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Is Trump Snoozing on Iowa? · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm back from the playa. Jon Lovett.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You made it. That would have been funny if you went.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: On today's show... Biden shakes off concerns about his age
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: with a five-day trip around the world. Kevin McCarthy may
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: shut down the government to keep his job. Republicans in
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin may try to overturn last spring's state Supreme Court election.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Legal scholar Lawrence Tribe talks to Lovett about the gambit
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: to keep Trump off the ballot using the 14th Amendment.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And later, we take a look at the right-wing propaganda
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that states like Florida and Oklahoma are now including in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: their public school curriculum in a game we're calling Prager
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Who for kids?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we're calling it.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we're calling it. But first, Trump and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: DeSantis both went to the Iowa versus Iowa State game
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: this weekend. It was only Trump's seventh visit to Iowa
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: this year, where NBC News reports that some of his
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: supporters are getting a bit nervous about his campaign operation,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: including apparently Don Jr., if you believe the story. Before
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: taking his seat in a luxury box with his casino
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: magnet donor, Trump stopped at a frat house on the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: way to the game and noted the crowd's enthusiasm.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: What do you think about this? This is some turnout.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I guess the youth likes Trump.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: The youth likes Trump. DeSantis, who's already visited more than
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: half of the state's 99 counties, drew less enthusiastic crowds,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: but did sit with popular governor Kim Reynolds and claimed
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: that he's taking the state more seriously than Trump.
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: And I'm actually starting.
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: To hear a lot of people saying, because you're showing up,
• 1:52
  Speaker 5: I'm supporting you because that's the way you got to
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: do it. Iowans don't want the campaign to be about
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: the past or to be about the candidates' issues. They
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: want it to be about their future and the future
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: of this country. And that's what I represent.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I have to say, I hadn't heard Ron DeSantis' voice
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in a while. And just hearing it now, it's like, oh,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: that's why he's losing by 40 points.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why there's so many people he's meeting coming around.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Does DeSantis have a point there? Is Trump taking Iowa
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: seriously enough? Or is this just wish casting from DeSantis and,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I guess, to a lesser extent, the media, both of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: whom want a closer race?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Look, if the media wanted a closer race, there's a
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: lot of ways they could be covering Ron DeSantis other
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: than constantly asking the question over and over again, can
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis save his foundering campaign?
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: That's true. Yeah, I think it's wish casting with the
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: kernel of truth. Showing up does matter. Does it matter
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: enough to close a 23-point deficit in the last Des
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Moines Register poll?
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: That's a lot. It's two to one.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also, I think the other piece of it is,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: could Trump be going to Iowa more?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's the difference between... seven visits versus 11
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: visits by this point, something like that.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Well, so Trump's only done 12 campaign events in Iowa
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: and five in New Hampshire, 42 total. And you've add
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: up the whole country. I think his opponents are in
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: the States a lot more often, the early States at least.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: But I'm talking about Trump, this campaign versus the last campaign.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: When he lost Iowa. Right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: But the, the, well, that's a good point, but the, well,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: but the, uh, uh, but the point I was going
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: to make is that the, the, It seems like there
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: is more truth to the fact that it seems like
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: his staff is probably pretty fucking terrible and had nothing
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: compared to what other campaigns have on the ground.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: A source close to Trump. was reported to have heard
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump Jr. on a call saying, like, they really
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: got to get some adults in the room. The Iowa
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: staff is, like, amateur for Trump and yada, yada, yada.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: I know, because half of them.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, which room are
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the adults?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I was doing coke with eight of them, and they
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: were terrible.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, could DeSantis Mount a surprise comeback? Yes, absolutely. But, like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: people keep making this Obama-Iowa caucus comparison from 2008 that
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I think is silly. One, we were never down by...
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: two to one to Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. Two,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Obama had something called a message that distinguished him from
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: his opponents. It was like change and also I oppose
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: the Iraq war.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: You don't think I represent the future is the right message?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or I hate Disney more or whatever it is.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, it could happen, but the cynic in me
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: read that story and wondered if this was Trump's team
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: lowering expectations for themselves in Iowa.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Speaking of lowering expectations, did you see the story where
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: DeSantis' camp is now saying that a strong second In Iowa,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: that could be good enough.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't tell which camp was trying to lower expectations.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Because it seems like DeSantis' camp is going around saying, oh, look,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: it's basically a two-person race. There'll be two tickets out
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: of Iowa and we'll be one of them.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: The quote is just great from the DeSantis campaign operative
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: who asked to remain anonymous.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Because he wants to go work for somebody else.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: A strong second-place showing gives us an opportunity to go
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: into New Hampshire and show success.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: It's so silly. The expectations game is so dumb. I mean,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: we did this all the time in 2007 in Iowa.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: We were not allowed to say Obama is going to
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: win Iowa because you want to position yourself to just
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: exceed expectations, whatever that means. And the expectations are set
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: by the press corps. But strong second place, DeSantis. And
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: then you're going to go to New Hampshire and like
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: lose to Chris Christie. And then you go to South
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Carolina where Trump's got more than half the vote. Come on.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And you're also potentially still facing Nikki Haley and Tim
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Scott if they haven't dropped out yet. I mean, it's like,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: what is happening? I mean, I just.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: It was also like one of the lessons of 2007,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: 2008 is all this sort of narrative around the timing
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: and the momentum fell by the wayside to the demographics
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: in each state as they came up.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And Jeff Rose, you know, was on audio talking to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: donors saying like, well, Iowa is just a great state
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: for us because it's highly educated and super conservative. And
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: we think we're going to do good there. We think
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: we're going to win, blah, blah, blah. And that New
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Hampshire is a terrible state for Trump. He'll only get
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: 28 percent there. And suddenly he loses the first two states.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And it's like, all right, man, you get a little
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: ahead of yourself there.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: A little wish because Jeff Rose, the guy running the
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: super PAC for DeSantis. The other quote from the DeSantis
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: team I saw was on caucus night, every Republican caucus
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: goer will have had the chance to meet the governor.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: probably the first lady at least, won't. And that's a
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: big advantage.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Is that a good thing?
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've seen the video.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: They're saying that's positive? That's positive.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, I met Ron DeSantis. He insulted my
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: kid for getting icy.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Well, what they're also saying is like, oh, so underneath
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: the poles, there's some strengths that you can't see. But like,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: how many points is that worth? Okay, let's say it's
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: worth three or five. It's not 20.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Well, so, and you mentioned the Des Moines Register poll,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: which is obviously the gold standard, not only in Iowa,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: but like one of the best polls in the country.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: There wasn't a poll from Iowa State on Friday that
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: came out just before they both were at the game.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Trump 51, DeSantis 14, Haley 10, Ramaswamy 9. So per the,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: maybe you get a few points here and there, but
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: like 51 to 14, if that's anywhere in the ballpark,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: You know, and I know everyone, if you were online,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: people made a lot of like, Trump got some booze.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, it's also, it's a college town with
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: some college teams.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: And it was at Iowa, not Iowa State, right? I
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: think it was Iowa State. It was in Ames. Either way,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: it's like, those are more liberal towns.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So they both got some middle fingers, but it's like, right, they're,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: you know, DeSantis and Trump. And then I also liked
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that there was a plane that flew overhead with a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: banner that said, where's Melania? Who paid for that?
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Who cares?
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: Who cares?
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: She doesn't like them. That's where she is. She doesn't
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: like her husband. Yeah. Is anyone surprised by that?
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: What a funny thing to pay for.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: It's just a funny thing. Oh, Melania's not showing up
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: at the campaign events with them. We got them. It's like, yeah,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: guess what? She fucking hates them.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Ron, I don't think she'll like you either.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I thought that was so funny.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: I thought that was funny too.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Where's Melania? You've got this big budget line.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: You're going to drop like, what, 10 grand on a
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: plane to drag a message. You pick, where's Melania?
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: There's also people with like, there's two people with inflatable...
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: they were wearing inflatable Trump and Fauci costumes, both with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: like masks on them because like Trump listened to Fauci,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Well, they're all hoping, DeSantis is hoping that the lockdowns
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: will come back, the masks will come back so he
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: can make the whole campaign about his, you know, anti-COVID
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: stewardship of Florida.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Two of them bending over backwards as like proof they
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: tried to kill more elderly. It's unbelievable. What a country.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: But it's just like, it shows what they're like. They're
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: just grasping at straws. The DeSantis people are like, where's Melania? Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Let's get Fauci and Trump with masks on.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: What are you doing? I'm hearing from more and more
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: people that my being here might be a reason to
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: make me president.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: There was also a New York Times story over the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: weekend with a headline and lead that really could have
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: been written in 2016. Trump's resilience leaves anxious GOP donors
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: in despair and denial. It says as he barrels towards
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the nomination, they're reacting with a mix of hand-wringing, calls
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: to arms, and fatalism. Seems like a potent mix, huh?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I really was like, wait, I read this story before.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: We've all read it many times. April 2021, Trump lashes
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: his enemies anew as GOP dances around his presence. A
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: gathering of Republican leaders and top donors in Florida this
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: weekend is less a reset of priorities and more a
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: reminder of the tensions that Donald J. Trump instills in
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: his party.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Literally no one more useless than rich Republican donors.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's some democratic donors.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: That was the only part of this story that was
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: like fun was just being, just appreciating that this was
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a story about hand-wringing among Republican donors. You know, we
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: read the democratic one so much.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, One thing it highlights, too, is that these people,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: it's pathetic that they're not doing anything with all of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: their money and influence. But they also just don't have
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the power that they used to because grassroots fundraising is
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: such a big deal now, both on the Democratic side
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and the Republican side. So it's like the grassroots, the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: base just loves Donald Trump. And if a bunch of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: rich assholes don't agree, it doesn't really matter at this point.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: They're all pulling different directions and wondering why they're not moving.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Larry Ellison gave $ 10 million to Tim Scott's Super PAC.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: DeSantis has a $ 100 million super PAC. Nikki Haley says
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: she got a big fundraising bump after the last debate
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: and reportedly has become the donor favorite. That means you're
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: splitting the vote still. And I was looking around to see,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: is there a big super PAC running ads against Trump
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: somewhere that we just don't know about? The Club for Growth,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: said they're going to spend a few million on anti-Trump ads.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: The Koch brothers, American for Prosperity, announced a $ 1. 68 million
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: ad buy. There was someone who was running ads against
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Trump in North Carolina for some reason. Nobody's doing some organized,
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: concerted effort to try to stop him.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And the reason, as Bill Kristol says in the piece,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: is he's like, I think, because he told everyone, all
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: these donors and whatever at the beginning of the year,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: they've got to all spend their money actually persuading Republican
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: voters not to vote for Trump instead of just like,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: throwing some money at Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, or whoever.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And he said, I don't think they're going to because
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: ultimately they tell themselves they could live with them. And
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: it's right. You're a rich Republican donor and Trump's president. Yeah,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you'll be fine.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: He's sending signals today that he's going to do another
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: round of tax cuts. He becomes president and sort of
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: softens the opposition. There's also, by the way, a lot
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: of money that's just on the sidelines. And even in
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: that piece, there's somebody in there saying, I'm just waiting
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: to see what happens to these indictments once somebody weakens them.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Then I'm coming in with all my cash. And it's
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: just like, OK.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And then they're hoping for Glenn Youngkin, which like, give
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: me a fight. You really think you look at you
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: look at the Republican base. You look at Republican voters
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: out there. You think that what they're looking for and
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: they love Donald Trump. But what they're really looking for
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: is the guy in a fucking vest smiling and Richie.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Come on.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: My favorite part of that New York Times article was
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: it mentions that Trump's super PAC got a $ 1 million
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: check from Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner's dad. Trump pardoned him,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: by the way, on the way out the door in
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: the final days of the administration. That piece of data
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: is mentioned, the fact that there was a pardon. But
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: the donation was broadly framed as, quote, how some big
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: donors have stuck with Mr.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Trump.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Not just like a kickback.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I read that line.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Million dollar kickback.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I've never seen such Tommy bait than this part of
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the story about Joe Biden.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: The only difference between that and how Jared Kushner got
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: into Harvard is Kushner promised the Harvard money in advance.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Though maybe in this case he did too.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: I think it was two mil. Yeah, you're right.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: He probably did. So Joe Biden did not get to
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: enjoy any Iowa football this weekend. The president took a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: quick trip around the world with stops at the G20
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: in India, a few meetings and events in Vietnam. at
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: an event with U.S. service members in Alaska to commemorate
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the 9-11 anniversary. During his press conference in Hanoi, the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: president was a little bit punchy, a little bit wonky,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and extremely Biden. Let's listen.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: Good evening, Mr. President. How are you?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Good. These five-day trips around the world.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Are no problem. I can imagine.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: It is evening. I'd like to remind you.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of lying dog-faced pony soldiers out
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: there about global warming. Not anymore. But I tell you what,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm going to go
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to bed. Now, look, I read the whole transcript. I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: watched some of the clips. He held forth for 40 minutes.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: He got right into the weeds on all these foreign
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: policy issues. And the fact that even Joe Biden's critics,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like Peter Doocy from Fox News, had to admit that
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden really put in a lot of time on
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: that trip. He has been basically working all through the night,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of an all-nighter Eastern time. So he's probably
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: pretty tired, pretty jet lagged. So Dan and I talked
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: about the Biden age concerns on Thursday. We don't have
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: to rehash the whole thing here, but do you guys
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: think the trips like these help with those concerns? Does
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the coverage of the trip even break through to people?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, just on the trip itself, they are
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: absolutely brutal. The time change to India is nine hours
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: from Washington. That's 11 hours to Hanoi. So you're basically like,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: You flip the AM, PM, and that's how you're living
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: your life. You work on the flights because nothing's ever
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: done in time. Everybody wants a piece of Joe Biden's time.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: So you're scheduling meetings. You're doing briefings about the meetings.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: There's these protocol events. There's these leader dinners. And that
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: final press conference was at 9.30 PM Hanoi time. So like, yeah,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Peter Doocy's not wrong. I mean, he's working hard. I
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: do think that the way you tackle the age problem
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: is you show, you don't tell. The foreign trips help
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: tell the story. It's obvious that the administration believes that
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: because they've taken his Ukraine story train ride trip to
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Kiev and made that the first campaign ad. I think
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: it's pretty powerful and effective. Whether or not people support
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: the sort of underlying policy of arming the Ukrainians over
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: time is another question. But I think the challenge is
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: I looked for coverage of this trip and I turned
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: to like BBC News. You know, there was good print coverage.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: There wasn't a lot of TV coverage. And I think
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: the perils of campaigning in the internet age is that
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: clip that we played about, you know, I want to
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: go to bed at 10, 15 p.m. local time, by
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the way, is what gets pushed around social and it's
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: circulating the internet. So like, you know, one step forward,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: two steps back sometimes. But I do think like, you know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: it was a good trip. You got a lot done.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: You and Dan had a good conversation about this. But
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: you also were talking about how some of the hardest
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: people to reach are the young, disaffected, not particularly political
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: young people who Biden is going to need And I
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: can't think of a group of people less likely to
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: see anything substantive or good out of the trip and
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: more likely to see 30 or 40 seconds taken out
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: of context. I first heard about that press conference because
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine texted me the one minute excerpt
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: that the GOP war room sent around.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Which one did they pick?
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: That was the dog face pony soldiers. And I then
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: went and looked at the transcript and then I have
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: to say to them, there's nothing wrong with the actual,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's things wrong with the antidote, but not
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: that he's too old. But the challenge, and I think
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: we just, this, they are going to be doing to
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Biden on age what everyone else has done to DeSantis
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: on being an unlikable weirdo, which is he can do
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: an hour that's fantastic. Everyone's going to push around this
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: one minute. You do have to show and not tell
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: in a defensive way. We have to just have Biden
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: out there being Biden. Every point you made last week
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: was to me, right. But there is no version of
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: that on the left about Trump. There's plenty, as you
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: pointed out, about Trump being crazy. There is no operation.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: There's nothing that's just finding those moments of Donald Trump
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: seeming really fucking old. And it sucks that that's the
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: world we live in. It sucks that that's the way
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: this election is going to play out. But we need
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: to see clips of Trump seeming as old as he is,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: which is a far less healthy version than Joe Biden.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I think I said this to you guys while I
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was on vacation. I said to someone, But when I
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: watched the Tucker-Trump interview after the Republican debate, I was like,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: someone should have, forget about, I realize there's a lot
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of important ads that we need to create that are
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: about message and policy and what the Republicans are going
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to do, what Trump's going to do, all that, right?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: There's also space for like a 30-second cut of Trump
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: talking about the mosquito killing 35,000 people and selling the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Panama Canal where he sounds fucking nuts. That would have
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: been fun to cut and send around. We're actually not
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: doing that as much.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: No, and if you go look, and there's a lot of,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I think, democratic apparatus sort of finding the worst moments
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: of Haley and Trump and Chris Christie and putting those out.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: But to our detriment, they're just about how they'll hurt
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the country and do such a bad job on policy
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and really on the substance.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Great. Covered.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: We've got to make it like it can't just be
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: old versus crazy. It has to be old versus old
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: and crazy. And there just needs to be more of that.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And we need to collectively stop handling all the time.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Like we got to stop asking why won't they talk
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: about the fact that Donald Trump is old, too? We've
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: done that. Now we have to go out there and
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: be part of helping to drive that.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's show not tell, just like Tommy said
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: for Biden, but on the Trump side too.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think like taken as sort of an abstract question,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: like can you, if you're convinced that a candidate is
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: too old, can you be unconvinced of that? I don't know.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? I think that might be
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: a decision you make and it sort of hardens. I
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: do think you're right though, when it becomes a choice
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: between Joe Biden, who like is a good person doing
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: good things. Maybe you feel like he's just going to
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: be too old by the end of the second term
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: and that worries you. but Donald Trump seems crazy. And like,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: if you look, I think it was John Oliver used
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: to do transcripts of Trump answers and then have a
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: normal person read them in a normal voice. And that's
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: when you really realize like how out of just completely
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: insane gibberish languages.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: But it also speaks to Trump's energy and charisma. And like,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: that is what is carrying him through. And just the
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: fact that we're a bit inured to it. And the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: reality is that Joe Biden, uh, he's not as fast
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: as he used to be. He's not as loud as
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: he used to be. Those things are just real. And
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: it just, it can't just be, it has to be
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: a war of the grandpas. Good grandpa versus evil grandpa.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I will say that I was looking at the coverage
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: as well. And I know that the White House press
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: team is just like furious over the coverage of the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: press conference. And I think they have a right to be.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: with a lot of it, because when you, I did
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the same thing. I was just like, I'm just a
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: news consumer Googling about the press conference, see what happens.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And what you got was the Joe Biden saying he
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: wants to go to bed, the lying, which is why
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: we played that, by the way, not because we were
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: trying to add to it for this discussion, the dog
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: face pony thing. And then to Biden's credit, the opening
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: line about, oh, these five day trips around the world
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: are no problem. And I do think because he's always
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: going to gaffe, he's always going to do Biden things,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: they're always going to be able to take things out
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of context to make him seem old, right? That's just,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: that's baked in. If he's able to joke a bunch,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: if he's able to give people more interesting material that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: is positive, you can't just be like totally on message
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the whole time and just talking about details. And because
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: if you only do that, that's never going to get
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: covered and then the gaff's going to be the coverage, right?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: You got to sort of give him material, whether it's
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: a joke or whether it's him fighting like he did
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: during the state of the union and really like taking
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: it to Republicans like that, you know, you got to,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you just give him something to cover.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: But like on TikTok, there are so much Joe Biden's
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: old floating around. We need the other side of it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: We just need the other side of it. I mean,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: we need, people that make fun of millennials to make
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: fun of Donald Trump too. Just, we gotta get some
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: of that in there.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: I did, I watched the little press conference. I mean,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: the questions were all like, it was like four to
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: five or like, you know, fastballs about the US-China relationship.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't easy stuff and he handled it
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: very deftly. The dog-paced pony soldier thing is, look, God
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: helped me when I'm reaching for a cultural reference point
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: when I'm 80, right? Like, it's just a movie he
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: watched that no one else knows what the fuck he's
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: talking about.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I will also say- I'll be saying Raptors checking the
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: fences till 2075. That's right.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Another thing he did well in that press conference is
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: like having read the Frank Ford book and interviewed him
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: last week, like Obama and some of these foreign policy
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: press conferences could get like really, really wonky. Biden, knowing
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: that he's always trying to figure out even with foreign policy,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: like how can I make this easily accessible for the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: average American, right? And not sound like I'm using all
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: these terms. And you can see him doing that with
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a complicated issue like the United States relationship with China,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: like on the fly in the middle of a press
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: conference when he hasn't slept for 10 hours, you know, like,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: of course he's there.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: You know, like it was, it's almost like the opposite.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: It's the opposite of the transcript problem. Joe Biden seems older.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: You look at what he's saying. He is able to
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: walk you through the intricacy of policy in a way
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump never could on his best day with
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: all the at peak coursing through his veins.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Uh, Allegedly. Tommy, in terms of policy or diplomatic goals,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: what was the administration trying to get out of this
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: trip and what do you think they achieved?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Well, so it was the G20 and then this visit
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: to Hanoi, to Vietnam. So you guys remember the G20
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: was it still is the premier forum for economic cooperation
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: globally for the biggest economies in the world. In 2009,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: it was a super important venue for dealing with the
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: financial crisis. It was lots of Obama fighting with the
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Germans over spending versus austerity, right? They kind of went
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: into this wanting to prove that the G20 still matters,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: that they can get stuff done. That was harder this
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: time because Chinese President Xi Jinping did not show up.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: He sent his deputy. So that's a little awkward, but
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: they still got some things done. They did a lot
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: of stuff to improve the way multilateral development banks work,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: like the World Bank. That will, again, not probably make
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: the news in the U.S., but is really important if
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: you're a low-income country or a middle-income country or in
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: the Global South. There was a joint statement on Ukraine
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: that the Ukrainians felt like didn't do enough, but still
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: the White House would say it was an important statement
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: from the G20 countries. So I think that these forums
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: are very important. When you think about the last, what,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: 60 years of the U.S. relationship with Vietnam, Biden going
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: there and having the U.S.-Vietnam relationship elevated to this like
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: peak level in the in the eyes of the vietnamese
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: government is a big deal and it just shows what
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: a difference you know 30 40 50 years can make
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: yeah so they got a lot done i mean it's
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: an important event and i and it's supposed to like
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: put some pressure on china too or not or not
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: china is the backdrop of the whole thing the whole
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: idea is to you know reassure allies in the region
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: um that we're going to be there that we're a
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: pacific power and that the chinese aren't going to steamroll
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: them and uh i think they they accomplished that do.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: You see that um some Republicans are already attacking Biden
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: for commemorating 9-11 by being in Alaska.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Who's attacking, really?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were on Fox News saying, like, it's just
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a stop in Alaska with some troops. That's not how
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you commemorate 9-11.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: No, you invade the wrong country.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Like, you know.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Just ridiculous.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I think anyone our age, obviously that was a horrifying
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: day and something will be seared into our memory. We
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: should also probably remember that 9-11 at the center of
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: our politics led us to do a lot of really
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: terrible things and make a lot of bad decisions over
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: the last 20 years and maybe commemorating it not at
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Ground Zero or in the Pentagon or in Shanksville is
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: a good thing.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Back in Washington, Congress has finally returned with just 19
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: days until the government runs out of funding. And even
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: people close to Kevin McCarthy say they're doubtful the speaker
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: will be able to avoid a shutdown and still keep
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: his job. The MAGA hardliners are demanding some combination of
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: a border crackdown, cutting off support for Ukraine, defunding the
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice's Trump prosecutions, and an impeachment inquiry into
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Of course, the White House and the Senate
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: would never agree to any of that, but if McCarthy
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: decides to cut a bipartisan deal with Democrats to fund
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the government, the hardliners are threatening a motion to vacate
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that could oust him as Speaker. Guys, can you see
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a way out for Kevin here?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: There's always one way out for Kevin, but the....
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Resigning.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: You know, how's Kevin going to get out of this mess?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: You know, he doesn't have dignity. He doesn't need it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: The system doesn't need it to function anymore. You know,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: there was a period of time during that endless fight
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: for him to become speaker where it was like, does
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: someone else have to do it now? Is he really
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: going to be able to eke this out?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: He ekes this out.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Then we went through that default fight and there was
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of similar, everything's on the table. Kevin will
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: lose the speakership if he doesn't go along with us.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And then we end up with a vote where it's,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: He's still more Democrats than Republicans, but was 165 Democrats,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: 150 Republicans in a House of 150 to 70 something,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: which tells you what the actual appetite inside the Republican
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: caucus is at maximum for a fight that's about ousting
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy over this. But just because the group of
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: people pursuing this don't have a majority, they do have
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: enough people to cause a lot of fucking mayhem.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: And they all want different things. I mean, I think
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: this could be a really rough ride for him, for
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: the country, for anyone who wants the government to function
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: and remain open. But I keep coming back to what's
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: the alternative to McCarthy? Who's running against him? Who's going
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: to put their hand up and say, okay, I'll compete
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: with you? Until that happens, I mean, I'm not entirely
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: sure where the threat is coming from.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he doesn't have many votes to spare. I
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: think he's down four votes because of absences plus health
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and family. And then there's a fifth where Chris Stewart,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I think, is resigning for something. So he doesn't really
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: have any votes to spare. He would have to basically...
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: get all the Republicans on board that he has, which
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: is going to be really tough for anything that the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: hardliners want. So therefore, it looks like he would have
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: to cut a deal with the Democrats, and any deal
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: he cuts with the Democrats is really going to piss
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: off the hardliners. So now they're threatening the motion to vacate.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: But a couple of the McCarthy allies, I think they
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: were telling Politico, like, fine, if they want to do
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the motion to vacate, they can, but there's a bunch
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of them that will vote for McCarthy for Speaker as
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: many times as it takes, right? So it would, like,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: lead to chaos. But the only thing I, the only
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thing I could see is like Republicans, Tommy, I think
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: you said it was unclear all the different things they wanted.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And I think that's part of their problem. If they
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: could come around to pick like one thing that they're
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: all demanding, like if they could all, if they all
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: got together and said, all right, forget about the impeachment stuff.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Forget about the DOJ defunding. It's just about border security.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: We're going to crack down on the border. That's something
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: we can get all the Republicans in the house on
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: board with. We'll pass that bill. We'll jam the Republican's
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and Democrats in the Senate will jam the White House,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and then they can say, all right, let the government
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: shut down over what they'll say is wanting an open border.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You could maybe imagine that, but I don't even think
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: he can get all the Republicans in the House around that.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: You need all of them.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: That's what happened with the debt ceiling.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Yes. It is what happened with the debt ceiling, and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: now they're pissed because they think the debt ceiling was
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a betrayal, which is why we're in this spot.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And part of what they want to do is use
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: their leverage now to— renegotiate that deal and be, and
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: no longer be on the spending levels of that deal.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They want $ 120 billion more in cuts than Biden
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and McCarthy agreed to.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: And so it's crazy.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So it doesn't seem like there's any, like we are,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: the government will shut down or there will be something
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: that can pass in a bipartisan way in the Senate
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: and in a bipartisan way in the house. Cause it
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like anything that can pass with all Republican
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: votes that you need has any chance of how in
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: hell and passing in the Senate. And so then like
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: you look at the list and it is this mix
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: of normal and abnormal politics. The part that's like, normal
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: in this day and age, right? Which is the border stuff, right?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: There is, Biden has requested a bunch of money for
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: disaster aid and for the border. Republicans say it's too
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: much on processing, not enough on border security. That's just political.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: That's a political fight that you can have. No, it's
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: not going to be impeachment for government funding. I don't
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: think that is going to happen. The question I have is, okay,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: McCarthy got through this once. They said they would oust
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: him if he ever did anything like this, then he
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: did it and he got through it. Can he get
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: through it again?
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's what, if he has to kind
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of deal with Democrats, but I mean, it does raise
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: the question who, who, if not McCarthy, but I think
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you at least go through something where someone, all it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: takes is one asshole to trigger the motion to vacate.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And then now they're voting.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: And the other, the other part of it too, is
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: like some of this is like the, the debt ceiling
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: fight was a fear of this fight. This fight is
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the fear of the next fight. What Republicans in the
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: house have said for a very long time. And actually
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I think fairly is, Hey, the way we've been funding
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the government is ridiculous. We've been doing these giant bills
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: that if we say no to, Because we don't want
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: to fund the State Department, we're also not funding the Pentagon,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: what have you. The Senate and the House have both
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: now been doing individual appropriation bills, which is something that
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: hasn't happened for a really long time. And what they're
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: worried about is if they go along with another resolution
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: that looks bipartisan, that they're going to end up in
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: another situation where they're jammed again for another big spending bill.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: So it's like, how can McCarthy make another set of
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: crazy promises? to kick the can down the road one
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: more time?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: It's like, and you know what, assholes? You are gonna
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: get jammed again and again and again because you only
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: control one house of Congress and you don't control the presidency, assholes.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: And the 20 of you causing this don't even do that, right?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: And by the way, in the Senate, the Democrats and
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Republicans have been steadily- producing bills together to fund the
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: government in the way that House Republicans claim they want.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Senate Republicans don't want the shutdown.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: No. And they also support the disaster relief money. They
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: support the funding for Ukraine.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: Mitch McConnell is like a stalwart defender of Ukraine. He
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: wants that to be part of his legacy, which will
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: probably not be much longer in elected office. And he
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: really wants to get through this another, what, $ 24 billion
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: in funding for the U.S. ever, because he knows that
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: might be the last money that goes through.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Which is why, again, I would look to the border
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: stuff as the only possible area of some kind of
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: movement on this, because I think that the impeachment stuff,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the defunding DOJ and the Ukraine stuff are just like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: dead on arrival. It's not happening.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: I gotta tell you something. I love a fun invite.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I just love, I just like, it's just a little
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: bit of normal politics because if you look like some
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: of these, even like these, like these far right wingers,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: they keep saying they keep, they throw out all these,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: these threats and everything's on the table. And then they say,
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: we won't do a clean CR, right? Well, That leaves
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of room underneath for a lot of things
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: that would make it not a clean CR, which is
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I also think that, by the way, Biden and the
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Democrats are in a great position heading into this fight, too,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: because it's going to look like Republican chaos. You're going
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to have a split between McConnell and McCarthy. The House
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: and Senate Republicans are going to have a campaign going
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: on where these guys want to make it about Joe Biden.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: And instead, he's going to make it about crazy Republicans
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: who are trying to shut down the government over they
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: don't even know what.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Both McConnell and Thune have referred to this problem.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: We don't have a mess. They have a mess. They
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: don't say we, which tells you something.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: And the White House is lifting up very popular parts
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: of the spending, like money to deal with the fentanyl crisis.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: You want to shut down the government over this? This
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: is your priority? Right.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I think that the Republican Party
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: is changing on questions about whether we should support allies
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: like Ukraine. But a lot of those Republican politicians haven't
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: been voted out by There's still a size. I don't
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: know what the exact number would be, but a lot
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: of those House Republicans want to support Ukraine, too, and
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: they don't want to be in this fight.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: I think more money for Ukraine is probably far more
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: popular among members of Congress of both parties than the
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: broader electorate, which could be a down-the-road problem. Right now,
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: I feel pretty good about it.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: One last item before we get to Lovett's Larry Tribe interview.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I briefly mentioned this on Thursday, but Republicans in the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin legislature are threatening to impeach newly elected state Supreme
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Court justices Janet Protasewicz. Still don't remember how to say
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the name.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: We both on our separate pods said it and then
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: took a little moment to say, look what we did.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It took a long time. We went to Wisconsin for
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: days to figure that out.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: You gotta be a Protasewicz.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. Anyway, they want to impeach Justice Janet unless she
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: recuses herself from any cases involving gerrymandering because she accurately
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: pointed out during the campaign that the maps are rigged
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: for Republicans. Actually, the most rigged maps anywhere in the country.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And because the maps are rigged for Republicans... They have
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: a supermajority with which to impeach the new justice. If
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: she is convicted, Democratic Governor Tony Evers could appoint her replacement.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: So the plan is for the General Assembly to impeach
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: her and then for the Senate to do nothing, which
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: would leave her in limbo, unable to hear any cases
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: or rule on anything, and thus would leave the court
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: split 3-3. So there would be no majority on the
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court and the Republican legislature would just do whatever
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: the fuck it wanted. Very normal thing to happen in
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: a democracy, huh?
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: If Wisconsin was a foreign country, the State Department would
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: be putting out a press release, like, attacking their democracy
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: and saying these elections are a sham and what's going
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: on here.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is wild what is going on right now.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I remember when we were in Wisconsin, like, knocking on
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: doors and sort of in that final run, and Ben Wickler,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: who's always got his head on a swivel, you know,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, you know, he's playing... Kevin McCarthy's playing chess,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: but he's always two moves behind.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: But.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: But Ben was like, now the next fight is going
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: to be over this. And he was right because he
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: saw this coming.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And just so everyone, you know, they're like, oh, well,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: it's because she talked about this in her campaign. First
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of all, the actual rules that Republicans have set in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin says that, like, it doesn't matter if you said
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: anything during a campaign about an issue, if you're running
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: for judge. That's not only true in Wisconsin. There was
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: a Supreme Court opinion written in a majority opinion in
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the U.S. Supreme Court written in 2002 by Antonin Scalia
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: that said when there are judicial elections, you can't force
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: a judge to recuse themselves for anything that they said
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: or a political belief that they stated during a campaign
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: because it's an election for a judge. And that's what happens.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: There's never been an impeachment in the history of Wisconsin.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: There's one judge who's been impeached. for taking bribes, was
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: later acquitted in the Senate. That was like 1853. No
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: judge has ever been impeached in Wisconsin for anything else.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And no judge has ever been impeached in the entire
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: country before they ever heard a case, ever issued a ruling,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: or for any of their political beliefs. And we know this,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: of course, because we have nine Supreme Court justices, six
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of whom have been very clear about their beliefs.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: I'm not a big fan of recusals. And the hypocrisy
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: is so galling. So the chief justice in Wisconsin, became
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the first sitting Supreme Court justice in the state's history
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: to be reprimanded by her colleagues for not recusing from
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: a case. And as a circuit judge, she presided over
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: 11 cases involving a bank for which her husband was
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: a board member. That's incredible. The Republicans, led by Robin Voss,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, are the ones
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: who changed campaign finance rules to allow political parties to
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: make unlimited donations to the state Supreme Court candidates. So
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: the reason money It's such an issue in these state
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court races because of the current Republican leadership in
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the state. And then two of the three conservatives on
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: the court have gotten financial support from the Republican Party.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Neither recuse themselves from the redistricting case that established the
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: least change standard. This horrible map, the most gerrymandered map
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: in the country, according to a lot of experts, is
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: One conservative justice on the court right now in Wisconsin
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: has compared abortion to the Holocaust. And another one has
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: accused Planned Parenthood of being a wicked organization that kills babies.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Neither has recused themselves from any of the abortion cases
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: that have come to the Supreme Court. Can you believe it?
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: That's unbelievable.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's happening here. So Ben Wickler
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: and the Democratic Party have launched a website, DefendJustice.com. We
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: mentioned this on Thursday. And they are trying to get
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: a pressure campaign going so that people can call your
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: legislators to find out where they stand. They already had
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: one One Republican in the in the General Assembly who
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: has already said, I don't think I want to do this.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's fair to impeach a justice before
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: for not doing anything.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: Literally, literally.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And so they got one and they're trying to build
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: as much pressure as possible. It seems like the Republicans
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: in the state Senate do not really want this to happen.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: The majority leader in the state Senate was on record
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: to a reporter a couple of weeks ago saying, quote,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: impeachment shouldn't be used as a tool to overturn elections.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: acknowledging that that's what this would be. Now that same
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: majority leader has been like a couple of weeks later,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, we do have a judge that has,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: that has openly said the maps are rigged. So we
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: have to do something about that.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: So changing, changing his tune a little bit, but, um,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: this thing is not over by any means. And Republicans
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that were like going to go forward with impeachment as
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of last week. And they just, now they're keep putting
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: it off and putting it off. And I think because
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the blowback is so severe, but that means like go
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to defend justice.com. If you're in Wisconsin and You can
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: call your legislators. And if you know friends in Wisconsin
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: or you just want to help, you can you can
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: help that way, too, by going on the website. And
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: so just so people know, like what happens here, if
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: she is impeached and then the Senate does not take
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: it up and she's in this limbo, then one thing
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: that could happen is that Justice Persewitz could resign. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: then Tony Evers, the governor, Democratic governor, could appoint her
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: replacement and if that happens before.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Janet Protasewicz with a little.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Mustache.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: If that happens before December 1st, then that new justice
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: would have to run in a special election in April
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: of 2024 on the same day as the Wisconsin Republican.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Primary for president.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Which is bad.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: For turnout reasons.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Which seems like what their play was. And if he
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: nominates someone after December 1st, to take over then they
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: would get the they would be in the seat until
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: for like a couple years but it's.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Or are you going to appoint somebody then they resign
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I mean it's just they want to play games Tony
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Evers he likes to he likes to play games he
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: did that thing where he crossed out all the letters.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Here's why it's so important too I mean it's important
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: for Wisconsin it's important for gerrymandered maps it's important for
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the abortion cases that they might hear But if they
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: get away with this, they impeach a justice over absolutely nothing.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Imagine 2024 rolls around and it's another close election in
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin between Biden and Trump. And the assembly decides instead
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of just leaving it a 3-3 limbo, let's let's impeach
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: another justice just because we can't.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: They will they will take it to the extreme. Did
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: you guys know there's a great New Yorker article about
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: all of this that everyone should read that Robin Voss,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: the crazy Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly. was
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: college roommates with Reince Priebus. Talk about a room you
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: want to avoid. You know what I'm saying?
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: What's going on there?
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Is that a dorm?
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: By and like have a drink?
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: No, Robin's a, it's a man.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. That makes more sense. Oh yeah.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: That's what was notable.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Confused for a second.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Anyway, defendjustice.com. Go help out. All right. Few quick housekeeping
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: items before we go to break. It's now been one
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: month since Crooked Media Reads published our first book, Mobility,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: by Lydia Kiesling. And not only did it make the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: bestseller list, it also received amazing reviews from outlets like
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the LA Times, which called it an emotionally and geopolitically
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: savvy coming-of-age story. So do yourself a favor and grab
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: your copy of Mobility wherever books are sold. Also, do
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: you suddenly feel a strong desire to fulfill your civic
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: duty by serving on a jury in completely random places
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: like Georgia, Florida, D.C., or New York?
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Grab a totally impartial potential juror t-shirt. Now at the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Crooked store, Hillary Clinton has one.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: You bet.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: You should have one too. Head to crooked.com slash store
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: to shop. When we come back, legal scholar, Lawrence Tribe.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: As if 91 felony counts weren't enough, former President Trump's
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: legal troubles keep mounting. Last week, voters in Colorado filed
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: a lawsuit seeking to remove him from the state's election
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: under the 14th Amendment. Here to help make sense of
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: this legal theory is a preeminent constitutional scholar who believes
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: states should boot Trump from their ballots. Professor Larry Tribe,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: thank you for being here.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: Thank you, John.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: So you wrote a provocative article for The Atlantic titled
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: The Constitution Prohibits Trump from Ever Being President Again. The
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: title told me everything I needed to know. I read
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: no further. have completely relieved. Can you explain why the
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: GOP front runner, who is an American citizen, former one-term president,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: born in New York, 35 twice over, is ineligible for
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: federal office?
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, it was not just my article.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: It was an article with Judge Michael Ludwig, a very
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: well-respected conservative former judge. The reason we both concluded that
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: he is ineligible is that although he is 35, actually
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: a good bit older, and although he's a natural-born citizen
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: and meets those qualifications, there is one he does not meet,
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: and it's quite explicit in the 14th Amendment. One of
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: the qualifications is that you not engage in or give
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: aid and comfort to an insurrection against the Constitution of
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: the United States after taking an oath of office to
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: uphold it. That's something that's been in our Constitution since
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: after the Civil War, and it's been there as a
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: protective measure, quite apart from criminal prosecutions or civil suits
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: that basically says, whatever may happen to punish you, if
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: you take an oath to uphold the Constitution and then
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: basically commit treason against it, we can't trust you to
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: hold office again. It's a very dramatic remedy, and it
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: hasn't been used on an American president before because no
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: American president has done with this one seems to have done.
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: And it's going to be up to the courts of
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: Colorado where the main lawsuit has been filed to determine
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: in the first instance whether he is guilty of insurrection
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: and whether, if he is, that's what the 14th Amendment
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: tells us must happen. Namely, he can't be on the ballot.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: It'll go all the way up to the Supreme Court
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: where the final word will be that of a very
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: conservative court. And we'll just have to see.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Obviously, it hasn't been used in the case of a
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: president before, but other than immediately after the Civil War,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: has this argument been invoked? Has this been used to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: ever keep someone from the ballot?
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's been invoked several times. In modern times, the
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: most important probably was that of a county commissioner in Minnesota,
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: not a very high office, but he was actually arrested
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: for trespass, not insurrection, but trespass on the Capitol. And
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: he was removed from office. They didn't catch him in time.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: And actually, when he took the oath, he hadn't yet
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: committed insurrection. But he was disqualified. He was removed from office.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: And because he was removed, and then he lost his
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: attempt to be elected again, the whole thing became moot.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: But there have been no major cases other than that.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: There was one involving Madison Cawthorn. You may remember the guy.
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: He was effectively challenged on the basis of this law.
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: A district court in his state, a federal district court,
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: ruled for him on the bizarre ground that Congress in 1872...
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: by a mere statute, had gotten rid of this part
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: of the Constitution. That was a crazy ground. The Fourth
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: Circuit said that can't happen. It didn't happen. But that
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: too became moot when he lost his election bid. But
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: apart from those relatively minor incidents, it hasn't been invoked,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: but it's still a living part of the living Constitution.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: So Donald Trump hasn't been convicted of any crimes as
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: of this recording. He also hasn't been charged with insurrection
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: or rebellion or treason or anything like that. You and
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Judge Ludig say that you don't need a conviction, that
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: that's actually a separate matter because this is self-executing. What
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: does that mean? Who decides that... It's easy to tell
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: when someone's 35 years old or not. It's harder to
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: tell when, you know, when being, who is exactly engaged
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: in an insurrection or even what the insurrection is, who
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: makes that kind of a judgment call?
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Well, it is much harder. It's not a simple mechanical thing.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: That's what makes this an interesting and difficult lawsuit. In
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: the first instance, as the Colorado voters who have standing
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: in Colorado to sue the Secretary of State to tell
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: her to do her job, in the first instance, she's
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: supposed to decide, and if she won't, that state court
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: in which it has been filed in Colorado will hold
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: a hearing and it will render a decision and that
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: will be appealed. The reason that it doesn't matter whether
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: he has been criminally charged with insurrection, much less convicted,
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: is that this was deliberately put in the Constitution at
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: a time when we couldn't trust the chief executive and
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: the Justice Department to charge people. Andrew Johnson who was
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: basically a Confederate, had become president after Lincoln's assassination. He
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: wasn't going to have people prosecuted in the Confederacy. In fact,
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: he pardoned the ones who had been convicted. The people
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: who wrote the 14th Amendment very deliberately, and the history
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: is clear, they very deliberately said, we can't rely on
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: the executive branch and its prosecutions when it comes to
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: disqualifying people from office. who have taken an oath and
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: then turned tail on the Constitution and basically waged war
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: on it. It doesn't matter whether they're indicted. This isn't
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: a punishment. It's simply, you know, it's like saying if
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: you've had two bites of the apple, two wins as president,
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: you can't run a third time. You know, I think
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: you work for Barack Obama, a very popular president. If
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: the Democrats decided that Joe Biden was a little too
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: old and they wanted to put Obama forth on the primary,
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: it would be a relatively easy matter to say he's
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: not eligible. This is not so easy. But the fact
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: that it isn't easy doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: We've got to enforce the Constitution. A lot of parts
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: of the Constitution are a little blurry, like the meaning
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: of liberty, equality, privacy, equal protection. This is a little
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: bit like that, although wherever you draw the line of insurrection,
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: if this was not an insurrection and if Trump didn't
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: lead it, then I don't know what is or who
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: would be a leader of an insurrection.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: What is your mind is the insurrection? Is the insurrection
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: what happens at the Capitol on January 6th? Is it
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the effort to do fake electors? If there had been
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: more security on January 6th and people weren't able to
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: get into the Capitol, would you still believe Donald Trump
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: had engaged in an insurrection?
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: It would be a slightly harder case because insurrection usually
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: means force and violence. But here, the insurrection was the
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: whole plan from the beginning to the end. Fake electors,
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: pressure on Raffensperger, pressure on the vice president, the gallows
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: that threatened him. And then if he didn't give in,
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: the mob that almost got to him and threatened his life.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: That whole course of conduct was an insurrection against the
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: Constitution of the United States. It's hard to draw lines.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: Maybe if it had been a much less elaborate plan,
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: maybe if it hadn't included attempts to kill the vice
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: president and pressure on him, maybe it would have fallen
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: short of an insurrection. But wherever the line is, the
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: argument that is going to be considered by the courts
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: of Colorado is that this falls on the insurrection side
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: of that line.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: I guess the reason I ask that is because, look,
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: you can someone is 35 or they're not 35 and
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: that could be under dispute but it's a not a
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: subjective question. Whether somebody was a member of the Confederacy
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: or not, that could be disputed, but this was written
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: to address the Civil War. I took the LSAT. That
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: was the end of my legal career. But it does
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: seem to me that in a democracy... one thing we
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: try to practice, right, is forbearance, right? This idea that,
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: you know, this is a subjective call. This is a
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: difficult question. And when in doubt, we ought to defer
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: to the democracy itself, that people of good faith can
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: disagree on this question. And so why not leave it
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: up to the voters rather than to partisan secretaries of
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: state or judges who are unaccountable to the voters to
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: make this kind of a decision?
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: Well, that was one of the arguments that people made
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: who didn't want Section 3 to be in the Constitution.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: They basically said, you know, it might be a close call,
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: although this one doesn't seem close. Why not leave it
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: to the voters? And the answer was the voters are
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: entitled in a democracy to have the rule of law prevail,
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: and they are entitled to have only those who are eligible.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: And the answer that was given was that if the
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: power is abused, we have to build in a safeguard,
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: and they did. At the very end of this provision
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: of the Constitution, they said that if someone is basically
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: railroaded out of contention without sufficient reason on the basis
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: of too loosey-goosey a definition of insurrection, then if you
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: get a two-thirds vote of both houses, you can lift
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: the disqualification. Now, maybe that wasn't written the way it
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: should have been. But there are a lot of parts
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: of the Constitution, I can name some, the Electoral College,
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: two Senators per state, regardless of its size, maybe the
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: Second Amendment, that don't make a lot of sense today.
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: But that doesn't mean we just erase them. A democracy
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: requires the rule of law. And that means applying the
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: Constitution even when it's not convenient. And the argument that
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: it's not democratic to abide by the rule of law
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: really assumes that democracy is majority vote no matter what.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: But it isn't. We have a lot of safeguards, guardrails
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: against just allowing someone, because they are popular, to automatically
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: succeed to the presidency, however popular they are. The framers
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: predicted there might be someone who would come into power,
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: who would be so charismatic and yet so greedy for power,
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: that they would turn our democracy into a dictatorship. Donald
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: Trump may be the guy they had in mind. And
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: this is the safeguard they wrote into place. We'll have
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: to see whether the Supreme Court takes it as seriously
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: as Judge Ludig and I think it should be taken.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: But we can't just erase it because it's inconvenient or
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: because it doesn't accord with the common sense way of
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: doing things.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: The exact text is about those who have engaged in
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: insurrection or rebellion against the country or given aid or
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: comfort to the enemies thereof. There are Republicans... who say
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: that the Obama administration gave aid and comfort to America's
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: enemies through the Iran deal, or that the Biden administration
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: gave aid and comfort to our enemies when it left Afghanistan.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Do you think a Republican secretary of state who sincerely
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: believes those statements is on firmly legal ground to remove
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden's name from the ballot?
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: Oh, the reason is that those are not insurrections against
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: the Constitution of the United States. They may be policy
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: decisions that one can disagree with. But I think it's
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: very clear that if someone tried to leave Joe Biden's
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: name off the ballot on that basis, that the US
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: Supreme Court wouldn't agree. And in any event, I think
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: even two thirds of the current Congress would regard that
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: as an abuse of power. But the fact that a
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: power in the Constitution can be abused, which is something
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: that people say about the impeachment power and almost everything else,
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: the indictment power can be abused. doesn't mean that we
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: get rid of the rule of law and simply take
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: a poll of the national electorate whenever we have a
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: difficult decision to make. We have rules, and among those
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: rules is this disqualification rule.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Right, but obviously this is novel, right? You've introduced this
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: in a piece that became news because it was to
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: many people a completely novel theory. You recognize there's a
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: lot of people disagree with this point of view, that
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: see this as anti-democratic, that see this as like a
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: slippery slope towards people trying to use the legal system
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: to prevent their opponents from being on the ballot. People
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: that aren't just, you know, Trumpist or MAGA, people with
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: a genuine disagreement and a genuine fear about what this
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: would do, that this introduces yet another way in which
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: people can abuse their office and use their subjective judgment
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: to try to undermine a democracy. And given the that
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: we have a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, which is, it
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: seems to me, and I don't want to make a prediction,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: you're a lawyer, I'm just a schmuck, unlikely to decide
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: that Republicans can't vote for Donald Trump, that this will
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: only result in simply a new way for Republicans to
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: make trouble without getting to the result that you think
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: is so important to protect our democracy?
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, if I thought we could prevent
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: Republicans from making trouble whether it's with Benghazi or with
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: the impending impeachment of Joe Biden by disregarding the constitution,
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: then I really don't belong in the business of constitutional law.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: I think if you appease people in order to prevent
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: them from making trouble, you are well on the way
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: toward chaos. We can't decide selectively which parts of the
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: constitution might make too much trouble. If you ask me
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: to put on my gambler's hat, and I don't like gambling,
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't gamble that the current US Supreme Court would
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: keep Donald Trump off the ballot. It's pretty unlikely. But
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: when the vapor trail of these times is written in
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: the book of history, I wanted to show that there
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: were people who took the whole Constitution seriously, even if
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: the result might not be the one that they would
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: like politically. And I think that we can't simply refuse
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: to let the voters of Colorado, in accord with the
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: law of Colorado, bring a lawsuit to keep an ineligible
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: person off the ballot. They're just using their rights as
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: voters in Colorado. If they don't succeed, they will at
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: least have tried. And I think that of the whole
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: crisis we face, If we're not going to succeed, we
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: will at least go down trying. And I don't want
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: to abandon the Constitution in the course of that enterprise.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Given that this is so unlikely to succeed, I just
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: worry that we are giving fodder to the people that
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: believe all these legal efforts, all these legal endeavors, the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: criminal cases, the civil cases, that all of them are
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: about damaging Donald Trump politically, when This to you is
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: about upholding the rule of law, but it is so
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: explicitly about using the law to stop Donald Trump from
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: ever being able to go in front of the electorate again.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, if we lose, we lose. But it
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: seems to me that the alternative is a kind of appeasement.
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: The idea that weaponizing the law for political purposes is terrible.
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: It's hard to square with the idea that the guy
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: who is running on a program of revenge is saying
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: that if he becomes president, he'll go after all of
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: his enemies. That's his program. It's a program of retribution.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: He says, I am your retribution. And he says, I
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: will suspend the constitution. I will basically terminate the constitution.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: If that's what we confront to tell us we shouldn't
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: use the constitution for all it's worth to disqualify someone
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: on the basis of his having engaged in an insurrection,
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: Seems to me to be a pretty one-sided game. I
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: think we cannot afford to say, well, let's all get along.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: Let's be peaceful. Let's be undivided. We're not going to
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: have unity by appeasement. We're going to have to stick
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: with the rule of law and hope that in the end,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: we emerge a more unified country. In the meantime, there's
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: going to be division and acrimony whichever way we go.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: What is the strongest legal argument against invoking the insurrection?
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: I suppose the strongest legal argument is a very technical one,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: which I don't buy at all. It's one that former
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: Attorney General Mukasey made and the Wall Street Journal made,
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: and that is that for strange grammatical reasons, the presidency
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: is not an office. That's crazy. But it is legally
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: stronger than some of the other arguments, like the arguments
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: that this provision expired somehow because it was all about
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: the Civil War. It's not a strong argument. As I say,
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: the presidency is described as an office nine times in
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: the article defining the presidential power. Honestly, I don't think
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: there are any strong legal arguments. There may be strong
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: factual arguments. It may well be that Donald Trump's personal
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: engagement in the whole plot to overturn the election was
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: sufficiently unclear that he is not I suppose you would say,
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: not by a preponderance of the evidence guilty of engaging
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: in an insurrection. That's a factual, not a legal argument.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: It will have to be tried out in the courts.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: But I don't think there is any really strong legal argument.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: There's a strong political argument. But this is a very
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: scary part of the Constitution. But that's not an argument
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: that I can credit as sufficient.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Professor Larry Trim, thank you so much for your time.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Thank you, John.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: And before we go, with us is the legendary Hallie Kiefer.
• 59:55
  Speaker 6: The legend being Sasquatch or Loch Ness. But here I
• 59:58
  Speaker 6: am in the flesh.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: Where's your Fonny Willis candle that I bought you?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 6: Oh, it's burning.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: It's burning.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 6: It's going to be burning in an eternal flame.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: Okay, good.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: Probably.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 6: Gentlemen, last week, Oklahoma announced a partnership with PragerU approving
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 6: educational videos from PragerU kids to be used as part
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: of a classroom curriculum in the state's public schools. This
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: comes after Florida made the same announcement basically in August.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 6: What's PragerU, you might ask? Well, unfortunately, it's a right-wing
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 6: media outlet founded by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 6: And what's their angle? Well, I'll leave it to Oklahoma's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, to sum it up.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: When he said in the announcement, PragerU is challenging the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 6: left's domination of academia, of education, and this is what
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 6: has to happen.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: It is of the.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 6: Utmost importance that we're able to correct this leftist bent
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: of history, get that radicalism out, and go back to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 6: teaching true history to our kids. Or as I would
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: have put it, uh-oh.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, no.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: So, as you can imagine, their content library is available online.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 6: You can check it out. You know what's going to
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 6: be there. It's climate change denialism, ahistorical history lessons, and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: sort of an overall curating of history to focus on
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: the heroism of the white Christian headset and disparaging the
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: innate evil of wokeness, which for us is sort of just...
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: what we would have learned in a normal history class
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: in the 90s. They say big thumbs down to that.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: So I thought, what better way to highlight the dissolution
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: of the American educational system than with a game I'm
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 6: calling Prager Who for kids? Gentlemen, I'm going to read
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 6: two quotes from PragerU for kids videos, okay? One of
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: them is a real quote from a real video. The
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 6: other one, a superb facsimile created by yours truly with
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 6: help from Fiona and Reed. Also, shout out to Media
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 6: Matters and whatever poor bastard over there had to watch
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: all these videos because they have an excellent breakdown. Dear reader,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: check out Media Matters if you want to look at that. Again,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: it will destroy you.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Let us begin.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: Okay, so one of these, one of these two is
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 6: real and one is fake.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: Embrace your idea of being a wife or mother and
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: allow yourself to stay at home to raise your children. This,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: of course, is from the video How to Embrace Your Femininity.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 6: The other one, as you grow up, you will find
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: hair in strange places, your voice will deepen, and you
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: will take your rightful place as the head of your
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: household with your wife as your helpmate. And that is,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 6: of course, from How to Embrace Your Masculinity.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I know the answer.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: How?
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Because I'm a freak.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Did you read these?
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: I've seen that one.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: I've seen one of them.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: You can go last.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: I think the fake one is the, I'm going to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: say the femininity one because it's, okay.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say Hair in Strange Places is fake,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: which I think is the masculinity one.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, great.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: And having seen this?
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: They really want to teach the femininity. The masculinity is fake. Right, exactly.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: I thought it was just too.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: No, no, but these could all be real. That is,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: of course, the joke of this.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Is it funny?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: No, it's terrifying.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: On to the next one. Renewable energy sources... don't contribute
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: that much energy, unlike coal or fossil fuels. Energy from
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: wind or sun is unreliable, expensive, and difficult to store. That,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: of course, is from the video Poland, colon, Anya's Energy Crisis.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: And the next one, while some rush to say humans
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: are causing this extreme weather, the truth is flooding is
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: a historical event dating back to biblical times and simply
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: part of the Earth's natural cycle. That is, of course,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: from Germany, colon, Hans Rainy Day Dilemma. Gentlemen, which of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 6: these two is real and which is fake?
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: LAUGHTER I think the Germany one is fake.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: Me too.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, you're right.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: It's too funny. It's too funny.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, damn it.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: Rainy Day Dilemma was too funny. I'm simply too funny
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: to do this.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Other than Rainy Day Dilemma, it is a true statement.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: It did go back to the Bible.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: I'm convincing Favreau.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: He's like, wait a minute.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: These are good. I need to show this to my kids.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: They got a point. They got a point.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: In one PragerU for Kids video, the narrator criticizes Rosa
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 6: Parks for, quote, grandstanding during the Montgomery bus boycott.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: No, no.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: But concludes, in the end, Parks was able to work
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 6: with her white neighbors to resolve their differences over bus seating. That's...
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: And then in another video, the narrator describes George Floyd
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: as a black man who resisted arrest and claims the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 6: accusations of racial targeting leveled by protests against police were false.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, Rosa Parks has got to be the fake one.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: I kind of think the Rosa Parks one is real.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: Ugh.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Where did the word grandstanding come from?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 6: The grandstanding is in quotes.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: I can't believe what you're saying. But okay, I think
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: that Rosa Parkland is fake.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the George Floyd one is right. And it's from
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: a video called Los Angeles.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's not horrible.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: The video is called Los Angeles colon Mateo backs the blue.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, no.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: Of all the things you want them to teach you about,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: your kids about, it is not, of course, George Floyd.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: Without fossil fuels, humanity never would have created so many
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: wonderful things like jet fuel, asphalt, and heating oil. This is,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: of course, from Leo and Layla meet the dinosaurs. And
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: I never thought about how plastic makes modern life easier.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: I've only ever heard about the negatives of plastic. That
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: is from Leo and Layla meet Leo Baekeland, who is
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: the Belgian chemist who is known as the father of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: the plastics industry.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: here's my, I think the dinosaur one is fake because
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: I don't think they want to say that dinosaurs are
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: old enough to become fuel.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Cause that, those are some old dinosaurs.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: I agree with loving on that one.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: I think you're twisting us and they're both real.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: Good guess.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: The real one is Leo and Layla meet Leo Bakeland,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: who is the Belgian chemist who is known as the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: father of plastics.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Also, they probably have money from big plastics.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, big dino's not coming up with lunch. We need
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: them now. Don't believe in dinosaur bones. Please believe in plastics.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: And finally, our final two. Our founding fathers knew that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: slavery was evil and wrong, and they knew it would
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: do terrible harm to the nation. They wanted it to end,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: but their first priority was getting all 13 colonies to unite.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: As one country.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 6: The Founding Fathers made a compromise to achieve something great.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: That is from Leo and Layla's History Adventures with Frederick Douglass.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: And of course, pay your employees too much and your
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 6: business will fail from lack of profit. Pay them too
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: little and you'll also fail because your employees will leave.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: It's the invisible hand that will lead you to the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 6: right decision. When done right, everybody wins with capitalism. That
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: is from Leo and Layla's History Adventures with Adam Smith.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: So I know PragerU has a video with Frederick Douglass
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: in which it's basically like, America, imperfect but awesome. So
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: that's why I think that's the real one.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's the real one, too.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: Same.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: They are, of course, both real.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: I twisted too early. You twisted too early. You twisted
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: too early. Hey, real quick for all of you. Guess
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: how many views on YouTube PragerU's account has. Tommy, please.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: The total of the account?
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: Total since 2009.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: 2009.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Like 100 million?
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say 200 million.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: 300 million.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: 1.78 billion.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, Tommy. Oh, wow. That's no good. That's no good.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: All right, we got to start making some content for kids.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: That's a lot.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, let's do that.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Let's get it in the- Back the bluey.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 6: Paw Patrol, but with some criticism. With some salient criticism. Gentlemen,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 6: thank you for letting me come on here and bum
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: you out.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: We had a laugh.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: You know what? You did it in a jovial way.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you. The other thing about this is it's like, finally,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: a way for schools to really thrive by showing kids videos.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: The famous way teachers who have given up make the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: class time go away. You know?
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: Oh, you've got to think they're just not even going
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: to be hiring teachers.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: It's just going to be those videos. Yeah, that's true. Yeah,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: because they fired all the teachers.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: Oh, no, I gave them a genius idea.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: Oh, no.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: It's just chat GPT, welcoming the kids, putting on the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: PragerU vids.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: One of the little robot dogs comes out and presses
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 6: the play. They don't even need a person anymore.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Hallie Kiefer. Thank you for having me. Thank
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: you to Lawrence Tribe, and we will talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Farah Safari. writing support from Hallie Kiefer. Reid Cherlin is
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman,
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