Latest / Pod Save America / “Fair Fight 2020!”

Transcript

“Fair Fight 2020!” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Tommy's conversation with Politico's Natasha Bertrand,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: who's been breaking news about Trump using the government to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: keep his hotels afloat. We have a ton of news
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to cover first, from a new allegation of sexual assault
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: against Brett Kavanaugh to the politics of the climate crisis
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and the latest 2020 primary news in the wake of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: last week's big debate in Houston. Before that, a few
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: housekeeping notes. Love it, I believe you put on a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: show at a quaint venue in Manhattan on Friday evening.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Radio City Music Hall.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: It's out now.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: That's the one.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: That was very fun.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: That's the one.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Stacey Abrams, Desus and Miro, Alyssa Mastromonica, Wyatt Sinek, Dulce Sloan,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: a special appearance... By Michael Barbaro.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Damn right.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Mikey Barbs.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: One of the coolest experiences I've ever had. And you
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: can have it too.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: The big announcement from Friday's Love It or Leave It
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: is our partnership with Fair Fight 2020, which is the
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: organization that Stacey Abrams recently started to fight voter suppression
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: in 20 different battleground states. She needs to raise $ 5
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: million by November 5th, and we have promised to help
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: her raise at least $ 1 million. So we're going to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: be bugging the shit out of all of you to help.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: But first, let's just talk about why this issue is
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: so urgent and why we thought it was so important
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to help out. Tommy, you want to take it?
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think people should understand that Stacey
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: Abrams would be the governor of Georgia if not for
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: voter suppression. She said something, you love it, that really
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: stuck with me, which is that the insidious part of
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: voter suppression is that people try to make it feel
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: like this is user error and that voters are failing
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: to live up to their responsibilities and not doing things
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: right when it's actually a determined, deliberate effort to use
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: techniques that get spread around the country to strike people
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: from the voter rolls or make it harder to vote
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: and otherwise keep mostly Democrats, mostly people of color from voting.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: So Stacey Abrams doesn't take any bullshit. So she has
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: launched this effort to actively combat voter suppression efforts going
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: into 2020.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: And it is so, so important.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, A lot of people know about what
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: happened with Stacey Abrams' election in Georgia. I think fewer
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: people probably know that those exact efforts are happening in
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: states all across the country as we speak, states that
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: we need to win in 2020. Ever since the Supreme
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Court sort of nullified a key part of the Voting
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Rights Act, states can change their voting laws without getting
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: preclearance from the federal government and make it harder for
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: people to vote. And I think the biggest missing piece
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party's strategy right now is that too
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: few people have been focused on that. And so thank
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: God Stacey Abrams is going to be focused on that.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So what is her group going to do?
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: She can set up state-based organizations that can staff a
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: hotline to troubleshoot any issue a voter might face before
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: the election or at the polls. They can flag voting
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: irregularities that could have been caused by suppression. They can
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: challenge voter suppression laws and tactics in court. And they
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: can work with the campaign staffs themselves to ensure that
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: voters get to their polling locations. So while we all
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: sit around and watch debates that make us depressed, infuriated,
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: maybe inspired from time to time.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe richer if we sign up for a lotto, you know?
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: I got there. Where's he going with that? Yeah, I
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: got there too.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: We can donate to Stacey Abrams Fair Fight 2022. effort
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: now to ensure that the Democrat, whoever it is, has
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: a better chance of winning in 2020.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: It's so important.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it is important. And it's also, it's important
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to understand that this is something that we can overcome. Like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I think when you hear that there's voter suppression, that
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: these laws in place, you think, okay, well, what can
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we do about it? We're just fucked. But when you
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: have teams on the ground and Stacey Abrams knows this,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: when you have, and she's going to have like teams
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of full-time people who are hired from the community that
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: they're trying to protect the right to vote in. When
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: you have people on the ground sort of watching these tactics,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: when you have hotlines to help people voting, like, they're
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: making it harder for people to vote. But that doesn't
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: mean it has to be impossible for people to vote, right? Like,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: voter protection teams work. We know they work. They're a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: proven method. And the only thing we need to do
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: now is help Stacey Abrams fund them. And she needs
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: to raise a lot of money by November 5th. But
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: if every single person listening to this right now only
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: donated $ 10, we would get there. $ 10.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: $ 10.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And it's votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight. This is so important.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: We are spending a lot of time on this in
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: the next month to help Stacey Abrams raise this money
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in November. And we would love you all to help
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: because it's probably maybe the single most important thing you
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: can do between now and 2020. Certainly between now and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: we have a nominee.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just remember. that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, these are places
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: that were decided by tens of thousands of votes, and
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: they are actively right now trying to suppress hundreds of
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: thousands of votes in those states. This could determine the
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: outcome of the 2020 election. And one of the lessons
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: of 2016 is if you start paying attention to this
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: a few weeks, a few months before the election.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: It's too late.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Stacey's paying attention now to prevent these losses now.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we need the teams in place early next year,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: which is why the money has to be raised by November,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: because you do it a couple weeks before the election,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you're fucked.
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: Also, if Stacey Abrams told me she was setting up
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: a food truck, I'd want to fund that. I want
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: to be a part of anything she's doing. So thank
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: God it's actually something pertinent to winning elections.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I bet it'd be an improvement on the food trucks
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: that come to Crooked Media HQ on Tuesdays.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: This lobster tastes like it's right out of the ocean
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: in this roll, you know? I'm talking about Stacey's.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: VoteSaveAmerica.com slash Fair Fight. Go there right now and please
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: donate whatever you can. All right. We have a lot
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: of news to cover today.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Stacey Abrams was a lobster food truck. It was like
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: a lobster roll truck. That's the truck that she was running.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, was running?
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: No, that's, keep going.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So we have a lot of news to cover today.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: But I do want to start briefly by asking you, Tommy,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: what the hell is going on in the Middle East?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: After a series of strikes on Saudi Arabian oil facilities
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: over the weekend, the Trump administration is now making the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: case that Iran is responsible and the president has been
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: hinting at military action. In a Sunday night tweet, he said, quote,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: believe that we know the culprit are locked and loaded,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: this attack and under what terms we would proceed. Tommy,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: why does the president want us to go to war
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: on behalf of Saudi Arabia?
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: That's a really good question.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: So as you said, over the weekend, there are these
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: two major Saudi oil installations that got hit. Um, Maybe
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: there were a drone attack. Maybe it was a combination
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: of drones and cruise missiles. I don't think we necessarily
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: know yet. There's a rebel group in Yemen called the
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Houthi rebels who've taken credit for the attack. The Trump
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: administration says it's Iran. They've leaked out to the Wall
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: Street Journal that they have some sort of evidence that
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: they want to provide to the Saudis that say that
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: Iran was responsible. We haven't seen anything publicly yet. So
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: we don't really know what happened. There's some people suspect
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: that maybe this weaponry was too sophisticated to have been
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: used by the Houthis or that the point of impact
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: makes it look like It came south from Iraq and Iran,
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: not north from where Yemen is. Either way, this is
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: really worrisome to me. I think it's more worrisome than
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: the drone incident. A normal administration would maybe go to
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: the UN General Assembly and try to create some sort
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: of international effort to reestablish a deterrent on the Iranians.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: But Pompeo and Trump just sort of leapt to locked
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: and loaded or.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Some sort of military response. And it who knows what
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: will happen if that, if that goes down?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I would, that's what I was wondering.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Like even, you know, we don't, we don't know what
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the intelligence is going to show yet, but if it
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: showed it was Iran was responsible, I wouldn't imagine that
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: in a normal administration, the next move would be to
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: go attack Iran right away. Would it, or?
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think so. I hope not.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, the Saudis spent 70, nearly $ 70 billion on
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: military equipment in 2018. So I would suspect that they
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: have the means to deal with this on their own.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: Um, But I don't know.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, if this happened during the Obama administration,
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: I think there would probably be voices in the situation
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: room telling him that he needed to respond military to
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: Iran to ensure that they don't do this again. It's
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: assuming that Iran actually is responsible.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: For these strikes.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: But, you know, right now we're in this weird place
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: where Trump is trying to meet with the president of Iran,
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: but the world is actually divided against our policy because
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: we pulled out.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: Of the Iran deal.
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: So it's not clear It's not clear what's going to happen,
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: and it's just creating massive instability and, I think, fear
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: among people.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So we're just waiting to take some marching orders from
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the guy who had a journalist murdered over in Saudi Arabia,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: is that what's happening?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, our good friends the Saudis.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Very sweet. Okay. Well, we will keep you all updated
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: on the developments there. Another big story over the weekend.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Two New York Times reporters, Robin Pogerman and Kate Kelly,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: published a piece based on their new book about Supreme
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in which they share new evidence
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that corroborates claims made by Deborah Ramirez, a former Yale
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: classmate of Kavanaugh's, who told The New Yorker last year
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: that Kavanaugh thrust his penis into her face at a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: party when they were in school together. The Times also
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: reported that a different classmate of Kavanaugh's, Max Dyer, told
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: senators and the FBI last year of a separate incident
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: where he says he saw, quote, Kavanaugh with his pants
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: down at a different drunken dorm party where friends pushed
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: his penis into the hands of a female student, though
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the reporters say that the female student has no recollection
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of the incident. We also learned that Ramirez and her
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: legal team last year, quote, gave the FBI a list
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of at least 25 individuals who may have had corroborating evidence.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: But the bureau and its supplemental background investigation interviewed none
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: of them, though So, before we get to the substance
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of this awful and fairly predictable development, I want to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: start by talking about how the Times handled this story,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: which was unorthodox, to put it most generously. Love it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You were tweeting about this over the weekend. What was
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: your take on this?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you have to go back to when New Yorker,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Jane Mara and Ronan Farrow, published a piece with a
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Deborah Ramirez account. It was immediately attacked from the right
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: for some of the caveats that were in the piece.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: And then the Times ran something really peculiar at the time,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: which is they said they could not corroborate her story
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: and that they tried to. Very rarely does a newspaper
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: corroborate publish a story saying they don't have the story.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And that was immediately weaponized by the right at the time.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: It was an.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Incredibly influential story from the Times that undermined the credibility
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: of not just the New Yorker, but Deborah Ramirez and
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: some of the other investigations of Kavanaugh at the time.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: The Times, Dean Becke had to put out a statement
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: sort of adjusting what the Times meant. The Times published
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: a story the next day pointing out that they didn't
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: have an dispute her account. Now, a year later, Brett
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Kavanaugh is on the court. The New York Times publishes
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: this excerpt of a book by these two reporters who
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: did an incredible amount of investigative work to uncover what
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: happened with Deborah Ramirez and with some of these other
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: incidents at Yale. They now are actually saying the opposite
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: of what the Times had once said, saying that they
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: did end up corroborating with this, and they obviously point
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: out all this other information, including another incident But what
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: was so strange is they publish it as a book
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: excerpt in basically the opinion section of the Sunday Times
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: under a headline that basically says, boy, it's hard to
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: fit in at Yale.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Just bizarre. And an even worse tweet.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the tweet was insane and incredibly bad judgment.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: But the fact that they would bury.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: This incredibly important piece of news inside of an opinion
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: piece has sort of been... So just another chapter in
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: the strange behavior the Times has had towards some of
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: this Kavanaugh reporting.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: Well, and also then the New York Times had to
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: update the opinion piece, I believed, to reflect the fact
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: that in the book it says the female student involved
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: in this subsequent incident declined to be interviewed. Friends said
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: she didn't recall the incident in general, which that doesn't
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: mean it didn't happen. But how do you leave that
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: out of this initial account and have to update it
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: with this big correction that's now getting screenshotted and shared
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: by every conservative online?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you sort of wonder if that's another problem with
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: treating this as an excerpt from a book in the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: analysis section as opposed to... And look, these two reporters
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: are Times reporters. It's not like they did a book
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: review and they broke news in the book review. They're
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Times reporters. They could have very easily, I would imagine...
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: had a straight news story from this in addition to
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: sort of a longer piece in the analysis section.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: It was news.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Which is what the Times did around some of the
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Weinstein reporting that the Times did.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: But, you know, it's funny.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: That, to me, the way in which the Times has
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: failed to account for its change on the Deborah Mirra
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: story is more important to me than where this ultimately ended.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Because the truth is, the Times is taking shit today
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: for how they ran this, and fair enough, deserve. But
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: the truth is, in a Twitter environment, the news was found.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: The news has become the news. The fact that it
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: was in a different section of the paper, I think,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: is ultimately not as important.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Other media outlets wrote it up as news and made
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it the proper headline, so it worked out for them.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: It was just sort of there are these bizarre... There is.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Something happening inside the Times that I think is a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: pattern of just some sort of systemic issue with how
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the important work that their journalists are doing are translated
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: into the paper and into their social media platforms.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: That's just... problem.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, the tweet about Kavanaugh was just so beyond
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: the pale. And the headline that this story ran under,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: I think, was just really unfair to the journalism. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: that's it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The tweet that they tweeted the story out, the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: New York Times opinion account, and it said, having a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: may seem like harmless fun, But when Brett Kavanaugh did
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: it to her, Deborah Ramirez says it confirmed she didn't
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: belong at Yale in the first place. Just like, holy shit.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Literally couldn't believe that was true. Couldn't believe it was true.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: It's also just sort of, it speaks to something so,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: there really was such misogyny rooted in the tweet that like,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: that when a penis is brought too close to you,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you better switch colleges. You know, it's like, it's the
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: penis's school, and you need to go elsewhere.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was fucking awful. It was up for
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: like two hours. Two hours, and then the Times deleted it,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and then they had a tweet sort of saying it
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: was poorly phrased, which then they also had to delete
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: because it was much more than fucking poorly phrased, and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: then they finally... issued a full apology for it, said
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it was bad judgment, they were looking into who did it,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Get a public editor, guys.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Like, accountability is good for every institution. Clearly, the Times
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: is suffering from not explaining incidents like this clearly and
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: having readers feel like there's accountability. Again, I'm not in
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: the cancel your time subscription group. I will read the
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: paper till the day I die, but this is bad.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Well, it's hurting the very fantastic reporters and reporting that's
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: done by the Times. That's the issue.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually, you know, It's worth pointing out that,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: you know, the Times issues aside, one of the problems
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: with that tweet is it feeds into a kind of
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: mentality which has been kind of half of the pushback
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: of these Kavanaugh stories. You know, they've sort of tried
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: to have it both ways, which is, you know, we've
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: seen conservatives tweet various versions of this, defend it in
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: some way, which is these are drunken minor incidents that
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: everybody goes through on the one hand, and then also
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: this never happened on the other. They're trying to have
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: it both ways, but don't feed into that don't feed
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: into that interpretation that this was just sort of drunken
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: fooling around, not worthy of investigative attention.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: It also speaks to.
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: The fact that in conservative circles, they think that Kavanaugh's
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: confirmation on the closest party-line vote, I think, ever for
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: a Supreme Court judge suddenly means he is absolved in
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: some way, when the reality is the FBI investigation into
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: these incidents was false.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: The fix was in. It was a sham.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: The New Yorker just confirmed that Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: personally alerted the FBI director of an additional eyewitness alleging
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: Kavanaugh exposed himself to a second woman at Yale, but
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: the FBI never interviewed the witness, Max Dyer, who was
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: the source in the New York Times for the second incident.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: How is that possible?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, this tells us that the FBI investigation was
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a sham and that Kavanaugh very likely was perjured himself
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: during his testimony, which we already knew. I mean, you know,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: news organizations have pointed out all the ways that Brett
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Kavanaugh lied during his testimony, false statements, mistake, whatever you
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: want to say, didn't tell the truth. And this is
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: just more evidence of that. Remember, he said during the hearing, oh,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: this would have been the talk of the campus if
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: this happened. Well, it turns out it was because there's
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: now corroborating witnesses and a separate incident with a witness.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Brett Kavanaugh did not say in his testimony that I
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: am so sorry for the mistakes I made when I
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: was young. These were inappropriate incidents in which I was
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: foolish and immature and drunk and treated women poorly. It's
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: one of my great regrets. I'm so sorry, but I
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: do not believe it should be disqualifying. I've grown as
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a person. I'm a different kind of man now. They
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: dismiss them.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Just lied through it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: They dismiss them completely. And I think, you know, there,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: there has been a kind of internalized, I think they've successfully,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: on the right, even serious or semi-serious, what's left of serious,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: on the right, these people commentators have convinced themselves of
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Kavanaugh's having been railroaded so thoroughly that they now dismiss
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: everything and they can't see the complete picture. They can't
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: see how obvious it is that you attack any one
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: of these stories, you try to find an out out
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of any one of these stories. You're telling me you're
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: looking at the complete record and you're not seeing a
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: man who behaved drunkenly and inappropriately towards women during his
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: time in college and perhaps after. You're actually going to
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: look at all of this and dismiss it completely? That
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: takes an incredible... amount of mental gymnastics.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: He behaved inappropriately at the hearing itself.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: When asked by Amy Klobuchar if he'd ever gotten blacked
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: out drunk, he decided to berate her and ask her
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: if she drank beer when she is a, you know,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: spoken movingly and openly about her family's history with alcoholism
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: and how hard it was on her.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, the guy was, he's terrible.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So the real question is what happens next? Of course,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Trump immediately took to Twitter on Sunday to defend Kavanaugh,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: saying he should, quote, start suing people for libel or
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department should come to his rescue.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: No conflict of interest there. Unbelievable. Let's do that.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Other Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz also responded
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: by defending Kavanaugh and attacking the media. And most of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the Democratic presidential candidates explicitly called for his impeachment, with
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden calling for further investigations.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: So what can Democrats actually do about this?
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: They could impeach him.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, a Supreme Court justice can be impeached. It's,
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: you know, I think it's a multi-layered question about a
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: strategy here if we should impeach a Supreme Court justice
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: before the president of the United States. Yeah, and also
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: we run into, of course, the same problem that we
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: have with the president. And look, even if, you know,
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: the difficult thing here is, say we keep a Democratic
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: House and we have a Democratic president, and the first
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: order of business is, all right, let's look into these...
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: additional Brett Kavanaugh allegations and let's begin impeachment proceedings. You
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: do that in the House, you have a Democratic president,
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: but you go to the Senate and we have the
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: same problem. You don't get 67 votes because we couldn't
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: get any Republicans to vote against him when it wasn't
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: that many votes.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So, you know, there's a real problem here. But, of course,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: it does open up the possibility that you say, when
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you get to that point, all right, either Brett Kavanaugh
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: resigns because of all these additional allegations and these investigations
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: that we've done, or with our majority in the Senate
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and our majority in the House and our Democratic president,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: we'll just add two seats to the Supreme Court.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Or some of the other proposals to rotate justices out.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Rotate justices.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I will say there's also another aspect of this that
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I think Trump immediately went to because of his, you know,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: self-preserving id. Trump looks at the Supreme Court and he
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: sees only either a tool that will help him, whether
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: it's take money to build a wall or protect him
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: from investigations or what have you. And he immediately was
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: worried that stories about Kavanaugh are going to make him
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: reluctant to side too thoroughly with Trump because he needs
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: to look like an even-handed person, not a right-wing partisan
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: who is protected by the Republicans.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Such a weird bank shot, though.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: It was such a dumb... It was an uncharacteristically politically
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: dumb thought thing from Donald Trump.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, but it's... Usually he has a.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: when I say uncharacteristically, I mean, usually has some sort
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of a sense of how like raw politics works, but
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: like the idea that Brett Kavanaugh could convince Democrats that
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: now he's good because he, he lobbed a few good decisions.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And after he's done, that is not really getting what's
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. But at the same time,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: he looks, Trump looks at this and says, all right,
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Kavanaugh's not going anywhere. He's not getting 67 votes in
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: the Senate. So, so what is the, what is the
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: bad that can come for Trump out of these kinds
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: of stories? And it's Kavanaugh being a little bit reluctant
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: to be a straight right-wing judge vote. And that's the
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: only upshot that Trump could see from this, so it's
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: worth keeping that in mind.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: All right, let's move on. In one week, the United
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Nations will be convening its Climate Action Summit, and... We
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: here at Crooked Media have signed on to an effort,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: along with more than 170 other media outlets, to cover
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the climate crisis in the lead-up to the event as
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: part of the Covering Climate Now initiative, which was launched
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. At the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: climate summit on September 23rd, governments will submit plans to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: meet the Paris Agreement pledge of keeping global temperature increases
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: well below 2 degrees Celsius. Although, you know, Donald Trump
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: is trying to pull us out of the Paris Agreement,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: though it will not take effect until after the 2020 election,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: very notably. So I guess my first question is, why
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: does it take an initiative like Covering Climate Now to
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: get us all talking about the climate crisis? Why do
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: we start every Democratic debate with a 30-minute discussion on
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the intricacies of Medicare for All versus the public option,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and then we end up with one question somewhere, if
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: we're lucky, about climate change?
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, we've talked about this before.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Climate change, you couldn't design a tougher problem in a
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: lab if you tried. The effects are diffuse. The actual
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: impact of climate change is revealing itself slowly over time.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: No one terrible storm, no one terrible fire can be
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: explicitly connected to climate change, and yet the cost of
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: climate change are evident over time. The efforts to deal
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: with climate change require collective action on a mammoth and
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: global scale. And all of this creates a sense of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: fatalism that makes people unattracted to the conversation.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: We're also asking people to do something that could be
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: difficult in the short term for an enormous benefit in
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: the long term.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: And we as human beings aren't necessarily great at that
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: in general.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: There's also decades of anti-climate change science that has been
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: funded by the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industries, which
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: has led to skepticism about the existence of climate change,
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: which has been adopted by the cult of Donald Trump
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: and the Republican Party for many, many years that's made
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: it a difficult conversation. You know, in sort of doing
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: some research for this segment, one of the best things
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: I saw, though, was that one out of four American
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: teenagers have engaged in activism around climate.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: That's a remarkable number.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: 25% of any demographic doing something, walking out of something,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: attending a rally, writing to a public official to express
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: your views on climate change. That's exactly the kind of
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: activism we need to drive this issue to the fore
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: and to get people to actually care and to get
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: our government to do something.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I do think that the good news here is that
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the politics of climate change have begun to change themselves
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: fairly drastically over the last several years. Now, the bad
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: news is the reason that I think that they've changed
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: is because we are starting to really see and experience
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: all over the place these extreme weather events. Droughts, floods, fires,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: record heat waves. It's just happening all over the place now.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: There's a good piece we were reading in preparation for
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: this in Time Magazine about how the politics of climate
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: change has affected the race in Iowa. Because there's so
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: many farmers there who are like, there's been floods that
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: have cost me a lot of money, and then there
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: was drought that cost me a lot of money. And
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: so now all these farmers who are in the middle
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: of the country who you wouldn't think would be big
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: climate change people are now climate change people. So there
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: was a CBS News poll recently that said, a majority
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of Americans believe that climate change is a serious problem,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and more than 25% would consider it to be a crisis.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: 56% of those polled said that we need to address
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: climate change right now. And seven in 10 think human
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: activity contributes a lot or some. So, you know, the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: politics are changing. And, you know, we saw this in
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: our change poll of Wisconsin. We've seen it in polling
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: across a whole bunch of different states and around the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: country in the Democratic primary. Climate is now, after health care,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in many of these polls, the second most important issue
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to Democratic voters. And yet, while everyone came out with
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: their climate plans, it still seems like we haven't had
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: a couple new cycles on Democratic candidates talking about climates,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: except once they roll out their plans, you know?
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. There's a connection, I think, between the
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: way in which healthcare and immigration have dominated the debates
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: and climate and the economy have been given second billing.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: And they're connected in that I think one of the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: good shifts we've seen, in part because of the Green
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: New Deal, you know, when the Green New Deal came out,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: the Republicans immediately latched onto that one set of talking
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: points that talked about cows and that talked about planes
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: and talked about cars in ways that I think the
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: right found very helpful. And it's worth remembering that, you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: when we talk about climate change as things you'll get,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: as ways you'll be helped, as ways there'll be jobs
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: and new technologies, I think we're on solid ground. The
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: right understands that they are more successful talking about climate
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: change when they're talking about things that people want to
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: take away from you. whether it's cows or airplanes or
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: cars or what have you.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And so I think- Or the frame that Tommy was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: talking about, which I think is the real problem, that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: climate change is all about sacrificing something in your life
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: now for benefits that you may never see. And if
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: it's framed that way, we will not succeed, I don't think. Yeah.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And so I do think, look, I'm not talking about
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the science, I'm talking about the politics. I think one
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: of the most important stats we've seen is that I
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: think it's more recent study found that more than 70%
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: of global emissions since I think 1988 have come from,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I think, 100 companies. And I think when we resort
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: this whole issue, when we reframe it less as a
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: collective action conservation problem and more as a corporate malfeasance
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: technology and investment problem, I think we're on much firmer ground.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: I also think like I'm glad we did these climate
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: change forums. I think they were valuable. But I do
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: think a debate would have actually been better because conflict
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: gets news coverage and there was no sense of a
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: contrast between what's in one plan versus another. I do
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: think that for too long, the conversation around climate change
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: was like the polar bears are going to drown and
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: things that fell very far off. The IPCC report that
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: said we're basically in huge trouble if we don't drastically
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: fix the problem or reduce emissions by 2030, that changed
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: the context. But I also think people need to understand
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: that Climate change is not binary. We don't fix it
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: or not. We can make things better or we can
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: make things worse based on our actions. And I hope
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: that understanding will reduce some of the fatalism you hear
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: that's like, well, if the U.S. doesn't do anything, the
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: Chinese are just going to continue to use coal-fired plants
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: and put all the smog into the air and we're
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: screwed no matter what.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: So what's the point? Actually, that's not the case. We
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: can make things better.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And I do think, and the reason that I've always
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: thought that the Green New Deal is actually smarter politics...
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: than some of the more moderate proposals that don't include
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: proposals to sort of, you know, sustain economic justice. I
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: think the Green New Deal is smarter politics because we
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: need to talk about it as within this crisis, there
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: is great opportunity to create an economy that is fair
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and just and produces all kinds of well, good paying jobs.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And people can get training for all these new jobs
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and they can be guaranteed that, you know, they have
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a federal job guarantee in there and they can make
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: sure that they have benefits and people on the front
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: lines of communities who are getting devastated by climate change
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: can be helped now, not 10 years from now, but
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: right now. I think we need to talk about this as, look,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: we have a dirty energy economy here in the United
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: States and around the world. And in the transition to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: the cleaner energy economy, to a renewable energy economy that
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: we have to make if we want to survive, there
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: is plenty of opportunity to have an economy that is
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: more fair and more just and still productive and growing
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: all around the world. This can be a win-win, and
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: it doesn't just have to be make all these sacrifices now,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and hopefully things in the future will be better.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why I think when When Warren in the
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: climate change town hall was asked, I don't know, was
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: asked about straws and what have you, she said, this
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: is what they want to talk about. They want you
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: to think they're coming for your hamburgers, they're coming for
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: your plastic straws, because that feels like the kind of old, confiscatory, conservative,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: your personal sacrifice version of the debate when the Green
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: New Deal makes this about infrastructure and opportunity and jobs
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and all the other good things people inherently understand comes
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: from new technology, renewable energy, and what have you.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the primary. Last week's debate
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was the first where Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren were
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: on stage at the same time. But aside from an
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: initial exchange on health care, the two frontrunners didn't draw
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: too many contrasts with one another. In a few pieces
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: over the weekend, tried to dig into why and what
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: might happen next. The New York Times noted that Biden
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: delivered a veiled swipe at Warren at a fundraiser the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: day after the debate, saying the country needs not just plans,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: but quote, someone who can execute a plan. And Politico
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: reported that some of Biden's allies in Warren's home state
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of Massachusetts are going after the senator on electability, with
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: one state rep saying the grave concern of many of
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: us Democrats in Massachusetts is that in many of the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: counties where Senator Warren underperforms, they are demographically and culturally
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: similar to voters in key swing states. As for Warren,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the Times notes that her goals in the near term
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: are to consolidate her backing from liberals and expand her
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: appeal to lower income voters and minorities. Attacking Mr. Biden
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: might not serve either goal. Let's start with Biden here.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: What do we think about his strategy of largely avoiding
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: direct conflict? And what do we think of the argument
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: he's making about Warren through the veiled swipes and through
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: his supporters and allies?
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: I think we don't just need plans. We need people
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: who can implement them. While true, it's probably not going
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: to be the most effective attack. I do think that
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: trying to go after Warren on electability grounds is probably
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: their best bet, judging... on my conversation with people in
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: Iowa where it's literally the only thing they think about. Now,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: we've talked about this before. It's an unfair comparison. It's
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: an ill-defined term. We don't really know what it means.
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: I think looking at data from a Massachusetts Senate race
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: where Elizabeth Warren didn't run a single TV ad is
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: probably imperfect at best. But if you can sow that
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: seed of doubt in a potential or current Warren supporter,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: it might be effective.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: What do you think? I think going.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Look, when you said, oh, we need someone who's going
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: to get something done, immediately what I thought of was
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I know, I thought the same thing. It's a weird
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: one to go after her on.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: It's something so frustrating about the axis that these debates
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: have been on. Healthcare, this one is very similar in that, okay,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren doesn't know how to get things done. She
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's one of the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: most influential policymakers of the last half century on the
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Democratic side. Like, okay, fine, let's debate it on those terms.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: But then It's similar to the health care debate in
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: that Biden attacks Medicare for all, not, I think, with
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: what is, I think, the ultimate motivation for some of
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: the supporters of a public option, which is this is
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: the thing we can get done. Single payer might be
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: a better outcome in the long run, but it's politically unfeasible.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I think that that is the undergirding argument for a
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: lot of the public option defense. But he doesn't make
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: it on those on that frame. He makes it on
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: a pure policy frame that that actually his plan is
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: fundamentally better, not just more politically feasible. And I think
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: you see the same thing. Like, electability is ultimately the
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: redoubt for Biden and Biden supporters. And they are trying
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: to find a less political and a more inspiring way
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: to have this conversation. You know, maybe it'll work, maybe
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: it won't.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: But that was what I was thinking.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Warren has understood so far that the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: best way to prove electability is to win, right? It's show,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: not tell. And yet, I also think at some point,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I imagine she will turn to an argument about not
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: necessarily why she is the most electable, but why she
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: can win. What are the qualities that she brings to
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a race with Donald Trump that would make her a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: candidate who is able to beat him? And I think
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: because of what you said, Tommy, it's on the minds
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: of everyone you talk to in Iowa. It's on the
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: minds of the electorate. We know from poll after poll
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: after poll, we can all yell about it all we
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: want on Twitter about electability. And yet that's what Democratic
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: voters are thinking about. And they're very scared that Donald
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Trump's going to win again. And so If you want
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to be the nominee, at some point, you have to
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: make an argument about why you can win. Maybe it's
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: your issues that you're talking about. Maybe it's the contrast
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: that you have with Trump. Bernie Sanders has actually been
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: making an argument for his policies and himself and his
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: electability vis-a-vis Donald Trump from the beginning. Sometimes the Sanders
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: campaign throws out a lot of polls, which I think
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: are sort of useless to do that. But there's a
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: lot of times where Bernie is contrasting like his background
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump's background, you know, in a speech and
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: his policies with Donald Trump's policies. And he's sort of
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: trying to get you to imagine him and Donald Trump
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: on stage together. And I think I imagine that at
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: some point Elizabeth Warren will pivot to an argument similar
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: to that.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's I guess there's two levels. There's
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: that which I think is the kind of public facing.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: less intellectual, less data-driven argument, basically saying, see me on
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: the stage with Trump, see me battling Trump. It makes sense.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Here's how I'll do it. But I do think one
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: piece of this is the fact that consistently, when you
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: look at head-to-head polls in states like Wisconsin, often those
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: polls show Warren defeating Trump, Kamala Harris defeating Trump, Joe
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Biden defeating Trump. But consistently, Joe Biden has a bigger
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: edge in those polls. And I think when you get
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: the kind of conversation around Biden never totally gets past that.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: And so I'd be interested in a Warren campaign argument
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: about why I shouldn't care about that distinction. Now, maybe
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: it's because she believes she'll do better over time, or
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: maybe she believes that those numbers about Biden in Wisconsin
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: are actually soft and concealing some of his weaknesses. But
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: I just haven't seen that argument fully spelled out.
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, she's in a great position. I mean, she's got,
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: she doesn't have to lay a glove on Biden. She
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: knows that if she attacks him, her unfavorables will go
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: up and you don't want to do that this early.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: But she's got a whole bunch of people just laying
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: broadsides on the guy at every single debate. So if
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: I'm Elizabeth Warren, I'm wondering how I got so lucky
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: to be positioned as I.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Am right now.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, I was going to ask
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you guys what you thought about her strategy of largely
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: avoiding attacking him. And I do think it's quite smart.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I think His strategy of not directly, I mean, he's
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: doing it through veiled swipes and his allies and stuff
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: like that. But look, there is a reason that Joe
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Biden and Elizabeth Warren at the top of the field
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: right now, and even to an extent Bernie Sanders, are
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: not all going after each other. Sanders is a little
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: more directly confronting Biden. But there's a reason that Warren
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and Biden aren't doing it is because they are both
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: very well liked in the electorate, right? Like these differences
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: are magnified on cable and Twitter and everywhere in the media.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: But If you look at favorability ratings for Joe Biden
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Warren, they are both very, very high. Same
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: thing with Bernie Sanders, too, within the Democratic primary. And
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of people know them. Their name ID is
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: at the top of the field as well. And when
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: you look at second choice for Biden or you look
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: at second choice for Warren, you look at second choice
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: for Sanders, there's a lot of mixing there of supporters
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: that are going to each other. So you don't want
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: to be the one who's attacking another candidate who is
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: people have a lot of affection for, whether you're Elizabeth
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Warren or Joe Biden.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't think Warren needs to beat Biden
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: right now. I think she needs to be the sole
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: alternative to Biden in the minds of most voters, especially progressives,
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: and she will be well positioned. Now, if this whole
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: conversation is stressing you out, votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight. Donate,
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: build out the election infrastructure we need to win in 2020,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: no matter who wins the primary.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: And I also, I do think that Warren's task now
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: is to really make inroads with voters of color and
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: non-college educated voters as well, because she's not broken into
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: either of those groups. The latest CNN poll, here's the
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: white vote in the latest CNN poll, Warren 23, Biden 21,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Sanders 15. Here's the non-white vote in the latest CNN poll,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Biden 28, Sanders 19, Warren 12. And that Biden number
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: has hung on despite many months of... a lot of
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: criticisms thrown at Joe Biden about all kinds of issues.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: How much do you think there's a connection between the
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: electability conversation, which has generally been about how Biden has
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: this advantage, and these kinds of polls that show a
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: strong support outside of the kind of liberal, white, college-educated
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: voters that have been more favorable towards Bernie and Warren?
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: That there are a lot of people out there that
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: are looking at this election and just view Trump as
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: such a tremendous threat that they're just going to go
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: with the safest choice. And I guess what I'm getting
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: at is how much of Elizabeth Warren's problem outside of
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: what her current base of support is, is tied back
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: to that electability problem.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: I think it, I mean, we don't know how much
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: of a problem it is right now, but I think
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that is going to be her biggest challenge. I think
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: if we were in 2008 right now, and it was
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the end of George Bush's second term, and he was
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a horrible president, everyone's looking to see who the next
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: president is. And this was instead of Obama and Hillary,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Biden and Warren, I think Warren would have been close
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to overtaking Joe Biden right now because the risk tolerance
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: in 08 on trying something new and different and big
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: structural change was higher than it is now because Donald
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Trump is sitting there as president. And I think the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Warren campaign and all these other campaigns... whether it's Kamala Harris,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, they have to reckon
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: with the fact that the risk tolerance among the Democratic
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: electorate or people who have voted Democrat in the past
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: is much lower than it has been for a while
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: because of who is in the Oval Office.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: It's interesting.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I do think that's part of what you're seeing is
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: a different but connected calculation from Pete as he shifts
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: to a kind of more center-left, moderate alternative.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Very quickly, might I add. He swerved pretty fast into
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that lane.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: He swerved hard.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: But now it's also, I think, there's still this question
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: of not just will Warren defeat the... Not whether there
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: will be a left alternative to Biden, but will there
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: be a center-left alternative to Biden? And there are still
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: a few candidates... just right below the top three saying,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I want to be the Biden alternative for those looking
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: for the safe option.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I think the challenge there is if you're a voter
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: who wants a safer option, who wants someone that you feel, oh,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty positive this person could be Donald Trump. Do
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: you see that in a Pete Buttigieg, a Kamala Harris,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: a Beto O'Rourke, a Cory Booker?
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Even a Bernie Sanders.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Even a Bernie Sanders. And I don't know That might
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: be a harder case to make than just a case
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: for yourself and your candidacy in general, not a case
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: that like I'm going to swerve to be the moderate
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: alternative to Joe Biden. Like, I just don't know that
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that calculation with Biden's name recognition and the space he
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: occupies right now is and sort of like waiting for
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: him to collapse is the is a is a calculation
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: that you should make, especially if look, if you are.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I think if you're Amy Klobuchar, of course, that's a
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: good calculation because that's what you are. That's what you believe. Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: You know, that's who you are. That's who you've always been.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Pete Buttigieg, I don't know that that's who he's always been.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm actually paying attention to it less
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: as what it means for Pete Buttigieg than what it
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: means for Joe Biden. And that there are a number
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: of Democratic candidates who believe Joe Biden's support is softer
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: than it looks. Or at least are betting that if
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: it is, they want to be there.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, true.
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Tommy's interview with Politico's Natasha Bertrand.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: OK, I am joined by Natasha Bertrand, Politico's national security
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: correspondent and a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. She
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: recently broke the story about Air Force stays at Trump's
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: Turnberry Resort earlier this month.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: Natasha, thanks for doing the show.
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: So you were the first to report on these Air
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: Force crews staying at Trump's fancy Turnberry.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Golf Resort in Scotland. Why are these stays so atypical
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: in your view?
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: So we got a tip from someone who was essentially
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: in their mind kind of acting like a whistleblower here
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: saying that they had never experienced this particular flight that
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: they took over in March from the U.S. to the
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: Middle East. That they had never experienced a stopover in
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: Scotland and that the stopover that they had at the
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: airport nearby Trump's resort was in and of itself unusual
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: for that particular trip. And then, of course, the stay
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: at Trump Turnberry Resort was extremely bizarre for them as
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: well because it would be outside of their per diem
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: rates in terms of the food and, you know, even
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: the cost of the stay that the Air Force now
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: disputes that. So one of the big questions I think
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: that stems from this is whether it's obviously a violation
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: of the domestic emoluments clause, which prevents the president from
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: accepting any federal money outside of his salary. And that
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: is what the House Oversight Committee has been investigating for
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: the last several months. They wrote a letter to the
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: Pentagon in June asking whether this was an isolated incident,
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: whether there were more occasions of the U.S. Air Force
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: lodging at Trump's Turnberry Resort en route. to the Middle East,
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: and they never got a reply. And they gave the
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: Pentagon a deadline last week of last Friday. We don't
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: know whether they've heard back, but, you know, since we
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: reported on that one trip in March, we've gotten additional
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: information and learned that it's been actually about 40 times
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: that the Air Force has done this.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, another key part of this story is that
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: the Air Force crews were refueling planes at Prestwick Airport. Um,
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: That's a nearby airport to Turnberry, I believe. The Prestwick
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: Airport actually received its first Air Force contract in 2015,
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: which is obviously during the Obama administration. But it does
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: seem odd. I don't pretend to understand how the Department
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: of Defense procures things like fuel and whatever else. But
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: do you have any sense of why the Air Force
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: would want to refuel at that airport versus other options,
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: presumably where you might be able to have discounted fuel?
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question. And this is one of
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: the reasons why the person who reached out to us
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: was so concerned about this, because usually they refuel at U.S.
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: military bases, right, in Germany or Spain or Italy, wherever
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: has the space for them, essentially. What the Air Force
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: has been telling us is that in an effort to
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: kind of consolidate their operations in Europe and kind of,
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: you know, work down their stops at military bases and,
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: you know, as they're kind of, you know, decreasing general
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: activity over there, They've forged these partnerships with commercial airports
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: in order to just for convenience sake have a place
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: to refuel on these missions. What we don't know is
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: whether these commercial contracts are happening elsewhere, why Prestwick in
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: particular was selected when there's a military base right nearby
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: in England that isn't necessarily very crowded and that the
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: Air Force has used– that has continued to use even
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: with this contract with Prestwick. And how much more expensive
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: it is actually for them to be refueling there because
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: they get– it costs a lot more for them to
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: do that rather than refuel and have technical maintenance provided
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: to the planes at a US military base. And of
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: course the significance of Prestwick is that it was on
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: the verge of bankruptcy until the Scottish government bought it
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: for a pound back in 2013. And it is the
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: closest airport to Trump's resort. So if that airport fails–
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: then Trump's resort could really suffer. So there's a symbiotic
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: relationship there that is also kind of raising eyebrows among critics.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, this whole thing is so confusing because I
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: believe Turnberry was in pretty dire financial straits at one
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: point as well. I don't know how well it's doing
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: now because obviously the president of the United States refuses
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: to provide any financial information. But so it seems bizarrely
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: coincidental that suddenly you would see Air Force crews staying
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: at Trump's resort. You'd see the Air Force sending people
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: to this random airport in Scotland, which doesn't really seem
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: like it's on the way to wherever these folks are going.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: But it also happened.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: I mean, the refueling happened in 2015. So I've really
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: been struggling with how to understand this. And I don't
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: know if you have any tips for people who haven't
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: followed it as closely as you.
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the most important thing to keep in
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: mind is that this contract was signed under the Obama
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: administration in terms of the Air Force and the refueling
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: at this particular airport. But that doesn't necessarily mean that
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: the Air Force had to stay at Trump's resort, right?
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: There are a lot of hotels in between Prestwick Airport
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: and Trump Turnberry where the Air Force could have been
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: lodging their crews once Trump took office and it became
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: a conflict of interest, a clear potential boon for the
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: president and for the struggling resort that Obama wasn't– it
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: didn't matter for Obama because he doesn't own Turnberry. So
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: I think the conflict here and– which is what the
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: Air Force is actually reviewing. They launched an internal review
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: last week and what the House Oversight Committee has been
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: investigating is whether this is a violation of the constitution
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: and short of that, whether it's just an ethical lapse,
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: whether the perception that the US military is enriching the
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: president And providing a lifeline to this struggling resort is
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: something that they can justify to the American taxpayers who
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: are ultimately footing this bill.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: So you mentioned that the Air Force did a probe
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: of this issue. I think they found that Cruz stated
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: Turnberry up to 40 times. The Oversight Committee is now
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: investigating Turnberry. Do you know, like, how long those investigations
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: will take and what kind of public disclosure there will
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: be based on their findings?
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: We have no idea. I mean, we know that the
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Air Force is still in the middle of their review.
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: And so they're not giving us a breakdown, for example,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: of how many times the Air Force has stayed at
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: Turnberry since Trump took office. And they haven't given us
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: a breakdown exactly of the costs and how much taxpayers
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: are actually paying for this and what hotels were unavailable
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: or really the justification. for them essentially being Turnberry's biggest
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: customer at this point. The Oversight Committee has been investigating,
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: but they asked the Pentagon for documents by Friday, as
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: I mentioned earlier, but they haven't, to our knowledge, gotten
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: anything back. So it could be, right now it's an
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: independent investigation into U.S. military expenditures at and around Trump's
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: property in Scotland and other properties, but it could be
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: wrapped into the overall corruption investigation that the House is
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: doing And if we see that, of course, then it's
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: going to drag on for a while as this becomes
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: more involved in the overall impeachment proceedings.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: The on again, off again impeachment proceedings that we're maybe doing,
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: maybe not. Depends on who you ask on what day.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: So we're seeing what we saw today from Nadler is
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: that the House Judiciary Chairman is that he believes that
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: Trump should be impeached. And he says that we are
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: in the middle of an impeachment investigation. But, you know,
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: depending on which Democrat you ask, you'll get a thousand
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: different answers.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: That's always a winning strategy to message it. So another
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: interesting thing that happened over the weekend was Congressman Adam
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: Schiff has subpoenaed the acting director of national intelligence, claiming
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: that he is unlawfully withholding a whistleblower complaint from the committee,
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: maybe at the behest of the president, maybe at the
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: behest of someone in the White House. Schiff says that
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: because the DNI is citing executive privilege around this document,
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: around this whistleblower, it means it has to involve some
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: top White House officials. I know that this matter is
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: just completely shrouded in classification and secrecy, but do you
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: have any sense of What's going on or how this
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: might play out?
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this was a real shock for us on Friday
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: night to receive this kind of scathing statement from Schiff,
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: who's the chairman of the Intel Committee, giving us just
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: enough detail to be really concerned about a potential cover
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: up here that could involve the president and a whistleblower
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: in the intelligence community who went to the inspector general
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: of the CIA evidently to lodge some kind of complaint.
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: based on what he'd seen or she. But not enough
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: for us to actually know what the indiscretion, alleged indiscretion was,
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: whether or not, you know, the president has actually been
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: involved in discussions to keep it from the House Intel Committee. But,
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: you know, this was really bizarre, honestly, for Schiff to
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: put out this kind of statement. We rarely see him
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: making this kind of subpoena and statement so strongly and
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: so publicly, and especially when the details on the public
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: end are so scarce. So this really felt to us
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: like it was a last resort, like he was making
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: this public because the negotiations between the Intel Committee and
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: the acting Director of National Intelligence had just fallen apart,
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: even though the Inspector General within the CIA had gone
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: directly to the Intel Committee and said, look, just have
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: to give you a heads up, we have this whistleblower.
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: I can't give you the full details of their complaint.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: You're going to have to go through the DNI. So
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: really what we're hoping to see in the next coming
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: days is just more details of what this complaint actually was,
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: evidence that Schiff might have to suggest that this cover-up
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: that he's alleging came from the White House, and what
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: involvement the Justice Department has had in this. Because according
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: to Schiff's complaint, the acting director of national intelligence actually
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: took this complaint from the whistleblower to the Justice Department,
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: which is unusual because that would be then outside of
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: the boundaries of the intelligence community. So the whole thing
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: is very odd. And Schiff has been out on TV
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: over the last few days discussing it, but again, really
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: not providing any kind of minute details.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to stress how weird it would be,
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: I think, for a CIA inspector general to take a
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: matter to the Department of Justice. Normally, they would be
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: hell-bent on resolving these kinds of things internally, if at
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: all possible.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: It's very weird, and that's one of the biggest complaints, obviously,
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: that we've seen from the Durham investigation, which is the
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: Justice Department essentially going in and trying to interview CIA officers.
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: about the conclusions that they drew in 2016 during the
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: Russia probe. Just that kind of mixing of the DOJ
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: and the intel community is seen as a big no-no
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: because on the one hand, you're dealing with prosecutors who
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: deal in criminal activity. On the other hand, you're dealing
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: with intel officers who deal in human intelligence. And so
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: they always fear that the DOJ and the administration is
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: going to politicize their intelligence. So it's very messy, and
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: we still don't have really any answers.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of those stories. It's like this could
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: be like earth shattering, massive revelations. It might not. And
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: there's just no way for us to tell.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: And that feels like the infuriating part for the course
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: during the Trump era. Although I guess ultimately reporters have
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: managed to figure out every detail of every scandal.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: So hope springs eternal.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: The other big news over the weekend, obviously, was this
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: attack on the Saudi oil infrastructure. The Trump administration is
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: pointing the finger at Iran. The Houthi rebels have come
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: out and taken responsibility for I guess I naively had
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: hoped that John Bolton leaving this administration might cool tensions
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: with Iran. There was reporting about potential talk of Trump
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: maybe meeting with the president of Iran, President Rouhani, at
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: the UN General Assembly. Obviously, the Iranians have a lot
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: to say about how relations with the U.S.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: Go.
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: But just stepping back a little bit, I mean, do
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: you have a sense of who is calling the shots
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: when it comes to foreign policy? Is Pompeo in charge
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: of everything now?
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think that Pompeo is just a reactive figure,
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: to be honest. I mean, he doesn't even really seem
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: to know what the president's impulses are going to be
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: one day to the next. And I think we saw
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: that with the disagreement over whether or not the president
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: actually said that he would meet with Iran without preconditions.
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: You know, he had said that in interviews previously. And
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: then he sent out Pompeo to tell reporters that just
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: last week or the week before that And now he's
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: completely undermined that and said that he actually never said that.
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: So Pompeo then is, of course, left looking kind of
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: like an idiot, like he doesn't really know what's going on.
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: So I think, you know, I think Pompeo is definitely
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: the person that Trump trusts most in his foreign policy orbit.
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: And I'm sure that he takes advice from Pompeo the most.
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: And that's actually part of the tension that led Bolton
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: to resign is that Pompeo and Bolton were constantly clashing. But,
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: you know, ultimately, Trump is his own foreign policy advisor, right? And,
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: you know, I think that's why we're seeing so much
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: kind of schizophrenic behavior when it comes to creating a cohesive,
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: coherent approach to dealing with these crises.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, I remember well when the, you know, sort
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: of ongoing complaint about the Obama national security team was
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: that it was small and insular and, you know, cabinet
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: secretaries are being cut out. And I just, you know,
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: it definitely feels like there's a tiny cabal of individuals
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: who are making all these decisions. And, you know, normal
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: players like the Defense Department don't seem to even be
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: relevant in some of these debates.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: And, you know, I think part of the irony of
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: this Saudi-Iranian conflict now and with the president trying to
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: say that, trying to pin all the blame on Iran
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: is that You know, all of a sudden now he
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: kind of he appears to trust his intel community, right?
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's completely selective when he decides that he
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: wants to do certain things to put pressure on the
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: person or adversary that he doesn't like at this moment.
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: And other times when he feels like the intel community
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: is acting against his own personal interests. I do think, though,
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: that ultimately what Trump wants, and I was speaking to
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: a national security official, senior national security official who actually
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: left the administration very recently, it was not John Bolton,
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: but who really emphasized to me that Trump is obsessed
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: with nuclear weapons, absolutely obsessed. And he sees everything through
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: that lens. And for better or for worse, his main
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: focus and when it comes to foreign policy anyway is
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: trying to prevent anyone from using a nuclear bomb. And
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: that is why he's met with Kim Jong-un in North Korea,
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: why he's made such a big show of trying to
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: become friends with everyone. And that is ultimately why he
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: has been starting to kind of back down in recent
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: weeks on, you know, holding this really hard line with Iran.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: And that's ultimately what led John Bolton to resign in
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: fury as well, is that he wanted to ease sanctions
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: on Iran. And Bolton was extremely against that. He I
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: think now, though, with what we're seeing with Iran, and
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: this remains to be seen because the satellite images that
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: the administration released of the attacks are not totally consistent
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: with an attack directly from Iran. They're not all pointing
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: in that direction, but we'll see whether or not they
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: can produce more solid evidence of that. But he now,
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: I think, is using that as a way, just like
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: he did by tweeting out that classified image, that satellite image.
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: of the Iran missile launch, he sees it as a
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: way to kind of taunt them and threaten them and
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: thinks that he can back them into a corner now
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: and that he has leverage. But ultimately, I don't think,
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: you know, as his own foreign policy advisor and as
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: an America first type of guy and as someone who
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: is constantly threatening war and has in the past on
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: Twitter and never actually followed through on it, I don't
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: think that we're going to see any kind of serious
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: military action.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, man, I'd forgotten about the tweet of the classified
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: image of the Iranian military you know, space station, quote.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Unquote, side.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: The best thing I've ever heard about Donald Trump's focus
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: on foreign policy is that he wants to prevent the
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: use of nuclear weapons. If only that were to be
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: translated into negotiations with the Russians who actually have nuclear
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: weapons and not the Iranians who don't about limiting their deployment,
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: that would be a wonderful thing. But here we are.
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: Last question for you. So now we have like acting DNI.
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: We have an acting Homeland Security Secretary. We have an
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: acting chief of staff. we have some guy I've never
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: heard of who's the national security advisor. Is there any
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: sense of when Trump might step up and replace John Bolton?
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's the easiest one for him to do.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: He doesn't actually have to get Senate confirmed. He could
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: just name somebody tomorrow.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: And he's actually been, he's narrowed his search in recent days. Um,
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: you know, to people like Ricky Waddell, who is a
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: former deputy national security advisor, and Robert O'Brien, who's the
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: current presidential envoy for hostage affairs. And these are both
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: kind of, you know, you could say of O'Brien, at least,
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: that he's kind of an establishment figure. He kind of
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: worked in the Bush administration.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Et cetera.
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: But he could also go with you know, a totally
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: rogue choice like Rick Grinnell, who's the ambassador to Germany
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: at this point and who he had lunch with the
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: other day.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: And Grinnell is kind of very eager for any administration
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: position that he can get at this moment. He's been
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: angling for every type of national security intel position for
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: years now. And then there's also Keith Kellogg, who's on
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: his radar, who's a national security advisor for Mike Pence.
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: So There's no real timeline here, but like you said,
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: there's no need for Senate confirmation. So he could do
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: it really any day and probably by Twitter.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: Natasha, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: you for your great reporting on Turnberry and everything else.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: Everybody should follow you on Twitter. Where can they find you?
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: At Natasha Bertrand.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: That's easy enough. Thank you again for doing the show.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Talk to you soon.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: Thanks, Tommy.
• 1:00:17
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