Pod Save America - “Beat the NRA.”

Episode Date: February 15, 2018

The NRA and GOP vow to do nothing about America’s 18th school shooting in 35 days, Trump and Republican leaders reject a bipartisan agreement to protect the dreamers, and the Administration is filled with corrupt goons who screw taxpayers and jeopardize national security. Jon and Dan cover another banner day in the Trump Era, and then talk to immigration activist Marisa Franco about how she helped defeat Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and what we can do to change the politics of immigration.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the show today we have the interview that Dan and I did in Phoenix with immigration activist Marisa Franco. Also, Dan, we have a lot of bad news today to cover, a lot of disappointing, scary headlines. But there was a hopeful headline that I read in the Washington Post today about you and a new book. This is true. So for the last many months, people as you and Lovett and Tommy have been going around doing multiple pods, building a media conglomerate. People have said, Dan, what are you doing since you podcast for 50 minutes a week?

And the answer is mostly watching the resurgent 76ers on NBA League Pass. But when I'm not doing that, I wrote a book. And it is coming out on June 19th. It is called Yes, We Still Can, Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump. And it's about how Barack Obama and all of us navigated the forces in politics that ended up creating Trump, whether that's the Republicans going crazy, changes in media, Twitter. I got a lot to say about Fox News and the Trump media in there. So there's some nostalgia there. But also, I try to take

from that some lessons that we learned and how Democrats could apply those to the future for the battles that come in 2018 and 2020. So it's out 6-19, but it is on sale now as of today. And if people buy it, which I would please encourage you to do, because I'll feel better about having written this book, but also a portion of the proceeds for every book sold during the pre-sale period, so between now and June 18th, will be donated to Swing Left, our friends at Swing Left who are out there trying to win the house back. And so if you buy the book, I would be very grateful. The people at Swing Left will be grateful. Tweet at me the proof of purchase so I can sleep at night. And if you like Pod Save America, or at least one half of the Thursday

Pod Save America, I think you'll like this book. So I hope people get a chance to read it when it comes out in June. And I look forward to talking to people about it. So there it is. Dan, this is fantastic. I'm really excited about this i am dying to read this book despite the fact that i talk to you for an hour once on every thursday i text you 30 000 times a day i follow all your tweets i i feel like i pretty much know everything that you have to say about this and yet i am still super excited to go read this book and that's um really kind of you to donate some of the proceeds to Swing Left, too. So everyone go buy this book.

This is exciting. Well, thank you, John. I should tell everyone that we had a Crooked Media retreat earlier this week. And our special guest was Dan Pfeiffer, who talked about the changing media in the Obama era and the Trump era. I imagine some of your presentation was from this book. media in the Obama era and the Trump era. I imagine some of your presentation was from this book and the entire Cricut Media staff was incredibly excited about the presentation and learned a ton. So if that presentation, if any of that presentation is part of this book, it's going to be an excellent read. So you guys should go get it.

I only have one set of thoughts. So it's in both the book and my Cricut Media presentation. That's all you need, man. Okay. So that's great. We also, we're going to Texas in March. We just got back from our Denver-Phoenix-Vegas swing, which was great. And then a second weekend of March, we'll be in Texas. I think there's still tickets left for the San Antonio show. There might be a few left for Dallas and Houston as well. I think Austin sold out.

But yeah, go check us out. We'll be back on the road in a couple weeks. I think Lovett's going back on the road next weekend because he's crazy. So yeah, so that's our housekeeping. Okay, so yesterday, tragically, 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Florida high school, many of them students. The gunman was a former student who'd been expelled last year after being abusive to his ex-girlfriend. He used a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle in countless magazines. It was the 18th U.S. school shooting in the last 35 days. In the rest of the world, there have been 18 school shootings in the last 20 years. It goes without saying that this is

a uniquely American epidemic, and it happens here so much more frequently because the NRA and the Republican Party want people to have as many guns as they'd like with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You can be mentally ill, you can be a domestic abuser, you can be a suspected terrorist on the watch list, you can be a teenager. NRA and the GOP want you to have as many military style weapons with as much ammunition as you'd like, minimal background checks, no questions asked, take your guns anywhere you'd like, use a silencer, it just doesn't fucking matter. Basically, we're in this like over and over again, because Republican politicians make the argument that because we can't prevent all gun violence, we shouldn't try to prevent any gun violence. That's what they argue. And it's

bullshit. And it's another reason we should vote their party out of existence. Dan, what are your thoughts? I mean, obviously, yet again, what happened in Florida was just heartbreaking. The videos of people leaving schools. There's one place you should feel safe in America. It should be at school. And with the SWAT team, I mean, just hearing from the kids who are hiding in closets in classrooms, I mean, it breaks your heart. And it's just sickening. The videos of the kids in the closets and the kids in the classrooms that were on Twitter are just, they're sickening. It was just horrifying videos. And it is worth noting, you and I had Cory Booker on the podcast last

month, and he rightfully pointed out to us that we pay attention to these mass shootings, whether it be in schools or shopping malls or movie theaters or anywhere else. And we often ignore the violence that's happening all across America with guns, whether it's people in domestic disputes in their homes, suicide, because people have easy access to guns. Gun violence is an epidemic in this country, whether it's the ones that end up with a lot of press coverage or the ones that don't even make the local news in their community. And the sad thing here is everyone knows that no one is going to do anything about it, that nothing will change. After, you know, we were in Vegas and

we talked about this. We talked about the political strategy around guns on Monday's pod. So I don't know. We don't need to get back into that. But it's worth remembering that after the, in Vegas, a man, for reasons we still don't know, shot 500 people, killing more than 50, I believe,

in Vegas and using something called a bump stock, which takes a semi-automatic weapon and makes it fire faster and more dangerously. And everyone pledged we would do something about it. Here we are many months later, nothing has happened, not executive action, not legislative action. This is just how we respond is we do nothing. And there's probably no greater indictment of the Republican Party than that fact. Because this is not a – I saw you got into a Twitter argument with our friend Mark Murray from NBC who is great. He is great.

But the point you made is this is not a failure of Washington. This is a failure of one party that is in the thrall not just of of the NRA, but of gun voters who make up a distinct minority in this country. Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, it's one of the worst examples of the media fearing being accused by the Republicans of partisan bias, more afraid of that than they are of just like being honest about the problem. I mean, your political reporters, your job is to provide an accurate analysis of the political dynamics. And the political dynamics in the gun control debate are that Republicans want people to be able to have guns and they want to have as few restrictions as possible on that. Those are political dynamics. And yeah,

there are a couple Democrats from red states who feel the same way, but it is an extremely small minority. And it is nearly the entire Republican Party that holds the position that they do right now. And it's not even accurate to say that the Republicans want to do nothing. Because, you know, what the Republicans have done in the Trump era is they've tried to revoke an Obama era set of gun checks for people with mental illness. They've tried to pass bills that make it easier to use silencers on weapons. So they're trying now, the NRA is now trying to pass something called a concealed carry reciprocity, meaning that whichever state has the weakest gun laws around being able

to conceal a weapon and carry it, Other states have to recognize that too. So it's not even that they're doing nothing. They're actually actively trying to make it easier to be able to have as many guns and as much ammunition as you want, no matter who you are or what kind of background you've had. That's what their agenda is. And everyone needs to recognize that.

Everyone in the country needs to recognize that that's the problem and that it's not Washington being broken. It's not politicians not doing anything. And by the way, it's not even that the NRA is giving a bunch of money to Republicans. It's that the Republicans believe they believe in this. They're not just being bought off. They actually believe that this is the way to go. And I think that's important for people to realize that it's not just like they're doing this for the money. They're doing this because important for people to realize, that it's not just like they're doing this for the money. They're doing this because they want people to have as many guns as possible.

That's right. The NRA gives millions and millions of dollars to Republicans, but it's money not well spent, because those Republicans would endanger America for free. That's just what they think. They don't think that fewer guns results in less gun violence. They don't believe that. And that's their right to not believe that.

But if the rest of the country believes otherwise, then we should have a politics that reflects that belief. And we should vote for politicians that reflect that belief. After the mass shooting in Las Vegas, the New York Times talked to gun violence researchers, and they made a chart of the most effective gun control measures and how much public support each had. And just here are some of the things that top that list. Bar sales to all violent criminals, 85% of the

public supports that, the most effective thing you could do, according to gun researchers. Assault weapons ban, 67% of the public supports that. Semi-automatic gun ban, 62% support. High-capacity magazine ban, 62% support. Universal gun checks, 89% support. Bar sales to people deemed dangerous by mental health providers, 88% support. Bar sales to convicted stalkers, 85% support. These are all gun violence measures that researchers, some of the best experts, deem the most effective in reducing gun violence, and they all have massive public support. I don't know man you and i were

sitting here and everyone talks about congress and what is congress going to do and paul ryan goes out and does a piss poor job of pretending like he gives a shit uh it is press conference today and some republicans like mark meadows go out and basically say this is the price of freedom and you say well nothing's gonna happen in congress well don't wait for congress we have governors races and state legislators legislatures up for election this fall. Go win those. Because this was actually a Florida law that allowed an 18-year-old to buy this AR-15 with no background check and buy unlimited amounts of ammunition. A Democratic governor in Florida and a Democratic legislature in Florida can repeal that law in January of 2019.

And we can do that all across the country. So just because Congress may be fucked beyond recognition right now, don't wait for that. Go do this at the state level because every life saved is worth it. Yeah. This is the purpose of politics. Rick Scott is the governor of Florida. He signed five pro-gun bills, making it easier to buy more ammunition and other things. He potentially could run for Senate to try to defeat Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator, make sure that he doesn't do that. And when there's now there's going to be an open governor's race in Florida, make sure there's a Democratic governor in Florida. These are things that we can do. Like you said, we talked about the politics of this in terms of how Democrats should run on this issue and not be afraid of it. I saw,

you know, Joan Walsh tweeted last night to remind everyone that in Virginia in 2017, in the 13 races where pro-gun control Democrats squared off against NRA Republicans, Democrats won 12 of those races. The gubernatorial nominee, the lieutenant gubernatorial nominee, and the attorney general nominee on the Democratic side all had F ratings from the NRA

and all of them won by, you know, huge amounts. So it is possible to defeat the NRA. It is possible to defeat Republicans who are backed by the NRA. Don't let people tell you it's not. And, you know, if you want to get involved, if you want to help, you know, we've talked about this before. Moms Demand Action and Everytown are both two great organizations trying to do something about gun violence. You can text ACTACT to 64433 to get involved in these organizations. So please do that and please go defeat Republicans. Defeat Republicans who believe

there is nothing we can do to prevent gun violence. Go defeat them in November. It is the most important thing you can do. All right, let's talk about another rosy topic here, which is the immigration debate. So the Senate's going to vote today on a bipartisan agreement that would immediately protect 1.8 million Dreamers from deportation and eventually give them a path to becoming full citizens, though it would preclude Dreamers from sponsoring their parents to become citizens as part of the compromise. The bill would also appropriate $25 billion for border security, including construction of the wall, but over a long 10-year period.

So, eight Senate Republicans are on board with this so far. They introduced the legislation along with seven Democrats and one independent, Angus King from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats. If every Democrat supported this, it would have 57 votes, just three short of the necessary 60. Dan, what do you think the prospects are here? What do you think about this compromise? Look, it's a compromise. Is this the law that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would write to be signed by President Hillary Clinton? No. But it addresses and it contains things we don't like. But that is also life in a time of divided government. Republicans hold every lever of power. So if Democrats can get something that addresses the dreamers, this seems like the best option available to us.

And I would encourage every Democrat to vote for this because this is our best chance to get something done before 800,000 dreamers face the prospect of deportation in the coming months. And this is the right thing to do. It is much better than the absurd nativist policies that Trump and Stephen Miller offered earlier. It's a compromise. And compromise aren't perfect, but that's governing. Yeah. Well, and it's also, it's about, you know, the divide between what is urgently needed right now and what we can deal with in the future.

Like right now, you know, dreamers face deportation if nothing gets done. If we don't like money for the wall, if we don't like that they don't get to sponsor parents, if we don't like any of this stuff, we can fix that later once we return to power, if we win in November, and then if we ultimately defeat Donald Trump. We can't fix 800,000 plus Dreamers facing deportation in the next several months over the summer, over the fall, or before Democrats take back Congress. We can't fix that. Once that happens, that's irreversible. So this is about acting now to, you know, because it's an urgent situation to protect Dreamers. And all the other stuff we don't like, we can fix later. You know, it's $25 billion for the wall paid out over 10 years. Like, we can get rid of that funding after November, or at least after

Trump's out of office, if we, you know, get Trump out of office. I know Schoolhouse Rocks is not a thing that's on television anymore, but laws are not etched in stone into the side of the Capitol. They're written in ink, and they can be revised and adjusted. And so there are two groups of Democrats who may be iffy on this. So one would be potentially the Democrats in the quote unquote Trump states, the ones who voted to reopen the government back in January. And what I would say to those Democrats are, if you vote against this, you will get just as many ads saying that you are smuggling MS-13 members in the trunk of your car into your community.

The Republicans are not going to go easier on you because you voted with them. They would rather replace you with a Republican senator, no matter what your voting record is. The other group would be the 2020 Democrats, people who are thinking about running. And here's what I would tell that group is, one, this is the right thing to do regardless of politics, but it's also the politically smart thing to do. Because here's what you don't want to do if you were running for president 2020 is to have to go around explaining why why you worked with Tom Cotton, Paul Ryan and Stephen Miller to make it more likely the dreamers were reported. That is not a question you want to answer on the campaign trail or on a debate stage in 2020. Yeah, it looks like so the Trump administration is against this proposal. And apparently they just issued a veto threat, which is wonderful.

You know, now that's still, if this passes the Senate, if we can get 60 votes, if all the Democrats are for this and we can get three more Republican votes to get to 60, you know, maybe the White House feels a little more pressure there, or maybe they propose some other compromise. I think the immediate, the only thing we can do in the short term here is try to get this bill out of the Senate. The other bill that they're going to vote on is the Trump proposal, the Chuck Grassley proposal, that is basically like this proposal, except it dramatically reduces legal immigration into the country, something that doesn't have anything to do with the Dreamers. Just wanted to introduce it because, you know, they want to keep as many brown and black people out of the country as possible. So that bill is not going anywhere. That bill is not passing the Senate, the Trump proposal,

because that doesn't have a single Democrat on board. That is a partisan bill that doesn't even have the entire Republican caucus on board. So I don't know what the Trump administration is doing here. What do you think about that, that they just issued this veto threat? They are trying to ensure that they can deport the Dreamers as quickly as possible. That's what this is. Like Trump told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over Chinese food at one time that he wanted to help the Dreamers. He may have even meant those words when they came out of his mouth.

I don't think it was out of some sort of deep well of compassion. I thought I think it was more about getting praise on Morning Joe. But his administration, whether it's John Kelly, Stephen Moore, Secretary Nielsen, they want to deport the Dreamers. And so they are doing everything they possibly can to rig this process so it ends in failure so they can deport the dreamers. That is what Paul Ryan wants. That is what Tom Cotton and the immigration restrictionists in the Senate want. And we should just call that for what it is. This is not a failure of compromise or politics. This is the only way legislative path to solve this problem right now. And they are trying to scuttle

it. Yeah, this whole again this is another like oh washington's gonna fail on immigration reform no the republican leadership in this country wants to deport these people they do if they didn't want to deport these people they could fix it immediately at any moment they could they could easily pass a law to fix this and you don't even need a law no you don't even need a law can i just say that the department of homeland security and secretary kearson nielsen put out the statement this morning that is just fucking it's hard to continue to be shocked in this administration in the trump era and this was sort of shocking it first this is what it says this is what the department of

homeland security which is supposed to be an apolitical agency, said about this bipartisan compromise that got eight Senate Republicans on board. It destroys the ability of DHS to remove millions of illegal aliens. It would be the end of immigration enforcement in America. It ignores the lessons of 9-11 and increases the risk of crime and terrorism. Those are lies. Those are not in any way accurate assessments of the bill. It is fear-mongering about the dreamers that Trump has told us before that, you know, he needs a bill of love and he wants to protect these kids. What the fuck is the Department of Homeland Security doing putting out that statement?

And if you think it's just like a partisan thing to be mad about that, Lindsey Graham put out a long statement blasting them for doing that. Couldn't believe the Department of Homeland Security was putting out a statement like that. It seems in a world, in the parade of horribles that is the Trump administration, that this shouldn't seem like that big a deal but here's why it matters beyond this debate which is during a terrorist attack a hurricane yep and any sort of natural disaster the department of homeland security is the conduit of information to the american people so they must be above politics because when it comes time to tell someone to evacuate their home or where to go to get shelter, you need Democrats and Republicans to trust them. That was true when

Barack Obama was president. That is true when Donald Trump is president. That'll be true going forward. And so to just sacrifice that credibility to put out a Breitbart op-ed under the name of the Secretary of Homeland Security is just so dangerous in the long run. Yeah, it's really outrageous. I mean, so I'm trying to think here, you know, if this so we'll see if this gets 60 in the Senate. The potential Republican votes to get to 60 are Stephen Dennis was listing these potential senators, reporter Rubio, McCain, Hovind, Corker, Heller, Hatch. The reason he listed these people is because they supported the bipartisan immigration reform in 2013 that would have given 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. And so his thought was, and you know, Hatch was the original sponsor of the DREAM Act. So his thought was, if they're looking for other votes, maybe they'd get them from this crew.

Well, Bob Corker came out this morning and said he was against the compromise because Bob Corker is reconsidering his fucking retirement now that he's like buddies with Donald Trump again, so he can run in Tennessee again, which is a whole nother topic. John McCain would obviously support this, but he's been too sick to actually come to the Senate and vote. Hovind, I guess, supported the 2013 bill. Rubio, come on. Who knows? And then, you know, dirty Dean Heller. I don't know, man. I don't know if this will get out of the Senate. I don't know what else could have been done here. Like, I was just trying to rack my brain. Like, you know, at this point, the level of opposition from Paul Ryan and Donald Trump and his administration and some of these House Republicans, I don't know that if the Democrats kept the government shut down for four months,

if the Republicans would ever relent and decide that they were going to pass a bill that protected the Dreamers. I don't know. to pass a bill that protected the Dreamers. I don't know. I think these people just want this so bad that they're willing to do anything necessary to use their power to deport these people. Yeah, that is right. It is.

If a trade for helping the Dreamers, a group that gets massive bipartisan support paired with money for Trump's wall cannot become law in this country, then no immigration law can get passed with our current power dynamics in Washington. Yeah. Same thing with the gun debate. We've got to go defeat Republicans, got to defeat them at every single level. Nothing gets done in this country unless this version of the Republican Party, which has been the version of the Republican Party we've been dealing with

for over a decade now, needs to be defeated at every single level of government. It's the only way. So if you want to do something today, if you're in a bad mood like we are, go to Swing Left, go to Indivisible, donate to Democrats, sign up to go knock on doors, make some calls, because it has never been more important to win this election in November ever, because this is, are things are bad things are very very bad meanwhile in the White House the corruption it's fairly stunning even for these guys we're now a week into the White House cover-up of the Trump administration's decision to ignore warnings from the FBI that a senior staffer who handled classified information

was a domestic abuser vulnerable to blackmail. In fact, this week, we learned that the White House had planned to promote Rob Porter to deputy chief of staff right before the scandal broke. How about that? Guy was going to get a promotion. We also learned from the testimony of the FBI director that John Kelly and Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other White House officials lied about when they learned about Porter's domestic abuse allegations. They were only off by about six months. Dan, is John Kelly getting fired? Who the F knows? It's like I don't even know what to believe anymore.

What is clear is that his days as an effective chief of staff, that's not even right, as a moderately potentially effective chief of staff at making sure that memos get turned in on time is over because his own staff is calling him a liar. There is a revolt. The old Trump people who he has sort of iced out are now working to undermine him and convince Trump to fire him. Trump is doing the public torture thing with him. Trump to fire him. Trump is doing the public torture thing with him. So I don't know if he will quit or go. But I mean, I guess if there was one small silver lining to this very dark cloud, it's that the idea of General Kelly, political savior and captain of the Committee to Save

America is now over. Yeah, he is. He is bad. There is no two ways about it. It's pretty awful. How could they have handled this better? I mean, what... I guess the real question is how could they have handled this worse? It is impossible to handle it worse. Impossible.

You know it's pretty bad when Trey Gowdy said he's starting an investigation. The chair of the Benghazi Trey Gowdy is now going to start an investigation into the White House handling of this matter. I guess now that he's retiring, he is starting to develop a conscience

like most Republicans when they start to retire. I had to say one thing about that, which is Trey Gowdy also did an interview where he said one of the reasons he was leaving Congress was he was tired of facts not mattering. And everyone's like, oh, what a voice of reason in our insane time. And here's what I would say to that. Fuck that. We have this new thing now where people act in horrible bad faith for a decade.

They then say one thing that seems encouraging, and we erase the past and put them up on a pedestal as people of integrity. Trey Gowdy spent millions of taxpayer dollars to turn a Senate House committee into the RNC so that he could politicize the deaths of Americans – the tragic deaths of Americans in Benghazi in order to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects. And now he wants facts to matter. And so we're supposed to pat him on the back. Well, no, he's not getting a pat on the back for me, Dan, you can rest assured. A couple other things we learned yesterday about the fantastic administration we have, we have in power here. Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has been flying first class on the taxpayer's dime because he doesn't want the people in Koch to bother him about the EPA's policies. Is the actual excuse that they gave about this.

He is upset that maybe all of the poors and coach will yell at him about his agency rewriting rules to let polluters dirty up their air and water so that oil and gas industry executives can fly in first class with Scott Pruitt. With Scott Pruitt. Remember when we were in L.A. and Aaron, our friend Aaron Ryan at our L.A. show made the point about like a study about how people get mad when they have to walk through first class into economy. And that was that's the Democrats had to think about the tax debate in that way to show that it was people in first class were getting the tax cuts yeah so so then scott pruitt decides to embody that entire point and then use it as the fact that he used it as his defense is just unbelievable he took a in june he took a seven thousand dollar first class flight to italy your tax dollars seven thousand dollars so sc Scott Pruitt could go to Italy.

Just fucking hang. He took a $1,500 flight to New York. This guy. From DC, which is a three and a half to four hour drive. There was a train. You would have to work hard to spend that much money

on a flight from DC toC. to New York. Do you think he does the kayak thing and then does the reverse order so that he puts the most expensive one first? I don't even know how you would do that. He clearly did not use Upside.com. He did not. Well done. Well done. Look at that.

They just got a free plug. I don't even know if they're a sponsor this week. We also learned, as if that wasn't enough with Pruitt, we learned that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, took a $122,000 taxpayer-funded sightseeing trip to Europe with his wife and then had his staff doctor an email to pretend he'd been invited to an honorary dinner in Denmark so that the government would pay for his wife's airfare. This actually happened, Dan.

Here's what's even more shocking, the fact that it happened, is that Secretary Shulkin got to show up to work today. Like, that is a fireable offense in any job in America. And it is also, I would point out to you, illegal, I'm pretty sure. So we have people who are committing crimes and then going to work with no repercussions. $122,000 taxpayer funded. This is what the Trump administration is doing. This is just wonderful. Is they just put out a budget that cuts medicaid and food stamps they want to turn

food stamps into fucking government ration boxes for people uh to save like a couple million dollars here while their secretaries are flying around the world first class paid for by taxpayers for no reason so they can go fucking sightseeing well they're not like destroying america also our friend jared kushner and ivanka america's couple we learned that they're not, like, destroying America. Also, our friend Jared Kushner and Ivanka, America's couple. We learned that they're in debt anywhere between $5 and $25 million from financial disclosure forms. This is a situation that's a threat to our national security, since the debt is largely held by foreign countries who could pressure or blackmail Kushner, the same person who also has access to the top-secret, highly classified presidential daily briefing, even though he doesn't have a full security clearance. It's just like, and this is not just us saying like crazy liberal saying it's dangerous. No,

the fact that he doesn't have a security clearance means that the FBI has decided that he is not fit to protect America's security. They do not think he should have access to this classified information. And the White House is running a game to allow him to keep getting it by extending his interim clearance long beyond what would be appropriate under any circumstance. This is not a backlog. Kirchner has been there since day one. Yeah. I mean, maybe.

Gee, why isn't he getting security clearance? Could it be that he was setting up back channel communications with the Russians during the transition? I don't know. Could it be that he's one of the people, you know, under federal investigation for potential collusion with the Russian government when they tried to undermine American elections? I don't know. Maybe that's part of the thing that's holding up the paperwork, Dan. undermine American elections. I don't know. Maybe that's part of the thing that's holding up the paperwork, Dan. And that he lied repeatedly under oath on his financial disclosure and security forms. Could that be it? Which is also a crime. It is a crime. As you and I know,

when you fill out your security form, they tell you whatever you have done in your life is much less bad than lying about it on your security form right and Kushner did it time and again and is he in jail no he's in my fucking office in the west wing every day that is where he is it is um wait I have one more I have one more. I have one more. Finally, we also learned yesterday that the President of the United States, his personal lawyer, admitted, told us that he paid a porn star hush money who said she had an affair with Donald Trump. He paid her $130, star out of the Trump campaign account. Let me assure all of you, it came right from my own pocket, me, Michael Cohen. I paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 so she wouldn't talk about having an affair with the president while his wife was home with their newborn. Don't worry, folks.

That's what's going on. That happened yesterday. And how long have we been talking? 40 minutes now? We just got to that story that the president's personal lawyer paid off a porn star. What the fuck, man? Like this story has been bubbling for a long time. And we have sort of I don't know that we made a specific decision not to talk about it, but I don't we've barely talked about it in our endless series of podcasts, which I think has as much to do with there's just so much other stuff happening that is very real affecting people right now.

Right. that is very real affecting people right now. Right. And it's like whether Trump had an affair with a porn star or not, on the list of things I give a shit about, this is incredibly low. It just is. Well, it's also because it's like, of course Trump had an affair with a porn star. What do we think? We're confused about this?

Maybe this didn't happen? Of course it fucking happened. Look at this guy. Come on. Yeah. It's like every – I mean, I don't listen to Howard Stern, this maybe this didn't happen of course it fucking happened like look at this guy come on yeah it's like every i mean i don't listen to howard stern but people who listen to howard stern tell me that basically trump said he was doing stuff like this all the time so this is not a surprise what is interesting here is this is potentially illegal because this could be a violation of campaign finance law now there is a lot of republicans certainly believe this to be a violation of campaign finance law. A lot of Republicans certainly believe this to be the case, that behavior like this was illegal when John Edwards, former vice presidential nominee and Democratic presidential candidate, was involved in a similar situation.

And the Heritage Foundation put out a long paper arguing why it was illegal. But also Michael Cohen lied about this. He was only forced to tell the truth in response to Common Cause bringing action here, the campaign finance organization, or good government organization, I would say. And when this happened, he yelled, fake news, this isn't true. And what's important about this is Michael Cohen has been implicated tangentially in a lot of the Russian collusion stuff. And he is being a conduit to the Russians, maybe a conduit to what he leaks.

Like, I don't know what's true, but he yelled fake news to that, too. And so this is just part of a pattern of covering things up. And they lie and they lie and they lie. And when we get to the end of it, what we thought to be true is almost always true. So Dan, all these stories of corruption from the Porter cover-up by Kelly to Pruitt on First Class to Shulkin to Cohen, Stormy Daniels, like how did Democrats talk about all of this on the campaign trail, this culture of corruption in the White House? What's your best guess at a message here and how to connect this to other issues that Democrats are running on? Well, we've talked about this a

little before, but much of the Democratic political world and the media world is focused rightly on collusion, right? And collusion is a shorthand for obstruction of justice, working with the Russians, Russian interference in the election, all that. And that is the right, like our democratic institutions are potentially under assault, and we may be barreling towards a constitutional crisis for that very reason. But as a political message, corruption is better than collusion. Because a year into the collusion discussion, I'm not sure a single mind has been changed. Yeah.

Democrats should be running against a corrupt Washington establishment that is bilking taxpayers for personal gain. So David Shulkin can see Europe with his wife, whether it's Tom Price flying on private planes, whether it is taxpayer money being spent at Trump properties to enrich Trump and his children. And it is about the tax cut because the tax cut for most members of Congress, the president of the United States, and the Koch brothers, the Koch brothers wrote Paul Ryan a half a million dollar check. That is the textbook definition of corruption. We know this message works because this 2016 for Trump that Trump and the Republicans are full of shit. They are what they ran against. And this is how we do that. Yeah. No, that's a good point.

People who ran on this type of message in the past, 2006, Democrats before they swept into the House and the Senate. 2008, Barack Obama before he won in an electoral landslide. 2012, Barack Obama when he ran against Mitt Romney as a super rich dude who wanted to give billions of dollars of tax cuts to rich people. And like you said, Donald Trump in 2016. Those are the people who all ran on this kind of message, and they all did quite well. So it is important. And I think the other part to add to this is while they are bilking taxpayers, while they're giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, while they're doing all this corrupt shit, the Republicans and Trump are also proposing

to cut Medicaid, to cut Medicare, to cut education, to cut infrastructure spending, to cut all these things, to cut food assistance to the poor and to people with disabilities and women and children. They want to make it harder for you to buy health insurance. They want to make it harder for you to afford your prescription drugs. They want to make it harder for you to find job training, harder for you to afford college. They want to make it harder to do all of these things at the same time while they are giving billions and billions of dollars away to the people who are the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country. If you can't, I mean, like, this is the image, right? Republicans are giving a sack of cash to the Koch brothers and millionaires, to the Koch brothers and millionaires, and they're giving a can of beans to working class Americans.

It's like, if we had brilliant animators on the Democratic side, you would have an Oprah style video with Trump being like, you get a yacht, you get a yacht, you get a sack of cash, you get a can of beans. It's our Koch brother video that we had in Vegas. Yeah. That's what it is. That's our Koch brother video that we had in Vegas. Yeah. That's what it is.

That's exactly right. Okay. Well, again, most important message from today, go donate to stop Republicans in the fall. Because whether it is corruption, whether it is gun violence, whether it is immigration, I can't guarantee you we'll make progress on all these things and fix all these problems if we vote for a Democratic Congress. But I can guarantee you we will make zero progress if the Republicans sweep back into power in November. And I can guarantee you that if we do have a Democratic Congress, we can start

stopping some of this stuff. We can start investigating some of these people. And we end all of the Trump legislative agenda and any Trump judges or Trump Supreme Court justices. We end all of that if we win in November. So very important to do. Go to Swing Left, go to Indivisible and, you know, start helping out today. When we come back, we'll have the interview we did in Phoenix with immigration activist Marisa Franco. Our guest tonight is the director and co-founder of Mi Gente, a hub for Latinx organizing that brings together leadership, advocacy, culture, and media.

Please welcome Marisa Franco. Marisa Franco. What's up, y'all? Hey there. How are you liking Phoenix? So far, it's great. Yeah, it's great. Lucky you're not here in July, right? It's been perfect weather.

Marisa, thank you so much for joining us and being here tonight. Thanks for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in organizing, and what is Mijente's mission? So Mijente, I think I'll cut to the chase, is we started Mijente because we saw a massive gap in organizing infrastructure for Latinx people here in the U.S. But you can't really talk about where you're at without talking about where you're from.

And so I'm from a barrio about 15 minutes from here, Guadalupe, Arizona. And so I'm from a barrio about 15 minutes from here, Guadalupe, Arizona. And Guadalupe is mostly Mexican, Mexican-American, and Yaqui Indian. Guadalupe was where Sheriff Arpaio, when he decided to make immigration his core issue, was where he first held checkpoints. Arpaio's sheriffs policed my town. I have family members who stayed in Tent City. I have family members who were fed the green bologna that Arpaio would feed the inmates at the county jail. And I left Arizona to actually learn to organize because when I was coming up, it was just not the

same as it is today and I don't know if some of y'all feel the same way but it's a whole different ball game here we kicked his ass out ultimately but back in that time you know he was he was running game here and I left Arizona I left Phoenix I went across the country and I organized,

I worked with domestic workers, I worked around a cross-section of issues across the country. And in 2010, I came back to join the fight against SB 1070. And that... That led me to fighting deportations, but now one more deportation campaign. But at the end of that campaign, I think I was really struck with this reality of, like,

what is it going to take for us to actually win on immigration policy? And we need to build broader, and we actually need to look at what's happening, what gaps exist. And so I'm the daughter of immigrants. I was born here. And I know that there are more issues that our communities are facing, and it's not just immigration. Our schools are being closed. We don't have adequate health care.

We're poor. We're broke. We're in debt. And we need bigger, badder movement vehicles to fight for our future. And we need to do it in a way, like we talk about, you know, and I kept seeing demographics as destiny. And I go back to Guadalupe. I don't know what that means. I don't really know what that means. Because people are still broke. People are still getting detained.

People are still getting locked up. And so Mi Gente essentially was born, and we birthed it, to try to essentially build a field and build an ecosystem of Latinx people who want to see a different future, who want to fight for it. But not just for Latinx people, but actually seeing our future connected to others. Seeing Latinx people who are pro-black, pro-LGBTQ, pro-worker, pro-immigrant.

Because our community is all those things. And so that's where Mijente comes from. I want to go back to kicking his ass out about Joe Arpaio. Your activism helped defeat Arpaio in 2016. What lessons can people learn from that fight that they can apply to defeating xenophobe, anti-immigrant leaders like Trump, like other Arpaios out there?

What lessons can people learn from that? Number one, we can win in red states it is an error to concede building power and fighting in red states I think sustained organizing is what took our pile out it was direct action so we were knocking on doors but you can't ever take away the fact that we were sitting in the streets. So people sat in the streets, undocumented immigrants that said, we're tired of you going to our neighborhoods. We're tired of you going to our work.

I'm going to sit in front of this courthouse where you're getting tried because you're criminal as breaking all kind of laws and you coming for us. I'm going to sit here, come and get me. And that was just as important as knocking those doors and getting the voters out. And then I'd say the third part is like, who actually was part of it? I mean, he, there's a community that had a target on our backs for many years. And it was those people speaking truth to power, telling their story, being willing to come out. And I think those folks being centrally involved in leading that fight was critically important to defeating Arpaio and taking him out of office. So on the day that you defeated Joe Arpaio, you also woke up to find out that Donald Trump, Joe Arpaio's friend, was praising the United

States. How did you feel about that? What was your emotional reaction on that day? It was very bittersweet. And I remember we marched from, there was a victory party that we had at a local community center we marched to what I call the death star which is the building he built for himself the sheriff's jail whatever and I remember people were crying and I couldn't tell if they were crying because they were happy because he'd lost or they were crying because Donald Trump had won and we know exactly what it means to have a Donald Trump in office because in many ways we've been living in Trump's America here in Arizona. When you hear people like Donald Trump talk about border enforcement, it's always

talking about crime and drugs and gangs. How does that description square with what you see on the ground every day in border communities in Arizona? Well, point one, the gangsters I see are in Washington, D.C., in that White House. Point two, I don't understand how they're talking about, I don't know how he grandstands that he's going to secure the border. He can't even secure the White House. They can't run simple background checks on half of the clowns that work there. But point three, my people are from border communities,

and I know there's probably people here from border communities here. And I think about the late great lesbian Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa that talked about the borderlands and she said you know the borderlands you're you're neither here nor there she talked about the border as an open wound she talked about you, like the way that people on the border, people are sitting at the intersection of hope and hustle. But you know, at the end of the day, how different is that from anywhere else? The other side of it, though, is that the reality is that the border already is militarized. For people who live in border states and have actually seen how things have changed,

who live in border states and have actually seen how things have changed. There's drones, every year there's more agents, every year there's less regard. When you go south of Tucson in the state of Arizona, that is called the Constitution Free Zone. And so frankly, I don't really understand how many more toys Donald Trump wants to buy. And so I think it's critically important for all of us to actually start unpacking what do we mean by border enforcement

because it's always the first thing to get negotiated away but I think what we're uncovering is that there's increased surveillance and that borderlands and border communities are becoming and are a laboratory for things that will be used on all of us and so I think it's important for us to follow the money and it's important for us to question how quickly we are willing to negotiate those communities away. Before we let you go,

one of the most pressing issues when we talk about a lot on this show is about the 800,000 dreamers who are staring down the barrel of deportation if Congress does not do anything to put a legal framework around DACA. If congressional democratic leaders were here tonight, what would you say to them about how to prepare for that fight?

Well... Say whatever you want. What I would say to them is that you need to make it count. You need to play like you're in the fourth quarter, if they don't like sports metaphors like I do. You need to politic like it's your last term. We need you to be on the courage track, not on the career track.

Because I think that, I don't know about y'all, and I don't know about your listeners, but I think that a lot of us really made a key, key lesson and an observation in 2016, and that is that we can't continue to sit this out. However, I think it's important for Democrats to realize that is not just a passive base of voters who will continue to vote you in. In fact, the lesson was that we will run and we will take your ass out. We will primary you if you don't do the right thing. And that's the message I think they need to hear.

And that's the challenge I think I pose to all of us in terms of how we roll on this. We can't just be passive voters. We've got to actually hold their feet to the fire. Marisa, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for everything you've been doing. Please keep up the fight. Thanks to Marisa Franco for that interview.

That's all the time we have for today. Go buy Dan's book, sign up, pre-order, whatever it is. Is that what it is now? Yeah, you can go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, pre-order the book. And do it because it'd make me happy. But more importantly, a portion of all the proceeds goes to our friends at Swinlift. Excellent. We'll see you all again on Monday, guys.

Take care. Bye, everyone. Bye.