Latest / Pod Save America / Trump's Secret Plan for a 3rd Term

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Trump's Secret Plan for a 3rd Term · Pod Save America

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• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Detour.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we'll talk about Donald Trump's latest musings
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: about doing away with the Constitution to become president for life,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: why he's already calling next week's elections rigged, and what
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the resistance looks like right now as AOC and Bernie
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: rally with Zoran Mamdani with a week to go before
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the 2025 elections. We'll also get to the latest on
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the shutdown and the various scary deadlines the White House
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: is hoping will force Democrats to cave. Then Lovett talks
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: with Democratic elections attorney and Democracy Docket founder Mark Elias
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: about the third term chatter from Trump and the biggest
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: threats to this year's elections and the midterms. So let's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: start there. Steve Bannon, our good friend, kicked up the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Trump 2028 lunacy in a recent interview with The Economist
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: where he said that, quote, there's a plan for Trump
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: to serve a third term. Specifically, quote, Trump is going
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to be president in 28 and people ought to just
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: get accommodated with that. because Trump is, quote, an instrument
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of divine will, end quote.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Like how you don't like sushi when you first try it,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Trump got asked about that on Air Force One on
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Monday morning as he traveled to Japan, as he spoke
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to reporters with Marco Rubio at his side. Let's take
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a listen.
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  Speaker 5: I would love to do it. I have the best
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: numbers ever. It's very terrifying. Well, we have great people.
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: We have J.D., obviously. The vice president is great. I
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: think Marco's great.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I think.
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  Speaker 5: I'm not sure if anybody would run against us.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I think if they ever formed a group, it would be.
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: Unstoppable. I really do. I believe them. They have Jasmine Crockett,
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: a low IQ person. They have AOC's low IQ. You
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: give her an IQ test, have her pass, like, the
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: exams that I decided to take. The first couple of
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 5: They couldn't come close to answering any of those questions.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: They cut the part where he goes, Marco, die Coke. Marco,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: die Coke.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: If you're watching this, Marco is going between, like, he's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: sort of smiling, then he's looking down, then he's looking
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a little like, what is happening?
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I just want to invade Venezuela. Boston making fun of me.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: AOC did tweet this clip out by saying, hi, Mr. President.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Did they have you draw a clock? So we'll get
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: to AOC in a minute. We'll leave the legal analysis
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: to Mark Elias.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And love it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And love it, of course. They did take an LSAT champion. Right.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I do want to start with a question about how
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you guys think all of us democracy lovers should be
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: handling the fact that Trump and MAGA World just keep
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: talking about a third term. There is a will he
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: or won't he debate with no definitive answer for now.
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  Speaker 1: But what are we supposed to do with the information
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  Speaker 1: that Trump might try to serve a third term or
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: at least keeps telling us that he might?
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  Speaker 3: So I talked about this with Mark Elias and I
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: talked about the legal questions, which I think are really
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: worth listening to, but also this sort of question for us,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: which is like, how do we take it seriously without
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: lending it more credibility than it deserves? And I think
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: to answer your question, will he do it? Will he try? Yes.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Will he succeed? No, right? Like we have to be
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: unequivocal in saying that Donald Trump will not be the
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  Speaker 3: president of the United States until in January of 2029.
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  Speaker 3: That is not possible. That is not in the cards.
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  Speaker 3: He may try, he may think he should be, but
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  Speaker 3: he won't be. And as Mark points out, as a
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  Speaker 3: lot of people have pointed out, there's no secret part
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: of the constitution we're not aware of with that as
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: a king mode in it, right? Like there's no, there's
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  Speaker 3: no like information that Steve Bannon is sitting on that
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  Speaker 3: were we to learn it would terrify us to our
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  Speaker 3: very core. Like we shouldn't imbue them with more power
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  Speaker 3: or like kind of magic sense of the American spirit
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  Speaker 3: than they actually have. So like we have to like
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  Speaker 3: treat it really seriously. He is going to try, but
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  Speaker 3: we have to not act as if he's already succeeding
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  Speaker 3: by being so afraid and terrified that he'll succeed.
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  Speaker 2: It's a bit of a conundrum because I think they're
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: trying to troll us.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: But also it's something that Bannon and Trump would seriously
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: like to do. And so I struggle with that. I mean,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: I think Bannon's whole life is about trolling and the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: White House is full of trolls who do things like
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: put Trump 2028 hats on the Oval Office desk when
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are in there. You see
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: that little anecdote?
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  Speaker 1: And then just tweet out pictures of it, whether the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: pictures are AI or not. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And like that's it. Like also Trump, we know on
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: January 6th, we all remember that. And he said he
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: wants to stay in charge. Also building a $ 300 million ballroom.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily the behavior of someone who's ready to leave.
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  Speaker 3: Not a renter's move.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Not a renter's move. But I agree with you, Levitt.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I do think like, okay, so what do
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  Speaker 2: you do with that information? You do the same thing
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  Speaker 2: you would otherwise do. We win the midterms. We drive
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  Speaker 2: down as favorables. We fight all the things we're going
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  Speaker 2: to fight. And we also remember, like you just said,
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  Speaker 2: it's not popular. There's some polling on this back in August.
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  Speaker 2: Democrats are more likely than Republicans to think Trump will
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  Speaker 2: run again because we like to catastrophize. But it's not
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  Speaker 2: popular broadly. I mean, 91 percent of Democrats, 77 percent
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  Speaker 2: of independents said that Trump should not try to run again.
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  Speaker 2: When asked what.
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  Speaker 1: Those nine percent of Democrats know what they're doing, they
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: think he'll lose. Do you have a Republican number there?
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: There was a question about whether presidents should only be
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: able to serve two terms. 52% of Republicans agreed. So
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  Speaker 2: it's an uphill battle for Mr. Trump to win a
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  Speaker 2: third term. Not saying he can't do it.
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  Speaker 1: I honestly, I think we cannot predict even whether he'll
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  Speaker 1: try or not. And we can't predict whether it'll work
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  Speaker 1: or not because like, who knows what might happen? We,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we couldn't have predicted anything in the last
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: 10 years, but I actually just don't think you have
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to predict either or even wonder about either. I think
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the three choices are you either ignore it, you say
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  Speaker 1: that we shouldn't tear up the Constitution to install Donald
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  Speaker 1: Trump as a dictator.
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  Speaker 2: I like that choice.
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  Speaker 1: You know, maybe we just campaign against it, start moving
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  Speaker 1: public opinion against it, sort of get those numbers up
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  Speaker 1: that Tommy was talking about. Or we trolled them right
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  Speaker 1: back by saying, Obama, we'll see him on the campaign trail.
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  Speaker 1: We'll see him right there. Like, we just... I mean,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: if you want to read tea leaves about, cause like
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you'd say, okay, the Supreme court's never going to allow that,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: which I think there's good evidence for, uh, Amy, Amy
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  Speaker 1: Coney Barrett on her book tour was asked about it twice.
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  Speaker 1: The first time she was like, well, yeah, that's what
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: the 22nd amendment says. And then people still didn't worry.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Like she wasn't cutting dry or whatever else. And then
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: she was asked again on by Nora O'Donnell in her book.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: She writes, uh, that the constitution quote leaves no room
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  Speaker 1: for second guessing when it comes to term limits. So
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: she was, and then she was like, Yes, that's what
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  Speaker 1: I said. That's what I wrote in the book. So
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: she's pretty clear. You can imagine that Roberts is in
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the same place as her because she, you know, and
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: so it's like, but if, you know, could he defy
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court? Could he take over the, who the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: fuck knows?
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, but that's why it's like, do I
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: think that like my saying, Donald Trump will not be
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: president in 2029, might there be egg on my face?
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: What a bad day that will be when I feel
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: like I'm embarrassed by this moment. Like we should be,
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: I think, definitive in part because Either this will continue
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: to be America or it won't be. And if Donald
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Trump is president after his term, this isn't America anymore.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: It's a completely different place. And I don't understand that place.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: And that's where I'll live. And I'll come to learn
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But I like that. See, that to me is like
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the most honest answer.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: But I believe this is still America. And so I
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: believe it will not happen. I don't know what the
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: path is that I don't know how hard Donald Trump
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: will try. I don't know what other Republicans will do.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: But the part of the reason I think you need
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: to say that is like, well, why is Donald Trump
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: doing that? I think it's partly because he wants to.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Part it's because he's trolling us. Partly because he doesn't
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: want to be a lame duck. And he doesn't want
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: to be a guy that has less power than he does.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: But I think it tells us something not just about him.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: It tells us something about the Republicans all around him.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump doesn't want to be a lame duck because
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: so much of his power comes from the fact that
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: he is terrifying to people who criticize him, to his
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: fellow Republicans who don't want to get on his bad side,
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: and because so much of his power has been people
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: afraid to defy him in advance and giving him powers
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: he doesn't have. Look at all these pathetic Republicans around him.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Marco Rubio, claims to be a great defender of democracy,
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: standing there while Donald Trump is promising some kind of, like, dictatorship,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: whether by going around the Constitution or by putting his
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: hands through Marco's sleeves and operating the buttons, like, through
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: his coat jacket. And he's just fucking standing there. These
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Republicans are embarrassing. They're afraid to stand up to him.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: And they're afraid of what the world looks like when
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is gone because all they do now is
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: focus on his needs and his interests. They have no vision,
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: no platform, no idea what they stand for once he's gone.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, it's also going to be... We're going
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: to find out soon enough because... A year from now,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: once the midterms are over, J.D., Marco, they're all going
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: to have to make a decision and start running. That'll
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: be really.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Fun to watch.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: He's just like paralyzing them. They're scared to go to Iowa.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: They're just going to fly over Iowa.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Can we lay over in Des Moines? But it's like
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: it's going to have to happen at some point. I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: do think that the lame duck thing is the most
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: benign explanation for why Trump might continue to say this.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Like say he's not going to try. Right. Then the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: reason he's doing this is to avoid appearing like a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: lame duck. It's the reason why. People who seem like
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: they have no chance of running for president at all
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: or might not run for president continue to let people
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: think that they might run for president so that their
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: interviews get a little more attention. Same kind of idea.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Of course, Trump doesn't have to wait till 2028 to
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: screw with our elections. We got a few before then
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: that he could really fuck up.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Exciting.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Including the 2025 elections. One week from today, Trump is
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: already trying to frame an expected loss on Prop 50
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: here in California. That's the redistricting ballot initiative as illegitimate.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: On Sunday afternoon, he wrote a post about how the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: stealing of the 2020 election was a much bigger deal
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: than the NBA betting scandal. And he urged the Justice Department,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: which now takes orders directly from Trump, to keep investigating 2020.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: If not, he wrote, quote, it will happen again, including
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the upcoming midterms, no mail-in or early voting, yes to
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: voter ID. Watch how totally dishonest the California prop vote is.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Millions of ballots being shipped online. Get smart, Republicans, before
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: it is too late. This came just days after DOJ
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: announced that it would deploy election monitors to polling places
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in California and New Jersey next week. Lovett, I know
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: you talked to Mark about this, but how common or
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: uncommon is this? And what specifically should we be worried about?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Just a couple DOJ officials just watching the ballot box?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: So I talked to Mark about this, and I think
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: the The way in which this is most concerning is
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: this is a pretext for 2026. That is the fear.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump will not be able to undo the results
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: of Prop 50. He can make trouble in one county
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: in New Jersey. And as Mark points out, he's not
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: doing this in Virginia where there's another statewide election because
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: there's a Republican governor. So this is a lot about
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: pretext for what they will say after and what they
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: will try to do in future elections. I also just
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: want to say, I voted in Prop 50 over the weekend.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: I dropped my ballot off at- Thank.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: You for your vote. Yeah.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Who'd you vote for?
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: I voted yes for putting a knife in that fucking
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: independent commission.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: You're an Arnold guy.
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: Opposite.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: But I went to the Presbyterian church in Koreatown to
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: drop off my ballot.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Did you light on fire when you walked in?
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Take a whammo?
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: I was like, this is all fake. You sweet, you
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: sweet Korean neighbors. You're all part of some kind of
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: a scheme.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Why didn't you mail it back?
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: I always like dropping it off.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I like the feeling of dropping it off, handing it in,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: seeing it go in the box.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels good.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: And Ari wanted to vote in person, so we did
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: it together. Each voted twice, as is our way. That's
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: what we get away with. It's pretty quiet.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: We'd be disappointed otherwise.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: But, you know, you're in this. It was the first
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: day of early voting, or early and early voting, and
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: they were so sweet and careful about the rules and
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: wanting everybody. And it's such a wholesome and democratic thing.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: experience and it just stands in such contrast to this
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: thing that could only be persuasive to you if you've,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know, no contact with the actual world and
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: the actual people running elections in California.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: But all that aside, like... Has.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Chavez made any updates to the Dominion voting machines?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: No, I called him. He said he's still dead.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: It was, yeah, there was a little shrine to him,
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: which was interesting. People lighting little candles. It's very sort
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: of multicultural in a sense. But I'll It was just like,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: it was a reminder to you that it's all such
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: fucking bullshit. But like to the Mark Elias point about
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: it is, yeah, there's part of the Voting Rights Act
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: has election monitors as part of it. What matters is
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: that this DOJ is not run by any of those
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: previous attorneys general. This is Donald Trump's Department of Justice.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: And this is a illegitimate use of election monitoring as
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: a pretext for calling elections false and using it to
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: ramp up to something bigger and more dangerous in 2026,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: which Mark talks about in their conversation.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I love how you said millions of ballots being shipped.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: You mean mailed to us because we get our ballots
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: mailed to us in California?
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Also, it's not the most important thing, but the NBA
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: betting scandal part of that Truth Social post is very
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: funny to me because, first of all, cosplay Cash Patel
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: clearly thought this was a huge deal, and he went
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: to the press conference in New York and wore his
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: little special FBI whistleblower windbreaker thing or whatever because he
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: wanted credit. And also, it's not just like an NBA story.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: It's about the mob, like the five families, La Cosa Nostra,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Rigging card games, the way sports gambling is impacting billion-dollar industries.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: It's a huge deal, but Trump had to diminish his
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: own DOJ and make it about himself, which is kind
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: of funny.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Well, he had to go back to his core message.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: He's like, I'm just going to use the NBA thing
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: as a way in to get to my core message.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: He's going to.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Pokemon Go to the insurrection.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: There's a way to do it where he's like, hey,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: great job, DOJ, busting this thing. You know what else
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: is important?
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: This.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I hope you'll approach it with the same vigor. No,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: he's just a dick about it. But also, I mean, look,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the monitoring by DOJ of our elections is obviously bad.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: It will happen in just Democratic districts and places where
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: people of color live. And especially in California, it's like
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: some of the most heavily Latino parts of the state.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: In Jersey, it's like one county, I think, with a
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: lot of immigrants. There is a concern that they'll just
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: collect information that Trump will then feed into his disinformation
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: propaganda machine. But also, it's just very dumb because in California,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: I think the– 2021 special recall election was 91% vote
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: by mail. The last cycle was, I think, 80% mail-in ballots.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: So you're not monitoring that much of the election, sir.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: You know, most of us are voting from home, unless
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: you're sending DOJ people to all of our houses to
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: watch us fill out the ballot.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Or just like hanging out at the post office. Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Also, you know, DOJ is not sending people to Virginia
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: because Democrats are going to win big. And also because
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: there's a Republican governor, so.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: We haven't talked much about Mike Johnson's refusal to swear
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in a Democrat, Adelita Grijalva, for a House seat that
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: she won over a month ago now. But Tommy, you
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and I were talking the other day about how this
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: could be a sign of things to come for the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: 2026 midterms. Do you want to expand on your concern there?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think that was me.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Wasn't that not you?
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be a funny answer?
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Confusing with Dan again?
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: That was Dan. No, we were talking about this. In
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: part because I was talking to our very... Our radicalized
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: redistricting friend, Brian Tyler Cohen, has been very focused on
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: this as well. We should just say, what is driving
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: his refusal to seat Grijalva is because she would be
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: the 218th member to sign a discharge petition that would
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: force the release of the Epstein files. So this is
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: all part of a giant cover-up of one of the
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: most disgusting sexual predators in modern American history. Just worth noting.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: It's the cover-up that keeps on happening.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm not a lawyer or an expert in this.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I should have run into your interview and screamed at
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: the mic at Elias. But The way it's been explained
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: to me is like the Constitution is not self-executing. There's
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: not like a clear statute that says when a member
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: of Congress needs to be sworn in. Often there's language
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: like new members shall be sworn in by X date
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: from the election, but that's not the case here. So
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: I'm told it's not unconstitutional not to swear and it's
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: just a huge breach of norms and so much of
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: our democracy is propped up on norms which are being
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: shredded in the Trump era. And I think there's a
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: lot of concern that the Arizona AG has a lawsuit
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: trying to force Johnson to seat her And if that fails,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: that could create legal precedent that seems to bolster his argument.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And a lot of experts seem to think he is
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: almost certain to lose because you're basically asking the courts
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: to adjudicate or dictate how the speaker runs the House
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of Representatives, including elections. And SCOTUS in the past has
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: found that Congress is the ultimate authority on how to
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: handle those elections, as we learned in 2021, 2020. So,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's concerning that you can imagine
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: a scenario going forward where there's closely contested midterm elections
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: in 2026, and Johnson is like, oh, we're just not
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: going to seat all those ones the Dems won. Because,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: by the way, he just seated two members who won
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: special elections in Florida within like 24 hours after their election,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: even though they were not in session.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I worry about this a lot ever since I
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: read Steve Posner, the professor, wrote in The Bulwark like
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a month or two ago, this piece about what Johnson
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: might do in the midterms. So in the Constitution, it
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: says each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and qualifications of its own members. And what that means is, say,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: you have an election that's decided by a couple votes,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: 20 votes, 100 votes, whatever. There's a recount. State certifies
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: it for either the Republican or the Democrat. But then
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you go to Congress and say, I don't trust the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: state certification, and we need another investigation of the election.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So the house... rules committee or some committee in the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: House then can do their own investigation. And then the House,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: without any judicial review, can make the final vote on
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: who to seat. And since the first session of Congress
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in 1700s, 128 races have been overturned out of 35,000.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't happen often. but it has happened before
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: where the house decides to seat someone.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: So I didn't get into it in too much depth
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: because I was really, there's a lot of, there's a
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: lot of dark democratic news and we were trying to
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: get to the places where we have some, some levers
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: and this is to come. Uh, but what Elias was
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: talking about with me, which worth listening to is that
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of shenanigans Johnson can get up to
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: in the lame duck who the clerk is actually matters.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: Like there's like details that will matter because you're thinking
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: about this, uh, with, uh, norms, not laws. But on
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: the other hand, come 2027, Mike Johnson isn't the Speaker
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: of the House. He's not, he may have sort of
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: more power ostensibly than other members, but the clerk will
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: call the roll, you know? So there's like, that doesn't
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: mean they can't get up to a lot of dangerous
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: and nasty shenanigans, but it's just, in part, we just
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: don't know because we've never been in that situation.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I keep thinking about that slogan from 2024. It turned
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: out to be Trump's best slogan. Too big to rig
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: for all this stuff. It's going to be too big
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to rig. Because, you know, You would, you have democratic seats.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: They're winning by one, 2%. You're like, okay, well, that's it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: That's going to be hard. I mean, they'll, he can
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: still try to do it, but that's gonna be much harder.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of public opinion, you know? Yes.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: I also do think that like, I don't put anything
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: past Republicans, uh, uh, these days, but, uh, Republicans want
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: to be seated in a democratic house in the future.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: There are some like sort of natural system kind of
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: defenses that are built in Republicans, not wanting to gerrymander
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: themselves into tough races. every couple of years.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Like there are natural- Caucus isn't 100% crazy just yet.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: And, you know, that again, another reason why- I don't
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: see a lot of long-term thinking these days. I don't know.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Well, right.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of confidence in that one.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Not in all of them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: Not in all of them.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: You don't need to be all of them. You just
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: need food.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You'd have to get almost every single Republican to make
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this work. Last election, Trump tried to overturn the 2020
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: presidential that he lost. Still a big focus for him
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and his government. On Friday, Trump added a few names
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: to his list of people he wants his Justice Department
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: to prosecute. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith, former Attorney General
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland, former FBI Director Chris Wray, and former Deputy
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: AG Lisa Monaco, Trump seemed to accuse them of signing
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: off on the collection of Republican lawmakers' phone information in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: 2023 as part of the inquiry into Trump's efforts to
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: overturn the 2020 election, which he also accused them of rigging,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: even though he was president and none of them except
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: for Wray were in government at the time. The Post concluded,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: these radical left lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and highly unethical behavior. So in the Post, Trump referred
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: to Operation Arctic Frost. Anyone want to explain what that
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: is and why Republicans are trying to make it famous? Tommy,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you want to do Arctic Frost? Sure.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: What they're really mad about, so this is the FBI
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: effort to look into the false elector scheme and Trump's
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: efforts to steal the 2020 election. The FBI sought what
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: is called tolling data. for the cell phones of eight
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: or nine lawmakers from January 4th until 7th, 2021. And
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: what that tells you is who these people called, when
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: they called them, the duration of the call and the
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: location of the call, not the contents of the call.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Like Josh Hawley was saying, I was wiretapped. That's not
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: what happened here.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Which is basically what Trump was saying in his post too.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: They were recorded.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: And look, like that tolling information, um, it's incredibly invasive.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: You can learn a lot about a person by who
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: they called when and how long, et cetera. But I mean,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: it isn't a wiretap just for being technical. And so,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: you know, this was just sort of looking into who
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: he may have been scheming with to try to overturn
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the results of elections. It seems like the kind of
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: thing you would want to look into in the course
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: of this kind of investigation. But now we're going to
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: arrest Merrick Garland, I guess, seems like the thing.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: By the way, like, you know, we have, you know,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: senators like Ron Johnson kind of with envelopes full of
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: fake electors in their pockets. These guys are acting as
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: if the idea that they would ever be part of
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: a scheme to overturn the election is so ridiculous and
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: ludicrous that it defies imagination. It's a fucking disgrace. Meanwhile,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Josh Hawley put his fucking fist up in the air.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: A bunch of Republicans tried to overturn the election. It's
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: completely reasonable to look into what their actual involvement was
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: in this scheme. Because they need to pretend as though
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: the insurrection either didn't happen or was some kind of
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: a protest with a few broken windows that everyone is politicized.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: They have to now pretend that any sense in which
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: this might have been a broader conspiracy that involved them
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: is offensive to even suggest.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: You guys see any of the excerpts from John Carl's
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: new book?
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I have a copy of it in my house, but
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: not ready yet.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So I just saw one excerpt I think he tweeted out.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Do you know that... Jack Smith and his team wanted
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to move to disqualify Eileen Cannon as judge because of
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: all the shit she was pulling and at least tried to,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: you know, wanted to at least file a motion to
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: see if they could do that. And you know who
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: stopped them?
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: No.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Merrick Garland's Justice Department. Norms.
• 25:05
  Speaker 7: Norms.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's the guy that was spying on Republican
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: members of Congress and trying to get Donald Trump. He
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: was the same. He was a double agent.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: A lot of Trump's biggest benefactors are getting prosecuted. Jim Comey,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Merrick Garland.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Fucking put him in the Norms wing at the federal
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: prison they're all going to fucking end up in.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. It's a monument to He is the embodiment of norms.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: We really did bend over backwards to say, like, maybe
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: it does just take this long. Maybe it is this hard.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Maybe it was this slow. Absolutely fucking unbelievable.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Or bent over the other way, you know. I guess
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I should.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Nice to be bent over one way or the other.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Can we bend over four words?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: That would hurt.
• 25:53
  Speaker 8: Stretch those hips.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Hey, John, a lesson in politics. You can only bend
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: over one way, my friend.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I think we're on the same page. Pod Save America
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• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Trump and MAGA are also quite focused on elections that
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: have Little to do with him, like the New York
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: mayoral race. The president is openly predicting that Zoran Mamdani
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: will win next Tuesday, telling reporters, quote, we're going to
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: have a communist as the mayor of New York. But adding,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: here's the good news, he's got to go through the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: White House. Everything goes through the White House. At least
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: this White House it does. Talk about a fucking mob boss, right?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Seriously.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Trump has threatened to illegally cut all federal funding for
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: New York if Mamdani wins. And some Republicans in Congress
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: are making even darker threats at least to House members.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: are pushing to look into whether the federal government can
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: strip Mamdani of his citizenship. And Speaker Mike Johnson took
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: time out of his shutdown press conference to attack Hakeem
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Jeffries for his endorsement of Mamdani on Friday. He called it, quote, shocking,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and along with the rest of the party is arguing that,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: at the very least, Mamdani is now the face of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the National Democratic Party. Meanwhile, 13,000 people turned out at
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Forest Hill Stadium in Queens on Sunday night to hear
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: AOC Bernie Sanders... and Governor Kathy Hochul rally with Mamdani.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Which of these don't belong. At least a handful of
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: people showed up for Hochul. Poor Hochul.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Here's a taste of what they heard.
• 28:45
  Speaker 6: It is a time such as today when demanding affordable
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: housing is considered a radical and outlandish act, that we
• 28:54
  Speaker 6: can afford our lives, our groceries, our transit. is considered
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: an outlandish and radical act. We are not the outlandish ones.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: New York City.
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And what the oligarchs fear, what they fear is that
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: people will start understanding that this country belongs to us,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: not them.
• 29:24
  Speaker 9: Together, New York, we're going to freeze the.
• 29:28
  Speaker 9: Together, New York, we're going to make buses fast and free. Together,
• 29:33
  Speaker 9: New York, we're going to deliver universal justice. We will
• 29:38
  Speaker 9: make our cities one where every person who calls it
• 29:42
  Speaker 9: home can live a dignified life. No New Yorker should
• 29:51
  Speaker 9: ever be priced out of anything they need to survive.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Sounds so radical and dangerous and hateful, huh?
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Did you guys have a chance to watch the full
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Zoran speech?
• 30:04
  Speaker 8: I did.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: God, he's really good.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Really good.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: He is just like effortlessly charming. The speech started and
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: he goes, you know, a candidate is only as good
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: as the team around him. And right now I'd like
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: to ask that team, can you please turn on the teleprompter?
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Because this is all going off the dome. It was
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: so funny and like, God, it was like brutal on Cuomo.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: absolutely brutal. Like let our cheers ring out so that
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: he can hear us in his $ 8, 000 a month apartment
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: in Westchester. If he's there for the night and his
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: puppet master in the white house can hear us like.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I know they are, they are running through the tape. Yes.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: And hammering bill Ackman in the billionaire class and just like,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: it was fantastic. It was a great speech. Good for him. Yeah. He's,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: he's an extraordinary politician.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: He just is.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: And like, there's some, there's a small thing. So there's these, um,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: housing measures on the ballot in New York, uh, and Republican, uh,
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: and Bureware, Curtis Sliwa, has come out against them. Cuomo
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: is in favor. A lot of people on the city
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: council are against them. It's like a classic sort of
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: like YIMBY debate. There's some opposition from unions and from
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: left groups. And he actually hasn't said, like Mamdani hasn't
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: said how he's gonna vote on it, right? And it
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: just sort of speaks to the fact that like, there's
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: one thing that he's doing that I think is like,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: makes him a really amazing politician is the ways in
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: which he is a politician. while remaining authentic and charismatic, enthusiastic,
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: and smart about how he's running this campaign. If you
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: watch his interviews, he's so disciplined. He's so disciplined yet
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: because you know where he's coming from. You know it's
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: coming from a place of authenticity. He has the space
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: to do that. But here he's trying to be careful
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: because he's for freezing the rent. He knows that there's
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: some opposition to that from people that think they want
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: market-raised housing and that's going to hurt the situation. He's
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: come out more in favor of some market rate building
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: and development, right? Recognizing he's evolved on that issue. As
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: you see that, like, he is this kind of defiant figure, like,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: represents the left in this bold way, exciting way, while
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: at the same time being kind of, like, thoughtful about
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: politics and a number of issues, kind of meeting with, like,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: leaders in business who may not like him, but, like,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: he's sort of charming them, right? Like, there's something about
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: the way he's doing this that, like, belies, but beneath
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: the enthusiasm is just an incredibly sophisticated political operation.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: So you're on the fence.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean between him and Cuomo. It's a tough
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: fucking call the.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: The ghoul Not a slew a guy the ghoul who thinks.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: It's a waste of his time to even be participating
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: in this election It is unbelievable.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Not running through the tape.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: There's one was a great speaker. It was a great
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: speech I mean he obviously gonna get punched in the
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: face by like the reality of governing that city and
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: City Hall and the state and whatever the hell Trump's
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: gonna do them I would just like to quickly point
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: out that Hakeem Jeffries like you're still getting the worst
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: attacks from Speaker Johnson or Republicans by waiting to endorse
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: and But in the process, you got the entire left.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Mad at you. I cannot.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: What was the thinking here? I'd still like to know. Also,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: we are going to be doing like Tupac at Coachella,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Bernie hologram speeches at rallies in 2050, and they're still
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: going to play. Don't you think?
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It's so fun.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: The same speech. He's so consistent, but it works.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Still hits. What do you guys make of the intense
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: focus on Mamdani by Trump and Republicans, the threats they're making,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and their attempts to make him, which will certainly be
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: heat up should he win the election, the new face
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party nationally.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, I do think initially it was an attempt
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: to scare voters away from voting for him, but I
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: think they've probably given up on that by now. I mean,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: my God, the Islamophobia that this man has dealt with
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: in the last few months is just disgusting. It is
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: so rampant. It's been rampant in Republican politics for a
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: very long time, but the overt nature of it in
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the Trump era is just hideous. This woman, I think
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: she was what, like that anti-Semitism czar under the Trump
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: administration posted a photo of the planes hitting the Twin
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Towers and a man jumping out of one of the
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: upper floors of the building and was like, vote accordingly.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like sickening shit. But also, obviously
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: we know like that's a big piece of the puzzle
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: for Trump and then he just wants to paint every
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: liberal run city as a hell hole filled with crime
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: and corruption. And so he's getting started early. He's laying
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: the groundwork early starting now because he's just going to
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: hammer it going forward. Will he be successful against Mamdani?
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: I we don't know, like Mamdani is a pretty nimble politician,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: but Trump will be able to punish him in weird
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: ways that we probably haven't thought of.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, I mean, I put these into a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: couple of categories, like the, um, the attempt by now
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: two house members and several MAGA influencers online to continue
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to push that they're going to hopefully denaturalize Zoran Mamdani
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and deport him. And, um, I take, I mean, talk
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: about taking things seriously. I take that very seriously. Very much.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Because Stephen Miller has wanted to expand denaturalizations, which are
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: very rare and complicated and hard to do, but he
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: wants to like supercharge it. He said this publicly for
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: this term. They're looking into it. And if Donald Trump
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: and the ruling party decide that they're going to try
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to deport a leader of the opposition who runs America's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: biggest city, by stripping him of his citizenship, then I
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: think every single American should like take to the streets
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: and every single politician, Democrat or Republican, whether you like
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Zoran or not, especially if you don't, I would say,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: should stand up and fight that and protest that.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Melania is next.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Because that is some dark shit to be like. It
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: really is. It's Islamophobia for sure. And then there's specific
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Islamophobia that he has faced. It also intersects with the xenophobia,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the larger xenophobia and the anti-immigrant push. And it's also
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: just like the most authoritarian shit you can imagine that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: this guy, this is the guy who runs now the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: biggest city in America and he's in a different party
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and I don't like him. And so I'm going to
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: try to deport him.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Which is why I don't think it would ever succeed.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: He is a citizen of this country and like that
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: just on the principle of it, a naturalized citizen is
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: just as much a citizen as someone born here. That is,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: that is the way it works. And if that is fragile,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: then citizenship itself is fragile. It's incredibly dangerous, dangerous, regardless,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: regardless how you feel about the politics. It seems like
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: I remember when I talked to Waleed Shaheed about Mamdani
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: a few weeks ago. Part of this was about what
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: happens when someone from the left has a chance to govern.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: He's going to put it on its feet. And there's
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: going to be compromises. That's probably going to anger people
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: on one side of his coalition. He's going to pursue
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: policies that people more on the center left predict aren't
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: going to work. Maybe they'll be more successful than they think.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: Maybe they won't be. He has to govern and put
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: his governing on his feet. He's bringing in people that
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: he's going to keep the police commissioner in place. He's
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: bringing Brad Lander in. He's thinking about the people that
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: are going to be part of the group that are
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: going to help him govern. Now, Trump is going to
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: try to use the powers of the federal government to
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: make him fail, not for the ways in which his
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: policies work or don't work, but to try to make
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: him a failure before he's even walked in the door.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: And so that to me is what makes that so dangerous.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: They want to claim that he's a a communist, danger, anti-American, whatever, racism, Islamophobia,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: throw it all at him, and then try to make
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: sure he fails before he's even had a chance. And
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: he also doesn't have the right to do that, to
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: deny funds to the city of New York, or the
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: state of New York, because he doesn't like the mayor,
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: but he'll try. He'll have to fight it, and that'll
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: become something that occupies his mayorship, even though it shouldn't.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: It'll make his job harder. But, you know, that's the job.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I'll say Republicans have been trying to make AOC, the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: face of the National Democratic Party for several years now.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Before that, it was Pelosi. They always try to take
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the furthest left politician and make that person the face
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of the party.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Or the oldest face.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Or the oldest face, right. I think if you're a...
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to model good behavior here because I think the...
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffries strategy, as we acknowledge, probably didn't work that well.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Like if someone says, oh, you're the party of Mamdani
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: now and you don't agree with Mamdani, it's like big
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: tent party. There's like, you know, that the, the, the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Dem people of New York nominated him in a democratic primary.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And then the, the broader electorate voted for him as mayor,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: if he ends up winning. And, um, So I respect
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: that process and I'll work with him. It's not that hard, right?
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: If you really don't agree with him and you're worried
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: about it, right? If you like him, you should just say,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I like him and I like his policies and great.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: But if you don't, I don't think it's a real
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: hard thing. Just be like, yeah, he's got different beliefs
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: than me. We're a big tent party and that's that.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: That's what makes the Hakeem Jeffries thing waiting so long
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: so strange. First of all, you're right, I didn't get
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: him anything. But it kind of is an insult to
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: both the people that like Mamdani, people that like Hakeem Jeffries,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: people that don't like Mamdani.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: It's like, it's weird.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Is Mamdani the face? This question is, who's the future
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party? Is it Abigail Spanberger or is
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: it Zoran Mamdani? And we have to be confident enough
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: to say, yes, it's both of them. It's going to
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: be a big enough party for everybody from Fetterman to Mamdani.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: And that part of our job is- We're not a
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: cult like them. Part of our job is being part
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: of this big coalition is resisting the effort to divide
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: ourselves based on whether you like Mamdani's politics more than
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: say you like Like the politics of whether of like
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: of Mallory McMorrow or whoever it might be, because like
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: they want to make us one thing. We can't let
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: that work in either direction. We have to just say
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: like this is for all of us and anybody's welcome.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about the shutdown, because the government
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: has now been closed for almost a month. We're a
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: little overwhelmed. a week away from this becoming the longest
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: shutdown in history. And on November 1st, the pain starts
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: to get even worse. For one thing, that's when people
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: can start buying health insurance for next year through the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act, where the average premium is set to
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: rise by 30 percent if Republicans keep refusing to pass
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: an extension of the subsidies. That is the biggest increase
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: in years, like 17 million people it will hit. November
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: 1st is also when the federal government will run out
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: of money for the food assistance that 40 million low-income
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Americans count on, known as SNAP benefits, partly because the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Trump administration is refusing to spend contingency funds to keep
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it going. Other impacted programs include Head Start, which funds education, health,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: and nutrition services for almost a million kids, nutrition assistance
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: for low-income mothers and babies. and federal paychecks. Meanwhile, flight
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: delays are starting to pile up. There was a ground
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: stop here at LAX over the weekend, apparently because of
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: air traffic controller shortages. On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: was asked whether it's even safe to fly now, and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he did not respond with an unqualified yes, which gave
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: me a little extra anxiety.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: And yet, despite all of this, Mike Johnson still has
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the House in recess, which he said on Monday It's
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: actually a great thing for all involved. Let's listen.
• 40:46
  Speaker 10: I don't know what the Democrats are doing other than
• 40:48
  Speaker 10: publicity stunts, but I can tell you the House Republicans
• 40:50
  Speaker 10: are doing some of the most meaningful work of their careers.
• 40:53
  Speaker 10: They're in their districts working around the clock with their constituents,
• 40:57
  Speaker 10: helping them not only to negotiate the crisis that's been
• 41:00
  Speaker 10: created by this Democrat shutdown, but all the other matters
• 41:03
  Speaker 10: that they need to attend to.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: The most meaningful work of their careers.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: He's just so bad. That's just not compelling. What are
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: you talking about, dude?
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: When I'm legislating, I can't really be present for what
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: I need to do to make Donald Trump happy. Now
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: I can really work it. Now I can really put
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: my head into what I am trying to do. Really
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: get at all the parts of what it takes to
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: make Donald Trump feel satisfied. Yeah. Wow.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: What's the app called?
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Covenant Eyes.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Covenant Eyes.
• 41:34
  Speaker 8: Anyway.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: You guys write laws for a living, right?
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Could do that. Could do that.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: Just checking.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Could do some lot of work there. Also on Monday,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the country's largest union representing federal workers urged both parties
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: to reopen the government as soon as possible. Do you
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: guys think any of this should change the calculus for
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Democrats who have so far stood strong and have been
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: reading encouraging polls?
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: I don't think the AFGE comments, the big government union
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: comments should changed the calculus.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I think- Or any of it, but just more broadly too.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but just on the AFP point. I mean,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: I do think they were saying the same thing before
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: the shutdown started. Like the Democrats have said, we're closing
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: down the government to prevent people from taking their healthcare costs,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: maybe double. I just saw an article that New Jerseyans
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: who purchase health insurance through the state's exchange will see
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: an average increase of nearly 175% in their premiums next year.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: It's like, that's what Democrats are fighting for. That's what
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: we're fighting to fix. The problem has not been addressed,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: not even close. So I think we need to stick
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: to our guns here. I know it's going to get
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: really tough, but I'm like, I'm just not seeing anything
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: that would change my calculus. Even Sean Duffy not being
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: good at the job. Also, he wants to run NASA too,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: by the way.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Makes sense. Guys in outer fucking space. So the, the,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: the snap example that you mentioned, I think it's worth
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: talking about for a second. So, uh, there's this contingency fund, uh, for, uh,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: funding gaps for snap. It's about like five or $ 6 billion.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: It's sitting there.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: They got it.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Uh, the, uh, uh, USDA, uh, had a memo that
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: said in the event of a shutdown, that's one of
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: the contingencies we'll have this money and we can use
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: it to help people. It doesn't cover everything, but it'll, it'll,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: it'll work for a time through a funding gap. Uh,
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: that was posted on their website. That was something they
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: all seem to believe was true. Uh, they took that
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: down and now they're saying, Oh no, legally we can't
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: use the money during a shutdown. Now Trump was willing
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: to kind of extra legally move money around to pay
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: troops at the Pentagon, both moving money inside of that
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: budget and also getting money from the outside. But when
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: it comes to supplemental nutrition assistance, they're gonna draw the line.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Why are they doing it? They wanna make the shutdown
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: worse for people. They wanna make people feel the pain
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: of not, like of kids, to feel the pain of
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: not having the food assistance that their parents rely on.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: And then they wanna visit that pain. But for a
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: good cause. Cutting healthcare.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: The sacrifice you're making is so that others, many others,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: can make the sacrifice of paying more in health care premiums. And,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: keep in mind, so that they can keep the filibuster. Because, again,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Republicans could end the shutdown tomorrow.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: And so they keep in place the several trillion dollars
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: in tax cuts that they want for the richest human
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: beings on Earth. So, to me, that should be galvanizing
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: for what this fight is about. That's what they're willing
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: to do. They're willing to... They have the power... to
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: send out checks to people, to provide food assistance. And
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: they're choosing not to, to make the shutdown worse so
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: that they can visit political pain on Democrats. But that's
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: a small example of the larger way in which they're governing,
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: which is what the shutdown is about.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I would just keep saying like, look, either
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: sit down with us to talk about ways to prevent
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: premiums from increasing or end the shutdown yourself by changing
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the Senate rules if you think it's so painful.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: And the point of Speaker Johnson's bizarre spin there is
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: that Republicans are not even in Washington.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: They're not even in session to come together and meet
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: and figure out a way through this.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Also, come November 1st, a lot of people think once
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the– so the open enrollment in ACA and the Affordable
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Care Act, the window is open now so people can
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: go shopping this week and look online and see what
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the prices are. So people are starting to realize that
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: the prices are going up. And November 1st, you can
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: start enrolling. And most of the experts think that once
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you get past November 1st, even if they make a deal,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to stop premium increases
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: from hitting in 2026. At best, if they extend the subsidies,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: they'll be able to save 2027. But we're getting to
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the point now where it's just going to be too
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: late to even fix the premium increases. So then it's like,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: then what are they doing?
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize that.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's getting very, very late because they think if
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a deal was made by the end of this week,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: they could go back in, the states could recalculate, and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the insurance companies could recalculate, but it's getting much, much tougher.
• 46:07
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• 47:10
  Speaker 1: slash crooked. One of the major leverage points for Republicans
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be paychecks for the troops, but as
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: you've probably seen, MAGA billionaire Timothy Mellon has stepped in
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: anonymously to put up $ 130 million to offset some of
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the missed checks and benefits. Not the way things usually work.
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: No.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Private donations to, that's why we have a tax system, actually.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: And a government.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Right. Might be illegal.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Ostensibly.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: But what do you guys think?
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Sure seems illegal. There's a law called the Anti-Deficiency Act
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: that prohibits federal agencies from spending money beyond what Congress
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: has appropriated. Also, just as a practical matter, $ 130 million,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: that's a lot of money, but there's 1.3 million U.S.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: service members. So it's like a hundred bucks a pop.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: So it's not really going to cover the shortfall. I'm
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: not sure what they're going to do with it.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: It covers one third of one day's pay for the force.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: That's what AEI came out with.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: One missile. It's just weird. Like this whole thing is weird.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I want to focus only on
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: the donation to pay for the troops because that feels
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like Historically good messaging, but like, you know, I'd love
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: to see Democrats total up all the special interest money
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: going towards doing favors for Donald Trump. Like all the
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: corporations that are swooping in to bribe him by paying
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: for the new Trump ballroom. That's part of it. Like
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: there's all the money that's the crypto cash, the real
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: estate deals, the plane from the Qataris. Like just we
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: got to find a way to drive more attention to
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: this stuff and put more scrutiny on it and just
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: ask why. What is Timothy Mellon getting in exchange? Why
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: would anyone do this? It's very weird.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I don't like. A privately funded army. No.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Under the control of the president.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Maybe that guy.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Funded by one of his biggest donors. Yeah. I don't
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: think that's a good. I don't think that's good. That's
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: bad messaging.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: Constitution's pretty clear. Constitution's pretty clear. The power of the
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: purse belongs to that guy.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Timothy Mellon. So, yeah. He can raise an army and
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump gets to control it.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: There are a lot like.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: You know, this is one of those classic things, you know,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: we've been trained by years in kind of old politics.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: It's like money for troops, good, right? And you get
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: attacked if you don't want money for troops. So this
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: guy's going to make $ 130 million donation. It's hard to
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: total up the fortune of the Mellon family. It's vast,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: it's vast fortunes, but it's, you know, somewhere around, let's
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: say $ 14 billion by some estimates benefit, benefiting vastly from
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Trump's tax cuts. Billionaires added a trillion dollars in net
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: worth during Trump's first term. One year of the tax
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: law gives $ 117 billion to the top 1% of tax payers.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: I'm glad this guy wants to feel like a patriot
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: because he paid the troops for 45 minutes or.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: The better part of his day.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Hey, it was an anonymous donation.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: And you know what? I'd rather the money go there.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Until some reporter dug it up.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: I'd rather the money go there. I also think air
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: traffic controllers deserve to be paid. I think nurses at
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: the Veterans Affairs deserve to be paid.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Talk about who's making an anonymous donation to the air
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: traffic controllers.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we could have a system where we get
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: to the airport, we can pay them ourselves. Everybody, the
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: pilots can go around with a little fucking bag. We
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: go put money in to pay the air traffic controllers.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: We have a way to do this. And like, you know,
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump understands as well as anybody that there's no
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: such thing as a free lunch. Like maybe this guy
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: was moved. His heartstrings were tugged. He also apparently donated
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: money to find Amelia Earhart's planes. He seems to have
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: an emotional relationship to his money and he does things
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: with it as he can because we live in a
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: society with an elite class of people that inherited vast
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: wealth like this person. But there's a reason we don't
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: want the ballroom to be paid for by corporations and
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: we don't want to go to the crypto.com arena state
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: for fucking dinner because we live in a democracy and
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: we collectively decide where the money goes. We have a
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: great way for billionaires to pay for the military. It
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: is through the tax system. And they have made that
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: more difficult while allowing this man to feel like a
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: hero of the week for covering the first shift.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: And that's bullshit. Well, one more clear cut example of
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Trump unilaterally inflicting economic pain on the whole country is
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: his punishing tariff regime, which is why inflation is now
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: higher than it's been since the Biden years. The current
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: president doesn't seem to know or care. Late last week,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Trump halted trade talks with Canada and raised tariffs by
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: 10% on all the goods we get from our neighbor
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: to the north because of an ad run by the
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: province of Ontario that dared to feature excerpts from a
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: 1987 Ronald Reagan speech where Reagan cautioned against imposing tariffs.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And the Katy Perry Trudeau thing.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Every once in a while you feel fucking stupider just
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: saying the sentence. Like, what? American farmers are also suffering
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: from the tariffs, especially soybean farmers. Thanks to retaliation from China.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Not to worry, though, because if you are a soybean farmer,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: hedge fund manager turned Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, he wants
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: you to know that he is you. He is you.
• 51:58
  Speaker 6: I am him.
• 51:59
  Speaker 8: In case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer.
• 52:03
  Speaker 8: I have felt this pain, too.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: That's. I could watch that clip like 10 times. That
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: hits so hard. Can we play that clip again? Yeah,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: one more time. Run it back.
• 52:12
  Speaker 8: In case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer,
• 52:15
  Speaker 8: so I have felt this pain too.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: He's stiff in the weirdest way.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Was that a joke? Maybe he meant to be rye.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: He owns soybean farmers.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: He's a soybean slumlord.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a soybean slumlord. He owns $ 25 million worth
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota. So he
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: owns most of North Dakota. He's a soybean farmer. Actually,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: he just owns North Dakota. Right. Is what really was
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: going on there. He apparently receives as much as $ 1
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: million a year in rental income from his soybean farmland.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: He is worth half a billion dollars, the Treasury Secretary,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: who is a soybean farmer.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: King Louis XVI could barely sleep with all the racket
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: outside the castle, all these people saying how hungry they are.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: We're all feeling the pain of pre-revolution France.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: It's a tired observation, but imagine if a Democrat said that.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Like Fox News, what they would do to the Yale-educated
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: protege of George Soros, who is now Treasury Secretary, and
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: calling himself a farmer.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: It's... They still call Tim Geithner some Wall Street banker,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and the guy never worked on Wall Street.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Very good point.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: He was never even a Wall Street banker.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: It's also like, okay, so historically, China's been the top
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: buyer of U.S. soybeans. It was like $ 12 billion annually.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: China stopped buying U.S. soybeans to punish us in the
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: trade war. They've been buying soybeans from the Brazilians and Argentina,
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: et cetera. So what Besant is actually doing there is
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: bragging about the gigantic conflict of interest that he personally
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: has in being the one to negotiate this deal with China,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: trying to get them to come back and purchase more
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: of the U.S.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Soybeans.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And so he recently on Sunday announced that he negotiated
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: the Chinese to do a quote, substantial purchase of U.S.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Soybeans.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: It's not clear what that means because the Chinese have
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: already bought all the soybeans they need to make whatever
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: the fuck you make out of it. And so it's
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: not clear how much more They will buy. But like
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Trump keeps stepping on this same rake. Like in 2018
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: and 2019, China stopped buying soybeans to hurt U.S. farmers.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: We had to bail them out. It seems like we're
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: coasting towards that outcome again.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Do you think tofu.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: Is one thing you can make? Yeah.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: Soy sauce.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Here we go.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Edamame and soy boys.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Do you you guys think American consumers understand that the
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: higher prices will all be paying a necessary sacrifice to
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: punish Ontario for running a TV ad that made Donald
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Trump mad? It's like, I'm sorry, folks. They ran a
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: nasty TV ad up in Ontario, so now you're all
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: paying more money.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: I'm raising the cost of goods at Walmart.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Because I was mad about an ad in Ontario that
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: was honest, that featured Ronald Reagan just saying something.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: We're so fucking far down the rabbit hole here.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, it's not going to help the legal case.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: I was about to say.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: The reason he's not consulting Congress on the tariffs is
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: because it's a national security emergency.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think back to that ruling by Immergood
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: about how you can be deferential to the president while
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: recognizing that words have meaning. Did Congress really intend to
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: make the president kind of a fucking petulant, a tariff
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: god who can punish speech in other countries he doesn't like,
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: or actually in this case, speech in our own country
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: from another country that he doesn't like, with a 10%
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: tariff on all these fucking businesses, domestic businesses, domestic buyers,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: domestic consumers, because he's kind of fucking annoyed that Ronald
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: Reagan's words are being thrown in his face to send
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: a signal what to other countries, not to dare speak
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: ill of him in our public arena.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: They also already stopped the ad.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like Mark Carney did this.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: But the tariffs remain.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Such a petulant baby.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Did you guys– there's some tough news after all this.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Did you guys see that the argument at a national poll,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: what would happen if Trump and Kamala ran against each
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: other in 2028? No. You want to know the results?
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, tell me.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Kind of.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: 51-49 Kamala.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: I just like– She is on top, 51-49. So there's
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: some progress.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, MOE, baby. I just hate living in a country
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: where it's like, Trump could bomb New York and it's like, 48-52.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: He did lose some of those young people that he
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: won in 2024, but the base remains.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I think it was funny. The approval rating, the approval rating,
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: I think that you made this point, the approval rating
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: has basically been static since about 2015. It's just, it
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: really is... It's innervating, that's for sure.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Also, we're still trapped in this world where like you
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: regularly hear someone cite baskets of deplorables as this horrible
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: thing that happened, right? We're still slapping Hillary Clinton around
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: for that. And Trump posted an AI video of himself
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: dumping shit on harry sisson i believe in a bunch.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: Of democratic and everyone everyone who protested.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: In the new york times article i was reading about
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: it they mentioned it today uh said he dumped brown
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: liquid i was like i think we know what.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: The liquid couldn't tell what it was couldn't tell what
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: i mean.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: I think that's i mean honestly i think it's fair
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: reporting you say they go find out what he it's
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: artorial and it's art it's the artist intent yeah like
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: this is where i kind of like stepping back to
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: like there's so many confident people about like the direction
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: the democratic party should go and Like, this should be
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: our message. This shouldn't be our message. Like, these are
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: the people that understand what the future of the party
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: is or how this is where Biden went wrong, whatever.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: And like, I just like it is so hard to
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: move people now. It is so hard. There's so many
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: kind of like counter indicators all the time. And like,
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: I just that's where I kind of like I find
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: myself struggling to even like know how we what we
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: do in a situation where the president has launched an
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: all out assault on on the economy through tariffs, is
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: applying them to our biggest allies because he didn't like
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: a television commercial. The wealthy landlord is doing interviews on
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: CNBC referring to himself as a fucking soybean farmer.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: And to your point on votes not moving, Obama won
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: Iowa twice. There was a great piece in The Times
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: over the weekend about how Trump's policies are absolutely crazy.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: crushing Iowa.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: It's like a depression. It's like a local depression.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a local depression. It's soybean farmers. It's Trump
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: canceling all these wind energy projects. It's the immigration actions,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: getting rid of all the workers that work on these farms.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Like these Iowa farmers are getting killed, but it's not
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: leading some like populist revolt against him. They're kind of like, well,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: we don't know. I mean, I guess, look, we had
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: a big governor's race next year where Rob Sands running.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Maybe he can pull this off.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: There's a big race there as well.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: We'll see.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: But I'm also just you know, polls are polls, but
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in the results in the 2025 elections.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, me too.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: See where we are. We'll get at least some read
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: on where everyone is, or at least people in New Jersey, Virginia,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and New York City, and a few other states, and California,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: after a week from Tuesday. All right. When we get
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Mark
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Elias about our elections and the 22nd Amendment. Two quick
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: things before we do that. A reminder, it's time to
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: start holiday shopping, and we are ready for you at
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: the Crooked Store We got merch from all your favorite
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Crooked pods, plus holiday exclusives. You can now shop at crooked.com
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: slash store, or if you're more of an in-person shopper,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: do they come here? Oh, a selection of our merch
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: will be available at CrookedCon.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Smart idea.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Do we open up a brick and mortar here in
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: the office? Speaking of CrookedCon, another reminder, we're just 10
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: days away. As I mentioned on the Friday show, I'm
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: hosting a panel about Democratic messaging with Jen Psaki, Faz Shakir,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and Democratic strategist Liz Smith, Rebecca Katz, and Adam Jentleson.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Tommy and Ben are going to be doing a panel
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: about what a forward-looking democratic foreign policy should look like
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: in 2025.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: I'm looking backwards. We're also going to do– I'm also
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: doing a panel about– we're going to talk to some
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: of the lead consultants on the 2025 races, whether they
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: won or lost, what the lessons were, what we did right,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: what we got wrong, what they observed. So that will
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: be cool.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I love that. And you did cut off the panelists
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: and you and Ben's. Ro Khanna and Yasemin Ansari are
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: going to be on that panel, which is great.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Excellent.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Love it. It's going to be hosting a panel called
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Are We Having Fun Yet? Yes. with Hassan Piker, Simone
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Sanders Townsend, Tim Miller, and Jessica Tarloff. That's a fun,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: what a panel.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: It's going to be fun. We're talking about why Democrats
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: seem like such downers and what it will take to
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: get it.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know, just listen to our show.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: I had a good ass time last hour.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm present company excluded.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Of course. Tommy Lovett and Dan will also be doing
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: one-on-one interviews with Lena Kahn, Ruben Gallego, and Chris Murphy.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: And Alex Wagner is going to be talking with Andy Beshear.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: And on top of all of that, there's the Vote
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Save America Action Hub. To see the full schedule and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: get tickets, head to CrookedCon.com.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: That's where you get some action.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: As we discussed.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: It's a whole hub for it.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the Olympic Village.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Fewer condoms.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: CrookedCondoms.com. No, you got it.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: That's the point.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: You got it. You got where I was going.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 9: We're good.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: Because love doesn't do anything. I was going to say more.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because we don't need them. That's right.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right, Abundance fans. There was just an
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Abundance joke.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we promised there'll be some Abundance bros in the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: house if you know what I'm saying.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: That is the first condom-related Abundance joke that has been told.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know. We can check with Ezra and Derek
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: on that, but I believe.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: It's the first.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Quince. As
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  Speaker 3: Mark Elias leads the Elias Law Group and is the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: founder of Democracy Docket, a digital news organization dedicated to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: protecting democracy and voting rights. Mark, welcome back to the pod.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 7: Thanks for having me back.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Lots to talk about.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: All of it great. Steve Bannon said... Is it really
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: all great? It's all great. Steve Bannon said that Trump
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: will get a third term and, quote, people just ought
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: to get accommodated with that. Trump didn't rule out a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: third term when asked about Bannon's comments. How seriously should
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: we take this?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 7: So one of the things I've always said is that
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 7: we got terrible advice to take Donald Trump seriously, but
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 7: not literally. I think we have to take him both
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 7: literally and seriously. And so Donald Trump wants a third term.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 7: I fully expect he is going to try to get
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 7: a third term. There is no constitutional loophole here. There's
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 7: no legal way for him to seek a third term.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 7: There's no special provision that Steve Bannon has found that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: none of us But that won't stop Donald Trump from
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 7: trying to do so anyway. Remember, he incited a violent
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 7: insurrection in the nation's capital the last time he tried
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 7: to take a term that wasn't his.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's why I'm of two minds of it.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: On the one hand, I think we need to say unequivocally,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: he will not have a third term. But we need
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: to say that in a way that doesn't act as
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: if it won't be something that is pursued, that Donald
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: Trump doesn't see as a possibility. To your point, there's
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: no secret king mode inside of the Constitution that when
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: Bannon says, oh, we have a plan, they have no
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: access to any secret information that would make that possible.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: So then it's incumbent on us to understand what that
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: plan could look like. And tell me if I'm wrong,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: one would be they just defy the Constitution. He just
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: doesn't leave office. That's a possibility. And then the other
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: is a whole collection of end runs around the Constitution, like,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: you know, the Speaker of the House, no rule says
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: can't be a dog kind of stuff. Which one are
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: you more worried about? And How do you take it
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: literally and seriously? How do you prepare for something like this?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 7: Yes, I take the first more seriously than the second,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 7: because there is no end run around the Constitution. There's
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 7: no secret way, like I said, for him to be
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 7: the vice president or that. I mean, the closest thing
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 7: there would be to a secret way would be, frankly,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: that he does what Vladimir Putin did after his first term,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 7: which is that someone else is technically the president, like,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 7: for example, Don Jr., and he is just like the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 7: power behind the throne. But that's not an end run
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: around the Constitution. I mean, that's just, you know, that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 7: just is what it is. I think what Steve Bannon
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 7: and others have in mind, I suspect, is something that
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 7: looks much more like January 6th. I mean, let's be clear.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: He already has military in a number of major cities
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: in the United States. That number will grow. He is
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 7: already building what would be, I don't remember if it's
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 7: the sixth or the eighth largest military in the world
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 7: in ICE. You know, like when you look at the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 7: by budget size, a force that will be very loyal
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 7: to him. And, you know, we've recently learned that he's
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 7: planning on deploying Department of Justice monitors in seven counties
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 7: in California around a ballot, a state ballot initiative. And
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 7: in New Jersey, in Passaic County, which is 43 percent Hispanic.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 7: for a gubernatorial election. Now, I don't think he's going
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 7: to affect the outcome of those, but do I think
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 7: he's doing that because he's looking forward to 2026 and
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 7: then ultimately 2028?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: So I want to get to 2025 and 2026, but
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: before we move on from this, you know, Steve Bannon
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: makes this comment and now we're having a conversation about
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: how powerful and dangerous Donald Trump is when whatever their
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: plans are, Donald Trump doesn't want to be perceived as
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: a lame duck. And is there any way in which
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: you worry that we're even in sort of following this lead,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: imbuing Trump with more power and political will than he
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: actually has?
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 7: No, and here's why. Look, I represented President Biden in
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 7: the aftermath of the 2020 election, and we won 64
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 7: of 65 cases. Those cases got more and more desperate
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 7: over time. They got less and less meritorious over time,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 7: but they actually gained more and more political support among Republicans.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 7: People don't remember this, but one of the last cases
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 7: that went forward was the state of Texas suing four
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 7: Democratic states directly in the Supreme Court to throw out
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 7: the election results. Now, that case was never going to succeed.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 7: But what happened was that wound up getting the support
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 7: of a majority. Almost all of the Republican state attorneys
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 7: general signed on to a amicus brief there, as did
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 7: 126 House members. Those 126 House members were led by
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 7: and organized by a backbench Republican at the time from
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 7: Louisiana named Mike Johnson. And 126 Republicans signed on to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 7: this effort. And then on the night of January 6th,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 7: after the violent insurrection, 139 Republicans supported that. So it
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 7: actually gained support through January 6th. So I don't think
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 7: this is going to succeed. I don't think Donald Trump,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 7: like I said, there's no secret plan. There's no way
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: that the military, I think, could be deployed to overturn
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 7: the results of a free and fair election. But all
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 7: of these things... have to be treated seriously because January
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 7: 6th had to be treated seriously. Those lawsuits had to
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 7: be treated seriously. It didn't mean they were going to succeed.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: It just meant that you couldn't dismiss them. So people
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 7: shouldn't be despairing about this. People shouldn't give Donald Trump
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 7: powers he doesn't have because he doesn't have these powers.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 7: But we also should recognize that he's not above using violence.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 7: He's not above going outside the Constitution. He's not above
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 7: bulldozing part of the White House. And so we need
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 7: to be prepared and we need to be serious-minded about it.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 7: But if we are, we will be able to prevent
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 7: him from serving past his sell-by date on January 20th, 2029.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Okay, so let's talk about how we do that. We
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: have 2026, but before that, we're here in 2025. DOJ
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: has said they will monitor elections in California and New Jersey,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: as you mentioned. What does that mean in practice? And
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: then how does it set them up for something more
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: dangerous in 2026?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 7: So look, one of the most dangerous things I think
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 7: that is happening on the center and center-left is that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: people are finding excuses for the abnormality of the Trump administration.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 7: So you will hear people say, well, hasn't the Department
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 7: of Justice always sent monitors, federal monitors, to elections? I mean,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 7: after all, it was after the passage of the Civil
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 7: Rights Act that this federal monitor program got going and
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 7: really took off. And the idea was you'd have DOJ
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 7: monitors go to places with histories of discrimination against minority voters,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 7: and you'd have them observe to make sure that Those
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: minority voters were not being discriminated against. This is not
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 7: that DOJ. This is not the Merrick Garland DOJ. This
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 7: is not the Bill Barr DOJ. This is not the,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 7: you know, you could go back in time. This is
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 7: Donald Trump's Department of Justice. This is a Department of
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 7: Justice run by Pam Bondi. And they're not sending out
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 7: these monitors in order to protect minority voting rights. They're
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 7: sending them out because they are trying to test the fence. Now,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 7: they're not going to overturn the results of the ballot initiative.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 7: They're only in seven counties. They're in one county in
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 7: New Jersey. But it is notable they are not, for example,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 7: in Virginia, which is also having gubernatorial elections, but where
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 7: Republicans run the state. And so what I think is
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 7: happening here is two things. Number one, they're sending these
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 7: monitors out so that Donald Trump can lie about what
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 7: happens when he loses the ballot initiative in California. When
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 7: Gavin Newsom and the voters of California pass this ballot initiative,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 7: Donald Trump wants to be able to lie about California elections. Why?
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 7: Because he's always lying about California elections, and he wants
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 7: to create a permission structure to do so. Same in
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 7: New Jersey when Mikey Sherrill wins that election. As he
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 7: moves forward though to 2026, that lie both helps start
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 7: to delegitimize those elections in 2026, create a permission structure
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 7: for these federal monitors to be much more widely deployed
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 7: in 2026 because they'll say, look, we deployed them in
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 7: 2025 and nothing bad happened. In fact, they uncovered fraud.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 7: So you can see the building of a big line
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 7: narrative that these monitors are part of. And then in 2026,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 7: you have more monitors, more places. You have the military,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 7: more places. You have Donald Trump claiming that there should
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 7: be no vote by mail. There should be no there
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 7: should be no states that have absentee voting except for
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 7: people in the military. And in his latest social media post,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: he says there should be no early voting. That's right,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 7: no early voting. And so you can start to see
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: all of these things coalesce as we head towards 2026,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 7: in which he lies about what happened in 2025. He
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 7: uses that as an excuse to do more egregious things
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: in 2026. And then he claims that there's fraudulent voting
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 7: that requires greater federal action.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: And do you worry about that being in place in
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: 2026 in such a way that election results will be questioned,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: that there's a possibility that that even in 2026, we
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: won't be able to count on the outcomes of those elections?
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: Is it or is that more for 2028? No, I
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: think you put your finger right on it. And I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 7: think you use the right I think you use the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: right verb questioned.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 7: I am I'm not saying that we will not have
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 7: elections in 2026. Of course, we'll have elections in 2026. Actually,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 7: dictators quite like elections. The question is how fair and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 7: free they are. And I suspect in 2026, they will
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 7: look less fair and free than they were in 2024,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 7: and perhaps more fair and free than they will in 2028, right?
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 7: So it's someplace in between. And so what I suspect
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: that he is laddering up to in 2026— is to
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 7: be able to make it marginally harder for people to vote, right?
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: Maybe some Republican states, for example, repeal their mail-in voting
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: laws or cut back on how easy it is to
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 7: vote early, right? Remember, Republican legislatures and Republican governors have
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 7: proven themselves quite willing to scale back on democracy when
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: Donald Trump asks them to. So maybe you see that.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 7: Maybe you also see an increase in election vigilantism in
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 7: some Democratic states.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: So can we, I'm sorry, before we get onto what's next,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: I want to stop on that for a second. Cause you,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: you put together two things and I think they're both important.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: One can be overcome with information and turnout, which we
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: have also seen, right? As Republicans have tried to come
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: after legitimate and, and done through legal means come out,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: come after maybe with rhetoric, that's not true, whatever, but
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: they've come after some kinds of access to voting. And
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: we've seen democratic campaigns and, and, and those in favor
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: of more voting overcome them. That is a separate matter
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: than vigilantism and intimidating people out of voting, which can't
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: be ultimately is very difficult to even measure. So can you, like,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: let's put aside for a moment, Republicans hearing his call
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: to get rid of early voting or mail-in voting, which
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: by the way, it's not even clear hurts Democrats.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: Like that's it.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: That is, that's, I don't think, I think it's stupid,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: but it's overcomable. It's something we can deal with. What, what, what,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: what does intimidation look like to you? Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: So look, I, we have.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 7: Been, I've been warning about a particular type of intimidation
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 7: for several election cycles. Now we've seen a rise in
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 7: it and it is this idea of right-wing election vigilantism.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 7: And it has basically taken two forms. The first is
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 7: mass voter challenges. Now, we have seen, there's always been
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 7: some number of people who get challenged in their right
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 7: to vote. But what we have seen over the course
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 7: of the last two election cycles is the building of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 7: right-wing organizations and right-wing organizations with voter files that essentially
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 7: create one-stop shopping for right-wing activists who to download lists
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 7: of thousands and tens of thousands of voters that they
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 7: then take to their local election office or mail into
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 7: their local county and say, these 10,000 people or 20,000
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 7: people should not be allowed to vote at all. They
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 7: are ineligible. They're not properly registered. We've seen this in
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 7: the hundreds of thousands in states like Georgia. We've seen
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: it in the thousands, so not in the tens or
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: hundreds of thousands, in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 7: even in New Hampshire and New York. And we're seeing
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: that grow every election cycle in scale and in scope
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: because it's becoming easier to use big data from these
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 7: right-wing groups. And so we're seeing more and more of that.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: That's probably the primary way. And my legal team and I,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 7: we fight against it. As you say, it's hard to
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 7: organize around. Sometimes it's even hard to know what's going on.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 7: The other is more traditional types of intimidation in which
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 7: you see people, for example, in Arizona, we saw outside
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 7: of Maricopa County, we saw people in body armor fighting
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 7: and video cameras, staking out drop boxes, intimidating people returning
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: their mail-in ballot. Right now, the Republican Party is in
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 7: court in Minnesota to try to strike down a law
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: that prohibits voter intimidation around the polls. We've seen this
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: movement by Republicans and conservative organizations try to strike down
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 7: state laws that prohibit this under the guise of free speech.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 7: Those are the two twins that we see, and that's
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 7: before you get to things that are done by the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 7: federal government itself.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: So now let's turn to what those are. I want
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: to break it down and it's all very daunting.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: So now we've got efforts to get people's names off
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: the polls. We've got people intimidating people out of voting.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: Now the votes are cast. What are you worried about
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: from that point forward? Because I think that is where
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: people feel the most disempowered, right? They feel the most scared. Like,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: what am I meant to do? I did my part.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: I got everybody to vote.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: We voted.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: Now what happens?
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 7: So now we get to the thing that is probably
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 7: the most concerning of all. And that is, as you say,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 7: after people have voted, you have the vote counting and
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 7: the certification process. And just to be clear, Donald Trump
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 7: posted on social media, on Truth Social, several months ago.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 7: It was the social media post that garnered a lot
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 7: of attention because he targeted vote by mail and some
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 7: voting equipment. But if you read down in that social
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 7: media post, what he said was that the states are
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 7: the agents, his word, the agents of the federal government
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 7: for tabulating and counting results. And then he said that
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: the federal government is him because he is the embodiment
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 7: of the federal government. Now, everything about that is untrue. A,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 7: states are not the agents of the federal government. B,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 7: he is not the federal government. And C, they don't, like,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 7: he doesn't get to control vote counting. But that is
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 7: clearly what he has in mind, is that the tabulation
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 7: of votes and the certification of votes will be the
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: friction point that he can put the most pressure on.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 7: We know that he is interested in this because in
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 7: an Oval Office meeting in 2020 on December 16th, There
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 7: was actually a proposal for him to send the FBI
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 7: into the state of Georgia to seize the ballots of
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 7: the voting equipment after the 2020 election. And that didn't
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 7: happen because the White House Counsel's Office, others in the
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 7: White House, and people at the Department of Justice threatened
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 7: to resign. Well, we know no one's going to threaten
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 7: to resign this time if he does that after 2026.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 7: We also know that in the run-up of the 2024 election,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 7: there were movements in a number of states including in Georgia,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 7: to allow election deniers on county election boards to refuse
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 7: to certify election results. If they didn't like the numbers,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 7: they could refuse to certify. You may remember this led
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 7: to litigation and other pressure in Georgia, but it wasn't
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 7: just Georgia. And again, we've seen a history of this.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 7: I sued, my law firm and I, we sued Cochise
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 7: County after the 2022 election because they were refusing to
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 7: certify the outcome of the election. We sued after 2022
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 7: in Pennsylvania, several counties, for refusing to do so. The
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 7: only reason why you didn't see this litigation in 2024
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 7: is because Donald Trump won. So you're going to see
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 7: election deniers at the county level and at the state
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: level encouraged by the White House to refuse to certify
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 7: Democrats if they won elections. And that's, of course, before
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: you get to the House of Representatives seating and the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 7: Senate seating, which is like the whole the whole, you know,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 7: the whole whole ball of wax in some sense.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: So you've just laid out what their potential levers are
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: to subvert the will of voters in individual races across
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: the elections in the midterms. What are our levers? And,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: you know, for people listening to this who want to
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: feel galvanized and empowered as citizens to do everything they
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: can to make sure we win the midterms, what are
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: their kind of places where they have some way to
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: influence this part of it so they know with confidence
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: that not only they're going to get people to do
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: everything they can to make sure we win the House
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: and ideally the Senate in the fall, but that we
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: have the power to make sure that it actually carries through?
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 7: So we have a lot of levers and ours are
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 7: stronger than theirs, okay? Which is the reason why this
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 7: is not a hopeless conversation. I'm laying out what their
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 7: game plan is, just like before the 2020 election, I
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 7: laid out, frankly, for people what Donald Trump's game plan
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 7: would be, which is that he wouldn't want to leave
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 7: the White House.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: And you sounded fucking crazy.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 7: And I said, people did say I was crazy, right?
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 7: And like, it turned out it was true. So here's
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 7: the deal. Number one, one of the realities of almost
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 7: all of Donald Trump's anti-democratic actions is that he winds
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 7: up getting sued and loses. And so the truth is
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 7: it would be again a painful process to have to
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 7: sue county by county to force certification, but we would
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 7: sue county by county to force certification and we would win.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 7: And we will win. And we did in 2020, we
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: did in 2022. And if we have to do so
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 7: again in 2026 or 2028, we'll do so. So the
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 7: courts are actually pretty good on these issues. The courts
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 7: tend not to favor the loser of an election being
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 7: able to withhold a certificate of election or seating from
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 7: the winner. That's number one. Number two is that this
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 7: whole process is very fragile, but its fragility favors activism.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 7: And so one of the reasons why Republicans have been
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 7: successful in some quarters here is because they've been willing
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 7: to be very loud Remember Rudy Giuliani and all the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 7: people claiming that they were kept out of the counting
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 7: and then banging on the windows in Michigan? Activism matters.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 7: And so one of the things that we have seen
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 7: this year is that Democrats and progressives are very, very
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 7: excited and very, very engaged. And these voter suppression techniques
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 7: tend not to survive first contact with peaceful activism. They
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 7: tend not to survive. You know, someone can stand outside
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: a Dropbox and try to intimidate people. But if there
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 7: are five other people standing outside Dropbox saying, get out
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 7: of our community, get away from this Dropbox, honestly, it works.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 7: It saves the Dropbox. If people think that they're going
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 7: to subvert the will of the election... after the election
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 7: by refusing to certify, one of the ways that doesn't
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 7: happen is that people notice and they protest and they
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 7: go to the county board meetings requiring certification. Let me
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 7: tell you a really quick story. This whole idea of
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 7: refusing to certify elections has its origin in Wayne County, Michigan,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: following the 2020 election. When the two Republican members of
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 7: the Wayne County board were told by the White House
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 7: not to certify the election, Donald Trump called these local
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 7: officials It's a two Republican, two Democratic board. And at
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 7: first they weren't going to certify. And then if you remember,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 7: people like you sounded the alarm. And the result was
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 7: that Democrats in Wayne County flooded that county board. It
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 7: was actually an online canvas. It was in the middle
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: of the pandemic. And as a result, the Republicans, they relented, right?
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 7: They didn't want it. They were willing to do this
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: in quiet. They were not willing to do it if
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 7: it was a public spectacle. And the same thing happened
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: at the statewide canvassing board when people thought the Republican
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 7: canvassing board members at the statewide level would refuse to certify.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 7: But there was a public outcry and public attention, and
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 7: they did certify. And so the truth is that if
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 7: people are paying attention to these things and people are
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 7: engaged and they are They are standing up against voter challenges.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 7: They're standing up against refuse to certify. Typically, or very oftentimes,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 7: these state boards and county boards, they can only steal
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 7: elections in quiet. They can refuse to certify in quiet
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 7: in the back rooms. But if there's people paying attention,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 7: by and large, they wind up doing the thing that
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 7: is right.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: So right now, as we're recording this, Mike Johnson is
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: keeping the House out in part because he does not
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: want to seat a Democrat who won a special election
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: because that would give them the votes to do the
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: resolution on the Epstein files. How much does this look
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: like a harbinger to you of the ways in which
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: Republicans in Congress could try to stand in the way
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: of Democrats taking back the House? What does that look like?
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: How does that work?
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 7: There are a lot of doomsday scenarios around Mike Johnson
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 7: and the House and seating. I mean, I'll say this.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 7: The Senate is a continuing body, as you know. The
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 7: House is not. So like, whether Mike Johnson likes it
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 7: or not, in the first days of January, the House
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 7: is going to reconvene and the clerk is going to
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 7: call the roll. And Mike Johnson actually doesn't have any
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 7: more power on that day than anyone else. So in
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 7: some sense, I'm not minimizing the trouble that Mike Johnson
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 7: can create. I mean, he can try to do things
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 7: in the lame duck. He can try to appoint a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 7: new clerk. There's all these technical ways that people worry
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 7: about this. And believe me, I've done more House and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 7: Senate contested elections probably than any other lawyer, certainly than
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 7: virtually any other lawyer, if there's some Republican out there.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 7: And I just, I think that what Democrats need to
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 7: focus on is winning the elections. We need to worry
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 7: about passing the registering initiative in California. We need to
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 7: make sure that, because the easiest way for Republicans to
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 7: essentially rig this process is by gerrymandering so many seats
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 7: that Democrats can't win or creating voter confusion or apathy.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 7: division within the Democratic coalition so that they don't vote.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 7: I think if we get to the place where we
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 7: have won the seats on election night, leave it to
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 7: the lawyers and the political operatives and Hakeem Jeffries and
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 7: Chuck Schumer. They will get it across the finish line.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: It may not be pretty.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 7: It may look a lot like what we saw in 2020,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 7: but the main thing everyone can do right now is
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 7: if you have not already volunteered for a campaign, you
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 7: don't have to love every Democrat. Pick the Democrat who
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 7: you love and go give to them and volunteer for them.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: I love every single one of them.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 7: You and me both. I'm, you know, this is the thing.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 7: This is the thing about me is I don't do
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 7: inter-party squabbling. Like I don't do like, like when people
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 7: say to me, oh, I, you know, what about, you know,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 7: Sinema and Manchin? And what I say is that the
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 7: only reason why you focus on Sinema and Manchin is
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 7: because every Republican voted against voting rights, every single one
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 7: of them. And the same is true on the left. Like,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 7: for every complaint people have about a progressive Democrat, I'm like,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 7: the only reason why you have to complain about them
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 7: is because not a single Republican ever does the right thing.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: Well, this is why you're our lawyer. You know, you're
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: not doing this part of it. You're just doing the law. So,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: last question. Are there ways people can get involved in the... Like,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: what is the most effective thing our listeners can do
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: who are really worried about this, who are doom-scrolling a lot, who...
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: feel hopeless or powerless because this is an assault on
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: their ability to use the power that they believe is
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: theirs by right. What is the most effective things people
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: could do to be part of protecting the vote 2025,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: 2026 beyond?
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 7: So look, the single most important thing that anyone can
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 7: do and that everyone can do probably is a better
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 7: way to put it, that everyone can do is they
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 7: can speak up. You know, right now we have a
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 7: crisis of cowardice in this country. And it is not
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 7: just the largest institutions that are cowards, although they are
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 7: pretty cowardice. But honestly, we need more people willing to
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 7: speak up. And that means for everyone listening, you all
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 7: have social media. You all have a bridge club, a
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 7: lunch club, a bowling league. You all get together with
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 7: other knitters. You're on a Facebook group. You have dinner
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 7: with your friends and your family. And now is the
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 7: time to not stay silent. Now is the time to
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 7: speak up and say that, that what Donald Trump is
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 7: doing to this country is wrong, what Republicans are trying
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 7: to do to our democracy is wrong, and that everyone
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 7: should have the opportunity to be registered to vote, to
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 7: cast their ballot and have their ballot counted, and that
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 7: there should be zero tolerance for anything else. And I
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 7: know that sounds like a really simple thing, but honestly,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 7: there's not enough of that. There are too many people
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 7: who are just holding back because they don't want to
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 7: be in the fray. They don't want to be in
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 7: that line of fire. They'd rather have a polite conversation
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 7: than a hard conversation. And we need more people willing
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 7: to have hard conversations. So that's number one. Number two,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 7: You know, if you are able to, if you have
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 7: the time and if you or if you could spare
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 7: a few dollars, find a Democratic candidate or a progressive
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 7: organization and volunteer for them or give money to them.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 7: You know, like I said, you know, your thing in
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 7: California may be the ballot issue. You may not like
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 7: the candidates, but you may like the ballot issue. So
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 7: go knock doors and volunteer for the ballot issue. On
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 7: the local level, you may say, look, I don't really
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 7: care for partisan politics at all. But there is a
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 7: civic organization like the League of Women Voters who is
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 7: registering voters. Or you can go become a poll worker
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 7: by getting trained, right? Because we need good election officials
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 7: doing honest work in every place in this country, right?
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 7: So there's a way for you to engage locally in
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 7: the community everywhere you go. And then the final thing is,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 7: I always say this, people think that judges live in
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 7: these separate communities. One of the reasons why we tend
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 7: to win so many cases is because judges live in
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 7: the communities and they go to their kids' soccer games
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 7: just like you do. They go to the local mall,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 7: just like you do, or the local diner. And the
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 7: more we create a sense in communities that we expect
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 7: that our elections will be fair and free and that
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 7: they will be representative, the more likely we will wind
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 7: up with good outcomes. You know, watching not just the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 7: No Kings rallies, which have been inspiring, But watching what's
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 7: going on in Portland and what's going on in Chicago
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 7: and to some extent in LA is actually quite, it's
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 7: both terrifying and terrible, but it is also at a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 7: civic engagement level quite admirable. You're watching people put themselves
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 7: out there and saying, you're not going to do this
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 7: in my community. You're not going to drag people out
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 7: all the way in the middle of the night on
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 7: my watch. You're not going to disappear them to gulags
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 7: while they're my neighbors. And we can all do that
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 7: In all aspects of our life. And when we get
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 7: closer to voting, that can be part of us, too.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 7: If you see someone who's afraid to go to the polls,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 7: go with them. You know, if you are if you
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 7: hear that there are vigilantes staking out a drop box,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 7: you know, peacefully, safely. But but make your presence known
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 7: because cowards are the ones who are trying to suppress
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 7: the vote and they do not withstand a little sunshine.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Mark, for being with us. And
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: Mark will be at CrookedCon. He'll be on a panel,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: I believe, with Jon Favreau talking about the ways we
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: can fight back.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: Is that right? Did I get that right?
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: So thanks for being part of CrookedCon. I'll see you
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: in person then.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 7: I am really looking forward to it. And anyone, I
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 7: don't know how many tickets they have left, but if
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 7: you are in the Washington, D.C. area and you've not
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 7: already gotten your tickets to CrookedCon, please do so. It
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 7: is going to be great. I looked at the program
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 7: and there are so many exciting panels that are coming up.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 7: So I look forward to seeing you guys there, and
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 7: I hope I see everybody else.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: We'll be wild, one might say. Mark Elias, thanks so much.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks. That's our show for today. Thanks to Mark Elias
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: for coming on. Dan and I will be back with
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and
• 1:31:04
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• 1:31:07
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• 1:31:11
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• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save
• 1:31:17
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• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.
• 1:31:25
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• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan
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  Speaker 1: Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production.
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  Speaker 1: Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelleve,
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  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.