Pod Save America - "What the hell are alternative facts?"

Episode Date: January 26, 2017

Jon and Dan talk about Trump's disturbing first week in office, including his Executive Orders, ABC interview, and voter fraud lies. Then they're joined by DNC Chair candidate Tom Perez to talk about the future of the Democratic Party.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, joining us, we have the former Secretary of Labor, current DNC chair candidate, and one of the original friends of the pod, Tom Perez. It's exciting. Tom was our first interview back in the Keepin' It 1600 days, Dan. I think it was the second interview, just to fact check you. Stop with your fake news. It was Tim Miller was the first interview, right?

Yeah, Tom Perez was the first, and I think only, in-studio guest we ever had. That's true. Maybe love it, back when he was a guest, before he turned a star turn as a guest on the pod into an executive founding role at Crooked Media and a long-term co-hosting gig. He is now a media mogul. So seven days in to the Trump presidency, how are you feeling, Dan? Not good. Not good at all. Me neither. It's funny, we did the pod on Monday and I felt good because of the Women's March over the weekend, even though it was Trump's inauguration on Friday. And that feeling has dissipated a bit this week with the flurry of executive orders and Trump continuing to be Trump.

Not changing in any way, shape, or form, but just seemingly getting worse and a little bit crazier, right? Yeah, much worse. I listened to the Monday pod yesterday when it was super early in the morning. I was at the Atlanta airport, and I was listening to it when I got the notification that Trump had ordered a massive investigation into fake voter fraud. And you guys were like, look at all the marchers i felt so good people recognized me women protest resistance great i was like yeah not so great not so great it was like it was like it was like a throwback to a different era we can't let them beat us down though that's the that's that's what i'm taking from this because it's just you could get every day the news could get so bad that at some point you're just like I can't even tune in I have to walk away and that's that's the thing

that you have to fight against I think though it's though it has it has been tricky this week I will tell you yeah I did something that I'm I'm not sure was the right decision so the single in my opinion at least most important reporter to follow to understand Trump and what Trump's doing is Maggie Haberman of The New York Times. For sure. She somehow has managed to give really tough coverage of Trump yet still get him on the phone and has sources all throughout Trump world. And so I'm trying to keep up with what's happening. So I added mobile notifications for maggie's tweets and it is useful like you really do get a lot of really good information but it is she's a prolific tweeter and it's like a minute by minute accounting of the coming

apocalypse yeah and she wrote that story a few days ago about how Trump feels about his new digs in the White House. And, you know, it's like a fairly soft piece. But when you read it, you realize it's smart of her to do a piece like that where she sort of talks to Trump about how he's feeling about the White House and stuff like that. Because she's clearly cultivated him as a source. He's going to talk to her for more important things and much more critical stories. There are so many takeaways from that story. The part where it said he still gets up before 6 a.m. to watch cable news, but because his meetings start at 9 in the White House, much earlier than they did in the Trump organization, he's had to cut his screen time down. I'm like, is he a toddler?

No, all the aides are talking about that on background they're like oh we still gotta give him plenty of tv time he's gotta get his tv in like what the fuck i mean what do you think the schedule is do you think it's he wakes up there's probably a lot of morning joe right and then at some point he probably switches over to cnn to start screaming at the television and the fake news headlines right he must and the other part of that story I thought was amazing was that his one concession to, and like acknowledgement that he's fully going to get involved in the affairs of state as the president of the United States

and leader of the free world, is that he's added the Washington Post to his morning newspaper routine. So it's the New York Times, the New York Post, and now the Washington Post. So we can track what's happening in Congress. He's really expanding his horizons. He's a very clearly intellectually curious. Did you see that story from Gabe Sherman about how Trump's war on CNN is based on the fact that he is upset. He thinks Jeff Zucker wronged him because they

had a long-term relationship and he thinks CNN should be covering him like Fox. I mean, well, I think that CNN, I mean, basically Jake Tapper has been covering him in a way that all reporters should cover him on CNN. I don't know. And then they've been doing, like Brian Stelter and there's some other folks on CNN I think that have been doing some much better reporting than they did during the campaign. Though I think during the campaign, Jake was very good as well. So I do notice a turn in CNN a little bit from where they were during the campaign.

So I could see how he must be getting pissed at them. The basic takeaway is not good. And this isn't – I where are we are we still trying to make people feel good or are we like laying out our true feelings about things i never want to make people feel good if there's nothing to feel good about but i want people to always feel like they can do something and that they should be involved in the fight here so i think that when you're involved in the fight sometimes it feels awful and it feels like there's nothing we can do but you keep pressing ahead anyway that's that's where i am my message is wet the bed regularly profusely wet the bed and but don't just stay in the bed don't just stay in

the bed wet it all the time get up out of bed and go do something and then if you still want to wet it at night that's fine but do something during the day so that you... I want to say you're going to extend the urination metaphor into political activism. Yeah, I can't. I can't get too far with that. I mean, I think the difficult thing this week is trying to determine the sort of worry, outrage level. Because I do think, and we've talked about this before, I don't think you can turn it up to 10 with every single announcement or pronouncement that Trump makes. Because I do think that some of the things he did this week are much more serious than others. Like I was saying, you know, some of the social media accounts of various agencies, you could see that if we were in the White House and we just stepped in and there was a bunch of Bush political appointees at the agencies still subtweeting Barack Obama on policies they disagreed with, we'd probably say, please stop tweeting until the Obama agenda is in place.

So there was a lot of outrage and worry over that. And I think maybe that's a little bit misplaced. Then, of course, I saw the headline that, you know, for the EPA, they're not allowed to actually put out scientific reports anymore until Trump political appointees look at them. And that should worry people significantly. Yeah, I've been, I am, it's Thursday morning. worry people significantly. Yeah, I've been, I am, it's Thursday morning. I am, we are really six days into the Trump presidency and I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted in outrage and worry.

And I agree with you. We, like there is a limited pool of personal and collective outrage. And we have to find the things to get upset about and to separate the signal from the noise with the signal being the things that actually matter and the noise being the bullshit out there. But people ask me all the time over the last – during the last week but over the last – since this election. As someone who – I'm sure you get this too. As someone who worked in the White House, like what's going to happen happen? Basically, the question comes down to, is it going to be fine?

Right? The same question people asked us in the election, and we gave them the wrong answer. And my answer is, it's not going to be fine. It is not. I am deeply fucking worried about the state of the country, the mental state of our president, the ineptitude of the people he has surrounded himself with. I mean, it is a deeply, I mean, if you want to be concerned about our short, medium, and long-term future as a functioning democracy, watch the full interview that Donald Trump had with David Muirir of abc news last night oh oh my god that was i watched that late last night with emily who had to like stop

after the first two parts of it and she's like i can't i can't look at this anymore and um because i'm a glutton for punishment i I watched all five segments. It was, I mean, he just, he hasn't changed at all. At all. He has not tried to grow into the job. He has not tried to be more responsible. He has not tried to be more presidential. I mean, there's a, we could go through this interview, the entire pod here, but we have other things to talk about. But I thought his comments to David Muir about the CIA visit were maybe the craziest of the whole interview

when he decided to talk about his crowd size or the debate around his crowd size. Oh, and the applause that the CIA was giving him. And he said, quote, they said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl and they said it was the biggest standing ovation since peyton manning had won the super bowl and they said it was equal like what are you talking about you're talking about your the size of your standing ovation at the cia in front of the wall that is there to honor fallen cia operatives that's what you're talking about. And you're comparing it to fucking Peyton Manning coming after he won the Super Bowl.

Why? Why? Okay, first, who compared it to Peyton Manning? What was the one person who did that? Why Peyton Manning? Did Peyton Manning... I mean, I'm a pretty big football fan. I'm not aware that the Peyton Manning post-Super Bowl standing ovation was somehow historically known as the greatest of all standing ovations.

What about his good friend Tom Brady? Well, did Peyton Manning go to the CIA? That's what I was trying to figure out. I don't know why you would compare it to a random standing ovation for a quarterback. I just don't understand that. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post, who's the fact checker at the Washington Post, who we've all had arguments with over the years, he tweeted, this interview is so filled with inaccurate and misleading statements by Trump, I don't even know where to begin. If Glenn Kessler, who wakes up every day to try to find something wrong on something someone says, just gave up, then you have so far exceeded all bounds of truth

and objectivity in the world that said that entire interview but this actually you point out particularly would be exhibit a in donald trump's commitment hearing like it is deeply disturbing how did you think david muir did in that interview i think he did good fine i mean he's not you can't be who you're not right he is not jake right jake has a certain personality jake is a dog with a bone and that he is aggressive and that's how he was in the briefing with Robert Gibbs and Jake Carney when they're press secretary. He that's just who he is. And he that's not David Muir. But David Muir was well prepared for the briefing. And, you know, I thought, you know, having spoken to the off, knowing that Trump, it's not rocket science, but, you know, other people have not been done that

done it this well. Having the foresight to at least call the author of the Pew study that you knew Trump was going to cite so you could respond to that, I think he did pretty good. It's not perfect. No, I thought he had a lot of tough follow-ups. I think I was having a debate about this with my friend who was like, I thought he was great. And the problem is he had to cover every, he had to cover a ton of different topics. So he eventually had to move on. And yes, that's the truth. That's, that's how usually interviews usually go. You have a bunch of different, you know, newsy topics that you have to cover. So you can only press the subject on one subject so many

times. But I wonder if there are new rules for Trump that journalists have to just sort of think outside the box and be like, well, if I didn't get to six or seven newsy topics in this interview because I was pressing him to, you know, explain what the hell he means by voter fraud that doesn't exist for 10, 15 minutes, then I'm going to do it. So it's not really a criticism of David Muir because, like you said, I think he did a great job and I think that's what journalists usually do. But I wonder if there are new rules for journalists in this uh in the trump era i think that's right and that is i mean that's what jake did with the mexican with the trump's allegations about that american citizen judge who's american citizen of mexican descent can't can't um rule in his case a rule in a case about Trump, which is, to quote Paul Ryan, basically a textbook case of racism.

He pushed Trump really hard on that repeatedly and really wouldn't let him get off it. I think that's something that interviewers really need to think about because Trump is not a normal politician. He's not even, frankly, a normal human being. And the normal rules don't apply and it's pretty clear you can see this in the first few days of the sean spicer briefing i was gonna say journalists are wrestling with how to how to do their craft in a time in which the normal rules don't apply yeah i was gonna say so speaking of normal rules don't apply. Yeah, I was going to say, so speaking of normal rules not applying, Sean Spicer.

We'll start off where we left off on Monday's pod, which we recorded right before Sean's first official briefing. Actually, Sean's first official briefing since he made a complete ass of himself in his first official briefing. This was his big do-over on Monday. And, you know, like, he gets up there on Monday, he sort of ably dodges questions and tells a bunch of lies, but it seemed more charming than it had been on Saturday, and he wore a better suit.

So a bunch of people were like, great job, much more effective today. It's like, yeah, he was definitely more effective than when he went out into the press briefing room, started screaming at everyone for five minutes, didn't take any questions, and then ran back inside. I guess if that's the bar, then he certainly leapt over it on Monday. But I don't know if it was a ton better than that. No, I mean, to be totally honest, totally honest he's toast he ruined his career on saturday i mean he is a walking internet meme right now i mean steve kerr great american and not a trump supporter um you know made a sean spicer joke on sunday in his interview after the warriors game. Like this is a – the Dallas Stars, the hockey team, the NHL team in Dallas, when they did the regular announcement of attendance for the game, put 1.5 million people over the weekend.

Like every – he has become a joke. And that – Tommy talked about this on Monday with you guys, but he's right. Like right now it's kind of funny, and we can make fun of him when he's going back and forth looking ridiculous with John Carl or Jeff Zelnick or some reporter in the briefing room. But there's gonna be a time where he is the person speaking about something very, very serious, something more serious than, you know, inauguration crowd size. And he's the voice of the federal government, and people are not going to believe him because it's a joke.

and he's the voice of the federal government and people are not going to believe him because it's a joke well and he he continues to not tell the truth right i mean yesterday during the briefing when someone uh asked about the report that the trump administration was considering reopening cia black sites around the world uh he said that is not a white house report i don't know what you're talking about. We were totally taken off guard. You know, it was something, some memo that was floating around. And I found myself thinking, okay, maybe he's telling the truth. He seems like he's telling the truth, but I also know that he's lied many times before, so I can't really trust him. And then sure enough, later in the day, there's a report that no, no, no.

The White House did send around a memo to people about reopening CIA black sites. So he wasn't telling the truth again. And the question there is, did he lie or did he just not know? Because he is not he he is taking he is taking equally unseriously inside the white house and outside of the white house and either either is a problem for his job huge huge problem and i mean that's one of the biggest challenges being press secretary is having enough juice to know what's happening so you're not caught out there saying something that even that you believe to be true but is most certainly not true because no one got around to telling you the truth.

Now, it's a big federal government. Things happen. You have to be savvy enough to answer questions in a way that give you a little room if you don't know the answer. Sean Spicer is the opposite of savvy. This is fascinating. I mean the fact that people from inside the White House are aggressively sticking a knife in him, like the reporting that Donald Trump didn't want him. because he doesn't like his suits. I mean... And the people are telling Maggie Haberman this on a near daily basis is, you know, suggests that we will soon have a second... We'll soon have another Trump press secretary.

Well, but it also, like, I was watching the reaction on Monday to the press conference, and this is such a fucking Washington thing to do, which is he screws up so badly on Saturday, he comes back on Monday and, you know, doesn't like light himself on fire at the, at the podium and gets through all the questions and smiles and makes a few jokes and is, and is wearing a better suit. And, you know, a bunch of people in Washington are saying like, Oh, much better today, a lot more effective. Really? He really, it's just, it's always judging things on style when substantively he's still not telling

the truth. He still hasn't apologized for the lies he told on Saturday. He hasn't done anything to sort of reclaim his credibility. And so then, you know, a lot of these people just sort of move on and wait for the next lie to flip out about and i'm just like we gotta we gotta remember here what happened we can't we can't be judging this thing on a curve it's just not or or just on like style points like that's not going to do anyone any favors it's also worth noting that sean spicer is unlike unlike the rest of the trump senior, Sean Spicer is a member of the club. Right.

He's worked in D.C. for years and years and years. He goes to all the parties. He hangs out with these people with reporters at the convention and goes to dinner with them. And I say this as you and I, longtime members of the club. Right. So I'm not like holding a pitchfork trying to take down the town, but Sean Spicer is different in the eyes of a lot of these reporters because they've known him for 5, 10, 15 years,

worked with him on campaigns at the RNC, and this is unlike a Steve Bannon or maybe Josh Kushner or Ivank or people who they don't know. Sean Spicer has been playing the game for a long time. And so people gave him some benefit of the doubt. I think it was a pretty short lived benefit of the doubt because he was like, oh, he's not terrible. And then the answers on the questions around Trump's voter fraud investigation sort of put him right back in the soup. Yeah. Well, how did you think the reporters have been doing with Spicer in these briefings?

You know, fine, I guess. I don't, I generally don't think they should ask tough questions, but a whole bunch of like showmanship about how you ask them is, I think, somewhat pointless and counterproductive to the overall effort. Yeah. We never liked that either. counterproductive to the overall effort yeah we never like that either he is he has created for himself a real advantage by altering the order of questions so he basically can go normal reporter to right-wing auxiliary state media member and i mean like one of his first questions was to a

site set up by la Ingram, Trump supporter. Life's that. Life's that. Did you see, by the way, that fucking Alex Jones said that InfoWars has now received White House credentials? InfoWars. Sandy Hook truther, 9-11 truther Alex Jones claims he has a White House credential now. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what he's saying. I'm sure it is true.

I mean, Trump talked to Alex Jones right after the election. He credited him with his win. Of course they're going to give him a credential because when Sean Spicer gets tired of asking a question from a real reporter, he can just call on Alex Jones or LifeZet or Breitbart or, you know, state TV, Fox News. It's bad. It's bad. All right, and we're back. So let's talk about the voter fraud fiasco. In a meeting with congressional leaders, Trump repeated the lie that he thinks millions and millions of people, three to five million by some counts,

voted illegally in the last election. Something that has no basis in evidence isn't true. No one has suggested it with any sort of basis in fact at all. Not just Trump, anyone. The story that he actually told, which Glenn Thrush reported in the New York Times yesterday, is pretty fucking amazing. Did you read the story, Dan? Oh, I read the story. I read the story. So from what I remember here, Trump was told by his golfer friend...

Bernard Langer. Bernard Langer. A German professional golfer. A German professional golfer, right. Bernard Langer. So tells him that when he was in Florida trying to vote, he was turned away at the polls, you know, because he's a German citizen. And, but he said the people who weren't turned away at the polls were people in front of him who quote,

didn't look like they should be voting. And then Trump starts rattling off a list of Latin American countries to guess where those people might have been from. So that's racist. And then so he says this and Langer was really upset that he couldn't vote. Now, the Trump staff says that this was Langer telling Trump a story about some other friend. The people that were in the congressional meeting disagree with this account. But anyway, so Trump says were in the congressional meeting disagree with this account. But anyway, so Trump says this in the meeting. It leaks out of the meeting and it becomes news. Spicer is then asked about it at the briefing and says, if Trump really believes this, it would be the greatest

political scandal in history, the greatest voter fraud in history. So why wouldn't there be an investigation? So Spicer sort of dodges that. And then Trump tweets, well, now there will be an investigation. So basically, crazy Trump story he tells in a closed door meeting becomes news. Reporters try to hold them accountable for it. And then he makes policy based on the crazy thing that he said. That's where we are right now. That's sort of the story of the Trump presidency will be deeply disturbed conspiracy theorist president spouts off about something. Entire federal government then tries to figure out how to make policy to deal with that conspiracy theory that is fueled from his deep, deep personal insecurities. Because this is all about the

fact he lost the popular vote. He is trying to find a way to explain to himself, not even really the country, but to himself, why 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than him. Right. And apparently this really bothers him. I think Maggie reported this, Haberman, that he has this fear and this anger that he's not a legitimate president because of the popular vote thing. And it really gets at him. And so he's decided to make up this fiction that, you know, he would have won. And it was a bunch of people who shouldn't have voted that voted for Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's really been Chris Hayes tweeted yesterday. He's like,

please, no one asked Sean Spicer that if if Trump hates China so much, why doesn't he just nuke them? Which I like I laughed and then cried for a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty I mean, I don't what's like is it worse that Trump is is lying about this or that he actually believes it? Or is there some or has he believed his lie? I don't know. I would prefer a sane, dishonest president than an insane president. And I think we might have the latter. I mean, I think we might have both. The other question is, why can't his why can't anyone who's working for him stop this? Because apparently, he just doesn't have anyone around him who will tell him no about anything.

It's clear that I mean, it's this will probably not come as a shock to those of us who have watched Trump for the last two years here. It doesn't seem like someone who wants dissent in his organization or doesn't want to be told that he's wrong. And so, look, power in the White House is set up around how the president feels about you, right? Does the president trust you? Does the president talk to you? Do you get invited to meetings? And apparently in Trump world, if you tell the president that what he is saying

is ridiculous and not to say it, then you don't get invited to meetings. So everyone just enables him. It is a staff of amateurish enablers. And I mean, that's clearly what Trump wants. And that's the situation he's set up. But it's deeply dangerous. There's so I mean, there's just so much to unpack here. Imagine you were at Thanksgiving and your uncle told the Bernard Langer story. Like,

how awkward would that be? It's like, oh, drunk racist uncle just won't shut up. And the part that's like beyond the fact that let's state for the record, every person involved, including Republican secretaries of state, had said there is no evidence of voter fraud on any scale of what Trump's talking about. Or even tiny, like maybe dozens of cases around the country. So nothing that would affect the election. No, they had the Ohio Secretary of State on record in the New York Times, who's a Republican, who has participated in efforts to make it more difficult to vote. Certainly no friend of Democrats or voting rights. No friend of democracy. No friend of democracy.

And he said, no, I don't know what he's talking about. There's been no voter fraud. We've looked at this. We've investigated this. I have't know what he's talking about. There's been no voter fraud. We've looked at this. We've investigated this. I have no idea what he's talking about. Other Republicans, like Lindsey Graham, attacked him on, you know, said something about Trump on this, said it was sort of crazy. I mean, all these other Republicans have sort of, you know, walked away from this as much as Republicans can walk away from anything Trump does now because they're all too afraid to say anything critical. does now because they're all too afraid to say anything critical there is one other logical flaw to this theory because trump said to david muir none of those people voted for me not a one i can tell you that not a one the real question is why did three to five million not illegal quote unquote

to use trump's term trump voters illegal voters vote for hillary Hillary Clinton and then Ron Johnson for Senate. Right. It's like the only thing that— No, what about, like, why did they vote in California and New York? Why are they running up the score in two big Clinton states? Like, if you're going to be 35 million people voting illegally, go to Pennsylvania. Yeah, like, why did they deploy the massive illegal voting plan into states we'd already won? What a strategic error on their part.

It's just, it boggles the mind. It boggles the mind. So while this is all happening with the crowd size debate, the illegal voting fraud conspiracy, the Trump administration has been very busy signing executive orders this week. The Trump administration has been very busy signing executive orders this week. You know, as we've known, because we did a bunch of executive orders over the eight years in the White House with Obama, executive orders, you know, are, they can have the force of law behind them. It's basically like, what can the president do without congressional approval or without Congress passing a bill? congressional approval or without Congress passing a bill. And, you know, there is certain power and authority that the president has within the law to make policy on a certain set of issues. And so, even though it is preferable, obviously, to work with Congress, and on many, many issues,

you need Congress to pass an actual law to make something happen, there are a certain number of things you can do just via executive order. These were, of course, controversial in the Obama White House, because every time Obama issued an executive order, Republicans called him, you know, like a tyrant and said he was power hungry and all this kind of stuff, even though usually, you know, the executive orders can be challenged. Sometimes they're upheld, sometimes they're not upheld, whether they're lawful or not. So there's a whole process in place for these.

So Trump released executive orders on the Affordable Care Act. That one was very confusing. Have you figured out what that one's about? It's mostly bullshit to try and buy him some political space. But it's basically a directive to the federal government to try to buy him some political space but it is he it's basically directive to the federal government trying to undermine the affordable care act at every turn so it's something if you like people living because they have access to health care it's it should give you some concern yeah i mean my thought on all of these executive orders

is a lot of them are very vague and and sometimes they tend to look more like press releases than actual orders that will do something. But I wouldn't be as worried about them if we had a Democratic Congress. Because a lot if there's a Democratic Congress who couldn't, you know, pass legislation that sort of fulfilled the intention of a lot of these executive orders, you know, it wouldn't be a problem. But because there's a Republican Congress that will do anything Trump says, it basically signals, these EOs signal, like, this is our intention, and as soon as we get Congress on board, this is what will happen. And so for ACA, the intention is, yeah, they're going to want to try to gut it as much as they can. There's one on pipelines, the Keystone Pipeline and the pipeline in North Dakota that they want built.

That now goes to a State Department review. If the State Department says, OK, those pipelines will be built, even though we've determined that the environmental impact those pipelines could have would be considerable in a very, very bad way. On immigration, that was probably the biggest one yesterday. It directed Congress to start building the wall. On that one, they do need congressional approval to get the money to build the wall. But of course, last night, hero to conservatism, Washington intellectual darling Paul Ryan said, sure, sure, we'll give Trump $14 billion for a concrete wall that Mexico may or may not pay for later.

Yeah, absolutely. Which Mexico said again this morning that they were not going to pay for. And now there are reports that Trump is considering canceling his summit with Mexico over this dispute. Apparently, Mexico just canceled the meeting oh good good this is real news happening here that you all hear everyone else will hear hours from now so breaking news here yeah no so mexico canceled the meeting good for them i mean like we're gonna spend and 14 billion dollars is a low ball estimate by the way like most people think

it might it's probably around 20 billion but um the the idea that we're just going to pay $20 billion for a concrete wall at a time when illegal immigration is across the border is sort of at an all-time low or 40-year low. There's fencing all along the border. There's patrol agents all along the border. Like, no one would have said that the wall, a concrete wall was the right idea before Trump decided to just toss it out as a random line in his stump speeches. Once again, something crazy Trump said now will be national policy. It's just. And Paul Ryan's just going along with it. Like what the hell is wrong with that guy? He's a chump. I mean, Paul Ryan's always been a chump i know right i mean

that that is the washington needs paul ryan because they need someone who validates their view that there are good people in both parties and if only we could all get together on a golf course or a big steak at the palm we could solve all the world's problems. And Paul Ryan is that guy. He is the Tip O'Neill to Barack Obama's Ronald Reagan. The Simpson-Bowles Commission will save the world. Yeah, well, guess what? He is a man who once a week gets in a room with Steve King,

a mini-Trump racist, and courts his vote to be Speaker, right? So spare me. The only people who believe the bullshit of Paul Ryan are Washington reporters and Paul Ryan. That's, yeah, that's about right. So aside from the wall, the EO also talked about ending sanctuary cities, which are cities where undocumented immigrants can live without fear of deportation because that decision is made on a local level. So what the Trump administration wants to do is cut off federal funding to these cities to try to get them to give up the undocumented immigrants in those cities. The undocumented immigrants in those cities, which in a piece of good news, mayors from L.A. to New York to San Francisco to a bunch of other to Boston to a bunch of other cities said, keep your federal funding. We're not we're not turning over our our New Yorkers or our Bostonians. So that was that was hopeful. And they think that they can win that legal challenge if the Trump administration sues them in court. So hopefully that happens as well. The EO also talked about stepping up internal enforcement for deportations. They're expanding the definition of what constitutes a crime. is so expansive that they're saying that you're a criminal immigrant if you are undocumented. That's the crime. Not that you, you know, committed some violent felony or stole or anything like that. Just by the virtue of being an undocumented immigrant, that could constitute

being a criminal and then being deported. Bad. Bad news. All of this is bad. And I think our main point here by forcing you to listen to John read all the executive orders is that when we're talking about Sean Spicer suits and debates about crowd size and alternative facts and whatever else, it's like real shit that really matters to real people is happening every day. And we can't lose sight of that, right? As we, as Democrats are figuring out what we're going to do to fight back here, let's not get distracted by all the shiny objects. All the shiny objects are also really scary, but bad things are happening and we have to be aware of them. Speaking of Democrats, what do you think about, so Trump, we've had votes on a lot of Trump's cabinet picks in the Senate this week and a number of very progressive, very liberal Democrats, including, you know, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, basically they've

all voted for at least one of Trump's cabinet picks. This has sort of set off a debate and some anger among a lot of Democratic activists and just Democratic voters. You know, I thought we were trying to oppose Trump here on everything. Why would we want to, you know, this was directed towards Elizabeth Warren. Why would you vote for Ben Carson for HUD when the man is so unbelievably unqualified to lead the, to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? And, you know, yet she voted for him. So, I mean, what do you think about this debate? I will say that personally, if I was in the Senate, I would not vote for any of these nominees. They're all, I mean,

most of them are tremendously unqualified to do the job that they're supposed to do. And also it's not just about their own personal qualifications, but it would be a protest vote against the many insane dangerous policies that Donald Trump wants them to pursue. And so, and I also don't quite know the political downside of voting against all these nominees. That said, it doesn't quite rile me up as much that some of these senators have decided to pick a few to go ahead and support only because they were going to get in any way. Democrats do not have the power to block any of these. They do not have the votes to block any of these. have the power to block any of these. They do not have the votes to block any of these.

So I think that if it meant, you know, if Elizabeth Warren had only voted against Ben Carson, then we wouldn't have a HUD secretary or maybe we'd get a normal HUD secretary, then yes, I would absolutely expect her to vote against him. But these are largely symbolic votes. I believe that Democrats, with one exception, should vote against all of Trump's nominees. I understand why some don't do it. Some of them are running in states that Trump won, and they may want to avoid the talking point that obstructionists who opposed every nominee. I do not understand why anyone who is thinking of running for president in 2020 would vote for any of Trump's nominees, though there is no political logic of that. I think I can be convinced that it is okay to vote for Mattis for defense and maybe Nikki Haley for UN ambassador. Yeah. Mattis seems like there's a lot of reasons to be concerned about mattis but he is he is i think at least it is fair to say of a different background or cut than

these other people i do not understand in any way why anyone would vote for ben carson for hud i mean i think that is an insane decision it isend like five minutes Googling Ben Carson and then come back and tell me what you think about his qualifications to lead a federal agency. Zero. I mean, don't take our word for it. Take the word of his longtime advisor who said he does not want to be appointed to the cabinet because he is totally unqualified to run a federal agency. He knows nothing about housing policy. That's his advisor. Democrats should care about housing policy and you should not support the secretary of HUD who has zero experience in the things that HUD cares about.

Like go on record against that. It is offensive on every dimension that he picked Ben Carson to be HUD. And I cannot believe that he was approved out of committee unanimously. Like what are we doing? I don't know. I don't know the thinking behind it. I really don't. I read Elizabeth Warren's Facebook post on this and I still didn't quite get it. You know, again, I'm not like, oh, she's sold out and I'm never going to support her and blah, blah, blah. I just, I don't, I don't get this decision though. Yeah. I, I am mystified by it. And I do think there is, there are Democrats in the Senate, some of them. I think they're getting to where they have to be. You can sort of see it happening over time.

But they are still playing by an old set of rules as if Jeb Bush or John Kasich is president of the United States right now, a traditional Republican who respects the norms of governing and not a deeply disturbed, deeply ignorant megalomaniac. And we have to adjust our strategies for that. But I'm sounding very riled up about it right now, and I'm generally riled up these days. But I don't care what – like if someone comes to me and says, I got three candidates running for president, and two of them voted for a couple of Trump nominees and one voted for none of them. Which one do you want?

Like that to me does not matter that much. But I think we need to be the Ben Carson thing. We should care about housing and we should not approve of him. And that I think that is a very odd strategic choice by a lot of people, a lot of very proud progressives who have done really, really good work. I'm mystified by it. Same. Okay. When we come back, we will have Tom Perez, who is running for DNC chair, longtime friend of the pod. Ethical crooked media disclaimer here. Tom Perez is a friend of mine, and I have been actively supporting his DNC chairman candidacy. So just put that out there because we take our journalistic ethics incredibly

seriously here in the crooked media empire. And I haven't endorsed anyone because I'm a straight shooting journalist in the mold of John Lovett. Yes. Oh, we got to wrap this up so you can get to your brunch with Sean Spicer. We will be right back. You're listening to Pod Save America. With us on Pod Save America today, former Secretary of Labor, current DNC chair candidate, and longtime friend of the pod, Tom Perez. Tom, welcome. Great to be with you guys. So we ask everyone this question here now.

How are you feeling? Seven days of the Trump administration. Just want to check in and see how you're doing. Well, you know, the day of reckoning has arrived. I simultaneously have that pit in my stomach when I see everything he's done in six short days. The first thing he did was to tell people who were trying to buy a home. President Obama had lowered the cost of buying a home for a first-time homebuyer. Donald Trump said, nope, we're going to raise that cost back again. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and that's the first impression of betrayal. I'm helping working people, but no, I'm not. I said I would, but no, I'm not. And then the second, one of the

early things he does is go into Texas to take on a voter ID case that I brought. And he asked the court for more time because they're going to switch their position. That voter ID law was designed to make it impossible or next to impossible for African-Americans and Latinos to vote. We sued, we won, and now they're going to switch sides. So, you know, our values are at stake. So it's kind of like the best of times and the worst of times, because it's the best of times because the day after that inauguration, a remarkable thing happened around America. Two and a half million people came together, more people here in Washington on Saturday than there were for the inauguration by a lot. And what we have to do is turn that moment into a movement. And frankly, that's why I'm running for DNC chair, because we've got to tell America that our values of inclusion and opportunity are still the values of America.

What have you learned running for this job that you didn't know when you started, as you've been talking to folks out there? Well, I've learned that there's a real crisis of confidence and a crisis of relevance within the DNC and the Democratic Party. This is a turnaround job. We need to get back to basics. We need to organize, organize, organize. We need to make sure that the parties in all the states and territories are functional, are robust. are functional, are robust. I mean, we lost Wisconsin, for instance,

not because Donald Trump got more votes. Mitt Romney got more votes than Donald Trump, but what we did was we underperformed in Milwaukee, and we got our butts kicked in rural parts of the state where President Obama had done well. You can't show up every 4th of October to a church and call that an organizing strategy. And so what I've learned is that we really need to get back to basics. We can turn around the Democratic Party and the DNC by making sure we are organizing, organizing, organizing. We're supporting candidates from school board to the Senate.

We are working together and doing a much better job of coordinating with our partners in the nonprofit world, consistent with all the FEC requirements. But we don't coordinate enough. You look at Florida. Great example, guys. Four years ago, the RNC, the Koch brothers, and the nonprofit infrastructure, most notably but not exclusively the Southern Baptist Church, invested in organizing a four-year, 12-month-a-year investment. And that produced about 130,000 votes that nobody had seen coming. And that was basically the margin of victory. We need to get back to basics. I believe in data analytics.

But you know what? Data analytics can't supplant house calls, can't supplant that organizing that is the lifeblood of the Democratic Party. I think our values are the right values, the values of a good job for everyone, the values that say that, you know, anyone who's living in the shadows, you know, we're going to make sure that you have opportunity to get into the sunshine. We need to communicate those values better. And we need to make sure we're organizing in urban, suburban, and rural America 12 months a year and building those parties. Tom, what would your message be to the folks who turned out, you know, either in

Washington or all around the country on Saturday, who want to channel their energy? What should they do? They should think about running for office. They should understand that the Democratic Party shares their values and shares their vision. I think about millennials. Part of the challenge we have with millennials is that they're less attached to institutions more broadly, including but not limited to the Democratic Party. What I also observe about millennials is that they are so remarkably altruistic. They want to build an America that works for everyone. And so what we have to do as Democrats is talk to the people here who were here last weekend and tell them. And we've got to

build that bridge because your values, your altruism, those are the values of the Democratic Party. If you care about climate change, so do we. And look what Donald Trump has done to muzzle climate science already in his first few days in office. If you care about immigration, so do we. And look what he's doing with this silly wall. If you care about job creation, so do we. And look what Democrats did under President Obama and under other Democratic administrations to create jobs.

We are the party of opportunity, and what I think we have to do with these 2.5 million folks is turn that moment into a movement. And that's why I'm excited about running, because the Democratic Party has to be at the center of this, partnering with our other grassroots nonprofits who have been out in the trenches, but helping to lead this effort. Because people are asking me time and time again, guys, I want to do something. Point me, point me in the right direction.

And that's why last weekend Planned Parenthood, they didn't just bring people in, but they had training for hundreds of future organizers. We've got to dramatically expand that cadre of organizers. And then we organize around very real issues. For instance, the Affordable Care Act, you know, 18 million people stand to lose their insurance if they follow through on this threat. Millions of seniors who are getting, you know, $1,000, $2,000 a year in prescription drug relief are going to lose that. The diabetic or the other person with a pre-existing condition, they're going to lose their coverage.

That's catastrophic. And we have to be that vessel, the Democratic Party, to help folks, wherever you live, to organize in communities so that we can take this energy and channel it so that we are not missing this moment, but we're in fact turning it into a movement. I think we can do it. So, Tom, you and Keith Ellison agree on almost every issue. You're both very, very progressive. But, you know, Bernie Sanders supporters, or a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters, you know, they see him as Bernie's guy. He endorsed Bernie, Bernie endorsed him.

What do you say to those Bernie supporters who say, you know, well, by going with Keith Ellison, we sort of bring the Bernie wing into the party, and we need to do that now because we need to unify? What's your message to those supporters? Well, I would ask them to both look at my record and also look at my campaign. I mean, I have people working for me who supported Hillary. I have people working for me who supported Senator Sanders. I have people working for me who were in the Obama administration. I actually have people working for me who were casual participants in democracy, and they understood that that wasn't right. So now they want to help. And that's why,

So now they want to help. And that's why I've spent my whole life bringing folks together. When the West Coast ports came to a halt and the president sent me out there, he sent me out there because he felt that I could earn the trust of the parties who were, frankly, at loggerheads. And when Verizon went on strike, we know, we were able to bring together sides that had distrust. And I've been able to do that my whole career. And the issues that people in the Democratic Party care about, whether you supported, whoever you supported in the primary, these are the issues I've worked on my entire life, whether it was fighting Joe Arpaio

in Arizona, the rogue sheriff who's now the ex-sheriff, whether it was taking on Wall Street when we settled the two largest fair lending cases in the history of the Fair Housing Act on behalf of homeowners who got screwed, or whether it was moving forward on marriage equality. I mean, I've been fighting the good fight for my whole career, and that's why I've been able to attract supporters across the Democratic Party. And you know what? The bottom line is this. We have to come together as a party

because, folks, what Donald Trump is doing to America, that is the real threat. What unites us as Democrats far exceeds the differences that we have. And the differences are minuscule in comparison with what Donald Trump is doing to America already. And everyone I talk to, they understand that. And frankly, when I've been talking to voting members of the DNC, they understand that we have an existential threat right now and we must come together. Senator Sanders, supported Secretary Clinton. And what they want is a leader who has, you know, that progressive vision, and then who also knows how to turn around an organization that isn't firing on all cylinders. And I've heard from a lot of people, you know, Tom,

you've been a turnaround artist at the Labor Department and at the Civil Rights Division before that. And we not only need someone who can take the fight to Donald Trump, we need someone who can really turn around this organization that needs that, needs a culture change. And I've been able to do that. And that's why I think we've been able to get a lot of support. Speaking of the idea of turning around the DNC, what are some of the reforms or changes you would put in place at the DNC to get it functioning at a higher level? Sure. Well, first of all, we've got to change the culture. It's a command and control culture. People, you speak only when spoken to. Good leaders are good listeners.

And we were able to turn around the places I've worked at before because we gave people a meaningful seat at the table. And I'm not just talking about DNC members. I'm talking about stakeholders in the Democratic Party. That's how we engage millennials, when they see they have a meaningful seat at the table. So that's step one. We also have to build that organizing capacity that I talked to that simply doesn't exist right now. We've got to make sure we're investing in all of the states to give them that capacity to recruit candidates, to help train those candidates, and to help those candidates win. And then we've got to figure out, and I've talked about this a lot, we have some immediate threats right now that we have to absolutely ramp up our efforts on. And to me, the most significant threat is the voter suppression that is an indispensable part of the Republican playbook.

It is absolutely unconscionable what has been going on. And I sued Texas. I've sued South Carolina. We've sued North Carolina. on. And I sued Texas. I've sued South Carolina. We've sued North Carolina. And voter suppression is a staple in their playbook. And right now at the DNC, there are three or four very hardworking, very talented people. But that's all there is, taking on this issue. And they're taking on the Koch brothers machine and ALEC and all the far-right organizations who are able to make it next to impossible for people to vote. You don't go to a knife fight with a spoon. creation of voter protection and empowerment unit within the DNC, a muscular unit that will enable us to play a much more robust part in making sure that we're playing offense and defense, protection and empowerment. Both words matter. We've got to protect. We've got to play defense. When these voter purges occur and they're illegal, we've got to get in there earlier so that we prevent them.

These voter ID laws, we've got to nip them at the bud. And then we should be playing offense. You know, Oregon has vote by mail. We should be advocating for universal registration. Arizona did something really smart a while back. They, through ballot initiative, created an independent redistricting commission, and there are a couple more Democrats as a result in Arizona, because if left to their own devices, the hyper-partisan far right would have done the same gerrymandering that's being done in Ohio and Michigan and elsewhere. in Ohio and Michigan and elsewhere. And there's a dozen states that could do that by ballot initiative where these are red states.

And so we need to play defense and we need to play offense on voting. And this is an immediate challenge. And when I mention culture change, the last thing I'll say is we need to make sure that we are less Washington-centric. Yes, we have to obviously work to help elect the president and members of the Senate and the House, but we've all too frequently ignored the necessity to help elect people in state legislatures, in places like that,

because if we're going to prevail on redistricting, we've got to flip these state legislatures, and we've been getting our butts kicked. And that is a critical element of what we need to do. And we can do it. You know, the energy out there is palpable. And as I've said a number of times, we've got to transform and take this moment and turn it into a real movement. So Dana and I were just talking about this. Would you have voted for any of Trump's cabinet picks if you were in the Senate? Well, I'm hard-pressed to think of any right now that I would have voted for.

They're in the process of normalizing things that should never get normalized. Ethical misconduct. I mean, when you have a nominee for HHS secretary who has been pretty evidently profiting from laws that he helped pass, that's remarkable. When you have others who have acknowledged, and apparently the vetting's being done for the first time during the nomination hearings, or the confirmation hearings, because we see folks who, at least one nominee who was employing folks who were not authorized to work, well, that used to be disqualifying. And so we're normalizing ethical lapses that are just off the charts. And then putting that aside, I mean, the nominee to replace me is a guy who, you know, is a plaintiff

in the lawsuit to overturn our efforts to give people more money. I thought Donald Trump said, I want to give you a raise. And then the labor secretary nominee is a guy who believes that seven and a quarter is either okay or maybe too high and has called his own workers some of the worst of the worst. I mean, that's not the person you want to lead the labor secretary. I want a leader in the labor department who's going to actually care about giving workers a raise. And so we're normalizing, whether it's alternative facts. I don't know what the hell that means. That's an oxymoron. Hey, guys, I'm 27 years old. You know, my children would say, Daddy's lying right now. But Daddy, in response to the Donald Trump universe, will say, no, I'm not lying. That's just an alternative fact.

I mean, even if you produce your birth certificate, people wouldn't believe you. So I mean, I'm very concerned about this. And, you know, and we're going to have a Supreme Court nominee coming up. And if the past five days is prologue for for that, you know, I hope we don't hesitate to use the filibuster. Because, you know, when it comes down to it for me, folks, you know, people say, how should we treat Donald Trump? And I've said this repeatedly, I think we should accord him the same level of courtesy that Mitch McConnell accorded to Barack Obama, which is no courtesy whatsoever.

Exactly. Yeah. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. And again, for your second appearance here on the pod, we really appreciate it. Hey, I'm honored. And best of luck to you. A couple weeks left, and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Sprint to the finish line. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Tom. Thanks again to Tom Perez for joining us today well we will be back on monday until then

have a great weekend we'll be back on monday presuming america still exists sad dan all right bye guys bye