Pod Save America - “Choose your own obstruction.”

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

The Parkland students enrage right-wing pundits, Trump’s legal problems get worse, the Department of Veterans Affairs gets a new boss, and the Census gets a new question. Then Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, joins Jon and Dan to talk about her new book “Dear Madam President: An Open Letter To The Women Who Will Run The World.”

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, we'll be talking with our good friend, former Hillary Clinton campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, who's written a new book called Dear Madam President, an open letter to the women who will run the world. There's still some tickets to our Florida shows. We'll be there next week. Check it out on ourcookit.com slash events. For pod schedule, we are trying something new, Dan, where we actually are going to record Monday's pod Monday night

and put it out Tuesday morning first thing because we are reclaiming our Sundays. I have not known how you've done that for a year and a half now so i'm happy for you guys yeah we're gonna test it out we'll see if everyone freaks out also that works because our normal thursday pod next week will actually be out friday morning it will be our thursday night live show in clear water uh so we get a tuesday friday schedule next week for everyone who's listening okay I'm gonna find whatever restaurant has a bottomless mimosa Sunday brunch and invest in it in West Hollywood

yeah that's that's what I'll be doing Sunday no I'll actually be going to my parents for Easter okay so I haven't talked to you since the March for our lives last weekend but I saw on Twitter that you spoke at the March in San Francisco. How was that? I mean, I did. It was very nice of them to invite me to do it. And it was almost entirely students and then a couple of politicians and one podcaster who were sort of talking a little bit about our experiences in the battle for gun control and introducing the students. And so it was really a wonderful experience. The people, the students I met there were just unbelievable. The discussion was very broad based in a way that I think is important. And it just wasn't just about shootings in schools like Parkland. It was about gun violence writ large, about police shootings. You know, there were a lot of people who were representing organizations or who were in schools or communities who live with gun violence every day.

But it doesn't make CNN or The New York Times or MSNBC or whatever else. And people were fired up, but in an inspirational way. Like, it was not anger. Yeah. was not anger like i didn't and this this has been the trend i've seen with every march or protests we've been to is it'd be so easy to be angry and about it but people it was like this joyousness of being together to push for something real it was a really special experience that my parents in tow holly was there was a it was it was wonderful yeah i was talking with love it about that too because he was saying like it's a good place for everyone who's been so angry about everything to show up but i was saying you don't see that anger at the march like you saw

in 2010 with some of the tea party rallies you know like the tea party town halls and rallies were not like joyous peaceful uh gatherings there's a lot of angry people that were always yelling on tv and i didn't see that at the women. And I didn't see that at the Women's March. I didn't see that at the March for Our Lives. We should talk about some of the reaction to the march. First of all, it drove all of the worst people in politics absolutely insane. So you had Congressman Steve King from Iowa, noted racist, attacked Emma Gonzalez for wearing a Cuban flag on her jacket. attacked Emma Gonzalez for wearing a Cuban flag on her jacket. Eric Erickson at Red State spread false rumors that friend of the pod David Hogg wasn't actually at the school during the shooting, which he later had to correct.

And Laura Ingraham mocked Hogg for not getting accepted to his favorite colleges last night. She mocked a 17-year-old shooting survivor for not getting into college because she doesn't like his political views. I wish that was a joke. I see these attacks as sort of evidence that the Parkland students are winning and that the people in right-wing entertainment really don't know how to deal with it. What do you think? I think there are a couple of things at play here. First, Nate Silver had a tweet this morning that said something to the effect of, it's not that the Parkland kids have been spot on in everything they've done. There have been some things they've said that have been off tone or maybe not exactly right in the moment. good at political communication, they're as good at political communication as pundits and political and cable hosts and political operatives who've been doing this for years is threatening to those people, which is why they they act the way they do, right. And so if you have spent years toiling

away in the Fox News green room, you know, working your way up from the five to Fox and Friends to Ingram angle, and then all of a sudden, some kid walks out of high school and is as good at being a pundit as you are, that's probably threatening. The other thing is, is that the incentive structure in Trump's Republican Party is to be as big an asshole as possible. That's how you get clicks. That's how you get attention. That's how you get a presidential pat on the back. And so people are trying. They want to appeal to not just Trump, but the people that Trump appealed to. And you get that by being an asshole, not by being understanding or thoughtful. And that's how people like Laura Ingraham got famous to begin with.

And you're right. It is, if you watch the panic in the eyes of the NRA and Dana Loesch, they can feel the political terrain shifting underneath them. And the only way they know how to react is to lash out in ad hominem attacks against high school kids. And so it's a sign of everything that's that is wrong about political punditry, everything that's wrong with the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and everything that is right about where the politics on guns is going in this country. It's like high school, not just high school students, high school students who have survived a school shooting like i just i can't put myself in the minds of these people like

there's one of the parkland students this uh young man named kyle uh he's much more republican in his positions on gun control and he's been out there speaking as well and obviously like i don't agree with a lot of the policies he's pushing but i can't imagine in a million years going online and starting to yell about this kid and criticize him especially because of what he's just been through you know like i don't understand these people like what you know what what brings them to think to themselves like yeah it's a good idea to spend my like eric erickson looks like obsessed with fucking everything that david hogg says and does you look at his twitter feed and like it's all about david hogg all the time like what is with

the weird obsession with these high school students you know i just i don't understand it like there's an important point you make about this kid, Kyle, which is it is OK. Like you don't have to pretend to agree with Emma Gonzalez or Cameron Kasky or David Hogg or anyone like you can have it. There can and should be a debate about their points. They have inserted themselves into a national debate and they are not immune from criticism or disagreement about what they're saying. They are in the arena. That is fair. And that goes for people on the other side as well. But it takes a special kind of asshole to

decide that the way to respond to that is not substantive, but you try to tear them down. I mean, it's why we have Trump. It is exactly, there is a market for being an asshole in the Republican Party and these people are responding to the marketplace. Yeah, there is a sickness and it is a sickness that is much more prevalent on one side right now. One interesting reaction to the march came from a retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. This led Donald Trump to tweet, in all caps, the Second Amendment will never be repealed. and then chuck schumer immediately said that's not the democrats position repealing an amendment a constitutional amendment requires

a two-thirds majority vote in the house and the senate or a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures uh dan how likely is this to happen it is impossible it's not going to happen so why do we we think Stevens did this? He, I mean, Stevens is making a, to be honest, I don't know the answer,

but I think he's making a point that I guess I put it this way. I am confused by Stevens's point because it conflicts with his dissent in the Supreme court decision that held that the second amendment meant that people had a right to bear arms in the way in which we commonly think about it. This was D.C. versus Heller, and Stevens was in the dissent, and the majority won. So there are a couple things that I thought Matt Iglesias of Vox had a good point about this. Democrats don't have to repeal the Second Amendment. There's actually a lot of gun control that we can pass that the Supreme Court has essentially held is consistent with the Second Amendment,

an assault weapons ban, limit on high-capacity clips. No open carry. Yeah, no open carry, universal background checks. Because in Scalia's opinion in Heller, he makes it clear that the right to bear arms is not an unlimited right. But it is also worth noting that prior to Heller, there was real disagreement about whether the specific wording of the Second Amendment as it related to the right to bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia meant that people could – had a constitutional right to own a handgun, own a rifle, whatever that is. And it was only in a 5-4 court decision that held that. Up to that point, it had been, as I understand it, an untested constitutional

question. And so we actually don't need to repeal the Second Amendment. We should pass a whole bunch of laws that have broad bipartisan support in this country that are consistent with the Second Amendment, as interpreted in this Heller decision. And I'd like to see Democrats arguing that if elected to the presidency, we will appoint Supreme Court justice who will do a certain set of things, including overturn Citizens United,. But at the very least, I do think Matt Iglesias' point that in D.C. there are all these very strict gun laws that pass muster, constitutional muster, even based on that heller opinion. So it should not stop us from trying to, in the meantime, push for a number of very restrictive gun laws. very restrictive gun laws. The next steps for March for Our Lives, students are organizing a town hall for our lives and pushing every single member of Congress to host a town hall during the next congressional recess. That is Saturday, April 7th. They're trying to organize members of Congress to hold town halls. And then I think recess extends to the 8th and 9th as well.

So be on the lookout for that and we'll get you guys details about what's happening there as we get them. Let's move on to the president's mounting legal problems, which now span from obstructing the investigation into the Russian attack on our elections to paying hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. There are a few stories over the last couple of days on this. The New York Times reports that Trump's former lawyer, John Dowd, discussed Trump issuing pardons to Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn, of course, already is cooperating with Mueller. He pled guilty. Manafort has thus far refused. Dan, does this seem like the typical above-board legal maneuver

you see from lawyers with innocent clients? John Dowd is sort of like the attorney who represented everyone in the Barksdale crew from The Wire. He's just about as sketchy as you can possibly be. And this also answers the question that people have been wondering, which is why has Manafort not cut a deal? Yeah. He has been...

He's facing so much jail time and he's going to... So much money and lawyers cost. Given Manafort's age, many people speculate that he will spend the rest of his life in jail if convicted of the crimes uh he has been he has been charged with and he seems very guilty he just based on what we have read and seen he seems super guilty so why would he not if given the chance to reduce his sentence significantly, not turn on the person who fired him in an embarrassing way for a racist blogger, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. So that's always been a mystery to me. Like, why does he think he would win this case? And the answer may be, and this is irresponsible speculation on my part, but it may be that he's waiting, he's holding out for a pardon,

and that he would not go to jail at all. I mean, it may be that he's waiting, he's holding out for a pardon and that he would not go to jail at all. I mean, it may be irresponsible speculation, but it's also sort of the obvious, the most obvious explanation that you'd imagine because like, you know, Trump has pardoned people that don't deserve pardons before Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The pardon power is pretty expansive. the pardon power is pretty expansive now you can't use a pardon for corrupt reasons and certainly preventing people from cooperating with the man who's investigating you for crimes seems like a corrupt reason but my question in this whole thing was like what is stopping trump from just waiting muller out and pardoning everyone maybe nothing nothing. You know, that's the, I mean, everyone's very focused on will Trump fire Mueller? But Trump may decide that firing Mueller may be too much of a headache and he might as well just wait him out,

knowing that if he pardons everyone or if Mueller releases a report or at least releases a report just to Congress saying that Trump deserves impeachment, no one will do anything because the republicans have protected him every step of the way up to this point that is a real interesting obstruction of justice choose your own adventure for trump which is do you fire a mother now before he sends a report to congress which details the many crimes which you and your coterie of incompetent criminals has committed? Or do you wait till Mueller's already done it and then pardon everyone involved? But I guess I don't know whether Trump can pardon himself. That's probably an untested proposition. Yeah, I don't think he can.

I don't think he can pardon himself. I think at some point he has to, you know, lean on his goons in Congress to help him out here and to say, you know, the FBI is corrupt and Mueller's group is corrupt and this is fake news and blah, blah, blah. And then they just sort of wait it out. Now, you know, if Democrats take back Congress in November, this is a little more problematic for him but as we've said before you still you could get an impeachment in the house if it comes to that but you get to the senate and you know you need something like 66 67 votes and we certainly don't have that in the democratic party and i don't know that we can get there with even the Republicans who have expressed grave concern about Trump and his. You mean both of them? Both of the Republicans have expressed grave concern.

Yeah. So that's an issue. I mean, it does seem like Trump's a little more nervous than usual here about Mueller. Politico has a story about how Trump's media goons are unleashing opposition research on Mueller. media goons are unleashing opposition research on Mueller now. On Tuesday night, Bob Mueller filed a statement in court that says, former Trump aide, current cooperating witness Rick Gates, was in contact during the final weeks of the 2016 campaign with a business associate of his who was tied to Russian intelligence

and the theft of the DNC emails. That was pretty crazy, huh? Now, why do we think Mueller did that? If we had gone back to December of 2016 and laid out the set of things that have happened since then, and one of them was that Trump's deputy campaign manager, transition official, and overall Republican insider had been in touch with a russian intelligence official i mean that would we would have been like case closed done paul ryan and mitch mcconnell have gone to the white house and told trump to resign but instead it's on like page c12 because of all the other crazy shit that's happening i know it's like it happened late

tuesday night and so i didn't even see it until wednesday morning yesterday and then we were all on to the next thing but i'm like like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What the fuck? His business associate was Russian intelligence, was former Russian intelligence who still had ties. What do we think they were talking about in those final weeks of the campaign? Who knows? It is worth noting, I think, that this sort of does. And I think this can play into the Stormy Daniels conversation, is like no one saw that story.

I mean, we are obsessive news consumers. We are consuming it on Twitter. We are texting about it. We are posting on Slack about it. We live for this. It is basically our jobs. I mean, you're actually a media mogul. And we barely noticed it and so you

know voters didn't notice it like no one knows this happened but if you polled reporters many of them wouldn't know what happened because they're covering other things also worthwhile things but it also probably doesn't matter that voters don't know it yeah like what matters is muller knows it muller knows it but i think I think Mueller was doing it and making it public and filing it. I saw some people speculate about this, that one of the reasons he was filing this statement was to send Manafort a message that it's time to cooperate because look what we have.

Mueller keeps trying to show some of his cards to Manafort in order to pressure him to flip, which could be true or not. But no, it's funny when you said that we didn't notice it. Even Brian Boitler, editor of cricket.com, who I'm pretty sure has a bulletin board up in his office with red string connecting all the different players in the Russia investigation. Even Brian didn't know it.

I found it on someone's tweet and was sending it around yesterday. It's wild. Also, there's something weird that happened on Tuesday, which was Chris Coons, Senator Chris Coons from Delaware, found it on someone's tweet and was sending it around yesterday it's wild um also if something weird that happened on tuesday which was chris coons senator chris coons from delaware and senator tom tillis put out a statement calling for the protection of bob muller just out of the blue and i don't know if there's something afoot where they're a little more nervous than usual that trump's are gonna make a move but um i thought that was pretty weird yeah i i agree where they're a little more nervous than usual that Trump's going to make a move. But I thought that was pretty weird. Yeah, I agree that there we don't know anything. But it suggests

that at least there is rumors happening, or discussion happening among senators and, you know, I imagine Republican senators about that we may be getting closer to a point where Trump will fire Mueller. I mean, in fairness, he is firing everyone. He barely gets through breakfast without firing someone via tweet. So you can imagine why people could think this was coming around the bend pretty soon. Well, so the other potential legal issue the president faces has to do with a potential illegal campaign gift, which would be the $130,000 his lawyer paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about having sex with Donald Trump, which seems like something you'd keep quiet about for free.

Anderson Cooper interviewed Stormy on 60 Minutes. Anderson Cooper interviewed Stormy on 60 Minutes in their highest rated broadcast in 10 years. Good job, America. She talked about her affair with Trump. She talked about how at one point in 2011, one of his goons physically threatened her and her daughter, or at least she thinks it was one of her goons. It would be weird that anyone else would know the story. So, Dan, I thought she was very compelling.

I don't know anyone who doesn't think she's telling the truth. Obviously, she's telling the truth. I guess the question now is, will it matter to conservatives and Republicans? I'm afraid I know the answer to that one, and it's more rhetorical. Will it matter to conservatives and Republicans? I'm afraid I know the answer to that one, and it's more rhetorical. Will it matter to voters? The New York Times had this story about how, quote, the seamy sex allegations and Mr. Trump's erratic style could end up alienating crucial blocks of suburban voters and politically moderate voters who might be drawn to some Republican policies, but find the president's purported sex antics to be reprehensible.

So what do we think about this? It doesn't matter. It is possible this could be the thing that fells Trump legally. Right. This could be Al Capone. It could matter legally. Yeah, this could be Al Capone and the tax returns. That is for sure.

I don't think voters are going to give two shits either way. We know there is nothing that will separate the evangelical supporters of trump from trump they made a compromise concession on this two years ago and decided that he was the person for them and that's their choice and i don't think this is gonna be any different than i mean we already had the access hollywood tape come out right weeks before the election and people still voted for him and 19 women who said that he sexually assaulted them yes so if allegations of sexual assault did not convince uh these voters to leave him allegations around a hush money for a consensual relationship is not going to do it so i do worry a little bit like this is a very legitimate story it is not just sort of salacious gossip, although it has lots of salacious and fairly nauseating details in it. There is an actual legal issue here, and it is being compounded by the idiot that the idiot lawyer Michael Cohen went out and found a dumber lawyer than himself to represent him, who is going all over TV and saying incredibly stupid things, including this morning on CBS, that Trump and Michael Cohen

don't have a lawyer-client relationship. What was that? They're more like friends or colleagues, which will then be used in what may be the first time of Nora O'Donnell and Gayle King being used in court in the evidence to suggest that everything that Michael Cohen cannot use

to turn to client privilege to not testify or discuss things he said to Donald Trump. So there's real news happening here, no doubt. But I do worry that it is a distraction from the things that will matter most to voters. And that's the one thing we know about Trump is he can sort of hide behind these things that are horrendous and salacious and click-worthy and newsworthy, but are not the things that are decision makers for voters. And I think that's a lot of what happened in 2016. Yeah, I know. We should talk to Paul Mary about this too when she's on. But I mean, I thought about that too. There's a larger debate here about do you go after Trump's personality and Trump's dishonesty and Trump's racism and his

sexism and all of the things he's done wrong in 2018 and 2020? Or do you focus on the policies and the actions that his administration has taken that will affect people's lives in a real substantive, tangible way. And I think that we need to do the latter. I think that most people in this country have made up their minds about Donald Trump. Either they hate him or they love him. I don't think there's a lot of people who are in between. And I think that if you are a Democratic candidate in the most liberal district or in the most conservative district, that you should be talking about what your plans are and what your policies are and why the Republican policies and the Trump administration's actions have been so deeply damaging to the country.

I think that is your best bet, no matter what kind of district you're running. That's my opinion. I don't know what you think. My opinion is very similar. We have discussed over time a better deal as a message and some of the critique that people gave that, which was probably slightly overblown in people's reaction to it. But the challenge of it is it was a slogan in search of a story. political message making, which is you try to figure out the bumper sticker first and then use the bumper sticker to tell a story. When what you should do, and what I think Barack Obama, with the help of very able speechwriters, did was have a story and then figure out a slogan from there. And I think the story that Democrats should be telling is around stopping the chaos

and corruption in Trump's Washington. And that allows you to run against Ben Carson's $31,000 table, Tom Price's flights, everything about all the special interest giveaways in the tax bill, particularly when Paul Ryan gets a half million dollars from the Koch brothers in exchange for passing the bill, Trump enriching himself. You need to run against corruption and chaos, because we know from research I've seen that the chaos bothers a lot of people who would vote for Republican members of Congress. And that is a story to tell. Now, the challenge you have, you're like, we're going to say that and press secretaries of democratic races around the country are going to say, rightly, every time my boss goes out,

they ask about Stormy Daniels or collusion or should Trump fire Mueller. And the only way we get coverage is to do that. And that was the challenge the Clinton campaign faced. And that is a very real challenge. And you can't change. The press is going to cover someone saying that they spanked the President of the United States with a copy of Fortune magazine with his face on it. Like that is going to get covered. There's nothing you can do to stop that. And that is not even an indictment of media today. That would have been true in the days of pamphleteering. But you can control what your candidate says. You can control what your ads are. And Democrats have to be incredibly disciplined to carry a message that shows both why the Republicans are wrong and what they're

going to do about it. And I think that's both a populist economic message that includes everything from $15 minimum wage to Medicare for all or improvements on our healthcare system. And it includes a set of ethics reforms around campaign finance, around making Trump, making the president of the United States included in the conflict of interest laws and all of the above. So you have to have a story and an agenda and they have to pair with one another. Yeah, I mean, I think you answer those questions by saying X is just another example of Trump protecting himself, enriching himself, his friends, his donors, at the expense of caring about the American people. This is a man, this is a Congress who have told us that if you put them back in power, they will try to finish the job of ripping away people's health care and

driving up their premiums. These are people that if you put them back in power, they will continue to pass more tax cuts for the wealthy and gut programs like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. They have told us this. They have promised us this. They are out of control. They are unchecked. They are corrupt. They protect themselves at the expense of everyone else. And we need some accountability in Washington to keep them in check, to protect people. I mean, that to me is how you, you know, instead of getting into the issues about Stormy and this and Mueller and the lawyers, like you said, it's just all corruption. And it's corruption at the expense of the American taxpayer.

And I think the answer, like collusion, Russia dominates the news coverage. That is true. So just answer the question. We need to let Mueller do his job. What I'm focused on is X. Yeah, that's right. I want to talk about some of the weirder moves from Trump this week. He fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and replaced him with his own White House physician, Dr. Ronnie Jackson, who we know because he was an Obama White House physician. He took care of the staff.

He took care of us. He did a great job as doctor for us. But do we think that Dr. Ronny Jackson can run the biggest healthcare system in the United States? Does he have managerial experience? I don't know. I don't think so. Shulkin, of course, was a holdover from the Obama years. Trump didn't like him. He reportedly picked Dr. Ronnie because they have a good personal rapport. And, you know, he thinks he's out of central casting, which, of course, is a big one for Trump, particularly when you're on Fox, because he was almost going to pick a Fox person for this. So what do you think about this, Dan? I mean, as you point out, Dr. Jackson is a friend of ours.

He traveled everywhere President Obama went. We traveled everywhere President Obama went. We spent days and weeks on the road with him. When I had health challenges, he took great care of me, well above and beyond what anyone could have possibly asked for. above and beyond what anyone could have possibly asked for. I think he's a great doctor and a really good person who has served his country incredibly admirably over a long career, a long and distinguished career. To answer your question, I have no idea if he can run the VA. I've never talked to him about veterans policy or his managerial experience. I mean, he does have to run the White House Medical Unit. And I mean, that is a managerial job.

Obviously, there is no obvious experience to prepare you for running the VA, other than maybe being the deputy VA secretary. It is the second largest department, I believe. It's a huge management challenge. I worry for Dr. Jackson that Trump is putting him on a tough path here because for even with the best legislative affairs staff, communications people, strategists, it's a hard thing to get a person confirmed. It's a hard thing to get a person confirmed for a job that it is not immediately obvious why they are qualified for it. Yeah. And Trump does not have the best legislative

affairs staff. He does not have the best communications people. He does not have strategists, full stop. So I worry for Dr. Jackson that Trump threw his name out there via tweet because he likes him and is impressed by him, and then will do none of the actual work it takes to give him a chance to fairly make his case to be confirmed. Yeah. And again, to take this out of the purely personality realm, which is what the press always does, and put it into the policy realm here, you know, Shulkin wrote an op-ed this morning in the New York Times about why he was fired. And he said, you know, he basically attacks Trump political appointees in the VA for trying to privatize the VA and accuse them of wanting to, quote, rewarding select people and companies

with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans. He ends by saying it shouldn't be this hard to serve your country. It's interesting that, you know, now we don't know exactly what the causes were, but we do know that there are a lot of Trump political appointees in the VA right now who are trying to privatize veterans care, which is a very bad idea. And I think that the other thing that Dr. Jackson is going to face during his confirmation hearings is a lot of questions about whether he agrees with these ideas about reforming the VA by essentially privatizing it and giving a lot of this care to private hospitals where the costs are much higher for the same kind of care. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely people

in Trump world who want to privatize the VA. I'm somewhat skeptical that that's why Shulkin did make it. It probably had a lot to do with personal expenditures, forged emails, and some of the other scandals he was involved in. And not that he did those things, because that's totally fine. Trump only cares if you get caught doing those things and he gets bad press coverage. He's not mad that you're corrupt. He's mad that you're incompetent and corrupt. Also, remember how in 2012, when we were waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on health care, and you had to write like

three different speeches for obama for every possible outcome like they overturned it they upheld it they did this half thing do you think shulkin did that for his firing because he turned he didn't just like get fired by tweet and ben and turn this around he had this written for when trump fired him and so i imagine had like, if I get fired and he attacks my credibility, I'll do this. I mean, it's like, if I get fired on the toilet, I'll do this. Yeah. It's just, uh, working for Trump seems terrible. And if you chose to do that, you deserve what you got. So I'd say that the scariest Trump cabinet news this week came from the Department of Commerce. Billionaire Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, overrode reportedly career U.S. census employees and pushed the bureau to announce that the census will include a question asking every American household about their citizenship.

This is a problem because critics say that it may scare millions of undocumented immigrants from filling out the surveys. This is important because courts have ruled that every person, not just U.S. citizens, must be counted in the census. If they are not counted, states with undercounting don't get the funding or representation in Congress that they deserve. Cities get hurt the most. States with large immigrant populations get hurt the most. States with large immigrant populations

get hurt the most. What did you think about this news, Dan? The idea that people may be concerned about giving that information to the Trump administration. Of course they're concerned about it. They are raiding every place they can to deport as many people as possible. And every time they deport more people, they get a real attaboy from Trump. So of course, people are worried about it. Of course, it's going to have a negative effect. It's going to be really bad for states with large immigrant populations because of the way federal funding is allocated. It can have massive implications for the way districts are drawn in after the next redistricting. It is incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. And of course they're doing it because if given the choice to do the shittiest thing

possible, they will always do the shittiest thing possible. Wilbur Ross, who had been, according to Axios' reporting of inside White House gossip, had really been on the outs with Trump for a long time for falling asleep in meetings. He's now back in Trump's good graces for being for a trade war and now being for a racist census. Like that. He does that for a reason. I'm sure Trump fucking loves this. I'm sure Stephen Miller loves this.

And that's why they're doing it, which is generally a sign that Stephen Miller likes something and Trump likes something. It's a bad thing. But I want to get this out of just the sort of this is another awful thing that's unique to Trump because so what can be done about this? So 12 attorneys general have filed suit against this, including Javier Becerra here in California. But in additional to legal avenues here, Congress has oversight over the census. Congress could do something. Will Congress do anything? Well, here's Marco Rubio. He tweeted the other day that this is an absurd freakout over the census. And he said, quote, districts apportioned based on number of people not here illegally dilutes the political representation

of citizens. Well, Marco, that's not what the fucking courts have said for I don't know how many years now. The census is supposed to count all persons in the country, whether you are undocumented or not. That's the way it is. Fucking Marco Rubio, man. There has been a lot of discussion

about Marco Rubio online these days. Yeah, I noticed. A lot of very sad, never-Trump conservatives have tried to explain, as someone put it, a grand theory for why no one likes Marco Rubio. Here's the theory. It's not that grand. There's nothing likable about Marco Rubio. He is a empty suit who is scared of his own shadow,

who takes bold, smug positions and immediately backtracks from them at the slightest sign of political turmoil. He is the walking, talking embodiment of everything that everyone hates about politics. There is almost nothing that the Breitbart crowd and the friends of the pod agree on, but they do agree on this. Marco Rubio sucks. Forget about the Breitbart crowd. Don't take our word for it. Don't take the racist blog's word for it. Ask any of the Republican candidates and their staffs who ran against Marco Rubio in 2016

what they think about Marco Rubio, and you will hear something that sounds like you're listening to Pod Save America. Ask Republican voters. Right. Who took a long year and a half long look at Marco Rubio and decided, you know what? I like Ted Cruz a lot more. Yeah. There's about 10 people on Twitter, mostly Never Trump conservatives, and like a few

former strategists for Marco Rubio who defend him. And that's about it. You're not finding anyone else. Another person who reminded us that the Republican Party is why we got Trump and that Trump is not some aberration is never Trump hero Mitt Romney, who said this week, quote, I'm also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president. My view was these DACA kids shouldn't be allowed to stay in the country legally. Should we be surprised from the person who, during the 2012 campaign, talked about self-deportation and attacked Texas Governor Rick Perry for being too favorable to Dreamers? Probably not.

We've known Mitt Romney was bad for a long time. Yeah. We convinced ourselves everyone wants a Republican hero. We need an Arnie Vinnick in our lives to represent some other better version of the party because we need a two-party system to function. We hope and need a healthy, normal Republican party that's just conservative, not horrible. That does not exist. No. normal Republican Party that's just conservative, not horrible. That does not exist.

No. If you take that position, like Jeff Flake has tried, and so what is – he found that he had to leave. You get shunned out of the party for not being shittied immigrants. And this is where we are. And there is yet another reminder that long after we beat Trump, we still have to defeat Trumpism because nothing is – our system of government is not going to work until that is beaten out of the Republican Party. Yeah.

And that's why you have some of these never-Trump Republicans who actually become independents or Democrats and actually left the party. But it's all going in one direction. You're seeing these longtime Republicans leaving the Republican Party. You're not seeing a bunch of Democrats becoming Republicans or becoming Trump people. You don't see that right now. You see it the other way around. speak out and show political courage. But there are very few Republicans, if any, who have, you know, taken on the whole system of corruption that is at the heart of that party right now, or extremism that is at the heart of that party right now. And you just don't see that because they're all either, you know, afraid of the Republican base, or they genuinely believe these things. So that's what we've got. And that's what you got to think about, again,

when we go back to 2018, is that this is not just about Donald Trump. This is about an entire party that made him possible. The only way to solve this problem is to beat them so fucking bad in 2018 and 2020 that they are forced to reform themselves. That is the only option. And we have to do that.

And if we don't, we're going to be stuck in this shit spiral for a very long time. Break the fever, as our old boss used to say. Whoa. Okay, when we come back, we will be talking to Hillary Clinton's former communications director, Jen Palmieri.

On the pod today we are very happy to welcome back our good friend former hillary clinton campaign communications director jen palmieri who's out with a brand new book called dear madam president an open letter to the women who will run the world. How's it going, Paul Mary? It's going really great. We're so happy to have you on. I'm really excited to be with you guys. Yeah, the book is doing really well. It sold out on Amazon on Monday night before it came out. That's awesome.

I know. That was a good start. So the book has a ton of great advice and lessons learned from the Clinton campaign. One of the things you talk about is how you felt like Hillary was running for president with half of her humanity tied behind her back. What did you mean by that? And how can future candidates avoid that? What I meant by that was it occurred to me, and I remember the moment I was sitting on the tarmac in Florida and it was October, so it was really late of 2016. And it just occurred to me in a moment that what we had done was run her as a

female facsimile of the qualities that we look for in a male president. the qualities that we look for in a male president. And it was a gut punch because I thought in that moment, wow, A, fundamental flaw in the design, you know, something you would need to go back to square one to fix. And two, that it probably robbed her of her, you know, a lot of herself. What were some of those qualities? robbed her of her, you know, a lot of herself. What were some of those qualities? So the thing is, John, I can't tell you because we don't have any other model from which to think of when we think about qualities in a president other than men. And after, you know, a year and a half later, what I think is that, like women in her generation and other professions, the first woman candidate,

it happened to be Hillary, the first nominee, had to prove that she could do the job just as well as any person who had the job before her. And that means as a man. And I think, you know, now we can see, I have certainly always felt that I could do the job that any man did and do it just as well. But I don't really want to. I want to do it the way I want to do it. You've proved that many times. But I don't really want to. I want to do it the way I want to do it. You've proved that many times. So it is, I think that this election and watching what she went through and then the outcome, what it proved to me was the way we think about women in leadership is just broken. And I think that women have made

a lot of progress in the last hundred years. And mostly what we've done is followed in both politics and in the workplace, followed a model, the only model that there was, right, which was built by and for men through no fault of anybody. So that's just how the world was. And so, you know, you have to prove that you're tough. You have to prove that you can that you can take a blow. You have to, you know, maybe work a little harder. You have to you can't cry at work. You know, you get bad news. You got to nod. You got to absorb and you got to move on. And I think that those sort of tools served women really well up to a point. But what that election proved to me was we have plateaued when it comes to playing by a certain set of roles, both in politics and the workplace. And now women can imagine something else. After Trump won, in the first chapter of the book, which what I have found, us being the Clinton staff, but I have found that lots of people, men and women, both felt that same way, which was you woke up on Wednesday, November 9th in a different universe. And I remember desperately

wanting to go back to the one that was just – we were in just 36 hours before when I saw our former boss, President Obama, in Philadelphia at the last rally that we did with him. And he pointed at me and laughed and was like, do not mess this up. And I was like, we got it. We got it. And I really wanted to go back to that old universe that I was comfortable in and knew. But then we had to – women had to make a choice. We had to make a choice pretty early on after the election. Either you're going to think this guy won and that's what is meant to happen in America and women maybe are only meant to go so far or we have to fight harder to get what we want.

Or we have to fight harder to get what we want. And I think what most women who, you know, at least those of us who didn't vote for Trump decided in that moment, which is sort of remarkable, is no. It doesn't mean he was meant to win. It means we are playing the game wrong and we're not going to limit ourselves and our own thinking about how we lead, how we participate in politics, how we participate at work, how we participate in life. We're just going to make up our own rules. And I think that the first manifestation of that was the Women's March. It happened again with this Women's March. And this year, I think, is another manifestation of people saying, men and women both, wow, we've really limited ourselves, and we're going to think about this in a whole new way. So that is what I wanted to try to convey, because it's a remarkable thing how when we talk to women across the board, they do feel empowered in this moment. And I think that's what it's about. It's some of the doubts that have been in the back of our minds, like, wow, you know, I'm inhibiting myself and maybe I shouldn't be, or I, you know, I want to say this, but the rules tell me that that's not how women are supposed to behave at work. So,

and then his win sort of proved to us, it's the validation that we needed that this was broken. You know, your book is a very, it's great. First, I want to say your book is really fabulous. It's a very emotional and important, smart read. Thank you, Pfeiffer. But it's also a message to women in America, gentlemen, but also women who want to run for office. And, you know, there are in large part because many women made the choice that you just talked about. You have record numbers of women running for office all up and down the ballot across this country. If you could sit down with those women, what advice would you give them?

Right. So I think that you have to be aware of obstacles that still exist for women in politics and women in sort of leadership positions. And I think that it is that as far as we've come, you know, as much progress that women have made, if you step back and look at it from the scope of human history, it's still a really radical thing for women to be in the workplace. It's only been in the last 100 years. It's a radical thing for women, for a woman to be in charge. If you, you know, we spent centuries and centuries and centuries making politics and workplace a comfortable place for men. So don't expect that you're going to fit in neatly, right? So when someone says to you, you know, your voice is a little shrill,

but you really need to project and you're thinking that doesn't make any sense. You're saying contradictory things. You know, don't think that someone has the right answer because you're making a new model and that's scary because we – it's more comfortable if we understand that there's a set of rules that we're supposed to play by and just tell me what to do and I'll follow them. But that model doesn't exist. You're creating that. But you shouldn't inhibit yourself. So and I think, you know, I don't think that everybody who didn't who didn't vote for Hillary did so for sexist reasons or or, you know, that this is a conscious bias people hold in their heads against women. It's just we're in uncharted territory.

And the other thing are lessons I learned, you know, with you guys. I think Dan Pfeiffer comes across really well in Dear Madam President. I appreciate that. It's very nice of you. Yeah. Because when I first joined the Obama White House, you know, both you and Plouffe were, you know, you're like, this is going to be good. You're going to be in all the meetings. And, you know, you said all the right things to me to make me feel like I was going to fit in well. And you all had, you know, the Obama White House had an unfair reputation, as I learned, very unfair reputation of being insidery and, you know, and not being a place that had as many women in charge.

And it was not my experience once I walked through the stores couldn't have been more opposite than the reputation. You know, my first day, Dan, you were like, OK, we got to go brief POTUS. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, OK. So that was for real. He really meant that. Oh, OK. I'm going to have to go to the Oval Office and tell the president of the United States what I think. You know, in some ways, it'd be easier to sit outside the Oval Office and complain that you're not in the meeting, right? And like second guess all the decisions that are being made in there. But

I realized I'm not doing my job if I don't speak up in that meeting and tell the President of the United States what I think. That is what I'm here to do. And there was one meeting I was in with him, and it was all women. And he could tell one of them was holding back. And he said to this person, speak up. You are in the room. Look. Look at the rounded walls. It's the Oval Office.

It's the only one. This is it. I need you to speak up. And you realize then he's not Oval Office. It's the only one. This is it. I need you to speak up. And I really, you know, you realize then he's not just being nice. He's not just wanting women to feel empowered. He wants to know what you think. And like, that's a way that I got over myself and being, even me, you guys, feeling intimidated to say, to tell him what I thought he should do. And like, that's what I want to tell women now is if you hold yourself back, if you inhibit yourself, you are not just inhibiting yourself. You're like robbing everyone else of your perspective. And if you don't look

like everyone else, and if you're one of a few women in the meeting, as you know, can still often happen in this world, your perspective matters more, not less. And then the other lesson I taught myself in the Obama White House, because I still felt that at times, like, wow, there's probably a lot of good people. There's a lot of people in our profession that would be better than me at my job as White House communications director. And then, you know, so I would still second guess my, you know, before I would speak about what kind of advice I was going to say and think, you know, that somebody else might have a better idea. And finally, I just decided that if you had a national contest for somebody who could be the White House communications director, you could find somebody better than me, but not that much better. Probably not, by the way. I don't think you could.

So, you know, and these are things, Dan, that like I would talk to Hallie about and things I would talk to other of my female colleagues in the White House. And this is like how we rose to the occasion of a scary but amazing opportunity. And I think it's those lessons that I want women who are going into politics who might have a little fear to hold on to. Hallie would always say, J-Palm gives the best advice. And so it's really – she sat here and she read the whole book in basically one sitting on the couch the other night and was very excited you were doing it for that very reason so that everyone else would get to hear that advice. Yeah, I had Hallie in my head a lot during the writing the book because she, you know, she was one of the ones who told me, well, you should do this. You should write this all down. Jen, from a communications perspective, we were just talking about this. Yes. How do you think the next presidential candidate, but I guess also the next congressional candidates, how do you think they navigate the Trump show?

So you were on a campaign where every day you woke up and you guys had a message and you had a goal like you do on a campaign. And you go out and you give your speech and you hope for your headlines. And then what's different is you've got Donald Trump and the entire media universe revolves around every offensive, awful thing he says and does. And then you are sucked into responding to that. And then that becomes the news of the day. How do you break that cycle? Or I guess how do you navigate it? Yeah, I feel every day that dynamic is changing. You know, you guys have built Pod Save America, you know, it has a big reach Every day, and there's lots of other outlets or platforms that you make on your own, and then the people they cover, the game is meant to just sustain the

game to, you know, it's all about process. It's all about why somebody did something, not the repercussions of what they did. And I think that's changing dramatically every day and becoming less important. And I think the most important thing a presidential candidate or a candidate running now can do is make your own platform or seek out ones like this, because this is what the future is, is one that has more platforms, less gates. And I think people are yearning to hear more authentic conversations and not observe a game. And that's encouraging. You'll still deal with Trump dominating the news such as, you know, that maintains itself in that space of the mainstream media and that back and forth. And I think the best you can do, and what I really believe we did a good job with Hillary with, is try to use those moments to show qualities about yourself and what you were made of,

even though and how you deal with what he does and how you respond to it. Because you can ignore it. But that's, I think, the most useful thing you can do for yourself. The other thing I've been thinking about is the next Democratic candidate, they will try to scandalize him or her, just like they did with Hillary. I know. You say that Hillary actually wanted to address the email stuff head on, but the staff convinced her to leave it alone and that this was a mistake. So I thought about that when I read a few weeks ago, your colleague, Philippe Reines wrote a piece in the Washington Post about how to beat Trump in 2020. And one of Philippe's pieces of advice is don't apologize ever. So it seems like you guys maybe had two different takes on this. What do you think about that?

It's really weird that Philippe and I would have a different take. But what do you think about that? Because I can see both sides of the coin here, right? Like on one hand, you want to say like, well, I want to be forthright and I want to tell people what really happened and I want to explain myself. And then I guess in Philippe's mind, he's thinking, you do that, you're just going to give the whole thing more oxygen and you might as well just move on to your issues. And, you know, I think a lot of candidates have had to navigate that. What do you think about it? Yeah, it is. I mean, it's something, right?

Like we would navigate this every day, right? Yeah. In the Obama White House. It's like that's like that was the big question. If you respond, you're giving more oxygen to it. So, you know, so try to gut it out and not do that. And I think in today's world, you cannot do that. I think you have to respond because even if it's something from the staff on Twitter, because your supporters need to know what to think at a minimum, right? So if it's something that's getting attention and you're just trying to act like it's not there, again, that's, you know, that's part of the game, right? That's part of how we used to play it, that the press set something up That's part of how we used to play it, that the press set something up,

it's bait, we refuse to take it, we ignore it, we try to keep it contained and hope it goes away. But, and that worked four years ago, that could still work. But I think now if you don't address it, your supporters are thinking, well, maybe it's true.

I don't know, They haven't said anything. And you have to engage. Yeah. And that was a world where there was like four news cycles instead of like, you know, one news cycle every minute too. So you could maybe hope back then that it wouldn't get into the news cycle. You really can't hope that anymore. Yeah.

I side with Palmieri on this because the old world of don't give something oxygen was a world in which there was limited oxygen right and now there was unlimited oxygen for any and every story and some in Facebook and Twitter to spread those stories without any sort of context so you know if the we face the birth certificate problem in 2016 instead of 2008 we would have probably taken a different response to it right yeah Jen thank you so much for joining us. This was fun. It's good talking to you. I love talking to you guys. Come to LA and visit.

I know, yeah. I am gonna, I'm gonna do that. I'll be there later in April. I'm gonna see you on Monday night. Oh, you are? In San Francisco?

Oh, that's terrific. Thank you. Yeah, Hallie and I are coming. Look at that, guys. Oh, that's great. The book is Dear Madam President, an open letter to the women

who will run the world. Go buy it right now. Fantastic read. Jen Palmieri, wonderful the world. Go buy it right now. Fantastic read. Jen Palmieri, wonderful as always. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, Favs. Thank you. All right.

Take care. Thanks to Jen Palmieri for joining us. Again, we will see you guys. We'll have a pod on Tuesday morning and a pod on Friday morning. We'll be in Florida at the end of next week. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon. Talk to everyone next week. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon. Talk to everyone next week. Thank you.