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"Dicks Seek Pics." · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party try
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to kill off Iowa and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation status. Donald
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Trump tries to kill off the Constitution over Elon Musk's
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: release of some rehashed Hunter Biden laptop drama. And Georgia
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: closes out the midterms with today's runoff between Raphael Warnock
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and Herschel Walker. Then the Bulwark's Tim Miller is back
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: to talk about all the latest nonsense in the Republican Party.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Before we start, it says here that Crooked Coffee's best-selling
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: coffee accessory, the Cold Brewer, is finally back. Just in
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: time for the holidays. You guys going to get some
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: loved ones a cold brewer for a stocking stuffer?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Sure I am.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: I don't like how you're saying it. I think cold
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: brew coffee is great.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't like how you're saying it.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Your tone is terrible.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: A cold brewer. It's not the product, it's the brewer.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: It's a brew wave. That's how fast they've been selling.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Crooked.com slash coffee. That's how you go to get it.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. President Biden and
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee just endorsed
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a dramatic change to the presidential nominating calendar that would
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: end Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus that's been around for 50 years
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and push back New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary that's been around
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: for 100 years. 1920, first New Hampshire primary. Under the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: new proposal, the state of South Carolina would hold the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: first primary on February 3rd, 2024. Three days later, Nevada
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and New Hampshire would hold primaries. A week after that,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Georgia would vote. And two weeks after that, the last
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: early state primary would be in Michigan. The primary electorates
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in these states would be far more diverse than Iowa
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and New Hampshire, but also more moderate, which is more
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: reflective of both the general electorate and the coalition that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: just happened to deliver Joe Biden the nomination in 2020.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I'll stop there just to get your reactions. Tommy, RIP Iowa.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and RIP caucuses. What do you think?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Deserved?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Any downsides?
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: I think I said this at the time, but the
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Iowa Democratic Party kind of buried any hope of the
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Iowa caucuses going first again when they screwed up the
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: reporting process. Or at least I think I said it
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: at the time. I was a little bit distracted by...
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: accusations from mentally ill Bernie supporters that three of us
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: had rigged the caucuses.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I wish we had.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't see that.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: That would have been some power.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: It was really like, oh, you.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Had one job situation. And they didn't deliver on that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: And in the past, I think Iowa and New Hampshire's
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: role has been protected by the fact that usually the
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: person that does well there goes on to become president,
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: preserves the status quo. That was obviously not the case
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: with Biden, who took fourth and then fifth in Iowa,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: New Hampshire. The good thing about Iowa, right, it's a
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: small state. You can visit all every county. You can
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: do retail politics. You can potentially do well without spending
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: a ton of money. Iowans take the process really seriously.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: They ask good questions. They vet the candidates. The bad
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: part about Iowa was that caucuses themselves are way too hard.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: They're time consuming. It's prohibitively hard for disabled people, shift workers,
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: anyone who can't spare like three or four hours on
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: a freezing cold night. It's also a very white state
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: and doesn't come close to matching the diversity of the
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Democratic Party. So my takeaway is I loved my experience
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: in Iowa. That is obviously, um, I look at it
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: through rose colored glasses because Obama won. And there's this,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I think the, the suggestion that a Jimmy Carter could
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: come again and like campaign do retail stops in Iowa
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: and get vaulted to the presidency. I'm just not sure
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: that's true anymore in an era of, of cable news
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: and the internet and everything else. So, um, I think
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: the time had probably come Change is good. You can't
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: let a couple states own this responsibility forever. It's a
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: big gift to the states that get to go first.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Love it as a diehard Hillary Clinton supporter. A puma,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: if you will.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: A puma. A term everyone listening understands.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: It's a test. It's a test how long you've been around.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Party unity my ass is what it stood for. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: it was basically a group of Republicans saying they're going
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: to vote for John McCain instead of Barack Obama.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: That's right. So I assume that you're happy that the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Iowa caucuses will soon be gone. Look, it's... And should
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: we separate out the death of the caucuses in general,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: which it looks like under this plan, no state will
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: hold caucuses, or at least that's what Biden wants, with
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Iowa itself as the state not being in the early window,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: even as a primary?
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, I think one thing... I also
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: think it's like, I think the order matters. I mean,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is president of the United States because the
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: order didn't matter. In 2008, I think one thing we.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Learned- It mattered because South Carolina mattered.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it mattered that eventually they got to a state
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: he fucking won.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: There was no result in Iowa.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: That's sort of the hard part, right?
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Right. But on the Republican side, you've had Rick Santorum win.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: You've had Mike Huckabee win. You've had Ted Cruz win.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: In 2008, There was a lot of narrative as the
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: long primary was unfolding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: But what determined who won the state that followed wasn't
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: what came before. It was the demographics and politics inside
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: of those states. So I think sometimes the order is overblown.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: I do think it's good to be done with caucuses
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: for all the reasons that Tommy said. Look, I think
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it's a bittersweet goodbye, as we say. See you later, Rapids. Look,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the caucuses... Oh, my God. Here's the thing. Here's the thing.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: The caucuses.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: The caucuses could try to drink it till they make it,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: but even if Iowa decided to go to court and
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: sue City, everyone would.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Know that they were just counseled loving. Are you trying
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to say that this is Iowa's Waterloo? It is.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, and they're going to have to Grinnell and Barrett, frankly.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I was going to end on Waterloo.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That was my big finish. I was waiting for you,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: but you paused. You shouldn't have paused.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: That was my big close. No, I think it's good.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I think the one thing... I think that there's a
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: good argument against South Carolina being first, but the one
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: reason I think it's a positive if it does happen
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: is that it is maybe a place that has the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: potential to do what Iowa did and that it was
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: smaller and it's a place where people could go and
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: candidates could live there and you could hopefully see the
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: same seriousness of purpose that people in Iowa applied, which
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I think is the one sad thing to leave behind.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I think it also is good that a candidate can
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: live there And even as like politics has become more
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: nationalized and kind of more beholden to kind of broader storylines,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I think that there's still like the fact that Bernie
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: basically fought Iowa to the tide, the fact that Barack
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Obama managed to win, the fact that Pete Buttigieg narrowly
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: semi-won the Iowa caucus, even though we never really got
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: the results.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Try as we did to rig it for him.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Try as we did to rig it for him. All
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: of those, I think, are a testament to the fact
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: that like It's good that there's a place you could
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: go where the national story isn't as important. But beyond that,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: I say no more Iowa. Thank you. And also hotter
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: in South Carolina. It'll be nice that people don't have
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: to go to Iowa and New Hampshire. Like it's December
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: and January.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Although New Hampshire is still up there.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, listen.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: No, that is my biggest concern is I worry that
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: with the media environment the way it is, there's already
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: a head start that candidates get who have name recognition,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: who have money, who can garner national attention. And the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: things you do to garner national attention are not necessarily
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the things that would make you the best candidate or
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the best president. And so losing sort of the focus
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: on retail politics and losing the focus just on organizing,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: you know, on sort of grassroots organizing is would worry me.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that will go away completely, but
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: that would, that would, and I think you're right. South
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Carolina is a small enough state that you could still
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: sort of live there, camp out and, uh, and, and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: still meet a lot of people.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: And like, as much as a caucus, I think is
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: a flawed and an undemocratic process in a lot of ways,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: the fact that it requires you to spend so much
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: time did lead it to be the kind of thing
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: where like candidates were getting really substantive questions all the time. Like,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I remember like the final days of 08, both Obama
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and Hillary were giving these hour and 10 minute meandering
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: answers that were like they were really losing it. But
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the reason they were doing that is because they were
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: trying to answer all the questions that they were getting
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: and they were getting really specific, really intense questioning from
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Iowa voters. So like that part, I do think it's
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: sad to see go, but maybe you can find it elsewhere.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you like about this plan overall? Just
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: going beyond... uh iowa specifically uh and anything you don't like.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Uh yeah i mean i i i debuked in my
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: mouth a little bit i love its um explanation earlier
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: and a suggestion that you know south carolina voters are
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: hotter than iowans i think that was rude as.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Well i meant sexier i meant raw sexual chemistry.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: The other thing about caucuses that were actually good is
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: in the iowa caucus at least your second choice matters
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: you couldn't just like torch your opponents because if you
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: if I won't get into all the math, but if
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: your opponent wasn't viable, you wanted their supporters to come
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: to you. Anyway, overall, I think change is good. I'm
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: really surprised and confused about why there's only three days
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: between South Carolina, the first date and then nevada new
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: hampshire the second state in 2020 it went feb 3
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: iowa february 11th new hampshire this new schedule seems way
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: too squeezed for me i don't know why you wouldn't
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: want a week so you can go to both states
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: like kind of camp out in either space whatever Adding
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Georgia in Michigan obviously goes a long way towards making
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: the primary electorate more diverse.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's important.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: It will also force Democrats to spend real time in
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the primary in swing states. Georgia in particular, but obviously
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: I think we can't take Michigan for granted as we
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: learned in 2016. Like you guys said, South Carolina, New
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Hampshire near the top, that means retail politics will still
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: be a part of the process. The main criticism is
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: we'll get to in a minute in more depth that
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: South Carolina is not really a contested state in the general.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: So you'll do all this organizing in South Carolina only
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: for that not to matter. But that is a little defeatist,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: like we should be able to change that over time.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: It's not like Iowa going first meant it was democratic forever.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: The other thing is, Georgia is really expensive, no matter
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: where you are in the process. So like that will
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: really incentivize money, I think. I don't know, mostly it's
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: just gonna like upend everything. I think God knows how
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: this will look in the next time there's a contested primary.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Because it could be like, what, eight years?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I like that it forces candidates to
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: compete earlier for a more diverse electorate that better reflects
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: what they'll face in the general. And I think that's
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: diversity in terms of race, age, geography, and ideology. I
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: like that it forces candidates to compete in states that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: will be general election states. I share your worry, Tommy,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that having three states all within three days of each
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: other it's going to sort of cut down on the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: momentum you get from winning a small state having been
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: there a while. And then it compounds the problem by
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: then having the next two states after those three states
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: that are three days in a row or like within
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: three days of each other, having the next two states
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: be two very large states, Michigan and Georgia, which, so
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: in essence, having sort of a three-day window with three
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: states and then two bigger states as the entire early
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: state window really does mean that the race will be
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: nationalized quicker and favor the candidates with money and name
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: recognition more than it would otherwise.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Right. Especially you can see like split decisions coming out
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: of the smaller states. And then there's that two week
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: window before Michigan. And then all of a sudden, like
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: the stakes in Michigan become incredibly high.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, I used to have the Iowa results. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: then that night you get on a plane and you
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: have a, you fly to New Hampshire, you have a
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: midnight rally. You park there for an entire week. There
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: was often a debate And then you do the same
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: thing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. I mean, I
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: think you're right. It's just it's so compressed. I just
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: I don't get why they did that.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of that, like the Nevada Democrats must be
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: pretty pissed because going on the same day as New Hampshire, Nevada,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: as we just saw, takes a while to count their
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: votes and it's in the Pacific time zone. So when
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: people wake up on Wednesday morning, it's the New Hampshire winner.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: That's going to get most of the headlines if New
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Hampshire ends up going the same day as Nevada. And
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: by the time we find out Nevada, you know, it'll
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: just be sort of a delegate math thing. It'll be
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it won't be as much of a momentum story.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: Maybe.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Or this whole thing gets or it's like there's unforeseen
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: consequences in ways that this plays out that we can't predict.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Well, the other thing and then there's the Michigan issue
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: is so Michigan has one hundred and thirty nine delegates.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: which is nearly as many as the combined total from
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. So as a strategy,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: which we're going to get to in a bit, you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: could just say, I'm going to skip those first three states.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And then just for delegate math purposes, just wait till Michigan. Right.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: But like we've seen like that's candidates deciding whether or
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: not to skip Iowa in the past, right? Like it
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: just creates a whole new kind of set of strategic
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: questions that will all be grappled. It depends on the
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: mix of candidates. Yeah.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about South Carolina. Faz Shakir, who was
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders' campaign manager and has been on the pod
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: many times, wrote in the New York Times that the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: plan is great with the exception of putting South Carolina first,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: which he argues, quote, would be comical if it weren't
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: tragic because the state isn't a battleground, as Tommy mentioned,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and isn't trending towards Democrats and is way more ideologically
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and culturally conservative than the party and the country. Love it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: What do you think of Faz's argument?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: It was a very, it's pretty persuasive. It's like, look,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden is president because he won South Carolina. I
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: think he feels, A, beholden to what South Carolina did,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: what Jim Clyburn did. I also think, sincerely, they believe
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: that this mix of states is the right mix to
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: make sure you're choosing a Democrat who's nationally viable, who's
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: doing well with the constituents you need to win. But
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: at the same time, the point that Faz makes, which
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I think is a good one, is other than the
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: fact that South Carolina is a smaller state, like What
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: is the argument for South Carolina that doesn't apply to
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: North Carolina, which is a swing state?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I thought that was the most persuasive point. It's like
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: North Carolina is a state that, you know, we won
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: in 2008 and we haven't in a while and it's
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: close and putting more resources in there might really help.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And like to Tommy's point, yeah, I agree. Like we
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: should think about how we're going to compete everywhere. But
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: the point that like the Biden team has made is
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: like we should not do what we did, which is just.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: like seal in stone a calendar that we stick to
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: for 50 years. We should re-evaluate it every once in
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: a while. If South Carolina starts to move, if we
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: think that the way we can compete there, of course,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: go to South Carolina, but why not North Carolina, a
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: place where we have a Democratic governor?
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I do think that's important too, the point you
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: just made, which is the Biden team and the DNC
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: are basically saying, let's now revisit this calendar every four
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: years because there's one of you just said like, it might,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: this might not, none of this might happen. Right. Because, uh,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: so let's, let's talk about why it might not happen.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, number one is if Joe Biden runs and
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: he runs unopposed, then it doesn't matter where all the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: different States fall. He's just going to get the nomination.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And then by 2028, we could have another conversation entirely.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: His only opponent time itself.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So, so faz mentions in his piece, you know, he's
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a DNC member. He says he'll be voting no on
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the proposal, um, because of South Carolina. What are some
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of the other obstacles to getting this plan approved, Tommy?
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you're going to have to have states
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: approve the new primary calendar process, including Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: You're also going to have Democratic officials in Iowa and
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: New Hampshire not go down without a fight. Senator Shaheen
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: is boycotting the White House Christmas party in protest of
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: this plan.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Of this change.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: They're going to be mad, you know, and they could
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: try to move their schedules around and, you know, push
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: back on this new calendar. But in that will then
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: force the Democratic National Committee to punish them and potentially
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: say your delegates don't count or potentially punish candidates that
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: compete in the state. I think it's going to be
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: hard for states to fight this, though, because ultimately it
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: is President Biden's proposal. And that's going to carry a
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: lot of weight. And they're going to want to listen
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: to him. So You know, we'll see. Look, I read
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: Faz's piece too. I thought it was compelling. I do,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: you know, he also says that it will hurt organized labor,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: which is true. South Carolina is not a strong labor state,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: but I think having Nevada and Michigan up pretty close
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: to the top gives organized labor a lot of juice
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: in this. I think like the broader point is so
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: much of how the current primary process goes is reported
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: on how strategies are concocted. is based on people just
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: kind of doing the last thing. And when you completely
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: upend it like this, there's not going to be customs.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: There's not going to be the sort of conventional wisdom
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: that you get a bounce out of Iowa or a
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: bounce out of New Hampshire, you know what I mean?
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Or that this state always picks the actual winner. So
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: like you could see completely different strategies from everybody and
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: God knows how any of it will go. And that's
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: sort of like, in some ways the most scary and
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: exciting part.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I think it's great. Like there was a piece, uh,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: you know, there was a piece looking back on the
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: history of the Iowa caucus and talked about how like
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter saw an opportunity there that other people didn't.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And I do think that there's a problem to how
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: wrote all of this has become and how, how, how
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: much it's driven by the previous cycles. It'll be great
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: to have people thinking this through in a new way.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I think, um, we may be underestimating the complete chaos
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and just setting this schedule, uh, Because like, Tom, you
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: mentioned Georgia, right? So Raffensperger would have to agree to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: move the Democratic primary in Georgia. We should have said
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: from the outset, Republicans aren't moving any of theirs. They're
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: going to do this the first four states. So that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: would mean that Georgia would have to hold two different
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: presidential primaries on two different dates. So Raffensperger, as of
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the time we're recording this, hasn't commented. So that's that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire is going to be a real shit show
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: if this happens, ends up happening, because New Hampshire has
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a law that says it has to be first no
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: matter what. It doesn't seem that they are likely to
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: change that law, even if every Democrat, every whiny Democrat
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: in New Hampshire who's mad about this decided that they
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to. Sununu, the governor of Sununu, who's a Republican,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and the House majority leader, who is also Republican, already
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: went on the record saying, we are not changing the law.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: There's also a question about what the Secretary of State
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: of New Hampshire would have to do, right? Because it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: a little bit, Yes, they have the ability to move
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: it to make sure they go first. But we don't
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: know what would happen if they are threatened with the
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: fact that their delegates won't be seated. Right.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: And New Hampshire's pissy nonsense is why Iowa had to
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: be a caucus because they had to be the first primary.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: So there's all these stupid dominoes that are just.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Kind of toppling.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: No, but we know what they would. I think what's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: going to happen is New Hampshire is going to get
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: their delegates stripped. right because sununu doesn't have any incentive
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to make sure that the delegates get seated he's just
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: going to say no i'm not changing the law we
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: can't be in violation of the law the primary is
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: going to be on the day that it's going to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: be and then the dnc would have to decide to
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: strip the delegates or just give.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: In i also yeah like i also like And you
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: can imagine, like, this is such an improvement in bringing
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: in all these different states, I think is such a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: better approach. Like the exact, or again, I just think
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: like overanalyzing or just sort of overstating the importance of
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: like the very specific order, I just don't think you know.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And so if you ended up with a situation where
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: like New Hampshire went a week before South Carolina and Nevada,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: and then into Michigan, then into Georgia to Michigan, whatever,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: like it's still bringing, it's still achieving the geographic demographic
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: and ideological diversity that you want.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Well, with the stipulation that we don't know exactly what
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the order is going to be, or if there's any
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: states that are going to fall out of this, what
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: do you guys think the general upending of the nomination calendar,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: which does seem likely, what do you think that will
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: change about strategy for candidates and campaigns in both 2024
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and beyond?
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, if candidates approach it the way they traditionally have,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: it could mean... I think Obama spent 73 days in Iowa, right?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: And then probably like 10, 20 in South Carolina. That
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: will likely be flipped.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: You could see.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Candidates spending 60, 70, 80 days cruising around South Carolina,
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: talking to South Carolina voters. It also means that like
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: your primary task will be reaching someone who's closer to,
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: I think, the kind of median Democratic Party voter, which is,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: I don't know, say 50 year old African-American woman who
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: is probably less liberal than the kind of activist base
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: that you find in Iowa. I wonder what this will mean.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: We mentioned Nevada earlier, John, in that like sort of
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: shortened period. I kind of suspect this means like the
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Culinary Workers Union in Nevada will be even more powerful.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Because if you have like zero time to focus on
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the state and organize and turn your people out, like
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: you're going to need the biggest, baddest sort of party
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: bosses in town. And like I do, I worry a
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: little bit about, look, we should get rid of caucuses probably.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Like primaries are better. They're more inclusive. We want more
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: people to be a part of the process. But I
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: do like the muscle memory that comes from learning how
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: to organize the Iowa caucuses has trained some of the
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: best organizers in the entire Democratic Party, like actually most
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: of them. And I think I worry a little bit
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: about like losing that muscle memory.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you can still get that in a
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: primary in a smaller state, but it's tougher. It's tougher.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I think in the immediate, in 2024, I think this
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: could effectively kill off a challenge from Biden's left or
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: any challenge at all, necessarily. I think this calendar or
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: any calendar like this is sort of designed, first of all,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: by getting rid of the caucuses, which usually help more
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: progressive challengers, and also just from moving away from more
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: college-educated liberal voters. And also just any challenge. These are
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: states that are very, very good for Joe Biden in 2024.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I also think in the future, or if Biden doesn't run,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I think you get more potential state skipping and strategy
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: based on delegate math because you don't know what the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: momentum will or won't be i think the whole strategy
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: based on momentum out of states it already was sort
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of fading and i think that upending the calendar like
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: this will put a bigger dent in.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: It just the the one like kind of pushback on
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: that like just played counter you know devil's advocate georgia
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: is so big and those media markets are so expensive
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: that you're gonna have to raise like 200 million dollars
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: if let's say you do a georgia only strategy you're
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: like it's a big stay tons of delegates let's focus
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: there the amount of money it would take to play
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: there it's like i wonder if you can really pull
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: that off and make it worth your while as opposed
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: to a momentum strategy where you can get more bang
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: for your buck getting a balance out of small i
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: guess what we're getting at is who the hell.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Knows well if you're in that case if you're a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: uh a tom steyer or mike bloomberg and you have
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a shitload of money maybe that's when you do that
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: run it back Mike? I think from a substantive policy standpoint,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, Tommy, you were talking about the type of
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: voter that you're going to focus on with this kind
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of calendar. It may generate more moderate policy proposals from
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the candidates. And I would not be surprised if they
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: spent less time in doing activist forums, right? Like just
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the type of voter that that you're going to have
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to appeal to in states like these is going to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: mean that like, like we saw this in the primary
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in 2019, a bunch of candidates in that primary took
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: positions that Joe Biden's, you know, sort of stepped a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: little bit away from in the, in the general election.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And the reason they did that is because they were
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: appealing to an activist base that held a lot of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: sway in caucuses and in some of those early states
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that may not be true in this new calendar.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: I think those people still hold a lot of sway
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: in online fundraising is going to be sort of the
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: challenge and the question. I do wonder too, I mean, look,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: the Iowa caucuses, you saw how it distorted policy in
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: a bad way, like the ethanol subsidies we've all been
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: living with for a long time are probably, you know,
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: not the best way to be doing what we're doing.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: I do worry that like, will those issues get any say?
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Will there be any like ag forums? Will there be
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: any focus on you know, certain agricultural issues.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Who knows?
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Maybe in Georgia, yes. Maybe in South Carolina. In Nevada.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: You can just imagine these things not coming up.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And some of these dynamics around sort of pressure
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: from the left, like, you know, one of the kind
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: of like mini controversies around that came out of a
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: debate out of Texas, right? So it is sort of,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: some of these things are not just dependent on the,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: it's just the different groups of the Democratic electorate that
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: are in every state.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the Republican Party, which isn't
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: changing its 2024 nominating calendar, but may have a nominee
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: who wants to get rid of the Constitution. Over the weekend,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump truth to the following in response to the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: release of internal Twitter emails about Hunter Biden's laptop, quote,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and declare the rightful winner? Or do you have a
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: new election? A massive fraud of this type and magnitude
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: even those found in the Constitution. Crazy shit for sure. Lovett,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: how much worse is this than the shit he usually says?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it's more explicit. It's just more explicit. You know, like,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: I'm actually genuinely surprised that it's getting the reaction it's
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: getting in the sense that, like, you know, when you
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: call for overturning the election or rerunning the election or, say,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: mount an insurrection at the Capitol... That means you're not
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: a constitutionalist.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I know. That's why it was my first reaction.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: And so it's like, I actually am quite, I am
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: glad he's being this ham-fisted and stupid because he's cut
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: off and posting these fucking truths because now it is
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: requiring a response. I mean, the fact that Joe Biden
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: gets these T-balls, like he gets to hit a ball
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: that says Nazis are bad and the next ball says
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: the Constitution is good. Like that is fucking ridiculous.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Tommy?
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Tommy? Yeah, I mean, it's.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So brazen.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: He's such a brazen, clumsy authoritarian that you almost laugh
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: at him. But I mean, you know, you look around
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: the world and tearing up the Constitution is really like
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: autocrat 101. It's the thing that all these lawmakers literally
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: swear an oath to. So I guess it doesn't necessarily
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: tell us anything about Donald Trump. That we didn't already know.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: It does remind us that he can say literally anything
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: and 95 percent of elected Republicans will not criticize him
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: for it.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Because what's worse than this?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Well, we just now seen in two weeks, we've seen
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the two worst examples of anything, you know, like Nazi dinner.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And then I'm going to write the Constitution. I mean,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: but like he has been telling us since 2015 when
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: he came down the escalator that the rules and laws
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: don't apply to him. That's literally been the one most
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: consistent theme about his first campaign, about his presidency, and
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: about the period from when he lost and tried to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: steal the election through the insurrection. That's the biggest theme,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't believe any rules or laws apply to him.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all, though, it's getting, we're not too many
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: clicks away from jars filled with piss.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Here at Mar-a-Lago. What is the piss happening?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes, guys.
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: Remember?
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Aviator. Aviator. where I got all my history of how
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: it used.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Oh, when I hear jars of piss, I think of,
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: What do you think of?
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: Lazy dudes, lazy college people who pee in jars in
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: their dorm rooms. That's what I think of.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Speaking of the t-balls that Joe Biden gets. So the
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: White House not only issued a statement that condemned Trump's comments,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it issued a follow-up statement from Andrew Bates today, on Monday,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: that called on every Republican member of Congress to condemn
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the comments as well. Tommy, the White House doesn't usually
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: respond to every deranged thing Trump says. Why do you
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: think they did it in this case? I mean, I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: should say we just talked about in the last Monday,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Tuesday pod that they didn't actually go after the or
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: at least Biden himself didn't go after the Nazi dinner thing.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And eventually they came around, though. They came around with
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: a statement. Right.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Biden. We still haven't heard Biden talk about it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think as Levitt said, I mean, sometimes
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: you're playing t-ball and that thing's just right there sitting
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: on the stand and you want to hammer it.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Is a 99 to 1 political issue to call on
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Republicans to demand to continue to support the Constitution. So yeah,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think I would swing at this pitch
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: and he's a declared nominee who's going to run against
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: President Biden at this point. So yeah, I would be
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: hitting the shit out of pitches like this.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Probably didn't have to do a poll to find out
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: that shredding the Constitution isn't popular with voters.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: I would love to do that poll, though. It'd be interesting. Oh, God.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: It'd be like, you know what? There's no... It's still
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: like 35, 40... Well, now it's polarized. Yeah, the Constitution
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: is a polarized thing, you know, supporting it. But even like,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: even the White House statement, there was one part of
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: it that said, like, the Constitution is a document that
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: brings us together. It was like, there was a.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Anyway.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: There was a media strategy part of this, too, which
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: is really smart. Um, but I know like Brian Boitler
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and I had this conversation on, on offline and positively
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: dreadful last week about like what Democrats can do sort
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: of call attention to more Republican controversies. And they said,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you know, reporters should basically ask Republicans what they think
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: about this members of Congress. And today they did. So
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: there's like a whole nother round of stories about all
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: these Republican members of Congress. Here's some best of, uh,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Senator Roger Marshall said, um, we should be focused on
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the problems that matter to us at home. The constitution
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: that like, that is, that is a good one. Yeah. Um,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Rand Paul said you can talk to him about his opinion,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: but my opinion is that there are no exceptions to
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the constitution. Uh, Rick Scott said, he said he didn't
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: say that because there was another truth today on Monday
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: where Trump said, um, I didn't actually, I didn't actually, well,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: why are they all saying terminate? I didn't use the
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: word terminate. It's like, we, the fuck, the truth says,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: we see the truth.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: You can see your truth.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Which I guess.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: You're speaking your truth. That's how it works.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And then he finally said, they're like, oh, he did
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: say that. He did say it in the truth. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: he goes, well, I believe we ought to enforce the laws.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: They'll just never miss a chance to disappoint all of us.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It's so funny.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: So the reason that Trump wants to terminate the Constitution
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: is because Elon Musk gave left-wing turned right-wing pundit Matt
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Taibbi internal Twitter emails saying, that show Twitter executives granted
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a few requests from the Biden campaign to take down
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: some dick pics of Hunter Biden. This is a story
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: that the right-wing media is losing its mind over. Is
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: there anything more nefarious here that we didn't already know
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: before the release of what Elon's calling the Twitter, the
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Twitter files?
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Love it. Well, I mean, we got a little, like,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: there's got a little color. And basically one thing you learn,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's always true, but whenever there's some controversy
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: or crisis involving a giant corporation or organization, you can
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: be sure that what's going inside is not like Machiavellian maneuvering,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: but just like panicked people trying to figure out what
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: the fuck is going on, right? Like Twitter has said,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: I think Jack Dorsey has said that taking down, this
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: is about a New York Post story that reported on
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: the Hunter Biden laptop. That's the core of all this.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: So Twitter basically says that this New York Post story
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: is from hacked materials. They basically don't allow it to
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: be disseminated in a pretty aggressive way. Then over time,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: they come to reflect on that and view it as
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: having gone too far. The right goes fucking nuts. A
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: bunch of people go fucking nuts. They have basically said that. Internally,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: you see after the story has been throttled, there's a
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: bunch of people trying to figure out whether or not
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: they should have, whether or not it was right. And
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: as that's going on, they're also getting requests to remove
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: pictures of Hunter Biden's ding-dong from the social media platform.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: and even Taibbi says that Twitter was honoring requests for
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: takedowns from both the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign. Reminder,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Trump was president at the time. Joe Biden was just
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: a man from Delaware, not operating under the auspices of
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: the government, and therefore the First Amendment not really applicable.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: So I don't really think we learned that much other
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: than the dick pic takedown. That was news. Yeah.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Tommy? Yeah, I mean, it's.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Certainly interesting to see how the the, you know, behind
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: the scenes accounts of how the sausage is made, or
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: I guess in this case, uh, struck down, but like,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: That's good, Tommy. That's good. On the fly. How the
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: sausage was on, how the sausage was. All right. Sorry.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: You had it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: We're good.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't have helped.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: Look, I appreciate your help always. So, I mean, look,
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: some people on Twitter were like, ah, nothing burger, nothing
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: to see here.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I disagree with that.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Like, it was interesting, but like, I love it. Just said,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: The fact that this was kind of a messy mistake,
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: it wasn't news. Jack Dorsey copped to that. I think
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: most people in hindsight are like, yeah, that was probably
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: a mistake to block users from sharing this laptop story.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: But again, like everyone struggled with this decision. The New
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: York Post struggled with this decision. They had to, they
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: turned down the story, I think, before offloading it to
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: some former producer for Sean Hannity who wrote it up
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: and that person now works at Breitbart. So it was
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: a tough call. On balance, they made a mistake. I
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: think it was an honest mistake. But when you consider
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: the role that Russian disinformation played in the 2016 election
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: and the pressure that Twitter was getting and Facebook was
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: getting from the U.S. government to prevent election interference, you
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: can certainly understand it. And so, like, I think bigger picture,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk is creating more problems for himself here because
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: he is pledging to be this person that he is not,
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: which is a transparent champion of free speech. But he
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: stops being those things when they bump up against his interests.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: And at some point, there's going to be an edge
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: case like this that pisses off his MAGA base or
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: some decision they don't like, and they're going to want
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: the same level of transparency, and they're going to be
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: pissed when he doesn't get it. And look, pre-Elon Twitter
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: was not perfect. It frustrated all of us at times.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: But I listened to Kara Swisher's interview with Yale Roth,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: I think is how you say his name, the guy
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: who had the job of trust and safety. And He's
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: a very earnest academic. And what they tried to do
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: was put in place consistent processes to make challenging decisions,
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: knowing that they're all human beings and they're going to
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: screw it up. And Elon has just upended all of that.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Like he's playing King and making like impulsive, childish decisions.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: And so like, I don't know if he wants to
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: be transparent, put these documents out to all journalists. Don't
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: like cherry pick Tybee. And now Barry Weiss is the
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: other journalist who will now have access to them. I
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: know this because I have a very small shrunken social life.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: And I listened to like an hour and a half
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: of his Twitter space on Saturday and actually got to
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: ask him a question before they cut me off.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: What was your question?
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: I asked him, he had gotten asked by somebody else
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: about whether he would do anything to support protesters in
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Iran and China, and he ducked it. And so I
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: followed up on that. And I was like, look, you
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: say free speech is like critical to the future of civilization.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Will Twitter do anything to help free speech in China
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: and Iran with those protesters? Like, is their speech critical
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: to the future of civilization? And he basically got mad
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: at me, told me it was a dumb question because
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: they can't connect to Twitter with a VPN. All the
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: little like right wing guys hosting the call started mocking me.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: And then they muted me and they kicked me out.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And then Seb Gorka asked a question. So it was
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: a very productive use of everyone's time.
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: And what time was this? What's going on during... What
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: were you doing? I was flying home Saturday night from D.C. Yeah,
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: because I was like, what time is it in California
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: right now?
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: I was transitioning from World Cup soccer games to Georgia LSU.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: And so, look, it did no harm. Hannah was doing
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: some other stuff.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I was... Yeah. Few things annoy me more than... right-wing
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: media and assholes like elon musk trying to scandalize what
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: is sort of normal clunky behavior inside an organization by
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: trying to like release emails right like this is what
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: they did with like they've done this forever like i
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: went back and looked at the timeline on all this
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: because you sort of forget how this unfolded yeah in
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the in the weeks before the election but it's like
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: You're right. There was good reason to believe that a
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: foreign government would once again interfere in our election on
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: behalf of Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's intelligence agencies and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies were putting out that warning at the time. Right.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg in an interview had said, oh, they told
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: us specifically that this was going to happen. And so
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: when the Hunter laptop story comes up, they're like, oh,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: it could look exactly like this.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Like it looked like that kind of thing. So what
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: they do is. They'd make the decision, Twitter and Facebook
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and some other social media companies, to throttle back in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: a really significant way the ability to share that story
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: for a couple days. Then there was an uproar, and
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: then they realized, okay, we shouldn't throttle it back anymore. Now,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the effect that had was to increase the Google search
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: interest on the Hunter Biden story by fivefold overnight because
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the story was then that social media companies were restricting
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the stories. In a poll taken about a week before
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the election, 77% of all voters had heard of the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Hunter laptop story. 40% had heard a great deal of it.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: A plurality thought that Hunter did something wrong and had
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: corrupt business dealings. But just 3% of voters said that
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden issue was the most important issue in
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: deciding their vote. Turns out he wasn't running for president.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Turns out he wasn't running for president. Who knew? So
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: this whole idea that they tipped the scales of the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: election on behalf of– it's bullshit. And then Jack Dorsey
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: over a year ago was saying that it was a
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: mistake initially and that it was basically inaccurate that the
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Hunter laptop story was based on planted information or some
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: foreign op or whatever it was. So, yeah, it was
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a mistake, but it was not nefarious. and it didn't
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: have any fucking effect.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: The people who want you to believe that the Hunter
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: Biden laptop story suppression was critical to the outcome of
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: the election are the same people who mock liberals who
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: get upset about Russian interference in 2016. You can't have both.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: And again, hey, Republican friends, if you don't want to
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: be treated... like you are people who collude with foreign
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: governments and peddle and sketchy information, then don't collude with
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: foreign governments and conspire with WikiLeaks, et cetera, and all
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: the shit you did in 2016. Like they created the
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: context where this kind of action would happen from these
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: social media companies. It doesn't change the fact that on balance,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: it was probably the wrong decision for them to throttle
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: that story for a couple of days. But like, are
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: we supposed to act like Rudy Giuliani was credible?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Give me a break. They already knew that.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: They already said that.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: We've already known that for a year. And so Elon
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Musk is at best ignorant and at worst an asshole
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: for doing this. And he, look, he said at one point, oh,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't read all the Twitter files. So you just
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: gave all that to Matt Taibbi, who like is a
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: bad actor without good intentions. And all we learned that
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: was new was that there were some embarrassing pictures of
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Hunter Biden and, That didn't have anything to do with
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: the business dealings or the scandal, the corruption or anything
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: that he might ultimately get charged for by DOJ had
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with any of that. It was some
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: dick pics that the campaign asked to take down. That
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: was it.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: And, you know, like. Elon, he has he has bought
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: this thing, he is acting as though he has some
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: tribune for for for to create a global public square
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: where people can speak and have a dialogue. He's going
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: to defend free speech. there is this big space between
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: outright misinformation and like hard right bigotry and, you know, whatever, NPR.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: There's this big space in between where I think some
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: of the biggest obstacles to our being able to actually
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: have this utopian space that is impossible, that he wants
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: to create. And the thing that stands in its way
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: is not just these heinous examples of the most obvious and,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: you know, disgusting kinds of hate and lies and speech.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: It's sensationalism. It's noise. It's it's hyping things that aren't
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: actually a big deal. It's feeding into people's conspiratorial mindsets.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: It's treating everything, as John said, as as some kind
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: of nefarious plot rather than people just plodding along, trying
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: their best. That heat is like the biggest is probably
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: day to day the biggest problem. we have in having
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: any kind of political debate in this country. And no
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: one is doing more damage to it and actually making
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Twitter less usable and less likely to survive than Elon Musk,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: who wants to be both the mayor of this big
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: fucking town and also its chief troll and destroyer. So
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: it's like, fuck you. What a waste of, everyone's fucking time.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: And he's also just like, he's trying to just juice
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: engagement on Twitter because he clearly made Matt Taibbi Roll
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: this all out through via the most confusing Twitter thread
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: you could possibly have structured.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: It's like a lot of throat clearing, which is very annoying.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: But like he just wants people on Twitter, which, you know,
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: he's just like he's just doing like earned media ops.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: But the other thing he did over the weekend that
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: I just want to fly quickly is he tweeted in
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: response to somebody. I've seen a lot of concerning tweets
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: about the recent Brazil election. If those tweets are accurate,
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: it's possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: So what he's doing there, so right, like Brazil was
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: a military dictatorship until very recently. They just went through
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: an election where a modern day fascist named Jair Bolsonaro
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: narrowly lost to Lula da Silva, the former president. And
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: there was real concern about the potential for political violence.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: And it got really close. He is just throwing gas
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: on that fire before the transfer of power actually occurs
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: without knowing the facts. And it's like, hey, man, If
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you care about like truth and transparency, that's great. Get
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: the facts and then tweet about it.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: So don't do this. I saw that. And this is
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: an example of Elon's brain being poisoned by Twitter because
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: he is now he now follows and and interacts with
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: all of these supposed free speech advocates who are actually
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: just right wing fucking trolls. who are feeding him. So
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: all he's encountering is all this disinformation and misinformation about
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: not only things that are going on here in the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: United States, but all over the world. And so now
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: he's just regurgitating him because that's his information environment.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Well, because he's also a guy that's been in a
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: fucking boring tunnel for the last 15, 20 years. He's not, like,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: he's not, he's not familiar with the the organizations that
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: are advocating for democracy in Brazil. He's not familiar with
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: the contours of this debate. He's not familiar with the
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: contours of the American political debate about who's an honest interlocutor,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: who's full of shit. He is making it up and
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: figuring it out as he goes, because he's just a
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: fucking rich guy who built a car, who bought a
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: social media platform.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And now we're all along for the ride.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: And worse than that, he is exposed in foreign countries,
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: unlike Jack Dorsey was. So Elon Musk wants to move
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: some of his manufacturing... to.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: India, for example.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: He wants to sell a bunch of Teslas in India.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: The Indian government, we.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Know, in 2021 went to Twitter and said, take down
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: these hundreds of accounts that have been criticizing the Modi government.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: That is going to happen again. And Elon is going
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: to bend, if not break, when this happens. And I
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: guarantee you, he won't be transparent about it.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And guess what? A bunch of tech workers and a
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: content moderation council, that's messy and it doesn't get it right.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: But the alternative is what we have now, which is
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: a dictator. Elon Musk making all the rules himself. Yeah,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: and a Twitter poll that could be, you know, juiced
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: by a whole bunch of bots.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: His own staff says are just nonsense. They're all juiced
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: by bots, which is his primary beef with the platform.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: All right. Before we talk to Tim, there is a
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: runoff election Tuesday today in Georgia between Democratic Senator Raphael
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. More than 2 million votes
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: have already been cast, and turnout seems to be higher
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: in Democratic areas. Polls also seem to be favoring Warnock
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: by a few points, but it's a close enough race
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: that a surge of Republicans on Election Day could very
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: easily tip the race toward Walker. Guys, any final reflections
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: on how both campaigns and candidates have closed out this
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: relatively short runoff? Love it.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Look, I think Herschel Walker is leaving it all out
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: there on the field, as you would say in football.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: He has never been worse as a candidate. And I
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: think that's really going to make the difference. I hope.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: I hope. I hope. How about that?
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Walker seems to be closing out the
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: campaign by dealing with more allegations of abuse that are
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: incredibly troubling and seeming to misstate which entity he's actually
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: running for. It seemed like he was suggesting he was
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: running In the House? Or maybe he was just confused
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: about the.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Makeup of the House versus the Senate.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: He's an absolute disaster. It's embarrassing to everyone involved. And
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: I'm just praying that Georgia voters turn out and send
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Raphael Warnock back to the Senate. I listened to his
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: interview that I think you did love it. It was like,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: he's such an inspiring, hopeful, amazing person. We are lucky
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: to have that man in the U.S.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Senate.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: It's crazy that we were even considering, any state would
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: consider replacing him with Herschel Walker.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: And I can make fun of how bad a candidate
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Hershel Walker is, but I do think because he is
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: so bad, there is, I think, a reason to be
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: concerned about people being complacent and thinking it's in the
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: bag when this is coming out Tuesday morning. People still
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: need to turn out. They need to vote. Republicans turn
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: on their turnout machine. We have no idea what happens
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: when they do.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I did see Trump's former state director in 2016
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: in Georgia who had said that he was in Playbook
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: today and he said he had been hopeful that Walker
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: would win this runoff. But now he's a little less hopeful.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: But importantly, what he said is he's like this. The
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: machine that the turnout machine and the organization that Stacey
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Abrams helped build over the last 10 years is just unbelievable.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: And that's what makes him most worried that they are.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So that is that is good news. And it's also,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you know, good news that the Votes of America community
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: has really stepped up in these last couple of weeks after.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: stepping up all through the midterm. So we just want
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: to thank everyone who has stepped up for VSA. You've
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: raised over $ 175, 000 for the Warnock campaign and the runoff
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and over $ 70, 000 to support America Votes organizers through Vote
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Save America's Every Last Vote Fund. You've contacted 150,000 Georgian
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: voters with the goal to call an additional 2,000 voters
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: by the time the polls close this evening. So that
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: is fantastic work. And if you're hearing this Tuesday morning,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: there's still time to get out the vote before polls close.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Listeners can go to votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer to sign up.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Lovett and I will talk to
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Tim Miller. Stunning backdrop there. Are you going for a
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Room Raider score or a 10 out of 10 there?
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: You know, this is just my kitchen here, John.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, that's not a kitchen.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: That's a kitchen that belongs to a gay person. That's
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: a gay kitchen.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: I'm just trying to balance out my football hat with
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: a gay... Little plant and wallpaper combo.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: We get it. You're a man without a party. Let's
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: keep this moving.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: Shut the fuck up, love it.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Joining us today, writer at large at the Bulwark, author
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: of the best-selling book Why We Did It, a travelogue
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: from the Republican road to hell, friend of the pod,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Tim Miller. Tim, welcome back.
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: Hey, boys, and I'm so happy to see that it's
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: Love It and not VTOR this time. There were some
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: rumors in my Twitter mentions the last time that there
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: was gay drama and that Lovett snubbed me and.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Was faking it.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: Multiple people tweeting that at me.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Look, Tim, as I texted you, it was a true
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: testament that I liked the book because I finished it
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: even after I missed the interview because of COVID.
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: I appreciate that text, but the proof is now in
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: the pudding that you would say it live in front
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: of other people, not just in private.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: And you know what you did.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: I did.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Are you two okay?
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're good. We're good.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Tim, your latest bulwark piece, a real banger. The headline is, no,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: you do not have a right to post Hunter Biden's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: dick pic on Twitter.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: Constitutional right.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: You do.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: You do have a right, I guess, but you don't
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: have a constitutional right.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Constitutional right. That's correct.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: So you do a great job of cutting through a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: lot of the bullshit around this story that Mago World
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: is hyperventilating over, though that hasn't stopped the hyperventilating. How
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: much of an appetite do you think there is to
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: keep the story going? And do you think it'll have
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: traction beyond the hardcore fanboys?
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: Oh, there is unending appetite. Have you guys turned on
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: Fox today? I mean, this is leading the hour, leading
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: every hour. Concerns about constitutional rights related to posting Hunter
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: Biden's hog. I don't know whether I'm not certain. whether,
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: you know, how long that this will have success with
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: the Republican base, but it continues to draw interest right now.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: One of the, I think, you know, two or three
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: affirmative policy platforms of this incoming Republican Congress, that one
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: of the things they really do care about is making
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: sure people have a right to post Hunter Biden's penis
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: on the internet if they want to, and that the
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: platforms cannot cancel them for it. So I think they
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: intend to keep talking about it. I do not. I
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: do not get the sense. You know, I live here
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: in Oakland now. I'm a coastal elite. So but I
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: do not get the sense that it's resonating among among
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: the swing voters that cost the Republicans.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: So you don't think Hunter Biden's penis has become a
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: surprisingly big issue?
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: I don't. I think it's a growing issue to grow.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: But I don't think it's showing up in the poll.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: There's not a ton of evidence that. You know, I
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: did travel a little bit during the midterms for my
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: various media endeavors, and I didn't hear a lot about it,
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: you know, in Pennsylvania and Arizona among the swing voters.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: Did it show up in your focus groups? John, we're
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: not hearing that in the bulwark focus groups.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: No, I did not hear anything about it.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Didn't pop up?
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Every once in a while, you do get something Hunter Biden,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and then there's something nefarious attached to it, but that's
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: about it. What's your read on Elon Musk's role in
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: all this. And just as a fellow Twitter addict, how
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: concerned are you that he's our chief supplier now?
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: I'm very concerned. I did a whole Snapchat episode this
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: week about being a Twitter addict and being concerned about
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: having Elon and just my mix. It's a troubling relationship
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: that you have. It's like you're in a bad, have
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: an abusive boyfriend, abusive spouse type situation. but I'm pressing forward.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: I'm going down with the ship on Twitter. I think
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: that this reveals the Twitter files thing. The biggest thing
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: that it reveals is just, you know, there's a lot of,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: I think, occasionally correct criticism of the left and the
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: media ecosystem that they're kind of out of touch with
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: the concerns of regular folks. And, you know, you're talking
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: about sometimes things that, you know, in using language that
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: regular people don't care about. I just think this is
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: a prime example that the Republicans and the, like, contrarian
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: tech bro new republican allies are like in an equally
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: thick if not even thicker hermetically sealed bubble where like
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: they think that the things that they are obsessing about
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: are things that actual people care about and i think
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: that the twitter files is just a prime example of
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: this like they really did believe like i think that
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: elon really did believe that he had um you know
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: something something huge here. I mean, he said, he replied
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: to Taibbi saying that if this is not a violation
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: of the constitution, I don't know what is.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: And it was like, anything.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: That's a violation of the constitution would be, uh, but
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: this is not even in the ballpark. So I think
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: that that shows that, that like, it's not, he's not
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: like putting on a front, like he is obsessed over
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: this stuff over cancel culture and, and et cetera. And
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: so he thinks everybody else is, um, I think it's concerning.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: Obviously I've closed my DMS. I used to have open
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: DM policy, but like, You know, the fact that he
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: would leak people's emails, like internal emails of his own
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: staff and former staff, I just think shows a lack
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: of judgment and concern about how much he cares about
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: our data. I think that's an obvious point, but another one. Yeah.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: So speaking of cancel culture, it seems to have come
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: for Kanye and Trump. I am of two minds. Like,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: you know, look, we have this truth from this weekend
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: where he says he wants to terminate some of the
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: articles of the Constitution. that led to a fair amount of,
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: you know, Biden to press Republicans to be asked about this.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: You have the Nazi dinner and I'm of two minds.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: On the one hand, it feels as though his liability
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: is becoming more clear to people, especially after the midterms
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: and that he's committing Trump's liability. So he's committing the
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: ultimate sin, which is not being politically valuable as opposed
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: to causing insurrection. But on the other hand, this feels
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: a lot like the conversation that was happening before the
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: first votes in 2016, where, oh, he's not viable. Oh,
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: he's not viable. He's too toxic. And then lo and behold,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: there's enough of a minority to carry him to victory
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: in the primaries. How are you feeling right now about
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: where the Republican Party is with Donald Trump?
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: He's as weak as he's been since he came on
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: board with the Republican base, you know, since he came
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: down the escalator. I don't think that that's a question.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: A big part of that reason is because people see
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: a realistic off-ramp, to your point. It's not that he's
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: vulnerable because the Republican scales have fallen from the eyes
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: of Republican voters and now they see the man for
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: who he is. That's not what has happened. To your
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: point is they now have an alternate choice hypothetical one
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: in Ron DeSantis that is not Hillary or Joe Biden.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: you know, or, uh, you know, a Democrat or a
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: Rhino cock, never Trump or like me, right? Like they
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: have a, uh, they have an off ramp that is
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: someone else that they like, who's actually doing a Donald
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: Trump imitation. So for that reason, I, Trump is, is
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: a lot more, um, a lot more vulnerable than he was.
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: And I think that also just this sense of his invincibility, right?
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: You can't understate that with the Republican base, you know,
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: they never really liked Romney or McCain and, and like, we,
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: my people, we thrust them upon the base voters and,
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: And they they didn't they had to hold their nose
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: and and and they lost both those candidates. You guys
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: might not remember that. But so then when Trump wins, right,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: they the base voter, your your median Republican voter starts
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: saying themselves, well, fuck these guys. I can get everything
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: I want. I can own the libs. I can like
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: say racist stuff and we can win.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: And so and so Trump had this hold over people,
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: this power that allowed him to do all this crazy
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: shit because they're like, I don't know, worked in 2016,
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: despite the fact that he lost the popular vote. And
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: so I think that that hold on people is is weakening.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: Since they've lost now three straight times. And this was
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: the central element of the big lie.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: In 2020, it was like if I can convince people
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: I didn't really lose the second time that I can
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: maintain that hold. And I think that slowly but surely,
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: there's a certain percentage, not the whole Republican Party, obviously,
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: but there's a certain percentage of people that are like,
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: you know, the electability spell is breaking a little bit. Now,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: that doesn't mean that he couldn't win, of course. He's
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: still totally viable. But I think he's weaker than he's been.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, like, I have seen
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the argument. This is like a New York Times pitch
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: bot take here, that Trump's weakness is actually making him
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: stronger in the primary because.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Because what's happening is since he's weaker than he's ever been,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: more potential Republican candidates for president are thinking about jumping
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: into the field. And the more candidates you have in
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the field, the easier it is because of the Republican
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: primary nomination rules, which has mostly either winner take all
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: or winner take most delegates in a state. And now
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: you can win the nomination as a a factional candidate
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: who only polls, you know, 30, 40%.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: All right, so Pundit the Dog's going to like this
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: because I am against conventional wisdom on this. This is
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: the wrongest conventional wisdom about 2016. Donald Trump would have
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: beat any one of the other 16 candidates one-on-one. Donald
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: Trump had almost a bare majority, despite the fact that
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: there were 17 candidates. And he ended up with like
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: 45% of the total vote. The people wanted Trump. And
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: Florida is my best example of this. So I was
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: working for the anti-Trump PAC at the time. Jeb had
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: dropped out. We convinced Cruz to not compete in Florida.
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: So it was really a head-to-head with Marco and Trump.
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: And John Kasich is a stubborn asshole. So he stayed
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: in and got like 4% or something.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: We can check the numbers. But it wasn't that many.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: And Trump crushed Marco. in his home state, head-to-head, the
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: strongest supposedly candidate opposing him. So I don't think that
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: that is really true. Someone is going to have to
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: actually go out and beat Trump if he's going to
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: be beaten. Is there a hypothetical scenario where he could
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: get 38% and DeSantis could get 36% and Pence could
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: get whatever, have a math person figure out how many
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: are left? Yeah, that's possible. And I think that's something
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: to worry about then, you know, next fall or next winter.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: But I don't, I think the bigger challenge is can
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: you get enough people off of Trump? And until he's
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: starting to pull below the number that he was getting
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: into his 2016 primary, you know, I just, I don't
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: know that all, I think all of this is like
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: navel gazing, you know, BS. And it's particularly, and that
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: argument is particularly being advanced by Ron DeSantis fanboy's who
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: want everything about Trump except his unique derangement, psychological derangement,
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: rather than getting someone who has shown one iota of
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: integrity over the last seven years.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw you had a great piece on this.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: You're not a fan of the right-wing rush to anoint
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis as the one true Trump slayer. Can you
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: tell us about that?
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: Well... Sure.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: Right now, today. So again, if you look at the, Sarah,
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: we do the focus groups of the bulwark of the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: MAGA voters. Ron is their favorite. I'm not objecting to this.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: He is the second choice. But we've all seen this before.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, Scott Walker was everybody's favorite choice up until
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: the minute he had to stand on a debate stage.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: And they're like, oh my God, speaking of limp dicks,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: like this guy's got nothing going. And they moved off
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: him in two seconds, right? So maybe that'll happen to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: Ron DeSantis. Maybe his little whiny Ivy League kind of
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: Trump imitation doesn't wear that well over two years. We
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: don't really know. And so I get a little upset
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: that everybody's like, well, we have to anoint. The Republicans
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: have to anoint someone that has never even come close
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: to criticizing Donald Trump. Not only that, who ran the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: most obsequious, pathetic, like, I'm sorry. I was about to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: go too far on the penis jokes. You'll get it.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Advertisement you've ever seen in support of Donald Trump, where
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: he's like reading his kids the Art of the Deal
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: book and building a fake Lego MAGA wall on the border.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, we have to have this guy who's never criticized?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: Trump is so weak. Trump is, you know, he's so pathetic.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: He's cost you three elections. He's having dinner with Nazis.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: He wants to tear up the Constitution. He's not viable
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: at all. So our only choice is to pick his
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: most obsequious fluffer? I think it's a little early for that.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's a little.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: I got around to it. I think it's a little
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: early for that, is all I'm saying. Maybe someone else
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: can have a try. I guess why not have somebody
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: else who's like, you know, not Trump's little... Little guy.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And look, there's nothing worse than getting behind a
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: fluffer who's too early. That's what your point was. I
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: don't understand.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: It's related to my point.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: You have a question, Lovett? Yeah, here's my question. You
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: said in a hypothetical primary between Trump and DeSantis, if
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: it's competitive 15 days out before the California primary, you're
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: going to re-register as a Republican and vote for DeSantis again.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: You make me sick to my fucking stomach. John, I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: love it. Look at you. That wallpaper may belong to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: gay people, but I don't know. I don't know. I
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: don't know if I'm looking at a gay person.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: It's true that you're mad at me. And you did
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: fake your sickness on the last episode.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Wow. I fake COVID.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's the thing.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: I would do that. I would do that because here's why.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: Because it would be a signal to the other people
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: like me the former Republicans, the fucking people that hate
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: and resent Ron DeSantis with every fiber of our being,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: that just to end this national nightmare, to get rid
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: of this guy that tried a coup, that wants to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: tear up the Constitution, that has myriad other problems we
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: don't need to list, it's fine to just suck it up,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: check the Ron DeSantis box, if that's the only option available,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: and then go beat him. can Joe Biden not beat
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: Ron DeSantis? Did you see the way he went up
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: against Charlie? I mean, like, is he really that scary?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: Ron DeSantis? I, I, I'm not, I don't know that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: that's my view. Uh, I, I understand taking the other
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: point and you wanted to bring that up to just
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: make sure I lose all credibility with the positive America listeners.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: That's fine. Tim, I, Tim, I, I did read the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: whole piece and, and you did say that there was,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: there's a pot, you know, there was two exceptions. You
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: might vote in the Democratic primary, right? If, if, if
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: for some reason Joe Biden doesn't just run unopposed, and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: also if Ron DeSantis says something, I guess, Trump-level crazy.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: No, not says something, but if Ron DeSantis runs, which
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: is also possible, I guess, that he runs, like, Donald
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: Trump's biggest flaws is that he didn't ban enough Muslims
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: or separate enough children at the border, and then, and
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: so that's why I want to, I mean, you know,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: I guess it's possible. But I think that people, grownups,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: adults can carry the view at the same time that
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: Ron DeSantis is a despicable twat and that Donald Trump
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: is an existential threat to the country and that we
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: should probably just do everything we can to stop an
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: existential threat from the country from being president again, even
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: if that means supporting a twat.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you this. Uh, is Kevin McCarthy going
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: to be one of, or the strongest speaker of the
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: house in history?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: Iron fist, Kevin.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Um, is he going to be speaker of the house?
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Is he even going to be speaker?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: I do think he's going to be speaker of the
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: house because there's not really a good second option. And
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: the fantasy though, I mean, I'm trust me, I'm all
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: about my man, Bill crystal on the West wing fantasy
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: that like Don Bacon and David Valadao, we're going to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: team up with the Democrats to make Liz Cheney, the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: speaker or something. Uh, But that's just not really going
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: to happen. There aren't any moderate Republicans really in the House.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: There's a very small number and certainly not enough that
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: are going to cross over to work with the Democrats.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: I think that they could embarrass Kevin. I think that
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of like Matt Gaetz is a petty
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: bitch who lives for drama. So I do think that
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: he might want to embarrass Kevin and make him do
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: a vote where he loses. And he has to go
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: on to a second ballot or third ballot. You might
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: remember this happened to Boehner. I think Boehner. I'm going
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: from memory now. Boehner had like five or six ballots
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: one time and took a very long time for him
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: to get to 218. So I think that could happen
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: to Kevin, but there's just not a credible alternative. So
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: I do think if you're looking for a silver lining
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: in the Kevin McCarthy speakership, I do think his life's
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: going to be miserable.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just going to be chaos for the
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: next two years, right? I guess the question is how
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: much chaos... is there going to be, and like, how
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: much is it going to be fun to watch and
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: how much is it going to be awful because it'll
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: screw all the rest of us too.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Well, debt ceiling, for example.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: That's, yeah.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think that there's any, yeah. I mean,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: the debt ceiling and the crazy investigations, I feel bad
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: for people that don't have to get lawyers. And I
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: was on this, I got invited to some Twitter space
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: to speak, and Mick Mulvaney was one of the other speakers.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: And I was like, you know, I'm going to do that.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: I'm interested in what old Mick has to say. And
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: he was saying that his advice was that among the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: things that he thought the new Republican House should do
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: is investigate the politicization of the FBI and the way
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: that they've treated former President Trump. Now, Mick is like
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: on the team normal-ish side. of the type of people
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: that Kevin McCarthy talked to.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: And like, even he is like, we need to investigate
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: these fake conspiracies about how like liberals deep within the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: FBI famously, famously woke progressive institution, the FBI, you know,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: it's targeting Donald Trump. And so, so think about if
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: that's where Mick is like, like there's a whole just,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: you know, levels of crazy to his right. And that,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: and they're going to be making McCarthy do a lot of,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: Stuff that I think will be harmful politically, but annoying
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: for the country, for sure. Painful for certain people.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Any big takeaways or lessons for you from the midterms?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Anything that surprised you? Anything you were walking away from
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: that with?
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: I had to suffer through Arizona. I did the circus.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: I was down in Arizona for a week. Man, I
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: was really freaked out by the Carrie Lake campaign. It
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: had an emotional impact on me. when you went to
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: those rallies, they were like out of another world from
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: the old types of Republican rallies that I went to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: back in the day, the boring ones. And that crowd
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: was rabid. They were angry. They were conspiratorial. There was
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: a standing ovation for a guy who refused to get
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: the vaccine. I mean, like all kinds of weird shit
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: was happening. And I just, I was a little too
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: close to it. And I got worried that like that
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: level of energy in Arizona was going to push her
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: into a win. And I'm just, I'm very happy that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: she didn't win. And I think that there is even,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: you know, my cynicalness was abated, my cynicism abated a
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: bit in the midterm, because I've always been a person
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: that's like, you know, there are enough crossover voters, Democrats
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: should be focused on them, not just turning out the base,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: they should focus on both. And I was even surprised
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: the extent to which there were people you know, who
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: were Republican voters, really, for all intents and purposes, who
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: just looked at these crazies and were like, no, I'm not.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: This is too far. You know, if you're trying to
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: make Donald Trump an autocrat and you want to ban
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: abortion at two weeks, like, I'm not going to do it.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: I just I can't go that far. And that was encouraging.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: And so that's nice. It's nice to have nice things.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: And that was my big takeaway from the election.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Any advice now thinking about the results of the midterms? Like,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: any advice for the Democratic Party ahead of 2024? Like,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: what are Democrats doing wrong? What could they be doing better?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Sort of in the context of the results that we
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: just saw.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: From your vantage point as Chief Cook.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Chief Cook.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: Who's the Chief Cook? Well, my people are gettable, so
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: don't forget about us. I wrote about this a while back.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: I think that there are a lot of... You can
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: do a lot of progressive stuff that you're not going
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: to lose favor with the potential gettable voters by.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: Passing forth a very ambitious climate bill, for example, like
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: that didn't cost you anything, right? Like there's a lot
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: of progressive stuff that you can get done, you know,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: and still try to appeal to these voters by pointing
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: out the extremism of Republicans, by throwing us a few
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: bones now and then. And I think that Josh Shapiro's
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: campaign in Pennsylvania is just a prime example of this.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: There is no world where you can describe him as
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: like a centrist or whatever, but like he, or in
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: Raphael Warnock in Georgia, for example, if you look at
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: Warnock versus Abrams, I have nothing against Stacey Abrams. I
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: think that Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams probably agree on
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: everything policy-wise. But Warnock just sold himself and positioned himself
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: as like, hey, I'm a pastor for the suburbs. I'm
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: a dad. I wear sweaters. I've got a dog. I'm
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: not obsessed with the elite media. I don't need to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: be on the cover of magazines. You can trust me
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: from time to time. If I need to work with
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: a Republican, I will. And I think that's why he's
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: going to win this week. Um, and, and, you know,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: obviously he did eight, nine points better than Abrams. Part
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: of that was that Kemp was a lot stronger than Walker,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: of course. But based on my time in Georgia, when
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: I was interviewing some of these swing voters, a lot of,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: for a lot of them, it was like, no, I
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: like Kemp better than Walker, but I also liked Warnock
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: better than Abrams. I felt like he cared more about
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: me and my interest.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: How much of that is, I mean, look, I hear you,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: but like Stacey Abrams has worked incredibly hard to present
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: herself in a way that is you know, runs counter
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: to any idea that she's some far-left progressive. Like, some
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: of this is that she's been targeted by years of
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: campaigns to make her seem more extreme than Raphael Warnock, right?
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: Yes, and I think that there's certainly a misogyny element
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: to it, but I just, you can do this yourself.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: Google image, magazine cover, Stacey Abrams, magazine cover, Raphael Warnock.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: I I think that their vibes just matter now only
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: to a certain percent, only to a certain slice of
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: the electorate. But I think that if you're looking at
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: people in suburban Georgia, a lot of them felt, it's
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: not like Raphael Warnock wasn't the recipient of tons of
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: negative ads over the course of two cycles and two runoffs.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: So he was targeted too. I just think that that
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: strategy worked. And I think that you saw that. and
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: other places around the country. And I think my big
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: lesson from that is just, is that you don't really
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: have to pivot that far to the center. You know,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: you just have to think about, you know, how, how
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: people are, you know, how those types of voters, the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: gettable swing voters are processing you as a candidate.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: All right. Tim Miller.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: Tim Miller.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks for stopping by.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: There was no, there was no beef. There was no
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: secret beef between us.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: Dude, there's always a little gay drama. You never know.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: There's stuff happening.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm putting on a show now.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's something that happened on the alt Twitter. I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: know you're on that alt Twitter.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: It's a different job.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: Favreau doesn't even know what's happening.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: He doesn't know about alt Twitter.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: Favreau doesn't even know about alt Twitter. It's just a
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: whole different world out there.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Is that like Mastodon?
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: It's the opposite of Mastodon. It's actually technically the opposite
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: of Mastodon.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: Hopefully next time in LA, guys. Thanks so much for
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: having me.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: Come see us. All right.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Bye, Tim.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: All right. Thanks to Tim Miller for joining us today.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk to you on Thursday. Pod Save America
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.