Pod Save America - "Can I call you Easy D?"

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

The threat posed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump's battle against the judiciary, and the travails of Sean Spicer. Then, New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait joins Jon and Dan to talk about Obama's legacy and Trump's first few weeks.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we have writer for New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait, who has also written a book called Audacity, How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. I'm sure we're going to have a lot of disagreements with that book, Dan. Yeah, it seems controversial in the Podsafe America universe. Dan, I'm here in New York City. Welcome to winter.

Yeah, no shit. I think I was like the last flight out of LAX to here. We're here because Tommy and Lovett and I, tomorrow night, have a live show at the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Very exciting stuff. Crooked Media taking over the world. Live show in Brooklyn. Top-notch mention in Axios

this morning. I mean, that is some establishment shit right there, Dan. That's right. Can't wait to get your table to Four Seasons in Georgetown. We're going to be at Cafe Milano later this week. So, also want to remind everyone, Tommy was out with a new episode

of Pod Save the World yesterday. He interviewed Dan Restrepo, who was Obama's Latin America guru. Great episode. Sign up, subscribe, rate it. Also, subscribe to Pod Save America if you haven't. Rate us and review us in the itunes store always helps well well easy d can i call you easy d isn't that that's your name please don't call me

easy d um i feel like uh shit really went off the rail since monday huh yeah i this happens every time i listen to your podcast to the monday podcast. Like, what are John and I going to talk about? And then shit just gets crazier. We always have plenty to talk about between Monday and Thursday. It also shows, like, how slow time moves in the Trump era. Do you notice that? Like, it has been, it has only, he's only been in office, what, 21 days now? Yeah, it'll be a month.

Tomorrow will be one month since inauguration. Oh, tomorrow. Tomorrow will be one month since inauguration, which has felt like a lifetime. Did you see that story? I'll try to find this, but friend of the pod, Cody Keaton, sent it to us about how there's actually

a scientific reason it feels this way. Is that scientific reason because I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind? Yeah, that's right. People are usually pretty good about knowing how long, like be able to estimate time. Like I was doing that for 10 seconds or a minute. Unless they are very stressed,

and then they always dramatically underestimate it. It just feels longer than it is, or they overestimate it. And so basically we're living in a world of collective emotional trauma for America and the world. So we're gonna start on a happy note, you know? That's right. It does feel like that, though. So a few things happened in the old US Senate over the last couple days. A few things happened in the old U.S. Senate over the last couple days. There was quite a contentious fight over the nomination of Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, the nation's current new attorney general.

So there's this debate in the Senate over Sessions. And at one point, Elizabeth Warren got up to speak out against the nomination, which happens when there's a nomination you disagree with. And she started reading a letter from Coretta Scott King about why Jeff Sessions was a bad choice for federal judge in 1986 because he had a history of voter suppression. And the line was, and this was from Coretta Scott King's letter, And the line was, and this was from Coretta Scott King's letter, Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office as U.S. attorney in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. She called his conduct reprehensible. As Warren is reading this letter, Mitch McConnell invokes something called Rule 19 to call her out of order,

saying that you are not supposed to disparage a fellow senator first of all what the fuck is that rule like and second of all even if that even if you agree with that rule it's not like she was disparaging him on the senate floor because they were arguing as about something as fellow senators he's being nominated to be attorney general and so there's a debate about whether he should receive that nominee whether he should be confirmed or not um so the senate snowflake republicans uh couldn't really handle handle the uh the criticism of sessions silenced elizabeth warren which then had the effect of making sure that everyone in the world heard exactly what Elizabeth Warren had said.

What did you think about that strategy, Dan? I thought it was brilliant. If the goal was to have a million people watch a Facebook live reading of the Coretta Scott King letter, then kudos, Mitch McConnell, you have achieved your goal. I mean, like a few nerds on the hill who were watching c-span would have seen that speech had it not been for mitch mcconnell it would have been like that that would have been me when i was working there just sitting at my desk watching c-span um that's not true that that you would not i've been in your office many times c-span has never been on i know

when i was in the senate in 2000 i'm talking about the 2005 days i i am skeptical you had C-SPAN on That's true actually I worked in the Senate for many years And I couldn't find C-SPAN on my TV Evan Bayh wasn't watching C-SPAN when you were there? No No he was not I would refer to maybe someone like Tom Daschle

But I get your point I was noticing that There was a few people who said This was all part of our strategy and mcconnell's part because he wanted to elevate elizabeth warren uh because if you elevate elizabeth warren as the leader of the democrats you know she's too extreme and so uh that'll actually hurt the democrats i'm like can we can we not do the like mitch mcconnell is playing three-dimensional chess here chess here like whoa come on it's ridiculous also fine ridiculous fine elevate elizabeth warren like elizabeth

warren has a populist message that probably works in most of the midwestern states that we didn't do so well in 2016 so go for it um so the bigger the broader point here is sessions got confirmed um no republicans voted against him unlike the the two Republicans that voted against Betsy DeVos. And Joe Manchin also voted for him. So he is our attorney general. I believe this is incredibly dangerous. I think he's probably the most dangerous nominee that Trump put up. What do you think?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the amount of power over voting rights and civil rights law enforcement that the Attorney General has is mind-boggling. And here you have someone who basically believes in voter suppression as a political tactic, being in charge of that, who, even though there has been bipartisan consensus around criminal justice reform, reforming mandatory minimum sentences, Jeff Sessions believes the exact opposite of that. He is going to be put in charge of this, and on top of that. He wanted to bring back chain gangs and life sentences for individuals under 14 years old. I mean, you just can't even make it up.

I mean, the story that got me, the story that led Coretta Scott King to write that letter is that when he was the U.S. attorney in Alabama, Jeff Sessions prosecuted three civil rights activists who marched with Martin Luther King at Selma, who'd had their heads beaten in at Selma, for voter fraud, for allegedly helping elderly black voters fill out their ballots. It was the first time someone had ever prosecuted civil rights activists for voter fraud in that way, for doing such a thing. He took the case to court. It took the jury three hours to deliberate the case and then throw it out because it was ridiculous. And the Senate at the time decided that he was too racist to

become a federal judge in 1986. Since then, he's basically, you know, been the ideological godfather of Trumpism and ethno-nationalism and is one of those people who, you know, is against immigration, not for economic reasons, not for security reasons, but because of assimilation reasons, because of cultural reasons. And now this person is going to be in charge of, cultural reasons. And now this person is going to be in charge of, you know, when people bring lawsuits against the government for immigration executive orders, and like you said, drug sentencing and criminal justice and voting rights. And it is, he does not believe in same day registration, voter registration, doesn't believe in early voting uh he wants to prosecute voter fraud i mean it is it's scary i'm gonna go out on a limb and say he's probably not a good dude no not at all no i mean his senate colleagues were like well he's very nice personally great

well he can be nice as he you know suppresses the vote for the next eight four years yeah i mean i was joe mansion voted for uh for sessions but no other Democrat did. And I think that's the, it didn't, I think that was by far the right thing to do. And we should, I mean, you did, just like the DeVos confirmation, we didn't win this one, but by near unanimous Democrats voting against, it sends message, and that is at least a step in the right direction. And let's not also forget, and we'll segue into this later, but it'll be the Justice Department that is responsible at the end of the day for bringing any criminal charges against Trump or his administration for all the conflict of interest and violations of government ethic laws that are going to be happening on a daily basis around there. And to help investigate possible ties between the Trump administration or the Trump campaign and Russia, which Sessions has pointedly declined to say

whether he would recuse himself from such an investigation. Of course. Is this like the fox guarding the henhouse i think that's how they would say that i think that would be that would be the thing yeah so how do we as a coastal as a coastal lead i'm not great at my farm metaphors but you get the point so i think you have a lot of democrats and activists wondering you know they sort of wage this fight against devos we came up short up short, though I would say, you know, getting two Republican senators to vote against a Republican president's nominee and having Mike

Pence have to break the tie, which hasn't happened with a nominee in history, you know, it's a moral win, if not a real win. So it was worth it. But, you know, we came up short with Sessions. What do people do about Jeff Sessions, Attorney General? What are sort of our options here? That's a tough question. I think there's a larger point here that fighting for the sake of fighting, even if you don't win, is the right thing to do. It's only the right thing for Senate Democrats to do to show Democratic voters that they get what's happening out there. But this is not – we're in a long war now, right?

The next chance we're going to have to – we should fight every battle, raise hell where we can in the short term but the long term is we have to win the next two sets of elections and it is begin the slow process of channeling what caused people to shut down the capitol hill switchboards over betsy devos and channel that into action that actually wins um elections you know and because that like if you elections. One way to deal with Sessions would be to take the Senate back or the House back and be able to hold oversight hearings to narrow the margins so that the next time a Republican senator or two breaks, you actually win as opposed to losing. And that is incumbent upon the people who are calling and

protesting to begin to focus on the election. It's also incumbent upon democratic politicians and progressive organizations to give them a place to go, give them a reason to fight, and a reason to believe that voting, turning out to vote for members of Congress matters, and to give them the tools in the organizations to channel that voting, turning out to vote for members of Congress matters, and to give them, you know, the tools in the organizations to channel that energy. Yes, I think it's, we can never say enough that goal number one is the 2018 elections and, you know, winning the House back, the Senate's going to be tougher. But even with the House, you can still hold those oversight hearings. In the meantime, I think there are organizations like the ACLU that will be very active in trying to sue the government like they did with the travel ban. So support the ACLU.

And also this week, our friend, friend of the pod, Jason Kander, launched an organization called Let America Vote that is designed to fight voter suppression. And you and I are on the board, Dan. I know. I mean, this thing is destined for success with rock stars like you and I on there. Yeah, you know, don't know why they wanted us, but sure. We'll help. No, but I like the idea of the organization

because there's a lot of efforts out there to fight voter suppression from a legal standpoint, which is incredibly important. That's what ultimately would stop it. what's going on and what folks like Session and a lot of sort of Republican secretaries of state and AGs in various states are doing to sort of put in place these very stringent, targeted, often at minorities, draconian voter suppression laws. Yeah, I think Jason's exactly right in that politicians operate based on their own set of political incentives. And if there is more pain for pushing these laws than there is benefit, then they will do the opposite. And to be perfectly clear, we have lost the PR battle

on this over years. Voter ID laws, which disenfranchise a lot of people and are very onerous, also have to be very popular because the easier argument is the prevent voter fraud, everyone should show their photo ID, without explaining the consequences, people who are affected by that, the consequences, the fact that voter fraud is a Republican fantasy designed to explain away election losses like Donald Trump's 3 million popular vote loss this year. And this is the first organization to do this. And I'm very excited that it's here. I'm very excited that you and I get to be a part of it and excited to see what Jason Kander does with it. Me too. Let's move on to Trump versus the judicial branch of our government, which is something that we have to talk about now since trump is in a has already decided to pick a fight with the judiciary um so the the trump tweet that got all the uh attention yesterday was quote big increase in traffic into our country from certain areas while our people are far more vulnerable as we wait for what should be all caps EZD!

What the fuck was he thinking with that one? He just ran out of characters and he thought he would abbreviate the word decision with EZD? I have so many EZD jokes that I've come up with over the last 24 hours. They were made within the first 20 minutes on Twitter. I was a little late to it, and I just had

some pretty lame joke that I had to throw out there because all the good EZD jokes were taken. Well, I also then, as I thought about them in part of my very rigorous preparation for this pod every morning, remember that both my parents and my in-laws listen to this pod, so I was going to

potentially not get overly graphic in my EZD jokes. But I will say the best one that I saw was the Grindr Twitter account just did the inquisitive face emoji. That got a lot of attention. Good for Trump. Good for Trump getting Grindr attention there. get a lot of attention good for trump good for trump getting uh getting grander attention there um no i mean so the serious thing about this is he's he's we're basically all waiting and i'm sure by the time this podcast has been recorded and released uh the ninth circuit will have made their decision as usually happens to us while we record these but we're waiting for the ninth

circuit the appellate circuit to uh decide the travel ban and decide the constitutionality of it or whether it's legal or not. And so, you know, and Trump, as is like, has never been done by a president before, is basically just sort of attacking them, attacking the judiciary as he did over the weekend, like in advance of the decision and calling it politics and saying that politics plays a role in whatever they decide, which is extremely dangerous. Well, remember when Trump first took office and the White House website did not include the judiciary

as one of the three branches of government? And everyone was like, ha, typo everyone's like ha typo maybe not no maybe not i mean we talk about a lot on this podcast and we freak out about a lot of things i would say that in these first in trump's first uh couple weeks as president i think the uh his his stance towards the judiciary to, towards the judicial branch of government and his attacks against the judicial branch of government is probably the thing that most alarms me, that I think matters the most. Because we know that the legislative branch will not be a check on his power because Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have decided that tax cuts are more important than having a check against Trump's authoritarian ways because they're cowards.

So the legislative branch has just declined to stand up to Trump or offer any kind of check and balance against him. So the only bulwark against Trump acting as an authoritarian goon is the judicial branch. And, you know, to undermine them like he's doing and to turn them into just another sort of political object to be attacked is pretty frightening. If you step back and think about how our system of governance works, it really depends on the executive – think about it this way. The judiciary branch rules on the law, and then it is up to the executive. The executive branch owns all the tools for the enforcement of the law. So if the executive is unwilling to respect the ruling of the judiciary branch, the whole system can break down pretty quickly. And so it's a real open question of what is going to happen if and when the Ninth Circuit rules against Trump.

Are they going to abide by the ruling? Well, right. And I also, I mean, I want to show like when Obama was president, there were plenty of rulings by the judiciary that Barack Obama disagreed with, right? And I noticed when Trump started this, a few conservatives said, oh, well, you know, it was unprecedented when in the State of the Union in 2010, 2011, I forget when it was, when the court ruled on Citizens United and Obama sort of said that he disagreed with that decision. Of course, he started his statement with all due deference to the separation of power between branches of government. I want to say that I disagree with this decision.

Now, it's fine for a president to say they disagree with the decision. If this court rules against Trump and he came out the next day and said, I very strongly disagree with the decision of the Ninth Circuit. I think that in order to protect our country, we need to do this. But I respect their decision and we're going to try to figure out another way to protect our country. Fine. That is totally fine. He can criticize the decision all he wants. That is totally fine. He can criticize the decision all he wants. But to attack the judges, to call them so-called judges, to say that it's all politics, that the courts deserve blame if a terrorist attack happens in our country, that is so far beyond the pale. No Republican president has ever done something like that. No Democratic president has ever done something like that. It's appalling. And he's putting, you know, before we got to the appeals court hearing,

he was trying to target that one individual judge. Right. Like one of the real... Which he did with the judge in the Trump lawsuit case. Yes. In an even grosser way. In a racist way. He called him,

yeah, he said he was Mexican, so he couldn't rule in a fair way, even though he was not Mexican. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is very alarming and it,

the, the, the silence of, um, Republicans about this is very disturbing. It's, you know, cause like we are always like our, our system of governance worked great for many,

many years, but think back to Watergate. When Nixon fired 18 people until he could finally find someone in the Justice Department who would fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor, someone in the Justice Department who would fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor. Congress was a check there, right? Congress eventually impeached Nixon and forced him to resign. Does anyone believe – he's targeting the judiciary, and we know that Paul Ryan would do anything. He would back Trump to the end of the world as long as Trump promised to give more money to rich people and take food stamps away from poor people. So he'd be totally cool with that. So the system only works if there are checks and balances, and not to get

overly dystopian here, but one of our three branches ain't exactly doing the job right now, so there's reason for alarm. Yeah, well, and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell say that, have said, as long as Trump is abiding by the judicial decisions, who cares what he tweets or says, right? Which is also bullshit, because Trump has a huge megaphone. And when he's out there undermining faith in the judiciary and letting people believe that the decisions the courts make are all based on politics he's going to rile people up against the judiciary right like that's what authoritarians do um and he's going to lay the predicate for maybe packing courts maybe doing all kinds of other things that you know he shouldn't be doing so ryan and mcconnell think

they can get away with this right now by saying, well, look, he's abiding by the decisions even if he's undermining them publicly. I don't think that's going to be able to last for that long. Yeah, not strong. So one person who does not agree with what Trump has been saying about the judiciary is his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Apparently in a meeting with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, Gorsuch called Trump's remarks, particularly Trump's tweet on the, quote,

so-called judge in Seattle, quote, disheartening and demoralizing. And now, Gorsuch said this to Blumenthal, told Blumenthal he could say it publicly. And now Gorsuch said this to Blumenthal, told Blumenthal he could say it publicly. Former Senator Kelly Ayotte, who's been helping Trump with this nomination process, also said that Gorsuch made those remarks. And Trump decides to tweet that Blumenthal was misrepresenting what Gorsuch said and then started attacking Blumenthal this morning. Unbelievable. What do we think about this? So part of the theory— Let's break this down.

What has happened? So yesterday when this all came out, part of the theory was this was part of a very smart confirmation strategy. I mean, I actually believe Gorsuch probably does believe that it's not a good idea for the President of the United States to attack individual judges. I do too. So I believe that is a sincere belief of his because he's an American citizen.

And this is not because we think Gorsuch isn't as conservative as people say he is. Because you could be the most conservative right-wing person in the world and still have a basic respect for the judiciary. It's hard to keep in mind how outside of the mainstream Donald Trump is. But anyway. Right. Right. theory was, well, Trump's attacks on the judiciary were going to be a big part of the confirmation process. It could create a permission structure for a bunch of Democrats who might believe in

the idea of an up or down vote on a Supreme Court nominee, give them a reason to filibuster or whatever. Aren't these guys so smart? And then Trump sent his tweet, which suggests one of two things. Maybe it was not a grand strategy or maybe it was Gorsuch's strategies and not the collection of Mensa members who currently run the White House. Or it was a White House strategy and no one told the boss. is that this is all part of a play on Trump's part where he's going to let him have his cake and eat it too, where he can pretend like he wasn't actually upset about being criticized by his own nominee

and still get Gorsuch through. Like to your point about McConnell's three-dimensional chess, like Trump cannot play, he's not a three-dimensional chess player, he's not a two-dimensional chess player. I'm doesn't it's not a three-dimensional chess player it's not a two-dimensional chess player not sure he's a checkers player i don't know he plays candy land i don't know what game it is he plays but i this is he was pissed off because a guy whatever it is that's right he's never finished a board game in his life he just flips it over yeah we're just like but i you know he clearly was mad that this guy that he gave this amazing appointment to who shook his hand, didn't introduce his family and all of that, criticized him because he's a sensitive little baby.

Yeah, I mean it's pretty – The nuclear codes. I think it's pretty simple here. Like when someone of stature with a megaphone criticizes Trump, Trump cannot let that criticism go. He has never, ever been able to let one critique of him go and been the bigger person. So the instinct always from Trump is, well, now I have to attack whoever just attacked me.

He can't do that because it's his own Supreme Court nominee. Some people yesterday were speculating like, well, he could pull the nomination. I suppose, you know, I would say that's ridiculous in most cases, but hey, who the fuck knows? Like it's a Trump presidency. I guess that could happen. But I think even Trump is thinking like, okay, well, I can't attack my own Supreme Court nominee. So who can I attack? I'll attack, I'll shoot the messenger. I will attack the person who said that Gorsuch said this. And now we're going to get into the, I'm sure we're going to have Sean Spicer and

Kellyanne Conway and all the rest of the goons in the White House, when asked about this, be like, oh, no, no, no, no. He didn't attack that. No, Trump didn't attack Richard Blumenthal. No, that's – I'm sure Gorsuch said that, and Trump respects anything that Neil Gorsuch says and do some sort of Orwellian doublespeak that just – oh, God. They're the worst yeah i mean it's like basically the trump messaging strategy is like the these are not the jedis you're looking for uh part of star wars but without the actual force so just like no they are the jedis we're looking for oh god so um so anyway so then the other so the other issue that happened yesterday, I guess, is so Trump's intelligence briefing is scheduled for 930 in the morning yesterday.

At 950, he tweets, my daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom. She is a great person, always pushing me to do the right thing terrible so a few things about this one maybe it was a fast briefing and trump just got out in 20 minutes and couldn't wait to get back to his twitter machine perhaps um also i love that he there's and love it pointed this out there's an acknowledgement in that tweet that trump's instincts are to do the wrong thing right because he's grateful that ivanka is always pushing him to do the right thing um which which is a little window into his soul um but also by the way probably shouldn't use the presidential bully pulpit to attack a company for not promoting your family's brand right yeah that doesn't seem uh legal it does not yeah it does not seem it's also i think there's also like a window into

trump's psychology here which is nordstrom made this announcement a few days ago and i remember when it happened uh hallie said to me when is trump gonna tweet about this and i was like i bet ivanka asked him not to right because it's it's it like just makes a bad situation worse for her to get involved in this so he like he must have wanted to tweet so long and was like holding back on it for so long and finally just could not take it anymore and just like lashed out. But in a way to try to soften the blow at his dinner table at home, he had to point out that she is a very good person who tells him to do the right thing, which leans into the really obnoxious narrative that Ivanka and Jared Kushner have been pushing,

obnoxious narrative that Ivanka and Jared Kushner have been pushing that they are the ones who push Trump to abandon some of these onerous LGBT EOs and other stuff. And so it's like, look, honey, I said what you wanted to say, but I couldn't contain myself anymore. Yeah, they're big heroes. When I think of profiles and courage, I think of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Well, and so then of course the white house doubles down on all this uh spicer did in his briefing and then this morning kelly ann goes on fox and says buy ivanka's stuff which uh seems to be a violation of federal law uh yes it is most certainly a violation of federal law. I am positive that moments after being sworn in on Facebook Live today, Jeff Sessions will walk out of the Oval Office and instruct his team to look into this obvious violation of federal law. A friend of the pod, Norm Eisen, says that they could be sued under the Fair Business Act and that this is an abusive office. Both Trump promoting, basically like using the federal government

to attack a company that does not enrich, that refuses to enrich your own family seems like it's a violation of all sorts of things. And then Kellyanne using her public position to hawk goods for the Trump family also seems like it's a federal violation. So all kinds of law and rule breaking from the law and order candidate today.

Yes. I mean, as friend of the pod and modern day internet sensation Jake Tapper pointed out, we all pay Kellyanne's salary, and we pay for the briefing room in which she made these comments, and we don't get any of the money from the additional sales of Chinese-made handbags that have come from... Hey, it was right in the inaugural, man. First rule of the Trump administration, buy American. Unless it's Ivanka's clothes.

And then buy Chinese. Or Trump's ties. Or Trump's ties. Or sheets or whatever. Look, I think the important lesson here is you should be very careful about using your public platform to hawk merchandise unless you have a podcast,

in which case maybe it's time for a word from our sponsors. See how I did that, Dan? I mean, I've been thinking, just your Segway game is on point. This is what I prepare for. I barely read the headlines. It's basically just how can I figure out how to get to the ads. We'll be right back.

This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. Okay. Let's talk about your friend and mine, Spicy. Sean Spicer. Let's talk about your friend and mine, Spicy, Sean Spicer. Sean has had a rough couple of weeks, especially a rough week, rough couple days.

I don't know. I don't even know. Yeah. I don't know when Sean Spicer's last had a good day. This, I mean, it's basically become like his, it's become a national car crash and none of us can turn away. We're just rubbernecking at the public humiliation of this man just on a near daily basis. And like you and I, I guess we don't like Sean Spicer or we don't like what he does or we disagree with his choices. But you know who really doesn't like Sean Spicer?

His colleagues. His colleagues. The things that people call up reporters from his own team and say about him are mind-blowing. I mean, there was a CNN article the other day about how – it was about how Trump was trying to hire a communications director because Sean Spicer is technically doing the communications director job and the press secretary job. It just buried in there just a bunch of people saying that basically Trump wants to get rid of him. Reince Priebus, who was very close to Sean Spicer, forced him down Trump's throat. Trump now believes that this is Matt Re that writes prebis about it, that Steve Bannon doesn't trust him and therefore has hired his own person to run a rogue press operation out of his office, this woman Julia Hahn, who works at Breitbart. I mean, the whole thing.

I mean, I've never seen anything like this. I mean, Washington can be a tough place, but Saturday Night Live is the least of Sean Spicer's problems. Saturday Night Live is the least of Sean Spicer's problems. I mean, but also, the fact that Sean Spicer was in trouble with Donald Trump because he was played by a woman on Saturday Night Live. That Politico story was just, whew. And so Spicer's not doing himself any favors. Like I said, I might feel bad for him if he didn't go out there every day and proudly and happily lie for the administration like it's no big deal. I mean, like, I get that his position is to and his job is to defend the administration, which is often indefensible. And if he just tried to go do that with good humor every day, I'd sort of pity him.

But I wouldn't like, you know, I'd feel bad for him once in a while. I'd sort of pity him, but I wouldn't like, you know, I'd feel bad for him once in a while. But some of the things he says, like yesterday, after that Elizabeth Warren episode, where she read the letter from Coretta Scott King, a letter about how Sessions was racist. Spicer at the briefing yesterday says, quote, I can only hope that if Coretta Scott King was still with us, that she would support Senator Sessions nomination. Now, Dan, you gave this. This is your nominee for the dumbest thing that Sean Spicer has said or will ever say.

Well, I mean, it's sort of a I'm not I think Sean Spicer is not going to be there in three to four months. So it's we're on a short runway. But the thing that is like you and I have been involved with the prep that a press secretary goes into, like there's they they spend hours. I mean, theoretically, I don't know what happens to the Trump White House, but in every previous White House, from people who respected governing norms and democracy and etc, the press secretary would prep with staff for hours beforehand and think about all the questions they could get asked, try out answers on people, and maybe sometimes try to come up with newsworthy lines that could get quoted that would help move the administration's message.

And so I don't think this was off the cuff. Like Sean Spicer basically practiced this in the mirror in his office and thought to himself the whole time, boy, am I going to trick them when I – because I bet they haven't even considered the idea that Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow, would probably support the attorney general nominee of a man who put a white supremacist in the White House. Or a man that she criticized. Yes, that's a great idea. She took the time to write a letter about to criticize 20 years ago and said he shouldn't be a federal judge because he was intimidating black voters.

Yes, I'm sure that if Coretta Scott King was alive today in the ensuing three decades, she would have had a change of heart and would have supported Jeff Sessions. You moron. Like of the people who you – that you may not want to try to channel their thoughts, like I don't know. Martin Luther King's widow, credit Scott King, civil rights hero, may not be one of them. It's insulting. It's insulting to everyone who has to listen to that. Yeah. Like Sean Spicer – what Sean Spicer says offends me a lot of times on a policy level, on a political level. But just as a political operative with many years in communications, it offends me on a professional level that someone

would sit at that briefing and be so stupid on a daily basis. It's like, how did we get to this point? Because that is the job that almost every young young fledgling you know capitol hill press secretary hopes to change is to sit is to be at that podium one day and then like what a disappointment like and we end up we end up with someone with a moron it's really like i know this sounds very harsh so he's being trolled on saturday night live uh did you see the story that he's being trolled on Saturday Night Live. Did you see the story that he's being trolled on Venmo? I did see he was being trolled on Venmo, which is very clever. I hadn't even thought about that. BuzzFeed had a good story about this, is that all these people are finding him on Venmo and just writing nasty

comments to him, which we do not endorse that here at Pod Save America. Do you feel bad for sean spicer no i don't i'm like i said i there's there's probably some people in the trump administration i will feel bad for at some point just because it looks like they're there because you know they've been taken hostage um like i almost feel more pity for Reince Priebus somehow than Sean Spicer. Because Sean Spicer, like I said, I kind of say, I didn't feel this before the first day Sean went out in the briefing room. Based on what he did in the campaign, I didn't feel this way. But like, the lies he's been telling and he's like so proud of it. I just sort of lost also we we forgot to

cover the other thing he said after the aside from the credit scott king comment which when uh he was asked about the yemen raid and someone said oh you know have you guys thought about the fact that maybe it wasn't a success what went wrong and spicer said quote anyone including john mccain because john mccain had criticized the raid. Anyone, including John McCain, who says the Yemen raid wasn't a success, does a disservice to the slain Navy SEALs life and owes an apology. That is a despicable thing to say. It just is. And he knows that.

Yeah. And to say that to John McCain, who was POW, like and to say that. And also, how long did Donald Trump spend in the campaign attacking the Iraq War? When Donald Trump said the Iraq War was the wrong thing or said that Barack Obama's strategy against ISIS was the wrong thing and that our military and our general – when he attacked our military and our generals, did anyone tell Donald Trump that he couldn't criticize a military mission because it disrespects the people who died in that mission. That is such bullshit. Well, I mean, just think about Benghazi as an example. Right.

There's the exact corollary to this, which is if things went wrong in Benghazi too, obviously, and people lost their lives, And then politicizing it, maybe even using almost an entire night of your convention to try to score political points on it, might also be viewed as some people as disrespectful to the people who lost their lives there. I mean, it is just... And then Trump picked up this criticism today and started attacking John McCain. He said he's been losing for so long. So he went back to the well on McCain, who he attacked early on in the campaign famously by saying, you know, I like people who didn't get shot down. It is just, whew, man.

Yeah, what a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. Okay, when we come back, we will have New York magazine writer and book author Jonathan Chait. Hey, don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. With us on the pod today, we have New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait, who is also the author of the new book, Audacity, How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. Jonathan, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming. And look, I mean, as you can tell with the two of us on this phone, we have a lot of disagreement with this book. We have a lot of criticism. It's not something that's really up our alley. You know, I was really going to be unhappy if you didn't have me on the show. That would have been just about the worst

indictment I could have possibly gotten. I'm just feeling a tremendous relief right now. Look, you know, people are always pushing us to have people that we don't agree with on the show, so we're like, let's just invite someone who wrote a book about how Obama's legacy is awesome. It's a with on the show. So we're like, let's just invite someone who wrote a book about how Obama's legacy is awesome. It's a little on the nose.

It's an outstanding book. I read it over the last couple of weeks. And so the thesis of your book is that Obama's legacy will survive Trumpism. I also have that optimism, but I'm way more of a Kool-Aid drinker than you are, probably. So what makes you think that?

You can actually already see, if you go through issue by issue, how much trouble Trump is having overturning most of these policy achievements. And the book tries to make the case that there are much more of them than people understand. Even people who follow the news closely, I think, are going to read the book and say, oh, I forgot about this and I forgot about that. And if you realize that he did more, there was more breadth and more depth than you assumed, then that's going to get you part of the way towards understanding how hard it's going to be to overturn. But, you know, just look at health care. I've got some of this in the book already. The day after the election, they were basically saying, Obamacare's done, gone, move

on to the next thing. What's next? And, but, you know, they're, they're going backward, not forward in terms of overturning this law. It's, it's a successful law. People like it. At the time, people come, there's a lot of complaints about it because people were comparing it to an idealized alternative, but against an alternative that you can actually get to in a real political world. And so there was never any realistic way of getting an appreciably better law written. And that's what Republicans have discovered. I think if you go through some of the other areas, some of them I think are more vulnerable than others, but most of them are pretty sturdy for different reasons. Dodd-Frank is a major reform that I think a lot of people didn't quite pay attention to, how much it really did to rein in Wall Street.

That's protected for the simple reason that you need 60 votes. And Republicans don't have any Democrats who want to help them weaken regulation on Wall Street. All the financial rescue moves are protected for the sturdiest reason of all, which is that the financial crisis is gone and can't come back. I mean, you literally need a time machine to bring back the 2008 financial crisis. So that's been solved. They're not going to undo the auto bailout and kill the auto industry. So there are a handful of other things that are more vulnerable, but I do think that the major pieces are going to stay in place. Where do you think the ACA fight goes from here? Obviously, you know, they have sort of dragged their feet on this,

and the Republicans can't get together around an alternative. How do you see it playing out? It's a really good question, because if you play out any strategy that they try, it runs into some kind of brick wall. it runs into some kind of brick wall. They could try to jam through repeal with majority in the House, and if they can cram together 50 senators and let two of them go, they get 50, break the tie. But they're not going to be able to replace it. So are they really willing to take the damage of melting down the health care market in every single state

and not only hurting poor and sick people, but rich people who sell them health care market in every single state and not only hurting poor and sick people, but rich people who sell them health care services. I have a hard time seeing it. I think in the end, they're going to have to get some kind of deal with the Democrats to patch it up, to change it this way and that way, to make it probably more industryfriendly and call it replaced and say it's terrific. I think that's where they're going to have to go with this. To me, that's the most sensible move, even if you grant that they're willing to absorb a lot of political pain to repeal this law and get that pelt up on the wall. I just don't think they're going to really go all the way.

I'm trying to figure out what thing that they could put forward. What do you think, though? What's your... Well, I'm trying to figure out if thing that they could put forward. What do you think, though? I'm trying to figure out if they do get to a replacement package and it's like, alright, let's work with some Senate Democrats on something. I just don't know what I could imagine Senate Democrats saying yes to. Even

the mansions and the Heidi Hyde camps. What kind of package wouldn't actually cause people to lose their health care but would still be acceptable to Senate Democrats? I can't think of one. I think if you made it just more fiscally irresponsible. Oh, yeah. I mean, the pay-fors are unpopular.

You could find pay-fors that, you know, have that are opposed by industry groups, right, like the medical device tax and the Cadillac tax, and just cut some of those out. Yeah, I guess they could do that. But then it doesn't really... That's mostly a tweak, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it'll end up being tweaks. Yeah.

It's going to be interesting to see how the Democratic base would feel about any sort of bipartisan deal to tweak Obamacare, especially because the Republicans will have to sell it as more than a tweak. I mean, this is the problem we always run into is the Venn diagram of things acceptable to their base and that we would do from a policy perspective is there's very little overlap there. And that we would do from a policy perspective is, you know, there's very little overlap there. So, I mean, to me, it seems like the most likely scenario is stalemate, that we will get to the 2020 election and be in the same place we are with having the Republicans having tried to undermine it administratively and tout that as, you know, some measure of success. Yeah, that could be. I mean, you could very easily see maybe the most likely or next most likely scenario is repeal and delay on a long fuse. And they just delay, delay, delay.

And if I'm actually, if I'm them, and I'm looking for the smartest, most devious play, what I would do is repeal and delay and push the delay out past the time that they're in office. And then, you know, so like just keep extending it as long as you have control. And when you lose control, just throw the whole mess to the Democrats. And then the Democrats, whenever the Democrats take power, it's 2021, 2025. They've got an expiring law that they've got to cobble together the votes to sustain. And if it melts down, it's on the Democratic watch. That's what I would do if I were them and had their moral values. The good news is no one, no Republicans

listen to this, so they won't even get that idea from you. So Trump offers us, you know, a dozen targets every single day. And it seems one of the difficulties in sort of fighting back and focusing on a single message against Trump is us, you know, a dozen targets every single day. And it seems one of the difficulties in sort of fighting back and focusing on a single message against Trump is that, you know, it's inevitably upended by some tweet that gets more media coverage. Where do we fight? Like, where do you think he's weak? Where do you think we should be focused? You're describing the dilemma I have every day where I just have a proliferation of tabs engulfing my computer and 14 ideas to write about, and I don't know. To me, the simple economic populist nexus between personal corruption and policies that benefit the rich seem like the most straightforward thing that you can use to explain a lot of scandals and a lot of policy yeah it does you know you guys are this is your guy's job it's not

i've never i've never worked in politics so i don't really know what what what people care about or what people listen to no look i mean it that's what i've been thinking is that you know he at the end of the day there were voters who didn't like Clinton or Trump, and they said, well, I'll go with him because he seems more likely to change Washington for the better and improve my life for the better. And so revealing that he is breaking that promise every single day by, you know, either siding with plutocrat Republicans or, you know, sort of the billionaire class, as Bernie might say, and not with working people seems like sort of the best avenue. But that's a hard message to drive every day when, you know, he's like tweeting about Nordstrom and everything else. Yeah, you know, the best counter argument to that was by Yasha Monk, who's writing a lot about autocracy and the threat to democracy in the United States.

And he said, look, the fact is economic policy is just boring as hell. Most people aren't going to focus on it. And it's true. It really is. I mean, that's even true in Washington. I mean, most, I think it's less so now than it was when I started. But getting people to understand and care about economic policy is not easy. Yeah, no, believe me, working on those Obama econ speeches was never the most exciting

thing. Although he got, he was excited by them. Right. I mean, I'm interested in it, but, you know, it's complicated. And some people, most people don't really pay attention. So, you know that that's the i'm not sure i agree with it but that's a pretty um persuasive counter argument to that i think the challenge there is it's less about convincing people that policy a is affects them

and that you know would affect their income level or their wages in this very specific way but using income level or their wages in this very specific way, but using economics to tell us – you need to tell a story about Trump's values and economic policy. Economics is the most resonant way to do it. It was basically – I mean that was the Obama 2012 strategy against Romney. And you have to – so it's a proxy for a conversation about values. But one question I had for you is, how do you think the Democratic establishment is handling the first month or so, the Democratic Senate, Democratic House members of the establishment,

handling the first month of the Trump presidency? It's hard to say because there's some shadowboxing going on with the public comments and you don't really know how much they mean it. Like all these comments, they say, we will really want to work with Trump on this and that. Do they mean that? Or are they just positioning themselves to come back and say, well, we tried, but he didn't, you know, blah, blah, blah. I don't really know the answer. I know some people who are a little more close to the situation are kind of alarmed that some of the comments

about wanting to work with him on things like infrastructure are genuine. They really believe it. So, you know, that's been a big Schumer theme, and I've been writing about that, that McConnell had this right politically with Obama that denying the opposing administration bipartisan cover is your best play as the opposing party. And, you know, I'm not sure they completely understand that, but I think the base is kind of pushing them there, even if that's not where they want to go. There's just so much anger at the Trump administration. I feel like it's going to be really hard, as you mentioned before, with Obamacare, to make a deal on almost anything.

Jamil Bowie wrote a piece about your book that I was reading the other day, and he argued that sort of the triumphalism in your book and just around Obama in general, and he kind of blamed Obama for this too, sometimes discounts the force of backlash to the progress of the last eight years. And that has contributed to all of us sort of missing the rise of Trump in the first place. What do you think about this? Well, you know, Jamel missed the rise of Trump just as much as any of us did. So I'm not really sure that's what, if that's really the explanatory force here that causes us to miss it. I mean, I... I guess my question is, why did you find it important to, not just to set the record, I mean, your book wasn't just like, let's set the record straight, here's what Obama really did. But it seems like, and look, we tried to do this in Obama's speeches

as well. It's basically detailing progress as a way to say, you know, don't lose hope, because even though things look challenging, if you look to history, you know, this kind of forward progress is possible, right? So why did you find it important to kind of get that message out? Right. So that's a worldview that he had, that President Obama had, that I agreed with, that, you know, that if you look at American history over any long interval of time, you see things getting better. Even though you have lots and lots of periods where it gets, where it looks really scary with things are getting worse.

I didn't really understand. I like Jamel. I respect him. I think he's a great writer. I didn't really understand his point here. He didn't disagree with that. He just said, if you're a person living in a period when things are getting worse, it's bad.

And I agree with that. And I think President Obama would agree with that. And I don't think that's a kind of blindness. And it's not really, he's not really bringing up a rebuttal. He's just putting more emphasis on a point that's already been acknowledged. What do you think caused everyone to miss sort of, I mean, everyone missed sort of the electoral results, but like, sort of the power of Trump, right? Like that he that this, this, what do you think? What do you think caused us to all miss that? I think there are a few factors, I would say the biggest, the biggest way in which

we were in a bubble, that people like us who pay attention to politics all the time saw the Clinton scandals as just ordinary, low-grade political crap, just the same stuff, blah, blah, blah. We all know, yeah, she shouldn't have done the email server. Yeah, she deserves to be wrapped over the knuckles for it. Ordinary people saw it as outright criminality. They did not have that kind of context that we had. And I mean, this is what I, I have a friend who works in politics, too. And I've heard this actually from a lot of sources, that a lot of ordinary voters in the middle thought that Clinton definitely killed people. Absolutely.

Oh, yeah. I heard that a lot. I mean, very. I think, I mean, so that was the number one thing that we thought that they would just say Clinton is just like or an ordinary politician in a somewhat bad way, but they saw her as a completely extraordinary evil politician. I think that's number one. I think we missed the degree to which the apprentice made Trump truly seem like a business genius with superhuman abilities. I think a lot of people who pay attention to politics more closely maybe followed the degree, kind of understood his business career in a different context of him seeing him as a huckster, right?

his business career in a different context of him seeing him as a huckster, right? Someone who's got talent for media manipulation, but basically plays a rich person on television and has made, has learned how to make a lot of money by pretending to be a rich person and thus becoming a rich person. But I think they saw him as totally different than that. And I think there was just the self-fulfilling quality of people assuming Clinton was going to win. She was in this very dangerous zone of being ahead enough that all the coverage assumed that she was going to win,

but not being ahead so much that she really was certain to win. Yeah. Go ahead, Dan. It's interesting because in some ways, You know, it's interesting because like in some ways, most people I think did not miss the power of Trumpism. We just overestimated Hillary and underestimated Trump as a political figure. But Trump – like a lot of people thought, including a lot of us, know in 2013 when the shutdown was happening uh that ted cruz was on his way to being the republican nominee and that actually if trump had not run

that probably is how that would have played itself out and you know i the way i often describe the election is we overestimated hillary clinton's abilities as a candidate and we underestimated Barack Obama's. And by that, I mean, there are all these voters that probably made it like these rural white voters in Iowa and Ohio who held, who we sort of thought Obama was the floor. You know, like if they can vote for a black guy named Barack Obama, then these are Democrats. But it turns out actually that he had a unique appeal beyond that, that Hillary did not have. And so I think it's always important to separate, you know, quote, unquote, Trumpism, which is the rise of, you know, ethno, you know, white nationalism, populism, you know, anti-establishment fervor from the actual election results of Trump.

from the actual election results of Trump. To stick with the Trump thing, how do you think the election of Trump affects Barack Obama's political legacy? What does that say about his presidency, that the first African-American president was replaced by or succeeded by someone who know, someone who many people believe to be an out and out racist? So I would make a couple points. I would say it's not normal for us to assess a president largely through their successor. I think that's just something we're

doing right now because Trump's coming into office and it's on everybody's mind and it's magnified in its importance. But people didn't – when you talk about what did Abraham Lincoln do, you don't primarily talk about Andrew Johnson, even though Andrew Johnson did attack much of his legacy. In fact, Andrew Johnson is part of Obama's – sorry, Andrew Johnson is part of Abraham Lincoln's legacy because Lincoln fired his vice president and put Andrew Johnson on the ticket and was single-handedly responsible for that disaster. But that's not really on page one of anyone's Lincoln biography. So I think that's a bit of applying an unusual standard to Obama. So number two, I would say Trump is related to Obama's legacy. In fact, Trump is a major character in my book and was a major character in the book even before I thought he was going to get the nomination, because I think he tells us something really important about the nature of the Republican opposition to Obama.

I think if you look at the way people were analyzing Republican behavior during most of Obama's term, and that's what I do. I sort of show what Republicans were doing and what people thought Republicans were doing at the time. It was really being seen as being about the deficit or about the Constitution or about discrete policy choices that the Obama administration was making. I think Trump really shows that that's not the case, that it was mostly an identity politics-based backlash, a form of white identity politics backlash against anything he did. And the commentary that a lot of people on the center and even some on the left were making about why doesn't Obama do this or that in response to Republican opposition was unrealistic. One last question. Since Trump has taken office, what's one thing that has surprised you in a good way and one thing that surprised you in a bad way? I think in a bad way, I think he's literally worse at his job than I thought he would be.

I mean, I had such a low estimation of his ability to do this. But it really seems he's even more childlike than we assumed. I mean, these stories that come on almost every single day, how, you know, he won't read a briefing book. He won't read anything more. You can't have more than nine bullets on a page of paper that you hand to him. But he's reading, he's looking at 17 different samples of curtains for his office, and he's complaining about the towels not being soft enough in Air Force One. It's really just like, you know, like it's beyond Saturday Night Live version

of his mental capacities in the state of mind. It's really worse. Like, I didn't think he could screw up a get-to-know-you call with the Prime Minister of Australia. If you had predicted that before, they'd actually say, come on, like, he's going to struggle at the hard and the medium-level tasks, but not that. So it's really it's really bad on the good side. I really think that there's been immediate pushback and resistance and mobilization on the left. And I actually think it's working in a lot of ways. I think you're really seeing some acknowledgement and fear on the Republican side of and, you know, the House ethics change got pulled back. You're seeing a lot of reluctance to just get rid of Obamacare. So I think, I actually think that

part is working. I thought Republicans would have power and feel almost totally unconstrained right away, maybe until 2018, but that's not happened. Trump is a bigger child than we thought, but we are a better resistance. Okay, Jonathan. I know that is a self-flattering surprise, isn't it? I'm with you. Thank you very much for joining the pod. And everyone go check out Jonathan's book, Audacity, How Barack Obama Defied His Critics

and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail. Take care. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save America, there are other great new and archived episodes you should go check out. Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And also, check out Tommy Vitor's podcast, Pod Save the World. Subscribe to that one and don't miss a new episode of Pod Save the World

now every Wednesday by popular demand. Okay, that is our show for today. Thanks again to Jonathan Shade for joining us, and we will see you again on Monday. Bye, guys.