Lovett or Leave It - Canceling with the Stars

Episode Date: September 21, 2019

Trump and Ukraine. Nadler and Lewandowski. Spicer and total humiliation. What a week. Senator Cory Booker joins to face the Queen for a Day gauntlet. Ben Rhodes covers the whistleblower story and tensions with Iran. Plus Sasheer Zamata and Vox’s Sean Rameswaram play a climate change game and discuss the Trudeau scandal, Amazon’s excessive packaging, and Lou Dobbs losing his mind.

What is up, everybody? Good evening, Los Angeles. How's everybody doing? Great to be back in Los Angeles. Love It or Leave It is heading out on the road. We will be in San Francisco. That's basically sold out. But there's a couple left.

There's a couple tickets left. And then Pod Save America will be live in San Jose on September 26th and Portland on September 27th. Crooked.com slash events. There were three moments this week that captured for me something essential, fundamental, about the kind of people that work for Donald Trump,

the Trump Pokemon, if you will, his apologists, his defenders. And each of these three moments captures an evolution of a Trump Pokemon. And so I would like to discuss them with you tonight. Stage one, you are a clown who debases yourself for the dear leader who tamps down any dignity and sense of self,

who gives over to the task of saying anything, no matter how silly. Let's roll the clip of Lou Dobbs. Have a great weekend. The president makes such a thing possible for us all. Have a great weekend. The president makes such a thing possible for us all. Who knew? Imagine saying it. But imagine sitting at home and being like huh i'm gonna show trump

some gratitude this weekend it's all up to him it's gonna be pretty great figure out what ad astra is And then there is the next evolution. You are a clown. Confronted with those lies, ideally under oath, and all your bluster and all your little smirks and playing to the people you can't lose isn't enough because you don't respect the people who respect what you're doing. So let's roll the clip of Corey Lewandowski. I don't ever remember the president ever asking me

to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form ever. Did you hear that, sir? That was you saying on MSNBC, you don't ever remember the president ever asking you to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form. That wasn't true, was it, sir? I heard that. And that was not true, was it?

I have no obligation to be honest with the media because there's just as dishonest as anybody else. So you're admitting, sir, you were not being truthful in that clip, correct? My interview with Ari Milberg? Yes. Can be interpreted any way you'd like. Would you like me to play it again? I also just appreciate the logic of it,

which is that when you lie on television, you're not lying to television. You're lying to people watching the television. So if you can do anything on television that's as bad as what you perceive what other people do on television, there's incest on Game of Thrones. So I like that Corey Lewandowski clip because obviously there have been a lot of implications of what he said. There are implications for the media. Maybe don't book Corey Lewandowski on your show because he doesn't believe he has to be honest,

which presumably is one of the goals of talking to him on television. He also confirmed that the Mueller report is accurate, basically accurate, which means he's confirming that Donald Trump beseeched him to commit obstruction of justice and that even Corey Lewandowski, who is very smart, knew that it was such a bad idea that he didn't want it logged in the records.

So that's our second stage, all right? Desperately trying to cling to some form of self-esteem, self-regard, trapped between the tension of continuing to lie to protect your ego and not wanting to lie under oath because you don't want to go to jail. Finally, we reach the third evolution of the Trump Pokemon, and it is a vulgar and sad, important display.

I would like to say, if you are squeamish, maybe lower the volume. Do not pause. Do not shut it off. Get to the ads. Let's roll the clip of Sean Spicer. Dancing the salsa with his partner Lindsay, it's Sean Spicer. Had any of you not seen it till this moment?

I'm so happy. Can you fucking believe what we did to him? You know what? It has been a difficult few years. But there are heroes everywhere. Because there is a gay makeup artist, gay costume designer,

and gay stylist who did their part for the resistance. I think you look chic. Get out there. No, it works. I know you feel worried. I know you feel uncomfortable.

But it's a bold choice, and people are gonna love it. No, that's the look right now. Shiny. The shirt, the skin, the hair. Shot. Here's the hair, shot. Here's the thing, Sean. I've been doing this a long time. And I'm telling you, like, I know you've never done this before, but I'm a

professional. You're in the hands of a professional. Did you see the gif of him, the first introduction where he shakes his hands and he's coming down the stairs, chilling to the fucking core. I had the same feeling watching him coming down the stairs and doing that shimmy as I do when I would catch a moment of that show to catch a predator.

Let me explain why. Let me explain why. Because it was the feeling of watching someone caught doing something terrible that deserves it, while at the same time recognizing it was bad for my soul to be taking this joy in seeing someone at the lowest and darkest moment of their life. And obviously these are different things, I'm not comparing the thing, but I don't even know if that's allowed. Here's the point. Not everyone who has left the Trump administration has so thoroughly debased themselves so obviously. Not everyone has been dressed up like a literal clown for our amusement.

We've seen others sort of cling to dignity more successfully. But I am very grateful to Sean Spicer. In a way that I've been grateful to him from the very beginning, which is he has an inability to hide on the outside what's happening on his inside. Unlike your Kellyanne Conways, your Stephen Miller, your Sarahs Huckabee Sanders,

who manage to have a kind of dead-eyed, vacant expression. Who have more thoroughly killed the part of themselves that feels shame. So they can just look you in the fucking eye and say something insane that is opposite of what they said yesterday. And shame on you for questioning them. That's an incredible skill, killing that part of yourself. Takes practice. Sean never was up to it. He's always managed to show on his face

and in the cut of his jackets what's going on inside. And what's exciting about this is that's what's inside every Trump official, a clown desperately dancing for relevance. And thank you Sean one more time for Sean Spicer what are you doing?

how bad were his book sales? how much could they pay? does anyone know? this is an industry town does anybody know what they start at when they go at Sean Spicer? you know he said yes. What is it? No, it's SAG rates. Are you fucking kidding me? He's making scale? Really? Yes! What a disaster! But that's not all that happened

this week. Purdue Pharma, the company that invented OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying court settlements. Yeah, terrific. The lawyer said the company didn't have the money unless anyone here wants to buy like a thousand oxys right now just say it's your back uh what's on his phone he's fine a new state whatever didn't even notice i had a whole conversation I was this close still in there yeah obviously he's somebody's dad

back in your phone I've been talking do you know that I've been talking to you you've heard me you didn't know that I've been talking to you? You've heard me? You didn't look up? I literally was this far asking what was on your fucking phone. What's going on?

Are you a doctor? Is there a patient in need? You're telling me that at our weekly podcast where we cover the week's news, you had to go into your phone to gather other news coverage. You weren't sure if I were on it yet.

Well, you know what? Guess what? I watched that clip on my way here. And we are going to cover it, sir. So show me some respect. There was also a ton of foreign policy news this week from elections in Israel, tensions with Iran, and an intelligence whistleblower inside the U.S. government. Here to help us break it down,

he was the deputy national security advisor for President Obama where he killed Osama bin Laden with his bare hands. That seems exaggerated. And more importantly, he's the co-host of Crooked Media's Pond Save the World. Please welcome Ben Rhodes. How you doing, Ben? I'm good. I'm just glad everything I've done in life led me right here.

Roll past that. In the past here at Love It or Leave It, we've done a VTOR detour to cover foreign policy, but tonight we're going to take our horse to the old town roads. That's it. That's the noise we got. We didn't know what we could get away with legally, so just a little tiny, just a little taste. So, first of all, do you remember when I came screaming into your office because I'd successfully removed acknowledgments from a speech? Because there was this fight about

how often Barack Obama would have to acknowledge local officials. Because the thing that would happen is, because of political reasons, trying to keep everybody happy, when the president would go give a speech somewhere, there would be like five or six people you'd have to thank. So you'd thank the mayor, you'd thank the city council person, you'd thank the assembly person. The problem was the cable networks would only take about five minutes of the speech. So the president would be giving a speech about the economy, and then MSNBC would cover four minutes of acknowledgments and one minutes of, so I'm here today to talk about the economy.

And then they'd go back to whoever was anchoring saying, well, come back to the president. And so you'd never get the news out. So we would always fight to get rid of the acknowledgments. And there was one time where I had, like, it was a really tough fight to keep the acknowledgments to a minimum. This is what happens in politics. And I had successfully done it by waiting out the clock because they tried to sneak him in, but the president was already on his way to the podium, and I ran into the... Ben's office and John's office were connected by a door,

and I ran, and I was like, I killed the fucking acknowledgements! And then there was just a room full of very serious foreign policy journalists in there. They always thought I was a little cooler, though, because I was taking out you and John. Let's start with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Classic odd couple.

Can you explain what has led to this confrontation that's playing out right now? You can start at about 200 AD, if you'd like, or just the past week. I'll start with the Iran deal, which I labored for eight years on. So what happens is President Trump pulls out of the Iran nuclear agreement at the behest of Saudi Arabia. And actually, we can start with Jared being deputized to be the guy in charge of this relationship with

the Saudis, right? Which, as far as I know, involves Jared going over there with no security clearance and no adult supervision and hanging out in Mohammed bin Salman's yacht where he's buying Caravaggio paintings for several hundred million dollars and making deals about American foreign policy. So that's how it starts. I also just think it's inappropriate for someone to be Jewish that tall and have skin that that's good. That's like, fuck you. Yeah. Go on. So noted New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner essentially outsources our entire foreign policy to the Saudis. We pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement. We escalate a war in Yemen that we never should have gotten into in the first place, causing a huge humanitarian crisis.

The Iranians are also fighting on the other side of that war in Yemen. So there is an active war that has already been taking place in that part of the world. After Trump pulls out of the Iran nuclear agreement, he starts piling on sanctions on the Iranians, blustering threats. John Bolton is leading us into a war with Iran. Donald Trump figures that out when the planes are actually in the air to go bomb Iran and is told by, I think, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to pull that back. But what we've seen since then is that the Iranians are very upset that there are these sanctions, that they've been punished even though they're complying with this nuclear deal. They're in a proxy war with the Saudis, and so they're lashing out in different places.

They're assaulting tankers in the region. They shot down that U.S. drone. And presumably either they or their proxy in Yemen or their ally in Yemen, a group called the Houthis, blew up this Saudi oil infrastructure a few days ago. Well, this exposed the fact that the Saudis are incredibly vulnerable to Iranian aggression. You have the Trump people beating their chest and saying this is an act of war. You have Donald Trump saying that he is waiting for the instruction of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, about what to do. Reminder that Mohammed bin Salman is a man who killed a journalist, chopped him to pieces.

Where in the Constitution? I know that it's complicated because it's like the president has inherent authority according to the unitary executive theory. Others claim that congressional authority has been limited too much by an overreaching executive theory. Others claim that congressional authority has been limited too much by an overreaching executive branch. But very rarely have I heard anyone invoke a clause in the Constitution that gives the war powers to Saudi monarchs. Well, the clause might be the amendment that has the tally of how many millions of dollars the Saudis have spent at Trump property since he took office, right? How much money that they promised probably to invest in Jared's real estate ventures,

either during or after the administration. But then the reality is what becomes evident, once again, is that the American people don't think it's a good idea to go to war on behalf of Saudi Arabia. There's essentially been a backlash in terms of public opinion, and Trump, once again, is pulling back. So for the time being, it does not look like we're going to war. But the problem is everything in Trump's foreign policy, because he wants to have the appearance of being tough on Iran, he wants to have the appearance of being tougher than Obama, he wants to do the bidding of people like Mohammed bin Salman, makes that conflict more likely, even though Trump doesn't want to get us into it.

So we're going to be living in this kind of tenuous, anxiety-driven place where essentially we are doing things to escalate with the Iranians. The Iranians are going to be punching back, and then Trump is going to be withdrawing from the war at the last moment. Okay. Sorry that that didn't make you feel better. No, it's just... Okay. So now let's turn to accountability in the American system. The whistleblower story. A complaint from inside an intelligence agency has set off a confrontation between the Trump administration and Congress. You've seen reporting that the whistleblower was so alarmed by Trump's behavior that he filed a report, perhaps a response to Trump attempting to push Ukraine to investigate Biden.

And Hillary. And Hillary. Well, why not? Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it just says, like, you know, try a new dish, but also get an appetizer that you already know you like. So I was going to ask, how big a deal is this?

That seems a stupid question. What the fuck? Yeah, there's a lot to say about this. I mean, you know, first of all, the whistleblower law is very clear. If a whistleblower brings a complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community and the inspector general finds that it's urgent and serious matter of national security, that automatically has to go to Congress. That law has already been violated because Trump's handpicked director of national intelligence

is refusing to allow that to happen. Acting director, right? Acting director. Because he fired the director, he fired the deputy director, and found the only guy who was willing to take the job. And lo and behold, that guy is falling on the sword for this right now. That's a problem. Then to first start with how serious this is, you essentially have a country, Ukraine, that has been invaded by its neighbor, Russia. And there's still a war going on in eastern Ukraine.

There's still people being killed in eastern Ukraine. And we should be very mindful of that. As with a lot of stuff with Trump, you can obscure the fact that there's like people's lives actually at stake here. And Ukraine depends a lot on the assistance we provide them, the pressure we put on Russia, which is not exactly something Trump has seemed like a natural fit for. No, famously. Yes.

It's been a huge issue. Ukraine elected a new president recently who's a comedian. John, this may be in your future. Go on. President of Ukraine? He played the Ukrainian president in a show, and he was so convincing in that show

that he ran for president and got elected president of Ukraine. This is actually... We're taking the roads here. Okay. So that happened. You guys all missed this because of Trump, but this is a pretty good story. But meanwhile, this guy has actually been earnestly trying to be a reformer.

But lo and behold, the most important kind of foreign supporter that he has, the United States, the first ask he gets from them is to have a meeting with Rudy Giuliani, who goes over there to say, you have to investigate whether Joe Biden aided and abetted some corruption in Ukraine. A story that has been widely debunked. Oh, and by the way, can you investigate whether or not Ukraine was helping Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election? That's

actually true. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's in Ibiza just sending it to voicemail. Yeah. I don't care. Kill me here. So what does this mean? This means that Trump was trying to essentially extract some promise from Ukraine to do this in exchange for something. Lo and behold, a lot of weapons and support that we were supposed to give to Ukraine was being held up by the Trump administration during this period of time. So we'll see what the facts say the appearance is certainly that they were literally leveraging our support for this country that had been invaded

in exchange for a promise to let Rudy Giuliani pursue his conspiracy theory fever dream to discredit Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton which is a problem you can't put Rudy and Giuliani in charge of your nefarious investigations because

he's not up to it because he's not up to it. John, he's not up to it. And, again, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact here that the president of the United States is leveraging the power of his office to try to get a foreign government that is at the center of a key national security issue to aid his campaign. The impeachment clause that was written in the Constitution, like, literally, like, when they were sitting around, this is what they had in mind.

Yeah, they had, like, three conversations. It was, like, three-fifths compromise, AR-15s are good, and this is what impeachment is for. Yeah, that's about it. And that's Old Town Roads. When we come back, we bring out the rest

of our panel. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Let's bring out the rest of our panel.

He's worked at Radiolab, NPR, WNYC, and is currently the host of Vox's daily news podcast, Today Explained. Please welcome Sean Ramosvaram. Sean, how you doing? Doing so well, thank you. If you could ask Rudy Giuliani to do one crime for you, what do you think it would be?

Murder. I missed what you guys said though, so. Was it also murder? I hope not. From the new movie, The Weeknd, and Best Friends podcast, please welcome back, Sashir Zameda. Hi, Sashir hi there you can ask Rudy Giuliani okay to commit mm-hmm but one crime sure on your

behalf yes what might it be to pay for me to go to USC when When do Felicity Huffman's 15 days begin? What? 14 days? Alright, calm down. Do we know when they start? You're saying it won't. Alright. A little bitter.

Did she do something to you personally? Oh, you work at USC. Oh. A little bitter? Did she do something to you personally? Oh, you work at USC. Oh. You don't work at admissions. Huh. You seem defensive. Would anyone out there like to play a game?

Hi, what's your name? Tori. Tori. Yes. would you like to use an alias because we're gonna discuss the fact that you work at USC my whole family will hear it they'll be so proud cool cool cool cool and your co-workers sadly as much as I talk about this my co-workers don't listen to this pod because you work at USC if you work to UCLA everyone would talk about this fucking show. Touche. Cross town, UCLA, they're hiring.

I'm sure it's like a city. Fair enough. Sean's saying, think about UCLA. Hi, Tori. Hi. How are you? I'm well. How are you?

Otherwise? Doing great. Okay. Climate change. Killer transition. Yeah, thank you. Tori, you Doing great. Okay. Climate change. Killer transition. Yeah, thank you. Tori, you ready? Born ready. Climate change. It's like a meteor is coming to Earth, and it

requires sending ten of the world's greatest oil drillers into space. But those oil drillers work for big oil companies, so that oil company starts putting out anti-meteor propaganda that says it's all a big lie. And then a whole cottage industry pops up saying that the meteor is a conspiracy from NASA. And by the way, aliens are real and vaccines cause autism. And you're like, okay, aliens

are real, but vaccines don't cause autism. And now you're arguing about vaccines and you remember what Ben Affleck said in the DVD commentary of Armageddon, which is why would you train oil drillers to be astronauts instead of astronauts to be oil drillers? And then you look up and realize, wait, this isn't Armageddon, this isn't even Deep Impact, it's melancholia.

The gay section got it. Alright. Sorry for making assumptions. So, yeah. I saw you. Never have so many hands said it's fine while explaining why

it was fine. Anyway, this coming Monday, September 23rd, the United Nations will host a UN Climate Action Summit where leaders from around the globe will meet and talk about collective action the world can take to reach net zero emissions by the middle of the century. It's led by young people of the world, and it makes you want

to fast forward into the future to see how we did. And so, this week, in our commitment to covering climate change, that's what we're going to do. So let's go to the future. You all ready? Alisa, press the future button. The password is Biden'sEye6969.

Three, two, one. It's totally worth it. It's like 1992 now. Yeah, it doesn't totally check out. This is for the future? Welcome to Love It or Leave It. I'm your host, John Lovett Hemsworth. It's so great to be here.

In the year of our Lord, Bezos 2050. Live from the comedy store where just last night Hollywood legend Shane Gillis did his famous Justin Trudeau brownface impression. Wow, never thought I'd see it in person. What a treat. I'm so sorry. All right. As you all know, this is the 30th anniversary of the UN Climate Action Summit, which really was a turning point for the way we dealt with climate change. And we thought we'd take a look back on just how much the planet has changed in a game we're calling

2019 I Can't Believe What Happened to Trump. Also, does that mean the Hemsworth married into your family or? I married a Hemsworth and wanted to take the name, but I wanted to keep my name. He just kept his name. Yeah.

He stayed Hemsworth, and I became Hemsworth Lovett. And we still don't know which one it is. Maybe it's a couple of them. It's the future. Yeah, it's 2050, and I had to get to have two of them. Still left the third one out. But which third one? Everyone knows which one.

The Westworld one. All right. Here's how it works. I'll ask a question, Tori. From the last 30 years of history, our panel will read clues to help us figure out what the answer is. Your job, Tori, will be to figure out what actually happened in the past 30 years. Reminder, it's 2050. Okay, Tori?

Could I have explained that very simple idea more poorly, you think? I think you did a great job. Thanks. Alright. Before we begin, I just want to thank our sponsor, Raytheon Disney Goldman Beef Box. Raytheon Disney Goldman Beef Box. You're hungry.

We have the food. Question one. After the UN Climate Action Summit led to some substantial goals being set for carbon emissions worldwide, what major historical event caused the United States to be the only major world power

to nearly miss its emissions target? Is it A? In 2026, President Roseanne Barr was about to sign into law a repeal of President Warren's Medicare for Everyone but Biden bill. A tornado ripped through Washington, D.C. Furious, President Barr did the only logical thing. She nuked the tornadoes. Or is it be. Due to

widespread water shortages in 2029, clean drinking water became the status symbol we know it is today. That's why InBev introduced a line of hard waters with 5% alcohol by volume and fun flavors like potable lime and no lead.

This trend led to many influencers arguing that we shouldn't stop climate change because it makes them seem cool that they can afford things other people can't. What do you think, influencers, or think is cool? Or is it C? John, I just want to say that when I was in Paris with President Obama, when we were finalizing the Paris Accord, this is not what I thought I'd be talking about at this point. But I'll say.

I was in Paris with Barack Obama. Wow. C. President Trump's abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord in his first term, but thankfully President Delaney reentered the Paris Climate Accord after negotiating an emissions exemption for baldies, and we managed to avoid the devastation of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming. C. You got it. Possibly.

Tori, great job. Before question two, I just want to take another moment to thank our sponsor, J.P. Morgan Amazon Wetzel's Pretzels. J.P. Morgan Amazon Wetzel's pretzels. J.P. Morgan, Amazon, Wetzel's pretzels. What cameras? Question two. Kansas City famously became the club capital of the United States after it was chosen as the main refugee relocation zone for Miami

before the great cocaine exodus of 2023. But then we got serious and tackled the crisis. How? Is it A. Americans mobilized around the country, electing pro-climate Democrat leaders in the House, Senate, and Presidency. And we finally created a paper straw that was just as good as plastic.

And that really unlocked the whole issue, believe it or not. Or is it B. Americans mobilized around the country electing pro-climate Democratic leaders in the House, Senate, and the presidency, and the fake meat corporate wars resulted in cheap, delicious, medium-rare

New York strip steaks that could be 3D printed in sheets the size of drywall. What a time. Or is it C? What a time, Sean says. Americans mobilized around the country, electing pro-climate Democratic leaders in the House, Senate, and the

presidency, but it wasn't until Las Vegas got so unbearably hot that Sheldon Adelson Jr., which was just Sheldon Adelson's consciousness, downloaded into a volunteer who wanted to wipe out his student loan debt, said fuck it, and gave a billion dollars

to Stacey Abrams. What do you think? I want it to be C. Can I change that answer to one that a Bruin could pick? It was B. You didn't get it. That's because we never cracked paper straws, and when Vegas got too hot,

Sheldon Adelson just moved to Elysium. I also just want to take a moment to say a few words about Travis who we all miss. He died doing what he loved, riding a Lime scooter on the 405. I can't believe September 23rd 2019 was when he died. Seems like yesterday though I barely remember him. R.I.P. Tug! R.I.P. Tug! Question three. We all know by now that climate destruction isn't binary.

It isn't a save the world versus world is destroyed situation, despite what Jonathan Franzen, who famously went to jail for fucking a bird, once said. Hasn't happened yet. You get it, it's in the future. Huge Jonathan Franzen fan right in the front row. Furious. Furious Franzen head, right? Oh my god, did you see that? How she turned on me?

And she was such a fan the whole time. I made one Jonathan Franzen joke. Obviously, we're in the future, joking about Jonathan Franzen going. Obviously, we're in the future joking about Jonathan Franzen going to jail. Just back off. Just back off. Question. Does your last name start with an F? Does it end with a Ransom? I'm getting heckled by a huge Jonathan Franzen fan. That is unprecedented. What? You're here from Nebraska and you love Jonathan Franzen fan. That is unprecedented. What?

You're here from Nebraska and you love Jonathan Franzen. I like freedom. All right. The point is we staved off two degrees Celsius, many feared. But what did it take us too long to understand? Is it A?

Just 100 companies were responsible for 71% of all warming. It was never about straws, except for that one company, Straw Fire Incorporated, who just made straws and set them on fire. That was about straws. And fire, I guess. This is the weirdest game we've done in a while.

Sean, is it B? We need to spend less time arguing with climate deniers and way more time weatherizing our homes and businesses, focusing on low-income communities. It supports jobs, slashes energy bills, and cuts climate pollution. When Illinois did it, they saved $4 billion in energy costs. Plus, we found out climate denial was a lot like vape lung. Incurable, and only the worst people

were into it. And it turned out you could get vape lung by simply being in the same room with an unopened vape. That's crazy when we find that out. That's how dangerous it's going to turn out to have been in the wrapper.

It's going to get 40 million people. Is it C? Fighting climate change saves money. For instance, in 2018, the average cost of operating an electric vehicle in the United States was $485 per year, while the average for a gasoline-powered vehicle was $1,117. Unfortunately, in 2050, our money is worthless, because all currency is in face bucks, and you can only spend face bucks if you give them your literal face.

Tori, what do you think? B. No, it was all of the above, but you got it. Tori, you do you think? B. No, it was all of the above, but you got it. Tori, you've won the game. And a gift card from our sponsor, Walgreens, Walmart, William Morris Endeavor, WWWME, laughter is the best medicine

because we ration the medicine. Thank you for playing. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Senator Cory Booker came by Crooked HQ this week and graciously agreed to face the queen for a day gauntlet.

He was a very good sport and it was very fun. Let's roll the clip. He's the former mayor of Newark, a senator from the great state of New Jersey and a candidate for president of the United States. Senator Cory Booker, welcome to Love It or Leave It. I am so grateful to be on. Thank you for having me. I want to talk about something you've said many times. So first of all, here's why I want to talk about this. Okay. So Marianne Williamson. Yes. Candidate for president. Yes. One thing that she said that really bothered me is, you know, I'm the only candidate talking about love. I'm the only candidate talking about the deeper. She said that? Some version of it. I'm paraphrasing. It doesn't

matter. But I always think, wait a second. There's another candidate talking about love all the time and his name is Cory Booker. So when you announced and you said this version of this before, what's called me to run for president is because I think we need a revival of civic grace. We need to reignite a more courageous empathy. You've also talked about radical love. And rather than get into a bunch of different policies, I really wanted to dive into what you mean by that. So right now, where do you see empathy that we need that's missing? God, I see an impotency of empathy. Impotency of empathy. Impotency of empathy.

Wow. We live in a nation that we sing songs, proud songs. We're the home of the brave. But our veterans are disproportionately homeless. Their suicide rates are off the charts. Talk to veteran women and you'll hear stories about having to wait like weeks, if not months, for just a gynecological checkup. We don't seem to connect the injustice of some with the injustice of others. people who needed health care and help. And the opioid epidemic is now broadening and affecting middle-class families. And suddenly people say, oh, we can't arrest our way out of this problem. Gun violence. This issue became an urgency for me when I moved from Yale, a guy who grew up in the suburbs. And in my first days in Newark, New Jersey, a shooting happened right outside of my house. And suddenly it became this urgency because now it showed up on my doorstep.

Well, we should have enough empathy for each other that we recognize that, as King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And I can go on issue after issue, environmental injustice. I could literally, you and I could go to Duplin County, North Carolina. This is just one of the places that lives with these massive factory farms where the people who are the pig farmers, they live like sharecroppers. They're in debt. And these huge multinational conglomerates like Smithfield, in this case, have changed the way we do farming in America, crowding out independent family farmers. They have millions of pigs in North Carolina.

They produce 10 times the feces of human beings. And they all flows into these massive lagoons. And then they spray things called spray fields where they spray this stuff. And I watched as the stuff fell in the fields. But it also, like when you do your water sprinkler, it mists into African-American communities. And so I'm in the packed room with people telling me we can't open our windows. We can't put our clothing on the line. We can't run our air conditioning. The values of our houses that we've been on generations going back to slavery, the respiratory disease, the cancer clusters. But yet we don't talk about, as a

society, how we are participating in such massive injustices, often using our tax code to incentivize the behaviors that are harming workers, harming communities, harming the environment. I get very upset that the best of our history was when we responded with that empathy when four girls died in a bombing in a church in Birmingham. God, this country awoken people from different backgrounds, different socioeconomic statuses responded when women were throwing themselves out windows at the Shirtwaist factory fire and dying on the pavement. Woken people from different backgrounds, different socioeconomic statuses responded. When women were throwing themselves out windows at the Shirtwaist factory fire and dying on the pavement, we rose up and we changed laws. But now we're at a point in our country where we watch on the news people get killed at houses of worship from Pittsburgh to Charleston.

We watch people get killed at concerts and nightclubs in Orlando or Vegas. Children getting shot in schools, hiding under the desk one after another. And we still don't manifest the urgency and the sense of demand to make the change. 50 years ago, my parents were trying to buy a home in the community I grew up in, in white neighborhoods. And they were denied housing because of the color of their skin. And what broke that housing segregation was that a group of Americans got together, activists, mostly white in this neighborhood and said, we're going to stop this. And they developed this sting operation where they would send a white couple right behind my parents. My parents were told the house I grew up in was sold. The white couple showed up

and they bid on the house, bid was accepted. On the day of the closing, the white couple didn't show up in the real estate agent's office. My dad did and a volunteer lawyer named Marty Friedman. And they walk in and the real estate agent didn't capitulate. He gets up and punches Marty Friedman in the face. A fight breaks out. The guy sings his dog on my dad. A big melee happens. What I want to understand is what is the equivalent of that for liberals? What do you think liberals listening to this are failing to do, are failing to properly show courage in their empathy? You're saying this to a guy that lives in a low-income, below-the-poverty-line neighborhood who sees every day the lack of urgency to deal with horrific situations.

I come from sitting at a kitchen table with two civil rights activists that told me about people like Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner, black and white Christian Jews willing to die for that. The lessons that I learned around the kitchen table, like King, who said, the problem today is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people. It's the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. I tell people, you're probably never going to hear this from a presidential candidate ever. But if you elect me president, I'm warning you, I'm going to ask for more from you than you're doing right now. Because what we're doing right now is not enough. And the injustices that exist in our country are horrific. Right now, as we sit here having this conversation, there are children in solitary

confinement who haven't even been convicted of anything yet for doing things that two of our last three presidents admitted to doing. Other countries call that torture. I'm not exaggerating. Psychological professionals call it torture. We have pregnant women that are being shackled. And you ask me what we're not doing. Take environmental injustice.

My city's on the news right now because kids are being poisoned by lead water. But you know what? We don't talk about the fact that there's 3,000 jurisdictions in America where children have more than twice the blood lead levels of Flint, Michigan. Or what about this? I live in a community with two Superfund sites around me. We used to clean them up. We had a small tax on chemical producing companies that allowed us to clean up these Superfund sites. And they started going down. Well, in the era of Grover Norquist and no new taxes, even though Reagan and Mitch McConnell voted on this reauthorization, they stopped reauthorizing it. And Superfund sites are going up, and they're disproportionately in low-income communities. And now we have

longitudinal data. We now know that children born around Superfund sites have 20% higher rates of autism, birth defects, and more. But where's the urgency? Change doesn't come from Washington. It wasn't a bunch of guys in 1920 on the Senate floor who said, hey, fellas, let's give women the right to vote. Ready? Break. We came because of an extraordinary level of activism and engagement. And I'm not, people who are listening to this show who are out there marching, I'm not criticizing that. I tell people all the time, this might shock you, that this has been the two most hopeful years of my life because I define hope the way a woman taught me in the fifth floor of the projects, that hope is the active conviction that despair won't have the last word. One of the things I've been most interested in your candidacy is I sincerely think

when you talk about love, when you talk about the deeper pain people feel, that that's a unique and compelling view on where we are right now. That beneath the Trump coarseness and brittleness, beneath the sort of daily partisanship, there does seem to be a deeper pain that we're struggling with a kind of loss of dignity in our economy, in our society. And I guess I just want to hear you talk a little bit about what you see as the kind of source of that pain, the way out of that pain. Like, how do we get out of this kind of toxic politics that we're in right now? This is not going to be an election that's going to be decided on who has the better 15-point policy plan.

If that's what decided elections, we would have won the last one because we had a much better policies for Americans. This is an election that's going to turn on heart, on gut, on the spirit of this country. I went back to find the people 50 years ago that helped my family move into Harrington Park. And I found the lawyer that organized all the lawyers. And I asked him why. And he said to me, his response was basically March 7th, 1965. He's like, I was sitting on a couch, tired after a long week from work. And on that night, back when we had three channels, most of America was watching a movie called Judgment at Nuremberg. And they broke away from this movie to show a bridge in Alabama. And these marchers started

in Selma trying to get to Montgomery. He watched them get stopped on a bridge by state troopers who then gassed them and viciously beat them. We call this day Bloody Sunday. Here is a white guy on a couch a thousand miles away who sees black people being beaten on a bridge. And he tells me he thought to himself he couldn't afford a plane ticket down there. He thought maybe I can go out. He couldn't do that. He doesn't do what all of us do. We allow our inability to do everything to undermine our determination to do something when issues are big. He gets up off his couch, does the calculation that he can maybe squeeze out one hour of pro bono work. He says he goes to work, looks around for people who need help, finds this group of housing advocates.

65 turns to 67 to 68. He gets more people involved, leverages more lawyers to help. 68, 69. And he says he remembers the day he gets his case file with his family coming up with two names on it. The case file were Carrie and Carolyn Booker, my parents. file were Carrie and Carolyn Booker, my parents. I am literally sitting here with you right now because a white guy on a couch in a time that was a moral moment where he could really do nothing about what he saw, but decided to do the best he could with what he had, where he was, got up off that couch and changed the destiny of my life. I wouldn't be the fourth popularly elected black

senator in the history of this country if it wasn't for him. I wouldn't be running for president of the United States if it wasn't for him. My purpose for running right now is because I think whoever our next leader is better be able to create the conditions necessary to pass big legislation. The conditions necessary for civil rights legislation, workers' rights legislation, suffrage legislation, all of that, and you know it, was because incredible leaders at all levels expanded the moral imagination of this country, helped us to see each other for who we are. We may beat Donald Trump in this next election, but that's not going to make changes on the shootings, on the inequities, on the people on my block that work full-time jobs and still need food stamps. You and I both know that's not going to change that. not going to change that. We need leaders that can excite that moral imagination, have that revival of grace. I promise you that is what's going to help us to move forward as a nation. And that's why I'm in this fight. I want you to know that that answer was so inspiring at the end that I

did skip a question about building a tunnel from New Jersey to New York. First of all, you have no idea how important that is to the national economy. Okay. I want to talk. You know what? I want to talk. Why can't we build a tunnel from New Jersey to New York? Chris Christie fucked it. Trump is trying to fuck it. It can't get the cost down. Why can't we build that tunnel

and why is it so expensive? In general, a dollar invested in infrastructure gets about 100% return. In the New York, New Jersey metropolitan area, it gets like multiples of that in return. But the busiest rail corridor

in North America that runs from Boston to Washington, D.C., through New York and New Jersey and those tunnels runs half an hour slower than it did in the 1960s. And so I called a summit meeting with Christie and the secretary of transportation in my office and I said, enough of this fighting and blaming people. Let's come up with a plan. And to everybody's credit around that table, we came up with a plan. We got it going.

Everything was moving front, but that train had a head-on collision with a guy named Trump who has denied that project the resources it needs. Everybody knows we produce a significant part of our national economy. The Obama administration said it's the number one infrastructure urgent project in the country, and this president is doing everything he can to block it. If I become president of the United States, Lord knows. I want that tunnel. project in the country and this president is doing everything he can to block it if i become president united states what i want to hear lord knows i want that tunnel if i have to go out there and take a shovel myself i will get that tunnel done mark my words honestly that is the best

promise i've ever elicited in the history of love it or leave it all right all right we had our regional moment i'm you have no idea how gratifying that was for me. That was exciting to say that all of that. Thank you. All right. Wow. I just need to shake it out. All right. Shake it out. Shake it out. All right. All right. For decades, Grover Norquist, the love child of Ayn Rand and Al Borland. Isn't that I brought him up already. I know. That's amazing. Yes. He's asked Republican candidates for office to sign his pledge to commit them to his core values. No new taxes.

No elimination of tax deductions. No making fun of boot cut jeans. And since I consider myself the Grover Norquist of people who buy high end luxury edibles, I figured I'd start. What is a high end luxury edible? Just a very fancy. Cupcake? It can be a cupcake. Okay.

I'm talking about marijuana. Oh. It's a weed. I'm talking about marijuana. Oh. It's weed. I'm talking about drugs. But this is great because my team tells me of the number one pro-pot person

in the Senate, people tell me all the time that I am the corniest guy. I've never drank alcohol for crying out loud. Yeah, I would say you will be the number one

pro-pot senator until I become a senator. All right. So I'm the Grover Norquist of high end luxury edibles. We'll start. I literally thought you were talking about vegan cupcakes, but go ahead. We're going to get to it. All right.

I started my own pledge during this primary. We're pinning presidential candidates down on the issues that matter to me most in a segment we call Queen for a Day. I mean, if you're going to be a queen, why do it just for just a day? Listen, that's the story of my life. All right. Senator Booker has graciously agreed to be the sixth candidate to face the gauntlet. Why am I number six? Is it polling?

Because you're tough to schedule. National poll. On day one, do you pledge to eliminate daylight savings and never let the American people see dark before 5 p.m. again? God. I applaud that. I'm the nerd that looks at the data. That literally you have more accidents that are happening as a result of this.

I mean, bad things are happening because of daylight savings. Yeah. Well, because we don't remain at daylight savings. No. That's right. Because it shifts back and forth. I think this is archaic. I would love to get rid of it.

I will not make you a promise that I'll do it, but I will tell you it is a pain point for me probably equal to the pain point for you so i will i am the pro eliminating uh daylight savings time person yes if you go to a vegan restaurant and they have items on the menu with little quotes around it like chicken parm or carnitas is it okay for antifa to break some windows no but let me translate that into spanish for you no i'm joking no it is annoying when it says like chicken fingers and it's misspelled as a guy that knows the ills of the industrial animal agricultural industry i don't give a damn if you put quotes around okay taking meat out of our diets and having more people choose a healthier option i am all for it we're gonna talk star trek oh here we go why which film is better voyage home or first contact

i'd say first contact okay that's interesting that's interesting follow-up please be brief borg queen good villain or bad villain great villain that is incorrect which is why voyage home is a better film. The key to the Borg, yes or no, Senator? Yes. The key to the Borg as a unique and terrifying villain is the fact that there are hive minds. Yes, you're absolutely right. First of all, I'm just going to still say she was terrifying.

Okay. So she herself was it, but it was thematically inconsistent with the whole idea. There's a great Star Trek episode, I wish I could quote the number, where this group of old board folks crashed and they liberated themselves. But they were in fights and clashes. And then they tap back into the hive mind and suddenly there's peace. And they made a conscious choice to connect their minds again. I don't remember that one. You don't remember that one?

I don't. Follow up. Are you open to the possibility that Undiscovered Country is actually the greatest Star Trek film and not as commonly asserted Wrath of Khan? Undiscovered Country? Are you serious? Yes, I am. I'm going to say that. Well, but make your case because that is that.

Undiscovered Country. I have never heard anybody in my entire life defend that movie. I'm just making sure I don't need any more of these. Let's talk about it. I really want to talk about it. And you're going to say better than the wrath of God. I am going to say it and I'm going to say why because I'm going to say Undiscovered Country and as a senator, you want to talk about

Courageous Empathy. That is a movie about diplomacy, about overcoming your past prejudices. William Shatner begins by saying, is it Kronos? No one here is going to know. It blows up and they say, we got to rescue the Klingons, or they're going to die. And William Shatner, our hero, says, let them die.

And then over the course of the film, he comes to understand that he was wrong, that they were part of an old generation that had to do better, and it's through diplomacy. And then if you just pretend generations doesn't exist, it's the final great film that Shatner made. Now, Wrath of Khan, also good well Wrath of Khan is epic man it is epic but what about the fact that three undoes two right because they you know

Spock goes out in that sunglasses case and you think that's that and then all of a sudden the whole we're now we're searching for him so I love Star Trek as my dad and literally you can go on my Instagram page. And I still remember the day I had a friend of mine from college. Hadn't seen me in the longest time. And I'm sitting here crying as I'm writing this tribute to Leonard Nimoy because my dad sat me down and said, you have to watch this show. And he was so excited about it because it was this bold, optimistic view of the future. Literally, first of all, they're vegans.

Second of all. that true I guess I mean it's a replicator yeah yeah I mean you're getting a steak you could Google Star Trek vegans and you'll see like clips of them it is like impossible burger in a way it's a constitution it's not there's no animal torture going on in the way that factory farmed animals

are often killed in ways that don't align with American values and and so so anyway my my my, big deal for him. He introduced me to Star Trek. Leonard Nimoy becomes like a hero to me. He loved this view of the future where the racism and poverty, all these things were overcome.

And an event here in Los Angeles, night before last, his widow, Susan Nimoy, an amazing human being herself who's helping Stacey Abrams actually. I connected the two of them and she is such a righteous activist. She hands me a gift, and I'm dead tired on East Coast time. Go home to my hotel, open this gift, and I'm overcome

because it is a book of Nimoy's love poetries to her. He signs it to her, and then she re-signs it to me. That's nice. I was like overcome. It was like the poetry of this man who, who so changed my dad's view and my views of like excited science fiction love, uh,

to have her widow who is a, a democratic activist, a justice activist in her own right. Uh, for her to give me this gesture is one of the more meaningful gestures of my life in terms of just experiencing just someone who was so thoughtful to give me something of such value to her. It was powerful.

It is powerful. Also powerful, Leonard Nimoy, story credit on Star Trek 6 Undiscovered Country. Okay, let's just see. What are you binging right now, by the way? Schitt's Creek. I just finished Mindhunter binge watching right now I began to do it out of significant other obligation and now I'm doing it out of unashamed proud to say it love

the show Jane the version okay okay and so my girlfriend pops up in like season four or five. And so I was just saying, let me just get through the, but no, it's a good show. That's cool. Yeah. All right. It's Jane the Virgin. Jane the Virgin.

And then Supernatural. Supernatural. Interesting. I don't watch that either. Does anybody here watch Supernatural? Wow. How could a show, honestly, last 15 years and has a fan base? I'm just blown away that there's nobody here that watches Supernatural.

America's divided. One last question, then we'll let you go. You've been incredibly gracious with your time. You told an interviewer that your comfort food was veggies. And I just want to give you an opportunity to save your dignity, candidacy, future career, whatever you want to save, because that was a terrible answer. I was resoundingly mocked by my own campaign staff that in a moment like that I would answer vegetables. And I'm going to tell you exactly – I'm going to be sharing – this is very personal.

Oh, let's hear it. And can we just have a condition that if this doesn't come out right, we can cut this part of the podcast? No. Okay. just have a condition that if this doesn't come out right we can cut this part of the podcast uh no okay so i am a guy that is like on the wagon and then falls off the wagon when it comes to food yeah and when i'm off the wagon watch your fingers actually i'm a vegan so you don't have to worry about your fingers but if you're holding a vegan cupcake i might tackle you for said vegan but this is why i found your answer so okay but i'm gonna let me finish before you judge me okay i feel i feel bullying i feel

bullying right now yeah okay so they that was an interview when i stood towards the beginning of the campaign and i am freaking on the the wagon i am like eating healthy my staff literally published this like view of me eating brussels sprouts which they thought was definitely more than rated PG the way I was enjoying those, those Brussels sprouts. And, and so I, I, when you're on the wagon, I'm on the wagon right now. You know, yesterday I was like watermelon tearing into fruit and, but what I'm, what are we doing? I'm telling you right now. It's all sugar. Yeah. So when I answered that question, they asked me, I was feeling strong. I looked at them i said vegetables and and and i thought you know didn't think too much of it but it then by the time it came out and my staff is laughing me because now

i'm on the campaign trail where people bring me vegan brownies they don't even get to the car i'm like eating them i got like chocolate all over me you know because the problem being a vegan is there's tons of you everywhere i go there's, there's a vegan tribe out there that doesn't think I'm getting what I need on the campaign trail and they bring me incredible vegan treats. So I admit to you that there's a few very low moments of my campaign. And this was sincerely one of the lower moments. And you've given me a shot at redemption. So I'll ask this question again. And does me exposing to you my vulnerability of eating

all my eating hangups, does that in any way give you some sympathy for me now? No. I'm checking. I mean, I'm just doing a little emotional check-in, and I don't. No sympathy for a guy who's always struggling. That I do have genuine.

I don't have sympathy for saying veggies, because as someone who I know, you've talked about it. You go up and down. You like vegan. There's so many great vegan comfort foods. Mac and cheese. Oh, my God. Meatloaf.

Listen, I can tell you. Chili. You name a city, I can tell you the great vegan spots that have the most incredible vegan comfort food. From Champ's Diner in Brooklyn to Crossroads here in L.A. Crossroads is good. It is so good. I'm talking about vegan chicken and waffles. I mean, it is unbelievable.

And so the problem is with that is junk food is junk food. I may not have any cholesterol, but you gain weight. And so for me as a guy who has gone from chiseled as a Stanford football player to jiggled where I was at the highest... I'm sorry, man. chiseled as a stanford football player to jiggled where i was at the at the highest i'm sorry man i'm the corny jiggle i'm the cory booker story i have this terrible desire this need to say dad jokes i don't know it's another uncontrollable habit i have like when you said that schitt's Creek, which you were watching, I immediately popped up a great, I make the Senate pages tell me their best

jokes and I go joke for joke with them and the Senate page told me this great joke. There was a zoo. They'll take us out. Take us out with this joke. There's this zoo that has no animals in it. You walk through it, there's nothing there but this one dog. It's a Schitt's zoo. Well,

Oh my gosh. Guys, give it up for Senator Cory Booker. Thank you so much. This is so fun. I appreciate it. Thank you to Cory Booker. When we come back, the rant wheel. Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. What's... Uh-huh. What does? Jersey! How could you not take pizza, vegan chicken parm, vegan meatballs? Okay, well, listen. No one wanted a straight answer more than me on the question of what vegan food was his vegan comfort food.

I'm not actually even sure. I don't know if we even get there in the full interview. But I hear you on the vegan chicken parm, which is a great vegan option. Thank you for chiming in. I mean that. And I want you to know, as a person from New Jersey, I did ask him about the Tunnel Project.

I did. I'm not lying. ask him about the Tunnel Project. I did. I'm not lying. Shout out to the Tunnel Project. We got it. Yes. Are you from a tunnel? I want you guys... In New Jersey.

I want you to know that I think I got a promise on the tunnel if he wins. The tunnel needs to be fixed. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's what we're talking about.

We're not saying to take... When I say Tunnel Project, I don't mean to destroy them. Yeah. Fix them and make more of them. That's what we mean. Making less tunnels is very easy. How are you, Sean? I'm so good. Are we going to talk about Corey's jeans? It's a podcast, so it's tough, but tell us what you thought. I mean, I just feel bad for the listeners at home who won't see the jeans, because he looked good in the jeans. I know he's been working out.

Congratulations to Corey for the jeans. I didn't actually say it in person, because we covered a lot of ground. But he may have gone from chiseled to jiggled, but he's back at chiseled, and good for him. Good for him. Does he just put on the jeans in L.A.? Is it like an L.A. thing? I don't know.

We didn't get to it. How do jeans do in Jersey? I thought you were from Jersey. She just loves... No, this woman's from Jersey. That woman loves tunnels. That's a Jersey person. That's a tunnel person. These

people are from New Zealand. That guy's been on his phone consistently the entire show. Tori works at USC and feels kind of weird about it. This woman has a picture of Jonathan Franzen above her bed. Two pictures just to catch everybody up. And this section is gay. Now for the rant wheel. You know how it works. We spin the wheel wherever it lands.

We rant about the topic. This week on the wheel, we have Canada. We have shocking bird news. It's perfect. I know it's shocking. I'm on the right side on birds. Vaping, Nanette, overpackaging, impeachment, hustlers, and Alexa. Let's spin the wheel. It has landed on Alexa, which I believe Ben suggested. So I'll say in my house, I've got two daughters, two and four,

and they like to talk to Alexa a lot, mainly to ask her to play various Disney songs. You know, I look at this for my background, which I've been widely and appropriately mocked for tonight, and I see, like, a just gigantic security risk in our house, you know. So like when we were in those offices, right, like you couldn't even have a phone in your office because it could be turned into a listening device by foreign governments. And so then I just look at this black tube, like the computer from 2001, just vacuuming up all my data all day long.

And I walk by and I kind of look over at it. And I have these kind of existential questions. And sometimes I'll walk out of the room and I'll come back and my daughter will just kind of be talking to Alexa, having like a conversation. And Alexa will be talking back, you know. And then I think about, you know, all these governments, right, that I used to worry about. And even since I left, Ronan busted up the fact that Black Cube, this Israeli former intelligence official, had been spying on all of Harvey Weinstein's accusers.

And then it came out that they were also spying on me. And Ronan also had that story. Actually, he found out that they were spying on you, on Tommy, on John, on Dan. They were all on the list. And I wasn't on the fucking list. And it was, like, humiliating. But here's the thing. They only had page one of the memo,

so there really is a chance that I was on page two of the memo, but we don't know. Go on, Ben. You know, here are the kind of things that cross through my cupcake, edible, addled mind in my LA lifestyle. As I look at my Alexa, right? Which is that, finally, all these governments have all the goods on me, right?

Black Cube, Russia, all these people. And all they fucking hear all day long is me getting frustrated that my daughter can't get the fucking Moana soundtrack to play because it's always playing something else when she's asking for the song. And me just yelling, Alexa, can you play shiny from Moana? And this is what... And then somewhere, there's like, we've got them now. Yeah, exactly. Let's spin it again.

It has landed on overpackaging, which I believe was suggested by Sashir. Yes, yeah. I'm tired of ordering stuff online and then it comes in like a goddamn tree. Like it's just like covered in a whole massive paper. Like I got vitamins and it was just two bottles of vitamins

and they were in a box. And of course in the box was like another tiny box for the individual vitamins and then that box was in a bag. And then that bag was in a box. And then that box was in a plastic bag. And that was mailed to me. And I was like, I only ordered two things.

You couldn't have, I don't know. I don't know how things go through the mail. But it was just like too much. And I'm also trying to like just decrease my carbon footprint in general. So I'm like, let me go to the store and buy something in person. But stores don't have anything anymore. They don't have things anymore. Why do stores exist?

I'm so tired of going to the store and being like, do you have Tupperware here? And they're like, you have to go online for that. That's why I'm here, to avoid the online process. Stop making me go online to do the thing that I'm in the store currently for. I was looking for a seam ripper, you know, to rip seams, and couldn't find one. I went to CVS, where I'm certain I bought one from years ago. They didn't have it.

I went to Rite Aid, Walgreens, all of them. They were like, what? And then I went to a knitting store, because I was like, they must, and they did not. And they're like, go to Joanne Fabrics which is not near my house and I didn't want to keep moving around I had a seam ripper at home it was fine I found it but I wasted so much gas trying to find one in the real world and I was like I don't want to order online because it's gonna come in like a million packages it's too much and then they also the box that had the vitamins was like please recycle or something like it's going to come in like a million packages. It's too much. And then also the box that had the vitamins was like, please recycle or something.

Like, it's cool to recycle. I was like, fuck you. If I put this in the recycling bin, it's not going to get recycled. Only like 3% of things are actually recycled. So it's like just more trash. Stop giving me trash. Stop giving Sajir trash. Let's spin it again.

It has landed on Canada. Suggested by Sean. Sorry! Same. I heard there was a sorry that echoed politely. But it wasn't from a Canadian because it would have been a sorry. So, what a give. Anyway, as a

Canadian who was born with a brown face, for all the listeners at home, I gotta say, so I flew here from D.C. last night and the whole fucking thing happened while I was on the plane. And I got senses of it, because I had the free texting Wi-Fi, but not the, I'm gonna give this faceless corporation money for Wi-Fi, because they had to depart it on the fucking TV or whatever. And that's your time.

I had a sense that there was something going on with Justin Trudeau, but I couldn't actually read any of the things. Exactly. I sensed that there was something going on with Justin Trudeau, but I couldn't actually read any of the things. But once I landed and got to read all the things, I actually wasn't surprised because I a long time ago decided that I was going to live my life a certain way. And I would recommend the same for you because a lot of people seem, I was getting like a lot of texts when I landed. A lot of people heartbroken, like Barack Obama had just had sex with like Kellyanne Conway or something. And I was like, thank you for the mental image. Sarah Huck could be Sanders? Oh, no, no. Just stop. Just stop. We don't want to imagine this. I just wasn't surprised because you can either go through your life thinking like, oh, people aren't racist and

you will constantly be disappointed. Or I would recommend this. This is the attack that I've taken. Go through your life assuming that everyone's racist, and then when you find out that, like, a privileged, like, son of Canadian royalty who, like, went through his life in, like, elite circles dressed up in blackface or brownface once or twice or, like, four times, I don't even know how many now, you will not be fucking surprised, which I would recommend. And then I guess I saw all these headlines that were like, you know, Trudeau's brownface throws Canadian election into turmoil.

And I was like, turmoil? Can you name another Canadian politician? Can you name one other Canadian politician? I was just in Canada for Labor Day, and most of my friends didn't know who was running against Justin Trudeau in the election right now. I can name 47 people running against Donald Trump right now. My friends in Canada don't have any idea who's running against Justin Trudeau.

I don't know about this turmoil. Do we think that he actually thought it was wrong before this moment? I don't know what he thought when he did it, but it's hard to have observed multiple blackface scandals unfolding in the U.S. in recent months and have it, like, it must have occurred to him when he saw the weeks of news about Virginia. I don't know,

but then people in America still do it, though. Like, Ted Danson did it. Yeah, that is crazy. That was a long time ago. Billy Crystal did it at the Oscars five years ago. Did he really? 2012 a long time ago. Billy Crystal did it at the Oscars five years ago. Did he really? 2012. Seven years ago.

Isn't that insane? That is insane. But he's been doing blackface for a while, and people love it. He's had a long, long career in blackface. But, you know, he's a legend. This took such a fun turn. Let's spin it again.

It has landed on shocking bird news. New York Times, all of a sudden, see this headline. The crisis for birds is a crisis for all of us. I come to this article unaware. I didn't know about the crisis with birds. And I certainly didn't know it was my crisis as well. There are two crises. I was unaware of both of them. But this article is trying to convince me that a crisis I didn't know about is a bigger deal than I would have first thought. But I'm coming at

this at zero. And here's what I read. Almost one third of wild birds in the U.S. and Canada have vanished since 1970. 300 bird species are affected. 2.9 billion birds have disappeared over the past 50 years, reported in the Journal of Science. More than half of grassland birds have disappeared. That's 717 million missing birds. Quarter of blue jays. Just out of nowhere. And once a week this is happening. missing birds, quarter of blue jays, just out of nowhere.

And once a week, this is happening. Once a week, you go to the New York Times, and it's just, news alert, the bees are gone. News alert. Check out those coral reefs while you can. And it's always in one of those time stories where when you click on it, the picture takes up the whole screen and it's moving. And as you scroll down, something good, something beautiful becomes hideous. You start scrolling, like, no times, not again. And you just watch a glacier recede as you scroll down the beach.

Like, wait, no, I didn't know. I didn't know. You slowly zoom out as more and more... You're like, how big is this fire going to get? It's all of South America? Fuck! Let's end on a high note. However, the population of ducks and geese has grown by 56% since 1970

because the U.S. and Canada responded with laws that were driven by science. It's a reminder that every time you see a story about the plundering of our earth and the hopelessness around climate or the decimation of a wildlife ecosystem, part of the earth, just remember that we're in charge of the elected leaders who are going to set policy around these issues. We need to elect leaders who are going to take climate change seriously. That is the power we have right now. Whenever I see these incredibly terrifying stories and I click on them, I'm going to try to remember that 2020 is not just a referendum on Donald Trump. It is probably the most important environmental election, maybe ever,

because it will determine whether or not the United States leads on climate or abandons the terrain and dooms us, given how short a time frame the IPC says we had. There's a small girl from Europe who's going around everywhere telling us about it. She's pretty cool. Do whatever she says. and do whatever she says. And by the way, give yourself a treat of watching Greta go head-to-head against a Republican congressman

who came at her with, like, a rhetorical trick, and she picked him up and bounced him around the room like when Hulk picks up Loki. And it fucking ruled.

He was like, now what if you polluted one thing and another boat polluted fucking ruled. He was like, now what if you polluted one thing and another boat polluted five things? She was like, I try to stop mine and theirs. And he's like, but in my story, it's China, the U.S.

Yeah, I know. I know. China, U.S. Yeah, yeah. I'm from another place. You're both doing it. He's like, but little lady.

All right. Fucking ruled. The point is, but little lady. Fucking ruled. The point is right now there's something you can do. Crooked Media is partnering with Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight organization. I know that there's a lot

of hopeless news. I know sometimes their congressional Democrats are not perfect. But the most important thing we can do right now is put the people in place that will protect the vote in 2020. It's not

about the primary. It's not about picking a candidate. It's about making sure that once we have a candidate, once we're out there knocking on doors, once we're out there canvassing, that Stacey Abrams' team in 20 battleground states has people on the ground making sure that every person who can vote is registered

and can make sure their ballot is counted. We have made a giant container of jelly beans because we're trying to get to $1 million by November 5th. Stacey's trying to raise $5 million. We're going to do our part and do $1 million. In the past week, we've already gotten it past $500,000. So go to votesaveamerica.com slash

Fair Fight. Do that right now. On Tuesday, September 24th, it's National Voter Registration Day. So if you go to votesaveamerica.com, you can contribute to this fund, and you can help register voters through headcount. We need to do the work now. I think one lesson of 2016

is we got caught with our fucking democracy down. Thank you. Part of the challenge is we start paying attention too late. We need to do the infrastructure work right now that's registering voters, that's getting the teams in place

that will protect voters. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight. You can be part of that right now. If you want to know how you can help, if you're sick of all the news, this is what you can do. Right, Sasheer? Yes. Do it. Thanks, Sasheer. And that's our show.

I want to thank Ben Rhodes, Sasheer Zameda, Sean Ramos-Farr, The Comedy Store, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, AOC, and that staff lawyer who questioned Corey Lewandowski. Thank you all for coming out. Have a great night. Ben, this woman wants you to sign her book. Love It or Leave It is a product of Crooked Media. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett,

Elisa Gutierrez, Lee Eisenberg, our head writer and self-appointed Elizabeth Warren intern, Travis Helwig, and writers Jocelyn Kaufman, Alicia Carroll, and Peter Miller. Bill Lance is our editor, and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure.

Thanks to our designers, Jesse McClain and Jamie Skiel, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast, and to our digital producers, Nararmel Konian and Yale Freed for filming and editing video each week so you can.