Pod Save America - Pod Save America Takes Brooklyn

Episode Date: February 11, 2017

Jon, Jon and Tommy pierce their liberal bubble by traveling to Brooklyn for a live podcast. They're joined by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Alex Wagner of CBS News.

Let's give it up for the biggest show yet. It's the biggest show for now. It's the first show. It's the only show. See you at Madison Square Garden, guys. How's everyone feeling? All right. Better than I thought.

Thank you to BAM and to WNYC for having us. We have some very special, thank you for coming, we have some special guests tonight. The mayor of New York is here, Bill de Blasio. From CBS News in the Atlantic, Alex Wagner is here. And, of course, my two co-hosts and co-founders of Crooked Media, John Lovett and Tommy Vitor are here. Mostly John Lovett. All right, let's get into it. Let's get into it.

So, it has now been three weeks to the day since Donald Trump was inaugurated the 45th president of the United States. 205 to go. Feels like a lifetime. I wanted to start tonight by, I mean, there has been a lot of news, drama, crap thrown at us over the last three weeks. I was hoping maybe we could try to separate out what is silly, inconsequential, and what really matters in terms of what Trump has done over these three weeks. Can we do that in like 10, 15 minutes? Yeah, sure. Sure.

Okay. Love it. Let's start with Trump's relationships to our institutions, to the presidency, to the judiciary, to the media. What has alarmed you most in the last few weeks? This is sort of a softball, you know. So I think it's like Donald Trump winning the election. Honestly, threw me for a fucking loop.

And it's led to a lot but but no seriously uh i think the single scariest moment has been his threats to the to the judiciary i think that is the that to me is like our bright red line um you know we can handle his calling cnn fake news like cnn can take it we can also kind of like it a little bit um it's not fair, but it's okay. Hey, Brian Stelter. Where are you, Brian? He's somewhere out there. And Brian, you know how I feel about you. I can't see you, but you know. I can see you! But I would say that after the executive order was first stayed, and Donald Trump took to Twitter and said,

so-called judge, and I can't remember the rest of it, because there have been so many between now and then. But I think that was very scary, especially, you know, I went to LAX to take some selfies at a protest. And while I was there, I happened to see what was going on. And it was incredibly inspiring and it was incredibly moving to see these lawyers and these translators and people coming out of the woodwork and supporting people that were just there to pick up their family members who had been detained or deported or couldn't get any information. They didn't know what was going on. And standing there, you know, you could see the chaos of what happened after that order, and you see lawyers desperate to try to get information. And in those early days,

when it seemed as though Homeland Security wasn't going to obey the courts at the request of the president, and now in hindsight, we know that many people were treated incredibly unfairly and in violation of court orders during that time, I mean, that to me is the single scariest thing that Donald Trump can do because we really are reliant on norms and institutions to enforce these judicial orders. And without that, you know, we are toast. Yeah. So that's frightening. I mean, I was actually, and you were saying this, I was heartened by the fact that he had sent that tweet last night, said, see you in court. Yes. You know, he said that. heartened by the fact that he has sent that tweet last night said see you in court yes you know

but at least it means that he is yes seeing the court is legitimate yeah it's a see you in court is he sees it as a reality show drama moment but at least he recognizes that the court exists and will have some kind of dramatic say in the matter right you know it's better to say i don't you know that anyway where do you think the EO could end up, Tom? I mean, it seems unclear whether they're going to try to fight this thing or they'll completely rewrite it and fix all the obvious fuck-ups they made. I try not to swear as much. Why?

Because my girlfriend's dad yelled at me for swearing. Didn't yell, he was very nice. Brian Stelter's here. I know Brian Stelter's here. So it's unclear if they're going to fight this thing or they're going to try to get a do-over. But either way, I think the damage is done in terms of the way we're viewed abroad.

I think the damage is done to Trump in terms of people across the country thinking these people are woefully incompetent. And the damage is done to the rest of the government realizing that guess what? The days of working together and trying to do things in a smart, reasonable, lawful way may be over,

and Steve Bannon and his buddies are going to go into their little cave and, like, throw out these things. Yeah, I do think the one thing we have to be prepared for is, even though he lost in court yesterday because they said that the stay couldn't, you know, they weren't going to have the ban continue while they were appealing this, to have the ban continue while they were appealing this. The Trump administration can rewrite the executive order in a way that is possibly constitutional in accordance with the law, and the president does have a huge amount of power to determine who is allowed in this country and who isn't.

And so we've had this little victory so far, but they could get... I mean, they handled this, whether you were for the ban or not, they handled it so incompetently. Nobody here is for the ban. Those of you out there somewhere. They're so idiotic.

Look, Sean Spicer listens to the pod. Sean Spicer, yeah. He's a friend of the pod. Well, let's not go crazy. But yeah, so we should be aware of that. It also seems like Donald Trump isn't really too psyched about the job right now. It seems like the Politico headline today was that it's much harder than he thought

it was going to be. Yeah. Because he saw the American president, which is what gave him the idea. He's like, oh, I'll meet somebody. Just tweeting in his bathrobe. Yeah. He's just wandering around the White House in a bathrobe looking at the pictures being like, I don't know who that is. Doesn't seem like he's getting prepped for the foreign leader calls either, Tom. No. On the foreign policy side, I hate how reflexively opposed to everything he does we are, but there's nothing I've seen that's given me any confidence. First of all, you need good people to help you manage all these things, right? Because as big a set of issues you have when you come in, something happens the next day, and you need a structure and a team to help you manage these things. And then

we read today that despite denying that he had mentioned sanctions relief to the Russian ambassador, nine sources, nine sources say that General Flynn was negotiating sanctions relief for the Russian ambassador. Big no-no. Yeah, against the law. Now that law has never been tested. It's never been enforced, but you know, regardless, if you're not smart enough to know you shouldn't break the law, A, and not smart enough to know that you're called to the Russian ambassador,

you're probably not the only guy on the line, we have a problem. So in terms of his team... If Mike Flynn was fired, do you think we'd be like 5% safer? No, I mean, who comes next, right? I mean, do you think we'd be like 5% safer? No. I mean, who comes next, right? I mean, who lost The Apprentice Season 3, right? It's never clear.

It's like, here comes Meatloaf. Honestly, I would fucking take him. At the same time, you have Steve Bannon like rooting around in there like a little evil truffle pig down in the NFC. And he's making shots, and that just sort of like codifies politics as the cornerstone of national security decision making, and I sat in a million meetings in the Situation Room, and I literally saw Dennis McDonough like just dress

down someone who dared to mention an election in that room. Like that doesn't come up, but he's putting Bannon in there, and he's saying the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the intel guys, you can show up when needed. And that's a scary thing. And I think, you know, they're making, they're pissing off the Australians for no reason. They're pissing off the entire Muslim world. It's like, you know, there's a couple ways you can deal with terrorists,

and that's seemingly their sole focus. And one is we can do things on our own, like you saw we try to do in Yemen, and that requires permission, and, you know, it requires a president that's going to really go over the fine details of an operation and not, like, approve it at dinner with Ivanka and Jared and the gang, and that apparently is what's happening. I don't think Ivanka was there. Just want to, no fake news.

I keep, yeah, I keep my line, sorry, Jared and the gang. But, well, as long as Jared is there, a 36-year-old guy who's never done a fucking thing in his life. He did, I mean, he did get that. Look, it's not easy to get into Harvard unless your dad says, I'll give you guys $2 million after my son gets in. And then, I mean... Yeah, I hear you.

So not a lot of faith in the foreign policy advisor. No, and it's like... He's going to do Middle East... Jared Kushner's going to do Middle East peace. He's like... Right. He read the New Republic once. What foreign policy action has he taken

that's worried you the most? I mean, my concern is you can't kill your way out of a terrorism problem. You cannot take enough drone strikes. You cannot undertake enough military operations. There's going to be a threat. And you're going to need to work with partners. And they're going to need to have the political capital in places where we're not necessarily well-liked to work with us and partner with us. And by pissing off the entire populations of those places, it's making that

harder. He's also, I think, I believe, giving ISIS, they're literally cheerleading, they're calling it the blessed ban, he's helping them recruit. And that's not the sole reason people join these groups. We don't really know that. It's probably a case-by-case thing. But there's no security reason why this ban makes sense, right? Refugee vetting is the longest, most onerous process we have in terms of letting people into this country. and he's seized on this because it's politically advantageous. And the fact that he won't let that go, and it's doing such damage to our reputation around the world, is really unnerving to me. Okay, that's good.

Well, should we... I'm going to be the bum you out guy. Love the new joke. Should we get some good news on domestic policy? Oh my... I just... So I have some more hopeful news. Oh, good.

I think that the fight to save the Affordable Care Act is going to be incredibly difficult, but it's one that we can win. I agree. One that we're already winning in a way. I think the one that we're already winning in a way. So I think the trouble that Trump is going to face on domestic policy is there was a part of his campaign, a big part of

his campaign, that was economically populist in a way that the Republican Party is not. And so Paul Ryan's economic agenda, his domestic policy agenda, is lots of tax cuts and lots of cuts to just about every government program there is. And that's what most of the Republican Party in Congress wants. Trump has promised things like he's not going to cut Medicare, he's not going to cut Medicaid, he said that he wants to have health care for everyone. And now, look, if the Republican Party's message was,

and Trump's message was, it is not the role of the federal government to be involved in providing health care for the American people, then they could say that, they have the votes, they could push repeal through, and that's it. But that's not their message now. Their message now is we want everyone to have health care, we want people to have more affordable health care, we want everyone to have access to health care,

we don't want a bunch of people to lose their insurance. It is nearly impossible to achieve that goal by repealing the Affordable Care Act and not replacing it with something remarkably similar. You see there's all these healthcare experts that are now trying to figure out this Republican replacement. They go into the healthcare woods and they're very excited and they've got their rucksacks

and they're just crawling out the other side and just leave it. Just leave it alone. They're out of Luna bars. They're miserable. Frank Luntz, survivor of a glitter attack, is like, call it repair now for love of God. Don't repeal it. Don't throw glitter at me.

No, but the best thing is that Jason Chaffetz, congressman, where is he from? Utah. He's the worst. Remember he couldn't look his daughter in the face after the Access Hollywood tape came out, and so he unendorsed the phone? He hasn't seen her since. There is no member of Congress who has more completely abdicated his duty than that guy.

He's on the oversight committee, and he's supposed to investigate people when they lie constantly or use their office to sell goods for their daughter, things like that. And he's not really doing much yet. But he had like 600 people at town hall last night chanting at him. More. To protect ACA. You guys. And that's hopeful. I watched it. I watched it.

That's what I chose to do. You periscoped it. I opened up the live stream and I watched it. We were walking down the street today and some very nice woman heard us talking about Trump and she started ranting about it. And Lovett goes, do you want to periscope with me? Always be posting. Always be posting. Always be posting.

Content is king. We're here because of it. But the point of the affordable character is, look, speaking of content and content management, happy birthday, Tanya, wherever you are. We're not going to say your last name because this is going to go out to a lot of people.

Oh, yeah. This is a podcast for all the yokels who are going to get tickets. Please, please come help us. So, yeah, no, I think on the Affordable Care Act, look, there's going to be some things like executive orders where Trump's going to have a lot of power.

I think on the Affordable Care Act, people can make a difference. You go to these town halls, there's going to be a recess week coming up, not next week, the week after, and a lot of these Republicans are going to hold town halls. And if they are swamped with people who are very angry about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, they're going to think twice. And we say this because we were in the Obama administration in 2009. We did not have a very great summer in the summer of 2009.

We were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act because the Tea Party swamped those town halls. to pass the Affordable Care Act because the Tea Party swamped those town halls. And, you know, Jason Chaffetz, who has basically abdicated his responsibility for oversight, happened to sign on to a letter with the Democratic chair of the committee criticizing Kellyanne Conway for hawking shoes in the press briefing room. It's insane. It's like, try these shoes on. I like them. They look good on my feet.

When I'm crying alone in my bathtub, I use a Trump brand towel. When I can't look at myself in the mirror. Anyway, you were saying? What were you talking about? Oh, he signed on to the letter because he knew we had the town hall that night and he needed something to say to a room full of incredibly angry constituents. So it's going to be hard. We're going to be hard.

We're going to lose some fights, but it does make a difference. It does. Okay, we have a very special guest here. We should probably bring him out. Yeah. Mayor Bill de Blasio. Thank you. Thanks for coming.

My pleasure, man. Thanks a lot. Okay, like I feel a little underdressed, but I'm moving shirts, so it's fine. You're doing merchandising. It's all right. Always be selling. Are you getting warm now? What?

Are you getting a little warm? Not yet. Mary de Blasio, thank you for joining us for our little show here. So about a month after the election, Politico ran a story about you with a very Politico headline. It was Bill de Blasio finds his mojo as the anti-Trump. I was looking for my mojo. I was going to say. So you found the mojo.

Is that a fair characterization? But more seriously, how has Trump's presidency changed your tenure as mayor? seriously, how has Trump's presidency changed your tenure as mayor? Yeah, I think it's not a fair characterization because the vision that I've had and so many New Yorkers share is we had to change this place and we had to shake the foundations of what had been the status quo in New York City for decades. And that was going to happen regardless of who was president of the United States. But I think what has happened with the Trump presidency, it has crystallized our sense of me and people in this city and mayors all over the country has crystallized a sense of mission

of what we have to do to defend our people, how we have to build a resistance, how we have to make it national. And look, you wish you didn't, obviously. But I have to tell you, I'm seeing some things that I wished I had seen a long time ago in terms of people organizing and mobilizing and owning the political process. And if that is a byproduct of Trumpism that we can turn into much bigger change, there's potentially something great there. Why do you think it took Trump

to sort of galvanize that reaction and it didn't happen as much during the 2016 campaign? What do you think? Do you think progressives were just sort of? You know, look, I think that this was a painful lost opportunity. And I was at the convention in Philadelphia and I felt at that moment moment we had the most progressive platform

the Democratic Party had had in decades. There was real unity. It wasn't perfect, but in the scheme of a big political party, it was pretty damn good. And the juxtaposition was so clear, and then just I think the campaign became about the wrong thing. I think, unfortunately, the Democrats,

and I have immense respect for Hillary, the Democratic Party writ large, and the Clinton campaign in specific, focused on what was wrong with Donald Trump, his character, his personality, and not what we needed to do for the American people and how we needed to change things, and didn't reference that extraordinary

progressive platform enough. In the end, one thing you learn if you're sort're listening to people is everyone needs something to vote for not just something to vote against. Really elemental notion in politics. All those folks who stayed home, there's no question that Hillary had a working majority in

Michigan and Pennsylvania and states that she lost, but people stayed home because it didn't feel it was enough about them and for them. And that is a fixable problem. So that's why I'm not without hope. But it's painful to think about that victory was staring us in the face.

And that's acknowledging that she still won by 3 million votes. And that's kind of, I try and start, wherever I go, I say, hey, let's start the conversation with Hillary won with three million votes, the Democrats won with three million votes, and then everything else gets a little bit clearer. Right. Because we have a president who does not have an electoral mandate in any way, shape, or form. And that's empowering for all of us to remember that, you know, it's our country. We have the majority. We just have to make it real now.

It's interesting you brought up, I mean, I want to know how you handle this as mayor when you're talking about Trump, because I think Trump gives us like a hundred targets a day. Yep. Right. And I think the Clinton campaign probably would have said, you know, we're out there giving economic speeches, but every time Trump opens his mouth, everything becomes about Trump and you have to respond to Trump. Right. I think she ran a perfect campaign. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I think, look, I think they could

have been a lot more creative in trying to break through. I think that's the job of any politician. I think that's the job of any politician. But going forward, how do we ensure that every day isn't only about Trump, right? When Trump dominates the headlines and does so many things that we disagree with. Like, how do you get that message out? I think we have to take away the exceptionalism argument around Trump. Because the notion that he was doing things that were different, you know, he was using Twitter differently. He was throwing out something outrageous every day.

You're right, you give all these looks. Guess what? That's been done down through the ages in different forms. Anyone who at any given moment or any movement that dominated the political discourse did some variation of that. He didn't invent fire. It's not the first person to do something creative that threw off the opposition. You should not tell him about fire.

Yeah, right. Strike that for the record. It could be dangerous. But look, I think the answer is he did I think he creates chaos purposefully. I think he's quite cagey about it.

And if someone's doing that, you have to either create counter chaos or you have to create a consistency that people can latch onto. And the guy is, I mean, before he had his cabinet selections, we knew we had a millionaire, billionaire, whatever he is. You know, we can debate that, but whatever it is, he's a really rich guy who's the son of a really rich guy, born with a silver spoon, cheated workers, sent jobs overseas. This script writes itself of delegitimizing him in the eyes of working people,

including all those folks in the Rust Belt who were looking for solutions and said, hey, I could go with that guy. That could have been blown up sky high. It's not his character. It's his life, his experience, everything he did against working people. So that was one way was to just disrupt his disruption. I'm not saying it's easy. You all have been part of this process. It's not easy, but there was a game plan there. And to give people something to latch onto. I felt very strongly the party was saying, let's tax the wealthy and make them pay their fair share in

taxes. People wanted to hear that. They wanted to hear it. They didn't hear it enough. And it was there on a platform. It was beautiful. Democrats were the party that wanted to tax the wealthy more and use that money to help people. But that didn't come across consistently. So I think the lesson in this is, what if we did it right? What if we did it right? I think we now have, and we saw this on the day after the inauguration, I really think the history is incredible.

Those were the largest demonstrations against a new president in the day after the inauguration, I really think the history's incredible. Those are the largest demonstrations against a new president in the history of the republic. Like in the entire history, right? And think about the magnitude of that. And organized in ways we'd never dreamed of before. This is what makes me hopeful, and the town hall meetings you were referring to, and people rising up locally on Affordable Care Act

and all these other issues. Our mission now is to build a national movement. I always say this. Trump says he built a movement. I'm not sure it's my definition of the word movement, but he says he built a movement, right? Well, some of them are in little carts. Yeah, but he says he built a movement.

We need to build our movement. Our movement is going to be bigger. Our movement is just going to be bigger. And the demonstrations proved it that Saturday. And what you see on ACA, you're exactly right. I have not seen people retreat from a position this quickly in a long, long time. Right? It's like, remember Monty Python

run away? Right? It's like that. I mean, they're just in full retreat. That's because people are moving. And that is the seeds of a different political alignment. That's what's exciting about it. So let's start with the protest for a second, because I do think it's,

these protests we've seen across the country, right after it was inaugurated, the Women's March, but also at airports across the country, it was one of the few, I think, really bright spots and inspiring things that happened, and it did wrest the microphone away from Donald Trump. Yep. And some attention, and I feel like you have two hats. You're someone who is sort of actively leading fighting Trump in the city,

but you're also the mayor of the city and in charge of making sure there aren't disruptions at the airport. How do you draw that line? You know, there were people trying to get to the protest at JFK, and all of a sudden Air Trans shut down because the airport's too crowded. Where do you stand? How much disruption will you allow to make clear that we're opposed to Donald Trump's agenda? I don't see it as disruption to begin with, nor does NYPD. And this is one thing that I think

is very powerful about this city. We have a long tradition of understanding that protest is part of American life and democracy. And I will say there are times in history where, you know, I don't think the city government, the NYPD did it the way it should have been done, but I think now we're in a much better place where, I mean, look at the protests, the 400,000 people the day after the inauguration. I think it was an extraordinary example, and that was expected to be something much smaller.

You know, we expect things to happen. We're going to flow with it. We're going to make it work. Even something expect things to happen, we're gonna flow with it, we're gonna make it work, even something as chaotic as the airports we worked with. I think this is a moment where people have to stand up and rework the agenda, because what you said a moment ago is true, this is how you wrest back the attention.

And it's actually the fourth branch of government argument, right? It's great that the judiciary is showing its independence, that's very important. It's great that the judiciary is showing its independence. That's very important. It's great that the Congress is starting to freak out about things like the ACA and showing not necessarily noble independence, but maybe electoral survival independence, right? But the fourth branch of the people, in effect. And now the people are starting to dictate the agenda in a way we have not seen.

It's nascent. We have to do a lot more. But my point of view, running this city, I can run this city fine and still respect and support people's right to protest. There's no contradiction. And I think, you know, some of the journalists in New York City have gotten into this habit of like, oh, don't poke the beast. Don't say anything, you know, wrong. Don't say anything nasty about Donald Trump. He'll. He's so vindictive, he'll take funding away, right? My answer is every time, the only thing he's gonna respond to is strength. He'll show weakness, show deference,

and you're definitely dead, right? So show strength, people, numbers, being resolute, being willing to go to court and take them on, and show strength in numbers. Cities banding together around the country, states banding together. That's how you undercut the momentum. He depends on momentum.

I will name drop for a moment. I had a wonderful kind of revelatory conversation with one of our great activists who also happens to be an actor, Mark Ruffalo, who is extraordinary. And he made a very powerful point to me some weeks back before the inauguration that Trump not only needs the attention, he needs unfettered momentum. Disrupt the momentum, disrupt the flow,

and he visibly kind of spins out of control for a while. We may be seeing that right now. Amen. You might say Trump smash. Yeah. That was deep. Had a whole minute to work on it. Right. I saw you write that on your book. Wouldn't forget it. But but yeah, I think this is what is so interesting, because the fact that he's not mainstream on the one hand, it's troubling and we've seen things that we really

haven't seen and shouldn't see. On the other hand, there's a vulnerability because his schtick depends on this kind of swirl that if you let, it's like a whirlwind or a tornado and you get caught up into it, but if you disrupt it, if you just sort of throw the monkey wrench in,

he doesn't have a next act a lot of the time. And that's where I think people have to feel their own power. And honestly, the movements we're seeing right now have only begun. This is tip of the iceberg in my view. So I'm wondering where you see... Where Ruffalo

goes, so does Nation. Mr. Mayor, I want to ask about the role of the press. You obviously represent a city with a rabid, voracious press corps. Donald Trump figured out how to manipulate them, many of them, during the campaign. Not Brian Stelter. Not Brian. It's diminished greatly over time, but I'm wondering, A, what you think the role of a press corps is in a Trump administration when they will lie to your face,

and, B, if you think politicians or you yourself have learned a lesson from his handling of the press, and maybe it's the wrong one, right, which is they just give them the Heisman and refuse to answer questions, and I'm wondering, how do we go from here? What is the role of reporters going forward? Yeah, I don't, I think we should be cautious to think more has changed than it has. I don't think the fundamentals have changed at all. I think he is attempting the fact-free environment. It's like germ-free, but it's fact-free.

I think the media has a really sharp opportunity here to just do pure, visible, sharp, fast fact-checking. I think it works. I think it's quite clear there are millions and millions of Americans who are looking for that and want that, and being thoroughly unintimidated by Trump. It's a double-edged sword for Trump. He can try and keep people out of his press conferences.

He can try and deny mainstream media is mainstream media. I wish the CNNs of the world would challenge the status quo more often. But that being said, no one can call them, oh, look, they're the super liberal media or the super conservative media. No, they're the mainstream. And they do perform a function of fact-checking. And that matters, and people want it, and they need it. And I don't,

I think therefore the, the notion that Trump is affecting other people's approach to media, I don't, I don't know anyone who wants to be like him in the relationship with the media or with the, the electorate. I think he's, you know, he's a thing unto himself. So I don't see it infecting. I don't think, I think folks who try and be like, you know faux Trump or the next next iteration aren't gonna get very far I honestly believe it And I think in the end the public demanding of the media That that never letting things all give you an example, you know the Russian intervention in the election

Right that was super hot for a few days and then another hundred things happened one of the things media has to do and they've done it in previous eras is don't forget that part about another country intervening in our election you gotta keep coming back to that are you worried about the rise of blatantly partisan dubious

media organizations like Breitbart or Crooked Media having an elevated role in the discourse? Yeah, but I said the other day, and I meant it, don't think for a moment they just emerged in the last years. I mean, News Corp, Fox, the New York Post were doing the precursors of this for decades. And let's be clear.

And they helped build the platform that led to Donald Trump. So there's a little bit of revisionism going on here. There, again, there are purely mainstream corporate media entities out there. You know, your CNNs and your network televisions and your Washington Post, your New York Times. Fine. But long ago, we had a model of something that was partisan and ideologically driven and was trying to change the entire structure of the public discourse. News Corp did that, Breitbart then did it

in a different, even more extreme way. You gotta be worried about it. But part of it is just fighting back with information because I think most people, I love this, I think you're totally right about the Affordable Care Act. I think most people get down to kitchen table issues really quickly, right? So they, let's take a Trump voter, including one who might have been an Obama voter before, that famous Obama, Obama, Trump voter, right? They felt that Washington hadn't delivered for them. Well, guess what?

Washington hadn't delivered for them. So that was not an unfair feeling. They were angry and frustrated with status quo. I can understand that. They looked at Trump and thought, well, maybe he's different enough to do something. And they, as famously, they didn't necessarily take all his words literally. Well, then he says, I'm actually gonna take away

your health insurance. That is not a Trump voter anymore. The person who's gonna lose their family's health insurance or has been lied to about their jobs coming back or who thought he was going to drain the swamp, but he found pretty much every single human being at Goldman Sachs and named him to a cabinet position, right? That's not draining the swamp. And then a tax cut. Remember, what's about to happen? This is the one that's going to light the match. Tax cuts for the wealthy, tax cuts for corporations, and deregulation of Wall Street. Do you think those Trump working class voters who

want to change are going to feel good about that? They're not. They're going to drop him like a hot potato. And in time for the 2018 congressional elections. We should win those guys. Pretty important. But I will make my analogy. I was thinking about this before joining your august show this evening. And I needed something really high-minded that would appeal to a well-educated audience. So I was moved in the last year by the trailer to the extraordinarily tacky video game becomes movie called Hitman 47. Okay. Okay. Now, why, why am I bringing this? Why? Why am I bringing it up? Because it's seeing the trailer where the hitman, this, this super being who's trying to assassinate all these evil people is

in prison and the evil interrogators are there and there's a lot of them and they have them in prison as a super secure facility and they're mocking him because he's locked in here with his captors and he says a variation of the line I'm not locked in here with you you're locked in here with me my point we're not we're not locked in here with Donald Trump we He's locked in here with us. Are we doing an escape room? Yeah. That's right.

That's great. America is in an escape room, and we just have to solve the puzzle to get out. That's it. But, I mean, think about it. I mean, again, we have a working majority, 3 million more votes in the election, biggest demonstrations against the president in history. People are going immediately all over the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in retreat. It's not a triumphalist vision. We have huge amounts of work to do, and there will be ups and downs along the way.

But the point being, we have much more high ground and strength in the equation than people felt in the weeks after the election. The weeks after the election were incredibly depressing, right? It was very hard to feel your power in those weeks. I became a media mogul then, but I get that from other people. But that, I mean, people lost track of their own power and their own impact. And now it just burst. On January 21st, the whole thing reset. The whole thing reset.

And now the question is people feeling their power and their opportunity to make an impact. And really, he's the one who has the problem now. In the last 48 hours, there have been reports that there have been an increased number of ICE raids in various communities and cities across the country where they're deporting undocumented immigrants. You've said that in New York City you would resist any order to deport undocumented immigrants. How confident are you that you have both the legal and financial resources to win that fight? So let me make it clear. The threat that was put to us with the executive order on immigration was that the federal government would defund us if we did not cooperate in turning over any and all undocumented individuals.

And our response was, we have never, for decades, by the way, ironically, including the administration of Rudy Giuliani as mayor, we have not allowed... What happened to that guy? What did he lose his mind? He was screaming about a Muslim man on Fox last time I saw him. We never heard from him again. But New York City came to the realization that if a city

would now have half a million undocumented folks in it, 800,000 permanent residents, a lot of undocumented folks who have loved ones in the city who are citizens. I mean, it's all mixed together, right? Talk about the fabric of our city. So that if an undocumented person couldn't walk up to a police officer

and report a crime or couldn't go to their child's school to visit or couldn't go to a public hospital for fear of their identity being uncovered and their documentation status being uncovered and therefore, imagine half a million people who couldn't participate in any way in society. Long ago, consensus emerged in the city. We could not run the city. We couldn't have a safe city if we didn't say, guess what? You're not going to have any problem with anyone here in the city of New York.

You're not going to be asked. You're not going to be reported. You can come safely forward as a human being as a resident of our city and that helped us to become a safer city for 25 years straight this city's gotten safer and safer

the safest big city in America one of the reasons was that a pact was formed with folks including the document to say you matter too you're part of this

and you can go about your life without fear of deportation. What we have recognized in this executive order is it literally would undermine the fundamental safety and security of this city and cities all over the country by breaking that bond. And so New York City a long time ago said, the only times we'll cooperate with ICE is for very serious and or violent crimes. We literally legislated, we have a list of 170 crimes that we categorize as that's a

matter of city law. That's where we'll cooperate. Very, very few undocumented immigrants commit those crimes. The vast majority of undocumented, and this is one of the things we have to correct in this discussion. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants, like everybody else, commit no crimes and go about their business. Right.

And then to the extent people commit crimes, it's like the general population. The most common crimes are quality of life crimes, right? Someone littered. You know, they did very small things. We're not going to deport people because they littered, right? And have children left behind while their parents are taken to another country, right? So for every point of view, both a humane point of view, a public safety point of view,

a what do you do with a family that's torn apart that's not fair to them, and then we end up having to somehow pick them up and help them. By every measure, it makes sense to have a very, very high standard around a certain number of very serious offenses. So when the executive order came down, first of all, it was like a Swiss cheese. Like we looked at it and said, this thing is thoroughly, thoroughly challengeable in court, right?

It just, there were so many elements of it that were contradictory that made sense. Second, it said that, you know, it was a Supreme Court decision a few years ago written by none other than Justice Roberts, thank you very much, it said, you know, it was a Supreme Court decision a few years ago written by none other than Justice Roberts, thank you very much, that said you can't take away all the funding when there's a disagreement over a substantive area. So the two areas that were mentioned were Homeland Security and Justice Department. Guess where their funding goes? The NYPD.

So now the Trump administration wants to take away anti-terrorism funding from the NYPD. Right? They want to do that. In the name of counterterrorism. Right. In the name of safety and security, they're going to take away anti-terrorism funding from NYPD. Right? They want to do that. In the name of counter-terrorism. Right. In the name of safety and security, they're going to take away anti-terrorism funding from NYPD. Right? They have a problem. They have a problem right

there in the number one terror target in the country. But we also think they're beatable in court on the face of it. This notion they can reach in and take away all your funding is just plain unconstitutional. Don't ask me. Ask Justice Roberts.

So that speaks to what you can do and the decisions you can make. Right. But the administration also has power here, right? They can come in. They can do raids. They can conduct federal deportation raids inside of Manhattan, inside of New York City, whenever they want. What is your response

if something like that were to happen? They have a relatively small force. I have a police department of 36,000 officers who are not going to be part of those raids. We're going to have a clear standard. If anyone shows up from any federal agency, they best have the proper warrants,

and everything better be correct, or we have a problem, as we would, by the way, outside of immigration or any other situation. If anybody appears from another jurisdiction and doesn't have the proper warrants, we don't participate. But, you know, I'm not going to be shocked. We've heard just in the last day

of raids beginning in some places. I think the challenge here is raids here are going to generate tremendous public feeling, just like the executive order around the refugees did and the impact it had the airports and all. If they really want to see that all over again, they can come into here and a lot of other cities, and that's the kind of opposition look at. On the narrow question, is it possible for ICE agents to go and find some individuals

and take them into custody with a proper warrant? Yes, they can do that. They can't do that every day. They can't do that to everyone. They have limits. If local police forces, and not only has my police commissioner made clear that he's not going to let the men and women of the NYPD be turned into enforcement agents for ICE, police commissioners and chiefs all over the country are saying it.

So that means ICE is on their own. So they can do some things, but they can by no means do sort of a broad, huge national effort without local police forces participating. I just want to drill down on it for one more second because, look, we're in this situation where things move fast and you sound crazy until you don't sound crazy. I'm about to sound crazy.

That's what a crazy person says. I thought it was a joke. Oh no. Trigger warning. I thought it was a joke, but I thought you were serious. No, I am being serious for a second, which is if we view this EO as some sort of omen of something to come,

and there are attempts to do deportations out of cities like New York, maybe as a show of strength, they may bring in enough people to do deportations, but they're not going to be able to bring in enough people to quell protests. You know, we saw already just in the first raids that were happening in California, we saw protests of people getting in the wheel wells of ice trucks, of ice vehicles, and police needing to be involved in dispersing those protests. Again, you're the mayor of New York. You oppose Trump. What happens?

I think this is, and I don't mean to belittle the challenge, I think it's an excellent question. I know. You know what I like about you? What? Tell me. You've got moxie, pal. That's all he wanted. You don't even need to answer. One compliment.

Tell him his... That guy's a real go-getter. I'm not belittling the potential for not only unprecedented things, but very messy, even dangerous things happening. But I'm trying to put things in perspective. There is not a national police force.

One of the things that Trump sort of tried to project onto the country was his own special right-wing vision of a federal government that could do whatever it wanted. Well, there's a constitution in the way of that to begin with, and then there's just the reality of a country that was built on a lot of localities. That's the whole concept of America and states and everyone has their own

persona and values. So he's not going to have the cooperation of a huge number of the major police forces around the country. So there you're right. Yeah, you could concentrate a lot of federal agents and go someplace and do that sometimes. But then you're going to have a massive public protest. And as we said a few minutes back, I think a point you made, when the energy shifts to the massive public protest and the attention is on all the people are saying this is wrong.

And by the way, the faith community is a part of this. The Catholic church is a part of opposing this. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts here. When you've got a bunch of police chiefs and a bunch of Catholic bishops saying this is wrong, think twice, Donald Trump, right? So I would argue, sure, they'll try some. I agree, they'll try some. And there'll be some dangerous and messy moments, and we're all going to have to stand firm, and we're all going to have to mobilize.

But I think it's not going to be a winning equation. I think it's going to show a moral line that most Americans are going to say, wait a minute, this is not what I signed up for. The American people, I think, have, obviously there's a strong split in this country on issues of immigration, although a lot of times you see a majority that say we'd like to find a way forward

to something that once and for all answers the question, some pathway to the 11, 12 million people resolve positively their situation. I don't think American people in general like to see families torn apart. I think when you break it down, it's a bit like the ACA debate, right? Some folks didn't like Obamacare because they either didn't understand it because they thought it wasn't being implemented well because they thought it was for other people, not them, right? Or they thought that they were going to keep their doctor and then they couldn't. These were legitimate concerns that as progressives and Democrats, it was our job to answer or show improvements and respect people's feelings. Well, there's a parallel in immigration.

I don't think people in this country want to hurt others. I don't think they want to hurt families who struggle to get here. I think they want to know there's some rules that make sense and some way forward. If it devolves into literally seeing mothers and children torn apart before your very eyes, that's when moral outrage takes over. That's what happened in the civil rights movement in the 60s. When sort of the dam broke on American public opinion. Folks who didn't

think it was their problem started thinking it was their problem. I think if the Trump administration pushes that button too hard, a counter movement starts that's much bigger than anything they've ever seen. I really do. Okay. I'll ask you one last question.

You've been very generous with your time. You were a political operative before you were an elected official. Forgive me, Father, I have sinned. What have you learned as mayor that you wish you knew when you were a campaign manager? I have learned that what we thought were the rules of the game were not the rules of the game. That a lot of us who were brought up in political work, now I wanna say before I did electoral politics, I did issue organizing and grassroots work,

anti-nuclear power, nuclear disarmament, efforts to end US intervention in Central America back in the 80s. I mean, I did activism before I ever did electoral politics in any appreciable way. And I think that was really good, because it reminded me that the issues and the organizing on the ground are what really matter.

But what I found when I got more and more involved in electoral politics is there's all these kind of rituals and traditions and presumed rules that have been increasingly being thrown out, but a lot of people in this work don't recognize it. Now, 2016 was kind of the object lesson, and everyone is, of course, talking about Trump. I think you could have the same conversation about the rewriting of the rules that Bernie Sanders did. I mean, it was breathtaking. He had no money. He was this quirky guy from Vermont where there's no people, right? And he was supposed to have no chance, but he had an extraordinarily clear vision, and he had authenticity, and he had the willingness to speak truth to power.

And suddenly, we saw a type of organizing, a type of fundraising that we have literally never seen before on a vast level. That happened in the space of months. So the entire dynamic is changing so profoundly that it just would be really healthy for a lot of us to throw the traditions and the rituals and the assumptions away and see this moment for what it is. And even this conversation evinces, we're trying to make sense of what happened, you know, not a year ago, a month ago, we're trying to make sense of what happened this week and how it's changing the rules, right?

But in a funny way, that's liberating. In sort of a creative sense, once you say, okay, a lot of the rules are gone, we're in uncharted territory, but uncharted territory also allows you to do things you weren't able to do before. We're able to organize people faster and better than we ever have. We're able to form coalitions we didn't used to have the ability to think of because people were too divided along class or race or gender or whatever lines it was. So what I find

exciting about this time is we sort of, we're unmoored, we're sort of cut from a lot of the things that used to give us a sense of clarity, but they also held us back. I actually like the freedom of this moment. And what I saw on January 21st convinced me that whether we know we're on the march or not, we are on the march right now. It's up to us to do it. Samir, thank you so much. Thank you. We really appreciate you sitting down. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming. You appreciate it. This is Pod Save America. Stick around.

There's more great show coming your way. All right. I can't believe the mayor talked to us. I know. Who knew? I think that was great. You think that was great? Honestly, the president talked to us.

That's true. Of course the mayor talked to us. so. That's true. Of course the mayor talks to us. All right, let's bring out our next guest. She is the correspondent in

CBS News and a writer at The Atlantic and a friend of the pod, Alex Wagner. Hi. Hello, hello. Hi, hi.

It's in my writer contractually that a mayor has to be my warm-up act. I was going to say, does this happen often? Yeah, in Chicago, it's raw. I'm here. How you doing? I mean, there's a lot of answers to that question. Every day in the media, it's like someone throws up a giant handful of disaster confetti and it floats down onto the floor and we are tasked with picking it picking it up and pecking at it and it lands on for Sean

Spicer yeah exactly he's like why are you attacking me I mean that's a good place to start which is so much comes at us every day and it is the job of the media, or one of the jobs of the media, to make sense of it all for people. And how do you go about, on a daily basis, figuring out, here's what matters, here's what doesn't matter, here's what might get more clicks, but here's probably what's more important and have a bigger impact? How do you set the agenda at a time like this? We're asking because we're trying to start a media company. This is just advice. Asking for a friend. I think, so I think, to be honest, I'm not sure that we figured that out. What? Yeah, newsflash. No, because A, the news cycle was speeding up even before Donald Trump, and then Donald Trump sort of added a 60

horsepower engine to it. And I think there's always a pressure, especially in television, to get to the story that's freshest, right? But especially in the age of Trump, the story that's freshest is not necessarily the most important story, right? I mean, and today, there are 17 different stories. Do we write about the fact that Trump didn't have his earpiece in when he was having a bilateral press conference with Shinzo Abe?

Did that really happen? No, we missed that. See, you didn't even know that. That means he couldn't hear anything translated. That means he has no idea what was said. But here's the thing. Literally. But guys, he doesn't speak Japanese. Donald Trump. He nodded the whole time.

He just nodded a lot. Because he's a fucking pro. He nodded the whole time. He just nodded a lot because he's a fucking pro. He is a pro. He's a pro. I mean, while I was backstage, CNN and BuzzFeed are reporting that elements of the 35-page

dossier have been confirmed to be true. Oh, yeah. Not the PP tape, though. Not the pee-pee tape. Not the Ritz-Carlton part. Not the fun part. Yeah.

Not the salacious pee-pee. They're so, like, we are not even talking about the salacious part. Yes, you are. But, like, that's just in the last three hours. So, I mean, he has really put the media, I think is putting the media through its paces in terms of like, what are you, what are you just going to cover? And then what are you going to deem important? And it's, it's, it's hard. It's sort of impossible. This is like my hobby horse lately because you're right. So much is happening. And at the same time, I think we're

having a very hard time helping people understand that the media is their voice, and without them, they're not going to figure out the information they need. But I'm watching access get eroded, and it's just sort of happening. And I'm wondering, what can the White House Correspondents Association do to stand up and prevent this? Get a great comedian for that dinner. Sean Spicer's briefings are

like 11 minutes long now, and it used to be that the AP would call it after an hour. He did one press conference during the whole transition. They lie with reckless abandon. It's like, what stick does the press have to enforce these norms or rules or exact a cost? So two things. You know, you talk about Sean Spicer and the way he conducts a press conference. Today at the bilateral press conference, Donald Trump only called on Murdoch-owned American

news outlets. Unbelievable. Fox Business News and the New York Post. That's it. That's so amazing. I mean, I think that's something that we should be talking about, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, who's getting preferential treatment?

Who's getting treatment, period? You know, I think I covered the White House. I was a White House reporter, and I went to those briefings every day. And I will say, I think it's important that the press stays in the West Wing. I think it's important that they continue to have those briefings. But I think there was a kind of complacency that can set in in terms of that beat in particular. You're sort of spoon-fed these things every day. The best reporting that comes out of the White House is the reporting that happens behind the scenes, where reporters are really working for it. And I think it is now incumbent

upon the press to circumvent this White House in many ways and go to the agencies, cultivate sources. I mean, it's going to be hard, but the real work of reporting is as urgent as ever. And I think that there are a lot of really great reporters that have... I mean, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush at the New York Times, who are two of my favorite reporters, have been breaking incredible stories from the lion-failing New York Times, right? I mean, the fact is Donald Trump says he hates these mainstream media outlets,

but he follows them religiously and obsessively. Yeah, I mean, the only reason we know, the only reason we have this wonderful image of Donald Trump wandering around the White House in a bathrobe yelling about Don Lemon is because of the failing New York Times. Thank you, Glenn and Maggie. Which he then denied.

But did he? Because he probably talked to her. He doesn't even own a bathrobe. A kimono, perhaps. Not a bathrobe. I don't even have a bathrobe. I was wondering if there was a worse image than Donald Trump in a bathrobe.

No, there's not. Then it is Donald Trump in a kimono. Wait a second. Kimono, no earpiece. Maybe he speaks Japanese. Maybe he's fluent. Well, but this brings up the issue of trust in the media, right?

Right. He barely speaks English. It's from his original Japanese. He's in his mind translating the Japanese back in English. I don't know. So before Trump, trust in the media was sort of at an all-time low, right? And now we have a president who just about every day tries to undermine the media and tells people that there's fake news, that the media is

lying to them. And the trouble is, I mean, we can all make fun of it here, but there's a good portion of the country who does look at the New York Times and CNN and a lot of these mainstream media publications and now says, yeah, they're probably lying. It's fake news. They're just out to get Donald Trump. And he has, I mean, he didn't start it, but he certainly contributed to it. So when you're at one of these publications or one of these outlets, where do you begin to start rebuilding that trust? Or is it even, I mean... Well, there is a certain section of the country that truly believes that thousands of Massachusetts voters were bused into the state of New Hampshire to throw the race against Donald Trump and

Kennedy. We would never drive to New Hampshire. That was a claim made today as well by the sitting president of the United States. And I don't know how you get certain parts of the country back, to be honest. I mean, I think if you have dismissed places like CBS and the New York Times and CNN as fake news, I mean, A, I don't know where you're getting your information, but I don't know how you pull people back from that other side. I think it's, I mean, but I don't think that you're getting your information, but I don't know how you pull people back from that other side.

I think it's, I mean, but I don't think that that's a bulk of the country. I mean, I think that's a fairly narrow slice. I think there is a much softer middle that kind of like sort of gave up on following the news because it just all seemed kind of depressing or Congress was riddled with inaction. And now, as the mayor said, the stakes are just a lot higher. And I feel like, I mean, I have friends in my life

who didn't follow politics closely and now are completely fucking obsessed with it. And that's great. I mean, I think a reawakening of civic engagement is great. People were complaining when Trump announced his pick for SCOTUS. They were like, oh, the networks are falling into the trap. They're giving him a primetime slot. And I thought, you know what?

It's awesome that America is getting a prime time announcement for a Supreme Court nominee. And that people are like throwing around the term EO as shorthand for executive order. I mean, like, that's great. There's a new, there's a sort of rejuvenated fluency in political terminology. And people understand how the system works better. I'm trying to be patient with like newly woke people texting me like, did you see this? Like yes, I've been following the news for my entire life.

Yeah. Lovett doesn't do our outreach. Tanya, where are you? Where are you? I only prepared for the mayor. I don't have a question. You don't have a question? No, I do. I just interrupt with jokes.

Well, so, no. True. But I interrupted the mayor. No, so I want to, like, kind of break down this sort of distrust in the media because I do think some of it is there is this right-wing media that's sort of propaganda and all these things.

But I think that there's a larger issue of mistrust that doesn't have anything to do with partisanship that has to do with the way the news is reported, sensationalism, a feeling as though they're not getting the whole story, that they can't trust it, that it's corporate-owned, and these are problems that long predated Donald Trump. Yeah, for sure. Ratings predated Donald Trump. Right. And ratings are a real driver. I mean, it is not a coincidence that, you know, we talk about the cable news ratings for the election. That really matters, that advertiser rates have gone up since Donald Trump has become president.

Money is at the root of a lot of decision-making in the news industry, and that is abhorrent to a lot of people. That's also the way it works in the United States of America. That is not to say that money drives every decision and that there isn't a very well-intentioned, I mean, I can say at CBS, there's an incredibly strong sort of institutional mindset about news and being judicious and trying to cover things

fairly and comprehensively. At the same time, there are basic sort of, there are practicalities that limit that, like time. I mean, you know, you start out in the news media and someone tells you, oh, your hit's going to be a minute and 45 seconds. And you're like, what the fuck am I going to say in a minute and 45 seconds? And then you're like, oh my God, I have a minute and 45 seconds? Because your whole way of sort of processing information changes the longer you're sort of in the industry. of sort of processing information changes the longer you're sort of in the industry.

And there's a good side and a bad side to that. It's hard to be, you know, to discuss topics, I think, in the detail and as comprehensively as one might want in the time frame in which we're given. I'm going to give you a chance to butter up your employer. That's cool. How has 60 Minutes, how has CBS managed to, like, have institutions that have persevered?

60 Minutes has been great for decades. You have Charlie Rose, who's been doing basically the same thing. They put him in that room with that table like 30 years ago. It's a fine lacquer. It's a fine lacquer on that table. That's how you get the youth. Fine lacquer. That's how you draw the millennials in. The Finnish.

You really know the ins and outs. Love it. Charlie Rose, who we're all praying for because he's going to have surgery right now. We love Charlie. We love Charlie. Charlie's on the mend. He has a lion heart. He will be back on the air.

But you guys have done it right for a long time, and you've done it substantively in great shows that people love. I'm wondering, is there a special sauce there? Well, yes, there is. I was at NBCbc before that right i mean i i haven't been in cbs that long so i wouldn't presume i would not say i'm not speaking for the organization when i say this but i you know and i think integrity david rhodes is the president of of cbs and and takes the sort of mission and the history of the place yeah i heard of that guy really seriously and they made a bet i mean i think you see this most concretely in the morning,

which is all about news is back. And there is a thinking that is both, I think, strategic and substantive that, you know what? Everyone else is doing this, so why don't we do this thing? And this thing happens to be news, facts, information. Right. Well, so, okay. But so when we talk about ratings,

we're really talking about what people want. And so we have this strange phenomenon, which is people... Well, but is that... I mean, that's the question. Well, so I don't know, but clearly these morning shows are incredibly attuned to what people are tuning in for. And it's why you see less substance, and you see more cooking, and what have you,

into these shows. And I guess the question is, how do we have a situation where people on a whole distrust the media because of the things it pursues for ratings? Those ratings are determined by what the consumers want. And so how often... You calling people dumb? No, I'm not. I'm calling a bunch of hypocrites. Dumb hypocrites. No. But how often is this criticism of the media really criticism of news consumers? Well, I think there's definitely a self-loathing aspect to criticism of the news, right? But it's a really tough question.

To a certain degree, you could say, well, the reason people like cute pet videos is because you keep giving them to us. The reason you're eating so many damn Doritos is because they're on sale. I mean, there's like a circular logic to all of this. I can't defend, I mean, like I can't, I'm not here, like it'd be great if we had our version of the BBC in the

US too, right? I mean, I think there's a place for all different kinds of sponsored media in the world. But the reality is what it is. And I think overall, I've been really heartened by the fact that subscriptions to the New York Times are at an all-time high, that people feel like they need to double down and reinvest in the news media. And I got to tell you, I was down in Washington during the inauguration and I had to cover

the women's protest. And I have been in a lot of public space. People were coming up to me. I had a camera crew with me and they were like, good for you. We love you. You're part of the media. And like that never happens. People are like, get the hell out of here. Usually there is a sense that like the work we're doing matters. And that's really nice because that has not been, I think, the general... You know, President Obama, who... Did our show. Did your show.

Friend of the pod. That's the thing he's most known for. He knows him from fake news. It's not the ACA. Barack Obama, the 45th president. Unemployed community organizer. One of the, yeah, unemployed, yeah, official. He, you know, he was not great with access in the White House.

Yeah, you're laughing. Hi, do you know what show you're on? He's perfect. He's a literal angel. He never made a mistake. The door on the floor is going to open now. I'm not drawing any equivalence between him and Donald Trump. But, you know, I thought it was really interesting that in his last press conference,

he went on and on about how important the press was. Now, you guys know, I mean, I'll ask you this, John and John and Tommy. You know, he wasn't super psyched about the press for most of his tenure. I heard some media criticism from time to time. Yeah, exactly. Maybe I started it. I'm just saying. No, but I think his issue with the press is, you've heard a lot of our complaints about

this, is sort of what Lovett was getting at, which is not the partisan nature, right? It wasn't like damn Fox News every day, you know? It was more like there is this tendency towards sensationalism and what's trivial and all the silly things. All the horse race stuff and all the silly stuff and not what's really substantive. And he's always like, well, challenge me where you disagree, where I'm doing wrong, but let's make it serious.

Which also makes me wonder, do you think there's any truth to the gripes from the Trump administration that they're being covered completely unfairly? Is there any... I mean, there's this like... Kellyanne says she's walking around with wounds. Did you guys see the tour de force interview

between Jake Tapper and Kellyanne Conway? Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Brian Stelter, we do not want Jake to know how complimentary we are about him. Yeah, don't tell him we liked it, Brian. Fine. He's, I just, I think he's gotten enough good press like the last two weeks.

I mean, we all know how he is on email. Brian, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the good thing is that this podcast nobody listens to it. No one listens. Everything stays in this room. He's too busy keeping them honest. What's amazing in that interview

is she tries to sort of make the point that the thing that she kept going back to I felt like was veterans. Every question he'd ask her about whether the accusations about violence being an all-time high were not lies, and she'd somehow work the question back to veterans and say, but we're doing amazing work on veterans.

Now, much respect to people who were doing actual work on veterans issues. But it was so manipulative. I feel like journalism classes will study that interview, in particular her responses in decades to come. It is an amazing sort of, I don't even, Soft Shoe is putting it mildly,

she kind of like, she goes in and out of the actual conversation. She's like the liquid metal Terminator. Yes. The woman can walk through bars. Yes. And she just comes out the other side and she's like, I'm a cop again.

How am I killing it? A cop in a little red and blue hat. And then she's like, picks up a piece of herself off the floor, adds it back to the collective. It's incredible. You nailed it. You could tell in that interview that she was trying. She was like, I'm not going to appear defensive. I'm not going to appear wounded. I'm not going to appear wounded.

I'm going to just try to be nice. I'm going to appeal to what Jake likes. I'm going to say complimentary things about CNN that may fly in the face of everything that my boss has said recently. I'm not going to answer any questions. Yeah. I mean, so I guess this was all to a long-winded way of trying to get back to your original question, which is, like, is there stuff they're doing that we're not paying attention to? I mean, possibly. It's just that so much of the stuff that they're doing is so egregious and abnormal,

as we're talking about, you know, sort of institutions, that I think those other things take up most of the... And by the way, we have been very clear. Crooked media, we do our media criticism. But on the battle between the media and the Trump administration, we have picked a side. I mean, there are, you know, you can't paint a broad brush. I mean, there are great journalists holding them accountable every single day.

In their defense, right, I went on like every Obama foreign trip for four years and never once was the main story coming out of that foreign trip. Anything we were talking about was always something that reverberated back from home. So I get that frustration, but you kind of got to just roll with it, guys. This is your job now. If they call you and say, hey, we're corroborating some of these things in this dossier. What's your comment?

And Sean Spicer says, CNN is fake news and I hate you. Please lose my number. We were doing this on the way over here. Let's practice doing the correct response from Sean Spicer Which could have been no comment Right Or even like we don't believe this to be true

Not like CNN is fake news The only correct response from Sean Spicer is I am leaving This is an out of office message I'm in my car I'm in my car And I'm driving until it runs out of gas And then I'm going to get out and walk until I find water.

Should we make our official offer to Sean? Oh, by the way, yeah, Sean, who we know occasionally. Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod. The second you are thrown under the bus, and then Trump backs the bus over you, and then gets some of his cronies on the bus, and then drives the bus to Mar-a-Lago,

when you get yourself up and you take a couple days to look at yourself, figure out what mistakes you made, come have a podcast on. What's the title? We will give you a podcast called Pod Save Your Soul. And by the way, we are...

We are... You had that tucked away in your back pocket. We are a generous company. We are attracting great talent. It's a burgeoning concern. How do you think the media handled the campaign in 2016? Oh, my God. That's a big question.

Yeah, I was going to say, do we have any? Let me unbutton my blazer for that. I started out, I still had a show on MSNBC when Donald Trump announced his candidacy. And a lot of people, and that I think was the flourishing of the not taking Trump seriously enough moment. And in all of our defense, it really didn't seem like he was going to end up being the president. He rode an elevator down his gold stairs. Yes, right.

He's afraid of stairs. I mean, it was a carnival. He's a dotty old racist and he's afraid of stairs. And he had ringers in the audience cheering for him. This was not normal politics. So yes, I absolutely think we didn't take him seriously in the beginning. Once he started winning primaries, I think that there was a dawning realization. But to be honest, and you've seen this shift even in the mainstream media like the New

York Times, the sense, the feeling that you could say what the president or the president-elect is saying is a lie, that sort of definitive, like Donald Trump is lying about X, Y, and Z, that was not something that was done or said by anyone in the sort of mainstream media until very, very recently. And I think there's been this sort of dawning realization that, okay, by calling him out and fact-checking and saying these things are actually what they are, that's not being partisan, that's being truthful. And that is a sort of a new development. And it's hard to be that angry because it does make sense that it took him winning because everyone did expect him to lose, everyone, right? And that it is something about him winning that helped a lot of people figure out how to react. But partly that's because he's president now and he should be treated differently. Yes i think when you talk about i mean this is the perennial question i think that i get asked a lot which is well when are you guys going to

stop covering his tweets so much and and the answer is probably never because these are probably the most truthful um expressions of donald trump's like, thinking about being the leader of the free... All caps, crazy brain. Yeah, see you in court! I mean, or not, it turns out. Everyone's like, this tweet about the EO is a distraction from this other thing that's also terrible, which is actually a distraction from this other thing that's also terrible, which is a distraction from the original EO.

It's like a seven-layer burrito of distractions. The answer is everything is forever changed because of who this person is, and we're seeing that play out in the media. How do you think the Clinton campaign could have handled the media better? Maybe not roping them together during 4th of July parade. I'm kidding.

I did a fair amount of campaign coverage on the road as part of the circus with Showtime. And it was super interesting because the Clinton campaign, I think, and this is a scar tissue that has accrued over many years as a result of the Clintons being in the spotlight was so paranoid about bad press, which is something Donald Trump is not afraid of, apparently. And the level of access, I mean, it was just so difficult to negotiate even the most basic things to the degree that it was kind of like, your bad will is being created here for no

reason. It's not like there's a contentious interview and you're mad about what we said. We haven't even had the interview yet. I think they should have been a lot more open and more accessible. I think, you know, Hillary Clinton is a remarkably accomplished and very smart person. I don't think she's very comfortable in, you know, interfacing with the media. I think that, you know, they, they could have, you know, they, they, they probably should have been more aggressive and more open with a lot more, but until she comes on the pod, we are going to say that she was perfect. I don't think that that's why she lost the election. But it is this vicious cycle with them, right? which is they're cautious

towards the media because they'll say in the past the media has treated them unfairly and so then by being more cautious then they're treated more unfairly you don't get to do that forever or even for any extended period of time if you want to be in politics as they say John

politics ain't beanbag and these people are all our friends, and no one is trying to kick anyone after a very brutal campaign. But I think the moment to me that crystallized that there were some self-created wounds was when she fainted. And it shouldn't have been a big deal, but I think the time lag in terms of getting back to people, the fact that it seemed like only the bubble knew

that she was even sick to begin with. And people didn't know where she was. The body double was in the can, yeah. And that took time. They had to charge it. I don't really know what my role is supposed to be. Just let it play out. Usually just let it go until the...

Just let him spin his wheels quietly in the middle. One last question, and then we'll let you go. What is your biggest concern with political journalism today, and what gives you the most optimism? Oh, man, that's a tough question. What is my biggest concern? You know, the bifurcation of the media landscape is really

problematic to me. I think the most two most important people right now are probably Lachlan and James Murdoch because they are going to be running the show at Fox and they are by all outside accounts not as conservative as their father and could play a huge role in sort of

ameliorating the break, I think, in large mainstream media division. But it worries me that, and this isn't so much fake news versus real news, it's just that, you know, we are increasingly developing a public appetite for two different lenses on the country. And that seems really dangerous because the implications of that, not just for media but for governance, are pretty dire. If people can't agree that this happened, then how do you legislate from there? I'm most optimistic that podcasts like yours exist.

Right answer. No, I mean, this is not a butter up your hosting, but I think that there is, it is actually a butter up your hosting. Go on, don't stop. I think it's really, you know, I'm writing this book, book plug. And one of the questions is like the sense of like, who are your people? And what I realized in this moment is my people are the people that care and are hitting send on the emails and to our pressing play on the podcast and tuning into their DVR or

actual live television because they want to stay informed and are equally informing the public. And it feels like this is a remarkably rich moment for the exchange of information and for people giving a damn about facts and news and the sort of plight of our fellow man. And that's awesome.

Great answer. Alex Wagner, thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's this great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. Should we take some questions?

Yes, please. If you guys don't ask them, Lovett will just talk. Wait, you guys, I did a visual joke. You guys ready for a visual joke? There it is. Podcast people listening because you didn't get tickets because you missed the boat. I was wearing a Pod Save America sweatshirt.

I took it off to reveal a Pod Save America t-shirt. That is good radio right there. That's what happens. Hi. Hello. Hi there. Since we're in Brooklyn, I'm going to keep it on brand and ask about Israel. Okay.

All you, Tom. Thanks. So Israel is an issue that I tend to argue a lot about with a lot of my liberal friends, and I have a hard time convincing people or explaining to them that you can be pro-Israel and pro-two-state solution, but also anti-Netanyahu and anti-settlements.

And is there a way... Is there a way that you think is a good way to have that argument and explain that you can be for a Jewish state, but also against some of the things that are going on? Very good, very hard question. I think that, you know, listen, a lot of people had a very emotional response to President Obama's decision to abstain on the UN vote criticizing settlements,

despite the fact that decades of presidents and administrations have had as US policy in opposition to settlement construction. And I think what people don't necessarily understand is that with respect to creating settlements, there are certain areas that are called within the blocks that are likely to be swapped into state solution, right? So Palestinian territory will go to the Israelis, some Israeli territory will go to the Palestinians.

And those are close to the border. Those are close to the border. Those are understood to sort of be likely to happen in any sort of solution. What's happening now is construction deep, deep, deep into Palestinian, what would be Palestinian territory, to the point where it makes it unlikely that they could actually have a contiguous state where you could travel from point A to point B and actually sort of govern the entire thing. My argument to those people would be, if you care deeply about Israel, if you want it to not just exist but thrive, you want to resolve this issue sooner than later

because it has been such a source of tension for so long, and you want a viable Palestinian authority with a working government, with institutions, with a population that is employed and paying taxes and occupied and not, you know, sort of this disaffected youth bulge you see across so many places that is a hotbed for extremism, right? And so you want this to work out and you want a two-state solution to occur and for them to have a lasting peace agreement to remove that sort of irritant from the relationship and to help both sides move on and onto bigger things and figure out a way to work together.

And so I think Obama got in trouble for saying this in 2006 or 2007. It's like you can be pro-Israel, but not necessarily pro-Likud, which is the conservative party. And since that time, Netanyahu, every time he's had to reconstitute his government, has lurched further to the right, right? Suddenly you have, like, Avigdor Lieberman, who said some pretty abhorrent things, is the foreign minister. And you've got Naftali Bennett, who denies that there should ever be a two-state solution. It's like these people are getting pulled into the cabinet. And I think, ultimately, if you want young people to move to

Israel and, you know, it to be seen as, like, a thriving into the cabinet and I think ultimately if you want young people to move to Israel and and you know it to be seen as like a thriving democratic state which I think people believe it to be this like beacon of hope in a in a tough region then you want these sides to come together um and and figure out a path forward so that's a really fucking long answer that was long I feel like I'm on pod save the world over here that was a plug it was good it was nerding it was good Pod Save the World over here. That was a plug. It was good. What's what we do here? My question, you guys talk a lot about the 2018 elections, but I know that we have these few special elections that are coming up in 2017,

and I wondered if you could talk about any sort of hope that we have in those elections and what we should be doing here in Brooklyn to help in those cases. What's going on there? Compost. What's that? No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, look, it is, it has been common throughout history, usually in the off-year elections,

right after presidential election, if the president of power isn't doing so well and maybe has a pretty bad approval rating like Donald Trump does, those are pretty prime opportunities for the other party to sweep into power. So those are very ripe targets. I believe usually it's a governor's race in Virginia and a governor's race somewhere else. Jersey?

Jersey. Jersey. Jersey. Of course, Mayor de Blasio is running for re-election here. I don't think he'll have any stringent Republican opposition here, but I think in Jersey and Virginia, yeah, like we'll need, especially in a state like Virginia, I think that will be a fairly, that'll be a very competitive race. Virginia, of course, in 2016 went very, very blue, so there's a huge opportunity to keep the governor's seat there.

So I do think that, yeah, volunteering, donating to the candidate of your choice, that's going to be a primary in Virginia. Tom Perriello and Northam are the two. Tom Perriello fans. I think we know who the front of the pot is. I also think those elections are looked at as barometers of the mood of the country,

and that's a great way to scare the hell out of everybody that's up in 2018. And suddenly those people are running from Donald Trump in ways that allow us just some space in terms of protecting ACA and doing some of the other things. Yeah, and it's not just the win. It's like the size of the win. If Democrats win by a big margin in this November, that's like the earliest signal to, you know, to the Trump administration that they're in trouble, that maybe they don't have

these magical powers, you know. It's a tweet about it. That's the answer. Yeah. Yes. Hi. Hi. I think people should say their name. Okay. What was your name? my name is Zach can I be with Miriam? okay great and I'm Casey hi so I do have a question before I get to it I just wanted to say that

because of your podcast I have gone to my first protest and I've called multiple senators. Yes. And I've got a whole bunch of monthly donations set up. And I literally have never done that in my entire life

and it was entirely from listening to you guys. So thanks. Well, thank you. Thank you. That was great to hear. Misty. Okay, so here's my question and it's a little bit to you

pavs because i am a holy cross graduate as well oh even better yeah crusader so i'm not listening yes anyway so i have a bachelorette party coming up with a whole bunch of okay i'm listening, I'm listening. We're going to cut this out for Emily. We have a whole bunch of Trump supporters. Oh, wow. Yeah. The air just went right out of the balloon there. No, I'm like still very into what this question is. I'm into what we're going to talk about.

Right, so I think this is a large question that a lot of people have, which is how are we supposed to communicate with these? I mean, I'm really every day, half the day, I'm filled with primal rage at anybody who's a Republican. And then the other half of the day, I remind myself, you know, that I need to be more understanding and we need to reach out. And maybe I don't need to destroy my friendships with politics and and on and on and I'm just wondering what you guys think about the best way to talk to somebody who voted for Donald Trump good question where's the power where is this where's the bachelor party bachelor party sorry where is it Nashville Nashville that makes sense yeah um are they I think the first thing you don't want to do is stereotype Nashville. I'm not, I don't run with Nashville, but I get picking Nashville.

Wait, but this is, these are not like Rust Belt, you know, steel workers or something. These are girls that went to Holy Cross. Right. No, look, this is right towards, it was like a month before the election and my fiance was like, woke up panicked and she's like, one of my best friends from high school, she's from Cincinnati,

one of my best friends from high school just, I heard from another friend that she might vote for Donald Trump. And it was like panic in our household. She's like, I'm texting her now, what do I do? Write the texts. Let's figure this out. And I just sort of started asking.

We didn't get her. We did not get her, no. She's still coming to the wedding. For now. And Hillary lost Ohio. Coincidence? Great speech writer. Couldn't get one girl.

I will say, failure. It is a great exercise to go through, because when we talk like this, we make a lot of assumptions about the audience, right? And we do this to each other all the time. Yes, someone's not so much of a straight shooter respected on both sides. Oh, I got him. Anyway, no. So I started by asking, like, why do you like him? What are the issues that you care about, right? Like, just very basic stuff, right? Like, don't go to like, did you see that tweet that he just did? He's crazy. You know, like, um, now the problem is a lot like with her, it was, well, you know, Hillary like killed all those people in Benghazi. Um, and so then I had to go through the entire explanation of Benghazi.

And then I like texted Tommy and was like, give me some more Benghazi facts. You still have to start going back. Didn't get her. Didn't get her. Spent a day on it. You still have to start. Now, here's the thing. I think in an election, this is tougher than when someone's president. Because when someone becomes president, it is just them.

And there is no other person. There is no other candidate. And so, for better or worse, we judge presidents on their performance. We don't judge them in opposition. So there's no more Hillary Clinton to complain about anymore. There's no more Democrat opposition to complain about anymore. And I think you should ask them, like, how do you think about how he's done, right? Like, is he doing everything that you voted for, right? And what are those issues? And then start going issue by issue. I think on someone like Trump, ultimately, you are going to want to fight

him on the actual substance of the issues, right? Like, just jumping right to he's completely crazy and out of his mind, blah, blah, blah. Like, you can get there, but I think you want to go issue by issue. I do think the incompetence is the exception there, right? Like, I think no one from either party wants an administration that seems completely incompetent and out of control and chaotic, right? And so to the extent that they continue to roll out these executive orders like this, as poorly as they

did with the ban and stuff like that, I think that's going to be an issue of weakness for him, regardless of what party you're for. Like, maybe you're a Republican, but you don't want a president who's just incompetent all the time. So I think that's a big issue. But then, I would actually, I would go issue by issue and actually try to debate the substance, you know? Are they drinkers?

What would you do of it? I, I, I really get to, I don't know if you want, I mean, I don't know if I want my friend at my bachelorette party being like, I have some political things I want to talk about at this strip club. So I'd be like, maybe like at brunch the the next day you can like kind of bring it up and I would also do it in the like the language of feelings like here's how Trump makes me feel because that's how like that's just like therapy stuff that you get from Dr. Cathy but no but I think it's a threshold question as to whether or not you actually want like

you should go on your bachelorette party with your friends and not really worry about it because there's enough people worrying about it all the time. Like, we're all worrying about Trump all the time. People are dreaming about Trump. Like, you can go to Nashville and just, like, forget that Trump exists. She wants to persuade. Wait, do you want to persuade? I'm sorry.

Do you want to bring it up? No, she said she wanted to know what to do. She wanted to know how she should feel about it. What should she do? Well, I know you're right. We're all right. We've been right the whole time. We were incredibly smug in sanctimony before the election.

You've seen it's really gone away. And you've seen it's really gone away. I have an obligation to be smug for the country. To keep spirits up. I think I did a lot of soul-searching after that. And it doesn't always come through that I think about these things. But I do think our friend Anna Marie Cox is a reporter for MTV News. Really smart woman. Hilarious. But she had this simple recommendation, which is when you're talking to these people, But I do think, you know, our friend Anna Marie Cox is a reporter for MTV News, really smart woman, like hilarious.

But she had this simple recommendation, which is like, when you're talking to these people, don't try to, don't approach it as a debate. Just be like, why do you feel the way you feel? Yeah. I think that's a really smart way would then someone ask you why you feel how you feel. And then it's a conversation. It's not like you need to put the yo on the thing. Right. And so I think that'll get to a better place.

Yeah. Or do what love has said. Well, I'll let you know how it goes. So thank you. Oh, please, tweet at us. And thank you for doing all that stuff. And you don't have to bring up the politics at the bachelor party

unless you like really feel like it's a good... The question is whether I can resist, right? Right, that's right. That's true. That's what the drinking comes in. I get that. Yes, sir. Hi, I'm Dan.

So I'm a lawyer. I represent a client in Iraq. I've got a call with him tomorrow morning. You represent a client in what? In Iraq. Oh, in Iraq. Yeah, so he was a translator. Worked for the U.S. Marines in Fallujah during the worst of the worst fighting there.

And he's trying to get a visa to immigrate with his family of the worst fighting there. And he's trying to get a visa to immigrate with his family to the US and we've been working for over a year. Obviously it's tough to go through that whole process and now I basically set up a call to talk to him and respond to what's been going on over the last few weeks and I don't know what really to tell him, except that maybe there's going to be an exception for US interpreters over there. So I have really two questions.

One, what would you tell him, to reassure him? And two, if you oppose the EO, what's the most effective way to work against it? You know, what would you recommend? I mean, I would tell him that 99.9% of the country thinks that's the worst fucking thing they've ever heard. That we would tell someone who translated for our soldiers in Iraq, and now we're going to abandon them. It's immoral. It's wrong on every level. I don't, you know, there's a special type of visa for individuals from Iraq who did exactly this,

and I have to think, I have to think that Congress or someone will fix this on behalf of individuals like him because there's no planet where that person shouldn't be, not just to be welcomed into the country, not allowed, right? They did a lot for us. And, you know, and this speaks to, like, the broader stupidity of this law because, you

know, we have people in Afghanistan doing similar work. We have places, we have the CIA all over the world that goes to people and tells them, if you help us with information, we'll bring you and your family to the United States. And in these seven countries, that's no longer an option. And in every other country, people think that we're full of it. So that's a huge, huge problem. And it bothers me to my core that this is happening. And I forget your second question,

because I went on my high horse. The second question is what to do. And I think you have one of those stories that will help change people's minds. So you should tell that story. You should find... and I think you have one of those stories that will help change people's minds. So you should tell that story and you should find... Get Alex back. Where'd Alex go?

She's a journalist. We're just three guys. Tanya, help us. But that's a really important story in that stories about individuals like that change people's minds. It's not a coincidence that when the ACLU brought their first lawsuit in the moments after the CEO was filed, it was for a translator who did exactly what your client was doing and people with families and decent good people who deserve their chance to come to America as we promised them.

So I think there's something we all can do, which is protest at airports and keep up the momentum and go to these town halls and remind people how wrong this is and they've certainly felt the pressure on that, but you in particular should find ways to get that story in front of the media because it's really important. If you can get this guy on film, we'll put it on our website, we'll tweet it, we'll go nuts and call everyone we know about this because this is exactly

the kind of thing I care about. I will also say that the reason this is one of the reasons this is so important is I read a story a couple weeks ago an Iraqi was being interviewed and about the EO and she said you know for a long time I wondered whether America the United States States, cared about Muslims, and then this happened, and I saw the protests, and I saw the reaction, and I realized they do, you know, and so, like, that, that actually matters, you know, like, the scenes that we're projecting to the rest of the world in how we respond to this administration is going to make a difference in the opinion of the rest of the world, and so even if all those protests don't change the executive order

because they rewrite it in a more legal way and they can get it done, us continuing to resist and to protest and to speak out and to show the rest of the world that we believe in a different kind of America is going to be very important in the years to come. God, that pisses me off. Yeah, and just also, we joke and we try to keep our spirits up and we do a great job at that. But we're in the middle of a national emergency. Donald Trump is a national emergency. That's what it feels like. That's every day. You can still get a burrito.

You know, we can still go about our business, but we're in the middle of a crisis and Donald Trump presents a crisis. And, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast, but it's a combination of malevolence and incompetence and it it is dangerous, and it's going to hurt people, and it's going to kill people. And it's going to be a long, hard fight, and we have to fight every day. That's it. I don't know. That's it. Yes, sir. I'm Bob. My girlfriend's here, and she might love you more than she loves me. Well, I have some bad news for her.

And some good news for you. Thank you. Tommy John. In any case, you guys have had each of or many of the chairs or nominees for chair of the DNC come on the pod. I was wondering if individually you guys would be willing to endorse any of them tonight. And secondly, just... Chuck Todd over here. So I was wondering, you guys had Mayor Pete on last week,

and I was wondering if you guys thought there was any credence to the theory that he represents sort of a nice middle between the Tom Perez establishment and the Keith Ellison kind of super progressive wing. That's funny that that's the... I didn't know that was decided. That's just what I pulled away from. I'm going to give the super politician-y answer on this one. And I've been thinking about it for a while, actually. super politician-y answer on this one.

And I've been thinking about it for a while, actually. I just, if Perez or Ellison or Buttigieg, see, I say his last name now. Buttigieg. Buttigieg. Any one of them would make an excellent DNC chair. I really do believe that.

And I was impressed with all of them. I've known Perez for a while. He was one of our first guests on Keeping It 1600, so I really liked Tom. Ellison has sparked some real enthusiasm among a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters and a lot of other people in the party, and he has a good story to tell.

And then I didn't know anything about Pete, and then he came on the podcast, and what I liked most about Pete is that he talks like a normal human being. And this has been my hobby horse, especially as a speechwriter, is that, and Mayor de Blasio was talking about this, which is like, there's no rules anymore, and all the rule books have been thrown out because of Trump. And one of the good parts about that is, you shouldn't, if you're a politician, you shouldn't go out there and figure out like, parts about that is you shouldn't, if you're a politician, you shouldn't go out there and figure out like, okay, I got to stand my talking points that are what my pollster gave me. And he said

that this issue is right. And this line is right. And like, we do all these things to candidates as advisors and consultants to try to keep them on the right message and say the exact right words. And it comes off as phony most of the time. And I think most, most politicians just started talking like they have conversations with everyday people in their life. They would be a lot better off. And I honestly think that was a problem with Hillary in the race. I thought that was a problem with most of the other Republicans that weren't Donald Trump.

It's a problem with many politicians who stay in Congress for too long. And so I think when I heard Mayor Pete talk, I was like, this is someone who speaks like a normal human being, who's refreshing, who doesn't sound like he spent his whole life in Washington. Endorsement. Yeah, so I think, you know, I find myself not feeling like I know enough to make a decision, in part because I almost feel like it's impossible to know

what the right choice is right now, and that's a problem. And I'm very sympathetic to Dan, who is very smart, who is a huge fan of Perez. At the same time, I'm also sympathetic to the argument that there's an incredible groundswell of people who want to know that the Democratic Party is listening. And rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, they've basically drawn a line in the sand that said it has to be Keith Ellison or it has to be someone other than Perez because he represents the establishment. I think it's actually really unfair to Tom Perez, who's being tagged with kind of owning the mistakes of the DNC, which is not really something he was doing. If Barack Obama screwed up state party building, which we can acknowledge that, you know, that was one of his faults. We're in the wilderness. Like, Tom Perez didn't have anything to do with that.

Right. And so- Tom Perez was the most progressive cabinet member we had. I really like Mayor Pete. I like Keith Ellison's rhetoric and his record on getting out the vote. I think Tom Perez is one of the smartest guys who had a lot of really great things to say when he talked to us. I think the most important thing is that we can't fall apart over this. I think there's a chance Perez is going to win. And when he wins,

I really am going to be very annoyed with people who are like, the Democratic Party didn't listen, I'm out. No, it doesn't matter. You lost. Or if Ellison wins, people being like, oh. Now the party's moved too far to the left. Or Mayor Pete wins and everybody's happy. So, who knows?

Am I for Mayor Pete? I think you both are. He's also gay. Really? Great. I think he says I'm a gay veteran. Yeah, he does. People want to add an... They don't want to just be gay. They want to put something after it. Like Straight Shooter? And I'm just gay. I'm a gay don't want to just be gay. They want to put something after it. Like Straight Shooter?

You're a gay podcast host. I'm a gay podcast host. I'm just gay. Gay veteran. Tommy? I feel like I don't know. I'm happy to weigh in if I have a strong feeling on it. I just want someone who's going to run an organization really effectively

and raise money and recruit the hell out of candidates. And that starts in this room, right? If you guys have friends who could run for local anything, go to your town, figure out what board seats are open, just do it. It's probably empty slates. But I just want someone effective that's going to find great people

and raise a ton of money and help us as a pretty good messenger. And I'm kind of agnostic as to who that is. I sort of shared John's frustration with some of the interviews we were like, it's us. We're not reporters. Talk normal.

Say something normal. The DNC is like an operations job. It's really hard to know who's going to do a great job right now. Honestly, I think they can all make their claims and they can all make their best argument and may the best person win, but it's really a turnaround job

that someone's going to have to go down and do some deep rebuilding of this party and actually, like, figure out what the DNC is for, you know? And it can't just be a fundraising operation. It can't just be a, you know, a thing that exists to do big, giant fundraisers in L.A. and New York. And we have to figure out, like,

the Democratic Party is broken. It is a broken institution. It has failed us. Failed us at every level. And I think all of these candidates, it's what? It's true. We elected Barack Obama twice, like no big deal. Yeah. Well, you know, the Democratic Party didn't do that. I mean, the Barack Obama organization did that. Barack Obama did that. The Democratic Party has let us down in a lot of ways. And we've let the Democratic Party down in making an organization that can compete across the country. And I think no one person's going to solve this, no one term of the DNC is going

to solve this. We have, I don't, it's a lot of work. There's a big, this is going to be rough. Love it's going to go turn on its podcast. Hi Danny. Oh, hey Danny. Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod.

Friend of the host. Friend is a very loose term term I have a three part question Oh god So feel free to answer The part which is most convenient Outside the evolution Of crooked media and Love it shamelessly selling t-shirts

What do you think the long term Perhaps positive effects Of a Trump administration will be love it shamelessly selling t-shirts what do you think the long term perhaps positive effects of a Trump administration will be 10-20 years down the road part 2 what is your favorite slash most inspiring Trump tweet part 3

if you were to be characters on SNL who would best play each of you? Love it. You're born for this question. Let's take it from the bottom. I'd play myself. To compliment Trump's tweets for a second,

I think if he weren't such a liar and a racist, we'd kind of recognize that he's funny. He is funny and he is charming. It sucks, but it is true. And we don't normally see it and I'm not, you know, he is what he is. But that tweet where he says, you know, Happy New Year, especially to all the haters and the losers. Like, that's hilarious. He's funny.

Like, he's a funny guy. So I will compliment him there. Positive effects of Donald Trump being president of the United States. I'm not going to 10, 20 years. We got the election wrong. It was like two days away. But. T-shirts again.

What did you say? I just didn't want you to bring up the T-shirts again. These T-shirts at Crooked Media at Cotton Bureau dot com slash crooked. Where they're only on sale till Monday. My work is done. Act now. No, I would say, honestly, I think that the single, um, Donald Trump is forcing us to go back to first principles. Um, what we believe in and what we don't, what matters to us and what doesn't, um, a hundred thousand people tuned in to listen to the, uh, oral arguments in front of the Ninth Circuit, what Alex said about people subscribing to newspapers and paying attention. There is something happening in this

country that's really inspiring, and we know the protests matter, and we know that people going to the airport matters. You know, we joke, protest is the new brunch. Like, coming soon to the media, comes some merch. Would you guys buy that t-shirt? Okay, okay. All right. But I think that Donald Trump is forcing us, is really putting the left versus right, but pro-democratic institutions and norms and someone who has absolutely no respect for them.

And I think that will have a positive long-term effect. No, it's the engagement, right? And it's also, I think, I've always been troubled by the view that politics is purely transactional, that you give a politician your vote on election day, and then you walk away, and that's it. And there are some times, I think, that that frustrated us when Barack Obama was in the White House, and everyone was like, why didn't Obama fix everything on his own, you know? And it's because a democracy requires everyone to be

involved and engaged. There are a lot of people that are paying attention right now because of a bad thing, because Donald Trump's president, but if that leads to increased engagement and activism and people just paying attention more to the news and to politics on every level, then that's going to be good for this country. One more quick thing. Donald Trump really did expose a lot of unpopular dogmas inside the Republican Party. It's not a coincidence that Donald Trump is sort of talking about insuring everybody, and Paul Ryan's going on the morning

shows and saying, no, repeal and replace. We're still going to repeal and replace it. I mean, Paul Ryan's agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, trade, those things don't have as big of a constituency and exposing the fact that these voters weren't as conservative as Paul Ryan thought they were will be good. Thanks, Dan. Good answers. Yes, sir.

Hi, my name's Indy. So I live in New York, obviously, and it's a pretty liberal place. I mean, we get meals from BlueApron.com, we wear Indochina suits. In the pod version, this is where they're going to do the segue. Yeah, they are. We did a great Blue Apron read today, earlier.

You know, me and my friends have been at various sporting events with tickets from SeatGeek. And the thing that keeps me up at night on my Casper mattress is, how can we help people in the more battleground states, or they are in the purple states that aren't necessarily as liberal, other than sending them a bouquet from books.com to keep up the fight? Or some Sherry's Berries. You come from digital media?

We'll send them Sherry's Berries. You come from digital media? We'll send them Sherry's Berries. I feel like that was a rhetorical question. What do we do for people in the purple states? Why don't you take a shot at it? Because I failed to convince the Bachelorette Party. I think the biggest thing, I think this is a hard question. I think the most important thing, I think the lesson of I think this is a hard question I think the most important thing

I think the lesson of this big popular vote win I think the popular vote win is heartening because it does mean that Donald Trump doesn't have a mandate but it also forces us to ask questions like why did all the people vote in the wrong place like if we had buses and we were lying we should have put them in the right place laughter

why did all these dead people vote in New York laughter completely but I think that we made a lot of assumptions, and I think it pains me to say this, but I think the single smartest point about the 2016 election was made by Kellyanne Conway, straight shooter, respect it on all sides, one time, was there's a difference between what offends people and what affects people. And we focused way too much on what offends people and not enough on what affects people because we were right when we were talking about, you know, this is not who we are. You know, Donald Trump is, you know, disrespects people. He makes fun of people.

He's a bully. He's the wrong kind of person. He's corrupt. He's everything we said about him was true. But we didn't make the next step, which was, and this is why it's going to hurt you. This is why it's going to make your life worse. And the bad news is, I think that cost us the election. The good news is, when you're president, you can't lie about what's actually going on

in people's bank accounts, with their health care, on their roads, in their schools, et cetera, which is why Betsy DeVos broke through, which is why these protests are breaking through. It's a question of focus, though, because it is going to take relentless focus on those issues, and those are not always the sexy issues that break through.

But to peel those voters away from him, it is we have to talk about how he affects people's lives. And even the conflict of interest stuff, it's like you have to not just say that he has all these conflicts of interest and that he's using the White House to enrich himself. You have to make the next step and say he's using it to enrich himself

and thus making your life worse in this way, right? And so you have to constantly connect those dots for people that this president whom you elected because you thought he might change Washington for the better and improve your life for the better is not actually doing so. And that's it. That's the end of that. You know, it's not a lot of he's crazy. This is that it's just he didn't improve your life and he said he was going to. Yeah, it's incredibly galling. Right. When Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer or Donald Trump himself is like, you guys said I should give my taxes. I didn't, and people didn't care. And we can get angry about that, or we can be challenged by that and figure out, well, if this is important, why doesn't it matter? Why didn't it cost him everything? Why didn't he lose by 15 points? And I think it's making it so crystal clear that this person is lying to you,

and it's going to hurt you. I said that already. It was worth saying to us. Thank you. Thanks. I'm Claire. And until about 12 weeks ago when my co-worker Jen came in and told me about your podcast, I didn't know very much about politics. So my question is, since he's been elected and now since he's been in office,

we keep hearing he's breaking this law Kellyanne Conway and her thing the Russia whatever uh the dossier all these things right and it's breaking the constitution it's breaking the law but the only lawsuit that's really come up so far is the one with the EO on the ban and I'm wondering is there are there other lawsuits that are in process and we're going to see those soon or is there a timeline here or are we waiting on the Republicans and are we screwed? Some of these issues, it's a very good question because you're like, if she broke the law on TV, why isn't that a thing?

It feels like that should be easy. Some of these are like, you have historic coward Jason Chaffetz who refuses to do oversight, right? Like, that's one problem. So we have to win back the House so we can do real oversight and get subpoena power and hold hearings and, like, do something about that. You will see, like, Norm Eisen and Richard Painter and those guys continue to put forward, I think, sort of ethics-related lawsuits.

I think the ACLU will continue to challenge things that they view as unjust and unreasonable. And then with Flynn, you know, that seems like that could be some kind of FBI investigation. So there's like sort of a whole bucket of legal issues swirling that could be damaging to him at any point along the way. It's just not clear when or where or how. So we can't bank on that, I guess is my point. And we can't rely on or hope for that. We have to win this as a messaging fight

and maybe some of that stuff will spring up at a useful time, but it's probably gonna take a while. So we're kinda screwed. Yeah. No, I mean, we do have to, we win the House ballot box. We have oversight power again. Some of these, the shorthand is,

oh, she obviously broke the law, but it is a little more murky than that, right? Or it requires an investigation. Anything that requires their own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to get involved, that's not happening. And most things that require the Republican Congress to get involved, that's not happening, right? So when there's an

instance that's clear-cut that they broke the law and someone can sue, they can do that. But a lot of them are more murky, like Tommyy was saying yeah and i think that also like kelly and conway making one at offhand like kelly and conway making one offhand comment about how you should go buy shoes like we don't want to live in a country where she goes to jail for that we want to live in a country where she gets centered for that and embarrassed for that and criticized for that and maybe fired for that. Maybe some great shoes. Period. Thank you. Hello, boys. Hello.

Ronnie Cho. Hey, Ronnie. Hey. He's an Obama field organizer from way back in the day. Yeah, way back. Iowa 2007. First time, long time. I want to say thanks. As someone who considers you guys like a big brother.

Thank you for doing everything you're doing to give us a voice. So there's that. That's the end of the buttering up the hosts. Secondly, as our old boss, Barack Obama, who's still the most popular public political figure on earth, what is the most effective and important thing he does? public political figure on earth. What is... Yeah, we'll clap for that. What is the most effective and important thing he does for this generation to help

bring us back from the dark side? What can he do to inspire us again? And what can he do to empower all of us to believe in hope and change once more? I mean, I think that the mission of the Obama Foundation is going to be civic engagement, which is the more boring term for getting people active, getting people involved. He said that he specifically wants to focus on young people,

and he wants to make sure that this generation isn't cynical. And the battle against cynicism in public life, which is the battle he took up when he announced his candidacy. Ten years ago today. Ten years ago today, Springfield, Illinois. That fight continues even more today. And when I say cynicism, it's not that, you know, when you get involved in politics,

sometimes you're going to lose. Sometimes things aren't going to turn out the way you want. Sometimes you're going to get Donald Trump as president. That doesn't mean that it's not worth trying. That doesn't mean that the fight isn't worth it and that you shouldn't continue the fight. Right. And so I think if he, I think during the, like in the foundation, he will probably use his, you know probably use his voice, and he'll speak out on this, but he'll also try to lift up a lot of the voices and a lot of the young people out there

who are doing incredible things, who are getting involved in incredible ways and being involved in public life. And I think that will be his legacy in the next 10, 20 years. He's going back to his community organization roots. I want to ask a question. Can I say a thing? Yeah.

Thank you. To John's point, like, he cannot save us, right? Like, he's not going to be president again, I don't think. But I saw him in D.C. last week, and he is literally tanned, rested, and ready. So, like, the guy is going to be around. He's going to be inspiring people that work for us to run for office. He is going to be, like, fighting for things he believes in. So, you know So I think we should

all take inspiration from what he did, what he accomplished, who he is, the way he conducted himself in office. And remember that, yes, we were looking at this orange monster, but there's that ideal still out there. And that's what we all should aspire to. I hope the takeaway everyone got from that was, I saw Barack Obama last week. Because that's what I heard. And I think that was the point, isn't it? But I was just going to say, I guess my question would be, do you think it's September 2018?

It's September 2018. Is he campaigning for House candidates? Is he raising money? Is he giving stump speeches? I think he'll campaign in 2018. I mean, I don't know this, but I mean, it's not... I'm asking the question like... When I saw him in D.C., I was like, what are you doing in 2018?

Like, where are you in October? What do you want me to do? I'll be in Ohio. I was like, oh, me too. I mean, I got into politics in 2004 in the Kerry campaign, and I remember Bill Clinton was out there all the time. Yeah. You know? And so, I think that he's a very young ex-president and he'll

be out there. Prove me wrong. Run for office, Ronnie. You got it. Okay, cool. Yes, sir. Hey, my name's John and I have a question about the idea that you

guys were talking about on the podcast yesterday of this long-term trend that Obama believes in toward equality, if you look at the scope of American history, and toward progress on progressive issues. I take the more pessimistic view that I feel like there are major fundamental changes happening to how society functions, particularly around the Internet, that have produced Donald Trump, for example. Obama has said that he believes that Trump is a product of the internet. And I'm wondering if you feel like the internet or other changes that are unprecedented in American history are changing or could be changing this idea of a narrative of trajectory toward equality, toward progress on progressive issues that has been kind of steadfast, or do you feel like that holds up, that continues,

nothing that is happening today could be modifying that trajectory in a way that is worth recognizing? That's a great question. Did you listen to yesterday's yet? Part of it. What? I started it.

We just weren't on it. I'm not sure what you guys talked about. He doesn't listen to pod. The Thursday pod. I think technology is more of a tool than anything else. And so I think, yes, the internet helped give rise to Donald Trump, but also helped give rise to

Barack Obama. It helped give rise to the protests we're seeing. I think it can be used for good or for ill. I think when Obama uses that quote the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice he would always add in his stump speech but it doesn't bend on its own, you have to put your two hands on the arc and bend it and so I think there is no inevitable

march towards progress but there is, the history history this country has shown that when people are engaged and they are fighting and they are paying attention, that good things happen, that we move forward. I do think that that's the lesson that I've taken from history despite all the backlash,

all the struggle, all the pain that people have gone through. We shouldn't wash over that. We say this all the time. People are going to get hurt during this Trump presidency. It's not like some happy story where Donald Trump wins and then we're all engaged and everything's wonderful again. There will be bad things that happen. We will lose fights.

And every once in a long while, things do get pretty bad for like 500 years. Yeah. I mean, I think about this soon, it freaks me out, because even internationally, Dave Petraeus is like, we have this world order we've sort of been the leader of for however many decades,

but we didn't get there by accident and you can't kind of abandon it and come back four years later and be like, oh, can we get the thing back where we were kind of leading everywhere? So it's fragile and we need to really fight for the things we believe, which gets me back to the question about

this guy stuck in a rock. You know, it's like we need to, I think, project an image as an opposition that constantly shows the things we believe in. And, like, the Internet's a powerful force, but there have been powerful forces along the way. I think we're resilient and can adapt to that, but I think it's a fundamental adhering to values

and things that are bigger and timeless that will kind of help us navigate this thing. And I think mayor de blasio made a good point which is like trump's not magic you know he's he's not he's not a magic he's not magic he's just a dotty old racist who accidentally became president and after and and he lost and he lost the popular vote and and look i think there are big forces that made trump possible but little things had to go wrong for him to actually win and um little things can make him lose. And little things can make him lose. That's right.

And look, economic inequality, the striation of our media, the gaudiness and vulgarity of our culture, these things open the door to a real villain. And he puts the whole, he know, he puts the American projects in jeopardy. It really is. But we're protesting. We're marching. He's the most unpopular president.

We're already divided as a country as to whether he should already be impeached. We can win the House in 2018. We can hold him accountable. And then we can kick him out in 2020

and get back to business. And we can do that. And then we can all look back and say, what the fuck just happened? And we're going to play Kelly Clarkson Since You've Been Gone. And then we can all look back and say, what the fuck just happened? And we're going to play Kelly Clarkson, Since You've Been Gone, and it's going to be awesome.

Just remember, like, I actually... When you wake up with a really bad hangover, you're like, what the hell happened? I know this is like a crazy time, and it's scary, and it's horrible, but, like, there will be a last day Trump is president, and it's going to be fantastic. Yes. Hi, I'm Rob.

So speaking of looking towards the future, I'm a public high school teacher. I teach in the South Bronx. All right, thank you. And about 60% of my students, maybe a little bit more, are either immigrants or have families that immigrated from other countries. And I think that the most difficult day that I've had to teach was the day after the election. Just having not really processed it myself, not having slept very much, and having to go in and face students who are 14, 16, 17 years old who knew that something bad

had happened but they weren't sure how bad and they weren't sure what to do about it. Do you have any advice for helping empower these young people who will either vote in 2018 and definitely in 2020, how to make them feel empowered again? That's a really good question. Look, I would...

You're a teacher, right? I would take them on a tour through history. I was saying this on the podcast a lot, right? Like, I would take them on a tour through history, right? And, I mean, I've been, I was saying this on the podcast a lot, but it's like, everyone's been reading the books about, like, fascism and how Nazi Germany happened and Hitler, and I've been finding myself wanting to read more about the Civil Rights Movement, right?

And, like, that wasn't easy, and it took about a decade it took more than that and you know there are a lot of people beaten on that bridge in Selma and a lot of other places and um but I think teaching children today and teaching students today that progress is possible in America and it has been over the course of two centuries, even when we faced war and depression and really, really, really difficult challenges, that gives them hope that they can do something and let them know that it only happened because people got involved and they paid attention

and they studied. I think it's a great opportunity. I mean, it's very difficult what you're facing, but it's also a great opportunity to let children know that if they are engaged, if they pay attention, and if they fight for this, then they can make progress happen in this country, that they have the power to do that.

Do you need a permission slip to take them to a protest? Yes. We're talking story. I mean, there's story. Forget about history, too. There's stories happening all over the country right now that are good news stories, right? Whether it's these protests or whether it's, you know, people looking out for other. It's just find the good news out there.

That's why. Because it's very easy when you turn on the news right now to only see bad news. Because there is a lot of bad news. And I think we have to work harder to find the good news stories out there, find the stories of people protesting, of people helping each other, of people sort of living American values,

the ones that we believe in. And I think that will give inspiration. And maybe take them to a protest. Maybe take them to a protest, on the weekends. On the weekends, I'll work on it, thanks. I think that's not, I don't think that's like a totally crazy thing should we take okay two more questions and then I think yes

a version of my question was asked earlier but I was kind of about having an impact outside the bubble but I'm gonna be a little bit more specific so obviously we're in New York it's a very liberal city it's a sanctuary city most of our representatives are on our side. We protested outside of Schumer's apartment not too long ago, so hopefully we've gotten his act together. Awesome. My mother is taken to putting on a fake southern accent and calling red states. That was innovative. I've done that. My question is, A, is that effective? And B, if it's not, what are our alternatives

if our people are on our side already? I mean, that really depends on how good the accent is. It's not so bad. It's not so bad. All right. Well, then it's pretty good. I mean, I think, I don't know. Is she like cold calling people?

How does this work? Yeah, she's like, oh, I'm from 345 Main Street in your town. Way better than what I'm doing right now. But, you know, this is how I feel about this issue. But if our representatives are already kind of voting with us, you get those calls to action, call

right now, and it's like, alright, well, I already saw a tweet from my representative. I know they're voting my way. Then what else is there for us to do? I think that, I mean, that's amazing that she's that committed. Good for her. Seriously. But I think if she's that committed and has that much time and energy to put into this, that using something like swingleft.org to find your nearest swing state and going to that county and meeting people, or going to that district and meeting people face-to-face is probably a better use of time

and more likely to be effective, more likely to be an experience that's rewarding for her as well as sort of like a chance to move somebody on a boat. That's what I would do. I'm impressed. Alright, last question. Thanks guys. Hey, my name's Nathan Rubin, big fan

of the pod, love it. I love your shoes by the way. Thank you. Really slick. My question's actually pretty similar, but it comes to, you know, our biggest resource constraint is time. Yeah. And when you have organizations like Swing Left, Run for Something, Millennial Politics, Indivisible, these organizations out there, organizations out there, for us working folk who don't really have that much free time, how do we most effectively use our time to resist the Trump administration's agenda? It's a good question. Yeah, I mean, I think you have to figure out, like,

I don't know, this is sort of a silly answer, but, like, to me, it's always, like, when you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing, and if you can kind of routinize what your commitment is to the cause every week or every month, like if you're going to do two hours of canvassing a month, God bless you, that's amazing. And like figure out what that is and hold yourself to it and that could be your commitment or like 10 bucks a month to the ACLU or 20 bucks to the DNC, like whatever it might be.

Because I hear you, keeping up with the news, we do this for a living, allegedly, so we haven't got paid. But it's impossible to keep up with the news. Alex told us things we had never heard. And so I hear you, and like, yeah, you have a job, and you have real obligations. But I do think if you can figure out, like, what is that contribution and sticking to it,

and then becoming a force multiplier and getting two or three friends to do it with you like that's how you're a force and you bring that to a state race it's such a good point though is that thanks because we have so much news on so many different issues and there's so many things to freak out about every day it's like i need to figure out a way to help all of it and solve all of it and you can't do that then you should pick one issue that you care about pick one race that you care about and donate some weekend hours to it right whether it's canvassing whether it's phone banking whether it's you know uh i think that that probably makes more of a difference in the long run and it's not always as immediately satisfying because you don't see that we want we

want immediacy we're impatient right and so we want to say like i want to tweet and then solve this problem right and that just doesn't happen and so it takes effort it takes time but you know it pays off in the end and we saw this on both obama campaigns right that these organizers started like a year in advance yeah and they were in random places in iowa and it was not yeah you were there i we were 10 of us on the ground in iowa like it was like ronnie cho and like a bunch of us you know working out of a gas station. By the end of the campaign, Ronnie had organized 75

volunteers making calls for him. That sort of scaling of impact is so unbelievable if it's a dedicated, committed time. Also, we don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are lots of organizations. It's actually hard for us even to sort out which is the one we should be talking about, which is the best

one. And the truth is, it's great that there's all these new things. The Indivisible, these chapters popping up, it's exciting and they're great. And if there's one near you, you should go and check it out. If there's a protest, you should go give that a shot. I mean, I would say the single most important thing we have to do to save this country is win the House in 2018.

And if you can find a way to help win a House seat somewhere, you can protest and draw attention and make these people less popular and make Donald Trump less popular in any way that you can.

Like, you're helping and it's great. It's awesome. Cool. Thanks, guys. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

It was really great. And thank you to Radio Lovefest for having us. Thanks to the band Theater for having us. Thanks to WNYC. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We were shocked that people liked this band Theater for having us. Thanks to WNYC. Thank you for listening to our podcast.

We were fucking shocked that people liked this thing. I wasn't. It's really nice of you to listen. I'm serious. The coolest part about this job is when people tweet at us that they go to protests and stuff. So thank you. Thank you.

And thanks to Alex Wagner and Mayor de Blasio. Thank you, guys. Bye. Thank you guys. Bye. Thank you.