Pod Save America - “A dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Robert Mueller sends an unmistakable message to Congress about impeachment, more Democrats announce their support for an inquiry, the DNC changes its requirements for the fall debates, and Elizabeth Warren’s strategy pays off. Then Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and show runner David Mandel talk to Jon, Jon, and Tommy about politics and comedy in the Trump Era.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, our interview with Veep's Julia Louis-Dreyfus and showrunner David Mandel. They stopped by the office yesterday, and as you'll hear, we pretty much laughed the entire time. It was one of my favorite interviews. But first, we've got some big news to get through. Robert Mueller's first words in two years. The political case for impeachment in the Democratic Party's new qualifications for the fall

debates. In other pod news, we've released an interview on Wednesday between Dan and Amy Klobuchar. I'll also be talking with presidential candidate Marianne Williamson on Friday, and you'll be able to hear my conversation with her later that afternoon. On the newest episode of Pod Save the World, Tommy and Ben explain the recent European Parliament elections, analyze Trump's trip to Japan, and try to understand why he's micromanaging the construction of our aircraft carriers. Weird. And finally, the newest Crooked Media podcast, This Land, premieres this coming Monday, June 3rd. It's a story from Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagel about two crimes and an imminent Supreme Court decision could come any week now

that will determine the fate of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma. It's an important story about how this country treats Native people and their land. It's riveting. It's beautifully told. So please go subscribe now. Listen to the trailer wherever

you get your podcasts or you can just go to thislandpodcast.com to subscribe make sure it's on your phone and ready for monday morning when the first episode drops trust me uh you won't want to miss this one so please go subscribe i subscribed uh one last thing you subscribed thank you see dan subscribed all of you all of, too. For next week, we're on the road again. I can't believe we're already on the road again. Oh, my God. You can catch Love It or Leave It in Minneapolis and catch Pod Save America in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Des Moines. There's still a few tickets left, I believe, at cricket.com slash events.

So go scoop up those tickets and then come say hi. We'll be flying around the Midwest. One more thing before we get to the news. Sure. I watched Running with Beto last night. Wasn't it great? It was really great. And I would encourage people, whether they support Beto for president or they support someone else,

they don't know who they're supporting yet to watch it for a couple of reasons. One, it's just really it's a really good film. But I thought it captured two things really well that I think people will really enjoy. One is the moment in time that was 2018 and people's reaction to what happened in 2016 and just sort of every – regular everyday people getting involved in politics to try to put this country back on the right track. And second, what it's like to be on a campaign. Yeah. The highs, the lows, the exhaustion, the frustration, the excitement. And ultimately, as happens in a lot of campaigns, the heartbreak.

You know, I'm sure this was true for you in watching it, but having worked on campaigns where you pour your entire being into them and then having them come up short is it's just so hard. But, you know, so I thought it was really great and I would encourage people to watch it. And I was excited to see your name in the credits. that we wanted to, you know, help co-produce this in the first place is, you know, the filmmaker David Modigliani came to us, you know, when no one really knew who Beto was, and we barely knew who Beto was, and said he was going to make this documentary about people in Texas working for this long shot candidate in the wake of 2016. And it's sort of everything that we talk about here at Crooked Media and Pod Save America about getting involved and joining a campaign and, you know, fighting the odds to fight for what you believe in. And and so, you know, we jumped on then.

And I think, you know, David told an incredible story about people in Texas working for what they believe in. And so, and the, you know, the documentary doesn't just follow Beto. It follows three volunteers who worked on the campaign who all have pretty powerful stories on their own. So it's a great film. Definitely check it out on HBO. Okay, let's get to the news. On Wednesday, special counsel Robert Mueller spoke publicly

for the first time in two years to announce his retirement and send an implicit but unmistakable message to Congress about impeachment, do your damn job. Here are some key parts of his statement, quote, the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. And when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. And he says that on the question of whether the president obstructed

justice himself, quote, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. Mueller goes on to say that the reason he didn't make a determination about whether Trump committed a crime is because, quote, under a longstanding department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. The opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. So it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge.

Mueller also said that he doesn't plan on speaking publicly again because his 400-page report speaks for itself. Dan, why did Mueller, after two years and about a month since the report itself came out, decide to give the statement? What was he trying to achieve here, do you think? I think he was trying to go on vacation. I think Memorial Day weekend has passed us. He's probably got a home at the shore. He wanted to get there. I think, so like I say that that's half in jest, which is I think he is trying to put a coda on this part of his life and move on. And he's basically he is saying, as you point out in the preamble here that he's saying to Nancy Pelosi and the congressional Democrats, I did my job. It's time for you to do yours. It's up to you. I have put the ball on your court. You can do it with it whenever you want.

But let me be very clear. I was giving this to you, which he should have been clearer about in the report or not waited nine weeks to speak. But the message is clear, and I think he is ready to move on and let the next part of this process take place if that's the path Democrats choose, which we'll discuss why they should do that later. Yeah. And I think what he chose to emphasize in his eight minute statement versus the 400 page report that he wrote is important, too. You know, he says a few times at the beginning, at the end about how, you know, Russia, the Russian military, the Russian government launched this concerted, consistent attack on our political system. And then he said, obstructing the investigation into who's behind that attack and who was responsible for it is a very serious misdeed. And basically what he lays out is if Trump had succeeded in obstructing the investigation, if Trump had succeeded in firing Bob Mueller, if, you know, Don McGahn and all those Trump subordinates had

carried out his wishes to fire Bob Mueller and to make sure that the investigation was only focused on future election interference, which the report says Trump wanted to do, then Bob Mueller never would have been able to indict the Russian hackers, the Russian military, all the people in Russia that were responsible for breaking into the democratic email system, stealing emails, disseminating stolen emails, and then launching the social media campaign, propaganda campaign to sway the election. And so, you know, Mueller actually doing justice, finding the people responsible for the attack on our political system would not have been possible if the president of the United States had his way in obstructed justice. And I think

he's trying to tell us that is a very serious offense. That's right. And the question will be if anyone's going to listen. I will say that Bob Mueller could have been clearer on this point, and he could have been clearer earlier on this point. trying to read it like it's some sort of code. And like, what can we divine from this when he's pretty explicit? It is certainly not clear that Democratic leaders took the message. Some of the reporting is unclear. And this is both the benefit and the – or this is just the positive and the negative of having someone like Bob Mueller do this investigation. He is theoretically, although only in theory, not in reality, above reproach in the public sphere. He should have been an unimpeachable investigator if we were living in normal political times. He's someone with a reputation that is so good that the Senate, in a huge bipartisan vote, voted to extend his term as FBI director because he was

so good at the job. A Republican, someone that would have been appointed by George W. Bush, extended by Obama. He is the ultimate nonpartisan figure, even if he is a Republican. But because he is a nonpartisan figure, he was much more subtle, much less explicit, and left some room both in his, not what he wrote in the report, but in the way in which he presented the report and the way in which he allowed institutional figures like Bill Barr to spin his report for him. He left more questions about what he intended than he should have. And I think that's still true today, despite today's statement. Yeah, I think that Mueller's biggest mistake was allowing that four-page letter from William Barr to be released before his executive summaries,

and then after that four-page letter was released, not responding immediately to correct the record. That was his mistake. I do think in the statement he delivered yesterday, it could not be more clear than the sentence. The opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the sitting president of wrongdoing. I mean, it screams impeachment. That is the process he's talking about right there. And look, I get the box he's in because of the Justice Department guidelines, right? because of the Justice Department guidelines, right? He feels that it's unfair to accuse a sitting president of a crime if that person cannot then defend themselves using a normal court process.

And so therefore he does, that's even why he can't say, Congress, it's your job to impeach him and say the word impeachment deferral, because even that, and the Washington Post says this, Mueller's team believed that even that was accusing the president of a crime without the president being able to defend himself through a normal court process. So, Mueller did

everything he could to basically say here's the evidence that the president committed a crime, but I can't say that the president committed a crime because I can't charge him because he's a sitting president because of the stupid fucking opinion. Well, I don't know if he thinks it's a stupid fucking opinion, but it is. So you can see the box he's in. So I sort of understand that. I can't understand why either reporters, Democrats in Congress, I can understand why Republicans do this because they are conspiracy theorists and are willfully ignorant of this.

But I can't understand why there are any mixed messages coming from what he said yesterday. It seemed pretty clear to me. Yeah, it's like this is the hard part of undoing first impressions. Right. That's right. We would be in an entirely different role. It would probably be weeks into an impeachment inquiry right now if the way this had played out was he had submitted his letter or his report to Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein and then made this statement on that Friday night or that Sunday either before or contemporaneous to Bill Barr sending out his letter. And if he had done that, then we would be in a different world. Or if he had let it be known to the public that he disagreed with the characterization of the report in real time instead of waiting weeks to do so. And so I understand the box he's in. And

we really should be thankful to Bob Mueller for his service to this country throughout his entire life, including taking on what is a thankless but very important job, even beyond just accountability to President Trump, but finding out, but holding people, holding Russian entities and Russian individuals accountable for what happened in the election. But there is a world in which you have to understand that what is happening is not on the level and adjust your tactics as such. And so like writing a letter to Bill Barr saying you want your summaries out, but then Bill Barr ignoring you and then writing another letter and then just saying, well, I tried is not sufficient if you believe in the work that you did. And it's the same thing goes

to the question of his testimony, right? I understand why he doesn't want to testify, but that is not how the world works. And if you truly believe that this is really important, that the work you did was important, it should stand on itself and the public and the Congress should make a decision based on the work itself, not on the propagandization of the work by Trump, Bill Barr, and Fox News, then you got to speak for that work yourself. And there's not a substitute for that that is appropriate in this day and age. What do you think Democrats should do about his reluctance to testify? How much does his testimony matter at this point? I think what we know from yesterday is his testimony matters a lot. If he just sat in a

chair and read all 400 pages of the report out loud, I think it would be very dramatic and important. Does it mean it shifts all of the public opinion in the favor of impeachment? No, not necessarily. But a person is a better messenger than a PDF. And so having him do that would be good. I think we have to set expectations in our own minds as consumers and the Congress people do, and theirs, that Bob Mueller is not Jim Comey. He is not going to preen for the cameras. He's not going to try to be dramatic. He is going to be as boring as he possibly can. But I think as we saw from yesterday, there's so much confusion around this. There's so much bullshit

that just saying the words out loud in a mostly clear way helps cut through that bullshit. So I think he will be getting a subpoena one way or the other. And Adam Schiff, basically, as I heard yesterday, said, great, I look forward to hearing from Bob Mueller soon. So I think they're going to make him come testify in some way, shape, or form. I think the more nonpartisan and boring Bob Mueller is during his testimony, the more politically effective it will be, frankly. I mean, I think that James Comey was less politically effective because he decided to, you know, go after Trump, talk about his fucking tanning goggles, all that bullshit.

I mean, you know, he did sound in a way like he had joined the resistance at some point. And Bob Mueller being nonpartisan and just reading or reiterating the conclusions from his report in front of Congress. Yeah, look what an eight minute statement did yesterday. This is also, I mean, we're going to talk about this later, but it's another argument for the power of impeachment hearings in an age of television and media where, you know, people aren't reading a 400 page report, but when something is televised live for weeks at a time and it's all over cable and it's all over Twitter and it's all the news and information that most Americans are consuming, it has

a much, much bigger impact on people than any kind of report that Bob Mueller could release. And I think Democrats are probably underestimating the power of televised hearings that lay out for the American people exactly what misdeeds and crimes the president committed. Yeah, and they shouldn't be because the original approach that the Democratic leadership in the Congress proposed was as a either a substitute for or a preamble to impeachment would be a series of very high profile televised hearings with star witnesses to pull on the threads of the Mueller report and other associated Trump crimes and corruption.

So like that was the plan they wanted. Don McGahn in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Bob Mueller in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Donald Trump Jr. in front of the House Intelligence Committee. That was the plan. But that plan has not worked out for a host of reasons that also lead you to the path of impeachment. Yep. So another reason we know that Mueller's statement was a big deal is that Trump dropped his total exoneration bit and tweeted immediately after the statement, quote,

there was insufficient evidence and therefore in our country, a person is innocent. The case is closed. Thank you. And then today, waking up to this was fun. Today he tweeted, I had nothing to do with Russia helping me get elected. Whoops. And then he goes out to the White House South Lawn and he gives a little impromptu press conference to reporters. And I believe we have a clip of that that we're going to play right now. To me, it's a dirty word, the word impeach. It's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word. And it had nothing to do with me. So I don't think so,

because there was no crime. You know, it's high crimes and not with or or. It's high crimes and misdemeanors. There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor. So how do you impeach based on that? And it came out that there was nothing to do with Russia. The whole thing is a scam. It's one of it's a giant presidential harassment. And honestly, I hope it goes down as one of my greatest achievements because I've exposed corruption. I've exposed corruption like nobody knew existed.

Can I just say something? There's obviously a lot of problems with that statement. But maybe the biggest is that under Trump's definition of what constitutes an impeachable offense. You can commit a high crime, but if you don't also commit a misdemeanor, you're off the hook. I mean, there's just so much to unpack there. First, our anti-immigrant America first president would undoubtedly fail the citizenship test. Undoubtedly. Like just no concept of how anything within our government works, which is scary because he's in charge of the government. He also is just the king of the self-owned. He's like – where you mentioned previous where he, in an attempt to defend himself, finally admits that Russia helped him win. Here, he says he exposed a lot

of corruption, which is true. It's just his corruption. Yeah, his obstruction did succeed in exposing his own corruption. So that's a big win for him. No, I mean, but does that statement sound like the statement of someone who is goading Democrats into impeachment because he thinks it will be politically beneficial for him? No. That has been one of, I think, the worst arguments against impeachment is that it's what Trump wants. Yeah. It is. Doesn't seem like it's what he wants. There is a very real debate about what is good or bad politically, and we will have that. Yeah. It doesn't seem like it's what it is. an X-Files-style conspiracy to justify that black mark on his presidential record.

So imagine how he would act if he were to become one of three presidents who had to wear the scarlet eye of impeachment. There's no way he wants that. In his mind, so much of Trump's behavior is trying to navigate the dissonance between the reality of Trump, of who he is, how bad a president he is, how dumb he is, what a poor imitation of his own father he is, and the reality in his own mind that he is about to have his head carved into Mount Rushmore. And whenever he falls into the area between those and that dissonance comes through is

when he acts like a lunatic. And so impeachment is most certainly something that he would dread because it makes it harder to abide the fantasy that he is somehow not a giant fucking loser. He would be the only president in history to have won the presidency while losing the popular vote and getting impeached and by his own admission, having a foreign government helped him get elected in the first place. That is a very specific category. I mean, that is very much like what is in vogue

in sports statistics now when they're like, Steph Curry is the first player under 6'4 to average 28 points, five rebounds, and three steals. Like, yes, he would be the one president to do that. Well, it also goes to the core of what he cares about, which is the legitimacy of his presidency. Because if then you look at his presidency and say, okay, well, the guy won without

winning the popular vote he he won because a foreign government helped him get elected and then he got impeached that doesn't make him feel very good about uh about his presidency he also by the way said it wasn't part of that clip but he said of impeachment the courts will never allow it right hey buddy courts though they do not have anything to do with it i'm sorry except for the fact that that is a little bit of him like saying the quiet part out loud which is like he knows and mcconnell knows republican party knows that they have been stacking the courts in his favor and he's basically looking down pennsylvania avenue at the supreme court and in his head he knows i put bre Brett Kavanaugh on there and Neil Gorsuch and Mitch McConnell stole that seat from Obama.

So, like, I have immunity by court theft. Yeah, what's the problem? I think he really does think that. That's just why he's so fucking outraged when all of his unconstitutional illegal acts get overturned in court. Because he's like, I put all my judges, right? He calls them his judges. I put my judges on the court, and why aren't I getting all my judges, right? He calls them his judges. I put my judges on the court and why aren't I getting rulings that are in my favor? And so I do think he thinks the

courts will protect him because he has stacked the courts. Just wait till John Roberts, the chief judge of the Supreme Court, presides over the trial in the Senate and Trump starts saying like, why is crooked John Roberts there? Why isn't Brett Kavanaugh presiding over the thing? He doesn't get how any of this works. All right. So let's talk about the Democrats and what they should do now. Just about all the major presidential candidates put out statements supportive of impeachment to various degrees yesterday.

Two more House Democratic chairmen announced their support for impeachment, bringing the pro-impeachment vote in the House to around 40, 41, 42 Democrats and one Republican, Justin Amash. 41, 42 Democrats and one Republican, Justin Amash. That still leaves approximately 200 or so Democrats who are either opposed or undecided, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and most of her top leadership. On Wednesday, Pelosi said, quote, nothing is off the table, but we do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case that even the Republican Senate will be convinced. We want to do what gets results.

Dan, what kind of pressure does Mueller's statement yesterday put on Pelosi? How does this affect her decision? And what do you think of her reasoning yesterday? It puts more pressure on. I think the thing that probably puts the most pressure is Justin Amash, a Republican congressman facing a primary challenge, not only being essentially the most vocal advocate for impeachment in the House, going to a town hall in his Republican district and standing up and getting a standing ovation for making that case. I think that puts the most pressure on. We can't live in a world where Republican, even if it's one, but one Republican congressman is showing more courage of their convictions than Democrats in this situation. I think that puts a lot of pressure on. And I just have this sense that the momentum is all on the side of the Democrats who want to hold Trump accountable by opening an impeachment

inquiry. Because just think like the arguments they have. They have the clear moral argument. They have the clear constitutional argument. They have the better argument around legal strategy in the sense that Trump is stiff arming everything that they want to do and that their hand and getting access to those documents and those witnesses is strengthened by an impeachment inquiry. And the argument on the other side is essentially Trump committed impeachable offenses, but we're not going to do impeachment because politics or something. And that is just not – that's not a compelling argument. You're not exciting anyone with that. You're not – you're not – It's not a logically coherent argument.

It's just very hard to win that argument over the long term because there's no – and it's just – it's not a logically coherent argument. to check their passion because of political strategy, right? That's just, we have been down the road. We now believe, for better or worse, that no one knows anything. And so why would you take that on face value that doing the right thing morally, constitutionally, legally is the wrong thing politically? Why would you allow that argument to trump, no pun intended, what you believe? And look, you know know i've obviously been in favor of uh proceeding with impeachment for a little bit now but i will i understand where nancy pelosi is coming from i will make her argument for her um if you look at polls right now um democrats are in favor of impeachment by around 70, 75 percent of Democrats. Independents are slightly opposed.

Republicans are obviously very, very opposed. Pelosi is looking out at her caucus. She's looking at the seats that gave the Democrats the majority in the House that made her speaker. Those seats are in districts where those Democrats would not have won those seats if they did not get a good amount of votes from independents, from some Republicans. You know, ask Katie Porter, ask Lauren Underwood, ask Antonio Delgado if they'd be in their seats right now without Obama Trump voters, without Republican voters voting for them. And so if you look at the polls and you see independents and Republicans against impeachment and you see that not even all Democrats are for impeachment and you know that you're not going to get a conviction out of the Senate because Republicans are going to stand by Trump. You say to yourself, why put the caucus through that right now and why take that vote if we know that a majority of Americans, overwhelming majority of Americans agree with us on issues like health care, which voters happen to be very concerned about. So this is where Nancy Pelosi is coming from. The counter to that is that's where public opinion is right now at a time where only one half of one party is making the case why the president United States should be impeached. And we haven't had a trial. We haven't had all these televised investigations,

all this testimony. We haven't made a consistent coherent argument about why Donald Trump should be impeached. All the news right now is process arguments. It's about contempt citations. It's about getting Don McGahn to testify. Who the fuck is Don McGahn? Most people don't know. So all of this is we're in the weeds on process right now, and we haven't begun to make the actual argument for impeachment. They could be bad for Democrats. They could be good. Anyone who tells you they know where the politics are going to end up a couple months from now or a year from now, they're just they're here's the special counsel investigated the president, found that he committed a bunch of crimes. By the way, he's been abusing his power in office in all these other ways since the day he was elected, since before he was elected. This is why he's unfit for office. This is why he's dangerous. This is why he feels like he's above the law. Lay out the case. Who knows what might happen then? You know, as is probably clear to people who are listening now, is that my opinion has shifted on

this over time. Like, I have been- Yeah, so talk about that. And by the way, everyone should check out your piece in Crooked.com today about how Democrats can win the politics of impeachment if we go down that road. It's a fantastic piece. And so everyone, please check it out. Now I just write strategy memos for the open internet. It's become my new life. Someone needs to. So my view right after the Mueller report dropped was I agree with Nancy Pelosi. We should keep impeachment on the table.

You should do a series of high-profile hearings in the normal course of business that in the oversight committee, the judiciary committee, the intelligence committee that dramatized what was in the Mueller report and expand upon it. Right? So I thought that and then at the end of that process, if you could build support within the caucus and in the country for impeachment, you should proceed. There have been two things that have caused me to believe that now impeachment and impeachment inquiry is the best path for Democrats to take. The first is the path that Nancy Pelosi originally put forward is not available because Trump has decided to take an unprecedentedly unconstitutional approach to the balance between two separate but equal branches of government and to say that no oversight is appropriate, that everything is a partisan fishing expedition. I will not cooperate. You'll

get no witness. You'll get no documents. That's going to be true on everything from what was in the Mueller report to the hurricane, to oversight into the botched response, the tragically botched response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, to just all the other incidences of corruption throughout the administration. And so you're deprived the opportunity to expose to the public what Trump did through the normal course of business. So that's one. And the second one is I've sort of had this gnawing feeling about – it's almost a sense of deja vu as I've been talking about this. And so on Friday – I think it was Friday. I was on Twitter as often happens on a Friday or any other day.

Or any day. And I saw that Robbie Mook, who was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, was trending. And I was like, huh. So I clicked on that. And people were very worked up because CNBC had written an article that said, voter activists are essentially mad at Pelosi for not moving on impeachment, but political strategists agree with her. And it went through and quoted a lot of very smart, very accomplished pollsters, political consultants, essentially the

people whose job it is to keep the House, take the Senate, win the White House. And included in that group was Robbie Mook, who said that avoiding impeachment was the better political move. And I just had this feeling, not that I don't respect all of the people quoted in that story, move. And I just had this feeling, not that I don't respect all of the people quoted in that story, this feeling that there was just something deeply uncomfortable about, once again, the professional political class of, I consider myself at least adjacent to, if not an actual member of, telling activists, we know better what is good politically, so check what you believe is right morally or constitutionally, whatever. That just felt very uncomfortable and felt like an unsustainable position for the party

to be in because you're basically putting a neon sign over your head that says, we are not doing what we believe is right. We are doing what we believe polls better. And that is always terrible politics. Yeah. It's just you – it is very hard to convince people that you are the change that they believe in when you act like the most typical fucking politician in American history. And that is how Democrats are coming off right now because no one is making the counterargument to impeachment on anything other than politics, right? Like they're going out and saying, it's what Trump wants, it'll solidify his base, the polls say it's bad. Those are not arguments to persuade people to your position. And I think that is a huge problem. And so I took from that, I was like, huh, maybe I should as a thought exercise, try to make the case for why the politics of impeachment are good, right?

That maybe that all the consultants are wrong. And so I spent way more of my weekend, my Memorial Day weekend, writing that piece than I intended to. But ultimately, I couldn't convince myself that they were good, right? Like, what I came away from was that the politics are not, like, what the politics that matter are not what they are now. Like it is how they are at the end of this. And that there is huge political risk in impeaching and heading down an impeachment path. There is no doubt about that. But there is also as much if not more risk in not heading down that path and basically turning a blind eye to your constitutional

responsibility. And we can talk about why that is, but what it really came down to, and the reason I wrote this piece, was instead of trying to debate whether it was good politics or bad politics, or if or when we do impeachment, I decided to focus on how we do it. And to think about if we go down this path, which I think we are probably, at least seems as of today, like we are going to get to eventually, what would be the best way to do it to manage those politics to see if you can turn this into a moment when we are doing the right thing for the country, but we are also maximizing our chances to keep the House, defeat Trump, and even take back the Senate. And I think there is a path to do that. And that's what I laid out in the piece. I think the point you just made about what does the path look like?

What does the next year look like? If we do not pursue impeachment is a very important point and something that we haven't talked about as much. If you told me that if we walk away from impeachment, we could engage Donald Trump and the Republican Party in a great debate over health care coverage or a great debate over tax cuts, the Republican tax cuts or the regulations they're stripping away and how they're helping Wall Street banks and all this other kind of stuff. If you told me that we could have that debate every day from now until the election in 2020, I'd tell you I'd rather have that debate than have a debate about

impeachment. But that's not the presidency we're dealing with. That's not the age of media that we're dealing with right now. And I think it's a misunderstanding of how Trump captures the news cycle every day and how he acts as a president, which is he is going to, he has already told us that he is basically going to try to investigate his political opponents, turn this around on the Democrats, you know, try to have show trials by the time we're in the election next year. He's got his attorney general now investigating the investigators. He's going to beat up on Democrats every day. He's going to beat up on Democrats every day.

And I've come to think that basically this is a race against time to find out who can own more news cycles between now and the 2020 election. The Democrats or Donald Trump. after Trump, on the crimes that he committed, on the impeachable offenses that he's committed, puts him on the defensive, makes him angry, and prevents him from being on offense against Democrats as he is on other days of the week when we're out there trying to get our message out. Now, this doesn't mean that our presidential candidates and our congressional candidates shouldn't be out there at town halls every single fucking day talking about their plan for health care and their plan for wages and all the other kind of stuff. But it does mean that we are in this constant media battle to see who can own the microphone that day. And Donald Trump, nine times out of ten, is always in control of the microphone. Impeachment, having the eyes of the nation focused on these live televised hearings over and over again

is perhaps one way perhaps the only way to finally rest the microphone away from donald trump i think that is right and as i was trying to factor the politics of my head and it is like there is something uncomfortable about like this is Congress's most sort of sacred responsibility, right? Is the biggest thing they do would be to undertake an effort that could lead to the removal of an elected president. Like that is a big thing. And so you sort of, it feels weird to talk about politics, but it is a political process. It is the founder sort of intended it that way by giving it to the elected representatives of the public as opposed to the judiciary, which was also – they had three branches. They had to choose two here and they chose the one staffed by people who have to face the voters. But also we know it's political in the sense that Trump is – has immunity by Republican cowardice in the Senate, right? We have to be very clear,

he is not going to be removed from office. So we have to think about what we're trying to achieve here, and it is a political objective. And so a couple of thoughts about how to think about that. One is, we have to think about an impeachment proceeding as what matters is the journey, not the destination. As much as it will bother Donald Trump to be one of a tiny handful of impeached presidents, what matters is what we tell people into getting there. I don't think voters are going to be like, I was for him until you impeached him. But it could be that in the context of what they learned over the course of that time, they were less likely to support Trump or they decided that a Democrat would be better off. And so I think that

that is the way to think about it, right? It's not what's going to happen at the end. It's what's going to happen between the day you open the inquiry and Election Day 2020. And how can you inform voters in a very specific set of voters, right? New and sporadic voters who helped elect Democrats in 2018, the voters who voted for Trump in 2016 but disapprove of him now, the voters who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016, will they be available to us? That's how we have to think about that. The second thing is I think the arguments against impeachment politically are they're not precise enough, or they're somewhat inaccurate. And so they should at least be tested. It may still turn out that the risk of impeachment is tremendous. And you just everything is risky,

like getting out of bed is risky, right? So But the two points that people often cite is the effects of the Republicans impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998. And the way that story is told is historically inaccurate. Because a couple of important points. One, Bill Clinton was, yes, Bill Clinton won seats in 1998, which came as a big surprise and was very unusual for a midterm election and a president's second term. And impeachment was something that was being discussed in that election because Republicans were talking about it as a response to the Ken Starr investigation and Bill Clinton's conduct. But the impeachment didn't happen until after the election. So the Republicans didn't. So we're basically, if we do not impeach

or begin impeachment proceedings against Trump before the 2020 election, we are essentially rerunning the play that did not work in 1998, which is you put something that is a radioactive issue like impeachment on the table, but then you spend no time or effort to explain to people why you're doing it. Basically, they raise the charge without prosecuting the case. Second point is, yes, it charge without prosecuting the case. Second point is, yes, it is true that at the height of impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval ratings skyrocketed to 73% in the Gallup poll. That is true. But a couple of points around that. One, they were 66% on the day of the last Gallup poll before the 1998 election. in the last Gallup poll before the 1998 election. And while they hit 73, right as Bill Clinton was being impeached, his numbers went back down to what was sort of his baseline for the rest of

his term, which was high 60s, low 50s, which is still very high, but we're also sort of living in a different, less polarized era. And then in the first election after impeachment, Democrats did pick up seats in the House and they did pick up seats in the Senate. So we should be clear about that. But Bill Clinton's vice president lost election in part because George W. Bush, who was running against Al Gore at the time, ran explicitly against Clinton's conduct. He talked about returning decency to the Oval Office. It was very specific that he was running against Bill Clinton's conduct and the associated chaos that came from all the investigations and impeachment. And even though Bill Clinton remained relatively popular, he was at least toxic enough with swing voters at the end of that election that Al Gore decided that Bill Clinton, the incumbent Democratic president of the United States, could not campaign for him down the stretch.

And we can debate whether that was – that will be debated forever whether that was the right decision or the wrong decision. But the fact that he even thought it is proof that impeachment had an impact on Bill Clinton's political viability. on Bill Clinton's political viability. And so I think we have to think about, we at least have to understand that historical example correctly if we're going to evaluate the politics of impeachment going forward. Yeah, I think the other important point about that historical example is the argument that Republicans made for impeachment was somewhat discordant in the minds of voters because they're basically saying, yes, you might think he's doing a good job, this president. You might like the economy. You might think his presidency is a success, but we want to impeach him for personal conduct. And I think it also, I think that gets to

a very important point that you also raise in your piece today, which is that the Democrats messaging around impeachment and why they're impeaching Donald Trump and what for is critical. And I do think that if Democrats focus only on the Mueller report, that will be a political mistake and just a mistake in general, because what Trump did around Russia and his obstruction is not the only impeachable offense he has committed since taking office. And so I think you need a broader message about Trump's abuse of power. I mean, just imagine a set of impeachment hearings where you not only talk about the Mueller report, but you talk about how Trump has been using his presidency to promote his private businesses and get rich, which has encouraged corporations and

foreign governments to funnel money into the Trump Hotel in Mar-a-Lago if they want to influence, and foreign governments to funnel money into the Trump Hotel in Mar-a-Lago if they want to influence, say, a corporate merger or U.S. foreign policy. And, you know, you ask people, is that how we want our president to make decisions? Can you afford to join his private club if you need a certain policy? He's placed himself above the law. He's abused his power to target his political enemies. He's ordered investigations into Hillary, Biden, Obama officials. He's tried to make Amazon pay more for postage because of a personal feud with Jeff Bezos, the company's owner.

Imagine if he did that to your company. He's pardoned his friends and business associates, even when they violated human rights like fucking Joe Arpaio or stole money from people like his former business partner, Conrad Black. He told border patrol agents he'd pardon them if they broke the law.

He's considering right now pardoning war criminals. I mean, his government tried to cover up the murder of a Washington Post journalist by a foreign government who he currently has a secret financial relationship with. And then there's issues that actually, you know, matter to people's lives. He acted illegally to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, build a border wall using money that Congress refused to appropriate, and separate immigrant children from their families, some of whom his government has lost. I mean, imagine the witnesses that you could bring before Congress to tell these stories and how you could connect his actions and his misdeeds and his crimes to what really matters to the

American people. It doesn't have to be about just obstruction and contempt and the Mueller report and all this stuff. We can make this about issues that really matter to people. The other point I just want to make about the politics of it, right? Because, I mean, because they do matter, is people also say Democrats won in 2018 because they didn't follow Trump down rabbit holes and they had a disciplined, focused campaign on healthcare and the Trump tax cut. And that is true. But there is a second piece of that. And they also ran, whether they were running in blue

districts or deeply red districts, they ran on providing a check and a balance against the chaos and corruption of Trump's Washington. And we talked last week about this Catalyst report. One of the findings in that report was one of the things that caused Democrats to have such a successful 2018 was a surge of new voters for a midterm. Their 13% electorate was new voters. And what message does it send to those voters if you sell to them in 2018

that you're gonna provide a check and a balance to Trump? But then in 2019, you turn a blind eye to what is essentially an impeachment referral from Bob Mueller about obstruction of justice. What message does that send? The key to getting people to get off the sidelines and vote, and then to get them to go from being a first-time voter to a second, third, fourth-time voter is to show them that their vote matters. So if you make them an explicit promise and then break that promise within 365 days, then you are putting yourself at risk in 2020. We need every

one of those voters from 2018 to turn out and then some to win this election in 2020. And so, yes, there is real concerns about how this will affect some of those Obama Trump voters who voted for a Democrat in 2018. Yes, there is some concern about how this will affect some of those Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016, but now disapprove of him and got them to vote for him. There is some effect on that. There is also an effect on potentially base turnout. And we have to look at all of – look at a holistic picture here about the politics and not simply assign it to a set of white working class voters in the Midwest and allow them to dictate the strategy for the party, which I think too oftentimes we do. Yes. And last point here, and you talk about this in your piece as well, is I think Democrats should use the low expectations that impeachment will

result in Trump's removal in their favor, right? The jury is not the Senate. The jury is the American people. And as Democrats start this, I think they should say explicitly, we don't necessarily expect that Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans are going to show political courage for the first time in the Trump presidency and do the right thing here. But we want everyone in that Senate on record before the 2020 election, and then the American people can decide. If Susan Collins, who's going to be hopefully in a close race in Maine, if Cory Gardner, who's going to be in a tight race in Colorado, if Martha McSally, who's going to be in a tight race in Arizona,

if they want to look at all this evidence about the president's abuse of power and unfitness for office and the crimes he committed and say, we stick with Donald Trump, we're going to not have any accountability for Donald Trump whatsoever. We're going to let him off the hook for everything. If they want to take that vote, they can take that vote and then they can face the voters in 2020. And so therefore, we set up a thing where when, you know, the Senate exonerates Donald Trump and he says, oh, they exonerated me. No one's surprised because we know that basically this is about making a case to the American people, which we're going to do anyway, about why Donald Trump shouldn't serve a second term. And then the voters can decide.

Ask Susan Collins right now. I bet if a reporter asked Susan Collins right now, would you vote to exonerate Donald Trump or impeach Donald Trump? She'd at least say, well, I'd have to see the evidence. She wouldn't say I'm going to I'm going to. She's not excited to take a vote on impeachment. Cory Gardner is not excited to take a vote on impeachment. Do you think these people are like super psyched that Democrats are pursuing this and then they get to vote to exonerate Donald Trump? I don't think so. Yeah, they have no choice because if they vote to exonerate Donald Trump in blue states in a presidential election year, they face real risk

of wrath of both jacked up Democratic turnout and independent voters. So in a state like Colorado, independents are the largest portion of the electorate. And if they were, some people have said to me since that piece came out, well, wouldn't McConnell just let Gardner, Collins, McSally, et cetera, vote to convict Trump because he doesn't need those votes. They can't take that vote either because that would betray Trump and they would basically, no Trump voters would turn out. So you're putting tremendous pressure on them in an impossible position, which there's a way in which we can use this process to not just beat Donald Trump in the presidential election,

but also take the Senate, which is what this is. This is what we are aiming for. Yeah. It has to be done right. Like if this is done poorly, it's a fucking disaster. But you have to have a plan. You have to have a message and you have to execute it with fucking precision and discipline. And that is not easy. No. In a live fire exercise like this will be, but it can be done. We just have to do it right. Yeah. And I think that's where my biggest anxiety is that we fail on the execution here. exercise like this will be, but it can be done. We just have to do it right.

Yeah. And I think that's where my biggest anxiety is that we, we fail on the execution here and it becomes a bunch of, you know, Democrats and disarray stories and, you know, we fuck it all up. And, uh, you know, like, uh, the guy who ate a bunch of fried chicken when, uh, you know, Don McGahn didn't show up for his testimony and thought that was a funny stunt. That's, that's the kind of shit that, yeah, that will be politically bad for us. Okay, we talked a lot about this. Let's talk about the Democratic primary. On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee announced its third presidential primary debate in September, along with new requirements for candidates to qualify.

Candidates will now have to have 130,000 unique donors, up from the current threshold of 65,000 unique donors, and, not or, and they will have to poll at 2% or higher in at least four national or early state polls, up from the current rule of 1% in three polls. The new rules could dramatically winnow the number of candidates that make the debates as of right now. Nineteen candidates have qualified for the first debates later this month. These new rules could trim the field possibly down to seven, eight, nine candidates. Dan, is this a good idea? It's hard to say if it is a good idea or not. It is a necessary idea. And I am very sympathetic to the challenges the DNC faces here, right? They wanted to, especially after what happened in 2016,

they wanted to be as fair as possible to give as many people an opportunity to go from the bottom of the pack to the top of the pack. And so they set the standard of 1% in a poll and 65,000 unique doters. And the goal with that was to make it so that grassroots support, small dollar grassroots support should be encouraged and it should be recognized. It just turned out that it was easier to hit that threshold than people expected. And that's sort of impossible to know at the time. I don't remember much people being like, this is super easy. There was just more engagement among a wider array of candidates than people expected. And it's easier to get people to get like, you can convince people to

give a few dollars online, especially if you're putting money behind social media ads, which is what all these candidates have been spending all their money on. It's this building and donations. And so you can get there. So they're trying to balance not putting their thumb on the scale in favor of establishment candidates who are currently front runners with, I think, also an obligation to the voters that they get to see the candidates who are most likely to be the nominee engage with each other, right? Like, if we go through a bunch of debates and we never see Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders or Biden and Bernie Sanders engage with each other, then that is a disservice to the voters, right? Like if we end up in a world where Biden is on stage with Marianne Williams and Andrew Yang,

you know, a bunch of people who have a very, very, very small chance as of right now to be president, then we're not really getting to see, like to really test out the metal of that candidate. So they're trying to find the right balance. I think this could dramatically win over the field. Nate Silver made this point that it's just going to be very hard to get to 2% for a lot of these candidates. 1%, you're sort of within the margin of error and you can, you know, be zero most times, then one a couple of times and you'll get there. Two is harder, especially in a field this large. So, you know, you could be down to, you know, eight to 10 candidates pretty quickly. And I'm torn on it. It's hard for those other candidates, especially the ones who got in the race late, to say tough.

But I think ultimately, this is probably the right thing to do. It's just we're living in a world of unintended consequences. Yeah. I am sympathetic to all the candidates who are currently polling around 1% and haven't hit that donor threshold. And I'm sympathetic to their argument, well, I just need more time. I'm sort of in this catch-22, like, I need to be able to break through, but in order to break through, I sort of need the media exposure, and that's why I need this debate. And I get that to a point. But the counter example here is Pete Buttigieg, who, you know, he's a small town mayor. He was on nobody's radar. He was polling at 1%. And within a month of announcing, maybe a little more, he was able to, through his CNN town hall, maybe a little more, he was able to, through his CNN town hall, and of course, his interview with you, Dan, here on Pod Save America, he was able to prove that he belonged in the top tier through several breakout performances. And it took him about a month or two months. And if this threshold, this new threshold were in place for these first two debates, I'd say it was certainly unfair. But by September, by the time September rolls around and all these candidates have been campaigning for a couple months and they've all had their chance to do their CNN town halls and their MSNBC town halls.

And by the way, they've had a chance to do two national debates and get their message out there. and get their message out there, if they still can't hit 2% in the polls, then I do think it's fair to say, you know, we still are going to have about eight or nine candidates on stage at once together. That's still a huge field. And those are the eight or nine candidates, not the two or three, eight or nine candidates most likely to win this race, and voters need to see them in a series of exchanges and not hear 30

seconds to a minute from each person and then move on. They need to hear a real debate. And by the way, that field, if it was right now, would be, you know, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, perhaps as well. That field would be the most diverse field of Democratic candidates maybe in history. Three women in that field, two people of color, a gay man. I mean, that is a very diverse field. It's diverse ideologically. If we end up with that field, with that group of candidates by September, after all these other candidates have been campaigning for months and had plenty of media exposure sanctioned by the DNC, then I think we're in a pretty good place. Yeah, the barriers to entry have been brought down for lesser known political figures. And that's not just Mayor Pete. It's also Andrew Yang. Yeah.

Mayor Pete, at least, was well known within the party as a rising star. He had turned a run for DNC chair into some fame internally. I mean, even to the point where when we interviewed President Obama on his last day in office, he mentioned Mayor Pete as someone who was a rising star within the party. He's had that rising star label. But Andrew Yang, who's going to be in that debate, came from nowhere, right? And he built a following on the internet through an aggressive strategy. And so you still – even if you don't get in the debate, it gets harder. But you can still make yourself known because you can get on podcasts. This is just where the three networks, CNN and the New York Times and Washington Post decide who gets coverage. There are all kinds of ways to get coverage, and you can still do it.

And if you have a compelling message and a good story and an interesting agenda, you have a chance. But the DNC does, to your point, have an obligation to try to make these debates as informative as possible for the voters. And just simply saying you were running for president, as we've said before, is not the same as actually running for president. You have to be putting together a real campaign and getting traction. And whether this is going to be the exact right line, maybe it should be slightly different. Maybe you should have 12 candidates, not nine. Maybe you should have seven, not nine. I don't know. But going to a world in which we are beginning as we get, as we're within six months of the Iowa caucus, where we're focusing the

attention on the people who've been able to gain traction is probably the right and only path to take. Whether they're doing it the exact right way or not, we'll see how this plays out. But I understand why they did it, and it seems to be the only choice to make. All right, let's talk about the policy primary. A new story from Thomas Kaplan and Astead Herndon in the New York Times says that Elizabeth Warren is gaining in the polls and seeing bigger crowds, and that she's, quote, been propelled in part by a number of disruptive choices, most notably the breakneck pace at which she introduces policy proposals. Dan, do you agree with that? And what do you think about Warren's overall strategy and the strength of her campaign? Elizabeth Warren is running the best campaign of anyone in this race, and it's not close.

I agree. That is not to say there aren't other people running really good races. Like the fact that mayor Pete has gone from nowhere to a top tier contender and is by all accounts, raising more money than perhaps anyone else in the field right now is also incredibly impressive. So we can debate it, but Elizabeth Warren knows why she's running her campaign knows what their

path to win is. They're running it with strategic discipline. They are playing the long game. They are taking risks. They are consistent with their strategy. And they are being opportunistic to find ways to make news in a very tough news environment, whether it is being the first to, in the context of the presidential campaign, to jump on impeachment, whether it is seeing that every other candidate is doing a Fox News town hall, so you're going to take a strong stance against Fox. She's just running the best campaign.

Does that mean she's going to win? No. Does that mean she'll still also be running the best campaign three months from now? No. But she, this is a little punny, I guess, but she has a plan to win, right? That is the actual plan she has. And all of her policies ladder up to a narrative about who she is and why she'd be a good president. It's very impressive. Just from the perspective of people who have worked on campaigns before, both good ones and bad ones, she is running a very good campaign, and that should be noted. I completely agree. And it actually bothers me when people talk about Elizabeth Warren's success as only a result of the fact that she's releasing a bunch of policies. Because as we have seen in the past, as we've talked about many times about 2016 and about other races, you can put out a slew of 10-point plans and detailed policy papers.

slew of 10-point plans and detailed policy papers, and that does not equal a winning political strategy by any means. But the reason that Elizabeth Warren is successful and the reason that her plans are successful is because, like you said, they all ladder up to that one overarching message, right? Even her policies, it's all about sort of unstacking the debt. They fit a message, right? That, you know, people who are powerful and wealthy, they write the rules, they write the laws, and everyone else gets screwed. And she's saying, we're going to rewrite the laws so that they're more democratic. We're going to rewrite the rules so that more people have a chance. And all of her policies flow from that. And like you said, she's also been very good about trying to get coverage, not just on her plans, but on things like the Fox News Town Hall, on being out there early on impeachment. She's doing things like going to West Virginia to talk to Trump voters about opioids and getting news that way.

She's out there. She was at an event last week and she said ask the other candidates if they get their money from a bunch of millionaires which is talking about her very difficult and risky decision to ditch high dollar fundraising events and only do low dollar fundraising which is risky but she's then using it to her advantage by saying you know when mayor pete and kamala harris and joe biden and some of these candidates who are doing a lot of high dollar fundraising and raising money from really rich people, when they come through here, you ask them where they're getting their money from. I'm getting their money from grassroots donors. And so I really think it's smart that she's putting all the different pieces together and she's not just focused on throwing out a bunch of policy plans.

And one thing that is important to note there is her campaign has a very high risk tolerance. Yes. They understand that for anyone with the other than the possible exception of Joe Biden, just given his commanding lead in the polls right now, for everyone else, winning is a tremendous long shot. It is probably sub 10% for every other candidate, not other than Joe Biden. And because it's very hard to win a primary period, it's really hard to win in a large, incredibly diverse field like this one. And if you understand how low your chances are of winning, then you recognize that you need to take risks. You have to have a strategy with high variance where there's tremendous downside risk to saying, I'm not going to do in-person fundraisers. You are betting on something.

You're betting you're going to be able to sell a grassroots message and turn that into enough money to power your campaign. But there's also huge upside benefit if you execute it well. Being in front of impeachment, same situation. And I would like to see more campaigns understand the importance of risky strategies. It's not risk for risk's sake. It is looking at understanding what your strategy is and then being willing to tolerate high risk for high benefit. And that is, I think, been to the great credit of her campaign. And she hasn't panicked. It was only a month ago that the New York Times wrote a story that was very criticized by many of us, but made the point that she was struggling, not moving in the polls,

not raising money. And since then, she has moved in the polls and raised a lot of money and is firmly ensconced herself in the top tier of the race. And that's very impressive. and is firmly ensconced herself in the top tier of the race. And that's very impressive. The other thing I just say about her campaign is she has adjusted over time. I sort of dreaded, in some ways, what Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign would look like a few years ago when Trump first came into office, and she was getting in these Twitter fights with Trump all the time. And it just felt very – her strategy was drafting on Trump's insults of her and sort of allowing him to define

the four corners of the conversation around Elizabeth Warren. And that you're gonna, like Trump's gonna speak, you're gonna respond. And it felt 2016-ish to me. But since then, she has found a way to tell her story

and communicate her message absent Trump, right? Like Trump is part of every part of every conversation in America, so you don't have to mention it all the time. And her way of communicating her way of telling her story right now has really changed since the early part of the Trump era to a way that I think is a much more effective both primary and general election strategy. And it's impressive. So some of the other candidates released big policy proposals of their own this week. Joe Biden promised to triple spending on low income schools for things like teacher raises and access to pre-K. Beto became the second candidate to release a comprehensive immigration plan that would offer a pathway to citizenship

for undocumented immigrants and end deportations of undocumented immigrants who don't have criminal backgrounds. Kamala Harris released a plan based on the Voting Rights Act that would require states to get preclearance to pass new abortion restrictions if the state has a bad track record. Dan, what's your reaction to these plans? And do you think these candidates have felt pressured at all by Warren putting all her plans out? And should they? I think they all seem very, like much of the policy that's been released by all the candidates, well thought out, aggressive, speaks to the moment we're in.

By the moment we're in, I don't mean Trump being president. I mean a world in which we're living in a world of massive transformation both in our government and our economy, et cetera. both in our government and our economy, et cetera. And so like bold, right? Like these are good bold plans. I'm not an expert enough in some of them to know like the exact precision of how good they are, but they're compelling. I certainly think Elizabeth Warren is putting some pressure on some candidates to put out more policies because she set the bar. But this is also, in fairness to these candidates, this is how you run for president, right? Is that you try to tell the public what you stand for, what kind of president you would be, and you try to do it in a way that makes news, right? Kamala Harris did her announcement in anticipation of an MSNBC town hall she was doing. she was doing. Beto O'Rourke is someone who's defined his candidacy around growing up and representing a border district. And so immigration is an important part of it. So I think there's some pressure, but this is also what presidential campaigns should be doing. It's what they sort of owe the voters. And it's an important part of strategy. The key is making your policies be more than a one-day press hit. They have to be a data point in a larger story that you're

trying to tell the public. That's exactly right. I mean, I thought the same thing too. Your policies, it's not just about throwing out random policies to satisfy people who are saying, you need more policy. You're not substantive enough. Look at all of Elizabeth Warren's policy. And then you react by throwing out a bunch of policy. Every policy proposal you release, every press event you do, every strategic move you make should be in service of the larger story you're trying to tell about why you should be president, why people should vote for you in this very crowded field over everybody else. And even if you don't want to make the explicit argument about why you should be the nominee and not everyone else. It should be

implicit in just about everything that you say. And I do think, look, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have to worry about this a little less because they have near universal name ID. They're at the top of the field. Everyone knows who they are. And so they're going to lay out their plans and talk about why they should be president. That's that. And then you have the next sort of two people in the polls, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. They've sort of been able to stand out. I mean, Warren's policy is her message in some ways. All of her plans add up to a larger story about where she wants to take the country and what's currently broken about our politics. Pete's personal story and his age and where he comes from in many ways is his message. He's lighter on the policy side right now, but he's sort of telling a story about

who he is and where he comes from and generational change. That's his message. I think then when you get to Beto and Kamala, who are sort of the next two people in the polls, you know, they both stand out in different ways and have different stories to tell. But I think their challenge is to figure out what policies they can put together, what tactics, what strategies they can all put together that tells very unique stories about each of them and why they would be, you know, the best nominee and why they should stand out and why you should vote for them and not all of these other qualified nominees. why they should stand out and why you should vote for them and not all of these other qualified nominees. Yeah, that's right. It is, you know, every candidate needs to know why they're running

for president, what story they want to tell voters. And if you don't know that, you're going to run a very poor campaign because everything's just going to be pretty fucking random. I think the Elizabeth Warren-Pete puticic comparison is really interesting because warren is running entirely on policy and puticic is running almost entirely without policy which doesn't mean he doesn't have positions but he has been very deft at like at running in a way that allows people to regardless of where the, he's elided the debates around issues like Medicare for all or the green new deal by kind of being for broad versions of lots of things. So if you're for Medicare for all, Mayor, you know, Mayor Pete has given you reason as he did

in the positive American interview to believe he's open to a Bernie Sanders version of Medicare for all. But if you're against that, he is said he's also willing to consider a buy in. And so like some like there is it's just very interesting that you can have success entirely with policy and have almost as much or as much success without a focus on policy. It's just it's like two different campaigns both being run well. Yeah, what what ties them both together is knowing what your story is and why it's unique compared to the rest of the field and driving that message home every single day and not being random about what you decide to speak about and where you decide to go. So, okay. When we return, we will have our interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Dave Mandel of Veep.

On the pod today, we have Veep's star and its showrunner, Julia Louis Dreyfuss and David Mandel. Hi. Hello. Welcome. Thank you. It's so good to have you guys here. Thank you. This is exciting.

This is exciting. I'm freaking out. It is exciting. It's so good to have you guys here. Thank you. This is exciting. This is exciting. I'm freaking out. It is exciting.

I don't know if I've ever laughed harder than the last season of Veep. Yay. It was incredible. Well, you were a part of it. Yes. You guys were big parts of it. Two things that I 100% know of and also a lot of spiritual help and sending us to people to talk to. But two really killer

jokes I mean are we allowed to start with that? Yeah but just for the listeners and they understand John you came in and spoke with the writers and producers Which is a big part of our process I think we've talked about that too that sort of the opening certainly month of our show is like for us a really kind, a really good excuse to bring people like you guys in. It's the most fun thing I ever did. I get to sit with you guys. It's really enjoyable. It's like our little weird salon or something.

It's like our podcast that we're not recording, basically. Right, exactly. So I did that for a while, and then Tommy, you did it too. Yeah, I hung out with the writers. I would talk Iowa. Oh, I was not there. You were hardcore Iowa. Yeah, we just geeked out about all things corn related.

Yes, of course. Cockroaches. All of which we. And so when you were there, the opening scene of the final season, which was the landing at the wrong airport. And again, I can't remember if we said it in the room right then and there into your face,

but I can only tell you when you left, I wrote down the opening scene. I'm going to steal everything that guy has, never bring him back. We own him. No, but that just became the opening scene of Selena trying to make her announcement and being at the wrong airport. And I don't think we did the same mistake you guys. We did Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls or something like that. Cedar Rapids uh he was

supposed to land in des moines got it yeah i'm such a doofus that i watched the episode i was like holy shit that happened to obama too no kidding that's amazing i remember like a year that's hilarious but the thing is is that i honestly believe that if that hadn't been pitched as a real thing we I would have pushed back. Right on the edge of dinging it. Yes, I would have pushed back at Dave and said, no, it's too broad. It's not plausible, et cetera, et cetera. Can you imagine being Barack Obama?

I didn't remember that happened. We were just like, what the fuck, man? Like, how does this happen? But the other thing, too, was, I mean, I will say, not to geek out for a second, but, like, it was so great to shoot because you get to do that kind of like i don't know like like silence of the lambs like you're in the wrong place where it seems like a plane is landing and that sort of hello iowa moment and it was so it was a really good joke so but thank you for messing that up and then the other huge joke uh was we got from john

and it was in the final episode of the season, and that's when Selena is taking— Repeatedly taking, but in this case taking, yeah. Repeatedly taking language from the speech of DeVito, Governor DeVito, who is the veteran— Wounded warrior. Wounded warrior. That was our little ad, because you told the story about how basically you got sent by the Kerry campaign to take lines from Obama, right?

That was your first time you ever met him. That was the first time I met Obama is that Obama, Kerry said that Obama had a line in his convention speech that Kerry wanted to use. Did we steal the same line too? Something about multiple Americas or two Americas or three Americas? I think we made it. Was it something in that ballpark? Stand for America? Well, yeah.

The interesting thing was there was, so the most famous one was Kerry having the same line as Barack Obama in his speech. But there was also, so when Kerry walked out, he said, I'm John Kerry reporting for duty, which made sense because he was a Vietnam vet. But introducing John Kerry was Senator Max Cleland. Yes!

That was it. I remember that. Yes, of course. A triple amputee. Which we did not go triple. We went one crutch, kind of a limp, indistinct. And I'll just say, perhaps Max Cleland was thinking about using the line, I'm reporting for duty. Yes.

No, he was going to say, John Kerry is here reporting for duty and then introduce John Kerry. That was going to be his line. And then the advisors thought, wouldn't it be better if John Kerry said himself he's reporting for duty? Because he had it already. Right. It's as if, so you stole from John Kerry,

John Kerry stole from Max Cleland. So in a lot of ways, you stole from Max Cleland as well. Yeah, that's how we like to think of it. Exactly. That's exactly it. I did the same thing the same thing though i watched that episode and as soon as i saw that go down i was like did i tell this story yeah yes you did yes you did and we wrote it down instantly selena steals language from crippled guy that's that's what i remember because i was there that day and i remember looking at dave and we both sort of looked

at each other and nod and we're like oh, oh, yeah, that's going in. She's going to do that. And we actually introduced, even though he barely has a line, but in our debate episode, we very specifically hired. It's played by Ian Roberts, who's one of the UCB co-founders with Matt Walsh. So one of the really original improv guys. co-founders with Matt Walsh. So one of the really original improv guys. We hired him for this nothing role

which was to stand at one of the debate podiums with a crutch just so that... I had to explain to him thank you for doing this. It will pay off. She's going to do all this.

We didn't even know at that point he was going to be her vp possible we just knew she was gonna steal from him she's gonna steal from you and your story and so it was like trying it was and he was good enough to do it too but yeah so that was that went right in i mean i think what people love about the show what i love about the show is you guys spare no one so is it ever hard to deliver or write or get out a joke about a disabled veteran who you're just will you tell me shit out of i listen i don't know what tommy i thought it worked i don't know what time is going on about i gotta tell you i apologize but let me tell you you know this show's been this show's been edited too by the way i mean this the 45 minute finale was originally an hour 15 so suffice it to say there were a few more of those jokes in the original.

I mean, we piled on. Yeah, there's always one where you just go, we can't do that one. But it always helps to make the other ones that much more digestible. Like, well, we cut that really horrible one. When did you know how the series would end? And did real-life politics affect it? Because I read somewhere that there was an original ending and you guys changed it. Wait, when did we know how it was going to end?

Yeah, exactly how the series was going to end. Well, we thought it was going to end one way about. We sat down to originally basically. Two years ago. Yeah, when we initially made the decision that this was it. We sat down and this was going to be it and here's this finale. And a lot of it is what you saw. I mean, it was a build to a brokered convention and all of those things.

But I think it had, at the time, which was funny and good, but a more, maybe less surprising ending or a variation, I guess. Like Jonah screws things up and it costs her the presidency. I guess, like Jonah screws things up and it costs her the presidency. And then years later, Richard calls her to be his vice president, a pick, sort of the Biden to his Obama, I guess. And we and we discussed about how would she would we see on camera her say yes or we would see. And we I think we both decided we'd have to see that moment right before she says yes. Just as she starts to, yeah. You get the sense she might, and then the show's over.

But then we decided not to do that, and the show shut down. Well, then we shut down. Yes, for my cancer romp. And as I like to say, the best thing that ever happened to the show, honestly. I mean, thank God, honestly. Thank God.

Listen, I'm a team player, guys. I'm a team player. Cut it with a joke. But anyway, and so, and it actually, in fact, all kidding aside or kidding included, it did help us because, you know, Trump carries on with his heinous self, parading around like a maniac.

And it helped us set the tone for the next season and helps us make decisions as to where we were going to end up. I mean, just because we get to live more in Trump. Yeah, we shut down right, I guess it was right at the right before the holidays of 2017. And 2018, when he entered that second year of his presidency, that's when you forget. Year one seemed calm in comparison. Year two was where he really stepped on the throttle. And just the falsehoods, the tweeting, it all just got more crazy. And as we were sitting around, it just started to feel like everything has changed. The norms are out the window. And in some extent, why is Selina Meyer the only person being punished?

People who do shitty things do win. They're winning left and right. They're getting cabinet posts. And that's what drove us to that decision. It's funny it made sense because there was so long in the series where I thought to myself, oh, it's got to end without her being president because it just seemed like that's where it was going. But when I saw the ending, I'm like, oh, that actually totally makes sense with what's going

on in politics right now. Yeah. She caught the car. She what? She caught the car. She caught the car. Yeah. She caught the car.

Yeah. Yeah. She looks miserable. Right. It was good. So. I really liked it. I honestly only watched it because you guys were coming in, not because I was afraid to

say, that sounds bad, but it was because I was afraid to say goodbye to the show. I was so sad to see it going. I couldn't. He saved the last episode of this season. Yes. The last episode of this season. I just couldn't get myself to click play because I was so sad to see these characters go. Yeah, me too.

It's been kind of a heartbreaker. We watched the debate episode on the drive back from a live show we did in New Hampshire. And we wanted to stream it. And so we had all of our Wi-Fi set up. And Tommy and I were laughing in that bus so loudly. So hard. The debate thing was maybe the funniest scene of the whole. It was like being trapped on just two old uncles.

Just laughing their heads off at a TV. I was weeping. The man up thing was just. Oh, good. I mean, I've always wondered about that. I mean, you guys made a decision to depict the first woman president as basically a misogynist. Yeah. How did you think about that?

Well, I've always played her as a misogynist from almost day one. You know, we were constantly saying, you know, she would say things like, as a woman, I would never start a sentence with as a woman, you know, because everybody hates women. Why would I do that? By the way, that's right. I mean, you could make an argument that, you know, women aren't that popular to a certain extent, you know, as certainly as leaders or to be taken seriously. And so she doesn't like her sex and for all sorts of reasons. She does. I mean, we don't have to go down that rabbit hole. But so she's always been that way. But then Like there was an attempt at, you know, I'm not the woman running for Congress or the woman running for senator.

I'm just somebody running. Like it starts in a, maybe it started in an okay place. Maybe. But she has parents who weren't that fond of her. She had a psychological leaning. Yes, exactly. So those two things collided and it got worse. But it proved very popular to the American voting public.

Yeah. You don't mess with perfection. It really spoke to the throngs. You told Vogue, extreme times call for extreme comedy. What do you think that means? You know, it came to me and I was just grateful to be able to say it in the moment so good it's so she was also just thrilled to be involved it was i was like buzzing i was in vogue um no um i i i mean these are extreme times i think we could all agree to that no matter what

side of the aisle you're on. And so we pushed the limits of what we were doing on the show this season. And so the comedy in our show was very extreme this season. And I think that had we, for instance, this material would never have flown three, four years ago. It would have been too, it would have been, we would have been like, what are you guys doing over there? Is that the natural evolution?

I do think there is a natural evolution, but I think on the flip side also, though, when you go back and watch, like I sort of in the run up to the final season went through all of it. And in light of what was going on, I rewatched all the seasons previous.

Some of it starts to seem quaint in a really strange way on the flip side. So, you know, these two things fight each other, but you have to cut through the noise. And sometimes, I don't know how else to do it. The fact that she basically accidentally has her ex-husband killed, and it wasn't like a big conversation when you guys did that in the show. People weren't really talking about that much in the next day

because it actually made sense. I know. I mean, that was insane. I just thought about that. I'm like, oh yeah, we sort of forgot that Andrew was killed two episodes ago. Or was he? Or was he? Well, that's right. Or was he? Well, he wasn't, obviously, because you see him a couple times after the fact. But yeah, it's not that outrageous. But casual horribleness is the order of the day and that i mean and i guess i don't know i i would almost rather someone like kill their ex-husband than i don't know some of the the stuff going on just on a you know in the in the education department you know what i mean so not to you know i just wish we didn't have to choose yeah i just wish

it was such a horrible choice um so i feel like feel like the insults got more Baroque in this final season. But also it does seem like you did not miss an opportunity to go after liberals too, right? It does seem like the show chose to make liberal language a target, in part because it was a primary about some of those issues. But do you feel like that that was that fun? Just did you feel as though this was a chance that you guys had in this show that other shows don't have? You go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, yeah, I mean, it was it was from just a pure writing perspective. It was so much fun. And I do think it's one of the unique things that was laid down about Veep before I ever got there by Armando,

when he created it, when you guys sort of set up that there was no party there was no democrat there was no republican and that it's an equal opportunity offender and I think it's I guess I would hate for people to dismiss what we did this season as just Trump you know what I mean like and that's and I guess so I I guess in some ways I almost pride myself that we we attack from the other side, too, and lay into them on whether it's, you know, the PC stuff, the language, a lot of the, you know, the bending over backwards of diversity and some of these things to try and at least, again, have some fun with that stuff so that, again, it's an equal opportunity offender because it's that thing that you've always said when you meet people from DC that like yeah they depend it really doesn't matter who you're talking to if it was John McCain back in the day or if it was Nancy Pelosi or whoever or this senator or that congresswoman and please don't talk about John McCain. I'm so sorry. Thank you. But who is a fan of the show, by the way. But everybody, anybody we spoke with, first of all,

thought we were making fun of the other party. Always thought it was the other. Whoever we were with, oh, you guys are really sticking it to them. Pick your them. Yeah. Right. But the thing, I've said this before, but the thing that gave me a great deal of pride was when i had the incredible opportunity to briefly meet with uh uh supreme court justice elena kagan and she told me that she and tony scalia would get together every week and have lunch post an episode of veep to break it down and talk about Veep and laugh about it. Now that gave me great joy. So.

I read you guys sat down with Mitt Romney and that he was a fan of the show and provided insight before the fourth season. He came in just like you guys did. He came in, he was awesome. With Ann. Yeah, they both came. You guys yucked it up with Mitt?

We did, he was charming. And he gave us a line that we stole from him. Remember? If you're making excuses. Or if you're explaining. If you're explaining yourself, you're losing. Oh, yeah. Did someone tell him that after he lost? I will tell you the most interesting thing about his loss, which was we actually, I mean, I don't want to say it was like the most in-depth interview he's ever had. But we did talk to him because I think it was when we were going into the previous season.

So he was out of office. And so we had talked to a couple of people like, what's it like to lose? And the thing that was interesting was almost what he said was he talked so much about, you know, his kids and his grandkids and his wife and the support system. And it was so funny because it was just everything he was saying, we were just sitting there laughing going, Selena has none of this. She's going to lose her mind. So it was just really interesting to see somebody

who was actually dealing with it kind of in a very adult way. So again, we get pieces of things in different places. Go ahead. No, no, I don't want to interrupt. You go ahead. I was just going to say, he went and used the men's room and he didn't lock the door and somebody walked in on him,

but he doesn't know that. He does now. I don't think he listens to this show. I'm going to send him the link. They get podcasts in Utah? No, no. No, we're going. Yeah.

Walk to Tom. No, you're not. Why do you think people root for Selena even though she's such a horrible person because i found myself rooting for her by the end too and i'm like what really even towards the very very well we should talk about gary because gary broke my heart you root up to the tom james i think which is on purpose you're like when she takes down tom james oh i was rooting for that which yes the whole which is on purpose. You're like, when she takes down Tom James... I was rooting for

that. The whole thing with Tom James is amazing. You're like really happy. It's so good. And you're clapping and then you start to go, oh my god, what am I clapping? Like, she's a monster. And that was, you know, we tried. No, she's a monster.

The way she tells her daughter that her father is dead is pretty tough. Sort of in passing. Yeah. It's a tough thing to hear in passing. Yeah. She told him and then she told her and then she left. I don't know why you're rooting for her except, you know, to play her, I have to root for her.

So maybe you're picking up on that. You know, you can't play a heinous or sort of evil, inherently evil character, which she really is ultimately, becoming more sort of evil over seasons. But you can't play her with that kind of judgment. I mean, everybody has a backstory, even the worst people in the world. So you've got to come at it that way, you know? I always say I think, A, she has skills. I mean, you know, she got to where she was for reasons. But also, forgive me, they like this lady here. I think when people go, we want Selena to be president, that's not quite what they mean.

I think they mean they would like you to be president. Yeah, that definitely has something to do with it. Maybe, but I would also, you're allowed to, but I'm going to reject that theory. Welcome to our world. But I'm going to say that I think too, the frustrations that she has, particularly early on in her career, are ones that you can identify with, you know? And being constantly put back down, shoved back down, I mean, who doesn't identify with that, you know? Right? Yeah.

Something that, like, I think was true in the early seasons, true in the later seasons as well, that there are little moments where there's cracks and the real world and the real consequences of politics seeps through and Selena gets upset right when she meets a veteran or something she gets sort of like shaken up by having met somebody who is affected by these policies how oh yeah you know can you talk a little bit about just sort of when the real world and the real consequences were allowed to seep through it happens a few times in this season I mean, when she's staring at a row of monks was

pretty tough. But so, you know, it's a game, right? There's a show, it's a comedy, it's a game. And yet there are little touches of when the real world shines through. Well, if it helps the joke, then it's going to shine through. I mean, I think that's the fact of the matter. She's, in that particular episode, she's made a deal to, after freeing Tibet, to unfree Tibet. And you can see that she's met with the kind of horror of that,

but she doesn't change her mind, obviously. But she can tell it's wrong. She knows she feels guilty. Yeah, and you even see it in the final episode. A little bit, not enough to make her- She hugs Gary at the end too. Yes, of course, absolutely. Or when he's gone, and you know, there is always an,

I mean, you know, at what price this glory for her. Yeah, there's like, the last episode is so emotional. There's that really touching scene with Kevin Dunn, who plays Ben in his hospital her. Yeah, there's like, the last episode is so emotional. There's that really touching scene with Kevin Dunn who plays Ben in his hospital room. Yeah. There's a really poignant scene

when you're all alone for like one second in the Oval Office. You sort of feel the weight and then there's Gary at the coffin at the end and just, I don't know,

it's like tearing up for Gary. Poor Tony Hale just got screwed. He got way screwed. But he loved it. He was cool with it. The actor or the character? Gary, sorry.

I'm switching. I don't think he loved it. He was like, but the flowers look great or something. No, no, no. There's a little anger there at first,

but he can't help himself. No, but he does show up and he does bring the Dubonnet lipstick and place it on her coffin. It's a two-way dysfunctional relationship. It did remind me of

this is the cautionary tale of the top aide that stays along. Too long. Too long. Yes. That's a real like DC thing. Oh, that's great. A little bit of that. You're like, man, you've been there.

You're still there? Yeah. 20, 30, 40 years later. Yeah. It's Reggie Love, age 49. By the way, that's the other story we stole. But we had Gary sleeping by her front door at a hotel. Oh, yeah.

Did Reggie do that? For different reasons. Yeah, I was going to say that. Anyway. But that was another one. Thank you, guys. I was interested in the foreign interference storyline in this season. A lot of DC types during the Mueller investigation basically made the case

the Trump campaign was too incompetent and bumbling to actually collude with the Russians. You guys seem to prove the opposite or just prove that that's not true, that this like sort of incompetent, bumbling administration sort of fell into colluding with the Chinese. Were you thinking about that at all when you had that storyline? Well, it started a long time ago, that storyline. Yeah, I know. I mean, the funny thing, and again,

or the horrible thing, take your pick, is Selena's ongoing involvement with the Chinese and Tibet and... It started in like season three, I think, right? I mean, it hit hard in like five for us. I mean, they had been around, and then that was something we really started to go after. And so I can't say to you, back then, it was 100% like, oh, and I can't wait till they try and collude and affect the election

in a very similar way. But it was there. I mean, that was what was so horrifying was it was, it was there. I mean, that was what was so horrifying was it was, we were like right up next to it without even knowing it. I mean, I don't know how else to say that. We bumbled into it. Yeah. We sort of bumbled into it the same way Selena did, which was kind of, you sort of just had to. And then once it was there, she embraced it because, you know, why not? Do whatever it takes. But I think what was so, and I guess, I don't know if we were making it, it wasn't on our agenda,

but I do think there was this element of like how easy it could be. Like, I mean, you hate to say it, but like we had those jokes with like, Merman, where he's trying to buy in and he's like, new plan. I'll buy your house in Palm Beach for $110 million. I mean, we're still waiting on some of these real estate taxes to kind of come through. It's just not that hard. Right, and there's a lot of different avenues and possibilities. No kidding.

It's funny, but it's awful. Yeah. Do you see any anti-Selenas in the field right now? Anti-Selenas. Or Selenas. Name a Selena. We'll take a Selena. I think this Pete Buttigieg is pretty anti-Selena.

That's true. It strikes me as such. Yeah. But it's too early days. I don't... I think he has a good sense of humor, though. Great sense of humor. Yeah, I think he's got a really good sense of humor

and a really good sense of timing, if nothing else. Yeah. Like on a pure building blocks of comedy. We always, with casting, there are people that are enemies of comedy and then friends of comedy, which they can kind of handle it-ish, and then actual comedy generators. I think he's sort of a comedy generator.

And I'm okay with a friend of comedy in the White House or a comedy generator, preferably not an enemy of comedy. Where do you put Trump in that? I know. He's like,'s like again the norms i don't know like an accidental comedy generator i don't know that's a good yeah yeah i guess i don't know if he's ever been intentionally funny yeah no no i think he tries i guess when he wants to be yeah he wants to be funny he thinks is funny he's a bully yeah yeah he's mean funny

he's um he's a bully. We're not fans. I'm not. Oh, I was misled then, actually. I noticed, Julia, that in 2018, you were sort of got into real life politics a little bit. You know, you filmed a video trying to get people to vote. Oh, yeah. Multiple videos. Was it Trump?

Was it all your years on the show? I mean, what sort of pushed you? Oh, I've done a lot of political sort of activism sort of over the years. Yeah. I mean, we went, I took my boys and went to, in fact, that's where the Nevada joke came from because we went.

That was part of your training, right? Yes, when we went first go round, 2008, right? Yes. And we went to Nevada, and I took the kids, and we just were going door to door. And that was the training they gave us, was don't say Nevada, which is, of course, how it's meant to be pronounced. They're crazy about that. They're crazy. The other one is—

We got three seasons out of that, though. I mean, literally, we had those jokes. I mean could not get enough of that. Obama could never get his head around the fact that you can't say Waterloo, Iowa. It's Waterloo. Waterloo. Waterloo. You have to say it like that or else they yell at you.

Okay. I wish I'd known that because we could have used that. Why didn't you tell us? Yeah. Movie? Do I want to go to the movies with you? I would love to. I saw a great movie.

Seven seasons in a movie? I don't know. We can't wrap our head around anything right now. We're still recovering from having made that finale. It took every fiber of our emotional, creative, intellectual beings to get that thing out. So we're sort of still still we crawled here today like a brutal labor a good labor but good good we had a beautiful baby but it was 88 hours of yeah there was a moment where we were sitting in the fake oval like together and you had just

gotten out of your wig and you were like i don't know but both of us were just like sweating for no reason it was just like and we were just like oh don't know, both of us were just like sweating for no reason, it was just like, and we were just like, yeah. Do you wanna see a movie with me? That was my question. Yes. Sorry to get back to it. I will say the following, which is,

the Trump stuff, it just made it hard, it really did. I mean, I feel like we got out just in time. And so, I never say never, but it just like, it got really hard, time. And so, I never say never, but it just like, it got really hard. Like just every move, and whether it was, sometimes it was just worrying like, you know we did the thing where we had the runner, the killer runner, and then all of a sudden

down in Florida, like shoot him! And you just start to go like, oh. That immigrants. Yeah. It was just, it's a. And by the time you watch, you really do think, I was like, oh that's because of the Trump rally.

No, that was after the fact. A year before it. They're just catching. It just felt like. By the way, same for the vaccination stuff. Right. You were ahead of that, too. We were ahead of that.

Two years ago. Two years ago, we started on that one. Maybe you got to stop giving this guy ideas. Yeah, right. And now we're. That was the Colbert thing we did. Yes. Yeah.

We did a sketch with Colbert. giving this guy ideas yeah right that was the colbert thing we did yes yeah we did we went on the sketch with colbert where he basically like pops into the vp universe to say stop it like you're you're changing our world everything you're doing is coming true in our world but then there's a whole thing about uh numerals arabic numerals oh my god oh yeah with the the muslim math i mean it's like you sit down with i sit down with a group of some of the smartest people I know, the writers, and we have this amazing cast. And we work to come up with some of the stupidest stuff in the world. And then it's just like, that sounds great. America, let's do it.

And you just shake your head. And I guess that's why it did have to end. Why? Obviously, there's the obvious ways Trump makes it hard, right? He's so extreme. But are there other ways in which Trump being this larger than life figure makes it hard to write fiction about this moment? I think so, because discourse has sort of fallen away. And the way people communicate with one another is, that landscape has been changed not just by him by the way you

know I think we have a lot of folks to think including he is a he is a symptom or he's part of the disease but it's like so much of what the show was built on doesn't seem shocking I mean it's sort of what I was saying before just doesn't seem shocking. The language doesn't really seem shocking. Or we had to push it so far that it got almost borderline crazy shocking. And I guess that sort of, there's that concept of like, maybe it's time for like another West Wing show, like something a little more inspirational. Based on the moon? Based on what?

Based on the moon? Where is it? Is it under the moon? Based on what? Based in the moon? Where is it? Is it under the ocean? I know, but it's that idea of like, maybe it's a small town politics show. Come on, let's beat this thing out. But you know what I mean.

Come on. But just in the sense of like, go the other way. It's going to be escapism from something. Yeah, exactly. Because our horrible people, watching our horrible people, it stopped maybe being an escape from the real horrible people. I don't know. There's a line in the last episode. I think you're talking to Marjorie or Catherine.

You say, restore faith in democracy. We couldn't do that if we wanted to. And that felt very real. It felt very meta. But very frustrated, too. Like, what are we supposed to do? Yeah. I can't take that on.

That's a lot to ask did the show and all the conversations you had with people like us who are in politics did it change your view of politics along the way have you taken any sort of lessons about real life politics with you after doing the show um um for me it has um for the good and the bad yeah really you know i mean it's it's awfully nice on the good side of the ledger on the good side of the ledger is when you meet people who are earnestly trying to do the right thing and we have come across those kinds of people um none of you incidentally um some of the people you put us in contact with, though, were really great. So that is, and you are struck with the actual work that's involved, you know, the minutiae of the work. It's labor intensive, I don't have to tell you, you know. It's labor intensive.

I don't have to tell you. You know. The part of it for me that's scary, sort of like watching this Chernobyl show on HBO. I don't know if anybody's seen that, but oh, my God. Anyway. It's really been heating up. Oh, no. I've been doing this all day.

You must edit that out. Edit that out. The reviews have been glowing. Again, that needs to be snipped out of the show. But anyway. We have some vaults. Yeah, exactly. I've been blown away. That people are just human beings, simply just human beings.

And you think of them as being. No more, no less sometimes. It really shines a light on that, I'd say. And you think of them as being – No more, no less sometimes. It really shines a light on that, I'd say. But who are capable of making mistakes just like you and I would. And that can be terrifying when so much is at stake. Yeah.

Well, that's about right. I mean, I don't know. That's my little summation. Did I get an A? Yes. I was just going to say, I don't know. I guess having met some – yeah, some good people, I don't know. I'm not sure it restored my faith in the system.

But I feel like, I don't know, I feel like my own involvement, such as it is, has increased. Like the desire to whether it's, you know, phone bank or donate or whatever, when I find someone or something that's worth doing, like that desire is there maybe even more so than it was previously. That there is still a chance and that maybe it's sometimes it's got to be, you know, whether it's like on the state house level or wherever it is. But that you, is so important. I found myself tweeting last night about Virginia State House in a way that I don't think I would have pre-VIP. I mean, maybe, who knows, but you know what I mean?

So, yeah. Yeah, but also because it's, you know, to use the Nixon phrase, now more than ever, because it couldn't be more important. It's not just the top of the ticket. There's so much at stake. So, you know. So I understand that this is apparently the 30th anniversary of Seinfeld is happening. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What month is this? May. OK. So that shocked me because what? But also there's

a long time to not feel that long ago. But you've now been one of the great comedic actors for now, multiple characters that have defined television comedy, defined roles for women. That's an incredible run, incredible, amazing performances that like have stuck with so many people. What are you interested in doing next? Like what is the next thing you want to take on? Well, I'll say two things. First of all, thank you very much. Doesn't make up for the Chernobyl jokes, but thank you. Nothing would. It's fine, guys.

It's going to be cut out. You know what? You just cover it up. I have a final cut on this whole thing, so don't worry about it. Put a sarcophagus right over it. Keep it from getting out. Wait, can you repeat your question? No, I'm just kidding.

You are one of the most talented, beautiful, intelligent. I don't care. He didn't say beautiful. He didn't say beautiful. I'm not allowed anymore. Even though I'm gay, I think I'm still not allowed. Radiant is the word you're using.

Oh. So, I think. It's a Chernobyl joke. You see? I need to take a little bit of a breather because we've been running, you know, really, really hard for a number of years doing Veep. And there's been a lot going on. And so I need to take a little break just to breathe and read or something. I've heard books are good these days. But for me, it's just about finding material. And good material is not that easy to come by. So that's

a little bit of a search. And that good material would mean something maybe dramatically different than what I've been doing. So I don't know. Do you have anything? Because I'll do anything at this point. I have some pictures. I mean, it's been like two weeks. She's going crazy.

I have some pictures. She is. It's like. Seriously, guys, I'll learn to tap dance, whatever you want. I have got to perform again. Well, you can always join us here on Pod Save America

anytime. Thank you both for giving us one of the greatest television shows of all time. Oh, it's so nice for you to say thank you.

It's such a treat to be here. It's a treasure. I'm amazed I made words come out of my mouth. I'm still freaking out. Oh, don't freak out. And I'm never starstruck.

I'm not. I meet presidents. I don't give a shit. I really don't. Thanks, Obama. I'm never starstruck. I'm not. I mean, presidents, I don't give a shit. I really don't. Thanks, Obama. I met Obama. I was very starstruck by him, I have to say. He's cool. Yeah, he's pretty cool. I met him a few times. I thought he was pretty cool.

No big deal. Yeah, no big deal. Guys, we're good friends, and I've got his cell phone number. Whatever. Cell phone number, whatever. Thank you to Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Dave Mandel for joining us today. And we will see you next week. Bye, everyone. Thank you.