Pod Save America - “A potpourri of stupid.”

Episode Date: August 16, 2018

Trump is acting like a guilty man who’s bad at covering up crimes, and Democrats are nominating history-making candidates while they decide on a message for the fall. Then Wesley Bell, the Democratic nominee for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney, joins Jon and Dan to talk about his upset victory and his plans to reform the criminal justice system. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, we'll talk with Wesley Bell, the Democrat who just won the race for prosecutor in St. Louis County, Missouri, defeating the prosecutor who had been widely criticized for his handling of the police shooting of Michael Brown a few years ago. We're also going to talk about the results of Tuesday's primary elections and how several candidates are on the path to making history. And we'll check back in on how Omarosa and her scorched earth book tour is shaping our politics a topic that's getting more inspirational by the day do you think i would have sold more books if i had just released a lot of recordings of us together oh wait that's actually

how i sold books never mind yeah i was gonna say all of all of our white house recordings you can hear every t and Thursday right here on Pod Save America. What we said to each other for eight years in the White House is what we say to each other now. We are taping early this morning. I'm in New York City. So I was up in time for all the Trump tweets, which is always exciting. But of course, that means, you know, all the Trump tweets, which is always exciting. But of course, that means, you know, as I was walking to the studio here, I noticed that at 1pm on MSNBC, Omarosa will release another tape. So by the time you're listening to this, who knows what we might have learned. And then, and also, who knows, we could get a verdict in the Manafort trial today.

Look, these things could happen. Some of you may yell at us on Twitter and say, it's outdated, but you're thinking about it the wrong way. We are preserving in amber this moment in time between Omarosa recordings. What the world was like. Yes, and while the jury is deliberating. So go back, look at it fondly, listen, enjoy. We can't control what happens. You know this happens to us. And the risk is even greater because it's 7 a.m. here in California as we're recording it and 10 a.m.

in the East Coast where John is. We got some other pods out there. On a brand new episode of Pod Save the World, Tommy takes time to evaluate Donald Trump's Space Force proposal on the merits with a defense expert and Pentagon veteran. Come for the laser noises at the start of the show. Stay for the takes. This is a fun episode of Pod Save the World. You guys should all, you all should tune into that. It's very good. And of course, there are two episodes of the wilderness out this week on the economy. You should listen. So far, everyone who's listened, who's tweeted at me, has really liked these episodes. The rest of you, if you haven't caught up on the wilderness, please check it out. The first episode is about how we reached this

staggering level of inequality in this country, what's happened to our labor movement, what's happened to regulations, taxes, decisions that Republican politicians have made, frankly, decisions that Democratic politicians have made. So first episode called the 1% is sort of how we got here and how we got to this level of inequality. And the second episode, chapter nine, is what a big, bold, progressive economic agenda would look like. We talk about it here on Pod Save America quite a bit, but I got all the smart people from left to center left together to talk about what Democrats should be talking about in 2018 and 2020 when it comes to the economy. So

very exciting episodes. Tune in. Yeah, last night around 2 a.m. where our daughter decided that she'd forgotten how to sleep again, knowing I was going to get up at the crack of dawn this morning to prepare for this, I had serious thoughts about putting on the wilderness, which is fascinating to adults but puts small children to sleep. So we didn't do it, but it was a legitimate conversation of maybe if we put the wilderness in, she would go to sleep, and I would get at least two hours of sleep before recording this podcast today. Look, it works for the whole family, you know? You laugh, you cry, you learn something. That's the wilderness. Okay, so let's talk about the news. So this week has been a real

potpourri of stupid, but it all seems to lead back to... Just trying to get that episode title out quick. I was trying to think of potpourri of what, and I just decided to go stupid. But it's all connected, all the news, because it seems to lead back to a president who's acting guilty as hell and is too dumb to cover up his crimes

in any kind of believable way, except for the cult that is now most of the Republican Party. So let's start off where we left off on Tuesday's pod, which we recorded right before Omarosa released another secretly recorded conversation from the 2016 campaign, where she and her colleagues discussed how to prepare for the potential release of a tape where Trump used the N-word. On the recording, Trump spokesperson Katrina Pearson says, quote, I am trying to find at least what context it was used to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it. Then later she says, no, he said it. He is embarrassed by it.

When asked about this at the White House briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she couldn't guarantee there wasn't a recording of Trump using the N-word. Trump also tweeted that Apprentice creator Mark Burnett called to say that there are no tapes from the show where Trump says the N-word, which is like saying the bank called to say there's no video of me robbing it. Dan, do you think he said the word? Yes. Yes, of course he has said the word. He is a 73-year-old angry white man with a obvious and long history of racist views. It seems incredibly likely he said it. And the tape, I never know what to think about these Omarosa tapes. I presume this is real. It is not clear whether they had heard a tape or they were told about the existence of a tape, but they seem to all be in agreement around one thing. Donald Trump had certainly said the N-word, and they're trying to figure out how to spin that fact.

And just a little, there is no context. There is no context where that would be okay, unless Trump was saying, I mean, there's no context. There is no context there is no context where that would be okay unless trump was saying i mean there's no context it's just no context yeah the whole thing is absurd yeah we also saw it's like ridiculous the names in the news we have to talk about today pen gillette of penn and teller said said um said he was in the room when Trump said racially insensitive things during The Apprentice that it often made him uncomfortable. So, again, it's like there is long documented history of Donald Trump saying racist things during the campaign, during his time in the White House, back when he was refusing to rent his apartments to African Americans and got sued for it. I mean, whether it's policies, whether it's actions, whether it's statements, whether it's words, over and over and over again, the one consistent thing in Donald Trump's life is that he has been racist time and again.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We do not need a tape to prove this. And it just, like, everyone's sitting around just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there are fucking shoes everywhere. We know this. And here are ways in which we know Donald Trump is racist. His policies are racist. His statements are racist. He has a long history of racist policies and views. and views. And this is, I find to be the most damning is that avowed public racists applaud Donald Trump for his racism. That is why they like him. It is why white supremacists, Pepe, the frog nerds, and the sad losers who wrapped themselves in Nazism and white supremacy love Donald Trump because these are people are connoisseurs of racist views. And they love Donald Trump because based on what they see of Donald Trump, he agrees with their views. It is open and shut case. It's not even like we don't

need proof. We have proof. We don't need some smoking gun tape to tell us that something we already know with our eyes. It is the same thing with collusion. It is the same thing with everything about Donald Trump. All of the crimes, the corruption, the racism is happening right before our eyes. Yet, as a political culture, the media, other politicians, we are constantly looking for some sort of holy grail of evidence to prove to us what we already know. It is easier for the media, it is easier for other Republican politicians to always be waiting for the next thing before they have to take a moral stand on what is happening in our country. And you can argue, and I would, that past Republican presidents and other Republican politicians have certainly used and employed racial dog whistles. You can argue that Republican policies have increased racial inequities in this

country, that they have just led to discrimination against African Americans, certainly. But those racists that you're talking about, the white supremacists, the David Dukes, all these people who are, you know, white supremacists, white nationalists, they didn't praise George W. Bush. They didn't praise Mitt Romney. They didn't praise John McCain. They didn't praise a lot of other leaders of the Republican Party. They praise Donald Trump. Because they know that Donald Trump's views are in line with their views.

More so than any Republican in their lifetime, probably, who's risen to that level of power. And then also, you know, I mean, Trump responds to Omarosa's allegations that he used a racial slur by calling her a dog in a low life. So if you're wondering if he's going to use racially insensitive comments, and of course, you know, all the fucking MAGA people are online yesterday. And, you know, the big job for the last couple of days was to defend Donald Trump by saying he's called white people dogs as well. So obviously

that's not racially loaded. Yeah. Okay. Go with that defense. That'll work for you. When your defense is he's an asshole to everyone, not just certain people, then you have lost the debate. And also because we live in a world of data journalism, people actually analyze the claim, and overwhelmingly, he calls African Americans stupid and dogs. And then I would note one other thing. I'm pretty fired up this morning, because I had like 18 coffees to try to get ready for this. Nice, nice.

Is, I can't remember which story it was that said that Donald Trump has often used the term dog, because he believes that canine comparisons are the most devastating of insults. Because he hates dogs and that's why he doesn't have a pet. So Dan, let's say a tape comes out tomorrow or maybe today and when Omarosa reveals one on MSNBC where Trump is saying the N-word. What do you think the political impact would be? I think in the short term, it would be devastating in the sense that Trump would go through one of those periods like after he praised the Nazis as being fine people, where everyone would get upset. Republicans would send out even more, even Republicans who were not named Jeff Flake and Bob Corker would send out sad tweets decrying the use of the N-word without even mentioning Trump.

And the press would be in a feeding frenzy just because as we've seen in sort of our social media, digital media world, when there are videos or audio recordings that can be shared, it just becomes a much bigger deal. That is a large reason as to why people became so focused around the child separation policy in the media. Not just because it's a moral travesty and a policy atrocity, but because there were images to go with the stories. We live in an image-centric world. But I don't know that anything fundamentally changes because what really matters is the balance of power and how people use it. Would that cause two Republican senators to walk across the aisle and caucus with the Democrats giving the gavel to Chuck Schumer? No. Would that cause Republicans to run away from Trump? No. Would it cause Paul Ryan to spend the next five months not listening to that tape? Yes. a bigger political impact than we might think.

And I think the reason is you and I, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, you know, would define racism in a very broad sense, and I would argue accurately, you know, and we would define it as policies that, you know, racial policies, Trump's immigration policies, saying things like shithole country, calling an African-American woman a dog, calling Maxine Waters stupid. You know, saying that a Mexican judge can't give you a fair hearing because he's Mexican. Like, we would say all these things are obviously racist. things are obviously racist. But I still think there's a lot of people in this country who think that they don't see structural racism as much. And when they think racism, they only think

of either violence or assault against or outright discrimination against African Americans and people of color and using that word, right? Now, I would argue that's a very narrow view of what racism really is but i do think that's what a lot of people think racism is some people who you know don't pay as close attention to politics and news and all that kind of stuff and i think that an audio tape out there of the president united states using that word would actually jar the country in a way and brian argues this in his piece, in a way that the Access Hollywood tape sort of jarred the country. And look, look, he won after the Access Hollywood tape, which is the whole fucking thing that

drives us crazy. But we forget that it did sort of, you know, I mean, his poll numbers fell into the 30s there. And had the election been held a week after the Access Hollywood tape, I'm pretty confident that Hillary Clinton would have won. Yeah, I think that's the point though, right? And this is where I agree with you. I think it would be a huge deal when it happened. It would require the entire political system to react. The press would cover it rightfully as one of the biggest deals in modern political history.

I think Republicans would be on the campaign trail in Capitol Hill, be forced to react in ways that they're deeply uncomfortable with. But just like the Alex's Hollywood tape is that over a all too brief period of time, we would revert to the mean. And we saw this, like, let's take our good old friend Jason Chaffetz who said – after the Access Hollywood tape, I am unendorsing Donald Trump because I cannot sit at the dinner table and look across the table at my wife and daughters while supporting Donald Trump. And then two weeks later, because political gravity is a real thing, he reendorsed Donald Trump so he could win reelection. He re-endorsed Donald Trump so he could win re-election. And I worry that that's what will happen here because Donald Trump is – like we don't, I think, truly focus on how precarious in many ways Donald Trump's political position already is. Right. And what I mean by this is like everyone is – we see this at our shows all the time when we talk to people is like where is the accountability?

Trump is getting getting with everything. And it's like, actually, we don't know that he's getting with everything because political accountability happens to presidents twice in their first term, the midterm and the reelect. And we haven't had that political accountability test and we're about to. And if that taper to come out, it may help the Democrats win more seats than they would otherwise win just because it would dominate the discussion. It would just – Republicans would be on the defensive. Everyone would be talking about this instead of – they would be talking about whether Donald Trump is a racist instead of echoing Donald Trump's racist message to try to enthuse the base. But it will – because Donald Trump already has – he is only trending a few points above his floor. He has a very high floor and a very low ceiling in terms of polling number. And it is that floor, that high floor that is

what gives him his political power in the Republican Party because, yeah, he'd lose a few. I'm sure he would lose some voters for some brief period of time and maybe some, and certainly some permanently if that taper to come out. But his power, the reason he controls Republicans, the reason why Paul Ryan has supplicated himself to Trump, why these Republicans who we know think Donald Trump is an unstable racist moron do what he says is because he controls the base. And I don't know how much of that base. They have a disproportionate sway in the Republican Party. And so I't know how much of that base, they have a disproportionate sway in the Republican Party. And so I think we would have a huge frenzy, it would be a gigantic

deal. And then a few weeks after the election, we would be reading a piece in Politico or whatever else about how Trump's numbers have returned to near where they were before and Republicans are off their heels, because it's just, we live in this highly entrenched, highly polarized world where things, they always return to the mean of our polarized world. We see that. Remember after Bin Laden was killed in the Obama presidency and Obama's numbers jumped up and everyone was like, Obama has won re-election. He helped lead the American, like US armed forces for a thing that George W. Bush could not do.

People were cheering in the streets. Republicans were cheering him. And then a few weeks later, we were back to where we were before. And I think that, sadly, that's what would happen right now, which says, I think, more about the Republican Party than it does about America. Yeah. The speed of media today has also just sort of destroyed our collective memory so that it is no longer than, you know, a couple hours or the last news cycle, which is a real problem. So speaking of that, in an effort to change the subject from Omarosa, President Trump announced on Wednesday that he was revoking the security clearance of John Brennan, the former CIA director under Obama, and someone who's, you know, been nonpartisan and

also worked in the Bush administration as well. The White House also threatened to revoke the clearances of Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA NSA head General Michael Hayden, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and basically any law enforcement or intelligence official in the government who's been critical of Trump or, and this is even more important, who may have information about the crimes that Trump and his associates may have committed. At first, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied about why Brennan lost his clearance, making up some bullshit about his erratic behavior. But then later in an interview with

Wall Street Journal, Trump said the quiet part out loud like he always does. He said, I call it the rigged witch hunt. It is a sham and these people let it. So I think it's something that had to be done. Dan, how big of a deal is this, stripping a security clearance away from John Brennan? It is both a gigantic deal and not a deal at all at the same time, which is basically thanks pundits say, but I will try to make it sound smarter than that. This is different than firing Mueller, firing Rosenstein, getting rid of Sessions. The sort of things that would change the nature would be actual obstruction of justice, right? It's sort of ancillary to the larger effort to understand what happened in Russia because Brennan is not involved in that now.

He has not been involved in a long time. An important caveat is that you and I both worked with Brennan for many years. He is a friend of ours. He is a – truly a patriot in all the senses of the word and someone who serves his country, not a political party. someone who serves his country, not a political party. And I think we should just generally, if John Brennan, who is really one of the most apolitical people we work with, feels this way about Donald Trump after serving all these years in government for presidents of both parties, people should listen to that critique. Yeah. I mean, I would say John Brennan, being John Brennan on Twitter for the last year and the level of alarm in his tweets has alarmed me

almost more than anything else because we worked with John for so many years and he's like the last person you would expect to be some you know partisan bomb thrower or even comment on politics like he just never did. He sort of just did his job, you know. And he's a national security official, very serious, worked for, you know, Republican and Democratic presidents. Brilliant man. But not someone who's out there yelling about politics ever. Yeah. I mean, it is really – this is not someone trying to build up some sort of Twitter following or monetize the resistance or anything like this.

This is a person who has served this country his entire life being deeply concerned about the direction the country is going. And I think everyone should listen to that. And you're exactly right. John Brennan served George W. Bush. He served Barack Obama. He's a patriot. Now, does it matter that he does not have a security clearance anymore? It may. I mean, there are many reasons that these officials keep

their security clearance, but one is so that the current CIA or the current national security could call in John Brennan and get his advice on things he's worked on before, you know, terrorists that he may have tracked, issues he's worked on, sort of to get their experience, be able to read them in. It's something that is pretty standard for former national security advisors, former intelligence officials. And so that's a loss for Trump's national security apparatus, that they won't be able to ask John Brennan, and maybe this long list of other people, including Republican officials like Michael Hayden. So I think that is a mistake. Will that matter in the end? I don't really know. But what is concerning is, and this is the slow motion purge that is happening within the government, right? If Donald Trump, like,

this is a little like looking for the N-word tape or the P-tape or the email from Trump to Putin signing off on a collusion scam. It's all happening right before us, right? The Saturday Night Massacre is called Saturday Night Massacre because it happened on one night when Richard Nixon, a Saturday night, in fact, where Richard Nixon fired all these people in the Justice Department in order to get rid of the special prosecutor. Trump is doing this differently. He is just doing it slowly before us. And so, you know, he gets rid of McCabe. He gets rid of Peter Strzok.

He's now targeting Bruce Ohr in the Justice Department. He is trying to silence and intimidate his critics in the national security world by stripping their clearances. And because it's happening slowly and incrementally, we are missing the forest for the trees here. And that is what is scary is that Trump has an enemies list. He's telling us. It's just because he's saying it on Twitter. And instead of in a secret document that deep throat leaks to Woodward and Bernstein, we don't pay attention to it. We think it, we just treat it so differently. And we've said this many times, but we are ill-equipped

as a media culture, a political culture, to deal with crimes and abuse of power and destructive justice that happens right before our eyes, because we believe these things should happen in secret. And when we discover the things that happen in secret it's a big deal when they tell us them in advance and as they're happening we sort of slough them off and then we're gonna we look at the end of the process and see oh he's purged all of the people in the justice department who can corroborate jim comey's story about trump trying to influence him on the flynn investigation or whatever else well that he is no i was gonna say that to me is the most important point, because this is getting framed as Trump goes after his critics, Trump silences his critics.

But Trump hasn't been really going after just any critic. It's not like, you know, someone in DHS who has been critical of the family separation policy he's trying to get rid of, you know? who has been critical of the family separation policy he's trying to get rid of. You know, every single person that Trump has either fired or tried to discredit and smear publicly has been able to know something about potential conspiracy with Russia to influence the election or Trump's obstruction of justice to cover up that conspiracy. And so that's every, so there's, you know, like you just said, people who can corroborate Comey's story and Comey's testimony about how Trump tried to pressure him to let Michael Flynn go or the loyalty pledge or

all stuff like that. That's Peter Strzok. That's McCabe. John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Susan Rice were all privy to very sensitive, very classified information about what was happening with the Russians and who in the Trump campaign was communicating with the Russians during the campaign. And now he's trying to strip their security clearances away. He can't fire them, but he needs to discredit them publicly so that when Mueller comes out with his case and he also, again, he's on a, there's an uneven playing field here where Mueller can't speak about anything because Mueller is doing an investigation. And he's not doing an investigation in public because that's not what you're supposed to do and you're not allowed to do. And Trump can say anything through his fucking Twitter feed all day long. So there's an uneven playing field where Trump can discredit all of Mueller's witnesses before Mueller ever brings the witnesses to trial and makes the information publicly known of what he knows. And so all these people in the Obama administration, in the Justice Department,

in the intelligence community who know what happened in 2016 and know what happened when Trump tried to obstruct justice at the beginning of his administration, he is seeking to discredit them in the public eye. And that's how he's trying to win this fight. And it's important to know what we mean by the public eye, which is he's not really trying to discredit them with the public writ large. He'd be happy if that were to happen. And maybe he even hopes that happens. I'm sure he hopes it happens. But what he's trying to do is discredit them among the Republican base, among his MAGA base, so that it ties the hands of Republican politicians who will ultimately be the ones who could inflict some measure of accountability on Trump through impeachment, impeachment trial in the Senate, or congressional investigations. And in doing that,

he only has to speak to 38% of voters, which is like 17% of the American people to convince them that these people like Bob Mueller and John Brennan, who are public servants in the truest sense of the word, are partisan hacks in some way. And if he succeeds in that, then he, at least in the short term, he may not help him with voters, but it is a defense strategy within the political court of Congress were he to be impeached. So there's been a lot of talk this week about, you know, Trump did this, you know, made this move on Brennan because he's trying to distract from Omarosa. And then, of course, you know, you get all the people in the media who are talking all about John Brennan yesterday, and they're're all saying he's so good at distracting us here we are talking about something else as if like they have no control over their own actions

or decisions or what they talk about um it just it does seem like politics this week last week has been even stupider than usual as we sort of jump from, you know, Trump freak out to Trump freak out to the next Omarosa tape to the John Brennan thing to whatever we're, you know, probably dealing with as you listen to this podcast. Why is politics so painfully stupid right now? Is it our fault? Is it Trump's fault? Is it the media's fault? All of the above. Politics was headed towards stupid before Trump got around. And then Trump came, Trump, who is particularly stupid and says stupid things and is a performance enhancing drug for this stupid of politics, appears on the scene. But it is a cop out to say it's entirely Trump's fault. It's a cop out to say it's the media's fault. And because it's also our fault that I don't mean crooked media and pot save America. I mean, I'm sure we're due for some blame somewhere, but like we're talking about it. Exactly. We have we could be talking about something else. Trump does what the media gives him coverage for. The media covers the things that people watch, listen, click on. So everyone is responsible.

If Trump coverage did poorly, either in terms of click rate or viewership or subscription rate or whatever else, it would get less coverage. It would be treated more normally. But it is – we're all addicted to the stupid. And that is a real problem for Democrats because we're not stupid. The stupid and trivial helps Trump. It doesn't help us. If you think about the times in which Democrats have felt like they had the highest political ground during the Trump era, the debate around health care, the debate around taxes, the debate around the child separation policy, when the focus is on actual policy and issues, then and what Trump is actually doing to people, not what he's tweeting, but what his policies are doing to people, the Democrats do better. But there is this huge disconnect between what helps Democrats political, what is persuasive to voters, either to switch from Republican to Democrat or to switch from non-voter to voter, and what is being talked about every day.

And it's not even to say, and I think the one, I think, caveat I would say here in the press's defense is the biggest, most covered story is Russia. And that is not trivial or stupid. That is a serious piece of journalism. It's a very important story. It's also, unfortunately for Democrats, I don't think it's hurtful, but it's not helpful either. I don't think it's moving a lot of votes one way or the other. And so the challenge for Democrats is how do you get the conversation on the campaign trail, at the door, at the phone, on Facebook or whatever else to be around the things that move voters and not around the things that Trump wants it to be on? Yeah. And look, I mean, it's hard too.

I mean, I get it from the media's perspective. Like we don't cover topics on Pod Save America based on ratings because we don't really have ratings or like whether there's a bunch of downloads for one episode or the other. It doesn't matter a ton. But the reason, like if there's a possible tape of the president united states saying the n-word saying a horrible racial slur it seems like you got to talk about it that's pretty important because we don't we shouldn't have a fucking president who does that right um and if the president is silencing potential witnesses in a trial against him for conspiring

with the foreign power to influence election that's also something that you got to talk about. We will try to put it in the best context possible so that it's not just all a bunch of random silly stories, but something that is quite connected, which I do believe this is. The one thing we didn't talk about with Omarosa is she's also said that Trump knew about the Clinton hacked emails before they were released and that she's talked to Robert Mueller. hacked emails before they were released and that she's talked to Robert Mueller. So that's also pretty interesting. Again, all of this is connected back to Trump acting guilty and trying to cover it up. But so like you do have to talk about some of this stuff, you know, and yet, you know,

I couldn't help but read yesterday as I was getting ready for this that, yeah, there are over 500 children who still have not been reunited with their parents, and there's no plan to do so. And the Trump administration has no plan to do so. And you look at that story, and you're like, okay, well, what can we do about that? What can we say about that? Who can we pressure? And the answer is, right now, we can't pressure the Republican Congress, because they have decided they will do nothing, that they are a cult that is just a bunch of supplicants to Trump. And Donald Trump won't do anything about it. And so then you think, okay, well, now we've got to just look to November and make sure we are electing as many Democrats as humanly possible. It's not even just about the 23 we need for the House or one or two for the Senate. We need to elect as many Democrats as possible in every district, in every county, in every state, everywhere. It is only by electorally wiping out the Republican Party in 2018 that we can actually make a real difference and stop Trump.

Yeah, that's right. Because, you know, so there's a lot of stupid out there. Speaking of stupid, here's right. conservative, but has been very critical of Donald Trump since he's become the president. He's a conservative lawyer. He's the one who sort of introduced Kellyanne to Donald Trump. And now, if you follow him on Twitter, follow George Conway, all he does is tweet sort of disparaging things about Donald Trump. So Ben Terrace goes and he interviews the two of them. What is with this marriage? You work for Trump. You don't like Trump. What's this all about? And at one point in the piece, Kellyanne tells this Washington post reporter that she finds her husband george's tweets about trump disrespectful a violation of basic decency if not their marital vows

and then she asked terrence to quote her as quote a person familiar with their relationship on background because she doesn't want to be on the record saying that and he of course says no and then she says well i'm just gonna say this never happened it's so good it really it's it is it is a great like is it consequential to the fate of the republic no is it like who are we to sit in judgment of anyone's marriage but it is an amusing piece and it is brilliantly written no but i mean, and the one reason why it says something, it speaks to sort of a larger problem that we're talking about here is the one way that the Trump administration has been able to weather all of these lies, all of these crimes, all of these awful things that the president has

done is because Donald Trump is without shame and now his entire administration is without shame. And when you are without shame, you will lie nonstop and not worry about getting caught in those lies. I would notice someone who has been around politics a little bit longer than you, and I sort of, Kellyanne Conway sort of rise to prominence was right as I was becoming interested in politics. Kellyanne Conway is not a story of someone of integrity and principles who met Donald Trump and then was transformed by his powers of the dark side into some sort of unprincipled, shameless individual. She and Donald Trump deserve each other, as anyone who's watched her over the years on cable TV and elsewhere. All right, so back to more important stuff. Elections. We had some big primaries on Tuesday

night, and there were definitely some highlights. In Connecticut, Johanna Hayes is a first-time candidate who grew up poor and homeless, won National Teacher of the Year in 2016, and now has a chance to become the first African-American Democrat to ever represent the state of Connecticut in Congress. Very cool. I thought that's a very cool story. In Vermont, Christine Halquist made history on Tuesday night by becoming the first transgender candidate to be nominated for governor by any major party. Halquist will now face Republican Governor Phil Scott, who's running for his second term, though the Cook Political Report rates the race as solid Republican. For some reason, Phil Scott is very popular in very liberal

Vermont, even though he's a Republican. So she has an uphill race, but who knows? It's 2018. Earlier in the week, we talked with Rashida Tlaib, the winner of the primary in John Conyers' old district in Michigan, about the history that will be made when she becomes the first Muslim woman seated in Congress in January. Well, this week, Ilhan Omar won the primary in Minnesota's fifth district. So it looks like at least two Muslim women will be joining Congress Omar is a Somali refugee who came to the States as a teenager She's been a member of the Minnesota Statehouse Where she was the first Somali American to be elected to any office in the United States And in Paul Ryan's district

Democrats have nominated Randy Bryce An iron worker and union guy who's achieved a bit of an internet stardom as iron stash one of the first people we interviewed when we did positive america live and went to wisconsin um the cook political report rates wisconsin's first district as lean republican though we should note that in the primary on tuesday night there were more total democratic votes in the primary than republican votes which has not happened in a while in that district and is a very good sign for November. Dan, we've now had a different narrative for every primary night. The left was taking over the party when Ocasio-Cortez won.

Then the left failed miserably when a few establishment Democrats won last week. Now we have a few more Democratic socialists and history-making candidates this week. Is there a story about the party and where it's going that you can deduce from all this? Well, first would be immediate snap media narratives based on primary elections are always stupid and almost always wrong. To the extent they're right, it's from the broken clock theory of political punditry. But here's what I would say looking at what we saw last Tuesday, what we saw in the elections you just mentioned, is I'm really proud to be a Democrat. Yeah, me too. Look, do we have challenges in our party? Absolutely.

Are we perfect? Far from it. Far from it. We have, in recent years at least, not been great at winning elections, but I am really fucking proud to be part of a party that could nominate a group of people like the ones that you just mentioned. refugee in Minnesota to the first transgender candidate for governor anywhere in this country. Across the board, that is something that can only happen in the Democratic Party. It is why, despite where we currently stand in politics today, the Democrats can and must be the party of the future in this country because we represent what the country looks like and aspires to be, represent what the country looks like and aspires to be, as opposed to a dwindling, homogenous coalition that the Republicans have. Essentially, it is a 100% Venn diagram overlap with Fox News viewers. And so you look at this, you've got to be proud to be a Democrat, and it should inspire people to fight like hell for our party, because we need a party in power

that can elect such a diverse and interesting coalition of people across the board from across the country. Yeah. No, the Democratic Party is the party that looks like America, certainly looks more like America than the Republican Party. And that's not this divide between we're a party of people of color and young people and they're a party of the working class like that's bullshit too i mean you look at randy bryce but like you know there's about a third of our we talk about this in the wilderness a lot it's about a third of our coalition democratic coalition that is uh non-college educated white americans but there's also um a black working class a latino working class um there's suburban moms and then there's you

know somali refugees and there's a woman in connecticut who grew up poor and was homeless for a while now she might be going to congress um this is this is a party that looks much more like the america that is and the america that will be than what the republican party looks like and the reason the republican party looks like that is because they have made a decision, Donald Trump and that part of the party, which is now the Republican Party, to push away people of color from their party, to push away immigrants, to push away African Americans, to say, we don't really want you in this party. And that's where that party is headed. And the way that they're clinging on to power is through the fact that they've gerry on to power is through, you know, the fact that

they've gerrymandered districts and voter suppression and all that other stuff. And, you know, it worked for them in the presidential in 2016. It works for them in a lot of Senate races, frankly, partly because of the geographical distribution of where all these voters are. But, you know, the fact that we're nominating and running these candidates this year as a backlash to Donald Trump is probably the most inspiring thing about the Trump presidency yeah and then a lot of these people got into politics because they wanted to change their community these are not people who everyone is a different story in this case but it's activists who decided to get into the system much like Wesley Bell who we'll, to make change. And that is a lesson for everyone, I think. So there was also a story in the New York Times

this week that reads, House Democrats are discarding the lessons of successful midterms passed and pressing only a bare-bones national agenda, leaving it to candidates to tailor their own message to their districts. It goes on to say, in 1994, Republicans ran and won on their contract with America, which was a 10-point legislative plan. In 2006, Democrats flipped the House with a legislative platform they called Six for Six. I have no memory of this. This year, the Democrats have a slogan, For the People, which is the new better deal, and it's broad messaging about health care and corruption and a few other things. and its broad messaging about healthcare and corruption and a few other things.

The New York Times writes this as if it's a potential mistake, as if it's risky for Democrats. Do you think it's a mistake? Does it worry you at all? I mean, everything worries me in politics now after 2016. So sure, it worries me. I would note that in 2006, before people panic about this, you worked for Barack Obama in the Senate. Barack Obama campaigned for everyone. He was the most popular surrogate out there. Everyone wanted Obama. He barnstormed Senate races, House races, governor's races. You wrote all of his remarks for those events, and you don't know what the six for six was. So it says that maybe- I feel like I've never heard that term before, before I read the New York Times. And I was – the last month of the 2006 midterms, because Obama was on the road so much, I volunteered to go over to the DCCC and I helped them for the last month. And I still don't remember 6406.

Yeah. So I don't think it was as consequential. A lot of people who have gone back and looked at 1994 do not believe that the contract for America was the tipping point that pushed Republicans over. Is it a useful construct to give all of your candidates a set of principles so that you're sort of singing from the same song sheet? Absolutely. It is, particularly in this day and age where even though every district is different, in

the era of Facebook and digital media, what happens in one district affects what happens in other districts because people's Facebook feeds are not geographically homogenous. And so when you have one candidate running hard on – it used to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would run on Medicare for All in her district, and her voters would know that based on what they read in her paper, the local paper and saw the local news and in the television ads that she ran and then in a different district like in iowa indiana where someone was running on a different plan those people would only know that and very rarely would there be sort of overlap but now everyone sees that all the time because of how media is in our social media so would it be great if everyone was on the same page saying the exact same thing? Sure. But it was basically an impossible task for the congressional leadership to do because we are still as a party in the middle of a big policy debate about what the post-Obama progressive agenda looks like, whether it's Medicare for all, universal basic income, federal jobs guarantee.

What do those things look like? How are they implemented? And that debate is going to play itself out over the 2020 Democratic primaries. I do think that people kind of know what the Democrats stand for on broader principles. And I don't think it's anything to do with better deal or for the people or any of that stuff. where the people are running out of that stuff. It's more that we stand for a, against this tax cut for healthcare and against the corruption and chaos of Donald Trump's Washington. And those sort of things sort of weave themselves throughout all the campaigns that all the Democrats are

running, whether they're running in red districts, purple districts, or blue districts. Yeah. I mean, I have a few thoughts on this. Like, you've talked about this before, but I don't think it would hurt. In fact, I think it might help for the Democrats to come up history. And if Democrats take back Congress, here are the five things we're going to implement to clean up the corruption if we're running Congress. And I think that there is, you can find some lowest common denominator proposals there that almost every Democrat running can agree on. But I agree with you that for a midterm race, there's a big difference between, you know, what a Democrat stand for nationally and what does the Democrat in your district stand for who's running. And now, I think if a Democrat is running in an individual district and is only talking about how much they hate Trump and doesn't really have a plan for anything, yeah, that is a real problem. But no

one's doing that. We've seen in race after race, in all these special elections, in all these primaries, every Democrat who's running, whether they're running on Medicare for All, whether they're running on improving the Affordable Care Act, whether they're running on free college, whether they're running on debt-free college, whatever agenda they have, it's pretty specific. And they're spending most of their time talking about those issues and not talking as much about donald trump so there are hundreds and hundreds of races going on in districts and states all across the country and as long as the voters in that district know what the

democratic candidate stands for then mission accomplished nationally you're right that it doesn't matter until we get to 2020 and then 2020 better be a big contest of ideas and not a bunch of people just you know throwing slogans out there and sort of like gauzy vague phrases right which which brings us to our last topic that i just just have to cover michael avenatti i just want to cover Michael Avenatti. I just want to launch myself into the sun. So I know Lovett went on a little bit of a rant about Avenatti and Lovett will leave it. That was out of character.

I know, very out of character for Lovett. I want to talk about him because we actually have not talked about 2020 much on this podcast for good reason because we should all be focused on 2018 and we should not be fucking talking a lot of people that we respect, political operatives in Iowa, said he got a crazy reaction in Iowa, a very warm reaction in Iowa. I feel like we should talk about this. And in general, just a disclaimer about how we're going to be talking about 2020 on Pod Save America.

We don't plan as a podcast or as a company to endorse any of these 2020 candidates. We think that our best role is to give you all the best information and analysis we have on each one of these candidates to the best of our ability. At the same time, because we're normal human beings and not like robots on television, we are probably going to inject our personal beliefs about some of these candidates, whether we like something that someone did or like someone or don't like someone.

So that'll probably happen. But we're going to try to be as balanced as possible here. So Michael Avenatti wants to run for president. Good for Michael Avenatti. But I would say my initial impressions of this are that he is running on a single message, which is fight. Democrats aren't fighting hard enough. He said, you know, we must be a party that fights fire with fire. And then he said, when they go low, I say hit back harder, which is, of course, a reference to Michelle Obama's line from the 2016 convention and many other places where she said, when they go low, we go high. What do you think about this Michael Avenatti boomlet and not even necessarily what it says about 2020, though, you know, I guess what it says about 2020, but what it says about where the party is right now. I don't know that it says anything about where the party is right now. Because we're basing this sort of that when we use the term boomlet, we're basing it on media coverage, retweets, and subjective analysis of applause at a dinner, political dinner a few months before a critical midterm election.

I really have no idea. And I'm not, I can't tell you that Michael Avenatti is going to do well. I can't tell you he's going to do poorly. I can't, like, the one thing that is the real takeaway from 2016 about how we think about elections is humility, right? We had a very clear view of what we thought voters wanted, and we were very wrong. And I don't even want to pretend what I think Democrats, you know, a group of voters I theoretically should know more about. I don't even want to pretend I think I know what Democrats are going to want.

Not just right this instant like today, but a year from, you know, well over a year from now when Iowa, New Hampshire, California, all of the early states are going to start voting. So no idea, maybe Donald Trump, maybe Michael Avenatti can win. Maybe he can't. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. And if I saw a poll tomorrow that said Michael Avenatti had just jumped ahead of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders based on a fight message, then I could offer some sort of analysis of what it says about the party. Right now, it says something more about who gets attention in our media culture. And Michael Avenatti is very good at getting attention in our media culture. Yeah. I mean, I think this whole idea of Democrats got to fight, the problem with it to me is we're not really, he's not really clear on what fight means.

You know, I mean, you can use Democrats need to fight or aren't fighting hard enough in a whole bunch of different ways. Like we have talked, for example, about how Senate Democrats like did not fight hard enough on keeping the government shut down until Trump did something on the Dreamers, you know? And so there are legislative battles where you can say, okay, Senate Democrats have been too cautious and too worried and they should fight harder. Then there, but that's something separate than the whole Michelle Obama, when they go low, we go high thing, which like, if you look back at 2016, we can say a lot of things about hillary clinton's campaign and we have the idea that hillary clinton didn't fight donald trump hard enough is insane look back at her speeches look back at the debate performances she called him a racist every day for the last two months she was like hill, Hillary Clinton did not pull her punches against Donald

Trump. So the idea that we are in some, you know, the Democratic Party is still caught in some, you know, Obama era, let's all get along and like, let's not say mean things about Donald Trump is just sort of absurd on its face. Everyone is attacking Trump. Everyone is saying everything there is to say about Donald Trump. Now, but if you want to talk about fighting in terms of fighting on behalf of people, fighting for a big, bold set of progressive ideas, like, yes, then of course we should fight. But my problem right now is that it is an ill-defined phrase that excels at capturing media attention because there is a narrative out there that because Democrats have lost, that therefore we haven't fought,

even though no one can actually describe what fighting means. Yeah, so I'd say two more things about this, and then we can just shoot this topic in the head and move on. Perfect. But is, one, you were right. There is a market, like, centered among Democratic activists, particularly on Twitter, around this idea that Democrats don't fight hard enough. And it is totally ill-defined and I don't think actually holds up to scrutiny. Are there things Democrats could do better and smarter? Absolutely. Are there things the Clinton campaign could have done better and smarter? Absolutely.

But this idea that the reason Donald Trump is in power and the reason that Donald Trump stays in power is because Democrats aren't fighting is just absurd. And maybe you could have an argument if Democrats controlled some lever of power and you could point to a thing, right? They're not subpoenaing Jared Kushner or they're not holding a vote to repeal the tax cut. But right now, all they have is their tweets. And that is a sad statement about where our party is. But that is true at least until the 2018 elections where we can change that fact. The other thing that really irked me about the Avenatti analysis from the press were all these reporters who are knowingly like, look, if you think Michael Avenatti can't win, then you learn nothing from 2016. If you think Michael Avenatti can't win, then you learn nothing from 2016. And that is a level of political analysis that is so simplistic that it is an insult to one-dimensional thinking.

Because Donald Trump was not some attorney who showed up on the scene with a bunch of cable hits in June of 2015. He had 100% name recognition. He could self-fund. He had a long history of scratching the itch the Republican base wanted, which was racism. And people forget that when he was thinking of running for president for the 2012 election against barack obama in the early polls he was leading so this is a person with tremendous political sway influence and name recognition and just the it is just so fucking simplistic to say one outsider who was a real fighter one so obviously that can happen again that is just like let's just please be smarter than that i also donald trump had more of a message and a platform than Michael Avenatti does right now. Donald Trump wasn't just fighting.

He said that he wanted to build a wall. He said that Mexico was sending people here that, you know, he's talking about rapists and murderers and all of his xenophobia and nativism and stuff like that. It was right there. And he had that message right at the beginning of the primary. Because I hate myself, I read Michael Avenatti's full speech. And it looked like – it read like it was written by when you hire a speechwriter to just like churn out a speech full of like democratic platitudes. It was fine. It didn't say anything new on anything.

And it just said Democrats need to fight. That was all it was. It was like – I also't say anything new on anything. And it just said Democrats need to fight. That was all it was. I also read it because I hate myself. And it was even more, it was basically a string of tweets. Yeah, it was weird because I thought... It was like 280 character thoughts over and over again. Yeah, you think like the whole idea is, oh, we want someone authentic, like Donald Trump would say whatever is on his mind. But Avenatti's speech looked like every Democratic speech I've read for the last 20 years and mostly the bad ones um so i was i was not very impressed um but who knows it's early but i think what it where where it relates to our current environment right now is

this whole fight thing like you want to talk about democrats fighting and democrats need to fight harder um you know go call up heidi heitkamp and jo Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly and all these red state Democrats who have still not said where they are on the Kavanaugh nomination, which is just barreling towards happening. And we're all sort of, you know, in Omarosa land and everything else. And look, one of the reasons for that is we do not have the votes, even if every single Democrat votes the right way on Kavanaugh and votes against him. It's all up to Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and neither of them right now are showing any willingness to bend. And so, you know, in terms of fighting, we need to fight to put pressure on Collins and Murkowski and then fight to put pressure on Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin, and all the rest to make them believe that there is no political cost to voting against the Kavanaugh nomination,

the least popular Supreme Court nominee in a generation, who is not turning over any of his documents or enough of his documents. The Republicans refused to return over the documents and we're heading towards a confirmation battle, which we'll be talking a lot more about in the weeks to come. So that is something where we where Democrats really should fight. Though, again, if we lose it and all the red state Democrats vote the right way, we did all we could, you know, which is why we need to take back the Senate and why we need to take back Congress. Can I say one more thing about 2020 before we go? Sure. You were exactly right. We have not talked about it on this podcast, which has taken a massive amount of self-discipline on my part

because i have so many thoughts uh that are just like chomping at the bit and not about the individual people right like like you point out we have friendships with some of them we have worked with many of them we will analyze them let's go forward but i have so many fucking thoughts about how we should think about 2020 and how people should think about their campaigns that i'm just going to start churning out crooked uh op-eds the day after the the 2018 election we'll know if we'll know if brian was listening to this pod if you get an email right after that um no we'll we'll we'll sit down after uh after november whatever happens in uh in november and december we'll just take a couple pods to to talk about 2020. And we can finally, it can all be released then. We can finally talk about it.

But until then, we will keep focusing on the selection of November, which, goddammit, we have to win. Okay. When we come back, we will be talking to a very exciting candidate who just won a primary and is on his way to becoming district attorney in St. Louis County, Missouri, Wesley Bell. On the pod today, we are lucky to have Wesley Bell, the Democrat who just won the race for

district attorney in St. Louis County, Missouri. Wesley, welcome to the pod. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. So we've talked before on the show about how when it comes to reforming the criminal justice system, district attorneys are often the most important elected officials that people don't know. What made you want to run for this office and what impact do you hope to have? What made me run is having practiced for 17 years serving as a public defender, defense attorney and in the municipal courts. I have long realized the impact of this particular position.

I remember being out of law school and working in the public defenders and thinking to myself, man, I could never work in that office under the current administration because I disagreed so much with the policies and practices. And the only way I could work in that office is if I ran it. Now, at that time, I wasn't running for office was not on my radar, but I've always, you know, and not just me, but a lot of people, but I've always known the impact of that office. And yeah, and we're excited. I think there's a lot of things that we can do to not only make St. Louis County safer, but also to help people. And I think that those things often are viewed as mutually exclusive, but they're not. Wesley, four years ago, the unrest in Ferguson put your county at the center of a national debate about law enforcement, race, and accountability. It pushed you to run for city council, and now you've beaten the prosecutor who's in

charge of the county during that case and held the job for more than 25 years. What did this race mean to you, and what does it say about the possibilities for progress in St. Louis County? I think it's a clear message from St. Louis County voters that they do want change. I think that what we focused on in our campaign was, and I'm just going to boil it down to two main components. One was that we were going to focus on a message and ideas and a message about ways that, you know, utilizing diversionary programs, reforming the cash bill system for nonviolent offenders. We made it clear early on that we were not going to ask for the death sentence in St. Louis County. And so we pushed our message and we stayed

consistent with it. And then secondly, I think it's incumbent that leaders focus on bringing people together. I think when we look that leaders focus on bringing people together. I think when we look regionally, when we look nationally, we see a lot of divisiveness. And I think it's important that we it was important to us that we ran a campaign that was predicated on on inclusivity and bringing people together. And so I think it resonated when we look at the support that we were able to get. It was from all over St. Louis County, places that people did not think that we would get support. And so I'm really proud of the staff that we have, our volunteers, our supporters. And I think it reflected the goals that we set out to accomplish in this campaign.

Wesley, what were the biggest lessons you took away from the Michael Brown case and how it was handled? And, you know, obviously there have been calls to reopen the investigation. Do you have plans to do that now that you'll be serving as district attorney after November? You know, first and foremost, I think it would be irresponsible and, in my opinion, unethical to take a position or even comment on a case prior to being elected. I don't have access to all of the evidence. And so I think that it would be disingenuous for me to, you know, to comment on any case. One thing that I'll take away from Ferguson, if you will, is the fact that justice is about consistency. One criticism that I've always had, and I've made no secret about it,

is that the way that the case was handled. We know the average grand jury hearing is 45 minutes to an hour. This one was four months. We know that with a grand jury hearing, the point is to bring evidence to support probable cause, not to bring the defense's evidence as for trial, obviously. And so there were a lot of things the credibility of the entire process. And I think that when you start having a deficit in credibility and confidence in your justice system, you have no justice system. And so one thing that I'll take away from that just to directly answer the question is the need for consistency and transparency. At the end of the Obama era, it felt like we were starting to make some real progress around a fruitful national conversation around criminal justice reform that was happening in a bipartisan way. Now, as we sit here today, Donald Trump is president, Jeff Sessions is the attorney general, and things are headed in a very different direction. What is your reaction to that? What do you think about the conversation around

criminal justice reform, and where do we go from here? So, you know, I would start by saying I'm very excited to see the awareness of the need to address issues like criminal justice reform, mass incarceration, cash bail for nonviolent offenders. I mean, as someone who has been involved in the criminal justice system longer than I haven't, over 20 years, it's really encouraging because, as you alluded to earlier, this office impacts so many people on so many levels and for so many years that it just flew under the radar. No one paid attention to it. And it's not lost on me that the fact that now that this is an issue, the fact that when we were campaigning, we could start our talking points on a little bit higher level than normal because people were more aware of this issue. I know that that was a big contributor to me being in this situation and being interviewed by you now. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing

that we're having these conversations and sometimes uncomfortable conversations, but needed and necessary conversations. Now, as far as Trump and Jeff Sessions, personally, I don't want to dignify them and disrespect your show by having too long a conversation about the thing about them. You know, that's just a race to the bottom. And I don't think that they are even interested in having real constructive conversations at all. And so I think the more relevant conversation is the fact that it is encouraging that Republicans actually are also interested in discussing criminal justice reform. Obviously, Democrats and progressives have been the champions, but you are seeing Republicans get on board, and that's

also a good thing. But I don't know if you want me to say anything else about 45. We say plenty. That's okay. I will, but I just don't see the point. I just don't see the point. But I will. I will. Wesley, you are someone who saw what was happening in your community. You were there in Ferguson. And then you decided that the best way for you to make a difference was to sort of go inside the system and try to change the system from within by running for office. What would you say to the young activists out there who see what's going on and just feel like throwing up their hands because they think that the system is too broken to be fixed, and they don't know if they want to be involved? What I would say is that we are seeing across the country and in St. Louis County, we are seeing the fruits of continuing to fight the good fight.

You know, again, you know, my staff and I'm going to shout a few out like Josh Canavan is a big fan of this show. So he's like, I got to be there. He's here in the studio, Josie Nielsen as well. But I think no one outside of us living in our bubble, because in our bubble, we were going to win. We knew we were going to win and we knew we were going to win by a good margin. But, you know, now that we've had a chance to decompress and look at it from the other side, you know, I'm thinking like, why the hell did we think we could win? But we were in the bubble. So we weren't surprised. We put a plan together. We put processes together. And we knew that if we work those plans and work them and execute it, we would

win. And so but we you know, I get it. Not many people believed that we could win. But the fact is, is that what we had to sell people on is you don't have to believe, just support us. And so when we get everyone on board and we're all pulling in the same direction, we can move mountains. And that's what we did. And so what I what I do try to impart to people, younger politicians as well as activists and everyone in between, is that the best activists don't make the best politicians. The best politicians don't make the best activists. But when they work together again, that's when mountains are moved. And so we have to be strategic. We have to make sure that we are looking at the bigger picture and all rowing in the same direction. And when that happens, we'll see more victories like what we saw last Tuesday in St. Louis County.

Wesley Bell, congratulations on your victory. We can't wait to see the difference you make in St. Louis County. And thank you for spending time with us. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Wesley Bell. And we will see all you guys on Tuesday.

Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye.