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"MAGA King v. RINO Loser." · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: Thank you.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 1: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:23
Speaker 2: On today's show, Donald Trump unloads on Ron DeSantis. Ron
0:26
Speaker 2: DeSantis hugs Donald Trump on Ukraine. Los Angeles Mayor Karen
0:30
Speaker 2: Bass stops by the studio to talk housing and crime.
0:33
Speaker 2: And later, Dan and I answer your questions on everything
0:36
Speaker 2: from oil drilling in the Arctic to the new season
0:39
Speaker 2: of Succession. How's that for range? All right, let's get
0:43
Speaker 2: to the news. Donald Trump used his first trip to
0:46
Speaker 2: Iowa to unload on fellow Florida man Ron DeSantis and
0:50
Speaker 2: Mike Pence of Hang Mike Pence fame, both of whom
0:53
Speaker 2: also visited the site of the first GOP caucus in
0:56
Speaker 2: recent days, with a new CNN poll showing Trump ahead
0:59
Speaker 2: of DeSantis by just 40 to 36 percent in a
1:02
Speaker 2: crowded field, though other polls give him a larger lead.
1:06
Speaker 2: The twice impeached 2020 loser spent 10 minutes going after
1:10
Speaker 2: the Florida governor on the flight to Iowa, telling reporters
1:13
Speaker 2: on the plane that before his endorsement, DeSantis was, quote,
1:16
Speaker 2: dead as a dog, dead as a doornail. a dead politician,
1:21
Speaker 2: and that even George Washington couldn't save him.
1:24
Speaker 1: Would you say Donald Trump was beating a dead horse?
1:29
Speaker 2: Boo.
1:29
Speaker 3: Don't boo me.
1:31
Speaker 1: Boo Donald Trump. Don't boo him.
1:32
Speaker 2: Or whatever. Later, at the actual event in Iowa, Trump
1:37
Speaker 2: said this during his first Iowa speech.
1:39
Speaker 4: Ron was a disciple of Paul Ryan, who is... A
1:46
Speaker 4: rhino loser who currently is destroying Fox and would constantly
1:51
Speaker 4: vote against entitlements. He would just vote against— remember that?
1:53
Speaker 4: The wheelchair over the cliffs. The Democrats used it. The
1:57
Speaker 4: wheelchair over the cliff commercial. Very effective. That was about him.
2:01
Speaker 4: But Ryan— Paul Ryan is a big reason that Mitt
2:04
Speaker 4: Romney— I'm not a big fan of Mitt Romney— lost
2:06
Speaker 4: his election. And to be honest with you, Ron reminds
2:10
Speaker 4: me a lot of Mitt Romney. So I don't think
2:14
Speaker 4: you're going to be doing so well here.
2:16
Speaker 2: Dan, are you writing speeches for Donald Trump now?
2:19
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm kind of liking these speeches.
2:24
Speaker 2: Are you a persuadable voter?
2:27
Speaker 1: He has persuaded me not to like Ron DeSantis. How's that?
2:32
Speaker 1: If there was ever any question, I don't like Ron DeSantis.
2:35
Speaker 2: So Politico also reported this week that Trump's campaign is
2:38
Speaker 2: preparing a big oppo file on DeSantis that includes an
2:42
Speaker 2: attack that, as a U.S. attorney, he was, quote, an
2:46
Speaker 2: extremely lenient prosecutor in cases that involved, among other things,
2:51
Speaker 2: child pornography. In that same CNN poll that I referenced earlier,
2:55
Speaker 2: DeSantis is the first or second choice of 65% of
3:00
Speaker 2: Republican voters. Trump's number is 59%. 74% of Republican voters
3:05
Speaker 2: said they'd be enthusiastic or at least satisfied if DeSantis
3:09
Speaker 2: is the nominee. 71% said that about Trump. How risky
3:13
Speaker 2: do you think it is for Trump to go after
3:16
Speaker 2: DeSantis this hard, this early?
3:19
Speaker 1: I think it would be risky not to go at
3:21
Speaker 1: DeSantis this hard, this early.
3:23
Speaker 2: Interesting.
3:25
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis is a Rorschach test for Republicans. Most of
3:29
Speaker 1: those Republicans who say they are open to him or
3:31
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about him Many of them couldn't pick him out
3:34
Speaker 1: of a lineup. Some of them– most of them have
3:36
Speaker 1: never heard his voice. They just want– That's going to
3:40
Speaker 1: be a problem.
3:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:41
Speaker 1: Wait until they do because it's not awesome.
3:43
Speaker 2: That's an annoying voice.
3:46
Speaker 1: You don't want to be run for president sounding like
3:48
Speaker 1: the most annoying person in someone's high school class.
3:50
Speaker 2: And run to campus. Yeah. We talk about the substantive
3:55
Speaker 2: things here. No theater criticism from us. No shallow analysis
4:02
Speaker 2: from this crowd.
4:03
Speaker 1: The optics. Worry about the optics, Ron.
4:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
4:07
Speaker 1: And so Ron DeSantis is an empty vessel. What he
4:10
Speaker 1: really represents is a MAGA Republican who can win or
4:14
Speaker 1: Trump without the baggage. That's all they know about him.
4:16
Speaker 1: And so Donald Trump is trying to fill in as
4:19
Speaker 1: much information as possible while Ron DeSantis is on his–
4:23
Speaker 1: behind rope and stanchion tour of America, speaking only to
4:28
Speaker 1: Fox News and other MAGA media. And so he's trying
4:30
Speaker 1: to define him. And Ron DeSantis is not defining himself.
4:33
Speaker 1: And because you look at this from Donald Trump's perspective,
4:36
Speaker 1: right now in this race is Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence,
4:41
Speaker 1: someone whose murder is a undecided question in the Republican Party.
4:47
Speaker 1: There is Nikki Haley, who is a joke. And maybe
4:50
Speaker 1: Chris Christie may get in the race. Like that is
4:52
Speaker 1: who we're talking about here. And so if he– he's looking.
4:55
Speaker 2: At this and saying– Mike Pompeo erasure. Who? Mike Pompeo.
5:01
Speaker 1: Wait.
5:02
Speaker 2: I only know about him because of Pod Save the World.
5:04
Speaker 1: Was he the CEO of Exxon, the one that Trump
5:06
Speaker 1: fired on the toilet?
5:07
Speaker 4: Oh, no.
5:08
Speaker 2: No, he's the other guy. That's sexy Rexy Tillerson. Right.
5:13
Speaker 1: You're on one today. This is good. Start 30 minutes
5:17
Speaker 1: late and you come in with a fire of energy.
5:19
Speaker 2: Just need a little more caffeine and an extra half hour.
5:24
Speaker 1: Trump realizes if he destroys Ron DeSantis, he walks the nomination.
5:27
Speaker 1: So he's going to go destroy Ron DeSantis before Ron
5:28
Speaker 1: DeSantis can do anything to define himself. It's quite smart
5:31
Speaker 1: in my mind. And he's doing it in the exact
5:33
Speaker 1: right way. Make him an establishment loser. And that's what
5:39
Speaker 1: the Paul Ryan thing is about. possibly an attempt to
5:42
Speaker 1: specifically win me over. But it is also to remind
5:46
Speaker 1: voters that Ron DeSantis is in with all the Republicans
5:48
Speaker 1: you hate. And he's like Mitt Romney. And what he
5:50
Speaker 1: means by Mitt Romney is not a guy who votes
5:52
Speaker 1: for impeachment. He means a guy who can't beat Barack Obama,
5:55
Speaker 1: a guy who can't win elections. And so he knows
5:58
Speaker 1: the voters want a Republican who can win. And so
6:02
Speaker 1: he's trying to define him. And he's doing a pretty
6:04
Speaker 1: good job, I think.
6:05
Speaker 2: I think I mostly agree with that. Here's the other
6:08
Speaker 2: side of what I'm wrestling with. I think Trump has
6:12
Speaker 2: never had a Republican opponent who is as well-known and
6:17
Speaker 2: well-liked by Republican voters, including much of the MAGA base,
6:22
Speaker 2: as Ron DeSantis. I do not think he's Jeb. I
6:25
Speaker 2: do not think he's Marco. He's not Romney. He's not McConnell.
6:29
Speaker 2: It is true that this DeSantis approval is untested, for sure.
6:36
Speaker 2: But I do think he is... I think it's hard
6:38
Speaker 2: to compare DeSantis to any Republican opponent that Trump has previously...
6:42
Speaker 2: So I think we're in a little bit of new
6:44
Speaker 2: territory here. I also wonder if Trump fires all his
6:48
Speaker 2: bullets now and DeSantis doesn't plummet in the polls, what's
6:54
Speaker 2: left for Trump? And at that point, doesn't Trump look
6:58
Speaker 2: like the worst thing Trump could look like, which is weak,
7:01
Speaker 2: that he couldn't take DeSantis out?
7:04
Speaker 1: There is a world in which DeSantis is just going
7:07
Speaker 1: to win this race if he doesn't screw it up,
7:08
Speaker 1: where there are just enough voters who are sick of Trump.
7:11
Speaker 1: You have these looming shoes to drop around multiple indictments
7:15
Speaker 1: and multiple elections. Like at any moment, Donald Trump can
7:19
Speaker 1: stumble into having lunch with a white supremacist. Like all
7:21
Speaker 1: these things can happen. And that may be the case.
7:24
Speaker 1: But if Donald Trump wants to maximize his chance of winning,
7:27
Speaker 1: it is to destroy Ron DeSantis as soon as humanly possible.
7:30
Speaker 1: And right now, there's no pushback. Ron DeSantis isn't saying
7:34
Speaker 1: anything back. He's not fighting back. There are no ads
7:37
Speaker 1: pushing back. He just has free reign and he's taking it.
7:40
Speaker 1: And maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But this is
7:42
Speaker 1: the right strategy, in my mind, for him to take
7:46
Speaker 1: if he wants to win. Because it's actually, it seems
7:49
Speaker 1: patently obvious to me that this is what you would do.
7:52
Speaker 1: And I think Donald Trump, there is a world where
7:54
Speaker 1: other Republicans could pay a price for attacking Donald Trump,
7:57
Speaker 1: because he is well known and well liked, even among
7:59
Speaker 1: Republican voters who are not planning to support him. And
8:03
Speaker 1: that can make you look like a Democrat. Donald Trump
8:05
Speaker 1: has free reign to be an asshole to anyone he
8:07
Speaker 1: wants in the Republican Party. We know that from the
8:09
Speaker 1: John McCain stuff, everything out there. And so I don't
8:12
Speaker 1: think anyone's be like, man, that Donald Trump has changed.
8:15
Speaker 2: To your point, it would also be completely out of
8:17
Speaker 2: character for Trump to go easy on DeSantis right now,
8:20
Speaker 2: to the point where it may lead a lot of
8:22
Speaker 2: MAGA voters to be like, is Trump weak? Did he
8:25
Speaker 2: lose a step? Like, what's going on? Why isn't he
8:27
Speaker 2: unloading on DeSantis? So, and like you said, clearly, If
8:30
Speaker 2: he defines him early as a rhino loser in the
8:33
Speaker 2: mold of Jeb and Ryan, then that's it. Donald Trump
8:35
Speaker 2: wins the nomination. It's over. You talked about DeSantis not
8:39
Speaker 2: fighting back. Trump is also desperately trying to bait DeSantis here.
8:44
Speaker 2: He wants DeSantis to get down in the mud with
8:47
Speaker 2: him because if voters can say, eh, yeah, Trump's attacking DeSantis,
8:51
Speaker 2: but DeSantis is attacking him right back. They're both attacking
8:53
Speaker 2: each other. Trump always wins a fight like that. He
8:57
Speaker 2: always wins the fight where people are like, you know what? yeah,
9:00
Speaker 2: Trump is bad, but the other one's attacking him too.
9:02
Speaker 2: They're both fighting. And I'd rather take Trump because that's
9:05
Speaker 2: who Trump is. We all know that. And so I
9:07
Speaker 2: do think that's why DeSantis is not fighting back right now,
9:11
Speaker 2: because if he gets down into the mud with Trump
9:13
Speaker 2: this early, then I don't know why people go with
9:17
Speaker 2: him over Trump.
9:19
Speaker 1: There are varying degrees of getting in the mud with Trump.
9:23
Speaker 1: There is responding– as DeSantis has done a little bit
9:27
Speaker 1: subtly about how he won reelection, there are ways to
9:30
Speaker 1: defend himself without getting into a manhood measuring size contest
9:34
Speaker 1: like Marco Rubio, right? Like there are different ways to
9:37
Speaker 1: do it. You can– most people will end up stumbling
9:40
Speaker 1: into completely demeaning themselves against Trump because he has no shame.
9:44
Speaker 1: But DeSantis is in a– well, we'll talk about this later.
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Speaker 1: But I think there are ways he could be doing
9:49
Speaker 1: this that would be smarter than what he's currently doing. Yeah.
9:53
Speaker 2: We talked on Tuesday's pod about how Mike Pence recently
9:56
Speaker 2: criticized Donald Trump for almost having him murdered on January 6th.
10:00
Speaker 2: Trump responded on his way to Iowa by telling reporters that,
10:03
Speaker 2: you know, Mike Pence wouldn't have been in any danger
10:06
Speaker 2: if he had just participated in the coup like a
10:09
Speaker 2: loyal vice president should. And then Trump said, I guess
10:12
Speaker 2: he decided that being nice isn't working because he's at
10:15
Speaker 2: 3% in the polls. So he figured he might as
10:17
Speaker 2: well not be nice any longer. I feel like that's
10:20
Speaker 2: a fairly accurate analysis of Pence's remarks. What about you? Yeah.
10:24
Speaker 1: I mean, Donald Trump's logic is truly unassailable there. If
10:27
Speaker 1: Mike Pence had just given us his wallet, I wouldn't
10:29
Speaker 1: have had to beat him up. If he had just
10:33
Speaker 1: engaged in the nonviolent insurrection I suggested, there wouldn't have
10:37
Speaker 1: been a need for the violent insurrection. It's an impressive syllogism,
10:42
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, look, Mike Pence is at 3%
10:45
Speaker 1: of the polls. He's probably always going to be at
10:47
Speaker 1: something around 3% in the polls. It's always going to
10:49
Speaker 1: be the explanation for what he's doing. You guys touched
10:52
Speaker 1: on this on Tuesday. Why he decided after taking the
10:55
Speaker 1: high road with Donald Trump for years now after his murder,
10:59
Speaker 1: decided at a bizarre off-camera white tie Washington dinner where
11:05
Speaker 1: Washington media figures perform musical theater, did he decide to
11:09
Speaker 1: finally unload the core of his campaign? It is the
11:11
Speaker 1: most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life.
11:14
Speaker 2: I mean– Back to your– DeSantis' pitch is I'm Trump
11:19
Speaker 2: without the baggage. Mike Pence's pitch is I was fine
11:22
Speaker 2: with literally everything Donald Trump did until he tried to
11:26
Speaker 2: get me assassinated and history will not look kindly on that.
11:32
Speaker 2: That's your pitch? I was with Trump right up until
11:36
Speaker 2: the moment he almost got me killed and that was
11:39
Speaker 2: not a good thing.
11:40
Speaker 1: And it took me two years to come to terms
11:42
Speaker 1: with the fact that I was going to walk away
11:43
Speaker 1: with it.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so that's, you know, don't have a lot of,
11:48
Speaker 2: I would not be jumping on the Pence train and
11:51
Speaker 2: put a lot of money on that one. So because
11:53
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis was also pseudo-campaigning in Iowa last weekend, we
11:57
Speaker 2: got a piece from the Washington Post contrasting his style
12:01
Speaker 2: with Trump's, quote, the Florida governor's unofficial pre-campaign book tour
12:06
Speaker 2: has consisted of more scripted and stage-managed events, while Trump's
12:09
Speaker 2: campaign is, quote, leaning into his freewheeling style and placing
12:14
Speaker 2: a strategic bet on more unscripted up close and personal
12:17
Speaker 2: moments with his fans. You know, just the unscripted, freewheeling,
12:21
Speaker 2: up close and personal style of a guy whose second
12:24
Speaker 2: impeachment was for inciting a violent insurrection as a last
12:28
Speaker 2: ditch effort to overturn the election that he lost. Do
12:32
Speaker 2: you feel like maybe there's a slightly more accurate way
12:36
Speaker 2: to cover Donald Trump after the last seven years of
12:40
Speaker 2: everything we've all been through?
12:41
Speaker 1: Look, John, some politicians, they're glued to the teleprompter. They're scripted.
12:45
Speaker 1: Others are just out there. They're saying stuff. And sometimes
12:48
Speaker 1: they get you some high highs, some real moments with
12:50
Speaker 1: the crowd. They're laughing. Other times you end up just
12:53
Speaker 1: pushing a conspiracy theory that leads to a violent instruction.
12:56
Speaker 1: That's what happens. That's the risk you take.
12:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, like sometimes you like swear an oath to like
13:01
Speaker 2: protect the country from enemies, foreign and domestic. And other
13:03
Speaker 2: times you're like, yeah, get rid of the mags. Let
13:06
Speaker 2: the people with the guns through on the way to
13:08
Speaker 2: the Capitol because, hey, they're not coming after me.
13:11
Speaker 1: This was the risk the moment that Donald Trump said
13:14
Speaker 1: he was going to start running for president, is that
13:16
Speaker 1: slowly but surely the press would be sucked back into
13:19
Speaker 1: the way in which they feel this just like chemical
13:23
Speaker 1: desire to write about politics as some sort of game
13:28
Speaker 1: or sport where you can't account for the true danger
13:31
Speaker 1: that one particular candidate poses because he tried to violently
13:36
Speaker 1: overthrow the government like 26 months ago, right? It just.
13:41
Speaker 2: First of all, I don't like these days to focus
13:45
Speaker 2: my limited well of outrage on media outlets that have
13:49
Speaker 2: 90 plus percent of their readers are people who would
13:54
Speaker 2: never vote for Donald Trump anyway. So it's like, what
13:56
Speaker 2: are we doing here?
13:56
Speaker 1: That's all media outlets? All mainstream media outlets?
13:59
Speaker 2: That's part of the problem anyway. But I also think that,
14:02
Speaker 2: of course, you're going to analyze the politics of the primary.
14:04
Speaker 2: We do it all the time. It's not like we
14:06
Speaker 2: just sit here every... Tuesday and Thursday and scream about
14:09
Speaker 2: how dangerous Donald Trump is. That's just, you know, like
14:12
Speaker 2: 30 or 40% of the pot. But like, it would
14:15
Speaker 2: not be hard as you're analyzing Donald Trump's style and
14:19
Speaker 2: analyzing the primary to at least remind people of the
14:22
Speaker 2: multiple investigations, the multiple impeachments, the potential coup, the violent insurrection. Like,
14:29
Speaker 2: it would be helpful. You can throw that in. You
14:31
Speaker 2: can throw that paragraph into your analysis.
14:33
Speaker 1: It's just, it's so hard for them because After January 6th,
14:37
Speaker 1: or at least in the run up to January 6th,
14:39
Speaker 1: when Trump was pushing the big lie, the press changed
14:41
Speaker 1: the way they covered Trump. They stopped covering him live.
14:44
Speaker 1: They decided because I think because he had lost and
14:47
Speaker 1: was theoretically off national stage, they could take a stand
14:50
Speaker 1: for accuracy and truth and against disinformation, their entire reason
14:55
Speaker 1: for being. But that was a deeply uncomfortable position for
14:58
Speaker 1: so many of them because it required going against how
15:01
Speaker 1: they were taught journalism in the pre-Trump era. The both sides,
15:05
Speaker 1: the need for balance. And Donald Trump is running for president.
15:08
Speaker 1: He's going to be running for president for a long
15:10
Speaker 1: fucking time. And so you see it happening. It's like
15:14
Speaker 1: a tractor beam pulling him back there. How much does
15:16
Speaker 1: it matter? Probably not that much, other than just for
15:20
Speaker 1: our general blood pressure. I don't think it's great for
15:23
Speaker 1: the long-term future of putatively objective political journalism that they
15:28
Speaker 1: can't handle this very obvious challenge. But is it going
15:32
Speaker 1: to change this election? Probably not because of who consumes
15:36
Speaker 1: media and how they consume it now. It's just very
15:37
Speaker 1: different than it was in 2016 when they dramatically contributed
15:41
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump's election.
15:43
Speaker 2: Particularly if it's a rerun of 2020 and it's Biden
15:46
Speaker 2: versus Trump and just about everyone in the country has
15:49
Speaker 2: a strong opinion of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump
15:51
Speaker 2: at this point. So a couple of paragraphs in the
15:54
Speaker 2: Washington Post or the New York Times are not going
15:55
Speaker 2: to change that. But, and this is also, but this
15:57
Speaker 2: is like a practice run here, analyzing the primary. Like
16:00
Speaker 2: they start doing this shit about Donald Trump and Joe
16:02
Speaker 2: Biden's competing freewheeling styles or not freewheeling styles in the general.
16:07
Speaker 2: It's going to be a little more annoying. Back to
16:09
Speaker 2: the style of DeSantis, at least. Do you think his
16:12
Speaker 2: staged and scripted events are an intentional strategy meant to
16:17
Speaker 2: contrast his style with Trump's? Or is that just who
16:20
Speaker 2: he is, which may or may not be an awkward
16:23
Speaker 2: dweeb who doesn't like human interaction?
16:26
Speaker 1: Both, I think is the right answer. I think more broadly,
16:31
Speaker 1: we know from... DeSantis' book, and you guys talked about
16:34
Speaker 1: this on a Tuesday pod a couple weeks ago, he's
16:37
Speaker 1: making a very clear point that he is Trump without
16:40
Speaker 1: the chaos. That if you have Trump's beliefs with a
16:43
Speaker 1: more effective, more efficient executor of the agenda, you're going
16:47
Speaker 1: to get more done. And that because Donald Trump is
16:49
Speaker 1: a chaotic Yahoo, there are a whole bunch of priorities
16:53
Speaker 1: that did not happen. And so I do think that
16:55
Speaker 1: Trump without the chaos and crimes is the mess. It's
16:58
Speaker 1: Trump without the baggage, however you want to describe it.
17:00
Speaker 1: But the specifics here are Or because he is an
17:04
Speaker 1: awkward dweeb who hates human interaction. He likes to be
17:07
Speaker 1: in his safe spaces. He likes to know what the
17:09
Speaker 1: questions are. He gets uncomfortable when the questions are about
17:12
Speaker 1: things he's not prepared for from interviewers who are going
17:16
Speaker 1: to ask him tough questions or follow-up questions. He does
17:19
Speaker 1: not like to interact with humans because he does not
17:21
Speaker 1: like them. And I think he knows that if he
17:23
Speaker 1: were to interact with them, that hatred would become a
17:25
Speaker 1: two-way street. And so this is the kind of campaign
17:28
Speaker 1: he is going to run. I do think his team
17:31
Speaker 1: is going to try to make that a feature, not
17:33
Speaker 1: a bug, by contrasting it with Trump. Whether that'll work
17:35
Speaker 1: or not, open question.
17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I agree with the general strategy that he
17:40
Speaker 2: just doesn't want to make any mistakes. If he's going
17:43
Speaker 2: to beat Donald Trump, it has to be a near-perfect campaign.
17:47
Speaker 2: And you can't be... you know, having a gaffe here
17:50
Speaker 2: and there when some reporter yells to you a question,
17:52
Speaker 2: you can be going off the cuff with your remarks.
17:54
Speaker 2: Like everything seems, you just get that sense from his
17:57
Speaker 2: campaign that they are, they're sort of running scared.
18:00
Speaker 4: Yeah.
18:01
Speaker 1: I can't see the flaw in running the political equivalent
18:06
Speaker 1: of the strategy that the Atlanta Falcons used when they
18:09
Speaker 1: were up big on the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
18:14
Speaker 2: All right. So the biggest news DeSantis made this week,
18:16
Speaker 2: and this goes right to the conversation we were just
18:19
Speaker 2: having is when he finally took a stand on Russia's
18:23
Speaker 2: invasion of Ukraine after his boss, Tucker Carlson, demanded that
18:28
Speaker 2: every Republican candidate answer six key questions about the war. DeSantis,
18:34
Speaker 2: then his campaign released a statement to Tucker called the
18:37
Speaker 2: war a, quote, territorial dispute, which is not in America's
18:41
Speaker 2: vital national interest, said that providing Ukraine F-16s and long
18:45
Speaker 2: range missiles should be off the table. and implied that
18:48
Speaker 2: the U.S. is pursuing a policy of regime change in Russia,
18:52
Speaker 2: all of which are arguments that Vladimir Putin and the
18:55
Speaker 2: Kremlin make all the time. So knowing that polls show
19:00
Speaker 2: broad support for U.S. involvement in Ukraine, with even a
19:04
Speaker 2: slight majority of Republicans supportive, maybe less than half, depending
19:08
Speaker 2: on the poll, but it's up there. What do you
19:10
Speaker 2: think DeSantis' calculation was here, considering that he himself has
19:15
Speaker 2: been tougher on Russia than In the past, to me,
19:18
Speaker 2: this goes back to what we were just saying, if
19:20
Speaker 2: you're going to be Trump without the baggage or Trump
19:23
Speaker 2: without the chaos and crimes, then you've got to have,
19:29
Speaker 2: you've got to make sure there's zero policy daylight between
19:32
Speaker 2: you and Donald Trump because you don't want the primary
19:35
Speaker 2: to turn into a contest on actual policy positions.
19:41
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think there's an even more practical reason here,
19:44
Speaker 1: which is he does not want Tucker Carlson going on
19:46
Speaker 1: TV every night and calling him Dick Cheney.
19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Or a Bush. Oh, yeah.
19:51
Speaker 1: Either one, right?
19:52
Speaker 2: Just like the Bushes that he loves. He's a big interventionist. Yeah,
19:55
Speaker 2: that's– yeah.
19:56
Speaker 1: It is– so he– even if there is, I think,
19:59
Speaker 1: a tiny modicum of risk here for DeSantis because there
20:06
Speaker 1: was an Echelon Insights poll which looked at Trump voters
20:09
Speaker 1: and DeSantis voters And DeSantis voters were 47-47 on whether
20:17
Speaker 1: Ukraine was a vital interest in the United States. Trump
20:19
Speaker 1: voters were 22-32. But beyond that, the point here is
20:22
Speaker 1: what's more important than that is whether a very influential,
20:26
Speaker 1: trusted messenger within the Republican base, a la Tucker Carlson,
20:30
Speaker 1: starts screaming about you every night. And all of a sudden,
20:32
Speaker 1: you're going to start looking like a Paul Ryan disciple
20:34
Speaker 1: or like Mitt Romney, if that's the case. And so
20:36
Speaker 1: if you can take that off the table, you take
20:38
Speaker 1: that off the table, even if there is you're going
20:40
Speaker 1: to have to deal with some consequences of that, not
20:42
Speaker 1: just in a general election, but if you were to
20:44
Speaker 1: become president.
20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, I would say.
20:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:49
Speaker 2: Well, someone made the point that this basically, for Putin,
20:53
Speaker 2: gives Putin the incentive to keep the war going until 2025,
20:58
Speaker 2: at least, when hopefully Trump or DeSantis become president, and
21:02
Speaker 2: also to interfere in the 2024 election to help Trump
21:06
Speaker 2: or DeSantis become president because he knows if they do, then...
21:09
Speaker 2: the NATO alliance will fall apart because the US won't
21:11
Speaker 2: be supporting Ukraine anymore. It's really just dangerous shit.
21:16
Speaker 1: The thing that I think is important here, because there
21:18
Speaker 1: was a lot of people, particularly in the never Trump-ish
21:21
Speaker 1: neocon Republican community, who were very alarmed and angry at
21:27
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis about this. And they're saying, this is going
21:28
Speaker 1: to hurt him because look at the polls on Ukraine.
21:31
Speaker 1: And I think we constantly make a mistake in polling
21:34
Speaker 1: is We spend all our time trying to figure out
21:37
Speaker 1: how people feel on an issue without trying to figure
21:39
Speaker 1: out how much they care about an issue. And I
21:43
Speaker 1: am skeptical, particularly if you get down to 2024, that
21:47
Speaker 1: Ukraine is going to be an issue that changes people's votes.
21:51
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of people, Republicans, even potentially like DeSantis,
21:54
Speaker 1: who disagree with them on this issue. But I'm just
21:56
Speaker 1: not sure this is going to be high up there
21:58
Speaker 1: in terms of what changes their mind about who they
22:02
Speaker 1: vote for, either in the primary or or the general election.
22:04
Speaker 1: So I think this is a relatively, from a political perspective,
22:07
Speaker 1: it's low risk. I think this says a lot about
22:10
Speaker 1: DeSantis' character, because if he really thinks he's going to
22:13
Speaker 1: be president, you can tell the people who are serious
22:16
Speaker 1: by the ones who make decisions in the primary to ensure,
22:20
Speaker 1: even if they take extra short-term political risk, they don't
22:22
Speaker 1: tie their hands as president. Obama faces a whole bunch
22:26
Speaker 1: of 2008 around Iraq and some candidates we're running against
22:30
Speaker 1: who tried to get far to the left on how
22:35
Speaker 1: you would end the Iraq war. And Obama, even though
22:37
Speaker 1: that was his bread and butter, was his opposition to
22:39
Speaker 1: the war, did not go with him because he thought
22:41
Speaker 1: there was a good chance he was going to be president.
22:43
Speaker 1: And he did not want to have his hands tied
22:44
Speaker 1: by something he said to try to win over six
22:47
Speaker 1: additional Iowa voters in 2007.
22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly no one in the Republican primary feels that
22:54
Speaker 2: kind of anxiety. But look, I do think that, I
22:58
Speaker 2: think it was interesting that so many Republican senators came
23:01
Speaker 2: out and dinged DeSantis on this. Um, when, I mean,
23:06
Speaker 2: you couldn't get that many Republican senators to ding Trump
23:08
Speaker 2: on anything since, uh, January 6th. And that was only
23:11
Speaker 2: for a couple of days. Yeah. I was just, I
23:15
Speaker 2: was surprised. I was surprised that they, why, why do
23:17
Speaker 2: you think that they all did that?
23:18
Speaker 1: Because I think a lot of them hope that DeSantis is,
23:23
Speaker 1: is playing MAGA. but is really an establishment Republican, right?
23:28
Speaker 2: They can get him back on the team.
23:29
Speaker 1: Like, what would the saying be? Maga in the streets,
23:32
Speaker 1: rhino in the sheets or something?
23:34
Speaker 2: Ask Lovett for it.
23:34
Speaker 1: And they also know they're going to have this big
23:37
Speaker 1: fight on Ukraine funding coming up with the House, and
23:41
Speaker 1: it does not help that Ron DeSantis is going to
23:43
Speaker 1: make this worse.
23:45
Speaker 2: I will also say that when you really pick apart
23:48
Speaker 2: that DeSantis statement, it's like written... you know, in a
23:54
Speaker 2: nuanced enough way and a lawyerly sort of way that
23:57
Speaker 2: there he's like left himself enough loopholes to sort of
24:00
Speaker 2: come down from that maximalist position just a little bit.
24:04
Speaker 2: If he somehow wins the general, you can see that
24:06
Speaker 2: there's a little thinking in there that he could, that
24:09
Speaker 2: he could back off from it a little bit. But
24:11
Speaker 2: this goes to the next conversation we're just going to have,
24:13
Speaker 2: which was like how, if he does somehow win the primary,
24:16
Speaker 2: like how successful can DeSantis be in pivoting to become a,
24:21
Speaker 2: palatable general election candidate. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum just
24:26
Speaker 2: wrote a piece that asked the question, is Ron DeSantis
24:29
Speaker 2: flaming out already? Where he argues that Tiny D has
24:33
Speaker 2: a plan to win the Fox News primary and lose
24:36
Speaker 2: everything else. I know that, of course, you and Frum
24:39
Speaker 2: have mind meld since you expressed displeasure that he beat
24:42
Speaker 2: you to this take. What's your case that DeSantis is
24:45
Speaker 2: already flaming out?
24:48
Speaker 1: It's not that he is flaming out. And it's certainly
24:50
Speaker 1: not for the reasons that David Frum suggests. People should
24:53
Speaker 1: read the piece. It's largely about his appealing to the
24:57
Speaker 1: MAGA base on foreign policy that upsets David Axis of
25:01
Speaker 1: evil from. And you see this– this is I think
25:07
Speaker 1: to your point about why people got so upset is
25:10
Speaker 1: DeSantis– there is this hope that DeSantis will be bad
25:13
Speaker 1: on a whole bunch of other things but he will
25:14
Speaker 1: return to the Republican core on some things Donald Trump
25:17
Speaker 1: walked away from. Trade. foreign policy, entitlement cuts, those sorts
25:23
Speaker 1: of things. But my argument for why I think DeSantis
25:28
Speaker 1: is screwing this up is Donald Trump has a strategy.
25:32
Speaker 1: He has a very specific strategy. He is executing the strategy,
25:35
Speaker 1: not with the most discipline anyone could have, but he
25:38
Speaker 1: is absolutely doing it. His strategy, I wrote about this
25:41
Speaker 1: in Message Box a couple weeks ago, but is one,
25:43
Speaker 1: hug DeSantis on cultural issues. That's why he's been putting
25:47
Speaker 1: out these policies. He's getting He's up his bigoted anti-trans rhetoric.
25:51
Speaker 1: He's doing a bunch of stuff on schools. And he's
25:53
Speaker 1: trying to destroy Ron DeSantis by getting to the left
25:56
Speaker 1: of him on populist economic issues. And the race, I think,
26:00
Speaker 1: really boils down to a race between whether Donald Trump's
26:06
Speaker 1: going to destroy Ron DeSantis before Donald Trump destroys himself.
26:09
Speaker 1: And right now, he's doing a better job of destroying
26:12
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis. And DeSantis is, I think, If you look
26:18
Speaker 1: back two months ago, Donald Trump was much weaker than
26:20
Speaker 1: he is now. He was as weak as he's ever been.
26:23
Speaker 1: And in that moment, DeSantis could have jumped in, become
26:26
Speaker 1: a vessel for all the anti-Trump concern, locked down a
26:30
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people and got moving. But he did
26:33
Speaker 1: not do that. He's waiting and waiting and waiting. And
26:35
Speaker 1: every day he waits, Donald Trump's getting a little bit stronger,
26:37
Speaker 1: becoming a little bit more inevitable. And what is DeSantis'
26:42
Speaker 1: strategy thus far? Is he not really defining himself? He's
26:46
Speaker 1: running this very... establishment, high donor, rope and stanchion campaign.
26:53
Speaker 1: He's basically running... If I were to give him a nickname,
26:57
Speaker 1: it would be MAGA Rubio. That is his strategy. He
26:59
Speaker 1: is basically running a MAGA version of Marco Rubio strategy.
27:02
Speaker 1: And he has a lot of strengths Rubio does not.
27:05
Speaker 1: I agree with you that he is by far the
27:07
Speaker 1: strongest Republican Donald Trump has ever faced. But I think
27:11
Speaker 1: he is... His chances of winning the nomination today are
27:16
Speaker 1: less than they were two months ago, and that's in
27:18
Speaker 1: part because he did not jump in at the moment
27:21
Speaker 1: that he had. There's a reason, you and I know,
27:25
Speaker 1: that we went from– that Barack Obama went from deciding
27:28
Speaker 1: to run for president officially to in the race in
27:31
Speaker 1: like two and a half weeks because he knew he
27:34
Speaker 1: had a moment. John Kerry had not decided if he
27:37
Speaker 1: was running yet. Hillary Clinton had not announced yet. And
27:40
Speaker 1: he had to get in there because the longer he waited,
27:44
Speaker 1: the more it was likely people would move to other candidates.
27:47
Speaker 1: And I think that Ron DeSantis is waiting too long.
27:51
Speaker 2: I think he's got plenty of time. I think he's
27:53
Speaker 2: got plenty of time. I mean, look, I think that
27:56
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis' path to the nomination is incredibly difficult. And
27:59
Speaker 2: I think that is because Donald Trump still looms large
28:03
Speaker 2: and still has a hold on most of the Republican base, which,
28:07
Speaker 2: by the way, happens to be people who do not
28:10
Speaker 2: consume a ton of news and are not political junkies
28:12
Speaker 2: and are probably not paying attention and have low social trust.
28:16
Speaker 2: And they don't sometimes they don't register in polls. The
28:19
Speaker 2: press doesn't pay attention to them as much. The press
28:21
Speaker 2: is going to over index on covering the college educated
28:25
Speaker 2: Republican voters that DeSantis will surely win and crush Trump with.
28:30
Speaker 2: But that's just not enough to win the nomination in
28:32
Speaker 2: this party. So I think that's all true. But I
28:35
Speaker 2: do think that like I think what I think the
28:38
Speaker 2: campaign DeSantis is running right now is I'm Donald Trump
28:41
Speaker 2: without the baggage. Everyone's pissed that we've now lost a
28:45
Speaker 2: series of elections thanks to Donald Trump. And everyone knows that.
28:48
Speaker 2: So you really don't have to point it out that much.
28:50
Speaker 2: And by the way, MAGA base, I am your warrior
28:54
Speaker 2: against all of the woke enemies that you hate woke
28:58
Speaker 2: Disney and their corporate bullshit and, the woke media and
29:02
Speaker 2: the woke libs and the Dems and look what I've
29:05
Speaker 2: done in Florida. And I have all the enemies. I've
29:07
Speaker 2: picked all the right enemies, just like you always thought
29:10
Speaker 2: about Trump. And I'm focused on those enemies. Donald Trump
29:13
Speaker 2: might be focused on me and other Republicans. I'm focused
29:16
Speaker 2: on the woke left and the real enemies here. And
29:19
Speaker 2: I think that, I think that's a, you know, it
29:21
Speaker 2: might not be enough and he might get dinged as
29:24
Speaker 2: sort of an establishment cuck. But every time he picks
29:28
Speaker 2: another fight with someone on the left, or some institution,
29:32
Speaker 2: it's going to remind people that, well, Ron DeSantis' heart
29:35
Speaker 2: is in the right place, if you're a MAGA voter.
29:38
Speaker 2: And maybe he can win and Donald Trump can't.
29:43
Speaker 1: I guess this is maybe a better way to say
29:45
Speaker 1: what my biggest beef is. And this is why I
29:48
Speaker 1: think his strategy is MAGA Rubio, is he thinks he's
29:50
Speaker 1: the front runner. He's an underdog. He's a big underdog.
29:55
Speaker 1: I think he has a very real shot, but Donald
29:57
Speaker 1: Trump is a Big favorite to win this for all
30:00
Speaker 1: the reasons you said, and particularly just because Donald Trump
30:03
Speaker 1: has a lock on a certain segment of the electorate
30:06
Speaker 1: and Republican primaries are winner take all.
30:09
Speaker 2: So why from February of 2007 until the JJ dinner
30:15
Speaker 2: a year later almost, did Barack Obama sort of hold
30:18
Speaker 2: his fire on Hillary Clinton?
30:20
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he has to be attacking Trump right now.
30:24
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I'm not, I do not agree
30:26
Speaker 1: with you. He should not get into a fight. I
30:28
Speaker 1: think he could be defending himself in ways could raise
30:31
Speaker 1: his voice in here. It could be an announced candidate.
30:34
Speaker 1: He could be building in real infrastructure to that's, that's
30:37
Speaker 1: the main reason Obama announced when he did was there
30:39
Speaker 1: was a whole bunch of people wanted to work for
30:40
Speaker 1: him and volunteer for him all across the country. And
30:42
Speaker 1: he had to go get them. And DeSantis was more
30:46
Speaker 1: the bell of the ball, more in more sort of
30:50
Speaker 1: in the forefront of the mind three months ago than
30:52
Speaker 1: he is now. And I think he has to run
30:56
Speaker 1: his race as if he is an underdog. And that's
30:58
Speaker 1: to the whole point about not making a mistake, not
31:02
Speaker 1: trying to hug Trump in every single way. He's an underdog.
31:05
Speaker 1: You have to run an underdog race if you want
31:06
Speaker 1: to beat a frontrunner. And I think thus far, and
31:09
Speaker 1: it is early, he can still win for sure. Everything
31:13
Speaker 1: he's doing reeks of entitlement. It's the kind of entitlement
31:15
Speaker 1: you get when you're talking to all the MAGA, not
31:20
Speaker 1: even the MAGA, the Republican billionaires who are looking for
31:22
Speaker 1: someone else. when you are just talking to all the
31:27
Speaker 1: establishment folks. And I think that that is giving him
31:30
Speaker 1: a false sense of comfort.
31:32
Speaker 2: I think if the campaign looks like this and he
31:34
Speaker 2: looks like this in summer, early fall, then I would
31:38
Speaker 2: be more inclined to be with you on this one.
31:41
Speaker 2: I still think, gun to my head, I still think
31:43
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump is the, I definitely think he's the
31:47
Speaker 2: front runner and probably pulls it off. But I don't know.
31:49
Speaker 2: I feel like DeSantis could do it.
31:52
Speaker 4: All right.
31:53
Speaker 2: When we come back, I will talk to the mayor
31:55
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Joining us in studio today
32:07
Speaker 2: is the 43rd mayor of Los Angeles who just hit
32:10
Speaker 2: the 100-day mark in her term. Karen Bass, welcome back
32:13
Speaker 2: to the pod.
32:13
Speaker 3: Thank you.
32:14
Speaker 2: Great to be back. All right. You just spent about
32:17
Speaker 2: 10 years in Congress and about 100 days as mayor.
32:20
Speaker 2: That's right. Which is the harder job? Um, you know what?
32:23
Speaker 3: No question. It's, it's mayor.
32:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:26
Speaker 3: But you know, when I went to Congress, it was
32:28
Speaker 3: when the tea party took over. So that was pretty traumatic.
32:30
Speaker 2: I remember that.
32:32
Speaker 3: But now I look back at the tea party and
32:34
Speaker 3: they look mild compared to the latest crop.
32:37
Speaker 2: You, um, you've lived in LA most of your life
32:40
Speaker 2: and you started as an organizer in LA. Has anything
32:43
Speaker 2: surprised you about the job so far?
32:47
Speaker 3: Well, actually, you know what surprised me was, you know,
32:49
Speaker 3: on day one, I didn't go to City Hall. I
32:51
Speaker 3: went straight to the Emergency Operations Center and declared an emergency.
32:55
Speaker 3: Because to me, 47,000 people on the street with multiple
32:58
Speaker 3: people dying every day is an emergency. So what has
33:01
Speaker 3: surprised me has been how that has been so welcomed.
33:05
Speaker 3: And I have not found resistance to it. And one
33:08
Speaker 3: of my goals was to align every level of government, federal, state, county,
33:13
Speaker 3: and city. And I thought that would take a while.
33:16
Speaker 3: It's already happened. And just the openness of the city
33:20
Speaker 3: family to saying, okay, let's do something different. It is
33:24
Speaker 3: an emergency. I really expected to have more resistance than
33:28
Speaker 3: I found.
33:30
Speaker 2: During the campaign, you promised to get 17,000 people off
33:33
Speaker 2: the streets in your first year. Yes. How many people
33:36
Speaker 2: have you been able to get off the street in
33:38
Speaker 2: these first 100 days?
33:39
Speaker 3: Well, in the first 100 days, now, not all that
33:41
Speaker 3: I'm responsible for, 4,000 have been housed and off the street.
33:47
Speaker 3: In the program that I initiated, Insight Safe, which is
33:50
Speaker 3: moving people out of tents and into temporary housing, it's
33:55
Speaker 3: been over 1,000. And then there have been a few
33:58
Speaker 3: other ways that we have expedited building and also getting
34:02
Speaker 3: people housed. So one of my big goals was to
34:06
Speaker 3: cut the red tape. But you know what? I was
34:08
Speaker 3: just thinking about red tape in terms of the building process.
34:11
Speaker 3: What I didn't realize was how much self-imposed red tape
34:16
Speaker 3: there is to get people housed.
34:18
Speaker 2: Can you give examples of some of that?
34:20
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. We have only moved 64 people into permanent housing. However,
34:26
Speaker 3: the city has lots of vacancies. It takes us a
34:30
Speaker 3: while to move them because of the red tape. So
34:33
Speaker 3: the federal government said, you have to have a system
34:36
Speaker 3: to prioritize who gets housing first. And then LA came
34:40
Speaker 3: up with a system that's so crazy, it's very hard
34:44
Speaker 3: to get people through the process. So- Since it was self-imposed,
34:48
Speaker 3: since we did it, that means we can undo it.
34:50
Speaker 3: So we introduced a motion. Actually, Councilwoman Nithya Raman introduced
34:56
Speaker 3: a motion yesterday to untie the process. So that has
35:02
Speaker 3: been very, very important. And that will be able to
35:05
Speaker 3: expedite moving people out of motels into the permanent housing
35:09
Speaker 3: that actually exists.
35:12
Speaker 2: What are you doing differently now? than the last administration
35:16
Speaker 2: on this issue and what's been working the best?
35:19
Speaker 3: You know, I actually can't speak to what the last
35:22
Speaker 3: administration did, but let me just tell you, though, that
35:24
Speaker 3: I am the beneficiary of Proposition HHH. And you remember
35:29
Speaker 3: voters were up in arms over the fact that we
35:31
Speaker 3: had taxed ourselves twice and they didn't see the housing
35:35
Speaker 3: come online. Well, that's because the process was so darn
35:38
Speaker 3: long because of the red tape. So the red tape
35:41
Speaker 3: has played out, and I've been going to ribbon cuttings
35:44
Speaker 3: every other day. Now, they're not ribbon cuttings that, of course,
35:47
Speaker 3: I'm responsible for. But one thing that I can certainly
35:50
Speaker 3: do is make sure that when those ribbons are cut,
35:53
Speaker 3: they're actually people in the housing and that the red
35:56
Speaker 3: tape is not keeping them out.
35:59
Speaker 2: What new tools or powers did declaring a state of
36:04
Speaker 2: emergency give you?
36:05
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's an interesting question because it does
36:07
Speaker 3: give me extra power over the city council in terms
36:10
Speaker 3: of land use. But I have not used that power
36:14
Speaker 3: because I've not needed to. So my first job to me,
36:18
Speaker 3: even before I was sworn in, was to build relationships
36:21
Speaker 3: with every member of the city council. Now, of course,
36:24
Speaker 3: most of the members I already knew and had pre-existing
36:27
Speaker 3: relationships with, including several that we served in the statehouse together.
36:31
Speaker 3: then we have our new council members. So we have
36:33
Speaker 3: been working so collaboratively, there has been no need for
36:36
Speaker 3: me to actually use the powers. However, I also issued
36:41
Speaker 3: executive directives after that to expedite the process. So one
36:46
Speaker 3: of the things that developers complain about is that when
36:48
Speaker 3: they're trying to get something built, they never know when
36:52
Speaker 3: they're gonna get appointments, they're held up because of approvals
36:55
Speaker 3: by the Department of Water and Power and all of that.
36:58
Speaker 3: And so the executive directive orders those departments to act
37:02
Speaker 3: with time certain so that a developer knows. And a
37:05
Speaker 3: number of developers have told me, gee, I had an
37:08
Speaker 3: appointment in September and I got a letter telling me
37:10
Speaker 3: to come in in two weeks. So we have definitely
37:13
Speaker 3: fast forwarded that. Yeah.
37:15
Speaker 2: I mean, you mentioned, obviously, permanent affordable housing is the
37:18
Speaker 2: ultimate solution. Housing is a top issue across the country
37:22
Speaker 2: and cities across the country and for people who just
37:24
Speaker 2: can't afford it. Obviously, this is an issue that to
37:27
Speaker 2: solve it, it requires federal action. State action here, county action,
37:33
Speaker 2: city action, coordination. What tools do you have to make
37:36
Speaker 2: a difference on sort of the creation of and the
37:40
Speaker 2: building of more affordable housing and doing it more quickly?
37:43
Speaker 3: One of the other executive directives that we did was
37:46
Speaker 3: to marshal city land. However, the county, and by the way,
37:50
Speaker 3: I meant to say this too, the county declared a
37:52
Speaker 3: state of emergency. Long Beach did, Santa Monica did. So
37:56
Speaker 3: several cities are doing that. Well, one of the executive
37:59
Speaker 3: directives that I did after the declaration called for identifying
38:03
Speaker 3: all city land. Well, having said that, the county has
38:07
Speaker 3: come forward. They're identifying land. Metro has come forward as
38:10
Speaker 3: well as LAUSD. So to me, the first place to
38:14
Speaker 3: begin is on land that's already owned where we can
38:18
Speaker 3: build and the purchasing of the land is not an issue.
38:21
Speaker 3: So that's one of the concrete steps. But I do
38:23
Speaker 3: want to make a distinction between permanent affordable and permanent supportive.
38:27
Speaker 3: So permanent supportive housing, what that means is that's housing
38:31
Speaker 3: with wraparound services for the people who are coming out
38:34
Speaker 3: of tents and out of motels.
38:36
Speaker 2: Right. So another major barrier has always been, you know,
38:40
Speaker 2: what's known as nimbyism. Not in my backyard. These are L.A.
38:44
Speaker 2: residents and landlords, you know, not wanting the unhoused population
38:47
Speaker 2: to be placed in their neighborhoods. What do you say
38:49
Speaker 2: to people who care about this issue, have even voted
38:52
Speaker 2: to raise their own taxes to fund housing, but don't
38:55
Speaker 2: want it to be.
38:56
Speaker 3: To be built in somebody else's home.
38:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:58
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that I am finding is
39:01
Speaker 3: that much of the housing that has been built has
39:04
Speaker 3: been built in South L.A. Now, one of the ways
39:08
Speaker 3: that would exist now is so broken. So you have
39:12
Speaker 3: all of this housing in South L.A. You know who
39:14
Speaker 3: lives in South L.A., They have to place people from Calabasas,
39:19
Speaker 3: from all over the place, everywhere but South LA. So
39:22
Speaker 3: the first thing we have to do is get rid
39:25
Speaker 3: of that process. But I'm finding that in some of
39:28
Speaker 3: the neighborhoods that you would think would be nimby neighborhoods,
39:31
Speaker 3: they will tell you, I don't want housing over here,
39:34
Speaker 3: but why don't you build it over there? So one
39:36
Speaker 3: of the things that I believe has to be created
39:39
Speaker 3: in our city is a spirit of everybody needs to
39:44
Speaker 3: have skin in the game. This is an issue, the
39:47
Speaker 3: problem of the unhoused, impacts everybody, whether you're housed or not.
39:51
Speaker 3: All of us are impacted by the problem, which means
39:54
Speaker 3: all of us have to be invested in the solution.
39:58
Speaker 2: What do you think are some of the biggest obstacles
40:01
Speaker 2: left in terms of delivering on that promise to get 17,000
40:04
Speaker 2: people off the street?
40:05
Speaker 3: Oh, there's tons of obstacles.
40:08
Speaker 2: What are the ones that are keeping you up at
40:09
Speaker 2: night the most? Lots. You know what?
40:11
Speaker 3: The main one that's keeping me up at night are
40:13
Speaker 3: the wraparound services. So we have community-based organizations that do
40:18
Speaker 3: this and they do great work, but they don't have
40:21
Speaker 3: the capacity. The other thing that keeps me up at
40:24
Speaker 3: night are motel rooms in every area. So that has
40:28
Speaker 3: been a problem. For example, when we encourage people to
40:32
Speaker 3: leave an encampment, we would like to house them near
40:35
Speaker 3: the encampment. One, because they have built a sense of
40:38
Speaker 3: community there and they have relationships. But not every area
40:43
Speaker 3: has motels that are affordable. Case in point, Katie Erslowski's district,
40:48
Speaker 3: we wanted to move people out of an encampment, but
40:52
Speaker 3: we had to move them into Hugo Soto Martinez's district
40:55
Speaker 3: because the motels in her district were way too expensive. Now,
41:00
Speaker 3: we're in the process of purchasing a building in Katie's district,
41:04
Speaker 3: but we don't have it right now. So we move
41:07
Speaker 3: them over to Hugo's, but then we also want to
41:10
Speaker 3: move them back. So that has been a real problem.
41:13
Speaker 3: And we don't want to have the notion of we're
41:16
Speaker 3: just moving people far away from where they were. But
41:19
Speaker 3: when we moved the encampment in Venice, we were fortunate
41:22
Speaker 3: to find a couple of motels in Venice. But then
41:25
Speaker 3: there were more people. So there's a world of problems.
41:29
Speaker 3: But you know what?
41:30
Speaker 2: I view these as good.
41:31
Speaker 3: Problems in the sense that One thing is so important
41:34
Speaker 3: is that we completely dispelled the myth that people don't
41:37
Speaker 3: want to move. We have not had anybody turn us down. Now,
41:42
Speaker 3: they might turn us down for a couple of days.
41:44
Speaker 3: Say maybe there's an encampment of 15 people, and 10 say,
41:47
Speaker 3: I'm ready to go, and 5 say, I'm never leaving.
41:50
Speaker 3: And then the bus comes, and 10 people get on
41:52
Speaker 3: the bus, and all of a sudden, I think I'm
41:54
Speaker 3: leaving too. So now the problem has morphed into not
41:58
Speaker 3: only are 15 people going to get on the bus,
42:01
Speaker 3: but But five of those people called people they know
42:04
Speaker 3: who are in tents a few blocks away. And so
42:07
Speaker 3: instead of being 15 people, it's 20 people that show up.
42:11
Speaker 3: And we have to be ready to have rooms for
42:13
Speaker 3: everyone because we don't want to leave people on the street.
42:16
Speaker 2: You mentioned that this is an issue where everyone has
42:19
Speaker 2: to be in it together. Everyone has to have skin
42:21
Speaker 2: in the game. If there's people listening who are like,
42:24
Speaker 2: I'm frustrated by this. I want to help. What can
42:27
Speaker 2: people do?
42:28
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Let me give you an example. As I mentioned,
42:31
Speaker 3: the community-based organizations really don't have the capacity to reach scale.
42:36
Speaker 3: So when you move a person from a tent to
42:39
Speaker 3: a motel, they're not going into a motel where there's
42:42
Speaker 3: room service or maid service every day. So what neighbors
42:47
Speaker 3: could do is neighbors could assemble welcome packets. They could
42:50
Speaker 3: assemble towels and soaps and shampoos and basic items that
42:55
Speaker 3: somebody in a tent doesn't have. So we've also run
42:58
Speaker 3: into problems where in some of the motels, they haven't
43:01
Speaker 3: had adequate supplies. And then the community-based organizations don't necessarily
43:06
Speaker 3: have the resources to run out to Target to buy
43:08
Speaker 3: towels for everybody. And I don't think they should have to.
43:12
Speaker 3: So there is a community organizing component to this that
43:15
Speaker 3: hasn't come online yet. But where we will go in
43:18
Speaker 3: the next month or so is that our organizers will
43:21
Speaker 3: go to the neighborhoods where the encampments are and talk
43:26
Speaker 3: to the neighbors who are housed to say, we're gonna
43:28
Speaker 3: be moving the people in your area. We're gonna give
43:32
Speaker 3: them a choice. Would you guys organize the welcome packets
43:36
Speaker 3: so that on move out day, you can come and
43:38
Speaker 3: present the people who are in your neighborhood with this
43:43
Speaker 3: to be supportive of them. So we wanna do that.
43:46
Speaker 3: The other thing is, is that after the encampment is cleared,
43:49
Speaker 3: we don't want a new encampment to emerge. And so
43:52
Speaker 3: getting the neighbors who are housed to reclaim that public space,
43:56
Speaker 3: to occupy that public space. And if one tent shows up,
44:00
Speaker 3: to call the social service provider. Because the way encampments
44:03
Speaker 3: happen is you'll have one tent, a few days later
44:05
Speaker 3: there'll be three, then there'll be five. So let's prevent
44:09
Speaker 3: it by when one tent shows up, let's get that
44:11
Speaker 3: person housed right away.
44:13
Speaker 2: The other big issue that mayors across the country are
44:15
Speaker 2: dealing with is crime. A lot of folks have pointed
44:17
Speaker 2: to crime as the reason that Mayor Lori Lightfoot just
44:19
Speaker 2: lost her bid for reelection in Chicago. Most people, most
44:22
Speaker 2: voters across the country want to feel safe from violent
44:26
Speaker 2: criminals and from violent cops. You were at the center
44:30
Speaker 2: of this issue in Congress. You led the fight for
44:32
Speaker 2: the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. What lessons from
44:36
Speaker 2: that experience about the politics of crime and police reform
44:41
Speaker 2: have you brought with you to your job as mayor?
44:43
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I think that what has happened
44:47
Speaker 3: in our city and in our society, especially over the
44:50
Speaker 3: last 30 years, is we have divested from health, social,
44:54
Speaker 3: and economic supports, the safety net. And all of these
44:58
Speaker 3: social and economic and health problems flow into our cities.
45:02
Speaker 3: And then the big problem we're having, of course, is
45:03
Speaker 3: on the metro line. And so we don't solve the
45:06
Speaker 3: social problems, and then we expect the police to clean
45:08
Speaker 3: up everything. And then we get upset about that. So
45:12
Speaker 3: I believe you have to have a comprehensive approach. I
45:14
Speaker 3: do believe you have to have law enforcement, but I
45:17
Speaker 3: have established an office and I have a deputy mayor
45:20
Speaker 3: for public safety, but I also have a deputy mayor
45:22
Speaker 3: for community safety to come up with non-law enforcement methods
45:28
Speaker 3: of addressing problems. For example, because we have pretty much
45:33
Speaker 3: shredded our mental health safety net, people with mental illness
45:38
Speaker 3: are on the street. We allow them to deteriorate to
45:41
Speaker 3: the point where they commit a crime where they either
45:43
Speaker 3: hurt themselves or hurt someone else. We have no problem
45:47
Speaker 3: or we don't say anything about the fact that we
45:48
Speaker 3: incarcerate mental illness. But I think sometimes people need to
45:52
Speaker 3: be hospitalized and they need to be helped. And I
45:55
Speaker 3: think that sometimes people don't know that they need to
45:58
Speaker 3: be helped. If you're in a full-blown psychotic break and
46:01
Speaker 3: you're hearing voices, you're not in a state of mind
46:05
Speaker 3: to say, gee, I better go check myself in. And
46:07
Speaker 3: if one of the lessons I learned from George Floyd,
46:10
Speaker 3: because I was examining officer involved deaths over a period
46:13
Speaker 3: of time, like a few months, and there were 30
46:16
Speaker 3: to 40% of those deaths involved somebody who was in
46:19
Speaker 3: an acute mental health crisis. Why should we expect police
46:23
Speaker 3: to handle that? So we need to have mental health
46:26
Speaker 3: professionals who intervene first. And that's one of the commitments
46:29
Speaker 3: that I made to the chief that I'm going to
46:32
Speaker 3: focus on really building up our mental health capacity so
46:37
Speaker 3: that people don't deteriorate to the point where they hurt
46:40
Speaker 3: others or hurt themselves.
46:41
Speaker 2: And I imagine, as you're talking about building up capacity,
46:43
Speaker 2: that we probably don't have that capacity right now because
46:46
Speaker 2: we've relied on law enforcement to do this job for
46:48
Speaker 2: so long.
46:48
Speaker 3: That's right.
46:49
Speaker 2: That's right.
46:50
Speaker 3: And I think that it's expensive, it's inhumane, and it
46:55
Speaker 3: doesn't work. And I don't understand why we keep repeating
46:59
Speaker 3: things the same way and expecting another result. I think
47:01
Speaker 3: that's called insanity.
47:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. You've called yourself a pragmatic, progressive... You told the
47:07
Speaker 2: New York Times in a recent piece that you see
47:10
Speaker 2: similarities between Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and yourself as a young activist.
47:15
Speaker 2: And you said, that's who I was. That's who I
47:17
Speaker 2: still am. It's just that after a while, you want
47:19
Speaker 2: to begin to make a very concrete difference in people's
47:21
Speaker 2: lives as opposed to your positions in educating. Can you
47:24
Speaker 2: talk more about the evolution in your theory of change
47:29
Speaker 2: in politics as you've gone from activist, organizer... member of
47:34
Speaker 2: the state legislature, member of Congress, and now mayor?
47:38
Speaker 3: One of the things I've enjoyed the most about being
47:40
Speaker 3: an elected official is applying community organizing principles and strategies
47:45
Speaker 3: in a legislative context.
47:47
Speaker 2: It's different.
47:48
Speaker 3: It's different. But that's why the first order of business
47:51
Speaker 3: to me is always to organize my colleagues, which is
47:53
Speaker 3: why I said before I was sworn in, I focused
47:56
Speaker 3: on building relationships with everybody in the city council and
47:59
Speaker 3: the board of supervisors and.
48:01
Speaker 2: Anybody else around me.
48:03
Speaker 3: So what we have done is, you know, my little
48:06
Speaker 3: theme is locking arms with different levels of government. And
48:09
Speaker 3: then I consider it my job to make sure that
48:13
Speaker 3: the members of council are successful. And doing that, then
48:17
Speaker 3: we can work on things collaboratively together. And that is,
48:21
Speaker 3: you know, one of the basic principles of activism. And
48:25
Speaker 3: then I also believe, though, that you have to have
48:28
Speaker 3: the outside pressure. You need the outside. And I believe
48:31
Speaker 3: in fundamentally an inside and outside strategy. The difference between
48:35
Speaker 3: me and AOC and some of our new city council
48:38
Speaker 3: people is that when I was their age, the last
48:40
Speaker 3: thing in the world I would have thought about doing
48:42
Speaker 3: is running for office. And so now that they've run
48:45
Speaker 3: for office and they're in office, I'm very committed to
48:49
Speaker 3: making sure that they're successful.
48:51
Speaker 2: I imagine the other challenge is when you're an activist
48:54
Speaker 2: and organizer, a lot of what you do is in
48:57
Speaker 2: opposition to people that you disagree with vehemently. And when
49:03
Speaker 2: you're in a position like this, you probably have to
49:06
Speaker 2: build relationships with people who you disagree with on a
49:10
Speaker 2: whole bunch of issues. And I think that's probably hard
49:12
Speaker 2: for a lot of folks who are activists and organizers
49:14
Speaker 2: to imagine doing. Well, exactly.
49:16
Speaker 3: And I think in a way you got to get
49:18
Speaker 3: out of your head in the sense that what is
49:20
Speaker 3: the goal? The goal should be more than you. And
49:24
Speaker 3: so people, which I kind of chuckled at, people are like, oh,
49:27
Speaker 3: how are you going to work with city council?
49:29
Speaker 2: They're so different.
49:29
Speaker 3: It's like, do you know I just came from DC?
49:34
Speaker 3: The most conservative city council member Could not fly as
49:38
Speaker 3: a conservative in D.C. And, you know, I spent time
49:42
Speaker 3: building relationships with some of the most extreme members of
49:46
Speaker 3: Congress because I keep my eyes on the prize. And
49:49
Speaker 3: the prize is the issue that I'm working on. And
49:52
Speaker 3: so I can tolerate lots because the end result is
49:57
Speaker 3: what matters.
49:58
Speaker 2: Which is a very community organizing mindset. Yeah, exactly. Mayor
50:02
Speaker 2: Karen Bass, thank you so much for joining Positive America
50:05
Speaker 2: and stopping by. Come by again.
50:07
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on, and I will.
50:18
Speaker 2: Okay, before we go, we wanted to, we haven't done
50:20
Speaker 2: this in a while, so we wanted to take some
50:22
Speaker 2: questions from all of you. And so we will dive
50:25
Speaker 2: into the old mailbag.
50:29
Speaker 1: Questions.
50:30
Speaker 2: All right, first one, we had many, many questions on this.
50:33
Speaker 2: What do you all think of the Biden administration's recent
50:36
Speaker 2: approval of the Willow Project? The Willow Project is basically ConocoPhillips,
50:43
Speaker 2: big oil company, wants to drill at a site in
50:47
Speaker 2: Alaska near the Arctic for oil. And it had to
50:50
Speaker 2: be formally approved by the Biden administration. They approved it. Dan,
50:55
Speaker 2: what do you think?
50:56
Speaker 1: Obviously, I don't like it. I think it's weird.
50:59
Speaker 2: Out of my limb.
51:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. I've been trying to figure out why the
51:03
Speaker 1: Biden administration did that. The president made a pledge in
51:06
Speaker 1: the campaign, no more drilling on federal lands. He was,
51:11
Speaker 1: he's been excellent on climate as a president, so much
51:15
Speaker 1: better than I think anyone expected, both in what he's
51:17
Speaker 1: accomplished and doing things like putting Obama's climate advisor in
51:21
Speaker 1: charge of his economic policy and all these things like that.
51:24
Speaker 1: And based on the reporting, what it seems to have
51:28
Speaker 1: been the decision point here was that Conoco has had
51:32
Speaker 1: this lease for 20 years and that they were going
51:35
Speaker 1: to lose the case if they went to court. Not
51:37
Speaker 1: only would they lose, it would cost upwards of $ 5
51:40
Speaker 1: billion if they lost because it's not just that they
51:46
Speaker 1: would force them to do it, but that the courts
51:49
Speaker 1: would force the US government to give ConocoPhillips all of
51:55
Speaker 1: what the expected profits from said lease would be. So
51:58
Speaker 1: they made a decision. I don't know about the law
52:02
Speaker 1: to know whether this was the only decision, the right decision,
52:04
Speaker 1: but they made a decision to essentially negotiate into a
52:08
Speaker 1: more narrow project than would have been approved otherwise. So
52:11
Speaker 1: instead of five sites, it's three sites. They're walling off
52:14
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of the land around it to make
52:16
Speaker 1: sure that stuff is never used for drilling. It is
52:19
Speaker 1: a deeply unfortunate choice. I don't know that, you know,
52:25
Speaker 1: some of the points suggest they didn't really have a choice.
52:27
Speaker 1: Other people say otherwise. The one thing I do think
52:31
Speaker 1: President Biden and his team deserve the benefit of the doubt?
52:34
Speaker 1: And is there all these people saying, he's doing this
52:36
Speaker 1: to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters concerned about gas prices? I
52:40
Speaker 1: don't think that's the case. That's not how these things work.
52:42
Speaker 1: I think this was a substantive policy decision made by
52:46
Speaker 1: people who work in policy and government, not the president's
52:48
Speaker 1: reelection campaign or anything like that. I think they were
52:50
Speaker 1: forced with, as is often the case when you're the president,
52:53
Speaker 1: a series of shitty options, and they chose this one.
52:56
Speaker 1: I wish this wasn't the one they chose. I wish
52:57
Speaker 1: they had better options, but this is how we got here.
53:00
Speaker 2: No, this is the most important thing for me, too,
53:02
Speaker 2: is that there's a lot of understandable cynicism out there
53:06
Speaker 2: about politics and government, not just Republicans, but Democratic politicians
53:09
Speaker 2: as well. And partly it's because the press covers every
53:12
Speaker 2: decision as the politics first. And obviously, politics factors into
53:17
Speaker 2: just almost every decision you make. Politics in terms of like,
53:20
Speaker 2: what do most people in the country want? What will
53:22
Speaker 2: they accept? What won't they accept, right? But we have
53:25
Speaker 2: been here a million times before where a bunch of
53:28
Speaker 2: lawyers or policy people or whoever in the administration and
53:33
Speaker 2: the federal government tell you that you can't do something
53:35
Speaker 2: that you really want to do.
53:36
Speaker 1: Or you have to do something you don't want to do, right?
53:40
Speaker 2: Or you have to do something you don't want to do.
53:42
Speaker 2: And I think that it's not just the Biden administration
53:44
Speaker 2: saying that about the law. Like there was the inspector
53:47
Speaker 2: general of the Department of the Interior from the Clinton administration,
53:51
Speaker 2: which was in the 90s, that was the administration that
53:54
Speaker 2: ended up giving them the lease. So the Biden administration
53:57
Speaker 2: did not give any new leases to drill on federal lands.
54:00
Speaker 2: But sometimes you just have to approve the existing leases.
54:02
Speaker 2: ConocoPhillips had that lease since the 90s. And they concluded,
54:07
Speaker 2: based on all the legal advice they got, that they
54:09
Speaker 2: were going to lose in court. And like you said,
54:10
Speaker 2: it was going to cost them money to lose in court.
54:12
Speaker 2: It would cost taxpayers money. Now, could they have said,
54:15
Speaker 2: fuck it, we're going to fight in court anyway. And
54:17
Speaker 2: if it costs us a few billion dollars for the taxpayers,
54:21
Speaker 2: so what? At least we tried to fight. Yeah, they
54:23
Speaker 2: could have made that decision. We are now seeing what
54:26
Speaker 2: has happened in the courts every time the Biden administration
54:29
Speaker 2: tries to take an executive action. Many times the courts
54:32
Speaker 2: and particularly the Supreme Court seem hostile to what they're
54:35
Speaker 2: trying to do. We're dealing with that with student debt
54:37
Speaker 2: right now. So it sucks. It is notable that they
54:40
Speaker 2: were and we should not pretend, I think, that like
54:43
Speaker 2: the Willow Project is it's not going to be it's fine.
54:46
Speaker 2: It's horrible. It's bad to spew a bunch of carbon
54:50
Speaker 2: into the air at a time when we can least
54:51
Speaker 2: afford it. We should be doing everything we can to
54:53
Speaker 2: take our carbon out of the air. It sucks. They
54:56
Speaker 2: were able to reduce the size of the project by
54:58
Speaker 2: like 70,000 acres. And so now the calculations are that like,
55:01
Speaker 2: you know, the project represents like 0.009% of the total
55:07
Speaker 2: emissions reductions we will get from the Inflation Reduction Act.
55:10
Speaker 2: So relatively speaking, to the scale of what they were
55:13
Speaker 2: able to achieve with that climate legislation, it's small. Still shitty,
55:17
Speaker 2: but it's small. And then, of course, the next step is,
55:20
Speaker 2: I think because they were forced into this decision, the
55:22
Speaker 2: Biden administration also took a step this week to basically
55:26
Speaker 2: close off the entire Arctic Ocean for any new oil
55:30
Speaker 2: and gas development, a step which really pissed off the
55:33
Speaker 2: oil and gas companies. So everyone got mad at them
55:37
Speaker 2: on this, but I think we didn't realize how annoyed
55:40
Speaker 2: the oil companies are for the fact that he used
55:42
Speaker 2: this occasion to then close off the rest of the
55:44
Speaker 2: Arctic for new drilling. So I just, again, one of
55:47
Speaker 2: those two really bad decisions and you had to pick
55:50
Speaker 2: the least bad one. All right, next question. What tips
55:53
Speaker 2: would you give the Biden team for next month's anticipated
55:56
Speaker 2: 2024 campaign announcement address?
55:59
Speaker 1: You're the speechwriter. Let's hear what you got.
56:01
Speaker 2: Big crowd, lots of energy. Number one, I know this
56:05
Speaker 2: is just, please put them in front of some screaming,
56:08
Speaker 2: yelling people who are all fired up and have been
56:11
Speaker 2: for a while. Just no small crowds, no jury crowds,
56:15
Speaker 2: definitely not anywhere near the wet. Get them out on
56:17
Speaker 2: the road. Big crowd. Short, keep it short. The theme.
56:21
Speaker 2: The theme, I would do a choice between Republican extremism
56:26
Speaker 2: and Biden willing to work with anyone to focus on
56:30
Speaker 2: actually improving people's lives and focus on the issues that
56:33
Speaker 2: they care about. I would do basically a shortened version
56:36
Speaker 2: of the economic section of the State of the Union.
56:39
Speaker 2: And then I would include a section that highlights the
56:42
Speaker 2: Republican extremism and anti-freedom agenda on abortion, gay rights, trans rights,
56:47
Speaker 2: civil rights, and sort of wrap it up with a big,
56:52
Speaker 2: you know, ending about democracy and preserving democracy both here
56:56
Speaker 2: and abroad and why that's so important. That's what I
56:58
Speaker 2: would do.
56:59
Speaker 1: That sounds great.
57:01
Speaker 2: That's my speech advice.
57:02
Speaker 1: How much do you remember from the speech you wrote
57:04
Speaker 1: Barack Obama in April of 2011 announcing his re-election campaign?
57:10
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting because I don't remember that speech at all.
57:14
Speaker 2: What I remember is the speech that tried to frame
57:17
Speaker 2: the re-election campaign as which is a speech that he
57:20
Speaker 2: delivered in Osawatomie, Kansas, which was a speech. This was
57:27
Speaker 2: before he knew that Mitt Romney was going to be
57:28
Speaker 2: the nominee, and it was just a crowded Republican field.
57:31
Speaker 2: It was, I think, the fall of 2011. December of 2011,
57:36
Speaker 2: I think. December, yeah, I think you're right. And we
57:38
Speaker 2: went to Kansas, and it was a big crowd, and
57:41
Speaker 2: he tried to frame the election as a choice between
57:45
Speaker 2: He basically said that like protecting the middle class is
57:47
Speaker 2: the defining issue of this election and the future of
57:49
Speaker 2: the middle class and talked about income inequality and economic
57:52
Speaker 2: inequality is the core issue. And are you going to,
57:55
Speaker 2: you know, throw your lot in with what eventually will
57:58
Speaker 2: be Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and a bunch of
58:00
Speaker 2: people who want to deeply cut taxes for the wealthy
58:03
Speaker 2: so they can and then get and then pay for
58:06
Speaker 2: it with cuts to Medicare and Social Security or everything
58:09
Speaker 2: Barack Obama had been trying to do to move the
58:10
Speaker 2: country forward? I remember that speech a lot.
58:12
Speaker 1: Here's what I remember from Obama's announcement speech, re-election announcement speech,
58:16
Speaker 1: was there was a slight screw-up and there were some
58:20
Speaker 1: empty seats in Ohio. Remember, it was at twofer. It
58:23
Speaker 1: was Ohio and then Richmond.
58:26
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
58:27
Speaker 1: And most of the coverage was about how Obama had
58:29
Speaker 1: lost his mojo and couldn't fill a large arena anymore.
58:33
Speaker 2: Wow. Of course, I'm glad you remember that.
58:36
Speaker 1: The words were great, too, I'm sure. All right.
58:41
Speaker 2: Please discuss the Mifepristone case in Texas and its ramifications.
58:44
Speaker 2: I'm very, very concerned. So this is a case where
58:49
Speaker 2: a federal judge appointed by Trump in Texas may ban
58:56
Speaker 2: one of two extremely common and safe abortion drugs that
59:00
Speaker 2: the FDA approved decades ago. Dan, what do you think?
59:06
Speaker 1: Yes, we should be concerned. This is not just a Trump.
59:10
Speaker 4: Judge.
59:10
Speaker 1: This is like the Trump judge. Matthew Kaczmarek, he seeks
59:15
Speaker 1: out these sort of national MAGA issues. There's always this
59:21
Speaker 1: idea that every district court judge is auditioning to be
59:24
Speaker 1: an appeals court judge, and every appeals court judge is
59:26
Speaker 1: auditioning to be a Supreme Court justice. Matthew Kaczmarek is
59:29
Speaker 1: auditioning to be Judge Jeanine Pirro. Like that is his
59:32
Speaker 1: goal here, right? And so he– the legal experts that
59:38
Speaker 1: I read said that the– he is a dangerous entity.
59:41
Speaker 1: We should be worried about him. He raised– there were
59:43
Speaker 1: some real questions in the hearing about the 50-state impact
59:47
Speaker 1: of this because you have I think it is 22
59:49
Speaker 1: state attorney generals with the plaintiffs trying to ban it.
59:54
Speaker 1: But like with all things that are really important– that
59:58
Speaker 1: would eventually head to the Supreme Court. Now we live
1:00:01
Speaker 1: on the razor's edge of an extremely important, long approved,
1:00:05
Speaker 1: very safe drug that is often used to protect the
1:00:09
Speaker 1: health and life of the mother.
1:00:11
Speaker 2: The FDA has approved it. The safety profile is it's
1:00:16
Speaker 2: as safe as Tylenol, something like 99% safe with no
1:00:21
Speaker 2: other complications in this drug. So if he does decide
1:00:25
Speaker 2: to ban it, The DOJ will seek an emergency stay
1:00:28
Speaker 2: from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That's also a
1:00:31
Speaker 2: very conservative court. It could then go right to SCOTUS.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: SCOTUS could then either decide to grant a stay or
1:00:38
Speaker 2: accept the injunction, which, of course, if SCOTUS accepts it,
1:00:42
Speaker 2: then that means that it is temporarily banned before the
1:00:45
Speaker 2: case is heard and the Supreme Court decides. If this happens,
1:00:50
Speaker 2: even if ultimately the Supreme Court decides that they cannot
1:00:55
Speaker 2: ban this drug, it could be months and months and
1:00:58
Speaker 2: months without people having access to it. Now, the other
1:01:02
Speaker 2: option is the FDA. There's a couple of loopholes in
1:01:05
Speaker 2: the law where the FDA could try to bypass this
1:01:09
Speaker 2: and re-approve the drug through the FDA's process. But even
1:01:12
Speaker 2: that could take several months as well. And look, this
1:01:17
Speaker 2: is also like a first test of the Supreme Court's
1:01:20
Speaker 2: reasoning in Dobbs was like, oh, well, this should be
1:01:24
Speaker 2: left up to the states. But this is something where
1:01:26
Speaker 2: this is not leaving it up to the states. If
1:01:28
Speaker 2: he bans it, it's going to be banned nationwide, including
1:01:30
Speaker 2: in states, possibly including states where abortion is still legal.
1:01:35
Speaker 2: So then those states would have to respond. The FDA
1:01:37
Speaker 2: would have to respond, the Biden administration. So it's going
1:01:40
Speaker 2: to be a real mess. And at the very least,
1:01:44
Speaker 2: if the judge bans it, we could be seeing access
1:01:47
Speaker 2: disrupted for several months. All right, Dan, how do you
1:01:50
Speaker 2: think it could affect New Hampshire Republicans to If New
1:01:53
Speaker 2: Hampshire Democrats don't have a meaningful primary to vote in,
1:01:56
Speaker 2: could large number of moderates and liberals vote in the
1:01:59
Speaker 2: Republican primary there instead?
1:02:01
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It could have a real impact. And it has
1:02:03
Speaker 1: in the past where in New Hampshire, undeclared voters can
1:02:08
Speaker 1: vote in the primary. You can actually, people from the
1:02:11
Speaker 1: other party can go in, vote in the other primary
1:02:13
Speaker 1: and just sign up, re-register as undeclared on the way out.
1:02:17
Speaker 1: We saw this in 2008. One of the reasons Barack
1:02:21
Speaker 1: Obama lost to Hillary Clinton was A lot of the
1:02:25
Speaker 1: undeclared people thought that Obama was going to win by
1:02:28
Speaker 1: a lot. People including us and our pollsters thought that.
1:02:32
Speaker 1: Shout out to Joel. I didn't feel like naming him
1:02:36
Speaker 1: was really relevant 15 fucking years. Basically almost 15 years
1:02:41
Speaker 1: to the day. You're just bringing it back up again.
1:02:43
Speaker 2: Joel's one of the best pollsters in the business.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: We'll see if he still feels that way. Because people
1:02:50
Speaker 1: thought that was less competitive, a lot of the independent
1:02:54
Speaker 1: undeclared voters in New Hampshire who would have voted for Obama,
1:02:57
Speaker 1: decided to vote in the Republican primary and pick John McCain.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: And so it's just, there's going to be a lot there.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: You're not going to be splitting the independent vote between
1:03:04
Speaker 1: a Democratic primary and Republican primary. If they want to vote,
1:03:07
Speaker 1: they're going to vote in the Republican primary. And that,
1:03:10
Speaker 1: it's hard to know exactly how that'll impact it because
1:03:13
Speaker 1: independent does not mean moderate. It will change the dynamics.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: And if it was just a pure MAGA primary, which
1:03:19
Speaker 1: would benefit Trump.
1:03:21
Speaker 2: Next question. What's the appropriate response when you see a
1:03:24
Speaker 2: 20-something at the gym watching Ben Shapiro on her phone?
1:03:29
Speaker 2: Not hypothetical. That is the question. All right, so I'm
1:03:32
Speaker 2: going to take this one. You immediately knock the phone
1:03:35
Speaker 2: out of her hand. No, that's not.
1:03:37
Speaker 1: I was going to say call the cops. Call the
1:03:39
Speaker 1: woke police.
1:03:40
Speaker 2: You mock her relentlessly. You tell her she's wrong. No,
1:03:44
Speaker 2: this is what I wanted to take this. I think
1:03:47
Speaker 2: what I would do is instead of mocking the person relentlessly,
1:03:50
Speaker 2: instead of trying to knock the phone out of her hand,
1:03:52
Speaker 2: instead of telling her she's a monster for watching Ben Shapiro,
1:03:55
Speaker 2: all of which may feel good and may be the
1:03:58
Speaker 2: right course of action morally, but would leave that person
1:04:02
Speaker 2: continuing to watch Ben Shapiro and maybe even more ensconced
1:04:07
Speaker 2: in her Ben Shapiro-like bubble. Or you can say, is
1:04:11
Speaker 2: that Ben Shapiro you're watching? I've watched him before. I've
1:04:15
Speaker 2: watched him before. I just feel like sometimes He can
1:04:18
Speaker 2: be very like one-sided. So I've been trying to listen
1:04:21
Speaker 2: to some other points of you on the other side,
1:04:23
Speaker 2: just to sort of get a balance. I've been listening
1:04:24
Speaker 2: to this podcast called Pod Save America. You should try it.
1:04:28
Speaker 2: It's really good because, you know, I've watched Ben too,
1:04:30
Speaker 2: but I would, and then maybe you should check out
1:04:32
Speaker 2: Pod Save America and then maybe we convince her.
1:04:34
Speaker 1: I have a similar approach would be you tell that
1:04:36
Speaker 1: person that there is a anti-drag queen protest happening outside.
1:04:42
Speaker 1: When that person leaves to attend the protest, you then
1:04:44
Speaker 1: take their phone and subscribe to them in Pod Save America.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: The reason I took this question is we have had
1:04:51
Speaker 2: people come up to us and say, Love Pod Save America,
1:04:58
Speaker 2: I listen to you guys, and I listen to Ben Shapiro.
1:05:00
Speaker 2: It has happened. It has happened more than once. This
1:05:03
Speaker 2: is my hobby horse. I say this all the time.
1:05:06
Speaker 2: Voters are weird. They are complicated. They are impossible to predict.
1:05:13
Speaker 2: Not everyone who listens to Ben Shapiro is everything you
1:05:16
Speaker 2: think that they are. And so there are persuadable people
1:05:19
Speaker 2: out there, and we should be trying to persuade them.
1:05:21
Speaker 2: The reason I took this question, there's a couple other
1:05:23
Speaker 2: questions I didn't take. But one of them was, if.
1:05:29
Speaker 1: You're going to do this, aren't you?
1:05:31
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it. If Ron DeSantis is trying
1:05:35
Speaker 2: to commit transgenocide, and Joe Biden is the head of
1:05:39
Speaker 2: the military, shouldn't he use his military power to stop
1:05:43
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis because he is like Hitler? That was one question.
1:05:46
Speaker 2: The other one was, What is the process to get
1:05:49
Speaker 2: rid of a state that we do not like because
1:05:51
Speaker 2: they're too right wing? People, come on. It's just, it's,
1:06:01
Speaker 2: you know what the process is? Going out into the
1:06:04
Speaker 2: country and persuading people that we are correct and then
1:06:08
Speaker 2: having them vote. That is the only way. That is
1:06:11
Speaker 2: the only way. Unless you would like to start a
1:06:13
Speaker 2: civil war, in which case, a lot of people are
1:06:15
Speaker 2: going to get killed in the United States.
1:06:17
Speaker 1: I mean, that escalated quickly.
1:06:18
Speaker 2: Because we are a country that is awash in guns
1:06:22
Speaker 2: and weapons. We've seen the violence happen on January 6th.
1:06:25
Speaker 2: We've seen it in other places. Political violence is a
1:06:27
Speaker 2: real thing. And the right is extreme and they are horrible.
1:06:30
Speaker 2: And the way to convince people is to go out
1:06:34
Speaker 2: and make a case. Might not always work, might never work,
1:06:37
Speaker 2: but it's our best shot.
1:06:38
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to see how you pivot to the
1:06:40
Speaker 1: quote-unquote fun questions.
1:06:42
Speaker 2: So here's a fun question. What shows have you guys
1:06:46
Speaker 2: been watching? And most importantly, how is Dan feeling about
1:06:48
Speaker 2: the Bravo lineup these days? Are you up to date
1:06:51
Speaker 2: on the Scandival? Did I pronounce that correctly?
1:06:54
Speaker 1: I believe you did. Do you have any concept of
1:06:56
Speaker 1: what that is?
1:06:58
Speaker 2: Only because folks here at Crooked have been talking about it.
1:07:02
Speaker 2: I am looking at a chart about Scandival in the
1:07:06
Speaker 2: studio that I think was happening for a social first
1:07:10
Speaker 2: piece of content that took place here last Friday.
1:07:12
Speaker 1: Oh, exciting.
1:07:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I saw it on Instagram, but I
1:07:16
Speaker 2: couldn't really follow it. So anyway, Dan, what do you think?
1:07:19
Speaker 1: I am vaguely up to date on Sandoval. I'm familiar
1:07:23
Speaker 1: with what it is. I know who Tom Sandoval is,
1:07:25
Speaker 1: but I do not watch Vanderpump Rules. I would like
1:07:28
Speaker 1: to watch Vanderpump Rules, but I'm intimidated by the number
1:07:30
Speaker 1: of seasons to date. There's like 10 of them. So
1:07:34
Speaker 1: I've always been in a debate with our producers. Yes,
1:07:38
Speaker 1: last week about whether they have opinions on whether I have,
1:07:41
Speaker 1: whether the question is, can I just jump in right
1:07:43
Speaker 1: now or do I have to go back to the beginning?
1:07:46
Speaker 1: There's a dispute. If people have opinions, let me know.
1:07:49
Speaker 1: I'm curious about it.
1:07:50
Speaker 2: Bravo. Great.
1:07:52
Speaker 1: I have one concern, which is I feel everyone knows
1:07:54
Speaker 1: I love Below Deck. I feel like Below Deck is
1:07:56
Speaker 1: expanding too fast. We got Below Deck, Below Deck Metaradian,
1:08:00
Speaker 1: Below Deck Adventure, Below Deck Sailing Yacht. And the problem
1:08:04
Speaker 1: I've come to is yachting, not a huge industry. There's
1:08:07
Speaker 1: only so many people in yachting who are good on
1:08:09
Speaker 1: reality TV. And now we're spreading those people out over
1:08:11
Speaker 1: like seven different franchises. So that's my concern.
1:08:14
Speaker 2: Uh, what else are you watching? Anything new?
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Um, we are watching, uh, we just finished 1923, the
1:08:22
Speaker 1: Yellowstone spinoff, which is 1923 is better than Yellowstone, but 1883,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: the other Yellowstone spinoff is better than 1923, but they're
1:08:30
Speaker 1: both good. There's a television show with Harrison Ford and
1:08:32
Speaker 1: Helen Mirren.
1:08:33
Speaker 2: Like, Oh, interesting.
1:08:35
Speaker 1: It's great.
1:08:37
Speaker 2: I was going to say, speaking of Harrison Ford, I've
1:08:39
Speaker 2: been watching Shrinking.
1:08:40
Speaker 1: Is it good?
1:08:41
Speaker 2: I love it. Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams, all
1:08:45
Speaker 2: of them are great. And I very much enjoyed it.
1:08:49
Speaker 2: It's on Apple TV.
1:08:50
Speaker 1: Speaking of Apple TV, we're also watching Liaison, which is
1:08:53
Speaker 1: this new... Did you ever watch The Bureau? Did we
1:08:56
Speaker 1: ever convince you to watch The Bureau?
1:08:58
Speaker 2: No, I think I think Tommy has and Ben, everyone has.
1:09:01
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:09:01
Speaker 1: It's, it's the greatest show. It's on the, it's on
1:09:04
Speaker 1: the Mount Rushmore with the wire and breaking bad is
1:09:07
Speaker 1: a great.
1:09:07
Speaker 2: Wow. It's like, wow.
1:09:09
Speaker 1: Liaison is sort of Apple TV's attempt to sort of
1:09:11
Speaker 1: recreate that magic. It's half, half rent, half in French,
1:09:13
Speaker 1: half in English, but pretty good. We're like three episodes
1:09:15
Speaker 1: or four episodes. And it's pretty good.
1:09:17
Speaker 2: And I have a, and we just finished. Last of Us.
1:09:21
Speaker 1: I can't believe you watched Last of Us.
1:09:23
Speaker 2: I can't either. So Emily started watching it by herself
1:09:26
Speaker 2: because I was like zombie movie about some like existential
1:09:32
Speaker 2: post-apocalyptic post-pandemic world. No, thank you. No, thank you. And
1:09:37
Speaker 2: then I would go upstairs to bed and Emily would
1:09:39
Speaker 2: be like crying and saying it's like the most moving
1:09:42
Speaker 2: show and she loves it. And she's like, I'm telling you,
1:09:44
Speaker 2: it's more like a, don't be scared of it. It's
1:09:47
Speaker 2: not that. And so I got into it and I,
1:09:48
Speaker 2: and I, very, very much enjoyed it.
1:09:51
Speaker 1: When I watched the first episode, Hallie would not watch it.
1:09:53
Speaker 1: She does not do pandemic, dystopian, zombie stuff. That very
1:09:58
Speaker 1: first scene where they basically do the old new show
1:10:01
Speaker 1: that explains what will become the pandemic that will lead
1:10:04
Speaker 1: to the zombie apocalypse, I thought there was no... You
1:10:08
Speaker 1: would be out on that, was my thought. There was
1:10:10
Speaker 1: no way John is going to watch a show like that.
1:10:11
Speaker 1: But it's great. I wish it was longer. I feel
1:10:14
Speaker 1: like they, because it was nine episodes, they basically went
1:10:18
Speaker 1: from where they start, I'm not going to spoil where
1:10:20
Speaker 1: they started to where they ended way too fast. Like
1:10:22
Speaker 1: it was, it was great. And it was, it, you're right.
1:10:24
Speaker 1: It is not a zombie show. And I appreciate in
1:10:27
Speaker 1: this like weird kind of fucked up Hollywood moment. We're
1:10:29
Speaker 1: in when people take like genre stuff that will get
1:10:33
Speaker 1: made and get funded and then jam a whole bunch
1:10:35
Speaker 1: of other stuff into it. And they're like a really
1:10:37
Speaker 1: smart way.
1:10:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:10:39
Speaker 2: We got a question, uh, predictions on the succession finale.
1:10:43
Speaker 1: What do you, what do you got?
1:10:44
Speaker 2: Let's see. I think, I think Logan's got to die.
1:10:47
Speaker 2: That's the whole point of the show. It's called Succession.
1:10:52
Speaker 2: I feel like Kendall is not going to end up
1:10:56
Speaker 2: so well. Either he's going to be arrested or maybe
1:10:59
Speaker 2: he dies too, but I could see him being arrested.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think Kendall comes out on top.
1:11:04
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out who ends up taking over.
1:11:07
Speaker 2: Is it going to be a Game of Thrones-like ending? Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.
1:11:13
Speaker 2: Careful if you haven't watched Game of Thrones. Is it
1:11:14
Speaker 2: going to be like, Greg takes over is like Connor.
1:11:17
Speaker 2: I could see Connor Roy. I could see Connor being
1:11:19
Speaker 2: the one.
1:11:20
Speaker 1: I think Greg, I think Greg is where it ends up.
1:11:21
Speaker 1: I think that would be in line with the game
1:11:24
Speaker 1: of Thrones ending, which we will not discuss.
1:11:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:11:27
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:11:27
Speaker 1: Cousin Greg. Why not? I don't think it will be.
1:11:30
Speaker 2: I'm so excited for it. I'm so excited. Yeah. All right.
1:11:33
Speaker 2: Last question. Recent proud parent moments for each of us.
1:11:37
Speaker 1: Well, I have two because I have two children. The
1:11:40
Speaker 1: first one is Jack has decided to potty train himself.
1:11:44
Speaker 2: What?
1:11:45
Speaker 1: We have a.
1:11:46
Speaker 2: God, your kids are really smart.
1:11:47
Speaker 1: We have a trip coming up and we... I guess
1:11:52
Speaker 1: I can say this. We have a trip coming up.
1:11:54
Speaker 1: And so we want to wait till after that trip.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: But he's decided he's not going to wait. And so
1:12:01
Speaker 1: yesterday he just took his diaper off and just went
1:12:03
Speaker 1: poop in the potty.
1:12:04
Speaker 2: Man, that's so cool.
1:12:06
Speaker 1: He's sort of a toilet savant.
1:12:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:12:08
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to be a real pain in
1:12:09
Speaker 1: the ass when we actually do it. But he is.
1:12:13
Speaker 2: Charlie had to go the other day and Emily said,
1:12:15
Speaker 2: do you want to use the potty? And he said,
1:12:18
Speaker 2: potty's for big boys and I'm close, but I'm not
1:12:20
Speaker 2: quite there yet. I'm not quite there yet. That's what
1:12:22
Speaker 2: he said. So our old boss, Barack Obama, was in
1:12:26
Speaker 2: town and had met Charlie. And so we went to
1:12:29
Speaker 2: go introduce Charlie to Barack Obama. And it was getting
1:12:33
Speaker 2: close to bedtime. It was a little late. And Charlie
1:12:36
Speaker 2: had to wait around a bit because Obama was in
1:12:38
Speaker 2: another meeting. And I was like, how's this going to go?
1:12:41
Speaker 2: He's getting a little antsy. We got a two and
1:12:43
Speaker 2: a half year old here. He's got this like little
1:12:45
Speaker 2: bag of marshmallows that he's eating as a snack. Barack
1:12:48
Speaker 2: Obama walks out and Charlie runs up to him and says, hi,
1:12:51
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, would you like a marshmallow? Gives him the marshmallow.
1:12:56
Speaker 2: Gives our old friend Mike Brush, who was with him,
1:12:59
Speaker 2: a marshmallow. Gives all the Secret Service guys marshmallows. And
1:13:02
Speaker 2: then sits down and says, my name is Charlie. I'm
1:13:04
Speaker 2: two and a half and my dog's name is Leo.
1:13:07
Speaker 2: And then pulls out a book. from Emily's purse that
1:13:10
Speaker 2: is a book about the Obamas, a kid's book about
1:13:12
Speaker 2: the Obamas to show Barack Obama.
1:13:14
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
1:13:15
Speaker 2: The president just looks at me and he's like, man,
1:13:17
Speaker 2: he's sharing. Good job, guy. What is this? What is this?
1:13:22
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, that's Charlie.
1:13:24
Speaker 1: How did Obama look at the marshmallow? Has he never
1:13:26
Speaker 1: seen something like that before?
1:13:28
Speaker 2: He looked at it and immediately turned to one of
1:13:31
Speaker 2: his aides and gave him the marshmallow and made a face.
1:13:34
Speaker 1: He's like, I am not seeking voters anymore. I'm not
1:13:38
Speaker 1: going to eat unhealthy stuff for the cameras.
1:13:40
Speaker 2: He could not even pretend he liked the marshmallow, which
1:13:43
Speaker 2: is when I knew that Obama has not changed at all.
1:13:45
Speaker 1: I was going to say I have to do my
1:13:47
Speaker 1: other one because I have two children.
1:13:49
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. I forgot Kyle.
1:13:50
Speaker 1: That's right.
1:13:53
Speaker 2: When we– Kyle was like– Kyle did algebra.
1:13:58
Speaker 1: Actually, yes. Last year, last fall, did the same thing.
1:14:04
Speaker 1: Obama was in town. We took our kids to meet him.
1:14:06
Speaker 1: We were very excited for that. And the– Obama's produced
1:14:11
Speaker 1: the television show Ada Twist Scientist on Netflix, which is
1:14:15
Speaker 1: an amazing– Kids show, it's great. There are all these books.
1:14:19
Speaker 1: Kyla reads all the books, loves the books. And she,
1:14:24
Speaker 1: despite my kids being entirely wild and we were desperately
1:14:27
Speaker 1: afraid they were going to destroy the president's hotel room,
1:14:31
Speaker 1: just because Jack was one and a half at the
1:14:33
Speaker 1: time and a lunatic. But when they were finally, Kyla
1:14:38
Speaker 1: sat down at a table with Obama and she started
1:14:41
Speaker 1: talking to him about Ada Twist scientists. And there's this
1:14:43
Speaker 1: one episode about the Golden Gate Bridge. And she's convinced
1:14:47
Speaker 1: they made the Golden Gate Bridge wrong because it's part
1:14:51
Speaker 1: of the episode of the show is an incorrectly made
1:14:53
Speaker 1: suspension bridge. And so she like walked him through it
1:14:56
Speaker 1: and he was like, what? And then we had to leave.
1:15:00
Speaker 1: And then Obama encouraged us because we were in San
1:15:02
Speaker 1: Francisco to go see the Golden Gate Bridge afterwards so
1:15:06
Speaker 1: that she could analyze it. And we did.
1:15:08
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, look, I think you'll realize that you're
1:15:12
Speaker 2: in the wrong here.
1:15:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:15:17
Speaker 2: Anyway, thank you again to Karen Bass for joining us today.
1:15:21
Speaker 2: Everyone have a great weekend and we will see you
1:15:23
Speaker 2: next week.
1:15:23
Speaker 1: Bye everyone.
1:15:28
Speaker 2: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
1:15:31
Speaker 2: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
1:15:35
Speaker 2: Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
1:15:38
Speaker 2: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
1:15:41
Speaker 2: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
1:15:44
Speaker 2: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
1:15:48
Speaker 2: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
1:15:51
Speaker 2: and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
1:15:55
Speaker 2: slash podsaveamerica.