Jon Favreau
Appearances
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then later, you'll hear my interview with Cecilia Munoz, a 20 year veteran of the immigration fight, about why she thinks Democrats lost their way on the issue and how we can build a majority for real reform. But first, we have talked a lot in recent weeks about Trump's revenge tour and how scared his critics should be. Looks like we're starting to get our answer.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Can I just say Nancy Pelosi obviously has still, even though she's not speaker anymore, a lot of sway over Democrats, but she's not speaker anymore or minority leader in this case. 181 Democrats voted for Connolly. And, you know, if you're sort of a younger, newer Democrat to Congress, is it really like lobbying from Nancy Pelosi that's going to sway your vote?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Like, do you think there was anything else at play here?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I mean, I think this is crazy as do you. But let's give the arguments for Connolly. They're due here because there's plenty of Democrats talking about why the party did what it did. Retiring Representative Annie Custer, who heads the centrist New Democrats group in the House.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
said some of her vulnerable members had concerns about AOC's record of supporting primary challenges to her colleagues, even though AOC promised to stop doing that as part of her campaign for the role. There also was a fear, apparently, about her going too hard at divisive cultural issues, according to Politico. Majority leader Steny Hoyer, age 84, made the case for seniority on behalf of Pelosi.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And basically his argument was being senior shouldn't mean you automatically get the job, though it should at least be a tiebreaker between qualified candidates. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, age 77, said, I think that there are challenges in totally abandoning the seniority system here because if seniority is not the rule, money becomes the rule. What do you make of all those arguments?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
On Wednesday, House Republicans released a 128-page report that unsurprisingly tries to pin the blame for January 6th on Democrats instead of Donald Trump. People would be surprised to learn that. But Republicans, quote, top finding... was this, quote, former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson's attorney's knowledge.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I was going to say, I have nothing negative to say about Jerry Connolly because I, like 99% of Americans, have no idea who he is.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I will say two things here, too. I think there is some angst among a lot of House Democrats that I think is quite misplaced. Where, you know, I think they're like, oh, squad, unpopular with the broader electorate, you know, DSA, all that kind of stuff. I would say that AOC... particularly over the last several years.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I'm not going to say she has moderated her message or anything like that because I do not think that. But I think she has been very smart, especially in recent years, on which battles to pick, how to talk to voters, open to people who have different opinions. I think that she's very, very thoughtful. And she's like, really?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I mean, I was always impressed with her, but she's impressed me even more the longer she's been in Congress. So that's number one. Number two, I think from her perspective, whether she's the top Democrat on oversight or not, she's going to get hurt. Right. Like there can be a fucking five hours of hearings on C-SPAN that no one will ever see.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And if AOC picks up her phone and does an Instagram live, she's going to reach more people. And she's still going to be on oversight. Right. Because she was on oversight before. And if they're fucking smart, Jerry Connolly and others on oversight, you know, during these hearings, she'll be given plenty of time to speak. So that'll be OK.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
What really bothers me about it, right, is that it just this gets to your point. It reveals a mindset among Democrats that they are missing that attention is the only thing that matters right now or not the only thing that matters. But attention is the first thing that matters, because if you cannot get attention in this media environment, your message cannot be heard.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And if your message cannot be heard, you cannot persuade people. If you can't persuade people, you can't win. If you can't win, you can't cover. So I think that the Democratic Party has still not figured out how important it is to get attention and what is required to get attention.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And even if you're a more moderate member, what's required to get attention is not, I'm sure some of them think, just yelling and screaming about Republicans and showing the most outrage and this or that. Look, it's tough. You've got to be creative. You've got to talk like a normal fucking human being and not like a politician who's been there for 40 years.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering by the FBI and might have broken, quote, numerous federal laws. Cheney called the allegations, quote, defamatory and said that no reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously. Someone who is taking it seriously, Donald Trump, who posted at 3 a.m.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And by the way, I don't just want to make it an age thing. There's old politicians who know how to communicate. There's young politicians.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And there's plenty of young politicians who are unbelievably boring and do not. Just to be very honest.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
So it's not necessarily about age, but everyone needs to know that like if you cannot get attention and attention is not like putting out your press releases and giving your board and press conference and doing something at the whatever, like then you're just not going to be heard and we're just not going to win.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
So even though Democrats don't control the White House or Congress, we may actually have more leverage to fight back than people might think. As we've mentioned before, Speaker Mike Johnson will have an incredibly narrow margin in the House next year, which will require nearly every House Republican to support him on nearly every vote.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
if Trump and Republicans want to get anything done, at least legislatively. And right now, Johnson is already struggling to get that support. He is currently trying to pass a bill to keep the government funded for just three months, giving up on a full year. He's just trying to do three months.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
But all the usual MAGA troublemakers in his caucus are once again threatening to oppose the bill because it's not crazy enough for them. Unfortunately, one of those MAGA troublemakers, unfortunately for Johnson, one of those MAGA troublemakers is now Doge Master Elon Musk, who weighed in with a tweet saying this bill should not pass and another with a photo of a huge stack of printed out papers.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
There's supposedly the bill with the caption ever seen a bigger piece of pork. It's also funny, by the way, that Fox and Friends broke this news about Elon Musk to Mike Johnson live on air. And Johnson had to say, well, I know where Elon stands on this and he knows where I stand. And they called me last night and he knows what what a tough spot I'm in.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And we just need to wait till Donald Trump is in charge next year and and then everyone will get in line. But the question is what Democrats will do. Not just in this fight, but in next year's funding fight, the fight on taxes, immigration, energy, all the fights that are coming up in Congress next year.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Do Democrats use their leverage to extract concessions from Johnson, in this case in exchange for helping him keep the government open, or... Do Democrats just sit back and let Republicans fail? Because, you know, like I said, even if he gets the votes for this three month funding bill, which he may in the end, he's going to have to do this many, many more times when Trump is president.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
a statement that started, Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble. So this is obviously bullshit. And we know that it was Cassidy Hutchinson who reached out to Liz Cheney, not the other way around. Cheney talked to her in her capacity as a member of Congress, not a lawyer.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And we should say why there's an argument for paying them more. And it comes from like some Democrats, liberals, progressives. And it's because basically we have a system now where because members of Congress are paid the salaries they are, you have to be like... independently wealthy, which especially many members of the Senate are, in order to run for Congress.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Because a lot of these guys, it doesn't matter that they have a low salary for Congress because they're rich otherwise. But if we want people to go to Congress who are working class, who represent the incomes of most people in this country, then it needs to be a little more attractive as a salary.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah. But anyway, so that's one thing that's in there.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Or, you know, look, I am usually... Are you calling for a shutdown?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I'm not going to shut down the government. But just for discussion purposes, right? Okay. We've talked about shutdowns and what Democrats can do and using their leverage in the context of Trump's president, Democrats control the Senate, Trump's president, Democrats control the House, Biden's president, Republicans in the Congress.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We are now going to have a situation where Republicans control everything. They control everything, every level of power. They are in charge of the House, the Senate, the White House. Donald Trump has more power than any president has ever had. Got a Supreme Court that he has shaped.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And I wonder if next year when some of these bills come up, I'm thinking of especially like the tax bill, which I'm sure most Democrats will vote against anyway. But again, you can imagine a scenario where, you know, the tax bill is going to be a must pass bill. Right. Because the Trump tax cuts are set to expire next year. And so.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Trump wants to, of course, double down on his tax cuts, not just renew the tax cuts, but also like make the corporate tax rate even lower, give a bigger tax cut to corporations. You could imagine a scenario where because Mike Johnson may need Democratic votes that we extract some concessions and get some good middle class tax cuts, right? Beef up the middle class tax cuts.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And most importantly, when Republicans criticized Cheney for this meeting months and months ago, maybe years ago, they merely said that she had a, quote, ethical responsibility to have Hutchinson's lawyer present for the meeting. Didn't say anything about any laws being broken.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Or you can imagine Democrats saying, look, you guys run Washington. You have all the votes. You have powerful Donald Trump here. And we're not going to sit here and help you gut people's health care, take away their health insurance so you can give tax cuts to rich people. You find the votes for that because we're not going to stand for that.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Well, I mean, I think I think it depends on what's in the funding bill, too. But if that funding bill, which I imagine it will be under full Republican control, is gutting a bunch of priorities for Democrats and it's going to hurt a lot of people.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
If they they throw like Medicaid funding in there and they got Medicaid funding or they got the subsidies for the ACA that Democrats got to do instead of getting like compromising. So you get a little bit more of the subsidies and maybe you save a little bit more of the Medicaid cuts. I also think you could be like like they look, they want to fund the government.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
They want to pass something that's going to keep the government open but screw people who are going to lose their fucking health care? Go for it. You find the votes.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
He's the one who put out the report to Target Cheney.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I know what you're thinking. Dan and I together on a Wednesday, not a Friday. Is there a polling emergency? Turns out only for Ann Seltzer.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
But that, of course, was before Donald Trump and Kash Patel, the person he wants to run the FBI, campaigned on locking up Liz Cheney and the rest of the January 6th committee. Dan, how serious do you take this threat, not only for Cheney, but for all of Trump's critics?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
No. Yeah. Look, I've been I've been thinking about this because you can see even with the government fund. That's correct on the tax bill for sure. Even on the government funding bill, you can see a situation where Democrats are like, well, we want to want to work with Republicans where we agree and and, you know, extract some concessions and then stand up where we don't agree.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then Republicans end up keeping the government open, but they do a bunch of bad shit in the funding bill. And Democrats go, well, we got this concession and no one knows because no one pays attention to Congress. And all the people maybe understand about Congress right now or Washington in general, forget about Congress, is, oh, Donald Trump controls all of Washington.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Donald Trump's in power and anything that goes wrong, it's Donald Trump's fault. But in order for that to happen, Democrats have to be like, yeah, no, they're doing it all themselves.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yes, totally agree. All right. Finally, we like to cover good news when we see it, which isn't all that often right now. Something that caught our eye this morning, a piece from our friend Sam Stein at the Bulwark about more than 100 Democrats pushing for reform at ActBlue.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
ActBlue is the main online engine for small dollar donations to progressive candidates and causes and Democrats and all kinds of the whole broader Democratic universe. It is also, these Democrats argue, a key culprit in all of the fundraising spam movement. and grifty no-name appeals that drive us all crazy in our text messages, our emails, everything.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Some of the changes this group of Democratic operatives and staffers all want to see. No more solicitations from shady groups pretending to be official party entities when they're not. No more outlandish promises of a 500% match. If you give now and it's so urgent, you must give now by the deadline. They also want to see changes to the ways ActBlue sells or shares donor information.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
What do you think? I think this is the least we can do on this.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yes, I will just I would go beyond this, too. I mean, yes, let's get rid of all the scam packs and, you know, not have not as many of those texts. But like, we got to really think about, you know, the people who are writing these fundraising emails, these texts, like that strategy from the campaigns themselves.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And by the way, sometimes the campaigns outsource it to like some digital fundraising, you know, firm or whatever else, like, just the language that's used. I mean, I fucking start from scratch here. It's Some of the appeals seem ridiculous.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We've done this through Vote Save America here, but we believe that there is a way to help direct people's donations and figure out where to give that's smart and where it's needed.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
even in a way that makes sense to people, that doesn't sound like a fucking bot blowing up your phone, and is actually a real fundraising appeal, and maybe even use some humor, and maybe just sound a little more authentic. I just think that the entire business of democratic digital fundraising, it could use a real overhaul, and that goes just beyond the scam packs.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah, well, you know, I know. I know. They test the open rates, and so when they say, like, Matto segment freaked me out, and everyone, like, opens the fucking thing, and I get that, but, like, I don't know. I... I think that the testing is different from the like, okay, it's going to get some money, but how many people is it going to turn off?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
It's a good idea. Okay, when we come back from the break, you're going to hear my conversation with Cecilia Munoz about what it's been like to watch from the inside as the immigration conversation drifted farther and farther to the left. Quick plug before we do that. I know a lot of us have holiday trips coming up, maybe long flights.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
If you're traveling or you just need to escape from your family for a bit, I don't know why that would be. A reminder that you can binge Crooked's award-winning limited series. Podcasts like Dissident at the Doorstep about the shocking transformation of a Chinese civil rights activist into a MAGA figurehead. Killing Justice, which digs into the mystery of the death of a prominent Indian judge.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I also think it's interesting that they singled out Cheney. She's a former member of Congress and they didn't single out yet all the other members of the January 6th committee. And I think part of that is like that. What's scaring me most about it is that it is a concerted strategy to not like if they came out and said, we're.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And our most recent, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD about the secret history of America's largest police force, which was named one of the top podcasts of 2024 by Time Magazine, Vulture, and the New York Times. You can find all these limited series at cricket.com slash limiteds or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Cecilia Munoz.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Joining us today, she spent two decades focusing on civil rights and immigration at the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy organization before overseeing all domestic policy in Barack Obama's White House, the first Latina to do so. Cecilia Munoz, welcome back to Pod Save America.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
It is good to see you. Good to see you, too. You wrote a piece in The Atlantic called How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration with Frank Sherry, an advocate like you who ran pro-immigrant organizations for more than three decades and also advised the Harris campaign. I think the piece is very much worth a read, and I want to talk to you a little bit about the piece itself.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
But first, for people who don't know your background, can you talk a little bit about what led you to immigration advocacy and ultimately the White House?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
In your piece, you and Frank write, quote, Now, I've seen I shared the piece. You can imagine a lot of response. I'm sure you're getting a lot of response to it. I've seen a lot of activists and a few immigration reporters argue in response. Wait a minute. Biden relied on some Trump era policies to keep out the huge influx of migrants and asylum seekers during his first term.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then Kamala Harris ran on a border proposal so tough that it was written by a conservative Republican. So how does that qualify as elected Democrats following progressive advocates to the left?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
we're going after every member of the January 6th committee and all the staffers, and we're investigating all of them, then you would have more of an uproar. But to go after one person who's not in Congress anymore and is now just a private citizen shows that they're going to try to do this so that it doesn't garner a lot of attention, I think.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
So what do you think President Biden and Vice President Harris could have done differently over the last four years to deal with the border in a way that more Americans would have supported?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
It's funny because last night as I was preparing for this interview, I sort of went back on the whole timeline of everything that happened in the Biden administration around immigration. And because, you know, some people are arguing, look, they use Title 42, which Trump had used right from the beginning of the administration.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Title 42 is a public health provision that allowed both the Trump administration and Biden administration to turn away migrants and asylum seekers because of covid. And so they had that in place. And then after that was taken away, then they tried to do the border bill.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
So Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut agrees he had a compelling, if alarming, thread on all of this. He painted a picture where Kash Patel and the DOJ charged Cheney, right, because they have the power to do that. And then are the courts going to save her? Judges going to save her? Well, they can find a jurisdiction with a MAGA judge to try her.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then after that, they finally arrived at the executive action that essentially closed the border that resulted in many fewer crossings. But when I look back at like Biden's statements and speeches and remarks, it really there was almost nothing.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I mean, when he announced a new measure, he would talk about it, but like not much in the State of the Unions, not not like any kind of big immigration speeches. And it does seem like even as we talk about what the right message or wrong message was, there just wasn't much of a message at all.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And on an issue that ended up being, you know, the number two issue for most voters and not just Republican voters, that seems like a missed opportunity to say the least.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yes. And I want to get to that. But first, I want to go back for a second, because I think a lot of our listeners, a lot of Democrats, a lot of people who just sort of been involved and paying attention to politics sort of started at 2016 when Trump won. And I think the history and the context is really important to this debate to understand where we've been.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
The most common reaction when I shared your piece was activists on the left who said something to the effect of, well, you and Cecilia, you both worked for the deporter-in-chief, so we don't really trust you on this issue.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Can you talk a little bit about the politics of immigration when you were in the Obama White House, sort of your reaction to the deporter-in-chief criticism and what you guys in the policy part of the White House had to deal with there?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then Murphy tied it to Trump's larger effort to stifle dissent by, he's now officially sued Ann Seltzer in the Des Moines Register. He is, of course, intimidating media outlets. ABC News, we talked about on the last show, settled for 15 million dollars. Murphy talks about how Trump has and his new potential FCC commissioners threatened media outlets take away their broadcast licenses.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah, and I know you and Frank have both made this point, but look, the job of, as you know very well, the job of an advocate and an activist is to push on politicians, right? Yeah. It's also the job of the elected leaders to take in that advice and that pressure, but also do what's best for the country and for their other constituents and to continue to garner support so they can govern.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And one... The moment that I sort of realized that things had really shifted in a way that could potentially down the road be troubling is in that 2020 primary. Now, you know this because, you know, how many speeches do we work on? Immigration speeches in the Obama White House where Obama would always say we are a nation of immigrants. We are also a nation of laws.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And then he would say, we really want people who have been here in the shadows for decades, who were working hard and paying taxes and contributing to the community and have families here. We want to give them a pathway to citizenship. And we want to say that if we're going to give you this path, then there's a lot of other people who are going through the legal processes to become immigrants.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And so you'll have to pay a fine, get to get to the back of the line, and then we'll give you the pathway to citizenship. So he said that all the time. And there was no controversy around that at all. At least the way he said that. And then in one of the primary debates, Joe Biden uses that language about getting to the back of the line.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And there's this outcry that it was offensive, that he shouldn't say this. He had to meet with immigrant groups and and Latino groups. And he had to, like, apologize and do these roundtables. And I remember thinking, like, this is like so just standard language.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
He's threatened other lawsuits against media figures, media outlets. Whether or not any of this succeeds is beside the point, Murphy points out, because now, you know, everyone will be scared to say or write anything that Donald Trump doesn't like, including put out a poll where he's not ahead or is approving his law. What did you make of Murphy's threat?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And also now, after we just went through this last election and we heard from so many people in focus groups and voters and just, you know, interviews, Latinos, immigrants, recent immigrants who are saying, look, the one thing that bothers me is it took me years to become a citizen in this country. And now someone just just came over the border last week and suddenly they get all these benefits.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And I'm still been waiting for citizenship for 10 years. So I wonder why do you think the immigration activist community sort of went this route after 2012, I guess?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Well, you mentioned that a lot of this was sort of in relation to the response to Trump when he won the first time. I think the reason why it's so important now is because there's going to be another Trump term and another potential reaction from Democrats. He seems pretty intent on carrying out mass deportations.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
He's threatened to use the military, especially in blue states and sanctuary cities that may refuse to help ICE. He will try to end birthright citizenship. He seems ready to go far beyond only deporting undocumented immigrants who've broken the law while in this country or pose a threat to public safety or just arrived here recently.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We're looking at deportations of people who've been here for decades, who work and pay taxes and contribute and have family who are US citizens. How do you think Democrats should react this time around? And what lessons do we learn from last time, knowing that this time could be far more extreme than what we saw last time?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We are here together because Friday's episode is our annual Pundi show where all four of us debate the worst takes of the year, including ours. Then we're off for the holiday break. So Dan and I thought we'd do one last normal episode here in the very abnormal year of 2024.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah, my fear is that they are going to start by, they would love nothing more than to pick fights with blue state governors, mayors over deporting undocumented immigrants who are threats to public safety. And obviously this is a tiny percentage, but they have made these folks famous in the last campaign. And they would like nothing more than for Democrats to react
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
with outrage to the deportation of either recent arrivals or people who have broken laws and potentially violent criminals here in the United States. And I do wonder how we...
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Part of what I think this conversation requires is us to sort of have the discipline and wherewithal to think about when these horrific stories, much like the ones you just mentioned, when that happens, that we lift up those stories and that we don't necessarily overreact when they they try to, you know, deport violent criminals that they should deport.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Because I think that, you know, they're going to try to make this about what they've just made the last campaign about.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah. Well, to that point, I mean, we are so last question on this, like we are so far from having the votes to pass comprehensive immigration reform. And, you know, if if if the filibuster is still around, we would need 60 votes in the Senate. I don't even know how Democrats get 60 votes in the Senate at this point with this map. If we get rid of the filibuster, we still need 51 votes.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
That's still a challenge at this point. When you look at the states that are up in the next two elections. What do you think a Democrat running for president in twenty twenty eight? can realistically promise and what should they run on, knowing that part of the challenge has also been Democrats running on comprehensive immigration reform, making these promises, and then they get into power.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We don't have the votes, can't pass immigration reform because of the Republicans, and then Democrats get blamed for it.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And it's not just something that's happening here. We're seeing it all over the world as we're seeing mass migration, especially from the global south to the north. And so I think a lot of countries in Europe are dealing with this exact same thing. So this is not just a United States problem. Cecilia, thank you so much for joining.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Thank you for writing that to try to start this conversation, have an honest conversation. I know not easy for you as someone who cares so much about immigration and has been an advocate for so long. But I'm really glad that you and you and Frank started the conversation as contentious as it may get, because I think we need to have it. So thank you. And it was it was good talking to you.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
All right, that's our show for today. Dan, Tommy, Lovett, and I will convene on Friday to hand out this year's pundies, our awards for the very worst takes, and tweets. Talk to everyone then. Bye, everyone.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Yeah, there was a New York Times story as well today that sort of dug into why Disney decided to settle. And they listed a couple of reasons. One, as we've been saying and you just said, that $15 million for Disney is like chump change compared to what they would have to potentially pay if Trump won and they just didn't need the headache.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And so in some ways it's a business decision and it almost makes sense as a business decision, right? But then... They were worried about a jury in South Florida and a judge in South Florida because that's, you know, MAGA territory now. So they were worried that they wouldn't get a fair hearing. And then they were worried reportedly that it would go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And, you know, you've had Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and others say maybe the Supreme Court precedent on press freedom, like the foundational case, Sullivan, would that allows for freedom of the press and has the standard of actual malice for libel and defamation suits, that maybe it could get overturned.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And I think that just shows not only how screwed we are with Trump and what he's doing, but with the fact that the judiciary has been tilted so far right over the last several years.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I mean, it was interesting to me that Senator Murphy did this thread because he's a U.S. Senator, Democrat. It's not like us talking about it on Pod Save America. I sort of wonder, there's a lot of people sort of sounding the alarms, raising awareness for all this. Like, I don't know what to do about it. You know, like, I mean... There's obviously just thinking about Cheney again, right?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I think this is obviously another argument in favor of Biden issuing preemptive pardons, not just for Cheney, but for other members of the January 6th committee and staff, as well as potential Trump targets, the Department of Justice. But I think there's like a broader strategic question here.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
We have talked a lot since the election about how Democrats in the broader pro-democracy movement can't just spend our time being defenders of institutions and that we have to talk about things that directly impact voters' lives. I can't imagine a fight to defend Liz Cheney or ABC News or the Des Moines Register fits into that category, but...
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
I think we would also agree that a show trial against one of Trump's opponents or lawsuits that are completely frivolous and baseless against media companies is crossing a pretty dangerous Rubicon. So what do we do? That's a very tough question, John. I'm not going to lie. I know.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Because I wanted to use the example because I feel like, you know, we've all become very comfortable to be like, Democrats can't defend the status quo and we can't defend institutions and we got to be the party of reform, blah, blah, blah. And then something like this happens. It's like, okay, so do we just say, well, that's pretty scary, but I'll see you later.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
So we are going to talk about how House Democrats voted to pass over AOC for the top job on the Oversight Committee and whether it says anything about the party's broader strategy over the next few years. We also potentially have some good news. There's reportedly an effort afoot to stop Democratic fundraising spam. How about that?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Well, I completely agree. And on that note, I also think it matters how we frame these fights when we take them on. And so what does the average person care about the Des Moines Register or ABC News backing away from Trump? What do they care about Liz Cheney on trial or someone at the DOJ or Merrick Garland or whoever?
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Well, Donald Trump over the next couple of years is hanging around with a bunch of billionaires and they are going to try to enrich themselves at every possible chance. They're going to take every possible chance to enrich themselves and they're going to try to screw everyone else, take away your health care so they can pay for tax cuts for rich people, all kinds of corruption.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
You're going to have to pay more in prices and they want you not to know about it. They don't want any critics. And then when they do this, when the press tries to report about it or when someone tries to complain, a Democratic politician or anyone else, they want to throw them in jail or they want to sue them.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And so they want a country where they can get away with whatever they want and enrich themselves and screw you and have no one find out about it. And I do think that like just it's subtle and it's nuanced, but I think how we frame these fights matters.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
And so that it's not necessarily about our democratic institutions under attack, but it's about Trump trying to get away with a lot of shit with a lot of with Elon Musk and all of his billionaires around him. Yep. Let's talk about Democrats who are dealing with their own congressional drama.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
On Wednesday, House Democrats voted to give 74 year old Jerry Connolly of Virginia the top Democratic spot on the Oversight Committee instead of 35 year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, widely regarded as one of the party's best messengers, certainly the one with the biggest reach. The vote was 131 to 84.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Connolly has been a longtime member of Oversight, which is primarily responsible for investigations, though he did sadly announce in November that he has esophageal cancer. This means the Democrats will be replacing 61-year-old Jamie Raskin, who will now be the top Democrat on Judiciary, with someone even older.
Pod Save America
AOC Loses to the Gerontocracy
Though, as Connolly ally Congressman Don Beyer said, Jerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding. It's quite a quote. Dan, on last Friday's episode... We were both encouraged by reporting that AOC basically had the votes to get the gig, and we're pretty excited about it. What do you think happened?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Remember during the Obama transition, how many times Barack Obama said the words while he was announcing cabinet appointees and staff, which was the only time he really went out? One president at a time, one president at a time. That was like the whole that was the whole theme. And he's not the first to do that. That's that's what they usually do.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
There was a couple of White House officials that went on background to Politico for the story. And some Biden aides acknowledged the president's absent from the broader discussions about how to address Trump's coming presidency in the future of the party. They say that they say it's rooted in two factors. One, Biden's own recognition that few are eager to hear from him.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
and his own lingering personal belief that he doesn't owe much more to a party that unceremoniously pushed him aside and then another white house official former white house official said he's been so cavalier and selfish about how he approaches the final weeks of the job which is a lot for a former white house official i mean i like i get the recognition that maybe people aren't willing to hear from him is understandable that he might think that right the party thing i hope is not true because i don't know what do you guys think he could be doing quiet quitting
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That seems to be what he is doing. Yeah. Oh, instead. Yes. Got it. You know, but instead of just complaining that he's not out there, I'm wondering what we think.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I said this on Friday, but I also hope that he there's 30 or 40 inmates, federal inmates on death row. He could reduce their sentences. He could save them from the death penalty and just reduce it to life in prison without parole for those federal inmates. And just more broadly, like.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He could be giving a series of speeches or press conferences where he talks about the importance of defending democratic institutions, which was very... I know that's not a political winner, but it was important to him for his presidency. It seems to be the... And also, more specifically, he could talk about, like you were saying, Levitt, actions that he's taking to do that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Now, maybe he still may do that, right? And if he does, wonderful. We'll be the first to praise him. But it's just... It's odd that... You know, he talked about Donald Trump being an existential threat to democracy for so long.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And I wasn't necessarily critical when he like met with Donald Trump and smiled for the cameras because he's clearly he wants to prove and show that he believes in democracy and the transfer, the peaceful transfer of power. I totally agree with that. But he could still sort of speak to the angst a lot of people in the country are feeling. It seems to be a good role for a president.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That seems like that would be a good question for someone to ask in a press conference.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Speaking of the pardon power, Dan and I praised Biden on Friday's show for the single largest act of clemency in modern history. But over the last few days, we've all learned more about the big batch of commutations that the White House announced last week.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Some of them aren't looking so great, including a former judge in Pennsylvania who was serving a 17 and a half year sentence for getting kickbacks from private prisons in exchange for giving more than 2,500 juveniles the harshest possible sentence, even though most of them didn't deserve it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So the private for-profit prison gives the judge money and the judge says, I'll fill up your prison with juveniles whether they deserve it or not.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
It's a cartoon evil scheme. It came to be known as the kids for cash scandal. And some Democrats have blasted Biden for the decision, including Governor Josh Shapiro. This was in Pennsylvania, of course, who noted that some children took their lives because of this. What on earth do you think the White House was thinking?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I think that's probably what happened. Yeah, the CARES program under Trump sent 12,000 prisoners to home confinement, right? And the vast, vast majority of them were convicted of white collar and other nonviolent crimes. So for the last several years, you've got all these white collar nonviolent criminals serving out home confinement. And so you're right, they must have just did a blanket...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I just want to note that there's nothing defamatory about 60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris, where Donald Trump was not part of his problem in the interview.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But like, I don't know. Obviously, that's the council's office, the lawyers. You'd think a few political people would have eyes on that just to comb through the names. I don't know. I mean, it is. I will say there was I saw this on Twitter. There was like a bunch of people who are prison abolitionists who were complaining about Biden releasing the kids for cash guy and some other people.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And I was like, that's interesting, because if you're a prison abolitionist. I mean, it does speak to their challenge that you're bringing up, Tommy, which is like part of the reason you do a pardon is because you're like, yeah, someone did something bad and we want to we don't believe they should be and everyone should be in jail for it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Let's start with ABC then. What was your reaction to the news that they settled, and why do you guys think they did?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, and if you listen to some of the families of those kids, especially the kids who took their own lives, it's fucking heartbreaking. So Kamala Harris was at the DNC holiday party, too, where Biden told her, quote, Mood was festive, I'm sure. Biden told her, quote, you're not going anywhere, kid, because we're not going to let you go. Okay. We haven't really touched on this on the pod.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Speaking of home confinement. What are we talking about here? What do you guys think Harris's next move should be? There's a couple stories. There's one in the Washington Post. There's one on CNN about how she's trying to decide right now between, according to her advisors that talked on background,
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
uh whether she will run for governor california in 2026 or not run for governor in 2026 and run for president in 2028 and it is unclear right now which way she is leaning and i guess there could be a third option which she doesn't either yeah i'm interested in that third option the uh
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I think you should sit down and think to yourself, and I would give this advice to her or any politician, really. What do I really want to do? What issues do I care about? Where can I make the biggest difference? And, you know, she at one point, I think they said this in The Washington Post story.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
She was trying to decide when she was attorney general of California whether she wanted to run for Senate or run for governor. And she made a list of pros and cons. And she decided that her skills were better suited for the U.S. Senate. Right.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
She should look at the California gubernatorial race and if she feels like she can really make a difference and she loves the idea of being governor of our state and wants to tackle these issues, she should do it. If she really truly believes that she should be president again and she has a strong theory of the case on why she should and how she can contribute, then she should do that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I'm not saying she's doing this, but sometimes advisors do this and fundraisers do this and everyone else. I don't think doing... Should I be in this slot or that slot or what's better or what can I win? Like, that's obviously a consideration. But I think from the candidate themselves, you got to really think about what you want to do.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And she's run statewide in California and been the top law enforcement officer.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Can I share with you guys a quote from a Harris campaign advisor in the Washington Post story? Please. It's almost Shakespearean that Joe Biden didn't just kill his own campaign, he killed hers too. So no love lost there. What about that is Shakespearean? It's not particularly Shakespearean, honestly.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Anyway, if you're the Harris campaign advisor, please tell us what you meant. We'll keep you anonymous. It's almost Shakespearean. Almost. OK, two other big things people are talking about that are more politics adjacent. Drones and daylight saving time. Oh, yeah. Let's take drones first.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Joe Biden yields the spotlight to Donald Trump in the final weeks of his presidency. We'll dig into the strange dynamic and talk about what Biden has and hasn't been doing.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
As you probably know, since the middle of last month, lots of people in New Jersey and some other states now have reported seeing mysterious drones like things flying in the night sky. No one has been able to provide any definitive answers. The Pentagon says they're not U.S. military officers. or enemy drones. White House says they're mostly manned aircraft.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
A finding that incoming New Jersey Senator Andy Kim confirmed after going out drone spotting himself. Good for Andy Kim. Love Andy Kim. He's the best. But like a lot of other people, he's also expressed frustration that the federal government hasn't done more to alleviate people's concerns.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Kim wrote on Twitter on Saturday, quote, I think the situation in some ways reflects this moment in our country. People have a lot of anxiety right now about the economy, health, security, etc. And too often we find that those charged with working on these issues don't engage the public with the respect and depth needed.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Case in point, Donald Trump, for his part, said in the Monday morning press conference, the government knows what's happening and that something strange is going on. For some reason, they don't want to tell people and they should. Before adding that maybe he didn't want to spend the weekend in Bedminster after all.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And then when he was asked also, have you received an intelligence briefing on this? He said, oh, I shouldn't comment on that. Love the restraint.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
shoot them down it's like they're on chinese shoot them down another uh it might have been the same republican house member from new jersey that you just mentioned but he does a press conference with local police officers and he's like i want to give local police the authority to shoot down the drones now we're just telling police to just shoot things in this That's right.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, he's like, we don't have to get them. No, a mayor said that when some mayor in New Jersey like we don't we don't have to shoot them all down. Just one to see what's going on. Yeah. So John Kirby. Seems smart to me. John Kirby at the briefing on Monday. What's Kirby's title?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He said, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed wing aircraft, helicopter, helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones. Well, it seems like we have a great.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So now on a limb after that, you guys pay the big bucks for that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, they did say that like there were thousands of tips and out of all those tips, only like a very small percentage turned out to be anything in the sky. Right, right.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Speaking of mania that has you losing your mind, Daylight Saving Time. By the way, when Reid wrote this, and then he asked me, and then he's like, did you know it was called Daylight Saving Time and not Savings Time? And I was like, I learned that just in this moment when you sent me the script.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Anyway, Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that he would try to end it, which seems like he probably means make it permanent. You can get into that. It's a move that has support in a lot of quarters, including top flunkies like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Marco Rubio, and most importantly... Our own John Lovett. Take it away.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
One can only hope that when Mr. Trump and his lawyers are reviewing the part of this episode where you accused him of killing JonBenet Ramsey, they continue listening. to this part so they can understand the best solution to daylight saving time.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I don't know what it's called. Elon will tell us. All right. That's enough for that, I guess. Do you want to put a button on this? Yeah.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Okay, when we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna about his promises to work with Elon Musk on the Doge agenda, what worries him most about his second Trump term, and more. But one quick thing before we do that, if you've been wondering what the hell is going on in Syria and how the U.S.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
government is approaching it, or want to understand many of the other major international stories happening around the world... Check out Pod Save the World. I got you. Hosted by this guy over here, Tommy Vitor. Fancy title here. Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Look at that. Pod Save the World drops every Wednesday. Find it wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. When we come back, Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So you've been out there a lot since the election, and I want to start by asking about your approach to politics, which seems to be more economically populist than most Democratic politicians, but also more willing to talk and work with people Democrats disagree with, whether it's Republicans, Fox News, Elon Musk. I feel like that overall approach is...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
popular with most voters, but a harder sell with left-leaning politicians, pundits, activists, and otherwise very engaged liberals and leftists who help drive the debate. The people who favor reaching out to the other side usually aren't that into economic populism, and the progressive populists aren't that into reaching out to the other side.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
How do you break through all that, and how do you arrive at this approach?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I've heard you say that when it comes to Elon Musk, Democrats have to get back to celebrating entrepreneurship and innovation because the average American thinks it's pretty cool that someone like Elon can send rockets into space. I take that point. I think Elon is clearly smart and successful in certain areas. And I have plenty of liberal friends who can't understand why I don't really like him.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But I just wonder if... Yeah. It just feels like all of that goes beyond policy and political disagreements. I know you've known him for a long time. What do you think happened to him? Is going on with him?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
On Doge, I like your idea of trying to work with Musk and the Republicans on that commission. Have you and other Democrats thought about proposing your own list of budget cuts and government reforms that Elon and Trump and the Republicans would then have to respond to?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
We'll also talk about the great drone mystery that's taken the nation by storm and Trump's promise to make daylight saving time permanent, which might not be such a crazy idea, according to noted circadian rhythm expert Jon Lovett. That's right.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Ted Sarandos is on his way there now to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Do you think from your conversations that those guys are willing to play ball on Doge, like that they're going to take your ideas and compromise? Or do you think it's just kind of, you know, I know that they're sort of welcoming your ideas. They've welcomed your ideas, other people, Bernie.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But I wonder when push comes to shove, if it's more for show or they're really interested in working together.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So I dug into this just to see if I was missing something about the case. So what happened is Trump said that the damages were too much money and he shouldn't know that much because he didn't rape her. That was his contention when he filed a second suit. Judge Kaplan said... The finding that Ms.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I don't know if you saw that Senator Mike Lee and Elon just today both called for repealing the Congressional Impoundment Act so that Trump could unilaterally decide not to spend money that Congress appropriates by law. Does that worry you? Do you think that they could have the votes for that?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Obviously, the margins are pretty close in the House. Do you think there are enough of your Republican colleagues that wouldn't want to give up their own power to appropriate money?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Do you have faith that the judicial system, as conservative leaning as the Supreme Court is, will act as a bulwark against that?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Carroll failed to prove that she was raped within the meaning of the New York penal law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her, as many people commonly understand the word rape. Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that. That then led to a Washington Post headline saying,
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I want to ask you about what health care looks like in the next four years. Last time Trump was in office, he tried to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Probably doesn't have the votes to do that this time around, but he could certainly cut Medicaid in a budget and the ACA subsidies that you all expanded in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He was just asked about the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, which he rightly condemned, but he didn't say anything else about the need for health care reform or the anger people have towards the insurance industry. You've had some great ideas on how to prevent insurance companies from denying so many claims. You talk a lot about the need for Medicare for All.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
It seems like not only are we years away from any kind of reform, but we may be in a situation where millions of people are losing their health insurance and paying higher premiums over the next four years. What, if anything, do you think Democrats can do about that?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That said, judge clarifies, yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll. Then Stephanopoulos does the interview with Nancy Mace where he said, oh, he was found to have raped her. And Mace says no. And they go back and forth. And George says, oh, let's put up the Washington Post headline on the screen.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, I wish I could say that I expressed it more succinctly or at least more compellingly, but a lot of people are mad at me for how I've talked about it. And, you know, I've talked to some of our listeners about it, and I very much understand the rage and the anger towards the insurance industry. I totally get that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
what i've been trying to figure out is you know a lot of people said to me here's the thing we you know we vote for democrats we organize we go out there every election we volunteer and then we put democrats into office and it just never seems like we make any progress on health care reform and you know they'll say i know that you worked on the aca and that improved that improved things somewhat but uh it's still hell the the insurance system is still hell and i'm i'm losing hope
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
that we can make any kind of progress on health care reform. And that's why, you know, I don't think people who, you know, are celebrating the murder or at least excusing it are shouldn't be the focus. The focus should be like, you know, what are we going to do to change the system?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And it's to me, it's like a really hard thing to explain to folks that, no, you got to keep organizing and you got to keep voting and you got to keep working towards a better solution here because, you know, You know, it's been many, many years and it seems like the best we could do was stop Donald Trump from repealing the ACA.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You know, Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress, you guys beefed up the insurance subsidies, which is great. But clearly there's a lot of pain and anger out there. And I don't I don't really I'm sort of at a loss at this point what to tell people about the best path forward.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So with all that in mind, the standard of actual malice is you need to, one, make a demonstrably false statement of fact, two, know that the statement was false or either know that it's false or had reckless disregard for its falsity, and three, damage his reputation. I got to tell you, two and three.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, one thing I always think about is, you know, we often say that Democrats, we don't want to be Republican light on policy because that doesn't give people a real choice. Why wouldn't they just go with Republicans instead of Republican light? And then when we talk about our approach to politics...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I kind of think it's the same thing, because if we're going to act just like Republicans, then it's not really giving people much of a choice. Because why wouldn't they just go with Republicans? Because they're going to be tougher and and they're going to slash and burn and they're going to play dirtier and they're not going to follow the rules or follow the laws.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So I might as well just vote for Republicans instead of if Democrats are going to do the same thing. So part of me thinks that, like you said, we're trying to build our job is harder in a way because we are trying to restore people's faith. or at least buttress people's faith in the power of collective action and a government where we take care of each other and look out for each other.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And I just think it's a harder thing to do now, partly because of the problems that you've talked about, which is... you know, we have economic inequality and people are feeling isolated and they're feeling left behind. And, you know, it does feel like these two things are connected, right?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Which is the economic inequality and then sort of the cynicism people are feeling towards government and the possibility that we can actually build something better. Is that something you worry about as well?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The path back to power for Democrats doesn't just involve winning some combination of the seven swing states that Kamala Harris lost. It also involves winning 51 Senate seats. We currently have 47. If you look at 2026, a majority will require flipping Maine, which is doable, but then you need North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska to get to 51. Wow. 2028, just as bad.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You need Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alaska, the only real pickup opportunities. I wonder, like, what kind of Democratic candidate do you think could win in states like those, knowing that Sherrod Brown, one of the most successful, respected, progressive economic populists the Senate has ever had, just lost his seat?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You mentioned 50 state strategy for for DNC. Do you have a favorite candidate for DNC chair yet?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you, as always, for joining Pod Save America and come back soon.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Wednesday. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at cricket.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Then Congressman Ro Khanna stops by to talk about collaborating with Elon Musk and Trump and how Democrats in the upcoming Congress should strike the balance between resisting and getting things done. But first, Donald Trump unexpectedly took questions from reporters Monday morning at Mar-a-Lago. As he usually does at these things, he talked about all kinds of shit without making too much news.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah. Like one possibility is if there was something in all the documents where someone at ABC News, one of George's producers was like, hey, by the way, you're not supposed to say rape. You know, I don't know if that's true at all, but I'm just saying like that's one possibility where because Trump was set to be deposed. Stephanopoulos was set to be deposed. They settled before.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Also, head of ABC News was at Mar-a-Lago also a week before meeting with Susie Wiles. They said it didn't have anything to do with the settlement.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, and look, I think you could make an argument that it was the best business decision for Disney because it's chump change to them. But what happens when you are a journalist or media outlet that doesn't have ABC's resources, doesn't have the backing of Disney, right? Also, you know, the New York Times reported over the weekend that...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Trump, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel have threatened other journalists and pundits with defamation lawsuits, including the New Yorker for their Pete Hegseth story that ended up going to print anyway. And, you know, for Patel, it was Olivia Troy, former Trump administration official who was on TV, said something about him that he was lying or something like that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And then, you know, and now you got Trump out there saying, I'm going to just going to just going to sue Ann Seltzer for giving me a bad poll, which I mean, I don't I don't think that's that's going to fly.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The Pulitzer Organization for giving the Post and the Times Pulitzers for the Russia reporting, Russia investigation.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Even when I was like taking notes on this and thinking of like rereading what Judge Kaplan said, I was like, can I do this? Is this like it's the chilling effect is real because you start thinking, oh, shit, I don't want to get even if you can win the defamation lawsuit. You want to spend however much money on lawyers to go to to go to court.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But one thing that got a lot of attention, including ours, was his response to a question about lawsuits against media figures. We found out over the weekend that ABC News will contribute $15 million to Trump's post-presidency foundation and pay another million in legal fees to settle a defamation lawsuit the president-elect brought against them.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I don't know him. Parody. I was. He's just a guest on the show. Get his get his emails just only. Anyway, it is chilling. It is very chilling. I wouldn't worry so much if I was Ann Seltzer because I think that's fine. Shouldn't we be suing Ann Seltzer for giving us false hope?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You better get the 14th key and get the fuck out of here. I want to sue the American people.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
It's coming for you, Andy. Anyway, it's bad. It's bad, guys. So the purpose of Trump's appearance at Mar-a-Lago Monday morning was to announce a $100 billion investment from SoftBank, the hugely influential Japanese bank in American AI projects. What an American story. It was more or less a standard presidential policy announcement. The main difference being Trump isn't president yet.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
A fact that's getting easier and easier to forget as Joe Biden seems to be disappearing from the public stage as his term comes to an end. Over the weekend, Trump took his new bro squad to watch the Army-Navy game at the Commander Stadium just outside D.C., an event that the president sometimes attends and Biden has attended himself in the past.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
No sign of him this year, though he did apparently appear at the DNC holiday party. The White House put out a memo on Sunday hinting that in the coming weeks, Biden will be announcing more pardons or commutations, doing more to protect federal land and trying to forgive more student debt, rein in AI and award more CHIPS Act and IRA money.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
No details on what we can expect or when. What do you guys think is going on here? Has Joe Biden stepped out of the spotlight or has the spotlight just moved away from Joe Biden? And what do you think it says that they had to put out that memo at all?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And so it is like- Sounds like it was pretty smart of that guy.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The lawsuit came after George Stephanopoulos mistakenly said on air that Trump had, quote, been found liable for rape in the E. Jean Carroll case as opposed to mere sexual abuse and defamation. A reporter at the Monday Presser asked Trump whether he's considering expanding his legal strategy to include other media outlets that he believes defamed him. Let's listen.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
plotting out strategy like everyone's having a good time i mean well they all not i feel like none of them want to be too far from trump like mike johnson goes because he's everywhere they're about to do the vote for speaker and yeah he feels like he's got it but he doesn't want he wants to make sure you know and elon he can't shake elon no matter where he goes now um i do think it was i think it was probably probably not ultimately helpful when pete hexeth uh streaked towards the end of the game
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That's right. So, you know, get it while you can. I don't want to see it to seem like we are harping on the Army-Navy game attendance of Joe Biden or non-attendance of Joe Biden is like the issue here. Politico did a story about this last week. They said it crossed nearly two weeks abroad since the election when he went abroad to Angola and other places.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Biden spoke just seven words to the media traveling with him the entire foreign trip. Go fuck yourself. He has yet to schedule a post-election press conference as both President Obama and President George W. Bush did when they were on their way out of office. He went to the Rose Garden to publicly praise a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. And he spoke to the press about Assad fleeing Syria.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Pod something? Yeah, that's right. Podcast? You did a podcast? All right. All right. It's our last show of 2024, and that means it's our annual Pundies episode where we will rank the very worst takes from a very bad year, including our own, if they can find any. We'll also do our annual New Year's resolutions, which we always break and always forget.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
It's definitely the keys. That's where I was leaning. That's where I was leaning. I mean, like, Ann Seltzer is being sued and did have the biggest mist from the best pollster ever. But, again... She said, when she put out the poll, it could be an outlier and I'd be comfortable with that. She actually... She made a joke.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And now that's what the lawyers will do. So you know what? It's Alan Lichtman, hands down.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And honestly, Nate Silver, while spectacularly wrong about Florida and putting $100,000 on it, you know, I guess I have a little respect for putting the $100,000 on an event in public. I mean, I don't know if he actually did it, but even saying that.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Okay. So Alan Lichtman, winner. There you go. Congratulations. Or loser.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, I hope so. Is that the wrong approach? I think he'll end up being commerce secretary.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
That is a key difference. Key difference. I think I was told by this person directly that I was January 6th thing, Joe Biden. As were all of you. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I got that too.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Chris Busey has quite a few followers, Dan. Quite a few followers.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, you know, if you think that trying to pressure Biden to step down was like January 6th, agree to disagree.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Not to suggest that anything is more important than dunking on each other's worst moments, guys, but as we're recording this on Thursday afternoon LA time, the U.S. government is basically in total chaos. And non-essential functions may shut down just in time for the biggest travel week of the year. All because Elon Musk tweeted us to the precipice of a government shutdown.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
This was so good. So good. I remember this one too.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, just trolling. Yeah. I remember being struck by who it was. So they might have deleted their account, but it was not some rando with two followers. It was being retweeted.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Wow, that's a deep pull. I don't know. I think it was like a K-Hive person.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. If the text exchanges between Elijah and I end up in Discovery, this is what it's going to show. Don't let them shame you, John.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I mean, I want to know, did Chris Boozy go first or did he go first? Did Seth Abramson go first? Because they're very similar.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I do think Seth Abramson's been on the mark, you know? Time for some game theory.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
He's Tulsi's deputy at DNI. Now it's really time for some game theory. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think because he thought the funding bill had too many pages. He was upset with the height of the stack of paper. It was upsetting to him. Aesthetically not pleasing. So he started tweeting, and then Trump got involved, and then they killed this bill that had been negotiated with both parties very carefully. It was going to pass. Killed the bill. Then now, as we're recording, there's a new bill.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I mean, I will say, I'm not even going to name the person. There was a member of Congress who went on CNN and not only said that it was racist to call on Joe Biden to step down, but that it was ableist. Right.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
So so the discourse is the is skipping the debate commission.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Doesn't seem like they have the Republican votes for that or the Democratic votes for that. And the government runs out of money Friday night.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Well, now that we can look back on the race, I think we would all agree that celebrity endorsements were the difference maker. That's true.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
There was a statement from the White House on Wednesday evening. Right. That's all we've heard. President Trump's been doing some posting some truths. Elon Musk has been tweeting up a storm. J.D. Vance, I think, has been tweeting.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. I mean, look, I think I think when you look at Democratic consultants, most of them are like men over 40. Right. The under 40 men are usually operatives, staffers, stuff like that. But I don't know. I'm 40 now. Look, Travis didn't didn't word it artfully. You were 40. Yeah. I'm in my 40s. I should have said that's what I meant. But yeah, clearly we did have a problem getting men.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Well, guys, we made it. It's our last show of 2024.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I will say that the gender gap, at least according to the exit polls, ended up being not as large as the polls suggested.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
That's what I was getting at, Dan. That's what I was getting at. We did worse with women. So I guess we had a women problem as well.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
human beings but i will say even among gen z where we also had a big problem the split was the biggest split was college educated non-college educated uh not men women right so it's uh and we'll see more when the data comes out but we have a problem with people who don't have college degrees and a problem with travis and we have a big problem with travis huge problem who does hate women yeah yeah yeah we'll appreciate you saying that
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I guess I guess in the old version and the new version, the new version of the bill, which doesn't know if it's going to go anywhere that that Trump and Musk approve of the big changes. They were able to eliminate funding for childhood cancer research. It's got to stop. So losers, kids with cancer. Winners, pharmaceutical middlemen, pharma managers, and China.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Like I think we talked- Boy, did we get one of those.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I just want to say one more thing here. Joe Biden, this decision was Joe Biden's and a very small circle of people around him. Mostly family. Mostly family. And Wall Street Journal was out today. He was more cloistered in these four years than he ever has been in his whole career. He had a small circle of advisors. Not a lot of other people got in.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And I remember when we did a crooked offsite like a year, more than a year before the election. And we did like a political section where everyone could ask us questions about the coming race and politics. And all you guys, our staff, like peppered us with questions like, why is Joe Biden running? Joe Biden's too old. And I think then we said, number one, no one is challenging him.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
No one has decided to challenge him. And number two, like he is deciding with the people around him that he wants to run for president and he gets to decide. And people think it's like the party, this, that, the other thing. Like he was he wasn't even listening to members of Congress by the end. At the end, like Chuck Schumer barely got to his house to try to convince him.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
He was like, you know, he wasn't listening to many people. So.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
The pressure came. But yeah, it was pretty close to pretty close to him not doing it.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
So that's what we're watching. Merry Christmas, everyone. Wonder how it turns out. Dan, what do you think? Anything?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Is it gay to wear pink, fellas? Can someone note when Jesse Waters' birthday is so we can all wish him a happy birthday from as many people as possible? It's a funny bet. That's good. I feel like, like Lovett said, I think he needs it. July 9th, we got a minute. Sounds like he needs birthday wishes.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Wow, that person is crazy. I was waiting for, what is the Trojan horse metaphor there?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
What's the alphabet mafia? That's gay people. That's LGBTQ. That helps a little bit. Yeah, we're the alphabet mafia. Wow, that's up there for me. That's a contender.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
But I don't think she also was sort of incomprehensible. Oh, absolutely.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You boys work it out. The new click. Okay. Anyway, let's get to the good stuff. So we have not seen any of the takes or categories in advance. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to our guest host, the Take Master General himself, Elijah Cohn.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You know, that's a great point, Tommy. It's not this is going to bug me because like the January 6th committee now all facing jail time. The January 6th committee, like, that was the first set of hearings where I was like, oh, they finally nailed it. They didn't go every member on the panel giving their big, long speeches, doing this, putting on their dog and pony show. That's so right.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
It's like they had a plan. They stuck to the plan. They got right to it. It was good TV. Wouldn't it be so nice if the Senate Democrats did this for all the hearings?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Do we think Mark Zuckerberg will put his hand on his heart for that one too?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
My dogs were so... 77 million people. Thumbs up. Thumbs up to that guy. Looks like we're the ones eating crow.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I mean, it is tough because it's like we're doing worst takes. It was like a bad take that won. But, you know. Yeah. Best worst takes. I don't know.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
there is an argument for vaccines just because now we're going to be living with that. Like, right.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Dogs and cats. All right. Cool. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do that, a reminder that now through January 1st, we're offering 25% off new annual Friends of the Pod subscriptions.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
A Friends of the Pod subscription is the single best way to help Crooked Media continue our mission of building a progressive, independent media company at a time when it's never been more important. Plus, you'll get access to ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, a Discord community, and more. Sign up today at crooked.com slash friends or through the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Also, she did become the Secretary of Homeland Security. Yeah, she's DHS now. That's not nothing.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Abortion? Abortion? A headwind? No. Disagree. I'm for whatever you guys are all for.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I just think a lot of what I take- Sometimes it's like a shitty Polaroid, you know?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You've said this a few times. He's saying dog show.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I was so happy with that. I was so happy. And the appearance was not perfect, right? He still trailed off at times. He interrupts himself once in a while. But if you're someone who's wondering whether he's sharp enough for the job or knows his shit, more appearances like that should give you more confidence. I mean, he was pretty good on Seth Meyers. I don't remember that interview at all.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
No, I mean, I thought you should have gone with the State of the Union discourse, which I think was looking back at, talk about a grading on a curve.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Elijah, could you give us the... There was something missing from that take. What was the date of the take? February. February. February of 2000. 24, yeah. Okay, February 24. So after State of the Union. Okay, yeah. That's when he was cooking. He was off the seat.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Three dinners. I don't know. I don't know who to pick. Maybe we shouldn't pick. Maybe everyone else should.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Thank you, Dan. That's a good take. Yeah. Good take, Dan.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
If Joe Biden performed like he did on Seth Meyers the entire campaign, it would be a little different.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Probably not. I could name like five worst takes that I had. Go ahead. Yeah, do it. No, no, no.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
The answer is worse. Well, let's kick things off then.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I think now we can use a picture of Alan Lickman for the art.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Alan Lieberman, come get your keys. We've got one last order of business before we sail off into Crooked's holiday break. Our New Year's resolutions. As always, we'll be confronted with our resolutions from last year to see how we did. Unfortunately, I'm up first. Part of my resolution is similar to Dan's, which is my attention span's gone. I have a strategy, which is I want to take a walked
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
20 to 30 minutes a day, maybe a couple days a week, realistically, where I don't bring my phone and I don't listen to anything. This is big on TikTok, the silent walk. Yeah, the silent walk.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Not without my phone. But I will say this is what I did. I did every Tuesday. My Tuesdays in the middle of the day, I would take a walk and I would listen to a podcast, but I would not look at my phone. So exactly. I didn't do it, but I did.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Okay, how many years am I going to get the fucking volunteering one?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, my God. All right. Let's hear Tommy's resolution.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, wow. How'd you do? You get a lot of the tech consultants out of your inbox?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Okay, okay. Oh, oh, I guess I didn't do my resolution for this. Oh, let's do them all at the end. Okay, that's great, great. Dan, let's do Dan's.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, but like a weekly, a couple days a week? Is it every day?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. All right. Now we'll go around and do our resolutions. My resolution this year, this one I'm going to, I'm going to nail. I cannot fucking wait. More posting. Okay. I'm more posting, more Twitter fights. It's going to be Twitter. It's going to be Blue Sky. I'm jumping in the Discord. I'm posting, posting, posting, posting. TikTok stitches. TikTok stitches. Really? Is this serious? Yeah.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
More? I'm going to just say what I want. Okay. I'm getting in there. I'm getting in the Discord. You've all seen it. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Since Biden had that great debate.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I will say that like in the in the in the month or two before the election, I kind of I kind of settled down a little bit on the post and I did a lot of checking, but not a lot of posting. I'm posting now.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
It usually starts in the group chat. I usually test it out there and I'm like, oh, it's going to Twitter. What's the goal?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Part of this is that I can't stop it, so I might as well lean into it.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
No, it's a joke. It's a joke, guys. But I am going to... Well... The reason I'm going to post more is because I'm going to put out my thoughts, right? I'm not going to get in Twitter fights, stuff like that, but I want to write my thoughts down more. And if it's in posts, that's great. If it's in articles, that's great. But I realize that just talking is not good enough for me.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I want to actually write my thoughts down. And I really actually want to – I don't want to be on Twitter as much posting, but I do want to – I've been talking to our Discord subscribers, and they're great. And so I want to get in there more. They're nice. Great.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. And like some of it is, there's times where I've just been like writing stuff down that doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't go on Twitter. It doesn't go anywhere. But sometimes it actually just helps to sort of like, you know, type something out.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah. That's, it'll be good. That'll be good. All right, Tommy, who's a, who's in your inbox that you're getting out this year?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
It's Grammy for spoken word. Sounds like, is that Adrian? That was Adrian, right? Wow. Voice for radio. EGOT.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
All right. Well, good luck, everyone. I'll be posting. That feels like a pretty good place to end it.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
As I mentioned, we're going to be on our winter break the next two weeks, but we'll be tidying you over here in the feed with special access to an episode of our subscriber show Inside 2024 with Dan and Alyssa, all about how presidential transitions work and an episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams about the Trump administration's plans for health care.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
No, no, no. But it's not like a guess who did the... It's not a guess who did it.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Big thanks to the Take Master General, Elijah, for hosting, to Hallie Kiefer for writing, and to our PSA staff for the hours they spent combing through the very worst of the internet and this show to bring you today's episode. You guys are fantastic.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Farrah, Haley, Saul, Adrian, Reed heard his voice there too. I'm guessing David was involved too. Who else do we miss from our producers? That's everyone. All right, guys. Everyone, have a great holiday, and we will talk to everyone in the new year.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hepcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I feel like there was a lot of that going around. A lot of that. Probably some on this very podcast. Yeah, for sure. Some wish casting.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
This is America. We don't care about cracks. I think we had like 45 episodes that had some kind of title about like, Trump grip on the GOP loosens. Question mark. We always put a question mark. That's true. To protect ourselves. And boy, was that answered. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I mean, that is his brand. That is Elon's brand. That is the brand of all the bros, the billionaires who are running the government now. I don't know. Maybe they're smarter than they seem.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Again, on the way to a good take. I was going to say, I love these takes that are, like, mostly right and then... Yeah, you're like, crashes into a wall right at the end.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Yeah, well, I mean, look, her podcast has rocketed up the charts. What is her show called? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. Has anyone heard it?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, she's really kept up. Has she said anything since the... I mean, I guess it just shows her reach. LAUGHTER I cannot tell you anything that Nikki Haley has said or made news on her podcast. Anyway, we wish her the best. Nikki, come on. Come on, Pod Save America.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Oh, it's called Nikki Haley Live. I think it's on SiriusXM. It's a show. It's a radio show. It's our sister show.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Trump's GOP is cracking. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, I think that has to be the... That's it. That's the one that we can be sure of.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Please tell me it wasn't an issue of Messagebox. And can you also tell us how many more takes from The Hill are we going to do?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Well, you know what happened is there was... This was revisited. I hate that I know this. This was revisited when the New York Times, the other Nate, dropped a poll about Florida, a Florida poll in the weeks before the election that showed Trump... I think up 13 in that poll?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
I saw a picture of you embracing your nemesis slash frenemy, old friend, best friend turned frenemy turned what? Now we're friends again?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Nate Cohn basically nailed Florida. And so when Nate dropped this poll, then everyone started ragging on Nate Silver about the bet, but I don't think the bet had happened. Well, lucky for Nate. I don't think it's sufficient, but boy, is that a bad take. Yeah. God, just the confidence, too. It's like, how many of us have had takes that we were so sure of, we put $100,000 on the line?
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Thank you to whoever found this one. You're welcome. Look, you know, to his credit, did not put $100,000 behind it. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Race step. Race step for the real nerds. That's what they were all calling it, mockingly.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
Although I think less racial polarization is helpful. I don't think we want to be polarized by race. It's not helpful for us right now. I mean, in the battleground states.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
You know, just because we have trouble now getting white people to vote for us and black people and Latino people.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Gavin Newsom did that a long time ago. That doesn't bother me.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
My critique is with none of that, and I don't think that what you just said is necessarily reflective of what any of these fucking characters are doing or saying right now. I think Ro is my exception to this. Right. Ro is the exception, but I even think that
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
You don't need to call Elon Musk anything nice at all to be willing to play ball with the Doge thing and putting out a list of reforms that you want. I mean, I was saying this, but I think the Democrats should put out their own list before Elon and Vivek have their own list.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And make it about the corporate subsidies we want to get rid of, the tax breaks we want to get rid of, other waste and abuse that we're comfortable getting rid of. Like, let's do our own thing. And then when they don't agree to it, then we can hit them over it, right? Like, let's be constructive on policy and governing when we agree. And let's be really tough on...
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
on policy and governing when we disagree. But like, we don't have to say nice fucking things about these people. We don't have to kiss Trump. We don't have to, we shouldn't, we shouldn't chase Trump down every rabbit hole for sure. We also don't need to fucking kiss his ass.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
No, no, no, not Trump. Elon Musk stuff. Dick Blumenthal? What the fuck are you saying? That's crazy. I don't understand that. He's a champion of free speech? He's not a champion of free speech.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
There are few humans more full of shit than Mark Zuckerberg for all of the values he professed that Facebook had and that his company has and all this bullshit. It's like Donald Trump attempted a coup. He attempted a coup. He incited a violent insurrection. All these people. How many companies after January 6th were like, never again. We're not going to donate to.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Some of them said they were going to donate to Republicans after that. Not just Trump. Everyone who believes a big lie. And here's the, I would not have even been this annoyed over the fact that Zuckerberg sat down with Trump and had dinner. It's like, okay, you want to have dinner? He's the president of the United States. You run one of the biggest companies in the world. Like, fine.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Make peace, whatever. Donate a million dollars to inauguration when Meta has not donated money to any other inauguration? What? What? Now you're like in the Trump business. Now you're just giving him money. You're not just like not saying mean things about him or even saying nice things. You're giving him money. A million dollars. I mean, it just so fucking it's disgusting.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
It is. It's outrageous. It's like, it's just, what is wrong with you? You have no self-respect? No self-respect. It's just gross. And also the Elon Musk thing, too. Tony Stark, he's successful. The thing that bothers me about that is, yes, Elon Musk is rich. He's worth $400 billion. $400 billion. Congratulations, I guess. But like, do we not remember?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
It wasn't that long ago that he pushed a conspiracy online, said that he agreed with a conspiracy that Jewish communities push hatred against white people. Like just said so much truth. Yes, truth. When someone tweeted that.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
The conspiracy that then led a bunch of advertisers to stop advertising on Twitter because it was the same conspiracy that led the Tree of Life shooter to massacre a bunch of people. And now we're going to be like, oh, yeah, but you know what? He's like Tony Stark. He's like a really smart guy. Really smart guy. Really successful guy. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, really successful.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Again, it's just as easy to be like, Elon Musk wants to cut government. You don't have to say anything about him. I got a list of things for him to cut. And if he puts something on the table that's worth cutting, yeah, I'm right there with him. Like Bernie, he wants to cut defense spending. Yeah, I'm there for cutting defense spending too. I'll work with him on that.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
We do have one pretty good clue as to why the corporate types seem to be coming around so quickly. You mentioned this. It came at 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday as Trump opened trading at the Stock Exchange. Let's listen.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
In the statement, Whitehouse also said that there would be further action in the days to come. The Office of the Pardon Attorney, part of the Justice Department, has received nearly 12,000 requests for clemency during Mr. Biden's term. In 2022 and 2023, he pardoned anyone in federal prison for marijuana possession.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Now, I didn't see this footage, but was the audience of people he was saying that to at the New York Stock Exchange, was that a group of working class voters who were upset with high grocery prices? Is that who he was talking to? No, it was a collection of CEOs and stock traders. Oh, those are the taxes he wants to cut. Yes, yes. Those are the taxes he wants to cut.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
So Trump lowered the corporate rate to 21% from 35% in the 2017 tax cuts. Now he wants to lower it to 15%. He says he wants to do it 15%. There's a new twist on it with like, if you invest in America, if you do business here, I don't know how that works. But in general, a 15% corporate tax rate
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
would give the largest 10 companies in America a $23 billion tax cut for 10 companies that reported more than $520 billion in profits. This was a cap analysis over the summer. Meta, his new pal Mark Zuckerberg, would get $1.4 billion just for Meta from Trump's plan. UnitedHealth, have you heard about UnitedHealth lately? No.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
UnitedHealth would get $1.3 billion, a tax cut, and five largest grocery companies because obviously Trump was elected to lower prices for people. That's what he told us. But he does want to give the five largest grocery companies $1.7 billion in tax cuts These are five grocery companies that made $29 billion in profits as a bunch of people could not afford their groceries.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And now he wants to give them another $1.7 billion. You think they're going to use that $1.7 billion tax cut to lower the cost of food so people can buy their groceries? Probably, right?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yeah, they passed the savings onto their consumers and their employees.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
That's right. Yes, yes. So that is what Trump promised. Now, we knew this during the campaign. I think Kamala hit Trump on this a few times. The corporate tax cut obviously did not work, or at least it did not work well enough. What is your advice here to Democrats on how to make it stick in the next year in a way that we did not do as successfully as we could have during the campaign?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
He can also and has been urged to pardon or commute sentences of others convicted of nonviolent drug offenses who were in federal prison. Some people have urged him to commute sentences for the 40 people who were on death row in federal prison and reduce those sentences to life without parole so that they don't get the death penalty.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I totally agree with all that. I also think we've got to be able to make this real for people and tell stories about it that are not just sort of the typical, he's giving tax cuts to the rich and not you. That's the message, but we've got to sort of add some color to the message so that it breaks through. I think a fair...
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
A lot of critiques from the left about Kamala Harris and the campaign and all this. We've heard them all. We're not going to do it all here. I think one that is fair is I don't think she is someone who feels the populist anger. towards like companies that are price gouging and taking advantage of people and making record profits while people can barely get by.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Like she doesn't really feel that in her bones. At least that doesn't come across during the campaign. I realize it was a short campaign. And to be fair, you don't get that from a lot of Democrats. And I don't know which podcast I said this on, but I've been complaining about the glorification and the hero status awarded to Luigi Mangione.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
But I also think there is a large space between that and... and saying, eh, whatever. Rich people are rich people. Healthcare companies make profits. That's what they do.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I do think that people should be going out, Democrats should be going out there every day talking about these companies that are going to get a huge fucking windfall for nothing who have been gouging consumers, raising prices in a country where people are really struggling to get by with their costs and tell a story about it every single day, make it the message over and over and over again.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And you've got to be creative and you've got to figure out ways to break through. And you can't just be saying the same fucking words over and over again that seem like they came from a poll that tested really well. Like you've got to really, you know, make it make it real for folks. And so that's what I'm kind of hoping Democrats do in this fight.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Like it's not enough to just do the same old, same old.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
So altogether, he has issued, I think, 26 individual pardons and 135 commutations. So what do you think? What do you think is going to be next? What do you think should be next?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
People think it's like, oh, it's the corporate money that's doing this and it's the donors that have captured the Democrats. It's like, no, it's like the fucking wonks. They're like, no, that's not the reason. We know. We know. We know all the reasons that corporate greed is not the only reason that people are struggling to get by. We know that.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
But it is disgusting that people are getting tax breaks, CEOs, executives, shareholders, when so many people are struggling. And we're still dealing with high prices. It's crazy. But like it should feel crazy to the Democrats going out there and talking about it. And it should feel like it is a mission and that they are like offended on behalf of the American people by it.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And that's the kind of energy I think we need in this fight.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Well, look, I've seen the polling on this, right? Like tax cuts for the 1% for billionaires, like they are less popular sometimes than corporate tax cuts because what they try to do when they talk about corporate tax cuts is say, well, it's a lot of small businesses and when you give them tax cuts then they create jobs and so
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, everyone seems to be doing the Trump dance. As FBI Director Christopher Wray goes down without a fight, Democrats start flattering Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg sponsors the inauguration.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
if corporations are doing well then they hire more people and then wages go up and like they do this whole fucking song and dance.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I really think you got to hammer the fact that like we're talking about some of the most profitable corporations in the country who last time they got this tax cut used it to enrich their executives and their shareholders and did not do anything about prices and did not hire more people and did not raise wages.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yeah, I agree. Well, speaking of that, so part of the time person of the year routine is you sit down for a lengthy interview with the magazine, which Trump did at Mar-a-Lago in late November. It just was released on Thursday, so it's a little dated, but the interview is very long. Most of it wasn't very newsy, but a few notable things we hadn't heard before.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
At one point, the reporters asked Trump, quote, if the prices of groceries don't come down, will your presidency be a failure? And his answer was, I don't think so. Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And then he goes on to talk about his solutions, which are just fixing the supply chain, which Joe Biden has been doing for the last four years and lowering energy costs, which is involves drilling more for oil that won't do anything to lower gas prices for years. if they start drilling now, because also we're producing more oil than any time in history. Kind of a wow moment there.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Trump's saying, I don't know if prices will actually go down. We find out on the day that he goes to the stock exchange and is like, but your taxes are going down, Wall Street.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I say that because he was obviously not as pro-choice as he is now throughout most of his life, largely due to him being raised a Catholic.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And I think we need to come out with some plans of our own to lower costs for people and do so in a way that is achievable, real, that are paid for, that isn't just government spending money, but also regulating companies and making companies actually do well by their workers. I think that there's a good...
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
progressive populist agenda here that also, like, makes sense to most Americans that we should be pushing here. But I don't know. What do you think?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Well, I think part of it is these ideas need to be paired with who we're holding accountable. Because I think that sometimes it's a positive agenda, which is great. But I think it feels more urgent and is more appealing to people when you also talk about how these big companies and CEOs and everyone are making money hand over fist and are more profitable than ever before.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
and you're still struggling, and so we're going to help you, blah, blah, blah, and make sure that they're paying their fair share, blah, blah, blah, you know? Yeah, we need an enemy. Reporters asked Trump whether it's a conflict of interest to let Elon Musk oversee the budgets of agencies that could grant huge contracts to his businesses.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Trump said, I don't think so, and added, I think that Elon puts the country long before his company. I mean, he's in a lot of companies, but he really is, and I've seen it. Okay. You think this matters to people? Elon's getting to regulate his own businesses and some of his budget cuts might affect his biggest competitor, NASA?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And it seems like from all kinds of reporting now, since last time we talked about it, that he's still considering preemptive blanket pardons for some folks on Trump's enemies list. And Trump has now talked about the January 6th committee, talked about Jack Smith. So I guess we'll wait and see if he does that. Did you see that Benny Thompson said he'd take one? I did see Benny Tompkins.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I'm at the part where Rom is talking about the Bill Clinton 1992 New Hampshire. The hits I've taken are nothing like the hits your family's taken.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I think there's something that we need to add to the corruption message because I think if you told most Americans that Trump and all of his goons in the White House are using it to enrich themselves, but also...
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
you're getting richer too, and your costs are going down, or you're getting a tax cut, or you're getting something, then people will be like, yeah, it's not great that they're doing that, but honestly, I kind of figured that was the case when we elected him. It almost goes back to the famous ad, Kamala's for they, them, and Donald Trump's for you.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
We've got to make it seem, which is going to be the reality, that Donald Trump and Elon Musk and all these idiots, they're just there for themselves. They are just there to take care of themselves, their businesses, their people, and everyone else is getting screwed.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Like that's the corruption I think that really gets people pissed and not just the like, yeah, we're making a lot of money, but so are you. Everyone's making money. It's great.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Okay, we're going to take a quick break. A couple things before we do that, though. You've heard us talk about Crooked's limited Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD. It's been getting some really amazing year-end reviews. If you haven't started it, now's a perfect time.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
In just eight episodes, Empire City takes you back to the origins of the NYPD and completely reframes the way we think about policing today. You can listen to the series now wherever you get your podcasts, or you can binge all episodes ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app, or on Apple Podcasts.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Also, Tommy recently joined Brian Tyler Cohen on his show No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen to talk about Trump's cabinet picks, Democrats' path forward, and lots more. Plus, exciting update, No Lie is now an official partner of the Crooked Network. How great is that? That's exciting. Love BTC. I know, we love BTC.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
You can hear Tommy and Brian's conversation in all episodes wherever you get your podcasts. One of the exchanges that got the most attention was a question about trans rights and so-called bathroom bills. The reporters reminded Trump that he said in 2016 that trans people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want and asked whether he still felt that way. And Trump said, quote,
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
He'll take one. You know what? Which I respect. All these people playing coy, you know, Adam Schiff being like, oh, I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, Adam Schiff's going to take it if you get it.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Reporters then brought up the House bill to ban Sarah McBride from women's bathrooms. But instead of asking whether he supported that bill, they asked whether he agreed with Sarah that we should focus on bigger issues. And he said yes. And then they asked about the anti-trans ad that the campaign ran, and he didn't take the bait there either. What did you think about his answers on this?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I will say, even if Donald Trump himself does not want to spend a lot of time focusing on trans rights and not a lot of time beating up on trans people like he did during the campaign, cynically, I do think this is an issue that's going to come to him and Democrats are going to have to still deal with. It's not just a, oh, we're going to argue about it past the campaign.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
We're going to argue about it in the context of the campaign kind of thing. I spoke to a Rolling Stone reporter, Giles Holzman.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
who wrote a really great piece that everyone should, and it's an important piece that everyone should read about how this is going to come up in Congress, which is that Republicans want to do a Hyde-like amendment that will withhold government funding from any healthcare provider that gets money from the federal government to make sure that they do not provide any gender-affirming care.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I mean, not to dwell on this again, but it crossed my mind since we were talking about pardons and commutations today. Why do you think he didn't wait to do the Hunter pardon until after a move like this? We talked about this on a Tuesday show and Tommy mentioned that he wanted to do the Hunter pardon before Hunter was sentenced.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
So just like now, the Hyde Amendment is, you know, federal money cannot go to any provider, any hospital that performs abortions. That's why a lot of hospitals do not perform abortions, why there are abortion clinics, because of the Hyde Amendment. And they want to do something like that for gender affirming care. And the question will be, like, do enough Democrats stand up and stop this?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And I think it could not just be done through reconciliation. I think you would need to overcome a filibuster in the Senate to actually get this done, because that's the same thing with the Hyde Amendment. You can't get rid of that through reconciliation either. So you can't just do 51 votes in a budget bill. So I think we would have votes to stop it.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
But you could imagine the argument from Republicans. And then you can see what Trump will do, which would be, you know, well, no, taxpayers shouldn't fund gender affirming care. Taxpayers shouldn't do this. And what do you think? Like, how do you think Democrats respond to that? Because I think this is one where fuck the polls on this. Like we just that is you got to stand up for it.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And I think what we have to do is figure out a way to message it so that it is as popular as possible, even knowing that it may not be a majority position and that they might think that this is a wedge issue that that does that helps them politically.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And I will say, in the piece, Holzman was expressing the concern of a lot of activists and groups that maybe there's not enough Democrats to stand up on this. I do think the one silver lining of the Democratic caucus right now in the Senate, which is- It's quite safe. It's quite safe. I was going to say, we lost Manchin, we lost Sinema. We also lost the majority, but the people left-
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Are like mainstream to progressive, you know, like we don't have a lot of centrists and center right folks in the caucus anymore. And so I do expect that the senators will say, yeah, but it's something but it's something that's coming and people should prepare for it so that they don't just it doesn't surprise everyone. And, you know.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Though I guess I understand that, though, you could also make an argument that after Hunter was sentenced, perhaps commuting the sentence altogether would have been received better. Our old pal Anita Dunn, who's one of the was one of the closest aides to Joe Biden for not just his presidency, but like much of his career.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Well, and this is an issue that's come up right now, even before Trump takes office, because the defense authorization bill, Mike Johnson slipped in a provision that says the children of service members are not allowed to get gender affirming care through the coverage that their parents get by being in the military. Most Democrats in the House revolted against this.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Obviously, we didn't have the votes because the Republicans controlled the House. So now that goes to the Senate. And, you know, I don't know what's going to happen there. But So this is the kind of these are the kind of things they're going to try to do. They're going to try to chip away at trans rights and gender affirming care bit by bit.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And then I think test Democrats to see if they stand up for it. And if they do, then say, oh, see, they're still obsessed with the trans issue. They lost on it and they're still obsessed with it. Like, that's what they're going to do.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yeah, that is correct. That is correct. Speaking of the House bathroom bill and its sponsor, Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Mace is now set on making sure everyone knows she's the real victim here. On Tuesday, she spoke at an event for foster care providers and alumni in one of the House office buildings. This is a wild story.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
A foster care advocate apparently came up to her after she spoke and said something about how trans kids need advocacy, too. What happened next is disputed, but a police report says that this person, quote, began to aggressively and in an exaggerated manner shake her arm up and down in a handshaking motion. The police report was filed by Nancy Mason, her staff, so this is their side of the story.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
The advocate has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault. Some of the people in the room say they didn't see anything out of the ordinary, just a handshake. regardless, Mace is now wearing her arm in a sling and making a big thing of it, publicly reassuring her many fans about her odds of survival and so on.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
She went on Benny Johnson show sling in full effect to accuse trans people of having a mental illness. If I didn't have a medical degree, I don't know if I would be accusing other people of having a mental illness if I was Nancy Mace, but that's just me. What do you think's going on here? Is this just like, I mean, I guess reporters have requested the security footage.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
So like, we're going to find out what the handshake was like at some point. And, you know, maybe Nancy Mace. Famous truth teller is just telling the truth about being assaulted with a violent handshake. Totally possible, Nancy Mace. But it's possible that it's also possible that maybe she was looking for attention. Who knows?
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
It's crazy. No, no, no. I am not accusing her of that. I just want you to know. I'm saying it is a possibility that that could be one of the outcomes. It is also possible that someone came up and asked her a question and violently assaulted her hand.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yes. If I've seen it once, I've seen it a hundred times.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
It'll be the January 6th footage that Mike Johnson has been sitting on.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
She said recently at a New York Times deal book event when she was asked about the Hunter Biden pardon that. I don't agree with the way it was done. I don't agree with the timing. And I don't agree, frankly, with the attack on our judicial system.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
One of her former staffers posted on Twitter, this is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during January 6th, that she wanted to get punched in the face by a rioter so she could get on TV and be the face of the anti-Trump movement. That's back when she wanted to be a part of the anti-Trump movement and was so mad at him for the riot on January 6th.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
She wanted to get punched in the face. That story was first reported in the Washington Post, and that's now her former staffer confirming it on Twitter. So that's Nancy Mace. One last thing in the time interview before we go. They asked Trump all about his thoughts on his campaign strategy, the campaign in general, why he won, why Harris lost. He said his campaign was flawless.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
He didn't take any days off in the last 72 days. He called it, he's got a name for it, he said. It's called the 72 Days of Fury. He said that he thinks the issue of immigration was a bigger factor in his victory than the economy and that he won because the Republican Party has become the party of common sense.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
He also said Kamala Harris's worst mistakes were, one, taking the assignment because you have to know what you're good at, and two, not doing enough interviews. So that's his assessment. What do you think? Were we missing anything? Did you read that and think, maybe I was missing something there? Maybe he's got a point.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Let me just tell... Everyone who's listening, we're doing it for you here. You do not have to go read this interview.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Maybe it was post-debate, maybe? Or post-DNC? Maybe. I don't know.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
The argument is one I think that many observers are concerned about, a president who ran to restore the rule of law, who has upheld the rule of law, who has really defended the rule of law, kind of saying, well, maybe not right now.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Maybe he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about because he just picked numbers out of the air. I'm going to go with that one.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yeah, I do. There's something to the people came to believe that the Republican Party was the party of common sense. I don't think they think that about the Republican Party necessarily, but they thought that somehow that Trump and what he was selling was a little more common sense. And I think it's hard to square, right, because you're like.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
common sense he seemed fucking nuts and look in exit polls more voters said that he was more extreme than kamala harris so there's that but when he was saying common sense he was talking about the economy he was talking you know he's like people realize that they shouldn't be paying so much for groceries and people think and on immigration right like i do think people probably saw his view on
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
immigration as more common sense than where the Democrats were, even though I think I could make an argument that we're much more common sense on immigration, but I don't think that came through to people. We could spend a lot of pods and we will talking about why, but I do think there's probably some truth to that.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Yeah, I think it would be fair to say that people perceived us as no longer or less of a party of common sense than he was more. I don't think they did anything to help themselves.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Right, yeah, but we seemed like less of a party of common sense than maybe we had in the past. And look, again, it's not all Democrats' fault, but we have control over what we say and how we act and how we approach politics, so something to keep in mind. All right, that's our show for today. Tommy Lovett and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday. Everyone have a great weekend.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
We'll see you later. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at cricket.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Trump, meanwhile, admits he might not be able to bring down prices after all during his big-time Man of the Year interview, an honor he celebrated at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday by telling Wall Street he'd cut their taxes. Welcome to your populist realignment, Dan. But first, we have some actual good news. No, stop. It's real. I'm not a joke.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, and David Toles.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Which is why I think most of them weren't involved.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
That's what I'm saying. No, I mean, most of the very smart White House staff that we knew did not know until it was happening.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And I mean, I won't criticize it all over again. I already did. I will say that these pardons and commutations, they do make me feel better about the whole thing. Yeah, of course. I also think that if he, like I said, issues, you know, these preemptive pardons and blanket pardons and
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
and makes them about sort of protecting people from political vengeance and retribution by Donald Trump, and the Hunter pardon sort of fits into that bucket, then I feel even better, even though I'm disappointed that he lied to us. All right. Elsewhere in the justice system, there is less reason for celebration.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
FBI Director Chris Wray announced Wednesday that he would step down at some point before Trump's inauguration on January 20th, paving the way for Trump hatchet man Kash Patel to take over as head of the world's premier investigative agency.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Wray said in his statement, quote, In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work. A lot of folks aren't happy, to say the least.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Jonathan Shade at The Atlantic in a piece called A Scandalous Resignation sums it up this way, quote, The president-elect had been facing the unpleasant task of firing a lifelong Republican whom he had selected himself, inviting the national media to raise ugly questions about his oft-confessed desire to turn the federal criminal justice apparatus into a weapon of political vengeance.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Instead, Wray, like so many Republicans who couldn't stomach Trump's demands, decided to go gentle into that good night. Nobody except Ray will remember where they were when Christopher Ray resigned. Ouch. I mean, you can sympathize with Ray not wanting to just sit around and wait for Trump to fire him, but I don't know. What do you think? Was this the right move? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
I think I agree, just for the sake of argument. Oh, let's hear it. No, I guess, what benefit to... the country, or politically, for those who oppose Trump, would have come from Ray waiting, getting fired, and then Kash Patel gets the job anyway, just a little bit later than he would have.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
The White House announced on Thursday that President Biden made history by granting clemency to nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others. The largest single day clemency action in modern history. The 1,500 number is people who had largely been living out lengthy sentences in home confinement because of the pandemic. and already had been reintegrated in their communities.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And Donald Trump gets a couple days worth of very critical stories and commentary by all of us for firing the FBI director.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
My first reaction was like sort of the way he left, like less about I'm quitting, you're firing me and the difference between that and more about like Chris Ray, I think, has an obligation, whether he does it after he leaves or now or if he had waited and got fired. But he has an obligation, I think, to let people know that he did a good job and
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And the reason he's being fired is because he carried out his duties to investigate the president of the United States for stealing classified information. And that's why they went to Mar-a-Lago. And he, by the way, retrieved.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
classified information that the president had stole the ex-president at that point had stolen and refused to give back and obstructed justice like I do think that a little bit a defense of the bureau and the bureau's actions over the last several years and just making sure people know that they played it pretty fucking straight
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Over the last several years, after he was appointed by Donald Trump and is a Republican himself, I do think he has an obligation just for the public to know that. And if people don't care, then they're free not to care. But might as well tell that story. I'm sure we'll get to read it in a book coming out in October 2025. Maybe he can do a press conference with Jim Comey.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Also, I think there, and JVL made this point in his newsletter today at the Bulwark, that people who oppose Trump, or at least the people who want to defend our democratic institutions, anything they do to sort of delay... Trump and his minions from doing what they want to do is a good thing.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And so Kash Patel getting in earlier than he would have if we had to go through Chris Wray getting fired, you know, it would have been nice. Any delay tactics here are probably helpful. So that's... I have not heard a really good argument for... for Chris Wray doing it the way he did, but maybe he'll speak up soon.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
One factor that seems to be making the Wray news tougher to swallow is that it's not just Wray. Obviously, you and Melissa talked about Wednesday. Jack Smith also made the decision to resign rather than get fired. And in general, it seems like a lot of big players, corporations, media outlets, even some elected Democrats, are employing a kinder, gentler approach to Trump's second term so far.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Here's an incomplete accounting from just the last few days. Meta gave a million dollars to Trump's inauguration after Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump. Amazon giving a million dollars, too. Thanks, Jeff Bezos.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
The CEO of Time, the magazine which just named Trump person of the year, accompanied him to the New York Stock Exchange and started clapping and chanting USA, USA when Trump rang the bell. The fuck? Democratic Senator John Fetterman joined Truth Social and said that not only was the Hunter Biden pardon correct, but that Trump deserves a pardon, too, for his conviction in the Manhattan case.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
Those sentences were commuted. The 39 pardons went mostly to people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses when they were younger and who have since turned their lives around. What do you think of the move? Pretty good, huh? Love it.
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
And other Democrats like Congressman Richie Torres and Senator Richard Blumenthal have been praising Elon Musk, with Blumenthal calling him the tech industry's, quote, champion of free speech. Rokana has said he's been trading texts with Elon and called him an extraordinary entrepreneur. They said he also was clear with him where he disagreed. Fetterman compared Elon to Tony Stark. So...
Pod Save America
Billionaires' Bet on Trump Pays Off
A lot of cliches you could reach for here. If you can't beat them, join them. Discretion is the better part of valor. Better to be at the table than on the menu. What do you think is going on here? And obviously, all of the different people I just mentioned there, they could all have different motivations. There could be different degrees of kissing Donald Trump's ass and Elon Musk's ass.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
You know, Josh Hawley's out there proposing like an expanded child tax credit. And then there's Elon and Vivek, the billionaires, who seem to be more libertarian. They just want to cut government, you know, people to suffer. Trump doesn't know, you know, whoever the last person who talks to Trump, that's how he believes how things should go. So, like, I think it's going to be a fucking mess.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I really do. And I don't think that that guarantees wins for Democrats or for all of us or that means everything's going to be great. But I do think when we when we look at the next four years and figure out like how to strategize, we should keep in mind that it is most likely going to be chaos and infighting and figure out how we can take advantage of that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
That's it. I mean, it's like own the libs and they owned the libs. So now what are they, what are they doing?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, me too. Me too, Tim. It's possible that happens. My philosophy on all this is we've got to take it one day at a time. You're so balanced. Well, you know, it's taken me like 43 years to get here. But I do think that if we all spend all of our time like dooming about the future and what might happen, like A, it's not going to change anything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And B, it's going to take our focus away from like what we can do right now to actually fight these guys and also try to take power back by convincing people that we should have it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
The Atlantic, yeah. Widely read by the TikTok generation and the low information generation.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, so the thing about me and writing is I don't do it much anymore because it takes too much time. But the Atlantic reached out and they asked if I wanted to write a piece. And I was like, you know what? I should finally put some thoughts down on paper instead of just tweeting and skeeting and talking on a podcast. So I did. Really, this was just a piece for your pal Sarah Longwell. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Because, you know, it was inspired partly by focus group I've done, but also focus groups that she's done that I've listened to. And also just like knocking on doors and doing canvassing. Tell the knocking on door story that you started the article with for people who are not. We were in Vegas the Sunday before the election. We were in a very working class neighborhood in East Las Vegas.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Knocked on one door. I was with Tommy Vitor. Nina Harris, who's on Vote Save America. And it's like 72 year old on the list. It said, you know, 72 year old registered Democrat. It's like little old Asian woman comes to the door. She's like sort of tough to understand, but she's very sweet. And we asked her if she's voted yet. And she says, she's kind of confused that no, she hasn't voted yet.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And then she said, Trump, President Trump. And we're like, no, no, no, no, President Trump. And she's like, and she's like, and we're like Kamala Harris. And she's like, Didn't she let in all those illegals who killed all those cops? I saw that. And we're like, no. So then I was just like, what do you say? Right. And I imagined at the moment if this woman had posted that on social media. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Which is the first thing would happen is everyone should be canceled. People would scream things at her. Eventually, Trump would invite her to the State of the Union. Right. I think she'd have to kill a black person on the subway to get invited to the State of the Union, but okay. Yeah, that's true. So I stopped and I was like, here's the thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I'm like, actually, if Kamala Harris wins, she will pretty much close the border, especially when there's an influx of migrants that goes above a certain level. She's going to be tough on border. And by the way, she's also going to make your prescriptions cheaper. And then Tommy's like, and she's going to cut your taxes. And the woman sort of just looks at all of us and she's like, okay.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
She goes, and we're like, what do you mean? She's like, I'll vote for Kamala. We're like, really? She's like, yeah. She gives us a thumbs up. We give her a thumbs up and we walk away. And, you know, it was just most interactions, as you know, you've been in politics are not like that. Most they're not that satisfying when you talk to voters.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Some voters make you they say things that make you insane, as you know, by listening to all these focus groups. But. It is an indication that people are much more complicated than those of us who pay close attention to politics think. Because, like I said, we know what the MAGA diehards think. And we know what the leftists think. We encounter cohesive political identities all the time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And that's just not the case when it comes to most voters. And so I think that as we all talk about politics, as we all churn out our content or we're doing our posting and stuff like that, at some point...
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I will say it's the first time since the election, as I watch this unfold, I'm like, oh, I'm You know, everything's going to be horrible for sure, but kind of fun to watch. Funny and horrible. Funny and horrible. I mean, look, they... Kind of like love it or leave it. I've told this to friends who were like, you know, maybe it's not so bad that Donald Trump is running the country. Wait, hold on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We have to think that the way people perceive politics, people who don't pay attention that much, is through this algorithmic mix of takes and opinions and pieces and cable hits and whatever else that leaks through the bubble that we're all in to someone who's just checking out TikTok a couple days before an election, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And there's a whole other conversation about how we reach these people, which is obviously not just happening on Pod Save America or The Bulwark or The Atlantic, right? But there's also a conversation to be had, not just in how we reach them, but when we reach them, how we argue and how we talk about politics. And I think that those of us who talk about politics a lot are a little more
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We're not using language that most people use. We don't have a style of argument or debate that most people find persuasive. And if we don't persuade people, we're not going to win. And the way that a lot of us talk about politics is we're trying to fight battles in order to make ourselves feel right about being right. And politics is not just about being right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
It is about persuading people to think differently and behave differently and And that's how you win an election. An election is how you govern.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
It is an entirely human reaction to look for simple, easy explanations and simple, easy answers. And so it is very easy and maybe somewhat satisfying to be like, okay, the problem is we need, you know, I've seen this a lot. We need more independent media, right? I got a lot of this from the piece.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
People are like, don't you know, the real problem is the information ecosystem and we need to build up independent progressive media. And I was like, you know, I'm like, you know, I do know that I did start a progressive media company seven years ago. So I am aware of that point, but that is necessary.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But like, it's all the search for, okay, well, you know, Hillary lost because of misogyny and racism. And everyone mocked, you know, working class voters for economic anxiety after Trump won in 2016. It was like, oh, well, actually, they were just racist. And it's like, yeah, well, the complicated truth is racial resentment definitely fueled a lot of Trump voters. But
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Okay, then we had a bunch of Latino voters who voted for Trump. And now Asian American voters are voting for Trump and black men, some black men are voting for Trump and young people, right? So it's like, we're out of excuses at this point. And unfortunately, we're also out of very easy answers on how to move forward and beat him.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And the real work of democracy is like talking to and persuading people that you don't agree with on everything. And like, I know that's a hard thing to hear. And it's not meant to be like, we should all be centrist and moderate and all that. Because some people who are classified as like moderate, as you know, have like extremely left views on some issues and extremely right views.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
views on other issues like people don't have political identities that make sense to partisans that's just the whole that's most of the electorate you know it's a message to that's part of the reason it was written in the atlantic it is a message to all of us who pay close attention to politics do you have any thoughts on the media side of things though is the answer to create more left media or pro-democracy media whatever you want to call it or is it actually trying to engage
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Which friends are those? You know, I have some friends who were like, I voted for Kamala Harris, but the Democrats do suck. You have to know that, you know, and maybe, maybe it's, I don't want four years of Donald Trump, but maybe it's not the end of the world. Maybe the other leaders of the other countries will be scared by him because he's so crazy, you know, that kind of thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I think three things we need to do. Ben Wickler, who's running for DNC chair, was just talking about this the other day. I thought it was really... You're such a Wickler stan.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
No, we're going to have, you know, whoever wants to come on Pod Save America, I think I'm supposed to talk to Ken Martin when we get back from the break.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Is that that state senator from New York? Maryland. I have no idea.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, no, that's what the people want. More corporate tax cuts, less funding for childhood cancer. So, three steps. One, and the third is the hardest, but one, I do think, like, I would love more independent media. And when I say progressive, great, but also, you know, I think of liberalism now as small L liberalism stretching from the far left to the center right. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
any kind of independent media along that ideological spectrum on four. I think we need more of it. I think number two is to absolutely go into these other spaces, you know, with people that we don't necessarily agree with, go on their shows, talk to them, try to expose their audiences to other views since they're not necessarily being exposed to other political views. So I think that's important.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And then I think the big challenge here is like, we have to figure out a way to reach the like people who don't consume news that much. not just political news, any kind of news. And that is the tough one that no one is, the nut that no one's cracked yet. And I think we need to focus a lot more on that. We think about that a lot here at Cricket Media, like how do we go beyond our own audiences?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I'm sure you guys think about that too. Yeah, all the answers for that have been, from the political class, have been awful.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Because the people thinking about it aren't low info voters. Right. Right. We like Democrats, we lean on identity as an explanation for all kinds of things, but we forget to lean on identity as an explanation for like why low information voters don't think like us because we're not in their shoes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And so you actually need to talk to people who don't consume a lot of news and politics about politics to figure out what might persuade them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And I'm like, here's the thing. Donald Trump is, he might have some political genius to him. He's an idiot, right? And when you have a bunch of idiots running things who don't know what they're doing, that's not going to lead to good outcomes for anyone. And that's sort of what we're starting to see here. Why did Elon Musk blow up the deal? Who knows?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I did a focus group with a bunch of young people in Orange County before the midterms in 22. And it was right after Dobbs. And one young woman was like, she was outraged by Dobbs. And she was outraged about the Supreme Court. She couldn't believe it. So she finishes her whole tirade about this. And I'm like, so were you registered to vote in the midterms? And she said, what's a midterm?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
What's a midterm? And I was like, okay, well, there we are. Upset about Dobbs. We like the sentiment there. Don't know if you register or not. Don't know what a midterm is. So we got some work to do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Oh, really? This might make me cry, actually. Okay, great. So... I really thought a lot about the Luigi Mangione assassination thing. And it really bothered me. And I was trying to figure out why it really bothered me.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Did he see a tweet somewhere that pissed him off? Did he see some misinformation? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He's probably scrolling through his platform, saw something that got him mad, fired off a tweet, and then boom, whole deal blows up, government shuts down. For what? We don't know. There's no rhyme or reason to any of this. No ideology behind it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
The response. Because I am someone who got into politics 20 years ago because of healthcare. It's the issue I'm most passionate about. And I obviously... Worked for Barack Obama, went through the whole Affordable Care Act debate. I also think that insurance companies are awful. I would like something, if not Medicare for all, close to it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I like Pete Buttigieg's plan in 2020 about Medicare for all who want it, where you can, you know... choose Medicare. So I believe in all that. And then when I saw people who were like excusing or glorifying or celebrating vigilante justice, vigilante violence, extrajudicial killings, I was just like, what?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
At first, I didn't believe that it was, I was like, oh, it's probably like a few Twitter people. And then it just like, it grew. And then, I mean, you mentioned the Pets of America Reddit. There were some people on our, subscribers on our Discord,
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
who were like angry with me for my takes on this, which again, my, my centrist, my super centrist take is vigilante murder, bad insurance companies also bad. So that's my, that's my crazy take. Um, and people were not happy with me, but I, so I jumped into the,
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
into our discord and talk to our subscribers for a couple hours on Sunday, because like you said, yeah, because like you said, this is the kind of person I just, I just go right in there and I didn't yell at anyone. We had a good time. And by the end, everyone was like, of course we don't want this. Of course we don't excuse this murder, but you're not understanding like the rage that's out there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And They were mad that I think they think I called it performative at some point. And what I was calling performative was not people's rage towards the insurance industry at all or their anger towards the health care system. What I thought was performative was people like, you know, Taylor Lorenz was supposed to be a journalist, you know, posting memes, CEO down.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And, you know, she's got a headline, why we want executives dead. I'm like, OK, that you you're supposed to be in a position of responsibility that I don't think that's I don't think that's really wise. And I think that part of this is about trying to draw attention to yourself. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But someone out there who has been denied by an insurance company and has watched a loved one die or suffer or has faced bankruptcy, I get why they're mad. But my concern, and I'm sure it's your concern too, is starting to excuse this.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Or starting to think that maybe the political system is so broken and we're never going to get health care reform, we're never going to fix this, that you can understand why people would do this. That leads us down a path, I think, where the alternative to the right-wing authoritarianism that we are fighting right now is left-wing authoritarianism.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Where it's not about trying to persuade people or trying to make democracy work as broken as democracy is. It is about just, you know, force. It's about might makes right. And we can use force to do what we want. And if we believe something and we believe it so strongly, it doesn't matter if someone else doesn't believe it. It doesn't matter if it's complicated, if the issue is complicated.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
There's no, it's just, you know, it's just breaking things as we go.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We need to be right and we need to be right at any cost. And so it doesn't matter what we do because the belief and the ideology is more important than actually bringing people along. And look, I get the impulse, I get the frustration, but that path has never worked. That path has never worked. It doesn't lead to a good place.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Like when you start excusing political violence, that means that other people with political views that are very different than yours will also start excusing political violence and they'll be able to start committing political violence too. And then we have violence. Everyone's like, well, America is a violent country. I'm like, yeah, America is a violent country.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We don't need to make it more violent. That's not the answer.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I was, and then I used the civil rights movement as an example. And people were like, what are you talking about? The civil rights movement was incredibly violent. Like the state used violence against the activists and the protesters and civil rights. And I'm like, yeah, I know. Of course.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And you know what John Lewis did as he was getting his fucking head beat in on the, on the Edmund Pettus bridge. He just sat there because he knew and Martin Luther King knew that nonviolence, which takes incredible discipline.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
also has the power to persuade people to say oh my gosh these civil rights protesters they are like the state they are getting beaten to within an inch of their lives and this is awful blah blah and then suddenly the tide of opinion changes and you pass the civil rights act and you pass the voting rights act and does it fix everything absolutely not is the system still yes but like that's how change actually happens in this country that's how progress happens and and the non-violence of that movement that was the heart of the civil rights movement
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
was a strategy. It wasn't, it didn't just happen. It was a strategy. It took discipline. It took like, you know, responding to beatings and violence with peaceful protests is really fucking hard. And it took a long time, but it's a lot better than descending into civil war.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
A few things. One, I saw those polls and First, it could be the polling, right? Like sometimes people give trollish responses to pollsters and like, so you could have a polling issue there, right? And it's a subsample. Gen Z is most likely to troll. Right, well, it's like you got an Emerson poll and it's a subsample of how many voters in an Emerson poll that's 18 to 29. So like, whatever.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But what is different about Gen Z from all the other polls?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
generations in that poll which is those older generations like they remember domestic disorder and chaos and even violence in this country uh and elsewhere right like they lived through the oldest lived through world war ii then there was the cold war then there was you know the civil rights movement in this country right in the late 60s and the 70s so like
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Older people, they know what violence can do. They know what chaos can do. I think the younger folks, social media and their phones is a big part of this. First of all, that generation is, they are struggling with affordability and costs in a way that makes them feel a lot of despair. When you layer onto that, that everything they see on their phones, is outrage taking to an 11.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I don't do that, Tim. I have deep conversations and I have a lot of patience, which I don't know. I don't know why.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Everything's at an 11 all the time. It's doom. It's climate existentialism, right? We're not going to have a planet anymore. We shouldn't have kids. And this is what's showing up in people's feeds over and over and over again. And I think that puts you in a place of nihilism where you think, fuck it. Whatever problem there is in your life, it's magnified by what you see on your phone.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And then you think, okay, well, I have this problem. And also everything seems dark. Everything seems terrible. Like the, the, you know, we're all doomed. The apocalypse is coming. So like, you know, some insurance executive gets killed. Who the fuck cares? I like that. I think that's the sentiment.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I mean, we ran a campaign like this in 2008 that worked really well. People look back on it as hope and change and all that, but there was a huge reform element to the way that Obama talked, his agenda. We talked about lobbyist money, corporate PAC money. We talked about fixing Washington, Washington being broken.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And I think that we can be a party that wants to reform and fix a broken system as opposed to the other party that seems intent on tearing the system down and then presiding over the ashes. Because I don't think that's going to work for anyone. It's going to feel good to just destroy the whole system. Maybe that's what you want. But in its place... you're not going to get anything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
You're just going to get a bunch of people who are going to make themselves rich and do a bunch of corruption.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Get some alt coins. Yeah, and maybe it's going to be fun for people like Elon to watch the whole thing. Maybe it's going to be entertaining for you. It's going to be entertaining for them, certainly. They're going to get rich. You're going to be pretty fucked.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
So I think the alternative is just acknowledging what is broken about the system and pledging to fight relentlessly to fix it and to reform it. And this is what I think we have to do. And I think we've, you know, walked away from that at times. Like we have not had, the last four years, the message was not the system is broken and we're doing everything we can to fix it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
That was just, that was not the message of the Biden administration. It wasn't the message of the 2020 primary, really. Except for like Bernie and Warren and people like that. But that's not, it wasn't, it wasn't focused on the system and it wasn't focused on like, okay, how do we reform this so that it actually works for everyone?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I completely agree. with your ranking. I'm actually, I'm glad that you, you know, put Iraq and McConnell first. That was that, you know, you did some thinking there. I'm glad I didn't just fire off. Yeah. Of course it was the worst of my lifetime because I might've, I'm so mad that I might've.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I was like, yeah, like, This is right after Bush and McConnell. The key in that piece, too, everyone knows how I feel about Joe Biden at this point. I've been very open about that and his decisions over the last several years. The key line in that piece to me was, oh, he has some good days and bad days.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And I do think that the good day, bad day thing is why there was no moment where everyone was like, he's got to step down, he can't run again. Because every time he would freak people out close to him that dealt with him all the time. Then the next time they see him, he would be fine. And then they would tell themselves, okay, well, we should just keep moving forward.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But the people, look, there's a lot of people in the White House, a lot of people in the administration. The vast majority of them did not have a lot of contact with Joe Biden. You got to remember too, even the first two years of his administration, they were all working. A lot of them were working remotely. They weren't even in the White House because of COVID. But the small circle
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And the piece talks about this, the small circle of people around Joe Biden that did not push him and were not honest with him about how he was diminishing, about how he was making a selfish decision, about how he should have. Look, look, look what the polling says. Look what the bad news says. Like, that's who I'm I'm most angry at.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
When you are the president, you are sort of ensconced in this little bubble and you do rely on your advisors to tell you the truth about you, the truth about what the country thinks about you, what's going on out there. And those people did not do that. They just didn't do it. And now we're all going to, now we have Trump again.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Fundamentally, I don't think he gets it. And I just saw his interview with Midas Touch. He sat down with that podcast, Midas Touch. That's a big podcast on the left. It was a tough interview, but it was also, like, even if you get past the performance in the interview or, you know, did he do whatever, just his message is like nothing has changed, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Which is just, in his mind, I did some good things and I wanted to have America be more respected in the world. Check. Really? I wanted to... Unite the country. He gave himself a check on uniting the country. Yeah, unite the country. I wanted to just give... you know, working people on opportunity, more opportunity check.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And, and they've, they've, you know, convinced themselves that the chips act and the infrastructure bill, like fix the entire economy. And now there's, it's just, it's wild to me. And like, I think that legislatively they did some really great things, but, It's before the debate. And it's like, there was a time early on in that administration where they were already comparing him to FDR.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And they were like, we have learned the lessons of the Obama administration. And we're not going to make those mistakes. We're going to make the stimulus even bigger this time. And we're going to sell it, unlike those guys. And they did all that. And the thing that really got me was after the midterms,
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
They looked at the midterm results, and they thought that those midterm results pointed to Joe Biden winning in 2024 because Democrats did better than expected. Democrats lost the House popular vote. Lost the House popular vote, but because we hung on to a bunch of Senate seats. Lost the House also. Right. But because we lost by less, it wasn't a red wave. Right. Because we lost by less.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
It must be because Joe Biden is such a popular president that the polls are wrong. And and then we're going to run him again in 2024. And it is one thing for blue and on libs on Twitter to believe that. Whatever. Don't fault them for it because they don't have all the data.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
The people who have the data, who know, who know that a midterm electorate is nothing like a general electorate, they should have fucking known. And instead, they took those results as like, no, no, no. These results prove that Joe Biden should run again. I mean, that to me was the original sin. Do you wish you would have ranted about it more earlier? Do you think that would have helped?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We were talking about this on our last Pod Save America yesterday, and it's like... You go back, and the way that we would talk about it is no one is challenging him. Lovett and I had a pretty tough conversation with Dean Phillips here. Yeah, I had an apology to Dean Phillips. I did a public apology. I did too, and I saw him at the convention.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah. I was going to say that's the second part. Yeah. Cause they like Donald Trump, but they also just, they just want to win things and they, and they hate the libs. And Mike Lee, Senator from Utah was on the cable last night somewhere saying Mike Johnson can't be speaker anymore. It's gotta be Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy should be speaker.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But my point to Dean Phillips was like, your diagnosis of the problem is correct. I do not think that you are the solution here. because I just don't think that would have worked either. But like I said to Dean, I'm like, I share your concerns about his age, but like, look around, no one else is stepping up his advice. And it's Joe Biden's decision to make.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We can blame a whole bunch of other people. And I do blame like the, again, the close, close advisors, but like at the end of the day, Joe Biden had a decision to make. He's the president of the United States. He has free will. He as agency. He could have decided not to run. He chose to run. That's it. You're right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Well, you know what was most revealing was during that George Stephanopoulos interview after the terrible debate when Stephanopoulos was like, well, if you don't drop out and you run and you lose, how are you going to feel if Donald Trump wins again? And Biden said, I'll feel like I did my goodest. I did my best. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And when he said that I was like, oh fuck, really?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I feel pretty bad. Pretty bad. No, I really did do some thinking because this wasn't a surprise, right? Not that I expected Donald Trump to win, but because we all knew that it was a very real possibility. I genuinely believe this was a coin toss. I had an opportunity to really think about the reaction and what my reaction would be and how I would feel. And, um,
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I'm an Obama person through and through. And so I will always be hopeful. But I am much less hopeful than I was when I started that campaign or when I left the White House or even when I started keeping it 1600. And that is a hard thing to wrestle with the state of the world right now. But it's sort of like, you know, what I was saying to you before, it's the only way I
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We're like steps away from like Chancellor Musk dissolving Congress because it's just it's too messy. It did make me realize that like Democrats are going to have more leverage in at least the congressional fights next year than people might think. because they're going to have an even narrower majority Republicans in the House next year.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I can see through this is to take everything one day at a time and to believe that we still have the capacity to change, change our minds, change the way we behave, change the country. And that is, it's very possible that's just not true. But deciding it's not true now, like sends us into this nihilistic place where which I can't go to. There's no appeal to that for you?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
There's no appeal to that for me. Like, look, I have... I think since I was a child, I was always been like the, I've tried to be the diplomat and the peacemaker. I was like that in my family. It's probably why I worked for Barack Obama. Being a speech writer requires a lot of diplomacy and a lot of bring it. This person wants this edit. This one's the other edit.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
How are people going to think about the speech? How's it going to land with this group and that group? So like, that's just like, it's in my DNA. And if I give that up, I don't know what I have, man. Yeah. I don't have much else. It's been like a guiding principle of my entire life and career. And I feel like, I don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I feel like the idea of America is, this will sound extremely cheesy, but like, I think it's worth, it's still worth fighting for. And it is an idea. It's an idea. You're sure?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I mean, look, the founders, you know, we're all created equal. Right. The idea that everyone is created equal, that everyone deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Like it sounds cheesy, whatever. It is a radical idea. It is a radical idea. And one of the reasons the radical idea is because the people who wrote it had slaves.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And so like so right off the bat, we didn't start off too well. in this country. We had this great ideal, and it was not matched in practice in any way. And throughout our history, we have fucked up time and time and time again. But there are also times when we have moved forward and made progress. It has happened over and over and over again.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And the idea that this founding principle is still the best way to organize society and organize a country, which I do believe, I still think it's worth fighting for. I still think that you can change people's minds. I do.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We just baptized my one-year-old, our one-year-old, Teddy. We got really lucky. The person who baptized Teddy is a guy by the name of Father Greg Boyle, runs Homeboy Industries here in Los Angeles. Jesuit. Jesuit, a great Jesuit. It's a rehabilitation program for former gang members and people who are incarcerated.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, I'm Jesuit. And so is Father Greg. So is the Pope now, right? We got a Jesuit Pope. Great.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And Father Greg, who, by the way, is a huge Bulwark fan, afterwards that we were talking, he said he's a big Bulwark fan.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But the saying that he loves is, we are more than the worst thing we've ever done. And that is a...
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
deep belief in the possibility of redemption of change of grace of being able to like we all have the capacity for good and the capacity for evil i do believe that and so i think there are evil acts but like you know people can always have their minds changed and some people might never have their minds changed you're going to get your Donald Trump's, you're going to get your Elon Musk's, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And, I mean, we're watching this play out now, and maybe they get the votes, and maybe they keep the government open, but they're going to have a government funding fight. They're going to have to deal with the debt ceiling. Again, it doesn't look like they're going to eliminate the debt ceiling or a debt ceiling hike in this deal.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
That's humanity. But I also think it is entirely possible to go out there and talk to people and change their minds. And by the way, that is the only option. To me, it's just, there's just two choices, right? There's giving up or there's trying and trying is, might lead you to failure.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And if you ask me to predict, is it more likely to lead to failure in this political environment in our country right now? I would say yes, for sure. But like, what does that prediction matter at this point? It doesn't matter. What matters is whether you decide to try or not try. That's all that matters. It doesn't matter what you think is going to happen or what you predict.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
All that matters is what you're doing right now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah. And you know what I'm going to say? I'm going to say that is America. And this other guy in between there, Barack Obama, he's America too. And John Lewis is America. And so is George Wallace. And we contain multitudes. And this is a country that has never lived up to the ideals of its founding that are still worth fighting for.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
They're trying to pass a tax package that they have to pass, energy, immigration, all this shit. Farm bill. Yeah, farm bill. They can only afford to lose...
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And there is pain in this country and there is misery and suffering and evil. And there is also good and kindness and compassion. And that is the country we are in. And by the way, you have a say in what happens because we have agency. And no matter how dark it gets, we have agency. And so that's what I want to teach my kids.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
the exceptionalism i feel is more for the ideals than it is for the country itself and i think that those ideals are it should be universal right in other countries as well treat your neighbor like you want to treat yourself as like a precept of almost every single religion through human history can't be a coincidence that they all came around to that one and so i think that these are like universal principles that aren't just about america that's about like how we organize the world
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We're here. We're here in Los Angeles. Charlie, Teddy, me, Emily. Emily's parents are in town. They're staying with us. My parents live here. So my brother lives here. So we're all going to do Christmas at the Favreau's.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah. Where are you going? You're going skiing? I'm going to Vail. You're going to Vail. Nice.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
i'm gonna be off it's gonna be offline with tim miller that's great we'll see are you i was gonna say you're not gonna be you're like you're as bad as the worst you're the only of all the people at pod save america ball where all the people we talk to you and i we're the we're the most online we're the worst how many times has somebody sent you a text is like hey have you seen this where you haven't seen it never never
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
We're not looking for big swings, just progress.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Thanks for holding space for me in this last Daily Bulletwork podcast for a while.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Not just in our government now, either. I mean, he's announcing that he's like funding Nigel Farage's Reform Party bid in the UK. This morning, he endorsed the AFP in Germany, which is, you know, the new neo-Nazi party there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, FD, sorry. The FD in Germany. Tommy would be very unhappy with you. I know, I know. I miss my world. I was railing about it this morning, and now I screwed it up.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is crazy. But what I'm trying to figure out is, like... Elon Musk, you know, I was talking to Ro Khanna about him this week on Pod Save America, you know, and he makes the point like a lot of Americans look at him and they're like, this guy puts rockets into space and he's really successful and they think that's cool. And I think there's something to that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Like you look at the polls, right? Like he is not the most unpopular figure in the country right now. And so the question is, how do we get people involved?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Most people to realize like what's going on a that Elon is basically running the government and be that there's so many conflicts that it's just a corruption play and also he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and so a bunch of people are going to get hurt by it and I do think we kind of have to focus on like what he does that actually harms people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
And what he does to actually help himself, right? Because I think, you know, it's just like dealing with Trump. We can go on and on about all the crazy Elon tweets and this and that and all the shit that he says. But I think the effects of him running the country and maybe the world are going to be the most important thing for people to lift up.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Did you see Trump last night? I was asked about this somewhere. And he was like, you know, he's a good guy. He's trying hard. He's trying hard. I hope he's got to be strong. He's got to be strong. So it's not... Wasn't the full-throated Trump endorsement? But you can see this is why Mike Johnson is the lame member of their clique now. He's just like...
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
on board with, uh, on board Trump's plane with Musk. And then he's at the, he's at the army Navy game with them. He looks out of place. Like he's just, he's always in the back of the pictures. He's always in the back of the picture. He's like, who, he's like, who, who invited this guy?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
You know, he doesn't, I mean, whether he survives for a long term or not, like he might survive like the next couple of votes. I don't see how he or anyone survives in that role. It's the role more than the person.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
That's the problem right now, because they have no margin and you still have the chip Roy's and the, and, and this wing of Republicans in the house who are just going to like, just be crazier than even, you know, Donald Trump and Elon Musk and, and the mainstream mega Republicans and, And so I don't know how anyone survives in that position.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Wait, did Jesse Waters' show Lovett crying on your show? Did that happen?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But did you know that if they can't elect Mike Johnson speaker or they can't elect a speaker when Congress convenes in January, they can't count the electoral votes for Donald Trump? So if Kamala Harris has the courage? No, no, it's not even Kamala. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have to step aside by law. So you know what we're going to get? We get President Chuck Grassley.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Chuck Grassley. It's upset President of the Senate pro tem.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
How did I miss that? Why didn't you send that around?
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
wobbly and it's like well all right well we don't want people to not get their paychecks at christmas so we'll cut a deal that we don't really like even if children's cancer research we lose but we'll still go along with it because we got disaster relief or something they're not doing that last i saw hakeem jeffries did say the lines of communication with mike johnson are open again and they're starting to talk to them again of course this is friday morning that's the death note for mike johnson maybe that was a strategic move by hakeem yeah maybe
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
So yeah, but they're going to need some Democratic votes, and I don't know what Democrats vote for. I think they got debt ceiling out of this latest package. But you can imagine if it's a clean CR that's just like a patch that kicks it one more month down the road. Maybe the Democrats do it so we don't have chaos around Christmas. TSA.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I heard Bannon say this at the New York Young Republican Club thing this week, and his view on this from Mike Davis, noted legal expert Mike Davis, because in the Constitution, it doesn't say consecutive terms that maybe Trump can run again, in which case, let's do Trump-Obama 2028. Let's do it. Let's bring him back.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Yeah, thank you. Sign me up. I think he thought that was a neg. You think they're going to put Pod Save America and the Bulwark in the same prison? Do you think we're going to get to share? I hope so, John. I hope so, too. That would be fun for me.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
I think it could burn itself out. But I also think that Dems can't just stand by and let that happen because I think we got to let people know exactly what's going on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
But we have for a couple of years now talked about the challenge of like Democrats being in power and having this big heterodox coalition that extends from, you know, Liz Cheney to Bernie Sanders and AOC and how that's difficult and it's tough to keep it together. Angela Davis to Bill Kristol is the version of that I like the best. Same idea. But at least we have a real platform.
The Bulwark Podcast
Jon Favreau: Funny and Horrible
Even Liz Cheney in the coalition, she wasn't asking anyone to change the platform, right? She just wants to stop Donald Trump. And Joe Biden, he came into office, he had things he wanted to do. And I think there is a split between... I mean, there's the J.D. Vance style Republicans who might want to be a little more populist, right?