Pod Save America - DeSantis World Bore

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Joe Biden gets pressured to negotiate with the debt ceiling hostage takers. Donald Trump says he might skip the Republican primary debates. Ron DeSantis’ gaffes overshadow his foreign trip. Republican supermajorities continue their attacks on democracy. Montana state Representative Zooey Zephyr joins to talk about her Republican colleagues banning her from the House floor for speaking out against an anti-trans bill. Then, Jon, Jon, and Tommy break down President Biden’s best jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Joe Biden gets pressure to negotiate with the debt ceiling hostage takers. Donald Trump says he might skip the Republican primary debates. Ron DeSantis' gaffes overshadow his foreign trip. Republican supermajorities continue their attack on democracy. And I talked to Montana State Representative Zoe Zephyr about her Republican colleagues

banning her from the House floor for speaking out against an anti-trans bill. Then we break down President Biden's best jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. But first, fashion's biggest night is here. And just like every other year, John, Anna Wintour is sure to make this year's Met Gala unforgettable. What is going on? That's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what I, that's what on? That's what I, that's a fun pivot. What's happening? But did you know that before she was an editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour ran

the fashion section for a little-known porn magazine called Viva in the 1970s. Nice tie-in. We used a current event to pitch one of our shows

and we had a seamless segue. It's a really good series. Yeah, it is. Great show. Cricket's latest limited series podcast called Stiffed is what we're

talking about here. It's about the rise and fall of Viva the Erotic magazine for women that rocked the publishing world in 1973 New York City. With a team of feminist writers and editors behind it and Porn King publisher at the helm, were they always destined for failure? Usually I have a line here about full frontal male nudity, but it's not here today. Sorry. It's not here today. Find out now by listening to Stift, available for free on your favorite podcast platform. All right, let's get to the news.

We are barreling towards a catastrophic default that the U.S. Treasury now says could come as early as June 1st. House Republicans just passed a garbage bill that has zero chance of passing Congress, even if Republicans controlled both houses. And now the president needs to figure out his next move. Axios reports that there's a divide between Senate and House Democrats over whether Biden should negotiate with McCarthy, with over two dozen House members saying he should. Those are Democrats. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, will hold hearings this week to remind people that the House bill would force deep cuts to law enforcement, veterans, families, teachers and kids, including taking health insurance away from 20 million Americans. Just before we started recording, it's reported that Biden has just called McCarthy, who's in the middle of an official trip to Israel, and asked to meet with him and the big four.

So the leaders of the House, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and the Senate. What do you guys think? Should Biden negotiate? Is this meeting, does it count as a negotiation? Is it just a meeting about negotiation? What's the best strategy for Biden over these next, I was going to say next few months, but now it basically could just be in the next month. So first, it's funny. He's in Israel. It's like, but enough about this intractable dispute. Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.

First of all, I find all this talk about will Biden negotiate? Will Biden not negotiate? I understand why that's the way it's described, because actually, in fairness, everyone describes it that way. Democrats, Republicans and the press. The reason that the reason it is described that way is because it's one of the lessons when, in the past, Democrats have agreed to negotiate over the debt ceiling. We feel like we got burned, rightly, because you're negotiating with people holding a gun

to the head of the economy. So now Democrats take pride in saying, we won't negotiate over this. The press report it that way. And then Republicans get to say, come on, negotiate with us, negotiate with us, come to the table, which, if you're not paying attention attention is, I think, a more reasonable seeming position. The reality is that everyone is negotiating. Saying you won't negotiate over the debt ceiling is a form of negotiation. You're just saying in my negotiation over this issue, I will not move off of this line. This is not a term I'm willing to debate with you. And even Biden himself had said previously, correctly, I'm happy

to talk to Kevin McCarthy, but we're just not going to talk about the debt ceiling as a pawn in this negotiation. Yeah. What do you think, Tommy? I mean, I think just first of all, I'm genuinely worried about a default. I think it's a real risk. I find it so odd that financial markets aren't really pricing it in. Everyone's just kind of bumping along and thinks it's going to be fine. And I know Biden doesn't want a default. I believe McCarthy when he says he doesn't want to default either, but I don't think McCarthy's steering the ship. And that's why I think the negotiation about whether to have a meeting is so silly because Kevin McCarthy is sort of papering over differences in his caucus with this proposal to cut $5 trillion in spending over 10 years or whatever it is, but they're not even specifying

what cuts they would make. Biden's being asked to negotiate with a guy who's not really in charge of his caucus, who won't lay out what cuts he wants to make. What are we doing here? I think that it was smart of Biden. I think the right move was what he just did, which is call McCarthy for a meeting. I think what he'll probably say is, I'm still not going to negotiate over the debt ceiling. I will negotiate over the budget. There is a budget process that's going to take place. We have to fund the government by the fall. I think the smart thing to do for everyone would be to punt the debt ceiling, do a temporary increase in the ceiling and punt it to past the government funding deadline. And then if you want to argue over the budget and shut down the government, no one wants a government shutdown,

but it would be a lot less damaging than a catastrophic default that would basically destroy the global economy. Yeah. People should just... So yes, people just understand. So there's two deadlines. One is sometime in June. It keeps moving around. Janet Yellen just doesn't know how much money she has in her checking, but she's trying to figure... We've all been there. We've all been there. So at some point in June, the government runs out of money, catastrophic default. September 30th, the current government funding runs out. And so by September 30th, they need to negotiate just a spending bill so that the government stays open so that there isn't a shutdown.

And because the two sides are at a very clear, you know, sort of there's no Venn diagram overlap between clean debt limit won't negotiate and no clean debt limit must negotiate. The idea is you punt and you say, we will never negotiate over the debt limit, but we'll negotiate over government funding and the debt limit increase will be included as part of that. The challenge is one is in June and one is in September. These are not, these people are real deadline freaks. So they'd have to either get this done by June or more likely in good faith, agree to an extension. But Kevin McCarthy, as you said, doesn't really have power over his caucus because the only reason he had trouble passing what would be a draconian and destructive spending bill is because for a lot of his caucus,

even this didn't go far enough. And I think McCarthy, if it was in private meetings with Biden, could probably throw out there, hey, how about a short term extension or agree to a short term extension and then make most of his caucus swallow it? A lot of Republicans will vote against it. But if he does, Republicans and Democrats, I think that there's a good chance he doesn't lose his speakership just by going with a temporary extension to punt it past the government funding deadline. And then Biden can say he didn't negotiate over the debt ceiling because he's doing it in the budget. McCarthy can say they still have the leverage over Democrats to extract concessions and cuts around the budget process. And then everybody wins and we don't all default. I just think for the White House's purposes, if you can get past this silly debate about whether or not to have a meeting or a negotiation and get to the substance

of what these cuts would mean, which is what Chuck Schumer wants to do, let's talk about means testing Medicare and what that would do to people in this country. Let's talk about the fact that McCarthy wants to repeal all the clean energy tax credits in the IRA, the big climate change bill that just passed. And they want to take away funding for the IRS that actually will make the government money in the long term, right? Which is why they've been very reluctant to include that, to really spell that out, because it hurts their deficit numbers, because it actually would raise money by going after rich people.

$200 million, $200 billion over 10 years. Yeah, it takes it also just government shutdowns are terrible things and they cause a lot of harm, but it is nothing compared to the harm of hitting the debt ceiling. And so it does move it back into the realm of normal politics and a kind of normal debate. It moves it back into the realm of normal crisis. Yeah. Normal fiscal crisis. If I'm ranking them, it's like bad government shutdown, way worse default, way, way, way worse repealing all the climate change measures we just put in place and watching the planet burn over the next decade. So not a lot of good options here. Yeah, I do.

I do wonder. Default might be even worse. I mean, yeah. Default is whoo. I don't know if it's default, I think, then IRA go away. I don't know. Well, you know what? I don't want either.

And I think we can hopefully avoid either. I do like, you know, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, whether or not McCarthy, so McCarthy passing this dumb message bill and which is like, it's a message bill, but twist, all the ideas are unpopular. So we passed a message bill that makes us look terrible. But whether or not McCarthy passed this, the fact that he did makes him a little stronger. He'd have been much more weak if it hadn't passed. He would have had to pass a clean extension. I don't know. But regardless, this was always ending in the same place. Whatever is going to pass both the House and the Senate,

it will probably pass the House with more Democratic votes than Republican votes. So McCarthy has to be able to propose something on the House side that will not cost him his speakership, but will likely have a lot of Democrats behind it. And to me, whether or not you may get a clean extension, but there also might be some other fig leaf or some other thing he gets, something along the lines of what the Freedom, not the Freedom Caucus, the Problem Solvers Caucus is looking, some commission or control on spending or some reduction during the interim or some concession that just gets you out of this impasse into the government funding. He took the biggest victory lap for passing one bill that I've ever seen. One of the most unpopular bills he could have passed. I will say too, I think that if Joe

Biden is going to go down the path of I'm definitely not negotiating over the debt ceiling, which I think is the right option, he should have in his back pocket a unilateral option, whether it's mint the coin, whether it's the 14th Amendment, whatever it is. Because I think we will get closer. We're going to get much closer to default, I think, than we were in 2011. Because I don't think that – I think that Democrats were actually willing to allow Barack Obama to offer some concessions around the debt ceiling in 2011 before we were all burned by it. I think the Democratic caucus at this point will not let biden do this anyway we'll see what

happens everyone put your money in your mattresses uh one person who's been uncharacteristically quiet about the debt ceiling drama is donald trump who made some news at a rally in new hampshire when he announced that he's officially swapping sleepy joe for crooked joe big news no the real news was when he said he might skip the Republican primary debates altogether. Let's listen. But so these debates, you know, Nixon and Reagan and Bush, Bush number one, others. No, they didn't debate in the primaries. They didn't debate.

I mean, seriously, you look at the boards and you see these things, 1%, 1%, 2%, 1%, 3%. And you're looking at these numbers and I'm, we're at 60 and 70%. Why would you do that? You want intelligent people, don't you, to be running your country? So, obviously, if Trump skipped the debates, it would be terrible for the content business. But would it be smart for Trump? Do you guys think he's really threatening to skip debates or is he just using this for leverage to get the venue, the hosts, the time and place he wants? Because normally, I mean, you do often see frontrunners either want to not debate or want to debate less,

but Trump is not your standard front runner. He is an attention seeker above all else. Like he's a front runner who's currently wailing on Ron DeSantis, his distant, distant opponent all day, every day. So I wonder if he's really going to, would skip these events if they occurred, because I don't remember 2016 primary debates that well but i remember him kind of dominating the conversation and dominating most of the events yeah i i first of all so he's doing a cnn town hall it's in like this next week or next week that's just him but that's just him but a network he spends all day railing against or saying is terrible but they come to him with a good opportunity.

He's going to take it. I think it depends on where the polling is. If he's still if he's looking at polling where he's way up ahead, he might consider not going. But he also might see them do one that he's not a part of and worry that it's good for these guys that he's not there. He also believes he won every debate he's ever been a part of. So I think it'll be I think he is using in his leverage, right? Saying you won't go puts you in a pretty good position. But I don't know that whether he's bluffing or not. I think he gets to make the decision as to whether or not the debate if he just if he thinks it's good for him five days before. If he was doing this with Joe Biden about general election

debates, I would say, yeah, he's bluffing. He's trying to extract some concessions here. I just wonder, like, I think there's very little risk for him in actually skipping these Republican primary debates. Because, like, a couple things. Who in the Republican Party and Republican media is actually going to criticize him for skipping the debates except for the candidates, the other candidates running? And to the extent they do criticize him, how many Republican voters will actually hear it? Like this guy now has, he is an attention seeker, but he gets more attention than any of them. They're having trouble breaking through anyway. If Fox does a debate and he doesn't show up, he's obviously going to do some big rally. And everyone's going to cover that just as much as they cover the debate. I just think we don't know. Well, it's funny.

It's like part of the reason it seems possible to skip the debate is the same reason none of them has been able to mount a serious challenge yet, which is that if there was somebody with the power and charisma and political skill to really dominate a debate in a way that would get a bunch of good news cycles. Yeah, you probably should be worried. But Ron DeSantis, I mean, this guy has the cadence of a phone book. I mean, he's just not very good. The risk is like Christie, Chris Christie actually runs and he does what he did to Marco Rubio, which is throw a few hard punches and kind of get Trump in a tough spot. Now, yeah, like, right, he has to get in, he has to be serious about running, actually, he has to try hard for that to happen. Yeah, and then I think it's like, and Trump's probably thinking to himself, if Christie's gonna come after me do i want to be on the debate

stage when he comes after me or do i want to just be at another rally and then he and then i heard that he went after me these guys though they're now all right it's like nicki haley going after desantis like these guys think that they punch each other hard enough it'll hurt trump they are the they are the worst i can't believe once again we just have the worst so embarrassing are the best place though to get your opponent sick with the deadly disease. Yeah. It's a great venue for a contagion. Yeah, maybe if he gets a new strain of COVID, he'll show up.

Yeah. Or maybe that'll pull him off. Catches the Zeta strain. Trump also just got a notable endorsement. Montana Senator Steve Daines, a close ally of Mitch McConnell, who's also in charge of winning back the Senate for Republicans in 24. Why do you guys think Daines is backing the guy who lost the Senate for Republicans in 2022? There's a really funny interview where somebody asked John Thune about why they would do that when this guy always attacks you and probably cost you the Senate. And he's like, boy, I don't know. You have to ask somebody else.

He did make the point that D the danes is looking for allies anywhere and get it i mean uh you know trump in your tent pissing out or outside your tent pissing in i don't know what else you're supposed to do trump pisses wherever he pleases yeah he's got to go he's got to go he's gonna piss in the tent outside of the tent everywhere he's gonna piss everywhere he's not famous it's why he wears a diaper he's gotta pee all the time and he's not really good at holding it in it's funny like listen first of all let's just be clear that no one gives a shit about steve danes in this room or outside of this room but there are all these reports in washington they're like how could he

do this to mitch mcconnell it's like guys if there's anything mitch mcconnell understands it's entirely cynical political maneuvering and if steve danes thinks this is going to help him in montana or helps him sort of keep trump from, you know, running Herschel Walker again. Sure, he'll give it a whirl. Right. Yeah, he can try. It's not it's not going to work. And I guess and reportedly McConnell told Daines it was fine to go to do it. So, of course, he was being cynical. But I do think now that like Democrats, it's going to make it easier for Democrats to label Republican Senate candidates as Trump approved MAGA candidates because now

Danes and Trump are working together. I'm sure the DSCC was so happy to hear this. Yeah. I'd say, yeah, the biggest, the gift of Steve Danes. I would say that, you know, the new Rick Scott, the new Rick Scott. Yeah. Yeah. Donald Trump and staircases are the worst things to happen to McConnell this year. Jesus. Jesus. What else we got? We wish you well. Trump's main competition for the nomination just got back from a foreign trip that generated what I'm sure the exact headlines his team wanted. Here's one.

Ron de tedious. DeSantis underwhelms Britain's business chiefs. And DeSantis' overseas trip overshadowed by fight with Disney, which of course reminded me of our all-time favorite clip from a candidate's foreign trip. Governor Romney, do you have a statement for the Palestinians? What about your gaffes?

Governor Romney, do you feel that your gaffes have overshadowed your foreign trip? It's the best. What about your gaffes? I'll never not laugh at that. I can't. I can't. We should say this. It's Ashley Parker. Congratulations. She's having a new baby. New mom. Baby girl, I believe. Yeah. Congratulations. Great stuff. I can't we should say it's Ashley Parker congratulations new mom baby girl I believe yeah

congratulations great stuff still it's just Ashley has gone on to do outstanding reporting excellent reporter but that's still one of my favorite

Ashley clips of all time Tommy did Ron DeSantis' gaffes overshadow his foreign trips it's so yes they did it's the readout like the nicest thing

someone said about him in the meeting of British leaders was like he came across well, but the second nicest was he was fine. Here's some of the other quotes about him. Looked bored. Stared at his feet. He looked spent. Message wasn't presidential. He was horrendous.

There wasn't any stardust. There wasn't any stardust is such a funny i was trying to think about this like there are definitely similar culture war fights that happen in british politics and u.s politics and like boris johnson was more than happy to push racism and you know go after the trans community and like do all the things that we hear from a lot but imagine explaining to someone in a foreign country why a politician is picking a fight with disney like it must be so confusing which is popular not just in the united states but all over the world globally it might be one of the most popular companies in the entire well-known and beloved brands yeah it's like yeah that's what you do

also there's just something about the way desantis is going about this like i must establish my foreign policy bona fides and so i'm gonna go on a foreign trip and i'm gonna talk to all the important people in other countries like what, what planet are you on? Also, Ron DeTedius was just sitting right there for Donald Trump. It's better than DeSanctimonious or DeSanctus now. I don't know. None of them are great. None of them are great.

I still like putting fingers. I like putting fingers as well. I'm a putting fingers guy. DeSanctus also went to Israel when they're in this sort of massive fight over the future of their democracy, too. And he just sort of walked right into it. What was he doing in Japan? Uh, Dan and I were trying to figure that out. He, he went to Japan, South Korea, uh, the UK and Israel. And I think in Japan, at least he got a head of state meeting. Like it's historically, I think conservative party there and the U S conservatives have gotten along. I think the Asia swing is like, Hey, look how tough I can be

on China and talk about defense spending. And then you go to the UK to, I don't know, stand in front of Big Ben and take a pretty picture. And then you go to Israel to make the evangelicals like you. None of it went perfectly. No, I would say I would say not. His super PAC is also running a new 60 second quasi announcement ad called Winner in the early states and nationally. Here's a clip. When the world lost its mind, when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue, Florida was a citadel of freedom for our fellow Americans.

Our rights are not granted by the courtesy of the state, but are endowed by the hand of the Almighty. Florida is where woke goes to die. We insist on the restoration of time-tested constitutional principles so that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from this earth. We will stand firm in the faith. We will be courageous.

Here I stand. I'm not backing down. His voice is so annoying. I went to Disney World and they didn't clap. He's so shrill. Tommy, you just returned from the free state of Florida? I did. Did you find any woke there

or was it all dead? Well, you guys were... Just corpses of woke come on the side of the road. Just Goofy's dead body. You guys are palling around with elites in Washington. I was with the Salt of the Earth. You're the first to take a photo. That ad.

So like, it's a bunch of cuts of kind of a mediocre Ron DeSantis speech. And then they cut images of people watching Ron DeSantis speak. So my takeaway was like, Ron DeSantis really likes to watch himself speak and then it's a hundred percent assumed knowledge they were also they were watching again this is an audio medium so you're not seeing it but um they were watching Ron DeSantis speak with um frames on the wall of headlines that just say DeSantis is a big winner and then one guy's just watching on his phone. Like, that's the best image you can find? It is really

interesting, right? Like, I don't know who this ad is for. It's not for, as you're, it is a very specific, where woke goes to die. Like, you don't know what that means if you're not really paying close attention. So this is an ad for, like, really, really... It's for Trump voters. Trump voters, super engaged. Super engaged voters. DeSantis curious.

But even some of those voters, like, when you say when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue Florida was a citadel of freedom how Ron you never tell us it was a

you're talking about COVID I assume yeah I know yeah we our brains are broken by politics so we know yeah

tell the voters so just one thing else at the end of the ad someone puts a DeSantis sticker over a Trump sticker yeah but I was

as I was looking at it though it's like man, the only time you're willing to take on Trump is when someone in your super PAC does it with a sticker. Yeah, they can't hear it. There's not any words that say it. It's just an image in the ad. It is just like, man, putting a sticker over another sticker is not tough. It's embarrassing. If you're not actually going to say those words out loud, you have to put the sticker over Trump in the actual world day to day.

Yeah. Listen, I'm a little closer to this than you guys are. I did have a Florida. You are on the ground floor. I did have an Uber driver who had recently driven one of Tucker Carlson's relatives while I was in Florida. Tom Friedman Vitor. Look at this. What's up?

What's the word on the street, Tommy? The word was a Lily Poulter. Anybody hear anybody talking about politics on your jet ski? Well, I was going to say that Ron DeSantis, um, the Calvary is coming though,

because in the wall street journal, uh, today there's an op-ed by one Mark Penn headline, Don't Count Ron DeSantis Out. And the advice that Mark Penn gives to Ron DeSantis is basically become 1990s era Bill Clinton. He says, the governor needs to shift from being the king of anti-woke pro-lifers to being a responsible leader of character and competence who can fix the budget and right the economy. This is why Mark Penn is such a fucking idiot. What about the Republican primary electorate

makes Mark Penn think that that's what they want? A responsible leader of character and competence who can fix the budget. Who's clamoring for that? Nobody. No labels. Bring me the head of Elsa. That's what they're saying.

So Florida and other red states are apparently also places where democracy goes to die in Missouri and Ohio Republican super majorities are trying to make it harder for voters to pass their own ballot measures and constitutional amendments to do things like protect abortion access allow workers to unionize undo gerrymandering raise the minimum wage in Iowa Republicans are trying to take away the power of the only statewide Democrat left in office, Auditor Rob Sand, also known as Tommy Vitor's doppelganger. And in Montana, Republicans voted to block Representative Zoe Zephyr, the state's first openly transgender legislator, from entering the House chamber because she criticized a bill that would restrict gender affirming health care.

I'll be talking to Representative Zephyr in just a bit. Obviously, these are very red states, but do you guys think these moves could backfire for Republicans? Yeah. Yes. I think in the Ohio case, the question is, can you educate people enough about the fact that this is a measure to make it harder to pass a measure in the fall to protect abortion access in the state. Yeah. So people know, because we should help out if you can, especially if you're listening in Ohio. Grassroots activists in Ohio were trying to put a ballot measure on the ballot for 24 that would protect abortion access in Ohio. Republicans in the legislature are like, we're going to change the law so that the only way for a ballot measure to pass is instead of having a majority pass it, you need 60 percent of voters to pass it. Thinking that there's not 60 percent who want to protect abortion access, but there's probably somewhere between 50 and 60 percent. So they're doing that in Ohio. In Missouri, they're saying that you can't put a constitutional amendment on the ballot unless five of eight congressional districts approve.

And the congressional districts are all so gerrymandered that that would require all deep red congressional districts to approve. Right. So basically what that means in Missouri is it's 50 50 if you're a Republican, but whatever, 57 if you're a Democrat, because you won't win all those districts. Democrat because you won't win all those districts. I will say, I do think it's a little bit of be careful what you wish for, because if they don't think abortion is 60-40 in Ohio, they should probably figure out why they think they're so much more Republican than Kansas, because in Kansas, abortion was it was a 60-40 issue. And if it's a 60-40 issue in Kansas, it's a 60-40 issue in Ohio. So, you know, we need to fight this thing. But also, like, they want to raise the threshold. That's fine. But I don't think that would mean that Democrats are out. challenge will be getting people to come out to vote for what seems like a technocratic ballot measure that's about raising a threshold to 60% when in reality, it's about telling people in Ohio,

if you want to protect abortion access, if you want to make sure that this isn't a right to work state and let people unionize, if you want to raise the minimum wage in the future, Medicaid protection, anything that might come in the future, you have to go out and defeat this and so that's going to take a lot of organizing yeah it's gonna it's gonna have to become a very similar to the wisconsin uh supreme court race a campaign to educate the majority in ohio that would surely want to protect their ability to pass those measures by 50 hopefully you can convince more people or more easily convince them that changing the rules in the middle of a game is unfair and a ridiculous thing to do. But there is this broader extremism narrative that's happening in states. I mean, you mentioned some of these things. We

talked about the six week abortion ban in Florida. That's wildly unpopular. I barely understand what's happening in Missouri because the way it's sort of been reported, but Missouri is now telling adults that they have to go through 18 months of therapy before they can receive gender affirming healthcare, not kids, not teenagers, grown adults. The state is telling you, you can't get healthcare you want. Now, I'm sure a lot of women listening are like, yeah, that's what they've been doing about abortion rights for many years. This is not new to us. But in that instance, I think the Republicans would make a political argument that they're talking about the viability of a fetus and not the individual receiving the care. In this case, you're selling an adult. You can't get a surgery

you want. Well, they've been doing that too. I mean, don't say game Florida. They, they, they lied and said, Oh, you do. This is just about kindergarten or third grade and you liberals are crazy. And then it's now all the way up through high school. And then, then Rob in Iowa, right? So he's the only statewide elected official in all of Iowa. He's really good at his job. He is, before he was elected to be auditor, he was prosecuting white collar financial crimes, including this wild conspiracy to rig the lottery. That was really interesting.

You can read about. But so the Republican governor of Iowa hates Rob Sand because he released a report detailing how her office had misspent about a half a million dollars in federal money. So they're changing the rules. The Iowa Republicans are passing a law to limit what information he has access to him. Which is his job. He's the auditor. And to require him to get permission from the agencies he's trying to audit before he can audit them. So these Republicans in the Iowa House are proactively pro-fraud, waste, and abuse. That's the message. I do think that it's both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do

for national Democrats to start lifting up these examples and weaving them together in a narrative. Because basically the argument is when you give Republicans full control of government, this is what happens. They don't just pass bad legislation. They don't just pass legislation that takes away your freedom to choose, your freedom to read the books you want, etc. They take away your freedom to be heard, to be represented, to choose your representative, to change the laws. They rig the game. As Cy Wynn tells you, Liz. It's really extreme.

And I think you get a big coalition of people against that. And Biden's been doing this a little bit. I mean, he, you know, by inviting the Tennessee reps to the White House, lifting up their story about how, you know, they were thrown out of the body for protesting or standing with protesters. I think it's telling a broader extremism story. Politico has a great piece about how Biden

and the Democrats are planning to make the red state book bans central to the 24 campaign. You guys think that's a smart move? Yes. It polls insanely well. No. anti-democratic tendency. It's just, everyone agrees. And we've been talking about this for a very long time. These Republicans got themselves into a bit of a moral panic and a bit of a mania, and they went way too fucking far across the board. And they talk only to each other. We hear so much about the liberal bubble. The conservative bubble has led all these guys to embrace, and it is mostly guys, these incredibly unpopular positions. And they walk around like they're

the antidote and they're the ones representing some real and true America. What Ron DeSantis is doing is really unpopular. But banning books, telling people they can't serve, they can't come and do their jobs as representatives, telling teachers what they can teach. These are all incredibly unpopular positions. The book bans are such an easily accessible way to understand just how extreme these attacks are.

Because even if you're not, like, if you don't pay attention closely to politics, if you don't follow political news, and you just hear that someone's banning a book that doesn't seem like any kind of an offensive book, you're going to be pretty pissed. What are these people doing? Even if you don't care that much about politics and you hear about book bans, you're going to be pretty pissed. Like you're going to because what you're going to start saying is these fucking people are weird. They're weird. And like, this is what they're focused on. Right. Like, I don't I live a life.

I look at like it actually is to me that it's the you know, sometimes I think Democrats, you know, we go on. We make this case. These Republicans, they're extremists. They're a threat to democracy. They're fascist. They're authoritarian. I agree with all that. But you go outside and the birds are chirping and the sun is shining and we don't feel like you live

in some fascist and dangerous place this is the opposite of that these guys are running around saying that gay people are gonna come and they're gonna fucking come and they're gonna groom your kids at a drag bunch like what are you talking about what are you fucking talking about you might talk about this later in the interview but there was a montana state rep who suggested she'd rather risk her child committing suicide than letting her transition. Like if that's not the most outrageous example of extremism and bigotry and hatred you could possibly lift up to make a political argument against this party, I don't know what is. It's wild. Well, I will be talking more about that and everything else that's going on in Montana after this. We'll have

state representative Zoe Zephyr join us on the pod. Joining us now, the Montana legislator who Republicans silenced and then banned from the House floor for the crime of speaking out against anti-trans legislation. State Representative Zoe Zephyr. Representative Zephyr, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

So for people who don't know, can you talk a little bit about the piece of legislation you originally spoke out against? Yeah, I was speaking out against the governor's amendments to Senate Bill 99, which is a bill banning gender-affirming care for trans youth in Montana. That care began with disallowing state resources or state facilities to advocate for things as simple as social transitioning, which is like allowing a child to cut their hair short, grow it long, go by a different name or pronoun. Then it also banned things like puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, which it's important to note at that juncture that this is health care that is done in conjunction with a child's parents, with a therapist, with their doctor, in accordance with the guidelines

by every major medical association in our country. So it banned that care as well. And then how did your Republican colleagues respond to your criticism? So they responded, I think, via their majority leader, the way we responded when someone feels like they didn't like a particular comment. The majority leader stood up and said, you know, that comment is uncalled for. And off they went. We've done that when they have said a variety of things around hot button issues,

including when Republican colleagues have insinuated that my existence itself is somehow sexualizing children. And so how did it deteriorate from that to them banning you from the floor of the legislature? So that evening, the Montana Freedom Caucus, which is a state chapter of the National Far Right Freedom Caucus, put out a letter in which they intentionally misgendered me. And in that letter where they did that, they also claimed, you know, for civility and discourse purposes, I needed to be censured. And the following day, the speaker asked if I would retract or apologize for my remarks. And I said, I spoke to the real harms. I stand by my statements. These bills kill my community. And that evening, he told me he would no longer recognize me going forward. And when I tried to speak on the next bill on Thursday, April 20th,

he refused to recognize me. And so your comment was that bills like this have been shown to lead trans youth to take their own lives. And because you said that, they thought that it was right to ban you from the legislature. When we talk about legislation, it's important to acknowledge that legislation like this, anti-trans legislation that bans our art, art forms, bans our books, histories, allows people to be cruel to us in schools or takes away our healthcare. They create conditions of daily life that make it incredibly difficult for trans people to have the joy and sort of meaning that comes when we're allowed to have access to those things. And so when I spoke to these harms, I was talking about not just the statistics, and we know that trans youth who access gender-affirming care have

a 73% reduction in suicidality, but I was talking about real impacts, people in my life who had lost a suicide, Montana families who had called me. There was one ER doctor who wrote us and said they saw a trans teen came in for a suicide attempt. And in their discussion with that trans teen, the teen kept saying, my state doesn't want me. We heard examples of a trans teen who attempted to take her life want me. We heard examples of a trans teen who attempted to take her life while watching a hearing on one of these anti-trans pieces of legislation. And when I spoke, I was talking about those kinds of things, the real harm that this legislation brings to real Montanans.

You decided today to file a lawsuit with the ACLU challenging your censure. How do you feel about your chances of winning? You know, I think it's really clear that to target me for my speech and debate on the House floor is a violation of my First Amendment rights, but more importantly, when the Speaker chose to no longer recognize me, what he was doing is also taking away the voice of the people who elected me. He was undercutting the very first principles of our democracy, which says we have the right to democratically elected representatives. We send them to go to their legislatures and their capitals to speak on our behalf. And so to me, I think, you know, I feel like there's a good chance that the courts will recognize this for what it is, which is unconstitutional and quite frankly, anti-democratic.

I'm curious, what's been the reaction among not only your colleagues and your constituents, but people throughout the state of Montana? There has been, I think, two parts. One, a little bit of shock and frustration that they would actually go as far as to undercut our democracy to silence someone who opposed their legislation. But I think people also see that the world turned its eyes to Montana in this moment and saw this move for what it was, saw it as an attack on democracy. And the vast amount of people who have recognized that I am getting emails and text messages and DMs, not just from progressives, not just from senators, I'm getting conservatives coming to

me and saying, you know what, I typically disagree with you, or maybe I even would have voted for that bill, or, you know, military vets, all saying, but listen, despite all that, I see this for the attack on our democracy that it is. Republicans have honed in on the trans community in part because they think these tactics will work on Americans who have less understanding of the trans community, perhaps. Do you think that Democratic leaders in general, both in Montana and around the country, have a strong enough message to counter that? Are they doing enough to fight that? You know, I will always say that there is more that can be done in defense of the trans community

until the day that we don't see any of these attacks on our community. So there's always more on that side of things that can be done. But I think what we'll see is what we saw with gay rights, which is as people come to understand that trans people aren't boogeymen, we're your neighbors, we're your colleagues, we're your friends. As people come to recognize that

and more and more people have trans people in their lives, I think we'll start to see these bills fade away because they're not popular already. And the more people come to know trans people and understand us, the less popular they'll be. So that President Biden just met with the Tennessee Three, the lawmakers in Tennessee who were expelled. Have you heard from the White House yet? I have not, but I also have been in Florida meeting all day today. So if I have and I don't know, I'm sorry. But no, I haven't heard anything that I'm aware of yet. Republicans with super majorities in states like Montana seem to be taking these extreme

anti-democratic actions more frequently. Do you think this will generate enough of a backlash to break the super majority in your state? And have you been talking with other Montana Democrats about a strategy to sort of break the super majority in Montana? How do you see that playing out both in your state and across the country? You know, I think what we're seeing is that marginalized groups who are impacted the most by this legislation, whether that's me being targeted by trans legislation, whether that is the Tennessee Three and people coming in and talking about gun violence and the impact it has on their communities. communities, whether it's the American Indian Caucus in my state, who were one of the first groups to come to my defense. And they said, hey, you know, this is targeting a trans person in a moment where the far right is targeting trans people. But remember, you know, this is part of a long trend of targeting marginalized communities and lashing out when they rise up in defense of their community. So people are starting to see that. And I think there is a path forward to move away

from this kind of legislation, but it starts with people recognizing the attacks for what they are, that it's not just the policy disagreement. It's an example of what will the right throw away in order to achieve an ideological goal. And what we're seeing in Tennessee, in Nebraska, in Oklahoma, Representative Maury Turner, and here in Montana, is that they're willing to throw away first principles of our country. And that should be concerning to American citizens. And I think we'll see a shift because of that. What would you say to trans youth who are living in some of these deep red states and probably pretty scared right now?

When Senate Bill 99 first came to the floor, I spoke to the camera and the first thing I said was, please stay alive. And the reason I said that is because I know, I see the polling shifts, I go through the communities, I see the way in which acceptance for trans people is growing across this country. And I know that that will ultimately lead to these bills going away. I know that many of these bills will fail in courts. And so, for example, SB 99 in Montana, it goes into effect on October 1st. I am confident that it will go to court before that. And so what I tell trans youth is understand that, yes, there is cruelty here in this moment.

And yes, it is very scary. But we will persevere and we will ultimately win in the end. And so have faith, keep your chin up, and stay alive. Representative Zephyr, thank you so much for joining. What you're doing is courageous, it's inspiring, and particularly so because I imagine these last weeks have not been easy for you personally, and for you to be speaking up not only for yourself, but on behalf of your constituents and for trans youth everywhere is really admirable, and we're lucky that you're doing that work.

So thank you. Thank you so much. It's easy to stand tall when you're on the right side of history. All right, before we go, we wanted to play some of President Biden's best jokes from Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner, which is the most important weekend all year, to be seen in Washington, to see and be seen, which is why Dan and Lovett. You had a feel to be seen. And I. We all made a brief appearance. Tommy didn't think it was that important. He wanted to be with the people.

We had a great party. We had a party. An event. As Shaniqua said, parties have music. No. great party. We had a party. An event. As Shaniqua said, parties have music. I was told that you guys served soup at a standing only event.

Mike O'Neill actually served the soup. He volunteered to ladle the soup. A lot of lessons. Is that a good finger food? We also had to keep Susan Rice out. Susan Rice was stopped at the door. They said we're at capacity and she said no. Which was awesome.

Which is pretty cool. And then she got in. Which is why you don't fuck with Susan Rice. Shaniqua and our whole politics team did a fantastic job. Our event was cool. The other ones were a lot. That's what we're going with. We do not care about the hypocrisy.

Alright, let's play some of Joe Biden's jokes. After all, I believe in the First Amendment. Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it. Call me old. I call it being seasoned. You say I'm ancient. I say I'm wise. You say I'm over the hill.

Don Lemon would say that's the man of his prime nice i do think it's hard to listen to joe biden now and not hear the tommy ai version of joe biden yeah i get that yeah a little easier to understand the tommy one sometimes i did think that um you know you always hold your breath a little bit when joe biden gets up there his delivery was excellent i excellent like i look we've been i've talked about joe biden sometimes watching him speak it's like watching a a small airplane in a dangerous weather condition he did fucking awesome he was so i was he like crushed it he did a really really good job he had some uh good ron de santos jokesantis jokes. Let's listen to this. At Ron DeSantis, I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready.

But Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got there first. Now, look, can't be too rough on the guy. After his reelection as governor, he was asked if he had a mandate. He said, hell no, I'm straight. I'm straight. I'll give you time to think that one through. I would say that those jokes...

Didn't need the time. Didn't need time. Didn't need any time. Those jokes go in the category of incoherent but still work. Okay, I was going to ask you, the first one, it kind of seemed like an example of where you kind of tripping on the joke actually made the joke funnier. Because he said Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me. Mickey Mouse beat me.

Right, beat me to the jokes. But that doesn't really make sense. I had jokes about Ron DeSantis, but Mickey Mouse beat me to them. Mickey Mouse hasn't made jokes about Ron DeSantis. Mickey Mouse has made a joke of Ron DeSantis. It's to me like the joke math. You know what I mean? But you gotta love a good mandate joke.

It's a classed and oldie but goodie. It's surprising to hear a mandate joke from Joe Biden. I enjoyed it. It felt like outside his comfort zone. Really stretching as a comedian. I do think these last set of jokes were his best. Let's listen. It's great the cable news networks are here tonight. MSNBC owned by NBC Universal.

Fox News owned by Domin to attend because they were fully vaccinated and boosted. This year, with that $787 million settlement, they're here because they couldn't say no to a free meal. to a free meal. And hell, I'd call Fox honest, fair, and truthful, but then I could be sued for defamation. It ain't nothing compared to what they do to me. Look, I hope the Fox News team finds this funny. My goal is to make them laugh as hard as CNN did when they read the settlement. But then again, CNN was like, wow, they actually have $787 million? That was great.

That was the best joke. So good. Fox always... You should get in there. Get in there a little bit. Fox always gets it at that speech. Boys, it turned out well for them over time. I was watching the Fox table

when he did those jokes. And the doocy duo... Is that because you were sitting with Axios? I was home. I got home by then. I saw the doocy faces too. They looked annoyed, but then they did laugh at the CNN joke. Everyone wins.

All their faces are pretty frozen by Botox. You're not going to get much out of any of those faces. He had a hard joke about Kevin McCarthy too. The last time he voted on something that hapless, it took 15 tries of a McCarthy speakership. I was like, all right, Joe. I know. It took me a second to get that one. I was like all right joe i know it took me a

second to get that one i was like what's he talking i was like oh the speaker vote yeah yeah yeah yeah but he yeah he nailed him i thought he was good we were talking about this before we were recording joe biden has um uh changed the setup so it's sort of a longer serious section tighter set of jokes and then you close again with more serious and i thought that the i remember hearing that he was going to do the serious stuff at the top. And I was like, oh, poor Joe Biden. Yes, that's going to be tough to like. It's just tough to transition from something serious to to humor.

But it actually worked great. I mean, it was it was the right thing to do. He spoke a lot about Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who's being held captive in russia and and press freedom in general and he did a great job speaking about that and then the transition into the jokes was the uh the jimmy madison one that's fine which is perfect yeah it got a better it got a great laugh because it was just the perfect way out of the serious section there's also just something fitting about joe biden joe biden who is this instant is this like person who has real who really values and believes in Washington institutions in an unironic way. Coming back to this dinner, this dinner evolved right over a lot of years.

And by the time by the time Barack Obama spoke at it, it was very rote. There was a formula. You get up, you say hello, you tell some jokes, you do a serious close, you go. The comedian goes, everybody goes home like the scholarships, you say hello, you tell some jokes, you do a serious close, you go, the comedian goes, everybody goes home, like the scholarships, you get through them. You know, it's like, it was just, it was very, it was, and sort of then Trump comes in like a fucking, you know, cleansing fire and burns half the like normality out of the city. And then some of these things start coming back. And Joe Biden, it's sort of fitting that Joe Biden is this sort of creature of Washington who genuinely likes the parts of it that unironically that are, that we view as silly like you get to talk to the people that are on both sides everybody comes together it makes sense that he would kind of treat it in a more serious way and not do the

rote formulaic thing if you tell your jokes you go home it was a nice arc too because he talked about uh Evan Gershkovich who's being held in Russia he also talked about Austin Tice who has been missing in Syria since 2012 yeah and presumed to be being held by the Assad regime for a fucking decade. And, but he could say, and Brittany Griner is here tonight. We got her out of Russia. We're going to fight like hell for the rest of them. So that was a nice arc to that story. But to your point, Lovett, about sort of the roteness of this dinner.

I mean, it was remarkable reading the coverage of this White House Correspondents weekend from afar, reading about like the Property Brothers and what's the really popular Bravo reality show? Vanderpump Rules. Vanderpump Rules. And then thinking back to like four years ago, all the sort of like self-righteous White House Correspondents Dinner rebirth stories about how it's now about a real commitment to the free speech. And we had a historian speak this year because we're all so serious.

And it's like, oh yeah, all those problems are solved, hey time to get uh the bravo crew back we were there uh it wasn't any less weird in person i'm sure it's a real there is yeah it is a little bit like a lot of like competitive party hopping and talk it's just like a it's a it's a lot yeah it's a lot yeah it's uh it's good tickets in and out in and out, you know It's it is though It's like if the option is a world a politics so fucked up By a right-wing authoritarian president that the city can't do these kinds of things and one where they feel kind of like they can Get away with it. I prefer the one where they feel like they can get Oh, yeah, you you nerds have your fun have your weekend do whatever you want to do I was there once I had a great time but like I do more than once

Back to the, the, a couple of times in a row. The incredible, like lesson, we learned our lessons, you know, this was too opulent.

We're going to recommit ourselves to the principles that built this dinner in the first place. Narratives from the Trump era. I know, I know. Well, it's also just sort of like, this is why people hate DC. I think it's low on the list.

I would say it's like, I would say like insulin and housing prices probably higher up than the fact that like, I don't know, a fucking Atlantic reporter got buddy-buddy with a member of Congress

for five minutes at a bar. I get that people are rightly kind of uncomfortable with the fact that there are people that when the camera's off treat this like a game when the cameras are on

they act like they're enemies. Like, I don't love that. But also like, the stakes here are not as high as some people would claim. Yeah. And we will uh i'll see you all hopefully at the cricket party next year i mean if you can snag an invite it's a hot ticket i gotta make sure i can i don't have a wedding over there don't don't be in florida i don't know i think gotta something about tommy not being there really gave it a good feeling you guys you guys have the best time when

i'm not around wisconsin yeah dc where else i've been left out? I don't know. One more is a trend. You better clear your schedule. We missed you, Tommy. People asked a lot about you. They did. There was a lot of Tommy conversation. We're not going to say it. But there was one person who was really interested in seeing Tommy. Really interested. Alright. Thanks to Representative

Zoe Zephyr for joining us today. Everyone have a great day and we'll talk to you Thursday. Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash pod save America.