Latest / Pod Save America / “Republicans cancel a Cheney.” (PLUS - Elizabeth Warren!)

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“Republicans cancel a Cheney.” (PLUS - Elizabeth Warren!) · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Republican cancel culture comes for the Cheneys.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg's... Mark Zuckerberg's private Supreme Court upholds Facebook's decision
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to suspend Donald Trump for now. And new census figures
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: show that an increasingly diverse electorate may not help Democrats
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: as much as the party has hoped. Then, Senator Elizabeth
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Warren is here to talk about her new book, Persist,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and whether she has a plan to deal with Joe Manchin.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: But first, check out the latest episode of Hysteria, where comedian,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: activist and stepmom Lindy West joins to talk all things
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: motherhood with the crew. Check it out and subscribe to
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Hysteria wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right, let's
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: get to the news. Liz Cheney, the third ranking Republican
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: in the House with one of the most conservative voting
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: records in Congress. is on the cusp of losing her
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: leadership post for the mortal sin of admitting that Donald
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Trump lost the election, tried to steal it, incited a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: violent insurrection when he failed, and probably shouldn't run again,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: nor should anyone who tried to help him overturn the results.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: In response, the twice-impeached, one-term loser called her, quote, a
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party leadership.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, who makes Paul
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Ryan look like he has a steel spine, has reportedly
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: decided to do Trump's bidding and orchestrate a vote to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: strip Cheney of her title as conference chair. The news
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: broke shortly after McCarthy was caught on a post-Fox &
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Friends hot mic saying this.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I think she's got real problems.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I've had it with her.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: It's, you know, I've lost confidence.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I've had it with her. I've lost confidence. Dan, here's
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: what the man who Donald Trump nicknamed Mike Kevin was
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: saying about the former president just four months ago.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: mob rioters.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: A few days after that, Mike Kevin and 145 other
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: House Republicans voted to keep Liz Cheney as conference chair.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Now it seems like they have the votes to get
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: rid of her, a process that could start next week.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: What changed?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: The political wins, ultimately. I mean, Kevin McCarthy is not
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: a leader by any stretch of the imagination. He is
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: not smart. He is not brave. He is not a
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: policy expert. His one political skill that has put him
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: at the top of this pile of festering idiocy that
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: is the Republican Party– is he has a great sense
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: of where the political winds are going and the ability
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: to get there about one nanosecond before everyone else. So
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: after he was almost murdered by a mob of Trump supporters,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: he thought the party was going to break with Trumpism.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: So he gave that speech, he defended Cheney, and things
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: have moved dramatically since then. And he went right with him.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: And this was probably inevitable, but it is, I think,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: a pretty important and notable moment in the long march
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: of the Republican Party off the cliff.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: One senior Republican told the Washington Post that the final
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: straw was when Liz Cheney fist bumped Joe Biden on
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: his way into his joint session address. And apparently, this
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: is so widespread in the conference now that there was
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: reporting that a Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: still thinks Liz Cheney should go. It's like, they think
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: that she is embarrassing the whole party because she refuses
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to say that the election was stolen? That seems to be,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: that's where the Republican Party is now.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, it is. I mean, we've known this
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: for a long time, although many in the media, particularly
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: the reporters who cover Capitol Hill, willfully try to avoid
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: this fact. But conservatism is not In ideology, it's an identity.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: And the barrier of entry to be a conservative is
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: your willingness to adopt racially motivated conspiracy theories for the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: purpose of maintaining minority rule in this country. And the
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: fact that Liz Cheney was unwilling to do that thing
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: means she cannot– not only can she not be in
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Republican leadership, she can't really be in the Republican Party.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: She probably would lose a primary if she had it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: She will probably not run again after this, and she
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: will be– cast out to go. I don't do whatever
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: former Republicans who don't like Donald Trump do.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Let's say that Kevin McCarthy, instead of the, uh, spineless
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: moron that he is, was a profile in courage and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: decided to try to do everything he could to protect
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Liz Cheney, um, from being ousted as the conference chair.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think he could have gotten away with it?
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: No, he couldn't. I mean, this is, this is where
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: the party is going. It is, uh, There has not
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: been a speaker in the Republican Party in decades who
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: was actually in charge. The inmates were in the asylum.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: And that is how it has been.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: It was the case with Boehner. It was the case
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: with Ryan.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: It was the case with Denny Hastert and so forth.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And so he is only as strong as a majority
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of his members are in backing him, and they all
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: back Trump. That is where the energy in the party is,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and that's where the leadership is going to be. Leadership
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: is just– it's like a– it's a complete misnomer. It's
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: an oxymoron because– Their job is not to lead. Their
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: job is to follow.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I saw some CNN reporting this morning that Kevin McCarthy
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: is also very worried about potentially having to testify in
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a potential commission that looks into the one six attacks,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: because if he had to testify during that commission, he
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: would have to reveal what Trump told him on the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: phone call, which was maybe you all should have tried harder.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to help me steal the election essentially. And, and maybe
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: someone would have played the clip that we just played
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: where he criticized Trump a couple of days after the attack.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: He doesn't want to, he wants to pretend that never happened.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So he's also worried about himself here, which is also
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: why one of the other sins of Liz Cheney is
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: apparently pushing for this commission to investigate the January 6th attacks.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And she wants the commission to be made up of independent, uh,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: an independent group that's not members of Congress so that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: politics doesn't completely get in the way. And she also
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: wants them to look only at the one six attack
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: and not at, um, the protests, uh, following George Floyd's murder,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: which is apparently what her colleagues in the house want
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the commission to look at as well as the one
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: six attack.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, everything is so stupid because it really like,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: this is, I guess how you would think about the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Republican party, which is If Liz Cheney had fist bumped
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden in the mouth, she'd be running for speaker
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: right now. But because she just fist bumped him in
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: some in some affectionate way, she's going to leave the
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: party like that's the difference.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So what do you think it says about the House
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Republicans that they're so quick to get rid of someone
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: who voted with Donald Trump 93 percent of the time
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and has a lifetime score of 80 percent from the
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: American Conservative Union?
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: It's that Republicans stand for nothing. There is no policy agenda.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: There is no ideology. There is just your willingness to
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: embrace Trumpism. I don't even think it's so much about
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump the person, and we'll talk about that. Basically,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: that's sort of the theme I think runs through the
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: topics of today. But the problem here is the inexorable
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: path towards further embracing Trumpism. Whether Donald Trump is around
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: or not, it is about this sort of conspiracy theory
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: that mongering, disinformation, authoritarianism that is the core of how
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Republicans think they can hold on to the party. And
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: you either embrace it or if you embrace it, you
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: can be in the party. And if you don't, you're out.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And that is where we are. It's not about tax cuts.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: It's not about spending. It's not about entitlements. It's not
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: about anything else. And I think the thing here is
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: for everyone has to recognize it for what it is.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It is like watching– it's like this two different worlds
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: between reading the coverage of what's happening with– Liz Cheney
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: and the fact that she is being kicked out, as
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: you said, for not pushing a conspiracy theory. The thing
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: she wants to tell the truth about is not that
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the merits of Joe Biden's plans or that maybe the
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Affordable Care Act works or that the Iran deal wasn't
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: a bad deal. What she wants to tell the truth
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: about is the fact that Republicans lied about the election
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: and Donald Trump pushed that lie. A mob of his
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: supporters went to Capitol Hill to murder Republicans and Democratic
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: members of Congress. He wants to tell the truth about that.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And in doing so, that is a mortal sin in
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: the party. And if you were one of those reporters
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: who's like, man, I... Do you think Biden's going to
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: be able to get a police reform deal? Or who's
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: in on infrastructure? Or why not the unity? One party
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: has lost its fucking mind. And if you are not
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: willing to call that out and see the grave, dangerous
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: threat that that represents, then you shouldn't be covering politics.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't be talking about politics. You shouldn't be involved
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: in politics. Because you're missing the forest for the trees.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: We know this.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: We talk about this on this podcast all the time.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: But this should be one of those moments where the
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: daughter of a two-term vice president, who was essentially the
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: avatar of neoconservatism, gets tossed out of the party. Mitt Romney,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: the 2012 nominee of the party, also a member of
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: sort of Republican royalty, gets booed off the stage at
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a convention in Utah. Not Massachusetts, Utah. That is a
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: sign of something deeply sick in the party that is
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: a threat to democracy. not just to Democrats or anyone else.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It has to be covered as such, discussed as such.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I also think it's the party is not organized
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: around ideology anymore, right? Like reporters in the media are
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: still in the general mindset that you describe someone who
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: is more extreme as more right wing and conservative and
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: someone who is more moderate as less extreme because they
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: hold a set of policy views. Policy views, policy principles,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: ideology as traditionally understood does not drive the Republican Party anymore.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: It drives some of the older establishment that is still
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: in Congress. It perhaps drives some of Mitch McConnell's decisions,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: maybe not. It definitely drives some of Mitt Romney's views.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Mitt Romney has not become some moderate, you know, over
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years, just because he's opposed Donald Trump.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And we can see this in a lot of the
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: policy debates that are unfolding in Congress. Mitt Romney is
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: still extremely conservative. There are most issues we disagree with
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Mitt Romney on, but that's not what's organizing the Republican
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Party anymore. What's organizing the Republican Party is simply power
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: at this point. What do they all talk about all day?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Like they're not talking about the legislation they're introducing. They're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: shit posting online. Like they're trying to own liberals. They're
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: talking about cancel culture. These are all the things that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: drive Republicans, things that legislation doesn't necessarily solve.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: The legislation that they care about the most is legislation,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: making sure that Democrats have a harder time voting.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It's not about like they don't they don't have passion
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: for cutting taxes anymore. They don't even have passion for
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: cutting Medicare like Paul Ryan used to anymore. They have
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: no passion for any of these policy issues. Their passion
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: is to put Democrats in their place and to hold
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: on to power however they possibly can. That's it. That's it.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, the most you know, we always sort of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: say like the economy is the most important policy issues.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I think voters care about the problem for Republicans is
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the party is irreconcilably divided on economic issues. Large portions
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of their base. oppose cuts to Medicare. Large portions of
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: their base oppose cuts to Social Security. Large portions of
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: the base support a $ 15 minimum wage. And so if
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: you talk about the economy, if you talk about the
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: party was organized around this idea of Supply-side economics, smaller government,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: reigning in entitlement, sort of Reaganomics. That has not been
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: popular forever with anyone, especially the Republican base, and therefore
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: they cannot talk about their policy agenda. But they also
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: can't abandon their policy agenda because they continue to depend
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: on corporations' wealthy interests to fund the party. So there
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: is this, the voters and the donors are at loggerheads.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So what do you do? You talk about everything other
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: than a policy agenda. And when you do that, your
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: organizing principle becomes your willingness to adhere to insane cultural
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: positions like conspiracy theories and the big lie.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And I think this has tremendous consequences as well going forward, right?
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of the coverage has focused on sort
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of relitigating what happened after the last election, talking about
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the insurrection, talking about Donald Trump's attempt to steal the election.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But this has a lot of implications for the future,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: because if Republicans take the House in 2022, which is
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: very possible, we've talked about this a lot here. That
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: they have a structural advantage going into the next midterm,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: no matter how well Democrats and Joe Biden are doing,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: no matter how popular the president is, they have a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: structural advantage going to the House. If they win the House, then...
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: What they are doing is you have a House Republican
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: conference now trying to purge people who are telling the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: truth about Donald Trump's attempt to steal the last election
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and will gladly try to attempt to steal the next one.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So what happens when we have another close presidential election
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in 2024 and we have a Republican House? And suddenly
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it's not just a few members here and there who
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: are voting to not certify the election. and trying to
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: overturn it, but you actually have a majority of the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: party that is controlling the House of Representatives now saying, okay,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: if the election was close enough, we're gonna refuse to
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: certify this election. And now you have chaos. That is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the danger of what's happening with Liz Cheney here. And
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: it's much bigger than like any kind of personality clash
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: between McCarthy and Cheney and Trump in the last election.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: It is about how the House looks is we head
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: into the midterms and then ultimately the 2024 election. And
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's very dangerous. And I think it's sort
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: of an undercover point as people are talking about this.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, I'm not a fan of Liz Cheney or any Cheney, frankly.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It's not a Cheney I like.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Weird.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: And so before everyone comes around, yeah, before a certain
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: segment of the internet comes around and says, Democrats embrace Cheneys. No,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I don't give a shit about Liz Cheney. And I
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: actually don't even really care that much whether she's in
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Congress or not or in leadership. Because the problem isn't
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: that we were going from one dissenting voice to zero
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: dissenting voices. It's that there are no, basically, there was
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: only one dissenting voice. That's the bigger problem. She had
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: no influence or change to it, but her removal should
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: be noted as sort of a mile marker on the
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: path to where you say we're headed. And another warning
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: sent to people who are desperately trying to normalize this
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: very abnormal party and who are understating the dangers to
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: democracy that come because of it. Things are not going
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: to be that much worse than they were before if
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: you replace Cheney with Stefanik. But it's a reminder of
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: just how bad they are, I think.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: It's the difference between running against Republicans with abhorrent policy
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: views who are willing to accept the results of an
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: election they lose. or running against Republicans with abhorrent policy
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: views who are not willing to accept the results of
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: an election they lose. That's the difference. And like you said,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: you don't have to love Liz Cheney. I'd rather we
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: have to be running against Republicans with abhorrent policy views
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: that will accept the results of an election. Otherwise, this
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: whole thing fucking falls apart. It's not that hard to understand.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Republican leaders from Trump on down want to replace Cheney
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: with New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. She's not nearly as
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: conservative as Cheney. In fact, she's more of a moderate
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: who only voted with Trump 78% of the time. But
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of course, like we just said, the only three votes
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: of hers that really count are the two votes against
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: impeachment and the one vote in favor of overturning the election.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Stefanik checks all three of those boxes. And she also
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: happens to be one of the absolute most shameless politicians
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: in a party where that attribute is the price of admission.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan, Dan. How about you?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, really an emerging star in the Republican Party.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: She is the biggest fucking phony. I mean, Elise Stefanik,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: first of all, I know people who knew her at Harvard.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: She was friendly with Pete Buttigieg at Harvard. She's part
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of that class. She was a moderate. She had co-authored
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: an op-ed with Gene Shaheen once, right? She's a moderate person. Like,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: what does it say about the Republican Party that a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: moderate Harvard grad decided that her best career move was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: to try to help Donald Trump steal an election?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, it says everything about the Republican Party. Think
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: about just, as always, to understand what a politician is
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: going to do, you got to look at their incentive structure.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Barack Obama won her district in 2012. Donald Trump won
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: it by double digits in 16 and 20. Then you
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: add on top of that, that she had this sort
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of moderate persona. She had no real juice in the
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Republican Party. She got a lot of profiles from Politico
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: and others. But in terms of actual power and influence,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: basically none. And then it's not just that she voted
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: against Trump's impeachment. It's that she put on a performance
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: defending Trump at the impeachment hearings that caught the attention
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: of Trump and Trump World. And then she raised a
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: gazillion dollars. right afterwards. And she became sort of a
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: star of the MAGA movement and sort of doubled and
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: tripled out on that because she was chasing the attention,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: the clicks, the donations. And that's where all of the
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: incentive goes. And if you're thinking this in pure, nihilistic,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: terrible cynicism, it's not a crazy choice because now she's
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: about to be the number three person in power.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: No, it's shrewd.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: And if she had gone the other way, she would
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: be probably already announced her retirement from Congress because she
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: was about to be primaried by some other guest on
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Steve Bannon's show and would be sort of courting a
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: meager MSNBC contributor contract. Like that's, those were her choices.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, look, there's a number of MAGA stars
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that have completely drank the Kool-Aid and believe all this stuff, right?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: They just, they 100% on the Trump train. And then
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: there's people like, and people say that Matt Gaetz is
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: in this category too, that people, along with Stefanik, people
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: who knew them way back when, know that they absolutely
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: understand that all of this shit is bullshit. They absolutely
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: understand that all of the Trump stuff is bullshit and
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: that they are purely in this to advance their careers.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: That's Gates, that's Stefanik, that's a whole, especially some of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: these younger Republicans who people knew back in the day
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: as much more moderate figures. And like you talked about
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: McCarthy and the political winds, they see where the political
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: winds are blowing. And it is, you either Fully embrace
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Trumpism and fully embrace sort of the authoritarian direction of
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. Or, like you said, you either get
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: beat by a Democrat, you're kicked out as conference chair,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: or no one cares about you. So the only path
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: in the Republican Party to success, the only incentives are
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to be as crazy as fucking possible now and to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: sort of embrace this new authoritarianism in the party, or
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: at least the authoritarianism that's taken over it over the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Trump years. And that's it. That's it. So she was on,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: as we're recording this, she was just on Steve Bannon's show.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, last we heard from Steve Bannon, he was
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: calling for Anthony Fauci to be beheaded. That was the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: last we heard from Steve Bannon. Elise Stefanik is on
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: his show this morning. She was out there saying that
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: one in every four votes in Fulton County were fraudulent
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in Georgia. One in every four votes. That's what she's saying.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: She knows better than this.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: I think when you sort of look back at people
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: like Elise Stefanik, you look at someone named like Adam Putnam.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So Adam Putnam, for those who don't know, was this
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Republican congressman, conservative by the Cheney definition of conservative, who
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: was elected at a very young age, worked his way
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: up in the Republican Party to leadership, left, ran for
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: statewide office in Florida, became secretary of agriculture, agriculture commissioner,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: whatever it's called, with the goal of running for governor
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: when Rick Scott was done. He had the support of
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: all the establishment. His whole career, his whole life to
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: run for governor of Florida. He was a Trump skeptic
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: establishment Republican, conservative, Heritage Foundation conservative. Ron DeSantis runs one
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: ad where he basically sucks up to Donald Trump, does
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: this ad where he teaches his kid how to say
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: MAGA and all this other stuff. Trump endorses DeSantis. Adam
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Putnam's career is over. So you're at least defined like
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: you're a young person trying to make a career in
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the I got one choice and one choice only, and
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that is to embrace Trumpism or I'm going to end
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: up doing something else. And that is where we are.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: It's sort of a– it's about more than her. It's
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: about where the party is going, where all the incentives
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: push it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So one thing that is slowing Trump down is the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: fact that he's been banned from most social media platforms.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg's private Supreme Court– because that's part
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of our dystopia now, ruled that while Facebook is justified
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: in suspending Donald Trump's account in the wake of the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: January 6th riot, the company has six months to set
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: clearer standards for this type of action and decide whether
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to set a specific timeline for Trump's suspension or to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: just shut down his account permanently. The oversight board, which
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Mark literally calls his Supreme Court, we're not just making
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: a joke here, is a Facebook-funded... 20-person global committee of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: experts in areas ranging from free speech to human rights
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and journalism. Facebook isn't legally bound to their decisions, though
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: they say they are bound by the rules that they
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: have all made up. But the oversight board did write
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: that in this case, quote, if a head of state
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: or high government official has repeatedly posted messages that pose
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a risk of harm under international human rights norms, Facebook
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: should suspend the account for a period sufficient to protect
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: against imminent harm. So, Mark Supreme Court threw it back
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in Mark's lap. What did you think of the decision?
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Were you surprised?
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: I was amused because Facebook went through this, as you
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: point out, this incredibly elaborate, intricate process to basically slough
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: off responsibility to someone else. Because Mark Zuckerberg's goal, I think,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: is to anger no one, but in reality, it's just
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to anger everyone. So he's like, I'll let someone else
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: make the decision. This board that was created and organized
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and funded and all of this elaborate rules. Like it
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: was the fucking constitutional convention. And then they were just like, Nope.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: And they threw the hot potato back in his lap.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: And now he's got to make the decision again. So
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: that was, I guess, enjoyable. Um, but it's, but it
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: was a punt, right? Everyone punted Zuckerberg punted to this
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: fake court he created. They punted back and we're going
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: to be right back here in some number of months
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: waiting for a decision to come.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Uh, what do you think about this oversight board on
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a scale of, how bullshit it is.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: On the scale of whether it's completely bullshit, but that's
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: not really the point. If your company is big enough
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: to create a global Supreme Court akin to the United Nations,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: your company is way too big to be held account
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: and should be broken up.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Our country now has two Supreme courts. We've got the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Roberts court in DC and then we got the Zuckerberg
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: court in Menlo park. Yeah.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is like, it is, it should be
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: exhibit a, in the antitrust case against Facebook.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Like, look, I, so, you know, what Facebook will say is,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: so it's, they, they have this trust. So it's funded
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: through this trust. There's no financial commingling after they've set
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: up the board. There's no communication between the board and
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Facebook allowed while they're making a decision. all of the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: members are, you know, sort of independent. Of course, they
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: are selected by Facebook. But, you know, the Oversight Board
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: so far hasn't ruled on a lot of cases. But
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: in most of the cases where they've ruled, with the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: exception of yesterday's with Trump, they have sort of overturned
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the decision Facebook has made, which also says, you know,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: they're somewhat independent from the board. So I have no
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: reason to believe that the board itself is not acting
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: in good faith in the decisions that they made but
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: your point is the more important one right which is
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: like the the very existence of the oversight board as
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: opposed to regulations that come from the government that is
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: elected by the people is that that tells you everything
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: you need to know right there.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Look if the whether it comes from the court the
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: court which is ridiculous As it did yesterday or from
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's office, as it will in a few months. The
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: fact that the decision is of such great consequence, that
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: it is watched by millions of people around the world,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: that it is seen as this massive pivot point in
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: American politics is a sign that the company is too influential.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: That is the problem. If any single corporate decision is
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: such a big deal, it's a sign the corporation has
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: gained too much power and we should do something about that.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And that is a thing much bigger than whether Donald
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Trump is on the platform or not.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: How much do you think a permanent ban would matter
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: if Trump decides to run again from two different standpoints,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: one from fundraising and the other from the standpoint of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: getting his message out?
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Well, let's start with... his message, which is it doesn't
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: matter whether he's on the platform or not. Would it
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: be a little more helpful to be able to pick
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: his own content?
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: But do you know what the 10 top performing link
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: posts on Facebook were in the United States yesterday?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Look, it's always a very tight contest between Dan Bongino
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and Ben Shapiro.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So yesterday posts number one, two, and three were from
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro. The top 10 also included two posts from
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Dan Bunchino, two posts from Fox News, one from Sean Hannity,
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and congratulations to Rachel Maddow for coming in number 10
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: and breaking up.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Wow, good for Maddow.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: And so Trumpism is run amok. Donald Trump, I think
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the ban is important because he broke the rules, and
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: people who broke the rules should be held accountable, and
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: there shouldn't be exceptions for world leaders. In fact, the
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: people who should be most held accountable is not some
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: random dentist down the street. It's the person whose posts
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: are viewed by millions of people that can lead to, oh,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know, an assault on the United States Capitol.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And so it should be upheld. But I think we're
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: sort of missing the point here, which is whether Trump
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: has a page or not, Trumpism is run amok on Facebook.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: It is just constantly pumping dangerous disinformation into the ecosystem
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: about vaccines, about the election. All of that is happening
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: on Facebook, whether Trump is on there or not. And
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: so that, I think, is the bigger challenge here that
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: doesn't really matter whether Trump is on there. The other
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: thing I'd say is, think of the conversation we just had.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump is basically absent from our lives in many ways, right?
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: He's not pouring gasoline on a raging media fire. He's
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: not tweeting at people. He has lost his job as
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: nation's assignment editor. Yet the Republicans are about to dump
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Liz Cheney at Donald Trump's behest. He is more influential
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: in politics now than he was before. Trumpism as a
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: movement is stronger now than it was before in Trump's
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: ban from social media. So that should tell us that
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: what is happening is something much bigger than one man
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: and whether that person can post at their own behest.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: It is something much bigger than that.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Well, it also tells you something very important about the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: silos that we're in, specifically the information silo in which
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party and Republican voters find themselves. Whether or
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: not Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024 depends
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: on two things, Donald Trump himself and Republican voters, right?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Republican voters get a say here. And where do Republican
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: voters get all their news and information from? From Ben
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Shapiro and Dan Bongino and Fox News and all the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: bullshit that's on Facebook and all the bullshit that's on YouTube.
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: And so there is almost a closed information environment in
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: which they operate, which is also, by the way, look,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: it is it is fantastic that Donald Trump is not
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the nation's assignment anymore. I love that he's not on Twitter.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I love that we don't have to think about him
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: all the time. But again, I keep saying this. It's
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: a false sense of security here. that he has somehow
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: gone because we are not experiencing Trumpism on a day-to-day
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: basis when we come in contact with the media. But
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: the entire Republican Party and Republican voters, which are the
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: ones who get the say in whether Donald Trump becomes
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the nominee, they're seeing it every single day, which is
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: also why it's so silly every time a reporter tweets
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: a statement of Trump or you know, or RT something,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: you get people on Twitter like, don't amplify him, don't
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: amplify him. It doesn't fucking matter, right? Like Republican voters
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: are mainlining the stuff every day and they're the ones
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: who get to decide whether he's the nominee again. And so,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump has a propaganda network in Fox and
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a propaganda funnel in Facebook to get his message out.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And that's all he needs. And neither of those things
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: are going away.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: So to the second part of your question, if Trump
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: runs for president, I am 100 percent confident that Facebook
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: will put him back on the platform.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: And what matters more than whether he can post his
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: statements on Facebook or post videos of his speeches, what
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: matters is whether he has access to the ad platform.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: So one of two things is going to happen. They're
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: either going to give him access to the ad platform
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: or they're going to get rid of political ads. And
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: so Facebook will not disadvantage him. When you look at
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: all the various things that Facebook did to help Trump,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: refusing to fact check ads, basically giving him dispensation after dispensation,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: They're always doing things in favor of Republicans. And part
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: of that, I think, is this very demented sense of
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: both sides-ism that I think plagues Mark Zuckerberg. But it's
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: also because Facebook user base is the most Republican of
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: any social media platform. Pew did a study a few
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: months ago which looked at how much Republicans and Democrats
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: use social media. Democrats overwhelmingly use social media more than Republicans,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: but Instagram users are 19% more Democratic. Twitter, 15% more Democratic.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Facebook is only 3% more Democratic. So Mark Zuckerberg is
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: not going to do something to upset what he sees
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: as 50% of his user base. And the people who
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: keep deleting Facebook and walking away are Democrats. It's Republicans
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: who keep signing up or staying on the platform. So
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I think we know where this is ending if he
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: runs for president.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out like what standard
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: they would have to keep him off.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: They would have to say see what they would have
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to say is anyone who continues to spread lies about
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: the last election or or question the results of the
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: last election can't be on Facebook.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: But if they do that, they have to kick. a
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of people off Facebook to the Republican Party.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So they could do a narrower thing, which is to say,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: so long as he doesn't incite violence, use language that
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: incites violence, he can stay on, which of course is
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: easier for him to abide by, even as he's out
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: there today, still talking about how the last election was
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: stolen from him and the Supreme Court should have overturned
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: it and Mike Pence should have overturned it. All the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: language that in fact is what incited the violent insurrection
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: in the first place. So because they can't figure out
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: what the exact standard is, You know for sure– maybe not.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: We don't know for sure. But you can guess that
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: they might throw their hands up and say, OK, if
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: he's running for president, he could end up being the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: president of the United States. We have to let him
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: back on.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: I mean we just talked about Steve Bannon.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Interview with Elise Stefanik, which is on Facebook because after
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: calling for the beheading of Anthony Fauci, he's still on Facebook.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: They didn't ban him for it. So there is no
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: standard here. The decision will be reverse engineered in a
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: way that allows them to appease half their user base.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: That's what's going to happen.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So since Trump was banned from just about every social
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: media platform, his team has been hinting that the former
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: president will launch his own communications platform. And boy, have
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: they delivered. On Monday, Donald Trump launched a blog As
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: many people online have noted, this blog is basically a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: scene directly out of the office. Here's a clip.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: I remember I blogged the whole thing. www.creedthoughts.gov.www.backslash creedthoughts.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Check it out.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Last year, Creed asked me how to set up a blog.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Wanting to protect the world from being exposed to Creed's brain,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I opened up a Word document on his computer and
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: put an address at the top. I've read some of it.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Even for the internet, it's.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Pretty shocking.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Now, in fairness, Trump's blog is connected to the internet,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: but basically all it does is encourages supporters to copy-paste
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: his blog messages to Twitter. Is this solution just too
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: genius for us to really understand? What do you think?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: We.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: we're making a huge mistake by laughing at this 2005
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: blog that he has launched. The person I want to
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: laugh at is the Fox News reporter who was pitched
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: this story, wrote it up with Trump launches new communications platform.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: When I saw that breaking news alert, I was like, huh?
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Because there have been all these reports that Trump was
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: going to buy Parler or launch his own Parler competitor,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: have actually tried to build an actual social media platform.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: I was like, which we've been very skeptical of because
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: it involves intelligence and work, two things that Trump is
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: diametrically opposed to. So when I clicked on it and
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: saw that it was a old, outdated website that looks
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: like it came from the Internet Archive, it was quite amusing,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently they hinted that there's still more to
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: come with this communications platform thing.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, they're known for telling the truth, so
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. Jason Miller told us, and he's never lied
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: to anyone before, so I'm sure that's.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: True. We talked last week about the effect of the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: new census numbers on redistricting. The data also gives us
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: a clearer picture of who voted in the last election.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Nate Cohn has a New York Times piece this week
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: that argues the census data reveals two important points about
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: our current political landscape. First, voters of color make up
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: an increasing percentage of the United States electorate. That is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: thanks mainly to the growing share of Latinos, Asian Americans,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and other non-black multiracial voters. That is why the electorate
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: is diversifying because of those groups. Second, this increasing racial
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: diversity isn't doing quite as much to help Democrats as
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: liberals hope or to hurt Republicans as much as conservatives fear.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And that's because diverse population growth is happening in redder
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: states like Texas and Florida than where Democrats don't win
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: non-white voters by the same margins they do everywhere else.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: For example, Texas and Florida would have actually gone to
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Biden if Latinos in those states voted like Latinos in
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: New York or Illinois. What do we mean by that?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: So Latino voters in Texas and Florida, much like white
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: voters in Texas and Florida, are more conservative than than
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Latinos in New York or Illinois, just like white voters
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: are more conservative than white voters in New York and Illinois. Now,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: did Joe Biden still win the Latino vote in Texas
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and Florida? Yes, but not nearly as much as he
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: did in Illinois and New York. Now, of course, like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: white voters in Texas and Florida still voted for Donald
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Trump by huge margins, right? That was like the big
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: reason that he won. But The point that Nate Cohen's
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: making from the data is that Latinos and non-white voters
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in general in some of these redder states, these redder
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: swing states, happen to be more conservative, which is why
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the diversifying electorate is not helping Democrats like they thought.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Cohen also argues that while increased racial diversity probably provided
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Biden's winning margin in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, the main
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: reason he won states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: haven't grown more diverse over time, is because Trump actually
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: lost ground among white voters between 2016 and 2020. So
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: the interesting thing there is if Biden had just won Arizona, Nevada,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and Georgia, which he did win because of a more
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: diversifying electorate, or at least that's what really helped him
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: in those states, that still wouldn't have been enough to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: win the presidency because of the Electoral College. You still
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: would have needed Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin in that scenario.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: And the reason that Biden won that is because he
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: made up some ground with white voters. Do you think, Dan,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that Nate's read of the data is correct here? And
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: if so, what are the implications?
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is certainly correct in the prism in
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: which he's discussing it. I think you can't have this
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: conversation without acknowledging what Nate Cohen is really saying is
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: that within the constraints of our anti-democratic political system that
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: disproportionately awards power to white voters who disproportionately support Republicans,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Republicans are doing better than they thought. If we lived
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: in a political system that was national popular vote with
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: universal ballot access, without gerrymandering, without the geographic biases of
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: the Senate, then this diversification would be overwhelmingly helping Democrats.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: This is why what he's really saying is the gap
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: between the popular vote, strength of Democrats and electoral strength
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: of Republicans is growing. And you can look at that
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: in the micro way of who that helps in the election.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: And that definitely makes things easier for Republicans than Democrats.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: But you're missing, in that case, the much bigger point,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: which is our democracy is being further strained as additional,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: as it's becoming easier and easier for a shrinking, mostly
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: white conservative minority to elect people in a country defined
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: by a growing, progressive, diversifying majority. And that's the bigger issue.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: issue here that I think you just have to acknowledge
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: when you have this conversation is that we are accepting
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: a premise of elections with voter suppression, with gerrymandering, and
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: with an electoral college, which obviously is very hard, if
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: not impossible to change, but is deeply problematic.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, for example, Democratic gains among non-white voters have
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: been concentrated in the major cities of big and non-competitive states.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: So where a diversifying electorate has helped Democrats... it makes
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago more liberal, more bluer.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't really help you in the electoral college.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: And because what's happening is, I mean, the other thing
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: it tells you is where you live and whether you
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: have a college degree can maybe tell us just as
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: much about how you voted than your racial background, which
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: is something that has started happening over the last several decades.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And so that it's not just we're not just polarized
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: by race anymore. We're polarized by geography and education. And
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: so some of those things can can interact here. What
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: what are like Democrats do? What are the implications for
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Democratic strategy?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Well, one other point to serve on the analysis, which
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: sort of bedevils this discussion and so much discussion about
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: the role that Latino voters play in 2020 and elections
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: more broadly is it is a very diverse community. It
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: differs by geography. It differs by background. And so having this, like,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: what do you do about Latino voters is just the
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: wrong way to have the conversation, right? And people who
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: do a lot of politics in Florida, you know, we
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: certainly worked on this when we worked for our president's committee.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: When you think about Florida, you think there's Cuban voters here,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: there's Voters of– there are Puerto Rican voters in Orlando.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: And you think about the diversity within the Latino community.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: But when we talk about politics nationally, we do not
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: do that. And so the best way to have this
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: conversation is to do it with a much finer point
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and think about it that way as opposed to just
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: trying to treat the community as a model. So I
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: think that's a mistake.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And look, and we have talked to Chuck Rogo
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: about this on the pod and Carlos Odio and, you know,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Latino strategists, Latino pollsters, and they will say the same thing.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: And I think for a lot of people, you know,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: saying that the Latino community is very diverse, they'll say, OK, well,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that's why, you know, Trump did what? much better with
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the Cuban vote in Florida, but it goes far beyond
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the Cuban vote, right? Like there are just dozens of
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: different communities with different political beliefs and backgrounds within the
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Latino community. And so just like, by the way, there
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: is in among white voters too, right? Like there is
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: plenty of diversity in beliefs and ideology with white voters.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: We talk about the difference between, you know, white voters
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: with a college degree, white voters with a non-college degree.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: There's a giant gap there in terms of politics. And
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: you are starting to see more of that same gap
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: among both the Latino community, the Asian American community. And
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: it's creeping a little bit into the Black community, though
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: not as much as other non-white voters.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: I think in terms of democratic strategy, I think step
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: one for all of us is to recognize the very
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: dark storm clouds on the horizon. It's very easy to,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: you throw out maybe the theme of this whole podcast,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: it's very easy to Be happy Trump's still off Facebook.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Just sort of laugh at the absurdity of Kevin McCarthy
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: dumping Liz Cheney and sort of be happy our enemies
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: are fighting each other. But despite Biden's massive popular vote margin,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: he barely won against a deeply unpopular candidate who lit
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: himself on fire for the last six weeks of the campaign.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: He got COVID. He did everything wrong and still almost won.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: And had the Republicans had the House, as you say,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: it's possible when they win the House. Look, if you're
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: sitting here right now without passing H.R. 1, without pushing
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: back on partisan gerrymandering, it's probable the Republicans win the House.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: We have to recognize that and be prepared. Because the Senate,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: we think this is a great Senate map.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Not really. I mean, it is better than we've had
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: in previous years, but... We have to defend Arizona and Georgia.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: We barely won those seats before, and it is much
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: harder to vote in those states in 2022 than it
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: was in 2020. We have to win. Our other opportunities
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: are good in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but those are states
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: that Biden barely won. And Senate Democrats underperformed Biden in
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: many cases all across the country. We have a chance
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: to beat Marco Rubio in Florida, but it just got
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: a lot harder to vote in Florida as of today
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: as if it wasn't And obvious enough, Ron DeSantis signed
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: this bill live on Fox & Friends. That is what
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: is at play here. And so we have to do,
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: I think, sort of three things here, none of which
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: are easy. And I'm not saying the Biden White House,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the DNC, the DSCC, others are not fully aware of this.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: They definitely are. we have to pass HR1. I don't
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: have a great plan for that, but we have to
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: pass it. Two, we have.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: To- Let's move on to the scenario where we don't
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: pass HR1.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's a binary choice on the Vote
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Save America site. What happens if we don't pass HR1?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: We're fucked.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: So let's operate in an environment, let's just say we're fucked.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: We have to have.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I say that because I want people to understand that
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: if Joe Manchin does stand in the way, it is
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: not and we can't get it done, it is not
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: like now everyone take their toys and go home. We
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: just have to fucking fight that much harder. And that
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: very well may be a scenario that we face, and
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: we just have to be prepared for that scenario.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: And what I think that means is we, you know,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: and it is to the credit of Joe Biden, is
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: he has found a policy agenda and a message that
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: is broadly appealing. Trump voters, large portions of them, shockingly
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: large portions given the polarization in American society, support what
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is doing. He has also found a message
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: that divides the Republican Party aggressively, and you saw the
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: gusto with which he discussed it at a media veil yesterday,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I think, about taxing the corporations and picking a giant
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: fight over taxes. All of that sort of comes down
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: to what we need to do is develop a set
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: of wedge issues that divide the Republican Party base from
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: the Republicans. And that is very possible because they are so,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: so divided on economic issues. And think this is what
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: I would sort of, it's easy to be like, well,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: how do you know, like, well, we're not going to
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: convince the people in the MAGA diner and the Fox
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: news years. Forget that. Here's what I want to do.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I want to have the Democrats have a narrative about
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: the Republicans. That is such that it tries to move us,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: not from, to move all these people into the democratic
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: We're not going to do that in one cycle. We're
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: still not going to do it in the midterm. But
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: can we get Republican turnout among– particularly in rural and
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: exurban areas from these white non-college voters down to Romney
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: levels instead of Trump levels? If we get them down
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: to Romney levels and we hold onto our gains– with
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: suburban voters and others, then we will keep the House
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: and we will take the Senate. But that is the
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: first step to getting people to join our party and
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: support us is to explain to them why they shouldn't
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: support the party they're currently supporting. That is the message
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: we need. That is where all of the intellectual energy
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: in the party needs to go, is figuring out what
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: sort of economic message that is evocative enough, visceral enough,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: and delivered with enough discipline and repetition can begin to
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: have that achievement. I want to convince Republican voters that
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party is not for them. Then we can
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: convince them to become Democrats, but let's start with step one.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I also think the lesson here is it is dangerous
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and wrong for Democrats to assume that non-white voters are
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: going to vote Democrat based on their race. We just
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: can't do that. There has been this Sort of debate where,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you know, some Democratic strategists will say, OK, we've got
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to appeal to some people who voted for Trump. And
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: then other strategists and activists will say, no, we can't
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: do that because it's just a bunch of, you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: non-college educated white racists who vote for Donald Trump. And
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: what we need to do is to boost turnout on
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: our side and register more voters. Well, of course, we
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: need to boost turnout and register more voters. That's incredibly
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: important to any strategy. We don't do that. We lose also.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: But behind that is this idea that if we have
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the more diverse party and we have a diversifying electorate,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: that new Latinos who are in the electorate, new Asian-Americans,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: new nonwhite voters vote. If we just sign them up
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and they vote, they'll automatically vote Democrat. And that's just
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: not the case. You still have to make a case
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to these voters. You still have to persuade them to
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: vote Democrat. And the fact is, as we've seen from
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: this data and from the last election, as you go
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: further south, as you go into these Republican states, you
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: get more conservative attitudes from some non-white voters. Now, are
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Democrats still winning the Latino vote? Yeah, they're still winning 60,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: 65% of the Latino vote probably they did in 2020.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: That's great. Latinos in general are still voting Democrat. That's fantastic.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: But like, take, you know, Biden wins Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, right?
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And he wins those states partly because of a diversifying electorate. Well,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: we just said those states aren't enough to hit 270.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: So you got to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Michigan. Now,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: let's say you look at those three states and say,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: you know what? Those states aren't diversifying. It's too hard.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: There's too many non-college white voters here. The Republicans, we
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: just can't persuade them. They're just too Trumpy. Let's give up.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: So what's the next state you have to win to
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: get to 270? Then you got to win Texas. What
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: happened in Texas in 2020? What happened in Texas in
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: 2020 is that Joe Biden improved his performance over Hillary's
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: among white voters, specifically college educated white voters in the suburbs.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: But he did worse than Hillary among a lot of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Latino voters in Texas because Latino voters in Texas don't think.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: like Latino voters in Illinois and New York, because it's
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: a diverse community. And so you got to go as
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: a Democrat and make the case to those border communities
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: that voted for Donald Trump by huge margins. And you
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: have to treat them just as you would every other voter.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: And this is what we mean when we say that voters,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't divide voters into a Turnout targets and persuasion targets.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Every voter is a persuasion target. And, you know, every
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Democratic strategist, pollster, pollsters that work in Latino communities, that
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: work with other communities of color, strategists that work with
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Democrats in red states and blue states, they will all
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: tell you the same thing. And so much of this
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: debate is just like unproductive when what we should be
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: trying to do is figure out, OK, we have to
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: even in order to win now, we have to win
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: over voters, white and nonwhite voters who have more conservative attitudes.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: We're not going to win over Trump fans. We're not
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: going to win over the people at the rallies. But
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: people who have more conservative attitudes than we do, we
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: are going to have to win over in order to
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: hold power. in a counter-majoritarian system that we find ourselves.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: That is just the reality of the situation. And so
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: we have to figure out what those voters think. We
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: have to figure out what messages persuade those voters. And
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: we have to go and make our case to them.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: Cool. Right?
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Am I missing anything? Well, yes.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you're missing it. But my one
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: addendum to your very persuasive argument would be we also
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: need to, as a part of that process, we have
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: to be more sensitive, attuned to disinformation campaigns that happen
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: in Spanish language. There is a lot– that is not
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: everything by any stretch of the imagination. The broader trends
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: you point are exactly right. But the Trump campaign, months,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: maybe even a year before Democrats got involved, were pushing
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: disinformation about socialism and Democrats in Florida. You saw similar
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: things happening in Arizona, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: We have to get ahead of that and fight hard
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: against it.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: When we come back, my interview with Elizabeth Warren. I'm
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: now joined by the senior senator from my home state
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: of Massachusetts, a longtime friend of the pod and author
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: of the new book, Persist, Elizabeth Warren. Senator, welcome back.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: Thank you. It's good to be back, John.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: It's good to have you. You write a lot about
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: your presidential campaign in this book, which I was particularly
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: interested in because I voted for you. Oh, thank you. Yeah.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: And I voted for you in the California primary when
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: it looked like you weren't going to win because I
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: just believed you'd make the best president. But as you
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: say in the book, a lot of voters in 2020
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: were focused on electability, which for you boiled down to
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: two incredibly frustrating questions. Can a progressive win and can
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: a woman win? Have you thought about, because I've thought
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: a lot about this, how future presidential candidates can either
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: change or overcome that dynamic?
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Yes. And let's talk about how and let's ground it
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: in where we are right at this moment. You know,
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: you have to stop to remember the 2020 primary was
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: really run in 2019. And what's happened since early 2020?
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: A pandemic, a racial reckoning, an armed insurrection. We now
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: have a new president. And we have passed the biggest
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: rescue package in the history of the nation. Very much
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: like in 2008, the lesson was when things are all
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: shaken up, when things are breaking apart, there's the opportunity
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: for change. People are no longer in the, well, this
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: is how it's always been. Now they're willing to try the,
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: what else do we need to try to do here?
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: I think that all that's happened in the last year
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: has changed the world for all of us, but I
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: think it's also changed where progressives are in this world.
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: Think about it this way. Joe Biden in the general
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: election ran on a very progressive agenda. He ran on
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: an aggressive role for government.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: He ran- Did that surprise you?
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: No, it didn't because it met the moment. That was
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: what America wanted and needed. It was a different moment
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: from the moments that preceded it. So Joe Biden was
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: talking about build back better, which giant infrastructure. He was
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: talking about childcare and a caregiving economy, universal childcare, very progressive.
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: He was talking about taxing multimillionaires, billionaires, and giant corporations.
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: So he had a lot of the basic building blocks
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: of a progressive agenda right there when he was talking
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: to the American people. He then gets elected and goes
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: full on in that first rescue package, which, by the way,
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: included $ 40 billion for childcare, included money to go straight
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: into our public schools. He had already put in place
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: suspending student loan debt payments, which is a $ 5 billion
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: a month click. So he was already in it. And
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: so I think of this, and this is what I
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: talk about in Persist. I try to make the case
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: about how personal policy is. What we get right or
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: wrong in Washington touches your life. Child care, you got
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: a new baby, right? Touches your life personally. affects your opportunities.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: And then make the case for here are the core
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: building block pieces we need going forward. And then my
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: final twist on it, because this matters personally, I hope
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: you'll be in the fight too.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Do you think that Joe Biden has gotten away with
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: having a more progressive agenda and pushing for a more
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: progressive agenda because he was perceived as a moderate white guy.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: You know, maybe. But I also think that the progressive
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: policies are just damn popular. Could we stop apologizing for this?
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, hello.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Very popular.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: The thing that progressives want to do, the rest of
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: America wants to do. So talk about the wealth tax, right?
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: You know my view on the wealth tax. Here's this
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: idea I have to put a tax in place on
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: fortunes above $ 50 million. If $ 50 million in the first dollar,
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: you've got to pitch in two cents, two cents for
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: every dollar over that. You get to be a billionaire,
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: and you've got to pitch in a little bit more.
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: That is popular, popular, not just among Democrats, but among
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: Republicans and independents. So my view on this is that
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: part of the problem has been we just haven't put
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: that stuff out there to have people vote on it.
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: Get it out there. Put it out in front of
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: people and people like it.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: What do you think about, you see all these ballot
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: initiatives with progressive policies on them passing in some pretty
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: red states, right? Minimum wage in Florida is passed by
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: far over 50%. And yet we lost the governorship in 2018,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: lose Florida in 2020. Medicaid expansion is getting passed in
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: some very deep red states. And yet the Democratic candidates
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: who run there don't win. What do you think the
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: gap is between the candidates that sometimes Democrats put up
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: and the policies, which you say, especially some of these
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: progressive economic policies, which are super popular.
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: Well, partly, and I don't want to identify anybody specifically.
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: Can we do this generically?
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: We can do generic, yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: We need Democrats who are willing to run on a
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: strong progressive agenda, who are willing to be full-throated. Katie Porter.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: Runs in Orange County in a district that literally had
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: never elected a Republican from the time that district had
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: been formed. Katie didn't run as a mush mouth, well,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: on the one hand and on the other, and I'll
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: try to pick up some votes from over here and
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: some votes from over there. No, Katie got out there.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: I told her, give them a reason to vote for you.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: Tell them what you'll do if they'll elect you. And
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: By golly, that is exactly what Katie has done. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: she not only beat an incumbent Republican in what by
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: any ordinary measure would be a very red district. Now, again,
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: the demographics were changing some in the district. But it's
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: not only that. It's when she ran for re-election, having
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: shown them what she'd do, having shown them the fight
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: she'd get in, she turned around and one by a
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: larger margin. And look at Arizona, where increasing taxes to
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: pay for education passed, right? Look at Colorado, purple state
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: by most measures, where paid family leave, you know, it's
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: just get it out there and tell people, I will
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: fight for this. I think that's what people are looking for. Look,
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: that's why I persist is to get out and fight
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: for these things.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: It's funny that that brings something else up because I remember,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: you know, when Katie Porter was running for the first
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: time and she did run on this very progressive platform,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I heard she was also getting a lot of advice
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: from consultants. Like, you've got to really run as a
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: suburban mom with your soccer mom in your van. And
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: it was this tension. And you sort of talk about this,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: the impossible woman trap in the book and how women
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: have to run. You talk about running in Hillary's shadow.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: What advice would you give to the next woman who
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: might feel like she's running in your shadow and comes
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to you for advice?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: You have to make policy personal. So I talk about
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: in this book when I got fired for being pregnant
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: and lost the job I had aimed my life toward,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: and that was to be a special education teacher. And
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: so I'm out on my... Fannie, and I get this
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: crazy idea to go to law school. Nobody in my
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: family's graduated from college, and now I'm going to go
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: to law school. And you know me. Naturally, I start planning,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: so I have my whole list. You know, I check
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: out where I can go and what the tuition will cost,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: find a state university, Rutgers, that I can afford. I'm
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: really down to things like how much mileage I get
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: on the car so I can work out a budget.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: That's the kind of planner I am. On that list, Childcare.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Because I got a little one who's not yet two
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: years old, and you can't take a not-yet-two-year-old to class
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: with you. I start looking for childcare, and I think
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: of this as one of the periods from hell in
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: my life. Every childcare place that I looked at, they
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: were eight towns over. They were they cost a bazillion dollars.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: If I could afford it and it was nearby, it
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: had a waiting list that was, you know, two years long.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: It was just one thing after another, after another. And I,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: I tell the story very personally about how I was
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: down to literally the last like five days. If I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: don't get childcare, I'm not going to go back to school.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: I'm just, that's it.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: Over. And I made it through. I found a woman
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: who was just opening a center. I tell the funny
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: story that she only takes dependably potty trained children. I've
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: got five days to dependably potty train a not yet two-year-old.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: That's not tough.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: But I tell this story to give an honest account
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: of how hard it can be. But also... to inspire
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: more women to run, to get them in, because the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: fight for childcare is won as a nation. If we
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: really believe in equal opportunity, if we really believe in
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: branching out and everybody gets a chance, to finish their education,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: everybody gets a chance at a job, everybody gets a
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: chance to take that promotion, then by golly, that's got
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: to include mamas. And I get it. And some daddies,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: some daddies are worrying about this as well. But here's
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: the thing. Childcare nearly knocked me off the track, as
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: I talk about in the book, twice by the time
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: I was 30 years old. Maybe I'd have gotten back
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: on someday, maybe not. It nearly knocked my daughter off
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: the track a generation later. And if we don't make change,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: it will knock my granddaughter off the track if she
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: decides to have babies. So I think of this as
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: we were saying earlier, the door is open to crack.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: We can make change. There's all this going on in Washington.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Now is the time to push and make this change.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: We need to make the change on childcare. We need
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: to make a change around student loans. We need to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: make a change around wealth tax. We need to make
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: it personal so that we can make those connections for people,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: get more people elected because we say these are the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: changes we will make. And they're not abstract. These are
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: changes that will touch your life.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: So two big ways to make change right now. President
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: has executive authority and then there's Congress. Start with the president.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: You've been pushing Biden to cancel $ 50, 000 in student debt.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Do you believe he'll do it?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: I'm sure hoping so. I'm pushing. Chuck Schumer is pushing.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: You know, Chuck has been a terrific ally. He is
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: a true believer. Ayanna Pressley is pushing. And the nice
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: thing about this, everybody's pushing. It's the reminder. Canceling student
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: loan debt is good, obviously, individually, but good for our country.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: It is a racial equity issue as well. You understand
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: the backstory on why we have so much wealth inequality
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: in this country and much of it. because of Jim
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: Crow laws, laws that prevented African-Americans from buying homes and
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: building up wealth in that way. But that gets us
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: to the point where we are today, where African-Americans borrow
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: more money to go to college, borrow more money while
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: they're in college, and have a harder time paying it
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: off when they get out of college. I'll give you
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: just one stat on this. I can do a zillion,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: but I'll give you one. And I'm glad you're sitting
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: down because this is one that just, it should just
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: knock us over. 20 years out after you've borrowed student
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: loan debt, the typical white former student who borrowed money
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: has 5% of the loan left to go. The end
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: is in sight. You can see it out there. 20
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: years out, the typical black student still owes 95% of
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: the original debt amount. It will be there until, for
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: many of them, they die. And when you're loaded with
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: student loan debt, we just know, the numbers now show,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: you don't start families, you don't buy cars, you don't
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: buy homes, and the big one, You don't start small businesses.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: So we want that entrepreneurship. We want our country to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: be productive. One way to do it, cancel student loan debt.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden could do it with the stroke of a pen.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: So I'm pushing, Chuck's pushing, and we're asking people all
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: over the country, help us push, help us get this done.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: What else should President Biden do with his executive authority
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: that he hasn't yet done?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: Declare Climate change, an emergency, a national emergency.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: And that would free up federal resources.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it unlocks things he can start pushing for on
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: his own. Manufacture drugs. The federal government has the power
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: on so many of these drugs to just step in
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: and put out contracts to manufacture them. You know, the
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: same way we put out contracts to build battleships, put
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: out contracts to Manufactured drugs like insulin, EpiPens, HIV, AIDS drugs,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: do that and it'll do two things. It will bring
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: the cost way, way, way, way, way, way down for
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: those drugs. Plus, it's like hold up a giant sign
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: to the drug companies on every other drug. You get
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: that far out of line, we are prepared to enter
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: in the national interest and make these drugs available to families.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Could do that one. Talk about Congress. President proposed American
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. Both include a
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: ton of great progressive policies. Highly unlikely that everything ends
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: up in the final bill or bills, depending. What, in
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: your view, are the two or three most important policies
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: that you'll be fighting for the hardest? Like, what will
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: you go to the mat for? It sounds like child
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: care is certainly one of those policies. Right.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: Child care. And let me put a pitch in because
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: you know as well as anyone, devil's always in the details.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: When I say child care, I mean universal child care.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: I mean it's there for all of our babies.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: And look, as your income goes up, there's a co-pay.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: So I want to make sure that any parent who
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: wants to put a child into child care will have
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: access to do it. If your income's higher, you'll have
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: to pay up to 7% of your total income. But
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: it's available to you. I also want to put in
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: a pitch, if it's not too deep in the woods.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: One of the things back and forth around childcare, childcare
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: has always been done in this country to the extent
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: there's been federal support, which has been way, way, way, way,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: way too small. along the lines of a work requirement.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: So you've got to fill out this paperwork even to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: find out if you can get your kid into one
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: of these centers. And my view on this is that's
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: just backwards. We should not be doing that. We don't
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: ask parents when they send their kid to third grade,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: are you working? Or are you just trying to finish
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: your education? Or are you just trying to start a business? Well,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: can you bring us some documentation? No. We say we're
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: going to make this available to all third graders because
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: we think it's a really good thing for kids to
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: have this chance to go to third grade. I feel
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: the same way about when they're three years old and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: when they're two years old. You probably are looking into
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: this now since you've got Charlie, but parents who can
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: afford it, even if they have a stay-at-home parent, often
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: are putting their children in, they may call them playgroups or,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: you know, baby time or whatever they call it.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: It starts early. It starts earlier than I ever imagined.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But you know why it starts early? It's because
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: we've come to understand brains better than we used to,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: development better than we used to. Getting, for example, 18-month-olds
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: and 2-year-olds, into a place where there are other toys
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: and lots of color and noise. It helps build vocabulary.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: It helps children get socialized. It helps children learn to
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: control themselves. These are good things. Indeed, we call it childcare.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: And dang, I get it. After the pandemic, you know,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: that parents are like, please get someone to give us
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: some care. But it's education. And we need to invest
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: in our littlest Americans. We need to make that investment
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: in them and make it high quality, affordable. And I'll
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: add one more pitch. We do this. It's not only
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: good for the babies and good for the mamas and daddies.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: It's good for the child care providers. The economics, think
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: for just a minute about the economics of running child
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: care centers. Half of America lives in a child care desert,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: meaning there are one or zero child care facilities available.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: Waiting lists, on average, stretch out what feels like forever.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: Why doesn't the supply ramp up on its own? Where
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: are all my perfect markets, friends? And the answer, parents
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: can't afford it. So the economics of providing high-quality childcare
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: is you can't afford most families to pay what it
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: would really cost and work. So we don't ask parents
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: to pay the full cost of third grade. We should
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: not ask them to pay the full cost of pre-K
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: or two-year-olds. So I want to get this money in
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: and then... raise the wages of every childcare worker and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: preschool teacher in America. You know, notice what you called
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: that infrastructure bill. You remember the title of it when
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: you started?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the jobs plan.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: Jobs plan.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: It's not the infrastructure plan. This has been driving me nuts, Senator.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But here's what really gets to me about it.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: Most of the time when they're talking about jobs, they're
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: talking about construction jobs. And I'm all for it. I'm
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: all for it.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Plenty of other important jobs, though.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: But there are other important jobs. We invest in child care.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: We are also investing in women's jobs because women are
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: the principal child care providers, principally women of color. And
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: right now, what most women are making in child care,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: they'd be better off to go be a cashier at McDonald's.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: And in fact, that's why there's a lot of high
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: turnover in the field. Let's make this a real profession
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: that pays. And we can do that by making an
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: investment as a nation. And again, you want to look
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: at ways to lift up families, to help create more
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: economic security for the working poor? Here's a way to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: do it.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: So, you know, it's about finance. $ 4 trillion worth of
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: spending between two of these plans. You know, the Republicans,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: they got their deficit complaints and then they got their
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: tax complaints, which don't even match with each other. But
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: I was wondering yesterday as the talk about inflation started
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: picking up with Treasury Secretary Yellen's comments. Our good pal
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: Larry Summers is concerned about inflation too. What's the argument
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: when inevitably Republicans start opposing this plan with a new excuse,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, inflationary concerns, prices are going up everywhere.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: What do you say to that?
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: No, they're not. So can we just start there? And
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: we have, I mean, they have yelled wolf. slash inflation,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: how many times now? I think they were yelling that
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: 40 years ago, right? This has been their standard response.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: And it just hadn't happened. And if it does start
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: to happen, Janet Yellen has got a lot of tools
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: to deal with it. We are well prepared. We have
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: an arsenal to deal with it. So, A, let's take
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: a deep breath on that. B, over and over, When
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: the Republicans want to cut taxes, they don't worry about debt.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: They don't worry about the deficit. They don't worry about inflation.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: Nothing matters except cutting taxes, which they tell us will
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: pay for itself, which it never does. And that's what
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: the data now show. So I'm a little tired of
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: hearing the Republicans run two of the same old tired arguments.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: Shame on them and shame on us if we listen
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: to them. But I want to make a third point,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: and that is we do need revenue. And I mean
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: this generally. It's not that you have to tie it
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: to one thing, because they only want to talk about
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: taxes when we're starting to put things forward. I just
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: want to say in general, we need to do more revenue.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: Wealth tax. Wealth tax. Oh, and here's my fave. Wealth
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: tax combined with a real corporate profits tax, that is
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: a tax on book income, not sure after you ran
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: every scam through the tax code, on what you're reporting
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: to your shareholders and to the public and basing your
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: CEO pay on, a 7% tax for corporations that report
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: more than $ 100 million in profits, and third leg on
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: the stool, nearly double the IRS budget with the instructions
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: that that money goes into enforcing tax laws for millionaires, billionaires,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: and giant corporations.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: And it does seem like the Biden administration wants to
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: do that last thing.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 4: That's right. In fact, we're getting pieces of all of this.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: You know my job, push for more.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: We do those things. Just those three things, not all
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: the other kind of pieces, which I may very well support.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: But the point is, those three things alone will raise
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: us about $ 6 trillion over 10. That's enough money for
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: the infrastructure, enough money for the caregiving, and there's still
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: a couple of trillion left over.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: So can we talk about what the hell we're going
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: to do with Joe Manchin and the filibuster? Do you
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: have a plan for that?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay. So let us start with a little history.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: I ran for president on getting rid of the filibuster.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: I remember. I remember. We spent a whole primary on
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: Positive America talking about it.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: Oh, we did.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: We got a whole bunch of candidates following your lead,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: finally saying no filibuster. And now we are in what
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I call the Joe Manchin cul-de-sac, which is every debate
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: on every policy issue that doesn't fit in reconciliation comes
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: back to, oh, but Joe Manchin and the filibuster. So
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: now we can't do it. What do we do?
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: So look, I want to see it gone, and I'm
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: going to keep staying out there, make every argument around it.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: The question is, how are we going to get there?
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: How are we going to get from here to there?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: I think the pressure on our senators who are hesitant
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: is good. Let me start by saying, four years ago,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: we weren't even close to where we are right now.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: Two years ago, we weren't close. But by this last year,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: we have moved a lot of folks in the Senate. Now,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: I get it. It's going to take 50 of us
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: to make this happen. So I don't you know, I
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: sound like Pollyanna here. But don't sell short what you've
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: been working on, John, and what all the people who
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: have picked that up and who have raised it at
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: town halls, who have tweeted about it, who have posted
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: about it, so that reporters ask about it, so that
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: News articles keep moving around. So we have got to
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: keep the pressure up. Here's where I see us right now.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: This historic rescue package that we just finished, stop and
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: think what that was like. It was, first of all,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: had a lot of progressive priorities like childcare in it.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: But other things were in it too. The fact that
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: the President of the United States said, I want to
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: be bipartisan, and invited the Republicans in, and they said, well,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: we're not gonna do that, it's too much money. And
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: he just rolled straight on ahead. That's an important, the
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: world changes when that happens. He described bipartisan as Democrats
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: and Republicans like it, ooh. And part three, he got
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: us all. 50 out of 50 senators, we were there.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: So that has kind of earth-shaking consequences. Mitch McConnell and his, no,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to let you do anything, well, they
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: don't work so good for you last time, Mitch. In fact,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: do you remember, who was it? One of the Republican
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: senators who was talking about, after the rescue package passed,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: help is on the way, without mentioning that he had
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: voted against it.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's their favorite thing.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: That's right. Recognizing, though, that This is popular. Now we're moving,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: I think, that we're trying to keep things going simultaneously,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: but right now it's infrastructure and caregiving. Very popular. So
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: we're going to put it to niche again. Are you
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: really going to filibuster this? Right. And if you do,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: do we think we can get all 50 senators to either,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: now we may have to go harder, Ram it through reconciliation,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: overrule a ruling of the parliamentarian on what can go
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: into reconciliation. You get the point. That's kind of like
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: the next rock we've got to roll uphill. But every
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: time you do this, you get stronger and you send
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: a lot of messages to the nation. I don't know
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: a single person who got a check for $ 1, 400 and said, well, yeah,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: I got a check for $ 1, 400, but they passed it
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: through reconciliation, so I don't really want it. cool.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: People like it.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: We're going to do the same thing here. And now
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: we're going to have to do the third one, and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: that is voting.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, yeah, the shit hits the
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: fan with HR1, of course. And I mean, and that's
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: not just about sort of the Democratic Party's agenda. That's democracy, right?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this. We just, you mentioned this,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: we just survived an attempted coup and a violent insurrection.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: I can't help but feeling like we're all living in
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: two different realities right now. And one reality, Joe Biden
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: is restoring competent governance and passing progressive legislation and the other.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: Most Republicans, from the leadership to the base, support the
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: guy who tried to steal the last election and want
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: him to run again, and he might run again. You
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: are from a family of much more sensible Republicans. How
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: do we get back to a place where we can
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: all have big disagreements about policy issues and not about
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: democracy itself?
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah. You know, that's a hard question, John. But I
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: think part of it is the more we do this
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: in the specific and the less we do this in
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: the abstract, it gets a lot easier. Talk to me
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: about roads. Talk to me about childcare. Talk to me
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: about the things that matter in my life right now.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: Vaccine distribution. You've made it available.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: It does seem like... this is like the Biden administration's philosophy.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: I heard Chuck Schumer talk about this too, that you've
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: all sort of coalesced around the idea that if Democrats
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: can deliver, if Democrats can tangibly improve people's lives and
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: show America that we can govern competently, then all the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: crap we get from the right wing won't matter as
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: much to voters at the end of the day. Is
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: that the theory?
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 4: I think that's the theory. I think that's actually a
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: very good description of the theory. And look, it's scary
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: what's happening over on the right wing. And it is,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: like you say, just a whole alternate reality, but for
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: a narrower set of people. So right now, for me,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: it's about, and I think for most of my colleagues,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 4: what can we show you in concrete, incontrovertible terms? This
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: is what a government can do for you. This is
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: We can get those vaccinations out. If you want them,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: you can keep yourself and your family safe. Boy, that
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: goes a long way on the credibility spectrum. If you
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: need some help financially, we've got a way to get
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: some help to you. And that's why I go back
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: to this notion that we were talking about earlier, because
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: I talk about it a lot in the book. That's
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: why I believe that this is a moment for change.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: that over this last year, in this pandemic, we have
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: decided we want a government that at least is on
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: your side. We want a government that is willing to
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 4: look at racial inequality and say, yeah, it's there and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: we can make some changes to make it better. We
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: want a government that says, we want to make it
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: easier for you to get to work. We want to
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: make it easier for you to be able to buy
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: a home. We just want to create more opportunity for you.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: We're not just trying to run this country for a
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: handful of showboat billionaires. We're trying to run it for
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 4: all of America.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: One of the huge challenges that we face is disinformation
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: and propaganda. You spent a lot of time in your
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: campaign taking aim at both Fox News and Facebook. The
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: Facebook oversight board just decided that they upheld Trump's suspension
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: from Facebook, although it led to Trump's former chief of
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: staff complaining and saying, well, some members of Congress are
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: now looking at breaking up the company. which you, of course,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: proposed during the primary. Are you going to have some
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Republican allies in this fight now for breaking up Facebook?
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: I may. I may. So look, I'm glad not to
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: have to get up every morning and, you know, open
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: my phone to see what the latest is from Donald Trump.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: But think about what this means. Facebook has become bigger
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: than government. they have something they call a Supreme Court.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: Wait a minute. What elected officials confirmed those guys? Where
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: were the public hearings on who ended up on that
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: Supreme Court and that they get to decide a question
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: like who has access to talking in America or any
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: other part? Look, I think Trump should be banned. But
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: the issue is that these companies are way too big
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: and way too powerful. And that's true for Facebook, for Amazon,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: for Google. Let's do our list here. And the reasons,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: let me just do real quick. It's both. It's a
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: set of economic reasons. Look at a company like Amazon.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: Watch their business model. They run two businesses simultaneously, basically.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: One is a platform, right, where buyers and sellers who
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: want to buy online come together. Great. The second is
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: they compete with the sellers. So you run, you know,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 4: John's Premium Pet Food and are doing a great job.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: They're scraping information out of every single transaction, they let
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 4: you take all the risk of the startup, test out
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: the idea, do the proof of concept, and then when
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: they see you're making real money, say, oh, I get it.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: We're gonna do John's Premium Pet Food, only it's John
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: with an H. Move it up to the front, move
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: you back to page seven, and scoop in the profits,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: and crush this small business. You can do one or
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: the other. You can be the umpire in the game
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 4: or you can have a team in the game, but
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 4: you don't get to do both at the same time.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of economic reason for breaking up. Facebook,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: there should be competition among different alternatives, just like there
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: are for phone carriers. You can keep your same phone number,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: but you can decide to move to different carriers, and
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 4: you can shop for price or maybe for privacy. So
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: there's strong economic reasons for breaking them up, but there
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 4: are also strong political reasons. They've got too damn much
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 4: political power.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: Do you see opportunities for progress in breaking them up
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: or at least sort of limiting their power over the
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: next four years?
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 4: And the number one thing that gives me optimism here
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: is we already have antitrust laws on the books. We,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: I hope, are going to have a Department of Justice
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: that is willing to enforce those antitrust laws. Now, you
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 4: know my view. Personnel is policy. Let's get a really
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 4: good assistant U.S. attorney for antitrust who really is willing
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: to take on the giants. But it's there. This is
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: something you don't have to get this through Congress. Now,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: are there some things Congress could do to tighten up
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: the laws and to overturn some bad court decisions? Sure.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: But for openers, let's just pick up the antitrust tools
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: that are already there in law, and let's start using them.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Last question before I let you go. A few weeks ago,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: a man you admire very much, Dwayne The Rock Johnson,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: said he will consider running for president. You've previously said
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: you thought this was a great idea. Does he have
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: your endorsement?
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: Well, it feels too early to endorse. But all I
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: can say is, be still my beating heart.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: There you go. I heard you say on NPR that
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: you're not looking to be president right now. Any chance
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: you might change your mind in the future?
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden is running for president. He's running for reelection.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: My job is to help him succeed as president. I
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: wrote persist to focus on what we need to do
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: while we have this opportunity. Think next hundred days. That's
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 4: when we make the changes. that would last for generations.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Thank you for joining so much. Please give Bailey
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: my belated birthday wishes. I saw the video of him
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: posted with the full burrito in his mouth. Did he
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: eat the whole thing? Of course.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: And then slept for about three days.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good birthday. Thank you so much, Senator Warren.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: The book is Persist. Everyone go check it out. It's
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: a fantastic book. Thanks for coming by PSA.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: Thank you. Thanks for having me, John.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for joining us today. Great talking
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: to you and everyone have a great weekend and we
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: will talk to you next week. Bye everyone. Pod Save
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: film and upload these episodes as videos every week.