Pod Save America - "C'mon, Shinzo... they've paid me a fortune!"

Episode Date: February 13, 2017

Trump holds national security talks in a crowded Mar-a-Lago ballroom. Flynn and Priebus are on the ropes. And DeRay McKesson joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to discuss protest and activism.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Joe American, filling in for Jon Lovett until we get done with the Mar-a-Lago part or this gross tiresome. I'm Tommy Vitor. Welcome to Pod Save America. Why do we think these handsome men are laughing? On the pod today we have civil rights activist DeRay McKesson. We're going to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and organizing and protesting in general. Everyone also tune in on Wednesday, Pod Save the World. Very special Pod Save the World. I have Ben Rhodes, who is really one of the closest advisors, period,

to President Obama for all eight years. Brilliant guy. We talked about everything under the sun, including his leading of the Cuban negotiations. So it's a very cool episode. Tune in. He lets it rip, I understand. He lets it rip. Outstanding. Also, it is the last day to buy March, guys. Yes, cottonbureau.com slash crooked. I know this is already tiresome, but it will be better

when we're in the Mar-a-Lago part. It will be better once people have the context for why you're doing it. Yeah, it's great. Oh, for sure. Just, you know. Okay, guys. I want to start with a national security question for Tommy. Tommy, let's say that you're president and a call comes in that North Korea just launched

an intermediate-range ballistic missile in the direction of South Korea. You're at your private club that you're still profiting off of as president, and you're eating dinner with the Japanese prime minister. What do you do? Do you A, go to a secure location and take the call, or B, just grab a cell and start chatting?

I think at a bare minimum, maybe you go upstairs to one of the rooms you own. I mean, the North Koreans do this stuff a lot. They tested 20 ballistic missiles in 2016 alone, and they often do it for maximum PR value and to try to get attention. So this is not new, but it's troubling. And I was thinking back to the first time this happened when we were in office. It was April 2009. We were in Prague to deliver a speech about nuclear nonproliferation.

The president was and he was woken up at 430 in the morning to get briefed on a missile launch. And what he did then was convene the call of the secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, his national security advisor, secretary of defense. Right. And then Hillary got working and she talked to the South Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese to start the process of coordinating on sanctions. So obviously, we didn't solve the North Korea problem that day or any day after. But like, that's kind of the play you run in response to this sort of provocative act. Now, Trump, like, let's set aside the irony of him running entire election based on Hillary's email security, right? Trump and his goons running around trying to manage this thing, an unsecure, crowded restaurant is just absurd. It's a horrendous process. And the result was equally as bad because he made this statement with the Japanese prime minister where Abe did all the

talking. Trump didn't condemn the launch. He didn't mention South Korea. They didn't issue a joint statement. He kind of just made this clunky comment. Aside from the OPSEC here, let's separate the both out, right? What is OPSEC? What is OPSEC? You're speaking in these holy words. The operational security. Let's talk about the substance of the response. So let's do the substance of the response and of North Korea. Because you

were telling us that this scared the shit out of you. Well, I mean, the operational security said, we don't know what documents they were looking at. They probably weren't like waving around classified matters. It was probably they were looking at like a statement. So whatever. Let's set that aside because we just don't know. On the substance, I mean, it was just, you know, when Iran tested a missile, they sent out General Flynn to demand to put Iran on notice, right? The statement from Trump was kind of half assed and weird. And I didn't really it didn't really work. And it's just, you know, substantively, when the North Koreans launch a missile like this, they're not just doing it for the sake of doing it.

They're usually testing something that you can then apply to a future weapons system. So they're trying to get to a place where they can put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States. They don't currently have that capability. We don't think the mid-range missiles they have could hit like Guam, but they could certainly hit Japan or South Korea. But it's a very real threat. And this might be the biggest threat Trump faces as president, is when they hit this threshold of a nuclear device that they can deliver on ICBM.

As president is when they hit this threshold of a nuclear device that they can deliver on ICBM. And we're not. His response was just ad hoc and it didn't do anything to reassure our allies. And so so that's scary enough. And but it's all going down in the middle of the dining room at Mar-a-Lago. Yes. America is a wonderful country. You come here, you get a job as waiter. You get to see president of the United States doing highly, highly sensitive classified meetings in wedding.

I'm serving iceberg wedge salads and I'm hearing incredibly interesting things. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking this country, man. And, you know, I come here with nothing but babushka doll. John Lovett got a job as a foreign, a Russian intelligence at the Mar-a-Lago. He's a waiter now. That's why this has been happening. That's the shtick. Really, I'm thinking twice about having suggested this last night.

Do we think this has run its course yet? Yeah, I think it's pretty good. Hold on, let me switch out. Hold on, let me get John. Hey, guys. Well done. So CNN had this story last night about what was going on at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, just reading a few things from the story.

As Mar-a-Lago's wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background, Trump and Abe's evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session. The decision-making on full view to fellow diners as described in detail to CNN. The patio was lit only with candles and moonlight, so aides used the camera lights on their phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents. Operational Security 101.

How's that, Tom? Have your cell phone on with a light pointed at a document. That will keep it safe. Someone's got a cell phone with a light on. It's like a portable satellite truck. I talked to some people today. I think they were reporting i think they were going over the language of a possible statement or communique or joint

statement or whatever it might be that said like go somewhere else guys he clearly he loves being in the center of a play about him right he loves this this is the coolest thing ever to be playing president reality television star exactly this was it reality television star. Exactly. This was, it was actually breathtaking. Like, I was reading the news and I was just gasping alone in my house. You know, there's some dingus who's a member of Mar-a-Lago took a picture with the guy holding the nuclear football. I saw that. You have people taking photos.

Like, regardless of whether it's classified or not, this is really sensitive. It's actually really useful information for our adversaries to see how decisions are made in real time. And I guess when I heard that Mar-a-Lago was going to be the winter White House, for me, all I heard was conflicts of interest. He's going to make money off of this. He's a scheming, grifting guy. It was hard to figure out what the problem was.

It never occurred to me that it was going to continue to be a club with events, and he'd be having Abbe down after a golf tournament and some wedding where they're serving shrimp cocktails. Right. So let's say this happened at the White House. They could have walked downstairs into the White House Situation Room. They could have had a secure video conference with the Pentagon, with our ambassador in South Korea, with anyone else we needed to in the entire world.

We could have had satellite imagery up. We could have seen the telemetry of the missile in real time from the Pentagon. I mean, there's like a million ways you could have known exactly what was happening faster than, you know, Googling it or whatever they were doing on their cell phones. Even if you were at Mar-a-Lago and this went down, right? Like we've all been on, I mean, you were just saying, we've all been on the road in foreign countries with the president when something of national security importance goes down and they have these rooms called skiffs. Yeah, I mean, you have a secure room.

Basically, you take over an entire hotel room. You set up a tent so no one can monitor you via video. There's a sound machine so no one can listen to the audio. You have secure communications capability. You know, it's a great make work when you're on the road. This president needs to get his PDB. That said, he should, you know, go to the White House, man. But he's not even on the road. You know, they're clearly planning to use Mar-a-Lago, which means the national security

apparatus should be setting up rooms there permanently to have these conversations the same way Bush did at Crawford, you know, when he was wrecking things. And they may be doing that, but clearly it's not prepared and if if it was prepared why they didn't simply retire down to that room is a mystery to me and just the like the art the the hypocrisy of the campaign i know the campaign was about her fucking emails i don't know everyone's been saying this but it's like so well there's a bigger problem with the nsc and i don't know if everyone's been saying this, but it's like so... There's a bigger problem with the NSC, and I don't know if you want to transition into that now, but it's gotten a lot of attention. Well, I want to... One more funny part is, this goes to the pay-to-play part.

At one point, as this all is happening, there's a wedding at Mar-a-Lago as well. And so Trump says to the... Trump wants to go see the wedding. So he takes the Japanese prime minister and he said, I said to the prime minister of Japan, I said, come on, Shinzo, let's go over and say hello. First of all, you're not really supposed to call him by his first name. You know what? That's okay. That's okay.

Let's not worry about that part because you're getting to the best part. Come on, Shinzo. So they go over there. He says, they've been members of this club for a long time trump said of the newlyweds they've paid me a fortune great great i just come meet him the the it's so sad that all these foreign leaders are going to come to this country they're going to meet with our president and they're going to go home and they're going to be like guys it's fucking nuts and i don't know it's as nuts as you think it is and then it's gonna be most embarrassing like imagining the foreign leaders call each other yes you know

like like like like abe calls merkel and was like you wouldn't believe what just happened this weekend it's like you've ever it's like it's like you i i just hate that like justin trudeau is gonna go home and have a bunch of really funny stories that he's telling his buddies up in Canada. And it's like, hey, don't make fun. I don't want to be on. It's America, man. Yeah. I don't like that your stories are about us and I'm sympathetic to them. Well, you know, in the backdrop of all this is that Trump has been just demagoguing the fact that the Japanese don't pay us enough for the defense capabilities we give them. Right. And then you have a population of people that are living in the fear of being nuked by a madman in North Korea,

and Trump's just like putzing around in Mar-a-Lago with them. I mean, this is not a serious response to a very serious threat. Everything that happened in Mar-a-Lago this weekend, it's sort of a backdrop to larger issues with the National Security Council that are sort of coming to a head today, not just with National Security

Advisor Michael Flynn, who he could be fired by the time you listen to this podcast, or he could be there another four years. We don't know. We have jinxed things a few times. So it'd be nice if you were fired while we're doing this. No predictions here, but it looks like he's on thin ice, many people are saying. So the New York Times story, which is very fascinating, is called Turmoil at the National Security Council from the Top Down by David Sanger. It's based on two dozen current and former National Security Council officials commenting. I love the sourcing on these stories. The Washington Post had nine people saying that Flynn had talked about sanctions with the Russians. They're getting you guys dead to

rights. Nine sources. I think we've got it. Look, it's so funny to be like, I have eight, but I'm not that, I want to get one more. One more. Tommy, as a former staffer at the NSC, what were some of the most troubling things about this story for you? I mean, what's most disconcerting to me

is how disorganized the NSC sounds. Because this sounds funny, but like the National Security Council lives and dies by good process. Like paper and how it's worked and who gets to see it when is very important. They run, you know, you run a process where hard, hard questions are debated at lower levels. They make as many decisions as they can, then they run it up to the deputies. And then by the time it gets to the National Security Advisor or the president,

things should be worked over and you should have worked out the details of, say, banning all Muslims. So so but tell me what the National Security Council does. Like it is a bunch of different agencies. The NSC, the National Security Advisor, is charged with convening all the relevant component parts of the government that do national security. So when General Flynn hosts a principals committee meeting with Steve Bannon on his right, he's got the Secretary of Defense, DOD, I'm sorry, DOD, State Department, like the intelligence community, all the relevant players, and they come together to make these decisions. It just sounds like these meetings are not happening on a regular basis. The staff is full of career people that come over from agencies. They're really apolitical professionals. Those people are all running out of the building because they don't like the way things are run.

They feel like it's being politicized. And and frankly it sounds like no one wants to work for general flynn who himself is probably not ready to lead this organization you see that people are bringing make america great mugs to national security yeah which is a small silly point but it's just like it's sort of like indicative of the overall feeling and also like well the scarier point is i saw that it's that they said that steve bannon is like convening a shadow national security council without some of the career experts yeah and who knows who's in that this stuff was happening with cheney right he was run his own shadow process and it was a disaster like a good process doesn't guarantee a good outcome but a bad process guarantees a bad outcome and like you also read that there are

insider threat programs going on where they're investigating people within the NSC to see if they're leaking. Meanwhile, Flynn's leaking to the Russians about sanctions relief. And Donald Trump is using a compromised Android phone in Mar-a-Lago to make national security decisions. So it's a problem. I was saying this last night. You know, we read the news to get ready for this podcast. At least I try to. I rely on John and Tommy to do

most of the work. But reading the news last night felt like the scene in Ghostbusters where Sigourney Weaver opens the fridge and she's like, you know, I was seeing this Flynn story and I'm like, wait a second, that's an egg cooking on the counter. And then I'm reading a little bit more of the details and it says that Mattis almost ordered basically a war against Iran

and then kind of changed his mind at the last minute because it leaked. And then you open the fridge and it's like, there's a fucking monster in it. It's like, there is no Obama, only Trump. I want to talk about that point about Mattis, too, because everyone's like, Mattis is the safe one. Mattis is the one who's going to get us through the next four years. But Mattis was like, yeah, we were almost going to like go. A firefight with Iran. Oh, no, no, no.

It's not that bad. Firefight with Iran. What was going on? It's not that bad. The Iranians ship weapons to the Houthi rebels who they're aligned with against the Saudis. This happens fairly regularly. We've interdicted a number of ships sending over this stuff. What it sounds like is he had his eye on a boat and he wanted to interdict it, which is fairly standard, but was worried, given how bad the Yemen operation had gone, that if this thing devolved into a shooting war, this could be us versus Iran.

And that's like, was just too much for the load to bear. Now, I don't know the details of this. So it could have been a responsible decision then? It sounds like it could have been a responsible decision, but it also sounds like a missed opportunity to collect intelligence and prevent a pretty nasty arms shipment from happening. Can you walk us through why Flynn might be fired in that whole talking to the Russians thing? Yeah. I mean, the quick and dirty is Flynn talked to Ambassador Kislyak, who's the Russian ambassador to the U.S. a number of times before the election and during

the transition. When asked about this, they all said he was discussing logistics for a call and they denied that he ever discussed sanctions and that there was time, there were discussions during the campaign. Mike Pence, in particular, went out and really put his credibility on the line defending Flynn. Now, thanks to the Washington Post and their nine sources, we know that those who had access to intelligence reports that monitor those communications between Ambassador Kislyak and whomever he's talking to, in this case it was Flynn, said he did mention election-related sanctions. So it's clear Flynn lied not just to the country but to his own team. And yesterday on the Sunday shows, the little, you know, elven conservative warrior they sent out, Stephen Miller, wouldn't defend Flynn.

And he was like, I don't have any information for you on that. And then you wake up this morning and there's three newspapers saying that Trump's upset with him and he might be done. So Flynn has lost credibility. People didn't make use up for the job to begin with. He seems like he's cooked. Flynn, man, you know. Anyway, he sucks. He just didn't seem smart enough.

The question is, I almost had a really bad spit take on that. I saw people wondering if Trump knew that Flynn was talking about sanctions to the Russian ambassador. And that's the one reason that maybe Flynn doesn't get fired here. Interesting. Stay woke. Because they won't say either way. Because Trump basically said, oh, I don't know...

Trump was asked about this on the plane to Mar-a-Lago by reporters, and he said, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Look into the story. Total lie. Of course, total lie. He knew. This is true in, like, any profession. It's true of executives in Hollywood. You can either be stupid or you can be an asshole, but you can't be both.

I feel like I know plenty of stupid assholes. Yeah, they don't do that well. But, I mean, I think the question for Flynn, I mean, there's a law called the Logan Act, which, you know, people are talking about whether it's relevant here because you're not supposed to have these contacts with foreign officials. That's probably not going to be enforceable or enforced. The question is, did someone come to him and did he lie to an investigator in the process of these conversations? Did he lie to his own team and lose credibility? I mean, seemingly he's lost the entire national security apparatus of the government. So I don't know how he could stay in that job.

A couple other tidbits in the New York Times story. There's so much happening. Yeah, I want to go through a few more. And while Mr. Obama liked policy option papers that were three to six single spaced pages, council staff members are now being told to keep papers to a single page with lots of graphics and maps. Quote, the president likes maps, said one official. So I remember vaguely similar stories about Bush, about how he liked the things to be one page. But I got to tell you, I don't think it should be one page including illustrations. Nine bullets was the max.

We all been up late the night before a term paper was due. And all of a sudden, 10 pages becomes 12 pages because you added a couple pictures. Is Trump a geography buff? I don't know. Now, I'll give credit to our Intel Community and Defense Department. They can produce some pretty cool maps, okay? There's some cool stuff you can see visually from these guys. But how about the basic information as well as the maps?

In fairness, though, these are a lot of countries Trump is finding out about for the first time. I mean, he really doesn't know anything. So it is fair that, like, you should start with the basics. Come on, Shinzo. We're going to go bomb this one. Now, Shinzo, you come from the... Show me your country. The bunch of islands, but not the ones, not the Philippines.

That's a different thing. That's a different bunch of islands, Shinzo. Also, just a small thing. He had recently talked to the president of China. So he thought that Japanese names were organized the same way that Chinese names were. So in one tweet he goes, it was great meeting with President Shinzo, instead of saying President Abe.

I did not notice that. The Chinese media has taken to calling him a paper tiger in print and mocking him with BuzzFeed-style quizzes about why he's weak. Also, that's not going well either. RT is starting to mock him. They're starting to run Saturday Night Live clips. Well, you know, it was only a matter of time until Putin, you know,

that worm turned. Right, because Putin's main goal is not to be buddies with Trump, it's to destabilize the United States. And look, we here at Crooked Media cannot confirm the contents of the dossier. But that's all I'll say about that. Okay, cool.

The other part, this goes back to Bannon setting up the Shadow Council. There was a quote in the story. For his part, Mr. Bannon sees the United States as headed toward an inevitable confrontation with two adversaries, China and Iran. I mean, Jesus Christ. That might have been the scariest part of the whole story. I was a gog. Because this is the guy running national security,

essentially, because Flynn's out there doing whatever and probably going to be fired. In Flynn's book, he compares himself to Machiavelli and Steve Jobs.

Jesus. Think different, Michael Flynn. One way he's thinking different is talking to the Russians about national security matters. Another way he's thinking different is apparently he was surprised to know that you couldn't

just ship more arms to Saudi Arabia. Yeah. This story is incredible, but there are parts of the story where I'm like, alright, that's the part. Every administration goes through learning the different parts of the levers of the government. I don't know that a three-star general who ran

the Defense Intelligence Agency should know that there's... He was the head of the TNI, man. I was trying to find one thing, but nah, he's terrible. No, I mean, look, that's one of those things that could be a garble and someone treating him unfairly. But boy, yes, there's some pretty well-established procedures for how these things get done. How about KT McFarlane in a national security meeting saying that we need to make America great again? And that was like an all-hands-all staff. And those are the people that are all career staffers who don't want to hear that kind

of stuff. Can you imagine people with their notebooks like, I got to take notes in this meeting and she's like, make America great again. She is not up for that job. That is incredibly hard job. But like the anecdote that shocked me that made me laugh really was her giving people like the wrap it up like Osccar style thing at nsc meetings i like that i mean i think that's a great idea those meetings are way too long way too long

in meetings let's wrap it up i really yeah i give love at that sign every once in a while guys it hurts my feelings you guys i don't think you all realize how often my feelings are hurt while recording the podcast are we gonna sit down sit down on the couch again? But the other thing, I would say that the saddest part of the story, the most pitiable part of the story, is when there's a bunch of national security officials are having a conversation about whether or not they should start writing draft tweets.

That, that. In the hopes of getting him to Trump and maybe influencing. But that's my point about like, there's not serious meetings going on with a process that are leading to decisions and policy ideas. It's the NSC is getting together to like write tweets. That is not a good time. You see, it's like like these these these staffers who are not political are just there for years and years, just like not knowing what to do. And like these are such dedicated people

like they are serious they got their pleated pants and they do their best and they love this country and they really really care and they are not funny because i tried making jokes and it doesn't work and you just i feel bad because i just know how deeply they want to do a good job for the administration and they're not given the ability to do it because they're monsters i think some of them are funny um aside from some of them are funny. Some of them are funny. Aside from the New York Times story, there's also, by the way, that Observer story that said that the intel community is withholding information from Trump

because they're worried that the Russians might find out. And the senior DOD official says the Russians are probably in the sit room. Yeah, you know, I don't know what to make of that. A, I'm worried that they think that. I'm equally as worried if the rogue National Security Agency is deciding that they don't have to give the President of the United States the information they're collecting. Like, that, too, is not acceptable.

That is coup light. Well, at the same time, I mean always be things where the CIA is not going to the president every time and saying, we got, we pay off Bob Smith and this government to get this. There's a need to know for some of these things. But, you know, the goal of intelligence is to help you make a better decision. And they need to give him everything he needs to make a decision. Yeah. So Flynn's on the ropes, possibly. But apparently he's not the only one.

Our friend Reince Priebus is in a little bit of trouble. The guy that runs Newsmax, Ruddy. Because this gave me such joy. Schadenfreude, if you will. Yes, yeah. Is that a Russian word? Just kidding. So Trump gets a Friday night drink while Trump has a soda, and this guy, the head of Newsmax, Chris Ruddy, Chris Ruddy, who's his old friend, they have a 30-minute jam sesh.

And then, of course, Chris Ruddy goes to Twitter, which is just so pathetic. But he goes to Twitter and he goes like, just how to, which is just so pathetic. But he goes to Twitter. He's like, just had a 30 minute conversation with President Donald Trump. He's got this thing in hand. That's like legitimately what he said. OK, so they have a 30 minute conversation. Then all of a sudden, over the next two days, Chris Ruddy takes to the streets telling anybody who will listen, Reince Priebus has to go.

Reince Priebus is dropping the ball. It's all Reince Priebus' fault. He's the one who failed on the executive order. He's the one who can't wrangle process. He can't tell the president, no, he's not up to this job. Reince must go. Reince must go. Now, I don't know about you, but that does not seem like a coincidence to me. No, no. It seems as though Trump spent time with Chris Ruddy to give him this. We don't know what that conversation was, but Chris Ruddy clearly came away from the conversation saying it's my job to go on television and make Reince Priebus look terrible. Yeah. The only bit of context I'd add here is that Newsmax was doing fake news before fake news was cool. Like they are garbage. Oh, yeah. But, you know, clearly this guy has access. But there's also that Politico story that said that Trump was a little annoyed with Reince and also, of course, our boy Sean Spicer.

So Flynn, Priebus, Spicer. The Politico story also interestingly said that the only people that Trump really likes are Bannon and Gary Cohn because they've made a lot of money. Amazing. Yeah. And Gary Cohn is like one of the people rumored to be possible chief of staff, you know. Well, and Gary Cohn is a Democrat. Unless he's murdered in the middle of the night by Kellyanne Conway. Former president of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn is now like the most important

person in making economic policy. I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to watch Ryan's previous be raked over the coals. Not the first person to make a deal with Donald Trump and then be ruined by it. One person who is not worried about his job in the White House is 31-year-old senior advisor on policy and top speechwriter Stephen Miller. This guy is quite a fucking character, let me tell you. It's so dark. A native of Santa Monica,

right here in Los Angeles, went to, like, Stephen Miller's, if you look at his whole backstory, it is like such a story of, like, conservative oppression.

This man was, this kid was so oppressed at liberal Santa Monica high school because he had to go to school with Latinos and Asians. Right. And not everyone was speaking English all the time,

so he decided to, like, mock them. Yeah, he had trouble making friends English all the time. So he decided to like mock them. Yeah, he had trouble making friends because of his ideology. Yeah, sure, Steve. He ran for student government president and was booed off stage by 4,000 people. That's all you have to know. And apparently he relishes it. Like when people don't like him, he likes it, which is sort of a...

You know what this reminds me of actually a lot is Ted Cruz, which is... Yeah, exactly. You know what this reminds me of actually a lot is Ted Cruz, which is it takes a lot to be the kind of person so despised at every stage of your life that at every stage of your life, all these people emerge to say, I knew Steve and he's the worst. And you get this sense that this is just a giant bit of payback to all the people who said he wasn't cool, who didn't want to dance with him. I don't know. But he is. He's like, I'll show you. I'm going to go be a nationalist.

He came to prominence during the campaign because he would give an entire speech as a warm up to the Trump speech. And he clearly adopted the language of Trump because he says things like, the powers of the president will not be questioned, which is just eye rolling Trumpy and bluster. But that was. Guess what, buddy? We're questioning it. Protesters are questioning it. The courts are questioning it. He was on the Sunday shows. He was on all the Sunday shows Sunday, which is why we're talking about him.

And it was like the craziest performance ever because he just, like, the lies were. Just lying. I used to think Kellyanne Conway was the best liar of the whole administration. Not the best liar, but the most joyful liar. Like, she enjoyed telling lies, right? She says them with, like, a straight face. Miller is giving her a run for her money because what he was saying about

voter fraud was he didn't just say the lie. He then said and you know I'm right, George and it is an indisputable fact and I will go on any show, any time to repeat these claims. You know what? Stephen Miller should come on this show. We'll be happy

to talk about voter fraud with him. Come on on, buddy. We are happy to talk to you about voter fraud. Because everything you said was a fucking lie. And the thing is, at least with Kellyanne Conway, there's some pathos. You can see that it's wearing on her. She's constantly talking about how aggrieved she is. There's a real kind of sense of fear in her eyes.

Stephen Miller has some dead eyes up there. And it's also really strange to hear this kind of nationalistic Breitbart language with a Santa Monica, California accent. Like, we're going to stop voter fraud. The president will not be questioned. One of their favorite new things is saying that thousands of people were bused from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and that changed the result there. Someone tweeted that there were 800 legal observers in New Hampshire, 6,000 election workers. The AG's office looked into it. There were cops.

There was not a single report of buses or voter fraud. And the reason this is important, guys, is because these kind of allegations are setting up voter suppression efforts that we need to watch going forward because they're going to try to use them to win more elections. And there's one more fact, too. I believe Donald Trump could question the results of New Hampshire. He could have done it for like 500 bucks. You could have filed a report on these and so in New Hampshire said, absolutely, voter fraud has not been a problem here. Republican politicians. And he said anyone would tell you it's a problem. No one would tell you it's a problem. Also, he has this whole thing where he said it is an indisputable fact that 14% of non-citizens are registered to vote in this country.

That is completely false. The people whose study he referred to has said that's false. They wrote the study. And he was so sure that it's true. It is not true. These people are such bad people. This guy should not be in the White House. I sort of wish that some of the Sunday show hosts were armed with a few more of these facts on voter fraud.

Because, I mean, at some point you just got to, you can't have that. You only have 10 minutes with him so you can't keep going. You know, I watched the Stephanopoulos. George was angry. George was very angry. He didn't have,

but he's like, you provide the evidence and of course, Stephen Miller has no evidence because there is no evidence. Yeah, man. I mean, it's just the, we're just like,

Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller's on the rise. All the worst people are just empowered. It is really bad. Yeah, and Trump loves him now because he's willing to lie for him.

One more Republican to complain about outside the administration before we get to our guest. I don't even know what this is. This is Jason Chaffetz. Oh, God. So, the town halls are going very well. And by the way, guys, next week is recess. Congressional recess. We'll probably give you some more information because

it's going to be very important to get to all of your congressperson's town halls. In fact, someone on Laura Olin on Twitter, who had worked on the Obama campaign at some point, she had a good suggestion, which is that if your representatives don't hold town hall next week, you should hold one yourself. I love that. Invite them, make it public, gather a crowd, take some photos. It's a good idea because there are going to be – we were looking around here next week and there's some – like the Republicans around here have already had their town halls.

Yeah. Sorry, Darrell. I said you're not going to see our shining faces. But if your representative is not holding a town hall, you should just hold one yourself. So these town halls are happening and in places like Utah, where Jason Chaffetz represents Utah's third district, he goes to his town hall and he is overwhelmed with people there who were just complaining about him wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, complaining about him not investigating Trump even though he's the head of the Oversight Committee. And so Chaffetz is interviewed and he says, this was more of a paid attempt to bully and intimidate me rather than a true showcase of how voters felt in his district he called them paid protesters then you look at some of the videos and it's like a

10 year old girl i watch this thing and like the people raise their hand and said hi you know my name is sarah and i just want you to know i am not a paid protester i am a constituent and i'm here to talk to you you know this was as as rough and tumble and real as it gets. I mean, the paid processor thing is so stupid. It's so stupid, but it's also so sinister. It's like these people take time out of their day to come to a town hall and talk to their representative about what bothers them. And then he goes, he's too much of a coward to tell them that they're paid processors to their face.

He goes to the press afterwards and tells the world that these people who took time out of their day to go see him are being paid money to do so. He goes to In-N-Out with a Washington Post reporter and he rags on his constituents as some big D.C. media journalist. Five guys. And actually, I will say, and also, it was especially disappointing because I have to say, you know, watching Chaffetz up there, he really did take a lot of questions. He talked to a lot of people who opposed him. Like, he did actually, I think, handle it the way I think a congressperson should handle it.

I mean, just to give him credit for one second and then to turn around and say none of it was real is ridiculous. Don't you think that Evan McMullin should run against Jason Chaffetz? Yep. Yes. Evan, friend of the pod, get in there. So it was in that longer Washington Post story that you referenced, Tommy, that Chaffetz was thinking in 2020 he might run for governor. He should, fine. Evan.

McMullen should go do it then. Utah. It's yours. Take it. Chaffetz is sort of a dangerous person to have in a leadership position because he just won't do anything to put any real oversight on Trump. Yeah, I mean. That's his job. That's his job.

He's supposed to investigate. We should step back from this for a second because what we're seeing at Mar-a-Lago is so galling and so breathtaking. All these violations that the Trump administration is doing. You see more and more stories about his sons continuing to go off to foreign countries to make deals. All of it is happening. And it's exasperating. We should remember why it's exasperating. It's exasperating because Donald Trump, who has spent his whole life living without consequence, now is a president without consequence because the Republicans have been abdicated their responsibility to just hold a fucking hearing. God damn it. It matters.

It matters. OK, when we come back, we will talk to someone who has been at the center of an organizing movement over the last couple of years, DeRay McKesson. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. On Pod Save America today, we have civil rights activist DeRay McKesson. DeRay, welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be here. Good to have you. So we were just talking about protests and organizing. We're talking about some of the town halls.

You obviously have a ton of experience with this. You were one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. So I think BLM was extremely successful in changing the conversation about race and police violence in America, particularly in raising awareness. What are some of the lessons you learned from the movement that you think could apply to the resistance today? So many things. So the first thing is I think about protests is this idea of telling the truth in public, that what we did with our bodies is that we told the truth that Mike and Rekia and Ayanna and so many people should be alive, that we disrupted board meetings and commissions, and so the truth that they weren't using their institutional power in ways that benefited the lives of people of color.

And I think what we've seen spread across the country, not only for the past two years, but definitely since January 20th, is people, even more people willing to tell the truth in public, like to put their bodies on the line and to see that as like a valuable thing. It is sort of interesting that two years ago, it was not cool to be a protester, right? It was like, I remember people who loved us as people were like, this is not the right way to do it. And now it's like, everybody's a protester, which is, I think, good for democracy. Interesting to look back on. The second thing is that we aren't born woke, but something wakes us up. And I marvel that like, for some people, it really is like a tweet or a poster or a Facebook post,

like that random conversation. And it reminds me that, like, it really is like a tweet or a poster or a Facebook post or that random conversation. And it reminds me that it's sometimes the small stuff that helps people understand that they have a stake in this. And like you said, I think for two years we were fighting the awareness battle. We're trying to convince people that there was a problem. People didn't believe that the police in 2016 killed three people a day. They just didn't believe it. And we won the awareness battle. I think that after the awareness part of the work comes the deep organizing.

Like, can we build an infrastructure that allows us to capture the energy that's out there? I think that that's where we are writ large right now. And you talked about you need something to sort of wake you up. You weren't born a protester. You didn't do it your whole life. You were working in schools. You were working in the Minneapolis public schools. And what was it that made you get in a car and drive to Ferguson in 2014?

What was sort of your moment? Yeah, I was a teacher. So I taught sixth grade math in Eastern Europe, Brooklyn, and worked at the Harlem Children's Zone, opened up an after-school center in Baltimore. So kids, and like the work of equity in education was always really central to my heart. And I was in Minneapolis. It was August 16th. Mike got killed on August 9th. It was August 16th.

I was sitting on my couch. It was 1 o'clock in the morning, and I saw the protest on CNN, and I saw what was happening on Twitter, and they were telling two different stories. And there was something about it that I was like, I want to go. I want to see for myself. So waited till my best friend woke up. He lived in Chicago with his wife and I called at like 7.59. It was like, Hey Donnie, I think I'm going to go to St. Louis. What do you think? He was like, if you think you should go, you should go. So I got in the car, drove nine hours, ended up in St. Louis, had 800 followers on Twitter, didn't know anybody. And that was my story.

And if anything, I felt called at the very least to be a witness, like to just see for myself. And when I got there, the second night I was in St. Louis was the first night of the curfew. It was also the first time that I got tear gassed. And it was in that moment that I was like, this is not the America I know, and I'll do whatever I can to fight back. And joined so many incredible people who are willing to put everything we had on the line to not be silent.

So in the past few weeks, I think we've seen an incredible growth in protest and a new spirit of protest for a lot of people who have never done it before. And that's really incredible and inspiring. And I think it's done a great job of kind of resting the microphone away from Donald Trump. However, in some of these protests, you know, as with any giant group of people, you've seen, you know, an occasional trash can get set on fire and all of a sudden there are 200 reporters around it. I know that the Black Lives Matter movement has dealt with this problem. You know, these masses of very peaceful protesters then being maligned on places like Fox News, but it all spreads outward from there

to the more mainstream press. How do you deal with, how do you control the message? How do you make sure that it's being treated fairly and not being kind of maligned by a small segment of a protest? Well, frankly, it's a little different now, right? Because there's so many white people that are protesting that it is like a whole different narrative around what force looks like and what violence looks like. But I'm mindful that people shouldn't have to protest, right? That like people shouldn't have to be at airports. They shouldn't have to be in the middle of the street, that people are outside because a wrong has occurred and this is a response to it. So the way people's anger manifests, like I can't manage, I know how I encourage people to be out in the street, but I don't have to condone it to understand it.

I think about, like, in Baltimore and in Glen Ferguson, so many cities where things didn't go as some people had hoped. Like, I understand where the anger and pain came from, and I'm mindful that people shouldn't have to be in the middle of the street. I'm also mindful that protest is, like, just one way to build power, right? Protest is not the answer. Just, right? Protest is not the answer. Just like voting is not the answer. Just like phone calls are not the single answer. There is no one answer. This has to be a conversation about how do we have as many tools in the toolkit to build power?

And I think that that is what I'm hopeful comes next. That like, you know, the awareness battles were, after the awareness battles were movements die, right? They change the conversation. Everybody starts to sort of see the world differently, and people think that that is victory. And victory really is a combination of how do we change systems and structures, right? So, like, how do we make sure there's equity built into systems and structures,

and then how do we change minds? And I think that that is, like, the challenge. As all of you know, as organizers in some way are working for one of the best organizers we've had recently, is that the biggest organizing infrastructure exists around elections, right? It's around charismatic people. On the left, we don't have deep organizing infrastructure that's sustainable across the country that's not used in election cycles. So it'll be interesting to see if we can build that now. Can we build a network of canvassers and phone banks and training and stuff like that at scale that will actually

become a home for all the energy that's out there right now? So to that point, in 2016, you ran for mayor of Baltimore. And I'm wondering what you learned about exactly that, about translating protests and awareness into electoral support or not, and what things you felt worked well, and what things, you know, we have some work to do to get those institutions in place. Yeah, concrete, you know, we raise a lot of money online. So I did no call time, which was, you know, the first fundraising person we hired. She was like, I'll never work for somebody who does no call time. And we raised $300,000 in 70 days. It was dope, and we did a lot online, and so that was great.

So it made me a believer that, like, if you figure out the right message, people can fund these things, right? There's this myth that, like, you'll never raise money, and I think that that was shattered for me. The second, though, is that there's nothing that can replace, like, getting in front of real people. So we did a lot of home house parties. So people would DM me and be like, hey, Drew, if I get 40 people in my living room, will you come?

And we did it in all different neighborhoods in the city. And that type of organizing infrastructure is incredible. But again, it only exists around election cycles. So how do we build that when it's necessary, but there's not an election coming up, I think is interesting. And then it's like the nuts and bolts, like no poll can replace the importance of like knocking on doors and those sort of like just nuts and bolts sort of things that we did well that I think I didn't appreciate as much until the end of the campaign. But like I did a lot of community forums, which were fine, but they were a lot of decided, right?

Like people were only coming to community forums who absolutely knew who they were going to vote for. But I would have done a lot more sort of talks in living rooms and door knocking at the beginning of the campaign that I didn't do. And the last thing is that people are so, people are not used to actually hearing solutions that we've been like tricked to believe that repeating the problem is actually a solution. So you'll be like, what are you going to do about schools? And people will be like, schools are so bad. And people are like, yes. And you're like, well, that wasn't an answer, right?

But people are like used to that cycle. And I didn't realize that until I had to sit on a million panels and literally heard people be like, schools are bad. And you're like, that wasn't had to sit on a million panels and literally heard people be like, schools are bad. And you're like, that wasn't an answer. But people were just so used to that. Did you have to deal at all with, I mean, the interesting thing about the transition between protesting into politics and specifically electoral politics is that politics necessarily requires compromise, right? And then as you start making those compromises to be in elected office and to be part of the system, then there are people from your organizing

and protest days who will say, oh, you're selling out now, right? Because you made this compromise. How did you deal with sort of that challenge, right, between protest and electoral politics? Yeah, it was hard at the beginning, right? I think that one of the things that I came to appreciate at the end was that this quest for purity will always lead you astray, right? That there's like no way, like this ideological purity that people try to have is just like impossible. So I think about on the campaign, people would be like, Dre, you've not done anything in Baltimore. And it's like, I don't know. I literally don't know what else I could do, right? It's like I opened up an after-school program. I was a community organizer when I was 15.

I trained a third of all the teachers in the school system for two years. Like, you know, but it didn't matter to people. Like, it was like if I have not, if they did not personally see me on their block, I was never an organizer. You're like, okay, that is crazy, right? Like, that's wild. on their block. I was never an organizer. You're like, okay, that is crazy, right?

Like, that's wild. Or there were people who just like, I think about one of my biggest contentions with the Hillary-Bernie battle that happened this last election is that people forgot that we live in a world of real choices, right? That we don't live in the world of ideological purity. We live in a world of real choices.

And like the false equivalencies that happened around that campaign were really hard. And I came out supporting Hillary in the end, and people were like, you sell out, and you're like, well, I don't know what you... One of these two people is probably going to be president. I prefer this one over the other one. She's not perfect,

but you were willing to sacrifice everybody on the stake of she's not perfect, and that is just a wild thing to live in. So I'm not willing to sacrifice real people's lives for this mythical ideological purity. Right.

And these differences become magnified through the media and through social media too, right? Yeah. And that's what we always say here. It's like, there are real differences between these candidates. I mean, we were talking about this at our live show in Brooklyn on Friday

with the DNC candidates, right? Like, I think that sometimes the differences between these candidates are magnified in a way that it the DNC candidates, right? I think that sometimes the differences between these candidates are magnified in a way that it's like, yeah, they're all progressive, they'd all be really great. Right, like people saying, like, if Tom Perez wins, the Democratic Party is done, or if Keith Ellison wins, the Democratic Party

is too far to look. Guys, they're not that different. Right. No, not at all. And I was just with both of them. And the Pete, I don't know how to say his last name. Buttigieg. Buttigieg. We learned it. Mayor Pete. don't know how to say his last name. Buttigieg. Buttigieg. We learned it. Mayor Pete. I practiced it 20 times before we interviewed him.

Buttigieg. I like him. I had never heard him talk before. Got to tell you, there is a groundswell on Pod Save America for a mayor named Pete Buttigieg. Yeah. He was like really, I had a one-on-one with him. I was like, I like this guy. But yeah, people, the Tom and Keith thing, you're like, guys, this is not. But people are like, you know, people are in my mentions when I tweet a one-on-one with him. I was like, I like this guy. But yeah, the Tom and Keith thing, you're like, guys, this is not.

But people are in my mentions when I tweeted a picture of me and Tom, and they're like, you fraud. I can't believe you sold out. He's neoliberal. It's like, I don't think you even know what neoliberal means. I think you're just using words. Dre, you said something earlier that was interesting to me, which was, how do you get people to believe something so awful, like three police shootings a a day that they just don't want to believe?

I feel like the Hillary campaign faces similar issue. It was like no one could believe that our election was actually hacked by the Russians. It was just too bad to believe. And there's this like major obstacle to getting people to come to terms with these things. I'm wondering. Or just how bad Trump is now. What did you learn about how to how to break through that barrier? Yeah, I think that one of the things I'm sensitive to is that I think the left gets seduced into this notion that the best idea wins.

And I think what is probably more true is that the idea that gets beat into people's head the most wins. And I think that what was potentially easier for us because the police were literally killing people. So it was like, hey, do you see that person who, like, they killed? We're just, like, repeating simple truths over and over and over again. And I think that that helped. And also reminding people that this is, like, your grocery store, right? That person got killed at your grocery store, and that person got killed at your gas station. And, like, this idea that the trauma is actually really close to you, whether you see it or not, right?

That it's coming, that it's there. I think that in this current landscape, that's what the right does really well, right? Simple messages, like death panels is not a very complex idea. It's a simple message, and they just repeat it over and over and over. And then the left, what the left does is like try to add nuance. And the challenge with nuance is while it might be factually true, it's just hard to repeat over and over. So if your response to death panels is like,

well, section 3000 of the Affordable Care Act doesn't actually reference that, nobody's listening to that. You lost. And I think that we haven't figured out how to just distill these simple messages. And with Hillary, I think that one of the big sort of misapportions of her campaign was that there was no real surrogate.

So you think about like Katrina Pearson. We all know Katrina, right? Like bullet necklace and all. We remember her on the news. And you think about Killer Mike with Bernie. It's like they're the section of America who didn't know who Killer Mike was before he became sort of a stump guy for Bernie. And he was really effective. And so who was stumping for Hillary?

I don't really effective. And it's like, well, who was stumping for Hillary? I don't really know. Like, I don't know who was talking about her $100 billion economic investment plan in long-term communities or her plan to undo the crime bill or the nuances of the way she wanted to deal with police. Like, I don't know who was saying that. Is there anyone you see out there right now, a Democrat that you think is speaking in that kind of clear, simple way that really drives home the point of, you know, what our policies will do that are better than Republicans, what Trump is doing wrong, that sort of speaks in that way that's not about persuasion, but about hammering a point home? You're trying to get me in trouble.

No, I'm not. I'm not. You don't have to answer. You're free to say whatever you want here. This is just a place where we can have a conversation. It's a delight. I think that, I think, I think that the normal cast of truth tellers

is like Warren, Booker. I've heard a lot that like Kamala Harris is starting to like use our voice in powerful ways given that she's new.

But I don't know if there's like, I don't know if we have the person yet, right? Like the person Yeah, I don't think we do. I mean, I haven't seen it. I mean – I don't know if we have the person yet, right? Like the person – Yeah, I don't think we do.

I mean, I haven't seen it. I mean, I'm sitting right here, guys. I mean, you are the speech writer. You guys are the communications guys. So, yeah, I don't think we have it yet. I think we might be close. People are still really – you know, I think – I fear that the Democrats might take the high road to oblivion, right, that we might like, you know, handshake, high five and wait for the next go round and then not exist in, you know, two and four years. With the Republicans, they're just like really dogged, right?

They're like, we don't believe this. They're willing to shut down the whole government. And we're like, you know, we're going to let this nominee go because it might be, we might fight for the next one. Whereas the Republicans are sort of like, no, we're going to shut down everything. And, you know, I'm interested to see who's going to show up to the fight on our side. Dre, last question, then we'll let you go. Tell us a little bit about resistancemanual.org that you put together, which is a little manual to sort of help in the resistance against Trump and other things. Yeah, so it started with this core belief that people need to know information

before they take action, right? So like it's just get informed, get organized, and then take action. So we built a Wikipedia site that literally just logs every single thing about the Trump administration, all the plans, the people, ways to get involved locally,

readings that you can do about race and equity, so that people can be informed. One of the things that people would ask over the past few years is, like, what can I read, what can I do? And there was just no good repository for that, so we tried to build one. So the resistancemanual.org is that place, and it's a wiki site, so if other people have things they need to add to it about immigration or about Obamacare or about any issue about what Trump's doing with the disability community,

all of those things can be housed there, and we built it for that. So that is just one of the projects that we plan to roll out. But I'm sensitive to, like, people should only take action when they understand. And how do we build mechanisms and spaces that allow people to understand really complex information simply and quickly. And that's what the Resistance Manual aims to do. Awesome. Well, everyone go check it out. And DeRay, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, you're really good at this. You should do it more. Good to talk. Bye, y'all. Take care, DeRay. 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. 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.