Pod Save America - Biden vs. Trump on January 6th

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Biden frames the 2024 presidential race as a fight for democracy while Trump and his allies call the insurrectionists “hostages.” Then, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is hospitalized without informing the White House, conservatives continue to wage war on the Ivy League, and New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni joins to talk about a deal to avoid a potential shutdown and the GOP effort to impeach Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary. 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 Pond Save America. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. John Favreau is off this week. His friend Joe Coy asked him to help him with material for the Golden Globes, but he'll be back. John is on parental leave, but he will be back as soon as next week because he has a sickness. Yes, he does. And this is The Cure.

On today's show, it's the January 6th anniversary and Biden and Trump got us speeches. Congress, as always, is trying to fund the government as a shutdown looms. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's mysterious hospitalization over New Year's leads to questions about the chain of command, and Republicans continue to fight the culture war on college campuses. Plus, New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Carney joins to talk about Schumer and Johnson's deal, Republican impeachment inquiries, and Elise Stefanik's war on Harvard. But first, late last week, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol with a speech setting up the threat posed by Trump and the choice in the 2024 election. Today, we're here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America's sacred cause?

Trump won't do what an American president must do. He refuses to denounce political violence. Now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned the democracy. They made their choice. Now the rest of us, Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we have to make our choice. We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to make our choice we all know who donald trump is the question we have to answer is who are we so i did a great job taking out the applause tommy what did you what do you think of the speech uh happy uh january 6th anniversary by the way yeah yeah no it's the it's um three years three years flies when you're having whatever we're having.

Storming the Capitol, yeah. Got you some bike rack. I thought it was good. I thought it was powerful. I mean, I think speech on threat to democracy can sound a little abstract, but really he walked you through some of the worst moments of the Trump presidency. He talked about January 6th. He talked about Trump refusing to call off the violent insurrectionists in the Capitol. He talked about Trump inciting political violence and laughing about it like he does with Paul

Pelosi all the time still, even though we know the full story there. He talked about the suckers and losers comment. So, you know, it was a good compilation of all the ways that Trump is a threat to democracy. He also reminded everybody of the legal challenges that Trump lost, including in red states and with Trump judges. And so that cuts to the heart of Trump continuing to say that this election was stolen or rigged or whatever you want to call it. And so, look, I don't think it was a one-off thing either. Biden reprised a lot of the speech in South Carolina again today. And I think this will all fold into a broader argument about just how extreme Trump is on a whole host of different issues. Yeah, there's a lot of people that have

been saying, draw the contrast. The campaign has to begin. The campaign has to begin. It doesn't mean he's trying to do that. There are a few ways he sort of frames the fight against Trump. One is that Trump is out for himself and not for you. One is that Trump is a loser. Another is that Trump is violent and anti-democratic. Was there any one that stood out to you? Anyone that you thought was the strongest version of an attack from Biden? You know what I liked? One line, I don't know if this is the strongest version of an attack, but a line that jumped out at me was, Trump is trying to steal history in the same way he tried to steal the election. I really liked that. And it spoke to the way he's trying to rewrite history and memory hole what we all watched happen

live on TV, what, three years ago. Yeah, he's clearly very like personally frustrated. I also appreciate it. We've talked about this a lot that like threats to democracy can sound abstract.

I'm glad that there was no reference in the speech to Schedule F government employment rules as much as it's important. I agree that it's important. We agree. He really tried at a few places, not for the first time, but I think clearly recognizing that

people don't totally get the connection to their daily lives. Democracy is the place where we go to make change. Democracy is the place where we try to make sure people get opportunities. It's where you can be yourself. He's trying to find a way to make it relate to people. Part of this is you can really feel Biden's genuine fury. Like, yes, there's strategy in it, but I do think this comes from this place where it's like just very personal. You mentioned the Paul Pelosi piece of it. Can we play the clip of when Biden talks about that?

At his rally, he jokes about an intruder whipped up by the big Trump lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi's skull. And he thinks that's funny. He laughed about it. What a sick. My God. I think it's despicable. Seriously. I's just repressive for any person to say that. You really feel like he can't believe it. He just like, he can't believe we're talking about this.

Yeah, that was a moment where he seemed genuinely angry and emotional. The other moment where he seemed genuinely really angry and emotional was referencing Trump calling dead soldiers suckers and losers because he brought up Beau, his son, who passed away. Joe Biden says repeatedly because of inhaling toxic fumes from burn pits when he was deployed overseas. So yeah, those are a couple of moments where you can tell he really feels this one. Yeah. And like there's there's the moral indignation of it, but it's also his continued disbelief that the country would get behind someone like that. So he makes the point,

talks about all this, and he says that the country rejected Trump in 2020, but also that the country has continued to reject election deniers as they did in 2022. How much of this is a message to voters? Surely it's that. But how much of it is also, this is a speech geared towards engaged Democrats have been doing a ton of hand-wringing to remind them that we have a winning message and that Joe Biden is the person who can carry it. Yeah, I think that it's a lot of that. It's a lot of reminding everybody what the stakes of the election are. Even if you're frustrated

about something that's happening right now, he's trying to paint this bigger picture of the true threat this guy poses, Donald Trump poses. And I do, you know, for people who listen to this show, it probably seems like bizarre to suggest that you would need to do that. But Donald Trump's been relatively out of the limelight for a while and off the front pages and off Twitter. And so there's a lot of regular voters who have kind of forgotten.

Yeah. And it's sort of like there was a divorce. We don't like living with mom. It's not as nice as we thought it was going to be. We're not as happy, but we forget that there's nothing in dad's fridge, that he doesn't take care of us. It's fun. You know, he's kooky. Doesn't have HBO. There's no HBO. You just don't feel safe when you're a dad. No. You know, you just don't feel safe. At no point in the speech does President Biden seem to acknowledge that there's a Republican primary. Based on your experience in Iowa, is he wrong to dismiss Nikki and Ron and Vivek at this point? There has not been a good poll out of Iowa in a while. That will change this week. I'm pretty sure the register is in the field right now and Iowa State, a bunch of outlets. But Trump does not seem at all worried about winning on Iowa. I went to see Eric Trump

near Des Moines. His warm-up act was, remember Matt Whitaker? Oh, wow. He's like a toilet salesman slash temporary attorney general. Right, right, right. Yes, yes. So normally in Iowa, you kind of like try to play the expectations game and you say, we have to do well, but you want to say we have to win, right? Matt Whitaker said, we need to set the record for the largest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history. So they want to blow that out. Well, I was thinking about that because the largest margin in Iowa history,

like he's on track for that right now with some room to spare, right? Like it's not, it's not close. They're worried about complacency. They're worried about their people thinking we got this in the bag, so we're just going to stay home. Because it might be the coldest Iowa caucus day in history. I think it's supposed to be seven degrees. Where's that climate change? That's what I'm talking about. So they just want to make sure their folks turn out. But he's not worried, no.

And you were just in Iowa. I'm doing a natural segue to a plug. So you have a two-episode special. Two-part series. This is Tuesday. Tomorrow, Wednesday. The 10th. And Friday.

The 12th. Nailed it. We're coming out. Right? Yeah. And you were in Iowa. Just in Iowa. I mean, we're literally like,

I was editing the second episode before I came in. I'll continue editing it after, but we're going to record the rest of it tomorrow, and yeah, we're going to drop it. Nice. We're excited. It was very fun. It was great great we saw a bunch of events we actually got on vivek ramaswamy's campaign bus and interviewed him so all that's coming you talked

to a vague yeah and you liked him we had a great time you liked him we swapped numbers oh really no i don't think he liked me to be totally honest well that's probably good yeah he doesn't seem like someone you want to be liked by he said um i think after i interviewed him he said that was less disappointing than i thought it was going to be. Oh, that's what my parents have said. Anyway, check it out. It'll be in the Pod Save America feed tomorrow. There were two stories this week, one about President Obama in the post suggesting that President Biden needs to empower the campaign more, and one about Jim Clyburn worried about the campaign not breaking through. Everybody's sort of grappling with the fact that we face this radical, extreme, politically unpopular movement,

and yet poll after poll shows how rough a political environment it is. Let's take them one at a time. What did you make of the story about the meeting between President Obama and President Biden? So the Washington Post said that Obama's message was basically, you need some senior people on the campaign staff that you trust and that are empowered to make decisions so that you don't have to run everything through your White House staff. That to me was like a very nuts and bolts, very tactical observation about how a campaign can be run well. Obama, I think, gets that this is a 50-50 country. It's going to be a tight race. It was pretty banal and inoffensive. The Post tried to make it a bigger thing about their relationship and is it really a bromance?

And seemingly talked to some people who are still mad that Obama discouraged Biden from running in 2016. But my reaction to that is guys, he's Biden's president. Like we got to get past this shit. Yeah. It's not that big a deal. It was a strange, it was strange because like, it was such a, it's also like an incredibly mild critique

about like management. Basically just so people know, like it's also like an incredibly mild critique about like management basically just so people know like it's a slightly unusual structure the campaign itself uh for a long time was very very small it stayed small and his closest advisors have been in the white house as opposed to say like david axelrod or david ploff who were in the campaign yeah it's like okay well maybe that's a good idea or i don't know maybe they can hop on a Zoom. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's like six of one, half dozen of the other. I have no idea, but this was Obama's take

and it doesn't seem offensive. It doesn't sound like he was sounding the alarm. It's very tactical and small. Then there was this Clyburn story which came out of an interview he did with Jake Champer on CNN. Let's roll the clip. He promised to relieve student loan debt,

and he has done that. But one part of his promise he was not able to keep because six Republican attorneys general and the United States Supreme Court, the 63 vote, stopped him from doing so. But he sought another way, and he is forgiven $132 billion to 3.4 million people in student loan debt. But nobody writes about that. Nobody talks about that. I'd like to because it's sort of like, what? That's a compliment. Yeah, that was a whole, the classic, sir, you don't have any policy problems, you have communications problems observation. People were sort of like spitting this up, because he said that the Biden campaign is having trouble breaking through the MAGA wall. And fair

enough, a CBS poll found that even though there's been an uptick in the share of Americans with a positive view of the economy, Biden isn't receiving any credit. Even in the interview, Jake says to Clyburn, sounds like you should go hit the trail for me. You're making a really good case. How much of this about the same numbers. The New York Times poll of swing states that showed some softness with Biden among traditional Democrats and younger voters of color. It was concerning. And I think everyone's reacting to that still. The campaign is ramping up. I was talking to some Biden staffers who say we're going to see more travel by the president and vice president soon. They're going to speak to these anxieties you're hearing among Democrats. They're going to reconnect with supporters. They're going to send staff to key states. You're going to see the VP doing a reproductive freedom tour. So they're getting things going. It's just, it's awkward when you don't have an opponent yet.

The, uh, the state of the union is a little later than usual this year. It's going to be March 7th. So that traditionally is a big kind of moment in these campaigns and in the reelect. So I think it's all happening. It's happening a little slower than folks want on the communication side and also just on the tactical, you know, kind of getting up campaign infrastructure. Yeah. It also is like some of this is people are genuinely and I think rightly concerned about Biden's liabilities. And the question I think everybody has fairly is, will those shift when the campaign begins in earnest? Now that's when this should be happening. It's 20, it's here. 2024 is here. The 2024 campaign was always going to happen

in 2024, but I do think people wanting it to happen right now is I think a response to wanting to basically, they feel this incredible pressure. They feel that the, the, the reality that like these polls are fucking terrible. They're terrible. They're pressure. They feel the reality that these polls are fucking terrible. They're terrible. They're concerned. They want the numbers to be better. I think the challenge would be rolling out some big policy speech or announcement right now in the midst of a Republican primary is probably just not going to get covered. I think a lot of these problems, basically, Clyburn was saying, you've done a lot of great stuff. Voters don't know about it. I really think we are just so far past the point where a good surrogate operation is going to solve that problem. I think it's going to take billions actually in their own lives talking to their friends and family and posting about it. This fact about how much student debt Biden was able to eliminate

despite the fact the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the whole plan is a really good fact. It's not a fact people know. And sometimes I think it's like, okay, yeah, the Biden campaign should do everything they can to get that fact out there. But at a certain point, it's just a criticism of society. We need them to do everything, but actually it's going to be on individuals deciding they're going to be surrogates for the Biden campaign. Yeah. I'm not sort of absolving the White House of responsibility or saying they can't have done more or done better. I just think that every White House ever always says, oh, the last guy didn't sell his accomplishments. Well, I will do that. And I think the reality is that the swing voters, the voters that aren't paying attention, they're just not consuming the media that we need them to consume. And you're going to get them through paid advertising and surrogate operations and a field campaign and all the things. And yes, we should ramp that up sooner than later. that's for sure. It also just depends on a, yes, we need the Biden campaign to do everything they can, but also it will require the country to pay attention,

and they will, and we have to sort of be there when they're paying attention. Yeah, to that point, I mean, you would be, I was walking around Iowa two weeks out from the caucuses talking to Republican Iowa caucus goers who are presumably some of the most politically engaged people you will ever meet. The number of people who told me

they hadn't made up their minds yet is always astounding. It's like the majority of people I talked to were like, ah, I'm still undecided. Now that could be because I wasn't at Trump events and I was at like, right, Yaeli events and DeSantis events. But like, people just, you know, they don't think about this stuff until they have to. In Tommy's home state of Iowa, Trump took a very different approach to marking January 6th. Let's roll that clip. What they've done and they ought to, you know what they ought to do they ought to release the j6 hostages they've suffered enough they ought to release them i call them hostages some people call them prisoners i call them hostages release the j6

hostages joe release them joe you can do it real easy joe that's so weird why does he do it like that joe it's it's menacing is a pejorative was something wrong with the name joe i don't know it's something like it feels vaguely violent i don't know why joe that was unsettling it's like a nightmare it feels like uh i don't like it i don't like it. Trump is not alone in referring to the January 6th insurrectionists who have been convicted by juries of their peers as hostages. Harvard alum Elise Stefanik said this. I have concerns about the treatment of January 6th hostages. I have concerns.

We have a role in Congress of oversight over our treatments of prisoners. And I believe that we're seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we're seeing it against conservatives. Do you think she stares up at night? I just it goes back to that Biden line. Trump is trying to steal history in the same way he tried to steal the election. I mean, these guys are trying to rewrite history and memory hole what happened and treat. These guys are trying to rewrite history and memory hole what happened and treat. I mean, there was a video clip that came out late last week shot by one of these insurrectionists through a hole in the glass door between them and I think either the House chamber or the

Senate chamber where you can see a police officer aiming a gun at them. And these insurrectionists are saying, if we have to hang a couple of congressmen, we'll do it. You know, I mean, there's no doubt that these people were incredibly violent and deserve to have been arrested. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of the part. Again, it's like Biden's indignation coming through, but he talks about that in the speech. He says, after it happened, Republicans acknowledged that this was a humiliation, that this was dangerous, that this was terrible. But over time, they've come to this position, but the American people

saw what happened on television. And I had to believe that's still true. I mean, Republicans have slowly but surely embraced the lie, but I do think what Biden's counting on, which I think is right, is that most Americans are not in this right-wing bubble and find the idea of referring to these people as hostages to be despicable. Yeah, I forget what the exact description was, but I think the Washington Post had a poll last week that said like 55% of the country think it was a horrible moment in our history or something like that. It is definitely the case that more and more Republicans have been sold these conspiracy theories that federal agents or the FBI were in the crowd. They were inciting people that they set up these January 6th protesters that they're being treated unfairly in some way.

But I don't think most of the country buys that. Did you meet any of those people on your little road tour there? Any J6 types? No, but like going to the Eric Trump event, you saw the culty nature of it. Like there was a family that was big enough that they, you know those kind of like shuttles

you take to the rental car place at the airport. Yeah. Family was big enough. They needed one of those. And they all had matching sweatshirts on with little American flags and Trump 2024 and then different accomplishments on the back that were like, that's nice. Fairer trade pack on like a seven year old. The, um, the group of people that come out for Eric Trump, those are the, those are not

undecided voters. Can I tell you something? He's, he was really good. Oh, come on. The speech was good. No. It resonated. Come on.

What do you mean good? What's good? It brings me no pleasure to relay this information. Maybe you wrote for Joe Coy. He was resonating with the audience. We talked to a woman who said he got her

to switch her vote. I mean. Wow. Yeah, Eric, man. Who knew? Is Eric the one? Is he the Aaron Allen? Well, SNL convinced us that he was the dumb one and that Don was the smart one based on their sketch.

But I don't think that's fair. Trump also, he truths that Joe would be ripe for indictment by weaponizing DOJ against his political opponent, me. Joe has opened a giant Pandora's box. So now he's basically openly threatening to indict Joe Biden. Right. While also asserting that he has immunity. Yeah, right.

That if he either, there's two possibilities, right? Either he has immunity. Don't question it. Or he doesn't have immunity, which means Joe Biden should fucking die in jail. Right. Either way, it makes total logical sense.

So the question of immunity is before the Supreme Court. Late last week, the Supreme Court also agreed to decide whether Trump is eligible for Colorado's Republican primary ballot. that this is nuts and that there's like, we're all just, it's all a big cycle waiting for the Supreme court to say that of course, Colorado's court can't decide Trump's not eligible. But what do you think? I mean, could I imagine some small percentage chance where a bunch of so-called originalists read the statute in the original way and decide that Donald Trump can run? I guess, but I think what they'll probably say, he wasn't convicted of anything yet.

Let the voters decide, is my guess. And then, and then will I, yeah, and then we can have Lawrence Tribe back on. I'm back on. You'll just, you'll just shut him down. It was so, he was, he was, he so thoroughly defeated me in that conversation. What are you going to say?

I don't know. This man's like read the Constitution inside out. And he studied it. You know, but I pre prep for like an hour. I still think it's nuts. Again, all I am is an LSAT score and a lot of confidence. One other story that broke just as we were about to record, the threat of political violence. It's very real.

This isn't speculative. It's not speculative of us. It's not even speculative to the people inside of Trump's orbit who view political violence as a means to them gaining and retaining power. Audio came out today as we were recording that has Roger Stone, Trump advisor, longtime right wing freak, rat fucker. Trump commuted and pardoned Roger Stone. Okay. Directly explicitly threatening Jerry Nadler, Eric Swalwell, as well as DOJ prosecutors in a conversation with Sal Greco and off-duty NYPD comp.

I think we have the transcript, but we don't have the audio. What he said about Swalwell and Nadler is, it's time, this is how explicit it is, it's time to do it. Let's go find Swalwell. It's time to do it. Then we'll see how brave the rest of them are. It's time to do it. It's either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let's go find Swalwell and get this over with. I'm just not putting up with this shit anymore.

Former NYPD officer served as security for Stone. They also talk about Aaron Zielinski, the deputy to Bob Mueller. Stone says he needs to be punished. You have to abduct him and punish him. That has to be done. It will be easy to abduct him because he is a weakling. Roger Stone says they're AI. About to find out.

Assuming that this is not artificial intelligence, it's pretty wild. Yeah, that seems bad. I mean, it's a good reminder that it only takes one person to commit political violence. One maybe disturbed person and something really bad can happen. So, yeah, I don't think anything Joe Biden said in that speech is hyperbolic. at his word and the kind of random, disgruntled, aggrieved, angry, fucked up person taking Trump's rhetoric to its logical conclusion. And then Trump can stand back and say, oh, I was just giving a speech at the Capitol and these other people went too far. Or I was just saying that they're poisoning

the blood of our country. It's, no, I'm not responsible if someone goes and shoots up a fucking store. But this is a case where a Trump advisor, someone very close to Trump, is explicitly, directly seeking help from someone who is in law enforcement to help him go and do violence against his political opponents. Yeah, very scary person.

And it just tells you, like, that's who these people are. That's their attitude towards what they should do to people that stand in their wake, right? Because these are Nadler, Swalwell, these prosecutors, these are all people that were making Roger Stone's life hell. Roger Stone was also caught on tape saying the day before January 6th, fuck the voting. Let's get right to the violence. Shoot to kill. That's what he's telling a bunch of proud boys and other people in the audience.

So these people are inciting violence. This is an odd story. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. He was hospitalized on January 1st for complications from an elective procedure he had on December 22nd. But there was one problem. Nobody knew about it until days later. CNN is reporting that even Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks was kept in the dark about his stay at Walter Reed, which is a problem because she would have been acting Secretary of Defense during that time. Austin has apologized, but is this a big deal? And what

happens if you need the Secretary of Defense, but he's not returning your texts? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think if this story was just the Department of Defense failing to notify the press corps in Congress about Austin being in the hospital, that would still not be okay. But it wouldn't necessarily be surprising. These are organizations, I think. They have different, they value privacy. Yeah. And you get a quick Brazilian butt lift.

You don't need to fucking tell the Washington Post about it. I mean, you could imagine an embarrassing elective procedure that he just didn't want to tell anyone. Whatever, that's fine. HIPAA or something, right? Yeah, HIPAA. What makes this story so weird is the Pentagon failing to notify the White House or even the Deputy Secretary of Defense,

who had assumed some of Austin's responsibilities. That's the other part of this. She had assumed some of the responsibilities and still didn't know that he was in the hospital. I don't even understand that, by the way. Like, how do you, just quick follow up, why? Well, I mean, I think there are times when you're going to be busy or something where you can delegate some operational responsibilities to your deputy, just because I don't know why, maybe you're on a flight, who knows. But although the Secretary of Defense would never be out of

communications touch because of the plane he flies around on. He's not on Alaska 737 Maxis. He's not on Alaska jet 737 Maxis. No, Max. He's not getting thumped out the door. The Doomsday plane, which is famously connected to everything, can launch nuclear missiles. But the Washington Post and Politico said that Lloyd Austin's chief of staff was also out, very sick. Full disclosure, she's a friend of mine.

We worked together in the Obama days. Watch your feet, names are dropping. It seems unfair and ridiculous to suggest that only Kelly could notify people. Like there's a lot of people in the Obama days, but- Watch your feet, names are dropping. It seems unfair and ridiculous to suggest that like only Kelly could notify people. Like there's a lot of people in the Pentagon. So I don't know. If any building would trip all over itself and create a problem like this

because of overly rigid job descriptions and reporting structures, it would be the Pentagon. Big picture, do I think this is a political problem for Biden? Probably not, but we don't know the full story. So who knows? And also Republicans are very good at making non-issues into huge deals, like look at Benghazi. But my guess is no one's going to talk about this in a month, but it's just, it's weird. It is weird. The question I had, which isn't clear from, I don't know if it was clear in what you saw, that like, was he awake and just sort of like,

you know what I mean? Like, or was this an anesthesia situation? If you're going in, cause you're having a complication, but you're still kind of copus mentis, like maybe that's why you're justifying like, this is my business, you know, getting this laser hair removal went really south on me and I don't want anybody to know. Well, I mean, there was a military strike taken in, I think Iraq on January 4th. And there was some reporting that said he was monitoring it. So I don't know if that means he was awake the whole day or who knows. Yeah.

It's all pretty opaque. I think it sucks because I think more broadly, Austin's done a good job, especially the work to cobble together this coalition to support Ukraine. And we know Biden really likes him. So I don't think he's going anywhere yeah there are people calling for his resignation but it does seem like a pretty good case of I won't do it again right yeah lesson learned here yeah it was a real oopsie and then you know then we get this brow lift or yeah whatever else his pec implants he can he can make sure he texts somebody but I mean if you're Jake Sullivan or Jeff Zients or someone at the White House, you're probably calling over and saying, like, you guys got to clean this up right now. Yeah, well, he did issue he did issue a statement.

It wasn't like a full apology. It was sort of like it's a statement, but not an explanation. I think that Congress will demand the latter. Last story. I touch on this a bit with Andy Carney later. But the fallout from those college presidents whiffing on that anti-Semitism hearing somehow continues. Claudine Gay resigned from Harvard after facing plagiarism allegations. Republicans are also planning more hearings to go after, you know, what they describe as sort of woke policies on college campuses.

Do you think Republicans are overplaying just how much people care about what happens on a few elite campuses? That's a good question. Why do we care so much about what happens at Harvard versus any of the other many campuses in this country? Look, we talked about that hearing on December 5th, where all these college presidents whiffed on the very easy answer is saying genocide against Jews bad or something that would get you in trouble. Obviously, anti-Semitism is bad. It's a serious problem. It's gotten worse since the October 7th attacks. And they did not address it in a way that was at all sufficient. What happened with Claudine Gay? I mean, I don't do you care about plagiarism? I can't get myself worked up about this. Here's what I like. I just don't care. I only care in so much as when it happens to kids, sometimes they get really fucked.

And when it happens to the professors, everybody can kind of be a little bit more kind about it. I don't like that way in which institutions protect themselves in any kind of context. But the issue I have with all of this is these Republicans, I mean, obviously they're hypocrites. It goes without saying, but I think it's worth noting, like they are doing their version of what they decry the left does, which is someone said something that they didn't like. That's why this is all happening. These in institutions, they already were pissed about that. They already found deplorable in various ways. or bad that got them in trouble. And so they wanted to cancel them. So they went combing through their stuff and they found problems, right? It seems as though basically like there, there was, you know, unattributed stuff. It was very funny when Harvard called it like unattributed undersourced material or something like that, because they didn't want to call it plagiarism at first, which was adorable, but they couldn't get out of it. But it's like, okay,

so you have a problem. You don't, you didn't think Claudia and gay was a plagiarist. You just didn't like her. Uh, you didn't like what she it. But it's like, okay, so you have a problem. You didn't think Claudia Gay was a plagiarist. You just didn't like her. You didn't like what she represented for a variety of reasons, including the fact that she was a black woman leading this institution. And so you went and found something unrelated that you could use to get rid of this person.

That's what cancel culture, if it means anything, that's what cancel culture is. That's it. You wanted to get rid of someone who said something you didn't like, so you found a way to do it. So obviously that to me is a problem.

But like, stepping back, do I think most people give a fuck about what happens at a few very fancy colleges? I don't, I just I don't under like, I get the value of it to their base. Like I see that hyper online, right wingers, hyper online anti-woke people love this topic. They are winners who want to feel like losers. Nothing makes them feel more aggrieved than saying they can't say what they want to say. I get all that, but I have to imagine a typical person

who's not paying close attention. It's like, I'm sorry, what is this hearing about? Yeah, unless you're sort of in the right-wing ecosystem, this will probably just completely pass you by. I do find it unsettling the kind of, so there's this guy named Bill Ackman. He's a billionaire investor and egomaniac, and he's sort of decided to become this Twitter vigilante and he's leading this movement. It started with going after students at Harvard who are members of student groups that signed a letter saying that Israel was solely to blame for

the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. That is obviously an idiotic, inaccurate statement. Well, right. Yeah. So the letter was terrible, but what he decided to do was if a student organization signed the letter, he then went and found students who might belong to that group, whether they had anything to do with the letter or not, and tried to make it so that they couldn't get jobs. He demanded that Harvard release a list of all members of each group so that business leaders, he said, could blackball them. Now, nevermind the fact that a lot of these kids, they never saw this statement before it went out. They were like, what are you talking about? I'm just a part of this group. I didn't see this letter. Anyway, but then Bill Ackman decided to go after Claudine Gay. And then Business Insider

reported that Bill Ackman's wife also committed plagiarism in her academic writing. In response, Ackman freaked out on Twitter, said it's out of bounds to go after his family, and then said he's going to conduct a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty members, its president, and its governing body. He's putting the system on trial. And then said that Business Insider wrote this piece because they're anti-Zionist and his wife is in Raley. And now Axel Springer, the parent company

of Business Insider, said it's going to review the coverage of Ackman's wife, not because there are any factual errors, but just because they're gonna. So this whole thing is just weird. And I don't know what Bill Ackman's doing. If I had a billion dollars, I think I would not spend my time on Twitter writing 8,000 word statements. It statements it's you know i don't care about this guy i i someone sent me this man he's a it's a i don't have i i logged out of twitter and i'm very proud of myself pat myself on the back good for you but someone sent me this manifesto it's really long i couldn't believe how long i couldn't believe how long it is and it's only three quarters of the way down that you realize that oh someone accused his wife of plagiarism and he's really upset about it and I couldn't believe how long it was. There's a part in this manifesto where it says something like, Business Insider is the height of what's wrong with journalism.

We were on vacation. Yeah, I love that part too. I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. But I actually was reminded of this, oddly enough. So at the Golden Globes over the weekend, Ricky Gervais' dumb stand-up about how you can't say anything anymore won for best, I don't know, comedy specials, a new award. And they show a clip of Ricky Gervais saying, there was a lot of backlash

to my last special for saying things you couldn't say, but guess what? I said them anyway. Round of applause. And there is this whole group of successful, wealthy, powerful, connected people with a ton of opportunity, a ton of freedom. They can say whatever they want. They can do whatever they want. And for whatever reason, the thing they want most of all is to feel like victims in some way, to feel like we can't say anything, we can't do anything.

Everyone's stopping us. Donald Trump is part of it. And this to me is just, it's a stupid, small, but signal example of that whole mentality. Like you're a billionaire. You can you can say whatever you want. You've sort of like you're you're you're OK, man. You won.

They're like anti-Semitism is a real problem in this world. There's got to be a better way to tackle it than going after a random Harvard student or the president or now every member of the faculty at MIT. And I guess the bigger picture, like there was a moment when people who grew up in the social media era started getting elected and there was, we all started to wonder like, uh-oh, everyone said stuff, everyone's got bad photos out there. Is there gonna be like kind of a detente

where some of this stuff is declared out of bounds? I wonder if we're reaching a similar moment with AI and everyone in academia, because it's become so easy to review everything you've ever written against everything else that's ever been written. And look, I've said this before, and I'll say this again. Social science is not real. And that's important. You know, that's an important part of this debate. Social science is fake. And we all know that. But unfortunately, AI is going to make that, I think, a little bit difficult to hide. Sure. You know,

and that's that's my official position on social science. Please send your complaints to John Lovett. Well, it is. I was a philosophy major. Yeah. Leave me alone. And you use that every day, do you? I do.

Well, kind of. Hey, are you a Cartesian dualist or what? Where's your head at on that? What is the soul? It doesn't weigh anything. Don't be such a cunt. Look at that. Look at that.

Can I get away with that? Oh, you know what I saw? Speaking of philosophy, this really bothered me. What was I listening to? What was it? I can't even remember, but oh my god, I know what it was. This is so embarrassing. It was Bill Maher talking to

what's his name who created Family Guy? Seth MacFarlane. I watched the whole thing. It was really a devastating thing. Oh, I watched the part about vaccines. It was on social media. But at some point during the... Yes, that's why I got into it, but then I kept watching it. But then midway through, they were like,

you know, Obama made a really good point once. And the point was that if you could wake up as a random person in a random society at any time in history or any place, you choose America Today. And both of them were like, wow, that's a really good and smart analogy from Barack Obama. And I was like, hey guys, it's the veil of ignorance. It's from John Rawls. That's what I thought when I was listening in my car, wasting my own time. Remember the veil of ignorance? Not really. I mean, I remember it exists. Don't worry, guys.

John will be back. Don't worry. Don't worry. Keep us in your feeds. Keep us in your feeds. Alright, when we come back, Annie Carney of New York Times. there's a lot happening in congress republicans are threatening to impeach the homeland security secretary hunter biden is about to be held in contempt elise stefana continues to serve as volunteer hr coordinator for the ivy. And as yet, another government shutdown

looms. We got news of a deal between Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to fund the government. Here to walk us through it, it's New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Carney. Annie, welcome to the pod. Thank you for having me on the pod. All right, let's start with the news over the weekend. a deal between Schumer and Johnson. Can you give us a little bit of the lay of the land about what they've agreed to? Yes. So they announced yesterday that they had a deal on government spending, like top lines. And basically, it's basically the spending levels that were agreed to in the debt limit deal that McCarthy and Biden signed into law last year. That was the beginning of the end for McCarthy.

And that is sort of where this was always going to end up because that was the law. But that's what Johnson agreed to. And of course, it should therefore come as no surprise that the ultra conservative wing, the far right members say that it's totally unacceptable to them. And that's where we are. Same dynamic, new players. deal was even worse than we thought. I don't know. I wonder how Kevin McCarthy feels watching this unfold from wherever he's ensconced. How long can Mike Johnson get away with making the same deals Kevin McCarthy made just by being less hated? Yeah, that's the question of his speakership. Yeah, that's the question of his speakership. I think that there's, first, I think the anger is already like any honeymoon that existed is over. I think Chip Roy, who's a far right member from Texas, is positioning himself to be kind of the Matt Gaetz to Mike Johnson's Kevin McCarthy, like the guy leading the opposition here. I mean, Democrats are giving him the benefit of the doubt saying like, look, he was hemmed in by an agreement that Kevin McCarthy made, but that's not buying him any goodwill with the right. The only thing I think that makes it different is that I don't really sense that anyone wants to touch the hot stove

again and vacate the speakership again. That was such a disaster for them. And you're right that there's just he's a relatively clean slate. There's not these years and years of hatred and broken promises and festering like it was with Kevin McCarthy. It's it is almost as though because he because Kevin McCarthy was so had so little trust than when he said this was the best we could get. People didn't believe him. But now it seems like there are some Republicans that seem to be willing to go along with with Johnson.

But the Freedom Caucus is furious. Are there ways they can gum up the works? And can you just talk a little bit about the position they're in given the way their majority has already slimmed, has shrunk even more? Yeah. So first of all, we have a tight time crunch now because we have only like probably a single digit number of work days before Congress has to pass this before a government shutdown. And Johnson has promised them that they can get in their policy, their hard right policy, things through riders, which is like an amendment. But those amendments will never pass the Senate.

So we're going to see what happens with how he's going to try and thread this needle of telling them they can still get some of what they want into this bill. how he's going to try and thread this needle of telling them they can still get some of what they want into this bill. Yeah. So just to break that down a little, Scalise is out for medical treatments. They've had resignations. So their majority is down to, is it two? Is it two votes from whatever it was? And obviously, Katara is gone, George Santos. So on the one hand, that means if they're going to pass something with just Republicans, they need every Republican. But because the Republicans are so fractious, basically, it sounds like what Johnson is saying is, yeah, you can propose any bills you want. They'll either won't get a majority of Republicans at which point we need Democrats. So it's dead

or it dies when it hits the Senate. Is that basically the gist of it? Yeah. I mean, there's no way forward without Democratic votes, which is the reality that Kevin McCarthy faced. Also, the majority is so slim that like, I mean, I think that some Democrats are wondering if there's a moment this Congress that they actually regain the majority before 2024. I mean, some of these members have announced they're not seeking reelection in 2024, but are staying. But that could change really easily.

I mean, a good job offer comes along. They think it's a miserable existence to be in this Congress. I can see some members leaving before the term is up. It's really like way too close for comfort. You've talked about why it's so miserable. And just obviously, we know Congress is dysfunctional, but I think people don't necessarily appreciate how historically dysfunctional it is. Can you talk about just how little Republicans were able to do in the last year?

Yeah. Last year, 2023, was the most unproductive year in Congress in decades, even by the lower standards of divided government when one party controls the House and the other party controls the Senate. Compared to 2022, when Democrats controlled everything, they passed the first bipartisan gun safety bill in decades. They passed the Inflation Reduction Act. They passed the first bipartisan gun safety bill in decades. They passed the Inflation Reduction Act. They passed some really landmark stuff. Last year, they managed to avoid catastrophic default. Hey, that's pretty good. Not bad. I mean, it was really a year of like, Congress, you had one job, and they did do it. But other than that, not much to write home about. I mean,

they passed like two bills to kind of kick the potential government shutdown into 2024 and a bunch of small bore items no one cared about, like the Duck Stamp Modernization Act, my favorite one. And this is because of what really this Congress was about so far was, you know, the speakership races, deposing the speaker, centering members of Congress. The fact that they, Republicans, it's not just divided government, but the Republican conference in the House is just divided completely against itself. Also, can I just say one thing about, like, it's all about personalities. Also, can I just say one thing about, like, it's all about personalities. And even in this, like Marjorie Taylor Greene is opposing this funding agreement between Schumer and Johnson.

Like she supported the identical thing when it was McCarthy because she and McCarthy had some sort of friendship and deal. And now she's against it. Like it is all, it's so much of what of these positions come down to alliances and who you like and who you don't like. And they don't seem to have any concrete policy agenda. They're much more interested in, you know, they want to do their kind of anti-woke performance and they want to go after the Biden administration. Speaking of, there was a push to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. That was something McCarthy had to be dragged to. And then he held that press conference where he opened an inquiry. Johnson has now gone along with it. It seems as though they've kind of realized that that

might not be as politically palatable for a lot of their members in Biden districts. So they've shifted to potentially pursuing an impeachment inquiry of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. I don't know that you but like the Biden impeachment is not dead by any means. But yeah, well, right. Fair enough. Fair enough. They're they're they're more enthusiastic right now.

Yes. About Mayorkas. There's more there's more conversation about it at this moment. What is the law? Do you know the law that Mayorkas is ostensibly breaking? Have they said what the high crime or misdemeanor is? No, but Johnson, I think over the weekend said, it's just broadly for these policies of the border that he thinks that he's claiming Mayorkas is perpetrating purposefully to, you know, ruin the country. It's coming at an incredibly awkward time, though, because Mayorkas

is the in-the-room negotiator right now with bipartisan group of senators working on an immigration deal with the White House. And what I'm hearing from people on that side is like Republicans like Lankford, the lead Republican in the room there, they really like Mayorkas. They are glad he's in the room. So he's the lead negotiator. They're supposed to like have some deal on paper this week. The House is supposed to impeach Mayorkas on Wednesday. It's like it's just super awkward

moment to be impeaching the lead negotiator on a border deal. Yeah, really like kind of captures, even like, you know, even as the whole Republican Party has shifted to the right, like the kind of what is left of the kind of normal Republican party in the Senate versus the kind of completely unhinged way of doing politics in the House. I mean, it'd be one thing. There hasn't been an impeachment of a cabinet secretary in about 150 years. It would be unprecedented to impeach basically over a policy difference, right? This would be impeaching someone just over a bad situation, right? Because it's not as though like they're trying to pin the whole border crisis on Mayorkas, but apprehensions are up. They're saying it's failure on fentanyl, but arrests for fentanyl-related crimes way, way up. They say, oh, he's letting terrorists across the border. Arrests for people on the terrorism watch list is roughly the same as under the Trump administration. It does seem like this is just genuinely a way of making the most of a news cycle in a way that might get moderate

Republicans on board because they know how unpopular Biden administration immigration policies are. Yeah. I mean, from what I'm hearing that it would have the Mayorkas impeachment would have the votes in the House. You know, I think everyone agrees, even I think the Democrats would agree that Biden has a problem on immigration. I think that's why the White House is willing to be negotiating right now with the Senate about doing something. They think it's probably politically benefit to them, too, to make some to crack down a little bit on border policies. down a little bit on border policies. Impeaching Mayorkas, I don't think has a real political blowback even for vulnerable Republicans. At the same time, I don't think that, I mean, there won't be the votes to convict him in the Senate, but I do think we'll see that vote happen. Yeah. I mean, but even in just the next few days, like how does it,

what happens when it's quite possible that on the same day they announce a bipartisan immigration proposal that involves Mayorkas and the Republicans in the House impeach Mayorkas for failing to have a border policy? Yeah, it's really awkward. It's very strange. It's really a split screen. I mean, the same thing is happening. Johnson is trying to negotiate directly with Biden while also pushing forward on impeaching the president. It's what they have to do to refill their red meat tank a little bit, I think. I hate that red meat tank. It's gross. refill their red meat tank a little bit, I think. I hate that red meat tank. It's gross. But it is like, there's a part of me, look, I don't like the House Freedom Caucus,

but it is funny that they really do keep getting, the deal of spending levels that Biden, Schumer, and McCarthy agreed to, that's what you get. And then what you give is a press conference at the border calling for impeachment. So it does seem as though what a lot of, in part because they don't care about policy, they care about the soundbites, they care about the red meat, the far right really is exchanging policy, not losses, but certainly not victories,

policy concessions for political theater, right? Like that's what they get. They get air. They don't get anything actually real. Like Mayorkas, as you pointed out, is not gonna be removed by Senate Democrats. I mean, look, they started the Congress by getting a lot. They got a lot of concessions from McCarthy

to make him speaker in the first place. But those have panned out yet in terms of passing policy. I mean, part of that is because it's divided government. And like that isn't how people of that ilk want to govern. I mean, that's not what they do. They don't compromise. That's the, they throw bombs and stake out a very far position

and don't compromise on it. So, but yeah, so they don't have like legislative wins to show for it. So one thing that you've covered recently is what happened with these hearings around anti-Semitism and college campuses. We've now had two of the participants, the college presidents, most recently, Claudia and Gay, resign because of the fallout from those hearings. There's now going to be more hearings about what's going on on college campuses. What is the goal?

I mean, obviously, at least Stefanik, there's PR goals. You know, they like, they enjoy the issue. They revel in the issue. But what is their actual goal in these hearings, in making all of us talk about what happens on a few elite college campuses? Well, I think they think that they have political gold here because they're doing this on behalf of anti-Semitism on campuses, which you can argue that that's totally hypocritical when they are people who did not call out Trump's rhetoric about Charlottesville or say anything about him alluding to Hitler and his rallies. But the actual issue of anti-Semitism on campuses, you can't just completely ignore it as a real issue. Like it's a real thing.

So it's like, it's complicated. It's kind of like both ends. It reminds me of when there was that whole Gamergate thing and they were like sort of attacking video and they kept saying it's about ethics and video game journalism. Remember that? That's what I'm sorry. It's sort of what it reminds me of. Like, this is about ethics and video game. Is it?

Is that what this is about? They found a really like heady mix of things here that allows them to go after elite universities, go after DEI, which is a longtime obsession of the right. So they're not going to let go. I mean, they want to expand. They've hired new staff to expand this investigation. They're going to expand it to other schools. Like this is going to be a big focus of what the education committee does this year. the Education Committee does this year? There's a focus group that I always think about that happened in Michigan. And somebody was asked basically about Republicans going after trans people in the bathroom they use. And this person in the focus group just sort of laughed and was like, I don't care about that. Obviously, this is a big issue in a certain bubble of Twitter people, rich, super online

types, certain parts of the right that are obsessed with college campuses, obsessed with woke, anti-woke nonsense. Who gives a shit? Who cares? I don't understand why anyone cares about who's in charge of Harvard or Yale or any of these places. Like, why do they care? I mean, obviously they care about it because it's a way to get at some of these other issues. But is there any sense from any of these people that at some point you can make an issue with the fact that they're focusing on the most ridiculous and

provincial, like little right wing sort of hot button issues? Is there any part of them that worries about that? Yeah. Well, you know, I think that a lot of, I've talked to some Democratic and Republican pollsters who say they're definitely like, they're over, there's not really that much political upside in this stuff. Like, yeah, like who cares? And actually some of these issues have broad support. Like DEI generally has broad, most people think it's a good thing across the country. Last question.

Speaker Johnson invited President Biden to give the State of the Union on March 7th, late State of the Union. Any nefarious purpose in there? Not that I've heard of. I think it might just be the amount of stuff they need to get done before February to avoid a government shutdown, to make sure that we're not in a shutdown when the state of the union is supposed to happen. There was some conspiracy theories that he wasn't going to invite Biden at all last week. But I think that, again, this is a Congress full of show horses.

I think a lot of Republicans love the State of the Union because, let's be honest, the speech is often boring. It's a moment for like, what do you remember? I remember like Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene heckling the president. They get kind of viral moments out of this big night when people are tuned in to watch the joint session. So I think they're happy to do it and probably happy to criticize whatever he's putting out there. Yeah. Maybe also, Mark, she's a month older, you know, and every little bit helps.

Annie Carney, thank you so much for your time. It's so good to talk to you. Thank you. And, you know, stay out of the red meat tank. It's gross. Thank you to Annie Carney for joining us. Tommy, welcome back. Thanks.

Good to be here. Welcome, Teddy, to the world. And we'll be back with a regular episode on Tuesday. But we are now going to have episodes. So starting with Tommy's Iowa special, which you're going to be able to hear on Wednesday and Friday. Pod Save America is going to three days a week. It finally happened. It finally happened, Tommy.

So you'll be able to hear new Pod Save America's Tuesday morning as always. And then Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning. So, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Fridays. We got a lot to cover because the primaries are going to heat up at least through Super Tuesday. So, yeah, extra episode. If you want to get

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