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“The Old Man and the CPAC.” · Pod Save America

• 0:21
  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 today's show, Donald Trump says indictments won't stop him
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: from running. Ron DeSantis tells his Florida story here in California.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: CPAC.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Is down to the most hardcore MAGA grifters, and Joe
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Biden balances public safety with self-governance in opposing D.C. 's
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: crime reforms. And here to take us through all the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: weekend's GOP shenanigans is a reporter who was forced to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: endure CPAC in person, Semaphore's Dave Weigel.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Welcome.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Good to be here. My 16th CPAC, by the way,
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: so I'm glad you have me.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Wait, what number?
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I usually don't get to go on a podcast after
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: they're over 16. 16 CPACs? Yeah, yeah.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: That's so many CPACs.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: That's a lot. Yeah, since... Since the days when they
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: thought George Bush 1 existed, which is not really a
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: thing anymore at CPAC or the conservative movement, but since
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: people would wake up at like 3 a.m. to go
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: see George Bush, yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I guess there's like a few CPACs a year, so
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it's not, right?
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Now there are. There used to be just one. Oh, okay.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: That's part of the story.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: We'll get there.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: I'm doing too much talking for it to be introduced.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Before we begin, I think, Lovett, you have a little
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: housekeeping for us.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: You bet I do.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: We've got a special episode on the Love It or
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Leave It feed with Ike Barinholtz, Mitra Juhari, Poppy Liu,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and Dave Stassen, who's one of the producers of History
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: of the World Part 2. We did a very funny
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: episode as part of the launch of History of the
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: World Part 2, and I've seen it. It's great, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: the episode's really funny, and everybody should check it out.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get into it. Donald Trump dominated a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: conservative political action conference that was both emptier and more
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: extreme than ever. The twice impeached loser of the last
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: election handily won the 2000 person straw poll with 62 percent.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis, who skipped CPAC, came in second with 20 percent.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Failed Michigan gubernatorial candidate Perry Johnson, who I hadn't heard
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: of until yesterday, came in third with 5 percent. Nikki
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Haley got 3 percent. No one else broke 1 percent.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Trump said right before his more than hour and a
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: half speech that he, quote, wouldn't even think about leaving
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the race if he gets indicted and then tried to
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: frame his candidacy as a vehicle for revenge. Here's a clip.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: In 2016, I declared, I am your voice.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Today, I add, I am your warrior.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: I am your justice. And for those who have been
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I am your retribution.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: See some of that Stephen Miller speech writing is back.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Some Old Testament stuff there.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: You really can feel it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: You get the... Dave, what were some of the biggest
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: applause lines from Trump's speech? And what was the general
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: reaction from the CPAC crowd to Trump?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Well, the crowd was there to see Trump and spent
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: three days and more people came on Saturday just to
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: just to see Trump, just to just to get in
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: that room. Rapturous for everything and rapturous for just like
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: what I what I'm kind of used to in a
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Trump stump speech now. And he hasn't made that many,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: but I still have the muscle memory for what kind
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: of promises he makes. He's been I would say was
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: really striking how little applause there was for anyone but him,
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: because Nikki Haley was there and half filled the room.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: You mentioned, as you mentioned, Mike Pompeo was there, filled
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: it less, lost the crowd a little bit as it
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: was going. And I tried to do the theater criticism
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: version of things, of watching a speech and nodding.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: No, you should. That's what we're here for.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: But it was, none were making an argument that you
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: could sum up as, Donald Trump used to be president,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: but he can't win again. They would kind of hint
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: at it. Haley hints at how we've lost the popular
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: vote seven of the last eight elections. Hint, hint, he
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: actually lost it. And Pompeo talks about, oh, he was
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: tough on China and Trump was not, to sum that up.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Just people didn't react to that at all. Like, no
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: one reacted to the lines that were, hey, there's this
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: guy who's going to speak later and he can't win.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: No one reacted, totally sitting on their hands. Every Trump
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: line hit, yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: As usual. It's funny, just like, Nikki Haley and Michael
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Pompeo have been observing Republican politics very closely for a
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: long time. And the one thing we know really works
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: for them is subtlety. That's the move for them.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: When you were talking to some of the attendees, were
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: they as... into Trump as they always have been? Or
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: did you detect people being open to some alternatives, even
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: if the sort of oblique lines from Haley and Pompeo
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: didn't really hit?
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Just a little bit of that. But then I'd ask
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: about whether they're worried about losing to Democrats. And it
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: was either one person who said they would steal it,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: which is actually a pretty common view. One person who
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: said they thought Biden could win again because they underestimate him.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: The rest were basically anyone can win Uh, Trump had
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: it stolen from him last time, but this is the
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: sample size, but this is about as half as big
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: as CPAC and it's prime. And if I didn't actually
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: go to the, the 2020 CPAC that Borat was at,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: like the one where COVID was coming down, you have
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: the clip of Mike Pence saying, as of today, there
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: are 27 cases of COVID night. You know, like I
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: wasn't at that, uh, that CPAC. I was, I, I
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: skipped that. I was just covering Democrats, like everyone dropping
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: out for Biden. Uh, But I remember it used to
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: fill that whole National Harbor Conference Center, and it didn't anymore.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: And a lot of people left because of the scandals around, well,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: one scandal around Matt Schlapp, which he has denied making
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: an unwanted sexual advance on a Herschel Walker staffer there
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: in court. He says he didn't. Most Republicans will say
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: he didn't, but a lot of them said, well, it
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: was a great year to skip. So, like, Fox Nation
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: skipped after spending a quarter of a million dollars. The
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: RNC spent eighth of a million dollars previous years. They
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: skipped this one. A lot of people just said, it's
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: not worth it. Maybe they'll come back. And it didn't
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: have the function it used to of, well, there's Donald Trump, or, well,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: there's a Republican field. Who else is in this? It
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: didn't have that function. It just was about a Trump
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: restoration with some other people allowed to come along and
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: hang out. I didn't even hear the only conversation about
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: who should run for vice president. It wasn't about Haley.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: It wasn't about Pompeo or anyone else. It wasn't about
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Perry Johnson, who I know more about, but I'm not
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: sure it's worth spending time on him. It was Carrie Lake.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Carrie Lake was there for the Reagan dinner, and she
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: won the VP. It was just a Trump crowd that
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: thought he won the election, she won her election. Even
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: though that means they're technically both now president and governor,
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: they should run for president and vice president. That was
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: the mood.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Tommy, love it. Anything stand out to you guys from
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Trump's speech?
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: I mean, I noticed, you know, as with any sequel,
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: you got to kind of up the stakes. So we
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: went from concern about socialism to Marxism is coming. So
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: everybody keep an eye out for that. I noticed he
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: flip flopped on early voting. We're now saying we need
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: to swamp the left with early votes, mail in votes,
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: same day votes until we eliminate ballot harvesting. We will
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: become masters at ballot harvesting.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: That was interesting.
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: They've sort of realized the political implications of telling lots
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: and lots of people not to vote a way that
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: makes it easier for them to vote. I always take
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: note of the isolationist language. There was a lot of like,
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: we should be in East Palestine, Ohio, and not in Ukraine.
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: We should lock down our border, not the Ukrainian border.
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: You know, that's a very extreme sort of MAGA America
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: first version of it. It did make me think, though,
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: is this all that different than John Kerry in 2004
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: saying we should be building firehouses in Indiana, not Iraq, right?
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's sort of always a version of this
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: in politics.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: It was a little bit different than that. I would
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: say it was different than CPAC one year ago, because
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: CPAC 2022 is the same weekend that Russia invades Ukraine,
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: and no one knew what to think yet. So you
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: started to hear some people in the crowd. I remember
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: talking to a congressional candidate named George Santos and asking
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: for his take, which is now the mainstream take, that
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: we shouldn't be involved at all, like Russia's not that bad,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: et cetera. But I remember a lot of the speeches
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: talked about the bravery of Zelensky, and they weren't The
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: narrative hadn't shifted yet to any money spent there is
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: being taken away from widows and orphans in America. It's
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: also you mentioned the Kerry thing. The difference between this
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: and that, though, is they're not saying and we should
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: also be spending more money. And they're saying it when
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: George Bush wasn't like passing infrastructure bills and like going
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: to open bridges. Biden is. So they're just it's just
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: kind of like a knee jerk line that is not
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: followed up. And that's why we will instead of Ukraine,
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: we're going, well, I guess it's finishing the wall, but
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: not a bunch of other policy. Trump has been kind
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: of policy centric. in his campaign so far, and no
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: one has really competed with him. I mean, Nikki Haley
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: barely says what she's going to do, but it's not
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: building more stuff. It's, I'm going to get in there,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: lock the border back down, stop Medicaid from covering gender
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: identity therapy, all that. He's been heavy on that, but not,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: we're going to build things. It's that the country is
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: about to collapse because of Joe Biden. I mean, he
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: needs to stop him.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Not a fan of the flying cars in the Midwest megacities?
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, the- Freedom cities.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That's a policy, though, the freedom cities.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: They do sound like just somebody- somebody from the uae
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: just like talked to trump and got him like got
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: him at the buffet it's 20 minutes saudi neom it's
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: like the long somebody's like the line he saw that
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: yeah things that no one would want to live in
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: and no one will ever live in but they look
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: amazing on like a render that you can show somebody
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: in a powerpoint that's right and i think i think
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: my guess uh you know having it's a couple days
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: ago i haven't i haven't gone to his brain trust
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: my guess is like If it looks really cool in
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: another country, he does military parades, right? He went to France.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: They marched. He thought that looked cool. He tried to
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: do it in America. I think he's definitely been like
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: MBS-pilled by the coolness of these city designs.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: You can tell that his staff is definitely aware of
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the criticism that all he does is talk about his
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: own personal grievances because you can hear him try to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: make the turn a little bit in the speech towards
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the grievances of others. With the retribution, I am your
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: retribution line. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, there were a lot of January 6th people
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: there and people wearing shirts like, you know, Ashley Babbitt
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: murdered by Capitol Police. That was a theme there. So
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: I think he was leaning into that too. That was
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: a hit. He dropped a January 6th song. He did.
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: Literally a collaboration with January 6th people who were in prison.
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: It was him doing the, reciting the pledge, I think,
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: and them singing.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I've always wanted them to work together. A lot of
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: people have been saying that.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I do think in general, the crime stuff got It's
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: getting even darker with each new speech, even if the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: policies aren't really changing. Like he's talked about creating the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: tent cities before, but now it's for the homeless, the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: drug addicted, and the severely deranged. He's added as well,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: he's talking about cracking down on juvenile criminals. He said
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: on these out-of-control monsters, young though they may be, and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: impose tough consequences on juvenile criminals. It's like, oof.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: It's getting pretty dark.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's no point in saying, oh, how hypocritical that
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: thing that Donald Trump said, like, who cares? But but
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: it is a reversal from the 16 and 20 versions
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: where he was running against a Democrat who was there
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: in the 90s and said, like, maybe maybe like some
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: criminal should go to jail. And he really he thought
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: he could drive a truck through that with to some
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Democratic voters. Like still my favorite one of my favorite moments,
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: the 2020 campaign, which is it's not hard to choose
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: because it was a good campaign. was there was like
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: a week when there were ads in Pennsylvania both saying
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden put too many black men in jail and
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden is going to get rid of the police
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: and you're going to get murdered. And he's gotten more,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, he will never talk about the First Step
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Act again.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: He's said now.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: He's now a crime guy.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: He's a nice crime guy. He's vacillated, but he now
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: has said a number of times that he blames Jared
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: for pushing him into that. He regrets it and sort
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: of redounding back to his comfort zone here.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this is who he was in the 80s.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: This is like, you know, Central Park 5 Trump. That felt,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, not just Stephen Miller gave him a script,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: but that feels very Trump. Like, he's watching TV, he watches,
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: you know, Newsmax or Tucker Carlson or something, and he
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: sees the footage, you know, I could probably all find
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: the neighborhood in, like, Venice and, like, downtown LA that
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: they get the B-roll. He sees that and he's like,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: lock him up, lock him up, put him in a
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: tent city out in the desert in Palmdale.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And he seems even more passionate about crime than... Immigration
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: even in in the latest couple speeches like he still
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: has his immigration lines But he really seems like he's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: zeroing in on the crime is where he really wants
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: to uh make his crazy mark Um.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: We can we can look we can mock the writing
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: and it is terrible writing But you see pompeo and
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: you see haley up there with these insipid boring Flat
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: speeches without much to say and trump gets up there
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: and says I am your retribution And if i'm i'm
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: indicted i'm gonna run even harder And he cosplayed as
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: a candidate, then he cosplayed as president, and now he's back.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: And it is powerful in that room.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Also, they both sound like, you know, neocons from the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Bush era, right? Like, Trump started the speech with anti-war,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: pro-entitlement rhetoric. Bullshit as it may be, like.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo didn't even really try to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: go there.
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: Trump paints the most apocalyptic vision of the future of
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: the country out of anyone by far. I mean, he
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: literally says, basically, if you don't elect me, you're going
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: to have World War III. In this context, he's talking
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: about how easy it would be for him to stop
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: the war between Russia and Ukraine. But he means it
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: in all kinds of ways, like culturally, the world is
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: going to end. Financially, the world is going to end.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: The whole thing is a sort of like It really
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: is kind of an old estimate apocalyptic vision.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: And he's going to keep having that lane, if not
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: to himself. I mean, DeSantis had no answer on Ukraine.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Now his answer on Ukraine is the Trump answer. Haley
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: doesn't have that answer. And there's just no shrinking and
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: shrinking and shrinking pool of Republican voters to talk to
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: if you believe maybe America should take a role in
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: helping Ukraine win. That's not his position. That's not the
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: one that's going to win.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I think it would be cool if he said, and
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: if I'm indicted, I'm just going to step back and
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: really focus on my defense.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he didn't mention any of his current rivals
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: by name, though he did say this.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists,
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: open border zealots, and fools. But we are never going
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: Jeb Bush. We're not going back to people that want
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: to destroy our great social security system. even some in
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: our own party.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I wonder who that might be. So we've been talking
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: about how Trump wants to define DeSantis and the other
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: candidates as establishment rhinos in the mold of Jeb and
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Paul Ryan. How much of a challenge do you think
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: that will be for him, particularly with DeSantis?
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: With DeSantis, the opening is there because DeSantis was a
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: congressman for six years and He was there during during
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: the not the first debt limit fight. But, you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: let's stop Obamacare. He signed on to every Ryan budget.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: So the numbers are there for it. It's just none
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: of that became became law. I think he can do
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: it because DeSantis, he at least he at least stagger
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: him because DeSantis is never. He just doesn't take questions.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: People who ask about that. I mean, he he's on
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: this bill talking to talk about it. this media tour, uh,
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: the speaking tour, he talks to friendly media that just
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: ask him how well he's doing. Uh, I mean, he's created,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: created or handed, handed like, you know, for, for, for, uh,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: advice to the, to his friendly media. So he's like
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: the most veal pen, uh, candidate in this race. He
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: just never, he never has somebody asking about a part
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: of his record. And this is not like a scandalous
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: part of record. It's became scandalous because Trump won and
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: you're not allowed to be interested in, slicing back entitlements
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: in Trump's Republican Party, he's never asked. So I think
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: if he forces DeSantis to an answer, I think that's
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: the first thing I think DeSantis doesn't have a pat
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: response to.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The tough thing, guys, is when it comes down
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to the nickname. He's been testing out even more nicknames.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And if you want to cast DeSantis' establishment, maybe you
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: go with Ron Deestablishment, which apparently he's testing out, Ron DeSonest.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: But then he's also been testing out Tiny D, which...
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know. What do you guys think?
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Grown adults. Grown adults. I want to know who the
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: freaks are. What are you saying? That's what Lovett was
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: just asking me.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: That before we were recording.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Who are the freaks?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Let's see.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: We don't know who the freaks are. I'm like, there's
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: homophobia under freaks. I'm just going to keep an eye on,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: so I'll keep our.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Heads about us. You can't be a fun freak?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Well, sure, you can. I don't think that's what Trump
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: would mean. I think when he was the first to
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: call Rove in the Bush years, you can think he's
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: talking about Ken Melman. talking about the pro-gay side of
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party. They're trying to kind of excommunicate. Yeah,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the tiny D thing, you know, it's because his last
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: name starts with D and it could be a reference
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: to his penis and he's short.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Did you get it?
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Surprising.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I feel like Trump's attention span, Trump on true social,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: where his id comes out, he wants to share these
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: things that kind of malign DeSantis as a weirdo, as
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: a kind of, ambitious, creepy guy, shared the pictures of
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: DeSantis at a party with high school people, maybe. So
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's a matter of time before he, this,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Paul Ryan Republicans, that's not where his heart's going to be.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: He wants to call this guy a fucking creep and
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: he's going to get there. And it's just a matter
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: of time.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: He's been trying and within the media, I will see
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: people react as if this is the most, this is
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: it guys. Like this is what we've been getting ready for.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Trump going negative. Just no one on the right ends
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: up caring. I think they're there's such strong closure around
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: their media system that I'll mention more than ever. I mean,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: even five years ago, I'd mentioned a Republican voter or
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: something I'd heard. More than ever, if it's like a
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Trump pushback against DeSantis, they haven't heard much about it
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: because he does it on true social. He doesn't do
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: it when he does the Newsmax or John Solomon interview.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, he needs to say more out loud, I think,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: for people to become aware. There's a video clip of
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: him attacking, and he does have like the the poster
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: version of his attacks, and then the one that he
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: will go out and deliver.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: That's interesting because we were talking about how DeSantis has
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: avoided criticizing Trump directly because he's worried about pissing off
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Trump voters. I wonder if the reverse is true as well,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: where Trump doesn't want to go too hard. Again, truth
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: social aside, for example, he didn't mention DeSantis' name. He said, oh,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: we wonder who I'm talking about. I wonder if he's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: doing that because he knows that a lot of Republican
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: voters actually, even though if they love him, they like
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis as well.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Well, like the ecosystem is different than it was in
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: 16 and then 20 with these presidents. So it's different.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: But he used to he used to tweet things. Everyone
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: in the media is on Twitter. People in the media
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: would write. I remember I think it's CNBC still has
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: the image that pops my head every time of this
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: is breaking news. Trump tweet like the guy around like
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: it's announcing the land invasion.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: And he doesn't do that. So he will, he will
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: post some stuff on true social and people on true social,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: like kind of see it. And if you love Trump already,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: you say, I wish he wouldn't. And he move on. Um,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: but he's not tried to like, that's what's, there are
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: many things different about this race, weirder about this race.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: That is the biggest one thus far is that the
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: media is just, is just having, we're covering something that
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: is happening next to the, the DeSantis Trump battle and
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: nothing they're doing is, is, is being trafficked through the
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: mainstream media. It's just like, people will report back to
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: like Maggie Haberman, John Swan or whatever. He had this insult.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: And that's it. Like he's not going on. But it
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: used to be, I mean, I remember being in Wisconsin
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: with like Ted Cruz. Trump had tweeted some stuff and
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: everyone in the press corps was like, what do you
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: make of this tweet? And Cruz would say, I don't
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: like it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Well, there was that gathering in Palm Beach and Trump
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: could have gone much harder than that. It's like, forget,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: it's like there's still, he's leaving a little bit of
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: like an off ramp for people that are, you know,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: DeSantis curious people. or for people that skip CPAC to
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: do Club for Growth, he's still leaving space for those
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: people to come home.
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: I still find the Rhino thing hard to believe. I
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: watched DeSantis' Reagan Library speech and there is a very
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: establishment-y vibe about him. He's at this presidential library. He's
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: not like the Gipper. He's not like a thousand-watt smile
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: with his jokes that he's told 10,000 times about Hollywood,
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: but he's there with his wife and his four- and six-year-old,
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: and they're telling stories, and he's trying to have a
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: personality and seem like a human being. but he's more
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: optimistic than Trump. What I thought he said that needled
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: Trump a bit is he said, you didn't hear from
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: my team lots of leaking and backbiting. We just got
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: stuff done. We did it efficiently and we beat the
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: libs over and over again. That felt like a direct
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: shot at the Trump White House. And then he said,
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: he talks about how we did an outsource decision-making on
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: COVID to Fauci and creating, quote, a Faucian dystopia or a, quote,
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: biomedical security state. So it does seem like DeSantis is
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: just really laying down a.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Path to go hard at Trump over COVID handling.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Everything you mentioned is, is about Trump. He does that
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: in his book too. I mean, everything I pulled out
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: from his, I did like a speed read it right
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: as soon as it was coming out. Uh, and the
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: stuff that jumps out is, is it's not just how
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: he retells the stories, but he'll mention, and then the
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: white house got this wrong. Or, uh, even the, does
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: the way that he, uh, the, the, the whole Disney
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: thing was showing you like recapitulate the whole thing, but
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: basically he legislatively, the way, the way he took away
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: the Disney state in central Florida, uh, was attaching it
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: at the very end of a special session. He has
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: a whole section about how smart he was going behind
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: the scenes to do that. Implication, there are some Republicans
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: who are unable to smartly do anything behind the scenes.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: It leaks the front page of the New York Times.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: It leaks on, they do a 60 minutes thing about it.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Not him. I mean, he just knows how to move
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: in there with the SEAL team and attack and win
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: and get out.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I think you cover this too. There's a number of
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: times in the book where he talks about, DeSantis talks
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: about how he was ready to do the right thing
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and he had to wait for Trump to come on board.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: I wanted to move the president the embassy to Jerusalem,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: he had to get Trump on board. I wanted to
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: do this on COVID and Trump did or didn't know
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: what he was going to do.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because I would say it's even establishment.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: He is the like the Tea Party seed planted in 2011.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: That is him. That is the Mark Meadows version of things.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: A lot of these guys melded with Trump and their
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: brands got crossed with Trump. But he is more more
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: of a 2011 like we need to destroy the left's
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: march through institutions. And Tea Party was it was I mean,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: it's some argument you could you could make about barely
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: about finance, like the budget is not smaller after the
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Tea Party fades away. It was about we didn't realize
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: our country was being taken away from us. How do
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: we get it back? And his answer 10 years later is, well,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: I figured it out. You just, you know, like win
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: super majority control of a state and pass bills and
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: watch them cry. Like what he's doing in new college.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: That's that general story of I use the power of
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: the state to dismantle the academic left. Trump was president
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: for four years. Trump didn't do that. Trump never thought
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: of attaching. So that's that point you make about the book.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: That's totally it. If you read it as who isn't
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: good at this, the answer in the book is always
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: He said, you don't see a drama in palace intrigue.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: You see surgical precision and execution.
• 22:48
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Just that's about Trump. No, no.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Kellyanne Conway in the Santa's world.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So I can't imagine that Trump's just back to Trump
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and CPAC for a second. I can't imagine Trump's comments
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: about running if he's indicted are too surprising to anyone. But.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: He also said that an indictment would increase his poll numbers. Tommy,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: what do you think about that? I mean, it's stupid.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: Maybe it would be the case.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I over-remember well.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: Who was the New York Times columnist who said that
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: the FBI just gave the nomination to David Brooks, right?
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: So I think any kind of prediction like that is silly.
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: Trump is obviously going to make the silliest version, which
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: is it will help me 10 times more than you think.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: But I take nothing at face value from him. Yeah,
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I think it helps short term in a primary. It didn't.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think when Brooks was saying that, the
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: idea was because I remember I was in upstate New
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: York for the special election where the Democrat was running
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: on abortion. And I think the attitude was, well, is
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: this going to be their answer to the Dobbs decision?
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: And neither the Republican candidate nor any voter thought that way.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: They're like, hey, that's Trump. That's probably a problem. They're
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: probably voting him or whatever. They didn't they didn't factor
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: it in for the for the hardcore MAGA voter vote. Um,
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: he needs to spin it though. Cause like Ron DeSantis
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: is not going to be indicted for anything. Uh, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: he needs, he needs to.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Make it a badge of honor. You didn't get indicted.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: He did.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: You're pushing them so hard. Where, why aren't they indicting you?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: But he has like, DeSantis has plenty of things that
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: like the, the wrong people attack him over. Just not
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: like the, he has, he has other things like he's
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: been at war with, with like the, uh, federal government,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: the education, education department, the, He criticized the Mar-a-Lago. He
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: can do that. Mar-a-Lago writers should say he can do
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: that stuff. He just like will not personally be indicted.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: So Trump needs to do. This is not like this
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: is really only as a Trump thing. There's never been
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: another Republican who benefits from from actually committing a crime
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: and being charged for it. They'll say that I'm being railroaded. But, yeah,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know how that's going to play out. I
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: think it does give him a short term burst because
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: everyone talks about him and every other Republican will react
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: by saying this is terrible. This is a miscarriage of justice. Yeah,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: I think it's like it. If DeSantis runs a good campaign,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: I don't think that's going to be the definitive stopping.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I also think that if there is a segment of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party that could potentially decide the primary that
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: is very concerned with electability, you know, Trump running with
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a couple indictments might weigh on them a little bit
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: more than you might think. Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Don't bother me.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: It didn't help Hillary Clinton when she was investigated in 2016.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: It certainly didn't.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: It certainly didn't. Before we move on from CPAC, Dave,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: any other notable moments or messages from that circus while
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you were there for those couple of days?
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: I wrote about how much talk there was about China
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: throughout every panel. And also partly because some people had
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: backed out, like I mentioned. Steve Bannon's group with this
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Chinese exile, new federal state of China, had a huge
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: sponsorship and multiple booths and high-tech audiovisual events. room, which
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I remember because I was interviewing them to get some
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: facts about this group that Steve Bannon supports that wants
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. And I was like,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: who can I talk to for the facts? And they
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: brought me onto their TV set and just interviewed me.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: And I said, well, while we're here, you're the facts guy.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: How many how many volunteers are at the conference? But
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: then the Epoch Times Network, the same thing like the
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: new like there were a ton of anti-Chinese Communist Party media.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: And this has been going on for years, like three,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: at least three or four years. that a lot of
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: the Chinese exile following Gong, we cannot have peace so
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: long as Xi Jinping is premier. They really were feeling
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: themselves and they were much more present. And that attitude
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: that everything stemmed from this coming conflict with China, which
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: people like Joe Biden are making worse, which Trump tried
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: to win. We blew past Pompeo. But like, that's the
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: point he's trying to make that no one's listening to
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: is that Trump actually got kind of snowed by these guys.
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: I think he is attitudinally correct, like right there with
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: the base, but just they're not paying attention to him.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: But the idea that China just literally, they tried to
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: destroy us with the COVID virus. They tried to destroy
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump personally by releasing it when it was an
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: election year. They're stealing our IP. They're spying on us.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: All that much more kind of like a great power conflict.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Even though they're moving away from neocon attitudes, it's more
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: like what I would hear from John Bolton 10 years
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: ago at CPAC. And you were not hearing the same.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: We are in a midnight struggle for Taiwan. It's really,
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: it's not new. I mean, this is like who lost
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: China is, As old as this version of China. But
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: I wasn't hearing it at previous CPACs. The move was,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: let's de-escalate. It's the libs who want to bomb people
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: and get into foreign conflicts. They're not saying we want
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: a war with China. It's that we need, what's it,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Vivek Ramaswamy, who was also there, was running for president
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: based on his book.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Anti-woke platform.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and his anti-woke platform was like, we need a
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: declaration of independence from China, cutting off all manufacturing, all drugs,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: go back to 1998 before we had trade status. That
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: was like not I think it didn't show up as
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: many articles because it was less of a headline grabby
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: than Trump or like the anti-trans stuff. But that was
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: like ran through everything. Every other panel was. And also
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: the Chinese are behind this. And also they're giving us fentanyl.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: And also they're addicting our kids to TikTok, et cetera.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Incredibly conspiratorial.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, speaking of the anti-trans rhetoric there, one of
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the more horrifying moments was when Daily Wire host Michael
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Knowles said that, quote, transgenderism must be eradicated from public
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: life entirely. the whole preposterous ideology. He and the Daily
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Wire then threatened to sue anyone who interpreted his comments
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: to mean that he was calling for harm against transgender people.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: What do you think about his attempt at drawing a
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: distinction there?
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: Love it.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what does he mean? You look at what the
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: anti-trans far-right actually advocates for when they say they want to,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: when he describes his ending transgenderism, which is they want
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: to punish doctors, provide evidence-based care to anyone, teens, adults, anyone,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: They want to ban that care.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: They are doing that.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: They're banning it in Mississippi and Tennessee and elsewhere. They
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: want to punish teachers who support and embrace trans kids.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And they want to make those teachers afraid to even
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: talk about LGBT issues because they're not sure exactly where
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: the law is going to end. They want to punish
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: parents who support those kids. That's what they're trying to
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: do or they are doing in Texas. And more broadly,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: they want to convince parents that if your child says
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: they are trans, they are being deluded. They are part
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: of a hoax. You should spurn them and not listen
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: to them. This isn't real. They want to ban trans
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: people for using bathrooms that match their gender, which is
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: another way of saying they want to make it unsafe
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: for trans people to exist in public. They want to
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: stigmatize and ban gender nonconforming performances of all kinds. They
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: want to malign nonconforming people and the entire medical community
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: as a danger to children while claiming that in order
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: to protect kids, they have to do medically, scientifically unjustified examinations.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: of kids in order to comport with an anti-trans moral
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: panic about sports. And as they do all of that,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: they then mock anyone who trans, non-binary, just gay or
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: queer or just not comporting with standards of masculinity and femininity.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: They want to ostracize anyone who does that as being
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: depraved and a harm to children. So not only Are
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: we going to tell you what your gender is? There's
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: only one way to be that gender. So it's live
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: exactly how we tell you to live. Then you have
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: our permission to exist. So, no, I don't think there
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: is a distinction. When they say they want to end
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: the ideology, they do mean they want to make it
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: impossible for trans people or non-binary people to exist in
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: public life. And so they are part of an eradication campaign.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: As all fascistic movements do, they like to troll and
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: pretend they're not saying what they're obviously saying. Claim offense
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: when you point out the implications of what they're actually saying.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: We're here to fix you, is what they want to say.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Michael Knowles is kind of a slimy B-team propagandist at
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: the Daily Wire. And he knows exactly what he's doing here.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: He chose the word eradicated for a reason. And he
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: chose the word transgenderism for a reason. Because he wants
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: to make clear that he doesn't think transgender people have
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: the right to exist. but then get offended when you
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: point out how dangerous that language is or the logical
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: extension of that language. And I agree with you, it's
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: a distinction without a difference because he has said previously
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: that transgender people, quote, are not a legitimate category of
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: being and therefore cannot be the target of genocide. But
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: that doesn't make it better. You can't tell people that
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: they are illegitimate. These are human beings. It's a group
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: of people. You're saying you don't exist, that you can't exist,
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: you can't live your life in the way you want.
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: That is the definition of dehumanizing language. And so, yes,
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: this guy is like a B-list troll, but he also
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: has influence. Until very recently, he did a podcast with
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: Ted Cruz, until Ted Cruz dumped him to go take
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: the show to iHeart. But he's not the only one
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: talking like this. It's like TPUSA. It's Candace Owens types.
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: It's the Daily Wire. And they try to gloss over
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: it with like faux intellectual language sometimes. And then Charlie
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: Kirk will go and say, man, we should take care
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: of these trans people the way men did in the
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: 50s and 60s, meaning physically harm them. And so I
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: do think it's worrisome. It should be called out. We
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: should refuse to play his little word game. And if
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: he wants to sue people that say as much, fuck you,
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: sue them.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: If someone gave a speech talking about eradicating Judaism or
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Christianity or Mormonism, what do you think the reaction would
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: be if they didn't say Jewish people, right? Like, come on.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: And this, you know, look, this is influential. Another Daily
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Wire person spoke at the bill signing of the Mississippi law.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: Was that Matt Walsh? Matt Walsh.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Some of the most incendiary violent rhetoric proudly embraces the
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: fact that he uses violent rhetoric around trans people.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: He talks about going to war against them.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: And so the other just point I would make too
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: is that like this is the context of the current,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: this is the context of the state of politics around
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: trans policymaking. You have outright bans, you have fascistic violent
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: rhetoric emanating from very big media organizations on the right.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: It is everywhere. It is on Fox. It is at CPAC.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: It is in the states. It is coming from powerful
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: people inside of states. And then you have a very
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: stupid conversation playing out on Twitter, dancing on the end
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: of a pin about the meaning of the word bias.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: And people really do need to get their heads out
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: of their asses and stop focusing so much on the
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: intra-liberal debate taking place among a very small group of
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: people and actually focus all of their ire and all
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: of their attention on the actual threat that is playing
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: out right now. Does the coverage that emanates from the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: New York Times, does that affect the coverage and the
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: impact in the politics in places like Mississippi and Tennessee
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: and elsewhere? It absolutely does. But we should focus on
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: the actual ongoing emergent threat right now.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I was thinking if the New York Times didn't exist,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: they'd still be doing that. Yeah, in those states, that
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: would still be happening.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the people in these movements,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: in these social conservative movements, look at what happened in
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: the UK. I think they're speedrunning it in ways that
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: are politically a little riskier. The UK, this is a
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: whole different topic. But the UK, it crosses party lines.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: A lot of the momentum for rolling back self-identification and
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: transgender rights comes from this thing called the LGB Alliance,
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: this fairly fringe group. But there are a lot of,
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: I'm a gay man. If I was a gay man
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: and I was given hormones and I was 10, I
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have grown up to be who I really am.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: that's kind of absent here. It is just the, the
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Matt Walsh, uh, um, the Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: version of things. And in your, it's very coherent. And
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: I feel like that is, um, that lives, these things
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: are just racing through state legislatures. There's no opposition that
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: matters to them when they pass. Uh, but as a,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: as a polit, as a political cause, it is concentrated
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: completely within the Republican party. And because it is, I
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: think it's getting, um, It's a little bit less, let's
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: worry about these children and more of that sort of,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: you know, patent in front of the flag rhetoric of
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: we need to stop this right now. We were at
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: war against this idea. I think any of you, any
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: of your people, especially conservatives have been called out. The
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: idea you could just obviate like an entire idea and
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: way of being somehow legally and it will go away.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: I think that that's what happens when you just get
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: so hyped up and you're not listening to yourself. You
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: don't have it's a strategy. It is just I want
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: those people to go away and And we've got momentum.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: So let's pass the make them go away forever law.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: That doesn't really make sense. But they don't have left
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: wing allies telling them to moderate these things like they
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: do in the UK. Yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And it is all very, there is a, you know,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: it is very frustrating that this is what is happening
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: in our politics. And meanwhile, there's a vast kind of
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: anti-woke ecosystem, the Barry Weisses and J.K. Rowling's and Bill
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Maher's and now Dave Chappelle's of the world all kind
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: of talking about the way in which this whole debate
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: is an imposition on them and the allegations against them.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: That is incredibly frustrating. But politically, I feel like we
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: have to move, we have to go past them and
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: focus on the actual laws and the substance of the
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: actual bills that are moving through the state houses and
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: then make a larger argument about these people like Michael
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Knowles and all these right-wingers who they just want to
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: tell you how to live in every way. They want
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: to tell doctors what to do and teachers what to
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: do and parents what to do. You know, when Mark Kelly,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: there's a great moment that Mark Kelly had in that
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: debate right before the election where he said something about
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: that skeleton. What's his name? Blake Masters. We all go
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: know guys like this. And Michael Knowles is another guy
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: like that. And we need to get back to a
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: larger argument about the way in which they are trying
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: to tell people how to live their lives and tell
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: parents how to parent and teachers how to teach and
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: get it out of this world. kind of bias, broader
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: debate that plays out amongst very engaged progressives online.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Great segue, because one of the people who's trying to
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: tell people how to live their lives like that is
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis. So let's dig a little bit more into
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: his speech at the Reagan Library in California that happened
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: on Sunday. Let's take a listen.
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: It's ideology run amok. That's why the quality of life
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: has declined in places like San Francisco and New York
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: City and Philadelphia and Chicago. It's all rooted in that.
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: And that woke ideology rejects the core foundational principles that
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: have made this country great. So in Florida, we say
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: very clearly, we will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: Our state is where woke goes to die.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Tommy, you were talking about what you... thought of the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: speech I'd like to hear more. It struck me as,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: this is like the first like full Ron DeSantis speech
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: that I've listened to. I thought it was interesting that
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: he began by trying to tell like the Florida story,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the story about Florida. And it was much more of
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: like a, general election intellectual pitch about what's happened in
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: florida than i had expected from ron desantis.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: A lot of economic data yeah which made it really
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: wonky and a little boring and then he gets to
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: the culture war stuff at the end of the speech
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: and that's where all the applause lines come in but
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: it's interesting because we were just talking about trump's speech
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: and trump sort of flips it trump didn't speak about
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: the economy and inflation until an hour 30.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Minutes into the speech And DeSantis does most of the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: beginning of the speech all about that. I thought that
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: was interesting.
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: And that to me was what like gave off the
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: establishment vibes and sort of the Reagan vibes. I mean,
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: DeSantis also has this little sort of war of words
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: going with Gavin Newsom where like Gavin Newsom attacks him
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: in the press and puts up posters in Florida or
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: in Texas about how great it is to live in
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: California and they go back and forth. And it frankly
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: benefits both of them. So I wonder if part of
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: that was just needling Gavin Newsom and talking about how
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: much better it is to live in Florida or have
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: a business in Florida than California, which has seen net
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: outflows of residents and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: He's like, I was growing up in Florida. You never
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: saw a California license plate. Now you see them all
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: the time.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: They go, it used to worry us.
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: You know, so I, you know, I, I, there is, there,
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: there's a piece of the message that's like, I'll do
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: all the culture war stuff, but I'm also.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Good at the job and I'm competent and I'm a little.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Less of a psycho. And he can, if he wins
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the primary, he can just sort of drop the last
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: quarter of the speed. You should at least minimize it.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Right. The anti-woke stuff is why he's famous. The economics
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: is more why he's popular. When the national press covers
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: his CRT, anti-diversity, anti-gay, anti-trans stuff, that's what covers the news.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: But then the part that probably had the biggest impact
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: is a bonus for teachers or raising teacher salary minimums, right?
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: So he has been very smart And we should be
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: aware of that, too. He's a great electability argument, too,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: which he barely won in 2018. And then he kicked
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Charlie Chris ass in 2022 by like a million votes.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't even say as much as he could.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, that they like got us here. majority. They
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: now have like no Democratic opposition to speak of. Like
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: they humiliated like everyone up and down, up and down
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: the ballot. It's also it's also coherent. So the thing
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: that if you're like going to Reagan Library to see
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: him and, you know, you're like a deputy undersecretary of
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: something and you retired, you know, like Sherman Oaks and
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: you want to see him. You want to hear more
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: about the economic stuff. It's more that he is a,
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: like Trump, although Trump kind of came around to it,
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: it's kind of ham-fisted. Like the DeSantis theory of how
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: the world works is just there is an incompetent elite
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: who was revealed by COVID to be incompetent. We never
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: need to listen to them. And if, hey, if they
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: were wrong about COVID, what else are they wrong about?
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: I bet everything. I bet they're wrong about everything. So
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: look at our tourism data. And then while you're looking
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: at it, look at our school choice program. Look at
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: our bill that makes it illegal for, you know, if
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: a fourth grade teacher to mention, to have a rainbow
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: flag in the room, uh, expertated that, well, they were
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: wrong about COVID. And that actually is, is just like
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: an icebreaker as a way to, as a way to
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: get an audience going has been very effective and he's
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: built on it with, um, this very, you know, they,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I think liberals think you, you mentioned Orban in Hungary
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: and that might, that might spook people in Florida. Not, not,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: not a, not a, not really controversial to be there.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: There's cross-pollination that they talk about between, uh, A European
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: state that figures, all right, we don't trust the experts.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: We're going to build our own national national state and
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: go back to traditional values. Exactly what he's doing. And
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: so he actually only sells it as well as like
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: unlike Trump. I feel like once he's rolling, he's the
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: best explaining why. Why? Like people liked him in office.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: The DeSantis version can be a little more boring than
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: the one that excites people so much, which is like
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: I am going to personally. It's not just like humiliated Fauci.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: But I humiliate, like, the medical, whole entire medical industry.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: The same people who are providing, you know, HRT and stuff.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: They're probably wrong, too. They're probably in it for the money, too.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know how long, but I sometimes
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: hear people think, oh, can you just talk about COVID forever?
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: And it's more than COVID. It's like, every time I'm tested,
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: I disagree with the establishment and I'm right.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: The thing I'm trying to figure out is, about this
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: primary with him and Trump, is it seems like DeSantis'
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: argument is, it's a very intellectual argument. He's trying to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: make a case. He's trying to, like, It's a it's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: a head argument.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: And obviously there's a I think among college educated Republicans,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: we're seeing this in the early polls already. DeSantis is
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: like crushing Trump among college educated Republicans. But knowing the
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: composition of the Republican Party right now and how most
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: of the party now is non-college educated white folks, I
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: sort of wonder if there are and there's more of
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: them than the college educated set in the Republican Party.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Sort of wonder if that argument will find an audience
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: as big as Trump's argument.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I feel like the Trump, what you
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: were talking about, trying to make him look like part
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: of the establishment thing is a good way in. Just
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: anyone who's been who's held elective office can't be trusted,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: which is something like DeSantis trafficked in. Like he won
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: his House seat by beating a guy who'd served one
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: term in the state legislature and he called him a
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: career politician. Like he knows how this works.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: But but that that DeSantis argument, I mean, he has
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: like Leonard Skinner wrote a song for him. He does
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: have that appeal to the beer track. voter and he
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: destroyed I mean he had like historic margins with exactly
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: the kind of voter we're talking about better than Trump
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: not just like Miami and Palm Beach County but like
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: that guy who has the Trump flag absolutely I mean
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: the flag I've seen I've been to Florida in a
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: minute but I've seen a lot of like Trump DeSantis
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: flags it is just convincing people that you should dump
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: him and put him in power but I've not met
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: a Trump voter who does not like DeSantis and worse
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: they're like he should just get more seasoning and then
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: be president for eight years after Trump.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And it does seem like and you guys were talking
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: about this with DeSantis's book It seems like his argument
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: against Trump that's emerging, and right now it's a very
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: sort of oblique argument, is that Trump was just sort
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: of messy and undisciplined. It's a competence thing. Yeah, right?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: And that like the guy, first there's an electability argument.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: There's also he made decisions. He wasn't great at making decisions.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: He was kind of impulsive. You don't like his behavior.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like just a smarter version of him.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll own the libs without the chaos. Even the
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: way they talk about college. Trump loves talking about how
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: he went to a good college. Remember, I think one
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: of his worst political antenna moments was when he makes
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: fun of Biden for not going to as good of
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: a college as he did in the debate. And DeSantis'
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: version of things is like, I went to Harvard and
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Yale and I learned I must destroy these people. He
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: never emphasized that he went there except to say, and
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: I learned, that they are destroying America from within. They
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: have been for decades. Not, look at my shiny degree.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Doesn't care about it.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Sometimes people make good points.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, just.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the worst person I know just made a really
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: good point.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: So here's some of what DeSantis wants to get through
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Florida's annual legislative session that begins this week. Concealed carry
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: without a permit, eliminate diversity and equity programs at state colleges,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: expand school vouchers, allow death sentences without a unanimous jury,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: repeal in-state tuition for dreamers, make it easier to sue
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the media for libel and further restrictions on abortion. Lovett,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: what do you think are the biggest targets on that
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: list for Democrats should Well, I was going to say,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: should DeSantis make it to the general, but maybe to
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: start talking about right now while he's still in the primary. Yeah.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: So just first of all, when he did the banning
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: of diversity and equity programs, he said he wants to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: fight ideological conformity, which, but, and the way he's doing
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: it is by banning one kind of teaching and mandating
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Western civ. And it's like nothing, nothing makes us more
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: kind of ideologically heterodox than everybody does a week on
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: the fucking Greeks. And then everybody does a week on
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: the Romans and then one week on Jesus, then about
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: the dark ages. Um, That's just a small point I
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: wanted to make.
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: Trump is talking about architecture, too.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It really is just like, I don't know why these
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: things always end up going together, but that's fascism for you.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Trump wants to clean up the building.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: They want Roman columns. They want symmetrical columns, big fucking arches,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: none of this modern shit. It's 2023. Pave a road.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: You're against the Bauhaus? What the fuck is going on?
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: So stupid.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: I got trapped with these fucking assholes. Anyway, the point
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: is to two policies I pull from that one for
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: the restrictions on abortion. Florida currently has a 15 week
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: abortion ban that has exceptions for life or serious injury,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: but not for sexual assault or incest. DeSantis is aware
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: of how bad the politics on this are. He barely
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: references abortion in the book. I think it seems like
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: he'd hoped the 15-week ban would get him through but
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: it won't activists feel like he's not leading There's a
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: push for a six-week ban. He's now embraced that push
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: The only reason the only thing that stands in its
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: way is a Republican supermajority and some resistance among Republicans
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: in in the Senate So that's that is gonna be
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: I think something Democrats try to make toxic with some
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: hard votes even though they don't have the ability to
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: stop it and the other is concealed carry and Only
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: 14% of Americans want looser gun laws. Most Republicans don't.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Most conservatives don't. Concealed carry without a permit is an
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: 80-20 issue. Even among Republicans, only 35% support it. I
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: think abortion is a big one. Then the permitless concealed carry.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: And then he's going after these fucking dreamers. Rick Scott
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: signed the bill to allow dreamers to use in-state tuition.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: By 80-20, Americans, Republicans, everybody believes dreamers should be able
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: to stay and have a good life. And it's this
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: cruel thing. Rick Scott went out of his way to
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: criticize DeSantis over that. The only reason he's doing it
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: is because he's such a fucking loser of an issue.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I got to say, too, that he's dictating what
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: exactly is taught in our schools and going through colleges, too.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's... I don't think it's super popular
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: across the country because it doesn't really scream freedom.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why he makes the point about we're fighting
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: ideological conformity. He feels the weakness that he's going after
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: people's ability to learn what they want to learn.
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and unlike the sort of Michael Knowles of the world,
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: he tries to scope his culture war arguments in ways
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: that sound more palatable. He's like, look, we're just telling
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: teachers you can't teach sex ed to, you know, third graders.
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: You know, he's like, what's so crazy about that? He
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: acts like sort of the left completely overreact. But, you know,
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: arguably maybe the most important Bill Ford DeSantis in this
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: session would be one that would allow him to run
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: for president without resigning first.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Yes, I saw that one. He's slipping that one in.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: Keep an eye on that one.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: All right, before we go, President Biden caused a bit
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: of a kerfuffle last week when he tweeted the following
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: about the D.C. council's changes to the city's criminal code. quote,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I support D.C. statehood and home rule, but I don't
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: support some of the changes that the D.C. council put
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: forward over the mayor's objections, such as lowering penalties for carjackings.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: If the Senate votes to overturn what the D.C. council did,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I'll sign it. This enraged many criminal justice advocates, D.C.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: residents and House Democrats, many of whom just voted against
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: repealing the new criminal code after the Biden administration had
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: released a statement that also opposed repealing the new criminal
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: code on the grounds that, quote, Congress should respect the
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: District of Columbia's autonomy to govern its own local affairs. OK,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: so for people who may not know, what's the backstory
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: on this crime bill and why can the federal government
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: overturn what the D.C. Council does?
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: Well, D.C. is not a state. Please call in with
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: your comments about this. I mean, it's in the Constitution
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: as a zone where the government works. It has a
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: home rule deal with Congress. It's had rights mostly expanded
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: since the 60s, never not really retracted, except when Newt
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: took over. They took a couple of hours away because
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Marion Barry was mayor. And there is a tug of
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: war where D.C. representing liberalism, representing like a majority black
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: liberalism and urban policy is a punching bag for Republicans.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: That's just been that's been true for the entire history
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: of Home Rule, really, since the 60s.
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: Home Rule just specifically says the Congress reviews can review
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: legislation passed by the city.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Home Rule is referring to the powers D.C.
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: Has.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: But like in case you get out of line and
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: this is something that a lot of states have. Florida,
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: good example. Lots of laws in Florida pass like, hey,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: your city is not allowed to do X, Y, Z.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: The difference is you can still elect a state rep
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: from that city. You can't in Congress. Just you have
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: no voting representation. So that's the backstory. Congress has the
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: power to do this. DC had been working on updating
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: its criminal code, which has not been updated in decades.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: with a combination of years, I believe.
• 49:37
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Uh, I mean, there've been tweaks, but like, like the
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: last time Congress overturned him in the DC criminal code,
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: it was, they, they reduced like the criminal penalties for
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: like adultery and sodomy in Congress. And no, no, no, no.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: We need to keep that on the books. But they've
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: been doing this for a while. they, the mayor opposed
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: some changes, the code that were more lenient. They were
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: like lowering the sentence and guidelines, specifically carjacking, carjacking, the
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: one that gets the attention. Cause there's been a rise
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: in carjacking, just like teenagers jacking cars. Cause they, um,
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: anything else to do. Uh, It increased some other penalties.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: It created like gun crime penalties that didn't exist before.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: But the council didn't do a very good job explaining
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: any of this. And there was a kind of to
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: the extent anyone heard about it outside D.C., it was
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: the mayor was against part of it. A lot of
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: mayors mean like Larry Lightfoot just went down in flames
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: because there are a lot of Democrat mayors. If crime
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: went up under your watch, you either quit or lose.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: You need a good explanation for it. But they dawdled
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: because they're not used to Congress. They think they had
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: confidence in Biden. They had confidence in the Democrats, the Senate.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: They dawdled and they let it get into the zone
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: where there's 30 days that you have to overturn one
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: of D.C.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: 's laws.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: And their lobbying was, please save this law because it's
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: not the mayor's letter to the Senate, etc. Their lobbying
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: was not, we're going to defend this bill on the merits.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: We're going to defend how it actually increases penalties. It was, hey,
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: this is not nice.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Like D.C.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: 's taxation was at representation. You're doing you're violating our sovereignty.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: So they managed to get a fight with Biden over that.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: without getting into any of the substance of the law,
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: which is– Mark Joseph Stern at Slate has a good
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: article about the criminal code. There are things in there
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: that are politically toxic, but, like, there's any bill, any
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: update to the code, you can, like, sell it in
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: a particular way. You can emphasize, like, actually this puts
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: more people in jail for, like, violent crimes, or you
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: can not say anything, which is what they did. So there's, like,
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: a little political story here about the D.C. Council– of just,
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: they're all Democrats having no idea how to like politics,
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: just do politics. But the larger story is, yeah, they
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: tried to update this, this code. It was a, I mean,
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: you had a mayor who looked like the, the, the
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: iconic Marion Barrow Bowser, the mayor of DC move was
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: she painted black lives matter on 16th street in front
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: of the white house. And then activists painted equals defund
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: the police. And she painted over that. Like she is
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: a very symbolic, let's keep things, let's keep the party.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Let's keep the party going while saying all the black
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: lives matter slogans, kind of mayor. And, none of them
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: are good at politics. Like none of them, none of
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: them were in a good position to say here is
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: a great series of reforms that will make the city safer.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: What they were competing with and they had no idea
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: about is Republicans going home and see their, their, their
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: voters see images of DC on TV or they'll hear
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: reports about the crime there. And it's just an easy
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: punching bag to say, I went there and I'm not
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: going to let this, this city that can't govern itself,
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: like make it more dangerous. I'm trying to go to
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: work in DC. Yeah. Just, just a case of just,
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: you know, Some good, some good policy ideas, some probably
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: bad policy ideas. And you're just like awful politics, not taking,
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: not taking seriously the new Republican majority in the House
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: of like five, you know, a five seat majority or whatever.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Absolutely cannot wait to like dismantle D.C.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Laws.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: They hate it.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think of the criticism of Biden?
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Well, so, yeah, today's what I mean. It's important to
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: point out the mayor of D.C.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Opposed the bill. Right.
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: Her veto was overridden. She says she supports 95 percent
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: of the bill. The part she's worried about are parts
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: that she thinks would explode the number of misdemeanor cases
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: that end up in jury trials. She's worried if every
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: misdemeanor case goes to a jury trial, it will overwhelm
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: the system. They'll never get anything done, whatever. The other
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: part is this. You mentioned carjacking. There's a provision that
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: drastically reduces the penalty for armed carjacking.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: The recommended penalty. Because right now it's 40 years. You're
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: going to explain. Today, what I read, and tell me
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: I'm wrong.
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: Today, I read that if someone commits an armed carjacking
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: and the victim is not injured, the minimum sentence is
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: 15 years. The new bill says the maximum sentence would
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: be eight years. So it's a big difference according to
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: the mayor's office. So Biden is getting hit on a
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: number of fronts. The first is people were saying he's
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: undermining DC statehood and I get where they are coming from,
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: but this is not a DC statehood bill. He would
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: sign a DC statehood bill. It's a bill going through
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: the current established, but also dumb process, right? So like
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: he's just working with the system he's got. The second
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: criticism is people who say he's undermining criminal justice reform.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: But I think what Biden would argue is, I'm in
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: favor of decriminalizing marijuana or reducing drug sentences, but I
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: never came out in favor of cutting in half potentially
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: the sentence for unarmed carjacking. The third criticism is from
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: Democrats in the House who voted for this bill, thinking
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: Biden put out an initial statement of administration policy that
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: made it seem like he had pledged to veto the bill,
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: even though the SAP didn't specifically say that. And now
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: these House Democrats feel like They had the rug pulled
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: out from under them because now Biden says he will
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: allow the bill to pass. So I think that is
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: a very fair criticism from House Democrats who are like, yo,
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: no heads up.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: Confusing statement of administration policy. Democrats did a terrible job
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: at every part of this. Yeah, well, that's still the
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: mystery to me is there's somebody in the White House
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: staff who put out this memo wasn't a veto statement.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: It was just like we're against the bill. And then
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: there was the president who didn't agree with that.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: And that's weird.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: That doesn't happen that often. You guys know that like
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: the White House comes to deposition remanded by the president
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: once he finds out about it. There's this weird wonky process.
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: I remember learning about it like six months into the
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: White House where bills come out and all of a
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: sudden there will be a statement that comes out from
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: OMB called a SAP, Statement of Administration Policy that sort
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: of lays out how you feel about it. And that's
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: what this is that we're talking about. And that we're
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: talking about that. And I guess there's just been no
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: real coordination on how that came out and what it
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: really meant.
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: Very good PR push by the antis, by the Republicans
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: on the car, the carjacking. He mentions in his, the
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: president mentions in his tweet, that is just a very
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: vivid crime that has gotten a lot of negative attention. DC,
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the irony being most, most of the gruesome cases are
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: like teenagers who wouldn't be subject to the full criminal
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: code because they're juveniles. But every time, I mean, if every,
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: it bleeds, it leads every time there's one of those stories,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: even I'm, I'll be across the country and I'll hear
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: about it. I'll, I'll like notice a Fox news does
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: have as much as there's like closure around conservative media, uh,
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: Fox News has the power by it ping pongs it
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: to a member, a Republican member of Congress, that Republican
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: member of Congress makes a speech. Fox News was driving
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: a lot of this. The White House reacts to Fox
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: News and the D.C. Council doesn't. And the rest of
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Democrats like Durbin, the rest, I think they just didn't
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: know what's going on. As far as I can tell,
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: they just had no idea how this is going to
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: play out.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: It's also, you know, this is a criminal justice reform
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: bill going for whatever tacit approval to a recently elected
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Republican House, many of whom have said, They want to
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: have more authority over D.C. One of the people that
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: has spearheaded the effort to reject this law wants to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: repeal the home rule altogether.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: And so in that- Or.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: Ban abortion in D.C., you know, repeal the gun laws
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: in D.C.
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: And so in that context, they, this bill goes from the,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: this bill is, they overcome the veto of the mayor.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: And the mayor basically says, I won't lobby for this
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: through someone on their team says, it's not up to
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: the mayor to lobby for something she doesn't believe in.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Which is just- You have a kind of divided D.C.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: government sending up a controversial bill in which you need
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: basically democratic unanimity. And once it was clear that it
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: might not might not be able to get through the Senate,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: which it was very easily going to lose, you know,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: your mansion, your cinemas, then a couple others. All of
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: a sudden, it's whether or not Biden is going to
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: actually veto it and make this a national issue. And
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: clearly they decided not to. And they'd rather the I'm
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: going to say it's serious of of angry House Democrats
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: who are right to be angry about this.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: And angry D.C. advocates who are right to be angry
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: about this than have a national issue in which D.C.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Democrats supported these carjacking rules.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's two issues here. One, you know, there's
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: criticism that the president can't be for D.C. statehood and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: self-rule while still signing the repeal of this criminal code.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: And I just think that, like you said this, as
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: of right now, The federal government still has the legal
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: responsibility to review what the D.C. council does. Right. Like
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: we wish it weren't so. But that's the law right now.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: And I don't know that they can abdicate that responsibility
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: just because they don't like what the law and the
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Constitution usually do.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Like the council will pass something and then Congress won't
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: do anything about it.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is if Congress takes it up,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: if the Republicans just what they did in this case
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: and decide to pass a resolution. I don't think the
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden Democrats can just say like, oh, well, the
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: reason we're not doing anything about it is because we
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: don't like the law. Because if the D.C. council decided
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: to outlaw abortion in the district, and I suspect that
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: most pro-choice activists and progressives and us would be saying, hey,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress, you should step in
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: and do something about that because you have the power.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: To do it.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: We probably would.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's right.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So I think we have to separate that from the
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: substance of the law, which people don't people aren't as
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: exercised about.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Of course. But the reality here, though, is that this
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: is not because the Democrats feel a responsibility to govern D.C.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: It is because they know you're you're soft on crime.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: You're pro carjacking is a more powerful and potent attack
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: than I was just deferring to the city council, as
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: we all believe we should do. Right.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: But I think all of the focus has been on
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the politics of this and the politics of crime. But
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: like and obviously the carjacking has received a lot of attention.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: And Mark Joseph Stern's piece in Slate is interesting on this,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: and it's been widely circulated. And he talks about how
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: the maximum sentence for armed carjacking has been reduced from
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: 40 years to 24 years, even though the harshest penalty
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: for that crime that's usually given is around 15 years.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: So he's like, what's the problem, right? But then if
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: you look at all the reduced maximum penalties in this bill,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: now this is the 5% that Mayor Bowser said she
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't approve. Carjacking that includes bodily injury is reduced from
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: 21 years to just four years. That's the most common
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: type of carjacking. They reduce the maximum sentence for first
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: degree murder from life without parole to 40 years. They
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: reduce the maximum sentences for first degree sexual assault, kidnapping,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: criminal abuse of a minor, and gun crimes at a
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: time when the number of shootings have been on the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: rise since the pandemic. So Politics aside, was it smart
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: to do that extra 5% that if everyone agrees that
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: 95% of the bill is great, critics and supporters, it's like, great.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: And Mayor Bowser basically said, can you fix the 5%
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: that's not great? And they said no.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: Let me play Ron DeSantis here and preempt DC's. But
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: the pattern in DC, like in a lot of cities,
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: has been... you look at data, the data shows most
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: people getting arrested and getting put in prison are black
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: and not white. And there have been responses to that policy.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: This was the most considered of them. I think the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: less considered was that in 2018, the council lowers the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: penalties for like jumping the turnstile and like, you know,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: riding the Metro for free, riding the bus for free.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: That has its own backlash. It's not as bad as this.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: This was, procedurally what you should do, which is years
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: of study for, for doing this stuff. They had experts
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: that were really well thought out. They really did think
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: it out. It was just, they ran into the buzzsaw of,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: and I, the reason I mentioned dawdling, cause it is
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: kind of complicated. If they just moved faster into this
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: in like October, Congress's role was done. You can only
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: do this because they passed it late enough. And cause
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: Bowser vetoed it. Just everyone in the process made a mistake,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: not knowing that Congress would, would, would do what the Republicans,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: the Congress said they would do. But yeah, that is,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: there were reasons they considered reasons why they tried to
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: reform this, but it all got caught up in that discussion.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: The mayor, you also have Indy. I mean, I worked
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: for the Washington post. You have at the, at the
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: Washington post editorial board, the voice of a city that says,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: don't lower any, what are you doing? Like we need
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: to like sell this as a place to live. That
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: is as good as it was last year. As good
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: as it was 10 years ago. Don't change this stuff.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: You like, they're not calling for harsher penalties. They're just,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: they're just saying like, why, why do any of this
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: when the city's image and the actual rate of crime
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: is higher. And you've even seen people, like that attitude
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: has been bubbling up. So as a political issue for
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Republicans to pick, it's a great one. It's just not
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: as like, it's, it's again, like it was something the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: city did not just because they felt nice and because
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: somebody said black lives matter, 2020, they're trying to a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: bunch of things with this bill. It just, they just
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: did it really with poor timing and bad PR.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: That's the shame of it too.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: It's just like, well, yeah.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: And, and, and you know, the politics of this have
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: gone completely South because The D.C. council is trying to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: withdraw the proposal and act like it never happened. And
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Republicans in the Senate are saying, no fucking way. We're
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: going to have a vote on this. We want the vote.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: It's going to be fun for us.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: We like this. But it does.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Republicans have basically said, oh, no, you can't. No,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: no takebacks. You can't withdraw it now, even though the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: city council is trying to withdraw it. But it does
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: seem like they could then just fix the most objectionable
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: parts of this. Like you said, we have 95 percent
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: of a bill that everyone agrees on and then just
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: pass it again.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: From a policy standpoint, I do think that's the key
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: for people who really do want to see criminal justice
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: reform pushed forward, which is the city council should work
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: with Mayor Bowser, fix the things they need to fix,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: then pass it together.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: A line where they send it to a Republican House.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: And maybe also then call Joe Biden and the Democrats
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: will be like, you guys okay with this version?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: And then somebody talked to Joe Biden earlier in the process.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: Have a meeting.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Come on, drop by.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: 31 House Democrats voted with Republicans on this initial bill.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: So yeah, there was some bipartisan concern from the very beginning,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: including from Congresswoman Angie Craig, who was very recently assaulted
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: in her own building.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: The day of the vote. I mean, this is the thing.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: And I mentioned Fox not just because I'm like, it's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: on Fox, so it must not be true. No, it's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: like when I travel the country and I mention, oh,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: I've lived in D.C. We're the Washington Post. It's become
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: a thing. If I'm a Republican event, they'll ask me
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: about if it's safe there the same way that people
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: ask if L.A.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Is safe.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: Like it was getting that reputation. And I think the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: city was like naive about this. They just like didn't
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: believe that it traveled that far. People had this thought.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: There is clearly there's a concerted effort by Republicans to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: paint mostly black Democrat led cities as unsafe sort of
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: urban hellscapes.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: They do it to San Francisco. They do it to L.A.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: They do it to Chicago.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: It's it's.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: Clear what they're trying to do politically there's very uh
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: overt racial.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: Elements to these arguments but yeah it's something i think
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: yeah there's there's a challenge there's that that's been happening
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: for the last 40 50 years yeah and then there's
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: the reality of people in these cities who are genuinely
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: a little worried about absolutely rising uh you know crime
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: particularly when it comes to gun crime um some other
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: forms of crime have actually gone down but yeah when
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: there's like more gun crime then people are going to
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: get nervous you know and it's sometimes as simple as that.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: Okay That's our show for today. Dave Weigel from Semaphore,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming and regaling us of
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Tales from CPAC.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: You can't see it at home, but Dave is waving
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: two gigantic flags throughout the entire episode.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Which flags?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: He's doing Semaphore.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: So you actually got the name. Oh, I have no
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: idea what a semaphore is. Can you tell us?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: It's an art, right?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: It's an art of signaling to a boat or a
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: plane can go into the harbor or land.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Semaphore.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: Did Ben come up with this shit? He did. Well,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I wasn't there for that part of it.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: I was there for putting out the publication part.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: And you know what semaphore is. And we know what
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: We know what that is, but the publication?
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Semaphore, yeah.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: It's online?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: It's online. It has newsletters, one of which I write
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: called Americana. I get that one delivered to my inbox
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: all the time. Thank you.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: It's a great newsletter. Fantastic newsletter. And it's a great outlet.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Dave Weigel, thanks for joining everyone else. We will talk
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: to you Thursday.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: Bye.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: slash podsaveamerica.