Pod Save America - “Cons and clowns.”

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

Trump kicks off 2018 with a series of deranged and dangerous tweets, and then has an ugly break-up with Steve Bannon. Then Seth Myers joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about hosting the Golden Globes and comedy in the Trump Era. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we'll be talking to friend of the pod and the first-time host of this Sunday's Golden Globes, Seth Meyers. We'll be doing that a little bit later. We're going to go meet Seth at his hotel in Beverly Hills here. So that's going to be our little trip after the pod. We have a lot of updates, Dan.

Let's do it. Pod saved the world this week. Tommy and Ben Rhodes talk about Iran. I don't know if you've heard this one yet, but there is an outstanding Cricket Conversations this week with Aaron Ryan and our friend Alyssa Mastromonaco. They talk about Me Too and looking ahead in 2018,

and obviously it's as serious and important discussion as it should be, but the two of them also manage to make it entertaining and at times hilarious because they are awesome. So you should go listen to it. They're the best. They are so good. Yes. Natural chemistry with Aaron and Alyssa on this pod. Jason Kander tackles gun violence on Majority 54. That drops tomorrow, Friday, also as Pod Save the World does.

And also on Friday, Anna Marie Cox talks to Sachi Cole about Logan Paul's disturbing YouTube posting. And she does her monthly Rick Wilson check-in. Lots of content out there. Rick Wilson check-in. Lots of content out there. Also, shows, events. Lovett is striking out on his own with Lovett or Leave It shows in Portland on January 25th,

and they just added a second Seattle show on the 26th, so check that out. Tommy is hosting his first live Pod Save the World here in Los Angeles at the El Rey on January 17th. Yeah, Dan, you should come for it. I would love to do that. He's going to be talking to Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power,

and the filmmaker behind the documentary The Final Year, which is about the last year of the Obama administration focused on foreign policy. And tickets are going to go on sale this week. Maybe the last year before America went in the toilet. That's it. So check it out. Have some nostalgia. Speaking of nostalgia, check out on Crooked.com Chris Liddell-Westefeld's piece on the Iowa caucuses, which were 10 years ago. Yesterday, Chris worked in Iowa on the

campaign. He later worked in the White House, and he like a multi-year oral history of the caucuses. He got to speak with Barack Obama, so there's some new Barack Obama stuff in there, which is great, but more importantly, I think, he spoke to so many of the organizers and activists that made Iowa possible, and it's just, it's a fantastic read. I was, because I'm a softie, a little teary by the end when I read it, but it's a fantastic piece. You should go check it out. Yeah, it's really great. It's not often that someone posts a piece and Barack Obama is not the most interesting part of it, and that is true here. It is the things that people who many of you have never heard of, but are absolutely critical

to making Barack Obama president say. It's really a wonderful, powerful thing. critical to making Barack Obama president say it's really it's really a wonderful powerful thing it is and of course this will be our last Los Angeles based pod for a week John and Tommy and I are headed off to Europe but as far as schedules of the pod go you'll just be hearing some of our live pod shows in Europe they will be our regular pods and they will still be all about everything that's going on the United States we're not going to make them you know pods about things that are going on in europe so just like your regular pod except the audience will be european so we'll see how that goes and dan you're holding down the fort here just in case we don't make it back yeah if you guys don't come back then alissa aaron ryan and the rest of us will just start potting all on our own perfect

in case we're because we're not allowed back into the country, too. Yeah, it's very possible. All right, Dan. This is what a Thursday to kick off 2018 on Pod Save America. When we last left our hero, Donald Trump, he was bathing in the adulation of Republican politicians and pundits for passing the most unpopular piece of legislation in modern history. If you remember that press conference right before the holidays, you had Orrin Hatch saying

that Trump may go down as the greatest president of all time. Paul Ryan said he showed exquisite presidential leadership. Mitch McConnell called it a year of extraordinary accomplishment and said he was warming up to Trump's tweets. Axios said he ended the year on the high note of his presidency, and the New York Times wrote, quote, President Trump has brought a reality show accessibility to a once aloof presidency. Trump celebrated over Christmas by playing golf for seven days in a row, flew back to Washington over New Year's, turned on Fox News, and reacted to those yapping morons with more than a dozen public statements released to the world via Twitter.com on Tuesday.

Weren't those some great tweets, Dan? Well, I think we know for a fact that one of Trump's resolutions was not fewer crazy tweets. It really, like, Tuesday was most people's first day back to work after the holidays. And usually it's like a slow transition back. Yeah. You get to work. Gotta ease into it.

You know, yeah, the first day is kind of slow. You're catching up on email. There's not a lot of immediate deadlines and projects. And Trump decided, fuck that, and just brought us right back into politics without a break. In the span of 12 hours, the president called for the imprisonment of a top aide to Hillary Clinton, accused his own Justice Department of being complicit in a deep state conspiracy, threatened to cut off aid to Pakistan and the Palestinians, took credit for the fact that no one died in a plane crash last year,

said that he'll be announcing the most dishonest and corrupt media of the year awards on Monday, and the coup de grace. Trump taunted fellow madman Kim Jong-un by saying that he has a bigger nuclear button. That's, it was a tour de force, Dan. Like, I'm sitting there and I'm just like, another one? Like, what is he doing today? And then, of course, you know, the folks at Media Matters and Daniel Dale, a reporter from the Toronto Star, and all the people who keep track of these things, soon showed us that every tweet followed a Fox News segment over the course of the day,

which meant that all Trump was doing on his first Tuesday back in Washington was watching Fox News. Big surprise about that. You know, we had this conversation, You and I had this conversation with Tommy and Lovett and others about how mid-morning on Tuesday, we were sort of laughing about the Trump tweets, but we weren't worked up about them. It's kind of like maybe we had grown numb to Trump's insanity. And there was some debate about whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. But by the afternoon, I was no longer numb. Once he got into a button measuring contest with Kim Jong-un, then I was concerned. Yeah.

And, you know, a couple people made what I thought was a very good point, which is, you know, you can look at that tweet and say, oh, well, it's just Trump being Trump, which some Republican congressman did actually say and we'll get to that soon and oh he doesn't mean anything and he's just you know mouthing off and doing his Twitter thing but the whole point of like nuclear deterrence and when there's two nuclear powers staring each other down especially when there's two you know sort of unstable madmen at the helm is North Korea and Kim Jong-un doesn't know that he's joking they don't know what his intentions are just as we don't know what kim jong-un's intentions are and so when you have two people with their fingers over the fucking nuclear button you know it's pretty dangerous to just mouth off like that which is why you know presidents

and administrations of both parties for as long as there have been nuclear weapons, haven't done shit like that. I know the New York Times told us in one of the most infuriating stories in modern American history that Trump has really shaken up the norms of Washington. And maybe that's true. Maybe we've now decided that lying is fine or corruption is fine. Anything's better than being aloof. Anything's better than being aloof anything's better than an aloof presidency dan that's what's really dangerous now that we have defeated the great scourge of aloofness but can we just decide all together you me peter baker from the new york times the republican leadership maybe even the folks on News, that the one norm that we're

going to adhere to is a general idea that nuclear Armageddon is something that we should not joke about. We should not taunt people. We should have extra caution in our public statements and tweets about that. Like, I mean, this is, you know, yes, if Trump wants to take credit for the sun coming up, kudos to him. That's weird. But this is one thing that's not really funny. And the consequences are very serious. Right. Like we have two crazy people, both with access to weapons of mass destruction, having a war of words that I mean, it's it is alarming and concerning.

And the fact that no one in the Republican Party seem concerned about this is worrisome, to say the least. Meanwhile, the South Koreans, who clearly have the most to lose since they are closest to North Korea and can be, you know, completely destroyed with almost conventional weapons that are pointed at Seoul. completely destroyed with almost conventional weapons that are pointed at Seoul. The South Koreans and North Koreans are about to open up talks for the first time in years to try to avoid war because they're seeing the situation develop in such a frightening and serious way. And so you have that going on. You have sort of a diplomatic solution going on between the South Koreans and the North Koreans, or at least the attempt, another last attempt at a diplomatic situation, while the president of the United States, you know, South Korea's closest ally,

one of South Korea's closest allies, is just taunting the fucking North Korean leader. Yeah, it's insane. That's still not what made me angriest. And I think, like, my theme of the last two days is not that I'm, like, even angrier with Trump or even angrier with trump or even angry with all the fucking morons that he's hired to run his government it is there is another branch of government whose constitutional duty it is to check the executive branch to make sure that trump doesn't do crazy shit and they once again as they have since the day that he came into

fucking office have fallen down on the job reporters went to uh from the huffington post went to ask various republicans what their responses were and from a bunch of different outlets when you know they tried to ask different congressmen what they thought about the nuclear tweet susan collins quote i'm going to vote responded tersely and walked away bob corker laughed hero by the big Corker, giving his big speech and talking about adult daycare centers in the White House, laughed. Tom Tillis, Senator, Trump being Trump. Ron Johnson laughed. Rand Paul, well, what he said was, you know, it just hasn't been done by tweet before, but other presidents have said something like that. Yeah, sure. Okay. John Thune,

oh, that's just trump being trump the only one who had even modest disapproval of this was senator mike rounds who said it certainly doesn't help i'm almost speechless with like this is the easiest thing to critique the easiest right we're not asking you to do your duty to stop the rampant corruption that is happening within as Trump and his family enrich themselves with the public dime. We are not asking you to step in. Well, we are. We are asking all you those things. But if you.

At the very least. At the very least. At the very least, just have a mildly critical statement about the president threatening war with North Korea via tweet. And also, get the button metaphor correct. Like, the size of the button is not what matters here. Just FYI. Like, what does Trump think? He's got some, like, giant desk-size button that he hits with, like, a sledgehammer, like, at the state fair.

Like, what is he doing? I don't understand. These people. You've all empowered him they're the only like i was saying this i i did an interview on ezra klein's podcast uh before the break and i you know he asked me what surprised me most about the first year and i said you know I think that in general, our institutions have held up better than I thought they would, because Trump is seems like a, you know, unstable authoritarian. Everything in his personality says that. But he hasn't been able to do everything he's wanted because the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the press and especially citizens have held them to account and ezra said yeah well my problem is that congress has abdicated its responsibility and i said yeah well congress has because of the republican party because the republican party in congress that's controlling congress is so fucking rotten to its core that all they want is to get tax cuts and to get medicare cuts and health care cuts out of this

guy they want him to sign the legislation that they want and because they want that stuff so badly to get tax cuts and to get Medicare cuts and health care cuts out of this guy. They want him to sign the legislation that they want. And because they want that stuff so badly, they just don't give a shit about any of the other very scary, dangerous, frightening things that he is doing on a day-to-day basis. And none of them. It used to be there might be some who were like, you know, you had McCain and Corker and Flake and maybe they were making critical statements. And you had Susan Collins stopping the ACA repeal. And you saw some bravery here and there. You don't see any of it now, any of it anymore.

All of them deserve to lose their seats, every last one of them. I think that is all correct. And I think the secret here is not that Trump made the Republican Party a joke. It's the Republican Party was such a joke that Trump became president. We'll get to the Michael Wolff book, but there was a section in there about how Trump theoretically didn't know who John Boehner was. And so someone tweeted out thinking this was going to look really good for Boehner and Trump, a picture of Boehner and Trump golfing together when Boehner was Speaker of the House in 2013. That was in the middle of Trump's massive racist birther campaign. And then, you know, we also maybe talk about soon-to-be Utah Senate candidate

and current hero of Mending the Resistance, Mitt Romney. And let's not forget that Mitt Romney, who to his credit has been very critical of Trump at times and has stood stronger than most in this party. But in 2012, when he was seeking the Republican nomination, he went hat in hand to Trump Tower to beg for the endorsement of the birther-in-chief. The Republican Party has been riding this wave of craziness for a very long time and they were terrible at their jobs before Trump was president and they are terrible at their jobs now. Did they do real oversight into Barack Obama when he was president? No. What they did instead

was let their overlords at Fox News tell them which fever dreams they should dedicate taxpayer resources to investigate. So, like, I think maybe I also had similar hopes to you that they would do anything, but we are wrong. They stand for nothing other than maintaining the power they currently have and maybe enriching some donors while they're at it. Full stop. This is not Paul Ryan's dream of enacting some Ayn Randian vision. He likes being speaker and being nice to Trump is a necessary component of that job. Yeah. I mean, look, we need a healthy opposition party in this country. I don't believe that one party democratic rule for the next 20, 30 years is a healthy thing for this country.

But this version of the Republican Party that we're seeing right now needs to be completely wiped out. They need to spend a lot of time in the wilderness thinking about what they did. And they need to be a whole bunch of new Republicans with different views and different ideas and real conservative principles, not the shit that we're seeing now, that you know, come of age in five, 10 years from now, because this group, this group is just they need to be completely wiped out of office. I actually think Democratic rule for the next 20 to 30 years is exactly what we need. I mean, like, I also believe you need a healthy opposition party. I believe we are decades away from that. Yeah, it's maybe a decade. I don't know what the time is, but I'm just saying it's certainly a long time from now. Yeah, Republicans have shown they are incapable of governing. They have no desire,

no ability, no coherent policy agenda, nothing. The Republican Party is an unserious institution. And frankly, Democrats should be in charge until republicans and get their shit together and there is no evidence that they're in any danger of doing any type soon because the the younger it's not like they're a bunch of old crazy republican senators and representatives and there's like a bunch of young really genuine serious people behind them the young ones are the fucking craziest ones yeah they are the ones who are raised, they were basically raised inside the cerebellum of Sean Hannity. And they are, like Matt Gates

or whatever that guy is, they're the ones out there who, they were radicalized, I mean, they're just, the party is a disaster and I really don't understand how, you know, this is another conversation with our friend Tim Miller, but I don't really understand, I understand how you can this is another conversation with our friend tim miller but i don't really understand i understand how you can believe in in republican principles as they are written on paper i don't

really understand how you can with self-respect continue to enable trump sean hannity breitbart the birthers the racism i don't i don't understand that. No, I don't think you can. Walk away, people. Like I said, I don't agree with you that a whole bunch of tax cuts and cutting government spending is a good idea. I think it's a horrible idea, but it's a legitimate belief to have. If you want to have it, then let's have a debate about it and let's see who wins the debate and let's see who votes for who. Great.

I don't believe that. I think that we should try diplomacy more than we try military force. But if you think military force is a better way to go, then let's debate it, let's argue about it, and let's see who wins.

But like, those are all debates I'm fine having, and if there's a whole bunch of Republicans I face that have those debates, great. But that's not this Republican Party. This Republican Party's made up of fucking grievance

and conspiracy theory. It's a joke. It's con men and clowns. That's the party. What do you think about one quick question before we move on to the Michael Wolff book? Trump does this nuclear tweet and then we see another round of all these folks on Twitter like begging Jack Dorsey to ban Trump from the platform. Is that going to save us all from nuclear annihilation, banning Trump from Twitter? No, I think that's a – I understand the emotions of you just want to get a win against Trump. I understand anger at Twitter, 100%.

There are a lot of reasons to be angry at Twitter about how they've handled the verification process for known white supremacists, how the inability to deal with abuse and things like that. So I totally get that. But Twitter is not the problem with Trump. The tweeter is the problem. Trump, some of the crazy things Trump said, he has not said on Twitter. And it's not like if we just took the – this is not a matches baby situation where if you take the matches away, the baby cannot start a fire. Trump has multiple access to things that could end the world.

And so I just think, one, that doesn't solve a problem. And two, I actually don't even think it's a good idea. Like the argument is that Trump threatened violence against the nation state of North Korea. And therefore that violates the Twitter terms and conditions around threatening violence. threaten violence against the nation state of North Korea, and therefore that violates the Twitter terms and conditions around threatening violence. And I don't think that's the same thing as random anonymous troll threatening violence against a person. The President of the United States. Like, if Trump had said that at a cabinet meeting, and then the White House had tweeted the video of him saying that

on a cabinet meeting is that if i just don't think that's an actual violation of the term service it's just like one thing i've seen particularly in the early days of of 2018 is there is an unquenchable amount of outrage within progressives for very good reasons, but it's not always been directly in the right place, and I don't think this is the right place. But we have plenty of places to channel that injury. It doesn't have to be around this. What do you think? No, I mean, I agree with you. You take his phone away,

or you kick him off Twitter, the guy's going to walk five feet to the briefing room where there's every news channel and reporter in the country and he's going to say the same shit he's going to say the exact same shit you're not going to stop him he uses twitter because it's easier and more comfortable for him and he can just like run around the white house tweeting here and there but the guy's the most powerful person

in the country he can literally say anything he wants to whoever he wants whenever he wants and reach as big of an audience as he wants, whenever. That's what's the problem. Like you said, it's the tweeter and it's not the tweeting. So I don't, I'm going to spend my energy on other issues. So I guess the question is, whenever Trump goes off like this, you know, he's clearly off his fucking rocker. Why is Trump off his rocker? There's always a various number of possibilities.

Trump office rocker. There's always a various number of possibilities. Oftentimes, it's the fact that he is under federal investigation for obstruction of justice and other potential crimes. And, you know, perhaps some of this is bearing down on him. We should talk about how over the break, there was quite a New York Times story about how the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign started, which was basically when foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos got drunk in London and told the Australian ambassador that Russians had told them that they stole emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton that they planned on using to influence the election. Did Papadopoulos tell anyone in the campaign about this? Yeah, probably. If he was getting drunk at a bar in London and telling a random Australian diplomat.

Yeah, there's a pretty good chance he told the campaign. So there was that story. And then Tuesday, I believe, the founders of the firm Fusion GPS, which is the firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, published a New York Times op-ed saying that they testified before Congress that the reason the FBI took the dossier seriously is because it corroborated reports the Bureau had received from other sources, including a source inside the Trump campaign, which many have speculated to believe is Papadopoulos, since he is the one who has pled guilty to lying to the FBI and is now a cooperating witness. Dan, what did you think about that?

Well, the story, The New York Times about Papadopoulos is a gigantic deal because it undermines the fundamental argument against the Mueller investigation, which, you know, as has been pointed out, was based on the Steele dossier, which was paid for sort of, kind of, in part by people associated with the Clinton campaign. But now we know why a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign was opened, and it was for very good reasons. The other part that's important about Papadopoulos is the argument when Papadopoulos pled guilty was he was a quote-unquote coffee boy, I think is the term that Trump used to describe him. And many reporters, Jonathan Swan of Axios most notably, pointed out that he was not an influential player in the campaign. We now know from this that Papadopoulos was definitely not Steve Bannon or Kellyanne Conway or Jared or anyone else, but he was not a coffee boy. He actually set up a meeting between Trump and the head of Egypt, al-Sisi, which is not something that coffee boys or unknown volunteers do.

It's something that foreign policy advisors do. And so he was more. He edited Trump's speeches speeches which is not something a coffee boy does even though i got people coffee and edited speeches too in fact he was editing a speech he's editing a foreign policy speech and having making sure that trump was saying nice things about russia which the russians took as a sign that trump did want to meet with them. Yeah. It is worth noting for reporters who cover campaigns that the most famous people on the campaigns, the ones who are public facing to the press,

are often the most important people. But there are a lot of people you've never heard of, never met, don't want to talk to reporters who are influential. Certainly there are large people who played very important roles in our foreign policy development in the Obama campaign that most reporters had no idea who were or what role they played because they just did their work, right? And it's true with all of our

policy other things. So just because he was not on Fox and Friends does not mean the Papadopoulos was not important. And so we need to not have this binary choice if he was either the campaign manager or no one, right? He fits somewhere in the middle and maybe a little closer to campaign manager than no one that we originally thought right also so just because he was an inexperienced doofus doesn't mean he was in wasn't influential within the trump campaign like no one do you know who else do you know who else was it was an inexperienced doofus donald trump which which we're finding out uh from this wolf book as well no but yeah so it's like this whole thing we're like out From this wolf book as well No but yeah so it's like this whole thing

We're like well pop it up who the fuck was this guy He didn't have the credentials to be in this campaign Yeah no one did including the guy running That's not the point The point was you know Fucking ugh anyway So the other interesting thing I thought from that op-ed From Fusion GPS

The founders basically said, look, the Republicans in Congress should publish our testimony, which they won't do, because in those transcripts of their testimony, they also suggested to Congress that Congress look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Trump and his organizations, because they had found evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians that often raised questions about money laundering. And Congress was not interested in pursuing those leads, of course. And of course, that brings us to yesterday and the release of Michael Wolff's new book about the Trump White House, which had a number of explosive revelations and salacious gossip, but I think none more salacious and explosive

than Steve Bannon describing the June 2016 meeting between Russian spies and Don Jr., Jared and Paul Manafort as treasonous and predicting that the investigation will focus on money laundering and end up taking down Kushner and Don Jr. What do you think about that? I never know what to think about the thing Steve Bannon says. Right. He's like a lying bullshit artist. Yeah, he's completely full of shit. It's also not entirely clear why he said these things, although I think he does believe them and he believes them because it's fairly common sense like it is obvious like

he has access to grind he thinks donald trump is a moron so does everyone and probably including including his father um but his point is very very obvious one, right, which is actually – there's a nice nexus between the Fusion GPS op-ed and what Bannon says, which is where this is headed is, A, money laundering, and, B, if you meet with Russians who offer dirt on a US citizen, your job is not to have a follow-up meeting. It's to call the FBI. And it is so patently obvious they did the wrong thing. And we know this because you know who called the FBI when they learned about this? The Australian diplomat that Papadopoulos told this to. That diplomat immediately told Australian intelligence, and Australian intelligence immediately shared it with the United States, which is why the FBI opened the investigation in the first place. the FBI opened the investigation in the first place. When you hear something that alarming,

that there's a foreign power that has hacked and stolen documents, you know, from another country in order to influence that country's political campaign, and that's an ally, you immediately alert that ally. Certainly you should do it if you're a citizen of the country that's being targeted. You know, and you hear some of the arguments in defense of donald trump jr and kushner and it basically boils down to they are dumb and naive right which was that bannon some of bannon's arguments in the book were basically like they didn't do the collusion smart enough yeah that's right and he offered a real plan for how he would have done the collusion if he'd been invited to the meeting. Yeah.

And he said he would have leaked a lot of the information. The best part of this, very underreported. He goes, we would have leaked some of this information to Breitbart or a more legitimate news organization. Which is something I might retweet every day. Basically, Bannon admitting that Breitbart is not actually a legitimate news organization. The chairman of Breitbart. Oh, man. But the fact that they are dumb and naive, that's not exculpatory, right?

Dumb, naive people commit crimes all the time and they go to jail. It's like you always see those videos of the people who post on social media, them committing crimes and then they get arrested. on social media, like them committing crimes, and then they get arrested. Yeah. Like, basically, that's who Donald Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner are. And it is notable he said these things, right? That is in and of itself news. He has not denied he said those things.

Michael Wolff apparently has tapes of him saying those things. It is interesting that Steve Bannon, for being the political genius he is, he is purported to be by so many in the media and the right, seems incapable of understanding what on and off the record means, since he lost his job for calling up a liberal columnist and saying insane things. But, you know. There was also, apparently there's this meeting on Air Force One after the Trump Tower meeting comes to light. And remember that the initial statement from the White House was that the meeting that Trump Jr. and Manafort and Kushner took, although at the time they denied that the other two were there, the meeting Trump Jr. took was all about Russian adoptions. That's the initial excuse. Now, of course, we know now that the White House

was lying about that in the statement. We also know that we've heard reports, at least, that Donald Trump himself was the one dictating that statement. So in the Wolf Book, we have more information about this that's reported from Steve Bannon and others. And apparently, while they were all on Air Force One and Trump was dictating the statement that lied about the meeting in Trump Tower, none of the people wanted to be there. Ivanka Trump took a pill and went to bed. Jared Kushner said he didn't want his pencil

anywhere near the statement. And Mark Corallo, the former spokesperson for Trump's personal legal team, told Michael Wolff he believed the meeting represented obstruction of justice and quit. That's a flag for Mueller. You might want to check out that passage of the book and follow up with some questions. Yeah. You also left out one key anecdote I really enjoyed is that the Committee to Save America, represented by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell, were in the senior staff cabin watching the movie Fargo, which is basically about a bunch of morons

who incompetently try to commit a crime. Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, just sitting watching a movie while they're obstructing justice in the conference room on Air Force One. What a fucking world. I would definitely watch in a few years the coen brothers movie of the brief trump era in america so yeah no you mentioned about wolf's reporting because there's a lot of questions other reporters are raising questions about wolf's reporting michael wolf is sort of a a repulsive figure in his own way and has it has sort of been caught, you know, not telling the truth about things before.

But usually his reporting is a mix of truth and embellishment. And Wolf sort of admits this in the book. He says a lot of this is recollection of various sources. Sometimes the sources conflict, and I picked who I believe was right. But like you said, he does have tapes. He has Bannon on tape. Apparently he has Katie Walsh on tape, who's the deputy chief of staff of the White House who quit. And the other thing is, like you said, most of his reporting checks out with the way we actually see Donald Trump behave on Twitter and on television. You know, it's not like a lot of it is shocking. I mean, it's certainly more salacious than what

we know, but it sort of comports with his behavior. Right. We know the idea that the Trump White House is filled with a bunch of people who don't like each other, aren't particularly good at their jobs, and are not loyal to each other or Donald Trump, and that Donald Trump is a semi-literate, uninterested, capricious man-child are all things we already knew, right? Very good reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Axios, others have shown us that to be the case. We just now have more details. And I think it is worth pointing, as you pointed out, everyone involved here are known liars. Bannon, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Donald Trump, and Michael Wolff. Right. And so the question is, what are we supposed to believe about this book?

It's sort of an interesting one to think about because it is very possible, like a lot of people pointed out that there's a 500 word, like verbatim recitation of a conversation between Bannon and Ailes that a lot of reporters raise questions about. And so like, OK, yeah, that's probably – the individual words are probably not right. And maybe this is Bannon's – obviously not Ailes' – Bannon's recitation of those words. But then we discovered that the host of that dinner party where that conversation took place was Michael Wolff. So it is impossible to know, but I think that the details are kind of irrelevant, right? It's the larger truth here that's more important. And the larger truth is from this book that no one who works for Donald Trump or who has ever worked for Donald Trump believes he is capable of doing the job of president of the United States, which is a frightening conclusion.

But it's the conclusion you get from this entire Michael Wolff book, all these interviews. It's also the conclusion you get from reading a Maggie Haberman piece, reading a Washington Post piece, you know, by Ashley Parker and Phil Rucker, reading an Axios piece, right? Like most of them. All of these people who talk to people who work for Donald Trump, none of the people who work for him, who have worked for him, who know him, who are friends with him, think he's capable of doing this job even close. Even these people, and these are the same people who are publicly defending him. The only people who truly love Donald Trump are people who hear about him through the filter of Fox News. You know, no one who's actually met him and worked with him thinks he's capable of handling this very important job. Yeah, he, on every dimension of what you need to be President

of the United States or President of the local Elks Club, Trump fails on those measures. It's just, it's a simple fact. Just for other fun tidbits of what some of his people have been saying about him. Ruben Murdoch, Mnookin, and Reince Priebus all called Trump an idiot. Murdoch called him a fucking idiot. Gary Cohn called him dumb as shit. McMaster said he's a dope.

Sam Nunberg said he tried to teach Trump the Constitution but couldn't get him to focus past the Fourth Amendment. These are all close advisors. Right. I would say, like, you and I worked in the White House when several of these contemporaneous accounts were written. And, you know, one by Bob Woodward, one by Ron Susskind, one by Jody Cantor, You know, one by Bob Woodward, one by Ron Suskind, one by Jody Cantor, some by Richard Wolff, formerly of Newsweek. Halpern and Heilman. Halpern and Heilman. And I think it's worth sort of the contemporaneous accounts are always more distorted than the ones that are written long after. Because it is impossible to separate what people say from their own personal agendas, right?

Ours were nothing nearly as salacious as this, obviously, right? But, you know, people are worried about their own standing. They're trying to put their own spin on how things went, like whether, you know, why something went wrong or who gets credit for why something went right. And they're also very concerned about the politics of the moment. Even if you were participating, as many do, in a completely authorized way, like the White House decided this book's happening, we can't stop it. So we're going to try to shape it. And so, you know, like I ran this process for a couple of these books. People would come to us. They'd say, we got an interview request from such and such author. Can I do it? Yes. We'd tell them the things other people learned so we could sort of try to fix problems. Even when you're doing it in that way, you're not just trying to knife the man or woman in the office next to you. It can't be separated from what is

going to be happening when the book comes out. Is the president be running for reelection? Are you trying to pass healthcare? Right. You're trying to conform, confirm a Supreme court. I mean, so it is, it's shaped by the moment,

right? But what, in many of the, you know, it was all, whenever these books would come out, it would always feel that our job was never as dramatic as the book made. It's not because you got to make some of the mundane pieces of government seem exciting.

Yeah, you're trying to tell a good story. Yeah, a lot of times I was like, I remember that conversation happening, but I don't remember it happening in such a cinematic way, if you will. Like, yeah, there was a disagreement, and then everything was cool afterwards. It wasn't the big blow-up as it was portrayed in the book. It's like a funhouse mirror version of reality. Yeah, the books are often true, but generally embellished. Yeah, they are often true on the macro level

and distorted and somewhat inaccurate in the micro level. In part because you're relying on people's... White people who work in the White House do not take notes. Right, right. You don't do that because those notes will become part of the public record one day. They could be subpoenaed, all these other reasons. And so you're forced. Right. So it's often recollection and recollections can be wrong. And there are certainly

recollections are biased by your own personal perspective. But so it's even though Michael Wolff is a known fraud and the people talking to him are known liars with known agendas. I think the larger truth of this book is what we should take. And I think even though Michael Wolff is a known fraud and the people talking to him are known liars with known agendas. I think the larger truth of this book is what we should take. And I think individual sort of progressives and others, we shouldn't get too worked up and latch on to individual things like what Ivanka Trump said about Donald Trump's hair or individual things that people said, because those are probably going to be things that we eventually get knocked down by you like

well like someone will do research and realize that ivanka trump couldn't have said that on that day because she was you know in davos or wherever the fuck she would be you know so it's like like focus on the larger truth which we already knew and enjoy the battle between people we don't like like uh the enemy of my enemy. You know, that's an enjoyable thing to watch. But like the individual stuff is like we can't get wrapped around the axle on it. Yeah, no, I mean, at the end of these two days, I tried to step back and think like, okay, after all the laughs we got about all the details and all the horrors we had about, you know, Trump's nuke tweet. I was like, what actually matters here? What can we take from this?

And what I take from all of it is very frustrating, which is we know that Trump is manifestly unfit for the office which he holds, dangerously so, that the people who work for him believe that, that the Republicans in Congress believe that, but that none of them want to do anything about it. And because none of them want to or will do anything about it, we are now in a race against time from now until November of 2018, at the earliest, to make sure there's a Congress with people in it who will actually check Donald Trump's worst instincts. And then we have to, you know, wait till 2020 to get him out of office. And we just have to hope during that time that something really, really terrifying and bad doesn't happen.

And that's a very, it's a scary thought and it can feel a little helpless. But it also made me feel just like so angry because I'm like, none of these people who could do something about this are doing anything about it. And there's nothing we can do about it except work as hard as we can to elect Democrats in 2018 because that will, you know, maybe that will stop 60% of the damage or 70% of the damage.

I don't know what it is, but that's our only avenue right now. There's nothing else we can really do. We cannot reason with Republicans anymore. We can't just hope that Mueller comes up with the smoking gun because we pretty much have the smoking gun. And right now Republicans are trying as hard as they can not just to ignore the investigation or ignore the conclusions of the investigation, but to actively shut down the investigation. or ignore the conclusions of the investigation, but to actively shut down the investigation. We have fucking Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows in the House calling for Sessions to resign, to happen today, so that Donald Trump can replace Jeff Sessions,

and thus replace Rod Rosenstein, and thus replace Bob Mueller. We have fucking Jeff Sessions, because he's getting that pressure from members of Congress deciding that he's going to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, which he announced today, because again, they're scared of this investigation into Donald Trump himself. So we have like a – not just a Congress like not doing their duty. Now we have Republicans engaging in a conspiracy to cover up an investigation into the president's crimes. That's right. I think just to focus slash rant about the Jeff Sessions thing is what like there's a lot of disproportionate complaining about the quote normalizing of Trump. Right. It's like if you write about him, that's a little bit of our argument against that New York Times story, which just made me mad. But that's not the real problem, is a story that calls Trump's insanity reality show accessibility. But this is the perfect example of actually normalizing. And it's not the press who's doing this entirely. It's just the entire political world, including

the Republicans. And I think to some extent, some Democrats, which is what has happened here is Donald Trump has bullied his attorney general into launching a taxpayer funded criminal investigation into Trump's chief political adversary. Former chief political adversary. Yes. In order to, among other things, may help cloud out the criminal investigation into Trump. And because Trump does commit his crimes out in the open, we don't know how to respond to that. If you picked up a phone and called Jeff Sessions and said, please open this investigation or I'm going to fire you, that would be the sort of thing that would be commonly thought of as an impeachable offense. But because he did it out in the open, we're OK with it. And we've sort of got to this point where we don't take anything anyone does seriously anymore because they're all unserious individuals. And so we therefore miss the serious crimes happening right before us.

And this is one of those things. Imagine if Barack Obama had called Eric Holder and said, please launch a criminal investigation into Mitt Romney. I mean – Like the entire world would – like Fox News just would have imploded. I can't even wrap my head around that. Yeah. The entire world would – like Fox News just would have imploded. I can't even wrap my head around that. You know, like it's just – Yeah. And so that is to me – like that is a particularly – we shouldn't like just glide by that one in the torrent of insanity that has been this week thus far. No, we shouldn't.

But again, it's all of a piece, right? Like there is a threat to Donald Trump's presidency. That threat is the investigation into his potential obstruction of justice and crimes. And Republicans, because they not only want to just accept Donald Trump as president, but they actually want to embrace Donald Trump as president so that he can sign their legislation, are conspiring to stop that investigation. That is what they're working on. There is, you know, you say the thing we need to do is win the elections right right that that is 100 right but i do think as a part of that that democrats

ourselves included but also people running for actual office need to lay out an agenda of exactly what we would do if we were in power to rein trump in right and part of that is it's more than just we're going to subpoena this shit out of them. Like that's not an actual agenda, but there are some specific laws that could be passed or that we would advocate for passing, right? Piece of legislation that is,

at least at times has been bipartisan and existed before Trump about making it requiring more consultation before you can launch a nuclear attack. That would be one. And Chris Murphy has that legislation right now. That would be something we could do. You can change the law that says the president is not included in federal government conflict of interest laws. There's a set of things we could do

because we have operated as a country under the assumption that we're going to elect sane, mostly moral people. That's been the assumption. The laws are set up for that. People who will abide by norms will not go out of their way to line their own pockets. And we have proven that this is not a fail-safe system. And we should have an agenda. We should have an economic agenda. We should talk about how we would approve the Affordable Care Act or put in place Medicare for All or whatever.

We should have that policy. But we should also address in how we run a set of specific steps other than just say, you know, we yell at Republicans all the time, do something. We got to say what those things are, right? And it should be more than just investigation. There are some laws we could put in place, which would hem in the dangerously unfit man who is currently in the Oval Office. I think in general, there's an argument that most of what we have described heretofore as norms should be enshrined as laws, because as we see, norms in the Trump presidency have all, and rules, commonly held rules, beliefs, weight, the way it usually works, all that stuff has been thrown out the window. And if it's not enshrined as a law, then it doesn't happen when someone like Donald Trump is president and people like the Republicans are in Congress.

I also think back to, you know, in 2006, one of the ways that the Democrats won back the House and won the Senate was a robust ethics and lobbying reform agenda. One of the reasons that Barack Obama won the primary in 2007 and 8 and won the presidency was a real robust ethics and lobbying reform agenda i think some kind of reform agenda from democrats both in 2018 and 2020 that is quite robust that doesn't just reign in trump but reigns in future presidents who may act like trump would be very important and i think and lovett's made this point many times on pod save america like i think there's there's an argument to be made that the presidency has, there's been too much power invested in the presidency over the years, that over, as the years have gone on, the presidency has taken more and more power away from Congress, from the states, from other, I mean,

people, all the conservatives will be laughing at us right now, because they're like, yeah, welcome to federalism. But I do, I think this is a check and balance thing, you know, and I think that we have learned from Trump's presidency for sure that there need to be stronger checks and balances on the presidency and's family profiting from the presidency, whether it's what you were talking about with launching nuclear war, whatever it may be, I think we need a pretty robust agenda in 2018 and 2020 about those things. We should talk to our friend Norm Eisen and some of the other smart ethics lawyers we know about this. Okay, in the meantime, we have a big government funding battle ahead of us. Right now, the government is funded until January 19th. Democrats and Republicans are currently meeting. They met yesterday, the leaders in Congress, Republicans and Democrats, along with the White House, to try to hash out a deal. Basically, where we are right now, what's in the deal? What's at stake here? As we've talked about, March is the deadline to protect the Dreamers, to make sure that 800,000 young immigrants who have been in America their entire lives are not deported come March.

And we have to make sure that any deal, any long-term funding deal for this government includes protections for those DREAMers. This government includes protections for those dreamers. We have to make sure that any long-term deal that funds the government includes funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program that protects 9 million children and offers health insurance to 9 million children. We have to make sure that any long-term deal to fund the government has funding for defense, for big weapons systems, and military and all that other stuff at the same levels as it's funding healthcare, education, transportation, and all the other domestic spending in our

country. And that we're not just spending a whole bunch more on weapons systems while we're cutting healthcare and education and transportation in this country. And so the Democrats right now have to make sure that they all say, we will not vote. We will not vote for a long-term funding bill that doesn't protect the dreamers, extend health insurance to 9 million kids, and make sure that we are focusing on education, healthcare, transportation, and the other important priorities in this country. Yes. You think we'll be able to do this? What are your thoughts on the negotiations here? I am going to choose to believe in the Democrats.

And I don't agree with every way in which they handled this at the end of the year. But I think Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi and the rest have, based on the way they've handled themselves in 2017, deserve the benefit of the doubt here, right? I think that they have stood very, very strong and very united against Trump in every way they possibly could. And there were lots of ideas that they would try to work with him on an infrastructure package, do all these other things, and they have not done that. They've been strong. And they have not done that. They've been strong. And so we should pressure that. Yeah, I was going to say, like, we don't have to wait and hope that they do the right thing or worry that they're not going to do the right thing.

We have agency here. Democrat and asking them, you know, will you vote against a long term funding bill that funds the deportation of 800,000 young Americans that doesn't extend health insurance to 9 million kids and that sacrifices spending on education and health care and transportation and science and research and medical research for more weapons systems for this country? Will you vote against that bill? Yes, that's 100 percent. Like we everyone has agency. Everyone can make their voice heard.

I just think that it is, what I don't like is a natural assumption that our leaders will fail us. Yeah. Right? That's right. And look, if they do not do the right thing here, then people will be every right to have that belief.

But the evidence to date suggests that they are going to be strong on this, but we just have to let them know they're going to have the backing of everyone who marched, who went to airports, who helped save the ACA. You have to make your voice heard and make sure they know that people care about this. And if you do that, I think they will do the right thing. Yeah. No, and look, I get what you're saying, because there's a lot of there's a lot of disappointed people before the break because a lot of us included, us included, because too many Democrats voted for the short term funding bill. And, you know, I think that the big battle is yet to come here. But I think you were right to be upset about that, because I don't

think the Democrats did a good enough job explaining their strategy before the break. Part of the reason was everyone was focused on the tax bill, and then suddenly there was two days to get the rest of it done. But part of it is, you know, these government funding battles are really complicated. And I think that when you're in Washington a long time, you don't do a very good job explaining what the strategy is. And I think Democrats need to be honest and transparent about exactly what they're thinking and what they're planning on doing in the lead up to the strategy and lead up to this to this vote before the 19th when the government runs out of money. But I mean, what we need to know and what we can do is basically making sure that all these Senate Democrats, like you said,

know that if they hold strong, if they say that, you know, we're not going to vote for this bill unless it, we're not going to vote for any deal that doesn't include these priorities, then we'll be behind you and we'll be, we'll be fighting right there with you. That's right. Okay. I think that's it. Is there anything we missed? Anything else, Dan? I know you're excited about Mitt Romney in Utah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will, we'll save Mitt Romney for another day. We'll talk to Tim Miller about that since I know he's going to be excited. Yeah, that'll be actually – I'd like to debate Mitt Romney's moral – or not moral core, his political principles with Tim. We can do that.

I think Mitt Romney has a moral core. Be very clear on that. Jeff Sessions this morning said that he's going to rescind the policy that allows legal marijuana to flourish without federal intervention. So that's troubling. I saw Cory Gardner, the senator from Colorado, pretty upset about that this morning. We'll see if he actually does anything about it. We'll see what this actually means from Sessions. Of course, this is right when California legalizes marijuana and Colorado and a couple other states already have. Two points on that. Jeff Sessions himself said during his confirmations hearings he would do nothing to undermine

the states who made the decision. And then I sent some snarky tweet about how, I think he said he'd take all necessary steps to push back on this. And I said on Twitter that that was something based on previous history that's basically a couple of angry tweets

before going back to covering up Trump's crimes. lachlan markey the daily beast reporter pointed out to me that cory gardner unlike others has stood up to trump by refusing to back roy moore yeah i was like i mean that is true but i have to say no one gets a fucking gold star for refusing to endorse an accused child molester and known racist. As our friend Tim Miller says, Tim Miller doesn't think he deserves a gold star for that. It's a pretty low bar. Yes, some Republicans did not abide by that, tripped over that very low bar, but no profiles encouraged for that step.

We'll see what Cory Gardner actually does here. I hope he does the right thing. I really do. All right. When we come back, we'll have Seth Meyers on his Golden Globe hosting this Sunday. On the pod today, we are welcoming back Seth Meyers. Welcome, Seth. I'm so happy to be here.

What a year. What a year. Since we were last on. You were one of our first interviews in 2017. I feel like I thought you guys got so big that I wouldn't be a good enough guest. So I'm really happy that a year into it, you will still have me on the pod. Of course. We moved around so much stuff to be here at the Beverly Hilton with you.

This is important, too. We've now been bi-coastal because you guys came to the office the first time. Yeah, we will follow you anywhere. LA york that's it okay you are hosting the golden globes for the first time i am how's the monologue coming it's coming along pretty well we our writing staff will all be here as of tonight and we will read through all the jokes this evening and that will give us a way better sense of where we're at. What's the process like? So I was lucky enough to have been on the writing staff when Amy and Tina did it. So at least I've been through it before.

And it really is, obviously, once you say yes, you think about it a lot, and then you start putting stuff down on paper. But we'll read through like 40 or 50 pages of jokes from not just the writers on my show, but other writers that I've known over the years that have all started chipping in did you have any hesitation in saying yes like what do you when you get an invite to something like this is it just like it's the golden globe so of course i go or do you think is this going to be a useful platform i definitely always have hesitation about saying yes to anything mostly from a place of self-doubt i would say more than anything else but you know we i think we went through a cycle of oh this is a terrible year to do it and then

oh maybe this is an interesting year to do it or a year where you'll actually be able to talk about stuff that you wouldn't talk about in previous globes and then also you just don't get to choose when you get asked to do these things it's not like you go back to them and say you know i'd love to pencil in 2019 i feel like i'd be a really good coach and so you say if this is something that you always wanted to do you just do it when the time comes we were talking before about how it was a weird week to not have a show like we didn't show till thursday felt like there's a lifetime of news you've been off are you at a point where that bothers you you're like god i gotta get into this or are you like okay to let one pass i think i'm okay to let one pass mostly because this isn't the

first off week i've had during the trump administration where crazy stuff has happened and it's amazing how often there would be any off week yeah but then on monday this will i mean we'll be back because we'll fly back on monday we'll do a show on tuesday this will all i believe this will all feel like old news to some degree it always does yeah oh man one uh globe's question i think you're probably getting a lot is like this has obviously been a weird year in hollywood there have been a lot of men who have behaved horribly done illegal sort of evil things they deserve to be mocked and criticized and just destroyed at every award ceremony in perpetuity but the other half of the room is women who uh were the victims

of their behavior yeah and they deserve support and. How do you as a comedian manage a challenge like that? You have so many conversations with your writing staff and we're really lucky to have women on our writing staff who have very strong opinions about this and getting the tone right. We're hopeful that there's a way to make jokes about this that is cathartic as opposed to just reminding everybody the litany of awful things that have happened.

And hopefully the night will have this sense of optimism as far as what things will be like moving forward. That's what I'm hoping the solidarity of the night will be, and that would be lovely. So one of the things I think Hollywood and the broader culture is grappling with is not just the men who conducted themselves horribly or committed crimes, sexually harassed women for decades and got away with it.

It's the complicity in the rest of the industry, in the rest of our society. You know, and that's been, you know, Hollywood's been looking the other way on people like Harvey Weinstein and others for a long time. For example, the Golden Globes gave Woody Allen the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. How do you address what's happening in Hollywood and address the hypocrisy and the failings that came before? I have to be honest, I don't know. I think we can address how awful the behavior was this year. I think addressing that hypocrisy might be too big of a thing for us to handle

in a Golden Globes monologue. I think it's an excellent point. But, you know, we ultimately have eight to 10 minutes where you want to address, you know, the issues that we've talked about this year, but you also want to make sure that you also start talking and making jokes about the movies and the people in the room and try to remind people that it's also a celebration that people did excellent work, despite all the awfulness that they had to get through to do it every day. How much of the sort of Me Too revelations that have come to light over the

last couple of months have, have you, have you been shocked, surprised? Have you known this was going on? Just been asking people in different industries. Obviously we've have a political viewpoint, but I mean,

I was aware, I certainly had heard rumors about a lot of these people. I don't think I realized the extent of it. I'm in a unique situation, and I'm lucky to be in this situation. You know, my wife was a sex crime prosecutor. You know, she now works for basically a victim's rights advocacy and sexual crimes and sexual harassment. And so, you know, when this first started happening,

and especially when it was names of people whose work you really respected, both in politics and in comedy and in films like when that happened i remember one point saying to her this is all such a bummer and her perspective of is this is great like this she's so happy this is happening and you know and and so i'm really lucky to to you know be with somebody who has this different perspective on it and like none of it surprises her at all you know that she is aware that people that women can't even ride the subway in new york city without a stranger doing this so she's not surprised that people with power

have been doing it for years let me ask you this what is the hollywood foreign press association who are these people have you met them no i met some of them but i think there's that thing of anyone at this point could walk up to me in this hotel with a cartoon for an accident and i would buy it yeah just a just a french thing someone with a baguette yeah and a piece of paper you know the office is right by where you live yeah yeah yeah we always walk by it i'm like it's a small little office in west hollywood you're like what where do these people come from they're wielding this power yeah and it's i think it's only 93 voting members. Is that right?

I'm getting a 93 voting. And when you think about it, and people are upset that sometimes it's weird nominations. It's basically like when you watch what the UN does, and when they get something wrong. Like, why would anybody expect there to be 93 foreign people from different countries would come to some weird consensus that we as a country would say that's great that's why they love the tourists with johnny depp yeah just a comedy brutal shot of the un so let's talk about trump it's been now a year of his presidency and you've been making fun of him quite a bit. Yeah. What surprised you about Trump's presidency in the first year? I mean, I don't know.

Everything, I'm embarrassed to say, I feel like this has all been very much in line with what people thought would happen, that we're warning people about Trump. Right. Everyone who said this is not a man who's fit for this job, this seems to be very much in step with it. I guess I'm a little surprised at the people who have decided it's all okay right but are you surprised

the way that republicans yeah but then i'm then i don't know why i'd be surprised by that so anytime i think i don't know i guess it feels foolish to be surprised by any of it yeah i don't know i'm just yeah it is so it's the last week of news has been so incredible and yet not, it's, Trump has this ability to shock you by not doing anything surprising, by be exactly who you thought he was going to be. But it is, I think, still a good thing that we're heartbroken by Republican failures to stand up for him. It's like, I don't know, it's like a pie is coming at our faces.

And even though we know it's coming, it still feels weird to get hit in the face with a pie. Good analogy? we know it's coming still feels weird to get hit in the face with a pie yeah analogy i don't know i can't even picture what it would look like for to stand up like i don't even see how that now i realize that would be the most shocking thing is like there's enough's enough like i can't see what how that starts or what it looks like i don't know that that person's treated as a hero either i think they're savaged by the same people who have been complicit all along the way. And the mainstream press kind of takes on what they say for 24 hours.

And then we move on to the next tweet. I don't know that the system is set up to manage this. I feel like you've ever had a friend who breaks up with someone who all your friends have known is horrible for like two or three years. And you get to them and you're finally like, you have Stockholm syndrome for real. I do worry that that's us. That's us? Are we the boyfriend? for like two or three years and you get to them and you're finally like, you have Stockholm Syndrome for real. Like, I do worry that that's us. That's us? Are we the boyfriend?

Are we the, we're the person. Who are we? Are we the person that's been treated poorly? Okay. And it's been over time gotten worse and worse and worse.

We're like Paul Ryan. Here we are. We're like, Paul, we love you. Get out. Paul, we're your friends.

So, but there, the other thing, they, you know it's i i do think it's you could argue this is much more a republican agenda than a trump agenda right right and so because what is a trump agenda right and so you kind of have to look at and say you know as angry as we are that nobody's standing up i think they would just say we're getting exactly what we want yeah so have you guys talked about this on the show about what is the trump equivalent and that you would support as a democrat like that what who would be the democrat in office that we would have to stand up and say to people uh pfeiffer used to say dan favor you say it was kanye that's a bad thing yeah yeah which is which is i've been trying to think though i don't know what would we

do since donald trump doesn't really have any principles, ideology, agenda, anyway, what would we be doing if Donald Trump woke up tomorrow and said, I want to pass single-payer healthcare. I want to do universal healthcare. Oh yeah, that's a better way to look at it. And I want to do all these big-time liberal priorities, and I'll pass them, but of course I am

a criminal. John, John, John, John, he's changing Washington. You're just not used to it. He's got a reality show accessibility and everyone needs to just calm down the bias in the media is out of control yeah and i guess i would hope that we would the democrats would still stand up and say okay these are important priorities for us but you can't completely divorce the priorities in the legislation from the person who's leading the country. So if he said, it's up to you.

I'm either going to pass single payer or I'm going to resign and Mike Pence is going to take over. That's hard. I think we have to get him to resign. The North Korea tweet, right? Like every once in a while, more often now than not, you get a reminder of why his presidency is dangerous in a bigger way than just the legislation he might pass. Right. I mean, this is your world. Well, I mean, the North Korea tweet is insane. It's needlessly antagonizing a nuclear armed dictator. But I also think like the Michael Wolff revelations that are most concerning to me are the man repeating the same three stories in 10 minutes over and over and over again.

repeating the same three stories in 10 minutes over and over and over again. We're finally having a conversation about whether he's an actual cognitive decline and now it's coming from inside the house. That feels like an important conversation. The good thing about Pod Save America is we interview each other. You just hang out. When did Seth Meyers get here?

Was he here the whole time? He's been great. It's so funny to have you. It's so much different to be here in person. I mean, look. Thanks for wearing the t-shirt, by the way. Of course, yeah. So, no, but look, I'll put the question to you then.

You can get, you can keep Trump with the incompetence and craziness and small probability of incredibly dangerous events, or he can step down and you get Pence. of incredibly dangerous events, or he can step down and you get Pence. And Pence is lower chance of total devastation, lower chance of the horrible, long, small risk things that we're all living under. But he will be more successful at passing the agenda that Paul Ryan wants.

You know, if we say that Trump is truly unique and in danger, we have to say that we prefer Pence. But do you? Yes. I think based on what you just said, if we're if we're saying now there's something wrong with his brain you have to have somebody yeah who has a working brain that just disagrees with you yeah it's also in a time when i have to remember okay

my orientation is a white guy that's not threatened by having a racist president or a man who's like sexually assaulted all these women like i for any one that is in us it's probably an obvious no-brainer pence yeah right well yeah i mean except pence poses a great deal you know pence will keep the justice department as it is currently running he's not just he doesn't disagree with jeff sessions on marijuana or immigration mike pence is anti-gay mike pence likes paul ryan's agenda you know mike pence is dangerous in a lot of the same way as donald trump is but i think the temperament argument is enough i think you know and also we live in a world you guys more than me half the time probably it's going to be someone who completely disagrees with you and so you're like okay it's somebody completely disagrees with me

but at least they at their core aren't like dangerous knee jerky yeah so you said that when you're trying to make jokes about trump you don't just want to make fun of trump you want to talk about what matters and what the consequences are of his actions which i think is is wise and we try to do that too do you think the media has done a good job of that in this first year of like making sure that they're focused on the consequences of his actions well i don't know i you know i think that there's really good stuff that happens in cable news and also cable news is built to work a certain way right i do think that sometimes investigative reporters will take to twitter to criticize what cable news is talking about and it seems like complaining to some degree like what color the sky is like it's gonna be that

i feel like it's done a lot of good stuff but but it's also limited by being cable news. Right. I feel like, I don't know, it's like with everything. Some people are doing great work and some people aren't. Who do you like? Who thinks they're doing a great job? I mean, I really like watching Jake Tapper. Yeah. I feel like as far as cable.

I also realize that now, like four in the afternoon is the best. Like that now is prime time. Yeah, it is prime time. So much happens that by, I feel bad for people who actually do primetime cable news because it's like I know we all know

it's so strange all of us keeping so tightly inside the news try waking up on West Coast it's the worst it's brutal

well I will say the best thing about being at work is I don't actually have time to follow the minute by minute of it we had a day

we had to shut down production for a day and double tape on a Tuesday because of the tree We had a day, we had to shut down production for a day and double tape on a Tuesday because of the tree lighting at 30 Rock. So we had to do two shows on Tuesday and have Wednesday off. And then Wednesday was the, I want to say Flynn plea deal.

And then, so you just watch CNN all day and you realize like how, basically you can give up eight hours and get two minutes of information. That's right. But just fed through different filters and different people and that it's a colossal waste of time. Yeah.

How do you deal with the fact that when Trump news breaks, there's a million jokes that go out on Twitter? So it's like every angle has been covered within an hour or two, and then you guys have to come up with jokes for that night. Do you take a different angle? I mean, we try to take a different angle. There are definitely times where we have to drop something because someone says oh i saw that on twitter i think as a group as a collective writing staff we follow enough comedians that i think we try to catch stuff we certainly if anyone's seen it we don't do it it's possible that someone's done it and we haven't seen it yeah you know the other thing is i'm guessing

that most of the people that watch my show aren't as married to Twitter as I am. Yeah, right. As anyone. Which is probably a good thing for everyone. So, of course, this year, you know, you've gone after Trump. You know, Kimmel's been outspoken. Colbert has. Every time that happens, you know, a lot of critics, mostly conservatives, right-wingers, say, stay in your lane.

They're not supposed to be political yeah do you take any of that seriously do you what do you no i don't i don't it's not a bad intellectual argument like i get that people say that but i feel like everything changes and when people talk about johnny carson you know everything's that's like i feel like it's like you know the super bowl used to be in standard definition. Yeah, stuff's different. Everything changes. Now there's too much to tell. Yeah.

I don't need to see the dimples on the pigskin. You just saw the colors. Yeah. You saw the colors of the helmets. Do you personally feel fatigued, though? There's some days I wake up on Monday mornings and I think, are we going to go in and sit in that box on La Cienega and shout about Trump again? Like,

there's so many important things that we want to be talking about that sometimes don't get on. Well, that I do feel is that unfair criticism to me. I don't know how you do, and again,

I don't think he's playing three-dimensional chess, but it's impossible. I do feel like he's chucking chess pieces at us. I would love for someone to ask him, how does the queen move?

What are the rules of that? The three-dimensional chess people. Well, that would be, the only reason I believe he plays three-dimensional chess is he doesn't understand two-dimensional chess. He moves it off the board. He just picks it up and smacks. He makes them characters. I'm a castle.

I eat your crown, man. But, you know, I don't know like at some point if people are throwing stuff at you like I feel like you have to duck or get out of the way like that's what I feel like more that how you react to Trump news is like it's almost self-defense and so as much as you want to say like oh I'd love to be talking about this you know that would be like not you know there's no way to ignore the North Korea tweet. Nor should we really. Yeah. But yet everybody only has so much bandwidth and we only have so much time on our show.

And we try to do things about – step back and talk about things like the VA or other issues that are happening while this is happening. But it is hard. And I don't know. I don't know if it benefits him or not. So in part because of Trump, and I think in part because of a bunch of different trends, I think there's a few different political comedy shows or comedy shows that take on politics, from The Daily Show to John Oliver, to your show, to Samantha Bee, and others that I think we would all admit to have come from a liberal perspective. And you'll take on Democrats and you'll take on Republican, take on the media, but it is a similar worldview that we're all tackling.

Do you see anyone out there that you like that's coming at it from a totally different direction? I mean, I think there are some stand-up comedians who do a really good job of not approaching it from the same conventional wisdom of liberal-minded talk shows. But I do think it's a different, you know, that's like sort of an hour a year or an hour every six months, which is a different thing. And I think that there are, you know, people like, you know, Bill Burr or Patrice that sort of, you know, who he was very good at taking something from the opposite side of what maybe his audience thought and approaching it that way but as far as like a day-to-day deconstructing the news i don't know if there's anybody out there who's doing that yeah i mean i'm like it's sort of a it's like how do you challenge liberals at a time in which liberals

have plenty of we're challenged from the outside it's not like one of these liberals gonna get some perspective it's like actually you know maybe liberals are missing some shit but right now we have a crisis yeah right but so but like do you ever worry about that i mean i think we worry about that about like are we not challenging people enough on our own shit because we're dealing with this emergency yes absolutely and we again much like we'd love to find time to talk about other issues i would love to find time to to drill down on that too but again that goes back to you know i we had the instinct of leading up to the election are we doing enough about hillary are we criticizing hillary enough are we talking enough about hillary's emails i mean those

are conversations we were having and now i feel like there's it's it's still being they're still adjudicating it on on twitter as far as like did you, hey, you guys did that and you talked too much about that. Now we're here. Yeah, but that was, you know, there but for the grace of God, we would have done that too.

Like we were very close to talking more about stuff like that. You almost did your call me letter. I almost did my call me letter. I had mine written. Who are you wearing? Valentino, is that correct?

Who cares? Great. Great. We do. Do you see your role as purely trying to entertain your audience every night or are you trying to get people to think differently about politics even if it's not a purely partisan goal like do you see is there any other obligation or role that you see that you have right now it's weird when i went into it i just wanted to really entertaining show right i then found i liked it was more entertaining for me to talk about politics i felt more engaged in the show it seems as though our audience then felt more engaged i think the

best we probably provide is information in a way that is maybe more cathartic than getting it through conventional news you know i i've always stressed that we're a better second or third news source than a first one but uh if you've kind of listened to the news disagree hard no us first and last set second do you ever feel pressure from corporations to not be political like sponsors pulling out or things like that, because we're in the process of having conversations with people about whether Pots of America could be on a video format. And like, it's a thing we think about in here. I, we, I have been very lucky. I can say that NBC was really supportive of the move to more

politics. Never heard a word from them about anything we when we've talked about uh politics on the show and that's been really nice and certainly nothing i you know again i feel like we'd hear if sponsors were pulling out you know i don't think uh based on politics i doubt i'll be a national spokesman in a commercial for anything that uh nationwide yeah anything that both uh red and blue america need yeah no one's throwing their keurigs out the window or anything yeah no let me ask you this great and thank you by the way nobody's told me a question's forthcoming they're just coming at me without any preamble don't want to do that to you uh now look we wrote jokes for the 2011 correspondence dinner you wrote jokes for 2011 correspondence dinner uh the jokes uh were so good that it caused uh trump to run and become president yeah are you going to attack anyone at the golden globe so thoroughly that they then run for president are

you going to focus on hanks mark ideally streep would be good is there someone you're going to interesting so you're saying attack someone that you think would be a good at it now that we all have the superpower right yeah like don't be careful that it's not like weinstein tobac 2020 that would be very rough so oh this is your just sort of let's get ahead of this thing let's three-dimensional because oprah's gonna be there is oprah gonna be there so go hard at oprah very hard you'll never be president oprah no one would buy it you're too much of a joke for that your ego can't take it this is actually i almost want to ask you guys to edit this out because this is actually a pretty good monologue this is a good idea back to the drawing board staff we'll edit it out as long as i can take credit later seth myers thank you

for joining us as always thanks good luck on sunday i appreciate it and uh i'm sure you'll do perfectly all right thanks guys i don't know that. Weird ending. He said it in a weird way. Leaving all this in. I don't know him as well as you guys. Is that a genuine shirt? He says he's trying. He's very nice. It comes from a good place.

That was just genuine. I don't know. Thanks to Seth Meyers for joining the pod today. Thank you, Dan. Good to be back with you here on Pod Save America. And I'll talk to you when we come back from Europe. Yeah, good luck in Europe. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

That's a good rule. That's a good rule. No, I'm very serious about that, actually. All right. We'll talk to you all later. Bye. Bye, everyone. I'm I'm I'm