Latest / Pod Save America / “Cyber Ninjas Stop the Steal.”

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“Cyber Ninjas Stop the Steal.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On the pod today, the entire Democratic agenda is on
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the line this week as the House prepares to vote
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: on President Biden's infrastructure and Build Back Better plans. Donald
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Trump and his allies keep laying the groundwork to steal
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the 2024 election despite an embarrassment in Arizona. And Washington
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Post journalist Jason Rezaian talks to Tommy about 544 Days,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a brand new podcast launching tomorrow that follows the true
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: story of when Jason was held hostage in Iran and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: accused of being an American spy. You can catch it
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on Spotify tomorrow.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: It's free. It's on Spotify. Can I give you guys
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: a little tip?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Please, please.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: It's gripping. It's like a better Argo. That's not a tip.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: That's an opinion.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: No, it's a tip.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: It's a tip about your listening habits. Hey, if you're
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: listening too, just remember this. It'll help you listen. It's
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: a really good podcast. I've heard all of the episodes.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Jason is hilarious. It's like a better Argo.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: The hilarious true story of being imprisoned in Iran.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the weird part, right? Like you wouldn't think
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: a story about being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly two years
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: would be funny, but it's very, very funny. Jason's funny.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: His wife, Anthony Bourdain, makes an appearance. Like it's an
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: incredible show. I'm super excited to listen. One more quick
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: note before we begin. September is National Voter Registration Month.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And Vote Save America is working to raise $ 1. 5 million
• 1:34
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• 1:37
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• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and Wisconsin. These are all places where reaching new voters
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: will especially help make the difference in our ability to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: win in 22, 24, and beyond. We know that $ 1. 5
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: million is a big goal. But the sooner we get
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: new voters registered, the sooner organizers can start building relationships
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and expanding their work to reach every last voter.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: It's all about the friends he made along the way
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: for these organizers.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: This is the work you do now so that before
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the election, we don't start hearing a bunch of stories about, oh,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Republicans did better in voter registration. Where were we?
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Blah, blah.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: This is the time. That's how we'll sound then. This
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is the time. That's how we always sound.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's funny that it's National Voter Registration Month.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Like, okay.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, I love a fake holiday.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Wake you up when September ends, John? Is that what
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: you're saying?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Go, go, go, go.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Hurry.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: We like news hooks here in the business.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we do.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: To chip in, head to votesaveamerica.com slash donate to learn more.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. Nancy Pelosi has
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: announced that the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill will
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: take place on Thursday. And since infrastructure is unlikely to
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: pass unless House progressives feel confident that the president's Build
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Back Better plan will also pass, Democrats in Congress have
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: just a few days left to make sure that every
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: last policy detail is agreed on by just about every
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: single member of their caucuses, from AOC to Josh Gottheimer
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin, everyone in between. Right now,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: there are still serious disagreements within the party over taxes, healthcare, climate,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of other issues. And once they
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: figure all that out, they also have to pass a
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: bill that will fund the federal government before it's forced
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to shut down on Friday. Pelosi summed up the challenge
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: in her characteristically understated way, telling Democrats, quote, the next
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: few days will be a time of intensity.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, great.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Great way to say it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: She had a knife to Gottheimer's neck at the point,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: which I think is lost in the quote.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: On a scale of one to ten, the political press
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: has dialed up the stakes of this week to about
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: a thousand. All the cliches are make or break, do
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: or die, grave consequences if it doesn't pass. How much
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of this is their usual hyperventilation and how much is real,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: do you think? Tommy, you want to.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Kick it off? I mean, I feel like the stakes
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: are pretty high, no?
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Here's what I'd say.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I think, I don't know if it's possible for both
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of these things to be true. I kind of agree
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: that the stakes are impossibly high. However, if we succeed
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: and pass both of these things and fund the government,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: next week we will be talking about how Joe Biden
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: and the Democrats can still very easily lose Congress in
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: the White House. And if we fail to best these things,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: we won't like shut down. Like, you know, we'll continue
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out what to do. So like, I
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: think the stakes are incredibly high because they will not
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: only set, they will set the tenor for the next
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: year and it will determine whether or not we really
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: have a shot of making our best case for the
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: argument I think we've been making for a very long time,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: which is Democrats have to deliver. That is the only
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: way we can subvert the kind of historic expectations that
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: we will do terribly in the upcoming midterms.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Last week in Los Angeles, we had a sunset at
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: like 4 p.m. that was blood red because of the
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: climate fires. So for me, that put the stakes up
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: pretty high when it comes to like, will they pass
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: something to meaningfully deal with climate change? Or will this
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: be our last chance holding majority for a long time?
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: So that's pretty high stakes. Like the total disaster scenario
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: is pretty catastrophic, right? It gets the government shut down.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: The U.S. could default on its debt. The Biden legislative
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: agenda is could implode if both of these bills go down.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Playbook could be really upset about his lack of leadership.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? We don't want to let
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: that happen. So I'm not saying all those things could happen,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: but that's the worst case. Whether it happens this week,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: I think is where it's getting a little amped up, right?
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Like Pelosi already punted one of the deadlines from Monday
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: to Thursday. So she's trying to buy some time to
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: get things done. That's not ideal. We don't want to
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: squeeze everything as close to the end of the legislative
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: calendar as we possibly can, but that's what tends to
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: happen here.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Tommy, can I just say, I'm very happy that When
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: you talked about consequences for not passing this, you talked
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: about real world consequences and not just purely political consequences.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: That's all I did.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Like we're fucking pundits in a TV box talking about
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: climate change.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: I feel like this is pundits on the radio on
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: your phone.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like that's what I did.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: There are some real world... There are people who won't have.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I forgot about the blood moon.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Child care help. There are people who will go without
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: health insurance. There's... Yeah. And you're right. Like if we
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: do not pass... I, for one, think that the political
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: press is not hyperventilating. I think the stakes are huge. Lovett,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to your point, I don't think that passing both bills
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: guarantees midterm success, but midterm success will be nearly impossible
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: if they fail. It is a prerequisite for midterm success,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: even though passing it does not guarantee it. But I
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: think that if we don't pass these, I think, aside
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: from the real world consequences that are terrible, because who
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: knows when we will have a majority again and a
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: chance to pass this again. Um, but I think the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: political consequences are going to be pretty rough as well.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I also agree with you, Tommy, though, that if it
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: doesn't get done this week, it's not the fucking end
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of the world. The government has to get funded. The
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: government has to get funded this week and the debt
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: ceiling has to get done by mid-October, I think, is.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Well, they don't know. That's part of the fun of
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: the debt limit. It's a bit of a gamble.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Janet Yellen's fucking, you know, juggling coins and stuff.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: She's trying to.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: Like, I don't know.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Who runs a bank account like that?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: She's writing IOUs, handing it to people.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I think I can stretch till Christmas.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, if it does pass this week, then one
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: piece of good news is that it's the last time
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: we'll hear infrastructure week jokes. You think that Twitter will
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: squeeze a little more blood from that stone?
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: D.C. is full of people who are unfunny but make
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: the same set of jokes every few months, unfortunately.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: The infrastructure vote was initially supposed to be today, Monday. Clearly,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Pelosi didn't have the votes. But what do you guys
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: think her announcement of a Thursday vote is? tells you
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: about how she thinks these negotiations will play out i think.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: It shows that she's trying to figure out what the
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: hell everybody wants and they're trying to figure out a
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: framework for what the larger build back better bill could
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: look like cut a deal with progressives on sort of
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: the outlines of what might be in it because it's
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: not going to be 3.5 trillion dollars even though dan
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: won't let us say that it's going to be smaller
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: than that so smaller how is the big question um
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: and then initially pelosi had told the moderate faction that
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: the gottheimer sort of uh splinter cell that they would
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: get a vote on the bipartisan bill today. She had
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: to appease them, but then punted that to Thursday. So
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: the fact that the moderates aren't mad tells you that
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: they feel comfortable with the state of things and the
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: progressives who are trying to figure out like what is
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: going to get cut from this $ 3. 5 trillion vision that
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: are worried.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, the other thing I would add too is it's,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of, it's hard at this
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: point to separate the kind of posturing and negotiations from
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: what their actual positions are internally. And, you know, you've
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: seen people like Manchin say, oh, why would we even
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: do this right now? There's no reason we should push
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: it off. But then everyone is behaving as though there's
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: a real possibility that this can get done this week.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Like if Manchin was signaling privately there was no point
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: in all this, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't be setting this vote.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: These negotiations wouldn't be as fierce and contentious and ongoing
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: as they are. And I think you start to see
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: some of the moderates saying things like, Why would progressives
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: jeopardize the bipartisan bill? They would never do that. They
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: wouldn't do that to Joe Biden is because they're all
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: trying to create leverage in this moment as they try
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: to get to the point where both bills go at
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: the same time.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The big question here is, can they all reach
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: an agreement on Build Back Better by Thursday? There is
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: currently no paper that I mean, there's only a couple
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of days here. It seems like a tall order. So
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: then the question is, how much of an agreement do
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: they have to reach to keep the progressives happy enough
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to vote for the infrastructure bill? On Sunday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: who leads the Progressive Caucus, I believe was on one
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of the Sunday shows. I don't watch them. I just
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: read the news about them. She didn't add about them online. Yeah, exactly.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And I think she said she wants an ironclad commitment
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: from the centrists before they do anything. But then today
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: she tweeted that the Build Back Better bill needs to
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: pass at the same time. which seems like a tall
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: order to get done by Thursday.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: It's not gonna happen by Thursday.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I just don't think it, I don't know. It really
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: reminds me of- Which means that the vote gets postponed again, right?
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: It has to.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of, there was this moment at Camp
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: David where Hud Barak and Yasser Arafat were both walking
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: into the negotiating room with Bill Clinton, and there was
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: this moment where bravado and madness overlapped and neither one
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: of them wanted to walk through the door first. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: so they ended up like physically fighting at the door
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: to stop the other one from getting in first. And finally,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Bill Clinton just basically pushed them both through at the
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: same time while laughing.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I feel like that's a little bit of the vibe
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: right now. To extend your metaphor, I mean, you are
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: seeing a lot of complaining in the press from moderates
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: and progressives that Joe Biden isn't engaged enough, that he's
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: not twisting arms, that he's not cajoling members, that he's
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: doing too much listening and not enough pressuring, I guess.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Do we think that that's typical carping or is there
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: some truth there?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It's typical carping in the sense that it gives me
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: deja vu that they used to say this about Obama
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: all the time.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: He's too aloof.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: He's not engaged, right? But I don't know. Who knows?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Usually presidents sort of stand back for reasons like they
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: stay out of this for reasons. And then at the
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: very end, they go in and start twisting arms. So
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: maybe he's just trying to let it all come together.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Jayapal also told Greg Sargent that Biden is not pressuring
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: progressives to vote for the infrastructure bill, which the moderates
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: hope that he would do.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: For the two bill solution.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also just a bit of I think I mean,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of there is just some basic mistrust of
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: that I think you see in those comments by Jayapal,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: which is that commitments can be evaded and talked out of.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: There's a real fear, I think correctly on the part
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: of progressives, that if they go along with the bipartisan bill,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, a bunch of people that claim
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: they would go along with the deal suddenly find reasons
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: that they can claim don't subvert what they said in
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: the past to prevent this thing from happening.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's some healthy skepticism. Yeah, that's, and
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: so- I agree with that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Completely, completely. And nothing about the way they've behaved. uh,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: over the past couple of months would argue against that.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, Biden got his booster shot this morning on,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: on television and was answering questions while getting the.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Booster shot and, uh, speaking really fast.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: He said, he said, it may not be by the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: end of the week. I hope it's by the end
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of the week. So even he is imagining that may slip.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Into trying to chill out the whole deadline thing.
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: One of the huge issues left to resolve is how
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: to pay for build back better. Um, Pelosi and Schumer
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: said on Friday that Democrats have, quote, reached an agreement
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: on a framework, a menu of options that would finance
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the bill with a combination of tax increases on corporations
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and people making over $ 400, 000 a year. But the New
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: York Times has reported that Kyrsten Sinema is opposed to
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: higher tax rates for both corporations and rich people, which
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is why Democrats are now exploring a tax on carbon
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: as a way to pay for the bill. What do
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: you think about that? Love it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Kyrsten Sinema is completely vexing. I don't understand her philosophy,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: don't understand what she wants. I also don't totally know
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: if that rendering of her position is accurate. Does she
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: oppose any increases? Does she oppose a specific version of
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the proposal? Is it a negotiation to try to get
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: a carbon tax in there and defray some of the
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: costs by reducing the amount that they increase taxes on
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: corporations and the rich? It's really not clear. But at
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: the end result... is that this leads to a carbon
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: tax as part of this that still honors the Biden
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: pledge for not raising taxes on the middle class through
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: some kind of a dividend. I think that's a really
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: positive outcome. Though I want the tax. I mean, obviously,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: I want the highest tax cuts on the rich.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Here's how you would have to do a carbon tax
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that doesn't hurt people making under $ 400, 000. You tax them
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: just like you tax everyone else, and then you mail
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: them rebates. That's not going to go over politically well,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you. There's a bunch of different versions of it, right?
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: One version of it is that the tax increases are
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: not aimed at everybody. But then the understanding that because
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: some of the costs read down to consumers, you do
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: a dividend that applies to people making under $ 400, 000. There's
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: a number of different ways you can do it. The
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: problem is the best version of a carbon tax that
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem to hurt middle class people is not one
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: that helps you pay for other parts of your bill.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: It's one that just is kind of neutral and the
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: benefits flow.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: To the bill.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: That's, which is something that I've always felt was like,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: doesn't get you much. Like if you really believe climate
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: change is this threat, you don't use a carbon tax
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: to pay for other priorities. You demonstrate that a carbon
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: tax is a means of not just protecting the planet,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: but also like actually making lives better by sending those
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: kind of tax benefits to regular people.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I think what they have in the plan right now,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: which is you charge the companies that are polluting and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: then you reward the companies that are transitioning to clean
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: energy is much better. But also, let's just go back
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to the tax, the opposition to the tax increases, like
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: increasing the tax rates on the wealthiest one or two
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: percent and and and corporations is, again, one of the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: most popular policies that you pull.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Raising taxes on corporations pulls at 66 percent approval. Sixty
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: one percent of the country thinks we should raise taxes
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: on household incomes over four hundred thousand dollars. So you
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: can either, you can care about debts and deficits, or
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: you can care about climate change, or you can care about,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: I don't like, tell us what you care about Kyrsten Sinema,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: but this is like, this position is indefensibly stupid from
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: a policy and political standpoint. And so what, what, what
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: is she doing? Try not to overreact to like a statement,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: like a quote in the 30th graph of a New
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: York time story that she hasn't, confirmed or denied, but
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: it's like, it's baffling.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Also, you can't, if you don't increase tax rates on
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: individuals or corporations, you can't pay for $ 3. 5 trillion. Now,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: can you pay for a $ 1. 5 trillion bill or a 2. trillion?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You probably get around 700 billion from the prescription drug thing.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: So you're getting closer, but then you're closing loopholes and
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: all this bullshit. So maybe you can get there with math.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I doubt it.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: One other piece of this too, though, Tommy, is like,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: It's like this weird throwaway line, maybe based on some
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: like kind of larger reporting that's a has been privately
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: reassuring his allies that Sinema will help prevent tax increases
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: on the rich and corporations as well. So there's clearly
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: there's truth to it.
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess there's just sort of a political
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: question of like, do you want to be able to
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: say this thing was paid for? And what I want
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: to be able to say to voters is, hey, you know,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: those billionaires buying islands and taking vacations and fucking space,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: we're going to tax them. We tax them more and
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: we're going to use that money to pay for things
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: that matter to you. That I think is the winning
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: political argument. Not that we're balancing the budget or we're
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: doing X, Y, Z. It's like, no, we're going to
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: tax the billionaires who are, you know, who pay like
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: 8% in taxes because they can rig the system.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: It's popular in and of itself. It is not, it
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: doesn't need to be popular because it helps you pay.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: For the bill.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: You're right, Tommy, that it's the winning political message. I
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: think it's also required under the budget rules and the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: budget reconciliation. Like, I don't think you can I think
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: you have to actually show how you pay for this.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: One thing on cinema over the weekend, the Arizona Democratic
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Party has pledged a vote of no confidence in cinema
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: if she fails to reform the filibuster or doesn't support
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Build Back Better. You know, there's a lot of this
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: like activists at home aren't happy with cinema stuff that
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: you wonder if it's going to go anywhere. The Arizona
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party doing this is it's sort of a big
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: deal again. You know, Mark Kelly, pretty moderate senator from Arizona,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: he's not fucking everything up. You don't hear Mark Kelly
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: yelling about taxes on the rich, increasing taxes on rich people.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Someday soon, I'm going to be out of the office
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: because I'm going to be at the urgent care center
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: because I will have broken my finger. hitting the act
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: blue button to donate to her primary.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Like i good good.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: For the arizona democratic party i i i too and
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: with love i'd like to see a little pressure from
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: the left on kirsten cinema like meanwhile the arizona republican
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: party's taking bong hits with mike lindell over in the
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: corner like god knows what's going on out there that
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: state needs some help tell us.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: What's going on arizona residents.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And by the way like you know a lot of
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: this gets couches like oh she's trying to create a
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: kind of like independent brand for herself when you know
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: some of these policies we're talking about these are not
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: far left progressive.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: What brand is this? Popular.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Raising taxes on corporations and rich people is like independence.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: What is her brand? Mitch McConnell? Is that her brand?
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you. That's my brand.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about how Democratic centrist political concerns
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: about Build Back Better fly in the face of poll
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: after poll that show healthy majorities of voters support the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: overall bill. But just to be fair, we do want
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to play one of the ads that the American Action
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Network is running as part of their $ 7. 5 million campaign.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that's targeting 24 of the most vulnerable House Democrats. Let's listen.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: D.C.
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: Liberals overspending. It benefits a few while working Americans suffer.
• 18:14
  Speaker 6: Now they're pushing a $ 3 trillion socialist spending plan. Where's
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: the money go? Pelosi snagged $ 200 million for a park
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: in San Francisco. And her rich friends get tax breaks
• 18:26
  Speaker 6: on electric cars with Chinese parts. But Maine's middle class
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: gets stuck with the bill. New taxes and even higher prices.
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: Tell Congressman Golden to vote against Pelosi's spending spree.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: That's a real paint-by-number Republican attack.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: With Chinese parts. With Chinese parts.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I didn't like the score. To me, strings.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't like the music.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: No. Listen to Secession and then try to rip that
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: off next time.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I think.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: They've got in there a piece of new information, right?
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: The park, right? Some line item budget somewhere, right? They
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: got that, and that's going to stick in your mind.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: The electric vehicles.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: When I heard that ad, though, what I thought when
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I heard it was like that. There are ads that
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: I think are kind of misleading, but faithful to a
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: core idea of some sort. But when you hear that ad,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: you just think, you will be vilified and attacked as
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: a Pelosi Democrat who's overspending on Chinese electric car parts
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: no matter what you fucking do, no matter what you do.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: It's all Orwellian. It's like American job creators for a
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: strong economy arguing against a bunch of things that would
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: improve the economy. I mean, I do think that, I
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: don't know if these ads are effective with voters. I
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: do think they're almost always effective when it comes to
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: making members of Congress get really scared and kind of
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: wet the bed. So, you know, we should be worried
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: about them. There are ads from the other side. There's
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: 2 million in Cape ads running, calling for paid family
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: and medical leave to be in the bill, right? So
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: there's pressure in both directions. Who knows how it'll shake out? But,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: you know, this is like a period of really intense
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: lobbying on these members of Congress.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I do think to your point about the ads on
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the other side, I think it's really important for Democrats
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and Democratic allied groups that are running these ads to
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to pick out individual issues to run ads on, like
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: some of these ads that we've seen on our side.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: There's one on paid family leave, like you said. There's
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: one running in Stephanie Murphy's district from the League of
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Conservation of Voters about climate and how climate's impacting Florida
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and why it's important. It really is hard to message
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: on the entirety of the Build Back Better agenda. It
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is much more effective and easier, I think, to pick
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: out its component parts and talk about them separately. And
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably the best path for Democrats.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: Yes. I also.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I remember when the stimulus passed and there was this
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: moment where we all said, hey, Democrats in Congress, remember
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: this feeling. Remember the good tidings that come with passing
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: big things despite the opposition, despite the claims that it
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: was on a partisan basis. Remember the overall change in
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the political climate that overtakes some of these smaller political attacks.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And I hope they do.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Biden's polling numbers went up and then childhood poverty was
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: cut in half. A couple of good reasons to want
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: to continue some of these policies we passed.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I do get the fear that some of these Democrats
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: must experience when they when they see these ads. You're right, Lovett,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: that they're going to attack us no matter what. Now,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: on some things, you know, back to our the 2020 primary,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: like if you call yourself a socialist, it's going to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: help when they run ads that says you're a socialist
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: that say you're a socialist. It's probably going to help
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: them a little bit more. So there is an element
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of that to it. But I think Republicans are going
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to attack Democrats, House Democrats, on being big spenders no
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: matter what, partly because they all voted for the rescue package.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: They're going to have to do the debt limit on
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: their own. We're not going to get any Republican help
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: with the debt limit. So there are going to be
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: real spending things that they're going to be able to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: attack Democrats for. So whether or not they sink the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Build Back Better agenda. So you might as well, the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: answer is not to oppose it, it's to sell it.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to voters. It's to sell your reasons for voting for it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I have no doubt that the ad wizards who came
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: up with the ad we just listened to could go
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: through the bills that have already been passed and create
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: a nearly identical version that makes the exact same argument
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: without having to ever think about the Build Back Better plan.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is president. Dumb Republicans are running, putting out
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: press releases, taking credit for provisions in the COVID relief
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: bills that they voted against. Up is down, down is up.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Just do what's right.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll be, by the way, some of those ads
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: will use the bipartisan infrastructure plan to attack you as
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: a Nancy Pelosi big spender, without a doubt.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: They'll always find a way. They'll always find a way.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: There was a CNN op-ed this morning from Pramila Jayapal,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Ilhan Omar, and Katie Porter about how progressives are going
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to put their votes on the lines to get both
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure and Build Back Better done. They had a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: line in there that I think is a pretty good
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: message to sort of sum up the overall bill. If
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: we allow corporate lobbyists to dictate our legislative agenda, the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: economic recovery will grind to a halt. I do think
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: it's time for Democrats from the progressives to Biden to
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the centrists to start talking about special interests standing in
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the way. And we're fighting on behalf of the American people.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Because you can see Republicans in that ad trying to say,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: we're for the middle class. They're for rich people with
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: electric vehicles and the Chinese and San Francisco parks.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: What's interesting about that? you know, Pelosi kitchen sink anti-China
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: ad was that it didn't include inflation because that's the
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: one thing you've been hearing from people in DC is
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: that voters are really worried about inflation. It's showing up
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: in focus groups and polling. And like, I don't know
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: if that's true or not. I know that I filled
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: up my gas tank yesterday and it was outrageously expensive
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: and I did not like that.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer over here.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm being gouged on the brain.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: But, um, but yeah, that wasn't part of that ad.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: And you'd think like, if that was the really like
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: powerful attack, it would be in there. But I agree.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Like we passed the recovery act in 2009 and then
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: nothing else got done. And it meant the economy stumbled
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: along for years.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm sure that'll all get done fine. Everything
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: will be great at the end of this week. We'll
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: be doing a pod next Monday and just cheering the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: passage of the Build Back Better bill.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Legislative purgatory for a long time. Cool, cool, cool.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: One thing I do notice is that a lot of
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: people who like kind of don't like Nancy Pelosi, they
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: don't really know what to say during these periods of
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: time when she's like ferociously trying to figure out how
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: to make all this happen at the same time.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Even if you really dislike her, no one really wants
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: to bet against her.
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: No.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: I like that Terry McAuliffe summed it up well. Voters
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: didn't send Democrats to Washington to sit around and chitty
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: chat all day. They need to get this done. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: you're right, Terry.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I do think, I'm glad you brought that up. I
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that, and he said that in
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: response to them not passing the infrastructure bill, that Terry
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: McAuliffe is really hoping they just pass the infrastructure bill,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: even if it doesn't mean Build Back Better passes right away.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: That's him probably feeling the pressure of a very competitive
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: race in Virginia.
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: Terry wants to deal with the commuting time in Northern
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Virginia or whatever, like parochial things in that bill. Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And he just wants to be aligned with the party
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that's getting stuff done for the economy. So while Democrats
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and Republicans in Washington are engaged in a high stakes,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: but relatively normal legislative battle, There's a parallel universe where
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is putting the pieces in place to make
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: sure his next coup succeeds. You might think that after
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Arizona Republicans wasted $ 6 million on their own private election
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: review just to have the Cyber Ninjas report that Joe
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Biden won Maricopa County by more votes than we originally thought,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: MAGA World would at least pump the brakes for a bit.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: But no. Instead, they just pretended that the sham audit
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: proved that there was fraud. Of course it proved that
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: there was fraud, right? The headline was, Biden actually wins
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: more votes in Maricopa County. See, we told you there
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: was fraud. Arizona Republicans called for other counties to be
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: audited after the report came out. Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans said they're moving forward with their own 2020 audits.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Trump himself issued seven separate statements lying about the Arizona
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: results before calling on officials to decertify the election during
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a rally in Georgia on Saturday night. Here's a clip.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: We won. On the Arizona forensic audit yesterday, at a
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: level that you wouldn't believe, the headlines claiming that Biden won,
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: that Biden won are fake news and a very big lie.
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: It is clear in Arizona that they must decertify the election.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: You heard the numbers.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: We won on a very high level. We won on
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a very high level. That makes a lot of sense.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: How do you spend $ 6 million on a sham audit
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: run by a shady firm called the Cyber Ninjas, only
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to have them find more votes for the guy that
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: you're trying to pretend to be?
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: It's actually kind of confusing, to be honest. It's not
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: a real audit. These are not real people doing this.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: They took hard drives into the woods and jerked each
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: other off for six weeks, and they came out making
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Biden more the winner. I'm actually surprised, to be honest.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I was too. If you had asked me to bet,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: obviously we're not in the prediction business. If you had
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: asked me to bet before this, would the cyber ninjas
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: find that Trump actually won? I would say, yes, of course.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: That's the whole reason they're there.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: These aren't the people that count the Oscar votes.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: They should get their money back. Cyber ninjas sucks at everything.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: They suck at actually counting votes. They suck at Corruption?
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and probably ninja stuff.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: They can't throw a star to save their life? Can't
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: use nunchucks?
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're hitting themselves in the face with these nunchucks.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was weird.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: It was surprising.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: No one said that these were smart fascists.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: No.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to be smart to be dangerous.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, the problem, like, Trump will spin anything
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: into an argument that he won, and this audit process
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: has become a long, dragged-out PR stunt that created tons
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: and tons of stories. that question the legitimacy of the
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: election itself. So they did the job without getting the
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: result they wanted.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact of the audit was the goal of
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the audit. He's lying about the results because the results
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: never really matter. There is no actual outcome here that
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be useful to them because the whole point is
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: to drum up enough uncertainty and questions among the base
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: to sort of set the stage for the next two elections. Yeah,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: and Trump's already created the context where to get the
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: MAGA base, you have to be all in on the
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: big lie. So the Arizona attorney general who was running
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: for Senate He knows he has to win that primary.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: And he said he is going to create some sort
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: of future investigations, do whatever the next iteration is. You're
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: seeing moves in Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Colorado to create sort
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: of similar style audits.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: So it's spreading. The cancer is spreading.
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure some people are wondering, like, why are
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: they so focused on audits of the 2020 election when
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: we're like almost into the 2022 midterm cycle? It does
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: seem like if you... make people believe or you make
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: enough people believe that the last election was stolen, it
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: will seem more legitimate to steal the next election.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It's also, you guys got, you stole one from us.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Now we're going to steal one from you. And fair
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: is fair.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Also, you know, Trump is a television programmer and 2021
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: is a programming hole.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: That's also what it is.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: And like, this is a great way to like get
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: on stage and fill that programming hole with an interesting
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: story that he can tell in Georgia and Arizona and
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: everywhere else he wants to go.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: And shitheads like Mitch McConnell can pretend they don't like
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: what's happening in Arizona and but then use the political
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: support it creates to pass voter suppression laws and do
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: other things that make it harder for mostly black Democrats
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: to vote.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: And it is, you know, it is programming that sets
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: up the theme of the 2024 election, which is revenge, right?
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: That's Trump's theme. That's going to be the theme to
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the base, the country that his base wants revenge against
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: a couple years of Joe Biden and the Democrats winning.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: They think it was stolen for them. And so it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: will drive them into the next election. Conservative columnist Robert
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Kagan wrote a terrifying Washington Post piece that was getting
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: shared everywhere this weekend. He wrote that, quote, the United
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: since the Civil War. with a reasonable chance over the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: next three to four years of incidents of mass violence.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And he argued the amateurish stop-the-steal efforts have become an
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: organized national campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: will have full control over the state and local officials
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: they need to steal a close election. Woodward's new book
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: also has a 2020 memo from Trump campaign lawyer John
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Eastman that laid out how Trump could overturn the election
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: by getting Republican legislatures to send their own electors to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Congress with the help of Mike Pence and Republicans in Congress.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: What's your level of alarm about this? Love it. High.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I keep it.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: I keep it pretty high.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Keep it pretty high.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: You know, I I talked to Adam Schiff for Love
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: It or Leave It. And he has this bill around
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: sort of some of the Trump abuses. But I asked
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: him about the Eastman memo. And I think I think
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: one aspect of it that I think has been sort
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: of lost in the kind of conversation about how dangerous
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: it is, is how accurate it is.
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, I do. You know, Adam Schiff is
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: not saying, oh, that description of how this would unfold
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: is not accurate. I don't think he's saying it's accurate.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: but I don't, but, but basically like the question is
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: what would happen if one point of failure in the
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: form of the vice president, uh, did what this memo
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: said instead of rebuking it. Uh, it is not clear
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: that what he has outlined in the remainder of those
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: steps would not have transpired. It is not clear that
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: the courts would step in the point about the courts,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: not wanting to litigate a kind of political question like
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: this is not, uh, uh, uh, a crazy one.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: The reason that we were okay in 2020, um, the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence thing, we can argue back and forth, but
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi was the speaker of the house. Kevin McCarthy
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is the speaker of the house. Um, and if the Republican,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: if the Senate is in Republican hands, um, it is,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: there is a very easy path to steal the next election,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: a very easy path because of the, you know, electoral
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: count act of 18, whatever the fuck it was that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: lets all this happen. And I think it is shocking
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: to me that we have not had legislation proposed that
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: would amend that act to say that you, that Congress
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: basically does have a ceremonial role or, that if Congress
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: really thinks that there are problems in some of the states,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it would take like a super majority in both houses
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: to go back to the states and have them get
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: new electors or whatever it is, because that would take
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: it out of the partisan realm. Like, I would love
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: for someone to tell me why this hasn't happened yet.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Well, there's two bills, right? There's the Preventing Election Subversion Act,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: and then there's the Right to Vote Act that are
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: supposed to get at some of these election subversion issues
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: that weren't in the original H.R.1 or S. 1, which were
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: introduced in 2019, because we weren't really worried about this
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: stuff yet.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, but the Kagan's op-ed gets to the
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: point at the end, basically says like, look, Mitt Romney
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: and some of these other Republicans did a noble thing
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: by voting for impeachment or standing up to the big lie,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. But now they got to put
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: their money where their mouth is, work with Democrats to
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: pass bills that would make it impossible for these state
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: legislatures to basically steal elections for states, name their own
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: slate of delegates, et cetera, et cetera, like all the
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: things in that Eastman memo.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: So we haven't talked about this much, but the new H.R.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: 1 is called the Freedom to Vote Act. That's the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: mansion-led compromise. That has a few provisions in it that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: would help with election subversion that we haven't seen before.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: It would allow election officials to bring lawsuits challenging their
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: removal if it's for reasons other than gross negligence, neglect
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: of duty, or malfeasance in office. So that's pretty good
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: that it gives some level of protection to people who
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: might get canned. But that doesn't help much with if, like,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Trumpy people become Secretary of State and then have power
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: over the election apparatus. It also expands records of what
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: must be preserved after elections, more penalties for tampering with
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: ballots and not preserving records. So it helps a little bit.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: But again, like you said, Tommy, it's not going to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: help much if either Manchin and Sinema have to get
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster or Mitt Romney and Susan Collins
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and some of these Republicans who said they won't help
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: on election reform at all or voting rights reform at
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: all have to fucking put their money where their mouth
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: is and actually do something about this.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would just say I do think everybody should
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: just read the Kagan piece in full. I was actually
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: like surprised by how honest it was about what has
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: taken place inside of Republican politics. Like there was one
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: one aspect of all of this that I think sometimes,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: especially kind of anti-Trump conservatives allied is outside of the
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: kind of political calculus. This is what Kagan writes. Perhaps
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: American conservatism was never comfortable with the American experiment in
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: liberal democracy, but certainly since Trump took over their party,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: many conservatives have revealed a hostility to core American beliefs.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: And so much of what we're talking about is that problem.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: And we still are not reckoning with that problem. He
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: is clearly avoiding the word that we are now more
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: comfortable to use, which is we're talking about fascism, that
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: fascism has taken hold in the Republican Party. It is
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a huge motivating factor. aspect of why they support Trump,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: why they're anti-democracy, why they storm the Capitol. And it
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: is hard to grapple with that because it is something
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: you can't grapple with inside of our political process. It
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: is something outside of our political process, threatening it every
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: single day. And I think that makes people like Mitt Romney,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Susan Collins, Murkowski, it makes them very uncomfortable. Actually facing it,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: they're very uncomfortable.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: The other scary thing is just that the attack on
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the Capitol is you know, there's a lot of talk
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: about the three percenters and the oath keepers and these
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: like scary militia groups that were part of that attack.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: But 90% of the people arrested or charged were not
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: part of those groups. They were middle-aged middle-class schlubby white
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: people from purple counties who got caught up in this
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: big lie and propaganda works. Demagogues are powerful. Like that's
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: what we've seen.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And fascist movements in the past have included those very people. Um, So,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: you know, one option here to protect our democracy in
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: our elections is there's a there's a policy option. There's
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: passing these Freedom to Vote Act and other election subversion provisions.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: There's also sort of a political cultural path here, which
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: is just raising the alarm about this, talking more about it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Democrats talking more about it. Everyone yelling more about it.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: We are the news is completely consumed with as news
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: usually is what Joe Biden's doing and what his administration
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: is doing, what the fights in Congress are. But it
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: is very frightening that there is this sort of parallel reality.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: You know, the right wing media universe is covering it
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: all the time where Trump and all of his henchmen
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: are putting in place the pieces. And it does seem
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: like everyone else is just sitting around doing nothing, yelling
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: about it once in a while, being scared, sharing a
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Washington Post op ed. Like one place I wonder is
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: we got these one six hearings, right? We got the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: subpoenas out for the one six hearings. Now, the Biden
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: administration is making a decision on whether they uh, wave
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: executive privilege to make sure a bunch of documents come
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: out about, uh, Trump. I do wonder if the, the
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: real purpose of the one six hearings in Democrats mind
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: should be to, um, tell the story of an ongoing
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: threat to democracy from Trump and his supporters and not
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: just look backwards.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: I was not thrilled to see that there's a big
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: fight over executive privilege in the white house withholding documents,
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: you know, on a case by case basis out of
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: concern that it might create some precedent that would, who cares?
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: You know what It's an unprecedented moment in our history.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: The Capitol was stormed. I am the beneficiary of executive
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: privilege and the fact that White House records aren't routinely released.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: All kinds of privilege, actually. All kinds of privilege. But
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: like in this instance, like I do think like the
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: White House is often end up turning over documents in
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: extreme cases like this, like the Benghazi committee, whatever it
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: might be. Of course, they should be turning over records
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: about Donald Trump's activities those days or like what senior
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: aides said. I know that I saw that they subpoenaed
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: a few people. They subpoenaed people who were around Trump
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: that day and had a part, maybe had a role in,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: you know, decisions he did or did not make about
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: tweeting to tell his supporters to calm down or whatnot.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: But I do think, I hope the Biden White House
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: will just not let lawyers bog this down and kind
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: of use common sense here.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, we got to a point briefly in January
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: where Donald Trump was so toxic that even Mitch McConnell
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: was telling, you know, was criticizing him publicly. And, you know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: we got nine, 10 Republicans in the House and Senate
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: voting for his impeachment. Like, we need to get back
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: to that place where Donald Trump and his henchmen are
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: once again so toxic to democracy that, you know, that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: we prevent this outcome that we can all see coming.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, one thing I was thinking about, which is,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you know, Something that happened after the insurrection and because H.R.1
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: was kind of there as the stalking horse for our
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: democracy agenda is I think sometimes in our political conversation,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: we have combined electoral suppression and electoral subversion into kind
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: of one soup of anti-democratic policies. And I do wonder,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure people would argue against this, but I
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: do wonder, what does it look like for democratic politicians
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: to really view the electoral subversion threat as the key
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: threat to the future of the country. What does that
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: look like? And what it looks like is stripping out
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: anything else and focusing on a bill that is exclusively
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: about that. Now, I think like Manchin and Klobuchar have
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: stripped out some of the other provisions to kind of
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: make a more targeted bill. But it does seem like
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: there's some kind of a debate to be had with
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: the Romneys and the Toomeys and the Collinses and the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Murkowskis to say, what is it that you want to
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: do to protect our democracy?
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: That you're comfortable with?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: And how can we get you to come aboard when
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: there's still such a strong desire on their part to not,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: to be anti-Trump while still kind of being Republicans in
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: one way or another? And that doesn't seem to be
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: happening and it seems like it should be happening.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I also think the the names of every official, every
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Trumpy official who embraces the big lie that are election officials,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: state officials, local officials needs to be known by everyone.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: They need to be highlighted. People need to understand the threat.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Like it just, we should be talking about it more.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: And I think the other question too, is how much
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: do Democrats make this part of their midterm message? We've
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: had this long running discussion about whether you talk about
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: all the good stuff that Democrats have delivered and Joe
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Biden sort of getting the country out of the pandemic
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and bring the economy back. or talking about Republicans and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the threat from the growing fascism within the party. And
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I do think that whether it's politically effective or not,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: it's the truth. So I think that we probably has
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: to be part of the message.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: The good news part is a little TBD too. So,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: you know, we don't really have to, it's been unfortunately
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: a false choice at the moment, but you know, good news, TK.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: But what the, you know, the, the odd thing is, um, that,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Support for the big lie is a litmus test in
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: all Republican primaries. That litmus test gets more and more
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: extreme by the day because now you have Eric Greitens
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: in Missouri, Josh Mandel, that schlubby putz in Ohio running
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: against J.D. Vance, calling for election reviews of the 2020 results.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: So they're sprinting to the more extreme end of this conversation.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: And I do think it's worthwhile to highlight them. The
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: problem is we highlight the Josh Mandels and Eric Greitens
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: of the world right now, to our peril because it
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: will help them in their Republican primary. So it's kind
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: of like a sequencing.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Well, there is some evidence that this could be a
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: politically effective issue for Democrats as opposed to just the
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: right one to talk about.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: I think it could be too.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Which Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, um, just told Axios that he,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't say whether he would have voted to overturn
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the election because he knows that this is an issue
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: that doesn't just, um, that isn't, you know, doesn't just
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: unite Democrats and independents, but it splits the Republican base.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Now there's probably like 60% of Republicans who are like, yeah,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: we should vote to overturn the election. It was stolen, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: But that's still, he needs the whole Republican base to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: win Virginia. And so I do think, like, I am
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: imagining that in the next debate between McAuliffe and Youngkin,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: McAuliffe's going to go up there and be like, you
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: wouldn't answer the question. Would you have voted to overturn
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the election and pin him on it? Because Trump, by
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the way, gave an interview, you know, a couple of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: weeks ago where he was like, I don't know about the, yeah, Junkin,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: he seems like he's running away from me. I don't
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: know about this.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: That'll work great in Virginia. It's just a question of
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: whether it works in Ohio or Missouri.
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, no.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, there has to be the hope, right,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: based on 2018 that like basically what we're talking about
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: is making people seem radical and nutty. Like that's sort
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: of what we're trying to sort of signal to the
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: kind of suburban moderates that help deliver districts that otherwise
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: we would have lost.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Either seem radical and nutty themselves or if you want
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to just be honest about it, embracing a radical and
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: nutty agenda in order to win. Either way.
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: Absolutely.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: And I and I and I think at this point,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: I don't care about the difference at all.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: We don't.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: But I do think also there is actually a connection
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: between the kind of economic and policy argument and the
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: democratic argument.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is good politics or the
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: right way to square the circle, but just in reality,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: they're so uninterested in helping you. They are so uninterested
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: in the reality of your life. They are so uninterested
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: in doing things that are good for the broad middle
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: of this country. that they're willing to subvert democracy so
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: that they continue to focus tax breaks and benefits and
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: deregulation on a wealthy and mostly white few, right? Like
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: that is the reality of this.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: You just run a six me into a DLC message
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: from the 90s. Look, you need some constructive feedback.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: No, I don't. I don't. It's on the bumper sticker.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: It's on a t-shirt.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: You two can both suck a dick. Put that on
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: a bumper sticker.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: That fits. That fits. that's actually catchy yeah it's catchy
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: sd 2022 i'm really sorry everybody that's okay i just
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: felt so attacked i also sit between them it's a
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: sandwich but not in a.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Good way here's the thing here's the thing i have
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: a uh i have a trump card that i can
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: play at any time which is to make my boys
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable uh by subverting their heteronormative expectations.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Just try it just try it i um I do
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: think you're right, though, that you need to combine both
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: of those messages. I don't think you can choose at
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the end. I think you need to find a way.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, so you agree with me, even though you kind
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: of like did local dick.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: No, well, I'm going to workshop the actual message in
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: private off microphone, and then I can bring it back later.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: That's our shtick.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: When we come back.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: People don't pay for this.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: If you want to hear more, though, there's going to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: be an extra message session behind a paywall. $ 6.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: 99.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I don't hate that.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: I don't hate that.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: We'll just launch the Masterclass competitor.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Now that we're brainstorming on air.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. When we come back, Tommy talks to Washington Post
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: journalist Jason Rezaian about the brand new podcast launching tomorrow
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: on Spotify. 544 days.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: I am so excited to welcome back to the pod
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: Jason Rezaian. Jason, it's so great to see you again.
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: Tommy, it is great to be here. I'm talking to
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: you from my basement bunker. My little 11-month-old is screaming
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: somewhere upstairs. And here we are, again, after a long time.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: A lot has changed. A lot feels the same. I'm
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: in the same place you are. So we are here
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: to talk about your incredible new podcast, 544 Days. It
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: is hosted by you. It is written by you and
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: produced by Gimlet, Crooked Media and A24. So some decent
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: production companies there. It's the story of the 544 days
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: you spent in the notorious hellish prison in Iran after
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: they wrongly accused you of being an American spy. Your wife, Yegi,
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: was also taken prisoner. Stories about your detention, the massive
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: effort by the U.S. government, your family, your colleagues at
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: the Washington Post. to get you out. Oh, and by
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: the way, Barack Obama was cutting a nuclear deal with
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Iran at the same time. So not at all complicated.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: It's not a lot of moving pieces there. So just
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: for listeners who might not be familiar with your story,
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: can we just start with the basics of why the
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Iranians arrested you in the first place?
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: So I was the Tehran Bureau Chief for the Washington
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: Post in the summer of 2014. I've been living in
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: Tehran since 2009, working as a as a reporter for
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: international media, freelancing really for several years until I was
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: hired by the Post in 2012. And at that time
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: when I was hired, I really thought that this relationship
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: with one of the main newspapers of the world, the
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: paper of record of the US Capitol, I thought that
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: gave me some cover, some protective cover. And as the
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: nuclear negotiations started heating up in 2013 and 2014, one
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: thing that nobody really factored in was that there were
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: actors within the Iranian regime that did not wanna see
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: any kind of rapprochement between Iran and the West and
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: Iran and the US specifically. So when I was taken
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: in July of 2014, it was right at the height
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: of those negotiations, the timeframe for coming to a deal,
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: the deadline had been extended by several months. And I
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: think anybody who was following this closely believed that the
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: deal was kind of a fait accompli. I mean, it
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: was gonna happen one way or the other. And as
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: you know, from being here in Washington at that time,
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: there were a lot of opponents in the US against
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: diplomacy with Iran and that deal in particular. Inside Iran,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: there were opponents as well. And the main opponent was
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And agents of their intelligence wing
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: raided my home and abducted my wife and I very
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: suddenly without any kind of warning and took us to
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: Evin Prison where we really had no idea what we
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: were being accused of. I mean, they said, okay, you're
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: a spy. They put us in interrogation rooms for weeks
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: on end. And during that time, they asked us all
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: manner of questions, which showed very clearly they had absolutely
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: no evidence that we were doing anything wrong. I was
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: just a reporter working with state permission in that country
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: who was kind of rounded up as bait. Yeah.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're very clear when you talk about the experience.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, being put in solitary confinement for that long,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: being interrogated under those conditions, it is torture. But what
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: is surprising about this show and this podcast and just
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: you generally is how funny the show is. You, your wife,
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: your mom, your brother, you are all able to somehow
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: look back and laugh at this experience. You guys make
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: fun of your tormentors. Is that something you figure out
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: how to do after the fact? Or did you keep
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: your sense of humor in prison?
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: That's me, right? I mean, you know, that's how I've
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: walked through life so far. I've tried to look at
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: the lighter side of every situation I've ever been subjected to.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: My dad, who died 10 years ago, he used to say,
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: if you worry, you're going to die. And if you
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: don't worry, you're going to die. So don't worry. And
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: I've tried to kind of incorporate that mantra into as
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: many moments in my life as I could. obviously this
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: was a very extreme one, right? And I had no
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: way of knowing if and when I would get out,
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: but I had to assume that I was gonna survive
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: this thing somehow. And you get to a certain point
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: after several days when you realize, okay, am I gonna
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: be a friend to myself or am I gonna be
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: my enemy? Because I'm in solitary confinement, there ain't anybody
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: else around, right? So you look for things to laugh at.
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: You look for memories, you plan for the future, conversations
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: you had, and you can very easily go down very
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: dangerous mental rabbit holes if you let yourself. I chose
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: not to let myself. And part of that, a big
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: part of that was finding things to laugh at. And
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: as my my world in prison opened up a little
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: bit more interactions with my interrogator and getting to know
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: my guards. And then after time having a cellmate, I
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: just found endless things to poke fun at because ultimately
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: this was really the most absurd thing that had ever
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: happened to me. And I really wanted to pull out
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: that absurdity in retelling this story.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: Is it traumatic? Do I still have emotional and psychological scars?
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: Fuck yes. Am I going to let that stop me
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: from laughing at it? I better not because then I'm
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: really screwed.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And so while you're in prison, there is
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: this government effort to try to negotiate your release. At
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: the same time, there are ongoing negotiations over what will
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: eventually become the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear agreement. What's
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: amazing in this podcast is is you interviewed all these
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: people about the process of negotiating your release, negotiating the JCPOA,
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: and you talked to them during the Trump administration when
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: they were out of government, when they were willing to
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: let their hair down and speak freely and not be
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: like the talking point robots that we all turn into
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: when we go back in. And now a bunch of them,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: John Kerry, John Feiner, the Deputy National Security Advisor, are
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: all back in government. What are people going to hear
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: from those individuals that might surprise them?
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: Look, I mean, I think that we always think of
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: people in government as superhuman or subhuman, but definitely not human.
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: And I think when you hear these people, you're going
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: to realize that they are in so many ways dealing
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: with issues in the same ways that anybody else would.
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: They're just people tasked with a job, a huge job.
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: And I think that the sort of impossible challenge of
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: weighing massive geopolitical issues against the concerns of a single
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: family is something the government has to deal with all
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: the time. They're not necessarily always really graceful about it
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: publicly or privately. But I think we really see into
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: that here. And for me, I've had the opportunity over
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: the last five years to get to know a lot
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: of these people and also people in the Trump administration,
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: specifically around the issue of hostage taking and hostage recovery.
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: there's a level of trust and intimacy that I've been
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: able to, to, to build up with these folks. But
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: as you say, I mean, you know, they can't really
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: let their hair down right now. They have a lot
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: of other things to deal with. I'm, you know, of the,
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: the eight or nine high level officials that we, we
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: interviewed for the show. Ben would probably be the only
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: one that would be willing to talk to me right
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: now for this subject. And I know that because, You know,
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: I continue to report on hostage cases and I can't
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: get any of these folks on the record at this point. So,
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: you know, that's no knock on them. That's just kind
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: of the nature of how things work here in Washington.
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: But I would say there's a level of intimacy to
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: this show that you almost never get when you put
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: somebody in government alongside with somebody who was affected by
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: the policies that they're tasked with implementing.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, it's not all government dorks in the show.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: Your wife, Yagi, is interviewed a lot and is hilarious.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: Your mom, your brother. Also, Anthony Bourdain has a big
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: piece of the show. Can you tell people how Anthony
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Bourdain became part of the story? Because for me, listening
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: to that trailer and hearing his voice again, someone who
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: I followed and listened to and revered in some ways,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: it was both jarring and also so wonderful to like
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: hear the guy's voice again.
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah. So when, when, when we were arrested in 2014,
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: six weeks earlier, we had been asked to appear on
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: Parts Unknown when he was in Tehran and we spent
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: an afternoon with him and it was, you know, it
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: was a really lovely experience all the way around. And
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: then when we were, were arrested again, you know, invariably,
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: someone's going to start thinking, okay, it must have had
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: something to do with, you know, with being on that show, right?
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of people who thought it had something
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: to do with them. It didn't have anything to do
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: with anybody. But Bourdain was somebody who really, from the get-go,
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: was full-throated in his advocacy for our release. And that
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: never stopped. It kept going. And a couple of weeks
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: after we got out, we had the opportunity to to
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: meet up with him in New York. We had a
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: meal and some beers and talked a lot and Bourdain
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: just gave Yegi and I incredible life advice. And from
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: that moment until he died, he was somebody who was
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: very much in our corner, very supportive of us. And
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: ultimately when I proposed a memoir and, you know, wrote
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: up the proposal and we took it to publishers, you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: we had sort of one of these mini bidding wars
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: where half a dozen different publishers wanted to publish the book.
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: He reached out to me and said, hey, Jason, you know,
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: whether you choose me or not, just give it some consideration.
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: I'd like to publish your book on my imprint. It's
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: such an important story to me. And I want you
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: to tell it how you want to tell it. And
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: by the way, you know, he ended up bumping up
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: the fee that he was willing to pay, the book advance,
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: you know, above and beyond any other publisher just to
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: seal the deal. So it's just like, you know, when
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: we made the decision, Yegi really kind of looked me
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: in the eye and was like, Jason, were you ever
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: even considering doing this with anybody else? And the answer
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: was no, right? I mean, this guy believed in us
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: and we believed in him. So, you know, that's how
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: that happened. And as part of reporting out my story
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: for the book, I spent an afternoon with him at
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: his condo in Manhattan. We had some beers and turned
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: on the microphone and just kind of recorded a conversation.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: And I think, you know, magically it really fits into
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: the story that we're telling here.
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's weird to miss someone I've never met,
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: but I do. Mike Pompeo. my favorite former Secretary of State,
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: failed Secretary of State, still likes to demagogue your release
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: from Iran, still likes to rant about pallets of cash
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: going from the U.S. to Iran. Can you explain for
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: listeners once and for all what actually happened with the
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: pallets of cash and how it makes you feel to
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: have Mike Pompeo out there peddling this fable years and
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: years later?
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: Well, I don't want to give away too much because
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: I think it's a pretty powerful part of the climax
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: of our story. But I think that what I will
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: say is that it was not a ransom payment. And
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: we debunk that pretty well, I think, in the description
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: of it in the show, told from the people who
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: were involved in deciding on whether or not the U.S.
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: should pay what was essentially an old debt to Iran.
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: that nobody disputed. We knew we needed to pay that
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: back to them. It was just a matter of how
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: we were going to pay it back. Very quickly after
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: my release, some members of Congress from the Republican Party
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: decided to seize on this as a political talking point.
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: And it has stuck to the extent that Pompeo was
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: on Fox over the weekend. And he said that the
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: US had sent $ 150 billion to Iran and that it
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: was Brett McGurk who uh, who sent this money to Iran. Well, uh, it,
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: it just, it, it boggles the mind. Uh, I was
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: glad to see that the, you know, the fact checker, um,
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: section of the Washington post wrote a fact, another fact
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: check article about this. They call the $ 150 billion claim,
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: a zombie claim, uh, which is basically, you know, uh,
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: a piece of misinformation that has been debunked so many times,
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: but continues to rise into the culture. It bothers me.
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: It bothers me less and less, but I think it's
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: a really youthful thing in terms of, you know, people
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: might ask, why are we talking about Jason Rezaian and
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: his imprisonment five years after he was released? Why are
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: we making a show about this? Well, I don't know,
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: but fucking Mike Pompeo still cares about it apparently. He's
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: got his butt all bunched up over this.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he talks about it all the time.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: All the time. All the time.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: So 544 days. You can only listen to it on Spotify.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: Do not complain to me because it's free. You can
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: get it for free on Spotify. The episodes are out
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: September 28th. You can listen to three of them right away.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: So you can do like a little mini binge, whet
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: your appetite, then we cut you off for a week,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: then you get more and more and more. But Jason, Congratulations, man.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: It's just an amazing show. I'm lucky enough to have
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: heard early versions. But it's not just the show. I mean,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: the music is amazing. The sound design is incredible. Like,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: it's an all-star team.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: I'm so thankful that we were able to do this.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: And I'm excited to get it out into the world
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: and just, you know, keep talking about these issues, about
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: this story, about Iran, about America. And I'm hoping we
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: can do more of it.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Jason for joining us. We'll talk to you
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: guys on Thursday. You bet.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: $ 6. 99?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: $ 7.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: 99?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: What's the price point? Yeah.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about it. Let's get a meeting.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: Get the business minds revved up.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't think it was so DLC. It was about anti-DLC.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: The DLC version of the- It's interesting.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Do you want to create tax breaks for- It was
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: the DLC thing that hurt him the most.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: It did hurt me the most. I didn't think that
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: I was doing that.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Good job, Tommy.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: The DLC version of that is we need- The middle
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: class is the middle of our priorities. We need to
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: build a bridge to the 21st century.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Isn't that a Hillary speech?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: Didn't you write that?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: Getting absolutely crushed today.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: What was the terrible Obama one?
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: That one got Elijah and Kyle laughing.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: Win the future. That was the Obama one.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Win the future. Win the future.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Which Biden is using. Everything old is for you.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: For some reason, I was reading Dan's blog for when
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Obama releases long form birth certificate when we really shut
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: that guy Trump up for good. And it concludes with
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: Dan saying win the future in it. And it made
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: me so sad. It's just so forced. It wasn't Dan's fault.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Everyone agree on that. Dan can respond on Thursday's pod.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Dan. Listen to the end. We'll see if you did.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: No soup from Bob Woodward, but plenty of future comments.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Bob Woodward.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: You really railroaded Belushi.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Look it up.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Follow the money. Woodward's not as good as people think.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Off the rails. Off the rails. Are we still recording?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Are people listening right now?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, leave this in. Leave this in.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: As long as there's music, it's fine. Are any of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: you here? We've all switched over to Ezra's podcast. I
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: need something smart.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: I gotta have something more sophisticated.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Get me Ezra.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Get me Ezra.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: I wanna know....
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Do we need money?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I love Ezra Klein's podcast.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: I love Ezra Klein's podcast, for the record.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Leave all this in.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Now it's over.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: I left the studio ten minutes ago. Hot Save America
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Flavia Casas, and our associate producer
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: is Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Narmel Konian, who film and
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: share our episodes as videos every week.