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“Fighting words in Des Moines.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, I'll talk to our own Brian Boyler.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: who is now also the host of Crooked Media's brand
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: new podcast on the impeachment process, Rubicon. Good.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I need that because I'm confused.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: We are just spitting out pods left and right here, guys.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: A lot of good stuff. Watch your feet. Pods dropping.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But first, we're going to sort through a lot of
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: news on the impeachment front ourselves and dig into a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: very busy weekend in the Democratic primary, particularly in Iowa
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: where caucuses are now less than 100 days away and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the general election is now less than a year away.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: I'm going to throw up.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I'm very nauseous. Lovett, how was the show this week?
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Great Lovett or Leave It.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: Pulitzer Prize.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I heard you landed quite a guess.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: Winning journalist. Ronan Farrow did stop by. I had some
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: tough questions for Ronan about his book, Catch and Kill,
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: including the impressions he does of a certain podcast host
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: who he makes sound like a gay snake.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, God.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: He does impressions of you in the audio book?
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: He does.
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: Oh, what a reason to listen to the audio book.
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: I thought it was just like... accents that were discernible
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: with foreign accent.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Well, he does the accent of a gay podcast host.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It sounds like a Disney villain.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Leave that right there.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: It sounds like I tried to, it sounds like I
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: tricked Simba into leaving town.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I'm going to, uh, I'm going to ask Michael and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Jordan to pull that clip for a future pod. Um,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: also a reminder, uh, election day 2019 is tomorrow guys.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Election day. All over the country.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: That's exciting, at least.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Tuesday, November 5th. If you haven't done so already, go
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to votesaveamerica.com to find your polling station and make a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: plan to vote. This election is especially important if you
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: live in Virginia, where Democrats have an opportunity to flip
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the legislature so that we have full Democratic control in Virginia,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: which means they can draw new congressional district lines in
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: 2020 and unfuck the gerrymanders there. And, you know, also
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: pass things like higher minimum wage, gun control, the Equal
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Rights Amendment, all kinds of great stuff. So it's very important.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Please go out tomorrow and cast your ballot.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news, guys. By the way, it's
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: great to see you both. We haven't been here in
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a while. I've been gone for two weeks.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: My boys are back.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I don't live here anymore, I don't think.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Tommy's been in Iowa. He's like Kamala Harris. He said,
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: fuck it, I'm moving to Iowa.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: I wish.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Dude's got to go.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Dude's got to go to Iowa. All right.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: As soon as next week, House Democrats may begin holding
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: public hearings on impeachment. And this week, they have already
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: begun to release the transcripts of the testimony they've heard
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: so far. They started today, among others, with former U.S.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. New polls from NBC and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal and ABC and the Washington Post
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: show that 49% of Americans believe that Donald Trump should
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: be impeached and removed from office, while between 46% and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: 47% disagree. That is much higher public support for Trump's
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: impeachment than Bill Clinton's or even Richard Nixon's until right
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: before he resigned. Trump's approval rating also fell to some
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of its lowest levels in both the Post poll and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: a new Fox News poll. Of course, we know the
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: picture is much closer and better for Trump in the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: battleground states that will decide to 2020. We received a
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: reminder of that this morning when the New York Times
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and Siena College released a series of swing state polls
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in six states that will decide the election and showed
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it way, way too close between Trump and three of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the top Democratic candidates, Biden, Sanders, and Warren. So guys,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: to start off, I should also say that we have
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a poll in the field right now with our friends
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: at Change Research. on messaging around impeachment that will give
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: us even more detail. We'll be talking about that later
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: this week. But overall, how much do you think those
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: impeachment numbers that I just read are movable? And what
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: can Democrats do to move them or at least keep
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: them steady as they start to plan and strategize around
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: this very public phase of impeachment?
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: I think that the numbers are hopeful, right? I mean,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: they have moved.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: People are despite the fact that Fox News has a
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: grip on the Republican Party, despite the fact that Sinclair
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: Broadcasting has probably bought up half the TV stations in
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: the key swing states, and that's part of why we're
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: so screwed here. Sorry, I woke up feeling like Nate
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: Cohn from The Upshot punched me in the face. I'm
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: sure he's a very nice person, but those polls were
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: brutal to read this morning. But there's another poll out
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: by Ann Seltzer, a great pollster out of Iowa with
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: Grinnell College, where they asked, is it okay for political
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: candidates in the U.S. to ask for assistance from a
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: foreign government to help them win an election? 7% said yes.
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: 81% said it's not okay. So I think we need
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: to continue to tell that story publicly. My guess is
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: some people in the country have heard a lot about
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: what's happening in Washington in the impeachment inquiry. Most have
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: not heard much, especially these swing voters who we really
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: need to win back. So that gives me hope that
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: we can educate them through a public hearing process. It's
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: going to take a lot of work, though.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we are The country is basically evenly
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: divided on the question of Donald Trump's impeachment and removal.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: And we haven't had a public hearing. You know, so
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: we're about to we're in a kind of, you know,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: you know, it's my catchphrase, liminal space between.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard you say that before.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: Between a lot of kind of process and revelation and
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: confusing information about private hearings versus public hearings, information being leaked,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: damning transcripts, Trump's rebuttals, Fox News. and some of his
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: intellectuals and bonies going hard to protect him. And that
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: has led to a kind of even split inside the country.
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: What happens when we go to public hearings and for
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: the first time we hear some of this out loud,
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: you know, on the television, leading the nightly news, leading
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: the coverage?
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I just don't think we know.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I know this has been portrayed as a trial, right? Hearings,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: ultimately a trial in the Senate, all that kind of stuff.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I do think that Democrats in the House should view
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: this as a show. they are putting on a show here. And,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and I should say, uh, all evidence so far points
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to the fact that they are, they are treating it
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: like this. Um, Adam Schiff's treating it like this. Nancy
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Pelosi is treating it like this, but this has to be,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: these hearings have to be choreographed for maximum drama and
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: maximum effect. And look, you know, the Democrats are talking
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: about which witnesses they're going to, they're going to call
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and Colonel Vindman and Bill Taylor and some of these
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: sort of nonpartisan public officials got a war hero in there, right? Like, they,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: you know, they're trying to figure out who are the most,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: who are going to be the most compelling witnesses to call.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I think the one challenge they're going to face is
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the Republicans are going, their strategy is to make this
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a partisan circus.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And to make this whole thing seem as partisan as possible.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And they're going to yell and scream when they can
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: yell and scream, and they're going to scream about process.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And I think the Democrats on the committee have to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: keep in mind those voters that, Tommy, you and I
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: were talking about on the Thursday pod, the people who
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: support the impeachment inquiry, but don't support removing him yet.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And those people are probably voters who do not pay
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: as much of attention to any of this stuff as
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: we do. They are probably more moderate voters. They are
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: probably voters who don't love excessive partisanship as much. And
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I think the Democrats really need to treat this. They
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: need to be sober. They need to talk about the facts.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: They need to not let the let Devin Nunes and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: all those House Republicans look like fucking maniacs on TV.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And I think the Democrats on the committee should be
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: calm and collected and just stick with the facts.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: I also do think political coverage in general is inaccessible
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: in a fundamental way in that the vast majority of
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: coverage does not give you a previously on the news.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: And so these public hearings are an opportunity to reset
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: for people that have heard a lot, but maybe not
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: internalized a lot of very complicated and important information delivered
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: through filters that are constantly, you know, muddying it up
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: and making it as sort of opaque as possible because
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: you're presented with facts and you're presented with a democratic
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: take on the facts and you're presented with a fabricated
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: critique of the facts. And so I do think that
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: these public hearings are the, you know, a reset where
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: we should have a very simple, very clear laying out
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: of what happened, why it was wrong, why it's important
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: that we hold Trump accountable, that we don't assume anything,
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: that we really do connect every single dot to the
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: next dot.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Well, on that note, why it's wrong, I think the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: most important argument for Democrats to start making, because this is,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about this soon, but this
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: is where the Republicans are going to land, is why
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: this is not only wrong, not only inappropriate, but impeachable. Yes.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And this is very hard because what is impeachable, we've
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: talked about this a million times, is subjective. It was
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: designed to be subjective by the founders. Not completely subjective, right?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: They had some guardrails around it. But Democrats need to
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: make the case that Donald Trump's abuse of power, his
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: many abuses of power, if they go down that route,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: make him unfit for the presidency and require him to
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: be removed from office?
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree with Lovett. We have to make the simplest,
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: clearest argument we possibly can. I think we probably need
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: to move away from this quid pro quo cul-de-sac and
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: stop sweating that terminology. And then this is very difficult,
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: but we need to make the case that impeachment does
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: not require a crime. High crimes and misdemeanors doesn't actually
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: mean a criminal act. You have to go back to
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: the founders and the way they talked about it at
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: the time, but it can mean abuse of power. It
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: can mean just being horrible at the job. It can
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: mean a whole.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Bunch of things.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: And we need to explain that to the American people
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: and make them understand that this president is so egregiously
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: abused the power that he was given by the voters, frankly,
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: that it's worth tearing him out of Washington, D.C. and
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: creating this disruptive process that you're right, John. I think
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: that they're probably... Most of the country is probably predisposed
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: to thinking that that's a terrible outcome.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Shall I read from the founders?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Please. Okay.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Name one.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: George Mason.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: During the debate over the impeachment clause, said this, in
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: defending the clause against a bunch of 29-year-old know-nothings who
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: are coming in with some dumb arguments.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: RT if you agree.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: He's like, arguing with Ben Franklin.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Ben Franklin's like, I'm 80 years old. What am I
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: doing here?
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: But anyway, George Mason said, shall the man who has
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: the first instance be suffered to escape punishment by repeating
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: his guilt? It's a simple idea, which is the powers
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: of the presidency are vast. And if you can use
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: them to keep the presidency and evade punishment because we
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: have no means to hold the president accountable, we have
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: no means to hold the president accountable.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: The president is above the law.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: And it is as clear as day in the founding
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: of the country that this is what impeachment is for.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: You can't rig the next election and say, oh, the
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: voters should sort this out, right?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Well, that to me is the best argument here. And
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, like a month ago, tweeted out a line
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that was like, I believe the American people should choose
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the next president, not foreign governments, right? And it's a
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: very simple line, but I think that is one that
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: will resonate with a lot of people, this idea, this
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: foreign influence in our elections, which George Washington worried about,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the founders worried about, happened in 2016. Trump is now
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: trying to do it again. And so Republicans are not
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: making great arguments right now, to say the least. But
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: if you wanted to make a good argument, you would say, OK,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: maybe what he did was very wrong. We have this
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: election in just a couple of months or less than
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a year from now. Why don't we wait till that election?
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: And if people truly believe he did something wrong, they'll
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: vote him out then. And the answer to that has
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to be, we no longer have a guarantee that that
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: is going to be a free and fair election because
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the President of the United States is using the vast
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: powers of his office to make sure that it is
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: rigged in his favor by asking foreign governments to help
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: him out. That's what we're doing.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: We forget how close this was to working. This could
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: have just worked. And it's also worth remembering, too, that
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: the call took place, what, days after? The next day.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: The next day after Mueller testified and Trump thought he
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: did a did a mediocre job, so felt he was
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: off the hook. Trump is a very simple creature. He
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: felt emboldened because he thought he had beaten Mueller. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: so he went right back to his dirty tricks. And
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: if he feels emboldened because he overcomes this investigation, there's
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: no telling what he will do to try to rig
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: the election.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Where are you guys on whether Democrats should focus exclusively
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: on the Ukraine scandal and keep the impeachment hearings on
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a relatively tight timeline versus sort of explore some of
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the other abuses of power, whether it's his obstruction of justice,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: his campaign finance crimes, his profiting off the presidency.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: Some have even pointed to the undermining of the Affordable
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: Care Act as a place where you could find an
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: access point to an impeachable offense.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think?
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: I struggle with this a bit.
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: I mean, I am worried about it feeling like a
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: kitchen sink strategy where we just throw everything at him.
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: But then I remember that, you know, he did commit
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: a campaign finance violation by covering up the Stormy Daniels allegations.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: And that should be vetted and understood by the American people.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, I.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: Also have felt like bringing in, you know, Mueller's work
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: might just make people feel like, This is all, you know,
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: the two things are related somehow and that we're just, again,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: throwing everything we can at Donald Trump. But then I
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: started reading some of the 302 forms, the FBI forms
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: that BuzzFeed got through FOIA. And Trump clearly told his
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: team to get Hillary Clinton's emails. And General Flynn, later
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: his national security advisor, said he would ask intelligence sources
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: to help him do it. So there's clearly some criminal
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: activity happening all over the place. They are actually a
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: piece of the same puzzle. We could probably tell a
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: bigger story about that criminality if we did talk about
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: these things, but I'm genuinely torn.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I am too.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: You know, when I saw some of these revelations from
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: these documents, I found myself thinking, why should we not
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: take them seriously simply because of Barr's ability to spin
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: the Mueller report and some of Mueller's odd choices as well, uh, uh,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: inure us to the, to the crimes that Trump already
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: has committed. At the same time though, I'm also just
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: very well aware of the fact that we are steeped
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: in this Ukraine story. We are steeped in what the
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: Mueller report represented. We understand it. We're at the beginning
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: of trying to explain the most serious, biggest, ongoing crimes
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: of Trump's presidency. The idea of adding to that the
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: challenge of going back and explaining a whole bunch of others,
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: I just don't know.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I think that the Ukraine scandal should be the primary
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: focus because it is the easiest story to understand. but
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: not just because of that, but because of what we
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: were just saying, it is happening now.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: There's new revelations.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: There's new revelations, and it can affect the sanctity of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the 2020 elections, right? And so there is an immediate
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: threat to this. But part of what we're going to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: have to prove, because what Republicans are going to go
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to is, well, this was, you know, Trump really cares
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: about corruption in Ukraine, right? We'll talk about all the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: excuses in a bit. And so, yes, exactly. We have
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to prove intent. We have to prove that this is
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: part of a long running pattern that Trump has abused
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: his power. And I think what happened before the election,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: what happened after he was in office and obstructed Mueller,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: what he's been doing by profiting off the presidency are
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: all of a piece that this man has been corrupt
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: from the start and tried to cheat from the start
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and tried to get foreign assistance to help win from
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the start. And he's done it over and over and
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: over again. And I think so. I think I think
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: it should be. ancillary to the main focus on Ukraine,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: but I think you should bring them in to start
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: prove the pattern.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: Just one, just the counterpoint to that is that this
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: intent frame, knowing his mental state at the time.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: That is part of a legal argument, right?
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: They're arguing that because they're trying to argue it wasn't
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: a legal act because there was no corrupt intent. In
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: a sense, you could say that us focusing on that
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: intent is buying into their frame and setting an even
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: higher bar from impeachment than as Lovett read for us
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: and the founders intended.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So I use the word intent. I didn't mean to
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: actually use it in the legal sense, because I do
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: not think we should buy into the legal frame. I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: think part of the problem with the Mueller stuff was
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that everyone was a professional lawyer suddenly, and they were
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: all trying to prove a certain crime. I'm talking about
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the court of public opinion here. And I think for
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: people sitting at home to buy that Trump didn't just
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: have a one-off with Ukraine here, but has been corrupt
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: for quite a while and has been intending to do
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: this for quite a while. I think for public opinion,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: it's important. I don't really care that much about the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: legal case.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I also think, too, it's like we're stepping back and
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: remembering that there is no one making an intent argument
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: on planet Earth in good faith. No, there is no
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: human being. Trump included his lawyers, Hugh Hewitt, anyone. There's
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: no person who believes Donald Trump has a passion for
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: fighting corruption in Eastern Europe. Like there is no one
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: who has ever bought that for even a second.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, though. Certainly none of the people making
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that argument. I think some of the people watching Fox
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: News and listening to Hugh Hewitt might believe that the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: more they're told that. That's what I'm worried about.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: But you're right that the makers of the argument are
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: complete fucking bullshit.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: Well, the Republican senators are going to try to cling
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: to this little fig leap of intent to say that
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: it wasn't a criminal act, and that's how they'll absolve
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: him in the Senate.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: That's, I think, the play they're making.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Well, so Republicans are already spinning to Axios that a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: victory for them is party unity so that they can
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: claim this entire thing was a purely partisan exercise. And,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: you know, two different Sunday show hosts— were asking their
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Democratic guests, first question to the Democratic guests, why are
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you moving forward with this if it can't be bipartisan?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: So how do Democrats deal with this? What does victory
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: look like for us, knowing, as we do, and as
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: we've said many, many times, that we think the likelihood
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of him being convicted and removed from office is very,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: very low?
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's also worth remembering, too,
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: that the views... on the impeachment inquiry itself are an
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: important marker for how the facts and information are being received,
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: but no impeachment inquiry will be on any ballot, right? So,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, they're going to try to make this about
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: process because they're very uncomfortable talking about the substance because
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: the substance is damning and unequivocal. And so I think
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: for Democrats, it's about not getting tied around the axle
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: on these Republican arguments around process, which we should note
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: flipped in a day from there should be public hearings
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: to Now there's going to be show trials in the House, right? Like,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: you know, private hearings are illegitimate, but public hearings are illegitimate.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: It's an illegitimate partisan process because we won't participate and
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: we won't participate because it's an illegitimate partisan process. You know,
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: again and again, there's no argument to be made against
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: the Republicans here. We have to simply lay out the
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: substance of what Donald Trump did as cogently and simply
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: as possible because what we have seen in the past
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: four weeks or however long it's been, six years, 500 years,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure, of this impeachment inquiry that Republicans feel
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: okay attacking Adam Schiff, attacking the process. They feel very
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: uncomfortable when they're asked questions about the substance of what
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump did.
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, facts aren't partisan. Ethics aren't partisan. That
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: frame from the Sunday show hosts, I don't know who
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: said it or who asked those questions, but it's stupid.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: In my opinion.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: I mean, we know that Trump is like, buying off
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: Republican senators' votes by having fundraisers for them.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: That seems kind of unethical.
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: We know that Trump's plan and the Republican Party's plan
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: is to attack the whistleblower and try to claim that
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: this person, whether or not they know who it is,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: is a John Brennan, Susan Rice acolyte who has just
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: been playing a very, very long game, waiting it out
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: to take down Trump. Their attacks are bad faith bullshit.
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: We have to focus on the facts and not give
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: a shit what anyone on the Sunday show thinks about
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: needing a bipartisan vote.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: It's irrelevant.
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: As you said in the top, we're telling a story
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: to the American people here.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Democrats, the answers weren't great either, by
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the way, from the Democrats on the Sunday shows. But
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I think we should just say, look, we can't force
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Republican senators to listen to their conscience, right? All we
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: can do as Democrats, and one of the reasons we're
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: doing this hearing and this impeachment process is what we
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: can do is force every Republican politician in Congress to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: go on the record with the whether they're cool with
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the president of the United States extorting foreign governments for
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: help with his reelection. That's all we can do. Everyone
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: should be on the record. And then the voters can
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: make the choice in November based on that. And I
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: think we cannot fall into the trap of, and look,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: this is why we criticized Nancy Pelosi way back when
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: for saying, oh, I don't want to do impeachment unless
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: it's bipartisan, right? Like the Republican Party right now, the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: price of admission in the Republican Party is full, 100%
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: loyalty to Donald Trump.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: So therefore, by definition, if you are critical of Donald
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Trump as a Republican, you don't get to be really
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: part of the Republican Party anymore.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Look at Justin Amash. He got kicked out. It is
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: bipartisan already.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: It is bipartisan.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Justin Amash is a Republican. He was forced out of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the he was purged from the party because he wasn't
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: 100 percent loyal to Donald Trump. John Kasich thinks there
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: should be impeachment. He's basically excommunicated from the party.
• 22:28
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Every Republican out there, look at all the Republican strategists,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: all the Never Trumpers on Twitter.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: The governors in blue states.
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Any single person in the Republican Party who has disagreed
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: at all with Donald Trump is shunned. Look what's happening
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: with Mitt Romney, right? So by definition, there's no way
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: that we can hope for some kind of bipartisan outcome.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: It's not on Democrats to fucking get Republicans on board.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It is on Republicans to let us know whether they
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: are okay with the president extorting foreign governments.
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I think that's right, John. But I just saw, I
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: think that's right. But I saw it this weekend and
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is where it's going next. This is
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: where it's, this is when the media falls for this
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: bullshit all the time.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: What it reminds me of, it reminds me, look, you know,
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: when Democrats were trying to pass Obamacare, there was a
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: long dance to try to get several more moderate Republicans
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: on board with some kind of a bill. Months and
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: months of negotiations. It delayed it, it delayed it, I think,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: for better part of a year trying to get Republicans
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: on board. The culmination is a center-left moderate proposal that
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: brings in market-based ideas, that brings in ideas from the
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: Heritage Foundation, that delicately balances the benefits to try to
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: keep the cost down, all of that to try to
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: get some kind of bipartisan basis for this bill. But
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: what Mitch McConnell said from the beginning, what Republicans understood
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: from the beginning, was that in Washington, if Republicans are obstinate,
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Republicans obstruct, then when there is partisan warfare and bills
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: are voted on on a party-line basis, that doesn't show
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: you that there's something wrong with the Republican approach. that
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: shows you that Washington is broken, that both sides are
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: failing to come together.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And it was very effective.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: It was effective. It was incredibly effective.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: That's why he won the midterms.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Ask Merrick Garland.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And it still works. And the Washington press corps plays
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: along with that. So that's just, you know, I mean,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, I saw analysis on the vote, right? There's
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: a House vote to go to the public phase in impeachment,
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: taking on the precedents from previous impeachments. Republicans vote no
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: on bank. Democrats basically stay together. They lose two people.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: And what does it show you about the state of
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: the impeachment inquiry? It shows you that we're very divided.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: The Republican Party is a cult.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: It's a cult of Trump.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: And when Mitt Romney dared to criticize Donald Trump... Donald
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: Trump said he should be impeached for the sin of
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: criticizing Donald Trump.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: That's where we are.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Sadly for Donald Trump, that is not an option for U.S. senators,
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: but we'll correct him later.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So we talked about this a little, but on Friday,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post reported that some Senate Republicans are weighing
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a strategy where they acknowledge that Trump threatened to withhold
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: aid to Ukraine until their government announced an investigation of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden and his son, but argue that it's not impeachable.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And they've offered a few different reasons why this is
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: different than the process stuff you were talking about, Lovett.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Now they're getting into the substance. One, quid pro quos
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: are normal in foreign policy. Two, the investigation wasn't about
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the Bidens. It was just about corruption. And three, Ukraine
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: ended up getting the aid, and they never announced the investigation. Look,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I walked into the liquor store with my gun. I
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: didn't end up using it. I was caught. I was caught,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: so I couldn't finish the crime.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: There was a cop there, so I paid for the booze.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I broke the knee, but it got better.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: So, Trump responded to the story last night by saying, tweeting...
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: False stories are being reported that a few Republican senators
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: are saying that President Trump may have done a quid
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: pro quo, but it doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with that.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: It is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so. But read
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the transcript. There is no quid pro quo. He also
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: said the Democrats will be releasing fraudulent transcripts of witness depositions. Crazy.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: He's in a different place.
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: Well, even his closest defenders in the House said that
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: the doctoring the transcripts comment was madness.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Madness?
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: You get to go... Like a court-appointed reporter... It.
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: Takes the transcript, and then the person whose testimony is
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: being represented in that transcript goes in and signs off
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: on it. I believe it's all done under oath. It's
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: like that is batshit crazy conspiracy theory stuff.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So how do Democrats handle all of these arguments? Do
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: they pick them apart one by one, the substance of this?
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Pick them apart one by one? That's going to take
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: a day. That's going to take– I'll tell you. You
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: spent– Donald Trump tweets something insane that he thinks of
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: on the toilet in five minutes. You spent two hours
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: unpacking it. You're three fucking arguments behind.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Well, forget about it. Trump's arguments are, I mean, are
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: completely crazy. But like, let's start with Tommy, you know,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the quid pro quos in foreign policy are normal.
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's why I like this sort of definitional cul-de-sac
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: is annoying because yes, quid pro quos in foreign policy
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: are normal, but the quo is not helping your reelection campaign, right?
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: So that's why we're sort of stuck in these dumb
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: definitional fights like we were with what is collusion, right?
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: I think that Ultimately, if like nine Republicans land on
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: saying what he did was wrong and not impeachable, I
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: actually think that really helps us in terms of the
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: public argument phase of this and convincing these moderate Republicans
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: out in the world who don't know much about this
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: story that what Trump did was wrong and that he
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: shouldn't be erected. I would be fine with that. My
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: goal in this process is not to get Donald Trump
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: removed from office by the Senate.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: I don't think we're going to get there.
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: But, you know, I think that them leaning into him
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: doing the wrong thing would be pretty helpful.
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, no president has ever just engaged in a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: foreign policy decision purely. I mean, some foreign policy decisions
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: are good for the country in the president's view and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: also probably good for that president politically.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely.
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: Most are.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Most are, right? No one is engaged in foreign policy
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that is just purely specifically for technology. help with your
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: reelection campaign. I'm literally doing this just so I can
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: help with my election campaign. And the way we, and,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and that goes to the second one, which it wasn't
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: about the Bidens. It was about corruption. Like Donald Trump
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: cut foreign aid that was going towards cleaning up corruption
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: in multiple countries. There are no other countries where there
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: are way more corrupt countries than Ukraine that he has
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: never asked for investigations to clamp corruption. And even within Ukraine,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: there are a whole bunch of other corrupt things going
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: on in Ukraine, and he didn't pay attention to any
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: of them. He never mentioned a word about any of them,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: except for the one company that happened to employ Joe
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Biden's son.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think it was on the level.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's absurd on its face.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And the whole Ukraine, Ukraine ended up getting the aid
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and they never announced investigation. You know, as you said, obviously,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: he released the aid, right after the whistleblower complaint came out, right?
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: After the news of the whistleblower complaint existed. So he
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: got caught, and then he released the aid. And, by
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the way, Zelensky announced that they were going to go
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: back and review Burisma, the investigation into Burisma. So he
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: did get the fucking announcement. They did do it.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: One thing we're also learning, forget what was happening publicly,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: we know that after this call, and on several other occasions,
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: the White House erupted because there were so many voices
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: inside of the administration and the National Security Council, nonpartisan
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: people objecting, right? So, you know, Trump went into this,
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: you know, and he started getting abandoned from inside the
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: White House because what he was doing was so pathological
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: and unprecedented. So, you know, the idea that like, oh,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: you know, he didn't ever actually go, you know, they
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: didn't ever fill up his bags with dollar signs with money.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, like half his crew left, right?
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Well, that's and this goes back to sort of telling
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the larger story. Trump wants it to be about one call,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: one call.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Like Democrats have and I think they're doing this with
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: all the witnesses. Democrats have to make the case that
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: this is a government-wide conspiracy that went from Donald Trump
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: throughout the White House to the upper levels of the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: State Department, the political appointees at the State Department, the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Justice Department, right? Like this is a concerted effort to
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: basically extort a foreign government purely to help the president
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: of the United States election.
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Brian Boitler made this point on Twitter, and I
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: think it's actually a good one, which is, when did
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: the Ukraine scandal begin? It's hard to think about. When
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: is the actual moment that this idea was hatched? And
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: you really can't pinpoint it.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Well, we found out in some of the 302s that
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Tommy mentioned from the Mueller report that Paul Manafort, months
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: before the election, was pushing the theory to people on
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the Trump campaign that it was actually Ukraine. that interfered
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: in the election and not Russia.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: And you know how hard it is for Donald Trump
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: to make a new memory at this point? You have
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: to fucking say it to him eight times. Eight times
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Paul Manafort must have had to say it for it
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: to kind of gel in there.
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this madness was seeded early. And there's some question
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: of whether Konstantin Kalimnik, who is the guy who worked
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: for Paul Manafort in Ukraine, who is seen as a
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: tie to Russian intelligence, was the one who gave the
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: idea to Manafort in the first place.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: So, goddammit.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: And there's a great story in the Post this week about,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know, how Trump's sort of, you know, dislike of
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Ukraine goes back to when he first took office because
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: he thinks the Ukrainians screwed him somehow.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Paul Manafort told him.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Because Paul Manafort told him. And so he said, well,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: if they want to get into my good graces, they
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: have to do a favor.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: We just know, look, he will.
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: Go to his deathbed feeling aggrieved that he lost the
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: popular vote and will look for anything to, any flailing
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: conspiracy theory to prove that his election was legitimate.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I think it's that simple. That's right.
• 31:15
  Speaker 7: That's right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about 2020, which is now less
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: than a year away. And with less than 100 days
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: until the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic candidates were in Des
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Moines over the weekend for the Liberty and Justice Celebration Dinner,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: just after a brand new poll from the New York
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Times and Siena College showed Elizabeth Warren leading the field
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: in Iowa at 22%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 19%,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Pete Buttigieg at 18%, and Joe Biden at 17%. Very
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: close among the top four candidates. Tommy, you were there.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: We will talk about the speeches in a minute, but
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: this event is always a big test of a campaign's organization.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: So who did well on that front? Who didn't? What
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: did you see on the ground there?
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: So I think inside the stadium itself, Pete probably had
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: the biggest presence in the arena. They reportedly filled like
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: 12 sections at the Wells Fargo Arena, which looked huge.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: And his people had these bracelets that lit up in
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: unison during key applause lines. So it was a, it
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: was a serious organization. Warren was out there as well.
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: They had a big, impressive visibility outside and inside the arena.
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: They were also everywhere in the arena signing up voters.
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: The Warren team was like, so I tweeted out a photo.
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: I watched this Warren field organizer sprint up to the
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: line in Google beer area and start trying to sign
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: up the three people behind the counter who were selling beer.
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: Another Warren field organizer was signing up the janitor who
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: was next to us. Like they were everywhere and talking
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: to voters. Um, It was impressive. Kamala also had a big,
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: impressive field team and advanced work in the stadium, and
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: they had a big, raucous section.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: So I think those were some of the, those are
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: the highlights.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: What about the lower lights?
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, Biden seemed like there were some, so
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: I was in the arena early, and I went to
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: a section just to check out what it looked like.
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: And all over those seats were Biden placards and thunder
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: sticks that said, beat him like a drum.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: And later when I went back to that section, they
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: had all been taken away and thrown in the trash.
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: So it seems like they couldn't fill all the sections
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: they'd purchased, which is probably not a great sign. And
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: then the other sort of odd thing is that Bernie
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: Sanders didn't bring his supporters into the stadium. They had
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: a different party somewhere down the street. And I think
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: it's because they don't want to support something that has
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: corporate sponsors.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: There's some principled reason.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that was it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: In practice, Bernie got pretty good applause from people who
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: were there supporting other candidates, but he didn't have his big,
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: raucous Bernie cheering section. So he also announced that he
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: donated $ 20, 000 to the party.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: But I don't know.
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: It just felt like, once again, they don't want to
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: play the game, and it only hurts him, at least optically,
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: in the room.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you would imagine that if Bernie had a
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: whole section of all the cheering supporters that were at
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that other party.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Then people, I mean, look, no one sounds big.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, no one likes to admit
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that the perception of these things among people is a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: lot of the times based on like crowd size and the,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and the, and the cheers that you get at these events,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: but that's sort of the way it is.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Right. And the Bernie people know that.
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: I mean, they did 20,000 plus at a rally in
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: Queens with AOC. And then a couple yesterday, I think
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: they had 10,000 plus people. in Minnesota with Ilhan Omar.
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: Those are big, badass, awesome crowd events. I just keep
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: wondering when they're going to do those in Iowa. Now,
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: he announced, I went to Bernie's pre-rally, which was great
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: and focused on labor and impressive. And he announced that
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: AOC was going to come to Iowa and do events
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: with him. So maybe they'll get there. But it's like,
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: you have 13,500 Democrats in a room. I would put
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: on my best possible show for them.
• 34:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah. All right.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the speeches. And we have a
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: few clips from the leading contenders. let's play a clip
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: from Pete's speech, and then let's play a clip from
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Warren's speech right after, and then we can talk about
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: both of those candidates.
• 35:11
  Speaker 8: We will fight.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: When we must fight, but I will.
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: Never allow us to get so wrapped up in the
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: fighting that we start to think fighting is the point.
• 35:22
  Speaker 6: The point is what lies on the other side of
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: the fight. And what lies on the other side of
• 35:35
  Speaker 6: that fight is the hope of an American experience defined
• 35:41
  Speaker 6: not by.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: Exclusion, but by belonging.
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: That is what we are here for today.
• 35:51
  Speaker 8: This is a time of crisis.
• 35:54
  Speaker 7: And media pundits, Washington insiders, even.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Some people in our own party, don't want to admit it.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: They think that running some.
• 36:04
  Speaker 8: Fake campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe.
• 36:10
  Speaker 8: But if the most weakly promised.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Is business as usual.
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: After Donald Trump.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Then Democrats will lose.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: We will. when we offer solutions.
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: Big enough to touch the problems.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: That are in people's lives. So, I thought that those
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: two candidates had the sharpest messages of any of the candidates,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and they were messages essentially for each other.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was, I think it was the sharpest argument
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: Pete's made. And I thought it was one of the
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: sharpest and not the sharpest argument Elizabeth Warren has made
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: in this campaign. They were aimed at each other. There's
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: more to the Warren clip that it really felt like
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: they had seen each other's speeches in advance because it
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: was about, you know, if you, it was some version of,
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: if you, if you don't understand that we're in a fight,
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: you're not going to win that fight.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: What did you think, Sami?
• 37:07
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, so when I first watched Pete's speech in
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: the room, they had been pushing this narrative so hard
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: of a Obama comparison that I kind of watched it
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: through that framework, which it's, it's funny. It's like, it's
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: not a fair comparison to make for any of those speakers.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: Cause Barack Obama is one of the best speakers the
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: parties had. Like you could give mayor Pete Obama's voice
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: and nothing else.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: And it would probably improve the speech, but like I
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: watched it again this morning. It was a very good speech.
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: It had a clear message at a clear argument. You
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: can tell what his strategy was. Um, I, I also
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: think like they put on a show and it, it, it,
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: people in the room were really impressed. So I talked
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: to a bunch of folks just sort of walking around
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: the arena who supported all kinds of different people.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: And many of them mentioned Pete's speech and they thought it.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Was pretty strong. So there were a lot of comparisons
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: being made by some of the campaigns to Obama's JJ
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: in 2007. And, um, partly because it was a big
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: breakout moment for us and it helped sort of change
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: the direction of the primary. So they wanted that comparison.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And it struck me that Obama's speech in 2007 had
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: three main themes to it. Changing Washington, showing political courage,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: and bringing the country together. And both Pete and Warren
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: hit the first theme about changing Washington. Pete hit the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: theme about bringing the country together, and Warren hit the
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: theme about showing political courage.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: Fighting.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And that's where they diverged. And it was interesting that
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: back in 2007, Obama was able to deliver a message
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that said both, we can't be, we have to be courageous.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: We can't rely on poll tested slogans. I mean, it's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: so funny. Obama's line was, you know, the same old
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Washington textbook campaigns just won't do in this election. You know,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: telling people what we think they want to hear instead
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: of telling people what they need to hear just won't do, right?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: And Warren's, as we just heard, was like, I'm not
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: running some consultant-driven campaign where we're too afraid to say
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: what we believe. Warren's really echoed Obama's there, but then
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Pete's echoed Obama's when it was, what kind of country
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: do we want after Donald Trump? I thought his best
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: line was, which he's used before, the purpose of the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: presidency is not the glorification of the president, it's the
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: unification of the country, right? And Pete is speaking to
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a very real desire among the electorate, even the Democratic electorate,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: to not have to engage in perpetual partisan warfare all
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the time. Elizabeth Warren is speaking to a very real
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: desire in the electorate to fucking not be afraid to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: fight and change a system that is not working for
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: people very well. And it's fascinating. And I'm fascinated to
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: see you know, which one of those arguments went out.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I also think, too, if you sat the two
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: of them down together and had a conversation about actual
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: change and electioneering and hard politics, there's probably more alignment there.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: And so really what we're hearing is, I think, more
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: of an articulation of a message about change that they
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: believe is most effective to win people over. You know,
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: when Pete says, you know, it's about what comes after
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: the fight, honestly, as someone just sort of an observer
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: of politics, I just think, well, There's no point after
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: the fight.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Not really.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, I understand the tilting toward unity, towards harmony.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: I get the value of that. I get the importance
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: of a president who appeals to everybody. But once you
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: won the election, you're either going to be fighting like
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: fucking hell or you're going to be losing. And I
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: think that's sort of what Elizabeth Warren is articulating. What Pete,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: I think, is saying underneath that is she is someone
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: who is seen as polarizing, as antagonistic. to people that
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: we need to win.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I won't be.
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: So it's, I think underneath the optimistic argument is, and
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying this in a critical way, is a
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: more cynical argument to voters saying, I know you like her.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: I know you like the fight. That's not how we're
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: actually going to win. And we have to win.
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if it's cynical.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's the wrong word.
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, I just, I think there's hard at hard nosed,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: let's say, how about that?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Like, I think, I think he's, he's making an argument that, um,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: It's not just about, like, fight, because he also said,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: you know, you need to have fight sometimes, too, right?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: You almost need to get to specifics of the policies, right,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and the substance, because, like you said, Pete burst onto
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: the scene talking about how, you know, Republicans have sort
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: of held Democratic norms hostage, and we need to reform
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court and reform the filibuster and all the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: stuff that we've been talking about that we like, right?
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So Pete sort of intuitively gets that. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren has, like,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: co-sponsored bills with Republicans during her years in the Senate
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: to try to get stuff done.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So both of them are a little like that, more like,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: like you said, more like the other one than they
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: probably admit right now, but they're clearly both trying to,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you know, be in their own lanes there.
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, I think if you watch her speech
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: and you just have like buzzword takeaways, it would be
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: big structural change, big ideas and fighting. Uh, and I
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: thought her speech got stronger as it went on the beginning.
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: She did this sort of longer story about toasters and
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: houses catching fire and how that compared to mortgage. And
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: I just thought that was a little too like low
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: energy for the room.
• 42:17
  Speaker 7: I agree.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: But when she got to the part at the end
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: where like fear and complacency does not win elections and
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: the consultant driven campaign, the place lit up. And like
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: anyone who comes on the stage and tells you they
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: can make change without a fight, like that got the
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: place rocking. And so, you know, there are two different
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: theories of the case. I mean, I do think Pete
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: is selling himself as more of a moderate uniter and
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: she wants to blow up the system, maybe not as
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: much as Bernie Sanders, but pretty close.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: I think what I found interesting about the way Warren
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: started is she didn't start by yelling. She started in
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: a kind of very conversational way, and she told that story.
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: And it is a story that attacks one of the
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: central weaknesses of her candidacy, right? This idea that, you know,
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: she's setting her sights too high, she's too far to
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: the left, but she articulates from beginning to end a simple,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: elegant story that begins with toasters catching on fire and
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: ends with her creating a federal agency. And I found
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: that really compelling. And, you know, not as a pundit,
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: as a voter. When I got to the end of
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren's speech, and she talked about hope and courage,
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: I was moved.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: I was excited.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: I was amped up by someone who was articulating my
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: feelings about where we are in this moment, a feeling
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: of emergency and crisis.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I agree with that towards the end. And look, I
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: know why she started with that story, and I still
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: believe that it's going to be a really important argument
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: for her down the road. especially when she's getting a
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: debate with Pete and Biden to say, this is not
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: pie in the sky. Look, I created a federal agency.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: What did you do?
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: That's a very important argument for her. But one of
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: the things I've my one worry about Warren's message has
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: been that it's not it doesn't it's almost like isolated
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: from the moment that we're in right now. Doesn't mention Trump,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't mention the threat to our democracy at all. It's
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: so focused on economic inequality, which is hugely important, but
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: it's so focused on that. that it doesn't talk about
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: all of the other big issues. And starting with a
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: story about a toaster at a big event like that,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I think plays into that issue.
• 44:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: It didn't, it, the beginning didn't land for me. I
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: thought it was, I thought you'd get a good speech
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: and that it got there and it got to a
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: good place. I do think, you know, she was also
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: trying to make an electability argument, which was, we don't
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: win by, by.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Going small and turning our sales.
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: We win by going big and putting huge solutions forward
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: that actually address the problems. Which is, is, was well
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: done and well said.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I, I, and, and, By the way, I thought Pete,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: in articulating his defense of Medicare for all who wanted
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: and for his was the biggest, he is really trying
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: to do something very difficult, which we've talked about a
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: long time, which is grounding a more moderate set of
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: policies in a larger, big vision for the country. And
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: I think this speech was really successful at doing it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: It was truly, I think, one of the best, if
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: not the best speeches I've ever seen him give.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Well, and partly because they're not that moderate. Yes, you
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: could say they're more moderate, but like every single one
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: of these candidates, including Joe Biden, which we're about to
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: play a clip of next, they're all proposing policies more
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: progressive than Barack Obama and mostly more progressive than Hillary
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Clinton in 2016. And we've sort of gotten a little
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: far away from that.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: I will say Pete has gotten better and better at
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: speaking and he was very confident up there. And it's
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: clear like they had practiced and they went in and
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: they wrote something specifically tailored for this event. I also think, though,
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: like there's been a lot of talk about Biden versus Pete.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: I think that the Warren people are starting to look
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: at Pete and get a little worried.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: He just went on a.
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: Big bus tour right after that speech. And he's getting
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: huge crowds. He's getting a look from a lot of people.
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: There's some very clear momentum on that campaign that's been
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: building for a while.
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah. All right.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Joe Biden, let's hear a clip from his speech.
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: We have got to.
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: We have got to.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: Beat this man.
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: It's not enough.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: It's not enough that we just beat him.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: We've got to beat him soundly.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: So everybody knows.
• 46:03
  Speaker 7: We are not going back to a time when another
• 46:06
  Speaker 7: president like.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Him can hold that office.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: And we must beat him.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: And I will beat him like a drum if.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: I'm going to nominate.
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: And he knows it.
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: I want to start by praising the end of Joe
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: Biden's speech in which he talked about get up. And
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: he and he was really invested in what he was saying.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: And he was and he was, I thought, the most
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: the strongest I've seen him in any forum in a
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: long time. arguing for kind of optimism, arguing for America
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: solving their problems. It's an argument he's made before, but
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: I thought he did it really, really well. I'm starting
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: with the compliment because I thought the rest of the speech.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Was a mess.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: And it actually, part of the reason I was, I think,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: so receptive to Elizabeth Warren's ending where she talked about
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: hope and courage is because Biden said something in the
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: speech that I found incredibly frustrating at this point in
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: the fight against Donald Trump, which is he said some
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: version of the only thing that stands in our way
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: is Donald Trump. And that I just think is not true.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: It's just not true.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Well, in fact, he said, once Donald Trump's out of
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the way, we got a clear path to everything.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: And it's just like- What are you talking about? That
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: is simply, it fundamentally doesn't understand the moment that we're
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: in and it is incredibly frustrating.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: And that's what I wanted to say about that.
• 47:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: The end of the speech was definitely stronger. He had
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: a line near the very end that was like, the
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: next president has to be ready on day one. You
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: can't have on the job training. And I was like, oh,
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: that's a compelling message for Joe Biden that makes sense with,
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: you know, understanding who he is and his background, his
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: record and the general electorate's abject.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Terror about Donald Trump getting reelected.
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: It's an electability argument as well. But the beginning of
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: it was it felt all over the place. The delivery
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: was kind of off. He was pacing too fast in
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: the circle. At one point he was talking about school
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: shootings and he leaned over and said, hey, honey, how
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: are you?
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Or something like that. And it was just weird.
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: He didn't have much of a presence in the room
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: and that it manifests in a lack of applause and
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: a lack of enthusiasm from supporters. It just like it
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: wasn't a it wasn't a bad speech. Like, I think
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: people didn't watch it and think, oh, he's terrible. But
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: I didn't think he did a lot for himself.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Good speeches tell a story and make an argument. Pete
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Buttigieg's speech did that. Elizabeth Warren's speech did that. Joe
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Biden's speech was basically his stump speech. And I said this.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: before I saw anyone's speeches on Thursday on that pod,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: that like the people, I'm not going to look too,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: too kindly on the people who just go and give
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: their stump at the Liberty and Justin.
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: And I heard that from people in Iowa. Like they didn't,
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: they said to me, don't show up and give your stump.
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: Like don't do the same shit and the same story,
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: same jokes. We want to hear a sharpened argument for
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: why you're going to win.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: And we know because his campaign makes the case sometimes
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: when he doesn't, that Joe Biden has an argument. Joe
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Biden has an argument for why he should be president, right?
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Like you, you talked about the on the job training, right?
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Like we've noticed, we've noticed it from him in different
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: moments and debates. Like there is a coherent argument that
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: exists for Joe Biden and his candidacy. And I think, look,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: maybe he doesn't, maybe, maybe the feelings of Joe Biden
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: among a large enough part of the democratic electorate are enough, right?
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: The feelings of goodwill towards him over the last eight
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: years are enough to carry him to the nomination perhaps.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: But he has not really made the case yet in
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: a really sharp way. And he didn't, I don't think,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: during the dinner.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden's candidacy has not been helped by Joe Biden
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: as a candidate.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: It just hasn't.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm getting very, it's a very frustrating thing
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: because I do agree with you that there is a
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: larger argument and a moving and powerful argument based on electability,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: based on his life experience, based on loss. and wisdom
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: gained through loss, there is a set of values that
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: he could be defending. And I just, it's never really articulated,
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: certainly not by him. And for, you know, it's a
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: small thing, but in Biden's speech, he said some version of,
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: you know, we learned two things. You know, Putin doesn't
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: want me to be president and Donald Trump doesn't want
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: me to be the nominee.
• 50:03
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I I understand that that's a pushback to the stories
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: about Hunter Biden that we've been seeing for the past
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: few weeks. But I was actually reminded something about what
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: Mayor Pete said when he was first sort of talking
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: about his candidacy, about why he doesn't want to do
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: potshots and all the rest. And he was saying, sometimes
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: when we engage in that kind of game, we're actually
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: giving into Donald Trump's terms of the debate. We're thinking
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: about politics the way Donald Trump thinks about politics. And
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: so at this moment, before the entire Democratic Party in Iowa,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: for you to stand up there and say, you should
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: vote for me because Donald Trump's opinion is is really important.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: It's really important that you know Donald Trump doesn't want me.
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: It's just another opportunity to elevate Donald Trump at a
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: moment when we're trying to elevate each other and elevate Democrats.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: Why do you want to be president? I know why
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump doesn't want you to be president. Why do
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: you want to be president?
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump's scared of me is a pretty
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: fair argument. I think that's a good argument.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: We can disagree here.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: I understand that it's core to his electability argument.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I get that.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: It was more just it's this moment to present yourself.
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: And it was so early in the speech for him
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: to kind of, basically, that was the substance of his
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: electability argument. And then he went into some kind of,
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: you know, talking points about various policies because he went
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: into his stump. And then in the end, he ended
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: in this optimistic way. And I just, in an event
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: where we're sort of hearing about the visions of this candidate,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: because by the way, you know, Barack Obama's speech, you know,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: you can go into the specifics about what it did
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: and what Warren did like that and what Pete did
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: like that. But the reason that that speech was so
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: effective is beneath the words, was a person who was
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: ready to be president and meet the moment, you know,
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: and it was big. It was big and it excited
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: people and it inspired people. And it said, I know
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: you're not sure about me, but when you listen to me,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: you can trust me and you can put your faith
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: in me to be your champion in this election that
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: is to come. And for, you know, I see other
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: candidates trying to do that. I don't see Joe Biden
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: trying to do that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: All right, let's hear Bernie Sanders and then Kamala Harris
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: right in a row, and then we can talk about
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: both of them.
• 51:59
  Speaker 7: Brothers and sisters, good policy is good politics. Now is
• 52:08
  Speaker 7: the time to stand with the working families of our
• 52:12
  Speaker 7: country and end the outrageous level of greed and corruption
• 52:19
  Speaker 7: we see.
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: From the corporate elite.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Now is the time.
• 52:24
  Speaker 7: To create a political movement any government that works for
• 52:31
  Speaker 7: all of us.
• 52:33
  Speaker 8: To win, we are going to have to fight for
• 52:37
  Speaker 8: what I know in my heart and in my soul
• 52:39
  Speaker 8: to be true, which is the beauty of the diversity
• 52:44
  Speaker 8: of who we are as a nation.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: We all.
• 52:57
  Speaker 7: We all have so much more.
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: In common than what separates us.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: And to win, and to win, and to win, we're
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: gonna need.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: A nominee on that stage with Donald Trump.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Who has the.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: Ability to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in Iowa, you're
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: looking at her.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: What do we think of those speeches?
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Bernie, it was a good speech.
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: It's a good message. But it's a greatest hits message.
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: You know, like, it could have been 2016. And so
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: he got, like, good, you know, nice applause from the
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: people who were there supporting other candidates. But, you know, again,
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: he didn't bring his folks in, so we didn't get
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: this big, raucous reception. And I just, I don't know
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: that that message in that moment builds support four-year campaign
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: that you didn't get in 2016. In fact, given how
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: much he got in 2016, you're probably already getting significantly less.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: I thought Kamala, her advance in field team did impressive work.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: People were pumped.
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: You came away from that speech thinking she's a fighter.
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: There was an intensity to the message. The message was basically,
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: I can go toe-to-toe with Trump. She had this critique
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: of Warren, clearly, about not representing corporations in legal work. Uh,
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: and then they kind of walked it back the next day,
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: which confused me. Like if you're going to take a
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: shot at Warren, take a shot. Um, the, the, for
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: the people formulation, it's sort of worked rhetorically. It looked
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: great in the room. It's a little bit clunky, but
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: I mean, no, look, I think people were impressed by
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: the delivery and that she's a fighter and like it
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: generally was received well.
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I was impressed by the delivery. I'm always impressed by
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: her delivery. I think she delivered the hell out of
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: the speech. Um, cause she, she does that well. And
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I think she is very good when it comes to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: talking about her biography and what she's done in her life.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I think she's very, very good when she talks about
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. I think she got a little bit closer
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: in this speech to having sort of a positive message
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: of how she sees the country. And you heard her
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: there talk about sort of recognizing the beauty of the
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: diversity in this country and how we have more in
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: common than we do different. But that also hasn't been
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: her message from Actually, she did have that message sort
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: of in her kickoff speech, which was really great. Then
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: it sort of gets lost. Again, she's someone who's gone
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: through a lot of different messages.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: I mean, I was thinking about the Bernie speech, and
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: it was sort of a version of his stump speech.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: There was a moment in 2016 where all of a
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: sudden there was a real opportunity for Bernie to maybe
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: even actually be the nominee. And it was a moment
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: where the campaign seemed to shift. You know, he was
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: no longer wearing the button down collars. He got a
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: bit more serious. He did more foreign policy. It was
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: like he was just sort of he really made it
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: was a moment where he thought, OK, this is a
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: person who's no longer running to change the Democratic Party.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: This person who now, I think, believes they have a
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: chance to be the nominee. And I see Bernie out
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: there now. And I just if you were someone with
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: a with a plan to say, I'm going to I
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: want to take some of the support from from other
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: candidates and build a bigger coalition, I'd be looking for
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: just a different version of his argument, an argument that
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: reaches out to other parts of the democratic coalition and
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: says like, I have a home for you. And I,
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: maybe it's too late now. Maybe, maybe it wasn't a
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: while ago. Maybe this is just Bernie is who he is.
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: He's going to be who he is.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: And that's that. I don't know.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: But I just, I always think that with Bernie, there's
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: this missed opportunity to be something bigger. And I thought
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: that's what I took away from it, even though I
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: think his stump speech is in a really good place
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: as a speech.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Any other thoughts on any of the other candidates? Cory Booker,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Amy Klobuchar?
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, I mean, so the thing to understand is
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: that this was a long dinner and Klobuchar and Booker
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: were near the end. They were not the very end,
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: but they were near the end, which means lots of
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: people had left, which just really sucks for them.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: Amy Klobuchar, I thought she did pretty well. Like something
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: might be happening there.
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: I think it's very hard for anyone outside the top
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: tier of candidates to break through at this point.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: It's just a long shot. But she's had some good
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: recent polling. She had a good debate.
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: I went to an event that she did the night
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: before where she rolled out a big Iowa endorsement, this
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: woman named Roxanne Conlon, who'd been a Democratic nominee for
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: governor and senator, and talked to some folks there. It
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: was a small crowd. But what they like about her
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: is not just her moderation, but there's a cultural affinity
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: for her that they feel like they get her.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: She's Midwestern.
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, she's a Midwestern mom. They like her for that reason.
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: So something could happen there.
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: Booker.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: Like he got the crowd pumped. He was super energized.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: It's more of this sort of inclusive, radical love message,
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: which I think in a different year might be the
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: right message for Iowa. If like Dave Weigel, I thought
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: had a great line in the trailer and in the
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: piece he wrote, which is that the negative phase of
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: the campaign is still in demo mode. People aren't beating
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: the shit out of each other yet. And I think
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: if they were, Booker's inclusive message might work even better.
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: I just, it's hard for me to see if it's
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: going to resonate quite yet.
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Well, it seems like it might start getting a little
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: nastier after this weekend.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: I thought, I thought so when I saw Kamala issue,
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: what was clearly an insult directed at Elizabeth Warren and
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: then not defend it. So I don't, I don't totally,
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: I don't, I don't know when this campaign starts to
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: get tougher.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: I wonder if the next debate in November is going
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to be a little sharp. All right. So, uh, one person, uh,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: who did not speak at the dinner, um, was a
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke because he announced shortly before
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the dinner that that he'd be dropping out of the race.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: He did so because he said it became clear that
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: his campaign didn't have, quote, the means to move forward successfully.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: In a Medium post, O'Rourke wrote, I can tell you
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: firsthand from having the chance to know the candidates will
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: be well-served by any one of them, and I'm going
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: to be proud to support whoever that nominee is. Guys,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: we all know Beto. We've liked him a lot since
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the Senate race. We thought he'd be a strong candidate
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: at the beginning. What do we think happened?
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: I think that First of all, winning the Democratic nomination
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: is really, really hard, right? It's even harder when there's
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: 20 people running and it's even harder when you stumble
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: pretty hard out of the gate between the Vanity Fair
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: piece and the way he was covered on his first
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: Iowa swing. And the fact that sometimes it seemed like
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: they hadn't gotten all their ducks in a row before
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: they announced. I didn't think at the time that that
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: was going to be unrecoverable, but it may have essentially
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: been that. And you know, in a year where I
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: think being part of the big national mix and scoring
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: points and debates and, you know, just getting national attention
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: was even more important than ever. He didn't do a
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: lot of like big national press after that Vanity Fair piece.
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: And I think it made it harder for him to
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: get a look in Iowa, which is again, not what
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: I would have expected to happen, but it's what happened.
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: So like, you know, he's a, he's a great person.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: I like him a lot. I think he'll have a
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: future in the party that is bright, but like, really
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: hard to win the nomination.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: I think he could have overcome a really sort of
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: a very, I think, inauspicious launch of his campaign. I
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: think he could have overcome starting late and taking a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: long time to staff up. And I think he could
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: have overcome taking some time to try to figure out
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: where his place was in the field and what his
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: larger message would be. It was not possible to overcome
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: all three. And I do think, you know, we can
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: talk about tactics and all the rest. If he had
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: had a clear articulated version of why he decided to
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: launch his presidential bid from the start, and made that
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: case across Iowa, made it on television wherever he wanted
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: to do television, he could have overcome it. But I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: think he did struggle in this very large and very
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: crowded field with some really excellent candidates that span the
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party to really articulate why
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: he decided to get in because it was so late.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I think Beto is an incredibly kind, decent, inspiring,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: you know, politically courageous politician who really doesn't love the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: game of politics. And didn't want to play the typical
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: game of politics. And that served him very well in
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: a Senate race where he almost, you know, won, became
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the first Democrat in decades and decades to win statewide
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: in Texas. I think his problem is going to be
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: is going to end up being the problem of a
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: lot of these candidates who fall by the wayside in
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: the coming months, which is. and I thought this at
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: the very beginning of the race, like you said, Tommy,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: with 20-something candidates, it's always important to distinguish yourself in
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: the field with the message, why me and why not
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: everyone else in the field? Even if you don't say
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: why not everyone else at first because everyone's being nice,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: there should be implicit contrast with almost everyone else you're
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: running against and a story about why you. In a
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: field of 20-something candidates, the most diverse fields of candidates
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: we've ever had, it is even more important that on
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the day you announce for president, you have that message down.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: And if he had that message down and he had
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: a team around him when he launched, which he ended
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: up with a great team, you know, but it was
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: like months after that launch, right? But if he had
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: a message and a team from the start, he probably
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: could have overcome a really bad launch. But the problem
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: is when you don't have that message from the beginning,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: it's hard. And I think it's, look, and I think
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: it's going to be hard when other candidates drop out
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: it will necessarily be because they couldn't nail that exact message.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Why you? Why not everyone else? What's your story? Why
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: are you in this race? Not just slogans, not just
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: random lines, not just random issues that you jump on
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: once in a while. Or riffs at the Iowa JJ.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: It is a.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Story about you and why you at this moment in
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: time and where the country is and where the country
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: needs to go. And we heard some of that message
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: from a few candidates at the JJ, and we didn't
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: hear it from a lot of others.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: Well, I also just think putting Beto specifically aside, it's
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: also a dynamic of this race that you have Biden
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: occupying not the similar role to what Jeb Bush did
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: in the primary, which was it was a campaign that
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: wasn't going particularly well, that wasn't really resonating that well,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: but did hold a big chunk of support for a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: long time that made it hard to be an alternative. Now,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: we can say whether you're being the alternative to Warren
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: or being the alternative to Mayor Pete or being the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: alternative to.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Biden himself, what have you.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: It has been really, really difficult for all but three
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: or four human beings to find a place to push
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: some space in the field to make a name for themselves.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: It's been hard for everybody.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. When we come back, I will talk to
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media's own Brian Boitler about his brand new podcast, Rubicon.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: On the pod today, we have Crooked Media's Editor-in-Chief, Brian Boitler. Brian,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: what's up, man?
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: Not a whole lot.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: How are you?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I'm good.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: I should actually say I'm super.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 8: Busy, working real hard for Crooked Media, as always.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: As always.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Very, very full agenda.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the reasons we wanted to have you
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: on today is because, in addition to your role as
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media's Editor-in-Chief, you are the new host of Crooked
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Media's brand new pod on impeachment... called Rubicon. We wanted
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to launch a pod on impeachment. We looked around. We
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: found the perfect host right here at Crooked Media, and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: that is you. What are you trying to do with
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: this pod each week, and what do you think it
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: can add to all the impeachment coverage that is out
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: there right now?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 8: So, obviously, there is no shortage of impeachment coverage, or
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 8: even of impeachment podcasts at this point, I think. But we've...
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 8: Most of us, at least at Crooked, have been of
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 8: the view since like well before the Ukraine scandal that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 8: drawing a line in the sand about Trump's abuses of
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 8: power would be critical for both deterring Trump from cheating
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 8: in his own reelection campaign and thus for making sure
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 8: that we have free and fair elections in this country. And,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: you know, we sort of recognize that if Trump wasn't
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 8: challenged on the abuses of power he was committing before
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 8: We learned all about the Ukraine scandal. It was just
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 8: a short jump from there for him to come to
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 8: the conclusion that he could get away with breaking election
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 8: law to help himself get reelected. So we wanted to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 8: cover the impeachment from that lens. A lot of the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 8: impeachment coverage you'll see on television or another podcast will
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 8: explain the process to you. It will examine how the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 8: impeachment process might affect the horse race coverage between Democrats
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 8: and Republicans. And it's not that we're going to avoid
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 8: those topics, but we want to make sure that every
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 8: episode is infused with the fact that doing this is,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 8: the stakes of this are absolutely critical to democracy in
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 8: the United States.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would let everyone know that, you know, I
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: listened to the first episode and you lay out in
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: the opening couple minutes just about all of the impeachable
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: offenses that Donald Trump has committed since taking office. And
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's a, it's, As great of a summary
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: as I've heard about sort of the story of impeachment,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: because I think, you know, we talked about this today
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: on the pod as well. It's going to be super
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: important for Democrats to not just nail him like they're
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: nailing him in a trial with the right evidence, but
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: to actually tell a story of, you know, Trump abusing
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: his power, starting from when he was running for president
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: up until right now. And I think making this– making
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: what he's done and the abuses of power all part
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: of a pattern and part of a cohesive larger story
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: is probably super important.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: I think that's right.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 8: So in that kind of opening few minutes of episode one,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 8: which we call the stakes for justice reason, right? We
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 8: go into sort of the history of impeachment very briefly.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 8: But Trump's story is one of achieving the presidency through
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 8: corrupt means, right? He– He was aware that the Russian
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 8: government was intervening in the election to help him win
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 8: by committing crimes. And he committed crimes of his own
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 8: to help himself win the election. And then when he
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 8: became president, he obstructed justice to make sure that those–
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 8: the details of those activities never came to light. So
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: right off the bat, he's abusing the power of his office.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 8: to try to hide the corrupt means by which he
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: became president in the first place.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: Because he basically got away with that, he was extremely
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: cavalier about using the presidency to funnel money into his
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 8: own pockets by kind of tweaking government policy and political
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 8: activity to make sure that people were spending money at
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 8: his properties. And he got away with that. And it
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: was Only when he got caught trying to sabotage his–
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 8: somebody who was like the frontrunner to be the candidate
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 8: against him in 2020 that I think Democrats who had
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: been reluctant because they weren't sure about the politics of
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 8: impeachment kind of realized, look, like we might be scared
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 8: of the– or unsure about the politics of impeachment. But
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 8: if we don't do anything about this, then he's just
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 8: going to cheat his way to reelection. So they made
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 8: the call and it seems like they very quickly uncovered
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 8: that that he had already gone to very great lengths
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 8: to corrupt U.S. foreign policy with the sole purpose of
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: harming the political opposition he faces in the United States.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: So, you know, after your opening on the first episode,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: you talked to Matt Miller, who's a former Justice Department
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: spokesman in the Obama administration. We've had Matt on Positive
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: America before. You guys sort of had a great debate,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I thought, about, you know, what impeachment should cover just
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: how many abuses of power it should cover and how
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: long it should go. You know, has your thinking evolved
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: on sort of the timeline around impeachment at all? I know,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you know, we've gone back and forth on this too.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: What did you take away from the conversation with Matt?
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 8: I mean, I take Matt's analysis very seriously for the
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: reason he said. He's not just a Justice Department vet.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: He's a Democratic campaign vet. He's a political animal and
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 8: he's He makes the best case for the strategy Democrats
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 8: have adopted, which is a very aggressive but limited in
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 8: scope impeachment where they really nail the case against Trump
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 8: on the Ukraine scandal and basically put it to Republicans.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 8: Is this OK with you when we've proven– not that
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 8: they need a beyond the reasonable doubt standard, but they're
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 8: going to meet that standard and then Republicans are going
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 8: to have to decide whether they're OK with it. with
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: the president of the United States doing this kind of
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 8: corrupt criminal activity. My view on it, I don't think
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 8: he changed my mind. He makes a better case for
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 8: that kind of impeachment than most of the Democrats who
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 8: actually will participate in the process do. And my view
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 8: is that if Republicans show signs that they've had enough,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 8: that they can't defend this conduct anymore– then it would
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 8: be obviously irresponsible to just drag the impeachment process out
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 8: longer than it needed to. You don't want to leave
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: Trump in office for one day longer than you absolutely
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 8: have to, right? But until there's some signs that the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 8: Republican defenses are breaking down, that you should sort of
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 8: layer other aspects of the investigation onto it that are
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 8: just as uncomfortable. It will not be popular for Republicans
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 8: to vote not just on the Ukraine matter, but on
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 8: Trump making the military spend money at his resorts. I mean,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 8: I don't see the harm in extracting more political pain
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 8: from Republican senators if they are determined at the end
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 8: of the day to let Trump get away with basically
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 8: anything Democrats uncover. And there's abundant evidence of other kinds
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 8: of corruption.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: See, I keep going back and forth on it because
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I am in agreement with you that the additional abuses
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: of power, especially around Trump's corruption, are not very popular
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: at all with voters. In fact, maybe even more unpopular
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: than some of the Ukraine stuff.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: But I also view everything through the lens of, you know,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: America's shortening attention span, ever shortening attention span, especially most voters,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: and sort of how broken the media is as a
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: way to, you know, fully communicate what's going on and
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: not sort of both sides everything. And so I do
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: have this concern that the longer it goes, there is
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: a possibility of impeachment fatigue. And there's also the possibility
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: that as Republicans keep fighting back, a lot of reporters
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: and legacy media start saying, okay, well, now the Democrats
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: are throwing this on and that on, and is it
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: really fair? And you know all the bullshit they do.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: So I understand where the Democrats are coming from in
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: their desire, the House Democrats and their desire to go
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: to make it like one story that's easy to understand
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: that they can hammer for a short period of time
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: over and over again. But, you know, I also see
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the value of making sure everyone knows sort of the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: full breadth of all of his abuses of power because
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: many of them are unpopular with voters.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 8: So I've thought about this a fair amount and I am,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 8: you know, I am sympathetic to the concern that that
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: the political value of impeachment isn't indefinite. You know, like
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: the amount of corruption is nearly indefinite, but that if
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 8: you literally set about to try to uncover every last
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 8: thing and make voters aware of every last detail, not
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 8: only would fatigue set in, but just the basic capacity
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 8: for people to keep track of all of it would
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 8: just come to dominate the whole impeachment story. But I
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 8: don't think impeachment is like a tire that would pop, right?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 8: If Democrats keep pushing the envelope, I'm mixing my metaphors
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 8: terribly here, but if Democrats keep at it and the
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 8: returns to impeachment start diminishing, they can bring up the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 8: process to a close as quickly as they need to,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: especially because they're about at the halfway point of Ukraine
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 8: as it is. I worry about two things with the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 8: settling on the rapid impeachment strategy from the outset. The
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 8: first is, that if you tell Republicans, hey, we're going
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 8: to impeach on this one issue and we're going to
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 8: try to get it done by the end of the year,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 8: then you give Republicans almost like scheduling, right? They can
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 8: tell themselves, okay, we need to figure out how to
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 8: excuse this conduct and we need to just get through
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 8: the month of December and then this will all be
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 8: past us, right? And then we can get back to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 8: all the, you know, covering up for Trump.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 8: Secondly, once impeachment is over, Trump will go back to
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 8: his prior strategy of basically defying all congressional oversight. So
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 8: that will be it. There won't be– I mean courts
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 8: are going to rule and there's going to be new
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 8: revelations and it's not like the story of Trump's corruption
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 8: is going to come to an end. But Democrats' powers
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: will wane significantly and Trump's power to corrupt the office
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 8: for his political gain will be at its maximum because
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 8: he'll have been acquitted and for.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: Doing just that.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 8: So Democrats will kind of be sitting ducks while Trump
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 8: has his attorney general go launch fabricated investigations of Democrats
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 8: or whatever, which is already kind of happening. And so
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 8: keeping the impeachment power invoked through all of this is
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 8: kind of a way of saying we can hit back too,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 8: unless you're ready to take this seriously. That's still the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 8: way I think about it. But I will say that
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 8: in episode one, Matt makes a very compelling case Democrats
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 8: are going for removal and they think that there's a
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: chance that they can have Trump removed for this one offense.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 8: And if he's right about that, then he's right about
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 8: the larger question.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: So what do you think about covering this week? You know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: right before we started talking, you know, two developments happened. One,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: The House Democrats are starting to release the transcripts of
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: the depositions they've done so far, starting with former U.S.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and top State Department advisor
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: Michael McKinley. The other development is, you know, most of
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration officials who were called to testify this
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: week are defying those subpoenas. John Bolton said he would
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: come testify with a subpoena, but only if the courts
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: basically tell him to. And there's also there's a, you know,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a court case right now where Bolton's longtime associate, Charles Kupperman,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: has been asking, basically, I got a subpoena from Congress.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Who should I listen to? The White House is telling
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: me not to go or Congress who subpoena who issued
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: a subpoena. And the courts have to decide. But they've
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: just the judge in that case has just pushed oral
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: arguments to December 12th, which sort of significantly extends the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: timeline for House Democrats. Have you been thinking about sort
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: of how Democrats should deal with obstruction? Is that something
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: you might cover this week?
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 8: So there's the question of what Democrats should do. And
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: I think that we will most likely delve into that
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 8: in this week's episode. And then there's a question of
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 8: what they're trying to hide and why. And so both
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 8: Kupperman and Bolton, but also the top White House national
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 8: security lawyer, John Eisenberg, are all defying– are all, I believe,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 8: under subpoena and they're all defying subpoenas. And they are
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 8: all figures who can speak to the extent to which
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: Trump has corrupted national security, right? Eisenberg is the lawyer
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 8: who basically– who decided that he wanted to hide the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 8: Ukraine call transcript on this code word classified server to
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 8: prevent it from getting out. And he instructed at least
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 8: one other White House national security official not to discuss
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 8: what had happened on the call with anyone. So it
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 8: seems like there was some effort to cover that up.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: And the whistleblower complaint that got all this rolling suggested
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 8: that that's not the first call summary or transcript that's
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: been hidden on this server to hide politically embarrassing or
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 8: possibly criminal evidence of crime inappropriately. And all of these
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 8: figures are the ones who would be able to speak
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 8: to that, right? So that seems like significant, right? That
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 8: may be why these are the officials that have– really
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 8: defied the subpoenas, followed Trump's orders not to testify, invoked
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 8: really indefensible legal arguments for why they should be able
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 8: to defy their subpoenas. And from there, you get into
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 8: some interesting, I think, questions about what do you do
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 8: when a president has corrupted foreign policy with at least
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: one country? You know, I think about it in terms
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 8: of like– how we ended up with special counsel Robert Mueller, right?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 8: When there's a criminal investigation that the executive branch is
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: too conflicted to handle through its normal channels, you bring
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: in a special counsel to try to eliminate the conflict
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 8: of interest. How do you do that in a context
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 8: of foreign policy? Can the Trump administration actually be trusted
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 8: to conduct foreign policy with Ukraine or Turkey or Saudi
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 8: Arabia at this point given what we've learned about how
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: Trump deals with with these regimes. And so that's an
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 8: avenue of inquiry that I think is like very important
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 8: and central to the question of impeachment. And then there's
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 8: the arguments that the actual officials are making about why
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 8: they should be allowed to defy subpoenas, which I think
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 8: have very legal merit as far as I understand the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 8: law around this. But You know, they are they're going
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 8: to basically seems like press their case in court. They've
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 8: drawn a judge that seems interested in helping them run
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 8: out the clock on impeachment. And so there's a question
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 8: of what Democrats can and should do to try to
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 8: force their hands. And that's a question of should they
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 8: hold these officials or others in contempt if they use
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: the contempt power? Should they ask judges to enforce it
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 8: or should they try to enforce it themselves?
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 8: Using the inherent contempt power that really allows them to
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: go grab people who are in contempt of Congress and
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: force them to testify, you know, almost like a police action.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 8: I think that that's the universe of questions that episode
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 8: two will have to delve into because as we see
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: from the news, like that's what's happening right now.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: Well, everyone should go check this out. So it's out
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: every Friday. Every episode is sort of you, you know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: you're breaking down sort of the news of the week
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit and then you're going to have a
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: conversation with someone who can sort of illuminate some of
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: these larger issues that we've been talking about today. I'm
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: so glad you're doing it. It's a fantastic pod. So
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: everyone go subscribe to Rubicon.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: I second that.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Brian for joining us today. And, you know,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: we'll see you later in the week.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: See you at the hearings, you know.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: See you at the hearings.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 6: Bye, guys.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segwin is
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yale Freed, and Milo Kim,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.