Pod Save America - “The enemy of your enemy is your frenemy.”

Episode Date: April 10, 2017

Trump strikes Syria and cable swoons, while the White House plays the Game of Cucks. Then, the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about covering the Trump Administration, and VEEP’s David Mandel stops by to talk about the show’s sixth season.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett, and this is Globalist Cuck, Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we have the White House reporter for The Washington Post, Ashley Parker, the executive producer of Veep, Dave Mendel. Great show today. And as always, Pods of America is brought to you by any airline but United. United. You can't drag doctors off in their seats.

By the way, it's also just not appropriate to charge a $75 dragging fee. I just think that's wrong. Insult to injury. That's a joke right from Twitter. I just, you know, I test my, I workshop my material on Twitter. The tweets are free. This I make money on. But, by the way, you know, not to ruin the illusion, but we already talked to Ashley

and it's an awesome interview. I'm really excited about it. Oh, I didn't want, I didn't want to ruin the illusion. Love it. It's done. Whatever, it happened. Okay. Before we get into it, subscribe to all of our pods.

Pods save the world. Tommy, I believe you're doing a special episode today. Yeah, I'm going to do a special episode on Syria, and then I'm talking to Senator Mark Warner about the Intelligence Committee and the Russia investigation. That'll go out Wednesday at regular time. Excellent. And of course, subscribe to With Friends Like These with Anna Marie Cox. Love it or leave it, as a juggernaut, it really found its stride this Friday. That's the message? That's the message. We had an awesome show with Neil Brennan, Ike Barinholtz, and Jessica Yellen, and you should check it out because it was really fun.

Also, this is the last day to buy merch. Yes, today or if you're listening to this on Tuesday. GetCrookedMedia.com. Yep. Check it out. Buy some merch, buy some t-shirts. And also go check out your member of Congress, find out if they're having a town hall over the next two weeks and go to Indivisible.org because they have messaging points and talking points and information on how to get to your congressman's town hall during this recess. Important time.

You can talk to them about health care, talk to them about the budget. We're going to have a government funding bill by April 28th when they come back. So there's a lot to talk to your members of Congress about. Paul Ryan specifically said he wanted health care passed by now because he was afraid of these town halls. That's right. And whoopsie daisy. Make your voice heard. Okay, let's talk about Syria. And let's be better than cable news and start with the substance of Syria before we get into the politics of Syria. Tommy, can you give us a quick refresher on the Syrian civil war? How did it start? Who's fighting who? All that kind of stuff.

I mean, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia in December of 2010. The Syria protests erupted not long after in March of 2011, when some teenagers in a southern city were spray painting anti-regime slogans on the walls of a school and they were arrested and tortured and that led to protests and the regime fired on those protesters and things spiraled out of control from there. That conflict over time became even more militarized, even more sectarian, even more ugly. Now we're at a place where literally hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Some of the big inflection points along the way was August in 2012, President Obama drew a red line regarding chemical weapons and the use or proliferation of chemical weapons that sort of has led us to where we are last week with Trump striking these regime targets, a military base that was used for a chemical weapons attack

earlier last week. And, you know, but there's sort of a couple issues here. There's the issue of chemical weapons and Assad's use of them on his own people. You have the issue of ISIS growing its foothold in the region and becoming more and more of a terrorist threat to really everybody. And then there's the just horrific humanitarian situation on the ground. So, I mean, people have been debating this. Let's start with, you know, back in 2013, right? So Obama draws the red line.

Assad launches a sarin gas attack against civilians. And so when Obama had previously said that the use of chemical weapons would constitute a red line, and, of course, the use of chemical weapons is also against international law, right? But then the U.N. wouldn't vote to attack because Russia had a veto power in the UN, the UK voted against using force. And then of course, Obama asked Congress to authorize the use of force, even though he thought he had the authority anyway, right? And then right as Congress was going to vote on this, even though we didn't think we had the votes. Basically, the United States and Russia did a deal where they said Assad will give up his chemical weapons if the United States doesn't attack. And so Assad gives up, what, 1,300 tons of chemical weapons.

So in hindsight, A, we know he didn't give up all of his chemical weapons. Do you think we should have attacked at the time? Do you think it would have made a difference? I mean, a lot of people, there's former Obama administration officials that are speaking to reporters over the weekend saying like, oh, we should have attacked back then, and we're glad that Trump did. The problem here is the definitions of what success and failure are are so loose. I don't think there's a scenario where a military strike on 1,300 undeclared tons of chemical weapons spread over 45 different sites would have had a better outcome

than shipping out those 1,300 tons of chemical weapons. I can't remember if it's tons or gallons, whatever. But there's this sort of more loose question of whether it would have sent a message that deterred Assad. I don't know that we that we know that. Yeah. You know, it's clear based on what Trump did last week. The Russians are already using that base to launch additional attacks on the same neighborhoods. They're just not future chemical weapons use, it remains to be seen if it was successful.

Certainly it has not stopped the Russians and the Syrians from attacking civilians in Syria. That is a humanitarian disaster that is ongoing, that has been ongoing throughout the Obama administration, and is something that is very, very challenging to solve. So one thing that happened in 2013 was, I certainly remember having the sense that President Obama changed his mind, that things were moving towards some kind of a strike, and then the decision was made to go to Congress, and then when Congress wouldn't approve it, to use that kind of as a way of justifying this isn't the time to use force. Is that is my is my understanding of that wrong? I mean, you just you don't know. I mean, he he he decided to, you know, go on this hour long 45 minute long walk with Dennis McDonough

that Friday afternoon in August and sort of rethink his strategy here. And I think a lot of people have speculated, uh, you know, and assumed that maybe he just didn't want to go to war and he was looking for an out. Um, others have thought that he sincerely thought that going to Congress was a way to actually get a stronger resolution put forward.

You know, I, Dennis hasn't talked about it. I tried to push him on it when I talked to him last week for pod, save the world. The president hasn't talked about the substance of that walk. I think there's a lot of assumptions made here. It is certainly not fair to say that there was some grand, brilliant plan that led to this deal with the Russians. That's something we got to over time. I think the credible threat of

force that was put on the ground by Obama regarding the red line probably helped us get to a resolution where we ship the chemical weapons out the 1300 metric tons I looked it up of chemical weapons pushed up but you know look it was it was not a it was not a perfect seamless bit of diplomacy there were some there were some bumps along the way there well because the reason I bring it up is because one of the things that was striking about that decision making process is and it sort of has had has had implications for what Trump just did, is President Obama said, we would like the authorization from Congress, but we believe that we don't need it. And I just think that's played out now with Trump claiming the same level of authority. And I don't know,

it just, it makes me, that to me feels like a kind of bipartisan mistake, the assumption that the president has this kind of unlimited authority to wage war for limited periods of time, or unlimited periods of time, that congressional authority is a luxury, but not a necessity. Well, yeah, look, I think that's a totally fair point. I mean, there is no authority under national law to take these military strikes. Presidents in both parties have argued that the president has the authority to take strikes if it's in the national interest and it falls short of war. I agree with you, though, that like Democrats and Republicans have abdicated in Congress, have abdicated their responsibility to be a part of these discussions.

And we should we should bring the AUMF, the Authorization of Military Force, forward and re-debate that. We should be debating in Congress the legality and the need and the national interest of striking Syria. But instead, they prefer the president to act and then get to put out press releases later when they know if it was a success or not. Right. They don't want to be on the record. So, I mean, one of the people warning Obama against military action in 2013 was Trump. There's like now a million tweets that everyone's digging up from Trump that says like, do not bomb Syria, Obama, do not attack, do not, right? broke from the Obama administration and saying that maybe Assad's removal was not a priority, right? Or that, I mean, we always used to say Assad must go or Assad is going or there was a whole bunch of different iterations of that. So the question is like, what changed Trump's mind

aside from, I guess, the images of the gas, of the children dying from that gas attack on television, right? Like, was it a policy change? Like what's going on there? That's a good question. I mean, listen to, you know, Obama said in starting in August of 2011, when a bunch of European leaders said the same thing that Assad should go over time, they certainly deemphasize that part of the policy. And I think by the end, we're at a point where they were saying, any transition in Syria needs to have an election that includes refugees, which is sort of a de facto way you would get rid of Assad, but they certainly weren't pressing on it. Trump has been saying all along, we should deal with ISIS first. He's been saying Obama didn't have the authority to strike Syria without going to Congress. So he did a massive 180. And it's not clear to me if you watched Rex Tillerson on the

shows or Nikki Haley or H.R. McMaster, his national security advisor, what exactly their plan is going forward. In fact, it's pretty discordant. Well, that's what we don't even know. We have no idea why they did this. It is it's four days later and they've offered these most ridiculous and vague justifications. Trump goes out to a bad mic and speaks for two minutes and says the hearts of the people, what have you, written by B-plus Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller. And we've just never been in this situation before. And also, Glenn Greenwald made this point, which is, I think, a really good one,

which is we have used military force in so many ways so often over the years that sending 59 missiles into a country doesn't feel like war to us. It's ridiculous. Well, I mean, it was interesting that McMaster said missiles into a country doesn't feel like war to us. It's ridiculous. Well, I mean, it was interesting that McMaster said the strike was not meant to degrade Syria's ability to carry out chemical weapons attacks or other attacks. And he said it was meant as a signal. So like, what signal could that have been, Tommy? Like, is that?

I don't want to talk about Russia anymore. I know, man. Like this, my great frustration is when you read people say like, we need to go to do X, like strike a target to send a signal to Y person or this sends a signal to North Korea. There's all these like bank shot pieces of diplomacy that seem logical on a Sunday show, but really don't make any sense if you unpack them. Yeah, it's not a fucking tweet. I think the point he was making is like they didn't crater the runway and make it unusable for future planes to take off and land that might drop chemical weapons. They didn't hit, you know, depots where they thought there might be additional sarin and render it unusable. They were saying to Assad, if you use CW again, you're getting more Tomahawk missiles. Maybe that will be effective in limiting future chemical weapons use. I don't

know. But certainly he's still going to use barrel bombs and indiscriminately kill civilians in these very same neighborhoods. It's not going to help the humanitarian situation. Right. That was the two piece of this is that this is why I think Syria's been so kind of confounding to even talk about, especially when you're talking about like how it's covered on television, which is, first of all, an incredible number of civilians have already died because of conventional weapons. And then also, we are on both sides of this conflict. We are, you know, supposedly actively fighting ISIS. And, you know, so we're in this incredibly insane sort of

multifaceted conflict. We are on multiple sides at once. You're right. I mean, listen, it's hard to figure out how we sequence these things. Well, first on the chemical weapons, like chemical weapons are treated differently because they are so horrific. There is a treaty banning them and their use. So we try to set them apart the way we do other WME to prevent their use. That said, there is a massive illogic in treating an attack on chemical weapons that killed less than 100 people when you have, you know, indiscriminate bombings that's killed hundreds of thousands. I'm totally with you there. Well, and also, by the way, you see stories that one of the reasons Trump was motivated to do this is because he saw the images. But we actually don't see a lot of images of the death caused

by conventional weaponry, because they are, they're incredibly gruesome. You know, they're just as gruesome. Yeah, well, it is searing. But you know, it's also worth noting that in 2013, when there was a chemical weapons attack that led to the debate over the red line, that more than 400 kids were killed in that attack. So I'm not trying to dismiss his sincere view or emotional response to what happened. Just factually, this is something that's been happening way too often. Well, so let's go the other way, right? Let's say that the Trump administration decides that it doesn't want to just send a signal that, you know, if Assad keeps going, they want to get more involved in this war,

which some neoconservatives and even some former Obama administration officials seem to be, you know, advocating, right? Like, we need to do more to, you know, degrade Assad's ability to carry out a lot of these attacks. What are some of the risks of escalation in this war for the United States? There are massive risks. We have a thousand U.S. troops or U.S. service members on the ground in northern Syria, and they could become a target. You have Russian and U.S. jets flying around in that airspace constantly. The Syrians have one of the better air defense systems out there. They have brand new Russian-made stuff, S-300 missile systems that could shoot down our planes if we try to impose a no fly zone. Doing even getting into a no fly zone would require hitting targets on the ground, taking

out their defense systems. You could risk an accidental armed conflict with Russia. So these are the sorts of slippery slope arguments that I think President Obama probably heard a lot of in the Situation Room when he was debating these things and are frankly unanswered at this point in time. Wars are easier to start than they are to end. That is one thing that we've learned over time.

How many times are we going to get involved in some civil war in another country because we presented with a group of bad options. We're like, let's do the worst one. I just don't get it. So let's get to the politics of all this. So We're like, let's do the worst one. I just don't, I don't get it. So let's, let's get to the politics of all this. So the first of all, there's the White House spin, right? The White House spin is that,

this is all the really gross stuff about this, right? The White House spin is that this is leadership week. That's what, in quotations, that's what they told Axios. They're going to, they're going to package this up as leadership week because he had a successful Chinese summit and he had Gorsuch on the court and then he fired missiles. So that is leadership. And then the congressional reaction is also quite interesting, too. Like, all of these Republicans you have who did not want to give Obama congressional authorization for the strike in 2013 are now just like rushing to microphones

to praise this thing. I mean, it seems a little hypocritical now. How many times can we go off about hypocritical Republican Congress people? Yeah, no, it's infuriating. Like, I mean, it's not just that they're they opposed it when Obama did it and they support it now. But everyone opposed Obama's actions for different reasons. Some warned that it was a slippery slope. Some said it was too limited and wouldn't do enough when it seems like Trump has now chosen the most limited option. I do think Lovett's fundamental point earlier is the most important one, which is Congress should be engaged on this stuff. We have a president that is a loose cannon at best. We should be trying to constrain him,

not telling him, hey, go ahead and bomb stuff. We'll be cool with it later. And the people who are doing that the most, of course, are the media. Or particularly cable news, right? I mean, mostly cable news. So I want to talk about the media reaction. Because perhaps the worst element of this entire episode has been how cable news has reacted to this whole time. I just want to make one point about the Democrats in Congress, too. I do want to really dig into the media because it is the most unsavory part. But I also am pretty frustrated by

Democrats putting out statement that their problem with what Trump did is about process that, you know, that's really important. But like, it's a lot of Democrats avoiding talking about what they think should happen in Syria to say that the president should have gone to Congress. What do you think they should have said? I don't know. Do they support or oppose these strikes? We just don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. But I'd like these people to take a stand beyond just wanting it to be approved or not, because I feel like nobody's arguing. There's very few people arguing that the president should not be taking military action in Syria. I mean, I do think that's one of these cases where in today's world, like you have to put out a statement immediately, even though

you sort of want to wait and see, like, if Trump came out with some larger strategy about the war or about like what he was going to do in Syria, then you'd wait to hear what the strategy was and then decide if you're opposed to it or not. It is sort of hard to be for or against a single missile strike when you have no fucking idea what else is on the horizon, why he did it or what his strategy is. Yeah, fair enough. All right. Media. So, OK, by now, everyone has talked over and over again about fucking Brian Williams' quote. Boy.

Brian Williams and Fareed Zakaria in a death match over who gave the stupidest quote about this. I mean, Brian Williams saying he was guided by the beauty of our— He was quoting Leonard Cohen saying he's guided by the beauty of our weapons. And then Fareed Zakaria saying this was the moment Trump became president. So they're rehashing the Van Jones line. We went at that pretty hard on a little show called Love It or Leave It, which you should check out. Because we went, I believe that was only one moment. John actually took a microphone at some point to yell, fuck you.

To Jeff Zucker. It's all about the peace. Well, it's part of Jeff Zucker's thing that these are all characters in a drama, right? And the whole thing is a dramatic storyline, cable news, which you could see that in action over the weekend or Thursday and Friday night, right? Like now it was just it was bizarre to watch. But I mean, this has been going on for a long time. This did not start with, you know, Brian and Farid shouting these quotes out like cable. Why does cable news love war so much?

What is it? What is it about the medium? Why do they always seem comfortable with military action? They're compelling images. I think that the boosterism and patriotism of being in favor of the troops who are launching these attacks is sort of an easy position for them to take. Right. And they look back at Iraq, and they see all the people that cheerleaded us wrongly into the Iraq war. And there's absolutely no cost for those people.

Most of them were promoted. They're still on TV. They're still writing for their various publications. So what's the downside? I do think there's a very real downside in terms of policymaking insofar as we never discuss the difficult questions of what happens the next day. There's a political situation in Syria that is just irreparably damaged and an unbelievable disaster. And there's no conversation about what are we doing to manage that? Where's the diplomatic strategy? What's next? I just want to say, too, this is a problem. And it's not just a problem with cable news. It is a problem with the Washington establishment.

And this goes far beyond Trump and precedes Trump in a lot of different ways. And this is a problem of both parties' establishments in Washington, that there is a bias towards military action. We always had a problem. We always said this in the White House. Ben Rhodes talked about the blob, right, in Washington. Like, it's a real thing, right? This consensus towards force, towards do something,

even when you don't know why you're doing it, and we do not know why. I do not believe Donald Trump could tell you with any with any great clarity why he decided to do this military action. And there's a whole apparatus of think tanks and experts and bipartisan bipartisan panels that will come together and get behind yet another military intervention. And I, and you know, I just, I don't understand. I understand why this comes from the right. I just don't understand how the, the liberal side of this equation has been so co-opted because you look at what's happened, these military inventions that have gone poorly. It's when both sides have been conservative, when both sides have adopted a kind of conservative militaristic line. I don't, I don't know how it changes. I mean, I think there's two factions in the on the on the progressive side and liberal side

that are dealing with this. One is and you know, there was always sort of a democratic centrist hawkish faction, right, that came up through the 90s, like Democrats have to look tough on terror, look tough, you know, after 911, especially, Democrats have to look tough on terror, tough on national security, and so they're more hawkish. And then there's a lot of humanitarian interventionists, right? Like people who see genocide and mass atrocities and say that it is the United States' obligation to go do something about that, right? And that's not quite the same as the hawks, although there's overlapping stuff there, too. I mean, look, I think it's a—the use of military force and deciding whether to use military force, it is a real debate. And, like, you don't want to be too cautious at times.

There are times the United States has to use force and use military. But I think the bias towards it in Washington is severe. Yeah, I mean, I do think this is, sorry, I do think it's just sort of like Donald Trump being president does expose the norms we've already broken. And a lot of those norms are about turning the president into this foreign policy dictator who could use Congress approval but doesn't need it, does need to wait for a NATO resolution or doesn't, does need a UN resolution or doesn't. It's completely incoherent. And as a result, our debates about these matters become incoherent, too. Yeah. I mean, the hardest debate in perpetuity will be what amount of war will prevent additional war.

Yeah, exactly. That's always going to be hard. But when we cheerlead every one of these actions, when we refuse to discuss the hard questions of what comes next, I think we do a disservice to the people who are actually going to be on the front lines fighting these things and not sitting in Washington. And it's so hard to learn the lessons of even recent history, right? We've lost more than 4,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, cost us $6 trillion, 1 million wounded between Iraq and Afghanistan. It's just like, we don't- Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died.

Right. Like, these are legitimate debates and there's good arguments on both sides, but it's for some reason we don't talk enough about the cost of war. We talk so much more about like the need for action. costs of war. We talk so much more about like the need for action. Yeah. You know, like there was a story, there was a story this week about kids being embarrassed in school for not having enough money to pay for lunch because the school doesn't provide free lunch. They have to bring the dollar 40 or the dollar 80 or whatever it is for lunch. And I read that. And first of all, people were outraged. And it's like, well, guess what? This is how we've been treating for poor people for a very long time. We like to embarrass poor people to get

their benefits we've been doing that forever but i just found myself thinking like how do we decide what's expensive because tomahawk missiles seem free in our debate about what we do military action is treated as if it's free and pipes in fucking flint or school lunches for kids those are too expensive we can't seem to afford it. And I just, that has to change. Like we treat military action like this, like this inevitable sunk cost. And it's absurd. Oddly enough, that was one of the messages

that Donald Trump ran for president with. Yeah, America fucking first. Which is why a lot of his base right now is pretty unhappy too. I mean, you see like lunatics like uh you know ann coulter and uh and all those people are now are like really pissed at him they're sort of he's he's losing some of the base on this one which is interesting so let's talk about the quickly before we get to our guests let's talk about um what i like to call a game of cocks the uh

the ongoing infighting in the white house we were so Bannon and Priebus versus Ivanka, Jared Kuckner, and Globalist Gary is the name for him. Isn't it strange how these Bannonites refer to Jewish White House staff, Gary Cohen and Jared Kushner, as the globalists? How odd. What a coincidence. Coincidence. I thought that the best, I forget which piece it was, but the best little detail here was that Bannon and the Breitbart crowd, when they text each other about Gary Cohen, they have two names for him or they have two. One is CTC for carbon tax cone, which I think is pretty lame. And the other is just a globe emoji, the earth emoji. So that's, first of all, that's fantastic.

I'm actually a little bit impressed by their cleverness. Also, I like how we're just like, oh, they're just violating the Presidential Records Act, by the way. Like that's just yet another example that they're all talking, using texting and other apps that they're not supposed to use because all these records are meant to be preserved. Terrific. I mean, just the lack of discipline. The fact that it's not just every cut and thrust between Jared and Bannon that that leaks out it's like that the meeting where Trump sits them all

down to tell them to figure it out and shut up and stop acting like children that immediately leaks nothing is sacred in this white house they're a bunch of children with very serious jobs and it's going to lead to a fucking disaster I know and also the Politico story this morning where they talked about how to like rebrand the administration for the hundred days marker oh my god and there's there's a communication needle meeting full of uh 30 people and six people like literally one fifth of the meeting spoke to politico it's actually you know what it's a little bit hard it's i mean obviously everything is disheartening so but one thing that is heartening is that it is a little bit like there's a natural defense mechanism, which is when you assemble a white house filled with

rejects, incompetent morons, goons, ideologues, people have no business being in government. They're all so unprepared and also scared and nervous and anxious that they're all leaking like crazy. And it's like, when you assemble people that would work for Donald Trump, they're going to shiv each other because they're not the best. And it's sort of a nice way. It's a nice little defense mechanism because I just don't understand. It's not a leak. Like a leak implies that there was a wall to begin with, or some kind of a barrier between this information.

It's just a free flowing river of information. They need to build a wall. So I have one question about this. So where it stands now is it looks like there's a detente between Jared and Reince and Bannon. Reprochement, if you will. Because Trump sat them all down and told them to be nice to each other. But we have McMaster has ousted KT McFarlane from the National Security Council. She's on her way to Singapore to be ambassador. Did she say yes to it? Pretty sweet gig.

She finally said yes to Singapore? I don't know if she did, but she's either there or nowhere. She's either there or Fox News. Either's fine with me. You know, there were some rumors that maybe Sebastian Gorka is next because McMaster can't stand him either, probably because he... Shall I do the Gorka? Please, please.

Oopsie doopsie, I've joined a Nazi group. So maybe Gorka's next. But the overall question is, how much better off are we with some of these Bannonites, nationalists out of the White House? Like, is it really going to improve the policy outcomes that much? That's what I want to know. Yeah, I just think that's the question, right? Like all the infighting, all these machinations. I'm answering my question, no. I don't think, look, I just, I don't know. I mean, first of all, we don't know how bad it,

we don't know. I think we have to wait and see. What I definitely believe is true is Ivanka and Jared can do their best to spin their participation in this disaster. But until we see actual tangible policy changes on the issues they claim they care about, it's all a bunch of bullshit. And do their best to spin their participation in this disaster. But until we see actual tangible policy changes on the issues they claim they care about, it's all a bunch of bullshit. And they're just there to put lipstick on a pig. But like, you know, one thing that I will, I will, to me, like, it's crazy, but like climate change, that Jared and Ivanka know better. And they sat back while the EPA was mined for parts by the fossil fuels industry. And if they want to claim that they're there to do good, and they're there to help help their dad,

then they need to talk about the environment. And that I will watch that one issue. And until that changes, and I don't believe it will change, to be honest, it's all a bunch of bullshit. CTC, I'm with you guys. It's not going to change. Like I agree, getting the white nationalist and his idiot crony friends out of the White House is absolutely a good thing.. Trump's not going to change. Like I agree. Getting the white nationalist and his idiot crony friends out of the White House is absolutely a good thing. But Trump's not going to change. So the infighting is not going to change. So the fact that we have a person that is, you know, totally incompetent and not up for the job leading the charge is not going to change. And we should all remain pretty freaked out.

Yeah. And I'll just say on domestic policy and relationships with Congress, let's remember the reason that the health care bill was such a disaster. And we almost like people almost lost 24 million people almost lost their health care and gutted preexisting conditions is because of Paul Ryan. Yeah. And the House Freedom Caucus. Like, I do think that the dynamic between the Trump White House and the Republican caucus in the House is probably in domestic policy, the more damaging dynamic than anyone who's

in the White House. Right. And it would take a far better human being to change that dynamic and change the dynamic to the point where he could build a coalition in Congress with Democrats and Republicans to pass something that the three of us would actually think is okay. I mean, it's just Donald Trump will continue to be Donald Trump. He is the fish rots from the head. He is the problem. And, you know, there'll be this constant apprentice like awful reality show for the next few years. But it doesn't matter who the players are. Donald Trump is going to be sitting at the head of the table. Okay. When we return, we will have The Washington Post's Ashley Parker. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way.

On the pod today, we have the White House reporter for The Washington Post, Ashley Parker. Ashley, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. I know it's been a crazy, well, probably been a crazy, like literally every day since you've started on the White House beat officially, but it gets escalated a bit when we start launching missiles. So how is Trump managing the situation in Syria? Is he getting briefed every day? Are they bringing you guys in for backgrounders or is it hands off now? Like what is what is their approach to this? I, you know, according to his aides, he's getting briefed every day and getting updates. They're not bringing us in for a ton of backgrounders yet. There was, you know,

everyone has started. I was not there, but everyone is down in Palm Beach with the president. And so they had a on the record briefing and a briefing that was going to be on camera with Spicer. And then at the last minute, it was off camera because they wanted the images, of course, of Trump to carry the day. So I think it's an open question if and when we'll start seeing them trying to shape this policy behind the scenes with reporters. And part of that may be because they don't quite know what the policy is beyond what they did with those airstrikes. So you wrote a piece about the deliberations leading to the strike on Syria.

At one point you said that the president had been presented with three options, but discarded one. Do you have a sense of what the various military options that the president was presented with? Yes, I think the best sense we have of the three options were obviously the one that he did, a first option that was sort of basically nothing or something akin to nothing, like a strongly worded letter.

And then the third option was a much more aggressive option. And I don't actually know which one he discarded of those three. I don't know. I'm just wondering why he would. It seems like one of those options was a tweet. He does seem to like those. So maybe that was something he kept in his back pocket. So how much fun is Steve Bannon having in the White House right now? What's the latest on your reporting on the war between the Bannonites and the globalist cucks?

Well, if you believe what Bannon has reportedly said, that he loves a good gunfight, But he's having a ton of fun, right, because everyone is out for him. I will say I think reports of his demise are sort of overstated. You know, the president sort of told him and Jared to get their acts together and stop fighting. Reince over the weekend had a meeting with the two of them that a lot of that was reported on. A couple of interesting questions. One will be sort of this, for Bannon, like this divide that people have been talking to me about on sort of pure ideological purity, or sort of a Reagan version of that, which is, you know, taking 80% of what you can get, but also realizing that you have to govern. So, like, one early thing I'm going to be watching for is if Bannon, you know, is sort of one

of these voices within the White House pushing behind the scenes to have the border wall funding in the CR, that would sort of show, you know, a lack of flexibility on governing, you know, and more towards ideological purity, which I think would cause some problems for the president and Reince. I love the idea of Reince Priebus the most on the way out, calling a meeting between Steve Bannon second most on the way out, and Jared Kushner, who's unfireable. Like, why are they listening to him?

Half the story's a bit about Bannon being on the way out, but the other half is about how Reince is going to have to leave politics. Right. Well, or Reince, who, you know, the big criticism of him, right, is that he can't manage anything. So the idea that he's trying to manage this most tumultuous of relationships. But the White House is a good example of, like, the enemy of your enemy of the enemy

is sort of your frenemy. I mean, I think you have kind of seen an alliance between Priebus and Bannon because they're just so opposed to some of the, you know, who they would call sort of like the Democrats or the globalists. The globalist cuts. I mean, along those lines, actually,

like these guys have lost three very senior officials in three months. They lost their deputy chief of staff, the national security advisor, the deputy national security advisor. Every day you read about Bannon being demoted, Reince being fired. Like they even authorize leaks about conversations to stop the leaks. Every day you read about Bannon being demoted, Reince being fired.

Like they even authorize leaks about conversations to stop the leaks. Is this place like is this how Trump wants it to be run or is it just as out of control as it sounds when you read the paper? I think it's a combo. I think Trump encourages kind of an atmosphere of of chaos and kind of survival of the fittest in Donald Trump's Hunger Games. I mean, that's something that has worked for him in business. It's worked for him in the campaign in the sense that they won, right, which is what they measure everything by. But no, I will say I don't think he's happy about all of these leaks in the press and the way, frankly, it's undercutting his agenda. So I think there does seem to be a real effort to regain some control, both of the actual operations of the White House, but also of the messaging and the narrative. And, you know, he's really eager for a bunch of successes. So to that point, sort of the outcome of all this infighting is supposed to be

policymaking of some kind. And you have, you know, this dividing line, right? And you read these stories like, oh, the Jared Kushner Democrats wing is triumphant with Gary Cohn and Dina Powell and Bannon's in retreat, what have you. But we haven't seen any sort of policy differences, right? Like, what does it look like for this infighting that we're, I'm, you know, personally admitting to enjoying immensely? infighting that we're that we're i'm you know personally admitting to enjoying immensely uh what does it look like for to manifest in actual changes in the way this white house proposes policy that's a good question when we were reporting on sort of like the latest round of infighting and the line out of the the banning camp was that you know all these democrats don't understand why trump got elected and they're not going to let him keep his promises to the base when you went to sort of the Jared camp and the other camp, their response, not incorrectly, was like, well, you know, what have we done that's been lefty or democratic or out of line with our promises to the base? And I think so far, other than maybe a few things in the margin, the answer has been nothing. Right. So I just like we're left with this Sophie's choice of this horrible white nationalist

being in charge or a 36 year old real estate non-Mogul inheritance haver. How is this the best we can do? I mean, does a white house never step back and think, you know, there's got to be someone else we could bring in? I mean, is there no, like, rumblings among Trump supporters on the outside that this doesn't have to be one of these guys? I mean, of course there's rumblings on the outside, right? That's half of the leaks you're reading about is what his, you know, on the campaign, the way donors always think they have better ideas. I'm sure you guys are familiar with that.

People, you know, people on the outside have a lot of better ideas or think they have a lot of better ideas. I'm sure you guys are familiar with that. People on the outside have a lot of better ideas or think they have a lot of better ideas. I mean, two things I've heard. One is, which is a fair point, is that no one actually wants the chief of staff job. It's sort of like not an easy job to sell at this point. That is insane. That is insane.

A year ago, it was one of the most coveted jobs in all of politics. It was like the sinecure of, it's like the craziest, coolest job somebody could get. People have been, people have gunned for it for decades. We know them by name. We're not even going to say their names. And now it's like, these guys can't, they're posting jobs on monster.com. And ZipRecruiter, our sponsor.

Hey, Donald Trump sounds like love is looking. Love is in the market. Maybe Bill Daley will do it. Ashley, we know that you're going to be going to Sean Spicer's briefing after this. I am. First of all, will you ask a few questions for us? Yes. We'll get to those later.

But second of all, how has your... Don't miss me on Confide. Now that you've been to a couple of these, how has your strategy as a reporter evolved? What do you hope to get out of these briefings, knowing that Sean is somewhat reluctant to divulge a lot of information? To tell the truth? Like my strategy for getting called on, or just my takeaway from the overall? Well, I guess strategy for getting called on is bright colors, sit up high in your chair. I'm not sure.

Bright colors, sort of like sit on top of one thrush. I mean, one time I found that I made eye contact with him and I got a question. So that can sometimes work. I mean, one thing that is not helpful out of the briefings is I found that, and I don't, this is the first White House again I've sort of covered in this capacity. So I don't know how it worked in other White Houses. But if he says he'll get back to you on that, he rarely gets back to you. So, you know, I think the goal is to get as much as you can, right, like in that moment, and this is not typical or unique just to this White

House, but I find that some of the most revealing exchanges are when a topic is kind of drilled down upon and followed up on and circled back to again and again and again, whether it's the reporter who's asking a question, asking a follow-up or another follow-up, and then if that answer is unsatisfactory or has raised new questions, other reporters in the room coming back to it. And to be clear, that's not like a mass strategy to game out Spicer, you know, from the press corps. But it's like we all oftentimes we all have the same question. And, you know, we we want an answer and we'll keep on returning to it. I'm actually interested in that, because that's something that I think a lot of people that

aren't reporters have been kind of clamoring for, like even a lot of people that have kind of worked in communications, even in the White House have been talking about this, that we wish that the White House press corps would be more of a team right now, because there is so much stonewalling and kind of in an unusual way that we wish that you guys would, rather than thinking about your own questions, focus on kind of getting answers to what the reporter before you asked and what have you. And I just wonder what your reaction is to kind of that critique. Yeah, it's an interesting question. And I think one that you've seen debated publicly, certainly, and privately, right,

especially if the president or someone won't call on someone from an outlet, right, or cut someone off because they don't like the question or something like that. What obligations do you have to go back to them? I will say I do think you are, especially on some of the key issues seen, these questions get asked, and even if it's maybe not quite as streamlined as you or someone on the outside would want to see, right, that like one reporter asks and the next reporter follows up and then the third reporter follows up, I often find that you do kind of get those follow-up questions, if maybe not in a quite so neat linear order.

Two other things I think are, you know, sort of asking the three-part questions on three different topics. I don't think that was ever helpful. I think it's particularly unhelpful with this White House. And I think you're seeing reporters come more, this is the only White House I've seen, especially the president, where you can ask a question with a fact embedded in it and the president will just say, like, you know, that's not true. I never said that. That didn't happen.

So you do see reporters coming to the briefing a bit more armed, like lawyers, right? If you're going to say to the president or even Sean Spicer, this happened or, you know, Donald Trump said this, you need to know what he said on what day to who and have the quote in front of you. And I don't think that's a bad thing for any administration, for covering any administration. Yeah, I agree. I mean, and to that point, actually, I mean, like the White House briefing is in many ways an institution that's built on trust. I mean, like the White House briefing is in many ways an institution that's built on trust.

You have to have a sense that the press secretary is going to give you an honest answer no matter how difficult the question is. And a lot of press secretaries have broken that trust and they quickly fall out of favor and usually get fired. Spicer opened his tenure with you guys by screaming at you about crowd numbers that were a blatant lie. I'm just wondering, how did you guys recover and push forward when the very first moment of that relationship was so broken and false? I mean, I think a couple things. I think Spicer came into that job, to be honest, with a lot of goodwill. A lot of people knew him from of from around D.C. and having worked with him for a long time. So I don't think it was necessarily quite as damaging had it been a purely new presence. But, yeah, I think there's always a healthy skepticism covering any White House. And I guess I would say it's even healthier and more robust with this White House.

Very diplomatic answer. I'm impressed. One last question. I noticed in the story you wrote about Bannon last week, it said this is based on an account with 20 White House officials or other officials, and that seems to be a pattern in a lot of these stories. Do you get the sense do these people just, do you get the sense that these people just hate each other that work in the White House right now, that there's like more backbiting and infighting than there usually is in an administration? It's

just, I mean, we've had leaking in our White House, right? Like it happens all the time in Washington. It just seems like an extraordinary amount coming from the Trump White House. I will say two things on that. I mean, I think it's, from a reporter's point of view, I think it's nice to have so many entry points. Is it a problem that, like, you're missing calls from one leaker while you're on the phone? Like, do you have to constantly go back to your voicemail? I mean, I think we as reporters appreciate that dynamic. Not necessarily, you know, the pure leaking, but just, you know, the ability to get as many viewpoints and perspectives and people to talk to us as possible, right?

Like, I think you want that an objective version of truth has been lost in this campaign cycle, in this White House, in this media. And so if I think it's really dangerous for everyone, right, because if in the Obama White House, you know, I feel like to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you guys very rarely repeatedly said about stories in the Post or the Times or the Journal or wherever, you know, this story is false, this story is bullshit, this story, you know, is not at all true. And if you did, it kind of meant something, right? Like if Josh Ernst or whoever it was, Axelrod or Gibbs, like went to the podium and said that,

people kind of thought like, oh, maybe this publication really did get it wrong. Yeah, like we would say stories were unfair a lot, but we wouldn't say false unless they were false. I mean, they said stories were unfair all the time. Lovett thought it was great. Yeah, no, Lovett never complained. Being so unfair to us. But when you have a White House that frequently denounces stories they don't like as false,

you know, it's sort of like, it creates like a boy who cries wolf thing, which is bad for them because I'm sure there are a number of false stories they get, right? But their credibility is a bit diminished. So when they're calling an actually false story false, it means a bit less coming from them. But by the same token, if they're calling a real story false, we just want to make clear, you know, this wasn't one disgruntled leaker, right? These were like 22 people who hopped on the phone with us in the past 17 hours.

It seems like it's almost become a little bit of a pissing contest. It started with eight intelligence officials verified this. We have 14 sources. 6,000 people. Literally everyone but five people in the White House responded to the story. The only person who won't say that Priebus is being fired is Priebus.

Ashley had four people named Trump on the record in this story. Ashley, thank you for stopping by. And when you get to the briefing, if you get called on, just ask Sean when he's coming on Pod Save America. All right. Will do. All right. Thank you, Ashley. Thanks.

Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America, and there's more on the way. Okay, today we also have a special segment presented by our friends at Veep, HBO's Veep. And with us today, we have the executive producer of Veep, Dave Mandel. Hi.

Thanks for coming by. That sounds like we've paid you to have me on. In fact, you have. Well, that's just embarrassing. But here's the thing. So now, listen. What a horrific start to this. No, no, no. We were going to be a little bit more subtle about it and record before the interview that we are being paid, but we would have done it anyway. So joke's on hbo it really is as long as the check clears we had said since the beginning of

this podcast we need to get v people on the podcast and then suddenly hbo reached out and we said sure yeah we were excited about it all right fine kevin spacey's coming in next for uh we'll let you know how long his segment is. Well, first of all, I'd like to hear a little bit about this season. How much can you tell us about what's going on? You know, it's one of these funny things where I'm desperately trying not to say anything about anything. I know. And people just want everything spoiled and ruined. We pick up a year after the end of season five, which if you haven't watched that, well, then this will be also a spoiler, which is at the end of season five, Selena lost the presidency.

And we pick up basically a year later and we kind of start to fill in the gaps of that year and sort of see where the sort of the team has gone and where they've split up and how she's dealing with sort of losing power. And here's a hint. Not well. It's so funny that you guys wrote that she lost this thing. I know, but I swear to you, it has nothing to do with it. You had no idea. No, I mean, I am personally separate from Veep. I was an active Hillary giver. I have a lovely picture here in Los Angeles over at the Henson Studios of my children

with Hillary Clinton that I took, you know, that we got so that I could save my daughter, the first female president of the United States. Think about how much better that picture would have been. Yes, exactly. Now my children just look at me and go, when are we moving? But no, honestly, this goes way back to when the show was created by Armando Iannucci. Right. And he ran the show for the first four years. I took over after him for year five, which was the resolving of the tie. That was what he had created, the Electoral College tie. Right, right.

And when I sort of sat down to start talking with Julie about taking over the show, my big sort of pitch was eventually we will solve this election and Selena needs to lose. That's what she wants most on Earth, which, by the way, is probably similar to Hillary Clinton. What she most wants on Earth is to be elected president of the United States. And if we give it to her, in my mind, the show is over. There's no point in letting her win. So that was sort of my sort of whatever. And then obviously it turned out we were predicting the future. I remember thinking the same thing.

I was like, if she wins and is president, like what happened? Is that the end of the show? It's like when Niles got with Daphne and you're like, what are we even doing here? That's a Frasier reference. There's your Frasier reference.

You're with me on that. What? You don't like being compared to Frasier? I'm not the biggest fan of that show. I know. I know. Comedy snob. You could only see Lovett's face right now.

I know what it looks like. So the funny thing about Veep is we, as people who worked in the White House, always get asked, okay, what's the most real? Is it House of Cards? Is it West Wing? And the answer is it's Veep because you guys nail the fragility of the egos in the day-to-day idiocy of the decision making is that great writing great actors consultants like how did you guys figure out it's a man so well it sounds so silly it is a magical combo and i certainly don't want to take credit again i do want to credit armando as the show's creator this thing existed i was a fan of the show before i ever worked there so that's

always a nice thing but we try really hard we have consultants from you know both fan of the show before I ever worked there, so that's always a nice thing. But we try really hard. We have consultants from both sides of the aisle, as they say. When we get into these issues like with this year and talking about Selena and the loss and what happens to the people, we had wonderful conversations with people that worked in different White Houses. Some of the best conversations we had were people who worked under Bush, the first Bush, because they didn't think they were going to lose. So it was sort of in some ways the closest thing we could get to. Obviously, Selena only served the one year as a vice president that was elevated. But in terms of getting caught off guard, in terms of not having preparations for a post-presidency, not having library plans, all of those things. So again, all these pieces of things. We sat down, Mitt Romney was gracious enough to come to our offices and sit down with us. He's got nothing better to do. No, that's true. Well, apparently the Senate

now. But, you know, willing to talk about what it's like to lose and, you know, that kind of firsthand sort of knowledge of dealing with the loss and what he's saying about the loss and then how you kind of take that and go, what can we do with Selena? Because, you know, he's, well, he's not shy about saying he's got this amazing family and he's got some money and all of those wonderful things. Yeah, but he still gripped the railing of that Miranda pretty hard for like a year and a half. No, exactly. And by the way, if you think he's gripping hard, wait till you see Julia gripping. I mean, we're talking talent, you know, like the metal bar just like cracking. So, again, you sort of take all of this in and try and process it.

And look, I don't know, you know, it's also just sort of knowing people, talking to people, but also a certain lack of sort of willing to put everyone on a pedestal, which I think is sort of a natural ability to kind of go, oh, if someone's in Washington, they must be up on a pedestal. As opposed to, well, wait a second. I went to school with a lot of those guys. They're a-holes. You know what I mean? Can I say that? Did I say that all right? You can say whatever you want. We've got to name right next to that title, so we're fine. You can say whatever you want. We've got a name right next to that title, so we're fine. So the big question that sort of hangs over season six is, you know, what do you do with the show about the absurdities of Washington when Trump is president, right? And the Trump White House is sort of out-veeped veep, right?

Absolutely, in a lot of ways. And I'll give you a perfect example, which is, and it sounds silly. I can't even imagine you're talking about something real, but at some point in the season, I had to turn to our writers and go, we have to take the golden showers joke out because of what's going on in the news today. So we hadn't shot it yet, but there was a joke in the script, I think it was Jonah that we were making fun of, because eventually, you know, in the quest to embarrass jonah you will get to a golden showers course yeah and it had to come out because if we'd done it it's first of all it's eight months later by the time we it airs and it starts to seem like a stale old hacky reference but also it doesn't exist anymore golden the

purity of golden showers has been lost never again can you think of just an honest, good old-fashioned golden shower without thinking of Trump. He's ruined it. He's ruined the golden shower. Exactly. But you understand what I'm saying in terms of, obviously, again, the absurdity, but also who knew. So in a weird way, and this is how I've thought about it, the decision to have her lose the election, which again had nothing to do with Hillary and nothing to do with Trump, turned out to be our best friend in the world. Because we're still about politics, but the visuals are now different because we're not – she's not at the desk. She's not at the podium.

Mike McClintock isn't doing press briefings where you could side-by-side them with Spicer and go, wow, Spicer is dumber and funnier than McClintock. You know what I mean? By taking this weird sort of sideways step into Lostville, I think we've actually given ourselves sort of she won and still being in the White House because most of our White House stories on a given week episode, we're sitting there going, what's the stupidest thing we could have the president of the United States do or her staff do? And this stuff is happening on an hourly basis right now. We are at the end of parody with what's happening at the White House. So it's like, how do you heighten it? How do you make it stupider? Have you noticed yourselves pushing the envelope even further because of what's happened in this season?

No, not so much. Because like I said, it does get harder to sort of, you know, once golden showers are on the table, sort of, I think that's another thing, along with the lack of consequences. The level of discourse, you know, when you start having, what's the word, Republican debates where people are talking about penis size and hand size. Yeah. You know, yeah, we can add the word fuck to a scene and it's funny, but it starts to, it's almost like you have to go more creative. The envelope has to turn into something else a little bit. Well, we are very excited for this next season. I can't wait. I'm going to like it.

I'm going to get you copies of it. The next bunch of copies of it. And if you ever want to talk again, I'm sure we'll buy our way back on it. Now you know our secrets. You can come back anytime. Can I pay for an extra two minutes right now? We're cutting this down to the five you're allowed.

Damn it. There's a coin slot in your microphone. Oh, there you go. Does this thing take Apple Pay? Can I just Dave Mandel Thank you for stopping by This Sunday night guys The sixth season of Veep

On HBO Thanks again to Ashley Parker And Dave Mandel For joining us today And we will see you A couple days Bye guys Later

We lost Tommy We should just mention That Tommy dropped off To do a Pod Save the World interview. I like when we do 10 seconds of odd closing. Because these are the people that stuck it out, you know? And now the music's starting. John, how are you doing? I'm great.

I'm ready to record some ads. Bill's in the booth. He's having a great time. I just don't want it to end. I had a great time today. Well, we have ads to do. Let's do some ads. Let's do some ads. Let's do some ads.