Latest / Pod Save America / "Everything’s Coming Up Brandon."

Transcript

"Everything’s Coming Up Brandon." · 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 Vito. Oh, wow.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Okay. We got some stuff to get to right now.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Let's go. Let's go. On today's show, on today's show,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The Senate passes the biggest climate change legislation in history
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to cap off the best week of Joe Biden's presidency.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump wins the CPAC straw poll after sharing the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: stage with fellow autocrat Victor Orban. And later, Lieutenant Governor
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes joins to talk about his campaign to replace
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson this November. Before we get started,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: if you'd like to help get women around the country
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: registered to vote and you enjoy being caffeinated, do we
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: have a new Crooked Coffee product for you?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's called the Cold Brewer, Tommy.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that looks cool, actually. I saw that.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's a sleek bottle that makes brewing your own cold
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: brew at home super easy. And like all of Crooked Coffee,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: a portion of the proceeds will go to register her
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: to mobilize women in underrepresented communities to get registered to
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: vote and have their voices heard. Both the dark and
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: medium water day roasts are perfect for cold brew, and
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: this bottle makes it so simple, and it's much better
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: than a $ 6 cup at Starbucks. I like that we're
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: going directly at Starbucks now.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: David and Goliath.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing some contrast ads now. Okay, get your
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: cold brew now at crooked.com slash coffee. All right, let's
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: get to the news. Breaking news.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think we can use this.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: It's fair use.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: This is parody. We're talking about it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: This is a parody.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Here's what I love about this song. That's what I
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: love about this song. It rules.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Anyway, let's get to the breaking news. This is Monday
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: afternoon here in LA.
• 1:48
  Speaker 5: It's Monday afternoon.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's 4 p.m. Pacific Coast time. Sure is. You're hearing
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: this Tuesday morning. But just minutes ago, before we walked
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: into the studio, we got word that... that the FBI
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: has searched Mar-a-Lago. And the reason we got word of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that is because there was some reporter from Florida who
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: couldn't quite confirm it, and then Donald Trump confirmed it
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: via statement.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: With a long statement.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Does anyone want to give some highlights of the statement?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: A reporter from Florida said, I'm hearing reports that Mar-a-Lago
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: has been raided, but I'm not a strong enough reporter
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: to confirm it. I've never seen anybody do that before.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I really respect the humility.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I respect that too.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Speed kills in this instance, and he knew. Gotta get
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: that out there.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And then Trump got his statement out, and he said
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that they even broke into his safe.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they got his ketchup-stained pornos. It's probably worth reading
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: some of this statement, shouldn't we?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you probably all know it by now,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: but we're still in surprise territory right here.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: As you're listening to us.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, the gist is he's very mad. They broke
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: into his safe. He's upset that Hillary Clinton stole furniture
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: from the White House decades ago, apparently.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: As if Hillary's never had a run-in with the FBI.
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, that's about it. Pretty remarkable. Although, you know,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: our friend, uh, well, I've never met the guy Popat
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: on Twitter. Um, he, he, he, he makes the point
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: that to get a search warrant, what it means is
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: that if a, to get a federal search warrant, a
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: federal agent submits an affidavit under oath to a federal
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: magistrate judge, uh, setting what they want to search for,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: what items and what probable cause there is, uh, that
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: are apparently evidence of a federal crime. And then the
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: magistrate tends to require thorough specifics, well-documented applications to prove it.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: And then you can get the search warrant. So someone
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: thinks there's something there.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: In the criminal justice system.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: This is what you're getting from us at this moment.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: We could spend the next half hour just reading takes
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: on Twitter.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: It's amazing.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: Live.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: This is just happening.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: They'll feel old by tomorrow, but right now it would
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: be fun.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: There is a piece of me that wonders if this
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: is specific to the classified material that he just had
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: sitting in boxes.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: That could be something. That could be something.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: That seems like something you'd rate. Again, this will date
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: itself poorly, probably, this guess.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Look, we've given Merrick Garland a lot of shit, but
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: he's definitely taken his legal blue shoes and he's up.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: This is the dark brain in me. He's loose. This
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: is going to take him up to a new level now.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Biden's passing bills. Trump's passing FBI agents in the hallway.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: We're a little giddy.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: We got him, people. We got him.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we'll talk about everything else. Great. Everyone continue to monitor.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: You two continue to monitor Twitter.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, does it turn out to have to do with
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: like Melania's shoe brand or something?
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. All right.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Other news. On Sunday. The Senate passed the Inflation Reduction
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Act of 2022, a bill that will do more to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: fight climate change than any action by the U.S. government
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in history. It will allow Medicare to negotiate for more
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: affordable prescription drugs for the first time in history. It
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: will prevent health insurance premium increases for people who get
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: their coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It will reduce
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the deficit and will pay for it all by cracking
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: down on rich people who cheat on their taxes and
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: billion-dollar corporations that don't pay any. The final vote, a
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: 50-50 split that required Vice President Kamala Harris to break
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the tie. came after a few days of last-minute negotiations
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: with Kyrsten Sinema and Republican antics that almost derailed the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: bill multiple times. But it's done. It's expected to pass
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the House later this week and then head to President
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Biden's desk, where he will sign it into law. How
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: about that, guys? I know we talked through most of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the provisions in the initial Manchin-Schumer deal on last week's episode,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: but how are you both feeling about the final product?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: It's a surprising feeling that it... didn't completely collapse, right?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: We were like once again presented with a mansion compromise
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: that seemed possible. And then we were waiting to see
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: what cinema would do. Obviously cinema did require that it
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: be worse. That's the deal she made with private equity
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: and the devil. But it largely remained intact from what
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: they announced. There were some of the tax changes, a
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: couple of things, which it's good. It's, I don't know.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: What's the hesitation here? I don't know.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Hold on. Give me a second. If only you knew,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: you'd be required to give a reaction to the.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Bill for the fourth time.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I thought that something better was
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: going to come out.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: That's good. Hope springs eternal.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: You heard it here first, folks. This is the analysis
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that you've come for. It's good.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Let me, let me, let me. I think when we
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: heard the deal was announced, I think we were surprised
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: by how good the climate provisions were on the whole
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and how much of what was in Build Back Better
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: was preserved. I think we were nervous about what would
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: happen next. We were nervous about what Sinema would do.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: We were nervous about what happened when it hit a
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: voterama and Republicans were proposing a bunch of amendments that
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: could have derailed the whole thing. I think it was
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: a pleasant surprise that Democrats held together and that Sinema
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: did make some demands for changes that made some of
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: the tax provisions worse, but ultimately left the larger structure
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: of it intact. I think that that's really positive. And,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: you know, there's plenty of criticisms that we can talk
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: about and we will talk about. But like the fact
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: that we were able to get this done when a
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: month ago it was dead, it was dead a month ago.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And then in a matter of days, we find out
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: the deal exists and is now heading to the House
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and likely to President Biden to sign like that. That
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: is great. That is a great thing that this happened.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Because the alternative was it not happening, which people seem
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: to forget.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: You got to set your baseline to zero because that's
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: kind of where we're coming from here. Um, much like
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: the recovery act is built is really divided into three parts.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: That's a joke for four people.
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Well, two of them right here.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: The climate change piece is in order. It gives us
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: 80% of the way to the pledge we made at
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: the Paris climate accord. So huge step forward. Obviously we
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: have to build on, but that's a big deal. I mean,
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: it reduces, uh, emissions by 40% below 2005 levels. It's
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: 2005 when we peaked not as a country, that was
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: a bad year.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Personally.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Well, 2005 was Brad and Jen divorced. Russell Crowe threw
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: a phone at the front desk guy at a hotel.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: And then Tom Cruise bounced on a couch, Oprah's couch.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: That was 2005.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: What a year.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Early aughts sucked.
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: What a year. But was that when it peaked emissions wise? I,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's exactly when it peaked, but
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: we've been going down from around that time. And, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: you know, we, this will help us get to hopefully
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: 40% reduction. We were on our way, probably something like 25,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: 30 already. So it's a, it's a, Big step forward
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: on top of where we're heading.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: And also, I mean, the U.S. is responsible for a
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: huge chunk of emissions through the Industrial Revolution. But per year,
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: it's about 15 percent of global emissions. And so that
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: means other countries are obviously going to have to make
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: cuts to get to where we need to go. This
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: investment should lead to new technologies that we can sell
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: or give to other countries and help them reduce emissions.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: And then the U.S. Biden has the next COP, the
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: next climate change summit in, I think, Egypt in like
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: three months. And now we can go and say, hey, look,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: we actually did something and push other countries to do more.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: So that's just enormous. And there's also like $ 60 billion
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: worth of money for environmental justice provisions. There's some things
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: in there that suck. The leasing is frustrating. There's some
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: things that will increase fossil fuel use in the short term.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: But I think on balance, the renewables will hopefully drastically
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: reduce demand for fossil fuels.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: The U.S. government spending $ 400 billion to fight climate change
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: is going to be transformative. And the reason I know
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it's going to be transformative is because A bunch of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: independent experts, people who do this for a living, who
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: study this for a living, ran the numbers and say that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: And they all kind of found the same thing.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: You know, they're really lining up the like expert groups
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: that are modeling it all out.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And like, you know, I always, I of course think
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: we need to do more. I think everyone who passed
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the bill knows that we need to do more. But
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: like you said, it wasn't a choice between more and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: this bill. It was a choice between nothing and this bill.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And the reason we have this bill is because A
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: guy from a coal state that Donald Trump won by
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: 30 points was willing to basically sign the death warrant
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: for the biggest industry in his state because this is
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: going to make clean energy more profitable than fossil fuels,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: even though it does help fossil fuels in the short term, unfortunately.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But in the long term, it's going to make clean
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: energy more profitable by dumping all this money into the economy.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And Joe Manchin was willing to go along with it,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: coal state senator that went for, you know, a state
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that went for Trump by 30 points. So that's pretty amazing.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: It's amazing.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: And there's also the healthcare piece. I mean, the prescription
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: drug piece is huge. It is just crazy that our
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: own laws prevented Medicare from negotiating better drug prices for
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: prescription drugs, but it did. Republicans blocked it forever, and
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: now they're going to be able to slowly start to
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: fix that. I think it's 10 drugs, the specifics TBD
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: in 2026 that they can negotiate for. and that'll increase
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: to 20 drugs. So that will save us a lot
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: of money. 13 million people will be able to not
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: see a huge premium increase if they get their healthcare
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: insurance through the ACA. And then the tax provisions, I think,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: are really interesting and transformative, the 15% minimum tax. And
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: then this excise tax on stock buybacks is estimated to
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: raise $ 73 billion or more over a decade.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It's a huge deal. So Sinema demanded that they remove
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: this removed the provision, closing the carried interest loopholes. This
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: is a favorite of private equity. But in its stead,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: they put this 1% tax on stock buybacks. Stock buybacks
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: are something where basically companies kind of enrich themselves and
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: buy their stock back. And so, and something that helps
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: large shareholders, like people that have- You buy your own stock,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: so there's fewer shares outstanding, so the price goes up.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: And so it basically is something that benefits fantastically wealthy people.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: So They replaced a tax that we really should fix
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: that benefits extremely wealthy people for a different tax that
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: will also tax really wealthy people. Both should be in there.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: We should be doing all of them. But I didn't
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: see actually a lot of people reporting on that, that
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: there was this change.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: But also hopefully incentivize actually investing in R & D
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: or CapEx. Like Apple spent over $ 400 billion on stock
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: buybacks over the last decade. That's nearly double what they
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: spent on R & D or capital expenditures. So hopefully
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: this means they'll now be incentivized to spend more money
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: on things that create more jobs.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so she helped the hedge fund folks with the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: carried interest loophole. She helped some private equity folks by
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: exempting them from the corporate minimum tax, but then she
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: put back in the stock buybacks, which I guess was
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Mark Warner's idea to get it back in the bill
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to fill the hole that she left when she took
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that other stuff out. She also added, by the way,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: more climate money for drought mitigation in Western states.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Five billion.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: So that was a good thing that she did. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: then the other things that changed from the initial deal
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Republicans successfully killed a $ 35 cap on insulin per month
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: since it didn't qualify for reconciliation under the budget rules.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: And so it didn't qualify. Democrats decided to keep it
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: in the bill anyway, which then would require 60 votes
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: to pass, not 50, because it didn't comply with reconciliation rules.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And Democrats got 57. They got seven Republicans on board,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: but they needed three more. Some people were like, why
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: didn't Schumer just ignore the parliamentarian? Well, they did. they
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: put it in the bill, they needed 60. Otherwise, you
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: can't just... The only way you could do that otherwise
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: is if you ignore the parliamentarian, but then Manchin and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Sinema have said that if you completely ignore the parliamentarian,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't get their votes.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: The reason we can't do it is because of the
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: same fucking mess we've been in for years. It's the
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: same problem.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: And again, to clarify that, what we failed to do
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: was cap out-of-pocket insulin costs for people who have private insurance.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: We did cap it for Medicare recipients.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Very good point. And similarly, another thing the parliamentarian did
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Democrats wanted to require drug companies to pay rebates if
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the price of medicine rises faster than inflation. And they
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: wanted this to cover patients under both Medicare and private insurance.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Parliamentarian ruled it can only apply to Medicare patients. So
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the rebate goes to Medicare patients, too. Again, anything that
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: affects the federal budget is fair game. And reconciliation, anything
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: that goes to the private sector, they have a harder
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: time passing through reconciliation, unfortunately. Bernie Sanders... was not thrilled
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: with the final bill, even though he still voted for it. And,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: you know, we saw a number of progressive activists share
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: similar sentiments on Twitter and elsewhere. What would you guys
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: say to people who might be disappointed by where we
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: ended up? Love it.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I went, you look at what Bernie actually
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: said in full. I feel like there were sort of
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: kind of two kinds of criticisms that I saw. One was,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: you know, Bernie largely, he criticized the fossil fuel subsidies
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and the parts of this, of this, that, um, um,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: We'll do increased leasing and fair enough. But the Lions
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: service criticism was basically saying we should be doing Build
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Back Better. There are a lot of really important things
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: in Build Back Better. And there was both a policy
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: critique and a political critique. The policy critique is these
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: are things this country needs. There is inflation. There are
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: these incredibly high costs. We are failing to address them.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: because we lack two votes. And he's very frustrated by that.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And he just wanted to make a kind of final
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: plea for doing the larger Build Back Better plan. And
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: fair enough, there was really good stuff in that plan
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: for pre-K, for childcare, for healthcare across the board. Then
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: there's this criticism on the climate provisions themselves. And the
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: fact that this is a climate crisis, this is the
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: biggest investment in American history, but In reality, we haven't
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: made very many investments in this in the past. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: when you compare it to other things we call priorities
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: like the military, it's still a paltry amount compared to
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the scale of the crisis. And fair enough. My view
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: on this is, yeah, we should do more of what
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: was in Build Back Better. We need more senators to
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: do it. And on the question of these climate provisions themselves,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: just looking at the climate proposals themselves, I actually think
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: it's important that we declare a victory. Not the victory,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: not the final victory. But after such a long time
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: of being unable to do anything, you want Congress to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: do more?
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: You want Congress to do more on social safety?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: On climate?
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: But I get saying they don't go far enough. Of course,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: we need to do more. But I do think it's
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: important as a movement that we take moments to kind
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: of celebrate victories, to celebrate hard-fought wins that will make
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: a difference. No one wants to be part of a
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: movement where every happy moment is cringe and every victory
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: is a secret loss. It's just not a way to
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: do politics that brings more people in, that's persuasive, that
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: makes people want to be part of your movement. We
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: should declare a victory, not the final victory, but a
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: victory nonetheless.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say, the celebration is not
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: about the job being done. The celebration is to tell
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: people that you can make progress and to inspire people
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: to continue making progress because we can actually see the gains,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: which is what this bill is doing right now. We're
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: actually seeing real progress happen. And that's why you celebrate.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: You don't celebrate to say, oh, we did enough and
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: that's it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: You can tweet that you like Maggie Rogers' new album,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: and that's not a criticism of Beyonce's new album because
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: you didn't also tweet about that. They're separate issues.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Did you get in trouble?
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: I might have gotten a little feedback.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I missed that.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: It's okay.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: But again, you reelect a Democratic House. We have two
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: more Democratic senators who are willing to get rid of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the filibuster. We're going to get more progressive policies. You
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: know how we know that?
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: Because.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Everyone else on the Democratic Party in Congress signed off
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: on the $ 3. 5 trillion bill. You know what I'm saying?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: So we know this. We don't have to take them
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: for their word. They all voted for this shit. We're
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: two senators away now if we really like the Democratic House.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So that's good news.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: And to clarify, Beyonce's album is also great.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I think so, too.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: I want the B.I.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: To know that.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: I think so, too.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: No, I would never.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: I think that. The lessons for me are the climate activists, again,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: they should take the win because they won something, which
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: was drive climate to the top of the agenda. So
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: while all this other stuff was getting cut out, Medicare
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: expansion to include dental vision, hearing, paid medical leave, like
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: all these other things got stripped away. The climate stayed
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: in and that was because of great work and activism
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: and because the planet's burning. Two, having majorities in the
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Senate and the House is everything. It's everything. We can't
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: kick Joe Manchin out of the party. We need his vote.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: This is why. Lastly, the thing that frustrates me the
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: most in all of politics is the people who say
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: all politicians are bad. All the parties are bad. They're
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: all the same. No, they are not. Every Republican voted
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: against this bill within the Democratic Party. There are really
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: great politicians and there are some kind of shitty ones.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Anyone who tells you they're all the same is lazy,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: stupid or trying to mislead you. Do not listen to them.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Listen to the climate experts and what they're saying about
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: the impact of this bill.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Also, there are some politicians who are really great sometimes
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and shitty other times and great on some issues and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: shitty on other issues. People are complicated. You don't have
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to have them be your heroes or your villains.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: They work for you.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: They work for you. They are instruments of progress or not.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And it's our job to continue pushing them. And guess what?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: That happens on election day. It happens between election days.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Voting is important. Public pressure is also important. And so
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: you just got to keep up the organizing and keep
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: up the pressure. So Joe Biden, Joe Biden.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Heard of him.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And the Democratic Congress have now passed a climate change bill,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a health care bill, a prescription drug bill, a COVID
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: relief bill, a bipartisan infrastructure bill. a bipartisan gun violence bill,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a bipartisan bill to expend health care for veterans who've
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: been exposed to burn pits, and a bipartisan bill to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: help America compete with China for semiconductor jobs. This has
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: led Politico Playbook, the publication we trust and value the most,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: as everyone has known for a long time here at
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America, what we think about Politico Playbook. They
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: called Joe Biden, quote, one of the most legislatively successful
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: presidents of the modern era. Damn.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: You know what I think?
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: What?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: I think Biden's passing bills, Trump's passing FBI agents in
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the hallway.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: You said that joke earlier, right?
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I did.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, good. I just wanted to say. Also, in just
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the last 10 days, Biden also took executive action to
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: protect abortion access, announced the successful mission to kill an
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: al-Qaeda leader, and is presiding over an economy where inflation
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: is still high, but gas prices are falling in unemployment
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: is at record lows. Everything's coming up, Brandon, guys.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: And he did a lot of that.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Everything's coming up, Brandon.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: He did that when he had COVID.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was in isolation.
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: He beat COVID. I saw some meme yesterday. Some meme.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Some meme. Some meme said, defeated COVID twice. Twice.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's another accomplishment. They finally found a meme
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: that works for them. They settled on it. That's not easy.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about the dark Brandon thing
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: for a second?
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: I barely know what it is.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I had to read a Slate story about it. How'd
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: that go? I only understand it just a little bit
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: more now. But the White House is tweeting it out.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: They got Joe Biden with glowy eyes and, you know.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Layers of irony on irony. He had a good week.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's think pieces about it. Yeah, he had a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: good week. Think pieces about the dark Brandon meme. Anyway,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I just, I would I would pay a lot of
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: money to hear someone in the White House explain to
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden the dark branded meme. That's what I want.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Because where does that explanation begin? Like, what is a meme?
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: What is the dark branded web? Why did you tweet
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: out my eyes like that? What's a tweet?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: In Bletchley Park, they made something called the Enigma Machine.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Is that where it starts? All right.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I'll do a more serious question.
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So, obviously, we have no idea whether the string of
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: good news will affect the midterms. But if you are
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: in the White House or if you're running a Democratic campaign,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: how do you talk about all these accomplishments? How do
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: they change your strategy, if at all? Are we back
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: to hashtags Democrats deliver?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: It's not. No, no, we're not.
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: Good.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about this. I feel like there's
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: a spectrum and it runs from Obama early 2009 to
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Trump all the time. Like, Obama 2009 is having an
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: incredibly successful legislative period, passing a Recovery Act, passing a
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: student loan bill, passing a health care bill, passing a
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Wall Street bill. But we went through this. And where
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the economy was still doing terribly, you couldn't tell people
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: that you'd solve their problems. And you also can't brag
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: about how much worse things could have been but for
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: your interventions. And so you're really careful about how you
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: talk about your accomplishments. That runs all the way to Trump.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: There's so many caveats.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: So many caveats.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Five paragraphs of throat clearing about how tough it is
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: out there before you get to.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Your first accomplishment.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Before you can say what you did.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Before the three parts of the caveats.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And by the time you get to there, the CNN
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: has switched. CNN is gone.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: They're out.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: They're out. And then you have Trump that just declares victory.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Of course, that didn't really work for him. People can
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: see with their eyes. It doesn't really work, so you
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: need to find something in the middle. And I do
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: think that based on how Republicans have been behaving— with
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: a kind of like imperiousness and assumption that they will
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: face no political repercussions for virtually any decision. I think
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: it's just about the choice. You just lay these things out. Democrats,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: you know, all of these bills, even the ones that
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: had the most bipartisan support, were opposed by the majority
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: of Republicans, right? You can try to call them, they
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: are on some level bipartisan, but Republicans whipped against the
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: manufacturing bill. They have tried to stop every single one
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: of these. They lost some people, But they did try
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to stop them. And so you just make the choice.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Here's what we tried to do. They tried to they
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: stripped out our ability to make insulin cheaper for everybody.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: We wanted to make America more competitive. They voted against
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the bill. We want to stop gun violence. Most of
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: them voted against the bill. You just paint the picture
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: of the choice that they're making. They threw in a
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: fit of pique, tried to stop us from helping veterans. Right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: That's what's at stake.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, the hard part of this bill, like you
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: alluded to, is that like the Affordable Care Act, that
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: the it will take years to be felt. It will
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: take years to go into effect. So it's not like
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: you can run on, hey, Joe Biden just sent you
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: a check, like cash or stimmy, vote for me, whatever.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: And so we have to sell, I think, a narrative
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: that Democrats get things done while the Republican Party is
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: obstructionist and extreme in all these ways. We tried to
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: cap the cost of insulin. Republicans blocked it. Republicans voted
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: against health care from veterans who got sick inhaling toxic
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: fumes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats got it done. And
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: so I think that's the core message is sort of
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: talking about momentum and all the things the Democratic Party did.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: And I think that's kind of where the take the
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: win message comes in because I think we need to
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: buck our own party up because a lot of people
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: are understandably bummed out and disappointed about the lack of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: progress of a year of getting mentioned. But then just
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: talk about the contrast and the choice. I mean, that's
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: what elections are. It's about, you know, imperfect choices. And
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: I think, unfortunately, part of this will be a little
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: bit luck of luck because we need gas prices to
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: keep going down in the short term. And that is
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: probably going to have less to do with anything that
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: happens in Washington than like China's COVID policies and whether
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: they still have a COVID zero policy and they lock
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: down their economy constantly and it disrupts demand. But hopefully
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: the Fed's interest rate increases will work. Inflation will go down.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: These jobs numbers were really good. But there is a
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: bit of like a sentiment, feelings about the economy that
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: is hard to drive if you're the president, but it
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: goes a long way towards contributing to whether people think
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: the country's on the right track or the wrong track,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: whether they support you, whether they don't.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think, too, as president, your job
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: is not to be the daily barometer of how the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: economy is doing or not. It's who's fighting for you, right?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Democrats are fighting for what people care about, right? Your
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: number one issue is inflation. Absolutely. We're trying to lower
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the cost of your energy bills, the cost of your
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: health care bills, cost of your prescription drugs. And Republicans
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: voted against all that shit. And you know what they
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: care about? They're out there trying to criminalize abortion. They're
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: coming after gay marriage, right? They're not even paying attention
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: to the issues that you care about most, which is
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the cost of everything in your life right now, which
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Democrats are fighting for. And they're off because they're so extreme,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: they're trying to do all this other shit. And that's
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: what they're going to do if they take power.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: It's so funny that we're talking about how Joe Biden...
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: should sell like the greatest legislative success since FDR. And
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Trump's out there announcing an FBI raid on himself. It's
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: like real competing strategies here.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It's quite a contrast.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Well, just so we don't get too optimistic about politics,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the conservative political action conference known as
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: CPAC that was held in Dallas, Texas over the weekend.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: CPAC is now for the hardest of hardcore MAGA fans.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump spoke and was once again the overwhelming favorite
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: of the attendees. 69% said they want Trump to be
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the GOP nominee in 2024, while 24% chose Ron DeSantis.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: That's a bigger margin for Trump than he got at
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: February's CPAC conference in Orlando.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: A straw poll conducted by his pollster at a conference
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: run by Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes Schlapp. who
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: also worked for Trump. So I don't know that we
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: put a lot of stock in this hole.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Well, okay. Well, all the public polls still have him
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: ahead too. But the fellow authoritarian who stole the CPAC
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: spotlight from Trump wasn't DeSantis, wasn't a potential 24 rival.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: It was the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Here's
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: a clip.
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage and the union
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: of one man and one woman. We don't need more genders.
• 26:55
  Speaker 6: We need more rangers. Less Drake wins and more Chuck Norris.
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: The globalists can all go to hell. I have come
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: to Texas. We must coordinate the movement of our troops
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: because we face the same challenge. You have midterm elections
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: this year. And we will have election in the European
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: Parliament same year. These two locations will define the two
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization. Today
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: we hold neither of them.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Yet we need both.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Tommy, why the hell was the Hungarian prime minister invited
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to CPAC? And for our listeners who aren't yet worldos,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: can you talk about why Orban is such a dangerous figure?
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: Sure.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: What did he say about Chuck Norris?
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: He was trying to Texas it up a little bit.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So he said, we need not more genders, more rangers.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And then he said, not more drag queens, more Chuck Norrises.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Man, that's a really dated.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: It's dated, a little complicated... According.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: To the first Google result on DuckDuckGo, the Chuck Norris
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: meme also emerged in 2005. So it's a real theme.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Viktor Orban sucks. He is the prime minister of Hungary.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: He spent the last decade crushing their democracy. He basically
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: took over the free press by putting his sycophants in charge.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: He gerrymandered their elections. In April, his party got 54%
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: of the vote but 83% of the district. So it's
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: a far more extreme gerrymander than ours. And he's changed
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: the Constitution to entrench his power and stuff the courts
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: full of his cronies and basically created this kleptocratic mafia-like
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: state where businesses have to support the Fidesz party, his
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: political party, or else they can get taken over or
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: shut down or harassed by the tax authorities. He's anti-gay.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: He's anti-immigrant. And he demagogues George Soros in a way
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: that it's incredibly anti-Semitic. And so Orban, none of this
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: is secret. He's been like this for a long time.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: But a few weeks ago, gave a speech where he said,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: we Hungarians are not mixed race and we do not
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: want to become a mixed race.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: That's pretty specific. Yeah.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, his own advisor called it, quote, a purely
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels. But CPAC still welcomed him.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: And that doesn't really surprise me because Trump loves Orban.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: He endorsed him. The Maganots want to emulate Orban and
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: do what he did to Hungary here. And Orban is
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: in many ways a much smarter, more effective Trump. And
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: someone we should be really worried about.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Trump invited him to Bedminster on Tuesday.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: And look, Orban's speech was like, we basically autocrats, these
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: like white nationalists need to coordinate to crush our enemies,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: the Democrats. um and and you know that's where cpac
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: is where the republican party is going you know they're
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: more extreme and more authoritarian.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: It's a fascist organization cpac is now a fascist it's
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: an outpost for international fascism this was an international fascist
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: conference that's why you have victor orban he's talking about
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: a international fascist movement taking wants that he wants to
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: connect and collaborate between europe united states and around the
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: world This is, you know, saying we, you know, attacking
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: transgender people, saying we need fewer drag queens and more
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: rangers or whatever. It's just pure fascist rhetoric. That's what
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: the conference has become. That's why you see a kind of,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: and it is, you know, like fascism isn't coherent. It
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to be. It's a permission structure for people
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: to be their absolute most vile selves. And that is
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: why it kind of spreads from the top down. It's
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: why you see reporters being harassed at this conference and
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: being kind of yelled at and followed around by people
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: smiling and jeering at them. It is a kind of
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: spreading vicious ideology. And this is the outpost of the
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: United States of America. And it's, you know, we should
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: just call it what it is.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: They were interviewing attendees about Orban's mixed race comments, too.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And you had a bunch of attendees saying things like, oh,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that. That's that's a little uncomfortable.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And then they called one back, and they're like, but
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you know what? He's pretty perfect otherwise. He's pretty great.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: The whole package is great. I don't know about that,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: but you can see how it's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: that's fine.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the other thing about it, too, is that
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: they're all part of the team. They're there as part
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: of the team. They have to defend themselves.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: There's no comment that's too extreme for them to.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: And it's also a very old idea. They're both in
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: on the joke, and the attendees at CPAC, they are
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: both being misled, but they know it, and they feel
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: as though they're part of the team doing the misleading.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And they love that in 2015, he was the
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: harshest on migrants coming from places like Syria or Afghanistan.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, basically Muslims. And, you know, in 2014, he
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: said the new state that we were building in Hungary
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: is an illiberal state. So all this gerrymandering and sort of,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: you know, legalized autocracy is kind of what he's overtly for.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: And I think what Republicans want.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And also why you see now increasingly Republican candidates when
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: they're not vilifying reporters from mainstream outlets, they're no longer
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: even talking to them.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't even engage.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: They don't let them in. They don't let them into
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: their events. It's all part of the same kind of
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: permission structure for abandoning all the kind of liberal values
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: that have been at the core of, you know, the
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: thing we pretended America was at least for a while.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Well, so yeah, speaking of America, Trump delivered a version
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: of the new stump speech he first gave in DC
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, where he now casually proposes the
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: death penalty for drug dealers and 10 Cities for People
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Experiencing Homelessness.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Which he probably stole from Rodrigo Duterte over in the Philippines. Right,
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: of course.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip of Trump's almost two-hour speech at CPAC.
• 32:24
  Speaker 7: If you instituted the death penalty for drug dealers, traffickers,
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: I believe that drug dealing would go down 50% on
• 32:34
  Speaker 7: day one. I'll tell you one thing, if I'm a
• 32:37
  Speaker 7: drug dealer, I'm going to say no thanks, I'm going
• 32:39
  Speaker 7: someplace else.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: The only way you're going to remove the.
• 32:42
  Speaker 7: Homeless encampments and reclaim our downtowns is to open up
• 32:47
  Speaker 7: large parcels. Create 10 cities.
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: You have to have it. We have to abolish.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: The Green New Deal.
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: Ronny Jackson, my doctor. He loved looking at my body.
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: It was so strong, powerful. I ran twice.
• 33:05
  Speaker 7: I won twice and did much better the second time
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: than I did the first, getting.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Millions and millions of more votes.
• 33:12
  Speaker 7: And now we may have to do it again.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I did not love looking at my body. I think
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: he's being funny.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: That is Trump where he's actually charming and funny. He's
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: like making fun of himself as a good joke.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he made it, yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were saying Orban's a more effective Trump, but
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I do think Trump's funnier.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Orban's jokes didn't list it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: He's a celebrity.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: That was, I did not watch this speech.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Nor did I.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: But I saw, I was scrolling through Twitter when it
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: was on, and our pal Tim Miller said, I hate
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: to ruin everyone's weekends, but this is absolutely the speech
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of someone who is running for president again. No doubt.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: And definitely in poll position, leading the field here, and
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: has a very strong grip on the party he represents.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I read something more about it for the Bulwark today,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and I could not agree more. I was definitely like
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: over the last couple of months flirting with the like,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: can DeSantis do it? Can DeSantis take him down?
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You watch a speech like that and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: you see the crowd. And I know that CPAC and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I know they're like special mega hardcore fans, but that's
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: a it's going to be tough for Ron DeSantis to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: take him down.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: I think I'd like to see him try. I think
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: maybe he could do it. I think the question of
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: will Trump run again? To me, the way to answer
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: that is, what does he have to do that's a
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: better use of his time?
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Unless his FBI raid goes really, really well.
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: They just took all his pornos. So now what's he
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: going to do? Yeah. I mean, he basically says, he says,
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: America's on the edge of an abyss and our movement
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: is the only force on earth that can save it.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: It's so apocalyptic.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: That's not something he's planning. And so I'm handing it
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: over to Ron DeSantis.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: What if the FBI raid is Ron DeSantis in like
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: a FBI costume jacket?
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is all like our this is our
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: horse race speculation about it. But the real danger here
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: is that the Republican primary is going to end up
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: being or could end up being Trump, DeSantis and others
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: just trying to out fascist each other.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Look, we're all it's all these forces are just pulling
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: them further and further to the right, further extreme so
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: that each one of them has to paint a darker
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: image of America. Sure. You know, I mean, that's what's
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: really scary about that.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, you know, we there's this little, you know,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: obviously there's this kerfuffle about the D.C.C.C. running ads for a,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: for a right-wing, uh, goon, uh, and in Michigan. And
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: the problem here is there are plenty of places all
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: across the country where the D triple T didn't have
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: to run an ad for the Republican base to choose
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: the most despicable, vile human beings on earth. You know,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: we talk a lot about what we need to do
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: to preserve democracy, but like this larger threat, it is
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: hard to have a democratic society in a country where
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: huge preponderance of people aren't Democrats, small d Democrats. And
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: like the Republican primaries across the country are now fucking
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: pasta makers that take in dough and extrude these fucking fascists,
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: no matter what they went in looking like.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: At the risk of getting a job on the New
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: York Times op-ed page, I am concerned that both sides, rhetorically,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: the right, they have this apocalyptic vision, like the great
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: replacement theory, the left is going to destroy us. And
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: then on the left, we're like, these people are trying
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: to destroy our democracy. And I believe that very much
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: to be true, but it's frightening to hear these two
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: competing visions of the world ending. I'm not sure how
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: that strikes the average voter who pays attention to politics
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: for the two weeks before an election.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I think about that a lot because I, like you,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: genuinely believe that this is a threat to democracy, as
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: do not just a bunch of wild-eyed liberals like us,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: but a lot of former Republicans like our friend Tim Miller,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: like other people who had once been conservatives and are
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: people like Liz Cheney who are still extremely conservative on
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: most issues, but are still worried that, that Donald Trump
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: and the MAGA movement is a threat to democracy, right?
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Dick Cheney.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Dick Cheney. We got fucking, someone wheeled Dick Cheney out.
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: Literally.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: And he was.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, took him out of a fucking, that fucking giant
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: mechanical egg.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Freezer or something.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: So I know, but I wonder, you know, I think
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: average people going about their day may not see that
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: threat who don't pay as close attention to the news
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: as we do and don't consume this stuff all day
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: long and don't pay attention to what's happening at CPAC.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But people should start paying attention.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Because the Orban version of autocracy is not you declare
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: an emergency, a state of emergency. You send the troops
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: into the streets. It's not like El-Sisi in Egypt. It's
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: you get a two-thirds majority in parliament so you can
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: change the constitution. So you gerrymander the districts. You pack
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: the courts and ignore the ones you don't like. And
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: your cronies take over the media so no one hears
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: from the opposition. That's the slower, long lead time version
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: of an illiberal state.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Well, and you know, you pose this thing, well, what
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: do we do? And like, you know, the two visions
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: are these two extremes. One is a fascistic vision for
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: the future of this country. The other is a group
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: of people desperately trying to raise the alarm about the
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: fascistic threat to this country. And you say, well, how
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: do we end up in this mess, right? Like, what
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: were the weaknesses that allowed us to be in a
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: situation where it's basically a controversy, right? Which of these
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: two poles is going to win out? And one of
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: the reasons we were weak to fascism is because the
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: mainstream press in this country cannot be honest about the
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: threats that we face. They are enamored of a kind
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: of objectivity that has left us vulnerable, that it has
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: made it seem as though it's a partisan exercise to
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: defend democracy. And when we look back on this era
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: and we see mainstream outlets spending way too much time
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: worried about trans swimmers and pronouns and woke politics and
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: cancel culture on college campuses and what happened to Dave
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Chappelle because these people didn't know their fucking enemy staring
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: them in the face, This will be why. This will
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: be one of the reasons it either got so close
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: or we fell over the edge.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think that fewer people are reading those
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: terrible New York Times op-eds than you might imagine.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: It's not a force. I think a much bigger problem
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: is not like we can all yell about the mainstream
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: media and you've heard me do it plenty of times.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: There are just an enormous number of people in this
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: country who are not consuming that media anymore. And if
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker and all the rest of
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: them got together and said, Trump is a fascist, let's
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: put it on the headline of the New York Times,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I do not know that it would make much of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: a difference at this point with all the people in
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: this country who are consuming all kinds of horrible propaganda
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: from the right.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Of course, of course. I'm not saying these specific things
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: would solve the problem, but as part of a collective
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: failure of all the kind of institutions that inform people
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: to be honest about the threat, to focus on the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: threat that involves. Yet, look, the New York Times remains
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: the kind of assignment editor for a lot of press
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: across the country. It affects what becomes the lead story
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: about national politics on local news, what happens on local
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: news stations, many of which are now conservative, is a
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: lot of the ways people get information. All of these
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: different things are failing to properly talk about the threat.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: That is one of the great weaknesses we have. And
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the fact that All of our news is then kind
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: of mediated through these social media platforms that only– Those
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: kids are getting.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Their news from TikTok. Who's moderating that one?
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: That only lifts up the most extreme thing.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Dark Brandon. Dark Brandon runs that shit now. No, the
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: solution is we Democrats need to make sure that we
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: attack others within our party who have marginally different policies
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: than us.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: All day, every day. That is how we're going to
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: get through this. I was like, wow, we got the
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: bill done. The fights about it were just like instantly.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Everyone take a fucking breath for 10 seconds.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: I think that, to your point, I mean, that's like
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: 100 people.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: It is. It's 100 people. But unfortunately, there are people
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: who have some influence on the elite opinion. All right.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Trump, we're somehow still getting new tell-all books
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: about him. Speaking of insular conversations also, Maggie Habermans will
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: be out in October. I'll read it. But Axios reported
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: today that her book will include a story about how
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the White House resident staff periodically found documents that Trump
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: tried to flush down his toilets. And fortunately for all
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: of us, there were pictures.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Who snapped that photo?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Excuse me. You walk into the president's shitter and there's
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: a piece of paper that says Stefanik on it.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: You take a picture.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: I take a picture and he's like, of course you would.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: That's where his ass was. That's the piece of paper.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Also, by the way, we included this story this morning.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like the FBI raids really overshadowed this documents
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: in the shitter story.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: John, I think you're safe. You're on safe ground with
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: that assessment.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Maggie's colleague at the Times, Peter Baker, I also
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: just mentioned, along with his wife, Susan Glasser of The
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: New Yorker, they have a new book out that says
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Trump once asked Chief of Staff John Kelly, why can't
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: you be like the German generals in World War II?
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Which is such a funny, because Kelly's next sentence is,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: you do know they tried to kill Hitler three times,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: which is a very funny response, and I hope he
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: actually said, but it's such a funny statement. You just
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: step back. Obviously, it's madness, but it's like, they tried
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: to kill Hitler, and then they lost.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: There's a movie about it. Yeah, that's where his head went.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think he was thinking that far ahead. Someone
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: rent Valkyrie for the guy. He was just thinking, I
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: need generals like that. That's all he's thinking.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Every time you watch Valkyrie, like this time.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: Come on.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Again and again all the time.
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, back to our conversation we were just having.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like the shock of these revolutions, it's wearing off.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, the guy seems like he's
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: ready to run again, and they should matter, and we
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: should figure out a way to make these revolutions matter.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing. So the New Yorker piece that's an
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: excerpt from this book leads with a scene where Trump
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: tells his team he wants an Independence Day parade. He
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: wants a military parade through Washington, D.C. with tanks and shit,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: like a good old dictator. And it quotes Trump saying
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: to his chief of staff, John Kelly, I don't want
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: any wounded veterans in the parade. That doesn't look good
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: for me. We've seen that reported before, but it was
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: like kind of not in quotes. It was backgrounds. If
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: John Kelly, four-star Marine general who lost a son in combat,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: goes on TV, does a interview about Trump saying this
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: to him on camera, that is powerful. That could be
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: potentially devastating for Trump. But if the Committee to Save
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: America guys just go to what's the fancy place in
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: Georgetown called that we always make fun of? Thank you, John.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Cafe Milano. And whisper on background to New Yorker feature writers,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: it's just going to be the endless cycle of everything.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Every bad revelation about Trump is fake news and it
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: gets denied. And then the New York Times says a
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: diner in Cleveland is full of people who've never heard
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: of the story and they're right and we're on to
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: the next thing.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: I guess what I feel about this is a lot
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: of this is actually just sort of giving more color
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: and kind of detail to stories we'd already known. I mean,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: We're a nerd to it, but there have been many
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: reports of Trump having collected works of Hitler at his
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: bedside table, the one book he went back to. And
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: it's also the summer of 2022. So it's like, if
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: we're going to hear more from John Kelly, if we're
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: going to hear more from Mattis, if we're going to
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: hear more from any of these general's I'm all for it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I'd love to see it in September of 2024 if
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: he's the nominee.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, I think the key is,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: you're right, Tommy, that people like John Kelly have to
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: go out and say this publicly, but he just needs
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: to be a constant drumbeat all the time, every day.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: We're a couple weeks out from the last episode of Insurrection.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Doesn't it already feel like it's starting to become too
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: distant of a memory, the January 6th hearings? And I'm like, no, no,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: we had it for a moment. It felt like Yeah,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: it's right there. It's like Liz Cheney should run a
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: hearing every day. Can we have her run a hearing
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: every day from now until 2024?
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I hope she does. There's this book by Ishiguro called
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: The Buried Giant. And it's about a fog that falls
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: over England that makes them all lose their memories. And
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: we live under that fog.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, God. Yeah, every day.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: And it's just we live under it. And things do
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: not last. And so it's like whatever we're going to
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: do with Trump, it's not going to matter for a
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: year or more.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Unless he goes to fucking jail.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Again. Again, any updates? Any updates?
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: Let me refresh Popat.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Unless Merrick Garland takes some of his Compound V and
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: fucking drags Trump out of that fucking gauche hotel, throws
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: him in a fucking cell.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: What is Compound V?
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: It's the liquid from the boys that makes you a superhero.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, another boys reference. Got it.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: It's the same boys reference.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: I'm getting left behind.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, last item. Cultures. One right-wing monster who didn't attend
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: CPAC was Alex Jones.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Who a jury just ordered to pay $ 45 million in
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: punitive damages to the parents of a six-year-old boy who
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: was murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting. Jones had previously
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: been found liable for defamation and, quote, intentional infliction of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: emotional distress against the parents for repeatedly lying and spreading
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: conspiracies about the massacre, the victims, and their families, including
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that they were all just crisis actors who made it
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: up and it was a false flag operation by the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: federal government. Here is a clip of the judge addressing
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Jones during the trial.
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: This is not your show. Do you understand what I
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: have said?
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: I believe what I said was true. So I guess
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: you believe everything you say is true, but it isn't.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Love it. What was your, uh, what was your reaction
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: to that? I thought it was very interesting that you
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: pointed out this isn't your show.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So first of all, it seems hard to, he
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: should be charged with perjury and it's, it will be
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: strange if that doesn't happen, given how many times the
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: judge had to instruct Alex Jones to stop lying on
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: the stand. There's something that, you know, you're obviously under
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: oath in a courtroom, but also just beyond that, there's
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: a kind of rhythm to a court proceeding that can't
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: be kind of overwhelmed by like pizzazz and showmanship and lies.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: You know, like you can go on television and you
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: can say all you want, the two plus two equals five,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: two plus two equals five. But then you get in
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: that courtroom and you have to, you are under oath.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Your lawyers are officers of the court. There are these,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: it's this bastion where the kind of the rules of
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: gravity being suspended no longer apply. And once just a
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: little bit of their fucking coat gets caught in the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Greek years of the justice system, they get kind of
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: ground up, you know, discovery happens. The lawyer hands over
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: the fucking text. Now those go to January 6th. You know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: the big lie attorneys, you know, the Kraken attorneys, they
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: go in front of a judge. The judge says, have
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: you found fraud? They have to say no, right? Like
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: once the kind of It's hard to get these people
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: in a courtroom, and it's been hard to get Trump
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: in a courtroom, and it's been hard to get Giuliani
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: in a courtroom. But once we get them in a
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: fucking courtroom, their powers leave them.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think what I took away from this
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: trial was Alex Jones did what he did for money.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: There was a point where InfoWars was making $ 800, 000 a day,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: a day. And what he would do was he would
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: sell his listeners on this barrage of paranoid, delusional fantasies.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: And then he'd sell them supplements or like doomsday prepper
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: packs or whatever other gold, like apocalyptic fantasies. And I
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: played a clip for you guys in our office earlier.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: In May, he literally berated his audience for not spending
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: enough in the Infowars store saying, if you don't support us,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: you're helping the enemy. And then what we learned at
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: this trial is he lied about everything. Because his idiot
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: lawyer turned over a copy of his phone for two
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: full years and to the defense Catholic, to the other
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: council for some reason. And what we know is, you know,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: Alex Jones lied to the press. He lied to his audience.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: He lied to the lawyers, to the San Diego parents.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: He lied to the court. He is the scum of
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: the earth. And I think what drives me crazy about
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: Alex Jones is there is a, there's a group of
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: people who treat him like he's funny or harmless, or
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: you can ironically like him because he's putting on a
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: show that Joe Rogan is kind of in this category. No,
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: this man is, tortured the families of six-year-old kids who
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: were murdered. People went to their homes and harassed them.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: And then he uses insane conspiracy theories to bilk the
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: audience he's constructed through these theories for cash. And he's
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: a scumbag. And I agree, I think he perjured himself
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: and he will likely get prosecuted for this. But Infowars
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: should be shut down. There's nothing First Amendment protected about spreading,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: knowingly spreading lies about the death of six-year-olds. And now
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: we know that his text were turned over to the
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: January 6th committee. There's a report in the Daily Beast
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: that Tucker Carlson is terrified about his text chains with
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: Alex Jones leaking. So a lot more could come from
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: this hearing.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: You hear the Daily episode about it today? Yes, it's heartbreaking.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: That's what I took from this whole thing. I mean,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I knew all this, of course, but so often I
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: think the media coverage focuses on Alex Jones and his
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: conspiracies and disinformation, and it's sort of just like esoteric concept.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: And you hear the father of this six-year-old talk about
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: dropping him off and holding his dead But I mean,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: it was called a crisis actor. It is horrifying. What?
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Like these are just lies. Lies seems like two to
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: a benign of a word. Conspiracy seems like two benign
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: of a word. You know, it's like when you, when
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: you hear what these parents and with these families who
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: have lost their children have gone through because of this
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: fucking man who was just trying to make money off them.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: It is horrific. Horrific.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: It's going to be there. I, Absolutely, scum of the earth.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Just scum of the earth.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Bad guy, Alex Jones. Bad guy.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: And also, Infowars was seen as fringe and it didn't matter,
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: but it really did drive a narrative in a subset
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: of the MAGA, 4chan, QAnon world that did damage to
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: the country.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: That's the media that's causing fascism.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: In the clips of Alex Jones on January 5th and 6th, like,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: telling people they're going to war, you know, cheering them
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: into the, you know, attack the Capitol. Like he's, you know.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Well, they're preying on, look, there are these like disenchanted, broken,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: mostly men who are looking for someone to confirm their
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: kind of violent, angry, solipsistic worldview. And the far right
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: is co-opting these people and kind of slowly pulling them
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: down the rabbit hole from, you know, Ben Shapiro to
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: To, To some of the more French. With the help
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: of all the algorithms.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Until they get down to Alex Jones. Again, I don't,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: I actually, I don't think that like, this is what is,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is, this is like the, this is
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: what makes a group of fascists dangerous. This is not
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: what is, look, Fox News and the larger right-wing ecosystem
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: is what is propelling the rise of fascism in this country.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: What Alex Jones is doing is capitalizing on that audience
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: and making a part of it far more dangerous and
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: caustic and violent.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Well, you know who's going to take care of it?
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Dark Brandon. Dark B.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Dark B.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: And you won't be able to take care of it
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: if you're not caffeinated. Crooked.com slash coffee.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: When we come back.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: He's moving a lot of merch, this fucking asshole. What
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: are we doing?
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: We got to get into the gold game like Ron Paul.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: I don't think we should do that.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Lovett and I talk to Lieutenant
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Governor Mandela Barnes, who is about to be the Democratic
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: nominee for Senate in Wisconsin. Joining us now is Wisconsin's
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Governor and future Senator Mandela Barnes. Welcome back to
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the pod.
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: Man, so happy to be back. Appreciate the invite. Really
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: happy to talk about this race.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, before we get to the race, I wanted
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: to ask you, the Senate just passed the Inflation Reduction
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Act of 2022 on Sunday. Senator, you're running to replace
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Ron Johnson, voted against it. What do you think about
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: the bill?
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: Well, I am so shocked that he voted against it, right?
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's ridiculous.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: Anything that does good for people, especially young people, or
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: just the future of this country. I mean, given the
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: fact that he's attacked Social Security and Medicare, even for
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: our Asian population, he's just not been there for us.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: But I'm incredibly excited that the Senate has done something
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: to get to work for the American people. I've always
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: lived with the fact that the Senate is broken because
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: the real perspective and American experience is missing. I can't
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: think of many more out-of-touch places, right? This is a
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: millionaire's club, and that's just not the reality for a
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: majority of people in the state of Wisconsin, not a
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: reality for a majority of people across this country. And
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: to see the Senate act on such a significant piece
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: of legislation is something that does make me excited, but
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: it also gets me amped up for the work that's still,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: the work.
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: That's yet to come.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to ask because, you know, another senator
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: who's endorsed you, Bernie Sanders, voted for it, but said
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: it would have minimal impact on inflation, said it turns
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: its back on working families. What do you make of
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Bernie's criticism and just, you know, progressive activists who might
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: be out there and say, you know, a little disappointed,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I wish we could have done more?
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: Well, I'll say there's always more to do.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: And we've been held up from progress for far too long,
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: having to always sit out and wait for a deal
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: that works for Kyrsten Sinema or a deal that works
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: for Joe Manchin. When so many more people across this country,
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: the overwhelming majority of people across this country support things
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: that are more significant, I give it. The fact is,
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: that's why this race is so important. That's why this
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: cycle is so important. I would have certainly voted for
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: it with the understanding, with the idea that, yeah, we
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: should still push for more, but we won't get more
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: until we have a U.S. Senate that is more reflective
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: of who we are as a country. And that starts
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: this November 8th when we flip Pennsylvania and we flip
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: Wisconsin and whatever other state that's in the cards for us.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: But there's a lot of hard work ahead and people
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: get what's at stake here. And the fact is Ron
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: Johnson is going to be a reliable no on anything
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: that moves us forward. And I'm incredibly proud of the
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: support that I've gotten all throughout this campaign. Bernie Sanders
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: was an endorser, but we have expanded our support to
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: include the entirety of the Democratic Party, people like House
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Cory Booker.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: And I'm excited to have a chance to work with
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: them to push forward for the people of this country
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: who have been waiting for so much more than we've
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: been getting.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: So speaking of Ron Johnson as a reliable no vote candidate,
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: your future colleague, Senator Tammy Baldwin, introduced the Respect for
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Marriage Act. She's trying to wrangle up 10 Republicans. And
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you see Ron Johnson say he
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: sees no reason not to support it, which was surprising
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: because he's a fucking dipshit. But then all of a
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: sudden this week, he's starting to backtrack. Were you surprised
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: that Ron Johnson seemed to be open to it? And
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: does it feel like now he's returning to form? What
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: do you think?
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you, I was surprised when he said
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: he was open to it. It just didn't it was
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: seen very odd character. And over the last couple of days,
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: you see now Ron Johnson choosing to take a position
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: that we always expected. This is another case where we
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: have adults in the United States Senate who opt to
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: act like children.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I think Ron Johnson, one of the challenges you'll have
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: with him is he gives you kind of a target
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: rich environment. There's there's quite a few ways you can
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: go at him. What do you think is the most
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: succinct and effective case against Ron Johnson?
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: Man, this dude is so out of touch. Like, that's
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: the problem here.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: Just a couple months ago, I'm not sure if you
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: all caught it, but there was Oshkosh Defense. They got
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: the contract for the next generation postal vehicles.
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: And Ron Johnson is from Oshkosh.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: And this company decided that they wanted to send those
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: jobs that should have been for Wisconsin workers down to
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: South Carolina. I got nothing against South Carolina, but what
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: I'm saying is I'm running to represent Wisconsin. I'm Lieutenant
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: Governor of Wisconsin. We're fighting to keep those jobs here.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Ron Johnson's response was, we have enough jobs. I cannot
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: think of a more out-of-touch position to have. We're talking
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: about 1,000 family-sustaining union jobs. This is a person who
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: cannot be more out-of-touch. And it feels like every week
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: there is something. As you mentioned, we had him voting
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: against capping insulin costs. Just last week, there was the
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: threat to Social Security, threats to Medicare, also voting against
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: benefits for our veterans and who were impacted by burn pits.
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: Like he has left every single community in this state behind.
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: But again, that is who he is.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: And our thing, though, with the campaign, as much as
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: there is, you know, against him, he's truly been a
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: poor representative for the people of this state.
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: But we have to lead with our values. We have
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: to lead with our vision.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: Because people aren't going to decide at the ballot box
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: based solely on how bad he is.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: People need to know we stand for as Democrats.
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: And that's one thing I feel that we've sort of
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: struggled with in previous election cycles, where people don't necessarily
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: know where we're coming from, what we're up to. And
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Republicans have taken that time to define us for the
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: American people before we've had a chance to do it.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: So we're getting out front. We're talking about our plan
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: to rebuild the middle class, to bring back good paying jobs,
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: to bring back opportunity in every corner of the state
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: of Wisconsin, all across this country. My story is a
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: very Wisconsin story. My granddad moved to Milwaukee after serving
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: in World War II. He got a job as a
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: union steel worker, walked into the factory, walked back out
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: 35 years later.
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: He was able to lay a foundation for the family.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: My dad followed in his footsteps, but the opportunities for
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: people in my generation to get into the middle class,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: it feels like there are fewer and fewer. It feels
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: like there are significantly less entry points to the middle
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: class than there were even back then. And that's the
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: real problem we're experiencing right now. But as Democrats, we
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: have to have a plan to hold corporations accountable that
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: send our jobs overseas and also make sure that the
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: wealthy are paying their fair share so everybody has a
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: fair shot at the American dream.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about jobs from Wisconsin across the country.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: Can we please put the map up? We have an
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: important map I need to show you. This is a
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: current map of Culver's locations in the United States.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Now, they've expanded. This is Wisconsin-based Culver's. They have a
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: Butter Burger. They have cheese curds. It's amazing. It's fantastic.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Do you see that there's these two big states, New
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: York and California, some of my favorite places to live exclusively?
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: You're currently lieutenant governor. You've done a great job kind
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: of representing Wisconsin, building Wisconsin. What's happening here? What do
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: we need to do to get this map more blue
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: in more places?
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: You got to get a map that shows the expansion
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: in the last four years since we've.
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: Been in office.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Taking credit for the Culver's expansion.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: What do I need to do to put you? I
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: need a Culver in Los Angeles. I can't live like
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: this anymore.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you, man, we win the Senate race.
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: We're going to start the expansion.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: And I'll tell you, For all the other fast food
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: restaurants out there, this is our great replacement theory right here.
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: There'll be culverts on every corner.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Don't hear Ron Johnson talking about that.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: He never talks about that.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: That's for sure.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: He's afraid of that.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: So we.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Well, now that we've got.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: I'm here to derail the interview. No, which was successful.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: I want you to know that I added myself to
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: this interview. I added myself for this purpose.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the segue back into... I don't even
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: have one.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: Speaking of the economy. Just say speaking of the economy.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so... Clearly, you made the case against Ron Johnson.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Republicans have already previewed the case they intend to make
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: against you, which is that they're going to say you're
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: too progressive on issues like immigration and policing. You're too
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: close to progressives like Bernie and AOC and the squad.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I know you've said this isn't about labels, but would
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: you characterize your views as progressive?
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you, Republicans said the same thing about
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: Tammy Ball when she ran for U.S.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: Senate two years ago. And she's been proving them wrong
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: ever since. And I've seen some very.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: Self-defined moderate candidates get the same attacks lobbed at them.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: And the way we overcome this is by generating real
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: enthusiasm across the state. And people aren't concerned about that.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: People want to know who has your back, right? Like
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: I tell you, Wisconsin goes in so many different directions.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: We have Tammy Paul and Ron Johnson in the U.S.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: You know, we went for Obama twice, voted for Donald Trump.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: We went from Scott Walker to Tony Evers. The fact
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: is people are going to show up for the person
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: they know is going to show up for them. And
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: in Wisconsin, it's not about the urban versus rural. It's
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: not always left or right. It's about the people who
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: have consistently been at the top and everybody else who's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: been left behind at the bottom and who is going
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: to actually show up for.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: These populations that continue to be ignored.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: There was a real powerful moment during one of the
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: primary debates where you shared your mother's abortion story. What
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: prompted you to share that? And how central of an
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: issue do you think abortion should be in this campaign?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: How central do you intend to make it?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll be very honest. So it first came up.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: We've been hosting a series of roundtable discussions about many
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: different issues during this campaign. And we did have an
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: abortion roundtable. And in that discussion, I share my mother's story.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: There was a reporter there who was, you know, very,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: you know, focused. he was very professional about it. He
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: said that he would not write about it unless I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: got my mother's approval. And, you know, I known about it,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: you know, for a while. And I had to talk
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: with her and she was more than willing to share
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: a story. She actually, she's featured in one of our
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: most well-received commercials, actually. She said that she shares her
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: story so others can know that they are not alone.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: And I think that having her strength, her courage is,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: has helped me throughout this campaign. And being able to
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: share that on the stage was certainly a very intimate moment.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: But I do want people to know how serious this
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: issue is, how close it is to each and every
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: single one of us. And I do think that this
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: is the big issue in this election cycle now, because
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: we're talking about a fundamental right, a constitutional right, 50
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: years of precedent being overturned. When you take away people's
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: rights to bodily autonomy, when you take away people's rights
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: to make their own decisions, people show up in kind.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: And we saw that in Kansas.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: You've been serving as lieutenant governor in a state where
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: one of the most gerrymandered legislatures in the country has
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: tried to strip Democrats of all power, including the governor.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: You look at Wisconsin and people say that could be
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the future for the rest of the United States if
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: we go down that anti-democratic path. How does Wisconsin get
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: out of this mess? if Republicans have such a lock
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: on the legislature? I'm sure you've thought a lot about
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: this in your time as Lieutenant Governor.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: I'll tell you, it's a sample of what's to come.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: I don't think we would have seen a President Donald
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Trump if it were not for Governor Scott Walker here
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: in the state of Wisconsin, a person who made his
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: whole political career on the backs of war, on division,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: keeping people separate, making.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: Working people the enemy of one another.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: And I'll tell you, people ask all the time, if
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: you're ready for the chaos of the U.S. Senate or
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: the chaos of Congress. Have y'all seen the state legislature
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: in Wisconsin? But the way out of that is through Congress,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: through the U.S. Senate. You know, if we can pass H.R. 1,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: if we can pass significant democracy reforms that include outlaw
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: and banning of partisan gerrymandering, we'll be in a much
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: better place as a country. I mean, this is not
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: who we are, the sort of representation we've been getting.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: I can tell you, I want to say in 2021,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: Assembly Democrats won over 50% of the popular vote and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: came away with 38% of the seats.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: That's what Jerry Penner has done to this state.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: And it has led to some very extreme legislation coming.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: Out of the Assembly and the Senate.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: Fortunately, we do have the veto pen that stopped much
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: of that from becoming law. But again, this is not
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: what the people of Wisconsin have called for. People of
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Wisconsin support Universal background checks for firearm purchases, band of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: assault weapons, people support marijuana legalization, people support a higher
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: minimum wage. We still have a $ 7. 25 minimum wage in Wisconsin.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: You know, all these issues that an overwhelming majority of
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: the people here support, but do not even get a
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: public hearing because of gerrymandering. And anytime people ask, you know,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: what's holding up progress, it is quite simply the legislature
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: and also the state Supreme Court that acts as a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: partisan extension.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: Of the Supreme Court.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: And at the same time, we have Ron Johnson in
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: the U.S. Senate that is doing the same exact thing
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: that they're doing in the state Capitol. And he wants
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: to see a partisan takeover of our elections. He wants
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: things to be worse.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: They are not bad enough for Ron Johnson. Things are
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 5: not bad enough for him.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: But it sounds like the answer then is things have
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: to get bad enough that people vote in enough numbers
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: to overcome the gerrymander.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: Well, that's the thing.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: The thing is, if we get a majority, if we
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: get a couple extra seats, get rid of the filibuster,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: get to work, see significant democracy reforms, including banning the
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: partisan gerrymandering through Congress, then our maps will change.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: So you'd be the second youngest United States senator after
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: that haircut from Georgia. And you would.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: I'm just joking with Asa.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: We love Asa.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: We love Asa.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: You would double the number of senators younger than me
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: and to a lesser extent, John. Fuck. Care to comment?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: I would also plunge the network, the media network.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: It would descend so far.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: It would almost cut it in half. We talk a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: lot about the dangers of living in a gerontocracy. Why
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: does it matter to have a new generation in the Senate?
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: What's the difference between between having a young representative, a
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: new representative, and someone who's been in the Senate for
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: a very long time?
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 5: It's all about perspective.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: Any governing body needs an accurate perspective of the people
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: that are being represented. Now, the fact is, our generation
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: is the first that's going to have fewer opportunities than
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: the one before us. And if we aren't in seats
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: of power, if we aren't in positions of power, none
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: of that changes. I'm not saying we need a whole
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: millennial Gen Z takeover. What I am saying is that
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: we do need at least some voices to say, well, no,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: I don't think that's a good idea. We need people
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: who understand things like social media, understand what it's like
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: to have gone through multiple economic crises, having lived through
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: a pandemic, having all these things thrown at us that
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: has made life substantially more difficult without leadership in place
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: to help us truly see it through. And Then on
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: top of it all, a working class perspective that is
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: missing as well. We see the Senate typically stall when
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: it comes to bold legislation that comes out of the House.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: And it's because that working class perspective isn't there. Things
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: like the child tax credit, expanding the earned income tax credit, significant, substantial,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: immediate action on the climate crisis.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: You name it. It's because people haven't had to experience that.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: Life as the majority of people do. And our generation is,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: quite frankly, had it tougher than most.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you for including me in your generation.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 5: We're the same generation.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: No, I agree. No, you and I are contemporaries completely.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Love it. We'll be 40 in just a few weeks.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's like a young 40. It's an LA 40.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: It's an LA 40. Honestly, a West Coast 40 is
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: a Midwest 47.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: Let's face it.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: Take it.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: Deal with it.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: It's from the cheese. It's because of all the cheese.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: It was tough. Mandela Barnes, thank you for joining whatever
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: this was.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being here. It's good to see you.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Congrats in advance on Tuesday and good luck in the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: months to come.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: And wait, one more. What can people do right now
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: listening to help your campaign? What's the best thing people
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: across the country can do?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. You can go to the website, mandelabarnes.com. Follow us
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: on social media as well.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: And that's the other Mandela is the Twitter and Instagram handle.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: Perfect. Yep.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: Take care.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: A great following.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Mandela Barnes for joining us today. And
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: we'll be in Nashville Friday. friday night for a show
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: so that's the next uh pod save america.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: You'll hear that's right hopefully we'll know more about this
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: whole fbi thing.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah hopefully we'll have something to talk about.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Maybe bring a little more we'll talk to you that
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: more information context knowledge bye maybe maybe we'll bring popat
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: let's get popat on the blower popat where are you
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: at can we get all right cut that just cut
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: it it's a this is the end of the show
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: it's like i have a real.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: Name yes please mr popat's my father.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: Mr.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 7: Hap.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Olivia Martinez and Haley Muse. It's mixed
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerard,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.