Pod Save America - "All hands on deck."

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

The Comey fallout continues, the left is resurgent in Europe, and the final showdown is near on #wealthcare. Then, Vox's Sarah Kliff joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about the policy implications of the Senate health care bill, and DeRay McKesson joins to discuss his interview with Katy Perry.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we have Vox's senior policy correspondent and the co-host of the podcast, The Weeds, Sarah Cliff. Later, we'll also be talking to the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay has a very big interview this week. Big get. Big get. Tell me what's on Pod Save the World this week. Pod Save the World this week is an interview with Senator Tim Kaine from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yeah, we talked about something that is unbelievably important,

the legal basis for the many, many wars we're in right now that never gets discussed because Congress takes a pass on doing anything about it. And presidents love that, including Barack Obama. So they just sort of go ahead and do their thing. So we talked about legislation he has to update the authorization for the use of military force and just dug into some of the wars we're fighting and why he thinks this is so important. We've cornered the market on both senators from the Commonwealth of Virginia now. It's friends of the pod all around. It's their best friend, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

You know, friends of the pod all around. It's their best friend, the Commonwealth of Virginia. Okay. We have a lot of important healthcare things to get to. Healthcare is the agenda item of the week, or it should be. But, because I didn't get to talk to both of you guys about the Comey hearings on Thursday, let's just do a little Comey cleanup. So, there was a Trump press conference on Friday. He was with the president of Romania.

Leaker! He took a couple questions. So after Comey's testimony... I almost spit up my drink. So Trump basically reacted like everyone hoped he wouldn't, but knew he would. He called the former FBI director a coward, a leaker. He accused him of perjury. Just, you know, normal things.

And when Trump was asked by Jonathan Karl whether he'd say all these things about Comey under oath, which was a suggestion that first happened here on Pod Save America, no one else thought of it. Trump said 100%. 100%. Which, let me translate that. 100%, I'm going to say, I'm going to do that. Let's start with the leaker charge.

Because it's not just Trump that's saying Comey is a leaker. There's a whole bunch of hand-wringers on the right about Comey being a leaker. So, Trump fired Comey. And then he threatened in a tweet to leak the tapes of their conversations. Maybe. Maybe there's tapes. Threatened to leak them. So then Comey, now a private citizen, decides to pass along his own recollections of their conversations to a newspaper before also recounting those same recollections and wanted to get his memos out to the public. I guess the two things I didn't understand is why Trump mentioning tapes makes that something he should do immediately as opposed to something he should do anyway. Obviously, Comey, without saying it, basically said these are the things that Trump did to obstruct justice.

So why is the existence of tape the reason he uses justification? That made no sense to me but fine the second thing is it's really unclear that he either the memos were given to the friend and then the friend gave the memos to the press or did they just recount the memos or it's unclear exactly what the kind of chain of custody is on the memos yeah the rationale there wasn't clear he's like oh there was all these reporters at the at the bottom of my driveway so i sort of laundered it through a friend i mean that kind of there are, there's emails. But I mean, stepping back for a second, like, and our friends in the press have actually done themselves

no favor by sort of muddling this issue for a long time and talking about the war on leakers, etc. It's not a leak that is illegal in any way if it's not classified information. Right? There's leaking of deliberations and things you don't want out there. There's absolutely nothing criminal about that. It's as American as apple pie yeah it's the first amendment it's the

first it's the first amendment it's just a matter of timeline everything that was in those memos that told me that comey gave to the friend to the new york times came out in his hearing it on on i know and he admitted it so it's like who the fuck cares it was the most rare thing in washington to see someone be like oh yes i did leak that story here's how i did it that is what baffled people yeah that's a funny like the republicans like he's supposed to leak it and then lie about it has he not been in washington what's going on but the other thing is i wish comey had just like oh the president was talking about tapes i felt like i needed to get my side out what comey is saying without without actually saying it explicitly is i believe that there's evidence of wrongdoing.

I wanted to make sure that if the president was going to lie about me that my account was reported fairly and accurately, so I got my memos to the press. But he can't—for some reason, that's one place he won't go. I don't really fully understand that. So, most important thing is, right now, the person who has the memos is Bob Mueller. Bob Mueller. Reading away. Speaking of Bob Mueller, it seems like— Some dog-eared pages. Bob Mueller. Reading away. Speaking of Bob Mueller, it seems like some dog-eared pages, yellow highlighter.

So everything's in Bob Mueller's hands now, right? Can Mueller get Trump to testify? I don't think so. I mean, Congress is going to ask him. He can ask him, and I think there'll be some protracted legal fight, which is why the conventional wisdom in Washington is that Comey failed to deliver a smoking gun as delivered by Axios this morning. And I think that that's actually a great summary of the conventional wisdom, which just shows how far away from reality we've gotten. Like, you have an FBI director testifying under oath that he thought the president tried to stop an investigation, that he felt uncomfortable because the meeting was one-on-one, that he had contemporaneous memos, and that Trump himself said he fired Comey over Russia. I guess the next step would be getting

Trump to incriminate himself. I just don't think we'll ever get there. Yeah. I mean, what this reminds me of most is the 9-11 commission. And if you remember, there was this whole controversy of how to get Cheney and Bush to meet with them. And then ultimately they decided they would meet behind closed doors, have a conversation, but it wouldn't be under oath. Interesting. And that seems like where something like this would end up. I think that if we're going to get Trump under oath, it's not going to be through Congress. It's going to be through some kind of legal process discovery and all the rest.

For sure, Congress cannot compel the president to testify. He can use executive privilege. There is some question of whether Mueller can still. There's various legal opinions out there right now, if you look at the thing. But you're right. If that happened before, I mean, I think no one should hold their breath. It could take forever. It's just not something we should.

I think that if we're going to get Trump under oath, it's going to be a Bill Clinton deposition scenario, not a special prosecutor. I guess that was my quick question is, before we move off this, how did they end up getting Bill Clinton under oath? That was not, I don't remember. I have no idea. Well, that's what I'm saying. So I'm just saying in the past, a special prosecutor has gotten a president to testify. We know that truth because of Clinton.

Maybe Mueller doesn't have the same authority that Ken Starr did. I don't know. I mean, look, it's going to be a long process, and it will take many months and years to play out. It is really funny and really ironic that Republicans who very correctly savaged Bill Clinton over equivocating of the definition of the word is are now pinning their hopes on the definition of the word hope. Good luck with that, guys.

Well, so now, of course, when Mueller was first appointed, a lot of Republicans said, oh, he's a great choice, fine. Newt Gingrich said he was a superb choice. Now today, they're all saying Mueller's got to go next. Mueller's got to go next. Newt said GOP is delusional if they think he's going to be fair. And Coulter, all the rest of them, they're all saying fire Mueller. But Mueller's not going to be fair now. Just so we're – it was the grand jury.

That's how they got Bill Clinton. It's through the legal process. That's right. Grand juries go through it. And by the way, interestingly, the attorneys general of Washington, D.C. and Maryland are bringing an emoluments case against Trump today. So there's like seven tracks of legal jeopardy here. Got to get Norm. Well, this is not the Norm one.

This is not the crew one. This is not the Norm one. See, the crew one, they have a great case except their reason for doing it, their claim of standing was like the weakest part, right? That they were like,

we have to do this investigation and therefore we have standing. The D.C. Maryland one, this is the one that I've been excited about because what they're saying is, we're losing business because Trump hotels

have an unfair advantage. And that feels like it's got a real shot. When we get those tax returns, get them. Get them. Anyway, a lot of this stuff is out of our hands. But I want to talk about the Republican reaction to this. Let's do it.

So there's a few categories of Republican reaction. There's a bunch of Republican politicians, particularly those who were in the hearing on Thursday, who were saying that they do not believe that that Comey perjured himself. So their defense of Trump basically rests on you have the Paul Ryan. He's new to this. Give him time. Unbelievable.

You know, anyone can accidentally obstruct justice. It happens all the time. Or or there's no obstruction case there because they're all lawyers and they've all decided that there's no obstruction. Right. Or there's no obstruction case there because they're all lawyers and they've all decided that there's no obstruction, right? Lindsey Graham did have a funny comment on Sunday. Oh, yeah.

In which she said, Trump can't collude with his own government. What makes you think he can collude with the Russians? He also said, you may be the first president in history to go down because you can't stop inappropriate talking about an investigation that if you're just quiet would clear you. Right. So there's, as usual, there's a lot of Republicans who know that either this guy is guilty of wrongdoing or some legal thing, or at least think that. But of course, we're not going to say anything because they just they got to get the tax cuts. Then there's the category of Republicans, the Republican media, the fucking lunatics who are just starting to churn up the conspiracy theory. Right right so I thought Jeremy Peters had a really good

New York Times story yesterday I believe about how Pizzagate asshole I forget what his name is tweeted that Comey said under oath that Trump never asked him to halt any investigation complete lie he completely fabricated

an interpretation of a quote that made no sense and then all of a sudden it's on Fox News and it's everywhere else. It became Fox News commentary, a Hannity rant,

a Breitbart story, a Rush Limbaugh monologue. Rush Limbaugh. I mean, this is how they launder lies. Friends, call me.

Oxycontin. And Alex Jones Alex Jones Who will be featured on Megyn Kelly's show Said it was Comey who committed perjury Actually Let's talk about that Alex Jones interviewed by Megyn Kelly Will air next Sunday

Don't watch it I mean so there's a lot of back and forth today About shame on NBC For giving Alex Jones a platform. And it is true that Alex Jones on Megyn Kelly will be the biggest platform Alex Jones has ever received. Once again, Alex Jones is a 9-11 truther. Alex Jones believes that the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown was fake? Was it a false flag operation? Which has led to threats. I mean, someone went to jail this week for, a woman from Florida, I believe, went to jail this week for threatening the parent of a child who died at Sandy Hook. Like, this is an ongoing crisis for the people in Newtown.

As injustice. And look, I get that, like, Megyn Kelly, I saw the clip, and she's like, you know, and she goes after him, well, you're a conspiracy theorist. How could you do that? How could you say that kind of stuff? But, like, even beyond whether he should or shouldn't be on NBC,

like, I think we should talk about every week, a couple million people around this country tune in to Alex Jones, and they go to his website, and he says this kind of stuff. Like, we wonder how public opinion is being formed and why there's partisanship and why politics are broken, blah, blah, blah.

Like, that's a big fucking reason. It was also, especially when the conventional wisdom is that the press is liberal. And meanwhile, Megyn Kelly is getting, trying to whitewash all the disgusting things she did at Fox for years and years. She does this embarrassing interview with Putin where he walks all over her. And now they're like, well, what can we do to one up this in terms of humiliating the network? Let's have Alex Jones on like a literal crazy person. This is similar. Right. Scott Pelley interviewed another right wing nut, actually a lesser of a lesser variety. And again, there's somebody who, you know, was pushing Pizzagate, a conspiracy theorist, you know, a liar and a fraud. And again, like it's it's it's like, why are you inviting these people into the marketplace of ideas? Like these are not people that are on the level. They're not there to have the paranoid delusions of their audience.

These are not people you can convince and expose to the truth. You can't win the argument. So then what exactly is your goal here? Then you say, okay, well, you're not trying to convince him of something. You're trying to demonstrate why these ideas are wrong, as if his audience can be compelled to watch Megyn Kelly and discover that his audience is somehow can be compelled to watch megan kelly and discover that alex jones is is incorrect about things and then the final reason is oh it's so fucking interesting isn't it fascinating fascinating how this person could believe this i'm not interested you know i just also think you should have some respect for your

own audience and like you shouldn't put an individual and and views in front of them that you know are totally wrong the individual involved is like like an abhorrent person who lies for a living to hawk, you know, crazy brain supplements or whatever bullshit and survival packs. I mean, these are bad people doing this for commercial reasons. Meanwhile, no one on the right in the media is exposing their audiences to very smart, popular people on the left with huge audiences. It's not happening. You're talking about the show?

Why won't you let it out? I mean, even the Democratic people on Fox are like, they struggle to find, you know, they have a few token liberals here and there that aren't really like, they don't have big followings, you know? So it's like, they're not doing that on their side at all. And also, by the way, even like, for even like like for whatever reason, the whatever the mainstream media, right, the NBC's of the world, they find people all the way to the right. Interesting, right. Worthy of being talked about. Fascinating. Alex Jones, whatever the other guy is that Scott Pelley talked to his name, I won't say. But they never bring on a person of equivalence on the left. Right.

Those people are never interesting people that have been like legitimate people to the left uh or where bernie sanders is that those people don't rise to the level of being being worth talking you don't hear them talking to like the young turks yeah amy goodman vilify them i mean these people do not deserve to be equivalent they're not these are not equivalent to alex jones they're not saying that at all but like you know no i know i know but it's just like they're somehow somehow the the range of discourse does not extend past Bernie Sanders. Another story like that, the New York Daily News had a story on Robert Mercer, billionaire GOP donor, Trump supporter, who funds millions of Twitter bots who follow Trump and help spread fake news. They make up 15 million of Trump's 30 million Twitter followers are these bots.

Jane Mayer did an incredible story. She wrote a book called Dark Money that people should read. are these bots? Jane Mayer did an incredible story. She wrote a book called Dark Money that people should read, and she also wrote a big piece on the Mercers. And their gateway drug to the right wing was just believing all the conspiracy theories about the Clintons, like believes that there's a kill list, like all the craziest shit that's out there.

And this guy basically bought and sold the Trump campaign. I believe in a conspiracy theory that Tommy has some sort of financial stake in Jane Mayer's book because he mentions it all the time. It's really good. We should probably get her on. It's a book I read recently. That's my bias. I don't read many books.

When I read one book, I get excited about it, too. All right, so really quickly, what's up next on the Comey stuff? Sessions and Rosenstein testify. Rosenstein's testifying in front of judiciary about appropriations. Sessions was supposed to. We canceled it, sent Rosenstein and said, Sessions is testifying in public tomorrow before the Senate Intel Committee.

I mean, who knows what the fuck he'll say. It's like, lie behind closed doors, lie in public, whatever. Mueller has hired one of the best, maybe the best criminal lawyer in America to staff up his team. So that tells you where Mueller's going, possibly. Yeah, though, did people expect him to go to LegalZoom.com? That's what Trump did to find his lawyers.

Isn't that kind of the thing you do when you're indicting the president, maybe? Trump was in a car out of Trump Tower and a bus passed by with a thing on the back that said, in Spanish, do you need a lawyer? Trump went the Better Call Saul route. Michael Cohen was on that bus. He got off and he got hired. What's his name? McAdowitz. Actually, his name was McCann, and he changed it to seem like a Jewish lawyer.

And, of course, we expect the unstoppable momentum from Infrastructure Week to continue this week as well. Actually, you know, the— Everywhere you look, bridges are being built. Our whole way here, actually, we were on a freshly paved road. It was like driving on glass. It was magnificent. All right, I want to talk about the left. In the UK last week.

I want to talk about the left. That's what I want to talk about. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party gained 29 seats, increased Labour's vote share by more than any leader since 1945, relying mostly on young and some new voters. Theresa May did not get a majority. She was the one who called the election early to do this. Great job, Theresa May. Great job, Theresa May.

Good strategy. Virtually nobody predicted this. Obviously, labor did not win, but no one predicted they would do as well as they did, or at least most people didn't. In France, Macron, more centrist. Someone on Twitter said we did not, someone from France said we're not pronouncing that very well, so I'm trying. You whiffed pretty hard

right there. It's like Macron. Okay, that's good. Macron. Obviously much more centrist than Corbyn, but won a massive majority, legislative majority in yesterday's elections. So is there anything we can learn from these very different candidates who both beat right and far right challengers?

I think it's very, very hard to both figure out what happened from afar and then apply that here. I mean, France, for example, is such a novel case where you had like a pseudo-Nazi on the right and you had the most unpopular president in history on the far left in Hollande. And then you had Macron, who basically invented this party a year ago and sort of drove down the center in the UK. It's hard for me to tell. I mean, people are saying reporting that Corbyn did a lot better in terms of his campaigning and seemed like a real person out there. So maybe there's an authenticity argument. But clearly, Theresa May made a huge mistake in calling this election and voters punished her for it.

So I'm very skeptical that we can take a bunch of lessons from this. It is interesting, though, that the unstoppable momentum of Steve Bannon and the Brexit movement and the far-right nationalists, that was a total bullshit media-created sensation. Or the fact that Donald Trump won and Brexit won has scared the shit out of people and they realized this wasn't a game. Yeah, could be all those. I will say there's obviously plenty of very legitimate arguments over Corbyn's past position statements, foreign policy, who is a person. But just to try to understand why he won this election, he had a very narrow message that he repeated over and over again. It was a campaign against austerity politics, against cuts to health, infrastructure, education.

He promised to spend more on health, schools, education, elderly. He promised tax increases on rich, big corporations. He was comfortable and sincere. She was a little more robotic as a candidate. He was comfortable and sincere. She was a little more robotic as a candidate. Macron, much more of his interest in corporate than Corbyn, but also campaigned as this anti-establishment outsider. Both of them broke from their parties.

Macron had a new party. He invented his party. Corbyn, very much on the outs with labor. So it is this sort of worldwide trend in a lot of these Western democracies where as these sort of populist, authoritarian, ethno-nationalist movements rise, one way to beat them is to come from not just the left but come from a populist stance, be an outsider, be anti-establishment, say that you're a little bit different than your party. Right? Like there are some commonalities that we're finding there. And one reason why Sanders did so well here. Yeah. You know, I don't want to, it's, I don't want to draw lessons from, you know, Jeremy Corbyn picking up seats. Like, what does that mean for

Wisconsin? Like, I have no idea, but I will say that I would say people should go, there was an ad that they use and their sort of closing argument ad from labor was excellent. It was called We Demand. And it was really well done. It was ordinary people to camera talking about what they care about and why they're voting for labor. And it was simple and it was effective. And it wasn't afraid to say we're going to spend more on school. We're going to spend more on health care. We're going to spend more on school.

We're going to spend more on health care. It embraced the kind of politics that a lot of Democrats in the U.S. have been afraid of for a long time. So I want to talk about this People's Summit that Bernie spoke at this weekend. But one of the people at that summit, who's the executive director of Progressive Maryland, and this person was quoted in the New York Times story we're going to talk about, said, quote, it didn't seem like Corbyn was talking about how bad May was or how stupid those Brexit voters were. They talked about ideas. Democrats focus too much on personality. I think that's a very fair criticism.

I think that there is a lot of talk about personality. And we do that here, too, because everything's a story and it's interesting to talk about characters. And there's not a lot of focus on who's talking about what issues. And I think like that ad that you're just talking about that focused that campaign focused exclusively on issues and not on like Jeremy Corbyn's personality. It's a different situation. It's an easy critique, right? Democrats, they're not talking enough about a positive vision. We make that critique all the time. It's really hard when we see what gets covered. We just did it. We had to spend a whole bunch of time on the Comey hearing.

And we should. This is a rare moment where personality is driving our national decline. What are we supposed to do? When the president has a personality disorder, personality is pretty our national decline like what are we supposed to do there's a president when the president has a personality disorder personality is pretty important i know but i i am skeptical that the individual quoted in that story was such a close observer of the uk election look i know i know i appreciate that you're we're just having a conversation so it's great but like meanwhile you're right like this week, Trump is going to roll back all the changes Obama made with, backseat to Comey hearing in Russia and all this other stuff. Like I that bothers me. It worries me. I worry about losing focus.

That said, I do think some of these things are just really important. Yeah, I agree, too. I think that but I think the central challenge for Democrats is not as much of an ideological challenge as it is how do you talk about your agenda, your positive agenda, in a way that breaks through in a world that is driven by personality because we have a president with a personality disorder, as you just said. That, to me, is the central conundrum of going into 18. And so I don't – I mean, so Jonathan Martin and I think Alex Burns wrote this New York Times piece yesterday. The base wants it all. The party wants to win. I have plenty of problems with the headline. First of all, it's a great story.

I have plenty of problems with the headline. Because it's like, I think the base wants to win pretty badly. And also, what's the base? Right. And I think the party probably wants it all. What a boring story. The base and the party want the same thing. What a boring story. The base and the party want the same thing.

Never write that story. I think there's also, first of all, and Nate Silver pointed this out, there's a huge confusion about who the base is in the Democratic Party. Yeah.

Because this story assumes the base is the people who voted for Bernie. That pisses off the Hillary people, understandably. Well, a huge part of the base of the Democratic Party is African American voters

and Latino voters and women, right? And so that's a huge part of the base of the Democratic Party is African-American voters and Latino voters and women, right? And so that's a big part of it, too. Yes. But anyway, so Bernie speaks at this conference. Bernie says, you know, the Democratic Party must finally understand which side it's on. I think that's fair. The story gets into Ossoff, right? Ossoff is campaigning in wealthy suburbs of Atlanta with tons of Republicans and moderates.

And so in this campaign, he's taken position. He said no to raising income taxes. He's opposed single payer. He said he hasn't yet thought about whether he'll vote for Pelosi. What do you think about that? I mean, this is why I'm wary of like all these discussions about nationalizing all these races. Like, yes, we should know we stand for as a party. Yes, I am probably more liberal than the consensus in the left.

And I would love to push for a single payer. And I would love to just, you know, talk more about progressive things that I think for years and years and years on issues like gay marriage, people were told, look, that's a politically unviable position. We shouldn't push for that. And you know know what everyone was wrong because it turned out great um but i also think that like the message the lesson from 2016 was not washington should dictate to local races about what those candidates should think i think we got to let them feel out their constituents and decide what they're going to run on like yes i wish asaf leaned a little more left on some of these issues that you just mentioned. But like, I would rather have him win than his opponent. I don't know.

Yeah. You know, I think we get into this conversation as like, should, you know, what should the Democratic Party as a whole stand for? And then what should people like Ossoff be for? And I don't think they're the same conversation. I think what Tom is saying is right. Like, do I believe that the Democratic consensus

needs to move to the left on some issues? Yes. Do I believe we need to have elegant, simpler, bolder positions that may not be achievable in one or two or five elections and embrace those things and fight for those things, even if they're impractical? Yes. Does that mean that there are not going to be Democrats in more conservative districts that don't divert from that consensus? No, that's what should happen. That's OK. That's how this always works. I think there's no disagreement between what Bernie Sanders wants, what Elizabeth Warren wants, and what John Ossoff wants, right? That there's always going to be a kind of bell

curve of positions. And we're just trying right now to sort of give people a foundation to run on and decide where what they stick with and what they don't. And I and my view is just we need to have that be more in the vein of a working class, simple, big economic populist message. I also think there's an issue now where reporters still see view the Democratic Party through the prism of left, moderate, right, you know? And I actually think when you look at all these districts right now, there's interesting cleavages within the party, right? You have a bunch of districts that are high-income liberals and high-income Republicans, moderates, who are really turned off by Trump. These are like high-information voters. They consume news like we do.

These are a lot of the districts that we're looking for in 2018, right? Which are districts that Republicans are sitting in that Hillary won. Okay. And for those districts, you do think you might have a hard time becoming super populist in those districts because a lot of the people there are high income, right? Now, there are exceptions to this. Daryl Issa, one of his Democratic primary opponents, Doug Applegate, who ran against him last time. There's a primary out there. Mike Levin's running, too. But Doug Applegate's for single payer in Darrell Issa's very liberal district.

He's on the roof. Very Republican district. So he's on the roof. He's hiding on the roof. Darrell Issa's hiding from single payer on the roof, smoking a cig. And then I think there's a bunch of districts where there's a bunch of working class whites, working class minorities as well. And those districts are the Obama Trump districts, right? Voted for Obama twice, but then voted for Trump. And those people are just struggling to hang on. Those districts, I think a Democratic candidate

should be quite populist. Right. And like, I do think they'll find I just it's like, yes, Democrats, we need to fix our message. We're a party with a lot of problems right now. But it is also the fact that Donald Trump is the one thing that unites everyone and will it is animating all the energy you're seeing out in the states and in the field. And ultimately, the message is going to be a lot about stopping Donald Trump, just as in 2006. It was like an anti Bush anti war message. And I think that's going to be OK. We need to figure out our positive message and our platform. But like, it's not the worst thing if the message in 2018 is we need to get Donald Trump out of office. I think that will get a lot of people out. Yeah. I mean, just you look at health care and you look at how the party has moved on health care, but it hasn't moved as a monolith. You know, you have people like Kamala Harris talking about how they want to be for single payer and with us. right? Mention that to us. Then we talked to Chris Murphy, and he's like, I actually think there should be access to Medicare for all, but it should be more like

a public option. And then you have people like John Ostaf, who are in a kind of more suburban Republican district, who aren't yet ready to come out for universal single-payer healthcare. And I think that's okay. I mean, that's the debate we're going to have, the debate. That debate is going to animate the party and give people a range of positions to take. But that consensus is shifting. I think that saying Donald Trump's got to get out of there might be enough, but it also might not. And so, therefore, come up with a platform and talk about it every single day. I'm not saying one or the other.

No, I know. No way. I just think we lean a little bit more towards because it's easy to hit Trump all the time. It's just one thing to keep in mind. Absolutely. And, you know, people have tweeted this. We've said this a lot, right? Which is Democrats need a better vision. Democrats need

a better story to tell. And I think that's something that we're talking about all the time, but like how we can help figure that out at Crooked Media, right? We're going to start talking to people and figure out how we can sort of... Just people on the street in West Hollywood. Yep. We're just going to find out what they think.

We think the Beverly Center is ugly. Can that be part of it? We think Kali Relic Place is better than regular... I didn't get into the Soho House, help me. Why have they been painting the Beverly Center for five years? Okay, healthcare. Big problems. Mitch McConnell and not just Mitch McConnell, but the so-called moderates,

I hate calling them that because except for Susan Collins, none of them are fucking moderate, in the Senate are getting closer. The bill is looking way too much like the House bill. Basically, the way they got the moderates on board or they're getting the moderates on board is that they're saying, OK, the House bill was going to phase out the Medicaid expansion in 2020. We'll give you a seven year window. Same cuts, same level of cuts. We're just going to take it longer. And then all of a sudden, Rob Portman and Shelley Capito and all these other people are like, sure, fine.

They're also doing it behind closed doors. So they're supposed to be done with a draft of the bill tonight, Monday night, and a Republican staffer just said to Axios on why they're not releasing it, we're not stupid. Yes, you are. You said that. Claire McCaskill had a great exchange in the Senate Finance Committee last week with Orrin Hatch, who had no fucking idea what he just stepped into. She is great at that. She's awesome.

And she said, why won't we have a hearing? This is ridiculous. She's like, I know that ACA was before my time, but I know that it was passed in a way that was two parts and stuff like that. But we still accepted dozens of Republican amendments. We had 100 hearings. This is ridiculous. And then you just see Orrin Hatch's staffer next to him whispering in his ear. You can kind of Republican amendments. We had a hundred hearings. This is ridiculous. And then you just see like Orrin Hatch's staffer next to him, like whispering in his ear.

You can kind of hear it. She's like, the talking point is to say that you're happy to have their input. Just say that you're going to talk to them about it. And you want to make sure that they understand what's in the bill. And that's really important. That everybody has a chance to talk about the bill. So here's the thing.

What should the rest of the Senate Democrats be doing? I feel like this is like fucking defcon one right here i used it right it's not defcon five it's defcon one yeah that you know so so you're right on two scores there no no i think you're right i saw you do tweet about this and it's it's what what does it take guys they're not there there's a big they're gonna pass a health care bill without a hearing. Maybe stop Senate business. I think you're totally right about that. Well, they said today that the volume of the volume of calls to the Senate this morning has been light over the weekend.

It's been light. And so we people really my thing is, if you're part of the resistance, if you don't like Donald Trump, if you've made phone calls or marched, if you've gone to the Women's March, if you've gone to the Science March, if you've talked about Russia, like, if you've done any of those things, do this. Get involved in the healthcare fight, because this, more than anything else that we've seen so far, is going to affect people and possibly cost people their lives. And this is a rare moment where there really are wavering senators who are up for re-election, who are making decisions right now, not only just on the binary of will they support it or not, but what they demand as part of their support.

And so it really is an all hands on deck moment for health care. Yeah. And there's no silver lining here. The only sort of good news, I guess, is that I think it has to get scored by the CBO before they're allowed to vote. Right. So we will have some time, and we should start today, to talk about exactly what the cost of this bill will be,

how many millions, tens of millions of people it will hurt before there's another vote. And they need to be scared to death that this will be a career-ending vote, period. Our friends at Indivisible have a new website called TrumpCare10.org. And TrumpCare10 are the 10 states where there's senators who could possibly be persuaded. And there's a whole toolkit on there on how to call them, what to do, and all that kind of stuff. So go there if you want to have help. I also – I had tweeted.

It's my pinned tweet. Not just the Senate offices that you can call of wavering senators, but their healthcare staffers. They work for you. They should answer questions about the bill. They know the policy. Blow up their spot. Yeah. You'll get the front desk, but then, you know, hopefully you can talk to them.

And Ben Wickler from MoveOn made a good point, too. If you want to get through, though, just pretend you're a lobbyist. Hey, yeah, this is from BLT, confirming a reservation for you and Pharma. Ben Wickler from MoveOn, our friend from MoveOn, did make a good point, which is don't call Senate staffers or Senate offices if they're not your senators. Yeah. Because they do need to hear from constituents. They can also see your area code. So you're not fooling anyone.

Be nice. Be polite. Be very polite. Speak respectfully about the issues. Do not harass these people. But you should call your own senators. And if you live in a state with Democratic senators senators call them and ask them what they're doing to stop this are they going to stop senate business are they going to sit there and obstruct

are they going to filibuster what are they going to do and i think we should get something we have not heard a lot from senate democrats aside from what mccaskill did last week about like what they're planning on doing to stop this and i expect we'll hear a lot more about it this week. But you know, Senate Democrats, they need to step up right now. Okay, when we come back, we will have one of the co-hosts of Vox's The Weeds and a healthcare expert, Sarah Cliff. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. show coming your way. With us on Pod Save America today, Vox's senior policy correspondent and co-host of the podcast, The Weeds, Sarah Cliff. Sarah, welcome to Pod Save America. Hey, guys. So we got a lot of healthcare stuff going on, as you've noticed.

We do. Everyone's been watching Comey, but there's actually been a lot of Obamacare news lately. Yes. So we just saw on Twitter that the Republicans plan to send the bill right to the CBO before releasing it to the public, which is just outstanding. What are your guesses on how the Cbo might score this relative to the house obviously you don't know all the specifics in the bill but like ballpark do you think it's still going to be around the same number of uninsured or or what do you think it's really hard to tell right now so i mean generally the sense we've gotten from the Senate is they want to reduce some of the coverage loss. But like, I don't know, like, my guess is that, you know, the HCA would cost 23 million people to lose coverage, maybe the Senate versions more like 15 million. And I don't know if you celebrate that as a win if you're Senate Republicans, like you lowered the number, but it's also really significant coverage loss. And I think one of the really big developments that happened last week was we saw a few a few senators who have been really strong proponents of Medicaid expansion suddenly saying they're open to ending Medicaid expansion.

And that part is responsible for causing 14 million people to lose coverage. So if that is going to be part of the Senate plan as well, then you can definitely expect some pretty big coverage loss numbers. So you have a piece out today about, you know, Obamacare is in real danger. And you say it's not just from what's happening in D.C. with the repeal effort, but also what's going on throughout the country with a lot of insurers exiting the markets. There's now 38,000 Obamacare enrollees who don't have an insurance option. So say this was a Democratic president or a Republican president who didn't want Obamacare to collapse. What could you do to actually fix that problem right now?

I mean, one is just bringing a lot more stability to the marketplace, like ensuring telling insurance companies like, yes, this law is going to stick around. Yes, we're going to keep supporting it. You know, even if let's say you're a Republican president who wants to repeal the law, you could be saying, you know, yes, we're working on this at Congress, but as long as it's the law, we support it. And you really seen the complete opposite in the Trump administration. One of the things that's become a key battleground, it sounds a little wonky, but it's these things called cost sharing reduction payments, which is essentially this $8 billion fund to help make copays and deductibles lower for low income people. And the Trump administration has just

been like super, like I'd say aggressively ambiguous about whether it'll continue paying those subsidies. And whenever I talk to someone in an insurance company, like this is their number one gripe. Like they need to know if this $8 million fund is going to be around next year so they can set their premiums accordingly. And we don't even know, the Trump administration hasn't said if they're going to make this month's payment or not. This is because these payments are being challenged in court right now. So I think that's one thing you could immediately do that would make the marketplaces work a lot better is say, yes, we are paying as long as this is part of the law, as long as this legal challenge is pending and hasn't been decided, like we are going to make those payments. And

it has been the complete opposite from the White House. Sarah, speaking of aggressively ambiguous, nothing sounds weaker than making an argument or a complaint about process. But in this case, the process of writing this bill and the way it's happening behind closed doors is so unusual that I really do think it's a bigger deal that people should understand better and talk about. Can you can you describe for us what's actually happening, how it's a departure from not just previous Obamacare efforts, but other the general regular order of the legislative process? Yeah, I mean, so much of it is a departure at this point. It's a lot to summarize. So I was I mean, I covered the 2009 2010 effort. So I was I mean, I covered the 2009 2010 effort. And, you know, I know it's one that Republicans often criticize for being too secretive and, you know, too rushed. But if you go back and look at

it, it was much longer and much more deliberative than what we're seeing now is actually because I'd seen that article you guys were talking about earlier that the Senate is planning to send this bill to the CBO and then send it straight to a House vote or send it straight to a floor vote in the Senate. And that's just the complete opposite of what happened in the Senate last time. Last time, the Senate Finance Committee, they had their longest markup ever marking up the Affordable Care Act. I think it took about eight days and everyone was very bedraggled by the end of that experience. The Senate had a 25-day floor debate over the Affordable Care Act before it passed on Christmas Eve 2009. Right now, Mitch McConnell has outlined a timeline where they will vote on their health

care bill, which we haven't seen yet, 18 days from now, before the July 4th recess. So it's much, much faster. And it's not in the Senate, you know, it's not moving through normal committee process. Like, as you guys know, usually the way laws get made is that it starts in a committee, the committee votes on it, sends it to the floor. Right now, you essentially have this working group of senators hammering out the details. You have most of the discussions are happening at private Senate lunches, at private meetings on the Capitol. You know, I think it is fair to say one of the reasons they don't want a lot of light on this proposal is they've seen the House go through this.

And once it came out, everyone criticized it. But you can only keep it secret for for so long. Right. Like at some point you have to have a public bill that the Senate is going to vote on and say, like, yes, we want to make this law. So it's super I mean, everything feels super different. The House voting without a CBO score, that's another huge departure that, you know, I think Republicans would have been furious at if Democrats had tried to move forward on the Affordable Care Act this way. But, you know, they were fine taking a floor vote, not knowing how many people this would cover and how much it would cost. So one thing one thing that's sort of sad to realize here is, like, obviously, there's an incredible amount of hypocrisy on the part of McConnell and Ryan, who talks so long, talks so long and often about how the Obamacare process was ramming this bill down our throats and all the rest. But one thing that's really hard to take here is that it does seem like this kind of a closed door strategy

might be effective. They've avoided scrutiny. We were just talking about this before we spoke to you that call volume is down. Are we learning something pretty dark here about the way our democratic process is going to function in the future? Is writing a bill behind closed doors and sort of setting aside the committee process altogether, is it working? So I think it works to a point, right? Like, I think that is actually, I think like you're saying, they learned a lesson from the House, where I think a lot of people were actually caught quite off guard when they got the votes together in May, that you had seen like this real groundswell of activity

in March around the first vote. And then things got kind of quiet. I think a lot of, you know, progressive activists I've talked to since like felt like they dropped the ball a little bit in May because they didn't get people mobilized enough. It just wasn't super on their radar. And I think you could see, you know, you've seen really groups like Indivisible, Town Hall Project trying to get people kind of mobilized. And it's harder to do when it doesn't actually look like there's much happening in the Senate. So I will say, you know, it might be a successful strategy

to pass a health care bill. But like at the end of the day, you're stuck with a really bad health care bill. Like you you are avoiding scrutiny because, you know, it's not going to be popular. And like that fact doesn't change. Like you can't avoid the fact millions of people are going to lose health insurance, that conservative health policy experts think this is a bad way to reform the health care system, that like every doctor and hospital group, you know, opposes your bill. Like those are things no amount of secrecy can really change. So I think it like gets you to the point of maybe passing a law.

But eventually you have to deal with the consequences of that law, right? Like, like, what is your what is your end goal here? That's not if the goal is just pass something, sure, that's fine. But if the goal is like, pass a bill that will get you, you know, positive remarks and get you reelected, it doesn't seem like a surefire strategy towards the long term future. I believe the goal is allow space for tax cuts for billionaires, but point well taken. term future. I believe the goal is allow space for tax cuts for billionaires, but point well taken. So it seems like we'll have a CBO score at some point, and there will be at least a short period of time between the bill being public and there being a vote. Do you believe that in that length of time, some of these wavering Republicans can be moved by public opposition? Or do you see this

as increasingly sort of an inevitable outcome of a passage to the Senate? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a hard thing to predict right now. Like, I can give you both sides of it. You know, on the one hand, I think one of the things I learned from the House process was how, how much the moderates were not really wedded to their, to their goals. Like, I think you saw a number of moderate Republicans who opposed the American Health Care Act, the House bill to start. And then with like some really tiny concessions,

someone like Fred Upton essentially gets on board and says, you know, my problem has been solved. I think there is a very powerful, you know, desire not to be like the one woman or man standing in the way of Obamacare repeal, like this thing that they've been promising for seven years. So I think the one things I did not think, honestly, you know, a few months ago, the House was going to get to a majority. And I think the thing I got wrong was that people don't really like being in the hot seat. They like don't like holding up this process and that they will make concessions to get out of the hot seat. But I don't know what a backlash, how effective it can

be, because I think we saw a somewhat muted backlash around the House vote. And I think progressive activists are learning from that. So I think it's a really it's an open question to me right now, kind of how how those calls and protests factor in. So it seems like these Senate Republicans and some of these moderates want the are pushing for the seven year phase out of the Medicaid expansion so they can delay the pain for themselves electorally. But what what's the world look like, like a year after a Trumpcare bill passes? Let's say it's something that's somewhat close to the House, even if they get the Medicaid expansion phase out in, like, what things will people notice in the either in the individual market or otherwise, over like the next few years, if something if a bill like this is passed? Yeah, so you'll see like the private market years, if a bill like this is passed? Yeah.

So you'll see like the private market, the private insurance market will change very, very quickly. Older people, old people who are older and lower income will see their premiums go up. People who are younger and higher income will see their premiums go down. There are generally more older and lower income people in the marketplaces. So you probably see more people who are having their premiums go up. But maybe you see some young, healthy people joining the marketplace who had sat it out before. So that's one pretty immediate change. Republican bill, and it sounds like the Senate bill, want to move to a much smaller budget for Medicaid. And that would be partially through ending the expansion, but also just lowering Medicaid financing overall. So I think even before the expansion ends, you could just see

some general cuts to Medicaid. It's hard to game out like what exactly they look like. But states are going to be told, you know, right now states are told the federal government has an open ended commitment to cover the people you have on Medicaid now states are told the federal government has an open ended commitment to cover the people you have on Medicaid under the Republican bill. They would say, you know, you have X number of dollars per person and like best of luck with that pot of money we're giving you. And so I think you'd see some states making different decisions about who they want to cover. So I think you'd really see changes quickly. And then, like you said, whenever Medicaid expansion phases out, that's when you hit a real cliff and see a lot of people losing coverage. Terrible. In the CBO score, the 24 million or 23 million that would lose coverage,

that's in the private system and that's the Medicaid expansion. Is some portion of that made up of people they assume will no longer be covered through Medicaid because of the cuts? Yes. Yeah. 14 million would lose Medicaid coverage over the next decade. Sarah, President Trump bragged to his cabinet today that they've gotten more done in this period of time than essentially any other president in history. Do you think that's an accurate assessment? That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I mean, you've seen there's a lot of appearance of doing things, right? Like there's a lot like there was a this is the first time I mean, I've been here in D.C.

covering Washington for seven years now. This is the first time I've seen a Rose Garden ceremony for a law that passed the House. So I think you see like a lot of appearance. Usually you save those until I'm sure, as you guys know, until you actually finish passing the law and the president signs it. So I think there is like a lot of appearance of things happening. Like it feels very busy. It feels like a lot is happening. If you look at actual laws making it through Congress, I think the evidence is scant to suggest this has been an especially productive time for lawmaking. Sarah, one last question. I think last week you wrote about Nevada moving towards a Medicaid for all system, possibly. Would Trumpcare passing

jeopardize that, or how would that work? And could you explain a little bit about what that program might look like since that could be the future of universal health care? Yeah. So the Nevada program is super interesting to me. This is a bill that passed their legislature. We're still waiting to see if the governor, who's a moderate Republican, is going to sign it. But this would essentially let anybody buy Medicaid coverage. It doesn't matter how much you earn, where you live in Nevada. Everyone who lives there would be able to buy into the public program,

which is essentially the public option that a lot of progressives really supported in the ACA debate, but eventually was dropped from the bill. Joe Lieberman. Sorry, come on, I just came out of mad. His legacy in healthcare. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

No, no, it's fine. More Joe Lieberman shouting the better. So one of the and one of the small details I love of this bill is it's being pushed by a legislator there named Mike Sprinkle. And that has given the bill the nickname Sprinkle Care, which I think sounds like like it should come with a cupcake. Yeah, it's fun. In Boston, it's called Jimmy Care. Look at that local joke.

I'm sorry. That's good. So, yes, Sprinkle Care is really interesting to me because it kind of shows like a state experimenting with a way to get to universal coverage that's really different from the kind of single payer efforts that are going on right now in California and in New York. It's happening in kind of a more moderate state. If Trumpcare does pass, I think that would hugely change the context in which SprinkleCare was being implemented. I think one of the things the bill sponsor likes about it is it would give people, you know, if Medicaid expansion

is eliminated, it would give people a way to buy into Medicaid expansion. But, you know, you're asking people who aren't earning a lot of money, like maybe $15,000 a year or so, to be able to cough up the money for whatever their Medicaid premium costs. So it would definitely be a very it works way better if you keep Medicaid funding steady than if you know, between the Trump budget and HCA, we're looking at like $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade. It's really hard to keep running a public program with those kind of cuts in place. Well, perhaps the senator from Nevada that's up in 2018, Dean Hiller, will pay attention to this then. Perhaps. Perhaps he'll be on Sprinkle Care.

Exactly. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. And please come back soon yeah thanks for having me all right take care everyone go uh subscribe to the weeds great podcast agree all right take care thanks don't go anywhere this is pod save america and there's more on the way on the pod with us the host host of Crooked Media's Pod Save the People, DeRay McKesson. DeRay, welcome. Hey guys, good to talk to you. Haven't talked to you in a while, but I'm excited to be on today. You're in Montreal today? I'm in Montreal, so I met IFEX25, an international conference of activists and organizers who

are dedicated to free speech and free expression. So first time in Montreal, beautiful city. And I'll be back in Baltimore later tonight. Nice. They put gravy on the French fries. They do. They have maple syrup dressing for the salad. I was like, wow, I've never heard of maple syrup dressing for salad.

That's exciting. Maybe we should take a trip to Montreal. A little live show there. Pate Montreal. So, DeRay, you have a huge interview this week. Katy Perry, right? I do. So, Katy, the interview with Katy Perry goes up tomorrow when the pie goes up, but we recorded it over the weekend and it was live streamed

because Katy's album just launched and one of the things she's doing is that she had a house sort of rigged like Big Brother for four days. It's actually still rigged like that. And there have been a whole host of people coming to talk to her, coming to have dinner, coming to interview her. And I was one of many people who went to the house over the weekend. Oh, okay. I saw the video clip on Twitter, and I was like, what is that room?

And they're just sitting across from each other on a couch. What's happening there? Futuristic apartment. Yeah, it's the confessional in the house. Right after me, they were doing a cooking thing with Roy Choi. We couldn't do it in the living room because the living room is attached to the kitchen.

A good conversation. Probably not to get to the bottom of what's going on in that house. So what made you want to talk to Katie? You know, so I met Katie about a year-ish ago. I met her around DNC time. We both have a mutual friend that we're really close to, Cleo Wade, one of my best

friends, and also one of Katie's. So I've been on Katie a lot since then. We've talked, texted, been in touch, and when I knew I was going to actually do the pod, I texted her like, Kate, I'd love to have you on. I'm interested to hear you talk about how you consider yourself an activist, right? She did a lot for Hillary.

She was out there on the Obama campaign. I'm just fascinated by that. I'm generally interested in artists who consider themselves activists, which is why John Legend was on the pod, too. So we talk about a range of things, from, you know, it opens with this conversation about why Hillary, and then about her religious upbringing, talk about race, talk about what comes next,

how she's learning and growing. So the long conversation, it was unfortunate that only two minutes of the conversation got clipped from the livestream, and then got, like, plastered on Twitter, and that that's all the people have been responding to because we had such a full conversation you know she's not talked about her how she identifies as an activist or really about race before um so i'm i was excited to have that but you know the thing about the house this weekend is that for this week even

is that a ton of people came so amanda field was was there last night, and I don't know if you saw, but Amanda Seale sort of pushed Caitlyn Jenner on some issues, and Cleo Wade, Diara from HRC's campaign. A lot of people came through the house. Van Jones, Gordon Ramsey, Roy Choi. I got to tell you, the more we talk about the house, the more questions I have. So what was the most surprising thing you learned from Katie? Oh, you know, I didn't know a lot about her upbringing before, but she grew up in a really

religious house, and it was sort of, I just wasn't, I didn't expect it. So I won't give away everything, but she couldn't call, she says this on the interview, she couldn't call the dirt devil, she couldn't call the dirt devil, they had to call it the dirt angel in the the interview, she couldn't call the dirt devil. She couldn't call it dirt devil. They had to call it the dirt angel in the house because they couldn't say the word devil. So it's like a whole lot of things like that she talked about. And then we talk about sort of how she got to like, I kissed a girl and I liked her, right?

Like how did you go from like not being able to say dirt devil to the artist you are today? So that's interesting. And then she had this really fascinating reflection not being able to say dirt devil to the artist you are today. So that's interesting. And then she had this really fascinating reflection on what Hillary did for, like, why Hillary? Why was she so far out there in Hillary? And I had not heard her say that.

And I know a lot of her friends, and we have talked about it since that interview, and they had not heard her process it like that. So that was interesting. She knows, I think, that she has more room to work on with regard to issues of race and equity. But it was interesting to hear her begin to have that conversation. And not only with me, but there were many people in the house who were there before and after me who pushed her on issues. So I learned a lot about her own journey and how she thinks about her platform.

No, I'm excited to hear that because I think, look, this is going to be the, I've spent time with Katie, we've actually hung out with her together, and one of the things that's most interesting is she really has been on this journey since, you know, she blew up in music, you know, she came from this conservative religious household, and she really has been, you know, learning about issues and public policy and activism in real time on a national stage, an international stage. I mean, she's one of the most famous human beings on planet Earth, and she's kind of grown up politically on television, on camera, in her music. So I'm

excited to hear that conversation. Yeah, I think that we actually met because of Katie. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Katie Perry just bringing Crooked Media together. Speaking of which, it's an interesting conversation. It's also fascinating, and like you said, all of you worked with one of the most famous people in the world.

It's a particular issue to see people grow and learn in such a public way. Yeah. I think she's struggling with that, and I think she's frankly struggling with how to talk about her conservative upbringing and still show love for her parents, but also deeply disagree with them, you know? Dre, one of the best parts about your pod, in addition to the serious guests you've been ringing on, is the banter with you and Brittany and Sam. How do you feel about John Lovett stealing Brittany for Love It or Leave It for the Washington, D.C. show?

Does that feel like he overstepped the boundary or are we still cool? I know. I didn't even get a call. You know, I found out on Twitter. Somebody was like, Britney? Wow. Britney, where are you? And I was like, where is Britney?

I texted Britney, like, where are you? And it was like, I guess she's in Love It or Leave It. You know, Britney is incredible. Sam is incredible. And we've been together for a long time. So I'm just pumped that they are able to get their message out and get the message about equity and justice out wherever it can be. They are obviously sort of staples with the news, a part of a party of the people. And I'm sure that many more people will be asking them to talk and to help dream about a better future that's just.

OK, one last question. We before we talked to you, we were talking about health care and how it's going to be crunch time, and Senate Republicans are trying to pass this bill, and they're doing it in the dead of night, and we don't have a lot of time to stop it. Obviously, you're a longtime activist, longtime organizer. What tips do you have for people to sort of get organized and get active to stop this bill over the next couple weeks?

Yeah, so stay informed. So there are a lot of resources out there and I'm sure you've already directed people to some that like, so that you know exactly what you're asking for. You know, we heard from people in Congress that, that people have stopped, people have stopped sort of jamming the phone and they stopped calling because they thought that was over. So keep the pressure on is really big. And then at the local level, press your governors and your state legislatures to see what we can do to offset any changes that might happen. Because what Trump is doing is not only trying to overturn Obamacare, but trying to sabotage it as it is currently being administered.

And that's also really bad. Yeah. All right, man. Have fun in Montreal. We're looking very much forward to the interview that drops tomorrow with Katy Perry. Everyone go download or subscribe to Pod Save the People and you can listen to that interview on Tuesday.

Exciting stuff. Poutine. It's called Poutine. Poutine. Awesome. Alright, man. Take care. See you later. Bye. Okay, guys. That's all the time we have for today. Thanks again to Sarah Cliff and to DeRay for joining us. Do you guys have any parting thoughts?

I want to talk about Reince Priebus. I've given myself until July 4th to get better at this or I'm fired. Once again, the 54th Reince is on the rope story of the last three months. He has so thoroughly emasculated him. Reince just thanked him for the blessing of working for the Trump administration. No one described it as a blessing. We should talk about that Politico had a story today

that Trump is giving Reince Priebus until July 4th to get shit together before he fires him. I don't know what that looks like. What does that look like, getting shit together? It berated him in front of Corey Lewandowski and David Bossies, the guys he has previously fired. Speaking of people who have their shit together.

Man, Reince Priebus, again, I've said this before. I tweeted this during the campaign that Reince Priebus would have to leave politics in the middle of the night with what he could carry. I still continue to believe that that will be true. I was just off by about a year. And I await Reince Priebus' ignominious end because he deserves it. Best of luck, Reince. Pies Save America, signing off.