Lovett or Leave It - From Russia with Likes

Episode Date: September 9, 2017

Sessions announces the end to DACA with a running fuse. Big boy Trump finally strikes his first deal. Deadly storms portend a worsening climate. Facebook has some explaining to do. Lou Dobbs goes MAGA on Paul Ryan. And Equifax is just despicable. Sasheer Zamata, Negin Farsad, and Jaboukie Young-White join Jon to break down the week's news. Plus a dramatic reading you won't want to miss. Recorded live at the Now Hear This Podcast Festival in New York.

Hey guys, how you doing? It's great to be in New York. in New York. There was a standing ovation of one, which means all but one of you was wrong. It's great to be here at the Javits Center. It's nice to associate it with something new. Speaking of, we have a very special episode of Pod Save America. On Tuesday, John and Tommy and I are, we're going to the woods. We're going to sit down with Hillary Clinton. We're going to the woods. We're going to sit down with Hillary Clinton. We're going to talk about what happened.

Also, to all of our listeners in Florida, stay safe, because as this comes out tomorrow, Hurricane Irma is heading towards Florida. And finally, of course, if you like the show, rate the show, subscribe to the show, tell other people about it, you know? All right, we have an awesome panel for you today. She is a comedian and host of the very funny political podcast, Fake the Nation, and author of the book, How to Make White People Laugh, Nagin Farsad. He is an up-and-coming comedian seen on Rolling Stone's 25 Under 25.

Yuck. That sucks. And Splitsiders on the verge. Please welcome Jaboukie Young-White. Thank you. And you've seen her on SNL, and she has an hour stand-up special called Pizza Mind. Please welcome Sashir Zamata.

Hi. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. There are Sashir heads here. I guess so. Sashirites here. I guess so. Sashirites. I think someone screened Beyonce and they might be confused. How are you guys doing?

Good. As good as you can. You know, people tell me to have a brief conversation at the top where they can identify the voices with the names. And I've never figured out a way to do that. Nagin, how are you? I'm great, and I've often been told that I sound like an adult butters. So if that helps the listener identify...

That's something to keep in mind. Jaboukie, you're the guy that's not me, so people will get that, I think. Yep, here I am, right here. Identify it. There's a little bit of a similarity, though people will get that, I think. Yep. Here I am, right here. Identify it. There's a little bit of a similarity, though. I'm going to try to match you. Just to shake it up a little bit.

All right. I think we're kind of heading towards the middle. Yeah. That's good. I like this. I think that we could ride this frequency. I feel like me and Sashir should go. All right. Let's get into it.

Do you want to hear my voice? Well, we already talked about the Sashir heads. So I felt like we had gotten, but you know what? I'm sorry. No, it's fine. People know my voice. It is weird, though. I've been in supermarkets or other public spaces,

and people will round the corner and be like, I knew it was you because of your voice. They could hear my voice and know that I was shopping. That's weird. Let's get into it. What a week. On Tuesday, Trump, through Jeff Sessions, his evil gnome, On Tuesday, Trump, through Jeff Sessions, his evil gnome, laid out their plan for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, something that I think about 800,000 young people in the United States have signed up for to give them a sense of permanence in the only country they've ever known, that they are going to end the program in six months, which is, I think, a terrible thing to do, but at the same time has now thrown the action to Congress. What's interesting is what's happened in the days

that followed. Originally, there was no information, right? It's just sort of leaking that the president's going to end it and then leaking that he's actually not sure what he's going to do yet because the uh the current white house is a general uh on top of the org chart overseeing the dregs of republican politics leaking after one another to try to get their various despicable ends uh so at first this seemed like we never really know what they're going to do because, you know, Trump plays chicken, but then he kind of forgets the rules and gets distracted by Twitter. But he then says Congress now has six months to legalize DACA, something the Obama administration was unable to do. If they can't, I will revisit the issue, which was a crazy thing to do because if you were setting a six-month deadline to force Congress's hand, then shouldn't that be something people believe is real? But then again, I didn't write the art of the deal.

Neither did he. Thank you. Thank you. Guys, don't miss a beat. Thank you. You guys don't miss a beat. And finally, yesterday he said, for all those DACA that are concerned about your status during the six-month period,

you have nothing to worry about, no action, which was both seemed like oddly sweet but also deeply dangerous and incorrect because people with DACA that may expire have one month to re-enroll before the deadline. But at the same time, he was urged to do that by Nancy Pelosi, which I don't understand. I don't understand any of it.

So Congress has to work on passing DACA. Has there anything you guys have seen this week that has made you hopeful about the fact that this can happen? I mean, there's been this incredible outpouring of activism. I mean, Nagin, what has your reaction to this been? I mean, well, what I love about this in general is that DACA is, you know, getting rid of a DACA means getting rid of, like, the best of the immigrants, because these people, like, have to, first of all, they came as kids, whatever, they have to enroll in the program, they have to be, you know, be enrolled in school or show proof of school,

and then they have to go through this rigorous background check, and, like, they're basically amazing people, and then every two years, they have to, like, go to do heinous paperwork to be a part of this program. Like, I don't know that I would make it in the program, you know what I mean? Like, it's, you have to be, like, a good, like, an awesome person. And so it's weird to get rid of the most awesome of the immigrants who also don't know anything about their mother countries. Yeah. I got a random message from somebody who had been listening to the shows and said, I came here when I was a child.

My parents are technically from India, but I've never actually been there because I was born elsewhere. And I came to this country and I tried to work in public service, but I couldn't because I wasn't a citizen. So I became a lawyer to do pro bono work and just terrified, just living in fear now. And the thing about DACA is it can debate the extension of presidential power, and we should all be uncomfortable with expanding presidential power, especially now as we see it in the hands of the worst person we've produced in half a century. But it was an extraordinary response to the fact that we've spent 30 years building an extra-legal, second-class status for millions of people in this country

who, as a product of that broken system we all assented to in one way or another, whether with our votes or with our dollars, are going to bear the brunt of it. It's completely insane. John Favreau and I talked to Larry Wilmore about this on his show, and he was thinking about the language of this,

and he said that we should be referring to them as undocumented Americans, because they're American. They don't know another place. It's not their fault that they don't have the one thing. The one thing, citizenship, is super important and it means a lot. Conservatives who talk about that are absolutely

right, but there's no reason to take 30 years of inaction and failure on the part of both parties and have it not land on the corporations that employ undocumented immigrants to make cheaper both parties and have it not land on the corporations that employ undocumented immigrants to make cheaper goods, to have it not land on the doorstep of American citizens who enjoy their cheap food at

restaurants, but to have it land on the most vulnerable people who did absolutely nothing wrong is completely insane. Can I say one more thing about immigrants? Immigrants on the whole, they've done studies, and for every immigrant, there's 1.2 jobs that gets created for every immigrant that comes to the country. So, like, conservatives like money, right? Like, that's more jobs.

Like, that's actually more jobs. The one thing, so they can, immigrants can create jobs. I guess the one thing they can't do is, like, bleach their skin. So, like, that's maybe, like, the, like they can't do is bleach their skin. So that's maybe the problem that some conservatives have with them. I feel like that was a subtle reference to racism. Undergirding some of this.

Jaboukie, I mean, do you have... What do you got? I got some. I just want you to know that that was halfway through a question but our chemistry was such that I didn't have any. We didn't need to finish it. The listeners know. We finished each other's sentences.

It's getting steamy up here. I think the most hopeful thing that I've seen this week is just the outpouring of support for undocumented Americans. And the fact that so many people are on the same page of like, if you grew up here and this is all you know, I don't care if you were a manager at Best Buy and you're taking six months to just quit and figure shit out on your mom's couch, you're an American. You shouldn't have to go somewhere that you're totally unfamiliar with. And I think that seeing that sentiment of seeing so many people on the same page is like, oh wait, there's actually a lot of sane people, more than I expected.

Yeah, and it's a reminder, too, that Trump is in many ways an outlier, but also a representative of a certain strain in the Republican Party. Because on the one hand, you see Republicans say, oh, we shouldn't do this. It should be a congressional matter. But then many of those same members of Congress, when they had the chance to vote, voted to end DACA because it was an Obama program. And Trump just gives voice to this darker impulse more explicitly. And there was this photo circulating of Jeff Sessions smiling before the announcement. And it was this deeply strange thing. You're going to the microphone to terrify 800,000 young people. You got a smile on your face because you got your way.

So Shira, what do you think the role of racism plays in this conversation around Hispanic? I mean, this is clearly targeting Hispanic people as other or less and deserve to be sent back to countries they've never known. Well, it feels like a movie where we have like a evil overlord who's doing everything they can to like eliminate people it's kind of wild like it doesn't feel real it's like what is

the reason who who does who does he think he's helping by doing this and it is hopeful though like I legit didn't know anything about DACA before this week and knowing that there is a potential into it makes me want to work to keep it so it's like now now there are people who know more about it and are actually like rallying behind other people and so there have been a lot of scary things that have been happening or brought up but like because these things are threatening citizens or people we know or people we don't know that are around us we now get to do the work to rally behind these people and support them and try to make sure that everyone's getting treated fairly yeah and uh you you can go to DefendDACA.com. And also, by the way, there are these incredible young people,

we can call them undocumented Americans, who have been protesting at the Hill and doing these hunger strikes, and it's inspiring, and it's a reminder that there's still plenty of good out there trying to fight back against this. So the hope has to be that we'll get to the debt ceiling and all that in these negotiations, but it seems like there really is hope that something can pass through Congress to help these kids. Obviously, we all hope it does. Next, also happening, is a series of historic hurricanes ravaging the Caribbean and Texas and now Florida.

Texas is still dealing with the aftermath of Harvey. Now Irma has devastated islands in the Caribbean and is now likely going to hit Florida. Over 650,000 people have been instructed to leave their homes. You know, and so again, if anyone's listening in Florida, you know, stay safe. Do we think that this is finally going to wake people up who have not yet woken up to the reality of climate change? I mean, what do you think?

No. Jibuki's think? No. Jaboukie's chasing. No. I mean, it was a couple weeks ago, I think, Ann Coulter tweeted that it wasn't global warming, it was a lesbonic mayor that caused the hurricane. Now, you're being so unfair to Ann Coulter

because her point was that climate change and gay mayors are equally culpable. Right, right, right. Or equally not culpable. So I mean, look, we're, look. Miss that nuance there, I miss that. And shame on you. Yeah, I don't, I don't think that.

I think that the level of cognitive dissonance is already so high that we can't, as an American society, back down off of this without coming up with some other, like, oh, it wasn't global warming. It was actually God changing the climate. That's what it was. But not global warming or climate change. It was God.

So, Shira, do you think this could wake people up right now? Do you disagree with that? Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't have, no. I don't have hope for that. I mean, because like, I mean, a while ago Trump was like, if I spray hairspray in my

house and all the windows are closed, how can that get in the environment? I was like, what? That's a person who's an adult. And I'm sure there are more people who think like that i don't i don't i love that because first of all it is a reminder that trump is like a mosquito trapped in amber in 1985 because for him the entire environmental movement starting with like silent spring and the forging of the epa and the cuyahoga river catching fire and the ozone hole layer boils

down to in 1994 hairspray got worse for a sec and he remembers vividly that two-year period when they made the cans worse and everybody was spritzing hairspray on themselves you know and it was like they hadn't figured out how to do a non-cfc or whatever the fuck version that's still kind of sustained you know that kind of whatever you'd call it consistent and now we've solved that problem because of amazing science but but there was that one year when like the ozone hole was gonna get solved but the hairspray was going to suck. And it did suck. Remember, everybody's like, and you're saying, that's just, that sucks. Trump remembers that. And it informed his politics a hundred percent. And so when you talk about like carbon pollution, he's like, hairspray. Against. Sometimes I, and maybe I shouldn't be saying this out loud,

but sometimes I think, like, our planet is like a body. Some bodies get diseases, and then the disease takes over the body, and they die. I think we might be the disease that's killing this planet, and it eventually will die whoops

I just want to let you know that you do sound like agent smith from the matrix who was the villain in that film everything's meant to die. Look, I think what I take from that... No, no, but I think there's something... As human beings, we are very good at solving something right in front of us. But the second the problem is on the other side of a mountain or on the other side of a lake or we can't see it, it gets much harder. There was a time where we just dumped our garbage into the ocean. It was like, well, what's going to happen? It's the ocean. They'll take care of it. The ocean will fix it. And I think climate change is this perfect

problem to exploit all of our weaknesses as human beings. I think because it's hard to see both the problem and it's hard to see the effects of the solution and it's so diffuse, it's hard to not counteract that human desire to just fill the space, to use what we have and to take up all the resources. I mean, one of the things we have to do with climate change is we have to leave trillions of dollars, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels in the ground. And if one of us, you know, a giant diamond buried in our yard, and they're like, please don't dig it up. I mean, you can. It's legal. It'll be awesome. But leave it there. Fuck you. It's a sick diamond. I'm going to use that to buy stuff.

And the thing that's scary is the fossil fuel companies that have access to that fossil fuel on the ground, their stock price assumes they'll take it out of there. So I think that there is truth to that, that we are not constitutionally as human beings able to grapple with a problem like this. So I think that is a reason to be somewhat pessimistic. like this. So, you know, I think that is a reason to be somewhat pessimistic. But I think, like, I'm hopeful about that people who actually lived it and experienced it, who may have been climate change deniers, are going to be like, well, maybe I'm still a climate change denier, but we're going to keep getting hurricanes. So, like, we can call them climate change or pistachios. You can call them whatever you want. But it's like, these are going to happen, and so let's, like, how are we going to live with it?

And so then maybe when we're building cities, we won't look at a piece of swampland and be like, let's fill this in and build houses on it, you know what I mean? Because, like, Mother Nature was like, guys, like, I made the swamplands to suck up the jizz from the hurricanes. Like, that's, what are you guys doing? You know what I mean? You fucking idiots.

She's got like a real potty mouth. Anyways, Mother Nature. She sounds very cool. I'm just quoting her. But like that's, and I think as we go forward with developing cities and rebuilding these cities, we won't take away those natural hurricane jizz suckers that we have in the ground. Well said.

One thing I've thought, just as a morbid thought, but Trump is not someone who is susceptible to subtlety. And perhaps Mar-a-Lago, in the line of this storm, will maybe wake him up to this. I don't know. He's so excited about how unprecedented all these storms are. He's tweeting constantly about how, biggest ever, he's very into it. Because, as with all things, he's now a weather pundit.

Because he's, as with all things, he's now a weather pundit. I thought one instructive moment was Rush Limbaugh telling everybody that Irma is being exaggerated because it's a liberal hoax to make us all worried about climate change as he jumped in his Winnebago and drove the hell out of Florida because he was in the line of the storm. And I think that captures something, which is, I've said this before, but climate change doesn't care if you believe in it or not. It's coming. I feel like this was pessimistic on climate change. Chibuki.

Oh, you were pessimistic too. Yeah, I was pretty pessimistic. I think that the Mar-a-Lago is definitely a hope, though. For sure. If anything, I just don't have to see those news headlines anymore. So that's a positive. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be tough, though, because he does a lot of foreign policy down there.

So I don't know where he's going to be able to do national security meetings with highly classified material, with waiters that haven't been properly vetted if Mar-a-Lago does flood, but whatever. I also feel like there's always Bedminster. As we always say here on Love It or Leave It, there's always Bedminster. Here's something hopeful.

Oh, good. There are a lot of people who are doing really cool things to combat climate change. I read this thing about some child, maybe, I don't know, middle school, high school kid who invented something that like cleans the ocean. It's like, it looks like an octagon or something and it just like kind of absorbs all the garbage. And then I think it like pumps out other energy or something like that. Whoa.

That's good. Yeah. You know what? That's exactly right. I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, even though Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord, we still as a country may meet its expectations because there are people doing good work. And all of a sudden, solar was supposed to get cheap, but it was never supposed to get this cheap. It's being exploited more and more and more. And even though climate change on the whole feels insurmountable, every

single step we take does help us achieve it. So there is reason to be hopeful. Let's not be pessimistic. You guys watched me go through something. And I think people are doing things on a local level too. Was it California that was like, we don't care if the country's not going

with this Paris thing, we are? Yeah, and Jerry Brown, who I really like, was like, if they don't if the country's not going with this Paris thing, we are. And Jerry Brown, who I really like, was like, if they don't want to put up a satellite, I'll put up a satellite. This is California. The economy's bigger than France. We'll be fine. Alright, let's move on to the

other big development this week, and it actually does tie back to what we were talking about with DACA, which is on Wednesday, Trump announced that he was increasing the debt limit for three months to finance the government. It was a deal he made with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi in front of congressional Republicans

who were furious and I feel like they were about to say something, but then Ivanka did walk in the meeting. And Ivanka, this is not an unplanned thing. She seems to always wander in at key moments. She wanders in in big interviews, and she wanders in when

Paul Ryan's about to be, but, but, and then she's just in, which I think is cool. So this was a deal that had a three-month extension to fund the government to lift the debt ceiling and to include disaster relief for Harvey. And I would say there was a really good

conversation about the details of this on Pod Save America on Thursday that John and Dan had, which I recommend. But the thing that I was thinking, so it's not that great a deal. It seems like Pelosi and Schumer were kind of bluffing. And he accepted the three-month thing, and it seemed like he could have

pushed back and got something better. But again, neither Trump nor I wrote the art of the deal. And it really reminded me of that Seinfeld where Kramer gets coffee spilled in his lap, and Jackie Child, they go to the coffee people, and the coffee people are like, all right, we're going to give him free coffee for life and a million dollars. And they're like, Kramer, we'll give you free coffee for life. I'll take it. So that's what I was thinking about this whole time. I feel like Schumer and Pelosi walked out of that meeting and gave each other such a shit-eating grin that I just wish, there's just no way to capture it. Maybe somebody could paint it, could imagine it. Because they walked in there with a two and a seven. and they came out with, I mean,

they came out with a dead ceiling raise. Let's not go crazy, but still, more than what they should have. And all these Republicans on background are super pissed, and there was one that said basically that Trump handed Pelosi and Schumer a loaded gun on DACA and all this other stuff. So the president makes his first deal.

Wait, can I, but here's the thing. Like, all of the coverage has been like, oh, Trump, the dealmaker made a deal, like, finally. But there was no, there was no deal that was made. They were just like, do you want to do three months and Harvey? And he's like, yeah. There's no, like, you know what I mean? Like, it is more complicated to haggle over a Persian rug at a bazaar than that conversation was. There was no deal.

What is this deal? Like, idiot. He's an idiot. Yes, and it wasn't, look, I've often said that I think that you can understand Trump by imagining that every moment he is trying to get a deal

on marble countertops. And I think in this case, he just got snowed. He got snowed. He got out-negotiated by Schumer and Pelosi. How great is that? Nancy Pelosi, man. I love Nancy Pelosi.

I do. She got a climate bill through the House. She got the health care bill through the House. She got a ton of stuff through the House. Nancy Pelosi's great. And I know, like like but she's a lightning rod i don't care i like her she passed health care jaboukie what do you got uh i think that this is actually really inspiring i think it just shows that he just likes to make any kind of deal

like you really just gotta to float it. I feel like the Democrats are kind of like kids who are like, no, I don't want to ask mom, like, you ask mom. And then you ask, and mom's like, yeah, go ahead. You're like, oh, wow, okay. Cool, let's run with this. So, yeah, that makes me really happy. And look, he'll still go back to being, he'll see the headlines

on Fox and all the rest, but for now, I mean, I think it's a little bright spot. When we come back, the Russia stuff. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

We're one of two countries that has a stupid debt ceiling this is not like a thing that everybody does it's like us in denmark i think it's denmark and like denmark keeps it so high that nobody ever hits the ceiling or ever has to talk about it it is so why do we have it it's the dumbest thing it is the stupidest fucking thing in the world. It's as if there's a ticking time bomb attached to our economy that ticks down all the time. And every six to eight months or two years or three years,

we have to remember to reset the clock. And everyone's like, let's get this thing off of there. And then the Republicans are like, no, we like it. Like, why do you like it? We use it to ask for other stuff. But you'll die too.

We know, it's stupid. But we pretend it's not because we pretend to be crazy. Somebody said Nixon did that once and so we like it and we do it. And it worked once, but then not again. But we're still hoping it'll work again. Like one time Obama was like,

Maybe they're crazy. And we're like, shit, yeah, tax cuts for the rich. And then he stopped caring, but we're still holding out. And it seems like Trump doesn't care. Fuck. Now for a segment called The Russia Stuff.

And it's a new segment. And basically, here's how it works. There's going to be a clock on that thing that says two minutes. And we're going to get two minutes to talk about all the Russia stuff. because I don't know what we're supposed to say about it. There's nothing for us to really do, but it's interesting and it seems very important, but

it's playing out very slowly, and every day a new shoe drops, but then it feels like there's too many shoes. It's like we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it's like, how can it drop? The pile of shoes has risen to the place where the shoes drop from. So then there's a backup of shoes in the shoe drop machine. Well, let's start the timer. Alright, two minutes

on the Russia stuff. Earlier this summer, Mueller asked the Senate Intelligence Committee for a transcript of an interview Senate staff did with Paul Manafort, and he's tried to get more documents. It's led to tension on the Hill. Also, Donald Trump Jr. has said that he set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 because he wanted to find out info

on whether Hillary Clinton had the fitness to be president. Of course, the fitness to be president and adopt people from Russia, which was, of course, the first explanation for the meeting. And finally, Facebook has apparently sold $100,000 worth of political ads to fake Russian accounts and there are some reports that say that those

ads may be reached 24 to maybe 70 million Americans. The Russia stuff. Any thoughts? I think it's funny that they were trying to hack Hillary's Fitbit? Is that what you're saying? Like, is this physical fitness or is this

just like overall? I think mental. Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't think they were seeing how if she was not doing the steps that she had claimed. It would not have fucking surprised me if in 2016 in September, Donald Trump was like grabbing pussy

and Hillary maybe had lied about the steps on her foot bit. And then the press would have been like, how can we handle both of these candidates? They both made so many mistakes. So Shira, I have to admit something. I'm pandering a little bit because we're talking to her on Monday. Oh, that's awesome. It's cool, right? Yeah.

Wait, did Facebook know that they were selling? It seems they did not know they were selling them to. They knew they were. I's cool, right? Yeah. Wait, did Facebook know that they were selling? They did not know they were selling them to... I don't know what they knew. They seem to have not known that it might have been part of an operation to disrupt American democracy. That they came to later. But they seem to have told investigators about it. End of segment.

Do you guys want anything else to say about the Russia stuff? I don't care. It's just a fake clock. There's no rules. There's no rules. There's no judges. I'm going to stick with my Fitbit hypothesis just because I like to think that she went into the forest to hike to rack up those steps.

She's like, somehow I haven't been getting my steps. She's like, am I going crazy? I feel as though my Fitbit has been hacked. Then her Fitbit is like, you've walked enough today. What? Sit down. Sit down. Do not go to Wisconsin.

It's unnecessary. It's unnecessary. Now for a segment called Okay, Stop. Here's how it works. We roll a clip, and then we say, okay, stop. Now, usually we can see the screen. However, today we cannot. And it's Lou Dobbs, so what we're not going to be able to see on stage

is kind of an old person who's lost his way, trying to sort of grab for some relevance in the world by making an absolutely bonkers argument. And as we go, we'll pause it and we'll talk about it. Let's roll the clip. A few thoughts now on the death of a rhino. Nothing to lament here. We're just examining politics in 2017. I'm talking about Speaker Paul Ryan and his obsequious deference to corporate lobbyists, his unbridled hostility toward President Trump. Okay, stop. He was flipping through the source.

Unbridled? Yeah, like, I feel the pages burning. That was a lot. I love that. I love the idea that, like, Paul Ryan, this fake Republican. I mean, look, like, I'm not a fan of Paul Ryan, but he's a Republican. He's a pretty good Republican. He's a right-wing Speaker of the House who proposed privatizing Medicare and Social Security.

That's on the mark, right? That's a bullseye. The funny thing about that clip is that he makes it sound like paul ryan has a personality you know what i mean he like attributes all this shit to paul ryan and i'm like most of the time when paul ryan opens his mouth like i want to take a nap like that's mostly how i view and it's just funny to me that he's like got all of this you know this rage for a guy that doesn't evoke anything. And he's just getting started. Let's hear some more Lou Dobbs.

He only took Rhino Ryan to the woodshed, but eliminated any need for any Republican to ever pretend again that Ryan is a real Republican in any way. any rhino has a political future after Mr. Trump simply booted the hapless fool of a speaker out of the way of those trying to get the nation's business done. Okay, stop. This really is something. That is Republicans catching a ride on a tiger and then being thrown from the tiger and eaten by Lou Dobbs. Let's keep in mind what he's talking about. There was a meeting, bipartisan meeting. Democrats made their first initial offer, which was like 500 grand below list. And right about Paul Ryan was like,

I think we could get more. Trump was like, I'll take it. And that's this reaction. Like, Paul Ryan was just a guy sitting in a room until Ivanka walked in and now he's a rhino and he's not a real Republican because you know also by the way anyone who says mr. Trump that's bad you can tell you could tell you're not dealing with somebody who's on the level let's keep rolling the clip I guess this Ryan just this morning talking about a

proposal tying Harvey funding to an increase in the debt ceiling. What the leaders you just described proposed is is unworkable. I think that's ridiculous and disgraceful that they want to play politics with the debt ceiling at this moment. I think that's a ridiculous idea. OK, stop. Not the heart of the clip, but holy shit what a hypocrite Paul Ryan is. That guy played so much politics with the debt ceiling when Barack Obama was president.

They held... You know, the debt ceiling is like, you know, it's holding a gun to your own head, but he did it, and he was very much a part of it, so let's not lose sight of who Paulul ryan is he needed a thesaurus because he said ridiculous like six times it's just ridiculous just ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous paul ryan paul ryan the rhino again republican in name only paul ryan i mean that's the thing that's it's it really is a

like how far like how much damage fox does on a daily basis like you're gonna look at trump who has no beliefs whatsoever and who just made a deal with the democrats to raise the debt limit which the republicans were against including paul ryan you're like that paul ryan he's not a real republican anymore it's, so a real Republican is whatever Donald Trump happens to say in a meeting at any given moment. But also, Lou Dobbs didn't give Paul Ryan any credit for then eating shit

later, like 30 minutes later, and being like, you know what, Trump was doing a great thing because he was trying to be bipartisan in a time of great crisis, I could totally respect that. And he totally, you know, I mean, he ate the shit that he was supposed to eat.

And he got no credit. That's true, although maybe part of it is that we've all, as a society, gotten quite used to seeing Paul Ryan just eat shit. He has, I mean, he has been eating shit since he attacked Donald Trump

and then undid his attack and then campaigned with Donald Trump. I mean, he's in the middle of a pretty long-running shit-eating contest. They don't mean that. They did mean that. And it wasn't so ridiculous, it turns out, because within just a few hours, President Trump reached a deal with the Democrats to raise the debt limit to fund the government until mid-December while providing funds for Harvey relief. Deal done. President Trump also clearing the way for tax reform while he was at it. Contrast Ryan's inane insults, his obstinance and subversion of President Trump to the behavior and the rhetoric of

Democratic leadership of late. They've calmed themselves. In a weird way, I sort of relate to Paul Ryan in this situation, just because I feel like this dynamic is sort of like trying to prove how black you are at the same time. And like, no matter what you do, it's never enough. And Paul Ryan is like, no, guys, I try to take free lunch away from kids. Like, i'm a republican like leave me alone please i also like how he said at the end there like democrats are have become calm or something what did he say he said they're just they've calmed down the democrats they're just doing you know he's i don't know it'd be it's just like, I'm like, why are you,

Democrats are calm because this week we didn't have to be like, why are there so many neo-Nazis here? Like, is that why we've calmed down? Like, we didn't have to say that today? Right, it's like, yeah, I guess it's been three weeks since Donald Trump called white supremacists fine people. I can't believe that was just three weeks ago. A lot happens.

A lot happens. Neo-Nazis make the time go by. As we always say here on Love It or Leave It, time flies when you're watching the return of some of the darkest forces in American history. Let's finish out the clip. They've been far more conciliatory in their rhetoric over recent weeks, and now Ryan is fully exposed to the nation.

His Congress, one that has accomplished next to nothing this year. Nothing in Paul Ryan's only two-year tenure as a speaker has been done. That's tough. That's also true. Lou Dobbs has a point. There's been a lot of shitty people having a point. Like, Trump saying in the meeting that the debt ceiling is something we should get rid of?

Trump has a point. Any final thoughts to wrap up this wonderful clip of Lou Dobbs losing the plot and then finding it briefly at the end? I just, like like will probably never watch a Lou Dobbs clip again unless I'm forced to like I was today. It's also funny that this is not on Fox News proper.

It's on Fox News business, which is like the farm team now for Fox News, which is both where up-and-coming Fox News people get their lay of the land about just the right amount of racist to be on the air, and where also the kind of pitchers kind of losing their arm but can't let go of the sport because it's

all they've ever known, like get a couple final chances to kind of throw one over the plate. I just made you sympathetic to Lou Dobbs. When we come back, a dramatic reading. Hey,

don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. So, amidst all of this, there's been someone else in the news, someone who's claimed to be the target of fake stories, who's pushing back against a mainstream narrative that they reject. And so tonight we will have a dramatic reading by Sashir Zamata of the song, Look What You Made Me Do,

by Taylor Swift. Give it up for Sashir. She has the floor. I don't like your little games. Don't like your tilted stage. The role you made me play, of the fool! No.

I don't like you. I don't like your perfect crime. How you laugh when you lie. You said the gun was mine. Isn't cool? No! No!

I don't like you. Oh. But I got smarter. I got harder in the nick of time. Honey, I rose up from the dead. I do it all the time. I've got a list of names, and yours is in red. Underlined.

I check it once, and then I check it twice. Oh. Ooh, look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Ooh, look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Oh, look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do.

Look what you just made me do. Give it up for Sashir Zamata. Now for a segment called... There's just so much going on. This week, Ta-Nehisi Coates released a piece for The Atlantic called The First White President. How many of you have read it or seen it?

I think it's really worth reading. It's basically about the role of white supremacy in the election of Donald Trump. And I found it to be fascinating. And a lot of it to me is about the story we tell about why Trump won. I think it's really important because we need to understand why this happened. And so one of the points he makes that I thought was really important is he notes that there's been this conversation about the white working class. But what was interesting is he points out that it wasn't just the white working class that voted for Donald Trump, that the most predictive thing about the election is white people that were working class, college degree, no college degree, higher income, middle income, lower income, white women, white men, young white people, older white people, that whiteness was the predictor,

not working class status. And I found myself thinking that it's amazing how that fact, which has been repeated over and over again, kind of just bounces off our politics but doesn't stick to it. Even for me, I was thinking about how many times I've talked about it, and that somehow we take all that information and it gets translated into this mysterious working class voter. I don't

know. What was your reaction to the story? Yeah, it is funny because I feel like at times people were saying, oh yeah, like the median income of a Trump voter is $72,000 or something like that. And then, but then they wouldn't follow that up by saying, and that is not a working class wage, you know? And so, like, it was just one of these things where we knew some of the details and the reality, but everyone still kept saying white working class. And there's something about us that we're like comfortable saying,

white, like, you know, a white working class voter would vote for Trump. Um, and he might be racist, but guys, his factory job just shut down, you know? And so it's like, okay, that he's racist. You know, there's like something about that construction that I find bizarre. Um, uh, but yeah, it was, it was striking to me the, the numbers of of other economic groups that were all also white um who voted for trump like it's just uh that means like some you know some people who have like earned real money like doctors and lawyers and uh you know and have done some shit with their lives entrepreneurs uh have like voted for this guy and it's uh it's just actually more upsetting

i think somehow yeah i think trump made it clear when he was campaigning like who he was supporting so like we think of working class people because like he said things like i'll bring back coal i'll bring jobs back to your town and this and that but then he also was making it clear at the same time who he does not support and I think that connected to a lot of people too where they're like I also hate women all right I also don't like gay people or whatever the thing is and they're like well I mean I don't give a shit about coal but I care about this the other stuff he's saying and then that's why I'll vote for him he's got my vote or even the people who are like

oh Hillary's too left which is insane but like oh if she supports gay people she supports women's health which should be normal things

but you know I can't get on board with that women's health, which should be normal things. But, you know, I can't get on board with that. Oh, man. It's like discouraging as I say it. Yeah. First off, it was so juicy. It was so good because it confirms so many things that I've experienced so many times of like having so many like Brooklyn white friends

who are like, you know, it's just like all the lower middle class like white voters and my grandpa and my dad and my mom and my brother and my cousin but it's just like really if we focused on like North Carolina I think like just totally diverting it while like just being blind to their surroundings so it was great to not feel gas lit for once um and have that just be like brought up and actually discussed because really trump winning was like a white thing like white people did that it wasn't like bernie voters or like jill stein voters or people who didn't vote it was white people who voted for trump like right that's what did it. That and the electoral college. True.

Yeah, I mean, the other thing, it was that it's sort of clarifying to see it laid out that way. And the other point just about the fact that the two sides of, the way in which Obama leads to Trump, that Obama represents this achievement of someone who works twice as hard, that Obama represents this achievement of someone who works twice as hard,

and Trump represents this achievement of someone who had no business being there, which is why in the piece he refers to him as the first white president, because he is both a reaction to the first black president and someone who exemplifies sort of all the flaws of white supremacy at once, not just the racism at the core of it, but also just the advantages and the things that don't stick. Racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia. Also in the article, he straight up,

yeah, when he was laying out he's the first white president, he's also the first president to say my daughter's bangable or whatever, my daughter's a piece of ass. It's like a piece of ass. It's so, this past week, he was like, you know,

I wasn't going to bring Ivanka, but then she said, Daddy, can I come? And you know, I like that. She called me Dad. Like, you've listened to too much Lana Del Rey. Like, you really got to pull it back. They're the Lannisters.

Lannisters. Game of Thrones, we wouldn't know. Okay. We wouldn't know. Okay. But I love that part about, you know, Obama worked twice as hard. And because it was almost like whiteness was like, oh, you think you're allowed to have a black president? How about we're going to just run a sentient piece of garbage as president

and he'll win, you know? And then it happened. So it was like a, you know, the entire presidency is like this reaction to this thing that we did achieve, you know, and it's sad. Yeah, no, we've talked about that. It's going to be hard to explain to children that Trump came after Obama. You know, it doesn't make sense. It's it's like, no, that can't that can't be right.

They'll say on the moon. I mean, you know, this has been in the works for so long this is not like all of a sudden we have racist people or we have people who don't care about the future for their children or you know like like this has been building and a lot of people felt like finally someone who's saying what I want to say, someone who connects with what I want, who doesn't give a shit about other people. They only care about me and what I want. And, and yeah, and now, now we can hear those voices. So now, other people who have been complacent, a little sleepy for a very long time because we felt comfortable because we were like, oh, everything's great. We're progressing.

This is good. We weren't thinking about the people who were not progressing with us and just angry and stewing. And now they are being very vocal. And so now we have to actually wake up and be active and combat this. Yeah, and I think it's a, I think the fact that this happened, and I don't,

I really resent talking of silver linings, and I don't like saying things like, oh, we'll survive this, or because it's an abstraction and a lot of people will be hurt. And the planet's gonna die soon, so we're not gonna survive at all. Well, there are things,

yeah, the virus is spreading but no but the uh but uh there are people being hurt right now there are people living in terror right now it's it's a point of privilege to say that we'll survive this but it is true that trump does throw some things into the wide open and what i took away from the piece is even after this election that exposed so much there's already kind of this layer of moss forming over what happened to hide it. And I think what'll be good

coming out of this is because he's an extraordinary writer and people read what he has to say and it makes a difference. That hopefully that clears some of that away and we don't let some false narratives take hold and I was finding myself making connection to these Confederate statues because the reason people are defending these statues is because the statues worked.

The statues convinced people of a certain way of thinking about the past. And allowing a false narrative about this election is just another form of Confederate statue that, no, this wasn't a group of disaffected people. Now, that is part of it it economic dislocation is part of it it's a point he makes in the piece too that of course it's not just racism of course it's not just white supremacy big cultural forces big economic forces are of course animated by these other impulses these darker impulses but it's just important to to see it clearly and see it said clearly so that's why i wanted to talk about it maybe trump is kind of like a confederate statue because like i saw something online that was like a timeline of when confederate statues popped up and a lot of them happened to combat civil rights like when we were progressing when we were making

movements then people were getting scared they're like well we'll put, when we were making movements, then people were getting scared and they're like, well, we'll put a statue up. So that reminds people that the people who run this town are white and when you go to school, if you're going to Robert E. Lee High School or whatever, you have to remember that, that we were the leaders, we were the masters, we own this shit. And it's rewriting history, literally literally it is erasing what happened and

creating a false narrative as if they're as if these losers were heroes and that's kind of what's happening now where it's like we're we have propelled someone so high in our government as if they deserve to be there when he did not do the work to get there. But it's like just to erase the progress that we had made. Yeah, because we were getting a little cocky. You know what I mean? Like we were like, we've got a black president. Like Mindy Kaling has a show. Like Beyonce is singing about feminism.

You know what I mean? Like pleaded font khakis are kind of on the outs. Like we were getting cocky about our progress. And then it was like, oh, yeah. And then we got the big Confederate statue in the Oval Office. Yeah, it's like a reminder. And also, a lot of those Confederate statues are, like, legit cheap. Like, they were, like, mass produced.

Oh, yeah, they're garbage. They're garbage. Like, some of them are, like, when you see them torn down, it Oh yeah, they're garbage. And they're garbage. Like some of them are like when you see them torn down it's like why is it so easy to tear down? It's like actually protesters haven't done

as much damage as the rain. I'll close only by saying that I went to Walt's Whitman Elementary School which is named after a gay nurse and poet and I feel very lucky

about that. Wow. When we come back, the rant wheel. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. Now for the rant wheel. You know how it works. We spin the wheel.

We rant about whatever it lands on. That's how it works. This week on the. We rant about whatever it lands on. That's how it works. This week on the wheel, we have Fascination with Royals, the Suicide Squad sequel, All Food is Bland, that was a wreck from the panel, Taking Uber and Lyft in NYC, we have

The End of Summer, Equifax, I hope it lands there, the New York City Subways, Equifax. I hope it lands there. The New York City subways, an audience suggestion. Now, this is an exciting day for the Rand Wheel because you guys can see it, but we cannot. And so when it lands, you're going to tell us professionally. Let's spin the wheel. Let's spin the wheel.

It has landed on Equifax. How many of you saw this story in the past day or two? So they have lost the data. Well, they have been breached, and there's been a compromise of about 147, 143 million customers. We're not Equifax customers. None of us ever went to the Equifax store and said, here, take our private information and then put it under a trash can lid and hope nobody knocks it the fuck over. Assholes.

So Equifax is one of the three companies that maintains huge huge reservoirs of data data that determines if we can buy houses and open credit cards and sort of function in the economy and oh if you made a mistake on a payment a few years ago they'll remember you know they have long memories over there at Equifax and they're a publicly traded business they call themselves agencies but they're a fucking traded business. They call themselves agencies, but they're a fucking business. And they were insecure. They left us all exposed.

And what happens? Well, all the data leaks and then their executives sell some stock and then they let us know. I don't think that's great. And then they say, we've been very bad about holding your very sensitive information private. The information that it's our job to keep secret.

We are at the heart of the protection of data in the global economy and we fucked up. But go to our website and put in your social security number right now and you can find out if we lost your data. Oh, oops. Actually, when you fill that out, you will not find that out. But you will have signed up for binding arbitration, which means that you can't be part of a class action lawsuit which the attorney general of new york is not tolerating which i think is very cool you know i i'm not an expert in data security i don't know if you guys know that about me. But it is, I think, part of a larger problem of consumers not having power. I mean, that is the truth of it, that these big, whether it's airlines or cable companies or phone

companies or these rating agencies, they have so much sway. You know, one of the things that's happening right now is, as always, Republicans are attempting to undo the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's this quiet fight that's always going on. And Elizabeth Warren tweeted out the importance of protecting this bureau because at a time in which we feel as though we are beholden to these giant entities, that we have no control over our information, we have no control over our privacy, we're all checking yes on a box that has a fucking 15-page contract not one person in this room has ever read. How many people in this room have read an end-user license

agreement? Don't raise your hand, you nerd. I read the end-user license agreement. Do you sign them? You sign them, don't you? You read them, discover that they're disgusting and you shouldn't sign them, but then you do it anyway. So you're not like a better person. You just waste more of your own time. I read the end user license agreement. It has

not changed my behavior at all. I'm just late to events. Yeah. Not going to raise your hand so fast next time, are you? Fuck Equifax. Fuck these things. And by the way, one other thing is, they're offering a year of protection. They have given up all of us. We are all vulnerable. Every person in this room with a credit card is currently vulnerable. So it's not going to take a year.

It's going to take a long time. And I think we have to ask the question of, what exactly does it take for a company to get the death penalty? How much data has to be lost before they die? And I think if a company says, we're in charge of all the information, and then they fail to protect it properly,

there should be a big red button we press, and that company goes away. I don't know who's in charge of the button. There's some constitutional issues around the button. There's probably going to have to be a trial before the button is pressed. And it's not actually killing any people. If that wasn't clear, it's like, you know, corporations

aren't people, you know, so they'll get the death penalty, which really just means somebody signs a thing and then, I don't know, a stock price, it goes unlisted, which is less satisfying. End of rant. Let's spin it again. Devin Nunes. You know what?

That'll be a fun one to end on. Devin Nunes, he's too stupid to be in Congress. So Devin Nunes is the head of the Intel Committee, although he's stepped aside and said he won't be involved. And then, of course, maybe he forgot he said that and then puts out a letter basically threatening DOJ for not releasing information on... If you're going to try to be an insider who is inside the Intelligence Committee

helping Donald Trump avoid the worst consequences of his cronies and goons and the decisions he made. You have to be pretty smart and sophisticated. And time and time again, Devin Nunes keeps just stepping on a rake. Devin Nunes. He always looks like somebody whispered in his ear five seconds before, I slept with your wife. I'm doing it now.

It's just like right before he goes up there, right before he goes there, like one of his aides just leans over and goes, I slept with your wife. And he goes, I gotta, it's like this. I'm doing the face. But he's trying to pretend that that didn't happen.

Like he's like, it's also a little bit like, I heard that wrong. So it's more like... It's great to do fake stuff in a podcast. Do you guys have anything you want to talk about? Anything you want to plug? I'm working on being a better listener, a better friend. All around better person.

Follow me on Twitter. Follow him on Twitter. Follow Jaboukie on Twitter. He's really funny. What's your handle? At Jaboukie. At Jaboukie. J-A-B-O-U-K-I-E.

Nagin, what do you got? You guys should totally subscribe to Fake the Nation. They say if you like, love it or leave it, y'all love Fake the Nation they say that all the time I say it political comedy podcast, so you guys would like it and also buy my book How to Make White People Laugh

and follow me on the Twitters I'm still trying to figure it out honestly how do I make white people laugh nah, I've cracked it is this here? yes, I've cracked it. So, Shira? Yes, I have a special called Pizza Mind. It's on CISO,

and the audio's on iTunes and Spotify and other places you can listen to things. And I do shows all over. I try to tweet about it. My Twitter is at the Sheer Truth, T-H-E, sheertruth. It's also my Instagram. I have awesome pictures, so you can check those out. Your fans could be sheertruthers.

Whoa, I never thought about that. That's fun. That's kind of fun. Do you guys want to be the sheertruthers? That's cool. Let's give it up for Nagin Farsad, Jaboukie Young-White, Shashir Zamata. This was so fun.

Thank you guys so much. Thank you. That was great. Thank you. Straight shooter Levé Olivier, levé Olivier Straight on the side