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Political Violence Shocks Washington · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Etorre.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: On today's show, we're going to talk about the awful
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and the predictably
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: idiotic discourse that's ensued. Republicans blaming Democrats, Trump trying to
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: get Jimmy Kimmel fired, conspiracies about the whole thing being
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: a setup. We'll also check in on the stalemate in Iran,
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: why talks have fallen apart and what the options are
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: from here. Then Love It talks to Katie Porter, who
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: stopped by the studio, former member of Congress and one
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: of the leading Democrats in the race for governor of California.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Before we get to the news, two big announcements. Love it.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Love It or Leave It is going to two days
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: a week. There's too much news and we have to
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: cover it too quickly. So we're going to get more
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: episodes out more quickly. And we're going to be shooting
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: it in a studio with a live studio audience for
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: the first time. We have a bunch of amazing guests
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: lined up, including Melissa Etheridge, Ron Funches, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Ginger Midge, and more. We're doing a show as part
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of the Netflix is a Joke Festival 2. If you're
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: in LA, come see our new studio at crooked.com slash events.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Awesome.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: And also, as you may have heard on the Friday
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: show or on Love It or Leave It, CrookedCon is
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: coming back. We've got three days of events right after
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: the midterms, November 5th through the 7th in Washington, D.C.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: There's going to be live shows, tons of panels, new
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: ways to connect with other political sickos like us. Head
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: to CrookedCon.com and sign up for updates, including ticket release dates,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: lineup announcements, and a lot more.
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: So as you all know by now, on Saturday night,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: a gunman charged the entrance to the White House Correspondents'
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Center and shot an officer before being subdued and taken
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: into custody. He's now been charged with attempting to assassinate
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: the president. Trump and other senior officials were rushed out
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: of the dinner by the Secret Service while other attendees
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: hid under the tables. The rest of the dinner was canceled.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: And then the president held a briefing at the White
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: House right after where he talked about unity and was
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: somewhat complimentary toward the media. By the time he sat
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: down for an interview with Nora O'Donnell of 60 Minutes
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: the next day, however, that changed.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: I was looking forward to making a speech and would
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: have been a lot different. I said, I can't make
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: that speech. I was going to do a pretty rip-roaring speech.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: I won't go into the total details, but no, I
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: was going to hit people really hard with humor.
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  Speaker 6: It's so much the press.
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: It's the press plus the Democrats because they're almost one
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: and the same. It's like the craziest thing. I do
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: think that the hate speech of the Democrats, much more so,
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: is very dangerous. I really think it's very dangerous for
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  Speaker 5: the country. The reason you have people like that is
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: you have people doing no kings. I'm not a king.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: What I am... If I was a king, I wouldn't
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: be dealing with you.
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: He also wrote this. I'm no longer willing to permit
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with
• 4:23
  Speaker 6: his crimes. What's your reaction to that?
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: Well, I was waiting for you to read that because
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: I knew you would because you're horrible people. I'm not
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: a rapist. I didn't rape anybody.
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: I'm not a pedophile. Do you think he was referring
• 4:36
  Speaker 6: to you?
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: Excuse me.
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: I'm not a pedophile.
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: You read that crap from some sick person. Your friends
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: on the other side of The plate are the ones
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things.
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: I'm not any of those things. Mr.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: President, these are the gunman's words.
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 Minutes.
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: You're a disgrace. But go ahead. Let's finish the interview.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Seems fun.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Friends on the other side of the plate. First off, anyone,
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: general reactions to what happened and how Trump is talking
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: about it?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, for the billionth time. political violence is bad.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: It is bad.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And not the way to solve problems in this country.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And it's a crass political matter. It does seem like
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: it's always backfiring. It does seem like the most likely
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: outcome from this incident is Donald Trump gets a little
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: rally around the flag effect. And I think he would
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: probably agree that that's probably what's going to happen because
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: you don't scramble to pull together a 60 minutes interview
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: last minute, unless you think it's beneficial for you to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: talk about this stuff. So thank God no one was killed.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Thank God that, you know, our political debates are frayed,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: but they're holding and that won't always be the case.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It sucks that Donald Trump is now blaming Democrats for this.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It sucks that they're once again, you know, making this
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: about political rhetoric or jokes or criticism. Uh, and we're
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: not talking about, you know, the combination of mental health
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: problems and guns or access to guns. It feels like
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: that would be a more worthwhile conversation if we want
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to curtail violence in this country. But here we are now,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: we're in this stupid defensive crouch for a while because of, uh,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: this bad faith attack about political rhetoric always gains currency
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and becomes the conversation.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The, but, but I was in the air
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: flying back to LA and the wifi was down. And
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: so by the time I landed, this was already about
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: building the ballroom and it was already about like funding DHS.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: It moved beyond just condemning political violence and having that
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: be a unifying thing. To be honest, like I really
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: like Nora O'Donnell and I understand why she read that.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And I obviously don't think Trump's response is correct, but yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I do think when you're reading the text from someone
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  Speaker 2: who tried to kill the president to the president, you
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  Speaker 2: are sharing something that you are only sharing because someone
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: attempted to do terrible political violence. And there's a delicate
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: balance to me between understanding the motivations of people that
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: would do this and trying to understand what the underlying
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: conditions are in our politics, in our society, in our
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  Speaker 2: rhetoric that might be contributing to it, without elevating the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: specific motivations of any one person, unless it was directly
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: incited by someone in our political system, because the reality
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: is what unites mass shooters, people trying to do political violence,
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  Speaker 2: sometimes they have ordinary beliefs, sometimes they have unhinged crazy beliefs,
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  Speaker 2: but what unites them is this desire to take control,
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  Speaker 2: go out in a blaze of glory. It is a
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  Speaker 2: contagious idea online. That is what we are grappling with.
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  Speaker 2: And the less we make it about the specific political
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: fights we were already having, I think the better. Yeah.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: One thing that has changed, I think, in assassination attempts
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: and even violence like this that we've seen is since
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: the advent of the internet and especially social media, you
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: have seen a lot more of these people be radicalized online.
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  Speaker 3: And someone ended up finding the shooter's Twitter account, and
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  Speaker 3: then he moved over to Blue Sky. So they found
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: his Blue Sky account. And it is just a bunch
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: of crazy shit and and the difference between you know
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: that shooter and anyone else is like tommy said he's
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  Speaker 3: probably had a he had a mental break and there's
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: easy access to guns um but yeah political violence is
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  Speaker 3: always wrong and you the idea that you are somehow
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  Speaker 3: a hero or you can solve any fucking problem with
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: violence is crazy and and it's counterproductive and it never
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  Speaker 3: works and um it only makes more problems and anyone
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  Speaker 3: who thinks that political violence is somehow okay or justified If,
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  Speaker 3: you know, the person that you're committing it against is
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  Speaker 3: more powerful or more evil or whatever, it's just wrong
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  Speaker 3: and it's stupid. I was thinking about when it happened
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: to the people. I think this is one of those
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  Speaker 3: situations where the people outside of the Hilton, the Washington Hilton,
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: probably knew that everything was okay more quickly than a
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: lot of the people inside the Hilton. Part of that's because,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: and we've been there before, there's fucking no service in
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: that ballroom. The Wi-Fi is always bad. And I think
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: if you were the president or one of the people
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: who was rushed out, you probably knew that the shooter
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: had been taken down and was okay. But if you
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: were one of the 2,500 attendees there and you were
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: under the table, that had to have been pretty fucking
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: scary for a little while at least before you knew
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: that the shooter was subdued. That was one of my
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: first thoughts.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Plus, by the time the chicken came out, it had
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: to be absolutely just room temperature.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Starving. Cold chicken. I think what Trump said to Norah
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: O'Donnell in response was weird, but If someone tried to
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: shoot me and then their words are read to me
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: that I was a pedophile, rapist, and a traitor, I'd
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: be pretty pissed off too. It's an interesting journalistic question
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of when you read a manifesto like that and why
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and to his face like that, if it's antagonistic on perfect.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to nitpick her, but yeah, I'd be
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: pissed too.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Again, because it gets sort of put through the lens
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: of politics and it is a different thing than a
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: mass shooting. There's all these different motivations, but I do
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: think the more we see people that are being radicalized online,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: they have access to guns. They may have a mental break.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: They do see a lot of crazy shit on their
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: phones and on their screens. Like the more we think
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: of this as kind of one big contagion that we're
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: dealing with, and there's a lot of ways to deal
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: with it. One of them is mental health. One of
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: them is addressing like where and how people are radicalizing.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Another one of them is the guns. But one lesson
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: we've learned, whether it's in mass shootings or in, uh,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: suicide being contagious. It is that you have to be
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: really careful how you share and talk about the motivations
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: and the methods that these people use. And that is delicate, right?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Because it is of journalistic value and that getting his
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: responses of journalistic value, it's not an easy call, but
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: I think if you take it outside of this, I
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: think you start to see it more as part of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: a broader pattern.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: I wonder if he had, if the shooter had named
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Trump in the manifesto if she would have asked that
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: same question because then she would have gotten the name.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like who else could he have, like,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that was her being like, oh, you think that was you?
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Of course he's been the same. Oh, that part, yeah,
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: for sure. But it was funny because she did ask
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: a question before that that was like, why do you
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: think people are trying to hurt you? This is the
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: third time. I'm glad you're okay, but like, why do
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: you think people are trying to hurt you? You probably
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: could have just asked that, I guess, and not done the,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: but anyway. There's been a lot of reporting already about
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: the security protocols at the event and how they seem
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: to have been lower than than at other comparable events.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: What did you guys make of those stories and the
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: security in general, how it went both this time and
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: in general, the security of those events?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: In general, I think the Secret Service is far more
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of a mess and a disaster than its public image
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: would suggest. And that's been the case for a long time.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: But I think in this instance, like the Secret Service
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: protection is about protecting the president and other designated protectees.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And from that perspective, I would argue that the system
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: worked basically. I mean, They will review their protocols. They
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: will maybe decide to create like a bigger perimeter, put
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the metal detectors further out in the future. But Trump
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: was never really in danger. Some criticisms that are worth
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: considering are like this guy certainly found and exploited a
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: flaw in their planning by staying at the hotel. Maybe
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Secret Service needs to think harder about like the totality
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of senior officials in a room and then adjust. But
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: like the dude sprinted at a security checkpoint. got off
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: one shot, maybe got, what, a couple dozen feet within it,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and then was taken out. And he never got close
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to Trump. And he never really got close to more officials.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So you can always have more security. The uncomfortable reality,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I think, is that someone who's willing to die is
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: always going to be able to do some really bad stuff.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: If this guy had done what he did 30 minutes earlier,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: it probably would have been a lot worse. But ultimately,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I think the process worked the way it was supposed to, largely.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so people know what it's like there. It's where
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: they got him. He was running towards probably the escalators
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: that would have gone down one flight, and then you
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: would have had the doors into the ballroom. Because the
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: dinner had started, once it started, those doors to the
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: ballroom were closed and they were guarded. So even if
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: the shooter had gotten past that security checkpoint and hadn't
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: been shot there, would have gone downstairs, would have faced
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: another several Secret Service agents, would have had to get
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: through the doors at that point.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: There would have been others that served. So Trump's up
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: on a raised stage. They can pull him backstage.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: But in general, I think the Hilton is a bad
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: location for this. And I think part of it is
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: because the guests in the hotel should never have been
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: able to get close to the ballroom if you're not
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: part of the event or the pre-dinner receptions. A lot
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: of other people could have been hurt, aside from the president,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: who was, I think, well-protected. And it's like you said, Tommy,
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: about all the senior officials in one place. What if
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: someone had brought explosives? I don't want to go into
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: all the different things that could have gone wrong, but
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: if you were a guest at the hotel, even if
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: you weren't that guy with those weapons, if you had
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: worse weapons or something, but you were still a guest,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: you could have probably done a lot more damage.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I don't agree with that. There's a lot that suddenly
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: because this one crazy person ran at the door, there
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: should be things to learn, but maybe they have to
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: do something different with guests, change the protocols in a
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: certain way, but then all of a sudden this location
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: is no longer possible for a dinner that's been happening
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: there for for decades like the.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: Well service said that i mean service was saying to
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: people on the record that like or on background at
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: least that you know we now have a convention center
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: in dc that is much easier to protect there they
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: can still hold the same number of people they've they've
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: never liked the hilton they said it's always an uphill
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: challenge you're always working against stuff and.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Like the president's also shot outside that building right uh
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and they've still been doing the dinner there i'm sure
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: that maybe there's better places to do it but the
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: point i'm making is only in the We have been
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: taking our fucking shoes off at the airport because of
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: one crazy guy for 10 years. We can't have liquids
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: in our suitcase because of one crazy guy. In the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: wake of things like this, there's always effort. I hope
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: they fix their protocols and learn things from this. But
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: the answer to some security breach by one random person
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: can't constantly be that the perimeter gets bigger, the security
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: gets more. our government becomes more militarized. Fewer of our
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: officials can be together. I know you're not saying that,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: but I do think that is the reaction. The second
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: something like this happens, there's an effort to like, there's
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: got to be something we can do to make the
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: whole system safer. And maybe there is, maybe there's not,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: but we live in a democracy. And if somebody is
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: going to try something like this, they can be stopped.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: This person was stopped. The system hopefully worked.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: But like, I think what's been revealed over the last
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: year or two is that Secret Service is pretty bad
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: at its job. Like Butler, there was a guy in
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: a raised position with a rifle with a scope aimed
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: at the president and shot him in the, like, it's insane.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: There wasn't like more changes in turnover. And I think
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  Speaker 1: it's the totality of the events that lead me to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: question secret service. Even if I think this incident was like,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: not really an issue.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: There's a, there's a lot of space between like, we
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: must live in a militarized society and there's, you know,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: what are we, we're just going to keep adding more,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: you know, protection and, people it's like then just maybe
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: expand the perimeter a little bit get a better place
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: have make make sure that secret service isn't fucking up
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: more you know like there's little things you can do
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  Speaker 3: for sure agree right you can't you can't solve it
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  Speaker 3: but you can improve a little stuff fair fair enough
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  Speaker 1: Positive America is brought to you by the Obama Foundation. America,
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  Speaker 1: it's time to bring change home. The Obama Presidential Center
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• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Let's go through some of the reactions to the shooting,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: starting with what I think might be the strangest. Just
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: hours after it happened, Trump, the acting attorney general, and
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: dozens of pro-Trump influencers essentially made the argument that the
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: best way to stop a bad guy with a gun
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: is with a rich guy with a ballroom. The government
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: is now asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: by preservationists to block the president's $ 400 million ballroom because
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: they say it's essential to, quote, ensure the safety and
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: security of the president for decades to come and prevent
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: future assassination attempts on the president at the Washington Hilton.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Who would like to point out some of the issues
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: with this line of reasoning? I just think this is
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: so dumb.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: That I kind of can't believe that this is how
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: they're harnessing an assassination attempt for political gain. Like, I
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: know it's like, it was hard to believe. Why, why
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: did the mindless mega influencers jump up? Like is the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: argument that the president will never leave the white house again,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: just do events at this one ballroom. What about like,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: is every event in the future going to be de
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: facto government hosted or government sponsored? What about when it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: goes to the States to do campaign events and rallies
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: and fundraisers? It's ridiculous. There's foreign trips. There's overseas speeches.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Even on the narrow point of the Hilton and the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: White House Correspondents Association, they would absolutely refuse to host a...
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a press association speech at the white house on government property.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So it was not even solving that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump gets to control the invites. It's not his
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: fucking event.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And then now, so it's like basically every, yeah, I
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: was taking it from the other point, which is that like, yeah.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: So now every time the president does an event in DC,
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the president's like, no, I just don't leave my house.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: You have to come to me because I have this neck,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: this also the white house has been breached. plenty of times,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: either by intruders who jump over the fence or by
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: the Salahis in 2009.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Also, we live in a free society. Even when the
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Secret Service is talking about the Hilton Ballroom, there's always,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: the safest place the president could be is to never
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: leave the White House again. But you do, and you
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: figure out, you do the best you can. You try
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: to secure places. You figure out compromises so that the
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: president can go where he or she needs to go.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: host campaign events, do OTRs where they stop at random
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: places because they don't think anybody knows. There's all kinds
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: of steps and layers of security that are about the
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: balance between the president being in a fortress and us
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: being in a democracy. No, the answer to the Hilton
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: ballroom being kind of stalked by one fucking asshole. is
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: not that the president only hosts from this point on
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: game night only at his house.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: It's ridiculous. Also, build your fucking ballroom if you want, man.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Just do it legally. That's all we're saying.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham's putting forward a bill to fund it with
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: taxpayer dollars.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Didn't see him at the Grindr party.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Fucking ran out of alcohol. That's another problem. But here's
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: the thing. The ballroom problem is that he decided to
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: bulldoze the East Wing without going through any kind of process.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: If you want to build your ballroom, do it legally.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Pay for the bribes. Go through the proper channels. David
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Fahrenthold of The Times just had a piece today or
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: a couple days ago that the Trump administration basically is
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: building this thing with a secret no-bid contract after inflating
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: its value by $ 1. three times and and the government
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: is paying also not just fucking private donors so like
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: there's there's a lot of problems that's not just like
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: oh no one will let him build anything it's like
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: you just don't want you to build it illegally yeah
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: i don't.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Want to build it at all but yeah no.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Legally would be best right legally if he has the
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: power to do and it's legal then he can do
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: it we can all complain about it right but.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: But the ballroom doesn't become less illegal because this horrible
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: thing happened at the.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Hilton exactly right Republicans are also using the shooting to
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: blame Democrats for not funding DHS, which oversees the Secret Service,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: whose employees won't be able to get paid after this
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: week because they've been getting paid through Trump's executive order
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: that only has so much money attached to it. Only
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: issue there is that Democrats and Republicans in the Senate
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: did already unanimously pass a bill to fund DHS a
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: few weeks ago. It's the House that hasn't done anything
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: with it because they're mad about ICE funding. You guys
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: think that attack will fly? They're all doing this today.
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: They're blaming Senate Republicans. Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats have
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: a bill. They sent it over. And by the way,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: we're in the midst of what's supposed to be a
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: process by which they pass that specific bill because they
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: have another vehicle for the ICE funding. I think they
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: just don't trust each other enough or they can't seem
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: to get their shit together.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: It could be funded right now. People could be getting
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: paid right now.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: And by the way, on a path to, as much
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: as we tried to stop it, Republicans in the House
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: and Senate with 50 votes in the Senate funding ICE anyway.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So there is no real excuse for this other than
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: House Republicans can't get their shit together.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Again, in moments of scariness and tragedy, you got to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: pick your one cynical way you're trying to exploit the thing.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: You can't start with the ballroom and then go to
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Kimmel and now you swerve back to DHS funding.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I would have started at DHS funding and just hit
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: that and try to get a vote on it and
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: got some funding, whether it's on the merits or not.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: But no, the entire conversation is about political rhetoric, not
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: DHS funding.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: But this is the problem. They do have the votes.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: They're the reason. The only path to funding DHS is
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: through a vote in the House. That is the next thing.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: There's nothing on the table in the Senate.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: It's absurd. It doesn't make any sense. I get blaming
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Kimmel.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where we should have started.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about that. Once it became clear from the
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: shooter's manifesto and social media presence that he was motivated
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: by opposition to Trump, the focus of the right-wing reaction
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: moved from the ballroom to the rhetoric on the left. Ballroom, actually,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: it's kind of died down now, right? We've moved past
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: the ballroom now. Now we're big into the rhetoric on
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: the left. The ballroom blitz is over. Yeah, just to
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: give you a flavor of how understated the criticism has been,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Senator Rick Scott of Florida said, quote, Democrats want President
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Trump and Republicans murdered all across this country. Just normal.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: The latest round of this discourse reached its inevitable climax
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: on Monday morning when Melania Trump tweeted out a condemnation of, quote,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: hateful and violent rhetoric from Jimmy Kimmel, apparently a reference
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: to a joke made last Thursday night. Days before the dinner,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: where Kimmel delivered a mock address to an imagined correspondence dinner,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: here's what the joke, which no one had been talking
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: about until after the dinner, sounded like in context.
• 25:00
  Speaker 7: I do have to ask, though, why do you hate
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: windmills so much? Is it because they can still get
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: turned on by being blown?
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Marco knows what I'm talking about. He's been there.
• 25:14
  Speaker 7: But I do want to praise the POTUS.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Look at how far you've come.
• 25:16
  Speaker 7: 30 years ago, you were just some rich guy on
• 25:19
  Speaker 7: Jeffrey Epstein's private jet out of Teterboro.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: But you worked hard.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You stayed friends.
• 25:23
  Speaker 7: You shared some wonderful secrets. And because of that, you
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: were able to fly on that plane seven more times.
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: Dreams really do come true. Our First Lady Melania is here.
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: Look at Melania.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: So beautiful.
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: Mrs.
• 25:36
  Speaker 7: Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. You know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 7: Melania's birthday is on Sunday.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: She's planning to celebrate at home the same way she
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: always does, looking out a window and whispering, what have
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: I done?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: So shortly after Melania posted, her husband jumped in, referring
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: to the sketch as a, quote, call to violence. That
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: was pretty clear. That's, quote, beyond the pale and demanding
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: that Kimmel be fired. You guys think that Trump's latest
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: attempt to fire Kimmel for a joke is going to
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: work this time?
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: So.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: The joke is that Melania doesn't like her husband and
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: that he's quite old.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Andrew Eggert, the bulwark, he was like, the trophy
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: wife who won't be crushed when her rich old husband
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: kicks the bucket trope is older than dirt. And I
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: was like, yeah, that's sort of what it was.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: But I also think there's another line in there that
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: is what really bothered her because there's a joke in
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: there about Epstein introducing Melania to Trump. And it's like, man,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: you're taking another run at canceling Jimmy Kimmel? Like, dude,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: open the fucking straight hormones.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Like, what are you doing here?
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Cancel hominy.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: So Kimmel, just for more context, Kimmel did the fake
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: speech because there was no comedian this year because Trump
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: is scared of comedy or jokes about himself. So they
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: had owes the mentalist.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Whatever he was doing. Big whiff.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Didn't call this shot on this one.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: He doesn't predict the future. He can read your mind
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: in real time. That's not really on him.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: He's not, he's not a future seeker.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Like there's a guest in room.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: That's true. I guess he could have read that guy's mind.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: But just like, again, this is, it's all just so
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: bad faith. It's like self-evidently bad faith. A few weeks ago,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Trump tweeted that he was glad that Bob Mueller was
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: dead because, quote, he can no longer hurt innocent people.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: That feels totally off. And Trump has made a similar
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: joke to what Kimmel just said there. Last December, he
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: did an event for members of Congress. Steve Scalise was there.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Trump talked about going to visit Steve Scalise in the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: hospital after Scalise was shot. He said, Steve, I want
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you to know your wife was crying her eyes out,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: which means she really loves you. And then he goes,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I know many wives that wouldn't be crying. Literally the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: same joke, same borscht belt, like Hardy Har Har secretly
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: hates the husband. And so like, okay, you're really offended
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: by this. But again, like I, if I'm Kimmel, I'm
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a little worried because your fate is determined by some
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: executive that maybe he's working on a merger and Disney
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: or some shit and like decides at some point that you're,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you're not worth it.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: You know who gets to complain about that joke? is
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: uh the person anyone who was complaining about it after
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: he made it before the dinner like if you no
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: one no one raised any objections afterwards and remember donald
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: trump was still there's still two attempted assassinations uh when
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: he made the joke so it's not like anyone drew
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: a connection because probably because the two assassination attempts were
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: like 600 days before he made the joke but like
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: no one said anything when he made it and someone
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: just you know someone found the clip after the thing
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: picked up and were like all right a thing to
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: be angry about let's do it let's go.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a real, in the wake of these things,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: there's this like, nobody, the internet, we've all, we're such
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: a kind of navel-gazing and kind of like, we have
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: such an immaturity about us that we're not allowed to
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: have any kind of uncomfortable feeling. Like, this is just bad.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Or that like, it's more pleasant to be mad than
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: to be scared or to be upset, whatever it is.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And so people just go casting about for like the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: thing to kind of make them feel the normal feeling
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: they feel in politics, which is just antipathy towards their
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: political opponents.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: I just like, you know, we went through this, of course,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and they all did the, like,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: we have to take the temperature down and the left's
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: violent rhetoric and stuff like that. And let's say at
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: that point you wanted to give them because, okay, maybe
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: they've all, maybe they want to bring the rhetoric down too.
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: And maybe, maybe this is a good faith thing. Just
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: bear with me. Maybe this is like a good faith
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: objection here and they're going to they're going to really try.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: After that, the president called for members of Congress to
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: be tried for treason, put to death, amplified calls for
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: their execution, literally said they should be hung. This was
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: over the video of the illegal orders video.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: George Washington.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Would have hung them. Celebrates the deaths of Rob Reiner
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: and Bob Mueller. Stephen Miller told ICE agents they have
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: full immunity to do whatever they want. Two of them,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: a couple of them killed two Americans. Then the administration,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: multiple people in the administration smeared them, knowingly false charge
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: that they were domestic terrorists. And Then Donald Trump said,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: threatened to annihilate an entire civilization.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: And also, even at Charlie Kirk's own funeral, Erica Kirk
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: forgave the shooter, and Trump was like, I don't, I
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: hate my opponents. I hate my enemies.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: It's just, and it's like, you know what?
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: No effort to take their tone, rhetoric down.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: And it's just the rhetoric, either. Like, he pardons violent criminals.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: He posts snuff videos of blowing up boats of fishermen.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Fucking blew up a school in Iran, has not even
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: apologized or anything about that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: The president and his party and the administration have done
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: and continue to do awful, evil, monstrous things that has
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: led to countless deaths and sufferings. And we get to
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: say that. We also get to say that they should
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: be removed from power through purely peaceful and legal means.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: You can say both those things. We have the right
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: to say the first thing. We have an obligation to
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: say the second thing. Both those things can live together.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Fundamentally, political violence is wrong. And it's wrong because it
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: doesn't just silence the person that they're trying to kill,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: it silences the entire society. It silences democracy. It is
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: an authoritarian act. Even when people claim they're doing it
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: for whatever their justifications may be, it's an authoritarian act.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: And by the same token, the motivations of one shooter
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: cannot be a way to silence the people who may
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: share those views because it's not their fault that some
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: random asshole on the internet decided to take a shot
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: at the president. It's especially galling to have them claiming
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: that the left is responsible for all of this rhetoric
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: when they I remember when.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: This time around, I was like, I can't even take
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: it seriously for a second because you people are so
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: fucking phony after the Charlie Kirk thing, after everything you
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: did since then. Like, it's so phony.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: I remember when Donald Trump was first running in 2016.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: I remember seeing this speech live and he said, Hillary
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. And if she
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And because this was new and we were young and naive,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: I remember being so fucking gutted to see this person
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: say that and see how many people apologized for it,
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: said it wasn't what he meant, made all kinds of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: excuses for him. You can draw a straight line from
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: that all the way to the insurrection. And I feel
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: like we have been consistent. Political violence is abhorrent and wrong.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: It is wrong on the right. It is wrong on
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the left. It is stupid. when people think it is justified,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: it is embarrassing and wrong when people apologize for it
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: or try to justify it or become anthropologists for it.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And it is wrong when the president of the United States, especially,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: is someone who has encouraged political violence for years. And
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: the fact that there are a lot of Republicans who
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: would like to point the finger at fucking Chris Murphy
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: or whoever else for telling the truth about Donald Trump
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: but can't look in their own house is part of
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: why we got here.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Just one person on the right, I would take seriously
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: if they said, you know what, there's some pretty bad
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: rhetoric coming out of Donald Trump's mouth in this administration,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: and Donald Trump has been pretty bad on some of this,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: and also there's some incendiary rhetoric on the left as well.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: And I think we should, you know, even if one
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: person said that, I would maybe take them seriously, but
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: none of them even try. None of them even address
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: the fact that Donald Trump says any of that shit,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: so whatever. Mike Johnson sort of just gave up the
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: game today. I don't know if you saw that quote
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: in his interview today on Fox when he was talking
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: about this, and then he said, I hope voters remember
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: this in the fall. You've got to keep the grownups
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: in charge, and that's the Republicans.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: I don't want to put this shit.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Hey, we're doing this because we think maybe this can
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: help us win the midterms. Got it. So I just
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: want you to know.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I definitely hope the assassin loses his congressional race.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
• 33:38
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• 35:57
  Speaker 3: One reaction that was notable, if unfortunately not surprising, was
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: the absolute explosion of conspiracy theories about quote what really
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: happened uh our dc correspondent the crooked matt berg got
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: a hold of data showing that there were 450 000
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: twitter posts containing the words conspiracy hoax staged or false
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: flag in the 24 hours after the shooting which is
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: almost as many as right after butler um is this
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: just the new normal and why do you guys think
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: so many people want to entertain the notion that this
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: may have somehow been staged.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's the old normal too. I mean there's
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: something in America's DNA that just makes us distrustful of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: government and concentrated power and prone to believing conspiracy theories.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I think it is a feature, not a bug of
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: American life. The founders of our country believed in conspiracy
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: theories about like British plots to do things. There was
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Masonic temples. The Catholic conspiracy theories were around forever. And
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: also like– Those are coming back. On top of– yeah,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: they're coming back.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: The U.S.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Government has given people ample reason to question official narratives
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: from the JFK assassination to the lies about Vietnam to
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: COINTELPRO to the Iraq war. And then more recently, you
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: have QAnon, which is obviously bullshit and crazy and has
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: a thousand offshoots that are insane. But the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I think, made people feel like, huh, maybe they weren't
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: so wrong. And so you take that American DNA, you
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: sprinkle on some social media algorithms and and some news
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: outlets that make money off this stuff and are like
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: seeding it all. Uh, and it just feels inevitable. And
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: so I think on a human level, a conspiracy theory
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: makes you feel like, um, you have a unified theory
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to explain why bad things happen. That isn't the world
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: is chaotic and out of our control. And that's just
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the way it is. And like, it just makes you
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: feel like, Oh, that's the one thing.
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Like now I have, I have some sort of control
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: over this when you really don't.
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: And I was thinking, it's like, instead of trying to,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: to frame it as either, I should believe conspiracy theories
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: or I shouldn't, or I should trust the government. I
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: shouldn't just take like each one as it is. It's like,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: I'm just trying to think about staging this fake assassination attempt.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Like how does it work? What is the, and also like,
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: what is the benefit here? Like he gets a, he
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: gets a five point bump in the polls that goes
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: away in a few weeks or, or in the, the
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: judge and the, in the ballroom case feels bad and
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: then dismisses the lawsuit. And that's, that's worth risking his
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: own life and the lives of the people around him.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: I just, I'm not sure the juice is worth the
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: squeeze on this one, on the staging attempt. Also, I'm not,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: not sure quite how you do it. The guys from California,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: he's been posting, uh, things about opposition to Trump for
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: like a couple of years now. That's a long, I
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: was going to say that's a long, it's a long game.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: It's a long game.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. The, the, like, I think everything Tommy said
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: is right, but as with everything else, people are more isolated.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: When you start seeing one conspiracy theory, you start to
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: see others, and it just feeds that worldview, and there's
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: not enough natural checks against it, whether it's people seeing
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: the news on their television just happen upon it, and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: people having tighter social circles, people having more friends. I
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: just think there is this The internet is conspiratorial. Social
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: media is fundamentally conspiratorial. It's why it rewards the right
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: more than it does the left. It feeds a kind
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: of anger and an animosity and a loneliness and a
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: paranoia in a sense that everything is happening to you
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: and that you have no place in it.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Sarah Longwell and I were talking about this on the
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Sunday pod. we did with like people are now in
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: focus groups saying, well, I'm a big conspiracy person. It's
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: not like a thing you're ashamed of or like, you know,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: kind of like walking on eggshells around. It's like, Oh people,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I love conspiracy. It's like, it's like part of their
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: identity now.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: Then I guess I would just say for folks who
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: believe that on this one, think about it this way.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: And a couple other people have made this point, so
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: it's not new, but, um, uh, Donald Trump, would he
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: have rather the night gone how it did, or would
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: he rather have gotten to give his speech where he
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: had the press captive for a full hour and was
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: going to just tear into them so that everyone could
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: hear and make all those jokes? He was really excited
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: to do what he was about to do.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: He was excited this outcome was probably more beneficial.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: He was so excited about it, he wants to reschedule
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: it for 30 days so we can go give this speech.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Yell at him again.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just, I think, I don't know if this
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: is the best outcome. Before we move on, we should
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: address the other incident of attempted political violence in D.C.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: on Saturday night. At an after party hosted by Substack,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: independent journalists Michael Tracy and Jim Acosta got into some
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: kind of a shouting match about Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: whose reporting broke open the Epstein scandal. Speaking of conspiracies,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: not Julie Brown, but the Epstein scandal. Afterward, Tracy tweeted, quote,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Jim Acosta threatened to fight me tonight at the Substack party,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: to which Acosta replied, that's because you are trash. Tracy
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: then posted maybe one of the greatest tweets of all time, quote,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: still have no idea whatever went on with Trump tonight.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: Just know Jim at Acosta threw a fucking hissy fit. Pussy, Jim,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: meet me in front of the Hampton Inn. Then he
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: posted a picture of the Hampton Inn with the address
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: of the Hampton Inn.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: No, first the address, including the area code and the country.
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, good.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Then he followed up with a photo of the facade.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: And then the caption was, Jim, I'm literally waiting for
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: you right now, you piece of shit.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So then Julie K. Brown posted that Jim Acosta was
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: a total gentleman.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Yes. It does sound like, I mean, Michael Tracy sounds
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: like he's a piece of shit.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: So Julie Brown, she said that Michael Tracy, she's like
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: tweeted criticism of him before. She said he was, she
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: asked or wondered aloud on Twitter if he was paid
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: to harass and smear Epstein's survivors. So I think he
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: asked her about that. But Tracy has also attacked her
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: reporting and accused her of fabricating quotes. So a lot
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: of like the underlying dispute is about the reliability of
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: claims made by some of the victims, especially Virginia Giuffre.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: So I don't, God knows what they were talking about.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: But Julia Brown says that Tracy was harassing her. Jim
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Acosta steps in to try to get him to calm down.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: And that led to what I think are some of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: the funniest tweets in the history of Twitter.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Like, me being.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Ohio style, I'm waiting for you outside the Hampton Inn
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: is so funny to me.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Also, like, on that night, everything else is so serious.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: It's just a constant stream.
• 42:23
  Speaker 6: Relentless.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on with Trump tonight, but
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: you are trash, you pussy. Meet me in front of
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: the internet.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: And then later, Olivia Giuliani was like a 23-year-old woman
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: political activist. She's still like, hey, since you like picking
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: on women so much, why don't you pick on me
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: next time? And Michael Tracy responded to her, okay, let's
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: do it. You want to meet up somewhere tonight? Like
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: he was trying to fight her. So now this guy
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: is threatening to beat up this Gen Z woman. Then
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: he later said, who are you sending in your stead
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: at Olivia Juliana? I would have loved to give you
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: the nice beat down you requested. No holds barred.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: Do you think he's still at the Hampton and right
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: now just waiting for anyone to show up who might
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: have a sub stack or, or any, he's just waiting
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: for an influencer to walk by. So, you know, I
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: will say, uh, I used to be like, Oh, how did,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: how did people get radicalized and do crazy things? I
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: We got to follow that, figure out what, how do
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: we get Tracy, how do we get Tracy off the
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Hampton Inn pipeline? But yeah, like I remember when we,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: like we were working on dinner back in the day,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: it was like, it's a little bit weird. Like all
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the press is there. It feels a little too chummy. Like,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: you know, it feels like it's politics, just a show.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: And now all these years later, it's like, you know what?
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: It had its problems, but like there was something good
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: about people being able to be in one space. But
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: then I think, you know what we were really missing?
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: That like 1960s, 70s, 80s coked out people who don't
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: have an internet. So the only time they finally get
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: to fight each other is in person. And there's like
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Gore Vidal's getting slugged in the face. Dorman Mailer's there
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: making a little quip. Like that, come on, let's get
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: back to that.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: But again, it does sound like the in-person portion of
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: this fight seemed much more boring- than what we got online.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: So even that, like it seems like there was a
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: little altercation in person. These dorks don't want to fight anybody. Right,
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: because it's like, but no one would be talking about
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: this without the beautiful Hampton Inn posting.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think it's worth saying the fact that, yes,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: like what a confrontation. It seems like based on what
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: everyone was saying that Tracy like wouldn't let Julie K.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Brown walk away from him. So he's basically like kind
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: of like yelling at a woman at a party about
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: the Epstein files.
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, wild.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Like also you guys don't want to fight anybody. Like
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: best case, you win the fight and then you go
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to jail. Worst case, you lose the fight and then
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: you're like severely injured. None of you would like to
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: stop it. Stop pretending you're fighting anybody.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Fighting is not cool.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: You're adults.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Movies make punches seem like movies and punches. I think
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: give people a bad impression of punches.
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: What will happen is you will throw one punch, then
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: you'll grapple and then you'll be exhausted and you'll fall
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: on the floor and the cops will arrest you.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: Have fun.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: All right, well, there are other things happening in the world,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: believe it or not, as Trump's interviewers over the weekend
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: tried to remind the president. Here's his answer to Fox
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: News' Jackie Heinrich in a phone interview about why he
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: called off Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner's trip to Pakistan
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: for a new round of Iran talks and where things
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: stand right now.
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: We're not doing this anymore. We have all the cards.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: If they want to talk, they can come to us
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone.
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: We have nice, secure lines. We've wiped out largely wiped
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: out the opposition. If we ever had to keep going,
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: we'd wipe them out very quickly. The rest of it,
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: the remainder. And I hope we don't have to do that,
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: but it may be possible that we do. You know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: they have no cohesion, and their leadership is very, very strange.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: Sometimes you don't have any idea what you're dealing with.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: So, in a separate interview with Fox, Marco Rubio echoed
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: that last point, saying, quote, The hardliners with an apocalyptic
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: seeming to indicate that the new Ayatollah and his loyalists
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: are stopping the more moderate bloc from offering any concessions
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: on Iran's nuclear program. The state of play right now,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: American officials say, is that Iran is offering to reopen
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: our blockade of their ports and punting the issue of
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: Iran's nuclear dust, known as the more than 900 pounds
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: of highly enriched uranium, to a later date. Um, German chancellor, um,
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: Frederick Mertz said on Monday that Iran is quote humiliating
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: the United States with how it's approached the negotiations. Tough
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: to disagree. Uh, Tommy, where does this leave us?
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Frederick Mertz. Uh, yeah, this makes me, uh, triggered on
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of levels. Uh, back in the day, we
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: would talk about how there were politics in Iran and
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: a diversity of opinion and moderates and hardliners and Republicans
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: would be like, you're so naive. They all chant death
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: to America. They all hate you. And now it's like
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Rubio's whining about the hardliners killing off hopes of a
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: nuclear deal. with the moderates, like, yeah, buddy. Well, maybe
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: because Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018, and
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: then you started bombing them with the Israelis and you
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: bombed them during talks, and then you killed the Supreme
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Leader and you killed Ali Larjani, who was one of
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: the negotiators. And now the IRGC, the military, is grabbing
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: more power, just like literally everyone predicted. So now it
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: sounds like we're left trying to negotiate a deal that
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: is just about a Strait of Hormuz, which is now closed,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: but was open before the war started. And All the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: nuclear issues are unresolved. The 900 pounds of highly enriched
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: uranium is just sitting there. The Iranian military has lots
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of ballistic missiles. They're repairing the launchers that they use
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: to fire them. And the U.S. is like kind of
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: relatively protected from the economic fallout. Like our gas has
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: gone up, but not a lot. But, you know, factories
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: are shutting down in Asia. Lufthansa canceled 20,000 flights because
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of fuel shortages this summer. Yet countries rationing energy. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: if this keeps going... There's going to be recessions in Asia, Europe,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the Gulf. You could see higher food prices down the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: road in Africa, if not shortages. So like, yes, this
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: is humiliating for the U.S., as Mertz says. Not just, though,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: because J.D. Vance is sitting on a tarmac in Islamabad,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: but because Trump has started a war and he has
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: no ability to end it. We're losing it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I noticed in reading some of the pieces about this
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: that the U.S. or the Trump administration official's And Trump
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: himself have not yet rejected this plan from Iran on
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: like opening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the blockade
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: and then kicking the nuclear negotiations down the road. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: I was starting to wonder, like, I could see an
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: outcome knowing Trump where they make that deal. He opens
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: the Strait and then says, And we got our eyes
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: on the nuclear dust anyway, and we're gonna get that later.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: They try anything with that dust, they don't even know
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: what's gonna happen.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: And we got all the cards, and we're gonna negotiate
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: real strongly later, and you know what? We've destroyed the regime,
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: regime change. We've destroyed all their missiles, not true. We've
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: done all this stuff, and we're gonna, and now, they
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: made a big deal, because the blockade hurt them so much,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: they couldn't deal anymore, and now we control the strait,
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: and the strait's open, and we won.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It's a lesson from Donald Trump for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz,
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: which is, no one can humiliate you without your consent.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: It is, yeah.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I think he's going to try to walk away from
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: this thing.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I could see that happening. Although I guess also
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: part of the deal was that Iran was like, if
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormuz opens in this deal, they're still
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: going to charge the tolls.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Open for them means you go on the route we
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: tell you to go and you pay us a fee.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: So it's actually worse than it was before.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Everything will be worse than it was before. They will
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: have more revenue to rebuild all their nuclear infrastructure and
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: all their military infrastructure. And by the way, like there's
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: some reports today that Iran retains two-thirds of its air force,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the bulk of its missile launchers. Like, you know, it's
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: just a mess.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: Even that was bullshit. All right, when we come back,
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: Lovett talks to California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter. Pod Save
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• 51:00
  Speaker 2: She's a former member of Congress from Orange County and
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: a candidate for governor. The real single mom of Orange County.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Katie Porter, welcome back to the show.
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: Great to be back.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: So I want you to know something. I'm an undecided voter.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: So this is an interview, but I'm also a constituent.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: First of all, what have you learned on the campaign
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: trail that has surprised you so far?
• 51:20
  Speaker 6: I would say how just kind of demoralized people are
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: about politics. The biggest opponent in this race, and there's
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: been a lot of speculation about who's going to win
• 51:30
  Speaker 6: and who's winning and who's not winning. Actually, the biggest
• 51:32
  Speaker 6: opponent in this race has been apathy. until a couple
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: weeks ago, people would stop me and say, like, you're
• 51:39
  Speaker 6: running for governor, you're great, but, like, I like Gavin.
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: And I would be like, hey, guess what? Like, I'm
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: not running against Gavin. Gavin's term limited. Even now, I
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: think people feel like they look toward politics. What they
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: often see is what's coming out of Washington, and that
• 51:54
  Speaker 6: is upsetting. And so then they don't want to think
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: about politics at all. But from the standpoint of a Californian,
• 52:01
  Speaker 6: this is a huge decision for our state. And so
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: one of the things I think that surprised me is
• 52:06
  Speaker 6: having someone who's been in a swing district year after,
• 52:08
  Speaker 6: you know, every two years, swing district. Like voters statewide
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: are not as tuned in to we need to make decisions.
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: It's okay to vet and choose among candidates. And so
• 52:21
  Speaker 6: I've been a little surprised in Orange County. Everyone was like,
• 52:23
  Speaker 6: I don't know. It's you or the, I'm not sure.
• 52:25
  Speaker 6: Like it's you or the Republicans. Persuade me. And at statewide,
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: it feels a little bit more like tell me what
• 52:32
  Speaker 6: to do. And I think, like, we need to flex
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: our political muscles and look at candidates and listen to
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: them and think about what the moment calls for and
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: make choices. And I think Californians are a little bit
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: out of practice with that.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like there's two big reasons. One is
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Trump sucks up all the oxygen. And the other is
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: the problems that are California-based are actually not brought about
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: by Republicans. As a Democratic state with a Democratic legislator,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: we've got a Democratic governor. Our cities are run by Democrats.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about each part of it. Let's start
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: with Trump. Governor Newsom told Mark Leibovich that he would
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: encourage his successor to meet with Trump and build a
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: relationship because it starts out interpersonal and that Trump might
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: really want that relationship to stick it to Newsom. What
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: do you think about that? Would you head to D.C.,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: take one of those smiling pictures like Mamdani and Karen Best?
• 53:27
  Speaker 6: Well, I would definitely head to D.C. And one of
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: the things I would head there for is not just Trump,
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: but to meet with the congressional delegation, because I saw
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: this when I was in Congress. Our state government, whether
• 53:37
  Speaker 6: that's the governor or the legislature in California, needs a
• 53:39
  Speaker 6: much tighter partnership with our congressional delegation, because our biggest
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: problems here, like housing, are not the biggest priorities of
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: our congressional delegation. That's a mismatch. So definitely go to D.C.
• 53:50
  Speaker 6: In terms of Trump, like, I think you always start out.
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: I knocked on a lot of doors in Huntington Beach
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: and I would approach Trump the same way I approached
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: a Huntington Beach voter. Hi, I'm Katie Porter. And see
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: where it goes from there. Because if you can have
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: a productive relationship, I'm not real confident it's going to
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: last given what Trump's doing. But I took Governor Newsom's
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: advice here to be get a positive thing going for
• 54:13
  Speaker 6: as long as you possibly can. And maybe we can
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: make some progress on things like aid for fire victims
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: that we have been waiting too long on. That said,
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: it's pretty likely that Trump is going to hurt Californians
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: and you are going to have to be ready to
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: punch back.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: So there's been a few different approaches by different Democratic governors.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: You have Newsom, I think has been the most publicly pugnacious.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: You have Pritzker that has, I think, done similarly, but
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: also I think had a lawsuit and kind of focusing
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: a bit more on the courts. You've had Others that
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: like Gretchen Whitmer that have at least publicly tried to
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: be more conciliatory. Is there a model that you think
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: looks the best, that works the best?
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: I don't think you can have an answer to that
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: because you have a president whose main characteristic is wild unpredictability.
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: So I think most of us get up every day
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: and be like, what are we getting today? So I
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: think you can't know for sure. But I will say
• 55:08
  Speaker 6: my time in Congress, I think I really showed all
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: of the ability to have all of those different responses.
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: So there were Republican members of the delegation, like Doug LaMalfa,
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: who passed away not long ago, that I did two
• 55:19
  Speaker 6: bills with Doug and passed them through the House. There
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: were other Republicans, Daryl Issa, like I just can't get
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: along with that guy and I don't want to. Don't
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: feel bad about that. Just can't find that opening space.
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: So I think you have to kind of be willing
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: to adapt to what Trump is throwing at you because
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: I think we see him changing on the minute.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about some of your proposals. You pitched
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: getting rid of income taxes for California is making up
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: to $ 100, 000. Now, for reasons that people outside of California
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: may not know, we have a proposition system. Property taxes
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: are limited in a way the governor can't change. And
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: what that's meant is because we have progressive taxes here,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: year to year, there's huge swings in how much revenue
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: the state has. Boom and bust, boom and bust. Wouldn't
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: narrowing the tax base make that problem much worse?
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: The opposite, actually, I think. So first, let's talk about
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: progressive taxes. We have progressive income taxes in California. But
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: we actually, because of Prop 13, have absolutely not progressive
• 56:27
  Speaker 6: property tax. In fact, if you buy something and then
• 56:30
  Speaker 6: it appreciates wildly, you get the same benefit as somebody
• 56:34
  Speaker 6: who buys something and it stays flat. So we're not
• 56:37
  Speaker 6: progressive there. But more importantly, what I'm really interested in
• 56:40
  Speaker 6: is the fact that we do not have a progressive income.
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: corporate tax. If you're a corporation in California and you
• 56:45
  Speaker 6: make a dollar in hard-earned profit, you pay 8.84% on
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: that dollar. If you're a corporation and you make $ 500
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: million in profit, you pay 8.84%. So we could actually
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: adjust that just slightly and actually provide some tax relief
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: for those corporations that are struggling. Some are big, some
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: are small, but they're struggling. And in the most profitable years,
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: we could say to corporations, you had a banger of
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: a year. You're going to pay just a little bit
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: more because that's what we say to Californians. You got
• 57:16
  Speaker 6: a big bonus. You got more income. You're going to
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: pay a little bit more. So that's the first thing.
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: The second thing is almost all of the volatility in
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: our revenue system comes from the tippy, tippy top. It
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: comes from capital gains, not from variation in the income.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: But the reliable part is the income part. There's going
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: The taxes will be applying more at the top.
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: So we get over $ 100 million in income tax every year.
• 57:42
  Speaker 6: The people paying under $ 100, 000 generate about $ 8 billion of that.
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: So it's not a huge, huge fraction. And I think
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: we can safely say we are going to have corporations
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: that make a profit every year. I mean, I've pretty
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: much never seen all corporations lose money. And so I
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: think that's about it. But the bigger reason to do
• 58:02
  Speaker 6: it is, look, there's... Everybody's talking about affordability, to which
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: I say, welcome. This has really been my life's work.
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: Families in bankruptcy, people, victims of predatory lending, families facing foreclosure,
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: pharmaceutical prices, all of the work I've done my whole career.
• 58:16
  Speaker 6: But a lot of what I see candidates doing, not
• 58:19
  Speaker 6: just in this race, but across the country, is describing
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: the problem to voters. Voters know they are already having
• 58:27
  Speaker 6: trouble making ends meet. So affordability might be like a
• 58:30
  Speaker 6: new talking point for some politicians, but But it's been
• 58:33
  Speaker 6: in people's lives for a long time. And the second
• 58:35
  Speaker 6: thing is pointing the finger at everybody else for affordability.
• 58:40
  Speaker 6: It's the fault of pharma. It's the fault of fossil fuel.
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: It's the fault of, now look, if you've seen me
• 58:44
  Speaker 6: with or without a whiteboard, you know I'm all about
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: holding those people to account. But government also can take
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: a big step to give people more money. And so
• 58:55
  Speaker 6: if we think it takes $ 100, 000 to support a family
• 58:59
  Speaker 6: in California, if we think that's what it takes, then
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: government can give people more of their money and be
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: part of solving that affordability crisis.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Right, but aren't we just downstream of the problem? Like
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: California had an income tax when we were always an
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: expensive state, but when the state was more affordable. As
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: of right now, if we keep on this trajectory, housing's
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: getting more expensive, school's getting more expensive. I know you
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: have policies for all of that, but the reason California
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: is unaffordable is not because we have a broad tax
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: base in which everybody pays into the system. It's because
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: California has a whole bunch of other problems, some caused
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: by the state, that hit long before you get to
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: the tax code. Aren't we like kind of just sort of, well, shit,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: California is way too expensive. Nobody likes taxes. Let's get
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: rid of taxes.
• 59:44
  Speaker 6: I don't think that's right. And I think we're actually
• 59:47
  Speaker 6: agreeing here, which is that it's not one or the other.
• 59:50
  Speaker 6: The biggest problem Californians have is the cost of housing.
• 59:53
  Speaker 6: That is the biggest slice of virtually everyone's budget. That's
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: why housing has been my number one issue, not only
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: in this race for more than a year, but in
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 6: the Senate race. I'm focusing on child care costs.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 6: Because if housing isn't your biggest expense, it's probably because
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: you've got little kids and you've got child care. I'm
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 6: focusing on college tuition. That's a really big piece. So
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 6: you can't nibble around the edges of affordability. But look,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: we are also facing population loss. We are not retaining
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 6: our own working age people. Our state is kind of
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 6: demographically aging pretty rapidly. If you look at the 10
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 6: cities in the United States that are aging most rapidly,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: like six or seven of them are in California. And
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 6: there are big cities. So we do need to say
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: to people who are coming out of college, who are
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 6: coming out of apprenticeship programs, who are like five years,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 6: 10 years on the job, stay here. Stay here because
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 6: we're going to let you. And they're often earlier in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 6: their earnings. They're often those below 100,000 people. They've got
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 6: a lot of student loan debt. They've got a lot
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 6: of child care expense. They're the ones who are suffering
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: on housing, right? So it's not an either or. I
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: think it's an all of the above. But I do
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: think it's really important for government to own directly some
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: of what we put on families. If you're making $ 50, 000
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: a year in California and you're a mom, a single
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: mom with a kid, Let me go back to my
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Diamond example from the whiteboard from years ago.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 6: You need every penny. And so the state should do that,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: should help you have what it takes to live. And
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: so it's not to take away from all those other problems.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 6: It's just to say, like, we need all the above.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 6: And we need to really get out California's reputation as
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 6: a place that supports the next generation of workers, the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: next generation of Californians. Come here for a better future.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: If you got every proposal you have put forward through,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: would the California state government be collecting more revenue or
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: less revenue?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: So on the two free years of college, which is
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: one of my proposals. So we have two free years
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: of community college under Gavin Newsom. Big shout out to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: him on that. I think it's someone who's a parent
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 6: of a 17-year-old with a lot of B-minuses. Transformative, okay,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 6: to know that I have that option for my kid.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: So I would do two tuition-free years at a CSU,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: a UC, or a Cal Poly, and then no taxes
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 6: on families earning less than $ 100, 000. Those two I can
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: make up and have left over with a little touch-up
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: from $ 8. 84 to maybe $ 9. 50 or $ 10 on the most
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 6: profitable years on our corporations. The child care is a
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 6: little different. The child care is going to be something
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 6: that is bigger. It's longer term. It's probably going to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: come through a mix of tax revenue. It could be
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: a small payroll tax. It could be partly through corporation taxes.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: But let me be clear. Free child care is not
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: something I'm doing for kids. It's not something I'm even
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 6: doing for parents or grandparents who are tired of being
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: the free child care. Child care grows our economy. And
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: that's what California needs.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's... The reason I ask that is, look, I...
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: I love California and you can tax the fuck out
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: of me. I'm happy to pay it. I'm not leaving.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: You and Tom Steyer.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, me and yeah.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: Or apparently not because he said he said me not
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: paying tax, me paying more taxes is not the solution.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: So so here's the right. But here's the problem, right?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Because the politics of this are good old fashioned. People
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: don't like taxes.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: They don't like billionaires.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: But right now, California, we collect more per person than
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: every state besides New York. We have the highest tax
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: top marginal rate of any state. Highest gas tax. It's
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: ten dollars every time people fill up their tank. We
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: have the worst roads in the country. highest sales tax
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: in the country. We're losing population to places like Texas.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: If you look at that, you'd say, you know what?
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: This state doesn't have a revenue problem. And that may
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: be kind of something that doesn't play well with certain
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: parts of the Democratic base. But the reality is what
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: we have is a deeper structural issue with how our
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: government is run and where the money is going. And
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: that to me is what we need the next governor
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: to focus on. And to be honest, watching that debate
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: the two Republicans, who would be a fucking disaster, seem
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: more excited about that and more energized about that than
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: the Democrats.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: So let me tell you where I got, because I think,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: you know, I'm known as a straight shooter, so let.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Me be really straight with everyone. Hit me.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: Do you know where I got the idea of knowing,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: no California state income taxes on people earning less than $ 100, 000?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: Where'd you get it? Steve Hilton. So the reason I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: tell you that is, I mean, I think Steve's got
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 6: crazy pants ideas coming out of his mouth most of
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 6: the time. But I'm looking for good ideas. And the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: fact that Steve said it, I thought about what that
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 6: would have meant for me early in my career. I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: thought about the person who's working as a cashier at
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 6: my Albertsons and what it would mean for them to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 6: not feel like they're paying in to a state that
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 6: right now they don't feel like they're getting what they
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 6: need out of. So I also think that's part of
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: it is like you're saying you have to be willing
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: to look at spending. You have to make spending decisions, period.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: And we have been sort of when Gavin Newsom ran
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: in 2018 and really he gave me so much help
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: on the campaign trail. He came to campaign for me.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: But look, it was a different moment. And he basically
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 6: said we'll have this. We'll have that. We'll have X.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 6: We'll have Y. We'll have Q. You can have a
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 6: free pony. Like everybody can have everything. That's not where
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: we are right now. So I am absolutely– willing to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: make tough decisions. One of the things I've said is,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: for example, on homelessness, we've got to put more money
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 6: into prevention.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: Because homelessness prevention programs take about $ 6, 000 to prevent someone
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: from losing a home. Permanent supportive housing after someone's been
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: on the streets for six months, that's $ 850, 000. So I'm
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: absolutely looking at where do we need to shift our
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: spending to give taxpayers more bang for a buck? When
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: I ran in Orange County, I don't think I've ever
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 6: seen Orange County Republicans more mad at me than when
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: I had lawn signs that said, Katie Porter, taxpayer advocate.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: Because they're like, you can't be a taxpayer advocate. You're
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: a Democrat. But we should all be taxpayer advocates. People
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: should feel like they're getting bang for their buck. And
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: Democrats should own that and lean into that. And it
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: doesn't mean you're taking services away from people. It's the contrary.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 6: You're saying, is this spending actually doing what we want
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 6: it to? And so if it's not, we've got to
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: redirect it to somewhere it is.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about how our roads, California roads, they
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: are the worst roads in the country. We also have
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: the highest gas tax in the country. We spend 2.5
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: times per mile than the average state. What do you
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: think explains that? What would you do to fix that?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about the reform aspect of what
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: we need the next governor to do.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: So I did not support the gas tax in 2018.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: And so as we hear everybody sort of say, like,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: this is all Democrats' fault, it's like, I didn't support
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: that gas tax. And the reason I didn't support it
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: back in 2018, that extra 12 cents, was it's deeply regressive.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 6: It hurts low-income people who have to make long commutes
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 6: with older cars. You know, I got the 2010 Sienna.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 6: It's not getting good mileage. So I think we have
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: to be careful about Doubling down on that approach, this
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: is a question of what do you do with your
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: general fund? What are your priorities? California roads also have
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: improved in many parts of California. I don't think that
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 6: people in Los Angeles feel like they've improved. But I
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 6: will tell you my roads in Orange County are great,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: and we've seen lots of projects and lots of improvements.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: Love to hear that.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: So there's also like, it's a big state. We've got
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: a lot of places that are doing things that are different.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: And so I think one of the things I also
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: bring to the race is like, I'm not running to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 6: be the governor of Los Angeles or the governor of
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: the Bay Area. Orange County is the sixth most populous
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: county in the United States. San Diego County is the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: fifth most populous county in the United States. And these
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: places get treated like political backwaters. So to Californians in
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: every part and pocket of the state, You've got to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: look everywhere. And when you have one city that's not
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: getting it done on any given issue, sometimes it's the city.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: And you've got to think about how to have those
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: conversations and figure out what's going wrong there.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: On education, again, another area where California is spending a
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: ton per pupil. There's been improvement over the years. It's
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: not a totally bad story, but we're clearly still not
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: getting the value we should be in our system. Part
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: of that is we have, again, a very convoluted bureaucratic
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: system Governor Newsom in January put forward a set of
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: reforms that have been on the table for literally decades.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: The Board of Education and the Department of Education are
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: separate and go up to different places. This is a
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: proposal that would have more authority and accountability flow up
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: to the governor. Do you support that proposal?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: I definitely support figuring out sort of having one place
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 6: where the buck stops.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: But why don't you want it to stop with you?
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 6: Why don't I?
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have it stop with the governor.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: So I don't have any problem with it stopping with me.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: But I do think that the governor needs to decide
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 6: if they're going to do this. And this may be
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: a decision the next governor doesn't get to make, right?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: Because Newsom's made the proposal. We'll see if it gets through.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: Is the governor has... to set more steady educational policy.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 6: This is one argument for it being with the governor.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 6: Because one of the things we see with educational policy
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 6: being diffused through those different agencies you mentioned, plus the legislature, right,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 6: plus the governor, is we change educational policy every two years. So,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: and I've seen this as a public school parent. First,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 6: it's two years of phonics. Then it's never mind. It's
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: common core math. Then it's never mind. It's remedial this.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 6: Then never mind. It's textbook reform. Then never mind. It's
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 6: class size. One of the things I want to do
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 6: as governor is decide what we're going to try for
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 6: eight years and then really decide at the outset, how
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 6: do we measure this? And I think states that have
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 6: made progress on education have done that. I think there's
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 6: a lot to be said about looking at the state
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: level at where do we lose people and we can
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 6: never get them back? So if you're not reading fluently
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 6: by age seven or eight, we never get you there.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 6: That's just about brain development. If you don't make that
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 6: jump from Algebra 1 to Algebra 2, you are not
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 6: going to have any of those STEM, engineering, even a
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: lot of the building trades careers are not going to
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 6: be open to you. And that's a place where the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 6: state could really concentrate its resources. We changed things up
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 6: with the local control funding formula several years ago. What
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: we haven't done is go back and seen whether it's
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 6: worked or not.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: But isn't this an easy one? What is the reason
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: to not just say, hell yeah, it's stupid how we
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: do it. I don't want to have all the accountability diffused.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: We have a bunch of laws in California that distribute
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: responsibility haphazardly. It's true in our city. We have this
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: ridiculous city and county. It's true in our... I want
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: a governor who's going to be like, I need this
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: authority because I have a limited amount of time. These
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: are great reforms. I'd go further. I don't understand the hedge.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 6: No, it's just a matter of saying to yourself, you
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 6: have to realize that when the governor takes all that,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: you are still dealing with every county board of education.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 6: That's not something you're eliminating. You are not dealing with
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: the local school boards. They still have a lot of authority.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 6: So I just want to be very clear. You can,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: and I think probably should consolidate it all at the
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 6: state level with the governor. But let me be very
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 6: clear here. What happens in local school boards, much less
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 6: what happens in every classroom, that is also in the mix.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 6: So if the governor had a stronger authority, you have
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 6: one entity to do that negotiation. I think that's probably
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 6: a good reform.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: So there remains a chance right now that Democrats are
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: going to be shut out of the general election because
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: of our jungle primary system. So we just had this
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: debate yesterday. It was you and three of your opponents
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: on the Democratic side and two Republicans. Should the other
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Democrats who didn't qualify for that debate drop out?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 6: Well, look, the ballot is set. We have 62 people
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: on the ballot. 62. And I just want to remind everyone,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: that's not totally uncommon for California for governor's races. When
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: Newsom ran in 18, there were dozens and dozens of
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 6: people on the ballot then, too. There's always the person
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 6: whose name is like IP Freely, right, who has to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 6: be on the ballot. For sure.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Some good ideas.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 6: I think everybody is... starting to consolidate. I think we
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 6: see this typically happen right around the time ballots go out.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 6: I think it is important for groups that are hosting events,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 6: whether it's a forum, whether it's a debate, don't platform people.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 6: If you're concerned about this problem, if you're concerned that
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 6: we're going to end up with too many Republicans, don't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 6: put the candidate with 1% on stage. Let's act like
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 6: grownups about this. But I also think that There's been
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 6: a push to, and we saw this with Eric Swalwell.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 6: There was a huge push that everyone but Eric should
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: drop out. Aren't we glad we didn't do that?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been a real botch.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 6: So I do think, you know, when we ran in 18,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 6: we had Newsom, we had Villagrosa. This is Villagrosa governor
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: part two run. We had Villagrosa, we had John Chung,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 6: and we had a lesser polling candidate, Delaney Stinn. But
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 6: We had three pretty high polling candidates, maybe a fourth
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 6: one hanging out there, and that worked out just fine.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 6: So do we want to have eight candidates all duking
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 6: out on the Democratic side? I don't think so. Should
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 6: we have three or four so people have some choice
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 6: or two or three? Yes, I think we should.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the other people in the race.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: Why would you be a better governor than Javier Becerra? Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 6: So I have shown a willingness to go toe to
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 6: toe with corporate America and a willingness to shake up
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 6: the status quo. like, well, you just said this yourself, John,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 6: the status quo isn't so hot. You started this with
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: a litany of things about California that are frustrating. Javier
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 6: Becerra first entered office when I was in like middle
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 6: school or high school. And I'm, you know, I'm 52.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 6: Like I've had Botox a couple of times and people
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 6: keep telling me on social media, I need it again.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 6: I don't disagree.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: So you need your face. That's your, that your face
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: is your instrument.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 6: So I think, you know, we need someone, we're in
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: a moment of California where more of the same is
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: not going to cut it. We need to change. We
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 6: need to recognize that we can't just pat on ourselves
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: on the back and say, we're California, we're the biggest.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 6: We got to say to ourselves, what's holding us back
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 6: from being better? And so I think that taking on
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 6: the status quo, being willing to do things a little differently,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 6: not just going along to get along, I think that's
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 6: an important quality right now. I also think I'm someone
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: who has It came into politics because of Donald Trump.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: So like Abigail Spanberger, like Mikey Sherrill, like Deb Haaland,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 6: like this whole next batch of governors that we have
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: and are electing, these are my classmates. These are my
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: generational peers in terms of when we came into politics.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 6: And we have a different vision of how states should
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 6: work together than I think we have traditionally seen. And
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: so I think that's really important. And then the other
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 6: thing I would say is I'm rolling out real policies.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 6: So I am rolling out concrete things that people can
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 6: count on. And so things like two years of college,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 6: nobody's confused about what two free years of college means. Housing,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 6: number one priority, been our biggest problem. I think that's
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 6: different than what we've seen in terms of all getter done.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 6: I think people need a different level of specificity and
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: they need to know that you have led with a
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: different level of accountability. So when I was questioning the
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: CDC director early, early in the COVID pandemic, And I
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: asked him, will you make COVID testing free? I wasn't
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 6: content when he said, yeah, I'll work on it. I said,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 6: will you today make COVID testing free? And he did,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 6: and people got it. And I think that is the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: willingness to kind of reimagine government accountability that I think
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: this moment calls for.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: And then same question on Steyer. But a lot of
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: the knock on Steyer, which I think is a very
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: reasonable thing to knock him on, is When in his,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: you know, he put his wealth into things like private
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: prisons and detention centers. And I think that's gross. And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: he's had to explain that. But I'm curious, just as
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: a governor, why do you think you would be a
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: better governor? Not based on what happened before, but going forward,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: why would you do a better job than Tom Steyer?
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, let me let me tell a story about being
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 6: in a caucus meeting full of Democrats. And they were
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 6: talking about gas prices. And they were like, you know,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: gas prices, they're high. This is true, by the way.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 6: This is years ago, a couple years ago. Gas prices,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 6: they're high. And everybody got in line and wanted to
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: talk about gas prices. And I raised my hand and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: I said, you know what? I want to talk about
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 6: grocery prices because that is the number one thing that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: has been going up really rapidly. Like I am seeing
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: boxes of cereal for $ 10. I am seeing eggs. I
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: am seeing bacon. I am seeing blueberries that are eight bucks. This,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 6: people were like, wow, who knew? John, I knew because
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 6: I pushed the shopping cart in my family as a
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 6: single parent. I'm parenting three kids who are 13, 17,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 6: and 20. So basically three teenagers, God help me. I
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 6: really think about what's it gonna mean for them if
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: we don't bring down the cost of housing? What is
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: it gonna mean for them if we don't bravely tackle AI?
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: With all respect to Tom, his kids are gonna be set.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 6: They're trust fund kids and it's a different context. So
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 6: when we talk about like kitchen table economic issues, You
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: hear politicians say that we should talk more about kitchen
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 6: table economic issues. That stuff happens every night at my
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 6: kitchen table. And so I think that it's as much
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: a question about are you really awake and attuned to
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 6: what it's like for California families in a way that
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 6: I just don't think a billionaire can be.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: So you've been asked to explain for years old videos
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: where you lost your temper. Too many times.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to do that.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: But I had this feeling when I was watching you
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: in the debate. And what I thought was, where's that
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: energy from Katie Porter telling someone to get the fuck
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: out of her shot? Like, you think Tom Steyer is
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: buying this race. He put $ 120 million in just to
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: get his name up there. You've been fighting this on
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: the street. You think Javier Becerra did a terrible job
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: at HHS. You think he's super vague, has no idea
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: what he's doing, and won't be able to get anything done.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: That's what I think you think. But I think there's
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: like a part of you that is like, I don't know. Like,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: where is that part of that? And I worry that like,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: you've been hit with this attack and you should treat
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: people well. And I believe you do. Or you've apologized
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: for this in the past. But like, sometimes I'm like,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: I don't want to direct it at your staff in
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: the room. And I don't think this person deserves to
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: be yelled at. But I would like to see the
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: get out of my fucking shot energy on the campaign trail.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if you feel that tension as a woman,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: as a candidate.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 6: I mean, look, California's never elected a woman governor. Let's
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 6: just put it out there. And the last time Democrats
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 6: had a woman nominee, do you know? A little trivia,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: live trivia.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 5: 1994.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 6: I was a sophomore in college. And a lot of
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 6: voters weren't born at that point.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: It was Dianne Johnson's granddaughter, I believe.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 6: It was Kathleen Brown. It was Kathleen Brown and the
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: sister of the governor, the daughter of the governor.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 6: So there is real— people have a hard time believing something
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: they haven't seen. I have a new appreciation in this
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: race for what it means to go first. In a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 6: lot of my life, I wasn't necessarily a first. I
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: wasn't the first woman even elected to represent my district
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: in Orange County. I was the first Democrat in a
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 6: long time, but I beat a woman to get there.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: In the Senate race, I was running with Barbara Lee. right,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 6: an iconic woman. And so the dynamics were, I think
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: the gender dynamic and the discussion was different. I also
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: think people are really sad that we have Donald Trump
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 6: as president and are trying to assign kind of why
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: that might be and how to understand that. You're seeing
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 6: that pop up in discussions of who the 2028 nominee
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 6: should be. But nobody should make any mistakes. Like, I'm
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 6: tough as hell. And that hasn't changed. And I'm running
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 6: my campaign and taking on policy issues that are tough.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: We just had a back and forth about taxes in which,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 6: you know, you ask tough questions and I explain to
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 6: you why I think you're wrong. I'm running my campaign
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: not taking corporate money. Believe you me, in a state
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 6: like California where, quote, that can't be done, quote, I'm
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 6: showing that it can be done and I'm willing to
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 6: be tough and say that I don't think our next
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: governor should be bought and paid for by Chevron. or
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 6: be funding their campaign with fossil fuel money.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: That was a crazy quote by Becerra, by the way,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: about having, do you need Chevron? Who needs Chevron? Do
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: I need Chevron? Do you need Chevron?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 6: Javier Becerra should not need Chevron, just to be clear. Like,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: we right now need gas for cars in California, but
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: no politician needs to be bought and paid for. That's
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: a choice that every one of us makes. And I've
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 6: made a different choice, and I think that is one
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 6: of the reasons Californians can trust me. Back to kind
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 6: of the debate stage look, like, Every debate has its
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 6: own ebb and flow. The more candidates you have on stage,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 6: the harder it is. I think I was the only
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 6: one who punched hard at Chad Bianco for telling California
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 6: to get over racism. And I said without mincing any words,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: racism is not something you get over. Racism is something
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 6: you fight. And you, Mr. Bianco, are unfit to lead
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 6: a state that's diverse as California. What you're saying to
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 6: black and brown Californians, to immigrant Californians is unacceptable. But
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 6: This is also a moment where people want to know
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 6: you're tough, but they also want to feel like they
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 6: can trust you. And I think you're always having to
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 6: balance that. And so you're going to see that. Our
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 6: first TV ads, they have me. They're up on air.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: They have me with the whiteboard warrior. I'm taking these
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: people to task. You know, Diamond, Trump's appointees, Ben Carson.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 6: And then you're going to see some ads that are
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 6: more about, like, what we just talked about. Like, here
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 6: I am, a mom. Don't want my kid to live
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 6: on my couch anymore. And frankly, like staring that down
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 6: with these three teenagers. Are they ever going to be
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 6: able to live on their own? And so I think
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 6: you always want to have a balance on that. But
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: I don't think I've changed. I think it's just like
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 6: when you're doing an oversight hearing, you're there to do
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 6: some oversight. That stings. In a debate, you're trying to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 6: show people different kinds of sides of you, all in
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 6: a one-hour format. And we've also got more debates to come.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 6: So make no mistake, like, People who are not being
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 6: truthful and not taking accountability for their own mistakes, as
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 6: you said, I've taken accountability for yelling at that staffer
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 6: four years ago, five years ago, and that's appropriate. But
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 6: that doesn't mean that Javier Becerra shouldn't have to take
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 6: accountability for losing 80,000 unaccompanied children. He should. And I'll
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 6: hold him to that account.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: Last question. You said you were watching Heated Rivalry.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: Ever on a plane? It's a tough show to watch
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: on a plane.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 6: Not on my plane. Worse. Worse than on a plane.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 6: I was sitting there. I was on episode two. And
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 6: my two teenagers come home, 13 and 17. And Betsy
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 6: walks in and she's 13 and she says, clock it.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 6: Because she's apparently, unbeknownst to me, watched He Did Rivalry
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: and loved it. And Paul says to me, he's 17,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 6: why do you have to watch porn in the living room?
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 6: And then we had an interesting discussion about would you
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 6: feel like this if this was porn, if this were
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 6: heterosexual sex, an interesting discussion. But like I am enjoying it.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 6: I have one episode to go. And actually, I wanted
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 6: to ask you something. Can I ask you one thing?
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 5: You can.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 6: Love this book. So I want to pitch something. I
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: am not a paid influencer, everybody.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: This is awesome, yeah.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: I am not a paid influencer.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: Woodworking by Emily St.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: James.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: Did you guys publish this book?
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, we did.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: Okay, so I didn't know until yesterday that you guys
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 6: had a publishing house. Everybody who is interested in understanding
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 6: What it's like to be a trans person and where
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: different trans people can be in their journey and how
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 6: people can help them and hurt them. Love this book, Woodworking.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 6: Not being paid by Crooked Media, but just telling everybody
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 6: this is my library copy. Highly recommend.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: Shout out to Woodworking.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 6: And I have like 30 pages left, so don't blow it.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to. No spoilers. No spoilers. Well, Katie Porter,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: good luck on the campaign trail. Thanks for talking to me.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: Really great seeing you.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Katie Porter for
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: coming on. I'll be gone for Friday's show, but Dan
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: and our buddy Alex Wagner will be back with a
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: new show on Friday. If you want to listen to
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts,
• 1:24:32
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• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: That helps boost this episode and everything we do here
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: Our producer is Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: Carol Pellevive, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.