Pod Save America - "A cannibal who's for single-payer."

Episode Date: September 28, 2017

Graham-Cassidy goes down, Republicans embrace Roy Moore, and Trump lies about his tax plan. Then Senator Chuck Schumer joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Democratic strategy on taxes, and Ana Marie Cox joins to talk about Zuckerberg v. Trump. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we will talk to the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. And later, we'll talk to the host of With Friends Like These, Anna Marie Cox. Also, check out Pod Save the World this week. Tommy talks to Dr.aren donfried about the german elections great episode i still have tickets for the late show in ann arbor at 10 p.m it's next friday and tickets to santa barbara in december also love it or leave it is going on tour with

pod save america as well you can find tickets and everything else at crooked.com slash tour. Exciting, Dan. I can't believe we're going on tour next week. I know. Can I ask you a question? What time is your usual bedtime? My usual bedtime? Yeah. I probably fall asleep around 11 or 1130. Yeah. Mine's like a little closer to 10 or 1030. So it's going to be a real interesting experience to do the 10 p.m. show.

Yeah. It'll be very late. I mean, Lovett goes to bed at like two or three so he'll be fine yeah no i know i need to switch my bedtime back that's good because the thing i was worried about was love it not having the energy for the show real concern real concern yeah let's start with the untimely death of Graham Cassidy. I thought that was going to be a Hugh Hefner lead-in. Yikes. That would not be untimely. 91 is a good run. I hope I get to 91.

All right. Why did the bill go down? If you believe Donald Trump, it's because an imaginary senator who would have voted yes is in the hospital. Did you hear that donald the president united states has now said six times that they had the votes for graham cassidy but they couldn't they couldn't get it done by the 30th september 30th which is the deadline for reconciliation because one of the yes votes is a senator who's in the hospital this has absolutely no basis in truth. It's just

something completely made up. Thad Cochran, the senator for Mississippi, was home in Mississippi on Monday recovering from a urological issue. I was debating whether I was going to bring up the cause, but I'm glad you did. Well, no, it was his office said so. He said so in a tweet, so I felt comfortable sharing it. Yeah, but he was never in the hospital, and even if Thad Cochran was there voting, they wouldn't have had the votes. And he would have come back for the vote.

I mean, it's ridiculous to even be talking about it, and it's just one of these, like, a couple people pointed this out on Twitter. It's one of these things that we're all just going to move past, like, ugh, there's that crazy old man, the president, spouting off some imaginary fucking scenario again. But it's pretty bad. Pretty bad that the president just lies like that. And the thing is, it's like deeper than just he's trying to convince us of why he failed. Right.

It's that he's trying to convince himself yeah we all get to watch which if you had a friend or an uncle or i don't know anyone who did that you would be it would be concerning behavior and if you do it once and you get called out on it you would think you would have the self-awareness to stop. But even after being called out, he continued to say it again. He cannot allow himself to accept any sort of blame for this. So he has to believe that he actually did succeed, were it not for some reason that he has created in his own head. Right. Or at the very least, good staff work. Someone in the White House would see him say it for the first time and say hey boss you had a little mix up there before he said it five more times in public i mean there's two ways i think about did maybe no one said anything because people are just

like i i don't care enough to fight about trump with it about this yeah or someone tried to say something to him and then he just sort of shouted them down. Yeah, and then of course he digs in. Yeah, like he digs in once you tell him he's wrong. So it's great. Anyway, the five millionth attempt to repeal Obamacare went down in flames on Tuesday without a vote. Susan Collins joined John McCain and Rand Paul

in publicly opposing a piece of legislation that would have made health insurance unaffordable for more than 30 million Americans and allowed insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions, whatever the fuck they wanted. As always, everyone who showed up or made phone calls made the difference here, particularly the grassroots disability activists who descended on Congress, the little lobbyists who were there, our friends at MoveOn, Indivisible, a lot of people and a lot of effort went into stopping this bill in a very short period of time. And everyone should feel pretty proud of themselves that they did. Dan, why else did this latest shitburger fail, in your opinion?

latest shitburger fail, in your opinion? Well, I think the main reason is it was not a serious attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act. It was a Frankenstein of gifts to, you know, attempted payoffs to quote-unquote moderates like Lisa Murzkowski, Susan Collins, some things thrown, you know, red meat thrown to the conservatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. I mean it was not a serious bill and it was not a serious attempt. I mean we have not – let me put it this way. I don't think any of the other shitburgers that have come before this shitburger were particularly serious, but they were more serious than this one. This was the most ridiculous of all the shitburgers.

And it could not withstand any scrutiny, and it was indefensible. There was no one was making in the past, you would have some quote-unquote conservative policy experts who would argue for

skinny repeal or ACHA or BICRA or whatever the fuck we call these things and make a case for it. You know what he would say. It's not perfect, but here's why it's good. No person other than Bill Cassidy made a case for this, and his case was just a series of bald-faced lies. Right.

I mean, when you look at how the thing came to be, When you look at how the thing came to be, which is apparently former Senator Rick Santorum was in the Senate barbershop with Lindsey Graham and told him one idea for Obamacare is to just split it up into block grants and hand out the block grants to the state so the states can do what they want with it. And Lindsey Graham, who by his own admission knows very little about health care and only learned about health care policy during during this process thought, oh, wow, states have more flexibility. That sounds great. And that's like, you know, in theory, conservatives like the idea of states having more flexibility. They're into federalism. So fine. But the second you got into the details of this plan, it was like a massive cut in funding before you even divide it up into block grants and then they continue to run into this pre-existing condition issue because if you get rid of the individual mandate if you tell people they don't have to buy insurance until they're sick you can't tell insurance companies that they have to protect people with pre-existing conditions so

none of these bills that the republicans have put forward stop insurance companies from charging sick people whatever the hell they want. And so they are then forced to lie about that provision in the bill. If they wanted to put forward Obamacare repeal that protected pre-existing conditions, mostly it would look a lot like Obamacare does now, probably just with less money. Because they'd have to keep the individual mandate and they'd have to keep the regulations that say you have to protect people with pre-existing conditions i don't know how they ever get out of that problem the best part of this is that rick santorum a decade after leaving the senate is still going to the senate barbershop he's just walking on the street going god these senators have great haircuts. Someone give Rick Santorum a job. Just get him out of there.

He has one. He has one. He's on CNN. Is that the job? Yeah. Hey, that's a job. Back off. Sorry.

I just didn't know that was the only thing Rick Santorum was doing. I think he has other jobs, too. He finishes his CNN hits and he just wanders around the Senate barbershop, I guess. I don't know. If Graham Cassidy had passed, it would have been one more piece of legislation than he passed in his decade in the Senate. Or several decades. So the bill fails. Three public no votes.

The rumor was some reporters were saying that the whip count was actually 45, meaning there were about four other no votes, three or four other no votes who didn't want to go public. So now the question is is is this really dead is obamacare repeal dead uh lindsey graham right after the defeat of the bill said it's not a matter of if but when this kind of bill passes people should know that republicans have two more chances to repeal Obamacare before the 2018 elections. Number one is they could try to fit Obamacare repeal into tax reform and pass it all in the same package, which would only require 50 votes because they're trying to use the reconciliation package this time around now for this tax reform package. So they only have to get 50 votes. So they could try to jam in health care reform and tax reform all in the same bill.

What are your thoughts about the prospect of doing that? Well, it's not as crazy as it sounds because no one remembers this. But when we passed the Affordable Care Act on a budget reconciliation bill, we also did it with student loan reform. That's right. Which is why no one, potentially including yourself. I just forgot. I just forgot. Whenever anyone would say, why does no one know about our amazing student loan reform accomplishment?

It would be because we passed it on the same day as a once-in-a-century domestic policy accomplishment that was not student loan reform. So it is doable, and it can go either way, right? It can make it harder in the sense that you may have Murkowski – you still need the senators who bailed on Affordable Care Act to get their tax reform. You can't lose three senators again. And so the most likely scenario is it creates the same problem that they have on health care, which is Murkowski and McCain want a bipartisan process and whatever bill they want to pass is not acceptable to Collins. And then, but on the other side, where tax reform might have trouble is in the House. And we'll talk more about tax reform just where there are conservatives who actually believe, who actually are pushing for the populist policies that Donald Trump ran on and has abandoned. And ACA repeal might be the thing that gets them to the finish line. are pushing for the populist policies that Donald Trump ran on and has abandoned.

And ACA repeal might be the thing that gets them to the finish line. But I guess the short version is tax reform is incredibly complicated. Health care reform is incredibly complicated. It is doable, but obviously more complicated to do the two at the same time. Yeah, I also think if you were trying to do a Obamacare repeal, and at the very end of the process, you sort of slipped in some tax cuts, that's probably easier than doing it the other way around, like, slipping healthcare reform or repeal into a piece of legislation suddenly makes healthcare the topic that we're all arguing about. Like, I think it's hard to do it under the radar. And the messaging then for us becomes that much easier and starker in that we're just saying, okay,

you're now literally cutting taxes for the wealthiest, raising taxes on middle class families, and taking away their health insurance all in one fell swoop, which, of course, the Republicans, I don't put it past them to want to do that, but it sure highlights the just how bad the whole thing is. The Republicans made a big mistake when they declared the Republicans now on three separate occasions tried to declare their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act is over. on three separate occasions tried to declare their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act is over. Whether it was the Senate vote, two different House votes or potential House votes. And the logic was – and it's worth remembering that after the 2012 election when we won, John Boehner told – in his press conference right after the election said, Obamacare is the law of the land and it's going to stay that way. And they have been trying to get this repeat, get, get from out from underneath

repeal for a very long time because it's politically toxic. They have no plan. And they knew, they knew they were playing with fire when they were running on it and never coming up with a replacement plan. And it's been dogging them. it gets in the way of things it's almost impossible to do expectations are out of whack because they said in 2010 give us a republican congress and we'll repeal the affordable care act and they didn't do it then it was like well give us this well we need it we need the senate they got the senate then they got the House. And now they have all three and they can't do it. So Republicans can never – but what they can't do is declare it dead because that inflames the base. As they said, I mean multiple Republican senators over the last couple of days have said one of the big reasons we did this is because our donors were pissed when we failed in the summer, which is maybe the most cynical thing you could say. I'm skeptical of that. You don't think the donors are really pissed

about that? I think grassroots money probably took a hit for it. I think that is probably true. I don't like the lead. There's a New York Times story, I think by Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns, or either or both, that talked about this. And the lead anecdote was Cory Gardner, who's the head of the NRSC, I believe, at some sort of fancy fundraiser. I just, I believe that there were probably the regular people who were giving $5, $10, $15 in mass to Trump, who were like, F these people, I'm not giving them money if they can't do this very basic thing. But the lobbyists and PACs, I just can't imagine that they are punishing the – they're willing to risk the Republican majority over their failure to do something that they are smart enough to know is near impossible.

Yeah, they're in it for the tax cuts. So the other vehicle that Republicans have to potentially do this is the 2019 budget. I'm unclear, and I think there's no good answer to this on the timeline for when you can introduce another reconciliation vehicle for 2019. To try to do this, I would imagine that you'd have to be you'd have to a finish the tax reform push for the 2018 budget and then introduce a 2019 budget sometime next year. I guess that the trick with that is now you're trying to repeal Obamacare while the 2018 midterm elections are happening, which doesn't seem like the politically wisest choice.

But, you know, Republicans, what are you going to do? Do you know what would worry me? I think, and budget nerds, don't at me on this, but I think it's after October 1, 2018, that you can do a 2019 budget resolution. Oh, well, that seems tricky. Well, no, what I think is worrisome would be if Democrats took the House, Well, no, what I think is worrisome would be if Democrats took the House, that they would use that lame duck session. And as we know from the many legislative accomplishments that we jammed into the 2010 lame duck session, like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the START treaty, some stimulus, economic stimulus work, et cetera, we got done because nothing clarifies the mind like losing power in a few weeks. And so that is a potential fight down the line if we take the House.

It's a high class problem if we take the House. But I think that's where you would see another danger. I can't imagine they'd be dumb enough to do it between October 1 and Election Day. But after that, you can pass a shell budget on 50 votes and then do it. And some of these Republican senators will be on their way out the door. Which could go either way also because I would imagine that jamming through Obamacare repeal the month before you lose the majority on your way out the door does not satisfy the regular order and bipartisan process that John McCain and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have requested. Yep. But I think that, so the two takes away is Republicans can never say Obamacare is dead

and Democrats can never believe it's dead. That's right. Because every time we ever get complacent about this, it comes right back. So we have to go, we have to keep the pressure on and win elections. And winning elections, there's both winning the congressional elections, there are winning some of the elections between now and then that sends a message that there's a price to pay for even playing around with repealing Obamacare. That's right. And we should also think about the Senate too, because Murkowski did not end up

coming out against this bill. She released a statement that said she didn't like the process, that the numbers weren't there yet. She said she likes the idea that states should have more flexibility and control over their health care dollars. She also did say she wasn't convinced that the bill had adequate protection for people with pre-existing conditions or a strong ban on the return of lifetime limits for insurance claims and that future bills need to be bipartisan.

So that's a good sign. And again, like I said, they're not going to fix their pre-existing condition problem, I don't think, because even if they do, they lose like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and all the rest of them. So she holds to that on pre-existing conditions, then we're in good shape. But I think, you know, I think you have to, for future efforts like this, we have to keep the pressure on Murkowski and some of those senators because we do not have a guaranteed three votes. That's right. Also, I just saw this morning, Lamar Alexander, the Republican

senator from Tennessee who had been working with Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state on a bipartisan solution to shore up the Obamacare markets, announced that a deal may come as soon as tonight to come up with a bipartisan solution to this problem, which would be great. What do you think? John, well, I guess... Are you not holding your breath for this? No, no. I'm just... I can't believe that after the process just blew up over an uncrossable chasm of policy differences, just at the time in which Graham Cassidy's been beginning momentum, that they have been able to stitch this thing back together in just a matter of hours. Amazing.

What are the odds of that, these cynical little fucks? Oh, man. I mean, the bad news here is that some damage has already been done by the attempt to repeal Obamacare because, you know, insurance companies already have to set their rates for next year. And because there was so much uncertainty about whether Obamacare would even exist next year, there will probably be premium increases for a lot of states because, you know, Trump keeps fucking with the market. For a lot of states because, you know, Trump keeps fucking with the market. Also, he's trying to screw with open enrollment.

Open enrollment is a period each year where people who don't have health insurance can go and enroll and get insurance via the Affordable Care Act by, you know, just signing up and you get affordable insurance. And the government, at least under Obama, the government helps people figure out how they can buy insurance. They help people sign up. They make sure that you get a good deal on your insurance. They help you navigate what is a very confusing system. And the Trump administration has sort of cut budgets, refused to do any outreach. They're trying to shrink the enrollment period. They are trying their best to not allow people to sign up for health insurance that the government by law is supposed to make available to them. It is disgusting. So in addition to cutting the budget that you would use to advertise and tell people, the outreach budget, so to tell people that, they also have told the regional directors who were a key part of the outreach budget. So they tell people that. They also have told the regional directors who were a key part of the outreach strategy, they could do participate in no Obama open, no Affordable Care Act open enrollment events. And, and this is perhaps the most devious of all things, they're going to do scheduled site maintenance on the for 12 hours on the Sundays during the six weeks of the open enrollment period. So that which also, as we know, happens to be some of the most important that people enrolling in health care takes a little bit of time.

And most people do it on the weekends because that's when they have time to do it. And so huge every hour matters and huge chunks of it. They're just going to shut the website down, which I mean, they're not even pretending this even like subtle sabotage. They are just trying to blow the thing up from the inside. Yeah. So if the government won't help people enroll in Obamacare, then we need an effort to make sure the rest of us do and that we get the word out. And I think we might have more to say about that next week. I think there's some outside groups that are going to try to get the word out about open enrollment and help people enroll in Obamacare and try to pick up the slack where

the government has decided to just screw everyone possible. So we'll be talking more about that. Also, before we leave healthcare, we should probably talk about Tom Price, the Health and Human Services Secretary, who is just flying around the country on private jets at our expense. Drain the swamp, Dan. Drain the swamp. when he had been nominated as HHS secretary. And it came out that he had been involved in a number of fairly sketchy stock deals where he just happened to invest in companies

right about the same time that Congress, via a committee he was in charge of, was about to do things to help said companies. And we made some hay about it. And a lot of Republicans, including ones we know who worked on the Hill, were like, Tom Price is one of the most ethical people I've ever met. If anything, this is just a case. This is just a case of him being naive about how stocks work.

And that seemed like – Is he also fucking naive about how a private jet works? Yeah. Has he never experienced that? Oh, I thought this private jet was free. I have heard nothing from those people. And Tom Price is terrible. There's no two ways about it.

He is bad at his job. He has used his position to enrich himself. He has used his position to enrich himself. He has chosen a lavish lifestyle as the HHS secretary at taxpayer expense at the same time that he is claiming that we don't have the funds to help enroll people in the Affordable Care Act or do other things to help people. He's just terrible. people he's literally literally i mean he is yeah we we are cutting the budget to tell people to help people sign up for health insurance and we're going to move see some of that money to fly me around on a fucking private jet it is like i mean i tommy had a good idea yesterday which is like the dnc or some outside, maybe some PAC on the Democratic side, should start running some ads on this. Because this is like, Steve Bannon, fucking populist hero Steve Bannon,

has got to be sitting there thinking, that is a bad move on Tom Price's part. Because all this whole drain the swamp bullshit, so like people upset about elites and government officials and powerful people bilking taxpayers like this is this is going to be one of the most politically unpopular things to trump's base even forget about our base that uh the trump administration has done and we should be like this is a scandal that we should be talking about uh from now through 2018 also scott pruitt epa administrator 58 000 private jet rides i think juliana goldman just broke that news yesterday i mean now we've got two of them two cabinet secretaries that are

running around on private jets at the taxpayer expense it's almost as if it was all administration is not on the level it's the thing i found maybe they weren't telling us the truth that seems to be par for the course the the thing of that you know they've been reading all these leaks in axios and for mikey haberman of trump administration officials saying that trump is mad at tom price over this one thing know about Trump, he's always been against waste. Yeah, and then there's – I think this – I can't remember who this was, but there was some report maybe in Bloomberg that Trump and Price had spoken on the phone and Trump had expressed his disappointment and anger, But he was not going to fire Price.

And people were surprised by that. Yeah, no. Well, you know Trump. When he's upset about something, usually he holds his tongue and keeps his temper in check. And if there's anything that would really upset Trump, it is using the government to help yourself. That's basically the whole ethos of the Trump administration. So anyway, that happened. So we should move on to the special election or the runoff that was held in Alabama on Tuesday. Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who

was forced out of that job twice, beat the incumbent Republican senator from Alabama, job twice, beat the incumbent Republican senator from Alabama, Luther Strange, in a runoff election on Tuesday. Strange was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions' seat, supported heavily by Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and the rest of the Republican establishment, to the tune of about $10 million in ads that McConnell's PAC dumped in the race to try to save Strange. Moore, on the other hand, was supported by Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, and a cast of lunatics. He won by about nine points. And then, of course, Trump deleted all of his tweets in support of Luther Strange after the race was over, which is a very, very shrewd move, Donald Trump. Shrewd move. So you might be asking yourself,

who is Roy Moore? I heard he was very crazy, but I don't know why. Well, Moore said that homosexual conduct should be illegal, that Representative Keith Ellison shouldn't be allowed to serve in Congress because he's Muslim, that 9-11 and Newtown were punishment from God, that God is sovereign over our government, and he was removed as Chief Justice for planting a 5,000-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments inside the state Supreme Court building. He said that there's no such thing as evolution. He referred to native Americans and Asian Americans as reds and yellows. That was two weeks ago. He said that

some communities in Indiana and Illinois are under Sharia law. Great guy. I love that we just gloss over the fact that he said homosexuality should be illegal. Yeah, just illegal. When he was asked whether homosexual conduct should receive the death penalty, he didn't have an answer also. Didn't have an answer. He's on the fence on that one. everyone, Republicans and Democrats, could agree that these views are so far on the mainstream that they would never, that they would shun him right away, that he would be seen as sort of a wart on the body politic. Is that how the Republicans responded? I have bad news for you, Dan.

The Republican National Committee put out a statement immediately embracing Roy Moore, saying that he will help pass our conservative agenda. immediately embracing Roy Moore, saying that he will help pass our conservative agenda. We need this bigot to pass our tax cuts, is the message. Donald Trump, he's a big fan now. He called him afterwards. They talked on the phone.

He said he's a great guy. Mike Pence, you know, preparing for his own version of The Handmaid's Tale. He put out a statement saying, yeah, no, Roy Moore's great, love him, wonderful. Huh. I never would have guessed and then there was a great uh I think it was a New York Times story where or maybe it was Politico anyway apologies to whichever outlet it was um they went and they asked a bunch of Republican senators what they thought about Roy Moore and and all these Republican senators are like who never met him don't know him think i don't know we need a republic we need someone in the seat yeah no i'm sure i'm sure you've never fucking met him i'm sure you have no idea who he is yeah senator kennedy of louisiana

republican louisiana said he's a bright well he's he has a right to his own opinions this is america it's like what in recent memory has anyone in the Republican Party suggested that some group of people who may wear helmets to their jobs on Sundays should not express their opinions? Huh. You know, it is so bad. I mean, let's talk about the race. This seems like a very good chance that Roy Moore wins in Alabama, where, you know, Democrats routinely get 15 to 16 percent of the white vote in that state. And they are not known as very liberal. is very liberal. The Democratic candidate that's running against him is a former federal prosecutor named Doug Jones, who said people want a candidate focused on kitchen table issues. People are tired of being embarrassed in this state, which is really not a bad slogan for Doug Jones to run against Roy Moore. Don't embarrass Alabama, vote for me instead. But I don't know. Do you think

there's any chance for Doug Jones? Well, as you may have heard, I don't know do you think do you think there's any chance for uh for doug jones well as you may have heard i don't really do election predictions anymore i did i did we didn't we don't have a good track record yeah well we did we're like we've won loss yeah we're like 2008 2007 2008 patriots back off and so it's hard it's alabama it's hard. It's Alabama. It's hard. Is there a shot? Yeah. And should I think Democrats should and I use Democrats as a broad term to include the larger progressive grassroots community, not just the DSCC and DNC should be willing to spend some money to see if it's doable. And don't walk away. Don't just decide this is Alabama. We have no shot.

We're not even going to try. And then a month out, a poll comes back and Doug Jones is only down four. And now it's too late. So I think you can leave no money on the table here. And so I think it's worth, we should do not walk away now, give it a shot and see if it can be done. Have expectations in the right place. It's Alabama. It's been a long time since we've had a

Democratic senator there. See, let's not just write it off right away like we did with Montana and Kansas, House special elections earlier this year. I think that's right. I think that sort of the larger issue is, you know, what does this say about the Republican Party? Well, you know what it says. The Republican Party is willing to embrace someone who thinks homosexuals should be illegal, homosexual activity should be illegal, and that Muslims shouldn't serve in Congress. The party has embraced a candidate for the U.S. Senate who believes those things. That is what it says about today's Republican Party. When you asked on Twitter, what would it take for the Republicans

not to embrace a candidate, a Republican, someone, I wish I had written this down, who it was, but responded to you with, a cannibal with a single-payer platform, which I thought was so funny. That's about right. That's about right. Which which to be very clear a cannibal with a plan to lower the corporate tax rate would be embraced in both arms totally in yeah just don't be a cannibal for single payer so steve bannon was obviously behind this uh this more fiasco or

at least he was helping it along uh i think he spoke at a rally. I don't know if it was the rally where Roy Moore pulled out a gun during the rally, which he did. That happened. He pulled out a revolver during his political rally. He was also wearing a cowboy hat. So he looked like a grown man playing like in costume it was in a child's costume it was just so crazy he's been all these all these uh media outlets keep calling him a firebrand that's

the that's the term for him that's the term for being a fucking crazy bigot now is a firebrand and um someone said yeah like he's a firebrand meaning he actually will fire weapons in public yeah well i guess firebrand is one step better than working class populist which is what we call the last uh the last bigot on a running for election so bannon now wants to target other republican senators who are too establishment, too cozy with Mitch McConnell, who is now public enemy number one among their conservative base, which is awesome. So he wants to target Senator Wicker in Mississippi, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Dean Heller in Nevada. Bob Corker just retired this week as well, senator from Tennessee, chairman of the

Foreign Relations Committee. So now there's going to be a race in Tennessee. Bannon's going to try to get some conservative nutcase to run there. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing for Democrats? And then we can talk about a good thing and bad thing for America as well, which seems even more important. Huh. That is a great question. important? That is a great question. Whenever I hear Steve Bannon or Donald Trump attack Mitch McConnell, I really have conflicting emotions about it because it's like, wait, are the enemies of my enemy my friend? Am I friends with Steve Bannon? I don't really know how to feel about that. But in terms of winning elections, yes, this is good.

We were able to keep the Senate in 2010 because a very similar dynamic happened, which was Mike Lee, who was now the senator from Utah, but he challenged Utah Senator Bob Bennett in the primary. Utah, but he challenged Utah Senator Bob Bennett in the primary. And Bob Bennett was an establishment, conservative, but establishment institutionalist Republican. No one thought there was any chance he was going to lose. And Mike Lee kicked his ass, became senator. That then inspired a range of crazies to run against Republican senators. Christine O'Donnell from the great state of Delaware. She who is not a witch. She who is not a witch, but has dabbled in witchcraft.

Ran against Mike Castle, an incredibly popular incumbent Democratic House member who was running for Joe Biden's seat. And would have been a shoo-in. Christine O'Donnell runs and wins. and would have been a shoe-in. Christine O'Donnell runs and wins, which then – so if you end up with – in states better than Alabama with people like Roy Moore, we have a shot. There are cases of like Todd Akin who defended rape in Missouri, which allowed – helped Claire McCaskill win in 2012.

In Indiana, I can't remember what it was, but Joe Donnelly was running against a lunatic You know, helped Claire McCaskill win in 2012 in Indiana. I can't remember what it was, but Joe Donnelly was running against a lunatic who I think also defended rape. It was a trend that year. So in the sense of would we like to run against the worst candidate possible? Yes. That is good. Where it is bad is if these people win, which is what happened in the House in 2010, and you now have a Congress that is ungovernable because you have a bunch of Roy Moores who blow things up for sport. if only we get Donald Trump in 2016, things will be easy. And it'll be so much harder if we have a moderate, a more moderate candidate like a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio. And it turns out Donald Trump won. I mean, so I am concerned that however many years later, a lot of the energy on the right

is behind these crazy fucking candidates, unfortunately. And don't know you're i mean alabama is an easy case right because alabama is so conservative and so far to the right that maybe more is a more inspiring candidate to that base than strange would have been and so you get more people to the polls i mean steve bannon's of the view that this is all about turnout this is about getting the base to the polls and people being excited. And that if they're not excited, they stay home. Now, I think that that could work in places like Alabama. I think the tough part of this is if you start the GOP Civil War, which Bannon is doing, more broadly, there's going to be a ton of Republican candidates running all across the country, especially for the House, that are seen as

more establishment candidates that have been in Washington for a long time, that have done whatever Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan told them. And if they're sitting there running, and the Republican base is saying, oh, we only want to vote for the crazies, and there's a bunch of McConnell and Ryan stooges around there, I think they might have a turnout problem and that it might depress, like Steve Bannon's crusade might depress turnout in races where they're establishment Republicans, and that could be good. But I actually don't know if a lot of these super far-right lunatics end up winning primaries, if that is, I can't tell if that's good for us or bad for us, politically. Certainly bad for the country and bad for Congress.

Yeah, it's going to depend on the state. And the other thing that is just the reason why these primaries might be helpful to us is there's only so much amount of money to go around. And every dollar the NRSC has to spend to try to protect a Republican incumbent is just a dollar they're not going to be able to spend to beat a Democrat, right? And so I think it is good for Democrats in the short term if we win these seats. It's bad for the country if we don't. I also think it's a fascinating dynamic for a party to be at each other. Not that the Democrats are the picture of unity right now, far from it, but we are much more unified and coherent than the party in power, which is just, that is the opposite of how it should go. Republicans won everything, all up and down

the ballot. They control every lever in power in Washington, and they're trying to destroy each other. I mean, you have the president's former chief strategist, a month removed from the White House, running an aggressive campaign against the Senate majority leader, whom Donald Trump depends on to pass his agenda. It's a pretty crazy thing to be in this situation this early in the Trump presidency. Yeah. The other interesting thing is Roy Moore said that if he was in the Senate, he would have voted against Graham Cassidy because it's socialized medicine. So you also get, you're going to get a bunch of purists in there and causing trouble like Rand Paul has caused

trouble on the right for McConnell or Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. And that actually could make it harder for McConnell to do things like repeal Obamacare. So that could be a silver lining of this as well. But again, I don't want Roy Moore in the fucking US Senate. That guy's a maniac. No, it's embarrassing. But Donald Trump is president, so everything's embarrassing. Everything's embarrassing. But one other thing on this, Steve Bannon is going to take all the credit for this, but the person most responsible for Rory Moore winning is Donald Trump. Yeah. Because even though he endorsed Luther Strange and sent a number of awkward tweets about how great, quote unquote, Big Luther was, he was spending most of his time attacking the Republican Senate majority and attacking

McConnell. And so he was actually making a case against the establishment candidate 80% of the time and making a case for the establishment candidate 20% of the time. And so he has created this situation where he has turned his voters against the establishment. And I think it's an interesting dynamic to look at for 18 is Trump is, at least in this case, unable to get his voters to vote for the establishment candidate, which shows some limits to his power. And open question is if some of these primaries happen and the establishment candidate wins, are his voters who have been told by Steve Bannon and by Donald Trump himself that Jeff Flake is terrible,

Dean Heller's terrible, are those voters going to be willing in 2018 to turn out to elect a Republican who's a member of the establishment that Donald Trump says is terrible. I agree with that. Trumpism is more powerful than Trump is what we learned. So let's talk about tax reform. For fun here, let's start with globalist Goldman Gary Cohn's interview on ABC this morning with George Stephanopoulos. He's standing in front of the White House, Gary Cohn, and he tells Stephanopoulos this is a plan that solves for the middle class.

First of all, solves for the middle class is a sort of phrase. The word solves for is a phrase that you'd only hear in fucking Goldman Sachs. A plan that solves for the middle class and doesn't cut taxes on the rich. So then Stephanopoulos says, well, that's obviously bullshit when you look at the numbers. So Stephanopoulos says, well, can you guarantee that middle class families won't pay more? And Gary Cohn says, well, there's always an exception to every rule. He said, well, can you guarantee that rich people or Donald Trump won't get a tax cut? Gary Cohn's like, look, George, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And just it is the please go watch it. It is it is quite a performance by Gary Cohn. I hope that this Goldman Sachs executive sells this faux populist tax plan all over the country. It would be wonderful for us. There's just this great moment. And in the interview, which is entirely split screen. So you're looking at Gary Cohn's face basically the entire time. Which looks like he'd rather be anywhere but on that television screen.

He starts off with the typical Wall Street master of the universe swagger. And in the middle of the interview, it dawns on him that he is royally screwed up, has no idea what he's doing, and is going to be in big trouble with Donald Trump. Because you can fly on a private jet, you can build taxpayers, you can be terrible job, but do not be bad on TV. That is the one mortal sin in Trump world. And he just has this look of utter panic that is just behind his eye, in his eyes for the rest of the time. And it is so much fun. Don't be bad on TV. Don't attack the president publicly for siding with white nationalists and white supremacists in Charlottesville. Gary is 0 for 2. It's not good for him.

That's Gary is 0 for 2. It's not good for him. So this is a $5.8 trillion tax cut. They want to, there's seven tax brackets now. They want to consolidate them into three at 12%, 25%, 35% tax bracket. That lowest tax bracket is, by the way, higher than now. So that's a higher tax bracket for lower income people the trump administration claims they make up for it with by doubling the standard deduction seems that math is a little fuzzy which we can talk about later um the corporate rate would go from 35 to 20 percent the tax deductions people take would largely disappear including for state and local taxes basically only charity and some of the mortgage deduction is kept. Foreign income made by American companies will be tax-free. How's that for an America First policy? Wait, say that again?

That's right, Dan. If you're a company that makes, if you're a company, an American company that decides to go overseas to make a bunch of money, which I would also presume would take jobs from the United States, you now can get a tax break for doing so. America first. Donald Trump. The estate tax would be abolished.

And Josh Barrow has a couple of great pieces about this tax plan. He dug into the numbers, found that moderate to upper moderate income families who take itemized deductions will pay more in taxes. So basically, this is a tax increase for many ordinary families to pay for a tax cut for the rich. That is a true statement. And that, to me, is the political problem for the Republicans in the Trump administration with this plan. It doesn't mean they won't pass it. It doesn't mean they won't have the votes to pass it. But it is certainly a messaging challenge.

It is a messaging challenge. As we say in the business. Yes. It is also substantively absolutely shitty. I mean, I think a couple of things are interesting about this. One is, much like Graham Cassidy, they are trying to sell this on a big lie with both Trump and Gary Cohn saying that the wealthy would not get a tax break. That is simply and obviously not true. They would get a huge tax break. And this is a very important point that George Stephanopoulos nailed Gary Conon, who apparently did zero prep for this interview, because there were two questions that have happened in every interview about the release of every single tax plan by every Republican since the beginning of time. Will the middle

class get a tax increase? And will the wealthy benefit? And if you're not going to prep for those questions, don't even ask where the interview is taking place. But Trump has himself on multiple occasions, both in his tax reform speech on Wednesday in Indiana and then I think on Twitter, has said that he would not get a tax break from this. Now, we don't know that for sure in the sense that he doesn't release his tax returns, but we know that for sure. Very long audit. One of the longest, most complicated audits in history, Donald Trump's taxes. Somehow we can't seem to get them, although Bob Mueller might try. Yeah, no.

I mean, Josh Barrow made the point that, at least in the Bush administration, when they tried to sell their tax cut, they basically said this is a tax cut for everyone. And it was a tax cut that was enormously tilted towards the wealthy that they didn't pay for that we've been paying for for years. And, you know, we all think it was awful on the Democratic side. But they got to go out there and be honest and using the statement everyone gets a tax cut these guys are like you said starting this whole thing on a lie which is the middle that's solving for the middle class and then the rich people don't get a tax cut when that is provably untrue this because once again they don't give a fuck about the truth. They just,

they think they're going to lie to you and get away with it because they have many times before. I mean, that is the silver lining in the Graham Cassidy fact is they tried to lie. It didn't work. Thanks in most part to Jimmy Kimmel

using his platform. Yeah. They were able to convince people of the actual truth and it didn't be. And to the media's credit, I will say it was not treated as a, he said, she said,

Jimmy Kimmel says preexisting conditions are not covered. Bill Cassidy says they are. It was treated. It was very done. The media did a good job of saying, this is the truth. And what Bill Cassidy is saying, it's not the truth.

And in the early, you know, both in the Stephanopoulos interview with Gary Cohn, but then also the coverage of the rollout of the tax reform, the media has done a good job in the outset here of saying that that is not true. The other thing is, I have this vague recollection of a lanky, sad-eyed P90X-doing gentleman from Wisconsin believing that our deficits were out of control and we were hurtling towards a Greek-like crisis. $5.8 trillion tax cut, he now proposes. How are they paying for this? Are there commiserate tax increases and cuts to the federal budget?

Yes, well, they have paid for some of it, I think all but maybe two or three trillion dollars, with tax increases, moderate to upper moderate income families, by taking away people's deductions, particularly state and local deduuctions that is how they're going to pay for some of this the rest just add it to the debt did you say add it to the debt trillion with a t t yeah that's a big number okay we have no money we have no money for your health care though medicaid is out of control we must cut medicaid it's out of control the the It is a weird world to live in. I just don't understand the Republican passion for this issue. I understand why rich people want tax cuts. That makes complete sense to me. But you just imagine you're just like a staffer on Capitol Hill and every day what makes you get up early, hop on the metro, work hard for less money you can earn in the private sector is just to cut taxes for corporations.

What a life that is. I mean I'm guessing they would tell you that the government, every time they spend your money, fucks it up. They waste it and that you should – everyone should keep all their money and rich people pay more taxes right now. And so when you dismantle government and send it back to people, obviously rich people and companies are going to get more because they pay more now. And that what they really hate is government crushing our freedom by doing things like giving people health insurance, building roads, building schools. That's probably what they would say. I guess that's their argument. It's an argument that does not have a large constituency in this country anymore. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Gary Cohn seem to be the last people who

believe that. Steve Bannon would probably tell you that that idea, that that belief doesn't hold much currency among the Republican base today. We would tell you that it certainly doesn't hold any currency among the Democratic base today. But there are these, some of them were never Trump Republicans, some of them are just Republican establishment figures in Washington, who are still peddling trickle down economics, get rid of government, give everyone a huge tax cut as not just an economic policy that they believe in, but, you know, a politically wise thing to do. And I think that they are wrong, if you haven't been able to tell. Is that it? Yeah, I guess. able to tell is that it yeah i guess the only thing i'd say is there's an irony to trump

promoting this because his political success was identifying the gap between where the republican base is and the pro wall street pro wealthy policies of the republican establishment right but he but he didn, but he's an idiot. Steve Bannon identified that. Donald Trump is a cable news viewer who just yells at the TV and then became president and is now being pushed around by Gary Cohn and a bunch of Goldman Sachs

executives who want him to give big tax cuts, just like he was pushed around by Steve Bannon and the other people who wanted him to deport immigrants. The guy's a fucking moron. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's just going from tweet to tweet and yelling at Fox and friends all day. Well, he does have a set of core beliefs, which are basically around inciting racial grievances for shits and giggles.

Yes, that's correct. That is a core belief. Okay, when we come back, we will talk to the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. We are very lucky to welcome back to the program the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. Senator Schumer, how are you? Great to be on. John, last time I was on the show, you were on your honeymoon. I hope everything's working out great. It is working out well. Thank you. He's still married, so that's good.

Yeah, it's going well so far. Hey, listen, I performed one marriage in my life. They were divorced ten months later. I am never performing another marriage. Oh, nice. I just performed my first a couple weeks ago, so hopefully I have a good track record. So you have come out against this tax proposal from Donald Trump as a giveaway to the rich. The White House has been courting Senate Democrats anyway. How do you keep the caucuses united as you did during the health care battle? Well, that's a great question, and it's a very big challenge for us. But the bottom line is, first, learning what this plan is. And the more people learn about the

plan, the more they dislike it. We had 45 of the 48 Democrats sign a letter that had three watchwords. One, no tax breaks for the top 1%. And I would add to that wealthy and powerful corporations as well. And I can talk about each of those. Second, we don't want to increase deficit spending. And third, we want them to do it in a bipartisan way. In other words, not reconciliation, how they tried to jam healthcare through, but do it with us. They are violating all three on the first day. are violating all three on the first day. This is a tax plan aimed at the wealthiest people. It's almost a parody. It's hard to believe they, after saying Donald Trump, Donald Trump's not telling the truth about his plan. Neither is Gary Cohn, neither is Steve Mnuchin. And I think certainly Mnuchin and Cohn know it. They know they're not telling the truth, given their financial backgrounds.

Amazing. They said they would not help the wealthiest people. The rate now goes down from 39.6 to 35. But amazingly and surprisingly and awfully, they raised the top rate on working class people, the poorest of people, from 10 to 12. They have these pass-throughs for wealthy corporations, big hedge funds, fancy law firms, where people will pay no corporate tax and only 20%. It's a disgrace. And listen to this one. The more kids you have, the more taxes you pay if you're a middle-class family. Because while they are doubling the standard deduction, that's $12,500, family, because while they are doubling the standard deduction, that's $12,500, they're eliminating the individual deduction, and that is $4,000 a person.

So if you're a family of three, you break even, and if you're a family of four, you pay more taxes. Middle-class families, even in just about any state who have a lot of kids, let me tell you, this is an anti-Mormon bill. It's an anti-Orthodox Jewish bill in the sense that these families, these people have lots of kids, and they're losing those deductions. Second, deficit reduction. It's estimated that this goes $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

And here's, we know what they'll do, $5 to $7 trillion in deficit reduction. When Bush did his tax cut in 2001 and 2003, within a year, they said, oh, gee, the deficit is so bad, we're going to have to cut entitlements. We're going to have to cut Social Security, the safety net, Medicare, Medicaid. And they tried to do it. That was one of my first ventures with Harry Reid, and we stopped him. That's what's going to happen. In fact, by the rules of the House and Senate, they could actually invoke sequestration, which would be automatic cuts in some of those entitlements.

And third, they're trying to do this under this reconciliation, which means they get no Democratic votes. So this is an awful plan. And I just make one more point here, and I'm sorry to go on, but this is so important for your listeners to hear. They say it's going to create jobs. You know, reducing the tax on corporations will create jobs, and will create economic growth. Two examples. One, corporate America, the top corporations in America, are making more profit than ever right now and paying a smaller percentage of taxes on those profits than they ever have. They're not creating many jobs right now.

AT&T wants this tax break. Randall Stevenson talked about it. AT&T is making record profits, has more money that they're just keeping there, and has cut something like, I don't remember the exact number, about 80,000 jobs. And then we have the great state of Kansas, conservative state, Sam Brownback, right-wing governor gets in. And they cut taxes dramatically, and they predict it's going to cause huge growth. There was such a huge deficit that they just had to increase taxes. As I recall, the same thing happened with Ronald Reagan in 1981-82. Cutting corporate taxes, cutting individual taxes on wealthy people does not create jobs.

With corporations, it means they do stock buybacks, increase the salaries of the wealthiest people, do dividends, all of which goes to the top 10 percent and the top 1 percent in particular. This is fallacy put out by right wing think tanks who are just interested in greed, getting paying less taxes themselves, but it will not create jobs. So on all four grounds, no good. themselves, but it will not create jobs. So on all four grounds, no good. Senator, how in the Trump era, one of the challenges is the fact that they simply lie about the policy. And so as you mentioned, Gary Cohn, this morning was on ABC saying that the wealthy do not get a tax break. Donald Trump has said several times since this plan came out that he would not get a tax break when all the reports, when all the analyses say that's absolutely not true. How do you have a debate around a policy when your opponents simply lie about it with no regard for consequences or evidence?

Yeah, well, first we got to call them out for it. Here's what I said about Gary Cohen on the floor of the House, floor of the Senate today. for the Senate today. He also said the administration believes it can, quote, can pay for the entire tax cut through growth by using a dynamic scoring model. I said Gary Cohn comes from Goldman Sachs. If he used the kind of funny math at Goldman Sachs the way he is in Washington, he'd be kicked out of the, he would have been kicked out of the firm a long time ago. He should know better, and he does know better. He's just saying it. So we're going to call what their way of characterizing some of this fake math.

The president says there's fake news. Well, right here there's fake math. But second, the public is on our side already. About 70% of the people believe the tax code favors the wealthy. And similarly, not quite as high a number, but a very high number believe that President Trump's tax plan, this was before it came out, would favor the wealthy. So what we need to do, frankly, is replicate what we did with health care. We need an outside strategy and an inside strategy. The outside strategy is for all of the concerned groups,

and not just groups who focus on tax and fiscal issues, but if you're a health care group and they pass this, there'll be such a huge deficit, health care will be slashed. If you're a group that provides food to people, if you're a group that depends on infrastructure and road growth, all of this will be slashed if this plan passes. And we're going to alert everybody to this. If the public is as against this as they were against Trumpcare, it'll be defeated. And that will help unify us at home in our more moderate states, as you mentioned. And I think even the three who didn't sign the letter are very strong fiscal hawks. They don't want the deficit increased, and they've stated that several times.

And if they see that the public sees that Donald Trump is not telling the truth about this and what the plan is, we will succeed. So we have to get the truth out. The public is inclined to believe us. But if we rest, if we're complacent, if we think, well, we want health care, we can relax on this one, we could lose. Because you're right, they mischaracterize everything they're doing. And this is an old issue for the hard right. The hard right, big wealthy corporations, big rich people like the Koch brothers care more

about reducing their taxes than anything else. And so they make it up. They hire these think tanks, you know, that put out miles and miles of BS on how tax breaks will create jobs. And we just have to work harder. I think the public's inclined, though, to be on our side. Senator, you and Nancy Pelosi cut a deal with Donald Trump to push the fight over government funding and the debt ceiling to the end of the year. You now have leverage in that fight because the Republicans are going to need Democratic votes to lift the debt ceiling and to fund the government. What are you going to ask for of the Republicans? I know, obviously, there's legislation to give dreamers a path to citizenship and keep them in this country

are you ask for anything on obama care i can imagine you saying you know fully funding the government means fully funding obama care and make that a condition of the deal right okay here are three things we did this deliberately because we want to increase our leverage in lucky luckily enough for the american people we were able to succeed the first is not just

the dreamers and it'll we want the full Dreamers Act, not some cutback thing. You know, there's some talk, let Dreamers become citizens, but they can't bring their parents in. We have never had two classes of citizens in America. It's probably one of the most major things that distinguishes us from Europe. People come to Europe, they work, they can leave the country, come back, but they never feel they'll be part of Germany or France or Italy. In America, immigrants have always felt they could become full-fledged Americans. We can't change that. So we don't want to cut back on dreamers, but we also are adamantly opposed to the wall. You know, I live in Brooklyn, you guys know that. And I see the Statue of Liberty out my window. I live on the 10th floor of an apartment building.

That's the symbol of America. Can you imagine welcoming people saying, bring us your poor, your tired, your wretched masses? I don't remember the rest of it either. Anyway, can you imagine if that symbol was replaced by a big wall, what that would say to the world? So on the whole issue of immigration and immigrants, we want to get the Dreamers, full Dreamer Act done, but we want to prevent these bad things, including things against sanctuary cities and more, and we'd fight internal enforcement. Second thing we want to do is stabilize Obamacare, ACA. We would like to certainly see cost sharing made permanent and long. There are other changes such as reinsurance provisions that can help stabilize Obamacare and deal with people who have very high medical expenses.

And so there are some things we would want to do to help stabilize Obamacare. That would be number two. And number three is a good budget. You know, they propose slashing in the House, particularly so many, whether it be food stamps or funding for EPA, funding for education, for infrastructure. They propose slashing all of it. And it's not just, you know, things, the things that they say, oh, the liberals love this. I mean, they cut transportation funding, which has generally been a bipartisan type issue. So we can restore all of those and get a good budget, which is our third goal. And that concomitant with that is eliminating poison pill riders, anti-labor, anti-environmental, anti-choice, anti-women, environmental, anti-LGBT riders, which they put in there, we can get out. The leverage

of the debt ceiling and having all of this come together at once should really help us. That's our goals. Senator Schumer, just take us in the room a little bit. What's it like to negotiate a deal with Trump? And do you have any concerns about blowback from the Democratic base about being seen working with Trump? Well, here has always been my principle, and that is this. I am not going to obstruct for its own sake, but I am not going to compromise for its own sake either. Be guided by our internal gyroscope, our principles. So if he, for instance, comes round to our view on DREAMers, which Nancy and I were able to persuade him of in that meeting, fine, we'll work with him. He says he needs border security.

Well, we're not against border security. We're totally against the wall. We're against all kinds of very invasive type things and internal enforcement. But, you know, if it's more drones or better roads along the border, that probably would be worth it in terms of getting a full Dreamer Act. So that's what we do. And we have been,

generally there has been almost huge acceptance of both our deals because we've stuck to our principles. How'd you get him to like you? I heard he's a big fan. I heard he thinks you're more fun to talk to than Mitch. Well, that's a low bar. Not that I say anything bad about Mitch, but he's a little quieter than me, shall we say. Right, right.

But in any case, you know, I'm a New Yorker and I talk right at him. And I tell him where I think he's wrong. Here's how I opened up our meeting the second time. I said, Mr. President, he invited us to come to the White House. The president invites, you've got to go. So I said, Mr. President, there's huge distrust among our caucuses, meaning Nancy and me, our party, and our constituents and our people, because of kinds of things you've done, like the Muslim ban, like doing health care in a partisan way, like what happened at Charlottesville. And you, you know, for us to get some trust back with our constituents, you've got to do some things.

And to get back, for you to get any trust with all but your base, you need to do some things. And we proposed Dreamers. And the other thing we actually proposed was stabilizing health care, which we talked about in a minute. On the health care one, he didn't bite. So we're going to have to fight for that in the December budget. But on Dreamers, he seemed genuinely, he said, you know, he understood that they didn't come in through any fault of their own,

that they're good Americans, good kids. And then he said he wants the wall in return. And we said, no, no wall, Mr. President, no wall. And he tried that for about 15 minutes. But, you know, he's not going to push me around verbally or any other way. And he finally said, OK, we won't do the wall. We'll do some other kind of border security. And we suggested that General Kelly, his chief of staff, and Nancy's staff, and my staff negotiate something. Now, they haven't negotiated much since then. And he got a load of blowback from the right wing. I think one of those commentators, Laura Ingraham or Coulter, called him Amnesty Donald. One of them called for him to be impeached. So they've slowed down on it.

But we're trying to get those negotiations going again. And I do think he wants to help the Dreamers, but I also think there's not many people around him who want to get that done. So it's sort of slowing us down. But we're going to keep at it because it's so important. But negotiating with him, what I find is I go right back at him as a New Yorker, and he sort of seems to enjoy that. Well, we hope you continue these tough negotiations and get a good deal at the end of the year. And thank you so much for coming back on the program. We'll have to have you on again after the next deal-making session. Well, thank you, and thanks for the good

job you do. It is my daughters who turn me on to your show, and they are 28 and 31. Oh. So you've got a great audience there, not a bunch of old bats like me. Well, tell your daughters thank you so much for listening. We appreciate it. All right. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you, Senator. On the pod today, the host of With Friends Like These, Anna-Marie Cox. Welcome, Anna. Hello. Hello, hello, hello. It is good to be here. Who will you be speaking with for this week's episode? It is the live show that I did with Michael Steele, former RNC chairman, show that i did with uh michael steel uh former rnc chairman and the best lieutenant governor maryland has ever had uh at least of the one who is both black and republican definitely the best um and he he was awesome he was he was a real crowd pleaser uh he's a very funny guy um where was the show where did you record this oh gosh i'm gonna forget the name of the theater but it

was in the texas student union it was in the Texas Student Union. It was in Austin. It was awesome. It was great. It was 92 degrees, but not in the studio. The studio is fairly cool, but it was very warm in Austin, which I don't mind. I don't mind warmth. I can tell you that Michael Steele is an entertaining guy. I'd be interested in that conversation. I just Googled lieutenant governor uh-huh and there are there have only been nine so he's in the right although kathleen kathleen kenny townsend might have something to

say about it he's definitely in the top 10 that's for sure definitely in the top 10 um it was really fun i mean we talked about we talked about the you know kaepernick protests we talked about racial resentment and economic anxiety uh and i guess i'll preview just a bit which is that he came a little you know came down harder on the economic anxiety argument than i would have expected yeah he's still a republican. I mean, you know, he still is. And he says, you know, he hasn't torn up his voter registration yet. He's not there yet. So we talk about that. I think it was awesome. It was great. I'm getting better at selling the show.

That was a great pitch. I'm going to listen. Thank you. Thank you. So I wanted to talk to you guys about something that I noticed this morning. I didn't see the statement yesterday, but Trump attacked Facebook yesterday. It said, you know, Facebook has always been anti-Trump. And then, you know, they colluded with the New York Times and Washington Post and everyone else against him. I don't think he knows what the word collusion means. It just keeps using it in the wrong way.

So anyway, so Trump sends this tweet out. And then later in the day, we get a statement from Mark Zuckerberg that he posts on Facebook. And it starts, Every day I work to bring people together and build a community for everyone. We hope to give all people a voice

and create a platform for all ideas. Fine, nice, lovely, great. Then Zuckerberg goes on to say, hope to give all people a voice and create a platform for all ideas fine nice lovely great then zuckerberg goes on to say trump says facebook is against him liberals say we help trump both sides are upset about ideas and content they don't like that's what running a platform for all ideas looks like is that what it looks like um i'll jump in yeah uh you know it's not so much that liberals say that facebook helped trump it's that the fbi says the intelligence agencies the law enforcement agencies yeah they say they abetted russian trolls that's what the situation is like it's not like liberals running around saying anything um except you know, pointing to intelligence agency reports.

So there's that. I mean, obviously, like he's running. This is like the worst example of, you know, kind of what about isms, both sides ism that I've heard in quite a while. It drives me. It's like a very Silicon Valley ethos, which is if you talk to a lot of people there a lot of people in tech companies sometimes or at least a lot of leaders of tech companies there there's a lot of you know what i think about politics i think there's just silly partisanship on both sides and if we could only get rid of that and you know disrupt politics and government

with technology all the problems would be solved and just like yeah pay some attention we used to call that read the news to call that fruit fruitopianism when i worked in silicon valley for briefly uh during one of the dot-com booms um yeah i don't know if he's visited facebook lately but the whole every day I work to bring people together. I don't know. I mean, that's not my Facebook feed. I don't know about you guys. No.

I get he believes that this is, you know, the most important thing about Facebook is to keep it this, keep it as a platform that anyone can use, that it's a free expression of ideas, that they don't want to censor things blah blah blah blah yeah that is separate and apart from a foreign adversary using the platform to disrupt an election um it's like liberals you know both sides are upset about ideas and content they don't like liberals aren't out there complaining that republicans are posting um you know please embrace donald trump's fucking tax plan to lower the marginal rate. No one's upset about that. We're upset that, like, you know, there's posts about how John Podesta is running a child porn ring. You know, that's the content we're upset about.

That post is not true. Just in case people missed that. That post is not true. That is not true. That is not something. Look, I think you are right that part of the Silicon Valley ethos, certainly pre-Trump, was partisan politics is trivial and what we need to do is focus on changing the world. There's a utopian sense to it. But there's also this awkward dance that a lot of people in Silicon Valley go through because they are liberal. Most of the people who work for them are liberal. All of their neighbors are liberal, yet they have conservative customers or users like Facebook. And so Facebook's in this situation where I think

the statement was incredibly tone deaf, and it is the the worst defensive actions ever it's the thing that reporters say that drive us insane which is well a lot of conservative leader readers say i'm too liberal a lot of liberal readers say i'm too conservative so therefore i must be doing everything right it's like the goldilocks defense uh yeah it's like a fucking bull simpson panel on meet the press yeah the the challenge for facebook is pretty, which is more than any other tech company except Google, their platform is used by everyone. And so it is not – a lot of these companies, whether it's like Uber or others, have a more – are used more in cities that are – if you were to poll their users it would be more liberal than conservative because it'd be younger who are more liberal than conservative facebook everyone's on facebook all these trump people are on facebook the 47 percent of the company the 38

percent of the country that loves trump they're all on facebook and they haven't figured out how to wrestle with that with with that in a way they don't they're just not deft enough to handle that because this is an incredibly complicated political messaging challenge and they're not up to that dan it's love it two things i just came in here with i just came in here with both dogs and they're going bananas specifically leo is the one you can hear and then also there is fake news that leo is the fucking barker when Pundit is the barker. There you go again. Not taking responsibility.

The entire company. You won't take responsibility. Every employee of this company will tell you exactly what's going on. You ask them. Oh my goodness. My goodness. Can you guys take this to a staff meeting? Your lack of, you know, this is the problem.

You're not relatable in these moments. You know, you go off. I mean, people don't care about which dog did what. You know, Leo barked. Pundit barked. But the bottom line is dogs are barking and we just need to change you all know what's going on on the matter you can tell on the matter of facebook i also think that that's something love it what's your opinion on what on facebook i mean out of control we wanted we wanted to know that's why we asked you wait Wait, someone asked him? Is that right? That hurt.

All I was going to say is, yeah, I don't care. All I was going to say is that there's a kind of like, there's this strain of Silicon Valley that's sort of cosmopolitan conservative in that they really don't have a political home. Like, they're pro-gay. They're in a kind of liberal epicenter. But they're, like, if there was a world in which you could believe in libertarian like anti-government policies and be pro-gay and if there was like a big American party that was a home for that kind of thinking, I think there would be a lot of these kind of whatever Rockefeller, Silicon Valley conservatives. But they don't. So they're ostensibly liberals.

But then they – that's it. I think that's right. I think they also get they are more scared of the right and Republicans yelling at them for being liberal than they are for from about the left yelling at them. I just think that's I think that they probably get more complaints. I mean, remember, like the trending topics issue with Facebook and they invited like all these Republican strategists and consultants to Facebook to tell them like how wrong they were you know like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck right yeah exactly you know I also want to want to say I think another problem that Silicon Valley has in terms of how they view their role is that they don't view their role like they think of their platforms as public utilities as these impartial areas,

you know, of towns that are like town squares where anyone can say anything and their duty is to just make sure that the, there's some kind of level playing field and everyone has equal access, but that's a lie. These are not public utilities and also not everyone has equal access. And also the way these forums are constructed, you know, that, you know, privileges, some voices over others and the way these forums are constructed you know that you know privileges some voices over

others and the way that these you know they're policed privileges some voices over others you know twitter and facebook have that have abuse problems that they are sort of systematically unable to really address and it's definitely not by making longer tweets. Yeah, and we should throw Twitter in there too because Twitter has the same kind of abuse, different kind of abuse problems, but there are serious abuse problems as well. No, yeah, I think you're exactly right. And I understand that, look,

they like to think of themselves as platforms only. The truth is they are media companies and media companies have certain responsibilities i get their challenge which is that it is a slippery slope and it is very hard to curate and edit with it without going into you know we're going to police free speech but they have to figure out a way to do it the answer is not to like yell at liberals no and i also want to point out that one thing that's maybe, to me, the most terrifying part of this conspiracy is that they didn't make us racist and divisive, right? They just weaponized existing sentiments. And they are the ones that shouted fire in a crowded theater, but we're the ones that overpacked the theater and didn't build any fire exits.

And so it's hard to say. And they would say that, and they're right about that, too. I actually would. No, I think that's mostly right. But I think it's a little bit also, you know, you pull the trigger on the gun, but the trigger pulls your finger, too. It is true that Twitter and Facebook exposes a lot of animus and hatred and racism that was there underneath the surface. But there's also a part of these – the way these platforms are built that makes it easy and simple to kind of snowball these ideas. And so there are plenty of people out there using Twitter to espouse racist ideas, taking on a racist persona online because it's fun and they're angry and they're bitter.

Anonymity. Anonymity and all the rest that in their personal life and in their private life would never engage in that kind of conduct. And by virtue of the fact that they've been doing this online for so long, it has changed them and made them more like the person that they became when they started tweeting these heinous things to begin with. that they became when they started tweeting these heinous things to begin with. Yeah, I was gonna say there's a couple of things happening here, which is one, Facebook in particular has grown so big so fast that the people at Facebook have do not know what is happening or how people are using the platform. They obviously never imagined a world where Russia could use their ad buying system and essentially use the algorithm that fuels the platform to push, to intervene in our election in a malicious way. That had never even occurred to them, so they were not prepared for that.

And it's so big that they don't know that when they make their statements about what has happened and what's not happened, they don't really know the answer, which is why they've had to revise their approach to this like, like 12 times now. And there's a much bigger question that is true of both Facebook and Twitter and Instagram about it's like, it's sort of an existential question around how these algorithms that, which predict what we're interested in and then double and triple down on that, how that affects the human mind, right?

Because it creates this impression that everyone feels the way you feel because it's showing you only the things the people who feel. Now, that's also the fault of the user who is making a set of choices that these are the things they want. Like, no, I mean, it's the same challenge that when we yell at ABC News or NBC News or CBS, like, why are you leading with the weather instead of, you know, healthcare or tax policies? It's because people watch weather, right? So it's, at the end of the day, it's also the fault of the people that they are making a set of, they are choosing this sort of life over a different sort of life where you're exposed to different ideas.

Yeah, it's a tough one. But anyway, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can find our Instagram account. That was very much like, that was very much like, who boy, Twitter, I don't know. Okay, well, everyone, I think, I think we're ready for the outro. Are we ready for the outro? Music. I'm never, I am never ready for the outro are we ready for the outro? music I'm never

I am never ready for the outro I'm never not ready for the outro everyone check out Anna's episode with Michael Steele and we're about to go to a recording of Love or Leave It this evening oh yes yeah we are

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