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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy · Pod Save America

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Speaker 1: That's policygenius.com slash crooked. Hey guys, it's Tommy. This week
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Speaker 1: I interviewed Alistair Campbell on the show.
1:14
Speaker 3: You know Alistair, John.
1:15
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:15
Speaker 5: He's best known as a political strategist, press secretary, director
1:18
Speaker 5: of communications and strategy to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
1:23
Speaker 5: He's like the British David Axelrod. That's how I shorthand it.
1:28
Speaker 6: High praise.
1:28
Speaker 1: Very high praise.
1:29
Speaker 5: Our episode dug into how Alistair and Tony Blair and
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Speaker 5: the Labour Party came back to power after nearly two
1:36
Speaker 5: decades of conservative rule in the UK and whether Democrats
1:40
Speaker 5: can steal some of those strategies now in 2025. If
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Speaker 5: you enjoyed our discussion, Alistair also hosts the Rest Is
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Speaker 5: Politics podcast, where he and former UK Cabinet Minister Rory
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Speaker 5: Stewart analyze the biggest events in global politics and explain
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Speaker 5: what it is like to be in the room where
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Speaker 5: it happens. I love the Rest Is Politics. It's a
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Speaker 5: of any genre in Britain. If you're a fan of
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2:31
Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
2:33
Speaker 1: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
2:34
Speaker 3: Big show today, Dan. We got Trump coming after our
2:37
Speaker 3: booze in the next phase of a trade war that
2:39
Speaker 3: might cause a recession. We got his family looking to
2:43
Speaker 3: do business with a crypto felon who wants a pardon
2:47
Speaker 3: and the president himself hawking Teslas on the White House lawn.
2:51
Speaker 3: And as the 2026 midterm announcements begin, Lovett drove down
2:54
Speaker 3: to Orange County to chat with Katie Porter, who just
2:56
Speaker 3: announced that she's running for governor of California, possibly against
3:01
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris. But the biggest story right now is the
3:06
Speaker 3: looming government shutdown, which as of this recording on Thursday afternoon,
3:10
Speaker 3: still hasn't been averted. For Republicans to pass their shit
3:14
Speaker 3: sandwich of a funding bill through Congress, they need at
3:17
Speaker 3: least eight Senate Democrats to break a filibuster. They have Fetterman.
3:21
Speaker 3: And reportedly, right before we started recording, Chuck Schumer told
3:25
Speaker 3: his colleagues that he'll allow a vote on the bill.
3:29
Speaker 3: There are also reports that six other Senate Democrats will
3:33
Speaker 3: follow Schumer, even though most of them have come out
3:37
Speaker 3: against the bill. which doesn't just keep the government funded
3:40
Speaker 3: at the same levels. It makes cuts to things like housing,
3:44
Speaker 3: health care, a billion dollars in cuts to D.C. And
3:50
Speaker 3: it also gives Trump more power to impose tariffs and
3:53
Speaker 3: basically spend our money however he'd like. Naturally, Trump's a fan.
3:57
Speaker 3: Here he is talking about the situation during a pool
4:00
Speaker 3: spray in the Oval Office on Thursday.
4:02
Speaker 6: We're talking about a shutdown. We're talking about getting to
4:05
Speaker 6: work immediately on the greatest tax bill ever passed. If
4:09
Speaker 6: we don't open, the Democrats are stopping all of these
4:13
Speaker 6: good things that we're providing. If there's a shutdown, it's
4:15
Speaker 6: only because of the Democrats. And they would really be
4:18
Speaker 6: taken away a lot from our country and from the
4:20
Speaker 6: people of our country.
4:22
Speaker 3: All right. So I don't know from where we sit
4:25
Speaker 3: right now, 3 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, it feels like
4:30
Speaker 3: the shutdown may be averted, Dan.
4:32
Speaker 1: It seems like it's going to be averted. If it
4:34
Speaker 1: is If Chuck Schumer is voting for cloture, that is
4:37
Speaker 1: a sign that there are at least six other Democrats, Schumer, Fetterman,
4:42
Speaker 1: six others, who will vote to allow the Republicans to
4:45
Speaker 1: pass this bill.
4:46
Speaker 3: So let's take a step back and just talk about
4:50
Speaker 3: sort of the strategy around this, like the analysis of
4:54
Speaker 3: voting for a shutdown against a shutdown. You had a
4:57
Speaker 3: great message box Thursday about why Democrats shouldn't fear the
5:01
Speaker 3: politics of a shutdown. Can you walk us through that?
5:05
Speaker 1: I would say it did not seem to carry the
5:07
Speaker 1: weight I had hoped when I wrote it. Smash that
5:12
Speaker 1: subscribe button, Chuck Schumer.
5:15
Speaker 3: Dan, didn't you just come from talking to some House
5:20
Speaker 3: Democrats in D.C.? I did. You know what they did?
5:23
Speaker 1: All but one of them voted against this bill.
5:24
Speaker 3: You know what?
5:25
Speaker 1: They did that before I arrived, but I was there
5:27
Speaker 1: for the celebration.
5:29
Speaker 3: So it's not your fault.
5:32
Speaker 1: I would say that this is going to be a
5:34
Speaker 1: wild pod because I woke up in Virginia this morning
5:37
Speaker 1: and did our morning call in California, so I'm quite tired.
5:40
Speaker 7: Unbelievable.
5:41
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. And I know that you were speaking along with
5:44
Speaker 3: fellow 2028 hopefuls, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro.
5:48
Speaker 1: They're speaking today.
5:49
Speaker 3: This was the first cattle call of the 2028 season.
5:53
Speaker 3: You were first up.
5:54
Speaker 1: I was first up. That's right.
5:56
Speaker 3: That's right. Yes, we Dan. Yes, we Dan.com.
5:59
Speaker 1: That is a painful thing for you to say. Okay.
6:01
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about the politics of this
6:02
Speaker 1: because that is what... I would stipulate that there are
6:05
Speaker 1: people who have legitimate substantive concerns about the impact of
6:07
Speaker 1: a shutdown and fears that if you're engaged in shutdown
6:10
Speaker 1: negotiations with a party that wants to destroy government, they
6:15
Speaker 1: may not open it again. Or that Elon Musk can
6:18
Speaker 1: do a lot of damage while the government is shut down.
6:20
Speaker 1: I think that's a legitimate substantive concern. But there are
6:22
Speaker 1: people who are worried about the politics here. And I
6:24
Speaker 1: think they're wrong to be worried about the politics. There
6:26
Speaker 1: is this narrative that the party that, quote unquote, shuts
6:29
Speaker 1: the government down, and I don't think that's what Democrats
6:31
Speaker 1: would be doing here, but the people who don't vote
6:34
Speaker 1: for the funding bill take the blame. And that's based
6:37
Speaker 1: on the fact that in the 90s, When Bill Clinton's
6:39
Speaker 1: presidency was struggling, Newt Gingrich shut the government down over
6:42
Speaker 1: a big budget fight. And Clinton won that fight substantively
6:46
Speaker 1: and politically and put himself on the path to an
6:48
Speaker 1: easy reelection. In 2013, Republicans shut the government down. When
6:52
Speaker 1: Obama was president, after the end of that shutdown, the
6:54
Speaker 1: Republicans had their– the Republican Party had its lowest favorability
6:57
Speaker 1: rating in modern history at that point. But what I
7:01
Speaker 1: think– and then when Trump– we forget this, but Trump
7:04
Speaker 1: shut the government down for– the longest government shutdown in
7:06
Speaker 1: history was Trump's fault, and it was over funding for
7:08
Speaker 1: the wall, which was something that while his base loves,
7:11
Speaker 1: most of the country thinks it's kind of ridiculous and
7:12
Speaker 1: not important. And so what the point here is– and
7:17
Speaker 1: Trump took blame then too. His numbers went down over
7:19
Speaker 1: the course of that shutdown. I think people are reading
7:22
Speaker 1: this the wrong way because in all three examples I gave,
7:26
Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich and the Republicans of the 90s, Republicans in 2013,
7:30
Speaker 1: and Trump, is they all shut the government down over
7:32
Speaker 1: incredibly unpopular things. But you can't get more unpopular. The
7:36
Speaker 1: Republicans wanted, Gingrich wanted to cut Medicare. Ted Cruz in
7:39
Speaker 1: the Freedom Caucus, who engineered the Obama-era shutdown, wanted to
7:42
Speaker 1: defund the Affordable Care Act and kick millions of people
7:46
Speaker 1: for existing conditions off their healthcare coverage. The wall's not popular.
7:49
Speaker 1: And so I think what we have to look at
7:51
Speaker 1: is what happens if you pick a shutdown fight over
7:54
Speaker 1: something popular? And Democrats would have a laundry list of
7:58
Speaker 1: popular options, Social Security cuts, veterans, cuts to VA health care,
8:02
Speaker 1: cuts to food safety and cancer research, like a whole
8:06
Speaker 1: bunch of things. We have the high side of the
8:09
Speaker 1: political argument on issues, and I think Democrats could win
8:13
Speaker 1: that fight if we tried. The other part is, even
8:16
Speaker 1: if you don't win the fight in the short term,
8:18
Speaker 1: these things flush through the system so much faster than
8:20
Speaker 1: we think, right? Yes, the Republicans were at their lowest
8:23
Speaker 1: level in November of 2013, but then they won the
8:27
Speaker 1: Senate and expanded their House majority in November of 2014.
8:31
Speaker 1: And so this idea that this would somehow damage our
8:34
Speaker 1: chances in the midterms is sort of, I think, sort
8:37
Speaker 1: of absurd. And so you people should be, I think
8:39
Speaker 1: it's a political fight Democrats could win. It would, you know,
8:42
Speaker 1: it's not a guarantee you'd win it. Absolutely. But there
8:44
Speaker 1: are no guarantees in life. And just being afraid of
8:47
Speaker 1: the politics, I think, is taking the, it's an oversimplistic
8:51
Speaker 1: reading of what's happened. And I think it's kind of
8:53
Speaker 1: taking the coward's way out of this fight.
8:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I completely agreed with your message box. And especially, like,
9:01
Speaker 3: I think that any political benefit or damage will be
9:05
Speaker 3: short-lived on either side, whoever gets it. And even if
9:10
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, which I may be, like, predicting who voters
9:13
Speaker 3: will blame for a shutdown is difficult, especially in this
9:17
Speaker 3: media environment, which is not exactly... friendly and conducive to
9:20
Speaker 3: getting a message out. And especially since there's no way
9:25
Speaker 3: to know how long the shutdown would last.
9:27
Speaker 1: Right.
9:27
Speaker 3: These things tend to change over time, depending on if
9:29
Speaker 3: it's a short shutdown, a longer shutdown, when it's going to.
9:32
Speaker 3: So like putting aside for a second, just what voters
9:35
Speaker 3: might think about this, like we should just talk about
9:38
Speaker 3: what happens during a shutdown, because I do think this
9:40
Speaker 3: is I think this is a harder vote for a
9:44
Speaker 3: harder decision for Senate Democrats to make than it might
9:48
Speaker 3: appear to be. Because look, I love a good shutdown.
9:52
Speaker 3: We remember in 2018, there was a brief shutdown before
9:55
Speaker 3: the longest shutdown in history that Trump caused. At the
9:58
Speaker 3: beginning of Trump's term, maybe it was like 17, 18?
10:00
Speaker 1: It was early 2018.
10:02
Speaker 3: Early 2018. Democrats decided they were not going to give
10:07
Speaker 3: votes for a funding bill because they were concerned that
10:11
Speaker 3: Trump would deport the Dreamers and that he was going
10:14
Speaker 3: to get rid of protections for the Dreamers. And we,
10:18
Speaker 3: as a podcast and a company... did like a whip
10:21
Speaker 3: count and tried to, you know, pressure Senate Democrats into
10:24
Speaker 3: doing this because we really thought that they had leverage here.
10:28
Speaker 3: And they did it. And then after like 48 hours, maybe?
10:34
Speaker 1: The government shut down on a Friday and I think
10:36
Speaker 1: it reopened again on a Monday.
10:37
Speaker 3: On a Monday, yeah, then they caved. But I wasn't
10:41
Speaker 3: like disappointed in them caving at that point because I
10:44
Speaker 3: don't know, like Trump was basically like, okay, the government
10:47
Speaker 3: shut down. I'm not going to give you what you want.
10:49
Speaker 3: I don't care. And so now you have a bunch
10:52
Speaker 3: of furloughed workers who aren't getting paid in the federal government.
10:56
Speaker 3: And it turns out the Democrats didn't really have the leverage,
11:00
Speaker 3: or at least they didn't try. Maybe they could have
11:02
Speaker 3: had it go on for a couple of weeks, but
11:04
Speaker 3: that made me rethink my priors about what leverage really
11:10
Speaker 3: is in a shutdown, depending on which party it is.
11:12
Speaker 3: So if we went through the shutdown, right? What would happen?
11:16
Speaker 3: So during the last shutdown, the longest in history that
11:19
Speaker 3: you mentioned during Trump's first term, about 400,000 federal workers
11:24
Speaker 3: were placed on unpaid leave and another 400,000 were forced
11:28
Speaker 3: to work without pay. This dragged on for 35 days,
11:31
Speaker 3: longest shutdown ever. So more federal employees would be out
11:35
Speaker 3: of work than Trump and Elon already fired. And a
11:39
Speaker 3: bunch of government services and benefits would get disrupted more
11:42
Speaker 3: than have already been disrupted. So then the question is,
11:45
Speaker 3: what forces Trump and Republicans back to the table to
11:48
Speaker 3: negotiate with Democrats once that happens? And then you have
11:51
Speaker 3: to ask yourself, OK, well, what do they actually want,
11:53
Speaker 3: Trump and Republicans? Well, they want to destroy government jobs,
11:57
Speaker 3: services and benefits. Government shutdown gives them that. They want
12:01
Speaker 3: the power to spend our money however they'd like, even
12:04
Speaker 3: if Congress appropriated it in specific ways. Government shutdown makes
12:08
Speaker 3: that easier. And now do they also want public approval? Yeah, maybe.
12:14
Speaker 1: Theoretically, they've done to date suggest they do.
12:17
Speaker 3: Well, that's my problem, right? Theoretically, a party wants public
12:21
Speaker 3: approval and wants to be popular so they can win reelection,
12:24
Speaker 3: particularly Republicans in Congress who have to face voters in
12:27
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six. But thus far, they have gone along
12:30
Speaker 3: with some Trump policies and decisions that are deeply unpopular.
12:34
Speaker 3: And so even if public opinion turns against them, do
12:37
Speaker 3: we think that will really pressure Republicans? Do we think
12:40
Speaker 3: Republicans and the Trump folks will feel pressure to then
12:43
Speaker 3: negotiate with Democrats? And then if so, what are Democrats
12:47
Speaker 3: asking for? And I hope and we can't be asking
12:52
Speaker 3: for an agreement, a promise, because they're going to break
12:55
Speaker 3: all of that. In fact, they're breaking laws right now.
12:59
Speaker 3: So it's just like, this is why I think it's tougher.
13:01
Speaker 3: And look, I still think you could say, whatever, let's
13:04
Speaker 3: roll the dice. Let's show that we're going to fight.
13:06
Speaker 3: Let's shut this thing down and let's, you know, draw
13:09
Speaker 3: attention to it and protest them, blah, blah, blah. But like,
13:12
Speaker 3: you know, I just don't know. I don't know how
13:14
Speaker 3: it ends and I don't know what we're asking for.
13:17
Speaker 3: And I don't know what they'll give, what they're likely
13:19
Speaker 3: to give because they don't give a fuck. They are,
13:22
Speaker 3: they do still care. They want to get rid of government.
13:25
Speaker 1: I think like we, you and I, Pod Save America,
13:29
Speaker 1: people who follow politics, the Democratic Party have been having
13:30
Speaker 1: this conversation for a couple of weeks now. And it
13:34
Speaker 1: feels like it's been the same conversation, but it hasn't
13:36
Speaker 1: caught up to changes in the facts on the ground.
13:38
Speaker 1: Like when we had Schiff, Senators Schiff and Merkley and
13:43
Speaker 1: Wyden on our live stream before Trump's State of the
13:45
Speaker 1: Union Joint Address thing, what we were talking about is
13:48
Speaker 1: would you vote for a clean funding bill, six-month funding bill,
13:53
Speaker 1: that would just keep the government open at the same
13:55
Speaker 1: levels that were agreed to when Joe Biden was president.
13:59
Speaker 1: That is a much tougher vote for the reasons you
14:01
Speaker 1: laid out.
14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:02
Speaker 4: Right.
14:03
Speaker 1: That is not what this is.
14:05
Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:05
Speaker 1: That is not this bill. This is really important. This
14:08
Speaker 1: bill increases fundings for the military by $ 12 billion. It gives,
14:13
Speaker 1: depending on how you read the language, gives Trump's more
14:15
Speaker 1: authority on how to spend that money unilaterally. It Increases
14:20
Speaker 1: funding for Trump's mass deportation plan. And this is very important.
14:24
Speaker 7: It has a $ 1. 2 billion cut in what is called
14:28
Speaker 7: non-defense discretionary spending. What that means is spending that is
14:33
Speaker 7: not military spending, defense spending, or Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
14:37
Speaker 7: So what that means is a billion dollar cut, Head Start,
14:40
Speaker 7: community health centers, education, food safety, cancer research.
14:43
Speaker 1: That's just being cut. Just we're just going to cut that.
14:45
Speaker 1: What that's essentially doing is codifying what Elon Musk and
14:50
Speaker 1: Doge have been doing right there. And then it just
14:54
Speaker 1: just for shits and giggles, it takes cuts a billion
14:59
Speaker 1: dollars from D.C. 's budget for no reason, which is
15:03
Speaker 1: going to force D.C. to possibly have to fire teachers,
15:07
Speaker 1: police officers and firefighters. And then on top of that,
15:11
Speaker 1: it takes away Congress's ability to reject Trump's tariffs. Congress
15:15
Speaker 1: can call a vote on tariffs. That power is taken
15:20
Speaker 1: away in this bill. And so Republicans, Democrats did not
15:24
Speaker 1: shut the government down here. They would not be shutting
15:25
Speaker 1: the government down. Republicans need a bill that can get
15:28
Speaker 1: 60 votes. They never talked to Democrats about what it
15:32
Speaker 1: would take to get seven Democratic votes for this bill.
15:35
Speaker 1: They never talked to a single Democrat about it. And
15:37
Speaker 1: so even if you want to just like the, another
15:41
Speaker 1: way to think about this is like, We should just
15:43
Speaker 1: fight for a clean new CR.
15:44
Speaker 2: Right.
15:45
Speaker 1: That's what you want. Just like we would support keeping
15:48
Speaker 1: the government open, but we're not going to do favors
15:52
Speaker 1: to Trump and Elon Musk in this for no reason.
15:54
Speaker 1: We get nothing for it. We have... like just giving
15:58
Speaker 1: away all of our leverage. And I think that is
15:59
Speaker 1: a huge mistake. And it just, it is rolling over
16:03
Speaker 1: in this moment. Like we don't, like, I think in
16:05
Speaker 1: a clean CR, it's kind of hard to figure out
16:07
Speaker 1: what the way out is. There is a way out here.
16:10
Speaker 1: And if you just said, you just go to Thune
16:12
Speaker 1: and say, clean CR, you're not getting clean CR. It
16:14
Speaker 1: can be six months, 30 days. Like we want 30 days.
16:17
Speaker 1: You want six months. Let's make it three months, right? Whatever.
16:21
Speaker 1: Something like that. Just, we will keep the, we want
16:23
Speaker 1: to keep the government, but we're not going to just,
16:25
Speaker 1: we're not going to vote for a big cut in
16:29
Speaker 1: programs like Head Start and community health centers. We're not
16:31
Speaker 1: going to do that. And I think that's a very
16:33
Speaker 1: defensible position to take, substantively and politically. And I'm very
16:37
Speaker 1: disappointed that it appears at this recording at 3.15 Pacific
16:40
Speaker 1: time on Thursday that that's not the direction the Democratic
16:43
Speaker 1: caucus will go.
16:45
Speaker 3: How do you message the, we're for a clean CR,
16:49
Speaker 3: which obviously no one knows what the fuck that is.
16:51
Speaker 3: And it does seem like the changes they made to
16:54
Speaker 3: the CR are.
16:56
Speaker 3: Uh, calculated to like, you know, our most, it's horrible
17:01
Speaker 3: that they're going to cut a billion dollars from the
17:03
Speaker 3: fucking DC budget. Um, are most people going to care
17:07
Speaker 3: about watch what happens in Washington, DC.
17:10
Speaker 1: Right.
17:11
Speaker 3: Um, I do think people would probably fucking hate that
17:13
Speaker 3: they're going to add another like $ 12 billion to defense
17:16
Speaker 3: spending for no fucking reason.
17:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
17:18
Speaker 3: The deportation stuff. I, you know, I wish it was
17:21
Speaker 3: more unpopular, but it's, it's like the most popular thing
17:23
Speaker 3: he's doing right now, which is fucking gross. Um, so
17:27
Speaker 3: I guess you would have to, you would talk about
17:29
Speaker 3: like healthcare cuts and cuts.
17:31
Speaker 8: Yeah.
17:31
Speaker 1: We're not going to support healthcare. We're like, we are
17:33
Speaker 1: in the process of negotiating a budget agreement for the year.
17:36
Speaker 1: Like that is the point here. What to try to
17:38
Speaker 1: do is you want to negotiate a budget agreement for
17:40
Speaker 1: the year. And while we're doing that, we're not just
17:42
Speaker 1: going to cut headstart community health centers for fun. Like
17:46
Speaker 1: we're not going to agree to that. That is not
17:47
Speaker 1: a way to have a negotiation over the budget. And
17:50
Speaker 1: if you want to re if you want to raise,
17:51
Speaker 1: you want to increase military spending by $ 12 billion, traditionally.
17:55
Speaker 1: Over the last 15 years here of budget negotiations, we
17:58
Speaker 1: have increased and decreased defense and non-defense spending at the
18:02
Speaker 1: same time. So they are breaking that. And so I
18:05
Speaker 1: think you just say all we are asking for is
18:08
Speaker 1: to keep everything working, keep the lights on, keep everything
18:11
Speaker 1: working the way it has been working right now. We
18:13
Speaker 1: are not going to support cuts.
18:14
Speaker 3: In these programs. We're happy to negotiate with Republicans. We'll
18:16
Speaker 3: go to the table. We'll negotiate. And we can either
18:19
Speaker 3: negotiate the same levels of funding that we had and
18:22
Speaker 3: just keep the government open or... We can, you know,
18:24
Speaker 3: we'll compromise. We'll put proposals on the table. But like
18:27
Speaker 3: where you got to you need our votes. You're going
18:29
Speaker 3: to you're going to give us at least a clean bill.
18:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we're not even we're not even asking
18:33
Speaker 1: for anything.
18:33
Speaker 3: So then why?
18:34
Speaker 6: So then.
18:34
Speaker 3: OK, now we're going to take from the other side.
18:36
Speaker 3: So then why? Why do you think that Schumer doesn't
18:39
Speaker 3: have the appetite to at least just fight for a
18:41
Speaker 3: clean CR?
18:43
Speaker 1: I would say that that Schumer is probably taking one
18:50
Speaker 1: for the team here. Right, he has enough members who want,
18:55
Speaker 1: who do not want this fight. For political reasons, substantive reasons,
18:59
Speaker 1: whatever that is, fear. The fears you have about a
19:02
Speaker 1: shutdown exist whether it's over a clean CR, and I
19:06
Speaker 1: can't believe it, a clean funding bill or this. They exist,
19:08
Speaker 1: they're the same. And so.
19:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think you're right. Even if you're fighting
19:13
Speaker 3: for a clean CR and the government shut down, you
19:15
Speaker 3: do have then the possibility, and there's been White House
19:18
Speaker 3: people saying this to reporters, that nothing would make Elon
19:22
Speaker 3: happier and Trump happier than having the government shut down
19:25
Speaker 3: and them being able to pick and choose who gets
19:28
Speaker 3: laid off, who's on unpaid leave, which money they spend,
19:31
Speaker 3: how they spend it, and basically just be, continue to
19:35
Speaker 3: be even more authoritarian than they have been in running
19:39
Speaker 3: the whole country.
19:40
Speaker 1: There is a, just, I worked in, I was in
19:43
Speaker 1: the White House when we had the shutdown, and everyone
19:45
Speaker 1: has to decide what's an essential worker and what's an
19:48
Speaker 1: inessential worker. And And the essential workers stay and work
19:51
Speaker 1: for no money, and everyone else goes home. And so
19:54
Speaker 1: you can just see they're just picking through the people
19:57
Speaker 1: they trust, their people, the Project 2025 people. So there
20:01
Speaker 1: is a substantive risk in all of this. But If
20:04
Speaker 1: you're not going to fight now, if you're going to–
20:06
Speaker 1: because this really is waving the white flag. I could
20:09
Speaker 1: argue the vote on a clean funding bill, round or flat.
20:13
Speaker 1: Like I would have leaned towards having the fight.
20:15
Speaker 3: This– you are– This is easier.
20:17
Speaker 1: You're getting punked here. I think you're really getting punked
20:19
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't bode well for any future
20:23
Speaker 1: negotiations or future votes. And it's going to inflame, and
20:27
Speaker 1: rightfully so, I think. the sentiment within the party that
20:32
Speaker 1: our leadership is not up to this moment. Because I just,
20:37
Speaker 1: if it, and then we keep having this experience where
20:40
Speaker 1: everyone gets up and says, Trump is this incredible, the
20:44
Speaker 1: existential threat to what is happening. What he and Elon
20:47
Speaker 1: Musk are doing are unprecedented. It's authoritarian. It's unconstitutional. It's
20:50
Speaker 1: potentially illegal, blah, blah, blah. And then we just go
20:53
Speaker 1: about normal politics.
20:56
Speaker 3: Right.
20:56
Speaker 1: And if you believe that if you believe that this
20:59
Speaker 1: threat is extraordinary, you have to be willing to take
21:02
Speaker 1: extraordinary measures yourself. And this is one of the rare
21:05
Speaker 1: moments we have to do that.
21:06
Speaker 3: I also think to argue again now for shutting it
21:10
Speaker 3: down or at least demanding a clean CR. So you
21:14
Speaker 3: so it shuts down and it lasts a week. two
21:18
Speaker 3: weeks and all the substantive risks that you and I
21:22
Speaker 3: were talking about come to pass and it's mayhem everywhere
21:25
Speaker 3: and people aren't getting their benefits or services. And there's
21:28
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of workers furloughed and, and Republicans are
21:31
Speaker 3: just like, fuck it. We don't care. We're not negotiating.
21:33
Speaker 3: We're not opening the government back up. Like we could
21:36
Speaker 3: cave then. And that would still be better than not
21:40
Speaker 3: trying to fight at all. Like it would be embarrassing
21:43
Speaker 3: when it happens and we'd have lost the fight, but like,
21:47
Speaker 3: Might as well give it a shot. It's not worse, right?
21:51
Speaker 3: Like having it shut down for a week or two
21:53
Speaker 3: and then saying, OK, well, Republicans don't care about the government,
21:56
Speaker 3: don't care about these workers and are just doing whatever
21:58
Speaker 3: they want anyway. We'll vote for a clean, you know,
22:01
Speaker 3: we'll we'll vote for the bill or we'll let you know,
22:03
Speaker 3: vote for cloture, whatever the fuck it is. We'll do
22:05
Speaker 3: that like that. That's not worse than just not fighting
22:08
Speaker 3: at all.
22:09
Speaker 1: No, probably not. I think if it shuts down on
22:12
Speaker 1: Friday and you open up on Monday, that's probably worse.
22:14
Speaker 3: That's worse. Like last time.
22:17
Speaker 1: Part of this is just an unwillingness to wrestle with
22:21
Speaker 1: impending tough decisions. This has been coming for a while.
22:25
Speaker 1: We've at least known since the weekend what this bill
22:27
Speaker 1: looked like. I think everyone in the Senate was closing
22:29
Speaker 1: their eyes and hoping that Mike Johnson wouldn't get the
22:31
Speaker 1: vote so it wouldn't be their fault. But we could
22:34
Speaker 1: really use a little game planning here about what could
22:37
Speaker 1: possibly happen and The fact that we're at this point
22:41
Speaker 1: and they were just having a meeting about it today,
22:42
Speaker 1: I think is it's tough. This is a this is
22:47
Speaker 1: a tough. It's gonna be a tough pill for a
22:49
Speaker 1: lot of people to swallow.
22:50
Speaker 3: Not great.
22:56
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24:25
Speaker 3: Well, the government shuts down. Trump will have more time
24:27
Speaker 3: to focus on what seems to be his true passion,
24:30
Speaker 3: which is tanking the economy with his trade war. Here's
24:33
Speaker 3: the latest. Trump promised on Truth Social on Thursday morning
24:35
Speaker 3: to impose a 200 percent tariff on European wine and champagne,
24:41
Speaker 3: apparently as a retaliation for tariffs that the EU imposed
24:44
Speaker 3: on American whiskey, which itself was in retaliation for Trump's
24:48
Speaker 3: tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum tariffs. Meanwhile, a delegation
24:53
Speaker 3: from Canada was in Washington on Thursday, awkward, to talk
24:57
Speaker 3: about the trade war we're already in with them. Trump
25:00
Speaker 3: got asked about all this in the Oval Thursday. Let's listen.
25:05
Speaker 6: We've been ripped off for years, and we're not going
25:07
Speaker 6: to be ripped off anymore. Now, I'm not going to
25:09
Speaker 6: bend at all aluminum or steel or cars. In the
25:13
Speaker 6: case of Canada, we're spending $ 200 billion a year to
25:16
Speaker 6: subsidize Canada.
25:17
Speaker 2: I love Canada.
25:18
Speaker 6: I love the people of Canada. I have many friends
25:21
Speaker 6: in Canada. The great one, Wayne Gretzky, the great. How
25:25
Speaker 6: good is Wayne Gretzky? He's the great one. And to
25:27
Speaker 6: be honest with you, Canada only works as a state.
25:30
Speaker 6: We don't need anything they have. As a state, it
25:34
Speaker 6: would be one of the great states anyway. This would
25:36
Speaker 6: be the most incredible country visually. If you look at
25:40
Speaker 6: a map, they drew an artificial line right through it.
25:43
Speaker 3: Now, Dan, in one of our social videos that we're
25:48
Speaker 3: making now this week, I made a joke in the
25:51
Speaker 3: video that... Trump wants Canada as a 51st state because
25:56
Speaker 3: he thinks it looks cool on the map. But apparently
25:59
Speaker 3: that is that is true. That is why it seems
26:03
Speaker 3: like that is why he he looks at the fucking globe.
26:06
Speaker 3: He looks at the map and he's like, which country
26:09
Speaker 3: is the biggest? And he looks at us and he's like, well,
26:12
Speaker 3: if we had Greenland and we had Canada, look how
26:14
Speaker 3: look how big that would be. Look how big America
26:16
Speaker 3: would be then. And of course, he's probably looking at
26:18
Speaker 3: a map that's not, you know, the proportional. So he
26:21
Speaker 3: thinks Greenland is bigger than it is. I mean, it's
26:26
Speaker 3: so fucking stupid.
26:28
Speaker 1: It's also stupid.
26:30
Speaker 3: Trump's approval rating is now falling quickly, driven mostly by
26:33
Speaker 3: people's view of how he's handling the economy, which are
26:36
Speaker 3: now at all-time lows. 51% say Trump's policies have worsened
26:41
Speaker 3: the economy, while only 28% think they've helped, according to
26:44
Speaker 3: the latest CNN poll. The Wall Street Journal is also
26:47
Speaker 3: reporting that CEOs and even some of Trump's own advisers are, quote,
26:51
Speaker 3: spooked by the way he's talking about tariffs. And here's
26:54
Speaker 3: just a sample of what smart financial folks are saying.
26:58
Speaker 3: This is from CNBC's Steve Leisman.
27:02
Speaker 2: I'm going to say this at risk of my job, Kelly,
27:04
Speaker 2: but what President Trump is doing is insane. It is
27:07
Speaker 2: absolutely insane. It is about the eighth reason we've had
27:11
Speaker 2: for the tariffs. And now he's saying he's putting 50%
27:13
Speaker 2: tariffs on Canada unless they agree to become the 51st state.
27:18
Speaker 2: That is insane.
27:19
Speaker 1: It is.
27:21
Speaker 3: It's insane. It is insane.
27:23
Speaker 1: That is fact-checked truth. Yes, yes, yes.
27:25
Speaker 3: So the comments in the Oval Thursday where Trump also
27:29
Speaker 3: mused about sending troops to Greenland... and said that he
27:34
Speaker 3: had invaded Los Angeles to turn our water on. He
27:38
Speaker 3: did not invade Los Angeles. There was no invasion here.
27:40
Speaker 1: And the water doesn't go to Los Angeles.
27:42
Speaker 3: And the water did not go to Los Angeles. It
27:43
Speaker 3: just nearly flooded a bunch of farms in the Central Valley. Meanwhile,
27:48
Speaker 3: it was raining here while that whole thing happened. So
27:50
Speaker 3: none of that really happened either. He also, in that
27:53
Speaker 3: same pool spray, talked about the, quote, adjustment period that
27:56
Speaker 3: we're in. How do you think that's going for him,
27:59
Speaker 3: the adjustment period?
28:01
Speaker 1: Not great. It seems that way. You know who it's
28:02
Speaker 1: not going great for? The rest of us, for the
28:04
Speaker 1: American people.
28:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
28:09
Speaker 1: It is, I guess, somewhat comforting that public opinion has
28:14
Speaker 1: turned so quickly on him. The people get what's happening.
28:17
Speaker 1: When he was president the first time, his economic approval
28:19
Speaker 1: was always higher than his job approval. During the campaign,
28:21
Speaker 1: his economic approval was always higher than his personal favorability. Now,
28:25
Speaker 1: his economic approval is, in some cases, below his job approval.
28:29
Speaker 1: People get what's happening. In the Reuters poll, he is
28:32
Speaker 1: at a minus 12 on the economy, minus 17 on
28:35
Speaker 1: foreign trade, and minus 25 on inflation in terms of
28:38
Speaker 1: net approval. People get it. They see what's happening. And
28:43
Speaker 1: it's the public. It's the markets. It's business leaders. You
28:47
Speaker 1: see David Solomon, who is the CEO of Goldman Sachs,
28:51
Speaker 1: went on Fox and tried to send a message. He
28:54
Speaker 1: tried not to piss off Trump in his interview. But
28:57
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs is cutting their forecasts. And all these earnings calls,
29:03
Speaker 1: these Wall Street analysts are all saying they are cutting
29:05
Speaker 1: their economic projections. And they cite every single time the
29:09
Speaker 1: reason is the policies of this president.
29:11
Speaker 6: Yeah.
29:12
Speaker 3: And you don't usually get that a lot. It's not like,
29:15
Speaker 3: how much control does the president really have over the economy? Well,
29:18
Speaker 3: when he launches a global trade war, quite a bit.
29:23
Speaker 1: And it's not just that he is launching tariffs. It's
29:26
Speaker 1: that he's launching and then unlaunching tariffs on an hourly basis.
29:31
Speaker 3: We are now in the middle of one of the
29:32
Speaker 3: fastest market sell-offs since the Great Depression. The S &
29:36
Speaker 3: P slid into correction territory on Thursday. which is when
29:40
Speaker 3: an index falls 10% or more from its peak. NASDAQ
29:43
Speaker 3: was already there. All these Goldman, JP Morgan, they're also
29:47
Speaker 3: increasing their projections for the chance of recession. And look,
29:53
Speaker 3: the most generous interpretation here is that Trump genuinely believes
29:58
Speaker 3: he is pursuing a strategy that will bring back American manufacturing,
30:03
Speaker 3: bring in more tax revenue and force other countries to
30:07
Speaker 3: do what he wants. David Sanger had a piece about
30:10
Speaker 3: this in the times this week. Um, what do you
30:13
Speaker 3: think about that? That strategy? And, you know, and he's
30:15
Speaker 3: basically saying like, yeah, there's going to be short term
30:17
Speaker 3: pain and an adjustment. And he said in the oval,
30:20
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but we just have to do this. We
30:22
Speaker 3: just have to do this. So, but like even, even
30:26
Speaker 3: taking him, uh, at his word that this is what
30:29
Speaker 3: he thinks is going to happen. Like, What do you
30:31
Speaker 3: think about that strategy?
30:33
Speaker 1: Well, it's not a strategy. There's no strategy here. One,
30:36
Speaker 1: the manufacturing sector grew under Joe Biden, right? He is
30:39
Speaker 1: not like digging us out of some hole, right? It
30:42
Speaker 1: grew just about as much under Biden as it did
30:43
Speaker 1: under Trump before. The what he is... Like, if he
30:49
Speaker 1: had an actual strategy, you would put tariffs on and
30:51
Speaker 1: keep them. You wouldn't put them on, take them off,
30:53
Speaker 1: add this exemption, add this exemption, and all of a
30:55
Speaker 1: sudden get pissed off at someone, so now you want
30:56
Speaker 1: to put 200% tariffs on wine and champagne, which I'm
30:59
Speaker 1: sure is going to be super popular. But also, if
31:02
Speaker 1: you cared about manufacturing... You would not go to before
31:05
Speaker 1: the entire nation at your State of the Union and
31:08
Speaker 1: declare you want to repeal the CHIPS Act, which is
31:10
Speaker 1: supposed to specifically designed to spur semiconductor manufacturing in the
31:15
Speaker 1: United States. You wouldn't be trying to gut all the
31:17
Speaker 1: funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, which is trying to
31:20
Speaker 1: spur manufacturing in this country for solar panels, batteries, other
31:25
Speaker 1: green technologies and materials. He's doing the exact opposite of
31:29
Speaker 1: what I say. He may believe this. He also believes
31:31
Speaker 1: he won the election in 2020. So who the fuck
31:34
Speaker 1: cares what he believes? But it is nonsensical. Steve Leisman
31:36
Speaker 1: is right. It's insanity. There is no actual plan. There
31:41
Speaker 1: are no guardrails. His advisors have no say. You have
31:44
Speaker 1: Scott Bessett, who is theoretically a smart person. He was
31:47
Speaker 1: a very successful Wall Street guy. He is up there
31:49
Speaker 1: trying to defend this insanity. Howard Lutnick, who might be
31:52
Speaker 1: a loon, doesn't seem to know what he's doing.
31:53
Speaker 6: Might.
31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, might. I'm trying to benefit the doubt here, John.
31:56
Speaker 1: I don't know him personally. And they, it's just, the
32:00
Speaker 1: president has a, no idea, he doesn't understand policy at all.
32:03
Speaker 1: And he has, clearly has some sort of fleeting relationship
32:06
Speaker 1: with reality. And he's just unilaterally making policy with no
32:09
Speaker 1: guidance and no pushback from anyone. And this is, this
32:13
Speaker 1: is what everyone said was going to happen. I mean,
32:14
Speaker 1: he's going to hurt the economy and he's doing it.
32:17
Speaker 3: His reference point is like, you know, William McKinley, Did
32:20
Speaker 3: tariffs and that was successful. And then also like we
32:23
Speaker 3: should be, you know, I want to go back to 1950,
32:26
Speaker 3: the 1950s, where we were this manufacturing might like the
32:29
Speaker 3: idea that you can just undo the entire global economy
32:35
Speaker 3: and everyone can go back to like what we were
32:37
Speaker 3: like 50, 60, 70 years ago. It's completely insane. Any
32:42
Speaker 3: car is manufactured with parts from a dozen different countries.
32:46
Speaker 3: And to try to figure out where it's going to
32:48
Speaker 3: be made here, it's just so fucking stupid. And he
32:54
Speaker 3: really thinks they're going to unwind the entire global economy
32:58
Speaker 3: and that we are going to produce everything we need
33:01
Speaker 3: in America. And that's it. With like, and not realizing
33:04
Speaker 3: that that's not just like a recipe for short term pain,
33:08
Speaker 3: which by the way, when's the last time Americans have
33:10
Speaker 3: been like, you know what, I'm willing to sacrifice some
33:12
Speaker 3: of my own financial well being for this. larger dream
33:18
Speaker 3: of a wealthier America down the road. First of all,
33:20
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen. Second of all, that's not what's going
33:23
Speaker 3: to happen. It's just going to be short-term pain, medium-term pain,
33:27
Speaker 3: long-term pain.
33:29
Speaker 1: For no gain.
33:30
Speaker 3: For no gain.
33:31
Speaker 1: It is pain for no gain. The thing here is,
33:34
Speaker 1: is that it would be one thing if he, like
33:37
Speaker 1: there is a world in which you put all these
33:38
Speaker 1: tariffs on, you keep them on. You then pump money
33:42
Speaker 1: into the U.S. manufacturing sector and to build up US manufacturing.
33:47
Speaker 1: But that's not what he's doing. One day he's doing
33:50
Speaker 1: things that would theoretically bring manufacturing back here by putting
33:53
Speaker 1: these tariffs on. What business in the world would say,
33:58
Speaker 1: there were these tariffs on for 36 hours. This seems
34:01
Speaker 1: like a stable place to move my factory to. And
34:05
Speaker 1: then just on top of the insanity of this whole thing,
34:08
Speaker 1: he's so mad about our trade relationships with Canada and Mexico.
34:13
Speaker 1: Let's not forget who negotiated the existing on-the-books trade deals
34:18
Speaker 1: with Canada and Mexico. It was Donald Trump, the last
34:20
Speaker 1: time he was president with the USCMA or whatever it is,
34:23
Speaker 1: the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement that he said was the greatest trade
34:26
Speaker 1: agreement of all time. Biden didn't change it. Nothing changed.
34:30
Speaker 1: It's his own deal.
34:31
Speaker 3: The worst part of it all is him being like, well,
34:33
Speaker 3: we're going to be rich. It's going to bring in
34:34
Speaker 3: so much tax revenue. It's like the tax revenue you're
34:37
Speaker 3: bringing in is from American companies that are paying the tax.
34:41
Speaker 3: And the way that American companies are paying that tax
34:43
Speaker 3: is they're then passing the cost on to all of us.
34:46
Speaker 3: It's just like we're going to get so much more
34:48
Speaker 3: tax revenue from you, the American consumer, which is going
34:52
Speaker 3: to be a regressive tax because sales taxes are regressive taxes.
34:57
Speaker 1: Donald Trump wants to put on a national sales tax
35:01
Speaker 1: on products imported from various parts of the world. Food,
35:07
Speaker 1: auto parts, energy, whatever it is.
35:10
Speaker 3: You know, you remember during the campaign, I was big
35:14
Speaker 3: on the— we should talk more about the tariffs and
35:16
Speaker 3: the sales tax thing. And I was very big, but
35:19
Speaker 3: you were, you were huge on it, but I didn't. And,
35:21
Speaker 3: but I bought the argument that like, and I still do.
35:24
Speaker 3: I think that even if we had, even if Kamala
35:26
Speaker 3: Harris had doubled down and talked about it every single
35:28
Speaker 3: day and ran ads about it, I think it might
35:30
Speaker 3: not have landed the way it does now because no
35:32
Speaker 3: one would believe that Donald Trump is fucking crazy enough
35:37
Speaker 3: to have done this. And like, when he got the
35:39
Speaker 3: reaction he did, not just from the markets, but from
35:41
Speaker 3: companies from other countries, just continue to do it and
35:44
Speaker 3: then go back and forth. So maybe it wouldn't have
35:46
Speaker 3: been as believable a hit as it should have been.
35:50
Speaker 1: Well, all those business people, all those Wall Street guys who,
35:53
Speaker 1: you know, all the tech guys who coddled up to Trump,
35:55
Speaker 1: they believed one of two things. One, he would never
35:58
Speaker 1: actually do it. It was just a negotiating tactic.
36:00
Speaker 6: Right.
36:01
Speaker 1: Or if he did actually do it and the markets
36:03
Speaker 1: reacted negatively, he would back off. And instead he has
36:07
Speaker 1: doubled and tripled and quadrupled down.
36:09
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:09
Speaker 1: And he's made it even worse because he puts them
36:11
Speaker 1: all in takes on. So he's created this massive uncertainty
36:14
Speaker 1: in chaos that is, that is what is, it's the
36:17
Speaker 1: instability more than the strategy that is damaging the markets
36:21
Speaker 1: right now.
36:21
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:22
Speaker 3: Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but before
36:23
Speaker 3: we do some cricket tour news, strict scrutiny, our excellent
36:27
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38:26
Speaker 3: Well, there's one group of people who'll be making money
38:28
Speaker 3: no matter how bad Trump fucks up the economy, and
38:30
Speaker 3: that's Trump, his family, and their friends. Just this week,
38:34
Speaker 3: as Americans everywhere were freaking out about our 401ks, Trump
38:38
Speaker 3: held an event on the lawn of the White House
38:39
Speaker 3: that doubled as an infomercial for his top advisor's car company,
38:44
Speaker 3: Here's a taste.
38:46
Speaker 1: Should I get in?
38:48
Speaker 3: Get in.
38:50
Speaker 1: Okay. Let me get in a second.
38:53
Speaker 6: Do you want my notes?
38:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:55
Speaker 1: They gave me notes. I said, I'm not Biden.
38:57
Speaker 3: I don't need notes.
38:59
Speaker 4: That's beautiful. This is a different panel than I've had.
39:02
Speaker 4: Everything's computer in terms of imagination.
39:05
Speaker 6: I think I have a great imagination.
39:07
Speaker 4: Who else but this guy would design this and everybody
39:10
Speaker 4: on the road is looking at it.
39:12
Speaker 3: What kind of truck would Blade Runner drive? That was
39:15
Speaker 3: the design idea.
39:18
Speaker 6: It's really amazing.
39:19
Speaker 1: Thank you all very much. I love Tesla.
39:22
Speaker 5: Which one did you buy?
39:24
Speaker 1: Tesla.
39:25
Speaker 3: I love Tesla. I clearly had no idea the Blade
39:28
Speaker 3: Runner reference just went right away. his head.
39:30
Speaker 2: Not at all.
39:30
Speaker 1: Only a movie that came out in the early 80s,
39:32
Speaker 1: I think.
39:33
Speaker 3: So that was Trump and Elon Musk and Elon Musk's
39:36
Speaker 3: child once again popping up in the White House. on
39:40
Speaker 3: the front lawn of the White House selling Teslas. Trump
39:44
Speaker 3: decided he's going to buy a Tesla. Sean Hannity said
39:47
Speaker 3: he's buying a Tesla. And so now we're all buying.
39:51
Speaker 3: Now MAGA loves Teslas. And they're doing it because the
39:55
Speaker 3: libs have been so mean to Elon Musk. And now
39:59
Speaker 3: if you protest at a Tesla dealership and it gets
40:03
Speaker 3: out of hand, that is domestic terrorism. They are labeling
40:06
Speaker 3: that domestic terrorism. If you Fuck up a Tesla dealership.
40:09
Speaker 3: So please, peaceful protests only outside of the Tesla dealership.
40:12
Speaker 1: That may also be domestic terrorism under this.
40:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. So
40:16
Speaker 3: because everyone's so mean to Elon and Elon is just
40:19
Speaker 3: so hard up for cash, which is just a guy
40:21
Speaker 3: who's just trying to make a living and he's sacrificed
40:24
Speaker 3: so much to just destroy government with his Doge team.
40:28
Speaker 3: We got to help him out. We got to test
40:30
Speaker 3: the Tesla. You know, the share price of Tesla is
40:32
Speaker 3: just in the shitter. So clearly the guy's boss, who
40:37
Speaker 3: happens to be the president of the United States, is
40:39
Speaker 3: going to be out there selling cars. What can I
40:41
Speaker 3: do to put you in a Tesla today? He's not
40:43
Speaker 3: just selling cars.
40:44
Speaker 1: He's buying cars.
40:47
Speaker 3: He's buying cars. He's selling cars. I got cars to
40:49
Speaker 3: move off this White House lot.
40:51
Speaker 1: I just cannot emphasize this enough. At a time in
40:57
Speaker 1: which prices are rising and the stock market is sinking,
41:01
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's response to the pain the American people are
41:04
Speaker 1: feeling is to write a personal check to the world's
41:06
Speaker 1: richest man. It is insanity. We like to look at
41:13
Speaker 1: the data in the polls. I don't need polling data
41:15
Speaker 1: for that. That does not go down well.
41:19
Speaker 3: I also want to just make sure I have this
41:21
Speaker 3: right now. Okay. So now we love Tesla's. We love
41:29
Speaker 3: using the power of the state to protect and and
41:35
Speaker 3: and build American industries. But we hate tax credits for
41:40
Speaker 3: electric vehicles.
41:42
Speaker 1: And we hate charging stations. We hate charging stations.
41:46
Speaker 6: Yes.
41:46
Speaker 1: We were always going to be quite upset when they
41:47
Speaker 1: discovered that they bought all these Teslas in solidarity with Elon,
41:50
Speaker 1: only to find you can't charge them anywhere in middle
41:51
Speaker 1: America because we took out all the funding for the
41:53
Speaker 1: charging stations.
41:54
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure that they just believe that Elon will
41:56
Speaker 3: give them their own private charging stations so they can
41:59
Speaker 3: drive their cars because they don't really give a fuck
42:01
Speaker 3: about anyone else. Love Teslas. Again, love helping American industry.
42:07
Speaker 3: Hate tax credits for electric vehicles and charging stations.
42:11
Speaker 1: Donald Trump ran.
42:14
Speaker 1: And the Republicans ran millions of dollars of ads attacking
42:16
Speaker 1: electric vehicles in Michigan in this last election. And now
42:19
Speaker 1: he's selling them on the White House lawn.
42:21
Speaker 3: But wait, Dan, there's more. Representatives of the Trump family's
42:25
Speaker 3: World Liberty financial crypto business are reportedly in talks to
42:29
Speaker 3: take a stake in the disgraced crypto exchange Binance, which
42:32
Speaker 3: in 2023 pleaded guilty to federal money laundering charges and
42:36
Speaker 3: whose CEO is now seeking a pardon from Trump. According
42:40
Speaker 3: to Bloomberg... World Liberty and Binance are considering developing a
42:44
Speaker 3: so-called stablecoin. Dan, I'm sorry to do this to you,
42:48
Speaker 3: but can you explain to listeners who may not know
42:51
Speaker 3: what's Binance and what's a stablecoin? And I am one
42:55
Speaker 3: of those listeners who does not know what a stablecoin is.
42:58
Speaker 1: Well, the good news is, since you don't know, I
43:00
Speaker 1: can say virtually anything.
43:02
Speaker 3: You can? You can, no.
43:04
Speaker 1: But I will try to do this as accurately as
43:05
Speaker 1: I possibly can with my sleep-addled brain. But Binance is
43:08
Speaker 1: one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. It was founded
43:11
Speaker 1: in China. But now, according to Binance, it exists nowhere.
43:15
Speaker 1: It has no location, which is not sketchy at all.
43:17
Speaker 1: It just exists in the ether, which is definitely not
43:19
Speaker 1: a way to avoid local laws and taxes.
43:21
Speaker 3: Correct.
43:22
Speaker 1: It was founded by a guy named Shiping Zhao, who
43:25
Speaker 1: goes by the name CZ in crypto circles. And he's
43:28
Speaker 1: a very big personality in crypto circles. And as you mentioned,
43:31
Speaker 1: in 2023, Binance pled guilty to violating money laundering They
43:38
Speaker 1: paid a $ 4. 3 billion fine, one of the largest corporate
43:42
Speaker 1: fines ever paid. What they did was help facilitate money
43:46
Speaker 1: transfers to sanctioned organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas.
43:53
Speaker 3: Hamas, you say?
43:55
Speaker 1: I say Hamas.
43:56
Speaker 3: Oh, interesting.
43:57
Speaker 1: That Hamas.
43:58
Speaker 3: So the Trump family wants to get into business with...
44:04
Speaker 3: a convicted felon who helped launder money for Hamas, do
44:10
Speaker 3: you think that that possibly has adverse foreign policy consequences?
44:14
Speaker 3: Or are those just for people who peacefully protest and
44:20
Speaker 3: are immigrants that we are then going to deport? What
44:23
Speaker 3: do you think?
44:24
Speaker 1: Apparently, there's a two-tiered system of justice, as Trump used
44:26
Speaker 1: to say. And CZ spent several months in jail for
44:33
Speaker 1: crimes related to this. As part of this, Binance reportedly
44:36
Speaker 1: instructed some of these users to hide their location when
44:38
Speaker 1: they did the money transfers to hide it from authorities.
44:42
Speaker 1: And during the campaign, according to these reports, officials from
44:45
Speaker 1: Binance went to Trump officials, Trump family, Trump allies to
44:50
Speaker 1: begin a conversation about a possible business venture at the
44:54
Speaker 1: same time that CZ was seeking a pardon for its crimes.
44:56
Speaker 1: And Binance is trying to get back into the U.S. market.
45:00
Speaker 1: And What this business venture would mean is sort of
45:03
Speaker 1: an open question. It could be an investment from the
45:06
Speaker 1: Trump family into Binance. They could take a stake in
45:09
Speaker 1: the company. It could mean some sort of partnership or
45:12
Speaker 1: joint venture between World Liberty Finance, which is Trump's crypto
45:15
Speaker 1: company that did his meme coins, and Binance. And then,
45:18
Speaker 1: in a potentially even more alarming situation, according to Bloomberg,
45:22
Speaker 1: the report is that they could create what is called
45:24
Speaker 1: a stablecoin. A stablecoin is cryptocurrency that is pegged to
45:31
Speaker 1: real reserve assets, right? Where theoretically you have the money
45:34
Speaker 1: to back it up. So the price stays stable. So
45:38
Speaker 1: unlike like Bitcoin or Ethereum or these meme coins, you're
45:41
Speaker 1: not like buying and selling it like a financial instrument
45:45
Speaker 1: to make money on the spread. It's so you can
45:49
Speaker 1: transfer money. It's legitimate currency. Now, there are real questions
45:52
Speaker 1: for some of these stable coins about whether the actual
45:55
Speaker 1: backup assets exist. That could be US dollars, could be gold,
45:59
Speaker 1: it could be other crypto assets. But essentially what you
46:03
Speaker 1: would be creating is Trump bucks here. It might be
46:05
Speaker 1: an actual Trump currency that the Trump family would control
46:08
Speaker 1: and could be sent to people with– not just without
46:12
Speaker 1: paying bank fees, which is one of the arguments before
46:15
Speaker 1: stable coins and a decentralized financial system, but also without
46:18
Speaker 1: people knowing how it's being spent. And there are a
46:20
Speaker 1: lot of– there's legislation moving through the Senate on this.
46:23
Speaker 1: There's a lot of concern from people like Elizabeth Warren
46:25
Speaker 1: about the idea about these stable coins that non-financial institutions
46:28
Speaker 1: could control them. therefore not be subject to some of
46:31
Speaker 1: the regulations that would be in place in a normal presidency.
46:34
Speaker 1: And so this is just one of the most brazen
46:38
Speaker 1: bits of corruption you could possibly imagine. As you said
46:41
Speaker 1: in your intro, you have the president's family doing business
46:46
Speaker 1: with people guilty of money laundering while the head of
46:50
Speaker 1: said money laundering company is seeking a pardon from the president.
46:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, like literally terrorist financing. And Senator Warren has been
47:00
Speaker 3: working on that for a while, too. And I think
47:03
Speaker 3: it was like a bipartisan bill at some point, because
47:05
Speaker 3: like one of the challenges, one of the many problems
47:08
Speaker 3: with crypto and the crypto industry is that terrorist organizations
47:14
Speaker 3: use crypto to launder money to hide it from because
47:17
Speaker 3: they can't, you know, use banks. And now this now
47:21
Speaker 3: Binance that did this with Hamas, ISIS. Business with the
47:28
Speaker 3: Trump family. Business with the Trump family. Seems totally normal.
47:31
Speaker 3: There's a meeting with Steve Witkoff, the guy that's negotiating,
47:36
Speaker 3: the Middle East negotiator who's sitting down with Putin.
47:39
Speaker 1: We call him Marco Rubio's boss, Steve Witkoff. It's worth noting, however,
47:45
Speaker 1: that Steve Witkoff's representatives denied that he had any involvement
47:49
Speaker 1: in this, and CZ himself went on Twitter to offer
47:51
Speaker 1: a denial as well.
47:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was reported a couple places. I like that
47:56
Speaker 3: the New York Times... I saw Peter Kafka tweet this,
47:58
Speaker 3: but they really reported this part in a really understated way.
48:02
Speaker 3: But pursuing a business deal involving a felon seeking a
48:04
Speaker 3: pardon from his administration would be an unprecedented overlap of
48:07
Speaker 3: his business and the government.
48:11
Speaker 1: I would say so.
48:11
Speaker 3: That's a big overlap. That's one you're going to want
48:14
Speaker 3: to watch. Remember back in Trump's first term when Kellyanne
48:18
Speaker 3: Conway got an official warning from the White House ethics
48:21
Speaker 3: office for casually suggesting that Americans should buy from Ivanka
48:24
Speaker 3: Trump's clothing line?
48:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:27
Speaker 3: Just so we know how far we've come. Now we've
48:30
Speaker 3: got the president of the United States hawking Teslas and
48:33
Speaker 3: his family looking at business deals with a crypto felon.
48:38
Speaker 1: Well, I was trying to remember the name of the
48:41
Speaker 1: guy who was the White House ethics officer who got fired.
48:45
Speaker 2: Oh.
48:45
Speaker 1: Remember what I'm talking about? He was big on Twitter
48:47
Speaker 1: for a long time.
48:48
Speaker 8: He was.
48:49
Speaker 3: He was big on Twitter. He was a character from
48:54
Speaker 3: the first resistance. Yes, for some time.
48:56
Speaker 1: He may be huge on Blue Sky right now. I
48:58
Speaker 1: don't know.
48:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't either.
49:00
Speaker 1: But either way, what is at stake here is when
49:04
Speaker 1: Kellyanne Conway got in trouble for violations of the Hatch Act,
49:06
Speaker 1: that wasn't just the White House Ethics Office. That is
49:08
Speaker 1: the Office of Special Counsel, which is theoretically a quasi-independent
49:11
Speaker 1: agency within the government that enforces the Hatch Act. Trump
49:15
Speaker 1: fired Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel,
49:19
Speaker 1: as part of his deep state purge. And so currently
49:21
Speaker 1: there is no person who would be administering these rules
49:26
Speaker 1: and enforcing them. So it is the purge 24-7, 365 in.
49:28
Speaker 3: The Trump administration. People are going to care about this, right?
49:34
Speaker 3: They just got to know about this. People have to
49:36
Speaker 3: care about this, particularly when the split screen is Trump
49:40
Speaker 3: hawking the Teslas and the crypto stuff with the markets
49:44
Speaker 3: tanking and risks of recession going up. I don't know.
49:48
Speaker 1: I just want to push back on one thing. The
49:51
Speaker 1: pushbacks from the right has been this picture of Biden
49:55
Speaker 1: in an electric Jeep on the White House lawn.
49:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
49:58
Speaker 1: But here's the difference. the founder of Jeep did not
50:04
Speaker 1: spend $ 300 million to elect Joe Biden and did not
50:06
Speaker 1: just promise another $ 100 million in donations to his political organization.
50:11
Speaker 1: That is a, these are entirely different deals and it
50:14
Speaker 1: is absurd.
50:15
Speaker 3: It wasn't Hunter Biden's Jeep dealership, you know?
50:18
Speaker 1: That's right. It's just so stupid. Like, are people going
50:22
Speaker 1: to care?
50:22
Speaker 3: It's so much worse than Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden
50:24
Speaker 3: wasn't in the government. It would be like Jeff Zients'
50:29
Speaker 3: Jeep dealership.
50:32
Speaker 1: If Jeff Zients had given $ 300 million to get him elected.
50:35
Speaker 6: Right.
50:35
Speaker 3: Again, yeah, there's no comparison.
50:37
Speaker 1: You can't even come up with some sort of reasonable
50:39
Speaker 1: example because there is no thing like this.
50:41
Speaker 3: Nothing like this.
50:43
Speaker 1: People are going to care. And you do see this
50:45
Speaker 1: in polling. As you know, I'm obsessed with corruption as
50:47
Speaker 1: a key part of the Democratic message. If you watch
50:50
Speaker 1: the polling, the number of people concerned about corruption keeps
50:52
Speaker 1: going up and up and up. And for good reason.
50:55
Speaker 3: Trump crime family. Trump crime family.
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Speaker 3: Okay, according to the beautiful gold-plated timepiece I purchased from GetTrumpWatches.com
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Speaker 3: for just $ 799, it's now time to introduce our final topic.
52:40
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm so mad about this.
52:43
Speaker 3: So, it's only been about four months since the last
52:46
Speaker 3: presidential election, and sadly... No, I don't know. We don't
52:50
Speaker 3: have to officially start talking about the next one.
52:52
Speaker 8: Read.
52:54
Speaker 3: No, we're going to. So Democrats are making moves. We're
52:56
Speaker 3: not going to get into the presidential so much. But
52:59
Speaker 3: 2026 midterms are coming. And which means that the very
53:03
Speaker 3: least now candidates have to start announcing that they're running.
53:06
Speaker 2: Right.
53:07
Speaker 3: Because, you know, you have to start your campaign. Democrats
53:10
Speaker 3: are making moves. Pete Buttigieg announced on Thursday that he
53:14
Speaker 3: will not be running for Senate in Michigan or governor.
53:19
Speaker 3: which leaves the door open for potential presidential run in 2028.
53:23
Speaker 3: For Pete, Tim Walz is out there. He's touring the country,
53:26
Speaker 3: distancing himself from the Harris campaign. We talked a little
53:29
Speaker 3: bit about that. Gavin Newsom has launched a podcast where
53:34
Speaker 3: he's raising his profile. He's talking to MAGA goons like
53:37
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. That's happening. We could do
53:41
Speaker 3: a whole episode on that.
53:42
Speaker 1: That's definitely happening.
53:42
Speaker 3: That's happening. Kamala Harris herself is toying with a run
53:45
Speaker 3: to replace Newsom as governor of California. where she will
53:48
Speaker 3: face a formidable challenge from, among others, Katie Porter, our
53:53
Speaker 3: pal Katie Porter, who officially entered the race this week.
53:57
Speaker 3: We're going to get to Lovett's interview with Katie Porter.
54:01
Speaker 3: He wasn't just going to do some remote thing. He
54:02
Speaker 3: drove down to Orange County this week. Lovett just got
54:05
Speaker 3: in the car, just drove down.
54:06
Speaker 1: He flew to Michigan over the weekend. He's in Orange
54:08
Speaker 1: County on a Tuesday.
54:09
Speaker 3: He's all over the place.
54:10
Speaker 1: It's great.
54:12
Speaker 3: So before we get to Lovett's interview, is this all
54:15
Speaker 3: really happening now? Not just about Katie Porter. We're talking
54:19
Speaker 3: about presidential 26? No, we're not.
54:22
Speaker 1: Some people may, but we are not.
54:24
Speaker 3: We are not.
54:24
Speaker 1: And I think we should put.
54:26
Speaker 3: I have no views. No views that I'm sharing.
54:31
Speaker 1: It would be, honestly, truly idiotic to have a view
54:35
Speaker 1: about 2028 right now. I think I've said this on
54:38
Speaker 1: this podcast before. I say it to everyone who brings
54:40
Speaker 1: up 2028. At this point, In 2005, when we were
54:43
Speaker 1: still licking our wounds from losing to George W. Bush,
54:45
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he invaded the wrong country after 9-11,
54:51
Speaker 1: everyone thought we needed a moderate white guy, preferably a
54:56
Speaker 1: governor like Mark Warner. That was the flavor du jour.
55:00
Speaker 1: And then a few years later, we nominated Barack Hussein
55:03
Speaker 1: Obama from the South Side of Chicago, uh, via indonesia
55:07
Speaker 1: and hawaii so we don't no one knows what we
55:08
Speaker 1: actually need right now and so pretending like you know
55:10
Speaker 1: what footer's gonna want 20 28 is insane some of us.
55:13
Speaker 3: Know we needed that and we're glad that we lured
55:15
Speaker 3: you away from evan by to help us out well.
55:18
Speaker 1: You didn't just lure me away from evan by you
55:21
Speaker 1: ran evan by out of the race uh so for
55:25
Speaker 1: which everyone is forever grateful um i wonder what percentage
55:28
Speaker 1: of people know who evan bias he's a senator from
55:32
Speaker 1: indiana uh Anyway, go ahead. Either way, not important. But
55:36
Speaker 1: I think we should put Pete's decision is not a
55:38
Speaker 1: 2028 decision. He had to announce if he was going
55:41
Speaker 1: to seek these seats now because other candidates are getting
55:43
Speaker 1: in the race. It's forming. It would be time to.
55:47
Speaker 1: To begin forming a campaign, to begin getting petition signatures,
55:51
Speaker 1: to get on the ballot. And so, yes, the logical
55:54
Speaker 1: conclusion is if he's not running for something in 2026,
55:56
Speaker 1: he's running for something in 2020. And that may be true,
55:58
Speaker 1: but that is a, I put that in the Katie Porter,
56:01
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris may run for governor category. The other thing
56:04
Speaker 1: I'd say is whether you're running for president in 2028
56:06
Speaker 1: or not, and this is the thing I took from
56:09
Speaker 1: Lovett's experience with Bernie Sanders, is people are hungry for people,
56:13
Speaker 1: for someone to get out there and fight. to speak
56:18
Speaker 1: with authenticity and passion about what is happening in this country,
56:20
Speaker 1: to speak to people's fears and their hopes. And so
56:23
Speaker 1: all the people who may want to run for president,
56:25
Speaker 1: don't do presidential level. Like, just go get out there.
56:26
Speaker 1: Go to those Republican districts and do town halls. The
56:30
Speaker 1: people who think they want to run for president but
56:32
Speaker 1: are being silent right now, I think, are missing a moment.
56:34
Speaker 3: I think it's a huge mistake.
56:36
Speaker 1: Not just to help your presidential candidacy, but to use
56:39
Speaker 1: the interest in your potential presidential candidacy to help the
56:42
Speaker 1: larger cause of pushing back against Trump and Musk.
56:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, I completely agree with that. OK, well, with all
56:47
Speaker 3: that said, we are going to get to Lovett's interview
56:51
Speaker 3: with Katie Porter. All right.
56:58
Speaker 1: I am here with Congressman Katie Porter on the set
57:01
Speaker 1: of her TV commercial. A.K.A. My Kitchen. It is actually
57:05
Speaker 1: your kitchen.
57:05
Speaker 8: It is actually my kitchen.
57:06
Speaker 3: You've been asked about that.
57:07
Speaker 8: People have actually asked me that. Like, is that actually
57:09
Speaker 8: her kitchen?
57:10
Speaker 6: Yeah.
57:10
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really.
57:11
Speaker 8: I don't think it's a compliment.
57:13
Speaker 3: No, I don't.
57:14
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's I honestly I think it's like, wow,
57:16
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I think the kitchen of a
57:19
Speaker 1: working mom is who's actually living that life as opposed
57:23
Speaker 1: to doing an impression of someone doing that.
57:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
57:25
Speaker 8: And I think that people have this expectation that things
57:29
Speaker 8: are shiny and new and. Like, this is it. This
57:32
Speaker 8: is actually my kitchen. And so, you know, it's the
57:35
Speaker 8: same thing when people are like, do you actually drive
57:37
Speaker 8: that minivan? And I was like, yeah, it was my
57:39
Speaker 8: only car until a few months ago.
57:42
Speaker 1: And that was actual pee from your dog, Poppy, on
57:44
Speaker 1: the floor when we walked in.
57:44
Speaker 8: Yes, that was actual pee. Thank you. Thank you for
57:47
Speaker 8: advertising that.
57:47
Speaker 3: Yes.
57:48
Speaker 1: So it's March of 2025. What made you jump into
57:52
Speaker 1: this race for the governorship so early?
57:53
Speaker 8: Well, look, I think Californians are hungry for leadership. I
57:56
Speaker 8: think the country, half of the country anyway, is really,
57:59
Speaker 8: really hungry for leadership. They're concerned about what Donald Trump
58:03
Speaker 8: is doing, and they want to make sure that we're
58:05
Speaker 8: going to have a plan to deal with that. A
58:07
Speaker 8: plan not only for the next several months, but a
58:09
Speaker 8: plan for what could be a very, very long four years.
58:12
Speaker 1: So you talked in your announcement video about fighting back
58:15
Speaker 1: against Trump, but Governors have been in a bit of
58:18
Speaker 1: a bind because they obviously want to defend, especially Democratic
58:22
Speaker 1: governors want to defend their people against abuses from the
58:24
Speaker 1: federal government. But if there's a disaster in California, and
58:27
Speaker 1: there will be, Trump's on a revenge tour against governors
58:30
Speaker 1: he doesn't like. So how do you think about that?
58:32
Speaker 8: Look, I think it's exactly what I said in my
58:34
Speaker 8: launch video, which is I will say yes to anyone
58:37
Speaker 8: and I am willing to say no to anyone. I
58:40
Speaker 8: will work with anyone who has a good idea, regardless
58:43
Speaker 8: of what else we agree or disagree on. Look, I
58:45
Speaker 8: had a lot of bipartisan bills in Congress. I didn't
58:47
Speaker 8: agree with everybody on those issues. At the same time,
58:51
Speaker 8: people want to know that you'll have their backs, that
58:52
Speaker 8: you're willing to stand up and that you're going to
58:55
Speaker 8: go toe to toe with Donald Trump and that you're
58:57
Speaker 8: going to come up a winner. So, look, bipartisan disaster relief,
59:00
Speaker 8: wildfire relief, that should be bipartisan. I think that Governor
59:03
Speaker 8: Newsom did the right thing to walk with President Trump,
59:06
Speaker 8: to get him here on the ground. That's what fighting
59:09
Speaker 8: for California is. looks like in that context. But when
59:12
Speaker 8: we have a president who's saying, I'm going to cut
59:14
Speaker 8: off health care for a third of your population, then
59:17
Speaker 8: that's time to push back and time to fight.
59:21
Speaker 1: Now, for the most part, the people you'd be pushing
59:25
Speaker 1: back against if you're a governor are Democrats. And there's
59:27
Speaker 1: a lot of people that look at California and say,
59:29
Speaker 1: this is a state where you've had Democrats in the
59:32
Speaker 1: governor's mansion. You've had Democrats controlling the assembly. And we
59:35
Speaker 1: haven't been able to build housing. We haven't been able
59:37
Speaker 1: to tackle a lot of the biggest challenges we face.
59:40
Speaker 1: How do you think about pushing back against Democrats or Democrats?
59:45
Speaker 1: When there aren't Republicans to blame, what do you think
59:47
Speaker 1: went wrong here?
59:48
Speaker 8: Well, I think people want to see a common sense approach.
59:50
Speaker 8: They want you to call a spade a spade. Where
59:52
Speaker 8: we have come up short, we need to do better,
59:55
Speaker 8: not try to convince people that there isn't a problem.
59:57
Speaker 8: Anybody who's walking into a grocery store today, walking back
1:00:00
Speaker 8: out with any number of groceries, understands the problem. People
1:00:03
Speaker 8: who have kids who are wondering if they're going to
1:00:05
Speaker 8: be able to afford to stay in California. As a mom,
1:00:09
Speaker 8: I feel that personally. So I think you have to
1:00:11
Speaker 8: be straight with people. This is where we've fallen short. This,
1:00:14
Speaker 8: you know, Governor Newsom, when he got elected, said he
1:00:16
Speaker 8: was going to focus on housing. Kudos to him for
1:00:18
Speaker 8: seeing and talking about housing at a time when very
1:00:21
Speaker 8: few Democrats were. But I think we've taken the tools
1:00:24
Speaker 8: that he's used about as far as we can. Now
1:00:26
Speaker 8: we need a set of fresh ideas.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: What are some of those ideas? And do you look
1:00:29
Speaker 1: at like, you know, people talk about Florida and Texas
1:00:33
Speaker 1: versus California, right? You have the kind of conservative, more
1:00:35
Speaker 1: conservative model than you have the democratic model. Are there
1:00:38
Speaker 1: lessons that you would take from what some of those
1:00:41
Speaker 1: other states have done?
1:00:42
Speaker 6: Yeah.
1:00:42
Speaker 8: So one of them is look. We in California, we
1:00:45
Speaker 8: need to fight to get good high paying jobs here,
1:00:49
Speaker 8: not just keep the ones we have, but actually bring
1:00:52
Speaker 8: new industries here with good jobs. So we always say, well,
1:00:55
Speaker 8: we're the fifth or sixth biggest economy.
1:00:57
Speaker 1: I want to be the fourth biggest.
1:00:58
Speaker 8: I want to be the third biggest. I want those
1:01:00
Speaker 8: jobs to be there and I want to attract new
1:01:02
Speaker 8: and amazing talent. I think the other lesson is. coming
1:01:06
Speaker 8: from the Trump administration is people want to see things done.
1:01:09
Speaker 8: So you have to be willing to think a little
1:01:12
Speaker 8: outside the box, to prioritize, to have a tight agenda.
1:01:16
Speaker 8: You can't be the everything everywhere all at once. You
1:01:19
Speaker 8: have to have some priorities. You have to tackle them
1:01:21
Speaker 8: and you have to be straight with people. This is
1:01:23
Speaker 8: how far I got. This is what needs to be done.
1:01:26
Speaker 8: Here's the lesson learned. Here's what I'm going to change
1:01:28
Speaker 8: to deliver the rest.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: Is there a little part of you when you see
1:01:32
Speaker 1: someone like Elon Musk barreling through the government, and obviously,
1:01:35
Speaker 1: I asked and answered, doing it in a despicable way,
1:01:39
Speaker 1: destroying important resources.
1:01:40
Speaker 8: In a disingenuous way.
1:01:41
Speaker 1: Yes. But, Do you see that and think, no, of course,
1:01:44
Speaker 1: that's not what we should be doing? But man, if
1:01:47
Speaker 1: Democrats were a little less deferential to some of these
1:01:50
Speaker 1: institutional prerogatives, man, if Democrats were a little less consensus
1:01:53
Speaker 1: oriented and a little combative, do you take any lesson
1:01:55
Speaker 1: from what we're seeing?
1:01:56
Speaker 8: Well, look, you're talking to someone who during the COVID
1:01:59
Speaker 8: pandemic in the early, early days had it was the
1:02:03
Speaker 8: second to last person to question 50 people in question.
1:02:06
Speaker 8: And the CDC director and all of the executives danced
1:02:09
Speaker 8: on the top of it. The government officials had said,
1:02:12
Speaker 8: we're trying. This is what we're working on. We're operationalizing it.
1:02:16
Speaker 8: And the truth was, there was a law that allowed
1:02:19
Speaker 8: for make testing free in a public health emergency. And
1:02:22
Speaker 8: I stuck with the CDC director until I got him
1:02:25
Speaker 8: to yes. Not yes for me, yes for everyone in
1:02:28
Speaker 8: America for free testing. So I think that's a good
1:02:31
Speaker 8: example of being really true to our values. If you
1:02:36
Speaker 8: believe that government workers do good work, put them to work.
1:02:40
Speaker 8: Let them thrive, right? And so I think believing that
1:02:43
Speaker 8: government can do things and holding it accountable to achieve
1:02:47
Speaker 8: those outcomes are entirely consistent. So Democrats should own the
1:02:51
Speaker 8: issues of things like government efficiency. We should own the
1:02:54
Speaker 8: issues of modernizing government so that it works better for
1:02:57
Speaker 8: people and it inspires confidence. We should own the issue,
1:03:01
Speaker 8: I would argue, even of things like taxpayer rights and
1:03:04
Speaker 8: making sure that taxpayers are seeing return for what they do.
1:03:08
Speaker 8: We want to see outcomes. Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody want
1:03:12
Speaker 8: to see outcomes. And I think Democrats need to be
1:03:14
Speaker 8: laser focused on that. So part of the reason I
1:03:16
Speaker 8: care so much about oversight is that's what oversight's about.
1:03:19
Speaker 8: It's about closing that gap between what People stand at
1:03:23
Speaker 8: a press conference and say they're going to do, and
1:03:25
Speaker 8: then what's actually happening? If you don't close that gap,
1:03:28
Speaker 8: you're going to lose people's trust. You're going to lose
1:03:29
Speaker 8: their confidence.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that gap. So 30 years ago, we
1:03:34
Speaker 1: were going to have high-speed rail in California by 2020.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: We're supposed to have a train that takes us from
1:03:39
Speaker 1: San Francisco all the way to San Diego. Now we
1:03:43
Speaker 1: can't seem to build a train that goes from Bakersfield
1:03:46
Speaker 1: to Merced, which makes no fucking sense to me. What would...
1:03:52
Speaker 1: Do you believe right now sitting here that you could
1:03:55
Speaker 1: help get done that high speed rail line between our
1:03:57
Speaker 1: two biggest cities?
1:03:58
Speaker 8: Well, I think there's two challenges with that. One is
1:04:01
Speaker 8: President Trump is trying to take back the promised federal
1:04:04
Speaker 8: funding that is the foundation of the project. So you
1:04:07
Speaker 8: can't push it ahead when it's when it's being sort
1:04:10
Speaker 8: of undervalued. cut down from the bottom, right? So you
1:04:12
Speaker 8: can't build something when it's being eroded from the bottom.
1:04:14
Speaker 8: And that's what he's doing with that funding.
1:04:15
Speaker 1: Well, except the money that's supposed to come from the
1:04:18
Speaker 1: federal government is less than how much the budget has ballooned, right? Correct.
1:04:22
Speaker 1: We're already on track to spend more as a state
1:04:25
Speaker 1: than we were supposed to spend on the entire thing,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: not like 10 years ago.
1:04:28
Speaker 8: So that's my second point. There are real costs. to delay.
1:04:33
Speaker 8: There are real costs to being overly cautious. There are
1:04:36
Speaker 8: real costs to deciding that you have to make everybody
1:04:39
Speaker 8: happy all of the time. You know, I think Governor
1:04:42
Speaker 8: Jerry Brown was a little bit of a good example
1:04:43
Speaker 8: of this. Governor Schwarzenegger, a little bit of a good
1:04:45
Speaker 8: example of this. They made some people unhappy when necessary
1:04:49
Speaker 8: to get their top priorities done. And so I think
1:04:52
Speaker 8: with this high-speed rail project, we have to decide, are
1:04:55
Speaker 8: we going to build this? And if so, I have
1:04:57
Speaker 8: every confidence that California can do it. And if we're not,
1:05:00
Speaker 8: then we need to cut bait and quit wasting taxpayer dollars.
1:05:04
Speaker 1: We've had a cat.
1:05:05
Speaker 8: This is Dino.
1:05:06
Speaker 6: Dino.
1:05:06
Speaker 5: Yep.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: So on housing, uh, we face the dog. I mean,
1:05:12
Speaker 1: this is, I love this. I'm so glad we came.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: It's so much better in person. Uh, On housing, it's
1:05:18
Speaker 1: the same problem, right? You have to make some people
1:05:21
Speaker 1: upset to build a lot of housing. Are you going
1:05:22
Speaker 1: to tell the NIMBYs to fuck off?
1:05:24
Speaker 8: Well, look, people need to understand there are consequences to
1:05:28
Speaker 8: all of us, whether you're currently a homeowner, whether you
1:05:31
Speaker 8: want to be a homeowner, whether it feels way out
1:05:33
Speaker 8: of reach. There are consequences to every single homeowner. person
1:05:37
Speaker 8: in California of not building enough housing. We have a
1:05:40
Speaker 8: mindset problem and we need to call it out and
1:05:42
Speaker 8: to shake it up, which is this idea that if
1:05:45
Speaker 8: we do something to lower the cost of housing, that's
1:05:47
Speaker 8: helping only the people who can't afford housing. Nonsense. Our
1:05:52
Speaker 8: whole economy is being held back by our housing challenges.
1:05:56
Speaker 8: So this is the exact same argument we have about
1:05:58
Speaker 8: things like school funding. People say, well, why should I
1:06:01
Speaker 8: pay for schools? I don't have kids. because that's the
1:06:03
Speaker 8: future workforce. So I think we need to get out
1:06:06
Speaker 8: of this, who benefits? It's this little sliver and get
1:06:10
Speaker 8: into talking about things that, for instance, if we build
1:06:13
Speaker 8: more housing, Every single person in California is going to
1:06:16
Speaker 8: benefit because it will increase. Our businesses will come here.
1:06:19
Speaker 8: Jobs will come here. People will be able to spend more.
1:06:22
Speaker 8: We'll have more sales tax revenue. All of those things
1:06:25
Speaker 8: are up. It's not a zero sum game. And we
1:06:27
Speaker 8: have to get out of that conversation.
1:06:29
Speaker 1: But even if like here, the problem is that like
1:06:30
Speaker 1: even if most people agree, I think most people in
1:06:32
Speaker 1: California already agree. Most people in the state are Democrats.
1:06:35
Speaker 1: or most voters are Democrats, they mostly agree with you.
1:06:36
Speaker 1: The problem is you have in individual projects, individual communities,
1:06:40
Speaker 1: you have a committed group of people that are able
1:06:42
Speaker 1: to not just use public opinion and public sentiment, but
1:06:46
Speaker 1: our environmental laws, our town hall processes, and all these
1:06:52
Speaker 1: different levers of government that originally were supposed to make
1:06:55
Speaker 1: government work better, that grind everything to a halt. And
1:06:57
Speaker 1: it does seem to me that one job of a
1:06:59
Speaker 1: leader in this state is to obliterate those blocks.
1:07:02
Speaker 8: Those are roadblocks. And you need to be clear, we
1:07:04
Speaker 8: are building a road.
1:07:06
Speaker 4: Right?
1:07:06
Speaker 8: And so I think that's exactly what you need to say.
1:07:08
Speaker 8: All of these things, the environmental laws, the local processes,
1:07:12
Speaker 8: it's too much. If we want to get problems solved quickly,
1:07:16
Speaker 8: and there is a real hunger from voters in California
1:07:19
Speaker 8: to tackle some of these things that we have dealt
1:07:21
Speaker 8: with now for too long, then you're going to have
1:07:23
Speaker 8: to be willing to make hard choices, to have hard conversations.
1:07:27
Speaker 8: And to own the consequences of that. And I think
1:07:30
Speaker 8: you do that. I think how you do that in
1:07:32
Speaker 8: a way that doesn't sort of tear down things and
1:07:34
Speaker 8: leave things in fragments is you're honest with people. Look,
1:07:38
Speaker 8: this is a priority. This is Californians' top needs. This
1:07:42
Speaker 8: is not my pet project. I work for Californians. And
1:07:46
Speaker 8: so this is what California needs. We all have to
1:07:48
Speaker 8: get on board. And I hope you will. What does
1:07:50
Speaker 8: it take to get you on board? How do we
1:07:52
Speaker 8: get you there? What are your concerns? You have that conversation.
1:07:55
Speaker 8: But at the end of the day... They just want
1:07:57
Speaker 8: to be in the way of California thriving. And what
1:08:00
Speaker 8: it means to be a leader is to is to
1:08:02
Speaker 8: get them out of the way.
1:08:04
Speaker 1: Now, how do you think the governor has done on
1:08:06
Speaker 1: this issue? It does strike me that he's been that
1:08:10
Speaker 1: we've made a lot of progress that we're not seeing
1:08:12
Speaker 1: the results of is the generational failure. But like. you know,
1:08:15
Speaker 1: pushing San Francisco to build a bunch more housing, same
1:08:17
Speaker 1: thing down here in LA. Where do you think it's
1:08:19
Speaker 1: working and where do you think you need to go further?
1:08:20
Speaker 8: Well, I give Governor Newsom a lot of credit. When
1:08:22
Speaker 8: he ran in 2018, it was my first time as
1:08:24
Speaker 8: a candidate too, right after Trump had gotten elected. And
1:08:27
Speaker 8: he was really one of the only people in the
1:08:29
Speaker 8: Democratic Party talking about housing. And at the time, I
1:08:32
Speaker 8: remember talking with my consultants and being like, I want
1:08:34
Speaker 8: to be a housing candidate. And they were like, eh,
1:08:37
Speaker 8: you know, that's not really a big issue, which was
1:08:39
Speaker 8: nuts because it was the big issue then. It's a
1:08:41
Speaker 8: big issue today. It was a big issue when I
1:08:43
Speaker 8: came to California and started helping people in the foreclosure crisis.
1:08:46
Speaker 8: So I give them a lot of credit for really
1:08:48
Speaker 8: making that a big issue. I think we've started to
1:08:51
Speaker 8: hit the limits of what the strategies that we already
1:08:54
Speaker 8: have in place are going to be. So I think
1:08:57
Speaker 8: with the current environmental framework, with the current building requirements,
1:09:01
Speaker 8: with the current zoning, with the current infrastructure planning, we've
1:09:05
Speaker 8: built a lot of ADUs in some cities.
1:09:07
Speaker 3: Great.
1:09:08
Speaker 8: But you can't just build ADUs to get out of this.
1:09:11
Speaker 8: It's going to take a lot more housing and a
1:09:13
Speaker 8: lot different kinds of housing in a lot of different places.
1:09:16
Speaker 8: So I think we need to start moving forward. One
1:09:19
Speaker 8: good example I would give you is we're going to
1:09:21
Speaker 8: have to innovate in how we build housing. We're going
1:09:23
Speaker 8: to have... Housing is one of the only industries that
1:09:26
Speaker 8: we still build them the same way now that we
1:09:28
Speaker 8: built them 300 years ago. We don't build anything else
1:09:30
Speaker 8: that way. So then there's an opportunity to create good
1:09:33
Speaker 8: high-paying jobs, to create research design jobs, innovation jobs, to
1:09:37
Speaker 8: do some 3D printing work, to do this with innovative materials.
1:09:41
Speaker 8: We're kind of hitting the limits of what we can
1:09:43
Speaker 8: do by simply trying to do more within the framework
1:09:47
Speaker 8: we have. I think we have to move the framework.
1:09:49
Speaker 1: So one challenge that I see... is because we have
1:09:54
Speaker 1: such an affordability crisis, whenever you're talking about new projects,
1:09:59
Speaker 1: inevitably the discussion turns on what exactly is the kind
1:10:02
Speaker 1: of housing in that specific project. the evidence suggests that
1:10:06
Speaker 1: the best way we could, because the problem is so deep,
1:10:09
Speaker 1: really micromanaging individual projects, we just say, build whatever you want,
1:10:13
Speaker 1: wherever you want, we need a ton more. But that
1:10:16
Speaker 1: faces blowback because then critics from the left will say,
1:10:19
Speaker 1: you're building units for richer people, you're not building units
1:10:22
Speaker 1: for the working class, even though allowing those kinds of
1:10:25
Speaker 1: builds will bring down rents elsewhere. How do you think
1:10:28
Speaker 1: about that?
1:10:28
Speaker 8: Look, We need so much housing. And look, housing for
1:10:33
Speaker 8: people in the middle makes housing for people one rung
1:10:35
Speaker 8: down the ladder more affordable. So the answer here is
1:10:39
Speaker 8: we need more housing for seniors. We need more housing
1:10:41
Speaker 8: for college students. We need more housing for workforce development.
1:10:45
Speaker 8: We need housing for people who are coming to college.
1:10:47
Speaker 8: We need housing for workers that we are recruiting into
1:10:50
Speaker 8: California from states where housing costs less. And so the
1:10:54
Speaker 8: answer has to be this is this is not a
1:10:56
Speaker 8: politics of scarcity. This is a politics of abundance answer.
1:11:00
Speaker 8: More is more for everyone here, not just more for
1:11:04
Speaker 8: the person that gets that particular housing unit, but more
1:11:08
Speaker 8: for us all.
1:11:09
Speaker 1: Do you think the governor has powers to that that
1:11:13
Speaker 1: the current governor is not using to the fullest to
1:11:17
Speaker 1: step in when there are decisions to like, for example,
1:11:20
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area? when a court ruled because of
1:11:23
Speaker 1: some nimbyism that a bunch of college kids had to
1:11:25
Speaker 1: lose their acceptance letters. Do you think the governor could
1:11:27
Speaker 1: have intervened there in a way that he didn't?
1:11:30
Speaker 8: Well, look, I think the governor's had his hands full
1:11:32
Speaker 8: with a number of challenges recently, but I think we
1:11:36
Speaker 8: are at the limits of kind of what we've done.
1:11:37
Speaker 8: So we're gonna have to develop, for example, a plan
1:11:40
Speaker 8: to make sure that every student at our state universities
1:11:44
Speaker 8: has stable, secure housing so they can focus on learning.
1:11:47
Speaker 8: We're gonna have to have a plan to make sure
1:11:49
Speaker 8: that looking at where California is gonna grow the jobs,
1:11:52
Speaker 8: that we're gonna have housing in those specific places. We're aging.
1:11:55
Speaker 8: We have a master plan on aging. We need to
1:11:57
Speaker 8: look at what we're gonna do through that plan on housing.
1:12:00
Speaker 8: So I think there's just more conversations to be had here.
1:12:04
Speaker 8: And like I said, I think the limits on cities
1:12:06
Speaker 8: that are being recalcitrant, Huntington Beach, which I used to represent,
1:12:10
Speaker 8: they get sued by Attorney General Bonta because they're not
1:12:13
Speaker 8: willing to build housing as they should. They're breaking the law.
1:12:17
Speaker 8: But there's a limit to that tool. And I think
1:12:19
Speaker 8: what I'm excited about— It takes years.
1:12:20
Speaker 1: It takes years.
1:12:21
Speaker 8: But also, like, there's a phrase, when you're litigating, you're losing, right? So, like,
1:12:26
Speaker 8: absolutely Attorney General Bonta's job is to hold people who
1:12:29
Speaker 8: are breaking the law accountable. And to that I say, Godspeed.
1:12:32
Speaker 8: Glad to have him in the fight. But the job
1:12:34
Speaker 8: of the governor is to figure out what we can
1:12:36
Speaker 8: do proactively— so that we never get there, so that
1:12:39
Speaker 8: we are addressing whatever concerns they are. We are creating
1:12:43
Speaker 8: more capital in the private market to help fund this housing.
1:12:46
Speaker 8: We are making sure we're recruiting the workforce that we
1:12:48
Speaker 8: need to be able to do this construction because we
1:12:51
Speaker 8: need to do it at a scale and at a
1:12:53
Speaker 8: speed that is going to require some out-of-the-box thinking.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the politics of this race. What did
1:13:01
Speaker 1: you learn from the race against Adam Schiff that you'd
1:13:05
Speaker 1: bring to this statewide race?
1:13:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:13:08
Speaker 8: I mean, look, I think that that race was a
1:13:11
Speaker 8: lot about people's anxieties about Trump. And Adam has a
1:13:16
Speaker 8: terrific record of taking on Trump. I think what we
1:13:20
Speaker 8: see now is we're living with it. So we are
1:13:22
Speaker 8: living with the political consequences. We are asking ourselves, how
1:13:25
Speaker 8: do we reach people that we don't always reach? How
1:13:28
Speaker 8: do we get a closer hold and bigger, stronger trust
1:13:33
Speaker 8: with people who were slipping away. And so I think
1:13:36
Speaker 8: that's where being sort of a messenger who's come into
1:13:39
Speaker 8: politics relatively recently, somebody who comes from a purple district,
1:13:42
Speaker 8: somebody who has spent her career doing other things, you know,
1:13:45
Speaker 8: in classrooms, as a consumer advocate, I think that's the
1:13:49
Speaker 8: kind of messaging that we need in this moment. To
1:13:52
Speaker 8: connect with people. And we also need to do a
1:13:54
Speaker 8: lot of listening. And I think that is something that
1:13:57
Speaker 8: the joy of the Senate race, my happiest moments in
1:14:00
Speaker 8: that race, were listening and learning. One of my favorite
1:14:03
Speaker 8: days in the entire Senate race was the day I
1:14:05
Speaker 8: spent in Bakersfield. And when I say that, people are like, what?
1:14:08
Speaker 8: I spent a whole day learning about how we can
1:14:11
Speaker 8: reduce the amount of water we use when we're growing nuts.
1:14:15
Speaker 8: I spent a day learning how baby carrots are made.
1:14:17
Speaker 1: So cool.
1:14:18
Speaker 8: And so we need to have those kinds of conversations.
1:14:21
Speaker 8: We need to listen. Businesses are concerned about staying in California.
1:14:25
Speaker 8: Workers are concerned about staying in their jobs. You got
1:14:29
Speaker 8: to have those conversations. You got to be willing to listen.
1:14:31
Speaker 8: And so part of the launching now is I want
1:14:33
Speaker 8: that runway to do exactly that.
1:14:35
Speaker 1: I mean, some of it was just around name ID
1:14:39
Speaker 1: competing in a state that is massive that requires such a.
1:14:42
Speaker 8: Huge amount of money. Well, and this race is really
1:14:43
Speaker 8: different that way, right? So I've run big, expensive races
1:14:46
Speaker 8: here in Orange County, three times, a statewide race. So
1:14:50
Speaker 8: I've had the opportunity to connect with a lot of voters,
1:14:52
Speaker 8: to introduce myself to a lot of voters. And this
1:14:55
Speaker 8: race is an opportunity to build on that by talking
1:14:58
Speaker 8: to voters and listening to voters about what are they
1:15:01
Speaker 8: worried about with California? What do they love about California
1:15:04
Speaker 8: that they're worried that Trump is going to cause us
1:15:06
Speaker 8: to lose? What do they miss about a California maybe
1:15:09
Speaker 8: of the past? What do they want to see in
1:15:11
Speaker 8: a California of the future?
1:15:13
Speaker 1: But you, but you understand why I'm, what I'm getting
1:15:14
Speaker 1: at here, which is you're getting in the race early.
1:15:16
Speaker 1: There are rumors that the vice president may get in
1:15:20
Speaker 1: the race later. I saw some reporting that, that you
1:15:23
Speaker 1: said that, that the vice president might clear the field.
1:15:26
Speaker 1: And I, I was surprised to see that one of
1:15:29
Speaker 1: your advisors apparently told CNN that you wouldn't run against Kamala.
1:15:32
Speaker 3: Is that true?
1:15:33
Speaker 8: Well, so listen, what I've said and what I'm going
1:15:36
Speaker 8: to say again today is that I think if Kamala
1:15:38
Speaker 8: comes into this race, especially if she comes in tomorrow,
1:15:41
Speaker 8: she comes in now, it's going to have a near
1:15:44
Speaker 8: field clearing effect.
1:15:45
Speaker 1: It's just going to be real.
1:15:47
Speaker 8: I'm not sure who all, there's a big field of people,
1:15:49
Speaker 8: and some of them have said they're staying in no
1:15:51
Speaker 8: matter what, right? So I think it's going to shake
1:15:54
Speaker 8: up the field. I said it's going to have sort
1:15:55
Speaker 8: of a seismic effect. That said, we got to start
1:15:59
Speaker 8: this process now. Kamala's going to make her decision in
1:16:02
Speaker 8: her own time. The vice president is owed that. That's
1:16:05
Speaker 8: her decision to make. And I've worked with her. I
1:16:07
Speaker 8: know that she's a careful decision maker. She's a thinker.
1:16:10
Speaker 8: And so she's going to make her decision. But in
1:16:12
Speaker 8: the meantime, it is full speed ahead. I'm not waiting around.
1:16:16
Speaker 8: And I don't think voters are waiting around. They want
1:16:19
Speaker 8: to know how we're going to lead. They want to
1:16:21
Speaker 8: make plans for what we're going to do with regard
1:16:23
Speaker 8: to Trump. And so I think there's a hunger for
1:16:25
Speaker 8: people to lead in this moment. And I'm stepping up.
1:16:27
Speaker 1: But I'm like, honestly, like what I expect from as
1:16:31
Speaker 1: someone who admires and respects you as a leader. and
1:16:35
Speaker 1: a political figure, I'm surprised you're not saying, I don't
1:16:37
Speaker 1: care what Kamala Harris does, I will be the best governor. Like,
1:16:40
Speaker 1: that's what I don't, that's what's confusing to me. Like,
1:16:42
Speaker 1: isn't the person that's supposed to lead this big fractious state,
1:16:45
Speaker 1: the person who says Kamala can get in, who I
1:16:47
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck, I'm gonna, if she gets in,
1:16:48
Speaker 1: I'll beat her?
1:16:49
Speaker 8: Well, I'm not sure that our leaders, people want to
1:16:52
Speaker 8: hear our leaders say.
1:16:53
Speaker 3: I don't give a half.
1:16:53
Speaker 1: Well, the way that you would say it, I'm not,
1:16:55
Speaker 1: I have to find the right district for my vibe, but.
1:16:58
Speaker 8: I do think, look, I am not waiting for Kamala Harris.
1:17:03
Speaker 8: And I don't think anyone should who wants to lead.
1:17:05
Speaker 8: I think what it means to lead is to literally
1:17:08
Speaker 8: step forward, right? To be willing to be at the
1:17:10
Speaker 8: tip of the spear in this moment. That's exactly why
1:17:12
Speaker 8: I'm launching. That's why I've been working on this. I
1:17:15
Speaker 8: am not sitting back waiting to see what Kamala does.
1:17:18
Speaker 8: I am not considering other races, hedging my bet. I'm
1:17:22
Speaker 8: going to be California's next governor. But it would also be,
1:17:25
Speaker 8: I think, disrespectful to somebody who went toe-to-toe month after
1:17:30
Speaker 8: month after month in a grueling race against Donald Trump and,
1:17:34
Speaker 8: and I saw this firsthand personally, served California very, very
1:17:39
Speaker 8: ably as our Attorney General, not to acknowledge that this
1:17:43
Speaker 8: is somebody who would be an incredibly strong candidate and
1:17:47
Speaker 8: there are practical realities that anyone faces.
1:17:49
Speaker 1: But you think you would be a better governor than
1:17:51
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris?
1:17:51
Speaker 8: Well, look, if I didn't think I would be the
1:17:53
Speaker 8: best governor that California could have, I wouldn't be in
1:17:55
Speaker 8: this race.
1:17:56
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has appointed or, you know, fake appointed a
1:17:59
Speaker 1: group of celebrities that like him to be ambassadors to Hollywood.
1:18:03
Speaker 1: But there is a problem that I think isn't getting
1:18:05
Speaker 1: enough attention generally, which is you have all these losses.
1:18:08
Speaker 1: We're not far from the heart of Los Angeles, which
1:18:11
Speaker 1: has been the kind of center of film and television
1:18:13
Speaker 1: culture for 100 years. And now they're filming all of
1:18:17
Speaker 1: the game shows in Ireland. There's tons of states and
1:18:20
Speaker 1: cities putting in incentives. Like I have so many friends
1:18:24
Speaker 1: that are work that like are, if they're working at all,
1:18:26
Speaker 1: they're going to Vancouver, they're going to Atlanta, they're going
1:18:28
Speaker 1: to New Orleans, they're going to all these places. It
1:18:31
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous to me that we don't have a plan
1:18:34
Speaker 1: to get production back to Los Angeles. What do you
1:18:36
Speaker 1: think about that?
1:18:37
Speaker 8: Well, that plan is the same plan that we need
1:18:40
Speaker 8: to get tech jobs back here, to get manufacturing jobs here,
1:18:45
Speaker 8: which we were once a center of kind of highly
1:18:47
Speaker 8: skilled manufacturing in California. It's to make sure our agriculture
1:18:51
Speaker 8: sector flourishes. It's all the same. We are in a
1:18:54
Speaker 8: competition with other states and other countries now. And it's
1:19:00
Speaker 8: a competition that we need to win. California is amazing.
1:19:03
Speaker 8: The people of California are amazing. The history of California
1:19:06
Speaker 8: is amazing. The resources of California are amazing. So, Let's
1:19:10
Speaker 8: not get down in this. This is a battle that
1:19:12
Speaker 8: we can win, but you don't win the fights that
1:19:14
Speaker 8: you don't start, that you don't enter. And so we
1:19:17
Speaker 8: need to be understanding. We need to bring California's treasures
1:19:21
Speaker 8: and our talents to those competitions. I think California can
1:19:25
Speaker 8: win those jobs back for production, back for Hollywood. I
1:19:28
Speaker 8: want protecting writers against AI. We need to be aggressive
1:19:32
Speaker 8: about doing this because, frankly, other states are.
1:19:36
Speaker 1: So you're going to get to go all across the
1:19:38
Speaker 1: state of California. It's going to be a lot of
1:19:43
Speaker 1: eating on the road, a lot of unhealthy, long days,
1:19:49
Speaker 1: fast food in the car. What are we excited about?
1:19:51
Speaker 1: What are we not excited about?
1:19:52
Speaker 8: Well, I'm in fighting shape, so I'm ready for this.
1:19:54
Speaker 8: I really feel so lucky to have had some time
1:19:58
Speaker 8: after the Senate race, you know, a year now to think,
1:20:01
Speaker 8: to learn, to get healthy, to spend time with my kids.
1:20:04
Speaker 8: to think about what I did well and what I
1:20:07
Speaker 8: didn't do well, what I learned, what I listened, what
1:20:10
Speaker 8: I heard and where I maybe wasn't listening enough. So
1:20:13
Speaker 8: I think this is going to be really, really exciting
1:20:15
Speaker 8: and fun. Look, I love campaigning. One of my campaign
1:20:19
Speaker 8: staff once said, you know, they were doing a training
1:20:22
Speaker 8: for volunteers and they said, now when you get to
1:20:24
Speaker 8: the event, Katie's just going to get right out of
1:20:26
Speaker 8: the car. And I thought, wow. Well, what else would
1:20:29
Speaker 8: you do? But apparently some people don't want to get out.
1:20:31
Speaker 3: Of the car.
1:20:32
Speaker 8: I love to get out of the car. I love
1:20:34
Speaker 8: to get stopped in the grocery store. I want to hear.
1:20:36
Speaker 8: I want to listen. I want to connect. I love campaigning.
1:20:39
Speaker 8: So to me, to take the minivan, to get a
1:20:42
Speaker 8: chance to go back to Bakersfield, to spend some more
1:20:45
Speaker 8: time in Fresno. I didn't get to make it to
1:20:47
Speaker 8: Merced last time. I didn't get to make.
1:20:48
Speaker 1: It to Reading or to Chico.
1:20:51
Speaker 8: I'm personally going in the minivan because that's how I
1:20:54
Speaker 8: like to roll.
1:20:55
Speaker 7: But.
1:20:56
Speaker 8: I do think we should make sure that if we're
1:20:58
Speaker 8: spending money on a train, we get a train.
1:21:00
Speaker 1: And how do your kids feel about this next round?
1:21:02
Speaker 8: So my kids are very excited. And I was a
1:21:06
Speaker 8: little surprised about that. They've been through a lot. There
1:21:09
Speaker 8: was a lot of negative advertising spent against me in
1:21:11
Speaker 8: the last race. That's hard on kids. It's frankly hard
1:21:13
Speaker 8: on the candidate, but it's really hard on kids. So
1:21:16
Speaker 8: I was surprised. I asked them each question. about this.
1:21:19
Speaker 8: And I think what my oldest son said really stuck
1:21:22
Speaker 8: with me the most. He's 19. He's a voter now.
1:21:25
Speaker 8: And he said, I want a governor who's going to
1:21:29
Speaker 8: fight for California values. I am not going down without
1:21:32
Speaker 8: a fight. People cannot just sit around and say, oh,
1:21:36
Speaker 8: I'm going to emerge in four years. I'm just not
1:21:39
Speaker 8: going to read the paper till Trump's gone. He's like,
1:21:42
Speaker 8: I want someone who's going to do the work, to
1:21:44
Speaker 8: be tough. And he's like, and mom, you're really tough.
1:21:48
Speaker 8: Sometimes I'm tough on him. So he knows.
1:21:50
Speaker 1: And how's your driving been lately? How are we doing?
1:21:52
Speaker 1: How's the road rage out there?
1:21:53
Speaker 8: Oh, I'm pretty good now because I walk to work.
1:21:55
Speaker 1: Okay.
1:21:56
Speaker 8: So not only did I, I mean, I also don't
1:21:58
Speaker 8: have to fly to Washington anymore. So now I walk
1:22:02
Speaker 8: to work to the campus and I've been loving teaching.
1:22:04
Speaker 8: So I just finished grading my midterms Monday night so
1:22:07
Speaker 8: that I was all ready to launch today.
1:22:09
Speaker 1: What kind of grading are we doing? How tough are
1:22:12
Speaker 1: we on these papers? Are we still post-Vietnam grade inflation?
1:22:16
Speaker 1: Are we back to giving people fair feedback?
1:22:17
Speaker 2: I'm probably a little.
1:22:18
Speaker 8: Tougher than average. But part of it is this is midterms.
1:22:21
Speaker 8: So I think this actually says something about what we
1:22:23
Speaker 8: were talking about, about how I would lead, about the
1:22:25
Speaker 8: honesty I try to bring to things. In these midterms,
1:22:28
Speaker 8: I was pretty tough with them because I'm trying to
1:22:31
Speaker 8: help them know what needs to change. So I'm telling
1:22:35
Speaker 8: them straight up, if you do this same thing again,
1:22:37
Speaker 8: you're going to get another C. Here's where you need
1:22:41
Speaker 8: to pick it up because that B plus, maybe even
1:22:44
Speaker 8: an A minus, it's in your grasp. And I'm going
1:22:46
Speaker 8: to push you to get there. And I think when
1:22:48
Speaker 8: you think about the governor and leading all these different
1:22:50
Speaker 8: agencies and That's what people who are in the cabinet,
1:22:53
Speaker 8: the Katie Porter governor cabinet can expect. We're going to
1:22:56
Speaker 8: set goals. I'm going to listen to you about what
1:22:58
Speaker 8: your challenges are. I'm going to try to clear them
1:22:59
Speaker 8: out of the way. We're going to set goals for you.
1:23:02
Speaker 8: And then I'm going to ask you, why isn't it done?
1:23:05
Speaker 8: And what do I need to.
1:23:06
Speaker 1: Do to help you? Katie Porter, thank you so much.
1:23:08
Speaker 1: Good luck. Good luck out there. We'll see you out there.
1:23:10
Speaker 8: Thank you.
1:23:16
Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Love It, Tommy and I
1:23:18
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