Latest / Pod Save America / Joe and Mika Do the Trump Dance

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Joe and Mika Do the Trump Dance · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Democrats prepare a new strategy to fight
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Trump and get ready to pick a new party leader...
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Joe and Mika kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago while the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: new MAGA clique sits ringside at a UFC fight. Then
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: NBC News' Brandi Zadrozny, one of the best source reporters
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: on the RFK beat, talks to Tommy about what we
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: know about RFK's plans for the medical care you get
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and the food you eat.
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: It's funny that they're the best source. It's like, she's
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: talked to the worm.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: The worm, the whale, and the... What was the other thing?
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: The bear.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: The bear!
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: The bear! RFK Jr.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Is a source close to the worm.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Brandy and I talked. She's also such a... She's an
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: expert in online disinformation and misinformation too. And we also
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: talked a lot about the wellness space and how people
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: who consume wellness content inevitably get to a lot of
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: the things RFK Jr. is focused on. Not just vaccines and,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: you know, misinformation he pushes around vaccines, but also... the
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: broader sort of Make America Healthy Again agenda, which includes
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: food safety, et cetera, which I think is why he's
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: very attractive to a lot of people.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: People like West Coast Moms and Jared Poulos.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I'm on the wellness algorithm road.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: So it's only, you know, right now it's vitamin C
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: in the morning, but we'll see where it gets me.
• 1:43
  Speaker 5: I'm excited.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: RFK Jr., very anti-ozempic. Did you see that?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, okay. from my cold, dead hands.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: Four years from now, I don't know what the future
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: holds for this country, but I'll have Manjaro in one
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: hand and Diet Coke in the other. You'll have to
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: take it from me by force.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: We will also talk about how, like, there's some parts
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: of what RRK wants to do that, who disagree with, like,
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: healthier foods or getting pesticides out of the environment, et cetera.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: But how is that going to work with the broader
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Trump's deregulation agenda?
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, because the people that used to disagree with
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: it were all the fucking Republicans.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, stick around for that interview.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But first.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I regret to inform you that the news about Trump's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: cabinet picks has not gotten any better. Let's start with
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: his nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, who resigned his
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: seat in Congress just before the bipartisan House Ethics Committee
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: could release a report about his alleged illicit drug use
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and sex with underage women. A lawyer for two adult
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: women who already testified before the committee said that Gaetz
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: paid them for sex and that one of them witnessed
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Gaetz having sex with a third woman who was then
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: 17 years old at a house party in Florida. Democratic
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and Republican senators have said they want to see the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: committee's report before voting to confirm Gates, though Speaker Mike
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Johnson says it shouldn't be released. And apparently the ethics
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: committee will meet on Wednesday to decide. It seems unlikely
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to me that Gates gets confirmed without at least the Senate,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: if not the public, viewing this report. But what do
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you guys think?
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: So John Cornyn was asked about this, and he said
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: to reporters that the truth is that the information is
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: going to come out one way or another. He also said,
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I think in order to do our job, we need
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: to get access to the information also to protect the
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: president against any surprises that might damage his administration. So
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: John Cornyn is just looking out for number one, who
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: is Donald Trump. Yeah, I just I find it unlikely
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: that we won't know most of what's in that report
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: by the time we get.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: To a vote. If we get to a vote, you
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: get 10 members on the House Ethics Committee. Let's look
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: at their website today. I saw 28 staffers. Apparently, all
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: 10 members had access to the full report. So it's
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: a lot of people. And apparently the ranking Democrat, Susan Wild,
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: just lost her race. So what does she have to
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: lose by floating that thing to some nice media member?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: The email is hey at crooked.com.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Hey at crooked.com. Listen, we won't, you know, remember when...
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: The Intercept posted that file and that poor person had
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: to go to jail because they didn't get rid of
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: the copy marks.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Reality winner, yeah. We will not do that.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: We will protect your anonymity.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Sidney Sweeney needs no more rolls.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: We're certainly not asking for any classified information. Let's not
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: say something we're going to regret, Tommy. We're not soliciting
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: any classified information.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: No, this is all public.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Just everything that's public.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: You have to think, all these Senate Republicans, they know
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Matt Gaetz is a sketchball, but they don't know the
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: extent to which. You would want to know that information
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: before you vote for or against him. The risk though,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: the flip side is he might end up being attorney
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: general and he can target whoever puts out information about him.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: So it's a scary situation.
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I think there's no way that he gets confirmed or
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the nomination hearing goes forward without at least the senators
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: on the committee or all the senators seeing the report.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I can see reasons if you take like Matt Gaetz
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and the specific substance of this, these set of allegations
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: out of it, why a house ethics committee like wouldn't
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: publicize the their reports, because especially depending on what they found,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: if someone is innocent or whatever, you don't want like
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: salacious allegations out there. But that said, probably leaks. And also,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: if it doesn't leak, you could imagine Democrats on the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee just sort of redoing the investigation in public
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: as part of the confirmation hearing.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also like we should try to get the report.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: You don't need the report to know Matt Gaetz is
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: a scumbag. He famously would walk around the floor of
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: the House showing photos and videos of his exploits to
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: horrified or annoyed or somewhat disgusted colleagues, you know, as
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: has been reported by members of the House.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: A U.S. senator who will now vote on his nomination.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Right, right.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Mark Wayne Mullins was in the House when that was
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: going on.
• 5:36
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: And the context here is normally all of these nominees
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: go through an FBI background check, but that background check
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: is requested by the White House, not the members of Congress.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: So if Trump says, we're not going to request one
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: this time, it might not happen, or maybe he'll use
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: an outside firm. So, I mean, the next chairman of
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: the Judiciary Committee is going to be Chuck Grassley, spring
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: chicken at 91 years old. He will likely work with
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Dick Durbin to structure these hearings. Presumably, Durbin will have
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: some leeway to call witnesses who could be people who
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: are also associated with this House ethics report, but they
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: would have to be willing to come forward and testify.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: They couldn't compel them.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I will say these allegations are incredibly serious, if true, horrific.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I hope that they are not the primary focus of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the confirmation hearings, just because the position of attorney general
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: is so powerful. And I think a lot of people,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we all think it's pretty scary, the idea
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: of Matt Gaetz being attorney general, but maybe most voters
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: have no idea what they're in for other than Matt
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Gaetz seems like a scumbag because of these sexual allegations.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: But like, I hope they ask him about political prosecutions,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: civil rights, following the law. maybe his position on sex trafficking,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: which I know is a big deal for his friends
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: at QAnon.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: It's true. And also the Senate Democrats could also ask
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice to turn over any relevant documents
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: about their investigation into Matt Gaetz, which didn't turn into
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: a prosecution, but they still could have found things in
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: there that are politically relevant. Yeah.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: The Gaetz folks are saying, well, Merrick Garland's Justice Department,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: you know, found him not guilty. It's like, eh, they
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: didn't bring the case.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: That's a prosecutorial standard. This is something different. This is
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: a political vetting. Yeah.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And I agree with you. Like it's hard, right?
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: Because, and we'll talk about Hegseth, but like with Gates, right?
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: These are disqualifying allegations, right? And they should be enough
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: to make it so that we don't have to deal
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: with someone like Matt Gates in Congress, otherwise attorney general.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Or someone like Donald Trump as president.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: But the, but like, These are the most sensational and
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: interesting stories around these cabinet appointments. And what we are
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: seeing is the most radical, unqualified group of people who
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: are promising to do deeply unpopular things as leaders of
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: the administration. And if the focus is on just these stories,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: we will have missed this chance to talk about what
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump will actually do as president. I do think
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: like there is a way to talk about what these
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: allegations represent and why they are so dangerous. to have
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: an attorney general who's been accused of these things or
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: has been alleged to do these things, what it tells
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: you about what he thinks about the law, who the
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: law applies to, who the law doesn't applies to, who
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: he respects, who he doesn't. I think there is like
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: a story there you can use to talk about the
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: broader reasons Matt Gaetz shouldn't be attorney general, but I
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: have the same worry.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: So it turns out Trump's pick for defense secretary is
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: also facing sexual misconduct allegations. The reported incident involved an
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: unidentified woman and took place in 2017 at a Monterey
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: hotel where Pete Hegseth was speaking at an event. The
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Trump transition team apparently has a memo, which we haven't seen,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: but the Washington Post reports on. It says the woman, quote,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: didn't remember anything until she was in Hegseth's hotel room.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And then the next day, quote, had a moment of
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: hazy memory of being raped the night before. Hegseth says
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: through his lawyer that there was an encounter, but it
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: was consensual, that there's surveillance footage of the two walking
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: back to his room, smiling with their arms locked. and
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that the person involved has tried to, quote, blackmail him.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Hegseth reached a settlement with the woman that apparently prohibits
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: her from talking about it. Separately, concerns have been raised
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: about a tattoo on Hegseth's bicep. It says Deus Vult,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: which is Latin for God Wills It, a phrase that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: started with the Crusades but has been used more recently
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: by Christian nationalists in the far right. The tattoo was
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: apparently why Hegseth was ordered not to deploy as a
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: member of the National Guard to Biden's inauguration in 2021,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: an incident that has fueled Hegseth's complaints about the so-called
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: woke military. Not to downplay the seriousness of these charges either,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but in the context of a president who himself has
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: been found liable for sexual assault and dined with white
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: nationalist Nick Fuentes, do you think at least four Republican
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: senators could care enough about these issues to tank Hegseth's nomination?
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: I don't think we should spend a lot of time
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: on the tattoos, but I think the assault allegations are
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: very recent and very serious. And the Senate has an
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: obligation to investigate them as Hegseth will be in a
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: position of enormous power and he will manage hundreds of thousands,
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: if not millions of women in his role as secretary
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: of defense. And so I agree. Like, it's very frustrating
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: because Trump has managed to evade accountability on this set
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: of issues over and over and over again. But that
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Teflon does not apply to everyone he nominates. And we've
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: seen him jettison people that he views as politically inconvenient
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: in the past. I do agree that much like with Gates,
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I think there's got to be a broader conversation here
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: about just his utter lack of qualification. I mean, again,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: this guy, this guy will run an organization. The next
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: secretary of defense runs an organization that that oversees employees
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: well over two million people. What has prepared you for
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: that weekend anchor? He personally lobbied Trump to pardon service
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: members who had been convicted or accused of war crimes.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Hegzeth would be the primary point of contact for his
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: counterparts in foreign countries at places like NATO. What like
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: diplomatic experience does he have? He'll be the top advisor
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: on defense policy and military and security issues. He'll oversee
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: an $ 800 billion annual budget with a wildly complicated acquisition
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: process underneath it.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Two million employees.
• 11:16
  Speaker 8: More.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's insane.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Two million.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: His biggest job was, I think he managed a nonprofit
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: that had between 11 and 50 employees. Five zero.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I will say that I have been, when Dan and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I first talked about this, some of these cabinet picks
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: last week, and I was talking about like, they don't
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: have qualifications, they don't have experience. And I thought about it.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: That is actually like a benefit to a lot of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Trump supporters and a lot of people who voted for
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Trump and a lot of people in the country. Like
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: they want someone with not a lot of Washington experience
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: or quality. Like they don't care. I do think that
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: like the politicization of the military could be extremely dangerous.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: And I would really want to zero in with him
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: on questions of like, you know, There's reports that Trump
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: is drafting an executive order to, you know, fast track
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the purging of generals he doesn't like. He's talking about
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the woke military. Pete Hegseth had comments about doesn't think
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: that women should be in combat roles. People should ask
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: him about Donald Trump and the Insurrection Act. Like if
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: he if you have a military that is only filled
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: with Trump loyalists, at least in the senior ranks, it's
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: a real fucking problem.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: I want to talk about the stupidity of the focusing
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: on the tattoo for a moment. Because I saw people
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: talking about the tattoo and then that it's this Latin
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: phrase and it's a dog whistle for white supremacists. And
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: someone on Twitter pointed out that this phrase really wasn't
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: in common use until it was the name of a
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: video game expansion for a video game called Crusader Kings.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: And so then the phrase took off a little bit
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: because it was associated with that video game. Also, the
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: reason people used to talk about dog whistles, it was
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: meant to signal that this was somebody that had secretly
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: very dark motives, right? That they're not telling you the
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: whole story, right? They're pretending to be normal, but then
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: you see the dog whistle. He's got a secret white
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: nationalist tattoo. These people are telling us what they're going
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: to do. And what they're doing is very terrible. Like
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: the fact that he has a deus volt tattoo on
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: it just doesn't fucking matter at all because we already
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: know that what he has talked about, what he wants
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: to do, whether it was maybe being the person that
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: gave Trump the idea for a preemptive strike in North
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: Korea or talking about purging the military or whatever other
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: heinous ideas he's bringing to the table, they're no longer worried.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: about speaking at a tone only dogs can hear. And
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: so like the idea that like, oh, he's got a
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: secret white nationalist tattoo.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It's not a secret.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: He's telling us what he wants to do.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he posts shirtless selfies. It's not secret at all. Yeah,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I agree. That's like, it's a silly sidebar to me.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: And it's an easy thing that the Republicans can use
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: to make us sound ridiculous.
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: But John, I also worry about like the qualifications trap
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: that you're talking about. Because if I'm a MAGA person,
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, you don't think this guy, who has
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: two bronze stars, served in combat, went to Princeton and Harvard,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: is qualified? But you think that all these four stars
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: over there who kept us in endless wars in Iraq
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: and Afghanistan and before that Vietnam and Korea, those people
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: were qualified? Thousands and thousands and thousands of service members
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: killed under those leaders, but my guy can't do it
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: because he's a disruptor? That's a powerful rejoinder. And I
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: agree with you that even listening to my own kind of,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: litany of questions about his qualifications, I feel like I'm
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: getting myself in a trap here.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And it's funny too, because we, a million years ago,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: were in a campaign with Obama, where Obama was hit
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: with all of these same accusations, right? That he was like,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: he was a empty suit and didn't have a lot
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: of experience. And our whole rejoinder was, yeah, he doesn't
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: have Washington experience. He's going to shake up the system.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Change.
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: So But there's plenty to focus on with like their views,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: these nominees and what the views are. And I think
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: that's what we need to get at. And that speaks
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to the tattoo stupid thing that keeps everything else like,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: forget about, we got to move away from just the
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: offensive things these people might say or symbols or this
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: or that or the other thing. It's like, what are
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: their views? What are they going to do if they
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: have power? And what is that going to mean for people?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: I agree with what you're saying with Hegseth. But with
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: Matt Gaetz specifically, he spent a couple years saying, at
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: a Northwest Florida corporate law firm before, like, Nepo babying
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: his way into Florida politics.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, he's different.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: His only exposure, it seems, to criminal law was his
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: own potential prosecution. Like, I do think a qualification argument
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: with Gates specifically is worth making.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I agree with you there. I totally agree. And although
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: he's just a career politician, everyone hates career politicians. Hegseth, though,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I think, has these, you know, bullets on paper that
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: look pretty good. Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, one major cabinet post that Trump has not yet
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: filled is Treasury. which is reportedly causing a little intramegadrama.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: The soft consensus is that it's a race between Scott Besant,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: who heads up the Key Square Group hedge fund, and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and chairman of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Trump's transition team. You might have remembered him from his
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: interview with Caitlin Collins, where he said, of course, RFK Jr.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: is not going to be Health and Human Services Secretary.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Nailed it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Finger on the pulse.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: But also where he was so charmed by RFK Jr.,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: he came to become an autism vaccine connection guy. Just
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: based on that one conversation with RFK Jr., who must
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: be the most charismatic man on the fucking planet.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Dark.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that he thinks
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Besant is a, quote, business as usual pick and that
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Lutnick will actually enact change with RFK Jr. chiming in
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: to say Lutnick would be great on crypto. There's also
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: a vocal pro-Besson camp that includes a lot of Wall
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Street types and potentially Steve Bannon. What is the Trump
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: world debate going on here actually about? How are these
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: guys different from each other?
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Tommy? You know the scene in American Psycho where they're
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: all comparing business cards and they're all just like white
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: with black print, but it's just like, this is bone.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: The typeface is ceiling rail. I feel like that's what
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: we're looking at is for identical business cards. But there's
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: a sense in Trump world that Besson And another guy
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: named Mark Rowan, who co-founded this massive investment firm, Apollo Management,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: they would make the markets happiest. They're the least true
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: believer-y when it comes to putting in place massive tariffs
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: on imported goods, especially goods from China. While Lutnik is
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: seen as more of a true believer on tariffs and
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: going hard at China, and I guess supporting cryptocurrency, even
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: if maybe long-term there's a view that cryptocurrency could help
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: displace the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency and
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: harm U.S. power abroad. I also think there's some intrapersonal
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: shit going on over here, though, as always with Trump World. Like,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Lutnick's the co-chairman of the Trump transition. The Bulwark reported
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: that there's a lot of people in Trump World who
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: find him aggressive and thirsty for press coverage and annoying,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and they feel like he's Dick Cheney-ing himself into the
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: role of Treasury Secretary. I remember when Dick Cheney famously
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: helped George W. Bush find a VP and was like, aha,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: I found it. It's me. So that seems like there's
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: some intra-Trump fighting happening too.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: It's hard to really, if you dig down, what is
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: the actual policy dispute here? Then CNN put these side
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: by side and I thought it was pretty instructive, which
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: is like, okay, both these guys are going to execute
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump's agenda.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: We know that.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: But Besant wrote an op-ed and he said, tariffs are
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: a means to finally stand up for Americans. But Lutnick
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: at the speech at Madison Square Garden said, when was
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: America great? 125 years ago. We had no income tax.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: All we had was tariffs. And it does seem like
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: he's a style guy.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Or I don't even know if Lutnick has those genuine
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: beliefs about tariffs or his genuine belief is that he
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: wants the job and will just say whatever Trump wants.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And I feel like that you always get a leg
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: up on everyone else. Unless you're unless you're very public
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: about everything and then try to get too much news
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: coverage then. So that's where he may not end up
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: in the job.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's like the like the signaling that like
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: he's willing to say the crazy thing. Whereas I think
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: the money guys are like, listen, we know that Trump
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: is talking about tariffs, but he's not going to fuck
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: with the markets. And we got to have somebody in
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: there that knows how to speak the language of the markets.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: Because I look, we're all having fun here. This has
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: all been a big fun joke, but nobody messes with
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: our fucking money.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's like tariffs as a threat or tariffs as
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: a thing we do and potentially crater the economy. Same
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: with deportations. There's deportations as a threat and there's actually
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: throwing 20 some odd million people out of the country and, again,
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: cratering the U.S. economy.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: There's some reports that Trump may go another direction from
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: either of those two, which I could get because one
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: thing Trump doesn't like is getting pressured to do something
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and then actually doing it.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Either camp, right? And now that the, you know, the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: pro-Bessant and pro-Lutnik camps are so public, like it just, like,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, if it's Bessant, then it looks like Wall
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Street wins, you know, and Trump doesn't want that. And
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: if it's Lutnik, it looks like, you know, Elon tweeted
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: it and I'm sure he doesn't like the idea that
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: he's going to be led around by Elon Musk. There's some,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: maybe a little drama brewing there too. Elon Musk overstaying
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: his welcome at Mar-a-Lago.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like they've created now this,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: this choice wasn't actually a choice that was going to
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: determine whether Trump was going to go hard on tariffs
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: or be against crypto, but like it, by making the
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: choice now, it maybe like removed some of his like
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: strategic vagueness that he loves to have.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: So. Yeah, I can see that. Ludnick was also accused
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: by some in the Trump world of leaking the Rubio
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: pick for Secretary of State to The New York Times.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: And maybe people think he asked Elon to lobby for
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: him on Twitter. And that's just seen as a big
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: no-no to pressure the boss publicly.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I do think the big policy implication here is like
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: how serious Trump is about the tariffs. And I think
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: they don't know yet because the tariffs in the first
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: term We're nothing like what he's proposing or what he
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: has talked about for the second, for this coming term.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And it's one thing to impose targeted tariffs on, you know,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: aluminum or steel from China, one country. You're doing across-the-board
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: tariffs on every single thing that's imported from every country. Like,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: not only is Wall Street not going to like that, but, like,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: consumers are not going to like that.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be very disruptive.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Talk about, like, inflation and prices. I mean, it could
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: be pretty bad. Last personnel thing we wanted to get
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: into today is Trump's pick for FCC chairman. That's the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Federal Communications Commission. The guy's name is Brendan Carr, who
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: literally wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025. Trump appointed
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: him as one of the commissioners of the FCC in 2017.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Right after Trump announced him on Sunday night, Carr tweeted,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: rights for everyday Americans. He's also talked about going after
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the licenses of broadcasters like NBC per Trump's demand. Anything
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: else to know about this guy? What do you think
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: he represents in terms of policy change? And what can
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: an FCC chairman do?
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: So two big things that I think are not getting
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: the headlines but are pretty important. One is he may
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: have the ability to drive a bunch of money towards
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Elon Musk and Starlink. The second, which I think is
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: pretty important, is the FCC decides how restrictive the ownership
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: rules are around local TV stations. The last time Trump
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: had the FCC, there was a lot of bluster on
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: a lot of different issues, but one of the most
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: impactful things they did was make it easier for there
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: to be consolidation in the ownership of television stations, which
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: has benefited right-wing news organizations like Sinclair. Now that Trump
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: has won, the head of Sinclair, the Sinclair CEO, said
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: that it feels like a cloud over the industry is lifting.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: We're very excited about the upcoming regulatory environment. The rule
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: that stays in place right now is that no one
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: company is allowed to own stations that would collectively reach
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: more than 39% of U.S. households, and no single entity
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: can own more than one of the four largest stations
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: in any single market, right? These are the kind of
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: last rules preventing even more consolidation in the industry. Carr
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: would like to lift those rules. Some right-wing Republicans, organizations
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: like Sinclair would like to lift those rules and have
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: even more control over the local news that people get.
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: And those to me are sort of the two biggest,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: right now, things that they can do with power. Beyond that,
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: it's a lot of like, bully pulpit and a lot of, look,
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: news organizations are already squeamish, right? We saw that after
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Kamala Harris was on SNL, they gave Trump a free
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: spot on NASCAR, right? Like they don't need to kind
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: of bring the hammer down for news organizations and media
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: companies to be afraid of the FCC chair and afraid
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: of having a letter from the FCC chair or afraid
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: of being called into Congress for hearing or being kind
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: of investigated. And so that, that to me is the,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: is the biggest concern. It's like these sort of regulatory changes,
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: but also just someone like this having the bully pulpit.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: He's a very hardcore conservative activist. He's exactly what you'd
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: expect to come out of the Heritage Foundation. And he
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: will know how the mechanics of the agency work to
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: actually use it for power, to implement the Trump agenda,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: whether that's punishing enemies at tech companies, whether it's punishing
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: enemies in the media, whether it's steering money to Trump
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: allies like Elon Musk. So he's one of those people
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: that's not like a name brand MAGA type, but knows
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: what he's doing. And I think that's the danger here.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that he, in the Project 2025 chapter, he
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: wants to ban TikTok.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Big time.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Which is interesting since.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Now Trump is... One of many actually in the cabinet now.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Since Trump has flip-flopped on that. So that'll be interesting. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: he talks a lot about regulating tech. Google and Meta
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: aren't defined as communication services. So he doesn't really have
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the authority to do that. They would need to change
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the law probably with the FCC. The FCC is also
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: prohibited from punishing television and radio stations for editorial decisions.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So like you said, it's more bully pulpit than actual,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: you talked about ownership, changing ownership so that people can,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: an entity can own more. He also block mergers. The
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: FCC can block mergers. So for communications companies and media
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: companies that he doesn't like, he could stop that.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but that also then it's like, okay, well, that
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: depends what court that ends up in front of.
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: And so like a lot of this is like how,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: how much power he ultimately has also depends on how,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: how much the right wing court, uh, is willing to
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: step into the fray. And then more broadly, like this
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: is part, there's like a, there's a, like a lot
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: of this will be about what Congress does. Well, uh,
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Congress is, uh, enamored of the same, uh, right wing
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: beliefs about the media, uh, that this guy is. And
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: so like, you know, there will be hearings and they will,
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: this guy will testify for Congress about the need to, to,
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: Stop the censorship caused by big tech and all the
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: different ways in which the media is biased against conservatives. Like,
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: this is part of a long-term effort, and they have
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: been succeeding.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Big, big personnel news while we were recording, guys. Sean Duffy,
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: nominated to serve as the Secretary of Transportation, first real-world
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Boston cast member in the cabinet.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: But maybe not the last.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Wow. Rachel Campos. Rachel. Yeah, she might get in there, too. Yeah. So.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: We love reality TV representation in government.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of it, right?
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Top down.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: There have been great people that have been on Survivor
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: that have run for office. Something to think about. Also
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: some misses.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Speaking of needing experience and qualification.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: You see Biden wandering off into the middle distance in
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: the Amazon. Everyone is like, hey, were you there?
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: A lot of tweets that said he looked like he's
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: at a tribal council.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about what the Democrats are
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: up to. There was an article in the New York.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Who are they?
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. There was an article in the New York
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Times on Saturday detailing the party's new battle plan against Trump,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: which basically involves Democratic governors and attorneys general using their
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: power to protect people in their states. One thing that
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: was notable in the piece was that a lot of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: governors who seem to be on the Democrat shortlist for
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: 2028 have not yet signed on to this. It's basically
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: a Pritzker, Governor Pritzker-led... Governor Polis-led sort of alliance, but
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: there was no Gretchen Whitmer on it, no Josh Shapiro,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: no Tony Evers. What do you guys make of the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: plan and the fact that some big-name Democratic governors haven't
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: yet signed on?
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Some of the plan is just common sense. You fight
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: bad laws in courts. You pass what you can pass
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: in state legislatures. There were other pieces in there that
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: were a little weird. I wasn't sure if they were
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: part of the broader plan, like someone pitching opposition research
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: on the Murdoch family or on Elon Musk. I could
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: imagine why an elected official might want some distance from
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: that like big picture. I imagine that every governor is
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: doing what they can internally to quietly prepare for a
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: second Trump term and have been for a while, but
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: they don't want to signal that it's part of some
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: resistance 2.0 or some big donor led effort. And they're
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: ultimately going to frame anything they do is fighting for
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: the people who voted for them, not as part of
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: some broader democratic party thing. That's my guess. Yeah.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Pritzker's office said that not all governors wish to be
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: named publicly because of the potential for to be threatened
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: by a new Trump administration. I was reading their release, too.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It was a lot. It was hard to find like
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: what it actually is, you know, because I mean, the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: truth is the big issue that they're going to face
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: right away is sort of cooperation with the feds on
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: potential deportations and whether local law. Because here's the thing that,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you know, ICE and the new The new ICE guy,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Tom Homan, has said that like, oh, I can do
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: it with ICE agents alone. We don't need local police.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: But the truth is, it's a lot easier if they
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: have cooperation with local law enforcement. And in some states,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the law says that local law enforcement can refuse to cooperate.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: In some states, they don't have to refuse and they
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: can cooperate. So I'm sure a lot of it is
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: probably figuring out what powers... Democratic governors, attorneys general, and
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: local officials have and don't have that are currently on
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the books or not on the books. And some legislatures
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: are already thinking like, do we need, like I think
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in New York, they're thinking about maybe passing new laws
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: around immigration. So I think it's a lot of, but
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of like, you know, powers that they
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: currently have.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, what is the value of getting out
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: in front and having a kind of branded response as
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: opposed to like, kind of just being ready for anything
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: and fighting where you can? Like it is, I think, Obviously,
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: like chilling that Democrats are afraid to say the ways
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: in which they will want to fight against Donald Trump
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: for fear of retaliation. We saw during the pandemic that
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: Democratic governors had to go out of their way to
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: praise Donald Trump because they wanted to make sure they
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: were getting the supplies and resources they needed. That is
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: part of the menace that Donald Trump poses. But I also,
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: I don't totally understand how the sum is greater than
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: its parts of them all doing it together. As opposed
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: to just they're going to be fighting these guys the
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: way they fight them state to state. And like beyond that,
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know yet.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: I feel like it's we're just in this space where,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: you know, Trump is not yet president. The threat is perspective.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: We don't totally know what he's going to try to do.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: By the way, there are ways in which I am
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: sure Trump and his goons would love to fight with
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: New York about deporting criminals. And I am sure that
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: these governors, I'm sure the Shapiros and the Whitmers are
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: very aware of the fact that they do not want
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: to be drawn into one of their first public fights
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: with Donald Trump over stopping deportations of people that they
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: will point out are violent offenders, like that is a
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: fight they don't want. And so I think like, it's
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: just tricky. And so I think I'm like, just sort of,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: I'm like concerned about what it means to brand it
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: before it exists and what that gets you.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: They really do want a reaction. They want to provoke
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a reaction. And Trump also confirmed today on truth social
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: because tom fitton of judicial watch was like oh yeah
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: he's going to use the military to assist in deportations
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and trump said true which is it's you know being
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: treated as news today but he said it of course
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: all during the campaign in every interview he was asked
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: but you can tell that's the kind of thing where
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: they they want to provoke the reaction and then to
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: say oh actually this person that we're deporting committed a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: violent crime you know um So Democrats are also trying
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to figure out who's going to represent them as the
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: next DNC chair. On Monday, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: became the first person to officially launch a bid. Other
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: potential contenders include Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler, former New York State Assembly
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: member Mike Blake, and maybe even former Chicago mayor and
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, although reportedly he
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: seems less interested now. Despite being a decision made by
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: less than 500 committee members, the race for DNC chair
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: will serve as the first big public debate about the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: future of the Democratic Party. How fun. You guys have
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: thoughts on this and what the role of a DNC
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: chair at a moment like this should be?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: I know and like Ben.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a couple different forms. There could be,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: you're going to have to raise a ton of money.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: You're going to have to try to coordinate and create
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: strategy for how Democrats get back on their feet and
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: win elections and down ballot races starting pretty soon. You're
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: a key spokesman and fundraiser for the party. You'll oversee
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: the platform and the convention eventually. But by then, there
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: will be a nominee running for president. So I don't know.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: There's different forms you can imagine. You can imagine someone
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: who's more of a classic organizer that's getting to the
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: nuts and bolts and kind of trying to reshape and
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: rethink how the committee operates. Or it could be someone
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: that is a spokesperson and just raises a shit ton
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: of cash. And I'm not totally sure what the Democrats
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: want at the moment.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: We've spent years of seeing endless sort of conspiratorial thinking
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: about the power of the DNC and its role in
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: determining in back rooms who the Democratic Party chooses and
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: who the candidate is and whether they try to stop
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: Bernie or whatever it might be. We have to have
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: a big conversation about the future of the Democratic Party.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: That's like an organizing conversation. It's a fundraising conversation. It's
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: a policy conversation, a messaging conversation. And the DNC chair,
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: it can be somebody that is central to that conversation
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: and like helping to lead it and think about it,
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: that it can also be someone who is doing behind
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: the scenes operating while that takes place in other forms.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: I just don't know. I think that's partly what this
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: debate is about, like what the role of the DNC
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: chair will be in the next couple of years. And
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, the one thing I just think about what
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: happened after.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: So.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: Two thoughts about this is one, just that what we're
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: saying right now, how we're thinking about the future, it
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: will turn out to be wrong in some fundamental ways, right?
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: Like just things will change over the next couple of years.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: We will be overtaken by events. What happens with the
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: Trump administration will kind of inform the politics of the
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: next couple of years. But I will say that like
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: one lesson from 2004 that I've seen people talking about
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: is that people took the loss as a need to
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: reinvest in a 50 state strategy to think about how
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: we win everywhere. And if there's one place I would
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: like the DNC chair to be thinking about, it's how
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: we build and organize organizations. everywhere across all 50 states,
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that that is only additive to all the other debates
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: and strategy discussions that will be unfolding.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: I really agree with that. I know that this will
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: be seen and treated as this first big public debate
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: over the direction of the party. I think that this is,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: at this moment, this is not the role where you
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: want someone with a strong ideological view of where the
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: party should go or allegiance to one faction of the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: party or another. I just think, at the end of
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the day, the DNC chairman of course, becomes a spokesman
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: for the party, but they are seen as partisan. They
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: go on TV, they give a message, and we're eventually
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: going to have in the midterms a whole bunch of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Democratic candidates, and we're going to have primaries for that.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: And then we're going to have a primary in 2028
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: where all of these debates should be worked out. And
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: I just don't, I think that the DNC chair should
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: be thinking about organization, party building, like someone who you know,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: knows that the key to winning is organizing everywhere and
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: building relationships with voters all year round. And, um, so that's,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: that's sort of what I think.
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: And this is partly because of when we did this
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: in 2016, I remember, you know, we had a lot
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: of the candidates on positive America when we just started
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: positive America. And it did seem like it was going
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: to be this big ideological debate about where the party was.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: And it's just like that, That ends up not being
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: what the DNC chair is good for.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: That's not the role. That's not the role. And you'll have, look,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: in terms of spokespeople, you'll have congressional leadership that will
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: be doing a lot of that. The midterms will be key,
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: as you said. And look, the 2028 presidential primary started
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: on November 6th. So that will be revving up soon.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: And whoever wins is going to be, you know, going
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: to fundamentally reshape the entire party. So it's not, it
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: matters a lot who the DNC chair is, but for,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I think, the reasons that you were talking about, which
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: is just the need to kind of rebuild and organize
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: the and get back to the grassroots and not, you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: it's less of a spokesperson job.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And look, I mean, we're all biased. We love
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Ben Wickler.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Um, and I do, and I worked with Michael Blake
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: in Iowa a million years ago and he's been a
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: vice chair. So there's a lot of like great candidates
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: out there floating their names.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: We've worked for ROM in the white house. We've had
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that experience.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: Um, Maybe what we need is someone to yell at
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: us to win again. I'd like, you know, maybe that,
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: no bad ideas in a brainstorm, maybe some more yelling.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I'd like to hear more from O'Malley. Obviously, you know,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: we've known him for a long time just as a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: public figure. I don't know much at all about Ken Martin,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: but he apparently he's not just the chair of the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Minnesota Democratic Party or the DFL as it's called there.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: He's the DNC vice chair because he's also the president
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of the Association of State Democratic Chairs. So he has
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: a position at the DNC now and just long time
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: in politics in Minnesota. So I would love to know
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: more from him. Do you think that, you know, if
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Ben decides to do this, Wisconsin was the smallest swing
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: towards Trump of any swing states in all but four
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: other states. He has been organizing that state, leading that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: state for a long time. He's got a really strong
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: record of winning that he can talk about. So that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is that's that's one thing in Ben's favor. And he
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: is he is liked by multiple factions.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've talked about wishing we could replicate Ben Wickler.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my secret.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: And short of that, this is perhaps a way for
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: us to get closer to that than we otherwise could.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and to Rahm's sort of like the most divisive
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: one of the names that's been floated out there, I
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: think the credit to him is in 2006, he ran
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: the DCCC, and we won a ton of races, and
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: he deserved a lot of credit for that success. And
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: then he was the White House Chief of Staff, and
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: he went on to be Mayor of Chicago. I think
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: the record in Chicago in particular, though, is seen as
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: divisive for a variety of reasons among Democrats. He's someone
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: who greatly pisses off the left, often on purpose. So,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the upsides for Rahm would be
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: a track record of success. The downside would be some
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: pretty obvious splits in the Democratic Party from the first minute.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: It said in the report today that now his interest
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: is maybe tepid because if Durbin- decides not to run again,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: he could run for senator in Illinois. Or if Pritzker
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't run for governor again, he could run for governor
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: in Illinois. If I was Rahm, I would rather do
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: that than come fucking.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: Be DNC chair.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: I remember one time in the White House, I can't
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: remember what the speech was about, but I got called
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: into Rahm's office and he just started, he yelled at
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: me and I remember just being, it wasn't like, it
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: was just loud. And I remember saying something like, oh,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: you're doing the thing where you're yelling. What is this
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: supposed to do?
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Why are you doing this? I think you're the only
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: person that's happened to.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: No, but it was such a funny thing.
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: It was just sort of like, oh my God, you're
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: yelling at me, like the famous thing that happens.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: What is this tone meant to convey?
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: He did that all the time. All right, before we
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: go to Tommy's interview with Brandi Zadrozny about RFK Jr.,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: two quick notes on how our friends on cable news
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: are reacting to a second Trump term. On Saturday night,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Trump went back to Madison Square Garden to see a
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: UFC fight with his new MAGA pals. He had Elon.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Johnson, who did
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: not look like he belonged. They were also hanging out
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: with Joe Rogan and Dana White. CNN panelists didn't quite
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: know what to make of this. Here's the reaction from
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the Bulwark's Mark Caputo.
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: I mean, and it really looks like ancient Rome here.
• 39:33
  Speaker 7: This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who's going
• 39:36
  Speaker 7: into the Coliseum and everyone's cheering and he's got his
• 39:40
  Speaker 7: political gladiators with him. That appearance isn't just about him
• 39:44
  Speaker 7: enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the Senate.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: Like, Not only are you entertained, but these are my
• 39:50
  Speaker 7: people and are you willing to fight because here's who
• 39:53
  Speaker 7: I have.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Trump's favorite on-again, off-again frenemies at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and Mika Brzezinski, revealed on Monday's Morning Joe that the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: couple made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Trump that Mika compared to a kind of diplomatic summit.
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: President-elect Trump. It was the first time We have seen
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: him in seven years.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: who watches this show, has watched it over the past
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: year or over the past decade.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: That we didn't see eye to eye on a lot
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: of issues. And we told him so.
• 40:34
  Speaker 6: What we did agree on was to restart communications. And
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: for those asking why we would go speak to the
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: I would ask back, why wouldn't we? Joe and I
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: realized it's time to do something different. And that starts
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: with him.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: It feels like it's going to be a long four
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: years at CNN and MSNBC. Do you guys see Trump's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: return as conquering Caesar in ancient Rome or more of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: a Stalin at Yalta situation?
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: I saw it. I was like, guys, at some point
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: we all just need to realize that sitting ringside at
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: a fight and then flying home on a PJ while
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: crushing McDonald's with the boys.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: It's cool. That's pretty cool.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: It's a fun time. It seems like a good ass
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: time to most people in this country. And I think
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: that's what it's about.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: You don't think it was a message to Kevin Kramer
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and John Cornyn about the picks?
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: No. And then, you know, look, I was watching football yesterday.
• 41:37
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: You know. I'm kidding. Keep going.
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: What?
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: I was watching football yesterday. And then, like, you have
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: all these players celebrating, doing the Trump dance. John Jones,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: who was a UFC fighter who won the fight that night,
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: the fight Trump was at. He came over and kind of, like,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: kissed the ring with Trump. Like, these guys all like him.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: They think he's cool. There's a huge swath of the
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: culture that is just into Trump. And also just to
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: look at it aside, we worked for Obama. Obama was
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: seen as being aloof and he didn't socialize enough, right?
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: There was the famous, why don't you have a drink
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: with Mitch McConnell thing. This is the absolute opposite of that,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: which is he names these weirdos and goobers to his
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: cabinet and then he flies them all to a UFC
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: event and allows them into his entourage for like the
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: cool kid show. And you, like, dorky little Speaker Johnson who,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: you know, in his day job is setting up software
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: with his son to monitor their masturbation is now, like,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: hanging out with Dana White. I mean, it's a brand
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: of politics that combines the professional and the personal in
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: a way that has to be pretty powerful.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Didn't see Barack Obama taking Ray LaHood to the Wizards game.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Probably should have.
• 42:52
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: I was trying to decide if that had happened.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: It's a joke.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Hit the Republican you put in.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like the dance thing too.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: It's like, there's something about it that's like, it's not
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: just like pro-Trump, but it's like anti-everybody that hates Trump.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: And it's like, ha, you lost. You have no real power.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: Like we're done pretending, right? And I do like, that
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: to me is what like sort of is striking about
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: the whole thing. Cause it's like, it's not like everyone
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: suddenly loves Trump so much. It's like Trump exists as
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: like a fuck you. And like the dance is like
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: part of this, like big old fuck you. I will say, man, Now,
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: if you're going to I get why Mika and Joe
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: went to see Trump this week, because like Donald Trump,
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: imagine getting president and basically getting acquitted of 5000 felonies,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: like all in the same day. Like he must be
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: the happiest guy he has ever been in his whole life.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: If there's ever a question you wanted to ask Donald Trump,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: this is the time.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: See, I was thinking. A lot of the reaction to
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Mika and Joe going was like, oh, I guess all
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: that Hitler rhetoric didn't mean much. I'm like, maybe they
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: didn't really believe it after all. I was like, or
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: did they believe it too much?
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: And that's why they went to go kiss the fucker like, hey, Mr. Trump,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: be nice to us.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: You don't crawl towards Kublai Khan because you think he
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: won't kill you.
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's just to, like, repair the relationship
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: so they can have hard-hitting journalism? No, they're fucking probably scared.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Trying to get off of the Gates hit list.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Look, I'm trying to take seriously. We all should reach
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: out more, try to understand the other side, interview them,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: talk to people who disagree with us, et cetera. But, like,
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: you don't host the kind of establishment show in Washington
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: for decades without access. And that's what this trip was.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: They're just trying to reestablish that. And remember, Donald Trump
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: almost wanted to do their wedding at the White House.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And then he called Mika a crazy psycho who was
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: bleeding badly from a facelift on Twitter.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I forgot about that.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: It's been a long eight years.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: It's great work, actually.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: If it's true, it's great work.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: Watching this sort of swing on a cultural dime really
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: is amazing to behold. In 2016, people were You know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: a lot of them were ashamed of supporting Trump or
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: they didn't tell people they didn't have Trump signs. But now, like, again,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: this NFL player named Nick Bosa plays for the 49ers.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: He wore a Trump hat during I think it was
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: like a pregame or postgame interview and he got fined
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: by the NFL. And, you know, the kind of narrative
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: on the right is like, ha, he can do that
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: in your face, free speech, whatever, a decade ago. it
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: was black NFL players kneeling during the anthem and they
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: were told that they were insulting the troops and you
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: had Trump tweeting about them and how dare they bring
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: politics into sports and just like the pendulum has swung
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: so thoroughly. It is head spinning.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you also see like right-wing stories about like, you know,
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: CBS censors the Trump dance. They don't want America to
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: see the Trump dance. They're just like spinning it up
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: because like, it's like they're.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Making- They don't want people to see the double jerk-off?
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: Well, it's- It's just sort of like it's like it's
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: it's both like it's like they are in power. Trump
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: has won. They control all branches of government. Like showing
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: your support for this is somehow both like like you're
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: you're embracing the most powerful forces in American life. And
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: it's like an act of resistance against the kind of
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: like woke mob. And man, we got to figure out,
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: we got to figure out a politics. That's fun because
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: this sucks.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that sucks.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: That is the key thing. Like those photos and videos
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: of Trump walking to the UFC thing surrounded by goobers.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: It looks really fun. So that's like a party people
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: want to be a part of. And we have to
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: figure out how to emulate that.
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, the first time Jeffries to go to suffs, suffs,
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: get on the plane.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: We're all going to suffs.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, the first step is not to fucking whine
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: about it. Right, for sure. That is the first step
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: to not like.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Or pretend it's something that it's not. It's not like
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: a threat. It's just a guy going to a sporting event.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like, once again, they want the reaction. I
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: saw a bunch of like right-wing commentators on X being like,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the libs have been kind of silent since you won
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: and they're not complaining. They exist to have the fight.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: They want the fight. They want the liberal tears. They
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: want people doing it right. And if you don't give
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: it back to them, they get pissed, you know? Okay,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: when we come back from the break, you're going to
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: hear Tommy's conversation with Brandi Zadrozny about RFK Jr. and
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: all the wellness and vaccine skepticism craziness that got us
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to where we are today. One quick thing before we
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: do that, this week on Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams talks
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: with historian Heather Cox Richardson to see how history can
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: be our guide in charting our path forward. Together, they
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: dive into strategies for countering disinformation and harnessing states' rights.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: And Stacey answers audience questions on getting involved. Listen to
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: the latest episode of Assembly Required now or watch on YouTube.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Brandi Zadrozny.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: I am so excited to welcome to the show today
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Brandi Zadrozny. She's a senior reporter at NBC News. She
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: specializes in misinformation, extremism, and the intersection of technology and politics,
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: and is someone whose work I have read for a
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: very long time. Brandy, it's great to see you.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Thank you for doing this. So I just wanted to
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: start big picture. I mean, the context here is Robert F.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Kennedy Jr. is now nominated to be the Secretary of
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Health and Human Services. Very big job. And I want
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: to talk a little bit first about how we got here,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: because I imagine for some listening, Robert F. Kennedy's popularity
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: is quite surprising. But for others, especially those who consume
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: kind of wellness content on social media, the issues he's
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: talking about are very familiar. Kids' foods being unhealthy, additives,
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: dyes in food, fruit loops, how stuff we eat here
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: is actually banned in other countries, corporate capture of regulatory agencies,
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: et cetera. Can you just kind of describe for listeners
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: the wellness media space and how you think that has
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: helped Kennedy build an audience.
• 49:07
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, the.
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: Wellness media space is really a woman's space in so
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: many ways in terms of consuming, right? And so, you know,
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: we can talk about this in the frame of Kennedy himself,
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: you know. The way that he became where he is
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: now is truly a story of women. It's a story
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: of women on the internet who had babies who were
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: sick and they didn't understand why. And so this was
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: a real problem they were facing. They, you know, No
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: one had an answer for them. And then they came
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: onto the internet, and there was this really burgeoning community
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: of wellness mamas, of autism moms, they called themselves, warrior moms,
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: this Jenny McCarthy era that we remember pretty well, of
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: women saying, there's no answers for us, so we're going
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: to find some ourselves. And he became a champion of
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: these women. You know, they literally came to his door
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: with a stack of, you know, papers and data and said, see,
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: the data shows this. And it did not then, and
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: it does not now, but he became their champion. And
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: he went to spaces like churches in Harlem. He went
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: to spaces that people who had real health concerns weren't
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: being heard and said, I am your champion. I have
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: an easy answer for you, as conspiracy theorists.
• 50:22
  Speaker 9: Do, and gave them that answer. He grew his.
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: Organization from one that was making less than a million
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: dollars in 2015, 2016, to an organization that's making, you know,
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: 20 something million dollars a year now.
• 50:35
  Speaker 9: It's huge.
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: And it was a big movement anyway, even after, you know,
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: we decided that Jenny McCarthy's and that like whole campaign
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: was no good. We didn't want it, you know, in
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: public anymore. It was relegated sort of back to the internet.
• 50:51
  Speaker 9: But then COVID came along.
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: And with COVID, that audience of like moms who were
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: looking for answers for why their babies were sick, Now
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: was everybody looking for answers for what is this disease?
• 51:06
  Speaker 9: What is this sickness? What causes it? We were all,
• 51:09
  Speaker 9: you know, I.
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: Was, I was taking, you know, wipes and like wiping
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: off my groceries.
• 51:15
  Speaker 9: We just were all scared.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: And so just his audience just exploded. And he has
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: been saying the same thing that he was saying those moms.
• 51:24
  Speaker 9: The world is sick. I know how to fix it.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll never forget like Clorox wiping. every individual Clementine,
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: knowing that I was going to peel that thing at
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: some point. It seems stupid in hindsight, but that's how
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: scared we were. But yeah, I want to get to
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: this broader cause, the Make America Healthy Again cause. But
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: let's start with vaccines, because that has been Kennedy's focus,
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: primary focus for 20 plus years now. He could be
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: very evasive, though, when asked about what he really believes
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: about vaccines or his claims about their efficacy. or the
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: harm that's caused. Can you just give us a bit
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: of the backstory about how he kind of came to
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: the vaccine cause and what he's been saying and how
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: those claims have evolved over the years?
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah. So he came to the anti-vax cause in 2005. Again,
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: he was giving these environmental talks and a couple of
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: women who were at the forefront of the movement came
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: to him and said, you know, you could be a
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: great champion for us, basically.
• 52:22
  Speaker 9: And so he wrote.
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: This article that was really well-received. He was on Morning
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: Joe or whatever it was called at the time. John
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: Stewart interviewed him because he wrote this article saying basically
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: that the CDC in a secret meeting in Georgia determined
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: that autism was caused by vaccines and that they weren't
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: telling anybody.
• 52:43
  Speaker 9: It was a big cover-up.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: That probably sounds like a familiar storyline for him now,
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: even to people who aren't familiar with them.
• 52:50
  Speaker 9: But that was the storyline.
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: That has since been retracted by Rolling Stone and Salon.
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: We learned that not only that piece that he wrote,
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: but also the wider research that he based his piece on,
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: including Andrew Wakefield's debunked study about the MMR vaccine causing autism.
• 53:10
  Speaker 9: That has all been debunked at this point. He never
• 53:13
  Speaker 9: backs down.
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: He never says, oh, maybe I went wrong about that thing,
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: despite the fact that he says he does that a lot.
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: And I was still sort of reporting on the movement generally.
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: But in 2015, I was working at the Daily Beast.
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: And this is an interesting story. And I'll keep it short.
• 53:30
  Speaker 9: But I was working at the Daily Beast.
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: And he came to my editor-in-chief at the time, John Avalon,
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: and said, I have an essay that I want printed
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: in the Daily Beast. And the headline was, I'm not
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: an anti-vaxxer. And that was the moment where he was like,
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: I wanted to sort of turn the story around. He
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: was tired of being called an anti-vaxxer. And he's like,
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: I'm not one. And he laid out this whole reason why.
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: It was given to me to fact check. And so
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: I fact checked it. He had tons of footnotes in
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: the bottom. I called the people who had written the
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: studies that provided the footnotes. And they were like, this
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: person's crazy. No, that's not what my research says. And furthermore,
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: don't put my name in this because I'm afraid that
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: his minions on the internet are going to reach out
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: and harass me. That was 2015. So he's been wanting
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: to say that he's not an anti-vaxxer for a long time.
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: He can say it forever, and it's just not true.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: When COVID happened in 2021, that was the first time
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: that I had seen him saying, we don't have to
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: hide anymore. Anti-vaxxer is fine. And so he said on
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: a podcast that, this thing that I think about all
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: the time. He told these other people on the podcast,
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: this is our moment. We've been hiding in the closet
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: as anti-vaxxers too long, afraid of our family disowning us.
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: But COVID has now given us this big audience. People
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: are believing what we're saying. And so now, he said,
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: I go on my morning hikes. And if I see
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: a woman with a baby, I tell her, you better
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: not vaccinate that baby.
• 54:59
  Speaker 9: You better save that baby.
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: And so the idea that he could even claim to
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: be not an anti-vaxxer is so wild. He says that
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: no vaccines are safe and effective. And if you believe that,
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: then it's curious to me, then why wouldn't he be
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: an anti-vaxxer? Why wouldn't he own that label? And it
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: seems clearly because he's in this space where he wanted
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: mainstream acknowledgement. He wanted mainstream acceptance, whether running for president
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: or now as this HHS secretary pick.
• 55:27
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: And just to dig in a little more to his claims,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, his primary claim for a long time was
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: that an additive called thimerosal was causing autism because it
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: was in vaccines. My understanding is I think thimerosal has
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: now been out of basically all vaccines for decades, but
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: rates of autism did not collapse when that happened. And RFK,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: as you just mentioned, has not since said, hey, sorry.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: I was wrong, what he does is he shifts the goalposts.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: And he says, well, actually, now the problem is that
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: thimerosal is in the flu vaccines. Now, nevermind the fact
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: that I think a little over half of kids aged
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: six months to 17 years got the flu vaccine in 2023, 2024.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: That was down from pre-COVID levels, by the way. And
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: the single dose flu vaccine, which is the most popular kind,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: doesn't have any thimerosal in it because it's a preservative
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: that you use in multi-dose vaccines. But this is what
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: he does, right? He just when you call him out
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: on a factual error, he just shifts the goalposts. And
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: this is why he's so challenging to debate as a
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: public figure.
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: And it's so nebulous. Like, he does this thing called
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: the Gish Gallop, which I know that you're familiar with. It's,
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: you know, just throwing spaghetti at you and, you know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: seeing what sticks.
• 56:39
  Speaker 9: He has a lot of facts and figures.
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: He talks about, like, well, in 1999, you know, the
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: vaccine was increased to this many shots and that many shots.
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: And so at the end of it, you're like, whoa,
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: that man really sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: But in general, like, I've interviewed him several times. I
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: have read everything that he's written. I have watched every
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: podcast I.
• 56:59
  Speaker 9: Think that he's ever done.
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: And the main idea of his worldview is actually so
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: broad and nebulous. It's that one, vaccines don't work. So
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: he's a vaccine truther. He doesn't believe that the polio
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: vaccine solved polio. He doesn't believe that vaccines have saved
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: us at all. He thinks it's this like, larger issue
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: of sanitation, which of course makes us healthier. But his
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: main idea is that vaccines don't work at all. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: he may not. So now he's like, OK, maybe it's
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: not thimerosal, though he does think that was dangerous and
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: he was right at the time and has never said
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: he was wrong.
• 57:35
  Speaker 9: But he now thinks, well, it's some sort of environmental.
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: Toxin or something else in the vaccine must be it.
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: That's what you're talking about, moving these goalposts. And so
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: there is no fact checking him. There is no like
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: if we can just show him that this is wrong,
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: then surely he'll change it.
• 57:50
  Speaker 9: Just go on to the next thing.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, actually, I came across this claim that the polio
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: vaccine didn't work, actually, because I was watching Joe Rogan
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: talk with some of his buddies about the Trump interview
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: and sort of it was actually Rogan's frustration that. Trump,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: in that interview, named polio as a successful vaccination campaign because,
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: in fact, Joe Rogan did not think that was true.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: And we don't have to belabor the audience here, but
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: to your point, this goes beyond just the COVID vaccine.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: They're questioning all vaccines. But let's get back to RFK
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: because if he's confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Kennedy would oversee the Food and Drug Administration, the Center
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health. He would
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: advise the president on health policy. He would oversee the
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: regulation of drugs and vaccines. biomedical research, HHS's massive budget. Generally,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: I saw a quote from him the other day that
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: if he gets the job, he's going to say to
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: NIH scientists, bless you all. Thank you for your public service.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: We're going to give infectious disease a break for about
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: eight years. I imagine that means R & D. But
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: what kind of things do you think Kennedy could do
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: with that power as Secretary of Health and Human Services
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: that might impact drug or vaccine availability or usage in
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: this country?
• 59:03
  Speaker 9: There's so much he could do.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: A former HHS secretary called the position a shocking. amount
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: of power with the stroke of a pen. And so
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: on day, I mean, we could talk about just this
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: one thing forever. But the thing that people are concerned
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: about that I talk to in the public health space
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: are a couple things. One, there's an advisory panel that
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: basically have doctors and experts, public health experts, that meet
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: and they look at all the science around vaccines. They
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: look at the safety signals. They look at the data.
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: And then they make recommendations for certain vaccines. Those recommendations
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: are then given to the states that make their recommendations
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: and make their school policies, stuff like that. He could
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: disband that tomorrow if he's in power. And like, That
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: would be really helpful to him, actually. And Children's Health Defense,
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: his organization, often makes a big show of going to
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: those advisory panel meetings and having their anti-vaccine activists make
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: hay at those meetings so they get airtime and public comment,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: stuff like that. That's long been a target for them.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: So there's no reason to think that he wouldn't do that.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: If we don't have data and we don't have good
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: people weighing in and we don't have advice to give states,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: then that could hurt the public rollout of vaccines. Also,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: vaccines are like it's not like it comes. It's a
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: really complicated process, actually, to get vaccines into enough children
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: that they have herd immunity in this way that they
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: can we can ward off diseases like the measles or
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: whooping cough, which is rising now. And what that takes
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: is lots of public private sort of partnerships working hand
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: in hand. And that a lot of that funding comes
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: from HHS. He could say tomorrow, all of this stuff,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: all of these like those partnerships, we don't need those.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: Let's turn off the lights there.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 9: He could do that tomorrow.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: I mean, you know, we could go on and on
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: and on, but he did this interview with a colleague
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: of mine recently, and he was asked, would you stop vaccines?
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 9: Would you stop giving people vaccines?
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: And he said, no, no, no. I would never, I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: would not do that. If you want a vaccine, you
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: can have a vaccine. But he could make getting vaccines very,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: very difficult. He could also, this is an important thing,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 5: he could also, you know, vaccine makers have liability issues.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: against lawsuits because they were being frivolously sued in the 70s.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 5: Vaccines are not a huge moneymaker for drug makers. And
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: if they're sued by people who have their child has
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: an illness and they'd like to explain it with a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: temporal association and they get sued, they might say, which
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: they were starting to do, this isn't.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 9: Worth our time. And so they have this liability.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: He could take all of the vaccines that currently enjoy
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: that liability and he could erase them, basically. And so
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: that would change quite a bit. And the last thing
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: he could do that he's already signaled that he wants
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: to do, and not the last thing, that's a lie,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: but one other thing he could do is that he
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: has said that he wants to look under the hood, basically,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: of all these departments and look at the data. And Lutnick,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: the co-chair of Trump's transition team, said on CNN the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: other day, he wants to look at the.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 9: Data So he can show that they are unsafe.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: This is not science. Yeah. And so what happens when
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: what happens when the head from the government, the head
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: of HHS is giving us giving the public misinformation that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: says vaccines are unsafe.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 9: You have a lot of people who aren't going to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 9: vaccinate because of that.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 5: And you just need 10 percent, whatever it is, that
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: threshold to say not for me to cause a public
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: health crisis in this country like we have never seen.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: And just to give folks a real world example of
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: such a public health crisis, can you tell us the
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: story of RFK Jr. and anti-vax in Samoa? Because I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: think it's instructive.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah. So in 2019, there was a measles outbreak in Samoa.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: And there was a measles outbreak because two babies had
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: died after receiving a measles vaccine. Now, There was space
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: in between when those children died and learning why they died.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: And they didn't die because the measles vaccine is dangerous.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: They died because two nurses incorrectly mixed the vaccine. And
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: so instead of mixing that vaccine with water, they mixed
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: it with a steroid, and it killed these babies.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 9: It's tragic.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Horrible.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: But in that space, when no one knew what was
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: the cause, there was a lot of fear. And so
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: people en masse stopped vaccinating. They were supported by a
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: couple of local activists and misinformation provided by Children's Health Defense,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: specifically from Robert F. Kennedy, who came to Samoa with
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: his lovely wife and, you know, met with government leaders,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: met with anti-vaccine activists, and then came back and wrote
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: a letter to the head of the government of Samoa saying,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: in effect, don't vaccinate. Now, people started dying as they do.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: mostly small children and babies, as what happens when you
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: get a measles outbreak. And so I think in total,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: 83 or close to that people have died. The government
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: reacted with an immediate vaccination campaign, but it was too late.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: And so a lot of people died. And more than that, too,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: a lot of people got sick. A lot of babies
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: got sick. And I know you have a young child
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: at home.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 7: I do.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: A lot of kids died.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: Needlessly got sick, which is really sad too. Like we
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: don't want to pepper over that, right? Or like skate
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: over it. And so after this measles outbreak happened, I
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: asked Kennedy about this.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 9: He's been asked other places about this.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: But he denies that the measles killed those children and
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: killed those 83 people. And instead thinks that it has
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: something to do with the vaccination campaign itself. Although he's
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: been a little quieter on that conspiracy theory only because
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: it's linked to the deaths of these children and he'd
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: very much neither like him nor his organization to be
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 5: linked with that.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: He's just like it's like the most everyone's had a
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: relationship with a friend or a partner or that person
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: just will never concede an inch or ever say they're
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: sorry or ever give you just like a little like
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: you just want I want you to say sorry one
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: time and then then we can be friends again and
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: it just they won't do it and it drives you
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: insane and that is Robert F. Kennedy stepping back from
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: my weird psychobabble and away from vaccines for a second.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: There is this broader Kennedy agenda, the kind of Make
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: America Healthy Again agenda. And I think it sounds very reasonable.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: I want my kids to eat healthy. I don't want
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: my kids ingesting pesticides or chemical additives. I think he's
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: right that there is corporate capture of regulatory agencies, meaning
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: it's more likely the corporations are telling the regulators what
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: to do than vice versa, and people kind of siphon
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: in and out, right? All of that is true. What
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: I don't get, though, is how Kennedy is going to
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: solve these problems when so much of the Trump agenda
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: is deregulation. And you've got Republicans getting, I think, $ 40
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: million from Koch Industries, for example, which does, you know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: they have the chemical industry, they're in the ag industry.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Trump got tons of money from the tobacco industry. So
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: there's all these cross pressures and something's got to give, right?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, how do you think Kennedy is going to
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: be able to sort of exist in that ecosystem when
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: you've got Lee Zeldin over at EPA, for example, who
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: I'm guessing is not going to want to overly regulate pesticides?
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 9: I don't know.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: I mean, I don't, I'm shocked constantly. I'm constantly in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: a state of shock about like why people are doing,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: nothing makes sense to me ever. So I don't, I don't,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: I can't like pretend to peek into the president-elect's brain
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: and determine like why or how he would get this
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: he wouldn't listen Kennedy says a lot of things that
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: are not true Kennedy says that he is going to
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: go into HHS and figure out within two months he
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 5: says what is causing the childhood uh disease epidemic, as
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: he states it, you know, obesity, asthma, like literally everything
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: that befalls children or that could, he's going to figure
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: it out within two months.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 9: And then within two years, he's going to fix it all.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: So like, I don't know what he's going to do.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 9: I also don't know.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: People have asked me for over a decade whether Kennedy
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: means it, whether he believes any of this stuff. Yesterday,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: I saw him on a plane eating McDonald's and drinking
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: a Coke. And I was like, Wait, but I thought, like,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: this is, I'm so confused. So maybe getting so close
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: to the halls of power is enough to make him say,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: you know, I did what I could and not mess
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: with things too much. You know, I do know that
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: there are a group, a large group of people, these,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: you know, autism moms, this anti-vaccine movement that he's built
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: that treat him like a god. And that he could
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: say basically whatever he wanted in terms of like what
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: I tried, what worked, what didn't, and they would be fine.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 9: My concern is that I.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: Just, I have to believe, or I still hold on
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: to the fact that Trump in 2017 met with RFK,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: you know, signaled that he was going to do some
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: sort of vaccine whatever with him, vaccine, make him a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: vaccine czar, have like a working group or something. And
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 5: then better angels or smarter advisors came and said, don't
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: do that. And then that was squashed pretty immediately. If
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: he gets confirmed, I don't know. If he gets in,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: how long will he last before Trump says, actually, it
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: probably wouldn't be a really good time. idea to spark
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: a public health crisis on many different fronts. Maybe people
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: wouldn't like if I did that and got rid of him. TBD.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, TBD. And look, it's not just that we're hoping
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: for better angels to get to Trump. It's also I
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: think there might be corporate interests that get to Trump
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: that just say, oh, this guy's not going to do
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: it because it's going to hurt our bottom line. But
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: I think you're getting at something that is, it's kind
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: of hard to convey to people about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: because it sounds kind of harsh and it sounds very partisan.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: But the reality is he's just incredibly dishonest. And I
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: know he's a famous guy and I know he's named Kennedy.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: But like, you know, a year ago we had Jake
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: Tapper on the show. And Jake told us how back
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: in 2005, around that Salon Rolling Stone article that you
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: talked about, that Kennedy wrote that was later retracted about
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: vaccines and autism. Jake did a piece on it for
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: ABC News. And he had this conversation with Robert F.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: Kennedy Jr. And the way RFK represented what they talked
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: about was just like entirely fabricated, utter bullshit. And of course,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: you know, The representation was that, you know, Jake called
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: him and be like, look, man, I got to pull
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: the plug on this thing because big pharma overlords are
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: beating down my neck. Right. Like just didn't happen. Nonsense.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: But RFK tells the story this way, including like a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: few months ago. And so I'm trying to understand how
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: there's that reality. And then there's RFK Jr. 's popular appeal.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: But then also he has like supporters in big places,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: big tech places. Hollywood, sports, Aaron Rodgers, politics. I mean,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: you spent time with RFK. Where do you think his
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: appeal comes from? And how have these lies not caught
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: up to him, really?
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: So the first line, I'm going to mess it up,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 5: but the first line in RFK's book, American Values, is
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 5: something like, I knew very early that the world was
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: made up of gods and monsters, good and evil. And
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 5: I was like, no, no, it's not.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 9: Like, that's a really problematic.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: For me, as a person who knows that the truth
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: is almost always found in nuance, that's a problematic worldview.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 5: And I think that it is very intoxicating, especially for
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: someone who's looking for an answer and not finding one.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: There are a lot of frustrated people out there that,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 5: like you said, I don't want crap in my kids' lunches.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: My kid has not a great lunch at NYC public schools.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: My kid who needs special education, they can't figure out
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 5: the bus on time for him. COVID is scary.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 9: Wealth gap is real.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 5: The money, I'm never going to buy a house. There's
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 5: just all of these grievances that have no home.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 9: Politically, it feels like.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: And so when a person like Kennedy, again, is saying,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: I can fix it, I think it's very, very alluring
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 5: and it's not just health right he ran on this
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: campaign of all of these sorts of issues and having
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 5: these very very easy answers for them and i think
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: that's having a person that knows all the answers is
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 5: an intoxicating thing having him be a kennedy is an
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: intoxicating thing we tell we are storytellers we tell ourselves
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: stories for everything and i just he's he's a he's
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 5: just a crazy alluring figure in that way i.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Think intoxicating is is the perfect word Because there is
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: that time when you read something and you feel like
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: you just learned like kind of the Rosetta Stone to
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: solving like a whole worldview. And it's this amazing, empowering feeling.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: And before we started recording, I said to you, I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: wanted to approach this conversation with empathy because I think
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: these are understandable feelings. Every parent wants to protect their kids.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: If your kid is harmed, you want to know why
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: and you want to prevent it from happening again. A
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: lot of the women you were talking about who sort
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: of like getting these Kennedy messages are We're doing it
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: at a moment of real emotional vulnerability and trauma. I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: know for my wife and I, we experienced a ton
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: of pregnancy loss and all of a sudden TikTok knows
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: and you're bombarded with information about potential causes or fixes
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: or fucking snake oil. And then COVID, right, upends everything
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: and pours gas on all these feelings. And I feel
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: like actually raise some It was a more legitimate conversation
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: about vaccines that were relatively new and mRNA technology being
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: new and vaccine mandates versus people's freedom not to take them. Right.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: And so it just all got so much more complicated.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: But now it's like I can't remember if it was
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: in one of your stories or someone else's stories or
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: something else I was reading. There was an effort. People
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: were shown kind of anti-vax conspiracy theory video and then
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: as sort of a test of They tried to show them,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: these researchers, that video with kind of fact-checking below it.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: And in fact, the fact-checking actually hardened people's views about,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of their belief in these conspiracy theories
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: they were hearing. And it just made me want to wonder, okay,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: what's the best way to talk to people in our
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: lives about these problems? Like everyone has a family member
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: or a friend or someone who is vaccine hesitant or
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: anti-vaccine at this point. What do you think, what's the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: best way to approach that conversation?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 9: I mean, in terms of health misinformation, I.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: Don't know if you and I around the Thanksgiving table
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: or whatever can make much of a dent in someone's
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: belief in that way. Because like, again, health misinformation, if
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: we zoom back, has always preyed on the vulnerable. And
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 5: the vulnerable are new parents, even if you have healthy kids, right,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 5: where you're just like, I don't know what to do
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: with this. beautiful baby like and it's all it's literally
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 5: life or death every second going a nap is life
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: or death and so that's a very scary place to
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: be in and you're googling all the time at 3 a.m
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: in the morning and so like and like the same
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 5: is true you know beyond this Kennedy's also like a
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: cancer truther he's got like these wider ideas too so
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: like again people that have cancer and it's not getting
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 5: better with you know the doctor or whatever they're they're
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: looking for these other avenues. I, I sort of, one,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 5: I do think that empathy is always the way to
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 5: go for anything. Like, I don't think being mean to
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: people and making them feel stupid or like is ever
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: going to make anybody sort of see your side of things.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: But like, we have got to get to a place
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 5: somehow where like experts are in the same places that
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 5: these like influencers and who are chasing clout or cash
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 5: or whatever it is. And, you know, that is Kennedy too.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 5: Like where they're so available, their content is so quick. And,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 5: you know, we did that a little bit during COVID.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 5: There were, I think, doctors who were like, this is
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 5: where we need to be. We need to be online
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 5: and we need to be authentic. We can't be like,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 5: you know, we have to show our homes. We have
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 5: to show our own struggles. We have to be creators.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 5: And like that really works.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 9: I think sharing.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 5: content from creators who are meeting these other creators where
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: they are is really, really helpful. So like I have
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 5: a host of doctors and creators that I follow like that.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: And you'll see in their comment sections, people that have
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: come from the wellness space that have come from, you know,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: the Dr. Mercola's and the Kennedy's who were only talking
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: about that. And now they have an answer to some
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: of their questions from someone that they actually trust. Because,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 5: and I'll just say one more thing is that, like,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 5: you know, Kennedy likes to talk about how nobody trusts Congress,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: nobody trusts government, nobody trusts the media. And he is
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: the answer to that. But, like, Kennedy is a lawyer.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 5: I remember they were always the butt of the joke
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 5: in terms of trust. Like, we should not be trusting
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: this man. And when you see these content creators up
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 5: against Kennedy, I think that stands a real chance.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 9: Of breaking through.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and you and I both have sort of
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: obliquely referenced this wellness scene a couple times. I mean,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: can you just tell us a little bit more about that,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: how people are getting drawn in? And then is it
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: a profit-motivated scene, or are these people who are true believers?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's probably a combination, but what's your sense?
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: I don't know. Sometimes I think there are content creators
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: that are so out there, like the woman who said
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 5: that you could heal your eyes. Did you see that?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: There was one that said like, you don't need glasses anymore.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 9: You can heal yourself.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: It's just big.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, well she's right. Yeah. She's got it. She's got it.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, I, you don't have glasses and I do.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 5: So who's the real loser? Big, big glasses.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 9: That's me.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 8: Um, but yeah, so like, it really is like a
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 8: spectrum and like, I like, again, like it's a big,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 8: it's a big movement of women, like again, driving sort
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 8: of a lot of this content creation.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: And so like, it's, I like girly stuff. I like wellness.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 5: I like, you know, I'm a crunchy person. I'm a
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 5: crunchy mom. And so like, it's a big industry that's
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 5: like mostly fine, actually. Like a lot of it's just
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 5: fine content, mommy blogging stuff. And then it's, but it's that,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 5: that small portion that's just sort of insidious and gross
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 5: and leads you to like these websites where they want
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 5: to sell you, you know, lemon supplements to cure your cancer.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 9: Which gets problematic.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: Right. Or like natural sunblock because the other sunblock doesn't
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: work and you shouldn't wear it. And it actually makes
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: you burn The one I really don't get, as a
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: pale person, I find that very offensive.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 9: That's Nicole Shanahan's thing.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is Nicole Shanahan's thing. The RFK's former vice
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: presidential nominee. The one I really just don't get is
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: raw milk. Why do people want to drink raw milk
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: so bad?
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 5: Ew.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 9: I don't, like, have they never been to a farm?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 5: I just, it's so... It's crazy that that's what you
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 5: want to do. I don't know. I mean, I lived
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 5: in Vermont for a while. I've seen lots of farms.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 5: I've seen a cow being milked. And you could not
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 5: pay me to drink that.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: It's dumb.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: The milk stuff is pretty close to the poop stuff.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: You always want to keep that in mind. Do you
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: think there were errors by the government or tech platforms?
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: when it comes to talking about COVID, vaccine efficacy, the
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: kind of silencing of debate?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: Did that make it worse?
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: With a conspiracy theory, a pretty important part of making
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 5: it bigger is being able to to say, or just
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 5: saying most of the time, but if you can say
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: it and it's true, that's even better.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 9: That nobody wants you to know this. This is the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 9: answer they don't want you to hear.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 5: And so that was a really big part in propelling
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 5: some of this misinformation.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 9: So that was a problem.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 5: I think that platforms should have a North Star, generally.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: I think if you're going to be the steward of
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 5: a public square.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 9: then you should probably, you know, make.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 5: Sure that your parks department keeps it clean of trash.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: You should probably make sure that, you know, if you
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 5: have a naked person screaming, well, that's not good for kids.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 9: Like, let's get that guy out of here.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 5: And you don't want people just propping up booths.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 9: And selling snake oil all the time.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 5: That would probably not be a fun place where, like,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 5: you'd want generally to come.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 9: And so, like, I sort of think the same thing
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 9: of social media platforms.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: Twitter was not perfect. Like, yeah, it turns out probably
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 5: shouldn't have stopped the Biden laptop from spreading. That was
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 5: probably a huge mistake. Probably shouldn't have labeled so much,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 5: just from what we know now from research, labeled so
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: much COVID misinformation. Probably should have knocked Kennedy off when
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: he was president. breaking the rules in 2018 and 2019 against,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 5: you know, targeted ads or misinformation around vaccines when we
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 5: were having a measles outbreak.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 9: We knew about that then. So, like, I think you
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 9: can get the worst actors off your platform.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: You can try to provide good information where you can,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: and you cannot get so in the weeds that it
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 5: gets out of control. But, like, I'm, you know, I
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 5: don't know how you say that because I don't know sports. Quarterbacking, armchair.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: Monday morning quarterbacking.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 9: That's me. So it's a hard job.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 5: Content moderation is really, really hard. And until Musk fired
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 5: them all, there were some really thoughtful people doing some
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 5: really thoughtful work.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 9: Did they get it right all the time?
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 5: But my big take from the Twitter files was just that.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 5: There were a lot of really professional people trying to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 5: keep their platforms safe.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You're not going to get it right 100% of
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: the time. Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of people that say to me,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: which of these cabinet choices are you the most worried about?
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: Is it Tulsi? Cause she's a Russian stooge, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: I think we all should stop saying that stuff by
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: the way. Or is it, you know, this person or
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: Matt Gates for me right now, it's Robert F. Kennedy jr.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: Because as you mentioned, I mean, I have almost a
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: two year old, I have a six month old. I'm
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: just worried about them being at physical risk period because
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: of fear mongering, because of some step to limit access
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: to medicines that they need. I mean, I think in
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: like right now we're holding out hope that Republicans spike
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he is pro-choice and they
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: really want a pro-life nominee. That's where we're at. That's
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: good news for us.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 9: I'm not a political person. I'm just not.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 5: But like it's such a dangerous, dangerous idea. And I
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 5: talk to doctors all the time. I talk to pediatricians
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 5: who've like cried to me just like hoping, hoping that
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: this doesn't happen. Like when somebody says I want to
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: dismantle public health, we should believe them.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we should believe them. Brandy, where can people find
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: your work?
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 5: NBCnews.com.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 9: And I'm on Blue Sky.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, you're Blue Sky-er. I haven't gotten over there yet.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: I'm worried it's going to be a lot of like,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: you know, progressives either agreeing or telling me that I
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: suck because I'm not far enough left.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 9: That's what I hate about threads, actually. I find it
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 9: just like, oh, insufferable.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 5: Everybody's like, signaling how whatever they are, I just don't
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: like it. Blue Sky has like very early Twitter feelings
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: where it just feels like a fun place to be.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 5: And like, that's all I'm looking for in these dark,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 5: dark times.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe I'll check that out.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 5: Please do it.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: Brandi Zabrosny, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: Thanks for all your great reporting on this. I think
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: people should follow you because I do, you know, look,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: the science is not a clean, easy process, nor is
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: media or information gathering or combating misinformation. I think it's
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: going to take Lots of intensive work by people like
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: you to, you know, build a body of evidence that
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: this guy is just wrong and dangerously wrong. So hopefully
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: we'll keep it up.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 9: I hope so.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 5: Thanks.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Tommy will be back in
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: your feed tomorrow with guest host Liz Smith, one of
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: the smartest Democratic strategists out there. You'll also hear Dan's
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: interview with Senator Jon Tester. on Democrats' problems in the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: heartland and how we can make our brand more appealing.
• 1:23:47
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