Latest / Pod Save America / “The world’s assignment editor.”

Transcript

“The world’s assignment editor.” · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Later in the pod, you'll hear Lovett's interview with ACLU
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: attorney Chase Strangio about the Trump administration's most recent attempt
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: to roll back civil rights protections for transgender people. But first,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk about the president siding with the
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: murderous tyrant over his own advisors and our allies, his
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: decision to use the powers of the presidency to go
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: after his political enemies, and all the latest 2020 news.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: A light show.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Light show. After a holiday. Good times in America right now.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Love it? Yeah. Speaking of good times, how was Love
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: It or Leave It?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We had a great conversation with Norbeze Flint, Megan Gailey,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Joel Kim Booster. It's one of my favorite shows. Actually,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you know, we talked about the abortion bans that have
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: been passing, but we had one of the most interesting
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: conversations that I think we've had on Love It or
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Leave It in a long time. So I really recommend
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the episode.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Plus, it was funny.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Not that part. That part was very serious. But the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: parts after it were funny. And actually, even some jokes
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in that part. So check it out.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I hate to say it's unusual of it for you
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to have your laptop here. In the studio. And I
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: see that it's open to your mentions.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Well, because I had it open for my conversation with Chase.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I had questions.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, look at you.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I had questions for my interview.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: God, you're always so prepared. Also, check out the latest
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: episode of Hysteria, where Aaron Ryan and the crew recorded
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: a very powerful and personal episode about the human stakes
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: of the newest assault on reproductive rights. Definitely check it out.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It's a very, very powerful episode.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: John, you can also see here that here is my
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: notes for what I was going to tell you about
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Love It or Leave It.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: A really great episode. It says so right there. It
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: says so right there.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: See, I take notes.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Gotta prep. You need notes on that?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I wanted to remind myself.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Also, please go subscribe to our brand new Crooked Media podcast,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: This Land, which is already climbing the charts and drops
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: on Monday, June 3rd. It is a riveting story about
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: a pair of murders and a Supreme Court case that
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: will decide the fate of half the land in Oklahoma.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: hosted by Rebecca Nagel, a Cherokee journalist and activist. This
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: is going to be fantastic.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Sweeping the charts.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Please go subscribe. Subscribe now. Subscribe while you're listening to
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: this podcast. What are you waiting for? Beep boop bop.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Flying off the shelves.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Most important thing you can do. Um, and finally, today
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: is the day you can watch Running with Beto on HBO,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: documentary about Beto O'Rourke's 2018 Senate campaign, uh, as well
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: as all the activists and volunteers who were part of it. Um,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It's fantastic. What else can we say about it? That's it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: It's about a moment.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: About a moment in time.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: People reacting to the Trump presidency and how we're going
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: to take it back, our democracy.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so go check it out. Check it out on HBO.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: We're very proud of it. All right, let's get to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the news. During his trip to Asia over the weekend,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump said that he sees things differently than those
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: who believe that North Korea recently conducted missile tests that
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: violated a United Nations resolution. Those people include Japan's prime minister...
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: and Trump's own national security advisor, John Bolton, the president
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: tweeted the following, quote, North Korea fired off some small
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: weapons which disturbed some of my people and others, but
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: not me. Some of my people and others, but not me.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: to me. And I also smiled when he called Swamp
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Man Joe Biden a low IQ individual and worse. Perhaps
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: that's sending me a signal? For Christ's sakes, I mean... Tommy,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: before we get to the Biden stuff, how concerning are
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: those test missiles and what is North Korea up to here?
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: Well, so, I mean, I don't know what Trump is seeing.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: I assume a radar sees every missile the same way.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: And these are ballistic missiles, according to his national security advisor.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: And shooting off a ballistic missile is a violation of
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: a bunch of UN Security Council resolutions.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: So it is.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Against international law. It is pretty scary if you live
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: in Japan or South Korea or anywhere where you could
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: be struck by one of these missiles. His team is
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: trying to play it down in this ongoing effort to
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: resuscitate a completely dead set of negotiations with North Korea
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: that's been a complete failure. But I don't think you
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: can really smooth over that stuff with happy talk and
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: pretending you didn't see what is right before your eyes,
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: which is a UN Security Council resolution violation and a
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: missile test. So it's just it's ludicrous.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: At this point, what actions or behavior have we gotten
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: North Korea to change since the beginning of these so-called negotiations?
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: There were some swaps of remains of service members killed
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: in the Korean War. I mean, you know, there was
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: the saga, the tragedy of Otto Warmbier, whose body was
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: returned to the United States. But I mean, basically, Kim
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: has been enriching uranium and making more nuclear weapons for
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: about a year and a half and advancing his missile program.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Why do you think Trump would side with Kim over
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: all of our allies and his own national security team?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Is he just that horny for a deal or what's
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: going on here?
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, he ignores intelligence when he doesn't like it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: It's a pattern.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: And I think that he knows that if he dangles
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: an attack on Biden out there in the tweet, even
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: if he spells his name wrong, which is weird. we
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: should just note that our president can't spell the last
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: vice president's name.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: That's troubling.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And incredibly the least problematic part of the tweet. Yeah.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: But you know, so he can dangle out that little
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: cable catnip and he can play assignment editor for a
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: bunch of journalists who then have to focus on this
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: stupid attack on Biden and distract from the fact.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: That the policy is.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's done. He's, this is a, an area he
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: knows is fruitful in terms of getting people to talk
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: about what he said about his opponents. He knows that
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: he doesn't really care.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: He does.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: He, he, he instinctively knows that it's wrong to choose
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to side with a tyrant over an American politician, but
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: then he knows it also gets him tons of attention.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So he's done it before. It's not the first time
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: he's said, you know who I like, this tyrant. It
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: makes our Democrats look like shit.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm thinking back to.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: An Obama, like if Obama had gone.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: To Japan and there had been a North Korean missile
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: launch and the prime minister offered one view of what
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: that meant and Obama offered another, it would be seen
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: as a massive rupture and a decades old relationship, right?
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: It would be seen as like this incredible moment in
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: the history of our two countries. And Trump just kind
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: of lies through it and insults through it. And, you know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: I don't know why he thinks it's great to highlight
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: North Korean propaganda. Remember, they called him a mentally deranged U.S.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Dotard.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dotard, dotard.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Not long ago. So, you know, it's really weird.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And also the follow up to like we know this
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't some errant tweet because Sarah Huckabee Sanders goes on
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Meet the Press and and she says, well, you know,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I think that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un agree
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: in their assessment of Vice President Biden. Like how concerning
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: should that be that the president states is siding with
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: a murderous tyrant over a possible political opponent and a
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: former vice president states?
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a lot less concerning the fact that
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: the negotiations with North Korea that are designed to deal
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: with their nuclear weapons program have completely failed. I think
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: that's the point, that they can dangle this stupid shit
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: out there and Chuck Todd has to ask two or
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: three minutes about it. And we liberals get our backs
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: up and we're like, how dare you side with Kim
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: Jong-un over Joe Biden? And, you know, his people don't care.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: They love when he attacks us. They love when he
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: attacks Democratic politicians on foreign soil. Like all the norms
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: are gone and broken. And I think we've all long
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: past moved on from, you know, any sort of concern
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: that he would.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Hold up those norms. So I don't know. I'm just
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: like fed up with the bullshit.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I'm, I agree. It's almost, it's
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: sort of, this is not new, right? We shouldn't be
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: so surprised. Like this is how Trump speaks about his opponents.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I do think the bigger issue is the fact that
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: in his, you know, permanent 1980s negotiation over granite countertops,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: he thinks buttering up Kim Jong-un is still the right
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: thing to do and the only path forward um you
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: know in fairness to him there is no obvious good
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: negotiation yeah but enough of.
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: That fairness like there is a better way to run
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: a set of negotiations of course of course totally failed
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: like we're way too soft on him on this front
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: i'm not being soft i'm just saying that like there's
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: no it's like what he could he could say create
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: he could say incredibly critical things about kim jong-un he
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: continued to say the most farcical and evil things about
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: Kim Jong-un by comparing him to Joe Biden, we're still
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: in the same bad place we are with these negotiations.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: But we're in a worse place when you are able
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: to split the president of the United States from his
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: national security advisor, split the U.S. and Japan and South Korea, right?
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: Like that is how he's weakened our position in these negotiations,
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: in my opinion. And that is like the fundamental policy
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: failure that's not getting surfaced because he's calling names.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: It is so intense to go on Twitter and just
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: be like, John Bolton's an idiot.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, North Korea on Monday called Bolton a warmonger
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: and a defective human product. So, you know, there's a
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: lot of name calling.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Broken clock, right?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I was about to say, wait, let's hear these people out.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: How should Democrats handle these sorts of attacks, Tommy? And
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: what kind of case should the presidential candidates be making
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: against Trump on foreign policy in a broader sense? Like,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: is there any way to sort of connect these dots
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: of what happened with his comments on North Korea and
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Biden over the weekend to sort of other instances?
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that he hasn't delivered on
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: any of his promises. You know, he said he would
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: get us out of wars in Afghanistan and he actually
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: sent more troops. His team ran this play in Venezuela
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: to install Juan Guaido as the president and it's completely failed.
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: He did this big set of negotiations on North Korea
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: and they have completely failed to achieve the directive. So
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: in all those instances, he hasn't lived up to his
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: promises and he seems to like spending time with these
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: dictators and tyrants and not reaffirming alliances with Europeans, Japan,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: South Korea, all the people who actually help us achieve
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: the things we're trying to do. So I do think
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: we should be making a case on foreign policy. It's
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: just it's not as It's a little more complicated than
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: just pointing out that he's a climate denier or that
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: he's a horrible human being.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: No, look, I do think that last point, in foreign policy,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: he puts his personal relationships for political and financial gain
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: ahead of the country's national security over and over again.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: He signs with Kim Jong-un when he attacks a former
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: vice president of the United States. He sides with Vladimir
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Putin over the intel community when every piece of intelligence
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: says that Putin sabotaged our election and may do so again.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: He sides with the Saudis when they murdered a Washington
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Post journalist and has now decided to go around Congress
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and sell weapons directly to them. So time and time again,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: he keeps siding with these murderous dictators because... Why?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: You know, like.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Envies them.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I guess envies them. And he sort of, he wants
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the deal. He wants the personal relationship. And it's at
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the expense of our national security over and over again.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And I feel like some Democratic candidate, hopefully most Democratic candidates,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: can go out there and sort of connect all these
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: dots together. Because I actually, I haven't heard anyone really
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: There's a podcast called Dr. Death in which a... insane
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: narcissistic surgeon is just going into people's backs, like attaching
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: screws to the wrong place, making huge mistakes and then
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sealing up and going, I'm the best surgeon in the world.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Like basically that is sort of a Donald Trump approach
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to negotiations. Like he, he gets in there. He's like,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I'm the fucking best.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I'm going to walk in there.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to fucking charm the charm, the fucking missiles
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: off of this Kim Jong-un.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get those missiles.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And then he's not going to get him. He's like, ah,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, take another bite at this.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Fucking crush it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: This perception of Trump as opposing wars in the Middle
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: East was very beneficial to him. Remember Maureen Dowd's column,
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk? That was a big
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: seminal thing. People thought that Hillary was going to get
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: us into wars, Trump would get us out. The opposite
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: has happened. We need to make that case.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It really is. We're constantly paying for the mistakes of 2016. Obviously,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the country and maybe the planet will pay for them
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: for the rest of humanity's existence. But there was a
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: period of time where Trump was a pro-gay dove.
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: here we are, as he is laying waste to rules
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: protecting trans people and pursuing escalation in the Middle East
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and in South America. And it's like, well.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: It's just a betrayal of the country, too. It's a
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: betrayal of his own country. What he's doing with Putin
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: and MBS and Kim Jong-un, he is betraying his country.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: He hates Democrats more than he wants to be tough
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: on actual murderous tyrants all around the world. That's how
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: much he hates his perceived political enemies and opposition in
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: this country.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I also think that's actually, it's actually even giving him
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: too much credit to suggest that he hates. It's actually,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's even more cynical than that, right? It's,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: he sees value in taking this position.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Personal value.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Personal value in taking these positions. It's all about himself.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And I think the question we should be asking is
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: actually less like, can you believe that Donald Trump said this?
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Can you believe that once again, he chose to side
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: with the dictator over fucking Joe Biden? It's more, how
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: sad is it the state of the Republican Party, that
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: an American president can say something like this about their opponents.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: And there's just no outrage, nothing. There's either.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: A.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Few statements here and there. A few Republican congressmen have some.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: But not the kind of... And in part because they
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: know that due to Fox News and sort of the
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: way in which their own base has been anesthetized, that
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: there's just no cost for Trump to say something like
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: this and that there's only cost to really saying the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: truth about about Donald Trump when he does attack an
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: American like this.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's all about himself. It's all a short-term game.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: All right. So the president is now doing more than
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: just tweeting about the people on his enemies list.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: On Thursday, Trump issued a directive granting Attorney General William
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Barr the power to unilaterally declassify any government secrets held
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: by our intelligence agencies and law enforcement so he can
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: investigate whether Robert Mueller's investigation was really just a deep
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: state coup started by the Obama administration. Cool. Tommy, how
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: unusual and dangerous is a move like this?
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: So the declassification memo is a big deal. Basically, the
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: classification process and declassification process is governed by a series
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: of executive orders. And he basically just sort of rewrote
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: that on the fly and inserted the attorney general above
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: that process. Normally, if you're the head of the CIA,
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: you can classify, declassify things and grant people access to
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: that information.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: He just slotted the AG up on top.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: And so the Normally, I wouldn't be reflexively opposed to
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: an effort to increase transparency and declassify things, except for
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: the fact that Bill Barr is running it. And he
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: has already shown himself more than willing to cherry pick
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: information to paint some deep state fever dream of a
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: conspiracy to take down the president. So they are clearly
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: trying to bring Biden into this in every way possible.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: It seems very.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Likely that they'll look for like the next iteration of
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: the Peter Strzok text messages where somebody says, you know,
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump's an idiot in some random email. And it
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: was classified because someone at the agency sent it to
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: someone at the FBI. And suddenly it's part of this conspiracy,
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: you know, web we're weaving. But it's like, I think
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: that I want to just sort of calm down all
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: the people that are like, humans will die. You know,
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: you just hear that too much. The government cries wolf
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: too much when we're talking about classified information. But there
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: have been reports that the CIA at some source close
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: to Putin who helped us figure out that Putin personally
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: greenlit the election interference, if that name gets out there,
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: that guy's toast, right? So there are real stakes to
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: this major change, and it's clearly politicized.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Also, what does it mean for sort of intel officials
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and law enforcement officials who are out there, you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: trying to get this information?
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, if I'm another country, you're looking,
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, you've been looking at us like we're insane
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: for like years, right? But I mean, if you're a
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: foreign intelligence service, You're like, wait, what? You've changed the
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: process to make it easier to release this information?
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Why would we help you?
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: Why would we, as a liaison intelligence service, provide you information?
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: It's pretty transparently political and politicizing intelligence information.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does seem like Barr is becoming a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: more sophisticated version of Devin Nunes.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Sort of an internal... Imagine if.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Devin Nunes is what would happen if sort of William
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Barr was walking near a construction site and a cinder
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: block fell on his head. Like that's what Devin Nunes
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: has been for a very long time. So now we're
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: back to kind of now we have a real sophisticate
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: at the core of this as opposed to a bumbling
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Twitter sewer. So that is very alarming. But, you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it reminds me of Benghazi, too, in that. On any level,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: it is cynical and sinister, right? Giving Barr this power
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: to declassify things. It carries grave risks. It's clearly a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: partisan effort. All that is true. But it's worth remembering
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that the core supposition of all of this is made up.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: It's made up. I was just going to say, like,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: what really drives me crazy about this is why we
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: have to continually relitigate why the Russia investigation began. Let's
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: do it one more time, okay? Just very quickly. In
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: July of 2016, we find out that Russia has stolen
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: emails and starts disseminating emails from the Democrats. And what happens?
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: An Australian diplomat says, oh, by the way, I was
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: with a Trump foreign policy aide who told me that
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: the Russians told him they have a bunch of damaging
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: emails on Hillary Clinton. If you're the FBI and you
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: don't open an investigation because of that, you have nothing.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: You're not doing your job.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Really, really fucked up.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And not to mention what happens in this apparent coup attempt.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: There are two simultaneous investigations going on. One of Hillary
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Clinton and one of Donald Trump. They keep the Donald
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Trump one a secret till after he's fucking president of
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the United States while going on television to tell us
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: just how close to being a criminal Hillary Clinton was.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: So this great coup attempt by fucking Eric Holder and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Samantha Powers really shot the bed.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: And also looked like Spying on the Trump campaign, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the spying. It was one fucking person
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: named Carter Page who was known as a potential Russian
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: asset before he ever joined the campaign and wasn't surveilled
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: until after he left the campaign and the application to
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: conduct surveillance on Carter Page. was not some deep state plot.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: It was approved by multiple judges.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Judges appointed by who, John?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Republicans, over and over again. That was it. So if
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: they were going to do surveillance on the Trump campaign,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: they really fucked up by only picking Carter Page.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And wait, I hope that we could get to the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: bottom of the sexy text messages. Perhaps we should be
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: able to read them, the text messages that are the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: core of this, that reveal of this deep state plot.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Is there any way we might be able to get
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: our hands on these text messages? Oh, they're already released.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: They've already been released. There already was an investigation.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: There's a reasonable conversation.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: To be had about the FISA courts, the Foreign Intelligence
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: Surveillance Act courts.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: This is not that. This is nonsense.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasonable conversations to be had.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: This is Trump is also saying that he wants Barr
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: to scrutinize the role the Australians and the British governments
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: played in this process. So he wants to go after
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: allies for trying to help him prevent a Russian agent
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: from penetrating his campaign.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Tell me, it's deeper than you think. It goes deeper.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: It goes to the Australians, to the British. Well, it
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: goes kangaroos.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: They just hop around.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: But then on top of that, I mean, we've never
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: even really mined the fact that Rudy Giuliani was getting
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: leaks from the FBI right before the campaign and was
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: talking on TV about that information.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: So whatever.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, You can think that this is Barr just
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: appeasing Trump in his crazy tweets, but it does seem
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: like this is a broader, consistent strategy here. During a
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: press conference on Thursday, NBC's Peter Alexander said to Trump, Sir,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: the Constitution says treason is punishable by death. You've accused
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: your adversaries of treason. Who specifically are you accusing of treason?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Without missing a beat, Trump says, Well, I think a
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: number of people. If you look at Comey, if you
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: look at McCabe, if you look at people, probably higher
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: than that. Then Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney said in an
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: interview on ABC on Sunday that the Mueller investigation, quote,
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: could well be treason. Former Trump lackey Corey Lewandowski says
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: in an interview, quote, I think we're going to see
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: that Biden is behind the Steele dossier, that James Comey,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Andy McCabe, Strzok, and Page will be on trial for
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the crimes they committed against the Fourth Amendment and against
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: this president. Should we take this literally, seriously, or both?
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: You know, it's... It's not the first time a reporter
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: has given Trump the opportunity to say something truly insane,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: to kind of like tee him up. So he says like,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: all right, you want me to say the most crazy
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: fucking thing?
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: I'm in.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: I'll say it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I'll say whatever you want. Treason? Yeah, kill him. Kill
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: them all. So, you know, I was thinking about this
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: today because we really do feel like we're in this
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: in-between space, sort of there is the harbinger of the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: next step in American depth, like in in the devolution
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: of our politics. We are hinting at show trials. We
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: are hinting at charges like this. We are tilting toward it.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And we also know that one of the reasons some
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of the more heinous anti-American norm violations that Trump sought,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: like arresting his opponents and pursuing his opponents, were only
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: stopped because people around Trump weren't willing to do it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So I don't think anyone knows the answer. And on
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the one hand, I don't want to say now's the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: time to ring the alarm, you know, Trump's about to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: put people on trial for treason. But at the same time,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's silly to pretend that Trump doesn't mean
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: what he says. You know, I'm like of two minds
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: We got it's got a real Weimar Republic vibe to it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is intense, serious stuff. And I would
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: be great if, you know, when a fucking Liz Cheney
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: says a word like treason, that the entire interview stops
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: and pauses and focuses on nothing but that word for
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: the duration, given that is a capital offense where you
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: can lose your life for treasonous activity. I mean, it's
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: It's a big word that Democrats shouldn't throw around. None
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: of us should throw around. It's a significant charge.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Also, even in the best case scenario where this is
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: all just bluster from Trump and his goons.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Fascism for the cameras.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: It is very difficult to see the consequences, the exact
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: consequences of where this may lead. Let's not forget that
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: a month before the midterm election, there was a man,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: a Trump supporter, who sent fucking pipe bombs to leading Democrats.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: When Trump is at a rally and starts talking about
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: treason and the crowd starts saying, lock them up, and
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: he says the attorney general is on to it, don't worry,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: he's going to look at it, what do you think
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: that starts telling people when they hear that the president
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: of the United States starts saying to them that Obama
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: administration officials, law enforcement officials, intel officials have committed treason
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: against this country? What does that do to people who
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: are already a bit unstable?
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: You can't unring that fascist bell. No, you can't.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And it's also, too, a reminder that... Liz Cheney was
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump before Donald Trump came along. She is somebody
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: who for years, you know, when she said, you know,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: whose side are they on about Democrats for a long time?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: She like basically viewed Democrats as being disloyal to the country.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: She was the one who led the charge against the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Ground Zero Mosque, as they called it at the time.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: You know, her political action committee basically accused several Justice
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Department lawyers of Al Qaeda sympathies.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Remember that?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So, you know, it's worth remembering that this strain of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: vile kind of attack has been with the Republican Party
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: for a very, very long time. And they're inviting everyone
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: to follow the logical conclusion of what they're saying. And
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll do it for real or maybe they just
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: want the points, but it's awful.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I also say the media has a responsibility
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: here as well, because what happens when Bill Barr drops
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: his big report? his investigation into the origins of the
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Russ investigations a week before the election or on the
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: eve of the Democratic convention.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Or when it turns out to be entirely focused on
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Joe Biden for no good reason.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, clearly Biden's being worked into this conversation because
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: they currently view him as the biggest threat to Donald Trump.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Right. And how seriously does the media take this? Because
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: they didn't do a great job with the Devin Nunes
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: release the memo bullshit. They didn't do a great job
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: with the Strzok and Lisa Page text messages that came out.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: They all treated it as big fucking breaking news that
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: was serious.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And they didn't do a great job with the fucking
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: four-page bar memo.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Horrible job with the bar memo. So when are we
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: going to learn that, like, whatever comes out of Bill
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Barr's office about the origins of the arrest investigation should
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: be treated like a fucking press release from the Trump campaign.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And no more serious.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: I think the real big story and big takeaway is
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: that the office of the attorney general has been just
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: fundamentally tainted. And it's not going to be fixed until
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: we have a new president of the United States. And
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: it's something that's hard to grapple with.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: It's a political arm of the Trump campaign. That's what
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the attorney general's. That's what the Department of Justice at
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: the highest levels is right now.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You know, and Brian Boitler on Crooked.com made this point.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And I think it's worth making. Look, you know, he's
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: been one of the people ringing the bell, the bell
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: being banging the drum. bells and drums, saying that the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: only logical step for Democrats to take is impeachment. And
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: without impeachment, you're left open to these sort of specious
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: investigations by Barr, etc. And I think that that is
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: a debate worth having. But even apart from that, Democrats
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: in Congress need a plan to counteract what Barr eventually does.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And they need to be ready with the fuller story
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: when Barr inevitably releases some completely one-sided document accusing Democrats
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of malfeasance based on a totally unfair reading of intelligence
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: that they have access to, that members of Congress have
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: access to.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And I will say it's another argument for pursuing impeachment proceedings,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: because impeachment proceedings may be the one way to wrestle
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: the megaphone away from Donald Trump and Bill Barr and
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: focus the country's attention on exactly what they're doing. Because
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: right now, it's pretty hard to get that megaphone. And
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the investigations aren't doing it because they're being stonewalled. And
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: the Democrats don't have a single message on this. And
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: like you said, everyone's out there banging their own drum,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: ringing their own bells. But there's no focused attention on
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: exactly what's happening right now. And whether they pursue impeachment
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: proceedings or not, this is going to happen. The Trump
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: campaign and Bill Barr are going to run their play
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: no matter what. So we can either, you know, look
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: at it and yell at it or we can try
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: to uh focus everyone's attention on exactly what's happening it's.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Quite an amazing thing to watch as uh they run
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the exact same playbook with actually some of the same
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: accusations and allegations but just cross out the names like
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: clinton or obama and just put the name biden in
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and just say it and say it and say it
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: until it's just one of two viewpoints.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Which the steel dossier thing is the is the funniest
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: thing right like like By the time the Steele dossier
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: was released, right, it was like in the middle of
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the 2016 campaign. Joe Biden looked like he was going
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to go retire from public life for good, right?
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: He was recovering from horrific tragedy.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: He had nothing to do with it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: It's literally just putting his name and Steele dossier in
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: the same sentence. There's nothing else to do with it.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: It is lazy, but it is the kind of thing
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: that gets picked up.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: You got Rudy Giuliani running around Kiev with a magnifying
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: glass looking for fucking clues.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, dusting for prints on various doorknobs. Watson, Watson.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm talking to a fucking glass of scotch.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: All right. Let's talk about the 2020 democratic primary, which
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: the president has decided to get involved in beyond just
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: insults and nicknames that lead to entire New York time stories.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: On Monday night, he tweeted anyone associated with the 1994
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: crime bill. He's He's really concerned about the crime bill now.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: It's just out of the blue on Monday night. Anyone
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: associated with the 1994 crime bill will not have a
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: be able to vote for you. Joe Biden was so
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: heavily involved in passing that bill. I, on the other hand,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: was responsible for criminal justice reform, which helped fix the
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: crime bill. What's Trump trying to do here, guys?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: It's actually very subtle and hard to suss out.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: It seems to be for some people.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: He is trying to depress Democratic turnout. Yeah, that's it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: He's just trying to, you know, he sees an attack
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: from the left on Joe Biden about the crime bill,
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: and he loves to just dive into whatever stream of,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: you know, fighting he sees out there.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: It's so cynical and so obvious.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I should say, too, because the reaction
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: from some folks on the left has been, well, this
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: is an example of, you know, why we shouldn't nominate Biden,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: because the further left goes, we nominate someone, the harder
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: it's going to be for Trump to try to divide
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: the party and attack that person from the left. You know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: vote for whoever you want in the primary. Scrutinize everyone's
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: records in the primary, for sure. If they had a
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: bad vote in the past, talk about their bad vote.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: But don't for a second think that Donald Trump won't
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: be able to successfully do this to any one of
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: the Democratic candidates who become the nominee. He will find
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: something with every single one. In this case, Bernie also
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: voted for the crime bill in addition to Joe Biden,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: so he could do that with him. He could find
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: something with Elizabeth Warren. He could find something with Beto O'Rourke.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: He could find something with Pete Buttigieg. He will find
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: something with all of them. His purpose in the primary
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: is to try to divide Democrats against each other, and
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: we shouldn't let him do that. The fight should be
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: among ourselves. We shouldn't let Donald Trump do it for us.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: see a bad faith attack for what it is and
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: just call it out. I mean, look, there's a, there's
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: an important debate to be had about the crime bill
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: and about mass incarceration and the role it did or
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: did not play. That's a worthy discussion. Don't let Trump
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: kickstart it. Yeah.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, Trump tried to, uh, execute innocent, uh, black
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: teenagers because, uh, they were black and he wanted the headlines.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, let's, um, eyes on the prize.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: What he's trying to do. He's trying to be the
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: assignment editor for the primary.
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: That's his whole list for it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: He is.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my, oh my God. He is the world's assignment editor.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The whole planet elected him the fucking public editor. The
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Times got rid of their public editor and the world
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: replaced them with Donald fucking Trump. He's the, I'm freaking out.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: That's all he has to do is, and you know, look,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: we can debate whether it's some brilliant strategy on his
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: part or just like he saw something on the crawl
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: of Fox and Friends and decided to tweet, right? Like
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: who knows? It could be both. But when he does
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: something like this, Now everyone's going to be jumping in
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: and talking about what he wants us to talk about.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: Well, he thinks he has a record on criminal justice
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: reform because they passed a bill that did just the
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: absolute bare minimum in terms of addressing some federal sentencing problems.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Which the administration is now dragging their feet on implementing.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: To make it worse.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: States preside over the bulk of the criminal justice system,
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: but whatever. A longer discussion for another day. Yeah.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: So while this was going on, a Washington Post piece
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: over the weekend reported that unlike most of his Democratic rivals,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Biden took Memorial Day weekend off and hasn't been campaigning
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: as much or doing as many interviews as the other candidates.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: What do you think the strategy is here from the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Biden campaign? And what do you guys make of it?
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think it's always dangerous
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: to run a campaign in which you are trying to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: avoid avoid being seen to avoid losing whatever kind of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: frontrunner status you have at the same time.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Which basically in the piece, Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Robbie Mook, admits.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Right. And yet it's also early. And, you know, I
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: know we live in a permanent campaign. I would not
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: be surprised to see a sudden ramp up of Joe
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Biden's activities and see him everywhere all the time as
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: we get closer. So I'm not totally sold on the thesis.
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think Biden's trying to run a Rose
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Garden strategy, right? I mean, it's Memorial Day. I think
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: that it's just after Memorial Day. I think it's safe
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: to say that the election has officially kicked off. Isn't
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: it funny to think we used to say that the
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: election started after Labor Day?
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: That's crazy. That's not true at all anymore. I mean,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: Really a lot of value to doing a limited schedule
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: of campaign events. I think you need to be out there.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: You need to meet people. You need to talk to voters,
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: take questions. You get better at it. You know, it's
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: just like he needs the reps.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think There could be thinking within
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: the Biden campaign that the more you put him out,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: you know, he's he's the front runner. He has name
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: identification is almost 100 percent. Every single person knows who
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is. They have an opinion of him. And
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: the more you put him out there, the more he's
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: answering questions, the greater the risk there is for him
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: to fuck up. Say something, say something that gets him
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: into trouble.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Crazy because Joe Biden is fucking famously on message. Like
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: he just sort of is a is a machine.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: So there is that concern, but I also think when
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: you're running in this primary against, you know, there's 23
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: candidates running, and obviously also Biden's going to get questions about,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: you know, his age, does he have the energy to
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: do this, all that kind of stuff. I would be
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: running everywhere all the time, making sure that I'm fighting
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: for every single vote. And like you said, Lovett, that
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: very well could be the case in the next couple months.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: It is fucking early. He's only been in the race
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: for a month, but it's something to.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I actually think the more, to me, I expect that
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: that's what will happen. I don't know if he'll campaign
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: as hard as some of the others who are just
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: trying to fucking get up in the numbers before any
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: votes are cast. But I think the more interesting question
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I have is what share of events is it going
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to be where he just comes up to the microphone,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: delivers a prepared speech and leaves, whether that's fundraisers or
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: public events versus how often he takes questions. I would
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: not be surprised to find a strategy that says, you
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: know what, we're going to stick to kind of hitting
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: our points and we're going to avoid taking questions, which
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I think is a, you know, a choice. I don't,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a good one, but I
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: can see why they would make it.
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, I just, maybe the piece is just overstated.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: Like I don't think that any campaign would run a
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: four corners offense and in June that does, that's not a,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: no one would think that's an acceptable strategy. It's probably
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: the truth that he's doing a ton of fundraising events
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: and there's just, I think he's letting the press pool
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: into them, but he's not taking questions at them.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: They probably realize that they're going to need a lot
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: of money.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: Like you got to imagine, Mayor Pete is going to
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: put up a huge number this quarter. Bernie Sanders is
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: going to put up a huge number this quarter. There's
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of people that are going to wow folks
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: with their fundraising. And Biden wants to be the frontrunner.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: He can't deliver a number that gets doubled or tripled
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: by someone else.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Do you think it matters how many campaign events these
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: candidates do and how hard they're campaigning? The piece notes
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: that since he announced a month ago, Biden's done 11 events.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Beto's done 44, Warren's done 27, Bernie's done 17. Do
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: you think it makes a difference whether you're running around
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: that much?
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: It matters in Iowa.
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: It probably matters in New Hampshire, some of the early states,
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: because you're literally meeting people who are going to caucus
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: for you, and you're getting their information and then later
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: organizing them and turning them into volunteers and whatever. I
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: do think a lot of the campaign has run through
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: the media these days, at least more so than before.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I want to say two things. One, it's also just
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: given how much Iowa revolves not just around support, but
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: deep support, being in front of people is really important.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And also, just one other point, too, about answering questions
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: at fundraisers, it's also worth remembering that if a Democratic
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: politician is going to make a gaffe, you would be
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: smart to bet it happened in a fundraiser.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: Always.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, always.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Again and again and again. So I can see why,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: especially at the beginning.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Playing to guns and religion, deplorables.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Deplorables, yeah.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Just go down the list.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: The richer the crowd, the crazier the conversation.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: It's a one-to-one. That's easy math.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's true. San Francisco and Los Angeles fundraisers. Yeah.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Stay the hell out of that.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Some of the questions you're getting in those fundraisers are
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: just not good. They lead you down a path.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I'd like my jade egg to be covered by my insurance.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: It's also, it is what leads politicians to become sociologists
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: when they should be politicians, right? Like you're supposed to
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: be there advocating on behalf of people, talking about issues.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: But super rich donors tend to want analysis and punditry
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: about the race. And so they lure the politicians into
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: offering punditry and analysis about the race. And when you
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: are offering punditry and analysis and you're talking about how
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: voters think, you sound like you're a fucking anthropologist and
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: you get yourself in trouble. So the flip side of
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: this is all the other candidates without Joe Biden's name
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: ID who are trying to break through. The New York
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Times TV critic James Ponowozik wrote a great piece over
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: the weekend. It started about the Beto doc, but it
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: got into Democrats trying to fight for media attention writ large.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: And he basically says that all these Democratic candidates face
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: two big challenges— One is to figure out what entices
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: news producers to show their clips and what lures voters
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: scrolling their phones to hit play. The second, related to
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: the first, is to implicitly argue how they, in a
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: general election, would seize attention from a president who can
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: re-scramble the day's news lineup by tweeting a mean nickname
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: before breakfast. That was really smart, by the way. What
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: do you guys think about that and what Democratic candidates
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: have been doing a good job meeting those two challenges,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: in your opinion? Hmm.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: I think this piece was spot on.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: I think every Democrat from the ones running to the
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: people in leadership in Congress have failed to pull the
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: mic away from Donald Trump. And it's just, it's something
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: we have not figured out yet.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I think several candidates have succeeded in different ways. I
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: will say, I think a signal moment for me was
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: when AOC was talking about raising the top marginal tax
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: rate and Elizabeth Warren was talking about her wealth tax.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Those both happened at around the same time. And all
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, It was part of the national conversation.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: It was a question for people at a panel in Davos.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: It was something that all of a sudden was being
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: pulled and showing that actually not just Democrats, but Republicans,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: independents supported policies like that. So Elizabeth Warren, I think,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: has successfully used policy as a way to get the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: microphone away from Donald Trump. I think Mayor Pete has
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: successfully used his contrast with Donald Trump and his decision
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to go on Fox News, at least to have a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: moment where we're talking about what Mayor Pete said about
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Fox News. Some of the lines he's used about his
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: service versus Donald Trump's service have broken through. So I
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: think there's like a few examples like that that show
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: that there are still ways to grab the microphone without
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: having to sound like him.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the most difficult balance because, first
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: of all, I think one of the toughest challenges on
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: any Democratic campaign, and it was when we were on
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: campaigns and it must be infinitely harder now in this
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: media age, is you wake up every day and you say,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: how are we going to make news today? How are
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: we going to break through? And there's a few traditional
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: ways of doing that. One is we're going to roll
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: out a new policy. And you're right, Elizabeth Warren has
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: excelled at that, partly because her policies, it's not just
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: she's putting out random policies every day. They are ambitious policies.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: They are all of a piece. They're all about sort
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: of economic inequality and the rules being broken in the system.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: And there's such a speed at which she's putting them
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: out too, right? So she's been doing good on the policy.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: The other way, but she's also found other ways to
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: do it too, which is saying that she's not going
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: to do a Fox News town hall, right? Like she's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: found certain ways to do that. And I think Mayor
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Pete has done that too. He really hasn't done it
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: with policy at all, but he's done it by, you know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: he's very, he excels at sort of like democratic punditry strategy.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: What's wrong with the party? What could we be doing better?
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And that usually can make news as well. And then
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: I think the other way to do it is just
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: showing enthusiasm in big crowd events, right? Think of Kamala's
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: first event where she got 20,000 people in Oakland or
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Bernie's rallies where he's gotten, you know, tens of thousands
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: of people in some big cities.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think unfortunately the way you make news
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: in a campaign often is by attacking your opponent. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: right now that would be Democrat on Democrat violence. And
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: that's not something we really.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: Want to see.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: It does depress the hell out of me to wake
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: up and see the New York Times publish an article
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: in quotes that is just them regurgitating all the nicknames
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: Trump has given to his various opponents and friends. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: then People are asking Biden, what's your nickname for Trump?
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: And he's like, I'm going to call him a clown.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: I just think like that is one, an indication that
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: the press has not learned any sort of lesson about
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: how not to cover someone who treats politics like a
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: sport for dumb people. And two, like, I don't think
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: that we should have a nickname for Trump. We should
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: not call him clown or condom or some stupid thing.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: We should make a case that is a little more
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: substantive than that.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Disagree.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I think de Blasio really cracked it with condom.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: That's a good example of trying to get in the news,
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: interacting with Trump in a way that doesn't go so
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: well for you. Because I do think it's a balance, right?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: I think the candidates who treat Trump as someone who
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't even exist tend to fall out of the news
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: cycle because they sort of run their own campaign, they're
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: talking about their own policies. But you've got to get
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: into the news cycle somehow. You've got to be reacting
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: to what's happening that day without looking like you're too reactive.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: I know that sounds silly, but there's a balance there.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that's what Mayor Pete, I think, has
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: done for a while that's really successful is actually a
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: lot of the moments in which he's broken through to
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: me are moments where he's talking about Trump and talking
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: about how to talk about Trump. It's interesting. I think
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: that there's such a fascination on the part of journalists
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and also people who pay attention to politics, who spread
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: stories on Twitter, And that as Twitter, as you know,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: along with Trump as the assignment for politics, that's a
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: fascination for people. How do you talk about Trump? And
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Mayor Pete often waxes incredibly eloquently and in a sophisticated
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and new way about the way he thinks about Trump.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I remember when he talked about he talked about nicknames
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and punching back at Trump. And what he said was,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in a strange way, when you talk about going toe
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to toe with Trump and successfully beating him, you're actually
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: playing by his rules and in some sense seeking his approval.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: which was a completely novel, at least public, in terms
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of the public conversation, way to think about Donald Trump.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: And I think it was one of the first moments
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: people decided to give him an extra hard look.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I do think when Trump does things like he
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: did over the weekend with the Biden tweet or the
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: North Korea thing, you've got to figure out a way
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: to talk about that without minimizing it, without trying to
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: just reduce it to a hashtag game or an attack
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: back on Donald Trump. but try to bring it to
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: a bigger plane. Absolutely. You've got to be big while
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: still responding to what happened.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And I do think that's really hard because I do
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: think one of the challenges has been that there's been
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of, you know, I joke about it, whether it's,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: you know, people tweeting like they're writing the Federalist Papers
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: or everybody crossing the Delaware. There's been a lot of,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: how dare you, sir? This country was strong before you
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and it'll be strong after you. And I think I'm
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: very tired of that. I don't know. I don't know
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: if other people are tired of it, but I think
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: that there has been a It's not crying wolf because
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: he really is coming and grabbing the sheep. But now
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: there's only a couple sheep left and we need another
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: way to sound the alarm.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: You have to be able to capture the urgency of
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: the moment. You have to. And you're right. You can
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: maybe tone down the language so it doesn't sound like
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: you're crossing the Delaware all the time. But if you
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: don't rise to that level, if your view of the
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: moment is hashtag Condon, that is small compared to what's
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: happening right now. So you don't want to be.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: eye rolling.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, you want to be big
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: and let people know that this is urgent. Yeah.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: But I mean, look, Trump doing what he did to
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: Biden over the weekend was a perfect opportunity for everyone
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: to jump in and talk about his failed foreign policy record.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: The Congressional Research Service has a report out today that
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: shows that the Republican tax law that passed did essentially
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: nothing for the economy. Literally every single candidate should jump
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: on that because that will help us drive a message
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: to the entire country, not just Democratic primary voters, that
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: President Trump is not in it for you. He's there
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: for his big, rich, fat cat donors and corporate friends, etc.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: It's like we need to be jumping on those moments,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: not occasionally, every single time they emerge.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And the key there, that requires you to be incredibly
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: nimble and to rip up your plans for the day
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: if something else happens.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Please stop tweeting stump speech quotes. Everyone.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Well, definitely. But sometimes you might have a big rollout
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: for a big policy and you're all ready to do it.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And if Trump says something and that's the news... And
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: that's an opportunity to really show what you're made of
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: and why you should be president. You've got to kind
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: of rip everything up. Don't go off your strategy. You
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: should stick with your strategy. But sometimes you're going to
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: have to change your tactics last minute.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do also think we're in this period right
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: now where we're talking a lot about Trump's role in
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: the administration, Trump's role in our politics, Trump's role vis-a-vis Congress, impeachment,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: the inherent powers vested in Congress versus the executive, what
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: will happen with Bill Barr, what will happen with these classifications.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: And I do think we are looking to our presidential
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: candidates to find ways to move us back to health care,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: move us back to the economy, move us back to
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the corporate tax cut, even as we are pushing. Because
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: we are pushing Congress to focus on impeachment, to focus
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: on the crimes and corruption of the administration. But we
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: also need to make sure that there's this other flank
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of people finding ways to make news around the issues
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: that are going to drive a lot of people to
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the polls.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Okay. When we come back, you'll hear Lovett's interview with
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: ACLU attorney Chase Strangio.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Joining us on the pod, he's a staff attorney with
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: the ACLU's LGBT and HIV Project. Please welcome Chase Strangio.
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: It's going all right, you know. It's a new adventure
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: every day.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: So the Trump administration moved on several fronts last week
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: in ways that could make this country less safe for
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: transgender people. This time, it was about health care and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: housing and homeless shelters, other steps taken by the White
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: House that concern the military, schools, prisons, workplaces. How would
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: you describe the philosophy that's guiding the actions the administration
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: has been taking?
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, since day one, the Trump administration has put individuals
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: in charge of federal agencies and other positions of power.
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: And then, of course, from the president and vice president
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: as well, who are committed to systematically excluding transgender people
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: from public life. And so this means that we are
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: seeing policies from 2017 through the present that sort of
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: chip away at the ability of transgender people to protect
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: themselves in basic ways, whether it's with respect to housing,
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: with respect to healthcare, with respect to access to employment,
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: with respect to more safely being held in prisons, The
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: philosophy is transgender people don't deserve legal protection, and we
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: will do everything in our power to create legal norms
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: that exclude transgender people from both formal legal protection, but
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: also sort of basic access to life necessities.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: So what exactly is the Health and Human Services Department
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: seeking to do under Trump? You tweeted that the effect
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: of this rule could mean people like you are essentially
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: erased by law.
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that there's two things that are critically
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: important to note about what's going on with respect to
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: the regulations coming out of HHS. The first is that
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: it seeks to roll back some critical protections that were
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: put in place under the Obama administration that were part
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: of the implementation process of the Affordable Care Act. And
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: these protections sought to provide transgender people with some explicit
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: ways to protect against healthcare discrimination, whether that's discrimination when
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: going to the emergency room and just being turned away
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: because of being transgender, and then protections from exclusions from
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: coverage on healthcare related to being trans. So things like hormones,
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: surgical care, counseling related to gender transition. And so since
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: the Trump administration has come into power, we've seen them
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: alluding to the idea that they're going to take these away.
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: And so this proposed rule not only sort of eliminates
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: all of the, or proposes to eliminate all of the good,
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: robust language that came through Obama implementation, but then the
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: second thing it does, and this is what we're seeing
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: across the federal government, is it tries to define sex
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: in more restrictive and limited ways. It's not the rule
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: that we had sort of feared that had been reported
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: about in the New York Times that created its own
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: regulatory definition of sex. What it does is it strips
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: away the protections and refers to legal protections under other
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: federal laws. And those protections under Title IX, which protects
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: against sex discrimination in education and elsewhere under federal law,
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: are also being chipped away by the administration. And the
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: Supreme Court is currently considering this very question. So we
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: sort of have this two-pronged attack, one, to take away
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: protections that existed, and then two, to sort of implement
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: across the federal government a more restrictive understanding of how
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: people are protected under federal sex discrimination protections.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: So, you know, you said this on Twitter recently. You said,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm aware of a trans person
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: who hasn't been turned away, mocked, harassed, or received shitty
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: care by a healthcare provider because they are trans. So
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: there are, you know, even as... administration is rolling back protections,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: what limited protections there are, it is still, it is
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: currently difficult, not just because of what's enshrined in law
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: or not enshrined in law, but because of how people
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: feel free to treat trans people. What do you see
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: as the goal of the administration, not just around changing regulations,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: but about how the country sees trans people?
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this is such an important point because
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: the ACA, the 1557 regulations under the Affordable Care Act
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: tried to create some, you know, legal mechanisms for what
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: is on the ground, a sort of horrific set of
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: discriminatory practices that people experience separate and apart from what
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: the law may or may not say. And so, you know,
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: the law can only do so much, and the sort
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: of violence and discrimination that trans people face in healthcare persists.
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: I think what is particularly concerning about what this administration
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: is doing is not only are they sort of taking
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: away the few legal protections that we have, the few
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: sort of efforts to normalize trans existence in ways that
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: will over time increase access to care in really truly
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: life-saving ways. I think that the goal here is not
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: only to take away the formal protections, but to really
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: instrumentalize an ideology that trans people don't or shouldn't exist.
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: And we know that that is very much the position
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: of many people that are at high levels of government
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: under the Trump administration. I've been litigating in North Carolina
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: for the past three years, challenging North Carolina's anti-trans laws,
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: HB2 and HB142. And almost every person that was involved
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: on the side of defending those laws has a senior
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: position within the federal government now, from Noel Francisco, who's
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: Solicitor General, to Kyle Duncan, who's now a federal judge
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: for life. The head of the Office for Civil Rights
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: under HHS is someone who has, for his career, focused
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: on ways to you know, systematize attacks on LGBTQ people
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: and particularly trans people. And so what we're seeing now
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: is an effort to use the law to send a message,
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: not just to take away formal protections, but to send
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: a message that transness isn't real and that we're going
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: to scare people into believing that we need to stop
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: people from being trans. And that is a really dangerous
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: addition to the messaging that we're seeing. And that part
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: is certainly escalating.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, the rollback of protections in homeless shelters feels
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: like particularly It seems really does seem rooted in cruelty.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people say cruelty is
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: the point, but that's not the internal logic right there.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: It's a.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: There is. Do they claim any other logic other than
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: truly eliminating the idea of trans people from our rules,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: from our society? Like what is their rationale even to themselves?
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: I think we see a number of different rationales and
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: all of them are sort of grounded in the same
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: set of sort of core beliefs that trans people don't
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: or shouldn't exist, sadly. But, you know, I think the
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: sort of on paper justifications are, you know, false claims
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: about safety that somehow if we let trans people into
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: spaces that are sex segregated, that safety will be compromised.
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: And we know this isn't true. You know, every bit
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: of data that we have says that it's both not
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: true and that the people who are at risk of
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: violence are trans people. You know, they'll raise claims about privacy,
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: the idea that a person's body, a trans person's body
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: somehow inherently threatens the privacy of others. You know, notably,
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: they teed up this question for the Supreme Court about
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: whether protecting trans students from discrimination violated the constitutional privacy
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: rights of non-trans students.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: And the court.
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: Today just rejected review in that case, which is a
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: really actually important win for trans students. And that was
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: a case that had been brought by alliance defending freedom, um,
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: an organization that is behind a lot of these, um,
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: policies and, and, and lawsuits. And then, you know, I
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: think we're seeing a new, um, strand of, um, arguments about,
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: you know, sort of faith-based objections to trans existence, um,
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: And that is obviously coming into play here. But when
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: you strip away sort of whatever is attached to the
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: justification at base, the goal is to say that a
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: person shouldn't be trans. And they're actually saying that explicitly.
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: In a case that's before the Supreme Court now, which
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: is a case in which a trans woman was fired
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: by her employer when she announced that she would be
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: coming to work as a woman, the The organization that's
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: defending the employer before the Supreme Court has publicly essentially
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: stated that they're acting out of this benevolent concern for
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: her living her authentic truth, that somehow they think they're
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: doing her a favor by trying to guide her back
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: to her quote-unquote biological sex. So there is this sort
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: of coercive conversion therapy that's also animating a lot of
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: these policies. And I will note, it's also what we're
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: seeing with the military ban, for example. The Justice Department
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: and the Trump administration are defending the trans military ban
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: by saying, no, no, you can be trans and serve.
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: You just can't actually live as a trans person. And
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: so these are policies that are actually, you know, almost
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: gaslighting our existence by saying, no, no, we're not discriminating
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: against you. Just go be somebody else.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: It feels like a kind of new version of Don't Ask,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Don't Tell. Of course you can serve. You just have
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: to serve as someone else.
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and of course you can get married when we
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: ban marriage. You just can't marry someone of the same sex.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: So, you know, you mentioned this court case and this
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: ruling today. And, you know, there's been a lot of
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: questions about what's going to happen with some of these
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: rulings around health care. Can you tell people what exactly
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court did today to uphold this lower court ruling?
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And how do you think that's going to impact other
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: attempts to stop the administration in the courts?
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, so today's action by the Supreme Court
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: was upholding a lower court ruling that essentially said when
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: a school district protects trans students, that they have every
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: right to do that and that isn't violating the rights
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: of the non-trans students. So that's sort of one version
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: of the cases that we see in the context of
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: anti-trans discrimination, the cases that are brought by the non-trans
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: students challenging protections for trans people. The other sort of
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: brand of cases are the cases brought by trans people
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: who have experienced discrimination, arguing that the discrimination is sex
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: discrimination prohibited by federal law. And that set of questions
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: is before the Supreme Court. So that is being briefed
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: now and will be argued next term. And that really
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: is at the core of a lot of the actions
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: of this administration about sort of how and whether and
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: how are LGBTQ people protected under federal prohibitions on sex discrimination.
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: So that question is very much live. And I will
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: note that for the past 15 years, the lower courts
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: have held that trans people are covered under federal law
• 57:13
  Speaker 5: prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex or under Title
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: IX and Title VII. The question about can schools protect
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: trans students? I think the fact that the court denied
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: review in that case sends an important message to schools
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: that want to do the right thing, schools that want
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: to ensure that students have equal access to educational opportunities,
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: that that means the good ruling stands. There's no counter
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: rulings in the lower courts in comparable cases. That doesn't
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: mean we won't see more, but I think what we
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: can take away from the court's actions today is Schools,
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: employers should go on doing the right thing, protecting trans
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: people from discrimination. Same with homeless shelters. We have state law.
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: We have state constitutions. We have lots of mechanisms for
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: people to be protected. Unfortunately, the court has taken up
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: a series of questions that implicate the rights of LGBT people,
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: and that will be decided next term. But I think
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: no matter what happens there, what we have to keep
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: fighting for is an increased understanding of how dangerous it
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: is to fundamentally try to remove people from the protections
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: of the law in some basic and fundamental ways.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: So we're in this sort of strange moment. I think
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: it's fair to say that there's never been more visibility
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: around trans issues and around trans people. I think that
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have come to learn a lot
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: in recent years about the challenges facing trans people in
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: their own lives, how important these issues are. It's become
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: something that Democratic politicians talk about that is just part
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: of the conversation in a way it wasn't before. We
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: see trans actors in roles in a way that is unprecedented.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, we see an administration
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: launching an all-out assault on trans people at this moment
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: of sort of cultural progress. I guess my question is,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: how are you feeling right now about the state of
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: acceptance and progress on behalf of trans people?
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: I think they just have to hold a lot of
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: sort of tensions at once. I mean, there is obviously
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: an increase in visibility. More people are feeling safe and
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: comfortable on some levels to live publicly as themselves. And
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: that is progress. Being able to not hide a fundamental
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: truth of who you are is essential for many people's survival.
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: So I think that is incredibly important. But with visibility
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: comes both sort of state backlash, as well as interpersonal backlash.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: And so I think that's also the moment that we're
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: in that we really have to be responding to. One
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: of the most painful things about last week was three
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: black trans women were murdered. And the response of our
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: government was to announce some of the most restrictive policies
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: with respect to trans people and rollbacks and protections that
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: will absolutely escalate violence against the communities who are most
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: funneled into street-based homelessness, into criminalized economies, and to other
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: sort of instabilities that then lead to increased vulnerability to violence.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: It's not just targeting trans people. These are rules targeting
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerable trans people in our society, people who
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: have already been victimized by so much injustice that they
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: either are living on the street or seeking help in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: homeless shelters, right? This is targeting people who have already
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: seen the consequences of systemic injustice directed against them.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. We're talking about a government that is invested
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: in targeting the absolute most vulnerable trans people, the people
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: who are most likely to be killed, and announcing that
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: on the week where we have three black trans women
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: who have been murdered and the trauma to the community
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: of having to hold that. And so while seeing trans
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: actors on television and seeing trans narratives you know, sort
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: of in popular discourse and media is important. It's not
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: saving the person on the street. It's not disrupting those
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: acts of, you know, interpersonal violence or governmental aggression. So
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: I think we have to sort of know that visibility
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: won't alone save us. I do think that the more
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: we have cultural conversations that include trans people and the
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: truth of our stories, the more we're going to see
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: trans people empowered to ourselves speak in these halls of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: power and disrupt the conversation. I know for me as
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: a trans lawyer, it's been incredibly powerful to be visibly
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: and vocally trans in government spaces, in state legislatures, in
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: the courtroom, in depositions, because that in and of itself
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: is a disruption that perhaps I could not have done
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: without all of the ways people who came before me
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: were able to produce cultural content that allowed me to
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: imagine myself in the future. And so I think we
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: want to hold the value in that. It's just that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: alone isn't going to feed people, isn't going to keep
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: people from being homeless, isn't going to make sure that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: we can disrupt those acts of violence on the streets.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: So what can people do if they're looking to help
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: with the fight?
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: You know, I think there's so much that people can do.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: And I would say start small, sort of, you know,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: with your friends, with your family, sort of challenge people's
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: understandings about who trans people are and just start to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: include trans people in conversations. And I think that's something
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: that can really make a difference. And then in the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: next year, not only are we going to see the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: number of critical people you know, federal elections and state
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: and local elections, but the Supreme Court is going to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: be answering some critical questions about are trans people protected
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: under federal law. So what we want people to be
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: doing is really raising the profile of this issue of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: trans survival as not some sort of fringe, quote-unquote, identity
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: politics issue, but really a core issue when we're talking
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: about economic justice and racial justice and criminal legal system
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: reform that how we conceptualize gender and bodily autonomy is
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: always going to be central to those questions. And if
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: we neglect to pay attention to how trans people are treated,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: and we are the canary in the coal mine, you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: can watch it happen, I think we're all going to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: end up missing out on some important transformative conversations and accountability.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Chase Strangio, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: All right. Thanks to Chase Strangio for joining us today.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: You know what we didn't talk about? What's that?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: We didn't talk about the hilarious story in CNN about
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: being trapped on Air Force One with Donald Trump who
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't sleep.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, I did see that.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: That did look like hell on earth.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Could you imagine?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: Imagine these people deserve more. Fucking locked in a conference
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: room with a Diet Coke-addled fucking nut bar.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: Who's watching.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Talk about how cool he is.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: Tivo'd Fox and Friends and finding things to get mad about.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: All trips.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: You just sort of, you put your chair in recline,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: you glance up, that fucking mug is staring down at you.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: Those trips are awful for a variety of reasons.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: I hope eternity is like that for all those people.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do too.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: A fucking Neverland. That is Trump narrating Fox and Friends
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: over and over again.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: That is the best punishment. Flying around Air Force One
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: forever with Donald Trump in your ear.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Just constantly thinking you're about to land and they're like, nope,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: we're refueling in the air. We're refueling. We're refueling again.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: He must fart with such impunity.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: Oh!
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: All over those poor staffers. Don't act like that's surprising
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: to you. You know damn well.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: It's not surprising. I just didn't see that's where we
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: were going. All right, everybody. We'll talk to you soon.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 5: Bye.