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“He did it. Not guilty.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: On today's pod, we'll talk about a few of the
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: last minute surprises in Trump's second impeachment trial and the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: coming battle over voting rights and democracy reform. Then Heather
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: McGee is here to talk to Lovett about her new
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: book on how racism costs us all. But first, Lovett,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I heard the show was horrible this weekend. Convince me otherwise.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: I can't believe Emily said that. No, it was a
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: great episode, per usual. Akilah was very funny in the monologue.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: talked to Dr. Atul Gawande about the vaccine rollout. And
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: then we played a dating game with Pallavi, one of
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: our writers, in which he went on six speed dates.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And it was very silly and very fun.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that must be the first podcast ever
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: that had Atul Gawande and a dating game on the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: same episode.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was pretty surprised to be on one
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: of the dates.
• 1:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Also, don't miss America Dissected this week. Abdul talks with
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the show's resident virologist, Dr. Angela Rasmussen, all about the
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: COVID variants, the latest vaccine news, and where we go
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: from here. Be sure to check it out. All right,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: let's get to the news. Trump's acquittal had been expected
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: since the trial began, but the overwhelming majority who voted
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to convict him represents the largest bipartisan impeachment in history.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: All 50 Democrats and seven Republicans found the former president
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: guilty of inciting a violent insurrection, while 43 Republicans chose
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: to protect the man who left them to die at
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: the hands of an armed mob of Trump supporters. Just
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: before the vote on Saturday, there was one last surprise.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: The House impeachment managers announced they wanted witness testimony from
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Republican Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Butler, who confirmed in a statement
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: late Friday night, a conversation she heard about between House
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump during the attack on
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the Capitol. Let's play a clip.
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Now, There's another report that the next thing that McCarthy
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: said was, who the fuck do you think you're talking to?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Don't know if I believe that. Don't know if.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: I believe that.
• 2:50
  Speaker 6: That was a garble of which color starburst do you
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: want now, sir, I think was what he said.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yes. So, Tommy, the house managers then asked for a
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: vote to allow witnesses, which they won 55-45. Two hours later...
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: They made a deal with Trump's lawyers and the Republicans
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: to instead enter Butler's statement into the record rather than
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: deposing her or calling other witnesses. What happened?
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: What happened? Good question.
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: So what it sounds like from all the reports since
• 3:22
  Speaker 6: this went down was that the impeachment managers were genuinely
• 3:25
  Speaker 6: torn about this question about whether or not to call witnesses. Obviously,
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: people around Trump that day on January 6th could have
• 3:33
  Speaker 6: offered clarity into his actions and his mindset. But the
• 3:36
  Speaker 6: Democrats were worried about their ability to call witnesses in
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: a timely manner, their ability to get former White House
• 3:44
  Speaker 6: aides to actually testify or Pence to testify because they
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: point out that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel,
• 3:50
  Speaker 6: his request for testimony is still being litigated from impeachment 1.0.
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: So as the trial went on, there were some Republican senators,
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: specifically Mitt Romney and Bill Cassidy, who expressed interest in
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: Trump's mindset. They got into this question of his intent
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: on the day of the attack, especially when it came
• 4:07
  Speaker 6: to Mike Pence's safety. And then on Friday night, CNN
• 4:11
  Speaker 6: reports the Jamie Herrera Butler conversation that we just played
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: for everybody. And That gave the impeachment managers a window
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: into or a tactic for how to get some testimony
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: that would seem to speak to Trump's mindset that day
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: in a way that would be easier than, say, trying
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: to subpoena someone who worked at the White House.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: So they basically made this call.
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: To go ahead and seek witnesses about five minutes before
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: they announced it publicly before the Senate chamber. I think
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: it surprised a lot of Democrats. It surprised Trump's very
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: professional lawyers, caused them to lose their respective minds.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: And it sort of threw the place into chaos.
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: And I guess, you know, as these negotiations ensued after
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: several Republicans and most of the in favor of witnesses,
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: Chris Coons, Senator from Delaware, went and told the impeachment
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: managers that getting more witness testimony might actually cause them
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: to lose Republican votes because everybody had basically made up
• 5:12
  Speaker 6: their mind, they'd heard enough, they wanted to go home,
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: and they had Valentine's Day reservations because that's very important.
• 5:17
  Speaker 6: So the net effect was to raise everybody's expectations that
• 5:22
  Speaker 6: this trial was going to broaden, that we were going
• 5:25
  Speaker 6: to hear from maybe one, maybe two, maybe infinite witnesses,
• 5:30
  Speaker 6: And then we were all quickly deflated when the outcome
• 5:33
  Speaker 6: was just reading this statement into the record. And then
• 5:35
  Speaker 6: the Senate voted a few hours later to acquit President Trump.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Lovett, what did you think of the decision? Because take
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: what Tommy said about sort of the time it would
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: have required to depose a whole bunch of witnesses, as
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: well as the fact that some of those witnesses may
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: have been hostile to the prosecutor's case, right? If you
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: If you subpoena Kevin McCarthy and Kevin McCarthy's like, no,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I never said that. Or Kevin McCarthy.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I remember it differently. I just remember it differently.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Or as, you know, Representative Stacey Plaskett has pointed out,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: like we're still in court over Don McGahn's subpoena back
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: in the first impeachment a year ago. We still haven't
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: gotten done. So a whole bunch of witnesses could take
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: some time.
• 6:19
  Speaker 7: But.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: You got Herrera Butler saying she's a friendly witness. She
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: remembers the conversation. Why not just try to depose Herrera Butler,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: get a video of her, play that video, which would
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: have been powerful TV. Why not do that? What did
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: you think of the whole decision?
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: So it was like designed in a lab to make
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Democrats look bad. Toward no end whatsoever. The day ended
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: as it began with no witnesses. Like that's how the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: vote in the morning there was going to be a
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: vote and there was going to be an acquittal. We
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: didn't know exactly who would vote to which Republicans would
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: vote to convict or not. But that was basically written.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: McConnell comes out and says he's going to vote to acquit.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden there's this sudden emergence
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: of the idea of witnesses. You know, Brian Boitler, editor
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: chief of Crooked, is on the edge of his fucking seat.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: thrilled to high heaven. He can't believe it. It's happening,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: his dream. And then within a few minutes.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I was excited. It's Saturday morning. I wake up at
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: 7 a.m. I'm sitting in bed. I turn the TV on.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, we got witnesses. Oh, this is exciting.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: And, you know, one thing that I found striking during
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: the impeachment week, this impeachment week, was that even when
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: we know what the future is, we're really bad at
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: predicting the future. Like, When Trump loses the election, we
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: say we're worried he's going to contest the results. We're
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: worried he's not going to accept it. He then doesn't
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: accept it, but obviously it's still shocking in how it unfolds.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: We know that we're heading towards an acquittal and we
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: know that there's not going to be witnesses during the trial.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: And yet the trial itself is in many ways more
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: riveting than we expected. The evidence is more chilling. The
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: facts are more persuasive. The American people in poll after
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: poll becomes even more convinced that Trump should be convicted.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: and banned from seeking office in the future. So what
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: I thought when I saw this debate unfolding about witnesses is, okay,
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: it's written. We know an acquittal is likely. And yet
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: even that likely outcome, we don't know what it would
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: look like if it unfolded. And I was very frustrated
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: by to see the idea of witnesses pop up and
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: then be immediately beaten back into a tidy hole. Because
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: even if ultimately we land at the same vote totals,
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: even if we lose a vote of a Republican, we
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: do not know what it would have looked like to
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: have witnesses. Now, is there a possibility that weeks from now,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: depositions are ongoing, impeachment keeps coming up, it slows something down,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: Republicans use it as an excuse to delay confirmation or
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: to delay a vote on legislation Democrats view as a
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: priority and then everybody's hand-wringing about this impeachment thing dragging out?
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: I don't think it was like a cut and dry,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: easy strategic decision, but I think the way it unfolded
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: was sort of the worst of both worlds because Democrats
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: looked incredibly weak and the day ended as it began.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: I think that the House managers made an incredibly effective case.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: They made a very strong argument. They got seven Republican
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: senators to convict. I think this, in the grand scheme
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: of things, this was a minor error, but I do
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: think it was an error. Because like, they were, first
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: of all, they were going to get a conviction, right?
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: They weren't going to get 17 senators. Mitch McConnell, before
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the witness thing even began, puts out a statement saying,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm voting to acquit based on an imaginary
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: constitutional issue that we'll talk about in a second. So
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: zero chance you're getting 17 senators. But if you can't
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: get a conviction, the goal should be to make the
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: most persuasive case possible to the public without dragging the
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: trial on so long that you put basically unemployment benefits
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: at risk by not passing COVID relief by mid-March, which
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: is when unemployment benefits expire. So there is a clock ticking.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: But would deposing like one friendly Republican witness delay COVID?
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: relief past mid-March, especially when this week the Senate's in
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: recess and the House is in recess? And I'd say, well,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: the Republicans would call 100 witnesses. Republicans couldn't call 100
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: witnesses because you need 51 votes to do that. So
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I don't understand why they just didn't
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: say to the Republicans, all right, we get one witness,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: you get one witness. And then that's it. It's one
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: and one and we're moving on. And then if Republicans
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: want to vote that down or Republicans want to delay
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: the trial for that, then take that to the public
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: and say the Republicans are delaying the trial for 200
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: witnesses for no reason. And they're delaying your COVID relief, too. Like,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I just it was weird to me.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: It is weird. It's also just not clear what what
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: the right like Lindsey Graham flips his vote to vote
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: in favor of witnesses. And everyone's like, oh, he's got
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: some he's hatching some scheme to drag this out for months.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: But there weren't going to be 51 votes. to drag
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: this out for months. We don't actually know what there
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: would have been, like what the compromise for witnesses would
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: have been. There was a possibility that they actually, you know,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: step back from the trial and then go into a
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: period of deposition. And then the trial pops up later
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: after COVID relief. There's like a number of different ways
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: it could have gone that we'll never know because within
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: a few hours, the witness, the witness dream was dead.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Tommy, should the Democratic Party be canceled for this? No.
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: I mean, I felt like it was one of those
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: situations where everyone was mad online and everybody was right. Like,
• 11:23
  Speaker 6: if your position is, why do impeachment without calling witnesses
• 11:27
  Speaker 6: and kind of half-ass it?
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: I hear you.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: If your view is that what voters really care about
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: is moving forward with the Biden agenda and COVID relief
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: and money for vaccinations, I totally agree with you there.
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: I think what the House impeachment managers did here was
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: they created an expectation that management problem. And they did
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: it at a moment when everyone was paying attention to
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: this trial because suddenly we seem to have gone off
• 11:53
  Speaker 6: script and there was a hope that something revelatory was
• 11:57
  Speaker 6: going to break, maybe some big change would occur. And
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: that obviously didn't happen and to let everyone down. Did
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: it change the ultimate outcome? Would a bunch of Republicans
• 12:05
  Speaker 6: have voted to impeach him? I don't think so. In
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: part because, as you mentioned earlier, Mitch McConnell sent them
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: a strong signal that they could not vote their conscience, right?
• 12:14
  Speaker 6: I mean, he basically just said, I don't care. I'm
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: going to give you a pass on this. And so
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: we ended up with seven instead of what we needed.
• 12:22
  Speaker 6: But it was an annoying moment.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: It shouldn't take.
• 12:25
  Speaker 6: Away from the very good job that the impeachment managers
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: did generally.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: In fairness to the managers, it's a rough job as
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: prosecutors when a third of the jurors are afraid of
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: the defendant and another third is afraid of the trial.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: You know, that's a tough draw.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: And a couple of them are like in the room
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: with the defense lawyers giving them tips. Passing notes. That's
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: also tricky.
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: Most of those tips said Van Der Veen, stop yelling.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: You utter lunatic.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: I'd say though, look, if I had a slip and
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: fall and I was faking it, I'd go with him.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I'd go with him. He's very kid conviction up there.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, those eyebrows.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I will say, I will say, you know, Brian Boitler
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: made the point to me. He's like, forget about the
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: politics of all this. Like I wanted witnesses because I
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: think I want to know and I think the American
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: people deserve to know what actually happened and all the facts.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: To that end, you know, Pelosi did announce on Monday
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: that Congress will establish a 9-11 style bipartisan commission to
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: further investigate the attack on the Capitol. Republicans like Lindsey
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Graham said they support such a commission. Although that was
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: like a flag for me because I'm like, do we
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: think that a commission can be worthwhile if the Republicans
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: who chose to acquit Trump are on the commission?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Well, look, there's a.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: No.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, the rhetoric has been really interesting because
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: there's been this elision between the two overlapping emergencies, right?
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: When Nancy Pelosi talks about a commission, she says, we
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: need to get to the bottom of the security lapses
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: that took place on Capitol Hill, and we need to
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: get to the bottom of the president's complicity in what unfolded.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Graham just does the first part. And we kind of
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: have examples from the past couple of years that go
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: in both directions. I think like some of the reports
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: out of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I think, are instructive
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: in that they were actually more bipartisan than you would
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: expect in terms of the conclusions they drew about the
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: harm Donald Trump did. But then Democratic members of the
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: committee would go to the podium and describe the results faithfully.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: And people like Marco Rubio would go to the podium
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: and describe them dishonestly as if Donald Trump wasn't found
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: to have been involved in certain ways. So my fear
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: is there is going to be bipartisan agreement around security lapses.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: There will not be enough bipartisan agreement on Trump's complicity.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: And then you end up with a report that focuses
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: entirely on like building walls around the U.S. Capitol and
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: nothing on the fucking coup that the president led from
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: the White House.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 6: It's like there's basic questions that should be answered about
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: like Why was there more security?
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: What took so long with the National Guard?
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: How are we this vulnerable 20 years after 9-11? But
• 15:11
  Speaker 6: is this commission going to subpoena former White House staffers
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: who watched Trump that day and understood his mindset so
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: we can finally learn that information? It doesn't seem like
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: that's the case. We also know that he's paid no
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: price to date for his lie. The Republican Party was
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: often complicit in the big lie that led everyone to
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: be there. So yeah, I don't have a lot of
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: faith in this 9-11 style commission solving any of these
• 15:36
  Speaker 6: problems or answering the much more important questions about disinformation
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: and lies that made the attack possible.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, looking forward to candidates in 2022 and 2024 on
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the Republican side being asked what they think of the
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: report and them saying, What report?
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: Didn't read it.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: What attack? It was a hoax. The whole thing was
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: a hoax.
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: Already.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Which is what Ron Johnson's already saying.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Today, he's already, what attack?
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Ron Johnson's like, armed insurrection? What are you talking about?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I didn't know there were any guns. It seems like
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: they were just pushing people.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: And by the way, there's also a little bit of
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: collective amnesia around the 9-11 commission and the way in
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: which the Bush administration was resistant to to cooperating with
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: the commission, whether or not even George W. Bush and
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Dick Cheney would be put under oath when they talked
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: to the commission behind closed doors. So that was not
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: a perfect process. And the 9-11 commission did not have
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: a tweet from George W. Bush from September 10th saying,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: watch the skies tomorrow, it's gonna be fucking wild. I'm sorry,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: it's like.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: That is true, that is a fair point.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: Too glib, too glib.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the seven Republicans who voted to convict.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Most people thought that the only five Republicans in play
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: were Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania. Not only did all of them
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: find Trump guilty, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and North Carolina
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Senator Richard Burr voted to convict as well. All right, guys.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: More surprised that we got seven Republicans or that we
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: lost 43? Tommy.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Got seven.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Love it?
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Got seven. Look, you know, some key retirements made it
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: easier for a couple of Republicans to vote for conviction.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And Cassidy follows an ancient Senate rule called the wackadoo rule.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: It's kind of an odd bird, you know, and occasionally
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: you get the odd birds.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: In the Senate, you really do. Two are retiring. That's
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Toomey and Burr are retiring. Cassidy has been rumored to
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: potentially retire. But like, except for Murkowski, none of these
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: people are facing voters until... either four years from now
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: or six years from now. Yeah, so we had basically
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: seven Republicans who actually, I actually think it was fairly, look,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: whether they're facing retirement or not, I think it was
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: a fairly politically courageous thing to do in that party
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: considering the immediate censure of all of these Republicans from
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: their state Republican parties. Yeah. And then you also have
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: people like Rob Portman is retiring too. And that fucking
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: guy didn't decide to vote to convict. He's not facing
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: voters again. He still acted the way that he's supposed
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: to be like a mainstream Republican. Yeah.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: He's a coward.
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, but like Bill Cassidy is rebuked by
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: the Louisiana Republican party. The party that very recently brought
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: us David Duke is the one rebuking him. So, you know,
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: I would take that as a badge of honor.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: So Mitch McConnell has been on something of a publicity
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: tour after announcing his vote to acquit, even before the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: witnesses and closing arguments. He tore into Trump in a
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: speech on the Senate floor saying that he was, quote,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: No question about it. Here's a clip.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: The president did not act swiftly. He did not do
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: be faithfully executed. and order restored? No. Instead, according to
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: public reports, he watched television happily, happily, as the chaos unfolded.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Now,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Vice President Pence was in serious danger, even as the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the president sent a further tweet attacking his own vice president.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Suddenly, very familiar with tweets that the president sent after
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: four years.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I will say the speech works better when read. It
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: really does.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I was just going to say, like, we talk about
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell so often on this podcast. Don't hear his
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: voice that often. There's a reason. Oh, yeah. He's a
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: real he's a better behind the scenes sort of guy.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: So.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Mitch goes on to say that Trump isn't constitutionally eligible
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: for impeachment and later added in a Wall Street Journal
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: op-ed that, quote, this selective disregard for rules and norms
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: is a civic disease that is spreading through the political left. Tommy,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: what's he up to here, aside from being a dick?
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:49
  Speaker 6: He's basically, if the glove don't fit either way, I
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: don't give a shit, was my summary.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Hey, a nice little rhyme. That was good.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: Thank you for that, Johnny Cocker. So- Right.
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: Remember, this is the guy that stole a Supreme Court
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: seat from Barack Obama and then jammed one through at
• 21:04
  Speaker 6: the end of Trump's term. So his complaints about norms
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: and institutions are probably not credible. I thought Jamie Raskin
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: made a very compelling argument that McConnell is wrong about
• 21:13
  Speaker 6: the constitutionality question. Part of that argument is rooted in
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: evidence from history of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers,
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: British history. Part of it is just logic. Why would
• 21:23
  Speaker 6: you set up a system where the president of the
• 21:25
  Speaker 6: United States is gets a free pass for criminality in
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: the last month of his term. That makes no sense.
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: But to me, I mean, you kind of you joked
• 21:33
  Speaker 6: about the tweets. I mean, to me, this this was
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: just the impeachment version of the I didn't see the
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: tweets excuse. It gave Republicans a way to vote against
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: impeachment without engaging in the substance of what Trump did.
• 21:45
  Speaker 6: And it was just like it's cowardice disguised as principle. And,
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: you know, I saw Dan making the case that McConnell
• 21:52
  Speaker 6: was signaling to corporate donors that they can now give
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: to Republicans.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: Again, right? And maybe it was about that.
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: But what I don't really understand and what drives me
• 22:00
  Speaker 6: crazy about McConnell is I sincerely believe that McConnell doesn't
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: like Trump and that he wants the party to move
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: on from him. But McConnell understands raw power politics better
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: than almost anyone. And he had the chance here to
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: prevent Trump from running again. He had the chance to
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: rid the Republican Party of this guy. But instead, he
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: constructed the impeachment hearings in a way that created this
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: constitutional question and gave his party and himself a way out.
• 22:28
  Speaker 6: And then he voted against conviction. And now he's trying
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: to say that the judicial system can deal with Trump
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: and that there might be civil litigation or the courts,
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: the courts that he packed with like 32-year-old.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: Unqualified MAGA lunatics. That's the solution he has for us.
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: So I find myself very confused by how this works
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: for McConnell other than just kind of like Getting along
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: to the next day and trying to just, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: dispense with this.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Love it. What do you think of the point Tommy
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: raises there? Because I think I have one answer, but
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I want to hear what you have to say first
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: about what McConnell's up to and like what what are
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: the politics driving this?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: So first of all, I will say, I think our
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: bona fides on being anti-McConnell are well established. Before I say,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: we started a fund called Get Mitch or Die Trying.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: It succeeded. I feel very good about that. We're alive.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: We got a Mitch apologist here. Here we go.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: I will say, I think he's given the two best
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: speeches of his life were the speech before the certification
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: and the speech he gave about impeachment. It is the
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: best possible argument a Republican can make to vote for
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: acquittal while recognizing the harm that Donald Trump did. It's
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: a bullshit argument on the merits of the Constitution to
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: the points that Tommy made. A lot of people are
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: saying that McConnell in the speech says, oh, there is
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: a justice system. He basically says there's a justice system.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: The impeachment is limited, but the justice system can apply.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: But he also says earlier in the speech, he does
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: not believe necessarily that what Trump did rises to the
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: level of criminal incitement. So he's sort of passing the buck,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: not just, he's passing the buck more fully than I
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: think even people are recognizing. In the speech, it seems
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: like what he wanted to do is get credit for
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: telling the truth about the insurrection without causing the Republican
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Party to ramify into a Trump party and a Republican rump.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: There is a risk of that, whether in actual forming
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: of a third party or in just the kind of
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: base turning completely against what were once mainstream Republicans. And
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: it seems to me he is more afraid of that.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: than he is about the risk of Donald Trump becoming
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: the nominee and taking the party back in four years.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: We will see how that plays out. He's putting a
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: lot of faith in the justice system outside of the
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: incitement question to take care of Donald Trump for him.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: I think this is about 2022, even before it's about 2024.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And I think Dan's partially right that it is about
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: getting back corporate donations, but I think it's about more
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: than that. So McConnell not only gives this speech, he
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: writes this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He gives
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: an interview to the journal and an interview to Politico
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: about his strategy. Like he's very explicit on this. He
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: says he wants to get involved in primaries in 2022.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: There's a section at the bottom of the Wall Street
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Journal story that says, Inside Mr. McConnell's orbit, strategists calculate
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: that radical elements inside the party can be weeded out
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: and separated from what they see as a larger group
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: that has unwittingly fallen victim to a misinformation about the
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: 2020 election. They are still riding the tiger. Mitch McConnell
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: wants Trump voters in 2022, but he doesn't want Trump candidates.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: So a QAnon candidate who wins a Senate primary in
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania might scare off the suburban voters in Philly and
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Pittsburgh that they need in November, but they want the
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: QAnon voters to show up in November. They just don't
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: want the crazy candidates because they might lose, but they
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: want the voters.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Well, it's also wishful thinking, right? Like they're not, you know.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: The idea that, oh, there is a conservative majority in
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: America and then there is this fringe group of Trump
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: Q radicals, just not what the facts bear out. The
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: majority of Republicans don't accept legitimacy election. They are not there.
• 26:13
  Speaker 7: They, you know.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: They're not bamboozled by Trump and but for Trump, eager
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: to support McConnell's deregulation, low corporate tax agenda. That's just
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: not what's on the table. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: today proposed raising the minimum wage and doing backflips to
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: make the connection, tying it to undocumented immigrants. There is
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: a core of the base that is not for the
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Paul Ryan agenda, and Republicans everywhere are desperately trying to
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: figure out how to manage this majority of their party
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: that is much more interested in grievance politics and anti-democratic
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: politics than anything else.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And McConnell basically admits, too, he said to the Journal,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: my goal is in every way possible to have nominees
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: representing the Republican Party who can win in November. Some
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: of them may be people the former president likes, some
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: of them may not be. The only thing I care
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: about is electability. I mean, he's on as always. McConnell
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: is honest about his cynicism and what his game is,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: which is power. All he wants is for Republicans to
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: win here. And, you know, Cornyn sort of gave away
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the game to like wherever side you fall on. Is
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: it still Trump's party or not? Did you convict him
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: or not? He said, you know, we'll focus on what
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: the Biden agenda looks like. That will create some cohesion.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: They're going to now unify by attacking everything Democrats do
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: because that's the only way they can come together as
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: a party. much like for Democrats, a lot of the
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: fissures in the party were sort of set aside because
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: we were all focused on Trump. They're going to now
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: try to do the same thing about Biden and try
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: to sort of, you know, minimize these fissures by focusing
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: on Biden.
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, look, I mean, I have no doubt that 2022
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: is going to be about, you know, Hunter Biden leading
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: the Antifa caravan in Guatemala, right, or whatever the fuck
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: they talk about. But I think that there's a good
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: chance that Trump consumes this so-called moderate wing of the
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: Republican Party before they even get to that point. I
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: think I think McConnell has been playing footsie with Trump
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: for years and he continues to approach him in a
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: way that's weak. And I just I don't think you
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: can win that way.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Tommy, do you think that the second impeachment trial has
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: weakened or strengthened Trump's standing with Republican voters?
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: I think he's like almost exactly the same.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: I mean, there was a poll out this morning. He
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: is still the overwhelming favorite in the 2024 primary. Fifty
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: nine percent of Republican voters say they wanted to play
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: a major role in the party going forward.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: I think 53 percent.
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: Of those voters say they want him to be the
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: nominee in 2024. I think the question is what happens next, right?
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: So if Republicans who supported impeachment or were opposed to
• 28:49
  Speaker 6: the effort to overturn the election are systematically primaried and
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: picked off, Trump will end up looking much stronger. If
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: Fox News decides that their shows have to be just
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: nonstop Trump propaganda for the next four years because that's
• 29:01
  Speaker 6: the only way they can not lose viewers to OAN
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: and Newsmax, he will stay strong. I just think the
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: Republican Party has the same collective action problem. The base
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: loves Trump. The anti-Trump voices are too fractured and disorganized
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: and too weak to offer some sort of meaningful alternative.
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: And so this McConnell split the baby approach of reading
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: Trump the riot act, but voting against impeachment, I just,
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: I think it's more of the same.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: What do you think? I will note that the poll
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: that Tommy just mentioned where he said 59% of Republicans
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: say they want Trump to play a major role going forward.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: It's up 18% from a January 7th poll that they
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: did and nine points from a january 25th poll so
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: of course the first but.
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: I just make the point on that like i think
• 29:45
  Speaker 6: what we see constantly is trump does something bad like
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: lead a violent insurrection and people forget about it i
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: don't think blaming impeachment for.
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: That is quite fair which is sort of why i
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: said it's the same.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't think I don't blame impeachment at all.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I was going to say that's the exact dynamic that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: you just mentioned. Like insurrection happens, the most horrible thing ever.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Everyone's like a Republican. It's like, OK, maybe we'll back off,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: back off. You give it a few weeks and they're
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: right back.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: They're like, oh, but cancel culture, right?
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: You know, they died, but cancel culture.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're right back there.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: Love it.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: There are these studies that show that like when there's
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: a gun in the room with you, you tend to
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: be more violent that. guns that your finger pulls the trigger,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: but the trigger pulls your finger, that like the idea
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: of invoking something makes it more likely. Trump is like
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: now a gun on the mantle for the Republican Party.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: He is in their minds. They see the way his
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: politics have worked. Even when people like Tucker Carlson and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity are not outwardly discussing their
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: politics as it relates to Trump, it fully reflects a
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Trump worldview and a nationalist worldview that has fully infected
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: all of the fringe content that tens of millions of
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Americans consume. And that is the underlying condition that will
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: shape 2022 primaries, that will shape the 2024 primary. So
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: at a certain point, it stops really even being about Trump.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: He showed them a path, and they took it, and
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: they don't see another. We're about to talk about it.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: They don't see their future in building a multi-ethnic coalition
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: of working people. They see it in competing for an
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: ever shrinking white minority to retain power in every way
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: they can with power as the only thing they care about.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: How Trump figures into that depends a lot on him,
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: on what he does over the next two years in
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: a world where he can't tweet every day. It depends
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: on where he intercedes and where he doesn't. But in
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: a lot of ways, the die is cast. The Republican
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Party is a nationalist, revanchist party. And anyone trying to
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: fight that is desperately trying to figure out how to
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: win with that majority while still pursuing policies that fall
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: outside of it.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I thought the most telling thing was there's a story
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: in the Philly Inquirer about Toomey and the state Republicans
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: censoring Pat Toomey. And one of the county chairs said,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: we did not send him there to do the right thing.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: We sent him there to represent us. And then another
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: state party chair at the end of the story says
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: he has been conservative, but we just never really felt
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: that he was behind the president, which I think says
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: all you need to know about the Republican Party. Like,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: I do not think you can have a future in
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: national Republican politics, especially presidential politics, if you openly criticize
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump at this point. I don't. What do you
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: guys think?
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: I mean, 59% of Republicans support someone named Trump in
• 32:45
  Speaker 6: the primary.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: 53% don't.
• 32:47
  Speaker 6: Six percent Don Jr. Like that's not a good sign
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: for anybody else in the Republican Party. Get those people help.
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: I will get that six percent help. And he's going
• 32:57
  Speaker 6: to Trump is just going to freeze the field like that.
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: This is why McConnell should have pushed him out of
• 33:00
  Speaker 6: politics forever, because Trump is going to freeze the 2024
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: field and it's going to be Trump and then a
• 33:05
  Speaker 6: bunch of mini Trump's hoping that he Trump drops out.
• 33:08
  Speaker 6: And so someone might jump in to that presidential race
• 33:11
  Speaker 6: with a message about moving on from him. But I
• 33:13
  Speaker 6: think that message is severely weakened by allowing Trump to
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: claim that the election was stolen from him.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: You want to be able to say he lost. He's
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: a loser. We need someone who can win. Instead, it's
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: all about voter fraud.
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: And like these statewide election officials are playing a mealy
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: mouth middle ground. Redistricting is going to make everything worse.
• 33:33
  Speaker 6: Like I think the Marjorie Taylor Greene type's are going
• 33:37
  Speaker 6: to be the future of the Republican Party, especially as
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: they go forward with redistricting and other anti-democratic reforms.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, even put Trump aside. Let's say Trump is
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: prosecuted in New York. Say the children are prosecuted too.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: They're all going to jail. Take them out of it.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: This is still a party that is going to nominate
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: someone whose main issues are owning the libs, cancel culture,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: some kind of racist shit. Like the idea that what...
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: whether it's a Nikki Haley or a Mitt Romney or
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: a Ben Sasse, what they represent, the type of conservatism
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: that they represent could be ascendant in this party that
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: is controlled by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and all
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: the crazies on the right wing and all the Trumpy
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: type people is crazy to me. I just, I don't
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: understand how it can happen. Like it may not be Trump,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: but it's going to be someone who is just like Trump.
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's, that's like, that's the point I'm trying
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: to make too. It's like, you look, you know, no
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: longer can you hide behind the kind of reflexive explanations
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: that were all over the place in 2016. It's not
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: that Trump's drawing a plurality And the majority doesn't coalesce
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: around something else. It's not name ID. People know who
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Mitt Romney is. People know who Marco Rubio is. He
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: ran already. He did better the last time in the
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: polls than he's doing now. 2%.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: 2% in the poll Tommy mentioned.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: And, you know, you think about what McConnell's saying. Oh, like,
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a group of people that have been
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: like ensorcelled by this argument and we can pry them away. Like,
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: this is what they think. They don't think something else.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: They're not pretending to think this. They're not kind of
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: for this. This is what the base of the Republican
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Party wants. And we should be honest about that, because
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: I think not being honest about the base of the
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Republican Party for a very long time is what led
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: us to this moment.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: So what do we do about the fact that Trumpism
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: is still a threat? Democracy is still under attack from
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: this Republican Party. One of the most important steps we
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: can take is to pass a piece of legislation called
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the For the People Act. which focuses on three types
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of democratic reform, voting rights, gerrymandering, money, and politics. On
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: voting rights, it would provide for automatic voter registration, same-day
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: voter registration, mandated early voting, limits on voter purges, and
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: an end to the disenfranchisement of people who were formerly incarcerated.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: On gerrymandering, it would require nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: state maps. And on money and politics, it would require
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: public financing for House campaigns and expanded disclosure requirements.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: All these reforms sound good, but why are they so
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: important now? There's a headline in Esquire over the weekend
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: that reads, if we don't pass H.R. 1, which is
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: what this bill is called, we are fucked as a nation.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: It's pretty simple. We won by 7 million more votes.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: We barely were able to retain power. The force of
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: our democracy is already that weak. We are about to
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: go through redistricting because of the census. Republicans have already
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: said that they believe that they could potentially win the
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: House with enough seats just by drawing new lines using
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: the census. And in the wake of an historic voter turnout,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Republicans across the country have introduced bills in state houses
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: to restrict voting rights everywhere they can in advance of
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: the 2022 election, which means we are hurtling towards elections
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: where democracy will not be strong enough to overwhelm anti-democracy.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: We have one shot here. to make sure that our
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: votes count enough, not equally, but enough to retain the
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: power that the majority of the country over and over
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: again has tried to give to Democrats. And, you know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: we have to use it or we're going to lose it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Tommy, there's a bunch of polling on this bill, including
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: our poll with change. All of it shows the legislation
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: is enormously popular across party lines. What are the major
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: obstacles in getting this passed? I mean, the major obstacle
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: is the Republican Party. But, you know, we could get
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: around them if we got rid of the filibuster in
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: the U.S. Senate, then we could pass this bill on
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: the party line and vote. But there are some moderate
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Democrats who have not yet gotten there. So that is
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: that is the big hurdle.
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: But, you know, like Lovett said, I mean, this is
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: this is a problem we need to deal with as
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: soon as possible, because the Brennan Center for Justice found
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: that there are 106 bills in 28 states that.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: That have been introduced that will make it harder to vote.
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: These Republicans, despite all their concerns about what happened on
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: January 6th and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: are still using the big lie about election fraud and
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: stolen votes and vote by mail to pass voter suppression
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: laws that will make it harder to vote, which will
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: lock in minority rule for maybe another decade with redistricting
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: and the census.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And look, we have talked before about the obstacles
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: in the way of getting rid of the filibuster. It
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two Democratic senators. They're
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: the ones who are on record. There are potentially others
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: who are resistant to this. The question is, what are
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: the strategies to persuade them otherwise? Obviously, there are no
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: easy answers here. But I do think on this bill, like,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: We need President Biden and the Democratic Party to make
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: a sustained public case. You need to frame this as,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: I think, as a civil rights, voting rights issue. You
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: need to tie it to the insurrection and the conspiracy
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: to overturn the election. You should highlight all the ways
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote next time,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: just like Tommy was citing from the Brennan Center. I mean,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: just so that Kyrsten Sinema knows, you know, there are
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: bills in Arizona right now that would make it easier
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: to remove voters from from the permanent early voting list
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: or eliminate it entirely and add voter ID and notarization
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: requirements to mail ballots. This is a state, now arizona
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: is a state that has been doing mail-in voting forever
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: right and imagine now with your mail-in ballot you have
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: to go get it notarized from fucking notary like does
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: if kirsten cinema wants that to happen she can allow
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: it to happen if not she can vote to get
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: rid of the filibuster what's more important making sure that
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: people can vote in arizona or keeping the filibuster like
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: at some point we have to make it so that
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: she has to be forced to make that.
• 39:47
  Speaker 6: Decision And I also think they just need a little
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: space for people like Sinema and Manchin to climb down
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: from their position. So I think it can't be keeping
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: the filibuster as is or eradicating it forever. Maybe you
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: could talk about filibuster reform, preventing abuse of the filibuster,
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: getting rid of the filibuster for certain pieces of legislation.
• 40:07
  Speaker 6: But to your point, John, I mean, Georgia Republicans introduced
• 40:09
  Speaker 6: nine bills to restrict voting rights on the first day
• 40:12
  Speaker 6: of Black History Month. including getting rid of automatic voter registration,
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: no excuse absentee voting, mail ballot drop boxes. Things, by
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: the way, that most Republicans used to support because they
• 40:24
  Speaker 6: used to think that absentee votes.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: Were good for them.
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: They wanted people to be able to vote absentee because
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: their base used that form of voting all the time. So, yeah,
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: I think this is this is not some esoteric good
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: government thing.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: This is urgent and existential. And I think we need
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: to make that case.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: Love it.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: No, I think the point that Tommy's making is really important,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: which is there's four basic, I think, ways we need
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: to talk about the filibuster. One is about preserving our democracy.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: One is about just our capacity to make progress as
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: a country. But there's two other pieces of it. One
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: is about their interest in the Senate as a body
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: and its function. And the other is their interest as individuals,
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: as senators. You got a part of that. But I
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: do think we need to make an intellectual case that
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: takes people like Sinema at their word when they say
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: they want to preserve the Senate as a deliberative body
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: and they believe in the institutions of the Senate. We
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: have to meet them there. You know, she gave this
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: interview to Politico, which was, I think, set a real,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: she has a maximal position right now, right? She doesn't
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: just want to preserve the filibuster. She wants to strengthen
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: the filibuster. Well, that means we have a lot of
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: work to do and it's going to take a lot
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: of space to find a compromise where she can get
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: behind it. But we talk about democracy. We talk about
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: her ability to legislate. How about the fact that A
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: 50 vote threshold means bipartisanship can happen. A 50 vote
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: threshold means the Senate can actually legislate again and you
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: can actually use your power effectively as an individual because
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: you can build unusual unorthodox coalitions because it's easier to
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: get 51 bipartisan votes than it is to get 60.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of parts of this argument that
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: I think are quieter and not as resonant to the
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: country or to the 2022 midterms that we have to
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: start making because I think we need to make the
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: case not that we want them to like, but the
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: case according to their own standards that they have set.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think, you know, Joe Biden has a
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: State of the Union coming up or a dress to
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: a joint session, which is what you call the first
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: State of the Union. I would make this a very
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: big part of that speech. Obviously, he's going to have
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: to talk about COVID relief. That's going to be number one.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: But I would also devote some time in the speech
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: to this. I would make it emotional. I think groups
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: outside should run ads about this like it's a campaign.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: I do think that we should, to your point, love it, too. Like,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: let's talk about, you know. who is opposed to these reforms,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: which is Republicans. Like, I don't think it is useful,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: at least just yet, to go all out against Manchin
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: and Sinema and Democratic senators who don't want the filibuster. Like,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: let's set the lines of this, the battle lines of
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: this fight right now, which is Democrats want to expand
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: the right to vote and protect the right to vote.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Republicans do not. And make the Republicans sort of own this,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: make this a very popular issue, and then ask people
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: within our own caucus to make sure that they vote
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: for it.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: So.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: OK, when we come back, we'll have Lovett's interview with
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Heather McGee.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: Joining us on the pod, she is a political strategist,
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: chair of the Board of Directors for Color of Change
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: and author of the new book, The Sum of Us,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: It's a fantastic book. It's officially out today. Welcome back,
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Heather McGee. Good to see you.
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: I'm so glad to be here.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: So I want to start by talking about the minimum
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: wage because it's having a moment. Pramila Jayapal joined Dan
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: last week to talk about how important the fight is
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: to pass the minimum wage through reconciliation now as part
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: of COVID relief. Some Democrats are skeptical about whether that's possible. Others,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: like Joe Manchin, are skeptical of the number of going
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: to 15. Can you talk a little bit about the
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: importance of this fight to the kind of solidarity movement
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: you talk about in the book?
• 43:58
  Speaker 7: It's just time for Democrats in power to deliver. And
• 44:03
  Speaker 7: so these are fights that people who have the absolute
• 44:07
  Speaker 7: most to lose have been fighting in the streets with
• 44:11
  Speaker 7: their employers, with their city council members for almost a
• 44:15
  Speaker 7: decade now with the fight for 15. And so many people,
• 44:19
  Speaker 7: not just, you know, the suburban moms we hear about
• 44:23
  Speaker 7: all the time, God bless them, but people who really
• 44:25
  Speaker 7: have been at the bottom rungs of our economy. People
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: in fast food making a thousand times less on average
• 44:32
  Speaker 7: per hour than their CEOs have been putting it all
• 44:36
  Speaker 7: on the line to try to get this done and
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: to truly transform their lives. And that is an essential
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: part of the Democratic coalition. And if the Democrats don't
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: realize that, that they've got to just absolutely pay back
• 44:50
  Speaker 7: the people who have done so much for them time
• 44:53
  Speaker 7: and time again with every opportunity they have, then they're
• 44:56
  Speaker 7: missing the boat and they're going to suppress the vote
• 44:58
  Speaker 7: in the midterms.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Also today, and I thought this was interesting, Mitt Romney,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: Tom Cotton, two tribunes of working people, introduced a proposal
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: to raise the minimum wage but tie it to immigration
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: enforcement and talk about how we can't allow, in their words,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: illegal immigrants from taking jobs from Americans. What do you
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: make of that kind of conservative politics that mixes, that
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: tries to outflank Democrats on a key issue for working
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: people while adding in some of the immigration politics that
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: has been so central to the Trump coalition?
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: You know, it's really smart politics, right?
• 45:40
  Speaker 7: Trump used to always say that he, you know, wanted
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: to raise the minimum wage and wanted to put all
• 45:44
  Speaker 7: this money back in the pockets of working people. And
• 45:47
  Speaker 7: so it's a classic divide and conquer, which is the
• 45:49
  Speaker 7: central sort of analysis and indictment in my book, The
• 45:54
  Speaker 7: Sum of Us, that Republicans have tried to cleave white
• 45:58
  Speaker 7: working class people away from their brothers and sisters in
• 46:01
  Speaker 7: the broader multiracial working class by resentment politics, by saying
• 46:06
  Speaker 7: that it's either a dollar in your pocket or it's
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: a dollar in the pocket of brown and black people.
• 46:11
  Speaker 7: So it's a message bill. It doesn't really make sense
• 46:14
  Speaker 7: in terms of how it would actually work. It's also
• 46:18
  Speaker 7: really clear that we've been enforcing and enforcing and enforcing
• 46:22
  Speaker 7: immigration policy and that that is not the answer to
• 46:26
  Speaker 7: making working class people who come here seeking better lives
• 46:30
  Speaker 7: and better jobs, you know, able.
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: To actually come out of the economic shadows.
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: It is legalization and citizenship that creates more bargaining power
• 46:40
  Speaker 7: for the working class. But, you know, you don't hear
• 46:43
  Speaker 7: Mitt Romney talking about bargaining power that often.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: You know, the Biden immigration proposal was basically laying out
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: all the pieces of it that have to do with
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: the path to citizenship, to helping dreamers, to reforming the
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: legal immigration system. And then the parts that are least
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: defined in his plan were the parts around enforcement. But traditionally,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: it's always been understood that if we're going to get
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: a coalition to pass immigration reform, that it's going to
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: be the rhetoric of nation of immigrants and nation of laws,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: that that is always going to come first. to be
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: part of it. How are you thinking about that now
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: as part of a working class politics? You talk about
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: this in the book that there was somebody you met
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: who didn't understand class solidarity until the fight around the
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: minimum wage and didn't understand how to think about their
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: non-white working people as part of their coalition. How are
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: you thinking about how immigration fits into this working class solidarity?
• 47:43
  Speaker 7: We've got these amazing bridges of empathy that have been
• 47:47
  Speaker 7: built through some of the most traumatic and cruel public
• 47:52
  Speaker 7: policies that we've seen in my lifetime with family separation,
• 47:57
  Speaker 7: with the Muslim ban. I just don't think it is
• 48:01
  Speaker 7: smart or fair or moral to leave that behind.
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: A huge part of the coalition that made these historic
• 48:11
  Speaker 7: wins for Democrats were ones that were morally were people
• 48:14
  Speaker 7: that were morally outraged by the dehumanization of immigrants. And
• 48:19
  Speaker 7: so and there's very much a link in those voters
• 48:23
  Speaker 7: minds between the kind of enforcement first deportation only cruelty
• 48:30
  Speaker 7: of the Trump administration. And they've been educated and a
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: bit radicalized on these issues so that the ball has
• 48:36
  Speaker 7: moved down the field from the Obama era, where the
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: President Obama we're talking about, you know, really, I think,
• 48:42
  Speaker 7: felt like he needed to do a lot of enforcement
• 48:45
  Speaker 7: to bring Republicans along. And so I think we are
• 48:48
  Speaker 7: much farther down the field towards a more humane set
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: of policies. We have effectively closed our borders now for
• 48:55
  Speaker 7: so much time. We have really pushed people way into
• 49:00
  Speaker 7: the shadows between ICE enforcement internally and the incredible chilling
• 49:07
  Speaker 7: effect of the pandemic and the job losses that have
• 49:10
  Speaker 7: been concentrated among low-wage service workers. That now is not
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: the time to be putting more people in jail. Now
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: is not the time. to do anything but heal our
• 49:22
  Speaker 7: communities and bring everybody in and make everyone healthy on
• 49:27
  Speaker 7: an economic level, on a physical level, on a security level.
• 49:30
  Speaker 7: That's gotta be what Democrats say to the public.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: So we just went, we just had an election. The
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: popular vote Democrats won by 7 million votes. That resulted
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: in a presidential win that still hinged on closer votes
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: in a few key states. We kept the House but
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: lost some seats. We won the Senate in a photo finish.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: And following an election with an historic turnout, Republicans across
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: the country have introduced vote suppression bills that they're poised
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: to pass. And the Republicans are in some ways being
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: completely explicit that they can use gerrymandering alone to to
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: take back the House. Into that context, we have a
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: fight over democratic reform in the Senate. What is the
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: best argument that we should be making to the country,
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: but also to three or four or five democratic senators
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: about the urgency of passing these kinds of reforms despite
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: procedural hurdles like the filibuster?
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: So I think the.
• 50:28
  Speaker 7: Three or four potential holdout Democrats, frankly, that's a quiet conversation, right?
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: They're not trying to be moved by flag waving or by,
• 50:38
  Speaker 7: you know, the same things that the American public could
• 50:42
  Speaker 7: get stirred up by in terms of rooting out corruption
• 50:44
  Speaker 7: in our democracy, both the corruption of big money and
• 50:48
  Speaker 7: corporate power and the corruption of the tinkering of votes
• 50:52
  Speaker 7: and the tinkering of our election system.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: And the corruption of the tinkering.
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: With our election system that happens when politicians get to
• 51:01
  Speaker 7: choose their voters, right? That kind of messaging about what
• 51:04
  Speaker 7: we lose with this widespread corruption, how it skews our
• 51:08
  Speaker 7: tax policy, how it skews our ability to raise the
• 51:11
  Speaker 7: minimum wage, that's the message for the public. I think
• 51:14
  Speaker 7: a lot of people do that very well. Tie it
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: to the issues, make sure you include the voting and
• 51:19
  Speaker 7: the money.
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: People get it.
• 51:20
  Speaker 7: It's actually something that gets a tremendous amount of bipartisan support.
• 51:25
  Speaker 7: What do you do for senators who are flexing their
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: muscle and, you know, want a horse trade?
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: You horse trade with them. You get it done. You
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: figure it out.
• 51:33
  Speaker 7: There's obviously a self-interest argument for any Democratic politician to
• 51:38
  Speaker 7: say that you will have a better caucus, a better
• 51:43
  Speaker 7: time defending your seat, a better time defending yourself against
• 51:47
  Speaker 7: dark money if we have these reforms.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: So Kyrsten Sinema is actually who's been on my mind.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: A lot of attention goes to Joe Manchin, though I
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: think sometimes Joe Manchin stands in front of a bunch
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: of other Democrats behind him who also are a bit reluctant,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: squishy on the filibuster. But Sinema did an interview with
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Politico where she basically said she doesn't want to overrule
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: the parliamentarian. She supports a 60 vote threshold and actually
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: would like to see it made even stronger. That is
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: a maximalist position on the filibuster. And I'm glad to
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: hear you talking about this sort of quieter conversation. Are
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: you engaged at all with some of these quieter conversations
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: that are going? Because it sounds to me like this
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: is like not just, not even about self-interest, like there
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: is a like intellectual persuasion that needs to take place.
• 52:38
  Speaker 7: So I think that, for example, you know, my friend
• 52:41
  Speaker 7: Adam's book, Kill Switch, which is about the history of
• 52:43
  Speaker 7: the filibuster, has been a super helpful intellectual weapon And,
• 52:48
  Speaker 7: you know, just batting down some of the nonsense that,
• 52:52
  Speaker 7: you know, pro filibuster politicians try to say to keep
• 52:56
  Speaker 7: it right.
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: That's important.
• 52:58
  Speaker 7: It's important to make the case that this is a
• 53:00
  Speaker 7: racial equity issue, that this is a Jim Crow era relic,
• 53:03
  Speaker 7: as President Obama said, and that today it stands in
• 53:07
  Speaker 7: the way of the kind of civil rights and democracy
• 53:09
  Speaker 7: reform legislation that would allow us to keep a multiracial
• 53:13
  Speaker 7: democracy in America. There are lots of arguments like that
• 53:16
  Speaker 7: you can make. There are arguments that you can make
• 53:19
  Speaker 7: about how bipartisanship will actually be more possible if people
• 53:23
  Speaker 7: have to negotiate with one another because there's going to
• 53:26
  Speaker 7: be legislation moving. If there's no legislation moving and I
• 53:30
  Speaker 7: can make a phone call to the Senate cloakroom and
• 53:32
  Speaker 7: stop anything from happening, what incentive do I have to
• 53:36
  Speaker 7: be bipartisan, right? It's really important that people like David Brooks, right,
• 53:41
  Speaker 7: who's this sort of moderate bellwether, you know, come out
• 53:43
  Speaker 7: and say that we need to kill the filibuster. But
• 53:46
  Speaker 7: I think it's also really important that, you know, and
• 53:49
  Speaker 7: this is the kind of organizing that I do think
• 53:51
  Speaker 7: people are doing, that the people who are funding Kyrsten
• 53:54
  Speaker 7: Sinema's campaign, that she feels like she needs in order to,
• 53:59
  Speaker 7: you know, still be able to fund her campaign, because
• 54:02
  Speaker 7: it's not a grassroots swell of working class people who
• 54:05
  Speaker 7: are behind her, you know, that they are also equipped
• 54:08
  Speaker 7: with the kind of arguments they need. This is the
• 54:11
  Speaker 7: bottom line for me. If Democrats keep the filibuster... and
• 54:17
  Speaker 7: all of the other arcane Senate rules that are stopping
• 54:19
  Speaker 7: progress and therefore are not able to deliver real change
• 54:23
  Speaker 7: in the lives of working people, they will not be reelected.
• 54:26
  Speaker 7: There is nothing more important to the self-interest argument and
• 54:30
  Speaker 7: this idea that Democrats shouldn't get rid of the filibuster
• 54:33
  Speaker 7: because if they did and they became the minority in
• 54:35
  Speaker 7: the future, there's no quicker way to guarantee that the
• 54:38
  Speaker 7: Democrats are the minority in the future than if they
• 54:40
  Speaker 7: keep the filibuster and aren't able to deliver at this
• 54:43
  Speaker 7: time of record, record economic pain for most Americans.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: Can I as a follow up on that about reconciliation?
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: So I obviously we agree on this topic. We're in
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: vigorous disagreement. I feel like there are a lot of
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: podcasts about the filibuster in which people are in a
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: state of vigorous agreement about what to do about it.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: If bipartisanship is served by a 50 vote majority, even
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: with a kind of recalcitrant partisan Republican minority. Why is
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: it that we're not seeing Republicans recognizing that the reconciliation
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: bill is moving and trying to change it and by
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: promising their votes? Like, why aren't we seeing that kind
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: of give and take in the Senate right now on
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: the 50 vote bills?
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: You know, I think because right now we're still in
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: war footing. They are still getting marching orders from McConnell
• 55:44
  Speaker 7: that says, don't do anything whatsoever to legitimate, you know,
• 55:51
  Speaker 7: what is the majority party of this country. I think
• 55:54
  Speaker 7: it's also really important to recognize that Republicans have a very,
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: very uncomfortable base right now. Their donors are disgusted. Two-thirds
• 56:06
  Speaker 7: of the country is interested in a third party base.
• 56:10
  Speaker 7: The polling about what January 6th did to, you know,
• 56:14
  Speaker 7: a good 40% of the Republican base, 40 to 60%,
• 56:20
  Speaker 7: depending on, you know, what question you ask in terms
• 56:23
  Speaker 7: of just feeling like a bridge had been crossed.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: They are really unsure how to act.
• 56:31
  Speaker 7: They don't know which direction to step in in order
• 56:34
  Speaker 7: to preserve their power and preserve their base. And so
• 56:38
  Speaker 7: the safest bet is to do nothing. McConnell has a
• 56:42
  Speaker 7: lot of sway on this issue. This is not something
• 56:45
  Speaker 7: that I think Trump is tweeting about, you know, would
• 56:47
  Speaker 7: be tweeting about or did that. This is not an
• 56:50
  Speaker 7: issue that I think Trump is, you know, has a
• 56:52
  Speaker 7: lot of opinions about. So they're not getting, you know,
• 56:54
  Speaker 7: any kind of orders from there. And I think that
• 56:56
  Speaker 7: they're really just frozen. They don't have a governing principle
• 57:00
  Speaker 7: other than to maintain the status quo at all costs.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: I want to ask you about a story in the
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: book around bankruptcy and one of your early experiences on
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: the Hill. Can you talk a little bit about what
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: you saw and what it showed you about the kind
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: of the broader connection you draw in the book between
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: public goods and racial grievance?
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: You know, I was a young whippersnapper, a young policy
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: wonk in 2005. And we had done a lot of
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: work at Demos on the issue of debt. And so
• 57:33
  Speaker 7: we had our research and we were you know, taking
• 57:36
  Speaker 7: it from Senate office to Senate office, trying to convince
• 57:38
  Speaker 7: them not to reform the bankruptcy laws to make it
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: harder for working and middle class people to have a
• 57:44
  Speaker 7: second chance after they'd lost everything. And we brought the
• 57:47
  Speaker 7: numbers and the figures And then, I'll never forget, I
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: was walking down the hall in the Senate office building,
• 57:54
  Speaker 7: Russell Senate office building, and I had these terrible shoes
• 57:57
  Speaker 7: that I'd just gotten for this lobbying visit, and.
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: So they kept falling off.
• 58:02
  Speaker 7: And I bent down to put my shoe back on,
• 58:05
  Speaker 7: and then I heard a senator, I believe it was
• 58:09
  Speaker 7: a senator, just because of the way the other people
• 58:10
  Speaker 7: around him were sort of kowtowing to him, and he
• 58:13
  Speaker 7: was just sort.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: Of being bombastic, right?
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: He was talking about these freeloaders and deadbeats who had,
• 58:19
  Speaker 7: you know, babies with multiple children. I'm sorry, who had
• 58:23
  Speaker 7: babies with multiple women and, you know, use the bankruptcy
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: to evade their personal responsibility. And it like made my, like,
• 58:32
  Speaker 7: you know, me hot under the collar because it was
• 58:34
  Speaker 7: like a very sort of gut level feeling like, whoa,
• 58:40
  Speaker 7: the picture they have of who's seeking bankruptcy is so
• 58:43
  Speaker 7: different from what the research says, right? So different from
• 58:47
  Speaker 7: the truth. But it is this stereotype. And it felt
• 58:50
  Speaker 7: to me really racially coded. It reminded me of the
• 58:53
  Speaker 7: welfare reform debates, which were both about the deservingness of
• 58:57
  Speaker 7: people who don't have any money. And in America, poverty
• 59:00
  Speaker 7: is so racialized. And it just felt like, whoa, we
• 59:04
  Speaker 7: have totally missed something when we are trying to bring
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: economic arguments to what is ultimately a fight. about identity
• 59:12
  Speaker 7: and culture and deservingness and worth and status and these
• 59:16
  Speaker 7: things that in America always seem to turn on race.
• 59:19
  Speaker 7: It was one of a few early moments in my
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: career when I realized that if we were trying to
• 59:24
  Speaker 7: address economic inequality and not address those core questions of
• 59:30
  Speaker 7: racial hierarchy, racial status, racial stereotypes, then we were never
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: gonna make progress.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: I wanna end by just talking about the other side
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: of that, which is the solidarity dividend you talk about
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: in the book, that when you actually tackle this coded language,
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: the way in which our economic arguments have been infused
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: with racial stereotypes, prejudices, notions of who deserves things and
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: who doesn't, that when a public good is shared beyond
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: white people, those white people lose. Can you talk a
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: little bit about some of the examples where people have
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: been able to kind of build those coalitions to overcome
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: that kind of coded language and build something new?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: I mean, I did find that this term solidarity dividend
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 7: kept coming up in my mind. And so it's basically
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 7: what we can gain when we actually defeat the divide
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 7: and conquer politics of racial resentment, when white people particularly
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 7: reject the zero-sum story that It's either a dollar in
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: my pocket or a dollar in yours. And people link
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 7: arms and actually get a majoritarian movement going for the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 7: things that we all desperately need. I think about Bridget
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 7: from Kansas City. This is a white woman who'd worked
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 7: in fast food her whole life. She really had no
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 7: faith whatsoever that the Fight for 15 would win, that somebody,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 7: as she said, like her, would ever get $ 15 an hour.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 7: But she went to the first organizing meeting anyway, and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 7: there she met a Latina woman who stood up and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 7: talked about her own life, talked about living in an
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 7: apartment with plumbing issues with three kids and feeling trapped.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 7: And Bridget saw herself in her. And it was a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 7: wake up moment. And then Bridget became one of the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 7: real leaders in this organization, Stand Up Kansas City. She
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 7: was in a fully multiracial organization, pretty much evenly.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: Divided, black, white, and brown.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 7: And the way she talks now, she says, it's not
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 7: about us and them. I had you know, bought this
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 7: zero sum us versus them lie about immigrants and black people.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 7: And now I know that in order for us to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 7: come up, we all have to come up because as
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 7: long as we're divided, she says, we're conquered. I saw
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 7: so many other examples of that, of basically, you know,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 7: it really does come down to white people rejecting a
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 7: story they've been sold for the profit of, you know,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 7: economic elites and saying, you know what, there's actually not
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 7: so much so different.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: Between you and me, and we've got to do this together.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: Heather McGee, thank you so much. The book is The
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Sum of Us, and I really hope everybody buys it.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: It is out today. I think that there are a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: lot of political books that people say you should read
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: because really what they mean is they think other people
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: who don't already agree with us should read them. I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: agree so heartedly with this book, so you should read it.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: But this is a book that I think does something rare,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: which is it puts together a lot of pieces about
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: what is broken in our system and helps you have
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: a way to think about it that you might not
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: have seen before. So Heather McGee, thank you so much.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: The sum of us out today.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you, John. Thanks to Heather for joining us today.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: Everyone go buy Heather's book and we will talk to
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: you later this week. Pod Save America is a Crooked
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: episodes as videos every week.