Pod Save America - “A very revealing Cohenoscopy.”

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

Alyssa Mastromonaco joins Jon and Dan to talk about the fallout from Michael Cohen’s explosive and incriminating testimony. Then, Elizabeth Warren makes a big fundraising move, Biden keeps waiting, and Beto makes a decision. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco. What? I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Look at who we have here at Crooked Headquarters today. We have Alyssa as our co-host. Dan is here today. Alyssa's out with a new book.

So here's the thing. Notes on growing up, getting older, and trusting your gut. How exciting is that? It was supposed to be not giving a shit instead of trusting your gut, but apparently that's derivative. There's a real challenge about having a word that they can't say on TV when you're trying to sell a book. Yeah, well. It was funnier. What day is your book out? Tuesday, March 5th. Can you buy it now? You can pre-order now or buy it at your local bookseller. I mean, pre-order at your local bookseller. Sorry, I'm trying to help the little guy. Well, I'm glad you're here.

Alyssa's on all the Crooked Media pods. I moved in. They can't get rid of me. I'm squatting. Also... Wait, before we move, let's just do this. Yeah. Buy Alyssa's book.

Right. Buy it now. Buy it now. Take a screenshot of your proof of purchase. Tweet it. Alyssa might respond to you. Let's get this going. I'm very responsive.

I'm very responsive. It's like Pfeiffer sold a book or two in a day. I got a lot of questions yesterday about how Tommy hates and tries to murder cats. That was a rough moment in the live stream. My vet actually texted me about that. We talked about dead cats and your super pack, Dan. We covered a lot of

ground. Was there a connection between the two? No. Just that I wanted to co-run the super pack. Later today, Dan will also be talking with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg about his presidential campaign. Mayor Pete will be here at Cricket Headquarters as well.

We'll be releasing that conversation as a standalone bonus pod tomorrow as well as all of our 2020 candidate interviews from here on out. These have all been longer interviews than we expected, so we thought we'd split them up for you from the news discussion. And now you get a bonus pod with a cool interview with the presidential candidate. So that's what we're doing from now on. If I seem a little off today, because I'm interviewing right after this, it's the anxiety i have about pronouncing his last name correctly when we get to the interview i had that anxiety for a long time then once you figure it out boot edge edge that's the way that's wrong boot it

i thought it was booted i'm just saying like when you break it out but you should have the pronunciation on booted judge i feel like this should be one of his first ads it would be a funny ad it would um i've done my research he it already. He's got little kids saying it. It's very... Oh. You did do your research. So I am derivative. Okay.

Today's news. Before we get into yesterday's Cohenoscopy... Very good. Very good. I'm waiting to say that. We have some breaking news overnight about the summit in Vietnam between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. And here to give us his analysis on exactly what happened, Tommy Vitor, host of Pod Save the World.

It was a disaster, John. Thank you, Tommy Vitor, for popping in. Yeah, guys, the summit didn't work so well. It collapsed. Everyone went home. Trump says he had to walk away because Kim Jong-un wanted the United States to lift all sanctions in exchange for only partial denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And that's that.

It's the art of the Korean Peninsula. And that's that. It's the art of the deal. I guess we can all be thankful that we are still not at war, that nothing worse has happened there. But it does seem like this is status quo, that what Trump has done has not really worked, has not moved us closer to peace. And, you know, and in that,

he has faced the same challenges that Barack Obama has faced the same challenges that barack obama has faced in north korea that george bush face that bill clinton face well i mean except they all didn't escalate to de-escalate that's they just didn't scare the shit out of us every other tweet so we could actually sleep and not worry about it too too much yeah the different the main difference here is that trump has pretended to achieve progress here when no progress has happened. So hasn't gotten worse, hasn't gotten better. That's where we are with North Korea. Dilla dotard. If you want to know more about this, for people who are experts,

Tommy and Ben Rhodes are going to do a special bonus pod about everything that happened in North Korea, along with there's some breaking news about Bibi Netanyahu being indicted. There's the standoff between India and Pakistan. There's lots going on in the world. And Ben and Tommy are going to take care of all of that on a bonus pod. So be on the lookout for that. Okay. In a day-long hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Donald Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified that the man he spent over a decade working for is

a, quote, racist, a con man and a cheat. Michael Cohen accused the president of a series of lies and or crimes involving false statements, conspiracy, bank fraud and campaign finance felonies. He testified about the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, about Russia, which wasn't in the original plan, and about some new investigations and potential crimes we didn't even know about. So I want to get into each of these areas separately. The hush money investigation, the Russia investigation, and other revelations. But first, overall reactions to the hearing from yesterday. Alyssa? Not a great moment for America.

You know, when, I guess though my favorite part of it, what I thought was kind of like a real moment, I guess, though, my favorite part of it, what I thought was kind of like a real moment, was when Michael Cohen talked to the Republican members and said that, like, I am your cautionary tale. That was interesting. I'm your cautionary tale. I followed him blindly. That is what you are doing. You're going to end up here. And I was watching it last night and I was like, wow, that was fucking deep.

It's like you follow Donald Trump blindly. You either end up in jail or with a Fox News contract. Right. For a year. Sometimes both. Or a member of the House of Representatives because our system is horribly jammed. Either way. Dan, what did you think? had is that one of the president of the United States' closest advisors, someone who was at his side for 10 years, sat before Congress under oath and talked in great detail about criminal

conspiracies that the president undertook to violate campaign finance law, violate tax law, engage in serious corruption, and no one was surprised. And to put a point on it, all three of us worked for Barack Obama for about 10 years each. So that's sort of like us going and being like, so let us tell you about Barack Obama. We've actually been lying for him for years. He is a criminal in many different ways. That clip is going to end up on Gateway Pundit. Enjoy. Hope it goes viral. to end up on Gateway Pundit. Enjoy. Hope it goes viral. So one of the big questions at the start of the hearing was how credible a witness will Michael Cohen be? Basically, the only argument

that Republicans on the committee tried to make was that Cohen is going to jail in part because he lied to Congress. So what did you make of his credibility? So, I mean, look, it's like 50-50, right? I mean, he is a liar. He has nothing left to lose. And there was someone who actually made the point, this is like he's going to go to jail. His family has been destroyed, you know, and put in the public spotlight. And so this is his, like, moment to try to make it right. Right.

You know, at least so that he can clear his own conscience and sort of, like, get on with his life think it was sort of like Newbroom sweeps clean, like he's going to go out, do this, say his piece, you know, unearth all the things that he'd been hiding so he can at least, you know, leave it to the American public to deal with. Yeah. Dan, what'd you think? I mean, Michael Cohen is a convicted liar. He is also an obvious liar. Like no one talks to Michael Cohen, just like you were to meet him and think, this guy seems like a real straight shooter. This guy's on the level. Yeah, that's not the vibe he gives off.

And if we were, if he was talking about, if Trump had like a public reputation as like the Dalai Lama, and then Michael Cohen went out and told us these things, you should be very skeptical. But it all makes perfect sense. And he produces, he actually has paper.

He brought the receipts. He brought the receipts. I think that's the important thing is that Michael Cohen said himself many times yesterday, you don't have to take my word for it. I have corroborating evidence. And it's not just the evidence he brought, by the way. There's evidence we haven't seen yet because we know that the Southern District of New York prosecutors in the Hushman case and the special counsel prosecutors in the Mueller Russia investigation have all said in

their sentencing memos about Cohen and public filings about Cohen that he is a credible source for them. And the reason that he's credible is because they were able to back up his statements with corroborating evidence. And some of that evidence we saw yesterday that Cohen brought to his hearing but some of it we haven't seen yet so it's like you don't really have to take Cohen's report the other thing I think that made him credible is he did knock down some of the conspiracies and allegations against Donald Trump and against himself even you know there was a Reuters story that Cohen had gone to Prague and had taken a meeting with the Russians and he said he never went to Prague. This is exactly like someone who went to Prague.

Right. There, you know, there was this idea that someone brought up that maybe there was this videotape people were looking for of Trump, you know, physically assaulting Melania in an elevator. Where did that come from? He said that never happened. You know, so there were a lot of like rumors about Donald Trump that he actually knocked down. He said that there's no direct evidence that he knows of that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, but he has his own suspicions. So that seems like an honest take, right? Like if he really was out to just screw

Trump for himself and to just lie about Donald Trump, you'd think he would do it sort of across the board, right? I mean, I just was so interested at how eloquent he was. I mean, eloquent is not exactly the right word, but he was very well spoken. He had really thought out points and moments he had prepared for himself. I had low expectations and he surpassed them. The point isn't whether we believe him or whether Elijah Cummings believes him or any of these members of Congress. The most compelling piece of evidence for his credibility is that Robert Mueller believes him.

Right. Right. Yeah, and Robert Mueller's just not taking the word of any doofus off the street. Right, and he's making a very specific decision, right? It's not like he just chooses to believe him because it's in his interest. It's that there's a very likely chance in the case of Roger Stone or some of these other cases that may go to trial, he's going to need Michael Cohen to sit on a witness stand and need a jury to believe. Potentially, yeah. So that's the judgment he's

making is that what Michael Cohen says, backed up by evidence Michael Cohen and others have provided, is compelling, incredible. Yeah. I also think, Alyssa, to your point, one of the reasons he looked so good up there is because of who he was going against. So before we dive into the testimony itself, I just want to talk about the Republicans on the committee. With the exception of Justin Amash, not one of them, not one of them asked a single question about the credible evidence that the President of the United States committed multiple crimes. Not one of them asked about Trump at all. They spent all their time accusing Cohen of lying, colluding with Democrats and turning on Trump so that he can get a book deal. And they did it all very loudly. There's a lot of yelling. What did you guys think of the Republican performance?

It's, I mean, it's a microcosm of everything that has been wrong with politics for the last many decades, and particularly in the Trump era, is they didn't have zero, absolutely zero concern about the fact that the president of the United States and the leader of their party, the person for whom every member on that committee will be on the same ticket as in a year and a half, engaged in multiple conspiracies to defraud the electorate, to defraud the FEC, to defraud the IRS. No concern, defraud the FEC, to defraud the IRS. No concern. Zero. Nothing. I mean, it is, I mean, it, many annoying pundit types will look at this and say, politics is broken, polarization. And that's not what this is. This is about a fundamentally broken Republican Party that stands for nothing other than serving as a political protection racket for Trump. My favorite part, I had a lot of favorite parts, in case you can't tell, was when they

accused him of like seeking out book deals and that he just cares about that. And he's like, wait, hold on. There's been TV too. TV and movies. TV and movies. I thought that was funny. But who knew? But wait, did anyone else know that Elijah Cummings and Mark Meadows were best friends?

Because that was a revelation from yesterday. That is a, it's an odd choice. It's an odd couple. He really defended him at the end. I was like, whoa. That was weird. You're stuck on an island with one person yelling at you for the rest of your life. Mark Meadows or Jim Jordan?

Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows. His face isn't as offensive. I mean, Jim Jordan would kill you and eat you. Like that is the obvious. Okay, so my friend and I were debating last night like what kind of criminal he is and we decided he was like an abusive murderer. I just thought it was, I mean, you know that they're idiots when you're following this in the news, you're reading Twitter, you're reading stories about them you see their fucking bizarre quotes when you actually see them on tv in action it's like just a couple levels worse than you even imagine like mark meadows and jim jordan just screaming through

the trial make they they didn't know basic facts they didn't have a grasp of basic facts there was what was higgins was his name there was one one house member who said. Is that the dude with the vest? Yeah, I think it was the guy with the ill-fitting vest who looked like a fucking blackjack dealer. And he said at one point, like, I didn't even know who you were until today. Like, if you didn't know who the fuck Michael Cohen was, what were you doing? He should be on the jury. He's the only person who's sequestered himself for the past year. It was really embarrassing. I found myself wanting the Republicans to just have people who ask better questions.

Well, how about creepy lurker in chief Matt Goetz? Oh, yeah. Oh, I have. We're going to get to that. Is he in the outline? He's in the outline right here. What does it say in the outline? Put a pin in him.

I want to make sure I get the tweet right. So before Cohen's testimony, Matt Gaetz, Florida congressman, human frat paddle, beloved calls him, tweeted, Hey, Michael Cohen, do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot. Gaetz, who has since deleted that tweet and apologized to Cohen, is now under investigation by the Florida State Bar for potentially violating professional conduct rules by threatening

Cohen before his testimony. Seems normal, right? I'm glad to see the Florida Bar taking it seriously. What is with fucking Matt Gates? And he was like lurking at the hearing yesterday. Yeah, like on the side and in the back and then apparently just ducked out when his staff must have texted him, like, yo, Florida Bar Association, hot on your ass.

Is there any doubt that he was just doing this at Trump's behest? Yeah, whether Trump specifically asked him to do it or not. Or he's just showing off. Yeah, or he intuited what Trump would like. That's clearly what happened. It's also the fact that he went to the hearing is, like in the early seasons of The Wire how Stringer

Bell would go sit in the courtroom whenever the witness was testifying just to make sure they knew exactly what he was doing. Although it seems like Matt Gaetz may be not quite as intimidating as Stringer Bell. Or smart. Matt Gaetz would be the one taking the notes on the

motherfucking criminal conspiracy. All right, let's dig into the testimony itself and start with the campaign finance investigation, which is being led by the Southern District of New York. Cohen, who pled guilty to a criminal conspiracy that involved defrauding voters by hiding illegal contributions in the form of hush money payments to women publicly implicated Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization in that criminal conspiracy. Cohen also brought receipts, including one hush money reimbursement check signed by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization CEO Allen Wesselberg, and one check signed by the president himself while he was in office. This all sounds very cool and very legal.

But what new information did we learn here? And what actually stuck out at you about Cohen's testimony in the hush money investigation? He was signing checks. That's crazy. As a president, I actually tried to think about it. If like, you know, like even if you go back to movies remember the American president Andrew Shepard couldn't find his credit card Donald Trump's just got a Trump

organization checkbook lying around the Oval Office it's a problem it seems like it which is strange because he told all of us right after the election that he was going to be 100% separated from the business 100% which clearly clearly that's not true.

It's just they're so fucking stupid because they went through this entire process to set up a shell corporation to space out the payments. Over a year. Over a year in order to make it less obvious what they were doing. So they could claim it was retainer

instead of simply a reimbursement. Retainment. And then Trump himself signs a check that he discusses in the Oval Office as president. It is mind boggling how stupid these people are. Well, and also, I mean, so the defense is, and they like to point to the John Edwards case, that in order for this to be illegal, you have to knowingly and willfully conceal these payments and know that you are breaking the law by concealing these payments. And they say, you know, because you can get away with it by saying, well, I was just trying to hide this from my wife because I didn't want to hurt my family, but it wasn't to influence an election. But, you know, when you're setting up shell corporations when you're when

you're reimbursing people through all these different ways when when michael cohen and alan weisselberg are sitting there saying who's ponying up the money to pay stormy daniels because trump won't and alan weisselberg is like can we find any big donors can we find anyone who maybe wants to go to a party at a club and pay somebody. That was crazy. When you're going through these great lengths to hide this, it seems pretty clear you know that you're doing something illegal and you're not just trying to keep it from Melania. Also, what sort of bargain basement president do we have that his accountant and his consigliere are talking about renting out a club that they own

so they can get someone to throw a party there and just pay Michael Cohen back directly. It's crazy. That's like Studio 54 shit right there. Without the cocaine. Also, put aside whether, like, what would happen were this case to go to trial, right? Where Trump was just some run-of-the-mill criminal defendant. Let us hold the president of the United States to a slightly higher standard than John fucking Edwards. I was going to say Christopher from the Sopranos. Yeah, I was going to say this is a theme throughout all this testimony that everyone's like the bar is now,

you know, were Trump a private citizen, would he be indicted and would he be convicted because there's, you know, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed these crimes. Like that's not necessarily what we're looking for here. We're just looking like we don't want to have a president who is implicated in potential criminality or has just done really shady shit. Remember that? That used to be a standard for the president. Who wants Allen Weisselberg to get a subpoena?

I mean, I think that's probably. Well, so the question is, like, what's next on this case? Like, how bad is this politically and legally for Trump? And, you know, is this impeachable in itself? If Mueller said nothing else, is the hush money payment investigation impeachable? You know, I really wrestle with the question of the politics on this because there's sort of two competing thoughts in my head. Where one is we shouldn't really look at this through a political filter. Like the idea that obvious and rampant criminality and corruption from the president

only matters if it affects his poll numbers is really a stupid way of looking at things. And it's anti-democratic, right? Just the mere fact that Trump committed these crimes, whether it affects him in the election, whether it affects the gubernatorial races in 2019, should be irrelevant. that almost no one's opinion has changed on this. Right. And that over the course of three years now, and that the entire country is spending all of its time having a conversation about, spending 90% of its time, I guess,

having a conversation about something that has very little impact with voters. And then there's this other way of thinking about it, which is everyone seems to be waiting for there to be this moment when we talk about the politics where like there will be some revelation where, you know, maybe it's a Mueller's report or it's in a New York Times report or something. There's some sort of smoking gun piece of evidence that will cause a dramatic political shift because you're thinking about

this in terms of the election in 2020. That's sort of irrelevant in the sense that you only need a hundred thousand people to change their votes over three states and you would have a different outcome maybe this will impact that maybe it won't but if you want to it does seem like it's easier to change the votes of those hundred thousand people than it is to find what 15 16 republicans in the senate to convict trump yes like it is impossible to conj conjure the piece of information that would change the politics so dramatically that 50, 60, 70 percent of Republicans would leave Trump, creating a permission structure for Republicans to impeach Trump. So that is not going to come.

That cannot happen. So how do we really think about it is i think sort of an open question what do you think alissa i mean i just want donald j john jr to go down well i don't think that i don't think that impeachment it's like you know if you listen well i mostly i guess i just listen to you guys but um you know if he were to get impeached or there would be impeachment proceedings that's like civil war vibes in the country yeah you know and he should be tossed out because he fucking sucks yeah like in 2020 i think i i have but don jr should be indicted and go to trial and jail yeah well i want to get to that in a second i mean my opinion on the impeachment thing has been sort of what you said dan which

i don't think it necessarily is the politically smart thing for Democrats to do. But I sort of worry about the precedent for the country of allowing a president who has potentially with a president who at least there's credible evidence that he has committed multiple crimes. Right. To just let that person go and to not use the one tool that's in the Constitution to hold the president accountable, which is impeachment. Because, like, what does that mean for our institutions? What does that mean for future presidents who may do these kinds of things? Like, I can get away with it as long as I know that I have all my party on board and we're in power. I can get away with whatever I want because it's not the most politically popular thing to do to impeach someone. Well, and also, if you look back, like what Bill Clinton did and had to go through an impeachment trial for is arguably ridiculous as compared to perpetrating a fraud from the Oval Office. Yeah.

You know, I mean, he. And we haven't even gotten to the Russia stuff yet. Right. So I just, you know, to me, that's. My question on Don Jr. is, so Cohen has pled guilty to this criminal conspiracy, which means that it was serious enough and there was enough evidence that he felt like he couldn't fight it in court. So he pled guilty. He just implicated the president, who, according to DOJ guidelines, cannot be indicted. He's also now implicated Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg. So why haven't they been indicted?

What's going on there? And what will they be? Or are the prosecutors just building a stronger case? Why did Cohen go down and not those two? I think the question on Don Jr. is, he seems to be, if you believe the reports, in very real trouble for lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. And getting someone for lying to Congress is not easy to prove because you have to get to mindset. You have to have corroborating evidence. But it seems pretty clear based on what Cohen said. Some of the documents have gone on.

I imagine other people have said that there's probably a pretty strong case that he – like we know he lied to Congress, right, or we have reason to believe that. It seems likely they should be able to prove that, at least to the point of bringing something to trial or getting an indictment. I think the question is, you know, what Marcy Wheeler has raised with us a couple of times is, are they, is Mueller trying to run to ground a larger conspiracy to defraud America case, you know, which is, you know, which we stupidly all call collusion, but is there a larger conspiracy case that he is working that holds that piece of it up? Which is the reason that Don Jr. is still sort of hanging on out

there. I mean, that would be something I think we will probably know that that case cannot be proven if what ends up with happening to Don Jr. is he simply charged with lying to Congress. That's that's a good point. All right, let's move on to the Russia part of the investigation. First, Cohen told the committee that in July of 2016, he was in a meeting where Donald Trump put Roger Stone on speakerphone and Stone said that he'd talked to Julian Assange, who told him that WikiLeaks was planning to disseminate a, quote, massive dump of stolen emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign. And Trump responded by saying, wouldn't that be great? Guys, what's new here? And what does this tell us about whether Trump is guilty of conspiring with Russians to sabotage our election? I mean, this is the first time that someone has said openly and on the record and under oath that Trump had advanced knowledge of the leaks and the source of them.

Not necessarily the hacking, but where the documents were going to come from and that there was direct communication between Stone and Assange, which there's reason to be very skeptical, not necessarily of what Cohen said, although maybe somewhat, but that Stone was telling the truth when he told Trump that, if he did, that he was talking directly to Assange, because all the other information suggested he had used an intermediary in Corsi or someone else to have that conversation. And the timing lined up the way that Cohen explained it, which I think was always sort of Roger Stone's defense of himself. It's like, well, I'm always talking. You know, I'm always talking. You can't always believe what I say. And I mean, this like it all sort of like lined up that, you know, what was it like a week or two later? Yeah. And I think it's important that...

On the day of the Access Hollywood date. Right. And advanced knowledge of this, the WikiLeaks dump alone, isn't necessarily proof of conspiracy. Because I think for, to charge co-conspirators, you have to maybe help disseminate the emails, plan somehow with Russia, whatever. But, you know, Bob Bauer and others, our former White House counsel, said that it could be a violation of the election laws that

say you can't knowingly accept help from a foreign government to help your election because they would know this helped their election. But again, this is one of those things where whether it technically violates a law or not the fact that donald trump who at that point he and everyone on his campaign knew that wikileaks was a hostile non-state actor that has you know was not was trying to damage united states national security interests like they had in the past and decided to put their electoral ambitions over um what was you know, reporting the whole thing to the FBI because they had advanced knowledge, that tells you something about where their loyalties lie, right? Right. And that they're not sort of like the moral standard bearers that you would hope

someone running for the highest office in the land would care about. I mean, Pfeiffer, you probably remember better. Remember what happened with Al Gore? Yeah. So one of Al Gore's consultants received in the mail a copy of George W. Bush's debate prep book. And as soon as it was opened and realized what was in it, immediately called the FBI. We made copies first, right? Yeah, we made copies. We shared them with the Free Beacon. It was just starting at the time. No, that's what you do when you realize and you don't cheat.

And that was just debate prep. And you certainly don't cheat with a fucking foreign hostile entity. Or like a hostile non-state organization like WikiLeaks, you know? I mean, the thing that's always, we just have to remember about whether it's Trump's knowledge of WikiLeaks, whether it's the building of the of the Trump Tower in Moscow, whether it is contacts with Russians, the original Don Jr.

Paul Manafort meeting at Trump Tower, is that at every stage, every one of these people have lied repeatedly about it. Yeah. And lied in many cases under potential criminal penalty. Right. Like Jared Kushner lied multiple times on his national security clearance forms, which is a crime to lie on those forms. Multiple times I'll contact with Russians. Jeff Sessions lied. Donald Trump lied. I can't ever forget that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, on Air Force One, dictated and instructed his staff to lie about the original Trump Tower meeting.

Yeah. Like at all of these steps. Like I feel like sometimes we get in the weeds of like can you prove this thing? Well, it's like, well, is WikiLeaks – like did they know WikiLeaks was working with the Russians than that? The larger point here is that they have been deceiving the American people about their interactions with Russia throughout this campaign, about Trump's business interests with Russia throughout this campaign. And that in and of itself is and actively obstructed justice to the point where the president is using his Twitter account to intimidate witnesses as they go forward. using his Twitter account to intimidate witnesses as they go forward. All of that together is really an open and shut case for starting impeachment proceedings. Now, like you asked about this a little earlier, and the question is, should Democrats do that? That's a really hard question.

Like, should you start something, even though you know it's the right thing to do, if you know it is not going to end with your desired result? I will say that there are some things that are potentially easier to prove here. Like, you know, one thing that came out of this revelation about Stone and Trump talking about WikiLeaks is Trump has reportedly denied and sworn written testimony to Mueller, answering Mueller's questions, that he never talked to Stone about WikiLeaks. And if somehow, in addition to Cohen testifying this, Mueller has some kind of evidence that Trump and Stone did communicate about WikiLeaks and he gave his answer to Mueller that he didn't, that's pretty obvious to everyone involved that the president has committed perjury,

or at least has issued a false statement. Right. The problem is with all of this stuff is it's he said, he said, and both of the he's are known liars. Right, right. I guess unless there's phone records somewhere that Weller has, but I don't know. But also just something so much more basic, which is that, you know, everybody can be confronted with challenging circumstance

or potentially fortuitous, you know, like. But at every point in their journey, when they were faced with a choice with a fork in the road, they took the shittiest road possible. Like never did their better angels prevail. Never was there a thought bubble that was like, is this a good idea? And I just, that's like sad too. Like we're talking about what's criminal and how they've defrauded the American public, but like that shouldn't, it's almost feels like it's becoming the standard when really like what happened in the beginning when they just could have been. Yeah. Whether I mean whether it meets the violation of the statute,

they certainly defrauded the American public in many different ways and continue to do so today. do so today. The other thing that I took from Cohen's testimony is you get all the time from sort of know-it-all reporters who were like very, who covered Trump very closely, Trump's campaign in particular. And their argument often is, and I think some of the White House staff will say this on background, which is the Trump campaign was too poorly run to engage in this sort of criminal conspiracy. And that is such a stupid Hollywood way of thinking about how crimes are committed. Like you. It's sort of like, I think it's the complete opposite.

That's exactly right. Like poorly run organizations. Your mark. Your mark for hostile foreign intelligence. And just like where corruption and crime happen in the worst run governments, in the worst run organizations where there is no supervision, there is no rules, there is no system in place to prevent that from happening. There's desperation. Yes. It is exactly an organization like the one that Michael Cohen described that is likely to fall prey to a Russian counter Russian intelligence operation and to just engage in a bunch of stupid criminal corrupt behavior. The last thing that Cohen cleared up was some of the confusion over last month's BuzzFeed story that Trump had directed him to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. He said, quote, Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That's

not how he operates. Instead, Cohen said that Trump made it clear he wanted him to lie, quote, through his personal statements to me that we both knew to be false and through his lies to the country that he wanted me to lie. And he made it clear to me because his personal attorneys reviewed my statement before I gave it to Congress. And he said that they changed that statement, including the length of time that the Moscow project was being considered. Jay Sekulow, one of the president's attorneys, has now put out a statement denying that. But again, that seems something that we might be able to prove.hen probably has cohen said he would provide the draft of his initial statement who knows somewhere there are computer records that have those changes i mean these fucking yahoos probably did it with comments in a google doc or something but share drive so and then so

just other revelations before we move on from the hearing that i mean, because there were so many, we should just bring them up. Trump says racist shit all the time. I don't know if that was a revelation, but that is something. I mean, it's pretty free talk. It seems like seems like he's comfortable with that kind of language. Yeah, I noticed that one person was like grilling Michael Cohen. They're like, but do you have tapes of him saying these things? It's like, yeah.

Have you turned on the news? Have you looked at Twitter? Like, remember shithole countries? Remember birther conspiracy like yeah he said remember very good people on both sides yeah there's definitely tapes of trump saying racist shit they're out there man charlottesville trump has had cohen threaten people including physically threaten them more than 500 times uh he ordered cohen to threaten people to uh keep his high school grades private in SAT school. That was delish in writing. And then here was the big one this might have been one of the bigger revelations from the whole hearing. Cohen claims to be in quote constant contact still with Manhattan

prosecutors about ongoing investigations and declined to provide the details of his final phone call with Donald Trump in the weeks after the FBI raided his office and other places because he said it's the subject of an ongoing investigation. And looked directly into the camera when he said it. So he knew that was going to be a thing. I have another one. Yeah. And it sort of got lost because there was a lot of sort of esoteric conversation about like home equity lines and property, etc. sort of esoteric conversation about like home equity lines and property, et cetera. But Cohen did serve as a first person witness to the New York Times story that should have ended

Trump's presidency, but people forgot in five minutes, which is that Trump had been engaged in for a very, very long time in finding ways to ease his tax, to basically defraud the IRS, to engage in obvious tax fraud, to lower the reported value of his property so he would pay less taxes on it. Which is probably somewhat related to his refusal to release his tax returns, which Michael Cohen pointed out he had no reason to believe that Trump was actually under audit, like he claims. And I think that the president engaging in tax fraud should be somewhere higher than the 18th paragraph in the fucking story about this well and the person who brought that up was alexandria ocasio-cortez who who did a great job and had like one of the she like came in loaded for bear she did not have this like grandstanding woe is the state of the country preamble she just asked her questions and she

made news she basically asked if trump committed insurance fraud right and michael cohen said yes and she said well who else would know who can prove this? And he said, Allen Weisselberg, who was mentioned more than anyone. Allen Weisselberg. Come on down. You're getting a subpoena, buddy. He does have an immunity deal, though, right? Well, apparently NBC reported yesterday that he had an immunity deal only for the AMI National Inquirer story that he testified on.

His attorney is about to start looking for a second home. Yeah. So Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman, and someone named Matthew Calamari, who was the COO of the Trump organization, and, you know, is Matthew Calamari. But also, just let us not forget this nugget when he talked about, in the same sort of conversation, that how stupid the United States government was because he got a $10 million rebate and tax break and how stupid the government was and cut everybody's salaries in his company by 50%. Yeah. I mean, we talk about the election and like

whether it's impeachment versus just, but I do think some of all, some of what we learned yesterday and what we've learned about Trump's criminality and corruption, I do think is like a potent message in 2020 that we shouldn't just ignore. Like what you just said, Alyssa, where like he collects a 10 million dollar refund from the government while cutting his employees salaries. Like that's the kind of information that maybe even more so than Russia stuff would actually matter to voters. that maybe even more so than Russia stuff would actually matter to voters. I thought Cohen had a great line in his testimony that could be like the message against Trump in 2020. He said, Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make

our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation, only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Like, I do think that probably is the most damaging kind of case against Donald Trump. Yeah, I think I've said this before on this podcast, but I think the best message to Trump is to argue that his political philosophy is not America first, it's me first. That everything he does is about Trump. It's about lining his pockets at your expense. That allows you to weave in the tax cut.

It allows you to weave in what he did in business. It allows you to talk about Trump University. His authoritarianism. All the farmers that lost their farms. The way he treats the press. I mean, it's very broad what you can weave in. The fact that he is running a unconstitutional bribery scheme out of a schlocky hotel three blocks from the White House. Even his moves on immigration, right? Like he is doing this to benefit himself politically to to rile up all the white nationalists. Also, unrelated, did you see that the apple-cheeked hate goblin Jeff Sessions was at Trump Hotel last night?

Stop. Get some self-esteem, bro. Yeah, that's got to be a dark scene there. It's Hotel California for the worst Americans. All right, let's talk about the latest 2020 developments from the last week. Elizabeth Warren announced a big fundraising change for the primary, which she announced in a Medium post. Quote, no fancy receptions or big money fundraisers, only with people who can write the big checks. And when I thank the people giving to my campaign, it will not be based on the size of their donation.

It means that wealthy donors won't be able to purchase better seats or one-on-one time with me at our events. And it means I won't be doing call time, which is when candidates take hours to call wealthy donors to ask for their support. What do you guys think of this change? Is it politically smart? And can she raise the money she needs doing this? I think it's smart all around for the following. One, she's right. I mean, how much time, you know, I forget what we were talking about the other day, but, you know, the fourth quarter of 2015, you know, Hillary did something like 50 fundraisers and Bernie did three, which means that Bernie was in far more living rooms and battleground states, you know, than she could because she was raising the big money. So, yes, it's good for her time management.

But I do also think that she probably did the math and realized she wasn't going to raise that much money in big numbers, that she probably wasn't leaving that much on the table. And it does sort of, I think, help set expectations for what her first quarter fundraising number is going to be. I think she figured that she was not going to be spending a lot of time in Manhattan penthouses with hedge fund managers giving Elizabeth Warren big checks. Right. Like she wasn't going to sweep up money out here in California. And so, you know, good for – it's smart. Good for her.

It's strategic. I think the – I mean it is definitely politically smart. Like Elizabeth Warren has probably had the best theory of the case of how she wins and then execution of that theory of any candidate who's gotten in the race thus far. I agree. Whether that's the right theory of the case, no one really knows. But she knows how she wants to run this race and how to go about doing it, and she's doing it, and this is a part of it. I think there are some questions about whether the substance of this pledge matches up to the headlines. The political promise. The political promise of it.

Which is, is call time, as annoying as it is, is that the biggest problem in money and politics? Probably not. I think it's probably the size of the contribution. I think to the credit of, I think, basically every Democrat running thus far is that they have taken the one stance that I think matters the most, which is they're not going to have their own super PAC. Right. Because there's too much money in politics for sure. But one of the giant problems, if you can have someone like the Koch brothers, like Sheldon Adelson, who can write unlimited amounts of checks in your name and give it to this technically separate entity where you can raise money for them

and like this is how super PAC fundraising goes you candidate walks in talks to a group of people who can write million dollar checks about their campaign leaves some other dude walks in and ask them for money and that is legal and every democrat has resisted that and I think that's most important I think a more, a bolder stance is whether someone would be willing to put a cap on contributions below the legal limit. Right. Yeah. And I've thought about that too, because I do, I mean, here's what, and Elizabeth Warren has made this case herself for many years. And she, she usually says like, one of the ways that money influences the system is you just you end up having to spend a lot of time with really wealthy people in order to fundraise from them.

And the more you spend time with them, like even if they're liberal, wealthy people, maybe they're very socially liberal. Right. And on taxes, maybe they're not as liberal. And the more time you spend with them, the more they're saying, oh, do you really want to fight that carried interest loophole? Like, I don't know about that. And I do think that's a very real issue where Democratic candidates are forced to spend too much time with really rich people in order to get money. Right. But you're right that if you did a cap, that would sort of fix that. If your goal is to democratize people's influence, you should limit the amount of

influence they have, not limit the amount of influence they have not limit amount the amount of time you spend with the influencer right right someone is still there's still going to be some group of people through some mechanism who are going to write larger checks to elizabeth warren like what trust me i would be for publicly funded elections we get all money out of politics get citizens united i'm not sure someone writing a, like a couple, like people writing the, you know, whatever the max is now, $4,000 to a candidate is the ultimate problem in politics. But it is like, she has done it.

She has identified, it is a true, like, it is true that we Democrats spend too much time raising money. So we should raise more grassroots money online. It is true that spending all this time with rich people can affect you. I would like to, let's pick a president who has the capacity to distinguish between those audiences. Like, is it immediately just like in the thrall of the hedge fund guy they just ran into at the coffee shop?

Well, and it'll be interesting, one, to see what her low dollar number is at the end of the month. But also, she didn't make the pledge for the general election. Right. Which is just worth noting. It's like, you know. Well, and she basically explains that in her Medium post, and she says,

because, you know, it's sort of the we're not going to unilaterally disarm argument that Democrats have made, you know, why we didn't take publicly public funding on elections in the general in 08, you know. All right, let's talk about our friend Joe Biden. The former vice president said this week that his family is urging him to join the 2020 race for president,

but he still hasn't made a move to get into the primary. According to the New York Times, he said in front of an audience at the University of Delaware, the most important people in my life want me to run, but he doesn't want to embark on a, quote, fool's errand. And he laid out his concerns, which include whether he'll be able to garner enough money and support and the nastiness of the campaign he predicted Trump would run against whoever the Democrats nominate. How long can Joe Biden wait? And what are the risks? I kind of feel like he can wait a while. I mean, he still has like the number one name ID of anyone. And I do think that, you know, personally, he's someone who served the country for his entire life. He's like the ultimate public servant. And I think that, you know, personally, he's someone who served the country for his entire life.

He is like the ultimate public servant. And I think that he does need to see if he can get the money behind him and the grassroots support, because I think it would be really like a disservice to his legacy if he got in prematurely. Like, I think that he should wait as long as he has to wait to feel like it's all lined up. Right. Because I think it would be terrible if like the former vice president, lifelong public servant came in and like, you know, six in the Iowa caucuses. I am not sure he can wait that long because I think this is not necessarily a take most people agree with. But my my belief has been that the changes in the primary schedule that moved

California and Texas and states like that up earlier actually make the Iowa caucus more important, not less important. And therefore, and I'm happy to have a longer conversation at some point about why that is, but if that is the case, and we should have Tommy on who worked in the Iowa caucus with Barack Obama to explain the caucus process to people at some point. And the new process. But it is incredible. It is the most complicated organizing endeavor in all of American politics.

Yes. And you have to build a very real, very serious organization if you have any chance to succeed. And so time is the only non-renewable resource in politics. And so every day that he is not out there recruiting precinct leaders, hiring field organizers, sitting in people's living rooms, or going to the pizza ranch and trying to convince people to caucus for him, he's losing time. He's not going to get those dates back. Someone else is going to do it.

And he doesn't have an Iowa organization to lean on. There is actually a decent amount of goodwill for Joe Biden over the times that he has run in New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is just a decent amount of goodwill for Joe Biden over the times that he has run in New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is just a straight primary. But I don't think he garnered a single delegate in the 08 caucus. And so it's not like there's a group of 10,000 people he's going to call. There will be some, I think, former Obama organizers who may be waiting for Biden. But it is this hard thing.

You don't want to run for president until you're sure you want to run. But the longer you wait to make your decision, you are in some ways making the decision for yourself to not run. And I think that is a challenge. I do think that people who look at Biden's numbers and say that's all name ID are sort of naively looking at it. Because that is with, like, we've had a lot of people get in this race with big splashy announcement and Biden's numbers have held. I think it's a mix of three things.

Name ID, for sure. Affection from the Obama base for Barack Obama's very loyal and amazing vice president. And a group of Democrats who rightly or wrongly believe he's electable and think he could have won in 16. They think he is the kind of Democrat who can win the states that Hillary lost to Trump.

Whether that's true or not, no one has a fucking clue. But it's out there that there's this vague desire for an electable person, which usually means moderate. White male. It goes to the point, though, that right now the thing he benefits from is the benefit of the doubt from everybody. It goes to the point, though, that right now the thing he benefits from is the benefit of the doubt from everybody, that he is the person like people are really buying into the numbers for what it means. But I want to amend my earlier statement. I meant that he should wait. Like if he doesn't want to do it today or like in the University of Delaware, you know, chat he was doing, that's fine. you know, chat he was doing, that's fine. But he does have to, like, the hurdles to get into the DNC debates in June are not massive. But 65,000 unique donors is something that, you know, he is not a proven online raiser. Right, he doesn't have an infrastructure.

Right. So he's probably trying to figure that out. Speaking of people who have been waiting a long time to make a decision, the Dallas Morning News reported on Wednesday that Beto O'Rourke has ruled out running a Senate campaign against John Cornyn in Texas and that he's made up his mind about whether or not he'll run for president and will be sharing his intentions soon. So, you know, we all said that on the pod that Beto should run for president right after the last election. We said the same thing about Stacey Abrams, said the same thing about Andrew Gillum. right after the last election, we said the same thing about Stacey Abrams, said the same thing about Andrew Gillum. What about the people who argue, because I saw some of this last night

after this news, that he should run for Senate? What are sort of like the pros and cons of a Senate race versus a presidential race for him or for someone like Stacey Abrams? I mean, people like Beto or Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum or anyone else who get to run for the office they want to run for. It's like you don't have to do what someone tells you to do. And you will only run a good race if it's the office you want to run for. The worst candidates, and I've seen this time and time again in politics, are when the DSCC or the Senate leadership has to drag someone into the race. When it's like they just, you know, Chuck Schumer calls them a times, so they finally give in and run. Then you run a shitty race. It has to be a cause, not a campaign for you. If you just think, I'm the most electable Democrat,

I used to do pretty well here, we should run, that almost always fails. It is a very open question about what the Texas electorate will look like in 2020 versus 2018. It's a very open question about what the Texas electorate will look like in 2020 versus 2018. It's a very open question of the difference between running against John Cornyn and running against Ted Cruz. But ultimately, if he were to decide he wants to run for president, he should do that. If Stacey Abrams were to say, like, would it be great if Stacey Abrams went for Senate in Georgia? Sure. But if Stacey Abrams wanted to run for president? Go for it.

Go for it. Do it. She would add a lot to such a race. I guess I don't I don't really love people on Twitter who don't necessarily know about Texas politics or Georgia politics or anything else, basically just playing head of the DSCC like like they know exactly what candidates can do and how they can win. Like you just you don't know. And the conventional wisdom is the 20 electorate in Texas would be better because it's a presidential year and more turnout. There's plenty of evidence that shows that there's actually a whole bunch of rural conservatives who didn't turn out in 18 who usually turn out in presidential years. So it would be tougher for Beto in 2020.

And also, John Cornyn is not as disliked as Ted Cruz is disliked. He has lower name ID. Cruz is disliked. He has lower name ID. So a poll for Cornyn and Beto would probably show it closer than it might be because people, a lot of people in Texas don't, or not as many people in Texas know who John Cornyn is as they did who Ted Cruz is because Ted Cruz has sort of a national profile for better or for worse. And so it's not a slam dunk in any way running for the Texas Senate. No, and like, I have to stand up. So, you know, especially like, you know, when you guys came out and said the day after the election, like, Beto should run. And I was like, are you kidding me? I've been slogging it out in small events for NARAL trying to remind

women that Roe v. Wade can be overturned and preaching about trigger laws. And I was like, I can't listen to this right now. And now I'm for it. Yeah, I mean, look, I think, like think there's going to be a million candidates running. Right. And we have this situation happening in other states, too. John Hickenlooper or Michael Bennett, both in Colorado, are thinking about running for president. I think Colorado is probably the easiest state for us. It is going to be the easiest state for us to pick off for the Senate in 2020. Cory Gardner is probably the most vulnerable Republican senator. You see this in Montana with Steve Bullock, right? He's popular governor of Montana. There's a Senate seat open there,

but he's thinking about running for president too. Like the Senate is incredibly important. It's incredibly important that we win the Senate in 2020. We need, if we hold Doug Jones in Alabama, we need three seats. If we don't, we need four seats. You know, you got Colorado's number one, Maine's number two, Arizona's number three.

You see Roy Moore's thinking of running again? Yeah, I did see that. And then after that, it's sort of all it's all a mix. So we don't know. But I also think, by the way, that we can get pretty good candidates in some of these states that aren't necessarily the people who are known. Beto O'Rourke wasn't known in Texas at all at the beginning of 2018. No. And he came out of nowhere. But like something, too, that I like to remember is that, you know, people in New York where I live, some people were really against Cynthia Nixon running and were like, she has no business. She has no right. She can never win. It's never I don't really think it's the point of people running whether or not they can win. People should run for something because they believe. And I think that New York state is much better off for having had Cynthia in the race, who I really supported, because a lot of the policies in New York have already shifted because of her presence in the race. And so I think that it's good to get all different kinds of people into the election, except I really don't want them all running for like the AOC endorsement primary because it's trite.

No, I mean, we've talked about this before. There may come a time where 20 people in the field is causing all kinds of chaos. That moment will come when the Iowa caucuses happen or probably after the Iowa caucuses, right? This is the stage when everyone in the pool. Can you and I just picture in the New Hampshire primary, like 21 candidates with buses trying to get up to like Berlin and Londonderry? If there are 21 candidates, 18 of them ain't going to have buses. They're going to be riding a bicycle built for two with

their field director. Yeah. I mean, some of this will play out. Like some people will find out that they can't raise enough money and they'll drop out before. Some people will see themselves at like 1% in the polls and they'll drop out or they'll do great right like that's just sort of the process and the thing though that i think is interesting to watch is that with so many people in the race the amount of money that people are going to have you know i would wonder i mean this is whatever but when the numbers come out at the end of March, I wonder if all the candidates rolled up to one, not including Bernie, have raised as much as we did the first quarter of 2007. Oh, you think? So I think we raised about $27 million in primary money.

And I have been trying to do the math, and I'm not sure that most people are coming up with more than a couple million that'd be interesting i would have i would have it'll change the races higher it'll it'll change it'll change how people are running yeah it's it is really interesting because i do think there are a lot of donors they kind of people who you know who max out in the primary like at one event who were probably waiting right they will they kind of want to see the self play itself out. They are, they don't have a specific allegiance to one candidate and they can't afford to write two checks,

let alone 12 checks to these people. So they're going to kind of let it play itself out. And really only Bernie, theoretically, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Beto, were he to run,

have an email list that can raise money. No one else has anything like that. Cory Booker, you think? No. No. I mean, I'd be curious to see. He could raise money probably, but maybe not through a grassroots. I think it's going to be hard to raise high dollar maxed out donations in the primary.

I could be totally wrong. Well, no, but the other thing to think about too is that if you look back to our primary, you know, we had a lot of donors. Not our best donors, but there were a lot of donors that maxed out to Edwards, Hillary, and us. Like, they could hedge their bets three ways. It's like if you're a donor and you hedge your bet and you give three, well, then you're still offending the other people. You know what I mean? It's not as easy.

Remember our chief of staff, Bill Daley, I think, had donated to all three. Did he? Yeah. Interesting. I think both of our chiefs of staff. Oh, I think you're right. Hey, Rom. One last thing. Democratic strategy in 2020. New York Times published a story by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns this week built around the narrative that Democrats need to choose

between winning back Rust Belt states where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton or going after states in the South and West where demographic trends are more promising. And it's not just a question of where to invest and spend their time, but which voters they should be going after, the Obama-Trump voters in the Midwest or the younger, more diverse voters in the West and Southwest. And they write that candidates have to decide between whether to focus on kitchen table topics like healthcare and jobs aimed at winning moderates and disaffected Trump voters or by elevating matters of race and identity, such as immigration, to mobilize young people and minorities with new fervor.

Dan, I think you have some thoughts on this story that I would love to hear. I yield the floor. First, this election is a stressful time. We are all anxious. We don't know what's going to happen. My advice and request to Democratic strategists would be develop an inner monologue. Do not feel a need to work through your anxiety by calling the New York Times and presenting multiple false choices not backed by one fucking iota of data. As someone who just did 15 episodes of The Wilderness about the Democratic Party, conducted focus groups both in these Midwestern states and the South and West states with both Obama Trump voters and younger, more diverse voters who just didn't vote in 2016 or were Bernie people who didn't vote. It made me lose my mind reading this because none of it is what you actually hear from people on the ground. None of it.

Like this is not, to be clear, this is not Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns's fault. No, this is the fault of Democrats who tell them this. And I want to make a couple points about this. It is true that come to the end of the 2020 election, the Democratic nominee is going to have to make some choices about what states to spend money in and visit it. Like that, they're going to look at polling, they're going to look at data, they're going to look at analytics and they'll decide, can we, should we go to Florida? Should we go to Ohio?

Should we go to Arizona? That is a different question than this. This is based in this incredibly stupid idea that there is some strategy that works in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio that doesn't work in Florida and Arizona. That is just wrong. Voters care about the same things.

And we are so wrapped around the axle about looking at this through this ideological prism that has not been relevant since 1990 fucking three that somehow with like voters think in terms of liberal or moderate, liberal or moderate or centrist or whatever. Like what vote there is there. They're Republican and Democratic states. There are not liberal and moderate states. Right. That it is.

Democrats have this incredible advantage that we refuse to ever acknowledge and then utilize, which is the message that works. And you know this from your focus groups. The message that works to persuade middle of the road voters is the exact same message that works to motivate new Democratic base voters. Like you have to talk about the economy. You have to be someone who fights for change and stands up against corruption. That works with everyone. And instead, we're like, well, we whisper this thing to this, you know, fired auto worker in Ohio. And then we go visit a young Latino man outside of Tampa. And we tell them this other thing, we'll be able to stitch together some fucking culture. That's not how politics works. You should be able, you have to have the same message in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, whatever else. And that is either going to

work or it's not where you don't pick. It is just so we are addicted to stupid false choices. Well, also. Also, Barack Obama won all those Midwestern states and Florida twice. So just to pile on, I don't like to be redundant, but also it's not like we lost those Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by millions of votes. Right. Like not to be basic, but but Hillary didn't visit Wisconsin in the general election. You know, there is a thought that the strategy, that if you just went once, we wouldn't have had the problem,

which is really just a tactical problem, not that people have lost. Now, look, to be fair, she went to Pennsylvania a ton of times and spent a lot of money there and came up short there, too. But I still think, I mean, look, Stacey Abrams won more votes than any Democrat in history in Georgia. She is a black woman running in Georgia as a progressive, and she did better than any of the other Democrats in history in Georgia. Beto O'Rourke got more votes than any Democrat in history in Texas. And in the middle of the campaign said he supported Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill. Okay.

So like, and then, by the way, in Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema ran as a moderate. And that won her the state of Arizona. So we're not just saying like you have to be like. Right. We don't. Ideology is so overrated by pundits, by people on Twitter. And it is not all the things that voters are thinking about. You should run based on what you believe. And like you said, you should have a message that appeals to everyone, to all the states, to all the people.

All the people. Politics is not paid by numbers. That is the greatest misperception of the reporters who cover politics is they think because now we have data that we're just we're going to piece together these little coalitions with micro messages. That is an absolutely miserable way to run a campaign. And it's not how it works. And if you cannot win Pennsylvania, you can't win Florida. There's not a strategy where you win Florida and then you lose Pennsylvania, Michigan. That's just not how it works because of the way you have to have a certain amount of appeal with base voters and independent voters. And like you put together that coalition. Now, the percentages of those numbers differ from state to state, depending on the size of the Democratic base and the size of the undeclared or independent

electorate. But there's not a world where you're like kick ass with the base in Pennsylvania and then they stay home in Florida. That's just not how politics works. And there's not a world where you're like kick ass with the base in Pennsylvania and then they stay home in Florida. That's just not how politics works. And there's not a world where you crush it with independent voters in Florida and Pennsylvania voters are like, nah. Like that's just not how it works. No. It's never worked that way. It's never going to work that way. All those pundity people who contributed to that article, their thoughts, they should just focus on the new season of Veep that's coming out.

Oh, very excited about that. Okay. I think that's all the time we have for today because I believe Mayor Pete's here and you that's coming out. Oh, very excited about that. Okay. I think that's all the time we have for today because I believe Mayor Pete's here and you've got to do your interview, right? I do. Okay. How do you say his name? Buttigieg.

There you go. Nailed it. Way to go. The key is to mumble it like Mahershala Ali's character in True Detective Season 3 so no one can know if you're right or you're wrong. Alyssa, thanks for joining us today. Bros, thanks for having me. The book is so here's the

thing order it now please I have read it people don't fuck around here buy it right now it is to her advantage you're gonna buy it anyway so if you buy it now that helps her it helps you tweet it so that all of your friends see that you bought the book like that is how that's how this game works and so do it thank you and you'll also learn about what it's like to be a platonic life partner which is what hyper is to me plus i wrote a q a in the book it's really that's the least funny part of the book no it's pretty funny i can't wait for the japan chapters i'm gonna read it this weekend um alissa thanks for being here dan thanks for being here great to have everyone it's usually lonely here on a

thursday don't take it personally, Michael, Elijah, everyone. Not this table. Not bad for a Thursday. All right, everyone. We'll talk to you next week and be on the lookout for Dan's interview with Pete Buttigieg, which we'll release as a standalone pod. And Ben and Tommy are doing a special bonus episode of Pod Save the World to talk about all the latest developments in foreign policy.

Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone..