Pod Save America - “All is not well!”

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

Trump gives his Mission Accomplished speech after a momentary pause in the crisis he started, Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans get ready to vote for a rigged impeachment trial, and the endorsements start piling up in the Democratic primary. Then Senator Elizabeth Warren talks to Jon about the Iran crisis and her campaign strategy in the weeks before Iowa.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, I will talk to Senator Elizabeth Warren. But first, we'll talk about the latest in the standoff with Iran, the developments in Donald Trump's impeachment trial and all the latest 2020 primary news. uh not not you and howley us this is this is the third anniversary of pod save america and i only know that because right before we started recording tommy just ran right into the studio to tell us that it's the third anniversary of pod save america three years ago man i had a brief heart attack like i know howley and i got married in october like i know that but for a second i was like it's hard to keep track of the months yeah i was like i don't know yeah the weather is the same times a flat circle trump's still president i was like fuck no i have that problem too i have that problem too um all right so two quick housekeeping notes

tommy and ben recorded another essential episode of pod save the world this week right after we learned on tuesday that iran had fired missiles on bases housing American soldiers. They talk about Trump's changing rationale for assassinating Soleimani, what Congress can do to stop the war from escalating, and they're joined by Brett McGurk, who led the coalition against ISIS under Obama and Trump. Listen, subscribe, become a worldo, especially now. You won't regret it. And a favor for me, Please subscribe to The Wilderness. Our second season premieres on Monday, January 13th, this Monday.

And you can listen to the trailer and subscribe right now at thewildernesspodcast.com. Go to thewildernesspodcast.com. This season I talk to all kinds of voters, organizers, candidates, and strategists, including one Dan Pfeiffer. And I go to some of the battlegrounds that will decide 2020, looking for a path to victory. So I'm excited for it. I just heard the first couple episodes, and the team, as usual, has done a fantastic job. It sounds great.

It'll make you... Look, there's some tough stuff in the focus group but ultimately it points to the uh it points to the right direction and i think you'll feel more inspired and energized to uh go do something after you listen to it so take it take a listen now if i was previously subscribed to season one of the wilderness do i need to subscribe again uh you might you should just go check because you know when you subscribe to something and, you know, episodes haven't been dropping for a while, you might, Apple might unsubscribe you from it. So you should go. And you should listen to the new trailer.

If for no other reason than at the beginning of the trailer, David Plouffe scares the shit out of everyone. And it's pretty good. I think I said to you that, obviously, for those of us who worked for Plouffe for many, many years, his voice carries weight with us, whether he's telling us how elections are going to go or what we should order for lunch. But so hearing him describe the consequences of a Trump re-election basically had... I was packing my bag to go to a battleground state

as it was happening. It's very alarming. Yeah, I started the trailer very dark, and then by the end you hear people like stacy abrams and heather mcgee and sherrod brown being really uh much more hopeful and optimistic so it's a nice little balance something for everyone no one in politics has known more for their optimism than sherrod brown that's true um dan i believe you have a uh you have something to say about untrumping america i do the book not the concept. The holiday hiatus from bookshilling has come to an end, and we have work to do, trust me.

And so we are announcing today a special promotional giveaway where anyone who pre-orders the book between now and Friday, January 17th,'ll get in the mail a signed poster version of the cover of the book, which says on November 3rd, let's untrump America. So it can remind you about the book, but it can more importantly remind you to vote in this most consequential election. If you're one of the American heroes who pre-ordered the book already and desperately want a poster, do not worry. You are still eligible. If you go to the website, untrummingamerica.com slash promotional giveaway, and you upload your proof of purchase, we will send you a poster. I am signing these, all of them, which I feel very awkward about that anyone will want my signature. And at one point in the discussions, the publisher said to me, you know, we can just auto sign these,

which I was so embarrassed by. I was like, no, if I did that, I would hate myself. You would make fun of me. My wife would make fun of me. So I will be signing all of them individually for those of you who are interested in this. And reminder that a portion of the proceeds from every book pre-ordered, whether that's a hardcover book, a Kindle, an audio book, will be donated to Fair Fight Action, Stacey Abrams' group to protect our voting rights. So there is an additional incentive there.

And I will say, I am behind schedule from where I was at this point last year. A fact that my publisher, who I'm convinced is now more interested in telling me he told me so than selling books, has pointed out to me repeatedly. I feel like this is a Democratic presidential candidate email right before the fundraising deadline. Trust me. This is an actual... A lot of times those emails say, if you do not do X, then we cannot do Y. And it's complete bullshit. This one is not bullshit. We have work to do. Look, we had the holidays. We have potential war with Iran. People have been very busy. I get it. But I'm quite competitive. And I don't like losing elections or even verbal bets with low stakes with my publisher.

Have you considered, um, offering signed headshots? Uh, no, I had, or maybe, maybe a calendar,

12 months of Dan. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just spit mulling here. I thought we'd do some light brainstorming. Anyway, if someone, go buy on trumping America, everyone go buy it. It's going to be a fucking great book and it's going to

teach you uh not only how we can beat donald trump but how to fix our politics it's a fantastic read go buy it how about how about this how about if you don't buy the book i will send you a calendar of 12 months of dan oh that okay well then get to your fucking computer yes you do you do not want that trust me okay news on tuesday night the iranian government retaliated against the united states for last week's assassination of major general qasem soleimani over a dozen ballistic missiles were launched at two bases housing u.s forces in iraq the u.s government has confirmed that there were no casualties and the iranian government has said that this will be the extent of their retaliation.

But before we knew any of this, right after the missiles were falling all around our troops, Donald Trump tweeted the following, all is well. Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties and damages taking place now. So far, so good. Then on Wednesday morning, he gave a speech where he said all Americans should be, quote, grateful and happy. So, Dan, it does seem like Iran wanted to give Trump an off-ramp that he has decided to take, at least for now. Off-ramp is the metaphor

we are using in the last couple days. That's what's all over the news, so we're going with the off-ramp. Dave Weigel actually got the quote of the day from a Democratic member of Congress who told him, quote, you need two crazy leaders to start a war. And fortunately, Iran doesn't have one. Do you think that's a good summary of what happened? And do you think this pause in the crisis can last? I think it's an excellent summary of what has happened. So kudos to you and Michael and Jordan who helped you put it together. And I think that quote, you hate to say it because it's so scary when you think about it. Because whenever you talk about North Korea or Syria or anything

else in a national security context, it's always the chaos factor in it is the unpredictable and irrational nature of the opponent. And at least for one day, Iran behaved very – like this was very irrational. If this is what they wanted was a de-escalation of sorts, they behaved very rationally and specifically. And obviously, lots of risk and danger in firing ballistic missiles. But they sent a symbol at home and abroad that this was responded to and sent a very specific message to the United States that the ball is in your court if you want to take a pause here or de-escalate or whatever the term is. And in that sense, that did work. But Trump is dangerously unpredictable, right? All of the stories about how this decision was made, who he talked to about it, who was influencing him, the

information that he has and where he's getting it from are all deeply concerning that we're one cable segment away from heading back to the brink of war yeah i mean look i'll take it from the trump side and then the iranian side from the trump side it's like you just said um like any rabid consumer of television news who becomes the president of the United States. Trump knows three things about the politics of war. Killing bad guys and terrorists is popular. Blowing things up with rockets and bombs is popular and makes for good television. But getting stuck in an endless war is very unpopular.

So to me, Trump's actions all sort of make sense when you just think about him as, as usual, just this cable news viewer, Fox News fan who becomes president of the United States. And so is he going to do impulsive things like, you know, kill terrorists, even if it has horrible global consequences for the United States and the world? Yes, he's going to do that because he can, you know, he can just get swept up in a rush to war. Is he going to make stupid moves and send rockets here? And that, yeah, of course he's going to do that because that's what, you know, cable news tells you is

strong and good and all that bullshit. But he also knows, and I think this has been true from the beginning of the presidency, he knows in the back of his mind, because he spent so much time you know yelling about george bush in the iraq war he knows that it is at the very least unpopular to get stuck in an endless war and so he's constantly going to do these things in foreign policy that don't make a lot of sense um because that's sort of what i think cable news tells us about war unfortunately anyway that, that's my theory of that. What do you think? Doesn't that seem like that's Trump? Yeah, I mean, he's definitely constantly pulled between two impulses, which is his

innate mortal fear of being seen weak and his view that a protracted land war is bad politics. And he doesn't want to go back and forth between it. I mean, David Sanger in the New York Times described this, like his speech yesterday as essentially a strategic muddle masked by a ceasefire. And that Trump has been unable throughout his presidency. Um, and particularly as it relates to this current crisis we're in to reconcile the two impulses he has on foreign policy,

which are bellicosity and isolationism. And so he wants to both be able to have his, and I think this is how he thinks about it – have his moment of announcing to the world that – that Obama had of announcing to the world that bin Laden has been killed, he might not have taken this move. Because in some of the reporting, which it's always hard to tell what is accurate and true in any sort of Trump story, but one of the reportings is the Pentagon gave Trump a series of options to respond to the Iranian aggression involving the embassy. And they put the killing of Soleimani on the list, not because they thought, they thought there was no way he would take it.

It's a very typical bureaucratic move to direct a president towards a certain decision by picking a massive overreaction and a massive, massive underreaction. And then the only option is Goldilocks policy B and And that which was a dangerous misunderstanding of Trump's brain, because he is most likely to pick either massive overreaction or massive underreaction. And we ended up with overreaction here. this to both of us and to everyone else who will listen. We are by no means out of the woods here. And while this may have been sort of the official extent of the retaliation in terms of what the Iranians were willing to announce to the world, they still control proxy forces all over the globe. The Ayatollah himself had said these military actions are not sufficient for revenge. What is important is that the corrupt president of America in this region comes to an end. So they can bide their time,

they can wait months, there can be additional retaliation that may perhaps they do not take credit for as they did this time. And again, you know, our operations against ISIS have been suspended. The Iraqis don't seem to want us in the country anymore. And, you know, perhaps most frighteningly, the Iranians have resumed their pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which was on pause when Donald Trump took office because of the Iran deal, which maddeningly is not getting enough coverage because everyone has a memory the size of a pea these days who works in the news business well in in fairness all of us because for a brief millisecond i thought today was my wedding anniversary thanks to you so i can't i i have to i have to look in the mirror on this one yeah um so trump gives a set of remarks on the retaliation with such an odd delivery that hashtag Adderall was trending on Twitter.

And in those remarks, he announced new economic sanctions on Iran. He said he welcomes peace. And then he actually blamed Barack Obama for the attack. Quote, Iran's hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013. And the missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. Just a fucking unbelievable, un-American, revolting thing to do blames his predecessor for an attack on the forces that Obama actually led once as commander-in-chief

with a complete lie. But aside from just how disgusting it was and the lie itself, how painfully stupid is it to blame Barack Obama for what has happened over the last week? Well, let me ask you a couple questions just so we can get a level set of facts. When the Iran deal was in effect, was Iran firing ballistic missiles at U.S. military bases? They were not. They were not. Okay. Thank you.

When the Iran deal was in effect, was Iran actively pursuing a nuclear weapon? They were not, Dan. Are they doing so now? They are. Okay. I do not feel safer now. Also, they weren't preventing us from going after ISIS, and they are now. Look, Donald Trump's Iran policy has failed. And what has happened over the last couple of weeks and what has happened since he left the Iran deal over the advice of his own national security team and the entire international community is that the world has been made less safer. Donald Trump has made America less safe. He's made the world less safe. And his Iran policy, the stated intent of his Iran policy is to get them to agree to a better nuclear deal. How's that going? Is that going well? I don't think

that's going too well. It is mind boggling where he was like in one three minute period said, Obama's Iran deal, Obama's multilateral Iran deal is responsible for the situation we're in. And the way to get out of the situation we're in is a multilateral Iran deal. Someone made this point. It's like he wants a repeat of NAFTA 2.0, the new trade deal, except that was something maybe he could control. He definitely can't control this one. He's not getting a new Iran deal. He's not getting an control this one. He's not getting a new Iran deal. He's not getting a new Iran deal. Because you tend to not get a new Iran deal when you assassinate the second most powerful government official in Iran.

Usually they don't want to go to the negotiating table then. And you pull out of the first deal with no pretext. Just because. I saw this political cartoon, which I guess they still exist, circulated on Twitter, which had Trump reading, which was funny in and of itself, the Iran deal and some aid says, Mr. President, what is wrong with Obama's deal? And Trump says, Obama's signature, which kind of summarizes the entire Trump presidency. With the Iran deal, with the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Affordable Care Act, with just about everything Obama has done,

that's the only thing that his pea brain can understand. Again, because he watches too much Fox News. So let's talk about how this may or may not play out politically for Trump. If there is a true de-escalation between the US and Iran, what happens? What does that look like politically, in your opinion? I've sort of come to the conclusion, as we've talked through impeachment, Iran, everything that has happened over the last couple of years, that the safest bet in all of these things is status quo. Yeah, I was going to the brink of war with Iran, is sufficient to fundamentally change the political landscape. This is an election that's

going to be fought in the margins, and various outcomes here could have some impact on the group of voters who are either deciding between Trump and a Democrat or Trump and Democrat and a third party candidate or not voting and voting. And that could happen. And it's too early to know what that is. But there's going to be no, like, I don't see a world in which there is a seismic shift, that any event creates a seismic shift in the political calculus for 2020 between now and November. Yeah. And look, we should say, I asked this question about if there is a sort of a permanent de-escalation somehow, which is a gigantic if. I think if there is a protracted conflict between the U.S. and Iran or there's further retaliation, it could

significantly damage Trump's standing. I think a few other factors here, because some of these things could affect it on the margins. I think the idea that this is any kind of political win for Trump is fucking foolish. And, you know, so far, the polling has borne that out. A Reuters poll out Tuesday, 53% disapprove of his handling of Iran, an increase of 9% since mid-December. That includes 50% of independents. An Economist poll Wednesday 51% of his disapprove of his handling of Iran, only 41% approve. So, you know, those numbers aren't great for him. I also think, and we've talked about this before, and this is sort of David Axelrod's chaos theory, anything that sort of adds to the general sense of Trump brings more chaos than he brings any kind of stability or progress hurts him. And look, most people in this country didn't know who Soleimani was. They didn't really

know who Baghdadi was. That didn't help Trump either, killing Baghdadi, which Democrats were mostly behind, were all behind. And so no one knows who Soleimani is, but they wake up and see that the U.S. is almost on the brink of war with Iran. And there's Trump tweeting about the whole thing like an idiot. So you're right. His base stays with him because of the Fox information bubble. As always, they probably get whipped up just like they did around impeachment. But I think most Americans either think more chaos from Trump or status quo, let's keep going. What do you think about his campaign running nearly 800 Facebook ads trumpeting the killing, which is according to our friends at Acronym?

I have multiple somewhat conflicting thoughts on this. There is few things that are more personally exhausting than running through the mental exercise of imagine if Obama did this. It's just so frustrating because it's so obviously true that Trump gets away with things that if we did, would have been a six-day political scandal. Imagine if Obama's 2012 campaign had run 800 ads about the killing of bin Laden. Like, no. And so I'm not going to yell about it. I've made several New Year's resolutions to stop shouting into the void or tweeting into the void. I'm not going to do that here. But I do think, it doesn't have to be now, there is a longer discussion about why Trump can get away with things that Obama couldn't.

One of them certainly is that Obama was a black man and Trump was a white man. That is 100% true. It's the same reason Trump could get away with things that Hillary Clinton couldn't get away with, or Elizabeth Warren can't get away with, or Kamala Harris can get away with. That is just an inherent fact of media coverage in American politics. But it also is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. And the significant pro-conservative bias that there is in our social media-fueled media ecosystem. And so that is all true. My counterpoint to that is when we have a Democrat in the White House,

I hope this is exactly what they do. Not necessarily about the killing of an Iranian or something like that, but the way to communicate in the modern media age is to do it through all available channels, which includes digital ads. So Trump is protecting himself in doing what is the right strategy here. It's just one that is not currently available to Democrats and we have resisted doing thus far. Yeah, like if, you know, we were in the White House again right now and had just passed the Affordable Care Act again, hopefully we would be running more than 800 Facebook ads touting the Affordable Care Act's benefits and what people could expect, as opposed to what we, you know, the limited ability we had last time back in 2010. So speaking of the politics of this, you know, Trump already has political problems with Congress

on Iran, and that includes Republicans now, surprisingly. On Wednesday, top administration officials briefed members of Congress on the intelligence that led Trump to make the call to assassinate Soleimani. Many members were furious about how bad the intel and the briefing were, especially Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Here is a clip of Mike Lee coming out of the briefing. I had hoped and expected to receive more information outlining the legal, factual, and moral justification for the attack. I was left somewhat unsatisfied on that front. The briefing lasted only 75 minutes, whereupon our briefers left. This, however, is not the biggest problem I have with the briefing, which I would add

was probably the worst briefing I've seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I've served in the United States Senate. What I found so distressing about that briefing was that one of the messages we received from the briefers was, do not debate, do not discuss the issue of the appropriateness of further military intervention against Iran. And that if you do, you'll be emboldening Iran. The implication being that we would somehow be making America less safe by having a debate

or a discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement against the government of Iran. Now, I find this insulting and demeaning, not personally, but to the office that each of the 100 senators in this building happens to hold. I find it insulting and I find it demeaning to the Constitution of the United States, to which we've all sworn an oath. The worst briefing I've seen, I found it insulting and demeaning to Congress and to the Constitution. What'd you think of that, Dan? Do you think that's, and do you think that has any kind of impact or will have any kind of impact? Well, I would like to address Mike Lee, the Senator from Utah who said this, which is,

this is your fucking fault. Because if, I don't remember Mike Lee speaking up when the Trump White House refused to send over the documents about Brett Kavanaugh that the Senate demanded. I don't remember Mike Lee speaking up when Congress refused to turn over documents about the Trump spending money and the Secret Service spending money at Trump properties. I don't remember Mike Lee speaking up about impeachment witnesses or any of the memos and paperwork requests. If you stay silent when Trump sticks his thumb in Congress's eye on the things that you don't care about politically, what do you think is going to happen when you want information? What behavior have you taught Trump? This is Mike Lee's fault. This is Mitch McConnell's fault. This is all the Republicans' fault because they have sent Trump the unequivocal message that oversight is a choice. It is not a constitutional obligation.

You do not have to submit to it. So this is like no shit. This is what happened. You are reaping what you've sown. I'm glad you spoke up. It has given us great audio and it has made things uncomfortable for the fucking yahoos who did the briefing. But this is the fault of Republicans in Congress.

So I'm going to put you down for not much impact. Yeah. Well, look, I think they're going to I do like I do think that I don't think it's going to change things dramatically, but it like it makes it uncomfortable. Yeah. Squeaky wheels from your own party tend to get the grease. So I suspect there'll be something else. It also, we shouldn't gloss over what Mike Lee said about the administration's message, which is that if you debate this or question this or have oversight over it, you are giving Iran a win, which is just a reminder that every time there is the smell of

war in the air, we are all teleported back to 2002 and Coleman Powell's talking about yellow cake. Like nothing ever changes over this long period of time. Yes. And look, and this is, and a lot of folks on the left will say this, and they are absolutely right about it, that a focus on Trump as the only bad guy here, as the true evil here, is very misguided, particularly when it comes to matters of foreign policy. They have all proven themselves to be warmongers. Nikki Haley, fucking Nikki Haley, was out there saying on Fox News that Democrats are mourning the death of Soleimani.

Something that she was so proud of saying that then she tweeted out the clip of her saying it and then tweeted that line in the tweet, which is fucking revolting and disgusting. That's now become the lines, members of Congress. Doug Collins said the same thing. I saw him on TV saying the same thing. Marco Rubio has been saying similar bullshit too because he's awful like these people are the you know trump is trump is does impulsive crazy shit and but he is being led around by mike pompeo and a bunch of neocons in the republican party who have been causing trouble and wanting war and wanting to bomb around for a very long time um and it is just you know it's bad it's very bad it's not great dan it's just not great um but you know what congress can do congress you know they're trying to pass a war

powers act there's going to be a vote on that um of course you know trump can veto that and it's hard to override a veto um there's also been you know people like bernie sanders and rokhana in the house have been trying to make sure that the administration pass a resolution that makes sure that the administration cannot spend any funds on, that Congress won't authorize any funds for the administration to spend on, you know, war with Iran. And so, you know, Congress would have firmer ground if they pass something like that. So, you know, and then hopefully they can get some of these Republicans like maybe a Mike Lee or Rand Paul on board. But, you know, who knows if they have the votes for that in the Senate? Certainly they could pass it through the House. But that's where we are. That's where we are. And, you know, once again, just like with impeachment, which we're about to talk about,

that the true check on Trump and the Republicans here is to vote them all out of office in November. That's it. That's what we got. I mean, it is notable that both the Ro Khanna legislation and the repeal of the 2001 authorization for use in military force were in the original defense bill that the House Democrats passed and then pulled it out in negotiations with the Senate. Which I am sympathetic to the challenges that you have in trying to pass legislation in divided government, right? Like, that is very hard, and there are other very good things in those bills. And I also don't think if those things were in place that Trump would not have done this, because he will just rely on – like, he gives two fucks about the Constitution and has a very broad definition of Article 1 presidential power when a Republican's in office and when a Democrat's in office, he starts at Article 2. But it is just this reminder that having the maximalist position against Trump is usually the right thing to do. We would be in a stronger position right now if Democrats had not just all passed a bill that took those things out. All right, speaking of leverage and maximum list positions, let's talk about impeachment.

For a brief moment on Monday, it appeared that maybe, just maybe, John Bolton would testify at Donald Trump's impeachment trial. But then Mitch McConnell said he refused to agree to a fair trial that guaranteed relevant witnesses and evidence. And then every single Republican senator agreed with him on those rules. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, every last one of them. Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, has said she wouldn't send articles of impeachment over to the Senate until McConnell makes public his proposed rules for the trial, which he hasn't yet done. Okay, lots to unpack here. First, what does Mitch McConnell getting his way here actually look like when it comes to the Senate trial? Well, it means that we will begin this process without witnesses, and that he has gotten the vulnerable members of his caucus to agree to a trial plan that is favorable to Trump as opposed to justice and truth in the

American public. That is what's happened. He has not closed the door on that possibilities with this vote because it could happen after the opening arguments. But McConnell is very good at slowly turning up the heat until we all realize we've been boiled. So I guess it would be easier for these Republicans to vote for a cover up a second time after they've already done it once. Yeah, so just so people know how and like, you know, I just said, we we don't know exactly what the rules are going to look like or how the trial is going to go. But he keeps saying we want to go by the Clinton rules of the Clinton impeachment. And so what that would look like is each side gets to present their opening argument. The president's defense team and the House prosecutors,

whoever Nancy Pelosi decides are going to be the House managers or prosecutors, they present their case. The president's defense team presents their case. The senators then submit questions for both sides in writing to John Roberts, who's presiding over the trial. And then John Roberts will allow both of those sides to answer the questions that the senators submit. The reason they're submitting questions is so there's no grandstanding and a bunch of speeches on the Senate floor like we usually see. We should note that in the Clinton impeachment trial, there were over a hundred questions, I believe.

So that process could take a bit of time. Um, and then once you get the opening arguments and the questions, then, then they're going to eventually probably take a vote on whether additional witnesses and evidence are necessary, you know, and at that point, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a bunch of them are on the record saying they would like to hear from John Bolton at some point. At least Mitt Romney certainly has said that. And I don't know. I mean, I know what you're saying about McConnell, but I still think that this is really just kicking the can down the road on an uncomfortable vote for a lot of these vulnerable Republican senators.

They still might take the uncomfortable vote and just say, yeah, we're all in for the cover up. In fact, you know, if you were betting, you would probably bet that they do that. But I still think it's going to be uncomfortable when they have to take the vote later, when we've now heard on television very compelling arguments like we heard in the House for why Trump committed an impeachable offense. And if the House prosecutors are smart, they will say during their case, and we would know more if only John Bolton would come tell us about why he called this a drug deal. If only we'd get this email from the House, if only we had this document. And you're going to hear the House prosecutors saying that, and then reporters are going to go to mitt romney

and to susan collins right after the trial and they're going to say what do you think about the house prosecutors saying that we need to hear this from john bolton and of course they'll like run away from the cameras and slam the door in their office and that'll be that but you know it's going to be uncomfortable yeah i mean it will be as uncomfortable as we all make it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so we should make it very uncomfortable. Yeah. I mean, can we just say something about John Bolton first? Yeah.

Let's do it. Come on. Let's not fall for this coy act where he gets to be some sort of hero of truth, pitch the book he's writing, and not also tell us what he knows. He doesn't need a subpoena to talk. He's doing fucking interviews about Iran left and right. Type out a fucking op-ed, send it to the New York Times, done. I am currently sitting in my own home speaking into a microphone. We are in the age of the internet. You don't even have to leave your fucking house to tell people what you know. So I have zero faith in him. He is a snake. And he is finding a way to both keep himself in good stead with the larger Trump world

and be seen as some sort of George Conway-esque never Trump hero. And we should not fucking fall for this. There is one other looming shoe that could drop, which is, if you remember, sometime around the holiday or since the holiday, but since you and I last spoke via microphone, the court gave Lev Parnas the permission to share what was on his phone with the House Intel Committee. So there is potentially more information and evidence that could come out in the coming weeks that could also be used to put additional pressure on these witnesses. I think the other thing that Democrats have to continue making the argument on is McConnell's entire argument is we're just going to go with the Clinton impeachment trial rules. That should be just like the Clinton impeachment trial. He's been saying this a million times now. So has Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski. The Clinton impeachment trial rules. This should be just like the Clinton impeachment trial. He's been saying this a million times now. So has Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski. The Clinton impeachment trial eventually had witnesses.

When they, after the opening arguments, after they went through all this, they did have witnesses. And their witnesses were witnesses that the American people had already heard from during a two-year investigation where there were depositions. So they just called the same witnesses again, let alone new witnesses who have said, like John Bolton has said, that they have new

relevant testimony. And there was evidence. And we have, again, here evidence that is relevant to the case, because we have emails that the White House is withholding and all this kind of stuff. And that wasn't even true in the Clinton impeachment that the White House was withholding a bunch of documents and evidence. And I think the Democrats need to say over and over again, a vast majority of the American people, including even I think a plurality of Republicans in some polls, believe that these witnesses should testify, that the Trump administration senior officials should testify in the trial. They believe that is fair. People are opposed, especially in, there was another poll in just the states that Susan Collins and Cory Gardner and,

you know, Martha McSally represent that they're up in 2020, that those constituents want these people to testify. They believe there should be evidence. They believe there should be witnesses. And I think Democrats need to hammer those points over the next couple of weeks, for sure. One other point on this, which is McConnell keeps saying, Clinton rules, Clinton rules, Clinton rules. Now, Tom Daschle was a Senate Democratic leader during the Clinton impeachment. And he refused to speak to the White House, coordinate with the White House, share a strategy with the White House, because he thought it was improper. So if McConnell wants the Clinton rules, then he should be behaving like the Senate Democrats did during the Clinton impeachment trial. And McConnell was at the White

House yesterday meeting with Trump to brief him on the strategy. And so he is swimming in a swamp of conflict of interest. And he should not be allowed to get away with that because he is not conducting this like the Democrats conducted an impeachment trial of a president from their own party. And he's doing the exact opposite of that. And it is historically unprecedented and it should be called out. So last thing on this, what do you think, you know, in the last couple of days, a couple of Democratic senators have been getting antsy and have sort of called on Pelosi to send over the articles of impeachment because they want to get going on this trial. Pelosi today, I believe, said she's ready to send them over, but she still wants to see the rules from McConnell. I tend to think this is like much ado about nothing here. Like a lot of the Hill reporters and D.C. insiders think this is all like a big deal it seems to not matter

to me whether she sends them over today tomorrow next week like she's gonna send them over in the next couple weeks um i think she has achieved her goal here which is to put a spotlight on mitch mcconnell's rigged trial um which has the spotlight has been on that for the last couple weeks as opposed to her just transmitting the articles right before Christmas and McConnell maybe shutting the whole thing down. So I think she got her win here. And, you know, people are going to be like, Pelosi didn't have leverage. She won, she lost this or that. I just don't think it matters that much, but I don't know what you think. Yeah, I agree. Pelosi is the savviest legislator of her generation or any other generation. And so she obviously knows

she doesn't have leverage to make McConnell do what she wants. But she does know that by holding the articles, she would force a conversation about the form of the trial. And it would put additional pressure, not just on McConnell, but on the vulnerable Senate Republicans, and they would have to sort of stew in their own complicity for a few weeks. And by creating this conflict with McConnell, she generated more attention to the conversation. So she did the right thing. None of it is massively consequential one way or the other, but I think she knew what her goal was and she achieved it. I would also say to the Senate Democratic senators who were, quote unquote, and she achieved it. I would also say to the Senate Democratic senators who were, quote unquote,

calling on Pelosi, don't call on her. Call her, Dianne Feinstein. I'm pretty sure your offices are in the same building in San Francisco. Pick up the phone, call her. There is no need to basically just print hashtag Dems in Disarray on your forehead and walk out and talk to the press. Just communicate a message. You've been friends for decades. Like, I mean, it's, this is, it's wild,

man. I don't get how that, like, look, there's, there are times on this podcast where we say things about Democrats and I'm like, Oh,

we, maybe we should have just transmitted our criticism over email to people we know. And that's our fucking podcast. You're a fucking United States Senator or you're a member of the house. Stop talking to fucking reporters in the halls about things that are going to cause your party problems. Pick up the fucking phone and call your friends. It is really unbelievable.

They never learn. Yeah, it's wild. They never learn. Oh, and one more thing we should say on Bolton. I do think, and Brian Boitler wrote a great piece about this on cricket.com, that the House should subpoena Bolton because now he has said he would respond to a subpoena from the Senate, which makes any kind of rejection of a House subpoena legally dubious at best, since he said he would respond to a Senate subpoena in the house democrats do have subpoena power now the house could subpoena bolton and then trump could try to um exert executive privilege and say no he can't testify because it's national security and blah blah blah and then i guess they end up back in court but i think it's worth a shot if for no other reason than to let people know and to remind people that we do want john bolton's

testimony because it is relevant in this trial so So I don't see how it can hurt for the House Democrats to subpoena Bolton. But I don't know. Do you agree? I think the way in which it would hurt would be if it forces a legal confrontation over it and then gives Trump and Bolton the out to just wait for the legal confrontation to conclude. Like Schiff has thought about this. He has, I'm sure, talked to Schumer or someone about this, and they have a plan. And I actually, I understand Brian's point. I think you have to let this play itself out in the Senate for a while before you make a decision. And if the ultimate conclusion is the Senate is not going to hear from witnesses for whatever reason

McConnell decides or whatever happens, then you have to push the case in the House. But if you were to do it now, I think it undermines the case of the Senate and gives an out to the Senate Republicans and to Bolton himself, who I think is probably also looking for an out. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about 2020. It's endorsement season here in the Democratic primary. Last week, Joe Biden received the endorsement of four freshman House members who flipped red districts in the 2018 midterms. Conor Lamb, Elaine Luria, friend of the pod, Chrissy Houlihan, friend of the pod, Abby Finkenhauer of Iowa. And today, Bernie Sanders received the endorsement of the Sunrise Movement, which is a movement of young people fighting climate change. And maybe the most notable endorsement recently, Elizabeth Warren won the support of former presidential

candidate Julian Castro this week. Dan, we really haven't talked about endorsements much, but how big of a deal are they in general? Well, we haven't talked about how much could there have been almost no endorsements. There are like a shockingly few number of endorsements in this election. Very few House members have picked sides. I mean, the biggest ones, I think, have been obviously AOC endorsing Bernie. Prior to the list you just gave us, Ilhan Omar endorsing Bernie. There have been a lot of endorsements within one's home state, right? Ayanna Pressley, which is, I think, a very important endorsement for Warren.

Kamala Harris had the endorsement of a lot of the exciting freshman members of the California delegation. But endorsements are good for two things, and they run in various degrees. Endorsements from politicians, and then we can talk about the Sunrise Movement separately, I think. But they are good for news. Your goal is to try to generate good news for your campaign, and endorsements are good. And Elizabeth Warren, for a whole set of reasons, has been running through a tough media cycle. And the Julian Castro endorsement was sort of a circuit breaker on that. Like, oh, here's a piece of good news here. Big rally speaks to sort of the broader coalition that she could have. the broader coalition that she could have. And then the other reason I think they're very valuable is they give you someone who can be on the trail with you to generate excitement, additional

crowds, additional media coverage, or be out there without you, right? And Castro has spent a lot of time in Iowa. If he's out there campaigning for Warren, they can go together and they can go separate. And Castro can still get a crowd and still draw attention, and it is sort of a force multiplier for the Warren campaign. I think that, you know, Julian Castro did not get a lot of support in the primary in the polls, but he has become, you know, beloved by the progressive wing of the party because, you know, he's taken a lot of sort of courageous progressive positions in this race. And I think in the when he endorsed her and then campaigned with her at an event in Brooklyn, I thought he did a great job as a surrogate for her. You know, he made a really good case for her. So I think you're right. Like on the margins, these things help. I would say that probably the biggest endorsement or the most

effective endorsement of the cycle still has probably been AOC with Bernie, because if AOC had just simply sat out or if she had endorsed Warren, I think, you know, there is, you know, Bernie has clearly done well over the last couple months, because he's consolidated the left. And a lot of that support has come from Elizabeth Warren. And you can sort of pinpoint the moment that started happening to around when AOC endorsed him. And so yeah, I think that was sort of a big deal. Yeah, the endorsements are we should talk about the Biden endorsements, because I think they're also pretty significant. But the endorsements sort of come in different flavors.

One, like the ones that are the most, when they're surprising, are perhaps the most valuable, right? Like, I mean, one of the worst days on the Obama campaign in 2008 was when John Lewis endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. I remember that very well, yeah. I remember being, we were in this meeting with Obama and it was like, we were in a tough period of the campaign anyway. And we had just spent like several hours in a conference room, like plotting out like how we were going to get out of this mess. And we all felt really good about our plan. And Obama was like, let's go do this. And then he takes out his phone and he said, huh. He looks at an email and says, John Lewis has tried to call me like nine times.

And we're just like, fuck. And then he opened the door and one of his political staffers outside came in to tell us that John Lewis had been calling to say he was going to endorse Hillary Clinton in the morning. And it was just like a fucking gut punch. And one of the better days was when Ted Kennedy decided to endorse Barack Obama because the Kennedys had been close to the Clintons. Or when John Lewis flipped his endorsement back to Obama.

That was a pretty great day too. That was good too. Yeah, that was good too. But so like if AOC had endorsed Warren, that would have been a brutal blow for Bernie. And I think a lot of people thought she might sit out, much like Warren sat out the primary between Clinton and Sanders until very, very late. So not getting endorsement could also be a problem. The Biden one is once or significant because – and these may be the best endorsements of all, are the ones that speak to your larger message and story.

And Biden's argument is very explicitly electable, that he is the most electable candidate. He is the candidate who can go everywhere and campaign everywhere. And he got endorsements from a group of the most vulnerable House freshmen who won in very hard districts. And so the fact that they cast their lot with Biden is a data point that Biden can use to make his larger case. Yeah, I saw someone on Twitter say when these endorsements were announced, oh, the Democratic establishment is rallying around Biden, which made me laugh because it's like these are all first term House members who had never been in politics before. Just decided to run it there's some of the people young people who all ran in 2018 um three of them women who you know everyone was very excited about in 2018 because they were able to they were young exciting candidates who flipped red districts you know and like you said i do think whether they they don't

have the star power of aoc but like you said they fit with biden's story and especially his electability argument and so i think in that sense they are valuable, especially Abby Finkenauer in Iowa, because, you know, everyone's trying to win Iowa and there's only two new Democratic congresswomen from Iowa, Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne in that 2018 class. And, you know, one of them's off the sidelines now and endorsing Joe Biden. So that's something. So what do you think about the Sunrise movement endorsing Bernie? I think it's a huge deal. I think it is politically very important because this is one of those surprise endorsements where most people thought they would stay on the sidelines and not endorse between Warren and Bernie and I guess some of the other candidates.

So the fact that they chose to do this, they chose to do it overwhelmingly. I think it was a 75% So the fact that they chose to do this, they chose to do it overwhelmingly. I think it was a 75% win in terms of their internal vote for Bernie. But it's also a ton of very savvy, very motivated organizers who are now going to be out there working for Bernie in all the Super Tuesday states and elsewhere. And so I think it's a really big deal. and elsewhere. And so I think it's a really big deal. And it's also just sort of symbolic of the tremendous success that Bernie Sanders' campaign has had over the last like six to eight weeks of, as you said it, consolidating a lot of the activists left. And there's sort of been this decision among a lot of them that the best way to have a progressive nominee and president is to line up behind Bernie Sanders. And that has come at a cost for

some of the other candidates, Warren most notably, who are depending on some portion of that support or being the one who consolidated it. Let's finish up with one of our favorite topics here, political advertising. This week, we learned that Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump are each planning on running an ad during the super bowl they've both taken out 60 seconds of advertising that will cost 10 million dollars each uh good use of money what do you think i mean whenever i think of bloomberg spending money it reminds me of this conversation that holly and i have whenever like we're watching the NBA finals. And there'll be these people sitting in courtside seats. And courtside seats, not sitting in Hallie.

They paid $13,000 for that seat, or $20,000 for that seat. And she's like, that's insane. And I'm like, yeah, but that person is worth $2 billion. It's like the mathematical equivalent of my $100 ticket to the game three months ago or whatever. And that's a little bit like all things with Bloomberg is if you have endless amounts of money, what's the big deal? Why not do a 60-second ad in the Super Bowl? It's sort of like our decision about whether we're going to make lunch or order lunch.

It has the same financial consequences. So you're Mike Bloomberg. You have 60 seconds. More people are going to watch this ad than maybe anything else in your entire campaign. What do you say? just paying for that massive audience. So that audience is massive, particularly in our sort of disaggregated media environment. We're also paying for the fact of having a Super Bowl ad where the news media and podcasters will discuss the fact you're having a Super Bowl ad. It has a head, it has a tail. It theoretically will be talked about before and after the 60 seconds you get. But you got to make your ad good, right? If he just runs the same...

Good advice. Well, and by good, like, yes, yes, you are welcome. Michael Bloomberg, that one's free. The next one you got to pay for. But by that, I mean, it's got to be, it has to have some virality to it, right? If it's just the same ad, you're not getting what you paid for because you're really paying for the attention that a Super Bowl ad gets for the fact that it's a Super Bowl ad. And so if it is just the totally fine ads

that he has been running during every NFL game I've seen for the last like six weeks, I think that's a waste of money. Now, who cares? Because he's got endless amounts of money, but I think that you have to do something interesting. You have to catch attention because you're competing. Like this is the most brutal ad competition ever. It's not just like car ads, soda ad, beer ad. It's like, you know, ad companies have been spent in ad firms have

been spending an entire year planning for how they're going to have an amazing, catchy ad that people will talk about. And so if it's just like amazing Doritos ad with Beyonce, Lizzo and Paul Rudd or something obscene like that, and then it's just like Mike Bloomberg talking about climate change, I don't think that's really going to work. Or Donald Trump talking about, I don't know, whatever the fuck Donald Trump talks about. to work or donald trump talking about i don't know whatever the fuck donald trump talks about yeah i mean look i we are in a very cynical mean nasty age where the internet just brutally mocks everything especially ads or in the super bowl i've noticed this over the last couple years in the super bowl like you'd watch super bowl ads and you'd like talk to the people at your super bowl party about the ads now we all talk about them together on Twitter. And usually the reviews aren't very great for most of them. There's usually one or two that

stand out that everyone likes. And so if you're Mike Bloomberg, it is the potential for being mocked is extraordinarily high. And so I would think about doing something that is mostly anti-Trump that can at least rally Democrats together, which is part of his stated rationale for running here, that he's worried about Donald Trump winning. I would make it very light on Mike Bloomberg himself and very heavy on Donald Trump. And I would, you know, he's a rich guy. He can call in sort of creative ad people from all over the country and the world. I would go way outside of the box and make it seem like it's not your typical political commercial, that it is like a very different kind of ad. I would think

different would be at the top of the list there. And for Trump, I would imagine that Trump is going to try to run a very morning in America type ad that is not like anything Trump usually says in his speeches or at his rallies. I think it's going to try to take credit. He's going to try to take credit for the economy. He's going to try to take credit for terrorist killings. Maybe they'll revive what we both thought was a pretty clever message. That's, you know, I might not be a nice guy, but sometimes it takes someone who's not a nice guy to shake up Washington kind of thing, which is them owning him being an asshole, which I actually think is fairly smart of their campaign. And so I would imagine the Trump campaign ad, it could be, I won't say good, but better than, certainly better than anything

we hear from Donald Trump or see from his tweets. Yes. I thought you're basically describing what was Trump's World Series ad, which was a frighteningly good ad. And these things are particularly valuable for Trump because he is incapable of having a message coming out of his mouth or his Twitter feed because he has no discipline or attention span or impulse control. But on an ad, like you can have a message. The one question I have for you is, do you think Superbowl ads matter as much now as they used to?

I know you've been a frequent Superbowl watcher because you're a Patriots fan. So you've basically been in the Superbowl. This isn't even a Patriots attack. I'm not even going to ask you if you're basically been in the Superbowl. This isn't even a Patriots attack. I'm not even going to ask you if you're going to watch the Superbowl this year. But like, I remember for years and years and years, like people were more likely,

there was such focus on the ads. The people were almost more likely to go to the bathroom during the game than during the commercials, because you wanted to see what the ads were. Cause that was, cause also for many years, the Superbowl was terrible terrible even though it's been pretty good for the last several years but so like you wouldn't want to miss that but now i feel like

i've seen most of the ads or read about them before they come because of youtube right and if i miss it when it airs i will see it on Twitter or elsewhere afterwards, right? Like you're not, in the old days, you would see it. If you didn't see it when it happened, you may not see it, right? I agree with you. I don't think they matter as much. I think it's the problem with content writ large right now, which is there's such a glut of content.

And there is among all of these advertising firms and marketing agencies and consultant companies, you know, we in past life, past lives, we've worked with them all. They all sort of have the same advice, which is they're all trying for virality, right? They want their ad to go viral. And there is now a certain quality of an ad that you can tell is trying to go viral, that almost makes it more cheesy and obvious and inauthentic. And I think there is not enough innovation in advertising anymore either. And in fairness, that's because it's harder to surprise people because there's so much content and because everything has been done. And so I

think there is such a premium on trying to find something that is truly different that will truly grab people's attention. And I do think for the last couple of years, companies just haven't done that very well. I remember years before that, a couple years before that, there was a good run of Super Bowl ads. But I feel like the last couple of years, they've all been sort of shitty. You could expand this concept about the insatiable search for virality to everything, right? It is why- Yeah, for sure. It's why Cats is in theaters, right? I swear to God, it is like, it is this trying to, starting with a premise of what would

go viral and then working backwards to the product is a- Such a mistake but and it is endemic to american politics in this age you could do autopsies of many campaigns that have failed in part because of this approach um it's like there's a longer conversation but it is a fascinating thing that stretches through advertising movies television politics it's it's and it's all well it all comes from these stretches through advertising, movies, television, politics. It's, it's, and it's all, well, it all comes from these fucking consulting advertising firms. I remember back in our old lives when, you know, Tommy and I had a company briefly that did this kind of stuff. It was around the time of the ice bucket challenge. Remember the ice bucket challenge for ALS, which was, you know, went viral and it and was for very very good cause um and multiple firms that we came in contact with would say things like would sit clients

down and say all right we need to figure out what our ice bucket challenge is we need a nice bucket challenge for x or for y and so they take something that has gone viral because it was authentic and real and exciting and then they try to go backwards and try to you know uh generate it was authentic and real and exciting. And then they try to go backwards and try to, you know, generate it that way. And it's just such a fucking mistake, right? Like it has to, it has to start from an authentic position, not work backwards towards. Well, I mean, it's, it is the fault, obviously, in some ways of sort of one dimensional thinking from consultants and advertising executives and business people and creative people and politicians. But it's also a product of an algorithmic based advertising and media ecosystem where like you need, you need to generate conversation to get coverage. And if you

don't, you won't. Right. It's like, I mean, this is, we've gone far beyond it, but Hallie and I watched the two popes last night, which is a phenomenal movie, right? I loved it. I loved The Two Popes. But like there was so much more conversation about the Irishman in part because everyone was screaming about how The Irishman was too long, which I

don't really agree with, but there was no one like The Two Popes did not, there was no controversy, right? So there was no conversation about it. There was no trending. So it was just like a good movie that most people will not see because they will not seek it out because it never pierced the social conversation that determines what is watched and what isn't or what is consumed or what isn't or what's talked about or what isn't. All of these things we just talked about are not just responsible for cats. They're also responsible for Trump.

More on that later. Yeah, no, that is, it is true. All of this, all of this is politically related and it's, it all applies to this campaign and to politics. So, um, okay. When we come back, we will talk to democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren. On the phone today, we have Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator, welcome back to the pod. Thank you. It's always good to be at the pod. Yeah, good to talk to you. So you attended the classified briefing yesterday about the Soleimani assassination. Do you think that the administration is lying about their legal rationale for launching the strike, which was that there was an imminent threat to U.S. forces?

Well, they just certainly couldn't outline what the imminent threat was yesterday. And, you know, I think it was pretty clear. Republicans and Democrats left that briefing, not all Republicans, but some Republicans, and I think nearly all the Democrats left it saying, you just never made the case, and really didn't even seem to try very hard. You know, it's kind of one of these, nope, it was an imminent threat, let's move on. If you're president, how do you even begin to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table for another nuclear deal at this point? Well, I think we start with the example that President Obama laid out for us during his administration. I don't have to tell you all, it's painstaking work.

You've got to prove your credibility. But I actually think it starts with our allies. We get on the same page with our allies. We start with modest goals. We find out whether or not we can talk to each other at a more modest level and then see if we can build some trust, willing to do a lot of stuff through back channel in order to be able to, you know, let everyone save face so no one is getting squeezed, and you build up that trust.

And then we saw that, what could happen from that when the Obama administration was able, with our allies, The Obama administration was able, with our allies, but also the very technical scientific aspects of it, and get to an arrangement that Iran could live with domestically, was not threatening to Iran, but that permitted substantial verification that Iran was really abiding by the deal, that the economic sanctions had been put in a place that let Iran's economy start to recover, let Iran's economy start to recover, but made it clear there were going to be some sanctions that would stay in place until Iran took other steps separate from the nuclear negotiations to bring them more into the family of nations, you know, to drop their support for Hezbollah and other terrorists and so on. And you really watched the building on that. I watched it during the negotiations.

And, you know, I'm the first to say I was a very early supporter of the Iran nuclear deal. And ultimately, what came out was not perfect. There were many who wanted to say, this part should have been and that part should have been. But the truth is it's an extraordinary move forward from the perspective of both halting Iran's nuclear development and suggesting that we could build a world in which nuclear proliferation was going to stop or at least halt for an extended period of time and then try to build out from there, build out more economic integration, build out how you open up your society a bit more, how you let your middle class have more of a voice domestically, and that helps internationally, all of those pieces.

And it's like Donald Trump came in and said, oh, Barack Obama did that, so I have to do the opposite. Yeah, like with everything else. So you released a bankruptcy plan a couple days ago that would fix pieces of the law Congress passed back in 2005, a law that you've criticized in the past, Joe Biden, for supporting. I imagine this might be an issue we hear about next week's debate, if there is a debate. So Biden's campaign has said that basically the bill was going to pass the Republican Congress and be signed by George Bush anyway. So Biden got in there and he negotiated some concessions that helped middle class families, including making child support and alimony, you know, priority for debt payments, stuff like that. What do you say to that argument that,

yeah, the bill wasn't great, but it was important and good to make it better? My views on this are very well known. They're publicly documented. This was not just something that happened in 2005. It had been a fight that had been going on for a decade. And I had been able, working with consumer groups, to fend off the efforts to take the legs out from underneath the bankruptcy laws for nearly a decade that we had really been in that fight. While the credit card companies had figured out they could expand their profits if they could just get the bankruptcy laws to be a little less helpful to families

who were head over heels in medical debt, to people who'd lost a job, to someone who'd had a death or divorce in the family, which those three things accounted for about 90% of all the folks in bankruptcy. So, you know, my views on this one are well documented. They're out there, and they have not changed. I disagree with the way that the Biden campaign wants to describe this. Yeah. No, it's funny. I remember when I was looking at this, when I was looking up for this question, you know, Obama was obviously as a senator then on the other side of this issue,

on your side of this issue. And it was one of the first floor statements I ever wrote for him. And we quoted you in the floor statement as a bankruptcy professor who really cared about this kind of stuff. So it was time is a flat circle. Yeah, it really was, though, because it was such a, watching this go forward, I remember when, you know, America has, fairly relative to the rest of the world, has bankruptcy laws that let people come in and wipe out their past debts. And the families who do this always remember are families for whom they are in so much financial trouble that dead flat broke looks like a great improvement from where they are. And the whole idea behind it historically was you want people to be able to get back on their feet so they have a reason to go out and have a job

so that they can hang on to a house maybe and their kids won't be made homeless and not be able to go to school, not finish their education. You'll have the larger implications. But it's also part of the fact that in America, we don't have nearly as big a social safety net as in much of the rest of the world. You go bankrupt in America over medical bills. You don't go bankrupt in much of Europe, for example, over medical bills.

You go bankrupt over trying to get an education and getting caught head over heels in student loan debt, not in much of the rest of the world. You go bankrupt trying to get a job and keep a kid in daycare and pay for housing, not so much in the rest of the world. So when the credit card companies figured out that they could help close that door to bankruptcy and literally keep hundreds of thousands of people a year from filing for bankruptcy, think about it this way. It's not those people got any richer. It's that the credit card companies just got a longer space to try to squeeze them harder for a few more

interest payments, get them to borrow from their friends and family. We'd read the stories in our research of people, women who sold their wedding rings to be able to just try to pay something down to stop the collection calls. That's what the credit card companies want. And that's what they got in 2005. And that's why then Senator Obama and I were on the same side in this fight. So caucus season is upon us. And I imagine that you and your campaign are making and will be making many final pitches to undecided voters in the weeks to come. What's your pitch to a young, progressive college student, say from Iowa State, who really likes you, really likes Bernie Sanders, and is having a really hard time

deciding between the two of you? What do you say to that voter? Well, I think I'd start with, I know how to fight and I know how to win. So help me fight and help me win, because we have such an incredible opportunity here. You know, I will be the only person on the debate stage, whenever that debate occurs, on the debate stage whenever that debate occurs who has beaten a popular incumbent Republican any time in the past 30 years. I've been out there in these fights to win. When I first ran for the Senate in 2012, you may remember this, I had been working for President Obama as his assistant, setting up the consumer agency. The Republicans had pre-rejected me and said I could never be the head of the agency. And President Obama said, go back to Massachusetts and run for that Senate seat.

And when I got back to Massachusetts, I thought, you know, this is not me. I'm not, I don't, I never thought I'd run for elected office. And I was going to teach and do the research. And people said to me, look, we've got this popular incumbent Republican. He had about a 65% approval rating. He's been here in office for just a couple of years. He just beat a very qualified woman. You should definitely run. You won't win, but you should definitely run, you know, to which my response is Democrats get a better sales pitch. But I got in that race, and I started out way down. And I just kept fighting, and I ended up beating him by seven and a half points. You know, to me, it's you fight from the heart for what you believe in.

And running for president has been this extraordinary opportunity to talk about what's broken in our country, to really try to give it a frame in how we can build a country going forward that is different. I think the big contrast that we're going to make with Donald Trump in the general election, I think the one that gives us the best chance of winning, is over corruption. And it's the corruption of money in Washington. It's the donors, but it's also the lobbyists and the lawyers and the bought-and-paid-for experts and the bought-and-paid-for think tanks that just flood Washington. They flood Congress on just create a little exception for us. You know, can't we just rewrite that rule just a little bit to help us?

And they do that for all the agencies, for all the departments, departments until the whole game is tilted wildly in favor of those who are already rich and powerful and against everyone else. How do you end up in a democracy where a company like Amazon proudly announces, we just made $10 billion in profits and we're paying zero in taxes. How many lobbying dollars did it take them to get there? But they got there. So I see this as who government works for. And for a generation coming of age now, this has got to be the crucial question. My two-cent wealth tax is all about saying if you've already got a great fortune,

more than $50 million, pitch in two cents on the part above $50 million. So you're 50 millionth and first dollar. Pitch in two cents, two cents on every dollar above that, a couple of pennies more once you hit a billion. Do you know what that money lets us do? Just think about this. It lets us do universal child care for every baby in this country. That means every mama can finish her education.

Every parent can get a job and not have to worry about their kids. Their kids can be in high-quality care. It lets us do universal pre-K for every 3-year-old and 4-year-old. It lets us stop exploiting the largely women, largely black and brown women who do this work and raise the wages of every child care worker and preschool teacher in America. It lets us put $800 billion, new dollars, into our public school system and fully fund IDEA so children with disabilities get 100% funding for the education they need.

It would let us make technical school, two-year college, four-year college tuition free. Let us put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. That would really help level the playing field. And one more, it would let us cancel student loan debt for 43 million Americans. And I use that as just one example. A two-cent wealth tax on the people who've made it big,

people who are already growing their fortunes at 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, just a two-cent wealth tax. We invest in an entire generation. And once you start talking about making government work, not just for the lobbyists and lawyers and big donors, that's how you tackle climate change. That's how you tackle gun safety. It's how we tackle housing costs. It's how we tackle making this the country that invests and invests in the future, the country that lives its values every day. We have such an opportunity to do that in 2020, but it's going to take all of us in this fight. So I sat down with a lot of swing state voters recently for this little project I'm doing,

and just about all of them want what seem to be two conflicting things. So first, they're sick of all the corruption in Washington and want a government that actually does something to improve their lives, especially when it comes to health care costs and student loans and everything your campaign is about, everything you were just saying. But then in the next breath, they say, I'm really tired of all the fighting and the nastiness and the pettiness in Washington. And I just I want someone who can bring us all together. Is it possible to be a president who does both of those things in this political environment

with this Republican Party? Absolutely. And let me tell you how. Okay. You know, I was born and raised in Oklahoma. All three of my older brothers are now back in Oklahoma. They all three live there. And one is a Democrat, two are Republicans. Think about that for a sec.

So we can certainly get together. And two of my brothers can give the Republican talking points, and one of my brothers and I can give the Democratic talking points, and we can stay engaged in that same old battle, or we can shake up how we look at it and use a different frame. So think about the point made about corruption. and use a different frame. So think about the point made about corruption. When I talk about the corporations that made billions of dollars in profits and paid nothing in taxes, my Republican brothers are as mad as my Democratic brother,

because they know that's not fair. You know, one of them said to me not long ago, hey, wait a minute, he said, somebody's got to pay to keep the roads and bridges paved. Somebody's got to pay to keep schools up. Somebody's got to pay for our defense. And middle-class families, working families, working poor, they're out there paying their fair share of taxes,

and the rich people are just walking away from it and saying they're not going to pay their part. That's a point where we start to get the influence of money, the fact that the lobbying, lobbying, lobbying. You know, people talk about, oh, gridlock in Washington. There's no gridlock in Washington. Nah. When the Republicans wanted to pass a tax giveaway of a trillion and a half dollars, bingo! They got it done in like five weeks.

The rest of the time, when they don't pass climate change legislation, when they don't pass gun safety legislation, when they're not passing those laws, the reason it's not gridlocked, the reason, is because that helps the lobbyists who have the most influence. It helps the industry. We have changes in the laws governing the drug companies. That helps the drug companies. This isn't gridlocked. This is what they got for their lobbying dollars. So I start there on corruption and say, I tell you what, let's think of this as we all have to

organize for the election, but we have to stay organized after the election. Nobody gets to go home after we win. You get 24 hours to celebrate and rest up and you've got to be right back in the pushing business because you push from the outside. I'll lead from the White House, and we will hold Congress accountable, and that's how we'll make change. So when we start with something that is very popular, like the anti-corruption bill, then we got something where we can get some, not all the Republicans, but we can get some Republicans with us and some independents with us and some, a lot of Democrats with us. We make that change. We knock back the influence of money. And now think how it all looks different

because now we can start to make other change. You know where I go next? Right off the top. How about then we pass a two-cent wealth tax and cancel that student loan debt? Again, very popular, that wealth tax among Democrats and Republicans. How about we vote to expand Social Security and disability payments? I've got a way to do that. Raising taxes on only the top 2%. Very popular among Democrats and Republicans.

Get some wins under our belt. And a president should be doing the things, I love saying this, that she can do all by herself. Like reduce the cost of prescription drugs. I'm going to do this on the first day. The power has been there in the hands of the president for a long time, but it just hasn't been picked up and used. So I'm going to reduce the cost of insulin, the cost of EpiPens, the cost of HIV AIDS drugs. That will save families hundreds of millions of dollars just right off the top. In other words, put government on the side of the people. Let's get some real wins. I've got practical ideas for how to make this happen, but ultimately ideas that rely on the fact that together in a democracy, we can build this movement, we

can make change. And it all comes down to us. That's what 2020 is about. Senator, my last question is just more of a comment. I don't wash my face either. So I am completely with you on that one. And that's why you have that glowing skin. As do you, you know, as do you.

I stand in a hot shower every morning. Of course, of course. But we don't need to go into a whole routine every night. That just seems like a lot. It just, it does. It does. You know, we'll just take care of ourselves this way. Perfect.

I like it, I like it. Speaking of beauty, I was combing Bailey when you called. Well, that was going to be my next thing. I was going to say, give Bailey a hug for me. I will. He is such a good boy. He's a good boy. He's right here next to me.

Yeah, Leo's right here with me, too. So he likes to sit in for all the interviews. Senator, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And good luck out on the trail. Thank you very much. You take care. Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for joining us today.

And we'll see you next week. If there is still a Democratic debate, there's a question of whether there will be one if there is suddenly an impeachment trial. will be one if there's suddenly an impeachment trial. But if there is one, we will be doing our Pod Save America coverage on Wednesday morning. All four of us will be doing it then. And then John and Tommy and I will be doing our pod on Monday. So we'll talk to you then. Here's my message to the DNC that even if there is a debate, they should just have a one-on-one debate between Biden and Buttigieg. I mean, why not? Right? That'd be something. They're not in the Senate, so let's do it. And if Andrew Yang makes it, he should come too, or Tom Steyer, whoever else.

Perfect. All right. We'll pass that message along to Tom Perez. Oh, you know what? Fuck. We should have called him. Why am I calling on him? We should have called him.

God damn it. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. Have fun.