Pod Save America - “A human centipede of obstruction.”

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

The media lowers the bar for Trump’s State of the Union, Democrats look for an economic message, and the Republican effort to shut down the Mueller investigation continues apace. Then DeRay McKesson joins to talk about restoring voting rights in Florida, and Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz sits down with Jon and Tommy to talk immigration and 2018.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, our interview with Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz. How was that? Who stopped by the office on Friday. How was that? He got merch. He saw the dogs.

It was cool. Love Brian Schatz. He talks to you like a normal person. Like a normal human. We'll also talk to the host of Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. Check in with DeRay. We're here in New York, guys.

You know how it is in New York. Because also, we're going to be on Colbert Show. That's insane. We're going to be on The Late Show Tuesday night. That's confusing. Live reaction to the State of the Union. We're talking like real New Yorkers these days. Hopefully people will watch it,

because opposite us, on Jimmy Kimmel, will be an interview with Stormy Daniels Tivo or her watch us yeah watch us cool love it how was the tour

this weekend love or leave was on tour it was good okay cool cool cool do you want anyone

to listen to it we had an awesome time on the tour Akilah Hughes quick contributor love Akilah joined for the whole swing we did shows in Portland

and Oakland she still like you by the end you can see that there was a certain look on her face by the end of the tour. But that's just anyone who spends more than a few hours with me. But it was awesome. We had a great Seattle show with Ijeoma Oluo and Lindy West and Akilah. That's out now.

One of my favorite shows. You invented a new workout class. We did. We did. Building the wall. It's going to be great. Liberals are going to build the wall. You're going to pay like 50 bucks a class. Wall fit. And then climb the wall. Oh, you're going to build the wall. Trump's wall. Oh, Trump's wall. Right, right, right. No,. Building the wall. It's going to be great. Liberals are going to build the wall. You're going to pay like 50 bucks a class.

Wall fit. And then climb the wall. Oh, you're going to build the wall. Trump's wall. Oh, Trump's wall. Right, right, right. No, I figured that out. Also, go get your tickets for Phoenix and Vegas. Still for sale. Crooked.com slash events.

We'll be going a couple weeks. All right, guys, let's get into the news. Let's do it. On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address. Last year, he managed to get through his first address to a joint session of Congress without throwing his feces at Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She won't be there this year. Therefore, it was declared a smashing success.

This year, the president delivers the speech as the target of a federal investigation that has led to two guilty pleas and two indictments of senior Trump aides and associates. And it comes a few weeks after the president told lawmakers he doesn't want more immigrants from shithole countries in Africa. So what do the headlines say? What kind of bar is being set for a president

mired in such controversies? Well, Washington Post. A chance for a reset? Can a divisive president flip the script? Politico. I just don't understand how you can even... Politico. In the state of the union, Trump has to be quote normal new york times will trump stick to the script that's the lowest it can go tommy are we in store for another round of stellar reviews if trump

manages to read a boring typical speech all the way through i mean doesn't this expectations management and spin feel like a relic from a bygone era? It reminds me of the 2004 campaign when the Bush people would spin that John Kerry was the best debater since Cicero. And the press was like, that's a clever line, like style points, expectations management. You know, you get like sort of chuckles, points for creativity. The State of the Union is not a chance for some major reset, especially if it's just some one-off speech followed by the same old shit of attacking Jay-Z and doing whatever Trump does on a daily basis. Like, it's this fictionalized version of politics and events that is a more interesting narrative than you kind of got cemented an approval rating in the

40s and it hasn't changed for a very long time. Yeah. I mean, first of all, even if he does succeed in reading the thing aloud, if we remember last year, right on the heels of his tour de force on the floor of Congress, we went right back into Sessions, Russia bullshit within hours. I mean, it just didn't even last a day. But even putting that aside, the notion that what's happening right now is Trump going through a normal process is in and of itself not true. You know, you see the stories that say, oh, you know, Trump's doodling in the margins and putting the finishing touches on the remarks with with who are they? Are they qualified speechwriters? They're the dregs of Republican society sort of elevated to a position because this administration can attract real talent. Right. It's C plus Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller, you know, trying to write something in a Word document that is vaguely cogent and not as racist as he is.

But, you know, he gets up there and he gives a speech and he can read it out loud. What does that mean? This isn't a president who is engaged in the running of an administration trying to figure figure out the best way to put forward his own agenda. And this is an autopilot administration. Also, we should say, by the way, that White House aides are already telling reporters that there will be no new policy in this speech. So, which is, if I can't even imagine, like, think of the stress of writing a State of the Union, which we've been through, love it. Like, can you imagine if all the communications and political people told us,

oh, you guys are gonna have to get this done and it's gonna have to succeed. But by the way, we have no new policy. We have no agenda. But that speaks to what's going on here, right? This isn't a normal White House. We all know that obviously, but even by the standard of giving a State of the Union,

Donald Trump doesn't sit atop a working hierarchy in which he makes decisions to drive forward the policies trying to achieve. He is a separate entity kind of disconnected from it, eating cheeseburgers and watching television as Paul Ryan runs policy, as Mulvaney runs policy, as all these sort of snakes in a snake pit vie with one another for power and good headlines as anonymous sources. And so when he gets up and gives a speech, it's not a president letting us know what's going on. It's all just a pretend thing. It's a Potemkin thing. Yeah. I mean, he got a lot of credit for the Davos speech, which I read. And I thought it was fine.

Like the opening of that speech was a pretty good pitch for why people should come and do business in America. We just, you know, we lower these tax rates. It's a good time, blah, blah, blah. Fine. It wasn't some like unbelievable piece of rhetoric or new piece of policy. I mean, I think this shows the severe limits of analyzing politics by performance. And those limitations were in place even before Trump. And I don't think we really fully recognize them then. But it was silly when they, you know, judged Obama's speech for performance or George Bush's speech. Like, the way to judge something like this is, like, does he have a policy agenda?

Did the speech help him move his policy agenda forward by either swaying public opinion in any way or swaying the lawmakers who he's talking to? Right? Like, that's sort of all it is. I do think there's also, like, State of the Unions are sort of stupid and anachronistic at this point. Like, why do we, they're like a relic, you know? But, you know, I've thought that maybe if there's one moment in the year where a president of the United States can get up, speak to the whole country, perhaps bring us together, perhaps remind people why they voted for him, then yeah, maybe that's a brief success. That's a good thing.

But we should say, having been in the Obama White House, it never lasts. Like, Obama never got a huge bump in his approval ratings from State of the Unions, even though every State of the Union the night of and the days after was judged a huge success by all these instant polls. So Trump's will be, too. Trump's was last year. Like, guess what, guys? He's going to stick to the script.

That's another thing. Like, if you've watched Trump for the last year, he goes off the script and says crazy shit when he's at these rallies where he clearly doesn't have a speech in front of him. Every time he's delivered a speech off prompter, like he did at Davos, like he has in other places, he usually sticks to the script and it's boring. There's no surprise there.

He's not getting the rise out of the crowd that all of a sudden he's like, and Colin Kaepernick is a shit. And he can't do that in Congress. he doesn't do improv unless he's in front of fans of improv the uh but but but like state of the unions matter insofar as if we had a normal functioning administration it would say here are my priorities for the year the rhetoric really doesn't last right we couldn't i couldn't right now tell you some of the best lines from state of the unions we were i could spill Union. Spilled milk. Spilled milk. Spilled milk.

That's all we can remember. Eight years. Love it's a joke. I wasn't going to say that, but he did body language. I was going to say that it was a joke, so I had to do it. It is not my joke. You didn't use my joke. I love it wasn't in the White House.

He was creating a wildly successful sitcom at the time. I'm going to pick this beehive. I'm going to put it back up where it was. Sorry about that, guys. Anyway, we could talk about spilled milk another time. Here's the point. Here's the point. State of the Unionists matter because the president gets up and says, here's my agenda for the year.

It's also an opportunity for people to hear directly from the president when they don't normally do that. First of all, Donald Trump is occupying. People hear directly from this president. We hear directly. He has succeeded in so far as we hear of all, Donald Trump is occupying... People hear directly from this president. Yeah, we hear directly. He has succeeded in so far as we hear and think about Donald Trump a fucking ton. But also, it's about whether or not you are laying out an agenda you plan to stick through.

The State of the Union matters insofar as it's saying, here's what I'm going to do this year, and if you follow through with that, if you are able to be disciplined and continue using that message, drive towards some sort of an agenda, maybe. This guy can't keep an agenda for like two hours. And just to add to that, your point is exactly right.

But the way you make a State of the Union bigger than just one speech is you have a set of policy agendas and you leak them out the day, a couple of days before the speech so that you own like four days of news. They don't think they're saying they don't have new policy. And then you go on and then typically then you go on a tour around the country and then every day you sell a new policy agenda. Whatever we've, what are we even talking about? No, no, no.

No, but let's look. No. But this is like going back in normal world. Yes. We're going to go. But you know what? We have to remember what it was like before. I know.

What it was like before is the president gave a speech that he actually had a stake in and then he went on the road and he said, here's what we're going to do for jobs. And here's what we're going to do for healthcare. And here's what we're going to do for health care. Donald Trump is too lazy and undisciplined. He's not going to leave the fucking White House. And so there's no follow up. There's no there's no agenda. So my question is, like, why does the political analysis and the previews never change?

Like, why does the media set this bar? Because I don't think it's because they all like Trump or they're biased to Trump or anything like that. I think it's just because they're they don't know. Like, people haven't really figured out how to cover someone so abnormal and administration so abnormal. So they fall back on the frames they've used for previous administrations when it's like, I just get like the president. United States is under federal investigation and has, like, offended everyone in the country who isn't like a white man you know like i don't know and in the world now the shithole countries thing like he is mired in controversies given the speech if barack obama was given the speech in this scenario or george bush or bill clinton or

ronald reagan all of the previews would be like, will he apologize? Can he make this right? Will he say something about the investigation? Will he apologize for shithole countries? Like those would be the tests for this speech. And you don't see any of that because he's sort of inert us to like, oh, this is how he's going to be. And so that's just Trump. You know? Yeah.

It's interesting. I was thinking about. So we have this book, Fire and Fury, and it's written by a sleaze, about sleaze, to narrate a sleazy guy, right? Fine. But it went through the whole body politic. It was like processed like a really heavy meal, right? Would the coverage we have been reading for the past day look different if that book had never even come out? If we had not spent three or four or five weeks talking about just how incompetent and just how ridiculous the administration is? The answer is no. So the book had absolutely no impact, right? Even though everyone recognizes that it's probably at the very worst 75% true. So what does that tells me that like, there is a desire to not truly allow the truth of this administration's behavior and

conduct seep into coverage, because ultimately ultimately that is a simple and boring story to write over and over again you know it's funny i'm glad you raised fire and fury because like hillary clinton is the person who pops up and the press just like hits her with a bat every time she shows up with like the normal political sort of status quo of like how you judge things before because she read from fire and fury last night you see people tweeting at the grammy sorry tweeting how gross it was that she would read from a and Fury last night. You see people tweeting. At the Grammy. At the Grammy, sorry. Tweeting how gross it was that she would read from a book that was so unfair to various people. But like, if you wonder why the Clinton people go crazy, if you look in your Times op-ed

page this weekend, one had a column that, from Maureen Dowd, that talked about how Hillary enabled Bill's bad behavior, a column she's been writing for 20 years. And another lauded Melania Trump as some like transgressive first lady breaking the mold because she didn't go to Davos after it was revealed that her husband paid off a porn star he slept with.

Like, yes, things are graded on a weird fucking curve. I forgot that, Tommy. He's giving a speech right after it's revealed that they paid off a porn star he was sleeping with right after his wife had a baby.

He's a gross person. That's another thing. Okay. Anyway. So that's happening. The response to the State of the Union will be delivered by friend of the pod, Joe Kennedy, the 37-year-old third-term congressman from Massachusetts and the grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

Before we get to the selection of Kennedy himself, what do we think of State of the Union responses in general? Is anyone watching? That was it. That was my fart noise is what I have to say about State of the Union. We all remember little Marco's water. We all remember, what's his name from Louisiana? Bobby Jindal looking like

a five-year-old boy. Bobby Jindal shitting the bed. Criminal Bob McDonald trying to speak in front of a crowd in Virginia. It's hard. It's a hard job to have. It doesn't really matter that much. No one watches it. No one watches it that much.

I happen to think Joe Kennedy is great and inspiring. I think he's a great speaker. I don't think there... I don't know why we live in a world where there's controversy around every single thing that happens. It's like, I just don't care that much. Good for Joe Kennedy. It's one response. I don't know why he took that baton. I would have left it where they tried to get.

It's like, that's a, take it, take it, take it. No, no, no, I don't want it. Right, like, it's great. He can articulate progressive values. You can never match the states that the President of the United States is on, so you always kind of look diminished in comparison. The Democratic Party's in this weird place where I'm sure they didn't want to pick anybody who could conceivably be seen as running for president.

Yeah. So, gets you to a different set of candidates. I'll tell you, there's not that many stars in Congress. Well, I mean, literally everyone's floating that they're running for president. That's what I'm saying. If you take those people out of Congress, the rest of the crowd. Joe Kennedy has an incredible future. It's probably just not 2020.

Right. And he's young, right? Like, he doesn't represent the Democratic coalition in the. And he's young, right? Like he's not, he doesn't represent the Democratic coalition in the sense that he's a woman or a person of color, but he's young in the future. So you know what, Joe, good luck. You're going to get bad reviews and hopefully you'll be able to come back. We're expectation setting for you. Yeah. Okay. At least five Democratic House members, including civil rights hero, John Lewis will boycott the state of the union. What do you guys think of the boycott thing? I'm like, John Lewis can do whatever he wants.

Go, don't go. For sure. I get the urge to boycott. It is a good reminder that at the end of the day, Donald Trump standing at that podium is a great and historic shame. And we should not forget that. Yeah, I'd want to go and hear the craziness and then yell about the craziness. Right?

That was my thing. I'd go, I'd listen, and I'd walk out and tell whatever camera would listen to me what I heard and what was objectionable or not. John Lewis, yes, do whatever you want. I mean, look, again, he has dealt with discrimination and oppression in this country in ways that we don't understand. So I'm sure he's viewing this through a very different lens. More power to him if he wants to skip this creative speech. So let's talk about what the White House is telling reporters about the speech. It's a speech that will, quote, unite us with patriotism. It has a theme of, quote,

building a safe, strong, and proud America, which the Washington Post called bumper sticker ready. Can I just, I mean, if the Democratic Party had some kind of speech where the slogan was building a safe, strong, proud America, we'd all make fun of it. And rightly so. That's a dumb slogan. You know, richer, stronger, safer America. These are old ad slogans.

They're interchangeable partisan slogans. They just drove up to the slogan retirement home and put one out of a fucking room. He's been in a dedicated state for 30 years. They had to cut the word Dukakis off the bottom of it. Just bad. That's the kind of speech rating we're going to get from Stephen Miller, just FYI.

It's going to cover infrastructure. He's sort of like re-rolling out sort of his warmed-over infrastructure plan, which they call a trillion dollars, but is actually like $200 billion, plus magical private investment that's going to come. He's going to cover immigration. That should be fun. National security and the state of the economy. We're going to get to the economy and dig in. But tommy what are you looking for a national security what do you think he's gonna talk about north korea you're looking for

what he says in north korea don't call a continent a shithole uh don't flip out everyone in nato don't bait a nuclear armed madman uh i mean it seems like all they're going to mention is that he moved the embassy in Jerusalem. I'm not sure what else. We are sending more troops to Afghanistan. It would be good if he talked about that. It would be great if he visited Afghanistan, but I don't have much in terms of... There's not much leaking out in terms of expectations.

Got it. So I want to dig into the economy here because I've noticed a narrative developing in Washington that the economy is now a political strength for Trump and Democrats had best be worried. Now, I've seen this narrative in multiple media outlets, but I will read from Saturday's Axios newsletter because no one sums it up better. Imagine a more restrained President Trump like we saw on stage in Davos. Sounds the impulsive and offensive rants against Muslims, immigrants,

and women. We might be talking about a resurgent golden age for America. Record low unemployment, economic growth here and abroad, employers handing out bonuses thanks to a new spirit of America first for our economy. Love it. Are we in a golden age for America? So here's what I think the truth is. It is absolutely correct that if Donald Trump wasn't Donald Trump, if he was Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, and he had just passed a giant corporate tax cut and some middle class tax relief, and he had had the success appointing judges, he'd be more popular, right? That's absolutely true.

They do have successes that they can point to now. Are we in a golden age for this economy? No. Why? Because cutting corporate taxes and giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires doesn't address the fundamental inequality at the heart of our economy that created in many ways the mistrust and division and appeals to racial resentment that helped make Trump possible to begin with. But yeah, if your point is Donald Trump flying off the handle, being the most divisive and vulgar and crass and racist figure we've elevated to the White House in half a century, then yeah, if he stopped doing that, he'd be in a better position. But he can't because his brain's broken. I mean, I just want to talk about the state of the economy a little bit because I don't

think Democrats are doing a good enough job like talking about these facts. I mean, job growth averaged 214,000 jobs a month the last four years of Obama. In 2017, they averaged 171,000 jobs a month. We are, of course, in a recovery, at the stage of the recovery. You'd expect less job creation in 2017, but still, it's less than Obama. Economic growth in 2017 was 2.3%,, faster than 2016 but slower than the two years before that. Wages still haven't grown much at all. Stock market's up, but it grew faster under Obama's first year. Half the country doesn't have a single dollar in the stock market. Also, Trump told Davos that America is open for business, but direct foreign investment in the U.S.

declined last year after doubling over the eight years before that. Tourism to the United States has declined. The solar industry has said Trump's new solar tariffs could cost 23,000 American jobs. Three million fewer Americans have health insurance. Trump ripped consumer protections away. And remember the carrier plant that Trump supposedly saved. They have recently shipped 600 jobs overseas. So I just I don't think the Democrats not only shouldn't be scared about talking about the economy, I think Democrats can't cede the economy to Trump in 2018. When, remember, in the campaign in 2016 and when Obama left office, part of the reason that Donald Trump supposedly won, according to these same people doing the same narrative in Washington, is that Obama and Hillary didn't understand that even though the economy had sort of recovered, people in most of the country were struggling because their wages hadn't gone up. Remember that? What has changed since then? A trillion dollar tax cut to corporations. Well, they point to the stock market as if it's the end all be all. But to your point,

52% of Americans own stock, but the top 10% of Americans own 81% of the stock. So it's exacerbating inequality in the way that every other economic indicator has for a while. It's funny, like thinking back, the economic reporting on Obama always included the caveats and context, like we had a great jobs number and it was like, but wages are stagnant. You're just not seeing that happening here, right? Like, I think the reality is, I remember sitting in an NSC meeting with Obama before like a G20 or something. And he was getting briefed on the Greek debt crisis. And like one of the economic advisors was like, this is the asteroid heading towards the global economy that could destroy everything.

And he was like, hey, guys, a month ago, you told me that energy prices were the asteroid heading towards the global economy that could destroy everything. So could you pick a fucking asteroid? Because like this feels kind of out of my control. And I think that's the reality. Like the president doesn't control like the U.S. economy or the global economy. A lot of what's happening now is that the ECB, the European Central Bank, what they did is sort of like ramping up and Europe's cranking. Like a whole bunch of other parts of the globe are also doing better.

So that's sort of lifting all boats. Trump can take credit for that. You know, that's sort of his right as president. But you're right. Like, I don't think Democrats should see this argument because we still have like a raging opioid crisis, right? There's still like manufacturing and retail jobs are going away in certain places.

So like there has to be a nuanced discussion. Well, we also, we said during the eight years of Barack Obama, and he said this all through his reelection too, that income inequality and stagnant wages are the defining challenge of our time. That has not changed. It has gotten worse. Trump has made it worse by giving a $1.5 trillion tax cut that goes mostly to corporations and his rich donors. And, like, Democrats are somehow having trouble talking about these bonuses, one-time bonuses.

Like, Nancy Pelosi called it crumbs or whatever. Like, I don't get why this is so hard. $1,000 bonus to a worker. Fantastic. That's wonderful. And that means a lot to people. It's like 2% of their tax cut that the company is getting. Right.

That's what I'm saying. Like, you can still say that the bonuses mean a lot to people. But first of all, a new Reuters poll out today said that only 2% of people have said that they've gotten these bonuses. And also, the bonuses happened because Trump gave a $1.5 trillion tax cut, mostly to rich people. It's a great thing. It's a great thing that companies are giving a tiny amount of the wealth Trump just gave them back to their employees.

Right. But that is the nature of trickle down. We just gave a huge pot of money to the richest and most successful people, to the least struggling in our country. And they said, here's a tip. And that's fine. And most of it they're going to pocket. And most of it they're going to pocket. And most of it they're going to pocket.

And that money is not going to go to health care, education, housing, transportation, child care, all the things that could help people. It is being paid for with rising debt. It is being paid for with rising debt. It is being paid for by growing inequality. And that is the problem everyone claims is the most important problem to solve, just like John just pointed out. So Donald Trump has done nothing to address the fundamental problems at the heart of the economy as a result of the trade and globalization that he complains about, as a result of automation, which no one has explained to him before, right? And the result of dynamism and fundamental shifts in how people work and the way they live their lives, the decline of unions and all of it.

Neither party has successfully addressed these fundamental problems. And the reporting on this is not great. Like, people just don't get economics. Brett Stevens wrote this whole big piece about how allowing Apple to repatriate money that it had made abroad to the United States with a huge tax cut meant that they could now open another office here and create a whole bunch of new jobs.

He just finally didn't understand that what they would have done before is just one entity would loan the US entity money and they could invest the same amount of money with just using like accounting gimmicks, right? Like this- Didn't use a fact checker on that column. Yeah, could use a fact checker. Could use an economist like, you know, Paul Krugman, whoever's down the hall.

But one thing, though, we also, I think, should be clear-eyed that cutting the corporate tax rate, right, this repatriation, it can lead to money coming into the economy. If designed right. For sure. We had a corporate tax cut plan in the Obama years and Congress never did anything about it. Like there was a way to slightly cut the corporate tax rate without cutting it as drastically as Donald Trump did, which we can't afford because now we have all this money that could have been going into all kinds of investments for this country. That would attract jobs and business. Imagine reform to our tax code. Education, skills, training.

Right. to our education, skills, training, right? Imagine reform to our tax code that lowered corporate tax rates, but didn't pay for it by borrowing from the future by cutting healthcare, by shifting the tax burden down to the middle class, but paid for it in a more fair way, in a more progressive way, right? That would have been something that would have actually made a huge difference in people's lives, while getting the result that Trump and the Republicans and the Koch brothers and all the rest seem to want by lowering corporate tax rate. But the point is, Democrats should talk about this every day. Democrats should talk about the economy every day.

And don't be afraid of dumb media narratives and think that, like, you know, we have to talk about other stuff because now Trump's strung on the economy. Make the fucking argument, you know. Push it. Move the needle. And by the way, you know, for every thousand dollar bonus, there are reports of factories closing and layoffs and declining wages and stagnant wages. Live by anecdotes, die by anecdotes, right? They are cherry-picking information, but economies are complicated. Some people are doing better and some people are doing worse, and that is always true. All right.

Let's talk briefly about the latest in Trump's probably illegal and definitely unethical war against his own Justice Department. We learned from a few stories over the weekend, first the Post and then the New York Times, that Trump has put pressure on the Justice Department to release the memo that Devin Nunes wrote that apparently reveals, you know, an FBI conspiracy to elect Hillary Clinton, which went really well. His Justice Department

has said that releasing the memo would be extraordinarily reckless. We've also learned that the reason that the White House and Trump want the memo released is because they believe it will provide them an excuse to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Cool. Trump selected this Deputy Attorney General himself. But, of course, if Rosenstein was fired, he's the one overseeing the Russia investigation because Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself because Jeff Sessions could be incriminated

in the Russia investigation and if you fire Rod and then you bring in another Deputy Attorney General then that person can fire Mueller so Trump doesn't have to fire Mueller directly. That's where they are right now. It's a human centipede of obstruction of justice. Better title.

It's so funny how many really important facts you have to just gloss over to give a shit about all this stuff Devin Nunez is supposed to be

recused from this whole matter but he's in there just like cooking up memos by himself based on FISA data Rod Rosenstein was a

Trump appointee who was like you know a Republican from the Bush era and all of a sudden He's the guy that wrote that thing that said that they fired Komi. He wrote the memo that was the

predicate for firing Komi. So it's like what the fuck is going on here? You're attacking all the wrong people, guys. Trump has to basically say, I fired Komi because this guy told me to, who I hate and want to fire because I don't trust him. But I did trust him when he told me to fire Comey.

But the New York Times story about this that's running today is pretty fascinating because they basically say this is what the memo is going to say. We learned from the New York Times that Rosenstein approved an application to extend surveillance of Carter Page shortly after he took office last spring. Carter, Carter, Carter. So, the big reveal from Release the Memo is that Trump's hand-picked Deputy Attorney General believed that he had probable cause to extend surveillance on a former Trump advisor because he thought he may be acting as an agent of Russia. John, Carter's in the secret society, which is the other part of it. Republicans want this to come out that the trump appointee thought that they would continue

the surveillance that the obama administration started because they think the guy's a russian agent cool awesome the uh trump going through uh non-loyal people the just reminds me of like every once in a while we'll get an email about some politician who just can't seem to find a great speechwriter. And they go through them one after another. Like this speechwriter wasn't inspiring and had this speechwriter and they couldn't make me seem good. And I got this speechwriter and they didn't sound great and I didn't like them. And somebody was like, maybe you suck.

Maybe you can't deliver a speech to save your life. It's like you're not going to be able to find a great lawyer to do your bidding at the Justice Department because the president is a criminal. able to find a great lawyer to do your bidding at the Justice Department because the president is a criminal. I just want to remind everyone, Paul Ryan decided that Devin Nunez to cook up this whole stupid plot with the memo and all this garbage over the DOJ, Trump's DOJ, who said it'd be extremely reckless to release the memo. One. Two.

I'm so sick of these Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins being all mealy mouth about whether they should put forward legislation to protect the special counsel's office. You guys drafted a bill. Push to get it done. Like, how many times do we need to read that Donald Trump wants to fire the guy? It's also like, when is the right time to pass a bill to make sure the president can't fire Robert Mueller? Is it before he fires him or fucking after? Ridiculous.

Also, just remember, when this memo comes out, it's supposedly going to reveal, again, I guess, that the dossier, the dossier was paid for by partisan. I don't care if fucking Christopher Steele is getting paid by what happened royalties. Okay? Like, the reason, the reason that the FBI opened this investigation

into the Trump administration was not the dossier. It could have been paid for by selling uranium via the dossier. It could have been paid for by selling uranium via the Clinton Foundation. The dossier merely corroborated evidence that the FBI already had. We have seen mountains of reporting

that says that. Mountains of reporting. It could have been Anthony Weiner paying for it with a cash app. I don't know. Still, everyone has done a pretty good job and the reporting has been pretty great just previewing what's going to happen and how bullshit this memo is but i i want everyone to be prepared everyone should be prepared for when it's released and we go through five days like maybe six days what will democrats do now the whole investigation is fucked maybe trump will be president forever did you see that the that trump threatening fire... I think Manchin said it was just New York talk.

That was so weird. Why is Joe Manchin defending that? Dude, what are you doing? I love the idea that, like, yeah, you know. You know how people in New York are. You know? Always obstructing justice. Hey!

Hey! Forget about it. File the special counsel. Pizza. I can't believe... I'm taking the subway. Welcome to New York. We like to instruct justice

how about the Statue of Liberty huh like I thought Fire Muller I thought the character arc for noted I thought the character

arc for noted moron Devin Nunez had ended when he was supposed to recuse himself and when he made a fool of himself like climbing over

the White House fence to cook up intelligence at the end of the day how is this diving out of an Uber he's a clown well always we can't forget mild mannered wonk who will be sitting behind the president to cook up intelligence at the end of the day. How is this being back in our lives? He's a clown. Well, always, we can't forget

mild-mannered Wonk who will be sitting behind the president tomorrow night is at the heart of all of this because all it takes for the House

to behave responsibly is for Paul Ryan to say that the House is going to act responsibly. He is enabling all of this every single day. Paul Ryan is a co-conspirator

in a cover-up right now. He doesn't even know what he's covering up. He doesn't even know if there's crimes at the heart of this, but he is willing to cover it up anyway. He just wants to impede this investigation any way he can. He just wants to get one more year of donor-sponsored legislation over the transom before he loses his speaker job. In fairness, the Koch summit looks really fun.

Yeah, and he did get a reward for passing the tax cut legislation. $500,000 from the Kochs. Oh, by the way, also $300 million. You see, they're going to spend $300,000, $400 million on the midterms. Why wouldn't they? They made three times as much on this tax cut. I also love Paul Ryan giving a speech to donors thanking them. Yeah.

Thanking them. Hey, buddy, you got it wrong. You work for them. They should be thanking you. And you saw our editor-in-chief for Cricket, Brian Boiler, said, If anyone has the video, please leak it to me. My DMs are open. Looking for that video of Paul Ryan thanking his donors.

Would love that for some ads. That'd be cool. Oh, man. There are so many places where that exists, right? Because he probably did it at the studio on the house side. You know, they go to that studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey.

You down there? You down there in that studio? Maybe some of his old waiter friends at Tortilla Coast have a copy. Yeah, back when he pretended to have a summer job. Isn't that how he got the Romney tape? The caterer? All right. When we come back, we'll be talking to the host of Pod Save the People,

DeRay McKesson. On the pod today, we have the host of Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, how's it going, man? It's good. It's a busy world. We've got a lot going on, but I'm good. I'm good. How are you guys doing? Are you back? Are you back in the country? I feel like I never know where you are. We are back in the country. We're in New York City right now. Reeling from... I'm in New York City, too. We don't even know this where you are we are back in the country we're in new york city right now reeling from i'm in new york city too we don't even know the ships passing in the night right um i don't know if you saw but pod save america was snubbed from a spoken word

grammy uh which we we thought was in the can frankly i love it that's hilarious so duray we want to talk to you about Floridians for Fair Democracy. We saw last week that they successfully gathered the required signatures for a November 2018 ballot initiative, which, if approved by 60% of voters, would restore voting rights to Floridians with felony convictions after they fully complete their sentences. DeRay, tell us more about this campaign. I know you guys have been involved a little bit. What's going on? Yeah, we work with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, incredible group of activists and organizations in Florida. You know, it's about 6 million ex-felons in the country can't vote. Almost 2 million live in Florida. So they got enough petitions to make

it work. And the petition law in Florida is not the the easiest to work with but they did it you know we helped them uh you know katie perry and lady gaga and jay-z and pigminta let people get petitions at the concert they let organizers come and get petitions which was dope we helped provide a mailing campaign the aclu chipped in and a lot of local organizers desmond mead shout out to him who helped lead the coalition and led this work. So it worked. And you know, if this you think about Florida, Trump didn't win by a ton, Bush didn't win by a ton, giving 2 million people the right to vote would have a huge impact. Yeah. So Dre, you guys did incredible work to get this thing on the ballot. What happens next? Like

how do we get this initiative approved? And how can people listening help if they really care about restoring voting rights to these people? Yes. The organizers in Florida are leading this effort. And, you know, now it goes on the ballot in the fall. So I think that what a ramp up soon will be messaging to voters so they know this is a good thing. I would anticipate that the right is probably going to push back against this. But, you know, it's a lot there, a lot of white people can vote. It's not even like majority people of color who can vote right now. It's like, you know, so this is like an interesting initiative because black people are disenfranchised but a lot of people are disenfranchised right now in florida and one of the reasons that you guys targeted florida was because it doesn't have one of the highest rates of incarceration i also know that

it has obviously laws where you can put something on the ballot which helps yeah yeah so a lot of you know florida it's something like a theft over 300 makes you a felon right so it. So it's like not people are, when people think about felons, they think about like, they're like everybody killed 10 people. And it's like, that's actually not what's happening. And, you know, Florida is actually a big deal because it's the state with the single largest population of disenfranchised voters. Right. It's like almost 2 million of the six live in Florida. Also, I saw that if, if you were in jail for murder conviction, it's not like reenfranchising people who've murdered people. Yeah. So it's like you think about like there are a lot of things that make people felons and we don't have a good language for it. Like you watch TV, you think that, again, every felon committed bank robbery and blew up the White House.

And like that's not what happened. So when people serve their time, they should be able to, you know, vote again. So I think people are waking up to the fact that people are being systematically disenfranchised across the country based on arrests for things like drug possession in a school zone or, you know, crimes that I think on their face, it would surprise us for how long you get jail time or, or what it can mean to your, you know, your ability to be a citizen long term. How easy do you think it will be to replicate the type of effort you're doing in Florida and in other states? Is that something that the Democratic Party or people who believe in social justice should be fighting for or adding to the sort of list of groups or supporting? Yeah. And, you know, just to be clear, we supported the work of these incredible

local organizers in Florida. But yeah, I think this petition route actually has a lot of play. And, you know, sadly, not every state in the country allows for citizen petitions to put things on the ballot, but there are a lot of states that do. So I think that, you know, stay tuned. We're already working with some new states that we haven't announced yet to help them bolster their efforts. And, you know, I'm hopeful that this can be a key way that we can move criminal justice reform work around. Floridians. This is another big reason to vote in November, as if there wasn't enough at stake on the ballot, as if there weren't enough important races. Now we have this in Florida, and this is going to matter for a lot of people. And it's going to matter not just in 2018, but then in 2020 and 2022 and 2024 and all the elections to come. So it's a very, very big deal. Dre, also, I hear Pod Save the People's going on tour.

Yeah, yeah. First tour, February 18th in D.C. Tickets on Ticketfly. So excited about that. We haven't announced the guests yet, but, you know, I'm excited about who we have in the bank to come. And it's dope. Yeah, yeah. The last thing I want to talk to you guys about is Governor Hogan in Maryland. And, you know, Maryland's one of those blue states that just, like, doesn't, people don't think about being a sort of state where issues

are important but around criminal justice but governor hogan the governor has just introduced like a set of bills that would take us literally like back to the 90s war on drugs and crime stuff and it's sort of incredible to watch like he's planning for like truth and sentencing a lot of mandatory minimum stuff and there are people in balt, there are elected officials in Baltimore who are so scared about the crime stuff that they're willing to bet people's lives and vote on these wild pieces of legislation. Oh, no. It's so frustrating.

I mean, it's like these mandatory minimums were put in place, what, under Reagan? And you would have judges literally weeping in the courtroom because they had to sentence people to completely outrageous, disproportionate sentences. Everyone has come to grips with the fact that they didn't make us safer. They just stuffed people into prisons with no help of rehabilitation. And yet we have Jeff Sessions leading the charge and then state-based initiatives like this that people like, you know, lefty liberals like the Koch brothers oppose. Yeah. And like you think about Baltimore, I mean, you all saw the news that like an entire sort of wing of the Baltimore Police Department just got indicted for like setting people up in corruption and what you have at the state level is like

not a real investment in the city not really funding the school system not doing any laws that like make police more accountable or things that actually might lead to safer communities which you have is like they want to have the maryland state police like come in and police the city of baltimore you like, this is not an answer. And I worry that there are a lot of political leaders in Baltimore who are Dems, who are suddenly afraid about the crime problem, that they're just willing to let Hogan put back in these draconian laws. So what are the Democrats in the legislature doing about it? Are they against this? Can they stop it?

Because in Maryland, the Dems are the legislature. Right. You know, people are just afraid because crime is so, there's so many murders in Baltimore. People are just afraid. And, you know, what they would say is that they're knocking on doors and people are saying that they want more police. But the reality is that we haven't seen a time where like the state actually invested in the city of Baltimore.

So they've like cut bus routes again, not funding the school system. We all saw the news about the schools with no heat. Like that's because the school system hasn't been adequately funded, but Hogan is like playing to this base of like, you know, people thinking that black people just need to be, have more police and that'll make everything safe. And we should just lock people up. And we, like you said, it doesn't work,

you know? Yeah. Not learning any lessons from the past. Not a single. Thanks for letting us know about that. That's important. We'll keep an eye on it. DeRay, thanks for stopping by. Cool. Welcome back to the country and maybe I'll see you around in New York City

today. DeRay, what are we going to do about there not being a podcast Grammy? Because that seems wrong to me. What century are the Grammys in? What are we doing? It about there not being a podcast Grammy? Because that seems wrong to me. I mean, what century are the Grammys in? What are we doing? It's 2018. It's coming. It's coming.

Let's get a Grammy podcast going. I'm just sick of not having a Grammy. And an Emmy. Why not an Emmy? You guys are ruining this for Nikki Haley. Stop it. It's not ruining for Nikki Haley. We've got to make sure that not everybody deserves to be on the Grammy Nominally list, but we'll be there.

I'm confident. Outstanding. Look forward to it. Alright, Dre. We'll talk to you later. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. On the pod, we have with us Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz. Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz. Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me.

I'm honored to be here. In studio. We have an in-studio guest here. On your way home to Hawaii. On my way home to Hawaii. Nice to meet your dogs. Luca loved meeting you. She said you were incredibly thoughtful. She appreciates your voting record on a lot of issues.

I felt like she was a little distant. No, no, no. Listen, she was upset about the shutdown. She wanted a couple more days, but she's okay. She gets it. She's okay. She processed it like I did. And now I feel like a lot calmer about what happened. Leo's out there screaming, no dream, no vote. So start with the shutdown. We spent a lot of time trying to process everything that happened last week. You were the first person we've spoken to from the Senate since then. Congratulations. So you voted for the funding bill that failed, that led to the shutdown. And then you voted for the funding bill that passed, that reopened the government, both short-term, short-term CRS. So I voted no on Friday night and then yes on Monday. And look,

I think there's a lot of angst out there. And I think the foundation of that angst is that we're worried about the dreamers. You know, we're having a little bit of a disagreement about tactics. And my own judgment is that we have this great big movement that continues to grow. And as a result of its size and its ferocity and its intensity, that we have a lot of people that they want to know exactly what the plan is. And from Schumer's standpoint, and I'm not his spokesperson, but this is how I view it, we try to get maximum leverage to put Dream on the table. And then the job of leadership, especially Senators Durbin and Schumer, is to try to figure out when that maximum

point of leverage is and try to see what you can get for it. The judgment that was made over the weekend is that getting Dream on the floor on February 8th from the standpoint of a neutral bill was a pretty significant give. And I kind of understand that McConnell went out there and said that what was offered on Friday was the same thing that was offered on Monday. That's actually not true. First of all, Leader McConnell just sort of said, we will take this up in due time. But the play was on the Republican side to take it up in the last week of February, first week of March, and take up Tom Cotton's bill. And the reason that that's important tactically is that there would have been a lot of desperation to save the Dreamers. And what they're trying to do is, if they do anything for the dreamers, it's going to be

an exchange for a bunch of draconian sort of nativist provisions in permanent changes to immigration law. So what we got was a commitment to move this all the way up by almost a month. And then second of all, this kind of is in the weeds, but it's important. The bill that you start with when you begin debate very much matters, because if every amendment is subject to 60 votes, what they were going to do was start with Tom Cotton's bill. And now we have a commitment to start with what they're calling a neutral shell. Now that's kind of, there's going to be some wrangling, but the agreement is that it has to be something that Schumer agrees to, which means Durbin agrees to, and it will be something that this bipartisan group of about 20 members want to put on the floor. Therefore,

it won't have all that nasty stuff that Tom Cotton and Stephen Miller want, because trying to get 60 votes to repeal each individual odious provision was going to be impossible. So listen, I'm not pretending we just won the weekend, But I do think we made a significant amount of progress. And there's no way that dream would have been as prominent in the in the sort of eyes of the public were it not for what we did over the weekend. A statement and a question. We take Mitch McConnell at his word on this podcast. His word is bond. So I don't I prefer not to hear that he may have misled anyone. Second, for those listening for context, I think what you just said is really important.

Maybe if you don't know Senator Cotton's record, you don't quite get the significance. Is it fair to say he's one of the most strident anti-immigration senators in the Senate? Is he the most right-wing senator? It's probably a tie with him and Ted. Oh, yeah. Ted Cruz. But they want to use the Dreamers as leverage. And what's so awful about this is that we're in a situation now where the president says he wants to do something on DACA. And actually, the things that he's saying are similar to the things that Durbin is saying.

Obviously, Pelosi and Schumer are on the side of the Dreamers. And Ryan and McConnell have all said we need to take care of this problem. So what's weird to me is what are we negotiating for? How are you using this as a sort of democratic ask? And in exchange for that, one time statutory fix to save these people from deportation, they want to make permanent changes in the legal immigration law. That was literally never on the table until about three or four weeks ago. And what they want to do is reduce the number of people coming into this country by about 75%. And that's not a one-time deal. That's on an ongoing basis. So Stephen Miller rolled out this

thing yesterday via conference call, perhaps to distract from the New York Times story. And there were, you know, listen, what they did on Dream or what they've said they want on Dream is fine. But, you know, what they're calling chain migration, the chain migration is an epithet. It is a nativist term. It is a way to be derogatory about the way that 75% of all people coming to America legally do so. And it's the way most of us, or I should make an investment, and get citizenship. Or you're an engineer. You're highly skilled, and you're coming in through the H-1B process. That's its own thing. But the story of America, right, is you come here with nothing, and you build something.

So the idea that we're going to treat America like it's a prep school or a country club where we see what your qualifications are and see whether you're going to sufficiently contribute, the idea is you show up with a desire to participate in the American dream and then you make it happen for your family. How confident are you that you can get a bill out of the Senate that doesn't curb legal immigration like that? Do you think there's enough Republicans who will say, yes, maybe we want border security,

maybe we want changes to the lottery program, but we're not going to go down the road of curbing legal immigration by 50% or whatever Miller wants to do? So I don't know. I mean, I got out of the prediction business after 2016. Us too. I was trying to figure out on your bio whether that was sarcastic that you nailed the result of the 2016 election. Very sarcastic. Okay. That was sarcastic that you nailed the result of the 2016 election.

Very sarcastic. Okay. But no, I really don't know what's going to happen. What I will say is that we now have the best possible – listen, the Republicans have literally never taken up an immigration bill when they're in charge of the chamber. The only time we did it was with Harry Reid running the chamber. So now they're taking it up. Now we have a bipartisan group who is working in good faith and the preliminary conversations have been good. I don't want to be Pollyanna about what happens next. I think there are a number of members of the Senate who will try

to poison this thing and will try to do, you know, basically fodder for political ads and scare everybody about immigrants. So there are going to be tough votes and we have to hang together. Do I think we can get to 60? I think we can. There's kind of a basic question here at the tactical level, which is, is this 51 Republicans plus nine Democrats, or is this a true bipartisan coalition? Because if it's 51 Republicans plus nine Democrats, if that's how they think they're going to get there, this is going to be a bad bill. And I don't think they'll get there. If they really want to do what they say they want to do, then I think we can have a big vote. I think we can get 65 members. So the last question on immigration on leverage is, I saw that Durbin said, okay, now we're going

to, we're getting close to negotiating and finalizing a deal on a long-term budget agreement, which is great. If the Senate works on that first, and then everyone votes on a long-term budget agreement, which is great. If the Senate works on that first, and then everyone votes on a long-term budget agreement, and then move on to DACA, but DACA doesn't work, have Democrats then given up their leverage? Or how do Democrats plan to sort of force the issue before March? Let me just say it this way. I think we have points of leverage all the way through the process.

And the Democrats, listen, the minority party, and we should remember this, when we take the Senate, and God willing, we will, and everybody will work for that outcome in 2018. But remember that the minority party can really slow down the United States Senate, and we can use leverage. I mean, almost in any day, we can slow the Senate to a halt. So causing a government shutdown is not our only point of leverage. I think I would be unwise to sort of list our various points of leverage. But they need to pass bills, and they always need 60 votes to do so. So they're always going to have to come to us for participation.

I think shutdowns are very unlikely going forward, which I'm not so sure is a terrible thing. We were talking about before we went on the air about sort of having mixed feelings about shutting the government down. We're the party that likes to help people and we're the party that likes the government. And it's very difficult for us to use leverage sort of against our constituents for another constituency. But we are not without leverage. They need 60 votes and we can withhold it for anything at any time. Yeah.

Slightly switching gears here. Senator Ron Johnson is a colleague of yours from Wisconsin. He recently announced on Fox News that there is an FBI secret society holding meetings as part of a grand deep state conspiracy. It turns out that his source for this alarming allegation was one text message that was jokingly sent that referenced a secret society. So I have two questions. Is Ron Johnson the dumbest person in Washington, D.C.? And if you prefer not to answer that question, I'll try it this way.

How does someone who managed to get elected to the United States Senate believe something like this? Is he speaking in bad faith? Or do we think he's reading news sources that have so thoroughly eroded his faith in government that he's willing to believe that our own government would have a like Opus Dei secret society in the bowels of the FBI? So I don't know the answer to that. First of all, he's not the dumbest man in Washington. It's a 50-way tie, and he's not in that. But you know, listen, Ron and I have an okay relationship. I disagree with him on a lot of things. My instinct is, and I haven't spoken with him since this went down, is that someone gave him a talking point and he ran with it, because he is smarter than that, and that is clearly not true. And all you had to do was

like 30 seconds of research to realize, first of all, you should use your instinct and say there's very, it is very unlikely that there is a secret society within the FBI. Okay, but after you, let's, let's assume that your instincts don't tell you this smells a little funky. A little bit of research would have showed that someone was making a sassy and somewhat unfunny joke. And it was a one time text. but i what made me a little nuts is i guess we've all become inured to the idea that the sort of fox news ecosystem takes stuff and runs with it right and that is what it is and i'm not sure that we can penetrate that ecosystem but i saw cnn sort of and they were doing the the factual reporting along the lines of there is no secret society but when you're like in the airport or at a diner and all you see is like sort of this open question,

is there a secret society, FBI secret society shows? Maybe not. And I'm thinking the responsible thing to do is not to take this thing, chew on it and come to the conclusion that it's all nonsense, but rather to come to the conclusion that it's nonsense and not even give it the light of day. That was what made me a little nuts. I know what Fox News does, but I think some of the mainstream outlets need to be responsible enough to dismiss it and not run it.

I mean, listen, like a local news station, if you try to pitch them something, they go, no, we're not doing that. I'm totally with you there. I mean, like I'm on board with, you know know the press has to do a little better on these things but again on the house side you have devin nunez who like made a complete fool of himself early on in the trump administration by cooking up this intelligence plot with you know nsc staffers has now drummed up this release the memo conspiracy where he's saying that there's some fISA derived data that he's put into a memo that shows massive wrongdoing in the FBI in the wake up in the lead up to investigation to the election. Is there anyone in leadership either on the Senate or the House side going to these guys

and saying, cut it out? Yeah, cut it out. Cooking up conspiracy theories is bad for the body politic writ large. Apparently not. I mean, look, I think Ron's thing was more of a one-off, but Devin Nunes, I mean, has made a habit of this. And this is the weirdest recusal from the Russia matter that I've ever seen. This guy is supposed to be recused from this on the intel community. As near as I can tell, not only is he not recused, but he's actively running interference. And he's running a, you know, I don't come from the national recused, but he's actively running interference and he's running

a, you know, I don't come from the national security space, but it looks like an operation. Like it looks like he is a, he is an operative for someone in trying to obfuscate and mislead. So what he's doing is kind of, I think he's on his own. There are some people who are, there's a guy, Gates or something, who's just nuts on television. There are a few others that just parrot the talking points. But this guy seems to be using his position, his ability to get into a secure facility and have access to secret and top secret information and then kind of run around with it irresponsibly, which is why the Department of Justice itself basically warned him not to disclose classified information. A Trump appointee. Yeah.

Do you think there's going to be any movement in the Senate on passing these various bills that would protect Mueller or sort of protect the investigation? I know like Tom Tillis had a bill. I know Lindsey Graham did something. I mean, I don't know if after this New York Times story, we're recording this on Friday last night, if there's any ideas there. So I've been talking to, you know, Cory Booker was one of the authors of one of these pieces of legislation. I was texting with him last night. And, you know, we're starting to reach out to members and see whether the enthusiasm for moving forward has increased.

You know, I guess I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, Chuck Grassley said that he is open to a hearing on this matter, and I think that's encouraging. But I also don't think we should let Republicans off the hook for saying sort of vague, you know, I'm concerned that ought not to be done. We're legislators. We're not spokespeople. We have an obligation as members of the separate and co-equal branch of government to push back on anything that we think may be unlawful or not in the interest of getting to the truth. So it's nice if, you know, Senator Perdue or whomever says, well, they shouldn't fire Mueller. That's not good enough at this point. We need more.

We need there are a number of like mechanically you could have a hearing. You could adopt the bill by unanimous consent. You could have a number of members of the United States Senate send a letter to the president saying, if you fire Mueller, we will enact this statute instantaneously. some of them on the Republican side, to get away with being given credit for statesmanship and moderation if they tweet something or when they're getting off that train in the Capitol say, well, you shouldn't fire Mueller. And that's the end of it. We're going to need a little bit more of a bright red line. And that bright red line has to be statutory at some point.

It has to be like, what are you going to do as a legislator? Not some sort of clever tweet or brave statement. And then you go away for the weekend, come back having done nothing. Paul Ryan pretends not to read the tweets. That's right. Well, so here's the reason I was thinking about this is remember during the ACA fight, I remember there were these graphics on I think every cable station that was like eight or 10 members of the United States Senate who were the moderates who were considering voting against ACA repeal. And I think they get a ton out of being on a list of moderates, even though they were never in play to vote no.

I mean, I'm looking at some of these names and without attacking them individually, I'm going, that guy's never in a million years going to vote no on an ACA repeal. But he's getting the benefit of being on every TV station as like, hmm, I'm real concerned about Medicaid or whatever it may be. It's nonsense. And I think that- Bill Cassidy. Yeah. Sorry.

It just drives me nuts. But we can't, but you know, at some point Tom Cotton was against repeal without replace, right? And so I just want to make sure we hold our Republican friends accountable for action. And if the bar is so low that all you have to do is tweet something kind of like vaguely critical, and then you're like profiling courage, that's not going to save the country. Right. I want to ask you about the State of the Union. There have been various dust ups at times about whether people should boycott the State of the Union or major Trump speeches. Where do you land on that?

Like, should Democrats be present or should they send a message by not showing up? So, listen, I'm going to go. He's the president of the United States. For one thing, I think it's important to listen to him. For another thing, I mean, I was actually talking to a House member who was considering whether or not to go. And he asked me what I thought. I said, well, for what it's worth, I think it'll end up being a Rorschach test, right? If you just hate everything that he stands for, you're going to say right on, you didn't show up.

And if you're a Trumpist, you're going to say this is another example. They're trying to ruin him at every... So I just don't think it moves the needle by not showing up. But I certainly don't think anybody has any specific affirmative obligation to come. And people have their own principled reasons not to come. So I think that'll end up being a sort of a sub story. The main thing, again, is to move from the symbolism to the legislating. Right. Are you excited for how all the pundits will greet this speech as the moment he became presidential again? New Trump.

New to new Trump. Yeah yeah i can't tell if we're set up for that or not this time feels like we probably are like we're set up i don't know i mean it's a really interesting question because like is there is there no point at which certain not just pundits by the way but actual like hard news reporters will not say this is the best speech he's ever given it's just the bar is so low and i yeah and i agree like if he if he read a like normal republican speech written by like you know anybody's legislative coordinator and just read it people would be like that was pretty great well you can imagine if he does this right you can imagine him he's going to start talking about the economy he's going to take credit for the state of the economy even though it was mostly

barack obama's work he's going to talk about tax cut. I'm sure he'll talk about all the bonuses that the companies are handing out to employees, which raises a question. How do you think, I saw someone on Twitter today saying, how do Democrats talk about the Trump economy going into 2018? How do you think that Democrats running in 2018 should talk about the Trump economy, the economy in general? And like, do you think in general, they need to make their campaigns about more than Trump? Or do you think it's basically just a referendum on Trump? So I first of all, I think that the part of this electorate that is going to treat this as a referendum on Trump sort of already exists. So although there are aspects where you should sort of sharpen the focus, I really believe we have to have a hard-nosed, kind of hard-edged economic message.

And I think it's fine that the economy is doing well. It's just important to remember the GDP and stock market data doesn't actually impact everybody in the same way. And so what I think we should be saying is they're ripping you off. They lied to you that they are stirring up grievances, trying to pitch you against each other in order to pick your pocket. And that's what's happening across the country. And that is the kind of message that will fire up, you know, black and Latino women and white dudes in the middle Midwest. It shouldn't matter. Your pocket is being picked by this tax cut and by public policy, the evisceration of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, what they're doing on loans, what Mick Mulvaney stands for, everything that they've done

to empower Wall Street. I think we have a strong populist message. I will say that we have a tactical problem and I haven't figured out how to solve it, which is we literally like we'll plan a week where we're going to focus on the economy and then all hell breaks loose. And it's nice to say, you know, a lot of strategists will say, well, you know, you should have done your presser on your economic plan anyway. And the truth is that the news environment is such that we have to find our way to break through the craziness, which is so irresistible and interesting every day, that if all we're doing is talking about middle class jobs and protecting families and allowing everybody to share in a growing economy, it's what we should be talking about, but it is really hard to break

through. So I don't have a magical solution for that one. Yeah. I mean, that's something we think about all the time here, because I think you hear people say the Democratic Party has problems structurally. No one knows what they stand for. No one knows what they believe in. I don't know that that's entirely true, but it's certainly the case that we need to do a better job articulating a vision. But like going into 2018, it seems clear to me that it's going to be a referendum on Trump. So do you have a sense of, I know you said you don't have the exact solution, but a sense for how we should strike a balance there? I mean, do you think the Senate and the House are going to start putting forward more of an affirmative legislative agenda

that we can point to? Yeah, we will. Actually, it's funny because we actually had a bunch of things to roll out in January, but all hell broke loose. As usual, yeah. But we will. But here's my judgment. I think that the message could very well be, have you had enough of this crap? Yeah. And that can apply to Trump and his conduct. That can apply to the sort of nativist stuff that I think burns. It can apply to the stuff that's happening with civil rights and human rights and gay rights and women's rights and in policing. But it can also apply to the fact that they are basically using all of that as cover to pick everybody's pocket, that they're ripping you off. And I think have you had enough of this is a relatively strong,

straightforward, anti-incumbent message. I mean, one of the challenges that we have, because we're the party of government, is that we still act like the incumbents, even if we're not the governing party right now. We do not run the government, and yet we still want to defend the role of government in society. But right now, we have to run against the establishment. And that establishment is Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, establishment. And that establishment is Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. We just have a tendency to allow them to sort of outflank us on the anti-establishment side, which is preposterous. They run everything right now. So I think we can run a strong anti-establishment

campaign, which can be sort of, you know, irregardless of whether what's motivating you is what they're doing to the kids on the border, or whether you care about what Betsy DeVos is up to or whether you care about inaction on climate or whether you're pissed about net neutrality or what they're doing with marijuana, it's like, have you had enough? Had enough question mark. That'll fit on the book. Yeah, I like that too. But you guys are the message gurus. I'm just a legislator. Well, I wanted to ask. So you're one of the few politicians who I follow on Twitter who sounds like a normal human being.

You, Chris Murphy. I mean, actually, no less. Through your tweets. Was that a strategy on your part? Was that just you being you? Do you give your communications team heartburn? So, no, yes, yes. Yeah. So look, I sort of don't even love Twitter on a personal level. It drives me a little bananas. I spend too much time on it. It's hard to rest. And yet it's such a powerful tool. And, and, you know, I went from, you know,

very few Twitter followers around when Trump was elected to more, 10 times as many. And part of it was because I thought it was really important for me to express myself and lay down markers. And there aren't that many members of the Senate who tweet themselves. And I think that it's funny, I always say that I found the one job where being a normal person is like, totally a distinguishing characteristic. And so I just try to, you know, speak from the heart and speak from the gut. And I've said a few things that I wish I didn't say on Twitter and certainly more things that my communication staff wish I didn't say. But I think people need to hear from me.

And then on top of everything else, you know, I'm 5,000 miles away from home. So it is a good way for people who are following what's happening in the Congress to kind of know what my thinking is. So I've used it as a tool. I'm not going to stop using it as a good way for for people who are following uh what's happening in the congress to kind of know what my thinking is so i've used it as a tool i'm not going to stop using it as a tool i i'm i'm trying to put the phone down on the weekends a little bit more aren't we all good advice that my fiancee would like me to take as well actually one last question there was this horrible terrifying incident in hawaii where uh an emergency alert was sent out that saying a ballistic missile was inbound to Hawaii. Seek shelter immediately. This is not a drill.

We learned later that this was a mistake made by an employee. I'm curious, like, what that horrifying incident felt like for you and people you love and what we've learned about our preparedness generally on a state and federal level. Are preparedness generally on a state and federal level? Because the mere fact that a random employee could push a wrong button and do this for 39 minutes, to me, speaks of a lack of preparedness that is truly frightening. Yeah. First of all, it was terrifying. I mean, 1.55 million people were thrown into turmoil. Lots of people, just to give you a sense, some people sort of decided that it was a fake without actually knowing. Some people were able to call, you know, a garrison

or a base or an installation and get some information. But lots of people were hiding in closets and basements if they have a basement and saying their goodbyes. I mean, people thought they were going to perish. So we had a systems failure, obviously, because you don't want a system where only one person making a clerical error can cause that to happen. And then you had a bunch of sort of errors in human judgment along the way in terms of not, you know, telling the public that a missile was not coming. But one of the things in terms of preparedness that we're working on and on a bipartisan basis is that actually the authority for a missile alert should be federal. You know, we have interesting arguments about the role of the federal versus the local government.

But like this is the most federal thing there is. And so we're working on legislation to essentially say, you know, NORTHCOM, NORAD, PACOM, the people who know whether or not a missile is coming should be the ones to inform the public. Because right now it's voluntary. So FEMA has a system. And then every emergency management agency, 3,017 counties and 50 states and five territories can voluntarily enlist in this missile alert system or not. And so the likelihood of another mistake is actually relatively high. Or not. And so the likelihood of another mistake is actually relatively high. And the likelihood after this mistake that a mayor or a governor is going to say, I would like to not incur that political liability is super high.

This is just clearly not a thing where we want to have them be the laboratory of democracy and everybody has their own missile alert system. No experimenting with missile alerts. Yeah. And I think the one thing, Tommy, that sort of worries me is whether or not this could have pinged around in such a way that caused our adversaries or our allies to think that something real was going on. Now, PACOM immediately knew it was not real. And I'm sure they have ways to communicate throughout the region to calm nerves, but you can't expect that that's always going to go well, so missile alerts should be in the control of the National Security Council. I think that's

a bipartisan statement. Yeah, for sure. Senator Schatz, thank you so much. Thank you, thanks for having me. Thank you to Senator Brian Schatz and DeRay for joining us today. And that's all we have. Aloha. Some good New York talk, guys.

Good New York talk. Instructional justice. Get a pizza. Let's go to 30 Rock and fire a lawyer investigating us. Now I'm at Ellis Island. Close for business. Appeal the investigation. It's like a sort of Italian accent, but sort of New York.

It's New York. You're from here I know I'm kind of doing Vaguely like an uncle This is vaguely what What is your dad Doesn't your dad have a long

I'll do Jonathan I'm telling you It's simple You find the investigators It's not that complicated You find the investigators Then we go get a couple of bagels

There you go I think that's it That's it Get a couple of rogola And come in obstruction of justice, because we're New Yorkers. This is what we do. This is what we do here.

All right. We'll see you guys later.