Latest / Pod Save America / Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market

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Trump's "Liberation Day" Crashes the Stock Market · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Ever wondered exactly how the U.S. will fund trillions of
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  Speaker 3: Or how China is building so much nuclear power.
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  Speaker 2: Or what's behind the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. And I'm Jill Weisenthal.
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  Speaker 2: And we are the hosts of Bloomberg's OddLots podcast. Every Monday, Thursday,
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• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. Both John
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and Dan are away this week. Happy Liberation Day to them.
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  Speaker 1: So we thought we'd take the opportunity... to mix things
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  Speaker 1: up a little bit and what has turned into a
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  Speaker 1: wild news week, thanks to President Trump's announcement about tariffs
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  Speaker 1: and subsequent stock market crash. So joining me today as
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  Speaker 1: my co-host is the excellent Emma Vigeland. She's the co-host
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  Speaker 1: of the Majority Report with Sam Seder and one of
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  Speaker 1: the smartest political analysts out there. Emma, great to see you.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, Tommy, for the kind words. I really
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  Speaker 3: appreciate you having me on today.
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  Speaker 1: I'm very excited to have you on. We are going
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  Speaker 1: to talk about The politics of Trump's tariffs, the Democratic
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Party's big win in Wisconsin, some signs of hope about
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  Speaker 1: how Democrats are fighting back and how to fix some
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of these lingering divisions between the moderate and more progressive
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: wing of the Democratic Party. Do you think we can
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: heal the wounds from 2016 today? Can we finally do it?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, never say never, but we're going to, I think,
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  Speaker 3: move that ball along.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to move the needle. I mean, jokes aside,
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  Speaker 1: I am really excited to talk to you about this.
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  Speaker 1: Because I know you come from more of like the DSA,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Bernie wing of the party, but you are also pragmatic
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and constructive and smart and thoughtful. So I just appreciate
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: that about you. And I think it's a good balance
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: in the show and a good conversation to have and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a timely one. So you guys are also going to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: hear my conversation with a longtime economics writer named James
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Surowiecki about the details of Trump's tariffs and why the
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: White House's tariff math just made no sense. Then you're
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: going to hear my interview with Susan Rice. We recorded
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that on Wednesday. She's the former National Security Advisor, Ambassador
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to the UN, White House Domestic Policy Council Chair. We
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: talk about Signalgate, Trump appeasing Russia, RFK's assault on our
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: public health, and a lot more. And then finally, at
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the end of the show, you're going to hear just
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: a brief interview of a conversation I had with my
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: friend Ashley Parker. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And Ashley wrote this beautiful, funny, tearjerker of an essay
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: about miscarriage and pregnancy loss. which longtime listeners of the
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: show might know is something that unfortunately my wife Hannah
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and I have also experienced. So that full conversation is
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: available on the Pod Save America YouTube. I hope you'll
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: give it a listen, but you can hear an excerpt
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  Speaker 1: of it at the end of this episode. So like
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  Speaker 1: I said, a packed show, but a great one. So
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  Speaker 1: let's start with the tariffs. On Wednesday, President Trump made
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: an appearance in the Rose Garden. He announced his long-awaited
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  Speaker 1: tariffs on basically every country he says treats America poorly
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  Speaker 1: on trade. The specifics here were a big mystery until
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  Speaker 1: the moment he announced them with his big stupid charts,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and they were far worse than expected. Trump announced a
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  Speaker 1: baseline 10% tariff on all U.S. imports. Far steeper tariffs
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  Speaker 1: on countries Trump declared were the worst offenders, including some
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  Speaker 1: of our closest allies, like the European Union, Japan, South Korea,
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  Speaker 1: and others. China got hit with a 54% tariff. They're
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: vowing retaliation. And to make matters worse and more confusing,
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  Speaker 1: Trump's 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars also went into effect
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  Speaker 1: on Thursday. So in total, about 90 countries will be affected,
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  Speaker 1: including a number of uninhabited islands. So we're going to
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  Speaker 1: stick it to those fucking penguins. So we're recording this
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  Speaker 1: on Thursday afternoon Pacific time. Markets have closed for the day.
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  Speaker 1: The S & P dropped nearly 5%. Trump got asked
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  Speaker 1: about the stock market dip at the White House today
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  Speaker 1: next to the roaring helicopter engines, as always, and responded
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: with some new spin. Let's listen.
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: I think it's going very well.
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on.
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  Speaker 5: And it's a big thing.
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  Speaker 3: I said this would exactly be.
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  Speaker 6: The way it is.
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  Speaker 7: We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our
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  Speaker 7: country and we've never.
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  Speaker 8: Seen anything like it.
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  Speaker 1: What pristine audio. Emma, Trump is clearly made inroads with
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  Speaker 1: blue collar voters in the last couple of elections, especially
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  Speaker 1: in communities that were hit hard by NAFTA. or other
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  Speaker 1: free trade agreements. He believes that tariffs are how he
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  Speaker 1: can convince those communities that he cares about them and
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  Speaker 1: that he's fighting for them. How do you think Democrats
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  Speaker 1: should respond to that?
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  Speaker 3: I think that he's making it extremely easy, even though
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  Speaker 3: the facts are that people are going to be really
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  Speaker 3: harmed if these actually go into effect. You can just
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  Speaker 3: basically talk about tariffs as a tax on the poorest Americans.
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  Speaker 3: When you look at a sales tax, right, the sales
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  Speaker 3: tax is essentially a flat tax on all goods. And
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  Speaker 3: it is called a regressive tax because the less money
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  Speaker 3: you have, the more you're disproportionately impacted by a sales tax.
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  Speaker 3: If you're a millionaire, a sales tax on a banana
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  Speaker 3: or on some groceries isn't going to affect you as
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  Speaker 3: much as somebody in the middle income bracket or in
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  Speaker 3: the lower income bracket. And tariffs essentially function as a
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  Speaker 3: compounding sales tax because they raise the cost of basic goods.
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  Speaker 3: And really, like, let's just zoom out for a second
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  Speaker 3: and say, OK, Donald Trump wanted to onshore manufacturing and
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  Speaker 3: he wanted to further build up our domestic manufacturing capacity
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  Speaker 3: here in the United States. We would need a I
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: don't know. billions and billions of dollars of investment. We
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  Speaker 3: would need it to happen over a multi-year period to
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  Speaker 3: even create the factories and systems and supply lines that
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  Speaker 3: would be needed so that we could onshore this manufacturing
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  Speaker 3: and produce the goods here that are now going to
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  Speaker 3: be hit by these tariffs. But he's doing it in reverse,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't even think that would work. He's now
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  Speaker 3: imposing the tariffs when we don't have the capacity to
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  Speaker 3: produce a lot of these goods that are going to
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  Speaker 3: be hit with the tariffs and these price increases and
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  Speaker 3: so americans have no choice but to pay more and
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  Speaker 3: more and have their wallets hit here and it's not
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  Speaker 3: entirely clear what he thinks he's going to gain from
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  Speaker 3: this except i think he genuinely has a complete misunderstanding
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  Speaker 3: of trade policy he thinks he can shake down other
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  Speaker 3: countries this way and Frankly, it seems like ever since
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  Speaker 3: January 6th, he's been holed up in Mar-a-Lago with very
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  Speaker 3: little connection to the outside world and to even the
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  Speaker 3: threadbare pieces of liberal society that he was connected to
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  Speaker 3: via Ivanka or whatever in 2016. He's in OANN-ville and
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: doesn't know left from right. And so my guess is
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  Speaker 3: somebody got into his ear, maybe somebody who read that
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  Speaker 3: Karl Rove book about William McKinley, who he's now obsessed with.
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  Speaker 3: and said that this is going to be the thing
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  Speaker 3: that allows us to raise revenue without having to go
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  Speaker 3: through the cumbersome process of developing tax policy via the legislature.
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  Speaker 3: It allows Trump to act as a king. And I
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  Speaker 3: do think the other side of this is that For
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  Speaker 3: the industries that are affected by these tariffs, now Trump
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  Speaker 3: feels like they're going to have to come to me
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  Speaker 3: and they're going to have to give me goodies like
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  Speaker 3: he got from various news organizations with his frivolous lawsuits.
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  Speaker 3: It's open corruption and also an open war, frankly, if
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  Speaker 3: these go into effect and are more permanent and there
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  Speaker 3: still is potential to back off of it, hopefully. It's
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  Speaker 3: really going to harm the lowest income people in our society.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, McKinley is so hot right now. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I wish he wasn't, but there's just a lot of
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  Speaker 1: McKinley emulation happening in the Republican Party. You're right though.
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  Speaker 1: I was just watching a speech by Rand Paul who
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  Speaker 1: was like, hey, this is a massive tax increase and
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  Speaker 1: you're trying to do it through this bizarre tariff authority
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  Speaker 1: that has never been used before and you're going around Congress.
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  Speaker 1: None of this is acceptable or by the book or
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  Speaker 1: how it's supposed to go. And to your point about
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  Speaker 1: the timeline of revving up American manufacturing, you're hearing some
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  Speaker 1: people say, well, you know, there's auto plants in the
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  Speaker 1: Midwest that are operating at 60 percent capacity and those
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  Speaker 1: could go up to 80 or 90 or 100. You're
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  Speaker 1: hearing that even from Sean Fain from the UAW.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: But I was talking to an expert on Monday. He
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  Speaker 1: was like, I'm not so sure that that capacity is
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  Speaker 1: going to be filled by human beings as opposed to
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  Speaker 1: robots and also like retooling and revving back up these
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  Speaker 1: these factories and even if they exist already, can take
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  Speaker 1: a really long time. So I'm with you. It feels
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  Speaker 1: like it's pie in the sky to me.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, if we wanted to re-industrialize, again, tariffs can
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  Speaker 3: be used in a targeted way. Say if it were
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  Speaker 3: just purely for the auto industry and we were trying
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  Speaker 3: to develop that capacity, I could even understand that, right?
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  Speaker 3: But that's not what he's doing. These are broad-based tariffs
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  Speaker 3: that he's calling reciprocal, but they're not. And the other
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  Speaker 3: thing that is just so terrifying is that All of
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: this talk about short-term pain in the stock market. What
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: happens when the Republicans gut Medicaid as they're promising to
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: do with their budget in the fall? 72 million people
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: are on Medicaid that rely on it for their health care.
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  Speaker 3: Half of the folks on Medicaid are well below the
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  Speaker 3: poverty line. These are the people that would be hurt
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  Speaker 3: the hardest. with this compounding sales tax, with this regressive
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  Speaker 3: tariff that would function as a tax. And so they
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  Speaker 3: would be immiserated if the Republicans get their way. And
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: we're seeing, I know Ted Cruz, as of right now,
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  Speaker 3: is coming out a little bit against the tariffs. And
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  Speaker 3: as you mentioned, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, they dipped
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  Speaker 3: their toe into criticizing Donald Trump because, by the way,
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  Speaker 3: Kentucky bourbon- Kentucky, I think, produces over 90% of the
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  Speaker 3: world's bourbon. And these tariffs on Canada, those guys are saying, hey,
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  Speaker 3: screw you. We're not going to buy bourbon from you
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  Speaker 3: anymore if you're talking about making us the 51st state.
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  Speaker 3: So this affects folks in Republican states. And like the
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  Speaker 3: 2008 financial crash, The people that are closest to retirement,
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: whose 401ks do not have the time to replenish, don't
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: have the ability to wait out this short-term pain. Their
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: entire retirement could be cut in half right now because
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump and his buddies are playing with the stock market, basically.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just watching Fox News and there was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: a host named Will Kane who was doing a segment
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: who was like, look, today the markets are down, the
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: S & P is down, the NASDAQ, the Dow. but
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: what do we mean by down? And then he threw
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: up a zoomed out chart of the market that went
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: back like one year or five years. And boy, you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the cope is strong when these guys are doing a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: five-year chart of the S & P 500 and be like,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: we're doing like a what's the definition of is kind
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of conversation a la Bill Clinton in the 90s. It
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: didn't feel like they're on their strongest footing. But on
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party piece of this, do you think it's
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: enough to make the argument that you're making, which I
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: find very compelling, by the way, because it's true, against
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: tariffs that there are regressive... backdoor way to raise taxes
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: on people? Or does that need to be married up
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: with some sort of positive agenda, even if we have
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: no power at the federal level for four years?
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  Speaker 3: I think you've hit on it. It absolutely does need
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: to be paired with, you know, a positive agenda. And
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: talking about the oligarchy has proved to be immensely fruitful
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: for the Democrats, because you also have a mascot for
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: yourself right there in Elon Musk, who nobody likes. The
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: more they see of him, the more repulsive he is.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And frankly, I mean... And it's quite clear why. He's
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: just not somebody that has natural charisma and is obviously
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: saying things like Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: of all time. And we know that Social Security is
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: one of the most successful programs in the history of
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: our country, if not the most successful program. It keeps
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: two-thirds of our seniors out of poverty. It is self-funding.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: You fund it and Medicare via the payroll tax, and
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: it's set aside in the budget so people don't have
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: to worry about it. It's not a Ponzi scheme. It's
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a retirement fund that all Americans pay into. So I
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: think talking about Social Security, talking about our social programs and,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: of course, a positive vision of we do need Medicare
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: for all. We do single payer. We need some sort
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: of health care plan that is not just improving the
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Affordable Care Act. And I think Tim Walz has been
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: really good about this. But but tapping into the pain
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: that Americans are feeling where, you know. traditional economic indicators
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily pick up on what folks had been experiencing
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: in the run-up to the 2024 election, I should say,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: because obviously I was hoping Kamala Harris was going to win,
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: but the way that the campaign was run and saying
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: that the economy is good, we just have to improve
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: on it, it didn't prove to be the most salient
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: argument in this time because there are things that traditional
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: economic metrics aren't picking up on, like the fact that
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: rent has never been higher, like the fact that corporations
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: took advantage of inflation and artificially kept their prices higher
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: in the wake of COVID and took home record returns.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: And even though Lina Khan was doing her best, it's
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: quite difficult to get these corporations in line when they
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: have somebody who's running on the presidential ticket who says, hey,
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: if you elect me, she'll go away. Don't even worry
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: about it. We'll make sure that you get to keep
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: doing what you want to do in terms of extracting
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: profits from the rest of Americans. And frankly, it's almost
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: as if Donald Trump learned from corporations during COVID where
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: basically you can take advantage of naturally occurring inflation or
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: persistent inflation in order to cement those prices and then...
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: he doesn't have to address it via Congress, but he
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: can essentially elevate tariffs, impose them on goods, and say, like,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: what can you do? This is naturally what has to happen.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: And then he thinks he can bend the American people
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: to his will.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth noting. I mean, on Thursday, Senator Chuck Grassley,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: who's a senior Republican, and Maria Cantwell, who's a very
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: senior Democrat, introduced a bill that would require approval from
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Congress for all tariffs within 60 days. Congress also passed
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a more limited measure regarding tariffs on Canada. Now, pretty
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: big open question of whether the House of Representatives would
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: ever call up a bill like this, even if it
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: passed the Senate. I consider me skeptical. But the other
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: piece of this that I just wanted to hit on
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: quickly is what's so kind of bizarre about this tariff
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: announcement is Trump ran on the threat from China. But
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: instead of focusing on China with his tariffs, we are
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: taking this broad based approach. We're tariffing all of our
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: closest allies and And then earlier this week, we're reading
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: reports that countries like Japan, South Korea were meeting with
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: China trilaterally for the first time in five years to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: discuss how to coordinate their response to U.S. tariffs. That
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: was according to Chinese state media. So if the rise
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of China is like the big agreed upon bipartisan risk
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to the United States over the next century, this seems
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: like the dumbest possible way to tackle it.
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  Speaker 8: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, we're now getting reporting about how much further
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: along both China is on AI. We heard that a
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: few months ago with deep seek and how much cheaper
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: it is. but also their electric vehicles. There is some
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: early reporting that shows that BYD, the EV kind of
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: behemoth in China, has developed a battery that can charge
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: in the same amount of time that it takes to
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: fill up a petrol tank or your gas tank at
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: the gas pump, or at the very least, they're close.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: And so when you think about these tariffs, why wouldn't
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Canada look to China and say, hey, if the United
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: States is going to treat us this way, we should
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: start buying from China. We should start buying Chinese vehicles. Mexico,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: the same thing. And it's even more common sense for
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: our allies across the Atlantic and elsewhere, or former allies,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: I should say. So it's nonsensical.
• 17:53
  Speaker 7: It really is.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: And like inflation, I was kind of alluding to this earlier,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: These tariffs don't prevent domestic manufacturers from raising prices.
• 18:04
  Speaker 7: Oh, no.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: They don't encourage it, yeah.
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: It encourages it because, frankly, they can just blame the tariffs,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: like corporations did with inflation really in 2022, 2023. And
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: in part, I think, because they were pissed that the
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Biden administration was doing some more enforcement with Lena Kahn.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: and with Jonathan Cantor and that part of the administration
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: domestically that I was very much a fan of. And so, yeah,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: I really do think he's opening the door for more
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: price gouging. And instead of inflation this time, U.S. companies
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: can just blame tariffs and say, what else can we do?
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if the tariffs are successful,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: prices will go up no matter what prices are going
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to go up. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: And then you're going to hear my conversation with James Surowiecki,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: about the substance of Trump's tariffs announcement and why basically
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: every economist seems to think that the way these tariffs
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: were calculated was just complete nonsense. We'll also talk a
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: bit about the stock market reaction. James has written about
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: economics for outlets like Fast Company, The Atlantic, The New Yorker,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and is the author of the book, The Wisdom of Crowds.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: So stick around for that. And then after the interview
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: with James, Emma and I are going to talk about
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: how a fringe right-wing conspiracy theorist is making personnel changes
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: on Trump's national security team. And then the Democrats' big
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: win in Wisconsin, the state of the party, and progressive media.
• 19:31
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• 21:11
  Speaker 1: James Surowiecki, welcome to Pod Save America.
• 21:13
  Speaker 8: Thanks for having me on.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So let's just start with the basics. What did President
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Trump announce yesterday?
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: So what he announced was that the United States will
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: be imposing tariffs on, I would say, almost every country
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: in the world.
• 21:26
  Speaker 8: It's a little unclear. There's some countries that weren't on
• 21:28
  Speaker 8: the list.
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: And we know that Canada and Mexico were exempted because
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: they already have these other tariffs that they put on.
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: So what Trump said was that these were what he
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: called reciprocal tariffs. In other words, that he was imposing
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: tariffs that were pegged to the tariff rates that these
• 21:45
  Speaker 6: countries impose on us. And as he described it, basically,
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: they were half of the tariff rates that these countries
• 21:52
  Speaker 6: are imposing on us. So if you saw it, he
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: had this kind of prop because of course Trump is
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: doing something like visual or whatever, TV-ish. He had this
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: big prop with the country's names on them, and it
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: had one column that was the supposed tariff rates that
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: these countries are charging, and then the tariff rate that
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: we will be imposing.
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: In response, basically.
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: So that was essentially the message he was sending. But
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: as it turns out, the tariff rates that these countries
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: are supposedly charging The way the Trump administration calculated those
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: was kind of odd. Yeah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Can you explain that? I mean, I think the math
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: was basically the U.S. trade deficit with each country divided
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: by the imports from that country. And they declared that
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the resulting percentage was, quote, tariff charge to the USA,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: including currency manipulation and trade barriers. This was described by
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Twitter and as quote,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: this is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned to you before we started recording, I
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: basically failed the last econ class I took. So could
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: you just explain this to a dumb person?
• 23:07
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 23:07
  Speaker 8: So let's just start from the beginning.
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: So when Trump introduced these, he went through and he
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: went through different countries. He would talk about China and
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: what good negotiators Vietnam is and everything. But the way
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: he described it was the way it read on the chart,
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: which it said tariff rate. And then underneath it, it
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: said tariffs. So the actual tariffs that people in countries
• 23:28
  Speaker 6: impose on U.S. exports, plus what they're calling non-tariff trade barriers.
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: So that would be things like, I don't know, there
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: might be special regulations that make it hard for American
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: companies to sell in this country or The Trump administration
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: likes to call value-added taxes a non-tariff trade barrier. I
• 23:46
  Speaker 6: think it's nonsense, but they tend to do it. So
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: when it first came out, I think we assumed that
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: that number was somehow assembled out of those things. Even
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: though the numbers, when you looked at them, didn't really
• 23:59
  Speaker 6: make sense. They were like way too high for some countries.
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: They were too low for others. It was totally unclear
• 24:04
  Speaker 6: where they were coming from. But Trump said, this is
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: what we are being charged by other countries. But The
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: reality is exactly what you said. What they did was
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: they just took our deficit with these countries. And one
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: thing that's important is just the deficit in goods. So
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: services were not included. This is just like manufactured goods
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: or agricultural goods and the like, right? So they took
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: our trade deficit. That's just the amount we sell to
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: a country minus how much we buy from it. And
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: then they divided it by the total number of imports
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: we get from that country. And so, I don't know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: like Indonesia, our trade deficit with Indonesia is like 18
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: billion and.
• 24:48
  Speaker 8: Total imports are 28.
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: You divide 18 is 64% of 28. And so Trump
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: said on the chart, it says Indonesia's tariff rate is 64%.
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: Needless to say, that's not the actual tariff rate Indonesia
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: is charging. It has nothing to do with the actual
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: tariff rate Indonesia is charging. The real point, I think,
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: the reason this is important is I think what it
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: shows is that for Trump, it's something we knew, but
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: it's worth being reminded of. For Trump, basically any trade
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: deficit is bad. Any trade deficit is evidence that we're
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: being ripped off. And so they basically came up with
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: this method that made countries' tariff rates look a lot
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: higher in a lot of cases than they actually are.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Just a quick question on trade deficits. First of all,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: what is the 30-second explanation of what a trade deficit
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: is and why do you think Trump thinks it's bad?
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And what is the reality of the kind of the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: nature of a trade deficit?
• 25:45
  Speaker 8: Well, trade deficit is pretty simple.
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, it involves if you're running a trade deficit,
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: you are buying more in dollar terms. You're buying more
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: from a country than you are selling to it. And again, again,
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: it's not countries that are selling to each other. It's
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: companies within those countries. But you know what I mean?
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: One thing that is important to note about the trade
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: deficits that Trump used to calculate these quote unquote, you know,
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: imaginary tariff rates is.
• 26:10
  Speaker 8: That he only looked at goods.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: So the United States runs a huge surplus in services with,
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: with the rest of the world and with a lot
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: of countries. Um, and he just excluded all those because
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: I don't know, I guess, cause he's, you know, only
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: interested in manufacturing or whatever. But so, uh, so that,
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: so trade deficit is you buy more than you, than
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: you sell. So sometimes that is because countries are making
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: it hard for you to sell in their country. So
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: they either have high tariffs, which raise your prices, or
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: maybe they have these sort of non-tariff trade barriers. In
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: the old days, there would actually be literal quotas, right?
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: You could only sell so much, or maybe you couldn't
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: sell cars at all or whatever it is.
• 26:50
  Speaker 8: There are many, many fewer of those now. They tend
• 26:52
  Speaker 8: to be hidden a lot better.
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: So for Trump, as I said, if there's a trade deficit,
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: it's a sign that that there are these trade barriers
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: that are keeping us out. But the reality is that
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: sometimes it reflects what used to be called comparative advantage.
• 27:08
  Speaker 6: Like countries just specialize in something and are having to
• 27:11
  Speaker 6: get very good at it. And we want to buy
• 27:14
  Speaker 6: stuff from them. And we want to buy more of
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: that from them than they want to buy of whatever
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: it is we're selling. Sometimes that's just going to happen.
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: Sometimes it's a product of just climate, right? So we
• 27:25
  Speaker 6: buy coffee from Indonesia, we buy bananas from Honduras or whatever.
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: And And those are not necessarily rich countries. They aren't
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: necessarily countries that have a huge amount of appetite for
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: American goods.
• 27:37
  Speaker 8: Maybe they do, maybe they don't.
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: But it's not surprising that in some situations like that,
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: you're going to have a trade deficit. Or like an
• 27:45
  Speaker 6: example a lot of people have cited in the last
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: couple of days is this little African country called Lesotho.
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: So Lesotho had the highest tariff rate listed on Trump's chart.
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: It was 99%, which was the maximum you could get.
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: And the reason for that was that we imported like
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: 240 million from them and sold like 2.8 million. But
• 28:07
  Speaker 6: the reason is that Lesotho has tariffs, but that's not why.
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: The reason is that Lesotho sells diamonds and we buy
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: diamonds from them. And they're a poor country, a relatively
• 28:17
  Speaker 6: poor country, that American companies are not necessarily going to
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: spend a lot of time investing, trying to get into
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: that market. And so the idea that the answer to
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: all these trade deficits is just like get them to
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: lower their trade barriers and everything will be solved, which
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: Trump's tech commerce secretary, Howard Lutton, it keeps saying over
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: and over again. I think it's just like incredibly simplistic,
• 28:40
  Speaker 6: but it's simplistic in a way that totally fits the
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: way Trump sees trade.
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: So it kind of makes sense.
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And there was a suggestion that they may have done
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: this math using chat GPT. Have you seen this?
• 28:52
  Speaker 8: I did see this. People suggested that. Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: Because if you ask a variety of AI things, a
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: question about like, what's an easy way to devise a
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: tariff policy that will theoretically balanced trade. And I think
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: that's what AI answers, basically. So it may be that
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: there's some, there may be that. It's also true, though,
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: that this is like an incredibly simple formula. I mean,
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: it's just not a complicated formula. And it really embodies
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: this idea that, you know, not just that trade deficits
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: are bad, but that if you have a trade deficit,
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: it's the result of some nefarious actions on the part
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: of the countries you're trading.
• 29:33
  Speaker 8: With, basically.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: JP Morgan wrote that Trump's announcement would raise just under
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: $ 400 billion in revenue or $ 1. 3 of GDP, which would
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: be the largest tax increase since the Revenue Act of 1968,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: which was used to pay for the Vietnam War, a
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: bunch of great society programs, like a lot of spending.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Who is going to bear that cost? And is there
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: a credible argument in your view that this could bring
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: back manufacturing jobs?
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, tariffs
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: like this do have some impact on overall manufacturing. I mean,
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: my general take on the manufacturing question is that factories
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: today are just not that labor intensive and because factories
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: are much more automated and that the desire to somehow
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: or the imagination that we're going to be able to
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: bring back, you know, 5%, 10% of our workforce to factories,
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: I think is really ill-conceived. And the other truth is
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: a lot of factory jobs are just not that well-paid today.
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: They're not exceptionally well-paid and I don't think they would
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: become so. I think the bigger question about is who's
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: going to pay for it? And the answer there is
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: I think mostly working and middle-class people and also American
• 30:47
  Speaker 6: companies that import a lot of goods and either resell
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: them or actually to use them to in turn make
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: whatever it is they're making.
• 30:54
  Speaker 8: I mean, we do have global supply chains.
• 30:57
  Speaker 6: And so just today, I guess Stellantis announced they were
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: laying off like 900 workers at an auto plant because
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: of some of these tariff issues, I think with Canada
• 31:07
  Speaker 6: or Mexico, I can't remember which.
• 31:09
  Speaker 8: And I think that.
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: The foreign producers will probably eat some of the tariff costs.
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: In other words, they'll reduce their profit margins some. Um,
• 31:20
  Speaker 6: American importers, uh, who are the ones that actually pay
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: the tariffs, literally, um, they will probably eat some of
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: the costs, but some of it.
• 31:26
  Speaker 8: Is just going to get passed on.
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: Um, and that's especially true for, you know, one of
• 31:31
  Speaker 6: the things that's amazing about this is he's in, I mean,
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: this is so obvious, but it's worth stating again, like
• 31:36
  Speaker 6: he's imposing tariffs on basically everything we import.
• 31:40
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: And that includes things that we have no hope of making.
• 31:42
  Speaker 6: He's importing tariffs on coffee. You know, we grow a
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: minuscule amount of coffee in Hawaii. It's pretty much the
• 31:48
  Speaker 6: only place we can do it. So there's all this
• 31:50
  Speaker 6: agricultural stuff.
• 31:51
  Speaker 8: And then, you know, if you think about manufacturing, it
• 31:54
  Speaker 8: takes a long time to open factories.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or even retool them.
• 31:58
  Speaker 8: Or retool them. Yeah.
• 31:59
  Speaker 6: And, you know, there is a reality that like companies
• 32:02
  Speaker 6: that have been doing this for a long time have expertise.
• 32:05
  Speaker 6: And the idea that we're just going to be able
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: to replace them, I think is really foolish. And then
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: the last thing I'll say, sorry, I'm going on here,
• 32:11
  Speaker 6: but- The other big problem with the manufacturing thing is
• 32:14
  Speaker 6: Trump is injecting so much uncertainty into the economy that
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: I just think it's very hard for any CEO to
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: convince himself, okay, you know what the thing to do is?
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: We're going to invest billions in the US and we're
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: sure that everything is going to turn out fine.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I think that is the key point, which is that
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: all these companies just want to know what the rules
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: of the road are going to be one years, two years,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: five years down the road so they can make massive
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: CapEx investments. Um, we're recording this. It's now 1126 AM
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Pacific on Thursday. Uh, the S and P 500 is down.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. 4.28%. Um, that suggests, wow. That suggests that
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Wall Street analysts were very, very wrong in their predictions
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: about what Trump was going to announce because, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: they were trading flat for a while. It seemed like
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: they thought Trump would delay the tariffs or announce something
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: more minimal or have a bunch of carve outs like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you did last time for big companies or sectors. Um,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Did that whiff by Wall Street surprise you?
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: A little bit, but I do think that I cut
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: them a little bit of slack because the obvious problem
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: with Trump is you literally never really know what he's
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: going to do. Like he could have woken up yesterday
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: and been like, ah, you know what?
• 33:28
  Speaker 8: Ah, forget it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: We'll just make it 10% flat or, you know, 10%
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: plus 20% for some of our bigger ones, you know?
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: which is, or he could have, they could have actually
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: really done reciprocal tariffs. Like they could have actually, which
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: is what he had originally suggested they were going to
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: do back in February, when he talked about this back
• 33:44
  Speaker 6: in February.
• 33:45
  Speaker 8: So I cut them a little slack on that.
• 33:47
  Speaker 6: I do think, this is something I've been talking about
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: for a long time. I do think people consistently underestimate
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: how much Trump just loves tariffs.
• 33:56
  Speaker 8: I agree. He really loves them.
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: And he really does think, and always has, I mean,
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: you know, Trump doesn't care, from my perspective, I don't
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: think Trump cares about almost anything.
• 34:05
  Speaker 8: Certainly in politics.
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: I think almost no issues matter to him, but trade
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: is one that has always mattered to him since the 80s.
• 34:14
  Speaker 8: I mean, he's really.
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: Always been obsessed with it and has always had the
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: same position. But the second thing is that the goal
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: is to get rid of every trade deficit with every country.
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: It's not just even to like balance the trade deficit globally,
• 34:27
  Speaker 6: which would be hard enough.
• 34:28
  Speaker 8: He ideally, I think, wants to get rid of.
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: Every single trade deficit with every, even like little tiny
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: countries he wants us to not have a trade deficit with.
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: And I think Wall Street just thought he would be
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: more rational and less in love with tariffs than he
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: actually is.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he just fundamentally doesn't seem to believe in The
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: fact that there can be win-win transactions where I give
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: you money for a thing and I'm happy that I
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: have the thing and not sad that you took my money.
• 34:58
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: No, no.
• 34:59
  Speaker 8: I mean, I think that is it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think his entire view of the world
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: is zero sum. Like that's his entire view of the world.
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: And there's either a winner or a loser. And if
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: you're buying, especially if you're buying without like driving a
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: hard bargain to begin with and trying to, you know,
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: get the other person to drop down. then, um, then
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: you're losing and, and, and more, it's worse than losing.
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: You're getting ripped off.
• 35:25
  Speaker 8: And he hates that more than anything.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: James Sir, Wiki. Thank you so much for doing the show.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
• 35:30
  Speaker 8: Appreciate it. Thanks for having.
• 35:35
  Speaker 9: Me on.
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• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, we are back. Still have Emma Vigeland, co-host of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the Majority Report with Sam Seder here with me. Okay, Emma,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: so apparently Trump found some time on Liberation Day to
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: meet with a far-right conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer. Now,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: if listeners have never heard of Laura Loomer, consider yourself lucky.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: In the past, she has said that the 9-11 attacks
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: were an inside job, that the White House would, quote,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: smell like curry if Kamala Harris were elected, and she
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: once handcuffed herself to the front door of Twitter's office building.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: while wearing a yellow star of David like the ones
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that European Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: because Twitter had banned her from the platform. Despite all
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of that, Trump met with Loomer for 30 minutes on
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Wednesday to hear her case for why he should fire
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: members of his national security team and then, according to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the New York Times, fired six NSC officials, including the
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: senior director for intelligence, international organizations, and legislative affairs. Emma,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: how does this person... get into the White House in
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the first place, let alone make personnel decisions? Like, what
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: do you think this tells us about decision making in there?
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: I think Donald Trump's circle is as small as it
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: could possibly be. I mean, Laura Loomer was laughed out
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: of the room and should be in any room. I mean,
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: she's an absolute nut job. But Um, she struck, she
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: ran for Congress down in Florida and was so crazy
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: that even the Republicans down in there didn't vote her
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: out of the primary. And then all of a sudden
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: she's hanging out with Donald Trump and appearing on his,
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: his plane. I really, as bad as Trump one was,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: you got to think about who are the people that
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: we're rooting for in terms of voices of reason here
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: in Trump 2.0. In the first administration, okay, you have
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil executive, not a good person, but somebody
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: who's at least a functional human being. Reince Priebus, I
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: think he might have resigned within the first hundred days
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: because of how bad it was, but there was an
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: effort to get establishment Republicans who were at least adults
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: and not little babies and toddlers in the room. Basically,
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: over the past few months, who has been advocating for
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: brakes on the car? It's been people from the outside, like,
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, Steve Bannon, who was a white nationalist
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: trying to say, maybe you shouldn't install Elon Musk illegally
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: in the treasury and let his neo-Nazi groiper 19-year-olds steal
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: the data that Of every American, their social security number,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: their bank information, their like all of that. Maybe you
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: shouldn't do that. And Bannon justifies it on, of course,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: xenophobic and nationalistic grounds. But that's all we have right now.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: And then you have Laura Loomer, one of the craziest
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: people I could think of off the top of my head.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: If you were to gun to my head, I would
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: say like in politics, she's in the top five potentially.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: She's the voice of reason right now saying, hey, maybe
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: some heads have to roll after there was this massive,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: embarrassing display where Mike Waltz added the editor of The
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Atlantic to a Signal group chat, basically displaying that it
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: seems like the Trump administration is illicitly enacting their communications
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: and probably across a variety of different agencies on a
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: commercially available encrypting app seemingly to avoid the scrutiny of
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: the Presidential Records Act, which Trump was so angry about
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: because some of that was used in the Mueller probe
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: when his transition team went through the official channels after
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: he won in 2016. So there's so much illegality here.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: And because Trump also has scared so many of the
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: other Republicans and frankly did vetted his administration to make
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: sure that there was nobody who isn't in the cult
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: and people aren't leaking. We don't know how bad it
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: is in the same way that we knew in 2016,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: because some of those adults in the room were talking to,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: you know, the Washington Post or the New York Times
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: or whatever.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they all were hanging out with Maggie Herbman on
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: After Hours. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, like Laura Loomer
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: is genuinely crazy, but she also called bullshit when Pam
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Bondi invited a bunch of influencers to the White House
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and then handed them literal, like, binders that you would
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: take to second grade that said Epstein files that had
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: seemingly nothing in them. She was like, what are we
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: doing here? This is a joke. You're kind of making
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: light of a horrific case of abusing young women. That's true.
• 41:55
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 41:56
  Speaker 6: You're right.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, in this case, I mean, you know, there's
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: a report in Politico that Mike Waltz had set up
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: like 20 Signal channels about various issues that should never
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: be discussed on Signal. Like the entire NSC process has
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: apparently been made up on Signal. So that's nuts. But yeah,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, having Laura Loomer in the White House, it
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: did make me think about all the stories we were
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: reading just a few weeks ago about how Susie Wiles,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the new chief of staff, was running a tighter ship
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: and keeping all the fringy people at bay. It doesn't
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: seem like that's the case anymore. And just to nerd
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: out for one second, I mean, some of these jobs
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: we're talking about, like the senior director for intelligence means
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: you're the person on the national security staff that is
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: overseeing all the most sensitive covert action programs, compartmented intelligence collection,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: the intelligence budget, the how we collect stuff, the sources
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: and methods stuff, the most sensitive shit that the intelligence
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: community does. And when I was in the Obama administration,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: it is unimaginable to me that anyone outside of the
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: NSC staff would know who had that job, let alone
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: have an opinion about who should work there, let alone
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: allowing some crazy lady to the Oval Office to lobby.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know, like just reading this made
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: my head spin with the absurdity of it all, though
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I guess I shouldn't be surprised because like Laura Loomer,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: who said 9-11 was an inside job, was on the
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Trump plane when he went to the 9-11 memorial a
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: few months ago.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: And yet the Trump administration is now deporting student activists
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: protesting against the genocide in Gaza under the guise of
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: saying that it is combating anti-Semitism. This is the guy
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: that said that there were good people on both sides
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: in Charlottesville. I still remember that. Elon Musk is the
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: guy that was endorsing the Great Replacement Theory via tweet.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: until the ADL had to tell him, maybe you shouldn't
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: say that, and was SIG-hiling at the inauguration and was
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: endorsing the far-right German party that said we had to
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: move past remembering what we did here in Germany. I mean,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: it is... unbelievable the level of gaslighting that this administration
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: engages in because they really don't care about what facts
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: they're presenting. Steve Bannon, again, to bring him up, back
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: in the day said, we just have to flood the zone.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And I do feel like the administration here has almost
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: perfected that to a degree because there is so much
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: insanity that it's difficult to sink your teeth into anything
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: or get a hook. And that's why I think Signalgate
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: freaked them out. It's because it was the first time
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: they were on their heels for quite a while. And
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: so I think hitting them on that, their incompetence, as
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: they say, it's actually DEI or whatever, and that we're
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: hiring based on merit. That's why we hired the Fox
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: and Friends host from The Weeknd, The Weeknd host who
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: has no real experience to be our secretary of defense.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: Hitting them on their incompetence just as a political matter
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: and the oligarchy stuff, having these billionaires, not just Musk, Besant, um,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Howard Lutnick, who has, whose firm Cantor Fitzgerald, he handed
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: over to his two sons who are in their twenties. Um,
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: They have major holdings in cryptocurrency and in commercial space.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: That's why he's on board with this Musk agenda. They're
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: all getting rich. I do think that that's a really
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: easy way to attack them. And it's not dissimilar from
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: how they were attacked the first time around, but I
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: do think it's more salient in the public's mind. And
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: if the Democrats are smarter, and I think they're starting
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: to kind of understand the virtue in what a lot
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: of us who are supportive of Bernie Sanders and myself,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: I also was a hitting this kind of underpinning of
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: economic pain that a lot of Americans are facing. There's
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: no reason that the Democrats should be losing working class
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: votes to Donald Trump, given exactly what we're seeing with
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: tariffs and the compounding tax on the poor that he's
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: going to implement if he's allowed to.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: That's a really good point. And let's talk about America's
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: least favorite oligarch. So that takes us to Wisconsin. So
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: some good news for everybody. I mean, folks probably know
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: by now that In Wisconsin, Judge Susan Crawford beat Brad
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Schimel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by about 10 points.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: It was a shellacking dealing a very satisfying and I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: think critical slap down to Elon Musk, who spent, I
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: read like 26 million on this race. Maybe it was more.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And for all intents and purposes, put himself on the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: ballot when he flew there, stood on stage, put that
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: stupid fucking cheese head hat on his stupid head. And
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: just made the whole thing about him. And so, you know, Emma,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder, you know, you sort of alluded to this.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Do you think that this victory is a reflection of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the fact that Democrats now do better in off years
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and in special elections? Or do you think there's something
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: else happening here with kind of like the Elon oligarchy piece?
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: I do think it can be both, right? Democrats always
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: overperform in special elections. The voter base has evolved over
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: the time that I've honestly been paying attention to politics,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: where Democrats have kind of cornered the market in many
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: ways on high propensity voters. A lot of folks that
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: vote for Donald Trump, it's why Democrats overperformed in 2022.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: And why I was wrong in assessing that Kamala Harris
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: would win this last election cycle is because I thought
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: that abortion would be enough to carry the day. I
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: forgot this country really hates women. Andrew Tate's back in
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: the country for some reason. And, you know, we're appointing
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: people who've been credibly accused of sexual assault to the
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: highest positions in Trump's government, Trump himself, et cetera. But
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: I digress. You know, they do overperform in special elections,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: but it's how you overperform, I think, that matters. And
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: with this focus on billionaires and the hoarding of the
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: money and the ransacking of our federal government for their
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: own ends, and the fact that Musk buying this race
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: was so at the forefront. I mean, this is the
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: most expensive judiciary race in history because Elon Musk said.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: $ 81 million. Crazy. Insanity.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: And also, he said that this was going to be
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: the determining factor in whether or not Western civilization survives.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Right. existential.
• 48:11
  Speaker 7: Wow.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, gotta say, I don't know, Tommy, but I
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: feel like I'm looking around and I'm still in the West.
• 48:18
  Speaker 8: We're still here.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: I'm in a high rise or a taller building now
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: in downtown Brooklyn. Nothing's fallen yet. But I think people
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: are sick of the fact that billionaires have this outsized
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: influence in our politics. And we should be harnessing that
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: energy in the way that Wisconsin did it. Also, you
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: have to give credit to Ben Wickler, who has been
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: really phenomenal up there in terms of organizing the Democratic
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: Party and taking back what looks like a horrible situation,
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: as you know, in the early Obama years.
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 48:49
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: It was a really, really bad, bad situation. Benson did
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: an incredible job. But I agree with you. It is
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: a both. There's a lot of reporting out there that
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin Republicans basically hit their turnout goals they wanted to hit.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: They wanted something like 230,000 more votes than they got
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: in Dan Kelly's race, who was the Supreme Court candidate
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: in 2023. But Democrats just turned out even more people,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: turned out an additional 265,000 votes. And so there was something,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: there was some special energy there. But all of it,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: I think, does help explain why Republicans pulled Elise Stefanik's
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. because
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: they are absolutely right to be worried that they would
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: lose a special election right now to replace her or
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: really any special election.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, you know, she bought a new wardrobe. She got
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: all excited. She was going to be in fancy New
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: York City and turns out she's got to go back
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: and be a representative.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Back to Congress. So good. It makes me so happy.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but we've got to enjoy that schadenfreude. It's
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: the only thing that we have going on.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: That's all we got. That's all we got. Well, let's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: talk about the Democratic Party because ever since November, the
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, we've been engaged in some recriminations, some infighting, yes,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: but also I think a pretty good faith bit of
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: soul searching about who we are and how to run
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: going forward. And more recently, the debate has been less
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: about policy or ideological lines and more about how hard
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to fight. So I assume Emma, you're on, you're on
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: team fight and team fight very hard. Um, if so, like,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: what are you seeing out there that, that feels smart tactically,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: or I don't know, just genuinely inspiring you?
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: Well, as we talk about tariffs, this is a good
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: way to just say Chuck Schumer giving away all of
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: our leverage, um, is a huge reason why we're in
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: this situation with tariffs because the continuing resolution that was
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: not a continuing resolution, it was a dirty CR in
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: the dirtiest sense. basically removed Congress's ability to review these tariffs.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: And so now you have this bipartisan bill with Grassley
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: and I think Cantwell that is supposed to say like, hey,
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: can we reassert our authority over tariffs? Because Donald Trump
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: just did a really bad thing. Well, look, the Democratic
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: leader in the Senate just gave that leverage away. And
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: I think obviously, in my view, Schumer's time, he's on
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: borrowed time as leader of the Democrats in the Senate.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: I don't see how the Democrats can continue to have
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: him as leader, especially, you know, after the midterms in 2026.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there are some bright spots. I think that
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: it was encouraging to see the House all stand together
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: on that continuing resolution vote. It is encouraging to see
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: some members of the party speak about billionaires, speak about
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: the oligarchy. It's encouraging to hear, I heard Tim Walz
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: on Molly Jong Fast Show talk about how next election
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: cycle people are going to be expecting universal health care
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: as a part of these proposals. Going bold again is
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: really important. I try not to pigeonhole my politics because
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: I'm a DSA member, and I'm someone who obviously believes
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: strongly in something like Palestinian liberation, but I can also
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: encourage my listeners to vote for Kamala Harris because that's
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: the best option within our set of circumstances and And,
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: you know, I can appreciate Bernie Sanders is outside politics
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: and how incredible it is to get people involved. But
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Warren's inside politics and influencing Biden to appoint Lena Khan,
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: as I keep singing her praises throughout our conversation. But
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: there is more consistency here. I think, than there was
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: in the wake of 2016, where there was a lot
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: of anger within the party. And I think there still
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: is that. But there's also just a universal desire to fight,
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: and it crosses ideological lines. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ability
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: to honestly meld Bernie Sanders' outside movement with the inside
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: game of Elizabeth Warren is one of the most impressive
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: things that I've seen in politics in quite some time.
• 52:47
  Speaker 7: I really agree.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: She's getting centrist Democratic lawmakers to say, I will write
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: a check if you primary Chuck Schumer. And that is incredible,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: given the fact that she came into politics as a
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: Democratic socialist and a rabble rouser who was going into
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: Nancy Pelosi's office and helping the Sunrise Movement stage protests.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: But I think that with this kind of insurgent movement
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: of younger progressives in the House, there is a lot
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: of anger, I think, at some of the folks in
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: the Senate who are institutionalists. But I get the most
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: hope from folks in the House, Democrats in the House,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: and also our governors who, whether it's Pritzker, Whitmer, Walls,
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: what have you, they understand what it's like to respond
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: to Donald Trump as somebody who's in an executive role,
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: not someone who's legislating or negotiating with Republicans or treating
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: our budget as contract law or as if we're doing
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: a merger or something like that. It's somebody who knows
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: how to lead. and somebody who knows how to respond
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: to Trump's actions, not as somebody who's going to tweak
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: around the edges, but using the bully pulpit to cut
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: through the noise, because I'll shut up in just a second, Tommy,
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: but we are in such a corroded media environment, and
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: especially on the right, they're just eating up this slop
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: on the internet. How do we break through? How do
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: we break through? And having a simple message doesn't mean
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: we're stupid. In fact, it means we're better at politics.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: And I think Democrats have to stop resting on our
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: laurels and thinking that just because our policies are better
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: than the Republicans, that's true. It doesn't mean it's self-evident
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: to voters and it doesn't mean they're dumb because they
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: don't get it. It's also because people want a clear,
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: coherent vision and a way to differentiate yourself from the
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: other side. And It's not about converting those Republicans. There
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: were so many people that stayed home and just didn't
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: show up. Those are the folks we need to be activating.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: And I think they were depressed because of the foreign
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: policy of the administration and seeing their tax dollars go
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: into the slaughter in Gaza. And also just the fact
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: that they didn't feel like they were being offered anything
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: transformational on the economy. So they'd rather just stay home
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: and not vote for anybody. And those are the people
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: I think we have to target.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: And we had a candidate for a long time who
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: was just self-evidently too old. But to your point about
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: resting on his laurels, one person who was not resting
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: on his laurels this week was Senator Cory Booker from
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. He delivered a marathon 25-hour speech on the
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Senate floor. Booker broke the record for the longest floor
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: speech in history, which had been held by a horrible
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: racist senator named Strom Thurmond when he was trying to
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: block civil rights legislation. Here's a clip of what Cory
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Booker had to say during part of this long speech.
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: of the United States Senate for as long as I
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: am physically able. I just found out that the community
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: violence intervention money that you allowed me to fight so
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: hard to get into that bill is being clawed back
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: by Donald Trump. You're revoking somebody's visa.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Make a phone call.
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: Tell them that you have 30 days to leave. but
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: there should be due process. I've had farmers from New
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: Jersey to Texas coming to my office about this president
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: freezing contracts that we approved in a bipartisan manner. I
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: am inadequate. You are inadequate. We're senators with all of
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: this power, but in this democracy, the power of the
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: people is greater than the people in power.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: This is a moral moment. So my view on Cory Booker,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: on Bernie and AOC doing the town halls, Ro Khanna's
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: town halls, all the, you know, members of Congress and
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: in the Senate who are filming vertical video and clearly
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: not comfortable with it and don't want to be doing anymore.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: It's like, good for you. Like, keep putting up shots.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of you guys. Like, more is more. I
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: think the point you made earlier is the most important one,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: which is we worry way too much about what we
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: say and not about whether what we say is reaching people.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: And breaking through is the hardest part. So we just
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: got to keep putting shots on goal. To your point
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: about a simple message, my constructive criticism for Cory Booker
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: would be, again, I'm really glad he did this. But
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: my one note to him would be like, it was
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: not always clear to me what he was filibustering about,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: like what the core simple message was or purpose of
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the filibuster. A lot of the messaging I saw was
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: about the fact that he did it, which of course
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: is cool. And I'm proud of him. And I think
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: it's awesome. But it's, you know, I think we need
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: to be like, look, the State of the Union is
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: protests was you don't have a mandate to cut Medicare, right?
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Representative standing up there shaking his, what's his name? God,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I'm forgetting his name.
• 57:29
  Speaker 8: Al Green.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Al Green, Jesus Christ. I forgot Al Green's name. Al
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Green shaking his hair, you don't have a mandate to
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: cut Medicare. That was amazing. Booker's was less clear. To
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: your point earlier too, I mean, I think Democrats do
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: worry a bit about expectations management. I know you heard
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: that a lot early on, like we have no power,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: we don't have the Senate, we don't have the House.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Even the Tim Walz comments you mentioned earlier about how,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: you know, voters are going to be expecting universal Medicare,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: like on the part of me, like the angel on
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: my shoulder, that makes me excited because I would love
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: to see us move to a universal system. The anxious
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: political operative on my shoulder thinks back to, you know,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the 2020-2019 debates where we were all fighting about how
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: fast we were going to implement Medicare for all, right?
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: And like, ultimately, the votes were just not there. The
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: political will wasn't necessarily there. So I don't want to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: like raise people's expectations and then let them down and
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: have another generation of people feeling like, oh, the fucking Democrats,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: you know, they promised so much and they don't deliver.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: But I guess right now in this moment, all I
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: want to see is people fighting and doing things and
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: like putting their hearts out there and making the case.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: And I think that's why I thought what Cory Booker
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: did was good.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: I agree with you. And I think, you know, to
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: bring it back to your comment a little bit earlier
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: about Biden and his inability to really He was unable
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: to use the bully pulpit for like two years.
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: At all. At all.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: And we're getting more reporting about his condition. And, you know,
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: I really do think he set Kamala Harris up to
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: fail in many ways. And I think that was a
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: dereliction of his duty to the country. But it also
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: was a problem in which the Democrats didn't perform democracy.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: So a lot of the messaging... in this election was rightly,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: as we're seeing, that Donald Trump is an existential threat
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: to democracy, as he demonstrated on January 6th.
• 59:17
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: But first you have to sell to the American public
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: that democracy, as you're describing it, not just as a virtue,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: but in practice, is something that needs to be protected.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: And you may think that's self-evident, back to our point
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: about how the Democrats feel like they should be above
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: communicating these things. You may think that it is self-evident,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: but why is democracy so important to protect? And I
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: think Cory Booker agreed with what you had to say
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: about maybe the lack of specificity or perhaps I would
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: love if it was focused on those broad-based social programs
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: a little bit more. But overall, it's a really good
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: thing because at the very least, you are performing services
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: to your constituents. You are performing the act of standing
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: up to somebody who is an authoritarian and showing folks
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: what it's like to be politically empowered. There's an old phrase,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: you'd rather be strong and wrong than basically weak and losing.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: And I really do think the Democrats could be okay
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: with being strong and wrong and swinging for the fences
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: and then maybe not necessarily... delivering on everything, although I
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: think that the conditions now, given what we've talked about
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: with oligarchy, given what we've seen with Donald Trump and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: how he's so carelessly wielded the executive branch for whatever
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: the hell he wants, I think a lot of Democrats
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: are going, why can't we do that? Why can't we
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: have a president that acts in a manner that addresses
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: the urgency of our both economic situation But also when
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: it comes to systemic racism or the Supreme Court or
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: abortion rights. I mean, there's a lot of ways that
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: I think Democrats can show that they are democratically responsive
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: because when it comes back to Biden. A primary would
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: have done this, right? You would have heard Democrats speak about,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: and hash this stuff out. You would have heard what
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: these different Democrats stand for, even if Kamala Harris wasn't
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: the nominee in the end. And that would have been
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: a performance of democracy that would have bolstered the underlying
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: message about Trump's threat to democracy, because you would have
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: shown that you took it seriously in practice. And I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: think that when I speak to people who are not
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: really politically engaged, just kind of your everyday person that
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: has some family members, right?
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 8: They'll say, well, the.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: Democrats are liars too. Biden was so old and what
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: did they do about it? And I think that like, again,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: when we bring it back to this information age, having
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: a president that couldn't use the bully pulpit and who
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: chose not to perform democracy because he wanted to hang
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: on to power for another term was a really, really
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: bad cocktail to give to the American public with Trump
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: on the ballot.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was self-evidently too old. And there was a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: suggestion in 2019 in a Politico story that he would
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: be a one-term president and viewed himself as a bridge
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: to the next generation. I think all of us bought
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: into that and believed it. And I think the 2022
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: midterms happened. The White House started to believe its own
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: spin and decided that only Joe Biden could win again.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, you're reading, I don't want to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: belabor these books, but there's all these Biden books coming out.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: And you're starting to read anecdotes about like top aides
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: in the Biden campaign talking about how disastrous the debate
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: prep was and how terror, like how Biden had no
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: second term agenda and couldn't articulate what he wanted to do.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: And then also at the same time saying that it
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: was wrong for him to have dropped out or to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: have gotten pushed out. And I'm just like, what, like,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: how could you possibly believe that? It's like, it was
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: not only Joe Biden. I mean, the, the, the sin
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: was Joe Biden running for reelection, but then the month
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: between the fucking debate, him dropping out just absolutely screwed
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, foreclosed any chance of doing some sort of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: mini primary type thing that made her, I think she
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: ultimately would have been the nominee no matter what, but
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: that would have made it look like it came through
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: a legitimate process and not this coronation via a Joe
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Biden statement. He just sort of screwed us throughout that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: whole time period.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: And I think And Kamala Harris, she's she's OK. She's
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: not a victim. And I had some issues with how
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: she ran her campaign. Obviously, I thought the elevating of
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Liz Cheney was insane, but. I feel for her in
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: the sense where I think a lot of women have
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: experienced this in their professional lives. I am not shading
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: Sam Seder here. I just want to be clear. But
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: older men who often think that they know better and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: will talk down to you and are dismissive of you
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: broadly because a lot of the reporting is that she
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: was broadly sidelined. And he elevated the fact that he
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: wanted to appoint a black woman as his VP instead
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: of just doing it. And I think that gave this
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: opening for the Republicans to attack her in this like
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: racist and misogynistic way. And the fact that he didn't
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: really groom her as his successor, there should be probably
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: a bit of soul searching on the Biden side as
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: to why they were so dismissive of somebody who has
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: great credentials and who has been a senator, attorney general,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: went to Howard, smart person. Their politics were similar. Why
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: they didn't choose to give her a leg up and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: elevate her as Biden's potential successor instead of just throwing
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: her in at the 11th hour when Biden couldn't do it.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: And then he was calling her and saying, don't break
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: from me at all, even though obviously my approval rating
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: is in the gutter. So there's misogyny and racism everywhere.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: On that side, too, in my view, that hopefully Democrats
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: begin to examine about themselves and some of the leaders
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: in the party, frankly.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: And, you know, frankly, they kind of kneecapped her publicly
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: in the days following the debate performance by releasing that
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: memo that crapped on a lot of people, including me.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 7: Congrats.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Self-important podcasters. But, you know, talked about how all the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: polling showed that Joe Biden was beating all of his rivals,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: including Kamala Harris. I was like, guys, you're shitting on
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: your own vice president. What are you doing here? But anyway,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: so the final question for you, like the flip side
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: of our mostly happy, mostly constructive talk is there are
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: some corners of the Internet, mostly Twitter, where it feels
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: like 2016 never ended. It's like 2016 Groundhog Day. You see,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: you know, moderates pointing the finger at leftists and blaming
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: them for election losses. You see the kind of more
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Red Rose DSA crew. angry that liberals are punching left
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: or suggesting that anyone who doesn't hold, you know, the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: kind of like the maximalist policy position is a sellout
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: or a corporate stooge or whatever. How do you think
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: we get past this? Like, can we heal these divides?
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Or is it just the reality that intra-party fighting always
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: feels and is the worst because it's your friends fighting
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: with your friends?
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: I think it's a tough question. I do think we're
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: in a better position, as I said earlier, than after 2016.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: I'm hopeful that folks deploy an intersectional analysis of why
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: the Democrats lost. And it is very much a lack,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: in my view, of focus on broad-based policies social programs
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: with a vision that we haven't seen like since the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: new deal, um, or really since Medicare or Medicaid, these
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: are the kinds of things that we're due. It's time to, to,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: to pro propose these kinds of broad social programs for people.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: That's a huge part of it. But I also think
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: that COVID broke a lot of people's brains. We're in
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: an extremely reactionary time period. there's a me too backlash
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: where I don't know if I can remember such a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: anti-feminist moment. I mean, really since like the tabloids and
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: the way that they treated women in the early 2000s,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: but that seems so small ball compared to the normalization
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: of this kind of thing at the Trump administration level.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: I think we can heal these divides by having a
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: shared vision of boldness going into 2028. I think a
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: lot of The base is frustrated by the lack of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: fight in the Democratic Party, which aligns much more with
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: how a lot of us felt back in the day.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: And you see this bear out in Chuck Schumer's poll numbers.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: They want Democrats to be fighting and they don't want
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: to constantly be cutting deals. They don't want to have
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: to meet these fascists halfway because it is the bitch
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: slap theory of politics. And it's all Donald Trump knows.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: even if you don't win the fight, you've got to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: show that you can fight them because otherwise they're going
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: to walk all over you. And I think that the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: base is behind that as a broad vision for how
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: the party should move, anti-oligarchy and also fighting, right? And
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: we didn't have that in the wake of 2016. There
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: was just arguing. And it was a lot of Bernie
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: supporters saying, hey, we were right the whole time. These
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: were the kinds of politics that we should pursue. But
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: as I said earlier- you know, I'm, I guess I'm
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: somebody that's taken some grief on the internet from even
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: my side, because I was somebody who saw a lot
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: of value in Elizabeth Warren's politics and antitrust and going
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: about making people's lives better within the set of circumstances
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: that are given to us. Right. And so I can
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: say like, yes, I, I support decommodifying housing. I support
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: a universal healthcare program. I support free college for all.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: And A foreign policy that is a lot more humane
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: than what we've been seeing. But I can also understand
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: that we have to have the requisite dexterity to respond
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to the far-right fascist elements that we're with right now,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: so we can't all be perfect allies. We have to
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: come together, and perhaps through that process of coming together
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: and fighting Donald Trump, we will come out the other
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: end with a more cohesive vision of how to move forward.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: But I do think that this anti-oligarchy stuff can't just
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: be for the benefit of electoral politics. This has to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: translate into the Democrats taking on campaign finance reform and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: also pairing that with broad-based social programs that tax the rich.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: We have to tax the rich. We have to return
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: to higher marginal tax rates. I'm not even saying we
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: need to go to what it was like in the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: post-World War II era where we were at our most
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: industrious and the country was growing. I'll settle for pre-Reagan numbers,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: but really these billionaires are out of control and governments,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: what they do, they redistribute wealth. It's just a question
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: of how we choose to redistribute this wealth. And we
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: are at such catastrophic levels of income and wealth inequality
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: that frankly, many people in our body politic are not
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: making sane choices about who they're electing for president. So
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: how do we make sure that we cut off some
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: of these reactionary elements, make sure that people's basic needs
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: are met And we are past due for a broad-based
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: social program like a Medicare for All or something that
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: helps people in that manner.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. Like a shared vision of boldness,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: candidates that look like they're fighting. Barack Obama ran on
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: not taking PAC money and a whole bunch of efforts
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: to clean up Washington in the wake of the Jack
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Abramoff scandals of 2006, which old heads might remember. I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: totally agree with you that economic inequality is completely out
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: of control and figuring out some just clear, simple formulation
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: for how you're going to get it in line, whether
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: it's a billionaire's tax, whether it's Elizabeth Warren, you know,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: 2% of assets, whatever it might be. And then I
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: do think like for the next four years, we just
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: have to go about coalition building where we're all mindful
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: of the need to build the biggest possible tent, like
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the coalition to end the war in Gaza in the
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Trump era. Has to include like the isolationist Rand Paul
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Republican types and then the far left, you know, and
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: those of us who care about the people in Gaza
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: can't be, you know, purists. We can't say that you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: have to say the word genocide to be a part
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: of this coalition. You can't say you have to believe
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: exactly what I believe. Because that's just bad politics, right?
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: The lesson from around the world.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: That's hard for me, but yeah, I'm trying.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 7: I know.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: Look, I mean, you mentioned Obama. I was 14, right?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: And then right into 2008, Obama's candidacy is why I
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: cared about politics. It's literally what got me interested. And
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: it was truly his opposition to the Iraq war. And
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: I think that sometimes there's this consensus in Washington that
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: there are people that don't vote on foreign policy. And
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: I don't think that's true anymore, especially when you can
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: see children whose brains are falling out of their head
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: and their fathers railing over their carcass on your phone.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: Like this had an effect of really muddying the waters
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: of the morality of the two political parties that can
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: get elected in this bipartisan system. And I think that
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: the Democrats really are doing a disservice if they don't
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: reckon with how they damage their brand with young people
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: by supporting this.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Look, no, I'm not arguing that. I've been opposed to
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: this war from the very beginning. I'm talking about like
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: the way we talk about issues, the way we decide how,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: who can be part of a coalition or a movement
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: and just making sure it's as broad as possible because
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: authoritarian movements everywhere, they do well when the opposition, the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: left usually is divided. That's how they succeed because they
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: rarely get 50% of the vote. They're like winning with
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: pluralities at like 43, 44%, you know, sort of Trumpian numbers.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: And I think it's just a good lesson to learn.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: But we covered a lot of ground, Emma. Thank you
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: so much for doing the show today. It was great
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: talking with you. I really appreciate it and hope to
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: do it again soon.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: I would love that. Thanks so much for having me, Tommy.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: And I really appreciate all the work you're doing. You're
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: right spot in this insane media environment. So thanks so much.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break before we get
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: to my interview with Susan Rice. But before we do,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that we would be really
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: grateful if you subscribed to the Pod Save America YouTube channel.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: You guys have probably seen all these reports and studies
• 1:13:22
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• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: That is a real problem because a lot of people,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: especially young people, use YouTube primarily as a search engine.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: And what they find is right wing garbage. So please
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: subscribe to Pod Save America. Help us grow. Help us
• 1:13:39
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• 1:13:43
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• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and John can't stop me, subscribe to Pod Save the World,
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• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to hear my interview with Susan Rice.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: Pod Save America is brought to you by Beam. In
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  Speaker 4: today's America, every day feels like a barrage of news
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  Speaker 4: that keeps you up at night. Rights under attack, norms shattered,
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• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: My guest today served as the U.S. Ambassador to the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: United Nations, National Security Advisor to President Obama, and as
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council. Susan Rice,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: great to see you.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 7: It's great to be with you, Tommy.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: All right, Susan, we're talking on Wednesday, April 2nd, which
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: is Liberation Day, according to Donald Trump. Speaking of liberation, though,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: last night, Democrats finally got a win both electorally and spiritually,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: thanks to the good people of Wisconsin. Susan Crawford crushed
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: her Republican opponent in the state Supreme Court race there.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: How are you feeling about how the Democrats are fighting
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: back now that we're a few months into Trump 2.0?
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 9: Well, I think we're starting to get our footing and
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 9: maybe a little bit of rhythm. Susan Crawford's victory was tremendous.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 9: It shows that people are very, very unhappy with what
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 9: Trump is doing and what Musk is doing. They made
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 9: it a referendum on themselves and they got their asses
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 9: handed to them.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 7: That's encouraging.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 9: And also great to see somebody like Cory Booker, you know,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 9: stand in the well of the Senate for 25 hours.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 9: God knows how he managed to do that and beat
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 9: Strom Thurmond's filibuster record.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: How do you not pee for 25 hours? How do
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: you not pee for 25 hours? I don't mean to
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: focus on the stupid shit, but come on.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 9: No, I know that's the right question. We're all asking ourselves, right?
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 9: I have to believe that Depends may have had something
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 9: to do with it, but maybe not.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Credit to him. I love seeing people trying. Fight in
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: your own way.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: Exactly.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 9: And Booker is eloquent and thoughtful and that's fighting, that's
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 9: guts and that's vigor. And it's literally physical vigor, which
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 9: is kind of what we all need.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 7: We need a shot in the arm.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 9: We need people to be out there calling BS, standing
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 9: up and insisting that we're not gonna roll over and
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 9: play dead while Trump tries to steal our democracy and
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 9: ruin our standing in the world.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: Speaking of physical vigor, what territory do you think will
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: annex in Trump's third term? Will it be like Mexico
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: to make it easy logistically? Are we going to go
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: for a nice island like New Zealand or Tasmania? How
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: are you thinking about this?
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 9: You know, nobody elected Trump to rebuild or build an
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 9: American empire that we never had.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 7: I think this is.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 9: Extreme hubris and will not work well for Trump, much
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 9: less for the United States.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it always starts as trolling. Then he starts to
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: believe his own trolling. So I take it seriously, but
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: mostly it just pisses me off. Like, hey, buddy, I
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: don't think your approval rating is going to be at
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: a place where you're going to be able to win
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: a third term, but that's just me.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 9: And, you know, Tommy, all these things are crazy, but,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 9: you know, imagine how Canadians are feeling.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 7: Canadians who have.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 9: Been our closest friend, ally, partner, longest peaceful border in
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 9: the world, intimately connected to our economy, our peoples are
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 9: intimately connected. And Canadians are pissed. And they're like, to
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 9: hell with you. We're not coming on vacation. We're not
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 9: buying your products. How do you turn on a dime
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 9: and stab us in the back? And the anger up
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 9: there and Trump's efforts to try to cow them into
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 9: becoming the 51st state not only are going to backfire,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 9: but it's going to be really, really, really hard to
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 9: repair that damage.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it really is remarkable. I mean, Mark Carney,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: the new prime minister of Canada, gave a speech last
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: week where he basically was like the old cooperation, the
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: old relationship with the United States is now dead. I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: think a lot of the reaction you're seeing, which I'm
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: hearing from people too, Canadians are genuinely really pissed and angry.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And a lot of that is the 51st state, quote unquote, jokes.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: But there is the economic piece. I mean, we're recording
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: this before we learn what Liberation Day actually means in
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: practice in terms of the tariffs. But Donald Trump is
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: talking about crushing their economy. And we should just be
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: clear that if we crush the Canadian economy, that will
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: irreparably harm our economy too.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 7: Absolutely.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 9: I mean, Donald Trump is banking on the fact that
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 9: people are stupid, but people are not stupid and people
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 9: understand when it hits them in the pocketbook. You know,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 9: the estimates range from.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 7: $ 2, 000.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 9: To $ 4, 000 that these tariffs are going to cost the
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 9: average American family. And it's going to hit the people
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 9: at the lower end of the income scale the hardest,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 9: whether it's buying a car, buying your beer. You know,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 9: you name it, your vegetables, your fruit, it's going to
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 9: be brutal. And Trump ran on a platform of lowering costs,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 9: which he seems to have forgotten in his imperial rage.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 9: And people are not going to let him forget that
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 9: that is what they thought they voted for. And instead,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 9: they're seeing their prices go up because of these stupid
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 9: tariffs that have no clear-cut strategic objective. that they're just
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 9: getting screwed as he dismantles the federal government and the
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 9: programs that people rely on, whether they're in red states,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 9: blue states, rural areas, urban areas, people of all different backgrounds.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 9: This is not going to end well for the American people,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 9: first and foremost, quite sadly. But it's not going to
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 9: end well politically, I predict, because People really did not
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 9: think this is what they were signing up for.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: No, no, we were not signing up for a fight
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: with Canada. It's just crazy. So as I said at
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the top, you were President Obama's National Security Advisor for
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: several years. In the last week or two, we learned
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: that Mike Waltz, who's Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, he's
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: been holding principal committee meetings about bombing Yemen on Signal,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: which is a commercially available communications app. The Washington Post
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: reported that Waltz and his staff have also been using
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Gmail for government work. including sharing, quote, highly technical conversations
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, end quote.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: And we learned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: been bringing his spouse to meetings with his foreign counterparts. Susan,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: what the fuck? What are the national security implications of
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: this just like reckless behavior?
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 7: Yeah, WTF is exactly the right question.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 10: It is.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 9: This could not be more reckless, negligent, and dangerous behavior.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 9: The work of managing the national security of the United
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 9: States is serious business, and there is nothing serious about
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 9: the way they are approaching it in the Trump administration.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 9: First of all, conduct highly classified both deliberations and conveying
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 9: sensitive operational information in advance of military activity, conveying the
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 9: you know, the effects of the strikes on a commercial
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 9: app is extremely dangerous. All of that is inherently classified.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 9: And if you know the first damn thing about national
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 9: security and secure communications, you know there is a reason
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 9: why every senior government official that was on that chat,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 9: perhaps except Witkoff, but probably him too, have access to
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 9: 24-7 secure communications so that the Russians and the Chinese
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 9: and the Iranians and the North.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 7: Koreans can't hack into it.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 9: They can all hack into your cell phone, get on
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 9: your signal, and understand the contents of a conversation.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 7: We know that.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 9: And by the way, Tommy, just to remind people who
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 9: we are talking about, we're talking about Marco Rubio, who.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 7: Headed the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 7: We're talking about John Ratcliffe, who had been the director
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 7: of national intelligence. He knows better.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 9: We're talking about Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Walz,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 9: all of whom were military officers and know better. So
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 9: this is deliberate recklessness. And then you dig into how
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 9: they are deliberating. It was the most unserious, superficial thing.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 9: half-assed approach to considering a serious topic, which is bombing
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 9: Yemen and the Houthis, and the regional security, global security, economic,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 9: diplomatic implications of that, they barely scratch the surface of
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 9: the kind of deliberations that should be done. And then
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 9: they have the audacity to send out the NSC spokesperson
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 9: to tout how great their deliberations are and how thoughtful
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 9: and deep. It's a joke, but it's not funny because
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 9: it really is putting our national security at risk.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can't think of any prospective military action
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen that wasn't classified. It's just like that
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: kind of information is inherently secret and going to be
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: protected by the U S military and the United States government.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: But I totally agree with you. I mean, I think
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: this question about the deliberations has gotten a bit lost.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. Like I don't like JD Vance. I
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: didn't agree with him blaming Europe for some reason in,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: in his sort of thinking about bombing the Houthi rebels,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: but at least he offered an opinion. Everyone else is just,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: we're like, well, we're going to blame Biden for this.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: We'll say, you know, well, Biden was weak. And, you know,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller comes in and says, well, the decision was
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: already made. So basically, it's a discussion of when are
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: we going to bomb, not whether this is going to
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: be an effective solution, whether it'll actually deter the Houthis.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: They didn't seem to take a look at the last
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: year of the Biden administration bombing the Houthi rebels without
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: which failed to deter them. It was just it was
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: pro forma.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 9: And by the way, it hasn't deterred them yet, and
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 9: they've been going at it for over two weeks. But Tommy,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 9: it's an interesting point here, because if you really read
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 9: that signal text chain carefully, and I have, you'll see
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 9: that it was actually the vice president's intervention. that turned
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 9: that chat into a classified discussion. Mike Walsh was careless,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 9: put Jeff Goldberg on there, but basically he was using
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 9: it initially for pretty superficial purpose. Tell me your points
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 9: of contact. Vance jumps in with his two cents, which
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 9: makes you wonder, did he miss the first meeting on this.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 7: The one with the president? Was he not invited?
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 9: Or was he too chickenshit in that meeting to raise
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 9: his concerns? I don't know which it was.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: Good question.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 9: But then he raises them on the text chat chain
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 9: and gets into some questions that really should have been
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 9: carefully considered in advance of any decision making. What are
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 9: the economic implications? What will it do to the price
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 9: of oil? Have we protected our facilities in the region
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 9: and our allies and partners? What about the Europeans? All
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 9: these are things that should have been discussed and considered.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 9: He throws them in at the last minute. Mike Waltz
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 9: then should have thrown a red flag and said, stop,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 9: this is a classified conversation, and let's take it to
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 9: the Situation Room and let's discuss this again. Vice President
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 9: can reopen a conversation, make his... point of view heard,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 9: that's when the principal should regather in person and have
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 9: that conversation. And if that changes their recommendation of the president,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 9: then the president ought to hear that. And then he
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 9: makes a decision. Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: Or to bare minimum, just jump on your high side email,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: which is sitting on your desk at the computer next
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: to the one you're currently typing on, guys. It's not
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: that hard.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 7: But they're typing on their phones, I think.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they're probably.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 8: Which is even worse.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 7: Their personal phones.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: And Wyckoff was in Russia, maybe. So, you know, stew
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: on that for a minute. Okay, separate question for you.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: So the Trump administration in the last few months, they've
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: gutted global public health infrastructure by destroying USAID. And then domestically,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: we have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the Department of
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: Health and Human Services, where last week he pushed out
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: a guy named Peter Marks, who is the Food and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Drug Administration's top vaccine regulator. In his letter of resignation,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Marks wrote, it has become clear that truth and transparency
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies. Pretty brutal letter there. Also,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: thanks to Elon Musk and Doge, we've seen massive cuts
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: to the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Health and other major... And the FDA. And the FDA.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: And so when you add all of this up, I mean,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: what do you think the impact is on public health
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: and safety in the United States?
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 9: I mean, it's going to be devastating. And you listed
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 9: all the reasons why. First of all, the work that
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 9: USAID and the CDC do overseas or used to do
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 9: overseas to detect emergent diseases, test them, sequence the DNA,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 9: understand what they are so we can prepare to defend
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 9: Americans against them.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 7: That's gone.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: U.S.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 9: Officials aren't even able to talk to the World Health
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 9: Organization anymore.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 7: It's insane.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 9: So we're living in a world where we already have,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 9: right this minute, diseases emerging in Africa, hemorrhagic diseases that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 9: we don't know the nature or the origins of in
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 9: the family of Ebola. We have in the United States
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 9: an emergent bird flu that could become a pandemic. Meanwhile,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 9: you know, the administration just fired the senior veterinarian in
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 9: the Health and Human Services Department who was working on
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 9: the bird flu in cows and in chickens.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 7: It's insane.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 9: Then domestically, we're saying we're not going to have the
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 9: personnel to test our medicines, our devices, our tobacco, all
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 9: of the things that we rely on and believe to
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 9: be safe because they have been carefully vetted and approved
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 9: by the FDA. We're wiping that out. We're wiping out
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 9: cancer research at the National Institutes of Health. God help
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 9: you if you have a brain tumor of the sort
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 9: that John McCain had. We've wiped out research on that.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 9: The list goes on and on. They're doing this under
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 9: the false guise of you know, making America healthy again,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 9: we're going to kill millions of Americans. I should say,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 9: not we, they will be killing millions of Americans, not
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 9: to mention the lives that they're sacrificing overseas.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 7: For no good reason.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 9: I mean, a cost savings of a couple billion dollars, which,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 9: by the way, is not going to materialize. But even
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 9: if it did, Americans' health, the health of 300 million
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 9: Americans is not worth a couple billion dollars.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: What the hell are they doing? I know. It's insane.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, I think a lot about the work
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: you guys did at the end of the Obama administration
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: to manage a very scary Ebola outbreak overseas to prevent
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: it from coming back here. And now that capacity seems
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: to just be gone.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 7: It's extraordinary.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 9: I mean, and across the board, you know, FDA approvals,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 9: research at NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, you know, which,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 9: you know, is no longer able to work on infectious diseases.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 7: What are they doing?
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Well, the other stories that are
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: just horrifying me are these stories about the Trump administration
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: deporting Venezuelan men who have no gang affiliation or criminal record.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: They're sending them to El Salvador to this transnational gulag.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: seemingly just because they have tattoos. At the same time,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: you have ICE rounding up students in the United States
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: who are here legally because they protested the war in
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: Gaza at some point. What are you watching for as
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: we see this early shredding of constitutional rights due process?
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: What does it portend in terms of immigration policy or,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know, freedom of speech generally in your view?
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 9: Well, we're in a very dark period, Tommy. You know, Trump,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 9: if he has his way, is going to eliminate the
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 9: rule of law in this country. And it'll be the
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 9: rule of one, him. And we can't let that happen. But,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 9: you know, we've got universities and law firms and media
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 9: companies and other private sector entities, you know, bending over
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 9: and bending the knee. and not recognizing that this is
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 9: going to affect all of them and all of us.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 9: And take the immigration issue that you just raised. I mean,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 9: some people might say, well, you know, these are brown people.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 9: They allegedly came here illegally. They committed crimes.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 7: That's not our problem.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 9: It is our problem, Tommy, because people don't understand that
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 9: we don't know whether any of that is true, except
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 9: that we know they're brown. We don't know where they're from.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 9: We don't know how they got here, if they're here
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 9: without legal status. We don't know if they've committed a crime.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 9: None of that because none of them have been able
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 9: to have their constitutional right.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 7: To due process.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 9: They still have a right to due process. And if
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 9: they can pick up anybody they like on the street
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 9: because they don't like their tattoo or maybe they don't
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 9: like the color of their shirt or they don't like
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 9: their haircut or they don't like their dreadlocks or they.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 7: Don't like whatever.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 9: Or maybe they don't like you and look like.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 7: You, Tommy. It doesn't matter.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 9: The point is, if there's no due process, they can
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 9: claim that you, Tommy Veeder, are not here legally.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 7: That you've committed.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 9: Crimes and and you know disappear you to El Salvador
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 9: and you will never have the opportunity Despite being a
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 9: US citizen to prove otherwise, you know, they admitted they
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 9: sent one guy down there, you know In error, but oh, sorry,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 9: even though you know El Salvador is our butt boy
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 9: We can't get.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: This guy back that is so maddening We could make
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: one phone call to Naya Bukele from Marco Rubio from
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: Trump from dancer anybody and get these people back who
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: are innocent tomorrow. They just don't want to.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 7: Exactly. But that could be you. It could be me.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 7: It could be any.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 9: Passport-carrying U.S.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 6: Citizen.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is terrifying people, and I think understandably so.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: I'm jumping around a bunch, but I just wanted to ask,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have met with, observed, dealt with Vladimir
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Putin for a long part of your career, too long.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 7: Thankfully, not recently.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thankfully not recently. What is your sense so far
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: of how Putin is approaching Trump's push for a peace
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: deal in Ukraine? How do you think he's playing this?
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 7: Putin's playing Trump like a fiddle.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 9: And playing him for a fool. And it may be
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 9: that Trump is finally getting a whiff of that and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 9: starting to get a little bit unhappy about it. Look,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 9: Putin has no interest in ending the war in Ukraine.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 9: He thinks he has the upper hand militarily. He thinks
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 9: the United States under Trump is not going to sustain
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 9: military and economic support to Ukraine. He thinks time is
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 9: on his side, and he wants to take more and
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 9: more and more of Ukrainian territory, grind them down. Trump
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 9: is giving him the time and space to do that
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 9: with these sham negotiations in which he is demanding everything
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 9: of the Ukrainians and nothing of the Russians. And so,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 9: Trump is being played by Putin. The question is, will
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 9: he recognize that and realize that he's being humiliated both
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 9: domestically and internationally and push back on Putin? But I
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 9: don't think Trump has a desire to do that. He's
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 9: got a bizarre affection for Putin and Russia. And he is,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 9: you know, undermining not just Ukraine, but our whole global
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 9: alliance network in Europe and in Asia in service of
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 9: interests that are not American, but are Russian and by extension, Chinese, Iranian.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 7: And North Korean.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: And let me just, anyone who's listening, thinking to themselves, well,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: how do you guys know what Putin's intentions are? How
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: Putin announced that he is calling up 160,000 men aged
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: 18 to 30. It's the largest number of constrictions in
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Russia since 2011. He is, more broadly speaking, trying to
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: expand the size of its military to over 2.39 million
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: people over the coming three years. Does that sound like
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: a man who's preparing for peace? No, this is a
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: guy dramatically escalating and growing his military and preparing for conflict.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 7: Absolutely.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 9: I mean, there's no question that that's what's happening. And
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 9: everybody seems to get it, except Trump and his closest advisors.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who just don't seem to care. Last question for you.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: The Trump administration just pulled Elise Stefanik's nomination to be U.S.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: ambassador to the U.N. There's some reporting today in Politico
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: and other places that the Trump administration has reached out
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: to a bunch of people about taking the job, and
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: they've sort of said thanks, but no thanks. It seems
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: like Given the names have been floated, that this role
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: will primarily be focused on running interference for Israel and
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: kind of browbeating countries Trump doesn't like. But you were
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Can you just make
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: the case for why this role is important, why it's
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: still important under the Trump administration, how bizarre it is
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: that they can't seem to fill the billet?
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 7: Well, it's important in the normal scheme.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 9: Because you are, as UN ambassador, negotiating and leading on
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 9: behalf of US interests globally. interacting with literally every country
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 9: in the world and shaping decisions in the Security Council
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 9: and the General Assembly and other UN bodies that can
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 9: yield beneficial outcomes for the United States, our allies and
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 9: our interests. Now, in this administration, you know, frankly, it's
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 9: worse than, you know, prior Republican administrations where they may
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 9: disparage the.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 7: U.N., you know, think John Bolton.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Right, John Bolton.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 9: And, you know, criticize it as a hostile anti-Israel institution. Okay,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 9: well and good. But under Trump, you know, they seem
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 9: to have absolutely no interest in... you know, anything frankly,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 9: that gets done in the United Nations. And to the
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 9: extent that they have engaged at all in the United Nations,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 9: they engaged to come in Russia's defense in the General
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 9: Assembly and align us with North Korea and other adversaries
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 9: against our allies. So it probably will be a crappy
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 9: job in this administration, to be honest, Tommy, because you'll
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 9: have no influence, you'll have no real role to play. And,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 9: you know, they just seem to have nothing but disdain
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 9: for any kind of useful interactions with foreign countries.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're probably going to get sent up there to
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: destroy the organization from within to the extent that you can.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe you'll get invited to the Signal Chat, though. That
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: could be cool. Susan, great to see you. Thank you
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show and really appreciate
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: this tour of the world we just did.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 7: Great to be with you, Tommy, as always. Take good care.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: And finally, here's a quick excerpt of my conversation with
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: Ashley Parker about pregnancy loss. You can listen to the
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: rest of this conversation on the Pod Save America YouTube
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: channel and read her essay at The Atlantic. So one
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: thing I also want to talk about in the piece
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: that is really important is you talk about how after miscarriage,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: one thing that often happens involves a procedure called the DNC.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of people probably don't know what a DNC is,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: but I won't get into all the detail you can
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: if you want, but it's essentially indistinguishable from an abortion.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: And that knowing that having sat through multiple DNCs with
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: Hannah was part of what made like the recent abortion
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: political debate so infuriating to me because very often, you know,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: women who desperately want to have kids can't and they
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: have to have an abortion. They have to have a
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: DNC to protect their own health, to preserve their ability
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: to have children in the future. But some of the
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: more draconian laws that were passed in states essentially require
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: women to be literally near death before doctors are allowed
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: to treat them. And Ashley, I couldn't help but imagine
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: like if Hannah and I went through the pain of
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: the pregnancy loss and then we went to a doctor
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: and the doctor was like, hey, man, sorry, I can't
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: help you until her organs are failing. Like I would
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: have been in jail for homicide. You know, that that
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: was kind of my reaction.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 10: And I mean, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 10: sort of, and I, in my slight defense, I had
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 10: my pregnancy loss in my DNC before Roe was overturned.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 10: So the ignorance is like slightly more acceptable, but I
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 10: write about this, but I show up for my DNC
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 10: and I'm signing forms, you know, and all sort of
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 10: the typical medical forms. And one of the forms says,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 10: you know, I, I understand that I'm having an abortion
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 10: and I accept all the risks associated with an abortion.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 10: So I literally, I literally called the nurse over and
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 10: I was like, she's going to be so embarrassed. I'm like, ma'am,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 10: you gave me the wrong form. This says I, this
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 10: is the abortion form, but I'm here for the miscarriage.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 10: And like, she got this very like kind, sad look
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 10: on her face. And she was like, you experienced pregnancy loss,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 10: but what you're technically having is an abortion. Um, And
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 10: I was just, I mean, again, it sounds dumb, but
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 10: I was just floored. And then afterwards, I remember my mom,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 10: when I was traveling for work, when I was pregnant again,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 10: she was asking me, she was worried if I was
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 10: going to go, like if I was going to have
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 10: to travel to a red state. I was like, I
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 10: cover Trump, so he does a lot of rallies in
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 10: these states with his base.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 10: And I thought it was she was worried about like
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 10: masking and COVID because obviously getting COVID is bad if
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 10: you're pregnant. But she was worried that like because I
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 10: had had pregnancy loss and because I was pregnant, like
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 10: what if, God forbid, I had some sort of complication?
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 10: She didn't want me to be in a state where
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 10: I might not be able to get the medical care
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 10: I needed, which again is just a crazy thing to
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 10: think about when you're doing your job or for any
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 10: women when you're going through life.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 10: Like, can I get the life-saving help I may need?
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: I had not even thought about it that way. Like,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: if you are pregnant, should you travel to Texas? I mean,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: that is... Jesus Christ, what's happening in this country? Yeah,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: and just in your defense, I mean, I don't... Thank you.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 7: It depends.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what a DNC was until I learned
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: about it after we needed one. I didn't know that
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: there was... I think people think miscarriage... like they think
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: the movies, right? Like blood in a toilet. That's not
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: what it is. It's a really painful and at times
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: it can be a scarring procedure that can prevent you
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: from having kids in the future.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 10: And again, one of the reasons I wrote this essay
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 10: is because, and there's nothing wrong with this, but like
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 10: especially social media is often, it's like performative life and
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 10: there's nothing wrong with that. I love seeing when people
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 10: have healthy babies and I love seeing when People have
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 10: beautiful weddings, and I love seeing nice vacations or tragedy moons.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 10: But it's one thing to post beautiful pictures from Hawaii
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 10: or of your new baby, and very few people are like,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 10: I know what's going to be a great Instagram post.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 10: My sixth DNC. I'm going to do like a selfie
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 10: from the table with the ID. And it's just not
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 10: out there. So it creates this sense. Like you see
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 10: all these– gender reveals and baby bumps and baby moons
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 10: and happy families. And I'm so glad for that. But
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 10: you just don't see the other side as much. And
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 10: I thought it was important.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks again to Emma for
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: coming in. Thanks to Susan Rice for coming by. Thank you,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: Ashley Parker, for talking with me for our YouTube. Love
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: It will be back in the feed on Sunday with
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: a special interview with Michael Lewis, the culture-changing author of Moneyball,
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  Speaker 1: book on the people that make the government work and
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: why he thinks Elon Musk has no idea what he's doing.
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