No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - January 6 Committee lawyers deal courtroom blow to Trump

Episode Date: March 6, 2022

Trump gets bad news in court courtesy of the January 6 Committee lawyers, and the Republicans who supported Putin backpedal now that the whole world has turned against him. Brian interviews former Obama spokesman and host of Pod Save America and Pod Save the World, Tommy Vietor, about the Ukrainians' surprisingly strong showing against the Russians, the prospect of Russian citizens rising up against Putin at home, and his response to Tucker Carlson and Trump for parroting pro-Putin propaganda in the US. And Bernie Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir joins to discuss companies taking in record profits while hiding their higher prices behind the pretense of inflation and how Democrats should be driving the economics narrative on the campaign trail.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we're going to talk about Trump getting some bad news in court, courtesy of the January 6th committee lawyers, and how the Republicans who supported Putin are backpedaling now that the whole world has turned against him. I interview former Obama spokesman and host of Pod Save America and Pod Save the World, Tommy Vitor, about the Ukrainian surprisingly strong showing against the Russians, the prospect of Russian citizens rising up against Putin at home, and his response to Tucker Carlson and Trump for parroting pro-Putan propaganda in the U.S. And Bernie Sanders' advisor Faz Shakir joins to discuss companies.

raking in record profits while hiding their higher prices behind the pretense of inflation and how the Democrats should be driving the economics narrative home on the campaign trail. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So I do want to dig into the war in Ukraine, but first, some big news out of the January 6th committee as part of a civil court filing, the committee's lawyers revealed for the first time that they have evidence demonstrating that Trump and others could be charged with criminal violations, including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

The filing included information from over 550 interviews with government officials. One of those interviews was with Trump's senior campaign advisor, that's Jason Miller, and he revealed that Trump had been told shortly after Election Day by a campaign data expert that he was going to lose to Joe Biden, meaning Trump knew his claims of a stolen election were bullshit all along. In other words, he was made well aware of the facts beforehand, and yet chose to to lie for months on end because, you know, he was just trying to defraud the American people. Now, just to work clear, the January 6th committee is legislative. It can't charge Trump, but it can make a criminal referral to the DOJ. Whether Merrick Garland will actually do anything

with that remains to be seen. Like, I'll reserve my judgment on Garland because, I mean, you have half the people out here begging for patience and assuring us that he's working diligently behind the scenes. And then you have the other half saying that he's too feckless to do anything and he'll just be the reason why. Trump claims he's completely and totally exonerated. At this point, I don't know which one it is, so I'll just have some patience because, yeah, I have no other choice but to have some patience. So look, just to set expectations here, we didn't get him, but it's at least evidence that the January 6th committee is taking this seriously and building a strong case. Whether everyone else

down the line, meaning the DOJ and Merrick Arland, will do their duties, remains to be seen. But if you're looking for some accountability, as elusive as it's been, this is at least a step in the right direction. Okay. So as for Russia and Ukraine, we're now a little over a week into Putin's invasion. I'll talk to Tommy shortly about how things are looking over there, and he is definitely way more of an authority on this stuff than I am. But I want to focus how things are progressing here at home, specifically with those Republicans who'd put themselves out there parroting pro-Pooten talking points, only to watch their guy turn around and become the biggest villain in the world. I'm sure by now you've heard people like Tucker Carlson and Trump's effusive praise of Vladimir Putin

with Trump calling him a genius and savvy and Tucker pretending that Ukraine, a democracy, is the same as Russia and autocracy that's descended into a totalitarian state. Well, turns out that putting their chips in the Putin's good basket five minutes before Putin launched a war against a sovereign country wasn't the best move. So now comes the overcorrection. Now we've got Tucker and Trump both decrying the horrors of what Putin's doing. But here's the thing. They knew who Putin was. They knew he was a brutal autocrat.

Everyone knows he's a brutal autocrat. How many countries do you have to invade before you lose plausible deniability about being a tyrant? How many political opponents do you have to arrest? How many people do you have to poison with polonium? But they knew, rightfully, that Putin was still obscure enough to Americans

that the vast majority of people here wouldn't know. Or they wouldn't care. Like Putin flew just low enough below the radar that Trump and Tucker and the rest of these Republicans could run with their Putin apology tour and still get away with it. It was only when Putin exposed himself as exactly the man we all knew him to be by invading Europe's biggest country in the age of social media, that the optics finally got so bad that these guys had to suddenly pretend that they had no idea this was coming and they

had no choice but to change their minds about Putin. Like, give me a break. Nothing about Vladimir Putin changed. He is the same guy that he always was. The only thing that changed is that Americans realized that. and it became untenable for these Republicans to continue carrying water for the world's most hated tyrant. And that's what I hope people realize. The Trumps and Putin's of the world are on the same team. If there's any distancing happening right now, it's not because they have

any irreconcilable differences. It's not because their ideologies are divergent. It's just because the optics were bad. That's all. I said this on last week's episode, and I'll say it again now. This is what far-right authoritarianism looks like, whether it's in the form of a warm mongering tyrant invading a sovereign country, or a malignant narcissist right here at home whose life's goal is to convince his own supporters to believe a lie for the purpose of undermining trust in a free and fair election, they are two sides of the same coin. If you are rightfully scared about what's happening in Europe, then I hope you can recognize that same danger when it's right here on our own doorstep.

Next step is my interview with former Obama administration spokesman Tommy Vitor. Today we have the host of Pod Save America and Pod Save the World, Tommy Vitor. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks, man. Good to see you again. So as of now, it looks like Ukraine has put up way more of a fight than anyone expected. Then again, you know, I know just like anybody else that my perception is colored by what I see on social media and people want to see Ukraine win.

So I'm sure there's a ton of confirmation bias happening right now. What's your objective view of this whole thing? And are you as confident that Ukraine's in a decent position here as the media is making it out to be? I think it's sort of two parts. One, I mean, the Russian invasion didn't start a week ago. It actually started in 2014 when they invaded Crimea and they invaded some eastern parts of Ukraine. So the Ukrainian government has been preparing ever since that day to better professionalize their military. And frankly, it radicalized a lot of the people in Ukraine who decided that, you know, they were not going to be occupied and invaded and they were going to fight back. And so the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian people have shown extraordinary courage. I mean, it's, it's, It's mind-boggling. It's overwhelming to watch the courage in the fight these men and women have put up. And President Zelensky has got to be one of the bravest leaders I can recall in memory.

I mean, it is clear that he does not care whether he lives or dies. And he is acting accordingly. And when you see someone put themselves out like that, like it's hard not to be inspired. Now, on top of that, what it seems happened was Vladimir Putin's military decided to try to break off small pieces of their army that were mobile, race them towards the capital in hopes that they could get Zelensky to surrender the Ukrainian army to sort of give up its arms and end the war before it started and maybe outpace Western sanctions or prevent them from happening. That was a massive miscalculation on their part. The Ukrainian people are fighting back. Their army doesn't

appear to be as capable as the Russians might have thought it would. And so that's why we've seen this shocking result over the first week. It's important to note, though, that the vast majority of Russia's military hardware has not been involved in the fight, and those units are slowly making their way towards cities, and when they get there, they will likely start to use increasingly brutal tactics, indiscriminate bombing, massive weapons that have no business in an urban military theater against, you know, civilian targets. So it's going to get a lot worse would be my expectation. I mean, we're hearing about a ton of different countries, a ton of our allies around the world who are sending in supplies and weapons and whatnot. Do you think that

those are going to have any mitigating impact when Russia's, you know, real lethal weapons start to make their way into Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, look, it's really just a question of logistics. It's a question of how fast can these weapons get there, how much, how much ammo, how much communications equipment, how many sort of advanced pieces of weaponry like anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles, the Ukrainian military members have left, and how long is this fight? You know, I mean, the challenging thing for Russia, I mean, if you think about the war in Afghanistan, one of the reasons that war was unwinnable for 20 years is because there was a border between Afghanistan and Pakistan where members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban could move back and forth

and they could get resupplied. That will be the case in Ukraine because the Russians can try to occupy Ukraine, but is a massive country geographically that borders several NATO states and also has a sea border. So there will be ways to resupply the Ukrainian resistance or the Ukrainian military for as long as they are fighting. But it's just a question of how quickly you can get those arms there. Now, you know, I'd mention that our perceptions are colored by social media, but by the same token, I'm sure the Russian people are consuming news that's colored by, you know, their own sources, is there any indication that the Russian population more broadly is for or against this? Like, do they think that this is a noble pursuit or that somehow the U.S. is at fault

here, that Russia is just defending itself? Or, you know, they've mentioned that this is all a campaign to fight back against neo-Nazis. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating to talk about the sort of information warfare piece of this. Ukraine is certainly won the information war in the West and within Ukraine itself. No one believes that Vladimir Putin is going in to denotify Ukraine. Ukrainian people don't want... Against the president of a country whose own family came from, you know, Holocaust victims. Yeah, I mean, right. Right. Zelensky, one of the only Jewish presidents in the world is probably not a Nazi. No one believes that it's nonsense. There's also, you know, there are these inspiring little clips and vignettes of Ukrainian battlefield successes on

the internet that I think are inspiring the Ukrainian people and really like helping with their resolve. The question is whether those are representative of how the broader military effort is going. And I suspect that they are not. And that, you know, both sides are taking heavy casualties. But ultimately, it's a numbers game and the Russians have a lot more numbers. There have been sort of steady, relatively small, but steady protests in Russia every day. You know, Russia is not China. There's not a great firewall. There's not some, you know, a government entity. locking the Russian people from getting news. That said, the Russians are slowly and methodically shutting down or silencing and have

been for many decades, frankly, any independent news media members, and their state TV pushes the propaganda line for a living. And so, you know, it's really hard to assess what kind of information the average Russian is getting. You know, if you're young, urban, living in a city, you're online. you're going on, you can go to nwitimes.com. It's just a question if you are. If you're part of Putin's base, you're older,

you live in a more rural area, you're probably watching state TV or radio. No, to that point is the way to end all of this for the Russian people to like rise up and take to the streets? Like not to get philosophical, but isn't Putin only powerful insofar as people recognize his power? And so as soon as people rise up against him,

like he loses that power because no one's immune to pressure? I mean, I think there's some truth to that. I mean, my concern is this, that Vladimir Putin has defined himself as this strong man who's all powerful, who's, you know, representing a rising reemergent Russia on the world scene, and that he might view any capitulation, any sign of weakness as an existential problem for him personally in that, you know, maybe it would lead to a coup, maybe it would lead to some general trying to push him out or off him. Right. And so I do worry that, you know, Putin is. going to grind this war out and fight to a bitter end, even if he takes serious losses, unless there is some sort of domestic pressure that forces him to stop. Because I do take Joe Biden at his word that he doesn't want the U.S. or NATO to get involved because that would

literally constitute World War III. And there's a huge downside risk. Do you think that that pressure among Russians is going to rise, like as people start to feel more squeezed as inflation skyrockets and the ruble becomes more worthless and their wealth is wiped out in the market and so on? That's the single most important question. It seemed early on that Vladimir Putin was trying to hide this war effort, not only from his own troops, but from the Russian people. That's not a choice anymore. They're watching their economy crater. They are losing their ability to travel abroad. They are losing their access to international markets. You're going to feel this if you're an average Russian. The question always becomes, okay, do the people getting hurt

blame it on the government or do they blame it on the West? And I just never know how this is going to go. On top of that, I mean, Putin has made suppression of speech. It's an art form for him, you know, that he is his shock troops out in the street beating the shit out of people probably as we speak or who are, you know, showing dissent. So that's always the question is like, will there be a spark that leads to enough people having enough courage at the same time to hit the streets. Yeah. You know, I know you'd mentioned the prospect of a nuclear war. How do you think that legacy media is taking this?

Like, I know you responded to on Twitter to a really glib suggestion from a reporter that our options are basically just sitting with our thumbs up our asses or dropping nukes and nothing in between. And yet, like, we're seeing right now that if the world is unified, that economic war can have really devastating impacts for an invading country? Yeah, look, I feel a little bit bad that I picked on that reporter. But like, you know, there is sometimes in foreign policy reporting this suggestion that like either you respond to something militarily or you're doing nothing.

And like you just said, I mean, the sanctions that Joe Biden and the Europeans have put in place on Russia go so far beyond anything I ever could have expected that it is economic warfare. I mean, these sanctions will crater the Russian economy, full stop. And so that is an enormous lever that the West is using against this Russian intervention. So I do hope, like, we can get past this false choice and this debate that I saw in Afghanistan and Syria and Iraq and so many other times that either the U.S. intervenes militarily or it's doing nothing. Because, frankly, I saw the U.S. intervene in a lot of places during my time in the Obama administration, like Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. and, you know, there are our second, third, fourth order consequences.

And sometimes we can do more harm than good. And we should just be honest about that. I mean, you know, we're coming off of a 20-year war that the second it ended, basically reverted right back to where they were before we got there. So, you know, I think that should kind of underscore how, how, like, this approach isn't necessarily like the end-all, be-all, where it's just, like, drop bombs and then we'll win, you know? That's right.

Yeah. Like, it is, the U.S. military is the, the, most lethal fighting force in the history of the world. But there was always something that comes after that narrow military victory. And that's the hard part. And there's sort of like a political reconciliation that needs to happen here. Now, Russia seems to be holding its own for now. But like, it's still evident that the rest of the world isn't willing to engage in a direct conflict with Russia. You just mentioned like not wanting to basically, you know, start World War III, engage with another nuclear power. Do you think that there's a chance that China sees the world's

restraint in the face of such blatant aggression by Russia and like takes that as tacit permission to go into Taiwan, for example, or some other territory that it views as their own, knowing that they're basically going to have a free runway to do so. I mean, there might be economic sanctions, but there's not going to be any military action by the West. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a good question. It's a hard one to answer. I mean, I do think that there's a good chance that the Chinese look at what's happening to the Russians economically. And they think, oh, wow, the world actually has a lot more guts and is willing to take a lot harder actions than we anticipated. So that might raise the cost of an annexation.

With that said, though, I mean, Russia is not China. And like, it's easy to kind of cut Russia out of the world order because they don't make anything. I mean, China, so many of, so much of the world is like predicated on Chinese manufacturing. I mean, it's intertwined in a way that no other country on the planet is. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, look, we get a lot of stuff in China. Our supply chains are way too dependent on China. I think we learned that during the pandemic. There's a lot of risks there that could come from sort of a decoupling of our economy and the Chinese economy. That said, there's a lot of risk that could come from Europe if they decoupled their economy from Russia's because they are so dependent on Russia

for oil and gas. And it's like, you know, literally freezing in the middle of winter in someplace like Poland. And all of a sudden, your gas, natural gas prices could double or triple if, you know, they didn't go the wrong direction. So it's like you're in Texas, you know? Yeah, exactly. But yeah, like seeing these countries make a lot of tough choices. And so I don't know, I'd be kind of heartened by the willingness of global leaders to take hard choices in the face of, you know, a madman. What it says to China in terms of Taiwan, I don't know. But, you know, like Taiwan is the place where all these, you know, advanced processors are made that power all of our computers, all of our smartphones, all of our cars. And if you had a war that looked like what we're seeing in Ukraine in Taiwan, it would. would set the world back young. It's just something to be mindful of. Also something to be mindful of is the fact that Democrats introduced the America Competes Act bringing the domestic semiconductor chip industry here.

And one Republican voted for it. That was Adam Kinzinger. Every other Republican voted against funding the domestic semiconductor chip industry. I would be a good idea that we might want to get on. Yeah. You know, back home, we've seen people like Trump and Tucker Carlson really lead the pro-Putin ranks here in this country. Do you think that that pushes anyone on the right away, or is it just like everything else where

their values are so malleable that Trump just says something and then suddenly that becomes their new guiding principle? You know, that's a really great question. I was thinking about that today. I mean, it is just staggering to think that a week ago, Tucker Carlson was, you know, asking aloud to his audience, why do I dislike Putin? What's the problem with Putin? It is mind-boggling that a couple weeks ago, Donald Trump was suggesting that this invasion

by Putin of Ukraine was smart and that he was getting, you know, a country on the cheap. I think that those comments look so disgusting in light of what's happened a week later that I'm hopeful that they will repulse people. I mean, there have been global, there have been bigger polls done since the invasion about like sort of Putin's approval, what people think of the intervention. And the country is overwhelmingly anti-Pooten. They're overwhelmingly opposed to what he's doing in Ukraine. And this glib crap from Tucker Carlson or Trump, I really don't think has played well.

The last thing here, that's during Biden's State of the Union. We heard Lauren Bobert heckle the president while he was in the middle of talking about burn pits and also his son who just passed away. Is there anything that'll ever be too far? Or is the Overton window just like on a perpetual sprint to the right? with no end in sight. I know, man, I hate it. It's like the members of Congress

just get dumber every year and people are willing to do more outlandish, disgraceful things to get attention. And the problem is, like, the minute they did that little shouting bit, they won because it got covered.

It became a thing that people focused on, whether you're forward them or against them. They fundraise off it. They raise money off it. They are backbench, powerless, lame members of Congress who we've only heard of because they do these disgraceful things. We live in this world now where there's so many incentives to just act in the worst way possible, whether you're an elected official or, you know, like one of the Paul

brothers walking around some forests in Japan and like all of these disgusting things get rewarded. I have no idea what to do with that. But it's a huge problem. One problem. One major issue at a time. Anyway, Tommy, thank you for taking the time. Thanks, Brian. I really appreciate it. I love, I thought you only interview presidents now, but I'm glad you still let, please let me on. Thanks again to Tommy. Now we've got advisor to Bernie Sanders and founder of more perfect union, Fas Shakir. Thanks so much for coming on. Hey, thank you, Brian, for the invitation. And congratulations with everything you're doing. Thank you. So let's jump into the economic stuff. Despite a relatively strong economy right now and good economic indicators, the right has pretty much seized on the

issue of inflation as a way to attack Democrats and basically to prevent them from passing any spending. But in terms of the high prices, can you speak to the role that corporations have played in all of this? You know, it doesn't have to be me on this question. Brian, you just got to listen to the CEOs of America. And it could be the CEO of any big corporation, whether it's 3M, Procter and Gamble, you know, Kimberly Clark, even today, Costco. Everyone is reporting record profits. Everyone down the line is saying that their bottom line is growing. They're making more money than ever.

And this obviously comes out of the pandemic. So how's that happening, Brian? And why isn't it, why aren't people talking about that as a, as the reason for the inflation driver? And there's this, you know, it's crazy, but we have, it shows you the dimensions of economic conversation in America where a ruling, you know, class, of corporate class, a corporate media, they want to share a certain narrative about why inflation is going up and they put that blame on Joe Biden. They say, hey, you know, he put too much money in people's pockets.

That's the problem. He created demand. Yeah, well, you know, flip that on its head. What did people do? Would they have more money to spend? What happened? Corporations came and stole it. That's what's happening. They said, hey, you got money to spend? Guess what? Price for everything just went up. And we're going to take more from you. That's what's going on, Brian. while just tacking on, you know, this convenient narrative where where there's inflation so they're going like, oh, yeah, you know what? There is inflation. And meanwhile, we're going to raise prices on X, Y, and Z.

You say it's an important thing, Brian, because, like, you know, people want to make this an economic debate and they say, oh, look at the supply and demand curves. And yes, that's a good theory. And that's right. There's supply demand curves and that tells you generally where price points should lie. However, there's also people as human beings who have business psychology and they make decisions around that. So they might look at where the price point should be, but they say,

say, you know what? There's people worried about inflation out there. They think that prices are going to go higher. So yeah, we could raise, you know, due to our transportation costs and our labor costs, we could raise the bag of potato chips by 25 cents and probably make ends meet. But these people, they think there's inflation going on. So they use psychologists and say, hey, you know what, you can raise it 75 cents. How about that? And make even more profit. And that's what's going on. You know, something I think is ironic about that is Facebook has actually been fact checking this exact claim. Like my own Facebook page was hit with a fact check, which has consequences, by the way, in terms of my general reach, because I posted...

Not alone. I got that too. Yeah. I mean, I posted an image showing the very simple correlation between companies, raising prices, and those same companies making record profits. And the fact checkers claim that the post was misleading because actually those things clearly can't be correlated. I mean, to be honest, right, like, there are other factors for inflation. It is fair to say that, you know, the Federal Reserve, putting money into the economy, sure, that's one. Biden certainly creating demand by putting money in people's pockets. Sure. Was there supply chain shortage?

Was there labor shortage? Of course, of course, all true. However, also true is that corporations are seizing this moment of increased prices due to serious, you know, challenges in the economy to say, hey, I'll go further. I'll go higher. And I think that the point there, Brian, is that changes whether we are seeing record inflation or general increase in inflation. I think we could be living in an inflation environment where the inflation is three to four percent, right? And Biden would not be getting raked over the coals if it were three to four percent. Right.

Right. But if it's seven or eight percent, if it's a record, what accounts for that delta? And they'll make you feel like, oh, that delta is because of either progressive policies, which is the most heinous thing that's going on, right? The corporate class, say, hey, you put money into people's pockets. That's why. Don't never do that again. Or, you know, they'll say, you know, for the economist class, oh, it's,

It must have been some, you know, transportation and supply chain shortage. Those challenges don't answer why corporations are making record profits, not just profits, record profits. Right. And again, I mean, you alluded to this right when we began talking about it, but like, the answer is right there in the numbers. You can't have record profits and then still point to inflation accounting for all of these price raises.

And I've got become a little bit of a Wall Street Journal and CNBC junkie over this past period of time because it gives you a different insight. If you put aside political coverage, watch this, watch it. And you just look at their quotes, right? And just look at what they're telling you. And they use the business speak. Price elasticity is our historic lows. What does that mean? That when they raise

the price, the demand is still staying there. So if you're a CEO, they're saying, hey, price elasticity is so low here at PepsiCo or Walmart or Costco or Coca-Cola, wherever this large corporation, that's what they're experiencing, Kellogg's, Nabisco, all of them. And so they say, okay, price elasticity

are historical lows and prices are going up, we can just grab it up even further. And people are accepting it. That's what they're saying. Even Warren Buffett use that language, that people are just accepting a price increases until they are not. And I think that that's what we're trying to generate. As people have power here, you can speak up, you can fight corporations who decide that they just want arbitrarily jack up prices on you. Well, I mean, that's the question, right? So what is the answer? And I know this is an impossible question, but what's the answer? Is it just to kind of put this stuff out so that people at least know, you know, because, you know, the fact is that, like, if everybody is raising their prices, we can't stop eating. We can't stop,

you know. That's what they're counting on. And in a world of greater corporate concentration, you know, it becomes harder to battle them. But I do think there's a power in publicly dragging these people and making people aware of what corporations are doing to you. In the one instance, I think that you and I know well is that, you know, the White House and many of us raise the concerns around the meat packing industry and the fact that prices were going up for meat and that there's obviously a heavy amount of concentration 80% of meat and America comes from just only four companies and we talked about that in the White House raised that when what happened in the next quarter after we raised that meat prices went down how this happened we are so suddenly

went down they saw that hey you know we're raising concerns that if if we could get dragged even further if beat prices continue to go up because people have noticed and observe what we're doing. I think that's the point is we're trying to make people as consumers more aware of their power, chop locally. Don't blame labor. Don't blame the workers. We know that you're making decisions about this. So I think that's one element, but on the policy lens, I would also love to see an administration also flex on that they've done an FTC investigation into big oil, which is great in the rising gas prices. I think I'd love to see continued efforts, whether it's at the CFPB, FTC, what the White House National Economic Council can do, to just say, we have observed

this, and we're going after you. It could obviously be a version of investigations just about the decisions they're making to raise price, whether they're colluding with each other or not, but then there also should be on the table efforts to, over the long haul, increase more competition in our economy, reduce monopolization, and also have greater taxation of corporations. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Now, you serve as an advisor to Bernie Sanders, who is relentlessly on message with regard to economic issues. There's also the issue of opposing Republicans in their whole anti-democracy platform.

How do you think Democrats should approach these two issues as we head into midterms if we've got limited bandwidth and are trying to make the case to the American people? I mean, ultimately, if you want to win an election, right, let's put on political hats for a moment and leave policy aside for a second. I think we want to win elections here. And I think that there is a very powerful feel by people that the corporate class that did extremely well during the pandemic. I mean, a number of billionaires went up. Everyone who was very wealthy saw their stock market gains go increasingly higher and higher.

And I think there's a lot of anger and frustration out there. And the good news about that, Brian, is that there are people standing up and doing something about it, whether they're the Starbucks workers or workers all over the country who are either quitting jobs and say, I'm going to go get a better job or a higher paying job elsewhere. a result, the bottom half of America is actually seeing wage gains, even accounting for inflation, it's still seeing wage gains, which is good. So I think that there's churn out there of an awakening of a conscience, of a people feeling they have power to do something about it.

But now as a political leader, somebody running for office, you've got to speak to it. You got to associate yourself with it. So first thing I'd say to a lot of people is, A, you know, go stand with some of these workers who are taking matters in their own hands and saying, I'm going to change the conditions in which I work or call out my bosses for not treating me right, stand with those workers. Then find ways to galvanize this argument that the corporate class needs to have some degree of accountability over it. And the Democrats are the party of government. Ultimately, when people, what do people expect of the Democratic Party? Your label is that you believe that government can

work for people. And what that means is that you're a check and accountability on business. And they're going expect you to play the role that they want you to play. You're crushing business. You're just holding them accountable. And I think you've got to come forward with an agenda that says, here are the various ways we anticipate holding business accountable. Now, we are a year into Biden's presidency right now. How would you rate his performance? And what would you like to see from him moving forward? I mean, so he started off with like a ball of fire. There's a reason for that, right? Over the first three, four months, his poll numbers actually went up. We passed the American Rescue planned things were going in the right direction. And I think he got hit over the course of July,

August, with some calamities not of his own making, and then some calamities, you know, that just befell them. But like the three that come to my mind, Brian, during that period of time, in July, August, September, when he saw the pull number start to move down and haven't really fully recovered ever since. The Afghanistan was one. Obviously, it was a difficult in the context of how to handle it. I support that decision 100%. But obviously, just to like, just to, just to butt in here. The thing that blows my mind with Afghanistan is they are doing the exact same thing as Benghazi. Like, we are right now contending with 2,000 Americans dying every single day. They find 13 people who tragically died, but tragically, no doubt, and have extrapolated this

to make it like into the worst catastrophe that America has ever seen in exactly the same way that four people dying in Benghazi also tragic, but it's four people dying in Benghazi. And like after a 20-year war that was the making of a number of presidents and everybody still clings onto this thing and the media focuses on it. Like it's, you know, again, like it's the biggest, like, it's the biggest disaster in American history. To add to that, Brian, leadership is about making hard decision. If it was easy, like everyone could do it. The hard ones are the ones you get the big box for right now. That's what you're paying. And getting out of Afghanistan, incredibly hard to say it, incredibly hard to execute. They were going to rake them over the calls for it. He made

the right decision, lean into it. But yeah, he had the fallout of what was a difficult exit out of there. But I'm glad that he started that process and got us out of there. The second was obviously the mass mandate, vaccine, all that stuff in that milieu, I think, was we could dive into that. But that was one. And then the big one, obviously, in July, August, coming out the August recess, is Joe Manchin executing a strategic pause, a quote, unquote, strategic pause. And literally from that point, I think many people had hopes that, you know, build back forever is going to happen and boom here comes a one man and some maybe more than just him but like he was i think he put a stop to it i for that reason it is my view and i'm going to have to share but he more than

any single individual is responsible uh for the political uh struggles of Biden over his first year because by putting a stop to that um i think you know really killed a lot of the momentum that they were having and i think there's a reason that you've seen some of the state of union bounced back uh in his numbers because like people heard and saw the things that he had campaigned on, pledged to do, feel like he's still committed to them. So yes, they're going to come back, but I hope he can get it done because he's got to get through this roadblock in Joe Manchin. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I've, as an aside, I think everybody listening to this podcast knows I have the Don't Be a Mitch Fund, which I raise money for voter registration groups

across the country in states to try to, you know, nullify the voices of Joe Manchin and Kirsten cinema because, you know, these, these one or two people have really done a great job castrating the entire, not only our momentum is the party, but our legislative agenda as well. Moving over to your work as founder of More Perfect Union, by the way, I think anybody listening to this, go check them out on Twitter that's at More Perfect US. You guys do great work supporting workers as they seek to unionize. What have been the most egregious examples of union busting from these big companies that you've uncovered thus far? Oh, man. She'd fish in a barrel there, Brian. They all do it. It's just a matter of how the different

flavors of every corporation in which they do it. I mean, you have Starbucks who's a, you know, calls itself progressive company and then, you know, finds ways to progressively kill a union. So it's a, you know, they're all very heinous in the way they go about it. The classic is the captive meeting, right, where you bring people in, you make them, make workers attend management-led meeting and then propagandize to them about why unions are terrible and suck all your money away and fill their heads full of fear and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, bad information. So that's been the core of what we've seen across a lot. But then you have the even the very like awful ones where the people would just fire you, fire you like, oh, you're

organizing. Yeah, we're guess, guess what, you're out of here. Is that legal? No, it's not supposed to be, right? But the people have gotten less concerned about the penalty upon them. So if I guess, I guess if you're Starbucks and you have, you know, a 17-year-old kid who tries to lead a union drive like that that's a that's a that's a risk you're willing to take like what are they going to do lawyer up and take on starbucks you know well that and brian you know the right now the way the labor law works america's you fire them and then like maybe two years later they that that individual gets the back pay and maybe there's a little bit of a slap on the on the hand of of starbucks like two years later three years later it's baked into their operating costs like sure we'll

take it it's got there's got to be penalty and this is what the pro act is all about right is there's got to be harsher penalties up front and immediately for people, for a corporation who want to take those actions. So it is, I will say the other piece of this, Brian, and, you know, while I'm proud to, you know, talk about labor and the organizing is going on. And I'm glad to see that it's really picking up some steam out there. People are supportive of it. There's a political undercurrent of it. And I think for anyone who's thinking about running and winning elections, Brian, you've got to be thinking about how this relates to the moment of having a successful political message. This is, this is populace with the best sense. These are. people taking action onto themselves and generating, you know, community support for it. And I've been a little bit surprised and sad quite frankly. There hasn't been more high-level people standing out, speaking out. Because if you think about what laborers are doing, they're building in the friction that you need.

If you're going to run a campaign, there's a friction. Who do you take it on? What are you fighting for? What are you fighting against? And these workers are giving it to you. They're saying, okay, we're taking on this corporation. We're fighting over these conditions. here's the values at play. And they've done the hard work. Now, as a politician, all you got to do

is say, we get behind them. We stand with you. And I hope that more people who are listening or agitate and hope that, like, let's get some more Democrats fighting for the values that claim to stand for. That seems like a great place to end it. So FAS, thank you so much for taking the time and for the work you're doing. Again, if you're on Twitter, check out at More Perfect U.S. Thanks, Fass. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. Thanks again to FAS. Just to note, if you haven't yet listened to my interview with President Biden, just click on my show and your podcast player and give last week's episode a listen.

Okay. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.