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Will Elon Find the Epstein Files Before It's Too Late? · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: like Simply Safe. Hi, Georgia. Hi, David.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: What do you think the world needs more of?
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Well, the world always needs more podcasts.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Didn't you used to have a podcast?
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Not only did I used.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: To have a podcast, Georgia. It's coming back.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: David Tennant does a podcast with Season 3.
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  Speaker 1: It's coming at you.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, and who are your guests?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Who are my guests?
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: What about Russell T. Davis? What about Jamila Jamil?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: What about Stanley the Tooch Toochy?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: So it's really just you hanging out with your mates then?
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Come, join me. David Tennant does a podcast with.
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  Speaker 4: Bye.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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  Speaker 1: Dan, nice to have you in L.A.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: In studio.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, love that. Great. We're going to have a good
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: time today. No, we're not. This is terrible.
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  Speaker 3: I know we're going to talk about it.
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  Speaker 1: No. We're going to talk about Republicans in Congress moving
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: forward with the Trump economic plan, which, among other things,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: would take away health care and food from kids in
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: order to fund a huge tax cut for the one percent.
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  Speaker 1: So that's lovely. Democrats are also going to have to
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: decide whether to use the limited leverage they have in
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the government shutdown fight that's rapidly approaching. We'll get to that.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: We're also going to cover Jeff Bezos' decision to turn
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post editorial page into the Wall Street Journal.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Then we're back with our latest installment of, wait, did
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  Speaker 1: that really happen? Where we'll react to this week's most
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: insane moments. It was stiff competition, but I think we
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  Speaker 1: found the three.
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  Speaker 3: I'm sure everyone remembers the one time we did that segment.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it's back, okay? It's back.
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  Speaker 3: Repetition, it's key.
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  Speaker 1: And stick around later for a sneak preview of the
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  Speaker 1: excellent conversation that Dan and I just had earlier in
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  Speaker 1: the week with our pal Jen Psaki. about White House
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  Speaker 1: press and communication strategy. That's on our subscriber-only show, Inside 2025.
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  Speaker 1: But you get a sneak preview here.
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  Speaker 3: Lucky you.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. But first, Donald Trump kicked off the first cabinet
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  Speaker 1: meeting of a second term with a special presentation from
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  Speaker 1: the most powerful member of his administration, or any administration,
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  Speaker 1: special government employee Elon Musk, who showed up in his
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  Speaker 1: trademark dark MAGA hat and tech support t-shirt. to reassure
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  Speaker 1: everyone that Doge isn't a complete clusterfuck.
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  Speaker 3: And I should say, also, we will make mistakes.
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  Speaker 1: We won't be perfect.
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  Speaker 3: But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly.
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  Speaker 1: So, for example, with USAID, one of.
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  Speaker 3: The things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola. Ebola prevention.
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  Speaker 1: I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored
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  Speaker 1: the Ebola prevention immediately.
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  Speaker 3: And there was no interruption.
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  Speaker 1: So unfortunately, for those of us who aren't keen on
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  Speaker 1: getting Ebola, what Elon said there is not true. Jeremy Kanondike,
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  Speaker 1: who led Ebola response at USAID under both Obama and Trump,
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  Speaker 1: said the U.S. government's capacity to respond has, quote, been
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  Speaker 1: wrecked right as there's an Ebola outbreak happening in East
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  Speaker 1: Africa as we speak. That's not all. Kanondike also says
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  Speaker 1: Doge has crippled the CDC. Also, the FDA this week
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  Speaker 1: just canceled their annual meeting to discuss next year's flu
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  Speaker 1: vaccines with no explanation. Catherine Wu reports in The Atlantic
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  Speaker 1: that the NIH is still violating court orders by refusing
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  Speaker 1: to restart most medical research. And the person now in
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  Speaker 1: charge of the nation's health, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., said
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  Speaker 1: during the cabinet meeting that the measles outbreak in Texas
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  Speaker 1: that has now killed a child is, quote, not unusual.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, it is unusual.
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  Speaker 3: Quite unusual.
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  Speaker 1: It's not died of measles in the United States for
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  Speaker 1: quite some time. Quite some time. Is this Maha? Are
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  Speaker 1: we Maha now? Is this, have we, have we Mahad?
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  Speaker 1: I don't know how to say it.
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  Speaker 3: It really, I think the question of whether we Mahad
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  Speaker 3: or not depends on how you define the word healthy.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Because if you define it in its traditional sense, then no,
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  Speaker 3: we are not headed towards healthy. We're headed in the
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  Speaker 3: opposite direction. And there's so much to say here, but
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  Speaker 3: just on the Ebola thing, just an example of what
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  Speaker 3: an absolute chaotic clusterfuck the Trump administration is in Uganda,
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  Speaker 3: where they are, they've been dealing with this Ebola outbreak.
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  Speaker 3: They were in need of more protective gear because there
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  Speaker 3: had been one patient who had gone to six different
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  Speaker 3: facilities or six different clinics. And so they needed gear
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  Speaker 3: there to protect the workers there. We could not access
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  Speaker 3: the gear because it was in a WHO warehouse. And
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  Speaker 3: because you are not allowed to speak to WHO, this
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  Speaker 3: is according to a report in The New York Times,
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  Speaker 3: you're not allowed to speak to WHO within the Trump administration.
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  Speaker 3: So it just sat there.
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  Speaker 1: Because we pulled out of the WHO, the World Health Organization.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, pulled out of the World Health Organization.
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  Speaker 1: And now we're not communicating with them at all, even
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  Speaker 1: though it's the World Health Organization, and they could use
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  Speaker 1: the only superpower in the world to help them out.
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  Speaker 3: And they had protective gear that we had paid for.
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  Speaker 3: So then they had to do a contract to get
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  Speaker 3: more protective gear. So we're not saving money. We're not
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  Speaker 3: doing anything right. We're just making things worse.
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  Speaker 1: So much of the USAID clusterfuck has not been about
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  Speaker 1: saving money. And I can't emphasize this enough because people
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  Speaker 1: are like, well— Voters don't like foreign aid and they
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  Speaker 1: want to spend money on other stuff and some of
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  Speaker 1: it was wasteful and blah, blah, blah.
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  Speaker 3: No.
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  Speaker 1: There was money that was appropriated already. We're not getting
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  Speaker 1: it back. Spent on, you know, $ 500 million in food
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  Speaker 1: that's just like sitting in docks spoiling right now. Like
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  Speaker 1: malaria nets that were already purchased. Like this stuff was already,
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  Speaker 1: the money has already been spent in a lot of
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  Speaker 1: these cases. And it's just now the life-saving food and
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  Speaker 1: medicine just isn't getting to people because they're all fucking assholes.
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  Speaker 1: incompetent assholes running the country.
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  Speaker 3: It's truly insane. You have to be both dumb and
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  Speaker 3: lacking in even a single iota of empathy within your
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  Speaker 3: body to run the government like this.
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  Speaker 1: So are you saying that they're not showing competence and caring?
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  Speaker 1: That's what Elon said. He goes, competence and caring. That's
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  Speaker 1: what we're all about here.
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  Speaker 3: There is no competence and caring. And you make the
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  Speaker 3: point that the conventional wisdom is people don't care about
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  Speaker 3: foreign aid. It's always top of the list. You ask people,
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  Speaker 3: where should we save money in the government? They always
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  Speaker 3: say foreign aid. If you ask them anything else, they
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  Speaker 3: want to keep the military. Many people do. Never touch
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  Speaker 3: Social Security or Medicare. Certainly don't touch education funding, whatever
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  Speaker 3: else it is. But I think, one, you can and
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  Speaker 3: should make the case here for what is happening. Because
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  Speaker 3: it's not about whether you should spend that money or not.
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  Speaker 3: You can make a case for why you should spend it,
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  Speaker 3: why it's good for our security, particularly when it comes
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  Speaker 3: to something like Ebola prevention. We help prevent pandemics and
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  Speaker 3: epidemics in other countries so they don't come here.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: It's exactly what we are doing. And if you don't
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  Speaker 3: control them at the root of the cause of the pandemic,
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  Speaker 3: then it spreads everywhere. Then an epidemic becomes a pandemic,
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  Speaker 3: and we are back to right where we were before.
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  Speaker 3: But also, the NIH stuff is particularly notable. In every
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  Speaker 3: funding fight in history between Republicans and Democrats, Republicans are
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  Speaker 3: trying to cut funding. The place where they always lose
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  Speaker 3: the public is on food safety, drug safety, research in
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  Speaker 3: diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. And that is what's happening here.
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  Speaker 3: And particularly, if you look at the disease research, I
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  Speaker 3: think we talked about this a couple weeks ago. There
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  Speaker 3: have been major breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research. There's real momentum there.
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  Speaker 3: Just this week, there was an announcement about real progress
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  Speaker 3: with a treatment for pancreatic cancer using mRNA vaccine technology.
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  Speaker 3: There's huge momentum here, and all that's going to stop
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  Speaker 3: in its tracks if we back away from this, which
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  Speaker 3: is exactly what Elon and Trump are doing.
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  Speaker 1: So the NIH has helped fund 99% of the drugs
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  Speaker 1: that are approved in the last decade. Catherine Wu's story
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  Speaker 1: in The Atlantic, everyone should go read it. It will
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  Speaker 1: infuriate you. Basically, they try to freeze a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: NIH funding and then they go to court and the
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  Speaker 1: court says, no, you can't freeze it. You got to restart.
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  Speaker 1: And people at the NIH want to start approving grants
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  Speaker 1: again because everything had been frozen. And then HHS, the
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  Speaker 1: political appointees at HHS from the Health and Human Services,
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  Speaker 1: this is before RFK Jr. got there, they said to
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  Speaker 1: the NIH, no, you can't restart the grants. And then
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  Speaker 1: The lawyers at HHS and the lawyers at NIH was like, no,
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  Speaker 1: we have to. We are in violation of a court order.
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  Speaker 1: And the political appointees at HHS said, no, you don't
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  Speaker 1: do it. And so there's been this like weeks, weeks
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  Speaker 1: long thing now where here and there, some grants are
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  Speaker 1: like getting approved because people are just like sort of
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  Speaker 1: just doing their own thing. But everyone who works in
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  Speaker 1: the building is just like they are demoralized. A lot
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  Speaker 1: of these grants aren't going anywhere. In some cases, there
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  Speaker 1: are critically ill people. patients enrolled in drug trials that
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  Speaker 1: cannot continue because of this? I mean, again, this isn't
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  Speaker 1: saving money. This isn't making government more efficient. This is
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  Speaker 1: just fucking ruining people's lives and denying us potential treatments
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  Speaker 1: and cures that we've already paid for. Our tax dollars
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  Speaker 1: have already paid for. It's fucking nuts, man.
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  Speaker 3: It's nuts.
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  Speaker 1: And sadly, the Doge chaos continues apace across the entire
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  Speaker 1: federal government. I would refer you to this AP head
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  Speaker 1: from Wednesday evening. VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by
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  Speaker 1: Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care.
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  Speaker 1: Lot of cuts hitting veterans, veterans health care, veterans with disabilities,
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  Speaker 1: getting fired left and right, VA hospitals. At the cabinet meeting,
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  Speaker 1: Trump touched off a fresh panic by saying that EPA
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  Speaker 1: administrator Lee Zeldin is planning to cut 65% of the
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  Speaker 1: agency's workforce, only to have the White House clarify later
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in the day that he meant EPA is going to
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  Speaker 1: cut 65% of its spending, not 65% of its staff.
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  Speaker 1: Still bad.
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  Speaker 3: Not good if you like clean air and clean water.
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  Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Then there's the fact that Elon and Doge
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  Speaker 1: have cut about 400 jobs from the Federal Aviation Administration's
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  Speaker 1: only to have Elon tweet on Thursday, quote, there is
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  Speaker 1: a shortage of top-notch air traffic controllers. If you have
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  Speaker 1: retired but are open to returning to work, please consider
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  Speaker 1: doing so. Is that where we're recruiting now, air traffic controllers?
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  Speaker 3: On Twitter?
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  Speaker 1: On Twitter?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where we are.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. Seems like there's downsides to the move-fast-break-things
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  Speaker 1: approach from Elon and the dogebags and the Silicon Valley types.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems that way. Let's stipulate that government can
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  Speaker 3: and should be made more efficient, more cost effective, that
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  Speaker 3: there's possible that there are places where there are too
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  Speaker 3: many people doing not the right things. Like that is
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  Speaker 3: absolutely 100% true. But what Elon Musk and Donald Trump
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  Speaker 3: are trying to do here is not fix government. They're
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: not trying to reform it, not trying to make it
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  Speaker 3: more efficient. They're trying to break it, to absolutely destroy
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  Speaker 3: the idea of a federal government whose job it is
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  Speaker 3: to help people to protect people, to keep them secure
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  Speaker 3: and safe. They do not believe in that and they're
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  Speaker 3: trying to destroy it. And what that means is, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: they have made a bet here, right? Because of their actions,
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  Speaker 3: we are less safe, less secure, we're at greater risk
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  Speaker 3: of plane crashes, disease epidemics, pollution in our air and water,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: foodborne pathogens, dangerous drugs, all those things are there. The
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  Speaker 3: point here is that Donald Trump is responsible for everything.
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  Speaker 3: Everything that happens from this point forward He broke government.
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  Speaker 3: There will be consequences for that, right? That could be
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  Speaker 3: a plane crash, something as serious and dramatic as a
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  Speaker 3: plane crash. It could be very, not unrelated to this
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  Speaker 3: measles epidemic that is taking place in Texas, where we
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  Speaker 3: now have a, we've fired a lot of the people
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  Speaker 3: in charge of managing those things. And we have, as
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  Speaker 3: the HHS secretary, a vaccine skeptic. And a president, frankly,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: who was a vaccine skeptic to some degree.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And that canceled meeting with the FDA was supposed to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: figure out the flu vaccine for next year. Like they
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time. before they have to
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: start production of next year's flu vaccines. So no one
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: knows why it was canceled. No one knows when it's
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: going to be rescheduled. And they're almost out of time
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to figure out next year's flu vaccines. And we've now
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: had the worst year for flu that we've had in decades.
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  Speaker 3: There are consequences of these actions. They have to be
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: held accountable for these actions. And that is, like I said,
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  Speaker 3: that can be as serious as the things I mentioned. Also,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: when you try to run the Social Security Administration with
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: half the staff, payments are going to be missed, right?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: They keep talking about how they're cracking down on fraud.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: You know what's one way to have there be more fraud?
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: To cut staff at the Social Security Administration or the
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  Speaker 3: IRS or those other places. And I just cannot obsess enough.
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  Speaker 3: Every single thing. The Republicans held Joe Biden responsible for
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  Speaker 3: a million things that were nowhere near him. Remember when
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: everyone was supposed to be mad at Joe Biden because
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: you couldn't find a turkey on Thanksgiving because of supply
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: chain shortages that you were going to go to Target
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: and there would be no Christmas presents or holiday presents
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: for anyone? And We have to hold Trump to a
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: same standard, but we actually have a basis in fact
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: for that. He promised stability. He promised security. He's doing
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: everything to create the opposite of that. And he has
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: to be held accountable.
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  Speaker 1: This is also a direct result of Elon trying to
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  Speaker 1: run the government like he runs one of his companies. And,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you know, everyone's like, oh, well, he did this at Twitter.
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  Speaker 1: And then he made Twitter, in some people's opinion, work
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  Speaker 1: better or whatever. But like, if you cut a bunch
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  Speaker 1: of staff, fire a bunch of people at a company,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and it degrades some services for a while, but eventually
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: it becomes better run, more efficient, whatever, right? Like if Twitter,
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  Speaker 1: if he took over Twitter, fired a bunch of people
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  Speaker 1: and Twitter went down for a while, okay, like that's
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  Speaker 1: not great.
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  Speaker 3: Maha, that would be Maha.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: That would be Maha, right, yes. If, you know, he's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: at SpaceX and they have to delay the launch of
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: a rocket because they fucked something up because they didn't
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  Speaker 1: have the right people, whatever, right? With the federal government,
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  Speaker 1: They are breaking everything, firing all these people, gutting all
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: these services. And like, say they make it more efficient
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and better run years down the road, like millions of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: people's lives are at stake right now. And that is
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the difference between running the fucking federal government and running
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: a business.
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  Speaker 3: And he also doesn't run Tesla and SpaceX like he
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: runs Twitter.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: Because there are stakes with nothing like federal government stakes,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: but there are, you know, yes, they, you may have
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: to delay a launch, but you could also have an explosion, right? Yes.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: You can- If there is a problem with Tesla cars
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: and the self-driving software, that obviously is commonplace. But Twitter
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: is the example everyone keeps using. It's like, who gives
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: a flying fuck if Twitter goes down for a minute? Right.
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  Speaker 1: And you know what?
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: It's so low stakes. It's like the sixth most important
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: social media platform in this country. LinkedIn is 10 times
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  Speaker 3: more important than Twitter.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And it is worse.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It's like spammy ads, bullshit.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Like, come on.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Elon and the FAA, because this is one
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I'm following closely.
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  Speaker 3: Why?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I will say, as Dan was flying here yesterday, I
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: was like sending a story about the near miss.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: You were sending a video of a near miss as
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I was boarding my plane.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you were on the plane, obviously. But
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it's somewhat comforting in this time to know that other
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: people who have not been afraid of flying their whole
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: lives like you are now starting to get nervous as well.
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  Speaker 1: Misery loves company.
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  Speaker 3: I can still do the math. Yeah, no, I know.
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  Speaker 1: So he's forcing the FAA now to withdraw a contract
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  Speaker 1: they gave to Verizon to modernize communication inside the air
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  Speaker 1: traffic control system and to hire Musk's own company, Starlink,
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  Speaker 1: to do it instead. Now, Elon tweeted on Thursday that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Verizon's existing system is on the brink of a catastrophic breakdown,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: which is comforting. He said, we're single digit months away
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  Speaker 1: from a catastrophic breakdown. It's like, oh, is someone from
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the fucking FAA going to tell us that? Or do
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: we just have to take the word of the ketamine
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: addled fucking billionaire who's running the government that, by the way,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: if we don't put in Starlink, air traffic control is
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: going to have a catastrophic meltdown. It's like, is that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: what we're left to do to figure out whether we
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: should fly or not? Like, is someone at the FAA
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: going to come give a press conference, tell us about
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: their fucking air traffic control? communication system or no? It's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: just Elon tweeting.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: I would just note that my bag is packed on
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: the couch in your office. And the second we finish
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: recording this, I'm going to leave the studio and go
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: get on an airplane to fly home.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Well, luckily he said we're a couple months away.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Well, look, right here, I'm really leaning into the definition.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Of the word brink. And he tweeted this in response
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to this story about Elon trying to push them to
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: cancel the Verizon contract so they could do Starlink. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: he said, well, no, no, It's Verizon things on the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: brink of catastrophic breakdown, and I'm providing Starlink units at
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: no cost to the taxpayer for now. Then, it's an
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: update for you, just before we record it. He corrected
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: himself and said, actually, the existing system that's on the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: verge of a catastrophic breakdown isn't Verizon's. It's another company.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: The new system that's not yet operational is Verizon, but
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: now we're canceling that and giving Starlink the contract instead.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: The funny thing is, is I knew this from the beginning.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: And I'm not even in charge of Doge. Because you
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: just read the words in the article. It's very clear
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: the Verizon is the new system.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Un-fucking-believable. And this isn't the only government contract Starlink could
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: be getting. The Biden-era Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. God,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: terrible fucking name. Bede. You know what? Some of this shit,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is why. This is why we're doing it.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: This is why Doge exists.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It passes part of the infrastructure bill. He could have
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: just said broadband. We're doing broadband. Anyway, they set aside
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: more than $ 40 billion to improve broadband in rural areas
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: by growing the fiber optic network. Didn't really happen that well. Again,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that's another problem for Democrats to think about next time
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: if we ever want to be in power again. But Elon, surprise, surprise,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: thinks that it should be satellite internet instead and that
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Starlink should run this show.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I am shocked to find that out.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: So stipulating Starlink might be great to use. It might
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: be the right solution for all of our connectivity challenges
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: for air traffic control. Who knows? Still feels like a
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: major conflict of interest at best that we're not having
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: companies bid for these contracts. We're just going to have
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the guy that's running this single handedly cutting government, firing people.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: His companies get the contracts.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: It's a coincidence. It's hard to imagine how that happened.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: It feels like Democrats should make some noise about this.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: No.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: I think Elon Musk is Donald Trump's political Achilles heel. Yeah.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: We've seen this in polling and in focus groups that
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Peter Hammy wrote about in Puck News the other day. Voters,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: they don't trust Elon Musk.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I think he's a tool. That's what one of them said.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Trump voters say he was a tool. Love that Trump voter.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: That Trump voter had a point. But they don't trust him.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: They don't like him running around unilaterally slashing government. They
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: don't like the idea of the world's richest man rooting
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: through government. They think he is filled with conflicts of interest.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: They don't think he's doing a particularly good job in
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: that Washington Post poll. Only 34% of people approved of
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: how Elon Musk was doing his job in government. And
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: so we should talk about it all the time in
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: this conflict of interest there. And I think this is
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: really important because this is something I'm going to, I
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: will flesh it. I've mentioned this once before, but I'm
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: going to, we'll one day flesh this out as an
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: actual written argument. But my belief is that the narrative
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: the Democrats should tell about the Trump administration is one
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: of chaos and corruption. And nothing embodies that more than
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk and Doge. This is incredibly chaotic.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: It's funny because you've talked about chaos and corruption before
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: this election.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: I talked about it in the last Trump election, too.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: You love chaos and corruption. But I was going to say,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you were ahead of your time, really, because if you
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: thought that was chaos and corruption before, Elon Musk is....
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: My problem is Donald Trump keeps becoming president.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, we've done this podcast or a version of
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: this podcast for three consecutive presidential elections, and Donald Trump's
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: been in all of them. So chaos and corruption keep
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: coming up. I don't know why.
• 20:56
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  Speaker 1: $ 50 off your first purchase of $ 100 or more. The
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Democrats are sort of figuring this out. I guess Hakeem
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Jeffries did a press conference today, I think, Thursday, where
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: he mentioned that Elon Musk is making $ 8 million a
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: day in government contracts and the average person on Medicaid
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: makes $ 65 a day because they're looking to cut Medicaid
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: in the budget, at least if we're going to get to,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: at least if you believe the budget instructions. So yeah,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I do think that's relevant that Elon Musk is making
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: $ 8 million a day in government contracts.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: And once more.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And once more, while he's trying to slash government because
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: he says it's wasteful and inefficient. Yeah, I think that's
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: something to look into. Maybe something to talk about. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, even bigger Doge cuts are coming.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Just one example, the Washington Post reports that the, as
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: you said, the Social Security Administration has been told to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: start getting ready to cut its staff by half. Of course,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: cuts like this have already happened at places like USAID
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: that we mentioned. In a court filing, the administration detailed
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: this week that they have canceled more than 90% of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: USAID's foreign assistance contracts, or about $ 16 billion in foreign
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: aid across the government. A federal court had ruled the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: government needed to pay out assistance money that was already
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: obligated by Wednesday at midnight. But a few hours before
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the deadline, the Supreme Court stepped in and said the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: deadline shouldn't be enforced, meaning the foreign aid freeze can
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: stand for now. So this was a, the SCOTUS ruling
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: was pretty temporary and narrow. They basically, you know, there
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: was a midnight deadline that said the government must pay.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And I think the court was like, okay, we can
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: skip the midnight deadline until we have a broader consideration
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: of this case.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: And the parties have to respond by tomorrow with briefs
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Right. So, you know, I would not, I would not
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: call this a huge win for the Trump administration, but
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I do wonder if we're seeing the limits of what
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the court's might be willing or able to do to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: stop these guys from just destroying whatever they want. And
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I think back to the NIH example that we just
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: talked about where, you know, there's even the lawyers, even
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration lawyers in the agencies that are like, yeah,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I think we should follow the court orders. And then
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: some other jack offs are like, nah, fuck it.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is the test, right? This is the
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: ultimate test of the system is the idea of the
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Supreme court of, as a, or the judicial branch is
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: a co-equal branch of government is the really just a
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: theoretical concept that exists only through the acquiescence of the
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: executive branch. Because the people who enforce court orders work
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: for the executive branch. And so this is the test.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: And there's real speculation that John Roberts is going to
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: try as hard as he can to avoid testing this
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: proposition in a way that would have Trump violate with
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: impunity an order from the court, as J.D. Vance has
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: encouraged him to do.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Because once that happens, the idea of judicial review, the
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: findings in the main Supreme Court case that you learned
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: in the first day of all con law classes, Marbury v. Madison,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: falls apart. Because once you say, do this or else,
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: and they say no, and there's no or else, the
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: whole system collapses. And so this is like a very
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: serious situation. You can really see John Marbury, who's tried
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: really hard to ruin the court slowly, to allow sort
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: of avoid an epic confrontation. That is going to be
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: to Trump's benefit as these cases proceed through the process.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: And I will say, for being totally fair, and I
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: don't know why we have to be, but Trump has
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: said he would follow court orders.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Well, that brings up another scenario, which could also happen here,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: which is Trump doesn't openly defy the court, and then
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the court issues a ruling, and then Trump says, I'm
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: not going to follow this.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: They just don't.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Right? They just don't. And They don't do it at
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the Trump level. Trump doesn't talk about it. But, you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: we had to wait for a piece in The Atlantic
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: by Catherine Rudd to find out that all of these
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: fuckers at HHS were telling the NIH to violate court orders. So, like,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: how many times across how many agencies could that happen?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: And then what remedies does the court have? You know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: they can try to hold people in contempt. None of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: them have wanted to do that yet. And they haven't
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: even wanted to word their rulings or decisions in a
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: way that would suggest that people might face contempt charges, right?
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Because I think all these courts are nervous that if
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: they hold someone in contempt in the administration and then
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: they don't show up, like, what are they going to do?
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Send the, send the Marshalls?
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Is Kash Patel coming to get him? Yeah, it is
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: a very, this is a real precipice of something very
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: different in American life that we are standing on right now.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, and, and part of what I wonder is
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: like how to put it back together. You know, like
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: if we like, you know, Democrats win the midterms, which
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: we have to, but what's to say that whatever the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Democrats do in Congress or try to stop in Congress,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that Trump's not just going to plow ahead or the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: agencies aren't just going to plow ahead. You know, I mean,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: like this is a real, we're in for it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: On his podcast, Ezra Klein once described American democracy as
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: a series of norms in a trench coat, which really
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: is being, the trench coat is open and there are
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: only norms there.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: That's rough. That's rough.
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: As much as it pains me to say this, let's
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: talk about what the Republicans in Congress are doing, since
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: it could end up affecting people's lives even more than Doge,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: believe it or not. We got two big fights brewing
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: over spending, and they're both important for different reasons. First,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: we had the House budget resolution, or as Trump calls it,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the big, beautiful bill. Mike Johnson got this thing passed
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday after both the hardliners on the right and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: some of the more vulnerable frontline members both said, reneged
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: on their pledges to oppose it so.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Under the urging of trump under the urging of trump in.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Fact there was a couple holdouts and it looked like
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it might not pass and they they pulled the bill
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and one of them was victoria spartz did you see
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the puck story on this no no apparently trump called
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: victoria spartz and started screaming at her and said you'll
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: just be a fake republican i'm the president remember who
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: i am started screaming and like people were hearing him
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: scream at her And then she hangs up and Mike
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Johnson's right there and he pats her on the back
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and he goes, you know what you have to do now?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: It's fucking mob, just a mob family. That's where we
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: are right now. Yeah.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, related to this is there was another story
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: about how Trump's team has told the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: the NRCC as it's known, that they were only going
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: to support candidates who pledge their loyalty to Trump.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yes. And so this is going to matter for Because
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the budget resolution is like the first step in passing
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the bill, right? It's basically like a shell of a bill.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: It's instructions to the committees, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: don't really need to know. You just need to know
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: it's the first step in the process.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: It's a critical but largely meaningless step. Right.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Because if you're a Republican who is thinking of not
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: voting for the final, you vote for the budget resolution
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: because it just moves the whole thing a step forward.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: We dealt with the same thing with Manchin and Sinema.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: in Joe Biden's Build Back Better, which then became Inflation
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Reduction Act, is they were like, yeah, we're going to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: vote for the budget resolution and then we'll.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Should we do a little explainer on this or?
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: So just so people understand, what Trump is trying to
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: do here is he and the Republicans want to pass
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: this bill without fear of a democratic filibuster. So the
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: only way to prevent a filibuster on a piece of legislation,
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: because the filibuster still exists for legislation. Thank you, Joe Manchin.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Here's the cinema. But actually, right now, maybe. Thank you.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: I would be happier if we had passed a whole
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: bunch of other bills like voting rights and other things.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: And the filibuster is still stupid. But is to use
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: the budget reconciliation process. which is a process that was
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: set up understanding that you have to pass a budget
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: and deal with budgetary matters, and you can't do that
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: with a filibuster. So this is basically like a filibuster
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: free card. Step one of that is pass a budget resolution.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: In many years, when you're not trying to use budget reconciliation,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Congress never passes a budget because you don't really need it.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, particularly if the party is in control
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: of Congress and the other side is different than the president,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: it's a fake thing. But here it actually matters. All
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: it is is the ticket to ride on the budget
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: reconciliation process. The budget reconciliation process, you only need 50 votes,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: but everything in it must relate to taxes and spending.
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: You have to pass something- So you can't pass laws
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that are just like, you know, famously we couldn't raise
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: the minimum wage through budget reconciliation.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, because there's something called the Byrd Rule, named after
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Robert Byrd, which dictates what is allowed in the budget
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: resolution process. When there is a question, the Senate parliamentarian
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: rules on that. Now, it is worth noting that the
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: presiding officer of the Senate can ignore the parliamentarian. And
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: some of us may have made a case that they
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: should have done that back then. But lo and behold,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: we don't have voting rights. But at least the parliamentarian's
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: integrity is intact. So that's the process that has begun.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And now the Republicans, both the House and the Senate, separately, theoretically,
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: have to write a gigantic tax bill and a giant
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: spending cuts bill that they have to pass before the
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: debt ceiling runs out sometime in late July or August.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And the important thing to realize here is that none
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of their math works and none of them have agreed
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: on anything, really, because they have promised, and a lot
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: of this is in the budget resolution, a couple trillion
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: dollars worth of spending cuts, which you can only get
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: if you really tackle Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans health care.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: They've also promised over $ 4 trillion in tax cuts. They
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: want to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. They want
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: new tax cuts. That's a lot. They want to raise
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the debt ceiling by $ 4 trillion. None of this adds up.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Either adds up mathematically or legislatively.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And what everyone's focusing on is the House budget
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: resolution instructs the committees to find $ 880 billion in savings
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: from Medicaid. And yet all the Republicans, including Donald Trump,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: are out there and Mike Johnson saying, we're not going
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: to actually touch Medicaid benefits that people are going to get.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: It's all waste, fraud, and abuse. So, and the Senate
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: is basically like, eh, too much Medicaid. We don't want
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: to touch Medicaid. But if they don't touch Medicaid, then
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: they need to find spending cuts other places, but there's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: just not a lot of money other places. What do
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you think is going to happen here? Is there a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: version of this that works that you can see?
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Well, there's got to be a version to lift the
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: debt limit before we default on the full-fledged credit of
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: the United States. And look, Trump was able to get
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: this through last time fully unpaid for. They did not
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: do cuts to pay for it. Will he be able
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: to do that again? He obviously had a much larger
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: house majority, relatively larger house majority. It's not a huge
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: house majority. It's really incredibly... complicated. The Medicaid math, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: just so people know, Medicaid provides healthcare and nursing home
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: care for like 72 million Americans, including children. Yep. And
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: they've talked about all kinds of things. One of the
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: things that the Republicans are always batting around is one
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: of the ways in which a lot of people have
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: access to affordable healthcare is through a provision in the
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Affordable Care Act called Medicaid expansion, where the government covers
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: 90% of the Medicaid match for state Medicaid funds if
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: they expand healthcare. Mm-hmm. They may try to cut that back,
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: which would kick a whole bunch of people off health care.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Work requirements would save them $ 100 billion. There's also a
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: bunch of Medicaid reforms that we proposed that I think
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: didn't go through that target waste, fraud, and abuse and
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: tax stuff. They could throw those in there. I could
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: see them getting to a point where they cut some Medicaid...
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: that didn't necessarily get to people's benefits. And they did
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: some other stuff there just to say that they got
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: some fraud and abuse, but they didn't cut the benefits
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: here and there. And then they just add to the deficit,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: make the tax cuts permanent, somehow lie about the accounting.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Well, that's one thing they're definitely going to do.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And then when the hardliners in the House and Rand
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Paul in the Senate start yelling about it, And then
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump just calls them and threatens them.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: The only way this passes is a whole bunch of
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: people have to vote for a bill that they said
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: they would never vote for. They either have to vote
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: for a tax cut that massively increases the deficit.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Which seems like no matter what they do, even in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: their own math, it increases the deficit.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. But without any sort of significant spending reductions
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: or changes to programs like Medicaid. Or they have to
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: slash Medicaid in a way in which they all said
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: they would not do.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: It's worth just noting Donald Trump in 2016 campaign said
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: he would not touch Medicaid. And then he pushed like
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: hell to pass a bill to repeal the Affordable Care
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Act that drastically slashed Medicaid.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: And even if they don't touch Medicaid, it's important for
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: everyone to realize nothing in this bill is for you.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Unless you make over $ 750, 000 a year. in which case
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you're in the top 1% and you will get a
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: very substantial tax cut. It's about a trillion dollars in
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: tax cuts just for the top 1%. And everyone else, yeah,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: maybe you get like a couple hundred dollars.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: You're probably not going to get more than you already got.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Right.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Because you've had this tax cut since 2017.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And they don't even think there's going to be room
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: in there for his no tax on tips proposal, although
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: maybe someone will find out a way to get in there.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: But there's nothing else for anyone. It's not going to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: help fix the deficit or even lower the deficit. It's
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: going to add to the deficit, make the deficit worse.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: And it's going to cut a bunch of other shit
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people depend on.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Just, it would be hard to go into a lab
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: to craft a policy more unpopular than cutting healthcare for
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: Americans to pay for a tax cut for billionaires. Yep.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: And again, the alternative is they don't touch healthcare, which
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: is going to be really hard. And I don't believe
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: that they'll be able to, but they don't. And then
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you go test this one, a tax cut for billionaires
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: that just adds to the deficit.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: Well, we did this. We tested it and it was
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: very unpopular. It showed up in a shitload of 2018
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: House midterm ads. Yeah.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: And you know what? We got that one. We did
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: pretty good.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I like that election. That was a fun election.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: That was a fun election. Yeah. Okay. This podcast is
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• 37:34
  Speaker 1: The other issue the Congress has to deal with much
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: sooner is government funding, which runs out in about two weeks.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: So usually only two things happen with a shutdown. First,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: it looms, and then it's averted.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: That's great fucking writing.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Reed gave me that line. That's good, Reed. Anyway, so
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the way a shutdown's averted these days is by passing
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: a continuing resolution known as a CR. Which just keeps
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the government open at current spending levels with the hope
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: that an actual budget gets passed somewhere down the line.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Which probably won't happen.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Probably won't happen. Which never happens. We've been funding the
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: government on CRs for like.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: CRs and omnibus spending agreements.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, forever. It's a fucking.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: No one's passed a fucking appropriations bill in a long time.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Right. And you know what? People in both parties are
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: mad about it. They all complain about it. And then
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it never changes. So, two problems for Republicans this time around.
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: One.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: The House doesn't know if they can pass a CR
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: with just Republican votes, since they have a few loony
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: hardliners who have basically made a living saying, I'll never
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: vote for a CR ever, and I don't want to
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: lift the debt ceiling, and I don't want to do
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: any of this shit, because they think that they want
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: to eliminate all of government. So they don't know that
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: they can get all the Republicans. Second, even if they
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: can get all the Republicans and it passes the House,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate, because this is
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: not the 51-vote budget resolution. It's the 60th. which means
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: they'd need the votes of at least seven Democrats. So
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the question becomes, what should Democrats do? Mike Johnson said
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: on CNN this week that he wants a CR to
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: include language that codifies the Doge cuts. He has also
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: rejected Democratic efforts to include some guardrails in the CR
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: around Elon and Doge. What do you think Dems should do?
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: We've been talking about this in many forums, personally, you
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: and I, for a few days now.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: I just start recording our conversations. It would be so
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: much easier.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Just turn this whole thing into a reality show.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. doing multiple times.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: That's right. That's why I'm always like, did we talk
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: about this on the pod or.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Was it a text? Was it in person? I don't know.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: I do not think the Democrats can vote for a
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: bill that does not do something to stop what Elon
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Musk and Trump are doing. What they're doing is dangerous and... frankly, unconstitutional,
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: and they cannot allow it to happen. Now, there's some
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: ways in which, I think, to go about this that
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: would be smart. Senate Democrats should really say and insist
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: that the House goes first. They should not negotiate. And
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: I think that, like, if Mitch McConnell was still there,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: he'd make the House go first, because he does not
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: want to pass a bill that he sends to the
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: House that the House then rejects. He needs the House
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: to collapse in a heap of their own failure, which
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: they often do. And then what he does is he
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: gets together with Schumer, passes a bill that has some
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: sort of bipartisan agreement, sends it to the House, sends
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: all of his members home and says, pass it or
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: be responsible for shutting down the government. So the House
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: goes first. That really simplifies things because Democrats aren't the
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: ones shutting down the government. Right. Either Mike Johnson and
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: the House Republicans can keep it open or they can't.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: And so leave it on them. That's one. Two, I
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: think you, in the way in which we talk about this,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: it has to be about the specific things that Elon
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Musk and Donald Trump have done that have hurt people. Right.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Food safety. cancer research, the FAA, having competent air traffic controllers.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: It cannot be about the power of the purse or
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: congressional prerogatives. And I've already seen some members of Congress
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: and a political story on this today talking about that.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Cannot be about that. We have to be protecting people
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: from cuts that are hurting them. That is absolutely essential.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: And look, there is risk in a shutdown politically. We
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: are not the ones shutting down the government. Republicans are
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: shutting it down because they cannot pass a bill in
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: the House. They are too incompetent to do it.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Or if it gets to the Senate, Republicans are, I mean,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the reason they couldn't get Democratic votes is because they
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: are just blatantly destroying government with, like, illegally.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Previous shutdowns have always happened, other than previous shutdowns have
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: happened when the government is divided and the part in
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: the House, usually Republicans in the House, refuse to bring
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: up a bill to keep it open. Or they pass
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: something they know the president won't sign. Republicans control all
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: the levers of government. If they can't keep this thing open,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: that's on them. And there is political risk in this.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Shutdowns are bad. People get hurt in them. We do
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: not want this to happen. But also, we cannot save
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: the Republicans from themselves here. Yeah. Because it's the one
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: point of leverage we have. And there is political risk
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: in it. There absolutely always is. But I think the greater...
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: political risk in the long term for Democrats here would
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: be to walk away from a fight when the party
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: absolutely must demonstrate strength, must find a point of conflict
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: where we can demonstrate to the American people, we can
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: grab their attention and demonstrate to the American people what
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: it is we stand for and who we're fighting for.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: And if we walk away from that, we're not going
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: to get another opportunity.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: No, I was going to say, we have said now
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: many times that Democrats don't have much leverage and much
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: power in this Trump presidency, at least for these two years.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: And that is true, except for moments like this, right?
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Moments where you need 60 votes in the Senate is
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: like the only leverage we have. And we've just talked
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: about stories where the courts are issuing rulings that are
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: not being followed, where Elon Musk and his people are
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: going in, getting access to our private data and personal information.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: They are firing people that are providing services that are,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: in some cases, life-saving that people depend on. And Democrats
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: are complaining, sending letters. In some cases, Republicans are starting
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: to complain and send letters. Those letters are not being
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: responded to at all. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: basically saying, fuck off, as are the rest of the
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: people that they have in the government. There are nominees
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: that were voted into the cabinet that just lied during
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: their hearings, said they weren't going to do this, weren't
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: going to do that, and now we're just doing it anyway. So, like, yeah. Yeah,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: if you want our votes in the Senate, then you
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: need to start following the fucking law and being responsible
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: stewards of people's tax dollars and not cutting the services
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: that they depend on.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: There has been this real dissonance at times between Democratic
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: rhetoric and Democratic actions. We talk about the existential threat
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: of Donald Trump. We talk about the deeply damaging things
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: he is doing or could do. And then we were then,
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: but our response exists in the frame of normal politics.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: And if this is as dangerous as we believe it is,
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: and I think Senate and House Democrats believe it is
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: as they say it is, then you have to be
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: willing to engage in more politically risky maneuvers to try
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: to do something to stop it.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, I think they need
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: the fight, you know? Well, we'll be talking more about
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: this in the next couple of weeks. One more thing
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: here on the serious topics list. It's a long list.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos sent out a memo to the
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: staff of the Washington Post, which of course he owns,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: saying that from here on out, the opinion page would, quote,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: to be published by others. He then informed staff that
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: David Shipley, the opinion editor, would be leaving the paper
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: as a result of his decision. Former Washington Post journalist
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Gene Weingarten today also reported that a piece about Bezos'
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: new policy by Post media reporter Eric Wemple was killed.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: You wrote a message box about this on Wednesday. Give
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: us your take.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: This is a very sad day for the Washington Post.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: The Washington Post is, while it's been struggling financially in
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: recent years, is one of the most important media institutions
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: in the country. It is famed as a a media
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: institution that will cover anyone and everything without fear or favor.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: They will stand up to incredibly powerful forces in this country.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: They took down a president. They published the Pentagon Papers.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: They came up with the slogan, democracy dies in darkness.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: That was probably the beginning of the decline.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: It feels a long way away, doesn't it?
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Yes. But now, at least the opinion section of that
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: paper is nothing more than an organ for the billionaire
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: with multiple interests in front of the federal government. that
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: owns the paper.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: And what I think this, so this is a problem
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: for the Post. It's deeply demoralizing and unfair to the
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: very good journalists of the Post who do very good reporting.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: They deserve much better than this because this has caused
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: people to cancel their subscriptions. It has caused people to
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: not trust the work they are doing. And I think
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: it also is, and this is the broader point, it
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: is just another signal about the dangers of corporate-owned media.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: The 21st century was a period of media consolidations. Jeff
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Bezos bought the Washington Post. Comcast bought NBC. The Walt
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: Disney Corporation bought ABC News. The CNN is owned by
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Warner Discovery. And for a long time, even as those
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: were good purchases because the business of journalism was so
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: good that they were profit engines for these companies. And
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: they were good for the brand because they also owned
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: these valuable news brands that meant a lot. In recent years,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: and because of that, these corporations abided by the traditional
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: firewall between the business and news side. They did not
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: get involved in interfering. Over the course of time, the
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: financial value of these journalistic organizations within these larger conglomerates
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: came down. They still make money, but they're declining assets.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: In fact, in some cases, they're drags on the stock
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: price because people know that these networks are in inexorable
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: decline because of changes in how people consume media. And
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: now the firewalls are starting to come down because they know,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: they believe that Donald Trump will hold the larger corporation
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: and its interests hostage over the coverage of the news entity.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: And so we see this in the.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: With good reason. Yes.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: They're not wrong for thinking that, right?
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Also, remember in the first term, Donald Trump just called
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: it the Amazon Washington Post and threatened them all over
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the place.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: And canceled a, or at least tried to, I can't
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: remember the full details, but tried to cancel a Pentagon
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: contract with Amazon.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos- has Amazon contracts, and Blue Origin, a space company,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: depends on federal funding. And all of them worry about
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: regulatory scrutiny in a vengeful way from the Trump administration.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Which the new FCC chair has been carrying out.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: And that's what they wanted. Many of them want to
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: merge with other companies. They want to buy companies. And
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: they know that Trump will, Trump's FCC or FTC or
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: whoever else is involved in it, will hold them in.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: So there are some examples here, right? The Disney Corporation
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for a couple
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: of years now. They settle a pretty specious lawsuit involving
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: George Stephanopoulos for a $ 15 million donation to the Trump Library.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: Trump has an even more specious lawsuit against 60 Minutes
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: involving the editing of a Kamala Harris interview. The Paramount Corporation,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: which owns CBS News, has been bought by Skydance, a
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: production company owned by Trump's buddy, Larry Ellison's son, David.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: That is going to need approval from the FCC. And
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: so what is Sherry Redstone, the owner of Paramount, want
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: to do? She wants to settle that lawsuit, that absurd lawsuit,
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: in order to stay on Trump's good side. And so
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: the point here is that media is changing. The era
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: of corporate media has come to an end because the
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: firewalls are coming down. And so you mentioned the Eric
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Wemple thing, right? Eric Wemple actually is a, as I understand,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: is a columnist for the Post. He's on the opinion side.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: But the story the Post ran about this was basically
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: the press release from Jeff Bezos.
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: It doesn't say, there's no report, there's a furor inside
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: the Post. In a different era, the story would be
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: about the reaction within the Post. We've seen this in
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: the New York Times and there's been certain situations when- And.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Probably, ironically, the Times or Politico or Puck or someone
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: else will write the story about the turmoil inside and
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: now the Post can't.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: And the Post did not do it. And so what
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: do we think is going to happen when, let's say
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: the Post were to stumble on, the example I used
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: in my message box, let's say the Post were to
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: stumble on a scoop akin to the Access Hollywood tapes
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: or when the New York Times got Trump's tax returns.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Are they going to publish that?
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, they, um, Jeff Bezos just paid $ 40
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: million to Melania for a documentary three times more than
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: anyone else had ever, uh, offered for a documentary that
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: she'll be pocketing 70% of that.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: And million dollars at the inauguration. Yeah.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: A million dollars to sit there. So no, I don't
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: think they'd be publishing.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: Obviously if Jeff Bezos stopped the publication, like there'd be
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: mass resignation at the post and it'd be the end
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: of it. Like we would all know that, but that's
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: the future. And My argument, and I think, and this
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: is obviously self-serving for a whole host of reasons, but
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: it's also why we do these jobs and why we're
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: in this business as opposed to something else is the
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: future of media is not corporate, it's independent.
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: It means it's going to like, entities will be smaller, right?
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Because the economics have changed and they're going to be
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: more transparent about their biases, right? Some of it will
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: be like purely traditional objective journalism. Some of it will be,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: you know, what we're doing here at Crooked Media Podcast
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: of America or what I'm writing on the message box.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: But that is the future. And as I said to people,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: if you want a better media ecosystem, you've got to
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: build it yourself. You have to support these entities.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And look, I don't want a media world where it's
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: all just takes flying left and right and that's all
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: that we have. We need to make journalism a viable business.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: But you're right that independent journalism, which is– there's not
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: enough of it right now. Like that is the that's
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: got to be the future at this point.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And the economics are very hard. Some of it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: nonprofit like ProPublica. Some of it is smaller stuff like
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: what our friend Jessica Yellen's doing in News That Noise.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: There's but there's just it just it's a world and
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: you just there is this inherent and irreconcilable tension between
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: a media entity who views its job as trying to
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: hold the powerful accountable being owned by a large corporation
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: with multiple business interests before the powerful.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: And this is all true and it is a, it
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: is a story about corporate media and where it's headed.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: It's also a story just about like, this is what
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: happens in authoritarian governments, you know? And like, this is
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: hungry shit. This is like Russia. I mean, Peter Baker
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: at the New York times was talking about the, um,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: as we were going to talk about this with Jen
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: in the inside 2025 episode too. But the idea that the,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: now the Trump white house is just picking the press pool.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: So they get to pick who covers them from the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: press and they have like, you know, gateway pundit and
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: OAN there. And he was like, you know, I covered
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I was the Moscow bureau chief for a while for
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: New York Times. And this is like Russia.
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not Russia yet, but it certainly looks
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: like the beginning. And the idea that now the now
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: corporate America media, corporate media owners, whatever else, are now
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: basing their business decisions and basing their other decisions on
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: like what on how to make sure they either curry
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: favor with Trump or don't piss off Trump is it's
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: getting to a pretty scary place. Okay, we're going to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: take a quick break, but two quick announcements before we do.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Trump's given his first joint address to Congress this coming Tuesday,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: March 4th. Come hang with us. We're going to be there.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: The whole gang, Tommy, Lovett, Dan, and I are going
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: to live stream a preview of the speech on Tuesday
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific on the Pod
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Save America YouTube. We'll break down what to expect, and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: we're going to take some questions from Friends of the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Pod subscribers, so check that out. Then when the speech
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: starts at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, head over
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: to the Friends of the Pod Discord for a subscriber-only
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: live chat where you can sort of process everything and
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: feel just a little bit less alone. And then, of course,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: we'll have an episode out the next day about the speech. Also,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: stay tuned at the end of this episode for a
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: preview of our exclusive subscriber series, Inside 2025. As I
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Dan and I talked to Jen Psaki. We
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: break down how modern presidents have used the press to
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: their advantage, what it takes to control the narrative, and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: how Democrats are doing in the early days of Trump 2.0.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: To get access to shows like Inside 2025 and to
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: ask us questions on the State of the Union livestream
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: and get access to our Discord and all our other
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: great subscriber-only shows, join Friends of the Pod at cricket.com
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: slash friends or directly from the Pod Save America feed
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. You can get started with a free
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: seven-day trial. Pod Save America is brought to you by Beam.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing about sleep. It's the foundation of whole
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: body health, Tommy.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: When we sleep well, our minds and our bodies perform
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: at their best. Good sleep is both mental and physical,
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• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like, you like hot cocoa? You like sleep?
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Why don't you have one before bed? I have two. Boom,
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• 55:43
  Speaker 1: we have a new Friday show semi-tradition around here.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: We're going to make it a fucking tradition. You're going
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: to like it.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: All right, we have a new tradition around here. It's
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: our segment, Wait, Did That Really Happen? We're going to
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: listen to the three craziest moments from this week. And look,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: if we missed a crazy moment and these aren't the
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: three craziest, please let us know because there's a lot
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: of crazy moments this week. These are just three that
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: really stuck out to us.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: This is a really just great engagement tool.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what?
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Tweet at us.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: So we're going to listen to the three crazy moments.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Then we're going to try to put the shattered pieces
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: of our brains back together. All right. First up, this
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: is an AI-generated video about Gaza that the president of
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the United States, Donald Trump, posted to his social accounts
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday nights.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: For those of you who are not watching on.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: YouTube, This is a good opportunity to just go to
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: our YouTube channel and start watching here because you've got
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: to see the video.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: And while you're there, like and subscribe.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah, of course. Tell about the content. But
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the audio is pretty fucking nuts, but it does not
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: do the whole thing justice. You've got to see the video,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: which involves... Elon Musk, many times dancing.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: AI-generated Elon Musk.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all AI-generated. Elon Musk, and there's like cash
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: showering down on him. A couple times, there's golden statues
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: of Trump in Gaza, and everyone's very excited about the
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: golden statues of Trump in Gaza.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: There's a Trump-Gaza casino.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: There's a Trump-Gaza casino. There's a shirtless Trump and a
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: shirtless Bibi Netanyahu on the beach together. That's the last
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: scene in Gaza. I mean... It's like you want to laugh.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: You want to be like, I can't fucking believe this
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: is real. And also, it's just horrible and awful when
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: you think about what has happened in Gaza, what is
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: happening in Gaza right now, and just the death and
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: destruction and starvation and everything that's happening. And then the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: president of the fucking United States puts this video up?
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: What is going on?
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, Trump shares a lot of memes that somehow
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: make it to him. I don't know how they get there.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: And sometimes I feel like we're a little... like overly
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: pedantic about it. We're like, Oh, how can the president
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: of the United States do this? And it's like, you
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: know what? Everyone can relax a little bit. The president
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: of the United States is already a ridiculous human being.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: This is low on the list of concerns, but this
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: is one that is particularly offensive.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: And just because it just shows such disregard for the
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: people in Gaza, the people who have family in Gaza.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: You know, it just, it is, it's so callous and
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: so cool to think that that's funny with what is
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: going on. There is just, Like it just shows the
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: fact that there is no soul there. It's like just
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a bottomless hole.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Everything is just like just memes and fun and
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: whatever else. Like who cares? And he actually, he probably
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: somewhere in his fucking deep addled mind, somewhere in his
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: fucking addled mind, he probably actually thinks like. I'm sure
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: it's not going to look at the video, but like, yeah,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: I can remake Gaza as the Riviera of the Middle East,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: as he said in a fucking press conference.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: And put a casino there.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: It's fucking dark, man. Alright, second, we have Trump making
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: an announcement in the Oval Office about a new immigration policy.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: We're going to be selling a gold card. You have
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: a green card. This is a gold card. We're going
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: to be putting a price on that card of about
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: $ 5 million, and that's going to give you green card
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: privileges plus. It's going to be a route to citizenship.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: And wealthy people will be coming into our country by
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: buying this car. They'll be wealthy and they'll be successful
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: Would a Russian oligarch be eligible for a gold car?
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, possibly.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: It's possible. This is it. We want to be importing
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Russian oligarchs now. Just let's, we're against immigration now, unless
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: it's rich oligarchs from abroad.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: That we're selling American citizenship for the price of $ 5 million.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. That's what we're doing now.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: We've come a long way from the principles of the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: Statue of Liberty right here. Yeah.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I would say.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: It's so ridiculous that it's almost hard to believe. Like
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: you're probably too young for this is where our age
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: difference comes in. But do you ever see the HBO
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: sketch comedy show, Mr. Show with Bob McGurk and David Cross?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: This is almost like word for word what a Mr.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Show skit would be because they used to really make
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: fun of really bad infomercials on TV all the time.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: This is what it sounds like. You like green cards,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: try a gold card.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Also, I'd love to know what the Steve Bannons and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the hardcore MAGA people think of this because they don't
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: want any immigration.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: Should we just ask Tommy?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: They don't want any immigration whatsoever because they just don't
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: like immigrants. Their problem is not necessarily what kind of
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: immigrants are coming or how they're coming, whether it's illegal
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: or legal immigration they just don't like immigrants and now
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: donald trump is like oh for five million bucks a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: pop first of all like also and they're like oh
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: they'll be they'll be carefully vetted like this this is
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: so ripe for abuse for sketchy people i mean like
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: jesus christ.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: I mean for people like andrew tate.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Right yeah oh yeah the tate brothers accused of sexual
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: assault there's reporting that the Trump administration had leaned on
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Romania to let them leave Romania, where they were under
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: house arrest, and they were free today and ended up
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: in Florida. And then Trump said he didn't know anything
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: about it. Of course. Yeah. But that's what we're getting now.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Real push comes to shove is when Romania wants them
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: back for their trial. And what happens then?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Well, even Ron DeSantis was like, I'm not keeping... No,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't ask for this. We don't want this.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: There's nothing you can do about it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: Just send him to Alabama? Like, I don't know. All right.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Here's the last one. Oh, and by the way, the
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: gold card's not, he can't do it. Trump can't, it's
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: got to be passed by an act of Congress. You can't,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: you can't just unilaterally do that.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: Or can you, John?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Well, where's the, I mean, who, what, maybe, who knows?
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Maybe, maybe it's 5
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: million bucks.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Many of the principals of Schoolhouse Rock, inoperative now.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Is like Assad going to come here? Putin?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Is that what we're going to get? We're just going
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: to get all the oligarchs and autocrats around the world
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: just going to come pay $ 5 million to come to America?
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Live at fucking Mar-a-Lago in Florida?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I just can't believe people would really be into the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: selling of American citizenship to the highest bidder.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: You know? It's Trump's America. All right. Last one. And
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: we have saved the best for last.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you. Here's a photo of three people
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: standing outside the White House. Again, for those of you
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: who aren't watching on YouTube, that's Chaya Raichuk. also known
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: as Libs of TikTok. It's someone named DC Drano.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: He's a real meme guy.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Jack Probosek, whatever his fucking name is. You know what?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Don't even try to do it right.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Another right-wing influencer, Liz Wheeler, another right-wing MAGA podcaster. They're
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: all right-wing social media influencers. They're holding up a binder.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: They're each holding up their own binder that says, The
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Epstein Files Volume 1 Declassified. But alas, there was almost
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: no new info about the Epstein trial in those binders,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: which made the MAGA internet very mad, especially when the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Republican House Judiciary Account tweeted in all caps with the
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: alarm emojis, breaking Epstein files released with a link that
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: when you clicked it led to this. That's right, Dan.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: The House Judiciary Committee rickrolled America.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Rickrolled America. What the fuck? Would you like to talk?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I don't even know how to get into this for
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: people who are so confused right now.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: I have so many questions.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you want to ask me? Maybe I can.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: Well, let me ask you a question.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Because I've gone a little deep on this.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: Why were the Epstein files classified?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: They weren't. That was just a lie.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Now, keep in mind. So these social media influencers were
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: in the White House. With Pam Bondi, the attorney general,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Kash Patel, the FBI director, I think Trump stopped by
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: to say hi?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, of course. You think Trump's missing that meeting? Yeah.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And because Pam Bondi had promised many times that the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Epstein files would be released, right? There's this big thing.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: So then they get the Epstein files and it's all
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: stuff that has been released before. In some cases, years before.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: In fact, you can go on Amazon and buy like
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: an Epstein files thing, which like has whatever evidence they
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: had that was publicly available and And it's basically what
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: was in the binders, okay? So now everyone's really mad
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: about that. So they're like, oh, fuck, what are we
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: going to do? Liz Wheeler, one of the social media people,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: decided to tell the whole story. And so she said,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the FBI was told to deliver the files to Bondi.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: They did, about 200 pages. Bondi smelled a rat because
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: there was nothing juicy in the 200 pages, just flight
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: logs and Rolodex of phone numbers, no smoking gun. Still,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Bondi promised to release the documents, so she prepared a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: binder of them. Then... Last night, before the binders were
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: delivered to all the influencers, a whistleblower contacted Bondi and
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: revealed that the SDNY, the Southern District of New York,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi's order
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: to give them all to her. We're talking recordings, evidence,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: et cetera, the juicy stuff, names. These swamp creatures at
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: SDNY deceived Bondi, Cash, and you, America. Be outraged that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: the binder is boring. You should be because the evil
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: deep state lied to your face. And so next thing
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: that happens is that Pam Bondi sends a sternly worded
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: letter to Kash Patel saying, hey, we have both been
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: lied to. And that the deep state FBI and the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: deep state goons at the Southern District of New York,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department that is now filled with Trump people,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: somewhere is hiding the real Epstein files. And she's demanding
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: that they be delivered to her tomorrow, Friday, when you're
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: listening to this today.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: Everything is so stupid.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Also, it's funny. It's also about like, like sex trafficking
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: of children, this whole thing. And I don't know what
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: people are looking for. They have all, all the MAGA
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: people have gotten themselves into this space where they think
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: that there's some Epstein files, I guess is going to
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: be like a list of high profile Democrats and, Democratic-leaning
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: celebrities and media figures who have all helped Jeffrey Epstein
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: traffic children? I guess this is what they're looking for?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what they think is there.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: They think it's like a Pizzagate thing?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: It is part of the Pizzagate... Which is why the
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: Pizzagate guy was at the White House. Pizzagate-Cubanon conspiracy narrative.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: This is what they think, and they think these files
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: are there. But it is... Here's what's interesting about it.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: Tell me.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I've been thinking about this for a while because
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: they now have everything. They've won everything, right? They got
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: the White House... They've got this right-wing media apparatus. They've
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: got the FBI. They've got it all. They've won all
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the branches. But they still have a bunch of dumb
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that aren't true. They're still going to fuck
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: things up, as they have been in the last month.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: They're not going to get their way all the time.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: And so they are still going to blame, have people
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: to blame. Like, lest we think, oh, they own everything now,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: and now who are they going to blame? They always
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: find people to blame. There's always deep state people out
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: there that still haven't been, you know, found in the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: agencies and they're still lurking and the purge missed them.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: And so there's always some kind, there's going to be
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Democratic governors who are villains or anywhere there's an elected Democrat,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: anywhere there's someone in the media who is not loyal
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: to Trump, anywhere there's some bureaucrat who isn't loyalist to MAGA,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: they'll be blamed to be cast by the Trump administration.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the entire evil genius behind the
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: deep state narrative is it allows Republicans to control everything.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: and have someone within their own government to blame. Now,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: that can work with a segment of people who are
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: looking for reasons to stick with Donald Trump.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: You mean fucking crazy people? Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, just Republican-based voters.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: If you like Donald Trump.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm thinking, I was thinking about the Pizzagate.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: The Pizzagate is off, but just this idea that Donald
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: Trump is failing because someone inside the government is preventing
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: him from succeeding, which is how a lot of Republicans
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: justified Trump's colossal failures in his first term.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: But that's not going to work for everyone.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. You're right. I totally agree with that.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I just think it is wild that the attorney general
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of the United States sent a letter to the FBI
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: director saying that there's a deep state hiding files that
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: are going to expose corruption from Jeffrey Epstein. who is dead.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: Let's just follow the story closely.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Anyway, that's our crazy shit for this week. That's our
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: show for today, but you're about to hear a special
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: preview of our subscription show, Inside 2025. This is Dan
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: and Jen and I. We talked about White House communication
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: strategy and press strategy. It's a great episode. Again, sign
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: up for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America and all
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: our subscriber-only shows, all kinds of other good stuff at cricket.com
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: slash friends or through Apple Podcasts. Here's Inside 2025.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: I think there is a way to be respectful and
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: valuing the freedom of the press. without being so old
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: school wrapped up into the rules they want you to
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: live by, because they're not effective in terms of how
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: you communicate with the public anymore. And that is like,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: if you're running for president now, you're gonna be in
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: the White House, you gotta throw out some of how
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: some of this is done to state the obvious.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just one other thing on this, because I can't
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: let it go, is part of the problem for the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: press here is they have a boy who cried wolf problem.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Which if you screened that the president not having a
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: formal press conference or not doing enough rope-lying Q & As,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: is an abridgment of freedom of speech, then people are
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: going to take you less seriously when there is an
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: actual threat to press freedom, which is what happened to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: this president. Yeah. There's been too much confusion between the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: First Amendment and access. Yes. And when you get mad
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: about that, when you paint access or transparency as assault
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: on freedom of speech, then you're setting yourself up for
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: when the actual threat to freedom of speech comes to
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: be taken less seriously.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: Right. Yeah. And also the American people, I don't think,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: believe that the only person who can ask a president
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: a question is somebody who has a seat in the
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: White House briefing room.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: That's just because it's not.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: So, you know, the notion that they're the only ones,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: it just isn't how the world works anymore.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: But yes, that was better stated than what I said.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: I was getting at the same point.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting fight that the Trump people are picking.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: And I think part of the reason they're doing it
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: is just for the sake of having the fight because
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: like Trump himself, it's not like he's not visible and
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: not out there answering questions and doesn't like to mix
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: it up with the press. Like he is in our
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: faces way more than even his first term. Um, and
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: so he's like willing to answer questions. If he doesn't
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like your question, he'll yell at you. He'll lie. He'll,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: you know, do whatever, but he's answering those questions. So it's,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: It's funny that they are kicking out press even though
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: he is very available to the press. It's weird.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: But don't you think it's because they think it's– and
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: I think it is effective, unfortunately– And getting some to
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 5: obey in advance, right?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 5: To not do stories so that they don't piss them off.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: To do extra outreach.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 5: To go, like, so beyond the pale at the extra mile. And,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 5: you know, look at all these payouts that have happened from,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 5: and more will happen.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, they will sue maybe all of us.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Shh, shh, shh, shh.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Sorry.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 5: Just because I say it doesn't mean it's– if I
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: don't say it, it doesn't mean it's not happening.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Jen works for the network that was the subject of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: a truth yesterday. We were– Yes.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Well, congratulations to me.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: But I think it is that. And it doesn't mean
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: it's like people– outlets or reporters are going to be like, oh,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: we're obeying in advance now.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: They just do it.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: And I think they know that it can work in
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: some capacity.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So before we go, Jen, you started to give
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: advice to future Democratic presidential candidates, future Democratic comms directors,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: press secretaries. We have talked over the years about press strategies,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: communication strategies, message strategies. It seems like now we need
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: attention strategies. What are some good attention strategies for future
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: people who are going to sit where you guys sat?
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Hopefully Democrats someday.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. That's such a good question. question.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm going to steal a little bit of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: what Dan said, which is like Democrats sometimes don't take
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: advantage of the cultural moments. It doesn't have to just
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: be the Super Bowl. Sometimes there is an unwillingness or
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: discomfort in showing all sides of yourself. I mean, there's
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 5: a lot of extremely smart Democrats out there. A lot
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 5: of them are elected You don't have to always talk
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 5: like you are defending your PhD thesis, right? At every moment,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: you can talk about your love for sports, football, art,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 5: cultural things, music, whatever it may be.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: There is a.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 5: Stiffness sometimes is one of the things I would say.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: Maybe there's another way of saying it. Everyone needs to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 5: let their hair down a little bit more.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I just use 12 analogies, but I
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: think you know what I mean.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: The other thing I would say about communicators, which is
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 5: less about the attention, but I do think it helps
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 5: you in this regard, is one of the things that
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: helped me in being the bridesmaid many times for the
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 5: press secretary job and never the bride until finally, is
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: that you have to know the policy and the policy
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: and the substance of the person you're working for. What
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: do they believe? Why do they believe it? What's the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: answer to the 18th question? Sometimes people think of being
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: a press secretary, and this is where people get confused
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 5: about the attention question, as being able to craft a
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: good tweet or X or whatever the hell we're calling it.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: It's not just that.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: It's like you've got to understand the depth of the
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 5: housing policy so you can help your boss figure out
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 5: how to communicate and talk about it in a human way.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: And sometimes I think that part is undervalued.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I hear that because I had to become—
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I had to become an expert in like 10 different,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: like every topic, but like an inch deep, right? Like
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to go too deep on it.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: I'm like, I think of like, which I still don't
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: know if I could explain now, but like credit default
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 5: swaps was like a phrase that came out of my
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: mouth a lot in 2009.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: No, me and you both in 2009, Larry Summers had
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: to teach us about that. And I was a great teacher, Dan. Okay.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: I give a few pieces of advice. The first is
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: When I was the communications director on the transition, which
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: meant one of my jobs was to try to figure
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: out how to set up the White House communications office.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: And so they handed me a binder on my first day,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: which had the org charts for every White House communications
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: and press office from Jimmy Carter until George W.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Bush.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: And the thing that is so fucking alarming is the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: Carter and the Bush ones are almost exactly the same.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: And you know what? Frankly, it's changed some, but not
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: that much. Not much. Not much.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: And so I would tell every person, if you're about
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: to start your presidential campaign, your Senate campaign, your Senate
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: office job, whatever it is, take the org chart you
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: have and light that thing on fucking fire.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: Because what it is, is that all we're doing is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: we're building on a View of communications that uses the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: traditional legacy media as the primary vehicle for delivering our message.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: So we have to get it. If you keep just
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: tinkering around the edges, you're always going to keep doing
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: the same thing. It's why legacy media brands keep failing
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: because they keep trying to become digital by just appending
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: on to the old print infrastructure, whatever it is. So
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: that's one. Ditch that.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: You got to doge that org chart.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, sometimes we're pro-doge.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: I need a dozen guys under the age of 22
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: who didn't go to the prom.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Get big balls to get to.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: Big balls will help you.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: There you go. The second thing is we have to
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: think about communications as message delivery, right? It's all content
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: generation or message generation in our heads. Like what's the
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: event we do? What's the interview we do? What's the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: social media post we do? The real question is the
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: one we should build all of our infrastructure on is
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: how do you get the piece of information that you
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: want to put out in front of the people that
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: you need to see it? It used to be that
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: you would just put it out in the press and
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: they would organically consume it in some way, shape, or form.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: It doesn't work that way anymore. So you have to
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: have an actual plan to do it. And you have
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: to build up an infrastructure that allows it. That includes
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: both very aggressive influencer work, organic social stuff, and actually
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: the thing that I'm most passionate about is empowering your
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: supporters to be your messengers, right? To actually carry your message.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: And the next thing, and I said it, Jen's saying it,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: but it's so important is, and everyone says politics is
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: downstream of culture. And that is true. But the thing
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: that I think in terms of communications is, if you
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: are a politician, find the thing outside of politics that
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: you are passionate about and can talk about authentically and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: go talk about that thing all the time.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Like I still am so struck by the Kamala Harris
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: interview on Call Her Daddy, and it was all policy. Yeah.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: Like, you know, the Trump interview, obviously the caller was
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: like 30 minutes and the Trump interview was three hours.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: But the part of the Trump interview that worked for
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: him was when he was just talking about UFC.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: Like a guy who can't like a UFC fan.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: And like for some segment of his audience, that's his
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: persuadable universe. That's a big deal. If it's sports, go
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: talk about sports all the time. If it's pop culture,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: talk about pop culture. If you go talk about what
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: was on White Lotus or which Bravo shows you like
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: or which music you like, right?
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: And because that is a way to connect with people
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: outside of politics. Obama did this all the time.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: Right. And he could do all this. He could talk
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: about sports. He could talk about movies. But find ways
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: to do that so that you can connect with people
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: on something other than policy. Because if you have that
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: human connection first, then they're going to be more willing
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: to listen to what you have to say about the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: other stuff.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 5: Can I give them two more pieces of advice? Because
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 5: we're rooting for these people to bring us back from
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: the brink.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 5: One is this is so obvious and old school, but like,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: why are you running for president? Please determine the answer
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: to that question. The second thing is figure out what
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 5: you actually think of a range of policy issues. Right.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 5: I mean, we go through this thing where you see
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 5: politicians try to bend themselves into a pretzel answering questions
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 5: about any range of issues. And it's like, start with
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 5: the place. And this is like to comms people who
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 5: are advising people who may run for president. What do
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 5: you think about what's happening in Israel? What do you
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 5: actually think?
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: What do you think should happen with health care? And
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: I think some.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 5: It gets so wrapped up in like poll tested language
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 5: and words that it's confusing and it doesn't feel authentic.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 5: And if you piss some people off, that's OK. And
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 5: I think we've gotten a little bit away from that.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think use polling and research to help you
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: find the most effective way to talk about what you
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: already believe and what you care about and what you
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: want to prioritize, right? Like that should be the direction,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: not the other way around.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. One final piece of advice, John, that's very important.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: This is so fun.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: Is that you and I have been podcasting for three
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: presidential elections now.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: And I would say the record of people who've been
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: on our podcast is one and oh, and the record
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: of people who did not go on our podcast is
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: oh and two.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, oh.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: Just something to think about.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: Well, but that is such.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 5: A good, I will say, just go back to the
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 5: New York Times editorial board thing. It's like there is
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 5: still people who are of the age who might run
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: for president who think if you have a Washington Post op-ed,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 5: I keep picking on them. It's really, I don't, it's
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 5: not even Jeff Bezos related. Like that's written in the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 5: print form, you're reaching America.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you you're not.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 5: And so actually to Dan's point, Don't be so fragile
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 5: about like what the name of the outlet is. Like
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: who is reaching people and how is it reaching them?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 5: And is it reaching the audience you're trying to reach?
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: That's it. It doesn't matter what their name is. It
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter how long they've been around. It doesn't matter
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: what their.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 5: Masthead is or no masthead. And that would serve a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: lot of people well too.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: Talk to everyone all the time and just be fucking human.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: Just be human. Talk like a human. Talk like you're
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: talking to people in your life. And if you talk
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: to people in your life like you talk as a politician,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: then don't run for office.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's true.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: Please stop yourself.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, we
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: hope you'll subscribe at crooked.com slash friends or through the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts. Love it. Tommy
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: Talk to everybody then. Have a great weekend. Bye, everyone.
• 1:20:51
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• 1:21:21
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