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“After Balloon Delight.” · Pod Save America

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: People were pulled over on the side of the road.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: If you've ever seen the movie Independence Day, where people
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: are coming out to their porches, they're pulling over their cars.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: It really reminded me of that.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody had a TriCom spy balloon on their bingo car.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Dark Brandon obliterates Beijing's
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: big balloon ahead of his State of the Union address.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Just leaning right.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Into it, huh?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: And outgoing White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain joins
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: to talk about the speech, U.S.-China relations, and reflect on
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: his tenure in the Biden administration. But first, we're officially
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: in the phase of the George Santos news cycle where
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: it's time to make some merch. As you know, merch
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: usually comes right after the ex-boyfriend talks to the media phase.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: So the Crooked store now has mugs and teas for
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: a few venerable institutions that George Santos did not claim
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: to found, but it's only a matter of time until
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: he does. The George Santos Center for Middle East Peace
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and Bird Rescue? That's just a good idea. He should
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: lie about finding that. This is the first I'm learning
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of all this in my life. Me too, me too,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: as I'm reading it. By the time this episode comes out,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: maybe he has. Check out all three designs at crooked.com.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: That seems like it was written by either Hallie or Lazarus.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Let's not name names here. You're just going to offend somebody. Which,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, those are just compliments. Someone else wants to
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: take credit for it.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: They're excellent jokes. They're great jokes.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: That's why it's very funny. All right, let's get to
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the news. President Biden is set to deliver the State
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of the Union on Tuesday night under the enormous shadow
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: of a Chinese balloon that has really sucked up all
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: the oxygen in the media and political world. He's doing it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: The U.S. military first spotted the unmanned surveillance blimp over
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Alaska about a week ago, and Biden gave orders to
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: shoot it down once it was safe, which took place
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: over South Carolina on Saturday after the balloon drifted slowly
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: across the United States. Secretary of State Tony Blinken also
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: indefinitely postponed his trip to Beijing over this incident. though
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: none of this was good enough for Republican politicians and
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: some pundits who promptly lost their minds.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: How about COVID-22, 23, whatever year it is?
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: If they know Joe freezes at the first sight of
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: a balloon, the next balloon might be filled with another virus.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Pop, droplets all over.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: We're all on ventilators again.
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: Did it drop and disperse surveillance products powered by solar
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: energy to allow unlimited surveillance?
• 2:33
  Speaker 6: We had plenty of capacity to scoop that balloon out
• 2:36
  Speaker 6: of the air.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: We used to do it all the time.
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: Whoever is working with the Chinese government to sell our
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: farmland near our bases, I don't know if those are
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: investment firms, real estate agents. I don't know who's providing
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: cover for the Communist Party in Chinese.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: That's treasonous.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I have another question.
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: Why haven't we shot this balloon out of the sky?
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, Joe Biden is the president.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Or how about you ram it with the Goodyear blimp?
• 3:00
  Speaker 6: The only reason they shot it down is because it
• 3:02
  Speaker 6: made it into the news and they felt forced to
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: as a matter of politics rather than national security.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Since the Chinese are telling us it's a weather balloon,
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: I'm almost thinking it's a weather balloon. I almost think
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: it's a double bluff from China. This goes back to
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Chinese subterfuge for centuries.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Double bluff.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I do love the Ted Cruz one because he's like, yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: he shot the balloon down, but his heart wasn't in it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I like, is that thing Newt Gingrich?
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: Like we used to scoop balloons all the time.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: What was that?
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: When did we scoop balloons? I think he's talking about
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the Skyhook from Dark Knight.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I just want to... Can I just put a pin
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in this balloon star for a second?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Get it out.
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: Get out of your system.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Look, obviously Republicans have tried to over-inflate this story. And
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the media has been pumping it up too. But even so,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised by how much lift it's had day after
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: day of hot air.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Are these the famed notes that you took for this episode?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's part of it. That's the top of it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: That's right there.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Lovett's notes are balloon jokes and the words Joe Biden
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: he wrote down.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: It's underlined.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: So, Tommy, before we get into... Some of the more
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: hysterical reactions. Can you walk us through what else we
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: know about this balloon so far and why the Biden
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: administration is taking it so seriously? Tony Blinken did cancel
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: his trip. Tony did. I think he might have just
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: wanted his weekend back. What do you think? I think
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: he wanted to, yeah. Tony's a busy guy. He wanted
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: to consume all the balloon coverage. He's got small kids.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: He wanted to make sure he could see all those memes.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: He wanted to see Young Get Up.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: So this is one of, it sounds like this is
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: one of several Chinese spy balloons that have come into
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: us airspace.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Or been released.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: There's a, there's one in Latin America right now. There's
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: balloons partying all over the place.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Chinese balloons are all over the world.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Now, my firsthand knowledge of, uh, spy stuff stopped in 2013.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: So I'm working with like an iPhone five worth of technology.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: So like we'll take it with a grain of salt. Uh,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: presumably this thing is loaded.
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: Up with high resolution cameras, signals, intelligence collections, stuff.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: So not shaving cream.
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: So not shaving cream. We know that it went over
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: a bunch of sensitive military installations, including nuclear missile launch
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: sites in Montana. So, you know, stuff you don't want
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: photographed by the Chinese government. It is generally not acceptable
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: to just fly into someone's airspace. There's a principled reason,
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: but there's also the practical reason. Like what if this
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: balloon deflated and then it was in the flight path
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: of a jet?
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: That'd be very, very bad, right?
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: So a lot of reasons to be mad about this.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: It's not clear to me what this balloon can do
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: that a Chinese satellite, spy satellite, isn't already doing. That's
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: sort of what I don't get in the big freakout.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: I read some weird DOD paper on this. You can
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: definitely get much higher quality photos and videos from cameras
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: at lower altitudes. Balloons can loiter over these sites for
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: a lot longer and collect more intelligence. I think you
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: can do a better job collecting radio signals and other signals.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: But again, I'm not sure that that volume of collection
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: and intelligence makes it worth this kind of embarrassing diplomatic
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: dust up because the chinese wanted tony to go to
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: beijing for this trip they've been trying to lower the
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: temperature and this incident puts that effort on pause what
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: do you think like.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: There's been some speculation that maybe the maybe the reason
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: that they sent this but so you sound so ridiculous
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: sent this balloon uh is that there's some sort of
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: group of people that are we're actually trying to get
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: this canceled i mean i guess the question.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: I have is like How much can you really control
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: how fast the balloon moves? Because what it seems to
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: do is there's an algorithm in there that controls the
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: altitude and it catches prevailing winds, which make it go
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: to different directions. But that doesn't mean you can put
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: on cruise control and say like, hey, Tesla, go 55,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: get me there by Tuesday.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: This is not a remote. No one's sitting there with
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: the remote control, like speed up, slow down. I mean,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: maybe they are.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: But I think that happens by just adjusting your heights
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: and catching different.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Jet streams. It's not like a motor.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: They did go on quite a tour. Went to Alaska,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: went down the coast.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Checked out Montana.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: A purposeful route, it seems. It's hard to know that. St.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Louis Arch.
• 6:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So it was about 60,000 feet above into the sky, right?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: That's the altitude for this thing. You were mentioning Chinese
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: spy satellites that are already in lower altitudes in space.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: And so basically, this is just getting a clearer picture.
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: Maybe.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Just a sharper image, like HD. Yeah, I mean, you
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: can get a lot better pictures. I don't know. Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Who knows what they were looking for? I think the
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: fact that we waited to shoot the thing down and
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: now we're going to go through it inch by inch
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: and figure out what it was collecting and what its
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: capabilities are, we'll have a lot more information on this.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: And Levi, when you were talking about the speculation that
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: some people were trying to ruin this visit by Blinken,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: that's referring to there's some speculation that the Chinese military
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: or sources within China... There's.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Some dissensus within the Chinese government. Some people want the visit,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: some people don't. Maybe President Xi somehow didn't know that
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: this was happening.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: I find that very hard to believe. Xi Jinping rules
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: with an iron fist. He has since 2012. Just recently,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: he moved out a lot of other potential.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Power centers from the Politburo and put in his own guys.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I think if someone in the military or the intel
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: world tried to mess with him and mess up the
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Blinken trip and cause a controversy that he wasn't dictating
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: the terms of, Xi Jinping would throw them in jail
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: for a long time. Do you think it's possible that
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: this is the result of what happens many times in
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: our own government, which is just someone fucked up? Yeah,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: that would be my guess, yeah. Someone fucked up, didn't
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: intend to sabotage Blinken's visit.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Did not plan for a situation in which Joe Biden
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: would do to that balloon what a windy Thursday did
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: to the cat in the hat, the 1997 Macy's parade.
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: Oh, man.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. One of you, I think, mentioned the Pentagon acknowledged
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: for the first time that they've previously seen similar balloons
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: from China three times during the Trump administration, at least
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: once during the Biden administration. What's different about this latest incident?
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: So there's just a report that NORAD said publicly that
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: they failed to detect the previous balloon incursions. And they
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: learned after the fact from... I think we should call
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: them balloonings.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Balloonings.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: We've been ballooned.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Derived by balloonings.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: And they were notified of them after the fact by
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: the intelligence community. I don't know if that means they
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: were notified about what had happened in real time or
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: if you figured out sort of the signature of this
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: balloon based on the last week's events and then looked
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: back in some old data and figured out all these
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: things that had happened. It's not really clear. It sounds
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: like the previous balloons kind of peeked into U.S. airspace
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: and then left it. This one obviously flew into Alaska.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: This one extended its trip.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I'm having so much fun. Honestly, I'm going to stick.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Is that crazy?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Should I stay a couple more days? I never do that,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: but I'm feeling spontaneous.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Should we go to Times Square?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: We're in Montana. The hardest part is crossing over.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: We're here.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: The Pentagon said, Five Chinese balloons have circumnavigated the globe,
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: and China has conducted 20 to 30 balloon missions globally
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: over the past decade.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Look, here's the other thing, too. This is all about trends, Uh,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and what's hot right now is 1930s politics. It's all about,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it's all about dirigibles and fascism. And that's like, that's
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: like super in right now and sort of looser suits
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and kind of bigger suits moving away from the kind
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: of that's, that's all, it's all coming back. It's all
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: coming full circle.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: You guys are laughing, but Republicans are angry.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: They're furious. More like Osama balloon law.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Folks, we've been hearing about this one all day.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it a couple of times because
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I want to get the best one.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: The main criticism from Republicans seems to be that Biden
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: didn't shoot down the balloon over Alaska the second that
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: they detected it. Should have shot it down. Tommy, what's
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the best response to that?
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: The best argument against shooting it down over land is
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: crashing 2,000 pounds of metal the size of a regional
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: jetliner onto a human being.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: This is what the word balloon obscures for what the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: thing is, which I learned today as I was reading
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: about this. It was the same weight as two to
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: three buses.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: That's a big balloon. I think people are picturing a.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Hot air balloon. This isn't a Mylar thing.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Remember when there was that boy that was supposedly in
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the balloon, but it turns out it was just a stunt?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: People are picturing, I think, that's On a scale of balloons.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: This is a big balloon.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: The balloon itself is dangling below it, two to three
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: school bus long hunk of metal that's collecting all this information.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: What about when they saw it right over the coast
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: of Alaska, before it got to Alaska? Could you shoot
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: it down then? I mean, I think they probably had
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: to figure out what it was going on. Before you
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: just start shooting into the air.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Also, I read that somewhere the Pentagon modeled out options
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: for how to deal with the balloon. And one of
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: those options found that if you shoot a missile at
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: the balloon and it tears it, instead of exploding it,
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: then the landing zone could have been several hundred square
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: miles for where all that material lands. So I think
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: the worst thing Joe Biden could have done is order
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: a military operation that kills an American.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Do you think so? Can you imagine what Republicans would
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: be saying then?
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Imagine if it, yeah.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: And then there's some articles saying that by allowing this
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: thing to transverse the US, we were able to, I
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: don't know, cover up sensitive military sites. And again, everyone,
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: these Minuteman II missile silos are, They're dug into the
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: ground in Montana. You know, there's 150 missile silos there.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: I'm sure that you can figure out something worse. There's
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: things you don't want people to know about those, but
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: everyone knows that they're there. And satellites have been flying
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: across them for decades. And also presumably they had some
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: notice that the balloon was coming.
• 12:16
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, if Joe Biden had shot it
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: down over land, but it fell on a drag bunch,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I think it would have really scrambled their response.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. I asked Ron about this.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: There have been some reports that the United States collected
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: more intelligence about the Chinese balloon capability by watching it,
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: by monitoring it, maybe jamming its signals than they would
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: have if they just immediately blown it up.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I always say that.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: That feels true to me.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Chinese surveillance balloons are more afraid of us than we
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: are of them. You know, that's something that I've always said.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. I'm sorry.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: This is so stupid. I can't. One other thing, too,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is that as silly as Newt Gingrich was... Apparently, according
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to David Ignatius, the Pentagon did weigh whether it might
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: be possible to partially deflate the balloon and capture it
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: at lower altitude. But officials said no technology exists that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: would allow such a butterfly net capture operation. And shame
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: on us. Shame on what's become of this country that
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: we don't have a giant butterfly net ready to catch
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: these fucking balloons.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: That'll be Trump. That'll be Trump's thing. Well, you know,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: we're more similar than we'd like to admit. I gotta say,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I don't often miss being in government. Being in the
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: balloon capture or kill options meeting would have been sweet.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So fun. And also just like, I like that.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: It's the bin Laden, the sit room picture. Except when
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: you turn it around, there's just a big balloon.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: It's the birthday party.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton's like, whoo!
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: The other thing, too, is we sent an F-22 to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: kill this thing, and it's the first time the F-22
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: has done an in-air kill, like an actual air-to-air kill.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And just like, man, I'm sure it's quite stressful, but
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: you're really not at great risk from the balloon fighting back.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And so you just go up there, shoot a hole
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: in that fucking balloon. That has got to be a
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: satisfying day. That is a good day at work.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: That pilot is the king of that Air Force Base
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: right now.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: They're the best time.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: That's a cool day. That's a cool day. The day
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you shot down the Chinese spy balloon.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: The real threat is our ballooning national day. Oh, there
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: No.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: I think that'll be a real take away. There it is.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: At a time when the country's mood is far from buoyant.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Playbook's Monday morning headline. This is so good.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Speaking of enraging. This is wild. Was China deflates Biden's
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: so-too swagger. Should he resign during the speech, do you
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: guys think, because of this? Love it. You start.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously. But assuming he doesn't. He shot
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: down the balloon. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: But it was too late.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: He shot down the balloon.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: It knows everything about us.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Already.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: The balloon's got all your nudes.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: The balloon's got my nudes? Just overhead nudes?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Then the nuke secrets. It's got the nuclear codes and
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: everything else. Too late. Biden dithered.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: But it's like, really, like, hey, I know you all
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: did your final takes before the weekend on Friday, and
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: he made the idiotic mistake of shooting the thing down
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: on a Saturday, but he shot down the fucking bullets. Shot!
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I know, I know.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So then he did what you wanted. I mean, I
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: asked Ron about this headline, so everyone get excited for
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: his take on... We basically made him play one... shot
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: take appreciators on this.
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: Nice.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Did he give the playbook headline a full playbook?
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: He did not love it. I'll let him speak for
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: himself on this. I mean, just a little bit of
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: context here. I mean, the thing that's so dumb about
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: this is like no matter what happens, right, Republicans are
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: going to spin it as a negative for Joe Biden.
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: It's just so silly that we take those claims seriously.
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: In 2001, a U.S. spy plane was flying off the
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: coast of China. It actually collided with a Chinese fighter jet.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: They had to make a crash landing. They landed some island.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: George Bush had to write an apology letter to.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: The Chinese government to get them to release 24 airmen
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: and get them home. And as far as I can tell,
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: both countries continue to exist. You know, we're all doing
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: OK here. Like we treat these things like they're this
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: like this life ending event or it's just it's absurd.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: The hyperbole is absurd. Also, just from a purely political
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: perspective here, most people who heard about this incident in
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the country heard that we shot it down, that Biden
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: shot it down. And more people will hear about Biden's
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: explanation of the incident when he addresses it in the
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: State of the Union than they will hear Republican criticism
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: about the incident.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: They will also probably hear during the State of the
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Union more about issues they care about, probably more than
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the balloon.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: If there is such an issue, I can't think of one.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: But I will.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do not believe in a year or even
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: two weeks that a key argument Republicans will be making
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: is Joe Biden didn't shoot the Chinese balloon fast enough.
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: I agree.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they're thinking ahead, though. On a
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: more serious note, how do you think this incident affects
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Biden's domestic politics on China, where there seems to be
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: a bipartisan competition over who can be toughest on China?
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I am very worried about this.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: And I think it's worth just setting the context here,
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: which is that Joe Biden has been extremely.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Tough on China.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: The United States banned the export of semiconductors and semiconductor-making equipment.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: That is a huge deal. Ever heard of the CHIPS Act?
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: It could have enormous implications in terms of their ability
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: to develop new tech. The CHIPS Act, the IRA, the
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: giant climate bill, that's this sort of nationalist, one I support,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: effort to make the U.S. the leading maker of clean
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: energy technology. We gave nuclear sub-tech to the Australians. We're
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: expanding military alliances in places like the Philippines and Japan.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the U.S., would defend
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: Taiwan militarily if China invades. That is, to be clear,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: not the U.S.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Position.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: So there are real reasons to be worried about the
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government under Xi Jinping.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: I'm not belittling that or diminishing it at all. But
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: it's very worrisome to see this like Red Scare thing
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: happening in Washington. It's a race to the bottom to
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: see who can be more hawkish and jingoistic. And we
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: just psych ourselves out as a nation. It's like, it's
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: a balloon. But the language is so psychological.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It's like, we're humiliated. Well, yeah, it's all very much.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It's all very much.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: We're the ones who say we're humiliated. What are we doing?
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Well, it's also like, OK, it's also it's yes, it is.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: It becomes that like the sending of the balloon is
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a test of what will happen in the future when
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: they send something far more dangerous. And what did China
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: learn about America from our failure to shoot down the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: balloon within minutes?
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: The Chinese send a balloon over here. We all go crazy.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It's a real monster to do on maple street.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: We just, we just, yeah, it's not.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Look, look for the Chinese spy balloon in our fucking hearts.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: I would, I would look to the a hundred billion
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: that Joe Biden and the United States just gave to
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: the Ukrainians to defend themselves against a Russian invasion.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's more telling, but.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Like you, you see the Mike Pompeo's of the world
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: posting themselves, pointing guns into the sky. Like, mock shooting thing.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: It's like it radiates small dick energy as a nation
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: and as individuals.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: It is so embarrassing.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: In this case, perhaps he gave an inch.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Did you read his Fox News op-ed where he also
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: attacked the Biden administration for inviting TikTok influencers to the
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: White House when TikTok is possibly controlled by this?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It's by balloon on our phones.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: Mike Pompeo attacked Joe Biden for... withdrawing from Afghanistan when
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Mike Pompeo himself personally negotiated the deal with the Taliban.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: None of this is on the level. It's very stupid.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: But the reason I worry about this is I think
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: the media gets pulled into these conversations. The conflict gets
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: played up, the humiliation language, the demands to take military action.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: Like there were not a lot of voices on cable
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: over the weekend being like, what if we all chilled out?
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: And what if we all remembered that we spy on
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: the Chinese all the time, all day, every.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Day, they spy on us. That's why you come to pod.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Save America. This one's just visible. That's right.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: There are satellites. Chinese satellites are flying over the United States.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: American satellites are flying over China.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Every single day.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Look at the Snowden documents.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot out there.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think that this was their, do you think
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: they sent their newest balloon or do you think they
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: had a feeling this thing might end up in the ocean?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: They sent kind of like a, you know, a balloon
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: they didn't mind losing. An old balloon.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Well, here's my question. Why not paint the balloon blue?
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Then he can't see the thing. Wow.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. Don't tell them.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: 99 red scare balloons?
• 20:25
  Speaker 6: Nice.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: That actually worked. Um, I think that's all. I think
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: that's it. That's everything for the balloon. That's 24 minutes
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: of balloon.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: These Republicans are treating it like Osama balloon.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I just want you guys to know the whole balloon
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: thing started. First, it was some jokes. I was like,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to listen to this on pod. Save
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: the world this week. Then it just, it, it, it
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: ballooned to something bigger. So then I'm like, I don't know.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: This is hitting Pod Save America. This is now the
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: biggest news story in the fucking country as of today.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I saw the coverage and I said to myself, oh,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the humanity.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: It's just.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: That's a reference to.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: What is that? Oh, the humanity?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: That's what they said when.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Hindenburg?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Hindenburg went down.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, there you go. I was waiting for Hindenburg reference.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I think there's a rigid airship.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Okay. That was a bad one. When we come back,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Tommy will talk to Ron Klain, outgoing White House chief
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: of staff, all about this and more. A little bit
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of balloon, yeah.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We get some, yeah, more balloon coverage coming up
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: right after the break.
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: Thanks, Wolf.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: We are hypocrites.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we're good.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: I am thrilled to be joined by President Biden's outgoing
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: chief of staff, Ron Klain, uh, Ron, I was reading
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: a lot of coverage about you. I was blown away
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: when I read that you started working for President Biden
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: when you were 28 years old. You are at least
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: 35 now. So that is a hell of a run.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: I just want to start by saying, you know, congrats
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: on the job well done as chief of staff and,
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: you know, an amazing two years.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Tom.
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: It's been a wild ride, 36 years off and on
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: with Joe Biden. And here at the White House, we
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: just have the most amazing team. It's very hard to
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: say goodbye. but I think it's time to pass this
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: along to somebody else.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think it's hard to explain to people
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: who haven't had your job or worked in that building
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: how close you get. You know, it's the sort of
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: shared foxhole feeling, the shared sacrifice. So again, congrats to
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: you and the team. So Ron, the headline of Politico
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: Playbook this morning was China deflates Biden's so-too swagger. Just
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: wanted to start there and see where that ranks among
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: the most absurd headlines that you guys have dealt with
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: during your tenure as chief of staff?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: You got a ranking for us?
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: I'd say, you know, I hesitate to rank these things,
• 22:47
  Speaker 6: but I'd say it's definitely in the top 10 stupid
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: headlines of the Biden presidency. You know, Joe Biden's swagger,
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: if you will, in the State of the Union comes
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: from the fact that when he took office, this country
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: was closed. Our schools were closed. Our economy was closed. 3,000
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: people a day were dying from COVID. We had left
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: the Paris agreements. We had, uh, broken our alliances around
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: the world. And look where we are just two years later.
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: Record job creation, the unemployment rate down more than half
• 23:20
  Speaker 6: since he took office, the lowest in 50 years. Our
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: schools are open, COVID deaths down 80%, COVID cases down 80%.
• 23:27
  Speaker 6: We're back leading globally on climate change. We're bringing 800,000
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: manufacturing jobs back to our shores. We're leading the world
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: in clean energy. We've passed the most significant gun control
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: bill in 30 years. The list goes on and on
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: and on. That's where Joe Biden comes in to the
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: State of the Union with swagger. And I think, look,
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: as to this incident with the Chinese balloon, the president
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: ordered the military to take it down when they could
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: do so safely. They did. They're now recovering the key
• 23:59
  Speaker 6: elements of the spying devices, whatever it was, surveillance devices.
• 24:04
  Speaker 6: So I think mission accomplished on the balloon there. And
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: more importantly, a mission accomplished on a number of key
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: domestic and global priorities.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: See, he took a question about political playbook and made
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: a case for the re-election. That's how you become chief
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: of staff, people. So obviously you guys are taking this
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: spy balloon joy ride very seriously.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Planes were grounded.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Tony Blinken indefinitely postponed his trip to China. You shot
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: the thing down.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Can you help us just cut through some of the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: hyperbole that we've seen over the weekend and just help
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: listeners understand how seriously they should take this incident or
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: how much of this is Great powers spy on each
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: other a lot. That's just kind of how it is.
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: Well, look, we take it seriously. China violated our airspace,
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: and that's something we can't accept. Now, it did it
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: three times under President Trump, and he either didn't know,
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: didn't care, didn't understand, or whatever happened then. But President
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: Biden took it seriously. But we also take the security
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: and safety of our own country very seriously. We weren't
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: going to shoot something down from 60,000 feet and have
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: it land on a church or a school or a hospital.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: even in the more rural parts of the country. So
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: I think we responded and handled this appropriately. Look, our
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: relationship with China is a very important relationship. It's one
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: of competition. We seek it not to be one of confrontation,
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: but there's no question there are great differences between our
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: two countries. The president has spoken with President Xi from
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: time to time over the course of his presidency. It
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: didn't make sense for Secretary Blinken to go in the
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: middle of this incident, but we'll find a time for
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: his visit to get back on the books. and at
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: an appropriate time. And we have important business to do
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: with China. There's no question about that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Last balloon question.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: I've seen some reports that suggested letting this thing cross
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: the U.S. and then shooting it down not only made
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: it safer to do so, but also let the U.S.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: gain more information and intelligence about the spy balloon's capabilities.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Is that accurate? It is.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: I have to be careful what we say here, but
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: certainly we, as our military commanders have already said, and
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: we had a briefing today from the commanding general of NORTHCOM.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: It did allow us to collect intelligence on the balloon,
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: on what the Chinese were doing. We were able to
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: gain a little more understanding about how the system operated
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: and what we think they were trying to do. So
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: I think we did some intelligence gathering ourselves here, and
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: I think it was helpful for the long run.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And I just want everyone to know that you're probably
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: listening to this. The balloon's corpse is behind Ron, tacked
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: against the wall. So it's just, you know, important visual.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So this, we're talking on Monday afternoon. This will come
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: out Tuesday morning. What should people expect to hear in
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: President Biden's State of the Union speech later tonight?
• 26:44
  Speaker 6: Well, what they're going to hear, Tom, is a combination of,
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: first of all, the progress we've made. I think it's
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: important to remind the American people where we were when
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: we got started and what's happened to get us to
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: where we are. But even more importantly, they're going to
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: hear his plan to go forward from here. Look, we've
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: made tremendous progress on the economy, but there's a lot
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: of important work left to do to bring inflation down
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: further and to make sure we're building that kind of bottom-up,
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: middle-out economy that's so important to the president. We've made
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: progress restoring our alliances around the world. We've been managing
• 27:17
  Speaker 6: the largest land war in Europe since the end of
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: World War II. But we have a lot of progress
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: to make there, more work to do there to combat
• 27:25
  Speaker 6: Russian aggression and to make sure the Ukrainian people can
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: be free. We have progress building a new clean energy
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: economy for the future that's going to create hundreds of
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: thousands of jobs here in America combat climate change, make
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: our air cleaner, make our water, everything healthier here in
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: the U.S. But there's a lot of work left to
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: do there to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, other measures
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: that we passed along the way. And look, we've made
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: even progress on health care. This is something we started
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: when you and I worked together in the Obama administration
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: with the Affordable Care Act. Since then, we've passed additional measures.
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: More Americans have health insurance today than any time in
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: American history. We capped the price of insulin for people
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: on Medicare at $ 35. We need to take that cap
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: and make it true for everyone in the country, paying
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: less than $ 35 on their insulin, bring down the cost
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: of prescription drugs across the board. So you're going to
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: hear the president update the country on the state of
• 28:17
  Speaker 6: the union today, but also lay out his plans for
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: how he can have an even better union a year
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: or two years from now.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: You know, as you know, you and I have been
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: in politics, I think So every year there's some article
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: the day after the State of the Union about ratings
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: are down that tends to be entirely correlated to the
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: number of people cutting the cord.
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: We're all watching on YouTube now, watching clips on Twitter.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: But the expectations around the State of the Union haven't changed.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: It's still this like massive event in the year of
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: a presidency. How are you guys thinking about the State
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: of the Union in terms.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: Of the broader tapestry of President Biden's desire to or
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: efforts to communicate with the American people about what you're doing?
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: Well, Tom, you're absolutely right. Compared to five years, 10
• 29:01
  Speaker 6: years ago, certainly when I worked here for President Clinton
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: compared to then, the idea that this was like roadblock,
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: primetime network viewing for every American, which was true 25
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: or 30 years ago, is not true anymore. But on
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: the other hand, we have a lot of ways to
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: push clips from the State of the Union, excerpts from
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: the State of the Union to a wide range of
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: people on our platforms, on other platforms. And so I
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: think in the end, virtually everyone sees some part of
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: it in some way, shape, or fashion. What we know
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: is it's a night when a lot of people who
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: don't otherwise tune into politics do tune in and do
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: listen to what the president has to say. It's an
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: opportunity for people to focus on our messages and for
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: us to get them across. So it's not the kind of,
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: and I think the other thing about it is it
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: may be less impactful on one night than the State
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: of the Union was 20 or 30 years ago, but
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: it's probably more impactful across a range of time People
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: pick up these clips on social, on other forms of
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: sharing and other platforms. So it's a big content generation
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: night for us. And we're looking forward to getting that
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: message out.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: And presumably, I mean, parts of this speech will become,
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: you know, part of the campaign's reelection effort. There are
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: some reports that you might leave the chief of staff job,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: take some time off, hopefully, and then be a part
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: of the president's reelection campaign.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Is that accurate?
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: Well, as I said at my farewell speech, I worked
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: on Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign, on his 2008 presidential campaign,
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: on his 2020 presidential campaign. And if he runs in 2024,
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: and I expect that he will, I will find some
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: way to be some part of that campaign too.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: A little debate prep action? You're very good at that.
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: Well, if the president winds up debating his opponent, Donald
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: Trump has said he's not going to debate this time.
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: So we'll have to wait and see how that goes.
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: But I'll find some way to be helpful, I'm sure.
• 30:55
  Speaker 6: maybe stuffing envelopes, whatever it is. But whatever I can
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: do to help Joe Biden get reelected, I'm going to do.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the best debate prep with Donald Trump
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: is an N95 mask, as we learned last time.
• 31:06
  Speaker 6: Yes, indeed.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, indeed it was. I mean, outrageous.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: He's Chris Christie over the weekend, taking more shots at
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: him on that. Okay, so one challenge for President Biden
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: seems to be Democratic enthusiasm. There was a Washington Post
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: poll over the weekend that found 58% of Dems or
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Dem-leading independents want someone other than President Biden as the nominee.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: I think if you read those same 58% of Dems
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: or Dem-leaning independents, the list of policy accomplishments you just named,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: they would probably say, well, that sounds pretty good. I'm
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: wondering why you think that delta exists between what you've
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: gotten done and support for President Biden and maybe what
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: they need to hear to bring those Democrats and independents home.
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: Well, Tom, first of all, without getting into the a
• 31:50
  Speaker 6: technical attack on the poll. I have a lot of
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: doubts about that poll this weekend, which showed that young
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: voters preferred Donald Trump to Joe Biden, which has not
• 31:57
  Speaker 6: been the performance of young voters at any single time,
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: any time in the past three years. But look, I
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: think if you want to ask about Democratic enthusiasm, we
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: had a meeting of the Democratic National Committee on Friday
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: in Philadelphia. And that committee, which consists of Democrats from
• 32:13
  Speaker 6: all over the country and Democrats of all shades of
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: ideology in our party and all kinds of things, showed
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: the overwhelming enthusiasm the Democratic activists, Democratic leaders have for
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: the president. And I think that's what you're going to
• 32:27
  Speaker 6: see across the board. I think that if he runs,
• 32:31
  Speaker 6: and as I said, I expect he will, I think
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: he will have the overwhelming support of the Democratic Party,
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: and I think he'll be reelected. So look, we know
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: that there are challenges to being an incumbent and challenges
• 32:47
  Speaker 6: to having to get your message out in a certain
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: way when you're the incumbent. But I'm quite confident that
• 32:53
  Speaker 6: President Biden, if he runs, will wind up with the
• 32:56
  Speaker 6: overwhelming support of the Democratic Party. And again, as I said,
• 33:00
  Speaker 6: United Party taking on the Republicans next year.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: You know, I've heard President Biden and you and members
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: of the team talk a lot about President Trump and
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: sort of the unique threat he posed to our democracy,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: maybe still poses. I haven't heard you guys talk as
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: much about Ron DeSantis, who some people argue is really.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: The front runner for the Republican nomination.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Do you have a view of Ron DeSantis and maybe
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: what a DeSantis candidacy or presidency would mean for the country?
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: Well, look, first of all, I think Donald Trump is
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. I understand they
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: have some wish fulfillment exercise going on over there trying
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: to avoid Donald Trump. But when Kevin McCarthy couldn't get
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: elected speaker, the phone call went out. It was Donald Trump.
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: They got Kevin McCarthy elected speaker. And you go down
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: the line, at every key moment for their party, Donald
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: Trump is the person who decides. He decides who gets nominated.
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: He decides who wins for them. He decides where their
• 33:55
  Speaker 6: party goes. So I think they can pretend that they've
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: solved their Trump problem, but I don't see really any
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: evidence of that. Beyond that, we'll just let the Republican
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: Party politics play out as they may. And as I said,
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: I think if the president runs, he will have a
• 34:10
  Speaker 6: whelming support from Democrats and independents. Look, I heard a
• 34:14
  Speaker 6: lot of these same doubts about Joe Biden, his record,
• 34:16
  Speaker 6: what he stood for before the 2022 midterms. I heard
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: a lot of the same questions about polling numbers and
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: all these kinds of things. What we saw was, as
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: you know, a historic result, the first president ever to
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: get every senator in his own party reelected, a historically
• 34:32
  Speaker 6: low number of states given up in the House, actually
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: gaining governorships, gaining state legislature seats. You saw what happened
• 34:39
  Speaker 6: when Joe Biden brought his team and his talent and
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: his message to to the ballot box. And I think
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: really that's what I look to when I assess how
• 34:47
  Speaker 6: he's going to do in 2024. It was a.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: Hell of a good midterm, a lot better than 2010.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: You're about to leave the job. Jeff Zients is going
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: to take over. Just wonder if you could look back
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: for a minute. I mean, you've been through some pretty
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: historic moments. In particular, I just was wondering what it
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: was like for you, someone who's in the PDB, who's
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: reading intelligence constantly, at that moment when you guys realized like, okay,
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: Russia is actually going to do this.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: They're going to invade Ukraine.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: You're sort of sitting on this information, you're going home
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: at night, like trying to be normal over dinner with
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: your wife and friends, knowing that this sort of catastrophic
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: event is going to happen. Can you sort of take
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: us back and, you know, just remember what that moment was?
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: You know, Tom, it's interesting because in fact, we weren't
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: really sitting on it. We had sent the president out
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: to say this was going to happen. We had called
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: our European allies to say, hey, this is going to happen.
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: And of course, we'd had a lot of communications with
• 35:36
  Speaker 6: President Zelensky and others in Ukraine saying this was going
• 35:39
  Speaker 6: to happen. Far from kind of hiding the information.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, people doubted it.
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: We were telling anyone who would listen, hey, we need
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: to get ready. The West needs to prepare for this.
• 35:51
  Speaker 6: We need to get sanctions ready to go. And in
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: the end, although there was skepticism, what we were saying,
• 35:57
  Speaker 6: we were able to very quickly get the West lined
• 35:59
  Speaker 6: up to impose these unprecedented sanctions on Russia. We were
• 36:02
  Speaker 6: able to quickly get key aid and assistance to the Ukrainians.
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: And I think the most amazing part of this was
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: seeing the Ukrainians with their courage, with their guile, with
• 36:15
  Speaker 6: their flexibility, with the weapons we provided and other Western
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: allies provided, hold off what was thought to be the
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: second largest military in the world, to hold them off
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: from taking their capital, which most of the experts thought
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: would happen in two or three days, and hold off
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: from the overrunning the country, as most of the experts
• 36:36
  Speaker 6: thought would happen in two or three weeks. So just
• 36:39
  Speaker 6: seeing that unfold day by day was just an amazing
• 36:43
  Speaker 6: thing and something I think all of us here are
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: very proud of.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Last question, because I know you have a busy day today.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: Is there a moment or an event or a foreign
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: trip that you'll think back on as sort of your
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: favorite time in this White House that you want a
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: story to tell?
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I think really the moment really was
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: the month of August of 2022. It was a strange
• 37:02
  Speaker 6: month here. The president had COVID for a solid chunk
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: of the month and notwithstanding the fact that he had
• 37:08
  Speaker 6: to work remotely and work the phones. We were able
• 37:13
  Speaker 6: to get the Inflation Reduction Act passed. We were able
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: to conduct a major successful anti-terrorism mission in Kabul. We
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: were able to get the CHIPS Act passed, get the
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: PACT Act passed to help our veterans. And so it
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: was a time, a two or three week period of
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: tremendous progress on the legislative front, on the national security front,
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: and it just was just one of those periods where
• 37:40
  Speaker 6: everything kind of clicked, and we really had an exceptional
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: couple weeks there, and I'll always remember that time as
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: what we call the season of substance, a time when
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: we really got a lot of things done here, and
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: I think a time when the things we got done
• 37:56
  Speaker 6: are going to pay off benefits for years and years
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: to come in terms of the economy we'll be building,
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: the progress we're going to make at home and abroad.
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: That was a really critical period.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Every White House always tells the staff to take parts
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: of August off thinking it's going to be slow.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And it just never is. Never in history.
• 38:13
  Speaker 6: August is the month when it all happens every single year.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Don't travel in August, White House staff. Are you the
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: only guy in the country who hasn't gotten COVID yet?
• 38:20
  Speaker 6: I don't know about that, but knock wood. Thanks for
• 38:23
  Speaker 6: cursing me, Tom. I have not gotten COVID yet. And yeah,
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: but again, if I do, I'll take Paxlovid. We've got
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: a great medicines now. That's why, if you look, people
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: don't really appreciate the progress we've made on COVID. If
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: you look at the charts and the graphs, you see
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: in previous winters, cases went up, hospitalizations went up, ICU
• 38:43
  Speaker 6: admissions went up. This past winter, we've kept ICU admissions
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: very low because we have a treatment that this administration
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: purchased and has distributed widely. It keeps people who get
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: COVID from getting very sick.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I'd also note that you're someone who, when I see
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: you in public, you are wearing a mask.
• 38:58
  Speaker 6: I do wear a mask.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Pretty religiously.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: And it seems like it does the work. Ron Klain,
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: all your hard work for President Biden. And we really
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: appreciate it.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Tom.
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Before we go, let's talk a bit more about the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: State of the Union, every speechwriter's favorite set of remarks.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: We just heard Ron preview the speech in his interview
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: with Tommy, which will now include what I'm sure is
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: a seamless insert about the Chinese balloon. yeah uh the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: speech is also a chance for biden to make can
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: you guys try to.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Write that in real time much as we'll have to
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: much as much as we have to bring down inflation
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: we also have to bring down chinese spy balloons.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Well done you nailed that that's it can't improve on
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: that The speech is also a chance for Biden to
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: make his case for a second term ahead of an
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: expected re-election announcement this spring. And there's a new Washington
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Post-ABC News poll that shows Donald Trump leading the president
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: 48 to 45 percent in a potential rematch. Yikes. With
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: around 60 percent of Americans saying they'd be dissatisfied or
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: angry if either man returns to the White House. And
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: there are plenty of other rough numbers in that poll
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: for both Trump and Biden. No one speech can fix
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: any of that. Not pretending it can. But if you're
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: looking at polls like these in the White House... What
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: are you hoping to get out of the State of
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: the Union? Love it?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's sort of two broad tasks, neither easy. One,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I think, harder than the other. The first is to
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: tout what I think is fair to call an incredibly
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: successful two years, given the hand that President Biden was dealt.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And he can point to bipartisan bills like gun safety, infrastructure, semiconductors,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: which we talked about, health care for veterans. He can
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: also talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, which has investments
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: in clean energy. And he could talk about lower prescription
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: drug costs. You talk about at least pushing for student
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: debt relief and hoping it is held up. He can
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: point to inflation coming down. He can point to a
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: low unemployment rate. He has to do that at a
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: time when the country is in a pretty bad mood, deflated,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: as you said, in a part that we cut.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Sure, it's fine.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: So he has to find a way to do that.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: But that is something I think that was what we
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: struggled with. When President Obama was giving State of the Unions,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: how do you tell your accomplishments when people aren't really
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: in a mood to hear them because they feel unhappy
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: with the state of things? But I think it is
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: important that he does that. And then the other big
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: task is finding a way to speak to the desire
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: for unity and bipartisanship, which is so central to the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: case Joe Biden makes for himself as a candidate, while
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: also finding a way to paint Republicans as extreme. So
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that is I think that's the slightly harder task to
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: figure out how you talk about what you want to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: do with the Republicans in Congress while still painting them
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: as extreme. radical and out of touch and why we
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: need to elect more Democrats.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's important not to disparage all balloons because angioplasty.
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, um, uh, balloons, balloons play a vital role, uh,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: in children's parties.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: That's right. Serious question.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: What do you guys think the balance is in this
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: bad boy, the state of the union, a foreign policy
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: versus domestic, given that you have to talk about Ukraine
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: and you have to do a bunch of balloon nonsense.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, I'd still, I'd still confine it to that one section.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: As we must be strong at home, we have to
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: also be strong abroad.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Give us a percentage. I think you've got to do 25%.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Because here's the thing. That's all I get? That's all
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: you get. Here's how, off the top of my head,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: I try to organize it. You've got to do your accomplishments, Litany.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: You've got to get through that fast. I know they
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: all want to have the accomplishment. I think they're going
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to lean into that. I know they're going to, but
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: they've got to get through that fast. Because, like Levitt said,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: people aren't feeling it in their own lives. And by
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: just saying it, you're not going to set it there.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: No one's going to sit home in a dour mood
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: and be like, oh, well, he just actually told me
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: that unemployment's low. I feel great. That's not going to happen.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: It's still good to do it. I'm glad he should
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: do it. I'm not saying he shouldn't. But I think
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: you have to frame the accomplishments within the context of
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: what else you're fighting to achieve and who's standing in
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: your way. So I think you do the accomplishments. He's
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: also going to have to do a big section on,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: or I'm guessing some section on the debt fight. what's
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: to come, right? There's also- McCarthy's previewing that. McCarthy's previewing that.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: On Monday.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: He wants to hit the economy, jobs, inflation, all that hard, right?
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: That's going to be the crux of both his, what
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: he's talking about with the accomplishments and his policy prescription.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: And just on the debt, I do think it's like,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I think that that's a framing of, you don't frame
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: it as therefore cutting spending. I think you would frame
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: it as, we can either work together or you can
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: destroy the economy, right? Like this is something where we shouldn't,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: we have to work together. Come work with me, come
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: get this done with me. This is something we have
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: to do together.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And then we just talked about accomplishments, economy, debt ceiling fight, Ukraine, China,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: and then somehow you got to do all the other
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: issues that matter in like one section, you know, like
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: whether it's probably going to talk about immigration, Tyree Nichols
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: family has been invited to the same union. We'll go
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: talk about police reform. You want to talk about all
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: these other issues, both issues where he's made some progress
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: and issues where he probably hopes to make progress. I'll
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: probably mention student debt reform, right? Like all of this
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: stuff he's got to put in there. And I also
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: think that the challenge here is basically what you want
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: out of this speech is it's a night's worth of
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: free airtime for your message, your re-election message in front
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: of a big audience and maybe 12 hours worth of
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: good coverage afterwards, right? That's it. There's no more State
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: of the Union coverage goes for a week or a
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: couple days anymore. Tonight was the night he became president.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Tonight is the night he became president. So you want
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: your message to get out, which means that of all
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that litany of things that you have to put in
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: the speech, you also need some kind of theme to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: emerge from the speech. And for him, if he's, as expected,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: going to run for re-election, the re-election theme needs to
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: come out. And I think what he'll probably do is show, like,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I'm the guy who has been working with some in
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: the other party... To get stuff done that matters to people.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And I'm still working hard at that. I'm still fighting
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: for that. While these jokers are just like a bunch
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: of children who are working for the extreme elements of
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: their own party with a whole bunch of political stuff. Yeah,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: he's not going to say that that explicitly he's going
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: to be much more. I think he frames.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: That as a choice for them.
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Like you have an opportunity. You can give in to
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: the most extreme elements of your party or you can
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: work with me to solve these problems.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: And the message is going to be like, I'm serious.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: They're not. You know, I care about you. They care
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: about power. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: The most recent.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Calm competence versus chaos.
• 45:23
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: The most the best example we've had of that message
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: in the last few months is. is Joe Biden standing
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: next to Mitch McConnell doing an infrastructure event in Kentucky
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: while Kevin McCarthy is, you know, promising organs to Matt
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Gaetz to.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Get the speakership. And not the organs you think.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: He's down a few right now.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Matt Gaetz got the organ he wanted.
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: I'm so sorry, everyone. This is a good contrast for
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden, right? Because we've talked a lot about, you know,
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: The challenge Biden's poll numbers are facing right now. That
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: was a weird passive voice construction.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: But there was a reason for White House press secretary.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: The balloon has been shot down. Mistakes among us have
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: been made. But there's a CNN poll from late in
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: January that found that nearly three quarters of Americans think
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: the House Republican leaders haven't paid enough attention to the
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: most important problems that they're facing. So he Biden can
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: play off of them in a way that I think
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: will be beneficial to his message.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: We've said it a million times, as has Joe Biden,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: That's the whole, that's what he's going to go for
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: in this speech. That's going to be the whole re-election campaign.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: And the story of his life.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Love it. We've been through this special hell a few times,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: the State of the Union. What's our friend Vinay Reddy,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: who's Joe Biden's chief speechwriter, what's he been through these
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: last few weeks? And what's the process like in these
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: final 24 hours before the speech?
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Well, we know that even in the last 24 hours.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: They have, the white house has said that this final
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: message of the speech isn't done. Right. Which tells you
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: that his life is a fucking nightmare.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to say last year. Remember right before
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: the speech, they were rewriting it because of Putin's invasion.
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: It's tough. The second time something is some foreign policy
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: thing is upended the state of the union right before.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Right. I, if I were, if I were, so I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: think it has been weeks and weeks of conversation, uh, Obviously,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: they want to tout their accomplishments. The White House put
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: out a kind of litany of accomplishments a few weeks ago.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: And that, I think, is probably the blueprint for most
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of the section that's looking back over the last two years.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And probably it's a matter of emphasis and what they
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: cut and what they keep. That's not easy. But I
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: assume the real debate has been about what policies to
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: announce you're pushing for and how much to lean into
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: what you'll want to get done in Congress, how much
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to want to do administratively, and how much
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you're saying is going to be that you can't do
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: without more support or what have you. And I assume
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: that's been a lot of what the internal fight has
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: been about. There's been a lot of conversation about how
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: much to talk about things like the child tax credit
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and other issues like that. And how did it resolve?
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: We don't know.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: What about that fun, that.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: One hopeful 30-minute meeting where you just kick around ideas
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: about how we're all doing it different this year?
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, yes.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes. The first, the first, right, that's the first meeting,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: which is this year.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: This speech is going to be really short. It's going
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: to be different.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: We're going to be punchy. We're going to be tight.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Now, who crushes those hopes?
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Every person everyone who works in the government it's like
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: murder on the iron express no one person holds the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: knife yeah.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Uh lawyers lawyers what's their problem hey just like the
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: fact checkers they have some documents to read what they're
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: going through classified notes in trouble who we love and
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: protected us for many years but yeah i love their pro.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I will say though for them was like was biden's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: i have some I wouldn't be surprised if they actually
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: successfully have a slightly shorter State of the Union.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to bet it. I'm not going to
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: predict it. We'll get to predictions in a second. We'll
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: get to predictions in a second. What you're doing in
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: this last week of any sort of State of the
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Union speech is you're fighting off cuts. I'm sorry. You're
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: fighting for cuts. Yeah, fighting for cuts, fighting off additions.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: You're fighting off words.
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: And you want to try to make that message come through.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: You're pretty delirious because you haven't been sleeping. You're going
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: through speech prep. Lud, I just want to read you
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: a paragraph that sent a chill down my spine from
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: the New York Times story about the speech. huddled at
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Camp David over the weekend to go over the latest
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: draft of the address with top advisors, including Mike Donilon,
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Bruce Reed, Anita Dunn, and Stephen Reschetti, as well as
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Vinay Reddy and John Meacham.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: This is what I was worried about. This is the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: part I was referring to.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Now, here's the thing. I have worked with Donilon. I've
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: taken edits from Bruce and Anita. They're all great people
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: to take edits from, I will say.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Where are we going with this?
• 49:43
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: But the idea of, in the final weekend, being cooped
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: up with them at Camp David in a room with
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: the president and them, I'd fucking lose my mind.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: And they're great. They're great people, but I'd lose my mind.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I've been a part... In a big speech like this,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the worst case scenario is ending up in a room
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of advisors because here's what actually happens
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: in practice. Everybody has a conversation. The conversation ends. And
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: then everybody... And everyone says a million things. And then everyone...
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: You got that? Yes. They turn to the speechwriter and
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: go like, you got that?
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: You got that? And you're sitting there and there's just
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: like steam coming from your head.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: And it's 7 p.m. and everybody else wants a drink.
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And it's like.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: They all go out for a drink.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: They all go out for a drink. You got that?
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: You got that? You want to do a pass?
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: You got everyone's comments. And by the way, everyone made
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: a comment because... When you're in that room with the
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: President of the United States, you've got to say something.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: You've got to make a comment. You've got to be
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: part of the.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, why are you there?
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Why are you there? You've got to say something.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: You've got to make an impact.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: You can't just say, oh, I think it's great.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I agree with what everyone else said. You won't be
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: at the next one.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: I really think you two are making too much of this.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: You've got to just let Joe be Joe. You've got
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: to get out the yellow legal pads.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: And you start.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I just think we've got to be a little more... Grounded.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Now we're channeling Axelrod. This is what Axelrod would say.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: I think we're at 60,000 feet.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: We're way up here and we've got to ground it a.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Little bit more. the other, the other sad part, this
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: is really therapy.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: You guys are great at this and I'm, I leave
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: it to you. You guys are the masters here, but
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: the wordsmiths, the wordsmiths.
• 51:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: It's like a, what Jack, it's a lot of, um,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the Jack Donaghy line from 30 or on, which is, uh,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not a writer, but do that. Uh, the, uh,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the other, the other sad, I think one of the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: most kind of, it's like a, it's a necessary, it's a,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: it's an admission of defeat. It's the, it's when the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: speech has now ballooned to several thousand words longer than
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: you want it to be. And you're going through and
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: you're cutting just dependent clauses and like the tightening that
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: just sort of denudes it.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Of any beauty.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the other.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: You lose every fucking flourish to run through every policy.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: That's the other danger is that you get to the
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: point where you're literally just reading policy items and like
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: poll test language that some advisor told you to put in. Yes.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: And it is the danger. But it's also, I think,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: the crux of why the State of the Union is
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: an important speech that people who pay attention to politics
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: hate and don't care about because it's For people that
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: do pay attention or are aware of a lot of, say,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's accomplishments or the contours of the debate with
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the Republicans in the House, the speech is boring and
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: probably will ultimately be unmemorable. Very rarely are sentences from
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: State of the Unions memorable. But for people who don't
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: check in that often, it is the rare time where
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the president speaks to everyone. And inevitably, State of the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Unions are viewed far more negatively by the press and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: experts than they are by the public who sees them.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: They inevitably poll quite well after the fact. even when
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: they are just boring fucking litanies.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Biden folks, as they should, probably we will too,
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: will be tweeting and sending around insta-polls that will be like,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: 78% of Americans loved the speech, you know, which is great.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: But yeah, then they'll get a bunch of annoying comments
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: on cable, as usually happens. All right, so let's jump
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: back into the prediction business with bets on how long
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: this speech will be. Okay. And then let's give our
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: picks for what we think the most cliched so-to take
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: will be. On Tuesday night, because there's a lot to
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: choose from.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Now, I want you to know that I wrote I
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: wrote this take wrote is a strong word. I wrote
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: it in my mind. I didn't take a note down.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: But before I read one of the Times pieces that
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: actually was the preview that makes this uses this cliche.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: But I do think the most common response will be.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: A president who promised unity delivers a speech at a
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: time of incredible division. That will be the overall. Can
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: he bring the country together? Probably not. But God, will
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: he try?
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: See, my post, my number one, if we're drafting, my
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: number one take would be Biden failed to craft a
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: message that brought the country together. Republicans and Democrats still divided.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: That will be the most annoying take for me.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: I think that those are both very possible. I'm going
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: with cable anchor recites bad poll numbers, turns to pundit.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Did he do anything tonight to turn things around? Did
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: he change any minds tonight? Did he quiet the chorus
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: of doubts?
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, which of these subjects will be in more Republican
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: press releases? Joe Biden's speech didn't fix inflation. Joe Biden's
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: speech didn't bring down gas prices. Joe Biden's speech didn't
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: secure our border.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, the border. I think the border. It's all about
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: the border. You'll hear adult in the room, bully pulpit,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: soft launch about the campaign. Soft launch. Oh, yeah.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: There will be the unofficial launch of Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: I see a lot of inflection point around. There'll be
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of inflection points.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Now, all of this is predicated on like in the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: in the piece in The Times. They did make a
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: point of the fact that like. It's also about Joe
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Biden's energy and delivery. And that will be a big
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: part of the coverage. Age concerns. The kind of pundits
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: look around. I think pundits look around and be like.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Did he just like slump over on the.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How hard am I allowed to go on this
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: based on how he presented during the speech?
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: And if he, you know, God forbid he stumbles over
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: a word, that'll be a whole thing.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Well, one way to make it memorable is just put
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: a bunch of lies in there about like a rock
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: WMD and stuff.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then it's like a timeless address.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: He'll say the state of our union has never been stronger.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: You think we'll get that? We'll think that like superlative?
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I think it'll be more of a strong and getting
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: stronger because we're building back better.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. All right. 61 minutes last year. What do
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: you think? How many minutes?
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. 48.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say it.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: 48.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: 48. I'm saying it.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: Tommy? 65.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: 65.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: That's what I have down here in my notes. It's
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: right here in my notes.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: 65. You also wear the same fucking shoes.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: We got a balloon topper. You are dressed like a bumblebee.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: What am I? What is it? What am I dressed like, Tommy?
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Tell everybody what I'm wearing, fucking freak.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Yellow shorts and a yellow tee. All right. Thanks to
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Ron Klain for joining this pod. Sorry, the speech didn't
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: lift the dead ceiling. Did he tell you what he's
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: doing next? Does he want to be a co-host on
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America? We didn't get into it, but that
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: was not the vibe I got.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden has a taste for blood.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: You're welcome here any time, Ron.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: He's going to shoot down the Goodyear blimp. He's going
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to start taking out people in those hot air balloons.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: People get into those hot air balloons.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Those things are dangerous. I cannot. I wouldn't do that.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: People wear masks for two years and get in a
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: hot air balloon?
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: What's going on? Elijah would be very disappointed if I
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: didn't say to all of you, we're going to be
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: on Group Thread Tuesday evening. That's right. Just go to
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: the Pod Save America YouTube page and check it out. Bye, everyone.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Our producers are Hayley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: slash podsaveamerica.