Latest / Pod Save America / “Chaos is a ladder.”

Transcript

“Chaos is a ladder.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Later in the pod, Tommy's interview with Nobel Peace Prize
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: nominee Amanda Nguyen, who's behind a new effort to train
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: young people to build social movements... We've got a lot
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of news to talk about first, from the resignation of
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security and the Republican strategy
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to court Jewish voters, to Nancy Pelosi's strategy for keeping
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the House and the ever-expanding 2020 field. Quick programming note,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: we'll be out on the road again this week, so
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: our Thursday night show in Boston will be released as
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a pod on Friday, and our Sunday night show in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire will be released as next Monday's pod. Also
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a reminder that we dropped a bonus episode right before
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the weekend started. Tommy talked with Julian Castro. about his
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: presidential campaign on Friday right here in Los Angeles. And
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that entire interview is available now. You can also watch
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: it at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Smash that subscribe button.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Wow, you can see it too.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: You can listen to Tommy. You can watch Tommy.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Radio on TV. It's great.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. During a meeting
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: at the White House Sunday evening, Donald Trump asked for
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and then accepted the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: As the great Dara Lind wrote over at Vox, Nielsen
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: has arguably been the most aggressive secretary in the department's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: short history in cracking down on immigration, with her legacy
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: likely to be defined by the zero-tolerance prosecution policy of
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: late spring and early summer 2018 that resulted in the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: separation of thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. None
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of it appears to have been enough for Donald Trump.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So Nielsen's resignation came shortly after Trump decided to withdraw
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: his nominee to run ICE. because Stephen Miller and others
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to go in a, quote, tougher direction. Replacing Nielsen
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: on an acting basis will be Kevin McAleenan, who currently
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: runs Customs and Border Protection. Trump's cabinet is now operating
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: without permanent secretaries in charge of Homeland Security, Interior, and Defense.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: And an acting chief of staff. And an acting chief
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: of staff. Which is kind of the.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: Funniest one, because Trump could make Mulvaney permanent chief of
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: staff today. He just doesn't do it because he wants
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: him to feel small.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I was actually wondering about that because it's the only
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: one where because he doesn't need to actually get confirmation,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: he could just do it. I wonder if there are
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: legal implications because he also is running OMB. He has
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Mulvaney running three quarters of his government at any given moment.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have a lot of choice these
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: days in the Trump White House if you're looking for staffers.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: There's not that many people there. There's tumbleweeds in the hallways.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Mick or Jared.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It's Mick, Jared, Ivanka, Stephen Miller, and then a bunch
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of random people who they just found.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Steve Bannon's empty Chinese food containers still lying around.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: A couple Pepe memes. So guys, what do we know
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: about why Trump fired Nielsen and what he's looking for
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: in his next Homeland Security secretary?
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: The reports are that she wasn't mean enough, John. The
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: woman who oversaw the family separation policy that ripped kids
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: away from their parents and separated them for months at
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: a time, doing permanent damage to these children, was not
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: mean enough for Donald Trump, according to background quotes in
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: everything you read.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And it also seems like in recent weeks, Donald Trump
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: has said, NBC's first reported this, that he wants to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: reinstate the family separation policy, and she resisted that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: It's not really up to Donald Trump to reinstate it
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: or her to resist it. The reason it ended is because, one,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: he signed an executive order ending it. And two, the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: court stepped in and said he couldn't do it. So
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it does seem like, I mean, you know, we always
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: focus on personalities and we can talk about Nielsen all
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: we want. But this is more of Donald Trump is
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: facing an intractable policy problem. that he cannot fix and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the legal problem that he cannot.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Getting rid of her saying he's going to shut the border,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: saying he's going to reinstate family separation. It's, um, it's
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: what he's frustrated with is that his cabinet secretaries aren't magical.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: They're not magical cruelty beasts who can like use cruelty
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: to implement his vision. I mean, you know, Dan, uh,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: tweeted about this over the weekend, but there was a
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: tweet that I, by, uh, one Donald J. Trump that
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: captures his attitude about immigration, which is, uh, I'm doing
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: such a good job at the border. Everything at the
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: border is really good. Also, it's a total catastrophe. It's
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: an emergency. They're coming droves and we need to shut
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: the border. And so he's trapped in this place where
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: it's a signature issue. He's been president for, he's running
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: for reelection. This is the signature issue of his presidency.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: It's not a success, right? The cruelty is not redounded
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: to policy benefits that he was hoping would happen. And
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: it's clear he doesn't know what to do. So he's
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: firing people. He's yelling. He's calling for crazy things. He's
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: trying to He likes the attention on the issue, but
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: he's clearly angry about what's been happening, and I don't
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: think he has an answer.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think this is the I alone
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: can fix it presidency coming to fruition here, right? Trump
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: promised that he could fix everything. He thinks he can
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: fix everything. He thinks he can just fire people and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: get his way all the time, and he has never
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: realized and never learned that to solve a problem as
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: complicated as immigration, and look, there is an influx of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: asylum seekers at the border right now. And, you know,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: any president, whether it's, and Donald Trump's policies helped fuel
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that influx of asylum seekers, but any president, Democrat or Republican,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: would be dealing with a lot of asylum seekers right
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: now and have to figure out, well, what do I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: do about that? Most presidents would learn that you have
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to work within the bureaucracy. You have to work with Congress.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe you need some support from the other party. Maybe,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you know, like maybe you need to have lawyers telling
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you what's the most legal, you know.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: You have to accept that it's complicated. It's hard. Right.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: And that there are reasons to uh, not be so
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: strident because even if you have a view about how
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the immigration system could work, it's going to take time
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to get there. There are, there are just complications to governing.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: He's never shown any interest in on top of being
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: a racist who's pursuing, uh, you know, nativist nationalist revanchist
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: policies in order to rile up his base.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: It's also clear that he just doesn't, he doesn't understand
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: immigration policy fundamentally, fundamentally in any way, shape or form,
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: despite it being the thing that he focuses on the most.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Like He referred to the Flores court settlement, which bars
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: the federal government from detaining minors for more than 20
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: days and blamed it on Judge Flores, whoever you may be,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: end quote. No, it was a little girl with the
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: last name Flores that led to this agreement, I believe
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: in the 80s.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, years ago.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: In like 97.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: He doesn't seem to understand, or at least he doesn't care,
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: that building a wall doesn't stop people from seeking asylum.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: And in fact, so like, what do we do about it?
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: We're stuck in this place. where he says and does
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: the same things over and over and over again in
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: immigration policy, and he just gets increasingly craven-sounding, talking about
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: doing away with asylum entirely, talking about closing down the
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: border to Mexico, talking about eliminating all aid for Latin
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: American or Central American countries, and the press covers it
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: because it's crazy and new and completely counterproductive.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: But I don't know what else to do. We're stuck
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: in this cycle.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And it is alarming because it seems like even since
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the midterms, he has sort of attacked the rule of
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: law even more than he has. As we've all, as
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you've said many times, love it, he's the raptor testing
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the fence here. And what he's looking for is another
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security Secretary and other personnel who will help him
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: essentially break the law. Because he's now, and he also
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: said the other day, what we need to do is
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: get rid of the judges.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: It's just it's just it's authoritarian riffing like he hasn't
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: thought very deeply. He has no discipline.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: There's no plan here. I mean, it is. I think
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: part of the reason why it's important to the media
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: does cover what he says about immigration is it's actually
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: one of the few places where he's followed through on
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: some of his more outlandish promises.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: The zero tolerance policy resulting in family separation that began
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: as this kind of frenetic off the cuff riffing. And
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it's policy.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: But usually he's had to step back from those because.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Of the courts. Including this one. Including this one.
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: And I don't blame them for covering him when he
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: says all these outlandish things, but it does reinforce this
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: notion that there is a massive unprecedented crisis at the border,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: which just simply isn't true.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: There's a huge problem at the border. There's a growing
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: number of.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: People coming up from Central America and seeking asylum and
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: the system is being stressed to the point of breaking.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: But he's doing things to make that situation worse, not better.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I also think I think there is a legitimately a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: humanitarian crisis at the border.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, I think we've had triple the number
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: of asylum seekers this month that we had last month.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: And they've been metering them. So they're not hearing their cases.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: So they're all stuck in camps in Mexico.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So it's a humanitarian crisis. It is not a national
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: security crisis, which is how the administration is talking about it.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: These are not people who are criminals. These are not
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: people who are coming to our country and causing crime.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: These are mostly women and children and families who are
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: seeking asylum. And what has happened is there is this
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: huge backlog of cases right now while they're seeking asylum
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: about whether their asylum application will be processed. We don't
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: have enough judges. There's a backlog of cases. And Trump
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: this whole time is focusing on fucking building a wall,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: which will do nothing about this. Some of my friends
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: said he has only repaired some miles of fencing since
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: coming to office. He has built zero miles of new fencing.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing that's so strange, right? I imagine,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is partly why he's sort of raging
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: about this, is that he's trapped here because on the
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: one hand, he does, I think correctly, see this as
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: one of the few things he can successfully talk about
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: with his base. And on the other hand, he's not
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a candidate, he's the president, right? So he has a
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: record here. So I think a lot of this venting
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: at Nielsen, venting at the fact that these people weren't
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: tough enough, is looking for someone to be able to
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: run against, basically, to say, like, this is what has
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: prevented me from actually implementing my vision. And I think
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: it comes back to, I think it's worth looking at
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: what Nielsen represents, because I think it's important that she's leaving,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: and it's important that we're having this conversation about her legacy,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: because She is what happens when you try to like
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: put a layer of seriousness, a layer of adulthood, like
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: icing on this Trump cake of sort of bigotry and
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: chaos and frenetic, you know, she's the icing. I think
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: she's the, I think icing is the wrong word. I
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: mean that she's like, She is pretty horrible. Of course
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: she's horrible. What I'm saying is she tried to do
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: what Trump wanted to do while looking like a traditional
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: serious cabinet secretary. I see. I don't agree with that.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: She fucking went to the press briefing room and lied
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: like crazy. Like that's not serious. That's just being a,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: that's just being a polished looking liar.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what I mean. She is a Paula. She
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: is a Polish representative of Trumpism. That's what she's trying
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: to do. But presenting well is a.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: Very different thing in my opinion than like acting like
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: an adult in the room and trying to calm his
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: worst instincts, which she never ever did.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what they're claiming, right? That's what they claim
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes. That's what they want to spin.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've had so many conversations about personnel in
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: this White House, right? And I think what we've learned
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: is some of these people resist him for a time.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Most don't. Some people resist him sometimes and then end
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: up giving in to him anyway, right?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: But that's what I mean.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: The personalities in this administration, whether it's a Gary... What
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the fuck was his name?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Cone?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Gary Cone. Wow. Whether it was a Gary Cone or
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a John Kelly or a Kirsten Nielsen... Or is Stephen Miller, like,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: whether they're with him all the time, with him sometimes,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: not with him sometimes, he gets his way in the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: end because he's bulldozing people left and right.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: He's the president.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: He's bulldozing norms. He's trying to break the law. He's
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: doing all the shit.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: That's the point. She thought she could come in and
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: be respectable, you know, be a serious Republican inside the
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Trump administration. It turns out that's impossible. You become the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: representative of what requires lies in order to execute, and
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: you leave tarnished by Trump. and having succeeded and having
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: failed to do anything to mitigate his worst impulses.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I think we have to worry about now is, you know,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: so McAleenan reportedly has said that when they're talking about
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: bringing back family separation, that he might present families with
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: a binary option, which is either you can be separated
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: from your children or you can all go into detention
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: together indefinitely. And they're contemplating this policy.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: That's illegal per the Flores Agreement, which says you cannot
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: hold kids for longer than 20 days. So I guess
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: we're reaching another breaking point where we're going to have
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: to decide. Maybe Republicans in the Senate will have to
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: decide if we're going to just allow the Trump administration
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: to brazenly break the law. Maybe a court will jump
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: in and stop them from doing this. But we saw
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: this with the Magnitsky sanctions about Jamal Khashoggi. They were
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: required under law to present their findings to Congress.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: And they said, nope. Not going to do it. And
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: no one said anything.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And again, we should remember that back when Republicans controlled
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the House and the Senate, Donald Trump had a chance
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to pass some kind of immigration policy where he got
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: more border security, maybe even some money for his wall.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of money for his wall. A lot of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: money for his wall. Right. You know, help DACA recipients
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and dreamers and even, you know, ended family migration.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Five times the amount of money. for what he shut
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the government down over for border security, right? It was
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: 25 billion was on the table. He shut the government
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: down over 5 billion. He's turned down 25 billion.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, from whether you're looking at it from
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the right or the left, his immigration policy has been
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: a failure, an abject failure.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, you look at what's happening right now, right?
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: All of this, you step back and like all this
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: asylum conversation shutting down the border, the judges trying to blame,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: you know, trying to foment in front of a fucking
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: group of American Jews that the country's full saying the
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: asylum seekers are faking. And saying it's all about trying
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: to ferret out the share of asylum seekers who might
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: not deserve asylum. That is the primary focus of the
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump administration at the border. Finding the group of
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: asylum seekers.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not finding. Trying to convince everyone that that small
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: group that doesn't deserve asylum is everyone.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Is everyone? Of course it's everyone. But even just the
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: idea that even if you accept that a share of
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the asylum seekers don't deserve asylum, this is not a crisis.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: This is not a national security crisis. It's not a
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: national security threat. It's not worthy of an endless debate
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again. It's not the most
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: important issue facing the country. It's not the most important
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: issue at the border.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: But it's going to be the issue in the fucking
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: 2020 election because he's going to make it the issue
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: every day. So as you mentioned, Lovett, we did hear
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: some of the president's xenophobic rage over immigration during a
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Saturday where he said that our current asylum system is a, quote,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: scam and that families and children seeking asylum should turn
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: back because the United States is full. First of all,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: is the Republican-Jewish coalition not an odd place to declare
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that the United States will no longer provide refuge to
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: groups of people fleeing violence and persecution?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: You'd like to think it wouldn't be, but I thought
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: the thing that was most chilling is the fact that
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: him saying America's full, that they're faking it, works in
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: front of this audience now, and it's like, come on, people,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: shame on you.
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Trump telling a group of Jewish voters
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: that America's full to.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: A room that included an audience.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: with Holocaust survivors in it, is one of the most
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: historically ignorant, insulting things you could ever imagine him saying
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: to that audience.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: But he did.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine the Holocaust survivors in that audience hearing that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Especially with America's history of there was a time when
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: we turned back Holocaust survivors.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Entire boats full of individuals who later died in concentration camps.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: We drastically restricted immigration quotas and enforcement and made it
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: almost impossible to immigrate to the United States in the
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: 30s and 40s, 20s, 30s.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: So Trump also made an appeal to Jewish Republicans in
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: his speech by saying that the Democrats are pushing an
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: extreme anti-Semitic agenda, quote, and attacking Representative Ilhan Omar just
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: a few days after federal agents arrested a Trump supporter
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: who threatened to, quote, put a bullet in her head.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: And to show the audience what a good friend he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: is to American Jews, Trump referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as, quote,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: your prime minister and said the Democrats could, quote, leave
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Israel out there all by yourselves. In response, the Anti-Defamation
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: League and the American Jewish Committee both criticized the president's
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: statement for, quote, feeding bigotry and, quote, leading people to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: believe that Jews aren't loyal Americans. Guys, do you think
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: all the Republicans and D.C. pundits who accused Ilhan Omar
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of feeding the dual loyalty trope are busy writing their
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: takes about Trump today? I think those op-eds are getting printed.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: It's so frustrating. You know, look, he has done some
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: of the most, you know, he has bought into anti-Semitic
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: tropes in front of Jewish audiences again and again and again.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: That is what he does. He thinks it's charming. And
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: if you listen to the way the crowd reacts, sometimes
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: the crowd finds it charming too. And it's very frustrating
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: because it's a, uh, they don't, it's, I think the
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: biggest reminder of it is that, that this is a
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: bad faith attack on Democrats, obviously. And just a reminder
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: that he can go in front of these crowds and
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: use these tropes himself, uh.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: While attacking Democrats for being anti-Semitic. In the next breath.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: While right-wing anti-Semitism is on the rise.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, you couldn't write down a more clear-cut example
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: of accusing someone of dual loyalty than telling them you're
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: prime minister. But in 2015, he told the same group,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: you're not going to support me even though you know
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I'm the best thing that could ever happen to Israel
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: because I don't want your money.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: You don't want to give me money. You want to
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: control your own politician. He said that to them.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: That is the most anti-Semitic thing I've ever heard. And
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: the reason that doesn't get replayed on Fox News and
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: Breitbart and Loops just because Trump's a Republican and because
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Ilhan Omar is an African-American Muslim who wears a hijab.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: That is the reason they play her shit over and
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: over and over again, her comments. Now, there are reasonable
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: people who could hear those comments and think that's offensive,
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: that's unfair.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: I don't like that.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: I completely respect them for feeling that way. And certainly,
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: certainly she received near universal condemnation. But what Trump does
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: and says is worse. And we're not even talking about
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: all the literal Nazis who love him.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Barely a blip, these comments.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: And, you know, it's funny because it's, you know, Trump
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: does it like, oh, we're all in on the joke.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: You guys negotiate, I negotiate. You know, you're rich Jews.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: You know, Jews, you love your money. But it's not
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: a joke to a lot of people who are watching it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And Donald Trump doesn't just engage in this kind of
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: anti-Semitic rhetoric in front of Jews. He has done it before.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: He's famously done it in private. It's been reported on
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: many times. You go back, look, It's a small thing.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: But when John Stewart made fun of Donald Trump, Donald
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Trump referred to him as John Leibovitz over and over again. Why?
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Because it was his Jewish name. And he would put
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Stewart in question marks. And he would call him, I
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: don't even remember them off the top of my head,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: but he would use all kinds of anti-Semitic words about
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: John Stewart. It is his nature. It's what he's using
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to appeal to people. And it is shameful for Jewish
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: people to smile and smirk at this kind of fucking rhetoric.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: that America's full, that you're rich Jews who just try
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: to buy our politicians because you think that he's in
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: on the joke. There's a lot of people who aren't.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It's also important to understand that these are not just
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: bad faith attacks coming from Donald Trump. This isn't just
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: like Trump spouting off. The Republican Jewish Coalition and Sheldon
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Adelson are reportedly planning a $ 10 million campaign in 2020
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: to convince Jewish Americans who traditionally vote overwhelmingly Democratic to
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: vote for Donald Trump, the man who just called the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: prime minister of Israel their leader.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: And I don't think it's directed– I think it's going
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: to be directed at Jewish Americans, but I think it's
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: particularly directed at older Jewish Americans.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: And my personal experience in my family, what I hear,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: I I think it's working. I mean, so for a
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: certain subset of older Jews, I think it's working.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I think, look, I don't disagree.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's, there's 10 million bucks to reach 2%
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: of the U S population, but obviously if you're trying
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: to swing a couple thousand voters in Florida or Pennsylvania,
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: this matters a lot. That said, like exit polling data
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: since like the 90s, has shown that Jewish voters pretty
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: overwhelmingly go to Democrats. But also J Street has done
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: a bunch of polling because, you know, hawkish Republicans always
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: claim that the Jewish vote could be swung by just
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: talking about Israel. But in fact, when they ask, J
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Street's pollster asked American Jews, like, what are your top
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: two voting issues? They usually say the economy, health care, terrorism,
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: gun violence, about 10 percent or less in these polls.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: say Israel, also 80% of American Jews support a two-state solution.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: So it may be the case that this is a threshold.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: Issue for a lot of older Jewish voters, where they
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: think if the Democrat is insufficiently pro-Israel, they then can
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: look to the Republican Party. And that's probably the argument
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: they're trying to make. But just stepping back a bit,
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: the unflinching Republican support for everything Israel does has nothing
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: to do with Jewish voters. It has everything to do
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: with evangelical voters who the furthest right wing of which
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: think that Israel needs to be fully controlled to have
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: the rapture come and that all the Jews will later
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: be converted to Christianity or they'll go to hell. They're
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: talking to John Hagee and Jerry Falwell Jr. and those
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: crazy creeps far more than they're actually talking to Jewish voters.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I believe.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I still want to find... the democratic Jewish voters
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: who are democratic in every way, but because of Trump's
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: position on Israel are now moving over as opposed to
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: older Jewish voters who were already sort of Trumpified and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: then are thus are more willing to listen to this message.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I don't, and I don't know the answer, but.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think we know either, but I do think
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: it's this kind of thing where it's just this, it's
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: just that it's sowing this little bit of doubt in
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: the minds of a subset of American Jews and say like, Hey,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: you know, you can't trust these Democrats. Maybe you'll stay home.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe you'll vote for Trump. Maybe you'll just, maybe it'll
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: just become a bigger issue for you, but it's just
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: there to kind of just stoke that little bit of fear.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Same.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: That's what the, that's what the Omar stuff too. It's,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: it just leaves a little bit of a mark. I
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: totally agree.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, one of my neighbors is a Holocaust survivor
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: and I went over to her house once. She's incredibly old,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: but Fox news is on all day, every day blaring.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And she's probably seeing the story after story about Ilhan Omar.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And yes, it works. And also just one more thing
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: and we'll get to it, but it's, it's also about
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: equating supporting Israel with, with supporting right-wing American politics and
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: supporting right-wing Israel politics, right? That's like the biggest, that's
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the most important long-term project that they've been engaged in.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of that, just days before the elections coming
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: up in Israel this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: in an interview that he'd start annexing settlements in the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: West Bank if he's re-elected. Netanyahu, who's the subject of
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: multiple investigations, is fighting for his political life. Tommy, why
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: is he saying this and how bad is it?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: So, just a little context.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: So, You know, Bibi called early elections because he thought
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: it would prevent the attorney general in Israel, who he handpicked,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: who is a total right winger as well, from bringing
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: forward indictments about him or starting the process of indicting
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: him on corruption charges.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: That did not work. So now he's cut.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: How did we get that? William Barr?
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Well, their legal system takes even longer than ours. It's frustrating.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: So.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Uh, basically, you know, this election is on Tuesday. Uh,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: and BB is, he does, it's not just that the
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: Likud would win, his party would win outright. Like the
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Democrat or Republican party wins outright. There's like 40 different
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: parties running and they each to get a seat in
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: the Knesset, you need to reach 3.25% because it's a
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: proportional system. So what he's trying to do is, uh,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: get support from the furthest right wing of political parties
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: and to get out Likud members by doing these drastic
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: last minute things. In the 2016 election, the day before
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: the election day or the day of the election day,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: he released a wildly racist video that said Arab voters
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: were going to the polls in droves because they wanted
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: to take him out.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And that was how he inched over the line. And
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: he is attacking get out the vote efforts among non-Jews.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And so this is very similar. I mean, it's actually...
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, equivalent to Donald Trump's sort
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: of caravan stuff right before the election. Netanyahu has been
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: in power for a decade. Days before the election, he
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: announces a new right-wing policy on the West Bank. First
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: of all, why wouldn't people see through that? But also,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the only reason Netanyahu faces a threat right now is
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: that there's been a kind of a new coalition formed
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: in the center of Israel. But everyone kind of recognizes
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: that Israel has moved to the right. Why? What explains
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: this power that he has? He's been a survivor for
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: a long time. He's had personal corruption charges against him
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: since the very beginning. He's running against a guy named
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Benny Gantz in a coalition of former Israeli generals who
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I think, frankly, if they win, we will not be
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: close to happy with their politics either. So, I mean,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: with regard to.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: The need to annex West Bank settlements, basically every member
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: of the Likud policy has already come out in support
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: of this policy. It's just that no prime minister ever has,
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: and Netanyahu ever has.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Did you think it's a popular policy with the Israeli people?
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: I think it's growing more popular, and it's certainly probably
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: very popular in the Likud party, which is the conservative
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: party and parties to the right. So what he's trying
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: to do, because of their weird system, is he needs
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: to forge coalitions with these... super far right-wing policies, including
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: one that was so racist that they were compared to Nazis, literally, and.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: To get out all those people.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: Because you can have a scenario where a more moderate
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: party wins more votes than the Likud party, but if
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: they can't form a coalition to form a government, then
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: it falls back to whoever else can pull it off.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: So that's what his play is here.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: Now, I mean, the problem with this policy is most
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: people view it as a nail in the coffin of
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: a two-state solution.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: You know? I mean, these are.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: It's an apartheid state.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: If they do that.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: There's always been an assumption that in a negotiated two-state solution,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: there are Israeli settlements that are right along the border
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: that would be swapped in terms of territorial swaps so
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: that they would remain part of Israel. What's happened is
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: the settlement construction has gotten so far into the West
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: Bank that to carve out all of those areas and
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: bring them into Israel, you basically would make it so
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: you just have these little islands of territory that become
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: the West Bank.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: There's no contiguous state. There's lots of little dotted, there's
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: lots of little.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Seems like that was by design, huh?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I mean, yeah.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: And so Israel now faces this existential choice where they
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: can continue to go for a two-state solution, or they
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: can essentially annex the West Bank and have a one-state solution.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: But then, you know, you will then incorporate 2.8 million
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: Palestinians into Israel. And that question becomes... Is this now
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: a democratic state? Do they have the right to vote?
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: And if they don't, it's no longer a democratic state.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: And presumably one of the obstacles to a prime minister
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: annexing the West Bank was that they'd face international rebuke,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: including from the United States, but Donald Trump won't do that.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, every other, you know, Bibi may have wanted
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: to do this for a very long time. Obama had
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: to force him to say he supported a two-state solution
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: back in 2009. They know that Trump will not say
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: a damn word because they handed over the Golan Heights
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: agreement And they moved the Jerusalem embassy, which, you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: in fairness to Trump, every other president has promised to
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: do and not done.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: But Trump will never question this. Trump will never question this.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about the Democrats. In a new
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: that her party will hold on to the House in 2020.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: saying that she's, quote, going to have our races won
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: by this November.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: She's such a boss. That's a year early, Nancy.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Then she's got the next year to just sort of
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: chill out.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, take up meditation.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Kick back. Paul Kane of the Post wrote that Pelosi
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: rejected the idea that today's Democrats are further to the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: left than a decade ago. She said it was just
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a few high-profile people in Congress and then a few presidentials,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and has instead charted a course— of again appealing to
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: moderate suburbanites and some rural voters frustrated, frustrated by Trump's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: reality TV style presidency. Uh, she doesn't want to focus
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on impeaching Trump or on farfetched legislation that has no
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: hope of passing and divided government. This is all from Kane. Um,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: she promises not to repeat the mistakes leading up to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: 2010 saying, quote, you cannot let your opponents characterize, mischaracterize
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: what you're about. So what was missing from that election
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: was a strong messaging piece. And that's what we had
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: in this last election in 2018. Uh, What do we
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: think about Pelosi's strategy here?
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I don't particularly understand the 2010 point, right? Because the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: other thing.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was a messaging problem in 2010.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I think even if there is a messaging problem,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: there's a big difference between running to take power and
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: running to keep power.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Especially, by the way, we should just lay out the context.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Running to keep power after you have passed a massive
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: government program, the Affordable Care Act, and the economy has
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: not even started recovering from the worst recession since the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Great Depression.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: And we're in this... That was 2010.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: And we're in this.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: This.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: A word I constantly regret using. This liminal space between
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Obamacare passing... Liminal space. Yeah, between Obamacare passing and being
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: vilified and... Obamacare actually becoming something that's a part of
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: people's lives, right?
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Which happened like yesterday.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which, man, that took a long time.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: People started liking it right before 2018.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: We stood up geocities.healthcare.gov and that didn't work. Now people
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: love it. Now they can't get enough of it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Now they want more. What else do we think about
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: her strategy? They're saying, you know, it's moderate suburbanites, you know,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: rural voters. She's worried about them.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: I mean, it seems like she's trying to give cover
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: to a lot of moderate Democrats who won in 2018.
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: In districts where impeachment might not be popular, in districts
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: where some of the more progressive legislation that we've all
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: talked about ad nauseum might not be as popular. She's
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: trying to take some slings and arrows for them in
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: advance of them having to talk about it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, one thing we have to understand is that
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's job is different from any of these Democratic
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: presidential candidates. They are trying to put together a coalition,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a national coalition that adds up to 270 electoral votes.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: In doing so, we have often said that you need
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a candidate who can rally and inspire the base of
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the party, including people who haven't felt like they wanted
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: to vote before, non-voters, and still appeal to sort of
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: these middle-of-the-road, independent, swing voters, whatever you want to call them.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And that's what we need in the presidential level. On
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the House level, there are a lot of districts where
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of base voters. And there's not
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of, like, trying to get, and that is,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: and we have to remember and recognize that in 2018,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: we did not win the house because there was this
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: sort of like liberal surge among the base. We won
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the house because in a lot of these districts, there
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: were a lot of Republican voters who decided to vote
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Democrat for the first time and independent voters. And that's
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: what's on Nancy Pelosi's mind. And that is a different
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: task than what the presidential candidates have to do.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I also just think, you know, we've talked about this
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: before too. There are no really grand conclusions you can
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: draw from 2018 in the sense of saying, this is
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: the way you need to run to win a House seat, right?
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: There were California districts that we won, even with very
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: liberal candidates, but still won by pulling in independents and
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: pulling in Republicans. There are more liberal districts where people
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: like AOC could mount a campaign that not only helps
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: them win the district, but kind of creates a new
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: benchmark for how far the left can be inside the
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party, and that has value. So like, you know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: There are going to be places where Democrats can run
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: on Medicare for all, can call for impeachment, can put
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: a marker down for the Green New Deal. And then
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: there are going to be districts where people have to
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: run a more moderate race. That's that's the game. That's OK. Right.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: That's all. I mean, and we should say it's not
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: to say that if you are in one of these
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: purple reddish districts, you have to run some moderate centrist campaign.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: We've made this point a million times, but Katie Porter
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: won a suburban district out here that was very Republican.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: She's for Medicare for all. She's a protege of Elizabeth Warren,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: still won that race. But it's not like there's a
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: lot of Democrats who are in some of these reddish
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: purple districts who won their seats by talking about abolishing ICE.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's also just a lot of jockeying
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: going on.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: You see it every day on Twitter to define who
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: is a progressive, what progressivism is. A lot of it
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: has involved a discussion about Medicare for all or a
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: buy-in plan or legislation Pelosi put forward to sure up
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: Obamacare in the interim, right? Like that's a conversation that's
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: happened a lot. It was interesting talking to Julian Castro
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: because he has an immigration policy that is way to
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: the left of anyone else. And that's not seen as
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: the same sort of litmus test. So it's a question of,
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: how will he start to define his policy as the
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: litmus test for what it means to be progressive?
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Or will he at all? Because like, that's how you're
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: going to get to the left of some of these
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: people in this campaign. It's also worth remembering too, there's
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: this balance that someone like Nancy Pelosi has to strike, right?
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Because on the one hand, she's setting the agenda, right?
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: She's going to decide what it does mean to be
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: progressive in a way that's practical, right? She is going
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: to help set that boundary. At the same time, she's
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: also going to share this kind of like what does
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: amount to kind of a form of punditry and saying,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: here's what I believe some candidates have to do. Here's
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: what I believe other candidates have to do. But the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: thing to remember is what we have seen repeatedly is
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: that Nancy Pelosi is not going to be the obstacle
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: to how far left Democratic politics can go. The House
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: version of Obamacare was further to left than the Senate
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: version of Obamacare. Anything we end up passing, if we
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: are so lucky as to take the Senate, the bound
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: will be determined by the debates that take place inside
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: of the Senate. Her job is just to retain the House,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: try to build that majority, right?
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And it's also, it's a question of, you know, let's
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: fight about what version of healthcare legislation we pass once
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: we actually have the power to pass it.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: As opposed to fighting about it now, because you can
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: vote for Medicare for all, you can vote for Bernie
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Sanders bill and, you know, Representative Jayapal's bill in the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: House right now on single payer, or you could vote
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: for Nancy Pelosi's ACA legislation that would shore up the ACA.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Either of those votes right now, they ain't going anywhere
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: after they leave the House.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: And notably, Congresswoman Jayapal supports Pelosi's bill to shore up ACA.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Now, the one exception, I think, to what Lovett was
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: saying is that Pelosi is trying to supports efforts by
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: the DCCC to prevent people from helping out primary challengers
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: to the Democratic Party. So to the extent she is
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: protecting incumbents, I guess you could argue that that prevents
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: the party from moving to the left. But it's also
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: completely understandable from her point of view to not want
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: to spend money on primaries. It's the kind of thing
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: McConnell would do. We would all, you know, sort of
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: grudgingly admire how cynical and awful he is. I personally
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: think If you want to primary someone in a safe district,
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: go for it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: That's great. It's a notable exception.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: That's where I disagreed with her in this interview is
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: her decision to support the DCCC's blacklist. So like you said,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the DCCC is basically saying we will blacklist any firm,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: any consulting firm that works for anyone who's mounting a
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: primary challenge to a sitting House Democrat.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: And.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Look, I think primaries are healthy for this party. Now,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I think, look, it's interesting. Ro Khanna, who's one of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the more liberal members of the House, he seems to
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: have floated a compromise. And he said, well, why don't
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: we say that if you're mounting a primary challenge to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: someone in a safe blue seat, you know, we won't
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: blacklist your consulting firm and you should be able to
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: do whatever you want about that primary challenge. But you
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: shouldn't mount a primary challenge to someone who's sitting in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: a reddish purple seat that could flip. Yeah. I think
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty sensible compromise. But look, we have to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: understand that primary challenges within the Democratic Party and House
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: challenges have happened for such a long time, right? Like
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama ran against Bobby Rush for his first congressional race.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: You know, that's how Beto O'Rourke won his seat, mounted
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: a primary challenge, right? Like this has happened for a long,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: long time now.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I also don't think this is going to dissuade anyone
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: from running. It is going to create a debate, a
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: debate we're having right now that basically says that a
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: portion of the party's opinion isn't wanted or isn't welcomed.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: It's also going to mean that there's firms that are
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: going to then become primarial. Like, I don't even know
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: how this shakes out, but you end up in a
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: situation where you're literally dividing the party between people who
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: work for incumbents and people who work for primary challengers.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of places where there should be
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: primary challengers because these are very blue districts with, you know,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: members that have been there for a long time who
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: don't represent the best interests of their district and are
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: far to the right of where the Democratic mainstream has become.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Or if you think that they do represent the district,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: then they make that case to voters. And whoever wins, wins.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Why do you put your thumb on the scales
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: like that?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: They're trying to mount a primary challenge to Richard Neal
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts because he won't hold a hearing on Medicare
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for All in the Ways and Means Committee. Now, they're
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: going to hold a hearing for Medicare for All in
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the House. Nancy Pelosi has already promised that. He doesn't
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: want to do so in his committee. He's also the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: guy that's now going after Trump's tax returns. You could
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: make an argument that he's pretty liberal, but– If you
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: say that he's not liberal enough, run the primary challenge.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: If he's liberal enough, he wins the seat. If not,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: he doesn't.
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: I also think there might just be a practical problem
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: here for the DCCC. If you have a pollster who's
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: working on 10 races for you and they're on calls
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: with your paid media team, your research team, your comms
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: team all the time, and that person is also working
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: on a primary challenger against some of your incumbents, it
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: just creates some weird challenges that they're probably getting ahead of.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: You can have an inspector general running around, crunching the numbers.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: It all feels like a lot of work to prevent
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: someone from doing some polling or running some ads. Also,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: it kind of elevates the role that consultants play. It's
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: just the whole thing is too much.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Which is already way too elevated in people's minds because
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: of all these stories. It's actually not as big of
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a deal either way. The consultants don't make the fucking
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: race either way. They just don't.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: You're going to take away the lifeblood of these kids.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, everyone thinks, like, you know, you hire
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: high-priced consultants and they win your campaign for you. Like,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it's just not what happens. You need a good candidate
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and a good message. That's the fundamental.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Consultant come out there and be like, remember, middle class. Yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: no shit, right? That'll be five grand. That probably actually happens, yeah.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: So, you know, speaking of all this, our old boss,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama, was talking to young leaders in Berlin over
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: the weekend, and he said that he worries that sometimes
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: progressives create a circular firing squad because our allies stray
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: from purity on the issues.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Is he right to worry?
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Is he on Twitter?
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Does he have a.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Secret Twitter account?
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: No, which is good for him. I think he just
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: probably hears the fights.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: He might be right.
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: It might be totally fine that there is a constant roiling... uh,
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: conversation about democratic policy ideas that consumes the media narrative
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: the way the fucking Trump show did in 2016.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I have no idea.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: I do think, I do think, look, it drives me
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: crazy personally when I see people running down, for example,
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: the affordable care act, because I think it's the height
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: of privilege to say that Medicare expansion or 20 million
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: people getting health insurance is not somehow significant for those individuals.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Right. So like.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: That's, you might think I'm wrong and that's just fine,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: but I think it's an absurd argument.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my view on this has always been we should
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: absolutely have fierce policy debates over the direction of the party,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and everyone should be free to participate. in those debates.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: But what I start worrying about is challenging each other's motivations, right?
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: When you pick a specific policy saying that you're, you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you're a corporate shill or you're doing this for this
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: reason or that reason, like that's when it starts to
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: get bad because that's when, you know, we start When
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: we start telling each other that this Democrat is not
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: worthy because they're like a little bit to the right
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: on this policy or that policy, you know, that's a problem.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: It's completely fine to say my candidate supports this policy.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: The other candidate supports this policy. I don't think it
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: goes far enough. And so that's why I'm that's why
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I'm for my.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Then fight that out.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: It's also I think part of it gets much nastier
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: than that on Twitter. Yeah.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think part of it is that so
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: much of our debate around candidates, around politics or ideology
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: is about what we'll do when we get power.
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: That ends up being an argument about who's who's really
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: going to do what they say and who can you
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: really count on, who's really progressive. when the evidence, the
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: record you're going on is mostly words, mostly proposals, mostly
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: how they, how strongly they talk about certain issues. And
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I think then when debates, I guess it's like circling
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: fire swats, like, well, what's in the chamber? You know, like,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: what are we firing at each other? And it's like,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: when a debate boils down to C, this is why
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: you can't trust this person. C, this is why you
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: shouldn't ever listen to this person. C, this is why
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: you should disabuse yourself of this entire wing of the party.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: I think that is when you have crossed a line.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: Also, I'm totally fine with with elections being really contentious.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: I think vetting candidates is a good thing. You should
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: dig into their record. We should do it now before
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: that person wins and it happens in the general election.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: That should be our operating assumption. I don't care if
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: it's nasty and contentious. I just think it's an argument
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: that you should think about whether the way you attack
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: someone's motives or criticize them personally might turn someone off
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: from your candidate permanently.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: That's a thing that people should consider.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And I'll say I saw people pointing out that Barack
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Obama and Hillary Clinton ran quite a contentious race against
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: each other in 2008, maybe more contentious than the Bernie-Hillary
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: race in 2016. I think there's a lot of evidence
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: for that. But you know what? All of us on
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: both campaigns, the Obama campaign and the Clinton campaign, will
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: look back at some of those debates and some of
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: those attacks, and we're not super proud of all of it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: That debate where she's saying you're slumlord Resco, and Obama's
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: saying you sat on the corporate board of Walmart. Like,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I don't think that was a great moment for either
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: of them. And I don't think that was very constructive,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and I don't think that helped either of them and
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: helped the party at all.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Well, part of the problem of those debates at the
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: time was they'd been debating for such a long time,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: their policy differences were minimal.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just the mandate.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: The healthcare mandate.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And some vote on Iran, I think.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Well, there's the whole Iraq war. war thing. Oh, that
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: was the big one. But by, but by, but that,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: by then these fights had been litigated so much and
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: mostly what they'd been proposing to do as president aligned
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: so much that they were left with like so little
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: to actually yell at each other about it.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Iraq was the big one. And then Iraq was in
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the past. So then it was like going forward, it
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: was too similar though too.
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: Well, that was the IRGC designation, which Trump did today.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: That was, I was just thinking about that. Um, all right,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: let's talk about 2020 over the last few days. I
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: think something like 40 additional Democrats announced they're running for president.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan announced on Thursday the 45-year-old Ryan,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: who's been in Congress since 2003, is perhaps best known
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: for running unsuccessfully against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader back
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: in 2016. He pitched himself on The View as, quote,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: a progressive who knows how to talk to working-class people
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and get elected in working-class districts. California Congressman Eric Swalwell
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: is announcing his bid on Colbert tonight, Monday night, and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: he'll be hosting a town hall this week on gun
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: safety with our friend Cameron Kasky, one of the survivors
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of the shooting last year in Parkland, Florida, because he
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: wants to focus his campaign on gun violence. Colorado Senator
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Michael Bennett said last week that despite a recent prostate
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis, he's committed to running for president once he's healthy.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Others still considering a run include former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Montana Governor Steve Bullock,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and Stacey Abrams. So outside of Stacey Abrams, who I'm
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: going to put aside because she is fantastic and has
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: a national profile, I've seen a lot of complaining and
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: mocking on Twitter about all of these prospective candidacies. Let's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: take the other side, just For shits and giggles here.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: What's the argument for running if you're one of these candidates?
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: What are they seeing when they look at the political
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: environment and the current field that's telling them, I should
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: do this?
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: It's hard. I don't know. I honestly don't know.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, Eric Swalwell is an easier example. It
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: seems like he wants to run a campaign that's primarily
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: focused on stopping gun violence.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Right. That is admirable.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Sort of like the Jay Inslee campaign.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting approach.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: But I also think it's an open question for me.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: if that approach where you say, I'm the climate change
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: candidate like Jay Inslee did, is the best way to
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: elevate that issue. I would argue that AOC did a
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: hell of a lot more to elevate the issue of
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: climate change or the people who protested Dianne Feinstein's office
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: than Jay Inslee has so far.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Now it's early.
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: Maybe that will change, but that's my honest take on it.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: So maybe, I don't know, maybe they're going to bring
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: something to this race that we can't see yet.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: And so we should by no means rule them out.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: It's just, When you enter this late, it's hard to fundraise,
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: it's hard to get staff, it's hard to meet the
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: thresholds to get into debates.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure I get the strategy. I don't know.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: So if you think about running on an issue, there's
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: two reasons to run on the issue. One is because
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: you want to make the issue central to politics, or two,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: you want to use the issue as a launching pad
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: for your own legitimate, full-throated presidential race. I don't know,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: in the case of Swalwell or Inslee, what the goal is,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: but In either case, you know, you look at this
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: field right now, you see Beto O'Rourke, who is no
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: longer in Congress, who has raised millions of dollars. You
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: see Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who turned, and this is not
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: a criticism of him at all, who turned a few
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: key moments on television where he was thoughtful and interesting
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and new into enough of a base of support to
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: get on the debate stage. You look at that and
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: you say, all right, I have one one persuasive, powerful
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: moment about the climate. I have one persuasive, powerful moment
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: about gun control in a CNN town hall. Maybe I
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: can get to 65,000 donors. Maybe I get on the
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: debate stage. And the debate stage is a chance to
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: reach the people that you can't reach when you don't
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: have a national profile. And so maybe a lot of
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: people are saying the debate stage is the threshold. If
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: I make it, I make a shot at it. If
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I don't, I'm out.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right. I think I have a
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: few thoughts on this. I mean, I think this all
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: started with, it might've started with Barack Obama winning the
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: presidency and Right. He was a state senator who was
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: then a senator for a year and then became president states.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: It accelerated in a huge fucking way with Donald Trump
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: winning the presidency because he was just we know we
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: know this whole story. We have to repeat it again.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: But Donald Trump is president. So thank you for skipping.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to go.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Previously on America. We know what we know.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: We know how that ended. So you see that and
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: then you think, OK, well, you know, anyone can really
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: do this now.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: If Donald Trump's president, anyone can do this now. And
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: then you think the way that the media has changed, right,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: where you can get all this national attention for a
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: couple viral moments, right? And the way that raising money
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party has changed. You used to have to, like,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: know a bunch of rich donors and sit with them
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and suck up to them and get money that way.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Now you can raise a ton of money online. And
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: so they look at all this kind of stuff. And
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I think you're right, especially it started with Beto in
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: this race, but especially Buttigieg, right, where these people, these
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: people are congressmen. or in Bill de Blasio's case, you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the largest city in the country.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And they're saying, like, he is a mayor of a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: pretty small college town and has held no other elected office.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And this guy has raised $ 7 million and is now
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: this sort of national candidate who really has a chance
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: in the race.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: And who benefits from running even if he doesn't become
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: the nominee. Right.
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: That's the more cynical version of this, which is you
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: run for office to get a cabinet appointment or.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Worse, you run to get a book deal. Or if
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: you're Herman Cain, you get a book deal and you
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: get named to the Fed later.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Just because you run for president and you raise your profile.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: Now, I don't I'm not making that accusation by the Democrats.
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: But certainly that was the case for most of the
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Republicans who ran for president.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: They did it to make money down the road.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not making the exact accusation either. I really hope
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: that's not true because I do not have I do
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: not respect as much. I will just say. people who
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: are running who thinking I'm not going to win, but
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I'm just running because I want to raise my profile. Like,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and I don't, and look, I think like Pete Buttigieg, um,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: is not running because he wants to raise his profile.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I think he really wants to do this, you know?
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: But I think if you're, if you're running for president,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: if you do this, you really have to think that
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: there is a path for you and that you want
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: to run. And maybe all these people do. And I
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: think the reason they do is for all these reasons
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: right up there. Like all I need is a couple
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of big moments, you know, where I take off, And
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: then if I can just get to that debate stage
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: and show people, you know, what I am and what
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: my message is and what my story is, then there
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: I go. And they're looking at the field, too, by
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the way. And they're saying we have two frontrunners, Joe
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Biden and Bernie Sanders, one in the race, one not
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: in the race yet. And they're not like traditionally super
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: strong frontrunners like Hillary was in 2015, 2016. You know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: they are they're both pulling it like between 25 and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: 30 percent. You know, Biden's support has ticked down a
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: little bit. Bernie's has stayed solid. Um, but they're not
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: so strong and no one else. And then after that,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: you've got Kamala, Warren, Beto, and now Buttigieg all sort
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: of in the mix at around eight to 10% and
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: then a whole bunch of other, you're looking at that
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: field and you're like, nothing is scaring me away.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Right. And I also just, they're human beings. And, um,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: I just think we don't know how loud the applause
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: was in their minds in the shower while giving their inaugurals.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I think they must be extraordinary speeches that these people
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: are giving to themselves. I mean, look, I think Howard
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Schultz is a good example of someone who was practicing
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: running for president in his mind for a very, very
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: long time and only discovered how hard it was when
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: he started saying words out loud to other human beings.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: That's a whole other garbage can of coffee grounds.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Howard Schultz.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: Who got his candidacy unraveled in one interview with Ali Velshi.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: He thinks that he belongs on the world stage.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: What a clown. Well, Ali Velshi wasn't who was interviewing
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: him in the shower.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: But, yeah. I mean, just to... But everyone should run
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Disclaimer.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: We have no idea.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Disclaimer.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: And honestly, I have no fucking idea what's going to
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: happen in this primary. I don't know about you guys,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: but every single day.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Now I got it locked.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Every single day I read the news, I'm like, I
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: would be... Nothing would surprise me in this primary.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Some say chaos is a pit. I think chaos is
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: a ladder, John.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: When we come back to Tommy's interview with Nobel Peace
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: I am honored to have in the Crooked Media HQ
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: Amanda Nguyen. She's the founder and CEO of Rise Media.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: a non-governmental civil rights organization. She was the power behind
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: the Sexual Assault Survivors Rights Act, one of 23 bills, two,
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: three bills, Michael Jordan number of bills to pass unanimously
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: through U.S.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Congress.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: In 2013, she graduated from Harvard University where she studied
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: astrophysics and was the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: Amanda, it's great to see you again.
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: Last time I saw you, we met for an hour
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: about how you figured out to do something most elected
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: officials can't do, which is pass laws.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: But then I buttonholed you for like 30 minutes to
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: talk about something I saw on Cosmos, which was recently
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: taken off Netflix, which is very upsetting. But you were
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: like going to see a spaceship launch that day.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: Virgin Galactic.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: How was it?
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: I mean, it was amazing. All space launches are amazing.
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: Have you been to one?
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: No.
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: You have to go.
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: It's so sad that they put cameras all over them.
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, Elon Musk putting his Tesla on the spaceship
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: was just brilliant.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. So you're basically, you're on the track to be
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: an astronaut.
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: I want to be. That's my main dream.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: So this whole like writing civil rights stuff, it's like
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to do a blueprint so that I can
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: get to space.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool. We'll get to space at the end.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: So I think if people want to learn even more
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: about the work you're doing at Rise, you did an awesome,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: awesome crooked conversation with Julissa Arce that gets into a
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: ton of detail. But there's some new stuff as of
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: this week that I want to cover. So we'll probably
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: do a little less. But let's start there in the
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: work RISE does because it's so foundational to what you're doing.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: What's RISE and how are you able to pass more
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: pieces of legislation than like anybody thought possible?
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Um, by taking our egos and shoving it somewhere.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: Um, okay.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: So rise is a civil rights nonprofit and I started
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: it because I needed civil rights and nobody was going
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: to write it for me. So after my rape at Harvard,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: I discovered a broken criminal justice system. Um, rape kits
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: in Massachusetts before my law passed were destroyed before the
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: statute of limitations. There was a huge double standard. So
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: convicted rapists had the right to hold on to it
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: for the duration of their conviction.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: That is outrageous. Yeah.
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: The other double standard is.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: That other types of class A violent felonies like murder,
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: they never have their evidence destroyed.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: But rape does.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: And I thought that was unfair. And so I realized
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: I had a choice. I could accept the injustice or
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: rewrite the law. One of these things is a lot
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: better than the other.
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: So I rewrote it.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. When I started RISE, it was a team of us,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: and we sought to pass the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: of Rights through the United States Congress. People thought we
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: were a joke. They were like, look at these 20-something-year-olds.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: You have no money. You have no power. You have
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: no connections. And then we did it.
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: That's amazing.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have this astrophysics background.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: You're You get science, you get math, you're organized. How
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: did you apply some of the things you're passionate about
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: to the work you're doing?
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Because I feel like you.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: Kind of hacked the system in a way that a
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: lot of people talk about, but few people really do.
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: So for us, data and being data-driven is extremely important.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: And when we walked into a members of Congress office,
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: we knew every single vote that they've ever done on this,
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: everything they've said, and also everything their Cook PVI score, right?
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: And it was not only the moral case for why
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: they should do this, but also the political case for
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: why anyone should do this.
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: So it came with a lot of strategy. But when
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: we passed at that.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: Time, we became the 21st bill in modern US history
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: to do so unanimously. And the statistic for.
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: That is 0.016%.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: But The most remarkable thing wasn't that. It was what
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: happened after. So when President Obama signed it in 2016,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: we heard from over a million people who reached out
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: to say, hey, I'm having these issues in my own
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: community too. And can you help us, me, pen my
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: own civil rights into existence? And so we sought to
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: replicate that success. And I created a theory of organizing
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: called Hoponomics.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: I love Hoponomics.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: You.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: It's part game design theory and then part national security theory.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: And what it does is it gamifies the process of
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: passing a law. And over the past 21 months, we've
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: passed 21 laws unanimously. We've trained over 200 organizers to
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: do that. And it covers about 40 million people's civil rights.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: That's incredible.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: It's like, it's a truly remarkable accomplishment. So this kind
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: of blends into your announcement for this week. But like,
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: Do you think your theory of the case could be
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: borrowed by someone who is passionate about criminal justice reform
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: or fill in the blank?
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: That's the whole point.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Right. So so much of politics isn't about facts.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: It's about how do you talk to.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: Irrational human beings about making them believe it's in their
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: best interest, not only logically, but emotionally as well. And
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: that's exactly what we've done. So we've taken now the
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: knowledge and resources we've amassed over these 21 laws and
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: we're taking it to the next step. So we've built
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: America's premier civil rights accelerator and we call.
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: It Rise Justice Labs.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: So just a couple of days ago, you launched this project.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: It's an incubator for people who want to build a
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: movement around the cause that they care about.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: So how is Rise Justice Labs going to work? Yeah.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: So here's how it works.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: In cities across America, there are umbrella organizations that give
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: seed funding to tech entrepreneurs. So when a tech entrepreneur
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: has an idea based on the merit of their idea,
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: they can pitch to VC firms and get seed funding, mentorship.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: And that doesn't exist for civil rights until now. So
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: what we do is we took a social entrepreneurship lens
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: to grassroots organizing. When an activist or an organizer wants
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: to pass a law, they can apply to us. And
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: if they get accepted, we'll give them seed funding, training,
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: access to professional services like lawyers and a community. And
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: essentially we're covering the opportunity cost of someone starting up
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: a social movement.
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: That is such, that's so important because I've heard you
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: talk about this, but I think you saw this after
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: Parkland where if a student who survived one of the
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: attacks dare to tweet something about finding some joy in
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: their day-to-day life, they were smacked down.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: It was like, how dare you? enjoy what you're doing.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: There's this sense, I think, that activism has to be
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: punitive for the individuals involved, and that's totally crazy.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: It's unfair.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't believe in martyrdom, right?
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And actually, I'm so glad that you brought them up,
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: because we've actually started Rise Justice Labs under the radar
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: for the past eight months, and the first team we're
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: so proud to work with are the survivors, alumni, and friends,
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: other people who work with the folks from Parkland, the
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: survivors of Majority Stoneman Douglas High.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: So like when I think about how effective you've been
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: and how effective they've been, it's like a Transformers coming together.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: What are they looking to learn from you and your organization?
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: So this group of young people, incredible young people founded
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: by a young man named Robert Shentrup. So he lost
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: his sister, Carmen Shentrup, in the shooting.
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: I'll never forget it.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: So he came to me and said, I just want
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: to make sure that politicians, I don't care what part
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: of they are, will be able to be safe in
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: voting for gun violence prevention because I just don't want
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: to lose my other sister to gun violence. And that
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: kind of organizing, that kind of attitude is what it takes.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: Over the past eight months, they've been incubated at RISE
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: full time. They've gone through our Hopenomics training. And they
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: are now in 15 states. They have met with President
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: Trump in.
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: The Oval Office.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Wow. Good for them.
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was incredible. And with Democratic House leadership. And
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: just last month, Robert testified in the Colorado State House
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: for a bill they're supporting called ERPO.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: And that bill passed and it's on its way to
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: the governor's desk.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: That is remarkable.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: God, the antidote to being frustrated with Washington is to
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: get out to states and see work.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Like that happen.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Well, look, this is a time of frustration, of political tribalism,
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: and of waning faith in our democracy. And I don't
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: think that there's ever been a more vital moment in
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: our history for people to understand that they.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Hold the power.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: I am so sick of politicians who just for retweets
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: have these reduced soundbites instead of making steadfast policy.
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: And for people who want.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: An alternative to you know, giving money to candidates, right?
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: There are only 535 seats within Congress. Um, you can
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: run for them. You can also run for local office. Um,
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: but also if you don't want to run or if
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: you lose and you still want to serve in some way,
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: there is a path for you to make change. Um,
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: you see, like if I was a member of Congress,
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: I'd be the most successful one. I've passed 21 laws unanimously.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: And the only reason I was able to do that
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: is by being outside of that political fray.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: Um, So the other thing I think, the other tension
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: I see a lot, mostly online, because that's where we
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: all live, is what's real activism versus hashtag activism? So
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: I kind of think it's a false choice, right? Like
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: marching works, sit-in works. But I imagine if Dr. King
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: had the social media tools we have today, he would
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: have used those as well, right? So where's the balance?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: What creative things have you seen young people do that
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: merge the history with what we can do today?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Well, I think our century's industrial revolution is digital and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: that the path, you know, the networks of distribution are
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: absolutely social media. If I go to a celebrity who
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: has millions and millions of followers and ask them to
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: tweet about calling in something, those members of Congress will
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: be hearing those phone calls, right? And so hashtag activism,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: along with other forms of organizing, are all valid. But
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, what is it that
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: you're trying to accomplish? And for us at Rise, I
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: didn't have the political luxury.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: Of a cathartic performance.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: What I mean by that is I needed to work
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: with people from all sorts of walks of life and
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: people I didn't agree with in order to pass laws.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Because for me, in order for a healthy democracy to function,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: it's citizens need to be able to hash things out.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: And we have, I think in this moment of extreme,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: extreme toxic political tribalism lost that. Um, and so for
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: folks who still want to make a change, there is
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: a way and they can go ahead and.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: Apply to us at rise.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: So you talk about the tribalism and the way it
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: plays out in the media. I mean, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: like I almost don't even want to it.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Was so awful, right?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: Because you have this incredibly, you know, believable, credible, compelling,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: emotional testimony for Dr. Blasey Ford, followed by a fucking
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: temper tantrum from Lindsey Graham. And that seemed to inspire
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: their base more than Dr. Ford's testimony got Democrats to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: turn out and oppose the nomination. And that like broke
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: my heart. I just couldn't believe we lived in a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: country where that is how someone would respond to trauma and.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Like that, right?
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: And then More recently, we have a very different debate
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: with similar tones about Joe Biden and what is appropriate
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: and whether something falls short of sexual assault or misconduct,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: whether making someone uncomfortable, how we talk about those sorts
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: of issues in the public square. So I guess I'm
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: trying to figure out what's the best outcome we can
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: get from the conversations that we have publicly now about
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: all of these issues?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: First, I think America, and to the world as an extent,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: is going through mass public trauma together.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: For the first time in the.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: News, we're seeing very deeply rooted traumatic things that were
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: stigmatic ones being played out over and over 24-7. And
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: that is affecting the way that people are responding not
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: only to politics, but in their everyday lives. The second
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: thing is that regardless of the political spectrum, And what
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: at least I've observed from the things that have gone
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: on is that it's no longer do you believe survivors.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: It is if survivors matter.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: And the whole point that I'm trying to show not
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: only survivors but everyday people is that not only do
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: you matter, but you have agency. We're demystifying the process
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: of passing a law and trying to give people a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: roadmap because People are just fed up with investing or
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: putting their hopes into politicians that maybe will do some
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: things for them, right? There's a profit model in politics
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: of people paying a premium to lobbyists and consultants for
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: access to research connections, and maybe.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: It'll work out.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: But for us, there are people on the ground in
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: these communities, look, It's my deep belief that the people
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: who have the solutions to the world's most pressing problems
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: are the people who live the problem every day. And
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: those people should be at the drafting table too. So
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: why just cut out the middleman, right?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Do it ourself. I love it.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: So if you're listening, say you're at home right now,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: you're listening to this, you're fired up by your success.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: You want to get involved. You want to apply to
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: rise at justice labs. How do you do that?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: And what do you want to hear for them? if
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: they're going to go from applicant to accepted. Because I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: imagine you're going to get a lot of people trying
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: to be a part of this.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so folks can go to risenow.us and apply. And
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: what we're looking for are people who are passionate, who
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: have really big ideas about how to change the world,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: and who have what it takes. And here's what it takes.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: Somebody who can compromise. One of the final questions, I'll
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: give this away. One of the final questions that we
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: always ask any person who applies to RISE is if
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: you were to meet President Trump, What would you say?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, good question.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: And if the answer is anything short of respect, they're
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: not accepted. Because at the end of the day, we
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: have to compromise.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: We have to work with people.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: That's what democracy and our legislative process demands. And I
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: still have faith in our legislative process. That's why we're
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: being able to.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 5: Pass all these laws.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: One space question. Okay. Okay.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: The path from today for you to becoming an astronaut.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: How many years is that and what do you.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Have to do?
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: So that's a really both exciting and complicated question because
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: there are multiple routes. Obviously, so I used to work
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: at NASA and that would be my dream to be
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: a mission specialist on one of their deep space missions,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: hopefully to Mars.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: But it's much more likely for.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: Me to go to space through a private space program.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: And there are a ton of companies who are exploring
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: and making a lot of innovation headway into private space.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: So I am really excited to be able to contribute.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: In both ways.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: You're bullish on private space?
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: Yes, definitely.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: I've literally seen it with my own eyes. The last
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: time I was here, I headed from you to Virgin
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Galactic and saw the first woman ever to fly in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: a commercial space flight into space and come back down.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: That is so cool. Yeah. Amanda, congratulations. It is so
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: inspiring to talk to you. Thank you so much for
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: coming in. Everyone should apply. Yes. This is such a
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: good idea.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: We need to see this replicated all across the country
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: because that's the only way we're going to make some progress.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 5: Everyone should. No one is powerless when we come together.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Get in the game, people. Thanks for talking to me. Yeah,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: of course.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Amanda Nguyen for joining us, and we'll see
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: you in Boston.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: We'll see you in Boston.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: The rest of you will hear us from Boston on
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Friday morning.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: Still some tickets for Lover Leaving in Boston on Wednesday.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Just come say hi.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Snap up those tickets.