Pod Save America - “America’s crazy old uncle.”

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

Democrats target Brett Kavanaugh’s views on presidential power, Trump blows up the NATO summit, and House Republicans defend Rep. Jim Jordan against accusations that he turned a blind eye towards sexual abuse allegations. Then Senator Dick Durbin joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Kavanaugh nomination and immigration.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, we'll be talking to Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois about how Democrats should handle Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and the latest on the effort to reunite the families separated under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy. We're also going to talk about Trump's attack on our NATO allies in advance of his meeting with Putin,

because this is something that we're dealing with here in 2018. Housekeeping. The Wilderness launches on Monday. Thank you all for your great feedback. Thewildernesspodcast.com. You can go to the website and check out the titles and descriptions of each episode along with the guest list. One of the guests is here with us today, Dan Pfeiffer.

I'm excited. It should be good. I mean, I'm excited. I have blocked out hours of my Monday for this podcast. Yeah, there's four episodes. So I'm very excited. And I'm very pleased to see, for you and the Democratic Party, who's in the wilderness, the reception to it has been very positive and good,

and people understand what you're trying to accomplish here, which I think is a very important task that we will all be better for. Yeah, I hope so. But yeah, no, we'll have four episodes out, and they're like, you know, 40, 50 minutes each, so everyone will have a lot of listening if they'd like. If you'd like to get away from the news just for a second and sort of listen to a longer form documentary about a party, this podcast is for you. Dan, how's the book tour going? I saw you and Alyssa in, were you in New York? We were in D.C. It was an Obama nostalgia event at the Six and I Synagogue in D.C. and we had a We were in D.C. Alyssa came down. Yeah, it was an Obama nostalgia event at the Six and I Synagogue in D.C., and we had a blast. It was really fun.

Alyssa should host a talk show of some kind because she is a superb host. I mean I knew when I asked Alyssa to be the moderator of my event that she would be the actual draw of the crowd, the line of people who wanted to see Alyssa, talk to Alyssa, get advice from Alyssa, get Alyssa. They sold Alyssa's book there too, which is now out in paperback. Who thought this was a good idea? And people came with signs and shirts about Alyssa's cats. It was really nice to just sort of drag behind her fame and popularity. And we had a blast. A lot of our friends were very nice enough to come out and check us out. But you brought up the book, which I thank you. The book is called, as we know, because it's very important to say the title, Yes, We Still Can, Politics in the Age of Obama, Trump, and Twitter.

As you remember from two weeks ago, I announced that we were going to make donations from a portion of the proceeds of all books sold over a two-week period to NARAL, the organization which has done so much good work but is also leading the fight against Brett Kavanaugh, who seems bad. And so that two-week period of donation, of proceed donation will end on Saturday at midnight. So if for some reason you're a Pod Save America fan, you have t-shirts, you know the names of John, John, and Tommy's dogs, and you haven't bought the book yet, now would be a good time to do it

if you want to also give a little help to our friends at NARAL. So we're recording this on a Thursday, and you have until midnight Saturday night to get this done. So I encourage you to do so. Buy the it um excellent okay let's uh let's start with trump's nomination of longtime republican operative turned judge brett kavanaugh to the supreme court um dan we haven't talked about this yet. What are your reactions to Kavanaugh so far? And I'm interested in what you think are his biggest weaknesses as a nominee, as Democrats try to fight this thing.

Well, I'm not a Kavanaugh, so let's put that on the table first. I thought that was really great work on your guys' part. Sometimes it just comes to you i think it is interesting that trump basically had a final menu of three white right wing white wing that's a freudian slip of epic proportions three right wing white male ideologues and he picked the one who had the longest paper trail that mitch mcconnell had told him was the most difficult to confirm, yet was the only one with a clearly articulated view on why presidents could not be criminally investigated for their conduct. So I think that kind of tells you everything you need to know about why Trump picked that person. I think the argument – Kavanaugh – we'll get into some of the details of this, but I think the most important things that arguments Democrats should make about him is, one, we should be making a process argument that all of the papers, the emails, and everything that were demanded of previous Supreme Court nominees from President Obama, the same sort of serious, careful vetting should be done of Kavanaugh. If that slows it down for a few weeks or a few months, so be it.

This is important. He's going to be on the court for decades probably. But also from an issues point of view, I think it is women's reproductive freedom. It is voting rights. It is workers' rights. And I think there's also an important point that he almost every single time rules on the side of large corporations against consumers. And we should make that case because that is a metaphor for everything that people dislike about politics, everything that people hate about this Republican Congress, everything people hate about this president.

And so we should not let that go by, that this is a gigantic win for the same corporations who have been doing incredibly well in the Trump economy and just got a giant tax cut. Yeah. I mean, to that point, he has written and said he believes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency whose sole purpose is to look out for consumers, is unconstitutional. And he has that view with a number of other independent regulatory agencies that are supposed to look out for consumers, that are supposed to protect our air, our water, they're supposed to protect unions, people's rights to organize. I mean, it's a larger

theory that in a democracy, people cannot elect representatives who are going to regulate free market capitalism so that people are protected and still have opportunity in this economy. And that's a pretty radical belief to have on the court. And Republicans like to talk about an activist court. They don't like activist court. That's pretty activist, saying that when people elect representatives who make laws to regulate corporations, that they can't do that, or that some of those laws are unconstitutional. That's pretty dangerous. Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly activist. That's exactly what it is. It's not strict constructionists.

They are trying to dismantle the entire regulatory structure that's been in place since the New Deal, and that has real consequences for consumers and real benefits for corporations. And that seems not like the bargain we should be striking in this day and age. Yeah. And as you first mentioned, of course, his views on presidential authority, particularly around investigations. In 2009, he wrote that Congress should pass a law exempting the president while in office from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. So, I mean, obviously we know that whether presidents can be indicted while in office is something that's sort of like, you know, up for grabs.

Different legal experts have different views on this. But the idea of like that the president shouldn't even be under criminal investigation, that he shouldn't even be questioned by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel, that's going to have a huge effect potentially when or if Mueller decides to subpoena Trump for an interview and Trump rejects that subpoena potentially, if that ends up at the Supreme Court, then Brett Kavanaugh could be the deciding vote on whether Donald Trump needs to sit for an interview with Bob Mueller. And if he has this view, some people are saying, oh, well, he didn't say that the court should reject it. He's saying that Congress should pass a law exempting that. Yeah, maybe. But he still believes that presidents shouldn't have to do this. He still believes that the president should be essentially above the law while in office, which is a pretty extreme view. I don't know the exact rules around judicial recusal, but it sort of seems common sense that both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, were he to be confirmed, should recuse themselves from a decision on whether Trump should have to sit for an interview or not or whether he was subject to a subpoena. It feels like they are conflicted out if he gave them a lifetime appointment to the court.

And so you would hope that would be the case. I suspect it probably will not be the case because we live in a world of hackery. It is also worth noting to students of history that Brett Kavanaugh first came to fame in American politics by being a deputy to Ken Starr, who argued vehemently that a president should be subject to a subpoena. Now, that president obviously was unique in the sense that he, unlike Donald Trump, was a Democrat, therefore a different set of rules applied to him. Right, and then apparently Kavanaugh said that he changed his mind when he went to go work in the executive branch for George W. Bush and said, oh, well, you know, now that I've been here in the executive branch, I see that the president is so busy and has to handle so many national security issues and economic issues that he doesn't have time for this shit. Well, good luck arguing that about Donald Trump, whose 90 percent of his time is involved – he fucking tweets and plays golf. So that's bad. Yeah. Also, I would also note that I'm pretty sure Brett Kavanaugh worked in the executive branch before he worked for Ken Starr too.

Oh, right. Yeah, that's true. I think there's a little bit of bullshit emanating here as he has shifted his positions to be whatever was most politically palatable to him at the moment. That is a dangerous – look, we live in a world of politics. Don't be naive to think that every Supreme Court justice is – or any Supreme Court justice is just like this Solomonic figure making rulings from stone tablets. They are political individuals. And there's nothing that says being a political individual is disqualifying from the court. Elena Kagan, who Barack Obama appointed, had worked in the Clinton administration.

But being a political individual who has worked in politics and therefore will have to make political rulings means that you should be subject to a greater examination of your paper trail that goes beyond just judicial rulings. What were your views and beliefs in your time in politics? And Elena Kagan went through that, and Brett Kavanaugh should as well. I am skeptical that Mitch McConnell will all of a sudden find the consistent bone in his body and demand of Kavanaugh what he demanded of Kagan, but Democrats should make that argument. Yeah, I agree. And so a couple other things we learned

over the past few days about Kavanaugh, someone unearthed a speech he delivered praising former Chief Justice William Rehnquist for his dissent in Roe versus Wade, which seems like a pretty big deal and quite a window into his views on abortion should he sit on the highest court in the land. So that's pretty troubling, even though the Republicans are like, well, we're not going to ask him about his personal views on Roe. I mean, it does seem like those are pretty clear. Yeah, it's obvious what is going to happen here. It is obvious. It is all happening right before us. But there is, and this is not entirely just true of Republicans. This has been the way Supreme Court confirmations have been happening ever since Robert Bork got torpedoed in the 80s. And I think we should accept that all of this is bullshit. People should have to answer these questions.

Presidents should have litmus. I don't have a litmus test thing is one of the dumbest things presidents say because every president has a litmus test, right? And they want people – the litmus test is, are you consistent with my view of the constitution? And I actually think Democrats should be as explicit in their litmus test as about Citizens United and ACA and voting rights and everything else as Donald Trump was about his litmus test in 2016. He said very clear that he would appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He has appointed a justice. We should assume that that justice will return or overturn Roe v. Wade, regardless of what they say in the hearing, whatever sort of legal mumbo jumbo verbal applesauce comes out of their mouth in the hearing.

This is what we are headed towards, and Democrats have to make this case because when five white men overturn Roe v. Wade one day, we need to know whose fault that was. Yeah, it was a campaign promise that he reiterated over and over again. I promise if I'm elected and have the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court justices, I will appoint justices who overturn Roe versus Wade. And he said, and if I get two, then it's done. Roe's going to be overturned. I mean, it was right there on fucking video. It all happened. He's told us what's going to happen. So one other story I wanted to ask you about.

Yesterday, I believe it was the Washington Post that reported that Kavanaugh incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying Nationals tickets over the past decade. What did you think of this story? I thought it was weird, but I don't know if I thought it was anything beyond that. I don't care. I don't care how witness credit card debt is. If he buys national tickets or mystics tickets or wizards tickets or tickets to the theater, I don't care. about the very cleverly placed op-ed pieces from the people whose children Brett Kavanaugh coached in CYO basketball, or one I saw in the post is that basically the gist of it was Brett Kavanaugh, great carpool dad, don't care.

I care about what rulings he is going to make that are going to affect millions of Americans around the country. That's what I care about. Like all of this, like Supreme Court justices are not presidential candidates. They are not like, I don't care if they look the part. I don't care how cute they are with their children. Like it's cool that he gave his daughter a high five in the middle of the national televised address. It seems nice. Being nice to your child does not tell me a ton about how nice you're going to be to everyone

else's children. And we've seen that throughout our time in politics. And so I don't care if he has credit card debt. I don't care if he is the red hourback of CYO basketball. I don't care about any of that. I care about whether he's going to overturn Roe versus Wade, whether he's going to rule on behalf of corporations, whether he's going to gut the ACA. That's what I care about. And the rest of this is a bunch of bullshit. And I don't like we all participate in this conversation. We focus on all the most trivial parts of a Supreme Court nominee, which is crazy because it is the most consequential decisions we make, even more consequential in many ways than a presidential election because it lasts longer.

Nothing is more fucking Washington than a bunch of really elite, rich people in both parties saying, like, whoa, the guy in the other party was really nice because our kids played together at the same fucking elite, really rich prep school. Like, it's just, it's so crazy. It only happens in Washington, D.C. People fucking put op-eds in the newspaper about how Brett Kavanaugh was personally nice or they think he's a great soccer dad or something like that. It is one of the big reasons why people hate fucking politics and hate Washington, D.C., because that clubby shit goes on all the time. That made me so mad, that piece.

This is particularly true in the legal profession. Oh, it is. Because they all went to Harvard or Yale Law School together. Oh, it is. progressive traditional nominees and like and ken star likes them and and it's all absurd who cares it does not matter whether another yale it doesn't mean anything to the struggling working class family who was very worried that their child with a pre-existing condition is no longer gonna have health care that some other member of the harvard law review thought brett kavanaugh was a great dude on the squash court like it just it doesn't matter Let's care about what his impact on people is going to be writ large, not this other bullshit. It's really – it's stupid.

It's really stupid and we fall for it every single time. It only goes in one direction. I would say this to our liberal friends who tend to do this. going to school or working with someone from another political persuasion who you find to be a good person, a good friend, a good colleague. I understand that, and that's fine. But when it's a progressive who's up for a nomination, you don't hear a bunch of conservative legal scholars or conservative legal minds saying, oh, well, Elena Kagan is personally a wonderful person and I really enjoyed her. And I'm going to write an op-ed that says a conservative's case for why Elena Kagan

should be nominated to the Supreme Court of Justice. You never see that. We only see it on the other side when it's a conservative and a bunch of our liberal friends are like, well, I should say that I worked closely with this person and he or she is a good man or good woman. That's the only time you see it. I'm going to say this right now. If 30 years from now, President Tiffany Trump puts Tim Miller on the Supreme Court, I will oppose him with every bone in my body. I like him personally. He's a good dude. He's a great

crooked media contributor, but he also thinks the tax cut is good. He opposes the ACA. And I don't want someone like that making those rulings. So even if we're friends, you will be getting no statement from me, Tim Miller, who I don't even think is an attorney. So this is probably a fairly, the only part of this that's realistic is Tiffany Trump as president, but you get my point here. And here's the thing, Tim would do the same thing to us. And he should. You know, like, yeah, we are friends, but we have fundamentally different views on a whole bunch of really important issues. And that's what we're talking about here. The impact that these beliefs will have on millions of people's lives, not our personal friendship, you know?

Anyway, good luck, Tim. Good luck. You better start talking up to Tiffany Trump now. Okay. Let's talk about the state of play on the nomination. Susan Collins, who's one of the two Republicans who Democrats hope might be willing to vote against Kavanaugh because of views on abortion and the Affordable Care Act, because of her views on abortion and the Affordable Care Act. She told reporters this week, quote, it will be very difficult for anyone to argue that he's not qualified for the job. He clearly is qualified for the job. But there are other issues involving judicial temperament and his political or rather

his judicial philosophy. Interesting slip there that will also play into my decision. Collins and Lisa Murkowski both voted to confirm Kavanaugh in 2006. And according to the Boston Globe, Collins has voted for judicial nominees from Republican presidents nearly 99% of the time during her time in the Senate. Dan, what do you think Susan Collins is thinking right now? Is she trying to get to yes here? Is she, do you think she's still, there's still a possibility that she votes no? What do you think? I mean there's a possibility she'll vote no. It's possible. We don't know that she will vote yes.

And so we should continue to put the pressure on her. Those – our listeners in Maine and it should continue to go to protest all of that. We should put all the pressure on the world on her. Her history suggests that she desperately wants to get to yes. And it is our – we can't control that. Our responsibility is to make that path as hard as possible and maybe stop it. But we shouldn't expect that she is not an avatar of political courage. She is not someone who seeks out sort of, she doesn't, in the times in which she has opposed Trump, she has done it quietly, if you

will, right? She is not like there are people like Jeff Flake who opposed Trump in order to get attention. And I'm sure he sincerely believes it, but he does it in a way that gets him more Sunday show appearances. On the rare moments when Lindsey Graham breaks with his dear leader, it's done entirely calculated to get himself on Meet the Press more often. And that's not how Susan Collins operates. She's not looking for political attention. So we're not I don't think we're to get a true view into this, but her history is her own constituents on this issue, which is also what happened with the Affordable Care Act is people camped outside her offices, people flooded her Senate office with phone calls, telling their stories about what it would mean to them and

their families to lose their health insurance. And, you know, and she she responded to that pressure, then will she now we don't know, again, you're, and she responded to that pressure then. Will she now? We don't know. Again, the prediction business on Susan Collins is not something that I think we should spend too much time engaging in. I think what everyone needs to do is tell her, everyone who lives in Maine, if you know people who live in Maine, reach out to them. Everyone tell her why this nomination would be really bad and impact your life in a very negative way. I think that's probably the only path there. So we do have another problem, which is some of the Senate Democrats who are up in 2018. The New York Times ran a piece about how the red state Democrats are approaching the nomination

with caution, either not talking about it at all or saying that they want to meet with Kavanaugh first. Here's Joe Manchin's quote. Quote, no, I don't have a lean on how I will vote. I think he seems to be a very fine person of high moral standards, a family person who's very involved in his community. He has all the right qualities. He's well educated. And with that, you know, we have to just look at making sure that the rule of law and the Constitution is going to be followed. I'll be hearing from West Virginians and their opinion. And I think they also have a right. That's why I work for. They're my boss. And we want to hear from them, too.

So, Dan, what are Manchin and some of these other Democrats thinking? Like, what are their consultants telling them right now about, you know, why they should be sort of cautious around this nomination and not just oppose it outright? I don't know their individual consultants, so I can't tell you exactly what they're saying. But my guess is they probably, like Susan Collins, want to get to yes, and they really hope Susan Collins gets to yes first so that the pressure gets off of them. I do think it is probably – it's not unwise to – if Joe Manchin were eventually going to oppose Brett Kavanaugh, it is probably the better political move and frankly the more responsible move for him to consult, to actually think of like meet with the guy. It is easier to say I met with him. I talked to him.

It was very clear to me that he would make decisions that would be bad for West Virginia than to say – Yeah. No original – Yeah. I oppose – Joe Manchin wouldn't even meet with Brett Kavanaugh before. I think most of this is on the margins. I don't think the Supreme Court – I think you guys made a very compelling point about this on Monday is I think this is not a particularly – this is not going to be particularly consequential in these races either way. And I think frankly the better political move is to vote no and that's better for you and your race and it's certainly better for the Democratic Party and democracy in the long run because we have to take a stand against the theft of a Supreme Court seat two years ago. But I think it's fine. If Joe Manchin wants to meet with him five times and then say no, I'm cool with that. Yeah, me too. I think that is a fine

approach. That is okay. And I don't even blame progressive senators for saying, I have grave concerns about this, but I want to meet with him and then I'll give you my answer. I think that has always been the dance. Even when people know what their answer is going to be, I think that's fine. I will say, you know, Jeff Garron, who's a longtime Democratic pollster, said this in the New York Times the other day, voters, including many independent voters and some Republican voters, care deeply about maintaining the Supreme Court as an independent check and balance on the power of the president. Our polling in red state shows that voters would approve of their senator for voting against confirmation if he or she believed that the nominee would weaken the court's role as providing an independent check and balance. I do think that's a good point and something that these red state Democrats should think of as they frame potentially how they may, you know, why they might vote against Kavanaugh is that the Supreme Court needs to act.

I mean, it's basically the argument that a lot of Democrats running for Congress are making in 18, which is Republicans control Washington right now. control Washington right now, if you're not happy with Donald Trump, if you're not happy with the Republican Congress, vote for Democrats to provide a check on that Congress and provide a check on Donald Trump. And now that the Supreme Court has basically become a political institution, voting against the nominee is another way to hold Donald Trump accountable, to put a check on Donald Trump's power. Yeah, I think that's a very strong point. I think particularly in some of these upper Midwest – in these Midwestern and upper Midwest states like Montana and North Dakota, there is a strong independent and populist streak. And I think there's a real strong – and I worked on Senate races in South Dakota against – and won a Senate race in South Dakota many years ago back

when George Bush was at 80% popularity by running by Tim Johnson, who was a senator at the time running as an independent as a check against Bush, and who would fight for the state and both it like for Manchin or Heitkamp, or frankly, Donnelly or anyone, these are states where their constituents benefit tremendously from the ACA. So there was an argument there. These are states that suffer greatly from the tax cuts. There's an argument there on the populist front. There are states that are often prone to – where populist – where Democrats went with making populist economic arguments and people are concerned about Trump. And so if you want to – I think it's a better political move. There is a great case to be made to vote no.

And I just – this is – we've talked about this before on so many nominations. But I don't know who the Brett Kavanaugh voter is, the Kavanaugh, if you will, who's just like, well, I was for Manchin. But then he opposed Brett Kavanaugh. So now I'm going to switch. All right, let's talk about Donald Trump's attempt to fuck up our most important global alliance that has helped prevent a third world war for about 70 years now. It appears that while we were all sleeping on Wednesday night, the president called NATO into an emergency session to berate our allies about increasing their spending on defense. According to two officials who were briefed on the meeting, Trump threatened to, quote, do his own thing if countries didn't meet their defense spending targets of 2% of gross domestic product by January. Later at a press conference, Trump said everything was fine, quote, the people

have stepped up today. Everyone in the room thanks me. Very unified, very strong, no problem. He also took credit for persuading NATO allies to increase defense spending, which they immediately denied agreeing to. And then he held himself as a very stable genius and left for London. Dan, what the fuck was going on there? Well, I would note that as the father of a seven-week-old daughter, I was not sleeping when this happened. I was wide awake. I got to see – I got to follow it on Twitter in real time. And it was – it's even scarier in real time than when the Twitterverse has had seven hours to digest it.

So it's not great. I don't know what to say. There's like so many different angles you can take on this. One, he is delusional. Two, I'm not trying to delve into Luis Mench territory here, but if hypothetically Vladimir Putin was holding some sort of urinary cassette, this is exactly what he would ask Donald Trump to do, would be to blow up NATO. That is the number one foreign policy priority of the Russians when it comes

to America and Western Europe. Why are we doing this? He doesn't understand NATO, what it does. He certainly doesn't understand how people allocate defense spending for it. He threatened to blow it up, then

fabricated a made-up imaginary deal that it was back together and pretended like people thanked him, which clearly didn't happen. What – if you were looking for reasons to be deeply concerned about the well-being of the United States of America, today would be one of those days. Yeah. I mean, let's just start by going back to basics. NATO is essentially a political alliance which states that an attack on one is an attack on all. And it was created after World War II to basically prevent sort of Soviet aggression in Europe. So that's the beginning the whole spending thing there's basically an agreement among all nations that each nation would spend two percent of its own gross domestic product

on its own defense spending there is no like pot of money it's not like dues it's not a fucking country club they don't like it's not like every country pays some dues and then the United States is paying too many dues and there's like a pot of money and that Europe's not paying their fair share. That entire – that's what's in Trump's mind and it's just not how the fucking alliance works at all. It's basically a commitment from every country to say, okay, this is basically a defense alliance. It's an alliance about defending each other. And so all of us should spend around 2% of our own gross domestic product on defense spending. And the United States is there. A few other countries are there.

Some countries are not quite at 2% yet. But that number is sort of inconsequential, or at least it's not quite as consequential as the basis of the alliance, which is saying if one of these countries is attacked by Russia or anyone else that's outside the alliance, every other country will respond. This happened, for example, after 9-11 when the United States was attacked. And NATO said, we will all step in and defend the United States. And we will stand with the United States because we're part of the NATO alliance after this September 11th attack. And so that's what the NATO alliance is for. So this whole fucking crisis that Trump created and then pretended that he solved to take credit for it is based on his own fundamental ignorance of what NATO is and what it stands for, right?

Yes, and I would note that I've read 1,000 tweets and 500 articles, and you did a better job of explaining the issue at stake here than anyone else because as much as Trump does not understand what NATO is or how the defense spending metrics work, neither did most of the people writing about it or tweeting about it. Well, I will just say, like, I only knew this because I thought I was crazy. So I'm like, you were on the text chain. I'm texting Rhodes about this to make sure

I had the right understanding. And then, like, you have to Google for all these explainers, which some outlets did very well. Like, there was, you know, the interpreter column in the New York Times that had a good piece on this. But you have to really dig for these columns because the political reporters who were there didn't do a good job explaining it in their stories because, and it might not be because they don't know the truth. It's because Trump pulls people into this fucking media circus where it's all about what he said versus what the Europeans said. And so much of the article is spent on talking about the fight that it doesn't give people

a fundamental understanding of what's actually at stake here. It's a real problem. Yeah, this is how we got here. This is how Trump won. It is. I mean, it's not just reporters. It's the entire political conversation is removed from the seriousness and it's centered around the trivial theatrics of it. And that, that is problematic. And I'm glad,

I'm glad we took the time here to explain this and I hope other people will do the same. And you're right. Many people have done it. There are like, you can find the answers, you have to go looking for it and it, but it's not, it's not readily apparent in most of the coverage or conversation around this. And that's not great. I mean, I don't really know. It's crazy. It is really crazy. I mean, there's no really other way to take it. It is self-defeating and stupid.

It is crazy the way Trump is acting. And it's crazy. I mean, it's nuts. The whole thing is completely insane. And it has real consequences here. It has real consequences that Trump is unwinding decades-long alliances that matter. And he's doing it out of ignorance and pique. And we probably shouldn't have elected a narcissistic toddler to be president of the

United States, but here we are. Right. No, it does have serious consequences because Russia, one of Putin's main goals is to break up the native alliance. We know this. We know he wants to try to pick off some of these countries in Europe and to have all of the allies fighting with each other, which is why Russia interfered in the Brexit race. It's why he interfered in the brexit race it's why he interfered in the united states election like this isn't some this isn't fucking fake news conspiracy bullshit um it's still you know we still no one has proved yet that donald trump knew of you know colluded and knew of collusion between putin and blah blah blah but we do know for a fact that russian has been interfering in the elections of western democracies in order to weaken them and weaken the NATO alliance.

Like this is not – this is a fact. And also it's just – it was hilarious like just – and also frightening a captive of Russia because Germany gets some of its natural gas from Russia. And you see this picture in this video of like all of Trump's staff around him and Kelly looks like he's, you know, about to pass out. And then Sarah Sanders afterwards said that John Kelly was only displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese. Like I had to look 12 times to see if that was real. It was real. Like this is the chief of staff of the president of the United States, the most powerful non-elected, non-confirmed person in the government frankly and we try to explain away his anger or his concern based on a present an overly voluminous presence of pastries it's like what are we doing i mean look i am sympathetic in the fact you and i've been on many foreign trips

no one ever feeds the staff if i went to a meeting looking for bacon and eggs and I got pastries, I'd be pissed too. But that is not what's happening here. And also if you're concerned about the pastries, shut the fuck up about it. Don't tell anyone. I mean it's just so – it is so embarrassing. It is embarrassing. Trump, his staff are embarrassing to all of us. His staff are embarrassing to all of us.

And in the meeting that Trump called, like sort of the emergency meeting, trying to figure out like what it was like in that meeting, a senior European official told Axios, the allies looked the other way as when the old uncle gets nuts. That's a quote from a senior European official, which I'm sure was the most accurate representation of what happened in that meeting. Donald Trump starts yelling at all of them and spouting off about something that he's completely wrong about because he hasn't bothered to actually learn the fucking issue. And they're all just thinking, how do we get this guy out of here and on his way to London before he loses it and actually unravels this entire alliance right here? And so they're probably just like, sure, yeah, we're going to, we're all in on NATO. We're going to up our defense spending. It's all going to be fine. Please leave us alone and go screw up something else in some other part of the world. I would just love the day Donald Trump leaves office, sooner rather than later, I hope. I just hope that Macron, Theresa May, and Merkel

sit down for a joint interview and just tell us all what they have been thinking all this time. It would be really great. It would be really great. That would be a great Pod Save the World episode. Great cooker conversation. World leaders crap on Trump. Michael, Tommy, get on that. Let's book those world leaders. So the question is, of course, some people are like, is this good politics that Trump did this?

Because American voters, they don't like a lot of spending on foreign aid. They're receptive to Trump's argument that the United States is getting screwed by other countries because it's good politics. What do you make of that? because it's good politics. What do you make of that? Well, before we get to the actual political analysis, I would like to stipulate that perhaps on some issues, like maybe the dissolution of a 50-year security alliance that arose out of the battle against Nazism,

that we not interpret it solely through how it affects voters in Cuyahoga County. Like, I actually don't, like, that's not the most important thing. That's like the 12th most important thing. And so we should, like, that is just the worst instinct of everything is to be like, here's this horrible thing that's happening to America and the world, and everyone other than Vladimir Putin can objectively say this is bad. But what if it's good politics?

Like that sort of contrarian hot take is fucking stupid. But since you asked the question, I will answer it. And I don't think it's good politics. Is it appealing to Trump's base? Sure. I'm sure it's appealing to them. Everything's appealing to them. What he has for breakfast is appealing to them. What he says on Fox News is appealing to him. He's with them. I don't think there are NATO voters who are angry about it.

There are anti-NATO voters who are like, well, I was really leaning towards the Democrats, but then I saw Trump really stuck it to Merkel about how the percent of her GDP spent on defense spending. It's also notable. I mean, it is crazy. I do think that there is a – will be a strong argument less in 2018 and more in 2020 about for – that will be appealing to a broad swath of non-MAGA hat-wearing voters about restoring America's role in the world. And I know this because George W. Bush, in less embarrassing ways but actually more destructive in terrible ways, ruined America's alliances in the world because he invaded the wrong country after 9-11. And when Barack Obama was running for president, people found it very appealing that he could restore our place in the world, that Americans wouldn't have to – I've told this story before, but Howley went to Ireland when Bush was president in college to visit a friend. And they told her the people people they told her when she went to tell ever

that they should tell her when they were canadian because you were going to get into a fight you're going to get to an argument about iraq war if you told people you're american and that that sort of that bothers people and so i think a democrat who who will run on restoring america's role in the world will be that will be appealing in the short term i don't think it's going to affect the turnout in california 49 well and again trump trump's argument um is only good politics because it's based on a lie like when if people think that nato is based on dues that everyone pays and that the united states is paying all of the money into the nato pot and no one else is paying their fair share then you could see people getting upset why are we spending all of the money into the NATO pot and no one else is paying their fair share, then you could see people getting upset. Why are we spending all of our money to uphold this

alliance and no one else? But when you actually know what the alliance is all about and how and what increasing defense spending means, then I don't think it's good politics at all. I mean, Trump increased defense spending in the United States on his own, and now he's complaining that no one else is spending enough on their own defense and that we're spending too much. He's the one who increased defense spending in this country. And by the way, you know what a popular position is in the United States? That we're spending too much money on our military. That's been true in polls for a long time.

People think that there's too much waste in the military, that there's all these defense contracts out there. We're buying all these fucking planes and jets and military equipment that we don't actually need to keep ourselves safe. I say this as a fan of Angela Merkel and the German people. But if you look at this in the long arc of history, we now have most of our political analysts saying that the following is good politics. Trump bullies Germany into building bigger military. It's just... Which, you know, and pleases Russia by breaking up the NATO alliance. That's it. That's it. That's good policy. Great job, political analysts.

You have your finger on the pulse of the American people. And look, you pointed this out, but according to a recent poll, just 40% of Republicans now think that the United States should stay in NATO, while 56% of Republicans consider Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin good for the United States. Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin good for the United States. So it is, I mean, it is dangerous and it should be pointed out that what he has done to the Republican Party and the base of the Republican Party and the views of the Republican Party is pretty, it's awful and it's dangerous. And to have, you know, even though Republicans now make up, what, 34, 35% of registered voters, it's pretty scary that there's a segment of the population who believes that now, and they believe it because of Donald Trump, and

because of Fox News, and because of his propaganda machine that says, that's just telling a bunch of lies about this. And I don't know what we do about that, but I do know that we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking it's good politics broadly beyond the Trump base yeah that's right that's right one more thing on russia before we move on um the senate on wednesday confirmed brian bench kowski to be head of the justice department's criminal division bench kowski has no prosecutorial experience which one would think would be a major problem. But to make matters even worse, he once worked for a Russian bank called Alpha Bank, which is part of this whole, you know, run by Russian oligarchs who answer to Putin. So that's a problem.

So now we have a guy with ties to a Russian bank running criminal investigations at DOJ in the middle of a massive investigation into potential crimes with Russian ties. And he was confirmed yesterday because every Republican voted for him and Joe Manchin. What's going on here, Dan? I don't even really know what to say about this because it's so, like everything else today, it's so crazy. I don't understand. I have, I have dug into the story. I can't, no one has articulated a reason why this person should be in charge of the criminal division. There's no rational argument for it.

There's certainly no rational argument for fucking Joe Manchin to vote for him. Like, look, Joe Manchin, thank you for saving the ACA. I hope you do the right thing on the Supreme court, but this was a crazy vote.

And if you think this is going to help you win your reelection, then you're insane. But we are in some ways living in the plot of a too absurd to believe Tom Clancy novel. It's like we're in the middle of a – I mean this guy was a former – this guy was a former Jeff Sessions staffer. And he could end up – like if Trump fires Rosenstein and goes through with this, this guy could end up helping to oversee the investigation. And he answered under oath during his testimony, I cannot commit to such a recusal at this time. He won't recuse himself from the investigation should it get to there even though he has connections to this bank, even though he's a session staffer, even though he has no prosecutorial experience.

Like it's – you try to resist being dragged into conspiracy theories. I know. But some things are just so obvious. Like he doesn't recuse himself because he wants to be in charge of the investigation if Session gets fired. And it is mind boggling. Maybe it shouldn't be mind boggling, but that every single Republican voted for this person. Every single one. Like Bob Corker, who thinks Donald Trump is a cult leader, voted for this person. Jeff Flake, who is so sad about what's happening in the Republican Party, voted for this person. Lindsey Graham, who, despite being Trump's caddy most Saturdays at the golf course, has expressed concerns about Trump being too pro-Russia, voted for this person. Ben Sasse, who just got a glowing article about how he's the one never-Trumper to never fold, voted for this person.

Trump or to never vote for this person, do you people care about nothing? Like, I understand it's probably pretty hard to buck Trump on the ACA or the Supreme Court. But this appointment of this incredibly compromised, underqualified individual, but a really easy way to remind people that just for one minute a day, you'd be willing to put your country over your party. It's not that hard. I mean, it's really like we have to beat all of these people because they do not deserve to be in charge of shit, let alone the government of the United States. You know, I really don't want to move on to another story that's going to make us really angry, but there it is in the news. I want to

talk about the Jim Jordan scandal, which we have not talked about yet. So first, who is Jim Jordan? He's a congressman from Ohio who's one of the founders of the House Freedom Caucus. He's also one of the most enthusiastic peddlers of conspiracy theories that there's a deep state plot to take down President Trump. Today, he's being accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse that's alleged to have occurred at Ohio State when he was an assistant wrestling coach there in the 80s and 90s. Eight former Ohio State wrestlers came forward recently alleging that a former trainer there, Richard Strauss, molested them and that Jordan knew and said nothing. One wrestler said that Strauss, who committed suicide in 2005, could have molested thousands of students. One of the former athletes said that he told Jordan about the alleged abuse directly. The head coach who Jordan worked for, Russ Helixson, is on video saying that he confronted

Strauss about it and told the administration. Dan, the people who were there, the wrestlers, the other coaches, are all saying that Jordan knew. What are the chances that all of them are lying about this? I would say the chances are just about as good as 19 women who don't know each other all coming up with similar stories about being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump. Like, of course, right? Of course. And it – like, we don't know everything, but we we should believe the victims and it should be investigated. And Jim Jordan has been caught in a lie on this already because first he said he did not know. And then he slipped up in an interview with Bret Baier where he made it pretty clear that it had been – that there was something different between things that were said to you in a locker room and formal complaints about behavior like this. And so after saying he had never heard anything about it, he then implied he had heard something about it but not enough that would make him actually report it.

And so it's pretty clear he's lying. He also has a long history of being a liar. clear he's lying. He also has a long history of being a liar. And so I don't know why the entire Republican Party and frankly, a lot of the media are giving him the benefit of the doubt here, a benefit of the doubt they did have not given other politicians in similar situations who've been involved in sexual abuse scandals. So Dan, the pushback by Jordan and his allies to this story has given air to a conspiracy theory that the allegations are nothing more than a plot to protect FBI agent Peter Strzok, the guy Jordan and others have accused of trying to undermine the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server and poisoning the Mueller probe with

political bias. What do you think about this, especially in light of the fact that as we're recording this, Strzok is testifying before Congress now, and we've got Trey Gowdy and Goodlatte looking like complete idiots as they're questioning Strzok and trying to undermine the Mueller investigation via these ridiculous texts. John, are you asking me if I don't find it credible that a half dozen or so Ohio State wrestlers all came together to decide they were huge fans of Peter Strzok and wanted to protect, came together to concoct a story to protect him? No, I do not. I do not find that credible. I do not find that credible. I do not find it credible. And it's fucking embarrassing that this is actually the mainstream view of the Republican Party right now. It's not just like mainstream.

This is what Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and all these other nutcases are saying. But to hear other members of the Republican Party saying that's not true. Like even if you can very fairly give Jim Jordan the benefit of the doubt here, a benefit of the Republican Party saying that's not true. Like even if you can very fairly give Jim Jordan the benefit of the doubt here, a benefit of the doubt, I would remind you that Jim Jordan has given no one in his fucking life, right? Not Hillary Clinton, not Peter Strzok, not Rod Rosenstein, not any other individual alive today. But if you want to be a better person and give him a benefit of the doubt and say we have to get the bottom of this, that's fine. But to allow this idea to, and it's

worth thinking about, these are victims of sexual abuse. And then you have the Republican Party attacking them and accusing them of being part of a thoroughly absurd but nefarious government conspiracy to protect an FBI agent. That is insane and it's's disgusting. Yet, in our two-party system, we have an insane and disgusting party playing the role of one of those two parties. Yeah, and like you said, it is very mainstream. Your friend and mine, House Speaker Paul Ryan, said that even though he's frequently butted heads with Jordan and the Freedom Caucus, said he considered him a man of honesty and integrity. So there's Paul Ryan basically saying

that he believes Jordan over the wrestlers. He hasn't quite gone into the deep state conspiracy theory yet, like Matt Gaetz and the other assholes, but he's standing by his guy. But he didn't shut it down. This is always the most Paul Ryan thing. And I will not Paul Ryan rant here, but there is a choice. shut it down. This is always the most Paul Ryan thing. And I will not Paul Ryan rant here, but

there is a choice. A normal, decent human being would find it disgusting that victims of sexual abuse who have come forward are then attacked for coming forward by an absurd, offensive lie. And you could say, one option would be Jim Jordan's man of integrity. We have to get to the bottom of this. My experiences with him have been good, but I will say that people should not be attacking. We should hear these victims out and not be attacking them. That would be the right thing to do. That would be the thing that required only a modicum of courage to do. But that is, of course, not the thing that Paul Ryan did. And this is like, it's sort of a microcosm of everything that's wrong with the Republican Party is at no point, no one has the

courage to stand up to the craziness. And that's how we ended up where we are today. Yeah. And if you want to know what the purpose of this whole game was, you know, Trey Gowdy and Goodlatte basically just threatened to hold Strzok in criminal contempt of Congress for not divulging details of a counterintelligence investigation that Mueller's running because the FBI told Strzok that he should not divulge these details because they want to undermine the Mueller investigation. That is the whole point. That is the goal that is uniting the entire Republican caucus right now in the House, is to undermine this investigation at any cost, even no matter what kind of crazy conspiracy theories they have to dream up to do it. They just want to protect this president. They want this investigation to go away so they can go on and pass all of their awful legislation that's it right yeah that's where we are great job america good stuff good stuff so again we come back to please go register to vote make sure your friends

are registered to vote and go vote in november vote them all out every single last republican that's it that's the only way that's the only way to solve this. Everything that we've talked about today. Okay, when we come back, we will be talking to Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois. On the pod today, we have friend of the pod, Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin. Senator Durbin, welcome. Good to be with you. I wanted to talk about Brett Kavanaugh with you. This isn't a person you're just learning about. He's someone who's been on the federal bench for more than a decade. He's someone you examined

really closely when he was nominated by Bush for that seat years ago. What do you feel is most important for your colleagues to understand about who Kavanaugh is and the kind of justice he'd be on the Supreme Court? Put this in perspective. For years now, we would await controversial Supreme Court decisions and basically ask, where's Justice Kennedy? Because he was the swing vote. He made decisions. Some of them were terrible. Citizens United is a classic example. I'm saying terrible from my terrible. Citizens United is a classic example. I'm saying

terrible from my perspective. Citizens United is a classic example. But Obergefell, in terms of marriage equality, was a decision which he wrote and one which I agreed with. He really was the swing vote, and now he's leaving. And that means that the future and fate of this court for a generation or more will be decided by a successor. So putting this decision in that context tells us how important it is. And, of course, we take a look at Judge Kavanaugh, who has a record of a dozen years of service in the D.C. District Court of Appeals. And before that, an even longer period of time in the executive branch of the government working in the Bush White House. He has a lengthy record behind him of things that he has done during the course of his

life and as a lawyer and a judge. First, I will suggest there's no question he's well-educated. I mean, that's not going to be a big issue, I can't imagine, under any circumstances, nor that he has any legal experience. He certainly does. But the real questions get down to what kind of a judge is he going to be? Is he going to be in the style of Kennedy, at least a swing vote? But I'm afraid as we look at his record closely, we find he's more likely to swing to the far right than to the center, as Kennedy often did.

Senator German, a decade ago, you wrote Brett Kavanaugh a letter asking why he gave misleading testimony to the Judiciary Committee about the detention of enemy combatants. You tweeted that letter this week and noted that you never heard back. How did he mislead you? And what does that interaction say to you about who Brett Kavanaugh is? It's a simple question asked of Brett Kavanaugh when he was aspiring to the D.C. Circuit Court about the nomination of another individual and basically boiled down to whether or not he had any involvement in the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration. Think back, Abu Ghraib and some of the things that were disclosed during that period. And he gave an unequivocal answer that he had nothing to do with it. Well, it turns out after he was sworn in as a judge on the bench, information came out from two different sources, one through Vice President

Cheney's office, that he was in fact involved in negotiations and debate within the administration about some of the more sensitive subjects on detention and interrogation. He contradicted, I should say that evidence contradicted what he had said to the Judiciary Committee in answer to my question. So as a judge, I wrote him a letter asking him to clarify it, explain to me how you could say under oath one thing and then evidence comes out directly opposite. He never replied to it. It's been 11 years. He's going to get a chance to reply to it now because he's returning to a sworn testimony before our committee. Senator, what kinds of conversations have you had with your colleagues in the past few weeks

about the risks of holding together against this nomination? On the one hand, there are a few red state Democrats in tough re-election situations. On the other, there wasn't a single Republican who paid a price for refusing to even consider Merrick Garland when President Obama nominated him two years ago. How likely do you think that the Democratic caucus is going to be able to hold together here? It's a question everyone asks, and it's the right question. My job as whip of the Senate is to basically count votes. And that means I ask a lot of questions of my colleagues of how they're going to vote. Here's what I've learned over a number of years in this job. Don't ever believe that you can beg or threaten your way into getting a colleague to vote your way. More often than not, almost all of the time, my colleagues in the Senate on the

Democratic side are making decisions on the basis of their own personal values and their own analysis of the issue and some reflection, of course, on the state that they represent. But if you think that Chuck Schumer can walk through the caucus and twist one arm after another, that may have occurred under LBJ back 50 or 60 years ago. That isn't the case today. Here's what I know for sure. My Democratic colleagues understand the historic significance of this vote. They know that whoever takes Kennedy's seat is likely to swing this court for a generation or more. They're taking it very seriously. But I can just tell you, in this day and age, in this Senate, arm twisting is out. It wouldn't work. It would backfire. Senator, if the Democrats take the Senate back in the fall, how would you approach

judicial nominations for what we hope are the final two years of Trump's presidency? Not just Supreme Court nominations, but all judicial nominations. Well, first, I mean, let's be honest. This nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, as well as Gorsuch and virtually every other major judicial nominee, had to receive the stamp of approval of an organization known as the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society was created. It's now headed by a man by the name of Leonard Leo to preclear judicial nominees. They created the list that President Trump issued with 23 or 24 names of potential Supreme Court justices. In pre-clearing them, they went back and looked carefully in their backgrounds so they could

answer the basic questions. How will this judge or justice vote when it comes to the critical issues involving a woman's right to choose? How will they vote when it comes to critical issues about the availability and accessibility of health insurance for Americans. Time and again, they had to have a checkmark before their names before they could move forward. Trust me, if we're going to go to a Senate with a Democratic majority, that is gone. We are going to make sure that we have nominees that are much more centrist. While we're talking about confirmations, the Senate voted yesterday to confirm a guy who has no prosecutorial experiences but has ties to a Russian bank as the head of the Justice Department's criminal division. You've said that putting Brian Benchowski in charge of criminal division at justice could prove to be an historic mistake.

What was at stake here and what concerns you most now that he's going to be moving into this job? Listen to this job description. To be the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, to be in charge of 600 federal prosecutors in deciding the prosecutions for the most serious crimes in the United States of America. The man who was nominated by President Trump has never had a trial in his life. Not a civil trial, not a criminal trial. I'm not sure he's ever been in a courtroom. And he's in charge of the criminal division. Now, that's bad enough.

I mean, that is just gross negligence to pick someone who's never been in a courtroom to head up the criminal division of the Department of Justice. It gets worse. It turns after the Trump transition, he returned to private practice here in Washington and took on as a client an organization known as the Alpha Bank. Alpha Bank is a Russian bank run by an oligarch. This oligarch is so close to Vladimir Putin that when he opened his London office for the Alpha Bank, he invited Putin, then president of Russia, to be a special

guest and Putin showed up. They are that close. Now, Alpha Bank, just coincidentally, turns out to be the organization that the computer was pinging against the Trump campaign computer during the course of the last election campaign. And Alpha Bank, unfortunately, has been under investigation for a number of things. So this Mr. Benchikowski agrees, after Trump was elected, after the allegations about Russian interference, to take on Alpha Bank as a legal client. And what was his assignment? Take a look at the mention of the Alpha Bank in the Steele dossier

and decide whether Alpha Bank should sue Steele. So, I mean, he was in up to his eyeballs with this oligarch's bank, friend of Putin, at a time when he was aspiring to be the head of the criminal division of the Department of Justice. I'm not making this up. Yeah, so many coincidences. Yeah, so many coincidences. Well, and let me add it as well, that when we asked him, will you please recuse yourself from anything involving Russia? He said, well, as an assistant attorney general, I'll recuse myself if it's specifically about Alpha Bank. But when it comes to Russian investigation, no, I won't recuse myself. And, you know, there are people playing out different scenarios.

And, you know, there are people playing out different scenarios. If this president decides to try to fire Rosenstein, for immigration reform and fighting on behalf of immigrants in this country. What do you make of the idea of reinventing or abolishing ICE that is sort of taking hold in parts of the party? Is that something Democrats should be getting on board with? And if not, how do you think we should approach that issue? I don't think that's a credible position, I'll be honest with you. I believe, and I think I've got evidence to prove it, there's been gross incompetence when it comes to ICE and the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. The fact that they would separate under zero tolerance 3,000 children forcibly removed from their parents, and now they can't

link up the parents and the children under court order to reunify them is the most dramatic case of incompetence that I've seen at the federal government. So am I critical of ICE? You bet I am, as well as the other parts of DHS that are responsible for this travesty. But saying abolishing it is like saying we're going to get rid of the Department of Justice. Things will be okay. You know, we have jobs to do. Some of them are very important, and we want competent people doing them. This zero tolerance policy and 3,000 kids separated is a collision between cruelty and incompetence. I'm not making excuses for ICE.

Any other president would have cleaned shop over there long ago. Yeah, I was going to say, obviously, I think that a new immigration policy, immigration reform is the single most effective goal that we should push for as Democrats, right? But it does seem like this has become a bit of a rogue agency here. I mean, I even remember under Obama when he was trying to reprioritize deportations, ICE was dragging their feet and not quite listening to the directives they were getting from the White House and from DHS. Like, do you think there needs to at least be serious reform within ICE? Because, you know, some of these abuses have been documented now that it's not just incompetence, but it's, you know, they're committing abuses to people. There's no question. And what you remember is correct. They were a rogue part of the agency

under the Obama administration. When the Obama folks would come down with directives in terms of standards, it wasn't any certainty that they would back them up and they would enforce them. That is unacceptable in any federal agency, number one. Number two, yes, it is a rogue agency still today, but it reflects the leadership of this administration. It reflects the policies and the sympathies, if I can use that word, of Steve Miller and Jeff Sessions. You know, their view on immigrants is a very negative view and, frankly, has been very destructive. And I think that's been played out by the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Nielsen and others.

They are playing the playbook handed to them by the Trump administration. And that's why we see these outrageous events. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. As always, we appreciate you. Come back again. And thanks. Thanks again. Look forward to it. Thanks. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you to Dick Durbin for joining us, and have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week. Talk to everyone next week. Thank you.