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“A Picture Says a Thousand Crimes.” · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
0:22
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:23
Speaker 1: On today's show, the Department of Justice reveals more evidence
0:26
Speaker 1: against Donald Trump Republicans try to run from their extreme
0:30
Speaker 1: abortion positions. Joe Biden caps off a big few weeks
0:33
Speaker 1: with a primetime speech. And former New Orleans mayor turned
0:36
Speaker 1: White House infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu stops by to talk
0:40
Speaker 1: about how the president's infrastructure law is being felt in
0:43
Speaker 1: cities all across the country. Then, Dan and I brace
0:47
Speaker 1: ourselves for another round of Take Appreciator.
0:52
Speaker 2: I was so ready for this.
0:54
Speaker 1: Me too, me too. But first... Midterms are coming up,
0:58
Speaker 1: so we're drinking a ton of coffee. I don't know
1:01
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1:02
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1:11
Speaker 1: we did that, Dan? See how we did that?
1:13
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1:52
Speaker 1: out this week's America Dissected where Abdul speaks with Atlantic
1:55
Speaker 1: staff writer Amanda Mull. about which sunscreens are truly protecting
1:59
Speaker 1: your skin and why Americans have fewer good, safe sunscreen
2:03
Speaker 1: solutions compared to people in other countries. I did not
2:05
Speaker 1: know that. You can learn more about this and listen
2:07
Speaker 1: to new episodes of America Dissected each Tuesday wherever you
2:11
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. Dan,
2:15
Speaker 1: you've talked about how Donald Trump's legal strategy has been
2:18
Speaker 1: to flood the zone with shit, and now Donald Trump
2:22
Speaker 1: is drowning in it. The 2024 GOP frontrunner thought he
2:30
Speaker 1: could delay the Mar-a-Lago investigation by finding a Trump judge
2:34
Speaker 1: who would grant an independent review of the classified secrets
2:36
Speaker 1: he stole from the government. But his request triggered an
2:41
Speaker 1: incredibly damning 36-page response from the Department of Justice that
2:45
Speaker 1: laid out even more evidence of criminality. He's such an idiot. Alright, so...
2:52
Speaker 1: Trump apparently had three classified documents in his desk and
2:55
Speaker 1: more than 100 in his residence, some at the most
2:58
Speaker 1: highly classified levels. And that was twice as many documents
3:03
Speaker 1: as Trump's lawyers turned over when they swore an oath
3:06
Speaker 1: that he didn't have anymore. The government also has evidence
3:10
Speaker 1: that documents were likely concealed and removed from the Mar-a-Lago
3:13
Speaker 1: storage room after the Justice Department had subpoenaed them and
3:17
Speaker 1: wrote in the filing that, quote, efforts were likely taken
3:20
Speaker 1: to obstruct the government's investigation. Even Fox and Friends' own
3:27
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite has some questions about this. Let's listen.
3:30
Speaker 3: Well, ultimately, it comes down to why did he have
3:33
Speaker 3: all that secret stuff at Mar-a-Lago? You know, I know
3:37
Speaker 3: his team has said that they declassified it, but that's
3:39
Speaker 3: news to the agencies that those documents belong to. And
3:44
Speaker 3: he had he had apparently three classified documents that in
3:48
Speaker 3: his desk.
3:49
Speaker 2: And then the stuff, as Brian detailed on the floor.
3:52
Speaker 3: It shows five yellow folders marked top secret and another
3:57
Speaker 3: one that says secret SCI, which means sensitive compartmentalized information.
4:02
Speaker 3: Those are the biggest secrets in the world. Why would he,
4:06
Speaker 3: and apparently the president, former president, went through them in January.
4:10
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't he say, oh, you know what? I really
4:13
Speaker 2: need to.
4:13
Speaker 1: Turn that back over.
4:14
Speaker 2: Why do you have all that stuff at Mar-a-Lago?
4:17
Speaker 1: Never said this before, but good question, Steve Doocy. He
4:22
Speaker 1: was interviewing Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, but you
4:25
Speaker 1: don't hear her answer because she just ran away from
4:28
Speaker 1: the studio.
4:29
Speaker 2: I mean, if you actually watch the video of it,
4:32
Speaker 2: she is trying hard not to laugh. It's so uncomfortable.
4:36
Speaker 2: She has this weird shit-eating grin on her face because
4:39
Speaker 2: she knows this is a ridiculous question to which She
4:41
Speaker 2: can only give a ridiculous answer. But that is part
4:44
Speaker 2: of her job as a Republican governor is to answer,
4:46
Speaker 2: give ridiculous answers to ridiculous questions about Donald Trump.
4:50
Speaker 1: That's the gig. That is the gig. So what did
4:52
Speaker 1: you think of all this? What were your reactions to
4:54
Speaker 1: the DOJ's latest court filing?
4:58
Speaker 2: Donald Trump and his lawyers are just walking through a
5:01
Speaker 2: field looking for rakes to step on. This entire special
5:05
Speaker 2: master thing is stupid and fake. It could potentially delay
5:11
Speaker 2: the investigation or charges, but ultimately it has nothing to
5:15
Speaker 2: do with the underlying already proven multiple times charge that
5:19
Speaker 2: he took classified documents and then hid them from the government.
5:23
Speaker 1: Like it has not, not only, not only proven at
5:26
Speaker 1: this point, Dan admitted he's out there truthing up a storm, uh,
5:31
Speaker 1: about how he had the documents.
5:33
Speaker 4: Yeah.
5:33
Speaker 2: It's just, it is like, this was so unnecessary and
5:38
Speaker 2: it's like, he doesn't have real attorneys and, His real
5:41
Speaker 2: attorneys are not trying to win a legal case. They
5:44
Speaker 2: are trying to take press releases, truths, and put them
5:49
Speaker 2: into legal motions. And then you have real skilled lawyers
5:54
Speaker 2: on the other side making a case. And this was
5:58
Speaker 2: such an unforced error from Trump's team because Trump was having,
6:01
Speaker 2: I would say, a modicum of success in the public
6:04
Speaker 2: arena today. just spreading disinformation, flooding the zone with shit,
6:08
Speaker 2: as we would say, about all the various reasons that
6:11
Speaker 2: what he did was not illegal or it was a
6:14
Speaker 2: raid or all these other things. And then by following
6:16
Speaker 2: this unnecessary, not particularly important, special master motion, what happened
6:21
Speaker 2: was it gave the government an opportunity to lay out
6:24
Speaker 2: in explicit detail exactly what Trump did wrong. And it
6:29
Speaker 2: makes it very clear that he is, as you said,
6:33
Speaker 2: very vividly, I think, drowning in shit right.
6:36
Speaker 1: Now yeah it's a it's a it's a he flood
6:39
Speaker 1: the zone with shit and he is the flood victim
6:44
Speaker 1: i also i mean like we learned a couple things
6:47
Speaker 1: from the it's so funny every time trump tries to
6:49
Speaker 1: make one of these moves we just learn more damning
6:52
Speaker 1: evidence from doj and in this uh in this filing
6:55
Speaker 1: they wrote the former president's council explicitly prohibited government personnel
7:00
Speaker 1: from So there goes his whole argument, one of many
7:02
Speaker 1: stupid arguments, that they were cooperating the entire time. It's
7:05
Speaker 1: pretty clear that they were not cooperating. Not only were
7:07
Speaker 1: they not cooperating, but they were lying to the government
7:09
Speaker 1: and hiding things and attesting things that were false and
7:27
Speaker 1: in written affidavits or in written statements that now is
7:32
Speaker 1: going to not only get Trump in trouble, but it
7:33
Speaker 1: sounds like his two lawyers. I feel like the TV
7:36
Speaker 1: lawyers who swore to the feds that there weren't any
7:39
Speaker 1: more classified documents might be in some trouble, huh?
7:41
Speaker 2: I am shocked that the former OAN anchor who was
7:45
Speaker 2: on television spreading dangerous and malicious conspiracy theories turned out
7:50
Speaker 2: to be the same person who had lied to the
7:52
Speaker 2: FBI on behalf of Donald Trump. I am shocked because
7:57
Speaker 2: usually you would trust the integrity of these OAN anchors
8:01
Speaker 2: to stand by the truth because that's why they got
8:03
Speaker 2: into journalism to begin with is the truth. I mean
8:05
Speaker 2: this does– what I think this is another thing that–
8:08
Speaker 2: another question that appears to be answered by this filing
8:11
Speaker 2: is– I think you and I have speculated. Melissa and
8:14
Speaker 2: I speculated a little bit last week is did these
8:18
Speaker 2: attorneys lie to the FBI or did Donald Trump lie
8:21
Speaker 2: to his attorneys? It appears– from what the FBI is
8:25
Speaker 2: saying that they believe based not just on what they found,
8:29
Speaker 2: but also what they may have seen on the surveillance
8:31
Speaker 2: tapes or from other witnesses is that the attorneys seem
8:34
Speaker 2: to have known that Donald Trump was not turning over
8:37
Speaker 2: all of the documents, which it was a major tell
8:41
Speaker 2: that they were like, don't look in this box.
8:46
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm looking for classified documents. The president owes us
8:48
Speaker 1: classified documents. Can you please give us the classified documents? Yeah,
8:52
Speaker 1: look anywhere you want except right there in the box mark.
8:54
Speaker 1: Do not look.
8:55
Speaker 2: Do not look under my bed.
8:56
Speaker 1: Secret stuff in here. I see Trump's still truthing that
9:02
Speaker 1: this is all fine because he's saying he declassified the
9:06
Speaker 1: secret documents that he lied about hiding in his basement.
9:08
Speaker 1: He's still going with this. You think that's any more
9:10
Speaker 1: likely to work now?
9:12
Speaker 2: This is pretty interesting, I think, because this has been
9:15
Speaker 2: his core defense, but it could not be more flimsy. First,
9:21
Speaker 2: he is a president who was served by a staff
9:24
Speaker 2: known for their fealty to Trump and their willingness to
9:27
Speaker 2: lie for him, and not a single one of them
9:29
Speaker 2: has come out to even tell that lie publicly, even
9:32
Speaker 2: just in the public arena. Second, in the photo that
9:37
Speaker 2: was included in the filing, all of the classified cover
9:41
Speaker 2: pages are still on the documents. Had they been declassified,
9:47
Speaker 2: it's likely they would no longer have the pages that said,
9:49
Speaker 2: don't read past this page if you do not have
9:53
Speaker 2: the qualifications for it. Third, in none of Trump's legal
9:57
Speaker 2: filings has any of his attorneys ever made a statement.
10:00
Speaker 2: made that assertion because to do so would be a
10:03
Speaker 2: crime because it is not true. And then finally, and
10:05
Speaker 2: I think most interestingly and most humorously, in Trump's response
10:10
Speaker 2: filing last night– To the one we were just referring to,
10:14
Speaker 2: his team said that the special master would need to
10:17
Speaker 2: have top secret clearance to read the documents. It's just.
10:23
Speaker 2: That's the best part.
10:25
Speaker 1: It is the best part. Not only in the response
10:28
Speaker 1: to the filing did they not say the declassification defense,
10:32
Speaker 1: which you of course would. if you believed it to
10:35
Speaker 1: be true, but you wouldn't want to, if you're a
10:37
Speaker 1: lawyer putting it in a legal document, because you could
10:40
Speaker 1: face consequences as a lawyer. But yeah, they said the
10:43
Speaker 1: special master would need a high classification, which is so funny,
10:46
Speaker 1: which is like, if the Trump judge at this point
10:48
Speaker 1: grants a special master, then like, yeah, they're going to
10:51
Speaker 1: have to have the highest clearance and then fine. It'll
10:53
Speaker 1: delay it, but it's not going to help them at
10:54
Speaker 1: all because they're going to find the same thing that
10:56
Speaker 1: the fucking government just found. The other really funny thing is, um,
11:01
Speaker 1: you talked about the picture. So the, So, yeah. So
11:05
Speaker 1: there's the picture of all the classified documents, the highly
11:08
Speaker 1: classified documents. And then the Department of Justice has the
11:12
Speaker 1: picture and has them all laying out on a floor.
11:15
Speaker 1: And Trump truth to response that he really he really
11:18
Speaker 1: thought that he got them on this one. But he
11:20
Speaker 1: also he talked about this in an interview that he
11:23
Speaker 1: did earlier this morning. Let's take a listen.
11:26
Speaker 5: A lot of people think that when you walk into
11:28
Speaker 5: my office, I have confidential documents or whatever it may be,
11:31
Speaker 5: all declassified. But I had confidential documents spread out all
11:35
Speaker 5: over my far floor and like a slob, like I'm
11:40
Speaker 5: sitting there reading these documents all day long or somebody
11:43
Speaker 5: else would be. It's so it's so dishonest.
11:47
Speaker 4: When you look at it.
11:48
Speaker 5: And so people were concerned because they said, gee, you know,
11:52
Speaker 5: that's a strange scene. You look at the floor and
11:54
Speaker 5: you see documents, right? They have cover sheets of documents. No,
11:58
Speaker 5: they put them there, John.
12:00
Speaker 1: You can accuse me of stealing state secrets. You can
12:03
Speaker 1: accuse me of hiding them in my beach house. You
12:07
Speaker 1: can accuse me of lying to the federal government and
12:09
Speaker 1: obstructing investigation. But don't you dare accuse me of being
12:13
Speaker 1: a slob.
12:14
Speaker 2: And no one. And I mean no one thought you
12:18
Speaker 2: were reading these documents. Not a person thought that. Like
12:22
Speaker 2: no one has even ever asserted in all of this
12:26
Speaker 2: that one of the reasons why he wanted them was
12:27
Speaker 2: because he was so interested in the substance. He was
12:29
Speaker 2: so– had such an attachment to the information. He couldn't
12:33
Speaker 2: be separate from his books.
12:36
Speaker 1: It's like on the Tuesday pod when Tommy surmised that–
12:39
Speaker 1: Some presidents take notes about the classified briefings they get
12:42
Speaker 1: and they're like, maybe Trump was taking notes. I was like,
12:44
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a danger that Trump has taken
12:47
Speaker 1: any notes about anything. The guy doesn't read. He's not
12:50
Speaker 1: taking notes. He knows how to use his fucking DVR.
12:53
Speaker 1: That's about it.
12:55
Speaker 2: To the extent there is writing in Donald Trump's hand
12:59
Speaker 2: on those pages, it is just like, hearts to himself.
13:06
Speaker 2: It's like one of those notes to Jeanine Pirro, do
13:08
Speaker 2: you love me? Like very weird shit. But the other
13:11
Speaker 2: thing that is funny is like when you boil down
13:14
Speaker 2: that truth slash that interview, his argument is the FBI
13:19
Speaker 2: took the documents, the highly secret classified documents out of
13:24
Speaker 2: my unlocked desk drawer and put them on the floor.
13:29
Speaker 1: To make me look bad. It's like Dude, that's not
13:31
Speaker 1: what's making you look bad. Stealing the secrets is what's
13:35
Speaker 1: making you look bad. No one's out there being like,
13:38
Speaker 1: if the guy had only had those in cartons, in boxes,
13:41
Speaker 1: it would be fine. But he's just, he's, it's really,
13:45
Speaker 1: I was actually sort of disappointed by his response because
13:47
Speaker 1: he's just, it's very lazy right now. He's not even
13:49
Speaker 1: mounting a good, a good defense. I think the other
13:52
Speaker 1: thing this does, by the way, is like the more
13:55
Speaker 1: The more the Justice Department releases of their evidence here
14:00
Speaker 1: and why they think that Trump may have committed a crime,
14:02
Speaker 1: I think the more difficult it is for them to
14:05
Speaker 1: not bring charges, honestly. Like, I don't– I mean, how
14:09
Speaker 1: do you decide at this point that this is– what
14:12
Speaker 1: he has done is not criminal or does not warrant
14:15
Speaker 1: an indictment? I know we're not lawyers, but it's pretty–
14:19
Speaker 1: pretty cut and dry at this point. Yeah.
14:21
Speaker 2: What is interesting, I'm going to put on my fake
14:24
Speaker 2: lawyer hat for a second here.
14:25
Speaker 1: Thank God. Thank God, because I left mine in the
14:27
Speaker 1: other room.
14:29
Speaker 2: You know what? Send that idea to the merch department.
14:35
Speaker 2: They go right next to the fueling our democracy coffee shirts.
14:41
Speaker 2: So is... One way in which if– and you and Tom,
14:45
Speaker 2: we talked about this. Melissa and I talked about it
14:47
Speaker 2: as well. Like was the FBI just trying to get
14:50
Speaker 2: the documents back because they thought it was a danger
14:52
Speaker 2: that these documents were in this unsecured place? I mean
14:54
Speaker 2: we just had this report of a foreign national pretending
14:57
Speaker 2: to be a member of the Rothschild family and just
14:59
Speaker 2: wandering endlessly through Mar-a-Lago. Or is there a possible criminal
15:05
Speaker 2: case here? And the Presidential Records Act is a law.
15:08
Speaker 2: It is a law that Trump has clearly violated. Like
15:10
Speaker 2: it is not even– like that is obvious. Presidential Records Act,
15:13
Speaker 2: for reasons I can't really explain, does not have an
15:16
Speaker 2: enforcement mechanism in it.
15:17
Speaker 4: Right.
15:18
Speaker 2: So I think it's like the Hatch Act. You just
15:20
Speaker 2: get a stern letter from an unnamed government bureaucrat. I
15:22
Speaker 2: don't know. But the DOJ has never in a single
15:27
Speaker 2: filing cited the Presidential Records Act as a reason that
15:30
Speaker 2: they needed the search warrant, they wanted to get the documents.
15:33
Speaker 2: As the basis of the investigation, it has always been
15:35
Speaker 2: the Espionage Act. This is– A law that does have
15:39
Speaker 2: criminal penalties.
15:39
Speaker 4: Yes.
15:40
Speaker 1: And this is what I think a lot of the
15:44
Speaker 1: Trump people, a lot of other people are just missing.
15:46
Speaker 1: And Charlie Savage at the New York Times, who's a
15:49
Speaker 1: fantastic reporter on all these issues, laid this out many
15:53
Speaker 1: weeks ago, which is like the whole classification debate here
15:57
Speaker 1: is like a red herring or just doesn't. It's sort
16:00
Speaker 1: of superfluous because the Espionage Act is a law passed
16:05
Speaker 1: by Congress that says that you cannot be holding a
16:10
Speaker 1: national defense secrets, whether they're classified or not. If the
16:15
Speaker 1: government has these national defense secrets and you are mishandling them,
16:18
Speaker 1: that is breaking the law. So that doesn't have to
16:20
Speaker 1: do with the Presidential Records Act. That doesn't have to
16:22
Speaker 1: do with whether you're president. You can declassify some shit.
16:24
Speaker 1: That is a law passed by Congress, which is why
16:27
Speaker 1: it appeared in the search warrant. Also, there's an obstruction
16:33
Speaker 1: charge there. And I don't know how they get around
16:35
Speaker 1: not bringing the obstruction charge when they keep saying in
16:38
Speaker 1: all these filings, yeah, we have evidence that there was obstruction.
16:41
Speaker 1: Unless it's just like the lawyers just get charged with
16:43
Speaker 1: obstruction and Trump gets off. I don't know.
16:45
Speaker 5: I don't know.
16:46
Speaker 1: It's pretty, it's wild. I know we're doing take appreciators
16:49
Speaker 1: in a bit, but I just wanted to check back
16:51
Speaker 1: in and take your temperature on David Brooks's take from
16:54
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago that we talked about titled, did
16:57
Speaker 1: the FBI just reelect Donald Trump? How are we feeling
17:00
Speaker 1: about that one? So we feel pretty good about our
17:02
Speaker 1: original take on that take.
17:03
Speaker 2: Well, I have a question for you to help us
17:06
Speaker 2: get to the answer to this.
17:07
Speaker 1: Sure.
17:08
Speaker 2: Do federal penitentiaries have a student government like system? Like,
17:15
Speaker 2: could Trump run for president of the B block? Like,
17:18
Speaker 2: is that possible?
17:19
Speaker 1: He can run for president from jail. He can run
17:21
Speaker 1: for president of the United States from jail. I looked
17:23
Speaker 1: this up months ago. It was terrifying.
17:25
Speaker 2: That is such a funny sentence.
17:29
Speaker 1: Some legal nerd, a couple legal nerds wrote about this
17:31
Speaker 1: somewhere because we talked about this. It was like a
17:33
Speaker 1: year ago, maybe at this point. And yeah, he can
17:37
Speaker 1: even probably run for president from jail.
17:39
Speaker 2: That's actually– I would actually like to talk to a
17:41
Speaker 2: legal expert about that.
17:43
Speaker 1: Like I think you have to– Luckily, we have three
17:46
Speaker 1: of them on a Crooked podcast.
17:47
Speaker 2: It's like a huge missed opportunity.
17:48
Speaker 1: It's a very popular podcast.
17:49
Speaker 2: Since I co-hosted this podcast with one of them last week.
17:53
Speaker 2: Is I think in some states– like in New Hampshire,
17:55
Speaker 2: you might have to file for president in person.
17:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.
18:00
Speaker 2: I don't know whether you can designate a proxy, but.
18:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, all kinds of legal questions. Melissa, Kate, Leah, we
18:06
Speaker 1: would love to hear your take on this sometime soon.
18:11
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to you through this podcast. Okay,
18:13
Speaker 1: so yeah, I don't think that Brooks' take was, I
18:17
Speaker 1: don't think it was right on the money there. I
18:20
Speaker 1: don't think this is helping Trump in any way. But
18:22
Speaker 1: are you seeing any signs that this investigation is causing
18:26
Speaker 1: Republican politicians to rethink their undying loyalty to a twice impeached,
18:31
Speaker 1: one-term president who's the target of multiple criminal investigations?
18:35
Speaker 2: No, but it is, and this is a very enjoyable circumstance,
18:39
Speaker 2: making their defenses of him much more uncomfortable. It's like
18:44
Speaker 2: every day, Trump, through some sort of truth or message
18:49
Speaker 2: communicated through his sock puppets like Sean Hannity, puts these
18:53
Speaker 2: Republicans out on a very thin branch, and then the
18:56
Speaker 2: Department of Justice and the reality just saw it all.
18:59
Speaker 2: It keeps happening again. So it gets harder. I imagine
19:04
Speaker 2: that other than the most fatuous MAGA fabulists, most are
19:11
Speaker 2: going to try to avoid talking about this as much
19:13
Speaker 2: as humanly possible.
19:15
Speaker 4: Yeah.
19:15
Speaker 1: You don't think they're going to be hitting the campaign
19:17
Speaker 1: trail with this as a message?
19:19
Speaker 4: Yeah.
19:19
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like the idea that the quote-unquote raid
19:23
Speaker 2: is going to be the rallying cry for the MAGA base.
19:26
Speaker 2: I don't think that's going to be what people are
19:27
Speaker 2: going to take to the voters this fall.
19:29
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, not only is Donald Trump a
19:34
Speaker 1: big problem for the Republican Party right now, their extreme
19:37
Speaker 1: position on abortion isn't sitting so well with voters either.
19:41
Speaker 1: So Republican politicians are doing what they do best, which
19:43
Speaker 1: is lying about it. At least nine Republican candidates have
19:47
Speaker 1: removed or watered down references to to Donald Trump or
19:51
Speaker 1: abortion from their campaign sites. So we're already seeing them.
19:55
Speaker 1: They're walking a little away from Donald Trump. They're not
19:59
Speaker 1: touting their embrace of Donald Trump on their campaign sites.
20:02
Speaker 1: And also they're trying to remove some of their extreme
20:05
Speaker 1: positions on abortion. Blake Masters, who called abortion demonic, removed
20:10
Speaker 1: language that he's 100% pro-life, and supports a federal fetal
20:14
Speaker 1: personhood law, and he has walked back his call for
20:17
Speaker 1: a national abortion ban. Dr. Oz, the TV doctor who
20:21
Speaker 1: apparently doesn't know how TV works, has tried to waffle
20:24
Speaker 1: on abortion, but leaked audio from a campaign event in
20:27
Speaker 1: May has complicated that strategy. Let's listen.
20:31
Speaker 6: I do believe life starts at conception, and I've said
20:33
Speaker 6: that multiple times. Your heart starts beating at around nine weeks.
20:38
Speaker 6: So I was concerned that if legislators picked a time
20:41
Speaker 6: frame that's not medically accurate, it would invalidate the law.
20:44
Speaker 6: But also, if life starts at conception, why do you
20:46
Speaker 6: care what age the heart starts beating at? It's not
20:50
Speaker 6: risk to murder if you were to terminate a child
20:54
Speaker 6: whether their heart's beating or not.
20:55
Speaker 1: Abortion is murder under any circumstances. That's what Dr. Ross thinks.
21:00
Speaker 1: Even though he is now trying to waffle on that position. So,
21:04
Speaker 1: do you think this strategy could work? And, uh, How
21:07
Speaker 1: can Democrats make sure it doesn't?
21:08
Speaker 2: Well, it definitely can work. It absolutely can. I mean,
21:11
Speaker 2: if we think back to 2018, you think of those
21:14
Speaker 2: Orwellian videos of Republican candidates staring into the camera and
21:17
Speaker 2: saying that they always opposed efforts to take away protections
21:21
Speaker 2: for people with pre-existing conditions. Some of those people lost,
21:25
Speaker 2: but a lot of them won. And it absolutely can work.
21:27
Speaker 2: We know that disinformation works. We know we live in
21:29
Speaker 2: a world where 70% of Republicans believe that the election
21:32
Speaker 2: was stolen. The way we can fight back against it
21:35
Speaker 2: is we have to keep the pressure on. Ultimately, politics
21:40
Speaker 2: is a battle for attention. It's a battle for garnering attention,
21:42
Speaker 2: but it's also a battle for focusing attention. Right now,
21:47
Speaker 2: the public's mind is focused on abortion, Republican extremism embodied
21:52
Speaker 2: by the Supreme Court taking away constitutional right, and then
21:56
Speaker 2: the Republicans pushing these extreme positions. That could fade to
21:59
Speaker 2: the background and over the course of the next 80
22:02
Speaker 2: some days or whatever we have left, unless we keep
22:04
Speaker 2: the heat on. So I've been very, I think, pleasantly
22:06
Speaker 2: surprised at how intense Democratic messaging and advertising efforts have
22:10
Speaker 2: been on abortion. I looked at some of those ads
22:12
Speaker 2: with Melissa Murray for an episode of Campaign Experts React
22:14
Speaker 2: this week. They're spending a ton of money on the
22:17
Speaker 2: number one issue in all Democratic advertising, but we have
22:20
Speaker 2: to keep that up because if abortion fades to the background,
22:22
Speaker 2: the ability to flood the zone with shit, the real
22:25
Speaker 2: theme of this episode, could be more successful than it
22:27
Speaker 2: is right now.
22:29
Speaker 5: Yeah.
22:29
Speaker 1: And I do think The way to make sure that
22:32
Speaker 1: strategy works is like Blake Masters scrubbing his website like, hey, man,
22:38
Speaker 1: you know how the internet works?
22:40
Speaker 2: I mean, look, he's not really familiar with Silicon Valley
22:44
Speaker 2: or internet. He doesn't really know anyone who might be
22:47
Speaker 2: bankrolling his campaign who's Mark Zuckerberg's mentor. So it's understandable
22:52
Speaker 2: that Blake Masters wouldn't know.
22:54
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty easy for voters to understand, especially
22:57
Speaker 1: if you put a lot of money behind ads, that, like,
22:59
Speaker 1: here was the website when he was running in the primary,
23:02
Speaker 1: and here's the website now. And he's scrubbed it, and
23:05
Speaker 1: it changed, and he's trying to run away from his position.
23:07
Speaker 1: And here's a recording of him calling abortion demonic. And
23:10
Speaker 1: here's the recording of Dr. Oz calling abortion murder. Like,
23:14
Speaker 1: I think some of them can try to run away
23:15
Speaker 1: from it, but the people who have said things in
23:18
Speaker 1: the past where you can see the writing on their
23:20
Speaker 1: websites in past versions— If you put enough money behind
23:23
Speaker 1: those ads and you put that in front of voters,
23:25
Speaker 1: that's going to be really hard to walk away from.
23:27
Speaker 1: And then they're not just extremists, they're lying extremists, which is,
23:30
Speaker 1: you know, the truth.
23:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one part of this that's important, and
23:35
Speaker 2: it's like a minor nuance to the messaging is focus
23:40
Speaker 2: more on the extremism than the lying or the hypocrisy.
23:43
Speaker 1: Because people expect politicians to be liars anyway.
23:45
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And just like, that's it. It doesn't like, Ooh,
23:48
Speaker 2: he tried to trick us. Well, like no shit. He
23:50
Speaker 2: tried to trick us. He's kind of a disgusting human being.
23:52
Speaker 2: But the point is, what was he trying to trick
23:54
Speaker 2: us about?
23:55
Speaker 4: Yeah.
23:56
Speaker 1: It's sort of like our tendency to, to, to go
23:59
Speaker 1: after hypocrisy arguments.
24:00
Speaker 2: Like, yes.
24:01
Speaker 1: Oh, you saying this about us, but you said this, that,
24:03
Speaker 1: that doesn't work.
24:03
Speaker 2: You voted against the inflation reduction act and you went
24:06
Speaker 2: to a ribbon cutting election.
24:08
Speaker 4: Out of Congress.
24:09
Speaker 1: We all, yeah, we all love that on Twitter. We're
24:12
Speaker 1: all fans of that on Twitter. But I guess because
24:14
Speaker 1: voters think that politicians of all parties are all sort
24:18
Speaker 1: of cynical, lying assholes is the problem. But they don't
24:22
Speaker 1: like extremists. That's for sure. All right. So one person
24:25
Speaker 1: who's been having a pretty good couple weeks is President
24:28
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. We haven't been able to say that in
24:29
Speaker 1: a while.
24:30
Speaker 2: Fucking love it.
24:31
Speaker 1: His approval ratings have climbed from the high 30s to
24:33
Speaker 1: the low to mid 40s. So, you know, whatever. We'll
24:36
Speaker 1: take it. We'll take it. Swing state Democrats are starting
24:39
Speaker 1: to campaign with him again. Like to see that. And tonight,
24:42
Speaker 1: Thursday night, he will be delivering a primetime speech in
24:45
Speaker 1: Philadelphia that the White House says will focus on the
24:48
Speaker 1: continued battle for the soul of the nation. So this
24:51
Speaker 1: is the latest in a string of speeches and remarks
24:53
Speaker 1: from Biden over the last few weeks, including a fundraiser
24:56
Speaker 1: where he called Trumpism semi-fascism, which caused some pearl clutching
25:01
Speaker 1: among various supporters of the guy who just demanded that
25:04
Speaker 1: he be reinstated as president.
25:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:08
Speaker 1: So most of our listeners will probably hear this episode
25:10
Speaker 1: after Biden's speech, but talk about what you think the
25:13
Speaker 1: White House hopes to get out of this and what
25:15
Speaker 1: their thinking is on this soul of the nation message,
25:18
Speaker 1: which of course was Biden's message in his presidential campaign
25:22
Speaker 1: and appears to be the message they want to have
25:25
Speaker 1: in the midterms as well.
25:27
Speaker 2: I think there's been a lot of obsession in the
25:30
Speaker 2: run-up to this speech about the term soul of the nation.
25:34
Speaker 2: What is he going to talk about? And I think
25:36
Speaker 2: we have to think we have to kind of not
25:39
Speaker 2: focus on those words so much, right? You like the
25:41
Speaker 2: amount of times that you and I had conversations over
25:43
Speaker 2: the years where you were working on this big speech,
25:45
Speaker 2: but we have to go pitch it to people and
25:47
Speaker 2: we have to come up with some sort of quasi interesting,
25:50
Speaker 2: but not particularly revealing paragraph to put out there, which
25:54
Speaker 2: drove you insane always.
25:55
Speaker 1: It drove me insane. It drove me insane. I'm sorry
25:59
Speaker 1: for all the times I got mad at you when
26:00
Speaker 1: you asked me to do that.
26:01
Speaker 2: And that, I think that's what's happening here, right? I
26:03
Speaker 2: imagine the speech is not done. I think they know
26:05
Speaker 2: what they want to say, but battle for the soul
26:06
Speaker 2: of the nation is shorthand. Biden's larger argument. And what
26:10
Speaker 2: we've seen is a transition in that argument since 2020,
26:14
Speaker 2: particularly the last few months here, which is in the
26:19
Speaker 2: early days, it was largely about unity. And now I
26:23
Speaker 2: think it's transitioned to a focus on the fact that
26:26
Speaker 2: unity is impossible when we have a faction that is
26:30
Speaker 2: trying to divide America for partisan and political gain. So
26:34
Speaker 2: focusing on that part of it, what I want to
26:36
Speaker 2: hope the White House– I think what they want to
26:38
Speaker 2: do is frame the midterms, sort of send up a
26:41
Speaker 2: bat signal to the entire party of this is a
26:43
Speaker 2: message we can all run on whether you are running
26:46
Speaker 2: in a super liberal district or a purple district. You
26:48
Speaker 2: will– alter it to fit your district or your state.
26:52
Speaker 2: But this is the larger story we should be telling
26:54
Speaker 2: as a party and to build the momentum that he
26:57
Speaker 2: has had in recent weeks. So I think doing this
26:59
Speaker 2: and doing it in prime time is good because we're
27:01
Speaker 2: talking about it, right? If it's just a speech at
27:04
Speaker 2: a rally at three o'clock on a Tuesday, it wouldn't
27:07
Speaker 2: get this sort of attention. We might talk about it,
27:09
Speaker 2: but the rest of the press probably wouldn't. But this
27:11
Speaker 2: has been the subject of a lot of conversation. And
27:13
Speaker 2: it is yet another sign, I think, that we've seen
27:16
Speaker 2: a lot from the Biden White House over the summer
27:18
Speaker 2: that they are really sort of upping their game in
27:21
Speaker 2: terms of grabbing sort of the microphone and using it
27:24
Speaker 2: to communicate to the public and to drown out a
27:26
Speaker 2: lot of the bullshit and conversation that's been out there.
27:30
Speaker 1: I have one more thought on the sort of unity
27:32
Speaker 1: piece around the soul of the nation that I've been
27:36
Speaker 1: thinking about. And then I think the Biden White House
27:39
Speaker 1: has been really smart on this. We talked about sort
27:42
Speaker 1: of the ultra MAGA branding or the extreme MAGA branding
27:46
Speaker 1: that the White House unveiled a couple months ago, and
27:51
Speaker 1: some people were making fun of it, some people weren't sure,
27:53
Speaker 1: but it was the result of a lot of polling,
27:56
Speaker 1: a lot of research, a lot of testing. And so
27:59
Speaker 1: Biden the other day, obviously the semi-fascism comments got all
28:05
Speaker 1: the attention. But in that same speech, he said, MAGA
28:09
Speaker 1: Republicans refuse to accept the will of the people, embrace
28:12
Speaker 1: political violence, and don't believe in democracy. And then in
28:15
Speaker 1: like the next sentence, he reached out to Democrats, independents,
28:19
Speaker 1: and mainstream Republicans. So, you know, we get a piece
28:23
Speaker 1: in the New York Times today, of course, the preview
28:26
Speaker 1: piece of this speech by Michael Scheer that starts, President
28:32
Speaker 1: Biden likes to say there is nothing America cannot do
28:34
Speaker 1: if the country is united and its rival parties are
28:36
Speaker 1: willing to work together. But with just two months until
28:38
Speaker 1: the midterm elections, Mr. Biden is purposely spending less time
28:41
Speaker 1: hailing the virtues of compromise and and more time calling
28:44
Speaker 1: out dangers to democracy using some of the sharpest and
28:47
Speaker 1: most combative language of his presidency. Obviously designed to trigger
28:51
Speaker 1: us as most New York Times analysis pieces are. But
28:56
Speaker 1: I would argue that there is no conflict between Joe
29:00
Speaker 1: Biden calling out the extremism of MAGA Republicans and Joe
29:05
Speaker 1: Biden also saying, I want to bring Democrats, independents, and
29:09
Speaker 1: mainstream Republicans together in this country. And I actually think
29:12
Speaker 1: that is the smart and right message. I think, again,
29:15
Speaker 1: you hear Joe Biden calling out to Republicans on Twitter
29:18
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, come vote for us and trying
29:20
Speaker 1: to appeal to Republicans, normal Republicans. And on Twitter, everyone
29:24
Speaker 1: gets annoyed about that, right? Why is he trying to
29:26
Speaker 1: reach out to Republicans? But I think trying to cleave
29:30
Speaker 1: extreme MAGA Republicans from mainstream Republican voters to who we
29:35
Speaker 1: know have been leaving the party over the last several elections.
29:39
Speaker 1: People who maybe voted for Mitt Romney and then decided
29:42
Speaker 1: to vote for Hillary Clinton, or then people who voted
29:45
Speaker 1: for Trump the first time and then voted for Joe
29:47
Speaker 1: Biden in 2020. Like we know there is a group
29:50
Speaker 1: of people out there, mostly college educated voters in a
29:53
Speaker 1: lot of suburban places who are like, I might've been
29:56
Speaker 1: part of the Republican party once, but they have become
29:59
Speaker 1: too extreme and I'm done with them. And I think
30:01
Speaker 1: it's smart for Joe Biden to try to reach out
30:03
Speaker 1: to those voters while also making it very clear that
30:07
Speaker 1: MAGA Republicans, supporters of Donald Trump, Donald Trump, and especially
30:11
Speaker 1: Republican politicians that are supportive of Donald Trump, which is
30:14
Speaker 1: like 95% of Republican politicians in this country are a
30:18
Speaker 1: threat to democracy. Don't believe in holding up election results, right?
30:23
Speaker 1: Like I, so I don't, they're going to try to,
30:26
Speaker 1: The press and Republicans are going to try to do
30:30
Speaker 1: this gotcha shit and going to try to say, you know,
30:33
Speaker 1: he's talking about unity, but he's attacking Republicans in this language.
30:36
Speaker 1: And similarly, I think there's some liberals who are going
30:38
Speaker 1: to be like, why is Joe Biden reaching out to Republicans?
30:40
Speaker 1: But I think this is the right strategy if you
30:43
Speaker 1: want to create a pro-democracy coalition in this country that
30:48
Speaker 1: can beat Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.
30:50
Speaker 2: If you want to heal the soul of the nation,
30:51
Speaker 2: you have to cut out the cancer. And this Republican
30:54
Speaker 2: Party- is a dangerous, rapidly metastasizing cancer on the body politic.
30:59
Speaker 1: And I think you have to separate Republican politicians and
31:05
Speaker 1: the extreme MAGA supporters that show up at the rallies
31:09
Speaker 1: and that have embraced violence from other people who sometimes
31:13
Speaker 1: vote Republican and sometimes don't and are thinking about leaving
31:17
Speaker 1: the party or have left the party or haven't voted
31:19
Speaker 1: Republican in a while. You just have to do that
31:21
Speaker 1: because it's not just because it's the right thing to
31:23
Speaker 1: do because it's fucking math. Like we cannot we cannot
31:27
Speaker 1: win without those voters. We in 2020, it was the
31:31
Speaker 1: biggest turnout in history on both sides. And we still
31:35
Speaker 1: only won by like, you know, 40,000 votes. So we
31:40
Speaker 1: actually need all of those voters just as much as
31:42
Speaker 1: we need our base voters as well.
31:43
Speaker 2: I mean, there has always been a right wing extremist
31:47
Speaker 2: faction in this country. the John Birchers, the right-wing militias
31:50
Speaker 2: of the 90s, they've always been there. And at times,
31:53
Speaker 2: they've gained enough power that the Republican establishment has felt
31:57
Speaker 2: the need to accommodate them in some ways. The Tea
31:59
Speaker 2: Party is an example of the precursor to the MAGA movement.
32:02
Speaker 2: What is different now is that because we are in
32:05
Speaker 2: this very dangerous moment where the structural biases of the
32:08
Speaker 2: Electoral College and the Senate give that right-wing extremist minority
32:13
Speaker 2: a massively disproportionate share of the power. And then when
32:17
Speaker 2: you amplify that with a right-wing media apparatus like Fox
32:21
Speaker 2: News and a social media platform like Facebook, which communicates
32:25
Speaker 2: that message, that right-wing message at hyperspeed, at scale, the
32:30
Speaker 2: right-wing faction is now not just a faction to be accommodated.
32:34
Speaker 2: It is the establishment of the Republican Party. That is
32:36
Speaker 2: the leadership. They're the ones in charge. And what is
32:39
Speaker 2: interesting and notable about this moment, I think, is what
32:41
Speaker 2: Biden has tried to do and he's going to try
32:43
Speaker 2: to do tonight is– recognize that while this minority is
32:49
Speaker 2: growing in power, it is not growing in numbers. We
32:54
Speaker 2: actually are living in a world where that extremist minority
32:57
Speaker 2: is shrinking as percentage of the population. There is a pro-democracy, pro-truth,
33:02
Speaker 2: anti-MAGA majority in this country. And the way to defeat
33:07
Speaker 2: fascism or semi-fascism is to appeal to the majority who
33:12
Speaker 2: disagree with that. And that's going to include Republicans. It's
33:14
Speaker 2: going to include independents. And as you know, it's going
33:16
Speaker 2: to really focus on people who don't engage in our
33:18
Speaker 2: political process. And I do think one key to.
33:21
Speaker 1: This speech- Who are, by the way, targets for either side,
33:24
Speaker 1: the people who don't engage in political process. The MAGA
33:28
Speaker 1: movement is reaching out to them too. So they are
33:31
Speaker 1: up for grabs.
33:31
Speaker 2: They may actually, in some cases, profile as people who
33:34
Speaker 2: could end up being Republicans, geographically and demographically. And we
33:38
Speaker 2: have to be very aware of that. But I think
33:40
Speaker 2: one thing that's important here is to explain to the
33:43
Speaker 2: public that the real world specific dangers of this extremist minority.
33:50
Speaker 2: And this is where the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs,
33:54
Speaker 2: the banning of books, the promises to ban marriage, to
33:58
Speaker 2: outlaw marriage equality, to stop people from getting access to
34:01
Speaker 2: IVF or contraception, all those things, is that this is
34:03
Speaker 2: where the war on freedom matters. Because it's not a
34:06
Speaker 2: war on a political system that has never worked for
34:09
Speaker 2: large portions of this country. It is a war on
34:12
Speaker 2: people's lives. And this is what the danger is. And
34:15
Speaker 2: whenever these moments have failed, whether it's the Tea Party
34:18
Speaker 2: or the Reagan revolution in the 90s, it is when
34:20
Speaker 2: the real world consequences to the majority of the opinions
34:23
Speaker 2: of this minority become manifestly clear.
34:26
Speaker 1: And I would add to that too, and the embrace
34:28
Speaker 1: of political violence, right? Which I think, you know, I
34:31
Speaker 1: think when a lot of people look at January 6th,
34:34
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked a lot about like the fake
34:36
Speaker 1: electors and the plot to overturn the election, which is
34:39
Speaker 1: fucking horrible. But like most Americans look at that and
34:41
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, there's a right wing in this country
34:44
Speaker 1: that has now embraced political violence. And I don't like that.
34:46
Speaker 1: That's a real problem. OK, when we come back, I
34:49
Speaker 1: will talk to former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu,
34:52
Speaker 1: about implementing Joe Biden's infrastructure plan. Joining us now, the
35:05
Speaker 1: former mayor of New Orleans, currently a special advisor to
35:08
Speaker 1: President Biden, who's in charge of implementing the infrastructure law.
35:11
Speaker 1: Mitch Lander, welcome back to the pod.
35:13
Speaker 4: Oh, it's great to be here. I miss you guys.
35:15
Speaker 1: I know. Last time we saw you, I think, was
35:17
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, which is a.
35:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, at the Orpheum Theater. It was a throwdown.
35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, much more fun location than this interview.
35:25
Speaker 4: I told, who was it? I told him, I said,
35:27
Speaker 4: don't mention the saints. And they mentioned them.
35:29
Speaker 1: It was love it. It was love it. And he
35:30
Speaker 1: was almost, I.
35:31
Speaker 4: Said, don't do it. Don't do it. He said, you
35:34
Speaker 4: don't know what you're talking about. I said, okay, well
35:35
Speaker 4: just go ahead then.
35:36
Speaker 1: He was also, he was almost mobbed on the spot.
35:39
Speaker 1: That was almost the end of love.
35:40
Speaker 4: He started dogging out the saints and he almost didn't
35:41
Speaker 4: make it out of the city. I know.
35:43
Speaker 1: And none of us were defending him. We almost just
35:45
Speaker 1: left him to the, left him to the mouth.
35:47
Speaker 4: I love it.
35:47
Speaker 1: All right. So the money from the infrastructure law is, is,
35:51
Speaker 1: is starting to flow now. It's really starting to flow now.
35:53
Speaker 1: There are over, 5,300 projects getting underway all over the country.
35:57
Speaker 1: What do you want people to know about these projects,
35:59
Speaker 1: especially people whose eyes might glaze over the second they
36:04
Speaker 1: hear the word infrastructure?
36:07
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you don't use that word. It's about
36:09
Speaker 4: fixing roads. Everybody knows potholes are a pain in the butt.
36:12
Speaker 4: Everybody knows that traffic really stinks. Everybody knows what it's
36:14
Speaker 4: like to not be able to pick their kids up
36:17
Speaker 4: or to get to work on time or to get
36:19
Speaker 4: to wherever you're going. So when we're thinking about rebuilding
36:22
Speaker 4: the roads and bridges and airports and ports and the waterways,
36:26
Speaker 4: when we're talking about making sure everybody has access to
36:29
Speaker 4: high-speed internet, we're talking about clean air, safe water, which
36:33
Speaker 4: is a major problem that we're having right now in Jackson, Mississippi,
36:37
Speaker 4: just to make the case that I know that we'll
36:39
Speaker 4: talk about in a minute, or to build a whole
36:41
Speaker 4: new clean energy economy, which essentially means that we're really
36:44
Speaker 4: rushing into a new way of traveling and the things
36:48
Speaker 4: that we do, people can kind of see it in
36:50
Speaker 4: their real lives. It's a little bit hard because it's
36:53
Speaker 4: a long-term piece, but when this stuff starts coming out
36:55
Speaker 4: of the ground and you start seeing it, you go like,
36:56
Speaker 4: oh man, that's crazy. I mean, things are changing pretty
36:59
Speaker 4: fast and for the better.
37:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that because a few
37:03
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I did a focus group of Black voters
37:06
Speaker 1: in Atlanta for another podcast I'm working on. And when
37:08
Speaker 1: I asked which issues are most important to them, a
37:11
Speaker 1: lot of people voluntarily brought up as one of the
37:14
Speaker 1: top issues, roads are all broken, too many potholes, no
37:19
Speaker 1: good public transportation around here. And then they said, you know,
37:22
Speaker 1: we heard Joe Biden was going to do something to
37:24
Speaker 1: fix this, but nothing seems fixed. And they felt let down. Obviously, like,
37:29
Speaker 1: how do you wrap your arms around the communication challenge
37:32
Speaker 1: of talking about projects that will, in some cases, take
37:36
Speaker 1: years to complete?
37:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, that's a real challenge. There's no way
37:41
Speaker 4: to get around that. These are long-term projects. I mean,
37:43
Speaker 4: it's not like with American Rescue Plan funds or the
37:48
Speaker 4: Recovery Act, where you're just putting money in people's pocketbook
37:51
Speaker 4: that they see the next day. You're actually building something.
37:53
Speaker 4: And it takes a while to build something. As a consequence,
37:56
Speaker 4: it takes a while to see the consequences of it.
37:58
Speaker 4: So impatience is an expected thing. proposition on this particular thing. However,
38:05
Speaker 4: when it finally starts coming out of the ground and
38:07
Speaker 4: you go, man, okay, that's what they were talking about,
38:10
Speaker 4: you'll know that. I think it's really an unrealistic expectation
38:13
Speaker 4: that nine months after the bill was passed that a
38:16
Speaker 4: bridge was going to be built. We live in a
38:18
Speaker 4: political world. When Putin is invading the Ukraine, And we're
38:22
Speaker 4: having all this other stuff going on. People are thinking
38:25
Speaker 4: about that. And they're not necessarily thinking about the road
38:28
Speaker 4: that's getting fixed. But you will you will begin to
38:30
Speaker 4: see if you haven't already with 5300 projects coming out
38:33
Speaker 4: of the ground. the real consequence. On top of that,
38:36
Speaker 4: let me give you just an example of real life stuff.
38:38
Speaker 4: 10 million people have been connected to the internet that
38:40
Speaker 4: haven't been connected before through the Affordable Connectivity Program. So
38:44
Speaker 4: this stuff will move out over time. Now, in political years,
38:47
Speaker 4: everybody's got to do something next month. But infrastructure is
38:51
Speaker 4: not in political years. It's about laying a foundation for
38:53
Speaker 4: the future that I think is going to yield great benefit.
38:56
Speaker 4: And the president is completely comfortable with doing what is
39:01
Speaker 4: right and making sure that we go fast, but we
39:03
Speaker 4: also build the foundation that actually brings a country together
39:07
Speaker 4: in the future.
39:08
Speaker 1: When I was in the Obama administration, I always thought
39:10
Speaker 1: we should have been more explicit in taking credit for
39:13
Speaker 1: the Recovery Act infrastructure project.
39:15
Speaker 6: That's true.
39:15
Speaker 1: We had signs up, but I always said that they
39:17
Speaker 1: should have had a big picture of Obama, like get
39:20
Speaker 1: the Shepard Fairey poster up there. But I'm not sure
39:22
Speaker 1: what the legal constraints are. Like, what are you guys
39:25
Speaker 1: doing about that?
39:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, first of all, you know, we hear this
39:28
Speaker 4: all the time about who did what wrong and how
39:29
Speaker 4: everybody could have done it better. Right, right. All this stuff.
39:32
Speaker 4: And I think even President Obama would say, look, we
39:34
Speaker 4: probably could have, you know, tagged that a little bit more.
39:36
Speaker 4: I'm a mayor. If you build a project in the
39:39
Speaker 4: city where you are, there's a construction sign that goes
39:41
Speaker 4: up and says brought to you by the following administrations.
39:45
Speaker 4: You'll actually see that on these projects. It will say
39:48
Speaker 4: brought to you by the bipartisan infrastructure law, President Joseph R. Biden,
39:52
Speaker 4: or something like that, so the public can see it.
39:55
Speaker 4: But be that as it may, this is really not
39:58
Speaker 4: so much about taking credit, although it's important for the
40:01
Speaker 4: country to know how this got done so that if
40:03
Speaker 4: they want to do it again, they can replicate actually
40:06
Speaker 4: what happened. That's why it's important. It's also important for
40:09
Speaker 4: accountability purposes. And on top of that, I'm sure, although
40:13
Speaker 4: people who are running for or against this will talk
40:17
Speaker 4: about it during the campaign, so it'll get a little
40:19
Speaker 4: bit higher visibility as it breaks through some of these
40:22
Speaker 4: other critical day-to-day issues people are concerned about. And as
40:26
Speaker 4: bridges start coming up and new rail cars start showing themselves,
40:30
Speaker 4: people will go, oh, wow, that's what they were talking about.
40:33
Speaker 4: But there'll be some frustration because it takes time to
40:35
Speaker 4: build stuff. So it's just part of the game.
40:38
Speaker 1: You mentioned Jackson, Mississippi, which is front page news right now.
40:41
Speaker 1: Community of 150,000 people, 80% are Black. They're without running
40:45
Speaker 1: water right now in a 90-plus degree heat. Storm wiped
40:49
Speaker 1: out their water treatment pumps last week. How is the
40:52
Speaker 1: Biden administration helping right now and also helping to fix
40:56
Speaker 1: their infrastructure long term?
40:58
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, this is a perfect example of
41:00
Speaker 4: why the infrastructure law was needed. We have massive amounts
41:02
Speaker 4: of deferred maintenance across the country in areas city properties,
41:07
Speaker 4: state properties, and federal properties, which is one of the
41:09
Speaker 4: reasons why the president thought it was important to pass
41:11
Speaker 4: this bill. So that is just a long-term project. As
41:15
Speaker 4: it relates to Jackson, which is not unlike situations in
41:18
Speaker 4: my city, like New Orleans or in Flint, Michigan, or
41:21
Speaker 4: other places that have challenged water systems, especially in predominantly
41:25
Speaker 4: black cities, you have these kinds of events that are
41:29
Speaker 4: catastrophic in nature. The president has spoken to the mayor.
41:32
Speaker 4: He's spoken to the congressman from that district. Our administration
41:35
Speaker 4: has been in touch with the governor's office. FEMA director
41:38
Speaker 4: is heading down there tomorrow. We expect to have a
41:40
Speaker 4: team of people working hand in glove every day with
41:44
Speaker 4: the mayor and the governor for the short term, medium,
41:46
Speaker 4: and long term. The most important thing right now is
41:48
Speaker 4: to make sure that safety measures are taken, that people
41:51
Speaker 4: have access to water, And we're working with the mayor's
41:54
Speaker 4: office and the congressman to make sure that we can
41:56
Speaker 4: do our part in that. Remember, though, that money has
41:59
Speaker 4: been sent to the state and to the city and
42:01
Speaker 4: that this has been a challenge, not just this past weekend,
42:04
Speaker 4: but for some time. And this is one of the
42:06
Speaker 4: reasons why the infrastructure bill is so critically important so
42:09
Speaker 4: that we, at least from the federal level, have the
42:11
Speaker 4: resources necessary to partner with the city, partner with the
42:15
Speaker 4: state to make sure that everybody has access to safe
42:18
Speaker 4: drinking water.
42:19
Speaker 1: Your job is to obviously work with governors and elected
42:22
Speaker 1: officials of both parties on these projects. And I know
42:25
Speaker 1: there's been some tension with Republican governors wanting to use
42:28
Speaker 1: the money to build more highways or do other things
42:31
Speaker 1: that don't align with the administration's environmental and climate change goals.
42:35
Speaker 1: How are you handling that?
42:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, the president
42:40
Speaker 4: said to me, you know, when I was vice president,
42:42
Speaker 4: I was pretty good at running the Recovery Act. And
42:44
Speaker 4: I said, yes, sir, you are. And and he said,
42:47
Speaker 4: I want you to stay in touch with the mayors
42:48
Speaker 4: and the governor. So I have called every governor in
42:50
Speaker 4: the country and spoken either to them or their chief
42:52
Speaker 4: of staff. I've asked them on the behalf of the
42:54
Speaker 4: president to appoint an infrastructure coordinator, which all of them
42:56
Speaker 4: have done, including the heads of all the territories. I've
42:59
Speaker 4: talked to hundreds of mayors and we are I am
43:02
Speaker 4: clear about this on behalf of the president. that you
43:05
Speaker 4: can't do this without the federal government, the state government,
43:07
Speaker 4: and the local governments working together. Now, we live in
43:11
Speaker 4: a political world and there's gonna be some tension. Not
43:13
Speaker 4: everybody's gonna agree on everything, but I haven't been part
43:16
Speaker 4: of any disagreement that has really troubled me. I mean,
43:19
Speaker 4: that's outside of the bounds. For example, you know, the
43:22
Speaker 4: governor of North Dakota or South Dakota may say, listen,
43:25
Speaker 4: you know, what works in New York City or works
43:27
Speaker 4: in Atlanta may not work here. So let's work together.
43:30
Speaker 4: And by the way, you can't tell me exactly what
43:32
Speaker 4: to do. I'm the governor. I have some rules. And
43:35
Speaker 4: we go, yeah. And we, for the most part, have
43:38
Speaker 4: worked it out. I haven't really come across a situation
43:41
Speaker 4: where it's become impenetrable yet. And one of the reasons
43:44
Speaker 4: is that we're constantly staying in touch. Now, listen. I'm
43:47
Speaker 4: not naive. We live in a political world. But for
43:50
Speaker 4: the most part, everybody likes investment in infrastructure. And guess what?
43:54
Speaker 4: Every Republican that voted against this, as the speaker said,
43:58
Speaker 4: they voted no, but they want the dough. And so
44:00
Speaker 4: when you're in the execution mode of this thing, it
44:03
Speaker 4: becomes very nonpolitical. And you just got to get the
44:06
Speaker 4: street built. You got to get the pothole filled. As
44:08
Speaker 4: I like to say, there's no Republican or Democratic way
44:10
Speaker 4: to fill a pothole. Just fill the damn pothole. So
44:13
Speaker 4: we want to go fast, but here's the thing. We
44:16
Speaker 4: also want to build well. So it's critically important that
44:18
Speaker 4: we think about equity, that we think about inclusion, that
44:22
Speaker 4: we're not building highways that split historically African-American communities apart.
44:26
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, we use money to reconnect them,
44:29
Speaker 4: that when we're thinking about water, that we actually don't
44:32
Speaker 4: just go to certain parts of the country, go to everywhere.
44:34
Speaker 4: I was in Lowndes County, Alabama the other day, and
44:37
Speaker 4: it may surprise people in this country that not every
44:39
Speaker 4: American citizen has indoor plumbing, that there's actually raw sewage
44:43
Speaker 4: that are running out of millions of homes. Catherine Flowers,
44:46
Speaker 4: who's been leading this effort in Lowndes County, along with Congress,
44:51
Speaker 4: men and women have been talking about this. So there's
44:52
Speaker 4: investments to make sure that people just have access to
44:55
Speaker 4: clean water. The investment in lead pipes in African-American communities
45:00
Speaker 4: to clean out lead pipes so that kids are not
45:02
Speaker 4: drinking dirty water. There's billions of dollars to replace those
45:06
Speaker 4: as well. And there's a lot of money on the
45:09
Speaker 4: environmental cleanup side of cleaning up brownfield sites, cleaning up
45:12
Speaker 4: orphan wells, cleaning up abandoned mine lands, cleaning up superfund sites,
45:16
Speaker 4: and then investing in the restoration of Great Lakes all
45:20
Speaker 4: across the country. It's a massive investment in improving the
45:23
Speaker 4: lives of Americans. And then finally, just on this clean
45:26
Speaker 4: energy economy piece, They're going to blow the roof off
45:29
Speaker 4: right now. And you see the private sector starting to
45:32
Speaker 4: respond in a really dramatic way to the market signals
45:35
Speaker 4: that we're sending about how we're going to electrify the economy.
45:39
Speaker 4: So fortifying the energy grid, making sure that we have
45:42
Speaker 4: new sources of energy. And all of a sudden, you've
45:44
Speaker 4: got Ford, GM, Siemens, Tritium. Today, there's an announcement, another
45:48
Speaker 4: $ 2 billion announcement of bringing manufacturing back to the United
45:52
Speaker 4: States of America. producing high paying union jobs and rebuilding
45:57
Speaker 4: communities across the country. So we're well on our way.
46:00
Speaker 4: This is a long slog. We're pushing a rock uphill
46:03
Speaker 4: right now, but we're absolutely going to get there and
46:05
Speaker 4: the country is going to be better for it.
46:07
Speaker 1: You're working with these Republican governors. This was a bipartisan bill.
46:10
Speaker 1: As you said, infrastructure is an issue where both parties
46:14
Speaker 1: can come together. Everyone likes roads and bridges in their
46:17
Speaker 1: state and district. President has also given a speech tonight
46:20
Speaker 1: It's going to echo a lot of what he said
46:22
Speaker 1: the last few weeks, which is that the, you know,
46:25
Speaker 1: ultra mega Republicans are a threat to our democracy. What
46:28
Speaker 1: do you think about that?
46:30
Speaker 4: Well, I think what the first of all, I don't
46:32
Speaker 4: want to get ahead of the president's speech tonight, but
46:34
Speaker 4: I have heard him speak on this many times. And
46:37
Speaker 4: what he what I what I believe he's going to
46:39
Speaker 4: try to communicate to the country is that America is
46:43
Speaker 4: a very unique and exceptional place. And we're the only
46:47
Speaker 4: place that has lasted this long since. based on a
46:49
Speaker 4: simple idea that you all come to the table of
46:51
Speaker 4: democracy as equals. And that we are democratic in the
46:56
Speaker 4: sense that everybody gets a choice, everybody gets a chance
46:59
Speaker 4: to say what they need to say. And when we disagree,
47:02
Speaker 4: we try to do it in agreeable fashion, even though
47:04
Speaker 4: we can be passionate about it. But you got to
47:06
Speaker 4: stay within the bounds of the Constitution. And historically, there
47:10
Speaker 4: have been a small number of Americans that have fallen
47:13
Speaker 4: outside of those bounds And I think it's his impression
47:16
Speaker 4: that there is a good group of people that now
47:18
Speaker 4: call themselves MAGA Republicans that are outside of that. Now,
47:21
Speaker 4: he's not talking about all Republicans. He's not talking about
47:24
Speaker 4: all independents. He's talking about the idea of what makes
47:27
Speaker 4: America strong and what makes America great. And he's calling
47:30
Speaker 4: us back into focus on that. And so it's critically
47:34
Speaker 4: important that he reminds the nation of why we're here,
47:37
Speaker 4: what we're supposed to be doing, and who we are.
47:40
Speaker 4: And this can be a lot of disagreement within those bounds,
47:43
Speaker 4: but there can't be any disagreement about the peaceful transition
47:46
Speaker 4: of power. There can't be any disagreement about whether insurrection
47:50
Speaker 4: is a good thing or a bad thing. There can't
47:52
Speaker 4: be any disagreement about whether or not you ought to
47:54
Speaker 4: threaten violence against the FBI or against the police. That's
47:58
Speaker 4: outside of the bounds. And I think that that one
48:01
Speaker 4: of the discussions that we have to have in this
48:02
Speaker 4: country is how we bring it back in. We can
48:05
Speaker 4: be passionate. Look, I'm from a big family. I got
48:07
Speaker 4: eight brothers and sisters. We don't all think alike. We
48:09
Speaker 4: have a lot of really tough discussions at the kitchen table.
48:13
Speaker 4: But you know what? At the end of it, we're
48:14
Speaker 4: still family. And we figure out a way to live
48:16
Speaker 4: together in a peaceful way. And I think the president
48:19
Speaker 4: wants to speak to that issue tonight and call us
48:22
Speaker 4: back into the center of what it means to really
48:27
Speaker 4: be the great country that we all profess that we
48:29
Speaker 4: want to be.
48:30
Speaker 1: I mean, you've spoken about this yourself. You gave one
48:33
Speaker 1: of my favorite speeches about your decision to remove four
48:36
Speaker 1: Confederate monuments when you were mayor of New Orleans. Racism
48:40
Speaker 1: and right-wing extremism have only gotten worse since then. Looking
48:44
Speaker 1: around the political landscape today, how do you think we
48:47
Speaker 1: heal some of these wounds, get back to that table
48:50
Speaker 1: together and really keep a multiracial democracy alive?
48:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think that's one of the things the
48:56
Speaker 4: president wants to speak to. This doesn't mean that we
48:58
Speaker 4: shouldn't have arguments. It shouldn't mean that we shouldn't be passionate.
49:02
Speaker 4: But it does mean that we have to recommit ourselves
49:04
Speaker 4: to the notion that we all belong here and that
49:07
Speaker 4: we all have a voice. But we also have to
49:09
Speaker 4: set parameters and say that we're not in favor of violence.
49:12
Speaker 4: We're not in favor of autocracy. We're not in favor
49:15
Speaker 4: of the kinds of things that unfortunately we have started
49:19
Speaker 4: to see. Now, it's my personal opinion. I'm not speaking
49:21
Speaker 4: on behalf of the President here, but on my 30
49:23
Speaker 4: years of experience growing up in the South, This is
49:26
Speaker 4: stuff that's been around a long time down here. It
49:30
Speaker 4: just got into a megaphone that's been bigger and other
49:33
Speaker 4: folks have said, well, look, let's start saying it out loud.
49:36
Speaker 4: So if you go listen to the remnants of George
49:38
Speaker 4: Wallace or Bull Connor or other folks, this rhetoric, even
49:42
Speaker 4: David Duke, this rhetoric is very, very, very familiar that's
49:46
Speaker 4: coming from a very small section of the country, which
49:49
Speaker 4: is really kind of starting to push themselves into what
49:53
Speaker 4: some folks used to think was mainstream stuff. And I
49:55
Speaker 4: think that you got to say, look, that's just out
49:57
Speaker 4: of bounds. And that's not who we are. I think
50:01
Speaker 4: Liz Cheney, I can't think of a thing that I
50:05
Speaker 4: agree with her on, quite frankly, except that she believes,
50:10
Speaker 4: as do I, that there are some guardrails in democracy
50:13
Speaker 4: that once we get out of, we just can't have
50:15
Speaker 4: a country again. And so I think there are plenty
50:17
Speaker 4: of people that are much more conservative than me, much
50:20
Speaker 4: more conservative than the president, that would fall well within
50:23
Speaker 4: that boundary. But what we can't lose is a very
50:26
Speaker 4: simple idea that we come to the table of democracy
50:28
Speaker 4: as equals, that we have peaceful transitions of power, that
50:31
Speaker 4: people ought to have access to the polls, that we
50:34
Speaker 4: ought to be self-determining as a country. And that quite frankly,
50:37
Speaker 4: when we don't do that, we miss an incredible opportunity
50:41
Speaker 4: to do what the president says is big things, which
50:43
Speaker 4: is why I'm really excited about infrastructure, because I think
50:46
Speaker 4: it's the proof point. First of all, we're physically building bridges,
50:49
Speaker 4: but we're also So spiritually, in a way, finding a
50:53
Speaker 4: way to use infrastructure to connect people by demonstrating that
50:58
Speaker 4: if you put down your ideology, you can actually literally
51:01
Speaker 4: build a big thing, like connecting everybody to the internet.
51:04
Speaker 4: And just think about this for a minute. If you've
51:06
Speaker 4: got a little kid sitting on the stoop in the
51:08
Speaker 4: lower ninth board, Or you got a little kid sitting
51:12
Speaker 4: on the porch in the hollows of Kentucky, in Dogpatch, Kentucky.
51:15
Speaker 4: Or you got somebody sitting up in a tribal community
51:18
Speaker 4: in Alaska. And they're little kids. And they don't have
51:20
Speaker 4: access to the internet. They're stuck. But if they have
51:25
Speaker 4: access to the internet and they have access to knowledge,
51:27
Speaker 4: which is the great leveler, you may be looking at
51:30
Speaker 4: the kid that's actually going to take us to Mars.
51:33
Speaker 4: You may be looking at the next doctor that's going
51:35
Speaker 4: to find the next great cure to think it unleashes
51:37
Speaker 4: a huge amount of potential. And if people have an
51:41
Speaker 4: easy way to get to and from, that's even better.
51:43
Speaker 4: And if public transportation is available in a clean energy way,
51:47
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, the is looking at everybody else
51:51
Speaker 4: in the world in their rearview mirror. And we're not
51:53
Speaker 4: beholden to anybody and we're standing on our own two
51:56
Speaker 4: feet and we're producing jobs that make sense. Now, if
51:58
Speaker 4: we can get past the very, very difficult issue of
52:01
Speaker 4: race and we can get past this issue of white nationalism, extremism,
52:06
Speaker 4: There's really nothing that holds America back. We got to
52:09
Speaker 4: figure out how to do that. And we can do
52:10
Speaker 4: that within the parameters of the constitutional framework that we've
52:15
Speaker 4: all experienced in a long period of time, which is
52:17
Speaker 4: at risk right now, which is why the president says
52:19
Speaker 4: we're at a moment of crisis. It's an existential threat.
52:23
Speaker 4: And we have to make a choice in this country.
52:25
Speaker 4: It really isn't about Republican versus Democrat. It's about freedom
52:28
Speaker 4: versus autocracy. And freedom will always win.
52:32
Speaker 1: Mitchell Andrew, thank you so much for coming on Pod
52:34
Speaker 1: Save America and good luck fixing all those potholes.
52:38
Speaker 4: All right, my brother. Another day of potholes. Thanks.
52:41
Speaker 1: Take care. Bye-bye.
52:43
Speaker 4: See you later. Bye-bye.
52:49
Speaker 1: Are you needing a safe space to learn how you
52:51
Speaker 1: can get your mind right?
52:52
Speaker 5: Yes.
52:53
Speaker 1: Well, Tommy, you should tune into Imani State of Mind,
52:56
Speaker 1: a weekly podcast hosted by psychiatrist and TV personality, Dr.
52:59
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Speaker 1: with new episodes dropping every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. Okay,
53:44
Speaker 1: before we go, it is time for another round of
53:47
Speaker 1: Take Appreciator with our Chief Take Officer, Elijah Cohn. Elijah,
53:51
Speaker 1: I know that you have been just building up takes
53:54
Speaker 1: for a while now. Because we haven't done this in
53:57
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I know that you're just bursting
53:59
Speaker 1: at the seam with takes.
54:01
Speaker 2: Yes, I certainly am.
54:03
Speaker 7: Our cop runneth over with horrible takes.
54:07
Speaker 2: And it was really hard to narrow it down. But
54:09
Speaker 2: I feel like we have a nice array of takes
54:12
Speaker 2: for you gentlemen today.
54:14
Speaker 1: Oh, good. A good spread. Good spread of takes. Like
54:18
Speaker 1: a crudité platter of takes.
54:20
Speaker 2: Another idea for the merch department?
54:22
Speaker 1: Yes.
54:22
Speaker 2: Exactly. A coffee mug that says my, my take cup
54:26
Speaker 2: runneth over or, or are these steamy hot takes inside
54:31
Speaker 2: all kinds of options here.
54:33
Speaker 4: Yeah. Wow.
54:34
Speaker 1: All of our, all of our suggestions today to other
54:35
Speaker 1: people in the cricket network are just coming through the
54:37
Speaker 1: pods since I'm too busy to send emails.
54:39
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we'll find out what the merch department listens.
54:41
Speaker 4: Won't we? Yeah.
54:42
Speaker 2: Hey, if you guys are listening store.cricket.com, I said it.
54:45
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
54:47
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay, here we go.
54:49
Speaker 7: I'll explain for the audience who may not have heard
54:51
Speaker 7: how the game works. I'm going to share some takes
54:54
Speaker 7: with you both. The producers have seen these takes, John
54:57
Speaker 7: and Dan have not. John and Dan will react and
54:59
Speaker 7: then rate them on a scale of one to four
55:00
Speaker 7: politicos with four.
55:01
Speaker 2: Being the worst. Are you guys ready?
55:05
Speaker 1: As I'll ever be.
55:07
Speaker 4: All right.
55:08
Speaker 7: So let's start with one that has been talked about
55:10
Speaker 7: a lot at Crooked this week. It's a quote tweet.
55:13
Speaker 7: The original tweet poses the question, when did the GOP
55:16
Speaker 7: become the party of jerks? That led to this take.
55:21
Speaker 7: If I had to pinpoint a moment that the GOP
55:23
Speaker 7: became a party of jerks, it's when Mitt Romney spent
55:27
Speaker 7: his entire campaign being accused of killing Big Bird, building
55:30
Speaker 7: binders full of women, torturing the family dog, et cetera,
55:34
Speaker 7: et cetera.
55:36
Speaker 2: Guys, who said it?
55:37
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, fortunately we know that Fox News contributor slash Twitter person,
55:43
Speaker 1: who I don't know where she came from. Bethany Mandel
55:46
Speaker 1: tweeted it. And look, it really hits home for me
55:51
Speaker 1: and Dan, having been on the 2012 campaign. I am
55:56
Speaker 1: so sorry. I'm so sorry that Barack Obama dared to
56:01
Speaker 1: run against Mitt Romney. He should have just given up
56:05
Speaker 1: after his first term and let Mitt Romney win. And
56:07
Speaker 1: the fact that he called him... An out-of-touch plutocrat is
56:12
Speaker 1: just unforgivable. Unforgivable. The fact that he wanted to defund PBS.
56:18
Speaker 1: The fact that.
56:20
Speaker 1: Did he not put the family dog on the car?
56:25
Speaker 1: Did that not happen? I think that happened. I think
56:27
Speaker 1: that happened.
56:29
Speaker 4: Dan?
56:31
Speaker 1: Look, as we all know, I respect Mitt Romney for
56:34
Speaker 1: doing everything he could to save democracy right now from
56:37
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and voting to impeach the guy. That's great.
56:40
Speaker 1: Maybe he's learned and grown as a person since he
56:44
Speaker 1: put his dog on the car roof.
56:47
Speaker 2: Look, I, too, give Mitt Romney credit for doing the
56:51
Speaker 2: bare fucking minimum. Congratulations. And you know what? In a
56:56
Speaker 2: party where no one else would do the bare minimum,
56:57
Speaker 2: when you do, you can be a hero.
56:59
Speaker 4: Right?
56:59
Speaker 2: The profiles in Courage are graded on a curve, and
57:02
Speaker 2: you got one, Mitt Romney. But let's just take a–
57:05
Speaker 2: just let's hop in the old time machine and go
57:07
Speaker 2: back to 2012. All right?
57:08
Speaker 4: All right.
57:10
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that campaign because Mitt Romney was not
57:15
Speaker 2: the pro-democracy moral conscience of the Republican Party back then.
57:22
Speaker 2: He is someone who basically got on his proverbial knees
57:26
Speaker 2: to beg Donald Trump for his endorsement, begged him, went
57:31
Speaker 2: to Trump Tower to seek that endorsement. And when he
57:33
Speaker 2: got it, he celebrated. He viewed it as a way
57:36
Speaker 2: to win. When Rick Perry, the recent Dancing with the
57:41
Speaker 2: Stars contestant, then Republican governor, got in the race and
57:44
Speaker 2: seemed as a real threat to Mitt Romney's attempt to
57:47
Speaker 2: beat a bunch of yahoos like Michelle Bachman, what did
57:50
Speaker 2: he do? He went far to the right on immigration
57:54
Speaker 2: and ran an immigration platform as right-wing as Donald Trump's.
57:58
Speaker 2: His solution to immigration was self-deportation. He wanted to cut
58:02
Speaker 2: Social Security and Medicare. He had campaign surrogates who made
58:07
Speaker 2: in Incredibly racist comments about Barack Obama. Newt Gingrich calling
58:12
Speaker 2: Barack Obama the food stamp president, which is about as
58:15
Speaker 2: subtle as fuck, I don't know what. So let's not
58:17
Speaker 2: pretend that he was.
58:18
Speaker 4: Running on this.
58:19
Speaker 1: He went all in on the Benghazi conspiracy?
58:21
Speaker 2: Yes, on the night after, within like 12 hours of
58:25
Speaker 2: Americans dying in Benghazi, he held a press conference to
58:28
Speaker 2: try to use it as political ammunition to save his
58:31
Speaker 2: failing campaign. In that first debate where he did oh
58:33
Speaker 2: so fucking well, he lied his ass off the entire time.
58:37
Speaker 2: And Barack Obama's failure was that he did not respond
58:41
Speaker 2: to those lies aggressively. He was actually blown away that
58:43
Speaker 2: a human being who claimed to be such an honest,
58:46
Speaker 2: straightforward Boy Scout would just lie to the nation that much.
58:50
Speaker 2: So let's not pretend that anything was out of bounds.
58:53
Speaker 2: Barack Obama's beating Mitt Romney did not pave the way
58:56
Speaker 2: for Trumpism. The sort of campaign Mitt Romney ran made
59:00
Speaker 2: it easier for Donald Trump to have the nomination four
59:03
Speaker 2: years later. So I'm sorry. Stop blaming Barack Obama for
59:07
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. It's your fault, Republicans. You did this.
59:11
Speaker 1: Yep. Yep.
59:11
Speaker 2: 500 fucking politicos.
59:19
Speaker 1: And I just want to say, I genuinely admire Donald
59:24
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney for what he's done the last several years.
59:27
Speaker 1: I don't even think it was that. I think he
59:30
Speaker 1: showed genuine political courage over these last few years and
59:33
Speaker 1: also have zero regrets about the campaign we ran against
59:36
Speaker 1: him in 2012.
59:37
Speaker 4: Zero.
59:39
Speaker 1: A million politicos. Same with Dan. All the politicos.
59:41
Speaker 2: How dare we attack him for wanting to cut taxes
59:45
Speaker 2: for the rich by raising them on the middle class,
59:46
Speaker 2: which was his plan. I mean, powerful stuff, guys.
59:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.
59:53
Speaker 2: I didn't tell him to murder Big Bird. He just
59:54
Speaker 2: wanted to do it on his own.
59:56
Speaker 7: Like, this isn't the point, but also just a little
59:59
Speaker 7: cherry on top of this take is that she said
1:00:01
Speaker 7: if I had to pinpoint a moment and then list
1:00:03
Speaker 7: like five moments, that's just a little extra syntax.
1:00:07
Speaker 2: Thing that drives me crazy about that take. As if
1:00:10
Speaker 2: we needed anything else.
1:00:13
Speaker 1: We didn't tell him to sing Who Let the Dogs
1:00:15
Speaker 1: Out Like That and then put one on the roof
1:00:17
Speaker 1: of his car. We didn't tell him to do that.
1:00:20
Speaker 2: I will say after that, and I want to thank
1:00:23
Speaker 2: Elijah for giving me this opportunity, I feel exhausted but unburdened. Good.
1:00:30
Speaker 1: This is going to go viral. Elijah's thinking, Elijah's now
1:00:33
Speaker 1: doing his, he's not only take appreciator here, he's also
1:00:37
Speaker 1: Elijah social video master. And he's thinking about how to
1:00:40
Speaker 1: clip this and send this, send this into the internet.
1:00:44
Speaker 7: Look for this clip on Twitter with Bethany Mandel quote tweeted.
1:00:46
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, Dan, let's see.
1:00:49
Speaker 7: I'm glad you're feeling better, but I'm going to pull
1:00:51
Speaker 7: you back down with this next one. So this is
1:00:54
Speaker 7: one that I actually have been bursting at the seams
1:00:56
Speaker 7: that I've been sitting on it for a while. I'm
1:00:58
Speaker 7: glad I haven't exposed it in a public channel on Slack.
1:01:02
Speaker 7: It's a week or two old. It's from the wall
1:01:04
Speaker 7: street journal. It's a piece titled, but her emails, a
1:01:09
Speaker 7: defense of whataboutism.
1:01:12
Speaker 1: Oh my God. Oh my God.
1:01:14
Speaker 7: This piece is obviously about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
1:01:18
Speaker 7: Here's a quote from it. Hillary Clinton's treatment of the
1:01:21
Speaker 7: emails and server were wrong even if they didn't constitute
1:01:24
Speaker 7: a crime.
1:01:25
Speaker 4: Mr.
1:01:25
Speaker 7: Trump's removal of possibly classified information might be wrong too,
1:01:29
Speaker 7: until Mr. Garland fully and specifically answers the hard questions
1:01:34
Speaker 7: about what appears to be Unequal application of rules and practices.
1:01:39
Speaker 7: What about her emails will be a pertinent question. Guys,
1:01:42
Speaker 7: the author really puts a serve at the top who
1:01:44
Speaker 7: wrote it.
1:01:44
Speaker 4: Huh?
1:01:46
Speaker 1: This is in the wall street journal.
1:01:48
Speaker 4: Yes.
1:01:49
Speaker 2: It's a contributor. I don't think this person is a regular.
1:01:54
Speaker 2: Jim Comey.
1:01:55
Speaker 1: Cause I was going to say Kim Strassel, but that doesn't.
1:02:02
Speaker 2: It sounded very Matt Lewis ask to me until you
1:02:04
Speaker 2: said the wall street journal.
1:02:05
Speaker 1: Is it, Eli Lake?
1:02:06
Speaker 2: It's not. Would you like a hint?
1:02:09
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:02:09
Speaker 2: Larry David hates this person.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: Oh, the Dersh.
1:02:13
Speaker 2: Yes, it is Alan Dershowitz. Oh, yet another clam bake
1:02:19
Speaker 2: that the Dersh was disinvited to.
1:02:22
Speaker 1: Just walking around Martha's Vineyard with the Scarlet Letter on him. Yeah. Okay.
1:02:31
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to go.
1:02:32
Speaker 4: Like....
1:02:34
Speaker 1: What does he even mean by Merrick Garland? Like, fucking
1:02:38
Speaker 1: Jim Comey decided to come out right before an election
1:02:41
Speaker 1: and give a fucking press conference about charges that were
1:02:44
Speaker 1: never brought. Everything that Merrick Garland said so far about
1:02:48
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been a result of Donald Trump's own
1:02:50
Speaker 1: fucking idiocy. If Donald Trump had just shut the fuck up,
1:02:54
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't know about any of this right now.
1:02:56
Speaker 2: 1.3 politicos.
1:03:01
Speaker 6: Wow.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Dersh is losing his fastball there. I
1:03:07
Speaker 1: don't know if we ever had one.
1:03:11
Speaker 2: Okay, we can move on pretty quickly from that one.
1:03:13
Speaker 7: It just struck me so much, the what about her emails,
1:03:16
Speaker 7: the defense of what about her emails, the most annoying
1:03:20
Speaker 7: talking point.
1:03:21
Speaker 1: Well, when it turned out at the end that there
1:03:23
Speaker 1: was like some like, you know, classified markings here and
1:03:26
Speaker 1: there that probably shouldn't have been on there. And it
1:03:27
Speaker 1: was like a low classification. Meanwhile, Trump's got like the
1:03:30
Speaker 1: highest level classified documents that he stole and hid in
1:03:35
Speaker 1: his basement. Yeah, it's a little different.
1:03:36
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:03:37
Speaker 2: And Hillary Clinton cooperated with the investigation.
1:03:42
Speaker 1: And he is famously not cooperating.
1:03:45
Speaker 2: Not cooperating is like pleading the fifth. hiding the documents
1:03:50
Speaker 2: and lying to the fbi is obstruction so it's.
1:03:52
Speaker 1: A little different a little different but it's okay it's okay.
1:03:56
Speaker 7: All right so low politico rating we'll go to the
1:03:58
Speaker 7: last one i have so many but this will be
1:04:00
Speaker 7: the last one i was for i was texting andy
1:04:02
Speaker 7: for listeners like andy is the lead producer on the
1:04:04
Speaker 7: show about all the takes and she's normally like so
1:04:06
Speaker 7: polite and reserved but something about this week's takes just
1:04:09
Speaker 7: brought out like this inner hater and it was.
1:04:12
Speaker 1: Like oh from andy yeah this has got to be
1:04:14
Speaker 1: a big bad yeah that takes a lot for andy
1:04:16
Speaker 1: to get.
1:04:17
Speaker 7: I think it was just the weight of all of
1:04:20
Speaker 7: them together. But this one is from the Washington Post.
1:04:27
Speaker 7: It was a heavily ratioed piece when it came out.
1:04:30
Speaker 7: It's titled, What Biden Could Gain from Pardoning Trump. Here's
1:04:39
Speaker 7: a quote from it. It isn't clear that pardoning Trump
1:04:42
Speaker 7: would hurt Biden politically. On the contrary, making such a
1:04:45
Speaker 7: startling move could put the weary president back in the
1:04:48
Speaker 7: center of the political universe, scramble political alignments, and make
1:04:52
Speaker 7: his former rival, if he accepts the humbling offer, appear
1:04:55
Speaker 7: small and weak. He could have a unique opportunity to
1:05:00
Speaker 7: exploit his position to the country's advantage and his own.
1:05:05
Speaker 2: Guys, who wrote it? The Ghost of Gerald Ford?
1:05:11
Speaker 1: A dumb person? I don't know. I just want to
1:05:16
Speaker 1: ask about this take because I haven't read this piece.
1:05:18
Speaker 1: Is the conclusion here that there's some kind of a
1:05:23
Speaker 1: deal where Joe Biden pardons Donald Trump if Donald Trump
1:05:26
Speaker 1: agrees never to run for president again? Or is it
1:05:28
Speaker 1: literally just he should pardon him and that's that?
1:05:31
Speaker 2: No, it's pure punditry. It'd be good for Biden. He
1:05:33
Speaker 2: can grab the spotlight.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: That's it. Okay, yeah. It's just pure punditry.
1:05:38
Speaker 2: Did this person.
1:05:39
Speaker 1: Garbage.
1:05:40
Speaker 2: Some questions here. Is this a regular columnist for the
1:05:44
Speaker 2: Washington Post or a contributor?
1:05:46
Speaker 7: It appears that they're a regular columnist, but they have
1:05:48
Speaker 7: a legal column, not an opinion column. So that may
1:05:51
Speaker 7: make it a little harder.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: Is it Henry Olson?
1:05:54
Speaker 7: It's not, but Henry Olson is the fourth that didn't
1:05:57
Speaker 7: make the cut here. He's had a lot of haters recently.
1:06:00
Speaker 2: I was going to guess before you said that that
1:06:01
Speaker 2: it was... part of Bill Clinton's polling duo of Mark.
1:06:06
Speaker 2: I thought that too.
1:06:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking that too. I had that thought.
1:06:10
Speaker 2: A legal contributor. Ginny Thomas?
1:06:14
Speaker 4: No.
1:06:14
Speaker 2: You guys just want to hear it? Yeah, just tell us.
1:06:16
Speaker 2: His name is Jason Willick. Not a real person. That's
1:06:23
Speaker 2: a fake thing.
1:06:25
Speaker 7: As I said, heavily ratioed piece, but I'm going to
1:06:27
Speaker 7: say embrace debate. I actually kind of like this take,
1:06:30
Speaker 7: just so you guys know.
1:06:32
Speaker 1: You like this take?
1:06:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. I think it's a bold move.
1:06:35
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:06:35
Speaker 2: And he can grab the narrative back. I actually was like, well, maybe.
1:06:40
Speaker 1: I was at a wedding last weekend and a friend
1:06:44
Speaker 1: of the pod came up to me and started talking
1:06:46
Speaker 1: about all this. And she had asked what I was
1:06:49
Speaker 1: just thinking the conclusion might be, which is like, what
1:06:51
Speaker 1: if Biden pardoned Trump if there's some agreement that Trump
1:06:54
Speaker 1: never runs for president again? And that agreement, I was like, hmm,
1:06:58
Speaker 1: that's not terrible.
1:07:00
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: That's not terrible.
1:07:01
Speaker 2: That's a bad idea.
1:07:02
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is not going to pardon Trump.
1:07:04
Speaker 2: I know we don't do political predictions, but the amount
1:07:06
Speaker 2: of like.
1:07:07
Speaker 1: There's also– no, there's no deal. That's not a real thing.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: I don't think you can make that kind of a deal.
1:07:10
Speaker 1: Is he going to sign a document? We're going to
1:07:14
Speaker 1: trust his signature on the document?
1:07:16
Speaker 2: You know, man of his word, Donald Trump, who would
1:07:19
Speaker 2: like take the deal, which you then can't undo, and
1:07:22
Speaker 2: then just file for president the next day.
1:07:24
Speaker 1: You know what that deal would have been? If fucking
1:07:25
Speaker 1: Republicans voted to impeach him after the insurrection. That's what
1:07:29
Speaker 1: it would have been. Then he wouldn't have been able
1:07:30
Speaker 1: to fucking run for president again if we had finally
1:07:32
Speaker 1: just convicted him. That was the whole purpose of the
1:07:34
Speaker 1: second impeachment. They didn't do that. So here we are.
1:07:36
Speaker 1: Now he gets indicted. That's a dumb take. That gets
1:07:41
Speaker 1: one from me. 2.8.
1:07:45
Speaker 5: Okay.
1:07:47
Speaker 1: I like that we're only the point system now. We
1:07:50
Speaker 1: used to do halves. Now we're into 0.8, 0.3.
1:07:53
Speaker 2: We work with a person in the Obama White House
1:07:56
Speaker 2: who told me once that they always made their predictions
1:07:58
Speaker 2: based on– they were an economist– based on very specific percentages.
1:08:05
Speaker 2: Because they were an economist, the more specific the prediction,
1:08:08
Speaker 2: the more people thought it was very serious. So that's
1:08:10
Speaker 2: like a 30% chance is kind of dismissed. But like 33.8% chance,
1:08:14
Speaker 2: people seem like, oh, you must have had a math
1:08:16
Speaker 2: problem to get there.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Was it Jason Furman? No, no.
1:08:20
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's been a bad day for the point system.
1:08:23
Speaker 7: I mean, the first one went to like millions or
1:08:25
Speaker 7: hundreds of politicos, and now.
1:08:26
Speaker 1: We're... There was a big range. There was a big range.
1:08:28
Speaker 2: I think we're going to... I have two thoughts on this,
1:08:30
Speaker 2: and then we're going to wrap up. One is, I
1:08:32
Speaker 2: think we need to expand the number of politicos available.
1:08:38
Speaker 2: Because I feel like we've run ourselves... It's classic Dynapad
1:08:40
Speaker 2: embracing inflation. I think we've run into what I call
1:08:45
Speaker 2: the Glenn Kessler problem, which is when you only have
1:08:48
Speaker 2: a scale of one to four... The big lie is
1:08:51
Speaker 2: treated the same as Joe Biden misstating the number of
1:08:53
Speaker 2: people who got vaccinated on a Thursday, right? So it's
1:08:55
Speaker 2: like four Pinocchios is the greatest lie ever told and
1:08:58
Speaker 2: sort of an egregious misstatement. So we might need– like
1:09:01
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like the four playbooks was sufficient to
1:09:04
Speaker 2: give Bethany Mandel the credit. We need to be able
1:09:07
Speaker 2: to have some distinction there. So just– that's one thing
1:09:09
Speaker 2: to put– to think about for the future.
1:09:11
Speaker 1: I also feel like there's been a lot of really
1:09:14
Speaker 1: horrible takes but that are just– they're pretty dumb. I
1:09:18
Speaker 1: feel like the person wasn't trying that hard. First, I
1:09:21
Speaker 1: feel like the person doesn't really know how to play
1:09:23
Speaker 1: take appreciator, you know, like doesn't understand that what they're
1:09:26
Speaker 1: supposed to do is to be as trollish as possible
1:09:29
Speaker 1: and trigger us in a way that Bethany Mandel clearly achieved.
1:09:34
Speaker 1: I think we, I'm interested in some more of those takes.
1:09:36
Speaker 1: Maybe they're not there because maybe those people, maybe the
1:09:38
Speaker 1: trolls just... aren't on their game lately, but I'd like
1:09:42
Speaker 1: to hear some of those.
1:09:42
Speaker 2: And the other idea I want to just throw out there,
1:09:44
Speaker 2: because we're doing a lot of internal planning on this
1:09:47
Speaker 2: external platform today. Why not, right?
1:09:54
Speaker 1: Tweet us your own ideas for the cricket staff.
1:09:57
Speaker 2: So I listened to the Rigorous Fantasy Football podcast. They
1:10:01
Speaker 2: do this great game called Two Jargons and a Lie,
1:10:03
Speaker 2: where they do two very specific football jargons and they
1:10:07
Speaker 2: make one completely up and then the other two of
1:10:09
Speaker 2: us have to pick it. There's a world in which
1:10:11
Speaker 2: it's two real takes and a fake take.
1:10:16
Speaker 1: Dan, we just came up with the game.
1:10:18
Speaker 2: We did a meeting at the end of a pod.
1:10:20
Speaker 1: I just control.
1:10:26
Speaker 2: F control. What is it? Control F, control V. Is
1:10:28
Speaker 2: that what you speechwriters do? Control C.
1:10:30
Speaker 4: No, no.
1:10:31
Speaker 2: It's find and replace, right? I just took an idea
1:10:36
Speaker 2: and just took football out and put politics in. We're like,
1:10:38
Speaker 2: look what we came up with.
1:10:41
Speaker 1: Look, as every great media company does.
1:10:43
Speaker 4: All right.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: We're going to call it for today. That's our take appreciator.
1:10:46
Speaker 1: Thank you, Elijah, as always for- for giving us your
1:10:50
Speaker 1: worst takes. Thank you to Mitch Landrieu for joining the pod.
1:10:53
Speaker 1: Everyone have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you
1:10:55
Speaker 1: next week.
1:10:56
Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
1:11:02
Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
1:11:04
Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
1:11:09
Speaker 1: Our producers are Olivia Martinez and Hayley Muse. It's mixed
1:11:12
Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
1:11:15
Speaker 1: sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerard,
1:11:19
Speaker 1: Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for
1:11:22
Speaker 1: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford,
1:11:26
Speaker 1: Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as
1:11:29
Speaker 1: videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.