Transcript

“Maddow!” · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: Oh, me next.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Lovitz.
0:25
Speaker 1: On today's pod, we are thrilled to finally have in
0:28
Speaker 1: studio the host of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC
0:31
Speaker 1: and the author of the new book, Blowout, which we're
0:34
Speaker 1: going to talk about a little later. Rachel Maddow is here.
0:37
Speaker 2: Hi, you guys.
0:38
Speaker 3: So exciting.
0:39
Speaker 2: It's very exciting to be here. I can't believe this
0:41
Speaker 2: is real and it's really happening.
0:42
Speaker 3: Neither can we.
0:43
Speaker 2: This is the kind of set you imagine in your
0:45
Speaker 2: mind when you're dreaming. some sort of dystopian future in
0:48
Speaker 2: which you find yourself with people you recognize.
0:51
Speaker 3: I mean, this is real. What's wrong with our studio?
0:53
Speaker 2: Nothing's wrong.
0:54
Speaker 3: It's perfect.
0:55
Speaker 4: What's dystopian about it?
0:56
Speaker 2: No, it's a dystopian future I imagine for myself in
0:59
Speaker 2: which I'm sitting here talking with three smart guys who
1:01
Speaker 2: I admire and then I completely lose the power of
1:02
Speaker 2: speech and make a complete idiot out of myself.
1:04
Speaker 3: You don't have that dream?
1:05
Speaker 1: That's not possible. That's not possible. Although I guess we'll
1:08
Speaker 1: find out. We do have a lot of impeachment and
1:12
Speaker 1: 2020 news to cover tonight. But a few housekeeping notes. Tommy,
1:16
Speaker 1: tell us about this week's Pod Save the World.
1:18
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that show.
1:19
Speaker 5: Yeah, we talked about President Trump leaving our Kurdish allies
1:23
Speaker 5: hung out to dry in Syria, and things have only
1:26
Speaker 5: gotten worse since then. So we tried to understand what
1:28
Speaker 5: our guys were doing there, what the U.S. mission was,
1:30
Speaker 5: and what's likely to happen. And then we also talked
1:33
Speaker 5: about the NBA's fight with China and what it could
1:36
Speaker 5: mean for the broader business community as authoritarian countries try
1:40
Speaker 5: to tell us what free speech means.
1:42
Speaker 1: Check it out. Cool future, cool future. Also, a little
1:45
Speaker 1: plug for the 2019 elections that are coming up in
1:47
Speaker 1: a month. Democrats have a chance to make big gains
1:49
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia, where we need to
1:53
Speaker 1: flip just four seats to win the legislature and the
1:55
Speaker 1: chance to draw fair congressional districts in 2021. Head to votesaveamerica.com,
2:01
Speaker 1: or you can donate to our Fuck Gerrymandering Fund and
2:04
Speaker 1: find volunteer opportunities in these states, some right from the
2:07
Speaker 1: comfort of your home. So check them out. All right,
2:11
Speaker 1: let's get to the news. On Tuesday evening... White House
2:14
Speaker 1: counsel Pat Cipollone announced in an eight-page screed that President
2:17
Speaker 1: Trump is directing his administration to obstruct Congress's impeachment inquiry.
2:21
Speaker 1: They will refuse to comply with any and all subpoenas
2:23
Speaker 1: for testimony and documents, which is against the law. There
2:26
Speaker 1: were a few pretty angry responses from members of Congress
2:29
Speaker 1: with regard to this kind of obstruction, and I do
2:31
Speaker 1: think we have a few clips.
2:33
Speaker 6: Article 3 of impeachment against Richard Nixon. The article was
2:37
Speaker 6: based on the idea that Richard Nixon, as president, failed
2:41
Speaker 6: to comply with subpoenas of Congress. Congress was going through
2:44
Speaker 6: its oversight function to provide oversight of the president.
2:48
Speaker 2: When asked for information, Richard Nixon.
2:50
Speaker 6: Chose not to comply, and the Congress back in that
2:54
Speaker 6: time said, You're taking impeachment away from us. You're becoming
2:57
Speaker 6: the judge and jury. It is not your job to
3:00
Speaker 6: tell us what we need. It is your job to
3:03
Speaker 6: comply with the things we need to provide oversight over you.
3:06
Speaker 6: The day Richard Nixon failed to answer that subpoena is
3:09
Speaker 6: the day that he was subject to impeachment because he
3:12
Speaker 6: took the power from Congress over the impeachment process away
3:15
Speaker 6: from Congress, and he became the judge and jury.
3:19
Speaker 1: And I think we have one more.
3:20
Speaker 3: What a principled leader. So eloquently stated. Wow, he's really good.
3:26
Speaker 3: Lindsey Graham.
3:27
Speaker 7: The notion that you can withhold information and documents from
3:32
Speaker 7: Congress no matter whether you're the party in power or
3:35
Speaker 7: not in power is wrong. Respect for the rule of
3:38
Speaker 7: law must mean something irrespective of the vicissitudes of political cycles.
3:43
Speaker 3: It's a big word.
3:44
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember when I was coming to sit
3:47
Speaker 2: down here for the first time, I said, I don't know, like,
3:49
Speaker 2: if you have interference issues, is it okay if I
3:51
Speaker 2: have my phone with me because I have a couple
3:54
Speaker 2: of things. The reason I wanted to have my phone
3:56
Speaker 2: with me is because I saved that clip. Oh, really?
3:58
Speaker 2: Because I wanted to bring it to you as a present.
4:00
Speaker 2: I could play it off my phone into my microphone.
4:02
Speaker 1: You know what's funny? We don't always have clips like
4:04
Speaker 1: that at the beginning, but I saw those two this morning.
4:06
Speaker 1: I was like, these are very Matto-esque type clips. I
4:09
Speaker 1: think we're going to use those to start.
4:11
Speaker 3: Thank you, gentlemen.
4:11
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
4:12
Speaker 3: Had to step up our game.
4:13
Speaker 1: So obviously that was Trump's good pal, Lindsey Graham, and
4:16
Speaker 1: his brand new lawyer, Trey Gowdy. Rachel, what do you
4:19
Speaker 1: make of the White House's rationale for this decision to obstruct...
4:22
Speaker 1: which is basically that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate and
4:26
Speaker 1: unconstitutional because House Democrats haven't taken a formal vote to
4:30
Speaker 1: launch the inquiry. And, you know, there's a whole bunch
4:33
Speaker 1: of complaints about they haven't provided the president enough due process.
4:36
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting to me as a matter of political strategy,
4:39
Speaker 2: because they're saying this impeachment doesn't exist. This impeachment is unconstitutional,
4:46
Speaker 2: which is amazing because impeachment's literally in the Constitution.
4:49
Speaker 3: Article 1, I think.
4:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right there. Weirdly, it's the same word even
4:53
Speaker 2: after all this time. So it's obviously an out there argument.
4:58
Speaker 2: But to specifically say this impeachment isn't real unless you
5:02
Speaker 2: do X. And then X is a totally doable thing.
5:07
Speaker 2: I mean, like Nancy Pelosi could hold a vote in
5:11
Speaker 2: the House and all the Democrats could vote unanimously for impeachment.
5:14
Speaker 1: Right.
5:14
Speaker 2: And plus Justin Amash.
5:16
Speaker 3: Right.
5:16
Speaker 2: Or whoever. And even, you know, even if they needed
5:18
Speaker 2: a few Democrats to vote no or vote absent or
5:21
Speaker 2: be washing their hair that day or something, they could
5:23
Speaker 2: still afford to do it because they have plenty of
5:26
Speaker 2: Democrats on the record in favor of impeachment. So I
5:28
Speaker 2: don't think Pelosi should do it because I don't think
5:30
Speaker 2: she should let Trump dictate what she does. But if
5:32
Speaker 2: that's the threshold, that's the only thing that would make
5:36
Speaker 2: this a real impeachment, okay, they could have that tomorrow.
5:40
Speaker 2: It seems like an odd thing for them to set
5:42
Speaker 2: as the predicate.
5:43
Speaker 1: Super odd. I mean, do we think that, it's interesting
5:46
Speaker 1: that your explanation is that Pelosi shouldn't let Trump dictate
5:50
Speaker 1: what she does. I think it's a good point. I
5:52
Speaker 1: wonder if they should do it, just to call their bluff.
5:55
Speaker 1: I guess I'm wondering that, and I'm also wondering why
5:58
Speaker 1: Pelosi hasn't done it so far yet. To me, it
6:01
Speaker 1: might be because there's a couple members still on the fence.
6:04
Speaker 1: What do you think about it?
6:06
Speaker 3: It's interesting.
6:06
Speaker 4: I think there's two things. One, with every passing day,
6:11
Speaker 4: impeachment votes get easier for Democrats and harder for Republicans.
6:14
Speaker 4: And I don't think that's lost on anyone making this argument.
6:18
Speaker 4: The second piece of this is you're starting to see
6:20
Speaker 4: rumblings of demands that Republicans get subpoena.
6:25
Speaker 3: Power as part of this. I'm just like, And I'm sorry.
6:29
Speaker 2: Why?
6:29
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
6:30
Speaker 4: But until you have proven yourselves responsible enough for subpoena power.
6:35
Speaker 1: Because last time you had it, it didn't go so well.
6:36
Speaker 4: Last time you promised you would not eat that ice
6:40
Speaker 4: cream sandwich until after dinner, and it was gone.
6:45
Speaker 3: So, you know, it's funny. We'll talk about it as well.
6:48
Speaker 4: But, you know, Lindsey Graham suggesting Rudy come to the Senate,
6:53
Speaker 4: Trump calling for this vote in the House.
6:55
Speaker 2: I find myself thinking.
6:56
Speaker 3: I don't see.
6:57
Speaker 4: What the problem is, but I'm not evil, so I'm
6:59
Speaker 4: not able to totally wrap my head around all the possibilities.
7:03
Speaker 2: I also think that Nancy Pelosi has a really good
7:05
Speaker 2: read on how to play Trump. I mean, I don't
7:08
Speaker 2: think she does everything right, and I don't think that
7:11
Speaker 2: she's a master of the house in a way that
7:13
Speaker 2: is too hard for us to understand, but I do
7:15
Speaker 2: often feel like she knows how to get his goat,
7:18
Speaker 2: and she knows what not to rise to. And so
7:22
Speaker 2: her not wanting to take this vote is obviously within
7:25
Speaker 2: her power. I mean, the House gets to decide its
7:28
Speaker 2: own rules. And if their rules are it's an impeachment,
7:31
Speaker 2: when we say it's an impeachment and it's not dependent
7:33
Speaker 2: on whether we take a whole vote, then that's within
7:35
Speaker 2: her power. But I guess that's why, to me, the
7:39
Speaker 2: more interesting thing is not what Pelosi is doing, but
7:42
Speaker 2: why this crazy letter from Pat Cipollone set that as
7:45
Speaker 2: such an important threshold as if that is something that
7:47
Speaker 2: could never happen. Yeah.
7:48
Speaker 5: I mean, I read this this letter as just a
7:51
Speaker 5: flailing political statement. And I don't think that the White
7:54
Speaker 5: House counsel's office touches thing. I think dime store Peggy Noonan,
7:57
Speaker 5: Stephen Miller probably wrote this crazy bullshit because that that's
8:01
Speaker 5: what they do with that.
8:02
Speaker 3: Guy on the facts.
8:03
Speaker 5: Like, first of all, Marco Rubio's former counsel that, you know,
8:06
Speaker 5: Paragon of Virtue said the letter was a direct assault
8:09
Speaker 5: on the very legitimacy of Congress's oversight power. So that's
8:12
Speaker 5: what Republicans think about this letter. But regarding their specific concerns,
8:16
Speaker 5: like one, I believe the vote during Nixon's impeachment came
8:20
Speaker 5: months and months from now.
8:22
Speaker 2: Right.
8:22
Speaker 5: So like the argument that this needs to happen first
8:24
Speaker 5: before they're gathering the facts. I mean, what the House
8:26
Speaker 5: is doing is preparing an indictment and then the trial
8:29
Speaker 5: will be in the Senate. The idea that, you know,
8:31
Speaker 5: that they need to vote immediately is ridiculous. And also
8:34
Speaker 5: this subpoena power issue is a bit of a red
8:36
Speaker 5: herring because my understanding is in previous instances, Yes, you
8:40
Speaker 5: can give the minority party subpoena power, but the full
8:42
Speaker 5: committee then votes on it. So the majority has a
8:45
Speaker 5: de facto veto on minority party subpoenas anyway. So it's like, sure.
8:50
Speaker 5: Like you were saying earlier, set up these very easy
8:53
Speaker 5: to meet standards for the Democrats that we can either
8:57
Speaker 5: match or not. But I do think you're right that
8:59
Speaker 5: ultimately Pelosi should dictate. this based on her own political
9:02
Speaker 5: instincts and not based on whatever Trump is doing.
9:04
Speaker 2: She's the highest authority that gets to decide what happens here,
9:07
Speaker 2: no matter what the White House counsel does.
9:09
Speaker 1: So the White House sort of gave up the game
9:11
Speaker 1: on this because they held a briefing with reporters after
9:13
Speaker 1: this letter came out. And one reporter's like, okay, well,
9:17
Speaker 1: what would it take for the White House to change
9:19
Speaker 1: its mind and actually cooperate? And the senior administration official said,
9:24
Speaker 1: a full halt to all subpoenas, requests for testimony, for documents,
9:30
Speaker 1: everything else. So it's like basically they're saying their condition
9:33
Speaker 1: for cooperating in an impeachment inquiry is to end the
9:35
Speaker 1: impeachment inquiry.
9:37
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
9:40
Speaker 1: So I guess, why do we think that Trump chose
9:44
Speaker 1: this strategy of obstructing Congress? Like what is the political
9:48
Speaker 1: strategy behind the White House's decision to say we are
9:51
Speaker 1: going to war, we're going to pretend this is unconstitutional
9:54
Speaker 1: and we're just going to fight everything.
9:55
Speaker 5: Fucking guilty well yeah we read the transcript he did
9:59
Speaker 5: it he might as well there might be well be
10:00
Speaker 5: video of him shooting someone for all we have i
10:02
Speaker 5: think i think.
10:03
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be more complicated than what we
10:06
Speaker 4: know plus what we don't is far worse than what
10:09
Speaker 4: we know plus blocking the investigation yeah right.
10:12
Speaker 1: They think that going down for obstruction is, well, then
10:16
Speaker 1: it's just another process crime. We can get past that.
10:18
Speaker 1: And what they're most afraid of is the truth coming out.
10:21
Speaker 2: Well, but the process crime here, however that gets adjudicated,
10:25
Speaker 2: even if they left all the obstruction out, the crime
10:29
Speaker 2: of contacting another government and asking for help against a
10:33
Speaker 2: political opponent, done and dusted. You know, they're not going
10:36
Speaker 2: to get out. That's already done, already confessed to. They
10:39
Speaker 2: gave us the evidence. It's done. President Trump then did
10:40
Speaker 2: it again on TV in case we missed it the
10:43
Speaker 2: first time. So that part, the idea that they're trying
10:46
Speaker 2: to constrain this so that he only gets done for
10:50
Speaker 2: obstruction and not for some other thing, or that they're
10:52
Speaker 2: trying to fight that one article of impeachment because that
10:55
Speaker 2: one worries them more than the other one that's a
10:57
Speaker 2: sure bet. I mean, dude, it's a sure bet. I
11:00
Speaker 2: don't think there is any strategy here. I think this
11:02
Speaker 2: is whack-a-mole. I think this is like, ah, stop, ah, stop, ah.
11:06
Speaker 4: We were talking while watching a program we love called
11:09
Speaker 4: The Rachel Maddow Show for this very recording. And we
11:15
Speaker 4: were noting that, okay, now this story breaks that it
11:18
Speaker 4: looks like Tillerson may have been asked by Trump to
11:22
Speaker 4: call DOJ to intercede in a specific investigation, an investigation
11:26
Speaker 4: he personally cares virtually nothing about, maybe. All of it
11:30
Speaker 4: boiling down to if this is what he's doing, on
11:34
Speaker 4: a semi-regular basis, think about all the calls, all the interventions,
11:39
Speaker 4: all the illegal ruminating and questions and wondering if you
11:43
Speaker 4: could get away with things that could pile up if
11:46
Speaker 4: the dam were to ever truly burst.
11:48
Speaker 1: I was saying, because of the story, whether Trump did
11:50
Speaker 1: this at Rudy's behest or he did it for Erdogan,
11:55
Speaker 1: what does Trump give a shit about this guy for?
11:58
Speaker 1: Trump only gives a shit about himself. He does everything
12:00
Speaker 1: out of his own personal self-interest. So if he's that
12:03
Speaker 1: worried about getting off some guy who, you know, was
12:07
Speaker 1: laundering money with the Iranians, like, what else is he doing?
12:10
Speaker 2: For stuff that actually means something to him, imagine the
12:13
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that he has been pulling.
12:14
Speaker 5: Hey, Rex, right now you're known as the Secretary of
12:18
Speaker 5: State who got fired while on the toilet. Why don't
12:21
Speaker 5: you go out being known as the only guy who
12:24
Speaker 5: left this White House and told the truth?
12:25
Speaker 2: Well, this is an interesting part of this because part
12:28
Speaker 2: of what- That's my speech.
12:31
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
12:31
Speaker 4: I just have to say, I am sick of this
12:33
Speaker 4: shaming of Rex Tillerson for the crime of doing what
12:37
Speaker 4: we all do. It's not his fault John Kelly called
12:41
Speaker 4: him while he was on the John.
12:42
Speaker 1: All right?
12:43
Speaker 4: That's not- Why is Rex- Why is that embarrassing? Every
12:46
Speaker 4: single person in this room poops.
12:49
Speaker 3: Sorry, Rachel. Two bold stands in this section of the conversation.
12:53
Speaker 2: I'm going to not come down between you on this
12:55
Speaker 2: one just because it may implicate me in future crimes.
12:58
Speaker 2: I just I think one of the things that's really
13:01
Speaker 2: interesting about this Rex Tillerson story coming out right now
13:04
Speaker 2: is that it happened in 2017. Yeah. And it happened
13:07
Speaker 2: to Rex in front of three other people. And then
13:11
Speaker 2: it happened to John Kelly. Like he was in. Like
13:14
Speaker 2: Tillerson took this to John Kelly, according to Bloomberg News,
13:17
Speaker 2: and said, hey, the president just asked me to do
13:19
Speaker 2: something illegal. And the illegal thing he asked me to do,
13:22
Speaker 2: which is a crime, in case you don't know what
13:24
Speaker 2: illegal means, I'm not going to do that crime.
13:26
Speaker 3: OK, John?
13:27
Speaker 2: And so that's a couple of years ago now. It's
13:30
Speaker 2: just come out. Why has that come out now? Presumably
13:33
Speaker 2: because in the impeachment inquiry, we're starting to shake loose
13:37
Speaker 2: information about the president's behavior. That Friday night, late night
13:40
Speaker 2: Washington Post story with all of those quotes is about
13:43
Speaker 2: the president on the phone with foreign leaders, including him
13:47
Speaker 2: telling Theresa May that Russia wasn't behind the Skripal's attempted assassination.
13:51
Speaker 3: Crazy. Completely crazy.
13:53
Speaker 2: All of this crazy stuff. Why is that coming out now?
13:55
Speaker 2: It's coming out now because witnesses are coming forward, transcripts
13:58
Speaker 2: are being released, depositions are being taken, the president's behavior
14:01
Speaker 2: is being described, and it is shaking either the conscience
14:04
Speaker 2: or the self-preservation instincts of people who know stuff.
14:07
Speaker 1: Well, this is why I think this thing could be
14:11
Speaker 1: bigger than I even imagined, right? Because I thought, you know,
14:14
Speaker 1: if we ever do get around to impeaching him, the
14:16
Speaker 1: Republicans in the Senate are going to protect him no
14:17
Speaker 1: matter what, or it's going to happen before the year
14:21
Speaker 1: is over. And then by, you know, June of 2020,
14:24
Speaker 1: we're all going to have forgotten about the impeachment thing, right?
14:27
Speaker 1: But if it was just Ukraine and they rushed a
14:30
Speaker 1: really quick vote on it, and that was that, that'd
14:33
Speaker 1: be one thing. And they tried to obstruct everything else.
14:35
Speaker 1: But Hearing about this Bloomberg story about Tillerson and all
14:39
Speaker 1: the other stuff that's coming out, if this plays out
14:42
Speaker 1: so that all of these people keep coming forward and
14:44
Speaker 1: there are new stories and new developments over and over
14:47
Speaker 1: again for the next couple months, I think it really
14:50
Speaker 1: could build to something very, very bad.
14:52
Speaker 2: Why do we know?
14:53
Speaker 1: I would call it good.
14:55
Speaker 2: We just found out about the fact that they move.
14:59
Speaker 2: We just found out from the whistleblower. that they move
15:01
Speaker 2: the records of his problematic foreign leader calls into the
15:05
Speaker 2: standalone covert action server. And then immediately we started getting
15:09
Speaker 2: all this information about what's on all those calls. Like,
15:12
Speaker 2: I would like to visit that vault.
15:14
Speaker 5: It's not great when you fire someone like Rex Tillerson
15:16
Speaker 5: and you humiliate him. Or Rick Perry just happens to
15:20
Speaker 5: leave the administration after we all just read a transcript
15:23
Speaker 5: where the president commits a crime by trading foreign assistance
15:26
Speaker 5: for dirt on his political rival. And then Trump immediately
15:29
Speaker 5: blames Rick Perry. Like these are not people who are
15:31
Speaker 5: going to go to the mattresses for you and not
15:33
Speaker 5: tell their stories if they're called in an impeachment agreement.
15:36
Speaker 3: Rachel, are you surprised? I'm surprised.
15:39
Speaker 4: We talked a lot about what impeachment might unlock. That
15:42
Speaker 4: was our kind of argument, right? If we do this,
15:44
Speaker 4: if we pursue this impeachment, it'll give more power to
15:47
Speaker 4: Congress and we'll be able to get more out of
15:50
Speaker 4: the administration. But I did not believe it would be
15:53
Speaker 4: this transformative. Have you been surprised by just how much
15:56
Speaker 4: has shaken loose in just roughly what, two and a half,
15:58
Speaker 4: three weeks?
15:59
Speaker 1: Yes.
15:59
Speaker 2: The pace of it is remarkable. And because we're getting
16:03
Speaker 2: all this information about stuff that happened previously, it does
16:05
Speaker 2: sort of make you feel like it was like swelling
16:08
Speaker 2: and ready to burst. And then somebody finally took the
16:11
Speaker 2: first pinprick there and it's all starting to come. And
16:15
Speaker 2: so I don't know, again, like I don't know how
16:17
Speaker 2: many stories there are like this with Rex Tillerson, but
16:19
Speaker 2: I do know that Rex Tillerson in December told Bob
16:22
Speaker 2: Schieffer that that it was multiple times that the president
16:24
Speaker 2: had asked him to do something illegal. I don't know
16:27
Speaker 2: if this is one of those, if there's others. I
16:30
Speaker 2: don't know how much Rex Tillerson is talking. I don't
16:32
Speaker 2: know how much Brooke Perry is going to talk once
16:34
Speaker 2: he leaves. I don't know how much jeopardy other former
16:37
Speaker 2: Trump administration officials, including cabinet officials, feel like they might
16:41
Speaker 2: be in from this process. I mean, see, that's why
16:43
Speaker 2: I think the Pompeo thing and the Barr thing are
16:45
Speaker 2: both really interesting. Because one thing to talk about their
16:48
Speaker 2: bad acts and to see them Defending the president. I
16:51
Speaker 2: mean to see Pompeo talking about the Kurds like they
16:53
Speaker 2: don't deserve our alliance anymore I mean, it's just it's
16:56
Speaker 2: a it's incredible but do they fear for themselves in
17:00
Speaker 2: terms of potential prosecution or impeachment or some other sort
17:04
Speaker 2: of you know shaming or Contra or consequence that might
17:08
Speaker 2: motivate their own behavior other than just needing to be
17:11
Speaker 2: able to look at themselves in the mirror and that's
17:13
Speaker 2: an empirical question that I don't I mean I don't
17:15
Speaker 2: know what the Democrats are gonna do on cabinet officials.
17:17
Speaker 4: It's interesting with Pompeo specifically Forget, you know, the high
17:20
Speaker 4: threshold of worrying about his, you know, criminal liability. He
17:23
Speaker 4: seemed to be always someone like a Nikki Haley who
17:26
Speaker 4: believed he could escape with his credibility intact. And it
17:30
Speaker 4: seems as though he's, I don't know if he's let
17:32
Speaker 4: go of that dream or if he is unaware that
17:35
Speaker 4: that dream is slowly slipping through his fingers.
17:37
Speaker 2: Pompeo thinks he's going to be president. Yeah.
17:40
Speaker 1: And I guess that's why he wants to keep the
17:42
Speaker 1: Trump base on his side.
17:43
Speaker 5: To quote George H.W. Bush, Pompeo was the benefit of
17:48
Speaker 5: the soft bigotry of low expectations. He was the only
17:51
Speaker 5: person who could speak in complete sentences on a Sunday
17:53
Speaker 5: show and was not seen as a crazy ideologue like
17:56
Speaker 5: John Bolton. But then Pompeo's problem now is when you
18:00
Speaker 5: learn that Gordon Sondland is the one negotiating with Ukraine
18:04
Speaker 5: and you dig into that for 30 seconds and you
18:06
Speaker 5: realize that he only got that job, the U.S. ambassador
18:09
Speaker 5: to the European Union, because he cut a million-dollar check
18:11
Speaker 5: to Donald Trump's inauguration using four anonymous LLCs, you start
18:15
Speaker 5: to wonder. And then you do some Googling, and you
18:17
Speaker 5: realize that Ukraine is not in the EU. So why
18:20
Speaker 5: is this fucking guy banging around, negotiating, like, military aid
18:25
Speaker 5: to them, right? So, like, Pompeo's got to worry about
18:28
Speaker 5: the incompetence of the layer right below him.
18:31
Speaker 1: I also think the Democrats should rope in Bill Barr
18:35
Speaker 1: into these impeachment proceedings and possibly impeach him as well because...
18:40
Speaker 1: What Bill Barr is doing, flying around the world, meeting
18:44
Speaker 1: with all kinds of foreign officials to basically prove a
18:49
Speaker 1: bunch of right-wing conspiracy theories by also investigating our own
18:53
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies, our own law enforcement, just so he can
18:56
Speaker 1: basically backtrack to try to prove this conspiracy theory or
18:59
Speaker 1: multiple conspiracy theories is crazy and people should I just
19:03
Speaker 1: feel like we need the truth about that. You know,
19:05
Speaker 1: like people should know what the attorney general should do.
19:07
Speaker 2: That's an independent investigation. John Durham is a respected prosecutor
19:13
Speaker 2: who would never allow for any political pressure.
19:16
Speaker 1: Well, I also worry about criminal referrals coming from that, too.
19:19
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, we can say that he's running
19:21
Speaker 1: around doing is like Carmen Sandiego investigation. There's going all
19:25
Speaker 1: around the world. But. You know, when they come out
19:26
Speaker 1: with criminal referrals at the end, in the middle of
19:29
Speaker 1: an election, it's going to be very ugly.
19:30
Speaker 2: Using the Justice Department for stuff like that is the end.
19:33
Speaker 2: That's right. And we're getting there.
19:35
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, we already know that when the whistleblower's complaint
19:41
Speaker 4: ends up at DOJ, they're like.
19:44
Speaker 3: No, we're good. Stuff it in a bag. No, we're good.
19:46
Speaker 5: Did anyone watch the 51-minute Glenn Beck video? that Trump's
19:51
Speaker 5: campaign manager tweeted out that sort of gets at the
19:53
Speaker 5: root of what they think the conspiracy is?
19:54
Speaker 1: The one that says a DNC consultant is the one
19:57
Speaker 1: who basically hatched the whole Russia conspiracy?
19:59
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had a lot of free time on Saturday.
20:03
Speaker 1: It is.
20:04
Speaker 5: Glenn Beck looks like a coked up Colonel Sanders, and
20:07
Speaker 5: he needs not one, but two gigantic chalkboards.
20:12
Speaker 3: To walk you through this.
20:13
Speaker 5: And he's like grabbing photos of faces and bringing them
20:16
Speaker 5: from one chalkboard to another and slapping them down. It's
20:19
Speaker 5: kind of worth five minutes of your time.
20:21
Speaker 2: I love Glenn Beck. I have always loved Glenn Beck.
20:25
Speaker 3: It's theater.
20:26
Speaker 1: I didn't know he's back into the game.
20:28
Speaker 2: The thing that I'm mesmerized by here is like, I
20:30
Speaker 2: could get 51 minutes of Glenn Beck.
20:32
Speaker 3: 51 minutes.
20:33
Speaker 5: Well, the thing to know about Glenn is when he
20:35
Speaker 5: was trying to be the principal conservative, he had to
20:36
Speaker 5: fire like a fifth of his staff at the Blaze.
20:39
Speaker 3: So now he's MAGA.
20:41
Speaker 2: But is the idea, either Mr. Beck or the implication of,
20:45
Speaker 2: was it Parscale who tweeted it? And do we think
20:48
Speaker 2: what Barr and Durham is doing is not just trying
20:52
Speaker 2: to rope Ukraine into some sort of blame for 2016
20:56
Speaker 2: election interference. Specifically, aren't they trying to make it so
20:59
Speaker 2: that Russia didn't do it? Yeah. So that the Kremlin
21:02
Speaker 2: didn't run an op on our 2016 election. The IRA,
21:07
Speaker 2: the Internet Research Agency, that didn't happen. The DNC hack.
21:11
Speaker 2: Was not them and they were blamed by somebody with
21:13
Speaker 2: a grudge against them.
21:14
Speaker 1: No, they were framed by the barely stable country they invaded, Ukraine.
21:19
Speaker 2: Right.
21:19
Speaker 1: That's the belief.
21:20
Speaker 3: And a DNC staffer.
21:21
Speaker 1: Yeah.
21:21
Speaker 3: One person.
21:22
Speaker 1: That Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC were somehow working
21:26
Speaker 1: with Ukraine during the 2016 election to first screw over Manafort. who,
21:32
Speaker 1: of course, is a criminal.
21:33
Speaker 3: They said they set him up and then installed him. Right, yeah, exactly.
21:35
Speaker 1: So they exposed Paul Manafort's crimes, which I guess is
21:38
Speaker 1: a problem.
21:38
Speaker 2: Which they created.
21:39
Speaker 1: Which they created, yeah. And I don't know where it
21:42
Speaker 1: actually goes from there.
21:43
Speaker 2: No, what it goes to is that they stole their
21:45
Speaker 2: own documents and used them to sabotage Hillary Clinton's nominating
21:50
Speaker 2: convention and her campaign in order to make Russia look
21:55
Speaker 2: bad enough So that Trump would be elected and Russia
21:59
Speaker 2: would look bad.
22:00
Speaker 1: Right, exactly.
22:01
Speaker 2: That's the outcome.
22:02
Speaker 1: Trump winning just ruins all these conspiracy theories. Like all
22:06
Speaker 1: these people had all this stuff. They were trying to
22:07
Speaker 1: take down Trump, but they all decided to be very
22:09
Speaker 1: quiet until the day.
22:09
Speaker 4: After the election.
22:10
Speaker 3: We only knew about the one investigation. And it was
22:13
Speaker 3: the one unto Hillary Clinton.
22:14
Speaker 4: They are very, very, the deep state is phenomenally bad
22:19
Speaker 4: at making Hillary Clinton president.
22:21
Speaker 7: As evidenced.
22:22
Speaker 3: They are. By our nightmare.
22:24
Speaker 1: By our current timeline.
22:25
Speaker 2: But is this part of the thesis that Hillary was
22:29
Speaker 2: orchestrating a campaign that would result on purpose in her losing?
22:35
Speaker 2: Because that is the real knife in the back to the.
22:39
Speaker 1: That is... Some of the conspiracies are that. The more...
22:43
Speaker 1: The lower level conspiracies are just, you know, yeah, Russia
22:48
Speaker 1: meddled in the election and maybe the Trump campaign encouraged
22:51
Speaker 1: it and welcomed it, but... The Democrats were working with Ukraine, too.
22:53
Speaker 1: There was a little meddling there. It's back to the like, yeah,
22:56
Speaker 1: you know we're corrupt, but you're corrupt, too.
22:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:58
Speaker 1: And everyone's the same. And that's what they're really, that's
23:00
Speaker 1: all they need.
23:01
Speaker 2: Which is like trademark Putin, right?
23:03
Speaker 1: Exactly.
23:03
Speaker 2: Like the world is corrupt.
23:04
Speaker 3: We're not corrupt. That's absolutely right.
23:15
Speaker 1: So Lindsey Graham said he wants Rudy to testify before
23:18
Speaker 1: the Senate Judiciary Committee and that he plans to ask
23:20
Speaker 1: his Republican Senate colleagues to sign a letter stating that
23:22
Speaker 1: they don't believe the transcript of the phone call constitutes
23:25
Speaker 1: an impeachable offense. What is Lindsey Graham up to here?
23:29
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I don't think he's getting
23:31
Speaker 1: a ton of signatures on that letter because there's just
23:33
Speaker 1: a prizing number of Republican senators who are saying nothing
23:36
Speaker 1: right now, which is probably a bad sign for Donald Trump,
23:39
Speaker 1: or at least not a great sign. But the Rudy
23:42
Speaker 1: thing makes me think, They are gearing up to try
23:45
Speaker 1: to put on a show that is very loud and confusing,
23:49
Speaker 1: and they're trying to drag everyone into process arguments just to,
23:53
Speaker 1: you know.
23:54
Speaker 3: Here's my question.
23:55
Speaker 4: Is there something I don't understand about Rudy Giuliani and
23:59
Speaker 4: Lindsey Graham that anyone could come to the conclusion that
24:02
Speaker 4: an open hearing with Rudy Giuliani in which Democrats will
24:05
Speaker 4: have time to ask him questions will redound to the
24:07
Speaker 4: benefit of anyone associated or affiliated with Rudy Giuliani?
24:12
Speaker 3: Am I missing something? Am I crazy?
24:14
Speaker 1: I would have said that about the Corey Lewandowski hearing,
24:17
Speaker 1: you know, and then, you know, somehow that went off
24:19
Speaker 1: the rails.
24:20
Speaker 4: But even that, even that, you know, yeah, it was
24:22
Speaker 4: a it was a it was a big mess. But
24:25
Speaker 4: first of all, I would say this. I think Corey
24:28
Speaker 4: Lewandowski is still a better witness than Rudy Giuliani. And
24:31
Speaker 4: there were still 30 tough minutes with the staff attorney,
24:33
Speaker 4: which Corey Lewandowski confirmed a bunch of shit that ended
24:37
Speaker 4: up being a big part of the stories that followed.
24:39
Speaker 4: I guess, is there any way that Rudy Giuliani testifying
24:42
Speaker 4: before the Senate could be scoped to prevent Democrats from
24:46
Speaker 4: asking questions that would reveal the inner workings of Rudy
24:49
Speaker 4: Giuliani's mind?
24:51
Speaker 3: You've met Senate Democrats, right?
24:52
Speaker 1: I mean, Kamala Harris would crush it.
24:56
Speaker 3: We got some great ones, but we got some not
24:58
Speaker 3: so great ones.
24:59
Speaker 2: Well, that's Congress.
25:00
Speaker 4: Listen, you go to impeachment with the Congress you have.
25:05
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that clearly they are trying to
25:08
Speaker 2: put on a show, a Rudy Giuliani show. I mean,
25:11
Speaker 2: there's a reason Giuliani goes on TV all the time.
25:13
Speaker 2: It's not because he's great on TV. It's because Rudy
25:15
Speaker 2: Giuliani on TV is a spectacle that makes it seem
25:19
Speaker 2: like something crazy is happening and I can't possibly understand
25:22
Speaker 2: this anymore.
25:22
Speaker 1: Look at that guy.
25:23
Speaker 2: I mean, that chaos itself is enough, just that kinetic chaos. nonsense.
25:29
Speaker 2: But in terms of asking Republican senators to agree in
25:33
Speaker 2: writing and pledge the way they will vote before the trial,
25:38
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a, I mean, it's, for one thing,
25:41
Speaker 2: the problem with Lindsey Graham doing that is it gives
25:44
Speaker 2: Republican senators, it gives away their best way to avoid
25:49
Speaker 2: commenting on this, right? I think we've had one or
25:51
Speaker 2: two senators already say, listen, if this comes to the Senate,
25:55
Speaker 2: I will effectively be a juror. in this case. And
25:57
Speaker 2: so I don't want to say anything that might prejudge
25:59
Speaker 2: the evidence.
26:00
Speaker 1: Susan Collins, Mike Enzi just said that.
26:02
Speaker 2: They can all say that unless Lindsey Graham tells them
26:05
Speaker 2: all to sign a pledge saying, I.
26:06
Speaker 3: Quit no matter what it is.
26:07
Speaker 4: I like Marco Rubio's like, are we signing it, guys?
26:12
Speaker 3: No, we're not. I wouldn't sign it.
26:13
Speaker 4: Obviously, I'm a juror.
26:14
Speaker 3: I know, I know. I'm not going to sign, but
26:15
Speaker 3: we're not. Okay.
26:18
Speaker 2: Is Rubio's line still that he doesn't think the president
26:22
Speaker 2: really asked a foreign country for help with Biden.
26:25
Speaker 1: He thinks it's a joke.
26:26
Speaker 2: He thinks it's a joke.
26:27
Speaker 3: Certainly the China piece, he said he thought it was.
26:29
Speaker 2: So what CNN reported that actually one of the things
26:31
Speaker 2: in the vault is that Trump didn't just do this
26:34
Speaker 2: on the South Lawn. He did it in private in
26:37
Speaker 2: a conversation with President Xi.
26:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.
26:38
Speaker 2: Doesn't that take away that it was a joke?
26:40
Speaker 1: No, not even that report. The next day, Trump tweeted...
26:45
Speaker 1: I asked China to investigate not because of politics, but
26:48
Speaker 1: because of corruption. So he's like, hey, Marco, in case
26:51
Speaker 1: you were mistaken, I was not kidding.
26:53
Speaker 4: I feel as though none of you are familiar enough
26:56
Speaker 4: with the avant-garde stylings of Andy Kaufman. This is a
27:02
Speaker 4: long-term kind of piece.
27:05
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a bit. Okay, all right.
27:11
Speaker 1: What are the Democrats' options now that the White House is...
27:14
Speaker 1: all in on obstructing everything in Congress? What are the
27:17
Speaker 1: legal options? And then what is a good political strategy?
27:20
Speaker 1: Can they make the impeachment hearings successful with the Trump
27:25
Speaker 1: administration completely obstructing Congress?
27:28
Speaker 2: What are their options? One option they have is that
27:32
Speaker 2: they could just impeach him.
27:35
Speaker 3: Just call it a day. Just call it a day.
27:36
Speaker 2: I mean, you don't, yes, the obstruction stuff should arguably
27:39
Speaker 2: be an article of impeachment. It sounds like they're building
27:41
Speaker 2: quite a case there. They're also about to get all
27:44
Speaker 2: of the or a bunch of the stuff that was
27:46
Speaker 2: collected during the Mueller investigation that goes toward obstruction. You know,
27:49
Speaker 2: things like asking Comey to interfere with the Justice Department
27:53
Speaker 2: on the Flynn investigation. So that that could all be
27:55
Speaker 2: added there. But even if they don't want to touch
27:56
Speaker 2: the obstruction stuff, they could impeach him right away just
28:00
Speaker 2: on the asking for foreign interference stuff. The substantive matter
28:04
Speaker 2: that sparked the proceedings in the first place. They could
28:07
Speaker 2: just do that whenever they want.
28:08
Speaker 6: Yeah.
28:08
Speaker 1: They can go to court.
28:09
Speaker 3: Right.
28:09
Speaker 1: But that's going to take a long time.
28:11
Speaker 2: Go to court to try to compel the subpoenas?
28:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, to compel the subpoenas. I mean, obviously this goes,
28:17
Speaker 1: this would probably end up at the Supreme Court if
28:19
Speaker 1: the White House fought this, if the White House is
28:20
Speaker 1: going to say we're not going to cooperate with anything.
28:23
Speaker 1: And then I guess they could sue to enforce the subpoenas, right?
28:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, the sort of frustrating thing here is,
28:28
Speaker 5: you know, one of the arguments we always heard from
28:29
Speaker 5: people who are pro-impeachment way earlier than now was that
28:32
Speaker 5: impeachment would make winning these court battles easier, faster, would
28:37
Speaker 5: then force them to come forward. And like, I think
28:40
Speaker 5: It was probably always the case that that was not true,
28:42
Speaker 5: especially when Trump is guilty.
28:44
Speaker 3: We've read the thing. We know he's guilty.
28:45
Speaker 5: He's going to fight this thing and make it about
28:47
Speaker 5: process the entire way. So I think that Schiff is
28:50
Speaker 5: just going to proceed with what he has at a
28:54
Speaker 5: normal pace.
28:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was interesting. I saw Schiff did an interview
28:57
Speaker 1: with Greg Sargent the other day, yesterday, I think, and
29:00
Speaker 1: he said that he believes, he's like, look, if the
29:04
Speaker 1: courts know there's going to be a trial in the Senate,
29:06
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine a court in this land... that won't
29:09
Speaker 1: give us the evidence we need to conduct this trial,
29:12
Speaker 1: whether it's from Mueller or whether it's from anywhere else.
29:15
Speaker 1: Schiff seems to think that not only will he get
29:17
Speaker 1: the evidence, but he'll get it in a timely fashion
29:20
Speaker 1: for a Senate impeachment trial.
29:21
Speaker 2: Well, Beryl Howell is forcing that to happen right away
29:23
Speaker 2: with the Mueller stuff now.
29:25
Speaker 3: Right, right.
29:25
Speaker 2: I mean, it's moving.
29:27
Speaker 5: The Constitution says the House shall have the sole power
29:30
Speaker 5: of impeachment and the Senate shall have the sole power
29:32
Speaker 5: to try all impeachments, right? Like it couldn't be more
29:35
Speaker 5: clear that it's a congressional prerogative and that they need
29:38
Speaker 5: to supply this evidence. If your argument is we refuse
29:42
Speaker 5: to give you the information you need to hold impeachment proceedings,
29:47
Speaker 5: I mean, it just, what's the purpose of having impeachment
29:50
Speaker 5: to begin with?
29:51
Speaker 2: I feel like the thing that I'm, that I feel
29:53
Speaker 2: like is potentially on the horizon that I'm really worried
29:55
Speaker 2: about and I don't know what to, how to think
29:57
Speaker 2: about it. is reading that transcript from the Beryl Howell
30:00
Speaker 2: hearing this week, the one where she says, wow, you
30:06
Speaker 2: really are arguing something quite extreme here.
30:08
Speaker 1: You think Watergate was argued wrongly?
30:10
Speaker 2: You're arguing to me that Watergate was wrongly decided, that
30:13
Speaker 2: the material collected in that grand jury investigation shouldn't have
30:18
Speaker 2: been given to the House for the purposes of their impeachment.
30:20
Speaker 3: Eight to zero case, right?
30:21
Speaker 2: Yes. And so to see Howell arguing that, and then
30:24
Speaker 2: the brave Justice Department lawyers saying, yes, your honor, I
30:28
Speaker 2: don't think it's that extreme. Like, it's just very awkward,
30:32
Speaker 2: but it made me start thinking about the prospect that
30:35
Speaker 2: the Justice Department under William Barr, as some of these
30:37
Speaker 2: things do go through court, and there's a bunch of
30:39
Speaker 2: things that are already in court, the Justice Department has
30:41
Speaker 2: been representing the president essentially as his personal lawyer through
30:44
Speaker 2: all of these things. They're taking a side on everything.
30:47
Speaker 2: They're losing all of these cases, and they'll all take
30:49
Speaker 2: a while, but they'll all eventually resolve, and they'll resolve
30:52
Speaker 2: with court orders. And under Bill Barr, do we believe
30:56
Speaker 2: that the Justice Department might not comply with court orders.
31:00
Speaker 2: That's an actual constitutional crisis.
31:06
Speaker 3: Is that true?
31:06
Speaker 4: It's a constitutional crisis if we fail to remove Donald Trump.
31:11
Speaker 3: The reason I think you pursue every legal remedy.
31:13
Speaker 1: You're saying that that constitutional crisis should resolve in favor
31:16
Speaker 1: of impeaching the person that's precipitated the constitutional crisis. Right.
31:21
Speaker 4: It's a constitutional crisis. The constitutional crisis to me doesn't
31:24
Speaker 4: exist when Donald Trump flouts a subpoena. The constitutional crisis
31:29
Speaker 4: exists when Republicans in the Senate refuse to obey their
31:33
Speaker 4: sort of constitutional responsibilities for the sake of party and
31:36
Speaker 4: fail to punish the president for his obvious crimes.
31:39
Speaker 3: That is the crisis.
31:40
Speaker 5: That's not, I mean, the definition of a constitution, I mean,
31:43
Speaker 5: a constitutional crisis would be the courts ruling against Trump
31:47
Speaker 5: and him ignoring the congressional subpoena.
31:49
Speaker 2: Yep.
31:50
Speaker 3: Impeachment is a political decision. I get what you're saying,
31:52
Speaker 3: but it's not the word as defined. This is semantics.
31:55
Speaker 3: Semantics matter.
31:56
Speaker 4: A constitutional crisis is a crisis the Constitution cannot resolve,
31:59
Speaker 4: to me. And to me, a constitutional crisis that will
32:02
Speaker 4: be unresolved if the president is a criminal and it
32:04
Speaker 4: is obvious and he is flouting both the judiciary and
32:06
Speaker 4: the Congress and the Congress won't act because they put
32:09
Speaker 4: party over their prerogatives as representatives of the legislative branch. That,
32:14
Speaker 4: to me, is the ultimate crisis. I think it's very,
32:17
Speaker 4: very bad. It is a crisis if the president refuses
32:20
Speaker 4: to obey court orders. But to me, that is the
32:23
Speaker 4: moment we will have been. That is the Rubicon to me.
32:28
Speaker 2: I think I'm with Tommy on this in that I
32:30
Speaker 2: think that when you have elected officials behaving badly and
32:34
Speaker 2: refusing to acknowledge their responsibilities as patriots and citizens and
32:39
Speaker 2: That's bad, but you solve that by voting them out.
32:41
Speaker 2: And so you still have one other option to play.
32:44
Speaker 2: If the Justice Department itself, which is in charge of
32:47
Speaker 2: enforcing the law and prosecuting crimes, refuses to acknowledge the
32:50
Speaker 2: authority of the United States court system, I honestly don't
32:53
Speaker 2: know what to do. I mean, Congress could impeach Bill
32:55
Speaker 2: Barr there. Congress could impeach the president for overseeing an
33:00
Speaker 2: administration that is behaving this way. And it's really bad
33:03
Speaker 2: if the Republicans decide that's not worth impeaching them on.
33:06
Speaker 2: But there's no fix. There's no way to make the,
33:09
Speaker 2: I mean, the courts don't have an army. The courts
33:11
Speaker 2: don't have any way to get their way other than
33:14
Speaker 2: by having their authority respected.
33:16
Speaker 1: This is like the Andrew Johnson impeachment.
33:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I think we're arguing over the
33:21
Speaker 4: semantics of the phrase constitutional crisis.
33:23
Speaker 3: I agree that it is a terrible, terrible, dangerous thing.
33:26
Speaker 3: We're fucked either way.
33:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, completely fucked.
33:30
Speaker 3: It's not a lot to.
33:31
Speaker 2: Look forward to.
33:32
Speaker 4: To me, the assumption is we knew from the get-go
33:36
Speaker 4: that the courts would not have troops.
33:38
Speaker 3: That is their weakness.
33:39
Speaker 4: That is why Congress has the power of impeachment to
33:42
Speaker 4: enforce what happens in the court. I just think it's
33:44
Speaker 4: baked into the system that we might have an administration
33:46
Speaker 4: that fails to honor what the courts do and may
33:48
Speaker 4: even fail to honor what the the Congress does. And
33:50
Speaker 4: that's why we have this impeachment power to exist for
33:52
Speaker 4: this very moment.
33:53
Speaker 2: I just think that the thing that I worry about
33:55
Speaker 2: the most is the Justice Department. The Justice Department bringing
33:58
Speaker 2: political prosecutions against the president's enemies in order to score
34:02
Speaker 2: political points for the president or to clear his enemies
34:04
Speaker 2: off the board. I worry about the Justice Department kiboshing
34:10
Speaker 2: not only other forms of investigating the president or potential
34:13
Speaker 2: crimes by the president and other people in the administration,
34:15
Speaker 2: but but submarining them so that nobody ever finds out
34:18
Speaker 2: about them. I mean, it is really lucky, basically, that
34:21
Speaker 2: we found out about the whistleblower's complaint about the Ukraine call.
34:24
Speaker 2: It's only because of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community,
34:27
Speaker 2: appointed by Trump, who decided that he was going to
34:29
Speaker 2: do the right thing here despite the fact that he
34:31
Speaker 2: had been completely outmaneuvered. He just bluntly threw himself on
34:34
Speaker 2: it and said, no, I'm bringing this to Congress. I mean,
34:37
Speaker 2: that's the normal thing somebody should do. It counts as
34:41
Speaker 2: heroism in this moment. But had he not done that,
34:44
Speaker 2: we never would have known about the complaint the whistleblower
34:46
Speaker 2: would have been in severe danger.
34:49
Speaker 4: It is a shocking realization, the degree to which we
34:51
Speaker 4: have needed heroic acts to find out.
34:55
Speaker 1: I was going to say, my surprise is, to the
34:58
Speaker 1: point about the Justice Department, is that there haven't been
35:00
Speaker 1: more whistleblowers or people coming forth who are career people
35:03
Speaker 1: at the Justice Department because they have had a rough
35:05
Speaker 1: run between Jeff Sessions and now Bill Barr. And that
35:09
Speaker 1: is my worry, too, because so far we've seen Bill Barr,
35:12
Speaker 1: you know, abuse all kinds of power to protect Donald Trump.
35:14
Speaker 1: but we haven't seen as much of the prosecuting his
35:17
Speaker 1: enemies and going after his enemies.
35:19
Speaker 2: The one who's doing that is Mike Pompeo with reopening
35:21
Speaker 2: the email investigation at the State Department. And that is
35:24
Speaker 2: something that I almost feel like, oh, I want to
35:27
Speaker 2: put that in its own folder and carry that. But
35:30
Speaker 2: that's a really big deal that they're doing that. And
35:33
Speaker 2: the way they are pursuing it, as best as I understand,
35:36
Speaker 2: is that they're basically blackballing all senior State Department officials
35:40
Speaker 2: who had any communications with Hillary Clinton while she was
35:44
Speaker 2: Secretary of State by saying, oh, listen, we've retroactively classified
35:47
Speaker 2: your emails from that time as now looking to us
35:50
Speaker 2: like they're classified and therefore you've got a security ding
35:53
Speaker 2: against you and your record and you can never be
35:55
Speaker 2: employed in the State Department ever again, no matter who's president.
35:58
Speaker 3: It is disgraceful.
35:59
Speaker 5: Like they're retroactively classifying a bunch of emails that maybe
36:03
Speaker 5: could have been classified at the confidential level as a
36:05
Speaker 5: way to punish these people.
36:07
Speaker 3: Meanwhile... Our U.S.
36:08
Speaker 5: Ambassador to the European Union and our like special representative
36:12
Speaker 5: for Ukraine and the ambassador are texting about fucking Trump's
36:17
Speaker 5: phone calls with foreign leaders, military aid to Ukraine, like
36:20
Speaker 5: things the Russians would desperately want to know that should
36:23
Speaker 5: have been classified at a minimum. that business should be
36:25
Speaker 5: conducted on State Department equipment so that there is.
36:28
Speaker 3: Oversight, so that you can FOIA it.
36:30
Speaker 1: You mean not on WhatsApp?
36:31
Speaker 3: Right, not on iMessage, which is like... It was on WhatsApp! Well,
36:35
Speaker 3: at least that's encrypted, but whatever, you know.
36:37
Speaker 1: You're talking about not capturing it, though, for the records.
36:40
Speaker 3: The hypocrisy is stunning.
36:42
Speaker 1: All right, one other piece of news we should mention
36:46
Speaker 1: is Turkey's invasion of northeastern Syria, which began today after
36:48
Speaker 1: Donald Trump made the decision on Sunday... to abandon our
36:51
Speaker 1: Kurdish allies in the region and gave President Erdogan of
36:54
Speaker 1: Turkey the green light. Tommy, I know you guys talked
36:56
Speaker 1: about all this on Pod Save the World, but can
36:58
Speaker 1: you tell us why Trump's decision was so reckless here?
37:01
Speaker 5: I mean, basically what he did is he told President
37:03
Speaker 5: Erdogan that he has the green light to conduct a
37:06
Speaker 5: military operation into northern Syria. And the problem with that
37:11
Speaker 5: is Trump has tried to frame this as, oh, we're
37:13
Speaker 5: handing over the fight against ISIS to the Turks.
37:16
Speaker 3: They own it now. They'll manage it for us. Everything
37:18
Speaker 3: will be fine.
37:19
Speaker 5: When in reality, what Erdogan wants to do is roll
37:22
Speaker 5: in there and clear the Syrian Democratic Forces out of
37:26
Speaker 5: the area. The Syrian Democratic Forces are the folks who
37:29
Speaker 5: have been on the ground doing the really brutal combat
37:32
Speaker 5: against ISIS this whole time. They're the ones who cleared
37:34
Speaker 5: the way, got us to Raqqa. We're fighting house to house.
37:37
Speaker 5: They lost, I think, 11,000 guys.
37:40
Speaker 3: In this fight. Actually, men and women.
37:41
Speaker 5: There are men and women out on the front lines
37:44
Speaker 5: fighting every single day. I think like six Americans were
37:46
Speaker 5: killed during this time. So they've like shouldered the brunt
37:48
Speaker 5: of this. But Erdogan views the Kurds who are part
37:52
Speaker 5: of the SDF as related to the PKK, which is
37:55
Speaker 5: a group within Turkey that's been fighting for an autonomous
37:58
Speaker 5: Kurdistan for a long time. He views them as a
38:00
Speaker 5: terrorist group. So he wants to kill these Kurdish fighters
38:03
Speaker 5: who have been our closest allies, who we've been working
38:05
Speaker 5: hand in glove with over several years to take out ISIS.
38:08
Speaker 5: And so the reports as we were walking in here
38:11
Speaker 5: to record is that the Turks are bombing towns where
38:14
Speaker 5: there are Christians and Kurds and others living there. And
38:18
Speaker 5: are going to start killing these guys.
38:20
Speaker 3: And like.
38:22
Speaker 5: At best, this is going to be ethnic cleansing where
38:25
Speaker 5: they push them into a small part of.
38:29
Speaker 3: Northern Syria. At worst, it could be a massacre.
38:32
Speaker 2: Why do we think that Trump did this? I mean,
38:35
Speaker 2: there's something clearly that every time Trump talks to Erdogan,
38:38
Speaker 2: whatever Erdogan asks Trump for. he gets instantly with Trump
38:42
Speaker 2: not consulting on anybody, consulting with anybody. Obviously the US
38:45
Speaker 2: military would be rabidly against this. I think most other
38:50
Speaker 2: people working in national security, even Trump folks working in
38:53
Speaker 2: national security would be against this. I've never heard anybody
38:57
Speaker 2: argue for this. We should pull out and let Erdogan
39:00
Speaker 2: do what he wants to our allies. So either, what
39:04
Speaker 2: did Erdogan have to say to Trump to get him
39:06
Speaker 2: to agree to this? What does Trump see as being
39:09
Speaker 2: in this for him I mean, as Wendy Sherman was
39:12
Speaker 2: arguing tonight on my show, to the extent that Trump
39:14
Speaker 2: wants to be able to say for political purposes, I'm
39:17
Speaker 2: getting all our boys home. That's not even what this is.
39:19
Speaker 2: So why say yes to this?
39:22
Speaker 3: I cannot fathom an explanation to your point.
39:25
Speaker 2: Right.
39:25
Speaker 5: He's trying to say, oh, I'm bringing these 150 guys
39:28
Speaker 5: home who were there, maybe in the way of Erdogan's operation.
39:32
Speaker 5: They're not going anywhere. They're driving to a different location
39:36
Speaker 5: in Syria, so they're not in the line of fire.
39:37
Speaker 5: They're not coming home.
39:39
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't have an answer. Turkey's a NATO ally.
39:44
Speaker 5: It's the only NATO ally he's nice to, is the
39:46
Speaker 5: one run by this, like, Islamist authoritarian leader.
39:49
Speaker 3: Maybe they get along. I don't get it.
39:51
Speaker 1: It was interesting. I saw I think Newsweek had the
39:53
Speaker 1: NSC official say that Trump got rolled on the phone call,
39:57
Speaker 1: which is, you know, it's sort of a simple explanation
40:00
Speaker 1: and not as nefarious, but one that sort of fits
40:03
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He gets on a call with a world
40:05
Speaker 1: leader about something else, and all of a sudden he
40:07
Speaker 1: asks him for something, and he's like, yeah, sure, that's fine. Great.
40:09
Speaker 1: Let's make a deal. That sounds good.
40:10
Speaker 7: Okay.
40:11
Speaker 1: No, I get to bring my troops home?
40:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, great.
40:13
Speaker 1: That's good politically for me. We should bring troops home.
40:15
Speaker 1: At least I can say that, right?
40:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can see him.
40:17
Speaker 5: Erdogan's a prickly asshole, and I'm sure he got on
40:20
Speaker 5: there and lectured him for 40 minutes and said, we
40:22
Speaker 5: will take the fight to ISIS.
40:23
Speaker 3: We will take this fight over ourselves. You send your
40:25
Speaker 3: guys home. We got this covered. You don't have to
40:26
Speaker 3: spend money. And he's like, sure.
40:28
Speaker 2: But that makes even that makes sense to me as
40:30
Speaker 2: a rational course of events. If the end result is
40:33
Speaker 2: that Trump actually is bringing everybody, all U.S. forces home
40:36
Speaker 2: from Syria and he's not. And the argument that he's
40:39
Speaker 2: having to make now, including on Twitter, is about how
40:42
Speaker 2: the U.S. forces are out of the way and the
40:47
Speaker 2: Kurds didn't help us at Normandy. Yeah. In World War II,
40:50
Speaker 2: and so they're not that good. What are you talking about?
40:53
Speaker 2: I mean, I just, I don't, I feel like this
40:57
Speaker 2: is something where the thing we understand about the president
41:01
Speaker 2: is that he does stuff that's good for him. There's
41:03
Speaker 2: no way in which this looks good for him. And therefore,
41:07
Speaker 2: I believe there's something else going on here that he's
41:09
Speaker 2: been leveraged into. either by Erdogan or by some other
41:13
Speaker 2: force at work that we're not seeing directly. Yeah, I think.
41:16
Speaker 1: Well, we know he has business interests.
41:18
Speaker 4: Well, that's what I was going to say. I mean,
41:19
Speaker 4: this is the great struggle for understanding a congenital liar
41:24
Speaker 4: with multiple different vectors of corruption and influence on him
41:28
Speaker 4: at all times. We don't know if it's his financial interest.
41:31
Speaker 4: We don't know if it's simply him misunderstanding his own interest,
41:35
Speaker 4: being rolled in a call. We don't know if there's
41:37
Speaker 4: not some other.
41:40
Speaker 4: Other form of influence or interest that we don't yet
41:42
Speaker 4: know about. We just, we go into this, the only
41:46
Speaker 4: thing we know for sure is that his explanations will
41:48
Speaker 4: not be true.
41:49
Speaker 5: It's so funny, like, because he's the president of the
41:52
Speaker 5: United States, we are forced to, like, take his statements
41:54
Speaker 5: at face value and evaluate them and try to figure
41:56
Speaker 5: out what he's thinking. A month ago, this dude was
41:59
Speaker 5: drawing with a Sharpie on a fucking weather map to
42:01
Speaker 5: tell us that a hurricane was going someplace we all knew.
42:03
Speaker 5: So it's like, we're already in La La Land with him.
42:06
Speaker 5: The thing that's crazy is there is a massive Republican...
42:10
Speaker 5: backlash to this decision. He's getting criticized in ways he's never,
42:14
Speaker 5: ever criticized. And it's not just that this, he's not
42:17
Speaker 5: stopping the Turks from taking this military operation. He apparently
42:21
Speaker 5: invited Erdogan to the White House on November 13th. So
42:24
Speaker 5: like the fuck you is going to get rubbed in
42:27
Speaker 5: the faces of the Lindsey Grahams of the world all
42:29
Speaker 5: over again with a state visit, not a state visit,
42:31
Speaker 5: but a head of state visit to.
42:33
Speaker 3: The White House.
42:33
Speaker 1: Well, this is what happens with him all the time though, right?
42:35
Speaker 1: Like once he makes the decision and then he gets
42:37
Speaker 1: criticized for it, Now he's set. He's backed into a corner,
42:40
Speaker 1: and now he's.
42:41
Speaker 3: Going to go down. But not on this. He's walked
42:43
Speaker 3: this back, like, three times.
42:44
Speaker 1: But talking about the Normandy thing today and all that, like,
42:47
Speaker 1: he's going to keep fighting for his explanation. He just tweeted, like,
42:52
Speaker 1: you know, he tweeted his video of him talking about
42:54
Speaker 1: it tonight.
42:55
Speaker 3: He said, this is a.
42:55
Speaker 1: Different take from me. Like he's just a pundit talking about.
42:59
Speaker 3: What else you got?
42:59
Speaker 1: Look, I have a different take on this one. I
43:01
Speaker 1: have a different take on this. I gave a green
43:03
Speaker 1: light to.
43:04
Speaker 2: They are walking it back. I mean, remember the last
43:06
Speaker 2: time he talked to Erdogan was when he announced that
43:07
Speaker 2: all U.S. troops are coming out of... That's how we
43:09
Speaker 2: lost Mattis and how we lost Brett McGurk, who was
43:12
Speaker 2: the envoy to the fight against ISIS. And the... I mean,
43:16
Speaker 2: he did change that. Like, there's still U.S. troops in Syria.
43:20
Speaker 2: I mean, part of, I think, what we have to
43:21
Speaker 2: think about tonight is that what the Turks are doing
43:24
Speaker 2: right now with the cooperation of the Russians... is potentially
43:27
Speaker 2: starting an ethnic genocide campaign in that part of the
43:31
Speaker 2: country where there are a lot of people, not just
43:33
Speaker 2: who aren't only important to us because they were our
43:35
Speaker 2: allies and have been for five years against ISIS. That
43:38
Speaker 2: should be important to us even if we freaking hate them.
43:41
Speaker 2: And the small number of U.S. troops who are there
43:44
Speaker 2: right now are themselves in a new kind of danger
43:46
Speaker 2: that they've never been in before in terms of not
43:48
Speaker 2: having the support of the U.S.
43:49
Speaker 3: Government.
43:50
Speaker 2: And also, they're at grave risk from our former allies,
43:53
Speaker 2: who they've been working alongside for five years, having real
43:56
Speaker 2: reason to turn on them if they decide to think
43:58
Speaker 2: about it that way. And so to have U.S. forces there,
44:01
Speaker 2: deeply sympathetic with the Kurds, while the Kurds are being
44:04
Speaker 2: attacked and potentially massacred, them being under rules of engagement
44:07
Speaker 2: that are not supposed to have them fighting in a
44:10
Speaker 2: frontline way, having them newly in danger, having no sense
44:13
Speaker 2: about what's going to happen next. I mean, just the
44:16
Speaker 2: perspective of American soldiers in Syria right now is... almost
44:20
Speaker 2: unfathomably dark. And I don't, I mean, I am conscious
44:25
Speaker 2: of the fact that Russia has wanted U.S. troops out
44:28
Speaker 2: of Syria because it sees Syria as its playground from
44:31
Speaker 2: the very beginning. Turkey and Russia are on different sides
44:33
Speaker 2: of the Syrian civil war, right? They have different interests there.
44:36
Speaker 2: But when Erdogan starts this thing today, he puts out
44:38
Speaker 2: this statement saying, I want to thank Russia for its
44:40
Speaker 2: constructive attitude in this matter. And they're working together on this.
44:44
Speaker 2: That is, that's just, it's bad. It's really bad.
44:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, we really are confronted right now, it's, you know, you,
44:51
Speaker 4: it does become something you're anesthetized to a little bit,
44:54
Speaker 4: but that just put the, you know, there's incredible corruption,
44:57
Speaker 4: there's criminality, but the fundamental unfitness of the man, the
45:02
Speaker 4: kind of brokenness of his ability to reason and process
45:05
Speaker 4: and make decisions in a rational and cogent and thoughtful
45:08
Speaker 4: way with discipline, the absence of that ability is in
45:12
Speaker 4: and of itself a reason he should no longer be president.
45:14
Speaker 4: His behavior itself is an impeachable offense.
45:17
Speaker 1: Well, he pissed off a lot of his jurors with
45:19
Speaker 1: the turkey move as well.
45:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, which might end up mattering.
45:22
Speaker 4: Well, he's going to try to move it to a
45:24
Speaker 4: different venue.
45:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say.
45:28
Speaker 2: We've convened a jury in St. Petersburg.
45:30
Speaker 5: Lindsey Graham's 18 holes away from never knowing who the
45:33
Speaker 5: Kurds were.
45:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sad. All right, let's talk about 2020. We
45:36
Speaker 1: learned today that Facebook has denied Joe Biden's request to
45:39
Speaker 1: remove a false Trump ad from its platform that other
45:41
Speaker 1: media outlets like CNN have already refused to run. Facebook's
45:44
Speaker 1: response to the Biden campaign follows its very recent policy change,
45:47
Speaker 1: which allows politicians to run ads that have been already
45:50
Speaker 1: debunked by independent, nonpartisan fact-checkers, a decision that was also
45:54
Speaker 1: heavily criticized by Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday. Warren also noted
45:57
Speaker 1: that the decision came shortly after Mark Zuckerberg met with
45:59
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and called Warren's campaign an existential threat to Facebook.
46:04
Speaker 1: Just last week, the Trump campaign spent $ 700, 000 in a
46:07
Speaker 1: week on Facebook ads. Fire out spending anyone else on Facebook.
46:12
Speaker 1: Facebook says that their decision is grounded in their fundamental
46:15
Speaker 1: belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and
46:18
Speaker 1: the belief that in mature democracies with a free press,
46:21
Speaker 1: political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is.
46:25
Speaker 1: What do we think about that reasoning from Facebook?
46:29
Speaker 3: I don't think it's good. I don't think it's very smart.
46:33
Speaker 4: You know, you shouldn't propagate misinformation and put lies in
46:42
Speaker 4: front of millions of people to make money.
46:43
Speaker 2: Billions.
46:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they would say, look, and we
46:46
Speaker 1: should say it's not just Facebook that's done this. The
46:48
Speaker 1: ad is on YouTube. It's on Twitter. Fox ran it
46:51
Speaker 1: as well.
46:52
Speaker 2: It's had 5 million views on Facebook already.
46:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's out there. Yeah. And, you know, and
46:58
Speaker 1: Twitter and YouTube are basically saying the same thing. I
47:00
Speaker 1: guess from their perspective, their argument would be, how are
47:04
Speaker 1: we how do we fact check this, right? Like, so,
47:07
Speaker 1: you know, we've had, you know, the Washington Post, right?
47:10
Speaker 1: Glenn Klessler at the Washington Post, the fact checker there.
47:12
Speaker 1: He's given Obama four Pinocchios on stuff, and we've freaked
47:16
Speaker 1: out about it, right? And we've said, that's totally wrong.
47:19
Speaker 1: This is correct. He's, you know, imagine if we had
47:22
Speaker 1: an ad like that, that we put a lot of
47:24
Speaker 1: money behind, and we thought it was right, and we
47:25
Speaker 1: thought the fact check was wrong, and then Facebook took
47:28
Speaker 1: them all down. So I guess that, how do these
47:31
Speaker 1: platforms work? actually conduct fact-checking in a fair way that
47:36
Speaker 1: makes them.
47:36
Speaker 5: Same way every major network does it. Like, figure out
47:39
Speaker 5: a process and stick to it. Like, CNN rejected the ad.
47:42
Speaker 1: CNN clearly did it.
47:42
Speaker 5: Surely they could find the resources to figure this out.
47:45
Speaker 5: And by the way, like, they are just so constipated
47:49
Speaker 5: on all things politics, right? Like, they get beat up
47:52
Speaker 5: by the right, and then they get beat up by
47:53
Speaker 5: the left, and they're terrified of being called partisan. So
47:56
Speaker 5: at the end, what gets sacrificed is accuracy. So my
47:59
Speaker 5: advice to them would be stop running political ads.
48:02
Speaker 7: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
48:02
Speaker 1: It's a drop in the bucket.
48:03
Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
48:04
Speaker 1: It's a drop in the bucket.
48:05
Speaker 2: Exactly.
48:05
Speaker 3: You don't want the headache. Fuck it. Get rid of them.
48:07
Speaker 2: That's exactly it. And I mean, I have this fantasy
48:10
Speaker 2: that there was that that Facebook would recognize that it
48:14
Speaker 2: is powerless before its own failure. that it can't fix
48:18
Speaker 2: this problem. And no matter, even if they did want
48:22
Speaker 2: to try to fix it, they can't get there. They
48:24
Speaker 2: can't think themselves or engineer themselves out of this. And
48:26
Speaker 2: so we'll have a moratorium on all political advertising for
48:30
Speaker 2: a month before the election, right? Even just that. But
48:34
Speaker 2: they should just get rid of it entirely.
48:36
Speaker 5: And like seeing Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister
48:40
Speaker 5: of the UK, waving the white flag on like their
48:43
Speaker 5: ability to adjudicate.
48:44
Speaker 3: Facts and politics is so depressing.
48:45
Speaker 1: By the way, when I saw that, I was like,
48:47
Speaker 1: Nick Clegg, isn't that the name of the former, I
48:50
Speaker 1: didn't know it was the same guy. Now he works
48:52
Speaker 1: for Facebook?
48:52
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait. This is new to me. Nick Clegg
48:54
Speaker 2: works for Facebook?
48:55
Speaker 1: I learned this today too.
48:57
Speaker 2: That's who's arguing that we need to run fake, disproven
49:03
Speaker 2: disinformation because of America? Because free speech? Because we love democracy?
49:11
Speaker 2: And so therefore we need to take money to run
49:14
Speaker 2: this poison that we know is false.
49:15
Speaker 3: It's baffling.
49:16
Speaker 1: I just don't know that they have really learned anything.
49:20
Speaker 3: Lesson.
49:20
Speaker 1: Like, I know they've invested a lot of time and
49:22
Speaker 1: resources and people at what happened in 2016 and their
49:25
Speaker 1: role in 2016. But for Mark Zuckerberg to meet with
49:29
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, change this policy to make an exception for
49:33
Speaker 1: political ads on fact-checking, and then, even though it was
49:36
Speaker 1: leaked audio... talk in his company meeting about like, and
49:39
Speaker 1: I know it was Elizabeth Warren's policy is an existential
49:42
Speaker 1: threat to the company. And I'm going to go to
49:43
Speaker 1: the mat. Like, doesn't he have, doesn't he have a
49:46
Speaker 1: responsibility to be a neutral arbiter at the very least
49:51
Speaker 1: in 2020?
49:52
Speaker 2: Or at least a fake neutral arbiter. Aren't you worried
49:56
Speaker 2: about what you look like right now?
49:58
Speaker 1: Right. That's what I don't understand. Like what Zuckerberg's doing there.
50:01
Speaker 5: I got to say, like, If I ran Facebook and
50:04
Speaker 5: one candidate had said, I'm going to break up Facebook,
50:07
Speaker 5: I would probably view that as an existential change to
50:11
Speaker 5: the company or risk to the company. And I think
50:15
Speaker 5: that he was sort of being honest about what any
50:18
Speaker 5: CEO in that situation would believe.
50:21
Speaker 3: Now, whether it's smart to say.
50:23
Speaker 5: In a meeting with 10 people or an all-hands that's
50:26
Speaker 5: going to get recorded, that's another matter.
50:28
Speaker 2: While also making radical decisions about how you're going to
50:30
Speaker 2: handle political speech affecting that politician.
50:34
Speaker 1: It's not just any company. If he's CEO of some
50:37
Speaker 1: company that Warren says, I'm going to tax a lot
50:40
Speaker 1: or regulate or whatever, that's one thing. But he also
50:42
Speaker 1: has a role, I don't think he has fully, partly
50:45
Speaker 1: he hasn't recognized this because he doesn't think, Facebook is
50:47
Speaker 1: a media company. He thinks it's a technology company, right?
50:49
Speaker 1: Like everyone at Facebook is supposed to say, we're not
50:51
Speaker 1: a media company, no matter what you ask them. They're not,
50:53
Speaker 1: they are a media company, right? And they won't recognize that.
50:56
Speaker 1: So I don't think he fully recognizes his very important
50:59
Speaker 1: role in his company's important role in the 2020 election,
51:02
Speaker 1: no matter what. This is the story for me. That's
51:04
Speaker 1: why you can't be saying things like that about people's platform.
51:06
Speaker 3: This is Facebook. This is what they do.
51:08
Speaker 1: Sorry.
51:09
Speaker 3: It's not our policy. It's not our policy.
51:11
Speaker 4: We'll eventually apologize for it and change our policy and
51:13
Speaker 4: recognize that we're wrong, but we're not there yet. That can, that,
51:16
Speaker 4: There's sort of just this pattern with Facebook again and
51:19
Speaker 4: again and again. They've pursued bigness at all costs without
51:21
Speaker 4: regard for safety, and the bigness itself becomes an excuse.
51:25
Speaker 4: The scale of Facebook itself becomes an excuse for their
51:28
Speaker 4: inability to solve the problems that they created by achieving
51:31
Speaker 4: such scale. I don't, you know, look, don't run political ads,
51:34
Speaker 4: run political ads. To me, before you even get to
51:36
Speaker 4: them being forced to not have them at all, how
51:39
Speaker 4: about you accept that there are gray areas, there's also
51:42
Speaker 4: black and white, You may get them wrong sometimes and
51:44
Speaker 4: face a little blowback, but that doesn't justify allowing your
51:48
Speaker 4: platform to be a vehicle for misinformation and lies and
51:51
Speaker 4: deception that already once changed an American election a few
51:56
Speaker 4: years ago.
51:57
Speaker 2: Do we know what proportion of their ad revenue is
52:01
Speaker 2: political ads? Or do we have a guesstimate?
52:04
Speaker 3: I don't.
52:04
Speaker 5: I don't off the top of my head, but I
52:06
Speaker 5: would suspect it is like a percent of a percent.
52:11
Speaker 1: Yeah.
52:11
Speaker 3: That would be my guess.
52:12
Speaker 1: And so... I don't know.
52:14
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how these things get fixed.
52:15
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is spending a lot. Yeah. I mean,
52:18
Speaker 1: he is their biggest of all the political candidates.
52:20
Speaker 2: But given the market capitalization of Facebook, even if he's
52:23
Speaker 2: going to spend a billion dollars on ads, which he's
52:26
Speaker 2: not going to do, if they were all on Facebook,
52:27
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that would make.
52:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, Facebook made $ 40 billion in 2017.
52:31
Speaker 3: Yeah.
52:33
Speaker 1: So definitely not that much. So literally, if.
52:35
Speaker 2: Trump was going to spend a billion dollars on Facebook ads,
52:37
Speaker 2: it would be a little bit of a rounding error
52:40
Speaker 2: for them.
52:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
52:41
Speaker 2: It just... I mean, I don't know that much about
52:44
Speaker 2: this part of the world, and I don't know that
52:45
Speaker 2: much about the advertising to-ing and fro-ing. I do know
52:49
Speaker 2: that this is not a swap meet in which people
52:52
Speaker 2: are sending this information back and forth amongst themselves with
52:54
Speaker 2: no interface from Facebook. When people want to buy these ads,
52:57
Speaker 2: they send money to Facebook, and Facebook says, thank you,
53:00
Speaker 2: we're going to cash your check. We're going to take
53:01
Speaker 2: that money and thereby allow you to put this thing
53:05
Speaker 2: on our platform. And when they take that gatekeeper role
53:09
Speaker 2: for the purposes of taking money, they then put themselves
53:12
Speaker 2: in the position where they have to have some sort
53:14
Speaker 2: of opinion about what they're doing. You just can't, I
53:17
Speaker 2: don't know.
53:17
Speaker 4: There's just been, it is, responsibility has never been something
53:22
Speaker 4: Facebook has been particularly interested in. At no point in
53:25
Speaker 4: its evolution as a company has it ever been willing
53:27
Speaker 4: to accept the responsibility that it has earned by becoming
53:31
Speaker 4: such an ever-present part of our lives. It's just, we're
53:33
Speaker 4: not a, you know, we're not a media company.
53:35
Speaker 3: We're a platform. Okay. Okay, but look what your platform's doing.
53:39
Speaker 1: The ads don't really matter that much, except for the
53:42
Speaker 1: companies that buy ads on our platform. We believe that
53:46
Speaker 1: advertising works because it's our entire business model. But political
53:49
Speaker 1: advertising doesn't really have that much of an effect.
53:50
Speaker 5: It's the greatest advertising tool in the history of mankind.
53:53
Speaker 5: Their revenue for the 12 months ending in June 30th,
53:55
Speaker 5: 2019 was $ 62 billion. I think they always move a
53:58
Speaker 5: little slow. They always move with half measures. If I
54:01
Speaker 5: had an inkling of a sense that ethnic cleansing was
54:04
Speaker 5: happening in Burma because of my platform... I would have
54:07
Speaker 5: cut off access to the platform in the country.
54:09
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? It's like, go big, guys.
54:12
Speaker 5: Do something important, and maybe you'll get criticized, but at
54:14
Speaker 5: least you'll have addressed the problem. Rachel, before we go,
54:25
Speaker 5: I do want to talk about your new book.
54:26
Speaker 2: You're very kind.
54:28
Speaker 1: It's called Blowout, Corrupted Democracy. Rogue State Russia and the Richest,
54:31
Speaker 1: Most Destructive Industry on Earth.
54:33
Speaker 2: It's a very happy topic.
54:36
Speaker 1: It's about how Russia's reliance on the oil and gas
54:38
Speaker 1: industry is critical to explaining why they interfered in the
54:41
Speaker 1: 2016 election. I know you said that you did not
54:44
Speaker 1: start thinking that you would write this kind of book.
54:48
Speaker 1: So how did you start and then how did you
54:50
Speaker 1: end up where you ended up?
54:52
Speaker 2: I started because I am proudly and.
54:57
Speaker 2: Unapologetically, totally obsessed with Russia. And I get it. Bring
55:01
Speaker 2: on the hate. I got it.
55:02
Speaker 1: Bring it.
55:03
Speaker 2: I love it. You make me bigger and stronger.
55:05
Speaker 4: You brought a lot of red string with you today.
55:09
Speaker 4: You call me Carrie.
55:15
Speaker 1: We've spent like a year and a half on it.
55:17
Speaker 1: We're in it.
55:18
Speaker 2: The part of it that I felt like I was
55:20
Speaker 2: really stuck on is that I didn't understand why it
55:22
Speaker 2: made sense for Russia to attack us in that way.
55:26
Speaker 2: not only to try to influence our election, but to
55:28
Speaker 2: use those weird MacGyver-y tactics, right? Like, it's the oligarch
55:33
Speaker 2: guy who's got a St. Petersburg thing with people who
55:36
Speaker 2: make fake social media. We're going to use that. And
55:39
Speaker 2: then competing military intelligence hacker groups going for the DNC
55:44
Speaker 2: and then inventing Guccifer 2.0 to post all this stuff
55:47
Speaker 2: in Comic Sans. Like, what is this? This is a
55:50
Speaker 2: strange tactic. Why would a... country use this as its tactics?
55:56
Speaker 2: I was interested in that. And why would they take
55:58
Speaker 2: such a risk? I mean, if they believed, like everybody
56:00
Speaker 2: else believed, that Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election,
56:03
Speaker 2: I know that they wanted to weaken her ability to govern.
56:06
Speaker 2: They wanted to undermine her as a president. Those last
56:09
Speaker 2: minute text exchange or Twitter exchanges between Julian Assange and
56:15
Speaker 2: Don Jr., he was trying to make sure that they
56:17
Speaker 2: would contest the election results and not concede once Hillary won. Yeah.
56:22
Speaker 2: They wanted to foment as much chaos as they could
56:26
Speaker 2: and upset around. But if they thought Hillary was going
56:28
Speaker 2: to win, Hillary was already a Russia hawk. So imagine
56:32
Speaker 2: what Hillary would have, could have done to them getting
56:36
Speaker 2: into office knowing that Russia just interfered in our election
56:39
Speaker 2: to try to stop that from happening. You'd think that
56:41
Speaker 2: they might be... That's a big risk that they were
56:44
Speaker 2: taking against really, really bad odds. And so why was
56:47
Speaker 2: it worth it for them to do that? And I
56:49
Speaker 2: came to realize that both of those things came from
56:51
Speaker 2: the same place, which is desperation. And John McCain has
56:55
Speaker 2: made this argument. President Obama made this argument. Vice President
56:58
Speaker 2: Biden all made this argument that the best way to
56:59
Speaker 2: understand Russia was through their weakness. And in particular, their
57:04
Speaker 2: economic weakness. But I didn't really get how economically weak
57:08
Speaker 2: they were until I realized that their economy is a
57:11
Speaker 2: pogo stick. It's only got one thing in it, which
57:13
Speaker 2: is oil and gas, which it turns out is a
57:15
Speaker 2: terrible thing to build your economy on. It gives you
57:18
Speaker 2: a bad government. It ruins all other efforts to build
57:21
Speaker 2: a diversified economy around it. and in Russia's case, their
57:26
Speaker 2: oil and gas sector has been so looted by Putin
57:28
Speaker 2: to do the kind of things that he wants to
57:30
Speaker 2: do with it, to use it as a weapon, essentially,
57:32
Speaker 2: because he doesn't have any other forms of power to project,
57:36
Speaker 2: that they suck even at pumping their own oil and gas,
57:40
Speaker 2: and so they really need Western oil majors to come
57:42
Speaker 2: help them, and they can't get that as long as
57:44
Speaker 2: they're sanctioned because of their bad behavior.
57:46
Speaker 3: Are you a big resource curse adherent?
57:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
57:49
Speaker 3: Can you tell us what that is?
57:51
Speaker 2: The resource curse is academic idea that's been around forever
57:54
Speaker 2: which is basically that if you have resources in your
57:58
Speaker 2: country that are to be extracted and sold in the
58:01
Speaker 2: international as an international commodity that seems awesome because you're
58:05
Speaker 2: going to get revenue for that but it has a
58:08
Speaker 2: knock-on effect there's this paradoxical effect where it tends to
58:11
Speaker 2: shrink your economy overall give you bad governance and result
58:15
Speaker 2: in increased poverty and worse quality of life for everybody
58:18
Speaker 2: in your country And that's because whatever this remunerative extractive
58:22
Speaker 2: industry that comes in, they tend to capture the elites
58:26
Speaker 2: and the government officials who can make it happen. Those
58:28
Speaker 2: people get corrupted and co-opted by that industry. They get
58:31
Speaker 2: all the money. And all they would do for the
58:34
Speaker 2: rest of their lives is make sure that they and
58:35
Speaker 2: their offspring stay in power forever to stay clamped on
58:38
Speaker 2: this financial asset.
58:41
Speaker 1: How deep are the connections between Russian oil and gas
58:44
Speaker 1: interests and the Trump administration? I know you.
58:48
Speaker 2: Well... I mean, this is why I'm obsessed with Rex Tillerson.
58:52
Speaker 3: Right.
58:54
Speaker 2: So, I mean, here's the timeline, right? Russia is born
59:00
Speaker 2: living on a sea of oil and gas. They've got
59:01
Speaker 2: tons of oil and gas. Their easy oil and gas
59:04
Speaker 2: kind of starts to run out, and they start to
59:06
Speaker 2: need to be able to tap modern technology to get
59:09
Speaker 2: at their needs.
59:10
Speaker 3: Reserves.
59:10
Speaker 2: They have nothing else in their economy. They need to
59:12
Speaker 2: keep pumping oil and gas. They start making moon eyes
59:15
Speaker 2: at their resources that are in the Arctic, in the
59:17
Speaker 2: Russian Arctic, in the Kara Sea. They have no way
59:20
Speaker 2: to pump it themselves. They do a half trillion dollar
59:23
Speaker 2: deal with Exxon And Rex Tillerson is willing to do it.
59:26
Speaker 2: All these other Western majors have gone in and tried
59:28
Speaker 2: to do deals with Russia, and they've just gotten chewed
59:30
Speaker 2: up and spit out, including Western oil execs getting poisoned
59:35
Speaker 2: in Moscow. And good oil companies in Russia get seized,
59:39
Speaker 2: and their owners get put in jail. I mean, it's
59:41
Speaker 2: a disaster, but Rex figures it out and is willing
59:44
Speaker 2: to do it. He gets a medal, a freaking medal
59:46
Speaker 2: from Putin, right? And then they're about to start drilling
59:50
Speaker 2: in the Arctic. And Putin can't control himself, can't keep
59:53
Speaker 2: it in his pants, and he has to go invade Ukraine.
59:56
Speaker 2: And the U.S. institutes sanctions, and they're actively drilling in
1:00:00
Speaker 2: the Kerasi when the sanctions kick in in 2014. And
1:00:03
Speaker 2: Exxon is like, give us just a few more days.
1:00:05
Speaker 2: We just needed one. I know we've been sanctioned, and
1:00:08
Speaker 2: we're supposed to stop doing this, but we're really worried
1:00:11
Speaker 2: about the seabirds. We need to make sure we environmentally
1:00:14
Speaker 2: clean up our area. All because they're trying to spud
1:00:18
Speaker 2: that well. They're trying to get to the oil. And Ultimately,
1:00:21
Speaker 2: like on the last day, the Obama administration will allow
1:00:24
Speaker 2: them to be there.
1:00:24
Speaker 3: They do hit oil.
1:00:26
Speaker 2: And then they have to shut it down. And then
1:00:28
Speaker 2: Rosneft goes back to it themselves with Exxon not able
1:00:31
Speaker 2: to get there. They're so freaking incompetent. They can't drill
1:00:35
Speaker 2: the oil out of that well themselves. They need Exxon
1:00:37
Speaker 2: to do it. And they can't get Exxon to do
1:00:40
Speaker 2: it because of U.S. foreign policy. And then Russia throws
1:00:45
Speaker 2: this curveball into the middle of our election in 2015
1:00:48
Speaker 2: and 2016. And they help install Donald Trump as president.
1:00:52
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump, when looking around for somebody to put
1:00:55
Speaker 2: in charge of U.S. foreign policy, has never met Rex Tillerson.
1:00:59
Speaker 2: Does not particularly like him when he meets him. And
1:01:02
Speaker 2: Rex Tillerson shows up having never, ever worked anywhere in
1:01:05
Speaker 2: his life other than at ExxonMobil. Shows up for a meeting.
1:01:08
Speaker 2: He doesn't know what it's about. Has never met Trump before.
1:01:09
Speaker 2: Walks out as Secretary of State. It's like, OK, so
1:01:16
Speaker 2: that can't really have happened, did it? And then he
1:01:19
Speaker 2: sets about dismantling the State Department. And the Trump administration
1:01:23
Speaker 2: sets about doing everything they can to try to relieve
1:01:26
Speaker 2: those sanctions on Russia.
1:01:27
Speaker 4: What's happening with that oil right now?
1:01:31
Speaker 2: Sitting there. They can't do anything about it. I mean,
1:01:34
Speaker 2: the Russian oil and gas industry is terrible. I mean,
1:01:38
Speaker 2: natural gas is an even bigger deal for them than oil.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: The Gazprom, when Alexei Miller took over Gazprom, when Putin
1:01:44
Speaker 2: installed him, that company was worth like $ 360 billion, because
1:01:50
Speaker 2: they've got a ton of natural gas. Under his leadership,
1:01:53
Speaker 2: under Alexei Miller, It's now gone down to being like
1:01:55
Speaker 2: $ 60 billion. Like they've lost more than like $ 300 billion
1:02:01
Speaker 2: in value. But Alexei Miller is still in charge because
1:02:04
Speaker 2: he's doing what he needs to do, which is that
1:02:06
Speaker 2: enriching Putin and everybody who Putin needs enriched with that stuff.
1:02:08
Speaker 2: They don't even try to make themselves into good companies.
1:02:11
Speaker 2: He did, however, make himself a palace, which is called Millerhof.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: Miller is so not a Russian name that he's created Millerhof,
1:02:20
Speaker 2: which is a palace for himself. He's still going to
1:02:22
Speaker 2: be in charge of Gazprom forever. Their companies just suck.
1:02:25
Speaker 3: Sounds like a Milwaukee beer house.
1:02:27
Speaker 1: So in a world that is moving away from fossil
1:02:30
Speaker 1: fuels because of climate change, what did you find out about, like,
1:02:34
Speaker 1: what's the long game here for Russia if they're still
1:02:38
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze everything they can out of their oil
1:02:40
Speaker 1: and gas industry?
1:02:41
Speaker 2: If I could ask Putin one question, like if I
1:02:44
Speaker 2: could ever get a Putin interview, I'm not waiting on it.
1:02:46
Speaker 2: If I could, that'd be the question that I'm asking. Like,
1:02:48
Speaker 2: what's going to be Russia's number one export in 25 years?
1:02:51
Speaker 2: Because you don't have anything.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: Talk about desperation. Yes.
1:02:56
Speaker 2: And so as the world turns away from oil and
1:03:00
Speaker 2: gas because we have to, part of the reason I
1:03:02
Speaker 2: wanted to write the book is that I feel like
1:03:04
Speaker 2: we ought to get our heads around not just what
1:03:05
Speaker 2: the environmental consequences of that will be and not just
1:03:09
Speaker 2: thinking about it in terms of the political consequences of
1:03:11
Speaker 2: jobs in America moving from one sector to another and
1:03:13
Speaker 2: retraining and all that stuff. Think about it in terms
1:03:16
Speaker 2: of the international geopolitical influence, because the oil and gas
1:03:19
Speaker 2: industry is propping up a whole bunch of really terrible
1:03:22
Speaker 2: governments all around the world. And if they lose their
1:03:25
Speaker 2: market share and their power, then countries are going to change.
1:03:29
Speaker 2: Systems of government are going to change. I think the
1:03:32
Speaker 2: boundaries of countries will change. And countries that have built
1:03:35
Speaker 2: themselves on a single entity in their economy, that is
1:03:38
Speaker 2: oil and gas, will find themselves absolutely off the cliff.
1:03:41
Speaker 5: Can we ask one question about another project you did,
1:03:44
Speaker 5: which was Bagman, one of my favorite podcasts.
1:03:47
Speaker 2: Oh, so good.
1:03:48
Speaker 1: Oh, really?
1:03:48
Speaker 3: We love Bagman. We're Bagman. We're Bagman men.
1:03:51
Speaker 5: It is one of the best podcasts ever made. Everyone
1:03:54
Speaker 5: should check it out if you haven't listened to it.
1:03:56
Speaker 5: It's about our former upstanding, virtuous vice president, Spiro Agnew,
1:04:00
Speaker 5: a wonderful human being. You described it as Watergate adjacent, right?
1:04:06
Speaker 5: Now that we're in this impeachment proceeding, what did you
1:04:08
Speaker 5: learn about.
1:04:09
Speaker 3: Impeachment from doing that story again?
1:04:11
Speaker 5: And about, I don't know, you talked earlier about how
1:04:14
Speaker 5: if not for this brave whistleblower or a brave IG
1:04:18
Speaker 5: kind of doing their job, we would be in a
1:04:20
Speaker 5: very different place. You had some characters in the podcast
1:04:23
Speaker 5: who are very similar.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:04:25
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like Spiro Agnew's ghost is here
1:04:28
Speaker 2: to help us at this time.
1:04:31
Speaker 3: For a price.
1:04:36
Speaker 2: Which you need to pay in a manila envelope in
1:04:38
Speaker 2: his office in the White House. There's a couple of things.
1:04:41
Speaker 2: I mean, one, in a very literal sense, I learned
1:04:44
Speaker 2: how fuzzy the Justice Department policies are on criminally indicting
1:04:49
Speaker 2: a vice president.
1:04:50
Speaker 3: Interesting.
1:04:51
Speaker 2: To the extent that President Trump is trying to make
1:04:53
Speaker 2: sure that we don't have President Pence and is trying
1:04:56
Speaker 2: to make sure that Mike Pence is implicated here. I mean,
1:04:58
Speaker 2: his lawyers really were arguing in the Mazars case that
1:05:03
Speaker 2: just went against him in federal court in New York,
1:05:07
Speaker 2: they explicitly brought up out of nowhere, by the way,
1:05:09
Speaker 2: this immunity argument we're making, we're explicit about the fact
1:05:13
Speaker 2: that the vice president doesn't get this immunity. The judge
1:05:16
Speaker 2: was like, why are you saying this?
1:05:20
Speaker 4: That has been, we will know Donald Trump believes he's
1:05:22
Speaker 4: in real trouble when he throws his arms around Mike
1:05:25
Speaker 4: Pence and just jumps.
1:05:26
Speaker 3: In the ocean.
1:05:28
Speaker 2: So some of that is, and actually there were some
1:05:30
Speaker 2: dynamics like that between Nixon and Agnew back in 73
1:05:32
Speaker 2: and 74. or 73, when Agnew at one point begged
1:05:38
Speaker 2: to be impeached because he thought that he would survive
1:05:41
Speaker 2: impeachment and this would bring Republican partisans to his cause
1:05:45
Speaker 2: and it would excite the base, this kind of argument
1:05:47
Speaker 2: you hear from Republicans now. And he thought that if
1:05:51
Speaker 2: he was being impeached, that might persuade the Justice Department
1:05:53
Speaker 2: to drop their indictment of him. And Nixon was very
1:05:57
Speaker 2: much against that because he thought if agnew got impeached
1:06:02
Speaker 2: he wasn't sure that he would survive and agnew being
1:06:06
Speaker 2: removed from office nixon thought was actually bad for him
1:06:10
Speaker 2: because democrats hated agnew more than they hated nixon and
1:06:13
Speaker 2: so they would worry if they took nixon out first
1:06:15
Speaker 2: that they'd end up with the president agnew and that's
1:06:16
Speaker 2: terrible he also didn't want to get the wheels of
1:06:19
Speaker 2: impeachment going because he thought once they took out agnew
1:06:22
Speaker 2: well they'd be ready to go.
1:06:23
Speaker 4: And they take a little warm-up a little stretch.
1:06:25
Speaker 2: So that dynamic between presidents and vice presidents is i
1:06:28
Speaker 2: think really important but the big lesson of bagman is
1:06:30
Speaker 2: that The Justice Department has to be good and it
1:06:33
Speaker 2: has to have people in it who are upstanding and
1:06:35
Speaker 2: who are patriots and who don't do partisan things for
1:06:37
Speaker 2: bad reasons. And Elliot Richardson is a freaking hero. And
1:06:43
Speaker 2: we can't count on there being heroes, although sometimes you
1:06:47
Speaker 2: find them in unexpected places. Bill Barr is no Elliot Richardson.
1:06:54
Speaker 2: But to the extent that the Agnew story told us anything,
1:06:58
Speaker 2: it was that the Constitution... doesn't crumble in the face
1:07:03
Speaker 2: of bad men doing bad things. The Constitution only crumbles
1:07:07
Speaker 2: when we can't fix that. And that's the question that
1:07:11
Speaker 2: we're facing right now.
1:07:13
Speaker 1: We're going to have to end there because we've had
1:07:14
Speaker 1: all these really depressing stories. And that was so hopeful there.
1:07:17
Speaker 1: That was so good. At the end. So I think
1:07:19
Speaker 1: that's just the place to leave it. Buy the book.
1:07:21
Speaker 1: Download the podcast. Everyone go buy Blowout, please.
1:07:23
Speaker 3: Thank you very, very much.
1:07:24
Speaker 1: Rachel, thank you so much for doing this. I love
1:07:26
Speaker 1: you guys.
1:07:27
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
1:07:27
Speaker 3: I'll come back anytime you want me.
1:07:29
Speaker 2: Anytime you want me. We got Rachel.
1:07:31
Speaker 1: Bye, everyone.
1:07:32
Speaker 7: Bye.
1:07:36
Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
1:07:39
Speaker 1: senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
1:07:42
Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
1:07:45
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and
1:07:49
Speaker 1: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
1:07:51
Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Cohnian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
1:07:54
Speaker 1: film and upload these episodes as a video every week.