Latest / Pod Save America / Trump Works the FIFA Refs

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Trump Works the FIFA Refs · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 5: As Americans, we're constantly grappling with a fundamental question. Do
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  Speaker 4: Welcome to Pod Save America.
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  Speaker 6: I'm John Levin.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: John is taking some much-needed time off to tweet with
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: his family. On today's show, Donald Trump is working the
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: refs at the World Cup before heading to a NATO
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: summit in Turkey. We've got two big developments in the
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: Democratic Senate primaries in Maine. Grant Plattner faces serious and
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: disturbing allegations of sexual assault in Michigan. Mallory McMorrow drops out,
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: making that one a two-way race. We also look at
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: the conservative freakout over a patriotic speech by New York.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Mayor Zohan Mamdani.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: And we ask the question the mainstream media is afraid
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: to ask, is Mitch McConnell alive?
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Currently?
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  Speaker 3: I've been wondering that too. Depends on which Twitter you read. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, it's an important question.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: It is.
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  Speaker 7: It is.
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  Speaker 4: All right, let's get to the news. Starting with the
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: World Cup last week when the U.S. played Bosnia and Herzegovina,
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: star forward Flo Balogun got a red card for stepping
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: on a defender's ankle. I said Bosnia and Herzegovina because
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: I remember that that's how it was said in the
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: 90s when Bill Clinton... was a bombing from the skies.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: That was during that era. I remember that from when
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: I was a kid.
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  Speaker 3: Remember that, Nato? But I remember that, Nato.
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  Speaker 4: But now I'm being told it's Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: It's tough.
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  Speaker 4: Under FIFA rules, when a player gets a red card,
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: they have to leave the game. Their team has to
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: finish the match with only 10 players. And the player
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: who got the red card has to sit out the
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: next game. But we found out on Sunday afternoon that
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: FIFA was suspending that second part of the punishment for
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Balogun after a call from Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Now,
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: in a long Twitter post on Monday, Infantino said the
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: decision had been made by the association's independent judicial body,
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: but declined to give any specifics. Then again, this is
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: the guy who awarded Trump the first ever FIFA Peace
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Prize last December. Whatever happened on the call, it seems
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: unlikely that Trump's deep knowledge of the sport changed any minds.
• 4:31
  Speaker 8: I think the referee's call was horrible. And nobody talks
• 4:34
  Speaker 8: about that. They talk about the red card like it's fine.
• 4:37
  Speaker 8: Nobody talked to him. The referee's decision to red card.
• 4:41
  Speaker 8: I didn't know what the hell a red card was
• 4:42
  Speaker 8: when I found out. I said, you got to be kidding.
• 4:45
  Speaker 8: This guy just hands up. Okay, your best player is
• 4:47
  Speaker 8: not going to play next week or in the next game.
• 4:51
  Speaker 8: I said, wow, that's a lot of power. That's terrible. So, yes,
• 4:55
  Speaker 8: I asked for a review by FIFA. I had nothing
• 4:58
  Speaker 8: to do with the decision. What I did have to
• 5:00
  Speaker 8: do is I said, I think that should be reviewed
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  Speaker 8: because I watched the play. And he didn't do anything wrong.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: So the, the red card seems pretty wrong, but so
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: does Trump's meddling.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: What do you, what do you think? Yeah, I'm no, uh,
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: I'm no ref, but the red card seems like it
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: was bullshit. A lot of people I follow talk about
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: this stuff all the time. I think it was at worst,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: the yellow card, Lionel Messi did something very similar in
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: a different game in this world cup. Didn't get carded
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: at all. It's also seems like they use the video review, um, improperly.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: So I'm like a karmic level. This is the right outcome.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Like Flo Balgan deserves to play. He's an incredible player. Um,
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  Speaker 3: what makes it like head spinning is all the reporting
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: after the red card was that there was no way
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  Speaker 3: to review this.
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  Speaker 6: Right.
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  Speaker 3: So we all were like, oh man, we're just, we're
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: screwed here. And then apparently it turns out like the
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: president could just call the head of FIFA, his old buddy.
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  Speaker 3: And so I am like, I have a lot of
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: feelings about this. I'm annoyed that the conversation about this
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: team and their success, because they're awesome. They're so good.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: He's now kind of like is tainted by this bullshit. Um,
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: I think, uh, it is obviously bad. Like, well, from
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the Trump point of view, like it's not necessarily bad
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: for him to advocate on behalf of his country, right?
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: Like you could imagine another president doing this in a
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: way that just seemed less corrupt. Like Keir Starmer apparently
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: weighed in on the start time of the England-Mexico game
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: because he was worried about that. So I think like
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: mostly this is just really, really bad for FIFA. It's
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: par for the course for them because they're a terrible
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: corrupt organization. In 2015, a bunch of people were indicted
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: on like 150 million in bribes and kickbacks related to
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: the World Cup. The former head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: was banned from soccer. He's now on Twitter criticizing this decision,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: so that's when it's getting a little weird. But it's
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: just impossible to separate this decision from the very longstanding,
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: very weird, very corrupt relationship between Trump and Gianni Infantino.
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  Speaker 3: Trump's a corrupt person. We know that his one speed
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  Speaker 3: when he wants something is brute force, so we don't
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  Speaker 3: know what happened to any of these calls, but we
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  Speaker 3: know that he got the outcome that he wanted. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: so a lot of the.
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  Speaker 4: Coverage has been around the call itself, but this was...
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  Speaker 4: There was a shocking amount of administrative focus on the
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  Speaker 4: red card in a very short period of time. Andrew Giuliani,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: who's Rudy Giuliani's son, was appointed to lead some kind
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  Speaker 4: of World Cup task force. He apparently, according to Politico,
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  Speaker 4: has been talking to Trump several times.
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  Speaker 3: A week about the World Cup.
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  Speaker 4: You have Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was at the
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  Speaker 4: game saying.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Sitting next to him. Oh, sitting next.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: I didn't realize he was sitting right next to him.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Saying that he will.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: was offering White House lawyers to assist the U.S. team
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: in trying to fight this. There was other threats from
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: the U.S. team and from the administration behind the scenes
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: around other ways they could challenge this rule and through
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: other kinds of means that I guess the pressure mounted.
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  Speaker 4: And then there was this call on top of it.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: On the one hand, it does feel like another story
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: where you have The president, he's focused on the biggest fireworks,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: the ballroom, the reflecting pool, the statues, the arches, all that.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: He's focused on sports, not on the actual substance of
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: the job and the things that people want him to
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: pay attention to. But I have the same feeling as you,
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: which is of all the ways in which Trump could
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: be a bully, bullying doesn't. to have an advantage removed
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: from Belgium at the expense of a corrupt group of
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: European chauvinists is like not that big of a sin.
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  Speaker 1: No, no, it's not.
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  Speaker 3: And like, for what it's worth, the New York post
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: had this reporting that us soccer was already preparing to
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  Speaker 3: fight the decision. Um, they were especially focused on the
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: VAR system, the video review system, and that it was
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: improperly used to make this call. And they were preparing
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: to appeal to something called the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that is, but apparently it would
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: have taken the decision out of FIFA's hands. So maybe
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: they acted to preempt that. So there's a chance here
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: that Trump is taking credit for something that was already
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: in motion, which is something presidents get to do, good
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: or bad. All that said, Belgium has a right to
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: be pissed off. Other teams have a right to be
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: pissed off. They want one clear set of rules. They
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: never get it from FIFA. Imagine though, if this was
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Putin lobs in a call,
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: to FIFA to overturn some ruling, we'd all be like
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: ripping our hair out and screaming about injustice and corruption
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: and oligarchy. FIFA has made similar exceptions, including one for
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: Cristiano Ronaldo to make sure he didn't miss a game
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: in the tournament. So I think just like the way
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: to ultimately understand FIFA is it's basically a criminal organization
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: that just cares about money. And like the way to
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: understand Infantino is he just sucks up to the most
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: powerful person he needs at all times. So I think everyone,
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: of course, assumes that he viewed this as doing a
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: favor for Trump, even if it hurt his reputation.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like I can see like you could imagine
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: Obama at a press conference getting a question like that
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: was bullshit, man.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Like that sucks.
• 9:43
  Speaker 8: And then.
• 9:44
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: And but you this is where having independent, trustworthy organizations
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: is important.
• 9:49
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: Because, sure, an American leader should put pressure for the
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: American team. But you need to trust that the other
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: side of it will not let that influence the decisions.
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: But you can't trust that here. You also can't trust
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: that Trump is not abusing his relationship. and his financial
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: entanglements with with Infantino and all the rest. So anyway,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: Trump made soccer about him somehow.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: For what it's worth, we're recording this at like three
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: o'clock on Monday, Pacific Time, so two hours before the game.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: So we don't know the outcome right now. We'll find out.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Excited to watch.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: And I just want, I am a, I watch angel city.
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: I am a season ticket holder. So I'm not, I
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: am like getting into soccer.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Have you been watching these games?
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: You know, here's what my problem is with the way
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: that we, cause you have it on and I see
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: you getting into it. I find that with soccer, I
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: either want to watch the whole game or I want
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: to see highlights at the end, but I have trouble
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: dipping in and out because for me, it's about like the,
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: the way, like you can watch a team. And even
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: if I didn't understand this till I started watching soccer,
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: that even if a goal isn't scored during an entire half,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: you're still like understanding the way the teams are going
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: up against each other. And I feel like it's hard
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: to get that when you're just looking up for a computer.
• 10:50
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: I have to say this has been one of the
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: best world cups I've ever seen. Every game has been
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: like down to the wire and exciting. There's been all
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: these late goals. There's been like late goals called back,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: incredible headers. Some of the best goals I've ever seen,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: like Cabo Verde goal to tie it up the second time.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: And over time against Argentina was like one of the
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: most incredible shots ever. So just like the storylines, the
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: gameplay itself, Yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: And some of the worst, like, concerns about what would
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: happen with people traveling to the U.S. haven't, I mean,
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: we haven't seen that much of, like, what we, the
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: worst possible, like, people being stopped, being unable to come
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: see the games. You did have this little moment with
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: the Iranian team protest in the U.S., which I thought was,
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: we were in Mexico when they did it, but I
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: thought it was, like, particularly moving.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were real dicks to the Iranians for no
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: good reason. Like, we wouldn't let them stay in the
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: United States and make them, like, fly back and forth
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: from Mexico to games. There were some issues with, like,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: one of the African refs was denied entry into the
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: country for some, like, vetting reason that seems like mostly bullshit.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: But the level of anxiety going into the World Cup
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: was way higher than kind of the reality.
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: In fact, it's like the opposite. It's like all these
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: foreigners coming to America kind of nervous and feeling like
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: they love it and like going to Waffle House for
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: the first time and making viral videos. And it's just
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: been like this fun, like joyful melting of cultures.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: We have beautiful cultures combining in the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: is heading to Turkey for the annual NATO summit. And
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: Trump intervening with one of his reputedly corrupt pals to
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: remove what would have been an advantage for Belgium seems
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: like a pretty good metaphor for European frustrations with American hegemony.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: There will be a lot of discussion of defense spending
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: and of ending the war in Ukraine. Russia was striking
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: at civilian targets in Kiev this week, and Ukraine is
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: actually less able to defend itself, in part because of
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: a shortage of interceptor missiles made worse by Trump's war
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: in Iran. What are you watching for in this summit,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: and what are you hoping.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: For out of it?
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, you got at the top line, which is
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: like the signs that the divide between the U.S. and
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Europe are widening or narrowing. Trump is still furious about
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: the lack of support from Europe when it came to
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: the war with Iran. And Europeans are still rightly furious
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: that we started a war with Iran and made, you know,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: harmed them in the process. So we could see more
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: discussion about whether the Trump administration is going to pull U.S.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: troops out of Europe to punish countries like Spain that
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: oppose the war. Remember, like at some point, Pete Hegseth
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: was floating that we're going to like pull troops out
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: of Poland. Then Trump heard about it. He got mad.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: So it's like been all over the place. Rubio was
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: mad about that too.
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: Rubio apparently spiked it as well. Um, uh, and like
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: kind of the best, like, you know, there's competing worldviews
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: out there. There's like the, it's time to move on
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: from America worldview that you're hearing from Mark Carney in Canada.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: And then Mark Ruta, uh, the NATO secretary general is
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: more of the ass kisser, like keep Trump on sides guy.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: So the other thing Trump loves to do with these
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: NATO summits is browbeat these countries about defense spending. He's
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: now demanding that countries spend 5% of GDP on defense
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: by 2035. Now, before him, Obama, Bush, others were critical
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: of NATO countries for not spending enough, but they wanted
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: to get to like 2%. 5% is absurd. That said,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: it's like a fake target because 3.5 of the 5%
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: goes to military spending, and then 1.5% is defined as
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: security-related investments, and that could mean like roads, bridges, cybersecurity.
• 14:19
  Speaker 8: Right, yeah.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: For the record, I wanted to talk about NATO.
• 14:23
  Speaker 8: You did.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: I was pumped.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: And in part because, so last year, this was the
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: summit where Mark Rutte, who's the Secretary General of NATO,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: this is where he called Trump daddy.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: I think it was a low moment for him. It
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: was not great.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: And it came to represent like the Rutte strategy, which
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: is you just suck up to him in public and
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: you do your best to mitigate the damage in private.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: But in the year since that summit, you have Trump
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: threatening tariffs over Greenland.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: You have the war in Iran.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: The administration has proposed and actually enacted some troop drawdowns
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: or threatening more. And then six months ago, that's when
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: Mark Carney gives this speech laying out, I think for
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: the first time in a really, I think in a
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: way that felt like a legitimate alternative.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: The sucking up approach while trying in private to persuade
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: him doesn't seem to be working. There was a really
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: deeply reported story in the Wall Street Journal about the
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: European view of America. And there was a lot in there,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: but the experience of Europeans coming to the U S
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: beseeching Trump to defend Ukraine, him seeming to agree. And
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: then an hour long conversation with Putin wipes the fucking
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: thing clean. And so we're at this moment where there
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: does seem to be a real possibility of Europe actually viewing.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: This is not a Trump problem, but an America problem.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really, it's, it's troubling. Look at the, on
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: the Ukraine piece. I mean, Trump is going to meet
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: with Zelensky, um, We'll see what comes out of that.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Zelensky's wishlist is like, I want to be able to
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: manufacture Patriot missile interceptors in my country. It feels like
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: a win-win. The Ukrainians have done all this really important
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: stuff with drone technology and using drones to intercept drones.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: You're not spending like $ 3 million on an interceptor missile
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: to take down a $ 30, 000 Shahed drone. So there's areas
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: of coordination there. Hopefully Trump will just do no harm
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: when it comes to Zelensky, not pull back support, intelligence
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: support for them. Hopefully we'll like recommit to a serious
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: peace process and stop whatever this joke is that's being
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: led by Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner and the Russian
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: oligarch of the day that's seemingly just about dealmaking for
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: those guys. There's also this whole like subplot at NATO
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: about Turkey and whether Erdogan is a reliable partner, whether
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the U.S. should sell Turkey F-35s. The Israelis really don't
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: want that to happen. And then there's just like the
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: petty shit like Keir Starmer and Trump don't really get along.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: It was Starmer's last NATO deal. Uh, Georgia Maloney and Trump,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: the Italian leader, prime minister. Um, there was a back
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: and forth where he claimed she wanted a picture with
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: him and she was like, what the fuck are you
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: talking about?
• 16:54
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: Um, so we'll see. I mean, it's just, this could
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: be nothing or it could be him just picking a
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: fight with a bunch of euros.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: There's a way, which is they're just sick of it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: That just seems like they're sick of it.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: And because the, the root of thing, right, is, Hey guys,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: He's demanding 5%. You can count a bridge. Just shut
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: up and say you're doing it.
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: It's by 2035. It's never going to happen. He's going
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: to be long gone.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: Just say you're going to meet the commitment. Put forward
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: some way of proving it. He wants the flattery in public.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: He wants the great headline. And we can slow roll
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: it and deal with it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: After he's gone.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: But there seems to be a shift in which they're
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: just no longer willing to... to play along as much
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: as they were before. And in that Wall Street Journal report,
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: there was that Europeans are also removing American tech from
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: their systems. They're urging civil servants to no longer use
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: Microsoft Teams or Office. They're spending hundreds of billions of
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: dollars to try to boost Europe's own private space firms,
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: AI companies, and data centers. And it seems like, I
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: was interested in this in part because it seems as
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: though Trump's, his bravado, his sort of, his bullying, it
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: is predicated on America being indispensable and it's too hard
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: to shift away from us.
• 17:59
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: But that is only true if they treat it as
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: if it is true.
• 18:02
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. I mean, I think they're kind of
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: waking up to how many different ways they're reliant on
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: the US. Like the NATO piece is obvious. Like the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: US is what, like 70% of NATO, right? If the
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: US pulls out of that, if we refuse to honor
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: the Article 5 commitment within NATO, NATO kind of falls apart.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: So that's been an anxiety for a while. I think
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: they're also... concerned about their reliance on like the big
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: ticket weapon systems. Like you're seeing quotes being like, is
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: there a kill switch in the F-35 if we buy those?
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: And I hope there is. Could Trump just turn them off?
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: I still love this country and I hope there is.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: But also like recently we've seen this completely incoherent approach
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: to AI models, like the mythos model from Anthropic. One
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: day the administration just cuts it off to any foreign partner.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Then a couple of weeks later, they turned it back on.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: And I think, These European countries understand that this tech
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: is going to get embedded into everything they do, their economy,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: weapon systems, everything. And they have no AI industry. And
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: I think they're worried about that. And they're trying to
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: scramble to catch up a little bit. And then I
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: would imagine they're looking at us replacing NASA with Elon
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Musk and kind of worried that their ability to launch
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: stuff into space going forward runs through that guy.
• 19:12
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: It's just like two mercurial people. You're relying on the
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: US for defense. You can't trust them anymore. You're relying
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: on Elon Musk to provide access to Starlink. He is
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: a capricious... about that. And then on the other side
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: of it, right. And then they see Mark Carney, right.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: And Canada is even more dependent on the U S
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: than the Europeans are. And he's sort of charting this
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: other path, but it's not just that if NATO would
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: go away and then they would be in trouble, NATO
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: would go away and then they would have to spend
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: not 5%, but 10%, 15%. They'd have to have a
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: real defense, which currently we subsidize.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Well, what's so funny about this is basically NATO exists
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: to deter a Russian invasion, but Trump sort of doesn't
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: seem to care about Russia invading other countries. So why
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: are we spending all this time browbeating European countries to
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: increase their defense spending to 5% if he fundamentally doesn't
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: really care about the existence of the organization? That's like
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: the internal incoherence of this whole thing. It's just like,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: he feels like we're getting ripped off and he likes
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: to yell at them and that's become his shtick.
• 20:05
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: It does seem like that's the resistance, right? Because They
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: made the commitment last year. I don't know if they
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: all did, but almost all of the countries did make
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: the commitment.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Spain refused, right?
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: They didn't get to 5%. And now this is a
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: meeting about proving they're going to do it. And there's
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: never a day at which they've successfully assuaged Trump and
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: now we can get to the work of rebuilding the alliance.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: In the years since, they made those commitments. That's when
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: he threatened to put tariffs on because of Greenland.
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: And if you're the UK, I mean, like you have
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: this demand from Trump to increase defense spending. There clearly
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: is a need for them to improve, modernize and beef
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: up their military. But they're also like their economy has
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: been bumping along kind of stagnant for a decade. So
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: they have all these pressing economic domestic concerns, too. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: you just get pulled between the two. And then, you know,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Mark Trump just decides to bully you every once in
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: a while. And like Mark Carney gave a great speech
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: in Davos talking about this sort of post-America world. I
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: think the challenge is like, okay, in practice, can he
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: really cobble together this alliance of middle powers to really
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: push back on the U.S. and become another power center?
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: It just remains to be seen.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: And just every dollar is not the same dollar. It
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: is not good for the U.S. and it's quite costly
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: for Europe to have to build redundant capabilities to the
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: United States. That is, instead of the U.S., I mean,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: it is, Donald Trump does not care about our national interests,
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: but it is better for us as a country to
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: If they are buying, if whatever, 2% of their spending
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: involves purchasing a lot of our support versus 4% of
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: their spending being independent.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Well, and that's sort of the rub in a lot
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: of this is like when Trump is demanding they spend
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: 5% of GDP on defense spending, most of that money
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: is going to get shoveled overseas to U.S. defense contractors,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: to Raytheon and stuff. And it's like a terrible economic
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: investment for the leaders of these countries. It's not really
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: a return on that dollar. It's not flowing through their economy.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: It's just going over to the U.S. because Donald Trump
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: wants it.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: So we'll keep an eye on, you know, let's see
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: if NATO's around by next episode.
• 21:56
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  Speaker 4: Now, we also have a lot of domestic politics to
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: get to, starting with new and terrible allegations against Graham Plattner.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: The Wall Street Journal reported at the end of May
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: that Plattner had been sexting with women who weren't his wife.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: Just months before launching his campaign, Plattner then told a
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: private meeting of anxious Democratic senators that despite the rumors,
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: there were no other shoes to drop. Then on June 4th,
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: five days before the primary, the New York Times published
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: a story in which women who had dated Plattner talked
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: about a bunch of troubling incidents and dynamics. Plattner then
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: won the primary handily. Then on Monday, shortly before we
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: sat down to record this, Politico published a story in
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: which one of the women in that Times story, Jenny Rassikoff,
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: a Democrat, gave more details about her experiences with Plattner.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: She said that in 2021, He showed up at her house, drunk,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: without being invited, went in, forced her to have sex
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: with him against her will. She told Politico that she
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: withheld those details because she did not want to be
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: known as a rape victim. Moments after the story published,
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: the Plattner campaign posted a response video. Here is what
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: Plattner said.
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false
• 25:28
  Speaker 7: allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time
• 25:42
  Speaker 7: to reflect on the best path forward for the state
• 25:44
  Speaker 7: that I love, the people that I love, the movement
• 25:48
  Speaker 7: I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: So just so people know, if he withdraws by July 13th,
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: he can be replaced on the ballot. Tommy, what was
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: your reaction to the story?
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: The allegations in the story are really bad and troubling.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: They seem credible. They're backed up by documentation. And so
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: obviously the impact politically is not just what's in the story.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: It's this cumulative impact of a series of articles and
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: allegations about him. And the feeling that he's just has
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: not been fully transparent and honest about some of the allegations,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: like you mentioned. I mean, there was this meeting in
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Washington a while ago where these questions were put to
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: him directly. And the answer, I think it sounds like
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: it was just no. And now there's all this reporting.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: So I think my takeaway from that video was that
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: he's going to drop out of the race. I think
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: he has to drop out of the race. Like you said,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: if he drops by the 13th, the main Democratic Party
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: will choose a replacement by July 27th. I have no
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: idea who they're going to choose. I'm very worried now
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: about the prospect of winning this seat. If the party
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: can get its act together, we ultimately could be in
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: a stronger place politically than we would be with Platner
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: and all this baggage if these stories had come out later.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: I think The challenge is going to be, you had
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: all these voters who turned out and voted for Graham Plattner,
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: despite the Reddit posts, despite the tattoos in, you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: story and all the other scandals, they were turning out
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: to signal that they wanted something different and that they
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: were angry at the establishment. And I don't know who
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: in Maine can like speak to that anger, but also
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: has been vetted by the party and has been through
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: the political process because like, look, as much as Janet
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Mills is supporters, deserve to be angry and deserve the,
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: I told you so's they're saying today. The problem was
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: that Maine voters were not supporting her. They didn't want
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: to vote for her. And so this wasn't like some
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: online vibes issue. It was like what the electorate was
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: saying in the state where it matters. So I think,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know where they go from here.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: And she suspended her campaign before any votes were cast, right?
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: So there wasn't an alternative in the primary.
• 27:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: He has to, he has to end the campaign so
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: that we have a chance of defeating Susan Collins, I
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: think the story is horrible. I find it, you know,
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: starting from when you interviewed him about the tattoo, he
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: has not always been transparent about it. That has become
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: increasingly true that his denials have just not been backed
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: up by what came next, even here in the story,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: which is deeply reported, backed up by contemporaneous evidence and
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: previous conversations. It comports with what he said, which is
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: that he was drinking a lot. And the story describes
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: him as being drunk, potentially not remembering it the next day.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: And so then we have a video of him categorically
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: denying something, which it doesn't seem he's really in a
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: position to deny. So he has to withdraw to give
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: us a chance. And what I took away from watching
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: this video, from reading this story, is it is clear that, uh,
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: this is somebody that has not maybe even been honest
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: with himself about what was going on in the dark
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: phases of his life. Uh, but that is not for
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: us to deal with in a Senate race that will
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: determine the control of his head.
• 29:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Look, obviously a big lesson here is that vetting is
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: really important and some of the vetting gets done by
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: campaigns themselves. And then ultimately it will be done by
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: the media if the campaigns don't figure that part out. Um,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: but like we should be clear about what kind of
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: stuff comes up in vetting. Like the Reddit posts should
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: come up in vetting, like online accounts that should come
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: up in vetting. I've never heard of a campaign like
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: kind of calling exes to sort of suss out stories
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: like this, right? I mean, I think what happens is
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: campaigns have conversations with the candidate. They ask them a
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: series of questions. If the candidate is not candid back
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: to them, then they're in a very difficult position. And
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: like when I interviewed Platner about his Reddit posts and
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: the tattoo, like I was not aware of any of
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: these allegations. None of this was public yet, just for
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: the record, because I would have asked. I still don't
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: think there's evidence that he intended to get a Nazi
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: tattoo on purpose or that he had like Nazi leanings.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: In fact, I think the Reddit archive like shows the opposite,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: but like, like you just said, like I have come
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: to believe over time and over learning more information that
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: he just wasn't being honest about when he learned that, uh, what,
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: what the tattoo was or what it looked like. And
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he was being honest with himself
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: or the campaign about it. Um, and so I think
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: like the question is like, what do you do with
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: that information? What's the lesson here? I hope it's not
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: that we don't try to run people from outside of
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: politics because I think like, if that's a good thing,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I want people who weren't just like raised in a
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: political system to run for office. I think it's good
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: to have new perspectives. Also, there have clearly been vetting
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: problems within the party too. Like Eric Swalwell was in
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Congress for a decade. There were horrifying allegations that came
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: out about him. He was in leadership. He was like
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: close with Pelosi.
• 30:44
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: So like he was an establishment favorite who had some
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: horrible allegations in his past. But yeah, I mean like it's,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: It's horrible. It's awful. It's really sad. A lot of
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: people believed in him, believed in this campaign. I know
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: they're going to feel devastated by this. A lot of
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: people are going to be really angry. There's going to
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: be a lot of anxiety about our ability to win
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: this seat. And, you know, hopefully that Maine Democrats can
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: pick someone good to replace him quickly and get this righted.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's going to be a lot of, I think,
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: people sort of doing their kind of factional kind of
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: point scoring about it. too, and fine, people can have
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: at it. There are people who felt like this was
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: not a person that should have been trusted with a
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Senate nomination because of the Reddit posts, because of the tattoo,
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: that this was enough to say we should be looking
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: in another direction. That has turned out to be true.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: But what has consistently been, I think, the way in
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: which people talk past each other in these inter-party debates is,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: you view Graham Plattner as unacceptable. Voters seemed to find
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: the establishment candidates even less acceptable. And there was a
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: way to defeat Graham Platner with a viable alternative, and
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: that wasn't presented during the race. And that doesn't mean
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: criticism of Graham Platner wasn't completely and totally justified. That
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean there's anything wrong with supporting Janet Mills. But
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: now we have to figure out how to find that
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: person who can represent the party in the Senate race
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: because the stakes remain high.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Control the Senate.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: And look, I think ultimately I just don't get the
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: sense that Janet Mills really wanted to run.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: And she was like pushed and pushed and kind of
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: dragged into it. And it came through, you know, and like,
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: she didn't seem like she wanted the campaign. I understand
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: that there was also this insurgent candidacy happening and she just, uh, yeah,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: it's just the whole situation is just terrible.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Even after the June 4th story, she said, I am
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: still technically on the ballot, but didn't reactivate the campaign. So, uh,
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a terrible situation. And, uh, The story
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: is horrible. And my thoughts go to think of that
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: person who finally felt like they didn't get their story
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: out the first time the story ran. They felt they
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: had to come forward and tell it in even more
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: gruesome detail. And that is terrible and a brave thing
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: to do. And I still hope we win that fucking seat.
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  Speaker 8: All right.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: In other campaign news, over the weekend, Michigan State Senator
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: Mallory McMorrow ended her primary campaign for U.S. Senate, creating
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: a two-way race between Abdul El-Sayed and Congresswoman Haley Stevens.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: McMorrow is seen as a rising star in the party,
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: but She failed to gain traction in the race and
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: had been stuck in single digits in recent polling. Stevens
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: has the backing of Chuck Schumer, the DSCC, and AIPAC
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: is positioning herself as the electable moderate. To date, though,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: she's running behind El-Sayed, a progressive and former crooked host
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: and a friend of ours who's generating big crowds and
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: enthusiasm by running against the establishment, supporting Medicare for All
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: and opposing military aid to Israel. Mallory was trying to
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: position herself between Hailey Stevens and Abdul. Why do you
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: think that didn't ultimately work?
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just to be clear, I'm biased. Abdul's a friend.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: He did a show on her network. I'm a donor
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: to his campaign, so I just want to put that
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: all out there. I think Mallory started as a long shot.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: She was known online because of viral speeches a few
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: years ago, but I think statewide she had very low
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: name ID, and that's a real challenge. I think you
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: also had Abdul as the very clear Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive favorite,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: and then you had Haley Stevens with the Schumer support,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: the institutional support, and the tens of millions of dollars
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: in outside money that comes with it. I think 32
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: million has been spent on her behalf so far. And
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: then Mallory was left trying to figure out, like, what
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: is my middle path where I cobble off some votes
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: from the more progressives by being more electable and some
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: from the establishment? And it just, it never quite worked.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: And then I think she made sort of what turned
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: out to be a fatal error by attacking Abdul for
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: campaigning with Hassan Piker, which made progressives think, um, that
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: she was not credible or viable. And then I think
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: it got Abdul more attention than he had gotten in
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: a very long time. And it just sort of like
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: started this slow attrition and support. And so I think-
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: So it also lumped her in with Haley. Yeah, it
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: made her seem more like the establishment, which was sort
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: of played into the Abdul message. So I just think
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: like she ultimately never could really find a clear lane. Yeah,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: there was some, also I would.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: Just say like a fair amount of- hostility towards Mallory
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: McMorrow online. And it reminded me a little about of
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: when it was Bernie versus Elizabeth Warren toward the end
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: of that primary. And it was like, oh, you know,
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: we have our person. And so you're a threat to
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: our candidate. And it was sort of pretty hostile towards McMorrow.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: So yeah, now the question is, I think, what happens to,
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: there weren't that many McMorrow voters by the end, but
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: there are still a lot of undecided people. And Haley
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: is going to be making an electability argument against Abdul.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: Some of that will be around him being on the left.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: I think some of it will be subtly or not
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: so subtly about him, his identity.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: What do you think? Yeah, I think there's sort of
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: this assumption that Mallory's votes are just going to go
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: to Haley. I think that's wrong. I've heard from people
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: who've seen a lot of polling that Mallory's votes are
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: very much split. It's not an obvious boon to Haley Stevens.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: We'll probably see another poll soon. We'll have a better sense.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: But Like the old theory of politics was the progressive
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: lane was like 35, maybe 40%. You know, that was
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: sort of the ceiling. And then the rest of the
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: votes would go to more established kind of moderate normie Dems.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: This cycle though, we're seeing the total rejection of the
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: establishment on the left and on the right. We're also
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: seeing progressive candidates all over the country in New York, Colorado,
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: lots of places do really, really well. And that would
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: seem to benefit Abdul. There are questions about Haley's abilities
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: as a messenger and, Uh, there are, uh, you know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: foreign policy and support for Israel and AIPAC has been
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: more of an animating issue than we've seen in a very,
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: very long time. And I think that speaks to an
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Abdul strength. So those would be all arguments for, um,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: why he could benefit or do well coming out of this, uh,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: move from Mallory. Um, but, um, we don't know. I mean,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: like there's a ton of money getting spent for Haley. Um,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: she's a better known, uh, quantity in the state. And then,
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: as you said, I think there will be a lot
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: of talk about electability, fear of losing this seat, the
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: strength of their opponent. And you're right, like a lot
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: of that will be code for Abdul's a Muslim guy.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: But we'll just see what message resonates with voters. I mean,
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: this primary is in August. I bet a lot of
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: folks still aren't paying attention. So there is time. But
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: it's going to be seen as like a huge proxy
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: for a lot of the issues in the party about left, right,
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Israel-Gaza that we'll talk about in a second.
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've been saying for a while now that there
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: is this realignment on Israel, and it seems to be happening.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Very quickly during this primary. John and Dan talked.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: On the show Friday about Kamala Harris reaching out to
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Zoran and AOC and the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: in Michigan as she prepares for a potential 2028 run.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: On Wednesday, another potential 2028 candidate, Rahm Emanuel, the son
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: of an Israeli independence fighter and a career moderate, will
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: give a speech in Tel Aviv essentially threatening an end
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: to American support for Israel unless there are major changes.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: Here's how Abdul talked about the issue recently.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: This is a moral Rorschach test. Like if you can't
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: identify the systematic murder of tens of thousands of kids
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: as a genocide, and then you want to say that
• 40:34
  Speaker 6: you're a fighter for human rights and dignity.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: That's just hypocrisy.
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: So I just think that if you can't call the
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: most heinous violation of human rights what it is, it's
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: hard for me to believe that you're going to go
• 40:47
  Speaker 6: and fight the Trump administration or fight the pharma CEOs
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: or fight the health insurance CEOs who are making my
• 40:53
  Speaker 6: life unlivable.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: I do think he's describing the actual dynamic among a
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: lot of Democratic voters, that this issue has become a
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: kind of shibboleth for a willingness to take on the establishment,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: they're willing to take hard political positions.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: But at the same time, his.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: Choice of words there is interesting, right? Because a Rorschach
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: test is something in which you see what reflects your
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: view of it.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: Good point. Yeah.
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: And the thing itself is a way of eliciting what
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: your view might be. And I do think that's happening
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: here too. It's partly why I'm interested in what Rahm
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: ultimately says, because I think Abdul is describing the reality
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: of how this debate is unfolding, but that is in
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: part because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris left such a
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: massive hole, both in terms of the policy and any
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: kind of larger framework or message or story about what
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: a progressive defense of support for Israel might be.
• 41:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that for a lot of progressive
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: voters in the, in the U S especially young people,
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: it's kind of just like a threshold question about your credibility.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: If you can't look at what's happening in Gaza and say,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: that's wrong and say, we shouldn't be funding, uh, a
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: genocide or sending more weapon systems with that, with a
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: blank check over to Israel. Um, then they don't believe
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: you on anything else. I think the ROM speech is
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: particularly interesting to me. I'm going to talk to him
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: next week on pot say the world. Um, Because Netanyahu
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: has an election in October at the latest. I think
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: he's going over there in part to kind of stir
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: some shit up and signal to voters in advance of
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: that election, like, hey, it's time to move on from Netanyahu.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: This guy is bad news. He does not, he's not
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: serving interests. He's not going to help you in Washington anymore.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: We'll see if that works. I do think like looking,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: thinking back to the Biden kind of era Gaza fights,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: I think there was a suggestion for a while that
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the campus activists were performative. You know, the people are
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: protesting like they just that was their thing of the month.
• 43:00
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: And I didn't think that was true then. And I
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: don't think it's true now. And I think that your views, again,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: on Gaza have just become like a proxy for this
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: much bigger threshold question about whether people believe you. And frankly,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: things have gotten worse since then because we had the
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: war with Iran and all that Trump has, you know,
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: done to make things worse there. And so, you know,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: that's where it's like all getting swept up. And so
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: I do think this is going to continue to be
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: a huge issue in Democratic primaries in this cycle, but
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: also in 28.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is where I do think like the ways
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: in which I think pro-Israel Democrats or historically pro-Israel Democrats
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: have been, I think, really caught flat-footed and surprised by
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: the level of intensity and importance that this issue has
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: now taken.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: And you have seen a lot of those Democrats shift, right?
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: You had Bernie and Chris Murphy putting up resolutions about
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: cutting off offensive military aid to Israel and the number
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: of Democrats being willing to support that ticking up. But
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: in the absence, I think, of a clear articulation of
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: a view on Israel that is reflective of, concedes the
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: substance of the, I think, valid moral critique of U.S.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: support for Israel, military support for Israel and its conduct
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: of the war in Gaza. But that talks about a
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: position on settlements, that talks about a position on the
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: future of Gaza, two-state solution, whether or not that is
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: still something that is plausible, what it looks like to
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: actually fight for something like that, what it looks like
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: to hold Israel accountable, right? It is true what Abdul
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: says in that video, that if you can't call what
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: Israel has done in Gaza a genocide, then you are
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: failing this moral test. But there are no politicians right
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: now saying something like, I believe Israel's conduct of the
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: war is horrific. I think that they've committed ethnic cleansing.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: There are genocidal members of administration. I will leave the
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: definition of genocide to others, but I'll tell you, we will, uh, uh, uh,
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: make sure that the West bank is safe for Palestinians
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: and we will remove settlements, uh, as part of any deal,
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: we will hold off any funding for Israel, uh, until
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: it has withdrawn to.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: The borders, right?
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: Like there is a full throated pro-Palestinian, uh, uh, position
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: that acknowledges Israel's right to exist and defend itself, uh,
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: that I think could, uh, reflect the values Abdul's talking about.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: But right now it just doesn't exist. There's no one,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: no one really espousing that position that I'm hearing.
• 45:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: I think what, what is broken recently is for a
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: long time, they were kind of like political and policy
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: orthodoxies that were just kind of abided by in Washington.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like there was, there was seen as
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: most politicians did not stray much beyond, you know, sort
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: of like the 40 yard lines of this debate. And
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: then when Gaza started, like a bunch of people just
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: started asking why, why are we giving, you know, to
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: their credit, like places like J street and other groups
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: were asking these questions earlier, but like people just sort
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: of wondering, why are we giving this country 3.3 billion
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: a year in military support? And then a bunch of
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: additional funding after that, why are we partnering with BB
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu to launch this crazy war with Iran when it
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem to serve our interests? Why are we, why
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: does the U S Congress welcome in ICC indicted war
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: criminals like Netanyahu and and other Israeli political and military leaders,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: and yet we're having this big, dumb fucking fight for
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: a month about Hassan Piker's Twitch stream.
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: And why is a Democratic administration, two of them, supporting
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: a government in which their leader comes to the US
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: and insults us and basically does politics for the Republican Party,
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: and you have AIPAC as an organization that has become
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: completely sort of politicized and sort of attacking Democrats who
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: don't hew exactly to their line.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, AIPAC primarily has started sort of intervening
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: in Democratic primaries, attacking the more progressive candidate about issues
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: that have nothing to do with Israel, and that's rubbing
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: people the wrong way. And I think there's a broader
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: sort of waking up to the fact that at this moment,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: the two-state solution is just not realistic in any way.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: And I think a lot of times when politicians talk about, well,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: we need peace talks and two states living side by
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: side and blah, blah, blah, it's just a way of
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: punting the question and having anything to say that they
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: all know is complete bullshit because the West Bank is
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: getting chopped up every single day by more settlement construction.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: And after October 7th, neither side has any faith in
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: the process, nor do they necessarily support a two-state solution anymore.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: That's all true and real. I think where My only
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: advice to the more progressive candidates and people on the
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: left is I do think one thing that has gotten
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: lost from the conversation is any sense of empathy in
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: a lot of these answers about the trauma that Israelis
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: felt on October 7th or that Jews in America fear
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: they feel about anti-Semitism. And I think that needs to
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: be more a part of the conversation as we recalibrate
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: these much harder issues. policy issues.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: Well, I would say acknowledging that is not a concession to,
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: is not admitting to something, right? Like compassion towards Israelis
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: is not to take anything away from Benjamin Netanyahu's evil
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: conduct of the war. And as much as a two-state
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: solution seems like something you just say to get out
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: of the question, it's not like a one-state solution is
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: very appealing either. So it really is like a, you know,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: it's been a morass for a very, very long time.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Like you have to do both. Of course, I have
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: enormous empathy for people in Gaza, the suffering, the Palestinian people,
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: like having empathy for the Israelis who were hurt or
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: killed or kidnapped that day, or the people who were
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: scared by the events of October 7th. Like they're not
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: mutually exclusive. We can do both. And I think it's just,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: it's gotten a little bit lost from the debate.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: And I'll just also say too, like from the other
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: side of it, like you can go back to Rabin,
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: describing the importance of a peace process, in part because
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: you would get to the point we're at now, where
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: people would stop being willing to accept a two-state solution
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: and start demanding a one-state solution. When people criticize Mamdani,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: because he gets the question, do you support the right
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: of a Jewish state to exist? And I support a
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: state for equal rights to exist. Those circles can be squared.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: There can be a state with equal rights that has
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: a Jewish majority, but that requires a Palestinian state, which
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: requires a U.S.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: That is willing to put an.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: an extraordinary amount of pressure on Israel to remove settlements
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: from the West Bank and make a two-state solution possible.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: Because the alternative, which is increasingly what people are demanding,
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: is one in which there is no longer a Jewish
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: state in a region which there are a lot of
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: Muslim states.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Or, you know, a state That is a de facto
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: apartheid state with different laws for different people, different religions.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Which is also unacceptable.
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: Pod Save America is brought to you by Sleep Me.
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  Speaker 4: up better. The headlines will still be there in the morning.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: You might as well wake up ready for them. Speaking
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: of shifting and amorphous borders, we haven't discussed on the show,
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: but Mitch McConnell has been absent from the Senate since
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: he was hospitalized in mid-June. His staff and others have
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: tried to downplay it. On July 1st, according to Dispatch Audio,
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: reviewed by ABC News and other outlets, a person at
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: Mitch McConnell's address was discovered unconscious in a cardiac arrest
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: and EMTs performed CPR. This has led to rampant speculation
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: that McConnell is somewhere in the twilight realm between life
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: and death where he will be held, and this is
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: what the, I think the conspiracy is, where he will
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: be held until August 3rd because after August 3rd, the
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: November election would be for the next term as opposed
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: to for the remainder of McConnell's term and Thomas Massey,
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: who is obviously a free agent, could run for the Senate.
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: So goes the conspiracy theory. Would you care to recklessly speculate?
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: Man, I don't know. This wasn't really on my radar
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: screen until today, but then I'm seeing there was a
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: reporter named Desiree Townsend, who was quote tweeting Laura Loomer.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: So Laura Loomer, for folks who don't know, is this
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: crazy far-right activist who back in the day once chained
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: herself to the offices of the Twitter building in New
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: York because they like canceled, like they got rid of
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: her account or something. Or I don't know, I think
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: a gay guy was there. I don't know. Yeah, something
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: like that. So she was like a fringe lunatic, but
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: now she is very close to Donald Trump. There's all
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: these reports about how she'll walk into the Oval Office
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: with a list of names of administration officials and get
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: them all fired, including high-level people. I think she got
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: the head of the NSA fired, right? So Laura Loomer
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: is someone who has a lot of access at the
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: White House. She tweeted a couple hours ago today, a
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: high-level source close to the White House tells me Mitch
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: McConnell is officially brain dead. He's not coming back. Now,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: that is obviously crass phrasing, but I and I don't
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: normally believe her, but I do believe that someone close
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: to the White House would tell her that. And then
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: a journalist who apparently had like reported out or broke
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: the story of Mitch McConnell's initial cardiac issues confirmed what
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: she said. So there's just all this churn and it's
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: not coming from like the kind of resistance left. It's
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: coming from the far right spaces about McConnell's health. And
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: there's just no transparency. And then His wife is in
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: China for some reason.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she was on a trip very soon after this
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: had happened, which was a little bit strange.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: So, yeah.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: But I will say, as far as ways for Mitch
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: McConnell to go out, holding on to power, even in
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: the face of grim death, even in the face of
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: the ultimate end itself, as he shuffles off this mortal coil.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: It's the way to do it. It's how he'd want
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: to go.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: It is how he'd want to go.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: He'd want to go in some sort of nefarious plot
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: in which he has kept alive to fuck Thomas Madison.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: I think that's exactly what he would want. And as
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: much as I don't.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Approve of it, I approve of it. He died doing
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: what he loves. Yeah, he died with his boots on.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: We don't know is the answer.
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: We don't know.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: We don't know if he's alive or dead. Can I
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: tell you something?
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: When I worked for Hillary Clinton, when speaking of the
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: issue we were talking about, Ariel Sharon had fallen into
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: a coma. memories of prime minister very uh... hawkish prime
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: minister of israeli fell into a coma and i had
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: to write this statement announcing that he had passed because
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: we thought he was gonna die at any moment and
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: it was gonna be a statement from bill and hillary
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: clinton together and we went back and forth and it
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: went up went over to the to bill clinton's office
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: and it came back and the line of it's the
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: the last line of it said and ariel sharon died
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: with his boots on not a phrase i would have
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: used that which is what he wanted to because he
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: was still serving as in a right when he fell
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: into the coma he's working and Then Ariel Sharon was
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: in a coma for weeks, months, maybe longer, was it years?
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: He was in a coma for a very, very long time.
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: And we would have this internal debate being like, how
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: long after you've fallen into a coma are you no
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: longer dying with your boots on?
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? Do you just leave the
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: boots on the whole time?
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: Right, because he didn't die with his boots on because
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: he may have fell down. He got into a coma
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: with his boots on, but we can't keep this sentence in.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: This was weeks. Yeah, you'd probably be more comfortable with
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: the boots off.
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: The boots are off.
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: The boots are made for walking.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Speaking of being old, America turned 250 this week and
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: Trump got to hold his big freedom 250 rally the
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: culmination of months of meticulous planning There was dangerous heat
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: lightning pandemonium enough smoke to cause a code red air
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: quality alert and then on the morning of the 4th
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: of July a white nationalist group called Patriot Front Featuring
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: around 400 masked men carrying Confederate flags and chanting reclaim
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: America march to the Capitol good news They decided to
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: be climate conscious and take public transit bad news these
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: uber mention should have taken Uber because the master race
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: couldn't master the metro.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Here's how it went.
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a great photo circulating of these guys in
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: their masks on the train and this woman just sitting
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: there being like.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: What the fuck is going on here? So these guys,
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: they couldn't figure out how to use the metro? I
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: think that they were.
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: Trying to use, one person was trying to swipe them in,
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: but I wonder if they got a bit flummoxed by
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: the fact.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: That you have to, I think, tap in and tap out.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know if that's still the case in D.C.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I believe it is.
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: I think that must have been confused by the tap in,
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: tap out situation. So that was Trump's July 4th, a
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: fireworks display that seemed like the Capitol was being nuked
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: and that filled the entire region with smoke, gave a
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: pretty uninspired, speech. Uh, a lot of the, uh, there
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: was a lot of people fishing out detritus from the
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: sad reflecting pool, which has, I think, been through enough. Uh,
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: and I think that closes the chapter on the, uh,
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: 250th birthday America deserved for putting this.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: Man in charge.
• 57:20
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: It was just, the whole thing was just such a
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: sloppy mess and a bummer.
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: You Trump couldn't have predicted the weather. It's not his
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: fault that it was 105 degrees. But what is dangerously
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: hot outside, the thing you do is you cancel your speech.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: You don't have your supporters line up for hours and
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: hours and hours. And then you don't put Secret Service
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: in the situation where they're clearing out the National Mall
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: because of dangerous thunder and lightning. And the supporters are
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: accusing them of some sort of conspiracy theory to steal
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: from his big day. And the whole thing was just
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: selfish and stupid and sloppy and half-assed. And it could
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: have been really cool. And it's just a bummer.
• 58:00
  Speaker 8: It is.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: Now, various Democrats had their own July 4th counter-programming, including
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: Zoran Mamdani, who gave a great speech just before the
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: holiday that caused a bunch of conservatives to lose their mind.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: Here's a few moments from the speech, which Mamdani delivered
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: from a desk used by George Washington and with naturalized U.S.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: citizens all around him.
• 58:22
  Speaker 9: Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection
• 58:26
  Speaker 9: in which it was conceived. a nation striving each day
• 58:29
  Speaker 9: to better itself. Therein lies the work of America, the striving,
• 58:34
  Speaker 9: the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each
• 58:38
  Speaker 9: of us has to live in a nation that every
• 58:41
  Speaker 9: one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each
• 58:45
  Speaker 9: of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those
• 58:49
  Speaker 9: who came before. What power each of us holds to
• 58:53
  Speaker 9: bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have
• 58:56
  Speaker 9: seen when they looked upon these shores. The greatness that
• 59:00
  Speaker 9: for 250 years has been America.
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: What a commie fuck. So I saw the reaction before
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: I saw the speech.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: What did you think? You're like, oh God, what'd he say?
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: And you watch and you're like, oh, that's incredibly patriotic. Look,
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: it was a very Obama message, so no surprise that
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: I liked it. Like being patriotic and optimistic, talking about
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: America's flaws, but in a hopeful way. I mean, that's
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: a very It's a tough needle to thread for a politician,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: especially if you're brown or black. And you saw it
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: in the reaction where you had all these people accusing
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: Zohra Mamdani of attacking his country or being critical of it.
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: It's like, guys, Trump literally says, we were a dead
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: country until I came back. His view of America is,
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: unless he's in charge, it's dead. It's irredeemable. It's American carnage.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: We're making America great again. So it's just like this
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: very frustrating, endless, um, stupid conversation about what it means
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: to be patriotic. But I think like, I thought it
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: was a great speech. It was interesting that he decided
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: to step up and do it because they had to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: know that this was going to be the reaction. But
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: I imagine that it was just very important to him
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: in this moment where Trump is trying to repeal, uh,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: birthright citizenship and all these kinds of like pillars of
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: what makes us a country, uh, that is great. Um,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: that he wanted to be like, uh, to voice the
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: alternative view.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: Like when I saw, I was like, oh, that's so interesting.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: He makes interesting. He's going to do something.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: He's going to make a news where we're news, a
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: newsmaking speech around July 4th. And he's doing it because
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: the podium's open when the podium's open, he's taking it.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: Like it's just, it's open. Exactly.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: And I thought, like I was saying, there was a,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: I think it was Bill Ackman, uh, and, and a
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: bunch of people were saying, oh, he's even sitting at
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: the desk wrong.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Because the desk has drawers on both sides.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: And so they saw him sitting on the side where,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: and they said, oh, this dummy doesn't know how to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: sit at a desk. And it really like captured to me,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: like just the, first of all, the assumption that everyone
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: but them is stupid. And that there were so many
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: conservatives jumping in to say that this speech was dark
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: and hateful that like, how dare this person, but some
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: of them saying, how dare this immigrant who's only been
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: a citizen for eight years criticize my country, fuck you.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: But they didn't want to listen, right? Because it's a
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: beautiful and patriotic, speech. And he's very like, you know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: he did the same thing with the with that speech
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: around the Knicks winning where he's just, you know what, like,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: I'm going to there's a moment. My job as a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: leader is to make the most of moments as they come.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: And he's just so good at that. I think it
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: drives him a little bit crazy. Yeah, especially people.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Like Bill Ackman, where he's making an economic argument and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: going right at people like Bill Ackman. I And the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: rest of us should be grateful for being allowed to visit.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And he said how small they are, how weak. And
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: I saw a tweet from Elon Musk from over the
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: last couple of days where someone was telling him that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: he essentially saying you should oppose universal suffrage. And Elon said,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: I have wised up. So we've got this trillionaire oligarch
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: suddenly coming out against all of our having the right
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: to vote. So it felt important and timely because basically
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: he was trying to say, the powerful to try to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: divide us and turn us against each other. And we
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: can't let them do that. We need to come together
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: and like fight for the working class and acknowledge America's flaws,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: but then continue to talk about how to make it
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: great and greater. So it was, it was nice to hear. Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: And I enjoyed the, the freak out over it, especially
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: from people that I don't think they consumed it. I don't,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: I think they just started going at it and assumed
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: it was something that they wouldn't like. And like Fox
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: News calls it, you know, dark and anti-American, unpatriotic. And
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: how about it, guys? It's just a sort of slop
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: for the audience that you know won't see it either.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: Exactly. But not us.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: This is slop for people who read the articles. And
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: you can support pro-democracy media by becoming a friend of
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: the pod. Go to crooked.com slash friends. You help us
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: build independent media that gets good information in front of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: more people. You get ad-free episodes. You get subscriber-only shows
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: like Only Friends, where we really let loose. You get
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Dan's show, Polar Coaster. You get a bunch of great newsletters.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: You get a bunch of breaking news content without ads.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: It helps what we're building here. So please, please, please,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: if you're not a subscriber yet, become a friend of
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: the pod and support Tommy.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 7: Thank you.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: And that's our show. Thanks for joining Dan and Alex Wagner.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: We'll be back with a new episode on Friday.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 7: See you then.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: and Faris Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.
• 1:03:42
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• 1:03:50
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