Pod Save America - “America runs on Dunkin.”

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Trump trades his wall for a cave, Roger Stone becomes the sixth Trump advisor to be indicted, Republicans weigh a primary challenge to the president, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz flirts with an independent presidential bid. Then CNN’s Maeve Reston talks to Tommy about Kamala Harris’s campaign kickoff in Oakland. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, you'll hear Tommy's interview with CNN's Maeve Reston, who was in Oakland for Kamala Harris' campaign launch this weekend. There's also quite a bit of news to get through today, from Donald Trump bending the knee to Nancy Pelosi, to Roger Stone's indictment, to former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's flirtation with running for president as an independent.

The cup runneth over with frothy, milky news. That's why I brought my Dunkin' Donuts today. Yeah, you did. Oh, good for you. Fuck you. Also, we're going on. Let's cut to the chase, huh? Where do you stand, John?

Yeah, so I have a nuanced position. We're on tour. We're going on tour. Pod Save America, love it or leave it. And Pod Save the People are hitting the road in the weeks and months ahead. You can check out our tour dates and buy tickets at cricket.com slash events and if we're coming to your town it's best to get in on things early so for pod save america fans in boston dc and los angeles especially that means you will be doing the greek theater right here in la towards the end of the summer which is very cool love to leave it. It's going to be in New York City. So, very exciting. Yeah.

Very exciting. Okay. On Friday, President Trump finally agreed to end his ill-fated shutdown that he started over wall funding with no wall funding. The government will now be open for three weeks while negotiations continue over funding for border security. Trump is already warning that he's willing to shut the government down again if he doesn't get what he wants or declare a federal emergency to start building the wall on his own. Guys, why did Trump cave? What happened? Because he had no hand to play. He never did. And it became clear when all the Republicans in the Senate started to cave on him. I mean, that's truly I think it's that simple. All the Republicans, there was reports of a shouting match in the Republican caucus meeting,

and then six Republicans voted for the Democratic bill in the Senate to reopen the government. He had nowhere to go. Basically, Mitch McConnell was driving the car and Donald Trump was in a baby seat next to him playing with a little plastic wheel and honking the horn uh and mitch mcconnell was like you're driving buddy what did it sound like it beep beep okay and they're driving you know they're driving down the street and uh you want to go here you want to drive us into this ditch okay we'll go into the ditch and he really let him pretend he was steering for a long time but then finally it was time to go to the grocery store yeah i mean unpopular wall, unpopular shutdown, unpopular president doesn't add up to a very good hand. It's so funny. The Washington Post poll had him at 58 percent disapproval in that same poll. Fifty three percent blame Trump and congressional Republicans.

And in an NPR Marist poll, 57 percent of the country said they plan to vote against him. Those are not those are catastrophic numbers. I don't think that the press sort of appropriately contextualizes what that means for a president seeking re-election. That is a catastrophic defeat. Of course he had to cave. Of course. Yeah, I mean, the lowest approval ratings that President Obama saw were in the mid to low 40s during the debt ceiling crisis,

at which time the Republicans also had ratings in the like mid to low 40s during the debt ceiling crisis at which time the republicans also had you know uh ratings in the tank too and that was like for three weeks trump has been donald trump has basically been stuck in the low 40s he's been stuck since he's become president and then the shutdown and every once in a while he dips into the high 30s and this is basically what happened in the shutdown yeah and he also started losing some of the republican base which never usually happens and i think the other thing they faced was democrats were completely unified uh and trump got this he was complaining in a meeting why are they so loyal about democrats which is so funny and look there was a lot of people that started protesting uh the air traffic controllers there were unions that protested so i

think that the reason that some of these senate republicans started to cave and started to get worried was you know they had federal workers in their states not just democrats not just liberals who started protesting and telling them that like they were sick of fucking not getting paid um so i just in terms of where the white house went wrong i just want to uh how much time great question john read a Washington Post headline from last week. Quote, Master negotiator or non-entity?

Kushner thrusts himself into middle of shutdown talks. And this is from today's Washington Post. Trump cast about for blame and pointed fingers at his staff, including Kushner, for failing to resolve the impasse, according to aides. Guys, what happened to the master negotiator,

Jared Kushner? It's from Middle East peace to government shutdowns. It's really amazing. It's a good lesson. resolve the impasse according to AIDS. Guys, what happened to the master negotiator, Jared Kushner? From Middle East peace to government shutdowns. It's really amazing. It's a good lesson. Never hire someone you can't fire. You know, he likes, I mean, he's fresh off criminal justice reform passing. He thinks now he's a genius, even though, you know, most of the coalition for that bill was set up by other people, other senators, other politicians, other activists for years by the way it was forget like it almost the only reason it didn't pass

before donald trump was president is because jeff sessions stopped it right there's exactly there was a coalition for this long before jared kushner came along yeah i mean the only quote you really need to remember about jared kushner is from donald trump when he said apparently jared has become an expert on immigration in the last 48 hours. He said that to a big Oval Office meeting. And I think listeners to this show or followers of me on Twitter know that I don't like Jared. I think he's annoying and he sucks at his job.

But it's fun to remind him that he sucks because he's such a little pud who fell upward through everything in life. But it is also a reminder that having a dilettante who has never done anything in life doing life or death negotiations over government funding or pretending he understands Middle East peace is a dangerous thing to do. Like you have an idiot who's completely miscalculating. And this wasn't the first time. I mean, Javanka has never been a moderating force. They've been just morons

bungling their way through the administration. Like Jared thought firing Flynn would end the Russia probe. We learned that from Chris Christie over the weekend. He thought the Democrats would be happy when Trump fired Comey. That didn't turn out very well. He thought it was a good idea to march into the Moscow embassy and establish a back channel with his buddies in Russia. So, like, he's an idiot. He's an idiot. idiot he's an idiot jared and ivanka's politics are the type of politics that probably howard schultz has in mind as he's running for president like you wonder what the basis for like moderate

social liberalism when it's convenient and then physical conservatism that's like new york dilettantes uh jared they don't look at trump they don't have politics they don't jared kushner and ivanka trump do not have a coherent political ideology. They are, you know, they are like the characters in The Great Gatsby, sort of, you know,

bumbling through their existence, making mistakes, not caring who they hurt, not caring about any of it. The only, you know, their source of feedback is, I assume, cocktail parties, each other, friends,

and advisors who will never tell them the truth. So, you know, these are just two wealthy children who have never faced a challenge. Yeah, John Kelly was right. They've been playing government all along. And John mentioned before, like the fact that he thinks that success with criminal justice reform, which is something Democrats want, means you can get them to agree to wall funding. It is crazy. Like, he sincerely thinks that there's this grand bargain on the table. Meanwhile, the White House is setting up meetings with Trump and Ginny Thomas, Clarence Thomas's wife, where they scream at him for a while for not being mean enough to immigrants or transgender people

or hiring enough of their cronies. I like that meeting. They're setting themselves up for disaster over and over. It's also crazy. Like, one of these pieces that was either the Post or the Times said, you know, in meetings, Jared was holding up Stephen Miller as, oh, he's much softer than his reputation. You know, he's a really thoughtful guy on immigration. Stephen Miller, who, you know, in Cliff Simms' new book, Former White House Aided This Out, said at one point Miller said, I don't care if another refugee ever steps foot into the United States. It's so funny.

It's like, Stephen Miller is actually a kinder, more decent person. Once you get to know him, Stephen Miller looks up from a deer's carcass, his face covered in blood. What? Was my name mentioned? Their misunderstanding of Nancy Pelosi is just so absolute and fundamental that I don't know how it's possible. They thought that Pelosi was going to have a hard time on her left for not paying for a wall? That is bonkers. I mean, I get him trying to mess around with Joe Manchin.

But again, he called Joe Manchin and was like, keep an eye on the speech tonight. It's going to change everything in terms of the political dynamic. And then it was a gigantic flop. So I don't know, man. The emperor has no clothes on. I get why it's going to change everything in terms of the political dynamic and then it was a gigantic flop so i don't know man the emperor is no closer i i get i get why it's possible it's because they are stuck in this you know fox news right-wing media um bubble where like they think that you know democrats are going to cave and that democrats are going to want wall funding they're going to bring people to their side. They don't hear any other opinions. They don't expose themselves to other news.

What do you do when at the center of everything that you've built your life around is an unsolvable problem, this immovable huge mistake at the center of all of it? You play around the margins and try to pretend it's not happening. You fill your days with meetings and conversations somewhat loosely tied to reality while all the while the central problem doesn't go away. Like all these people are playing White House pretending. I mean, there's a reason every time they give a big speech, they gather around the Oval Office desk and take a photo like tourists. There's a reason. And the reason is deep down, they all know they have no business being there, that it's not actually real, that it will always have an

asterisk. And so but what do you do in that circumstance? They have to get out of bed. They have to check their emails. They have to respond to those emails. And so on and on it goes until we can get them the fuck out of there. Every day could be your last day. Of all the politically damaging things Trump has done to himself and the Republican Party, which has already, as we said, made him a uniquely unpopular president.

Where does the shutdown rank? How bad is this? I think we don't know, but I think it's very bad. I think it is very bad. The longest partial shutdown in history, the pointlessness of it, the cruelty of it, the damage of it, people will remember. His base clearly has left a mark, this is the beginning of the 2020 campaign. This is, you know, we have, we have Democratic candidates giving big speeches, and this is the president's kickoff. Yeah, the president's kickoff to his 2020 reelection was caving to Nancy Pelosi after shutting down the government for no reason for five weeks. Every political problem can be fixed,

you know, especially if there's an exigent event. But I mean, he has a 63% disapproval rating with independent voters. That is really bad. And I mean, he has a 63% disapproval rating with independent voters. That is really bad. And the solution that he's found to the problem with independent voters is creating a similar problem on the far, far right with the Ann Coulters and worse of the world, who now are gonna call him a wimp and a loser

for not getting wall funding until the day he dies. So he's stuck in this political place where I guess he's gonna fight for wall funding forever, despite the clear political dynamic that it doesn't help him. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I want to talk about that. I mean, also, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, they came out this morning, said the shutdown cost the economy $11 billion, $3 billion, which is a permanent loss. They project that growth will slow to 2.3 percent from 3.1 percent and in 2020 uh they're projecting the growth will decline to 1.7 percent that's when the president is running for re-election so and i think like you said

tommy it's this the shutdown it pissed off workers it pissed off liberals it pissed off moderates and and independents who think like government is always broken and doesn't work and is dysfunctional. It pissed off his base for once because he didn't actually get the wall. Ann Coulter tweeted on Friday, good news for George Herbert Walker Bush. As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as president of the United States. On Bill Maher, she said, you know, I expected the president to keep his promise. I wonder how widespread that is among the base.

Yeah, I think that's I think it's interesting. I think we'll see. I think one question is, over the next year, is it possible for Donald Trump's numbers to get below the high 30s or low 40s and start dipping into the swampy cold waters of George W. Bush's lowest approval ratings? It's obviously where he belongs, but will he get there? I think that depends on losing some of his own people. And I also think, you know, this fight is important and will last. But in part, that depends on what happens next. You know, one of the reasons Donald Trump ended up in this mess is he tried to behave the same way he would have behaved if Democrats didn't control a branch of the government. He kind of did his blustery thing and tried to get something through.

Now, he couldn't do that during the first two years of total Republican control. But he used the exact same tactic, went harder at it, and it left him worse off. And so I think the big question is, will there be any kind of adjustment in how they try to negotiate with Congress on this next funding bill and the other funding bills to come? Because I think that will determine the lasting impact of this shutdown and this kind of governing is what happens now. He's already said he's basically issued the exact same threat. We're heading into the exact same conversation. How is this going to look different? Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, Mulvaney's on TV saying he's going to do the wall with or without Congress. For some reason, there's reporting saying that Trump thinks he can still get wall money from Democrats.

What do we think is more likely? Another shutdown on February 15th? Trump declaring a national emergency and getting in trying to get his money that way or some kind of a deal? I think predicting what Trump will do is, I can't do it because he's irrational. But it is clear that he is reeling from the criticism. He is not used to being savaged on Fox News from right-wing creeps like Ann Coulter, etc. So they have to continue to posture and say that he might shut it down again because that's the only leverage they think they have. I can't imagine any scenario where Mitch McConnell would let that happen to his members. So I think that leaves you a national emergency. Now, when you get to a national emergency, Marco Rubio says it's a bad precedent.

Senator Roy Blunt from Missouri said he opposed it on Fox News Sunday. Gigantic jackass Lindsey Graham is now for it. But I assume he's for it as a way to just get past the government shutdown talk so that seems like the path to me but again it's not a success you just get bogged down in litigation and remember there's basically two big reasons uh for trump's base and republicans to be opposed to a national emergence declaration number one is um what if a democrat does that in the future you You know, national emergency because of climate change, Green New Deal, I'm going to spend all this money. But number two is it just might not work

and actually get the wall built because immediately there's going to be a lawsuit against it. Someone's going to file and it's going to be held up in court, much like Trump's promise to end the DACA program and deport all the dreamers, right? Which has been held up in court and litigation ever since he made the announcement. And basically the same thing could probably, and deport all the dreamers right which is uh had been held up in court and and litigation ever since he made the announcement and basically the same thing could probably and may probably happen

if he uh does a national emergency around the wall you know right but it's me like i said we've said this before it's tailor-made for trump right where he gets to have a big announcement on february 15th national emergency the base cheers again and then everyone forgets in three months from now that the wall hasn't been built at all it's not it's autocrat in the streets uh failed uh republican in the in the sheets but the um well that that is what that is his go-to someone needs to go back through all of our pods and find out all of your iterations of the streets things that you've but the other thing is also like you know we're we're sometimes it's hard to it's easy to forget that america has That's things that you've made. It's actually Donald Trump who has walked away from the ones that were palatable to Democrats. So I think another question would be also, all right, if a deal is on the table, if we are going to talk about border security funding, which Democrats are going to be open to, they always are. What are we going to get? What are we going to ask for?

Are we going to actually try to use our our newfound leverage and power to try to get through something for the dreamers? What are we going to get in exchange for this border wall funding? Because the answer is nothing. Right. Because Trump told The Wall Street Journal. Exactly. I don't want to deal with Dreamers. We should take care of that separately. Yeah. So, like, I don't know. But, like, we won't accept less than $5.7 billion and he won't trade wall funding for a broader immigration reform.

So what the fuck are we talking about? But, right. But then it turns back to Democrats and say, all right, Mitch McConnell cannot allow another shutdown. Like, what are we willing to fight for? What are we willing to push for? That's all. I mean, yeah. So another question, is it time to end the possibility of shutdowns for good? Some members of Congress are angry enough about the damage of recent shutdowns that they're pushing measures to keep them from ever happening again. The list of sponsors for a bill backed by Rob Portman, Republican from Ohio, is growing mark warner from virginia is offering a

proposal called the as tommy talked about last week the stop shutdowns transferring unnecessary pain and inflicting damage in the coming year act what's that for the stop stupidity act nailed it boom roasted great nancy pelosi has also said in the past few days that she might push a bill on the house side soon what do we think about this n Nancy's act is called I'll Kill Your Family if you shut down the government act of 2019. Get the guns off the mantle. No more debt ceiling. No more fund our priorities or we'll shut down the government. It's completely unnecessary. proposals are popular enough or reasonable enough to get through a normal course of debate over how

to fund the government, then using the government as leverage, using the government itself as leverage does not make that more appealing. Yeah. This is not how the system was designed. The founders were not sitting around thinking, let's hold each other hostage all the time. And like the economic data you mentioned, some of what we lost, we'll never get back. We will lose points in GDP, but that's also true for for the gathering of scientific data about climate change, for example. You never have a chance to get back data that you could only gather that day. There's real problems here. Yeah.

I will say, I was looking into this, and there's one note of caution on this. So basically, the way this bill would work is, if you couldn't reach an agreement agreement it would automatically fund everything at the prior year's levels and then to spur resolution funding would be reduced by one percent after 120 days if no agreement is reached and by one percent more every 90 days um that's bad the yeah the the chief uh economist on the budget committee who works for bernie sanders uh wrote a blog post this morning that said it's actually very bad for Democrats because as you continue to fund everything at last year's levels, it basically means cuts because you don't keep up with population growth. And so for Democratic priorities, for food stamps, for education funding, for all this stuff, they just keep getting cut and cut and cut every year. It's worth remembering, too, that we played a game like this in the past where we set

this deadline to negotiate in good faith under the Obama administration. And if we fail to hit that deadline, the sequester would kick in and there'd be drastic cuts to both defense and to the domestic discretionary spending. Outside of the defense, that was sort of the both sides had something to lose. Democrats were, you know, Republicans don't want to see defense cuts. Democrats don't want to see defense cuts. Democrats don't want to see domestic cuts. And guess what? We blew through that fucking deadline like an Arizona wildcat. I don't know.

Struggling to get ready for finals. I don't know that they do that there. Just kidding, Arizona. I honestly only know wildcat from the movie Speed. I was searching for a school. It is nothing personal. I love it. Speed comes to mind.

Shut up, Rob. Doesn't he say that? Doesn't he say, like, hey there, wildcat? He does speed i was searching for a school it is nothing personal i love it speed comes to mind shut up doesn't he say that does he say like there's a hey there wildcat it's a part it's spoiler for the film speed uh i i agree with you there was a camera on the bus the the uh draconian bill to prevent government shutdowns can't deliver by default republicans something that they want which is less spending it has to actually be indexed to either inflation or population growth or something that's how you make them how about it goes up by 20 every year yeah i like that all right let's talk about who framed roger stone uh on friday federal agents arrested stone at his florida home for seven criminal counts including obstruction making false statements witness tampering most of the charges had to do with Stone lying or covering up or threatening others to lie and cover up his contacts with WikiLeaks

about the emails and documents that Russian government stole from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Guys, what's new in this indictment that we didn't know before? So we'll get to that. I just want to talk about two sort of bigger picture things that I feel like are getting lost a little bit. One, Roger Stone is not some fringe weirdo. He is Donald Trump's closest aide. He's probably his long, he's certainly his longest serving aide. So I think that people dismiss him as sort of a clown or a buffoon who's on the fringe of politics. Like he's the guy who is the architect of Trumpism. And I think once again, the Stone saga raises for me the question of why lie about these things? If there was no, there's not

necessarily a crime in contacting WikiLeaks if you think it's a news gathering organization. So why say that some guy named Randy Credico was your connection to WikiLeaks instead of Jerome Corsi? Why create a crime and lie to Congress when there wasn't one that we know of? And the only answer I can come up with is that there's something they're trying to hide in the same way General Flynn was trying to hide something about his totally actually kind of boring contacts with the Russian government. Well, AT McFarland, like all of them are lying about this issue over and over and over again. Right. And this to me is the most interesting piece of it, where it says someone inside the Trump campaign was it was was directed to reach out to Roger Stone to find out more about what WikiLeaks is going to do. A senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about information WikiLeaks might have had on Hillary Clinton. The date on that is, of course, in July of 2016. So who the senior Trump campaign official is we do not know some speculation that it could

be rick gates because he's a cooperating witness at this point so then your question would be who would direct who had the power to direct rick gates who was like deputy campaign manager well possibly paul manafort who was campaign manager at the time though since they've already charged manafort why wouldn't you name him or call him individual one or something like that? And if it's not Manafort, then it's Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Javanka, someone like that. This is a good example of not just the passive voice, but the passive-aggressive voice.

That's right. Yeah. Very, very true. No, but I think this indictment tells us for sure that the campaign wanted to know how WikiLeaks releases could damage hillary clinton for sure um and of course we already know that they wanted dirt from the russian government on the clinton campaign because they all took that meeting in early june this is now the campaign

asking stone okay we know that wiki leaks is going to put out dirt that the russian government stole they knew that at the time because it was publicized at that time right that russia hacked the dnc so they knew that a foreign government was trying to launder stolen material to hurt their opponent through WikiLeaks, and they were asking Roger Stone, go find out where it is, when it's coming, all that kind of stuff. And Roger was flailing to make it happen. I mean, he emailed Jerome Corsi and told him to get to Assange.

He emailed a guy named Ted Malik who tried to get him to go see Assange. I mean, this wasn't something he undertook lightly. He didn't just fire off an email to get him to go see Assange. I mean, they were, this wasn't something he undertook lightly. He didn't just fire off an email to like info at WikiLeaks.org. Like he made a real good faith effort. And later he told Sam Nunberg, his former aide and a guy he was sort of raised politically. What's the word I'm looking for? Mentored. He mentored that he had dinner with Julian Assange. And he later said that was a joke because that's a thing we always joke about. I just make up dinners when I email you guys. I pretended I had dinner with somebody.

So it's like a weird, concerted effort to get to these people. Yeah. And so I think, you know, Stone said over the weekend that, quote, this indictment is thin as piss on a rock and that his text messages have been mischaracterized. That one's really great. That one's really great because they are so hard to mischaracterize they are so explicit

and direct I mean the dog you know Chris Christie himself said it to George Stephanopoulos this weekend you know

they've got all these emails and text messages that he created that tell a pretty clear story and I think it's gonna be very difficult for a jury to listen to that and conclude that it wasn't

what he was trying to do it's worth remembering that before Chris Christie was a famous political oaf he was a prosecutor prosecutor. Yeah. And he thinks that the indictment actually is very, very damning. I want to go back to Tommy's first question, though, which is why all the lying? Right. Because I only I think there's only two explanations. One, they are trying to cover up something worse. Or two, they are just so stupid that they wanted to lie because exposing that there was some contact with russians would be politically devastating to trump right and so

they were so stupid they figured why not lie because the political fallout of this could be really bad for the president we want to protect him even though it's not illegal i mean i'm just i'm just throwing that out there's the other possibility like i don't think that's right but i guess that could be it. I buy that. I buy that for some of the other dum-dums. But Roger Stone has a Nixon tattoo on his back. Right. You know, he is familiar with what happens when you lie during the course of an investigation like this.

Yeah. I mean, just to break it down. Right. There's two reasons somebody would try to lie in this way. One would be to protect themselves or, you you know protect themselves and their loved ones the other would be to protect donald trump and i think it's still an open question for some of these indictments as to whether or not these were people purely lying to protect themselves and their involvement in crimes or were they lying to protect donald trump either his reputation or the fact that he was involved himself. Yeah. I mean, just some of the text messages, too.

This is what Stone texted Credico to lie. Quote, Stonewallet, plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan. In other exchanges, according to the indictment, Stone told Person 2 that Person 2 should do a Frank Pentangeli before HPSI, before the House Intelligence Committee, in order to avoid contradicting Stone's testimony or reference to a character in The Godfather Part 2

who would plan to testify against the Corleone family but was pressured to deny any recollection of key events. Anything to save the plan is sort of a flashing red light there. I mean, what an idiot. What's the plan? I don't know, but but man do these people love using their fingers to type incriminating things on permanent records over and over again so i think the other big question here muller has already charged the russian hackers and russian intelligence

with a conspiracy to defraud the united states the question now is what are the possible reasons that muller hasn't charged stone manafort you know uh flynn any of these folks any of the trump folks is part of that conspiracy is he waiting or is this all we're gonna get it's that's a really obviously we don't know but there's sort of evidence on both sides yeah we don't know i mean one of the things i think that should make us all a bit cautious is the fact that the last thing, like Rudy Giuliani and his sort of addled appearances, he kind of comes back to something, which is like, what's the crime? Conspiracy to hack? And it's a very specific turn of phrase because the Russians, they were hacking Republicans. They were hacking Democrats. They were hacking people for a long time.

A lot of the things they released, they had for some time. They were hacking Republicans. They were hacking Democrats. They were hacking people for a long time. A lot of the things they released they had for some time. And so, you know, if the Russians already had it, it's not like Roger Stone conspired to hack anybody, conspired to steal anything. He was just aware of something participating in the release of that information. And that is an important distinction. Then again, as we also know, Donald Trump went on television and said, can you please do me a favor and get her emails? And they tried getting those emails that very night. So there's sort of. And even but even that's not necessarily a crime. No, no, that's not.

But it is if somebody participated, if someone's aware of it and participating in the ongoing stealing and hacking of Democrats. Yeah, I thought the New York Times laid this out really well. There's there was a piece over the weekend like what's a crime, what's not a crime? They basically said, you know, if Trump campaign officials coordinated with Assange on the timing and content of the document releases in an effort to maximize the damage of the Clinton campaign, that might qualify, but so far Mueller has offered no evidence of that. So it's like Trump was, if Trump and the campaign were aware that the documents were going to be dumped, even if they asked, like, when is it going to happen? We're just sort of interested, but that's not necessarily a crime.

But if they actually said, like, oh, if you do it here, this might help. And there is some evidence that it was getting close to it when they were like, when Stone was basically saying, like, oh, the campaign should start talking about how sick Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are because that's going to be a subject of the dump. Jerome Corsi, who is a birther, scumbag, right-wing journalist, I guess, in the loosest sense of the word, emailed Stone saying he knew of Assange's plans and that he had two more document dumps, basically. And he said, would not hurt to start suggesting that Hillary's old or memory is bad, that she's had a stroke, which is this sort of weird focus on medical issues,

which they kind of did later do and especially after she fainted at the 9-11 event yeah but um you know that sort of language and that interaction does speak to coordination yeah and so you know why hasn't muller charged it yet um mimi roca who's a former sdny uh she said there's three possible reasons um one uh muller wants to charge everyone at once and he's not ready yet. Two, charging Stone with that would trigger discovery on the evidence around the conspiracy. And maybe he doesn't want that evidence public yet. And he doesn't want the other side to see that yet because they could be indicted themselves.

And also, you know, pointed out that two search warrants were executed when they indicted Stone, both of his house and his apartment in Manhattan. And so Mueller wants to get more evidence first, right? Or the other one is, and some people are raising this, that Mueller just, you know, to prove a conspiracy, you need to prove a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. And Mueller's cautious and he wants to prove the crimes that he can prove, which are all these cover-up crimes. And he doesn't yet have the evidence and may not have the evidence to prove a conspiracy against the United States beyond a reasonable doubt for these Trump people. And I think that we should just look at what that is. Right. Let's take let's call that the worst case scenario.

What we were describing then is a a embarrassing, morally reprehensible, vaguely but unprovably illegal effort to subvert American democracy. vaguely but unprovably illegal effort to subvert american democracy so embarrassing and wrong wrong and humiliating that a group of people then spent the next year of their lives lying and obstructing justice and committing crimes to cover it up still not great exactly very very bad still not great yeah it should be enough yes i mean it should be enough we don't know much but one person who knows a hell of a lot more than we do is John Brennan, who's the CIA director and who now tweets like he is Madison or Jefferson. So he said on one of the shows that I expect there to be a significant number of indictments and a significant number of names that will be familiar to you all.

He thinks that the shoes that are yet to drop are going to be the ones that are going to be the most profound and that it will hit people at the top of the organization so i don't know what john knows john doesn't know anything in terms of classified information since he left the united states government but and trump took his clearance away to be a dick that's right that's right quite a statement from brennan though i saw that it was just like a headline in the hill and i'm like okay names that will be familiar to most americans We are accustomed to statements like this from people like James Clapper and people like John Brennan because they have felt the need to talk this way since Donald Trump became president. But these are people who take so seriously not getting ahead of the facts,

who take so seriously being circumspect and not doing anything to go beyond what they could reasonably conclude. That is what they try to do. I want to go back to Levitt's point just before we move on. Even if Brennan is wrong, I do worry that if Mueller ends this whole investigation with a whole bunch of crimes about covering up up lies and obstruction all that kind of stuff that the but but nothing else on conspiracy that's connected to actual trump campaign officials or administration officials then the press is going to be all like you know don't trump's going to declare victory no collusion the right wing's going to say that the conservative

media is going to do that and the mainstream press is going to be like yeah i know it was all just a bunch of process crimes it's like we have laid out here yeah that the that the trump campaign knew there was a conspiracy on behalf of the russian government to interfere with our election to elect them president and not only agreed to like wanted that to happen and sought it out but then like agreed to participate let it happen these are the same republicans who impeached bill clinton for the same Republicans who impeached Bill Clinton for the same set of process crimes and the underlying cover up. The thing Bill Clinton was trying to cover up was not an international conspiracy to fundamentally corrupt American democracy. It was a gross abuse of power and a fucking blowjob. Like we've been through this before several times.

These are important crimes that we need to take seriously. Everyone believes that. than what we currently know. Certainly the political case is there for a human being leading our country who is shockingly unfit on an uncountable number of levels to lead the country. He stood next to Vladimir Putin in front of the world and took his side over the American intelligence community

on whether or not he interfered in our election. That's all, that's basic. Forget about anything else that Mueller finds. That's all you need to know. Look, Mueller is, he's got a big chunk of marble. And like Michelangelo, he doesn't carve it from the out in. He carves a perfect hand. And then he carves a perfect foot.

Then he carves a perfect arm, you know? Yep. And when will we see this whole statue in beautiful marble? It'll be gorgeous. All right. Let's talk about 2020. The New York Times published a piece this weekend about how Trump's team is getting nervous about a potential primary fight. Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah. Especially after the shutdown dragged down his poll numbers, quote, Mr. Trump, according to close associates, appears without a plan for mounting a strong campaign in 2020 or for persuading the majority of Americans who view him negatively to give him another chance. The article mentions potential Republican opponents like Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, former Ohio Governor John Kasich, former Arizona

Senator Jeff Flake, a loud fart noise, I don't know. Guys, if you were political consultants, would you advise one of these candidates to challenge Donald Trump? Yes. Run. All of you. Please, all of you, run and primary him and attack him and try not to suck at it this bad this

time. That said, I think this is going to get maybe built up into a possible hurdle for Donald Trump that doesn't really exist if you look at the way primaries work and the hold he has on his base and that therefore it will ultimately be spoken of as a win somehow that he didn't get primaried as a sitting president of the United States, which should be a matter, of course. So there's no appetite for Jeff Flake. There's no appetite for John Kasich, really.

But maybe if they go out and they really hammer him day after day after day, it will harm him. Yeah, I think we don't know. You know, Tim Miller wrote a great piece about this and why he thought it was important. And I thought the argument he made is the right one, which is Tommy's right. Politically, it's a long shot. But so is Donald Trump becoming president. And the real case to be made for an alternative to Donald Trump and the Republican Party is a moral one. That all these people that have claimed over the years that this is not who should represent republicanism and who have failed to stand up for it enough, if they claim that there

should be an alternative, well, someone has to fucking be it. And if someone doesn't stand up and be it, if the Republican Party was a healthy political party, if it was a healthy political movement, we wouldn't be having this conversation. There would be multiple conservatives standing up and saying, why not me? I should do it. I want to do it. The question would not be, is anyone going to be tough enough to stand up to Donald Trump? The question would be, are there going to be too many, too many people willing to try to fight against this guy who obviously is morally and personally unfit to be president? But that's not happening. And so they are in the situation where their movement has failed. The base has been enamored of Donald

Trump by right wing propaganda. And the question is, is someone, despite all those headwinds, willing to do the right thing? And I think so far we don't know. Yeah. And look, Tim's point is he wants to save that version of the Republican Party, that even if it's a long shot and this person might lose, they should try anyway because it's the morally right thing to do. Right. So that that's good. But I actually think the most effective primary to Donald Trump would come from his base from the right. I think like Ann Coulter running for president against Tucker or Tucker or Tucker. Right. And saying you promised all these things you promised a wall, you promised us that and you didn't deliver for the base. That's actually far more dangerous to him, I think, than some Republican mainstream Republican or some Republican moderate. And look, historically, challenges from the base of your own party are more dangerous than a challenge from,

you know, a more centrist part of the party. Yeah. I mean, Jimmy Carter was sweating Ted Kennedy a lot more than he was some fucking Pete's Coffee CEO or whatever the hell the alternative. I mean, look, I don't mean to be dismissive of these efforts. I don't think they're going to be effective in any way for exactly the dynamic you talked about, which is he has a hold on 30% of the country

that is absolute at this point. And that's going to make it really hard to win a primary against him. But they should attack him. But they should go into this full speed. Don't go in with some

high road message about how you're going to unite the country, blah, blah, blah. Your goal here is to damage him politically so that he is not the next president. Just be eyes wide open. And also to understand that this dynamic that John's pointing out is absolutely right,

which is the base wants someone even more to the right than Donald Trump. That problem will not be solved in this election. But if someone does give voice to that version of republicanism, it will be there as an example after this kind of republicanism gets the comeuppance it deserves. And once, you know, it will take wide scale republican defeat to force the reckoning the republican party needs. That's what we said before the 2016 election. That's what we said since. That reckoning will not be brought about by a primary challenge, but it will offer an example for when that reckoning comes. So we talked a lot about Donald Trump's challenges as a candidate. Let's talk about his strengths. What strengths does Donald Trump bring to the 2020 race?

Well, according to some of the MAGA dead enders, he is playing chess and the rest of us are just playing checkers. So he is a master. He rest of us are just playing checkers so he is a master he's a master genius political i mean his honestly his real strengths are that he continues to dominate the news cycle all day every day no and i have that as a big one yeah and command media attention well and like even even the dynamic that just occurred in the in the wall shutdown fight like it the press ended up trying to meet in the middle of the debate, despite the fact that he was like, I will gladly own the shutdown,

despite the fact that it was clear that he was trying to extract a unilateral concession from Democrats while offering nothing. It was treated as a both sides issue. So the frustrating dynamic that we've all screamed about for two years, four years is still there. Yeah, I would just add, we still live in this crazy political environment, media environment where there's the standard we're all held to

and then there's the standard Trump is held to. And that continues to be true. And that continues to be an advantage for him. You know, he is rewarded for, you know, not throwing up on himself. Yeah. Where other politicians would have to say, produce a cogent argument? I think the other strength he brings is he's going to have a fuckload of money.

He's going to raise a lot of money. He's going to have all the Republican super PACs behind him throwing in a lot of money too. And he is very good at demonizing opponents. He's not very good at coming up with a positive message for himself, but he is very good at demonizing whoever runs against him. And he will use that money to try to destroy the Democratic candidate in every way possible

and make that candidate unacceptable to American people. He is not trying to win. He is merely trying to make sure that the Democrat loses. And that's what he did in 2016. And he's going to try that again. And so and one other thing that could help Trump, a third-party challenger. On Sunday, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz let the world know that he seriously consider running for president as an independent candidate in 2020. He said in a 60 Minutes interview,

We're living at a most fragile time. Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's necessary on behalf of the American people. According to the news report, Schultz has hired a number of people already to advise him on this potential project, including Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager in 2008. As noted in a recent piece by the Washington Post, Schultz has signaled a willingness to break with democratic orthodoxy. We have to go after entitlements, he said in the CNBC interview after announcing his retirement last year. He also dismissed as false promises the proposals for single payer health care, guaranteed federal jobs that have become popular on the left, saying they were fiscally unworkable. Guys, how much should a Schultz candidacy scare the shit out of us?

I'm not really there yet. I'm still in the place of he has not said he's going to run as an independent. I think it's all of our jobs to make sure that he doesn't actually make that decision. It's extremely foolish and dangerous and selfish and narcissistic and not evidence-based. There's a piece about when you hear this is up on cricket.com where I sort of walk through what I was thinking about it because it made me so angry. I had to write an article. All right, which is not something I like to do. Tell me, what do you think about the Chelsea? I mean, hopefully it'll turn out to be nothing. If he wants to run as a Democrat, welcome. Yes,

go for it. Have at it. But running as a third party, there are just reams and reams and reams of data that show he is more likely to peel off anti-incumbent voters, disaffected Republican voters, and the sort of middle ground that we need to beat Trump. And to do that at a time when Trump's disapproval is at a historic high and we have the best possible chance of sending his ass back to New York is unconscionable. It is immoral. It is a disgraceful, arrogant, stupid thing to do

because you were able to peddle expensive lattes for decades and think that you are somehow the businessman savior that we've all heard about for decades. And we got with Donald Trump and that hasn't turned out too well. Yeah. I mean, look, it's very hard to predict what's going to happen with a specific set of candidates in a race. But, you know, we do have some evidence. Howard Wolfson, who's advising Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire who's thought about running for president in the past, tweeted last night, you know, I have seen enough data over many years to know that anyone running for POTUS as an independent will split the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote. Bloomberg himself

said something similar this morning. I mean, here's what you have to understand. Go back to 2016. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the states that all basically decided the election, if both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein won a larger share of the vote than the percentage that Hillary lost by. Donald Trump won Michigan by 0.3%, Pennsylvania by 0.7%, Wisconsin by 0.7%, Florida by 1.2 so it's like you could i mean we can talk about how harvard schultz has no real constituency in this country for you know fiscal conservatism and social liberalism right which would surprise a lot of listeners perhaps because you know the constituency for that is on wall street you know maybe in silicon valley maybe in parts of Los Angeles, the conference class. But even if he doesn't, even if he only pulls 2%, 3%, 4%, it could be devastating to the Democratic nominee in a close

race. Right. There is there is no coalition for him to win, but there is a coalition for him to destroy the country. The yeah. And just, you know, but let's not even go to like I think the political argument is good, but so is the policy argument. Schultz, you're a lifelong Democrat. And I watch your 60 Minutes interview and you're you asked about tax policy. You say the Democratic position, immigration, climate. You say the same thing. Health care.

You say that you think there should be universal health care, but you think the Democratic proposals for things like Medicare for all are too expensive. That's the that's the primary debate. We're about to have a nationwide state by state context in which that, in which that is going to be the subject of the debate. You say that neither party, neither parties take fiscal responsibility seriously, that the $21 trillion national debt is one of the biggest challenges, is the biggest challenge we face. Okay. First of all, I point out that it's under Democratic presidents in which we've actually achieved fiscal responsibility, that there is a f responsible party in this country and it's the one you belong to. But also, if you believe that that's important, if you believe that Democrats are wrong on that, get in the fight. Get in the fight. We've said this for a long time. If you believe that your voice is missing

in democratic politics, you can be a democratic candidate and have your chance to make your case. But somehow you believe that A, you're the right person to become president. But, B, your argument is not persuasive enough to compel the millions of people who will ultimately choose a non-Trump candidate that your argument is correct. And so I'm just sort of at a loss. And honestly, it's the same kind of egotism and I alone can fix it attitude that led Trump to become Trump. And you have the money to do it and you can hire the consultants to do it. But you're not actually doing the hard work of putting your skin and time in the game. And the only reason you're in a position to do that is

because you have billions of dollars and shame on you. Yeah. I mean, Mike Bloomberg actually ran a city, right? So he has some experience that would lead me to believe that he might be good at becoming president. I'm not endorsing him. I don't want him to run. But again, just the CEO becoming president is an experiment that hasn't worked. Howard Schultz might be a wonderful man. And by all accounts, he's kind and nice and has done good things. But his main position is that we need to get rid of our debt by slashing entitlement programs to balance the budget.

That's not just to the right of Democrats. That's to the right of Donald Trump. There's no there's no audience for that policy position. And I also would I would argue that it ignores a lot of what we learned in the last couple of decades about how we should be prioritizing things in this country, because the the austerity versus spending debate has kind of played out in the favor of spending more and stimulus and investing in our country and not slashing taxes for corporations and the wealthiest people, which, by the way, there was a story in Reuters today that said that there was barely any capital expenditure for businesses as a result of the tax cut. Almost none. Yeah, I mean, there's just there's no

substantive reason why Howard Schultz couldn't run as a Democrat, which is unfair because, you know, for all the shit that some people give Bernie Sanders about being an independent and yet running in the Democratic primary, at least Bernie Sanders is running in the Democratic primary and not as an independent, which would fuck everything up. And pulling us all left. Mike Bloomberg, same thing. Mike Bloomberg looked at what it would be like to run as an independent,

realized he could hurt the Democratic candidate's cause and thus help elect Trump. And so Mike Bloomberg said, all right, I'm either running as a Democrat or not at all. These two people, Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg, on very different ends of the spectrum, are both thinking, yeah, we could both run in the Democratic primary and we'll just see if anyone likes our ideas. Howard Schultz thinks that he doesn't have to do that, that he gets to just run on his own as an independent and do it that way, even if it means hurting the Democratic candidate and helping to reelect Trump. And that's just a fucking awful thing to do.

And one last thing I'd say, I don't know if Steve Schmidt is currently still advising Schultz or what he's advising them, so I don't want to jump to conclusions yet. But Steve Schmidt, who has been all over MSNBC for the last couple years talking about how important it is to defeat Donald Trump he knows better for sure even if Howard Schultz doesn't and so whether he's advising him now whether he invites him in the past Steve talk to him tell him this is a bad idea come on man come on yeah and we're we're giving you the benefit out please all right because it would be such a shame to find out that your joining of the resistance was an entirely, was just a giant ruse for you to go on television and preen and seem moral,

only to join the one campaign that could help return the presidency to Donald Trump. So much for giving the benefit of the doubt. I'm just saying, I hope that's not the case. I hope that's not the case. I hope I'm wrong. I don't even know if I'm right or wrong. But anyway, yeah, that should happen. Okay, when we come back, we'll hear Tommy's interview with CNN's Maeve Reston about Kamala Harris's launch.

On the line is Maeve Reston. She's a national political reporter for CNN and a bit of a jet setter at the moment. Yesterday, she was in Oakland for Senator Kamala Harris's presidential announcement. Today, she's in Des Moines, Iowa, preparing for CNN's town hall tonight with Jake Tapper and Senator Harris. Before that, she was in South Carolina with Senator Harris, covering her there. Maeve, thank you so much for doing the show. I hope you are getting airline points. I am trying to basically put coffee through an IV drip at this point. But Kamala has had a very, very busy month, as you know. It feels like she launched her campaign,

you know, basically over a three week period. A million years ago, yeah. So let's talk about the Oakland rally first. Her campaign estimates that there were 20,000 people at the announcement speech yesterday, and from what I saw, there were nearly as many flags displayed behind her at the venue. It was a great-looking shot. It seemed like an energized crowd. What did you make of the substance of the speech and the size of the turnout and what they think that means for her candidacy? Well, I was really surprised.

You know, I traveled with her in Iowa last fall, you know, then obviously went to all of her book tour events. But, I mean, the crowds were really, really impressive yesterday in Oakland. It was interesting because, you know, obviously they filled in that whole space in front of City Hall. But because of security, they had barricaded off the streets. And you could just see thousands of people going all the way back in the streets, just trying to catch a glimpse of her speech. And, of course, we're talking about Oakland, San Francisco, you know, the home of the white liberal progressive. But it was a really also racially

diverse crowd, tons of young people. And that has been such a strong theme throughout all of her appearances over the last year, how she is drawing these younger voters, voters of color, many of the same voters that Hillary Clinton really struggled with. And so that is clearly, you know, helping her launch and building a lot of momentum for her. But the crowds, yeah, I mean, you never can quite trust crowd counts, but it was big. Yeah. Talk to Sean Spicer about that. There was also a ton of policy in the speech. She talked about Medicare for all, replacing the Trump tax cut with a middle class tax cut of up to $500 a month, universal pre-K, debt-free college. This is definitely another very strong, progressive platform. But did anything you heard or did

not hear surprise you on the policy front? Well, she has been talking a lot about each of those policies, particularly her tax credit for middle class Americans over the last few months. But it's been really interesting the way in which she has taken on Donald Trump. aggressively, talking about certainly his immigration policies, but also talking about how, you know, you've got foreign powers that are basically like a malware in the White House. And so that was a pretty direct hit on Trump and his, you know, alleged relationship with the Russians. She clearly is hitting all of those high points that she knows that she needs to hit with progressive voters as she competes with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but definitely trying to make a stronger push here initially to connect with voters, you know, about their economic struggles and what they're worried about, those kitchen table issues. And then,

of course, always hitting a lot of those high points on criminal justice reform, which is the most controversial part of her record. So let's dig into that. I mean, she was a prosecutor. There was a lot of bio as part of the speech. She talked about being the child of immigrants growing up in Oakland, her work as a prosecutor. You know, the campaign slogan is Kamala Harris for the people. And I think that sounds like, you know, language you could probably hear from almost any candidate. Right. But what I think makes it unique to her is that apparently it's something she would say when she walked into the courtroom. Do you think it was that first it was actually blocks from where she made her announcement where she said those words for the first time in the Alameda County Courthouse, Kamala Harris for the people, which is what every prosecutor says, you know, when they walk into the courtroom.

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess like telling that story and making a, I think, sort of standard issue campaign slogan feel like it's real and meaningful based on your bio, I think is the challenge of any election. I mean, do you think that she made progress toward that goal yesterday? I think so. I mean, I think that this is just going to be a continual issue that pops up for her. Because if you look at the length of her record, you know, both as a line level prosecutor, prosecuting crimes from sexual assault all the way to homicide, then as DA of San Francisco and as Attorney General. There are so many cases that she oversaw and has responsibility for over those years that I think it's a record that's hard even for her own people to get their arms around.

But she has tried to cast it over and over again as this difficult decision that she made to become a prosecutor, to try to change the system from the inside, knowing that that was going to be something that surprised even people in her family. She did get heckled by one protester during her speech yesterday about one specific case where an undocumented immigrant allegedly killed someone. And it was something that she didn't quite address in the moment, but something where you could see any number of these cases coming up over and over again as she tries to explain her record and the fact that she, you know, sometimes wasn't making these decisions directly with prosecutors below

her and she would sometimes learn about these controversial cases in the press. Mm-hmm. You know, I noticed when Senator Warren made her announcement, President Trump immediately took to Twitter to attack her in the most racist way he can find. Yesterday, he attacked Howard Schultz, the Starbucks guy, and we can talk about that in a bit later. I didn't see any tweets responding to Senator Harris. Did you notice that as well? Has he been reticent to attack her or what do you think? He has.

You know, we were going back through his Twitter feed to see if he's really ever really attacked her. And I think that she is kind of a conundrum for him, maybe in the same way that, you know, Nancy Pelosi is. And the city hasn't been able to come up with a nickname for her. But I mean, this is someone who is trying to convince Democratic voters that, you know, after going through this series of firsts in her career, going up against the big banks as attorney general, that she's someone that is not going to be bullied by President Trump. And she's going to have to prove that over and over again. But he

has yet to engage her. And you have to wonder whether that's just because he doesn't, you know, think he has quite the right strategy to do that yet. Yeah. Maybe women from the Bay Area are his kryptonite. That's what we're learning. There you go. That's the story. That is certainly the Harris for president campaign story. So Senator Harris, you talked about this before. She went to South Carolina before her announcement on Sunday.

You were there as well. Can you talk about that event and what made it unique? You were there as well. Can you talk about that event and what made it unique? Well, so this was so interesting because a huge part of Senator Harris's background is obviously the fact that she went to Howard University. It was a place, she said, where you could come as you were and be exactly who you wanted to be, that you wouldn't be put in anyone's box. And a big part of that for her was pledging the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, incorporated their official name, this powerful sorority of black women who are in many leadership positions all over the country. And this event in South Carolina on Friday night

was maybe my favorite thing that I have been to in many years. It was this incredibly elegant gala called the Pink Ice Gala, where all of these sorority sisters came in their finest gowns to hear her speak, to listen to her. She said that she was there just as a sorority sister. She didn't actually mention her presidential bid in her speech. But this is a kind of hidden network that she has of black women who obviously could be the key to the Democratic nomination, as they have been so many times over and over again. And in a state like South Carolina, to have that splashy rollout in front of these women who are so excited about

her bid, I think was a really strong way to launch in the state that she really hopes will be her springboard to all of those states throughout the Southeast, as well as Nevada and California. I mean, what you're describing to me in terms of the South Carolina event, the crowd in Oakland, sounds like the recipe for winning the Democratic nomination. And to the point where you're seeing the L.A. Times, people you know well, like Mark Baerbeck and others, wondering aloud if she's the frontrunner. Like, I know those terms are utterly meaningless this far out, but is that something that worries them or that they embrace? How are they dealing with the success so far? Well, I think that they have been really happy with the rollout so far in the sense that she really was able to try to define herself at the beginning

as she wants to define herself. And obviously, that is so important. I mean, you look at the way that Elizabeth Warren got totally tripped up with by engaging Donald Trump on, you know, her ancestry. And at the same time, I think they're very cognizant of the fact that there will be many front runners in this race, as we have seen so many times. You know, if we're thinking back to 2007 at this time, I don't even know who would have been the frontrunner at that point. Not Obama. But it's just, you know, I think they're kind of buckled up, ready for the ride, and know that there are going to be a lot of ups and downs throughout this year, especially with so many candidates in the field and, you know, potentially dealing with

an independent candidacy in Howard Schultz, which is the Democrats' worst nightmare. That guy. Before we get to him. So you're in Iowa right now. There's a town hall tonight with Senator Harris and Jake Tapper. Is it at 10 p.m.? Yeah, 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. on the West Coast. And it'll be really interesting. A lot of people just coming with questions, whatever they want to ask, and Jake will be moderating. So I think it'll be really interesting to see her in that setting.

One thing that I've noticed about her, particularly in Iowa on this last visit, was that she's incredibly good one-on-one on the rope line, like blows Hillary Clinton away in that sense, just engaging voters one-on-one. And she has this very unique connection, particularly with women, after her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh during the Supreme Court hearings last year, where women would come up to her crying in Iowa during her last visit, saying, you spoke for me, like I am a victim of sexual assault. It was really a remarkable thing to see. Then you've seen her on the stump, where she kind of gets huge cheers when she comes out, but sometimes her stump speeches kind of fall flat.

I think that's a challenge for her, like sort of sustaining the energy in the room. So I think it's going to be really exciting tonight to see her in this setting where, you know, she is able to engage one-on-one, but it's going to get some really tough questions from the voters of Iowa who like to kick the tires on all of these candidates. So is this basically Jake moderating questions from voters or is he going to get to throw a few fastballs himself? I am sure that he will slip a few fastballs in there, as he always does. Yeah, I hear that. But but it is, you know, kind of a free flowing conversation.

So we'll see where it goes. So a little bit of a process question hear you. But it is, you know, kind of a free-flowing conversation. So we'll see where it goes. So a little bit of a process-y question for you. Like, back to your point about one-on-one on the rope line and the key to personal retail politics. I am, like, an Iowa obsessive weirdo. And when I first heard that she was doing this event, I wondered, is that the best idea? Because for all the Iowa reporters, you know, are human beings who want the first crack at the candidates when they come to town and they might get pissed off. And then you have to deal with Jake, who is like a notoriously tough interview. Am I wrong about this or does this speak to a different treatment of Iowa than, say, other early states?

Well, I mean, I think, you know, there there there has been, I guess, a little bit of grumbling that she's not, you know, starting in somebody's living room. But you do have to remember that she did come and do that seven-stop tour last fall where she did a lot of that. You know, she did the kind of small brick tavern conversations with voters. So I don't know, I guess a little bit of a risky strategy. strategy, but if you're looking to get your message out in a big way, right off the bat, and especially when you have much lower name ID than, let's say, Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren, I think that they felt like this was enough of a balance where she could come in, talk to voters, but also kind of address the rest of the country at the same time. but also kind of address the rest of the country at the same time.

So when you talk to the campaign, like what do they view as her keys to winning? And what kind of things do you sense that they're worried about at this stage? Well, I think, you know, as we talked about before, certainly her record on criminal justice, they just know that that is going to be something that that comes up over and over again. And it's hard to get ahead of that sometimes. You know, I think they were caught off guard by the op-ed in the New York Times that was very critical, saying that she had not been progressive enough as a prosecutor and pushing reforms as Attorney General in California, you know, for example, to reform the three-strikes law, even though she had advocated for that in the past. But at the same

time, I think that, you know, they see these early months as just really important in terms of her connecting with people on the ground, having those one-on-one conversations. And then in terms of their path to victory, you know, they actually lay it out better than a lot of campaigns that I've heard, where they hope that she has a strong finish in Iowa and New Hampshire, you know, enough of a strong finish to have some momentum going into South Carolina. Then really try to galvanize that black vote and consolidate it, which will be a challenge, of course, if she's got Cory Booker and Joe Biden in the race. got Cory Booker and Joe Biden in the race, but then use South Carolina as that launchpad into all of those states in the Southeast that are, you know, many of them have huge proportions of the electorate is dominated by the black vote. And so they see a chance for her to do really well in a series of those early state primaries. And then, of course, you have California

moving up its primary to Super Tuesday. So actually, ballots will be going out in California on the same day that Iowa voters go to caucus. So she's going to make a huge play there, which is not going to be an easy win, by the way. And also in Nevada, where she hopes that her advocacy on immigration reform and for the Dreamers will really help her notch a win there out west as well. God, I miss just the hilarious hedging of early state success. My favorite ever was Joe Lieberman in 2004, claiming that he was in a three-way split decision for third place in New Hampshire. Shockingly, that didn't really fly with the National Press Corps. But yeah,

do well in Iowa. But like, you know, no one ever says what that means. I was literally not allowed to say we need to win Iowa because God help us. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, and you know, so many people are saying, so many of the sources that I'm talking to here on the ground in Iowa are saying, we have no idea how many tickets are coming out of Iowa this time. Because if you've got like 15 people in the field, you know, it's a little hard to measure success in that. So this could be a fight that really drags out for a while. And I think that's to the benefit of the country rather than having it decided way up front. Yeah, I totally agree. I also think that the number of people in this primary

means that anyone who thinks that they can predict what will happen is bonkers. Oh, totally foolish. Last question for you. Howard Schultz charges me a lot for coffees, commoditize the experience. What the hell is he up to? I know you're buying CDs at Starbucks, right? Yes, yes. I buy the Adele thing that's been on sale for like six years. So I have been talking to folks who are close to him for quite some time now, as they have been very seriously investigating this idea of an independent run for him. He just feels as though that the Democratic Party obviously has gone too far to the left and these ideas like Medicare for all are too expensive.

But I mean, I think the blowback that he's seen over the last two days has just been pretty brutal. And while it's true that, you know, by the numbers, there are a ton of independents out there in the country, as we all know, they generally tend to really be Democrats or Republicans or lean one way or the other. So, I mean, I'm not surprised that he jumped in, but I think that he's going to be under so much pressure, including from another billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who put out a statement today saying that he didn't think an independent run was a good idea. So many people that just have chills thinking back to, you know, Ralph Nader and the other spoilers of the past. I mean, these states are decided by such a small margin of voters. And you can see him having potentially a really strong constituency. small margin of voters. And you can see him having potentially a really strong constituency. And I don't see how, you know, how Democrats could do well in that scenario. I mean, it basically is it makes it will make Donald Trump's play for his base look like the most brilliant thing that

we've ever seen if we end up in this three way race. God, that is exactly right. I mean, Howard Wolfson, who is a longtime strategist for Hillary Clinton, and then more recently from Mike Bloomberg, tweeted that he's seen enough data over many years to know that anyone running for president as an independent will split the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote. Therefore, this could be the thing that delivers the presidency back to Donald Trump at a time when his disapproval rating is 58 percent and at a time when I think it was ABC Washington Post poll said 57 percent of voters said they would not vote for him. Like this guy is going to fuck up the closest thing we have to getting this guy out of office. It'll be interesting to see if he is, you know, getting this guy out of office. It'll be interesting to see if he is, you know, listening to all of these voices, like if he really is in still in decision mode, because you'd have to think that

there's a chance here that that Howard Schultz becomes, you know, the villain for everyone in the Democratic Party going forward if he if he goes ahead with this. Oh, we Democrats love to blame external forces for our own failure to win elections. So yeah, people will like boycott Starbucks locations. I guarantee you the the we will take this so far over the top that he will not even be able to understand what happened to him. It's going to be wild. That's a great story. Democrats are going to lose their fucking mind. I mean, you're already seeing it on Twitter. I hate the stupid, I'm here for the ratio culture on Twitter where someone posts something and it's a question of how many replies versus retweets you get.

But in this instance, there is no national movement for Mr. Schultz to run. I do think that we're just going to have to see how this goes for him. You know, obviously, the biggest issue is going to be ballot access. He says he's got that all locked down. You know what a Byzantine system it is getting on the ballot in all 50 states and counties. So we'll see whether he can withstand the backlash and whether he really thinks it's worth it to put his reputation on the line or if he really thinks it's worth it to put his reputation on the line or if he thinks that there's enough independents out there who are ready for something totally different than these two parties that have so much dysfunction.

Yeah, too much listening to David Gergen, not enough listening to like voters in states, I think might be the problem here. But you are exactly right. It is not an easy task to get on all those ballots. Maeve, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for all your travel to actually cover these events. It is invaluable for us to hear from journalists like you who are doing the work. So I really, really appreciate it. Oh, it's so much fun to be with you,

and I hope we'll do it a lot over the next two years. Yes, see you soon. Thanks to Maeve Reston for joining us today. And, you know, we'll talk to you guys on Thursday. Oh, God, John, I forgot to say, this episode of Pod Save America is brought to you by Starbucks. Oh, shit. It is kind of funny, though, that, like, Morning Joe,

the place that probably convinced him to do this, has had Starbucks cups on their desks for the better part of a decade. I like Starbucks. I do too. I love Starbucks. Morning Joe to Aspen to Davos. That's why you get this view of politics. The nodding heads of the both parties are broken. Why won't they just be pro-gay and cut the fucking Social Security?

Isn't that what America's clamoring for? Smaller Social Security checks? It is not. Tune in next week where we talk about the impending invasion of Venezuela. Oh, God. Bye, everyone. Bye.