Pod Save America - “Barack to the future.”

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

Obama returns to the campaign trail, Kavanaugh lies to the Judiciary Committee, and Democrats see their chances of taking back the Senate improve. Then musician Jason Isbell talks to Tommy about music, politics, and when artists become activists.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. Shana Tova. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in today's pod, you'll hear Tommy's interview with musician Jason Isbell. Tommy, tell us about that. How did that come about? Well, it was my birthday. He was playing at the Greek. No, I'm just kidding. He's a really awesome artist who is from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, lives in Nashville, is sort of in the country scene, but has these super progressive views on politics.

He was attacked recently by the NRSC because he did an event for Phil Bredesen. And it just has really interesting thoughts on the Trump administration, the state of politics, and the world as it is. Great. We had a great conversation.

Really cool. I was at the Greek Theater behind the stage. We were there too later for the concert. Yeah. Tommy's birthday. Thanks for coming. We were. Thanks for having us. stage. We were there too later for the concert. Yeah. Tommy's birthday. Thanks for coming. We were. Thanks for having us.

Okay. We're also going to talk today about Barack Obama's return to politics, the next phase in the fight to keep Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court, and the race for control of the Senate. Some encouraging signs for Democrats, hopefully. But who knows? Okay. How was Love It or Leave It?

We had a great Love It or Leave It. Did you? One of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite panels, Cara Brown, Josh Barrow, Emily Oshita. It was such a great show. And on Thursday night at the El Rey, after the Ponce of America show, we added a Love It or Leave It show, and there are still some tickets left for that, which you can get right now.

Come for the politics day for the discussion about uh dipping your chicken fingers and diet coke yeah yeah you won't know what i you'll be surprised tough shot at uh wine pairings which also happened to be the uh the gift yeah john and emily and hannah and i gave you for your birthday i enjoyed the wine with the food tremendously i just never understand we're like this goes with a barolo check That's Czech. You called it bullshit. That's why we also sent you a Diet Coke. Which I loved. What's going on with Pod Save the World this week?

Have you guys heard of Ben Rudds? I heard he just moved to Los Angeles. He just moved to Los Angeles. So he's going to be in the studio tomorrow. We're going to go through all the things that are happening in the news on foreign policy. Apparently, we're planning coups with Venezuela. All kinds of bad stuff's going down in Afghanistan. It will be a grab bag of things that are in the news. I'm just glad that we've moved the deep state headquarters to L.A.

West Coast echo chamber. The blob has a tan. He's the echo chamber fighting the blob. Yeah, right, right, right. Cool, cool, cool. Season two, they'll switch sides. A new wilderness episode dropped Monday. It's called The Bench.

It's about how Democrats can recruit and run a new generation of winning candidates. You'll also get to hear from three recently elected Democrats who were part of that new generation, Danica Rome and Jennifer Carol Foy, who won their races for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, and Seth Moulton, an Iraq war veteran who came home and ran for Congress in Massachusetts, also a friend of the pod. So check it out. All right, let's get to the of the pod. So check it out. All right, let's get to the news, guys.

Barack Obama is back. Says who? Our old boss delivered a major speech on Friday in Illinois and hit the campaign trail here in California over the weekend. We hated it. Spoiler. We'll get right to the point. We hated it. In both appearances, he finally broke his silence about his successor,

saying that Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause of our current political crisis, which he blamed on a Republican party that has trafficked in division, resentment, and paranoia. Doesn't sound like the Republicans we know. He also made clear that the biggest threat to our democracy is indifference and delivered an impassioned plea for everyone to vote, especially all you young people. Let's start with the message of the speech, particularly his critique of Trump and the Republicans. Tommy, what did you think about his analysis of our current situation? And were you surprised that he didn't pull any punches?

Yeah, it was a strong speech. It was a full-throated indictment of Trump's and his worst actions. They didn't pull punches on, say, Charlottesville and his response to Nazis parading through the streets. I mean, he hit him on all the things that we all wanted to hear Barack Obama criticize him on. I think that there's value in that message. I think there's some nice level setting to hear from him how far we've drifted and also to see what a normal president looks like. So I imagine this will inspire and motivate Democrats and volunteers on the trail. It also reminded me, though, how hard it is to counter program Trump, because it was an hour long speech with a lot of nuance and context, which

yeah, I mean, he told the whole story. And it's hard to do that and then be intellectually honest when Trump is going to go out there and say, you know, the economy is actually perfect and North Korea is fixed and I'm going to protect you from crime and only I can save everything. And there we go. So, you know, I think ultimately you're speaking to two totally different audiences, but I think having him out on the trail will fire people up and get Democrats to the polls or at least to volunteer and do more. Yeah. Love it. Obama said of Republican politics, it's not conservative. It sure isn't normal. It's radical. It's a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters, even when it hurts the country. What did you think of that critique? I for the most part. So I really like the speech. I really liked it in part because one thing he does in this speech, which is identify himself with Democrats as opposed think is good about it is it really lays out a very

sophisticated, I think, ultimately hopeful argument while still having the critique of Trump in there. It is just valuable for Democrats who will be campaigning to have this as an example of how to sound because, you know, he Barack Obama continues to be the most popular Because, you know, Barack Obama continues to be the most popular and unifying leader of the Democratic Party. My problem is with saying this is not conservative. I think there's two ways to go at that. There's one. Is it true? And is it valuable? Is it true? No, it is not idea that there is some nascent form of conservatism that's just about to be in charge right we're just waiting for the for the three reasonable sounding op-eds in natural national review to come become sentient and run for congress once john huntsman moves back to the united states yeah i see i see i sort of saw it as small c conservative from a long time ago you know like I think, and he always used to do this during his presidency too.

Like you talk about conservative, conservative is caring about the rule of law. It's caring about our institutions. You know, it's all this kind of stuff. And I think he would probably say that the Republican Party hasn't been small C traditionally conservative in quite a long time. Of course, or ever ever right well at least at least a modern in the modern era so that gets to the next point is it a valuable thing to say i

think that's debatable one of the things i was thinking about while watching him say that is well who is that for and i do think there is value to having it be part of what we say to people who might be independents might not be voters to say wait a second this isn't about democrat or republican what's going on is crazy. Even if you consider yourself conservative, even if you don't consider yourself a Democrat, you should come along with us. I think there's real value in that. But there is a it's a short term proposition when what we also need to do is make sure people understand that what's happened to conservatism has its roots in conservatism. And we need to stamp that out.

And we need to say, this is what republicanism has become. This is what conservatism has become. I think in large part, this is semantics, because ultimately, I agree that that's the larger case. I was impressed and relieved that he sort of laid the blame for Trumpism at the feet of the Republican Party. Because I was like, we've had this debate around John McCain's funeral, right? And it's sort of been a debate about Trump that stretched back to 2016. Because at times it seemed like in 2016, the Clinton campaign and Obama

were saying that Trump is some sort of aberration from the Republican Party because they were trying to get Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton. Right. And it's this idea that, like, this isn't the Republican Party we know. You know, Donald Trump is different. And clearly it is the Republican Party. And we saw, like, Donald Trump is here because the Republican Party became sort of rotten to its core, which is something that probably started way back in, you know,

when Gingrich took over Congress in the early 90s, maybe even as far back as the 80s. Right. But we really and then in Barack Obama's presidency, we saw this all the time. So the fact that he at least went right at the Republican Party as the problem was, I thought, good. Yeah, I agree with that, too. I think it gets at. Yes. And I think a lot of this is about how how honest should you be to make the best case. So one thing he says throughout the speech is common ground exists. It's actually a really lovely part of the speech where he says common ground exists between people. I know that there are Republicans in the world who care about this. I know that there's compassion, that there are

places where we can find common ground, even if it doesn't seem like it. And that is true. But of course, the logical conclusion is there is common ground in the country, doesn't seem like it. And that is true. But of course, the logical conclusion is there is common ground in the country, but not in Washington. Why not? Well, because of a massive propaganda effort, a sense that these people are above democratic approach because of gerrymandering and vote suppression and the power of the Koch brothers network. And if you really do believe in a country that that where people can find common ground together there's only one thing we can do which is stamp out this form of republicanism defeat it completely and govern without them until they learn that there's a price to be paid for the

kind of politics they've practiced of course that's not particularly uplifting right yeah i mean he's like two challenges for president obama he's always going to defend institutions and government and sort of like try to rally people towards to strive to create a better kind of government that actually works and delivers for people. He's also always going to be intellectually honest or at least far more so than President Trump and say things like better is good. And that's not a big rallying cry, especially when compared to I alone can fix it and like all the shit that Trump says. So it's a it's a it's a tougher it's a bigger challenge for us. Like we are trying to practice a better type of politics to beat a demagogue and a monster. And that's tough.

And look, we're we're talking about this. It's not really an abstract either. You know, Obama is a former president. But like this is sort of the test that Beto O'Rourke is betting on in Texas. Right. I mean, he goes into all these counties that have never seen a candidate, a lot of Republicans, a lot of independents who maybe consider themselves conservative, evangelical, stuff like that. And he's trying to reach out to them, not with a middle-of-the-road centrist message, but a progressive message and seeing if he really can do that. I mean, look, the sad fact is 87, 85% of Republicans support Donald

Trump. So in a way it is the Republican party. This is, this is what they believe. But we also know that, you know, less people are Republicans now that probably makes up 30% of the country. And so there's a lot of people who have left the Republican party who consider themselves independents and a small, tiny percentage of the Republican party who is not, you know, doesn't favor Donald Trump, you know, that we could possibly reach in some situation. Look, it is a it is a fundamental problem. It's a problem we've been grappling with as Democrats. It's a it's a it's a basic, almost mathematical problem. What do you do when one side totally abhors compromise and believes in power at all costs because you can. Do you play the same game that they play or do you find a way to uphold your values while still finding a way to win?

I think it's really hard. I think that there is a contradiction inside of it, which is in order to prove to these people that their scorched earth tactics are fruitless. In order to prove to these people that their scorched earth tactics are fruitless ultimately, we need to stop treating them like reasonable people we can work with. Because they're not, we need to defeat them. And obviously, that's a tough thing to discuss. There's nuance required there. I think he did the best job he's ever done as a candidate, as president, as an ex-president in describing the current menace of what's

going on inside the Republican Party. And I think that is very good. Yeah. Let's talk about the reaction from Trump and other Republicans. Trump said last week that he fell asleep during Obama's speech, but he has spent the past several days showing that he was particularly sensitive to Obama's assertion that Trump doesn't deserve credit for the current economy. He was whining about this all weekend long.

Can you just before I do want to quote him because it's so stupid. He goes, it was very good for sleeping, which is just literally the insult, the triumph formulation. It's that structure. He might as well have said for me to poop on. But it is so funny because like he could have he could have stayed with that as his line, right? Like it was boring. I didn't pay attention. I fell asleep. But then he just, you know, for four days after, I mean, right before we started recording, he just put out another video of Obama talking about the economy and he's tweeting about it. His tweet Monday is

the economy is so good, perhaps the best in our country's history. Remember, it's the economy, stupid, that the Democrats are flailing and lying like crazy. Phony books, articles and TV hits like no other Paul has had to endure. And they are losing big, very dishonest people. Tommy, what's the truth about who's responsible for the current economic recovery? I mean, just a broader point first. One of the things this White House is really good at is keeping shitty stories about them in the news by constantly referencing them. So I'm so glad Obama came at him on this because it clearly bothered him. And this lie shouldn't go unchallenged. So a couple of facts. In the 19 months since Trump's inauguration, the economy has created 3.58 million new jobs. That is less than the 3.96 million created in the last 19 months of Obama's presidency. So they're imperfect comparisons because Trump hasn't been there for eight years. But, you know, we've hit 4.2 percent in the second quarter of, I think, economic growth. Unemployment is way down, but it's been on trajectory to go down since, you know, the Recovery Act went in place. So like, this has been a long, long run of really great economic news. They'd like to point to the big corporate tax cut for billionaires and say that that somehow is the reason for all of this. It doesn't seem like there's much, if any, evidence that that's the case. They also like to point to like these like soft feelings, like Larry Kudlow

said, Trump has ended the war on business and he's ended the war on success. Like that's the kind of bullshit they have to default to because the numbers literally don't back him up to the point where his top economist today was asked to explain something Trump had tweeted and was like, well, that's just factually inaccurate. I can't defend it. defend it. Yeah. I also think this idea that, you know, the narrative out there is Donald Trump is unbelievably unpopular, like most, you know, unpopular president in decades. And if only he wasn't so crazy and, you know, he was more on messaging, he talked about the economy more, he'd be in better shape because, you know, you point to some polls saying that people think he's better on the economy than a lot of other issues. But I also think, look, when Barack Obama was leaving office and we had all that job growth and we had all that economic growth, all the pundits and the

narrative in Washington was, you know, Barack Obama is saying that the economy is great, but really people aren't feeling the recovery. Well, right now we have wages are barely growing and costs are growing faster than wages. 43% of all households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cell phone. There isn't a county in America where someone earning minimum wage can afford the rent for a two bedroom apartment. Like I don't think that Donald Trump running around saying how wonderful the economy is, that it is the best in the history of the country is necessarily the best message. Yeah, it doesn't. I don't. I think you're right. It's I just don't want I don't want Democrats to be scared away by that, you know?

No, I think it is certainly true that if the if we had the exact same economy and Donald Trump were more disciplined, he would be more popular. But there's also something inherently, I don't know, there's something revealing about the way he brags about the economy in the same way that he sends out Mike Pence to say that Donald Trump is one of the greatest presidents in history. It's interesting just how much the subtext is always, see, see, it's fine that I'm president. It's fine. If it was so bad that I'm president, if I couldn't do the job, how could the economy be doing okay? They don't need to just say he's doing a good job. They need to say he's doing as well as an American president can do because they know fundamentally, not legally, not based on the Russia scandal, but fundamentally as a man, he's illegitimate. As a human being, he's illegitimate in the job. So all of this is kind of wrapped up in that, you know, we talk about it.

It's always it's always true. Presidents are not as responsible for the economy as we want, as we say. Bill Clinton takes credit for tens of millions of jobs. Barack Obama took a took took hits for the fact that the recovery was slow from the worst financial crisis ever. Donald Trump is going around bragging. I mean, it's pretty impressive to create 94 months of job growth in 18 months. Pretty amazing. So it's pretty impressive to create 94 months of job growth in 18 months. Pretty amazing. So it's all bullshit. I think that, I mean, right.

If you look at the reality of the policies he's actually implemented, I mean, he's made fewer people have health care and he's passed a tax cut that is overwhelmingly weighted towards the wealthy. Now, to your point earlier about the messaging, I don't know if it is the wrong message. Because like when we were with Obama, everyone was like, oh, the polling shows that people don't feel that great. Maybe you shouldn't go out there and talk about how great the economy is just to feel their pain. And I don't know if that was the right call all the time or if that held him back. Trump goes out there and he's like, everything's perfect. Economy's great. North Korea doesn't have any nukes anymore. We're all good. We're perfect. And like a subset of the country believes him. To me, it just speaks to the completely partisan

nature of almost all information and news, at least now in the Trump administration, because consumer confidence basically just flipped in terms of the partisan feelings about the economy when we went from Democrat to Republican, even though none of the underlying economic conditions changed. Right. Though it's interesting. There are there's a difference in the numbers when you ask people, do you think President Trump is doing a good job on the economy, in which he's getting probably the best rating of almost any other issues. But in all the polls that came out in the last couple of weeks where he's had really bad approval numbers, when you get to the question, does Donald Trump care about people like you, he's doing really poorly on that now and that i think that number i think it was like 40 think he cares about people like him 55 i think he

doesn't in the in the latest in the quinnipiac poll that is a real warning sign that number for him because he is at risk i think of looking out of touch and again tommy not for his maga base that's watching fox but for like the maybe 10 percent of Republicans who aren't fully on board. His numbers with independents is at like record lows. And a lot of these people, these are like, you know, working class people in the middle of the country, the supposed people that, you know, the Obama Trump voters that went from Obama to Trump. And Donald Trump running around just echoing what the financial press says, which is like record profits, everything's wonderful, GDP growth that's through the roof, stock market's up. And they're sitting there and they're like, I don't feel that in my lives right

now. What's interesting about that Quinnipiac poll is all these numbers are in the 30s, about his temperament, about his honesty, but he's at 41% approval and 41% cares about people like me. Right. It's matching the, and it's interesting. And it's, I'm sorry, it's not, and it's 41% of people say he's fit to be president. So what's interesting is there are people that are asked, they think he's a liar. They think he's unstable, whatever, but they still think he's fit because they still think he cares about people like me. So it is really important number for him. Yeah, for sure. To Tommy's point though, what's interesting is Republicans have now have a built in advantage on these economic

indicators because they are partisan, but they're more partisan for Republicans. So Democrats think the economy is doing better under Democrats. Republicans think the economy is doing better under Republicans. But the but the effect is more pronounced for Republicans. So there's an inherent bias. They have the propaganda machine. For various reasons. But yes, that means that Republican wins, all of a sudden consumer confidence has an automatic bump because people are inherently biased.

Okay, let's talk about what's next in the fight to stop the Kavanaugh nomination. The confirmation hearings are now over. After a week where Democrats picked apart Kavanaugh's views on Roe versus Wade and presidential power, other issues, Democrats also zeroed in on whether Kavanaugh had lied to senators more than a decade ago about receiving hacked documents related to judicial confirmations when working in the Bush White House. Tommy, now that the hearings are over, what new info have we learned about our friend Brett Kavanaugh? We know that he is not nearly as slick and polished as Roberts or Gorsuch were in their hearings. We know that there's a damn good reason the Republicans are covering up and withholding hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that we know about.

And then probably maybe millions more from the period of time where they didn't even request the documents from when he was staff secretary, because there is a chance he hasn't been forthcoming about his record, his positions. He potentially lied under oath. So there are a whole bunch of things we learned that I feel like if this were 1998, we would be talking about what was this nomination in real trouble. Given the partisan makeup of this Senate, that conversation is not happening right now. But it does seem like he might be in some real trouble about not telling the truth. Love it. Did Kavanaugh perjure himself? That's a debate that people have been engaged in.

Love it. I'm prepared for this. I dove deep on this. Five Diet Cokes and a couple Reeds. Let's do this. One Starbucks. All right. So there's this question about whether or not Kavanaugh perjured himself.

There have been a few different issues on which that was a question. One was around what he told Susan Collins about Roe. One was about this prior nomination and whether or not he was involved. I think those are both and more obvious case of willful, obvious lying is around what he did when he was working at the Bush White House. Basically, it's a three part story. Part one, Brett Kavanaugh receives obviously stolen information from a Republican staffer of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is working on judicial nominees for the Bush administration in the White House. He is working with the Republicans in the Judiciary Committee to try to get their right-wing judges confirmed. They get stolen information that tells them what is going on inside the Democratic side of the committee.

There is no question about the provenance of this information. The subject line of the email was spying. The email references, quote, a mole who is referred to as it to avoid gendering the person. The materials are marked not for distribution and Kavanaugh is told that the information should not be shared. OK, that's step one. Step two, this all blows up in the public. OK, because and again, this is according to Lisa Graves, who is chief counsel for the Democrats who documented all of this, whose information was stolen. It was her materials that were part of the stolen cache of information that got to Kavanaugh. So step one, he gets stolen information. Step two, this all blows up in the public.

OK, there's a big investigation. The Senate sergeant at arms, according to reports at the time, seized more than half a dozen computers, including four judiciary servers. The staffer who did the spying had to resign. And Orrin Hatch, who ran the committee, said he was, quote, mortified that this improper, unethical, and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch. That's what Orrin Hatch says about the stolen documents. OK, this is all in the public. Then step three, shortly after all of this happens in the public.

Again, this is from Lisa Graves. You should go read her article on Slate. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received any documents that appear to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh responded unequivocally, no. And that's not the only time he denied his involvement. Again, he is clearly not just unaware, not just forgetful, not just misunderstanding the question. He is lying and he has to be lying because the information was obviously stolen. And it is simply not possible for someone this smart to have forgotten or to not understood why it mattered, especially when there was an investigation in the Senate right before he was asked about it. So I do not see

how you can deny that he willfully lied under oath. I am not a lawyer. You know, I know that there are some lawyers on Vox.com who say, I don't think it's perjury. You got to go ask them what the hell they're talking about. I'm looking at this and all I see is something that is so obvious. And everybody should go read Lisa Graves again, who was at the heart of this. OK, and read what she wrote on Slate, because to me it is such a cogent and important argument. And I think it's something that is core to our argument against Kavanaugh.

This brings up a good point, which is it's like, why isn't this a bigger deal? And I think the you know, Tommy pointed to this partisanship in the Senate is probably the biggest answer. But also it's hard to sort of boil that down into a simple story about like what he lied about. Yeah. I mean, it's a bizarre and terrible fact about the Senate that they have this tacit agreement to make Supreme Court confirmation hearings fucking useless. It's infuriating. Right. Like they all know White House's Republican or Democrat tell their nominees. Literally, Kavanaugh was the guy in charge of telling nominees, don't say anything relevant. Don't talk about your positions. Don't talk about hypotheticals. Don't talk about how you rule in specific cases. And so it's assumed that like you just kind of smile and, you know, evade your way through these things.

Now, on this specific point, like it's hard for me to understand what the gotcha. through these things. Now, on the specific point, like, it's hard for me to understand what the gotcha. I agree with you that like, there is a pretty strong case that he just lied in this 2000 in 2006. So what would have to happen here? Like a Republican would have to say, this is a big enough ethical breach for me to maybe not move forward on this domination, right? Yeah, I mean, so I came, I here was the question I came away having like read about this and seen just how clearly it is that he willfully lied under oath to Congress. I think the question for Democrats is, first of all, we should make a big deal of this, but should we, should we not let this go?

Like, look. Of course not. I mean, look, no, I mean. But we talk about court packing, like This guy lied under oath to Congress. He has no business being a judge. We're going to find out after he gets on the court that he was lying to Susan Collins, too. This is grounds for impeachment, whether he's confirmed or not confirmed. Yeah, I mean, like you said, Tommy, the tradition, which Kavanaugh has schooled nominees in himself, is to evade, is to not take position on something.

It seems like he has taken this a step further, which is he was not truthful about many parts of his record. And like you said, some love it or maybe close calls, whether it's perjury or not. But the whole debate about whether it's perjury or not is almost beside the point. He lied to Hash. Even if it wasn't under the legal definition of perjury he clearly wasn't telling the truth when he said that he didn't know he received stolen documents because there's emails that he's on where it basically admits that they're stolen documents joking about it simple you know like put it and so if the point is smart guy he knows

where this came from he knows it was unethical. He knows. That's what I'm saying. So like if, and if you're going to be on the Supreme Court and you're willing to lie about something, even if you believe it's something relatively minor, a kind of, oh, you know, did I work on the prior nomination? No, no, no. And then there's all these emails where he's in meetings about the prior nomination. If you're not willing to be honest about these things, like how do you get a seat on the

highest court in the land? Who thinks that's okay? No, he like, yeah, you need to to be nominated to the Supreme Court and confirmed. You need to have convinced everyone that you are not only a brilliant legal mind, but that you are upstanding ethical. You put the rule of law above before anything else. And there is no doubt in my mind that Kavanaugh does not think that way. And that he is first and foremost, a partisan individual grown by the Federalist Society in a fucking Petri dish for exactly this moment. to lie about these things is because he has been part of Republican politics and advancing the interests of the Republican Party for most of his career, which is sort of the biggest lie he's telling of all, right? Like he's up there being like, no, I wasn't part of Republican politics. I've just been a good old judge in DC for all these years. And really he's been at like,

at every moment of intense Republican politics over the last 20 years, when it's like intersected with legal issues, Brett Kavanaugh has been there. Ken Starr investigation, Democratic hacking scandal prior, like all this stuff, he's been there. And also, I have to tell you, I came away reading about this specific instance, a lot less pleased with the senators on the Judiciary Committee. Why?

Because there's been such a scattershot approach. And I know they've been fiery and I know they've been fighting and I know they've been pushing him hard. But I look at this and I wonder if we couldn't have made much more out of this if we had focused on this specific case and said, laid it out plainly, you got stolen materials. It was investigated by the Senate while you watched. Then you were asked about it during a confirmation hearing and you fucking lied. That is, I don't care about. I think they all did that though. But during the year, I mean, again and again and again, all the big dramatic moments were around a bunch of different issues. But this specific thing could have been a huge,

could have been the main focus of Democrats attacks on this guy. You know, look, I don't want a Monday morning quarterback. They all pushed really hard. But for a lot of reasons, we struggle to make this the thing. But in part because there were all these other questions about whether he lied about other topics, too. But this one. But again, we shit. We keep we keep saying this as if this is some kind of like, you know, the American people get to vote on this or something. Right. This is all this. Every single thing here is for Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski, provided that the fucking red state Democrats vote the right way.

But if they do, it's all for Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. So, and according to a story from the Portland Press Herald, Collins is still undecided on Kavanaugh. She doesn't seem worried about his views on Roe for some ridiculous reason, because it's clear he wants to overturn this. she doesn't seem worried about his views on Roe for some ridiculous reason, because it's clear he wants to overturn this. But she did say, quote, if in fact Kavanaugh was not truthful, then obviously that would be a major problem for me about these scandals. So I guess the question now is, how do we put pressure on Susan Collins to say, okay, you said if he wasn't truthful,

it would be a major problem. He wasn't truthful. I mean, does Democratic senators do this? Do we hold press conferences? Does everyone call her office? Does everyone, you know, I mean, it's I mean, I think everyone listening who lives in Maine or has a friend who lives in Maine calls them, tells them to explains this story and then encourages them to call the office. I mean, she's pretending there's some reports that like her interns and stuff aren't even like cataloging who's for and against when you call the office. But I don't believe that for one second. I think we need to put maximum political pressure on her. So, yeah, every I mean, you know, it looks like the Democrats will push the committee vote on another judicial committee vote into next week. And then it looks like we are headed for a final

vote on this the week of September 24th. So there are a couple weeks left. We know it's an uphill climb. It's been an uphill climb from the beginning. I think our first step is to get certainly all of these red state Democrats who were up in 2018 to vote against Brett Kavanaugh and to announce they're going to vote against Brett Kavanaugh. And now it should be an easier vote than it's ever been before, because when we said this on last on the last pod, people just really said, hey, I wanted to give him a chance.

I wanted to be fair. I wanted to cooperate and put a justice on the Supreme Court, but he has not been truthful. Yeah, I would say that this needs to be the third plank. So I think that we're expecting a lot of Democrats who are squishy on this to rely on healthcare. I think it should be the three planks are healthcare,

Roe, and light under Roe. Yeah, and he's just not honest. And we got to make sure that trust him, cannot trust him. And we got to make sure that any Democrat who puts out a statement, make sure that they're hitting the fact that he lied under oath, because I think it's really serious. And if Susan Collins, Susan Collins, she very rarely keeps her word, which is a promise like that. But man, if she if she means it, this is enough. Yeah. And Murkowski has been very tight lipped about the whole thing. Collins has seemed more in favor of him even than Murkowski so far. So Alaska, Maine, you live there. You got friends and family there. Let them know and call the offices. OK, so we spent a lot of time during the past several months talking about what Democrats can do to flip the House. But it is increasingly clear that we also have a real shot to take back control of the Senate, which means that Democrats could block the confirmation of any more Trump judges,

including Supreme Court nominees. So important. Democrats need to defend 26 seats, including close races in North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia. If they do that, they need to flip two of the following four Republican seats, Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, and Texas. Lovett, why is the Senate so much harder than the House for Democrats? The sort of 30,000 foot reason is the Senate's always been anti-democratic, but by like sort of luck of history, we have now sorted the country into Democratic big states and Republican rural and smaller states. You know, I think a lot of people don't be like, oh, the Senate's getting even more anti-democratic. I don't quibble. I don't know that that's true. But what's certainly true is

Democrats are more and more concentrated in places where their Senate votes just don't carry as much weight that and it's just the way Senate election works is a thirds up every six years and just a bad year, bad year. Bad year. And so on all these states that we just talked about Democrats defending, Trump won those states by 10, 15, 20 points. Yeah. And just to give you an idea of how tough it is in the Senate, we've talked a lot about, you know, because of gerrymandering in the House, Democrats need to win the popular vote in November by six, seven, eight points in order to win the

House because it's so gerrymandered. Well, so Nate Silver today sort of did a rough calculation. He says it's a very rough estimate, but the Democrats would need to win the generic ballot by 11 points to take the Senate. So that just goes to show you how much of an uphill climb it is. Tommy, Republicans are starting to even panic about Texas. Over the weekend, senior Trump official Mick Mulvaney told donors that Cruz could lose to Beto O'Rourke because he's, quote, not likable enough. True. Former Cruz communications director Rick Tyler also said it's possible Cruz could lose. Why is Cruz so vulnerable and what does Beto have to do to win this race?

Love this question. First of all, can we just talk about what the fuck the director of the OMB and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing out talking to Republican campaign donors? That is like the most inappropriate person

I can imagine hitting the trail to have this conversation, A. Remember he got caught for talking to donors a couple months ago, too? Yeah, he was like, basically, if you're not a lobbyist, don't call me. You don't cut a lobbyist, don't call me.

You don't cut a check, you don't call me. Fucking corrupt goon. So regarding Texas and Beto, I mean, first of all, Republicans know that Texas isn't a Republican state as much as it is a state where a lot of people don't vote. And if you can turn out people that haven't voted before, like, say, there's a big wave election, that is hopeful for us. Two, Beto O'Rourke is a truly special candidate. He is someone who is firing up the liberals. He's firing up conservatives. He's getting Cruz voters to give him a look. He's excited voters in that state in a way that I don't think anyone ever remembers on the Democratic side. So he's a special candidate. We also need to be clear that there's a cynical piece of this, which is like these are the Cruz lackeys sounding the alarm for the fucking Koch brothers and the conservative groups and the PACs to get more money,

to get independent expenditures and super PACs to come into the state and start cranking in dollars. and start cranking in dollars because six months ago, a year ago, this is a state where the national Republican campaign committees thought Ted should have this covered even though he's the least likable human being in the nation. But all of a sudden, it's a real race. It's tied. Beto's raising a ton of money. So they are, I think, legitimately nervous. But this is a play to get the grossest Republican donors to dump negative ads on Beto's head.

And like you literally started it started today. Yeah. Yeah. Rana McDaniel, nay Rana Romney McDaniel, who dropped her middle name to appease Trump before she threw extra money at Roy Moore after he was credibly accused of. We should never forget. Never. Never forget what Rana Romney McDaniel did. Name Romney.

Never. Never forget what Ronna Romney McDaniel did. Name Romney. She said something that I thought was so revealing, which is in the context of saying, please help us with money. She was talking about how excited Democrats are. And she said they have their enthusiasm. We have our infrastructure. I saw you. We have billions of dollars. I was like, wow, that is a quite an admission. Basically saying, please help us use money to drag people to the polls to vote for these fucking orcs we've got on the ballot all across America. These Trump orcs that nobody really wants, except for this tiny base that Trump has. I should say, you know, we talk about Beto a lot because he is I do believe he is a once in a generation candidate and he is one of the more exciting candidates I've seen in a long time. And that was true when we went to Austin in March and talked to him. And I've never seen a response like that from anyone we've had on. But we should also say we want people to be hardheaded and pragmatic. I've donated a lot to Beto because I really believe

in him and I think he's a very inspiring candidate. But, you know, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Joe Manchin in West Virginia. I know a lot of people probably rolling their eyes like, oh, they're so conservative. Bill Nelson in Florida. Jackie Rosen. Claire McCaskill. We need them. We need all of them. We need them. And so, you know, you should. And I realize that they have voted in ways sometimes that drive you nuts. But these are good, solid Democratic, and I realize that they have voted in ways sometimes that drive you nuts, but these are good, solid Democratic votes in the Senate that we need to take the Senate back. And the Senate is about who is leader of the Senate. And it is a very big difference

if Chuck Schumer or whoever is the leader of the Senate versus Mitch McConnell. And if you need, you know, if you need an example of that, just look at the kavanaugh right right now so we do want people to support all of these democratic candidates because a democrat in the senate is a democrat in the senate there's going to be some that we believe in more than others i actually think even if beto wins even though he's representing texas he's probably going to vote um the way that we like the progressives like more than some of these red state democrats because he has that sort of courage. But look, all of these all these Senate Democrats definitely need your support. Just imagine Ruth Bader Ginsburg seeing that the Democrats have won the Senate and she can take a day off, not do yoga, not do leg day.

Just chill for a fucking second. Have aburger relax eat something unhealthy go for a walk sit in the sun go skydiving whatever have a fucking blast ruth go crazy out there and look and do drugs ruth finally you can do drugs oh my god um now that was very funny and i don't want to i don't want to oversimplify things because i can see us all a year from now when the Democrats are in charge of the Senate and there's a Supreme Court vacancy. I can't. I can't. And suddenly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly are like, we don't know if we want to block Trump's nominee. We still got to think about it. I think Robert Bork's ghost is actually a common sense judge right in the mainstream.

But I will say. Is Robert Bork alive? I don't know. Keep going. We're leaving it in. But even in that sense, you have to ask yourself, who's going to be easier

to persuade on that? Yeah. Is it going to be a red state Democrat or is it going to be a fucking Mitch McConnell Republican? And I think you know the answer to that.

Yeah. So we're going to talk about one of these potential Democratic candidates right now. We didn't get a chance to talk to him when we were in Nashville a few months ago,

but Phil Bredesen has a very real chance to win a Senate seat for Democrats in Tennessee. In fact, if you look at all the data, he's technically in an even stronger position than Beto. Tommy, who is Phil Bredesen and why don't we hear much about his race? Why don't you hear much about his race? I think you don't hear much about his race because he doesn't want his race nationalized in any way.

I think some New York Magazine reporter tried to get him and he's like, why don't you ever talk to national press? He's a, well, I don't care about you. I'm focused locally, but he was a governor of Tennessee from 2003 to 2011. He was the mayor of Nashville. He was a very popular governor. He was elected with over 50% several times. He's someone who has a real chance at a seat against an opponent that is pretty out there. Yeah. No, I think if it was a sort of generic Democrat in this race, the polling wouldn't be as close. Bredesen is beloved in Tennessee. I think his approved rating is somewhere around 60 percent right now because he's a very popular governor. And I think he is trying very hard to be completely under the radar here because he's testing the proposition. Can I be a fairly

nonpartisan candidate in Tennessee and squeak out a win that way? Yeah, it really is actually the long tail of a certain kind of politics in which the traditional Democratic South went Republican because of national politics and the changing politics around race. But for a very long time, there were a lot of southern states that retained state Democratic strengths and state Democratic governors. He is one of the people that was an example of that, that continued. And now he's trying to go even further with that by carrying it back into the Senate, into national politics, which seems eminently possible. Love it. Tell us about Marsha Blackburn. Oh, she's very bad.

Marsha Blackburn has earned a reputation among public interest advocates as the, quote, biggest enemy of Internet freedom on Capitol Hill. That's a cool title. She has that. Left it on a card. Yeah, so she's won that award. She's one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters in the House, calling herself, quote, politically incorrect and proud of it.

She once accused Planned Parenthood of selling baby body parts on demand. She has an A rating from the NRA, and she believes the jury's still out on global warming and rejects the theory of evolution. So that's Marsha Blackburn. Jury's still out on global warming. Jury's out on evolution.

Jury's out on evolution, postmates for baby body parts, and then what was the other thing? Biggest enemy of internet freedom on Capitol Hill. Man, Phil Bredesen's got to win. That's terrible. That's crazy. Yeah, she's been one of the Trumpier Congress people over the last couple years. So Phil Bredesen, people.

Yeah. Hopefully, I mean, I do think that she is too extreme for a lot of Tennessee voters. You know, to your point that Bredesen is a special candidate from the Democratic side, I think she is a especially bad Republican nominee. And she yeah. And her approval. I mean, this is why. So the latest poll has Bredesen up like forty eight forty six. It's within the margin of error. So it's a completely tight tied race. But her approval disapproval is much worse than Bredesen's and I will also just say and this is important Phil Bredesen looks like uh a sweet person who takes you in when your car breaks down by a farm at the side of the road but not one of the horror ones

where it turns out that they're cannibals or something evil's going on the good ones that you stay for a while and it helps you fight the zombies until something goes wrong that's on a bumper sticker i think yeah that's his uh that's his that's his dumb speech he's one of the good ones he's a good one in that scenario you'd be glad to see him all right so um we've talked it over um is it time for the endorsement we endorse phil brennison oh wow i think we need some uh endorsement music We endorse. Phil Bredesen. Oh, wow. I think we need some endorsement music when we do this. Yeah.

It may have already happened. It may have already happened. Maybe you're hearing it now. Because this has been recorded, and the endorsement music is playing. Rising to a swell. Go to commercial. When we come back, we will have Tommy's interview with musician Jason Isbell. My new best friend.

I am here at the Greek Theater in beautiful Los Angeles. We are backstage. If you hear some drums, that's soundcheck, so you should think that's cool. I'm with one of my favorite artists, Jason Isbell. Jason, thank you for visiting us here in flyover country. I'm happy to be here. L.A. So I want to start with a song you wrote called Elephant because it's this beautiful, heartbreaking song that, if you haven't actually heard it before, you might want to pause, play the song, we'll wait for you.

Yeah, listen to the song and return to the podcast after you've dried up your face. So it's about a couple. It's like watching someone you love die of cancer. Right. And so I'll never forget walking home from my office down Melrose Avenue in L.A., listening to the song and just weeping. Like everybody else walking down Melrose was doing.

Yeah, there's a lot of reason to cry when you're walking down Melrose. But what was amazing about that moment was it created real empathy in me for a fictional character. And I think that empathy has been missing in political discourse long before Donald Trump ever came to be. And I'm wondering if there's a way that we can like steal your mojo and the empathy creation magic from artists to fix this discussion. I mean, I think it's better for everybody if we just try to pretend like we're somebody else every once in a while, you know. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the Trump thing would never have happened if we were still acting like civilized, grown citizens.

You know, I think that that was probably a result. You know, not the Trump administration is not the disease. It's just a symptom of it. You know, and the disease to me is people have really I don't want to say that they've stopped caring about each other, but I don't know that they ever really have as much as, as, as they should, or as much as we should, you know, because I, I, I don't believe that this is as bad as it's been in America. I mean, we almost didn't make it.

All the other countries in the world were laughing at us, you know, around, around the civil war time saying, look at these guys, they just got started and already they're killing each other and watching from the bleachers and, you know, and the Civil War time saying, look at these guys. They just got started and already they're killing each other and watching from the bleachers. And, you know, and we were shitting ourselves to death in ditches. I mean, more people died from diarrhea in the Civil War than anything else, you know. And it's been worse. Right. But it's also been a lot better.

And, you know, I still think of it like we've fallen a few rungs on a ladder that we're still trying to climb, you know. But, yeah, I think part of the problem is the idea of delayed gratification is really, I think, hard for people to grasp. I think it's a lot easier for people to say, you know, the low-hanging fruit conundrum, for people to say, this is right in front of me, so I'm going to take it, rather than really realizing, and I'm not talking about like a financial system. I'm not saying people should be socialist or communist. That's a different conversation. But just in the way that we treat each other on a day-to-day basis, I think every once in a while it might even be in your own self-interest for your neighbors to be happy.

You know? And I think that's something that we've sort of forgotten. It's like, you can still be as selfish as you want. Right. You're just going to have a way better day if everybody's being treated fairly. Yeah. If your neighbor comes and says, I think someone's trying to break in. Yeah.

That'd be a good thing. That'd be good. And you know, if everybody was getting treated fairly, we wouldn't need to break into so many houses. Your house might not get broken in in the first place, you know. Those are worse to live by. And I'm not saying that, you know, you should be, because I love old guitars and sneakers way too much to be a communist. But I do feel like there's a level of fairness there where, you know, there's a certain amount of success you can have and then you really need to start thinking about okay is this more than i need you know and not

just financially but i'm talking about you know in every possible way do i have more power in general than i need and if you do i think it's probably time to start sharing that um so i come out of the gate hot with an empathy question. I'm going to reveal myself to be a hypocrite, which is to say like politics basically, it mostly enrages me these days. Yeah. And that's like,

I have a, an off valve, right? Where I get to talk about it for a living. So that makes it easier. But like in person, I'm a pretty measured person. I like don't usually tell people what I do for a living. If I think it's going to start a shitty political debate,

but on the, on the internet, it's like, let's go. Let's get angry. Let's get profane. And sometimes when I'm rage tweeting at something Trump said, the song you wrote called Hope the High Road comes into my head. And I feel very guilty. So I'm here to... That's what that song is for. So I'm here to ask you, what that song is for so i'm here to ask you is that is it an

aspirational song for you are you able to like live by that and not get pulled into the muck oh no i still get pulled into it all the time you know and i think even even having dignity and self-respect in discourse is a privilege you know because your dignity and your self-respect is going to go away as soon as you don't have any water or as soon as you don't have any food. Right. You know, so the opportunity to say, you know, let's take the high road is, yeah, that's a great privilege to have and the opportunity to turn it off and go about your daily life and not have to bring it up. I don't have to bring up politics to people on the street because I've got on shoes. You know, if I was walking barefooted, I would be talking about the politics of getting me some goddamn shoes, you know?

So it's, yeah, and I think realizing that privilege, you know, I don't think you have to be on all the time because within that privilege, there is a point of diminishing returns, you know? And you kind of have to, at a certain point, you have to be a hypocrite to really get anything done, you know, or I do from my position, because if I'm not a hypocrite that I'm walking around screaming all the time, you know, and if I'm walking around screaming all the time, nobody's listening to me anymore. True. And, you know, they're locking me up somewhere. So you sort of have to,

you have to use that privilege to keep yourself sane enough and functional enough to create rational arguments that might get across to people who otherwise wouldn't listen. You know, that song is, it's sort of the impossible dream there, you know. It's like, let's do our best to try to stay civilized in this. And, you know, it's not going to always be possible. Sometimes you're just going to get, you know, so angry. It happens to me all the time. But I have some friends who, you know, the only thing they post on their Twitter account is rage toward the administration. And I guarantee you, I'm just as angry as they are. But man, you're going to turn everybody off if you're just screaming about it all the time. And,

you know, the only really good thing about hypocrisy is being a hypocrite does not mean you're wrong. That does not make your point wrong. You know, you can be just, you can be right about everything and live by none of it and be a hypocrite and a genius, you know. It's true. Speaking of some non-geniuses, the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee came out and criticized you the other day. It was you and Ben Folds headlined a rally for Phil Bredesen, the former governor of Tennessee who's running for Senate. We should pause for a second on who Ben Folds is. If you haven't heard of the Ben Folds Five, check them out.

He wrote a song called Brick that tore up everybody in high school for a while. Yeah, until everybody realized what it was about. Everybody's super sad, and then all of a sudden they realize it's a song about abortion and they're like oh my god, oh my god, this is my favorite song. But Menfold is like this virtuoso piano player on the board of

the symphony orchestra, right? Like a very thoughtful, serious guy. Super talented, super, super grown up dude. With a really, really sick, weird sense of humor that I just love I've always been a fan of his work I think the song Satan is my master

where he says he buys my Metallica records for me, I think that's genius that's old Ben Folds that's pre-TV talent show judging Ben Folds that's back in the day so there's a lot of layers of Ben Folds the NRSC decided to attack you and Ben Folds. That's back in the day, yeah. So there's a lot of layers of Ben Folds. Yes.

The NRSC decided to attack you and Ben Folds by saying, Phil Bredesen was partnering with the unhinged left by doing an event with you as a concert. My read on that is like a recovering political professional was just to laugh at how stupid it is to attack. I think that was everybody's, yeah. Like a popular local artist and Ben Folds, who we've discussed now.

Yeah. But what did you make of this? Oh, no, they totally missed. It was laughable. I was proud of it, you know, because being insulted doesn't bother me. I know what I do in the world. I'm fine with myself, you know. But I thought it was a great moment for Phil's campaign, for one thing,

because it just completely backfired. for Phil's campaign for one thing because it just completely backfired and it really showed you how out of touch uh the people who crafted that particular insult were because if there's anything that my career has been about over the past six or seven years it's it's been hingedness you know and how to get rehinged and stay that way you've been pretty angely it was great I went to my therapist and I was like you know how you told me I'm supposed to take some more risks now, like, like kind of like I used to, but not, you know, like measured risk. Well now I'm unhinged. And I think you'll feel like that's probably pretty good for me. And she said, oh, you're unhinged. She said, they're not going to shoot you. Are they? And I was like, no, no, I'm not

that popular, you know, at this point, but, but, uh, but yeah, I'm, I'm unhinged. It's good. It's good for me to, to feel dangerous. Yeah. You're dangerous. I mean, my wife looked at me differently after that. She's like, Ooh, you're unhinged. All right. You're going to get a motorcycle. Yeah. I mean, but it's, it's like part of this trend where athletes, celebrities, uh, artists are criticized for having an opinion or talking about social issues or politics, right? Like Laura Ingram famously told LeBron and Kevin Durant to shut up and dribble because everyone wants to hear what she has to say and not them.

How do you deal with that or view your responsibility as an artist to talk about things that are important in the world? Well, it really, it's a non-issue. I mean, the real issue is, you know, Kevin and LeBron disagree with Laura. And so Laura's doing everything she can do to get people to not pay attention to them right you know nobody cares where those voices are coming from nobody gives a damn if it's me or ted nugent or lebron james or you know it's really the issue is not that it'd be nice if if they really meant it you know but

we we know it's a game yeah it's it's. Listen, I played this benefit show in a crazy ski town a while back where I just went up and played like 45 minutes for all these people who donated a ton of money to some organization they had. I'm not going to get too awfully specific about it, but it was a good thing. I had a good time. Nobody told me until after I'd played my set that Ted Cruz was in the audience. You know, they're probably smart to do that, to not tell me that. But I didn't play White Man's World, so I was so mad that I didn't find out until the show was over and they packed everything up.

I was like, can I just run up to him and play this song in his face right now? But, you know, he's out there listening to the lyrics and, like, bopping along. They don't believe any of this shit. They don't. The far right, they're just doing that because they think they're going to get more powerful that way. Nobody really believes that shit. Maybe Pence. Pence looks like enough of a Mennonite to maybe go along with that kind of stuff.

He looks like the kind of guy who wouldn't marry a woman who wore pants. He won't sit in a dinner with them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He's probably afraid he's going to have to pick up the check. But he, you know, most of the people who are, at least the pundits, most of the people who are running for office too, you know, on the far right side of things, they know all that's ridiculous. They know that we're right. They just don't want anybody to listen to us because it threatens their power. Right. It's, um, I mean, Trump's favorite pastime right now is, is telling NFL athletes, African-American athletes how to stand or sit during a national anthem. Right. And like, you know, it's hardly the first time that patriotism, uh, has been, you know,

whether we've demanded a specific type of patriotism. The Dixie Chicks were essentially run out of country music when they criticized President Bush on the Iraq War. Yeah, that's because they were women. Yes. Yeah. Yes. 100%.

And because we were in that insane period in 2003 where you couldn't say the Iraq War was a bad idea. Yeah, it was all because they were women. If Tim McGraw had done it, nobody would have cared. No, it was because they were women. They were talking out of turn it, nobody would have cared. No, it was because they were women. They were talking out of turn. And watch Eric Church's record sales. They're not going to drop.

You know, after his interview in Rolling Stone where he talked about, you know, how assault weapons are not the best idea for everybody. And the NRA, you know, he talked like he didn't really particularly love the NRA. Nothing's going to happen to Eric Church. You know, guys like me can say whatever we want to say. But that thing happened because Natalie was a woman. And I thought forever, I thought that it was different. I thought it happened because they were selling their records to people who weren't similar enough to them, you know, and I thought that's what happened.

I thought they got popular on country radio, you know, middle America's buying these albums and Natalie is not the kind of person who believes the same thing as the majority of her audience. So when she allows herself to be herself, then there's this huge blowback. But then one day we were playing that very same venue where that happened in London and I was walking around the place on the sidewalk and it just hit me. It was like, no, that's not, that has nothing to do with it. It just happened because she was a woman and people didn't want to hear her opinion because she was a woman and it gave them an opportunity to push another woman out of the entertainment business. But back to your question.

Well, no, I mean, look, that's part of the question because you see this like patriotism music factory in country music sometimes. But then I listened to songs that you wrote like TVA, which is about the Tennessee Valley Authority and like what it meant for a whole bunch of people. Or Dress Blues, which honors the death of Marine Corporal Matthew Conley, but is overtly critical of the Iraq War. And I think those songs are a hell of a lot more patriotic than like iraq and roll or whatever bullshit was coming out in 2003 i mean i love my country very much you know i love my daughter very much but you know it's my job to try to help her uh be better you know and uh i mean i think that that's a type of patriotism

that rings more true to me than anything else. I think it's your job to stay reasonably educated, at least, you know, as educated as you're privileged to be about what goes on in your country and try to do what's right. Try to encourage people in leadership positions to do what's right. You know, I don't see blanket acceptance as ever helping anybody, you know. I mean, or blanket encouragement. Maybe blanket acceptance, but not blanket encouragement. You know, you don't have to. In order to love an institution, you most certainly don't have to agree with every decision they make. And I don't think you should.

You know, I love Gibson guitars, but they're bankrupt right now. Are they? Yeah. Yeah, they're in a bad shape. I'm a Taylor guy. Yeah, they're good. I've had a Taylor before. I'm a Martin guy.

Yeah, for the acoustics, I like the Martin. But the Taylors play really, really well. Is it just because they've got that big, booming dreadnought? Is that like the thing you like about them? I like the loudest guitars possible. Okay. For acoustic guitars. I think it's kind of like the green m&m principle so you know you may already know this but um everybody used to give van halen

a hard time about the green m&ms no green m&ms on their rider and they thought that was just them being prima donnas but really and david lee roth talked about this in his book but really they would put that in the rider in order to make sure that the entire rider was red because they were on a tour where they were playing a lot of tertiary markets and they were doing rooms where they weren't sure that all of their stage production could be supported by the room you know so somebody could very easily get hurt you know if you're if you're blasting off a bunch of pyro and jumping off the speakers in the Civic Auditorium in Columbus and somebody hasn't gone through the proper channels

and they haven't read the entire writer. So they knew as soon as they walked into their dressing room, if there was green M&Ms in that bowl, somebody either didn't read the whole writer or didn't care about what it said. When they saw there was no green M&Ms, they could go on stage without fear of getting their neck broken by a falling lighting truss.

There was a reason for that. There's a method to that. There was a reason. I mean, it's silly, but I love that story. So is the green M&Ms, does that relate to Martin somehow? Yes, the volume of the guitar is the green M&M to me. Got it. If I play an acoustic guitar and it is louder than any other acoustic guitar in the room,

I know all the pieces of it are put there the way it's supposed to be yeah i uh i bought myself the guitar that i remember seeing in guitar center and wanting with all every fiber of my being when i was 12 years old and then i realized two years ago that i'm old yeah and i can buy whatever i want so i just bought this like koa wood, beautiful tailor. Nice. I used to have a tailor that I really liked and I bought it with some student loan money in college one year. I went to all my teachers and I was like,

I'm not going to buy your textbook because this is a scam. You know it's a scam. And I'll study, I'll take notes, and I'll get whatever I need to get and, uh, you know, I'll get whatever I need to get from the library, but I'm going to spend my student loan money on something that actually does me some good. Did that work? It worked.

Every single one of them was great with it. And I made one B and the rest A's that semester. Shit. Yeah. Yeah. It worked. And I don't know if it would work now, but you know, in those days it was like, they were looking at me and I was from Alabama and I

was like you know they're like well I'm sure if he you know he probably didn't have a whole lot of money coming into here so we're not going to scam him this semester um speaking of looking at you and being from Alabama I mean I feel like I've seen a bunch of interviews with you or read them where I feel like they look at you like this rare political specimen that shouldn't exist in the U.S. because a white guy from Alabama with an accent who hangs out at country music festivals shouldn't have like a super woke take on white privilege or like you know how women are treated horribly um do you think that gives you some insight into like the the other half of the country that you know they assume you are um I think the people that I grew up around and the people that I'm related to

and, you know, the people that I still spend some of my time with, definitely that does give me some insight, I think, that, you know, I do get a kick out of people saying I'm like a Hollywood liberal elitist or I'm in some kind of bubble, you know. Awesome shorts bubble. Yeah, Yeah. That North Alabama bubble. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I think I know, uh, what rural people for the most part, I'm not, I'm not, you know, wanting to group those folks together too much, but I think I know what a lot of middle Americans are interested in and what makes them happy and where their priorities sit at the very least, you know? Um, cause I'm super close with my parents and I mean, they, you know, they grew up in Alabama in the sixties and seventies. And

then, you know, when I got a little older, I started making music with people who had worked in the Muscle Shoals scene and, and, you know, people who had dealt with the convergence of black artists and white artists around that point in time when things weren't all rosy in Alabama. And there's a lot of different opinions on what that music did. Some people don't necessarily believe that it was the best thing. But for me, I was so heavily influenced by Aretha and Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. I just got lucky enough to, at some point in my development, decide, okay, I'm not qualified to make this type of music. I would love to do that.

I would love to be blue-eyed soul singer. That term makes me cringe, but I just can't do it. I'm not going to get up there and do that because that doesn't. The gift of self-awareness. Yeah, that's a big deal for me because, I mean, if I didn't have that, I could very easily be up there trying to sound like Otis Redding, and that doesn't belong to me. I think you could pull it off.

I mean, pull it off to a certain extent, you know. I know all the words and I can hit all the notes, but I couldn't do it in a way that would make it necessary. It's better for me to listen to Otis Redding and let the spirit of that find its way into the music that I make. Gotcha, yeah. So I obviously wasn't alive for Woodstock. Not quite that old. Not even like the one with Limp Bizkit?

I might have been alive for that one. I bet you weren't alive for that one either. Where everything was on fire. Didn't everything get burned down. Was it the 90s? 92? Yeah, it was 12. I tried to forget that. Yeah, that wasn't that cool. So my window into this is documentaries and books. And when I look at docs about the 60s,

the Vietnam protests, Woodstock, it feels like there was unity from music among those groups of people. And I sometimes wonder, like, where the fuck are our protest songs? Is it some EDM track that I'm not into? Or are we lacking that cultural unifying force? They're there. They're just not as...

That type of music is not promoted like it was in those days. There's still people out writing those kinds of songs and trying to get their way through, how do I make this a good song without, like we were talking about earlier, getting past that point of diminishing returns where you're just yelling at somebody. But that's not what's being consumed, so that's not getting to people's ears as quickly and as often

as what was happening back then. I mean, you had folk rock musicians So that's not getting to people's ears as quickly and as often as what was happening back then. I mean, you had folk rock musicians who were selling more records than anybody on earth in those days, and that's not happening now. It's still there. You just got to look for it. Take it a little deeper. Yeah, you just got to look for it.

I don't know that anybody has written one, like, we shall overcome type of anthem for the time that we're in right now. I talking to david crosby about that at newport a few weeks ago and and you know he was saying which one of you guys is going to do this you know this is like i'm too old i'm too old i've already had my movement but which one of you folks is going to write the song that really unites everybody and i don't know that that's possible in the same way that it was in the 60s but um you know i know i get a lot of uh motivation and inspiration from uh my fellow songwriters so hopefully somebody will make something that just seems perfect for the time you know yeah um almost done here i'll let you go perform a concert for all the really happy people um

i know you spend countless hours like writing songs perfecting them like getting good at the craft do you ever show up at a venue and think like let's just play some covers like you know and like a 14 minute in memory of elizabeth reed would be fun tonight yeah we could do that we've done it before um you know what i like to do is no i never think about doing that at my own shows because that would that's not fair yeah that's not fair and i'm not exactly trying to upset the people in the audience at this point in my career maybe i was early on but um but i do like we played in austin last weekend and we played three nights there and then on Saturday night I went out to the Continental and played guitar with David Grissom and essentially Joe Ely's backing band

and they've been together for like 30 years since they were all playing together with Joe and they're called the Booze Weasels and they get together like once or twice a year and they play a bunch of covers at the Continental Club and that happened to be the night that they were doing it and i know david a little bit i don't think any of them knew whether i could hang or not so it was like when i got there it's like you know just come on up turn it up it's great it'll be fine and then after i got up there they were like can you stay and i was there for like an hour and a half but i didn't have to sing or get in a mic or anything it was it was so much fun just lead guitar yeah just loud lead guitar yeah that sounds fun as hell that's really therapeutic for me when i get to do it and you know i like when i play with amanda my wife i get to do that just play

guitar and sing harmony vocals and that you want to sing you know i like singing uh but not as much as i like playing guitar and singing harmony vocals, because that's what I did first. And I feel like singing is kind of work for me because it's very, very focused. And, you know, it's really like the whole set I'm concentrating really, really hard. It's kind of like balancing, you know, an egg on a spoon for two hours every night. But I enjoy that. I like the challenge of it. And, you know, I love playing shows.

But every once in a while, if I just really want to do something just for selfish enjoyment purposes, I'll just play guitar with somebody. Loud ass guitar. Yeah, just really loud. Way louder than it should be. Well, Jason, thank you for taking the time. Thank you. Everyone should check out all your stuff.

Spotify, Apple Music. All that. Everywhere. I would love it if you just go buy it. Where do you buy it? You can buy it at, if you have a local record store,

that'd be great. If not, you can order it off of my website. Great. JasonIsbell.com Perfect. We'll go there.

I think that's it. Backslash letmegiveyouallmymoney.org. Thank you to Jason Isbell for spending time with me before a show, while his family was there, while he's been on the road. It was very cool. And I want to say thank you for a song called Alabama Pines, which I think is one of my favorite songs of all time.

Nice. And I am not a music connoisseur, so I didn't realize it was his song until we were at the concert. That's one of those guys that was on repeat from Michael O'Neill, who put it on a mix for me in DC. I'm a big fan of 24 Frames, that was my favorite song. Michael O'Neill makes the best mixes.

I wonder if they're public on Spotify. You guys should search for Michael O'Neill makes the best mixes. I wonder if they're public on Spotify. You guys should search for Michael O'Neill's mixes on Spotify. They're fantastic. Oh, Michael, you just got a big bump. Easter egg in this outro. One more thing that we have to say in the outro I just realized. We will not have a regularly scheduled pod on Thursday morning because on Thursday night we will have a live show at the El Rey here in Los Angeles.

It is sold out, but you will be able to hear it on Friday morning. And it will be the three of us. Dan Pfeiffer will be in town. Aaron Ryan will be joining us as guest host. Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen will be there. George Papadopoulos will be there. The Stephanopoulos Papadopoulos jokes were just terrible

and constant over the weekend. Who else will be there? I don't know. TBD. Great guests. I didn't have a joke. I thought we were going to name

some other fun people. Scaramucci's going to come in. Remember him? Remember when he was someone we talked about? Brett Kavanaugh will be there. Yeah.

Fucking shifty-eyed Brett Kavanaugh. Look at him Fucking shifty eyed Brett Kavanaugh Look at him Darting little eyes huh You're right I think we've overstayed Our welcome We'll see you later everyone

Have a good one Fucking Brett Kavanaugh