Pod Save America - "A very 'Cuck You' week."

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

Trump looks for any kind of win before the 100-day mark, pushes Trumpcare 3.0, and proposes big tax cuts. Then, Pod Save the People host DeRay McKesson joins Jon and Dan to talk about his new podcast and the future of the Resistance.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. In the studio, Dan Pfeiffer. This is the first time we've done this? In the Pod Save America era, yes. Yeah, I think we did it once during the Keep It In 1600 era. That's right. So nice to have you here in Los Angeles, Dan.

I think the real test of this is, we'll find out if normally when I interrupt you it's because of the cell phone delay or that I'm just rude. I see. I never noticed that you interrupt me. I'm probably just talking over you. On the pod today, we're going to be calling the host of Crooked Media's newest podcast, Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. That's awesome. He's going to be joining us. Yeah, so if you haven't subscribed to DeRay's podcast, go on iTunes, do it now, and the first episode will drop Tuesday. So we're very excited about that. We're going to talk to DeRay about the pod a little bit later.

Also, of course, subscribe to Pod Save the World with friends like these. Love it or leave it, you know the drill. And, of course, Pod Save America. Don't just listen, subscribe. That helps. Okay, Dan. So we are here. We have two days left until the 100 days mark. And possibly an impending government shutdown, but maybe not so much anymore.

I don't know. What do you think? This morning I woke up and thought... Hard to keep track of all this. Yeah, there's no way the government's going to shut down. Which means the government's going to shut down. It's hard to figure out what's happening here. It seems like what was going to make it possible for the government to shut down was a fight over

the wall, which Trump has surrendered. Ann Coulter and the base will love that yeah um they're very upset a lot rush limbaugh was very upset about this all these people are pretty pissed but we sort of saw this coming right like yeah what a cock total cock he was cocked he gave in to nancy pelosi um i mean i said this on monday which is i thought that he he's going to try to say that he got some border security money in the funding bill and then call that a win, but just sort of punt on the wall. Do you think the wall is ever going to get built? No.

The wall is never going to be built. It won't be built. It won't be paid for by Mexico. It won't be paid for by anyone. There will be no wall. It just doesn't seem like the Republicans in Congress or enough Republicans in Congress are supporting it. No. No one cares. If they all they all did it probably would get built unless democrats just filibustered or whatever but it doesn't seem like they're they're all sort of treating him like he's an

idiot you know like oh when he says the wall the wall is just sort of a symbol for border security yes it's a rorschach test for just how nativist you are. Yeah. So they were going to do it over the wall. That didn't happen. And then Democrats were going to try to get subsidy funding, Obamacare subsidy funding, into the bill, too, so that the insurance markets didn't melt down. It doesn't seem like they're going to get that. The Democrats are going to get that into the funding bill. But yesterday, the Trump administration said that they would continue to pay those subsidies for now, which means that it seems like they just want to continue to hold the insurance markets hostage for some future leverage. I don't know. Everyone cucked once again.

It's a real cucky week for Donald Trump. And the second is they're basically agreeing to just do what the law says. So kudos to them. It's a real win. But also Anthem, one of the largest insurers, came out and said, if we did not get this money, we would pull out. And which would lead to, they'd jacked premiums up 20 all kinds of problems so which trump would then own and so they they think they have leverage here they do not you see trump's tweets this morning though he's like so many so many he's trying to frame this as um democrats

want to shut down the government unless i pay their insurance companies who are their donors and bail them out. It's such a weird, tortured kind of explanation here. Yeah. Do you know who are not big Democratic supporters? Insurance companies. Yes, that is correct. And also, he's ignoring the fact that making these payments is actually what allows people to have a choice of insurance companies or to have any insurance whatsoever. Because, like we said, if he does not pay have choices for no one on the market in the exchange market will have a choice

of insurers because they'll all pull out yeah so so that's that i mean there's so much going on with like i think the best way to understand what's happening now with trump and the white house as they approach this hundred days, this stupid artificial 100 days marker, is they have convinced themselves it's important. And so they are trying to get some kind of win out of this. So that when Saturday arrives, they can say, look, we just negotiated some deal, or we stopped the Democrats from shutting down the government, which they're not really trying to do.

They just want a win here. And it doesn't matter what the win is, they do not care at this point. They have an audience of one. It is Donald Trump. And whoever's watching Fox and Friends. Which is Donald Trump. Fox and Friends is saying they have a win, so Donald Trump will think he had a win

and he won't fire everyone. In 2009, when we were facing down the barrel of 100 Days, I remember telling a reporter that 100 Days was a Hallmark holiday. It's a totally fake thing. And despite that, you can't avoid it. The press will cover it.

It's really stupid. The public does not care. Didn't we give some economic speech somewhere? Yeah, we did. But we had an advantage. Barack Obama talked about how the stimulus was divided into three parts. Was that on the 100th day at georgetown university the famous georgetown speech i think we were probably still taught still trying to sell the stimulus i think

we did a primetime press conference did we oh we might have done that but it just goes to show i can barely remember right what we did on the around the 100 days mark i mean it is an artificial the difference for us is we had so many accomplishments at the time it was just like how do you sort them how do you rank them how do you sort them? How do you rank them? How do you get them all covered? So it's a bit of a different scenario. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. No, we had passed a giant recovery bill, a financial rescue package. We were well on the way to passing Wall Street reform. We had started healthcare reform. Yeah. Saving the auto industry. Really led better. Right.

Tobacco regulation. Don't ask, don't tell. No. Was that then? No, that was later. That was later. In the Recovery Act, there was massive investments in education, renewable energy. So there was a lot that got done.

This is the point. We did so much. It was confusing. Yeah, that's right. We needed a better message, according to Barack Obama. So yeah, I thought Politico had this story again, the education of Donald Trump, which is quite a long story, but quite good, about Donald Trump's first 100 days in office and sort of how he sees

the presidency. At one point they have a, you know, first of all, there's some great tidbits in the story, like Donald Trump's own aides are hiring their own PR people to get their own stories out because they're all fighting each other. And so they're like, the press people are hiring

press people for themselves. He meets with Drudge sometimes. Trump meets with Drudge in the Oval Office, Matt Drudge, which is just really comforting. But at one point in the story, it says, other than winning, what does Trump really want? And I think that sort of gets to his whole, I mean, there's a lot of questions about like who he'd be when he got into office. Like, is he some authoritarian? Is he a hidden fascist? Is he going to be more democratic more republican and i don't i think the truth is

trump really doesn't have any beliefs he doesn't believe in anything except winning he wants winning and he wants like short-term wins too you know which is like i mean it just strikes me that it was so it's so opposite of uh style of Barack Obama, right? Who was, I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to read the press too much because I don't want to be focused on who's up, who's down, short-term wins in the news cycle. I want to be focused on the long game. And if I get dings right now because I did something, then so be it. We can't be reactive every single day. This is the complete opposite of that. I mean, there are a multitude of differences between Barack Obama and Trump, obviously.

Barack Obama also really likes winning. And he hates losing. Very competitive. I don't want to give anyone that impression. I once saw him get super competitive over a game of Nerf basketball in the Outer Oval, so he's very serious about this. But there is a difference in motivating factor.

Trump wants to win because he wants the praise that comes from will from winning to fill the deep hole of insecurity in his life yeah brock obama's in some ways competing with himself right he doesn't really like he likes praise doesn't like criticism like any normal human being but he doesn't need the praise to continue functioning in the way that Trump does. I think that's true. I think it's also a question of short-term versus long-term. Barack Obama sat there and thought, I may take a lot of shit right now, but what's history going to say five years from now about the decisions I'm making right now? the decisions I'm making right now. Trump is literally just trying to get to the next morning's Fox and Friends and CNN and MSNBC and figure out if he can, he is letting the media basically set the agenda for him, which is a difference.

And then like one of his, one of the senior administration officials said in the story, quote, on healthcare, Trump just wanted to sign a bill. He didn't necessarily care what it said. And he wouldn't have read it. He wouldn't have cared and he wouldn't have read it. He would have had no idea. I mean, you've said this several times. Could some reporter just ask Trump

how his health care plan works or how his tax plan works? He would drool himself into a pile of spittle. It also goes to say, if a bunch of liberals snuck into the White House and took over the roles that Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner have and Trump didn't know it and presented him with a single-payer health care bill,

he probably wouldn't know and he'd sign it. I mean, he actually supported that. He has no principles. And so he's just there. He has no care in the world what's in this health care bill right now, which brings us to the health care bill. Trump care 3.0? At this point, who knows? Zombie Trump care?

Wealth care? I saw a fucking wealth care hashtag on Twitter yesterday. Despite all of our best efforts, this is somehow sticking with some small segment of the population who's very active on social media. It's not even fun anymore to do it when Lovett's not here, because it just gets him mad.

So, the new bill is basically just the old bill with an amendment on it that allows states to let insurance companies discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, which means they can charge whatever they want if you have anything from cancer to asthma to diabetes to being pregnant. Right now, the Affordable Care Act says insurance companies cannot treat people with these conditions differently. You cannot charge them differently. This amendment says states can do that if they want. It also says states can eliminate essential health benefits, hospitalizations, doctor visits, all that kind of stuff. So that's not great. So it looks like it won over about 80% of the Freedom Caucus, who were the right-wing Republicans who scuttled the bill last time. But it seems like it's having a hard time getting moderates, yes?

It seems that way. But as you always say, never, ever underestimate the ability of congressional Republicans to sell out everything they believe in. Yeah. I mean, I was just checking Twitter on the way in here, and who knows how much things will change by the time we finish recording. But it does seem like there's at least a few Republicans who were leaning yes last time who are now leaning no in the moderate group. Which is just to say, everyone should, again, call their congressman. Just deluge the office with calls.

Do whatever you can because this is – it's real. They're trying to pass it because he just – he wants a win. Yeah. I mean everyone needs to make their voice heard. I mean we have recesses a couple weeks. Get out there, town halls. Call, email, tweet. Just raise holy hell is the only way to keep these people from giving in to the pressure of the moment.

Yeah. Just raise holy hell is the only way to keep these people from giving in to the pressure of the moment. Yeah. And also, just this morning, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association came out against the bill. They both said it would make it dramatically worse from the last bill. I love this quote from Catholic Hospitals, which just came out against the bill. It is not in any way a health care bill. It is legislation whose aim is to take significant funding allocated by Congress for health care for very low income people and use it as money for tax cuts for some of our wealthiest citizens. It's pretty, that basically nails it. Basically, hospitals, doctors, patients, seniors, everyone involved in the health care system in any way, shape, or form does not like this bill. Which would seem like a hint to me, at least. Also, who was the bright person who decided to exempt members of Congress and their staff from the weakened pre-existing conditions protections?

Well, we wouldn't want our members with pre-existing conditions to not get coverage. That's just an easy, like, what a politically stupid thing that is. If nothing else, like, what are you, a moron? Sometimes I think the Republican Party and Democratic ad makers are in collusion with each other. It is bad. So, I don't know. I mean, I guess it's not impossible for this to pass the House, which is why everyone should keep calling. It seems like it would have a tougher time in the Senate, right?

You would think. I mean, the original House bill, Trumpcare 2.0, 1.0, whatever, the last one was not going to pass the Senate. This one is worse than that one. All the things that upset some number of Senate Republicans, this is worse on. So this is the trouble in the Republican Party. This is the fatal flaw of the Republican Party is what can pass the House can't pass the Senate. which is every time you need to get something through the House, whoever the Speaker is, be it John Boehner or Paul Ryan,

the only way to get it through the House is they have to make the legislation more and more conservative and right-wing. And as they do that, they lose more and more both moderate Republicans in the House and regular Republicans in the Senate who aren't as right-wing as most of these yahoos in the House. The Yahoo Caucus. The Yahoo Caucus um which is why nothing can ever get done in washington like that is the source of the problem and so many different things so you know we got to change the congress we got to change the house this is pod save america stick around there's more great show coming your way so in addition to trying to pass trump care 3.0 yesterday the trump administration also came out with their principles for tax reform what did you think of that dan so many things the my favorite

thing that happened was they held up like they passed out the tax reform plan and it was a sheet of paper with some bullet points. There were like seven different fonts on there with no details. And they did win, there was a messaging victory here that most of the press referred to this as a tax reform plan.

This is neither a plan nor a reform. It's a giant tax cut, mostly for corporations, paid for by no one. It's just add to the deficit, which is ironic on so many annoying levels. I mean, it is in many ways worse than what George W. Bush did in 2001, who passed a huge tax cut skewed to the wealthy. That was at least at a time where we had a very large surplus. And so he was saying, well, the surplus, you deserve the surplus. Let's not spend it on government, right? Which we didn't agree with, but whatever, it's an argument.

We have a huge deficit and piling on debt left and right. And they're just going to pass a... The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, these are like the boring deficit hawks in washington um they estimated that this would cost anywhere between three and seven trillion dollars as a baseline they have 5.5 trillion that's great and it's a tax cut that would go i mean overwhelmingly let's they did an analysis of uh trump's tax plan, which is very similar, the 0.1% would get $1 million in savings. The top 1% would get $215,000 in savings. And the lowest fifth, the poorest fifth, gets $110.

And noted populist and Goldman Sachs exec Steve Mnuchin was on one of the morning shows this morning. And they asked him, can you guarantee the middle class won't pay more under this plan? And he was like, no, I can't guarantee that. So think about this. Trump was covered as this working class populist. Yeah. Fight for working people. And on day 97 of his tumultuous reign over this country, he proposes a massive corporate tax cut that benefits the 1%, the 0.1% at the expense of the working class people who voted for him.

This is a man- Rolled out. Rolled out by two Goldman Sachs employees, globalist Gary Cohn and uh steven you can yes chief cucks and the the thing that is it's worth remembering that at the end of the campaign the last ad that the trump campaign ran was an ad that featured the ceo of golds, Lloyd Blankfein, in a not super subtle anti-Semitic ad, and then turned around, hired all of Lloyd Blankfein's deputies, and then assigned them to develop economic policy for this country. I don't think it's going to go well. No. Do you know who was a big loser in this other than the american public workers

anyone who's not super rich paul ryan not super rich as far as i know um and his dedicated his life when he wasn't doing keg stands talking about and rand and like he has two goals right one take out the work from poor people the other is reform the tax code in a way that benefits the rich. And he's been steamrolled here, cut out of it. His real passion, real passion is something called the border adjustment tax. Oh, yeah. Also a Steve Bannon passion, too. Yes. They bonded over that.

Which is as they were just texting back and forth. It's basically like a way to do some kind of a tariff. It's like a protectionist sort of move. Without being super protectionist. If you want to know about it, listen to the weeds. That's what they're there for. Ezra and Matt Iglesias will walk you through the border adjustment tax. We promise. Much better than we will.

But anyway, so that's gone. So, Paul Ryan's been sidelined. Also, the whole thing is so fucking crazy. You cannot cut the corporate rate to 15%. Everyone said, every smart person says that's impossible. But it's a negotiating ploy. But he's negotiating with his own party. Because Democrats are not going to support this.

Well, they're also getting rid of all deductions except charitable deductions and the mortgage deduction, right? So, state and local, you can deduct state and local taxes from your federal taxes. In high-tax states like California and New York and New Jersey, that's not going to be very popular. And there are quite a few Republicans sitting in those states and sitting in districts that Hillary Clinton won. And that's going to make it a lot easier to defeat them if they're for this tax reform, but they probably won't be for that. And then, just now, Spicer at the briefing was asked, well, are you going to keep the deduction,

are you going to be able to keep the deduction around 401ks so you can deduct what you put into your retirement account from your taxes? And he said, no, it's not going to protect the 401k deduction. Which is nuts. That's not going to survive. We are, by the time this podcast posts some deputy of sean spicer is going to go out and say that that was wrong right yeah just yeah it's going to be another spicer uh spicer apology um so i know i

don't know what they're trying to do with this tax reform it seems like there is a path where they pass a very temporary short-term tax cut aimed at reducing the corporate rate somewhat, reducing high-income taxes somewhat. And they make it temporary so it doesn't blow up the deficit, meaning that they can pass it via reconciliation with 51 votes and then call it a win. Again, I just like trump is looking for some sort of win if he can cut like one person's taxes and call it a victory he will probably go with that plan i can't we're not in the prediction business no but i find it very hard to imagine that they can even pass a temporary unpaid for tax cut. Yeah. It's just the, you know, Mick Mulvaney, who is the OMB director,

before he was the OMB director helping shepherd through a massive tax cut for the wealthy that would add $5.5 trillion deficit, he was someone who believed that America's fiscal situation was in such dire straits that it was worth potentially defaulting over to bring our budget into balance. And so Jake Tapper asked him about this on some night this week. And he basically just said words that had no connection to each other and shrunk into his seat. I thought he was going to melt before our eyes. It's funny watching these people. It's before our eyes. It's indefensible. It's indefensible.

So let's sum up the 100 days here. Let's do his accomplishments. Well, I was going to say, let's assess it based on, I mean, one way to assess it in an objective way is like, is the country better off, right? So he hasn't crashed the economy yet, but I don't think he's made a tangible impact on a lot of people's lives just yet no um is the world safer uh it doesn't necessarily seem like it but he has not started a war yet

right okay so that's what has he done for the country it too early to tell promise is kept that's another way to do it so he had a contract for the first 100 days on his website. He listed 10 pieces of legislation on that contract. Zero have passed. His travel ban is blocked by the courts. Obamacare, for now, remains in place. Wall Street reform remains in place. He wanted to repeal that and repeal Obamacare. Most carbon regulations that Obama passed are still in place, even though he wants to get rid of them. Tax hikes on the rich that Obama put into place are still in place.

He hasn't pulled out of the Paris climate deal. He hasn't pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. Said he would do both of those things. Hasn't reversed the Cuba reforms. Promised he'd do that. No wall. No Mexico paying for the wall. No anyone paying for the wall.

No infrastructure plan. No wall. No Mexico paying for the wall. No anyone paying for the wall. No infrastructure plan. No budget. So what has he done? He's blocked about 13 out of 20,000 Obama regulations. By the way, I got a lot of these from Mike Grunwald of Politico. Wrote a great What Did He Do in 100

Days piece. I'm stealing from him. He did pull out of the TPP. And I think on immigration from him uh he did pull out of the tpp true um and and i think on immigration for him he's had success in that um arrests of non-criminal immigrants have more than doubled correct so he is he has expelled non-criminal immigrants undocumented immigrants from the country he has done a good job of that, basically. And he has repealed some Obama regulations here and there, specifically around the environment, which is very troubling. But beyond that, I don't know what he's done. Let me put on my straight shooter hat for a second. Yeah, let's do it. It just says, love it across the front. It's a fedora that says, love it.

Because look, I want to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt here, you know? That's right. As we always do here on Pod Save America. That's right. He has had a horrendous, epically shitty first 100 days, by every measure. Right. And I know he's, my favorite part about the AP interview is like, look, somebody put together that 100-day plan. That somebody is you. You are that somebody.

You talked about it every day on the campaign trail. Now, does it mean that his presidency is doomed? No. No. He could theoretically bounce back from this. Now, there's one major impediment to that. He is Donald Trump. So that's going to really slow him down. And we should say, not to dig into polling, but on the good side of the ledger for donald trump his base has remained his base even though there's no wall yet and all the things they wanted have not come to pass except for the expelling immigrants um you know he's got like he's sitting at 40 something percent and 90 something percent of republicans are with him most of his voters are still with him his re-elect numbers, you know, between like 39 and 43 percent. So that's not great. But, you know, he's still got the base. He will have the base.

And he has a conservative media. He has a right wing Republican media. I call them Republican media now, since you said that, because they're not conservative media, who are all for him. They have not abandoned him yet. Drudge, Hannity, Rush. These people reach millions and millions of people all across the country, and they are supporting Donald Trump every single day. And so are the people. He is the Russians. They are also helping him. He has many, many Russian bots who have not abandoned him.

Right. His base will always be there. We should. Which is I'm so sick of these stories. Go out into the country and interview a Trump voter and the Trump voter says, I'm still with him. He's trying. No shit. Yeah. He tweets too much, but I'm still with him. I think perhaps more than any other candidate in recent memory, being for Trump becomes part of

someone's identity. Right. And it's very hard to abandon that because if you were for Trump, you have made a decision against a lot of people in the media, on the internet, maybe in your life, making very passionate arguments against you for doing it, who may have called you a racist or that you're supporting a racist. Or this is my monthly time to remind everyone that our current sitting president has been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women. But despite all that, you stayed with him. So it's going to take something massive to pull you apart. And that

may never happen. He may lose, God willing, in three years or four, three hundred days, whatever it is, with the exact same number of voters that he has now. That's true.

And look, I think time is a factor here, too. I mean, those of us who pay close attention to the media cycle think, you know, so much has happened since he took office, right? But it has only been 100 days, and a lot of these voters that voted for Trump are saying, well, you've got to give the guy some time to push through these changes and maybe the jobs are going to come back to our communities eventually, but I want to give him a couple years. So I do think that's another factor here, too. I mean, Obama's base never left him. Right, that's true. Now, he also delivered for the base in many different ways over time.

He did. But in that first, if you look at the end of the first two years, he had delivered a lot of things, passed a lot of legislation, made good on promises. But the impact of that legislation was not necessarily felt by people at the time. And look, and our reelection campaign was not based on, look at all the things I've done for you, Vote for me. It was based on we've made progress, but we have a long way to go. And look how bad Mitt Romney is. The economy was still in the shitter. It did not tipped over into a Great Depression and we had stemmed the job loss. But unemployment was still hovering around 10 for much of that first two years. But people did not leave them.

And this is a little bit about the tribal nature of politics in this day and age, is that people view these things through their own partisan lens. In 2009, 2010, when the economy was at its absolute worst, the voters in polls who said Obama, who gave Obama the highest approval rating in the economy, were African-American and Latino voters, who were doing some of the worst of anyone in the economy. The people who thought Obama was doing the worst were the people who were actually doing the best. The people making over $100,000

or whatever the demographic economic break is. And then when Trump won, the next time those numbers completely flipped. Yep. Which is a, says a lot about our politics. Yeah. I want to bring you in on the discussion that we had on Monday about the future of the Democratic Party, because I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Lots of listeners love the conversation, which is great. Want to keep having it. At one point, Lovett said, what kind of kicked this off, is Lovett said he thought that Democrats were more out of touch with people's concerns than

Republicans, because there was that poll that I put in the outline about Democrats being out of touch. Is this before or after you yelled at Lovett? Look, so I pressed him on what he meant by that. Some people took that to mean that I thought Democrats are doing great or that we just need to tweak our policies or explain our policies better. And like that could not be further from the truth of what I actually believe. Like, I think the Democratic Party has huge problems. I also believe we need a better message. Like, and I think we need a message that's like focused on people who are getting screwed by Washington and screwed by the economy. I know that because I was a speechwriter for Barack Obama and helped craft that message

for two presidential campaigns. I am well aware of how our party can seem out of touch, and especially now, and especially after 2016. I guess I was just, I mean, I guess my point was I think it is one point it is one thing to be self critical and we should be self critical right now and we should be soul searching and we should be figuring out how to improve the message and speak

more plainly like I've said and hit the economic message harder I just don't want to veer into being self defeating or somehow think that Republicans are geniuses who've cracked the code and are super in touch with people um because i don't think that's true either yeah that is definitely not true yeah i this is a there are no easy answers here and there are a couple things

to think about one both parties are fucked right now, which says how people feel about politics, right? In some sense, the divide is not necessarily left-right. It is establishment, anti-establishment. And that does not mean that Trump supporters and Bernie supporters, like each other, have anything in common that Bernie is the Trump of the left. He is not. It just is the fact that the left. He is not. That is, it just is the fact that people are frustrated with politics. And by the way, we saw that in 2008. Yeah. When Barack Obama was starting to run. I mean, it's worse now in 2016, which I didn't think was possible because, you know, when David Axelrod laid out the lay of the land back in 08, what

people, how many times did he say the driving force right now in voters' minds is how upset they are with the establishment in Washington. We knew that then. So for a different project, I went back yesterday and read the Iowa JJ speech, which is the speech that Barack Obama gave about two months before the Iowa caucus that really is the reason why he won the Iowa caucus. It was very well received. It launched him into momentum in a time which he was doing.

We were really struggling in the campaign and it changed the direction of the campaign. And it's, it has always been my favorite Obama political speech. Same. And so I went back and read it. And right after I listened to the very heated discussion over this, between you and Lovett, and if you could, I will tweet this speech out later, but people, that speech could be given today with a couple of tweaks to update it for time, like find and replace Bush for Trump. And we're not actually, you know, and we have passed some, we passed healthcare, but there's more to do. But that there is a Obama hit on a message that is that what could be updated for our current situation, but is very resonant for the time because it was a progressive message

that that crossed the divide between this, what I think is a somewhat false choice between quote-unquote identity politics and economic populism, with a wrapped in a strong anti-Washington, anti-politics-as-usual message. Which was an implicit attack on Hillary Clinton's campaign. Yeah. Without mentioning, which, I mean, we were very careful to straddle this because he did not want to go out there and say Hillary Clinton's name at the Jefferson Jackson dinner and attack her. But by attacking the establishment and the way politics is played as usual, it was clearly telling people, I am new and she is politics as usual. When you read that speech in a current context after having spent a year supporting Hillary Clinton. It doesn't seem super implicit.

It's fairly explicit. And it also is the – it's not dissimilar from the argument Bernie used against Hillary, and it's not dissimilar in elements from the Trump argument. Obama did not make a case that Hillary was a crook or anything like that. So it was more about sort of her as a representation of politics as usual. But I think for the, I'd say a couple things about the party. And we,

this is not unusual. We're not, from an electoral standpoint, we're in a very bad place. And the party is Up and down. And Levin was right. Like from local state races

right to the top. And the local state stuff has atrophied for a while now, and that's a fucking problem. And, you know, Democrats walked around sort of patting themselves on the back saying demography is destiny. We're going to be fine. We got lazy. We got lazy. But the other thing is geography is also destiny. And we're in a race between demography and geography.

is also destiny. And we're in a race between demography and geography. And you saw this as what would be core Democratic voters or young people are amassing in urban areas. So we're consolidating the Democratic vote in more places. We have these precincts in New York or San Francisco where 100% of the votes are for a Democrat as opposed to being more spread out. where 100% of the votes are for a Democrat as opposed to being more spread out. And the geographic consolidation has happened faster than the browning of the country in a way that would help Democrats. And so we're in a very bad place.

It does not mean we haven't done a lot of things wrong. And I think the party has been hopelessly divided in most of my time in politics. Barack Obama, by winning at a time when Democrats desperately wanted to win, and also by the, I think it was, he had a universal appeal that helped, they would sort of paper over some of those differences. And once he was gone, they sort of, they emerged. Well, I just go back to, I remember I was on the Kerry campaign.

John Kerry loses. And not only does Bush win the White House again, and everyone thought it wouldn't happen because Bush was so unbelievably unpopular, but he wins a second term. Republicans win the House. Republicans win the Senate. Unified Republican control of Washington. John Kerry loses. And the Democratic Party is seen as out of touch, aloof, can't figure out what they stand for.

And a lot of that was a reflection of John Kerry's campaign, right? Fairly or unfairly. And it looked like we were in the wilderness, we're done, we need someone to reach out to working class whites or else we're never going to have a future as a party, blah, blah, blah. 2005, George Bush tries to privatize Social Security, even though we don't have majorities in either House or Congress. We stop him from doing that. 2006, Democrats take back the House and take back the Senate. And then in 2008, they nominate a liberal black guy, one-term senator, who's named Barack Hussein Obama from the south side of Chicago.

And he wins a commanding victory against a war hero maverick beloved by people in both parties and the press especially the press you know like and that wasn't easy and it took a lot of like soul searching it took changing the price stuff like that but all i'm saying is it is we should not feel hopeless about this case you know i think the it's if you were to sort of analyze how the democrats so we've done the hundred days for trump so let's do the first hundred days for democrats in the Trump era. If you look at Democrats in Washington, they haven't done a terrible job. They have stood up to Trump.

They have fought his nominees. They have limited leverage. Where they have leverage, they've used it. They have not put forth a positive, inspiring message. And I would say that's partly due to there is no one leader in the party. And so it is hard for any one Democrat to break through on a given day with some kind of compelling message. And I would say that's partly due to there is no one leader in the party. And so it is hard for any one Democrat to break through on a given day with some kind of compelling message. But they haven't done that. Right. And I think we had some fear, some of the base had some fears that the party would compromise with Trump as a way to sort of win over his voters. And they have stood up. So Washington Democrats have done okay. Like not perfect, but they have been on the side of the angels in the battle against Trump. But let's talk about

Democrats. The health of Democrats around the country is incredibly strong. You look at the town halls, the marches, people are more motivated, more engaged, more active. They listen to more political podcasts. Everyone wins in this situation. And, you know, I saw... And they've been pushing Democrats in Washington. Yes. Which is the... They have, in some ways, the people in the town halls are the ones who've been leading, not the people in D.C. And that's good. We need new blood in the party. We need new voices. And like, that's where it needs to come from, you know? And you look at every time I turn around, I find another person announcing for office.

Yeah. Like people we know, people who are, who've reached out to us via Twitter, who are- See 11,000 women via Emily's list versus 900 in the year before Hillary ran. Like that is the seeds of victory in the future. And so that part, I feel very good about where our public is, where Democratic voters are in their level of engagement.

And people who, you hear from a lot of people who thought maybe this doesn't matter as much in 20, they were turned off by maybe by 2016 or they're just tired or maybe politics doesn't matter. And then they see Trump winning. It's been a wake up call to people.

I think that is very important and good. I worry about the Hillary-Bernie proxy fight. I think it's I don't really know exactly what to think about it. I don't think the differences are as great as people think. Yeah. differences are as great as people think yeah well it's tough because i don't i think i think both hillary and bernie are sort of poor stand-ins for um what each side would like to put forward as their best vision you know what i'm saying like i think if you are more on the left and you want to put forth someone who's going to be a leader of the party in the future who's going to like move the democratic party to the left so like that may i don't know that bernie sanders is your guy and if you're more towards the center center left

or liberal um and you want to show that the party isn't necessarily establishment and is and you're bringing a new blood i don't think hillary clinton is the answer he's like nor do i think a lot of the other like i love joe biden he's probably is the answer. Nor do I think a lot of the other... I love Joe Biden. He's probably not the answer either. Joe Biden is always the answer. That's true. Bite your tongue.

We need young, new voices from diverse walks of life. Women, African-Americans, Latinos. This needs to be the future of the party, for sure. I got a question for you. Sure. Do you think Bernieernie sanders should join the democratic party i care less about this topic than just about anything else i have

been at times critical of bernie sanders the whole like bernie sanders shouldn't speak out because he's not a democrat it is a party label i don't care i really don't he's got a set of values he's trying to fight for them if he wants to caucus with the democrats great he's been doing that the whole time. If he wants to still call himself an independent, we focus too much on labels. I just, I don't care that much about it. And I've been critical of him on other things too. I just, on that, that one thing, I don't, I don't agree with. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's just not, as long as he has caucused, he was the, nearly the Democratic nominee for president. He ran in all of our Democratic primaries and caucuses. He caucused with the Democrats in the Senate. It just He ran in all of our Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Totally. He caucused with the Democrats in the Senate. It just doesn't, I don't think that matters as much. And I find it, there are debates to be had in the argument that Bernie Sanders can't influence the Democratic Party if he does not quote unquote officially join it. It's just, we're focusing on the wrong things at that point.

Yeah, that's where I am on that one. Okay, when we come back, we will have the host of the new podcast, Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's just great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff.

On the pod today, we have the new host of the new podcast, Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, welcome to the Crooked Media family. It's good to be a part of the family, good to be here today, and I'm excited for the first episode that is up on Tuesday. So tell us about the podcast. What's it going to be about? What are you hoping people get out of it? Yeah, so I'm obviously new to the podcast world. And what I'm hoping to do with the podcast is both have a way for us to process the world that we're living in, right? Which a lot of people are doing, but also be really thoughtful about giving people things that they can do, whether that is understanding an issue at a deeper level so that they know where they can do more research or where

they can think about their own community or just like concrete advice about like what does it mean to run for office what did you learn here so when i think about the people that i'm hoping to talk to it is not only political leaders but it's influencers and entertainers and artists and athletes and importantly perhaps the most important is talking to activists and organizers from around the country and we've seen such incredible organizing and activism over the past two years so So I want to make sure that we capture those learnings so that they can inform the way people move forward. How do you think we sustain, this is something we've been talking about here a lot, but how do you think we sustain the energy and enthusiasm out there right now from now through, you know, it's been the first hundred days of the Trump

administration. How do we sustain it through November, 2018, when there's midterms, November, 2020, when there's a presidential election of the Trump administration. How do we sustain it through November 2018 when there's midterms, November 2020 when there's a presidential election? How do we keep it going? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that, you know, one of the things that we're always mindful of when we got into the street in Ferguson in the very beginning, right, is that protest is not the answer. Protest creates space for the answer. So like being in the street, pushing systems and structures to acknowledge things that they would otherwise ignore is really an incredible path forward. It's a necessary component, but it's not in and of itself enough, right,

that we have to also build and construct a world that we want. When I think about how I'm processing what comes next, it is like the mobilization piece, which I think we've nailed. Everybody's nailed it. Two, three years in, we've gotten that. I think the next part of the work is how do we have people imagine and really be thoughtful about the solution part, this idea that if you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it. And I think there's some people who, when you think about the struggle or resistance, it is always an opposition strategy. And what we have to be mindful of, right, is that the absence of police violence, right,

doesn't mean the presence of safety, that those are not the same thing. And a lot of people focusing on the absence of, right, the absence of Trump doesn't necessarily mean the presence of something better, though, with Trump. I think that that probably would be something, anything better than Trump, I think. So I think that's what comes next.

So, you know, I don't think we talk about some of the non-sexy stuff enough in the public space, right? Like the quota on the first episode of the pod, we're going to talk about super funds and the ICE quota. Or, you know, like if you could kill an American, the police don't. If you could kill an American, a newspaper doesn't write about you. You aren't captured in the data set. We almost don't capture any real, any sort of official data around police violence, which is so wild. And those things like limit our ability to come up with concrete and vast solutions at scale.

So that's what I think comes next. Not a short answer, not necessarily a sexy answer, but I think that's the truth. DeRay, I'll ask you a question we ask a lot of our guests the first time they're on. So we're 98 days into the Trump administration. How do you feel? guests the first time they're on? So we're 98 days into the Trump administration. How do you feel? You know, the reality is that America has been a hostile place for people of color in across certain areas for so long that this is not shocking. I think what is the thing that is shocking to me is the people who are shocked, right? Like there are people, I think the color of surprise is white in so many, in so many corners of the country right now. So there are people who believe that the history of injustice started with the Muslim ban, and therefore if we just, like,

end the Muslim ban, all of a sudden America's like this great, amazing place for everybody. And it's like, well, that's not true, right? So in this moment, I think what is most interesting is that he's somebody who followed through on everything he said he was going to do. And when people said it during the election, they were told that they were, like, dramatic,

and he would never do that, and da-da-da, and, like, he actually did it but there's a deep history in this country of sort of rich white men doing whatever they want to do to marginalize people at every step of the way so I'm not shocked by that if anything I think what is most

fascinating right now is just how brazen he is right like it's like you're gonna put forth a bill you haven't read like it's gonna ruin a lot of people's lives. You don't really care. You're like, okay. Or like, the press releases from the White House

like are naming the wrong secretaries. You're like, well, that's sort of interesting, right? Like, it's just so sloppily brazen. And that is like, that is wild to me. What do you think about sort of how we start

building coalitions, right? Like, it seems like it's easy for a large swath of people across different backgrounds, beliefs, races, to oppose Trump. But how do you build a coalition for positive change, right? I mean, we've been, over the last episode, and Dan and I just talked about it a little bit too, we've been talking about sort of this rift on the progressive side of the aisle.

Right. Or a democratic movement. Right. Like how the Bernie people versus the Hillary people and, you know, people on the far left versus people on the left. And how do we how do we sort of move past some of those divisions to or or can we to sort of enact positive change? Good question. What's interesting, I think, about the left or the Democratic Party sort of left, and I'm on Tom Perez's transition team, I believe in the party in as much as I think it is a strong and viable option for people. I know that it's not the only option for people. What's interesting about the left, right, is that we fight about, we essentially fight about

what we would do with the power we don't have, right? So people are killing each other right now and don't actually have the power to do any of this stuff, as opposed to what would it mean to fight about getting the power and then we struggle with how we use it later. So that, I think, just doesn't, from a strategy perspective, doesn't make sense.

Like the Bernie versus Hillary are like, who's the most true left? It'd be different if we were actually in power and then we could fight about like the best way to do healthcare on the left and da-da. But we're like literally killing each other right now and like don't actually have the power or luxury to do that. So that I think is a real struggle. When I think about coalitions in general, though,

it's this idea that we agree on what the world should look like in the end. We might not agree on how we get there, but we have a shared vision of what freedom or justice or equity or whatever we want to call it, what that looks like, and therefore we build a coalition knowing that the path to that goal might be different, but the goal itself are the same. In the past few years, I've seen that increase more and more.

Like I said, the first time I was on the pod, I am always worried about people who are willing to sacrifice real people's lives for some sense of ideological purity. And I think that we continue to see that happen. Right. So there are people who are against Obamacare because they believe that it reinforces market logic and they are anti-capitalist in the sense that they don't believe in any markets. Right. And it's like, well, that is you would rather millions of people lose health care in this moment simply because you just don't believe in a market, right? And when I ask you for your alternative, like you don't really have one. And I think that that is frustrating. Like I think that that's a hard part. But in terms of how we build it, I think that we've seen so many people come together in the past, definitely in the past

100 days and certainly in the past two years, who are starting to have like a common vision for like what safety looks like, right? What does it mean to be in a world without prisons? Like how can we have consequences about prisons or the death penalty or those sort of things? I think we're starting on it, especially around markers of identity, right? So sexuality, the disability community, gender, race, age, I think we're starting. disability community, gender, race, age, I think we're starting. DeRay, do you see a good amount of crossover from some of the activism that started post-Ferguson and the anti-Trump activism of the last hundred days or so? The people who are at the Women's March or the March for Science are showing up at these town halls. Yeah, I think the crossover, you know, I think about protesters' idea of telling the truth in public

and that we use our bodies to tell the truth, that Mike and Rekia and I and John should be alive, and that people have taken so many impressive tactics to tell the truth in public, knowing that we're going to force a conversation that otherwise would not happen. I think that that has been the through line over the past three years. I think that in the context of Trump, that we see that taking on different forms, right, that people are now telling the truth at town halls and sort of forcing a public confrontation with these facts that we all knew were real at our dinner tables, but we're making sure they're real in public spaces.

So I think that that is the through line. I think that, again, what comes next has to be an affirmative understanding of what the future looks like, right? Like, so health care should look like this. It should be single payer, and it should be this. And, like, we can fight for that. Or at the local level, sanctuary cities should be this, or we should, you know, one of the things about ICE that I think is so fascinating is, you know, ICE doesn't on its own have enough detention centers for, to detain the people they want to detain. And what they're doing right now

is they are essentially renting out local prisons and jails so that they can detain people. And what is important about that is that when you think about what it means to fight at the local level, like local activists can actually leverage their city council mayor to not enter into those contracts, which would be like an incredible way for you to do something at the local level that actually like has a real impact at the federal level. And I think that what we've seen over the past three years is a complete myth busting of the idea that all politics is only local, right? That the federal government actually has a huge impact on the way people live their day-to-day, and there's a way that you can impact the federal level at the local. And I think that that's interesting to me with regard to how we move forward,

and I think that that has been a through line. I think the other through line on the flip is that there will always be some people who are more interested in fighting than winning, and we have to make sure that we know the difference, right? That like, I didn't stand in the street so that I could stand in the street forever. I stood in the street so that we could live in a world where nobody has to stand in the street. And I think that's important to acknowledge. So there's this debate going on in the party now too, which is, I think is a bit of a false choice, but it's, you know, should we emphasize issues like racial

justice and women's rights and gay rights and immigrant rights and talk about all of these cultural social issues? Because on those issues, sort of the coalition and the Democratic Party is, you know, is looking more like, you know, it's browner, it's blacker, it's younger, it's more female. And so should we emphasize those issues more than a lot of economic issues, right? Now, I think as a party, we obviously need to do both. But how do you think about that and sort of the intersection between racial, social, economic justice and sort of what we need to emphasize and how we go about fusing those things together? Yeah, John, I think you're right that this is a false choice.

And, you know, some people say that, like, black people, for instance, are so loyal to the party that they get dismissed by the party, right? They get taken for granted, which is how conversations like this fester. You think about black women where the overwhelming majority of supporters of Hillary, right? Like, that that is not an insignificant thing. So when you think about the Democratic unity tour that's happening right now, the party's unity tour,

there's a critique of it that's like, who are you actually talking to, right? Like you're not talking to the most loyal part of the base. You're not recruiting people in marginalized communities, or that's not the impression that people have of it, that you are sort of talking to these white voters that you're trying to get back to the party. When I think about this false choice, you know,

I'm mindful that like it is, it will be impossible for Democrats to win. If people march on to communities, like chose not to be a part of the party. And the other thing is that when people talk about the working class, they almost always like that image to people excludes people of color, right? Like they say that and they mean they really are talking about the white working class and not, um, not people of color, not women. And that is so problematic because we know that economic justice alone is not enough, right?

You give every black person a million dollars, that doesn't end racism. It doesn't end addiction. It doesn't end the wealth gap alone. It doesn't end any of the, like, educational disparities that happen because of the historical wrongdoing that happened around race. So it's just simply not enough. It's like a failed lens for us to think about this only in economic terms. So economic terms are an important lens that we have to look at. Seems right.

So do you have a guest for Tuesday yet? Did you lock one day? So one might be a surprise, but Cory Booker is the first guest on Tuesday, and I'm excited to talk to Cory. We have a good conversation. He talks about what it means to be one of ten black people to serve in the Senate and how that informs his understanding of the work ahead and then some practical advice for people who want to run for office.

Awesome. Well, we are very, very excited. DeRay, thanks for joining us. And everyone go subscribe now to Pod Save the People and check out the first episode on Tuesday awesome thanks guys and I'll see you on my podcast soon absolutely anytime take care man