Pod Save America - "A garbage organization that protects harassers."

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

Trump’s popularity and agenda falter, Senate Democrats filibuster Neil Gorsuch, and Fox News lets Bill O’Reilly get away with sexual harassment. Then, climate scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to explain what people can do to fight climate change.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we have the director of Texas Tech University Climate Science Center, Catherine Hayhoe. We're going to ask her all about climate. Great. Going to figure it all out with her. Also, please subscribe to all of our podcasts, guys. Pod Save the World.

We're going to talk about China this week. Xi Jinping is coming to the Mar-a-Lago this week. Lost, among all the other stuff. So it'll be interesting. We're going to preview that. Jared Kushner got that all set up. So that's terrific. We're good to go.

By the way, that was seamless, the way you said the president of China's name, Tommy. I used to work in this stuff. That's right. Also subscribe to With Friends Like These, Anna-Mar Marie Cox, and The Growing Juggernaut, Love It or Leave It. Guys, we had a great time on Friday. It was a lot of fun. You should try the episode.

Tommy was on. It was fun. I compared Tommy to a certain item of clothing. I'm not going to ruin it for you, but you should listen. It's basically been trending on Twitter. It's weird to be your foil for a little while. I guess I deserve it. Tickets are still on sale for our LA show on uh may 17th at the ace hotel

so go grab some of those and we have merch on sale right yeah today the t-shirts are back the t-shirts are back we're doing friend of the pod we're doing pod save america and due to popular demand repeal and go fuck yourself oh nice don't buy any of this knockoff amazon red bubble crap i'm upset with those people. I don't even want to talk about it. I don't even talk about people. You know what? No, we're not going to cut it out.

We're going to leave it in and just going to say a phrase one time. Cease and desist. That's it. Let that just ring through your ears, Amazon creeps. Here we go. Okay, that's good. Let's begin, as we often do, with the goings-on in the mind, in the addled, the addled wounded mind of our highly unpopular president. This morning, Trump was busy tweeting, once again, the lie that Obama spied on him and his team.

He got this from the intrepid reporters at Fox and Friends. It's amazing. In one of his tweets, he also included the FBI's Twitter handle because apparently that's the only way he can get in touch with them. Tweeted at the FBI like, hey, check out this report on Fox and Friends, even though the FBI has of course denied that Obama wiretapped him. In the circular nature of it, it's like clearly his staff

leaks his stuff to Fox. Fox reports it. He tweets it like it came out of nowhere, like it was real shoe-leather reporting. Honestly, if you just did it with closed-circ, like it was real, you know, shoe leather reporting. Honestly, if you just did it with closed circuit television, nobody would have to know Trump is doing this. He also, in the middle of the tweets about the Fox and Friends report, he just randomly started tweeting some nonsense about John Podesta and his brother in Russia. He goes, Hillary got the debate questions, never apologized. Just asking.

Which is like Tom Petty, you know, going to the old hits. There was a story this morning that sort of got some of this going, which was Eli Lake reported that it turns out, you know, the whole Devin Nunes thing when he went to the White House and he had the sources at the White House that said that some of the Trump officials were caught up in incidental collection of intelligence. And it seems as though Susan Rice is the one who was asking for those names to be unmasked for her to understand the foreign intelligence, which is completely within the realm of normal, right? Yeah, I mean, we don't know. We don't know what was reported. We don't know what Eli's source is telling him. I would guess that it rhymes with Blunez. Revin Blunez might have been his source as a little. Hey, let me get you back for lying to your face, Eli. Eli is a friend of mine. I can speculate like that on the pod.

But, you know, what might have happened here is Susan was reading an intelligence report that said named U.S. officials said X, Y or Z to Israeli official, like name a foreign country. And she was trying to figure out maybe this individual was undercutting U.S. policy or negotiating something in violation of the norm that there's one president at a time. It's like Obama was still president. Right. She was trying to figure out what's going on. Yeah.

And that's just, that's not just legal, but it is completely appropriate and necessary to do your job. Like, hey guys, I'm doing my job trying to do national security business. And I keep hearing about unpaid Trump people talking to our counterparts. That's bad. Yeah, that sounds bad. You know, like, you know, Susan has been savaged ever since the Benghazi incident. She had nothing to do with the security for the individuals, the embassy. She has nothing to do with why the individuals there died. That was a tragedy. That's something we need to fix. She went on Sunday shows later and used talking points that were dated and needed

to be fixed and got it wrong. And she apologized and atoned for that sin. But she is still like catnip for these guys. And they freak out when they see your name and they go crazy. Yeah. Also, two years of bullshit about that. Two years of bullshit. So CBS News poll, poll 74 of republican voters think it's at least somewhat likely that trump's offices were wiretapped during the campaign so my question about this whole thing is it's like does it should we care about this does it matter that like the the closed circuit thing that you were talking about with between fox and friends and trump right isn't this responsible for it he he tells a lie fox backs up his lie and the fox complex all

the related fox organizations um and then on then the republican base believes it and then we have to just sort of like move on i feel like there's like that's the world we're living in right and there's not much we can do about this you know trump and his sort of propaganda machine built up around him can get this information out there and can make people believe that but honestly it doesn't really matter. Like, OK, you know, people are going to believe that there was something going on with people spying on Trump during the election. It doesn't take anything away from the very big and serious investigation that is slowly chipping away at the Trump administration. You know, somebody made this analogy on Twitter, which I thought was a good one.

It's like Trump's been caught having an affair and he's just attacking his girlfriend for looking at his phone. And so, you know, OK, like you're going to keep doing that. All right. Hillary got a debate question from Donna Brazile in the primary. OK, OK. Your national security adviser resigned. The senator Mark Warner from Virginia says more and more of the dominoes are going to fall. So good luck with that, man. You know, in the end, the truth is coming out and what matters is the thing itself. Yeah. He gave a pretty crazy interview to the Financial Times over the weekend that they released. Two things I just want to bring up from that interview. One, foreign policy,

so I'm going to ask you, Tommy. He was asked about North Korea. He said, quote, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. And that's all I'm saying about that. What the hell did he mean by that? Do you know? I mean, real quick, back to your point. I think that this bigger challenge is like a cancer of partisanship in our political system, which is like everyone believes everything based on what party they're in. So I don't know that it's bigger than Trump.

It's like something we need to solve more broadly. The North Korea portion of that FT interview is baffling. First of all, it's baffling that they were like, hell, let's sit this guy down with the FT. I was going to ask about that. Clearly he's fucking clueless. Clueless. He's learned nothing. He's learned nothing in this process.

So a couple things in North Korea. The journalist says, what is the incentive about North Korea? And he says, I think it's trade. I don't think anybody thinks it's trade. Everyone thinks that the way you incentive, China's, what they're looking at with respect to North Korea is one,

if the place collapses, they're going to have a flood of refugees into their country. Two, if the peninsula reunifies and North and South Korea are all South Korea or some new thing, they're likely to be an American ally and our military assets move further and further up the peninsula towards their border. So there's a lot of things they're worried about and ways to incentivize their involvement. None of that's to do with trade or all the weird things he pivots to because he doesn't know what he's talking about. He does not know what he's talking about. There were so many moments in that interview where he clearly just did not understand the

question and he just went back to his old talking points. Like there's one who's like, is it a virus or the antidote? And he goes, ah, we're going to start winning again. Like it just says absolutely no idea. Right. They're like, well, so, you know, can we press you on this? If you're not going to, China's not going to sell North Korea, we will appoint you. And he goes, I don't have to say any more.

Totally. Totally. The other big one in that interview was health care, which is, he said that a deal is still being negotiated with the Freedom Caucus. It's not. But, quote, if we don't get what we want, we will make a deal with the Democrats and we will have, in my opinion, not as good a form of health care, but we will have it. So, we have to break into, like, what is going on with health care right now. than what you'll get from me now, right? It's sort of just a counter-proposal. I mean, the one thing I took away from that interview is it actually, it didn't actually seem as crazy as usual to me. A lot of the parts, like, you know, saying things like...

No, dude. Yeah, what? I thought, I don't, maybe not crazier than usual, but definitely dumber than usual, or as dumb as it usually is. Yes. None of the words made sense in that interview. He said alliances have not always worked out very well for us, okay? I guess talking about NATO, all of this was just head-scratching.

I think Blake Hounshell from Politico sort of remarked on the collective sort of, eh, to the interview. When you think, if this was six months ago, people would have just been like, we are fucked. I just took it as garbled Trump nonsense. I just took it as garbled Trump nonsense. I want to go back to health care because something's going on with health care here when he says we'll have to make the deal with the Democrats. Because obviously the Democrats are not going to help him on this. But there is a hope in the White House that they can get the Democrats to fix this. And this is the hope.

If they sabotage the insurance markets, they think that they will be able to then get Democrats to fix them. And there is a theory in the White House among some right now, Bannon, Pence, and others, that what they'll do is stop making those payments. In the law, you're supposed to be making payments to help with cost sharing so that you don't have deductibles rise on low-income Americans. If they stop making these payments, you could get a death spiral in some of these markets. They could do a whole number of things to sabotage the individual insurance markets, put it into a death spiral, and then

hope that the Democrats will come to the table. Now, this is still crazy because if they do that, they fucking own this. I know we're not in the prediction business anymore, but they are crazy if they think that people will blame Democrats and not the person they see on TV every day. Agreed. But the scary part about the whole thing is not who gets blamed, right?

Because I agree with you that I think they will get blamed for this, but it does mean that a lot of innocent people will be hurt by this who don't need to be. People will literally die. Again, and Paul Ryan is just as big of a liar on this, too. It is entirely within the power of the federal government without further legislation

to shore up the individual insurance markets in Obamacare. It is entirely within their power. If Barack Obama were in office right now, he could take, or any Democrat, or any reasonable Republican, they could take a number of steps without Congress to help shore up, maybe not as strongly as they would if they had legislation to do some fixes on ACA, but within their own authority, they could fix the markets. Right. I mean, we're so like sort of through the looking glass on all this stuff. What Tom Price or what these people should be saying is we don't like Obamacare. We think it's a bad law. We'd like to change it. But we're going to do our best to make sure it works for the people of this country because that's our job. Now, you could see like a President McCain doing that, a President Romney saying that.

It's also what Trump promised he would do, right? And we're at this point now where we are legitimately unsure whether or not the Trump administration is going to sabotage the American healthcare system. And the fact that it is a legitimate possibility gives me such a knot in my stomach. It's just really sad.

So he is very unpopular right now. Gallup had him at 38% over the weekend. Real Clear Politics average is 41%. FiveThirtyEight has him at 40%. Democrats are at 9% approval. Independents are in the high 30s. And notably, Republicans are anywhere from 80 to 90, which is low for Republicans. So why is he unpopular?

Well, it's some combination of, it seems like from reporting from some of these polls, it's some kind of combination of the people who always disliked him. The healthcare thing was extremely unpopular. And now word of his tremendous budget cuts is leaking out there. So Nick Kristof of the New York Times went out to Trump country to talk to some people about the budget cuts, specifically Trump supporters, Trump voters. A few quotes from some of these Trump supporters. My prayer is that Congress will step in to protect the domestic violence programs that save this woman's life. Quote, why is building a wall more important than educating people? That was from a Trump voter. Quote, if he's preaching jobs, why take away jobs?

So, of course, the issue with all of these Trump voters who said this is they all to a person said they will probably still vote for Trump for reelection. So and there have been a lot of explanations for that in there. And first thing is we're two months and two weeks in. So give everybody a chance to process what's going on. People do not like telling a reporter that they were wrong. Nobody likes doing that. Right. Also, we are fetishizing a very small subset of the population. You know, there's been no there's been no soul searching around the black working class and the Hispanic working class who are also being screwed by this president.

And the other thing is, there's just no polling that bears out focusing on this small group of people. Poor people didn't vote for Trump. Poor people don't vote. You know, like the poorest places vote for Hillary just as much as they vote for Donald Trump. It is a crazy media produced kind of focus. And it's like this, somehow it's like, when white people are poor, it's fascinating and nostalgic.

And when black people are poor, we don't talk about it. Yeah, I mean, voting against your economic interest is hardly a new phenomenon. You see on the minimum wage, you see it on Republican tax policies. This happened for a long time. It's something Democrats have done a lot of hammering about. I am very skeptical that enough people know about what's in the budget to really change opinions. I understand that when issues get localized, you start to feel it, et cetera. But nothing's happened yet. It's been two and a half months. I think that there's just he wasn't that popular to begin with. They didn't

like the choice they were offered. And there's this general, like, chaotic malaise that's, you know, in all of the coverage. I mean, the guy has not had a good day since his groundbreaking joint session speech that everybody loved. Yeah, I just, I totally agree with all that. I think it is interesting because, again, we all, I'll go back to that Kellyanne Conway quote, like, there's a difference between what offends people and what affects people. I think it's not just what Conway quote, like there's a difference between what offends people and what affects people. I think it's not just what offends people, but there's a difference between what the national media focuses on every day. There's been like Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, right?

Like Trump's tweets, all this kind of other stuff. will be because of budget cuts, health care legislation, things that affect people's lives and their day-to-day lives, because a lot of these voters, they just don't pay attention to the news as closely as the rest of us do. And like you said, Lovett, it takes time for this stuff to filter down. And the question they're going to ask themselves, not just, and again, there's Trump fans and there's Trump voters. And all of these pieces continue to interview Trump fans, right? It's like, you really want them to interview these people who are like, you know, I hate Trump and I hate Hillary Clinton, but I think he might bring about change. So I'll reluctantly cast my ballot for him. Those are the people that we should always be looking at. because put the budget cuts aside, put the healthcare aside, put all the machinations that come out of DC.

People voted for Trump because of what they didn't see in their world, right? Which is this like change, improvement, jobs, a culture and society they want to live in and feel like they're a part of. And like Trump can't change that. And well, a president can maybe change that. A great leader can change that, can do things.

But Trump has not proposed anything to help these people, right? Like he's not bringing the coal jobs back an executive order on climate's not going to bring the coal jobs back so what's what are these people hoping for they're not going to get from him yeah and i and i do think the lesson for democrats here is because some of these people told nick kristoff like well you know we don't like the democrats because they call us bigots for voting for trump i think the lesson for democrats Democrats is people need to vote for something, right? And you could imagine some of these people, if a Democratic candidate came along who was proposing good ideas on jobs and told them, like, this is the vision for the future.

But, like, you could see them saying, OK, I want to give that person a chance. Maybe that person might change Washington where Trump couldn't. That's what they're going to say to vote for a Democrat. Yeah, and also I just think, as with all things, you know, people are complicated. And what they tell a reporter as to why they're not changing their mind is not necessarily what's going on. Right. Like, that's true for me. That's not some elitist point. Like, it's really hard to figure out why you think the way you think. And, you know, there's there's cultural reasons. There's economic reasons.

There's all kinds of reasons. And just none. economic reasons. There's all kinds of reasons. And just none of I guess what I want to think what I come down to is like, we can't let all this kind of focus on the why these people are voting and suggesting it may be cultural or tribal. We have to propose simple, elegant policies that will help them. That's it. Hey, don't go anywhere. This is pod save America and there's more on the way. a filibuster, very likely, while we're recording this or by the time you hear this, they'll have received 41. Schumer thinks it's likely they'll have 41. Let's pretend they have 41. Let's pretend it for this. Yeah, we have only about three Dems, or now I guess four Dems, because Mike Bennett came out in support of them,

supporting Gorsuch, or at least saying that they won't support the filibuster. So, what do we think about this? It seems like, do we have, I mean, they will have a filibuster, it seems like McConnell will have the votes to change the rules and Gorsuch will sit on the bench. Right. Yeah, I just when we were in power, we used to say elections have consequences and it was seen as condescending and trite and it wasn't intended to be because it's a fact. You know, I mean, this is what happens. I realize the seat was stolen, but I don't know that we can do anything to stop Gorsuch.

And it's infuriating, but it's the reality. Yeah, the seat was stolen. We should be able to get retribution for this, but we can't because we don't have the numbers. I don't even know what should means here. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, I think, you know, you've seen this sort of a lot of these stories mentioned that there sort of seems to be kind of a lack of energy on both sides in this fight. And I think there's a kind of malaise around it, in part because we're so far from principle. You know, I was before before we were going to record, I just was like, I don't really even understand what's at stake here. And you look and you look and you see like the hackiest Republicans on Twitter saying this is what Democrats do. And it's time they get their payment for what they've done over the years. They always do this. And then, of course, there's the Democratic hacks who say the opposite. And so I went and I was like, look, I was like, let me look at this and figure out what happened here. It's like, you know, a string shooter. And you look and you say, OK, there's like four key events.

One is Robert Bork. You really do have to start there, which was a crazy fight that changed the way we talk about judges forever. But it wasn't a kind of thing where Democrats changed the way we do this. Republicans voted against Bork, too. Six Republicans voted against Bork. But that sort of set the table for all these years of fighting. What happened next is event number two, which is the unprecedented obstruction of judges in the Clinton administration by the Republican Senate. And that was an escalation, full stop. And they blocked dozens of judges. And those spots were escalation, full stop. And they blocked dozens of judges. And those spots were held open for when George W. Bush took office. Third event,

Bush administration, George W. Bush administration. Democrats frustrated by years of Republicans holding up votes. We didn't hold up. We were not in power. So we just tried to block 10 judges. And if you remember, that was when the word nuclear option was first invoked by Bill Frist, or I think Trent Locke coined the term. And there was a gang of 14 that had a compromise, which let most of the judges through. It really was a capitulation. It was a compromise, but it was a capitulation to Republicans. invoking the nuclear option to get Obama judges through after another round of unprecedented obstruction by Republicans. And so you look at this in this grand sweep of things, and you can blame both sides a bit, but for Harry Reid invoking the filibuster to punish basically a decade of intransigence, it has been a Republican-led effort that Mitch McConnell has been central to, and the Garland, holding up Garland is the final straw. And it is incredibly unprecedented. The filibuster for Supreme Court judges will fall. It's just the

next thing. There's just absolutely no possibility of any kind of approachment. This is what's next. And we should just draw the line on Garland. And if we lose, we lose. But we should fight it to the end. Well, this is what I'm saying is like, I think part of the reason this was this was like a conclusion that was long. We knew this was going to happen from the end well this yeah this is what i'm saying is like i think part of the reason this was this was like a conclusion that was long we knew this was going to happen from the beginning of this fight right we knew mcconnell was going to nuke the filibuster we knew that we weren't going to be able to do this like i just think it's it is just like everything else in our political culture right now which is um things that are norms and rules and traditions but that aren't set into law are going to fall by the wayside in a partisan environment like this.

And we need to understand that. Like that is the central thing. There's a fundamental change that happened and these little fights that are popping up are emergent properties of that change. But to show how bullshit all this is too, like Chuck Todd asked on Meet the Press sunday asked mitch mcconnell which is a really smart question yeah he goes okay so will you commit to a rule now where no supreme court nominee will be confirmed in an election year anymore since that's what you said with for garland and mcconnell goes no that's an absurd question to ask yeah well no one owns hypocrisy like mitch mcconnell you know what fuck you he's the most hypocritical lawmaker in power period

because it just i mean let's remember what happened with Garland just one more time. Scalia dies. Within one hour after Scalia dying, McConnell says, Obama will not be able to nominate a Supreme Court justice. It was 11 months left to go in Obama's term. And he decided not to do that. So, like, you just have to say, Mitch McConnell decided, fuck traditions, fuck norms, fuck rules.

The only thing I have to abide by is actual laws. And so if I can do whatever I want and hold up a Supreme Court nomination, I'm going to do it. And now he's saying, if I can nuke the filibuster up, I'll do that too. So people do things that they have the power to do.

It's a raw power game here. Harry Reid gets, I think, more than his fair share of the blame for this for some of his early statements. But I think McConnell is as cynical a Senate majority leader as we've ever had. Harry Reid invoked the nuclear rule for lower court judges

because of unprecedented obstruction. It was an unprecedented response to unprecedented obstruction. And then Garland comes along and we go to 100, right? There was no justification for it. There was no rule for it. It was pure power. And that's it. That's it. It's over. Here's my question. It's going to go. Do you think it matters? And some of the some of these red state Democrats that are up next time, you know, some of them said no. Some of them some of them are going to say yes. Some of them are going to say no. Do you think it matters to voters that much? I know. Do you think it matters to voters that much? I have one of the things that's been most fascinating to me over the years of Supreme Court fights is how is the polling about it, how not political the actual polling is. You see over and over again that like people want qualified judges confirmed no matter which party nominates it.

That may be part of product of not really knowing where the judges stand or not fully following it. But still, there really is some kind of it's actually like actually surprisingly positive. Right. But the only place I really see this being a big factor is in a presidential primary. You know, I mean, if you look back, if you if you had voted for any of the Bush nominees, it probably would have been a death knell in a primary. Well, so here's my next question. Last question on this. Should Dems who oppose the filibuster be primary?

Because some groups or some groups are starting to say they're not going to support any Democrat who who votes for Gorsuch. I think that's nuts. I hate these purity tests. I do not want to be the party that does these things. You know, I don't know, though. I guess like you look at where this is all heading. And so I want to agree with you on that. And because, you know, in principle, that makes sense. But you look at where this is heading and because you look at where this is heading and you say, OK, does that mean that you'll just at the point they'll never be a confirmation for a judge of the opposite party? Is that the logical conclusion of this? Right. Once we get rid of the filibuster and you need 51, if your party controls the Senate and the presidency is in the other party, there'll never be another seat filled. We'll have empty Supreme Court. Like, how does this end? Right. And so I want to agree with you there. At the same time, I understand the need to put pressure on these people, because if that is where we're going, if we are going to end up at a place where it's a pure partisan decision, then we need people who are going to fight. We're going to cut off our nose to spite our face,

right? I don't like Joe Manchin. I hate his politics. I find him personally annoying. But like, do I want to jump in on his primary and say, you're done, we're going to primary you, you're out of office because you don't agree with me on every decision, including the Supreme Court? I just I can't get myself to that place. of politics that would be better for the people of West Virginia rather than this kind of capitulating nonsense. I'm fine with that. I'm just not fine with a series of litmus tests on issues like this. There's something about it that I just don't like. Well, I do think it comes back to if you support or oppose

Gorsuch, you have to support or oppose him based on some principle about how he might affect people's lives. Going into the... There's a lot right now, like, he didn't answer my questions, he didn't do this,

he didn't do that. It's like, there is a judicial philosophy that Neil Gorsuch has that is very far to the right, in some respects, further to the right than Scalia, right?

So, if you believe that is very dangerous for people and is going to set, you know, decades, he's young, he's 49 years old,

decades of precedent that could really harm people then you know and then you should oppose him and forget about the filibuster the institution whatever else but if you think that the other party gets to have you know the person who just became president gets to nominate a justice in a conservative mold and like you hope that he you think that when it comes time to making a lot of decisions, he won't necessarily be partisan, but will abide by the law, then go ahead and vote for him. But like, at least explain that. And I wish, I wish that we could do that, right? I mean, Scalia, I don't,

Scalia was confirmed by what nearly unanimously 98 to zero. We don't live in that world anymore. And it's probably good that we don't live in that world anymore. But we're trapped in this tit for tat game. And I don't know how you reset it, right? Because you could, you know, they stop something, so we stop something, and then they escalate, and then we escalate. And basically, you go down this path, and then there'll never be another judge confirmed. You know, it used to be those kind of judicial philosophical questions weren't enough to justify voting against, right? It was merely a question of were you qualified. And now we're at a place where it's fully ideological. And I just don't know how you get out of that. And if that is how it's going to be, we have to fight 100% of the time.

But that's where I agree with your conclusion, your point before the conclusion, that it's ideological. I'm not saying anyone should vote for Gorsuch. I'm not coming out in support of him in any way, shape or form. What I'm what I'm having a problem with is setting up another litmus test and say we're going to primary everyone who doesn't oppose a Trump Supreme Court justice. I just think those are dangerous precedents. That's more money going to these races. You already have 10 Democrats, I think, having millions of dollars of ads run against them. I mean, I just think we could make things worse. I do think that the decision to primary someone or for a group not to support someone has to be broad and take into account their entire voting record right and not just one vote right unless it's

unless you're a group that that's your single issue i mean i don't know i mean you can do whatever you want as a group but um all right before we get to uh before we get to katherine hayhoe let's talk about bill o'reilly oh boy so over the weekend the new york times reported that five women received settlements totaling 13 million million after accusing O'Reilly of sexual harassment or verbal abuse. Basically, he would promise jobs with the expectation of sexual favors. This went on over many, many years. Some of these settlements had been reported in the past, but I think there were three or four new ones. So, Fox, in response to this, extended O'Reilly's contract.

So, I mean, it's pretty gross, guys. And it's gross for O'Reilly, but O'Reilly's always been a fucking asshole. But Fox News, after dealing with the Roger Ailes scandal, where they just paid out $20 million and Roger

Ailes was forced out, now they're going to stand behind o'reilly too fox news is a rotten organization right and along the way many people including us in the white house have tried to sort of bring them back into the fold and work with them and we sort of normalize that what they do they peddle lies they have a leadership that has sexually harassed and done whatever they wanted to women in that organization for decades. And they allow anyone who makes them money to get away with it for the money. It is for the money. Look no further than who's in the White House right now to like the message that sends to

every woman in this country who's dealt with this shit before. But it's unconscionable and people should speak up. And, you know, there's an organization on Twitter called Sleeping Giants that goes to every advertiser that advertises on Breitbart. And they've gotten like seventeen hundred and fifty people to pull ads. That kind of effort needs to be advertiser that advertises on Breitbart. And they've gotten like 1,750 people to pull ads. That kind of effort needs to be started with Fox until they get rid of this. I mean, that's how they got rid of Glenn Beck, right? Ultimately, Glenn Beck was canceled because the advertisers started pulling ads.

It is so despicable. You have Roger Ailes, who is sexually harassing women for his entire tenure, turning around and protecting Bill O'Reilly, who's sexually harassing people for his entire tenure, turning around and protecting Bill O'Reilly, who's sexually harassing people for his entire tenure. One thing that I think is fascinating about these stories, though, is it actually relates back to the Supreme Court fight, which is that Clarence Thomas wouldn't be confirmed today because the sexual harassment that he inflicted on Anita Hill would not get a pass the way this got a pass. And what's interesting to me is the rules changed on these guys, right?

They changed while they were in those jobs. They could get away with this for a long time. All of these stories were out. You know, I see people tweeting, I can't believe this story about Bill O'Reilly. It's been out there for years. The $9 million settlement, the transcripts of his abuse, the transcripts where he talked, where he threatens people and says, Roger Ailes will quietly get you in one way or another, that I'm the street fighter, I'm on TV, but we get you behind the scenes. All this stuff has

been out there for a really, really long time. And it is fascinating how all of a sudden there's a critical mass and then the culture remembers that it changed. I mean, the same thing happened to Bill Cosby because those stories were out there for years and years. And then all of a sudden, Hannibal Buress makes a joke and things unfur and you know the worst part is all of these people are allowed to stay at fox news which every day is the number one defender acting as state television for a man in the white house who is a sexual predator okay yeah and who has who has been who so many women came out to for allegations of harassment you know nothing came from it nothing was ever disproven like and we just went on like nothing happened it was literally on tape

bragging about it on tape and bill o'reilly every night defends donald trump's agenda and he has sexually harassed people he's defended roger ailes who sexually harassed people and no one fucking does anything at this organization and the other thing too is it's it's we have no idea how many settlements are out there because those settlements are pretty ironclad. Yeah. Right. That that that that that that people come forward. They look at their options. They look at whose careers have been destroyed by going forward. And they say, you know what, I'm going to settle. I'm going to settle. I'm going to take the money. And they write check after check after check because Fox News has generated billions of dollars or hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for their parent corporation and everybody

looks the other way and it's despicable. And Fox News and O'Reilly both in their statements said well none of these women called the Fox hotline there's a hotline you're supposed to call. Like after it's been well known for a long time that Roger Ailes had financed a unit at Fox entrusted with surveilling its own employees like maybe you don't want to call the hotline they hired bo deedle to trail these women around and they put them on air as a contributor the hotline man the call is coming from inside the house like you can't call the house you pick you call it's like roger ailes here how can i help you ah hang up disgusting disgusting i'm just so sick of the in the in the conversation about media

organizations and ideological media organizations left and right it's like and then there's there's organizations on the right, like Fox News, that just have a conservative viewpoint, and organizations on the left, like the Huffington Post. No. You know what? Fox is nothing like that. Fox is a garbage organization that protects sexual harassers, and they lie all the time, like you said. That's what they do. They are not a legitimate fucking news organization. There are some legitimate reporters in there.

A few left. A few. And Chris Wallace and what's his name? Shep Smith. You guys gotta look in the mirror because you're part of something fucking evil and you can't pretend you're not. It is evil. There is evil in the world.

And Fox News is a disgusting organization with giant old man heads attacking pretty young women and putting them on television if they'll do sexual favors. Like, that is not an acceptable news organization for the White House briefing room. I guess it is if you're sitting next to fucking Alex Jones, but otherwise. It's escalated a lot, guys. Escalated

pretty quickly. Unbelievable. Anyway, I don't know if we like Fox. It's so awful, man. No, I'm just sort of sick of them getting a pass every day. Agreed. Okay. When we come back, we will talk to climate scientist, Catherine Hayhoe. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. With us on Pod Save America today, the director of Texas Tech's University

Climate Science Center, climate scientist, Catherine Hayhoe. Catherine, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. So, we invited you on. We heard from one of our friends at the White House, Tanya, that when you were at the White House event, South by South Lawn, you were at an event with Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio,

and apparently you stole the show. You were much more impressive than either of those guys. Well, that's very kind of them to say. I definitely had fun. So last night I was asking folks on Twitter what they wanted to ask you, and I got many, many different versions of the same question, which is, how fucked are we? Yes, I saw that.

Okay. So what do you think? Well, I can answer that question, because I'm actually one of the people who does the research to answer that. And the answer, of course, is that a certain amount of change, there's nothing we can do. It's as if we've been smoking for 30 years already. Some of our lung damage is permanent. But I run this information out into the future.

And specifically, I look at the difference between what the future will look like based on the choices that we make today if we continue to pursue the clean energy economy or if we try our best to roll back the clock and pretend that it's 1900 and bump up the coal industry. There's a massive difference in our future depending on the choices we make today. So no, it is not too late in our actions and our choices do matter. So it's hard to overstate what a radical pick Scott Pruitt was to run the EPA. He sued the agency 14 times. He doesn't believe that CO2 is a primary driver of climate change, which is stunning. Even ExxonMobil said that. Can you talk about his selection,

what it means for U.S. climate policy, and if there's anything states, cities, or citizens can do to weigh in and push back? Yeah, I agree. I mean, putting somebody who doesn't believe in something in charge of that very institution is like putting one of the world's leading atheists in charge of the Church of England. It just doesn't make sense. Why would you do that? Now, the EPA is primarily concerned with regulating our air quality and our water quality. They don't do as much on climate change as other agencies, and that might surprise people. I work with agencies across the board, everybody from Department of Interior to infrastructure and commerce. But the EPA is primarily concerned about the immediate impact of burning fossil fuels on our lives, and that is pollution. Air pollution from fossil fuels kills 200,000 people in the United States every year.

That's how important these standards are. Not to roll them back, but to increase them. So one thing that Trump did, speaking of these standards, is he signed this executive order called the Energy Independence Order or something like that. But really, it's about rolling back the Clean Climate Plan, the Clean Power Plan. It was sort of a catch-all. There was a lot in there. What is the most worrisome to you? Yeah. Well, where should I start? to you? Yeah. Well, where should I start? So first of all, though, let's be clear. The Clean Power Plan was what the president could do with the abilities that he had at the time, but it would

not take us all the way to the Paris Agreement. So the Paris Agreement, signed about a year and a half ago almost, says that we should limit warming to at least two degrees and possibly one and a half if we can to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. And the Clean Power Plan was only part of the way there. We needed more. Now, of course, we're looking at not even that. We're looking at a lot less. But we're also looking at things that just lack common sense, like investing in the coal

economy when there's already twice as many jobs in the solar industry and coal jobs have been dropping like a rock, not because of the Clean Power Plan, but just because it's not an economically viable form of energy anymore. It's like investing in insuring up horse farms when Henry Ford is already rolling out the Model T on his assembly line. Honestly, the most concerning thing to me is that these regulations are going to be rolling the United States back

from an international perspective, from a technological perspective, back into possibly even a second world country. China is already poised to take the leadership, not just in the clean energy economy, they've already taken the leadership there, but with the climate plans as well. So the U.S. is losing leadership, and how long will it take to regain, if ever? So I know you do this a lot. What's the best way to talk to people

who don't accept climate science? What do you think the source of climate denial is, and how do you sort of break through that? That is a good question, and that's why one of the little global weirding videos that we did for PBS that you can find on YouTube, one of the most popular videos is, if I just explain the facts, they'll get it, right? So often, we hear people saying things that we know make no sense. Like, the Earth isn't warming, or it's just a natural cycle, or scientists don't know enough to actually say what it is yet.

And we know there's good facts that we can counter each one of those arguments with. There's a website called Skeptical Science that has answers to over 250 common but what about questions. What we've found, though, is that when we respond to people who are throwing up these science-y sounding arguments, or even religious-y sounding arguments like God wouldn't let this happen or the world's going to end anyways, why do we care? What we find is it's like playing the whack-a-mole game at the fair. You whack one mole, another one pops up. You whack that one, another one pops up. You can keep on playing this game infinitely because the real reason people object has

nothing to do with the science and everything to do with the solutions. They believe that if we agree that climate change is real, it means government control, loss of personal liberties, complete destruction of the economy, and all kinds of negative things that they're not willing to accept. No one really would. But that's why they've decided it's easier to say it isn't real than to say it is, but I don't want to fix it.

Just to dig in on this a little more, you see people who are worried about climate change try out different angles. There's health impacts, there's harm to public lands and what that might mean for hunters and fishermen. There's religious, spiritual terms, there's national security implications. It can feel like we're flailing around a bit when making that argument. Do you feel like there's a way people should present these facts or try to talk about this that is most convincing? That's a good question. It is completely true that connecting this issue of climate change to the values that we already have is one of the best ways to talk about this issue. So first of all,

rather than bringing in, you know, five feet worth of scientific reports and just whacking someone upside the head with all the data and information, instead, having a conversation, figuring out what makes them tick, and then saying, hey, you know what, I'm a parent too. And you know, this is what my daughter does, this is what your son does. And you know, I'm really concerned about this issue, you issue, climate change or air quality, because my child has asthma or I know that this affects children living in the city. So connecting first over a shared value is an incredibly effective way to talk about this. And we can find that shared value, maybe not with every single person on the planet, but with the majority of them, we can find that shared value

if we're willing to listen and talk first. One of the easiest ways, though, that I found to have a conversation is to start, again, not with the science, but rather by talking solutions. Because there are some incredible solutions out there that anybody at any end of the political spectrum can get completely enthusiastic about. And that's often a much more natural way to talk about it, because you can be enthusiastic and excited about it. And the social sciences show that if we agree with and support a solution to a problem, we're much more likely to actually agree that the problem is real. But if we feel like there's nothing we could or would want to do about it, then our instinctive reaction as humans is just to say, oh, well, it doesn't matter, or it isn't real.

So one thing Democrats have done, I think, over the past few years or decade really is try to take that advice, right? Recognizing that people aren't really taking the science appeal and talk more about jobs and the benefits of the economy and leadership on solar and leadership on renewables. And then what we've seen is actually a sort of a more partisan response, right? That Democrats increasingly care about the issue, but Republicans increasingly don't. There was a Gallup poll that said 66% of Democrats believe it's a serious

problem, and only 18% of Republicans have the same concern. How do you... I'm sorry to come back to this pessimistic problem, but, like, what do you do with that? Yeah, no, no, no. We have to look the facts in the face.

You can't just kind of, you know, shove your head under the carpet and pretend like it isn't, you know, it isn't a big deal. Right. I mean, you know, John and I, we wrote tons of speeches and we talked about the clean energy revolution and the jobs it'll bring and the promise of being a leader on these issues and the renaissance that will come. And here we are, you know? Yeah.

Well, here we are. But at the same time, things are changing. I mean, honestly, if you look at the last eight to ten years in the United States, and you look at where the greatest forward progress was happening on clean energy and on building resilience to a changing climate, as much as the president did and tried to do, the majority of the action was happening at the levels of individual states, cities, and in the tech sector. So all of that momentum is there, and things are changing. And I see them changing in Texas. I mean, a couple of years ago now, I was down visiting a farmer down by La Mesa, a very

conservative part of West Texas. visiting a farmer down by La Mesa, a very conservative part of West Texas. And after, you know, after we kind of got to know each other and had lunch together, I asked him a question that had been bothering me. I said, well, if you don't mind telling me, is there a reason why your neighbor has wind turbines right up to the edge of your property line, but you don't have wind turbines, you just have a couple of of oil wells and I was kind of expecting him to say something negative about oh liberal

whatever whatever and he said yes there is a reason so I said well what is it and he said I've been on the list for two years waiting for my turbine and my neighbor got on before me and I said oh well why do you want them and he said well it's because

the check arrives in the mail I mean those oil people are always driving in and off the land, messing up my roads. And the wind people, they set them up and they push the button from Florida. And so we're seeing these types of changes all across Texas. We already get 12% of our energy from wind. We have entire towns like Georgetown going 100% green, making a big point of the fact that they're just doing it because it's cheaper. And we have army bases like Fort Hood doing the same thing. And so I feel like in some ways, everything that's been said and talked about, about the clean energy revolution, it was just in advance of that boulder gathering the momentum enough to be rolling downhill by itself. And I feel like it's starting to do that now. So that raises a question that we get a lot from people, which is,

you know, what concrete steps can people take in their own lives to do something about this? You know, if you can't get wind turbines on your property, right? Like, what are some other steps that anyone out there can take who's listening right now? Oh, I love that question. And that was definitely another one of our little global weirding videos we did is, you know, I'm just one person. What can I do? The first thing we can do is get online and find a carbon calculator and actually figure out what our carbon footprint is. Because depending on who we are and what our lifestyle is, most of our carbon can be coming from different places.

It might be coming from driving my car and commuting. It might be coming from traveling. It might be coming from my places. It might be coming from driving my car and commuting. It might be coming from traveling. It might be coming from my diet. It might be coming from other things. And so the number one thing we can do is the most painless thing, which is step on the scale and actually measure it and see where it's coming from. And then there's all kinds of places that can give you helpful little hints. There's a great book called Cooler Smarter and lots of great websites

that can say, you know, if you're concerned about cutting your carbon footprint in terms of energy your house uses or your transportation or your lifestyle, here's what you can do. But the bottom line is today, in my opinion, the most important thing we can do about climate change as individuals is talk about it which we're doing today because studies have shown that over 75% of people in the United States talk about climate change less than a few times a year why because we're scared to we don't want to bring it up we don't want somebody to snap off our head and that's why it's so important to get those talking points about solutions, about Elon Musk's solar shingles, or how much money I save because I have a plug-in

hybrid now. Or, wow, I love those amazing light bulbs I got on Amazon. They use 10% of the energy, my electricity bill of almost nothing, but they give great light. We need these talking points. Talking is one of the most important things you can do, and that's why one of the organizations that I support as a science advisor is Citizens Climate Lobby, because they go in and they talk to every elected representative from every part of the spectrum, and they have been doing amazing things. There's a bipartisan climate solutions caucus in Congress now that has 34 members, 17 of which are Republicans. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is. And I also believe the carbon footprint of tweets is near zero.

Yes. And if you use a Mac, they use less electricity than a PC. Well, Catherine, so you sound pretty hopeful. Even though we have a pretty reactionary administration when it comes to climate, you seem hopeful about the future. Well, we have to be because despair is going to lead to inaction, and we can't afford to give up because, as I said at the beginning, my own research has shown that our choices make a difference.

I was going to make it, you know, in the movie Interstellar, a false sense of hope is how they, you know, solve their problems. So thank you for that. Yeah, that's right. No, I'm definitely not supporting kind of a Pollyanna view that everything will be okay if we just wait it out. Right. We have to take responsibility for what we can do, but we need that long-term hope to spur our full momentum. long-term hope to spur our forward momentum.

And I'm Canadian, and we had, you know, we had about eight or nine rough years in Canada, you know, the last decade. We have a new prime minister now who was able to put a price on carbon within a year of getting into office, in part, because things were so dark before in terms of scientists being muzzled and monitoring stations being shut down, a lot of the stuff that we're looking at here in the U.S. So I know this is very helpful to say, but I really hope that this is a wake-up call to all of us as individuals that our voice matters and we can make a difference and nobody else is going to take care of this problem for us. Well, that is a very

hopeful, good note to end on. Thank you so much, Catherine, for joining us today, and please come back again. I will. Thanks so much for having me. Alright, take care. That's our show for today. Thanks again to Catherine Hayhoe for joining us, and we'll see you later. Do you feel that optimistic about the climate? I do, after talking to Catherine. I want to be hopeful.

You've got to do something. That's how we're going to do this? Action. Like let the show end? I don't know. I don't know if I want to let the show end just yet. So the idea of being hopeful or not hopeful is like, are you doing something or not doing something? I think that's a better question to ask than are you hopeful or not. I tweet every day. You do.

You tweet every day. Okay. We will see you soon. Bye, guys. Bye..