Chapo Trap House - 318 - Rahm Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Neolib feat. Ryan Grim (5/27/19)

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

We talk to The Intercept's Ryan Grim about his new book "We've Got People," discussing the Democrats' reliance on big money and how it might be broken by mass-movement based politics. Rahm Emanuel is a central figure in Ryan's book, so we read from Rahm's new column in The Atlantic, ironically called "It's Time To Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses." Finally, we introduce a new character into Chapo canon, NJ representative Josh Gottheimer. Few tickets left for our UK shows in Glasgow (6/3), London Early (6/5) and Manchester (6/7). Go to www.chapotraphouse.com/tour or https://www.gigsandtours.com/tour/chapo-trap-house for tickets.

But let's hear the son of a bitch deny it. Well, yeah, I mean, once he starts talking about denying that he wears a diaper, then in the minds of people who's hearing it, they have to open their imaginations to the possibility that he is. They're just thinking about the diaper all day long. They're thinking, this motherfucker's wearing a diaper right now. He starts looking at his pants like, there's a little bunched up there, and he does have a wide dumper.

And he's got a dumper and he does wear a very baggy clothes. Yeah. Oh, God, those pants. And he waddles. He waddles around to these huge hammer pants. It's the ass pennies negotiating strategy. No, but yeah, they, they, they should just start calling him doddering Donald diaper Don diaper Don and just talk about him like he is senile, which, you know, I think he

probably is. Oh, he's clearly senile. And like that would drive him insane. Like they don't know how to get over it. It's all he would talk about. Yeah. They're already only talk about his poop. There are diapers.

They're already not indicting him and they're not going to impeach him and he's still trying to prove some, you know, point about how innocent he is. No collusion. Yeah. He's still posting about it. Like that just that alone made him go insane. Yeah. Sorry, I started recording Chris.

Yeah. Just I wanted to get the poop. Come, come, come. Yeah. May come out. Yeah. As Will said, Will said before recording, the idea here is every meeting they have the Pelosi should come out afterwards and say the president shit himself.

We could all smell it and it was we had to cut it short. It was we could not continue talking about infrastructure we would not then talk for the next two years. You go. His acceptance speech at the RNC would be about his diaper and how it doesn't exist and it's fake news. He's strong. His colon is never poop.

I've never gone to the bathroom once. I'm 100% efficient. Also imagine, you know, not saying it matters that they're being a Senate impeachment trial and just how pissed off he would get at whoever he gets to represent him. So yeah. A lot of our way of are saying that like Matt was saying, you know, we understand like the left case against impeachment, but I got to say like I've come around on impeachment because I just think it's important to fuck with Trump and like and to fuck with him,

to make him angry, to make him more unhinged and most importantly to distract him from whatever is invading Iran. Yeah. From whatever his administration would be doing otherwise, you know, building privatized concentration camps, the wall and starting a war with Iran. And the thing is like the argument against impeachment is we're trying to build a socialist movement. That means we're trying to pitch like we're trying to make a pitch for new policies, a

new approach to redistribution. And it's like, yeah, do you think that anyone in the House of Representatives is going to do that? No, fucking course. The House of Representatives, as we'll discuss, is this just club filled with unemployable dipshit failed sons and used car salesmen and absolute corrupt dipshits and CIA agents. They can't pass anything anyway, because the Senate's Republican control and Trump's president.

So like just have them troll him with hearings for the next two years. Meanwhile, Bernie is out there. Let him fucking actually promote the alternative to this fucking shit show. And like, you know, like the what brought me around on it is just how bad the arguments against doing it are, which basically boiled down to is like, this will turn out Republican voters and Trump will fundraise and play the victim off of it. Like, whereas, I mean, like someone running against him for president in 2020. I mean, he will play the victim and be like, very unfair.

They're persecuting me. Yeah. Presidential elections tend to mobilize the base of the two parties, no matter what. That's going to really do the job there. I mean, you might have a case if we were going into a midterm, but like if you're redlining turnout in presidential elections, regardless of anything else. And as I said, like the other week on the show, like the other big thing is like, this is again, like 2016, all just assuming that Trump will definitely not win reelection, which

is like, you know, it looks pretty bad. He's extraordinarily unpopular for someone with 50, 50, yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm out of the prediction business. Yeah, yeah. Everyone should be. How dare anyone fucking say anything about what's going to happen? You shut your fucking wet mouth. So like you say, like, oh, we're not going to impeach him because the most important thing

is beating him in 2020. Well, it's like, well, what if you lose? Like then you've established a precedent that there's basically nothing a president can do that you won't impeach him for. And it's like, he can't get away with it. So I actually, I mean, it's hard to care about any of that because like the real argument for impeachment from a non troll move is that you need to do something to push back against the erosion of these norms and rules that are just being flagrantly violated without

any, any kind of even threat of pushback from law enforcement or or Congress. Yeah. But I mean, if you don't really care about that shit and you think that's fake anyway, that's not really persuasive. The persuasive argument is that he wouldn't talk about anything else at all for two years and he would just get more and more insane. He would get so mad and worked up about it and like, you know, anything that raises his blood pressure is, I think in the long run, good.

Yeah. Absolutely. You could, you could kill him. Like you're saying that day his nose is looking mad, big, mad bulbous, so like pitted and like gored. Yeah. Like that guy that Putin poisoned, yes, Ukrainian election. And just imagine that an impeachment hearing and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger

and eventually it like just pops where it turns into Dan Aykroyd's nose from nothing but trouble, a penis, an actual penis. Okay. It's just a little, little opening, opening rifts and thoughts on impeachment, but let's, let's start the show because we have a very cool guest for you guys. Fresh out the feds, first day out, John Walker Lynn, the American Taliban. How you been, dude? Yeah.

We've got a lot of pop culture to catch you up on. Forget Game of Thrones. Let's talk about entourage. Yeah. Kim Kardashian went public and Edward Snowden went, God damn it, Facebook went public, Edward Snowden went private. That's it. Kim and Kanye had a baby, so now there's another Kardashian to not keep up with.

That's it. That's the line. So anyway, how you feeling, John? Any regrets? No, I'm just fooling with you. He'll be getting on and on shortly. He'll be guest hosting for us while we're in Europe, but no, he's going to be Twitch streaming with Felix very shortly.

But from the intercept, it's back on the show. Ryan Grimm, how you doing, Ryan? Just wonderful to be here. You were in person for the first time. That's right. The first time actually on the show. Yeah. Well, actually the last time we, I saw you was in the Bronx at AOC's victory party at

that pool hall. Verso and I were there, the victory pool party, the victory pool party. And I mean, I guess that's sort of where your book, the latest book that you have a book out now called We've Got People from Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the end of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, your book sort of begins there. Yeah. I actually decided to finally pull the trigger on writing it the next day. Wow.

Like I'm... Well, you have your thesis, you know, like... And all of a sudden people cared. Yeah. So this was the thing that I've been writing about for about 12 years, starting in 2006 covering the midterms, this fight within the Democratic Party. But the left side of that fight had been so weak for so long that people justifiably were not tuned in to the conflict until really 2015 when Bernie Sanders kind of takes off.

And you know, broadly speaking, like going off the subtitle of the book, like this inter-party conflict is between sort of the big money people and the more people-powered grassroots movement-oriented activists and voters. Right. Two theories of how you organize a party, like the one theory saying, we just need to raise as much money as we can to match the Republicans, do whatever we need to do to do that, spend the money on consultants and good TV ads, be smart, turn out the right voters, and win a majority is that way.

And the other says, let's just register lots of people and give them something to be excited about, get them to the polls and win that way. And often today, people commentators say, oh, what's going on is a conflict between liberals and socialists. You were saying this predates the invention of socialism in 2015. That's right. Our show. Yes.

And you know, up until then, the money theory that you just, you've got to raise enough money to be competitive. You need to spend it on TV ads and consultants and targeting the right people. Not totally an insane way to run a modern political party, is it? And it wasn't always the way that the party operated. So up until the 1970s or so, they had labor backing, they had some money, but the scale of money in politics wasn't what it was so that a lot of these senators were spending just a handful of thousands of dollars to win reelection.

So like Frank Church and Birch Bay who just kind of just coasted on their kind of lion status. And then when Reagan came in, Newt Gingrich and the like New Right rose up in 7880 and they got wiped out of the Senate, wiped out of the White House, they still had the House. And they felt like they were going to control the House forever. Like they felt like they had an impenetrable wall around that thing. And so they used it. They went to Wall Street.

They went to other corporate interests and said, look, we've got the House. You know, you need to pay us. And you know, we're not necessarily going to give away the store, but because we're in power, Annie up. Yeah. And that obviously evolves in the direction that you would expect it to and brought that wing of the party to where it is now. But in some ways it was an accidental response to them getting wiped out in 1980.

But the very beginning of the book begins with AOC's surprise victory over Joe Crowley. Like the real, like that sort of comes full circle. The real narrative of the book begins with Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, which is, you know, something I think like most people have totally forgotten about. So like, why did you, why did you begin with Jesse Jackson and like what have people forgotten about his presidential campaign? Well, part of it was his, his theory sounds so familiar, which was register more voters, give them something to care about and have them come out and vote.

But what people don't understand is that there was a moment in that campaign in 1988 where he was neck and neck with Dukakis for the nomination. Happened after Michigan. He was, he was expected to lose Michigan. This is 37, 38 primaries and caucuses in. So they're deep into this campaign. Losers like Al Gore and Joe Biden had been pushed aside by then. It's just, it's Gebhart, Dukakis and Jackson going into Michigan and Jackson wins this

stunning upset and pulls basically within a delegate tie with Dukakis. And Democrats in Washington just have a complete meltdown figuring out, okay, what are we going to do if Dukakis does not stop Jackson? First idea they have is they're going to send Mario Cuomo to the convention and draft him there. That was there. That was there. That was their plan D.

That was like, if nothing else works, the best man we're going to stop him at the convention with Cuomo. And the vitriol just comes down on him. And then the electability arguments just pour out. They're just very explicit. America will not elect a black man. They will not elect this black man. Michael Dukakis is the electable candidate.

And Jackson was polling well ahead of in Wisconsin, which was the next state. You know, he goes to Wisconsin. He has this like rainbow rally, talks about economic violence that neoliberalism is doing to workers, black and white, rural and urban, and he gets crushed in Wisconsin, even though he's polling well ahead. This is one of the first instances of that phenomenon. And so he fades from there. But in between Michigan and Wisconsin, there was a very real possibility that he was going

to actually steal that nomination, which changes the kind of course that the party takes from there. So you're firmly in the camp that, you know, the Democratic Party, I mean, our political system fundamentally went, fundamentally was realigned in the 80s and 90s, because you can see the wheels coming off the Democratic coalition post 70s. And it's also, you know, it's, and correct me if any of this is wrong, but my idea of what the Democratic Party looking like in the 80s, it's still this coalition of, you know, white working class ethnics in the Midwest, the North and such, you know, black

voters post civil rights movement, educated liberals, and still Southern segregationists, you know, like post civil rights movement segregationists. And that's not a coalition that seemed destined to continue to function. And then you also have the labor movement is still in a major part of that coalition, which has been in now the Reagan's office a rapid decline. The white working class ethnics, they flocked to Reagan, it wins two big election victories. And 94 is when what the Southern whites just started leaving the mass on the federal level. That's when the wheels completely come off of it.

And even in October of 94, Democrats felt like it was going to be bad. Sure. People were mad at Hillary care and mad at all the other things Clinton had done wrong. But they didn't think they were going to lose the House. They were surprised that they lost that. And so in hindsight, we say like, yeah, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the party has shifted and all the white people left. But as you were living through it, every midterm cycle, you could say, OK, yeah, they're fleeing,

but if we just raise enough money and spend it in the right ways, we can win back these Reagan Democrats. The fact that they still, we still talk about Reagan Democrats this day. This is somebody who's been a Republican for 30, 40 years at this point, and we call them Reagan Democrats. Like, no, these are not. But they were doing the same thing then. So while the labor movement is dying and as this coalition is disintegrating, there's

another thing going on. And that's just money increasingly being pumped into politics. And what I took away from your book is that generally the reaction from the head honchos at the Democratic Party of the Washington types and the consultants and so on was, OK, you know, this rickety coalition is just fracturing. It's falling apart. And you know, the same old magic isn't there anymore. Maybe if we just get a shitload of money, that's just going to make it up for us instead

of, you know, going and we definitely can't go to any kind of like a populist Jackson type politics that might be able to forge a totally new coalition that would have a strong majority. Right. So we're going back a step and say, OK, we'll double down on working class politics, labor politics and hope to paper over the simmering racial divides. We'll go the opposite direction. We'll just go to this professional managerial class and we'll go to Wall Street.

We'll go to the big business and we'll just suck up the money and we'll just our elections will increasingly get, you know, just a wash in these, you know, contentless campaign messaging and all very scripted consultant based shit. And I remember you used an example in the book of this, this Southern Senator, Democratic Senator, who like for the first time, he was facing like a difficult reelection campaign against Republican. Like this was, you know, when that became a thing as before, you know, you're a Democrat, you're golden in the South.

And he had his last election raised $200. And this time all the Washington consultants come and say, we've got to save your campaign. Yeah. John Stennis, white supremacist, it was his his 82 campaign. Against Haley Barber, actually, like a 35 year old Haley Barber or something. Yeah. He'd raised nothing in like five, five reelections before that they come in and they're like, you will need $2 million to prove, you know, get up on TV, just show people that you're

alive and you're still. I'm still racist. I promise. I'm still, I'm still racist. I can still walk. That's all like, that's, that's all, that's all they're asking for. He's like $2 million. How can I raise $2 million?

Like, well, aren't you like the top Democrat on the armed services committee? You know, what about these weapons makers that are back in your state? And he's like, that wouldn't be proper. And he ends up doing it anyway, but he, and he raised a couple of million dollars and he beats Haley Barber and he serves another six years and retires at like 90 in 1988. But yeah. See miracles can happen. Miracles can happen.

And this is a guy, he was as a prosecutor, he was responsible for a landmark Supreme Court case. I think in the 30s, which outlawed confessions extracted from torture because he had convicted black defendants based on confessions extracted from torture, acknowledged it and said, that's fine. And it went to the Supreme Court and this is when the Supreme Court effectively outlawed torture as a means of extracting confessions. And so it's this same guy who then in 1982 is saying like, yeah, okay, actually I'll raise

the couple million dollars and we'll keep and we'll keep a Democrat in the Senate for another six years rather than trying to figure out some other path forward. And now he's got an aircraft carrier named after him. He does, right? Yeah. Funny you bring up confessions extracted under police torture and interrogation because another big character in the book is Rahm Emanuel, who now just left office as the mayor of Chicago to get a cush job at the Atlantic, which I want to get into in a bit.

But how does Rahm figure in this book? Because you said you sort of started telling this story in 2000, you started sort of looking into this, if we're finding this story in 2006 during the midterm elections, of which at the time Rahm was like the triple C chair. And like, what was the strategy that like he brought to bear in 2006? Because this realignment is happening, Rahm is, you know, we're seeing it through the lens of his career in your book. Yeah.

And Rahm is kind of the main character in the book. His first campaign, 1980, where he's tries to beat the Republican who is Arafat's best buddy in the House of Representatives. It seems odd now, but like this is like a different era in politics where like across parties you could sort of like have your faves in foreign countries, like there's like Republicans who are like, yeah, I support Arafat or PLO or Turkey or whatever. Taking him out was Apex first win. Dick Durbin ended up beating him in 82, that was Apex first like that.

That was Rahm's first job in politics, you said that he like his first job was a fundraiser. As a 20 year old fundraiser, he was so, he was just so good at it. Yeah. Good Lord. And he'd be like 22, he'd see like the commerce secretary, Bob, what's going on? How you do it? Like just back slapping, like he just absolutely belonged there. So he never even had an idealistic phase that he grow out of or anything.

He was just a lizard from the jump. But he was raised with one and, you know, idealism takes different forms. His dad was in Irgun, which he volunteered for the IDF, right? He volunteered for the IDF during the Gulf War. Rahm, uh, Rahm, Israel, Emmanuel, his father was a terrorist, um, which, you know, means he believed in something. Uh, no, no, no, ma'am, uh, his father was a good person, an American. And his mother was a civil rights activist.

Uh, and, you know, he talks about the kind of social justice conversations they'd have around the table. And so, you know, he was in it for the cause of, of Israel in that first campaign, 1980. Uh, you know, so he, he, what, he did believe in something at that point. Um, but so by 2006, he's a, he's a proponent of the idea that if you're going to win the house, you need to find the most right wing guy you can find who will call himself a Democrat and run them in all, in all of these, all of these districts. And what he was so good at was pretending to the press that that strategy worked.

But if you actually explore the numbers, they won on an anti-war wave with Rahm Emmanuel insisting that none of his candidates could, could say they opposed the war. And the ideal candidate would be a veteran, you know, a vet who has sort of, uh, I don't know, tactical critiques about the war. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to change direction. Like that was their phrase.

Like blue dog vets, county sheriffs, NFL quarterbacks, anyone who could sell fun NFL quarterbacks, bat NFL quarterbacks. And the, you know, it's the, their strategy has evolved. It used to be anti-gay vets. Now they, now it's gay veterans, but, but essentially they're relatively short on time. So that's progress. That is progress. Yeah.

Yeah. So in 2006, yeah. Like the Democrats, they, they do take back with, uh, they take back both the house and the Senate, 2006, but as you were saying, like Rahm's genius is sort of convincing people that, you know, he is like the, the, the man, the power broker, the guy who pulls the strings and has the, the plan or whatever. But as you point out, there was a broad feeling by 2006 of like disgust and, you know, fear about where the Iraq war was going and that people did not want to continue.

Like the insurgency was like roiling the country and this was like years after, you know, mission accomplished and Bush was deeply unpopular. And Republicans had a pedophile in the house. The Mark Foley. Yeah. Who was exposed at the, toward the very end, Tom DeLay was on his way to prison. Like, yeah, it was a really hard election to screw up and he screwed up a ton of races. And so he, there, and I go through a bunch of the examples in the book where he would

say this right-wing Democrat is the only one who can win this district. And then the left-wing Democrat would beat him. He would walk away from the race and Rahm would say, we're done with this race. We're not spending a dime. We're going to lose it. And then the progressive wins the general election. It happened an embarrassing amount of times. Uh, New Hampshire was a good one.

Yeah. Carol Shay, Carol Shay Porter. He's very, very little money. Right. Was a band. Anti-war. A ball, a musician in upstate New York abandoned McNerney out in California. And McNerney's still, still in Congress.

John Yarmouth. Uh, still. Rahm had no idea he was going to win. He's now the budget chairman. Like the, a lot of, Carol Shay Porter just left. Like, these are not people who are like one and then got run. Well, how, how would that compare to the record of like Rahm's guys, you know, like, all wiped out in 2010.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The few good men. They, and that's the thing. They voted against Obamacare. They voted against cap and trade. They voted against the spending bills, uh, voted against repealing.

Don't ask, don't tell. You name it. And then they all lost. So it's like, thanks. They lost in 2010 wave. They, they, they shrunk the size of the stimulus, you know, which, which ramped up unemployment and then they get wiped out. So for a blissful four years there, it seemed like the Democrats had picked the electoral

lock and that they, they've finally been able to dominate the new, you know, this new realign, you know, six party system or whatever you want to call it, um, without having to resort to a, a multiracial working class becoming like following the lead of a rainbow coalition that Jesse Jackson proposed. And after Obama won and put an exclamation point on that victory, it did seem like for a time that do that, all that Jesse Jackson, that would, that would just be a footnote and we'll just have permanent Democrat majority electoral college. Right.

And there's some strange ways that Obama coalition was the one that Jesse Jackson wanted to put together. Uh, you know, it's, which was, you know, progressive whites, um, black Hispanic, uh, LGBT, uh, with then a ton of Wall Street money thrown in. Uh, so that wasn't the part that Jesse Jackson wanted, but you know, they've been chasing that coalition ever, ever since then. And that's, but that's the precise one that Jesse Jackson pointed to and said, if, if you can pull these people together, you know, you're, you're the, you're a majority party.

And it turns out that it was really completely tied to the specific, first the specifics of the economic collapse happening right as the election is happening and the specific person of Barack Obama, because they went into 2016 thinking, we've got this figured out. Right. We don't need to rock the boat. We just slap another cone of paint on Pilly Clinton and have her do the Obama thing. And it just, there was no traction because she's not Obama and literally nobody is.

And people overlook this unique event, which was Obama saving Detroit. Like that, like the fact that he went in, Republicans wanted Detroit to go bankrupt. You know, it ran me famously headlined his column in the Wall Street Journal, let Detroit go bankrupt. Obama says, no, I'm going to take a political risk. I'm going to save these auto companies. That, that bought him 2012, like that without, without that, who knows, you know, how that ends up going or without them nominating this cartoon plutocrat of Romney.

But then by 2016, none of that goodwill is drifting to Hillary Clinton. Yeah. They don't see her. She didn't talk about it. That's for sure. And they suspect she probably would have let him go under. That's probably what. So take us to, you talk about in your book, 2009, 2010, Democrats have at varying points

of 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, massive, massive majority in the house. And Rom Emmanuel is the chief of staff. Right. Guy keeps being brought in. So yeah, like, so he was, he was the head of the DCCC, so like he technically did his job. They, they won the house and Senate in 2006.

Then yeah, Obama names him chief of staff, but like before that, you were telling me, not only was it like Rom, you know, picking these candidates or his guys, but it was also like ignoring everyone who was progressive or liberal, but like anytime a blue dog picked up the phone to him, he was on the other end of the line. It's striking. And, and he'd come right down to the Capitol too. And in Washington, there's, there's all kinds of theater. You know, who, you know, who goes, who goes to who means everything.

Any blue dog has any problem, roms in his little sedan, zipping, zipping down Pennsylvania Avenue. You know, what, what can I, what can I do for you? Stimulus is too big. How about we take 150 billion off it? How's that? Okay. How about 200?

200 billion. We'll take 200 billion off of it. Progressives, it's the, it's the complete opposite. Trump is talked about as this tough guy, you know, who's really going to, you know, crack some knuckles. He swears. Can you believe it? He swears.

It's bad words. The only time he brings that force to bear is with the left. Yeah. Those are the people he called the R word. It wasn't the Republicans. Right. And that was because move on and some other groups were, were running ads urging blue dogs to vote for Obama's budget and Obama's spending bill.

And Rahm flipped out on them, got some stories in the book of people getting called into the White House and told, stop it. Like, if, if you continue with this, we're going to go to your funders and we're going to shut down this little progressive group that you've got. Like we've got this stop agitating. Don't push Republicans. Don't push Democrats. It's interesting because in a lot of the Obama apology, you know, his apologists paint

him as a guy who actually did want to, you know, fundamentally transform the country, but was just so constrained by, you know, a few senators and a few blue dogs in the house. But you're, you're painting a different story that Obama's own consigliere was the one just saying, no, we're, this is the direction we're going. Yeah. And there's, there's a debate that still goes on about, you know, what you could have done to get 60 votes for a better stimulus or 60 votes for this or that.

But in the book, I step away from that a little bit and say, what if Obama had actually brought his army to Washington? What if instead of shutting down OFA, which was his, you know, grass roots. Put it under the DNC. Put it on the DNC, mothballing it. In fact, it's Beto O'Rourke's campaign manager is the one who was assigned the task of executing. Executing order 60. Take it all the other behind the bar.

Literally, she's the one whose job it was to, to shelve that thing. What if instead of doing that on election night or inauguration, say, you know, I want 10 million people to demand that we do X, Y and Z's and we're going to, we're going to make this happen. There were people talking about the end of the Republican Party. I remember, I remember feeling that way. Yeah. I did too.

I remember, you know, after the 2008 election, watching Gore Vidal watching the returns and so there's, he was being filmed and someone asked him, like, what do you think of this? And he goes, I think the Republicans are as dead as the wigs of yesteryear and they will never win another election again. It felt that way. And they, they telegraphed right away that their strategy to come back was to vote against everything. Yep.

Yeah. No matter what. They did not, they did not hide it. Yeah. And Obama's response was, let's not push them. Like when McConnell said that, Mar-Mar Gore or top, or the economy was still in fucking free fall, shedding jobs and it's stunning, a million jobs a month and he's like our number one priority.

The man in the second term is like, that's just breathtakingly sociopathic and out in the open. And yet they were still like, no, these are the guys we have to deal with. I saw an article the other day, quoting Brahma Manuel from around 2009 saying, I don't give a shit about judges. We're not spending click, right? Well, I mean, this goes to the point about Rahm Emanuel as a character, you know, famously his brother Ari Emanuel is the hotshot Hollywood agent of which the Ari character is brother

Jeremy Piven. Yes. And that like, you know, he relishes the role of being like that guy, being like the fuck you guy, the guy who gets you in a room and screams at you, but like, but, but ultimately does it in your benefit and is like, just wants you to win. He just wants you to win. You fucking children, you babies, you don't understand what reality is like out here. And you know, he's a tough guy like during the auto bailout debate, he said, oh, fuck

the UAW. That's him. Yeah. And yeah, like, you know, fuck the haters, like, I know what's right, but like ultimately like I'm the guy in charge and like, I like, this is politics and I know how to play hard ball and I know how to get shit done and win. And like that's his extremely cultivated self image. But like, I think the revealing thing about him is that he what he's really good at is

convincing people that he's that guy and staying in the room, despite the fact that like the manifest failures of all of his political machinations and part of it, there wasn't a real alternative media at the time. The, you know, political, political didn't even exist in 2006, the Huffington Post was sort of around. It was just a blog. You didn't, but you didn't have like New York Magazine and TNR and like all of these other outlets that will post hot takes about, you know, what the democratic establishment

is doing wrong. There's certainly, there was no intercept at the time. And so it was just basically the New York Times and the Washington Post telling the story. Oh, I remember all the stories about Rahm Emanuel were just fawning like in this war room, yelling holler at people, doing swears, my God, this guy is just, he's got it by this fists. And there's the book that comes out of it called The Thumpin, which is. The Thumpin, the Thumpin, a reporter from the United States of Chicago, I believe, follows

him around and just catches all his swears and like he's on the phone swearing and he's in the room swearing and he's in the airport swearing and you're like, wow, this guy. Obama gave like a, you know, like a roast or a dinner in Rahm's honor and he told the story about how Rahm lost like the tip of his finger in a deli slicer accident when he was a teenager. He worked at Arby's. At Arby's. Yes.

He has the meats. They have his meat. They have his meat. So he cut off the tip of his middle finger and Obama said, he lost his middle finger, which rendered him nearly speechless. It's just like a pretty funny line, but he was pretty good at that. So that was the last best chance the Democrats got to legislate. They didn't push for card check.

They let Acorn, ironically, a community organizing coalition just totally get destroyed. I mean, there was a push to do, okay, we can't get rid of the filibuster yet because we've got 58 senators who won't agree to it. You can do budget reconciliation, which is what the Republicans did to try to repeal Obamacare to do their tax cuts. So there was a push, put climate change in the, in reconciliation. So you only need 50 votes to do it. They don't do it.

They had all of these different levers that they could have pulled and they just decided not to pull. Oh, that's fine. That's a big deal. Yeah. What's that? Oh, I just, oh, the capital of the US state is gone now. What happened?

Oh, now we're fine. Well, 2008, you know, it did kind of look like the end of the Republican Party. Like that Democrat House majority was a genuine national majority, rural suburban, urban Indiana, for God's sake. Idaho. Idaho. Idaho. Then 2010, Republicans win what, 62 seats back to take back the House and, you know,

the Democrats may have to keep the Senate just because of a few Tea Partiers. Yeah. And because only a third of the seats are up, you know, which always saves the Senate in these wave years. Then 2014, of course, the Democrats lose the Senate, despite Obama's reelection. They're losing all of these, these state legislative seats, losing governor's mansions and all that stuff. And then there were, there were White House aides who were okay with that outcome because

Reed and Obama were at such loggerheads that they were like, you know what, what do we need to read for? He just causes us some real problems. And of course, the Supreme, because everyone on the Supreme Court is the hail and healthy 35. Yeah, they're going to be fine. There's no chance any of them might just die suddenly at a ranch while doing pizza gate crimes.

Allegedly. But you'd have to, you'd have to care about judges. What was the conflict with Reed? Yeah. What was the, what was the tension between Reed and the, and the Obama White House? Reed is, was, is a fascinating character. It's Reed. He really is.

One of the few dirt, dirt poor background with Mormon family boxer. He was an amateur boxer. Yeah. He was inspired by his character, played by his mother was in casino. Tell me how it was at the dinner, Senator. He was a car bomb. Yeah. We're a wire.

When he was getting wire, believes that UFOs and funnel money to investigate them with US government funds. I didn't. 2012. If he jumped on a grenade and said, yeah, I saw him in Romney Sacks return and said, yes, wrote off his penis and larger. That was, that was, that was an interview with me. Actually, I was like, are you really saying this?

Like, so no, but he's one of the few guys who, as he got older, moved left and socially and economically across the board quite, and a lot of it. And I interviewed him for this book and he, and a lot of it was his staff. Like he started hiring these like actual lefties and like people from like weird movement backgrounds that just absolutely don't belong in a normal Senate majority leader's office. And so they started treating it like, like a weapon that Democrats don't, don't ever do. They don't actually wield power, but, but, but Reed did.

And so they, they started calling out the White House, you know, privately and, and publicly. And that just drove the White House absolutely bad shit. And as an aside, you know, you, you know, there's not enough press, I think, about exploring like the actual people on these staffs who wield, you know, a great deal of power collectively. And you mentioned, even though Jesse Jackson lost his campaign, he got this SOP where, you know, a lot of his, you know, a lot of members of his coalition ended up, you know, in Washington, in, in, in, in, with jobs and positions.

Yeah. And also when, when you run a campaign like that, that like gets people fired up, different types of people get into politics who other, who otherwise wouldn't have. Like Luis Gutierrez is, is one of them. He, Harold Washington won the, a mayoral election in 1983 against the, against the machine. In fact, after he, after he won the, this insurgent primary with the backing of the DSA, all the, the democratic machine flipped and back to the Republican in the general election.

And he only won by like two or 3% in the, in the general. But that kind of radicalized Luis Gutierrez was just a social worker at the time. He then becomes a city council member and kind of breaks the back of the machine with a special election. But, but people like him then get behind the Jackson campaign and yeah, then they start populating all these other, all these other places that, that, you know, create at least the possibility for some shake up. So it's 2015, Democrats, I mean, the Republicans controlled through all of these state legislatures

and the, the house and Senate and, but everyone's still kind of laughing at the tea party and it looks like it's going to be Hillary and there's no way she can lose. Look at Obama's back to victory, count the rings. Yeah. And look at all these, the 17, you know, douchebags that are running in the Republican and, oh man, it looks like Trump might actually win the nomination. Let's see what we can do to boost him so that he's the nominee because then we're golden. Yeah.

And you have this guy, Bernie Sanders, who might very well just end up the next Jesse Jackson, this, this historical curio during the reign of Hillary. Yeah. And Sanders actually was one of, he and Paul Wellstone were basically the only two prominent ish white liberals who backed Jesse Jackson. He was Burlington mayor then and Wellstone was a professor. But, but right. Yeah.

And Bernie didn't want to run. Like he, he was nudging all kinds of Warren and others to try to run so that somebody would, you know, put up a challenge to Clinton and at least get a message out there. And finally it's like, okay. Yeah. I'll announce his campaign during his lunch break. Literally during his lunch break in Washington, like didn't, I mean, later he did it in Vermont, but his actual announcement is just out.

He walked outside the Senate, talked to a few microphones and cameras said, I'm running for president in 24 hours. He raised a million dollars from that launch. And that's when I was like, oh, that, that was weird. Uh, yeah. And no, it was actually, it was Senator Wellstone's support of Jesse Jackson was the reason a Stinger missile was fired at this point. No, just, just, just kidding.

Am I? I don't know. But before we get, before we get to the readings, I do want to complete the narrative though. So your book covers the unpleasantness of 2016, sure. But then what happens? What's, what's, how the Democrats, Democrats in disarray now? Well, there's, there's, there ends up being a similar to how Jackson created a new wave of people getting into politics.

The Sanders campaign brought in weirdos like Troycott Chakrabarty, who's now Ocasio Cortez's chief of staff, Corbin Trent, who's now her communications director and who was a food truck operator, Alexander Rojas, who's now the head of justice Democrats, was a community college organizer. A ton of these people joined the Sanders campaign in kind of a renegade way and set up there his, his distributed organizing. When they all, when the campaign ends, they all then form justice Democrats. They go out, they recruit Ocasio Cortez.

And so like out of the Sanders campaign comes this, this effort, a bunch of them have now gone back to the Sanders campaign to try to redo it. But there are, and you covered this intensely, there, there were all of these left primary challenges going on in 2018. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I can't imagine that being the case when someone like Rom is in charge of D-Trip, where you can run these campaigns and actually get competent staff. There were all of these, these renegade consultants who heard, you know, oh, well, if you work

for XYZ, you know, you'll be locked out forever and said, well, fuck it, I don't give a shit. Right. Right. And I, and I think that's what, that's the kind of infrastructure that D-Trip is kind of accidentally setting up now by saying that if, if you work with a primary contender that you can't get any money from the party for it, for anything else, they're going to create a parallel industry of, of people who know how to run campaigns and are not beholden it or dependent on the party at all.

So, and it's also like, like a, like an infrastructure in that, like, if you have progressive policies that you'd like to see enacted in government, you almost have no choice but to run a people-based campaign because they're going to shut you out of any money or consultant or, or like any of the official, you know, systems or, you know, conduits for, you know, putting Democrats in office, they're, they're flatly saying like, we're, you, you, it is, you cannot run a primary against the Democrat. Right. Yeah.

They've just straight up have said it. And it's easy to, to clown on consultants, but every campaign needs them. You need some of them. You need somebody who's going to file your FEC forms. You need somebody who knows how to like put together a mailer and make sure it gets in people's mailboxes. Like not just everybody knows how to do that and they're not inherently corrupt just because they're consultants.

So what is the left civil war now? What, what is, what is the state of the Democratic party, the intro party fighting? Who are, we've got people. Who are these people? Well, a lot of these people that we've got don't vote. And so that's, that's the, the challenge that has never really been met by, by the left. And it's, it's, it's the, it's the theory that Bernie, you know, is bringing to this, to the presidential election that, that his kind of grassroots distributed organizing

approach of, of giving people something to vote for can, can expand the electorate. That's, and that, that really is, is the test. Cause if, if don't, then you, then you don't got people and they do have money and money will beat not people. Well, we do have that. So I mean, the, the, the, the test is going to be in the Democratic primary now. And interesting fact, I don't know if it was you who reported this, but I'm sure you knew this, that Beto's Senate campaign used Bernie's organized right.

Right. It's just this kind of like decentralized, you know, distributed organizing. And it was Bernie's, Bernie's people and Bernie didn't really know anything about what was going on with this decentralized distributed thing and his, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver didn't like it. They just kind of just did it and the difference with Beto, they say, some of the same people from Bernie's campaign, they pitched to Beto and to Beto's credit, he was like, that sounds good.

So I just drive around the state on like Facebook live and like talk to people and you'll handle everything else. Do I get to stand on the, stand on whatever you want, like skateboard, air drum. It worked perfectly for him. One of the big stories in there, these early stages of the Democratic primaries is all of these, you know, establishment friendly candidates clamoring to say, oh, I, no, I love Medicare for all. I want to abolish ICE.

I guillotine gritty, right? Does that, I mean, is that just pandering or does that mean that, you know, maybe something from the Sanders from the left populist wing is winning? Yeah. I mean, almost all politics is pandering. So yes, but that's fine. Like if, if, if you can lock them in on that, then great. But there's, there's an extraordinary amount of effort on the, on the side of the corporate

wing, the third ways and the others to, to pull them back from that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You said Medicare for all. What you meant is that everybody kind of has the option of access when they're 65 to Medicare. Does the Democratic Party today look any closer to reimagining its coalition in, in the time,

in the years that you've been covering this closely? Yes. And they, despite what you might think, because you hear so much focus about white guys and diners, it, it's far less than it was in, in 2006 and 2006. That's all, that's all it was, that guy. Now there is like, even among the, the center right consultant class, a recognition that you, you, you have to have a broader base that that, that that's, that that's not the answer.

So, so yes. And also the, the, the party has moved a lot, like the thing, the things, like the fact that the sellout position now is public option or is, is Medicare buy-in, that's, that's huge. Like that was the, that was the left edge position among House members just 12 years ago. Well, to, to return now to, to Rahm Emanuel, just to, you know, fill in the gaps in his story, White House Chief of Staff, and then his next big job was Mayor of Chicago, which

he just departed from that job. And he, he fixed all the problems, he fixed all the problems, he just right off into the sunset. I mean, you know, he did preside over, you know, a, a murder cover-up and probably the worst major police force in America, which is really saying something in the Chicago PD. Mass, mass closing of public schools. That's not, I forget that.

That's also good. So Rahm brought, operated some out of churning machine meant to grind up the poor and turn Chicago from, well, it's like, well, fuck, I, I guess we never released the footage from our Chicago live show, so people won't understand this reference. But you know, try to turn the city from this, this, this, this, this horrifying, uh, uh, the maelstrom of violence that, that Airbnb host warned us about, uh, into like some kind of like disnified time square. World-class city.

That was his phrase. World-class city. Uh, you can see, uh, yeah, you can see sort of evidence of, you know, the things Rahm does believe in, I suppose in his tenure as mayor, but just recently, just now, uh, immediately out of office, he has immediately got a job as a columnist for the Atlantic. Of course. God, I love the Atlantic. And it's just, you know, welcome with open arms.

Neoliberal De Beek. I called it. And it's still true. The liberal media. And, you know, he's, the first article he did was like a sort of a pay-in to Pete Buttigieg. But that was, he was like a contributor then and he was just like, the point of that article was like being gay is the least interesting thing about Mayor Pete and then went on to just, you know, talk about like how he's the perfect candidate and, you know, like

people need to start taking him seriously. He's the future of the Democratic party. So now he's officially been hired as a full-time columnist and I really would love to your thoughts on this piece, uh, Ryan, because it's, I mean, based on everything we say, like it's incredible. The title of this piece is called, It's Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses. It's so good.

It's so good. I mean, he, I mean, he, they covered up a murder of someone when you have a teenager when he was mayor. And he was involved in it. Yeah. He was personally involved in it. Oh, and like, I mean, you, you, the, you pointed this out that the reporter who broke that story is now waiting tables.

Yeah. He's, he's serving coffee at a hotel in, in Washington. He's, he's doing, he's still doing freelance work on the side, but yeah, he's, he's, does not have a full-time journalism job. The reporter who broke that, broke that story, um, got, got the video loose from, from Rom's hands. So, and that will, yeah. And then, and now Rom has, and it didn't he back a bunch of just these white elephant

fucking development projects or something with the Paul University, some million dollar fucking facility and, and, and, uh, like, obviously like every other big city mayor and like, like developers just write their housing policy and all that shit. Took hundreds of millions of affordable housing money and just wouldn't spend it. So he would literally rather not spend the money. So Rom is back now with his, you know, very kush, high profile byline in the Atlantic saying that American elites need to be held accountable. And it says here, if Democrats want to address simmering middle-class anger, they need to

deliver justice. So I just want to read it from a couple of selections for this piece here. We must nominate Darkwing Duck. So he begins by talking about the, uh, the college admissions scandal and he says the outrage over the varsity blues investigation perfectly illustrates what may be the most important least understood and underappreciated political dynamic of our era, a full on middle class revolt against the elites and the privileges they hoard. I mean, a middle class revolt against sort of decadent elites, they're very angry.

Yeah. So he goes, uh, the privileges they hoard for all the focus on inequality and social justice, this middle class revolt is the most important barrier standing between Democrats and the White House. They can't afford to ignore it. Think of what's happened over the past decade and a half. And now please think about this paragraph in light of what we just talked about with the ROM's career, particularly in the White House.

America endured a war sold on false premises, a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren't selling. Is it any wonder so many middle class taxpayers resent the elites? The middle class has been forced to build them out from their own mistakes time and time again. And yet the beneficiaries of that goodwill haven't apologized, let alone taken responsibility. America's middle class is Cinderella and the nation's elite are her evil stepsisters.

Only now is the stepsisters who get to marry the prince. It's infuriating. That's great writing. I see why they hired him. It clearly wasn't just bad, glad handling and elite self promotion. Clearly they're just like his prose is too sparkling. So I mean, other than the Iraq war, he's hanging. Which he supported.

He ran in 2002 as a pro war candidate. So he's saying like the problem is like and then what she didn't need to do this to represent Chicago. Look, we're not there's no point talking about who killed who. But he's saying like he's basically hanging the auto bailout and the bailout of the overall of Wall Street of like, you know, which was true, especially the Wall Street bailout. Yeah, that was awful. And they didn't need to do it.

There's other things they could have done. But there was some guy, there were a couple of guys charged at that time who decided that there was no author alternative and he was also shaving hundreds of billions of dollars off the stimulus that, you know, and I get into this in the book too, that he was instrumental in one of the biggest scandals around the Wall Street bailout, which was the AIG bonuses. And this everyone that I talked to who lived through that in the Senate in the house says like that's the moment we lost everything like we lost the public right there. They absolutely turned on us and we took the blame for everything.

And this was something that Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner pushed for. Chris Dodd of all people who was the chairman of the bank committee wanted to make sure that there were no bonuses anywhere near this bailout. They said no, that's that's that's that appalled them as unconstitutional, it's not fair. These contracts are sacred. These bonuses are written down on paper, cannot take them away from these bankers who have worked so hard so they insisted they ended up going around Chris Dodd, going directly to a staffer on the committee to get the language changed.

They ended Chris Dodd's career over this, went on to become a lobbyist for Hollywood. So he's fine. Actually, he got run out of there, too, yeah, lost Jack Valenti, his old job. Oh, he yeah, he I forget the beef that ran him out of there. I mean, to quote Rahm in this paragraph, it's infuriating. Yeah. So skipping ahead here, he also goes as maybe the clearest early manifestation was the Iraq War.

After 9 11, the Washington elite claimed that the country needed to neutralize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Chris and the media largely went along for the ride, but one trillion and 5,000 lives and 16 years later, by the way, it's actually quite a bit more than 5,000, but and 16 years later lives that matter. Yeah. 16 years later, the public has been told that those weapons of mass destruction had not existed after all, yet as clear as that became, no one ever took it on the chin.

No one from the Bush administration ever took responsibility. You know why it's because Obama came into office immediately and said, we're looking forward and backward and eschewed any investigations of the run up to the Iraq War or let alone prosecutions of any of these people. The second that Pelosi won the House in 2006, she said, I'm taking impeachment off the table, if that sounds familiar. Yeah. Taking impeachment off the table.

Wow. I totally forgot. Yeah. This is Nancy's career. She should have that on like a little embossed thing on her desk. I'm taking impeachment off the table. She'd be on the floor. Impeachment should be just on her floor.

So so Rama's saying here, like there's a middle-class revolt because of these things that, you know, elites perpetrated and cause great catastrophe at huge costs and both, you know, as our favorite thing, blood and treasure for the taxpayer. But like, at the time, if you had tried to, let's say, make anyone in the Bush administration or Wall Street take it on the chin, guess who you'd be running up against trying to stop you from doing that. I was appalled when it looked like Rahm Emanuel might get one of these gigs. And he's, I guess he's already got a gig with ABC too.

It was clear that he was trying to come up with his ABC games going to be a contributor for their news as well Oh, I thought he was getting like a sitcom We can hope your manual shitty brothers his asshole brothers, but I've actually flipped on this idea I think it's delightful that he has this column. What's good. It's like it's like the perfect, you know, I mean This is the Atlantic. This is what they're I mean, this is perfect. So he goes, uh Middle-class families paid both blood and treasure. There's that phrase God, but the people who had made the worst foreign policy CC decision in US history never owned their failure The same thing happened during the Great Recession

The nation's banking elite had lent billions to home buyers without any realistic hope of making good on their debts They're irresponsible lending not only precipitated a global financial meltdown But also necessitated a bailout from the nation's financially stressed Middle-class taxpayers yet even after being bailed out the nation's banking executives never faced any real consequences No one went to jail. They never had to repay the personal fortunes They'd made by passing out those bad loans once again The middle class is called to bail out the elites who were responsible for the mess while the elites got off scot-free This is so fucking perverse

What a sick puppy. I mean, he's not he's never gonna run for office again presumably his political career is done Right. He actually floated his name out there for president as one of these two dozen. What it looks like he's decided against that But yeah, he was kicking he was kicking himself around fuck well, then never never mind Maybe this is all this is on the Nixonian revamp that is like a long march back to relevance because otherwise Why would you write this? Why would you just lie like that other than you just getting off on it? Because you're a little piggy. Also, he spent about two years in the private sector between the White House and and running for Congress and In that time he earned something like 19 million dollars $19,000

Brokering private deals between people that he'd met while he was at the Clinton White House And and shaking down nuclear power companies for for money Like he so he he walked away with an extraordinary amount of money Who knows what he's worth now if he had 19 million dollars, you know that he made him a year in 1999 look, he's he's not a fat cat. He's a middle-class tax Class so yeah, his use of his constant use of middle class is just so 90s So he goes Washington wasn't wrong to prevent a global financial meltdown Obama was certainly right to save the domestic auto industry against my advice

But those decisions came at a real cost After the Recovery Act had passed and the auto bailout was rolling We had a fierce debate inside the White House about how to sequence our pushes for health care climate change and financial reform as the White House chief of staff I argued Unsuccessfully that the American people needed the catharsis of seeing that the bankers who had gotten the country into this mess are being forced to Take responsibility that faith in government would plummet if we fail to deliver some old testament justice Yeah, he was in there saying stone these guys today. Yeah, I don't think that's true

I think you might be lying. I just pause and say nobody actually gave a shit about the auto bailout I'm not like right other than the people who loved it in the state of, right people love it Like you said it bought in the state of Michigan right outside Of course of the the the racial dog whistles about Detroit. Yeah, so here goes I'm just giving it because your Democrats have become increasingly cognizant of the anger But too often this this middle-class anger you guys but too often they've drawn the wrong conclusions The answer certainly isn't socialism Middle-class voters currently

Middle-class voters certainly presume that elites already control the government So why would they want to give the bureaucracy any more power rather? Democrats need to become the party of justice They need to demand accountability from bad actors and point out where Republicans would give them a pass Every time Democrats look at a problem They think of a program and while those programs often point the way forward Democrats need to focus their energy on convincing the middle-class that they shared their values more than just their economic interest What does that mean? What does it fucking?

You want to like get seal team six to just like murder Lloyd Blank fine if he does I'm fine with that vote for him That's cool But anybody's he's saying like we do that instead of reordering society in any way that's that's wait Wait, so we know we know a you know Democrats when Democrats face a problem they want to write a solution or something we need to spend our time Convincing the middle-class of our values like through podcasting You know what this literally sounds like this sounds like the what the Jacobins did with the reign of terror Like when at least according to Marx. No, I'm serious

Marx's analysis of the French Revolution The the reign of terror was that because it was made up There was a revolution made up of lawyers and like the emerging bourgeois and it was like a class project in that sense And the productive forces didn't exist for socialism to really you know be a viable option and the vast the people of Paris Wanted change they wanted lives that were good. They couldn't give them that they didn't have the inclination or ability to create a Social order that was just what they could do is cut off the heads of all the fucking asshole royals and fancy noble people who they hated And he's basically saying yeah, just do that instead, but to Laurie Loughlin of full I guess yeah And it's it's a version of Joe Biden's solution, which is to take Donald Trump behind the gym and beat him up

Yeah, Tom Perez gonna hit somebody with a two by four is right They don't have an actual yeah program as brahman you and the thing is if they wanted to kill people I mean that would at least be something I mean if I mean he's clearly not talking about he wants to give the Chicago Police Department treatment to Yeah, Lloyd Blank fine or Jamie Diamond by all means but something tells me that's not what he's talking about Yeah, but the interesting thing is or he says like you know, we need to we need to become a party of justice in Bringing these bad actors to justice Now you could you could disagree with me But like to my mind you cannot do anything close to bringing the bad actors in American people politics to justice without something that looks like

Socialism well, you have to make them less powerful. Yeah, so just prevent ever being held accountable Just say have all the fucking money. Well, okay, just to finish it out here. It goes there is more to voters than their wallets to do That Democrats need to prove them prove to them that they know the difference between right and wrong How what and that begins? Okay with owning the terms accountability and I'm going to jump out of this goddamn window They need to own those terms Democrats need to be the ones Those who fall short no matter how privilege be made to answer for their own decisions theater Every one of us go around with a big boot

Every one of us should have to live by the same moral and ethical codes the nation's elite Shouldn't have any special license to take the easy way out And I think it's interesting that he opens the article talking about the college admissions scandal because I think Actually, that's what he's talking about. He I think he's basically signaling that the Democrats throw the book Felicity fucking like strap Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy's into the electric chair like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg And just flip throw the switch on these Hollywood scoff laws because that's the elite He's talking about talking about the people who actually have any fucking power Like there's not talking about putting healthcare executives in the stockades or anything like that

No, he's talking about Lori Loughlin and fucking their shitty influencer daughters. I mean, it has to be I mean, how do you God damn it. How do you write that? It's a breathtaking. I just I'm deeply grateful that he wrote this and that he's back in the news Because when I was writing the book, I was like, yes, Rahm's gonna be my main character because he's been such an influential Figure in the party over the last 30 years But our people over him, you know, he's been gone from Washington since 2010 or people not gonna care about Rahm Emanuel Thank you, Rahm for coming back and showing us. He's bringing it He's gonna be a recurring figure I think if he keeps writing shit like this because you start with just I hate I hate it when people refer to things that

Public people in public say as gaslighting. It's just lying. You can only be gas lit by like an intimate partner Yeah, but that Doing having his career then being like, you know what? We really didn't uh, we didn't give these elites the what part in that war Like that is like the gaslight. I feel like I'm being gaslighted. Yeah, the problem is you know There's always don't and the weird thing about this is it like reading in between the lines here and actually not even reading in Between them just reading the lines. He's basically blaming Obama for Donald Trump. Yeah, which is like in a way I mean like I mean I kind of agree with that in certain respects like it every level like it was there blame it's yourself you're talking about yourself of his entire all the worst decisions and is because he was the chief of staff when

They had when the only time when they actually had control of the of the political agenda and they fucked the dog Completely that was when he was chief of staff then they like had that revolving door of like weirdo cat men and and and like I'm daily. Yeah, the one of the dailies like dipshit brothers who couldn't even get elected The mayor of Chicago didn't even make it past the wrong make it into the runoff a daily brother couldn't make it into the runoff To be mayor of Chicago. What how did he get out of his house every day to be fucking chief of staff? Well, that's wrong But Ryan I we can't let you go here without talking about another character sort of a new challenger has like thrown and Entered the arena to become sort of the new rom in a way

Let's this guy is really trying hard to be the new wrong Why didn't send me this article the other day and I got it. I gotta say I really admire the pissed guy energy that this guy We're talking about Josh Gottheimer So right you just described really who Josh Gottheimer is and then described to us What happened at the T-neck Democratic Municipal Committee meeting? Well, he's he's a protege of Mark Penn Oh, that's good. That's all I need to hear. Yeah, why isn't he running for president? Yeah, so he he won in 2016 a seat impressively that was gerrymandered for a Republican in Jersey, Northern Jersey

So he represents the the burbs and all the bankers represents the Tony Soprano Bergen County, yeah, he does sanitation people. He does so so he won that seat in 2016 so after So Trump is elected and there's all of this push from these indivisible groups and locals say we want you to do town halls You know, we want to yell at you. We want to push you to oppose Trump. If you don't do it We're gonna put a cardboard cut out of you up there and that's gonna show up in the local news He hates town halls so but he finally agrees. He's like, okay, T-neck. What was it called a T-neck municipal? Democratic Committee T-neck Municipal Democratic Committee. I will come to your town hall

We can't we're not gonna call it a town hall and there can be no press and the questions must be written down But I will do this public event for you like so he needs the questions in advance as well I'm down in advance. Yeah pre-screened And so he's he's going about his town hall or whatever whatever they're calling it and his staff notices that there's an old man In the audience with a notebook taking notes and they figure out it's this guy Jim Norman who'd been laid off a mass layoff from the Bergen County record and he's trying to start a community newspaper in T-neck and They panic

Because they know That Josh Godhammer does not like the press and so they they approach him kind of quietly It eventually becomes a little bit of a scene as Jim Norman to his credit defends the freedom of the press I'm here with my notebook. I'm gonna stay I'm gonna take photographs Democratic Club guy even tells him look. We're not gonna we're not gonna bar Jim Norman From our from our event like he can be here. It's a public event. You can be here with a no He's an institution. It's Jim Norman's institution now boat maker. He's retired. He's made me making boats This old man who wants to make a

Out of his garage That was a glaceous take from a few years ago where he said that one of the byproducts of media consolidation is that there's no more local press anymore and the way that was gonna fill That void was retirees. We had nothing better to do. We're just gonna go to City council meetings and things like that and just take notes and write them up somewhere right as always So it's like this is he was doing His dream so so what happens when Josh finds out? So they they come out there like Event went great Josh terrific job. Just FYI there was a guy

I didn't even have a gaffe or anything nothing nothing and I talked to the staffers who despite they're like he was great It was fine. They loved him so They're like it went great like the logo guy is basically gonna write something in his like in his like, you know Neighborhood newsletter to be like Josh Gottheimer speaks on issues. Yes local meeting and he's and they're like so they tell him that and he's just like Just eyes start glowing What's it get what the fuck did you just say he's like get me his notes so they did try to get the guy's notes

These guys not giving up his notes He's getting louder and louder not not Jim, but Josh So his staff kind of like nudges him outside by the time he gets out in the street He's now having a full-blown meltdown They go in this the Senate majority leader Loretta Weinberg is there they go and get her and they're like can you help us with Josh? She's like she's like Josh. I've known Jim for like 20 years. Whatever he writes. It's gonna be fine Don't don't worry about it. He and I we work together on this on saving this big tree downtown Charming I emailed her she said I don't have anything to add

She's still Senate majority leader and so it doesn't work He's still demanding the notes He's he's screaming louder and louder in the middle of the street and then he spots the the car of the staffer who drove him To this event. I guess he blames that car for bringing him to this God forsaken scene Goes over to the car and just starts raining blows down upon the roof Of this of the staffer's car beast mode on the car mode He goes beast mode on the car like one of those interstitial game the minigame some Street Fighter 2 And then he has it and then he has a new idea

And he tells his staff tonight. I want everything I said transcribed So that they would be war ready For when this could dispatch against like it's the Norton family circular We're ready for we're ready We're ready to strike back when the guy like gets it from underneath his windshield when he goes out to work in the morning And so at the time he had this a site called the T-neck independent calm and You can still find the cached article if you if you Google it, right? He did end up writing something the next day and he told me that they he actually did get some quibbles from the Gotthimer

Crew he said he doesn't remember if he changed anything. It's a completely mundane Right up of the event. It's it's positive. He said people liked him. Here's what he said blah, blah, that's it. And so The descriptions of that event from the staff that were there like just I've never seen anything like it But it was it wasn't out of character. It was just the most extreme expression Expression the piece that you wrote of this like just came out very recently But Gotthimer came on my radar because you wrote like the original piece about him What is it? I really like I had no idea who this guy is and I just like it was one of those things

We're like you have the feeling reading it where it's just like the bench of just psychos and just sadists and assholes That are involved in politics Democratic Party Republican like it's just it's endless and You you wrote a writer for him where I was like I cannot believe this guy is real because like you said he got on your radar Because he tried to shit can the anti-yemen war resolution That was one of his first things to do right and and he was doing it on behalf of the pro-Israel lobbies He was saying if and he gets a ton of money from the Saudi lobby He was saying if you if you don't criminalize BDS on the same day

Then I'm gonna I have enough votes to take down this and like you try to totally big dick it And yeah bluff everyone. Yeah, like he was like I have the votes to kill this and he had nothing He didn't he had ended up having four votes and then also the other the other amazing story from that original piece about this guy is him Approaching just like cornering Rashida to live in with a as you described it a burn book of her worst quotes Did you talk about her? Oh, it's oh, it's some of them and some all on Omar Yeah, yeah, and she said he was confusing the two of them constantly in the conversation. But yeah, he's it's a white binder

With with printouts and words highlighted that he's just that he flips through with her You said this you said this you met with this person this person is related to this terrorist organization just like Going at her and that's like they both got elected in the same year. Well, he He got elected 2016. Yeah, I actually saw some ads for him My local news because you know, Northern Jersey a lot of the same Media markets and I remember it's you know, it's very generic him and his wife We're gonna fight for New Jersey families and I remember just I remember looking at him and I remember thinking this guy's a freak

That was him. Yeah, that. Oh my god those ads that just always start with like him and his wife in front of the garage Yeah, yeah, that was old and I remember just no, he's not that old. He's not that old and I remember just thinking you might be thinking Somebody else cuz they all do the same thing. Yeah, all the North Jersey fucking shitheads. It's all the same Oh, those ads are delightful and and I mean, obviously it's a fair bet He's awful cuz you know, he's a Northern Jersey Democrat, you know, if I can suburban hellscapes, but God I just looked at him. I just thought that guy's a freaking. Oh, yeah Very shortly afterwards Makes sense, but like my point is like what he got in there like what a year before it's like who the fuck are you dude?

Like and then you said that he also went beast mode on Maxine waters. Who's like, yes, you know, elder statesman of the party Yeah, it's this was to this was two years ago. Also. He it's the financial services committee is trying to repeal Obamacare Democrats are all trying to hang together Steven Lynch Massachusetts congressman has an amendment to the repeal that it's it's something that Wall Street doesn't like It's this fiduciary rule and Godheimers like pull this. I ran on this You cannot make me vote on this pull it and Lynch is like, no, I'm not pulling this amendment And so he goes to Maxine water. He's like pull this. She's like, no, I'm not making him pull this Take some to an anti-room starts screaming at both of them in front of other staff members and members of Congress

Screaming at Maxine waters and Steven Lynch think I will burn this motherfucker down He says I have the votes the moderates. We're gonna walk on this There's somebody in the room was a staff member. He's like, no, no, you're on your own on this He's like fuck this so he's like I'm calling Nancy and in front of them He calls Nancy Pelosi Explains this horrible amendment They're trying to make him vote on and Nancy Pelosi's like Josh sounds like a good amendment vote for it and hangs up on And then calls other junior members of the committee. I heard Josh is agitating. Don't take the bait

I want you to vote for this amendment. So this guy. I mean like he's he's he thinks of himself as like the next Rom or and he behaves like, you know, Malcolm Tucker, but without the juice With just the personality disorder and I really we're talking before we start recording like where it's just like The thing is like you can try to be wrong But it takes a little bit more finesse than just yelling and cursing at people like you need a little something else They're like something like purse strings access to cash something like that or he does have that He's a great fundraiser. Yeah, but you need something and you need more people on your you need like a group that you lead He doesn't really lead any he thinks I think he from that just it sounds like he thinks he's like the leader of the new moderates

There's something yeah, if you're going beast mode on a part Carbys You just lost your fucking battle to the death with an old man Publishing a newspaper for his family and neighbors also and here is you're not wrong. This is good way So a I got more reaction from members of Congress from this article than anything anything I've written They were just absolutely eating it up So this this is an email I got from a member of the new Democrat coalition, which is this is the like pro Wall Street thing That got Heimer's a part of wrote to me

Let's just say there are many Democratic colleagues who are enjoying reading this articles. You're doing on him It was the talk of one meeting I was in They're pretty giddy reciting the car anecdote He's one of the most unpopular colleagues around here Oh, I am I am looking forward to years of more coverage about Josh and I do want to say if anyone out There is a budding citizen journalist in or about New Jersey You don't check out. You know that check out Josh got Heimer's town halls. That's a good Well, he won't do top. He won't do town halls what he does

He calls him like cup of coffee with Joe or a cup of Joe with Josh or something like that Oh, yeah, but he doesn't give you he doesn't give you much warning. Oh, that's But go find a cup of Josh with Joe or whatever and like go with a notepad and see what happens Absolutely, and also, you know, hey, you a lot of journalism takes place on social media now Just follow Josh ask him some questions send him pictures and notebooks online. He's gonna love this take take an uber I you know what? I mean, I've been watching this Democratic presidential field shape up and I really feel like it needs a new voice I think that he should run got Heimer 20 20. Let's make it happen. He's got the money Yeah, by the way before we close things out here a little bit of a house cleaning first off

Mary and mindset continues to dominate the open that's third eye people get a squeegee clean He's made debate are spreading First she after our landmark episode where we discussed getting Mary on the base. She first Got enough donors to qualify for the debate but because there's so many candidates are various tie-breaking procedures is reported today that Mary Ann has achieved enough poll support to basically guarantee her a place in one of the two of the first Democratic debates We will levitate the debate stage It will be four to six feet off of the ground by the end of that debate. Also

Well, let's follow up on this one about two months ago after the release of the Mueller report Matt Christmasman And I made one of our famous bats where Matt said he thought that the fact that the report more or less Exculpates him of the worst serious charges of collusion that Donald Trump's approval rating would go up by 10% Honestly, what I I but my big problem is that I never really consulted the 538 Composites because it was way lower than I thought it was because you would just see things like oh 46 and Rasmuses or something. Those are all outliers The actual the 538 composite approval rating was like never hover than 42 and if I'd known that I probably would have bet 45

But that wouldn't matter anyway because he actually you the difference is a point one percent and it's actually one point one percent less and I Just really forgot that no one is paying attention or cares or knows about any of this And it is all baked in already and no one is moving because of anything that happens Oh, no, it's it's it's you know, it's JK Simmons at the end of burn after reading. Yes, what do we learn? Oh, we'll tell him what he's won I came what is it a month of watching the view a month of watching the view I cover Congress And I don't pay much attention to it. Yeah, yeah, I'm not looking forward to this

Well, the deal was because it would have been what would you would have had to watch something that you would Watch the daily show which is the half an hour. It's four a week and it's a half as half an hour So I don't have to watch the whole hour. I don't have to watch the first half hour For a week for and that is that's where they start is it a week or you won't be able to turn on for a month That's where they talk about issues And we'll we will we will get on this after the conclusion of our European tour back and you can also follow Matt for his daily live blogging of the view

Oh Yeah, speaking of the tour ticket do available now by England Glasgow the capital of England Manchester the largest city in England and London there are tickets presumably still available ChapoTraphouse.com slash tour if you just click the pictures, it'll take you to a page Oh, I mean also, I want to push back because you know You know, we posted that you know attention Eurozone were coming and people got angry They're like, you know the Eurozone you bloody mop it and I'm gonna say first of all, you're wrong

If England wasn't in the Eurozone, why is the Queen of England the leader of the Eurozone? Why is why is Buckingham Palace the capital of the zone? Guess what? Answer riddle me that England your country is in Europe. Yes, and they're in the zone. Yeah, there is the zone of Europe you fucking ass Is it America? Is it America? Is it China? It's Europe assholes you're in the Eurozone deal with it So and then finally Ryan Grant, thank you so much for joining us. The book is we've got people in stores May 28th. Yes Look forward to

Toasting you for becoming a future Fellow bestseller. There you go. There you go. Definitely check this out. It is a very good book It's a very good history one that we condensed and more or less just bullshitted in the liberal chapter of our own book There's a lot of tea if you love sipping and spilling is that there's a lot of tea I actually thought about like choppo listeners were like in my mind as I'm like who wants to read this book actually It's to choppo listeners and then like the indivisible wine moms like those like both of those groups from Is Ryan Graham and Marianne mindset are gonna bring together these two feuding clans

Yes, we're gonna unite under the the banner of good chill vibes and the orb. Yeah a blood alliance to Defeat the Emperor cheeto All right guys till next time. Bye. Bye