Pod Save America - "Biden cancels student debt!"

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Melissa Murray guest hosts as Donald Trump kinda, sorta mounts a defense in the rapidly moving criminal investigation into his habit of illegally storing highly classified documents at his beach house. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joins to discuss President Biden’s huge and long awaited decision to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt, and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs joins to talk about her campaign for Governor. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Jon Favreau is out of the office this week, but we are very excited to have Melissa Marie, the co-host of the amazing Strict Scrutiny Podcast joining me today. Melissa, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. We're very excited to have you because today we're going to talk about quote unquote law things. And it's very important to have a quote unquote law person here to talk about it. So this is great.

Law-ish. Law-ish. It's law-adjacent things, which is still a zone that John and I should never enter on our own. So thank you for chaperoning me through this. Well, I just want to put out there that John Lovett did get a really good score on the LSAT. So he could technically step in at any time here. Well, I would like to point out that I took not one, not two, but three common law classes when I was in college. So I feel like I'm at least on the outside looking in, but I'm kind of in the zone. I mean, you could be on the Supreme Court with that background. Don't count yourself out. Technically and constitutionally,

I could be. Okay. On today's show, Donald Trump kind of sort of mounted a fence in the rapidly moving criminal investigation into his habit of illegally storing highly classified documents at his beach house. President Joe Biden makes a huge and long awaited decision to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will come on to tell us all about it. And finally, Arizona Secretary of State Kitty Hobbs will join me to talk about her campaign for governor against the most MAGA of MAGA candidates. to talk about our campaign for governor against the most MAGA of MAGA candidates. But first, as everyone here knows, because we tell you all the time, we are huge fans of Kari Yuma shoes,

but we are excited to announce that Crooked and Kari Yuma have now collaborated on two new awesome pairs of shoes that the listeners of Pod Save America will love. You can order your pairs today in the Crooked store. And as always, a portion of the proceeds from these shoes and any item you buy in our store goes to Vote Riders, the leading organization focused on fighting voter ID. One design features an I voted sticker print all over the shoe, and another one is a sleek white pair that says no steps back on the side. Get it?

It's a walking metaphor. Anywho, check them out at crooked.com slash kicks. Also, with election day less than 100 days away and early voting starting even earlier in many states, election officials will be deciding in the next few weeks how many early voting and election day polling locations they can open, which means we need people signing up to be poll workers right now. We are working with Power to the Polls to recruit as many poll workers as possible. Sign up at powerthepolls.org slash crookedmedia. That was exhausting. I honestly don't know how John does it every week, twice a week. All right, let's get to the news. We are learning more and

more about Mar-a-Lago and what exactly was in Trump's possession. According to a May 10th letter to Trump lawyers from the National Archives, Trump tried to delay the FBI's review of the records he turned over in January. There were 700 pages of classified documents in his possession, and some of them contained what a source told the Washington Post were, quote, the most sensitive secrets we hold. All right, Melissa. First, I just got to ask, who among us has it misplaced 700 classified documents? I mean, Dan, who among us hasn't taken the nuclear football home because you had to do some work later that night? I mean, this is an easy mistake to make. This is an easy mistake to make.

I mean, 700. Yes. I mean, you go home. You're watching Jeanine Pirro. You might have to launch a tactical nuclear strike. So you have to have it. You got to have it with you. Yeah. I mean, it's a work from home.

WFH. That's right. Not WTF. WFH. Yes. In terms of a potential criminal prosecution, as we look at this letter, help us understand what's more significant, the amount of documents, the types of secrets held in the document, or the fact that it appears that Trump lawyers lied about having the documents to

begin with. Maybe none of that, right? So one interesting twist. One of the things I thought was really revealing about this letter, and again, the idea that the Trump people wanted this letter out in public is utterly baffling to me because I think it's incredibly damning for the former president. But one of the things the letter documents and makes quite clear is that there was this constant back and forth with the former administration about the return of the documents, whether the documents, in fact, were privileged, who held the privilege. And the picture that you get coming out of this is that there's almost a willful and intentional effort to keep the documents out of the hands of the National Archives, to not return them. And if you think about some of the statutory predicates that were identified in that search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, among them is the Espionage Act. And one of the

elements of the Espionage Act is willfully refusing to turn over documents that are sensitive to the national security. And, you know, just a lot of what you see documented in this letter seems to be about willful, intentional, purposeful retention of sensitive items. We've been debating back and forth on this show for the last two weeks about why Trump might have wanted these documents. He is not someone who is known to care about policy. He famously did not read his briefings, classified or otherwise. There was even some anecdotes in some of these books that he preferred pictures and over words in his documents. I mean, who doesn't? Who doesn't, Dan? That's right. In today's meme economy,

there would be a much more efficient way to get presidents briefed up on very sensitive things. Why can't the Constitution just be gifts, Dan? Really? That's right. Do you have a theory, I mean, about why he might have wanted these? Anything you have gotten from any of the various statements or documents that suggest why he – because he very clearly, this was not an accident. He clearly fought hard to keep these as you pointed out, but do you have any thoughts on why that might be? So, you know, why release the letter? I can only imagine that the release of the letter is part of this sort of grievance style politics where he has imagined himself the victim of a dark Brandon slash Biden-led campaign to bring him down, even though he's not doing anything but hanging out with 700 pages of classified documents at his beach club.

That's the only reason I can think of for releasing this. Why have the documents? Like, that, I think, is a different question. And I can't help but read that happening without sort of reflecting back on the first Trump impeachment, where the whole question, I mean, like this is like now we're really reaching into the vault. The first Trump impeachment was all about whether or not the president had withheld aid to the Ukraine in exchange for the president of the Ukraine, Zelensky, providing who it was alleged would go to any lengths to best a political opponent, including using whatever resources of the United States were at his disposal. And when I think about these 700 pages of classified documents,

that's what I think about. Were they there because he viewed them as being at his disposal for leveraging and perhaps obtaining an advantage in something else that we don't even know about. So there's no good reason for someone to have 700 pages of classified documents in what is likely a very humid basement in Mar-a-Lago. I grew up in Florida. I guarantee you it's an incredibly humid basement. But again, I think you can't think about it without sort of reflecting back on some of the different episodes in this man's tenure as president, where we just saw a lot of unorthodox use of American resources and alleged unorthodox uses of American resources. The other reason that I think Trump may have quite stupidly released this letter is, and I can't believe I'm about to say what I'm going to say because it makes me

really question a lot of my life decisions, but John Solomon, who is a noted conspiracy theorist crank who wrote a lot of the fan fiction about Trump in Ukraine during the first impeachment, fan fiction about Trump in Ukraine during the first impeachment, went on Steve Bannon's podcast to talk about the letter. And John Solomon, in addition to being someone who was fired from the Hill for lying, which is basically – the Hill is a place you can't get fired from. It's like getting – it's just like hard to imagine that ever happening to someone. Solomon is also Donald Trump's handpicked representative to the National Archives. Like he is the person who is supposed to communicate with the National Archives about various documents like President Obama, you know, when he was writing his memoir, was constantly getting papers from the National Archives to look at. And there was this very specific process with lawyers and high-level staff members who were

communicating, and they were being returned all that. And Trump has this complete nut job doing it. But so John Solomon went on CBN's podcast. And just the way we know that Trump released this letter is it was released on John Solomon's website, which I'm sure is like- Very normal. Very normal. Super.

It's a super normal. That's a traditional legal way of getting information out is on a website that's probably banned in a lot of places. But in it, John Solomon argued that the letter proved that Joe Biden masterminded, signed off on, was somehow involved in the raid at Mar-a-Lago. And just so we can dispense with that, and you may have more to add here, but the specific mention of President Biden in the letter has to do with the claims, the completely ridiculous claims of executive privilege that former President Trump was trying to make over these documents. Presidents are the ones who make decisions about executive privilege, just as it was President Biden who made decisions about what documents would be released to the January 6th committee and those sorts of things. It has nothing to do with the raid.

You need like several spools of red string to get to where they're going. But it was part of this effort to try to blame Biden, as you said, to make himself the victim of some conspiracy. Well, so let me just like make one amendment to what you said. And I agree with all of that. This is part of the victimization narrative that is being spun. It was not a raid of Mar-a-Lago, right? I think that's important to underscore. There was a validly obtained and executed search warrant. Like someone had to go to a judge and provide probable cause for the search. And that was all provided. And it was all on the up and up. And so to say that it was a raid, I think does play into this narrative that he is somehow a victim who has

been wronged, which I don't think is the case. But again, I do think this is part of this narrative where he has been besieged and beleaguered. And Joe Biden is a puppet master orchestrating everything. And the other part of this, and this sort of goes with everything that Trump has done, right? It's everything he said. Like, they planted the evidence. They planted the evidence, but the evidence they planted was not actually a crime because I had this mysterious, magical standing order to declassify everything.

I declassified it before it was planted, which was the most prescient thing I've ever done because I'm a genius. Yes. Yeah. All of those things is all part of the, it's like the embodiment of the Trumpian right-wing media strategy that Steve Bannon once called flood the zone with shit, which is you just throw everything you possibly can, even if it is ridiculous, contradictory, absurd, at the wall, distract the media, distract Democrats, hope that less engaged voters just throw up their arms and say, who the fuck knows what to believe, and to also give

who the fuck knows what to believe, and to also give as many very thin reads to all the people who are predisposed to stick with Trump, to give them a reason to stick with Trump, to hang on to to stick with Trump. And that like, it doesn't matter how ridiculous that's, that's what it, that's like, that's sort of what they're doing. The problem they face is, and this is where I really want to get your take is, when that has worked quite successfully in the past, including in both impeachments, it is because it was happening in the realm of politics, where the audience was voters in a deeply polarized country, powered by right-wing propaganda or Congress and the Senate where you had politicians who had political incentives to behave certain ways. Where I think Trump is struggling here is this is not a case that is necessarily going to take place in the realm of politics. He's not trying to persuade

Susan Collins to stick with her party or Lisa Murkowski to stick with her party or give some talking points to Lindsey Graham. This is going to happen in the court of law. And so in that context, there's been this running debate among people on Twitter, which is obviously very important, about whether the Department of Justice simply executed this legally authorized court-approved search warrant that was done in a very peaceful fashion, not a raid, because they needed to get these documents back, which seemed to be quite sensitive, or because it's part of an actual effort to seek evidence for a potential criminal case against them. Is there anything you've learned over the last couple of weeks that gives you a clue as to

which direction you think this is going? So I love the distinction that you draw between law and politics. I also love the idea of just, you know, flinging shit at the wall, because it reminds me of going to the Oakland Zoo, which has this chimpanzee enclosure. And basically, these chimpanzees literally just fling fecal matter at each other all day. So I just like had this image of Steve Bannon, like in an enclosure, just flinging.. Well, I would say I am a, my family is a member of the Oakland Zoo. So we are very frequent viewers of Zedd. It's very popular in my family, the chimpanzee enclosure. Well, you know, I lived in Oakland for a long time and spent a lot of time at the Oakland Zoo. So

I have seen all of this, the chimpanzee media strategy up close. But I think you're right. this, the chimpanzee media strategy up close. But I think you're right. This will play out differently because it's not being reviewed in the court of public opinion, but instead in a court of law. And I think you're seeing some of the limitations of that strategy already. So, you know, for example, we know that on Monday, the former president filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida before Judge Eileen Cannon, who is a Trump appointee, to basically have a special master review the boxes and make his own determination about what could be returned to the president, but also to have some of these documents returned to the former president because they are, quote unquote, his. And Judge Cannon, who is a Trump appointee, kind of wrote back in this sort of, you know,

letter order or I actually wasn't a letter. She wrote back. She sort of clapped back in this order to the litigants that they had to basically rewrite their filing in a way that was actually legible to the court. I mean, it's basically judicial equivalent of what even is this, like WTF, like you wrote a complaint asking for relief. You didn't specify the kind of relief you wanted. You didn't specify a theory of law that you could predicate your case on. You didn't specify the kind of relief you wanted. You didn't specify a theory of law that you could predicate your case on. You didn't identify any evidence that made you entitled to this kind of relief. It's just seriously WTF. What even is this? And again, if you read that complaint, it is basically a 20 page rant that's intended to be a press release, talking about the Biden witch hunt,

talking about all these things, like he's a victim. It's not a legal filing. And she kind of said, this is not a legal filing. If you're going to do this in a court of law, you actually have to do law. And so that, to me, is one of the chief distinctions. They're not going to be able to get away with the kind of shit flinging media strategy that I think works in politics in a court of law, even before someone who is on the bench because Donald Trump appointed them. I mean, there might even be limits to what he has done as president to shape the judiciary in the way these kinds of filings will be received by the court. So that, I think, is the most important distinction here. And I think we're going to see that play out.

One of the funniest parts about that is, and I'm getting this from a New York Times article from the other day, which is in that Tuesday hearing, the judge told Trump's attorneys, who, according to the New York Times, neither of them were licensed to practice in the state of Florida. Yeah, there was a whole thing about whether they had done the proper requirements for pro hoc vice, which is how you get to practice in the Southern District of Florida. Yeah. And according to the judge said, quote, a sample motion can be found on the court's website since they had filled out all the paperwork wrong.

It's just so... I'm assuming you never want to hear that as an attorney sitting before a judge. Download the sample motion from the website. Well, I mean, it's also I think it says a lot about the kind of legal counsel that's available to him right now. And that, I think, is a real question. You know, during the first impeachment and even in the second impeachment, he had access to lawyers who were, I think, you know, very good lawyers. I mean, say what you want about Pat Cipollone. He is a good lawyer. Right. Same for Pat Philbin. Like they they they know how to do this, even if they're doing it on behalf of someone who might be a sociopath and potential autocrat in the making.

a sociopath and potential autocrat in the making. But this filing is not something I would ever want to see one of my students file in court. I mean, it's just so devoid of any substance or any of just the traditional markers of an actual legal filing that it would make you wonder, like, is this the extent of your professional acumen? Who trained you? Like, this is bad. John and I talked about this last week, but there's been a lot of reports that Trump is really struggling to find quality attorneys to represent him, which is unusual in the sense that politically connected, rich, even obviously guilty politically connected and rich, particularly white men, never have trouble finding attorneys. Do you have any theories as to why he can't get some person

who understands how to motion to represent him? Like someone who understands how to wave into a district where they're not actually licensed to practice? Yes, yes. So really complicated, high-level constitutional interpretation like that. So I think one thing is, you know, we've famously heard that he doesn't pay his lawyers. Michael Cohen talked about getting stiffed on the bill by Donald Trump. That surely has to be part of it. But I also think at this point in time, there are real reputational costs to representing the former president. And I'm not saying that that is necessarily a good thing. I truly believe in the Sixth Amendment, anyone who is facing criminal liability deserves vigorous counsel. And I believe that for everybody,

because I don't think that's a constitutional commitment you can be itinerant about. But I do think that given the adjacency to the insurrection, everything that has happened, the two impeachments, I think there are reputational costs to any lawyer who steps up to represent Donald Trump. And I think those reputational costs are real and people are weighing them. But I also think there has to be some consideration that this is a client who is unlikely to listen to you, a client who thinks that he knows best. And in pushing for his preferred outcome, this is a client who may likely lead you into some ethical thickets that may compromise your ability to practice law in the future, may even compromise your ability to live freely because he could get you into trouble in terms of your own criminal liability. I mean, with that National Archives letter, the whole discussion of the lawyer signing off on the document saying, okay, this is it,

we've given you everything, and perhaps knowing that, in fact, that is not true, that's a real problem. That's an exposure to criminal liability. And I imagine there are a lot of people who are like, you know what? There are plenty of people to represent. I don't have to do this. Yeah, I think that you hit right at it, which is Donald Trump is like a super spreader of criminality, right? You come near him, you work for him, your odds of needing an attorney, of being indicted,

of being interviewed. MAGA, making attorneys get attorneys. That's what it stands for. I have said this over and over again. They are all, all of his attorneys, White House counsel, private attorneys, we're all seeing their video, deposition videos in the January 6th hearing. And it's very specifically, you don't know if he is telling you the truth and you are put in a position of signing an affidavit based on false information.

I mean, this person also, a lot of people who work around Trump, even if they are members of the bar, also lie on his behalf all the time. So maybe this person knew they were lying. But either way, I imagine if you're an attorney or someone else with any other options in life, you might choose to avoid catching crimes from Donald Trump just by being in his general presence, right? Getting a dime dropped on you. Exactly. You don't want that. But I just want to take advantage of having you, once again, a noted legal expert here on a podcast devoid of legal experts on most days. I think you're selling Lovett short. Fair, fair. He's on vacation, and he's never listened to the Thursday Pod, so he'll have no

idea I said this. But what do you think is going to happen next here? What should we be looking for is this case proceeds, or this investigation proceeds, I guess is the right way to say it. You know, I didn't answer your question about what's the DOJ doing. I think that question leads inexorably to this question. I don't know what the strategy is for the DOJ. Is it simply to recover the documents or rather to gather evidence that makes it more likely than not that a criminal prosecution could be mounted? I think this is where the realm of politics and the realm of law sort of get inverted. I think that the fact that all of this is coming out right now, that there's 700 pages of documents, many of them are incredibly sensitive. Like someone said, these are like the most important secrets that the nation holds. I think it's going to be really hard for the Department of Justice

to simply say, we got everything, right? We did a damage assessment. It's all good. Let's move on. I think it's going to be really hard for people to just move on without any sense of accountability. At a minimum, I think there's definitely going to be legislation about how presidential records are kept and how they're retained more than what we have now. And, you know, the Presidential Records Act that we have now is a vestige of the aftermath of Watergate. I think we're going to get more legislation around these kinds of questions coming out of this. But I think there are going to be a lot of people who rightly will demand accountability, like the idea that you had this

back and forth with the National Archives, the FBI is involved. We had to have surveillance video to figure out who's coming in and out of this place where you're keeping these documents. I think a lot of people are going to say like, that can't be how we do national security. That can't be what a former president, someone who has a fiduciary obligation to the nation and the national security, that can't be how he conducts himself. And I think people are going to want accountability. And that may very well be in the form of criminal prosecution. Whether the DOJ takes that step, I think, is another question. But I think there are going to be people demanding it. Putting us – like obviously I can't comment with any substance on how they would make such a case or whatever it is. who knowingly and willfully took documents and then allegedly tried to hide them after signing legally enforceable documents and saying that they did not have those,

in a world in which the Department of Justice has prosecuted Reality Winner for something much smaller, has aggressively and I think in many cases inappropriately, gone after people who have leaked classified information to reporters. Obviously, we have a two-tiered or multi-tiered system of justice in this country where politically connected people do not pay the same price that those who are not politically connected do. But this is such an obvious, painful case that not pursuing this would seem like a very, very hard thing to explain if it is as, at least appears to the non-liars on this podcast, as open and shut as it seems, right? So I definitely think that if there is a decision

to not go forward with a prosecution, it will, I think, lay bare the fact that there are various tiers of justice here that operate in different ways for different people, depending on their level of political connectedness. I think one other thing that we can't overlook here is just sort of DOJ norms around launching a prosecution. And these are prudential norms, launching a prosecution close to an impending election. If you count the days between when the search of Mar-a-Lago took place and when the midterm elections are supposed to happen, I think it's about 90 or 91 days. And typically, the DOJ norms that you don't do a prosecution close to an election and close is usually between two or three months out from an election. So I wonder, just given the timing, whether that wasn't purposeful.

They waited until the outer reach of that in order to do the search and conduct the search. And it may mean that we don't hear anything else about what comes out of the search and where DOJ is on its next steps until after the midterm elections. And that might be shaped by whether at that point in time, we know if former President Trump is now current candidate Trump. And that may also shape the decision about how to go forward in terms of accountability.

So I think there are a lot of prudential concerns here. This is not to be an apologist for the DOJ, but to sort of identify some of the things I think they're likely thinking about. But again, you're exactly right. A lot of people have gone to jail for a lot less than this. It would be really, I understand why the Department of Justice may not, we're getting to the point where it would be very weird to announce some next step here this close to an election. But what would be really, I think, terrible if Donald Trump's announcement of his candidacy for president, something he already has said he's already basically announced. He has said – he's already basically announced – not that we're prosecuting a lot of FEC violations, but he's in a real legal gray area about his next candidacy given what he said publicly. But if the worldview is that you can't be indicted for criminal defense while president because of the OLC opinion from many years ago, but you also can't be indicted for a criminal offense committed while you weren't president because you were running for president, we're going to end up with a lot more people running for president in this country if that is the case. We have the Republican Party is going to announce just to avoid

prosecution for various insurrection related crimes. Well, I think it just sort of shows that these norms were created and conceived of at a time when you just couldn't imagine a president of the United States or someone running for president, like doing anything that could be considered crime adjacent or, or criming in full. I mean, like, you know, presidents don't do crimes and, you know, maybe that's entirely out the window. And we're just like, you know, some sweet summer child who is reflecting on a bygone day when, you know, you didn't crime while president. Or while running for governor. I mean, just all across the board. You know, I mean, we even had

in the last election, in the 2018 election cycle, two sitting, two members, Republican members of Congress who were under active indictment who ran and won their election. Now they did retire after being convicted, but were able to win election underdiamond. So we're definitely in a new era here. Okay. Finally, let's end on a little bit of good news here. A lot of pundits declared in the immediate aftermath of the thing we are not calling a raid, that this would fire up the Republican base and be a political boon for the Republican Party. But on Tuesday night in New York, Democrat Pat Ryan easily won a special election against a quality opponent in a district that Biden won by two and a half points. So, Melissa, do you think it's possible the leader of the Republican Party stealing

nuclear secrets may not be the political win that the pundits thought? I mean, I think it's possible that some people may have been like, hmm, sounds shady, right? This is not going to be the political win that the pundits thought? I mean, I think it's possible that some people may have been like, hmm, sounds shady, right? This is not going to be the, but not everyone buys the grievance victimization narrative. Like Joe Biden didn't make you do this. And I also think it's not simply that the prospect of retaining 700 pages worth of classified information is not appealing to the electorate. I mean, I think there are just a lot of aspects of the Republican platform right now that are unappealing to broad swaths of the public, right? So the stance on reproductive

freedom, for example, the effort to limit the opportunity of individuals to participate in the electoral process, probably not a big winner. So I think there's just a lot of places where people are just like, you know what, I'm not down for that. It may also be the case that the Ryan race took place in a jurisdiction that has a very active Democratic electorate or portion of the electorate, and they were especially turned out for the primaries. I mean, we had a lot going on in New York at that time. A lot of things could have been at play. But I do think this idea that there is some sector of the public that just isn't buying into what the Republican Party is selling right now is a real thing. And I think we saw it in Kansas.

And I think, you know, we saw it last Tuesday, and maybe we'll see it going forward. Yeah, I don't think Pat Ryan won because of this new criminal investigation of Trump. But it what it did not do, based on this one specific race, is change the trajectory that Democrats have been on for the last few months. No, I think that's right. This is the fourth special election in a row where Democrats have outperformed their 2020 numbers. And so the idea that this was going to put a stop to the momentum that has been growing, starting with the Dobbs decision and then proceeding through this recent bit of success

for Democrats and lower gas prices, et cetera, is that this is not, you know, it is probably at best for the Republicans neutral and at worst, you know, slightly detrimental, but it is not a sleeper issue. It seems like the people, you know, if it was going to be this red wave is going to fire everyone up, you would have seen some indications of that here and that did not happen. So it appears that at least as of today in American politics, getting your home visited to by the FBI is not yet a win for your party. So we can all sleep well knowing that. Not a win. I like how you said that, visiting by the FBI. I am working really hard to get Raid out of my vocabulary.

Because yes, as you pointed out, it was court approved. It was peaceful. They even wore cargo shorts. I'm not sure why that was mandatory. But they were- It's Florida. You have to wear cargo shorts and a short sleeve shirt everywhere. I mean, do you need, I mean, did they need additional,

I guess they need additional pockets because there were 700 documents to find. Yeah, you roll them up, you stick them in your side pocket to get it out. Yes, that's probably how Trump got them out of the White House, to be honest with you. All right, Melissa Murray, thank you so much for joining us, for filling in for John and giving us actual knowledge on legal issues. Thanks for having me. When we come back, White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. In an executive order yesterday, President Biden made history by canceling $10,000 in student loan

debt for all Americans, making less $125,000 a year and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Here to talk about this big news is the White House Press Secretary, Corrine Jean-Pierre. Corrine, welcome to Pod Save America. Hey, Dan. Thank you so much for having me. I have been wanting to be on the show for a long time, and I know it's not easy to get on, so I appreciate you allowing little old me on. So thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. You're the White House press secretary. You have an open invite to our podcast. I appreciate it. Tell us about this announcement, what it means, who's impacted, and how do people go get,

sign up for this debt relief? Where do they go to get the help? So, and you, thank you for laying it out pretty well for me. So I'll just kind of piggyback on what you just said, Dan. Yes, this is a historic, historic announcement. This has not been done by any other president before, which is doing this, the work and keeping his campaign promise of doing that $10,000 debt relief. And he just didn't stop there. It is up to $20,000. And the president wanted to make sure that he did this

in a fiscally responsible way, in a balanced way. And that's what you saw yesterday, because it's not just the $10,000 for people who are making less under 125,000. And then if you add the Pell Grant borrowers, that will that will add for them up to 20,000. If you think about Pell Grant borrows, I was a Pell Grant recipient when I was going through undergrad. And it is for households. Just think about this for households, for folks who don't know, some folks may have gone through the same thing and know this personally. If you're a household making $60,000, well, it's average out. It's mostly Pell Grant recipients are folks who are nearly making $60,000 per

household and half of the Pell Grant borrowers are at 30,000 per household, and half of the Pell Grant borrowers are at $30,000 per household. That's a big deal, because this is a targeted, targeted effort for folks who really need that extra breathing room, as you hear the President say often. So that's that piece. And then there's two more other pieces I want to talk about really quickly, and I'll give it back to you, Dan, is the other piece is that the pause that we have had since the previous administration and it's been extended under this administration a couple of times is going to be lifted at December 31st. So we wanted to do this about the same time. So to give people continue to give people a little bit of breathing room. And the third thing is there is a reform component to this. room. And the third thing is there is a reform component to this. People have been asking us,

well, what happens to the folks who are going to come, who are in high school or who are going to be future borrowers? Doing this reform piece, we got to understand this student loan piece, it is, the system is just not working. It is a broken system. So we wanted to make sure that for future borrowers and current borrowers, we are taking that 10%, that 5% cap. I'm sorry, that 10% cap, 200 bucks a month for your student loan, it will now be 100 bucks a month. So that is incredibly important as well to make sure that we're giving relief and we're thinking about, the president wanted to think about future borrowers as well. So this is exciting. This is historic. We are proud of what we have been able to do, and it's just going to help so many, so many Americans and families. If you're a person who qualifies for this debt relief, either under student loans or Pell Grants, is there a place you go to sign up? And if those applications aren't online yet, any sense of when they will be?

So as you know, you've been you've've been, you've sat in this, in this building before. And so this was a directive that was done by the Department of Education. This is an administrative action, as you know. So the Department of Education is going to run this process. There is a website that is set up. What I tell people to go is to whitehouse.gov. There's a separate website, but the whitehouse.gov is pretty simple too. There's a banner right at the top of the website. You click on that banner. It takes you to the actual website, directs you to the website that talks about the debt relief program that we just announced yesterday. And then you can sign up to get email updates so that you know exactly what you need to do. Department of Education is going to do all that work. They are working through that process.

They will have an application for people to sign up to sign up for. There's about eight million people that we that that we the administration has automatic information on, right, that we just have information so that that will automatically, they'll see that relief pretty quickly. But then others have to kind of check and make sure and go through the process. And that's going to happen through the Department of Education. Now, predictably, this announcement calls Republicans to flip their lid. They're screaming about fiscal responsibility and helping certain people and not helping others. What is your guys' response to the overall Republican critique that we, everyone listening to this knows is complete and total bullshit, but I want to hear

it from the White House as to what is your response to what the Republicans have been sort of screaming about in response to this plan? It is dead. It is so ironic. It is incredibly ironic. And I say this because how irresponsible were they back in 2017 when they gave a tax cut to the wealthy? Two trillion dollars, two trillion dollars. They didn't have a way to pay for it. Two trillion dollars didn't have a way to pay for it. And it was for the wealthy. And the way that worked out is 85 percent of that tax cut benefits is going to go to people who are making less than seventy five thousand. So you see that the reverse of what we are trying to do, we are we care about the little guy. We care about the little the people who have been left behind, who have been crushed and crippled by the economy the last two years. We know that the president has done so much work to turn the economy back on. But it is such I mean, it is we are happy to have that conversation.

We are happy to have that discussion, because, again, when we were talking about those PPP loans back during the beginning of the pandemic that was going to small businesses, Back during the beginning of the pandemic that was going to small businesses, no one said anything when we were forgiving loans because of the PPP loans. No one, no one on that side said anything about it. Now that we're trying to help, you know, doing this in a targeted way, helping people that really need the help. Oh, now we hear, now we hear this is a problem. In general, we can't take critiques seriously from people who fought like hell to keep huge corporations paying zero dollars in taxes. They're not really credible messengers on this. But there are some critiques that I think I would love to get your take on because they're less on their face, ridiculous than the Republican ones. One is that this is going to increase college tuition. It doesn't address college affordability. Like this is obviously one piece of a larger college affordability plan that the

president campaigned on and has worked on, you know, going back to when I worked in that building with him. Could you just talk about what else the president wants to do to address the larger problem of college affordability? And that is something that Secretary Cardonas, who is, as you know, the secretary for the Department of Education, is taking very seriously and keeping a close eye on that. It has said he's going to crack down on those efforts if we see those happening, which we people, you know, clearly we're expecting that to happen. That is not surprising that that would happen. That is not surprising that that would happen. And so he has put forth some real programs to keep an eye on that and to take action if it warrants or when it warrants. The other pieces, the other things that this president has done, which has been historic,

and you're right, it's not just been this past 19 months, it has been with the Obama-Biden administration. That is something that we all cared about. He cared been with the Obama-Biden administration. That is something that we all cared about. He cared about with President Obama and did the work there in a way that was effective for people who needed the help. But the thing that I wanted to just also mention is the president has also $32 billion. He's been able to take away loan debt for about 1.6 million Americans. That's something that he was able to do very early on. That's $32 billion for 1.6 million Americans. That's incredibly important. When you think about HBCUs, the historically Black college and universities, we're talking about $6 billion because of the American Rescue Plan, which by the way, only Democrats voted for and helped turn the economy back on during one of

the hardest, toughest times for Americans because of this once-in-a-generation pandemic. And so the HBCU investment is at $6 billion, which is also a historic amount to invest. So we have done extra, extra work and taken extra steps to make sure that people who have been feeling the crunch with tuition increases or high costs can get a little bit, also a little bit more breathing room. From the American Rescue Plan, which I just mentioned, there's about $40 billion that was put in there so colleges and universities could help people, young people who were really at need, to make sure that their costs were lowered as well. Again, only Democrats, only Democrats voted for the American Rescue Plan.

That seems to be a real theme these days and a lot of things that help working people. The president has said that fighting inflation is his top priority. He just signed the Inflation Reduction Act. It's not just Republicans. There are some economists, including Democratic economists, who've argued that this decision would impact, would potentially increase inflation. What are the White House economists and economic advisors saying about why that's not the case? Yeah, so we don't think that's the case. And we've heard from experts as well, including Wall Street experts who have said it will not have a meaningful impact on inflation. Look, one of the things that we have talked about, and I

believe I said this at the beginning, and if I did, I apologize for repeating myself, is that we have, you know, this president has been very, very keyed in and tuned in on the deficit reduction, right? The first, and this is part of deficit direct deduction is indeed part of fighting inflation. They go hand in hand in many ways. When you want to fight inflation, one of the things they can do is reduce the debt. And in the first year we saw in this administration, three hundred eighty billion dollars of deficit reduction. By the end of this fiscal cycle, which ends in October, we'll see $1.7 trillion in deficit deduction. And that is because of the work that this administration has done to make sure that that happened. And so you have seen how seriously we take this. We want to make sure when we put out this plan,

we wanted to make sure that it was fiscally balanced and smart, but also was done in a targeted way to truly, truly help Americans. There have also been some critiques here, including from some Democrats, that this obviously affects only people who went to college, not the millions and millions of Americans who did not go to college. Maybe, I think once again, that is taking this executive order out of the larger context of the Biden economic clinic. You talk a little bit about some of the things that this administration wants to do to help working middle-class people that, oh, I don't know, maybe Republicans may be blocking in the Senate. Well, there was one bill that just got signed by this president that

was certainly blocked by Republicans, which is the Inflation Reduction Act. And here's the thing about this, Dan. If Republicans truly cared about fighting inflation, they would have voted or supported the only inflation bill that was in front of them a few weeks ago, which is this Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to do wonders. a few weeks ago, which is this Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to do wonders. It fights special interests, right? We've been fighting, Democrats have been fighting special interests, wealthy, wealthy special interests like pharma, for example, for decades. And what the Inflation Reduction Act is going to do, now that it is law, it's going to lower cost of pharmaceutical drug costs for our seniors. Just think about it.

Our seniors, I mean, I know people, I have friends who pay, who have to help. And actually the president did this when his mom was getting older. She had to pay thousands of dollars a month, a month on prescription drugs. And what this will do, and this is so many seniors that this affect, this will cap the year payment to 2000. But Republicans voted against that. They voted against lowering prescription drugs for our seniors, because they were in the pockets of Big Pharma, because they were in the pockets of the special interest. Big Pharma spent tens of millions of dollars

to make sure that this bill didn't go through. And that's what they've been doing for decades. And let's not forget the climate stuff in there. Historical investments going to really make a big, big dent in what we're trying to do to deal with a climate crisis or climate change. This has obviously been a period of great progress, a season of substance, I think, as Ron Klain has called it, for the Democrats in this administration between passing the Inflation Reduction Act, Veterans Benefits, the CHIPS Act, etc.

There's so many, so many. So many, I can't even list them. Congress is working somehow. Somehow. What are you guys going to turn your attention to now as summer comes to an end, fall happens, we have this looming midterm, or some things that our listeners should be expecting to see from this White House, more executive actions, more attempts at legislation? No, it's all good questions. The president is going to continue to do the work for the American people. There are things that, for example, his BBB, the Build Back Better agenda, that's where the Inflation Reduction Act actually comes from. That is part of that.

When you think about elder care, when you think about child care, all things that he's still very much committed to that we know is going to give some relief to families, to single moms, to parents out there who really need that help, especially in taking care or someone taking care of an elder parent. Those are real issues that Americans have to deal with. So that's still important to him. He's going to continue to work on these issues. And in the next several weeks, the next several days, you're going to see the president and Democrats out there. To your point, we have successes. We have the receipts, as the young people say, because I'm getting really old now, but

the receipts to show the American people that, hey, look, this is what we have done. This is what we're doing. And we're going to continue to do that work. But we want to explain to you what the American Rescue Plan did, why it was able to put shots in arms and get the economy going again, why it was able to save small businesses, why it was able to open up schools again. We want to talk about the bipartisan infrastructure law. Let's not forget that is an historical investment. And it was bipartisan, which people said it couldn't happen for our roads, for our bridges, for our tunnels. We're going to go out and talk about that. And all of the amazing things, the CHIPS Act with the manufacturing and strengthening our supply chain, making sure we're strengthening our

national security, the benefits, right, the benefits for veterans, expanding benefits for veterans, which hasn't been done in so long, making sure we're taking care of our folks who put their lives on their line for us, for our nation. Think about, again, the Inflation Reduction Act, all of those things. And let's not forget the bipartisan gun reform that hadn't been done in decades. And you were here, Dan. You were here when it was so hard. All of the things, the horrible mass shootings that we saw during the last administration, and we couldn't get anything done, and how hard President Obama and Vice President Biden at the time worked so hard to make sure that we were protecting communities. Now we're taking a step. We've taken a step to get to a better place where we're, you know, going to school doesn't have to be so scary. Going to a grocery store doesn't have to be so scary. There's still work to be done, but at least we're taking a step in the right direction.

read that President Biden has seen the dark branded memes. He's briefed on them. Having worked with President Biden before, I'm really trying to imagine that conversation. Is there anything you can tell me about how he learned about this, his reaction to it, how you guys explained it to him? It's so funny. I was not there when that happened. If they haven't, I actually don't know. My guess is maybe his grandkids may have, have probably brought it up to him. I don't know. That's just my, my guess. But it's so it's wild. I saw something, somebody said, it's like going viral. People are sending me, sending me dark Brandon things all the time. But it is,

it is something to behold. Wow wow i don't know what to say the grandkids is a great guest that would be that's my guest house and i was tasked with trying to explain dark brandon to joe biden i would definitely send the grandkids in younger they're hipper he definitely listens to them so that makes a lot of sense they're his grandkids he would he loves them of course he would you're to your point of course he would listen to them. So that makes a lot of sense. They're his grandkids. He loves them. Of course, he would, to your point, of course he would listen to them. That's my guess. I don't know. That sounds credible to me. Corrine, thank you so much for joining us today. And we'd love to have you back again soon. Oh, this was so much fun. Dan, thank you for the opportunity to give me an opportunity to talk about all the great things that we're doing here. All right. Bye,

guys. Good luck out there. Bye. Bye. Joining us now is the Secretary of State from Arizona. She's also running to become Arizona's next governor, Katie Hobbs. Welcome to the pod. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. You were serving as Secretary of State during the 2020 election when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by just 10,000 votes. Arizona became ground zero in the big lie. It is where the center of the battle for democracy is. How did your experience as Secretary of State

in that election impact your decision to run for governor in 2022? in that election impact your decision to run for governor in 2022? It was absolutely foundational in my decision to run on two fronts. First of all, we are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy from every angle. And it's all fueled by the former president's big lie, the fact that he is running all of these election denier or backing all these election deniers running in offices up and down the ballot here in Arizona. His entire slate of candidates swept the Republican primaries, including my opponent, Carrie Lake, who has made election denial the center of her campaign. And on the other side of that, Arizonans want to move on from the 2020 election. We're facing some serious challenges and nobody, I'm the only one offering solutions for how we can tackle those challenges and talking about how we can bring

people together to solve these problems and continue to move our state forward instead of being stuck in an election that happened two years ago. After a number of election officials, yourself included, in Arizona and around the country stood up against the big lie and the people trying to throw out people's votes. We heard about this during the January 6th hearing. There were threats against election workers. I know you continue to get these threats. I understand that you actually got a very serious threat earlier this month. Your team has shared that audio with us. Let's take a listen and we'll talk about it afterwards. This message is for trader Katie Hobbs.

You've drug your feet. You've done nothing to protect our election for 2020. You're committing election fraud. You're starting to do it again from day one. You're the enemy of the United States. You're a traitor to this country. And you better put your fucking affairs in order.

Because your days are extremely numbered. America's coming for you. And you will pay with your life, you communist fucking traitor bitch. That is obviously a very disturbing and scary message. I can only imagine what it was like to receive that. What's your response to it? And what do you say to the people who are helping fuel, including your opponent, are helping fuel these conspiracy theories and these threats against people who are helping fuel, including your opponent, are helping fuel these conspiracy theories and these threats against people who are simply trying to do their job to protect

democracy? I mean, we are in very dangerous times right now. As you mentioned, it is elected officials and other political leaders who are fueling these kinds of threats of violence and who continue to feed the big lie. And so when everyday people who are being misled by these lies don't see action being taken because there's nothing to take action for, there's no evidence of fraud. We conducted the safest and most secure election in our state's history. And my opponent continues to call for me to be arrested. And when that doesn't happen, where's the point where people decide to take things into their own hands? I mean, you heard his words saying that, that I'm a traitor and that America is coming for me. And, and our, our, our so-called leaders are, are egging this on and refusing to

see how dangerous or ignoring how dangerous their behavior is and their rhetoric is. Your opponent, Kari Lake, is, in my opinion, perhaps the most dangerous candidate running for office in the country right now. She has fueled the threats like the one we just heard. She is spreading lies. But she is also someone who is a former news anchor who has a long-term relationship with the voters in that state. What is your strategy for centering the campaign on her extremisms and informing the voters of Arizona why she would be such a dangerous choice to be governor?

Well, you're exactly right that she is incredibly dangerous. And it's not just because of her rhetoric and her focus on these election conspiracies, but it's the actual thing she said she would do as governor and her extreme positions on critical issues like abortion. She fully supports criminalizing abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest or even the life of the mother. Her proposals would kill women. And that is not being hyperbolic. She's suggested that everyday Arizonans should be able to own rocket launchers, which are weapons of war that are designed to cause extreme destruction. And when given the chance to back down from these positions, she's doubled

down on them. And so she's clearly dangerous. And so our focus is making sure that Arizonans know that, but also that I'm the sanity in this equation, that this election is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about sanity versus chaos and that we have real issues to tackle. And I have a record of working across the aisle to tackle problems. And that's the kind of leadership I'll bring to the governor's office to continue to move our state forward. I would like to just ask one follow-up question that she supports allowing Arizonans to have rocket launchers.

Did I hear that correctly? Yes, yes. She supports allowing Arizonans to have rocket launchers. Did I hear that correctly? Yes. Yes. And she said this at some point during the primary when she was trying to bolster her Second Amendment cred and said this, trying to say the most extreme thing that's so extreme you can't even believe it. But when fact checking an ad that we put out saying this, she said, oh, yeah, I support all weapons and didn't back down.

Okay. So now allowing 18-year-olds to buy assault weapons is the right opposition of the Republican Party. A true Republican supports rocket launchers and any other weapon. That's great. That is good to hear. Obviously, you're going to spend a lot of time in your campaign communicating with Arizonans about the stakes in this election, what her policies would mean for them. But for our listeners who are not in Arizona, who may want to help your campaign, can you just help explain what dangers we face in the 2024 election if we go into a close race in Arizona where Kari Lake is the governor, Mark Fincham, a member of the Oath Keepers, is the Secretary of State, and what

that looks like and why democracy hinges in some ways on your race. Yes, absolutely. And thank you for asking that question. So first of all, we are going to win this race. We've gotten support from across the country because people know how important Arizona is, and we will continue to accept support at katiehabs.org, so thank you so much for that. But there is so much at stake, and you see the former president focusing on swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, because they're key to clinching the presidency in 2024. And he wants folks like Carrie Lake to be in positions over certifying elections so that they can overturn the will of the voters, break the rules if they don't like the outcome.

That's what we're facing. We're facing a choice between it's the future of free and fair elections in our country that are on the ballot in 2022. Obviously, Arizona was an incredibly close state in 2020. It's a state that Republicans have won many years in advance. What role is Donald Trump's support of your opponent and the rest of the Republican ticket they're playing? How are Arizonans reacting to that? Is that helpful to them? Is it hurtful to them? Is it something you're talking about? Well, I think Carrie Lake's electorate that gave her the nomination for the Republican Party is not representative of the majority of our state. That being said, this is still going to be an incredibly close race. A Democrat doesn't win in Arizona by a landslide. But from what I've talked to folks about,

they are ready to move on from the 2020 election. They are tired of Arizona being a laughingstock, being the butt of late night comedy television jokes, of late night comedy television jokes and and having been ground zero, as you said, for the fallout from the 2020 election. And so so they're tired of it. They want to move on. And I think they really get what's at stake in this election. And and and so Donald Trump's involvement here and in other states is really driving home that that extreme rhetoric, that election denial that most people know is not real and and alienating them from from everyday voters. Carrie Lake certainly is continuing to feel that rhetoric before the primary. She started saying there were there were huge amounts of fraud that she had evidence of if she lost the race. Clearly, she didn't, but we know she's coming back with that after the general. She's going to bring the cyber ninjas back. Is that right? Yeah.

This is one of the most unique midterm electoral environments we've ever had. Traditionally, the party in power, Democrats, would suffer in this election, but a lot has changed in recent months. How are you focusing your message or communications with voters? Obviously, as we mentioned, you're running against a big lie candidate. Arizona's at the center of the battle for democracy. Abortion is also top of mind for a lot of voters. Your opponent has extreme record on abortion, but we're also existing in an environment with record high inflation, a very confusing economy. What is the story you're telling voters? How do you work through all those issues to have a coherent

narrative about why you and why not your opponent? So, yeah, and that's a question we get a lot. And I think it's really clear. This is a race for Arizona. It's a race between myself and Carrie Lake, not the White House and Republicans. Certainly those things are playing out. Arizonans are concerned about affordability. It's one of the top issues I hear from people that's being directly impacted by inflation. We put out a plan to help address that and put money back in the pockets of working families without raising taxes and give them some immediate relief from these economic problems we're seeing. In Arizona, inflation is being largely driven by the housing market. And Arizona inflation is being largely driven by the housing market. We're going to focus on how we bring those costs down so that Arizonans can afford rents or new home purchases. So that's, we're focusing on these real issues and how we address them, which my opponent has no plans to do, no serious plans to do. Arizonans are absolutely concerned about

continued access to safe and legal abortion, which we don't have in the state right now. There's no abortion providers providing services right now. That's not only compromising necessary health care for people seeking abortions, but routine pregnancy care. I had a miscarriage. My doctor performed a DMC. It was the best option for my health. These are common in miscarriages and women's healthcare is being compromised because of these policies. And it's not extreme to say that what my opponent is proposing, a full criminalization of abortion, is going to put women's lives at risk. We need to invest in public education. My opponent wants to put cameras in every public

school classroom to monitor what teachers are doing, which would open the doors for predators to spy on all of our children. Um, and we have serious issues when it comes to water and our leaders have kicked the can down the road for too long. We need to tackle that head on. Um, and my opponent has proposed piping water to Arizona from the Mississippi river, which is, uh, not a feasible alternative at all, but there are some real things we can do that would have an impact and address the crisis immediately. And those are the things I'm talking to folks about and how we can, again, move our state forward versus offering a lot of extreme rhetoric and not addressing the real issues that we're facing. So to put a button on this, your opponent is pro-big lie, pro-election theft, anti-access

to abortion, pro-rocket launcher, and has no serious plan for inflation or water. Is that correct? That sums it up. Yeah. Good, good. So let's just one more time for the folks listening. If they want to support Katie Hobbs, protect democracy, make sure Donald Trump's favorite candidate does not become governor of a critical battleground state, where do they go to help your campaign? KatieHobbs.org is the website. You can donate. You can sign up to volunteer. We can absolutely use out-of-state volunteers for phone banking. So please help us. We can win this race. I'm ahead in the polls. The most recent poll has me leading by three points. I've never lost an election. I'm the first Democrat to win secretary of state in 24

years here. I've got a track record to protect and the stakes are too high to lose now. So we're in this to win it and your help will absolutely help get us there. Secretary Hobbs, thank you so much for joining us and good luck on the campaign trail. Thank you so much for joining us and good luck on the campaign trail. Thank you so much for having me. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.