Latest / Pod Save America / Trump Loses the Gerrymander War

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Trump Loses the Gerrymander War · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: slash crooked. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash crooked. There's
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  Speaker 1: no safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm
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  Speaker 1: Jon Favreau.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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  Speaker 1: Look at us. We're here in D.C.
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  Speaker 1: Back where it all started. Beautiful city. Beautiful city. They
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  Speaker 2: That's good. Yeah, the Lincoln Memorial painted MAGA red.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. So everything looks normal so far. All right.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we're going to talk about the latest
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: developments in our new forever war and why it could
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: take six more months to open the Strait of Hormuz
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: even after the war ends. We'll also cover Democrats' big
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: win in Virginia in the state of the redistricting wars,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: which Republicans are starting to regret. We'll check in on
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  Speaker 1: our boy, Kash Patel, who can't quite shake the J.
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  Speaker 1: Edgar Boozer allegations.
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  Speaker 2: Just a top-notch, top-ten, all-time positive market title.
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  Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know who came up with it.
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  Speaker 1: They're all on the line, so someone knows, but we're
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  Speaker 2: Lovett's saying it was him.
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  Speaker 1: It definitely was not Lovett. That's all I care about.
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  Speaker 1: And why the biggest national security threat that we face
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  Speaker 1: may be sugar daddies. Then our friend Mark Leibovich of
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  Speaker 1: The Atlantic joins us here in studio to talk about
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  Speaker 1: the California governor's race in this town's Super Bowl, the
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  Speaker 1: White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend. Why we're here. We
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  Speaker 1: couldn't stay away. And with Trump in attendance for the
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  Speaker 1: first time as president and the first time since 2011.
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  Speaker 2: What happened in 2011?
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  Speaker 1: All right. Let's get to the news and what seems
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to be a stalemate in a war that's been going
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: on for seven weeks and counting. Quick reminder, it's now
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: been 43 days since Trump first declared victory in Iran.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Now we are on week seven and counting. So we're
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: recording this mid-afternoon East Coast time on Thursday, a little
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: earlier than usual. And Trump is about to do an
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: event in the Oval Office where he may take questions.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Our producers are monitoring the situation. Reid, you're going to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: give us a wave, a big wave. Throw his sweet
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: green bowl at us. It's going to be big news, though.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Big news.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But for now, Trump extended the ceasefire on Tuesday, didn't
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: put a new deadline on it. And it's unclear if
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: we still have a ceasefire because then Iran seized two
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. has
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: seized a couple tankers, including on Thursday a tanker of
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Iranian oil. And there's still no word on whether there
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: will be another round of negotiations. J.D. Vance just sitting
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: at the airport waiting to get the call so he
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: can jump on a plane. Trump is still posting through it.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: This is all just today, claiming that, quote, we have
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: total control of the Strait, which we obviously don't, as
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: evidenced in part by his next post. that he's ordering
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the Navy to, quote, shoot and kill any boat laying
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: mines there, which he claims is already happening, but wants
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it to continue at a, quote, tripled up level. That's
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: technical speak. Yeah, tripled up level. He also shared two
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: posts from warmonger Mark Thiessen, my predecessor at the White House,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: that suggested he should kill the Iranians who don't want
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a deal, So he said there's a couple of factions.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: There's the want to deal faction and the don't want
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to deal faction. And Thiessen said he should kill all
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the Iranians who don't want to deal. But also the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Trump doesn't need a deal. So there's a few problems there. Meanwhile,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: this is all after the Pentagon reportedly told Congress in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: a classified briefing. This is from The Washington Post that
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: it could take six months to clear the strait from
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the date the war ends. So if the war ends tomorrow,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: we're looking at six months until the Strait is open
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: again and global energy supplies go back to normal and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the price of gas comes down and oil and the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: supply shock and all the other problems that have befallen
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the global economy because of this. So it looks like
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the administration is trying to spin the ceasefire extension as
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a temporary act of mercy. They're saying on background three
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: to five days to, quote, allow the Iranians to get
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: their shit together. This is what they told Axios. And
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Trump keeps threatening that huge strikes will resume. How eager
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: do you think he actually is to restart this war?
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Well, he's given, I think it is now five deadlines.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: A lot of deadlines.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: And at every single one of them, he's extended the
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: deadline without getting a single thing he wanted. So I'm
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: getting the sense that he does not want to restart
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: this war. But he really wants the strait to be
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: open and the war to be over and it to
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: be seen as an unalloyed American victory. But all of
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: this is an impossible task.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: One tough circle to square.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is an impossible circle to square. So we
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: are stuck in this place. And every day that we,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: that we're still in the stalemate, because really stalemate is
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: not a term you want to use with a war
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: in the Middle East.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: No. I've been there before.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Every day that the stalemate continues is, makes it worse
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: for the U.S. and the global economy. The oil shock
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: gets worse. The shortage gets worse. I think, You know,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: if you read what people, like sort of experts in
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: the oil industry say, is that the markets, the political
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: conversation is dramatically underestimating how bad this is and what
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: the medium-term consequences are. Like Europe is headed towards a
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: potential jet fuel shortage.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Lufthansa canceled like 20,000 short flights already. It's really bad. Yeah.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It's very, very bad with very, very real implications for
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: people's daily lives. Not just gas prices, but every single
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: part of their life, the strength of the economy. overall inflation,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: the cost of food, and from the day you end
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the war, you have six months till you can get
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: to something hopefully resembling normalcy and begin to unwind all
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: of this. And we have no idea when that day
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: one will be.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: And per usual, Trump is making his problems worse because
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: he has made it clear to the that he's horny
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: for a deal, which the Iranians know, which is why
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: they're going to make it harder for him to get
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a good deal that he can feel confident about, which
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: he also needs to avoid seeming weak because he can't
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: seem weak. So it's just, and you can tell that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: like the Iranians are sort of showing a little more
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: confidence in the way they're posting and talking about this.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And also they're like, It's clear like the IRGC is
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in charge and the hardliners and there's a long New
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: York Times piece today about the new Ayatollah and he
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: is apparently still very injured and very ill. But like
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: it's like the way they described how Iran's being governed
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: right now is that like it's a board of directors
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and the new Ayatollah is the chairman of the board.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: But all the generals and all the IRGC people have
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: almost just as much of a say or certainly more
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of a say than they did. When his father was
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: in charge. So that's probably not good for world peace
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: or getting a deal.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just there are such different incentive structures here.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: All the IRGC cares about is staying in power.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And they can wait it out because they are a repressive,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: awful regime. They don't care how much pain they inflict
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: on their own people. And it's not like they have
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: elections coming up.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no one sitting at IRGC headquarters worried about
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: the generic ballot right now.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And they know that Donald Trump just wants out, both
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: because he's worried about the politics and because he has
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: no attention span.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: And it's just not clear what he could do to
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: change the calculus here because all he can do is
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: bomb more things.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: What we all have to hope is that they end
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: up doing a deal that's probably better for the Iranians
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: than we would have hoped. And Trump pretends that it's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: some great deal and tries to take credit for it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: But at least it ends the war like that. That
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: to me is now the best possible outcome because there
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: is no outcome where we get a great deal.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, the fundamental challenges here is anyone dumb
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: enough to start this war is too dumb to get
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: out of it.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: That's about where we are right now. You see that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth fired the secretary of the Navy, which is
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: an interesting thing to do here in the middle of
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the biggest naval blockade. operation in decades. Another heroic background
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: quote to Axios, quote, he didn't understand he wasn't the boss.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: His job is to follow orders given, not follow the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: orders he thinks should be given.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: The only wars that Pete Hegseth can win are bureaucratic ones.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. Doesn't seem great that they're losing the Secretary of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the Navy. It seems like this guy went to because
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: he was having trouble with Hegseth and fighting with Hegseth.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And part of it was based on, you know, Hegseth
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: wants to, like, eliminate the woke army, the DEI agenda.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And so he was trying to make sure he looked
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: at every application for a possible job and scrubbed social
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: media to make sure there were no signs of woke
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: or DEI anywhere in the resume or in the social media.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem like that's a good thing. There's
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of people now, I feel like, at upper
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: levels of the Pentagon who have been let go, again,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a war.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we keep getting rid of people who know what
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: they're doing and replacing them with people who don't.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats brought up a war powers vote on Wednesday yesterday.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans voted it down now for the fifth time this year. Um,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: what else can or should Democrats be doing? It seems
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: like they're just going to keep bringing these votes up.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: And it seems like each time they are getting like
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: more Republicans, um, who are at least considering voting, uh,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: for the war powers resolution and the, and the time
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: limits up in terms of even if you don't have,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: even if you don't think that the war powers resolution
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: does anything, um, the president can only be at war
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: for a certain number of days and that's the time
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: limits coming up there. And so they're now, they're trying
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get around that.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I'm always torn on the war powers resolution thing as
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: a tactic here, because one thing we've known for some
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: of the polling we've seen is that people are very,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: very against this war. They don't understand why we're in it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: They hate the costs of it. They think it's stupid.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: The least effective argument is it is the process one.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Um, but, morally, constitutionally, from a governor's perspective, the process
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: one is very important. That is a case that should
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: be made. And even if we were to pass it, Trump,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: we're not going to pass with a veto-proof majority. So
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: it sort of is what it is. And so we
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: have to think about using these votes to put as
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: many Republicans on the record as for Trump's illegal war
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: as possible.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I have noticed that all the talk about the supplemental
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: war funding has kind of died down. Remember, it was
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: going to be $ 200 billion in And then someone said
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: maybe it's closer to $ 100 billion that the White House
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: is going to ask for. But I don't see that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: legislation getting fast-tracked anytime soon, do you?
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I just don't know what the immediate urgency is. Like,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: what will push this is, it's very, very, when the
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Pentagon wants something, the Pentagon is very, very good at
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: ensuring that everyone knows they want it. And so if
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: they actually, like, Trump and Russ Vogt have made mockery
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: of all sort of budgeting laws. So they could be
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: robbing from all sorts of places to avoid this. But
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: at some point, they're going to need that money and
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: they're going to have to go to Congress for it.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: And then that becomes the most important, most politically salient
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: vote people will take on this war.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I would bet their calculation is he's trying to get
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a deal. He's trying to get us out of this.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Let's just try to wait to ask for the funding.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: until the war is over. And then we can say
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with the war. The war
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: is over. This is just to refill our munitions, which
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: are running low. And now there's reporting from Alex Ward
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: in the Wall Street Journal that munitions are so low
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that if we ever had to go to war with, say, China,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that we wouldn't be able to have enough munitions.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the risk to that strategy is the
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: later you wait, the closer you put it to the election, right?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: We're in late April now. Congress is going to take, like,
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  Speaker 2: the last thing, the worst possible scenario for Republicans is
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  Speaker 2: They have to deal with this in September, right before
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  Speaker 2: the election.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as gas prices are like over $ 5 a gallon
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• 19:46
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the great news of the week.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Democrats won the Virginia referendum to redraw the state's congressional maps,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: which will likely net Dems another four seats in the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Commonwealth and hold 10 of the 11 congressional seats there.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: It is now going to be a 10-1 split in Virginia,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans. Trump said the election was rigged, obviously,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: called on the courts to fix this travesty of justice.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: That was his quote. And of course, indeed, a Republican
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: circuit judge in Virginia blocked the results on Wednesday, which
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: was expected. This judge had blocked the referendum earlier. And
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Attorney General Jay Jones vowed to appeal. Now Virginia Supreme
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Court will decide. Republicans and right wing media joined Trump
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: in bitching about the results. And Democrats aren't feeling too guilty.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Here's Jesse Waters, Jessica Tarloff and AOC. You guys have
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: been gerrymandering for quite some time. You're very good at it.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: Trump tried his hand at it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Did it in Texas.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Got some good results. And then you guys have just
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: been running the table. Can you stop? Can you slow down?
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: No.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: All gas, no brakes.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: What do you make of Republicans saying that Virginia?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: First of all, what do you think about the Republican complaining?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: If you could expand on wah, wah, wah. Because I
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: saw it from like a lot of Republican strategists who
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I think know better. Many of them live in Virginia,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: as many Republican strategists and Democratic strategists do in Northern Virginia.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: But they are very upset. And when you say, well,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Texas started it. They're like, well, no, Democrats started it
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: first before Texas and other cycles. And in New York,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they did it in 2020 and all this fucking bullshit.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Okay. So what is it? The Republicans would love to say,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: fuck around and find out. Cause that's exactly what happened here.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: But let's just, that's.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: What Hakeem Jeffrey said.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: He said, do you say that?
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And he actually said, fuck. Did he? Yeah.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: That's very authentic.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Good for him. Um, here's, uh, honestly good for it.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: We should, Hakeem Jeffries gets a lot of credit here.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: He crushed it.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: He absolutely... Republicans started this redistricting war.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: He.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Democrats could have crawled into the feet of opposition. Gavin
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Newsom stepped up. Hakeem Jeffries stepped up. Hakeem Jeffries.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And he did work. He, like, went to these states,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: went to these legislatures, pushed people. Like, it was a
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: lot of behind-the-scenes work, but he did work.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Virginia would not have happened without Hakeem Jeffries, for sure.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So he gets a ton of credit here. But let's
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: just be clear about this. In 2021, there was a
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: vote to ban gerrymandering. Every single Democrat voted for it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Every single Republican voted against it. One party supports a
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: national ban on gerrymandering because the only way to do
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: this is a national ban. One party supports it, it's
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: the Democrats. One party opposes it, it's the Republicans. What
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: they don't like here is they started a dumb fight
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and they lost it.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think we should be consistent in the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: positions we hold on reform that sort of, you know,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: reform's corruption and rigged system and gives people more of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a voice and like, yeah, we're for ending gerrymandering everywhere.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: And if the Republicans don't like the bill from 2021
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: that would end partisan gerrymandering for whatever reason, because some
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of them have some problems with the way it's, then
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: tell us what you want to do. Give us a,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: give us a bill that would, and then maybe we
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: can negotiate on it. But I feel the same thing
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: with money in politics and citizens United and no Democrats
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: are spending money. So no, We want to overturn Citizens United.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: We want to get rid of money in politics. Do
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you also? Then let's do it. Like, I think that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: there should be term limits and maybe age limits for
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: members of Congress and Supreme Court justices. Great. Let's do it.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I think I think we should get rid of the filibuster.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Everyone's like, oh, well, now the Republicans, would you be
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: pissed if the filibuster wasn't there? Yeah, I would be
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: annoyed that they maybe could pass a few more things.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: But like, I believe the filibuster is bad. And so
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I believe that it is bad no matter what. Like,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I just think that maybe Republicans could be consistent for
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: once on the reforms they support and when they support them. Yeah.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's two things there. One, there's consistent. The
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: other one is whether Democrats should be required to unilaterally
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: disarm when things remain legal. Of course not.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: That is an absurd fucking position.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: I do think in a different era, and maybe even
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the first Trump era, Democrats would not have responded as
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: aggressively to this. Because we do believe gerrymandering is wrong.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: We would have thought that, not everyone, I don't think
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: you and I would have thought that, but I think
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of, many in the party would have thought
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: that it is dirty pool. Two wrongs don't make a right.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: We should not do it. And the fact that we did,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: it turns out Democrats have learned a lesson, finally, of
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: the Trump era, which is if you are going to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: take on fascism, you have to be willing to fight
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: fire with fire. You have to use, everything Democrats are
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: doing is legal. It is a maximum use of allowable
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: political power.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: The way to fix unfair rules is to fix the rules,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: not just sit there and let your ass get beat.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: So last year, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia beat her opponent
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: by 15 points. The referendum passed by three. It's a
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: 12-point swing. Why do you think it was so close?
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: A couple of reasons here. One, so the most obvious
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: comparison point is the California.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Measure.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: That passed in November that passed by about 30 points.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: This is three points. California is, uh, more democratic than Virginia,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: but it's not, it's not 10 times more democratic.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Right. And if it passed by 30 points, isn't it
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: like a, isn't it like a D plus 20 state usually?
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And, uh, Kamala Harris won Virginia by 5.8 points. Um,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: but some reasons why it was closer. Um, one, this
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: was a very Republican, Republican turnout was quite good. It
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: was actually as, um, the big 2021 levels. Um, When
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: we lost. When we lost, yeah, when Glenn Youngkin was elected.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: The Republicans did mount a very good campaign here. They
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: actually used Barack Obama in their ads. Both sides used
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Obama in their ads. The no side used Obama, footage
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: of Obama talking about why gerrymandering was bad in their ads.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: And then the yes side used more recent footage of
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Obama saying pass this amendment.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Smarter than no side.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And they spent real money, less money than the yes side.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: The other.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: issue here that made it closer was independence. So, um,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: independence in the last Washington post poll that was a
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: couple of weeks before the election had independence at plus
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: 10 on the no side, which is a huge swing from, uh,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Sandberg who won them by more than 20 points in, uh, 2025.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: And that kind of makes sense because if you're an
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: independent who is upset with Trump. Maybe you voted for
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Youngkin in 2021. Maybe you voted for Steinberg in 2025.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Probably Trump in 2024. And you're mad at Trump. You
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: see this, a process-oriented, anti-pro-gerrymandering amendment is something that you
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: can still vote against.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't know how the vote broke down
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: in any of the individual districts, but I also think
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: it is very understandable if you're an independent or if
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you're a Republican and you're deciding whether to come out
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and vote or not or vote. Like, If you're in
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a district that's going to get gerrymandered and so you
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: no longer really have a say and you're a member
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of Congress or you're not going to ever get a Republican,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I can see why you vote against it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: This is why gerrymandering in general is bad and they
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have sent us down this path.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: And interesting, the one group that blew the doors off
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and it's probably why Democrats won was Asian American voters.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And black Americans too. I saw both Asian and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the Asian vote and the black vote.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Were- Were quite high.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Because, again, especially black voters know what it
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: is to be gerrymandered. Let's talk about what the redistricting
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: war Trump started with Texas hath wrought. When you add
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: up all the states now that have redrawn their maps,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Democrats are, as of this moment, plus one in the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: overall count. The only state left is Florida, where the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: legislature has a special session scheduled for next week. But
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: it's actually unclear if DeSantis changing the maps will net
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Republicans any additional seats. And some in the party are
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: already feeling what Axios described as, quote, buyer's remorse.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: You bet.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: It's a bummer, huh? When asked if the redistricting effort
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: was worth it, the chair of the NRCC, whose job
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it is to keep Republicans house majority, told Axios, quote,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: it's not for me to say because really it wasn't
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: my decision. And California independent Kevin Kiley said, who was
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a Republican and now caucuses with the Republicans still, told Axios, quote,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I wish none of this had happened. No shit.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: He probably lost his seat.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Did we win redistricting?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, yes, we won redistricting. You know, when
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Florida's done, it could come out that we are a
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: seat or two behind. Florida's interesting because DeSantis could redraw
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: the maps. One, just worth noting that partisan gerrymandering in
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Florida is illegal?
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: According to the Constitution, no less.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: To the Constitution.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: So he's going to need to- So that seems like
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a hurdle.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: It is a hurdle. I would say the legal reasoning
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: of the Florida Supreme Court is malleable.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: A bunch of Eileen Cannons on that thing. Yeah.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And so there's some thought that they're going to find
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: a way to twist this, twist the illegal pretzel enough
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: to get it done. But even if you draw it, right? Yeah,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: this is the problem. DeSantis is under pressure to do
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: what Newsom did because DeSantis wants to run for president
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: in 2028, potentially- This is his chance to show himself
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: to be an important Republican player.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: But experts who look at this think that anything more
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: than adding two Republican seats puts them at real risk
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: of what you call a dummymander, which is where you
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: draw the districts in a way that in a bad year,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: you lose a bunch of seats. So even if DeSantis
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: were to do it, He's going to get two seats
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: at max. So we end up minus one for the
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: whole thing. And what I think in the sense that
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: we won, I'm not sure anyone's going to do this
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: again in mid-year, right? Obviously, we're going to have to
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: do this again after the 2030 census in every state.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: But I think Democrats sent a message to Republicans that
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: if you try to do this, we will do it too.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: And you're not going to get that much. It's not
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: going to be worth– the juice won't be worth the squeeze.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. a longtime Florida Republican consultant, uh, talking to Politico.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: He ran the numbers and that person ran the numbers
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and concluded the new map couldn't at Republican zero seats
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: for the reasons you talked about. So, cause right now
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: they hold a 20 to eight edge. And, um, cause
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: basically there's nowhere left to cram Democrats without exposing safe
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Republicans to incumbent. So it is, it's going to be
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: really hard even if the Supreme court doesn't, even if
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the Supreme court allows it. The other thing that we'd
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: been waiting for is this Supreme court case. Um, that
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: could upend the map and the Voting Rights Act and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: basically say that all majority and minority districts can be redrawn,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: which would cost Democrats a bunch of seat. But I
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: do think as of now, it's like too late. It's
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: too late for it to matter in 2026, apparently because
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: two Southern states, which is where it would heavily affect,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: it would affect Southern states more than anyone. Two Southern
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: states have already held primaries and candidate filing deadlines have
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: passed in every state but Florida. So, even if the
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court says it matters for this election, like, they
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: just can't.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: It would be mass chaos if they were to try
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: to make it in place.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And it's just like, for the states that already have
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: held primaries, you can't do anything. I guess you can,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I guess the legislature could go try to change a
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: filing deadline by passing legislation.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they'd have to pass new laws to basically do
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: emergency elections to do it. You have new filing deadlines.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: People have to get signatures for those petitions. Then you'd
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: have to have a primary. Then you'd have to have a, then,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: then the general election in November seems, and you have
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: to draw the districts at some point in there too.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: So seems fine for 2026. It is a problem and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: it seems like the decision will be bad, but a
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: problem for another day.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Enjoy that majority while we have it.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: For the next two years. The redistricting fiasco only adds
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: to the Republicans' midterm woes. Trump and the party continue
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: to hit new lows in polling. Both the AP and
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: ARG had Trump's approval at 33% and 32% respectively. So
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: that's fun. As Sarah Longwell says, that's the Bush line
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: right there. Cook Political Report released a new poll on Thursday,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: finding that just in swing districts that Trump won in
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: 2024 by an average of two points, Democrats now hold
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: a six-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot. So that's
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: pretty big. And in a new Fox poll, voters gave
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Democrats the edge over Republicans on inflation and the economy
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: for the first time since 2010. I think that's a
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: six-point spread in the generic ballot as well. How much
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: hopium are you huffing these days? I don't know.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not really a hopium huffer per se.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I know. That's why I'm asking.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: But I think that the political environment looks about as
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: good as we ever possibly could have hoped for Democrats
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: right now. And the poll that everyone should really be
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: paying attention to is the Cook political report poll of 36,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the 36 districts that will decide the house, all of
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: the toss up lean Republican, lean Democratic districts.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: And that was the one that was the, that's six
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: point 36.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: And in that one, um, uh, Democrats have double-digit advantages
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: on lowering prices and on the economy, which is something
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: that has changed. Trump's unpopular. Republican base is divided. We
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: have the opportunity before us, as we'll get to in
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: this conversation. There are some hurdles to maximizing that opportunity,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: but this has the potential to be a 1994, 2006,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: 2018-style election for Democrats, whereas a massive rebuke to the president,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: incumbent president, and the party in his party.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: And we've been talking about the House, but the headline
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: of Nate Cohn's newsletter earlier this week was why a
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Democratic Senate, once unthinkable, is now a real possibility. What
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: did you make of Nate's reasoning? Because he's not someone
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: who just flies off the handle and just starts making predictions.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: You know, we've made this case on Polar Coaster multiple times,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: and we've talked about it a little bit here, but
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: once again, as we've said, It is a tall order
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: to get the Senate because you have to win two
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: of four states that Trump won by double digits. In
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: addition to winning, holding all of our ones we have
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: in Winnie, Maine and North Carolina. But the advantages we
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: have are we have good candidates, very, very good candidates
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: in three of those four. The first state is Iowa,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: which has it at its primary end. So you have
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Mary Poltola in Alaska, top-notch candidate. Sherrod Brown in Ohio,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: top-notch candidate. James Salarico in Texas, top-notch candidate.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And there's some view- And Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: And Roy Cooper in North Carolina. And then Maine.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Brad, that's not one of the four.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Maine's not a race anyone's ever talked about on this podcast. So,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: you know, it's an under the radar race. And the
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Democrats are overperforming in special elections by a margin that
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: would deliver, it puts all of those states in play, right?
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: We got to win those. We need a plus 10,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: plus 11 environment to win those states. And we're seeing
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: that's the sort of environment we're in right now. And
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: then you can add some additional points of that because
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: you have candidates who are going to perform better than
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a generic Democrat.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The paragraph in Nate's piece that really stuck out
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to me was talking about Sherrod and Mary Paltola. It says,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: in Ohio, Mr. Brown lost by 3.6 points in 2024. Ms.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Paltola lost by around two points in Alaska. Today, the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Democrats are faring about eight points better on the generic
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: congressional ballot than they did in the 2024 combined U.S.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: congressional popular vote. Or put another way, Mr. Brown and Ms.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Paltola probably would have won re-election in 2024 if those
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: contests had been held in this political environment. So that's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: pretty big. Echelon did a set of polls in the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Senate states. Echelon, really good pollster run by Republicans, Patrick
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Ruffini and Kristen Soltis Anderson. They have Ossoff up 51-44
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: in Georgia. In Maine, they have Plattner up on Collins 51-45.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: They have Mills up by a narrower 48, 46.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Um, that's that main Senate race.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not gonna, I'm just holding my tongue on that. Uh,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, they have Zach walls, a two point lead and, uh,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Josh Turek, a one point lead. So they do have
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a tiny lead inside the margin area in Iowa. And
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: then the only tough one there is in Ohio. They have, um,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: shared down 51, 45. And there's been a few Ohio
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: polls that have been kind of, uh, troubling lately, but
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: we'll see. Um, so speaking of Patrick Ruffini, um, uh,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: who literally wrote the book on the so-called realignment that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: delivered Trump to the White House in 24, he tweeted
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: a few days before the Virginia election that if the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: referendum passed by around a five-point margin, of course it
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: passed by three, it meant Republicans, quote, have some fight
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: in them and can, quote, hold down Dem seat gains
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: in the House and keep the Senate. What did you
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: make of his case?
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: It's not crazy. So like the original point here is
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Democrats tout every time we overperform. And so he's going
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: to go around and tout the one time we underperform. So,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: you know, sporting, I guess. The what I think is
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: and I want to stipulate that a process oriented ballot
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: measure is very different than a candidate race where the
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: candidate it's hard to hold the no on redistricting measure
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: accountable for why you're angry at Trump.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And just to your point about ballot measures, let
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: us not forget all the abortion ballot measures in deep
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: red states that made us excited that maybe we were
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: going to win those states.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Or minimum wage ballots.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: And they did not.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: We did not. The 25-point congressional performance in Georgia from
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: three weeks ago or whatever it was is a better
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: indicator than this. Also, it is certainly not evidence of
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: an improving political environment. Trump's actually doing worse than he
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: was before. The generic ballot is getting bigger, not smaller.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: And so I think it's a bit of a vacuum.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: What I think is true is that what Republicans effectively
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: did here is they nationalized that election. And when you
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: nationalize an election, that gives them the chance to turn
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: out more of their voters. Because we are winning both
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: through massive Democratic turnout, persuasion, and diminished Republican turnout. They're
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: not going to drive down our turnout. They're probably not
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: going to do a lot of persuasion. But the one
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: thing they can do is drive their turnout up. And
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: that is a difference between us winning a bunch of
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Trump plus 12 seats and us not winning Trump plus
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: 12 seats. Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And the other point I found compelling about Patrick's argument
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: is he basically said in all these special elections that
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: we've had so far, Republicans really haven't been able to
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: sort of up the stakes and make voters feel like
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot at stake in this election. And in Virginia,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: they were able to do that because they made it
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: seem like, you know, you could lose your voice and
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: your district forever. And So once you get closer to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the actual midterms and everything is nationalized, as you said,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and the stakes are higher and they're spending, you know,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: all the money they have, which we're about to talk about,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: then you could get a closer environment than you've had
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: in some of these elections, which I do think is possible.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Republicans are going to get their shit together in some way,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: shape or form. That is going to happen. It always does.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: The.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Not going to get Trump-level turnout. They're not going to
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: get the turnout they want, but they're going to get
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: better turnout than they've been getting in some of these
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: special elections, and that is going to hold. That is
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: not enough to save the House. It may be enough
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: to save the Senate, but it's not enough to save
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: the House, but it could hold down margins. The difference
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: between Democrats picking up 15 seats and 25 seats.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace.
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• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Times reported this week that Republican Party political committees and
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: allied groups currently have a massive $ 600 million financial advantage
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: over the Democrats and their political committees and allied groups.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: The DNC's total cash is actually negative $ 4. 5 million, which
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: seems less than ideal. What do you make of the
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: overall disparity there?
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: I would say one of the funniest things I've read
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: in a long time is there was a– A political
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: reporter was passing along, it was Natasha Karecki, I think,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: was passing along some of the spin from Democrats. And
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: one of the spin from some of the Democrats about
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: this was, well, we had all this money in 2024
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: and we lost anyway.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: So let's try running it back with no money.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: In 2024, we had a candidate and we lost.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Let's try no candidate. That's good thinking. Here's what I'd say.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: It is bad when the DNC... Has negative money.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: That is bad. It is not as consequential as I
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: think people on the internet think. The DNC is not
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: intimately involved in funding House races or Senate races. That
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: is the DCCC and the DSCC. They have less money
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: than their Republican counterparts, but that's a much narrower gap.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: And then where Republicans are truly crushing us is in
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: super PAC and nonprofit money and dark money. And that's
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: not even counting all of the hundreds of million dollars
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: in the AI and crypto super PACs, which are mostly
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: going to help Republicans. But where Democrats are crushing us,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: our candidates are raising a lot more money than their candidates.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: And here's why that matters. Because every dollar in political
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: fundraising is not equal. By law, television stations have to
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: sell TV ads to TV. campaigns run by candidates, the
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: actual candidates, at what is called the lowest unit rate.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: They have to do that. What the going rate is
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: is what they charge a candidate. They gouge the living
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: shit out of Super PACs. So Super PACs in the
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: last 60 days before an election are paying two, three,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: four times the amount of the campaign. So let's take
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: North Carolina, right, where Cooper's raised a gazillion dollars. Let's
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: say the Republicans plus Michael Watley's Republican nominee have $ 80
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: million in That's equivalent to $ 20 or $ 30 million of
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Roy Cooper's money. And so it is bad. We should
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: have more money. It is bad that we are being
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: outraged like this. But give money to campaigns because those
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: dollars go further, which you can do by going to votesaveamerica.com.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: And we'll tell you the best place to send your money.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Don't want to be wasting any of it. Seems like
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Trump is responding to the grim political outlook with his
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: tried and true method of firing people. So he's reportedly
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: considering forcing out more members of his cabinet. Lori Chavez
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: de Ramer, the labor secretary, resigned this week in scandal
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: following Christine Noem and Pam Bondi. There's some speculation that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Howard and I almost just said Nutlick.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: You can say that.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's just, it's natural now.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Was he going to sue you?
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: No, I guess maybe. But maybe Nutlick could be next.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Or possibly Cash Patel, who's again not having the easiest
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: time rebutting.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Tulsi Gabbard too could be.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I saw Tulsi Gabbard, yeah. Cash is having trouble
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: rebutting the Atlantic story that did lead to his new nickname, J.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Edgar Pooser. Here's Patel and his boss, acting AG Todd Blanche,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: responding to questions about the Atlantic story. at a DOJ
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: press conference on Tuesday. Let's play the clip. Can you
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: say definitively that you have not been intoxicated or absent
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: during your tenure as FBI director?
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: fake news mafia. I'm like an everyday American who loves
• 45:59
  Speaker 6: his country, loves the sport of hockey, and champions my
• 46:02
  Speaker 6: friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: in to celebrate. I've never been intoxicated on the job.
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: Obviously, you've read the Atlantic article that's now a subject
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: of a defamation lawsuit.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: I absolutely did not read that article. You're being extraordinarily rude.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: And I know maybe that's part of your profession, but
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: please just stop. Your lawsuit contends that you were not
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: able to log into the system. What did you think
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: After you were unable to log.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: Into the system.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Let's have a survey.
• 46:27
  Speaker 6: How many of you people believe that's true?
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: It was never said. It never happened.
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: I was never locked out of my systems. Your lawsuit
• 46:35
  Speaker 6: says the opposite.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Your lawsuit says the opposite. That's the key line from
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the reporter at the end. Meanwhile, the Times reported on
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Tuesday that the FBI began investigating one of the New
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: York Times reporters, Elizabeth Williamson. After she broke the story
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: last month that Patel has assigned FBI SWAT teams to
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: protect his girlfriend and drive her to her concerts, because
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: she is a country music sensation, and even a hair appointment,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Patel is now denying that the FBI investigated, even though
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the Bureau basically confirmed to the Times that they had
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: looked into Williamson's, quote, methods. How hard is Kash Patel
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: crushing it right now? What do you think of that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: press conference?
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, man.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: He's so.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Uncomfortable in every situation.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: He's just trying too hard at all times. Just an
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: average everyday American who loves hockey.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: The lawsuit is helpful if you read the lawsuit because
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: it does detail every allegation that is bad in the
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Atlantic piece in one helpful page. Just puts them all
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: down one through four.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Was the Atlantic article so long you couldn't get through it?
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it basically gave you the summary of it
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: right in the lawsuit and did essentially admit that the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: story about not being able to log into his email
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: system was true. Um, do you think, do you think
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Trump gets rid of cash?
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's like even more than Bondi and
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Kristi Noem. I think that this would be seen as
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: an admission of failure on Trump's part.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: It was the other. Yeah. I just, I don't, I mean,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, Trump's, uh, uh, you know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: had never had a drink. He doesn't drink. And so
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I think he doesn't like the idea that someone is
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: like running around drunk in the FBI. And, um, not
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: because he like, I think this is all through the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: prism of like, it makes Trump look bad, right? This
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: is not about, he doesn't care about like the safety
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: and security of the country. And also what Trump wants
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: is revenge on his enemies. And I mean, look, that,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that press conference was about, uh, indictments they brought against
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: the Southern Poverty Law Center, um, for, it seems like
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: crazy charges, but yeah. Um, but, uh, so I think
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Trump's annoyed with that. So we'll see. I don't know.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: I would have said, I said this on Tuesday's show,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: but I would have said, no, he'll keep him if
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it was before Bondi and Gnome. But now that he's
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: got those two out, I feel like he's got a
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: taste of like, oh, I fire someone, it's a story
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: for a day and then we move on.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So would you, I know we don't predict on this show,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: but if you were on some sort of prediction market platform,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: would you put any of your hard-earned coin on the
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: idea that Cash Patel will not be in this role
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: on Thanksgiving.
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: You think he'll be gone by Thanksgiving?
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I think they'll– yeah, because he definitely posts midterms. Not definitely,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: but I feel good about saying that. Your guess would
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: be– Like if you told me like by 4th of July,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, nah.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: So you think– If he wants to bring– You think
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: post midterms, but definitely before the end of the year?
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I think so. I would put money on that. Okay.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much money, but I'd put money
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: on it. Speaking of money and staff behaving badly, it
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is our solemn duty to discuss the case of Julia Varvaro,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: the 29-year-old who is serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. Don't worry about it.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: That's not a big job. According to a former romantic
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: partner who filed a formal complaint against Varvaro, she is
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: actively on dating sites where, quote, sugar daddies agree to
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: fund the lifestyles of younger women, including one called Seeking.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: where she offered, quote, mutually beneficial relationships. According to the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Daily Mail, the whistleblower slash ex said he'd spend $ 40, 000,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: not betting that on cash leaving, on gifts and travel
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: for Rivera over the course of their three-month relationship. And
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: he thinks she's under financial stress that constitutes a national
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: security risk. Seems like the government agreed because she was
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: placed on administrative leave after the story came out. As
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: you know, Dan, our producers are constantly urging us not
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: to kink shame on the show, even though I continue
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: to stress that kinks that constitute a national security threat
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: do not count and traditionally have been frowned upon at
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the highest levels of the federal government.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: What if threatening national security is your kink?
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Well, then what do you do there? I don't know. Yeah, no.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: If people want to go on wherever this is, just
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: to get some sugar daddies. That's fine. If you want
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: to be a sugar daddy, that's fine.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: If you want to be a sugar daddy, that's fine.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Jon Favreau, April 23rd, 2026.
• 51:10
  Speaker 7: Just, you know, just when you have a government job,
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: especially one that involves counterterrorism at Homeland Security, I don't know.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: You don't want to put yourself in a position of
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: being blackmailed.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: I have to admit to you that when we were
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: slacking about this, yesterday it was on my plane. I
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: did not know about this story. It was all news
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: to me. Then I went to my computer. And I
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: was about to type in sugar daddy politics. And I
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: thought better of it.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of pictures of this guy, of the
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: sugar daddy with her that the Daily Mail has published
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: and everyone else. And there's one right as we started recording,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of course, our old friend Travis Helwig, who used to
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: work here, sent it to me. And it's just the
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: sugar daddy standing next to her with a little sign
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: that says, she's horny. Again, fine. But if you're Deputy
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: less fine.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Counterpoint. On the scale of corruption in this administration, this
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: is fucking quaint.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not corruption necessarily. It's just, it's a risk.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: It's also a corruption risk.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, I guess, yeah.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: There's a blackmail risk.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: The reason that a normal FBI cares about all of this,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the reason they all did interviews with all of us
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: before our security clearance, stuff like that, is the idea
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: is that if you have lied to the FBI... or
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: you have secrets that you haven't revealed, or some foreign
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: actor or someone can blackmail you and say, if you
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: don't do this for me, I will reveal publicly what
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I know about you, that you go on this website
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: or whatever, then you are more likely to do the
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: thing that the foreign government or actor wants you to do.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: That's the whole reason. Anyway, that's that. That's that, Dan.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Sugar daddies.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: For dessert.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Sugar daddies for dessert. That's what we got for today.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: All right, when we come back, We will talk to
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich about the shit show in California.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America is brought to you by Z Biotics pre-alcohol.
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• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Mark Leibovich. Welcome to the pod. Great to be back
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: with you guys. Good to see you here in D.C.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks for letting us back in the town you rule, Washington, D.C.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Mayor of D.C., they call him.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: That's me.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: You know how all these parties I'm blacklisted from? I'm
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: not even invited anymore.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were blacklisted from ours until we just– I know.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: That was unintentional, unfortunately. It's fine. It's all right. Just
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: don't make– well, I won't say it. I won't say it.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: So you visited our fair state to report on what
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: you and– Mike Murphy, uh, lovingly referred to as the
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: stupid circus, AKA the California governor's race. Well, I guess,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I guess I kind of echoed him.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Which I love. Mechanism. I think that's a good mechanism.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Take the quote and echo from it. Yeah. Um, you
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: start the piece at a little league game with Eric Swalwell, um, which,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: you know, quote, felt consistent with the wholesome image that
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the campaign had been straining to project of late for
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: reasons that would become clear soon enough. I did. Made
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: me laugh out loud. Um, Did you get any bad
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: vibes from your conversation with him?
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: I got bad vibes from everything I had heard about
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: him going into the conversation. This was one of those
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: things where I spent the whole week just sort of
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: touching as many bases as I could. And Swalwell basically
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: lives here. I don't know where he lives now, but
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: he lives in D.C. You know, back in the quaint
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: days when he was getting heat for like not really living,
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: spending that much time in California.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: And that was like a scandal for him.
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: Um, he, he was, you know, he's here a lot.
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: His kids are here. His wife is here.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, here in DC? Here in DC.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: He lived, I mean, he played a place on Capitol Hill. So,
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: or at least he used to. So, um, don't know
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: where he is now, but he is, um, look, I'd
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: heard everything. It was, it was starting to perk up
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: on social media, but that was kind of commensurate with
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: whatever momentum he had. Cause there were, there was definitely
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: some movement to him and Trump did him.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: A huge favor.
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: Uh, well, I guess the Patel did him a huge
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: favor by, uh, releasing these sort of like completely ridiculous
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: 10-year-old file that found no wrongdoing. So, you know, a
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: great way to get elected statewide in California is to
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: be a big target of Donald Trump. And, you know,
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: Adam Schiff proved that and Newsom. I mean, well, he
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: certainly got Prop 50 probably over.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: The finish line.
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: So I thought so. But I was thinking, you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: how far does this have to go before? I mean,
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: do I ask, do I bring this up at the end?
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: Or do I wait for another conversation? But, you know,
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: there was no other conversation. Well, there wasn't. I mean,
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: literally three days later, the implosion happened. But, I mean,
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: you guys know there's a big gap between stuff that
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: everyone talks about and reportable, actionable stuff. And to the
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: eternal credit to the San Francisco Chronicle first, later CNN,
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, they nailed it down and looks like it
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: was kind of tip of the iceberg. So, I mean,
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: I definitely caught– I knew the reputation. I mean, he's
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: a perfectly– he can present. I mean, he's a thoughtful-ish guy.
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: I mean, he's kind of Adam Schiff-lite in some ways
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: except without– with all the personal baggage.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: But– so, yeah.
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: And I knew something was coming and they were clearly
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: very self-conscious about it.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It was like– and he was going.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: Over the top about his kids' Little League thing. I mean,
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: he didn't– understandably, he wanted to keep his kids out
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: of it, but– It was a whole dad thing. He
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: brought his wife along. She seemed very nice. So it
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: was a little over the top.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: In all your reporting, like for people who aren't from California,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: haven't been paying attention to the race, like why is
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: this the field?
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: It's a great question.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know.
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: The– The short answer is Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla, who
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: apparently everyone wanted to run. I'm not sure I'd buy that.
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: I think there's a little bit of revisionist history there.
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: But they're big names. They would have, if not cleared
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: the field, definitely would have probably guaranteed 25%. Certainly Kamala
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: would have maybe a little more.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: And George Clooney lives in France.
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: As you know.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: And Newsom's term limited. I mean, there are quite a few,
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: I think, quite talented– members of Congress from the delegation,
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: I think a couple of mayors. But again, there's not–
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: I mean there's not like a giant in the race.
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: And I don't know if Kamala would have been that person,
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: but there wasn't. So when you have just the math
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: of seven Democrats splitting their votes seven ways, two Republicans
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: who are complete unknowns and I wouldn't think that electable
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: in California under regular circumstances, they're just splitting their vote
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: two ways. This is the math issue. So the Republicans,
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: for anyone who doesn't know, there's a runoff system, jungle primary,
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: top two finishers in the June 2nd primary, regardless of party,
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: go on to the November election. And in a lot
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: of the polls, the top two finishers have been Steve
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: Hilton and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County. just
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: basically two Republicans that no one's heard of, but they
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: could get there in November and there can be no
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: Democrat on the ballot.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: And California is interesting because it's such a big state
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: that it's almost impossible for anyone to be known in it.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: And we've just had this situation where our last three
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: governors were Gavin Newsom, who was quite famous when he
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: eventually won because of gay marriage, Jerry Brown, who had
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: been governor before and was a national figure and run
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: for president and Arnold Schwarzenegger before that. And if you
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: are a member of Congress, You cannot, it's so expensive
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: to run for governor there. You just, it's almost impossible
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: for anyone to raise, unless you're an American, a national profile,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: which Swalwell sort of had, it's impossible to raise the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: money to run there. And you just have impossible to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: get name ID because we have a million media markets
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: and no one can become famous. And so I even,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: I think Padilla, who was a statewide elected official before
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: he became senator, even if he had run, he still
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: would have fit into this mix because he's no more
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: well-known than Javier Becerra, who had been attorney general and
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: HHS secretary.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: That just made me think, not to get us off
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: on a tangent, but don't you think that's the future
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: or where we are now of national politics at the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: presidential level too? It just seems like if you go back,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: the nominees of each party, who the president ended up
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: being for the last 10, 15 years, just the way
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the attention economy works now, if you are not famous,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: it is very hard to become famous out of nowhere
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: in national politics on a national level.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: You have to be someone who is a master... Right.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Like Pete Buttigieg is the example of someone who became famous.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: He's the one example. So every other candidate in the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: 2020 Democratic primary finished in order of name ID at
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: the outset other than Pete Buttigieg.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: No, but there's a wild card here, which is relevant
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: to this race, which is Tom Steyer, who basically became known,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: got actually on the debate stages in 2020, was actually
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: finished seventh in New Hampshire and I think sixth in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: Iowa or something like that.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: He finished third in South Carolina, I think.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Did he really?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: He danced with Juvenile on stage at the end.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: That's what people remember about that. I mean actually no
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: one really remembers that Joe Biden was rescued in South Carolina.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: It was only that.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: No, so Tom Steyer, I mean he basically– he spent
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: $ 140 million so far in this race. I mean it's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: really quite something. I mean his strategy is spend as
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: much money as possible, put as many ads out there
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: as possible and take the most liberal position possible and
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: maybe that.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Gets you home.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: I mean Swalwell wasn't– was known but that's because of MSNBC.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: And CNN.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: I mean, it was, and hearings, right? So, but that's
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: all national, nationalized political news and very Trump centric.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: Becerra, he's one person like surprisingly absent in your piece.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Is that, did they, did they not give you an interview?
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: You know, so that was just, I mean, when I
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: wrote it a week ago, he was nowhere. And I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: kind of had to make, I mean, I had, you know, 2,500 words.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: I took about 4,000. And there's a lot to explain.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: There are a lot of characters. And Becerra seemed kind
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: of back in the pack. And a lot of it's
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: just logistical. I mean, I was out there to cover
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: this debate. The debate was canceled. I had 72 hours.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: I basically could only stick around Southern California. He was
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: in Northern California. So, I mean, there's sometimes not a
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: lot of rhyme or reason. He also might just not
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: have wanted to talk to me, as Steyer and Porter didn't.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Did he, what did you hear about Becerra? Which was
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: a huge mistake on there.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: Not much.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, he, I mean, I really.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out, he's had the surge is
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: real with Becerra. Like he's, it's now been a number
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: of polls where he's either in tied for first or
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: right after that. And that the money has followed. And
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, what, what happened?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, the numbers thinned. I mean, I mean,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: Betty Yee, who was at 1%, she dropped out too. So,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's a number, but I mean, Swallow dropped.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: And there was a sense for at least a couple
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: of days that Steyer was just going to be, okay,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: he's going to inherit the wind here. And I think
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: there was an immediate backlash. And a lot of people
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: I talked to were just instantly just offended by that.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: Just part of it is just sort of like the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 5: basic American ideal, but it has hostility towards buying an election,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: which is basically what this is. And also the guy
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: doesn't particularly present all that well. And I think Becerra,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: if he ever got a first look, got, a first
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: and a half look or something like that. And he's
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: quite credentialed. I mean, he was in the Biden administration.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: He was the AG in California. You know, he's out there,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: but there was a debate last night. I don't know
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: how well he did.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: What'd you guys think of the debate from what you saw? Dan,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: what'd you think?
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: I saw highlights of the debate and then I watched
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: parts of it on 3XP this morning in my one
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: hour to do this. I, if Becerra had delivered a
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: great performance, he could have essentially locked up a spot here,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: I think. Um, but he did not. And so that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: leaves the, I think you leave the debate still wondering
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: who the candidate is who could actually solidify in this field.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Cause people were really hoping it was going to be Becerra,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: you know, and California braces are largely funded by interest groups,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: the California teachers, the environmental folks, trial lawyers.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: And they would rally around him.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: Well, they could have like, they're looking for someone to
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: rally around because Swallow had a lot of these labor endorsements. Um,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: One of them has gone to Steyer since then. But
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: he could have seized the momentum, and I'm not sure
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: he did. Also, not sure how many people watched any
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: of it, so it's hard to say.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: I thought Matt Mahan was aggressive in a way that
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: he needs to get attention, right? And so I thought
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: he did well there. Steyer took a lot of incoming,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: which I was surprised, I guess, because he's still kind
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of the frontrunner. And so it was a lot of
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: people attacking Steyer. Becerra didn't seem like... I thought Becerra
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: and Katie Porter both kind of quiet in the debate.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Like they didn't have a lot of big moments.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Porter was a little better than I think. I mean,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: I don't think anyone, I don't know if people are
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: going to give her a second look.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: She kind of stalled.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: I mean, she like Swalwell had a bit of a
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: national profile, was very effective kind of anti-Trump Democrat during
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: the first term and didn't get a lot of traction.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: I mean, there were, there were some pretty nasty viral
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: videos about her that she caused. I mean, sort of
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: jumping down the throat of a staff, just yelling at
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: a staff member and yelling at a reporter, a couple
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: other things.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: So some reputational issues. Newsom told you he wouldn't endorse
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: unless it's a break glass moment. What's your read from
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: talking to him, both his relative absence in this race
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: and his seemingly inevitable 2028 campaign?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: Or his preference. I would say, okay, I have some,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: I think some informed wisdom on that. I mean, I
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: think he is as underwhelmed as a lot of other
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: people are, a lot of other Democrats are about this field.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: I think he hasn't been that shy about it privately.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Even he told you that, I think the field is interesting.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: This man has a great personality.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know what? I'm not, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: So there's that. I mean, apparently, I mean, he, I
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: think was looking to, to have some kind of a
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 5: Sarah breakout. I don't think he has issues. I think he's,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: fine with Becerra. Uh, he doesn't like Mahan. Um, I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: think he has reservations about Porter. I think he has
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 5: reservations about Steyer. Um, and, um, for a lot of reasons,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 5: but I, I think that he was really looking for
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: a reason to, to have someone like Becerra sort of
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: like make his decision for him. So we'll see. I don't,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: I don't know though. I mean, I think he would.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: Love a real process of elimination pick.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not, I mean, unfortunately, you know, Newsome, I mean, he, he's,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: Not always the most decisive guy in the world, but
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: I do think that his indecision here is quite– or
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: his hesitation here is sincere and I think it's reflective
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: of a larger ambivalence among Democrats.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: He did endorse the lieutenant governor's race this week.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: He did.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: So he can do it.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: He can.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: It is allowed.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: And he has experience as a lieutenant governor.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: So it's your favorite weekend of the year.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Your Super Bowl. The White House Correspondents Day. My Mardi
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Gras the whole thing.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: I guess the only thing different about this year is
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: that Trump's going to be there at the dinner for
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: the first time since 2011. First time as president. Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: That'll be interesting. What do you think, though? Has anything changed?
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Has the dinner regained any of its splendor from years ago?
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: When are you getting to the Grindr party? I haven't
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: been invited to that. So here's the thing. Okay. Full disclosure.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: I've known you guys a long time. I'm 60 years
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: old now.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Spring chicken in Congress.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: Look great. Thanks.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: I feel great.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: You're 20 years younger than the median Democrat. That's true.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: I might be too young for the Senate. I don't,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, I will do a Saturday night. First of all,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: now that I'm not at the New York Times anymore,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: I can go to the dinner. The Atlantic has, I think,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 5: two tables.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: I was going to ask about the Atlantic. I went
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: last year. I think I went the year before. They
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 5: asked if I wanted to go and I wasn't sure
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: I was allowed to say no, but I tried and
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 5: they accepted my answer. Although I will say, I don't
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 5: know if this is mystique or luster or intrigue or whatever,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: but from a pure um, voyeuristic point of view, I mean,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: I think Trump almost certainly has something planned. I mean,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: I think like the.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Great mass arrest or no, but.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: Some like a really, no, I mean, it would not
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: surprise me at all if he was just intentionally antagonistic,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: prepared something, not the least bit clever, not the least
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: bit funny. not the least bit gracious. I mean, to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: think about all the opportunities he's had to play that game.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: I mean, starting with the Al Smith dinner and when
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: he was with Hillary in 2016. And I don't think
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 5: he would have accepted this. Well, I mean, I think
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: part of him just thinks, all right, what a spectacle.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: I'll be in the middle of it. You know, who
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: knows how many opportunities I'll have to be this. It'll
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: be different. But I'd be shocked if he didn't have
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: something antagonistic planned. And I mean, the media is not organized.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: I don't know what they're going to do, but it's,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: but it'll be, it'll be kind.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Of a reality show, which is what he does.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: And, um, I mean, I don't think there's like a
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: great August and, um, you know, beyond reproach tradition, um,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: of the white house corresponds dinner that could be lost
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: and that he could soil like he's soiled other institutions
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 5: around Washington. But I do think that, um, I mean,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: there could be some friction there that will be worth watching,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: and I'm kind of glad enough to be there for it.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Don't you think it's going to be a problem when
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: his plan runs headlong into those First Amendment pins that
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the reporters are wearing?
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: That'll do it, man. Can I tell the story?
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: Now you have to.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: So when I went to college in the 80s, I
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: graduated college in the 80s, University of Michigan, they wanted
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: to give an honorary degree to Nelson Mandela. Uh, and, um,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: there was some regent or some rule, the Michigan regents
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: or something. He couldn't be, if you can't be there
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: in person to receive your honorary degree, you can't get
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: your honorary degree. Nelson Mandela had an excuse. We all
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 5: know what that was at the time. And, um, there
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: was an alternative, you know, those of us who were
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: protesting that were like a big button and I wore,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 5: you can see on my graduation gown or my thing,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: it was a Nelson Mandela button.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: So that was my protest there. Okay.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: You could tell that story.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say you accepted the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: award on his behalf. I thought that's what you were
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: going to say. Wouldn't that have been fun?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: Liberal reporter comes out pro-Mandela. Yeah, right?
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: You know what? You'd be surprised. Resistance.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: What do you think about– I mean Trump has investigated reporters,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: has trashed the press, has stomped over the First Amendment.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: His secretary of defense, who is a guest of the
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: Paramount Corporation, has kicked the reporters out of the Pentagon.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: What do you like talk to me about how the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: press sees things about going to that dinner in that context?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 5: I think it's, well, I think it's uncomfortable at best.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, I mean, the Atlantic is still going.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Um, and I mean, I assume you guys have been
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: invited to some signal chain, so it's okay.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, every, every one of the group
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: chat gets to get to table.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, look, just, I mean, this week, I mean,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: like Sarah Kirkpatrick, my colleague, I mean, she wrote this
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: cash Patel story.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: They, they served us. I mean, they're, they're filed lawsuit
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: two days ago.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 5: Um, Which I mean there's– that's a little bit standard.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: I mean like nasty story.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: It's a constitutional response.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: It's a constitutional response. Yes, correct.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 5: But I don't see how many– I mean I don't
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 5: know a lot of journalists who are excited about it
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 5: any more than they would normally be. Now, there's sort
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 5: of like a sport around you have to sort of
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: roll your eyes at the whole thing. It's like– I'm
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 5: above it, but my bosses are making it. And I mean,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: you can also get a lot of work done. I mean,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 5: if you're one-stop shopping and you want to talk to
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: people and stuff. But no, but I mean, I think
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: the dissonance between what Trump talks about, what the administration
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: has done, and what the dinner is supposed to stand
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: for kind of is pretty obvious.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, won't that be highlighted when the Wall Street
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Journal gets the reward for their Epstein letter story?
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: That'll be an interesting scene, right? I mean, I do
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: wonder about it. I mean, I was actually– I still
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 5: think there's a non-zero chance that he could pull out.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But who knows? 250 journalists, Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: signed an open letter demanding that the White House Correspondents
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Association use the podium to condemn Trump by name and
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: toast the First Amendment. You think there's any chance they
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: I was going to say something snarky, but I would
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: say no. I don't think there's a chance.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: It's funny because at first I'm like, well, that's not
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: going to happen. But I'm like, what?
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Why shouldn't it?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I could imagine a condemnation that is not so harsh
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and unfair that it– like I could imagine doing it
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: in a thoughtful way. Yeah, I can see that.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 5: But I don't– I mean– Who's the president? Of the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 5: Correspondence Association? Well, actually it's Donald Trump. Marco Rubio is.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: Now the– I mean the whole thing is– it's always
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: been bizarre. It's more bizarre now. The best argument that
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: the media organizations can make is the money goes to
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: pay for scholarships for young journalists.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: Scholarships, yep.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: Are there ways to raise money for journalists and scholarships
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: that don't involve a toast to a president who disbanded
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: the White House press pool? Maybe, but.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 5: The toast to the president of the United States is always...
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: I mean, I don't care who the president is. It
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 5: just strikes me as distasteful.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole thing.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: The toast is crazy. Imagining the toast tonight, or tomorrow,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: whenever it is, Saturday night, it's crazy.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: It's one thing to be there with him, which is like,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: you can debate that enough, but the actual toast is just,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: what are we doing?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 5: There are two reasons to go. I mean, one, the
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 5: comedians can be good. No comedian is sure of that, right?
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Mentalist. It's a mentalist. Forget that. The manosphere is mentalist, apparently.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 5: And there are certain moments when Presidents can, you know,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: with good timing, I mean, the guy you worked for
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: can do well. I don't think Biden's talks were terribly good.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 5: Bush had his moments, I thought. Clinton had his moments.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, but those days are long gone.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Last question for you. This town came out in 2013.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: If you were writing the 2026 edition, what's the opening scene?
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: Who's the central character? Opening scene? Oh, man, you put
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: me on the spot.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: Do you want me to do it for you?
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: You're at Butterworth's.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: No, that story's been done. What about that club? I
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: thought I texted you about one. There was a funeral.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: There was another funeral.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, there have been a lot of funerals.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: Because you opened this town, as people know it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: Oh, there was a funeral.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Wasn't it Carter's? Were you at Carter's funeral?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 5: I've done a lot of— Was that the most recent one? Okay,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 5: so here's the thing. Since that book came out— Or Cheney.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 5: The New York Times, I did do a Cheney piece.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 5: And I've been assigned a number of pieces. I remember
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 5: the last— one of the last pieces I did for the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: New York Times, I was kind of playing out the string,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 5: cleaning out my desk. And Elizabeth Bumiller, my boss, walked
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 5: over to me and said, Hey, you know Bob Dole died.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 5: And the funeral's at the Kennedy Center— or not the Kennedy Center,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: at the National Cathedral on Friday.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: You've got to cover it.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 5: So, I mean, there were several moments like that where
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: I was kind of became the funeral guy. That was
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 5: during COVID, too. I remember, like, it was a huge
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 5: deal to wear a mask because you were in a cathedral.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: You were packed with elderly people, you know, signs everywhere,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 5: wear a mask, wear a mask, D.C.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Rules, the whole thing.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 5: And I remember looking, I was sitting in the press
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 5: area right above where the Senate was seated, where most
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: of a lot of the sitting senators were. Every single
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 5: one of them was wearing a mask. except for Ted Cruz,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 5: who was being completely ostentatious about it. And, you know,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 5: we're talking elderly people, you know, there's no vaccine yet,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: you know, right across the way. And, I mean, it
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 5: was a church, I mean, just the whole thing. And,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 5: you know, he probably got a shout out for it. Anyway, there,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 5: the problem with, I mean, Tim Russert, that was a
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 5: thing though. I mean, the critique, which seems very quaint now,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 5: was that there was this one world, one Washington thing,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 5: you know, overly chummy world between the media and the
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 5: money people and the lobbyists and the former people and
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: the elected.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Officials and the White House and Congress.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: And that was what was insidious at the time, which,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 5: of course, in retrospect, seems like a comedy of manners.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, the fact that Trent Lott and John Breaux,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: a Democrat and a Republican, a Republican and a Democrat,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: would go into business together and make money, I mean,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: that was like a scandal. And I mean, again, it's almost,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 5: I'm not embarrassed by it, but it just gives you
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: a sense of how much time has passed.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: And the second book was Suck Up Culture, but it
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: was really around Trump.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Trump, yeah.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 5: And the second term does feel different. I mean, I
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 5: do think, okay, so I think that it's kind of
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 5: running on two tracks now. It's Suck Up Culture around Trump,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: which is orders of magnitude worse now. I mean, it's just,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 5: it's gone beyond cult level. But there's also, so my
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 5: book was called Thank You for Your Servitude. I don't
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 5: know if I can talk about this, but I will anyway.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 5: Jacob Weisberg has a book coming out called Profiles in Cowardice,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 5: which I read like a part of it. And it's
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 5: a similar way.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of that. I mean, it's sort of
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: of a piece to that. I don't know.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, I do think that it's hard to think
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 5: of like what the one, what the merger of MAGA
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 5: and sort of normie politics as we know it, whether,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 5: you know, independents, Democrats, some Republicans.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, my sense, like I've been gone from the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: city for 10 years now, but my sense is there
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: is just less of the stuff that was at the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: center of your book, which is basically this idea that everyone,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: you know, cosplayed rivals during the day. And then they
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: went to the same cocktail parties at night and all
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: hung out and it was like one party circuit and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like that's necessarily still the case in the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: same way.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah i don't see how it could i i honestly
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 5: don't i mean i i just have people who I mean,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 5: you've all lived here. I mean, it was actually possible
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: to have bipartisan friendships.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: It's hard.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 5: Like, I mean, MAGA just like it's a whole different
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 5: dimension and they don't seem to want to have much
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: to do with mainstream journalists, mainstream Democrats, you know, people
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 5: who have been critical of President Trump and vice versa.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Democratic institutions. Yeah.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 5: I mean. Again, I mean I always thought that– and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 5: other presidents have tried variations on this. But I mean
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 5: blowing off the White House Correspondents Dinner would have been
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: a great move for any president, not just when Trump
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: started doing it. I mean I thought Obama, Bush, whoever
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 5: would have gotten credit for it in some way. It
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: might have been some grudging. People would have come– People
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: would have complained but they would have walked into your office.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: How disrespectful to the First Amendment.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been terrible.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the– Anyway, no, but so, I mean, so, but yeah,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: so Trump was obviously, he wasn't onto something, but I mean,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 5: he just sort of, he just trashed the whatever polite
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 5: society existed here that was probably too cozy for its
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 5: own good.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: But now he's trying to just run it because he
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: went to the alfalfa, didn't he go to the alfalfa dinner?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: He did. Yeah. He did.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: Which makes the White House Correspondents Dinner look like Buffalo
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: Wild Wings.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah. That's a good line. No, I've never actually been
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: to the Alfalfa Dinner.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: I staffed Obama at it once.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 5: Really?
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: I ate Burger King in the back room while he spoke.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: They didn't have food for the staff. So Reggie and I,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: Marvin and I, had to go to Burger King to eat.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: That's perfect. You probably had the best time of anyone.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: Mark Leibovich, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Well, come
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: to our party. We'll toast you. We'll do a toast
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: to the First Amendment specifically. Yeah.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Bring your First Amendment pins.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I totally will.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: Actually, you know what, though?
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 5: There'll be like a kitty for us to put money
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 5: in for the scholarships, right?
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, of course.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: The Pod Save America scholarships. Yes.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: For young podcasters.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Young podcasters. Yeah. Just start now. All right. Thanks, Leibovich.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Buy the tight t-shirts.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks to Mark Leibovich for coming on. Tommy will
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: be back with an interview with Sarah Longwell on Sunday's PSA,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: and then Tommy and Lovett and I will be back
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: with a new episode in your feed on Tuesdays.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:21:22
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• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save
• 1:21:37
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• 1:21:41
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