Latest / Pod Save America / 100 Perfect Days

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100 Perfect Days · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: slash crooked. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we are somehow only
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: 100 days into Donald Trump's second term. And the only
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  Speaker 1: promising news is that just about all the polling is
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: now showing that the president and his agenda and his
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  Speaker 1: party have already reached historic levels of unpopularity in just
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  Speaker 1: three months. We'll talk about where things stand, how we're feeling,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and the state of the opposition. Then you'll hear the
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  Speaker 1: conversation that Dan had when we were in D.C. with
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  Speaker 1: our old friend Neera Tanden, who's once again running the
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  Speaker 1: Center for American Progress. But let's start with what the
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  Speaker 1: White House wants to be talking about on day one
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  Speaker 1: of what they're calling 100 days week. Wait, what?
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  Speaker 2: 100 days week?
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  Speaker 1: They're calling it 100 days week. So it's like it's
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the 100th day, but then it's a week of days.
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  Speaker 1: I wonder if it's like 100 days month. How do
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  Speaker 1: you do the math there?
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  Speaker 2: Just being by the dumbest motherfuckers on earth. A friend
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  Speaker 2: of mine is on a jury and it's federal. or
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: it's in a federal building, and he went to report
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  Speaker 2: for jury duty, and there was a notice on the
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  Speaker 2: front of the DOJ saying that they hadn't been paying
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  Speaker 2: their water bill, and that the water was going to
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  Speaker 2: be turned off starting next week.
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  Speaker 1: It feels like that's an Elon question.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: An Elon question.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, they dozed the water. Did Big Balls turn the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: water off?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: They dozed the person that's in charge of paying the bill?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: They dozed the water payment person. On day one of
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: 100 Days a Week, they want to talk about deportations.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: They kicked things off on Monday morning by putting signs
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  Speaker 1: all over the White House lawn that had photos of
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  Speaker 1: people they've deported along with the crimes they've committed. I'm
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  Speaker 1: sure Stephen Miller was out there in the middle of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the night putting up the signs. Oh, he was doing Photoshop.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: He was making these himself.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, doing something. Doing something. Getting pretty excited. Not
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  Speaker 1: pictured on the lawn were three small American kids the
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  Speaker 1: administration just deported. A two-year-old, a four-year-old, and a seven-year-old.
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  Speaker 1: All U.S. citizens deported. who were sent out of the
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  Speaker 1: country when they showed up with their mothers for routine
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  Speaker 1: immigration check-ins in New Orleans. The two-year-old's father is an
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  Speaker 1: American citizen who had asked a federal court to keep
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  Speaker 1: his daughter with him. But before the courthouse could open,
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  Speaker 1: the government had already deported the girl and her mother
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  Speaker 1: to Honduras. The presiding judge, who is a conservative Trump appointee,
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  Speaker 1: said it's, quote, illegal and unconstitutional to deport a citizen
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  Speaker 1: and scheduled a hearing for May 16th, quote, in the
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  Speaker 1: interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just
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  Speaker 1: deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process. That is
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  Speaker 1: the conservative Trump appointee. The four-year-old and the seven-year-old are siblings,
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  Speaker 1: and according to the family's lawyers, the four-year-old has stage
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  Speaker 1: four cancer and was deported without their medication or the
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  Speaker 1: ability to contact their medical team. Stomach-churning stuff. The other
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  Speaker 1: big deportation story is the highly publicized arrest on Friday
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  Speaker 1: of a county judge in Wisconsin. Hannah Dugan, who the
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  Speaker 1: administration says helped an undocumented immigrant escape from her courthouse
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  Speaker 1: as ICE agents arrived to make an arrest. FBI Director
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  Speaker 1: Kash Patel essentially live-tweeted the arrest and later posted a
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  Speaker 1: photo of Dugan being frog-marched to a cop car, while
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  Speaker 1: Attorney General Pam Bondi called Dugan, quote, a criminal judge
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  Speaker 1: on a criminal bench and labeled all judges who opposed
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  Speaker 1: Trump's immigration crackdown, quote, deranged. And here's Border Czar Tom
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  Speaker 1: Homan talking about the deported children today.
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  Speaker 4: If you choose to have a U.S. citizen child knowing
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  Speaker 4: you're in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position.
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  Speaker 4: You put your family in that position. What we did
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  Speaker 4: is remove children with their mothers who requested their children
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  Speaker 4: depart with them. This was a parental decision. Parenting 101.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: The mothers made that choice. And I tell you what,
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  Speaker 4: if we didn't do it, the story today would be
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  Speaker 4: the Trump administration separating families again.
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  Speaker 1: Lawyers for the families said the mothers did not make
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  Speaker 1: that choice. I mean, you did separate families, but anyway, Tom.
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  Speaker 1: So the White House line is basically these weren't deportations.
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  Speaker 1: These were mothers who chose to take their kids with them.
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  Speaker 1: You just heard Homan. But the Trump judge in Louisiana
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  Speaker 1: said in his ruling, basically, that he couldn't take that
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  Speaker 1: into account until the administration actually proved it in court.
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  Speaker 1: What do you guys make of all this, Tommy?
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  Speaker 5: I mean, I think big picture, it tells you that
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  Speaker 5: the process is a rush disaster and the Trump administration
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  Speaker 5: doesn't really care. I mean, here, Tom Homan there, he's
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  Speaker 5: just so unapologetic about the human suffering involved in this.
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  Speaker 5: I think they think it's the price of doing business.
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  Speaker 5: It's similar to what we saw with the Venezuelans who
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  Speaker 5: were sent to El Salvador, who were just people who
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  Speaker 5: had tattoos, who are clearly not members of a gang
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  Speaker 5: in 90% of the cases. And, you know, in this case,
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  Speaker 5: I mean, you have a father, apparently ICE threatened to
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  Speaker 5: arrest the dad too.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: And the dad was allowed a one minute conversation with
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  Speaker 5: the mom and while she was in custody before they
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  Speaker 5: were deported. So, I mean, they're just, I mean, the
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  Speaker 5: cruelty is the point has become a cliche, but clearly
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  Speaker 5: they are rushing this process because as we've read, there's
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  Speaker 5: a goal of deporting 1 million people this year. I
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  Speaker 5: think Tom Homan said today they've deported 138,000 so far,
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  Speaker 5: so they're behind schedule. And so they're just moving as
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  Speaker 5: quickly as they can.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a, so in the past, look, there are
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  Speaker 2: undocumented people who have citizen children that creates a horrible
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  Speaker 2: circumstance if that person is going to be deported. The
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  Speaker 2: way he says it is disgusting. He is pointing at
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  Speaker 2: the fact that there is inherent cruelty in any immigration system,
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  Speaker 2: even when it is operating with compassion and decency as
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  Speaker 2: much as it can, because there are difficult human questions
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  Speaker 2: in our immigration system. But that's why the lack of
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  Speaker 2: due process is so evil and awful. These are questions
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  Speaker 2: that require humility and compassion and time and attention by
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  Speaker 2: people who have the best, have some like modicum of, of,
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  Speaker 2: of decency in, in dealing with this. But for them,
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  Speaker 2: there's just two kinds of people like citizens in Trendo Agua.
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  Speaker 2: And so if, if this has happened to you, it's
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  Speaker 2: your fucking fault. And if we do something cruel, it's
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  Speaker 2: your fault. There's a, there's a guy that took a
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  Speaker 2: wrong turn. And if you saw this story, it happened,
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  Speaker 2: I think over the weekend or just before the weekend
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  Speaker 2: of somebody took a wrong turn and ended up crossing
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  Speaker 2: into Canada.
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  Speaker 1: It's happening all the time.
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  Speaker 2: And he's doing Uber Eats and gets picked up. It's
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  Speaker 2: not clear if it was purposeful or just an error,
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  Speaker 2: but then the family can't find him. Turns out he
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  Speaker 2: is in El Salvador, even though he wasn't on the record.
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  Speaker 2: So I guess they corrected that. And of course, the
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  Speaker 2: Department of Homeland Security and the spokesperson who was consistently
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  Speaker 2: lying throughout this whole process, like, no, Trendy Aragua got him.
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  Speaker 2: And the family's like, this is not true, and we're
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  Speaker 2: desperate to get in contact. Only because the New York
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  Speaker 2: Times investigated it did they get this information. And I
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  Speaker 2: don't know, what I'm realizing as just watching all this
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  Speaker 2: unfold is how competence is part of how you show
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  Speaker 2: empathy in a society, that mistreating people this way, whether
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  Speaker 2: cruelty is the point or just ham-fisted fucking morons, doesn't
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  Speaker 2: really matter because they're being so callous and reckless with
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  Speaker 2: people's lives.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it just didn't, like, there are tough choices you
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  Speaker 1: have to make When, like you said, there's undocumented immigrants
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  Speaker 1: who are getting deported and then they're U.S. citizen children.
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  Speaker 1: This was not a case where, like, they didn't apprehend
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  Speaker 1: this woman, either of these women. They showed up for
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  Speaker 1: a check-in, right? So there was no danger there. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't like there was criminal conduct there they were worried about.
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  Speaker 1: They did not, according to the lawyer's families, and we'll
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  Speaker 1: find out in court later, they didn't give the mothers options.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't give them time to talk to the fathers
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  Speaker 1: or the caregivers or the lawyers. And one mother was pregnant.
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  Speaker 1: There was no reason not to let them contact caregivers
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  Speaker 1: or the fathers or anything. There was no reason to
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  Speaker 1: do it this fast. There was no reason to do
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  Speaker 1: it before the court opened. There was just no reason
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  Speaker 1: to do it like this. And now they get into
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  Speaker 1: this defensive crouch like they always do where they're like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: do you think we made a mistake? No, fuck them.
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  Speaker 1: It's their problem. Well, they lie, right?
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  Speaker 5: Like Jose Hermosillo, the 19-year-old U.S. citizen who was in
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: prison for 10 days by U.S. immigration authorities.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: It turns out he had a seizure.
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: And he went to the hospital and then he saw
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: a border patrol agent and asked that guy for help.
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  Speaker 5: And then they threw him in jail. And then Trisha McLaughlin,
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  Speaker 5: the DHS spokesman, went online on Twitter and lied and
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  Speaker 5: made up this whole story about how he went up
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: to a border patrol agent. and claimed to be from
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: Mexico and the country illegally. And it's like, this is
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: just the pattern over and over and over again. They
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  Speaker 5: do something horrible and they pretend something else happened.
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  Speaker 1: Also, I feel like if you deported, even if the
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  Speaker 1: mother wanted the kid to come, if it's a four-year-old
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  Speaker 1: with cancer and you find that out and you're the government,
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't you do something? Wouldn't you make it so that
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  Speaker 1: the kid could get his... The kid could get their
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  Speaker 1: medication or a doctor or something. These people don't fucking
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: give a shit. On the Judge Dugan case, it certainly
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  Speaker 1: seems like whether or not she broke the law, there
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  Speaker 1: wasn't a legal or public safety rationale for frog marching
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  Speaker 1: her out of the courtroom and having the FBI director
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  Speaker 1: and the attorney general essentially celebrate the arrest in the media.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the story? How alarming was
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  Speaker 1: it to you, Levitt?
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  Speaker 2: You know, Donald Trump's been arrested. Uh, and nobody showed
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  Speaker 2: up at his house and frog marched him out of
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: the door because they understood that he's, uh, uh, not
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  Speaker 2: a danger in that circumstance, that there's no urgency to this,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: that you can show some respect and have this person report. Clearly, uh,
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  Speaker 2: this judge is going to fight these charges. There was a,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the judge was angry that they were even trying to, uh, uh,
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  Speaker 2: serve this arrest warrant. The judge claiming it was a,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: they had the wrong kind of warrant, right? That we're
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: going to learn more about this. Whatever the exact facts
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: turn out to be, this will be a gray area.
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  Speaker 2: Even if it's the worst possible version of what fucking
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Cash Patel is saying, it would be a gray area
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  Speaker 2: at best. I can't trust these people or anything that
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: they're saying about it anyway. What is certainly clear is
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: they are excited about the prospect of arresting a judge
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  Speaker 2: and sending a message to other judges about, hey, if
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: you're thinking about standing up for an immigrant that's in
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  Speaker 2: your courtroom, that's a dangerous thing to do. You should
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: be really careful about how you do that. You should
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: be worried that if you cross some invisible line that
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: you won't know about till after, till we tell you
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: about it, you might find yourself arrested in front of
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: your courthouse.
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Tom Homan threatened others today at that press conference
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: at the White House. I mean, it's very clear that
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: these guys, Homan, Stephen Miller, all the hardline immigration folks,
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: they want to fix fights with state and local officials
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: so they can call them South immigration or call them
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: sanctuary cities or whatever. And this does seem like it's
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: a shocking escalation. But also, clearly, there was a weird
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: PR rollout that had been planned, right? Because Kash Patel
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: tweets about it. He deletes it. Then Pam Bondi tweets
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: about it. And then they do this big PR push.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: The story is very weird. The facts are weird.
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: Why would a judge help someone who was before her
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: for battery charges get out of the courtroom?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: There was no public safety problem because the cops immediately
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: arrest the guy the same day. So it's not like
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: he was on the lam. And then they also arrested
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: her at work when she arrived.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: No, that's the public safety problem.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: It's bizarre.
• 12:32
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: And the claim, right, that, oh, she secretly directed him
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: out one door and then another. They got him right then.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: It didn't lead to any actual negative consequences.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Clay Higgins, Republican House member. uh, said, I hope they
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: rest a hundred more judges. Cool. So member of Congress,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I was looking into this because, uh, Andrew McCarthy of
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: all people, it's like a very right wing conservative, uh,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: legal pundit. He was writing in the national review why
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: it was very bad that they did this basically. And
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: he said, look, whether, whether she was in, did the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: right thing or not, whether she's guilty or not. He's like, the, the,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: the deal is in Milwaukee and Wisconsin and other places
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like this, the state judge doesn't necessarily know the person's
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: immigration status. that comes to the courtroom for this other trial.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And the federal agents didn't tell the judge they were coming.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: They didn't alert the police. They could have alerted the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: chief judge ahead of time that they needed to get
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: this guy and make arrangements. So they could have, again,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: if they wanted to get this guy, you call up
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the local state authorities and be like, hey, there's this guy.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: He's a danger. We're going to get him. Didn't do
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: any of that. And state court judges don't necessarily like
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: federal agents just jumping into their courtrooms and arresting people
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: because you're trying these cases in state court. And if
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: people who are supposed to go into state court, whether
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: they're defendants, whether they're testifying, if they know that like
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: federal agents can come scoop them up at any time,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: then they're not going to come testify for the other cases, right?
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: So there's a reason not to do this. And the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: idea that feds can just come in without a federal
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: search warrant is, Right, because they had an administrative warrant.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Which is what the judge objected to. Right, and this
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: is what she objected to. And again, right, like they
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: ended up getting the guy. And they just, they, this happened,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I guess, in the first Trump term as well. There
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: was a judge in Boston who told an undocumented immigrant
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: to go down into the basement. And the difference was
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: they let the judge come in on their own. They
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: didn't arrest them right there. And the charges were eventually dropped.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And they had like the state disciplinary board deal with it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: It was like an ethics case. Yeah, it was like
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: an ethics. Yeah, exactly.
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: It's not like they think this judge is, I don't know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: it was a danger to the community, flight risk. The
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: judge is out now. Of course, it's ridiculous.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: They love this. They love this. One other big story
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that Trump is probably less eager to discuss on immigration.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: On Friday, the administration abandoned its efforts to terminate the
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: legal status of thousands of foreign students. Tommy, what do
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: we know about why they did this and what happens now?
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, it sounds like there are about 100 lawsuits
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: and nearly two dozen court orders blocking them from deporting
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: these people or getting them out of the country. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: it sounds like ICE was about to have to testify
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: under oath about the process. So maybe that was a concern.
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: Just on the merits, if the administration cares about that,
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: this likely would precipitate a huge drop in foreign students,
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: which would impact not just school revenue, but the US's
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: ability to get the smartest researchers and the engineers to
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: come here and to learn and to conduct research and
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: do things that are very beneficial to the country. I'm
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: not confident that the administration won't find some other way
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: to punish foreign students. It's not at all clear that
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: this is going to help people like Mahmoud Khalil, who
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: was arrested for peaceful protests over the war in Gaza.
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: By the way, speaking of cruelty, he was denied a
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: request for a two-week furlough with an ankle bracelet to
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: be present at the birth of his first child.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I said no. But it does seem like there's a
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: reprieve here for a lot of other students.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about this early on and about what
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: it looks like for the administration to follow court orders.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: And following court orders doesn't just mean what you do
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: or don't do after the order has come through. It's
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: all the work that goes into treating the courts with
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: respect and showing up. And they're a little bit like
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Lucy with the chocolates right now. They do a brazenly
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: illegal move. to hundreds, if not thousands of students, suddenly
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: there's a hundred lawsuits. Suddenly there's all these people with
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: very valid claims in front of very angry judges. The
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Jenner Block case is before a judge and the DOJ
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: person's trying to defend this ridiculous order. And actually it's
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: because of racial discrimination. And the judge is like, what
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: the fuck are you talking about? It's embarrassing. And so
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: they're kind of brushing up. It seems like, look, I
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: do not think they give a fuck about whether or
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: not colleges recruit students from around the world. I think
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: they are thrilled to fuck with colleges and their ability
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: to recruit foreign students.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: But I do think.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: They are hitting some kind of genuine like human capacity
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: limits to pursue all this like brazen illegal conduct and
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: then defend it in court.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Does Lucy have a move with chocolates too?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Lucy. So there's Lucy with the football.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: That's Charlie Brown.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about, oh, I'm sorry. I love Lucy with
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: the chocolates on the conveyor belt. So they're doing illegal.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: The chocolates are, I think the chocolates are crimes, Of
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: some kind.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: That's, you know, cleared it up. Lucy with the construct.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: No, I hear that. I hear that. Lucy with the chocolates.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Lucy with the football. It seems like what happened here,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: there may have been AI involved, which is there's this
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: big database of all the students who have this specific
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: kind of visa. This is the F-1 visa, right? And
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so they were not going to deport them like they
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: did Mahmoud Khalil, right? That was like the Secretary of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: State somehow. It's Marco Rubio saying he's a threat to
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: national security. Right, yeah. Somehow that's something that the Secretary
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of State can do. This was, so they all have
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: their legal status in some database, right? And then they
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: went through and anyone who's ever had the most minor
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: brush with the law, they just terminated their status.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Traffic violations.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: So one woman in Connecticut said she was targeted after
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a dispute over a luggage fee. One was accused of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: boarding a bus that was out of service. One was
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: cited by police for driving too slowly. So these are
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the kinds of things that people, and so then they'd
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: go to court and the judge was like, okay, so,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: and the DOJ would be like, well, That doesn't necessarily
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: mean they're going to get deported. It's just that they
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: can always challenge it. And they're like, yeah, but what
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: if they just get scooped up? And they're like, well,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: their status was terminated in the database, but that doesn't necessarily...
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And so one of the judges, an exasperated U.S. district
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: judge on a race, this was in the Politico story
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: about this, said... He's either here legally or he's not
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: here legally. There is a yes or no answer here.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: This is not Schrodinger's visa. Either he's here legally or
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: he's not. Nice. And I think this is one of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the reasons they sort of backed off because it was, again,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it's cool, but it's just like incompetence.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: They can't get in front. These guys have to go
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: in front of a judge and defend these indefensible decisions.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: It reminds me a little, it makes me, I think
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: to Tommy's point, it reminds me of when they, in
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: the early days in 2017, did their Muslim ban thing.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: It gets thrown out and then they go back and
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: figure out a way to do it that can like
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: pass muster with at least, you know, conservative judges.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: And that's what they're doing. They're going to go back
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: and try to figure out a way to do this.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: But I also do think this is exactly what they
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: did with the Venezuelans they sent to El Salvador, which
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: was they pulsed the ICE database for anyone somehow connected
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: to Trendo Aragua. And it found people who just had
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: tattoos or like wore a Bulls jersey. And the problem
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: there is the damage is done and these people are
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: now rotting in hell because in an El Salvador prison.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Or people that just happened to have been touching the
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: immigration system at the moment where they were getting beat
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: down by their boss to go find people.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Right. pod save america is brought to you by books
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• 21:09
  Speaker 1: promo code crooked, Boox, promo code crooked. So here we
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: are at 100 Days, which is a completely made-up milestone
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: in every president's four-year term that gives an administration the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: chance to talk about its accomplishments, media the chance to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: do some retrospectives, and if they're lucky, get an interview
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: with the president, pollsters get a chance to put out
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a bunch of new polls. Trump's doing a rally in
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Michigan on Tuesday night. He'll also be sitting for an
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: interview with ABC News. He's already done big interviews with
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Time Magazine, another with our friends Ashley Parker and Michael
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Scherer at The Atlantic. That one posted on Monday morning
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: as we were getting ready for this recording. You guys
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: have moments from The Time or Atlantic interviews you want
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to talk about that stood out to you as either
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: newsy or at least noteworthy?
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, the Time one, there's one
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: thing that... It's just it just sucks to sort of
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: sink into a Trump interview because it's just sand through
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: your hands. But I did want to note that he
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: basically says when he's talking about the law firms that
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: the law firms going along with these deals and these
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: are smart people. They went along with these deals because
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: they know they did something wrong. And I just hope
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: the people that made those deals feel pretty proud of
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: themselves that now he's just basically saying, look, these guys
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: are copping to it. That's what happened here.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: In the Atlantic one, he did something similar about with
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the with the media. people, like he was talking about Bezos.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: But with them, he was like, at some point, you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: just keep going, you keep pushing, you keep pushing, and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: then they say, no mas, no mas.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: You know, the first kind of 100 days, a person
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: who raised up 100 days milestone?
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Who?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Is it FDR?
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: FDR. Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Nice job. Good trivia.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Another great president who served more than two terms.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: I mean, a couple from the Time Magazine one, when
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: he's talked about the Supreme Court's ruling on Abreu Garcia,
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: They read the language from the ruling that's like, the
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: from custody in El Salvador. And they say, are you
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: facilitating his release? Trump ducks the question. He's like, I
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions.
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: You know, they feel the order says something different than
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: what you're saying. So it just, it reminds you that
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: if he's going to defy the Supreme Court, it's not
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: going to be openly, bravely. It's going to be through
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: bureaucratic bullshit like that and cowardice. Also, that is going to,
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: he then says, Yeah, I mean, I'm for bringing him
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: back and doing it here the right way, but I'll
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: leave it to my lawyer. So, like, even him acknowledging
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: that he's willing to bring him back, that is going
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: to fuck him in these court hearings. Because now the
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: Supreme Court's going to be like, all right, we said
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: you must facilitate his release.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: You must take steps to facilitate his release. And then
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the president just told a reporter that he's fine with that,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: but you jokers are refusing to do that. It's very general, yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: That's not going to work so well in court, I
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: don't think. Yeah. That to me was one of the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: big takeaways from the two, from the two.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: I agree. No, I agree. And there was something strange
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: about that, right? Because the court has already ordered him
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: to do it, whether he wants to do it or not.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like, it's almost beside the point, whether
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: he wants to do it or not, unless he's trying
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: to push it onto his underlings for failing to do it,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: which of course is something he'll, he'll be interested in doing.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: He's leaving it to Pam, as Steve Miller said.
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: He also promises DeVito any bill that cuts social security,
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: Medicare and Medicaid. So file that one away.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Except fraud and abuse. Everything's going to be fraud and abuse. Right,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: everything's fraud and abuse.
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: He's asked about promising to end the war in Ukraine
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: on day one, and Trump now says he meant it, quote,
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: figuratively as an exaggeration and in jest. So your classic
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: joke about a war that you are also saying is
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: going to lead to World War III. And then when
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: the interviewer suggests he was kidding about annexing Canada and
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: just trolling them, he says, actually, no.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not, repeatedly. The other thing I took from the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Atlantic piece is he is not backing down on the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: tariffs in this trade war because Scherer at one point
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: asks him, you know, folks on Wall Street are calling
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: it the Trump put, and they're saying that if things
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: get bad enough and the market gets bad enough and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the economy looks like it's going to recession, that you
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: will pull back on the tariffs because you don't want
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the economy to go into recession. Is there any truth
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to that? And Trump's like, no, no. He's like, look,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I've been talking about this stuff for 30, 40 years,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and this could have been easy. I could have came
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in here, I could have not done the tariff stuff
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and just had everything be fine, but I think this
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: is important to do, and so I'm doing it. Yeah.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: It's so hard to figure out what's going on with their,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: because they don't have a long-term plan, like what their
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: long-term plan is on tariffs. If he is ever going
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: to relieve them, he can't say that he's going to
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: do it. He's also making ridiculous claims about how much
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: tax revenue will come from these tariffs and claiming it's
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: going to be able to reduce income taxes or get
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: rid of the income tax, which is absurd on its face.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And it can't do both It can't restore American manufacturing
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: and replace income taxes because they're in cross purposes. So
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I just think he's just full of shit.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I think he's full of shit.
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: I think what will happen is they'll try to negotiate
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: some sort of memorandum of understanding with the non-China countries
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: that suggest there's a trade agreement. It won't be a
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: real trade agreement because real trade agreements involve caring about
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: the details and those take years. And they'll come muddle
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: through that way. The big question to me is what
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: happens with the China piece of this because Xi Jinping
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: ate back and down. if Trump doesn't want to back down,
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: it's going to cause some serious.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Problems in the long run.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: This is my issue with this is that like, I'm
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: sure Besant is, and the people who don't want a
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: global economic meltdown are pushing this. Like we're going to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: get some, you know, parameters of a deal and then
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: he'll back off. So fine. He backs off the reciprocal tariffs.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Like the China piece is still there. We still have
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: a 10% universal tariff for everywhere else. Even without the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: reciprocal tariffs, you still have the 25% on Canada and Mexico.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And so we're still a couple of weeks out from
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: really experiencing like the full effects or at least the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: start to experiencing the effects of the trade war, like
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: empty shelves and higher prices. The rare earth minerals piece
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: is the biggest, scariest part.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Like this is all, this is all a couple of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: weeks away. And the idea that we're just going to
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: announce a couple of deals or sub deals as they
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: were called over the weekend by some people in the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: administration and that everything's going to be fine. Like, yeah,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: maybe the markets rally for a little bit, but that's
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: not going to like, we are headed for some, some
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: some bad economic times here.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: It's also just very silly that like that like okay
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: look trump the united states has power and economic might
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: we have leverage on our relationship with china china has
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: its power and its leverage and its and its might
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: that it can wield in this kind of a negotiation
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: but like um do you think you're gonna wait him
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: out do you think do you think you can wait
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: out i think donald trump has the discipline to wait
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: out china have you read anything about China and how
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: it works over time? How long their dynasties are? You
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: think Donald Trump, the most impatient and undisciplined man, you
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: don't think they're smart enough to know that they can
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: hold out longer than Donald fucking Trump?
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I gotta say, I think you got two very stubborn
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: authoritarians sitting there. The one thing I got from the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: full Atlantic interview, this guy does just, he does not
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: give a shit. He really is at a point in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: his life where he's like, everything's fine. I came back from,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: he thinks that he came back from the dead, although
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: he doesn't like to call it a comeback, he said,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: because he thinks he was never really gone. But he
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: basically thinks he has defied political gravity. And what's worse,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the people around him are all people who believe he
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: has chosen by God and has defied political gravity. Well,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: he was. Right, of course. And so none of them
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: are going to pull him back either, except poor Scott Besson,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: who's like hoping that we don't have a global economic collapse.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: So I really do think, look, he's Donald Trump. At
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: some point, he pulls back. How much damage there is,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: who knows? But I think in general, whether it's tariffs
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: or anything else, he is going to go much further
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: than he ever has in the past because he does
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: not care as much about public opinion as he ever did.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, I think that's– first of all, I think
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: that's already true. He's already gone further than he did
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: in his first term. Now, I have no idea whether
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: or not Donald Trump will cave. I just think– I
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: don't think you'll show the same patience as the nation
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: of China.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: I think the Chinese, you know, Xi Jinping has prepared
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: his people for a war and the American people are
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: not at all prepared for what a war with China
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: could look like. What it means if we have zero
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: rare earth minerals, that means we can't produce cars anymore.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: If 99% of child safety seats are coming from China
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: and you can't like travel with your kid anymore because
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: your car seat's too small.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Or buy them toys.
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: 95% of cooking appliances, 93% of coloring books for kids,
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: 88% of microwave ovens. Like, yeah, 70% of toys intended
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: for children under 12 are from China. Like, Americans are
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: going to squeal if this shit really happens. And I
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: do think political gravity will come for Trump because he
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: has a Congress unlike the Chinese Communist Party.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when people started going to Walmart instead
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: of church on Christmas, it really really made having stuff
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: on the shelves important.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the polls, which are much worse for
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Trump than they were even a few weeks ago. Certainly
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: worse than they've been for any other president at this point.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I think his average approval rating is now tied with
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: his first term approval rating at a hundred days. A
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: new time Sienna poll has Trump at 4,254. He's underwater
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: on every issue, immigration by four points, the Abrego Garcia
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: case specifically by 21 points, and the economy by 12 points.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: ABC Washington Post has him at 42.55, CNN's 43.57, Pew 40.59,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Fox is 44.55, and AP is 39.59. Trump's numbers with
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: young people, independents, and Hispanics are pretty abysmal after he
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: made inroads with all those groups in the last election.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: And most of the slide has to do with people's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: feelings about the economy and their own personal finances, which
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: are bad. Any thoughts on the polling here?
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: There's one number from the Harvard poll that jumped out,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: which is I think 59% of young men now disapprove
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: of Trump. So he's lost the boys.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Tough.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: The vibe shift has shifted back.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Let's hope. It's abysmal. The numbers are abysmal.
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: I mean, ABC News had him at the lowest 100-day
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: approval rating of any president in the past 80 years.
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: And the second lowest was him last time. And it's
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: funny just because The narrative around his presidency in 2017
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: was that it felt very weak and unsteady because he
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: shouldn't have been elected. And it was a shock to everybody.
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: And they were just getting up to speed. And the
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: narrative after this election was how much stronger he was politically,
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: how much more overwhelming the victory was. And now he's
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: in worse shape politically.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Puts that away. Yeah. So it's just good to remember
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: this guy's not 10 feet tall. He never, and he also,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: by the way, in the first term, he never really
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: recovered from the 100 day mark. Like it only got,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was in a narrow band from like,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: you know, 39 to 43, 44. And then he lost.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: not by much, but he lost. It's also interesting. Most people,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: including those who voted for him, think he's gone too far.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: That's like the theme of the New York Times-Siena poll
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: is that even people who, you know, there's still like
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a slight majority support for deporting undocumented immigrants, but they
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: just don't like the way he's doing it because of
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: a break with Garcia, because of other things they've heard,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: because of defying court orders. I also thought it was
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: one of the more hopeful parts of the New York
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Times-Siena poll was they asked about support for deporting citizens
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: to El Salvador, US citizens who were convicted of crimes
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to El Salvador. And they asked about whether you support
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: him defying the Supreme Court. And Nate Cohen was saying
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: he had almost 0% on those Supreme Court, defying the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court, 6% would approve of that, six. You don't
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: get that for anything anymore. No, truly.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: That is heartening, that is heartening. And it is the,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you see them, this is why I think
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: if the public opinion matters. You see them backing off
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: in certain places. And that is because I think courts
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: will be more confident when they feel like public support
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: is behind them. And Trump will be more weak and
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: afraid of the consequences of violating court orders when the
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: public are so thoroughly behind the courts. It is interesting
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: thinking about 2017 versus now, because chaos was the kind
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: of order of the day when Trump first won. And
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: he was at his lowest ebb when he was actually almost,
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: it didn't come through because of John McCain, but he
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: was on the precipice of repealing Obamacare. And it was
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: a moment where he was about to be effective. And
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: when he was about to be effective, he was never
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: more unpopular. And I do think like the early days
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: we were, I think, caught off guard by the swiftness
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: and like, I think what effective is wrong, but like
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: the speed and deliberateness with which they were like attacking
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: the government, going after immigrants, kind of implementing the 2025,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: probably 2025 agenda. But he's actually paying for that success.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: He's paying for the lack because Chaos stopped him from
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: doing the policies that we are currently seeing that the
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: American people, even though it's very clear that this is
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: what Trump has always said he was going to do,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: couldn't fully imagine what it would feel like to live under.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: I also think, you know, deciding to tank the stock market,
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: not a great political strategy. I mean, I think 73%
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: said the economy is in bad shape. 53% said it's
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: worse since Trump took office. 41% said their own finances
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: have worsened. 62% said prices are rising. So they're doing
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: a ton of shit. They're dozing, they're harming migrants, et cetera,
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: but they're doing nothing to deal with inflation and the
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: tariffs are just actively causing inflation and no one, only
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: 31% believe that they'll strengthen the economy long-term. Like 64%
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: of people disapprove of the tariff. So they're not, the
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: American people are not buying what he's selling on the
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: theory of the case here.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he did act fast and he did do
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: a lot, but the Times asked people for like a word,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to describe the first hundred days and chaos was still
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the order of the day.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: It's his essence.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It is his essence. Question on the polling. The guy
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: can't run for reelection despite selling, um, Trump 2028 merch
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: on his website. How much do you think the polling matters?
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: I talked to Ro Khanna on love or leave it
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: about what the prospects are for reconciliation. And he basically
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: said he'd never had felt more confident or hopeful. I
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: don't think he would say he's confident, but more confident
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: that they'd be able to, um, get enough Republicans to
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: say no, at least before they strip out certain parts,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: who knows where it leads. But I do think it
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: matters because he has a razor thin majority. And there
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: are a lot of Republicans who would like to stay
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: in Congress. And there are a lot of them in
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: districts that right now they are going to have a
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: very hard time successfully getting reelected in. And I just
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: think that is going to affect their ability to pass
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: this agenda. He was much stronger a couple of weeks ago.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: He was much, and that's why you saw today, he
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: posted on True Social, like They should arrest the people
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: disturbing these town halls because it's creating the illusion that
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: there isn't incredible unity and love amongst Republicans. And I
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: think he's feeling the heat there. And I think it's
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: making his job much harder.
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we want the vulnerable Republicans to feel like they
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: can defy him. And when they're doing some calculus, like,
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: am I worried about a primary challenge or a general election?
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: We want them to fear the general election more. Now,
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: the problem is, you know, he still has the North
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: Korean numbers with the Republican base, so he can fuck
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: with them in the primary.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: The timeline isn't good for him either. Thune said today
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't think this thing is getting done until
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: like later in the summer. And also, but he said
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it's like a moving target because of when the debt ceiling,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: when we hit the debt ceiling and we run out
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: of money just in case we need another crisis. So
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: as the effects from the trade war start to hit
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and the economy gets even worse and people get even angrier,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: then we're going to have a debate in Congress about
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: about how big a tax cut is that goes mostly
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to rich people. And cutting Medicare. And cutting Medicare and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: cutting Medicaid. And they've already now ruled out a tax
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: increase on the rich, you know, which like Steve Bannon
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: wanted and Trump was voting and some of the populists wanted.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: There was like a 40-hour window when that was on
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the table.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: So that's on the table. So now, and they also
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: have to do something on taxes because otherwise everyone's taxes
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: goes up at the end of the year. at which
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: time we'll probably already be in a, we could be
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: in a recession, right? I don't know how this, I
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: don't know how this goes.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: The other side of this is there are a bunch
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: of Republicans that just signed a letter about not wanting
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: to cut Medicaid.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: And so let's say they strip it. I don't think
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: it's inconceivable that they strip out the Medicaid cuts and
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: just try to do a tax cut. But one of
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: the only places where even Freedom Caucus members have bucked
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Trump is when it came to raising the deficit. They
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: sincerely believe and they believe, they care about it as
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: much as they care about pleasing Donald Trump. It's one
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: of the only issues and the only group of people
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: that do this in the Republican Party is that they
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: don't want to vote for increased deficits. If you lose
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: those guys, you don't have a bill. You don't have it.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: So I think it, I think it fucks up his
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: congressional agenda and it makes life pretty, the polling makes
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: life pretty bad for Republicans. I also hope that this
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: kind of polling emboldens more people to speak out against him. Colleges, media, business,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: whatever you thought about Trump at the beginning, how strong
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: he was, how scary this was, like, it's just, he's
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: not there now and you should not feel that same fear.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I also wonder if, look, I know courts are just,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: they're just calling balls and strikes. Judges are just calling
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: balls and strikes. But you've got to imagine if you're
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court or some of these courts and
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: you're thinking what the administration is doing is unlawful or
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: unconstitutional and it comes before you, you're a little less
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: nervous about making the ruling you want to make when
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the numbers are like this.
• 37:51
  Speaker 7: Oh, absolutely.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. So that's how Regular Americans say they're feeling. How
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: are you guys feeling being irregular Americans?
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I've never been less regular, frankly, under the Trump administration.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Also, just a couple days on the road.
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: I know. I know.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Time zone changes. I wish I was a regular American.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go see the doctor. I've got to
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: figure out a new kind of smoothie in the morning.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Join my fellow regular Americans.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: We're sitting in the airport waiting to go home.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Love it. Not already.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Take out. Just a bottle of those fiber gummies.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: You bet.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: You fucking bet we do. And I started laughing, but
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: then I said, yeah, I'll take a couple. Yeah. Yeah,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I'll take a couple. Tommy didn't want one.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Tommy didn't want one. Tommy's too cool for the fiber
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: gummies at the Delta Lounge.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to make it through a hangover
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: at 44.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think fiber hurts. I don't think fiber hurts.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Anyway, what are your takes on how consequential these 14
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: weeks have been? That was the question I wrote down here.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Consequential.
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's been a historically damaging 100 days, right?
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: There's no way to sugarcoat it. Millions of people are
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: going to die because of the USAID cuts. God knows
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: what RFK Jr. is doing behind the scenes, but the
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: stuff he's talking about publicly. We haven't had time to
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: talk about him. We've got to devote a whole segment
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: to that. Yeah, he's just going to gut public health.
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: He's going to cherry pick data. He's demagoguing anybody with autism.
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's just really terrible stuff. You get corporations
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: folding left and right. We're seeing the weaponization of the
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: Department of Justice to punish law firms, news outlets, former
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: Trump officials. I'm also worried that the tariff war has
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: set in motion some economic changes that will be impossible
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: to walk back.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: And will be very damaging.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: So on some level, it's heartening to know that the
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: polling has collapsed, at least for this amount of time,
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: because voters don't want chaos.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: They don't want the stock market crashing.
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: They don't like the deportations, despite everyone's concern that Democrats
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: were offsides on immigration. They actually think these deportations are
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: cruel and over the top. But I'm also worried that
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: it's not going to stop him.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I had the exact feeling, which is like, I think
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that the polling is going to get worse for Trump
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and Republicans. And I think the damage is going to
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: get worse because I think that they're not backing down.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Like there's one scenario where the polling gets really bad
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and they all back down or they just, then I
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: guess what we have like a semi-normal administration for the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: next couple of years where they just like, that doesn't
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: seem like Trump to me. Um, so then The other
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: thing they do if the polling gets worse is they
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: double down like they've been doing so far or they
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: never show weakness, never apologize. And then we're in a
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: situation where the country is very angry and the economy
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: is bad. And we have crises that we're dealing with
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: here and all over the world. And then the Trump
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: administration decides to like use all the power they have
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: to crack down even more. So that's what I'm sort
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: of worried about.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think like you have to start to say,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: he is doing a lot of damage. He is hurting
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: a lot of people. There are people that will die
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: that would have lived. I mean, he is, and that
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: destruction can't be undone. There's no pretending it didn't happen.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: We will be digging out of this for a long time. Internationally,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: we will be digging out of this for a long time, though,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: like I want to believe in like the resilience of
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: the American economy and the unique place we have as
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: like an innovative and kind of creative country that contributes
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: so much to the world that we can repair the damage.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: But To me, like the core question from the day
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Trump won is, is Donald Trump's second victory a door
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: that locked behind us?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Like the damage can't be undone, but we can kind
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: of rebuild and repair if we can win.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: We can take back the House, take back the Senate,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: take back the White House. I do worry about what
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: happens if the economy gets worse, the chaos gets worse.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: That's a tinderbox. It's people in the streets and an
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: authoritarian president that.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Is already unhappy with people at town halls.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Already unhappy with town halls. You had Stephen Miller out
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: there today criticizing J.B. Pritzker, suggesting that what he's doing
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: is inciting violence just for calling for protest, right? Like
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: it is dangerous. These are people that are, they are
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: instinctively fascist. They are instinctively authoritarian. That is incredibly dangerous.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: But one sign of, to me, at least hope is just,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I think even the past couple of weeks, we've seen
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Democrats starting to get their legs under them a little
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: bit in a lot of interesting ways that you can
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: talk about. Pete, you could talk about Pritzker, you could
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: talk about Ro Khanna, talk about a bunch of people,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Cory Booker, others. And I didn't have this feeling in
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: the first few weeks of the Trump administration of a
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: kind of defeatism, like, oh, he's turning us into Hungary,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: he's turning us into Russia. And I really was looking
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: for more leaders to say, but we'll have to fight
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: that and we'll win because America's filled with Americans. And
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: we're a rebellious and freedom-loving and democracy-loving bunch. And Maybe
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: we're a little bit, we're a little soft and a
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: little decadent, but like, we'll find our footing and we'll
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: fight back and we'll win. And he can't take this
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: country from us. And I feel like that energy is
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: starting to appear more and more. You see it at protests.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: You see it at people showing up at rallies and
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: town halls. And so that has made me feel like
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: the question, like, did the door lock behind us?
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And I think the answer is still no. Pod Save
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  Speaker 1: back against Trump. To start with the politicians on Sunday,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Senator Cory Booker and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries held
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: a 12-hour sit-in on the Capitol steps to protest the
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Republican budget. Meanwhile, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a 2028 presidential hopeful,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: gave a barn burner of a speech in New Hampshire.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Why New Hampshire? I wonder. Let's listen.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Fellow Democrats, for far too long we've been guilty of
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: tell you that America's house is not on fire, even
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: as the flames were licking their faces. Time to stop
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: who don't know how to organize a group chat. It's
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy and wearing a big
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: gold cross while announcing the defunding of children's cancer research.
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: Never before in.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: My life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization,
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: a moment of peace. They have to understand that we
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: then punish them at the ballot box.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Okay. Side note, if you guys listening out there want
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: to heed Pritzker's call to mobilize, you can find events
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: and actions near you by visiting GoSaveAmerica.com. And they're all
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: peaceful protests. No inciting violence like Stephen Miller.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Claim today.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What'd you guys think of Pritzker's message?
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: I really liked the speech. I really did. I, you know,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the part you played, I know, I'm sure your ears
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: had a little bit of a little sing-songy. Yeah, a
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: little bit. But I thought it was great. I actually
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: really liked a lot of it. One part, one section
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: that I thought is worth looking at is the way
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: he handled immigration, because he was so strong on due process,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: on the inhumanity of some of these deportations, while talking
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: about what we actually need to be for unabashedly. There
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: was a lot of places in there where I thought
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: the rhetoric wasn't as sanded down as you would hear
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: from Democrats in the past. And there was a part
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: where he talked about one reason Democrats lost is not
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: because Democrats don't have the right values, but because the
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: American people just don't see Democrats as the kind of
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: people that will fight for them. And I really liked it.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: And it was a turn into this section that you played.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: And on the whole, I just, I hadn't seen him
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: give a speech like that before. And to me, like
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: the two best speeches I've heard lately was this speech
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: and the speech where O'Connor gave at Yale, which is
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: a much more kind of cerebral and academic and philosophical speech.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: But putting them side by side, I thought like, oh,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: like there's an interesting kind of broad message there that
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: I really liked.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: What did you think, Tommy?
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: Did you guys feel like a lot of this was
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: a pretty, not that thinly veiled shot at Chuck Schumer?
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: You kept talking about Democrats who hoped that one day
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: Republicans would come to their senses, which Schumer famously talked
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: about in that New York Times interview around.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: The cave, the budget cave. I thought Newsom.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Newsom.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I thought Whitmer. And then I thought it was just
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: a general like, you know, Obama-Biden years, the fever's going
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: to break kind of thing. Like it was like a
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: sort of. Yeah.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: Vague shot at all that yeah we were shadowboxing a
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: lot of straw men there was that's you know yeah
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: you know it's funny i i'm doing what i told
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: myself i didn't want to do which is like i
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: i watched the speech and i'm like i could pick
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: apart a lot of different parts of the speech and
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: some of it is like as a speech writer some
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: of it is like what.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Do you actually mean by that yeah no i know
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: i know straw man thing and then some of it
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: was you know for a for a speech where you're
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: supposed to be like We just got to say what
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: we believe. It does feel like a lot of rhetorical
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: lines that you do to get applause. But overall, I'm like,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: good for him for fucking getting out there and saying something.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to be.
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: I actually liked it. I mean, like I watched a
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: 30 minute long speech and it made me feel good.
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, this guy's a fighter and
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: he's not pulling punches. He's calling RFK Jr. a nepo
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: baby and Pete Hegseth a washed up Fox TV commentator
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: who drank too much and committed sexual assault. Like, This
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: was red meat. A weird Nepo baby that threw the.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Bear in his trunk.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: These are like fun lines designed to rev up a crowd.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: It's a great speech to hit the primary trail. I
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: thought he did well, and I thought it was called arms.
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: I like when he said, as a Jew, stop tearing
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, I really liked that too.
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: Because when the pendulum swings back, you'll contribute to the
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: climate of retribution, I think was the line. So I
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: thought there was a lot of interesting points he made,
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: the language was, was, tough but quotable and made news.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: And I liked it.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my only– it's funny that you brought–
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: because I actually thought it was directed more at Newsom.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: I didn't think of Schumer.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Makes sense, though.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: When I was getting to the– when he was talking
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: about the Democrats, he was critiquing. I was like, well,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: these are applause lines about a kind of Democrat anybody
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: would hate.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: But like, who?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Who do you mean? And what does it look like
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: to do something different? But I think that's what the
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: next few months are about.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: It also made me think of like, you know, get
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: to that point, a primary debate stage. And he's going
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: to be the one that makes a lot of the
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: other Democrats on that stage feel uncomfortable because he's not
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: going to let them get away with, you know, not
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: going hard at Trump and Republicans. And I think you
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: need that kind of person in a primary, for sure.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: And we certainly need that kind of leader right now,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: just who's going to call out the bullshit. It's interesting.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: We were talking over the weekend about Pete's two and
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: a half hour conversation on the Flagrant podcast with Andrew Schultz.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And it's just such a different style. But Pete did
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: a really great job in that interview. Totally different than Pritzker.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Totally different than a lot of these other candidates that
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: we talked about. So I kind of like seeing everyone
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: out there doing something different.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And speaking of just like what has made the last,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: even as things have been so terrible, like what has
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: made me feel at least some glimmer of hope, it is,
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: you know, people have asked, well, who do you think
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: the next generation of leaders are? Like, who's the next one?
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: Who's the next one? And like, it's not, they're not
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: going to come out of an egg. Like they're going
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: to come through what we get to see. And like,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: what we've seen is like really interesting stuff. We've seen
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Cory Booker on the floor. We've seen Van Hollen go
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: to El Salvador. I like what Roe's doing. I like
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: the speech by Pritzker. I like seeing what Pete's doing.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: And it's, It's sort of leadership is as leadership does.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: And I'm like heartened by what? By the Pritzker speech.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: There are also encouraging signs from various institutions. Wall Street
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Journal reports that a group of about 10 schools, including
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: the Ivies and the major research schools, is coordinating behind
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the scenes to make sure no one else folds like
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: Columbia did. I love that you mentioned Jenner and Block,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: one of the law firms that refused to capitulate to Trump,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: how they were in court. And they were asking a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: federal judge on Monday to permanently block Trump's executive order
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: targeting them. The judge hasn't issued a ruling yet. But
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: he's a George W. Bush judge, seemed pretty hostile to
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the government's case, shouting, give me a break to the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: DOJ lawyer who attempted to justify blocking Jenner employees from
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: all federal buildings.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Based on the fact that Jenner and Block had DEI policies.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: That's sort of, it was like a ridiculous claim.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: The reason that it's okay for the administration to block
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: them from federal buildings is because they are racist. Oh. Yeah.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: And that the order can't be illegal because what the
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: order says is this order must follow applicable law.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Also, we've talked a lot on the
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: show about the Trump lawsuit and pressure campaign against 60 Minutes,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: whose executive producer Bill Owens resigned last week out of
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: concern that Paramount might cave to Trump in order to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: win approval for a merger. If you were wondering how
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the rest of the team feels about it, Scott Pelley
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: ended Sunday night's 60 Minutes broadcast with this.
• 52:15
  Speaker 8: Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard
• 52:19
  Speaker 8: on us. But he did it for us and you.
• 52:23
  Speaker 8: Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial. Lately,
• 52:28
  Speaker 8: the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure
• 52:33
  Speaker 8: they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way.
• 52:37
  Speaker 8: But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger.
• 52:41
  Speaker 8: The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise
• 52:46
  Speaker 8: our content in new ways. None of our stories has
• 52:51
  Speaker 8: been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that
• 52:55
  Speaker 8: honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it.
• 53:00
  Speaker 8: But in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the
• 53:05
  Speaker 8: right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Those angry Scott Pelley gats
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: right there. What do you think? Hopeful signs there?
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: No.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: To me, that's a very not hopeful sign. I mean,
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: good for Bill Owens to take some courage and guts
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: to resign like that. But I think, to me, it
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: was a sign that Trump successfully used the leverage he
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: has as president to block this merger to at least
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: dissuade critical reporting or at least drive someone who's good
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: at the job out. And also if CBS News gets
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: sold to Skydance, I think David Ellison is notionally in control,
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: but his father, Larry Ellison, I think is seen as
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: like really controlling things behind the scenes. David's a big
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: Dem donor. Larry's a Republican donor. So I don't know
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: what that means for the future politics of the parent company.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: But I think, I think this is a just dark
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: kind of scary moment for media.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's... the son of Fred Trump with a pressure
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: campaign against the daughter of Sumner Redstone in a fight
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: with the son of Larry Ellison. It is a nepo
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: baby conflagration. I do think that between, I mean, you
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: see why he undid the cuts to the social security office,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: but if Trump fucks with Medicare, social security payments and
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: 60 minutes, they will do to Washington what the British
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: did in 1815. I mean, it's just not, you can't
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: do this. You can't do these people. People watch every weekend.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: They've been watching this for 40 years.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I thought it was good that Scott Pelley said something.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: And that Bill Owens did it. It's great. Oh, it's
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: obviously bad. It's obviously bad. Courageous individuals. It's obviously bad
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: that it's happening. Cowards as corporations.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: And Dan and I talked about this on the last pod,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: but the corporate media side of this is not where
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: we're going to find the real heroes. I'm glad the
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: colleges are finally banding together, that some are finally banding together.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Good for Jenner and Block. I think that the executive
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: orders on the law firms are fucking ridiculous. And they're like,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: if they're not going to get laughed out of the courtroom,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: judges are going to yell like they did today. Like they're,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: they're not going to hold up. So the law firms,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: the capitulator are going to be like, what the fuck
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: were we doing? So I think that's good. But I
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: do think on the, on the corporate media side, you know,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: these people, this is what we were saying on Friday,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: like the, for a lot of these big companies, the
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: media outlets are a rounding error in their, in their business.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: And so they're not going to feel like they need
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: to really stand up for it.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: JBL, the bulwark, wrote a piece about this kind of,
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I really, it really kind of stuck with me about
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: the Pascal's wager of the Trump years, which is basically,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: if you think Republicans will seek political retribution, but you
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: think Democrats are too good of people to ever do that,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: it creates a terrible incentive because you just go along
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: with Republicans because you'll never pay a price. And I
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: do think we need to be, and that's what he
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: talked about in this piece, that we need to be
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: thinking about what it looks like for us to make
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: clear that like, We're watching what's happening here and capitulating
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: to Trump in order to get a merger through. Well,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: that's a merger to reexamine, right? Like there are ways
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: in which we need to be signaling that like going
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: along with this, and the matter is that Trump's becoming
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: less popular too, because this is not going to go
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: on forever. And I like that Pritzker says in his speech,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: like we will win Congress and we will take back
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: the White House. Like people need to think that this
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: era will end, that people will look back on what
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: happened with it, with not just disgust, but like with
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: genuine consequences.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Are you canceling your Paramount Plus subscription?
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: What do I watch on Paramount Plus? Survivor. I watched
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Survivor Empowerment Plus.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: How about that? There you go. How about that?
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Still?
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: Remember that?
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Remember when I was on that?
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Still?
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I'm taking a break. I'm in a strategic pause.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: It's a hazy memory, yes.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: I'm in a strategic survivor pause, but I'll be back.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I think you're right.
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: There are some smart members of Congress, like Tom Malinowski,
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: I think Van Hollen, I think Adam Schiff, people talking
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: about what can we do now to send a message
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: that we are paying attention, we're keeping score, and we're
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: going to talk about this through hearings or whatever it
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: means down the road, whether it's you know, uh, the
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: authoritarians in El Salvador who are contributing to the rendition,
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: extraordinary rendition of American citizens down there.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Like that's going to lead to future assistance.
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: Cuts or these law firms that are cutting these disgusting
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: deals and forcing their associates to do pro bono work.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And it's like, what? Like cataloging it all now is
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: very important. Speaking of press freedom, we were in DC,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the correspondence center and no president at the dinner, no comedian,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: no jokes and fascism, you know?
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Do you guys notice a difference? Should we discuss, do
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes on our.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Can I tell you something? There's a little bit too
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: much of, you can't go to a party ironically. There's
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: a little too much, as long as I say this
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: is weird and maybe uncomfortable, I can have a couple
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: of drinks. There's no need to do this. The opposite of,
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: you don't prove how much you take Trump seriously by
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: not having a couple of drinks.
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: I know.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: I said this to someone who asked me that question.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I was like, maybe it's just because we're in LA
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: all the time, but I'm like, we do this all
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: day long, talk about this and how scary Trump is.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: And we talk about like, you got to go live
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: your life too.
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: I just think that like the entire White House press corps,
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: the Correspondents Association would be better off not pretending that
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: weekend is about anything but a fucking party. It's always
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: been about a party. It is not about press freedom. Yes,
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: they do some good scholarships. There's real speakers that talk,
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: but I've watched that room full of random celebrities talk
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: over the children of deceased journalists who are killed in conflicts.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Okay. These, this was a decade ago.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: This is 15 years ago. It was never about these
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: high-minded principles. It was a bunch of people.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Getting loaded with the guys from the Hangover movies or
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: whatever it was. And that's fine.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Just be what you are. Well, that's the thing is like,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I think like there was this- Went.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Got drunk, talked to a bunch of people we hadn't
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: seen in a while. That was great.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: It was great. And like, this is why like I- Didn't.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Save press freedom? No. And it didn't do.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: Much damage either. But like, I talked about this with
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Eugene on Love It or Leave It that like part
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: of the, like what I was disappointed by is that
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Amber Ruffin, who's great, like would have brought a lot
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: of attention to journalism. And there should be a comedian
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: at dinner because otherwise no one's going to pay attention
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: to it. That's part of what the weekend is all about.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: And then I said that obviously I'm available.
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: I think Alex Thompson got a lot of attention for
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: talking about how the media should have done a better
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: job covering Biden's age, et cetera.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: And like, there's some truth to that. Alex also has
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: a book coming out on the subject.
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: So it's a little bit self-serving, more than a little
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: bit self-serving.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: If we're being honest.
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: But also it's just an example, like, yes, maybe there
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: could have, should have been more coverage of Biden's age
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: and mental acuity and decline. But also, the American people
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: were very aware of it.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It showed up in every poll. Every single one.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Every single one, even without the additional intrepid reporting.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: They kind of got the hint. Yeah. All they needed
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: was two of these.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: He was held accountable.
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Like, it seems like a couple of these.
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: These two journalists were picking it up. Dear listener, I
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: pointed out my eyes.
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Here's Leslie Stahl and Anderson Cooper were on the case.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm excited for the book. I'm
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: excited for the book, too.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk to them on this podcast.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk to them.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Anyway. Anyway, it was a good time. Always good to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: pop into D.C. and then leave. One more thing we
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: wanted to mention before we go. Semaphore's Ben Smith had
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: a great story on Sunday about. Great story. Oh, my gosh.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: So fun to read. These private group chats over the
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: last couple of years where the tech elite started to
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: open up to each other about moving toward Trump. Love it.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: You talked to Ben for a YouTube special today that
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: you can get on the Pod Save America YouTube channel.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: So check it out. But how was that?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: It's great. First of all, you should just read this story.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: But basically, all of these guys that kind of radicalized
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: a little bit during kind of the combination of, I think,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: COVID and Me Too and George Floyd and felt like,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: you know, they would say they were like basically under
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: like Soviet occupation.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: But basically.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: They didn't feel like they could. They didn't want to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: post what they really thought because they didn't want to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: stand by it or face the blowback for whatever it was.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: So they took it to group chats ostensibly to have
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: a kind of freewheeling open conversation where all ideas would
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: be welcome. But they kind of slowly shift to the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: right and slowly become a little bit annoyed by people
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: that aren't agreeing with them on certain issues. And it
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: includes everybody from Mark Cuban to like far right activists
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden Carlson, Tucker Carlson. But then
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden Donald Trump is president and the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: economy isn't doing so hot. And it turns out maybe
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: stopping wokeness isn't the most important thing when the stock
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: market loses a couple trillion in value.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: So it was a good conversation. Check it out.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: My favorite piece of that story, it's not ruining anything,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: is there was some big group chat called Chatham House
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: that involved like kind of a bunch of hardcore mega
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: people and then some journalists. And David Sachs, the now
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: AI czar who is mostly known for being a huge douchebag,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: venture capitalist guy, wrote, this group has become worthless since
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: the loudest voices have TDS so-and-so, you should start a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: new one with just smart people. Then it's like, David
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: Sachs left the group. Tucker Carlson left the group. Sean
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: McGuire left the group. Tyler Winklevoss left the group.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: They all just left in a fit of pique.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: It's so funny. The whole idea is to have dissent.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: We've got to be able to talk about things. We've
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: got to have dissenting views. I talked about this with Ben, too,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: that they were challenged on why none of them seemed
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: to find it a big deal that Donald Trump was
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: denying the results of the election. And Like House Republicans
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: or anybody else, they have all these justifications for why
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: they don't want to bring it up. But it is interesting.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: When are we starting one?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Look, I said this in my conversation with Ben, which
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: is I will not send Ben Smith fucking anything.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: Add me.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Look, it's all fun and games. Put me in.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: It's funny that it's all of this one guy, Marc Andreessen,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: this venture capitalist who's starting all these group chats. Do
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: you guys remember why he got canceled in like 2016?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: He tweeted, anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: people for decades. Why stop now? He was mad about
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: something they did to hurt Facebook. And it's like, yeah, well,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: you're wrong, sir. He's got a few other issues.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Colonialism was bad.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: It's also like canceled. Like he got criticized.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: All these fucking people got criticized. It's such as like
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: a kind of both sides of their mouth thing. Cause
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, you know, it's, it's, you can't say anything.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: You just, of course you can. You just don't like
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: what happens when you do.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: And that's okay.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: You don't have to say it. That's okay.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll go check out Lovett's interview with Ben on
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America YouTube. Go subscribe. If you're not subscribed
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: to the Pod Save America YouTube channel, I don't know
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: what you're doing.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get on there.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, when we come back, you'll hear Dan's conversation with
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Neera Tanden from the Center for American Progress. But before
• 1:03:26
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  Speaker 6: She served as domestic policy advisor to President Joe Biden,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: worked in the Obama White House, worked for our... Hillary Clinton,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: Bill Clinton, has been around democratic politics for a long time,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: but she's now the CEO of the Center for American
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: Progress Action Fund. Neera Tanden, welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 7: Great to be with you, Dan.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: I should disclose at the top of this that on
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: Inauguration Day 2017, while Trump was speaking, you called me
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: and asked me to join the board of the Center
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: for American Progress Action Fund. So I have been a
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: board member of your organization for Eight years now?
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: That's wild.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 7: I don't blame you for his inauguration.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: It was a really good time to get me to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: agree to something.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: I thought so.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: It was very clever. Very clever. All right, let's start.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 6: The Center for American Progress was formed in 2003. It
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: really rose up to be sort of in the center
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: of democratic resistance and opposition for more than 20 years now.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: It was sort of the locus of a lot of
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: thought about how to defeat George W. Bush and how
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 6: to build back from the loss we had in those
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: election as really a center of resistance in the first
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 6: Trump administration. What do you think resistance in Trump 2.0
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: should look like?
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 9: Well, I think resistance is, uh, very different from 2017. Um,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 9: we are in a very different time. Uh, the president,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 9: president Trump is much more dangerous. Uh, The country is
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 9: in a much more fertile place right now for him.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: Fertile meaning?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 7: Fertile, and I'll say.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 9: Meaning, essentially, because he won the popular vote, I think
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 9: a lot of people.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 7: Believe he has.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 9: He has the majority with him and are much more
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 9: scared of him. In 2017... He lost a popular vote.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 9: A lot of people thought it was a fluke. So
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 9: you didn't see institutions sort of pre-obey or gave. So
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 9: I think the moment right now is much more dangerous
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 9: in a real sense because, you know, I think Bannon
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 9: and Trump and Russ Vogt look at America as a
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 9: battlefield and they are really systematically not just trying to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 9: advance their own forces, but take out oppositional organizations, things
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 9: that they see as oppositional to them.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 7: Whether it's the.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 9: Media or law firms or universities or unions. So the
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 9: country is in a much more dangerous place. And also, frankly,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 9: the brand of the Democratic Party is in a very
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 9: different place than it was eight years ago. Eight years ago, again,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 9: Hillary Clinton didn't win the electoral college, but she did
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 9: win the popular vote. And also, you know, President Obama
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 9: was seen as a successful president.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 7: And so.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 9: The party was in a much stronger position than it
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 9: is now. So I think, you know, resistance and opposition
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 9: today has to mean three things. One, really trying to
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 9: drive facts about what Trump is doing and really make
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 9: clear to the American people in the miasma of Greenland
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 9: and Canada that He's actually harming your pocketbook. He's taking
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 9: away security for your families, health security, raising prices. So
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 9: it's really driving that connection. I also think it's vital
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 9: that we create an alternative agenda so that people see
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 9: that they have two choices of change, not just Trump's
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 9: wrecking ball versus a Democratic Party status quo. And then third,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 9: and you know, I think this really goes to the
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 9: democracy point, we have to think about how we bolster
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 9: institutions and buck them up and, and really push against
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 9: institutions that want to cave to Trump, because, you know,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 9: that is also very, very dangerous and different.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 6: Let's start with the institutions, right? Like you have talked
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 6: about in some of your interviews since returning to the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 6: Center for American Progress Action Fund that Democrats can't continue
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: to be just like knee-jerk defenders of institutions.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 7: Yes, yes.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 6: CAP is probably the most influential or one of the
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 6: most influential of all Democratic Party institutions. It sort of
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 6: sits at the nexus of sort of politics and policymaking
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 6: and sort of thinking about the future of the party.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: what is the alternative to defending institutions when Trump is
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 6: trying to destroy them? I guess the question is, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: I think it's a fair critique of all of us,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 6: that a lot of people took the lesson of the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 6: 2020 election is that people did not like Trump's destruction
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 6: of institutions. He was trying to take down Congress, came
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: out January 6th. And so we became defenders of institutions.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 6: President Biden is an institutionalist, to his core, like when
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: he was most passionate, I think, in his presidency was
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 6: in some of those speeches he gave about democracy and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 6: defending institutions. Like what's the middle ground between where Trump
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 6: is and defending the broken political system?
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 9: So I think this is really a central question for
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 9: the party going forward.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 7: And I think.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 9: That in many ways we sort of misread 2020 and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 9: we being all of us, all of us misread 2020. Um,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 9: I think, uh, you know, every election is actually a
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 9: change election. Every election has been a change election since 2006,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 9: except for one. And that was the president Obama's reelection
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 9: in 2012, which if you think about it now going back,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 9: it looks pretty amazing that given all the trend lines
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 9: before and since it was, it's a realist standout. So
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 9: every election has been a change election. I think one
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 9: of our challenges in 2020 was that, and I speak
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 9: for all of us is that we thought that it
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 9: was really. A restoration, you know, it was like a
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 9: restoration of the order. And I think it may have
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 9: just been a repudiation of the form and function of
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 9: Donald Trump's presidency. And I really fundamentally believe that people
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 9: in the country are still angry across the board about what.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 9: you know, a whole range of problems and that really
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 9: the tactic that or the approach has to be, you know,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 9: that we're going to solve every problem. And I think
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 9: it's this is an even more important issue for Democrats
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 9: because we believe in government. And so, you know, I
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 9: look back and I'll say candidly, I think we should
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 9: have solved problems earlier. I wasn't there for the entire
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 9: time on immigration, and I didn't handle the border day-to-day,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 9: but I was on the immigration team, and we should
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 9: have handled that much earlier in the administration.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 6: You mean more aggressive, like moving more aggressive border security?
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: What does that mean?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 9: So we took actions in June of this year to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 9: really ensure that we were limiting border crossings, and very
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 9: painful to do in the party, but- candidly, doing it
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 9: after Trump was the nominee really communicated to a lot
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 9: of people, I think, that, you know, if you really
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 9: cared about immigration, he was the force that was making
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 9: us do it. If we'd solved it a year or
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 9: two earlier, then maybe we'd be in a different place.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 9: And I just think, actually, I actually think the most
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 9: important thing is that we offer solutions on a whole
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 9: host of things. And, you know, we've been working on,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 9: for example, we've been working on government reform issues. Now,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 9: Secretary Buttigieg, or I guess Pete Buttigieg, we call him now,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 9: talked about this the other day, which is, you know,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 9: it's actually not reforming the government to just slash programs,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 9: but it is totally reasonable for people to want the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 9: government to work better for them. So we're undertaking a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 9: project where we're providing ideas about how to make government
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 9: work more seamlessly for consumers, reduce friction, make the government put.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 7: The citizen at the center.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 9: Of its work instead of making citizens go through lots
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 9: of hoops. And that's really, you know, product of a
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 9: lot of conservatives who want to make government more difficult.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 9: So we really see this as a moment, you know,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 9: where we have to offer actual ideas on a whole
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 9: range of issues, take more seriously where people are on
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 9: some of these problems. Like sometimes I think, you know,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 9: coming from the administration, sometimes I think we think, you know,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 9: people's concerns about an issue are really just political. You know,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 9: a lot of people, I think, thought immigration was just
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 9: an issue conservatives were pushing instead of a legitimate concern.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 9: Of course, there's insane things they're doing now.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: That people don't like.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 9: That people don't like, that actually sticking people who are
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 9: legally here in prison gulags in El Salvador is wrong.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 9: You know, we can have a happy medium, you know,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 9: on these issues.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 7: So I think it's I think the real.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 9: Challenge for Democrats right now, I mean, there's multiple challenges.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 9: It could be here for hours, but a challenge for
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 9: Democrats is not just defending institutions. You know, like I
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 9: am angry at what they're doing, but I'm not sure
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 9: doing a rally in front of a building is the
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 9: most important thing. More communicating, you know, using your channels
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 9: to communicate the impact of what that is with human stories,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 9: real people stories of how they're, you know, being denied
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 9: small business loans or other things or their prices are
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 9: going up or they're worried about the health of their children.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 7: You know, that I.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 9: Think is really crucial, but also it's really important to
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 9: say what you would do. And I think the one,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 9: you know, asymmetric benefit or asymmetric asset that Trump has
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 9: is he's very good at making his opponents, caricaturing his
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 9: opponents as defenders of status quo.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 6: Let's talk about an alternative agenda, right? This is something, uh,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 6: the Center for American Progress has worked on, you know,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: for as long as it's been around. I remember in 2005,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: they worked on an Iraq plan to sort of help Democrats, uh,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: figure out how, particularly Democrats who had voted for the
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 6: Iraq war to figure out sort of how to get
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 6: to the, get to, uh, have an alternative, right?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 9: And how to end the Iraq war in a way
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 9: that increases our security, which a certain Senator took up.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: Yes, yes, exactly. Um, I assume immigration is one of
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: those issues in which you think we probably need an alternative.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 6: And I guess sort of another question is, like, I've
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: been thinking about this a lot. I get this question
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: all the time. Like, Democrats need an agenda, which I
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: agree with. Like, if you don't agree with that, I'm
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 6: not sure, like, what you really believe if you're not
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: willing to just accept that premise.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 6: But there is this question of, like, how do you
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: communicate it? Like, in 2005, you could have Senate and
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 6: House leadership before it, and it felt like then we
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: had a party. Now it's just, I just don't even know, like, like,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 6: like how are you sort of thinking about a, what's
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 6: in that agenda, but how do you let people, voters
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: know that we have an agenda?
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 9: Well, the truth is that, I mean, we will put
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 9: out our agenda, but obviously it's like thousands upon thousands
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 9: of conversations, right? It's leaders in the house taking them up,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 9: but you know, I'd be interested. It's really interesting right now.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 9: You know, governors are reaching out for what do we
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 9: say about immigration, particularly because they want to criticize, uh,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 9: what Trump is doing. But I think they also feel
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 9: a little bit of insecurity about answering, you know, what
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 9: do you do about immigration writ large?
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 7: Or what do you do about the border and other things?
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 9: So, you know, our ideas, which we'll be putting out
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 9: very shortly, are how to fix the broken immigration system.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 9: And the truth is our system is broken in multiple
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 9: dimensions and we have to be able to.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 7: Make that case.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 9: So it is a problem that our border is not secure,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 9: but really there has been an abuse of the asylum system.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 7: That abuse started.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 9: In the Trump administration and went up in the Biden administration.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 9: So we should fix that problem. It's also a big
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 9: problem in our country that these green card backlogs are
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 9: decades old and we should fix that. And I actually
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 9: believe that people want more or be open to more
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 9: legal immigration if.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 7: They felt that their border itself was secure.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 9: And so we're going to put forward ideas that basically
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 9: fix all of the problems of the immigration system. Not
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 9: everyone's going to love our plan, I'm sure. But we
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 9: really think it's the focus should be what is the
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 9: problem and how are we fixing it? And, you know,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 9: we both work for political leaders. who got up every
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 9: day and thought, you know, when there's a big problem,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 9: the country has to solve it. And I think one
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 9: of the changes in the presidency over the last couple
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 9: of decades is, you know, people sort of expect the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 9: president to solve problems. And, you know, they're not thinking
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 9: politically of like, does this issue help?
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 7: Or her Democrats, they're just really trying to get solutions.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 9: And I think one of the challenges is if you
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 9: think about your job as oriented towards Congress and what
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 9: can pass, Then you think about just that dimension. But
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 9: if you're thinking about every problem you can solve for,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 9: sometimes that takes Congress. Sometimes that takes executive action. Sometimes
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 9: that takes working with governors. Sometimes that takes trying to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 9: change the culture. But you are being a change agent
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 9: in the way you're thinking about it.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: That is something I'm going to ask you in a
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 6: second about Trump's first 100 days. But that is something
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 6: that I was talking to Molly Murphy, who was a
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 6: poster for President Biden and Kamala Harris. But she was
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 6: saying in her focus groups, like people don't really love
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 6: what Trump is. doing, but they do think he's doing things. Right.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: And so he is given the perception of action.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: He's leading.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: He's leading. And we don't actually believe he's leading, but
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 6: people think, people see that.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 7: I think he's leading us off a cliff.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: I guess you could be leading in bad ways.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 7: He's definitely leading.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 7: He's driving events instead of being driven by them.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 6: Exactly. And he is, and this is something President Obama
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 6: used to say, which is sometimes you just have to
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 6: get caught trying. 100%. And even if you can't, like,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: let's say a Democrat wins in 2028. Maybe we have
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 6: a Democratic Congress. Maybe we don't. Maybe we have a split.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 6: But that president is going to be, like, has to
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 6: seem like they are trying every day to solve the problem,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 6: even if they are limited somewhat by Congress, right?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 7: A thousand percent.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 9: And, you know, I think this is really also just
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 9: changed dramatically in the way communications have changed. You know,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 9: there's so much competition for attention, right? But the presidency
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 9: and the president is, you know— is still the national
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 9: leader of the country.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 7: And I think, you know, I.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 9: Think people just expect the president to solve their problems.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 9: You know, it's like, you know, we've all had the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 9: experience where you're talking to somebody and they're basically like,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 9: why hasn't the president fixed.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 7: You know, for example, homelessness.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 9: And, you know, you can get into a robust conversation
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 9: about actually how homelessness is mostly a localized problem.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 7: It's not in most places.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 9: You know, most of the resources are at the local level.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 9: But this is, you know, I mean, I think this
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 9: is one of the things that Trump has done, which
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 9: is that, you know, there's no differentiation in his mind
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 9: between federal, state, and local.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 7: He won't comment on anything. He will attack anything.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 6: He was commenting on the changing of a mascot at
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: Long Island High School the other day.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 9: No, but he'll, and like, he will try to direct
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 9: resources on anything. And, you know, I do think, you know,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 9: we both worked for President Obama, and you know, like
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 9: something would happen, he, you know, he would try to
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 9: see how he could fix it.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 9: And even if Congress was out of the way, he'd
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 9: kind of think about how he tried to fix it
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 9: another way.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 7: And sometimes people would.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 9: Malign that as like pattern pen strategy, but actually it
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 9: was a, how do we fix this problem strategy? People,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 9: I thought it's, I think it's always important to communicate
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 9: that you are trying to fix a problem, get caught trying,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 9: but actually you're trying to fix a problem whether it's
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 9: through Congress, through the executive branch, or any other way. And,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 9: you know, I think this is the way governors think
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 9: a lot.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. So we're coming up on the 100th
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 6: day of the Trump presidency.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 7: I shouldn't smile. It's very grim.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 6: Well, I mean, it could be worse. We're going on
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: the 50th day, right? So 100 days behind us. What's
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 6: your sort of assessment of how– Like, there's a lot
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 6: of noise, right? A lot of things. He keeps doing
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 6: a lot of things. Many of those things have been
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 6: stopped in court or the... executive order doesn't really add
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: up to a lot of substance.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: I mean, it's really, these executive orders are like press releases, honestly.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 6: As someone who was a staff secretary, that must be
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: quite frustrating.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 9: Well, I'm also like, I just wish we could have
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 9: gotten away with this tactic of just doing a press
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 9: release and people like obeying ahead of a.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 7: Time, you know?
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 6: When we were in the Obama White House, I wanted,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 6: and I was the communications director, and I wanted to
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 6: do a presidential memorandum on something. And we really had
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 6: to like get it done for the news cycle.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 6: And obviously, as you know, there's a very robust interagency
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 6: process to get it approved. And I was like, no,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 6: we have to get it done tomorrow. And the person
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 6: in the staff secretary's office told me I was taking
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 6: the guardrails off government, which is, I don't think that
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 6: phrase is used very often in the Trump administration. I
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 6: don't think they're running a process.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 9: The quaint notions of like asking agencies how it would
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 9: affect people.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's kind of a crazy thing.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 6: But how do you think about just what's your sort
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 6: of your quick assessment of the first 100 days?
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 9: You know, I actually think we've turned a real corner
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 9: in the last couple of weeks. And I don't know
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 9: if it's like Harvard stood up or Democrats getting a
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 9: spine on immigration issues, like on.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 7: The deportation issues.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 9: But I actually think that, or maybe it's just Trump
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 9: has done so much that the levels of chaos with
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 9: the tariffs and the economic dislocations have all just like
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 9: gone into a whirlwind. But I, you know, I do
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 9: think fundamentally he is in a very different place. And honestly,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 9: you know, he's got a great communications, a range of
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 9: communications assets. But the truth of the first 100 days
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 9: is that I think he will, people will look back
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 9: at this and say he used a lot of his
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 9: political capital in ways that were ultimately squandered. Most of
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 9: his EOs were being shut down by the courts.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 7: There are temporary restraining orders.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 9: And he is actually, his administration is obeying most of
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 9: those TROs. So I think he kind of came in
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 9: and thought, I'm going to do all these executive actions.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 9: And he's actually been quite limited. And it is really
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 9: important that people are standing up. I mean, this is
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 9: why mass protests are really important, because everybody sees that
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 9: there is a strong opposition. And that's been hugely critical.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it is. If you just were to
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: assess it politically, he... is underwater on... He's underwater. The
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: only person with lower approval rates at this point is
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump in his first term.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 7: 100%.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 6: Obama and George W. Bush were in the 60s. President
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 6: Biden was at 54 in his approval rating at this point.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: And Trump's 46.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 7: 45, yeah.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 6: 45, depending on the moment in which the poll comes out.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 7: Let's hope it's just a trend later.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 6: Well, I mean, he has lost a point every week
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 6: in his approval rating for the last two months.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 9: Now, I do think, and this is an important thing
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 9: for all of us, I do think it is... it
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 9: feels very different if you were in the 30s than
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 9: if you were in the 40s. And I think institutions
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 9: will treat him differently. And, you know, I keep harping
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 9: on these institutions, but I will say when you look
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 9: at other countries that face an authoritarian threat, it feels
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 9: very different in the country when a whole range of
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 9: institutions are just, you know, kowtowing to the administration. So
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 9: it is important that we keep at it and drive
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 9: his numbers down. And I will say at Cap and
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 9: Cap Action, we are very focused on driving the connection
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 9: every day between a thing Trump has done and the
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 9: cost to you and your family.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 6: Last question for you. You did an interview with Ben
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 6: Smith of Semaphore where you talked about one of the
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 6: things you really want to understand is why, quote unquote,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 6: Bidenomics did not have the political impact you thought were,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 6: did all these things that were very good for the country.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 6: Very good for a lot of the people who left
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: our party to vote for Donald Trump in this election.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 6: What's your assessment on why that is or how you're
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 6: thinking about it?
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 9: Well, I think, honestly, lots of people are cross-pressured on
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 9: lots of issues. And I think it's multidimensional, and it's
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 9: not just economics. I mean, Joe Biden had an agenda
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 9: for working class people. It was, I'm going to get
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 9: the Congress to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in investments,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 9: and 70 to 80% of those jobs are going to
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 9: go to people without a college degree. Now, maybe we
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 9: didn't communicate that, but that was definitely a strategy focused
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 9: on working class people. And he talked about plants and
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 9: manufacturing locations and jobs in places that had been economically
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 9: left behind in red state, in blue state, in purple states.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 9: And That message was trumped by other messages in this
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 9: last election. Now, maybe it's also possible we didn't communicate
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 9: it well. Always a possibility. So I think we should
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 9: understand that. But I also think there's two other things
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 9: that are going on that we also have to wrestle with. First,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 9: there are kind of security issues, culture issues where you know,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 9: I mean, I do think a range of voters thought
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 9: of immigration as a kind of economic issue as well.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 9: The right really focused on large numbers of people coming
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 9: in and raising rents and other issues. So that's something
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 9: that I think we have to wrestle with and address
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 9: and actually address, which we're working on. But I also think,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 9: and this is, you know, I kind of defer to
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 9: you where I think there's just a constant drumbeat online
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 9: and elsewhere that, um, by the right, well-funded, that says
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 9: liberal elites look down on you as a working class person.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 9: They judge you. Their values are different from you. And
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 9: I think there's two ways to approach that. First, we
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 9: should figure out our own mechanisms of communication. But I
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 9: also think we have to go out of our way
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 9: in instances where that might feel like it's happening to
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 9: distinguish ourselves, say that's wrong, go out of our way
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 9: to really listen to people. You know, I mean, I think,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 9: you know, there's this big, robust debate about where things
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 9: are in the party. And, you know, and I think
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 9: we have to wrestle with the fact that white working
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 9: class people, not all working class people, but white working
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 9: class people have voted for a billionaire three times.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 7: And like, how do we impact that?
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 9: And how do we question our own assumptions when we
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 9: do that?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 6: And an increasing share of non-white working class people, which I.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 7: Think is the part.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 6: That really, I think, flummoxes a lot of how a
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 6: lot of people thought about politics in the Trump era.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 9: And I think, honestly, we have to think about economics
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 9: from a fairness perspective, absolutely.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 7: But I think for a lot of.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 9: People, young people, the working class people of color we lost,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 9: particularly the men, you know, what I've heard from a
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 9: lot of people doing analysis is that they have been
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 9: really focused on economic success, opportunity, like how do their
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 9: families how their family will do better. And I think
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 9: that's an area where we have to come up with ideas.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 9: And CAP will be working on that over the next
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 9: several months as well.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 6: The hard part is, I mean, there's sort of a
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 6: twofold problem here. Like, as you mentioned, there's a communications
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 6: issue where just People did not have the information. Like,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 6: that did not break through to people at all. Like,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 6: you would– like, I saw all the polls, which is like,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 6: what did– you know, did Biden do all these things?
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 6: Here are the things Biden did. Do you like them?
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 6: Now, but what's interesting there is it did not lead
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 6: to them to vote for him. Vote change.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 7: Yeah, vote change.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 9: But that's, like, the business. The business is in everybody–
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 9: you know, people like a lot of things. It's like,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 9: what persuades them to vote for you over the other guy?
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 6: And I think one thing as a party we have
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 6: to think about is– Like we need, you need the policy, right?
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 6: You need the ideas, but we have to think about
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 6: economics as an identity issue.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 7: A hundred percent.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 6: Which is like, am I, like, are you, am I
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 6: fighting for you? This is what Trump is very good at, right?
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 6: It's like, they think, some group of people think that
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 6: he'll fight for them, right? Like he had an advantage
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 6: in this election just because he was not the incumbent
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 6: at a time of inflation and people remember lower costs
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 6: from his age. But in general, all of this stuff,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 6: this like absurd, policies that don't really make a lot
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 6: of sense or would only address a small portion. Like
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 6: the no tax on tips affects a small group. It's
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 6: a good, it's a signifier.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 9: You know, it was a signifier to voters that he
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 9: got what it's like to be a waitress or a
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 9: waiter because he was really focused on that issue.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 7: I mean, I think we should learn lessons from that.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 6: We need signifier policies.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 7: Where we, where.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 9: We're communicating, like we get this, we get what it's like.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 9: I mean, I think sometimes we think about the biggest policies,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 9: but I, I guess my take on, you know, on
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 9: everything you were talking about is he has an advantage,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 9: which is, you know, he will say kind of crazy
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 9: things that nobody would, no political advisor would tell you
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 9: to say. So people are like, well, he's obviously being candid. And,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 9: you know, he has a whole frame of I'm fighting
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 9: for you because he gets attacked a lot.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 7: He has a way of speaking.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 9: And I think we have to do many things. But
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 9: I think the fundamental problem or a fundamental issue is
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 9: that he himself says, and there is a constant message
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 9: machine that liberals look down on you and hate you
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 9: and distrust your values and don't know what your life
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 9: is like. And there's a way to talk about that.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 9: There's a way to communicate about those issues. I mean,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 9: no one really remembers this, but the, you know, President
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 9: Obama's share of working class voters and white working class
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 9: voters was higher than our last several nominees.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 7: And he was a black man and they were white.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 6: But he was an outsider. Yeah, but he was an outsider.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 7: He was an outsider.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 9: And he had a populist critique of Romney. And also,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 9: I just think there's, and he was, you know, he
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 9: was arguing for change in multiple ways. So, And he
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 9: was running, you know, John McCain was an institutionalist.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 7: So I think there's, you know, we just have to.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 9: Be super mindful of talking, like, you know, representing ourselves
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 9: as champions of change, but also, you know, champions of
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 9: people who are struggling every day.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 6: Well, Neera, I could talk to you about this for hours,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 6: and we probably will offline. But thank you so much
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 6: for being here on Pod Save America, and it's always
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 6: great to talk to you.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 7: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Dan and I will be
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