy. Here's the thing.
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  Speaker 3: Who among us hasn't want to murder Mike Pence? That's
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: the Republican position. But I do think there's something similar
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: between what Barrasso did and what Trump did, because What
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Trump actually does in that statement is he kind of
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: glosses over what Jonathan Karl says about the hanging of
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Mike Pence. He just keeps making his previous point. But
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know that like, that doesn't like make it better.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Like Trump is just completely unfazed by the prospect of
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Mike Pence being murdered. Whether or not Mike Pence is
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: alive or dead is sort of an incidental issue for him.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: And with Barrasso, it's the same thing. It's like, look,
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  Speaker 3: Whether or not it's common sense to murder Mike Pence, obviously,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to say it, but you know.
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  Speaker 4: I don't agree.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: John Barrasso doesn't want to murder Mike Pence, but he's
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: not going to sit here like an idiot and disagree
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: with Donald Trump on something as fundamental as whether or
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: not to hang Mike Pence.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It's applying typical political talking points to- an extreme situation
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: in politics that we've never dealt with, right? Which is like, hey,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: what about hanging my pants? George, you always want to
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: look back. I want to look forward. Yes, but they
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: were going to kill the vice president. George, you're trying
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: to distract us from inflation.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Hey, sick of these gotchas.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: It's the cousin of Donald Trump calling Chris Christie on
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: his deathbed from COVID and saying, are you going to
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: tell people you got this from me?
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, hey, I'll tell you.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you. You know what?
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: You want to talk about hanging Mike Pence. I want
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: to talk about how the middle class in this country
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: has been hung out to dry.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, speaking of Chris Christie, he's got a new
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: book coming out. He did an interview with Maggie Haberman
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: and he's like, you know, Big tough guy now. He's
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: criticizing Trump. He's telling the party, oh, if we look
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: back on 2020 the whole time, we're going to lose.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: And Trump shouldn't be part of the party if we're
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: looking back on 2020. But then he's like, oh, yeah, well,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: knowing what I know now, I still would have supported
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump over Joe Biden. It's like, what?
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: This fucking guy. I mean, like, Christie's utterly full of shit.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Everything he says and does is about helping himself politically.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: And if I had to bet money on it, I
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: would bet that Chris Christie falls back in line in
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: six months, eight months, 12 months. That's it. I am
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: interested in seeing, like, I want him to take this
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: message on the road. I want him to go out
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: and say, you lost Donald Trump. You're a loser. You
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: lost a Joe Biden who you told us was brain
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: dead at the time. And the question is, will Christie
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: continue to do this? And also, will he ever do
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: it on a conservative outlet, right? He's not talking on
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Fox News right now. He was on ABC, the New
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: York Times, CNN, right? Places where conservatives aren't watching, places
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: where He can try to rehab his image with the
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: elite media and not really deliver a message to the
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: MAGA base that I would love to have inundated with
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: this kind of, you know, Trump is a loser message.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're joking about all this because what else
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: are you going to do at this point? Obviously, it's
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: all deadly serious. Like, how big of a deal should
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Democrats make this? Like, you know, I watched these stories
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: over the weekend. You know, the John Karl book got
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: some some good pickup. Obviously, they talked about it on
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: the Sunday shows. Some of it is it doesn't get
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: more coverage because. we've known it all for a while.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Trump has admitted all this. He's very open about it,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: but like, I don't know, we're headed into another, we're
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: going to head into a midterm election and then a
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: presidential election where by all accounts, Donald Trump is going
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: to run for president again. And you know, the odds
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: on favorite to become the Republican nominee, like how should
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Democrats talk about this? How big of a deal should they,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: should they make of this?
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: Love it.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's very similar to the, like the question
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: about how to make a big deal about not just
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the insurrection, but of the fact that Republicans briefly were
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: honest about how serious and bad it was. And then
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: with the amount of hours, if not days, abandoned that
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: position and fell in line and now are either lying
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: about it, pretending it didn't happen or cordoning it off
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: from their brain somehow to continue to support Donald Trump.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of how we, about the problems of impeachment,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: which is, I think a lot of Democrats that were
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: being really cynical and political, maybe fairly, said, if we
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: do this, maybe it feels like the right thing to do,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: but it will hurt us politically. And I think we
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: have been struggling as a party now for five years
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: for how to talk about the democratic threat that Trump poses,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: for how to make that tangible to people outside of
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: the few moments when it was obvious and clear and
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: dramatic and violent and smoke coming out of the Capitol.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: And so I Should it be a big deal? Of
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: course it should. It's one of the greatest threats we've
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: ever faced. How should we make it a part of
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: these campaigns as we head into next year when we're
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: trying to also talk about infrastructure and achievement and the
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: issues that really matter to people? I have no idea.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: It has been a difficult problem for us for years now.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: Tommy? I think you can make a broader message about
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: the extremity of the modern Republican Party. And a piece
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: of that should be John Barrasso, as I believe his name,
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: they're all rallying around their willingness to hang Mike Pence.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: That's a piece of it. And the violence on January 6th.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: But there's also the fact that the House of Representatives
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: is talking about expelling 13 members of the Republican Party
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: for voting for an infrastructure bill, right? They're getting death threats.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: They're opposed to liberal roads, right? Imagine how much fun
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Barack Obama would have with that kind of message. You
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: can make it funny. You can make it lighter. And
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: just talk about how extreme this party is and how
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: absurd it is to be opposed to roads and bridges
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: because Democrats support them. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling these
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: people traitors.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Not just because Democrats support them. It was a bipartisan
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: bill that their own Republican colleagues in the Senate helped negotiate.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: 19 Republicans in the Senate.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Fred Upton's getting death threats for voting for Rhodes?
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: It's crazy.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: It's crazy. One last piece of data on this. Priorities USA,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: which is the biggest Democratic super PAC, did some recent
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: polling in battleground states after the Virginia elections. They tested
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: 25 messages, 13 pro-Democratic message, 12 anti-Republican message, They tested
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: them among swing voters and among new and infrequent Biden
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: voters from 2020. Number one most effective message among both
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: groups was about Democrats making the tax system fairer, making
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: rich and corporations pay more. Also up there was Democrats
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: voting for the rescue plan, Republicans voting against it. Infrastructure
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: was popular with the swing voters. But of the 25 messages,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: a message on the big lie in January 6th ranked
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: fifth among swing voters and sixth among new and infrequent
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Biden voters. So it's a good thing. It's not like
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: number one or number two, but of 25 messages, it's
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: up there, you know, like it is. And that's that's
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: not just with Democratic base voters. That's swing voters. You know,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: that's people who haven't voted before.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And I do think the way like there is a
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: way to kind of tie them together, which is that
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: like and I would imagine if you like a message
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: around like being willing to work with people you disagree
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: with and not seeing Republicans and Democrats as enemies is
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: something that always consistently polls really, really well. And there's
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: something to be said about like, you know, these people
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: hate Democrats so much they were willing to burn the
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Capitol down. And that's not just dangerous. Obviously, it's incredibly
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: dangerous to not believe in these basic democratic values. It
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: also means you're not willing to work with these people
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: to get things done.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Like there's a way that like you can see even
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: like kind of mainstream. But you can you can see
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: a kind of basic message that tries to put those
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: two things together in some way.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like let's come together and agree not to hang
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Mike Pence.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: Or at least understand that in politics, some people want
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: to hang Mike Pence. Some people don't. But we're all
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: human beings except for Mike Pence.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: We'll leave it there for now. When we come back,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: we will talk to former Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: about inflation. One of the biggest drags on the economy
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: and President Biden's approval rating is inflation. which hit its
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: highest level in 30 years last month as prices rose
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: more than 6% between September and October. Republicans are ecstatic
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: about the political opportunity, with Senator Rick Scott saying, this
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: is a goldmine for us. So what can the president
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: actually do about this? Joining us is our old friend
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: from the Obama campaign and then the Obama White House,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the man who took pity on a speechwriter who'd never
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: taken an economics class and patiently taught me how to
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: explain credit default swaps to the American people. The former
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Austin Goolsbee.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to the pod, Austin.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: All right. And then you were teaching the class. You
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: didn't just learn. You became the teacher. Yeah.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: No, I steered the administration through that early crisis is
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: what I like to tell people.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: The green shoots.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Recovery summer was my idea.
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: The summer of recovery.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: That was my idea.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, boy.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Okay. So, Austin, when you were on the show in August,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: you told Dan... that there was this debate among economists
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: about whether inflation was permanent or temporary. And you said
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: that you were on team temporary. Are you still on
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: team temporary?
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: I'm still on team temporary.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: I'm still on team temporary because it's still the case
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: that most of this inflation is concentrated on all of
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: those physical goods where the supply chain has got this problem.
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: And it's happening all around the world. You got Germany's
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: got the highest inflation in 29 years. You got China's
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: got its highest inflation in 26 years. And I think
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: that's all because we're still in this weird period where
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: people are buying physical stuff in a way that they
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: normally don't. They normally buy services. And if the whole
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: world tries to go buy TVs at the same time,
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: the system is not designed for that. And the price
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: is going to go up on all of that.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So our old colleague, Larry Summers, you know him, pretty
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: shy kind of guy. He just issued an edict in
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the Washington Post today that was headlined, it's past time
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: for Team Temporary to stand down. Are you guys going
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: to have like a nerd fight? What's going to happen?
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: Look, the thing is, as you know, he's a very
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: smart guy. He predicted that there would be not just inflation.
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: He predicted there would be more inflation than everybody else,
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: including me, was giving credit at the time. The thing
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: that I've still, and I've talked to Larry about it,
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: the thing I still can't quite put my handle on
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: is if you look at the last time we had
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: this experience of inflation in the 1970s, when oil prices
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: were going up and a bunch of things went wrong,
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: The conventional wisdom among economists coming out of that period
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: was that if the thing causing inflation is a supply shock,
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: tightening monetary policy, raising the interest rate is not the
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: right thing to do. And somehow we've either lost that
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: lesson or they've decided that this isn't a supply shock,
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: but I think it is. I think if you go look,
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: So far, that's what it looks like. And as you know,
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: my bias is that the virus is driving this whole thing.
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: This wasn't a normal recession. It doesn't look anything like
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: a recession. It was a massive downturn caused by the virus.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: If you get control of the virus, we can go
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: back to spending money on services like we normally do.
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: And when that happens, it's going to relieve the pressure
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: on the supply chain. That's what I think. He says
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: we need to stand down if you're team temporary. Because why?
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: My view always was that we've got to wait till
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: the summer, end of the spring, beginning of the summer,
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: so that you're more than one year after the collapse
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: before you would start to see things go back to
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: normal on inflation. To me, that's temporary. But maybe if
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: you wanted it in a month, then you say, oh, no,
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: it's permanent.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Well, so let's go back to the 70s, to the
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: Carter era. You know, discos on the radio, people are watching,
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: you know, All in the Family or whatever. So you
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: have economists like Alan Blinder who say that inflation in
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: the 70s was in part driven by psychology. People felt
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: like inflation was here to stay and it became this
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you agree with that? And if so...
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: how do you break inflation of the mind? Like, what
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: do you do there?
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Inflation of the mind. Well, in a way you're
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: taking me back. I was just a kid, you know,
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: when this, when this inflation was going on, the thing
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: is that's the economists call that the inflation's expectation game.
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: And the unions were much more powerful than they were.
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: They were more involved in the private sector. And so
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: there were more collective bargainings. And so if, Inflation was 5%.
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: Then in the wage negotiations, they'd be like, well, if
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: there's 5% inflation, we want 6% wage increase. And then
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: if you got 6% wage increase, the company would be like, ah,
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: our costs are up 6%. We got to raise prices 6%,
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: you know, and you get on that circle. That's what
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: they call the wage price spiral. I think that is
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: kind of what happened in the 1970s. And then you
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: got to decide, do you think that the rule of 1977,
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: You know, the fashion rules don't apply and the music
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: rules don't apply. Should the economic inflation rules apply? I
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: don't know. And this was kind of like what I said,
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: you know, a couple months ago when we talked. If
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: you look in the last 30 years, three different times,
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: we've gotten the unemployment rate down to four and a half,
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: four or even three and a half percent without generating
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: sustained inflation. So the question I have is the unemployment
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: rate is still a fair bit above that. So why
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: would that generate sustained inflation now when it didn't in 2019?
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: I mean, we had the unemployment rate down to three
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: and a half percent and it wasn't generating that kind
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: of inflation. So that's why I'm still in my heart
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: on team temporary. So I'm hoping that it's not like,
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: you remember the You remember the movie, Good Morning Vietnam?
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: The guy who gives Robin Williams the hard time. And
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: he puts a Bruno Kirby on to the radio and
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: he has a little horn and he does all this.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like the waka waka waka jokes.
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: And they fire him. And then he says, sir, in
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: my heart, I know I'm funny. That might be me.
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: In my heart, I remain team temporary. This is higher
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: inflation than than people saw. I don't think it's from
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: the argument that this is from the US spending too
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: much on stimulus. I still think that there's maybe some
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: holes in that argument because if you look around the world,
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: ports are backed up all over the place. Inflation is
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: way up all over the place, including in places where
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: they didn't have a big fiscal response like what we had.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Well, there's the argument that it's because we spent too
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: much on stimulus. What Republicans want to say now is, okay, well,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: now you just passed this infrastructure bill and even worse,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: you're going to pass this build back better bill. So
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: that's going to be what? $ 5 trillion total in spending
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: over the year. This is a disaster. This is what's
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: causing inflation. Why is that argument wrong in your view?
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: Well, I think that argument is wrong on a couple
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: of counts. The first is this bill is basically paid for.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: So if you raise taxes, to pay for whatever your
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: spending was, it would add nothing to the stimulus component.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: And so that part would be irrelevant. Now, my experience
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: has been, if you say to Republicans, hey, I'm taking
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: your idea seriously. Maybe we should redouble our efforts to
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: raise taxes on high-income people to make sure that there's
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: no inflation. They don't accept that. They don't accept that
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: part of the argument. But the second thing I'd say
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: is the inflation is a matter of a six to
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: 18 months kind of timeframe. And the Build Back Better
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: bill is spread out over 10 years and even added
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: up over 10 years is a modest contribution. So the
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: amount that they will contribute to inflation in the next
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: six to 18 months is really quite negligible. And Larry
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: Summers himself says that. They tried to get Summers to
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: attack Build Back Better. And he said, no, that has
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: nothing to do with it. That wouldn't increase inflation. And
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: I kind of agree with him. So I think we
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: are just back in, we talked about in the summer,
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: the argument about unemployment insurance, that there were Republicans saying,
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: Let's not do any of the things that Joe Biden
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: ran on and now wants to enact. Let's not do
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: them because unemployment insurance is causing these problems. And then
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: if you showed them, but unemployment insurance isn't causing these problems. Look,
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: half the states got rid of it. It didn't change
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: the amount that people are looking for work. Then the
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: other half get rid of the supplemental UI. Same thing.
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: Didn't matter. They weren't saying it because they actually thought
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: that that's what was causing the labor shortage. They were
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: saying it because it was a convenient cudgel to attack
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: the Biden administration. And that's happened to us when we
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: were in the Obama administration. They would come up with
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: argument after argument why Obama should not be allowed to
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: do the things that he ran on and said he
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: wanted to do when he won. And I feel like
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: we're back to that.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Put that in your calculator and smoke it, Larry.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: So Austin, putting on my political hack hat, not that
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: I ever took it off. I mean, the other thing
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: I can confirm as a consumer is that gas prices
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: seem high in all of our years in politics. Gas
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: prices have always seemed to have had this outsized impact
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: on voter sentiment and frustration. There's speculation as to why.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: Some people say the Saudis are keeping supply artificially low
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: and prices high because the Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince,
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: who is a sociopath murderer, is mad because Joe Biden
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: won't meet with him. There are periodic news reports where
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: someone floats letting gasoline out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: That took me back to the Obama days as well.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: The old days.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: Are there things like can Biden do anything about gas prices?
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Is this a stupid debate every time it comes up?
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's mostly a pointless debate in the immediate term.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: What people want is the price of gas that go
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: down this week. I mean, and I just took my
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: car 68 bucks to fill my car. So if people
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: wanted to go down this week, there's not a whole
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: lot you can do to make the price go down
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: this week, for sure. Within OPEC, the thing to remember
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: is there was a time when OPEC dominated all the production.
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: Now there's a lot of other countries that aren't in
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: OPEC that also produce oil. I don't know what the
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: Russians are doing, but it seems like they're constantly making
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: mischief in both oil and every other kind of market.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: And they're blowing up satellites today.
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: They're blowing up satellites, chunk and sand.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: Come on, just chill out.
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: And so I know that when we shut down the
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: Iran deal, you've got chaos and a bunch of oil
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: producing countries, production is relatively low. We went through this
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: shale and the fracking boom in the US, followed by
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: bust when the prices went down. Now the prices are
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: back up. So you'd normally think, okay, well, won't all
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: of those fracking shale producers come back? But there are
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: a lot of their financing is like, whoa, whoa, wait
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: a minute. You're not going to burn us twice. We
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: just did this. The price went up. You all went
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: in there. You pumped so much oil that the price
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: collapsed and then we lost all our money. So I
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: think we got on the diplomatic front. Look, I know
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: you guys are the foreign policy experts. If we could
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: get the Iran deal back going so that we would
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: have more production, I think that would matter.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Tommy.
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that'd be good.
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: If the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I wrote a thing a
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: long time ago that I thought we ought to operate
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: it like how my mom used to be with the
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: toilet paper in an earthquake, which was she wanted to
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: have two weeks of toilet paper. And so if the
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: thing is to replace US production, kind of go figure
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: out what the US production rate is and say, here's
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: how many days of US production if we were interrupted,
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: here's how many days of use we could use. That
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: has usually, if you follow that type of logic, it
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: says you could draw down the strategic petroleum reserve. We
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: have been in a thing where we got it so full,
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: they literally could not add any more to it. It
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: was that full. And it probably doesn't make sense to
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: keep it that full. But overall, like I say, It's
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: a worldwide thing. All the countries of the world are
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: trying to come booming back all at once. The supply
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: of oil is not there to satisfy that. And that's
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: why the price is high, not just in the US,
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: everywhere in the world, the price is high.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: So there's not much that Biden can do in the
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: short term about the price of gas. He has limited
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: number of tools to affect inflation. If you were sitting
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: in the White House right now in your old job,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: what would you be advising Joe Biden to do about
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: all of this since it's not doing great things for
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: his poll numbers, that's for sure.
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure with the poll numbers. I mean, the
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: two and a half things to remember are first, the
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: poll numbers tend not to just reflect what happened this week.
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: They're accumulated over a few months. And there's no question
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: we had a tough summer in which the Delta variant
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: came back, the virus resurged, We had a bunch of
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: slowdown of economic growth, a few months of jobs numbers
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: that weren't that great. So I think the fact that
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: the approval rating on the economy deteriorated, I think is
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: kind of understandable. But the last job numbers were stellar, outstanding,
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: borderline amazing, 600,000 jobs in a single month in the
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: private sector. If you put up two, three, four months
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: of half a million jobs a month, I think people's
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: attitude is going to improve if we get incomes growing
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: back faster, job growth faster. Second, as part of this
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: rescue plan, we gave people money to cover what we
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: knew were going to be costs of this recovery. So
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: we had this famous image of the woman on CNN.
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: who had the nine kids and said she buys 12
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: gallons of milk a week, and the price went up
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: $ 1 a gallon. Okay, but the thing is, the child
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: tax credit that Joe Biden passed would have given that
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: woman $ 6, 000. So you buy a lot of milk with $ 6, 000.
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: So true. I do think, let's bear in mind that
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: the very thing about the rescue plan that they're condemning
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: is also a benefit. which is giving people money that
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: they can use to deal with this. And then the third,
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: just because this is a multi-month phenomenon and is going
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: to be grumpy and people are going to be annoyed,
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: and you can see why, doesn't mean we should. There's
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: too many negatives in that. Doesn't mean we shouldn't. We
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: should do all the blocking and tackling that we can
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: to improve the supply side and the bottlenecks on the
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: supply chain. And that means whatever money can be pulled
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: forward from this infrastructure bill they signed today, then they
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: should do it. They should work on, go down to
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: the ports, to the rail, to trucking.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: If they can- Joe Biden should move some boxes.
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: Defense Production Act, all of the things that you can
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: do to help get the supply chain. I think that
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: will matter for inflation over a multi-month period, not in
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: one month, but over a multi-month. And- Go get more vaccines.
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: You slow the spread of the virus. Like I say,
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: you can get people going back to spending their money
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: at Disneyland, at restaurants, and blah, blah, blah, and buying
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: fewer TVs, and that will relieve some of the pressure.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: It's good advice. Austin, my final question for you. It's
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: not about inflation. This is sort of a bonk it
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: in the dorm room kind of question that I've always wondered.
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: So over the past decade or so, we have seen
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: literally trillions of dollars in value created out of nothing
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: in the form of cryptocurrency. This afternoon- Oh, no.
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: Tommy's on this crypto I'm curious.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: No, I'm not a crypto bro. I wish I'd, I've got,
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: I'm a, I'm a crypto FOMO guy, but like this
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: afternoon though, I looked the, the market cap for Bitcoin
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: alone is $ 1. 2 trillion. What does that do to the
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: global economy? You have like rabbit out of a hat
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: wealth creation. One day we decide that there's another couple
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: trillion dollars worth of value in the world.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Like what the hell?
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it's speculative investments. I should have said, by
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: the way, on the matter of inflation, you know I'm
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: an economist. So I'm going to say, go get rid
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: of all the stupid Trump tariffs. They've increased taxes. That
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: was a tax increase on the American middle class of $ 2, 000
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: a family. If you go get rid of some of
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: those tariffs, you can put more money back in people's pocket.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Glad you got that in.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: The thing about... Bitcoin, NFTs, and other online stuff. You
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: know that if somebody makes a painting and a bunch
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: of people say, yeah, that painting's worth a lot, yes,
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: in a way, you can create assets out of nothing.
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: The whole puzzle to the economist is, is that really
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: a currency? That's not a currency. If you're thinking in
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: your mind that's going to replace the dollar, It's really not.
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: It doesn't have the attributes of a currency. It has
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: the attributes of a speculative investment. And if you're going
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: to go invest in speculative investments, I do think you
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: want to think about some of the basic economics like, well,
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: what are the substitutes and what's to stop every other jerk?
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: from taking his pet and taking a picture of it
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: and calling it a, you know, Irish setter coin or whatever.
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: We're back to the, what they called the free banking era.
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: There was a time when banks created their own money,
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: like the 1800s. Sure enough, turns out lots of banks
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: want to print their own money because it's really lucrative
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: minting money. You know, it costs how much for the
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: paper and then you get a dollar for it. And
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: we're prone to We're prone to bank runs. We're prone
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: to inflation. They're prone to crises of confidence in these
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: various currencies. Now, if you believe that one of these
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: cryptocurrencies is better than all the others, and no matter
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: how many new ones come in, there will always be
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: demand for Ethereum, Bitcoin, something. If you feel like they
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: can get the transaction costs down, so far the transaction
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: costs are really quite high, which is another reason why
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: it's not really a currency. If there's some reason why
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: this one's worth betting on versus all the others, then fine,
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: but just recognize it's really risky. And then you get
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: to these NFTs and it's like, come on, $ 1, 000. NBA
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: photo that can't be specifically replicated, but they can just
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: take another photo of the same player one second later,
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: it's hard for me to understand how that stuff can
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: be worth $ 500, 000.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: The Bored Ape NFT sold for $ 2. 7 million.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: So is that a buy?
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: That's a good word.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: If you can put the T in NFT, you've got it.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Tommy's going to come in tomorrow with a doodle coin.
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: You should. The V coin. Put a big V on it.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: There's one like Shinaibu coin or something that's up 81,000%
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: this year.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: 81,000%.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying.
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: And that's a competitor to the other one, the Dogecoin,
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: which should have been pronounced doggy coin. What are they doing?
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: I don't understand. It's fun to watch it. It's fun
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: to see kids coming in. So what do you think
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: about crypto, professor?
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Well, Austin, I look forward to talking to you again
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: sometime when you help me write a speech explaining to
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: the country why we're in a financial crisis because of crypto.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I'm going to have to.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: Get my crypto malaise sweater.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Austin Goldsby, thank you so much for joining us as always.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Come back again soon. Good seeing you, man.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: Thanks, Austin.
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: See you guys later.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: All right, so Monday was a great day for a
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: White House that badly needed one. President Biden was joined
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: by Democrats and Republicans at a signing ceremony for the
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: infrastructure bill, which is now the infrastructure law, a historic
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: investment in transportation that will deliver jobs, roads, bridges, public transit,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: clean water, all kinds of good stuff. Also joining Biden
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: were Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: former New Orleans mayor slash new White House infrastructure manager
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Mitch Landrieu, all of whom... have recently been the subjects
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: of way too early D.C. media speculation about whether they'll
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: run for president in 2024, despite the fact that Joe
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Biden is saying publicly and privately that he'll run again.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: The latest in the genre is an incredibly long CNN
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: piece from over the weekend.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: So long.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: It took most of my Monday to read it. The
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: piece was about the relationship between Biden and Harris, and
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: it starts, quote, worn out by what they see as
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus. Key West Wing aides
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Harris and her staff, deciding there simply isn't time to
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: deal with them right now, while, quote, many in the
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: First of all, first of all, do you guys think
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: this is a record for early speculation about an election
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: that's three years away? Like, why do you think it's
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: happening so soon?
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Why do you think there's speculation about the next Democratic
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: nominee when the current one is 78, unpopular, and talks
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: about how he's going to pass the torch to a
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: new generation? It probably has something to do with it.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Correct answer. Yeah. That might have something to do with it, huh?
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: You're not going to find this analysis anywhere else.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: And by the way, I would bet if you go back,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: it does feel early, but I imagine if you go
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: back and look, you can find some fucking like day
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: after the inauguration speculation every four years, you know, it
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: just feels new to us because it's been a while.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, if we don't know what Joe Biden
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: is planning or what he's thinking, but if Joe Biden
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: had decided, before the election even that he wasn't going
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: to run for a second term he wouldn't say it
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: he wouldn't probably even tell a lot of close advisors
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: that because then you're a lame duck president we don't
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: know what he's thinking but you know there has been
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: reporting that of course on one hand like you said
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: love it he wants to he said publicly said this
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: during the election he wanted to be a bridge to
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: the next generation on the other hand there's reporting that
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: he's thought like i'm the only person alive who's beaten
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: donald trump in an election and And I want to
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: make sure that if Donald Trump runs again, we better
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: be damn sure that the next nominee can do the same.
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: So that's probably in his mind as well. But I'm
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: sure that's what's that's what's going on. Tommy, what did
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: you what did you make of the story about about
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: the vice president?
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: Agreed on the length. It was it was a mess
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: for a lot of reasons. So starting with the vice presidency,
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: I hear their frustration on a lot of points like
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: the coverage of the vice president's foreign trips was often absurd. Yes,
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: the interview with Lesser Holt was bad. It was an
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: unforced error. But some of the coverage set the bar
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: impossibly high for her, like the going to Guatemala didn't
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: solve corruption in Guatemala. The New York Times wrote that
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: her visit to Singapore and Vietnam was bad because it
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: happened as the government of Afghanistan was collapsing, which they
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: wrote forced her aides to answer questions, quote, about the
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: historical parallel between that exodus and the U.S. evacuation of
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: American citizens in 1975 from Saigon. I'm sorry, that is
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: just stupid. The media chose that angle, not Harris or
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: her aides. This recent trip to France comes on the
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: heel of a diplomatic dustup with the U.S. and the
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: French that she had nothing to do with. Seems like
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: she actually did a pretty good job of playing mop
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: up duty for a mistake she didn't make. I think
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: her team is right to be furious at ostensibly serious
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: reporters like Bloomberg's White House reporter regurgitating right wing nonsense
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: that she was faking a French accent.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: That was insane.
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: There was no truth to that. It was just straight
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: up idiocy. But here's the problem for Harris, for Biden,
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: for everyone else. that coverage is par for the course.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: You never get the credit you want on foreign trips.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: There's always a domestic issue that overshadows what you're trying
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: to do. That's how it goes. And yes, the CNN
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: story was too long and it was gossipy bullshit. And
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: I'm sure annoying for everyone involved, but the people who
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: ostensibly were trying to spin for Biden or spin for
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: Harris made it all worse by complaining in the press.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: And the people who are frustrated that the vice president
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: has a shitty set of issues on her plate are
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: right on the one hand, But on the other hand,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: the presidency isn't a la carte. You get all the issues.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? And it's only going to
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: get worse.
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: If she runs for president and gets elected. So I
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: get their frustration. We lived through it with Obama. Fox News,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: conservative outlets clearly target her because of her race, because
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: of her gender. That is a given. But I do
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: think like to solve these kind of problems, the only
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: way you can deal with it is behind the scenes.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: You work it out behind the scenes. Biden should tell
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: his staff that if he catches them leaking about her,
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: they're fucking fired. She should tell her staff and supporters
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: to lock it down and not talk to the press,
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: especially ones who are known troublemakers, and go from there.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: Show me any example of when a bunch of anonymous
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: leaks to the press served anyone but the reporter writing
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: the fucking story i don't know how many times we
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: say this it is like so crazy and it's you
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: know it's it's donors who are always fucking oh.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: You can tell the donors you can always you can
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: tell the donors because they always it's a lot of
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: um there's also a kind of i think part of
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: these stories where people with where it's like um once again,
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: she's being poorly served by her staff, which you know
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: is a donor, kind of coming in and making a
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: critique from the outside.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: With no knowledge.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: The other thing I would say about this too is
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: it was gossipy and also really kind of devoid of
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: any kind of specific and good gossip. I was like,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: can we get any kind of confront? There's zero confrontations.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: There's zero actual kind of real dramatic infighting in the piece.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: It just seems like a lot of boiled up minor
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: frustrations added up into a kind of narrative from talking
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: to like several dozen people. And like this idea that
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: the reason these problems are happening is because of a
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: question on a foreign trip or a poorly chosen answer
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: at a specific event.
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: Like, no, no.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: These are frustrations from a moment in which both of
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: their approval ratings are way lower than they want them
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: to be heading into the midterms after a really tough period.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: That is like, that is what this story is ultimately about, right?
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Like it's not about, the specifics there were so kind
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: of soft and thin and not doubting that any of
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: them are not accurate, but it's like, yeah, like, you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: you call several dozen people who are in a building
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: that feels a little bit under siege and frustrated, you
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: can churn out a story about a meeting that went
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: poorly and an event she didn't get to go to,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: And I will say, One of the reasons we're covering
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: this is not because of a single CNN story. There
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: has been a number of these stories over the last
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: several months. This is the most extensive by far. And,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: you know, they said they talked to three dozen whoever's
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: for the story. But like Politico did a piece on
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: like there have been a whole bunch of the story.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: So this is sort of like bubbled up at this point,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: which is why it's worth talking about. But I also
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: think like, look, no vice president in history has been.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: comfortable or satisfied in that role, they made an entire
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: hit television show based on that premise of like what vice,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: what it feels like to be vice president of the
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: White House. Like this is, this is just what happens, right?
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Like you're in a weird job. You don't have a
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: lot of power. You're there. you're a heartbeat away from
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: the presidency. You're trying to figure out your role. You're
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out what you do. It's hard. It's been,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: it was hard for Joe Biden. It was hard for
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: all the vice presidents before him. You know, like that's just,
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: that's sort of how it goes. I mean, Joe Biden has,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: you know, what's unique is that Joe Biden has sat
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: where Kamala Harris is now. Having been in the White House, Tommy,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: what do you think made his partnership with Obama work?
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: And what do you think is replicable from that?
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: So there was clearly like genuine friendship and respect that
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: I think kept things together, kept the lid on when
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: times were tough. They dealt with zero of this current
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: speculation that Obama wouldn't run for a second term. So
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: that was not on the horizon.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: And Biden said he wasn't going to run.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right. And, you know, like I think it was
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: also a lot more obvious how Joe Biden's experience complemented Obama's.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: There were more clearly defined roles that flowed from that. Right.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: So the Recovery Act implementation Biden was handed the Iraq
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: drawdown process, congressional negotiations because he'd known these people for 30,
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: 40 years. That doesn't mean things always went well. There
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: were some pretty high profile blowups over marriage equality or
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: other other unforced errors.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: And in hindsight, they all seem very rosy. But I think,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: you know, friendship, mutual respect, clarity on roles, disposition of
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: the two, like got them through it. And, you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: I think that you'll work it out. It's been a
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: been a rough month.
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: Or sorry, it's been a rough year for the president
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: and the vice president. I mean, you know, if, if
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: this reporter started chasing down story, you know, narratives for
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: this CNN piece in like August.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: I bet you could call a lot of people who
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: are frustrated. Yeah.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of talk in the piece about like,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: she got handed a set of issues that are really
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: tough and which made me think like, yeah, but all
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: the issues are tough right now. What's the easy, what
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: are the easy issues out there?
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: I got to tell you, if I were Kamala Harris,
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: like standing on the Southern border and I turned on television,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: I see Mitchell Andrew with a hard hat with a
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: fucking shovel. cutting the ribbon i'd be like oh i
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: picked wrong well.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: She was there for that.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: Too i mean i would that's a good point because
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: mitch landry's plugging routers in at a school she's in
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: guatemala telling them not to come here that's a fucking
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: bum deal.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Here's the thing here's the thing i would bet i
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: would bet after that story after this weekend that Kamala
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Harris's staff and probably Kamala Harris herself when she's in
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: a meeting with Joe Biden is like, hey, as Pete
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: and Mitch Landrieu are out there cutting ribbons on infrastructure projects,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: can I get some of that? And she should, right?
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Like she should go out there and do that as well. Look,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: the immigration portfolio Biden gave her because he was given
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: that portfolio by Barack Obama. So he sort of passed it.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: He paid it forward. Voting rights is one that she
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: asked for, which she got. And everyone's like, oh, well,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: it's tough on voting. Tough issue. It's not her fault
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: that it's a fucking tough issue. And it's not Joe
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Biden's fault. It's fucking Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: How many times have we been over this? You know,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: and they're like, well, she privately wants to get rid
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: of the filibuster. Well, now Joe Biden said it publicly, too. Great.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: It's not moving Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Again, that's
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: not Kamala Harris's fault. That's not Joe Biden's fault. That's
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: fucking Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's fault.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: Well, the other piece of this, too, is I think
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: this happens in a lot of political coverage of these
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: kinds of internal fights, which is, is this about a
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: PR strategy to make her look like a president? Or
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: is this about her actual involvement in the administration solving problems?
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: Is this about, I mean, there was something very patronizing
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: in this CNN piece, which was like, she was denied
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to learn at the foot of a master
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: about like congressional negotiations, some kind of weird shit in there.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: But on the whole, it's like, like, if you want,
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: if the issue here is that she's been handed issues
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: that are very, very difficult, well, then It sounds like
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: that's a PR problem, but maybe something you'd want someone
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: who might be the nominee to kind of tackle, right?
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: Or if it's just about getting better headlines, yeah, she
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: should get the fucking hard hat on and go tour
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: an esplanade and talk about how many jobs this project's
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: going to create. I'm okay with either outcome, to be honest.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: What kind of political spotlight do you think being transportation
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: secretary or managing the new infrastructure funding gives a Pete
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: Buttigieg or a Mitch Landrieu?
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: This feels a touch ridiculous. Look, I... I'm a big
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: Mitch Landrieu fan. I think Pete is doing a great job.
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: He's already, he's a great spokesperson for the administration. He's
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: already made secretary of transportation, a far bigger job than
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: most people ever make it right. Like Normanetta wasn't getting
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: talked about like this. Normanetta. That's my, that's the poll
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: I had.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: I'm sure both of them will like have cool opportunities here.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: Like Lovey was saying, like they will plug in routers.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: They will work with state and local officials. Like, They'll
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: get to deliver stuff and do good for communities.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: But the idea that this is.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: Some giant political gift for them is... Just like it
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: presupposes that most political discourse is about substance when I
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: think the last few years undercut that.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: It's also so naive, too. It's like it's also like
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: you live in a world where people see on the
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: news that somebody's built a road and they remember like
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: like where is this fantasy land of democracy? We're like,
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: you know, I like that Mitch Landrieu. I saw him
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: open up a new tunnel between my house and my
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: neighbor's house. It's nonsense. It's the end days, people. Ideas
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: don't matter.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Like, I realize we're all talking about it. Speculation happens early.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And as we said, there's a reason for the speculation
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: with this particular president. But it's 2021, right? And, like,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: infrastructure projects now, what Pete's going to do, what Lander's
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: going to do, what Kamala Harris is doing. Like, this
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: is just not going to matter if there is a
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: primary election. In 2023, which is still an if, by
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: the way. So, like, the idea that everyone's gaming everything
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: out now. I'm sure they are privately with their staff
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But the idea that it's actually
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: consequential what happens right now with, like, cutting ribbons, I
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Think back to every election that's ever happened in history
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: and remember how stupid the issues were that were at
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: the fore of it. You can never tell in advance.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Can anyone remember any of the issues from the 2020
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: primary that we all got? No, I remember in.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: Must have been 2013 or 2014 when you had Mark
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: Warner on the cover of a magazine, the New York
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: Times Magazine, with that big grin. The next president of
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: the United States. Everybody got to calm the fuck down.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: Marco Rubio was the heir apparent for the Republican Party.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: How's that going?
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's early.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Kamala, Mitch, Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, any one of these
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: people could lose to Donald Trump at this point.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: Yes. Oh, love it.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: That's... That hurt.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: That's tough. Well, on that note, that's all we have
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: for today. I guess we don't end on a high note.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you to Austin Goolsby for joining us and teaching
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: us about inflation and helping Tommy become a crypto billionaire.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I'm a buy now. It's a buy.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: Wait, Tommy's finally admitting he's buying.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: I was waiting.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: God damn it.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: I saw it. I love his face. I was like,
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: did that just pass him by?
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: Clip it. Clip it. Clip it. Post it.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: Clip it.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: Sir.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Clip it.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: I need you to be a little more mature on
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: this broadcast.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't think so.
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: This is radio on your phone.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: You want me to be more... I actually never got to.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, sorry, guys, I can't hear you.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: Since the Bannon news, the resistance splooge on my screen
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: from Twitter has made it.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Hard to see either of you.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: How about that? Too much?
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: A lot of just shaking heads here in the studio
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: back in LA. Just sorry. A lot of.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: People on Twitter freaking out.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Amelia's so disappointed I can see it from here. Now
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: she's hiding her face.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: Love it. I'm like, Just kind of wondering, you know,
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: we have some more time here. Are you sure you
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: don't want to, like, just gratuitously poke the K-Hive? Because
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: you've been saying a lot about that off mic.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we're not going to get a
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: lot of replies.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, you want me to pick yet another fight with
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: the K-Hive? The people with the longest memory in fucking
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: human history? They're like ice core. You can use the
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: K-Hive to find historic carbon records.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if there's one thing you could say
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: that would draw the ire of both the K-Hive and
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: Team Pete with the same comment.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: Neither one of them won Iowa.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: Oh, my God.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: I did it.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: That's it.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: Wrap it up.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: We got a show.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: All right. We'll talk to you on Thursday. Good stuff.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Good stuff. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montouf. Our episodes are
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crooked media.