Pod Save America - "Bad criminals."

Episode Date: September 21, 2017

Trump threatens to destroy North Korea at the UN, Cassidy keeps lying about his Obamacare repeal bill, and Mueller closes in on Manafort. Then NBC's Katy Tur talks to Jon about covering Donald Trump.��

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we have an interview with NBC's Katie Turr about her new book, Unbelievable. And later, we'll talk to the host of Crooked Media's With Friends Like These, Anna Marie Cox. Love It or Leave It is tomorrow. Big Love It or Leave It. We got Ed Helms, Norman Lear, and Melina Abdullah from Black Lives Matter. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's gonna be a good one. I'm gonna miss it. Flying to Cincinnati tonight so I don't get to go to Love It or Leave

It. Okay, and there's also tickets still available for the tour. The tour's coming up, Dan. Are you excited? I'm so excited. that didn't sound excited i am actually very excited about it i'm excited too we're planning all the different legs as we speak right now so uh there's still tickets for the second show in ann arbor the late show and then there's a few tickets left for the philly the second philly show and then uh santa barbara is finally selling so get in there before it sells out. Cricket.com slash tour. You know, as I think about the tour, you love it really leads into the idea that he loves an audience,

but I'd be lying if I said I hated an audience either, so I'm pretty excited about it. It's fun. I've had a lot of fun when we did it in L.A. and San Francisco, so it'll be good to go other places. And Seattle. Don't forget Seattle. And Seattle. That was a great one. That was very long. Okay. Before we get into

everything else, we should probably talk briefly about the United Nations General Assembly that happened this week, Trump's first speech. I didn't pay a ton of attention to it because I was freaking out about Graham Cassidy all week. But, you know, he did threaten to

totally destroy North Korea, so that seems like a notable thing to bring up. But, you know, he did threaten to totally destroy North Korea. So that seems like a notable thing to bring up. What did you think about the speech? Well, I thought the thing that's interesting is I listened to the Monday podcast yesterday. And you guys have this exchange where it's like, who really cares about the rocket? Him tweeting Rocket Man. Is that a big deal? Who really cares about him tweeting Rocket Man?

Is that a big deal? And does it change your opinion that he used it in the speech on the national stage? What is the speech that is probably most watched around the world of any speech the American president gives in any given year? You know, if all he did was call him Rocket Man and there were no other notable portions of the speech that involved a threat to destroy a country of 25 million people, then I would say it was a big deal. But it's just Rocket Man is one of those things that sort of designed for, you know, the press to pick up on and they should have. But I think the substance of the speech of what he said was probably a little more alarming. I mean, you know, in the past, if there is a horrible dictator like, you know, Kim Jong-un, you know, with nuclear ambitions and we wanted to show force and threaten the country, you'd threaten the dictator, you'd threaten the regime. You could even say we're

going to attack their military. Like to just say you're going to totally destroy a country with 25 million people, which most of those are civilians, seems like the kind of thing you'd hear from a Kim Jong-un or a Gaddafi or Hugo Chavez or one of those lunatics who usually speak at the United Nations. You don't think you'd hear that from the president of the United States or really any of the countries that we're allied with. Yeah, I hate to break this to you, but we now have one of those lunatics who speak at the United Nations. That's us. The New Republic said that. Someone wrote, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to be represented by a wild-eyed megalomaniac minus the flowing robes and abundant military medals, take a look.

Which would be funny if it wasn't so sad. I had this other thought. A few weeks ago, you guys – it was after North Korea shot one of its multiple missiles across the bow of Japan. And you asked Tommy what Kim Jong-un's strategy was. Like, why would he do that? What is his end goal? And the answer was, we have no idea. But as I thought about that,

I thought about that as we were listening to the speech, and I realized that if there was a pod save Pyongyang, they would be having the same conversation about Trump. Like, why is he calling us Rocket Man? Like, why would he criticize South Korea?? Like, why did he why would he criticize South Korea? Like, what? What is the strategy? What's the strategy? The answer is

he's just a crazy person. He is just a crazy person. And you'd think that we'd have some, they might think, oh, maybe he has some smart people working for him. But, uh. They were smart when they started. One thing we know now is Trump makes everyone and everything around him dumber. That's that's very true. And more cowardly. What did you. So a lot of people on the right like the speech and even some conservatives who've been critical of Trump.

I am guessing that's because he was very warmongery and they usually tend to like that. I think if you are a Republican who is Republican because you believe in the long forgotten traditional ideals of the Republican Party, you are grasping at straws to justify your continued membership in this clown car of a party and trump standing on the world stage reciting some pretty trite lines that could have been recited by any republican president is like the last bastion of hope for you so i think they it's so hard for these they're like not exactly never trump republicans are like sometimes Trump Republicans. And this is one of the rare moments where they can say, look, he did something that other Republicans would do in an only slightly more embarrassing fashion. Yeah. And I mean, someone said it was it was like Bush's axis of evil speech, just with the crazy turned up. And, you know, we didn't like Bush's axis of evil speech,

or think it worked very well, since it led us into a prolonged conflict that we're still trying to extricate ourselves out of. So you can see why they might like it for those reasons. The other issue that was raised in the speech and elsewhere this week was the Iran deal. And there's been this back and forth, is Trump going to pull out of the Iran deal? He seems to be at war with many people in his own administration who don't think that it's a good idea to pull out of the Iran deal. And again, you know, in the UN speech, it's not like he made some really thoughtful, detailed case about why Iran wasn't,lying with the deal, because by all accounts, they are complying with the deal. So instead, he just said, it's a horrible deal. It's the

worst one I've ever seen. And you're going to hear about it again, believe me. I mean, just ridiculous. I mean, there's two elements of this. One, I'll get all of the Tommy's business for a second. This is actually incredibly counterproductive for the North Korea situation. right situation yeah that david sanger piece in the new york times was talking about that if your two paths are completely destroy a country of 25 million people or diplomatic solution it's going to be pretty hard to get a diplomatic solution is if in the most analogous situation of a rogue nation seeking a nuclear program, a nuclear program, and you then arbitrarily pull out of the deal without cause, why would, not just why would North Korea do such a deal, but why would the other nations like China put their names on the deal if they can't trust the United States to stick with it. So you are cutting off your by far more optimal solution to this problem by doing this. The second thing is

I find it hard to imagine that he's, if we've learned, just from watching Trump over the last seven months slash 50 years or how long it's been since he took office, I think he has made up his mind here. And it's just a question of either he's going to wear his advisors down, the ones who disagree with him will quit, be indicted or whatever else, or he'll just tweet out the policy one day. One early morning we'll make up to it because when he teases things like this, he normally does not back away. Yeah. And then, you know, it's also very complicated because we're not the only it's not a deal just between us and iran there's a whole bunch of other countries involved as well and so i don't even know how that works but we should should have tommy on to talk about this

so and it was also by the way this is like a small petty thing but the writing is horrible in that speech if that's like i know that some people were saying, I think fucking, I think Chris Eliza said it was like more poetic than usual. I'm like, come on, guys. It's more Stephen Miller garbage. And it was just like some of the lines were just absurd. on a prompter in some ways it's more embarrassing than when he's just going off at a rally because um he's like doing a bad impression of what he thinks a like tough republican president would sound like i mean there's no way he has worked on the speech in the traditional way that politicians work on a speech zero like there's no i mean he does these unguest speeches ben rhodes and

barack obama would be up to like four in the morning the night before perfecting them. I mean, Trump does not own a red pen. He is not getting in there and making edits. I think he probably at most reads it once on the car ride to the event just so it's not the first time he's seeing it. Even that would surprise me. That's at best. That is best case scenario. That is Trump's top preparation plan would be to skim it once in a car with Fox and Friends on it or something.

I don't know. But sometimes he is – it's very clear he is – this would happen every once in a while with Obama on a pretty – not on anything like UNGA, but like a rudimentary like we're doing four stops a day post-Day of the Union. And he may not – for whatever reason, his prep time got squished and he didn't get a chance to look at it thoroughly. And you can – we would see it in his face when he is seeing something for the first time on the prompter. And Trump is like that every day. It's not ideal. No. prompter and trump's like that every day it's not ideal um so let's talk about graham cassidy or as ran paul is now calling it gramnesty for obamacare gchj gchj that's right um so uh where are we at the schedule schedule is the Senate is out of session right now, so a lot of senators are home. They return on Monday. Monday is the big day here. They could vote as early as Wednesday. If they have the votes, it's still unclear if McConnell will call the vote, even if they don't have it or not. There's some confusion around that. And of course, they have to do something by Friday at midnight if they want

this to pass. That's the schedule. Vote count. Right now, here's where we stand. We need three no votes to kill the bill. Three no Republican votes to kill the bill. Right now, Susan Collins and Rand Paul are most likely no votes. Dan, what's your thought on the Rand Paul of it all here? Because I have believed and still believe that he is a no vote because every five minutes he tweets about how much he hates this bill. Others have told me he's going to flip at the end. I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, he seems like... It doesn't really matter. We need all the no votes we can get, so we should just... If we want to assume he's going to flip, then we can assume that and then go get more no votes. Yeah.

Do I trust Rand Paul as a man of principle? No. Am I encouraged by the fact that he has renamed the bill Gramnesty? Which is much better than GCHJ or BICRA or ACHA or all the other clever namings that have happened for these bills. So, yeah, that's encouraging. But until there's a vote or not a vote or the clock expires, we should go find two other votes beyond Susan Collins and who I do think is a person of principle. She is that sound.

You, that sound you hear is me knocking on wood and go from there. So don't count on Rand Paul, but don't panic about Rand Paul yet. Yeah. And I would just tell people, go back and look at everything Rand Paul said around skinny repeal, which he voted for.

It's not like he was out there for three weeks attacking skinny repeal, saying horrible things about it, saying it should never pass, saying it was bad. And then he flipped and voted for it. What he wanted was a vote on a clean repeal. And then he said a lot of good things about skinny repeal in the days leading up to him voting for it. So he's not someone who's flipped on the substance of a bill in the past that much. He was pretty happy with the substance of skinny repeal when he decided to vote for it. It was just a fairly new version of the bill before skinny repeal, which I fucking forget at this point what it's called. BCRA or whatever it was that's it's called bickra to friends and family cool cool cool um okay so we think we're we have no's from susan collins and

ray and paul so where's the other no or both no's if one of them isn't with us it's murkowski and mccain those are the two that we really care about those are the two that are most likely to vote no where are they mccain yesterday was asked whether he's for this. Again, he said he's not there yet and he wants regular order. At one point, he was just yelling at a reporter, I want regular order. I want regular order. So I don't know. Again, I mean, I think he's caught between his concern for the process and the Senate and bipartisanship and his concern for his good pal Lindsey Graham. It is concerning that he doesn't seem to be as worried about the actual substance of the bill and what it will do and what it will mean for people and the health care.

It seems like he's caught between, you know, his sense of institutionalism for the Senate and his sense of friendship for Lindsey Graham, which is not a great place to be, but that's where he is. This is also complicated by the fact that the governor of Arizona, who was very critical in his opposition to skinny repeal, has come out for Graham-Cassidy with no explanation of why, even though it's all the principles that he had put forward and why he opposed the previous bills. It is terrible for Arizona. Terrible.

Arizona would lose $19 billion between now and 2027. $19 billion. It is one of the big losers. I would love to know the pitch that got Ducey to jump on this bill, Governor Ducey. I just can't understand it. There was a post story by Paul Kane this morning that basically tries to answer the question of why are Republicans so enthusiastically going for a policy that they know is bad or don't understand and one they think is likely not to succeed? Like, why are they doing that? not to succeed. Like, why are they doing that? And the short version of that is they all got yelled at by donors, activists over the August break, which cheered on by Trump, basically.

Trump is telling everyone, the Senate via his Twitter account, is telling everyone that Senate Republicans are terrible failures and wimps and cowards, and then their voters are repeating that back to them. And so they're very afraid to be seen as doing nothing. So even though they know this is terrible policy, and is probably terrible politics in the medium and long run, they are doing it because they do not want to get yelled at. So that'll make you feel a lot better if you're a cancer patient or a sick child or have a pre-existing condition is that Republican senators are doing something they don't believe in and they know is a bad idea and will hurt people because they're getting yelled at.

Yeah, it's sort of the opposite effect of what happens when a bill like this, a garbage bill like this, is on the floor. Which is, right now, we're all ramping up and they're hearing from all the activists and organizations and everyone who is opposed to this bill. And so, you know, it pushes them back to, no, I don't want to do anything. But then when we start celebrating it might seem like, oh, once we win this fight, everything's quiet and these people can go on their business, but they don't. They get pressure from the other side, which is why our job is never done on this. It's so exhausting. It's exhausting. So McCain is iffy. We don't know. We're hearing he's genuinely conflicted about this. So Murkowski. Murkowski, I think, is more likely to vote against this shitburger than John McCain. She said again yesterday or the day before, she's still not supporting this bill. Her support's not there yet, but she's talking over the numbers.

She said she was talking over the numbers with HHS, which got me a little worried because it's Trump's Health and Human Services Department. And so probably a bunch of all the political people in that Health and Human Services Department are all probably a bunch of all the political people in that health and human services department are all probably a bunch of trump hacks and she's talking over the numbers with her state which is better um her governor governor walker is against this unlike governor ducie and of arizona which is great and and governor walker's statement about this bill was not just like let's see how the – I'm worried the math isn't going to work for Alaska or blah, blah, blah. He basically said any change to Medicaid like this that block grants Medicaid would mean deep cuts to our state and any restructuring of Medicaid goes far beyond repealing the Affordable Care Act. of Medicaid goes far beyond repealing the Affordable Care Act. It's a pretty strong statement, which I think is important because any day now, probably by the time you're listening to

this podcast, Graham and Cassidy will probably come back with more money for Alaska because it is cheap to try to buy off Alaska. So I think we should prepare for the fact that they are going to try to throw more money at the problem in Alaska. And what we're going to have to hope is that Walker doesn't flip and that Murkowski, you know, stands by her principles. What are your thoughts on that one? I'm nervous. Yeah. Lisa Murkowski is a person of principle. I believe that. I'm not saying that to guarantee she's going to vote no but i think on the relative scale of principles within the republican party she is on the high end of principled um and what she did before had courage and she has been courageous against she is not someone that mitch mcconnell has been able to bully or bribe in the past so i say that the only thing you need to know about lisa murkowski is she lost a primary

challenge from the right in her state she decided to run as an independent write-in candidate people had to write in the name and spell correctly murkowski and she still won as an independent candidate so she owes nothing to anyone. She does not owe the Republican Party. She does not owe Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell. She is her own person. And when she voted against this bill last time, she landed in Anchorage, went back home, and was cheered and applauded at the airport. And people hugged her and said, thank you for doing this.

it at the airport and people hugged her and said, thank you for doing this. So like, you know, again, like you just said, it's not a guarantee that she votes against this thing. But, you know, she has proven herself in the past to withstand political pressure from the right. It's going to be interesting to see whether McConnell actually calls a vote on this. Like they're playing a game of chicken here. So you have the clock coming, another dramatic loss at 1158, or in the most dramatic way possible, would be much worse for Republicans than just going home without doing it. But no one wants to say they're a no, because they don't want to be... There's two reasons for that. One is no one wants to say they're a no because they don't want to be – there's two reasons for that. One is no one wants to be the person who killed Obamacare repeal if they don't have to be.

There's safety in numbers on that, right? So it's like if Lisa Murkowski comes out tomorrow and they're like, Lisa Murkowski kills Obamacare repeal. That's an unpleasant place to be. be. And you don't want to be the person or the people who kill it until the last minute, because now you're going to, there will be a seven day massive pressure campaign from Trump, McConnell, Breitbart nation, whatever other collection of trolls, you don't care about this to put pressure on you. And so the longer you can stay in the undecided category, the safer you are from at least pressure from your own side. The safer you are, this is the game of chicken here, the safer you are until McConnell decides he's going to call the vote,

whether he has the votes or not, to put everyone on record. Because this is the danger that, I mean mean because I think Murkowski would probably rather and so in McCain and Collins as well just have this thing die before it comes to a vote because you know if like you said if there's this big drama and there's a senate floor vote and everyone's watching then they're even there's even more blame on them than if you know an hour from now the three of them put out a joint statement together, didn't even go on cameras themselves and just said, we're not for this bill. We don't think it's good. Then the thing just dies. There's no vote and everyone goes home and they move on to

tax reform next week and pretend it never happened. To me, like if I was Murkowski and McCain and Collins and I was against this, I might do that. I might try to put out some statement between now and Monday and just get this thing over with, because I think you'd rather do that than have a dramatic vote on the floor, unless you felt good about your no vote and you wanted to get a bunch of attention for it. But I suspect they don't this time. Yeah, no, I think McCain also is, he's probably genuinely undecided and he is quite unpredictable a human being. But I also think he wants to give, I'm sure Graham has asked him to keep his mouth shut. Even if you're a no, don't say anything and give me time to work this.

And maybe Graham thinks he can flip Collins or can buy Rand Paul off in some way, shape, or form. But just give me time because if you say no, then it's over. And at least give me time because if you say no then it's over and at least give me a shot and which which can potentially explain why the answers that the very odd answers mccain's been giving because mccain says all the words but no right and you could see him saying to graham like you're my buddy that doesn't mean that i'm gonna vote for your piece of shit bill but i will give you this i'll be quiet while you work lisa murkowski and try to get her to flip it's all very i can't believe i can't believe well yeah let's talk about how we're in this fucking situation so

the most maybe one of the most bizarre parts of this is that we are not going to have a score from the non-partisan congressional budget office that would tell us uh it's we're going to have a score that tells us how much this thing costs we we're going to have a score that tells us how much this thing costs. We're not going to have a score that tells us how many people would lose their health insurance or what it would do to premiums, which is beyond fucking comprehension. Because the CBO is not going to have time to do this, they say, by the September 30th deadline. But of course, they need the September 30th deadline so they can ram this thing through with 50 votes. So fortunately, a number of independent, nonpartisan, trusted organizations, consulting firms have run a bunch of numbers on

this. The latest is Avalere. It's a consulting firm. It's respected, independent. They said that in the next 10 years, there's a $215 billion cut. 34 states plus Washington, D.C. would lose money in the next 10 years. By 2027, that's $489 billion. 2027 and beyond, $4 trillion. Alaska loses $2 billion. We said Arizona loses $19 billion. Ohio, $19 billion. Colorado, $11 billion. It's pretty awful. I mean, this whole idea that the big lie, well, there's many lies, but maybe the biggest lie of this bill is, oh, it just takes all the money that is spent on the affordable carrot right now and just divvies it up among the states. It doesn't do that. First, it takes $215 billion off the top, and then it divides up what's left over among the states unequally. Not good. This is the shittiest of all the shit burgers, which is just the fitting way for this. It's actually a pretty great metaphor for the Republican Party

because in a normal, non-Trump, old school world of politics, the way this would work is they would try to pass the worst version first, like the straight repeal version. They would fail at that. So they'd say, well, we're going to come two steps closer to the middle. Then they would try that one, and that would fail. Then they'd come two steps closer. Instead, every time they fail, the answer is not to become more moderate. It's become more extreme.

And this is the most extreme and the most nonsensical of all the bills. This is just policy nonsense. It makes no sense. No one involved, and we'll get to this, but particularly Senator Bill Cassidy of Cassidy-Graham has any fucking clue what's in this bill. All they know is it does something to Obamacare and they're for doing something to Obamacare. That's all that matters. Yeah, I would encourage everyone to read Jeff Stein's piece, Jeff Stein of Vox. He went and found nine Republican senators to ask them what was in the bill. And the answers may not be surprising, but are certainly shocking. They range from really, really obvious lies to

people you can't imagine are senators, despite the fact that they're that dumb. There are two types of elected Republicans right now. People too stupid to understand the issues, and people who play stupid on TV so they can appeal to Trump's voters. Right. And they're just lying. So that brings us to the Jimmy Kimmel versus Bill Cassidy battle, which in any other time period would seem absurd that a late night comic is going against a United States senator who also happened to be a doctor on health care and winning the fight. But, you know, Donald Trump is president. So here we are. So Jimmy Kimmel, which if you haven't seen it by now, go check it out.

Two nights ago, just tore into Cassidy in this monologue about the bill, talked about all the problems with it. On Wednesday cassidy's response was i am sorry he does not understand more people will have coverage and we protect those with pre-existing conditions i mean the extent to which that statement is not true is mind-boggling the first part more people will have coverage like you cannot find an expert anywhere that would tell you that that is true and then of course you know the pre-existing condition thing which is they're all now the republicans are all very upset because they think everyone's lying about the pre-existing condition thing right and donald trump tweeted about this yesterday too i would never sign a bill that doesn't protect pre-existing conditions. Here's the thing. All you have to do

is read the legislation. It's a very easy way to solve this dispute. Because when you read the legislation, what it says is that states are allowed to waive the pre-existing condition protections under Obamacare. Under Obamacare, you cannot deny someone coverage who has a pre-existing conditions. And crucially, you cannot charge someone who has a pre-existing condition more than someone who does not have a pre-existing condition. Those are the rules under Obamacare. Under Cassidy Graham, it says, yes, you cannot deny coverage to someone with a pre-existing condition, but all you have to do is write an explanation to Tom Price's Health and Human Services Department that says how you're going to make sure that someone with a pre-existing condition still has access to affordable insurance. That's all you have to do. You have to write an explanation of how that's going to happen,

and then you're okay. Cool. Sounds like a... Why did you repeal the Obamacare regulation then? Why are you doing that? What's the motive of changing the law if it's not going to let insurance companies charge whatever the fuck they want to someone who has cancer?

Yeah, this is so fucking simple. If you didn't want to get rid of the protection of pre-existing conditions, you would not have explicitly in your own handwriting, Dr. Bill Cassidy, put a loophole in the bill that allowed insurance companies to do exactly that. You would leave the law. You would leave it in written. Yes, it's so easy. These people are bad criminals.

If you were trying to be tricky, there are ways you could write it that would maybe create some wiggle room that a lot of people do. Then we begin a debate. Is this the right interpretation or is that the right interpretation? Instead instead these machiavellian morons explicitly wrote the language so the insurance companies would have no doubt that they could fuck over people with pre-existing

conditions just just in case some naive well-meaning insurance company tried to interpret the law in the most favorable way to helping actual people, they made it clear that that was not their intent. If these people are bad, they also offend me with their stupidity. I know. Well, when we tried to cover people with pre-existing conditions and protect them, insurance companies said to us, here's the problem with your proposal. If we protect people with pre-existing conditions, what's going to happen is no one's going to sign up for health care, for health insurance, until they get sick. And if insurance companies have to deal with a whole bunch of people that are only going to sign up for health insurance once they're already sick, it's going to be really, really costly. So we said, well, that's why we have an individual mandate, because what we're going to tell people is everyone's required to buy health insurance sick people and healthy people and that way when people get sick it makes like the insurance

companies can take care of that and the insurance company said that's a deal we can take care of let's do that cassidy grim repeals the individual mandate so like you can't i mean it would it's going to send the insurance individual insurance market into a death spiral. So not only are people with preexisting conditions going to get screwed and have to pay more money, healthy people are at some point going to have to pay more money too because the whole individual market is going to unravel. And do you know how we know this? The insurance companies themselves told us that yesterday. Blue Cross. Yesterday. And the AHIP, which is – I can't remember what it stands for, but something American.

America's Health Insurance Plans. Yeah, I think so. Yes, thank you. The people whose job it is to represent the profit-making interests of the insurance companies were like, this thing is bad. That should be a hint. There are no people. I saw this list going around online. The only people who are for Graham Cassidy are Graham and Cassidy and their fellow Republicans.

There's no organization. They haven't even been able to invent a fake organization to be for this. No. And Kimmel last night said – so Kimmel goes back at Cassidy last night, takes another run at him in the monologue, which is just – last night was – it might have even been better than the first one. And so he responds to Cassidy saying, oh, maybe he doesn't understand. And Kimmel goes, maybe I don't understand the part of your bill, which federal funding disappears completely after 2026. Or maybe it was the part where the plans are no longer required to pay for maternity care or pediatric visits, or the part where the American Medical Association, the College of Physicians,

the Academy of Pediatrics, the Hospital Association, the Cancer Society, the Diabetes Association, he just goes on and on and on and lists all these organizations. He's like that the academy of pediatrics the hospital association the cancer society the diabetes association he just goes on and on and on and lists all these organizations he's like that they're all against it and then you know the conservatives are so angry today because they're writing all their fucking think pieces about how like a late night comic isn't a moral authority on this a late night comic shouldn't be not one of them not one of them has challenged the facts in either of Jimmy Kimmel's monologues because his facts are correct. And Politico had a headline, Kimmel, not Cassidy, is right on health, analysts say, which to me really sums up 2017.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. First is, the combination of Bill Cassidy and Ben Carson has made me retroactively question everything any doctor has ever told me. Like, we lift doctors up as these all-knowing experts on all things. And we have been exposed to two of them in our politics. And one of them thinks the one of them doesn't understand their own bill. And the other one thinks the pyramids were used to store grain. So it is, uh,

I'm hoping we just got the two, the two bad apples here. Cause I'm, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Second, how did Bill Cassidy ever get elected?

The man has the charisma of a surgical sponge. I mean, he is terrible on television. And Jimmy Kimmel, like the battle between he and Jimmy Kimmel is so one-sided because usually in this situation, the late night comic would be the better performer, the more charismatic person, of course, and the senator would be the expert on policy matters. In this case, Jimmy Kimmel is the more charismatic person and the expert on policy matters. In this case, Jimmy Kimmel is the more charismatic person and the expert on policy matters.

And Bill Cassidy cannot explain what is in his own bill. Yeah. No, what I'm really happy about what Kimmel did is sometimes when celebrities or Hollywood types or comics go off in politics, they exaggerate something or they get a fact wrong or they just plan out lie. And Jimmy Kimmel was so careful in putting this thing together and he fact checked everything and he made sure that everything was right that because his facts are unassailable, you know,

he wins the battle that way. It doesn't even matter about his charisma or his moral authority or anything else. He just, he just had the facts right and he made sure he got them right. And he made sure he wasn't exaggerating anything. So it was a really smart thing for Kimmel to do if he's going to go out there and do this. Do you remember when Obama wrote the takedown of the Paul Ryan budget at George Washington University? I do. And somehow we, there was a mix-up and we invited Paul Ryan to sit in the front row. I wish I could go back

and take credit because I'm so fucking happy about that. At the time, I was really embarrassed because I'm like, I would not have written the speech that harshly

had I known that Paul Ryan would be sitting right there because at the time, of course, we're trying to negotiate and be bipartisan. Now I think it's hilarious. Yeah, yeah, right.

History will judge that decision well. But the second part of that story is, remember Obama told you no Pinocchios was his role? He did. This thing had to be exactly right. What he said to me is, we do not need to put a bunch of spin on the ball. We don't need to go out there and say, like, Paul Ryan's going to kill your grandmother. We just need to lay out the facts of why that will be the result, basically. No, he was just like, just put the facts in. Just put the facts of the budget in. Make sure we have independent analysis that backs it up. Make sure you have all the numbers right. And I don't need

to go on this big thing about how he's an awful person. I just want to lay the facts out. And that to me is a lesson for our party in this day and age because there are two ways you can look at the nullification of objective truth that is sort of the core strategy of the Republican Party these days. One is you could just lie too. You could take – the lesson could be we're all going to lie. And if they can do it, we're going to do it too. The other one is to swerve in the opposite direction, which is to nail your facts so hard that it becomes very hard for your opponents to try to nullify them. And Kimmel – and we were operating at a different, more wonderful time back when that speech was written in 2010, I think? 2011, I guess. And Kimmel did this right, and I think there are lessons for progressives in making arguments

against Trumpism in how Kimmel did it. Yep. And now, look, if any conservatives are listening or some of our never-Trump Republican friends, I'm sure they're rolling their eyes and saying, oh, Obama didn't personally attack the motives of Paul Ryan. Of course he did. Look, Obama definitely engaged in the usual kind of politics from time to time. And I'm sure there's plenty of statements you can say were not just factually based, but they were also, you know, attacking the opposition. opposition but the point is we really tried and he really tried to make sure that we were just laying out facts and that even if you disagreed with those facts we had an argument for why we

put them down on paper and all politicians from time to time get things wrong and get fact-checked and get pinocchios but there is so little truth to the claims being made about Cassidy Graham. It may be unprecedented, even for Republicans pushing repeal bills. I've never seen lies this brazen before. Did you see when Bill Cassidy on Twitter responded to NPR. NPR tweeted out a story about Cassidy Graham. Bill Cassidy responded on Twitter saying, false, and basically saying that more people would be covered and precinct conditions would be protected. And then NPR went on a very obvious tweetstorm

quoting Cassidy's own bill, explaining why that was not the case. Bill Cassidy has not been heard from on Twitter since. Yeah, I don't know why his staff gives him the gives him the twitter machine before we get to russia you know what you know who probably feels really uncomfortable right now whatever genius well yes well yes exactly but whatever genius in the cassidy press office without thinking about it came up with a kimmel test i mean the way he said that on Kimmel, it sounds like it came off,

it was like in his head, like he just sort of did it on the fly. So we should talk briefly about Tom Price, Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary, who during his confirmation hearing was getting in some sort of trouble for possible insider training. We now find out Dan Diamond at Politico

reported that Price has been taking private jets on five separate occasions to conduct official business, including a flight from Dulles, a charter private jet from Dulles in D.C. to Philadelphia for $25,000. First of all, who the fuck flies from D.C. to Philadelphia? Never mind Dulles. first of all who the fuck flies from dc to philadelphia never mind dulles we've dulles you have to drive like an hour to get to dulles to do a 30 minute flight to philly for 25 000 hey we don't have enough money for medicaid though do you know how long the train is from union station which is basically a stone's throw from HHS. From Union Station to Philly is two hours on the train. Yeah, I've done that.

It's a very pleasant ride. Yeah. You know? It's just really, I mean, yes, we could just go on and on about the hypocrisy and the drain the swamp and stuff like that. But I think this is part of the message for Democrats. This Tom Price thing becomes important because it fits so well in this larger story about what they're trying to do on health care. Is that Donald Trump and his administration screw you so that Donald Trump and his pals like Tom Price can get all kinds of perks and get rich. And they're in it for themselves.

And they're not fucking in it for you because as they are trying to take away your health insurance coverage because they're saying that we don't have enough money for the government to help people afford health insurance, they're saying the government does have enough money to fly that fucking asshole

to Philadelphia on a $25,000 jet that's paid for by your tax dollars. Give me a fucking break. It's just so stupid. They are just so dumb. They do the wrong things. And they don't, I mean, their ethos is don't give a fuck. They just do not give a fuck about anyone or anything but themselves,

whether it's Tom Price, Steve Mnookin, Donald Trump himself. themselves, whether it's Tom Price, Steve Mnookin, Donald Trump himself. They just they want to do what is best for them at the expense of everyone else. So if you want to help and you should want to help to stop this fucking bill, please go to TrumpCare10.org slash crooked. So that's for calls. Again, call your congressman, call your senator 202-224-3121. calls, again, call your congressman, call your senator, 202-224-3121. MoveOn.org is also holding and organizing nationwide protests on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. They're going to be in D.C. on Monday and Tuesday. They're going to be all over the country Saturday. You can go to MoveOn.org

to find out where a protest might be near you. I believe there's one that's going to be in Alaska Tuesday, which is great. But again, if you want to figure out how to call, even if you're in a blue state, you can call someone in a red state or in a state with one of these wavering senators and encourage them to call. You go to TrumpCare10.org slash crooked. You can find all the information you need right there. That's an important point about if you live in a blue state,

and I'm sure you get this question all the time in LA as I do in San Francisco. What do point about if you live in a blue state, and I'm sure you get this question all the time in LA, as I do in San Francisco, what do we do if we live here? Senator Harrison, Feinstein are fine. And you know, people in Maine, Ohio, West Virginia, wherever else, call your friends and family and ask them to call their senators. Look at your friends on Facebook, see where all your high school and college friends you haven't talked to in 20 years have moved, and reach out to them and try to encourage them to call. Yeah, so everyone make sure you make that call and let's stop this thing. Okay, let's talk about Russia. We haven't talked about Russia in a while. Where to begin with all, a lot of stories are just like the Times and the Post are dropping all these stories and CNN.

And they're sort of going under the radar here, but it's starting to add up to a lot. So let's see if we can unpack it here. I don't know where to begin. I guess the CNN story that the FBI was wiretapping Manafort before he was Trump's campaign manager. Starting in 2014, the FBI begins investigating Manafort over his consulting work in Ukraine. As part of that investigation, they obtained a FISA warrant to wiretap Manafort per CNN.

They discontinued the wiretap at some point in 2016, and then they renewed it after he left the Trump campaign, apparently. Why did they wiretap him? Well, we're finding out more and more of the possibly criminal things that Paul Manafort did and just sketchy things that he did. So the Washington Post story that broke yesterday, two weeks before Trump got the nomination, Manafort offered to provide private briefings on the race to a Russian oligarch close to Putin.

And he also wrote an email hoping that his newfound fame as Trump's campaign manager would help get some of the, have some of his old clients in Eastern Europe repay the debt they owed him. How can we use my new position to make us whole again, is basically what his email said. Well, first, it's worth noting that in getting a FISA warrant, because in the whole wiretapping thing, if you were to tune into that festering abscess on American journalism that is Fox News, you would see that instead of seeing this, there's two ways to look at the story. One would be a federal judge was presented evidence of probable cause that a crime was committed that caused that judge to not once but twice give a warrant to surveil Paul Manafort. The other way to think about that, and the one you would find on Fox, is that it would be to say that Trump's tap the wires, in whatever quotes he used, tweet is now right. And Trump has been proven correct.

Liberals in the media were all wrong. That's not good. That is not accurate, Dan. No, it is not accurate. Particularly since the report showed that Paul Manafort was not being wiretapped while he was on the campaign. So that's a big hole in that theory. But fox will fox. That will happen. Right. And also, of course, it's relying on people's ignorance of knowing how wiretapping works, that it's not the president of the United States that orders wiretaps. It is the FBI and then it is approved by an independent court of judges.

So it's not like Donald Trump or Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or George Bush or any of these people can just go ordering, you can wiretap this person, that person. It just doesn't happen that way. And usually the president does not know about these wiretaps even if they do exist because that is the standard of independence that you set from the doj which donald trump of course has completely erased so it sounds like it's bad news for muller there was that other story uh i think it was the new york times about you know them when the fbi raided Manafort's house. And they didn't just do a knock on the door. It's the FBI open up. They just busted into his house and started taking pictures of his hard

drive, his suits. They started taking his documents. I mean, this is not something you do when you're just suspicious of somebody. Yeah. I mean, the legal experts around this talked about that they did that because they had reason to believe that in the time in which they knocked on the door, in the time in which Paul Manafort opened it or they were able to kick it down, Paul Manafort would destroy evidence. So that's why they did it. He was asleep when this happened, and they raided his home. The suit thing is funny just because, as we remember from his brief but humorous TV appearances, Paul Manafort dresses like Pauly Walnuts from The Sopranos. So I think they may just be passing those around the FBI just for fun. So I don't exactly know what the crime is that Paul Manafort is going to be charged with. First of all, the criminal statutes around collusion itself is are almost non-existent it seems like there could be money laundering charges it seems like there could be conspiracy charges it seems like there could be

some campaign finance violations some foreign lobbying violations could be could be all of the above we don't know but. But things don't look good for Manafort. And of course, what Mueller is hoping is that Manafort then turns on Trump if they've got Manafort. Yeah, because they also apparently in that same story threatened, told Manafort that an indictment was coming. Yes, I'm sorry. That is a big point. Yeah. So an indictment is probably coming. Now, the other part of the case that's very important

is Mueller is not just looking at Manafort. It's not just looking at Russian collusion. He is clearly investigating Donald Trump for potential obstruction of justice. I mean, it is the biggest thing sort of hanging out there right now. And the New York Times detailed this in a story this week. Mueller has asked the White House It is the biggest thing sort of hanging out there right now. And the New York Times detailed this in a story this week.

Mueller has asked the White House. He wants emails and documents from the White House related to the firing of Michael Flynn, the firing of Jim Comey, and Trump's meeting with Russian officials where he said that firing Jim Comey had, quote, relieved great pressure on him. Yeah, so it's, you know, I talked to someone, to a legal expert who said that because Mueller might be worried about Trump pardoning Manafort and Flynn and just using his pardon power for all these people, Manafort and Flynn and just using his pardon power for all these people, Mueller is speeding up the case on obstruction because he feels like he needs to nail Trump on a, you know, he would need to nail Trump on obstruction because if he does that, it makes it harder for Trump to pardon everyone else if you start implicating Trump in a crime as well. That seems encouraging. Yeah.

No, I think the obstruction thing is real because also obstruction of justice is not, it's not like one, this person also told me, it's not like one law. Obstruction is like a series of laws and it's also like about building a case. So it's not necessarily one single thing that Donald Trump did. It's, you know, what was his, what was his mindset while he was doing the firing? You know, how do you prove corrupt intent? You prove it by a series of things he did, and that includes public statements, like when he told Lester Holt,

I decided he was looking into that Russia thing too much. Or his conversation with the Russians, where he said the firing relieved him of great pressure. Or the original letter he drafted about why he wanted to fire Comey that Mueller now has possession of as well. So there are a number of things and a number of interviews Mueller is doing to try to prove obstruction. And we'll see where it goes. And why he instructed his staff to draft

a obvious lie about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians promising oppo research on Hillary Clinton. Yeah, that's a big one, too. That's a big one, too. One person who now might be caught up in all of this is Emmy star Sean Spicer. We found this morning, and Axios reported this morning, that Spicer's old colleague said that he took copious notes in a ton of meetings about everything that's going on. There was a report a couple weeks ago that Spicer may be one of the people, former White House officials, that Mueller wants to interview. The best part of the Spicer story is Mike Allen emails Spicer about this today or yesterday.

And Spicer writes back to Mike Allen, Mike, please stop texting, emailing me unsolicited anymore. Mike responds with a question mark. Spicer responds, not sure what that means. From legal standpoint, I want to be clear. Do not email or text me again. Should you do again, I will report to the appropriate authorities. Who are the authorities in this case?

Jim Vanahe case someone tweeted that who are the authorities is it vanda high is it the national parks association what if the who are the authorities it is worth noting that there are many aggressive confrontational reporters and it is a well-worn reporting tactic, especially for investigative reporters. They're reporters who scares you when they show up on your call list. Mike Allen is not one of those reporters. He is one of the more genial human beings walking around Washington, D.C. So if you know Mike Allen, you know how even more disproportionately absurd Sean Spicer's response is. So just as a general communications professional, why would you write that? Like that's an insane thing to write to a reporter who will then turn around and print it.

I don't know what's going on. It's very... Sean Spicer is not... He's having a tough go of it. Emmys appearances and tuxedo-clad selfies from Sunday Night Aside. It's not great for Sean Spicer. No.

On the pod today, in studio, here in Los Angeles, we have NBC's Katie Turr. This is so exciting to be here in person. You're one of the first guests that we've had in the studio, in the new Crooked Media studio. I think that's a good way to start. This is great. And welcome home to Los Angeles. Thank you. So last time we spoke, it was on a podcast called Keeping It 1600. Yeah. During the campaign, you were talking to Dan Pfeiffer and me. And in the middle of the pod, you were like, I gotta go. I was really distracted. I don't know if you noticed this. I was kind of rambly. I didn't really make any sense. My mind was clearly somewhere else. And you just said you're like,

I can't when we weren't recording, you're like, I can't really tell you guys right now. But there's a big breaking story. And if I seem distracted, it's because of that. And then you like suddenly had to go. Yeah. And we finished the pod, and it was the day of the Access Hollywood tape. It was the day of the Access Hollywood tape. So what had happened there? Had the Post broken the story? So the Post had... Because you guys had it first.

No, the Post had it. The Post called us and said, we have this story, this Access Hollywood tape. We need a comment from NBC. Where I come into it is I got a call from an executive saying, get down to my office right now. And I think, oh, my God, what did I do? And she says, you're not in trouble.

You're not fired. Just come down to the office. And I did. And she's on the phone in a very serious-looking conversation. And she points to her computer and says listen that's right press play and i see an access hollywood bus and i hear voices but i can barely hear them so i'm smashing my ear up to the computer and then i hear donald trump's voice i mean i know this voice like i know my own voice at that point in your head sadly oh my god yeah it still is and not sadly that was your word not mine um and

it it was what we all ended up hearing uh yeah i tried to f her but she was married i moved on her like a bitch you can grab him by the p it was it's it's hard. It's so weird now he's president and we reference that moment. Like, oh yeah, then that was some crazy thing that happened. Yeah. It's just beyond bizarre that the president of the United States said that and he's the president of the United States. It's beyond bizarre that I tried to have a conversation with you while this was happening. While this was going on. I was writing an email to Hope Hicks and Jason Miller

because I had to get a response from the campaign. How do you get a response on that? How do you phrase it? We have this tape. Donald Trump says, I moved on her like a bee. I did try to F her, but she was married. And I like to, or I can grab women by the pee because I'm a star.

I mean, that's a weird email to get when you're communications director for a presidential campaign. Let me follow up on that. I will. I'll get back to you on that. Did you think at that moment that this was it for him? I did.

You did. Of course I did. Everybody did. I mean, he said a lot of things. But that was a... Bragging about sexual assault. That was a big, big, big, big, big, big, big thing. And everybody saw it as such.

The campaign went totally dark. Kellyanne Conway, who you know loves the television, was not on TV. She canceled her appearances. The Trump Tower was silent. The senior staff was missing. People were not at Trump Tower. And Republicans en masse were defecting. Fifty Republican lawmakers, former and current Republican lawmakers,

either said they weren't going to vote for him or called on him to drop out of the race. People said they couldn't look their kids in the eye and vote for him. One of the people who called on him to drop out or told him to drop out, Reince Priebus, who became his chief of staff. Normal. So you have written this outstanding book called Unbelievable about your crazy times covering this campaign. You write early on in the book that you called Trump winning. What made you think he would win? Everything that I saw in front of my face. Yeah. I mean, you guys saw this. President Obama saw this when he was running these massive devoted crowds early on.

Right. But for a Republican candidate, this was unheard of. He got 20,000 people to go to a rally in Mobile, Alabama, six months before a primary in August of 2015. That is ridiculous. Nobody had ever seen anything like this. And it was just a few weeks after he went after John McCain, an American war hero, a vet, a POW, and trashed him.

And this is a guy who has no military service, had five deferments for like a bone spur in his heel. And I got a call from the RNC right after that saying, he'll never make it. Americans will never tolerate this. It's disgusting because, you know, a lot of these guys either served in the military themselves or, you know, grew up in military families

or military communities or political communities or political families. And this is just, you know, it's taboo. You don't do it. I promise you they won't stand for that. Two weeks later, he's got 20,000 people cheering for him. You talked to a lot of these voters, right? Or you talked to some of these voters? A lot of them. What made them so angry? Because it seems like it's a little bit more than I'm annoyed with the direction of the country. If you're going to a Trump rally and, you know, wearing, you write about the Hillary sucks, but not like Monica t-shirts or the little old ladies who are screaming at you that you're a liar, the reporter or the some of the racist things that are being said.

What was your sense of what was making these people? You can't point to any one thing and say, this is what it was. It was a convergence of a lot of things. And I would be lying to you if I said I knew exactly why he got elected or exactly why people thought he was the right person. I don't think anybody does. There's a lot of think pieces out there about it. And there will be a lot of think pieces to come. But it was a perfect storm of a lot of things. People did feel frustrated. They did feel like they voted for, you have people who would have voted for Obama again, voting for Donald Trump. Right. To me, that's the most confusing set of voters. It's wild. People

who voted for Obama twice, but then decided that they would vote for Donald Trump. They saw, they wanted hope and change, and certainly some people got hope and change, but others didn't. Others got the status quo. And there was a distaste for Hillary Clinton among a lot of Americans. There was a feeling that she was part of the system and that she was really out corrupt and only looking out for her own special interests, her back pocket, rather than the interests of the American public. Obviously, she had a long career in political service, and that helped her and that haunted her. Donald Trump didn't have that. And you could argue that Donald Trump was much more interested in his own bottom line and his own personal brand than Hillary Clinton was. But Donald Trump was also somebody that people didn't feel had wronged them in any way or lied to them in any way. And there was a feeling about that with Hillary Clinton, wrongly or rightly.

That was just the sense. Do you get a sense that he activated the anger in a lot of these folks? He did. Or that maybe right-wing media had? I mean, you talk about this too, like some of these folks outside the rally are these like, you know, Americans who just go about their business and they don't scream at each other in the streets or say bad things. And then they go into this rally and there's this atmosphere where suddenly this is permissible. It's a mob mentality to a degree.

And it's also they felt like they were part of an act, part of a show. Donald Trump came to town. You're going to go see a movie that night. You're going to go see a concert that night. You're going to go see the stand-up comedian that happens to be in town that night or whatever it might be going on on a Friday night. Donald Trump was the hot ticket. And you walk into the room and you knew that there was going, he was going to play his greatest hits. He's going to talk about the wall

and you say, build the wall. Who's going to pay for it? Mexico is going to pay for it. Hillary Clinton, lock her up. There were these call and response moments where you knew when to say what you needed to say. And he would go after the media and then everyone turned and pointed at the media and booed. It was part of the act, part of the show. And you could just take off your mask or take down all of your guards and just scream, get it out, let your frustration out. It's okay here. Donald Trump says whatever he wants, gets away with it, doesn't apologize, doesn't back down. I'm going to take this moment to do it myself. What was it like being one of the reporters who he singled out and also that these crowds would yell at? I mean, you had security. That is extremely unusual for reporters

to be running around. You didn't have political reporters with armed guards? Our embeds did not have armed guards during the 08 campaign, nor did John McCain's, nor did anyone in 2012. What was that like? It was weird. Yeah. I mean, it was scary,

but you don't think about it. I mean, moments were scary. Some moments were scarier than others. You try to put it out of your head. You watch your back. But mostly, it was just weird. It was weird going from town to town. Wherever Donald Trump went at a certain point, the riot police would also go. Why do you think his critique or his attacks on the press

resonated with a lot of these people? Well, right-wing media in general played a big part in that, just seeding that idea that the media is out to get you, seeding this idea that they're all a bunch of liberals. I mean, Donald Trump called, what, Lester Holt a Democrat? He's a registered Republican. I mean, but it doesn't matter. He could be a registered Republican, but people will think, no, but no, he works in the media.

He's got to be a Democrat. So right-wing media for years has been adding to this. Democrats also went after the media too and said that we were complicit in spreading damaging headlines about whomever. And also, we tend to live in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, not in the middle of the country. We tend to not do stories about hardships people are facing in their day-to-day lives in favor of other more attention-grabbing headlines. Not all the time, but there is this perception, and there's evidence to bolster that. And there's an argument to be made that we just kind of lost touch with the average American. So it was easy to demonize us.

Yeah. What do you think that reporters should do about this? Because it seems like you're sort of caught in this catch 22 where when the president now he continues to attack reporters as president states and so does his White House. If you call this out as a reporter, you make it about, you make the story about the press versus Trump. And some people say, well, if reporters do that, then they're making it about themselves. And that just riles up his supporters even more. But if you don't say anything about it, you know, you could be headed for a scary situation where there's threats, or at least that he's, forget about the physical threats or the people at the rallies, just clamping down on free speech, freedom of the press, you know, from the White House?

It's a difficult question, and I don't have a perfect answer for you. No one does. Yeah. You have to, I bristle at making it too much about ourselves. Coming from a person who just wrote a book about it. No, but I do. And day to day when he has tweets going after the media, I think, I personally like to avoid it when I can. I like to avoid that argument about what this means

for the state of the media, just because I think if we do talk about ourselves too much, people stop caring, they're not listening, does it matter to them? I think the way that you, we have to just build back trust and we have to continue to do our job in an honest way and fairly, but also not backing down, not trying to color something more favorably just because we're being intimidated to do it. And then build relationships back, get back into the middle of the country, do more stories, get to know people. The book, yeah, it's about me, but it's also a good insight into the day-to-day life of a reporter. And I think people don't really understand what we do. And if you get to know a reporter, I think you have a tendency to trust them more.

And finally, we should teach journalism in schools. Yeah. I think you're right about, I mean, I was a campaign staffer. I was in the White House and had plenty of fights with reporters. Of course. But when you get to know reporters and you, I mean, because a lot of people complain, oh, D.C. is this clubby place and the reporters and the staffers and they all have drinks. But it's just about if you get to know someone and you're the reporter, that doesn't mean I'm not going to stop fighting with them

or I'm not going to, like, complain when there's a story I don't like. But it just, it doesn't go I'm not going to stop fighting with them or I'm not going to like complain when there's a story I don't like. But it just it doesn't go to that level. You know, there was somebody in that is no longer in the White House that I had a conversation with before before Donald Trump assumed office. And we had talked off the record and I said something to the effect of, you know, you know, from here on out, it's not personal. And and that person said the same thing back to me. And it was a difficult relationship for a little while there. They're not in the White House any longer. And now I'm getting, now we're starting to talk on a human level again. That's good. But that is, that's important. I mean, it's important to say,

I may think you are a lovely, decent human being, but that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with what you're doing. I'm going to give you a pass for what you're doing in the White House. I'm not going to give you a pass for telling us something that is not true. I'm not going to give you a pass for talking, reversing yourself on a policy position. I'm not going to give you a pass for saying something inflammatory. That's not my job. My job is to present the facts, put them in context and to allow the viewer, the voter to take that and make an informed decision themselves. You know, it seems like a lot of the self-reflection among the media has to do with the failure to predict what happened. Or as you said, how do we miss the big story? How did we – we weren't talking to people in the middle of the country. It seems like there's been less self-reflection about something you also mentioned, which is did the media coverage do a good job of conveying the stakes in terms of policy? the media coverage do a good job of conveying the stakes in terms of policy.

And, you know, Harvard did this study on the media right after the election, and it said, you know, the coverage of both candidates was overwhelmingly negative and also very, very late on policy. Yeah, it's true. How do you fix that? I mean, it seems too like that's a particular issue with television coverage. It's hard with TV coverage. We have a minute 30, minute 45 to present what happened. Is it the format? The format makes it very difficult. You can do it more on cable news than you can do on

the network broadcasts. But this was across all forms of media. It wasn't just TV. But part of the issue was that Donald Trump didn't have any policy. There was no policy to speak of because he had very little of it. And the campaign wasn't talking about policy. When they did try to talk about policy, the candidate himself stepped on it with some saying some inflammatory or outrageous thing. speeches or terrorism speeches that he himself would just completely undercut by, I don't know, calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas or saying that Hillary Clinton was schlonged by Obama or saying that Ted Cruz's father may have had something to do with the assassination of JFK. I bet you forgot about that one. Well, since Ted Cruz was back in the news recently, I remembered it again.

Just someone on his staff liking porn. I woke up. That's the day that my book was released, and I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 4 a.m., and I saw a tweet from somebody in the media. I think it was Niall Stanage saying, I just read this line in Katie's book, the what if, and now I feel it with Ted Cruz and porn. I was like, did I write Ted Cruz and porn? Are they talking about Ted Cruz and porn in my book? What the heck is this? It took me a few

minutes to figure out what was going on on Twitter. Well, it is. I mean, it's tricky because I actually think that the media did a very good job of covering Trump. That study that I mentioned, of covering Trump. Thank you. That study that I mentioned, well, actually, Trump's issues and Trump's policy got coverage, but they got coverage because there's this asymmetry in the media

where Breitbart and Fox were pushing his immigration policy. They were talking about the wall. They were talking about the Muslim ban. So people knew where he stood on these issues because the right-wing media was pushing this for him. I think where it was tough was on Hillary's coverage.

Right. Like all of her coverage was about emails. Yeah. And when we spoke to her on Monday and, you know, the criticism she gets is we didn't have an economic message. And she'll say, well, I did this whole bus tour. I talked about the economy every day. I talked about jobs every day. And then I said, well, I did this whole bus tour. I talked about the economy every day. I talked about jobs every day. And then I said, well, it didn't break through.

And I wonder how candidates of either party in the future and future campaigns can actually break through television coverage with policy ideas in the midst of this circus. I mean, we were just talking about Ted Cruz and porn. Yeah. No, you know what? I think that's a really difficult question. It's part of our culture now. We are so attuned to the entertainment of something. Twitter is very much like that. These 140 character hot takes, people will see the headline to a story, and you'll retweet it, but will you go back and read that entire story? It's very easy to take something out of context and to maybe assume either the best for it or the worst for it. And that's a problem we have to, we have to figure out how to tackle. I don't know

yet. I, you know, with the, with the emails and with how to maybe go after somebody or not go after, but run against someone like Donald Trump. It's difficult, especially when you consider that he would bury one controversy with another controversy. It was a struggle. I mean, the famous quote, the Orwell quote, it's a struggle. It's a constant struggle to see what's in front of your nose. With Donald Trump, it was also a constant struggle to remember, recall what was in the back of your mind. You had a tendency to forget everything because there was a deluge of absurd headlines and you couldn't just focus on one because the next one came along. And how long do you spend on him calling Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails?

Okay, we've done a few days on that. But then the next thing breaks. And you feel like you can't not talk about him going after Khazir Khan. He's going after a gold star family, a father who lost his son and saying the mother didn't speak because that's their culture. Their women aren't allowed to speak. So you have to do that. You have to cover that. But then there was this Russia thing.

And then, oh, my God, he's going after Judge Curiel. He's going after a federal judge and saying that he's biased because he's Mexican. God, we have to cover that. So it was hard. I think in addition to all these other challenges, the American public faces a challenge of attention span and memory. I mean, if the election had been held a week after the Access Hollywood tape, I don't think he would have won. I think once you get to then by the time Comey sends his letter and then recancel it, now we're like three weeks out from Access Hollywood and it feels like it might have been last year. Maybe.

There are people out there who think that maybe it was bad for Comey. Comey should have just laid low and not even brought it up again. Not even said that they closed the investigation again a couple days before the election because it reinserted the email storyline into the voters' minds two days before the election. I have a beef with NBC about this, because I can remember seeing the last package the night before the election, once the letter, once he said there was nothing there, and the headline was like, Hillary Clinton and her emails.

The truth was it was exonerating her, but it was still in the headlines, which is just, you know, it's a challenge that she faced. You know, Hillary Clinton was, and this is my poor analogy, but I like it regardless. Hillary Clinton has a stain on her shirt. Emails, her emails are the stain on her shirt. And she tries to get it out and she can't get it out. And people are just focusing on the stain on her shirt.

They can't, they can't get past it. That's all they can see is the stain on her shirt because it's the only thing that's out of place on her shirt. Donald Trump got a stain on his shirt and then kept staining his shirt over and over and over again to the point where you couldn't tell where the first stain was. You couldn't tell if it was a stained shirt, if it was just supposed to be that way. And that's what made him so hard to cover. But it's also what made him so difficult to run against, not just for the Democrats, because they can't pick just one thing, but for the Republicans as well. Do you go after him because you think he's a xenopho well, do you go after him because you think he's a xenophobe?

Do you go after him because you think he's a racist? Do you go after him because you think he's a sexist or because he's a sexual predator? Do you go after him because you think he doesn't know a single thing about policy? Do you go after him because he's not as rich as he says he is? He's not releasing his taxes. He's not as intelligent as he claims to be. Whatever it is, I mean, you could make an argument for any one of those things if you were running against him. But if you have all of those different storylines, who's to say that any one thing will resonate in

the voter's mind? Right. So everyone now is trying to figure out what Donald Trump's strategy is in trying to make a deal with Schumer and Pelosi. And, you know, there's like, is he playing chess or all this? My view is he is driven by impulse and, you know, the need for a good headline. But you know him, you've interviewed him. What drives him? I don't think he's playing three-dimensional chess. Chuck says he's playing a really good game of checkers, I guess. Maybe tic-tac-toe. Chuck Todd, that is. And he is motivated by gut.

He believes what he believes in the moment that he believes it. He wants to, quote, unquote, make a deal. I don't know if he cares what's in that deal. He just wants something to sign. That's why you saw him celebrate with the House Republicans. Because, hey, something got passed in the House. It'll surely get through the Senate now in terms of health care. He didn't know what was in that bill. Later on, he called it mean. It doesn't make any sense. But also, Donald, you have to remember, do a bit of a psychoanalysis into Donald Trump. I am not a licensed psychotherapist, I should say. But I do know

a little bit about how he came up in the world. He's a guy that was born in Queens. He was told, you can never cross over the river into Manhattan and be a success. Just stay in Queens. But he did it anyways. And he built up a company and a brand for himself and a name for himself a lot through just him talking about how wonderful he was and bragging about himself. But he never truly felt accepted by the New York society crowd. He never really felt like he was one of them. So part of it is this feeling of resentment towards everybody else, this need to be accepted. Maggie Haberman talks about that being one of the reasons why he talks to her so

much, because she is the New York Times. She comes from this prominent New York family. Getting the acceptance, the blessing of the Times that you are a serious person, just by virtue of them covering you. Chuck and Nancy, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, you couldn't make an argument that that is an extension of it. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, you couldn't make an argument that that is an extension of it. Chuck Schumer is the senator from New York. Don't discount that. That means a lot to somebody who grew up his entire life, lived his entire life in New York. Yeah, and now he gets to turn on Morning Joe and see them being nice to him, which I'm sure that means a lot. I'm sure it does, but I think he's also somebody who revels in a good fight.

That's true, too. That's true, too. Do you miss being on the trail, and would you do this again? I do miss being on the trail. Is that weird? I do miss being on the trail. No, I'm the same way, you know? I know.

I would cover it. I definitely would cover a campaign again. I'm not sure if it would be Donald Trump because we have a crack White House team now, and they obviously get first dibs on that. They're doing a great job. But I do, it would be interesting to see how a quote unquote normal campaign works. I miss talking to people. I do, I really miss, you asked me when I walked in, are you getting bored doing your show? And I kind of laughed, and I'm not getting bored. I just, I do miss being outside all the time and getting to know regular Americans and also eating the great food we have around the country.

I miss the campaign food. I miss South Carolina. Oh, yeah. Good barbecue. Katie, thank you for joining us. I'm crashing. Okay, love it. John Lovett's here.

John's mad at me. Of course. Oh, I'm mad at you, but I was going to crash. Katie, thank you so much for joining us. I'm glad that the Access Hollywood tape didn't interrupt our interview this time. That's my favorite story. So funny.

Weird year, guys. Lovett stood up and said that at our team building exercise. It's just been a weird year. Weird year, guys. It's been a weird year. And then he starts shooting shots of whiskey. You know him.

The book is unbelievable. And good luck with it. Unbelievable. I'm excited. Go read it. I just crashed this thing. I pretended to have a question. I'm just. Everyone should go read it. I just crashed this thing. I pretended to have a question. I'm just a huge Katie Turf fan.

I am. That's why we wanted you on. My Johns. My two Johns. All right. Thank you for coming by. Thanks for having me. Joining us today, the host of With Friends Like These, Anna-Marie Cox.

How are you today? Hello, gentlemen. I am, in Trump-adjusted terms, still above average. All right. So, best I can hope for these days. Who do you have on the show this week? I have Tim Faust, who is a healthcare guy, kind of wonky person that some people might recognize his name from another podcast. I don't know what the overlap between Shoppo and Pod Save America is, but there's now officially one guest that lives in both universes, and that's Tim Faust. No, that's wrong.

Aaron Ryan. Yeah, Aaron is our other overlap. Slowly but surely, we're overlapping. Yes, that's Tim Faust. No, that's wrong. Aaron Ryan. Yeah. Aaron is our other overlap. Slowly but surely we're overlapping. Yes, that's right. We're, you know what, we're putting an end to dominance politics. That's what we're doing. And he's on to talk about just a really deep dive, both into Cassidy Graham and Bernie's bill and talking about something that he's the first person I ever heard talk about health justice as opposed to health care. And we talk about that. Excellent. Totally fascinating. It's not long at all, and it's just riveting.

You know what? Look at that. It's getting better, but we still have some work to do. I thought that was excellent. I'm going to tune in. So we just spoke the whole episode about how awful and unpopular Graham Cassidy is. We did a little update on Russia, sort of the walls closing in on the Trump team. And yet, recent polls this week, Politico Morning Consult has Trump's approval at 43 versus 39 a couple weeks ago. Gallup has him at 38 versus 35 a couple weeks ago gallup has him at 38 versus 35 a couple weeks ago and real clear politics average has him at 39.9 versus 37.4 now as i say all this out loud it sounds sort of you

realize how tiny those numbers are it's tiny and those numbers are really shitty for a first term president in his eighth month. We never had those numbers. We never had those numbers. No, we did not. And I also went back and I just looked up the margin of error for all of those polls where they had them. Morning Consult actually, a couple things about Morning Consult, which is the most positive

poll he has right now. It's an online poll, number one. And number two, they don't give their methodology, really. So it's kind of hard to judge. But for the other polls from those reputable polling agencies, they have margins of error between 2.8 and 3.1, which means that all of those upticks are within the margin of error. Like, it's not even, it is totally, the fact that he's supposedly more popular is a complete invention of people that want to have something interesting happen that doesn't have to do with nuclear war, I guess. Like, I think there's plenty interesting happening, but, you know, that's a narrative.

I will give the counter, only because we were all so thoroughly wrong about polls in the year 2016. And I do think there's something to be said for like slight trends the one explanation i have is not the oh he was a he was great in his response to the hurricanes and he struck a deal with chuck and nancy which you know nbc had a poll today that said 71 of people support the deal he struck with schumer and pelosi which didn't really surprise me if they called me i would say yeah i support that deal too though with Schumer and Pelosi, which didn't really surprise me. If they called me, I would say, yeah, I support that deal too. Though, by the way, a little concerned that maybe that deal is what now left open the room for them to pass Graham-Cassidy. We should do debt ceiling.

We screwed up what's happening. We were so happy. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, no, they had two weeks of nothing to do. So they decided to take away health care from 30 million people i will say in defense of uh schumer and pelosi not one person including all of us here at crooked media registered that objection when the deal happened except for tofer spiro who's been treated by health care and i remember seeing his reaction when the deal struck and he was like why did they clear the decks for health care like that no one else said no one nobody just i think nobody thought trump would take it no one thought

it was a lot i mean at the point republicans at that point were saying we don't have the votes we're not even close to the votes we're not going to do this and it's also it's not like schumer and pelosi didn't go into that room thinking we're going to get a deal in this room it was like a crazy thing like trump just said okay that's also true yeah over over egg rolls right um i also think that you know the other thing to say about these polls supposedly showing an uptick is that what they're a week old not even like that doesn't mean anything you guys know this and he's obviously as soon as he is gets to a place where he's at all like not a raving pathological lunatic he always shoots himself in the foot right so that yeah next week this might be different i mean this this health

care bill is once people find out about it i mean the problem is that you know it was kind of like a it happened so fast and we thought we were done with this so people weren't paying attention but now everyone is starting to pay attention and trump is saying bullshit about it and i think that you know he might start to suffer again and also he's going to tweet stupid shit too like that's also going to happen sometime in the next hour i think that's right is that it's the the further away he is from the center of the media universe the probably the better it is for him in a way because and he wasn't it's not that he did good things over the last couple weeks is that he was he sort of

receded from the spotlight not too much because all of us still live breathe trump every fucking day but just a little bit like he's been a little less in our faces you know the tweets are still crazy he's still doing crazy shit but it hasn't sort of punctured i mean there's been a lot of hurricane coverage on cnn right um in places like that the apocalypse is happening and so we've forgotten about the you know the demon right that's in our backyard and also because he's a giant toddler john kelly restricting his access to his fucking ipad has changed his behavior too i wonder if he has like one of those like games for cats on it like i have like you can just sort of put it on and it shows pretty colors like on the ipad and he bats at it like the cats do dan what do you think i think i think his version of that just

shows pictures of himself right yeah totally totally dan you're you're a polling guy what do you what's your thought on the whole thing? I've been on the polar coaster once or twice. Yeah. I think if you look, there's two things. I think you're exactly right that Trump receding from the center of the discussion, or at least there's X amount of energy and interest in any one time. And it has been almost entirely on Trump in all things for nine months. And because of for very good reasons, because of the hurricanes, the earthquake in Mexico and everything else, it's been pulled away from him. So that's one. And that was true for

Obama. Obama's numbers went up when he receded a little bit into the background during the Republican primary in 2012. And then during then certainly during the 2016 election. That was very good for him, because you're just not at the center. If people are yelling about you all the time, it makes you less appealing. And if people aren't yelling as much, then it does that. The second is, Trump's numbers are actually pretty steady. And this is probably close. And this was true of Obama, too.

If you look at the numbers, you can sort of draw a straight after the initial honeymoon comes to an end. It's pretty close. It's just is either up three or four points or down three or four points from a median. And where we are right now, give or take a point is probably what Trump's natural polling state is. And when he sides with white supremacists and everyone screams about it for weeks, he'll drop a little bit. And when people scream less, it'll go up a little bit. But we sort of know where he is, right? And it's a very low ceiling and a moderately high floor. Yeah, he's living between 35 and 45. 45 is actually a little high. He's living between like 35 and 42, 43-ish. Yeah, that's right.

These numbers are historically bad. Yeah, no. I mean, when Obama was living in like the 45 to 50 range, which he did for quite a while. He got very comfortable there. We thought it was horrible. We thought that was really bad, you know? In August of 2011, the gallup poll dropped below 40 for two days and i almost jumped out the window until i was staying in

that was that was debt ceiling time right that was the worst yeah it was right after the debt it was it was a week where debt ceiling was over, the market went into the toilet, and then we lost our AAA credit rating. And just largely out of statistical fluctuation, and August was always Obama's worst polling period because the world would implode. And just because people answer their phones less in August, we dipped below 40, and I thought that was over. All right. I think it's time for the outro, guys. It's happening now. Oh, boy it's time for the outro guys it's happening now oh boy i'm announcing the outro music and so we can take five minutes to do it is that the reason people

were very excited people love the outro last time around look you know the love it the dance story about the guy that knew love it and gave him fries all the time was that's not that's not what happened fake news listen bill listen billidy, no one believes you. You're not passing the Kimmel test with that bullshit. What's the more likely scenario? Love it, back in those days, ordered someone to give him French fries or ordered someone not to give him French fries? That actually could go either way when you put it that way.

Good framing, Dan. You should do a message for the Democratic Party. He probably did both, I'm guessing. He probably, in the space of one afternoon, both ordered people to get him fries and to not give him fries. I gained roughly two pounds per episode of 1600 Penn. Fortunately, there weren't that many. Is that 16 pounds?

Is that what it is? No, I guess that would be 26 pounds. 26 pounds, but we did do a finale. How could you tell, John? By the end of the season, I was wearing different pants. At that rate, could you imagine how heavy the creator of Grey's Anatomy would be? Right, right. If anybody lived by this rule, every TV showrunner would be? Right, right. If anyone else lived by if anybody lived by this rule

like every TV showrunner should be 400 to 500 pounds. Okay. Go download With Friends Like These it drops Friday. Love it or leave it it's Friday night

we'll drop Saturday. It's going to be a great one. Yeah. It's going to be great. And we'll all see you next week. The four of us on the phone we'll see you in Ann Arbor in a couple weeks.

Yeah. It's happening. That's right. We'll be there. Alright. Bye guys. Bye guys. Bye.