Pod Save America - BONUS: Bourbon & Biden (Live from Louisville!)

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Congressman Morgan McGarvey, State Senator Karen Berg, and special guest Perry Bacon Jr. join Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan live from Louisville! New Speaker of the House (and possible but unproven short king) Mike Johnson's MAGA bona fides are tested in an interview with Sean Hannity. Kentucky prepares for the November 7th gubernatorial race between Democrat incumbent Andy Beshear and Mitch McConnell mentee, Daniel Cameron. And, Joe Biden gets a primary challenger: Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota. Plus, Rep. McGarvey serves up tough questions and samples of the state's bourbon offerings in a segment called "I'll Drink the Fifth." 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. 

What's up, Louisville? Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Perry Bacon. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. We have an outstanding show for you tonight.

Your congressman, Morgan McGarvey, is here. Your state senator, Karenarvey is here. Your state senator Karen Berg is here. And we are so lucky to be joined by Louisville native Perry Bacon, also a columnist at the Washington Post. Alright.

Let's get to the news. I believe we have breaking news here. Oh, wow. Wow. Major shakeup in the Republican primary. Former Vice President Mike Pence has suspended his campaign for president. His surprise announcement came at the end of his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. He said, it's become clear to me that it's not my time. And he

called on voters to give our country a Republican standard bearer that will, as Lincoln said, appeal to the better angels of our nature. A little dig at Donald Trump, who Pence will now go from running against to testifying against in the January 6th trial. To endorsing.

You know what the Republican Jewish Coalition said to Mike Pence after he dropped out? Terrible in such small portions. You know what I mean? How do you guys think this bombshell will change the race? Dan? I don't think it'll change the race. Dan? I don't think it'll change the race. Who's going to get the Pence endorsement?

The vaunted Pence endorsement? I think what will likely happen is this 0.6% support in the polls will be divided up evenly among Nikki Haley, Rhonda Sands, and Tim Scott. I think Doug Burgum's making a move. All right. That's enough of Mike Pence.

That's more time than Mike Pence's campaign deserved. Let's talk about Mike Pence's spiritual successor, Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House. Yeah. New Speaker of the House who thinks Noah brought dinos on the ark. That's not a joke. Yeah. Yeah Speaker of the House who thinks Noah brought dinos on the Ark. That's not a joke. Yeah. Yeah, no, he fought for tax breaks for a park right here in Kentucky.

You guys know. Yeah. Yeah. Have you anyone been to the Noah's Ark? No? With the dinos? I got to say. You think the dino...

No, look, we can debate whether or not the dinosaurs were on the Ark, but he was right to fight for those tax breaks. That's right. I'm not saying the museum was accurate. All right. So Mike Johnson, he finally sits down for a hard-hitting interview with Sean Hannity. We learned in the interview that Johnson doesn't want to keep the government open unless Republicans get some policy concessions, though they're still fighting with each other about what those are.

On the menu are massive budget cuts, immigration restrictions, a national ban on mailing abortion pills. Johnson also admitted that he doesn't want to expel George Santos because Republicans can't afford to lose the seat. He said he wants to change the motion to vacate, which makes him smarter than Kevin McCarthy. And he told us a little bit more about who Mike Johnson is. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, it's curious. People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about Someone asked me today in the media, they said, it's curious, people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.

That's my worldview, that's what I believe. Comments you had made both in writing and advocacy for this group about homosexuality, calling it sinful, destructive, and not supporting gay marriage. Quote, no clear right to sodomy in the Constitution. You have been getting hammered on this. And I want to ask you about it.

I want to know exactly where you stand. Some of these comments were 15 years ago. I don't even remember some of them. Do you see in Joe Biden a cognitive decline? And if so, is that a danger to the country? I do. I think most of us do. That's reality. This is not a personal slight to him. If in fact all the evidence leads to where we believe it will, that's very likely impeachable offenses. You know, that's listed as a cause for impeachment in the Constitution, you know, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Bribery is listed there, and it looks and smells a lot like that. And I think the evidence, we're going to follow the truth

where it leads. We're going to engage in due process because, again, we're the rule of law party. I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord, and she's a little worn out. It's Mike Johnson. Perry, what's your early take on the Mike Johnson era? I mean, just, I know we're trying to keep it light, but when i just we lost mccarthy and we have a less experienced dumber way more radical speaker in all honesty i mean this is a sign of how think bad things are this guy i i'll be honest with you i had not heard much about mike johnson two weeks ago but sam i i and i don't

really know and all i've learned about him is that he is significantly more conservative than McCarthy, who was no moderate and terrible at the job in a lot of ways. So things are bad. And also he's doubled down on impeachment particularly, which it seems like I, McCarthy did not seem that invested in. And maybe, I mean, if you're doing an interview with Sean Hannity, you probably can't downplay impeachment. But that's it. It looks like all the things that we were you know the there was a lot

of chaos but ultimately we ended up with the speaker is going to try to do the exact same things that mccarthy was that matt gates wants a speaker who's even more in trump's pocket also and yeah and uh james comer just said the other day too that like he doesn't know if he wants to have another impeachment hearing and he's the guy that was like leading the impeachment charge and mike johnson's talking about doing impeachment now because the first one went so well yeah so he wants a better impeachment trial tommy johnson also said in that hannity interview that he respects the supreme court's uh decision that legalized same-sex marriage and that he thinks abortion should be left to the states uh even though of course he has long supported uh national bans on both abortion and same-sex marriage. What do you make of his comments

to Hannity? So, you know, look, I think he presents well, right? He looks like Harry Potter's older brother, like a friendly English teacher who doesn't teach evolution or believe in it, but like he's like seems like kind of a nice guy. But to Perry's point, like he's a super, super conservative lawmaker. He's a sort of white Christian nationalist. He believes there is no separation between church and state. As he said there, the Bible is his worldview. So when he says that, uh, there shouldn't be a national abortion ban, it should be left to the States. I don't think we should believe that at all. I think we should, that as a comment made with political expediency in mind, the same way all of Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominees said they respected precedent, right, that Roe v. Wade was settled law.

Now, I mean, he's a smart guy, and maybe he will not try to advance wildly unpopular things like overturning gay marriage or a 15-week abortion ban while he's the Speaker of the House and Democrats control the Senate and Joe Biden is in the White House because he knows it'll go nowhere, but it will make his moderate members take really bad votes. But, you know, like a friendly-looking ideologue is still an ideologue, and I think he's someone we really should worry about. Yeah. Well, and it's very recently that he sponsored bills on national abortion bans. He refused to vote for codifying gay marriage as legal. He introduced the legislation to make Ron DeSantis's don't say gay law a national law and expand it from schools to public libraries, hospitals,

military, anywhere that gets federal funding from the government. So he's pretty extreme. And if he had a majority, he'd probably do that stuff. Yeah, I think there are Republicans who got into politics for a bunch of different reasons, a messy coalition. There are Republicans that do the evangelical shtick, the anti-gay shtick, do the evangelical schtick, the anti-gay schtick, but their mission in life is deregulation and lowering taxes for corporations and rich friends. This person has a genuine motivation based around Christian nationalism. If you go back and look at the speeches he was given when

he was running for Congress, if you look at his work as a lawyer before he was a public official, it is all around advocating for these hard right, socially conservative views. He advocated not just against gay marriage, but against legalizing gay relationships after the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that the sodomy laws in Texas were unconstitutional. He wrote several pieces where he excoriated the Supreme Court, said that there was no right to basically against a right to privacy and explicitly saying that states should have the right to discriminate against same sex relationships versus heterosexual relationships, that he explicitly believes that a state can outlaw gay relationships because there is an inherent good in heterosexual relationships that doesn't exist for gay people. That was his view for many, many years. And he can play games here and say, oh, I don't even remember half of the things I've advocated for, but I don't really take him at his word. I do think this brings into sharp relief what a Republican trifecta in 2025 would look like.

You have Mike Johnson with these incredibly retrograde views on reproductive freedom, sexual relationships, same-sex marriage. You have Mitch McConnell, who has advocated for a federal abortion ban, who in the early part of the century was one of the leaders in demonizing gay people in order to win the 2004 election with a bunch of trumped-up bullshit about same-sex marriage. And then you have Donald Trump, possibly in the White House, who we know will go along with all of these things because that's what he did the last time he was in office. Like you can pretend like, oh, he's this guy from Manhattan, but he immediately did the ban on trans people serving in the military.

He used the, or at least allowed his staff to use the administrative state to make access to abortion that much more difficult. And he appointed three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And so for all, this is, I think, something we are going to have to make a huge issue in 2024 because it is what is on the ballot now

because of Mike Johnson. So love it. Johnson's first order of business this coming week is dealing with some House Republicans from New York who will force a vote to expel George Santos. He's still in Congress. Yeah, all right. Marjorie Taylor Greene will force a vote

to censure Rashida Tlaib for speaking outside the Capitol at a rally of activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And Congresswoman Becca Balint will try to force a vote censuring Marjorie Taylor Greene for about 40 different actions and statements, including public appearances with white nationalists and comparing vaccine requirements to Nazism. How big of a deal are all these votes? And do you think they go anywhere? I don't think they're a particularly big deal.

Mike Johnson has already poured cold water on the Santos one, which is hard for him to do because he barely can get above the table. It's the era of the short King and I'm loving it. It's interesting. Your, your attack on Mike Johnson is height. That's your, that's where you're going.

How tall is he? Actually, I've looked, I could not find anywhere because he's so unknown. We don't yet have publicly available height information, but he has short king energy. Like McHenry. As does McHenry.

So that's exciting. I think that's, you know, there's a Napoleon movie coming out. Being short is happening. It's very you know, there's a Napoleon movie coming out. Being short is happening. It's very right now. So I don't think the Santos thing is going anywhere, especially because you need two-thirds of the House to expel. So I don't see that happening. But, you know, stranger things have happened.

These other resolutions, you know, Marjorie taylor green's resolution i think goes after talib for things that actually there would be a majority in the house uh to vote against uh but then goes way too far and calls her an insurrectionist for participating in this peaceful event so like you know there i think that there is actually she's talib has received a lot of criticism uh from democrats and republicans for some of her statements around what is happening in Israel and Gaza. But this goes well beyond anything related to that. And then this tit for tat thing with the Marjorie Taylor Greene resolution. I don't I can't imagine Republicans going along with that.

But pass, don't pass. It doesn't matter. I can't imagine Republicans going along with that, but pass, don't pass, it doesn't matter, really is a sideshow to what is ultimately facing Mike Johnson as Speaker, which is the same dynamic that felled Kevin McCarthy, which is if a bill to keep the government open is going to pass, it's going to have to be bipartisan by definition,

and these people find that anathema to their uh you know whole vibe i sort of feel like the whole censure thing has gotten a little cheapened like once they once they did it to adam schiff for basically no reason now it's like you're censured no you're censured is that what well the other thing too is like the tit for tat censure thing it's like i think that there are people there are even republicans that don't particularly like marjorie taylor green but they're not gonna they're not gonna vote for uh they're not gonna vote to censure marjorie taylor green to get back at the republicans for the to leave thing it's like hey can we just can we all just chill the fuck out can you can you just keep the government open

once you've kept the government open you can have a fun day where you just fucking go ham on each other it'll be interesting to see how many Republicans vote to expel Santos. I think the swing district Republicans don't want to defend Santos because who does? He seems like he's violated 97 laws. So I think there will be 10, some Republicans will vote for that.

And there is a divide on the Democratic side about what's happening in Gaza. And I wonder if the number is higher than zero of people who will be, there's a congressman in Democratic side about what's happening in Gaza. And I wonder if the number is higher than zero of people who will be, there's a congressman in New Jersey, for example, who I think might be open to censoring Tlaib. So I think the number is probably low, but I think it'll be interesting to watch in terms of the divides in these two parties. I do think though, for both of these, Johnson gives Republicans the talking point, which is we should just let the due process play out and people can hide behind that. then on the marjorie taylor green point

uh you can just say something along the lines of look i have strong disagreements but the idea of calling this anything like the insurrection on january 6th like both sides have given the other side just an easy out to get away from this thing if you're a democrat you can criticize rashida talib and not vote for censcha. Voting for Sencha is such a fucking... That's a move. And I think on... Santos is interesting because I think Santos... I don't think he'll get two-thirds, but I think he'll get a majority

because he'll get all the Democrats, and like you said... He'll get every Republican in New York. All the New York Republicans. I mean, it was the New York Republicans who introduced it. They're leading it. Yeah, which is interesting. Dan, more importantly, government runs out of money in a few weeks. We've now heard from Mike Johnson and some House Republicans on the issue. How likely do you think it is we're headed for a shutdown?

If not November 17th, I think that's when the government runs out of money, like in another month or so. I think it's a question of when, not if. I think there is a chance of when, not if. I think there is a chance that... Someone likes a shutdown. You want me to just come up here and say Mike Johnson's going to solve the problem? Well, once you get him a phone book to sit on.

Oh, boy. Wild. I'm five foot six and a half. Wow. I'm five foot six and a half. I think there is a chance that Mike Johnson could delay this into next year. Republicans are tired. Everyone's exhausted. He did propose in his nomination speech before he became the speaker nominee that he was advocating for a short-term extension so the Republicans could pass appropriations bills so that they theoretically have some negotiating position in a negotiation with the White House and the Senate. They actually passed a couple of

those bills in the immediate aftermath of Johnson winning. So I think there's a chance that maybe we get through the holidays and then we have this confrontation next year. But at some point, it's going to come to a head because Mike Johnson cannot stay speaker and extend, keep the government open at current levels or at the levels the Senate Democrats and Republicans want and keep staying in his job. So at some point, there's going to have to be a fight over this. It's going to have to be a shutdown. Yeah.

And all these Republicans, some of the ones that ousted McCarthy in the first place and some other Freedom Caucus types. They want these massive cuts. They don't like the bipartisan budget deal that McCarthy struck with Biden, which already offered some cuts. So they're already annoyed about that. So they're going to ask for more. And I don't know how Johnson gets a bill through the House, even if he wanted to, that doesn't have a bunch of cuts that then the senate and the white house immediately reject i guess the question is whether there's any appetite even among someone like matt gates to go through the whole motion to vacate process again yeah well that's they might change the threshold too to make it harder right so yeah and then also there's that they can kick this can down the road because one thing mike

johnson is promising is that they'll go to, rather than sort of these omnibus bills, but they'll go to kind of whatever department by department budgeting, like the kind of, the thing that the sort of the Republicans in the House claim they want, that actually Republicans and Democrats have been doing together in the Senate, despite what's been happening in the House. But even then you lead to sort of, even if that were to take place as sort of the promise of mini shutdowns or sort of smaller versions of this fight over and over again. Another thing he's gonna have to contend with, Tommy, the president wants the speaker to pass a hundred billion dollar aid package,

most of it for Ukraine, but also for Taiwan, Israel, and some humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. What have you taken from Johnson's comments on those issues? So the Hannity interview was interesting and sort of a departure from where he's been before. He told Hannity that he basically has written a $14.5 billion bill that would be basically military aid for Israel. And it sounds like that's ready to go. They'll pass that. They'll send it over to the Senate side. I don't know what the Senate folks will do about it. I don't know if they're not going to want to divide the Ukraine support and the Israel support necessarily yet, but that'll get passed and that'll happen.

The Biden request for aid for the Palestinians is much, much, much less money. It's $100 million as opposed to tens of billions of dollars. Unfortunately, he and Hannity in that conversation immediately started demagoguing that money, suggesting that it would go to terrorists and not to people who are, you know, in week three of getting shelled relentlessly and like sort of living in a nightmare scenario. So I have less hope there. On the Ukraine funding in the past, Johnson has voted against support for Ukraine. In this interview, he said, you know, we're not gonna leave the Ukrainians hanging. We can't let Putin prevail. So it sounds like he's willing to allow a vote on a standalone Ukraine bill. Will it be the amount that Biden wants? We don't know. Could his caucus sort of upend it somehow? I guess

probably. But, you know, he the things he was saying were better than where he's been in the past. And then in terms of Taiwan, that's a little harder to like divine. I mean, I think the one thing that unites Democrats and Republicans in Washington right now is fear mongering about China. And especially for the sort of like far right evangelical Christians, they're particularly worried about like

the godless communists taking over the world. So I suspect that he will be in favor. Those were their words, not mine. That I suspect he'll be in favor of support their words not mine that i suspect he'll be in favor of support for taiwan to help them kind of harden it's just like porcupine strategy thing sort of get all the uh weapons and things they need into taiwan before a chinese invasion um that everyone thinks is going to happen at some point so i bet he will get there on the on the china support but you know it also remains to be seen Trump gave a speech today where he said that

across our southern border with Mexico, there are young, strong Chinese men coming over the border. Buff. Shredded Chinese men. Very strong, very young, very buff, very virulent coming over the border. I'm like, what? Love it. can you confirm what is it every once in a while a republican will just

kind of look remember when um what that guy steve king was like they're coming across the border with calves the size of cantaloupes it's like they can't help but paint a vivid picture of these just sort of rippling muscles swimming over the Rio Grande to get into the country. And Trump did produce Broadway musicals, or at least he wanted to. So something to think about. Last question on Mike Johnson for everyone. Perry, do you think Democrats should make Mike Johnson famous? Like like should he be a central figure in the 2024 campaign you know i was thinking about this this morning and because you all asked me about this and i it's hard to raise the profile of the speaker on some level like

pelosi was famous in part because she was a woman from san francisco i don't think that john boehner was well known by the average voter but i think think I'm more convinced by what Dan said, which is like you now have Johnson does fit the kind of MAGA, ultra MAGA, ultra, ultra MAGA way thing in a way that McCarthy really did. McCarthy at least seemed moderate in his persona on some level versus Johnson has said every conservative thing possible on every issue, including on the sort of cultural anti-gay. So I think in that way, it would make sense to sort of not, maybe not necessarily talk about Mike Johnson, but talk about the idea that the Republican Party is going to be very radical if it wins the House, wins the presidency. And it sort of makes it easier to Trumpify and to describe the Republican Party in it sort of makes it easier to trumpify and to describe the republican

party in a sort of a universal way yeah just think about this as the most powerful elected republican in the country wants to ban abortion ban gay marriage ban gay sex does not believe in evolution all across the board that is a very people don't won't fully get that he believes in evolution he just thinks it happened in six days and again again dinos on the ark plus all the food they'd have to eat and where do they poop well here's something i've never quite understood what kind of dinosaurs were they what were they the little ones the compies the so having looked at the actual there were their raptors on the earth they're they have a whole there's a whole listen there's a whole like you know um what was it called the uh the the when when they wanted the earth to be the center of the universe they had the kind of

they healed they had the different circles to keep complicated circles to explain the more complicated circles because because it didn't work and so they have like a complicated philosophy around not different like tyrannosaurids like there were there were dinosaur families that were on the ark as represented by certain kinds of dinosaurs here's what i've never understood i don't care what's on that ark when they get off the ark did a tiger not want to eat one chicken because if that tiger ate one chicken no chicken dunzo you know what I'm saying? Like, what did they eat

for the first couple weeks? What did the predators eat when they got off the ark for the first couple weeks? Or years? It takes years to make new prey. Also, what happened, what ultimately happened

to the dinosaurs in this scenario? Was it a double-decker ark? I would just say there's the Fiesta deck, there's the Lido deck, the Fiesta deck. Anyway, I would just run the Mike Johnson Noah's Ark stuff. That would be my thing. I like it. Bring people in with that, then talk about all those positions.

All right, when we come back, I'll talk to Kentucky State Senator Karen Burke. Please welcome the Democrat who represents the 26th District here in Louisville, State Senator Karen Berg. Hi there. Hello, hello. Hello. hello. Thank you for being with us tonight. We are honored to have you on the show. Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. So you first won this seat back in 2020 when the district at the time was much more conservative.

You are now just one of seven Democrats in the state Senate? I think we're down to six. Are you down to six? Okay, six. Do you have any advice for all the progressives in the red states who are always asking us how they can elect Democrats like you and turn their states a little bluer? Okay, yeah, I have a lot of advice in that regard. First of all, vote.

Vote like it freaking matters. Because, guys, it actually does. It actually matters whether or not you vote. And here in the state of Kentucky, we have a real serious problem with turnout. If we get 32% of the electorate to get out and vote, we think we have done a good job with turnout. And that is really the problem. Because people on the right, I promise you guys, they are voting. They are voting like their life depends on it because they think it does. And then the rest of

us who would prefer to go around and not have to deal with this stuff, you know, just go through your day-to-day life and let's be normal people and let's not have to worry about politics. And then they don't vote. And then all of a sudden you look up and we have really bad people elected in this country. vote, vote. And the other thing I can tell you guys, run for office. I know that sounds, that sounds like such pie in the sky, but it actually isn't. What John Yarmuth told me years ago is, first of all, the closer to home your seat is, the more impact you will have on the people around you. Which means running for school board, running for metro government, running for your local mayor, running for elections close to home. And then running like I did. Just put your name on the ballot, guys. Get out there, shake

hands, tell people that you care, ask them to vote for you, and they will. And that is the truth. So vote and run. Those are the things that I have to say. Good advice. And those are the things that I have to say. Good advice. You have been outspoken about losing your son, Henry. He was a transgender rights advocate who tragically passed away by suicide last December at the age of 24. I read that he was the person who inspired you to run.

What was he like? Oh, run. What was he like? Oh, wow. What was Henry like? Henry was a handful. No, Henry had a heart. He had too much of a heart. He was one of these people that if he saw somebody in a room who looked like they didn't feel comfortable, he would immediately go up and he would immediately introduce them to people and sit with them and, you know, ask them who you are, what do you care about, because he could tell so intuitively when somebody didn't feel like they fit into the space they were in. And that's because for so long in his life, he had felt that way. And he didn't want other people to go through that.

My son was big-hearted. Big-hearted, soft-hearted. He cared about this world. And he cared about making this a better place. So Henry came out in 2012 at the age of 14? Yes. How did the other kids and teachers react, and how did you and Henry handle that experience?

Guys, this is a long, long, long story. And it depends on the day. It depends on the person. It depends on the situation. For the most part, when my child came out at the age of 14, he was the first kid in his school who had ever come out as transgender the school had never had a child in that position before and and honestly we had at the time very few if any children in his class

who were willing to be openly gay either so he um he came out to his classmates, to his teachers, a couple weeks later to me and my husband. Henry honestly thought that he had gone to the same school from kindergarten through 12th grade. This was the beginning of 9th grade. And he honestly thought that once he told his classmates and his teachers who he really was,

that things would sort of just magically fit into place and people would understand sort of why it was that he had never really fit in in the first place and that that's not what happened unfortunately um henry's first suicide attempt was december that year. He came out in September. December of that year, and what he told my husband and I at the time is that he thought when he came out that things would fit into place, and instead it just made it that much worse, that he could no longer hang with the girls, that the boys wouldn't have anything to do with him.

He had nobody to sit with, nobody to talk to. And he was very, very lonely. Some of your Republican colleagues have said kind words about Henry, have said they've learned from you, but they keep voting for these anti-trans bills. It seems like their minds aren't changing. But I imagine that there are parents out there who maybe don't know any trans people, and they hear these Republicans saying that all they're doing is trying to protect kids, and maybe they aren't sure what to believe. What would you say to those parents? It's a long story. And it's not actually a very pretty story.

It's a story about politics. And, you know, I mean, I may be a politician at this point but I never considered myself a politician I'm a doctor by training and a mother and you know that's how I identify but really what happened with this youth movement was that um the right and certain organizations on the right like groups like the alliance defending freedom which you all if if you all don't know about the alliance defending freedom i think the new yorker just did it did an article on him last week mike johnson worked for them yeah mike john Johnson is them. That is who we have now elected as Speaker of the House. He comes from a right Christian nationalist ideology that really believes,

believes that homosexuality is ungodly and is a sin. But since they were losing politically on gay marriage and homosexuality, and they were losing politically on abortion and a woman's right to choose. But what they found out about five, six years ago was that this issue about trans athletes polled well. It was polling at 70%, 70%. And so they went with it because they thought this was their winning political issue. Never mind that they were attacking children. Never mind that they were taking rights away from parents

to decide their own child's health care. Never mind that they are literally invading the most personal of spaces that belong between a patient and their family and their physicians. They didn't care what they were doing. Because if this polled well, this was going to be their message. And so we got, I mean, literally they hooked up with physicians who left standardized medicine back in 2002. 2002, when the American Academy of Pediatrics decided that it was okay for a gay couple to raise a child. These physicians broke off because they felt that the homosexual lifestyle was a moral basis that they could

not under any circumstances accept. It's a basic ethical morality. So they broke off. There's about four or five hundred of them. They have gone around, funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom, literally to now like 30 state houses in this country. It is quack medicine. It is being supported by Christian nationalists who do not, guys, believe in democracy the way we know it. I mean, I point blank asked a House representative who sponsored House Bill 470 this last session. House Bill 470, in its face, would have any healthcare provider who offered any sort of affirmation to a trans child, mental health, physical health, any healthcare provider whatsoever, automatic revocature of

your license, automatic and permanent revocature of your license for just being reported that you acknowledged a trans child existed existed and i went to her and i said you know do you believe, do you believe this? Do you actually believe in separation of church and state? And her answer to me was, under the appropriate circumstances. Under the appropriate circumstances. under the appropriate circumstances. And then she tells me that we don't like these people that testified because they're Christian. And I'm like, honey, 97% of the people in this country are Christian. Being Christian is not an ideology that says that you have the

right to pass laws to make normal healthcare delivery illegal because you're the base that you're playing to likes this. I mean, when you hear them say that it's about parents' rights, but I know that you introduced an amendment to a bill that was in the legislature where they, you know, if a child wanted to be called by certain pronouns they said the teacher the bill would say the teacher doesn't have to call them by those pronouns and you added an amendment i believe that said well they do if the parents say that they with a note from a health care provider that this was important to the child

and they wouldn't vote they wouldn? They wouldn't do that. No. Actually, guys, there are good studies, good data, that shows if a trans child is affirmed in one setting, either at home, at school, at church, at school, at church, one setting, it can actually decrease their lifetime risk of suicide by up to 70%. And what's interesting about this data is that it has to be authority. It has to be school. It has to be work. It has to be church. Having your friends affirm you doesn't offer the same immunity from suicidality as having somebody, these children want to belong. These children want to fit in. So SB 150, which was this bill that Max Wise brought forward,

that basically said teachers don't have to use a child's preferred pronouns. What that does is go to the absolute heart of that child's identity and that child's struggle to belong and to fit in. It is, in my opinion, simply the cruelest, cruelest thing that you could do, much less make it legal to do. Yeah. And your point that Henry and transgender kids everywhere just want to belong, I think is so powerful because the right is trying to let people think that if there is this culture that allows kids to identify as transgender and be protected and stuff like that, then kids are just going to choose this. Kelly Craft went on our airways and said twice, I will eliminate transgender

from the classroom. Like, what does she mean? You're going to take these children. First of all, being transgender, guys, is not contagious. I promise you, it is not contagious. Nor, for the most part, is it something that's a phase. Yes, there are tomboys. Yes, there are girly boys. Sometimes you grow out of it. Sometimes you don't. But these are not the children that are coming to their parents and saying, I feel inside like my gender is this.

It's a whole different world. It's a very, very small percentage of the population. It is not growing. People think that because we're allowing these children to express themselves, that somehow we're promoting this. We are not promoting this. The reason that you see and you hear more now about transgender children than you did 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the best analogy I can give you is the same thing that happened in the early 50s when we quit requiring children to use their right hands. The number of left-handed students increased exponentially and then leveled out. And it's not that we were promoting them, not that we were, it's that they were already there, they already existed, guys, and we were letting them exist. exist. My last question, Senator Byrd, you've had an unimaginably hard year. You serve in an extremely right-wing legislature, but you are still here and fighting as hard as you can

every single day. What keeps you going? every single day. What keeps you going? Honestly, what keeps me going, and this is the truth, I believe in the goodness of people. I do. Well, I'm very glad that you're here and still fighting.

So thank you, and thank you for joining us. Thank you, sir. State Senator Karen Burke. Thank you. I still think the left hand is the devil's hand. Lefty. Yeah, and it should have been trained. And by the way, you should have been forced to use your right hand. Outrageous.

All right, back to the news. So before we get to the 2024 campaign, you guys have a big election here in Kentucky on November 7th. Just one week from Tuesday. Your governor, Democrat Andy Beshear is at least in the polls we've seen,

polling ahead of his Republican challenger, Attorney General David Cameron. It's a race where a lot of the ads and a lot of the debates have focused on the issue of abortion. Cameron has long supported the state's current ban, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Though he now says if the Republican legislature sent him a bill adding those exceptions, he'd sign it. Beshear has vetoed abortion bans as governor. Bashir has vetoed abortion bans as governor.

Harry, there aren't too many Democratic governors left in solidly red states like Kentucky. What is Andy Bashir's secret? And why do you think Cameron has been trailing him in the polls? So I'll start, because I used to work at FiveThirtyEight with the data website with a very sort of structural analysis, which is that the last four presidents have mostly been unpopular, like Bush is very unpopular most of the time. Obama had some moments of popularity, but up and down. Trump, very unpopular. Biden, pretty unpopular, unfortunately. But governors, for whatever reason, people like their governor. The average governor's approval rating is 57%. So Andy Beshear is at 62 or 63, so he's doing better than average. And that's good for him.

But I think people like their governor, and I've been trying to sort of figure out exactly why, because some of the governors suck, to be totally honest. And the second point is,, Bashir is a great last name to have in here in Kentucky. His father was a two-term governor, a very effective two-term governor, you know, famously sort of expanded Medicaid and was invited to the State of the Union address when Obama was president. So those are the two factors that have nothing to do with kind of Andy Bashir, who he was, who his dad was, and kind of that he's an incumbent governor. But there are two things he's doing right. And the first is he's good at the kind of

I feel your pain kind of dynamic. He's very empathetic. Like if you watched his press conferences during the pandemic, and I know people here probably did, he was just great at seeming genuine and like he cared, like he wasn't like every other politician when there's been flooding or tornadoes or other things that have happened, a mass shooting here. He's always there. He connects. If you talk to him, he's, you know, either he's very good at faking sincerity or he's very sincere. I hope the second, but he comes off well. He just, and Daniel Cameron does not come off that way, I don't think. So there's a sincerity factor that matters. And the other thing I would say about Beshear is, as somebody who's pretty progressive, I'll vote for Joe Biden. There's been some great days with Joe Biden as president. There are some

days that I've not been as thrilled, let's put it politely. But with Andy Beshear, he rarely does things that I disagree with. I'm guessing that's probably not going to help his campaign that I'm saying it that way. We'll keep it quiet But that's it. He's, you know, Kentucky's a conservative state, but he vetoes abortion laws. He vetoes terrible anti-trans laws. He doesn't do a lot of like punching the left to show how moderate he is. He's not a Joe. People call me about Andy Beshear. I have to tell them this is not a Joe Manchin type. This is a person who believes in the right values and does the right things and has been a governor I'll be very excited to vote for. That's great. That's good to know. So Dan, abortion has been central to this race. We'll be in Ohio tomorrow where abortion rights will literally be on the ballot. Do you

think the results from these 2023 elections can tell us anything about how big of an issue abortion will be in 2024? Or is it just, is it hard to draw conclusions from non-presidential elections? I think it's hard to draw conclusions from not presidential elections. Like for example, talking about Ohio, in 2022, the turnout in Ohio was 4.2 million. In 2020, it was almost 6 million. So there's a huge gap. There's a huge difference between midterm elections and general elections. Here in Kentucky, turnout was about 20% higher in 2020 than it was in 2019, wouldn't be sheer one. But I think that it tells us a couple things that are informative, if not instructive. The first is how salient

abortion remains more than a year after Roe. Like, it makes sense that abortion was top of mind in November of 2022, only five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. It was interesting that it did so well that abortion was so powerful in the first Ohio special election a few months ago. Will it remain that way? Really interesting. But I do think there is a powerful, powerful symbolism if Andy Beshear wins, because here you have the governor of Kentucky, one of the most Republican states by presidential choice in the country, the states that Donald Trump wins by more than anywhere else, running on abortion, his first ad about abortion, vetoing anti-abortion bills, in debates, fighting aggressively against abortion bans. I think that's

just a powerful symbol to every Democrat all across the country that abortion is not a blue state issue. It's not a purple state issue. It's an issue that Democrats can run on everywhere in the country. We, just to underscore, in Kentucky, I'll be honest with you, when Bashir's staff came out with their abortion ads, I called one of his aides and was like, you realize this is Kentucky, right? Are you, what are you, you know, what are you thinking? And they said, basically, you know, the dog has caught the car, so to speak. Like the Republicans tried to ban every abortion of all time, for everybody. They've done this for a long time now they have an abortion ban and even in kentucky the average person does not want no you know abortion ban in all circumstances like it's been striking to see here how much basheer has talked about abortion in this campaign and how cameron is nervous about

this issue he sort of backtracked into this whole, I'll support some exceptions. That was not his view. His staff seems very nervous about it. But I think, again, this issue has changed American politics fundamentally. We were canvassing today with Planned Parenthood, and we were...

Shout out them, not us. And we were at doors, and we were talking to folks who looked like, let's be old, older white people who are saying, I've never, because the folks we were canvassing with from Planned Parenthood were great. They were like going all the way down the ticket. And there were two different people said, you know, I've never pulled like straight ticket Democrat before, but this year I have to.

And it was clearly because of abortion yeah and a couple people we talked to like knew that cameron is pretty extreme like that was something that i already registered with them and i want to ask this just came to me so no bad ideas in a brainstorm but dan perry uh louisville played duke today okay they won the Duke fans are known as Cameron Crazies Cameron Crazies is there a thing there is that something could be people don't like Duke here yes that is

can we tie him to Duke love it your thoughts I don't know what the fuck you're talking about this is working I just want you guys to know that so I went canvassing with Lovett Tommy and Dan were together and we went up to a house

there was someone watching TV they didn't want to come to the door Lovett kept knocking this guy came to the door he seemed pretty Republican and he told us he's like i know i'm voting for but that's all i'm gonna say and then love it did the whole spiel about cameron and abortion rights and he said and he goes okay i'll think about it and then love it's like

i feel like this interaction's not going well what do you think and he's like i'll think about it it was good you here's the thing it was impressive it was impressive i don't well it's gonna happen you got the lady with the labradoodle we got we got a lady with a labradoodle uh whenever whenever the conversation went a little awkward i just asked about a hot brown yeah he did he did and that helped. The hot brown conversation helped. All right. Speaking of elections, with just over two months to go until the Iowa caucuses, Joe Biden just got a last-minute primary challenger. Dean Phillips, a 54-year-old Minnesota congressman with a moderate voting record who's worth about $50 million.

Phillips says he mostly agrees with Biden, but that he's running because of polls showing that most voters think the president is too old to run again. He launched with a short speech in New Hampshire where he's now running this ad. I'm Dean Phillips and I'm running for president of the United States of America. And I'm coming to New Hampshire to answer your questions. I love New Hampshire. I spent my summers as a kid in the White Mountains going to camp. Got to canoe the Saco River, learn how to fish, learned how to shoot a gun. And it's also where I learned to love my country. And that's why I'm back as a candidate for president. We've got some challenges, that's for sure. We're going to repair this economy and we are going to repair America

as long as we do it together. I'm Dean Phillips and I approve this message. as we do it together. I'm Dean Phillips, and I approve this message. You know, I'm from Massachusetts, but New Hampshire is where I learned to love my country, too. Same, yeah. I couldn't learn to love it in Massachusetts.

I had to go north. Who among us didn't learn to love our country at summer camp? Summer camp. I just... First of all, if you close your mind and picture gelato neppo baby, isn't that what you picture?

You summered here? Come on. It's just not a strong, it's not a strong message. Well, I just think, look, there are polls that show that Democrats are interested in some sort of generic alternative. And he's like, well, I in some sort of generic alternative. And he's like, well, I'm some sort of generic alternative. Yeah, that's what it is. Tommy, what'd you think of Dean Phillips' campaign launch? Speech, the ad, the overall message, the whole vibe. So he did a long interview with The Atlantic where he kind of laid out his theory of the case and why he decided to get in. And there were some things he said in that interview that resonated with me. He has anxiety about Joe Biden's poll numbers. He has concerns about Joe Biden's age. I feel the same way. I'm concerned too. And I think that we shouldn't criticize

anyone for talking out loud about their concerns about the need to win this next election because it is enormously important. But what I think is frustrating for me is just the execution has been terrible because, first of all, he just waited way too long. You know, if you wanted to run and try to primary the president, you can't do it three months out. It's very, very hard to primary a sitting president in any scenario. But when you give yourself only three months to build a campaign raise money get your name id from negative that vest to net like to where he needs to be like it's going to be really hard and which makes me wonder like what is your goal here sir because again in this atlantic article very respectful of you sir i mean listen he seems like a nice guy i'm

not trying to be a dick to him but like, no. In this article, his campaign manager is apparently a guy named Steve Schmidt. Steve Schmidt worked for George Bush, John McCain, joined the Lincoln Project, left the Lincoln Project, quit politics, got back into politics. Now he's doing the Dean Phillips thing. And he said one of his strategic imperatives or whatever is to hire content creators in six different time zones so they can have the Biden campaign reacting at all times and on edge. And it's like, OK, so you've set up a campaign infrastructure where you got in too late to get on the ballot in Nevada. But your plan is to fuck with Joe Biden's news cycle every single day for the next three months or so. That seems like a setup where there's no chance you're going to win, but there is a great chance that you could make it harder for Biden to tell a story about himself

and what he's done and for the Democratic Party to, you know, hit back on Donald Trump when it's very clear he's about to be the nominee. And so like, listen, maybe Dean Phillips will catch fire. What do I know? Maybe. I don't, I don't think that like the progressive primary electorate is hungering for a, uh, extremely rich Nepo baby is love. It said, who's extremely moderate. Um, but maybe they are, but I, you know, I think more likely than anything, it's just sort of, he's kind of like a milquetoast guy

who's going to maybe cause some problems in New Hampshire. And that's about it. I think it's important to dig into the origin story of the Dean Phillips for President campaign, which is laid out in this very extensive article in The Atlantic, a populist website available all throughout New Hampshire for free.

That's where you go to find Democratic primary voters. You go to the Atlantic. You talk to Tim Alberta. So Dean Phillips has been very public about his concerns about Joe Biden and his electability. And not that Joe Biden is too old to do the job, but that Joe Biden is too old to win re-election

has been his point to date. And at some point in mid-September, Steve Schmidt, current podcast host, DMed Dean Phillips. Careful. Hey. Don't trust the podcast host. Yes. DMed Dean Phillips and said, will you come on my podcast? Dean Phillips did.

come on my podcast. Dean Phillips did. Afterwards, Steve Schmidt sent him an email that said, all my friends who listen to the podcast said something to the effect of, this guy has to be president, which definitely happened. And before that conversation was over, Steve Schmidt had a job running Dean Phillips' presidential campaign. So I'm suggesting that perhaps not a lot of thought was put into this plan. And we know this because he is on the ballot in New Hampshire, a state that has exactly zero delegates. Yeah, that's a problem, too, because New Hampshire is still going to go first, even though the DNC decided that South Carolina is going to go first. So they're going to strip New Hampshire of their delegates if they go forward with the primary, which they are. And Dean Phillips is trying to take advantage of that. So because Biden's not going to be on the ballot in New Hampshire,

so he's going to try to win New Hampshire, even though he doesn't get any delegates. And of course, he's not going to get any delegates out of Nevada because he missed the filing deadline for Nevada. First of all, just a reminder that every member of Congress is just waiting for someone to say, it's your turn. To DM them.

Yeah. We have one coming out next. Yeah, yeah, no. Present company accepted, maybe. But also like... Love it. Do you know how tall Dean Phillips is? Honestly, I just think he seems like a generic 5'10".

I like that. He gives off 5'10 energy. But, you know, look, I read his campaign announcement speech with great interest. I read it because the full video is not available on the internet. Right, I looked for it for like hours.

The full video of his campaign announcement speaking to Dan's point that this thing was cooked up in a DM three weeks ago. No website, No website. No website. There's no SEO going on. It's not on YouTube.

You Google Dean Phillips, you gotta scroll down, make sure you're on the right Dean Phillips. But you can read the full speech if you're a Playbook subscriber. You can read the full speech and the full speech they released was in,

this actually gave me like a pang of anxiety because they didn't release a transcript the way a normal campaign would, which is like a press release. of anxiety because they didn't release a transcript the way a normal campaign would which is like a press release they just put out the copy that was clearly for him to read it was in the big font in the phonetic with this with the kind of spacing of a speech first of all extremely generic uh it's an insulting document it's a cursed text uh i had did you love it i had this urge when i was reading

the document oh my god yes yes like where's track changes this is so fucking bland you can't just what are you doing here like we need to be we need to be fed and we need to be free and it's like it's a lot of that it's like the 90s shit it's a lot of like sentences that that that that loop back on each other but the thing that's so insulting about it is that there's no real argument in it, right? It's basically, you're meant to read between the lines that Joe Biden is too old, we need an alternative, I am that alternative. The problem with that is he then goes

and does these interviews. He did an interview on Meet the Press and Kristen Walker's first question is, what are some places where you disagree with Joe Biden? And he's like, I'm not running against Joe Biden. I'm running for the future. And it's like, OK, that's a sentence a person can think. But don't. But then when you put it on its feet, it falls the fuck over because the follow up is. But that's exactly what you're doing, sir. You're running against Joe Biden.

So where are there some differences? Then he kind of fumpers around to kind of find some. And the other problem with this is like, look, he, he says in that interview, said in other interviews, he said it publicly that he's wanted there to be an alternative to Joe Biden. This is not the popular governor of a Midwest state who's shown the ability to build a coalition. This is a no-name congressman who's making references to his subcommittee work as part of his qualifications. Hey. Hey. Subcommittees matter. who's making references to his subcommittee work as part of his qualifications hey subcommittees matter i'm just saying it's like it's not gonna it's not gonna move the needle which subcommittee uh who can remember but but it's just like he then redounds to this

electability argument but it's like who are you to make that argument why do i have any reason to believe you dean phillips a person who i googled right after i googled mike johnson why are you more electable than Joe Biden? He doesn't really have, he doesn't have anything to say that's actually a cogent, specific argument. Yeah, Perry, what did you think of the speech? He did like, I mean, and Playbook picked this up, and clearly Steve Schmidt told Playbook this, but like, he, if you read between the lines, he sort of, he dinged President Biden on inflation, border security, crime. He says he had a line about we're funding wars, we're, you know, we're, we're funding fighting and more than we are feeding.

And he said, we, the new generation will rise not through war, but through peace. Do you think he's leaning into policy contrast? What is he trying to do there? I don't, I think it's a great example of polls are useful, but it's clear if you look crime borders, if you look at what issues is Biden weakest on, it's clear that he looked at those issues. And I'm going to talk about these issues. Dean Phillips is not known as a leading immigration expert on Capitol Hill. It's more than, and his whole campaign is Biden is unelectable or like Biden is too old. People don't like that. And Biden might lose. And therefore I'm running. But great candidacies are actually not made purely or usually by polls at all.

Like I didn't support a Muslim ban or whatever Trump said, but his candidacy did sort of emerge sort of organically. Obama's candidacy, one I thought was great, you know, emerged from different things. He had something to say. He was running for a reason. Just basing and grounding your candidacy on polls just usually doesn't work. I guess the other thing I would say is polls are not as important as sometimes they are argued. And I think that parties, I think, are actually more important. What's happened, and I think it's really important, is there are plenty of Democrats who, if they started running tomorrow, if Gretchen Whitmer or Raphael Warnock said, I'm running president, I would probably consider, I would probably vote for them myself in the primary. But that said, they're not doing that. And I think it's worth considering whether, whatever the polls say, the people who are actually Democratic candidates,

actually in charge of the Democratic Party have Decided our candidate is Joe Biden and that's like no matter what we that's why the media is sort of struggling with us We're all sort of struggling with this is parties have power one party has decided Well one party to be you know to the beard of the Mitch McConnell is trying to stop Donald Trump with the voters would prefer Donald Trump but in this party, like the voters are actually like Joe Biden, but even more, the viable candidates for president people might actually consider are not running. So and I think Dean Phillips should have assessed that too. He's not, you know, there's no demand for Dean Phillips. And I think that's pretty well, you know, Tommy,

Tommy said he might not win. I'm going to go further and say Dean Phillips will not be president. Yeah. Well, so and it's not. I don't think Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and the other governors, popular governors, are not running. Are not running because someone in the Democratic Party. They have

assessed that they either cannot beat Joe Biden or that they would damage Joe Biden or that maybe they'll run down the road and that's going to be better. So like they have made that decision. And look, I'll take Dean Phillips at his word that he is just someone who is freaked out by the polls, tried to get other people to run against Joe Biden, couldn't do that and decided, well, I'm so freaked out about the polls that I'll do it myself. But that doesn't seem like a great reason to run for president.

But that seems like what he's doing. And what is gelato other than just like ice cream with a master's degree, you know, that it's always telling you about? I think it's important to recognize that the Democratic Party does not lack people who want to be president, who think that they would be better presidents than Joe Biden, probably. But the reason that Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom are not running is that Joe Biden is incredibly popular with Democrats. Just this gets lost. Donald Trump's up by 60 points in Republican polls. His approval rating is 77 percent among Republicans. Joe Biden's is 80 percent among Democrats.

It's just it would be incredibly hard to beat him. And even in these polls that show that two-thirds of Democrats want someone else, 80% of all those Democrats say they have a favorable opinion of Joe Biden or approve of Joe Biden. And that's a big deal in a primary. And Dean Phillips voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time. Literally, according to FiveThirtyEight, Perry's former workplace. So it's like, sir, you know, again. I don't know why I'm so respectful of this guy. His vest is like half zipped up.

Drives me crazy. I mean, look, the guy has a vest that zips from the top down and the bottom up. That's pretty cool. I just, yeah. Like what we need to do for the middle class. There we go. Oh, no. We need to stop these zippers from the bottom up and the top down.

We need a zipper from the middle to fuck out. stop these zippers from the bottom up in the top down we need a zipper from the middle to fuck out if if i were a democrat getting into the presidential primary right now i would run hard to the left on of joe biden on gaza or anti-war i would like pick an issue that i think that could get the progressive left excited and motivated and giving me money and endorsing me and dean phillips is just pointedly not doing that so it makes you wonder that would definitely what are we doing apart but you know but look and again i don't i don't want to suggest here that like dean phillips's anxieties about joe biden are unwarranted right like he's like who knows we

don't know if the polls are right or wrong like yeah there's a clearly reason to worry to worry. But like looking at the polls, worrying, and then deciding like going from that point to be like, oh, I should just run for president. It's just it's a little bit of a leap. We've talked a lot about how you manage your polar coaster anxiety in this podcast over the years. This is extreme. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Dean Phillips, knock some doors, buddy. You'll feel better.

Anyway, well, that's Dean Phillips. We'll see if we talk about him again. Who knows? Maybe we will. Maybe we won't. He could be a guest on the pod. He could be a guest on the pod. Yeah.

You know what? If he is, he's going to like me, not you guys. Yeah, well, Tommy will be calling him sir the whole time. Yeah, I guess Tommy's the one that's going to get some of that faggy ice cream. Okay. We'll be right back with Congressman Morgan McGarvey, who I'm sure is going to be thrilled to join us. I denounce that joke. Please welcome to the stage a member of the Bourbon Caucus, which is what Jon Favreau calls himself after he's had a few at the babysitter's stand all the way till 10.

It's Kentucky's own Louisville born and brewed and perfectly aged Congressman Morgan McGarvey. He's over there. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Congressman, thank you for being here. I didn't know my parents were here tonight. There was no reason to take your shirts off Now we would be remiss congressman Not to capitalize on your love of bourbon And frankly it's just been that kind of a week

So we're going to play something We're calling drink the fifth Here's how it works Just a casual conversation But if we ask you or you ask us A question we don't want to answer We just take a drink And as we do we have a couple bourbons up here that you're going to tell us about

because you are the congressman from Bourbon Town. We have a couple of different ones. So I'll kick it off. I just wanted to kick it off with just sort of before we get to the nonsense. The House is a speaker. They ultimately had ChatGPT create someone with the prompt, what if Paul Ryan truly believed there were dinosaurs on the ark? Mike Johnson popped out.

First of all, what of any relationship have you had with him? And do you have any observations as this chapter of Republican chaos draws to a close? So I'll be honest, I didn't know who Mike Johnson was. And he's a colleague. You work with him. Hey, it's okay. He doesn't know who I am either. But, you know, there's a great thing in law school when you were studying, they call it the reasonably prudent person. It's a made up character to decide if someone owes somebody a duty, if they've been hurt or that sort of thing. I view my wife as the reasonably prudent person. And hearing you guys talk about Dean Phillips, now we're talking about Mike Johnson. When the Mike Johnson thing hit and then Dean Phillips

announced for president, she actually looked at me and she goes, okay, are you guys just making up members of Congress now? I felt that too. So no, I didn't, I'm not on any committees with him. I didn't know him at all. I mean, I felt that too. targeting LGBTQ youth, when you talk about bringing that type of extremism, whether it's on foreign policy or domestic policy, it hurts people in their daily lives. And so my hope is that he can rise above some of the things he has said and done and lead the institution as a speaker. But, you know, if not, then certainly the Democrats are going to be unified. We're going to continue to fight what we fought for, and Perry, you said this earlier, I think, too. It is going to be something with which now we can run against. It is a Donald Trump-Mike Johnson speakership right

now with that sort of MAGA element, and so I think we're in a really interesting time with the budget coming up. That's the first big test of his speakership. Let's see what happens. Point of order. Are these Kentucky socks? They are Kentucky socks. Nice. Nice. Those are cool. They are Kentucky socks. And appropriately for this room, they're blue, which I thought was a good thing to have. Now, we have three kinds of bourbon up here. This is Old Forrester 86 proof. Yeah. This one is

Old Forrester 100 proof. This one is Old Forrester 1920 Prohibition style. So I think you drink this one while being very quiet. Which one should we try first?

So yeah, definitely try the Old Forrester 86 first, and there's a reason for this. First of all, when you're trying bourbon, you want to start with the lower proof and work your way up. If you start with the higher proof, work your way down, then by the time you get to the last drink, you're like, what is this? Is this water? So Old Forrester 86, it is 86 proof.

The 100, obviously 100 proof. The Prohibition is 115 proof, which is fairly hot for a bourbon. So start with the 86. All right. Glad we did this segment towards the end. This is good. Now, when you taste bourbon, there's a right way to smell it. Don't dip your nose in it like a wine glass.

If you dip your nose in it like a wine glass. If you dip your nose in it like a wine glass and take a big whiff of it, you're just going to get a whole bunch of alcohol and burn those nose hairs. You hold it right below. You actually breathe in with your mouth. So kind of hold it up to your mouth. Not at your chin, love it.

Not at your chin. You hold it up to your nose. You know, I'm trying here. You're trying. It's good. Up to your nose. Read it. You know, I'm trying here. You're trying. It's good. It's good stuff. I like the 86.

It's a great bourbon. I think it's, you know, you can find it for about 23 bucks. And I think Old Forrester 86 is just one of those bourbons that punches above its weight. You can put it on the bar shelf. It can taste at a mid-shelf level at sort of that lower price. So I'm a fan. How many members of Congress are in the bourbon caucus? Not enough. After this week, I hope it's more. And look, you know, obviously it's a bipartisan group. Andy Barr, the congressman from Lexington, is the co-chair of it with me.

Hey, not for this segment. Shut the fuck up. You show some respect. Is it the Senate included too? Is Mitch McConnell in it? The Senate is allowed to be there. They don't come over to our side as much. Got it. They're uppity. But we've done two bipartisan bourbon tastings since I've been there now. The last one, we had about 40 members of Congress there from both parties, which is a good number. And, I mean, look, there's a lot of dysfunction up there.

Henry Clay, I think, is the one who said that bourbon can lubricate the wheels of democracy. Solid. We're doing our best. I have a question about that later. That's all fucked up now. I was going to gonna say was he talking you know what else I have something else for you

what Dean Phillips is 5'8 honestly honestly thank you for telling us I'm so confident because I have 5'10 energy and um

you know what I gotta say I gotta say it's classic 5'10 guy to be like that I have 5'10 energy. And you know what? I got to say, I got to say, it's classic 5'10 guy to be like, that guy's 5'8. That is. That's it. That's the reason. That's it. All right. You know, they told me I'd have your chair and I was excited because I thought it would

be higher. But no, it's the same as everyone else's. Wow. Unbelievable. It's the same as everybody else's. Wow. Unbelievable. It's the same as everybody else's. All right. He's flustered, people. The 100 proof is also good. It's also good.

Next question. Lube us up, love it. Come on. Well, now I'm going to skip to a dumb one. Oh, well. Nothing on the cards for this, huh? Well, now I'm going to skip to a dumb one. Nothing on the cards for this, huh? What is happening there? How many cards do you have?

Got a lot to get through. All right, but as someone who's been vocal about gun violence, what are your thoughts about Speaker Johnson saying that the problem isn't guns but the human heart? Are you aware of any proposals for human heart reform? And what do you think is so bad about American hearts compared to hearts in other democracies? Good question. All of them, no matter what, can buy a gun anytime, anywhere they want to. And the reality is we've got

to have common sense gun reform in this country. You know, look, I mean, right here in Kentucky, we had a mass shooting in April that rocked our community. You know, Louisville, I tell people Louisville is, it's the smallest big city in America. And Perry knows this. Everybody's one or two degrees of separation away from everybody else. If you didn't know somebody directly impacted that shooting, you knew someone who did, truly. I lost two friends in that shooting. I knew several others who were shot. It happened the Monday morning after Easter. And what happened? You had a young man who had a long history of trouble who went in six days before and bought

an AR-15 and walked out in 40 minutes with an AR-15 and rounds of ammunition. Six days later goes, kills five of his coworkers, injures eight others, shoots a police officer in the head with an AR-15 round. It's unconscionable that we don't have common sense red flag or extreme risk protection laws that keep people safe from themselves as well as others. It's amazing that we can just buy these weapons of war that right now in Kentucky, you don't even have to have a license to have a concealed carry permit. That in our hospital right here, Norton Children's Hospital in 2021, there were 80 kids who came in who were shot. And 85% of those kids shot were accidental.

That we're not talking about safe storage laws. I think if you have an American heart, you should be talking about common sense gun reform so that we can keep our community safe. Let's go back to bourbon. Now this is a hundred proof bourbon. Yep. We're going up the kicking it up a notch, kicking it up a notch. Where's the best place to smell this across the room? You've already had a glass, just drink it. Um, you know, but a hundred proof, obviously it's 50% alcohol, alcohol. The most it could be is 200 proof. So a hundred proof is 50, 50% alcohol. Um, you know, it's important to know what has to be in a bourbon, right? When we talk about bourbon, what has to be, is this part of, is this one of your questions? Am I messing this up? No, no, this is good. This is good stuff. This is good stuff. Um, to be a bourbon, what has to be. Is this part, was this one of your questions? Am I messing this up? No, no, this is good. This is good stuff. This is good stuff. To be a bourbon,

you actually don't have to be made in Kentucky. Now, all of the good stuff is made here. Obviously. And truly, 95% of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky. But it has to be made in America. It has to be in a new charred white oak barrel. Has to be aged for at least two years, has to come off the still at no more than 160 proof, into the barrel no more than 125 proof, and the lowest it can be bottled at is 80 proof. So a Basil Hayden is like an 80 proof

bourbon, whereas we've got the 86, now we're at the 100. It has to be at least 50% corn, Whereas we've got the 86, now we're at the 100. It has to be at least 50% corn. And that's basically, I think, those are our requirements there to be a bourbon. And so when you're looking at an Old Forrester 100 proof, it's 72% corn, 18% rye. So it's got a higher proof, a little bit higher proof right there at that sort of 100 proof level. But the corn gives it more of a sweetness. And so the rye is what gives it more of a kick. If you see more of a high rye bourbon, which I think makes this 100 proof Old Forrester really, really approachable for what the proof level is. Yeah, I was going to say, it doesn't

taste like 100 proof. It's approachable. It is approachable. It's like a teacher that turns the chair around and raps at you. It's 100 proof, but it's actually 5.8. And yeah, it's a hundred proof but it's actually five eight and um yeah that's good that's good have you now have you always known all this shit or do you learn this for congress no i mean this is like some deep knowledge of the bourbon you know look i mean a lot i think a lot of kentuckians do know a lot about bourbon. A lot of people in the crowd, I'm sure. I don't, but a lot of people do. I was in the state senate for 10 years before this and we really do a lot of

bourbon bills in the state legislature in Kentucky, as you can imagine. You learn a fair amount about it there. Tommy, I can't believe you didn't understand that being co-chair of the Bourbon Caucus comes with real responsibilities. I apologize. If I run for president, I'll campaign on that.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Now, you've been fighting to the white oak that makes the barrels. Yes. It's what's happening with it because it's not, the tree is in trouble. Yeah. I mean, this is one where you actually see Congress having a little bit of foresight right now, which is good. There's a white oak regeneration bill, bipartisan bill up right now. And it's a good thing. You know, when you look at white oak, again, bourbon has to be made in a white oak barrel. And there's about an 80 year lifespan to get that tree from plant to where you're going to harvest it for a bourbon barrel.

And so we're looking down the road and going, okay, we got to have enough white oak trees to make sure not only can we have bourbon barrels, all the furniture, all the other things that you use for oak. And so it's one of those things that you see a Democrat Republican kind of coming together because it can also be really good for the planet as well as being good for business. And I think that's, that's kind of a cool thing. Now let's find out about this last one before we get into the, uh, this is the hottest of the three. Um, old Forrester is, it was started in 1870. Uh, one of the cool things about it is it was put in a glass bottle by George Garvin Brown and then sealed. And so this is at a time when it was before the Bottled and Bond Act.

Tommy didn't wait for the explanation. That's good stuff. The 120 was not very approachable. Sorry. And so in 1920 when Prohibition started, Old Forrester is actually the longest continually sold

bourbon under the same name and the same company in the country and and in 1920 they're one of the few companies that got a medicinal license had a long history of having a good product got a medicinal license were able to keep going this was released as part of one of their series to honor that legacy and it comes in at 115 proof because during that prohibition era as medicine a lot of the bourbon was a higher proof you get them you get higher proof. You get a doctor's prescription. They're framed doctor's prescriptions for bourbon. Really? Oh, wow.

Yeah. You could get prescriptions for bourbon. And you could also take the grease off a carburetor. Now, when Old Forrester did this, they were... It's still pretty smooth. It is pretty smooth. It's not like Old Forrester. Well, this is still pretty smooth. It is pretty smooth. Well, this is why we tried it last, by the way. Now go back and try the 86 and see what you think about it.

But, you know, they released in 1870, which is when it started, 1897, 1910, and 1920. And I will tell you, for anybody trying this at home, if you ever have the 1920 and the 1910 just mix half and half, we call it the 1915, and it's a really good bourbon. There's your inside tip. Are you allowed to say if you have a favorite bourbon, I want to ask, and you can decline to comment. It might be useful for your future. I drink the fifth. No, I truly don't have a favorite bourbon. And what I tell people all the time is look at your price points. And so if you're looking at a little bit more of an inexpensive bourbon, right, I think that that Old Forrester 86 is great.

I think the Elijah Craig Small Batch, it's a 94 proof bourbon, is a really good bourbon that's out there. You know, obviously you've got some of your Maker's Mark and Woodford Reserve and those sorts of things. Move a little bit high up, like right now, high up for me is $37.99 at Costco. You can get a bottle of Four Roses single barrel. I like that in Louisville, you don't have to know what a gallon of milk costs. I think that that's cool. Now,

before we let you go, you have cards in front of you. I have some hard questions for you. Now we're getting into drinking the fifth here. Throw a question out at us. If we want to answer it, we'll answer it. If not, we'll have to drink. Sure.

What's the one thing that really annoyed you about Hillary Clinton? I'm going to drink on that one. All right. How about this? Who is the last congressperson you'd like to see in the Capitol gym? Marjorie Taylor Greene. Next question. Who's the first congressperson you'd like to see in the Capitol gym?

First of all, she's really strong. And second of all, a drink. Bobert? Bobert? Because you know what's going on out there with the Beetlejuicing. Better not be any Boberting out there. Show some respect.

Obviously we mean vaping, you sickos. It's my turn, my turn. All right. Who was your least favorite person in the Obama administration? Just drink. Just drink. They're written to be drunk during.

Yikes. Yikes. Let's see. Let's see what we got for you. All right. Who would win in a fight? Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert? And the fighting style is capoeira.

Marjorie Taylor Greene. Look, I mean, she's very strong, as you all know. She would win that fight as long as there's no guns allowed. Good caveat. Was there any part of you that wanted to nominate George Santos as Speaker? Since he's already been Speaker, I knew he didn't want the job again. That's true.

That's true. You want to hit one of these guys? Tommy. Oh, God. Hi. If Commander Biden bit you in the white house would you report it or just suffer in silence maybe sneaking him a few treats from time to time to earn his affection oh this is easy i'd suck it up patch it up and suck it up all right come on what are we doing you have a follow-up for Tommy there.

Okay. Follow-up question? You have a follow-up right there for Tommy, I believe. Dan. Oh, for Dan. And Tommy. If you could change one thing about Lovett, what would it be? Make him 5'10".

Yeah. That's fine. Being 5'10 would be cool congressman you once said bourbonism has exploded in kentucky and the reality is that you can't have bourbon unless you have a barrel where did you get the stones to make up a word like bourbonism bourbonism from From bourbon itself. You have enough of it and it just comes out. I'm still thirsty, so I'm going to drink.

Yeah, no, you should. You should. You should. I'm sticking with the 86. Well, you know... I've really settled on the 100. I don't dislike the 100. Yeah, no, I think the 100's great.

I mean, the 115 proof stuff I think would be great after, say, a divorce or something. This is a great thing to drink when you have nothing left to lose. This should be the last thing you remember before you wake up in a new city.

So a couple of things about that higher proof. One, better in an old fashion. A good old fashion is better in an old fashion. Two, better on the rocks. Let it melt a little bit. Or three, one like it's a bourbon trick, but on a higher proof bourbon even, if you just take

I know it's going to sound crazy, but if you take a drop of water and put it in it, it'll totally open it up. Just a drop. Just a drop. What does that mean? I've heard that before. Open it up. What?

Open what up? What the fuck are you talking about? Do you remember the face Tommy made when he tried the 115 proof? Yeah. You just don't make that face anymore. So you're not like a wimp. That helps. Do you have a couple more on there for one of our contestants?

I do. Favreau, if it meant saving crooked media, would you show your feet in Discord? Show my feet? Yeah. Yeah, I'll show my feet in Discord. I didn't know you were into that. That's cool.

That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. We've learned a lot about you. Love it. I know that the Bourbon Caucus is something that Favreau joins with a babysitter. So do you know the full names of

Favreau and Tommy's children? That's so good. the full names of Favreau and Tommy's children. Because you guys seem close. I mean, I'm just, I'm new. I mean, look, Charlie and Lisette. Dude, their middle names? That's full names. Full name. I feel like they're both

something like Franklin. Just say Mike Johnson. Yeah. I don't think you need to know the middle names of our children, but it's Louise for me. Louise, I did know Johnson. Yeah. I don't think you need to know the middle names of our children, but it's Louise for me. Louise, I did know that. Harrison.

Harrison. That's close with Franklin. Yeah. Final question. It was the American statesman, Henry Clay, who once said that bourbon could lubricate the wheels of government. Was he talking about having sex with a train? You know what?

I'll ask you actually. I want to ask you a serious, let's ask you a serious question to end this. Delightful experience. You leave voicemails for your constituents who apparently are the only people on earth who like voicemails. But you have a Democratic governor. You are the only Democrat in your delegation.

What do you wish people understood about running and winning in the South that maybe some of our listeners don't understand? Yeah, no, thanks so much. Don't overlook us. Don't overlook us. Don't overlook us. I know we're in flyover country right but we have people here who want their communities to be safe who want their kids to be able to get a good education who want to be able to have good affordable health care who

want to be able to retire with some security and some dignity, who care about the future of our community and our country, and if we can talk to them about our plans to do just that without looking down on them, then I truly believe not only will we listen, but we will find some more common ground. Congressman McGarvey, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking us through these great bourbons.

Thanks for getting us drunk. Well, we consider ourselves members of the Bourbon Caucus. Yeah. And thanks for being here. Thank you, guys. One more time for your congressman. That's our show for tonight.

Thank you to Congressman Morgan McGarvey. Thank you to State Senator Karen Bergen. Thank you to Perry Bacon. Thank you. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kiril Pellaviv, and Molly Lobel. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes and extra video content. Find us at youtube.com slash at Pod Save America. Finally, you can join our Friends of the Pod subscription community for ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and a great discussion on Discord.

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