Pod Save America - "Caps lock freakout mode."

Episode Date: February 16, 2017

General Flynn gets fired, the NYT's report on Trump-Russia contacts, and the White House's awful week. Then, the Atlantic's Julia Ioffe joins Jon and Dan to talk Russia, and MoveOn.org's Ben Wikler announces the launch of #ResistanceRecess.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we have The Atlantic's Julia Yaffe. We'll talk to us about the latest Russia revelations. And then Ben Wickler from MoveOn.org will talk about how Pod Save America listeners can cause some trouble at your congressperson's town hall meeting next week. I think that's how people cannot cause trouble, to express their views as good-natured citizens. I mean, I wasn't advocating any kind of anarchy here, Dan.

Are you sure? Are you wearing a black hoodie right now? We only have the most peaceful protesters here at Pod Save America. Everyone's saying that. And they're not paid. Okay, so let us begin with Flynn Gazi. Can we call it Flynn Gazi? I don't see why not. Okay, good. It's Flynn Gazi. So Lieutenant General Michael Flynn broke some records this week. First senior administration official fired from two administrations,

two presidents of different parties. Fired from the Defense Intelligence Agency under Barack Obama and was fired as Trump's national security advisor on Tuesday. Second record he broke, he's the shortest serving senior administration official in history.

So I guess he's got that going for him. That's great. I mean, that'll be high up in his Wikipedia page. Yeah. So I guess he's got that going for him. That's great. I mean, that'll be high up in his Wikipedia page. Yeah. So what was he fired for? He was not fired for saying that Islam is a cancer or that fear of Muslims is rational or tweeting a bunch of conspiracy theories, even though he did all those things. He was fired because of multiple calls he made to the Russian ambassador on December 29th,

which was also the day that Obama announced new sanctions on Russia in retaliation for Russia interfering in our election with the goal of helping Donald Trump. Which is a coincidence, I assume. Total coincidence. It's like, what are the odds? What are the odds indeed? John Spicer and Vice President Mike Pence told the nation that Flynn's multiple calls with the Russian ambassador on the same day weren't about the sanctions at all. They were just an exchange of Christmas greetings. That's what you do with a Russian ambassador. You call him a couple times.

You wish him Merry Christmas four days after Christmas and two weeks before the Russian Orthodox Christmas. And that's just that's what you talk about. So we now we now know this is not true at all uh the washington post this week confirmed that flynn strongly implied to the russian ambassador that the trump administration would relax the obama sanctions uh doing so would be a violation of the logan act which says that private citizens are not supposed to make foreign policy on their own. That's a good law. I think it's a good law. No one's ever been prosecuted under it. It's a pretty hard, difficult law. It's a pretty difficult thing to prove. This one seems pretty cut and dry, but who knows? The Post also reported

that Flynn had lied to Pence, which Pence also said. So here's where the whole thing gets even shadier. We also know now that in late January, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who's since also been fired by Trump, told White House Counsel Don McGahn that she believed Flynn was lying about the calls. The White House did nothing with this information and only fired Flynn after the post story broke. So, a few questions here. Did Flynn decide on his own to tell the Russian ambassador that Trump would ease the sanctions? Was Trump okay with him doing that? What do we think, Dan? Huh. There's so much to unpack here. So much. We don't actually know why he was fired because Kelly Ann Conway, Sean Spicer, Michael Flynn, and Donald Trump have all given different versions of why he was fired. Kelly Ann Conway, hours after saying Flynn had his full confidence, said that Flynn submitted his his resignation because he did essentially because

he didn't want to be a distraction sean spicer read a hostage video style set of remarks explaining that um the reason he was fired was a lack of trust and then trump in his uh pseudo press conference with bb net yahoo yesterday, said that Flynn was a great guy and was treated very unfairly by the news media. Never had to answer a question about why he fired him because he only called on state media subsidiaries like townhall.com or whatever absurdity they called on. Life is that.

So we don't really know. But it seems unlikely to me. Like, I don't know whether trump told him to do this but it seems weird that flynn would not tell trump that he had done it afterwards right like he just like kept this little secret to himself and like just total didn't brief the president on his call with the russian ambassador it seems weird that That seems very bizarre. It seems like someone would have told Flynn that that was a good idea. Someone would have told, like if you're the incoming national security advisor,

you probably don't want to float with the Russians that you may, that the president may ease the sanctions on them if you have no idea whether that's true or if you haven't been authorized to do that. Yeah, so that seems... And then if the Attorney General said, oh, by the way, we have this suspicion that Flynn was not,

that did talk about sanctions on the phone, and she says that in January, and she tells Don McGahn, the White House counsel, and Don McGahn apparently tells everyone in the White House, why didn't Trump lose faith in his national security advisor then? And just to be very precise on that, Sally Yates communicated that he was not forthcoming, not just with the public, but with the FBI when the FBI interviewed Flynn about it, which is obstruction of justice and how a lot of

people in the political world go down. And Sallyy eight said the russians could blackmail flynn right that he was vulnerable to russian blackmail for this reason and they kept him around for weeks and where he continued to get all the nation's greatest secrets or at least the ones the intel community don't hide from the trump administration um so there's so many people who have some blame here. I think Don McGahn is a great place to start the White House counsel. Like, how do you, like you were leaving everyone in the White House vulnerable to all kinds of legal and criminal issues by not acting when the acting attorney general tells you such a thing.

I mean, also like Trump and no one in the administration could survive like five minutes of straight questioning on this topic because trump was out there in his press conference just saying oh flynn's been treated so unfairly he's a good man this is all the fake media this is fake news it's like well if that's the case then why'd you fire the guy dude yeah dude why if he's been treated so unfairly by the media and this is fake news then why isn't he still working in your white house right and why did sean spicer say the opposite 24 hours earlier i mean this is just like forget forget about the substance of the whole issue. You're treating us like assholes.

I was thinking that we're not going to figure out what... Your explanation is so off right now. It's just... The whole thing is crazy. By the way, as we're recording this, Trump is holding a press conference right now. So who knows what's going to happen by the time you hear this? I know. It could be a whole new answer.

Maybe Flynn's back by the time this is over. I was just going to say, Flynn is the new labor secretary. And then the replacement looks like Admiral Robert Howard, who is a former Navy SEAL. Interesting choice for replacement because he's like a career professional and not seemingly crazy yeah he's probably gonna have some trouble fitting in is my guess yeah i've met him before he's like very nice guy seems you know served his country navy seal uh seems like he's like not very political which is a good thing so the question is will he question is will he clean out the national security council like will kt mcfarland still be the deputy who is basically just a fox news contributor i assume they're there's fox is still keeping kt mcfarland seat warm on the five and she

could be back any moment she wants you think it's like a the revolving door between Fox and the administration? That's the revolving door of 2017. Exactly. So we lose Flynn, and then on Tuesday night, there's a story in the New York Times. Times reports that members of Trump's campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign. We know this because American intelligence monitoring Russian intelligence leaked the information to the Times. Now, the same official said there is no evidence that the Trump people and their Russian intelligence pals talked about Russian interference in the election or talked about Trump. You know, and of course all the the right wing media are all saying, oh, this isn't a big

deal. The real problem is the leak itself. This is obviously what Trump is saying as well. He wants to go after the leakers. But I don't know. Don't we think it's a little unusual for the Trump campaign to be in contact with a foreign adversary that was launching a cyber attack against our country in order to help elect their candidate? I don't know know you've worked on three presidential campaigns how many

times in those campaigns did you find yourself on the phone with a member of the intelligence service of one of our foreign adversaries all the time i would call i mean who did who did that not happen to like you're just calling yeah voters inuyahoga County and you end up in Moscow. Like, when you talk to the FSB, you think you're calling NBC and you get the FSB. These things happen. These things happen. Usually, it's like, you know, I want speech suggestions. I want to see if anyone has any edits.

And so, you know, I call up Iranian intelligence. That's right. I mean, here's the thing. It is not unusual for foreign policy people in a campaign to reach out to counterparts in different countries. It is much more unusual for it to be foreign adversaries. It is even more unusual for it to be a foreign adversary that you know has engaged in cyber attacks against the country. has engaged in cyber attacks against the country. We knew these people, Mike Flynn and Donald Trump, stuff like that, the second they got an intelligence briefing, the first intelligence briefing in August,

they knew that the Russians were behind the hack of the DNC and other attacks. They knew this. And they had repeated contacts with this government. So, like, I don't know. I don't know if they were talking about, like, there was no evidence that they were coordinating the attacks themselves and that they knew about the attacks. And they were talking to the Russians about the attacks. But, like, I don't know. Still pretty weird to me, no?

Yeah, pretty weird. Like, what were they talking about is a very good question and let's not forget one of the officials mentioned one of these reports is longtime trump advisor roger stone a man who literally has a tattoo of richard nixon on his back that's not a joke google it it's fucking gross but it is true that's told the world he Google it. It's fucking gross, but it is true. Told the world. What a fun fact, Dan. He knew about the Podesta emails before the emails came out. He tweeted about them.

He talked about the WikiLeaks. He said, this Wednesday, Hillary Clinton is done. And then on that day, or around that day, the Podesta emails came out. So two options there.

He knew about this from his contacts with Russianussian intelligence or he's psychic you choose america yeah i mean look i and everyone's sort of hanging their head on well the time story is not a big deal because they said there's no evidence of coordination well yeah so there's no evidence yet that said so far and like i don't know even if there's no evidence yet that said so far. And, like, I don't know, even if there's no hard evidence that they colluded, if they knew about it, that still seems pretty bad. Yeah, this seems worthy of further exploration and investigation.

Yes. Yes, perhaps there needs to be an investigation. I mean, we need to know also, like, why have the Trump campaign and the white house have refused to acknowledge or deny these contacts they won't say either way so if they weren't a big deal if the contacts were just calling you know to say hey what's going on let's work together if i win um why don't they just say that there hasn't because because they know that something's out there right i mean why else would otherwise why wouldn't you just admit it? Was it more Christmas greetings? Yes. They were just preparing for Christmas greetings in the late fall.

One official did talk about this. Oh, God, yeah. Former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, friend of dictators. Good friend of dictators good friend of he said how essentially how am i supposed to know russian intelligence folks don't wear intelligence folks don't wear badges he said so paul manorfort resigned as trump's campaign manager after we found out that he secretly received 13 million dollars from a putin puppet in ukraine that's that was the remember that was the resignation okay and he said i have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officials.

It's not like these people wear badges that say, I'm a Russian intelligence officer. I think that we probably need to start selling t-shirts from Crooked Media with little badges that say, I'm a Russian intelligence officer. That's excellent. That's a good merch idea. I think I just came up with that merch idea now. So, yeah, that was Paul Manafort. idea now um so yeah that was paul manafort also remember trump was asked at a january 11th press conference whether there were any contacts at all between his campaign and russia during the campaign he said no so yes either uh everyone was lying to trump again in his campaign or trump was

lying to us those are the only two options. Either way, doesn't seem very great. Yeah. I don't want to burst your bubble. I don't want you to get sad on this podcast, but I think Trump might be a liar. There seems to be a pattern. There seems to be a pattern. He lies about the easy stuff. So I don't think he'll lie about the easy stuff and then, uh, and tell the truth about the hard stuff. That doesn't seem, that doesn't usually seem how it goes. So let's talk about responses to this, to all these allegations. First, let's start with the White House. So they've had quite a week at the White House, quite a couple of weeks. They had Flynn. Would you say worst week ever? I would say worst week. I'd say worst week in Washington, for sure. Easy. They're about to get a nasty fix column easy week for chris eliza so mike flynn

russia connections and then uh trump's pick for secretary of labor andrew puzder goes down uh he was forced to withdraw his nomination due to i was gonna say due to allegations of domestic abuse but really those allegations have been there the whole time it was because there was an Oprah tape of his ex-wife in disguise on Oprah because she was afraid of him retaliating against her describing these allegations. And I think when members of Congress saw that, they decided, well, if there's a tape, then we can't do it. So sad that it had to get that far. And it wasn't just the allegations that were taken credibly themselves. We had to have that far, and it wasn't just the allegations that were taken credibly themselves. We had to have a tape involved.

But aside from that, he also had a number of things that would sink any other cabinet nominee. There were some tax issues. There was hiring an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper. I mean, there's all kinds of things. Just generally an asshole, I think. Generally an asshole. Yeah, couldn't have happened to a least qualified candidate to run the Department of Labor. So, good for him.

So, they have this bad week. And so, all of these things go wrong in the White House. I mean, we have been in the White House during these crises. Not a week like this so badly. But, I don't know. Most of the time when you're in the White House, you do think the press is making a bigger deal of the crisis of the day than they should you know we've had our like obama's 20 katrinas the oil spill you know all that other stuff so i don't know what do you do in these situations what's what's the best way to act well that's a good question i mean when i was writing down on our little outline that we prepare uh vigorously

i put down our versions of like oil spill ebola snowden but those are all as big as a pain in the ass as they were drops in the bucket they have like multiple criminal investigations going on nominees dropping out everyone hates each other no one can leave because they're afraid they're not going to get invited to the meeting. The president's making foreign policy on the fly via Twitter account. I mean, like, just shit is off the rails. The problem is, I think, to the extent that you can draw any parallel between our normal government and this clusterfuck, is these feeding frenzies are all consuming. You can't get your message out in any other way. You can't change the subject.

And you have no control, especially if it is something that is happening within the FBI or in a congressional investigation. And we'll get to the profiles encouraged in the Republican Congressional Investigatory Committee community shortly. But they thought their day was done with Flynn resigning. That's not ideal. You don't want that, but at least it's over, right? Like we, they've put this behind them. They can move on.

And then 24 hours later, the, the other story about the Russian contacts drop in that complete, they were clearly surprised about it because our friend Sean Spicer was asked by John Carl in the press briefing a few hours before the story dropped about whether he could still say there have been no contacts. And it was like, I can still say that no contacts. And then he finds out a few hours later via the New York times that there have been many contacts. Um, and so you just can't get off the mat because every time you turn around, there is another story that you don't know how to respond to because it's information that you didn't know about coming at you. And people get very nervous. People lawyer up and

they get nervous and they stop communicating with each other. They stop writing emails about things. It gets very hard to make decisions in the White House. I wouldn't say I'm shedding a tear for these guys right now, though. No, I'm just, it's interesting because, you know, we've been there before. And like you said, in crises that are dropping the bucket compared to this. But I mean, it's also the way they choose to respond to these things. And that starts at the top with Trump, right? Which is, they can never let it go. You know, like, if you looked at, if you judge the White House message of the day by what the president says, which you usually do, and you look at Twitter, it's all, it's just like him attacking the leakers, which you usually do, and you look at Twitter, it's just like

him attacking the leakers, him saying that leakers are going to pay a big price, him attacking the media, him attacking the Democrats. Like, if you wanted to at least try to start changing the subject, I don't know, maybe he can try to do what he was elected to do, like talk about an infrastructure bill, talk about his tax plans, talk about something. It's just like all they can do is try to respond defensively and lie in response to what happens. And that doesn't really help them too much, I don't think.

Yeah, no, no, it doesn't. The other thing in how you respond to these is you need to get one answer that everyone within the administration uses, whether it's the president, it's Pence, it's Sean Spicer, it's Kellyanne Conway. They all say the same thing, and they say the same thing every day. Right. And you try to starve. It's a feeding frenzy, and you try to starve the media. are it's a feeding frenzy and you try to starve the media and because what they love to do is say well kellyanne conway said this on morning joe and then sean spicer said this what does that mean did they change their opinion and then trump said this and they are constantly changing the story

every single day and that's problematic because they're not they don't what the fuck they're doing and they're not organized in any real way because it's pretty clear there's no they don't know what the fuck they're doing and they're not organized in any real way because it's pretty clear there's no leadership there it's one thing if trump you know like they can't control trump which is scary for a lot but amongst themselves you would think that the staff could at least get in a room and come up with one answer among between all of them and they're incapable of that as well yeah at least kelly and conway and john spicer you think would be talking to each other since both of them are on TV all day. You know, like at least those two should get their story straight.

But that seems too tricky. I don't get the sense they like each other. I don't get that sense either. I don't think that they're thick as thieves. So Trump's response basically is to fire Flynn, sort of deny everything, attack the leakers. The New York Times today reported that he's basically assigning one of his billionaire hedge fund friends to lead a review of american intelligence agencies so that seems like a great idea um so this guy's probably going to go through and try to you know purge the people that aren't loyal to trump a little scary trump's been attacking the media

it's fake news there's a lot of a lot of fake news fake media which again if it's fake news then why did he fire flynn in the first place and then and you alluded to this dan he's a lot of a lot of fake news fake media which again if it's fake news then why did he fire flynn in the first place and then and you alluded to this dan he's only taking questions at these press conferences from white right-wing media six questions he's taken so far in three press conferences new york post fox daily caller town hall christian broadcasting Network and a local Sinclair outlet. Seems alarming, yes? Yeah. Now, again, we're doing this. He might have taken questions at this press conference today from a mainstream news outlet because maybe he's running out of the life zets of the world,

but who knows? Let's assume for a second he does that. Just for shits and giggles, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But what is – like we obviously did things with friendly news outlets, like no doubt, and they should do the same thing. He can do interviews with them. He doesn't have to do an interview with Rachel Maddow. Bobby didn't have to do an interview with Brett Baer, even though we did it once or twice.

And Bill O'Reilly. But in a press conference, you have to have a mix. And I – some people – like I tweeted about this the other day, and I got a bunch of really well thought out responses from people with MAGA in their profile. But the truth is, I can't think of a press conference where we did anything resembling that. I think if we took questions from the TVs, we took questions from all the network tvs and we took questions from cnn almost on every occasion would also take it from fox and i know there's no press conference for obama was like i'll talk to huffpo i was gonna say there's no analogy here because besides huffpo there's not a lot of other progressive media outlets that were credentialed

for press conferences. Now, the right will say, oh, what about the New York Times and CBS and all that? It was, okay, fine. Yeah, you think that they're left wing. It's a stupid argument. Right. It's a stupid argument. So, yeah. I mean, besides the Huffington Post, it's not like there's a ton that were at those

press conferences. It'd be like, I would like to, I want to start with HuffPo, then we'll go to Daily Coast. I'd like to end with the gentleman in the back from the Axe Files. Next Democratic administration, Crooked Media will be there, Dan. If you're not in the fucking front row seat, then I don't want to support that president. We'll be calling last questions. We'll be the new AP.

So, yeah. So, it's really not great, great though because these people are not challenging him in any way and you know i think at the press conference yesterday no one asked the two questions uh the two reporters he called on neither of them asked about flynn or russia instead instead one asked about anti-semitism and his response was that he had a huge electoral victory that's which is also just not true not true for the record no not true for the record also it's the nonsensical response but also in an act also a factually inaccurate one um let's talk about the response of congress so republicans in congress basically have uh at least in the house the republicans have refused to investigate flannery the russian connections instead jason

chaffetz who's really given paul ryan and marco rubio a run for their money in my book um he wants to he wants to investigate the leakers that's his letter doesn't want to investigate the flint or russian thing just wants to investigate the leakers yeah as someone on twitter put it uh this is the equivalent of the watergate commission going after deep throat instead of nixon i like that i I thought that was a good tweet, whoever. Now, the Senate seems to be in a bit of a different position because you've had McCain and Graham and Lindsey Graham saying they want a broader investigation.

I saw Bob Corker yesterday saying that the Intel Committee, which is currently conducting the investigation into Russia, is moving a bit too slow. And then you've got folks on the Intel committee, both Republicans and Democrats, like Mark Warner, saying, well, we've got this investigation. We actually don't want other committees to weigh in. So, I don't know. What's your sense of what's going on in Congress on this? Well, can we talk about Paul Ryan for a second? Of course, always. on in congress on this i well can we talk about paul ryan for a second of course always paul ryan's response was he declines to call for congressional investigation into general flynn because he needs to get more info before rushing to judgment that is the definition of a fucking investigation getting more info so you can have a judgment you fucking simp like he is just the worst he is the

worst he is the worst he was asked today about the leaks coming out of the white house he's like i don't know why leaks are coming out of the white house you tell me all right man he's like i gotta get i gotta get back to my tax plan i gotta get the tax plan i mean even from paul ryan's perspective here the longer this goes and like the longer this is hanging out there and people are demanding investigations, the less time he's going to have to put together an Obamacare package and a tax reform package. He thinks that he can just get this out of the headlines so he can get to cutting taxes and regulations and government, taking away health care from people. But I don't think it's a smart strategy from him. Yeah, like, I mean, if I was Paul Ryan, you want the investigation, put it in the Intel committee,

do it behind closed doors, and then you have an answer for the next, they can work on it for the next year. Like, you have an answer, which is, can work on it for the next year like you have an answer which is they're we're looking into it full stop let me go back to talking about how i can get andy puster a bigger tax cut like that that's a play like it's it is you he's not taking his oversight responsibility seriously he's also just handling this like a moron and i'm also offended by that uh let's talk about quickly the democrats

response um this is a tricky one like is it the right focus for the democrats to be talking about russia all the time um because you know do do regular people do do voters care about this it's tricky because i don't think you should base every decision on do voters care about this? It's tricky because I don't think you should base every decision on do voters care about this because governing sometimes just requires doing the right thing. And if there's an investigation needed into Russian connections within the Trump campaign, then it's needed regardless of what voters think. But, you know, we're also trying to win the House back in 2018. And I don't know, is it are we wasting too much time on this? Are we not spending enough time on this? What do you think about that?

You know, I'm a little torn on this one. We should Democrats should push very hard for an investigation. They should put pressure on the Republicans. They should put pressure on the Justice Department. And I think frankly, they should be putting pressure on Jeff Sessions to appoint an independent counsel. It is not credible that Jeff Sessions can be the one who oversees the investigation into this. This investigation into the Trump campaign, Jeff Sessions was one of the earliest and biggest boosters of the Trump campaign. And if Loretta Lynch had to recuse herself from the email investigation because Bill

Clinton knocked on the door of her airplane then jeff sessions should appoint a special counsel and an independent counsel and we should there should be an independent investigation this is democrats you push hard for that i don't think our closing argument to win the house is going to be around russia right right so we have to at the same time we're pushing for this be honing and developing our economic message. And that is where Trump betraying the quote unquote, working class populism of his campaign is going to be. And that is all tied in with the corruption, with his billionaire nominees handing the government over Goldman Sachs, all those things are part of a story. And we should tell that story over time. So in the long run, I don't think Russia is the solution to democratic political problems, but it's probably the right thing to focus on right now. I think they also probably have to connect the two messages in some way to like, I think you say, you know, Trump's lies and scandals and corruption and incompetence is

preventing him from doing anything to help working people, right? Like the administration is in such chaos. It is so incompetent. It is so embroiled in scandal that it's not doing what it was elected to do, which is help people, you know, live their lives better. And the other side benefit of this Russia stuff is, is it also, you know, one of the things we're trying to do is keep the Republicans from being able to move forward on some of their horrible legislative ideas. And the more chaos that is happening around here, the better. So like, there is, you know, there are a fire, like, we should continue to pour gas on this fire, from a political perspective. And it's also the right responsible thing to do. Because if it is true, that the that Trump's campaign was colluding with Russian intelligence to affect our election, it's the biggest political thing to do because if it is true that the that trump's campaign was colluding with russian intelligence to affect our election it's the biggest political scandal in american history it dwarfs the water gate uh you know of richard nixon on roger stone's back like it is a massive scandal and we should pay be very we should be very focused on it as a country and as a party. We're not saying it's Watergate yet, but if that is true, then yes, you are correct.

I'm so responsible of you. I'm seeing all these, I don't know, I was watching a little thing on Fox, a little clip and reading right-wing news and even some of the annoying centrist columnists would be like, all the Democrats are doing is comparing it to Watergate. That's the biggest problem right now is Watergate comparisons. That's our biggest challenge right now, Dan, with the Russia connections. Irresponsible Watergate comparisons. Okay, when we come back, we will have The Atlantic's Julia Yaffe

to talk a little more about all this Russia stuff. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. There's more great show coming your way. On the pod today, we have a staff writer at The Atlantic, Julia Yaffe. Julia, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.

So you recently wrote a piece on this, but I was wondering, what was the reaction in Moscow to the firing of our good friend Michael Flynn? You know, in Moscow, they just see it as more chaos coming out of the Trump administration. They seem to be backing away from him more and more. Today, there was a report in Bloomberg that the Kremlin has ordered its various television stations to not report about Trump anymore. I saw that. So is the bromance over here? What's going on? I don't think the bromance is over. And, you know, I think there were some inflated hopes.

There was actually a lawmaker in the lower house of the Russian parliament with a great last name of Slutsky or Slutsky, who yesterday in response to Trump's tweet about Russia taking Crimea in all caps, said that this was like a cold shower for our inflated expectations. um said that this was like a cold shower for our inflated expectations that said i don't know that putin had crazy inflated expectations i think he he doesn't his expectations never get crazy and inflated he is a realistic very cynical very jaded guy and i think all of the you know he is the one decision maker in the country as one of the people I've spoken to, I spoke to in Moscow said, and all this stuff around him, you know, the champagne toast for Trump's inauguration and the live streaming, watching parties of his inaugural address. That's all great, but they affect nothing in terms of decision making. And Putin probably knew what he was getting with Trump.

I mean, I think he was surprised that he got him, period. I don't think he thought he was going to win. He was just trying to, you know, think Hillary Clinton. But with Trump, I think there was a sense in Moscow and, you know, in the closing days of the campaign, the presidential campaign year, that if this guy wins, it's going to be great. And the champagne toast will go flat pretty quickly because he's so unpredictable.

And that seems to be happening maybe a little sooner than people expected, but it's not unexpected. Yeah, I was going to say, what's the better outcome for Putin here? Is it sort of a successful Trump administration where there are closer relations with Russia? Or is it an unsuccessful Trump administration where, you know, the U.S. is sort of destabilized because of his presidency? You know, I think either outcome works for Putin. And this is why I find the American narrative of Putin as this all-seeing, all-knowing puppet master with a perfect and perfectly executed master plan. I find that to be so problematic because this guy is also flying by the seat of his pants. And he makes decisions in a pretty emotional, knee-jerk way, too, a lot of the time.

decisions in a pretty emotional, knee-jerk way, too, a lot of the time. I think that for him, either outcome is okay, which also signifies that he's playing a weak hand and he's not aiming for perfect, like Americans often are. If Trump is successful, I mean, defined successful, if he lifts sanctions against Russia, great. If he continues weakening Europe and brings Russia in from the cold even more, fantastic. If he doesn't, chaos in the U.S. and in Washington is great for Putin for a number of reasons. First of all, since 1991, for Putin for a number of reasons.

First of all, since 1991, Russia has been, you know, Russians and people in the former Soviet republics and in the Eastern European countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact were striving, you know, since the 80s, they were striving towards a Western way of life, both in terms of consumption, in terms of politics,

and Putin has always resisted against that. And for him, it's really important domestically that people don't want to live like Westerners do, that they're satisfied with life in Russia. And the more chaotic things become in Europe and in the U.S., the more messy, the more circus-like, the more unpredictable. Russians hate unpredictability because they have suffered a lot from unpredictability in their own history. The more crazy and chaotic and unpredictable, the less it's appealing to Russians, and therefore the better Putin does with his own constituents. And if Trump continues to take a, or takes a firmer and firmer stance against Russia, that's great for Putin too, because this is a very comfortable role.

This is a very comfortable dynamic for the Kremlin where whoever's in the White House is evil and he's out, he or she is out to, well or she is out to humiliate Russia and weaken it and thwart it everywhere in the world. And so we have to rally around the flag and we have to rally around our leader and make sure to play for our own team. So there's really no situation in which he loses. Maybe he is all seeing. That's impressive. How important is sanctions relief? Is there a point in time where they need those to be, where the economic pressure gets to him, or are they kind of fine for as long as they want? I think it would be great for them if sanctions were lifted.

You know, it's made financing a lot of the deals in Russia more complicated, and it's made money laundering more complicated. But, you know, they can continue hobbling on forever. Russians are, again, Russians aren't Americans. They don't expect perfect. They don't expect to be living lushly and lavishly and comfortably all the time. You know, and even as food prices grow and things get harder and harder for the average Russian, I think they're going to hobble on for a long time. In your view, what is the most innocent explanation for multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence. So here's what's interesting to me about this.

I've talked to a number of current State Department officials who are no fans of the current president, and even Mike McFaul, whom you guys know well, President Obama's ambassador to Moscow, and one of the architects of the reset, the former president's advisor in Russia, has said this publicly, that there's nothing untoward about a member, a top member of the president's transition team being in touch with foreign diplomats.

People do it all the time. You should be doing it all the time. You need to start putting out feelers and developing kind of a common language and mutual understanding so that once the rubber hits the road, you already know who you're talking to. You're not doing that in the first days of office. The problem here seems to be twofold. One, it's political. He lied to or he seems to have lied to the vice president. It's, you know, it's political.

He lied to, or he seems to have lied to the vice president. And, you know, certainly it looks bad when he's doing this, having stood up at the Republican National Convention last summer and joining the crowd in chanting, lock her up, and saying, if I had done a tenth of what Hillary Clinton did, I would be in jail. So that looks kind of bad. Plus, it seems he may have lied to the FBI. So I think from the Russian perspective, they're not wrong in saying, you know what, this is an internal HR matter,

and you guys sort it out for yourselves. We're not touching this. But what about the, I'm thinking about the Time story, aside from Flynn, that during the campaign you had Manafort and I guess others, since they still haven't named them, who were in regular contact with senior Russian intelligence officials. It does seem like, obviously in a transition, you want to start reaching out to your counterparts. I get that. I'm just wondering how unusual it is during the campaign. What could they have been talking about during the campaign, right, if it wasn't some sort of collusion? the campaign? What could they have been talking about during the campaign, right, if it wasn't some sort of collusion? I don't know. That said, I don't think, I think the New York Times story is far from a smoking gun. And, you know, and they were quite careful and put in a number of

caveats. And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think Paul Manafort had a point when he said in that story, when he was asked for comment, he said, look, you're talking to Russians, you don't, you don't always know if that they to Russians. You don't always know that they're intelligence. They're not wearing name tags that say, hey, I'm an intelligence officer. And that's true. Under Putin, the lines between civilians and members of the secret services or the security agencies have become blurred. or the security agencies have become blurred. And any Russian you talk to, they don't know.

And it's part of the idea is to so mistrust between citizens, to atomize people, so that when you're talking to a fellow Russian, you don't know if you're talking to a businessman or an FSB guy posing as a businessman, or you're talking to a member of the foreign ministry, and he's a GRU guy or just a diplomat. That's kind of by design. So they could have been talking to Russian businessmen, the hypotheticals here, giving them the benefit of the doubt. They could have been talking to Russian businessmen that happen to have connections with the secret services. So yeah, I don't know.

I think it was not really a smoking gun. That said, all of this stuff is swirling and swirling and swirling. The Trump administration isn't really addressing this. And when they do address it, it kind of blows up even more. And, you know, there's a lot of unanswered questions, and it doesn't look great at the very, very least. Seems like at the least you might want an investigation just to sort of figure out the answers to all these questions. And also, you know, it's interesting.

Where's Comey in this? Where's the FBI director? He had painted himself into a corner with these weird precedents that he set for himself this summer. And so now we have reports that Michael Flynn may or may not have lied to the FBI. And Jason Chaffetz saying, you know, the matter has resolved itself and deafening silence from Comey and the FBI, given the precedent they set. It's just, I don't know, it's just a hot mess. A hot mess. That's a good description of our foreign policy.

Speaking of a hot mess, what's the deal with the Russian spy ship off the coast of my home state of Delaware? A good question. That's actually quite normal. Most Russian experts I talk to were like, this is, why are we free? It just, so here's what's happening. And I think this is why Moscow is starting to back away a little bit. The chaos around Trump is bringing all the anti-Russia,

the kind of the extreme anti-Russia voices, both on the left and the right in this country, into sharp contrast, and it's amplifying them. And so everything, you know, a ship off the coast, we freak out. That said, it's not that one's normal, but in the context of Russia buzzing NATO ships, American ships, constantly testing boundaries with NATO and Europe, so we no longer know what to freak out about, and we're just in

constant caps lock freak out mode. And the Russians see this, and they're like, okay, let's just, you know, lower the temperature a little bit, back away. The other thing, you know, getting back to your first question about the fading bromance, it's only been a month, and massive policy differences have emerged between Trump and Putin. So, for example, all the saber-rattling on Iran. There was a report today, I think it was the French foreign minister, said that after having met with Tillerson, he came away believing that the Trump administration wants to completely re-examine the Iran deal from scratch.

That makes the Russians really nervous. Iran is an ally. They wanted the Iran deal. They worked on the Iran deal. They also do not want Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon and destabilizing the region even further. They do not like all the abuse hurled at Iran. You have the statements on Crimea from Nikki Haley, the Trump administration's ambassador to the UN, from Sean Spicer, from the president himself.

That's not sitting well with the Russians either. They're saying, hey, you can't discuss Crimea because it's part of the territory of the Russian Federation and we do not discuss our sovereign territory with anyone, so just shut up. And, you know, the saber rattling on China, this is, you know, these are huge, huge policy differences between the Kremlin and the White House. And I think it's actually smart for the Kremlin to take a couple steps back and say, you guys figure this out. Let's talk a little bit later. Interesting.

Julie, one last question. We'll let you go. You wrote an incredibly moving story in The Atlantic a few weeks ago about your own experience coming to the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union back in the late 80s. How do you feel watching what's happening today? How do you feel watching what's happening today? I think I'm falling back on my Russian training, which is you kind of go a little numb, and you try to find the humor in things, and you try to not take things to heart.

I really personally reached a low point that weekend that the executive order was signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day. My family is Jewish, and we lost many, many, many relatives in the Holocaust. And then, you know, seeing these refugees who have already gone through extreme vetting, who have already, their cases are closed. They've been vetted. They're not, you know, I think President Trump thinks that refugees are illegal immigrants. They're not.

They're illegal. They've been vetted. And to be turned around at that point is just, I don't know, I just found myself crying a lot that weekend. And after that, I just pulled on my Russian shell of humor and numbness and I've been trying to truck through. Well, everyone should go read the piece in The Atlantic because if more people did, I think we'd have different views on this. It's really powerful.

Thank you again for joining us, and please come back soon when we need to figure out what is going on with Russia. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Julia. Bye. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. Save America, and there's more on the way. With us on the pod also today, we have the Washington director of MoveOn.org, Ben Wickler. Ben, welcome to the pod.

Thanks so much. Great to be here. So this week, this coming week, Saturday, February 18th to Sunday, February 26th, is the first recess of this Congress. This is when members go home to their districts and hold town halls and meetings to hear from their constituents. So what do you guys have planned for this, Ben? So this is not only the first recess of this Congress, it's the first recess of the Trump administration.

And recesses, as we know from August of 2009, say, and the rise of the specter of the Tea Party, recesses can be huge political turning points. Yeah, we didn't have a good time during that recess. No, that was kind of a rush. So we're going to make that recess a distant memory. At the level of resistance energy right now, opposition to this administration, to these Republicans, is so much bigger now than the Tea Party ever was that we actually think we can dwarf it. And the recess is the key kind of like, this is the moment when everyone, the national stage is not in Washington, D.C. It is in town hall meetings in states and congressional districts across the country. National press are all swarming out across

the country to go to these events. This is what's going to define the narrative about what is happening politically in the United States. And to prepare for it, move on Daily Kos, a whole bunch of different groups, Indivisible, we are all working to organize people, and specifically we're using the website resistancerecess.com. I would recommend

resistancerecess.com slash crooked. Crooked, guys. That's us. That's you. Yeah. So we've actually, in anticipation of this moment, we've created a special link that Podsave listeners can go to, resistanceresist.com slash crooked, to find a town hall near them. And when you RSVP, you're probably going to get a phone call from a local activist or organizer so that you can kind of coordinate

with a group. You should bring your friends. You meet up. And then when you go, you fan out. You sit everywhere throughout the audience, and you hammer a question. Do not let go of the microphone until you get an answer to your question.

If one of your co-patriots is asking a tough question of a member of Congress, applaud when they ask it, boo when it's not being answered, and make sure the whole thing is captured on Facebook Live, on video, and goes out on Twitter with the hashtag resistance recess. We can basically turn every one of these little things into a political flashpoint that echoes and ricochets throughout political Washington

so that by the time Republicans drag themselves back, bruised and battered, to Washington, D.C., only in a figurative sense, these are very very peaceful, nonviolent, yeah, citizen-y type activities. But by the time the GOP gets back to D.C., the amount of, like, we will have drained not only the swamp, but also all of the momentum out of their attempt to repeal the ACA and pass, you know, a raft of terrible, terrible proposals. And this is important, too, because I just saw that Paul Ryan this morning said they will be introducing a bill. Of course, they've said this for like the last seven years, but he said that they're going to be introducing a repeal and replace bill after they all get back from President's Day recess.

He didn't say which year, so that's a very important point. I think that Paul Ryan's staff has that teed up every year. They've been doing it every year since 2011. Yeah. So, Ben, I have a couple questions for you. First, are these paid protesters? You know, we have a $3 trillion fund that we're using to give a $1,000 check to each person who goes to one of these protests. So if you want to get reimbursed,

you just, if you actually, you just go to a pod, save America. You go to crooked media, get crooked media.com slash reimburse. Slash Soros. And there's actually, this is a,

make it clear that this is a joke. Because we, the funny thing is not only are these not paid protesters, the organized left, the professional left, if you will, is like scrambling to catch up with the amount of energy and appetite to show up at these events. Members of Congress can't organize enough events to accommodate all the people that want to come and ask them questions. That's actually led to a new idea, which is constituent town halls, which is basically, if there's not a town hall near you, then at the resistancerecess.com slash crooked website, if you click make an event,

you can organize your own town hall where you invite your member of Congress to show up and invite the media and have an empty chair for them if they don't come. And like there's going to be hundreds of those across the country at the same time as there are all these official town hall events. Like normally it is really hard to get enough people to fill a small coffee shop. But congressional offices are now, like, you know, either booking bigger and bigger venues to deal with the anticipated crowds or freaking out and making all these security plans to deal with the fact that they are going to be jam-packed. There's going to be an overflow crowd at these events.

It's going to be peaceful, but it's going to be intense. And if you're, you know, if you have a question about whether your health care is going to get ripped away or your kids will be able to sign up for your health insurance plan or if your grandmother is going to be kicked out of a nursing home because Medicaid funding has been slashed by $2 trillion, which is what Tom Price wants to do, go to this event and you will find it can be a little scary to ask a member of Congress a question as a regular citizen.

You will find that you are surrounded by supportive people who are there just to cheer you on as you ask that tough question and do your best Jake Tapper and like, don't let go until you get the answer. Study Jake Tapper interviews before you go to your resistance recess. Yeah, I was gonna ask like for someone who's never been to one of these, which is I'm assuming going to be a lot of people because we're hearing from people who listen here like it's the first time they've ever gone to a protest, the first time they've gone to a town hall. What's the experience like? What should someone expect if they go to one of these?

Historically, the experience is that there's a handful of very sleepy people. That is not what the experience will be now. If you're going now, let's say you go to resistancerecess.com slash crooked, you're in Phoenix, and you find that Paul Gosar is having a town hall at the Best Western Gold Canyon Inn and Suites, which is across the street from the Walgreens, you know, outside of town. Lovely. It's a lovely spot. Yeah. Beautiful, you know, kind of flat with hills in the distance. The town hall's at 6 p.m., so you arrive with your car full of friends. You pull in just as the sun is setting.

You have your signs, but you're not making a big deal out of them because when you come in, you're arriving early, I hope. You're looking for good seats spread throughout the crowd so that all of you can be raising your hands and you have a better chance of getting called on. The member of Congress probably arrived a little bit late, introduces, makes some sort of platitude-y remarks. They're probably a little nervous.

They're trying to figure out who in this crowd is there to hassle them. The answer is almost everybody, but in the best, most patriotic, civil possible way. And then they open the mic. They probably have a floating mic or, you mic or depending on the size of the room, maybe they're just calling on people and everyone's hand shoots up. You want to be smiling and looking as just supportive as possible

when you have your hand up because you want to be called on. You don't want to be ignored. And you and your friends throughout the room have all written down your questions in advance. You've practiced them. You know how to include a bit of your own story through your identifying yourself. I'm Ben Wickler. I was once turned down for health insurance when I was freelancing because I'd just gotten a stomach

bug test. That's actually a story about my wife. She's lactose intolerant. She had the test out. We were turned down for insurance for a pre-existing condition because we didn't know why she had a stomach ache. That was the old days. So you tell that story. And then you say, can you commit right now that under whatever plan you come up with, that you would not vote for any plan that would result in someone like me getting turned down for insurance

and that everyone who has insurance right now can keep their coverage? Can you commit to that here and now? And then the member of Congress tries to dodge. And by this time, you're nervous, you're excited, and you're supposed to stop talking. But you haven't gotten an answer to your question. So you look at your member of Congress, and you know that there's all these people holding up their phones, making a Facebook Live video of Paul Gozer right there and then.

And you say, can you please commit? This matters for my family. Can you commit that people will not lose their insurance coverage, that people won't be turned down? And everyone applauds. And you find suddenly that like the whole like vibe of the room has turned, it's like on your side, you're standing there supported by this whole kind of grassroots army of your fellow constituents. Even though none of you are being paid, it's like the, it's like a volunteer army, like the old days of the American colonies before they figured out how to pay people. And your member of Congress eventually is not satisfying people. Your goal is to get a public stance, a commitment, which is what politicians who have unpopular views least want to give.

But they're going to try to wiggle and explain away. You've got to keep hammering. What's happened in some of these town halls is the members of Congress actually sneak out the back entrance and try to avoid being the constituents. Capture that on video for sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, post your, like, 10th person in your group should be outside by the exit so that you capture it on video if they actually try to flee.

Look, basically you want to get to the point where the Republican member of Congress just says, I quit, put a Democrat at my place. Then you walk out, George Soros is standing there with your check, and then you go home. It's a great day. Exactly. Take the limo right home and let the valet take your car home. And we should say again, too, that if, because I saw Vice News had a report today that 200 members of Congress aren't holding town halls or meetings next week because they're afraid that this might happen.

And so, like you were saying, Ben, you should organize it yourself. You told me that some people are bringing cardboard cutouts of their congressmen to the town halls where they're not holding them. Yeah, that's a great thing to do. You can actually just use a computer printer and print the face of your member of Congress. And then if you take a piece of a box, you can tape it to it, and then you just bring a shirt on a coat hanger. You can have a pretty good replica of your member of Congress at your town hall,

even if they don't show up. Yeah, I should say careful with those cardboard cutouts, everyone. I had a bad experience. Keep that shit off Facebook. Put him in a red Make America Great hat. The other thing I just want to emphasize is you do it, and then you make sure that the world sees it. You might not get to ask a question if you go to one of these. What you can definitely do, what everyone can do, is post to Facebook, post to Twitter from the event,

do a Facebook live stream from the event, keep the camera on your member of Congress. If you push it out with the hashtag resistance recess, then my colleagues at MoveOn are going to be tracking that throughout the weekend. Lots of people will be tracking it. And it can be amplified. It can go viral and be seen across the country. There's going to be a flood of these things. And that's something that no matter, even if you are terrified by the idea of asking a question about one of these things, you can really help create a moment that becomes a political turning point. Yeah, and you should all know that we will do the same thing. So if you tweet at your

four favorite Pod Save America hosts, we'll be monitoring this all weekend and next week too, and we'll give you some love. Ben, thank you so much for checking in with us and talking about this. And thanks for helping us set up this website. We're very excited about this. So everyone, again, go to resistancerecess.com slash crooked to find out where you can go to organize during the recess. And we will be checking in next week on this just to give everyone updates on what's happening out there. Ben, thanks for stopping by. Awesome. Thanks, man.

Take care. 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. Thanks again to our sponsors. Please support

them the way they support this podcast. 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 every Wednesday. Thank you very much for joining the pod and take care.