Latest / Pod Save America / Officer Trump Patrols Washington

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Officer Trump Patrols Washington · Pod Save America

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• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: On today's show, Trump's now targeting our national museums because
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: they focus too much on how bad slavery was. He's
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: trying to charge everyone he doesn't like with mortgage fraud.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Democrats are grappling with a voter registration crisis. And MAGA
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: is triggered by Gavin Newsom's Twitter account. Then you'll hear
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: my conversation with Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss, a rising star
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: in the party, who stopped by the studio this week.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: But let's start with the siege of Washington, where General
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Trump's army is waging a fierce battle to liberate the
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Capitol from DoorDash drivers, liberals armed with sandwiches, and the
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: guy in DuPont Circle who asks if you can spare
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: a dollar. Now that the cavalry has arrived from regime
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  Speaker 3: strongholds across the old Confederacy, Trump sent his top lieutenants
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: to rally the troops on the front lines of enemy territory,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: the Union Station Shake Shack. Here are the courageous words
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: of J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller, flanked by Defense Secretary
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Pete Hegseth, and some of the 1,200 troops now deployed
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  Speaker 3: to D.C.
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  Speaker 6: Fire troops stationed here at Union Station on the National
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: Mall instead of areas in D.C.
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  Speaker 7: Where crime is statistically highest.
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  Speaker 6: Well, if you've ever been to Union Station in the
• 3:27
  Speaker 6: last few years with your family, you know the crime
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: is actually extremely.
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  Speaker 3: High right here in Union Station.
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  Speaker 6: You have vagrants, you have drug addicts, you have the
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: chronically homeless, you have.
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  Speaker 3: The mentally ill.
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  Speaker 5: Are you going to be releasing evidence of this?
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  Speaker 8: Of what?
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  Speaker 3: The D.C.
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  Speaker 9: Has a terrible crime problem.
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  Speaker 5: You just got to look around.
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: Obviously, D.C.
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  Speaker 9: Has a terrible crime problem.
• 3:45
  Speaker 7: We're not going to let the communists destroy a great
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  Speaker 7: American city, let alone the nation's capital.
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  Speaker 5: And let's just also address another thing.
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  Speaker 7: All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days,
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  Speaker 7: all of these elderly white hippies, they're not part of
• 4:01
  Speaker 7: the city and never have been. So we're going to
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  Speaker 7: ignore these stupid white hippies and all need to go
• 4:06
  Speaker 7: home and take a nap because.
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  Speaker 5: They're all over 90 years old.
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  Speaker 7: And we're going to get back to the business of
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  Speaker 7: protecting the American people and the citizens of.
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  Speaker 8: Washington, D.C.
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  Speaker 3: So Miller is a little uptight there because of the
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  Speaker 3: hero's welcome they all got while walking through Union Station.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: particularly the vice president. Let's listen.
• 4:27
  Speaker 8: Oh, look!
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: It's Couch Fucker!
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: You gonna fuck a couch, buddy?
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Go fuck a couch! Go fuck a couch, J.D.
• 4:38
  Speaker 8: Vance!
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Go fuck a couch!
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: That did not sound like a 90-year-old hippie.
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: No, no.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Go fuck a couch. You gonna fuck a couch, buddy?
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: I played that like 20 times. So... I'm guessing that
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Trump saw the Union Station coverage and decided that he
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: wanted to get in on the fascist cosplay himself because
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: he is, right before we were recording this, he gave
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  Speaker 3: some remarks flanked by the whole crew. You got your
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Doug Burghams, Pam Bondi, I think Kristi Noem was there,
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of police, troops. I think he was outside
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  Speaker 3: Union Station. I don't know, I could be wrong. But
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  Speaker 3: he's supposedly going on a patrol himself through the streets.
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  Speaker 3: He's going to go out on the front lines, although
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  Speaker 3: I don't know if it was just that little press conference.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: If that was the patrol, we'll find out later. No
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: word on whether he was wearing a sandwich-proof vest there
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  Speaker 3: to protect himself. This is all still about fighting crime, yes?
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  Speaker 3: Is that right?
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  Speaker 5: No, John. No, it's not. I hate to disabuse you
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  Speaker 5: of your hopes and dreams here, but no, it's not
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  Speaker 5: about fighting crime. And it's certainly not about fighting crime
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  Speaker 5: for the mostly black, mostly democratic residents of Washington, DC.
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  Speaker 5: It is what it always is about with Trump, which
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  Speaker 5: is appearing on TV. Like you're solving a problem, not
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  Speaker 5: actually trying to solve the problem. And so this is,
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  Speaker 5: it's all a use term, fascist cosplay. I use it.
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  Speaker 5: I think it's fascist fantasy camp where they all get
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  Speaker 5: to go pretend to be a fascist for a day.
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  Speaker 5: Stephen Miller, who is a white house aid, who has
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  Speaker 5: the same rank that you and I had gets to
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  Speaker 5: go to a press conference and wage war on 90
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  Speaker 5: year old hippies and act like a tough guy. He is,
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: you know, everyone gets, we get to occupy DC for
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  Speaker 5: a week with an army commanded by not one, but
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  Speaker 5: two Fox News hosts.
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  Speaker 3: What did you make of Miller's attack on elderly white hippies?
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  Speaker 3: Did that offend you personally?
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  Speaker 5: Was that necessary?
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  Speaker 9: Like, why?
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  Speaker 5: Does it make you feel better about yourself? Just like, oh,
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  Speaker 5: and you're. You're mid-40s as I'm closing out.
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  Speaker 3: I was going to say, did I say I'm not
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: an elderly white hippie?
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  Speaker 5: No, you asked it to me. You do a show
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: with two other elder millennials. You could have done that,
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: but no, you went after me. I'll ask Tommy. I'm
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: feeling my age this week. I got a problem with
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: my hip. My eyes are going. I'm podcasting right now
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: with walking pneumonia. I'll have you know.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: You have walking pneumonia?
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  Speaker 5: I have walking pneumonia, yes. Oh, no.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: My dad had that earlier this year.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I got it from Jack. Oh, poor Jack. Yeah,
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: you take some antibiotics, you're fine. But if I start
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  Speaker 5: coughing in the middle of this like Joe Biden in
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  Speaker 5: a debate, you'll know why.
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  Speaker 3: Well, apologies for personally offending you.
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  Speaker 5: Either way, I just thought it was very aggressive.
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  Speaker 3: Sorry, you're a Gen X white hippie. That's fine.
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  Speaker 5: That's all right.
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  Speaker 8: Yes.
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  Speaker 5: Barely, but that's all right. Barely.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Police Chief Pam Bondi, the new police chief, she says
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  Speaker 3: that her stormtroopers have now made about 630 arrests as
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  Speaker 3: of August 21st. Just to put that in perspective, during
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: a similar period last year, August 7th through August 19th,
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  Speaker 3: so it's actually a shorter time period because today's the 21st,
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  Speaker 3: the D.C. police alone made 667 arrests. That's according to
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  Speaker 3: the Washington Post. So they've made fewer arrests this week
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  Speaker 3: than they did this week last year with 1,200 National
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  Speaker 3: Guard troops, DEA agents, FBI agents, an army of ICE agents,
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  Speaker 3: and the DC police under the command of Pam Bondi.
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  Speaker 5: There could be a good explanation for this, which they
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  Speaker 5: would not like to offer, which is that crime was
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  Speaker 5: down this year over last year, but then that gets
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  Speaker 5: to the whole pretext of why they sent troops in
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  Speaker 5: to begin with.
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  Speaker 3: The White House won't release the data on who's been
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  Speaker 3: arrested for what.
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  Speaker 5: Or by whom.
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  Speaker 3: Over by whom?
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  Speaker 5: We don't know if it's just regular D.C. police officers
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  Speaker 5: who did it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we don't know who's been arrested, we don't
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  Speaker 3: know what anyone's been arrested for, and we don't know
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  Speaker 3: who arrested them. What we do know is that the U.S.
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  Speaker 3: attorney for D.C., Janine Pirro, said this week that her
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  Speaker 3: office will no longer bring felony charges against people caught
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: carrying rifles or shotguns in Washington because she thinks the
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: city's ban is unconstitutional. On the flip side, she did
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: say order prosecutors in D.C. to push for maximum charges
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: and sentences for anyone who's arrested in D.C. throughout this
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  Speaker 3: period of emergency, I guess we're calling it. We also
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: saw the first military civilian incident this week when a
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: 14-ton armored National Guard truck crashed into a civilian SUV
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: and the driver had to be cut out of the
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: wreckage by firefighters. Unsurprisingly, a post poll of D.C. residents
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: said found that 8 in 10 opposed Trump's military takeover
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: of D.C. 7 out of 10 strongly oppose it. A
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  Speaker 3: national poll from Data for Progress found 51% of voters opposed,
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  Speaker 3: 44% in favor. And then they asked, would you want
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  Speaker 3: this in your city? 52% opposed, 43% in favor. Any
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: thoughts on the numbers and more broadly how Democrats should
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  Speaker 3: talk about this now? that we've had a few weeks
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: to see how it's playing out?
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: I want to get to the numbers that the Pambandi
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: is putting out. What is really notable is that prior
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: to the invasion of Washington, D.C., if someone was arrested
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: by the D.C. police, there would be a publicly available
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: incident report within 24 hours. So you would know what
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: that person was arrested for, where they were arrested. And
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: that's how people track crime in their city, right? What
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: the police is doing. They stopped doing that under the
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: leadership of Chief Bondi. And so no one has any
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  Speaker 5: idea what these crimes are. They are stemming off any
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  Speaker 5: information that could undermine the mission here. And it's just
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  Speaker 5: very notable. Now, on the poll numbers, I guess I
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: will take solace in the fact that the Data for
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Progress poll found that a majority of Americans oppose deploying
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: the military to command a US city. I guess that's
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: a positive. We can take that, right?
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: That's good. As for how to talk about it, I've
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: wrestled with this a lot. I listened to you guys
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: have this conversation on the Tuesday pod I don't think
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: there's an easy answer here. It is just a simple
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: fact that Americans think crime is going up and it's
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: going down. They are much more worried about crime in
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: their community than statistics would ever suggest they should be.
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: Many Americans are more likely to die from a piano
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: falling on their head than being murdered, but they're not
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: worried about pianos falling on their head. I mean, you
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: and I have had this conversation about the fear of flying, right?
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: People's fears are not rational, and so you can't bombard
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: them with statistics to make them feel better. And you
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: don't want to fall into the trap of seeming like
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: you don't care about crime or you don't think crime
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: is serious because the perception of that for Democrats is
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: one of the things that undermine Democrats with certain segments
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: of voters between 2020 and 2024. So I think, and
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: I heard you guys talk about the distraction language and
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: all of that. I think the simplest way to do
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: this is to say that Donald Trump wants to send
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: at taxpayer expense, the United States military, and masked ICE
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: agents to U.S. cities against the wishes of the local officials,
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  Speaker 5: the local police, and the residents. And that this is
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: a stunt that doesn't help us fight crime. It doesn't
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: make us safer and just wastes a lot of time
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  Speaker 5: and money. Just full stop there.
• 12:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: Just play it straight is what I'm sort of saying.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: I think playing it straight is good. I also think, look,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: this is early days. I keep drawing the parallel to
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: what happened with immigration, right? Which at first, because of
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: everything that happened in 24 and in the Biden administration,
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: you know, after the election, I think it was right
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: to realize that a lot of people in a lot
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: of communities where there were an influx of migrants, it's
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: not like they were all worried about crime like Donald
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Trump worries about crime or worried about just the fact
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: that immigrants were around them like Stephen Miller worries. But
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: public resources, public services were stretched thin. There weren't enough
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: places for a lot of the migrants to live. There
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: were just too many people around. Like there was just
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: not an infrastructure set up to accept that many migrants, right?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And so it led to sort of perceptions of public
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: disorder that were real to people in those communities, right?
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: But at the same time, most of those people who
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: were upset about that are now very upset that there
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: are masked ICE agents in the cities rounding up people
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: without due process and disappearing them. One thing that's happening,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: you mentioned that Pam Bondi is not releasing any data.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: So there was another post story about how what's happening
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: is ICE agents are basically all over the city and
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: they're riding around with police officers. The police officers are
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: pulling over all of these moped drivers who were delivery drivers.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: And then the ICE agents come over and then they
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: take the people away because they, you know, they're undocumented
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: immigrants or they might be undocumented immigrants. And a lot
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: of these people's families who live in D.C. because they've
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: lived in D.C. for a long time. whether they're asylum seekers, undocumented,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: whether they're legal residents, whether they have a visa, whether
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: they're on their way to getting their citizenship. It doesn't
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: matter to ICE. They're just picking up everyone. And the
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: families can't find them. They don't get a call. They
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: don't know where they are. They don't know where they've
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: been taken. And that's where we are right now. And
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: you can't tell me that people want that, that most
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Americans want that. In fact, we know they don't because
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: we're seeing some of the polling on this for immigration.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: We saw it change in a huge way. And so
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: I do think that like just, We don't need to
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: exaggerate what's going on, but we should speak plainly about
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: what's actually happening in Washington, D.C. And I do think
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: the more people hear about it and the more this
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: goes on, it's going to become unpopular. Unless, of course,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: after 30 days, he like takes everyone out, you know?
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's unpopular now. We should note that, right?
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: A majority of people oppose it. So we're already in
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: a strong point. I guess what I'm just sort of
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: wrestling with is, like, we know this is not everyone's
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: top priority.
• 15:01
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: And I think, as you guys pointed out, trying to
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: twitch or something to a pretzel to tie it to
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: everyone's top priority just sounds fake and awkward. So you
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: might as well just tell people what's happening.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: And just let them know about it. Because the problem
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: is a lot of people probably have no idea it's happening.
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: Tell them about it. Tell them it can happen in
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: their community. Because as Trump said today, we're going elsewhere
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: when we're done here. And so it could be your community.
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: It could be where your family lives. It could be
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: where your friends live. And just do it like that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: I don't think you need to overcomplicate the simple when
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: the President of the United States sends the military for
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: literally no reason into United States city against the wishes
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: of the police.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: One last thing before we move off of this is
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: I've been thinking about Stephen Miller's comments there. One reason
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I pay a lot of attention to Stephen Miller, unfortunately,
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: is he is always at the, at the vanguard of
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: what's coming from the authoritarian regime and where they're going
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: to push the envelope next. And the fact that he
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: was out there saying that we're not going to let
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: the communists, we're not going to let the communists destroy
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: the city. So by the communists, he means the protesters
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: and the liberals and anyone who's criticized this. And then
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: he says, those people who are protesting aren't part of
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: this city. They were never part of this city. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: I do think, and this has happened in other authoritarian regimes,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: and it's like, it's in the playbook. It's exactly what happens.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: They start with immigrants, they start with the most vulnerable,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: and then they sort of work their way up. But
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: a lot of it is focused on the opposition and
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: the political opposition. And- He has already decided that immigrants
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: don't belong in this country, right? That this is a
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Western culture, Western Christian nation. And what he's quickly doing,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: because they want the protests, they want to start arresting protesters,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: they want to start cracking heads, is he wants to
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: make sure that people realize that in this country, if
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: you oppose Donald Trump, if you do not agree with
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump, not only are you a political opponent, you
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: do not belong in this country. This country is not
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: your country.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: And this is where they're going next. And this is
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: why they're in blue cities. And this is why they're
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: not in red areas of the country where there's high crime.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: They could be fighting crime. They could be doing more,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: sending more police to those places. And they're not doing that.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: They're doing it in blue cities because they want to
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: scare the shit out of liberals and let them know
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: that they're in charge and that this isn't our country.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: It really feels like Stephen Miller took his four years
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: between Trump's first term and his second term, read all
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: those books on authoritarianism from like Ann Applebaum, Timothy Snyder
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: and just read them as handbooks, not, not warnings.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: It's, it's bad. And you know what? And JD Vance is,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: he puts like a, you know, a somewhat nicer sheen
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: on the whole thing. Or at least more acceptable to
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: a broader population?
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: It goes down. I mean, just Stephen Miller's voice and
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: tone and just mere presence is truly odious. And so
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: it makes it so much worse. I mean, not that J.D.
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: Vance is a barrel of charisma. He is not.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: He is not. But he does- But he at least
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: seems less- angry and crazy and fascist than Stephen Miller
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: does in his tone.
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: But in reality, he's just as bad. Right.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: But you were asking the other day, like, what is
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: that accent from Stephen Miller? And I was like, I
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: don't know, like, fascist? Is that an accent? Just the
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: way he speaks, like the punctuates, the words and screams.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: It's just very, oof.
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: It really is like a Confederate general meets an SS
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: commandant or something. I don't know. It's very strange.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Fucking terrible, man.
• 18:37
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• 19:54
  Speaker 3: So Trump isn't just cleansing our nation's capital of commies, immigrants,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: and the poor. He's also trying to cleanse our history
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: of anything that suggests America hasn't always been perfect. For example, slavery.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Do we really have to keep harping? on what was
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: clearly just a big misunderstanding in this country. The president
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: got mad on the internet this week about the Smithsonian museums,
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: which he says focused too much on, quote, how bad
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: slavery was, unquote. He has now ordered White House aide
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Lindsey Halligan, yet another former defense lawyer for Trump, could
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: field a baseball team with his defense lawyers, to conduct
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: a review of museums using, quote, the exact same process
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: they did for universities, in order to make the Smithsonian, quote,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: less woke. Halligan went on Newsmax to defend her new project,
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: and even the host sounded a bit skeptical. How do
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: you balance that, that, you know, we need to be
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: able to review this while honoring even our not-so-pleasant past?
• 20:57
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, it's not about whitewashing. It's all about
• 21:02
  Speaker 8: full context. So while slavery is obviously a horrible aspect
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: of our nation's history, you can't really talk about slavery
• 21:14
  Speaker 8: honestly unless you also talk about hope and progress. And
• 21:17
  Speaker 8: I think we need to be focusing on the progress
• 21:20
  Speaker 8: that we've made since then. And we need to stop
• 21:22
  Speaker 8: focusing so much on the lack of progress. We need
• 21:27
  Speaker 8: to keep moving forward as a country.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: So she's an idiot.
• 21:32
  Speaker 8: Yep.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: I think she's really, they really picked their best for
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: that job. There's also a full White House report detailing
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: all of the woke sins of our national museums. Did
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: you happen to take a look at that? The report
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: on the website? Any thoughts on this whole project?
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: I skimmed it.
• 21:49
  Speaker 9: It seems like they don't really understand history, art, literature,
• 21:59
  Speaker 9: or even what museums do.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Also, it's like, I assume you've been to all the
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Smithsonian museums. I've been there. Pretty hopeful museums. The American
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: history one's pretty hopeful. Yeah.
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe a little too hopeful, some would say.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, also, a quote from 2017 when the
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: National Museum of African American History and Culture opened, someone
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: said it offers a meaningful reminder of why we have
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: to fight bigotry, intolerance, and hatred in all of its
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: very ugly forms. That was President Donald Trump.
• 22:34
  Speaker 10: Oh, wow.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Same museum. Same museum.
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: He's probably trying to get that scrubbed out of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: museum right now.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: He's also very mad that there's nothing about the future
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: in the museum. It is a museum. It's a history museum.
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: If he wants the future, he should go down the
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: street to the Air and Space Museum. I don't know. Also,
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: we can't ignore the fact that he also went through
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: and had the Smithsonian remove him from the exhibit on impeachments.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Although, did you see they're putting it back and
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: they were like, that didn't happen by any order. It
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: was just like, we were just renovating.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: We were just dusting off the bust of Alan Dershowitz.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: It's bad. That's bad. I mean, I know it's just like,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: is he bluffing? Maybe does he really have the authority
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: to do this the way that the Smithsonian is structured?
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: He's really- Of course he doesn't matter.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Of course he does. He's not on firm legal ground,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: to say the least.
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: It doesn't matter because he is forcing Harvard to do
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: things for him, which is, last I checked, not part
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: of the federal government, doesn't receive taxpayer money in the
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: same way. It's just, he will get to this on
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: other topics later in this podcast, but he just bullies
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: people into it, and then everyone gives in. They all
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: give in. And the thought is, we'll just make the
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: change now, and three and a half years from now,
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: we can go back to being a real museum, and
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: it's much harder to go back once you bend the
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: knee and give in.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: I also think it's just like these fucking snowflakes who
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: can't handle the fact that America has done some things
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: that are bad in the past, because America is made
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: up of human beings, some of whom have done some
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: horrible things. And sometimes we did it on a nationwide level.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: And one way to look at it is, you know what?
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: We do some, just like humanity, there is a lot
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: of good and some bad in America. And one great
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: thing about America, should be great about America, is that
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: throughout history, ordinary people have tried to change the country
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: and they've loved the country so much that they will
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: try to fight to change the country, even when the
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: country didn't love them. Like that is the whole purpose
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: of what this country is supposed to be. That is
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: like real patriotism. And Donald Trump and all the people
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: and a lot of the fucking MAGA people and, you know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Republican politicians have been like this for quite a while now. Right.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Which is like they think that America is so fucking
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: fragile that God forbid we should criticize our past. Because
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: then we would have to reckon with the fact that
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: we might not be perfect and that we might have
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: to make some changes in this country and that we
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: might have to make this country better. Like, what the fuck?
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: What is the itch we're scratching here?
• 25:26
  Speaker 8: Trump?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: Just for, or like, what are we trying to do?
• 25:31
  Speaker 8: Or like.
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: We worry that people are going to know too much
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: about our history. Like I can understand, like I get
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: in the Southern seats of the Confederacy and like there's
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: very complicated. The ones that are still celebrate Confederate journals,
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: like it's very, it is ridiculously complicated to people. It
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: shouldn't be, but you know, we went through all of
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: this and you know, a few years ago with the
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: Confederate monuments, but like, well, I don't even understand what,
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: The problem is, and here, I just wanted this from
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: a political point of view. We went through this with
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: the entire critical race theory bullshit that Republicans did in
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: 2021 in Virginia and elsewhere, is that when you talk
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: to people about whether they want people to know U.S.
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: history in context and certainly do not want the government
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: deciding what our history is, they're 100% with us.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And look, I think that I also vehemently disagree
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: with people who say, you know, America is inherently bad
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: or inherently a racist nation, right? Like the idea that
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: we cannot either accept or change the sins of our
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: past is just, it's not in keeping with what the
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: American story has been, right? But I do think to
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: your question about Trump, like in authoritarian regimes and fascist regimes,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: they go after culture and history and education because they
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: need younger generations to to believe that the nation is
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: great and the nation has always been great and we
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: have never done anything wrong and we are the best
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: and we are perfect. And that is where strength comes from.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: It is believing that we are perfect and great and wonderful.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: And anything that gets in the way of that story
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: is an opening for people who are unhappy with the
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: current regime, the current government to go make changes. And
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: so you want everyone to think, no, no, no, this
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: has been a great, wonderful, glorious nation this entire time.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: No problems because then everyone will say, okay, well then
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: I'll just sit tight and follow the leader and everything
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: will be great.
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: I really don't feel like you can put the genie
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: back in the bottle on this one. Also just not
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: to give them advice, but remember when they were all,
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: when the whole Republican argument was that we're not the
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: racist ones, Democrats were the racist ones. They were the Dixiecrats.
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: They did segregation and Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln was
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: a Republican.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems like that's more of a tactic.
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: We're past that now, yeah.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: So, not for nothing, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: on Tuesday that it will start screening visa and green
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: card applicants for, quote, anti-American ideologies. Pressed to explain what
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that means and how it would be enforced, a spokesperson said,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: if you hate America, don't try to live in America.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: It's that simple. We think it's a good idea for
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: the federal government to determine what specific beliefs and speech
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: constitute anti-American ideologies? I kind of thought we had an
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: amendment for that.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: There is an amendment for that. But if we're going
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: to go down this road, I personally would encourage them
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: to go through the social media postings from the first
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: Wednesday in November of 2020 through the first Tuesday in
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: November in 2024 and look at the social media postings
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: from Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller... Pam Bondi. We
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: could go on and on. Because I think they probably
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: had some pretty negative things to say about America during
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: that four-year period.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: But they're American citizens. They're here because of their ancestors.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Their ancestors have a claim to this place, Dan. That's
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: the blood and soil.
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: Do you think American citizenship is going to protect you?
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: No, I don't. So right before we started recording, too,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I think I sent this piece around, but they also
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: said they are now, the State Department will be reviewing
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: all 55 million visa holders in this country to make
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: sure they deserve to be here. And they're going to
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: go through their social media presences too. So if you're
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: here on a visa, if you're here legally, the State
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Department is going to continuously review whether you should be
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: here or not. So that's where you get to But
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of those people, a good number of those
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: people are probably in the MAGA movement, have probably voted
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: for Donald Trump, might have said some things about America
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: that some would classify as anti-American.
• 29:48
  Speaker 8: I would bet.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: But that's the whole fucking problem. Immigration cannot be based, like,
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: if you are basing immigration on what the current administration
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: believes is anti-American or pro-American... then it's just at the
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: whims of whoever rules the fucking country, which is what
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: they want. That's what Stephen Miller wants. He doesn't want
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: immigrants here. People who are here legally, people who are
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: here not legally. He just doesn't want them here.
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: Or people who are citizens who came here recently.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Right. Or people who are liberals or communists or people
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: who oppose them or protesters. I mean, it's just, you know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: not trying to sound alarmist here, but it just keeps happening.
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: People should be alarmed.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: So I know what you're thinking. Why isn't the Trump
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: administration focusing on what people actually care about, like figuring
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: out how to charge the president's political enemies with mortgage fraud? Well,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: good news on that front. A Trump loyalist named Bill Polt,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: he's on it. This is the guy who was installed
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: obscure regulatory position that turns out to be useful when
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: you need to drum up some crime in a pinch.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Polt has made criminal referrals to the Justice Department alleging
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: mortgage fraud by Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: General Tish James. He's accused Fed Chair Jerome Powell of
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: fraud for going over budget on building renovations. We've talked
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: about that. And now he's targeting one of Powell's associates,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Fed Governor Lisa Cook. On Wednesday, Polt tweeted a letter
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: accusing Cook of mortgage fraud and referring her to DOJ
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: for investigation. Trump immediately took up the call, posting, Cook
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: must resign now! Three exclamation points. Polt has been making
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: the rounds on cable to press the case and sounding
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: just as serious and impartial as you would expect. from
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: the head of a federal regulatory agency.
• 31:36
  Speaker 10: She lied, in my view, in her statement tonight because
• 31:39
  Speaker 10: she said that the first time she heard about it
• 31:41
  Speaker 10: was through my tweet. She didn't hear about it from
• 31:43
  Speaker 10: my tweet.
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: There's no way.
• 31:44
  Speaker 10: She doesn't follow me on Twitter. And I think it's
• 31:46
  Speaker 10: very disrespectful, both to the country, to the president, and frankly,
• 31:50
  Speaker 10: even to the Federal Reserve, for this lady to stay
• 31:52
  Speaker 10: in office. You know, what's funny is they tried to
• 31:54
  Speaker 10: go after President Trump on, you know, complete nonsense. He
• 31:58
  Speaker 10: was totally innocent. In this case, you see these signatures.
• 32:01
  Speaker 10: Did you sign this document or did you not? And,
• 32:04
  Speaker 10: you know, she can say whatever she wants. But at
• 32:06
  Speaker 10: the end of the day, the facts speak for themselves.
• 32:08
  Speaker 10: And I'll tell you, this is the hottest story in
• 32:10
  Speaker 10: the world right now.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Who the fuck is this guy?
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: Okay, I know. I've learned a lot about him in
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: the last 24 hours here.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Go for it.
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: First, I'm going to let you guess his age based
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: on having seen him on television.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, he looks like he is 51.
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: Well, you'd be incorrect. He's 37. No.
• 32:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: All these fucking MAGA people who are younger than us
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: in high positions of government.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: I wouldn't say I look rated at a high position
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: of government either. So I'm not throwing stones.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: You look better than that guy.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: I hope so.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: You look better than a 37-year-old. Or how old is
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: Stephen Miller? I don't even know if he's 40 yet. J.D.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Vance is younger than us. That's fucking nuts. Yeah.
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: Anyhow, so here, let's do Bill Poult. I would say
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: I learned so much about Bill Poult other than the
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: pronunciation of his name, because I was going to say
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: Bill Poult several times here.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: You know, I was going to go with Poult, and
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: then once I went with Poult, I decided I'm going
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: with Poult the whole way.
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: Is it definitely Poult?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And afterwards, when the staff says, do you want to
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: do a pickup on that? I'm going to say no,
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: because I don't give a fuck.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, who cares? But here's who he is. He is
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: a Nepo baby from Michigan, who is the grandson of
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: one of America's most successful home builders, who, in a
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: typical Horatio Aldo story, did what many do right after
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: graduating college. He started a private equity fund where he
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: had a lot of money, made a lot of money.
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: But what he's really, really good at, and here's how
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: he became famous, this is really wild, is getting attention.
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: So what he did is he went on Twitter and
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: offered to start giving money away to people on Twitter
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: if they followed him and retweeted him. He did Twitter philanthropy.
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: And this actually got him 3 million Twitter followers. At
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: one point he said, I'm going to give a veteran
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: who follows me $ 30, 000 if Donald Trump retweets this, which
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump did do. And then after doing that for
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: a while, he got very involved in the meme stock world,
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: became a very famous meme stocker, worked GameStop and Bed
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: Bath & Beyond. He was very focused on that.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: A well-trodden path.
• 34:06
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: Well, and then he did what many influencers who want
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: to work in government did, is he gave a half
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: million dollars to Trump's super PAC.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: And now? Now he's just drumming up fake mortgage fraud
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: charges for all the president's enemies.
• 34:20
  Speaker 9: Yep.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: And then going out and talking about it and saying
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: that it's the hottest story and that the Fed governor
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: is a liar because she doesn't even follow him on Twitter.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: How could she know what a tweet said if she
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: doesn't follow the tweeter?
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: He must have tapped her. He didn't tap her phone. Otherwise,
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: how would he know? We should just note that the
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: FHFA director... is not a law enforcement official. He's not
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: an inspector general. His job is to manage two government
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: backed mortgage companies.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it.
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: They are rarely on Fox news. They certainly are not offering.
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: I'm sure this is the first, second and third criminal
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: referral ever offered by the FHA director. Um, it's totally
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: like he's doing it. Like we could do a criminal referral.
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Same way. Just like criminal first. He's writing a letter
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: to the attorney general saying, I'm referring a crime. We should,
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: we should, maybe we should start.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: I don't know if Pam Bondi is going to accept
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: my note, but, um, I was looking into these charges
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: to what they're trying to do here. It's very common
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: for opposition researchers in a political campaign to check this
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: because basically if you have two homes, so if you
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: don't have two homes, don't worry, everyone. But if you
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: have two homes, they'll give you a better mortgage rate
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: on your primary residence than they would on your secondary residence, right?
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: And so what happens is sometimes people say that one
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: is their primary residence and then they say the other
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: is their primary residence too. And so they get good
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: mortgage rates on both. often the pun, almost always the
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: punishment is a fine or embarrassment or in the campaign,
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: you get in trouble for it. And now, and sometimes
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: it happens where, you know, you don't know because someone
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: put in your mortgage application. And so, you know, like
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: super rich people didn't sign it, whatever. So now they
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: must've decided that like, since Schiff got a pardon for
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: being on the January 6th committee, the preemptive pardon from
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Biden and other, they're just going to, Check everyone's, everyone
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: who might have two homes, they're going to check their
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: mortgage status and they're going to see if they can
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: get them on this.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: And then what? They're going to fine them?
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, who knows? I think the truth is most
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: of these get, they're looking for indictments here, right? Because
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: it's easy to get an indictment. And they want to say,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: you know, Crooked Adam Schiff was indicted. Crooked Trish James
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: was indicted. And then they get to court and they
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: laugh the indictment out of the court or they get off, whatever.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: But they got the headlines and then they could say
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: some crooked judge let them off, right? Or some crooked
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: jury in D.C. got them off, right, or whatever. But
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: they just want the embarrassment. Do you see Ed Martin?
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: The crazy Ed Martin who was Jeanine Pirro until he
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: was too crazy for that job. So Jeanine Pirro was
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: the saner choice for this job because Ed Martin, he's
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: like all in with the J-Sixers. He showed up outside
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Tish James' house in a trench coat, posed for a picture,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and then put the picture out.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Why did he show up outside her house? Because he
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: was like, it's a very important house. It's a very
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: important house. So you're just now showing everyone where Tish
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: James lives because you are trying to maybe charge her
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: with mortgage fraud?
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's not a felony, right?
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: No, I don't believe it's a felony at all. I
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: think the end.
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: Game here is not just the indictment. It's the beginning
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: of a criminal investigation.
• 37:31
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: So it's just that gives you, now you're getting subpoenas
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: to investigate things. You're pulling all their financial records. You're
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: digging in. Now you're finding other things. All their messages,
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: all their emails.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: Now you're finding other things and you're just torturing them, right?
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: You are causing them the reputational damage and you're hoping
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: to devastate them financially.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: And perhaps more usefully, you are sending a message to
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: everyone else that if you come after us, if you
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: oppose us, if you challenge us, this could be you too. Unrelated,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: but still kind of a big deal. Did you see
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: that at least two of the law firms that cut
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: deals with Trump under threat of punishment, Paul Weiss and
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: Kirkland Ellis, are now reportedly doing free work for the
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Commerce Department?
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: Just fucking deserve it. What an embarrassment for these law
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: firms who theoretically should have understood the Constitution and could
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: have fought this and said they cut a deal. And
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: then when they cut the deal, like, oh, we're going
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: to do pro bono work. But it's not really a
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: big deal because we do pro bono work anyway. It's
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: going to be for things like helping veterans and fighting anti-Semitism. Instead,
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: we're going to paper Donald Trump's ridiculous trade deals for free.
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: And do you see who brokered this and forced him
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: to do it? Boris Epstein?
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: He's like a Trump enforcer who did this deal to
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: begin with. He just shows up and is like, go
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: to the Commerce Department and do this. And they say yes.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: He was the one calling up law firms to threaten
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: law firms, to threaten people at law firms, to back
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: off right before all the law firm threats even started.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: This fucking mob boss.
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: And because they said yes the first time, now they
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: say yes. So what happens next time when it's like,
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: I don't know, come- defend my, I don't know, Tiffany
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: Trump's husband.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Who knows?
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: Like whatever the crime is, right?
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: I don't know if you read the New York Times
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: story about Tiffany Trump's husband's family.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: I did read that one.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: A lot of corruption happened in there. I'll tell you that. No. Yeah,
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: I know. It's shocked. Shocked. Best part is they bilked
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: Jared Kushner on a yacht deal.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Ooh.
• 39:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Intrafamily corruption.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Love that. Good for them.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America brought to you by Rocket Money. With
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  Speaker 1: Go to rocketmoney.com slash crookedtoday That's rocketmoney.com slash crooked, rocketmoney.com
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• 40:56
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: I wish we had a better topic here, but I
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: wish we had a brighter topic here. But for those
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: of you who think the next blue wave is going
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: to build itself, some tough news from our friends at
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: The New York Times. Shane Goldmarker published an extremely thorough
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: analysis on Wednesday that details how in all 30 states
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: that track voter registration by party affiliation, Democrats lost about 2.1
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: million voters between 2020 and 2024, while Republicans gained 2.4
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: million voters. Again, Democrats lost 2.1 million voters between 20
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: and 24, Republicans gained 2.4 million. Unfortunately, the limited data
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: for 2025 hasn't shown any signs of a reversal yet.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: There are now 160,000 fewer Dems and 200,000 more Republicans
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: than there were on election day 2024. Dan, walk us
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: through the numbers and why they matter and why it's
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: as bad or not as bad as it sounds.
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: It's actually worse than it sounds, Sean. Do you know
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: why it's worse?
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: Because California, the biggest blue state, has partisan registration, so
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: those numbers are included. Texas, the biggest red state, does not.
• 42:09
  Speaker 10: Oh.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: So it could be worse, is what I'd say.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: You're not calling Texas a purple state? No, no.
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: Well, it could be either. You want to call it blue.
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: You're not only calling it a blue state, but it's
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: a state that clearly moved, got redder over the last year.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: So those numbers are not even included in the shift
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: because you've certainly lost Democrats. But let me just go
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: through some numbers, put this in perspective.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: In 2018, Democrats accounted for 34% of new voter registrations nationwide.
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: Republicans accounted for only 20%. In 2024, Republicans accounted for 29%.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: Democrats accounted for 26%. So we had a 17-point swing
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: in new voter registrations in a four-year period. And to
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: make things even worse, in 2018, two-thirds of people who
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: picked one of the two parties picked Democrats. In 2024,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: 52% picked Republicans. These are voters under 45%.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: 2020 through 2024, bad fucking years for the Democratic Party.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: I'm not done yet, Sean. It also shows that all
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: of the core battleground states are getting more Republican. And
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: these are the states that decide the presidency and the Senate.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: Put some perspective on that. In 2020, on election day,
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: Democrats had a 400,000 person registration advantage in North Carolina. Today,
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: that number is down to 17,000. In Pennsylvania, you say, oh, well,
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: we haven't won North Carolina since 08, whatever. How about Pennsylvania?
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: Important state, if I remember correctly. We had a 500,000-person
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: registration advantage on Election Day 2020. That number is down
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: to 50,000 this summer. Nevada, Republicans actually exceeded Democrats briefly
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: this past year. Across the board, we are seeing a
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: dramatic shift. This is a party in crisis. And it
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: fits with everything we've seen in the party's approval rating,
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: remaining deeply mired in the toilet, even though Trump has won.
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: You would have expected a normal thermostatic reaction where politics
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: is often a seesaw. One side goes down, the other
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: one goes up. Trump's approval numbers have come down significantly.
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: He's now about as popular as he was in 2018
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: when Democrats were doing so great, but our numbers have
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: not gone up. Our approval numbers haven't gone up. Registration
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: numbers haven't gone up. The Trust in the party is down.
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: Democratic voters overwhelmingly want to change their leadership. I mean,
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: it is like, I do not think that people at
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: the helm of the party have been willing to contend
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: with the depth of the crisis the party is in.
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, it is at its worst point than at
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: almost any point in our history. And I would probably
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: even occlude after the 1984 election when we lost 49 states.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Well, I was going to say, I do think that's
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: an important point for people to understand because there's a
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: couple other things you might think, which is, oh, well,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: the party just lost and that's what happens. But this
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: kind of thing didn't happen between 2016 and 2020, the
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: first Trump term.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: No.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: The opposite happened. The opposite happened. It didn't happen through
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: two terms of Barack Obama. It didn't happen through the
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: Bush years. It didn't happen through the Clinton years. And
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: One thing that you saw, and I remember like comforting
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: ourselves with this at various points in the last 10 years, is,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: you know, there's some working class traditional or previously working
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: class Democrats who then started voting Republican. And especially in Pennsylvania,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: this happens. And this happened after 2016. And so they
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: have like a historic party registration where they were Democrats
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: for life. And they've been voting Republican for a while,
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: but they just hadn't updated their party registration. slow shift,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: especially in some working class areas. This is different. This
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: is like a fucking collapse in the last four years.
• 46:11
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: And I think it's actually, we ought to talk about
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: why it happened probably.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Let's do that.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, there's no easy answer to this. It's
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: a confluence of things, but I would point to three
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: specific things that have happened. One is the pandemic, right?
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: Obviously that happened under Donald Trump's watch, but the delayed
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: return to normalcy, the, you to thinking the pandemic's over,
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: to Delta to Omicron, that all happened with a Democratic president.
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: And that's not even how we handle it. I'm not
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: even blaming Joe Biden for it, but it's a traumatic
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: experience and it happened under his watch.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: And sometimes politics is just- That's particularly, I do think,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: a driver of the Gen Z numbers, which are quite bad.
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: People who were locked in their homes for high school
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: or college or whatever else, I mean, just devastating. And
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: sometimes politics is just luck. Like, are you, you know,
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: the wheel spins and does the bad thing happen when
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: you're president? And that could be the economy. It's totally
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: outside of your control. The second thing is inflation. Also
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: not Joe Biden's fault, but prices went up and people
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: did not think that Democrats were addressing it. I think
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: you can legitimately critique the Biden administration's rhetorical response to
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: inflation and sort of dismissing it for a long time.
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: And the third thing is Joe Biden. Both his age
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: and the fact that voters did not want him to run,
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: they looked at him and said he was too old.
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: And the entire Democratic Party looked at them and said,
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: ignore your eyes, you're crazy. And we're going to run
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: him anyway. And they feel, I think, with some good
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: reason that the Democratic Party lied to them about it.
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: And then because of Biden's age, but also because he,
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: and I think, frankly, a lot of the people around
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: him had no understanding of the modern media environment. He
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: was unwilling or unable to So he was just absent
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: from the political scene. He didn't sell his accomplishments. He
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: wasn't part of the conversation, didn't lead the conversation. And
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: so the Democratic Party was defined by voters, not by
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: their president of the United States, who was off actually
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: trying to do a lot of good things and accomplish
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: many of them, defined by what Republicans were saying about Democrats.
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: And so the biggest weapon you have, the biggest megaphone
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: is the president of the United States. And that president
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: was absent for four years. And we paid a steep
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: price for that. And I think related to that, the
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: last thing, this relates to younger voters, is that the
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: candidate that younger voters wanted has not been on the
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: ballot for a long time. It was like, you wanted Bernie,
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: Hillary won, go vote for Hillary. And it's like, we
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: want a younger candidate. We got Joe Biden. We'll vote
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: for him because Donald Trump is bad. But he's a
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: bridge to the next generation. So we're gonna have another
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: chance to pick another candidate. And then He runs again
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: until he can't. And then you get Kamala Harris, who
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: had 107 days, a number I will never forget now
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: that she has a book out about it with that title.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: Even though I think she was probably more appealing to
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: younger voters than certainly than Joe Biden was, they didn't
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: get a chance to weigh in on it, right? They
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: just do it. And so for like 12 years, we
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: had never had a nominee who was culturally attuned with
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: people under 45. And so you're going to pay real
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: price for that.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: I totally agree that it's the top of the party
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: and the leader of the party and the president at
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: the time. are the people who people see most. But
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: I also got to say, it's not like there were
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: a lot of other elected Democrats out there who had
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: cracked the code on breaking through the clutter and communicating
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: with the rest of the country, particularly young people, particularly
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: people who don't pay close attention to politics. And so
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: I think it's a party-wide systemic issue that is partly
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: about communication, partly about having something interesting to say, not
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: just how you say it or where you say it,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: and having something that's relevant to say to people's lives.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: I do think on the Republican side, I think Donald
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Trump is as fucking awful as he is, is holding
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: up a lot of the Republican party with his force
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: of personality. I think they have some communications problems and
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: policy problems and ideology problems as well. But, you know,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: he's still around. It's still his party. And I think
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: the point of this is not to just be like,
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: I don't want people to hear this and say, oh,
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: give up. We're fucked. That's it. But I don't think
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: we should believe, as I said at the beginning, that like,
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: just because we are seeing all this awful, awful stuff
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: that Donald Trump is doing, that like the blue wave
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: is just going to magically happen. That like, you know,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: negative polarization and backlash and thermostatic public opinion, like this
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: is all just going to Everything's just going to take
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: care of itself. And the danger is, by the way,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: and you know this, we get to the midterms and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: it's a different electorate than a presidential electorate. It's favorable
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: to us. And so you could see a situation just
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: like in fucking 2022 when we do better than expected
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: and a bunch of the same party cheerleaders because you
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: can't say any bad news about the party. You got
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: to just be We got to be like, just like
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Republicans now and just pretend everything's wonderful all the time
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: in the party and say, oh, wow, everyone, all the doomsayers.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Now that we did great in the midterm and now
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: we should just realize everything's fine. And that is what,
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: you know, you can't blame people online for that. You
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: can blame the Biden administration for doing that, which is
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: what they did for the 2022 results. And they're like, oh,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: this must mean that people love Joe Biden. He should
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: run for president. So I think we got to be
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: careful not to look at the midterm results. and extrapolate
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: from that that we have somehow fixed our problem. If
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: we do well on the midterms, which is still not
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: even a.
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's getting harder by the day.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right. So we got work to do.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: What I would say is the only way to stop
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: MAGA authoritarianism from taking hold in this country for the
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: foreseeable future is to rebuild and revitalize the Democratic Party.
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: We have a two-party system, for better or for worse.
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: And sometimes it feels like for worse. But if the
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: only party that is standing up against this terrible trend
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: is a shell of itself, then we're fucked. And I
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: think what I would encourage us to do, what I
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: encourage our listeners to do, what I would encourage everyone
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: in the party to do is just recognize the scale
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: of the problem and then try to think about solutions
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: that are proportionate to that scale. We just can't do
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: all the same things. The same people can't be in charge, right?
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: The same candidates can't do it. I actually hope that
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: whether we– I hope we win the midterms because that's
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: going to help us so much in just stopping so
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: much of what Trump wants to do.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: But I want the 2028 primary to be a– I
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: want people to run against the Democratic Party establishment. When
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: the party has been in its worst place– The candidates,
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: like the way it has been fixed, the party was
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: in the absolute shitter after the 1988 election. We've now
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: lost three elections in a row. Bill Clinton, he ran
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: against the party. He was going to rebuild the entire
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: party in his image. And he did that and the
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: party got strong again. Then we lost. And it was
• 53:12
  Speaker 5: not in as bad shape when Obama ran, but the party,
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: the Clinton era Democratic Party atrophied and then basically collapsed
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: on itself when most of the party voted for the
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: Iraq war, even though they knew they shouldn't have. And
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: Obama was an outsider who ran against the party and
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: rebuilt the party in itself. And so we, people should,
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: we should be challenging the establishment. We should be challenging
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: the people in charge. The candidates I'm most interested in
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: 2028 or 2026 and 2020 are the ones who are
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: running against the democratic party establishment as it is. Yeah.
• 53:42
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: Like we need new blood, fresh ideas, new ways of thinking.
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: We just can't do the same thing again. Cause like
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: there's no sort of middling or like meddling around the
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: edges here and to actually solve this problem. Like it
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: has to be a, we need, Big skills, which that
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: means taking on risk, right? Like that's what, like, that's
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: the thing you have to change is we're all so
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: afraid of making a mistake that no one wants to
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: do the big things and you're gonna have to do
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: the big things to solve this problem.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: All right. One more thing to talk about before we
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: get to my conversation with Congressman Auchincloss. Speaking of people
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: who are trying new things, we talked on Tuesday's show
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: about how Newsom's new campaign to drive MAGA crazy by
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: imitating Donald Trump on social media, It was just taken
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: off and sort of interesting. Well, we are delighted to
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: report it is working, at least in this one way.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Trump finally posted in response, writing, Gavin Newsom is way
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: down in the polls. He's viewed as the man who
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: is destroying the once great state of California. I will
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: save California, President DJT. But the real treat, Dan, has
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: been watching how much this has triggered Fox News and
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: the Magosphere. Please enjoy this non-exhaustive sampling.
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: They claim conservatives don't get the joke, but we do.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: We just think you look like a tool.
• 54:57
  Speaker 7: You're trying to do somebody else who you say is Hitler,
• 54:59
  Speaker 7: and you think that we don't get the joke?
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, we get the joke.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: It's just not funny.
• 55:03
  Speaker 10: I wish, Governor Newsom, that you would just get back
• 55:05
  Speaker 10: to California and govern, because there's a.
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: Lot of Californians that need right now a leader, one
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: with a.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: Vertebrae, instead of someone that just follows Donald Trump around.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Results matter.
• 55:15
  Speaker 9: A new, performative, confrontational style.
• 55:18
  Speaker 10: Maybe it wins your points with a loony, radical base
• 55:21
  Speaker 10: in your party, but America is not going to vote
• 55:25
  Speaker 10: for that record.
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: This idea that Gavin Newsom is somehow going to mimic
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump's style, I think that ignores the fundamental genius
• 55:32
  Speaker 6: of President Trump's political success, which is that he's authentic.
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: He just is who he is. You've got to be yourself.
• 55:39
  Speaker 6: You've actually got to talk to people honestly about the issues.
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: I don't think it's that complicated. Don't be a crazy person.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: Be authentic.
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: If the Democrats did that, they'd do a hell of
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: a lot better.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: Don't be a crazy person like when you're imitating my
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: crazy person boss. who is genius and authentic, authentically crazy.
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: And talks honestly about the issues.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: And he talks honestly about the issues.
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: Well known for that.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, and he is authentic. He is authentically, he is
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: an authentic fucking lunatic. That is, but you know, that
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: he is authentic, which is, you know, which is true.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: The self-awareness is just, I don't know how you can
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: do that with a straight face.
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: Well, they've been doing a lot with a straight face
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: for a long time over there at Fox News. So
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: it's like, it's one of the things they have to do.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: It's one of the tests to get in.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, I sort of went back and forth a
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: little bit with Dana Perino on Twitter as I want
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: I mean, I saw your original tweet and then I
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: read in a news clip circulated in our Slack that
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: you engaged in a back and forth with her.
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: And she, you made a dinner bet with her?
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I did not make the dinner bet, Dan. She offered
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: me dinner.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: Oh, you offered her dinner.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: She said she would.
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: What's the terms? If Newsom becomes president, you get free dinner.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: With Dana Perino? No, apparently if it, She's saying that
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: it works if Newsom becomes the 2028 nominee, which I don't, also, like,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think that, whatever. But then she would buy
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: me dinner, which is, you know, so there you go, Dan.
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: There is no restaurant in the world with no price
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: so high that I would want to have dinner with
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: any one of the members of the five.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: What?
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: Except Jessica. Jessica? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: No, I'd have dinner with Jesse Waters. He's my boy.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: We're tight.
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: I would not. Nope. As you pointed out, I'm quite old.
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: My hours are limited. I'm not wasting them on dinner
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: with Jesse Waters.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: You know, of all the back and forths I've had
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: on Twitter, Dana Preeno, she was nice and respectful. It's fine.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: I don't agree.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: It's like, what would the conversation even be?
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, I'm not talking about dinner. I'm just saying
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: I don't agree with her point. I don't understand. I mean,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: she was a White House press secretary, right? And George W. Bush,
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: he wasn't doing that, right? He was doing a lot. Yeah,
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: Iraq war, bad, all the bad things about George W. Bush,
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: for sure. He wasn't tweeting like that. And like if
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump had good policies and he had still been
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: tweeting like that for the last 10 years, we'd still
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: think he was fucking crazy. It's a crazy fucking thing
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: to do. His tweets are nuts. They're famously nuts. Now
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: all these people are like, how dare you do an
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: exact parody of my guy's nutty tweets. They're his nutty tweets.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: You can't do that. You can't make a joke about
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: his nutty tweets.
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, the reaction reveals the fragility of their position.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: It's like, they're not getting the joke. It's just like,
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: they missed the joke. They say they got the joke,
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: but they're not really getting the joke.
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: I wrote about this in Message Box today, but the
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: point I'd like to make is that to be MAGA
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: is to be utterly humorless. It's like, there is no
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: sense of humor to it. It is, there is no, like,
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: irony is not a thing they understand. It's like, Here's
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: how you understand that these are inherently unfunny people is
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: that their crown prince of comedy is Greg Gutfeld.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: He is very funny.
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: Well, that's my point, right? Which is like they just–
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: they can't get the joke. And to get the joke
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: would be to admit that what they have been like
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: simping for for the last decade is embarrassing. Like it's
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: impossible to do. And this is, I would say, the
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: brilliance of what Newsom has done. And he actually was
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: pretty explicit about this when he was asked. He's like,
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: I'm holding up a mirror to these people. to help
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: them understand how ridiculous what we've come to accept as
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: normal from President of the United States. And it is working.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Good effort, but.
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: Yes. Well, it is working in its... Like, their reaction
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: is exposing what he's trying to expose.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: I am... I have to say, like, when I first
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: saw those... the tweets, I laughed, thought they were great.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: I did not know they would have the impact on
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: MAGA that they have. I mean, they... This has been
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: on Fox... like all week long. This is, they can't
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: stop talking about it. They're so mad. I was like, wow, this,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: this triggered them way more than I thought it would.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: I thought like, you know, you might get a, a
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: Trump tweet about it. You might get a few Fox
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: people yelling about it, but they are, they have no
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: idea what to do. I was like, wow, this is,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: this is more effective than I thought, but I guess
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: that's how Donald Trump became president.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: That's right. That's exactly right.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know if that, I don't think that's
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: a good thing necessarily, but, uh, you know, good for Newsome.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: Good for Newsome. What do you think, what do you think, um,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: here's a question for you. What do you think other
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: 2028 contenders, what conversations are they having with their staff
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: right now about how they want to be like Gavin's?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: They want to do like what Gavin's doing, but they
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: know that they can't copy Gavin parodying Trump. So now
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: they're trying to do something else.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: I think if I were to advise any of them,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: like you should try to learn the lesson of his success.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: And the lesson of his success is not that the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: best absolute 100% successful thing to do is to parody Trump.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: It is to be willing to say things and do
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: things that are controversial enough to get blowback from both sides.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: Because it's not just Republicans. Joe Scarborough was quite upset
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: about this on Morning Joe the other day.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: Oh, he was?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, very. There have been some anonymous Democratic staffers talking
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: about it to Politico, and he was criticized by some
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: local political strategists in San Francisco Chronicle. If you want
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: to get attention, you have to engender a reaction from people.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 5: And so you have to not– if you just say,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: poll-tested Pablum, no one's going to react to it, right?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: You just have to be, you have to be willing
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 5: to be controversial. That can be in how you say
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: things can be in what you say. It can be
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: to whom you say it to. Newsom has figured this out, right?
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: That is, that's his, like we can criticize how he
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: executed some of his podcast interviews, but he was willing
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: to take on heat from both sides. And a lot
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: of what he did, it's doing, it's obviously doing the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 5: very important thing of doing the redistricting here. It's the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: social media is if you are, if you cannot do
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: something that's controversial, no one's going to know what you're
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: saying or hear what you're saying.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: I'm just, I'm going to bring this up because I
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: think it's key to some of the, what I think
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: people are misunderstanding is I've heard a lot of people
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: look at this and say, well, you know, Gavin Newsom,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: he first tried out going on all the, the bro
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: right wingy coded podcasts and that didn't work. So now he's,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: now he's in the right territory because now he's like
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: fighting hard on Trump. I don't see those two things
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: as disconnected at all, nor do I think that they
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: have to be disconnected. And I think that's like key
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: to this whole this whole strategy which is you are
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: willing to talk to anyone on any platform and hear
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: them out and have a dialogue with them debate them
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: push back but also not take yourself too seriously and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: also be willing to engage in humor and also be
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: willing to engage in mockery and um i saw ron
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: brownstein at cnn wrote about this is that um he
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: called it combative centrism now i don't think anyone would
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: necessarily say that Newsom is a centrist, but it's this
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: idea that like, it's not the, the style doesn't have
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: to go hand in hand with the ideology. And it
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: also isn't just like, oh, if I swear more now,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: that's what the kids want. Like I noticed, I don't
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: know if you noticed this, but like Chuck Schumer is
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: now just taken to saying bullshit all the time. He's
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: tweeting about bullshit. He's saying bullshit. And I'm like, okay, good.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: If that's how Chuck Schumer talks privately, then like, good.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: He should just, that's fine. He's closing the space between
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: public and private. But some of these politicians, Democrats, it
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: feels like their younger staffers told them, like, this is
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: what you have to do because this is what the
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: cool kids are doing. And so then they, like, go
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: on TikTok and say, like, bullshit, no cap.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: No one has said bullshit, no cap. If Chuck Schumer
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: said that, we should be– that should have led this podcast.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: Dick Durbin said that.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: Dick Durbin? Oh, not Dick.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: No. But yeah, you just got to, you know, you
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: just got to figure out what works for you. And
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: it's not always, take JD Vance's advice. Some decent advice
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: at the end there, except for the lack of self-awareness. Okay. Oh,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: we do have to, I'm sorry. I know it's long.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: We do have to cover this because Austin is making
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: us and it is important. Newsome also weighed in on
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: the great Cracker Barrel discourse of 2025. Are you familiar
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: with this, Dan? Do you know what's going on?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: I am. I think you should explain it. Okay. Because
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: you insisted on including this in the podcast.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: I did, yeah. No, see, I take my advice from
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: Austin now. So Cracker Barrel, restaurant chain, we know it.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: We love it. The MAGA people think it's MAGA-coded. I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: don't want to go into why. I don't know why.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: But they did a rebrand. Everyone's doing rebrands this week,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: this couple weeks. So Cracker Barrel did a rebrand, and
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: they posted– Uh, I'm going to show two photos now
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: for everyone. And again, if you're listening, that's great. Go
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: into our YouTube channel, check it out. So here's the logo.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: They changed the logo and it was the original logo,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: sort of an old timey vibe. There's a barrel there,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: a man sitting next to the barrel. It's got some,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: some Southern charm to it. The new logo, pretty dry,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: pretty antiseptic. It just says Cracker Barrel on a yellow background.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: So that's the logo. Now let's look at the restaurant.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: So we got the old. is a pretty dark room,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: not a lot of windows, and just a lot of
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: memorabilia on the wall. Sort of, again, just old-timey vibe.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: And it's great. It's good. It's Cracker Barrel. The new one,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: it seems like they've put in some more windows. There's
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: a little more space. And all the decorations have been updated.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: Okay?
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: Speaking of things that have triggered MAGA, this has triggered
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: them in a big way. Donald Trump Jr. has been
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: tweeting about this. Other Trump staffers and advisors have been
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: tweeting about it. All the influencers have been tweeting. They're
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: very mad. And they're mad because they think it is
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: the work of a new woke CEO of Cracker Barrel.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: And Cracker Barrel has gone woke. What do you think?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Has Cracker Barrel gone woke?
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: I would say I have a lot of strong takes
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: on a lot of chain restaurants. Hmm. I could talk
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: to you about Waffle House, Cheesecake Factory. I spent my
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 5: youth at the All-You-Can-Eat Sizzler Buffet.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: Love a buffet. I'll take any buffet.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: Talk to Shoney's. I've never had a strong Cracker Barrel take.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: I've eaten a Cracker Barrel many times. I have some
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: questions about the logo. I don't know why they took
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: the barrel out.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: Look, I think both the logo and the indoor rebrand
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: are shit, for sure. My question is, why do these
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: fucking people have to make everything... about politics and a
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: culture war. Why is it woke what they did? Why
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: can't it just be bad?
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: Well, in their worldview, progress is bad. Because progress... I'm
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: being dead serious here. Progress implies that a new, diverse, more...
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: Progress is progressive in their head, and that things are
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: going to change. And the way things were, were great
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: if you were a white Christian male of a certain stature.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: And so this idea that the world is changing, and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: change is inherently bad, right? That's like what being a
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: conservative technically means in its actual definition. And so they're
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: constantly looking for really fake issues to fire people up
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: about that.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the new Cracker Barrel logo isn't a fucking
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: pride flag with an immigrant.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: On it. They took the cracker off of it.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Like, you know, MSNBC rebranded to MS Now. They got
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: a new logo. I didn't think it was great. I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: don't think it's some fucking plot to make it centrist.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: You know, that's not my complaint. I mean, well, here's
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: the problem, right? These are people whose entire life is grievance,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: but they're in charge of everything. They're deciding what exhibits
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: are in museums right now. So they have to dig
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: to the bottom of the cracker barrel to find real grievance.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: See what I'm saying?
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Sorry that I called you an aging hippie.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: Look, dad jokes know no age, right?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just, it's like, man, they control everything, they
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: have all the power, and they need to look for
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: fights to pick every single day. Sidney Sweeney to Cracker
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: Barrel to, she should be the new spokesperson.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 5: Didn't we pick Sidney Sweeney? We picked that fight.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: No, we didn't pick that fight. We, again, we're backlash.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: We're here. Not us. But we're here to deliver the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: backlash to the backlash.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, okay. That's what we're doing.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: That's what we're here for. So that's, you know, it's
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: a great role. We're heroes. We're heroes. We're just doing
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: a public service.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: When we come back, you'll hear my conversation with Jake Auchincloss.
• 1:08:35
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  Speaker 3: We've been saying that. Yeah, but now we decided that
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  Speaker 3: Jake Auchincloss, welcome to the pod.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me on, John.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: So you now work in a city where over a
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: thousand National Guard troops from six states have been deployed,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: along with lots of federal agents from the FBI, DEA, ICE,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: all under the president's command, as is the D.C. Police Department.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: You are a Marine who fought in Afghanistan. You've worked
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: in DC for almost five years now. You represent a
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: district in Massachusetts that includes a city with one of
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: the state's higher crime rates. Is this militarization of Washington
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: a legitimate attempt to fight crime? Could it do any
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: good here? No, it's not a legitimate attempt to fight crime.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: It's another tin pot dictator move.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: And it has echoes, of course, of what we saw
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, where militarizing the police force is one
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: violation of the principle of posse comitatus, the idea that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: the military should not be used for law enforcement. And two,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: an attempt by the president to try to distract from
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: the issues that are front and center for Americans and
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: he doesn't want to talk about, which is the price
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: of living.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: Do you think it's, I've been going back and forth
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: on this because do you think it is, he's trying
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: to distract? It seems to me that he's doing it
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: to A, show that he's in charge. that he wants
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: to show force, especially since a lot of the troops
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: and the most visible presence is in high-traffic tourist, higher-end
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: areas in D.C., residents of high-crime areas. I haven't seen
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: as much of the presence there. And I also wonder
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: if it's an excuse to just continue the mass deportation,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: since it seems like ICE is the real star of
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: the show here, and a lot of the troops are
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: just standing around Union Station with very little to do.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: We know that Politically, his safety blanket is immigration. Whenever
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: the news cycle is bending away from him, whether it's
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: cost of living, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, whether it's him
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 4: getting embarrassed by Vladimir Putin in Alaska, he wants to
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: talk about immigration because he feels like that's where he
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: can ratchet up public support for himself. And I think
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: Democrats need to do two things simultaneously. One is we've
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: got to reject what he is doing. As we did
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: with Los Angeles, we have to reject what he's doing
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: with District of Columbia and support home rule. We also
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: have to explain to Americans how we would do things differently, though.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: And this is where we fall into a trap, I think,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: as a party is we've spent the last decade telling
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: Americans what we're against. And they know that we're against
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump. They're pretty clear on that. His favorable ratings
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: are exactly what they were a decade ago. We have
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: to explain to people, all right, here's what we would do.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: And on law and order, I think we have a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: particular opportunity because the Republican Party, which used to try
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: to carry the mantle of being the law and order party,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: has voted to defund the FBI, has tried to overturn
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: a free and fair election, has violated due process. They
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: are vacating that field. And voters do trust Democrats to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: defend the rule of law and to defend democracy. Here's
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: what they don't trust us on though. They don't trust
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: us on upholding public order in the cities. And this
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: is a hard conversation we have to have as a party.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: Open air drug use, homeless encampments, shoplifting, quality of life violations.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: We do have to take those seriously so that we
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: don't get associated with degradation and quality of life. And
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: we can say, actually, we're the law and order party.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I do feel like he has sort of narrowed
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: in on two issues, immigration and crime, where it's an
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: opportunity for him because Democrats maybe haven't taken people's concerns
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: about the border seriously enough, haven't taken people's concerns about
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: crime seriously enough in the cities. We just say, you know,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: crime rate's actually down, but You know, if you live
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: somewhere where there's crime or you live somewhere where an
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: influx of migrants and public services are stretched to the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: point where we can't house all of them and take
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: care of them, you're going to be pretty upset. And
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: then you're going to give Trump a chance to go
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: way over the other side and be extreme on it. Yes.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: And if you look at Democrats' positions on gun safety,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: for example, they empirically have saved tens of thousands of
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: lives and have reduced violent crime. It's not just violent crime, though.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: It's also nonviolent violations, and it's the perception of safety
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: and comfort in public spaces. I want to be able
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: to walk to accommodations without walking through an open-air drug market.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 4: We have to take that seriously. I think we're seeing
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: a lot of Democratic mayors who do take that seriously
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: and are representing, I think, an up-and-coming bench for the party.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: People tend to trust their mayors more than they do
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of national politicians, and these mayors have earned
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: that trust by taking seriously public safety, housing, education issues.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: Before we move on this off this topic, you know,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: because you've served, how would you feel if you were
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: called up to go into a city and like, like
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: DC or LA?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: I served in 29 Palms, California as a Marine infantry officer.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: And that is the base from which the Marines deployed
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: to LA were stationed. And it was actually my first
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: thought when the president called up these 700 Marines. I think,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: keep in mind that, I don't know, 400 to 600
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: of those Marines are under the age of 25. These
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: are kids really. And they joined the Marines because they
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: wanted a mission bigger than themselves. They wanted to have
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: discipline and direction in their lives. They wanted to put
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: their patriotism to work. And instead, they're being used as
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: political props. It's terrible for Esprit de Corps. It undermines
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: good order and discipline. And these young officers, and again,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: they are young, the lieutenants, the captains, probably 25 to 30,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: are in this impossible position where they have taken two oaths.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: One is they've got to support and defend the Constitution.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: It's the most important oath. And the second is they
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: have to obey all lawful orders from the commander in chief.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: And he's putting these young officers in this impossible position.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: And ultimately, it's terrible, not just for the military itself,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: for its own sense of itself. It's terrible for the
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: public's perception of the military. And that's scary because the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: military is the last federal institution with bipartisan support.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: They're not trained in law enforcement.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: Not only are they not trained in law enforcement, they
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: are trained to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, they are trained to be fighting... the People's
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: Liberation Army in the Philippines. They are not trained to
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: be doing habeas corpus, due process law enforcement in our cities.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: It's just grossly unfair to them.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: A lot of meetings this week, the White House has
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: been engaged in over the Russia-Ukraine war. How do you
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: feel about where negotiations to end the war stand after
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: not just the meeting between Trump and Putin, but the
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: meetings with... Trump and the European leaders in the White
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: House this week?
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: With Putin, you have to negotiate from strength. And this
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: president is dealing from weakness. What strength looks like is
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: taking the 300 billion frozen euros held in Brussels. Those
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: euros are Russian, but they were being held in Brussels
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: before the war. And the Europeans and the Americans control them,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: seize those frozen Russian assets, use it to fund the
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: Ukrainian military. And the Ukrainian military needs about 30 billion
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: euros a year to do air defense and a rapid
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: response force. So right there, you have just funded the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: Ukrainian military for 10 years using Russian money. You integrate Ukraine.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 4: with the European Union's collective defense treaty, and you authorize
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: Ukraine to do long range strikes into Russia. All of
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: these things cost America nothing, but they signal tremendous strength
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: and not just strength, sustained strength. This is telling Vladimir Putin,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: Ukraine's in this, and they're in this well-armed and well-backed.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: And then you summon Vladimir Putin to a neutral third party.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: You don't roll out the red carpet on American soil,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: my goodness. And then you do a deal from strength.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: Marco Rubio said over the weekend that life in America
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: will not be fundamentally altered if the war in Ukraine continues.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: Is he right?
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: No, he's not right. Because Americans benefit from the Pax
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: Americana in innumerable ways. I think our generation of Americans
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: have had the luxury of forgetting what conflict in the
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: North Atlantic and in Europe can mean for our way
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: of life. But it does matter that we have allies
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: who are able to sustain their own sovereignty. And it
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: matters not just on the Eurasian continent. It matters for
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: how China and Iran and North Korea think about their ambitions.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: Xi Jinping is watching what happens in Ukraine on a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: daily basis. And he's incorporating it into his calculations for
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. And our
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: ability to project strength in Ukraine is directly linked to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: our ability to deter Chinese belligerence in the Indo-Pacific.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: So over in Gaza, Hamas has accepted a ceasefire proposal
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: that's very close to a version that Israel previously accepted.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: But the Israeli government hasn't yet responded as of this recording.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: It's Wednesday morning. And instead is mobilizing to launch a
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: military campaign in Gaza City. over the objections of the
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: hostages' families and thousands of protesters who worry that Hamas
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: will kill the hostages. Israelis still aren't letting in anywhere
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: close to enough aid, even though 2 million Palestinians are
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: on the brink of starvation. They aren't doing anything about
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: the most violent settler attacks in the West Bank ever recorded.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: How is it in America's interest to keep funding bombs
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: and weapons for the Israeli military?
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: Well, first, Israel should take this deal and should not
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: attempt to occupy Gaza City And I think second, we
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: have to start from a place of alignment, which sounds
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: contrary to where so much of the US debate about
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: Israel has been. I think most Americans agree that the
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: attacks of October 7th were atrocities and unconscionable. I think
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: most Americans agree that starvation in Gaza is unconscionable and
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: should not be supported. And I think most Americans agree
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: that the Palestinian people should be able to pursue self-determination,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: and the Israeli people should be able to live in
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: peace and security. And the question is, how do we
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: get there? Part of it is military strength. So Israel is,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: on October 7th, was surrounded by terrorist armies to its north,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: to its south, to its east, and of course, in
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: Iran itself.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: U.S.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: Military aid helped Israel battle back Hezbollah, Syria, Iran itself,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: and the Middle East itself. is safer because of that.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: It is safer to not have Hezbollah in control of Lebanon.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: It's safer to have al-Assad out of power in Syria.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: It's safer to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps weakened
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: in Iran. What has failed to happen is that this
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: hard right coalition in Israel has not capitalized on tactical
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: victories to actually offer an alternative to governance in Gaza.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: And it's a moral and strategic failure by the hard
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: right coalition. And the United States should use all leverage
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: to force Netanyahu to engage with the Arab League on
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: post Hamas governance in Gaza that actually can end this
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: conflict and return the hostages.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: Is military aid part of that leverage?
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: Of course, military aid is part of that leverage. I
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: don't actually think that's necessary though. So let me give
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: you an example. Right before the president struck Iran, I
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: argued that he should require that Netanyahu define and execute
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: an end game in Gaza before he struck the nuclear sites.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: We had that moment of leverage and he let it
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: pass by. But the president still has tremendous leverage over
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: Netanyahu just with a phone call. And what has happened
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: is that the 22 member states of the Arab League
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: issued a declaration in the United Nations that is actually
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: the closest thing to an olive branch we have yet
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: heard from the Arab League. It condemned October 7th unequivocally,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: recognized basically Israel's right to secure itself. And yet Netanyahu
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: has not taken that olive branch. We have another opportunity.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: I'll be leading an effort in Congress to try to
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: get him to take it.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about the Democratic Party, which has now had
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: about 10 months to improve its image since the last election.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: New analysis from the New York Times this morning shows
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: that in the 30 states that track voter registration by party,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: Dems lost about 2.1 million voters between 2020 and 2024.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: Republicans gained 2.4 million. The limited data for 2025 hasn't
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: shown any signs of a reversal. There are now 160,000
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: fewer Dems and 200,000 more Republicans than there were on
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: Election Day 2024. What's your take on why this is
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: happening and what it's going to take to turn around?
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: Americans believe that this country is stuck in a corrupt
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: status quo that is a threat to the American dream,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: and they associate the Democratic Party with the status quo.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: And until we demonstrate that we are willing to disrupt
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: that status quo, not just by fighting Trump, but also
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: by being willing to take on our own received orthodoxies
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: as a party? Are we going to be able to
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: earn back voters' trust? And I think there are three
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: vectors in particular where we need to have big ideas.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: Cost disease and treating cost disease, particularly in housing, healthcare,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: and utilities. Corruption, and corruption broadly defined, not just the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: corruption of individual politicians, which of course is rampant, But
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: the corruption of the system, a system that can be
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: hijacked by health insurance or social media corporations, a system
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: where the vast majority of congressional races are not actually competitive.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: And then finally, classrooms. This is an issue, education, John,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: that neither party has talked about for five years. The
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: school closures were a catastrophe. 25 million American students are
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: grades behind on reading and mathematics. And because Democrats haven't
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: put forward muscular plans for how we're going to fix it,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: we're stuck having to talk about bathrooms. We should be
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: talking about classrooms.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: You had a great line that Democrats, as they think
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: about retooling, should remember that voters who ordered a Coke
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: don't want to die a Coke. What do you mean
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: by that?
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: What I mean by that is that we should reject
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: the siren song of seeding to megacultural populism. There is
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: this trend in the party to say, whoa, on... immigration,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: on trans rights, on a whole host of other hot
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: button issues. We just have to reflexively moderate. And my
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: view is that it's a little bit more nuanced than that. One,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: we have to stop condescending. People are willing to disagree
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: with politicians. And in fact, they appreciate a politician who
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: will authentically explain their point of view, but don't talk
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: down to voters ever. I have an allergy to that
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: as they should. And then two, we need to do
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: a better job of explaining where we stand on the
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: issue from a place that explains our why So let's
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: talk about trans issues. It's constantly bubbling up. Republicans want
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: to hammer this issue. My view is we believe in
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: the pursuit of happiness and non-discrimination. People should be able
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: to live as they see fit to pursue happiness. And
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: we don't discriminate in this country in housing or employment
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: for how adults want to make their own decisions. I
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: also think that there are issues of safety and sportsmanship
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: and high school sports and middle school sports that, of course,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 4: have to be taken into account. 70% of Americans are
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: basically there with that statement and we should be able
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: to address it. We should not though, just see this
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: terrain to Republicans. We should be authentically ourselves as Democrats.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: I also think that we should pick our own cultural fights.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: The most important to me is I think the emerging
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: fault line of in real life versus online. We are
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 4: stuck in a society where increasingly you've got these merchants
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 4: and miners of dopamine whether it's online gambling, whether it's pornography,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: whether it's the social media corporations, whose entire business model
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: is about taking young people in particular and monetizing their
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 4: attention span. And we accept it as like, yeah, I
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: guess how it is. It's like, yeah, the average kid
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: will spend more time on their screen than they will outside.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: The average inmate will spend more time outside than the
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: average American child. That's not acceptable. The Republicans just tried
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: to pass a law that would forbid states from regulating
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: AI for the next decade. So It's not like they're
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: pioneers on this issue. Let's seize it from them.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: What do you think we should do?
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: So first of all, strip the special privileges and immunities
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 4: that these social media corporations have enjoyed since the mid-1990s.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: They can't be sued. You publish deepfake, non-consensual pornography on Facebook.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: It's not Mark Zuckerberg's problem. It needs to be. Rescind
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: Section 230. We need to raise the age of internet adulthood.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 4: Right now it's 13, not enforced. Needs to be at
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: least 16, enforced. And then I think we've got to
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: start taxing these corporations. Wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: history of the world pay virtually no taxes. I think
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: we should tax their digital advertising revenue and route those
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: dollars towards the construction of trade schools, towards surging one-on-one
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: tutoring to American students, reading, math, writing, help them get
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: back up to grade level and be prepared for success.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: We got to stop treating these social media corporations like
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 4: they're these autonomous digital empires and make them accountable to
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: the American public.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: You've talked about an attention tax, which I assume is
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: what you were just referencing with taxing their digital advertising.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit about how that would work?
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: Because I guess if you tax their digital advertising, you'd
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: want to not just have revenue to invest in what
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: you just said, you'd also want to incentivize their behavior
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: to do less of what they're doing, which is keep
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: everyone hooked to the algorithm. Yes.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: I actually think there's two separate policy threads here. One
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: is directly tax a business model that we don't like.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: It's sort of a vice tax. We do the same
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: thing with cigarettes or alcohol, right? So we basically say, hey,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: your business model is you turn children into products. through
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: digital advertising. And we're going to directly tax that to
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 4: make that business model less attractive. I think it would
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: be naive though, to think that that alone is going
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: to sort of unravel their entire network effects that they've built.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: So I also think we need to start thinking about
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: digital dopamine as a phenomenon unto itself. So what I
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: mean by that is like, whether it's online gambling, whether
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: it's social media clicks, what all these companies are doing
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: is they're trying to give you a little hit of dopamine.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: It's an artificial hit of dopamine. There is very limited
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: research and no regulation around that. The Consumer Product Safety Commission,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 4: for example, has a range of regulations and guidances around bicycles,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: which is great. As a dad, I want to know
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 4: about bicycles. I also would love to know what is
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 4: the effect of this app in terms of its delivery
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: of digital dopamine to my son and to my daughters.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 4: And I think we need to start thinking about it.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: not just in a business model way where we're constantly
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: chasing these corporations as they shape shift through antitrust law
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: and start thinking about it in a biomedical lens.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: How do you feel about where we're headed on AI?
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: Because it does feel like we have failed to sufficiently
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: regulate or deal with social media companies and those algorithms.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: And now we are facing an even greater challenge that's
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: going to arrive even quicker.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 5: Yes, it is.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 4: And we can't be caught unawares as frankly we were
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: with social media. I think a blanket point of view
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 4: on AI is not going to serve us well because
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 4: it's a general purpose technology. So I give you two examples.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: If we're going to use AI to accelerate drug discovery
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 4: and narrow the number of endpoints that a new therapeutic
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: could target and thereby make clinical trials cheaper and make
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: it cheaper to get drugs to market, great.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 5: Let's do it.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: If we're going to use AI because Mark Zuckerberg wants
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: to have sensual, quote, sensual conversations, according to Facebook documents,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: with 12-year-olds not signing up for that. If we're going
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: to use AI, actually, I was visiting a company here
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: in LA last year. It's a defense and aerospace manufacturing company,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 4: uses AI to basically do high mix, low volume manufacturing.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 4: And it's not entirely automated. There's humans in the loop,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 4: but it is creating good jobs in a way that
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: is strengthening the United States supply chain.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: I'm pro-tech where it takes out costs and makes us
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: more efficient, but the American public deserve to have a
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 4: say to make sure that technology is empowering us and
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: is not just becoming another tool for these, particularly these
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 4: social media corporations to just attention frack us.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: You mentioned cost disease. Can you talk about cost disease?
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: I love talking about cost.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: I hadn't heard it before.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: We all know about inflation. What is less obvious is
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: that inflation is not evenly spread across the economy. Some
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 4: sectors inflate really fast and some sectors actually prices have
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: gone down like electronics. And the sectors that are most
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 4: infected by cost disease are housing, health care, utilities, local taxes.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: And the reason is because they're very labor intensive and
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 4: they've had low productivity growth. When you get your rent bill,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 4: when you get a utility bill for energy, when you
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: get a health insurance premium for sure, that bill is
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: afflicted with cost disease. And Democrats have got to be
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 4: doctors of cost disease. We should be specific that our
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: goal is to treat cost disease within housing, within health care.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: within utilities. So how do we do that? One, we
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: should cut regulations that are making it too hard to
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 4: build stuff. Housing here is a great example. We need
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 4: to build 5 million more units of housing across this
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 4: country in the next five years. We should adopt technology
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: where it takes out cost. Energy, great example. We should
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: be building five Hoover dams with a nuclear power over
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 4: the next five years. Nuclear power is safe, affordable, reliable.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 4: We need to build a lot more of it in
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: a standardized way. And then we got to take on
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 4: special interests where they are artificially keeping prices high. Health
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: insurance is a superb example. John, your old boss helped
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 4: Democrats see that fighting health insurance corporations turns out to
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: be good policy and good politics. I would like us
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 4: to rediscover that. In President Obama's tenure, the central thrust
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 4: of the fight was about coverage, right? Let's get more
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: Americans covered, pre-existing conditions, up until 26, fund your parents.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: We started talking about costs.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 8: You did.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: And then the more politically popular thing to do was.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 4: To focus on coverage.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: And vital.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 4: And Medicaid expansion. And we got work to do. We
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 4: got 90% of Americans. We got 10% more to go.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 4: I think that inflection point has arrived, though. It's about
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: cost now. People have health insurance, but it doesn't feel
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: affordable if it's going up 15% year over year and
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: you're out of pockets of $ 20, 000. I think the Democratic
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: Party should say quite simply, we don't think anything's free
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: in this world. You pay health insurance premiums. But if
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 4: you then get sick and a doctor tells you you
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: need something, you don't have to pay out-of-pocket costs. You're
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 4: not paying twice for this service. You pay one time
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 4: and you get the service.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: We spent an entire primary in 2020 arguing about the
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: finer points of Medicare for all and Medicare for anyone
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: who wants it or all the different versions of Medicare
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: for all. What would be the debate you'd like to
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: have or you'd like to see in the next presidential
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: election about health care? Because I think the easiest... thing
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: for some in the party is to lean towards universal
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: coverage that has, you know, either Medicare expansion or Medicare
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: takeover completely. And, you know, that is attractive to some
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: voters that when they hear about the details, it's less attractive.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: So how do you think about that debate?
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: Who Americans trust more to lower health care costs? And
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 4: it's a three-way choice.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 8: Mm-hmm.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: Do Americans trust Democrats to lower healthcare costs? Do they
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: trust Republicans to lower healthcare costs? Or do they trust
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: health insurance corporations to lower healthcare costs? I want to
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: have that debate. And the answer is Democrats. We will
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: demonstrate that we will fight both Republicans if they're trying
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 4: to collapse Medicaid and health insurance corporations when they're using
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 4: these pharmacy benefit managers and these group purchasing organizations and
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: these prior auth bureaucracy to try to deny care. We
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 4: will fight both of them. to lower healthcare costs for Americans.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: And we will also attack the central drivers of healthcare inflation,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 4: which is to say, we know the most expensive sites
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: of care in this country. It's intensive care units, it's
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: long-term nursing facilities, it's jails, it's emergency rooms. And our
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 4: goal needs to be, how do we deflect care from
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 4: those expensive sites and do mental health onsite, do expand
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: generic drug or medical device use so that we are
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: basically attacking the drivers of disease upstream rather than allowing
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 4: them to compound into chronic disease. But the central fight,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: before we get into those policy details, is about trust
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: on cost.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: You've talked about both parties turn towards populism, first under
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump. And when we talk economic populism, It seems
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: pretty clear there are good faith arguments on both sides
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: of various policy debates around economic populism. Politically, it seems
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: to be quite attractive to a lot of voters. Obviously,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: the most recent notable example is a New York City primary,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: and it's not just New York City primary voters, but
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: you see this in areas of the country that are
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: swingier than New York City, where people have such anxiety
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 3: about rising costs and have such little trust in whether
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: it's an insurance company, whether it's a bank, whatever it
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: may be, that they are attracted to more economically populist policies.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: Why shouldn't Democrats embrace what a lot of voters seem
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: to want?
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: I think we should. You could call it productive populism,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: but Democrats should absolutely sail to windward of a populist
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 4: moment in American politics. Here, though, is I think a
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 4: distinction that Democrats need to be clear about with Republicans'
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 4: version of populism, which is The Republican version of populism
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: is based on fear. It's telling Americans who to be
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: afraid of, whether it is elites or immigrants or other nations.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: I think the Democratic version has to be about improvement,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: an ethic of not just national improvement, but also self-improvement
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: about how we as a country can get better. We
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: want to be the party of improvement. And to do
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 4: that means we have to deliver. we deliver at the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 4: local level, we deliver at the state level, we had
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 4: to deliver at the federal level. And this is why
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 4: I think the momentum in the party right now is
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 4: going to be more with mayors and with governors. Because
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 4: while we in Washington have to fight Trump and it's
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 4: a righteous fight, we're in the minority of a trifecta.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: And so I've recently helped launch this group called Majority Democrats,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: 32 of us, a handful of members of Congress, but
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 4: actually the majority are mayors lieutenant governors, governors, soon to
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: be governors. And what we're trying to do is demonstrate
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: that Democrats can deliver again, and we can deliver in
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: a way that is picking fights with government or corporations.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: This debate about, oh, it's the government that's the problem,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: or it's corporations that are problem, it's a stale debate.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 4: It can be both. And oftentimes they're propping each other up.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: Last question. Living in an attention economy unfortunately means that
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: political leaders need strategies to capture voters' attention. Trump has
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: certainly figured that out. There's been a lot of discussion
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: lately about how Gavin Newsom is figuring that out with
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: his Twitter account. What is your theory of attention?
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 4: It's the currency of politics and the most valuable.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 5: Of it.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: I guess I view it less as a political opportunity.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 4: Maybe I should as a politician, but And I view
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 4: it more as a dad. I have three young children. John,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 4: I know you have two children as well. And I
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 4: am fixated on the idea of how do I protect
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: their attention and cognition from a society that's trying to
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: monetize it. And as we talked about earlier, this is
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: a really emerging fault line for me is like, I
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: want my kids to tie in real life effort to
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 4: in real life outcomes. I want them to have real friends.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: I don't want them to have Zox AI friends. And
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 4: I want them to be able to have, I guess,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: like attention autonomy. And candidly, I'm not sure I'm a
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 4: great role model. I'm on my phone more than I
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: should be, right? I bought a book recently called How
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 4: to Break Up with Your Phone in 30 Days. I
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 4: made it to day two.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 3: I've tried. I've tried myself.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 10: Right?
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 4: So like I got to be better. But that's when
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 4: I think about attention, it's like it's less in terms
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: of me being a politician, more in terms of me
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 4: being a dad.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's tough. I think about this all the
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: time because we're caught in this odd profession where I
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: could not agree with you more on what I want
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: for my kids, what I want for myself, what I
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: want for all of us. And then it's like, okay,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: Trump is dominating everyone's attention.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: And if we want to win power back, we need
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: great ideas. We need new ideas. We need to talk
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 3: about the future, everything that you've been talking about. We
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: also need people to hear it.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: And I don't know how to play that game without
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: falling further into the trap of all of our attention
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: going to our screens and our phones.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: Let me ask you a question.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 5: Do you mind?
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 4: Sure. One thing I was impressed by with Donnie is
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: he seemed to use his online presence less as like
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: a bulletin board for here's what I'm doing and more
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 4: as a backstage past in real life experiences. And that
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: strikes me as a thread to pull on for how
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: we think about engaging with voters going forward.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: What's your thoughts? I literally just talked about this yesterday.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: Ben Rhodes and I did offline my other podcast about
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: the internet breaking our brains. And we mentioned this example,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: which is, I think the days of a politician standing
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: behind a podium and sort of separating themselves from the
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: voters is gone. And it doesn't feel authentic. It doesn't
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: feel authentic to help people communicate today in this information environment.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 3: And so I think having these conversations, which aren't necessarily all,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: and I was a former speechwriter, but aren't prepared speeches,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: but you're just having conversations with voters and then you're
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: letting everyone into those conversations is a good way to
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 3: get people's attention. I think that it's hard to resist
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: the tactics that grab your attention with outrage or humor,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: which is a better version of that or anything else.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 3: And I think politicians probably need some of that too.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: But I think the core of what you're offering has
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: to be This is who I am. This is who
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: I really am. The space between how I am in
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 3: public and how I am in private has to be
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: as narrow as possible. You can't ever erase it, but
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: it's narrow. And if you come across that way to voters,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: then I think they're willing to give you a listen. Agreed.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: But it's tough. It's a tough one. Jake Hockenkloss, thank
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: you so much for stopping by and really appreciate it.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: Pleasure to be on, John.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Jake Auchincloss for
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: coming on. Love It will be back on the feed
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: on Sunday with a special interview with comedian Mark Maron
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: about the attention economy, how humor might help solve our
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: polarization problems, and lots more. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye, everyone.
• 1:43:05
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