Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED episode 225 - The Poster's Crusade (7/6/18)

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

In a special unlocked episode that we was too good to keep to ourselves, we thoroughly annihilate Dan Pfieffer's new book "Yes We Still Can" along with the entire universe of ex-Obama admin comm guys who also have a podcast you may have heard of. Please use this episode to start a conversation with any friend or relative who is skeptical about buying OUR book. Buy the book http://chapotraphouse.com/book/

Hey, everybody. Today we have a very special episode. I'm here with Felix, Will, and Matt to discuss a game-changing work of nonfiction that stands to become the handbook of the hashtag resistance. Dan Pfeiffer, senior advisor to Barack Obama and co-host of our sister show Potsafe America, just came out with his memoir slash Cree de Coeur. Yes, we still have ten, politics in the age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump. I caught Pfeiffer on the opposition with Jordan Klepper a couple weeks ago. You remember that show. It was canceled because several viewers had heart attacks from laughing too hard at the jokes. And at one point in the interview, Klepper breaks characters so that both of them could sigh wistfully imagining

the next Barack Obama, the next inspirational cool dad politician who would put Trumpism back in the Pandora's box. Before we jump into this, I have two big cavites. First, speaking for myself here, I want to make clear to the listener that I have no personal animosity towards Dan Pfeiffer. I don't really know him. I've never met him. Before this book, I had never heard or read a word of his. And it's clear to me from this book that he isn't a malicious actor, just a deeply misguided one. And although I find his book completely ridiculous, and I find the boss that he loves so much to have thoroughly failed in his mandate, a critique expounded in our book, The Chapel Guide to

Revolution, a Manifesto Against Logic Facts and Reason, now available for preorder, none of that is personal. To Dan's credit, he admits at many points that they had fundamentally risked right the political situation, particularly with respect to the Republican Party, whether they actually learned anything is another story. The second is that the copy I have is an uncorrected proof. This is before fact checking, copy editing, rearrangements of the text, that kind of thing. We might be discussing passages that are not in the published copy of the book, so this should not be considered representative of it. For all we know, the manuscript may have been totally replaced with Lights, Camera, Sex by Christie Canyon.

With that in mind, let's save America, Pod. Introduction If you're reading this, it's too late. My final visit to the White House during the Obama era was not at all what I imagined it to be. Over the years, I had often thought about the moment when this chapter in my life and the country's history would come to a close. I imagined it to be bitter-sweet, but more sweet than bitter. I imagined it to be the triumphant end to a great era in American history, one that would be talked about with the reverence reserved for the great presidents. That was the last day of the Obama presidency, but I wasn't headed back for a raucous goodbye party or even a

sheet cake in the Roosevelt room to pat ourselves on the back for years of good work. We weren't celebrating at all. We were about 36 hours from Barack Obama, our first African-American president, leaving, and Donald J. Trump, racist reality TV star, assuming the presidency. Sure, I had thought about the possibility that Obama would be replaced by a Republican. It wasn't just possible, it was historically probable, but I had never imagined something like this. Later in the introduction, not at all, quite the opposite, actually. I was inspired by something Obama said in the Pod Save America interview. At the end of the interview, John Favreau asked Obama, Mr. President, you've talked

a lot about how we're all trying to get our paragraph right in history. What do you hope that paragraph says about you? The president replied, When I think about what will most gratify me, it will be if, 20 years from now, I can look back and I can say, Wow, look at all those people who first got involved, maybe even when they were too young to vote. In politics, issues, nonprofits, public service, and that wave just kind of a cleansing wave washes over the country. And if that happens, then the details of how we dealt with climate change or whether the individual responsibility mandate of the Affordable Care Act was the right approach or not, that becomes less important because if we're getting the broad

direction right, this is a pretty ingenious country full of ingenious people and we'll figure it out. And that's what I want, is I want everybody to feel like we can figure this out if we just don't waste a lot of time doing dumb stuff. Now, also, just a reminder, it's $50 for blowjob, $100 for around the world. Fellows, if you had 20 million young voters to create the perfect paragraph, you want them to be millennials, Gen Z, or imported ISIS terrorists. Virgil, how would you describe this book overall? Is it like sort of his memoir of his time in the White House, or is it like he is sort of a roadmap for how we can get back there?

It's both. It's both. Yeah. All right. Chapter one is started from the bottom. Now we're here. It's the story. Chapter one, editor's notes. Dan, you can't call it, hit it, we made it. It's the story of how we got involved in politics. I'll spare you a lot of the details and get to some parts I found funny. In my junior year at Georgetown University, I met a guy named Chad Griffin. Oh, boy. He was a head, he was a year ahead of me in school, but a few years older. He was moving

into the famously pink row house we rented on Prospect Street right off campus. You know that famous pink house. We needed a seventh guy to move into our group house so we could afford the rent and he needed a place to live. Chad was from rural Arkansas and had been a student at Wachita Baptist University in Arkansas when Bill Clinton decided to run. Chad interned for D.D. Myers, who was press secretary in that campaign and eventually the White House. Chad was good at his job and got offered a full-time position on the campaign. When Clinton won, he went to the White House as a staffer at age 19. Among other things, he got to see the world helping

shepherd the media around during Bill Clinton's travels. After a couple years in the White House, Chad came to Georgetown to finish his college degree. Chad had great stories about working on the Clinton campaign in the White House and it occurred to me maybe working on a presidential campaign and maybe working in the White House could be a good way station on the path to law school. Certainly better than being a paralegal in some law firm while taking practice LSATs on my lunch break. Not to mention, since my Dukakis debate, politics had become one of the subjects I followed with trivial pursuit-like intensity. Old plan, go to law school, become a lawyer, probably hate my life. New plan, go work on a presidential

campaign, work in the White House, go to law school, become a lawyer, hate my life, but have done and seen some cool things first. So remember, it's cool. Chad, actually, the reason he needed to live with all these 12-year-olds who were one of the 85 million comms directors for Barack Obama, such an older man, was he got kicked out of his other house for getting too much pussy. He's too cool. I've got to say, I'm very disappointed in this origin story. I assume the lady of the wonk rose out of the Potomac River and handed him the enchanted lanyard. This is much more boring.

When Chad moved into their alpha house, was Dan Feifdog a virgin at that point? He ends up interning for the White House and it turns out one day... Sorry, this is Bill Clinton. Yes, Bill Clinton's White House. And one day, he's actually very useful. His unique set of skills come in handy. Gore was being investigated by several congressional committees, the FBI and every investigative reporter on the planet. This was the 1996 campaign finance. Oh man, the Chinese, the Chinese phone calls. Every reporter and Republican wanted to muddy up the likely Democratic nominee. Every day,

the office would get a request for some set of documents. Even with tracking numbers, finding the requested memo or email was very time intensive. Early in my tenure, one of the attorneys in the council's office came in and asked for a very specific memo about a very specific event that was under scrutiny. I need this by the end of the day, he said, and turned to go. Wait, this will just take a minute, I said. Walked over the shelf, grabbed a binder and opened it to a certain page. Is this the one you're looking for? He looked at me like I had a third arm growing out of my head. How did you know where that was?

I have copied and filed these things so many times that I remember the numbers. Word got around to the lawyers, researchers, and communication staff who needed quick access to the documents that I was the intern to ask. In hindsight, I was treated a little like Rain Man for this parlor training, but at the time I loved it. So this asshole is the reason that Dinesh D'Souza can walk into any Democratic party headquarter. See, you just find the bankers box to say secret racism files. God, that was such an adorable scandal. It revolved around, none of you people remember

this, but it revolved around Al Gore being accused of soliciting campaign donations in his office. Wow, the crime, and it was huge. It was all the time fucking Scott Pruitt spent a year and a half turning the department of the EPN will fucking meth lab and he nobody did a shit about it. It's a song. The nineties were such a blessed time. Scott Pruitt loaded up a Navy aircraft carrier with empties and drove it and it just like his letter, what he left is like, like my sister said about the letter around the world there are many societies and people are treated respectfully and I wasn't peace.

You remember that woman? Jocelyn elders had to resign because she was like, yeah, no kids should jack off. Yeah, you know, jacking off is okay. They fucking shot her out of a fucking catapult. Yeah, no, that yeah, they dropped her so quick, so quick. Whereas Scott Pruitt, you know, fuck the lotions and the mattresses and the bombs. He literally was like this carcinogenic pesticide more babies need to have their brains exposed to it. Yeah. Amazing.

He did the Doctor Strange Love Slim Pickens writing a bomb, but just full of DDT and on his way down like sent his Amazon wish list to every head of state in the G7. Dan goes on to talk about all the freaking boring campaigns that he works on, but I found this part to be incredibly enlightening and I assume this is not going to be in the final copy of the book because it's not properly copy edited. It's boxed out for some reason. It doesn't really fit into the narrative. I had entered politics as a bleeding heart liberal in my high school. One of the requirements for graduation was undertaking a month long senior project project. Some students wrote plays, others painted murals and conducted

sophisticated science projects. I wrote and defended a thesis that argued for socialism as a better governmental system than capitalism. That's footnoted and the footnote at the end is incomplete. It just says I was young, dumb and blank full of cum. I want to know if I ever get to meet Dan Pfeiffer. I want to know what the rest of that footnote was. No, that was it. That was a young bit. Dan, no, the second time. My liberal idealism had been dulled by the presiding philosophical strategy of the Democratic Party of the late 90s and early 2000s that the best way to win was to dull the edges of our liberalism and co-op Republican issues to win over swing voters. It wasn't inspiring

and after defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004, it was clear it wasn't effective either. I'm glad they learned that lesson. Third time's the charm. All my losses was lessons. Coming way ahead here, the sports center effect. This is him talking about the media and it's just like really boring media criticism. They focus too much on the horse race. They only focus on like gaffes and shit like that, which people have been talking about since the 50s. He's scalding this. He's burning this town down. He doesn't give a shit. He calls that the sports center effect. Wow. He says, you know, fuck Tim Russert and his goofy ass dad. See you in hell, bitch.

As Pod Save America listeners know, I relish my role as a self-appointed media critic. This was particularly true during the 2016 campaign when I thought the press was giving Hillary Clinton a raw deal. They were. I am motivated by my own partisan bias, desire to work with the referees for a better result and an itchy Twitter finger, even though it is rarely Twitter finger, even though it's rarely constructive. I can't help myself. I know the media is as interested in my opinion on their job performance as I am interested in their opinion on how I ran the Obama communication shop. But, and this is a big but, I love journalism and want more of it. I decided to go into politics in large part because

on my first day at Georgetown University, someone stopped by my dorm room offering a great deal on a Washington Post subscription. I was immediately hooked. I soaked up every detail about what was happening on Capitol Hill and in the White House each just a few miles away. I've been a news addict ever since. That guy, that guy is the worst child groomer ever. He got hooked on news in college. Someone passed him a newspaper and he was like, I started with the Washington Post, but pretty soon that wasn't tough enough. I had to get the economist. I needed the financial times. I was getting the fucking Shanghai Daily News banging out eight grand rocks and some guys selling fucking newspapers door to door. Imagine

if it had been like a cut go knives guy and Dan Pfeiffer became a serious snake handler. I'd never forget when I hit rock bottom, when I ruffled through a DuPont circle garbage can for an old Washington Times. My name is Dan Pfeiffer. I'm a newsaholic. Hi, Dan. I first realized I had a problem when I was DVR-ing the Bloomberg News show at 4 AM that Al Hunt hosts. I knew I was really bad when I offered to suck David Brooks' dick in exchange for his opinion on gays in the military. I know that I'm responsible for my own problems, but we got sexy shows on TV that glorify the news lifestyle, shows like the newsroom, shows like Sports Night. I was entranced by that news lifestyle. He talks about working in

Obama's press office and all their little victories that they did. Here's one. This is how President Obama ended up going Christmas shopping with his dog in the car in the run-up to the 2012 election. Romney had been dogged literally by a story about how he had once trapped the family dog to the roof of his car for a family road trip. That's not that long ago, and that's adorable now. That was a fucking scandal. For good reason, this story bothered a lot of people, especially dog lovers, so we had the White House release a photo of Obama traveling with his dog in the car. The subtlety was not lost on anyone, and a viral moment was born. No, I don't remember that. I don't know who pays too much attention

to this idiocy, and I don't remember that at all. Fuck off. Matt, you're exactly right. I do remember Romney having his dog in the crate on top of the car. Yeah, Seamus. Yeah. Wow. Man, you're right, though. Imagine the more innocent times when people got mad at a dog being put in the cave. I remember a different viral moment involving Obama and a dog. No, I don't remember it. Like somebody is going to run for the GOP nomination for governor or senator who has a dog fighting ring in 2018. Trump is going to do a video about tariffs just posted to his own Twitter where he drops a bowling ball on a dog, and you're like, that's what they do to cars. Donald Jr. is going to just start faving crush

videos on Twitter. Donald Trump driving an American-made steamroller over a puppy mill. Look how strong they are. Versula, I'm now thinking about what Dan Fife dog should have done as a communication. Obviously, they want to highlight that Obama treats his dog well, unlike Mitt Romney, who straps it to the roof of his car. But they should have combined the two, the other famous Obama dog moment that we all know and love. He should have been filmed taking his dog, like leaving to go shopping in the car. You see the dog in the car, and then he comes back. No dog in the car, but he's just like had a big plate of ribs. I'll tell you what, I won't tell you what the secret ingredient is, but

man, this is good. My whole family enjoys it. We call this farm to table. We call this bow to table. Well, that is the funniest. And also from Sid Blumenthal, King Sid Blumenthal was like abusing like the side effects of some heart medication or however boomers got high in the late 2000s. And he was like, yeah, he fucking, he met the Wizard of Islam and he fucking ate dog with them. And Hillary's people are like, damn, thanks, Sid. No, but like, obviously they would bring the dog out and be like, haha, I didn't eat the dog. But, you know, he's just a little playful, a little, you know, play, play with the story, you know, have a little fun with

it. Show that you're not above making fun of yourself. That's what I would do if I was a savvy comms guy. So I just want to say something though. So he complains about the sports. Centrification of coverage of news, and then he breaks his arm patting himself on the back that he created a two hour viral story about him taking his dog out two minute re wretched wretched idiot. Yeah, this is like this is like the VFW hall you go to in hell. Just veterans of comms departments telling you about many news cycles they created 10 years ago. I'm the guy who tripped Bob Dole that one time, made a fucking face plant. My finest moment was when the monkey business photo broke. And they said

to me, you can't make an equivalency about John McCain being born in Panama. And I said, watch me. Do you remember that? No. So a new problem merges sometime around 2014. The hogs are being riled up. For most of my time working for Obama, whenever we encountered some belt weight political crisis that dominated cable news, we would ask focus groups of voters if they had ever heard anything about it. Almost every single time they had no idea what we were talking about. These were things Washington got worked up about and things the American people cared about and rarely did these things overlap. But something had changed. Suddenly, focus groups knew all about the trivial things that Washington would get

worked up over. And they knew about them in great detail, often reading back to a moderator what just sounded like Republican talking points or a Fox News story, which are actually the same thing. Did he just say that? That's media criticism. When the moderator asked them where they go with the information, it was always the same. Facebook. By 2016, the media ecosystem of 2008 was impossible to recognize. It was the perfect Petri dish for a fungus like Trumpism to grow. Trump understood there were no rules and referees and that a good story was more valuable than an accurate one. Trump's main media experiences are the absurdity of reality TV and no holds barred world of big Apple tabloid journalism. Sadly,

these were the perfect experiences to compete for President 2016. To grapple with these changes, I propose going to Silicon Valley in New York to pick the brains of the smartest people in tech and media to better understand the current state of affairs and where things might be going. I went to Google, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and everywhere in between. I met with a venture capitalist who were looking for the next Google and Facebook. The gravity of the challenge before us came in a meeting at Google when I laid out the difficulty in getting our message out in the fragmented media environment. And one of the executives from Silicon Valley giant responded, we have been wondering the same thing and hope you

had some good ideas. What? Oh, okay. The chapter ends there. First of all, that's literally an episode of Veep. Yeah. Where they go to the Facebook thing. Yeah. Second of all, obviously, like we know Facebook and Google are like, they are not, they may be like liberal, the people who run it, but they only care about money. They have no fucking soul or conscience whatsoever in terms of what, you know, shit that they spew out to every boomer and grandparent in America. But like, what is he? So he wants to basically lobby Facebook and Google to be more sympathetic to their message at the same time. Right wing people, like we know, for instance, Jack has just been prostrating

himself before the Trump White House because they're demanding that they be more sympathetic to their point of view. No, you don't understand. Because Dan's message, the Obama White House message, those are the facts. Those are sacrosanct. And the facts need to be out there. Everything else is the fake news. Does he have anything in there about eating shit and all those congressional midterms? There's a little bit. But here's an example of fake news in action and what to do about it. Oh, good. Practical advice. All right. Praxis. Obama wanted to pull the Obama wanting to pull the plug on granny became a common GOP talking point amplified 24 seven on conservative talk radio and Fox News. One

day Sarah Palin posts on Facebook and before we know it, we have a full blown political crisis on our hands. I was deputy comms director at the time and auditioning for the top job. Once the death metal rumors started and our political prospects had started to go south, ramen and needed done asked me to oversee the communications regarding healthcare. My charge was to quote, bring some Obama campaign style rapid response tactics and quote to the fight for healthcare. Step one was to set up a website specifically dedicated to responding to these false attacks. Obamacare is a not so secret strategy to kill old people, was the highest profile, most pernicious attack was far from the only one Republicans would

repeat ad nauseam. Our plan would increase the deficit, even though it was completely paid for through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Well, it's almost like it doesn't matter when you do that. They'll just say it. They alleged it would cut Medicare benefits as seniors depend on also completely false. We need a one stop shop where people could come for the truth and our allies could easily find the talking points and other info they need to respond to questions. We started using the work done by fact checking sites such as political fact and fact check.org to set the record straight. I love that. I love that he's like, I love that he's like his tone of this is like he's like spears and band of brothers taking over command at the battle

of the bulge. Like I set up a forward operating fact space that all our allies could resupply at to shoot truth bullets at the Republicans. And I like the idea that you're going to compete with stuff that's being ambiently seen by old people on Facebook, which is one of three websites that people over 50 know how to use by creating a completely different website that's not connected to Facebook, doesn't have any cat pictures, doesn't have any herbal viagra deals. Why would anyone ever log on to it? You know, these people who are just like swayed by whatever emotion and entitlement they feel. Well, don't worry. We are partnering with pointexter.net to fix this problem. Well, I mean, here's an idea that I'd be surprised if Dan and the Obama administration

considered when it came to the ways in which Google or Facebook becomes a sluice for right-wing sewage and garbage. How about threatening them with anti-monopoly law? How about literally breaking them up and nationalizing them if they don't get their shit together? I mean, that would be one potential way of getting them in line. Well, here's what we need to do. Each chapter ends with a series of bullet points. That's like marching orders to you, the PRAD, save America, listener. And this one, its headline is winning the battle against bullshit. Everyone is a fact-checker. The fake news story spread across the populace via Facebook and Twitter, but those same platforms give agency to everyone to lead the fight for truth. People are scrolling

through their Facebook feed seeing posts about where Obama was or wasn't born or alleging some made-up act of corruption by the Clintons. They don't click on the post to see where the story was from or whether it's credible. And depending on the algorithm or the makeup of their social network, they may be seeing the same fake false stories multiple times a day. Absent Facebook hiring millions of fact-checkers to comb the platform. The only solution is to fight back. Multiple studies show that people are most likely to believe news if it comes from someone they personally know. Therefore, there is great power in people sharing on social media the stories and fact-checks that debunk the lies being spread by Trump and its friends in the Republican fringe

media. Democratic politicians need to build tools to make this easier for their supporters. But there is no reason we have to wait for that. This is so incredibly blinkered. The people who read Gateway Pundit will not take an article that contradicts Gateway Pundit seriously if it comes from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post. But hold on a minute though. What if it's shared on Facebook to them from their snot-nosed liberal nephew who they hate? Because that's what he's saying. You've got to share it for your idiot family members. We're all warriors in the Post and Crusades. But the thing is that your racist grandparents hate you. They think you're an entitled Tidepot eating piece of shit. They don't

believe a thing you say and they think you're a fucking feckless dipshit and they don't care. Yeah, yeah, like literally one of the most popular genres of Post on MAGA Twitter is like, what did your family stop talking to you? They've made their choice. Yes, very happily. They're posters. They're poster Americans. They basically they basically it's like it's like a fucking W curve or like a U curve where you have like the friendless fucking Pepe's when they're at 817 or 18 and now you've got people who basically turn themselves into friendliest Pepe's as grandparents when they should be surrounded by family members as a pet or familious. Instead, their insane politics have turned them into a basement dwelling Pepe who nobody will talk

to anymore. Yeah, it's the new Herald and Maude fucking fucking fucking old grannies like, oh, I bake you a cake that looks like Riper. Some friendless old like we got to make this movie family. We got to make that dollar idea. Yeah. Okay. If you don't like that, try this, play a different game. Ultimately, the right strategy is to nullify the idea of objective truth on issues like climate change, healthcare, tax policy. Republicans simply can't win an argument on the facts. So instead of changing their policy, they try to change the facts. Democrats could look at the relative success of Trump and try to play his game. That would be a mistake. Cynical conspiracy theories are their home turf, which we wouldn't be good at. And our supporters who still trust

objective new sources wouldn't be fooled. Instead, we should swerve in the other direction and abandon normal political spin to ensure that our statements, positions and analyses of the other sides are factually bulletproof. Who gives a shit? This is so ignorant. Like, why would that change any opinions? How would that move a single person? He just said they believe what they want to believe. Our guys are all, you know, smart smelling their own fucking affarts about how reasonable they are, but none of them are changing their opinion because you're rigorously factual. This is like, this reminds me of like, like, like, like trial lawyers. If like, if you're like a hot shot, like defense attorney or even like any, any like high, high level litigator will always tell you

the facts of the case, the evidence of the case don't matter. When you're in front of a jury, i.e. the voters, all that matters is telling a story that's more believable than the other side. It's using, I mean, like facts yet they're there, they have to be dealt with. But all they are is just like stitching in like this weave, this tapestry of a story that you're selling to an audience. And if you understand your audience, whether it be the jury or a voter, then you can get them to believe you and you can wrap them around your finger. He just seems to think, if we, if all of us are like you said enlisted in this posting crusade, where we're constantly fact checking every single thing that gets posted on social media, or that Mima or Pepep, you know,

oh, sorry, Gran, Obama, you know, you know, I don't know, wasn't born in Kenya or whatever. And here's X, Y, or Z bullet points to tell you why or what. It doesn't matter. The story about Obama being a foreigner is a story she believes, because it's a story that makes sense to her. Yeah. It makes sense to her because it describes to her what she's feeling. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, what she's feeling is that Obama is different from her. He's foreign in some way, and that he is a threat to what is familiar and known to her. You can't convince that person otherwise. What you have to do is tell a better story. Yes. And tell a story that quite frankly excludes these fucking apes. Yes. Well, I mean, everything in this just shows that the game they're

playing is trying to narrow cast technocratic solutions that appeal to essentially urban professionals, right? And then the base that just sort of votes Democrat no matter what. And this just shows you that that is a futile enterprise because every fucking solution is, well, we'll just tell the truth better and we're going to have a website. And it's like, we know none of this works because you're narrow casting to just not enough people, not enough people to create a durable majority. You have to tell a simple, effective story where you have an enemy and you have solutions. Exactly. And then you would crease hypothetically, maybe not, but it's honestly our only fucking hope. This isn't going to work. With that,

you increase the fucking number of people who are willing to vote. But it has to be factually bulletproof. No, it's like the OJ trial. Like if your client very clearly murdered someone, you create a story where there is another person who could have done it or you create all these questions. Or it's LAPD is the bad guy. Yeah, use the LAPD. Or you create a realistic enough story based on actual facts. Like for instance, that the LAPD is a ludicrously corrupt and racist organization. But however, you're exactly right, Matt. You need an enemy. Every story needs a villain. And these people, they don't understand. They think there are no villains. They think there are just like good and bad arguments. But like there are good and evil people. And

policies and agendas that need to be identified, right? And forces and interests. Yeah. I mean, you know what's amazing to me is like the most popular genre of like liberal viral tweet is like, it's like a very basic, true thing that anyone with a brain could figure out, but just repeated several times in all caps. Like it'll be like, birtherism is just because he's black. Birtherism is it's like, yeah, okay. So what? But no, not so what? It's like that's correct. And you could build a worldview around that. You could build a worldview where it's like, Oh, I don't need to factually combat what these people think, because it's not literally about whether he was born in Kenya or not. If we're losing that for using that for an example, it's like, if you generally,

genuinely believe that to be true, that like all of this is like racial resentment and all this shit. Like, why would you? Why would you think you have to just have a great argument? Well, you've already like, you've already stated that it's like very clearly what it is, but you can't make the leap. I feel like there's this like great manism with Trump and before him banning with these types of guys where it's just like, Oh, he's just so good at lying. And he's so, he's so talented that we can't beat him head on. We have to beat him with a, we have to create Phil Spector's wall of sound, but for truth, we have to create the greatest truth wall ever made. And it's like, this thing where it's like, Pfeiffer clearly thinks that Trump is like the most talented

liar ever. Yeah, because he must have entranced all these people. It's not that they're just like nasty entitled people who would like anyone was selling this, they'd be out for it. It's just that Donald Trump is just, he's brilliant. He's like a wizard. And it's like, for me, that's like saying the same thing about like Brian Pumper, because they're the same type of person, but they have to believe that they're just so unbeatably good at these two or three things that it's just, it's impossible to take them head on because the unstated thing here is taking them head on requires an enemy and it requires a goal, an actual tangible goal. Yeah. It says, we're going to take money from these people and give it to these people, which they are unable

to do. They can't do it. We can provide tax incentives for these people, maybe. Well, I'm just thinking of what the passage Virgil read earlier where he was like, you know, even though Obamacare, we made sure that like, you know, everything would be offset with a spending cut or a tax hike or something like that. Did not matter. Like, yeah, they don't give a shit. Yeah. And the reason that they couldn't get anyone engaged with it is because it was complicated and hard to understand. And it was about health insurance. Yeah. And it didn't really help a lot. I mean, it helped some people, but in a very staggered, rolled out way, and it made a lot of people's lives more complicated. And it didn't do anything to a whole lot of people, except make

them just blame any rise in their fucking premiums on it. Yeah. Let's go back in time. The next chapter is about the Pfeiffer's big bugbear during the Obamacare's Fox News. Oh boy. Oh man. All of our bugbear. I call them faux news. And I insist that you all do that as well. You're just a few tidbits from this chapter. This is about the foundation of Fox News. A TV network that would cover issues from a different perspective is a good idea and a healthy one for our democracy. That sort of network may be what Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had in mind when they started Fox News more than 20 years ago, but that's not what it is anymore. Remember was really how he was a fucking dry. He was a job of the hot sex predator monsters. He got his start

teaching Nick Richard Nixon how to be racist in a way that would get him the most votes. What are you fucking talking about? How do they do? America is already great for Fox News. Like they're just his worldview is so holistic that it's like everything used to be good until Trump. Every institution is good until Trump showed up. This is exactly what we're talking about. The inability to identify an enemy. And he's like, you know, crazy conspiracy theories. That's their home turf. And like I believe it when Dan says that he couldn't do that. But how fucking hard it would be for some enterprising, you know, Democratic Party or political opposition, if you hate Fox News, to, I don't know, uncover the fact that it's just an abattoir of sexual coercion and abuse,

maybe 10 or 15 years earlier than the last stories we've read about it. How hard would it be to turn up all the stories about how Roger Ailes forced himself on women and then literally bleeds out of his penis because he's slightly hemophiliac? That's true. Look it up. Why? I don't want to look at all described as raw hamburger meat. I don't know that. Why don't I just put his disgusting face. Every time you talk about Fox News, talk about Roger Ailes and have a picture of his decaying, decrepit body to go with it. Yeah, show his dick. Do what conservatives do anytime that like there's one of those insufferable Oscars, just call Hollywood the rape town. Call Fox News the rape network. That's what it is. Yep. You wouldn't have to stretch the facts very far for that. Well,

you don't have to for Hollywood either. Yeah. Well, here's some of the things that they have to deal with. Fox News promoted widely debunked conspiracy theories in order to raise questions about the integrity of Obama's victory. Most notable was a certifiably insane idea. The Obama administration was covering up an effort by a fledgling black militant group called the New Black Panthers, who had been dispatched to scare white voters away from the polls. Another favorite Fox Fable was that a little known housing advocacy group called Acorn had helped steal the election through various forms of voter fraud. You motherfuckers hung them up to try. That Democratic Congress killed Acorn and probably cost Hillary the election, considering how thin the fucking

margins were and how one of their big things they did was fucking voter registration. They got their skin or their own fucking shadow because of some jinda bullshit with a guy dressed like a pimp, a fucking trust fund rapist in a pimp costume, got them to fire Sherry Sherrod, and fucking defund Acorn. You fucking cowardly pieces of shit. This is my God, Matt's rage levels are reaching an unprecedented heights. No, I mean, I said when we were planning on doing this episode that I had probably the most controversial take I would ever have on this show. Oh boy. I like the Hillary people significantly more than these Obama fucking lizards. I know I do. Like these people, these people, like the people

like in Hillary's orbit, you like better than the sort of like, like the supposedly charming men in the world. Give me an ice chewing psychopath over these fucking. Not even that. Give me fucking Felipe Reigns who at the height of like me too is like, Monica, you stupid bitch, you ruined everything because at least they're loyal to their own dumb shit. At least Hillary kept on like the woman who gave her gum whose husband was a pedophile just because they actually care about loyalty. These fucking cockroaches, they will hang out anyone to dry. They don't like any that pod save America world that Dan Pfeiffer is a part of. Just look into their eyes. You see nothing. They fly around the world poisoning themselves with airplane water so

they can do live reads for slave labor meal prep companies. The Hillary people are like, they're freaks too, but at least they're passionate. At least they're like, think about all these people have ever done is subscribe to the news and work in a comms department for 30 years and then tell you how to argue with your racist uncle. Now you need to use facts. They he'll think about the lives of the Hillary people before you have Adam Pachinko machine who is like an Orc cop. You have, you have, you have Peter, Peter Dow who is a soldier and club musician. They're like real people. They're fucking freaks, but they're real people with blood and passion and loyalty. And these Obama freaks, they don't give a shit. They will hang

out anyone to dry. They don't believe in anything. Did you see that fucking video that John Favreau did after Ocasio won? Because they knew they knew they couldn't be like, oh, fuck her because their biggest fear is people yelling at them, but they also knew that they couldn't say she was good like because of what she believes in because they're the Joe Crowley people. So they literally put out a video where John Favreau is sitting in like a limited edition podcaster's chair going like that he got from Mark Marin that Mark Marin scammed him for. And he's like, number one, you have to believe in yourself. Number two, talk to voters. And it's like, you wrote it. You don't believe any of this. You're, it's like, at least if Pod State of America

was all Hillary people, like if it was like Felipe Reigns was there, he'd be like, another stab in the back. This is your final warning. They're real. They're real. They have blood and fury, and it's sort of they have it for the least passionate person alive, but they have it. That makes it more impressive. Yeah, it's amazing. It's there. I hate these. I hate these former Obama comm staffers so fucking much. They're so afraid of like any confrontation that they're like, no, actually, don't campaign against Trump. Let's just invent 30 billion fact checking websites where someone else can do it. You are pussies. You're absolute Corey. You've never done shit. Like, oh my God, they won't even let a young hit us say Iran should have nuclear weapons on their

own show. No, but to sum it up, the Hillary people, they must be loyal to their capo. I feel like an FBI agent who's been like following the mob forever. And I have this grudging respect that the Hillary people now because it's like, you know, like the incompetence of like a near attendant, at least it's like there's a human soul somewhere there. But I don't know. The fact that she gets barred out and fucking tweet still three in the morning. That's a real guy. That's a real passion. That means she has some level of guilt where it's like, do you think like Dan Pfeiffer is just like, he literally doesn't think he's ever done anything like beyond just the most noble pursuit of the truth. Like I feel like, you know, I'm like, hey, you know, I worked against

those guys, but at least they had honor and loyalty and family. These new guys, they just kill each other all the time. The Obama people, all you need to know about the Obama people versus the Clinton people is like, like the Clintons have been dragged down by all these freaks around them forever. And yeah, they fucked over people who weren't in the family. But in the family, like they will keep you on his dead weight forever. But Obama, like literally his pastor, his pastor, he was like, boom, look how bad I want it. Boom. You're right. Nira's getting, she's getting barred up. She's getting barred up every night, whereas he's Dan Pfeiffer, Favro types. You all cowards don't even smoke crack. No, they're just sitting there drinking fucking, drinking smart water

and fucking postage. Damn, this melatonin hitting this. The difference is the difference between these two is the difference between the intelligence dudes in the air conditioned office and Kurtz's Montignards in apocalypse now. Yes. Okay. Here's how to be powerful. Here's the advice. How to defeat the Trump propaganda machine. Talk to one, talk to Fox News viewers. Just don't do it. No, never do that way. Fuck it. Fuck it. But a fucking electorily and morally Democrats cannot afford to cede these voters to the Republicans. They have to. I am resistant to any strategy that says we give up on a third of the country. No, you have to. Oh, that's a good strategy. Of course, if you fucking parties, if you only have to give up on a third, you're fucking golden. If you get

two thirds in return, it would seem pretty good. We got to peel off a third of this third. But he thinks he needs a hundred percent of votes. That's what they want. That's what a big 10 is. We want a hundred percent. And if there's one person saying, I don't like this, then it's like, what can we do for you? How can we serve you better today? What about the over a third who doesn't vote? Just nothing about winning them over at all? No. It's like, how can we racistly accommodate you? All right. We need to combat Fox News by going around Fox News to communicate with their views through interviews on local TV and Facebook. And Democrats can and must campaign in those rural areas. Democrats need to give these voters a chance to see them first in person

instead of only getting to know them through the Funhouse Mirror of Fox. All of those local TV channels that they're talking about are owned by Sinclair, almost all of them. They're even more right wing and propagandistic than Fox. And, you know, and again, this is the direct result of the deregulation by the FCC that's been going on since the fucking Clinton administration does their own fucking grave. Yeah. You remember those things you had, the FTC and the fairness doctrine? Yeah. What have you used them? Yeah. That's crazy. What a crazy world who Barack Obama would often say that if he could just meet every person in America, much like he was able to campaign in Iowa in 2008, they would change the tone of politics.

People would see that he is a good honest person trying to do the right thing. Maybe he wouldn't get any more votes than he otherwise would have gotten because they're a legitimate, sincere differences of opinion. That seems like the most important element. But people would know the real Obama, not the Fox News character. There are at least 15 million people in America who think Obama sucked dick in a limbo. But even if they didn't and they didn't, if they still voted for Hitler Jr., what fucking difference does it make? Okay. This part, this is how the chapter ends. And I consider this the worst part of the book. And it's about us. Turn down Matt's microphone. Start pumping morphine into Matt's arm. Build out a progressive media. We are massively outgunned

in the media space. Republicans have powerful weapons, amplifying their message, parodying Democrats and shaping the online conversation in ways that are bad for progressive causes. Trump is unique in his ability to dominate public discourse without outrageous utterances. But Trump could not have been this successful without the army of right-wing propaganda outlets that sprung up in the shadow of the Obama presidency. If Democrats do not close the gap soon, we will once again have our message drowned out. With the possible exception of Russian hacking, the right-wing media advantage is the greatest threat to progressivism. There is a posting gap, gentlemen. Mr. President, we cannot allow a posting gap. I mean, he's right about that.

They do dominate the traditional media, but part of that is because they have nothing. Oh, wait for it. They have nothing to counter the Trump blood and thunder with. Wait for it. Developing an activist, entertaining progressive media is an imperative. This is different from creating a Democratic Fox. We cannot and should not try to adopt the mirror image of their dishonest, divisive, and frankly racist approach. We should not try to pretend to be fair and balanced to pull the wool over people's eyes. Unlike conservatives, progressives do not hate the mainstream media and are not looking for a replacement. But we do need a way to engage our supporters, amplify our message, try to win the battle of social media conversation. We cannot

and should not get involved in the propaganda business because that is about nullifying the idea of an objective media. And if we want to continue winning arguments based on facts, we need independent arbiters of truth. Here you go. You ready for this? Hit me. Crooked Media, the media company started by my pop-save America co-host, is the model for how progressives can erase the right substantial media advantage. I like the way this fnub thinks. John, John, and Tommy. And I think Tommy's the Republican one. No, there's another one. No, no, no, no. There's a first one. Tommy is in the Republican one. Tommy is like the smart one because he didn't. He's the only one of them who didn't work in comms. You see, Obama cloned 80

million Spartans, all named John with no age, to work in comms. But then he had Tommy, who is the policy guy. See, all the Johns are like little Labrador retrievers just running around. But Tommy's smart. Tommy's like a cock or spaniel. John, John, and Tommy started Crooked Media in the weeks after the 2016 election to inform, entertain, and engage. Podsave America and the rest of the Crooked Media empire of podcasts are unique in the progressive media space because they're building an engaged audience and helping that audience find ways to channel their energy into action. Come for the witty banter. Stay for the activism. Oh, I do. I do. I come at the witty banter. When I hear John 1117 talked to John 318, and he's like, so you're still ordering too many

napkins with your takeout? And he's like, oh, yeah. It's called Podsave America because that's what they're grown in. This is Halo. This is Halo. This is all the Spartan program. John 1117, do you want me to tell, tell me, do you want to tell me what you're doing at the North Carolina GOP headquarters? They're finishing this fight. Oh my God, guys, guys, Dennis Miller just showed up. Dennis, Dennis, you've been listening. What do you have to say? I haven't seen this many Johns in one place since buckaroo bonsai. During the battle to save the Affordable Care Act in 2017, Podsave and other crooked media podcasts used our platforms to encourage our listeners to get involved in the grassroots efforts to pressure Congress to do the right thing.

Georgia Media worked hand in hand with groups like Move On, Center for American Progress, and Indivisible to inform people about which protests to attend, which members of Congress are targeted with phone calls, and the best talking points to use. I remember that during that fight, we were also leading a crusade against the vile pervert known as the Noid. Unlike Fox and Bright... And he has not appeared on television to this day. Unlike Fox and Bright Bart, this is not a command and control operation. Trying to manufacture outrage is an ongoing, honest, no bullshit conversation about where the country has had in what we can do about it. We are as influenced by the conversations we have with our listeners

as they are by us. Crooked media is the first bright spot for progressives in the fight against Fox and the pro-Trump propagandist. Now, we just need more crooked medias. It's just like Titanic self-regard. It would take just a few more jobs. What's the big deal? Imagine if we even did anything remotely like that, even as a joke. What fucking assholes people would toss? We put Revolution in the title as a joke because we put guide to the revolution. That was their joke title because they wouldn't accept year zero and people are like, you fucking piece of shit. And they're like, yes, we have reinvented truth. In the next chapter, he talks about Republicans going loco during the Obama years. I won't

read this whole part, but it's a lot of things I forgot about what Obama did. He was all about living up to the promise of restoring civility, unity, and bipartisanship. That's not wrong. Mission accomplished, baby. He also immediately reappointed... Not a waste of time at all. He reappointed Robert Gates, George Bush's secretary of defense, Republican Ray LaHood, who stabbed him in the back. Crazy, by the way. ...later nominated Judge Reagan as Commerce Secretary. In the midst of a rapidly worsening economic crisis, he wanted to work closely with Republican

minority in the Senate and House to construct the economic package designed to rescue the economy. The hope was at the time of nearly unprecedented crisis. Republicans should be willing to put politics aside. So the president instructed his economic team to reach out to Republicans and incorporate their ideas, which they did, making nearly half the package tax cut instead of sort of government spending that was wrongly and anathema to Republicans. They ruined it for no advantage. Because in our book, The Chapel Guide to Revolution and Manifesto, Gwent's Logic, Facts, and Reason, we also use that point. We also mention that.

In this passage here, he's saying, well, later on, he's saying, well, we were wrong, and they didn't work with us, obviously, but they're proud that they tried. They tried. McConnell said, right after the inauguration, it wasn't like they had the... It was not like they had the wool pulled over their eyes or they got tricked. This is in the middle of the economy basically collapsing. Like fucking Home Depot parking lots were war zones, and he's going, our goal is to denial Obama a second term. He said that right away. So what in God's name would make any of these idiots think,

for a second, they would be helpful in constructing any kind of meaningful fucking stimulus? I was thinking back about like the early days of the Obama administration and like the tell, like the fact that he squandered, the fact that he came into office with this popular mandate. He was very popular at the time. He won basically by modern standards, a landslide election against McCain, had a Democratic Congress and Senate coming in. What were the tells? The first one that I remember was having that fat ginger, what's his name, Rick Warren, do his inaugural prayer, that Hawaiian shirt wearing, success gospel, fucking homophobic asshole, Rick, the purpose driven life, that fucking piece of shit.

He had him give his inaugural prayer. And then right after that, I know I've talked about it before, but this goes right to what Felix was saying about these people don't believe in anything and have no loyalty. He fucking through his own friends, skip gates under the bus when a fucking Boston cop arrested him for breaking into his own house and made them both come get a beer with him, have a beer, photograph together. Officer Seamus, black hate, come over here, have a blue moon. Yeah. I like, I remember when he got it, like I was a little skeptical about him going in, but he, you know, I, I, I read all these books when I was like 15, 16, like, what was that one about the Texas House Speaker, right? The will to power. Oh, Jim Wright. Jim

Wright. Yeah. Whoops. And all the Caro LBJ books. And it was just shocking to me like how different, how far right like the public discourse about like labor and like government expenditures and government controls had moved in like a very short time. And I remember thinking like, well, Obama isn't what people think he's going to be, but he has this unique opportunity where it's like, you can take all the last 40 years and you just, you have this perfect moment. You can just slam it back. You can go back to, not that it was like even close to what we need, but you can go back to how people maybe thought about the necessity of labor unions, the, uh, the necessity of like not cutting certain government expenditures and safety nets.

A billion, a run on card check. Right. A billion things. And then he gets in there and it's like, like, yeah, let's have a beer summit with my friend who I've totally thrown under the bus. And I've literally hang out with the guy who pulled over Paul Pierce 34 times. I let's, let's, uh, how hard would it him? Geithner, who that little manlet who lived in the pocket of Jamie Diamond, by the way, uh, by the way, news item on Tim Geithner this week. Well, what is fucking what is that piece of shit been doing since he left the White House? Um, answer is he sits on the board of a company that literally mails checks to destitute people. And when they cash them, immediately start charging them interest and then prosecute

them when they can't pay it back and get the court fees from the state for doing. They have to pay the lawyers fees. Okay. You have to pay the lawyers, which is worse. Yeah, way more. It is like the, it is usury and like in a, no, what it is, is it's like, oh, usury is boring. We're going to take usury and combine it with a prank show. It's like fucking punked with Ashton Kutcher. Like we're going to give money to this poor idiot. And then when he fucking takes it, we're going to fucking mad. I was talking to you about this the other night. This would be like the equivalent of like the robber barons of the Gilded Age when like they would just throw money out of their Rolls Royces or Zeppelins at people. Yeah.

If they did just to amuse themselves and see people fight over it to get a silver nickel or whatever. Uh, it would be like that if they started charging them all interests and then send Pinkerton's to kill them. Carnegie would have been like, God damn, that's cold. Guys, I don't even do that shit. Guys, I feel like we're getting really close to Fox news with how we're not using an argument. We're just demonizing this guy, Tim Geithner, and we could be as bad as him. Who knows how many people were helped by these insanely usurus and unpaybackable loans. And then Tim, this asshole Tim Geithner is the guy who Obama chose to put in charge of the economic or the fiscal policy and economic monetary or fiscal policy monetary policy and

economic recovery of this country. This predatory psycho piece of shit. Uh, this is the best thing. Can't they ever get angry? Can't they ever be mean to someone? How hard would it have been to Obama? I'm glad you asked. With his approval rating to just say, fuck that asshole cop. He had no business fucking asking him. He said, he did to begin with. He said the cop. I thought that was stupid. And then the right wing shit their britches and like, how could you say that about a police officer? And then he immediately backed out. He would have these like tepid statements. And then the thing was, is that he would immediately back down as soon as he was challenged by people who would never give him any fucking. They don't like argument. They don't like disagreement. They don't

like being like, uh, made to feel like they're bad. Well, so they will seed everything that they was in front of him, everything to believe in just so that the worst people in the world can maybe think of them as not bad or not like them. It never crosses their mind that for this third of the country, that there is no way for a black guy to criticize a cop that they won't like self emulate at minards over. Well, there is an answer to your question at the end of the chapter. Here's how to beat the Republicans. Go high. Democrats cannot and should not try to be a paler shade of Trump, i.e. slightly less orange. I could see some of the temptation of this approach. Doing the right thing is hard and can be painful. People like Frank can resign from Congress for allegations

of misconduct while Donald Trump gets to stay in power. Trump and Republicans violate norm after norm and lie in ways never seen before in politics, seemingly without consequence. It's tempting to try their approach after ours failed in 2016, but we cannot give it in that temptation. First and foremost, it's the wrong thing to do. And call me naive, but I believe as Barack Obama does that in the long run, doing the right thing is the best politics. Hopefully sooner rather than later, Republicans will pay a steep price for embracing Trumpism and cultivating the worst instincts of Americans for short-term political power. No, they won't. I'm sorry. That's very telling right there, that line about doing the right thing is hard, but it's worth it. In his mind, doing the

right thing is being nice. No, fuck you. That's not naivete. That's malfeasance. Doing the right thing is passing the legislation that people need in this country and that you ran on and that people who even, if they even took your campaign even one-tenth seriously when they pulled that lever, that you've pissed all over. That's doing the right thing. It's not being nice to the fucking Republicans or not being like Trump. Because you know what the key other QB says? What it's saying about Trump there? He gets to keep power. That's right. He does. The next, but the last substantive chapter of the book is about a topic that is very, very dear to us all. It's a big part of our praxis. It's about Twitter. Very important. First, Dan tells a story about being

in the hospital with some infection and he's like on painkillers and stuff, but he's got a tainted batch of news. But he's also just gotten into tweeting and he's trying to reply to something Jonathan Martin tweeted. Oh, I wish I could be there for that conversation. And this is again, this is a multi-page story about tweeting in a hospital bed or just his Twitter generally. My intention was to tweet also a bigger factor on the right. I hit send and put my blackberry next to me on the hospital gurney and waited to fall into a deep chemically induced sleep. For once in my life, my obsessive compulsive phone addiction worked my advantage. As my eyes were rolling back in my head, I took one last look at my phone. That's when I saw the email.

Delete your last tweet ASAP. My stomach sank. It was the worst mistake I could have made. See, the B key and the N key are right next to each other. And I have fat thumbs even when not under the influence of heavy medication. Holy shit. My tweet read at Jonathan Martin, also an N word factor on the right. The N word. Yeah. And then, then like the Republicans, they want to argue with facts, saw the words and word factor and they're like, there we go, we got our 2010 midterm message. Dan Fife dog also wanted a bigger Navy, but this is this is John Ashcroft or the hospital bed trying to get him to sign off on torture and he's too fucked up. That's the Obama administration equivalent of it. This is the most human thing in the book.

Like everything else is just like it's a replicant. This is the only thing where it's like, okay, this guy may not be an Android. Dan Fife dog, you're lying in a hospital bed. You see your email come up. It's an alert. It's urgent. It says turn over your Twitter. It's on the ground. Why are you turning it over? Why are you deleting the tweet, John? I want to know that he's devoted 30 pages of this book, at least to his Twitter account. And for everything people say about our book, The Chapel Guide to Revolution, like this is a coloring book is a bunch of stars, bunch of tweets. There's absolutely nothing so narcissistic as a chronology of our Twitter fucking bios. There is a connected dots, though, and a maze. It's a lot of fun. Anyway,

you want to know how to win the Twitter wars? If progressives have any hope of taking back this country, we all have to get better at Twitter. As gross as this feels, we can and should learn some, but not all lessons from Trump's Twitter strategy and admit it there's a certain appeal to beating him at his own game. Here it is. They take the exact wrong message in Obama. It just finally tweets on his account. You know, I think Geraldo Rivera is a fake person. Number one, tweet yourself. John Favestar always urges politicians to quote, talk like a human. Favestar's point is that too many politicians talk like they think politicians should sound. Poll tested mush with slogans and phrases that pollsters said people would like

and deliver speeches written by speech writers with visions of Kennedy ghosts in their head. In the end, they sound more like Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons than JFK. Obama, who certainly had the ability to hit high rhetorical flourishes, avoided sound bites and cliches like the plague. This Favestar maxim extends to Twitter too. Tweet like a human. Be normal. Be funny. Be a little snarky. Use a meme. Be like everyone else on Twitter. Some of the politicians with natural Twitter talent include established stars like Bernie Sanders and Senator Warren, rising stars like Jason Kander, Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy C.T., and nonagenarian John Dingell. Do you think Bernie Sanders is doing his own twiddle for that

matter? Yeah. I think 900 year old fucking... Have you seen Brian Schatz's Favestar? It's fire. All fire. All bangers. Check out the awesome new account, Racism Dog. It wolfs it racism. By the way, how pissed off is Ted Lu, the Tweet and Congressman that he's not in there? That's his entire fucking strategy is being an insufferable prick on Twitter and he's not even fucking shouting out. Dude, Ted Lu owns... Ted Lu is just... He's got to have a word for everything, right? He's just the first reply in everything. Donald Trump, your parents hate you, sucker. Dan Pfeiffer looking over Obama's shoulders. Okay, so in this universe, Mondays are for Mondays. And your wife is a derpina. Yeah. Okay, so the cop is asking you

why you have weed. You don't actually have weed. The reader understands that. That would be illegal. Okay, here it is. Stop the bullying and ban the trolls. Twitter's company has utterly failed to police their own platform. Scroll through the mentions of a woman or a person of color on Twitter and you're about to be horrified by what you read. Racism, misogyny, threats of violence, and sexual assault. This problem existed long before Trump, but his rise enabled and empowered far-right hate accounts to be more public. Twitter has even verified some of these hate mongers, giving them the vaunted blue check mark. Twitter has been impossibly slow to act, in part because kicking a bunch of people off the platform would exacerbate the problem of

anemic user growth. But this is a solvable problem. One, enforce the policies against hate speech and bullying with a consistent zero tolerance policy. Two, end the anonymity granted to users. There is no valid reason to let people spew hate anonymously. Much of the hate abuse and trolling would immediately disappear if people had to do it for the world to see, using their real names. Hey, hey, you know, you know all those people and say, you know, countries with laws against being gay, or kids in America who grow up in like hyper religious homes, or just people who don't want to be fired. How about people who just... Dan Pfeiffer is sick of people feeding frogs at him. Yeah, and because we know that all those people on Facebook who've joined

like the... Yeah, that's a cute... That's a cute Maxine Waters with a fucking RPG. Those people, using their own name is really tempered through rhetoric. Yeah, go to any local news Facebook pit. We say it all the time. Yeah. Like go there and just any story about like anyone committing any petty like larceny or something. Yeah. It's someone with their grandkids and their profile pick with them. They're like, here's what I would do to that fucking racial slur that hasn't been heard out loud since 1921. Yeah, these guys are all... High caliber death threat. They're just putting out the fucking letters from Francis Dollarheide, the Hannibal Lecter under their own name. I just think that this motherfucker spent resources, real estate in this book, this book that he's

presumably is going to be bought by thousands of people for something that is essentially a DM to Jack. Yes. Yeah. Because there's nobody, literally no one reading that can do anything about the trolls. Honestly, like there is nothing more pathetic to me than these like, yeah, like media figures just begging this tech douchebag CEO to like make their Twitter experience nicer. Yeah. I want to, I want to just begging this asshole to just, you know, ban the people who are mean to them. Oh, I want to know that was also a Carl Diggler proposal that you have to tweet on your real name, provide three forms of identification and your boss's phone number, put that in your bio. Yeah. If you're a woman, photos are your feet. Yeah. This is the spiritual successor to

thinkocracy, the rise of the brainy congressman. Just a couple more things. A little bit about dance. Read me more, read me more from liberal Flanders. A little more about dance personal life and then a funny story about working in the White House. This is how he meets his wife, Howley. Howley. She works in the White House. Moving castle. We became colleagues and then friends bonding over our shared love of hip hop and television shows such as Sons of Anarchy in the Wire. Yes. Before too long, it was clear that we were both interested in more than just a friendship. Breaking bad. They're into that. And I said to her, will you join my polycule with the other Johns? And he got some advice from the big man. Oh, this would be good. Let me be clear. If you

like your wife, you could keep her. Obama says, let me be clear. I do not now or have ever practiced the right of prima nocta. But I'm willing to make an exception in this case, Dan. You will spend more time with this person than anyone else for the rest of your life. There's nothing more important than always wanting to hear what she has to say about things. There should make you laugh. And I don't know if you want kids, but if you do, do you think she would be a good mom? Life is long. These are things that really matter over the long term. We had just pulled up on the plane and the world was waiting for us to get out. Howley is incredibly interesting, funnier than I am and will be a phenomenal mom, I told the president. Sounds like she's the one. Lucky

you. Obama told me as he exited the limbo. Was Obama on the toilet that entire time? It sounds like he could not give less of a fuck. Well, it's hard when you're blowing a guy. A year later, how a good advice. A year later, how Lee and I were engaged. And this is the advice I now give everyone about relationships. I credit Obama most of the time. This actually makes me like Obama more because it's like, yeah, he's gonna give a shit. I'm like, I think I found the love in my life. And Obama's like, do she, I don't know, just put out something. What's her head game? Oh, does she give that good top? I mean, like Hillary, again, to her credit, would ask you, would like get the CIA to pull the guy's finger, the girl or guy's fingerprints or something

like blood loyalty. Obama is playing fucking PUBG mobile. And he's like, what's her name? What's your name again? Also, what the fuck are you talking about? Here's a little bit about how Pod Save America came about. I'll spare you most of the details. Simmons's staff posted on the internet. And a few hours later, keeping it 1600 was born. Well, actually, it started untitled. Our first choice for a title was politics as usual, naming it after the Jay-Z song, but that was taken. Then we named it playing politics, which was an ironic homage to an Obamaism that politics isn't a game. After we announced that as a title, we discovered that the Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board had a podcast by the same name, which made it impossible. It turned out we were less

clever than a 62-year-old Minnesota newspaper columnist. It turned out we were significantly slower and less clever. Out of desperation, we asked people on Twitter for suggestions, and one very talented user suggested keeping it 1600. It made absolutely no sense to anyone, but that's why it was funny. Makes more sense than their current fucking podcast. Yeah. Wait a minute. Does that mean they didn't know what keeping it 100 meant? No. We went with a title where when we brought in front of focus groups, we're repeatedly beaten nearly to death because they were so annoyed by it. He mentions that they wanted to call it politics as usual after the Jay-Z song. After hearing excerpts from this book, I really wish they called it dead

presidents after the other Jay-Z song. Just two more things. There's an interlude where he tells a pretty funny story about working for the boss. Obama's not a Hollywood fundraiser, Leonardo DiCaprio's there, and Kim Kardashian's there, and Kanye West is there. And Obama says, last question goes to Kanye. Kanye took a breath and started talking. Yeezy did not disappoint. You and I are a lot alike, Kanye said, to Obama. We are both from Chicago. When we first came on the scene, we got so much love. Now we got so many haters. And I went on that for nearly a half hour. Some highlights. Everyone has opponents. Coke has Pepsi. Adidas has Nike. I have Drake, and you have the Republicans. The only way to get things done is to get the best people together.

Me and Jay on the mic, Mario Batale on the pasta, and we need Elon Musk. Brian Singer in the pool. I was mesmerized. I was mesmerized. All the individual parts were crazy, but somehow the whole thing seemed to make sense in the moment, at least. Obama kept a seriously inquisitive look on his face the whole time. Like all of Kanye's music, it seemed crazy at first. Before long, I was nodding along as if it made complete sense. Eventually, he had to take a breath and Obama jumped in. Kanye, thank you for your thoughts. You make some really good points, especially about the value of meeting with smart people like Elon Musk. Thank you, everyone, for your support for the DNC. Is this

a fever dream? Am I having a fever dream right now? Here it is. After the event, I jumped in the presidential limo with Obama, Nita, and Valerie. We all looked at Obama and waited for his assessment. What did he think of Kanye? Was he annoyed that we made him sit through it? Obama had a serious look on his face. I prepared myself to try to explain how the president, who had very important work to do, had ended up in this room with rappers and movie stars, and then Obama broke into a huge grin. That shit cray, Obama said in reference to a famous Kanye line, proving, once again, that is and always will be our coolest president. We all laughed and didn't really stop until we arrived back at the White House eight or so hours late. Eight hours? They had a great time at President

Camp losing the entire fucking country. Imagine you're on an airplane just cackling nonstop at that amazing witnesses. Obama is Tony telling the boring 747 joke from the Sopranos just for like anything he says that portrays even like a slight knowledge of culture. These guys think it's the funniest shit they've ever heard. Like fucking he couldn't. They love him so much and he couldn't give a shit about them. They're like the fucking Joker's minions. Yeah, like Obama like doesn't know what any of their names. Their names probably weren't even John until 2008. He's probably like, I have a new naming system. You got to be Dan. And he's probably never spoken to them since and they just love him so much. He does not give a

fuck. Oh, let me be clear. Your name is Rick now. It makes me even like Obama more. Yeah, because he clearly has contempt for these toads, which is the correct. If he actually liked them, it would be a darkness beyond imagining. Well, here it is. Here's the final, the end of the book, the last few lines. This is right after Trump is elected and he's talking to Dan. Sir, how are you doing? The tone of my voice made it clear. Who the fuck are you? My question was about something bigger than how this day was. I was trying to get at two things that have been on my mind since the election. Basically, I was asking him, how fucked are we? Obama knew what I was asking and he sighed and shook his head

and said, look, this isn't an ideal situation, at least. And then we both laughed. Understatement for the purposes of gallus humor is a tried and true Obamaism. Then he said, maybe I am just looking for a silver lining, but I am hopeful that this will be the clarifying event that will show the public the two different visions for the country. And there it was, the eternal optimism and unending faith in the American people. I am going to miss him. We are going to miss him. I love how little Obama always gives. It's like one day I came into the office and it was raining. Obama was the type of guy who could look outside and know what weather it was. He said, are you keeping dry out there, John? Even though my name wasn't John at that point,

I'd ranked up to Dan. I had prestigeed the John level. I knew that this is the last time we would ever have a president who both knew weather and the effects of weather. Hot enough for you, he said one day. I instantly shot through my dockers a 30 rope nut. I'd never experienced anything like it before in my life. Dear penthouse, this never believed what happened to me. I was coordinating a meeting between Elon Musk and Nicholas Sarkozy when Obama walked in and said, which one are you? This means that he knew I was one of the ones who worked in the White House with him. I am the luckiest man alive. You fucking little worm. It's awesome because that's how they treat everyone else. They learned it from him. It's like if a young Potts save America

person came up to Dan Fife dog and was like, Dan, I was inspired to work on campaigns because of you and Obama. He would just be like, that's great. Keep doing it. But sir, my mom has problems with their health insurance and I was wondering if you could, yeah, that's good. Yes, Obamacare. Yeah, it's like their interactions with everyone are so superficial because Obama replaced every other adult figure in their life. This guy who clearly didn't give a fuck about them as people and they're just like, oh, that replaces my original programmers intent. I'm going to have an Obama style conversation with everybody. By the way, Obama pretty clearly, for all he talks about how evil and awful Fox News and Trump is, Obama clearly doesn't give a shit. He just signed

a Netflix deal where he's not protesting outside ice facilities or anything like that. What if Obama like he's like Chappelle shows up just jacked and vaping. Wearing a white beater and a fucking news boy cap. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, at the end of the day, he did the right thing. We're going to miss you, big man. No, I, Barack Obama, if you have any more stories, if you just giving advice, you overheard from three men and a baby, so this guy will stop talking to you or just anything else of you completely blowing off all the guys who went on to found the biggest podcast network in the world, please tell me, sir. Obama probably had way more meaningful conversations with Donald Trump than any of these guys, right? Oh, God. Yeah. Like 100% because he like as bad, like, as

bad as Obama thinks Trump is not for like what you should think he's bad for, but like for what he's doing to the discourse or whatever. He probably relates more to Trump as a person than any of these worms. Yeah. Well, they're on the same level. Yeah. You know what's funny when it's a tradition, the outgoing president writes a letter to the incoming president. Obama wrote some flowery fucking thing for Trump that you know he didn't read. No. And the one thing I'm really excited for is Trump to write something. Oh, my God. I hope Kamala Harris went like some woman wins. He's like, I've been shown pictures of you from when you were younger. Wonderful. It's going to be the longest letter ever, but it's going to be done by like Microsoft speech to text. So it's

going to be a little fucked up. Well, in conclusion, it's for you, Barack. It's all for you. Yep. Yeah. This is so sad, dude. If you are an adult who knows any of the Pod Save America people, just please like, they're like shelter dogs. If you take them in, they have a dad who doesn't. If you go home with someone and you see this book on their bookshelf, what you need to do is surreptitiously remove the jacket and put it on a copy of the chapeau guide to revolution, a manifesto against logic facts and reason. This is how we will win the posting. That's culture jamming, baby. We have to post our way out of this. Guys, guys, guys, what if there was a version that got over all the noise and falsehoods of Pod Save America, a different podcast network

and by other, instead of other media projects, we do a Twitch stream four times a week. Can we, can we go out to Viper? Y'all cowards don't even smoke. Yes. Yes. All right. There's a better way, the Twitch way. All right. Bye, guys. Bye.