Pod Save America - "Anonymous cowards.”

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Trump administration officials confirm that the president is unstable in the New York Times and Bob Woodward’s new book, Kavanaugh struggles under tough questioning from Senate Democrats, and we talk about Ayanna Pressley’s primary upset in Massachusetts, and Colin Allred’s tight race for Congress in Texas. Then Jon Lovett interviews New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon about her race against Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the future of the Democratic Party.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, you'll hear Jon Lovett's interview with New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon. They chatted last week after her debate with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who we also invited to join us for an interview, but he did not take us up on it. Sad. We're also going to talk today about the fallout from Bob Woodward's new book and the anonymous senior Trump administration official

who warned the world in a New York Times op-ed that the president is unstable. Then we'll have an update on the Kavanaugh hearings and talk about some exciting 2018 Democrats who are running to help stop this madness. A few housekeeping things on this week's Cricket Conversations. Brian Boitler has an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren about her plan to save American politics from corruption and save capitalism from itself.

All you fans of Brian's old podcast, Primary Concerns, he's back. He's back on Cricket Conversations with a fantastic conversation with Senator Warren. So check it out. On this week's Keep It, John Lovett joins Ira, Kara, and Lewis to talk about the New Yorkers uninviting of Steve Bannon to its Ideas Festival.

That seems like something that happened three years ago. And on this week's Pod Save the World, Tommy talks with the Wall Street Journal's Julie Baikowitz about how the government in Qatar is trying to influence President Trump by giving the people he watches on Fox News cool trips to Doha. Wow. That's crazy. Tommy also does a roundup of some of the foreign policy news out of the new Woodward book. So check that out. And a reminder that DeRay McKesson the host of Pod Save the People has a new book out that you can get right now at

DeRay.com it's called The Other Side of Freedom he's also on tour and you can find more information about where you can see him on his website check it out man everyone from Crooked Media has a book out why haven't you written a book yet aren't you supposed to be one of the most talented writers of your generation

because I can't write more than 140 characters at a time, Dan. I've seen you get close to 280. I've seen that happen. Right, 280. That's it. Okay, well, anyone who wants a 280-character book, give me a call. You could probably sell a book that was just a compilation of your tweets in thread form. Oh, that is so sad.

It's sad because there are people out there who will do that, I'm sure, and sell books based on the compilation of their tweets. All right, let's get to the news because there is plenty of it. The week began with Donald Trump having a meltdown over Bob Woodward's new book, which has various senior White House staff and cabinet secretaries calling the president every different version of stupid and dishonest you can think of. Then on Thursday, Trump was called the following, a moral, anti-democratic, impetuous, petty, ineffective, reckless, erratic, unstable, and he was accused of, quote, acting in a manner that

is detrimental to the health of our republic. These accusations were made not by a Democrat or a member of the media or even a never Trump Republican. They were made by a senior administration official who wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times. The Trump official also claimed that there have been whispers among the cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment, which would allow for the removal of the president. But they didn't want to start a constitutional crisis. Thanks. And so this Trump official wants us to know that they are, quote, unsung heroes and, quote, adults in the room who are stopping some of Trump's worst impulses. They call themselves not the deep state, Dan, but the steady state. So I just want to start by saying thank you, patriots, for your service. We are all indebted to you.

Dan, what was your first reaction to this op-ed yesterday? No shit. We know all of these things. We know them from reporting that's been going on for almost two years now. We know this from all the various books going on for almost two years now. We know this from all the various books from people as esteemed as Bob Woodward and as sketchy as Omarosa. Everything in the middle tells us the same thing about Donald Trump, that he is a dangerously unfit, willfully ignorant man child incapable of controlling his emotions. And we also know this. Stan, we knew this from the moment that he walked down the fucking escalator

in Trump Tower and announced that he was going to run for president of the United States. And every single thing he has tweeted since then or said in public has confirmed it. Yes. No shit. I mean, we know this not from some secret source like modern day deep throat. We know this because we have access to fucking Twitter. He tells us every day, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, but his response to the accusation that he is an unstable moron with a passing knowledge of how government works, his response to that was to validate it by sending tweets that were emblematic of an disabled moron who didn't understand how government works. I mean, it is

no shit. And I have, you know how much respect I have for this person and how much gratitude I have for their patriotism? Zero. Zero. Yeah. I think they should quit, walk out of there and put your name to it. If you truly believe what you said in there,

then you owe it to the country, not to enable the moron currently in office. It is to step away, publicly say who you are, what you saw, and what needs to change. You saw it immediately from Trump, the MAGA media, the Republicans. It's easy to dismiss anonymous source. It becomes much harder if there is a person with a title and experience and a reputation that is on the line here. And that's what this person should have done. Yeah. A few things here. Number one, we're also not just talking about some single individual who's decided to write an op-ed here. The person in the op-ed said that there are multiple senior administration officials

in the government who feel the same way. A couple senior administration officials immediately reached out to Axios after that and said, the person took the words right out of my mouth. Wish I could have said the same thing. So we know, and we know from the Woodward book that just came out this week, we knew from previous books you said that there are a lot of people in the administration who feel the same way. And what you said about what they should be doing about this is exactly right. all the way to David Frum at the Atlantic. We're all talking about this last night, and both of those guys said the same thing,

which is this is essentially an administrative coup d'etat. This is basically, but there is a mechanism for removing the President of the United States from office if you believe he is unfit to serve or he has abused his office in some way. And those mechanisms, the most important one is impeachment. You can impeach him. You can go public. You can bring these concerns to Congress, and then Congress could impeach the president.

You could invoke the 25th Amendment, though, as we've said before, even invoking the 25th Amendment, it starts with the cabinet, but then it has to go to Congress, too. invoking the 25th Amendment, you know, it starts with the cabinet, but then it has to go to Congress too. Either way, either way, the only constitutional avenue for removing the president from office ultimately leads to Congress doing its duty. We know that Congress has refused to do its duty so far. But if there are a bunch of individuals within the administration who believe that the president is a threat to our national security, which the person who wrote this op-ed clearly believes the president is a threat to national security, then you should go to Congress, let them know, let the public know, and then put the pressure on Congress to remove the president from office. That's what you do. What you don't do

is keep the president in office, say nothing, or say it anonymously in the New York Times, or tell reporters about it on background, and do nothing because you want to still take what you can get from this president, whether it's a tax cut or whether it's putting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. That's the unpatriotic way of handling this. unpatriotic way of handling this. If this is an administrative coup d'etat, it is the least effective coup d'etat in the long history of coup d'etats, because it was just a few, maybe a month ago, that the quote unquote steady state failed to resent the president from standing next to Vladimir Putin and endorsing Putin's view of what happened in the 2016 election over the information and objections of America's own intelligence community. If the steady state was so effective, the president probably would not have put out a statement siding with the neo-Nazis who protested in Charlottesville. This whole idea that there's some quote-unquote committee to save America filled with true patriots is bullshit.

They are not senior administration officials. They are senior administration enablers who are continuing the fiction that we are not headed towards a cliff in this country because we have a clown president. Yeah, like where were these people when the Trump administration was ripping children away from their parents and putting them in cages? Yeah, I would note there's no reference to that in the op-ed. This is the problem. Yeah, didn't see reference to that. Yes, the senior administration official and his dozens of other patriots who come together to protect America, they may believe accurately that Donald Trump is dangerously unfit for the job. That is patently obvious. But let's not forget,

the reason that these people are propping up our weekend at Bernie's president is because they love tax cuts, they love pollution, they love deregulation, and they seem to be completely fine with the moral atrocity of a policy of separating children from their parents.

That is not what they are trying to stop. They are trying to keep the game going as long as possible so they can score as many conservative points as they can until everyone figures this out and shepherds them out of office, either by ballot box or some other mechanism. Well, that's exactly right. The real coup d'etat here is that a bunch of conservative Republicans have made a bargain with themselves saying, OK, we will allow the president to pursue his ethno-nationalist, xenophobic policies and statements, whether it's immigration, whether it's what he did in Charlottesville, whatever else it might be. Louisville whatever else it might be and we will risk the security of the country in the event of a national security crisis or some kind of attack but while we risk that we will make sure that we take everything we can get and make sure that all of our conservative policy preferences are realized

so we'll take the tax cuts we'll take Brett Kavanaugh we'll take all the other you know conservative wish list of policies that we're hoping for. And as we try to take everything we can get, we'll just hold out hope that maybe things don't get worse, that maybe something really bad doesn't happen, and that maybe we can stop some of the worst things he's doing. And is there a risk that we won't be able to stop it and then he could really do something horrible? Yeah, but that risk is worth it as long as we get our stuff. That's basically what they've said. That's not just the deal that senior administration officials have made. That's the deal that just about every Republican member of Congress has made too. Yeah, that's the Paul Ryan bargain. It's the same thing. I mean, I think you pointed this out, but this is not a ton different from Paul Ryan telling Mark Leibovich of the New York

Times in August, well, at least I can wake up and look at myself in the mirror and say, I've prevented that tragedy and that tragedy and that tragedy. And Leibovich said, well, what do you mean? Which tragedies? He said, well, I'm not going to say. Okay, well, you're not going to say. And also, this is the first time you've brought this up in August of 2018, and he's been president since January of 2017. So yeah, you've been living pretty dishonestly yourself yes also message of Paul Ryan tragedy prevention is not like your batting average of the MLB like batting 300 on tragedy prevention is not something to be proud of you're

supposed to prevent all the tragedies it's just I mean it is like i found myself the first i i read the op-ed the first time i was like no shit like you said i was also curious i'm like who did this and then as i read it again last night a couple times preparing for this pod i found myself angrier and angrier each time i read it because like we can all joke about, oh, you know, some people are like, well, you know, Trump is obviously he's an awful president, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, we've lived through worse. And that's definitely true. But, you know, we've said this before on this pod. We still haven't lived through a genuine national security crisis or terrorist attack or global pandemic under Donald Trump. And we are very lucky for that. But that luck could run out at any moment.

And if it does, the fact remains that we have a dangerously unstable man with his finger on the nuclear button. And that is not just my judgment. That is not the judgment of most Americans. That is not just the judgment of most Americans. It's the judgment of the people who work for the president himself. We all know it it and we are like living on borrowed time here because when this happens when something bad happens and he handles

it the way that we imagine he'll handle it which is the way that an unstable fucking maniac would handle it everyone's going to be like oh how could we have prevented this well now now is the time we could have prevented it if republicans actually fucking stood up to this man. I mean, the thing about all of this is, even if all of this is true and obvious to anyone with eyes, but even if Trump was moderately competent at his job, had impulse control better than a seven-year-old, had a knowledge of government better than a fifth or sixth grader, as General Mattis would say, even if that was true. He is still, still a moderately competent racist who's been credibly accused of sexual assault 19 times. There is so much wrong here. He is a bad person who is bad at his job, who doesn't know what he Right. people were sort of like there was an apparatus to sort of prop that up, right? This is something

very different than that. Trump is bad in every way, bad person everywhere else. And there is an entire Republican Party who has turned a blind eye to an issue point in order to advance their agenda. And they know time is short, right? Whether it's because of Trump losing an election, because of whatever can happen with Bob Mueller. And so it is just jam as much horrible shit through the system as possible before this accidental president is forced to leave office in one way or another. Yeah. Now, just to turn to what I consider the minor point here, do we have any clue who wrote this op-ed and does it even matter? I know this is what's on everyone's mind. This is what everyone's wondering.

This is the question that's coming up in the media a lot. In fact, I was driving to the office today. I stop at a stoplight, and this guy in a motorcycle pulls up next to me, and he's like, hey, John, Love Pod Save America, who do you think the senior administration official was? This isn't D.C. We live in Los Angeles.

And I was like, I don't know, man. I'm like, you know, senior administration official. That could be a whole bunch of people. It could be a mid-level staffer, the way the New York Times does it. I'm like getting into this debate with him while we're at this red light and he's like right right i guess it could be a lower level staffer than we think that's true that's true he's like so you don't think it was like john kelly i was like no i don't think it was john kelly and then the light turns green and he zooms off it's like what the where are what's happening right now i guess i guess

we should be glad that everyone's engaged in politics which is yeah that's true that is true if there is a tiny iota of a silver lining in this very dark cloud of trump's america i screamed i screamed after him as he sped away i was like vote save america make sure you're registered do you uh do you have a guess um i do not have a guess my dad asked me this last night too this is my dad texted me. He's like, who do you think it was? And I was like, I have no idea, Dad. He's like, come on, come on, make a guess. The only thing I could narrow it down to is I do think it's probably someone who is not the senior most level at the White House. It has to be senior enough that the New York Times, you know, I trust that the New York Times wouldn't print someone who is super junior here. I would bet that it's someone who works on national security issues, since those people seem to be the most alarmed, or legal issues in the Department of Justice, since, you know, Trump has probably leveled the most attacks on the rule of

law and has probably worried people in national security apparatus more than anywhere else. But again, I'm completely guessing. I have no idea. What do you think? If I had to pick a guess based on nothing, I would guess Dan Coats. Oh, yeah. He put out a statement this morning. Did he say it wasn't him?

Saying that it wasn't him. Yeah, he said it was not me or my deputy. That is exactly what the author of an anonymous piece would do okay maybe it's not dan coates well it is funny because they are all putting out statements this morning uh this is thursday morning we're recording this um you know like pence and his office said of course it's it's been beneath the office of the vice president yeah right okay you once wrote an op-ed saying that like mulan was a you know threat to the country um i don't think anything's beneath mike pence's office um so you know he's denying it ben carson denied it like thanks ben yeah we really thought it was you uh so a bunch of people are denying it now and i just wonder like at what point i mean clearly these people don't have a

problem with lying so who knows yeah i think the new New York Times I've had I've been thinking a lot about their decision to do this. Like, was it the right thing to do? Was it, you know, just it's it's unprecedented to do. And I do think the New York Times sort of owes us the owes the public the answer to three questions that are very critical. And some of it's implied, and so we may know the answer, but they won't say it. One, does this person work in the White House? Because I think if it's cabinet secretary or someone at a senior level in the White House, then that is one thing. So does this person work in the White House? Second, are they a Trump appointee? I assume that from the way it's written, or at least that this person is a rock-ribbed Republican. But that's very important because that is the, it is important

to know whether this is someone that Donald Trump himself hired to work in the government, or it is a career civil servant. Because then you get into a question of whether it's the, you know, the quote unquote deep state or not. And the third one is, is what they mean by senior. And as you point out, that is a very elastic definition that reporters use all the time. You know, assistant press secretaries in the White House were quoted every single day as senior administration officials. Assistant press secretaries in the White House were quoted every single day as senior administration officials. So if this turns out to be like Raj Shah's deputy, then people would have every right to be mad. And now, as you said, I'm sure The New York Times thought this through and it the course of the Trump era, the New York Times op ed page has shown the political judgment of a radish since we've been here. So it's very possible that they screwed this up, too. And if we find out it's like the assistant undersecretary for something at some agency, then I think they will have done everyone a disservice here. Yeah. But again, we know from the Woodward book, which we're about to talk about, that, you know, very senior officials feel the same way from Gary Cohn, who left the administration to John Kelly to Mattis, who, you know, called the president like has the intelligence of a fifth or sixth grader.

So it's not like, even if it's, whether it's a lower level staffer or a higher level staffer, we know from solid reporting that a number of people, maybe even most of the people in the White House, feel the president is not up to the job. Unfit for office. Unstable. That's totally right. That's exactly right. I just think that if they have put themselves out there and put the – and there was an argument made here. And it's a back and forth. out that this is not a person who deals with the president of the United States on a very regular basis and would have been party to these conversations about the 25th Amendment,

then they have injured the argument that is so important to make. Even if it doesn't, it does not undermine the actual objective factual basis. It's a political conversation and mistakes like these are always problematic in that conversation. That is right. That is right. That is right. So look, if you're the person and you want to reveal yourself, come on to the pod,

do it here in pod. Save America. We're happy to have you. We'll get, I know. Are we? I mean, maybe we can just do it by a phone call.

What if it's Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Are we going to let her on the pod? No, that's true. That's true. I mean, if she wants to admit it, she can admit it and then we'll say,

thank you. Have a good day. Oh, if she was, no, I think you can come on here what's that we'll yell at you yeah well yeah that's right we'll yell at you and then you can uh go eat at the red hen um okay so as you noted trump was less than thrilled by uh this op-ed but of of course. He stayed cool. In his famous no drama Donald style. He responded on Twitter. Calling his quote. Does the so called senior administration official really exist? Or is it just the failing New York Times.

With another phony source. If the gutless anonymous person does indeed exist. The Times must. For national security purposes. Turn him slash her over to the government at once to further clarify his feeling about the matter he also tweeted in all capital letters treason question mark i mean so the one question here about trump's response is did the person who wrote the op-ed actually make things worse by feeding trump's paranoia and potentially cause causing him to you know purge even more people make even more erratic

decisions um i don't know what do you think it it's hard to say i I don't who knows. I don't think Donald Trump is not a predictable human being. And it is not if Donald Trump is a subject of a Pavlovian experiment. I don't think you would ever know. He would never be able to figure out that the ringing of the bell meant cheese is coming. And so who knows? Maybe he'll be more stable. Maybe we just have no idea. And so, like, I think I am, I think this person is a coward for having written anonymously. Like, it drips of being self-serving for this human being. So this human being can one day reveal themselves and say, I know that I spent years enabling a racist madman, but check out this time I told you that I was doing the best thing I could for myself. So I don't think this person is putting themselves over country in every way possible. But I don't know that we can know for sure that this is going to make Trump... What is worse? How could he possibly be more crazy? Yeah. Well, the only thing I could think of is the allegation in the Woodward book that Gary Cohn was stealing papers off his desk.

So and then when he did that, the Trump would forget about them and then not make decisions that Gary Cohn thought were bad. Makes me think now that when Trump says something in a meeting and, you know, proposes some crazy shit to do, he now might be aware enough to think like, okay, my staff's going to try to stop me from actually doing this. So I'm going to make sure that this order is carried out myself. Which, you know, of course was always the danger before, because like you said, he's completely unpredictable, but we could be, you know, that could happen more now. So of course, this op-ed comes as Trump is losing his mind over Bob Woodward's new book. It's called Fear. Dan, you've dealt with Woodward on two books he wrote about the Obama administration. What was that like and how do these books work? So I, so Woodward wrote two books about the Obama administration. Both were timed to come out, uh, during elections. The

first one was about Obama's decision. It was really about Obama and foreign policy, but specifically centered around his decision making around Afghanistan policy because we were reevaluating how to think about Afghanistan when Obama first came into office, and he ran a very rigorous process to do that. And it came out, shockingly enough, about this exact time in 2010. And then in 2011, he wrote a book about the budget battles with Republicans and the debt ceiling that was time to come out, shockingly, in the fall of 2012. His book about Bush, State of Denial, which had a lot of very concerning revelations about the foreign policymaking process that led us to invade the wrong country after 9-11 came out in September of 2006, before those midterm elections. And so this is sort of standard timing. It's not some sort of deep state plot against Trump. I didn't really deal with Woodward a ton on the first book because I wasn't particularly involved in the Afghanistan policy, which everyone should be grateful for.

But I sort of helped shepherd the second one. And so Woodward, you know, I'd read all of his books. He had taught a class that I couldn't get into at Georgetown. And, you know, he was played by fucking Robert Redford in a movie. He's the most famous reporter alive. And so he shows up in Jay Carney's office, Jay Carney's press secretary at the time, for a meeting with me and Jay Carney and Jen Psaki, who was the deputy communications director, to tell us about this new book he's working on. We don't know what it's about. He walks in, sits on the couch, and begins to tell us that I'm writing a book. I've already done like 65 interviews, including with people who work here in the White House, about the budget battles with the Republicans. I'm requesting an interview with the president and complete and total access.

And then he pointed at the safe that all of us had in our office where we had to keep classified documents. He pointed at JSAFE. He's like, I'd even like some of the documents you have in there. He goes, because I already, and I probably have some of them.

Yeah, he goes, I probably have some of them already. And he opens up his briefcase and takes out a folder and lays out on the table a handful of memos written by Peter Orszag, who was the director of OMB in the first few years, and put them on the table. He's like, I already have these. And he's like, look, you guys can cooperate or not cooperate. That's up to you. I'm going to write the book either way.

But I imagine you probably would want to respond to this memo right here that says x like i'm sure there's an explanation for why this was said but you know that's up to you to give it to us we were like what it's like it was completely polite and genteel but in very calm but it was you can wow i'm gonna screw you and you can either try to obviate that screwing or get completely screwed. And so we did this. We basically gave him semi-access where he requested interviews. We sort of facilitated those interviews. But even then, even though I green-lighted and we had staffed dozens of interviews for him, when the book came out, I discovered that there were many people in the administration who had had long conversations with Bulwer that I never knew about.

Man, so this guy comes to play, huh? He does not fuck around. He is not fucking around. You have to know his style. It's basically called omniscient Narrator, which everything is written basically like conversations between people that would be like, in a meeting on this date, Dan Pfeiffer said to Jon Favreau, why did we do this? Jon Favreau turned to Tommy Vitor and asked X. And it's written that way. And you never know.

And you never know. It doesn't say in his style. Dan Pfeiffer said that on September 10th, he told Jon Favreau this. It just says as if it happened. And you never know in reading it who else is talking and it does create this. It creates a very, I think it's not particularly, uh, I'm not a huge fan of that style. I think it creates incentives for people to make themselves heroes, make other people's enemies and create a fun house mirror version of what actually happened,

which is what I think happened in Woodward's second book. Um, but it, it almost doesn't matter because in the eyes of the Washington press corps, his credentials are unimpeachable, no pun intended. Well, I was going to say, how much of his book on the Obama administration, the second one that you worked on, was correct? Were there some errors that you noticed? Like how, if there were errors, how big of a deal were those errors?

It is, I mean, everything are competing versions of reality, right? And there's no question that everything that he has in that book, multiple sources told him. And he has those sources on tape saying that. Now, they were told to him anonymously, but he hasn't. This is not Michael Wolff. This is someone who plays by a set of established journalistic rules. And his books have been attacked by presidents for years. And so he has the I's dotted in the T's crossed for sure. And so that's why you should not take seriously these statements from John Kelly and General Mattis saying they didn't say these things. Now, they may not have been the ones who said them to Woodward, but someone said them to Woodward and then multiple people who were present for those statements confirmed them to Woodward.

And Woodward has that all written down. The problem is there – what I really thought was incorrect about the – about his book about Obama and budgets was it overly relied on the Republican interpretation of events. And those people are liars, known liars who have been proven for years to be liars. And so I thought it was not an accurate reflection of what actually happened. That does not mean that he made anything up or said anything. It's that given two competing versions of what happened, I think he too many times chose the Republican version of what happened as opposed to the version that we were saying. And therefore, it was, in addition to being a pretty boring book, in my view, it ended up being an inaccurate representation of what actually happened in that time. So let's talk about Trump's reaction, which, again, was super chill. He called the whole thing fake, forced Madison Kelly to put out statements saying it was fake. He also did a Daily Caller interview where he said Woodward has credibility problems.

He also went on to say in that interview a whole bunch of other crazy shit. He said that Robert Mueller is biased because he's James Comey's best friend and that he could, quote, give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other. What? On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he doesn't, quote, know why politicians in Washington don't change libel laws because it's a shame that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact and get away with it without retribution or cost. Dan, is Donald Trump's response effective in any way? What would be the most effective response here? What do you think? There is actually no effective response to this.

Yeah. Right. It just, this is a Washington, this is the most Washington DC ritual that every president Yeah. very long time. And it's just, it is what happens. I don't think there's not some plan that some genius from the steady state could have put on a whiteboard that would have really worked here. Now, the point the book is making is that Donald Trump is dangerously unfit for the presidency with only a passing understanding of A, how government works, and B, reality. And in the end, his response to both this and the senior the anonymous near times op-ed is simply validates that point his better thing to do would be to just disagree with it politely and try to move on to other subjects imagine that he's he's it's like asking a fish to fly

or a bird to swim it's like it's not in his DNA. I mean, and so the final question here is, how much does any of this matter politically with the midterms approaching both the New York Times anonymous op ed, this Woodward book? I mean, I do have this sort of thought experiment in my head, where if we were in normal political times on a normal campaign with the normal Republican or Democrat in the White House, normal campaign with the normal Republican or Democrat in the White House, and a bunch of people within that president's administration used words to describe that president, like amoral, anti-democratic, impetuous, petty, ineffective, reckless, erratic, unstable, you would then see those words in multiple advertisements on multiple campaigns all across the country. And they would say, who said these words about the president of the United States? It wasn't a Democrat.

It wasn't someone, it wasn't the media. It was the people who work for him. And you would think to yourself, well, maybe that would be an effective ad, not among the president's base, but among the swing voters who maybe voted for him once, but voted for Obama before or other people. Now, do you think that's still holds true in this world or no? Yeah, I do. I think a couple different thoughts about the politics of this. First would be it is not as relevant. Just the mere fact that Washington is obsessing over it is a sign that it's not going to be as relevant on the campaign trail as Washington would think. That is the law of Washington obsessions, is the less relevant it is to voters,

the more Washington obsesses with it. But there is some relevance. To your point, one of the arguments that seems to be growing in credence with the voting public is the idea that we need to check on Trump. And this is not about the MAGA hat-wearing base that hangs out in the New York Times' favorite Pennsylvania bar. It's about the people who voted for Gary Johnson, the people who were elected Trump voters, the Obama-Trump voters. Can you get them to vote for a Democrat for Congress under the argument that divided government is good when we have a president like Trump. And this would be good arguments for that, right? You know, where the Republican who's on the ballot is going to enable the person that

General James Mattis said was a fifth or sixth grader, and the Democrat will do their constitutional duty to check the executive. Like, that seems like a good argument. The other political problem for the Republicans and Trump is simply opportunity cost. They're going to spend the next week to 10 days talking about the Woodward book and the New York Times op-ed, as opposed to trying to pivot to more fertile ground. Right. Midterm elections are always a battle between being a referendum

on the party in power or a choice between two different visions of the country. And that is, you know, that is also true of presidential reelections, right? Can you take it from people just saying, how do I feel about Trump? Or how do I decide between these Republicans and Democrats? And if the Republicans and Trump are able to make this more of a choice, then they would have better chance of stemming their losses and maybe even holding onto the House and the Senate. And just if all we talk about is Trump's own staff saying that Trump is unfit for office, that hampers their ability to do that. And it keeps it as a referendum on Trump, which is good for Democrats.

Yeah, they've been trying to pivot for a while, Dan. I don't know when that pivot is going to come, but it doesn't seem like November is the time. So let's talk about the latest on the Kavanaugh hearings. They are still taking place this week on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, senators had their first chance to question the nominee, who declined to answer questions about whether a president should comply with a subpoena or if the president has the ability to pardon him or herself. On Thursday, the New York Times was provided an email from

Kavanaugh's time in the White House, where he wrote the following, quote, I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level, since the court can always overrule its precedent and three current justices on the court would do so. Kavanaugh, of course, said during this hearing, said to Susan Collins that Roe versus Wade is the settled law of the land, according to his own beliefs. So apparently his opinion has evolved over the years or he was lying. And then on Thursday, Cory Booker and other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said that they would release 200,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents that the Republicans on the committee had marked, quote, confidential. Good for the Democrats.

Dan, what did you make of all the developments on Thursday morning? I just think it's important to take a step back and set the stage for what is actually happening here because it is fucking outrageous. The president of the United States, who has been implicated in multiple felonies under oath, is attempting to put on the court the swing justice that will decide the criminal liability of that president. And the only way the Republicans think they can get this person through for a lifetime appointment on the court is by letting the public know as little as possible about this justice. reason that any of these emails that were released today against the wishes of the Republicans in the Senate, there was no reason that any of them ever should have been denied to the public. There is no executive decision-making process, and there's no personal information. The only reason they are there is that Mitch McConnell has decided the more we know about Brett Kavanaugh, the less likely he is to be confirmed. And they are trying to jam him through in some sort of fucking kangaroo court. It is it's truly unbelievable. It is anti-democratic in every sense of the word. And we know that Mitch McConnell is trying and the Republicans are trying to hide as much as they can about Kavanaugh because way back when when McConnell was advising Trump on the various possibilities for Supreme Court nominee we heard through various reports that McConnell was advising Trump on the various possibilities for Supreme Court nominee, we heard through various reports that McConnell was a little bit nervous about Kavanaugh because he had this long paper trail that some of the other potential nominees didn't have. And so McConnell warned Trump that Kavanaugh might be more difficult to get through a nomination,

a confirmation process, than some of the other potential nominees for this very reason. nation, a confirmation process than some of the other potential nominees for this very reason. You know, we've been talking a lot about what is the Democrats overall message here. They're obviously going to hit him for his views on choice. They're going to hit him for his views on the Affordable Care Act. They're going to hit him for his views on executive power. But it does seem that overall, the message here is this is a rigged game right here that the republicans don't want you to know uh about the beliefs of this potential justice and they are trying to put him through a secret sham process to get him on the court um while hiding everything they can and using the power they have to install this justice and it's rigged and and the what the

senate is supposed to do which is you know advise and consent and and hold this hearing so that everyone can know the views of a potential supreme court justice they're just they're trying to rush him through as fast as possible because they're worried that after november they won't have the chance yeah it is it is just so fucking outrageous. And look, I think the Democrats have done as good a job as you can expect them to do. They have tried hard. I think Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and others have been very good

in the way they've approached the hearings. But they're playing with one and almost both hands tied behind their back because they weren't allowed to see most of the documents. The documents they were allowed to see arrived the night before the hearing. The rules make it very hard to reference the documents that have been kept confidential. It is – it's a fucking sham. The other thing I'd say is I was involved in, as you were, putting two Supreme Court justices on the bench, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and then prepping Sonia Sotomayor for her hearings.

And I was in the Senate for John Roberts and Alito. We have seen, you know, I've watched these for years. And this is not to say that Kavanaugh is not a very bright human being. I'm sure he's clearly very smart. And this is not to say that he is not qualified by the most basic definition of what we view as professional qualifications for the job of Supreme Court justice, but he is not an impressive witness. You remember when Roberts

went up there and he charmed everyone and was so smooth and so good and had this barely used notes, masterful understanding of his record and everything else. Similar response to Gorsuch. I mean, obviously we're biased, but I thought Landy Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor did the same. But Kavanaugh has so much baggage, more baggage than any justice, any nominee since Bork, or I guess Thomas, Thomas and Bork. Yeah, I mean, you're right.

I thought Gorsuch was more impressive. Oh, way more impressive. I mean, because I think Gorsuch is an extreme nominee and has showed himself to be a fairly extreme justice. But I remember being more worried when he was during his confirmation hearings, because I was like, well, this guy's pretty extreme, but he is conducting himself very well. And from what I've seen of Kavanaugh, he does not seem to be conducting himself very well. Yeah, he's just not good. He's got all this baggage. He has really bad answers for his baggage.

He seems sketchy. He seems obviously to know he's done things that if the committee were to know, it would endanger his confirmation. he would endanger his confirmation. And this is a really, I mean, when we look back on this very dark period of our life, what is happening to the Supreme Court and this nomination in particular is something that I think we will just look back. This will be a moment that lives in infamy

because we're going to be stuck. Because it all depends on Republicans. If we can't get Republicans to vote, we're going to be stuck if, because it all depends on Republicans. If we can't get Republicans to vote, we're going to be stuck with Brett Kavanaugh for the next 40 years of our life

and he is a Supreme Court justice with an asterisk by his name. It is, we have distorted the process. So is Gorsuch, by the way,

since Gorsuch is the fucking stolen Merrick Garland seat. There's going to be two Supreme Court justices with asterisks next to their name that Donald Trump appointed. Who's an asterisk president because he won the election with the help of Russia and got millions less votes.

This is, but you know what does not matter will be the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the gutting of unions, all the things that have the potential to happen because of this. Right. Can I say one other thing? Sure. Ben Sasse. I don't think we can talk about this without noting Ben Sasse, just who is every never Trumpers favorite Republican, because he sometimes puts out tweets about Trump. Telling the Democratic women and the protesters that they were being hysterical because they said that women's lives were on the line if Roe versus Wade was overturned.

It is so offensive. And everyone lets Ben Sasse get away with it because he's a friendly Republican in the eyes of the press and people's colleagues. And it bespeaks the inherent sexism within the party. I mean, it's just several. And in his rank hypocrisy like ben sass's whole thing is like we have to be respectful of each other and can't we have a dialogue and disagree and blah blah blah and because women are rightly concerned especially

seeing these emails that um that uh kavanaugh would vote to overturn rote versus wade and criminalize abortion in the United States. Criminalize abortion. You know, and then Ben Sasse calls that hysteric. Really? He doesn't just have to. You know, if he wanted to be Ben Sasse, he could say, no, I disagree with that view. Or I don't believe, you know, whatever.

But instead, he has to use a word that he himself, in all of his tweets and his diatribes about civility, you know, let's treat each other well okay fuck you ben says it's also not a hypothetical fucking situation we lived in this country for a long period of time where abortion was outlawed and women died we know what happens it is a fucking documented fact and so if, you are making a choice, right? Look, this is a tough issue. I don't think it's not tough for us, but people disagree with us. But there are consequences

to every decision. If you repeal the Affordable Care Act, more people will die. We know that. If you overturn Roe versus Wade, women will die. That's what happened. We are putting women's lives at risk.

That is a fucking fact. And if you choose in your balancing of equities that that is what you're for, come out and say it. Do not dismiss the concerns of women in a sexist way because you think it's going to hurt you politically. It made me furious. Yeah, well, that's exactly right. I mean, you want these people to be honest about their positions, at least. And that's what Republicans have refused to do through this entire process on Roe. They nominated Kavanaugh in the first place. He was on the list in the first place because they wanted justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is what they wanted for a long time.

And then once he's nominated, they're all like, oh, well, it's settled law. You know, I don't I don't I don't know if he'll overturn it. It seems settled, blah, blah, blah. It's like you're just lying. If you really believe that abortion should be criminalized, say it. Tell us. Be honest about your position. At least we respect that.

We disagree with it, but we respect that you're being honest about your position. But you can't because you're cowards. So it's also notable in this process, by the way, that Kavanaugh may have lied to Congress already. Earlier this summer, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told us on the pod that he was concerned Kavanaugh wasn't forthright during his confirmation more than a decade ago when he was asked about his role in shaping the Bush administration's enemy combatant policy. On Wednesday, Patrick Leahy asked Kavanaugh about evidence that shows he may also have lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during those hearings about whether he'd received

stolen documents from Democratic offices that were used in judicial confirmation efforts during the Bush administration. So there was that. There was also quite a moment Wednesday, late Wednesday evening, when Kamala Harris asked Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed Robert Mueller or the investigation with anyone who worked at a law firm founded by Trump's lawyer, Mark Kasowitz. And Kavanaugh could only say he didn't remember. So what's going on here? Does he have, you know, does he have a problem with not telling the truth to Congress? And could that potentially sway any votes? Yes. Kavanaugh seems to have a problem with not telling the truth to Congress? And could that potentially sway any votes? Yes.

Kavanaugh seems to have a problem telling the truth. Will that mean anything to any Republican? I have no idea. But what I do hope is that it means that every Democrat will vote no. Because if you needed an argument, if you needed any reason to get to no, they're all here. He is a bad nominee. We haven't seen his record. He will overturn Roe versus Wade.

He will gut the ACA. He refuses to say whether he will accuse himself from the Trump investigation where he will be potentially the deciding vote on Trump's criminal liability. And all of those things, it is pretty obvious that the right answer is no. And guess what? The public has already figured it out because in a recent poll, only 38% of them thought that Kavanaugh should be confirmed. Think about that. That is a number that is right at or a little below Trump's approval. So every other voter not wearing a figurative MAGA hat doesn't want Kavanaugh confirmed. Those are the voters that you need to win. You can win any state of a reelection, including West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, with those sorts of numbers.

I mean, you could write the statement for a red state senator, for Heidi Heitkamp, for Joe Donnelly, based on the information we have now and still, you know, comport with what they believe or what their strategists have told them voters in their state want. You could say, look, I wanted to give President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court a chance. I met with Brett Kavanaugh. I wanted to hear from him about his views. I wanted to have an open mind. I wanted to be cooperative. I think it's important that we fill the Supreme Court, that we have nine justices, that we confirm someone. important, you know, that we fill the Supreme Court, that we have nine justices, that we confirm someone. But I can't do that job because this person has shown that he is hiding his beliefs from the American people. The administration has withheld documents about his beliefs. We cannot evaluate him based on the information we have. And what we also know is that he has

been dishonest at times to the committee during this nomination process and so sadly i cannot vote for his nomination i hope the president will withdraw his nomination and potentially you know nominate someone who i can support who has full transparency about their record there there's your statement go put it out you know like guess what guess what sean what that's that's more than 140 characters you can still do this you still got it i'm just saying like you know if i was if i was a senator that wouldn't be the statement that i put out i'd say like you know he wants to overturn roe and he wants to return the affordable care act and all the things that

you know liberals believe but even if you're a democratic senator in a red state and you're worried about appearing that you're you're not cooperative enough with president trump who has a high approval rating in your state, you can put out a statement like that. It's going to be so fucking angering if for years, for decades, as we bemoan the things that Kavanaugh has done to the very rights we care so much about, it will say passed with a bipartisan vote.

we care so much about, it will say passed with a bipartisan vote. Like that will erase the asterisk by his name in the minds of many people and probably the history books. And so this is on us as a party. Let me ask you one more question is, what do you think would possibly change the minds of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins? Because that's what we're talking about here. Let's say all the red state Democrats put out a statement similar to the one I just suggested. Now we have 49 no votes. That's not enough. We now, and because McCain has been replaced by John Kyle, and he's surely a yes

vote since he was Kavanaugh's Sherpa through this nomination process, we now need two Republican defections. We need Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to vote no. What could possibly change their minds? I mean, right now it's public, thanks to that email, that Brett Kavanaugh lied to Susan Collins when he said he believed that Roe was settled law, because he wrote in an email that it wasn't settled law. What do you think could possibly change their minds? I just don't really know how to answer this question because it is a battle in my mind between the low expectations I have

for the integrity of Republican senators and my optimism that activism can work. And so I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question, but the only thing you can do to try to make sure that we even have a shot is to continue to pound the phones, show up at the protests, make sure that in Maine and Alaska, your voices are heard. We just don't know. I mean, we didn't know what would be the thing

that would cause John McCain to vote to save the Affordable Care Act. And we don't know what would be the thing that would cause Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to do the right thing here. what would be the thing that would cause Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to do the right thing here. And so who knows, but you can't worry about that. Just keep doing what people just got to raise the volume as high as we possibly can. If you are from Maine and Alaska, hit the phones, go to their offices, protest, whatever. If you're not from Maine and Alaska, whatever, call up, if you're not from Maine and Alaska, contact everyone you know in Maine and Alaska, friends of friends, family, extended family, and tell them to, you know, exert all the public pressure that they can on Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to reconsider this nomination, to vote against it. That is the best way to do it, because it is going to

come down to those two senators in those two states, if we get all the Democrats on board. Okay, before we go, there were more primary elections this week, and the big news on Tuesday was that Ayanna Pressley, the first African-American woman ever elected to the Boston City Council, defeated incumbent Congressman Michael Capuano in a primary for Massachusetts' 7th District. Presley is now in line to be the first woman of color to ever represent Massachusetts in the U.S. House. Man, that's a long time coming. And she'll do so from the seat once held by Tip O'Neill and John F. Kennedy. I know Ayanna Presley when I was an intern in John Kerry's office in college. She was the constituent services director in the Boston office. Alyssa knows her well, all of us from

the Kerry world. She is fantastic. She's going to be a fantastic congresswoman. It is awesome that she won. So unlike the Ocasio-Cortez Crowley race, the consensus in this race was that Michael Capuano took this race seriously. He wasn't caught by surprise. He was almost as liberal as Presley, with the notable exception of her position on abolishing ICE. How do you think she pulled this off, Dan, and what made for the upset this time? I mean, as always, the simplest answer is the most true one, which is she was a better candidate who ran a better campaign. And her media consultant tweeted yesterday that the only television advertising that they did was on Univision and Telemundo, I believe. And everything else, all their other communications were either through digital, on the phones, or at the doors, which is how you run a modern campaign.

And so I think there was a better run campaign, first and foremost. Second, I think what we are seeing is, like, there are definitely ideological disputes within the party. Those have always been true. Those will remain true, and they will certainly be true in 2020. But a lot of where we're seeing these primaries are, they operate on different axes than ideological debates. Like it is old versus new. It is inside versus outside. It is an attitudinal view of progressivism where as opposed to a more traditional, a more aggressive progressivism, not in terms of how left you are, but in how boldly you express that progressivism. Each one of these has been unique because Ayanna is, I don't know her, but we've had many of the same friends for many years and everyone has been telling me she's like an absolute rock star forever, is she is someone who came

up through traditional politics. She did, you know, unlike Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she didn't just get into a race, right? She ran for the city council, was part of the establishment of sorts in Massachusetts. But, you know, I think we are seeing a new generation of Democrats take hold here. And it's very interesting to see how this plays itself out in Massachusetts. But I think we are seeing a new generation of Democrats take hold here. And it's very interesting to see how this plays itself out in 2020. Yeah. And if you want to feel hopeful at the end of a fairly dismal week, you should check out the video of Ayanna finding out that she won. It is pretty moving and exciting. Okay. I want to talk about one more race. On Monday, we talked about

Democrat Jennifer Wexton's race to unseat Republican Barbara Comstock in the D.C. suburbs. Dan, we did endorse Jennifer Wexton over Comstock. I don't know if you have any disagreement there with that crooked media endorsement, or are you on board? I was not present for the vote, but I probably would have voted with you guys i've never been a comstock fan okay good good good um well it was a tough choice all right so today we're going to talk about colin allred who's challenging a republican incumbent in texas's 32nd district pete sessions allred is a former nfl football player and a civil rights lawyer who worked at the department of housing and urban Development for Julian Castro. The Cook Report rates this district, which is mostly located in the Dallas suburbs, as a toss-up.

What do we know about Pete Sessions, Dan? He's bad. Pete Sessions is a right-wing Republican who has enabled Trump, who was, we butted heads with Pete Sessions a lot during various budget battles when we were in the White House. And he's basically been wrong on every issue his entire life. And I mean, he's one of my least favorite members of Congress. I sat in a meeting with him and President Obama once, and he could not have been more obnoxious or more rude to President Obama in a way that was really stunning to watch. He votes with Donald Trump 98% of the time, wants to end birthright citizenship, has an A-plus rating from the NRA, and Politico

called him the most powerful anti-pot official in Washington. Not great. He's not great, Pete Sessions. And Colin Allred is a fantastic candidate, we should also say. And so if you want to help him, you can go to his website. You can also go to votesaveamerica.com where you can type in your zip code and find out more about volunteer opportunities if you happen to live in the 32nd District or even anywhere nearby in Texas. So, you know, go support Colin Allred. And he gets our endorsement. Again, it was a tough call. We thought about it a while,

but we're off the fence. We decide we don't like Pete Sessions that much and calling All Red's the way to go. It's a really rigorous endorsement process that we have here at Positive America. I mean, there's- We're going to be very transparent about it, very honest about it. We have certain standards.

Yeah, there's a lack of an interview, which makes our process different than other endorsement processes. There's a lack of having to fill out a questionnaire. But in all seriousness, Colin Allred is awesome. He is a super fascinating, inspirational candidate. And he is an example of something that we will time in the podcast in the weeks before the midterm to highlight individual races, individual candidates, and you sort of look at that, and in most years, that would be a pretty boring exercise. Because there was for so long cookie-cutter Democratic Party-recruited candidates, prosecuting attorney, sheriff, white guy. And here we just have this array of incredibly interesting, young, inspirational people who will, and this is what was so important about Ayanna Pressley's victory, other than just Congress will be better off with a more diverse set of people in it. Yeah. Right?

The fact that the Massachusetts delegation will not be all white dudes, will now have this person with a different background, a different set of experience, will make it better. Congress will be better when it better reflects what America looks like. And the various experiences, backgrounds of the Democratic candidates give us a generational opportunity to do that here in 2018. Yeah. And Allred, he's right on all the issues, but he's been, you know, particularly focused on voting rights and he's proposed making voting a national holiday, automatic voter registration, all of these steps to make voting easier in this country, which, you know, I think we've both talked about. Democrats have power again. One of the first things they should do is try to expand

voting rights, protect voting rights, and sort of push back on the Republican effort to suppress the vote. And so he's been great on that and a whole host of other issues. So if you live in Texas, if you live near Dallas, even if you don't, you can support his campaign. Let me say one more other thing about Colin Allred that I think is very important for people to know is traditionally, when you have Democrats running against incumbents in states like Texas, what happens is you sand down all the edges and you try to be the mushy middle candidate, right? They'd be equidistant between both polls. And Colin Allred has been aggressive and bold and has not been afraid to take on the argument for the Democratic agenda in his race. And so I think that's the way you win in this day and age. But it's just refreshing to see

a change in how we are combating the districts in red states like Texas. Yeah. And same as Beto in Texas, same as Gina Ortiz Jones, who's running against Will Hurd. We're seeing that all over the place, even in red states like Texas. So it is very inspiring. When we come back, we will have John Lovett's interview with Cynthia Nixon. Joining us on the show today, she is a progressive activist and actress

and a Democratic candidate for governor of New York. Please welcome to Pod Save America, Cynthia Nixon. Hey. How you doing? I'm really well, thank you. Good to be here. So the Times said that the debate echoed some of the same tensions that are gripping the Democratic Party nationally in an age of Trump, namely whether the path back to power and success must be led by seasoned political veterans or the to the barricades outside agitators.

Which one do you feel like you were last night? I feel like I was a to the barricades outside agitator. You know, I think that we have a real battle going on for the direction the Democratic Party is going to go in. And I absolutely feel that we need to reinvigorate it. I think that too many people didn't turn out in the last election because they weren't sure what the Democratic Party stood for. And I think the overwhelming issue facing not only New York State, but the United States is our growing inequality, whether you're talking about economic, racial, gender inequality, and how it's swallowing our democracy whole. And I think it's why people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have, you know, become such heroes and why we're seeing these upsets all over the country, these progressive victories that were not predicted, because I think voters are so far ahead of where our

party leadership is right now in diagnosing the problem and in proposing solutions to it. I think voters are so far ahead of where our party leadership is right now in diagnosing the problem and in proposing solutions to it. I think incrementalism is not the way to go. We've got a real inequality crisis on our hands, and it needs a big, bold vision. So here's a question I have. I was born and raised in New York. I like a lot of what you're saying on unions, criminal justice, on a host of issues. I love the hell you're giving Cuomo on the subways. But sometimes I wish the person carrying that message had served in government before, had more experience. How do you assuage

somebody like me who feels that way? So I would have a few things to say. You know, one is that experience doesn't mean a lot if you're not very good at governing. And I think that Governor Cuomo is not good at governing. I think he's a really astute politician. I think he is tremendously prolific and creative, I would say, in his fundraising. But when you see all of the things that he ran on, that he said he would accomplish and that he hasn't gotten done, when you see how he's broken the New York City subway, when you see how he's handed over the New York State Senate

to the Republicans, this would be as if, you know, Barack Obama said to a bunch of Democratic senators, will you go and vote with the Republicans so we'd be sure that Mitch McConnell runs the Senate? When you see how many of his really inner circle are headed to prison, when you see the great mismanagement of his economic development dollars, how they've gone into the pockets of his big donors with really very little accountability and very little job creation to show for it. I think this is not a governor who is great at governing. I agree with you that my not having served in office before is a liability.

I think it's also a plus because when you're talking about somebody cleaning up Albany, a lot of people have run on a platform of cleaning up the corruption in Albany, but they've all been creatures of Albany. They've all been part of that culture and have benefited from it. And I think having someone like myself who is not accepting corporate donations is an enormous step in the right direction because I come into office talking about the issues that people care about and also not beholden to any corporation, any particular industry, any special interest. And I think that's the kind of independence you need to really clean up Albany. So I wanted to ask you about the subways. I have a personal stake in this just

because I've been stuck on them recently. And I'm, you know, as many... We all, whether you live in New York, whether you work in New York, whether you visit New York, whether you care about the economic health of the city and therefore the rest of the state, we all have a stake in the New York City subway. It's also a national issue in the sense that I think a lot of places are dealing with declining infrastructure and there's all kinds of explanations offered about why things cost too much to fix, how things are allowed to decline. There are these two competing stories. One is that the blame is laid at Andrew Cuomo's feet,

that the MTA is his responsibility. The other is that this is a combination of a failure between New York and the state, and it's something that's been in decline for decades. Can you just help people understand why is mass transit in New York broken? And what are the lessons there for people who see these kinds of problems in their York broken? And what are the lessons there for people who, you know, see these kinds of problems in their own communities? So the New York City subway when I was a kid in the 70s was broken in a different way, but it was broken. And what we saw was an enormous investment by the state and a rescue. And so in the 90s, we had a terrific, aesthetically pleasing, silent, beautifully running subway. And then a series of governors and mayors did a whole bunch of bad things and took money out of the system and debt with the – Pataki in particular dealt with the debt very poorly to benefit some of his top

donors. But what I think we've seen under Andrew Cuomo is seven and a half years of watching this crisis get worse and worse and worse each year. It's literally, we have the worst on-time record, as you have mentioned on your show, the worst on-time record of any major transit system in the country. Delays have tripled under Cuomo. Train speeds are slower now than they were in 1950. And what we've seen is a governor who refuses to acknowledge that, in fact, the state is in control of the MTA since the year before I was born, since 1965. The state has controlled the MTA, and it is their responsibility to fund it. And what we have is a governor who's taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of the MTA budget for pet projects of his that have nothing to do with the MTA or the

New York City subway. And we're seeing the result. And I agree with you that this is a problem in many different places in this country. And I think it's very short-sighted because an investment in infrastructure is always an investment in the current health of the state, but also in the future health of the state and the economic well-being of the state. I mean, we look at how Andrew Cuomo has mismanaged our economic development. Investing in infrastructure is a much more reliable way of creating jobs. If you invest a million dollars in transportation, the federal government says that's 36 jobs created right there. And you're investing not just in today, but you're investing in tomorrow. And I think what we've seen is really unbridled corporate power in this country, who are advocating more and more and more

successfully by contributing to political campaigns, advocating for tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest. And that loss of revenue, we've lost 25 billion in revenue under Andrew Cuomo in the last seven budgets. That loss of revenue results, you know, you've got to cut somewhere. And so you cut from things that have big budgets like education, like health care, and like infrastructure. And you can't cut too much before those systems start crumbling. And that's what we're seeing in New York right now. start start crumbling. And that's what we're seeing in New York right now. So I feel like there's a lot of there's been a lot of stories around corruption that has come close to touching Andrew Cuomo's office that certainly has embroiled Albany. I feel like there's this delicate dance

between saying Andrew Cuomo is engaging in the kind of standard issue, Democratic, Republican corruption in politics and the insinuation that something else might be going on. Do you believe that Andrew Cuomo is a corrupt politician? Look, his chief aide, Joe Percoco, who has been at his side for decades now, and before that was at Mario Cuomo's side, this is the man who had the most power in the Cuomo administration. He's headed to prison. His chief economic czar, Alain Calieros, is also headed to prison along with a number of Cuomo's top donors. These men in whom Cuomo vested the most power and trust were doing things under his nose that he has no idea about.

Cuomo's reputation is that of a micromanager. So either he had no idea these things were happening, in which case he is incompetent, or they were happening with his blessing and his directions, in which case he is corrupt. It is true that no one has yet successfully found the smoking gun, but the difference between Joe Percoco and Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, is Michael Cohen turned and actually said what was happening, and Joe Percoco stayed silent. So you're a first time candidate and you're now having this experience of running for governor. We've seen first time candidates across the country motivated in part by Trump, motivated by what they see happening in this country. What has surprised you

being on the campaign trail in this way for the first time? surprised you being on the campaign trail in this way for the first time? I guess how, I don't know, how woken up people are and how desperate people are for a political system that they feel actually hears them and sees them and sees what they're going through in their lives. And I think that, you know, we can say statistics, even about our own state, and they can have a certain kind of impact on us as we're saying them and our listeners as they're hearing them. But then when you go and talk to people and hear about the particularities of their everyday lives, it brings it into a real stark reality. And so the thing to understand about New York is we have this idea of New York as this really progressive, really prosperous state. And it is both of those

things, but our government policies are not reflecting that. So we are the single most unequal state in the country, not only because we have Wall Street and so many wealthy people, but we have more than half of the kids in our upstate cities living below the poverty line. We have in Syracuse the most concentrated black and brown poverty of any city in the entire United States. And when you talk to people about their inability to find a job, their inability, their tremendous fear that they are going to be pushed out of not only the home, but the community in which they live, that they can't afford to live in the city they grew up in, not necessarily even a very expensive place like New York City,

but Buffalo or Newburgh or Syracuse or any one of these cities which is experiencing gentrification in certain parts and just a housing crisis as a result of it and also as a result of extreme poverty and people just losing their homes because they can't find a job. All right. Well, I have one last question that I'm already regretting asking because you already ended on such a poignant note to your previous answer,

but I'm going to do it anyway because why not? It's my show. Why not? Sure. Well, my show when I do the interviews and no one else is here. Would you say that Andrew Cuomo is a Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, or a Miranda? I would say he is none of those women. I would be, you know, if I had to pick a character on Sex and the City, I'm really scrolling through my Rolodex now. There was a guy that Miranda dated briefly,

and he made a second appearance when she had to call all of her past lovers because she had a sexually transmitted disease. I believe his name was Kevin. And he was a lawyer. And he was a real type A personality. And he was a kind of an arrogant mansplainer. And I would say Andrew Cuomo is a Kevin. He's a real Kevin. You know, I don't think it's as catchy.

I don't know. We'll see what we can do. But Cynthia Nixon, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America. And good luck with the rest of the race. Thank you so much. Thanks again to Cynthia Nixon for joining us today. And we will talk to you all next week. Bye, everyone. Bye.