No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Sinema pulls stunning move ahead of voting rights vote

Episode Date: January 16, 2022

Kyrsten Sinema drops a bomb on Democrats as they seek to pass voting rights legislation. Brian interviews Congressman Adam Schiff about his thoughts on Sinema’s failure to vote for filibuster reform and what other avenue we can take to protect voting rights. And MSNBC and Peacock’s Mehdi Hasan joins to discuss what the media’s role is in promoting the White House's accomplishments and how Democrats contend with the Republicans’ media ecosystem.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 Kirsten Cinema dropping a bomb on Democrats as they seek to pass voting rights legislation and where we go from here. I interview Congressman Adam Schiff about his thoughts on Cinema's failures to vote for filibuster reform and what other avenue we can take to protect voting rights. And I'm joined by MSNBC and Peacock's Medi Hassan to discuss what the media's role is in promoting the White House's accomplishments and how Democrats can contend with the Republican's media ecosystem. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie.

So if you listen to this podcast regularly, you know that all roads lead to voting rights. That issue is foundational. It's the one issue that everything else relies upon. If your thing is healthcare or climate or women's rights or workers' rights, whatever it is, it all rests on Democrats being able to be in power to actually make those changes. And so in order to pass voting rights, we need to carve out on the filibuster, meaning that all 50 Senate Democrats have to agree to that rules change. And this past week, as Joe Biden was making his way to meet with Senate Democrats about

this very issue, Kirsten Cinema took to the Senate floor and did this. And on January 6th, last year, I was standing in this very spot, speaking in this very chamber, defending Arizona's fair and valid election against disinformation when violent insurrectionists halted the presidential certification. Threats to American democracy are real. I share the concerns of civil rights. advocates and others I've heard from in recent months about these state laws. I strongly support those efforts to contest these laws in court and to invest significant resources into these states to better organize and stop efforts to restrict access at

the ballot box. And I strongly support and will continue to vote for legislative responses to address these state laws, including the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that the Senate is currently considering. I support these bills because they strengthen Americans' access to the ballot box, and they better ensure that Americans' votes are counted fairly. It is through elections that Americans make their voices heard, select their representatives, and guide the future of our countries and our community. These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease. But they do not fully address.

the disease itself. And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. The debate over the Senate 60 vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges. There's no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60 vote threshold to pass legislation. Now, I say this with as much certainty as I've ever said anything. No one has ever failed to meet the moment as spectacularly as Kirsten Cinema did. So she won't support changes to the filibuster because even though Republicans are divisively subverting democracy, we couldn't possibly do anything about it because that would be divisive.

Like she literally even outlines the importance of passing voter rights reforms. She acknowledges the threats to our very democracy, including the events of January 6th, before then undermining herself and claiming that her desire to, protect the filibuster is still more important than those voting rights reforms. As if the filibuster is what our legislators are there to defend. It is just baffling how Kirsten Sinema fashions herself this savior of democracy who transcends party politics while almost unilaterally hastening the demise of it.

Not for nothing, but if you claim to support voting rights but don't support the only way to pass them, then I'm sorry, but you don't actually support voting rights. Now, of course, if you're not purposefully burying your head in the sand, you would recognize that the filibuster is, A, not in the Constitution, and B, has been reformed over 160 times, including just last month when she herself voted for an exception to the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling. Like, she literally voted yes for a carve-out on the filibuster in December.

And yet, miraculously, there was no grandiose proclamations on the Senate floor. I guess you just save that for the one issue that's core to the existence of this country. But here's my favorite, if you're looking for more evidence of Senate. as hypocrisy, because while she lectures on how, quote, there's no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation, here she is in 2010. So what does that mean? Well, in the Senate, we no longer have 60 votes. Someone argued we never had 60 because one of those was Joseph Lieberman.

But that's, whatever. Yeah, and Nelson, too, but really, Lieberman. So now there's, I think as a president so eloquently said on Wednesday, there's none of this pressure, this false pressure to get to 60. So what that means is that the Democrats can stop cowtowing to Joe Lieberman and instead seek other avenues to move forward with health reform. And so it's likely that the Senate will move forward with a process called reconciliation, which takes only 51 votes. And by the way, it's not unusual. You may recall that before the Democrats took the Senate in 2008, that the Republicans controlled the Senate for quite some time.

in fact, since around 1994. They never had 60 votes, and they managed to do a lot of really bad things during that time. So the reconciliation process is still quite available, and we will use it for good rather than for evil. So... So I guess when she grandstands about her longstanding support for the filibuster,

that doesn't count the times when she held the exact opposite view. So cinema will continue to claim that by clinging on to the filibuster, somehow that'll help heal the divisions in this kind. country, even though the filibuster is currently intact, and there are still widening divisions in this country. Why? Because the divisions aren't born out of the filibuster. They're born out of a far-right anti-democratic party stealing power by any means necessary. They're born out of Republicans' gerrymandering districts. They're born out of Republicans passing voter suppression legislation, eliminating drop boxes and democratic population centers, closing down polling

places and minority-majority precincts, allowing Republican-led state legislatures to reorganize local elections boards. That is what's causing the division. party's refusal to acknowledge the right of the other party to exist. The elimination of the filibuster isn't a problem here. It's literally the solution. So I can promise you one thing, regardless of whatever legacy Kirsten's cinema thinks she's leaving behind, whatever institution she thinks she's defending, here's her legacy. When she had the chance to step up and defend our democracy, she sided with the people

who sought to tear it down. She deferred to platitudes and self-defeating arguments. She handed the authoritarian's the victory that they were desperate. for. And if we're able to salvage our democracy, it won't be thanks to Kierston Cinema. It'll be in spite of her. So what's next? What happens from here? Well, Schumer and the rest of the Democratic leadership are still promising to move forward with their vote on the Freedom to Vote John R. Lewis Act. That's the new bill that combines the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. So they're still promising to move forward with that and rules change on the filibuster, which

could happen on Sunday or Monday, barring a miracle that rules change will fail. And so the bill will likely go nowhere. And look, I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I hope they managed to get some type of rules change to the filibuster. May get a talking filibuster, require 40 senators to block a bill instead of 60 to advance. It's something. I don't think it will happen, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. But we may very well have that answer by the time you listen to this. So things legislatively are in flux. But look, with or without this bill passing, our job stays the same. Stay engaged, stay informed when election time rolls around you're responsible for making sure the people in your circle go and vote

like right now we focus on what we can control you know something that I found interesting is that more people are listening to this podcast now than listen during the Trump administration like we constantly hear that no one's paying attention anymore now that Trump is gone that everyone's checked out but that's not the case I have more listeners now than I did a year ago people are paying attention they understand what the stakes are

and I know this is a tiny sample I know that and my podcast listeners are not indicative of the entire population, but it's something. So look, will it be harder for people to cast ballots without federal legislation, without federal protections? Yes. Will we lose certain congressional districts because they've been gerrymandered to assure Republican victories? Yes. But we've shown up in the face of difficulty before. In Wisconsin, at the beginning of COVID, when there were no vaccines available, Republicans forced voters to show up in person for a state Supreme Court race,

thinking that it would doom the progressive candidate's chances. But the progressives ended up winning by 120,000 votes in Wisconsin, in a state where the margin is usually 30,000, meaning that when the cards are stacked against us, we've shown we can pull it off before and we can do it again. And one last way to help is to donate to the organizations that are doing the work right now to get people registered. Obviously, I have my don't be a Mitch fund. We've already raised $750,000.

You can donate to that. The link is in the episode notes. Or you can find other organizations that register voters because there are organizers out there right now replicating the strategy that flip Georgia blue. I'm not saying that you can out-organize voter suppression, but we can sure as hell try. So that's exactly what we should do. Next up is my interview with Congressman Adam Schiff. Today we've got Congressman Adam Schiff. Thanks so much for coming back on. Great to be with you. So as of this recording, Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin have both definitively shut down the Democrats' effort to create a carve-out in the

filibuster for voting rights. So is the Freedom to Vote John Lewis Act, which is the combination of the Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, is that bill dead? And do the Democrats have any other plans to safeguard the right to vote? I can't accept that it's dead because I think that would be catastrophic. And I know that the president is personally engaging on this. And we're going to have to count on the president as well as our Senate leadership to find a pathway to get that legislation through. I do not understand the opposition of cinema or mansion. It makes no sense to me. I think that they have a vision of the Senate that no longer exists as some institution in which the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, is somehow interested in working

in a bipartisan way on voting rights. That's antithetical to McConnell's entire political business model, which is disenfranchising people. They know that if more Americans vote, they lose. And so there's going to be no path to protecting voting rights as long as they can filibuster that in the Senate. So there has to be a way to overcome this. At the same time, I've been saying since the beginning of this session, we can't put all our eggs in the legislative basket. We're going to need a movement nationwide to push back against these disenfranchisement laws and determine whatever means are necessary to overcome them so that we can make sure that everybody's vote is vote and voice are heard. So we have to use a dual prong strategy. But I think the statement that

cinema released was just devastating. And I do not understand at all where she's coming from. Well, not being able to accept the fact that we might not have a legislative remedy. I mean, what would we be able to do, given that we? we don't have the votes to create any type of a carve out to the filibuster. Is there any other path, you know, either legislatively or through the executive branch that we could actually use to protect voting rights? There are other paths. I think none of them are quite as good, although the legislation itself is not a complete

answer either. And the paths are litigation. We can sue. We are suing. The Justice Department is suing to push back against the most draconian of these laws. but nonetheless, I'm having a real impact. I was talking to one of my Texas colleagues today, Joaquin Castro, and he was telling me that they're having to,

in his district where you can already apply for absentee ballots in the midterms for the primary, tens of thousands of people, a huge percentage of those applying or expressing interest in getting an absentee ballot are being refused because of these new laws. You see the very first clear indications of just what, what Republicans are trying to do and making it harder for people to vote. So there's litigation, but also what we really are going to need to do because these laws are, you know, multifarious and nefarious is we're going to have to use a multi-pronged approach.

And that is when they're trying to, for example, strip independent elections officials of their duties or drive them out of town with death threats, we're going to have to rally to the defense of these local officials, make sure that they're protected. and can do their jobs. We're going to have to make sure that we have people running for these positions, which were considered, you know, fairly non-controversial and consequential even in the fact that they weren't, you know, high profile. But they are very consequential. So we're going to have to run people for these offices, protect people who, Democrats and Republicans who are devoted to the rule of law. And we're going to have to find ways to overcome these additional hurdles to voting. This has probably been the most frustrating time for me.

You know, and I know a lot of other Democrats feel exactly the same way. And I've struggled to find words to adequately capture how insane it is to defer to the filibuster as a way to purportedly defend democracy and not voting rights, which literally are the basis of our democracy. Do you have a response to these Democratic holdouts to Joe Manchin-Cyrson-Cinnam who've put themselves on the opposite side of this thing? You know, I think you're right. It's insane.

It's insane. idea that we would elevate this rule that has a sort of past of defending, you know, Jim Crow laws, we would elevate that above protecting people's right to vote. It's absurd. What's more, you know, you can see a correlation between the increased use in the filibuster of last 10 or 20 years and increased partisanship, not bipartisanship, I'm not saying that necessarily one's the cause of the other, but they've gone hand in hand. It hasn't stopped the center from becoming a more partisan place, but it has allowed the minority to rule the Senate. And right now, that minority is killing, you know, voting rights.

Yeah, that's a great point. You've also offered the Protecting our Democracy Act, and that offers a sweeping set of reforms to root out corruption, like limiting the presidential abuses of power, strengthening the system of checks and balance. that continues to keep our country functioning, all of which obviously are essential right now. What do you expect will be the fate of this bill? And is there any way to implement the reforms, the provisions included in this bill in any other way if it doesn't pass legislatively? Well, of course, I was hoping that there would be a carve out at a minimum to the filibuster to protect democracy reforms like this one, like voting rights. If that isn't going to happen, And again, I can't accept that because that's basically saying that we're going to lose one of the most potent tools we have to protect the right to the vote.

There is still a pathway for the Protecting Our Democracy Act or elements of it. It can be taken up in pieces. As long as the job gets done, that's what I care about. Some of those pieces have been sponsored by Republicans in the past. There's no reason not to take them up now, except they live in fear of Donald Trump. And Donald Trump views this package or he potentially views this package as an indictment of his presidency. So fear is keeping them from supporting their own proposals in the past. But there is still a pathway even without filibuster reform.

I also don't think the hypocrisy of them having supported something in the past is going to stop them from failing to support it now. I'm looking at the Voting Rights Act that was passed 98 to nothing in 2006. Now you can't find a single Republican senator willing to put his or her name. on it. And with that said, with, you know, while we're on the subject of hypocrisy, Kevin McCarthy had threatened to kick you off of your committees if Republicans retake the House in this next midterm cycle. What's your response to that? A couple things. McCarthy understands that I, you know, probably more than just about anybody else in the House, held a former president to account for his corruption and his misconduct. And so he's doing Trump's bidding. But he's also a very weak

Republican leader, which means that he's beholden to the craziest components of his conference. And so he is also responding to the Marjorie Taylor Greens who are demanding retribution for her removal from her committee. And so he's catering to the lowest common denominator. And, you know, look, quite apart from his threats against me, a far greater significance is the reality that if he were to become speaker, he will vote to overturn the next presidential election if Trump loses. After all, he supported overturning the last one. And this time he could succeed, which is just why he can never be allowed to become speaker. But when you brought up, you know, speaking of hypocrisy, let's talk about Ken McCarthy, I was thinking about the fact that earlier this

year, or earlier last year, rather, he said that he would definitely speak to the January 6th committee. And of course, now he is singing a very different tune. Yeah, and I think that speaks volumes onto itself. Now, we did see Republicans in a number of states in Pennsylvania, and I believe six other states that Joe Biden won in November that tried to cast a separate slate of electors for Trump. And that issue has largely been ignored. I think now it's finally coming to the forefront.

do you expect to see any accountability for this you know there really needs to be accountability and of course we're investigating all these things on the january 6th committee but it's important that the justice department be looking into these things uh you know when i watched merrick garland last week i was so proud that we have a person of integrity again running the justice department after four disastrous years of bill bar and jeff sessions and matt whittaker i mean it was just a cast of horribles um but at the same time while he talked about accountability over January 6th and included people who were not there and pledged to follow the evidence wherever it leads. He didn't talk about all of the other lines of

effort to overturn the election, which involved the former president, for example, trying to coerce the Secretary of State in Georgia to find 11,780 votes that don't exist, but also may include forged certificates of electors or other efforts. that may have violated the criminal laws. And so I think all of those things need to be investigated where there are serious allegations of impropriety by the Justice Department, not just by Congress. And one thing I do want to clarify

because I hear a lot of misapprehension about this in the press and elsewhere, the Justice Department is not waiting for us to make a referral. They cannot wait for us to make a referral. And what's more, they don't view it as their responsibility or their job to wait on Congress. So they should be doing it now, independent of anything we're doing. So with that said, I mean, what is actually the job of the January 6th committee?

Is it to help lay out the investigation, help lay out the facts that the Justice Department could then use if they need to, but the Justice Department will then, will regardless continue to move forward with their own investigation? Do they work not necessarily in tandem, but just complementary to each other? Our responsibility is to fully oversee the facts, report the facts, and legislate in a way that protects the country going forward. So we don't have another effort to overturn a presidential election. We don't have another violent attack on the Capitol. So our role is predominantly oversight and legislation.

Our role is not prosecution. Now, it may very well be that facts that we discover are going to be important to the the Justice Department. But it shouldn't be the case, and it must not be the case, that the Justice Department is somehow waiting on us. You know, we're looking into, for example, the facts of the attack itself, the role of these white nationalist groups. The Justice Department just indicted a bunch of people for a seditious conspiracy. They didn't wait for us to finish our investigation to do that. And so if others were involved in that seditious conspiracy, higher-ups were involved, they should be investigating it. But they should also be investigating

other lines of effort that may have also violated the law to overturn the election. Now, for most of us out here on the outside who don't have legal backgrounds, you know, we look at this investigation and we see stuff like the fact that Donald Trump was caught on a recording asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,780 votes, exactly one more vote than he lost by. And it's been a year and we still haven't seen any accountability for those up top. And like you just mentioned, you know, we are seeing our first edition charges for members of the oathkeepers. But is the process moving at a rate that you would expect it to move at? Because, you know, for the rest of us, we see this stuff and it's been so long. And the fact

that there hasn't been any accountability leads people to believe that it's not going to happen. You know, first of all, I have to preface this by saying, I don't have visibility into what justice is doing, the Justice Department. They keep their investigations confidential, which they should. So all I can tell you is what I see from the outside. Nonetheless, from the outside, you can often see whether investigation is progressing or not progressing, because you often see public reports of grand juries that are meeting and the issues that they're examining. You know, I think that the Justice Department began with those on the ground on January 6th in the hope of not only prosecuting them, but also getting their cooperation on those higher up the food chain. Now, is that moving fast enough? You know, the Justice Department would say they're prosecuting hundreds of individuals that it took time for them to identify because they were not arrested on the 6th.

So they're, you know, given COVID restrictions and everything else, they're moving very quickly. But nonetheless, I don't see the kind of indications I would expect to see at this point of investigations involving those at higher levels. But even more significantly, potentially, I don't see evidence of investigation of these other lines of effort to defraud the American people of their vote. And that does concern me. Now, you wrote the book on an unelected authoritarian regime trying to take power in the US, literally midnight in Washington, how we almost lost our democracy and still could. You literally wrote the book. We know that the threat is there.

We can see it in broad daylight. And that's especially evident in moments like these. But what's the solution here? What do you say to people who've watched as we fail to pass a carve out for voting rights, for example, to secure our democracy who feel like we're doomed? What would you say to those people? I would say this. Look, we're a very resilient country.

We've been through worse than this. This too shall pass. But what we do in this moment is really good to determine how quickly it passes and how much damage we have to suffer in the meantime. This is not an opportunity for despair. We don't have the luxury of despair. We've got to be motivated. The other side is motivated. We must be motivated to save our democracy.

And, you know, look, we've been through a civil war. We've been through decades of struggle in terms of civil rights. We've been up against some really difficult challenges historically, world wars, Vietnam. And, you know, it's not for the faint of heart. Moving the country forward is not for the faint of heart. So don't give up. Don't give in, as John Lewis said. You know, we have to keep on, keeping on, and keep the struggle going.

And our democracy is worth it. Yeah, I think that's a great line. We don't have the luxury of wallowing and despair here because the other side is motivated. I think that that sums it up perfectly. So with that said, we'll leave it there. Congressman Schiff, thank you so much for taking the time. It's always great having you on. Thank you.

Great to be with you. Now you have Medi Hassan, host of the Medi Haasen show on Peacock and MSNBC. Medi, thanks for coming back on. Brian, thanks for having me. So let's start with the most predictable, if not most infeastern, infuriating news of the day, which is Kirsten Cinema's speech on the Senate floor announcing that she won't support a carve-out for the filibuster for voting rights, that she supports voting rights, just not the way to actually pass them. Now, is there any planet on which she's

acting in good faith? Like, what's the upside for her? What on God's Green Earth is the endgame here? It is one of the great questions of modern American politics. What is going on inside Kirsten's cinema's head? Unlike Joe Manchin, her partner in crime, She doesn't do many interviews, hardly yet. You can count them on one hand, how many TV interviews you've done in the last year. National interviews, I think, just CNN recently. She did a sit-down with a reporter. She doesn't do interviews.

She doesn't give many speeches. She doesn't do any town halls. I haven't done any in-person town halls, I believe, for three years. So no one actually knows what's going through our head. It's a source of great frustration for me. It's all in bad faith, in my view, because like with Mansion, and all of the arguments have been rehearsed with her. This is not January 2021, where we're just getting started into this fight.

The Senate has just, you know, come back 50-50. They're still trying to find their part. It's January 2022. There is no debate about what the Republicans are going to sign up to. Cinema herself said in her speech on Thursday, I'm very disappointed that we haven't been able to get any votes from the other side. Well, that was your fault. You were mentioned with the ones said you were going to get your Republican pals on board.

You didn't. And don't forget, more perfect union, the activist group, a while ago put out a video of cinema from 2010 back when she was a member of the house in Arizona, where she is saying the false pressure to get to 60 votes should be ignored, that reconciliation is the way forward. Ignore people like Joe Lieberman, she said at the time. Now she makes Joe Lieberman look like Bernie Sanders. So it's amazing to see the rhetoric shifting so much.

Unlike Joe Manchin, who whatever you think about him was always a reactionary conservative from West Virginia, kisses him as worse because she knows better. She was the one rehearsing these arguments. And what is she going to do next? Some people talk about an independent presidential run. I mean, rerunning for the Senate, she's going to lose that Democratic primary. If she doesn't lose that Democratic primary, then Democrats in Arizona should hang their heads in shame. There's talk of Ruben Gallego, the House member in Arizona, challenging her.

You know, people talk about her defect into the Republican Party. I don't buy that. Let's see. I don't think the Republicans want or need her. I don't know. I genuinely don't know what's going to happen. I don't understand why Joe Biden hasn't taken a stronger line against her, though. The argument against Manchin is there's no leverage in West Virginia.

She's in Arizona. Right. The president comes out against her. She can't win. With that being said, I mean, how should Democrats and Joe Biden have played this? And is there even a scenario where Manchin Cinema's response is anything other than no, in your opinion? Look, there's no good scenario.

To be fair to the Biden White House, to be fair to Chuck Schumer, there are lots of rocks and hard places involved here. I mean, had Ossoff and Warnock not won that runoff by the skin of their teeth a year ago, there would be no democratic control of the Senate. We should always put that in perspective to begin with. The 50-50 itself was very close call. Now, you can get into all thoughts of counterfactuals. What if Cal Cunningham in North Carolina

hadn't been involved in a sexting scandal would the Democrats even need Kirsten Sinema? You know, the fact that they didn't win more than 50 seats is a debate for another day. We know a lot of Senate candidates did very badly who should have won or come close to winning, who didn't. That's a post-mortem that the Democrats have never really had. They're so busy blaming defund the police for everything.

They don't look at all the awful. Senate campaigns they ran in Winnable Seeps. So look, there was no good option. And those of us who've been covering it for a year, I've been saying on my show, there's no good option. But I've also said, you've got to try harder. And this argument now is, well, Joe Biden, you know, had he pushed her, had he pushed Mansion, they would have, you know, resisted, they would have defected. Look, it's too late for that now. It's what's, you know, the argument is we are where we are, they screwed up. And the argument now is, what are you going to do now? Personally, I don't understand why Biden has not come out against cinema today, why he didn't come out seconds after her speech.

By the way, she gave that speech as he was going into a lunch with Senate Democrats. Multiple Senate Democrats had no idea she was on the Senate floor preempting Biden's meaning. The president's coming to visit you. The least you can do is hear him out before you give your finale speech. So she astounded her knows that the White House repeatedly, as has mentioned, when is Biden going to fight back? All of the arguments were he can't afford to push them, he can't upset them, he can't, blah, blah, all done. But, you know, bipartisan, that's all done. There's nothing left to lose.

There are midterms in November. Right. The Biden agenda is dead as long as a filibuster in place. People keep talking about a carve-out, Brian, for voting rights. Let's say Mansion Cinema even agreed to that. Well, our democracy might be saved. Yay, but you know, Joe Biden, if presidency would still be messed up, he wouldn't be able to get immigration reform done.

He wouldn't be able to get gun reform done. He wouldn't be able to get anything on climate change done. I mean, that's the irony. It's not just a carve-out for the filibuster. The entire Biden agenda is blocked by the filibuster. So I just wish he had tried harder. I just wish he'd given the speech he gave in Atlanta. on Tuesday, six months ago, nine months ago.

I wish he'd had the meeting in the White House with Cinnamon Mansion that he had on Thursday night, six months ago, nine months ago. I wish he had done a full court press because we don't know what would happen. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it would have worked, but there was no harm in trying. Right, right.

Can't be in a worse position than he's in right now. No, you cannot be in a worse position than you're now. I'm interested in the debate over whether it's the media's role to explain the White House's accomplishments as opposed to what they do now, which is basically cover the horse race element of it. It's not what's in Build Back Better. It's how many votes will Bill Back Better get?

Will Mansion supported? If a certain provision isn't included in reconciliation, is it going to get filibustered? And so, yeah, people are left not knowing what the hell's in the thing. Is it the media's responsibility to cover the content of legislation over the political jockeying? Or is it solely Democrats' responsibility to message their own legislation? It's a good question.

I think the problem is, I mean, the first issue is, Bill Better, yes, there's never been good coverage of the policy content of that bill, partly because it's such a huge and sprawling bill. We don't even have a name for it. As somebody who works on a nightly show, me and my producers always be like, what's the short form, the social policy bill, the climate change and, you know, there was so many different budget. Nothing worse than the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

And then there was a debate that itself is not accurate. It's 3.5 trillion over 10 years. Why are we giving the 10 year price, not the annual price? We don't do that with the pentagon budget. We don't say $7.5 trillion dollar pentagon budget. We say $750 billion. I think there was always a debate about how we cover Bill. But I did a video that went viral where I kind of went through what's in the bill,

just very, very quickly in 60 seconds, just to show that it can be done. And there's a lot of good stuff in that. I didn't even get through half of it. Now, so there's one issue is, is the media very good at covering policy debates? No, does it prefer horse races? Yes. That's, you know, that's been with us since eternity. I think there's a separate debate about the achievement purposes, which is, it's not about selling achievements.

It's about, you know, ironically, it's about being fair, which a lot of journalists go on and on about, and they complain about people like me, opinion host, saying that we should take positions. They said, oh, you know, neutral, okay, well, in the name of neutrality, why don't you cover things like you covered them under other presidents? You've seen, Brian, there are a bunch of Twitter threads out there recently pulling together how AP and the New York Times and the post and others covered jobs reports under Trump versus jobs reports under Biden, covered inflation under Trump versus inflation under Biden, growth under Trump versus growth under Biden. There was a decidedly negative spin in some of the coverage.

relatively speaking. It's almost like we graded Donald Trump on a curve. Surprise, surprise. It's almost like we give Republicans weird benefit of the doubt on everything and expect nothing. The number one disease in American political journalism right now is that we expect nothing from the Republican Party. We've all fallen into this trap. Even on Thursday night when I was covering the cinema, Mansion knows, I had to remind myself to put in the script. Don't forget the 50 Republicans who are actually blocking the whole thing, which is why we need these two Democrats. We've got such zero expectation now for Republican Party. For example, the Republicans have no policy on the economy. Nobody asks him about it. We just know that it's all about critical

race theory in schools and blah, blah, blah, and owning the lips. We've got to that point where have you seen a reporter ask a Republican leader about a policy with that? I've never seen Kevin McCarthy ask about criminal justice reform or even tax policy that Republicans used to have talking about. Healthcare. We just, you know, Donald Trump told us my health care plans coming in two weeks. He said that for like a year. Six years ago. Remember that? Two weeks is coming. Two weeks came again. No Republicans ever asked, what do you plan to do about health care? What's your they ran in the last election brand without a platform. Remember the 2020 Republican platform was whatever Donald Trump says it. That's what they said. Their words, we follow Donald Trump.

So that is my biggest problem right now in political coverage. It's not even just, oh, are you covering policy fairly? Should you be telling people what Biden's done? It's about the complete imbalance in the only one party's interested in governing or producing policy. And that is complete. So what happens is the entire coverage becomes intra-democratic squabbling, what a mansion and cinema doing, what is X or Y doing, which House Democrats are going to have. And it's just taken for granted that not a single Republican is voting for any of this.

Why? Building on that, you know, we do see to a degree that both sides is the default setting. And so Democrats could say, you know, the vaccine is 99% effective. Republicans could say, actually, it makes your arms fall off. And the headlines would be, you know, a feud erupts over vaccine side effects. So is it the media's job to act as stenographers or umpires, I guess, is the most common? Again, again, I mean, even the umpire analogy, which is not one I'm a fan of. But even if you go down the umpire road, they're not even doing that.

They're not calling out one side. They are only calling out. It's imagine being an umpire of a game and you're only going off to one of the two teams and arguing between the different players, you're just ignoring the other half of the court. So I just find this whole analogy. Maggie Havenman at the New York Times was asked by someone on Twitter the other day,

like, why aren't you asking Mansionson about this or that, about this? You know, their U-turn on this, how they plan to get voting. And she said, that's not our job. That's the White House's job. Really? I think it is the job of journalists to ask people in power to explain their positions, to explain their U-turns,

to explain their contradictions and inconsistencies, to point out the flaws in whatever plan they're pushing. I don't think that's the White House's a job, and I don't think that's beyond the job of a journalist. In fact, I think it's the opposite. It's Kirsten Cinema says, I support this legislation, but I also support the filibuster. It is the job of a journalist

every time you manage to get cinema in a hallway. She doesn't sit down with you to say, how do you reconcile the two? It is impossible to say you support the legislation while supporting the filibuster. That is, for want of a better word, a lie. Now, focusing on that asymmetry between the two sides.

You know, Republicans do have Fox News. They have OAN and Newsmax, Bright Part, Daily Caller. They own Facebook. their podcasts are at the top of the charts. They have a messaging apparatus that dwarfs the Democrats. So how did Democrats fight in this ecosystem? Is there too much reliance on mainstream media?

Is there not enough focus on local outlets? What's the avenue to rectify this asymmetry here? It's a great question. I don't think there's an easy answer for Democrats or for those of us who want to live in a reality-based universe and a reality-based media. Sometimes I feel like, you know, banging my head against the wall that, you know, no matter what we do,

you know, we can do as amazing coverage as possible. I'll give an example, the focus groups that were carried out recently that the McClatchy team looked at that they were live tweeting, where a bunch of soft Biden and Trump voters, quote-unquote, excuse me, swing voters sitting around the table saying they don't know what January 6th refers to. They think it's insurrection has been exaggerated, that Biden needs to move on and stop being divisive. And you're wondering, oh my God, like who, and you look at that.

Who is to blame for that? Is it just Fox? Is it the failure of the quote-unquote liberal media to actually cover one-sense? in the way it needs to be covered, is it the failure of the Democrats? And I think Joe Biden has to hold his hand up here, the fact that he didn't give that speech earlier, the fact that he didn't go to town. I mean, you think about 2021.

At the beginning of 2021, the supporters of one particular political party, incited by the leader of that political party, violently attack the capital as part of a plot to overthrow democracy in America. By the end of 2021, not a single voting rights bill or election bill has been passed by the Democratic Party. not a single top person has been charged or indicted by the Biden Justice Department. And you have the president who, when he was asked about, did Donald Trump deliberately infect him with COVID a few weeks ago before Christmas, he says, well, I don't tend to think about the guy very often, which is, in my view, the worst thing Joe Biden said in 2020. Why aren't you thinking about him more often? The guy is the former president. He's possibly the next president. He's sitting in Mar-a-Lago, continuing to incite insurrections against the government and push a big lie.

What on earth, aren't you thinking about this guy who hasn't been prosecuted anywhere for any of the multiple crimes that were documented on his watch? So that is the fundamental flaw. Like the Democratic Party never went to town. Look at what the Republicans did on Benghazi. And tell me that the Democratic Party did 1% of that in 2021 in regards to an actual insurrection that killed far more American. At some point, we have to get over this when they go low, we go high mentality that just creates this vacuum that Republicans will then fill with disinformation because we're, we're too. above the fray, you know what I mean, and look at where it lands up. Yeah, don't forget, Brian, in the immediate months after 1-6, Republicans were not as crazy

as they are now. Republican legislators distanced themselves from Trump. Multiple senators and House members voted to impeach and convict him. Republican voters were not pro-insurrection in the way that they are now. As you say, a vacuum was left. Into that space came the Bannons and the newsmaxes and the Tucker Carlson's of this world. And a year later, just look at the polling. Republicans are much less likely to want to prosecute insurrectionists than they did a year ago, much more likely to believe they were patriots than they did a year ago. You know, all of that, all of that, that gap that was left by the Democratic Party. I'm sorry, that's, Democrats have to hold their hands up.

They spent much of 2021, the first half of 2021, they spent arguing about, you know, defund the police and whether it costs them seats in the house. And the second half of 2021, they spent arguing about how do we respond to critical race theory in school closions. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is off, you know, pushing conspiracies about dead Venezuelan president changing election machines. And they're somehow winning the narrative with that, with that bullshit. Winning the narrative, according to the polls, they are ahead in the congressional preference for the midterms. That's astonishing. The party should have been ostracized.

This party should have been dead politically after half a million dead Americans and an insurrection. Instead, they're back within a year, ready to take over again, astonishing. Well, that's actually the perfect segue into my next question. And that is that in this current media environment, it's basically Republicans lie about something, about the big lie, about federal takeover of elections, about COVID, vaccines, whatever it is. And the rest of us, you know, myself, you spend all of our time

and resources debunking those lies, which no one on the right even sees because it's a close feedback loop. But it doesn't change the fact that Republicans are driving the narrative here and that Democrats are solely on defense. So how does that ever change in an environment in an environment where Republicans have no scruples and there's actually incentive to lie.

These are big questions, Brian. I'm just asking you to just solve, solve the biggest issues in politics right now on this podcast. I know, I grapple with these issues every day and I can be honest with you and your viewers and listeners that I don't come to any easy answers. I think we're in a very dangerous and dark place for American democracy, for American,

not just American democracy, we think of election. I'm talking about this country, as a whole. I mean, we're now having people talking about civil war. I don't think a civil war is around the corner, but the fact that we even having the discussion tells you everything we need to know, you know, we have people like Barbara Walter, the political scientists who came on my show recently to talk about how she's an expert on civil war saying America is closer to another civil war than's ever been since the last one. You know, that is where we are as a country. One of the main reasons we're in this position is because of misinformation, is because of a lack

of agreement on a shared reality. And now you look this week, Brian, the Republicans want pull out of the presidential debates in 2024. And, you know, the snarky response to say, well, debates don't do anything. You know, the Vox.com responses to pull out a political science paper and say, well, debates don't affect elections, which is true. But the bigger, more dangerous part of this is it's yet another part of American public lives and American political institutions, if you want to call it that, which Republicans are withdrawing from. At one place where you had some shared reality, where everyone watched the same thing at the same time, or not everyone, tens of millions of people still. And, you know, they are vacating from every space that was a place of shared interest,

shared values, shared reality. And that is a very dangerous place to be. And it's, you know, you can talk about, as you say, you can debunk a lie here or there, you can give a speech here or there. That's not enough. Until there is a complete transformation in the way you think about American politics and democracy, understand the scale of the challenge, understand that this is not, the people who still talk about bipartisanship. I mean, it just makes me want to cry. When you see Dick Durbin on CNN this week saying, well, maybe the president went too far, I just stop and think, this is not a party, the Democratic body, that is cut out to save democracy. It's just not.

It's living in some alternative universe that I don't know where it is. They're not in the universe I'm in. I'm in the real world. And in the real world, I don't know what the hell happens in the Senate behind closed doors when they're all back slapping each other and having lunches together and being friends in the Senate gym. But in the real world, sorry to break it to you. You know, we have a radicalized Republican Party. We have militia movements. We have hate crimes.

We have domestic terrorism. We have right-wing media, as you say, which is inciting a lot of this. And there's no end in sight. We're only going in one direction. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a very dark tunnel before we can see it. Yeah. Yeah. I think your point about Democrats being able to get out of their own way is especially important.

I mean, the few Democrats who are willing to take the fight, they're not the ones who are in charge. Right. Now, let's finish up with this. I want to know, how do we reconcile the outrage, cycle that certain Republicans thrive off of. So like you have the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the Matt Gases, Jim Jordan, whatever,

and they'll say something purposefully provocative so that, you know, to kind of force people to cover it and then everybody covers it and of course they were able to use that to raise money or do whatever they have to do. Is it more important to ignore these things and kind of bury our heads in the sand, so to speak, while these bad things are happening

or to cover them because it's new, It shows what the Republican Party has become, but at the same time, gives them the exact attention that they crave. Yeah, it's another great question, another huge dilemma that we were going to do a segment on the show this week on that very subject. And my good friend Molly John Farser wrote a very good piece

with Atlantic on this, quoting an expert on this who calls it rage farming, that they are farming our raid. The Texas GOP did this with their ridiculous tweet the other day saying, well, if you can line up for a COVID test, you can line up to vote. And then when everyone shared it, including me, including me, saying this is outrageous. They were like, ha ha, we're trending number four.

We are cry more libs. And yeah, it is a deliberate strategy. And I don't know, again, I don't know what the right answer is, because as you say, if you ignore it, okay, you're not amplifying their trolling. But by ignoring it, it comes back to my point we made just a moment ago with Dick Durbin is, are you then pretending that we live in a normal political reality? Are we are not enough people aware of the fact? Brian, you and I spend all our time on Twitter. We spend all our time arguing about politics. The average American doesn't. They don't have a clue about how extreme Marjorie Taylor Green and these people are. They might see her one night on nightly news or one clip on Facebook.

Ah, she's a bit crazy. They don't understand. No, no. This is the vanguard of a neo-fascist movement that wants to take over democracy in America. This is a bunch of anti-Semites and Islamophobes and anti-black racists, some of these people are. And it's just, you know, it's really depressing. It's like with Trump. It was always a debate with Donald Trump when he was in office, at least.

Less so since he left office with his kind of weird statements. Now he's not on social media. But when he was in office, it was always a debate. Do you amplify this latest crazy tweet from Trump or not? on the one hand, don't give him the attention he so bizarrely seeks to deflect away from other more substantive issues. On the other hand, he's the president of the United States. Everything he says is newsworthy, especially when it's crazy. So, you know, there is no right answer. I think what you can do is, I think you can ignore some of the more, you know, I think what we have

to do is, here's how I try and throw the needle, not successfully how I try and do on my show, which is cover the stuff that genuinely is scary, that genuinely is crossing lines and is from genuinely political, politically powerful, influential people. The problem we now have is we have a bunch of kind of, you know, you have the Daily Wire guys, and you have, you know, you have the Ben Shapiro in his, in his stooges and bag carriers. You have the, you know, candidates running for office, trying to primary people, these Republican nobodies. They're all trying to say outrageous things. Right. There I would say, yeah, don't amplify them. Don't give, yeah, they are pure attention. But with a Marjorie Taylor Green, with a Matt Gates, with a, with a Senator Ron Johnson, you know,

When Senator Ron Johnson says, oh, yeah, use mouthwash and gargle away the COVID, I mean, it's a ridiculous statement. I think you have to cover it. The United States Senator is saying absolutely mad stuff that would get him fired from most jobs, or at least people would move several steps away from him in a public train or bus. This guy's running for the Senate. He's running for re-election. That's the kind of stuff that people need to know. So it's a really difficult balancing act. It's who you choose to amplify.

It's how you choose to amplify them. I'm guilty of this. Don't just quote, tweet, take a screenshot. I'm just going to say that. But I don't do that myself. I should. Also, here's one thing I would say about quote-unquote, you know, mainstream reporters who cover this.

What frustrates me most is put aside the amplifying, not amplifying debate. Once you have amplified them, then what? Because for too often, Brian, we will say, this Congresswoman says something crazy and then it's buried in the memory hole. And then we wait for the next one, and there's no context.

For me, context is everything. So when Marjorie Taylor Green, you talk about Marjorie Taylor Green. Every conversation of Marjorie Taylor Green needs to start with, oh yeah, she's the person who made anti-Semitic remarks and talked about killing Nancy Pelosi. That should be the context. The phrase is used, the truth sandwich. Start with the truth, then say what the lies, then start with the truth. That applies to people, too. Start with the truth about who that person is. Then let them say their nonsense, then remind people who they are. Same applies to, you know, someone like Paul Gosar. Every conversation about Paul Gosar needs

to start with Paul Gosar, who went to a white nationalist conference with Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes. needs to be part of every conversation. And I would extend that. Kevin McCarthy, House Republican leader who gives cover to anti-Semites and Islamophones in his caucus. Like, we need to have that. The problem we have is reporters do a great job of on the day saying, Mr. McCarthy, Paul Gossar went to a conference. Do you have any comment? No. And then I'll never ask it again. My point is, why do we forget this stuff? Why do we give them a pass? It was like same day with Trump. It was always year zero. We always reset every day. And my point is, like, I was just thinking about this yesterday. we did a story on Thursday night about child separation and how the kids were taken at the water.

That was the biggest story in America for two months in 2018. It was globally the biggest story in the world at one point. It was seen as the low point of the Trump presence until the next one. But think about it now, Brian. Does anyone talk about child separation? Does anyone talk about accountability for what happened? Does anyone talk about where it's Kirsten Nielsen now? Does anyone ever ask Donald Trump about it in all the multiple post-election books? We just moved on. And this is my fundamental problem. Like, forget the amplifying debate. They're going to get amplified, as you say, they've got their own echo chamber. What are the rest of us going to do to hold them to account?

Yeah, I think that's a great point. We'll leave it there. Medi, where can my viewers and listeners see more of you? If they want to see more of me, I'm on every night from 7 to 8 p.m. Eastern live on PC, NBC streaming channel, and I'm on Sunday nights live on MSNBC 8 p.m. Eastern. So do tune in. And Brian, appreciate you having me on.

Of course. Well, thank you. Thank you for answering the biggest questions in politics today. I'm glad we could solve all of this stuff on the end. We solve gold issues. Yeah. All right, Medi. Thanks so much.

It is. Thanks again to Medi. 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 Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all. of my other channels.