Latest / Pod Save America / Trump's War on the U.S. Government

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Trump's War on the U.S. Government · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favre.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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  Speaker 2: On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's new proposal for
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: the United States to, quote, own Gaza. His continued destruction
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: of our own government that's being led by Elon Musk.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And he may finally be hitting some legal roadblocks, so
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about that. The Democrats are also now using
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: what little power they have to fight back. And later
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  Speaker 2: you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Senator Brian Schatz about why
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: he and his colleagues gave speeches all night to oppose
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  Speaker 2: Trump's nominee for OMB director and what else they're planning.
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  Speaker 2: But first, Trump attended the national prayer breakfast on Thursday
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  Speaker 2: in Washington, which you don't want to miss when you've
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  Speaker 2: been chosen by God to save America, as Trump has.
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  Speaker 2: In the spirit of our Lord and Savior, he gave
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  Speaker 2: a speech filled with his trademark humility and grace. Let's listen.
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  Speaker 4: And as the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers.
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  Speaker 5: And in that end, I hope my greatest legacy, when
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  Speaker 5: it's all finished, will be known as a peacemaker.
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  Speaker 4: And a unifier. I hope that's going to be clear.
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  Speaker 5: The opposite side, the opposing side, and they oppose religion.
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  Speaker 4: They oppose God. I don't know if you've been watching,
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: but we got rid of woke over the last two weeks.
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: Woke is gonzo. I'm sure you've seen it.
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  Speaker 5: The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada,
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down
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  Speaker 5: by millions and millions of barrels a day.
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  Speaker 4: And I opened it up.
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  Speaker 5: Wasn't that easy to do, but I opened it up
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  Speaker 5: and it's pouring down and it's a beautiful thing.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: You know, it is pouring in Los Angeles, has been
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  Speaker 2: the last couple of days, and I assumed it was rain,
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  Speaker 2: but apparently it's water from our Lord and Savior, Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 3: Barrels of water from Northwest Canada via Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he just opened up the spigots and it's just
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  Speaker 2: been flowing from the skies because that's how water travels
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: from north to south on our heads.
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  Speaker 3: That's how gravity works.
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  Speaker 2: So much to unpack here, but let's start with Trump's
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  Speaker 2: aspiration to be known as a peacemaker. Since we haven't
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: had the pleasure of discussing his plan to turn Gaza
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  Speaker 2: into what he calls the Riviera of the Middle East,
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  Speaker 2: a phrase he blurted out during a press conference with
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  Speaker 2: Bibi Netanyahu on Tuesday. Trump did not rule out sending
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  Speaker 2: American troops into Gaza, which he said the U.S. should, quote, own.
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  Speaker 2: but not before the forced relocation of 2 million Palestinians,
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  Speaker 2: the very definition of ethnic cleansing. Trump later walked back
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  Speaker 2: the part about sending U.S. troops, but aside from Israeli
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  Speaker 2: politicians and Trump surrogates, just about every other observer is
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  Speaker 2: a mix of very confused and very opposed. Does this
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  Speaker 2: fall into the watch what he does, not what he
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  Speaker 2: says category, or is this one to take seriously? What
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  Speaker 2: was your reaction to this? I.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we've talked a lot since Trump has been
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  Speaker 3: sworn in about how to modulate our reaction to certain things.
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  Speaker 3: We don't want to be at an 11 all the
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  Speaker 3: time and you want to try to separate just him
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  Speaker 3: having verbal diarrhea on the stage from like the thing
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  Speaker 3: he's actually doing to hurt people's lives, many of which
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  Speaker 3: we're going to talk about in this podcast. But I
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  Speaker 3: do think that's at times a false dichotomy, right? Like
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  Speaker 3: what the president says matters, right?
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  Speaker 2: It has- Especially in foreign affairs.
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  Speaker 3: Especially in foreign affairs. And so- Do I think that
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  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is going to be able to put together
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  Speaker 3: a plan to forcibly relocate 2 million people who do
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  Speaker 3: not want to go to countries who do not want
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  Speaker 3: to have them against the wishes of everyone in the
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  Speaker 3: region and do so without the U.S. troops so we
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  Speaker 3: can build luxury condos in Gaza? No, I think that's
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  Speaker 3: unlikely to happen. But the fact that he said it
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  Speaker 3: and Tommy pointed this out matters because that is a
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  Speaker 3: massive recruitment tool for Hamas and groups like Hamas. This
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  Speaker 3: is exactly what they have talked about, the idea they're
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  Speaker 3: going to be moved from their home so the United
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  Speaker 3: States of America can own Gaza for a resort, for
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  Speaker 3: a series of Trump resorts on the waterfront. That's a
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  Speaker 3: damaging thing to say. That does matter.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, is it? Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, well, we had this... Everyone is... We're having
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  Speaker 3: concern policing. Like, oh, you can't be worried about this.
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  Speaker 3: You have to be worried about this. You're not worried
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  Speaker 3: enough about this.
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  Speaker 2: I know.
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  Speaker 3: One of the ways we concern police is there's things
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  Speaker 3: he says that he's never going to do, and there
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  Speaker 3: are things that he's doing that he never talks about.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes the things he says he's never going to do matter,
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  Speaker 3: as you point out, particularly in foreign policy.
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  Speaker 2: So all the reporting, and it was confirmed by the
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  Speaker 2: White House, was that this wasn't just off the cuff.
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  Speaker 2: He had been thinking about this for a while. He's
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  Speaker 2: had this plan for a while. And Axios had a story.
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  Speaker 2: I think the headline was like, what was in Trump's
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  Speaker 2: mind and what Trump was thinking with this? And so
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  Speaker 2: I said, ooh, I'm interested to learn this. And there
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  Speaker 2: was a source close to Trump that told Axios, he
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  Speaker 2: is a disruptor and he wanted to challenge the discourse.
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  Speaker 3: That story made me want to throw my phone against
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  Speaker 3: the wall.
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  Speaker 2: He's a disruptor. He's just, you know, it's a war-torn
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  Speaker 2: country with starving people in a in the middle of
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  Speaker 2: a conflict that has been going on for hundreds of years,
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  Speaker 2: if not more, that is sort of a solution has
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  Speaker 2: evaded presidents and leaders. But you know what? Donald Trump's
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  Speaker 2: a disruptor. He's just wanting to, he wants to challenge
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  Speaker 2: the discourse by saying that we should own Gaza as
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  Speaker 2: a country. We've got Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, Gaza.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to forcibly displace 2 million Palestinians. But then
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  Speaker 2: he said, oh, well, then they're going to have new homes,
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  Speaker 2: new homes and just a nice life.
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  Speaker 3: Modern new homes. Modern new homes.
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  Speaker 2: Modern new homes. Modern new homes they're going to have.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So like clearly I think what happened here is someone
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  Speaker 2: told him that a very real problem right now is
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  Speaker 2: how are the people of Gaza going to live in
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  Speaker 2: a country that because of Hamas and the Israeli government
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  Speaker 2: is just absolutely fucking destroyed. There's people starving everywhere. Like,
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  Speaker 2: it's just horrible. Hamas has still not been completely rooted
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  Speaker 2: out either. And what are you going to... Like, how
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  Speaker 2: are you going to rebuild? What are people going to
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  Speaker 2: do while you rebuild? Like, these are real questions and
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  Speaker 2: it's a real challenge. And I think he didn't want
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  Speaker 2: to know more than that. And all he wanted to
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  Speaker 2: think of was like, well, why don't we do it?
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  Speaker 2: We're buying up everything else. We're getting Greenland and getting
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  Speaker 2: the rest of it. We'll do it. It'll be great.
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  Speaker 2: We'll send troops. It'll be fine. They'll be fine. And
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  Speaker 2: then he just said it. I think that's probably... He
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  Speaker 2: wants to be the guy who... is seen as fixing
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  Speaker 2: hard problems, but he doesn't want to do any of
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  Speaker 2: the difficult or unpopular things required to solve the hard problems.
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  Speaker 3: Look, if there is one situation in the history of
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  Speaker 3: world where it makes sense to just start spitballing ideas,
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  Speaker 3: it's Middle East peace. That's where you do it.
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  Speaker 2: That's where you want to freelance. That's where you want
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  Speaker 2: to freelance. As you also heard in the clip of
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  Speaker 2: the prayer breakfast, woke is gonzo. We've talked about Trump
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  Speaker 2: and Elon trying to root out and fire federal workers.
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  Speaker 2: who've had anything to do with any diversity initiatives. They're
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  Speaker 2: also trying to cancel all diversity programs. I think we've
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  Speaker 2: said this before, but there was even a Lunar New
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  Speaker 2: Year event at a public university that was canceled. Pam Bondi,
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  Speaker 2: who is now our Attorney General, so congratulations, Pam Bondi,
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  Speaker 2: she has already released a memo instructing the Civil Rights
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  Speaker 2: Division of the Justice Department to, quote, investigate, eliminate, and
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  Speaker 2: penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: activities in the private sector and in educational institutions that
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  Speaker 2: receive federal funds. In case you don't know, DEIA, the
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: A is for accessibility, so we are also making sure
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  Speaker 2: that people with disabilities cannot have any initiatives or help
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: or anything like that. We don't want to do anything
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  Speaker 2: for folks with disabilities as well. They got added to
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  Speaker 2: the DEI for Trump. Bondi is also heading up a
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: new task force to, quote, eradicate anti-Christian bias, which Trump
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: also announced at the breakfast. And on Wednesday, Trump signed
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: an executive order to ban trans girls from participating in
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  Speaker 2: girls' sports, which will almost surely be challenged in court,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: though apparently the NCAA has already moved on this and
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: is abiding by the order. But the 10 athletes that
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that applies to in the NCAA, So we got that
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: problem covered. Promise is kept, right? The reaction from MAGA
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  Speaker 2: fans on social media suggests that this is the stuff
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  Speaker 2: they're most excited about. They're all high-fiving, they're celebrating these moves.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Question is, are these performative? Are they real? And are
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: some of them seemingly just too an excuse to fire
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: and harass people who aren't Trump loyalists.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: In everything Trump and his minions do, harassing people who
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: are different than them is always... That's the benefit of
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: all of it, right? That is to them what cutting
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Medicare was to Paul Ryan, right? It's the thing they
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: talked about when they were sitting by the keg in college.
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  Speaker 3: That is the truth. These things are somewhat performative in
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: the sense that there are always... questions about the legal
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: authority they are using here. Does it exist? Will a
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: court uphold it? Is the bizarre interpretation of various regulations
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: they're using for these sorts of things truly give them
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: the authority to do stuff? But they have real-world effect.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: There's a very real chance you point out that the
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  Speaker 3: executive order on banning trans participation in sports is going
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  Speaker 3: to be held up by a court. That didn't stop
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  Speaker 3: the NCAA. They did it. Half the country has laws
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  Speaker 3: on the books that ban trans participation in sports. What's
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  Speaker 3: going to happen to half the country? It does not
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: have those laws, right? Do you think our high school
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: and rec leagues going to really take a fight with
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  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice? Even if the Department of Justice
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: has no chance of winning that, you see the same
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: thing with the DEI programs, right? Just Google the other
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: day announced they were abandoning theirs. Now, I think on
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: the corporate side, a lot of them are just waiting
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  Speaker 3: for the reason and excuse to do this. They're not
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: necessarily afraid that Trump's going to come after them. It's
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: like they were waiting for a reason to get rid
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: of these programs, and now Trump has given them cover
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  Speaker 3: to do it. But it has real impact. And it
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: makes me think about, you'll remember this, at a rally
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: early in the campaign when Trump was first talking about
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: this issue, he basically said, when I bring up tax cuts,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I give you all tax cuts, no one cheers. When
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: I bring this up, you all cheer. And you can
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: see it clicking his brain. There is real enthusiasm for
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: it in the base, and that's probably why they are
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: cheering here.
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  Speaker 2: Just in case people think that, you know, Trump going
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: after all these DEI, DEIA initiatives, programs is about like canceling,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: you know, the agency's unconscious bias training or, you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: getting rid of all the Ibram X. Kendi books, you know,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: that are sitting on the federal government agencies. A right
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: wing group called the American Accountability Foundation last week started
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: a DEI watch list website. that published photos, names, and
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: public information of mostly black employees within the Department of
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Health and Human Services. These are people in the public
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: health agencies and had the word targets above their pictures.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: These are doctors, scientists, researchers. And so that website has
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: been going around. There was about 50 employees suspended at
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the Department of Education. So there's a guy who works
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: in a, Regional office for the education department at the
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Office for Civil Rights. This person is a West Point grad,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Army veteran, former prosecutor, got a perfect rating in his
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: last three evaluations. He was suspended from his job because
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: he had been appointed by two Trump political appointees to
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: a diversity council that was created under the first Trump administration.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Trump administration creates a diversity council, two Trump appointees appoint
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: this guy to the council, veteran prosecutor, perfect ratings, doing
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  Speaker 2: his job. He has now been suspended from his job.
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  Speaker 2: So these are the effects of these orders and this climate,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: which is as Russ Vogt, who is set to be
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: the new OMB director, said that their goal is to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: terrorize federal employees, to traumatize them. He said their goal
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: is to traumatize federal employees so that it's miserable to
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: come to work every day. That's what the real goal is.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And you know what? You can say, like, federal workforce
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: is too big and too many bureaucrats and we should
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: cut weight. Like, yeah, sure, of course. There's a way
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: to do it. There's a way to identify budget cuts
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: and send them to Congress and have them in a
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: budget and tell employees, okay, you can leave. You got severance.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: You got this. You got that. This is not what's happening.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: This is not what's happening at all.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Ezra Klein made this point on his podcast recently talking
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: about this effort to basically force federal government employees to leave.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: It's like, do they have a plan for this? What
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: happens if a bunch of primary care physicians in the
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: VA decide to leave?
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: How are you going to replace them? Who's going to
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: give healthcare to veterans?
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Scientists and researchers at the NIH, law enforcement officials, judges.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, the list goes on and on. Air traffic controllers.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Where we have a shortage of people already. Do
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: I think that the federal government could probably operate with
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: fewer employees across the board? I'm sure that's the case. Absolutely.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: But you have to have a plan that focuses on
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: the most essential workers. Where do you have excess staff?
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Where do you have a dearth of staff? I mean,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: where do you have if you lose these people, you
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: have no easy way to replace them? Because you know
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: what's really hard to do? get other doctors who are
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: not currently in the federal government to come work for
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: the federal government.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of these federal workers, most of these federal
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: workers could be making a lot more money in the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: private sector, but they do it because they believe in
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: public service. And how are we going to get new
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: people now? You're going to go to the DOJ so
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: you can work for Pam Bondi as she hunts down
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: DEI initiatives? Oh, by the way, so Pam Bondi, she's
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: going after DEI initiatives now. and she's going to stop
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the weaponization of government. Here's another one of her first moves.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: One of her first moves was to eliminate the DOJ's
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: anti-corruption unit that prosecuted white-collar crime and seized Russian oligarchs'
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: yachts and billions of dollars in stolen assets. Sources tell
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Bradley Hope, who's a Wall Street Journal contributor, former writer there,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: he says that the sources tell him that the money
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: that they have recouped from oligarchs' yachts, billions of dollars
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: in stolen assets, The money that was supposed to go
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: back to the victims and the governments it was stolen
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: from is instead going to fund detention facilities in Gitmo.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: So we're cutting down on white-collar crime so we can
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: build mass detention centers to send undocumented immigrants.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: That's what people voted for.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: That's what people voted for. We were being too tough
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: on white-collar crime and Russian oligarchs.
• 16:59
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• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Elon Musk, the world's richest man and
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: dumbest genius. He continues his Civics 101 education, which involves
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: learning how government works before trying to illegally dismantle the
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: services people count on and terrorize the public servants who
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: provide them. But he is starting to run into some
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: resistance with the courts. On Thursday, a federal judge in D.C.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: ruled that the Treasury Department cannot provide access to any
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: payment record or payment system of records to Elon's Doge bags.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I'm calling them doge bags. This comes as CNN reports
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: that just days after the inauguration, the doge bags tried
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: to force the highest ranking career official at the Treasury
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Department to just stop all payments to USAID. Just stop them.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And when he refused, that's when he resigned. It has
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: also come to light that USAID's inspector general was investigating
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: the agency's partnership with Starlink, a service Musk owns to
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: provide Internet in Ukraine. Separately, another judge on Thursday also
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: delayed the deadline for federal employees to decide whether they
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: want to take Elon's fork-in-the-road buyout offer, at least until
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the hearing on Monday when the judge decides whether to
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: block the program, which around 40,000 employees have now agreed to.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Charlie Savage at the New York Times wrote a piece
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: rounding up all the ways that Trump and Elon are
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: ignoring organizations. or contravening the law as they do all this.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: You're seeing the lawsuits pop up, federal judges starting to
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: issue orders. You see this as a hint of good news, systems,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the guardrails are holding, or is it just too early
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: to tell?
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: I think it's early to tell, but I think if
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: you're looking for good news, and we should all look
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: quite hard for good news these days.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: You really got to dig deep. That's right.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: We're like a truffle pig for good news. You got
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: to get deep in there. The good news is that
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Trump and Elon Musk and his minions are not going
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: about this in a smart way. There are ways in
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: which you could try to affect real long-term change and damage, frankly,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: the federal government in ways that are more legally sustainable.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: There are ways to paper it over, to go through
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: steps or process to pause and think about it. But
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: they're not trying to do that. They are looking for
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: short-term wins, headlines. It's like Silicon Valley, move fast, break things.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: And in doing so, they are leaving themselves very vulnerable
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: to legal challenges. Now, ultimately, you're getting things stopped at
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: the district court level. What's going to happen when it
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: gets to the appeals court level, where you're going to
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: have more of these circuits that are going to be
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: filled with Trump judges? And then, of course, what happens
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: when it gets to the Supreme Court level? And the
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Supreme Court is going to have some pretty big decisions
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: to make about how much power the president has. And
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: they love Donald Trump. There's a majority that loves Donald Trump.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: He put a lot of them on that court. But
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: something will have to be in the back of their
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: mind is if you do a massive expansion of presidential power,
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: is there's going to be a Democrat in that office,
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: hopefully in the not too distant future. And are they
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: willing to.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Do that?
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: When you talk about just the ability of the president
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: to unilaterally just get rid of the power of the
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: purse to not spend money Congress appropriates, that would be
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: a massive change in sort of the balance of power
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: in this country that is extended for centuries.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you could see them ruling, and they've
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: been sort of hinting at this for a while, and
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: there have been some other rulings that pointed this direction,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: that the president does have more power than precedent suggests
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: in terms of, like, you know, firing civil servants or
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. The Schedule F stuff. Again, though,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the way that Elon has gone about it, the whole
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: thing about the payment systems and having you know, random
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: doge bags access the payment systems. I don't think they're
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: going to get away with that one. But on some
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: of the federal workers, I do wonder about the USAID
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: stuff because I don't imagine that you can just eliminate
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: an independent agency that was created due to a law
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: that passed Congress. Yeah. They're, of course, trying to get
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: away with saying that they are reorganizing it. But, you know,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: just before we record it, The news is that only
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: 290 of the 10,000 USAID employees worldwide will keep their jobs.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, that has to be illegal, right? Obviously, the
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: courts can decide what is truly legal or not, but
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: as you pointed out, an agency created by Congress, funded
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: by Congress, you do these things, and you can't just
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: unilaterally fire all the people and make it go away
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: and not spend the money. That clearly is a violation
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: of something.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. The USAID thing, and again, we all
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: know that foreign aid doesn't poll well. Get it. But
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: what is happening to USAID? Some of the employees at
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: USAID have been serving their country for decades. They are
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: some of the most apolitical, nonpartisan people you'll ever meet.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: They're in dangerous areas all over the world trying to
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: keep people alive with food and with medicine. And since
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: this freeze and, you know, Rubio's out there bullshitting that like, oh,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: the freeze is over and we've made exceptions and now
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: everything should be fine. And if you can't get your
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: grant back, then that's your problem. And maybe you're doing
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: it on purpose to make us look bad, which is
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: all bullshit. But since the freeze and since the freeze
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: has been ended, or at least there's been a carve
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: out for sort of life-saving assistance, it hasn't really worked.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: HIV patients still aren't getting their medicine in Sudan where,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: There is a genocide, according to the United States government.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Half the population of 50 million is starving, needs food.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Famine is spreading. And two-thirds of the soup kitchens in Khartoum,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: the biggest city, are closed because of this. I saw
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Samantha Power, the former USAID director, our friend, on Colbert
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the other night saying that this is how bad it was.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: In some places in Africa, kids were in line for
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: their TB medication, their tuberculosis. And three kids... got theirs,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and then the rest of the line had to go
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: home because the freeze happened and they couldn't legally provide anymore.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: In Zambia, there's medical supplies to stop hemorrhaging pregnant women
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: and life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, and those are all gone now.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: So it's just going to be like people around the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: world are going to die. And by the way, the
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: money that it costs for malaria nets or some of
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: these life-saving HIV drugs is like tiny, tiny. amount of, sorry,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: a small, small amount of money. We're not saving as money,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: money that's already been appropriated. So like, don't fucking tell
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: me that you were, we're like going to take this
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: money and now give people tax cuts in America, which would,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: which most people still probably wouldn't prefer. But like, now
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: this is just a waste now. And these, these USAID employees,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: like they, they have families in foreign countries. Suddenly they've
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: been told like, you got to go home. They don't
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: know how to go home. They don't know who to contact.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: They're taking their kids out of school. They've like, given
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: their life for this. They are also, I've talked to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: some people at USAID, they are threatening to investigate the
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: senior officials at USAID for some of this DEI stuff
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And the reason they want to do this
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: is to try to fire them for a cause so
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: they can make sure that none of these people have
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: a severance, none of these people have healthcare after they leave.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: So just like cut them off immediately and send them
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: out the door.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: This is truly insane. It is a fraction of the
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: government's budget. And you can argue about individual programs or
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: whatever else. It is a fraction of the government's budget.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And maybe the reason they're going after this is because
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk is mad at the USAID inspector general for
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: investigating Starlink, or maybe because they recognize politically that foreign
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: aid is the weakest of the herd, right? It's the
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: easiest to go after, the hardest to defend. You get
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Democrats in a position where they're defending foreign aid. I
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: think Democrats should defend foreign aid in this case. We
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: should defend the point of it. We should defend the
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: fact that we view it as our responsibility in the
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: world to do good things. And the– it's just the
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: way that– like, it is ruthless. It is cruel. It's
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: truly sociopathic, the way they are doing this. Just, like,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: targeting these people who did nothing. Like, this isn't even–
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: USAID isn't even really part of some crazy MAGA conspiracy
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: like the FBI or the DOJ. Like, you under– like,
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: it is also absurd.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: It's a new one. They just discovered.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: They just– As a scholar of Trump insanity or MAG insanity,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: you can understand we're going after Jack Smith people or
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: the FBI agents who've investigated January 6th, even if they
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: were just asked to do so by the superiors. That
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: is also wrong and terrible. But this one just seems
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: so random and the ruthlessness of it is truly crazy.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: It's hard to fathom how insane this is.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Another possibility is that Elon and the dogebags are just–
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: they're looking at programs that they're finding online and they
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: are in some cases outright lying about them or taking
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: it out of context or they don't know what the
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: fuck they're talking about so it seems nefarious. And they
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: could have just seen a couple of those programs at
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: USAID and decided, oh, that's where we're going to start.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: And then, again, these people, because they have no experience
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: in government, because they don't bother to learn anything, because
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: they think they're the smartest fucking people in the world–
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: because everyone in government's bad and everyone's attack is a
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: fucking genius who's going to save the world. That's how
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: they think out there, a lot of them, unfortunately. They
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: are now just, they're going on a website, usaspending.gov, and
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: all the Elon fanboy accounts on Twitter are doing this too.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And they're looking at publicly available information about government spending
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: and acting like they are making some incredible discovery about
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: corruption that has been hidden. The website is there because
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: George W. Bush signed it into law thanks to a
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: law that was sponsored by Senator Barack Obama and Republican,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: extremely conservative Republican Tom Coburn to make sure that all
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the government spending in the entire budget is online for
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: everyone to see. That's the only reason that they're all
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: finding all this fucking spending that they're like, oh, this
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: is the greatest scandal in history. And they just like
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: stumbled over it because they weren't fucking paying attention to
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: anything the government did up until now. unless it had
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: something to do with their companies and making sure they
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: couldn't make more billions of dollars. I can't stand these.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: It does make me wonder if transparency is a mistake.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: It's just, if you have people with massive megaphones just
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: pushing out out-of-contact misinformation to large-spots people at a time
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: which the media does not have the capability or the
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: reach to push back, it's not particularly great.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: There's so many examples of this, but the one that
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: really took off this week is a real, a huge scandal,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: huge scandal. Here's Donald Trump describing it at the prayer
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: breakfast this morning.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Did you see what happened yesterday where they found hundreds
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: of millions of dollars of money was fraudulently given to
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: newspapers and I guess Politico? I don't know. They're here.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: I hope you're enjoying your breakfast. No, they gave money
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: to all this out of, out of USAID.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: So, again, huge scandal. Trump also truthed about it early on.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Thursday morning, saying that billions of dollars had been stolen, quote,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: much of it going to the fake news media as
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: a payoff for creating good stories about the Democrats. What
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: a scandal. What a scandal.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: Well, think of all the good stories they've read about
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden. Money well spent.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: And just in case you think this is Donald Trump, no,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: the brain rot is now Trump, Elon Musk... just dozens
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: of fucking MAGA, Doge accounts online, Musk fanboys, Trump fanboys, everywhere, right?
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: They all think the right-wing media, they've got Fox, it's everywhere.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: The federal government purchased $ 8 million worth of Politico Pro subscriptions.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Politico Pro is separate from regular Politico and it's for
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: CEOs and companies and governments and it's basically... I don't know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: you learn information about legislation and analysis and very complicated.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: It's like a Bloomberg terminal is basically what it's like.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: It's like a Bloomberg terminal. And it's like $ 7, 000 a
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: year for a subscription to it. Pretty expensive. Look, if
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I saw a bunch of Politico Pro subscriptions in our budget,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, hey, do we really need that? Maybe
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: we should cut those down. But the idea that that
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: was turned into... USAID is secretly funneling money to Politico
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: to get good stories for Democrats. First of all, not
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: getting their money's worth.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: Seriously.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've read Politico the last couple
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: of years. Not getting their money's worth on that one.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: There's also something they go through in all of these
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Republican Senate offices, House offices, also spending government money on
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: a subscription to Politico Pro. In fact, in 2017, the
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: executive office of the president under Donald Trump paid $ 97, 000
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to Politico Pro.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: You're... You are missing one key part of this conspiracy
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: theory that is very important, which is on the day
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: this sort of came up, it was reported by Semaphore
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: that because of a glitch, Politico failed to pay their employees.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: So the theory is not just that the government- Oh,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: that's a coincidence. Was giving all this money to- Politico,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: it's that once Elon Musk in the doge bags, which
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: I assume he made up and is quite impressive.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: On the spot, really.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Very good. That's just genius at work. You know what, guys?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I'm just a little behind the scenes. Reid didn't want
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: me to call them nerds because he thought that was,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: He said, and I quote, where he comes from in
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: his social circle, nerds are cool. That's what he said.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: Nerds.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: I was a nerd. Nerds are cool. I'm not making
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: fun of nerds.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: I get it.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I get it. But fuck these people.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the problem is not that they're nerdy.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: That is not- Or that they're young or that they're
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: smart or that they're like, great. I want young, smart
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: people in government. And that's amazing. Want that.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: But to go back to this, the point here is,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: is people believe that Politico was unable to make payroll
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: because Elon Musk in the doge bags shut off the
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: fountain of money. And this one really is, this is
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: like the chef's kiss apotheosis of perfect right-wing conspiracy theories.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: You have a shadowy government agency that helps foreign countries
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: and foreign people funneling money to a Washington, D.C.-based outlet
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: that's owned by a German billionaire to write good stories
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: about Joe Biden and Democrats and bastards with Donald Trump.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: That is everything. If you could just get Anthony Fauci's
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: name in there, it would be just perfect. It's also perfect.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: It's also perfect for like the anti-anti-Trumps or the former
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: anti-Trumps since they're all on board now. Because they're all
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: out there like, look, obviously the craziest conspiracy is wrong,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: but that is so much money and the fact that
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: everyone's defending this much money. It's like, no, if you
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: don't like the government spending this much on Politico Pro subscriptions,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: go talk to your fucking Republican senators and congressmen. Go
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: through the normal process. So talk to your, talk to
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the fucking, like, fine, cut it. I don't give a
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: shit if anyone subscribes to Politico Pro.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if Donald Trump wants to cancel all the Politico Pro,
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: that's his, do it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: Fine.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Do not cut those message box ones, though. I'll be
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: very clear.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: No, do not. I'm sure there's a lot of those
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: in the federal government right now. One more thing about
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: the doge bags before we moved on. So, of course,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: everyone is like, what are these kids helping Elon who
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: haven't been vetted, don't have security clearances? They're trying to,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know, shut off millions of dollars of payments
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: that have been appropriated by law. This is concerning. And
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: then you get this from the Silicon Valley assholes who
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: are on Twitter now, the Musk fans, and they're like,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: We should want. This is ridiculous. These are young, smart,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: brilliant people. I know this one and he's brilliant. He's
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: a coder. But it's like, great, fine, whatever. That's not
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: our issue. Well, Wall Street Journal, right before we recorded.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Here's the lead. A key Doge staff member who gained
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: access to the Treasury Department's central payment system resigned Thursday
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: after he was linked to a deleted social media account
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: that advocated racism and eugenics. And you're thinking to yourself, well,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: what were the tweets? What do you mean by racism
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: and eugenics? How bad could it really have been? Well,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: here's a quote. Just for the record, I was racist
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: before it was cool, the account posted in July, according
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: to the journal's review of archived posts. Another one. You
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the account wrote on X in September. Another one. Normalize
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Indian hate. And then this was in December. This was
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: just a couple months ago. 99% of Indian H-1Bs will
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, AI. They're going back.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Don't worry, guys. To me, that's just that. That is the, right?
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: We're going to replace immigrants, people of color, ethnicities we
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: don't like with the machines, with the robots. That's the vibe.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: That's the vibe there.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: I hate to tell this to this Doge guy, but
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: who do you think the LLMs are coming for next?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Look, there was another one. There's another one whose name
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: had been out there, and I went to his Twitter account.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: It's still up. He's retweeting fucking Nick Fuentes. You know,
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I know he had dinner with Donald Trump, so I
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: guess that's fine now. But, like, what? It's un-fucking-believable.
• 36:04
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• 37:30
  Speaker 2: All right, now it's time to talk about the Democrats again.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: You know what?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: It's getting better every time we do this section. Lawmakers
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: have been more vocal about trying new legislative tactics, as
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: we'll discuss in a minute. There's also been protests, rallies,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: went to Treasury, went to USAID. They are still working
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: on landing the perfect soundbite. Let's listen.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Hello, everybody.
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: Are we going to fight the fight?
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Are we going to win the fight? Are we not
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: going to rest till we win?
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: We will win.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: We will win. We will win.
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: We will win.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: We won't rest. What do we need? We won't rest.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: We won't rest.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: We won't rest.
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: Thank you, everybody.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay. So, I just want to say, poor Chuck Schumer.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: He's gotten a lot of shit online for that. And, yeah,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: do you cringe listening to it?
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Sure. Is Chuck Schumer the most eloquent speaker? Is he
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: going to rile up a crowd? Probably not. Could you
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: not understand what the crowd said when they said, what
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: do we want? Me neither. Me neither. But you know what?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: They're trying. They are out there trying and they are
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: doing their best with what they got. And like, I
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: am going to give them credit for that. And I
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: realize it's cringe and I realize it's not great, but like,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: You know what? It's all hands on deck right now,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: and everyone's just throwing stuff at the wall to see
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: what sticks, and we're trying, and I encourage that.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: When we were on this podcast last week or the
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: week before some other time in the 12 years in
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: which Donald Trump has been president, we talked about how
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: Democrats have to get out there and make noise, just
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: start talking, stop worrying about what exactly it is you're
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: going to say, and just be out there. That clip
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: makes me question that advice, I would say. No, in
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: all seriousness, like, look, is it perfect?
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: No.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Don't worry about everything you're going to say, but do
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: say something.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: That's right. I mean, the clip of Maxwell Frost asking,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: what do we want? And then the part of being
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: unable to answer is kind of like the moment that will, like,
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: if you put how we lost this election at Time Castle,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: that would be it. But look, let's give credit where
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: credit is due, is they are out there They are
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: making noise. They are raising hell. We'll talk about it
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: in a minute. They are fighting back now in ways
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: they were not in the first couple of weeks, and
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: we should give them credit for that. And just the
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: mere fact that there is an opposition presence raising hell
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: about the bad things that are happening is a huge
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: change from where we were two weeks ago, and it's
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: a net positive for sure.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And again, let's talk about Chuck Schumer. He's got this
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Democratic caucus. He's got, you know, John Fetterman in the caucus.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: He's got some other people who, like, are probably telling him,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: we want to vote for some of the nominees because
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: that's good politics in my state. And he has to
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: sort of balance all the needs of the caucus. And
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: to Schumer's credit, you know, they came up with a
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: strategy this week. They said, can we stop any of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: these nominees? No, we don't have the votes because we
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: don't have enough senators. And so what can we do? Well,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: we can slow them down. We can hold the floor
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: and give a bunch of speeches so that we delay
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: these nominations already. I think Kash Patel now is not
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: going to be voted on for another week because of
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Democrats' delay tactics. So they're gumming up the works. They're
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: doing what they can. And they decided to hold the
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: floor Wednesday night into Thursday for the nomination of Russ
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Vogt for Office of Management and Budget, the budget director.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: And Brian Schatz, who you're going to hear in a bit,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: talked to Tommy and Schumer's office and everyone. They reached
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: out to us and said, look, we're going to hold
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: the floor. We want to make some noise. You guys
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: were talking about making noise. How about you guys do
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: a live stream and You know, we'll have all the
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: senators who are on the floor or a bunch of
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: senators on the floor, Democratic senators, come talk to you guys. And,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: you know, we did it. It was great. And, you know,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: they sat down. They were there all night. They popped
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: into the live stream. And again, it's like people are
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: trying here. People are trying. And we have limited power.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that people who aren't good or bad
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: messaging or whatever gets a pass, like we can all improve.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: But they're trying. They're trying. So now Schumer has also
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: got the whole caucus to oppose or he's asking Congress
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the whole caucus, to oppose all of the remaining Trump
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: nominees as a protest. Again, probably not going to do
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: anything unless we get Susan Collins and Murkowski and McConnell
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: and someone else to vote against them. So it's probably
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: not going to happen, but good for him. And then
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic minority leader in the House, he had
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: a letter earlier this week that made clear that House
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Democrats won't be helping Republicans deal with government funding or
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the debt limit unless they undo the Trump's federal spending freeze,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: and potentially other concessions. What do you think about that?
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: That strikes me as the most effective move because it's
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: probably the one piece of leverage the Democrats have.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this runs very counter to everything I've ever said
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: before in my career, but Democrats should absolutely, in my view,
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: hold the debt ceiling hostage.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Me too. And now- We're in a new time.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: But it's also, it is different. To be fair, before
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: all the people who are yelling hypocrite at us come
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: at us, is Democrats are not in the same position
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: that McCarthy was with Biden or Boehner was with Obama.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Democrats don't control the floor and there are enough Republican
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: votes to extend the debt ceiling.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: They do not need a single Democratic vote. If Mike
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Johnson and Donald Trump are unable to get the votes
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: they need and they want a Democratic vote, they're going
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: to have to give us something very significant for it.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: This is on them. It's not.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And by the way, we're not saying give us something like,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: give us universal healthcare and we'll raise them. It's like,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: stop fucking... shutting down payments that Congress lawfully appropriated.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, this is a very important point.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Stop letting 25-year-old racists access to the fucking Treasury payment system,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: you assholes.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not Ted Cruz demanding the defunding of
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: the Affordable Care Act. This is asking for the government
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: to spend the money appropriated by Congress the way Congress
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: wanted it to be appropriated. in, mind you, bipartisan budget deals, right?
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: We are not even asking, although we could, for Donald
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Trump to spend all the money that Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: and Joe Biden sent his way. That's not even it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: These are all deals signed off on by Mitch McConnell,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mike Johnson. That's all we're asking.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: But no Democrat should vote for the debt ceiling absent
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: a significant set of concessions from the Republicans.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: You want the debt ceiling votes? Go talk to Chip Roy,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: who's probably not going to give you a yes vote
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: on that because it doesn't cut enough, which is for
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: him most of government. Go yell at him. Go talk
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: to the Freedom Caucus. They're the ones who are going
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: to vote no on this. Don't fucking talk to Democrats
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: when you are violating the law and refuse to be
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: held accountable by anyone.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: I think Democrats should adopt as a general approach, essentially
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: a no layups rule. Everything you want to do, we're
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: going to make harder.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Even if like, it may, you may see, like you
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: guys did this live stream, the centers were out there, they're,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: they're eating up clock and you say, well, what did
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: that actually get? He is going to get confirmed. You
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: know what it gets us is every single minute that we,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: that we're Donald Trump and the Republicans are not able
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: to do what they want to do. It's the minute
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: they're never going to get back.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: We are burning clock here and we should do on everything.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: You delay it. We use every tactic we have and
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: it's frustrating to people. There are, we don't have a
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: lot of leverage. We don't have a lot of power.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: But everything we do have, you do to delay, to obstruct,
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: to make it, because there are no other checks, right?
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: There's no one in the Republican, there are not a
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: people in the Republican Party who are going to stand
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: up to him. The media cannot do it. The Supreme
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Court is on his side. They are trying to run
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: roughshod over how our government works. And we have to
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: use every tool we have to fight back in every
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: way possible. And it's not always going to be satisfying,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: but every single little bit helps. That delay, that is
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: one week that Kash Patel is not going to be
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: able to prosecute Donald Trump's, investigate Donald Trump's political enemies, right?
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: That seemed like a lot. It's going to seem like
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: a lot to the people in that we're going to
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: prosecute that one week. Like that's, it's not the end.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: It's not going to solve all of our problems, but
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: it's the right approach. No layups.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: And again, the rest of us don't have to be
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: spectators here. In fact, we shouldn't be spectators. Like the
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: other tool we have is to make a lot of
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: noise about this. And we don't have the megaphone that
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump and Elon have, you know, we have some numbers.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: And everyone has, you always say this, everyone has the
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: potential in their own life to talk to friends and
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: colleagues and post. And we all have platforms and it
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter how big your following is. Like we, we
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: got to get up off the mat here and actually
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: start fighting. And, um, I know that like, you know,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: there was an Axios story that, uh, Democrats were getting
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: like deluged with calls and, uh, to like ask them
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: to fight. And I think that some of the democratic
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: politicians are like, okay, we are, what else do you
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: want us to do? Like, Call some of the Republicans,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the House Republicans in vulnerable districts so we can take
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the House back. Call their offices. Go protest outside their offices. Because, like,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: you know, we got to... The Democrats, they get it now.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: They don't have much power because they didn't win. And,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: you know, if they're backing off and not even putting
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: up a fight, then, yeah, we should yell at them.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: But right now, they're trying to fight. Okay, when we
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: come back from the break, you'll hear Tommy's interview with
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: a very tired Brian Schatz, who just talked through the night.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Two quick things before we do that. Latest episode of
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Polar Coaster... Dan, what's the latest episode like?
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Well, we talked a lot about where Trump stands right now,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: some of the weakness in his numbers, how all his
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: various executive orders and policies are polling, and some sense
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: of where Democrats go from here. And Caroline Reston floats
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: a very notable former Bravo personality as a Democratic nominee
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: in 2028.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Wow. Okay. Now that's, look, if that isn't reason enough
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: to tune in, and if you're not listening to Polo
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Coaster because you're not yet a subscriber, Go to Crooked.com
• 47:20
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• 47:27
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• 47:30
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• 47:38
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• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Got all kinds of great merch there, and you can
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: get 20% off right now, all t-shirts. When we come back,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Brian Schatz.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Lumen. Did
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  Speaker 1: the show a great friend of the podcast, Hawaii Senator
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Brian Schatz.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: How are you, Senator?
• 49:51
  Speaker 6: I'm doing fine. We're mobilized. We're motivated. We're a little
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: tired from the overnight, but we're doing fine.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're fresh off a democracy bender.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats held the floor for about 30 hours, I believe.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: First question is just how you feeling, but also can
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: you explain to listeners who didn't catch our live stream
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: yesterday what you and other Senate Democrats have been up to?
• 50:14
  Speaker 6: Well, we're maximally delaying the vote on Russ, Russ vote
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: to run the Office of Management and Budget. And in
• 50:21
  Speaker 6: order to do that, we, you know, we took to
• 50:23
  Speaker 6: the floor and basically haven't relinquished it. It will be
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: done in a couple of hours. And all Democrats are
• 50:30
  Speaker 6: united against Russ vote. I don't think anybody in the
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: public has ever really paid attention to OMB. But the
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: reason that this guy is so important is he's one
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: of the authors of Project 2025. And part of Project
• 50:43
  Speaker 6: 2025 specifically talks about how they think the job of
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: OMB should be especially powerful, that it should be representing, quote,
• 50:52
  Speaker 6: the president's mind in all things, like just weird stuff.
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: And the person who wrote that is Russ Vogt. And
• 50:59
  Speaker 6: now the person who is going to assume that position
• 51:01
  Speaker 6: is Russ Vogt. This guy is the architect of the
• 51:03
  Speaker 6: federal funding freeze. He's the architect of illegally dismantling agencies.
• 51:08
  Speaker 6: He's quite a dangerous character. For those people who thought
• 51:11
  Speaker 6: they were going to get like, we're going to shake
• 51:13
  Speaker 6: up Washington and maybe we'll get some mean tweets, they
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: are setting about to dismantle the American government's capacity to
• 51:23
  Speaker 6: solve basic problems, not like new programs, but Medicaid, Medicare,
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: Head Start, federal firefighters, VA home loans, the Small Business Administration.
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: So this is deadly serious. We are fighting back. And
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: even today, I think there were at least two positive
• 51:40
  Speaker 6: results in the federal courts. So part of what we're
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: trying to say to everybody is we will fight where
• 51:46
  Speaker 6: we can. We are in the minority, which means that
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: we're going to, frankly, lose some of these battles because
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: it's going to be 53-47 a lot. But we're starting
• 51:56
  Speaker 6: to see a mass movement out there in the world
• 51:58
  Speaker 6: that that is standing up for democracy. And by the way,
• 52:02
  Speaker 6: we are starting to see that, yes, the things that
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: he is doing are illegal and they are being found
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: to be illegal and they are being stopped by the courts.
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: So one of Trump's magical sort of political powers is
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: to get people to believe things that are flatly not
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: true about him. And he's trying to EO his way
• 52:23
  Speaker 6: around the fact that the stuff that he's doing or
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: the stuff that he wants to do is so unpopular,
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: there's no way it would get through any legislative body.
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: They can't pass a bill. So they just like write
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: it down as if that makes it law. That's not
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: actually how it works.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: That's not in the constitution.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Just jot it down.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Will it to be?
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, you were telling me yesterday that Russ
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Vogt kind of thinks of himself as the hand of
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the king. Is that in the constitution as well? I mean,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: there's just, it's just, I was ready for Trump 2.0
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: to be bad, but this whole element of, setting up
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: this Doge team under Elon Musk and having this young
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: group of people that I don't even know if.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: They work for the government or not. They've never been vetted.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: We don't know their names necessarily.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: They're just kind of rampaging through agencies, I guess, trying
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: to cut whatever they can whenever they feel like it.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And it's taken us all, I think, a minute to
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: catch up with how radical that is.
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. I mean, but also it's so radical
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: that it sort of benefits us because, you know, it's
• 53:26
  Speaker 6: not the frog being boiled, right? It's the frog being fried.
• 53:30
  Speaker 6: And so everybody's kind of like, okay, I'm out of
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: my slumber now, right? There is no ability to relax.
• 53:37
  Speaker 6: There is no ability for anybody to claim, well, why
• 53:40
  Speaker 6: don't you guys give him a chance? Or, and there's
• 53:43
  Speaker 6: no ability for even the punditocracy to like stroke their
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: chins and say, there the Democrats go again. I can't
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: believe they're overreacting. This is no big deal. He's basically
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: a normal Republican and they're complaining about outcomes. but they
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: don't like the outcome. So they're saying democracy is at stake.
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: Nobody can credibly claim that what's happening is, um, is legal.
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: And they have a very specific theory of action, which is,
• 54:10
  Speaker 6: you know, as they talked about, you know, muzzle speed
• 54:13
  Speaker 6: flood the zone, but you know, that's a fancy way
• 54:17
  Speaker 6: of saying we're going to do a ton of illegal stuff, uh,
• 54:20
  Speaker 6: at the same time and see if like one or
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: two of them will stick. And, You know, I thought
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: Ezra Klein last Sunday wrote a very nice piece called
• 54:28
  Speaker 6: Don't Believe Him. And I think he got criticized, you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: by the Internet for being too casual about the Trump presidency.
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: And that's not how I took it. I think we
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: should be totally alarmed. But we also shouldn't concede our
• 54:45
  Speaker 6: power away, either our people power or our ability to
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: win in the courts or our ability to at least
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: gum up the works legislatively. There's this sense that the
• 54:55
  Speaker 6: coolest thing on the left to do is to catastrophize
• 54:58
  Speaker 6: and say we've already lost, that the Democrats are hopeless,
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: that the movement is dead, and that ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: I'm so left that I don't even want to participate
• 55:08
  Speaker 6: in the left anymore. And I think everyone, like normal
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: people who want to fight for our democracy and fight
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: for our country are saying, yeah, enough of that bullshit.
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: Activism is not just getting into someone's replies and saying,
• 55:19
  Speaker 6: why aren't you fighting harder? It's figuring out how you
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: personally can fight harder. And I think one of the
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: places that I've seen over the last week, real courage
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: is within the federal government. A bunch of people are
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: starting to disobey, or I should say, decline to execute
• 55:38
  Speaker 6: illegal orders, to establish themselves as whistleblowers. to stand in
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: front of federal buildings and protest, which is not risk-free.
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: But I think once you start to see each other,
• 55:52
  Speaker 6: there really is strength and safety in numbers. And I
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: don't want to get too philosophical about this, but I
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: just do think there's something very important about showing up
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: in real life when you start to see each other
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: on the street and not just intermediated through an app.
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: that you go, okay, I got friends here. This is real.
• 56:11
  Speaker 6: I'm in. Let's go. We're going to win this thing.
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: We may be getting our butts kicked for the next
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: six weeks, but six weeks is not six years. And
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: other Americans have faced other challenges to the American experiment,
• 56:27
  Speaker 6: and they did not simply tweet, we're cooked. They fought
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: like hell, and they continued the experiment.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: Listen, I.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: You and I both spend some time on Twitter. I
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: think I know the kind of frustration you're feeling, the
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: kind of tone you're talking about where people are somehow
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: blaming the Democratic Party for everything.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: That Donald Trump is doing. And it's exhausting.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: It's frustrating.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: But let's just sort of talk about the tension and
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: the anger. I mean, Democrats are pretty angry right now.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: We're angry at Trump, angry at what he's doing. We're
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: angry at Joe Biden for putting us in this place.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, a lot of people are lashing
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: out at Democrats in Congress for not doing more. So
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: help me just set expectations a bit. What power do
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Democrats in the Senate actually have? What can we do
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: to block some of Trump's actions? And what is just
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: gonna have to be messaging to create a political cost
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: down the road to some of the things Trump is doing?
• 57:23
  Speaker 6: Well, think of it this way. There are certain things
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: that need 51 votes and certain things that need 60.
• 57:29
  Speaker 6: So anytime it's 51 votes, All we can do is
• 57:32
  Speaker 6: make our best case and delay them a little. And
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: by a little, I mean 15 minutes, 27 minutes, 45 minutes,
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: sometimes not at all. And, you know, we can make
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: a nuisance of ourselves in small ways, but that's not
• 57:46
  Speaker 6: really changing either public opinion or the situation on the ground.
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: They're not getting their cabinet any slower if we do
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: minor procedural roadblocks. And by the way, we are doing
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: all of the, you know, in and out of a
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: quorum call or in and out of executive session, but
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: there's no magic bullet called slow them down. Remember that
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: the people talking about Mitch McConnell's obstructionism are talking about
• 58:09
  Speaker 6: an era when the cabinet needed 60 votes. Now the
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: cabinet needs 51 and they've got 53. So everybody needs
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: to understand they're very likely to get their entire cabinet.
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: And all we can do is scream bloody murder about
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: how dangerous this is. Then there comes a point this year,
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: and it's not that long from now, when they need
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: 60 votes for regular legislation. And that's when Democrats are
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: very relevant because they need seven more than 53. And
• 58:37
  Speaker 6: that's when the Democratic senators can exert some authority and
• 58:41
  Speaker 6: use some leverage. I'm not prepared to sort of tell
• 58:45
  Speaker 6: you exactly how we're going to do that because frankly,
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: we have to become united and that's a leadership call,
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: that's a joint decision, but we're not casual about those
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: moments in time when we actually do have like raw
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: leverage to push back on what's happening. Right now, we
• 59:05
  Speaker 6: have very little ability to stop them. And the best
• 59:09
  Speaker 6: thing we can do do is, as you say, make
• 59:12
  Speaker 6: them own these votes. I do not think the RFK Jr.
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: yes vote is going to age well. I don't think
• 59:20
  Speaker 6: the Pete Hegseth vote is going to age well. Obviously,
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: Kash Patel and all the rest of it. But I'll
• 59:28
  Speaker 6: also just say that To be fair to folks who
• 59:31
  Speaker 6: are frustrated, you know, they're not sure what we're supposed
• 59:35
  Speaker 6: to be doing, but they know we're not supposed to
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: be doing nothing, right? And so one of the reasons
• 59:40
  Speaker 6: that people were, I think, fired up at this 30
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: hours on the floor is like it was something. We're fighting.
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: We're showing some fight. We understand the urgency of the moment.
• 59:49
  Speaker 6: But it's like the old, you know, Steve Jobs used
• 59:52
  Speaker 6: to say, people don't know what they want until you
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: show it to them. It is not their job to say,
• 59:59
  Speaker 6: why don't you put the Senate in a quorum call?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 6: Because I take that as a, I'm at the end
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 6: of my rope. Would you please tell me what you're
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 6: doing here? And let me just tell you my theory
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: of change here. Yes, we can gum up the works
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 6: and we should. Yes, we will have actual raw leverage
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: on the vote count later. And we should use that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: as ruthlessly and aggressively as we can. I also think,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 6: you know, let's not underestimate the power of the federal
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 6: courts to declare and this has already borne fruit, what
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: the president of the United States is doing as flatly illegal,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 6: and to enjoin and stop those actions. And then I
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 6: think we also have to, together, as citizens, build a
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 6: mass movement, because when you're fighting autocracy, and you know
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 6: this as well as anybody, you need the legitimacy of
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 6: people on your side. So it's not just us fighting
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 6: and then people either cheering us on or not cheering
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: us on, you know, on social media. People need to
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: see each other in three dimension. It has to be
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 6: tens of thousands of people. It has to be peaceful.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: We have to have the moral high ground. But the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: way to beat autocracy is not just like legislative maneuvering.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: It's actual people power. And let's not forget that.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well said.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: And I agree with you.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I think that that RFK vote is going to age
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: like a vat of raw milk that we might be
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: available in stores soon.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about you personally.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: One way you have used your power is you've put
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: a hold on all of Trump's State Department nominees over
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: this Elon Musk-led effort to illegally gut USAID. Can you
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: give listeners just a quick explanation of what does that
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: mean in practice?
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: And also, what are you asking Trump.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: To do that will get you to release these holds
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: going forward?
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: What it means in practice is that there are a
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: bunch of State Department nominations because, let me back up.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: A lot of these nominations are mandatory, um, two hours. Um,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 6: and so that doesn't sound like a long time, but
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: there are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of them. So when,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: for instance, Tuberville held up all the military nominations, these
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 6: are like a two star becoming a three star. There
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 6: were a thousand of them. And some folks were like,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: why don't you go to the floor and just start
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: plowing through them? And the answer is because it's a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: thousand nominations times two hours we would have been in
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 6: the Senate for a year and a half confirming a
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: bunch of, you know, rear admirals and literally have no
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: time for anything else. And so it does gum up
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: their ability to get ambassadors and assistant secretaries through, but
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: anyone they really want to get through, they just allocate
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: the time and do it. And my, I haven't actually
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: said this anywhere else because I just, I issued the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 6: press release sort of without going through too much of
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: a Internal policy planning progress.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: I just sort of it's very Trumpy interview.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: Well quite Trumpy I mean I have with me but
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: I just told him this is what I wanted to do.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 6: Um Look, I am actually a little more willing than
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: people may know to have a negotiation about how USAID
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: is done and I think that it's not unreasonable to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: ask the question if we've got the Belt and Road
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: and everybody watches what China is doing and and says, wow,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: that's really smart that they're all around the world helping folks,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: but it's also aligned with their economic and geopolitical, geostrategic objectives.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: USAID does some of that, but there's an argument and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: it's been on a bipartisan basis that sometimes USAID is
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: even at cross purposes with the State Department. So I'm
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 6: open to better alignment. I'm also open to the idea
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 6: that we should reduce overhead. I think wherever we can
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: reduce overhead, We should. And I'm also open to the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: idea that, yes, there's some civil society stuff that we
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: should be funding. But, you know, I'm not sure we
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 6: should ever fund an opera overseas if we haven't gotten
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: everybody who needs a mosquito net, a mosquito net. So
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: I am actually open minded to reforms if they're done through,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: you know, a regular legislative process. I've just told everybody
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: I will only arrive at the negotiating table once the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: agency is reopened. And right now they're shuttering the whole place.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: I mean, just flatly legally, it is an extraordinary thing
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 6: they're doing. They are bringing, you know, thousands and thousands
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: of patriotic Americans, skilled Americans who have set up a
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 6: life in wherever it is, right? In Asia or South
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 6: America or Central America or Africa or wherever it is.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: They brought their family there. And then they just got
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: this email saying, you're coming home within the next 30 days.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: It's just a rotten thing to do to humans. But also,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: we may end up with eight people from our primary
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: development agency in all of Asia.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: This is nuts.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: There's Marburg's disease in Tanzania. There's Ebola in Uganda. So
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: I actually think this is going to back up on
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump. And I know there's some conventional wisdom knocking
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 6: around that foreign aid, people don't care about it. And
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: I stipulate to the idea that if you took a poll,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: most people would not rank foreign aid as their top priority.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: But it's one of those things where like, also people
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: wouldn't rank the FAA as their top priority. People don't
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: rank food inspections as their top priority until any of
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: those things cause a disruption at home, a lack of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 6: stability and safety at home. And I think, you know,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: these diseases are No, no political or geographic boundaries. And
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: this is a very serious situation.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, look, I understand this. I have the same
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: sort of tension in my head as you do, where
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: I worked in the national security world. I've seen the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: amazing good that organizations funded by USAID can do. I've
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: also seen the agency as a whole feel bureaucratic and slow,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and it can be frustrating at times.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: But you're right.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are specific examples of programs being run
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: by USAID like tracking highly contagious, deadly diseases all.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Around the world.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: You mentioned too Marburg, which is like Ebola without a vaccine, basically,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: is sort of how it's been described to me.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: There's Ebola.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: There's this bird flu outbreak that seems to be everywhere
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden. And if suddenly we're just flying
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: blind to this stuff and you can trace it back
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: to cuts to USAID, that is an incredibly powerful message.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: I mean, and you know, look, I mean, I'm not
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: rooting for Donald Trump, but I am trying to solve
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: this problem. And so, you know, one of the things
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: I've said to Republican colleagues is like, I get that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: foreign aid is not on the top of your list,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: except when we have our first Ebola case, you know,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: in the United States. And so, and people are going
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: to say, wait, what the hell? We don't monitor this anymore. Or,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 6: you know, PEPFAR is shut down and PEPFAR is shut down.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: The HIV AIDS prevention program, which has save tens of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: millions of lives is shut down. It's technically not, but
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 6: the problem is that, um, you know, everyone's shut out
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: of their email. Literally people can't even operate. They've been
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 6: sent home and nominally in order to like pretend to
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 6: not violate federal civil service laws and other laws, they're saying,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: we'll still pay you, please work from home. But then
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: they shut them out of their emails, which I, but
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: by the way is, you know, I'm not a lawyer,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: but I'm smart enough to understand this. It's one thing
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: to send people home to telework, but if you don't
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: have a reason to do that and then you shut
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: them out of their ability to work, then it's all
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: a pretext, right? And then you are just de facto
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: shutting down the agency. And that's why I'm very, very
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 6: confident that this will also be found to be in
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: violation of the law. But this one in particular, USAID,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: it's an arson job, right? The other ones, they're trying
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: to see what they can get away with, NSF. Small
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 6: Business Administration, VA, and it's really super damaging. This one,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: they want to, I think they know they only have
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 6: a couple more days before the full freak out happens
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: with the media and international attention. And by the way,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 6: we have, sorry to get all fired up here, but
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 6: we have the Munich Security Conference next week. We have
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 6: a bipartisan delegation of United States senators.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: J.D.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: Vance is going to be there. I'm assuming Secretary Rubio
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 6: is going to be there. All we're going to spend
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: our time doing is getting yelled at. Why did you
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 6: shut off the primary armed of goodwill internationally. So usually
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 6: the Munich Security Conference is a three-dimensional example of why
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: America remains the indispensable nation. Everybody's hanging on our every word.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 6: Everyone wants to know what direction we're going in. And
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: I think it's not going to be that. I think
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: we're going to get just, I mean, people will be polite,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: some of them, but whether it's africa or asia or
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: central europe or anywhere else people are just getting the
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: first item on their list when we have our bilateral
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 6: meetings is what the hell did you do to pepfar
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 6: what the hell did you do to disease prevention what
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 6: the hell did you do to foreign military financing or
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: any of the economic supports um This is such small
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: money in the scheme of things that we need to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 6: understand it for what it is. It is not a
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 6: budget or fiscal question. This is a America first policy, right?
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 6: What they want is for us to recede from the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 6: rest of the world. They want our government to be
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 6: about half as big. They want it to do way
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: fewer things. And they want, I mean, it is a
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: quite radical vision. They don't want FEMA to exist. They
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 6: think the FAA should have AI doing air traffic control.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's a very creepy, radical vision. And I'm
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 6: not sure Donald Trump cares one way or another about
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 6: all this, but he is letting these, you know, combination
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: of these sort of, you know, oligarch tech dudes and whatever,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 6: and some old school right wing think tank people just
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: kind of have the run of the place.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: And just on the foreign aid piece, I mean, a
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: lot of this is money that has been dispersed and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: is budgeted, you know, and if we are helping fund
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: some major component of the government in Jordan, for example,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: we can like rug pull them once on actually providing
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: that funding before we lose our influence with that government
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: in that country forever. So this is incredibly damaging no
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: matter how it.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Kind of ends.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: But you mentioned your Republican colleagues. I mean, look, they
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: like foreign aid when it's in the form of bombs.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: They might not talk about USAID, but they think they
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: know it's valuable. And there's also some Republicans in the
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Senate that we know hate Donald Trump. Like Mitch McConnell
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: hates Donald Trump, famously so. Not enough to do anything
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: about it, but he doesn't like him. Susan Collins is
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: now complaining publicly about Elon Musk's role being inappropriate.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: In conversations with them, do you think this is going to.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Shape up being like the first term where these guys
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: kind of grumble on background? but then refuse to use
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: their power to change anything? Or are people getting more
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: worked up? Like, how do you read this?
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 6: I don't know. I just don't know. I've certainly had
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: conversations with, I mean, seven to 10 Republicans who have
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 6: a real stomachache about this thing in particular, because as
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 6: much as I disagree with many of them about almost everything,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 6: a lot of them don't want, you know, babies dying
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 6: on their conscience. And the question is whether they're going
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 6: to exert themselves. So this weekend, the Republican senators are
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 6: going to be meeting with the president. And we'll see.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 6: I mean, you know, I think it's not a, I mean,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 6: it's probably a safe bet to assume, no, they will
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 6: not step up. And even if like handicapping wise, maybe
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 6: I still think there will be instances where they stand
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 6: up for, you know, what they think is important. I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 6: think there has to be more time elapsed. And one
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 6: of the conversations I'm having with, you know, some folks is,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 6: I don't think the question is time elapsed. I think
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 6: it is damage done. And if they're doing the damage
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 6: super quickly, you may not have six months. But I
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 6: think there's also a human psychology element, which is if
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 6: it sort of piles up over six months, it's easier
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 6: to get there to displaying your independence. If it all
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 6: happens at once, it looks like to them, you're immediately
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 6: turning on the newly inaugurated president. So they've got a
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 6: tightrope to walk. Some of them do that more skillfully and, frankly,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 6: more honorably than others. And, you know, my job is
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: obviously to articulate, to try to slow them down, to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 6: articulate to the public, you know, where I think the
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 6: country is going in the wrong direction. And that part,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 6: on some level, is the easy part. But I still,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 6: you know, I'm still trying to find three or four
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 6: votes for certain things because that is the job. And
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: I think we should all– Hope that our democratic senators
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 6: are in the business of describing how horrific all this
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 6: is in the business of trying to slow it down
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 6: but also in the business of Trying to do the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 6: senator thing which is to find four votes to stop
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 6: all this crazy shit And if it if it is
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 6: if we're unable to do so then um Then at
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: least we know that we've exhausted the possibility and that
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 6: we can go, you know, rhetorically speaking full thermonuclear.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah Let's talk about the Democratic Party right now because
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: we don't have a leader right now, right? Like we
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: have former presidents, we have congressional leaders, but there's not
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: like a single person guiding the party on messaging and
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: policy like you would have if there were a Democrat
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: in the White House or a major nominee running for president.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: On top of that, a lot of the Republican leadership
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: is getting up there. They don't seem particularly fluent in
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: digital media platforms. The messaging can feel a little behind
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the eight ball. Now, I'm saying this to you because
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: you're an exception to this. You are young and an
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: effective communicator and someone who understands like how to communicate
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: in 2025. And I'm just wondering for people who are like, look,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of us are getting the cringy clips on
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: the group chat. What do you say to them about
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: the way you are pushing Democrats to evolve and get
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: better and be more nimble?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: Look, I remember there was a lot of that kind
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 6: of chatter about Nancy Pelosi as she was speaker. And
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 6: then there were various moments during which we went, ah,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 6: she's really very good at this. And I just, um,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: Chuck Schumer is really very good at this. Is it
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 6: true that he's new to the internet age? Sure. But
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: so am I, frankly. So I just worry about the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: theater criticism part of the job, right? Like we need
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 6: to cheer each other.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: Like it's a theater critic.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's, it's, there's good messaging and there's bad, right?
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: Like there's a good... the harder part is getting it
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: to the people who need to hear it. And maybe
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: if it's so cringy, it gets to them.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: That's good.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: But like, you know, there's like the corny ass chance,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: like we can all just agree that maybe that's not
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: going to cut it.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: Right. Well, let me, let me answer the question this way.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 6: You know, Chuck has designated Cory Booker and Tina Smith
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: to kind of get us to be better at digital.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: And look, I think you're exactly identifying the problem, which is,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: We can say exactly the right thing, but if nobody
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: sees it, it doesn't matter. And the problem with the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 6: kind of battle tested way of doing things from the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: past is you pull a thing among the things on
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 6: the list of things you pulled, you pick the one
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: that's at 70 and not 67 and not 64. And
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 6: then you say the thing that pulls the best. The
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 6: problem with that model is it's very likely that the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: thing that pulls the best is also the thing that
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: is the least offensive. because that's why it polls the best.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: So it's really a kind of lowest common denominator, which
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: thing do you find least objectionable? And that might work
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: if you're in the mode of making a television commercial
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 6: and basically forcing it into the brains of a bunch
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 6: of viewers, but it will not go viral because it's
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: definitionally not interesting.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's boring.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: And so that's where I think Trump is brilliant, right?
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 6: They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. That was offensive,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 6: it hurt him in the short run, but he again
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 6: surfaced the question of immigration. And what happens is he
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: suffers for two days looking like an idiot, but then
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 6: on the third day people go, yeah, but you know
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 6: he's got a point about immigration. And then we're talking
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 6: about the thing that he wanted us to talk about.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 6: So his ability to command attention is not a trivial thing. Now,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 6: we have a structural problem, as you pointed out. When
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 6: you're out of power, you just definitionally don't have a
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 6: leader until you have a nominee. We could say it's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party chairman. We could say it's Chuck. We
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 6: could say it's Hakeem. But the truth is, there's not
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 6: going to be a one person who leads our party
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 6: out of the wilderness. It's got to be all of
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 6: us together. But I will say, we're all getting better
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 6: at communicating online and understanding that Yeah, cable hits are important,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 6: but there's very, very few undecided voters who are watching
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 6: any of the cable shows. It's not that we shouldn't
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 6: do those anymore. It's just that we should think of
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 6: those as one of the tactics in our toolkit. And
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 6: just by virtue of metrics, we are doing, I mean,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 6: like five-fold, eight-fold better than we did even three weeks ago,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 6: because there's a commitment, not just from the sort of
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 6: digital native members, of the Senate, but some others who
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: are like newly willing to be authentic and speak plainly.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: And like, uh, you know, because part of it too,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: is like, you got hearings and you got votes and
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: you got meetings and you got everything else. You have
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: to actually allocate time to like staring into an iPhone
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: and saying, here's what I'm up to. It's weird, but
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 6: it's a, and I actually had to tell my staff, like,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 6: we're doing this thing. You have to grab me, even
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 6: if it's just while I'm walking to the floor, stick
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 6: a camera in my face and make me start talking.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: And so we're doing that more and it's starting to work.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 6: We also need to, over time, build a bigger ecosystem of,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 6: you know, progressive media. And it's not exclusively, well, it's
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 6: you guys.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: I like what you're saying right now.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: Keep going.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 6: Showing up, but it's also kind of the network effect
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 6: of like, you went on Barstool, right? It's the recognition that,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 6: think of it like you're, high school buddies, you do not,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: I don't, exclude anybody who thinks RFK Jr. is great.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: You might argue with them or you might never talk
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: about it, but you just try to find common ground
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 6: and try to build community because I think one of
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: the things Trump did in the last election that was
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 6: kind of brilliant is you can talk yourself out of
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: Tulsi Gabbard's base mattering because you could take a poll
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 6: and go, oh, that's only 1%. And then you could
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 6: do the same thing with RFK and say, that's only 2.5%. Well,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 6: holy shit, we only lost by 1.5%.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: And so coalitions that work, and you were part of
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: the maybe most powerful coalition on the Democratic side in
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: recent memory, are always on policy and on politics kind
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 6: of contradictory. And we became the party that wouldn't accept
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 6: anyone with a weird idea, wouldn't accept anybody with without
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 6: like a kind of down the middle view that was
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 6: totally rational and totally acceptable. And I think we have
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: to be a party that says, look, if you've got
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 6: some heterodox views, if you've got even some offensive views,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 6: we still want you in the tent, right? Like one
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 6: of the reasons in the state of Hawaii, Democrats are
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 6: so powerful is we have conservative Democrats, right? We just
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 6: like welcome them because we figure, hey, better you're a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 6: conservative Democrat than a moderate Republican. And, um, I tell
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 6: you what, your listeners are going to hate this. I
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 6: miss Joe Manchin, right?
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: I miss his vote. Not his personality, but yeah, I
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: miss his vote. The House vote seemed nice too.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: I actually like his personality better than his vote. But
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 6: I still like, we would be thrilled to have three
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 6: or four Joe Manchins. So we could all be frustrated
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 6: at the fact that he doesn't vote like a Hawaii Democrat,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 6: but at least he votes to make Chuck Schumer the
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 6: leader Correct. And and puts Patty Murray in charge of
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 6: appropriations and put Ron Wyden in front of in charge
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 6: of tax and Martin Heinrich in charge of energy and
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 6: all that. And Sheldon Whitehouse in charge of the environment
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 6: and public works like that's what matters in the end.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 6: And so we have to kind of like we have
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: to decide, do we want to win? I remember talking
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: to a buddy of mine who who was in the
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: Hawaii legislature and. And the magic number in the Hawaii
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 6: legislature to become the speaker is 26 out of 51.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 6: So you need 26 votes. And he was at 22.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 6: And it was really hard to get to 26. And
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 6: we had a private conversation about a group of people
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 6: who he found to be kind of objectionable. And I said, Well,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 6: what the fuck, man? Do you want to win? And
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 6: try to get to 26 with no objectionable people. You
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: can't do it. So you have to make deals, arrangements,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 6: promises with people that don't agree with you. And that's
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 6: the way we're going to rebuild this political party is
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 6: we're going to have to aggressively welcome people into our tent.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 6: It doesn't mean we abandon our core values. It just
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 6: means that one of our core values is to exercise
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: power on behalf of people. And we can't do that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 6: unless we actually win some damned elections. And people do
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: not like being scolded out of the tent. And that
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 6: was definitely the vibe for a while. And I think
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 6: we've kind of shook off those cobwebs.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Look, I love what you're saying.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: I've noticed that a lot of you, you and a
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: lot of your colleagues are taking reps from recording things
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: that you're just posting on TikTok or on Twitter or wherever,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: just trying to get out there, talk more, explain what's
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: I think that's great.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: I think you're right.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: We cannot rely on MSNBC hits because those people are
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: old and already agree with us. I could not agree
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: more with the need to go to different places. I
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: once said Democrats should never go on Fox. I'm wrong.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: We should go on Fox. We should pick fights. We
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: should be interesting. We should make content that is compelling
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: to watch because there is tension in it And people
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: should go on like Barstool sports shows or other places
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: that I think were seen as not kosher. And it's
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: not because you agree with everything Dave Portnoy thinks or said,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: it's because that's not a standard that we apply anywhere else.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: Like I don't judge like ESPN talent based on what
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: John Skipper's political views are when back when he was
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: in charge of ESPN, he's not anymore. It's someone else
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: who I, I forget his name, but anyway, so I
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: think that's great. One thing I just would love to,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: get a sense from you on is, okay, you, uh,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: we're re we're worst NFL team. We're in a full rebuild.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: We're tanking to get the draft picks. We're firing the coach.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: New GM quarterback is, uh, uh, doing ayahuasca somewhere. What
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: three things do you want people to think of when
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: they think of the democratic party? Like what are the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: three core values that is part of our rebrand?
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: Um, economic fairness, um, and fighting corruption. and standing up
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 6: for each other. And the standing up for each other,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: I think, let's be honest, I did this on the fly.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: I just think economic fairness is very straightforward. And the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 6: billionaires on the stage in front of the cabinet was,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 6: I think, a gift to us because it put three
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 6: dimensions around what we think is happening. And they're about
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: to move forward with a massive tax cut. They're obviously
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: trying to almost literally raid the Treasury and shut down
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 6: critical services. So that's relatively easy to talk about. And
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: I just think, you know, we are no longer the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 6: party in power. And so we need to fight against
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 6: the power structure and not defend all the elite institutions.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 6: These people are at the helm and the corruption story
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 6: is both true and alarming, but it's also something that
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 6: attracts swing voters and attracts some of the voters that
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 6: liked Barack Obama, And then swung over to Trump because
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 6: they wanted someone who was going to kick these politicians
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 6: in the stomach, right? And then the third thing, and
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 6: forgive me for not having the precise words, but it
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 6: is just a little bit of belief in each other, right?
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 6: This core value that we're building a mass movement to
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 6: actually envision something different and to forgive each other our
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 6: past political or personal transgressions. to be welcoming and coalition
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: building in a way that I think is gonna make
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 6: all of us a little uncomfortable because we're gonna be
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 6: so fucking pissed, right? Now you realize Trump's an idiot.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: I know, and we gotta be nice to those people.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: We gotta be nice.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 6: We gotta be nice to those people. I've been having
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 6: a bunch of those conversations with folks. And remember that
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 6: people move from in favor of somebody to a little
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: bit less in favor of somebody to undecided, and then
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 6: they join you. They never flip, right? Because it's just
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 6: psychologically too hard to go like, holy shit, I was
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 6: wrong about everything. Some people might do that, but for
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 6: the most part, you're moving them over in a way
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 6: that allows them to not feel stupid, not feel put upon,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 6: not feel like they're being told that they were wrong.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 6: And like, that is honestly, like there's millions of people
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 6: who listen to podcasts and are politically engaged. One of
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 6: the most important things we can do is win people
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 6: over like one by one. I believe that. I know
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 6: that there's a little bit of like almost technocratic, like
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 6: data driven campaign stuff where it's like, it's all person
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 6: to person conversations. But at this stage, we're not in
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 6: a campaign and we do just need to create a
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 6: little room for people to, to say, by the way,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 6: people all the time misremember who they voted for. The
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 6: worse Trump gets, the fewer people will remember that they
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 6: voted for him. There's also a category of people. I
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 6: talked to a buddy who was describing his friends who
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 6: are Republicans. And they said, you know, they they voted
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 6: for Trump because they were pissed about Biden and prices
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 6: and his age. But they're not fans of Trump and
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 6: they're going to give him a relatively short leash before
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 6: they abandon him. And so those are those are real
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: opportunities for us. if we can just appear to be
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 6: somewhat welcoming and not just turn this into a, I
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 6: can't believe you allowed this guy to take the helm
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 6: and now you want to join us. The answer is
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 6: everybody's welcome. And I don't give a shit what your
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 6: views used to be, how you voted. This is the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 6: biggest possible tent right now, because in my view, everything
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 6: is at stake.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Those are great words to end on. Senator Schatz, thank
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: you for staying up all night for democracy. And also, Listen,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: those Maryland senators, they got nothing of a commute. You're
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: coming from Hawaii to D.C.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: And back.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: So shout out to you for logging some miles.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: And thank you.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: That's our show for today. Thanks to Senator Schatz for
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: coming by. And thanks to all the Democratic senators who
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: stopped by our live stream on Wednesday as they spent
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: the night holding the Senate floor to oppose Russ' vote.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Dan's going to be back in the feed on Sunday
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: with an interview with Ben Smith, the co-founder and editor-in-chief
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: of Semaphore. and former media columnist at the New York
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: Times about the wonderful media environment we're all living in.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: That should be fun for Sunday, and then we'll be
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: back with a new episode in your feeds on Tuesday.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Have a great weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone. If you want
• 1:28:06
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