Pod Save America - “All the President’s goons.”

Episode Date: May 8, 2018

Rudy gives an encore performance, Trump loves paying in (Russian?) cash, the Democrats try to break through the noise, Gina Haspel almost withdraws, and Eric Schneiderman is revealed as an abuser. Then actor and activist Yara Shahidi talks to Jon F and Tommy about her “Eighteenx18” initiative to register young people to vote.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, we'll be talking to Yara Shahidi, the star of Black-ish and Grown-ish, who's doing incredible work to educate young people about politics and to get them involved and registered to vote through her 18x18 initiative. You might say that we need people to get vote-ish. Through her 18 by 18 initiative.

You might say that we need people to get votish. Can I just say, we've interviewed a lot of impressive people on this podcast. She might be number one. So smart. Tough hit on Hillary Clinton. Oh my God, it's like Twitter came to life. Everything is 2016. Also, love it, you're back from a grueling tour.

Where were you? We were in Pittsburgh. I don't care.ing tour where were you we were in pittsburgh i don't care we were in columbus we were in baltimore recorded some great shows we're gonna be howard dean there that's the joke we were gonna we were going to we're gonna have a great show coming out this friday that will be a show about social media where we're gonna take the best of what we recorded in baltimore and in columbus we had some experts on social media and we're going to take the best of what we recorded in Baltimore and in Columbus. We had some experts on social media and how it influences politics. We had Henri Cox.

We had DeRay. We had some other great guests. And you should check it out. Experts on social media, huh? Yeah. Not you. Do you not work with us? Don't respond to mentions,

random angry mentions. Is that the... We're not responding to angry, trolling mentions anymore okay anyway nor are we using other apps nor other apps that's for the other milks that's for us we learned that too okay quick update on the trump crime family um cool the last we left rudy giuliani he was confessing potential crimes to sean hannity on live television specifically that the president michael cohen may have committed a felony by failing to disclose a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels just days before

the 2016 election. In response, Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that Rudy wasn't fully up to speed when he was on Hannity, and he would eventually, quote, get his facts straight. In response to that, Rudy decided to do more television interviews in which he made more news. One of those, he was on Fox, on Judge Jeanine's esteemed program. And then on Sunday, he sat down with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. And I believe Michael has a clip for us.

You said this was a regular arrangement you had with Michael Cohen. So did Michael Cohen make payments to other women for the president? I have no knowledge of that. But I would think if it was necessary, yes. He made payments for the president, or he conducted business for the president, which means he had legal fees, monies laid out, and expenditures, which I have on my bills to my clients. And are you confident that his testimony and the Stormy Daniels payment

won't contradict the president? Not in any mature respect. Look, if it didn't contradict it at all they'd somebody be lying nailed it you nailed it i i love rudy saying get out there again i love rudy saying i'm an expert on campaign finance law no you're not but i'm not an expert on the facts yet there's 1.2 million documents i haven't had time to review them all i mean you've had time to say hey mr trump did you pay michael Cohen back? When did you do so? When did you...

Like, there's like three relevant facts that he needed to know before going on TV and making an ass of himself. Saying, I haven't read the information yet is not an acceptable excuse when you are a child doing a book report in front of the class.

It is definitely not a good excuse when you are on, you know, a Sunday show, for example. The president's lawyer. Lawyer to the president of the United States. You don't have to, nobody makes you go on George Stephanopoulos. George Stephanopoulos doesn't come to your house and remove you in the middle of the night and make

you do it. They call you and they say, we'd love to have you. And you say something like, I can't, I don't know anything. Is this how we practice law in the United States now? We just have lawyers for different clients, like Michael Avenatti and Rudy Giuliani and you're just going to go on and do every single show possible and just argue the case in front of everyone else?

That's what's happening now? Yes, John. Giuliani's actual quote was, yeah, my issue is getting up to speed on the facts here. I'm about halfway there. Living on a prayer. Rudy Giuliani. I like to think of the case as half full.

You know? I like to think of my brain as half full, you know? I like to think of my brain as half full of information. So Rudy admitted that there may have been other women paid to be silent about the affairs they had with Trump. That was one little nugget. He also said that Trump may defy a subpoena from special counsel Bob Mueller to testify and that Trump may ultimately choose to exert Fifth Amendment rights, which protects people from giving testimony that may incriminate them. What's the strategy here, guys?

I know we say there's not much of a strategy, but what is Rudy's method to his madness here? What does Rudy think? I mean, I think that there's a meta Trump big picture strategy, which is he knows he did the crimes. He knows that he's guilty of maybe a series of things, whether it's collusion, whether it's money laundering, whether God knows. He potentially probably thinks he's guilty of things

that he doesn't even know about. I'm sure I did something wrong. Therefore, what he's trying to do in all his public messaging, and they've stepped it up with Rudy coming on board, is just make this a political fight and try to undercut the credibility of the Mueller investigation,

undercut the credibility of whatever was referred to SDNY in terms of the investigation now. It's a Michael Cohen in New York. He just wants to attack all of it and continue to sort of build this antipathy towards the FBI, towards Comey, towards Mueller, to everyone involved so that if Congress is called on to make a political judgment, i.e. impeachment, they will side with the president because their base wants them to do so. Yeah, I think two things. I think one, they're socializing everyone to a bunch of outlandish,

previously historic decisions by the president, like pleading the fifth, getting everybody comfortable with it. The other thing is, you have this guy, Rudy, he's combative, he is good on television, if what you want is someone fighting from Trump's point of right from that point of view. But also he's going on television and kind of hinting at admitting to various things in various ways. They're contradictory, but he's throwing stuff out there. And one thing that I think Trump did throughout the presidential election is this incredible

quick move. How quickly things went from fake news to old news. Right. You deny it. You deny it. You deny it. I think Trump did throughout the presidential election is this incredible quick move. How quickly things went from fake news to old news, right? You deny it, you deny it, you deny it. You kind of admit it in some convoluted way. And then the next thing you know, you deny it again. And then all of a sudden it's sort of been out there, semi-denied for some time. And then the press moves on and everybody moves on. I mean, there's only so many days we're going to talk about the fact that Rudy Giuliani conceded that Trump not only paid Stormy Daniels, but that his

lawyer had basically a slush fund for paying other women. That's a huge and extraordinary admission. And yet, how many days are we going to spend talking about it? Four? I very much agree with Tommy's point that they have settled on an argument and the argument is bias. And the reason they've settled on bias, like the FBI is biased against them. They're politically biased. They're all Obama holdovers. They're all Democrats, right? Because they know that this is sort of the media's soft spot,

that the media cares about bias and balance, and they believe that they can make a case that all these people, from Comey to Mueller to the prosecutors at the FBI, that they're all against Trump for political partisan reasons. So anything that they come out with, it's just partisan. It's all just a political fight, just like the Democrats in Congress, just like the race against Hillary Clinton. It's all part of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It's all politics. And that's the way he believes he can get around the fact that he committed. Yeah.

And normally lawyers don't speak unless they know the answer or the relevant facts. Normally, you know, prosecutors or lawyers don't usually ask questions that they don't know the answer to. They are just flying by the seat of their pants. There's reporting that Trump won't tell anybody on his team what may be in Michael Cohen's documents that were seized. So people are freaking out about that. But then you have Michael Avenatti saying that there was extensive communication between Michael Cohen and the old lawyer for Stormy Daniels about

the timing of the hush payment and that it needed to be made before the election, which clearly throws it squarely into the realm of a campaign finance question. Now, like smart lawyers like Mark Elias, who's a really smart campaign finance lawyer, thinks that they're in big trouble regardless. But it's just like it's a facts be damned situation. They just want the fight. Yeah. And the reason that they're trying to argue this out in the public is they know there's

a legal process that's going on. But they know at the end of the day that trump they believe that trump is immune from prosecution that he has as pfeiffer said on the pod thursday immunity by congressional majority that the republicans will protect him from impeachment that he can ultimately plead the fifth and while the pleading the fifth may get him some bad press for a little while then he gets to move on he can he can defy the subpoena the supreme court can say fuck it you have to accept the subpoena you have to abide by the subpoena and then he can just plead the fifth and then everyone will gasp it'll be headlines for a couple days and then it'll be like yeah but i pled the fifth and so now what are you going to do impeach me dark now we are of course saying

this in a world where he has not been charged with any crimes the after we talk about crimes like the crimes specifically have not come to light in the sense that muller and his investigators and his prosecutors have not charged or indicted trump or even tried to indict trump with anything yet if these crimes come to light if actual crimes come to light and they are proven if more evidence comes to light it could change things yeah i wouldn't hold our breath but it could change yeah i don't think we know we are still in this not purgatory but um like a liminal space where like we can what that was the word you were taking for liminal space yeah it was tommy i yeah no i just haven't used it for this it's that we we know that purgatory catholicism is the theme of the met gala the point is i'm sorry, it is?

That's what we were talking about. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, the liminal space. Like, we know a lot, but not enough. We don't know what Mueller knows. We don't know what's coming. Trump knows more than we do. There's going to be a certain point.

I mean, one thing that I was thinking about over the weekend, too, is, like, who knows more than us? Trump does. Mueller does. Mike Pence doesn't. I'm not sure Rudy rudy does you know i'm not totally sure he's only halfway through the crimes are at the end of the document rudy doesn't know what trump said to lester holt you know like he doesn't know anything and you know i'm sure like i put myself in the shoes of like rudy giuliani reading the stories that broke in the Post and the Times over the weekend.

And he's not just scratching his head like, oh, this seems very weird. Speaking of the stories that ran in the Times and the Post, Washington Post ran a story this weekend reporting that even though Trump financed most of his real estate projects through debt for most of his career, around 2005, 2006, this began to change, and he started spending hundreds of millions of dollars in cash for projects, including on 14 projects he paid for in full without any financing from any banks. The Post piece doesn't use the phrase money laundering, but it does paint a picture of a pretty sketchy scene in which Donald Trump is moving tons of money around the world on golf courses and all kinds of other projects without the Trump organization able to give a coherent explanation for where the money was coming from or why they

suddenly preferred cash. Eric Trump told the Post that his father, quote, didn't need to think about borrowing for every transaction we invested in ourselves. This is the same Eric Trump who four years ago told a reporter that, quote, we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russiaussia another normally not that trustworthy individual uh who has a relevant quote here was this is all about money laundering steve bannon told michael wolf muller's path to fucking trump goes right through paul manafort don jr and jared goes through deutsche bank and all the kushner shit so people in the know suggest that the this cash came from russia, you know, Russian sources

and that there was money laundering. Like the crime is in plain sight again. Yeah. And it's also just, Donald Trump has made it clear throughout his career that he likes to use borrowed money to make investments because it's lower risk for him. He likes the idea, you know,

that's what happened when he bought the Plaza. I think that was maybe even reported in this post story, but it's a sea change in how he conducted himself. He advocated for using debt because there are tax advantages doing, there's financial advantages to do it, and there's far less risk. And then all of a sudden, as if there's some kind of emergency, they're spending huge and huge, vast sums of money all around the world out of nowhere, totally new business practice for them. I mean, we also know that in huge and huge, vast sums of money all around the world out of nowhere. Totally new business practice for them. I mean, we also know that in 2005 and 2006, there was billions and trillions of dollars in illegal money in Russia that Russian oligarchs and Russian government officials were trying to get out of the country.

And they were looking for places in the West to put this money. And they were looking for places in the West to put this money. And around the same time, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization starts looking for international financing with the Trump kids and Michael Cohen. And sure enough, you can imagine them talking to the Russians and the Russians saying, we will give you alternative financing, is the term used. And you don't have to tell anyone. And so a bunch of real estate projects could very well have been funded by Russian money. Yeah, and in the Michael Cohen piece, they talk about how he flipped all these buildings for all of a sudden they're worth three times,

four times as much as what he paid for them without having put a lot of money into them himself. Just a small point and it's a broad point, but making millions of dollars legitimately is very hard and it takes like sophisticated people like Michael Cohen, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr.

Donald Trump. These people are exactly as sophisticated and intelligent as we think they are. Yeah. They did not crack the code for making hundreds of millions of dollars. And they certainly didn't crack it in 2006. I mean, I'm interested with comes to this because I also, like, right now you know that all of these Trump pundits and people at Fox and everywhere else are trying to figure out how to explain away money laundering as not a crime. Or at least as not a fair crime for Mueller to go after.

Well, even though, if it has to do with Russia, by the way, and they've committed criminal activity in laundering money, then, of course, Russia could hold that over them. That's the whole concern. That's the whole concern. Yeah, also just on the money. There's blackmail. I mean, it's national security implications. It reminds me of what happens when insider trading affects somebody in power, which is then all of a sudden there's this whole group of people that kind of say, everybody does it. Everybody's laundering money. Everybody's insider trading. Yeah, everybody's doing it. So yeah, that is something to look forward to.

I really hope this whole thing hinges on Bozo, Eric Trump, like hopping in a cart with a golf reporter and just coughing up this detail about getting all their money from Russia. I hope it's true. But to your point, love it about these guys like aren't the brightest bulbs in the tree. I mean, Michael Cohen flipping real estate a year or two later for like three, four times the price he paid for it, that has to raise a whole lot of eyebrows. I mean, it's not that easy to make money on real estate. I don't believe. I'm no expert. No, and neither is fucking he.

Because we saw the other avenues of his sophisticated business empire, and they are crashing into people with cars and then making insurance claims. Taxi medallions. This is the level of, we're not dealing with Kaiser Sose here. You know, like, this is Michael Cohen. This is the guy in the first 10 minutes of the mob movie. This is not. He doesn't make it to the end of Goodfellas. This is not De Niro checking to see

how many blueberries are in the muffins. So while we're on the subject of Trump goonery, there were also multiple reports this weekend about how the same Israeli intelligence firm that was once hired by Harvey Weinstein to dig up dirt on his accusers was apparently hired to dig up dirt on former Obama administration officials Colin Kahl and crooked contributor Ben Rhodes as well as their families in order to discredit their support of

the Iran deal. The Guardian's reporting says that aides to President Trump hired these Israeli spies for the job. Ronan Farrow's New Yorker article cites a source that says it was a quote private sector client pursuing commercial interested related sanctions on Iran. What do we think about this, guys? Some scary shit. This is really chilling. I mean, you are a fucking black cube. Yeah.

I mean, you're a government official just literally doing your job. And like this isn't traditional campaign oppo. This isn't like quotes and votes and financial ties. These are people who are out to destroy your life in any way they can, whether it's personal or professional. They emailed Ben's wife. They emailed Colin's wife. And by the way, whatever fucking spy genius thought the way to get Ann Norris

was telling her she wanted to consult on a movie about all the president's men meet the West Wing. Didn't build a very good psychological profile on ann norris yeah the also i really the company name was shell productions and it's like if you're making a shell company have a brainstorm guys yeah shell company we're from fake industries we're here to we're here to trick you yeah oh shit i mean so my question is like i don't know i mean obviously the guardian says it was trump aids ronan's piece doesn't i just can't imagine sort of a commercial entity going through these kind of lengths to start discrediting officials over this like what i mean maybe we'll know because

ronan will do more reporting or someone will but it's very fishy to me i don't think we know i also think ultimately the specific group responsible is less important than the implication that it is now seen as fair game to hire private spies to go after your political enemies i don't know yeah we just sort of like move on yeah and like we it's so serious we're surrounded by the implications of wealth concentration all the time in ways big and small and i think this is one of those where you look at it and you say there are people out there who have enough money and who have enough power that they're willing to vote resources things like that because there are so much concentrated wealth and so few hands that these people believe that they can wield this kind of power

in our political system my argument against the iran deal isn't strong enough. So I'm going to spend lots of money to destroy someone's life who is in favor of it. How's that? Is that going to work out for you? And ultimately, whether that's somebody with somehow financial interests that will benefit from the removal of the deal versus someone with just a political interest in destroying the deal, I don't think it ultimately matters. It's that we as a society have to say that this is just beyond the bounds. We just don't dig into the personal life of people who were in government in the past to discredit them or destroy them in some way for political purposes. It just has to be something that's beyond the pale.

There will be some people that say, well, okay, you Democrats are pretty happy that someone paid a whole bunch of money to Christopher Steele to create the dossier about Donald Trump that we're now all talking about. I would argue that it's very different to talk about vetting someone who might be the president of the United States. I think that's obvious. You know, but there are also people say, okay, well, news organizations, others dug into Seb Gorka, maybe opposition researchers. But like, again, it is very different when a group of former spies are contacting people's wives, partners, whatever, in this kind of dishonest, nefarious way. Like this is absolutely an escalation and uptick. It is chilling. And it should make anyone in government worried.

And there's a huge difference between journalists doing an investigation to try to report on something that might be newsworthy to private interests, hiring people to build a dossier on private citizens for political gain. I mean, it's just, there's no real comparison there. And also, the tactics are so different. You know, journalists trying to find out about, you know, whatever, Donald Trump's financial interest, what the Washington Post is doing is so vastly different than what these private spies do. I mean, these are people creating aliases to trick people into sharing information that will embarrass someone and to use that embarrassing information as leverage. Tommy, it does seem like Trump is prepared to withdraw from the Iran deal today on Tuesday.

What happens next? I mean, do the centrifuges come back? Do they start building weapons again? Are there no more inspectors? What are the consequences? That's what the Iranians say, is that they're going to resume their nuclear activities. I assume they'll continue their ballistic missile tests. I assume they'll continue a whole bunch of the things that they were doing before the deal came into effect. And no one is able to explain how this is going to make us safer. I mean, Trump's argument all along is like he wants to get a better deal.

He wants to get rid of the 10 year sunset on some of the limits on enrichment. He wants to put additional restrictions on their testing of ballistic missiles, whatever. And then maybe he was using this credible threat as a leverage to get the Europeans to cut an additional deal that is even stronger and gets us in a better place. Okay. But if you just tear the thing up with nothing to follow on, I don't get it. The rest of the world is not with us. Well, doesn't it seem like our only option then is military conflict? The opponents of the Iran deal, when we were trying to get it done, they'd be very upset that we'd say, oh, your option is war. Like, oh, you all paint us as warmongers. But if there's no deal anymore, and yet the Trump administration's position is they cannot have nuclear weapons, how else do they enforce that?

Yeah, it's going to be impossible to get the sanctions regime back in place that we had prior to the deal. Impossible. Because no one's going to be with us. None of the Europeans are. The Security Council won to be with us none of the europeans are the security council won't be with us from paris to daca to this deal in the run-up to donald trump doing what he said he was going to do from the beginning there is always this argument that oh he's doing it as leverage right he's laying down his markers he's threatening to pull the deal because he wants a better deal but then he doesn't get the better deal and he shoots the

hostage anyway a better deal and uh it's a good segue to our next topic um that and i don't want to just say it's on trump either this is what a lot of republicans and a lot of conservatives and a lot of pundits have wanted for a long long time this is trump just following the lead of the republican party i decided to demagogue this thing from day one all the neocons are going to be all cheering tomorrow on twitter that iran is now going to be closer to building a nuclear weapon and all the things that's what they're cheering and all the things they're furious about that would sunset in a decade well we're upset that it's only 10 years that they can't do this stuff so now it's immediately you excited cool unbelievable Excited? Cool. Unbelievable. Let's talk about the midterms and the better deal.

Stormy and Rudy and Mueller are sucking up a lot of media oxygen right now, but we are six months away from the midterm election. Trump's approval rating has not moved. If anything, it's ticked up in the last few weeks. The generic ballot is hovering around where we need it to be but hasn't really widened much a recent CNN poll that came out Monday said 57% of people think that things are going well in the country right now which is the highest since January of 2007 so with all this there's a fair amount of debate about whether or not the insane scandal surrounding Trump are just drowning out any attempt by Democrats to talk about issues like healthcare and taxes that have a more direct impact on people's lives and may even have a more direct

electoral impact in November. What do you guys think about this? Age old question. How do Democrats break through? Yeah, it is an age old question. I think it's a silly question, because what we're seeing play out in national news is not what people are going to be talking about when there's national news and candidates on the campaign trail every single day. I mean, you've seen this debate over what happened in Virginia. And it is true, the country was talking about, you know, Trump shenanigans. But on the ground, you saw candidates talking about Trump shenanigans and healthcare, Trump shenanigans and jobs. And I think candidates are going to talk about both. They need to talk about both. We're not going to be able to stop covering or talking about the various crimes of our mobster president, nor should we. It's really, really important. Also, over the next couple of months, we may learn more and more. For all we know, the Mueller investigation will wrap up. We don't know when, and at which point we will have lots of more information. And then all of a sudden, we'll be making it the centerpiece of their campaign. So we have really no idea. I find it to be a tedious debate at this point. And that's what I want to say about that.

Tell me you got some thoughts. I mean, I'm not surprised that his approval will tick up or perception of his handling of issues has ticked up because the economy's humming along. You know, things seem reasonably quiet on the international front. There might be this, you know, rapprochement with North Korea. So like the guy should be in the 60s, the 60% approval. The fact that he's a lunatic who tweets stupid shit, who probably colluded with Russia, who

has these debate about his hush payments to his former mistress like that is what's holding him down. I do actually worry about Trump blotting out the sun and making it possible to talk about anything else in a normal midterm cycle. The kind of way you get around that is you work with local press who actually is more likely to ask you about issues that matter to your district or what have you. That gets harder when Sinclair Broadcasting buys up your local media. So I think these things sort of exacerbate each other's problems. I know I'm hopeful that if we work hard and get our act together, we can win big in the

midterms, but it's going to be a challenge. It's going to be a challenge. I think it's instructive that during the healthcare debate debate during the tax debate his approval was lower we know that that the tax cut and the health care issue hurt him they hurt republicans the generic ballot was better for us and they're running those debates and they're running from the tax cut that's why you know it's so damaging and so it is true that if the national media was focused on health care tax cuts and all that kind of stuff, his approval rating may be lower and that the generic ballot for Democrats may be better. But we're not going to change that.

We've all yelled about this for years, like, oh, we wish the media would cover this, we wish they would cover that. You go to war with the media you have, not the media you want. In some cases, that helps you go to war. So this is guaranteed the media is going to cover these scandals from now until the election and so we have to figure out how to operate within this world yeah and 2006 is really instructive too because that was an election defined by scandal in the bush administration

scandal in congress corruption in congress as well as i think a smart strategy on the part of democrats campaigning to have kind of a a basic simple set of policies that they were rallying behind. And I think anyone know what's in the better deal? I do. But as long as I don't have to tell you now. I also think it's really like I think a lot of this is one in the recruitment phase and the fundraising phase. And we're doing pretty well there. So I feel OK.

It is. And like you were saying, love it. There's a difference between the chatter on cable and in Twitter and what's actually going on on the ground. And the Democrats running, even though they may be ideologically different, some on the left, some on the center left, they are all talking about health care and taxes.

Conor Lamb was talking about that. Arizona was talking about that. All the special election candidates have been talking about that. And they don't, whether they're conservative or liberal, not many of them at all are talking a lot about Donald Trump. Don Lemon's panel is not representative of what you're probably hearing in an average congressional district. Yeah, go find me the Democrat that's out there running on Stormy Daniels

and Mueller and talking all that news. They're not doing that. And then the question is, like you said, though, you used to be able to break through with local news. Now local news is either Sinclair-operated or national news is now substituting local news, and so the news becomes more national. So I do think that candidates are going to have to be creative in responding to the news of the day

and then wedging in the message on the issues that matter. I agree. I mean, look, we've said this before, but it's not a new problem, news of the day and then wedging in yeah the message on the issues that matter i agree i mean look we've said this before but it's um it's not a new problem and there's not like we need to like i don't know solve some ancient riddle of politics to figure out what to do like we just need to be disciplined and like get back to basics and it's something that we didn't do enough in 2016 which is you got to have the first half of your sentence start with trump and the second half of your sentence have health care in it you know just you you know, Mueller's come out with a series of allegations against Trump. And I think they're pretty serious. That's why we got to send somebody

to Washington who's going to hold Trump accountable and protect your health care. Yeah. Hey, I did it. Hey, by the way, the Republicans have some party, some problems, too. I mean, if Don Blankenship wins the Republican nomination in West Virginia, despite being like an avowed racist, despite being a mine owner whose, you know, horrible, lax safety standards led to the death of individuals who worked for him. That means that party is fucking broken in a way that is so fundamental. Don't tell me about their economic anxiety when the mine owner who went to jail is the one winning. It's like these naked appeals to racism. Winning on a campaign of calling Mitch McConnell's wife a China person. China person.

This is what's so amazing about that. This guy is a mine owner whose negligence caused people's deaths. And in order to distract from that, he decided to up his racism. Yeah. He always had it, but he's like, I need to make headlines about how I'm a racist, not that I'm a negligent mine owner. So I'm going to do that

because that's going to make me better off. Republicans everywhere, they aren't running on tax cuts. They aren't running on the free market. They aren't running

on the economy. They are running on identity politics and culture war. They are running on Hillary Clinton. They're talking about protecting Donald Trump.

They're running against Nancy Pelosi. They're talking about immigrants Donald Trump. They're running against Nancy Pelosi. They're talking about immigrants invading this country. All the cultural issues, all the identity politics stuff, they don't want to run on the economy. They don't, which is why we should. Yes. I was thinking about this like blankenship kind of rising over the weekend and what it meant and the fact that it's motivated by racism. And we really are. And I think partly, it's a similar set of conditions that made Trump possible, which is so much of our politics has become separated

from actual real world implications, and is so much around symbols and symbolism, and kind of definitional partisanship, like how people identify. And it's interesting, because as sort of political partisan symbols have become much more important, which is why we see so many things that Republicans say are good, because they like, you know, draw liberal tears and all the rest. As that's happened, the institutional parties themselves have become less powerful, not just because individuals have more power in their own lives, but also because we've seen outside wealth and outside money kind of dictate the terms so much more.

And so you end up with a situation where party identification could be enough that if a guy like Blankenship wins the nomination, he can become a senator. But party institutions are so weak that they can't prevent a person like Blankenship from just spending his own money and winning a campaign and then demanding the endorsement of the party itself after the fact. Well, Donald Trump weighed in against Blankenship today. Donald Trump Jr. did the day before. We better hope Trump doesn't see the racist ad and decide he actually sees the appeal.

I mean, if he wins, who really thinks that they're not going to support him? They will, of course, yes. Roy Moore. It's extraordinary. I don't think you're wrong. I think it's extraordinary, especially because one of the ways in which you'd have to... Donald Trump endorsing Blankenship

means endorsing somebody who ran a campaign against his cabinet secretary. Because Mitch McConnell's wife is Elaine Chao, his secretary of transportation, labor, transportation now, right? But yeah, hey. It's despicable. Won't stop him. It's despicable.

Mitch McConnell has allowed a lot of despicable people to come and go in that party it would benefit him to have some fucking courage early on because now this is coming at him personally and he doesn't have a lot of moral clarity in his statements and response i will also bet that if he wins this primary the joe mansion general election campaign will be all about that mine. And it will not be much about his racism. Well, no, because of course it won't be. Because Joe Manchin knows how to win a race in West Virginia. And also it's a bizarre and strange attack.

Like you'd have to explain the attack to people. The attack is vote for me, I'm a racist. To say why it's a bad attack is sort of beside the point. Let's talk about Gina Haspel real quick. She's the Trump administration's nominee to run the CIA, and she's scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. But the Washington Post reported over the weekend that Haspel tried to withdraw her nomination on Friday to avoid a tough confirmation process and any damage it might cause to the agency's reputation because of the interest in her involvement with the CIA's enhanced interrogation programs,

also known as torture. The White House convinced her to stick with it, to stay in. And then Trump tweeted on Monday that Democrats are pressing her to withdraw because she was, quote, too tough on terrorists. Tommy, should Democrats oppose her? And if they do, is it possible she doesn't get nominated? So Gina Haspel is a CIA lifer. I think she's been there for 30 some odd years.

Most of her career is clandestine. So there's very little information out there about her. We do know that she ran one of the first CIA black sites where a couple people were tortured, were waterboarded. She also was part of the group of people that ordered the destruction of videotapes that made about of evidence of that torture. So apparently she went to the White House, had this meeting about tough questions she was going to get and decided she was going to pull out until the White House sent Mark Short, their ledge

affairs guy, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders over to Langley to meet with her. Imagine being in that meeting. It's like, oh, this is the cavalry, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the ledge affairs guy who couldn't get anyone approved. Whatever. Talk about torture. Talk about torture. I had a long conversation with Pod Save the World with Fash Shakir from ACLU about their concerns about Haspel. If I were a Democrat, I would vote against her. I don't think we should put forward someone who had such a direct role in the EIT program in the legacy of torture. We need to get past it. It's a horrific stain on our legacy. John McCain said so. Barack Obama said so.

I don't know why of all the people you could choose for this job, you would choose someone that literally ran a black site. That seems absurd to me. Yeah. I'd vote against. I would, too. And I, you know, I don't know where all these red state Senate Democrats, especially the ones who are up in 18, are going to come down on this. But to me, this is the same as pompeo right it's like i don't know what you have to lose by voting against someone who's so identified with a time when we tortured in this country i just i don't

understand it i find it hard to understand any of these decisions around voting yes on nominees to send a message that you're moderate because no human being is going to be voting. Parses that shit. Yeah. Six months from now, you'd be like, I wasn't sure if I was going to support Claire McCaskill, but,

but now that I know that she kind of supports some of the nominees, I'm on board. I don't get it. So sensible. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent out a tweet saying that if you're a feminist and you don't support Gina Haspel, then you're somehow inconsistent. Like that is such a stupid, condescending, ridiculous argument. It's interesting that

Trump then quickly switched it to your traditional, you're soft on terrorism. Well, when they announced Gina Haspel and everyone started reporting on the fact that she was involved with this black site, I thought it was a feature, not a bug to Trump. I mean, Trump loves saying how tough he is and how he would be supportive of torture. So I thought he saw this and said, oh, let's have the fight about torture. I'm for torture. Let's do it. And it seems like maybe Gina Haspel is the one who doesn't seem to want to have that fight.

Yeah. All right. We'll be watching that. One more thing before we go, because the story just broke before we started recording. Another Ronan Farrow story in The New Yorker, this time with Jane Mayer, about New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, About New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who four women have come forward saying that he physically abused them, slapped them, hit them, and their stories are corroborated by their friends, by witnesses, by photographs. Pretty outrageous. Yeah.

Like, you read the story, and you should go read the story. It's a hard one to read, but you should read it. And it's monstrous. Yeah. And he should resign. Ronan and Jane Mayer have been working on it for some time it is beyond credible I mean these are women on the record

there are multiple allegations multiple allegations that comport with one another that were confirmed at the time beyond this serious physical abuse there are all kinds of other inappropriate behavior reported on the story. Drunk driving. Drunk driving.

It seems impossible to me to imagine that this person survives in this job. I think that especially right now, it is so incredibly important that we have someone in this position in New York who is credible and unassailable in terms of ethics and values. New York may play an incredibly important role

in holding Trump accountable because the president does not have the power to pardon for state crimes. And there cannot be someone like this compromised. So beyond the obvious moral disgrace and as reason enough for him to go, we need somebody better in that job. And that is obvious.

And the faster he goes, the fucking better. Just a quick note. I don't know if you guys probably didn't see this. Governor Cuomo said for the good of the office, he should resign. So it's good that senior Democratic leaders in New York state, it's a no brainer. He should be out of there. I mean, what I'm wondering is whether someone could press charges on him at this point for assaulting them. It's horrific. I also think politically Democrats, again, should draw a very clear line and say that unlike Republicans in states like Missouri, where you have a governor accuse them some pretty horrendous things, we're not going to allow this in our party. Yeah. And it's just like you said, it's the right thing to do. We are recording this in a very short period where a story breaks like this and it hasn't turned into complete politics yet.

Donald Trump has not tweeted yet about Eric Schneiderman, which we probably will by tomorrow morning. Right. And everyone hasn't gone to bed. The whataboutism hasn't turned into complete politics yet. Donald Trump has not tweeted yet about Eric Schneiderman, but he probably will by tomorrow morning, right? And everyone hasn't gone to bed. The whataboutism hasn't happened, and you did this and you did this. We're just in a period now where you read this story, and your first reaction is, I don't care what party this person's from. This is a horrible thing to do, and they need to leave.

It shouldn't be in public service. That's it. Very simple. It should be in jail. Yeah. Okay. When we come back, we will have our conversation with Yara Shahidi. Yara Shahidi, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you.

So great to have you here in the studio. Happy to be here. Yeah. You are the star of two TV shows,ish and grownish you're going to harvard in the fall you recently founded 18 by 18 which is an organization dedicated to registering and educating first-time voters you're busy a little bit tell us about grownish and blackish um well it's been fun i mean blackish we've been on for about going on five years now i signed on when i was 13 and now i'm a legal adult and such so

that's cool um and then grown-ish was just the natural next step to blackish um i didn't know whether my character was just going to disappear and like they just weren't going to address like where she went but instead we have a show to address it so that was a nice surprise you always want to ask i wanted to be a history professor for the longest time still still pretty dead set on that too i remember for my 10th birthday we had like a dress up as what you want to act? I wanted to be a history professor for the longest time. Still pretty dead set on that, too. I remember for my 10th birthday, we had a dress-up as what you want to be in the future, and I dressed up as a historian. What does a historian dress like?

It was a pinstripe suit and a pocket watch. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. How did you go from historian to actor? Well, my bubba is a DP, and my mama is a commercial actress, and so we started with her and you know it was always just a fun hobby you get to work with your family you work for a couple hours on set it wasn't really intense and then i think creatively it was just really interesting

and i i never we never watched much tv but always loved books and so it was like another form of storytelling and so it was a nice little happy accident that it all worked out. And it's been pretty cool ever since. Do you ever call your agent and say, I only want to do stuff with Kenya Barris from now on? I'm pretty sure we've had that conversation. I also remember, I'm not saying this just because I'm here, but I remember I'm with CAA. And I was like, so I really only want to do podcasts. Great. Good strategy.

And I was like, so I really only want to do podcasts. Great. Good strategy. Would have loved to known that as we started this friendship relationship off. But yeah. And Crooked Media's own Cara Brown. She's a writer. She's incredible. She's so funny.

Can you tell us about 18 by 18? Why'd you start it? What are you guys hoping to do? Well, I mean, the idea started post-election. And post-election day. I was 16. I escorted my parents to the polls, but couldn't vote myself. And so the idea really came from two things.

One, how as a person who is not yet able to vote, how are we supposed to be engaged with our government and how are we supposed to understand it? And more than a theoretical, I've taken my AP American history class in a way in which we understand what's happening, what policies are on the table when we're discussing politics, what does it all mean? And yeah, and how do we participate? And then on the other level of being a first-time voter this year during midterms, midterms aren't really something that's addressed very often, especially for younger voters, especially on its prevalence and relevance. And so to be able to have a campaign that's really marketing politics to my generation in a way that you're no longer the anomaly for wanting to be

engaged, but rather making it a given and really getting rid of the knowledge disparity in terms of information and how it's disseminated. And so that was the main inspiration for it. And then just then the very practical side of also wanting to register young voters. Yeah, I mean, that's what's so cool about what you're doing. It's like you're not just out there tweeting about Trump or like DMing Kanye and then he tweets it or whatever is happening these days. You're talking about the midterms, like midterms about redistricting, like those ramifications. What's your pitch to your freshman roommate at Harvard? That's by the way.

You're like, why would I vote? Right. Well, I first have to start with the fact that whenever I say happy birthday to somebody, it usually stems from you can vote in two years or you can vote in a year. You can register to vote this year. I heard you had a voting team birthday party. Yeah. I actually had friends register to vote at my birthday party.

It was really exciting, and I registered as well. That is commitment right there. I appreciate that. Committed. But I think, if anything, it's oftentimes we discuss policies as though they don't affect real humans and as though they don't affect us. And so given that we are 18 and we may not be thinking long term that when these policies are in effect, they will affect us as young adults. They'll affect our families. they'll affect our future. But more than that, being from a socially engaged generation that is known for rallying and phone banks and all of that,

it's really more so voting is about taking our passions and what we've clearly stated are social and moral compasses and putting it into policy change and taking the next step and saying, we've already told you this is how we feel, and now you have to listen. What got you interested in politics? How long have you been interested in politics? Well, I'm a history nerd, and so I think it's really just for the love of history. I have a very socially engaged family in both Iran and in Wisconsin and Chicago. And so coming from a family that's always been engaged, coming from a grandfather who is an educator and a great grandfather who got his master's behind a curtain to teach special ed,

I feel like there's a certain, I guess, a certain respect due to just our role in history and the role that we can play in shaping our own future rather than this feeling of helplessness, of it'll be however it'll be. And so I think that was the first step. And I think also I had the perfect timing if I took an American history class and a stats class during this election cycle, in which case I also realized my own lack of knowledge about what I was learning, about looking at a poll and coming from a stats perspective.

Everything just kind of shifted. And so there's more of a need to be engaged. And I feel like being that I've lived most of my young adult years under the utopic Obama administration, I feel like I was always interested in politics, but it didn't feel life-threatening or ending. And then you have this administration in which, well, the countries you're banning, my family's from one of those countries. Right. I mean, you're half Iranian. President Trump's Muslim ban affected you in a very direct way. You wrote this beautiful post, I think on Instagram, about the dangers of xenophobia.

Can you talk about that? Like, why did you decide to write that? What did, you know, what he tried to do mean to you? Well, I mean, on a selfish level, it was really personal to wake up and see the list and see that I know people, that I know family. I know family from Iran. I know family that are Iranian that are in D.C. And so, like, as a first-generation American on one side of my family, and so understanding the importance of immigration in my life means that it was something personal and

something that I wanted to address. And more than that, I feel like being able to have the platform to address it in a way that I'm not necessarily telling anyone this is what you should do or how you should feel, but these are my feelings, being that it's directly impacted my life. And fortunately, I had no family that was stuck in airports or denied visas with the timing of it. But still, knowing people that are stuck in airports is a drastic, crazy feeling. And yeah, so anyway, I can use my platform to address an issue and to make it more humane and stop acting like the people that we're talking about aren't actually being affected. Right. And that's like a bigger problem with the U.S. and any conversation about Iran. It's like nuclear program, religious leaders. There's no conversation that's about Iranian people, culture, food, like things that we

have in common. Any ideas for how we fix that? Like, does everyone go to a really big Nowruz party? Like, what's the next move here? That'd be great. I actually went. I went to the last Nowruz celebration at the White House. My entire family was there.

My littlest brother, Ehsan, actually was eating all of the food because they had the best Iranian chef ever there. The White House smelled fantastic. Have you made burial? Govashiri? Yeah, all of it. But I have to say, I mean, media is a big role in which like, how do we how do we talk about or normalize and more than normalize celebrate the day to day life of people from all backgrounds. And that's why I feel like television has been such a perfect alignment, because it is about saying that these are people's stories. And even if they don't necessarily parallel your own, you can still relate to the humanity behind it. necessarily parallel your own, you can still relate to the humanity behind it.

And, you know, more than that, I feel like, again, it goes back to history and education, in which because I've had such an alternative curriculum from which I've learned from, that has been more inclusive, I think I look at things within the context of, well, this is my knowledge base. And so this is why I'm view, this is why I feel a certain way about an immigration ban. Or this is why I feel a certain way when Macron and Trump are talking about the Iran nuclear deal, like this instability didn't come from the redrawing of borders, or whatever it may be. And so the history has definitely helped because being somebody who took every AP class available, it's non-inclusive in terms of the history that you learn. And so how are you expected to sympathize or empathize with somebody where you feel as though none of their journey had anything to do or impact your own? It is a very separatist, isolationist view.

So 18 by 18 is a nonpartisan organization. You said you're a Democrat. Yes. There was a poll today that said voters ages 18 to 34 support Democrats by nine points less than they did two years ago. Even as those young people overwhelmingly disapprove of Donald Trump. What do you think the Democratic Party needs to do better? Sort of reach out to young voters and make sure that young voters aren't just active, but active in politics and align behind a certain set of issues and beliefs. I mean, I guess a part of it, it's a hefty question, but a part of it would just have

to be in engaging us. I think even as somebody who was involved in the Clinton campaign loosely towards the end of it, there's just a lack of youth engagement in terms, in a way that felt natural, in a way that rather than having us fit into this, these are the standards or criteria of the Democratic Party fitting the Democratic Party to us or relating it to our life. Because I think there are already going to be so many natural correlations, but so many times those correlations aren't drawn for us. And so I feel like, again, it also goes to being aware of how voting works and being aware of like, okay, vote for a third party candidate. But understand how your votes are distributed and understand like, let's think about the greater good. And let's think about, you're never going to find somebody that you completely align with,

but what are the morals or what is the line that we draw between this is a candidate I support, and this is a candidate I can't support. When you talk to other young people, people your age, what is the biggest challenge that stands in the way of them getting actually involved? Well, it's really knowledge and self-recognition of your own possibility. I feel like I come from a generation that already wants to be engaged, a generation that, whether it's through social media, whether it's just through this idea that we have extreme access, we know a lot and we are aware of a lot. And, you you know we've led many movements and we've seen the re-emergence of student-led movements especially in the past month um and so it's not a lack of interest for sure i i feel like it's just a lack of recognizing the fact that we do have power and

whether it is buying power and looking at like when we boycott a brand that means something. And so being aware of our own power, being aware of, okay, even if you aren't a voting age, this is the power that you do have. Having, I have friends that campaign for elected officials that they, local elected officials that they like, but those kinds of things aren't often discussed in schools. You don't see a little like poster board up like, and if you want to campaign, just call here. see a little like poster board let up like and if you want a campaign just call here right do you think parkland and the response from those students has changed people's perception of their own power and their own possibilities definitely um i i feel like the past month and a half in particular has been really poignant because it's really discussed or really brought out the intersectionality

and all of the issues that we're facing because not only did we have the atrocity of Parkland, but we also had Stephon Clark being shot in his backyard holding a cell phone. And so when we talk about gun violence, now it's impossible to separate from not only these kids who are affected, but our communities of color, our communities in general. And so because of that, and also because of the stance that not only the students that are leading these Black Lives Matter movements, but also the Parkland March for Our Lives movements have done, it really becomes, you can't separate the faces and the people affected from the issue itself. Yeah. You think you'd ever run for office? I want to be policy adjacent. Policy adjacent? I like that term.

office? I want to be policy adjacent. Policy adjacent? Yeah. I'm still figuring out what I necessarily mean by that, but I think I want to be next to Capitol Hill, just not on it. Look, we feel you. We moved from Washington because you don't want to live there, but fighting for the stuff you believe in. You can do it from anywhere now. That's the best part. Yeah. It's really cool. Even here. All this. Yara, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. This has been so fun. We appreciate you stopping by. Come by again sometime.

Of course. You say that now. Anytime. Anytime. We'll have a nicer office next time. Literally, my entire cast just heard your voices, I think, on a loop on set. Because it's what I listen to. Yeah, we apologize.

I know. Yara Shahidi, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Thanks again to Yara Shahidi for joining us today. And, you know, we'll see you guys on Thursday. If you're lucky. If you're lucky.

If you're lucky. And you can download the pod. I have nothing to add. Thank you.