Pod Save America - “Deleted scenes from Helsinki.”

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

Trump hides the details of his chats with Putin while the FBI investigates whether he’s compromised, the government shutdown becomes the longest in history, Julian Castro and Tulsi Gabbard announce their presidential campaigns, and Republicans might finally take action against white nationalist Steve King. Then Jon Lovett talks to Los Angeles teachers on the first day of their strike. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, you'll hear interviews that Lovett conducted with Los Angeles teachers outside of a school this morning, the first day of a teacher strike here in one of the biggest school districts in the entire country. Nice and early, you got up and went and talked to some teachers, Lovett? It was early, it was cold, it was wet, so you better fucking listen. He was directing that to me.

If I can do that, and the teachers can do that, you can do that. You know? Why not? Listen. Yeah. Okay. It's rainy here. We've also got a lot of news to cover today.

From the truly bonkers Times and Post stories on Trump and Russia, to what is now the longest government shutdown in American history, to the growing list of Democrats who are running for president. Before we get to that, Tommy, tell us about PST dubs. What's going on there? Oh, God. This week, there have been some ongoing protests in Sudan. So we're going to try to get to the bottom of that with an activist. And then Ben and I are going to tick through the news, all the weird stuff that you could include on this show. The fact that we pulled out,

we went back in, now we're pulling out again of Syria. But we're, you know, it's unclear. Can you guys tell us whether John Bolton is going to take us to war in Iran while everything else is going on? Because that seemed pretty scary. Oh, requesting options to strike Iran. Yeah, that did seem troubling. I read that and I thought,

I hope I heard about this from Tommy and Ben this week. That's a long-standing issue and anger that a lot of people in the military have of Iran providing specific type of munitions to use by militia groups in Iraq that can take out armored vehicles and things. Yeah, we'll get into that. Cool. Done.

Finally, Pod Save America, Love It or Leave It, and Pod Save the People are all going on tour in 2019, as we have told you. Tickets for all are available at cricket.com slash events. We'll be announcing more tour dates and cities for Pod Save America tours on Tuesday. Tickets for all. It's like Medicare for all for tickets. Tickets for all. I like it.

So be sure to check out our social media for a video with that announcement. In the meantime, you can keep watching every episode of Pod Save America online at youtube.com slash cricket media. Check it out. We're coming for your eyeballs. All right. I am going to start with a New York Times headline. For the ages, FBI opened inquiry into whether Trump was secretly working on behalf of Russia. How's that one, guys?

Leaves a little bit of an aftertaste in your mouth. Yeah. You just let that one marinate for a while and you're like long way from the new york times in the fall of 2016 fbi sees no clear links i like honestly what a journey that was my first reaction and maybe that says something bad about me and the kind of way in which we're all a bit too comfortable with the possibility that a president is a foreign agent but uh my first thought when i saw the headline was well new york times you certainly have come a long way better

late than never better late than never new york times coming to the idea that he might have had a connection to russia when right before the fucking end of the election anyway tommy yeah no i i came down on the very unsatisfying uh shocking but not not surprising answer, which I think you're seeing a lot of places. Like if we had a time machine and we asked ourselves this question or really any living American in 2015, what you thought about that headline, it would be the craziest, most terrifying thing possible. But today, given what we already know in terms of what Mueller has been looking into, it sadly makes sense, I think, in terms of the investigative process and procedure. For example, if I told you that a U.S. official gave the Russian ambassador highly classified intelligence about an Israeli operation against ISIS while in the Oval Office, you'd say, that's a counterintelligence problem. That's bad. You'd also be like, I hope the president fires that official.

And then you'd be like, oh, no, it was the president. That's right. That's right. And I think we'll get to this, so I won't do a long preamble. Physician, heal thyself. Heal thyself. I think a lot of legal experts are struggling to

understand what that report really means because we don't have all the underlying facts, but also really talk through the legal ramifications of the extra designation and then just what it means to have the FBI treating the President of the United States as counterintelligence risk. That's fraught, to say the least. So what does this mean, this story, right? It means that Donald

Trump's firing of FBI Director Jim Comey was so concerning to the FBI that they launched a counterintelligence investigation so they could, quote, consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence. So what is a counterintelligence investigation, and how does this story change our understanding of Mueller's broader investigation? And how does this story change our understanding of Mueller's broader investigation? So a counterintelligence investigation means you're trying to figure out if a foreign intelligence service is conducting espionage or clandestine intelligence collection against us.

That is something that happens all the time. It's the FBI's mission. You know, they have a lot of authorities to do it. What makes this so fraught is that it's against the president of the United States. You know, a lot of times you read a bad headline about Trump and you think you feel good, you're happy that we're finally learning the truth. But this guy, I read this and I thought, this is so, so bad because it's bad that the president's behavior was so troubling that the FBI had to look into whether he's a national security risk. It is also terrible that an unelected law enforcement intelligence agency had to unilaterally decide that a president's actions might not be in the national security interests of the United States when those

national security interests are delegated to the president. He gets to choose what's in our interests. So it is like so novel and so fraught. But they ultimately must have said the possibility that he is beholden to Russian interests we're all retaining human consciousness as a species, is what powers can the president delegate? What powers can Congress take from the president and give to other parts of the executive branch? You know, conservatives, including now people like Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, have often argued that all power, all presidential power flows from Article Two. It flows from the power vested in the president via the Constitution, and that that's part of the reason why there's this notion that the president can fire the special counsel, because ultimately all those people get their power from him. They all are basically executing the president's job. But obviously in this case, you see both the importance of and the dangers of what happens when presidential authority is delegated.

The other thing I would just say is I think one of the what I was realizing as I was reading that story and also the Washington Post story is one of the challenges here is we're constantly muddling behavior and motivation. So is Donald Trump a national security risk? Yes. Is he doing things to undermine the nation's interests on behalf of Russia? That answer says yes, it is obvious. He's been doing it for two years. He's doing it publicly. He's been doing it since the campaign. He has been doing it in Helsinki. He has been doing it through the policy actions of his administration or the lack of actions of his administration.

Then there's this question of, well, what are his motivations? And I think there we know far less. And that to me is where you look at something like this investigation. All the stories were very clear that it was all the sourcing and everything was it could have been witting. It could have been unwitting. Right. Which is why most things he does is unwitting. Which is why, you know, you read this story. And on the one hand, it's a bombshell.

And on the other hand, you know, it forces us to confront something we already know. We may not fully understand Donald Trump's motivations, but we have seen his behavior. So it's a funny thing, like, we're going to open up an investigation to see whether or not Donald Trump is a risk to America's national security. Of course he is. Of course he is. I know. There's also the question of, like, without understanding the underlying facts, it's really hard to tell what this means. I've read and listened to as many smart people as I can on these issues, like former top DOJ officials, and it's not clear to me what additional authorities you get from opening a specific counterintelligence investigation into Trump versus the already opened several investigations into collusion or obstruction

or whatever. This could be as simple as the FBI's investigative manual requires you to open a sub investigation into an individual, but like we just don't know because we don't know the facts. And what we do know is, I mean, remember when Rosenstein appoints Mueller, he basically appoints him with the charge of that becomes public, you know,

investigating any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russia and how it affected the 2016 campaign. Well, Trump is an individual associated with the Trump campaign. It's been long surmised that Trump was included in this. This is just, like you said, it could be as innocent as, of course, we just have to take this extra step and formally launch this counterintelligence investigation. The other thing I thought that was interesting here is what triggered it is firing Comey, right? And I think someone had this headline, but maybe it was Ben Wittes at Lawfare, which was like, perhaps the obstruction was part of the collusion, right? Like, by obstructing justice, which is a criminal act,

which, of course, the special counsel has charged to investigate of the president because the president can obstruct justice. We do know that. That's on firm legal ground. By obstructing justice, he was therefore aiding and abetting the conspiracy with Russia, whatever happened, right? Because part of the reason he fired Comey, again, was because of the Russia investigation, which he told us, which is what also set off a bunch of flags in the in the FBI. Yeah, I think there's two. I think there's two. I don't know. To me, you can boil this down. I pull two things from it. One, we're now we're now drawing a distinction between the Trump campaign and Donald Trump. And now we are learning that they were looking at Donald Trump himself. That is one thing that's important. And if not totally new, at least now kind of

reported that this was now an investigation, not just into associates around Donald Trump, but Donald Trump himself. And then the second piece, Charles Pierce and Esquire pointed this out, which is there's this line in the Times story that says that the connections between Donald Trump, that connections between Donald Trump and Russia have not yet been publicly made known, right? That there are perhaps, and that Mark Warner and Adam Schiff and some other Republicans who have all been very quiet and very reticent to comment on this story, that what we may be learning through their, through their whatever, discretion, is that, and that the New York times may also know is that there is more to come

about the specific evidence that came out of this investigation about the ways in which Donald Trump and Russia were working together and that we just don't know yet. Well, that's an, this is an important point too, because you know, obviously the FBI is not a co-equal branch of government.

It's part of the executive branch, but Congress is. And so I think the first question a lot of people had was, well, was Congress briefed on this counterintelligence investigation? And Senators Burr, Warner, Schiff, a whole bunch of people were asked over the weekend, and they all declined to comment. They declined to comment.

And that, to me, is likely a yes. Because if they were not, you would imagine that the Republicans would be pissed. Right. Yeah, you would imagine that Burr, at least Burr, would be out there saying something like, I can't believe this investigation was ever conducted, blah, blah, blah. The Democrats would be pissed, too. They'd be like, everyone would be pissed. Yeah, but everyone wants to know this information. Now, notably, Trump himself said he just learned about this story in The New York Times, which is interesting because, you know, you collect information and intelligence arguably to run it up to the president ultimately. I mean, that's the point of intelligence.

So the whole thing is just complicated and fraught. Yeah. And Adam Goldman, who was one of the reporters who wrote the story, was interviewed about it. And he said, it's my understanding, having talked to people in the FBI, that if they hadn't opened this, they felt it would have been a severe abdication of duty. Right. And they did wrestle with it. I'm sure. Whether they should do this or not, but they felt like in the end, they could not let this go in good conscience.

Now, whether... I hope you'll let this go. I hope you'll see fit to let this go. Oh, my God. I mean, I guess I'll just ask, like, how do we begin to actually grapple with the idea that the president of the United States may be compromised by a foreign power. Like I started thinking about this over the weekend. It is something so big and so somewhat terrifying that I don't even know how, how you, how you start to unpack it. I, yeah, I think we, I think we sort of in some ways been grappling with it for two years. I mean,

the special counsel, if they find collusion, that to me is essentially a proxy for him being compromised. Because if Vladimir Putin is known since election day that he helped Donald Trump win with the support of Trump in his campaign, then he owns him. And he could disclose that at any time and destroy his career. That's the PTAB. The PTAB is the friends he made along the way. And so the reporters, you mentioned that in that interview, they said that their first response to this story was sort of, well, duh. Obviously, there's a counterintelligence investigation.

But the implications, as you play them out in your mind, especially when we get to our next topic about hiding all the notes from conversations with Putin, are massive. Yeah, so that brings us to the next topic. Another reason to suspect that the president may be compromised by a foreign power was reported in the Washington Post over the weekend. The hits just kept coming. Apparently, Donald Trump has been hiding details of his interactions with Vladimir Putin from people within his own White House,

going so far as to at least once take the notes away from an interpreter who facilitated one of his meetings with Putin and told that person not to talk about what happened in the meeting with anyone else in the administration. As such, no detailed record exists of several of Trump's interactions with Putin. Tommy, how unusual is it for this to happen? What usually happens when there's a meeting between two foreign leaders? I mean, normally, if there's a there's a meeting between two foreign leaders, there's a larger meeting that's six, seven, eight relevant officials on either side. And then sometimes that's gets skinny down to a tighter group of people.

And maybe maybe there's a one on one component to to just either only have Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state in the meeting or just an interpreter is wildly unusual. I mean, I can think of times during the Obama administration when we locked down distribution of notes from a meeting or a transcript of a call. Hypothetically, Obama calls Bibi Netanyahu. They're talking about incredibly secret details of Iran's nuclear program. You get why that's close hold. That's also a conversation with a friend who you can reasonably expect to keep that close hold within their administration, too. The crazy thing about this is hiding the notes of your conversation with Putin from your own team doesn't keep it a secret. It just keeps it from the United States. Like, Putin is going to tell whoever the hell he wants about the meeting. I would be shocked if the Russians weren't recording the meeting.

the meeting. So basically you are just allowing Putin to dictate the readout of that meeting to his team publicly, spread disinformation, which they're known to do. So you're harming yourself if you're Trump. Can I ask, don't you think, is it possible

also that after the meeting, if Putin discusses the meeting with his team, it's possible that our intel services know what was discussed. And that was reported in this story and has been reported previously that all kinds of people in the administration are trying to figure out what the hell was discussed. To include H.R. McMaster, who at the time was the national security advisor. He said he could never get a full readout of the meeting. I forget which one from Tillerson or from anybody

else. So our intel guys are trying to collect on Putin's team to figure out what the fuck our president said in a meeting with Putin. It is wild. Now, I get that he might have been paranoid about leaks because at one point the transcript of the call with the Canadians and the Australians got out. But like, can you imagine any barack obama would have a meeting or a conversation with the foreign leader and would refuse to read out what he said to dennis mcdonough tom donnell and susan rice no no no person not no no especially not someone who's an adversary okay someone who just attacked here's the the the prime minister of the uk says i have a uh horrible degenerative disease and i'm only telling you maybe you don't tell your team but like a two-hour meeting with vladimir putin that's crazy so this all to me goes this is similar

it connects back to the first story too which is ultimately what comes out of that meeting is a set of actions, right? Like what they say to each other in private goes to what Donald Trump will do as a policymaker, as president of the United States, and what Vladimir Putin will do as the leader of Russia. So I guess there's things that could come out of that where we will discover after the fact that Putin takes an action and Donald Trump fails to respond or responds in some inordinate way. And from there, we learn perhaps that's what they discussed in the meeting. He gave him permission to do something. He agreed he wouldn't care about some issue in Ukraine or in Syria or what have you. But ultimately, what has to come out of these meetings is policy, is decisions. And those decisions are not implemented by Donald Trump. He's never, I mean, there have been presidents that are hands-on. This is not one of them. There's not a president who is calling up to dictate the movements of his administration.

It's activated through his own people who don't know what happened in that meeting. So similar to the problem with this New York Times story, not the problem, but similar to the, similar to this sort of, this like dichotomy between the New York Times story and this Washington Post story is a lot of what we are coming to understand is we don't understand Donald Trump's motivations. His motivations are hidden from us and very well being nefarious and ultimately may be part of the greatest scandal in modern global political history. We don't know that. But what we do know are his behaviors, right? His behaviors are deeply troubling, and that is public, and that has been true the whole time. So we have this strange situation

in which we may be in the midst of uncovering one of the greatest scandals we've ever seen, and it actually won't lead us to a conclusion very different from the one we've already drawn. Well, as you say, we don't know all the facts yet, but we know even more than just his behaviors, right? I mean, one example that a lot of people were pointing out all the facts yet, but we know even more than just his behaviors, right? I mean, one example that a lot of people were pointing out after the story was, remember, the White House learns that the New York Times is about to run a story that there's a meeting in Trump Tower between Don Jr., Jared, Paul Manafort, and this Russian lawyer. And they asked them for comment. And that night, there's a dinner where Trump is with Putin. And he's already had a meeting during the day.

That's where he had the meeting with Tillerson and the translators. At the dinner, he grabs Putin. And it's just the two of them. And Putin's interpreter. And Putin's interpreter. Right. Sorry. Who's a KGB or whatever, SVR agent or whatever the fuck they call themselves. So it's the two of them and Putin's interpreter.

And they talk about adoptions, which is also about sanctions. And we know that because later in an interview with the New York Times in the Oval, Trump's just blabbing on and on and tells Maggie that he talked to Putin about adoptions. Donald Trump himself dictated the statement that it was a lie to the New York Times that at the Trump Tower meeting Don Jr. and the rest of them and the Russian lawyer were only talking about adoptions sanctions policy

and we also know that Mueller has been looking into specifically the fact that Donald Trump dictated the statement that was a lie and everyone's like well the president can lie that's not a crime but clearly one of the reasons Mueller's looking into it is because of the fucking Putin thing the night before. Yeah. And I just want to raise one other instance, which was there was a recent cabinet meeting where Trump said that Russia was in Afghanistan because terrorists were going into Russia.

And he said they were right to be there. Now, that is wildly factually wrong. The Russians were in Afghanistan as part of their pro-communism Cold War strategy. They basically went in, deposed a leader they thought was too Western, installed a guy they liked better. By the way, we were fighting against them. We were arming proxy forces in Afghanistan. There's no evidence, though, that terrorism was the motivation for Russia to go into Afghanistan. So it's not surprising that Trump was totally wrong about something. Not at all. But in this instance, you have to wonder where the hell did he learn this from, right? Because

his neocon national security team, like John Bolton's not peddling this Russian propaganda. Pompeo, Mattis, H.R. McMaster, they are not either. So this had to come from the Russians. This was like, came directly from Putin. And he's believing and regurgitating Russian propaganda, which makes what happened in these meetings all the more trouble. And that's not the regurgitating Russian propaganda, which makes what happened in these meetings all the more trouble. And that's not the first time. There's other examples of that, too. Yeah. It's very rare.

Look, we've been debating the domino theory and what the U.S. posture should be towards Soviet expansion for a long time, but it's the first time I believe that an American president has said the domino theory is real and very good. That's right. So the question is, what should Democrats in Congress do about this?

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff has said he wants the notes or testimony from the interpreter. Republican politicians, of course, dismiss the whole story as trivial. Kevin McCarthy, fucking Kevin McCarthy. My Kevin. My Kevin. Already trying to outdo Paul Ryan. Kevin McCarthy said it was about Trump wanting to build a personal relationship with

Putin. Yeah, that happens all the time, Kevin. So, what do we think about this? Now, other Republicans or other people have said, look, you can't start subpoenaing, you know, or you can't grab notes and testimony like that because then presidents in the future will feel like they can't have private

conversations with foreign leaders. This is very similar to the debate that happened after the transcripts of Trump's conversations with the Mexican president and the Australian prime minister leaked. And they said, look at this. This is a disaster. This is extraordinary. Presidents are going to be able to trust their team. They're not going to trust that their conversations will be held private. That's a very important concern. However, that concern is only valid if you don't believe Donald Trump is unique and deserves unique scrutiny and unique transparency. It is obviously the case that he deserves that. Now, if in the future, a future president has to worry that he won't be able to have conversations with an interpreter because that interpreter could one day be dragged in front of Congress. That's a problem we'll have in the future. But right now,

we're looking at the situation in which he has tried to conceal information from his own government. There are legitimate questions raised about the president's loyalty to the United States. There's plenty of evidence to support the fact that it's at least a worthy investigation. And so, yeah, there's a very valid concern there. It is trumped by the concern that Donald Trump is a disloyal person who deserves to be investigated fully. So, yeah, we want, I want presidents to have whatever executive privilege. I want presidents to be able to have private conversations. They need to be able to have debates amongst their team and be honest. And all that is very true and very important, but some things supersede it. And

this is a case where we have a national interest that supersedes it. I mean, it's almost easier than that in this instance, though, because then Trump went on Judge Jeanine's show on Saturday night, called into it, and he said, I couldn't care less if my conversation with Putin becomes public. Yeah, but he

said that in the same way he said he wanted to talk to Robert Mueller. He's just bluffing. This is part of what Mueller's going after, too. There's a story last week that Mueller is looking at his public statements as evidence of obstruction. At some point, the public statements and the tweets catch up with him. If you don't care that the conversations come out, then let the conversations come out. Then you obviously don't have a problem.

And if you do have a problem, then tell us why you have a problem. It's so wild to just snatch the notes out of your interpreter you obviously don't have a problem. And if you do have a problem, then tell us why you have a problem. Right. It's so wild to just snatch the notes out of your interpreter's hands and run away with them. Why isn't anyone talking about calling Rex Tillerson to testify? He was in the meeting. Yeah, Rex should be subpoenaed.

It's weird that people are all focused on the interpreter and not just on Rex, too. Well, I think people are more concerned about the Rex-less meetings is probably the answer there. He's in a jacuzzi filled with pure Texas crude. That was quite the interview with Judge Janine on Saturday night. That's so funny. Tommy, I know you were watching that, too.

We were both in our respective houses watching Judge Janine on Saturday night. That's a super cool Saturday. He also used the occasion of that interview to threaten michael cohen's father-in-law yes he did which he said he said there's going to be some uh some big stories coming out about him and she's and then judge janine goes what's his name he goes i don't know which earned him a warning from congressional democrats that it's against the law to intimidate witnesses. She just tries to tee up softballs to him. And instead of swinging at them, he catches them and throws them at her. Like he gets increasingly angry throughout the interview when she's trying to provide him the easiest form possible to deny these charges,

which he just doesn't do. Like, I'm not I'm not making too much of the fact that he didn't deny being a russian asset because he lies about everything why would he lie about this that's so frustrating like oh very interesting the president refused to say the word no he lies he would he lies all the time he didn't think about it that way he said no this morning so yeah it's all they sent him out to say no because everybody was saying he didn't actually say no. Who gives a shit? Our potentially compromised president has also now set the record for the longest government shutdown in history.

Congrats. Federal workers have now started missing paychecks. More people are filing for unemployment. Food banks are reporting a growing need. NBC ran a heartbreaking story over the weekend about one woman who's been forced to ration her insulin. Meanwhile, polls over the weekend from CNN as well as The Washington Post and ABC show that most of the country is not confused at all about whose fault this is. 53% blame Trump and the Republicans. 29% blame Democrats.

And only 13% say both sides are to blame. They're all pundits in green rooms. They're all picking sides, yeah. 13%. In the CNN poll, Trump's approval is only at 37%, with 57% disapproving. The disapproval number has risen five points in one month, and only around 40% of the public is for the wall in the first place. Washington Post poll was 42, 39 in CNN.

Meanwhile, 50% of Americans now call the shutdown very serious, up from 29% at the start. Guys, usually the polling is what helps end these things. In the past, that's been true. Why are Trump and the Republicans seemingly immune to these numbers? Or, I guess, do we have to just wait and see? I think we have to wait and see. I don't believe that they're immune to these numbers. I think acting as if you're immune to these numbers

is what you do right before you cave. It's always the way, you know, the shutdowns are always going to last forever right before they end. So I don't think we know. I mean, I think we talked about it a lot. There is a anti-democratic streak inside of the Republican Party. We see it all the time. This is a manifestation of it. I mean, we're talking about a president who didn't receive the popular vote being backed by a Congress that did not receive a majority of support for a project that doesn't have majority support. So, you know, I don't think we know the answer to that, but I think we're seeing the kind of polling that usually leads the side being held responsible for the shutdown to find a way to cave. Even Lindsey Graham's proposal

to compromise is a way to cave. I mean, they're all looking for a way out of this moment. Yeah, Graham's saying like, let's just, you know, open the government, pull the plug on this and declare a state of emergency. Like they want this to be over. But I think the thing that's freaking people out is Trump's allies told Politico that he might keep the government closed even after an emergency declaration, getting his border money because he is so worried about the Democrats getting a win. There's this, there's this overtone in the coverage that's like, is Donald Trump ready for perpetual political war? And I think that ignores the fact that that's all he knows. Like he thrives on it because it drives a new cycle.

It fires up his base. It gets him covered. And so he doesn't care. And like Peter Baker made the point today that what is at stake in this fight is $5.7 billion, which is roughly one-eighth of 1% of the total federal budget. So in a normal world, like there's a middle ground there that you could figure out. If that little amount of money leads to the longest shutdown ever we could be in for some much bigger fights which is why i think democrats think if they cave on this they're going to shut down they're going to have government shutdowns to deal with in perpetuity well yeah what struck me about um some of the comments over the weekend

was he is shooting down trump is shooting down compromises even from his aides, his closest allies, that Lindsey, you know, Lindsey Graham's proposal, which is so fucking ridiculous. It was like, let's open up the government for three weeks. And then at the end, if we haven't negotiated, then he can do his national emergency. And Brian Schatz point out three weeks brings us to February 8th, which is what the original CR that they voted 100 to nothing for was back in February. Also, but national emergencies, if it's a true national emergency, which will, of course, be challenged in court, it can't be based around the congressional schedule and when negotiations run out. That's not how emergencies work, and that will ultimately mean it doesn't actually go anywhere. Yeah, the court's not going to enjoy that argument very much.

So he shuts down Graham's proposal. Apparently, you know, he was in a meeting with congressional leaders, with Chuck and Nancy and the rest of the crew, and Mick Mulvaney, his new chief of staff, was in there, and Mulvaney was like, well, maybe we can go below 5.7, and we can go to something, and he just starts yelling at Mick Mulvaney, he said, you just fucked it up, Mick. You fucked it up, Mick. I got them right where they want them.

This is it. This is the art of the deal, and Mick Mulvaney coming in here fucking up my whole thing. First, you shut down the government without a plan, okay? Then, you get real unpopular, alright? Then you call Janine Pirro. Right before the final act, Mick Mulvaney fucks it up. I want to

read a little anecdote. I guess in the meetings, Trump is just all over the place. He's doing his normal stream of consciousness diatribe that you would see at any event, any TV interview. So I guess in one meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, he started trashing the Iran nuclear deal. And he told Democrats that they should give him money for the wall because they gave Barack Obama money for the agreement with Tehran. Like, he is so confused on the facts that, of course, this thing is stuck in place. He's very unwitting there. Yeah.

It was an unwitting comment. Thinking about all this, what I don't understand is, I don't get how we get out of this now. Because last week, I thought to myself, oh, he's building towards this emergency declaration. Me too. And it's awful and authoritarian and horrible. But, like, you know, it's a face-savingaving measure and at least we'll all get out of it and the government will open but he's shooting down every single compromise he went out today and said i don't think i'm going to do the emergency declaration and so i don't know how we get out of this but

it's it's very serious right now like i think it's yeah it's gone so far beyond like uh trump's tantrum and political games like you read these read these stories and, like, people are hurting. They can't afford, like, basic necessities. There's people with jobs. It's going to start affecting the larger economy. Like, I don't know what the fuck to do here. Yeah, I mean, this, it seems. But I think it's time for, like, mass protests here.

I mean. Yeah, I think we're going to, it's, I think protests may be one of the things we're going to all end up having to do to get out of it. It's also, you know, we talked about it before that there was there was often during the Obama administration, these two potential crises. One was a government shutdown and one was default. Yeah. And and a shutdown is is very bad, but ultimately not as destructive as default. But if a government shutdown is allowed to go on and on and on. It has a lot of, like, the longer it goes, the more it becomes a true national crisis, a true national emergency, not only for the millions of people, not only for the federal workers affected, but the millions of people who rely on food stamps

and other things, and also the businesses that rely on those checks. The ripple effects start getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The other piece of this, which is just an unspoken and accepted fact, is that Donald Trump doesn't care about the people affected. You know, in any other shutdown, you could count on the fact that everyone at that table, they may be craven and political and ideological, but there's some portion on both sides that has genuine empathy and does not want to be a party to hurting people for no reason. But Donald Trump doesn't care.

He doesn't have that muscle. He doesn't have that empathy. And so one of the things that would help end the shutdown, we just don't have. Yeah. No, what has to happen is because Donald Trump's an asshole who will only budge when, you know, Fox and Friends and Ann Clter and the people on fox tell him to which they won't because you know there's not a lot of souls there either um and then and they don't they're not on food stamps they don't know anybody no they're fucking rich

sean hannity and ann coulter are fucking rich and they don't give a shit about people okay um but the in the senate these moderate republic you know, we've already had Collins, Murkowski, Gardner, because, you know, Gardner and Collins are up in 2020. More moderate Republicans have to, or some Republicans or Senate Republicans, whether they're moderate or not, they just have to be scared of losing, right? They have to go to McConnell and tell him, go to Trump and end this. Because Mitch McConnell could end this today. Today. to Trump and end this because Mitch McConnell could end this today. Today.

Mitch McConnell, if you put a funding bill on the floor in the Senate, it would pass, if not 100 to nothing like the last one did, by probably a veto-proof majority. Mitch McConnell could end this today and override Trump's veto and then Kevin McCarthy would be like 15, 20, 30, whatever votes you need of Republicans in the House, they'd pass the bill and this thing would be over tomorrow. The problem is the idiots like Lindsey Graham is on TV saying that if we don't get Trump's back on this at the end of his presidency as we know it. So they've just like set the stakes. They've all painted themselves into the corner. They've let him just take them off a cliff and they knew damn well he had no plan. There's there's stories about them all trying to talk him out of this shutdown, But he just went through with it. Again, you know, you go back to the cause

of all of this. The Republicans already voted to open the government. And then Donald Trump pitched a fit. That is the order of operations. You know, there are other ways this could end, right? You can go out with a whimper. You can see bills opening up parts of the government starting to pass. That starts to crack the Republican intransigence. Maybe Donald Trump vetoes one. We don't know. Maybe he sends it back. Maybe he doesn't. I think we don't fully know. But I think the position Democrats have taken continues to be the right one. We cannot give. You can't give into the policy. You also can't give into this kind of governance when there's so much on the line and there's so many fights of real consequence

to come. There's just no option for Democrats other than to continue to put pressure not only on Trump, but on Senate Republicans. There's no other way out of this for us. And I think people out there, you know, you have to keep calling your members of Congress. And, you know, I know that there have been some, you know, protests already, but I do think this has to command national attention. These stories of people hurting have to command national attention. And I think, you know, this week, as this drags on and people are starting to feel the effect of not getting a paycheck, it's time for people to really take action. You know, and like, look, people have taken, this has happened in the Trump presidency, like around the travel ban, the women's march, the March for Our Lives. I think we need to treat a bunch of people who don't make a ton of money and really count on these paychecks and hurting

and what that's going to do to themselves and their families as seriously as we've taken all these other emergencies in the Trump presidency. Yeah, it's funny. It's just tying all this together, too. It's like, here we are, all of us who warned and were worried about what a Trump presidency would mean. We are now over two years in. The government is shut down for basically no reason whatsoever because of a fit by a narcissist. The stupidest and the longest shutdown.

Longest shutdown in history. There are, you know, the positions of technically White House chief of staff, secretary of defense. These are open positions, which with no hopes of being lobbyists running the cabinet, lobbyists running the cabinet. Most of them, most of them hadn't been a point. Most of them haven't been confirmed. No attorney general present under multiple investigations. We've seen rolling back of environmental protections. We've seen business allowed to kind of run roughshod over regulations throughout the government. This is what we feared. We are in it.

We are in the version of the Trump presidency that we feared right now. And one of the things we've said from the very beginning is we just didn't know how bad it would get. And the truth is we still don't. We don't know how long the shutdown will go because we don't have a true president. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about 2020. Since that's the hope here, that's the next hope.

Since there was a bunch of news on that front over the last few days. Former San Antonio Mayor and U.S. Housing Secretary Julian Castro formally announced his presidential campaign over the weekend from his hometown in Texas. He said he wants to run on a platform advocating for universal pre-K, Medicare for all, a Green New Deal,

a higher minimum wage, and comprehensive immigration reform. Castro, who's Mexican-American, is one of the highest profile Latinos to ever seek his party's nomination. His first campaign stop will be in Puerto Rico, where he'll meet with survivors of Hurricane Maria. Then he's scheduled to go to New Hampshire. Love it. You spoke to Castro a few weeks ago. What were your impressions? My honest impression is, you know, I'm looking for a reason why this person who has never run even for statewide office decided to run for president for why he has gotten in the race when we then there when there are so many other Democrats. And honestly, I still don't know why I don't understand the justification. You know, he's put he's saying the right things. He's putting forward the right policies.

But when you ask for like a genuine reason for why this person is running for president, why take this great risk when clearly he's a long shot, when clearly he's lesser known, when clearly has a reputation for being boring, and you ask for a reason why you're in this race, I don't think anyone has heard one yet. And I think we should just all be honest about that because this is the most important presidential election since the last one. And there is so much on the line. And I want to know that people are getting in the race because they think that that because they think it's so important. And they're the person that should win rather than a lot of people who are going to look at it as an opportunity to raise their profile, even though they don't have a chance. What do you think, Tom?

I think, you know, the resume on paper, like Stanford, Harvard Law, Mayor of the seventh largest city in the nation, Secretary of HUD. Like it's good on paper. The platform you talked about has a lot of sort of barrier to entry, I'd say, progressive policies. You know, I mean, universal pre-K is not something we've talked about a lot on the show, but only 55 percent of American three to four year olds attended preschool. So that's a big, important thing. I think it's interesting that his first trip is to Puerto Rico. I think that's distinctive and interesting.

And I love it. I think for a lot of candidates in a crowded field, you're looking for how to distinguish yourself. Like Jay Inslee came out and said that he'd be running as a climate change candidate. And I think that's interesting and distinctive. I think Castro has a little more work to do on that front. But it's super, super early. So he's got time. But yeah, you got to, you it's, it's going to be harder than ever to make news that you want to make this cycle. Yeah, it made me think, you know, listening to his speech, you know, when Elizabeth Warren

announced, one point we made was that she doesn't just have a list of very bold progressive policies. She has a story that weaves those policies together. You know, she has a reason for running, right? And she has a story, she has a theory of the case that there are, you know, corporations have been screwing the middle class, they've been rigging the game. And what we need to do is sort of unrig the game with rules of the road. And you know, this is what she's been doing her whole need to do is sort of unrig the game with rules of the road. And, you know, this is what she's been doing her whole life. And it sort of all connects. And so in a 20-person field, when you hear the name Elizabeth Warren, you think, oh, yeah, I know what her story is. I know why she's running. And I think Castro is interesting because you're right. He has this list

of very bold progressive policies. And I'm starting to think that in this race in 2020 in the primary, there's not going to be a ton of difference for a lot of these candidates about the policies that they propose. They're all going to be bold progressive policies, which, by the way, is great news. And credit to a lot of the left-leaning folks in the party for pushing the party to embrace things like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, whether it's, you know, AOC or Barney in 2016, or on some of these issues, Hillary's platform in 2016,

whoever it may be, right? So it's good that we're all going to be there. I think what ends up distinguishing you is your theory of the case, either about why you chose these policies, what's your priority among these policies, and your theory of politics and what's wrong with the country at this given moment? And when I listened to Castro's speech, it did seem very like, I'm running, here's my bio, here's where I grew up, and here's a bunch of policies, and they're important to me, and Donald Trump is bad. And so there it is. And it's like, you just sort of want a little more of that. It's a little too cautious, a little too checklist-y. And I think, look, one of the reasons that pre-K, he talked about pre-K, is when he was mayor of San Antonio, he instituted universal pre-K there.

And if that's an issue he's passionate about and that is where he has this long record, then go around know, go around the country making that a huge issue and make it a big deal and talk about it all the time. Like, talk about what you really believe in what you've done in your life, because that gives you, you know, that gives you more of a leg to stand on when you're in a field of 20 people and it will help distinguish you. Right. I also think that, like, there's what will help these candidates politically, right? And I think that's absolutely true. You know, you look at someone like Elizabeth Warren and you say, well, this is a person who has been advocating for these positions

for a very long time. The announcement video and the position she took in that announcement and the way she talked about policy and politics is how she's been speaking for better part of 20 years, if not longer, long before it was the mainstream position of Democrats. Also, she has a record on those issues. The Consumer it was the mainstream position of Democrats. Also, she has

a record on those issues. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau exists because of her. She's made the right enemies. She has been doing this for a long time. And so when someone like Julian Castro steps up and says, I have these same views, largely, you know, I take these same policy positions, you have to ask, well, first of all, in a field in which we're going to see a lot of people who have lived those values and done it at a national level and done it for a long time, both at a political level, just a breakthrough in this primary, but also to me as a person hoping to find a candidate who I think will actually pursue those things when they win. help you win a debate, but because we actually need someone to do those things. Because one lesson of the last 10 years is maybe our failure to be bold enough once we were elected opens the doors to villains like Trump. But let me push you on one point there, because we've also talked about how exciting in 2018, Beto O'Rourke, Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum, all were. And the three of

them didn't have very, very long records. Stacey Abrams probably had Gillum, all were. And the three of them didn't have very, very long records. Stacey Abrams probably had more than anyone, because she was minority leader in the Georgia legislature. But there was something else about those three candidates that were exciting. And, you know, you could see them as, all three of them as national candidates. And yet, I think we'd all say that they're different than Julian Castro. And maybe we'd be excited about those three running more than Castro. So on that case, it doesn't seem to be like a long record. Well, I think it's also, I think in an era in which we are constantly

confronted by very tested messages that understand what people in the base want and what can help you. And we look for evidence that a people have done things that were risky, that took chances. Also, that demonstrates not authenticity, but like actual zeal and integrity and passion. And you look at the kind of campaign Stacey Abrams ran. You look at the kind of campaign Andrew Gillum ran. You look at the campaign that Beto O'Rourke ran. And you see that in there. You see someone who is willing to say things that might not help them, that may even cost them votes, because it's what they believe and it's the kind

of person they are. And we need more of that. Yeah, that's an important point. The other Democrat who jumped into the presidential contest this week was Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii who announced her intentions in an interview on CNN with Van Jones. She said a formal announcement would be coming shortly and shared that criminal justice reform, climate change, and health care would be among her priorities as a candidate. Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran who was also the first Hindu and American Samoan elected to Congress,

has excited and alarmed both Democrats and Republicans during her time in politics. She made news in 2016 when she resigned a position at the DNC and supported Bernie Sanders for president. She made even bigger news when she traveled to Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad and questioned whether he was responsible for a chemical attack on civilians. He was.

She's also twice called the LGBTQ community and supporters of same-sex marriage, quote, homosexual extremists, which she says she now regrets, along with the anti-marriage position she took back then. Guys, what to make of Tulsi Gabbard here? I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of people ask that question. I mean, she was elected to the Hawaii state legislature at like 21, 22, and she left that seat to go serve in Iraq, which is obviously very admirable and impressive and not a lot of politicians make that kind of sacrifice. So good side of the ledger.

that kind of sacrifice. So good side of the ledger. The Assad meeting, the questioning of chemical weapons use, that is baffling to me. I think she worked for her father's anti-LGBT organization, which was trying to pass measures against same-sex marriage in Hawaii

and promoting really awful things like conversion therapy. And so I don't want to make excuses for her, but maybe like the family element of this is weird. But still, I mean, that is a non-starter for a Democrat. It's not like in 2004 you were against same-sex marriages. Plenty of Democrats were there. But like homosexual extremists, gay conversion therapy, like even if you've evolved, that's

quite a thing to evolve from. Well, yes. And also, you know, one of her explanations is like, you know, she she saw what theocracy is, what she said that she saw what theocracy could look like in the Middle East. And it changed her views on what the government should do, which leaves open both to her having still personal views on gay issues that are anathema to Democratic voters. But the question I would have there is, what were you not able to see about the humanity of gay people before that? Right? Like, why is it that you had to go halfway around the world only to come home to discover that gay people were people that deserve the same rights that you have? I don't understand it. I think, you know, I find myself thinking like, is this, here somebody who has who is willing to take, let's call them heterodox positions inside of the Democratic Party. And maybe we're also accustomed to unified democratic kind of consensus that it's hard to really break someone like this down ideologically. But then I think, you know what, I don't so much care.

You know, I don't need to understand the overall philosophy of a person who's taken positions that I find so important. need to understand the overall philosophy of a person who's taken positions that I find so abhorrent. Yeah. Also, Steve Bannon's a fan. Set up a meeting with her and Trump right after the election to see if she maybe would take a job in the administration, which of course she didn't. She's been very critical of Trump ever since. But another weird, weird one. Yeah. Weird stuff here. Crowded field. Getting complicated. Crowded field. Not sure if we need to. Exactly. Not sure if we need to pick these apart since we have 20-something other candidates. My only concern is I know that in the first few debates, they may roll the dice to see who's on stage. And I'm just a little bit worried about some of those dice rolls.

Who is on stage with who here? What am I dealing with? How am I going to figure this out? Quick thing here. One person who's not running, Tom Steyer, the billionaire impeachment ad guy, announced last week he would not be running for president. Went to Iowa to announce it, that he instead intends to spend millions of dollars on impeachment efforts this year. You know, I guess good for him for not running. We had often said, you know, is he spending all this money to get himself on TV to advance a presidential campaign? It turns out he was not. So that's good. And again, and we've also said this,

Tom Steyer's organization, NextGen, has spent a lot of money on the ground organizing in 2018. They were very helpful. They did a lot of good work. So that part's great. You know, I think the whole impeachment campaign is still a bit baffling to me. So I have to say, when I saw that he wasn't running, it did just sort of allow me to recategorize Tom Steyer. Because I think my concern through the last two years was here's somebody using an erogenous zone of Democratic voters, which is impeachment, to kind of get his name recognition out there and get people to be part of his organization, which is genuinely doing good work. So a double-edged sword from the beginning. But now that he's someone who is not running, right, maybe he's thinking of running in the future, who knows. But that to me does a lot to alleviate my concerns that he's just doing it for himself. And then it becomes just a debate about how to argue for impeachment. And the one thing I would say is the situation is very different now than it was two

years ago. We now have the House. And so I think there's a far more legitimate argument to be made for having an organization out there that is focused on building a case for impeachment. I'm not totally sold on it. But the fact that he's now not just doing it to raise his own name profile and has done this great organizing I think is really good. And, you know, that's my nuanced position on Tom Steyer. I just want to know what the impeachment effort looks like going forward. Because if it's $40 million of ads, that is not a good use of money. It's a terrible waste of money. If it's organizing in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, that is a great use of money.

And I know that's stuff he's already doing. They've done incredible work getting young people registered and involved and motivated. If they continue to put money into that kind of work, God bless you. Thank you. If it's just TV ads, I think that that's lighting the money on fire. Yeah, again, my big issue here is impeachment is an issue right now and in the coming months when Mueller finally finishes his work here.

Cross those T's and dot those I's, Mueller. Impeachment will not be an issue in 2020 because the issue in 2020 is already replacing the president. All these Democrats, you know what I'm saying? All these Democrats are running to replace the president. So a bunch of ads talking about impeachment

as there's a bunch of Democrats running to replace the president doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Yeah, you know what though? I agree with you. I agree with you. And then yet, I see what Tom Steyer says, and it's inarguable. He's like, this person is a threat.

He is dangerous. He is impeachable. Everything must be done to remove him as soon as possible. So it's like, you know, I am sympathetic. If there are soft lawmakers who are, you know, Republicans who we think we can peel off and get them to vote for impeachment, and you dump $5 million of ads in their state, cool. Interesting. I get that.

Let's talk about it. Totally. All right. Finally, this isn't about the presidential campaign, but one Republican congressman will have a primary challenger in 2020, and that's avowed white nationalist Steve King, who last week said the following in an interview with the New York Times. Quote, white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization. How did that language become offensive?

How indeed, guys. How indeed. He is the worst person on the planet. Thank God Republicans are finally going to strip him of his committees or maybe censure him or something. Hopefully, possibly. But, like, this guy and his disgusting, hateful views have been hiding in plain sight for years and years and years. views have been hiding in plain sight for years and years and years. And, you know, there was a media matters did a study of how much coverage Rashida Tlaib's use of the word impeach the motherfucker words impeach the motherfucker got on cable news

versus Steve King saying white nationalist, white supremacist word comments. And it was like five to one in favor of Tlaib. So it's something that doesn't get the coverage because I guess maybe it makes a bunch of reporters in Washington uncomfortable calling someone a racist, but he's a vile racist and he has no place in Congress. It's also, there's a, you know, maybe a senator saying motherfucker, a member of Congress saying motherfucker

is more newsworthy than a Republican being racist just because it's not exactly news. The other thing about this is all these Republicans turning on Steve King this week, it just like reminded me of the line from Casablanca, which is, I'm shocked to find gambling in this casino. Like, come on, guys, where you been? He's retweeted Nazi sympathizers. He retweeted some Dutch nationalists saying our civilization can't be restored with other people's babies.

He's met with far-right groups with ties to Nazis in the past. I'm glad that Republicans are finally speaking out. Where were they this whole time? It is amazing to me, by the way, for all the Paul Ryan legacy defenders out there,

Kevin McCarthy is the one who said action will be taken against Steve King when Paul Ryan refused to ever take that action. And a lot of Paul Ryan's defenders said, oh, well, he's done everything,

and he spoke out. No, no, no. You're going to say now Kevin McCarthy is going to be better than this? You think Kevin McCarthy cracked the code? He's the one who unlocked this fucking Enigma box? You couldn't figure out how to criticize Steve King and Kevin McCarthy?

Boundless cowardice, Paul Ryan. Hopefully Steve King goes down, loses committee assignments, and this, you know, And hopefully it's primary. Yeah, well, he's got a challenger. Hopefully this guy will take him down here. All right, when we come back,

we will hear Lovett's interviews with teachers who were striking here in LA. It was actually really great being out there and we had some very interesting conversations, so check it out. Great. We are outside Fairfax High School, public high school in Los Angeles, where teachers, parents and students are part of a teacher strike for higher pay, smaller class sizes, less standardized testing and more resources for the city's public schools. As you can hear, a lot of people have come out this morning, even though it is a very rainy and by Los Angeles standards, cold winter morning.

UT! UT! Hi, my name is Katie Andrews and I teach 9th and 12th grade English here at Fairfax. I've been here for four years. I'm originally from Louisiana and I've taught in the district for 20 years. We're striking today for a number of reasons. Number one, we're striking for lower class sizes. We don't want 36 students in an elementary class. We don't want 46 students in an elementary class. We don't want 46 students in secondary classes.

We're also striking for a pay raise for teachers that keeps up with cost of living increase. We're striking to keep education public and in the community so that we aren't taken over by charters and corporations and everything. In New Orleans, my home state is Louisiana, charters have taken over the entire city. There's no more public schools left in New Orleans. And what happens is, education shouldn't be controlled by corporations. Businesses and business people don't have any business and have no experience coming in here and setting educational standards and rubrics and everything. Leave that to the professionals.

Leave it to teachers to teach. Now, did you plan on having 30 years of policy culminate on an incredibly rainy morning? Could you have picked a better day, you think? Oh, I totally planned for that. Sure, yeah. No, we picked the day, and we were supposed to actually start last Thursday. We didn't know when it was actually going to start. It was pushed back to today and everything.

And you know what? I think the rain just actually strengthens our resolve because if we didn't believe in this, we wouldn't be here. You know, I'm freezing. And we're here, and we're going to stay here until we get what we deserve and what teachers deserve, what kids deserve, what our community deserves. So we've seen teacher strikes across the country. We've seen them in places like Oklahoma and West Virginia.

Like these are very different places. What do you think ties these different movements together? I think actually what ties us all together is the fact that this has culminated in a big fight against intellectual freedom versus money. I think it culminates in the fact that we need to be free to teach, and students need to be free to learn without the aggressive oversight

and coercion of money from big business. And one of the demands is about standardized testing and having less standardized testing. Why is that important, and what do parents think about that? We actually resent all the standardized testing. Some is good, but it's gotten more and more and more and more to the point where we're not teaching actually like things like literature and math and social studies. We're teaching to the test to prepare them for the

next test. The moment that test is over, we start preparing for the next test. That's not teaching. What are some of the books, so you're an English teacher. What are some of the books your students are reading right now? We're reading The Odyssey. Oh, come on. Oh, that is so tough. Well, it actually is better because I actually bought with my own money, and I'm a teacher, so what I do, I bought a graphic novel of The Odyssey, and it's beautiful. It's full color, and kids just get right into it.

And we also read Romeo and Juliet, and I know you gonna say oh that's so tough yeah it's tough but I bought also with my own money a side-by-side version which means it has Elizabethan English on one side and regular contemporary English on the other side and it's like we do this we spend our money because we want to help kids when when the textbook isn't enough we go above and beyond and this is why when teachers like buy stuff with their own money, we deserve a pay raise because we're here to help. It's what we do. We are helpers. One last question. You know, there is a difference between a state like California and a state like West Virginia or a state like Oklahoma, which is that California is a high tax state. This is already a really expensive place to live. And you feel that as one of the big sources of tension,

right? What do you think is driving the fact that even in a place like California, where taxes are already so high, the teachers are still having to take money out of their own pockets to buy school supplies, and parents are already paying so much just to be in these school districts? How do you make that argument to parents that schools still need more resources? What do you think about that challenge? I think that throwing money at education is always a good idea, because it's not just us.

It's not here at Fairfax It's not just here in California. It's nationwide Overall over the past several years education has been cut and cut and cut any any state budget Education is always the first to be cut when you put more money in education. It's like we all do better. We all do better Hi, what's your name? I'm Elliot Kim. I'm a senior here at Fairfax High School. And what's your name? Hi, I'm Audrey Chang. I'm a senior here at Fairfax High School. So why are you out here supporting the strike today?

So we know the strike stands for a lot of different things. It stands for the teachers and for us as students. The teachers want to put the students first, and of course we support that. We want to see that students first and of course we support that. We want to see that our education is improved by smaller class sizes and also not just in terms of our education in the classroom but also for the support that is available on campuses. So nurses, counselors, librarians, we want to see them more often on a campus and giving more to the

um giving more to the school and to our educational experience so if you were in class today what if you're in school today what would have been the biggest class size like of your day i'm not exactly sure maybe like 40 50 students in the classroom we had had class sizes where some students had to sit on the floor while the teacher was giving lessons. They would alleviate that problem by like distributing the students to other classrooms but this class size was still a big problem. So we're in Los Angeles this is one of the richest cities one of the richest countries in the world and you're saying that in some of your classroom there wouldn't be enough desks and it was so overcrowded that kids had to sit on the ground yeah when you're in a class that big do you find that like only the loud kids that always answer every question talk like do like

how many kids are able to actually participate in a class when it's like that big surprisingly even some of the loud kids can't even talk that That's horrible. As a loud kid, I find that offensive. I mean, mainly because the class size is so huge. I guess students feel that, well, it's huge and they kind of get a little embarrassed or like kind of pressured to not to talk. And especially for teachers, it's really hard to manage a class size that big and like materials like paper would run short on for their classes so it's really important that class sizes are decreased. My name is Pisco Ironhand I'm a senior at Fairfax High School essentially LAUSD is saying that they don't have the money to help pay teachers more because

the living costs have gone up as they keep increasing. Student classes have gone up as well, like the size of the number of students. The size of the students in each and every class has gone up. And they're sitting on $1.6 billion saying that they don't have the money to help pay for more things that the schools have been needing. Teachers to pay out-of-pocket for their own school supplies, you know Our technology like half of the iPads that we use are broken half of the laptops don't work Most time you can't even connect to the Wi-Fi. So we have all this technology that we're sitting on that doesn't work and You have a lock on a choker on your neck

You have a pin in your ear you have a lock on a choker on your neck. You have a pin in your ear. You have a pretty sick belt. This feels like a protest outfit. Well, you know, the red shirt is basically my protest outfit. You know, red is the UTLA color, and so, you know, red for the teachers. I love protesting because I love speaking for what's right and what's wrong, you know, and what needs to be going on. So, you know, whether I'm, you know, 17 like I am right now, 27 or 57, I'll still be out here if they need me

to be out here. So you strike me as somebody that has teachers that love you and teachers that don't love you as much. Um, I've, I've had my fair share of teachers that, you know, we kind of, our personalities kind of clash. I'd say for the most part that I do get along with most of my teachers and I honestly don't blame any of my teachers that have you know not really necessarily liked me because again like so many of them out there are at the ends of their ropes and if you see someone dressed like this coming into your class in the first day of school i'd be a little bit like too you know so have there any teachers you've clashed with that are out here today that have seen you and have been like that's cool i actually saw an administrator who i kind of clashed with one day when i was having a bad

morning we got into a yelling match i saw her today and we kind of made a little bit of eye contact but other than that you know was it nice it was like look you know we're on the same side you know it's it's like you know even people that i've like had trouble with online and stuff have like you know been commenting and like you know messaging me about like what's going on because it's like your personal situations don't don't matter this doesn't matter you need to put everything aside to you know for the betterment of the future for everybody you know yeah I'm a Steve G I am a teacher here at Fairfax as each for the visual arts magnet I attended a Fairfax back in 1988 the year before that first

teacher strike or that recent that teacher strike back in 1989. So I've been teaching here for about 25 years, approximately. And what do you teach? I teach AP English, 12th grade. I also teach 12th grade honors, 12th grade regular. I have a 10th grade currently. I've taught 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, all the grade levels over this past two and a half decades. Just being honest, do you think the education at this school has gotten worse because of the need for more resources in the time that you've been here?

I mean, there's always going to be numerous factors on why things are more difficult. I would definitely see a decline over these last 25 years, whether it has to do with parent involvement, whether it has to do with student engagement, whether it has to do with lack of supplies. I mean, so there's a bunch of different things. So I would say definitely we need the district to have that support to say, you know what, we need the best teachers to teach the best students so they do well. I mean, I have a kid right now who's actually going to be attending Harvard next fall, you know, and a lot of it is her own work, but a lot of it is,

you know, the work we've been doing with her, as well as just support staff, people that, you know, have been encouraging of her. And, you know, we need those type of kids who are motivated, but we need teachers who are motivated. And part of that is feeling supported feeling that our work counts and our work matters to them and I believe us as teachers we do desire that you know we want to be out here we don't want to be out here we want to be in there but you know so ultimately we want to fight for what we feel is important for the students for the parents and for our own livelihood what's the biggest what are the most kids you have in one class right now? Right now, the most I have is like 39.

I've had as many as 45, 46, 47. And teaching English is very difficult, having to do all the essays. So for my 12th graders, I have them do personal statements. And so they do the UC personal statement, which is over 1,200 words. And so I'm grading and reading 1,200-word essays just to get these kids feeling as though they can make it to the next level. So I think it's very difficult for us as teachers, especially in English, to be doing essays on the weekends, lesson planning. And so I would say, yeah, especially in English, it's a very tough, difficult task having 40-plus in the classroom. Do you ever make your kids read Dickens?

Dickens, I have them cover as a separate work outside during winter for them to present. I think Dickens is so boring. Oh, well, you know, it's a tale of two cities sometimes. All right, thank you very much. Thanks to the teachers and the parents and the students i talked to thanks for coming out it was a deluge out there you don't know what it was like john little little rain in la is all we're talking about all day it's gonna be a whole thing the tea it was and also uh mukta and caroline and nar also came out and the four of us after shivering got hot chocolate at a Starbucks. You're the real hero in this show.

Always get it to be about you. Now we know. We, we, we. Nar's sitting right there. Yeah, she's not talking about it. Nar was there. We'll talk to you guys on Thursday. Bye, everyone.