No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Ted Cruz humiliates himself trying to oppose Biden

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

Mitch McConnell is already trying to block Democrats from taking power in the Senate, Ted Cruz commits an almost impossibly humiliating misstep, and Brian interviews former Obama speechwriter and host of Pod Save America, Jon Favreau, about our options to deal with McConnell’s power grab, whether OAN and Newsmax should get credentials during the Biden era, and much more.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/To hear more from Jon Favreau, check out Pod Save America wherever you listen to podcasts.To help No Lie get matched with the right advertisers, please visit survey.fan/nolie to fill out a brief survey.See 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 McConnell's efforts already to block Democrats from taking power in the Senate and almost impossibly humiliating misstep by Ted Cruz in my interview with former Obama speechwriter and host of Pod Save America, John Favro, where we talk about our options to deal with McConnell's power grab, whether OAN and Newsmax should get credentials during the Biden era, and much more. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Well, it is the first week of Biden's administration, and just like the Republicans promised during their relentless calls for unity, they've decided to come together with the Democrats so they could help Joe Biden govern the... I'm just kidding. They are relentlessly obstructing every single facet of Democrats' ability to get anything done. Seriously, already there's obstruction from Mitch McConnell on a power-sharing agreement

that's intended to just start the work of the Senate. They're obstructing the part that comes before they can even read. really start obstructing. Just to give a quick explanation, Schumer and McConnell have been negotiating a power-sharing agreement, an organizing resolution, and until it's passed, Democrats can't officially take control of the Senate.

But McConnell's stalling on passing it until he gets an assurance that the filibuster will stay intact, meaning that Democrats will need 60 votes to pass all legislation. Some stuff can be passed through a process called budget reconciliation that requires only 51 votes, but it has to pertain to the budget, so most legislation will need to meet the 60-vote threshold. And so, in effect,

McConnell's filibustering the organizing resolution as a way to ensure that Democrats don't nuke the filibuster, thereby making the best case they could possibly exist to do exactly that to nuke the filibuster. He's showing us proving that he will obstruct, and he's doing it regarding the very tool that would prevent obstruction. So if you needed a reason to not support keeping the filibuster intact, Mitch McConnell just gave it to you. And bear in mind, while Republicans will inevitably start crowing about the sanctity of the filibuster and ensuring that there's enough of a threshold to ensure that a bipartisan majority of senators

passed legislation, a few things. First, if Mitch McConnell or any Senate Republicans cared about bipartisan legislation, we wouldn't have just gone through six years of him refusing to bring any Democratic legislation to the floor even for a vote. Hundreds of bills were left languishing on McConnell's desk. Votes that had bipartisan support in the House

and that would have had bipartisan support in the Senate. You don't brand yourself the grim reaper of the Senate and then turn around and, pretend that you're in favor of preserving the sanctity of robust bipartisan problem solving. And beyond that, Republicans already showed their hands on how much they care about preserving the thing

when they nuked it themselves to ram through Amy Connie Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. So apparently, with Biden's priorities of delivering unemployment insurance or relief checks for families who are trying to survive amid a pandemic that Republicans let explode throughout this country,

well, we must maintain a 60 vote threshold. But a lifetime appointment for a federalist society judge to get rammed through a confirmation process while Americans are voting Trump out of office? Yeah, no, that's totally fine. So what I hope and frankly what I expect will happen is that Schumer holds the line, considering there is absolutely zero reason why Democrats who just took the majority should be contracting an ounce of power to Republicans. I get that McConnell's entire identity revolves around consolidating power, but Democrats just won an election. And the way to reward the people who just turned out in

record numbers for you is to act like it. And by the way, the issue of the filibuster isn't the only issue that Republicans are fighting for the sake of fighting while simultaneously crowing about unity. Predictably, they're pushing back on everything. On a $15 minimum wage because, God forbid, people afford enough to feed themselves after working 40 hours a week. On the COVID package, because God forbid people have an ounce of relief while trying to survive during a pandemic that Republicans themselves advertised would miraculously.

disappear. But my favorite one is Biden's decision to rejoin the Paris climate agreement because the self-appointed spokesperson against this effort is none other than Ted Cruz. And his argument is this. He tweeted, by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he's more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans. And he did it again with some other iteration of that tweet. He wrote, stand with Pittsburgh or Paris. If you support blue-collar union workers, if you stand for jobs, get your free bumper sticker here. Okay. So just a few things about this whole campaign against

rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. First, the planet's melting. So that's one. Second, I don't know how Ted Cruz from Texas decided that he's anointed himself the spokesperson for Pittsburgh, but his last major act was trying to get the entire state of Pennsylvania disenfranchised so that the guy who humiliated his wife could steal the election. So I don't exactly know how much goodwill he's won himself with the citizens of that state that he does not represent. Third, this choice between Pittsburgh or Paris overlooks the fact that the city of Pittsburgh literally supports the Paris Climate Agreement. The mayor of Pittsburgh already put this issue to rest back when Trump made the same tired Pittsburgh versus Paris argument, saying, quote, as the mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people,

our economy and future. Fourth, Ted Cruz doesn't care about unions any more than he cares about anyone not named Ted Cruz. The guy has a 6% rating from the AFLCIO. 6%. That is three times lower than the average Senate Republican. Fifth, Ted Cruz isn't blue collar. A guy makes $174,000 a year at least, and his wife is a managing director at Goldman Sachs.

And finally, the Paris Climate Agreement isn't for Paris. It's for the entire world, including Pittsburgh and including Ted Cruz's home state of Texas, which itself in just the last few years has contended with devastating weather that was exacerbated by climate change. The fact that the agreement was signed in Paris doesn't mean it's only for Parisians. Just like the Geneva Convention didn't establish humanitarian treatment standards in Switzerland, and the Treaty of Versailles didn't just end World War I at the Palace of Versailles. And Ted Cruz knows this, but he is incapable of shame, and so he will continue to say it, even if the entire internet collectively shits on him.

Oh, and by the way, in the 2018 cycle, Ted Cruz was the number one recipient of oil and gas money. Probably should have mentioned that earlier. He got almost $800,000 in that cycle alone, more than any other politician in the country, according to open secrets. So if you're wondering why Ted Cruz might be positioning himself against the 77% of Americans who believe that it's more important for the U.S. to be developing alternative energy sources, like solar and wind, than to produce more coal, oil, and other fossil fuel, it's because they're paying him.

That's it. It's not any more complicated than that. Ted Cruz stands for Ted Cruz. And if fossil fuel companies are going to cut him checks to tweet stupid shit like Pittsburgh over Paris, then guess what? He's going to do that, because Ted Cruz is only driven by his own ambition.

And so that's what you need to remember when Republicans call for unity, that it's being done in bad faith, because unity was never about anything more than a desperate attempt by the right to demand that Biden and Democrats capitulate to them. despite having taken control of government. They didn't care about unity for the last four years.

They don't care about unity now while trying to cling on to the filibuster. They don't care about unity while propping up bad faith platitudes about Pittsburgh. It's about power. And it doesn't matter whether it comes from McConnell or Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley or any of them because their goals are all the same. The point being that Democrats should govern. They should enact their agenda swiftly and decisively and follow the mandate that they were given by 81 million Americans.

And most importantly, they should give no credence whatsoever to the bad faith actors on the right because they've already tipped their hands and showed their cards, and the fact of the matter is that they've gotten nothing. So now our job is to govern like it. Next up is my interview with John Favreau. Today we have Barack Obama's former speechwriter and the host of Pod Save America, John Favro. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me, Brian.

So I have had Lovett and Tommy on, so just making my way through the, through the PSA crew. It's got to get Dan in now. Yeah. All right. So let's jump in here. A lot of people have worked their asses off to deliver Democrats to the Senate. And to the surprise of exactly no one now, we're already in a situation where Mitch McConnell

is somehow holding the cards here. So he and Chuck Schumer are trying to hash out a power sharing agreement. But McConnell wants assurances that Democrats won't nuke the filibuster, which Schumer seems to be rightfully holding the line on. But until there is an agreement, the rules from. the previous cycle stay in place. So what are the options here? Could McConnell, like, stall forever and effectively stay in power? Could we give an assurance that we won't nuke the filibuster and then do it anyway? No, I think that my bet is that McConnell backs down. And I think the reason McConnell is

ultimately going to back down is because Schumer actually hold the cards here because, importantly, Joe Manchin said yesterday, Joe Manchin, who is not in favor of getting rid of the filibuster, unfortunately, but Manchin did say, I'm with Chuck on this. I'm not going to waver. We get to be the committee chairs. So if McConnell chooses to filibuster this arrangement, this agreement, you could theoretically have 51 Democrats, 50 Democrats plus Vice President Kamala Harris to basically break the filibuster and have an agreement that is to Schumer's like it. So basically just, you know, by virtue of McConnell trying to hold out, so to assure that the filibuster will stay in place, he would then assure that it would be nuked. I don't get McConnell's strategy. I don't get

why he's doing this. Like, I don't know if he's operating from a place where he still thinks he's in charge and he still has power, but he doesn't. And I think for once that the Democratic caucus in the Senate is more united than the Republican caucus. I think McConnell has an issue where he knows he has people like Collins, Murkowski, a few others who may want to work with the Democrats on some things here and there. And then he's got Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and all the maniacs who were trying to run for president in 2024 and just want to burn the place down. And so because he only has 50, he's in the minority and he doesn't have them all united. I don't think he has as strong of a hand as we might think. So until the filibuster, until there's a decision based on that,

If I'm not mistaken, the House pastor is passing H.R.1, which is for the People Act as its first bill, you can't use reconciliation for that. So is the choice basically that we eliminate the filibuster or we concede defeat immediately on democratic reforms that are so important that they're literally the first bill being passed? That is exactly the choice. You're exactly correct. And look, when we say like Democrats need to get rid of the filibuster, we should be specific about who we're talking about here because even though Joe Biden's been like wishy-washy on this, Joe Biden is fine if Chuck Schumer and the Democrats eliminate the filibuster. Chuck Schumer is fine limiting the filibuster.

From what I understand, talking to some Senate Democrats and just what I've heard, there is a vast majority of the Senate Democratic caucus is willing to get rid of the filibuster. The holdouts are famously Joe Manchin. And then you have people like, you know, would Tester go there? Would Kirsten Cinema go there? We don't know where Mark Kelly stands, but some of the more moderate Democrats. When you look through the caucus, though,

most of them are on board. So I think we have to figure out who exactly in the Democratic caucus is resistant to voting to get rid of the filibester besides Joe Manchin and try to put pressure on those Democratic senators

because you're right. We put, you know, I'm sure the House will pass HR one. It'll come to the Senate. And I think at the very least, Democrats should make Republicans actually filibuster the bill. If you want to go to the floor

in filibuster, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Yeah. You want to do that and go do that in front of the country for a couple of days. See what happens. And then basically that just gives the Democrats permission to then move forward. I mean, you know, like instead of just saying, oh, like theoretically talking about the filibuster, this puts an actual name to a face. Like these are the direct consequences of keeping the filibuster intact that we try to put

forward this bill that people desperately need that Americans voted for. Yes. And we can't so long as the filibuster is in place. So it kind of makes it easier in a way if Republicans do want to filibuster this thing. Yeah, it's basically anti-democratic tendencies blocking democratic reform. So it's really, it's a good story to tell, I think, at the very least. But we'll see. So aside from the filibuster Avenue, another way to pass legislation with only 51 votes is reconciliation, as I mentioned before.

But there are limits to using this process. So can you speak on that, specifically the idea that it can only be used once? Yes. So a budget reconciliation bill, as you noted, only requires 51 votes to pass. If you remember back in 2017, when Trump came into office, the Republicans were actually able to use two budget reconciliation bills in the same year because one was technically for the next year. But they used one at the beginning of the year to try to pass tax, to successfully pass the tax cut. They used one towards the end to unsuccessfully try to repeal the Affordable Care Act. in reverse. But so we could probably, Biden could probably get two budget reconciliation bills through this year. But that's it. That's at the most you could probably do too. And then the question is, what can be in a budget reconciliation bill? Well, anything that affects the federal budget. So some of that stuff is easy, right? If you want to do spending on COVID relief, that's obviously something that could fit in a budget reconciliation bill. Then there are provisions

that aren't as clear. So, for example, Joe Biden has the $15 minimum wage in his COVID relief bill. So you could say, well, the $15 minimum wage is basically a regulation on businesses that they should raise wages, so it doesn't really have to do with the federal budget. But you could also make the argument

that if the minimum wage is raised to $15, then there are going to be fewer people who have to depend on government benefits because they'll be lifted out of poverty, and that will affect the federal budget. So perhaps raising the minimum wage, does fit in budget reconciliation. The person who decides this is the Senate parliamentarian. So there is this Senate parliamentarian who ends up having a lot of power

determining what the rules are. And then the other factor here is the Senate parliamentarian can be overruled by the president of the Senate, who in this case would be Vice President Kamala Harris. So there's a lot of possibilities here. Okay. And do all these things have to be put into the, into the budget at once. So like, we have all of our priorities that we want to pass through reconciliation and everything basically, so we say like, okay, unemployment benefits, direct relief payments, the COVID relief package, $15 minimum wage, everything, I'm sure I'm forgetting some other items here, but all of those things happen in one fell swoop. They pass, they pass along with the budget. Yeah, unless you do get the two bites

at the apple and you try to do one reconciliation bill soon within the next month or so, and then one at the end of this year. So you could imagine, for example, some of the more immediate measures for COVID relief, like the stimulus checks, some of the spending on vaccinations going in this first one. And then maybe at the end of the year, you have stuff on infrastructure spending, clean energy, education, whatever it, healthcare, whatever it may be, going into the second reconciliation. Not that we'll need any infrastructure. We just had four years of infrastructure week. So I think we're probably good on that. Yeah, right. We finally have it for real. Okay, so let's move over to the White House briefing room.

I'm not sure if OAN and Newsmax have gotten credentials, but if they do, does Biden's press secretary, Jansaki, call on them? Like, how do you reconcile engaging a free press with the fact that some outlets are just outright trash propaganda? Yeah, I wouldn't. If I mean, if I was the Biden White House, I would not credential them, first of all, at all. I think, I mean, I'm a little extreme in this case. I probably wouldn't credential Fox, but I'm not in the Biden White House. House. But I definitely think they should not credential OAN or NewsMax. There's not real outlets. They are propaganda outlets. They're not real journalists. We should not pretend that they're real journalists. I know Jen very well. I've been friends of Jen for 20 years. She is exceedingly

kind. And so I also think Jen is very good at, like I don't think she's going to call on OAN and Newsmax much, but I think she'll get plenty of very annoying and unfair questions just from the Fox News correspondent. We've already seen it, by the way. Yeah, she's from Peter Ducey yesterday. Peter, aka Steve Ducey. Yeah, Steve Ducey, right. And look, Jen's just good at handling that. Like, Jen's not going to be combative, which is what they want. They want the White House press secretary to yell at them so they can run a clip of that on their network and then get everyone riled up. And I think the key for Jen is, and I know she's going to do this because of how she is, is just to not take the bait, right?

Like either just answer the question very dismissively and move on or we don't call them at all, but like I don't think, I think what they want, they want a fight. That's how they thrive. And I think not giving them fight either by not credentialing them, not calling on them or when you do answer their stupid question, just do it in a quick dismissive way and move on to the next one. I think that's probably the best strategy. I think they'd want nothing more too than to villainize her.

I mean, that's what Fox and the whole right-wing ecosystem. and thrives off of. They create villains and boogeymen out of people. So there's a lot to be hopeful about right now. But at the same time, what we're seeing happen in conservative media is just scary. Like Fox purge, 16 staffers, including one political editor who committed the crime of calling Arizona correctly for Biden. So clearly there's a launch to the far right. And that's likely for at least Fox to keep up with the OANs and newsmaxes of the world. So I guess the question is, how does all of this work when right-wing media isn't bound by any semblance of facts or reality more broadly? Yeah, I mean, look, this is why we started

Crooked Media. This is why you do your show, right? Like, I think that in a perfect world, I would love to be able to, you know, shut Fox down. I'd like some liberal billionaire to buy Fox and, you know, sell it for parts. It's not going to happen. right like we you know we have free speech maybe mike bloomberg's listening to the yeah right please you're listening mike bloomberg go by fox and uh and change it into a normal news station um but i think what they need is competition and i don't think um the the legacy media the mainstream media provides competition to right wing media um that's not their job that's fine i don't i don't think you know they're they're not progressives um so it's not in their interest it is in their interest not to have

Fox because Fox spends all its time degrading the regular media, the legacy media. So they should be fighting it, but they don't because they feel like they have to be balanced and unbiased. But I think you need more progressive media outlets. Like I want pricked media to have more competition out there. I want more progressive outlets to sprout out because, you know, if you are in some of these rural areas, if you are in some of these excerpts where local news has been decimated, where you don't have your local newspaper, where your local.

television station is now owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, which is right wing, then the information you're getting every single day is the warped conspiratorial paranoid view of the world that the right wing paints. And so can you really blame those people for believing in some of these conspiracies? What you need is to have a progressive media infrastructure that's not just our podcasts or YouTube or everything, but like we need local news stations. We need local newspaper. We, you know, like we really need to build out a bigger ecosystem of progressive media to compete with the right-wing media ecosystem because right now, you know, we just, we don't have anything close to that. Yeah. Just to build on your point, everyone's under what I think is a

mistaken notion that the mainstream media is liberal. But in reality, mainstream media bends over backwards to prove that it's not. And like there's a lot of overcompensating to drive that home, which is why we had 500 Benghazi stories and Hillary's email stories. And so basically what you have is on the right, you have unapologetic, shameless Republican media. And on the quote unquote left, you have media that is literally repeating what the right is saying. And so the entire ecosystem is tilted because one half isn't operating in good faith. You know, they prioritize balance over truth. And I should say, not all of them. I think, look, there's also what the right has figured out over the last

couple decades is working the refs works. And so they yell about liberal bias. They, you know, try to shame reporters in a shameless way. And I've noticed that over the last couple of years, during the Trump era, sort of the left has done that on Twitter at other places. And it does work because, like, Republicans are shameless. It's impossible to shame them. It is very possible to shame reporters into doing the right thing. And I actually think, to be fair to the media, to put them all in the same category, which I don't love putting them all in the same category, there are a lot of political journalists at a lot of outlets who I think have done a much better job of prioritizing truth overbalance and covering this Trump White House or covering the Trump White House over the last

four years, like it should have been covered. And then there are the usuals who are always going to drive us insane. But I think, you know, all you can do about that is, you know, continue to point out when they are both sidesing it. for no good reason and, uh, and shame them for it. Yeah. And I think that the both sizing came to a front when you realize that you basically have, you know, you're giving equal airtime to one side that's saying one plus one is two and the other side saying one plus one is four thousand seven hundred and twenty three, you know. So I guess, uh, my last question is, is what role do you think that new progressive media like, like crooked? You know, I, I know that you just

spoke about, uh, and you've, you've been, um, very consistent about this on the podcast. I hear all the time that you do want more competition on the left, you know, among this ecosystem because for so long, the right has dominated YouTube and Facebook and, you know, they've built out their structure much more broadly than the left has. So I guess moving forward into this new era, what role you see that Crooked is having? Yeah, I mean, you know, our goal at Crooked is inform, entertain, inspire action. And there's a lot of media companies that their goal is to inform their audiences,

and we want to do that too. But I think that if you, even like an MSNBC, right, if you watch MSNBC, you watch the news, you learn about what's wrong with the world, you learn about what the Republicans have done wrong, it is a progressive point of view. But at the end of the day, you walk away and you're not sort of given the information and tools

you need to actually go out and change the world. We are from the political world. We're former Obama staffers. And so we're organizers at heart. And so a big part of what we do at Crooked is to make sure that a lot of our content, all of our shows, not only inform our viewers, but actually give them the information they need

to act, to organize, to change the world. And I think the entertain part is important too, because you gotta meet people where they are. And there's 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden, and then there's millions of other people who still didn't vote, right? A small fraction of those 81 million people are political news junkies like we are. And the rest of them just go vote every two or four years. And then there's some people who don't vote at all. And I think delivering content, delivering television shows, movies,

podcasts to those people that isn't just all politics, all eat your vegetables all the time, but can be entertaining and still has a progressive perspective on the world is a great way to sort of build the coalition even stronger than we had in 2020. So that's what we're going to continue to do in the coming years because I think if we step off the gas at all, then if we're not as energized, enthusiastic, and engaged as we were in 2020, the Republicans will win again. We will have another Donald Trump, and it could be worse than last time. Right.

And I think the dangers of complacency were brought well to the forefront with what happened in the last four years. So, yeah, I think that's a great point. I think a great spot to end on. So, John, thanks so much for joining. I really appreciate it. And, you know, to all my listeners, I'm sure a good number, listen to Pot Save America.

But Pot Save America is one of the reasons that I started doing what I'm doing now. So, so thanks. Thanks for all you're doing, Brian. And thanks for having me on. Thanks again to John Favro and my friends over at Crooked Media. 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.