Pod Save America - “Devin’s Gate.”

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Alyssa Mastromonaco joins Jon, Jon, and Tommy to discuss the Inspector General’s report, Donald Trump’s response to the shooting in Pensacola, Joe Biden’s confrontation with an Iowa voter, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg’s transparency debate, and Michael Bloomberg’s massive ad buy.

Hey guys, Tommy Vitor here. I'm hosting a new podcast called World Corrupt with my friend Roger Bennett from the Men in Blazers podcast. Soccer is a game that is often called the world's most important, least important thing. Yet November's World Cup will force fans to confront and grapple with the complexities of the tournament. It was awarded via corruption and built with atrocious labor practices that have left a reported 6,500 migrant workers dead. Each week on World Corrupt, Roger and I will explore what it means to be a fan and responsible citizen of the world while watching the world's most popular sporting event. New episodes of World Corrupt drop each Saturday in the Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco. Yes! Yay! Alyssa, guest host! You're never getting rid of me. Now, are you on the phone or in upstate New York Or are you in Los Angeles right now? I'm staring into your baby blue eyes Tommy Vitor

She's got a very LA sort of juice with her Yet I'm dressed like I go to a prep school in New England It took us a long time to stop doing that I think that that sweater is cool Wait do you see the pants? Yeah they're like Archie Bunker but dope You're stylish Is it a tartan?

It's a bit of a tartan. What is that? A plaid. On the pod today, we have a number of developing stories while we wait for impeachment, including the release of the Department of Justice Inspector General's report on the origins of the Russia investigation and a shooting at a Navy base in Pensacola. We'll also talk about all the latest 2020 news. Before that, a few quick housekeeping notes.

Love it. How was the show on Friday? We're doing these late shows, all right? Very loose. Brett Gelman, hilarious. Riri Chaney, hilarious. It was a great episode. Check it out.

That's an all-star panel. They were awesome. Brett was so funny. Finally, a plea from your friends at Crooked Media. Protecting voting rates is the most important thing we can do right now to win in 2020. Right now, we're $400,000 away from reaching our $2 million goal to get organizers on the ground fighting voter suppression in every single battleground state. In fact, if everyone listening right now just donates a little bit, we won't just meet the goal. We'll crush the goal.

That's unimpeachable math. Unimpeachable math. Just a couple dollars. I can do it. Everyone listening right now. It's not that hard. I'm going to do it today. I'll donate again.

Alyssa's going to do it today. I'm going to do it today. Stacey Abrams will thank you. You want to help Stacey Abrams? Or do you want to be selfish? The website is votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight. Make it part of your holiday giving. If you put a little card in your mom's stocking

that said $10 went to help people vote this cycle, I bet she'd really appreciate it. I think that's right. Yeah. VoteSaveAmerica.com slash fair fight. All right.

I just want to make sure everyone's up to speed on where we are with impeachment before we move on to some of the other important stories out there. Over the weekend, House Judiciary Committee

released a report laying out the constitutional grounds for impeachment, which argue that Trump's Ukraine scheme could constitute bribery and an impeachable abuse of power. Today, as we're recording this, the Judiciary Committee is holding another public hearing where they'll hear evidence from lawyers for both the Judiciary and Intel committees that will help them decide how to frame the articles of impeachment, including whether they should include an article of impeachment about Trump's obstruction of justice in the Mueller probe. And Jerry Nadler has said his committee might vote on these articles of impeachment by the end of this week. We've talked a lot about impeachment on this podcast,

but Alyssa, we haven't talked about it with you yet. What do you think? Do you agree with the New York Times headline from Sunday that impeachment has devolved into a partisan brawl? I mean, for fuck's sake. Well, so far my favorite thing that I've seen today is that Castor showed up with all of his, the lawyer. The GOP lawyer. The GOP lawyer showed up with all of his papers for the day in a recyclable grocery bag.

Kind of endearing. You know what? I just say that's highly relatable. I really enjoyed it, and I'm not going to mock him for it. Very Hill Stafford. I mean, I just- Went to the Whole Foods on P in the morning, put stuff in there. Probably his gym clothes are in there, too.

I'm going to say it was a Trader Joe's. There's definitely, you can definitely see him with a bag dropping to the ground with avocados and incriminating evidence rolling out. See, I had a different view. In front of Logan Tavern. I thought, oh boy. I had a terrible experience outside of Logan Tavern once. No, I feel like he was maybe more like me and was like, you know what? It's going to be a long day. I'm going to pack a PB&J for an upper later. It does seem like it is a long day so far

because I woke up and started watching this thing and hours later, it's just still going. There's a lot of yelling today. The Judiciary Committee, the fucking Republicans on this committee are, look, their strategy is to turn people away and make people think that it's just a big partisan mess and they are succeeding

because they are just screaming and yelling about everything. Literally just with decibel level. It's like you can't mute your tv enough it's either you're fully muted or you're they're screaming at you through the television i would like once for the headline to read uh impeachment evolves into a partisan brawl because for a long time the reason there wasn't a partisan brawl is because democrats weren't pursuing impeachment and pursuing impeachment was the right thing to do it has evolved into a partisan brawl a partisan brawl is because Democrats weren't pursuing impeachment and pursuing impeachment was the right thing to do. It has evolved into a partisan brawl. The partisan brawl is a step up from the lack of a brawl over these very important criminal issues that are currently in. It's just it's so frustrating to read that headline and see all these

criticisms of Democrats on process grounds when Devin Nunes was a fact witness who was on the phone with Rudy Giuliani's co-conspirators, never disclosed it during the hearings. And it just came to light because of some subpoenas. And Democrats are the ones who are creating the process fouls. Are you kidding me? Also, I just the partisan brawl thing. It's so insane. And the New York Times story didn't even mention this, that like all the factness witnesses so far, the people who have done the most to incriminate Donald Trump are people who work for him.

They're people in his administration. Like maybe the Republicans in Congress are, you know, protecting him. Well, they are. But the people who work for him came and testified and they were incriminating. They were incriminating. Gordon Sondland had to catch a flight to continue being part of the Trump administration. After he said there was a quid pro quo. There was a quid pro quo.

Now I have to get back to my job reporting to Donald Trump as his handpicked advisor. And everyone's like, oh, how partisan. And Rudy caught another flight to Ukraine where he's back at it. He's just there. It's so silly. It's like real world Kiev. Start getting real. You see that

The Intercept sent a reporter to a Republican fundraiser. Oh, really? Lee Fang. Lee Fang, yeah. And he goes up to, they go up to Devin Nunes and they're holding a camera

to record him and they're basically like, hey, this Lev Parnas thing, what the fuck? And Devin Nunes runs away. But then later, they confront him again. And then Devin Nunes, in this incredibly creepy way, takes out his phone to start taking pictures. And his hand is shaking.

He looks like a fucking lunatic. And the reporter just laughs, being like, what's happening? What are you doing? What are you capturing? Lee Fang also, I don't know him, but on Twitter, like tough dogged like intense guy he's so polite he couldn't have been more professional in this little moment well that's the most off-putting to old devon he's like what does he mean why is he trying to trick me um so per usual you know trump's been doing everything he can to turn this around on democrats uh he does the i'm not a criminal you're

not you're a criminal i'm'm not corrupt, you're corrupt. On Saturday, he said he was looking forward to the Inspector General report. Inspector General Michael Hurwitz, who is the Justice Department's independent watchdog, did an investigation about whether the FBI's investigation into

Trump's campaign was legal and proper. Trump and his fellow cultists have long believed that it was some deep state Obama plot against him that he was being spied on. Well, today the report has been released and it says the FBI was right to investigate Trump's campaign, refuting every right wing conspiracy theory out there. It found no political bias, said the investigation was properly launched. It was proper to seek surveillance on Carter Page. But what they did find is the FBI was sloppy on parts of the application for surveillance on Page. That's all they found.

Lovett had his head in his hands like Macaulay Culkin. I just wanted to shout when you called it a cult. Devon's Gate. Devon's Gate. It just happened. And I couldn't. I was waiting for a pause. Devon's Gate.

Title. I didn't know what happened. It came over me. Found it. Isn't this a political disaster for Trump and the Republicans? Or, I mean, come on. Yes. I mean, in any other world, you know, if it were five years ago, this would be a disaster for whomever it was about because it's terrible.

And also also recall, this was launched by who again? Our favorite apple cheek hate goblin, Jeff Sessions. This wasn't, this was not some like Nancy Pelosi, like as they would have you believe. It was launched by Jeff Sessions and proved. Well, also, I mean, Barr and Trump for the longest time have been saying, like, just wait till you get that Horowitz report. The Horowitz report is going to be great. It's going to be great stuff, blah, blah. And then today, as soon as it I mean, Barr and Trump for the longest time have been saying, like, just wait till you get that Horowitz report. The Horowitz report is going to be great. It's going to be great stuff. And then today, as soon as it's released, Barr releases a statement. He has some shit to say.

Barr releases a statement disagreeing with Horowitz, which it's not totally surprising, but I guess I'm a little surprised at how blatant Barr has become at just being like, oh, yeah, I'm a hack. I'm a hatchet man for this guy. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm the Attorney General of the United States and not the President's personal lawyer. He literally said today it was that the investigation was launched on the thinnest of suspicions. Well, the thing that Barr's statement has,

it has the phrase, in my view, which is doing so much work inside of the statement because it's actually not what's in the report. The report finds the opposite, but he says, in my view, because they're still working on their second report, which is going to be God only knows what investigation. What do you think, Tommy? I just think you have to remember. Imagine you were in the FBI in that moment. You have George Papadopoulos drunk in London bragging to some Australian guy that the Russians have Hillary emails.

You have known idiot Carter Page, who we have Russian spies on tape, on wiretaps saying they tried to recruit him, but he was too stupid. He's now in the Trump campaign. Like, it would have been a dereliction of duty for them not to pursue this and try to figure out what's happening. And then we all know what happened in history, which is the Russians interfered in this historical way. So, I mean, I just look, there is a broader conversation to have about FISA abuse and FISA reform and wiretapping generally. But Trump has been promoting this like it's some MAGA guy's book, right? He thinks this is going to be some explosive like Dan Bongino's report or whatever. And it clearly did not deliver what they want.

I don't think it will matter because he will. What Trump wants is an open investigation. And to be able to point to an investigation, he doesn't actually care about the results because he can distort it however he wants and you know it's important to understand this wasn't just you know from QAnon to Trump it was also all of Trump's intellectual zambonis this was Hugh Hewitt, Andrew McCarthy, the fucking Rich Lowry all that crowd that like you know pretends to still be be somewhat legitimate. They all thought that this was going to be a big bombshell, too. And it was not. Yeah. So here's what I think is going to happen next. Right. So there's so I feel like there's three things that you take from the report.

One, the big story is what Chris, don't take it from me, take it from Chris Wallace on Fox News, who said the big headline is basically the claims of bias, the claims is a hoax. All the claims, the conspiracy theories have been debunked. Then there's the other pieces of it that sort of like there are details that are just a little bit worse for Trump. Like the fact that Christopher Steele was getting buddy buddy with Ivanka and Trump Tower. Ivanka almost hired. This is what the report says. Ivanka almost hired Chris Steele to do research on the Trump family business dealings before the campaign so they could have like self-research. on the Trump family business dealings before the campaign so they could have like self-research.

Yeah. And then the third piece of this, which is what I think you will now see all the right talk about, is that they found problems inside of the FISA process, problems that civil libertarians have been pointing out for a very long time. So you basically have claims that there was an anti-Trump bias at the heart of these investigations. That's been debunked. You have details that are worse for Trump. And then you have problems inside of the FISA process that actually don't have a partisan vector or a Trump vector. Civil libertarians have been talking about, like you said, Tommy, problems with the FISA process for a long, long time.

So there's a separate conversation you can have about that. Of course. And that conservatives have never cared about forever. Except for like Rand Paul. Except, right. The civil libertarians and the libertarians have cared about it, that they will now take this sort of problem inside of the FISA process as the big thing, the big proof. Look at all these problems. Look at how they targeted Trump associates, Trump campaign. This is the real issue. When, of course, the report finds the opposite. And just a preview of coming attractions here.

So there's obviously, as you referenced, a separate investigation that Barr has a handpicked U.S. attorney, John Durham, that is out traveling around the world trying to figure out something to help Trump when it comes to the origins of the Russia investigation, the Mueller investigation. And that investigation is not over yet. of the Russia investigation, the Mueller investigation. And that investigation is not over yet. But John Durham put out a statement today saying that he disagrees also with some of the findings of the IG report, which like, if you're in the middle of the investigation,

why are you releasing a statement trying to shape the media narrative after the Inspector General report? That doesn't seem too on the fucking level, does it? It's pretty amazing. I mean, first of all- No one should take this report seriously when it comes out. And if you're a reporter who does, you should be embarrassed. Right. Well's pretty amazing. I mean, no one should take this report seriously when it comes out. And if you're a reporter who does, you should be embarrassed. Right. Well,

of course, I mean, the only thing that's surprising is that Barr and Durham didn't try to get their report out first because that's what they did with the Mueller report, right? This is it's a reverse sequence. Now we're getting the kind of larger look. But of course, imagine if it had gone the other way, if we got the Barr-Durham report with all these sort of specious indictments of Democrats in the process before we got the actual IG report. The Ivanka piece of this, it just reminds you that the origins of Steele being tasked to look into Trump were because a bunch of conservatives were trying to stop him. It wasn't liberals. The conservatives passed the investigation off to the DNC or whomever at

some point along the way. The other thing this reminds you, because there's some text messages that came out that are decidedly pro-Trump from one FBI official to another. The FBI is a pro-Trump organization. It's a bunch of old white guys who love law enforcement. Particularly this New York office, which everyone is worried about. I just want to read one of the text messages after we had to go through the whole fucking Peter struck Lisa Page bullshit, which a lot of. And you ruin their lives. A lot of nonpartisan reporters bought into when the text messages came out. Here's here's one of the messages from an FBI agent to another.

I'm so elated with the election. It's like watching a Super Bowl comeback. It was energizing to me to see because I didn't want a criminal to be in the White House talking about Hillary Clinton. Un-fucking-believable. And what did the FBI do? They, I mean, of course, Jim Comey did announce that he was reopening the investigation a couple weeks before the election. So, yeah, exactly.

Did help Trump win the election. Unbelievable. All right. So, there was another very odd and somewhat alarming response from President Trump over the weekend. This after a Saudi airman opened fire at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, killing three and injuring eight before he was killed by police. The attacker was at the base to receive training from the U.S. military and the firearm that he used was purchased legally. The FBI is investigating it as an act of

terrorism. Trump's national security advisor was on CBS this weekend saying he believed it was terrorism. But Trump's first response was to pass along the thoughts of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, tweeting that MBS, quote, just called to express his sincere condolences. The king said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter and that this person in no way, shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love Americans. Sure. Very much. Tommy, David Sanger wrote in the New York Times that the president's first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account. Did you agree with Sanger's take? And why do you think Trump

keeps protecting the Saudis? What is going on here? I mean, historically, the U.S. has done a lot of training with Arab militaries, and generally they're valuable because it helps professionalize the force and it builds ties between these militaries. So, you know, like there is a there's a policy reason you might want to continue this kind of training. Why Trump would jump out ahead of the Saudis committing to, I don't know, give us the information we need to conduct a thorough investigation is beyond me. One, what I would want to know if I were providing some oversight over this is what vetting is being done and what went wrong. Because if these guys were watching shooting videos and this guy actually did tweet a quote from Osama bin Laden right before he went on this rampage, that speaks to a serious problem in vetting. Two, how did this guy get a fucking gun?

Right. Broader gun control question. Three, you know, I think we need, more broadly rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Generally, Mohammed bin Salman is a tyrant with a sovereign wealth fund that he ordered the assassination of a Washington Post journalist. So, you know, Trump went all in on the Saudis early. They were the linchpin of his Middle East policy when it comes to terrorism, when it comes to Middle East peace process. But look, cynical me, like I think it's because they have a lot of cash and they buy a lot of u.s weapons and down the road boy would i love to see uh what muhammad bin salman and jared kushner text about because i suspect there's lots of discussions of future

real estate deals well riad yeah oh show i mean there's nothing you don't need to go any further than that this is about some fucking real estate in a year if we're lucky. And in case you think that that's just like, oh, that's just us having some conspiracy theory. Here's Trump during the 2016 campaign. Quote, Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend 40 million, 50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them?

I like them very much. And also the biggest spenders at Trump DC hotel. Yeah, right. They boughtons of rooms that no one. Four hundred thousand dollars in the inauguration to show Trump that they were absurd. It's absurd. So, I mean, so one of the reason one of the many reasons this story is important is because, you know, as we talk about impeachment and everyone just is Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. It is important for Democrats to prove either with evidence or to just reiterate the fact that like this is what Trump is doing across so many different areas. He's getting like this. This Saudi thing is the same kind of thing he's getting impeached for.

Right. Like if you know Trump, if you're personally loyal to Trump, if you spend money at his hotels, if there is a political reason he can use you, he will be nice to you. political reason. He can use you. He will be nice to you. I would love a reporter with some time on their hands to go through the 11,000 tweets. I looked this up roughly 11,000 tweets he has tweeted since he became president and figure out what percentage of those tweets are about something other than the scandals he's embroiled in personal enrichment. And that's basically it. I would love to see what he has talked because twitter is his only form of communication really yeah so what has he communicated with the world about other than how he's not as fucking scandalous as we all know he

is and um you know ways that he'll make money someday there's two categories of tweets i'm not corrupt and the democrats are yeah that's basically that he does. No real proactive legislating or anything. And once in a while, like, best economy in the world. Ever! Exclamation point. That's about it. The stock market's awesome, except when it goes down. And then it is not mine.

So speaking of rank corruption, Politico reported that Seema Verma, who runs Medicare and Medicaid for Trump. This is a good one. Don't get me started. She filed a claim with the Department of Health and Human Services seeking reimbursement from taxpayers for about $47,000 worth of expensive jewelry and other belongings that were stolen during a work trip, including an Ivanka Trump brand pendant worth about $6,000. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Verma is currently under congressional investigation for spending two and a quarter million dollars in taxpayer money to contract a public relations firm that often worked to help burnish her personal image. Trump administration is currently trying to kick at least 15 million people off of Medicaid right now.

And, you know, Medicaid is basically health insurance that you are too rich to qualify for if you make like $10,000, if you're a family making $10,000 a year. And this is what Seema Verma is spending, $2 million on a consultant for a personal image and filing claims for lost jewelry that we have to pick up the tab for. Let's also just discuss the fact that she filed a claim for $2,000 to cover stolen clothes, $2,000 to cover stolen goods, and $325 claim for moisturizer.

For moisturizer. You add all of that up. What kind of moisturizer is that? Let's talk about this. You add all of that up. What kind of moisturizer is that? Let's talk about this. You know that in that fucking bullshit Snap stuff they did last week where they're kicking people off Snap left and right and removing the ability for people to eat.

Literally taking food off people's table. Literally taking food. a long time to read through the whole thing and highlight, is that if you, you have to work now to get your benefits, right? Except if you have a car that is valued at more than $2,250, you no longer qualify, right? Because you have assets. So you have to work. You may not have a bus that can take you to work. So if you have a car that's worth more than $2,200, you get punished, which, by the way, the cost of the car is half of what she is claiming in just her stolen goods, fucking moisturizer and noise canceling headphones. You know what? Like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer run this. Start running this ad.

Please. About the Trump administration trying to kick people off, take away their health insurance while the person running Medicaid and Medicare. Do you remember Tom Brokaw's Fleecing of America segment? I do remember that. Remember? Yeah. Go ahead. Love it.

You're thinking I can see it. Look, let's go to town on this. Sure. Go crazy. I don't really give a shit. I just don't care that much. No. I think people...

Oh, look. We're going to talk about... I want people to do it. I see why it's politically valuable to attack her for this. I just think it's like I just think this is the best example of what a pro Republican or a pro Trump media organization can do for you. Right. There's two examples today that we've covered already where I don't like to do the imagine for Obama. But if a Saudi soldier had shot up a U.S. base and Obama didn't call terrorism and read out a call from the king, it would be this explosive, massive story about how he's weak on terrorism. If an Obama official dropped $3.25 on moisturizer and demanded reimbursement, it would be the biggest scandal in history on Fox

News. And it's just frustrating that the rules don't apply equally for me. But also, I get that the jewelry is a couple thousand dollars. You filed the reimbursement claim. It's all crazy. We're talking about this because of the jewelry, but the that the jewelry is a couple thousand dollars. You file the reimbursement claim. It's all crazy. We're talking about this because of the jewelry, but the $2 million on a consultant that has just been in the news, Dan Diamond reported this for Politico. He's been on this beat and doing a great job. And this was reported, I don't know, a month ago or something about the consultant,

and it just goes through the news like nothing. It is politically valuable, obviously, but it's also like $2 million are why are government employees paying two million dollars at the same time they're trying to say that they're the kick people off fucking medicaid 15 million people by stopping the medicaid expansion like what come on i also just that's not a big deal no no it's a big deal i also just like you know but up up about news. What is this fucking brooch? What is this $5,900 Ivanka Trump brooch? I heard it had a, it had a, um, a mineral in it that I'd never even heard of.

I'm pretty sure it's something you can buy at the woo woo store. Okay. This isn't like the Bergdorf cat brooch, which I will save up and get one day. It sounds like it's made in like a TikTok thing, you know, a TikTok. You can see it in a TikTok. You know what? We're going to find a picture of it and I'm just going to read. I'm going to I'm going to craft it in the conference.

I'm sure Marianne Williamson is promoted at some point, too. Yeah, well, it's a good stalking stuffer. She's also in the middle of this massive fight with Alex Azar, the HHS secretary, which has seemingly prevented them from advancing any of Trump's interests on health care, which is good for all of us. But just another sign of how because of, you know, the daily Trump show, like the government is dysfunctional in so many profound ways. And it's also like it's another reminder that we have to at some point get out of this fucking Medicare for all versus public option fight in the Democratic primary when the Trump administration right now, you're right, they're having a fight over like who can kick more people off health care if Trump wins again. You know, I mean, it's just like there's a there's there's much bigger things at

state care because the Trump administration, if they win again, will gut Medicaid even further, will gut Medicare and will gut the Affordable Care Act and millions and millions of people lose their health insurance. And will be reimbursing brooches. Yeah. Shout out to the bureaucrat somewhere deep inside of HHS who saw that request and said, uh, no. You get $2,000 total.

I love that person. Leave us the fuck alone. Also, Ivanka, give her a new brooch, you asshole. Yeah. Totes. You got to have a couple extras. All right. Fake billionaire.

Yeah, just give her something else that will turn her arm green. That was good. Let's talk about 2020 and start with the frontrunner nationally and in South Carolina, Joe Biden. He was in Iowa last week where he's in third or fourth place. And got into a heated exchange with a Democratic voter who questioned Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine and whether Biden is too old for the presidency. In response to the 83-year-old retired farmer's concerns about Hunter, Biden said, you're a damn liar, man. That's not true. And no one has ever said that.

In fairness, the question that the guy asked Biden about Hunter was not like, don't you think it's a conflict of interest that Hunter served on the board? It was like, you sent your son over to Ukraine to get a job in an oil company and you did it. You know, it was like crazy conspiracy theory, but it was there. And then Biden also challenged the man to a push-up contest and an IQ test in order to prove that he is, in fact, fit enough to be president. What do you guys think about how Joe Biden handled this one? Alyssa, what do you think? I just need to say my quick

I really thought it was a missed opportunity for him to not be like, that's malarkey. Right, you put it on the bus. You put it on the bus. If ever there was a moment. That was malarkey. Thank you. People are wondering like, what does malarkey mean? That's malarkey.

That's malarkey. You're welcome for this tutorial, millennials. What'd you think love it um you know i thought he got out okay like i you know i i saw people saying he looked bad i saw people saying he looked good he was pretty cogent he was he was feisty it felt a little bit defensive you know john you're right that what the question this man articulated was a little right wing fever, swampy. But I also do think sometimes you just got to give an 83 year old guy a little bit of space to try to like. It's so complicated and so confused by the news, even if you don't watch the Fox News stuff. The guy was apparently a Warren supporter and he said he saw it on MSNBC, which, you know, he probably didn't.

But you can leave room for the man to be confused. Yes, for sure. Instead of calling him a liar. Yeah. So that was my reaction to it. And I just thought for the most part, honestly, at this point with Joe Biden, like he made an argument. Yeah. Successfully. Yeah.

I mean, does he need a better answer? I saw you tweeting that. I mean, look, I'm sort of used to my reaction to thinking Biden was wrong in the way he executed in some moment being completely false. And then his poll numbers go up. So what the fuck do I know? But look, I also get that these these questions are deeply personal. It's about his son. They're unfair.

It's literally a Trump smear campaign. But I do think there's a rule in politics, which is don't be a dick to voters. Right. You might that guy might have in front of a lot of other voters. Also, Biden pulled this kind of thing back in 1988, right? There's a famous clip of him yelling at a guy in New Hampshire saying, I think my IQ is better than yours. I went to a better law school.

So I do think he needs a better answer because he also went on Axios on HBO and got pressed on these questions and kind of got in Mike Allen's face and was wagging his finger. And I just think like, keep your cool. Don't yell at the questioner. Answer the facts when necessary. He's also kind of half turning it and making it hit on the Trump kids, but cutting himself off.

If you want to make the case that the Trump kids are profiting off of their father's role in government, make the case, deliver the hit, but don't half do it. So like the questions aren't going away. In fact, I think these answers are feeding the news cycle and creating more press on the problem. So from that perspective, I just I think he's got to figure out an answer. Yeah. I mean, my advice on this would be at the very least, don't signal to Trump, Republicans and the media and everyone else that whenever asked about hunter you're going to be super defensive and angry and newsmaking and newsmaking and look and i and

i understand it like some people are like you know he should just throw hunter biden under the bus and i think it is i can understand why he wouldn't want to do that right his surviving son like he's not but i think there's an easy way to both not throw him under the bus and also not like jump to his defense about every decision he ever made, which is for Joe Biden to just be like, look, like Hunter Hunter is a, you know, 47 year old man. He makes his he makes his own decisions. And all I can talk about is what I have done. And not only did I do the right thing in pushing for that corrupt prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine, but my actions increased the chances that Hunter's company would be investigated. So I actually acted in contrary to my son's financial interests.

And his stuff is his stuff. And, like, we don't need to talk about him because he's not running for president. Let's talk about me, what I did, what I did wrong or right, and I did nothing wrong. Yeah, I think that's right. I also just think it is a tone thing and that it is like, thank you for that question. I know this has been in the news a lot and I'm really glad you asked it because I really want to make sure everybody in Iowa understands where I'm coming from because here's what you need to know about me. Like I love this country and I'm, and the reason I'm running is because we have a president who's tried to profit off the presidency

and we have a president who's tried to do the wrong thing at every turn and you need we need a president right now who will think about the country first every single time and i'm here to tell you that that is exactly what i have done and exactly what i look at my record and that's not malarkey and and you know what again and if you're ever not sure about that i hope you come and ask me another question i'm so glad you're here i'm so glad you're ever not sure about that, I hope you come and ask me another question. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're all here. Applause, applause. Now I'm president. He's got nothing to hide on this.

Make a little joke. Are you sure that wasn't Fox News? Hardy har har. Like, he seems so pissed. Anything. But also, I felt like I watched it. So I read it and then I watched it, right? Like twice.

And the thing about it is he just he there's something about the whole presentation, like his whole engagement. His, like, his eyes get really small and beady. And he's still dressing, and I have said this, he's still dressing like Thurston Hill III. I don't know what's up with that. I mean, I don't think it helped that John Kerry was in matching outfits with him on the campaign trail. The two of them just walked right off Beacon Hill together. I mean, it's kind of true. Yeah, I think it's weird that they wore one ascot

and just couldn't get far apart. Just tied between them. But yeah, no, I just feel like his whole, just like the way that he did it and the way, it just felt like he knew he had to be mad. And so he didn't know how to like, and I understand it. He's thinking the whole time like how do I do this?

But I just felt like it came off so weird. I just want to say to him like – and the way the Biden campaign has had to deal with press and everything else, they have this big chip on their shoulder, right? Partly because of what you were saying, Tommy, where like everyone tells them they fuck up everything and then his poll numbers are still good. And so they're like why are we still dealing with this? And it's like I get it. I get a lot of this isn't on the level. I get that you have to deal with a lot of bullshit. But you just have to take it.

You're running for president. You know what I'm saying? You can't show. And his campaign is like this, too. A lot of people in his campaign, it's like, don't show that you're angry, that you're defensive, that you think everyone on Twitter is stupid. Like, just don't show that. Because fundamentally, there's a little bit of a, like, I can't believe we have to deal with this. Like, I should be the nominee by now.

Right. Like this is it's first. We're not even going to engage because it's beneath us. And now we're going to engage in a way that's not super helpful. I know that feeling. I lost. We've all been there. I lost my mind every time some reporter asked me about Barack Obama's birth certificate.

But you know what? You get unfair questions on the campaign trail. And part of proving you can run against Trump is showing that you're going to be able to deal with crazy lies from your opponent. Yes. All right. Let's talk about Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren's latest debate. Last week, Warren called on Pete to be more transparent about his fundraising, calling on him to release the names of his finance committee members, the names of his bundlers and who are raising money for him. That's what a bundler is. And to open his fundraisers to the press, which Joe Biden does. She and Bernie actually don't do fundraisers with rich people anymore.

Others, including the New York Times editorial board, have also called on Pete to release his client list from when he was a consultant at McKinsey, which he says he can't do because he signed a nondisclosure agreement, which he's asking McKinsey to let him out of. For his part, Pete called on Warren to release her tax returns from when she did some corporate consulting while she was a law professor at Harvard. In response, she released records on Sunday night showing she made nearly $2 million consulting, most of which was made over the decade she was at Harvard. What do we think about this whole debate? Are the critiques fair? What do you guys think? It's annoying. I mean, like if you want to turn people off to like being engaged in the process, this whole back and forth, neither one of them are right or wrong necessarily, but it is a turnoff. You know, like, first of all, the thing I find the thing that does get under my skin a bit is that Mayor Pete should release his bundlers. fundraisers and as you guys all know i spent the better part of my fucking adult life vetting invitations for fundraisers and so he was and then he got called out on it because he had a bunch of

lobbyists on his invitations so then he's like okay well we're not going to do that but i'm also going to not list them anymore it is a little bit like well what do you got going on just like tell us who your people are like why do we care i'm sure they're all mostly fine but and if they're not then they shouldn't be bundlers and also then the reporting on ew you know and and her disclosure was like so many i forget what outlet it was but was like elizabeth warren you know three million dollars two million dollars over 30 years well that was for it that's what originally said then annie linsky who wrote the story was like it wasn't 30 years it was the 10 years that she was at harvard which she didn't say originally but it's not like the amount of money is not the fucking point here at all

anyway like she clearly was a professor at harvard and had some side consulting work that we you know she was paid like lump sums or hourly or monthly retainer whatever consulting is here and there over 10 years at harvard that paid like a high-priced Harvard professor lawyer. Right. I know, everyone was saying like, maybe she was underpaid. We don't know if she was fucking underpaid. We don't know any...

And here's the thing. She just made some money as a consultant. Fine. We shouldn't... The standard for public service shouldn't be a vow of poverty prior to getting into public service, right? You shouldn't have to...

I don't get any start on this. You shouldn't have to declare that you have done nothing but philanthropy up until the point that you decide to run. Before and after. However. I will only work in the public sector my whole life. That is the only good person who can run for office.

But then at the same time, the people who are attacking EW but defending Mayor Pete and saying like, well, that was in his 20s and that's just crazy. And I was like, ah, he's only in his 30s now. So like not exactly lifetimes ago. Yeah. I mean, look, I think at some point he's going to have to open up the fundraisers. And honestly, like, that's fine. Everyone is a reporter these days. Someone's going to film your fundraiser. It seems more nefarious than it is. Usually there's boring kind of mundane affairs. It's actually smart, too, because once they know that their fundraisers are public, they stop making the kind of gaffes that people like, like clink your guns and religions deplorable. As a general matter, I think transparency is good.

But I want to be clear that the media gives you no credit for it. Obama released the White House visitor log, something that was a massive fight during the Bush administration. I believe it went to the Supreme Court, the legal effort to get those records. And we just got mocked. You know, people use it to do oppo research on people visiting the Obama White House. Obama got mocked for saying it was the most transparent administration ever. So the incentives are completely fucked. And what I'm a little bit worried about is us setting a standard for ourselves on the Democratic side that Trump will come nowhere near matching. And we're just rolling out a bunch of records for RNC nerds to dig into and create problems for Democratic candidates.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's two things to it. One is Tommy's point. We are being more transparent and going beyond and beyond any legal requirements because that's what Democrats demand of each other. And it puts us at a disadvantage. The second piece of this, too, is it's like, let's just step back and remember why we're doing this. It's about figuring out who's going to be the best president. And, you know, the assumption has to be there is something about Pete's bundlers or there's something about Pete's work at McKinsey that will tell us what kind of president he will be. I think there's probably some truth to that. And then for Elizabeth Warren, there has to be an argument that something about the clients she took on, the money she made when she was a professor is going to be revealing to us about what kind of president they are. aide when she was a professor is going to be revealing to us about what kind of president they are. And I think that the actual it's asymmetric in the sense of like what the goal

is for those launching these attacks. I think the the goal for the attack at Pete is a goal that says, see, he's a neoliberal center shill. The left can't trust him. He is going to govern with these wealthy interests in mind, whether, you know, they're going to compare him to Mitt Romney. You can't trust him to actually deliver a truly progressive government. That is the attack that they are trying to make. The other direction is actually it's not that because I don't think anyone truly believes that. No one's been able to successfully make that argument. It's more, look, Elizabeth Warren's just as bad as the rest of us.

Yeah, they're trying to get her on a hypocrisy argument. She rails against corporations, but she worked for corporations. Did she's purity come lately? Right. So this transparency debate is not about transparency, right? As you're sort of revealing. The campaigns are saying it's about transparency, but really it's to try to get the records or get the information so then you can use it to prove something.

To do these attacks. Yeah, of course. It's a dance. It's a transparency rabbit hole. Pete didn't work at fucking Blackwater. He wasn't shooting up town squares in Iraq. He was probably sitting with a bunch of guys with Excel sheets,

like figuring out how to cut costs and lay off people and cut benefits. And that's wild speculation, but that's my guess based on what McKinsey does all the time. And yeah, that'll look kind of bad in a campaign. And no one is more surprised that McKinsey's an issue for Pete

than Pete, who has wanted to be president for a very long time and presumably thought this was a good thing for him to do to get some interesting business experience before he went into government. Good point. Well, it wasn't long ago that having some business experience before getting to government was seen as neutral to good. You know, now it's like, oh, my God. That's the self-interested Twitter reaction. I do think people in America probably think, oh, McKinsey, I've heard of that. That's hard to, it's a hard job to get. You must be smart to work there.

They'll think that about McKinsey. They'll think Elizabeth Warren, oh, she did some side work for companies. Great. Good for her. Or who cares? I'll never learn that fact because I'm not you guys watching Twitter all day long. Right. and finally michael bloomberg has already spent or reserved 60 million dollars on television ads since he entered the primary this is more than double what the other four front-running candidates

have spent on tv all year combined that's b Bernie, Pete, Warren, Biden. All of their spending combined, double it. Mike Bloomberg's ahead of that. It's ironic because in part he's in the race for fear of a left candidate. So Elizabeth Warren

has already charged Mike Bloomberg a pretty substantial wealth tax. He's also spent millions on Facebook and Google ads, even more than Trump has because we've been complaining about Trump a lot, spending all this money. So Bloomberg's outspending Trump now.

The campaign also plans to launch, and this might even be more important than the television spending. They're planning to launch a huge ground operation. They're just hiring organizers by the dozens in the delegate heavy Super Tuesday states. And they're paying these organizers like almost double what other campaigns are paying them. Guys, what's Bloomberg's theory of the case here? What's the method behind the madness? I mean, so David Plouffe did a great interview with Bloomberg's campaign chief, Kevin Sheeky, and they're trying something that is quite literally unprecedented,

which is they're skipping the first four early primary states and making a Super Tuesday play, which is basically a national campaign. Yeah. You know, you should think of it that way. So they're betting that they can get him to, you know, 15 percent in some of these congressional districts and pick up some delegates that way. That's a tough bet. You know, like no one's ever done that. It's incredibly hard. But he has 52 some odd billion dollars with which to play. And so maybe it'll work. Now, Democrats who are resentful Bloomberg for getting in and getting in late should also know that it sounds like a lot of the spending will be anti-Trump. Now, we should

hold their feet to the fire on that and make sure that's actually true and that he's registering voters and running Trump attack ads and swing states. But it is good that he's spending in states that aren't these first four early primary states, because what happens at a primary is you focus on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Trump is just running ads against Democrats everywhere else. No, it sounds like what he's trying to do is prove his worth as a Democratic candidate by trying to help build up the Democratic Party, which is great, which is a smart. Yeah. Like whether it's out of the goodness of his heart or not,

who the fuck cares? It's happening. That's great for our purposes. Yeah, I think it's just a pure, to me, numbers question. How much of what he is spending is, like, I've seen a bunch of pro-Bloomberg bio spots. It's sort of like Tom Steyer, who, in the run-up to deciding to run for president, spent millions of dollars on ads that were both about impeaching Trump, but also about sort of burnishing his credentials and making him somebody people recognized. So what he's committed is he that he will spend at least 100 million dollars outside of his own campaign's efforts. So right now there's a mix of the bio ads, which take shots at Trump, but are mainly Bloomberg ads. And there's a bunch of anti-Trump ads in swing states and digital spends, which is.

And then he's helping out the state parties. Yes, that was the other big thing. Which is genius. He's going to Texas. He's giving a whole bunch of money to that state party, to Louisiana, to other state parties

that don't have enough money. Hey, Mike Bloomberg, we're like scraping together every dollar we can find for Stacey Abrams. Could you just clear out that thing? Yeah. Cut her a check for five mil?

Just clear it out. Please, Mike Bloomberg. Everyone tweet at Mike Bloomberg. Please write Stacey Abrams a check. That'd be good. And he's fair fight. Yeah. And he's donating to some candidates. He's going to donate to some candidates up and down the ballot, too. So, look, I mean, it's, you know, it is gross that we have a campaign finance system that billionaires can just like buy their way into debate stages and possibly buy a nomination. Absolutely. But I have been very worried for quite some time that Trump is outspending us everywhere, that he's going to outspend us digitally and in paid media everywhere.

And if Mike Bloomberg wants to try to stop that while running a campaign, like whether he's the nominee or not, at least it might help the Democratic Party, which is not a bad thing. Yeah. You know, he's also spent a lot of money on trying to close coal fire power plants. the nominee or not, at least it might help the Democratic Party, which is not a bad thing. Yeah. You know, he's also spent a lot of money on trying to close coal fired power plants. Yeah. And other things. But when I when I see those when I saw that that he was doing that, I think it's a very good thing. But the single most important thing you can do if you care about climate change is remove Donald Trump from office. The single most important thing. Right. Whatever. I think he's pledged a huge amount of money to that effort, but there's no bang for your buck if you care about climate change more than a million dollars worth of ads in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or what

have you. Hey, you guys remember when Barack Obama criticized the Citizens United ruling at the State of the Union in front of the Supreme Court justices? And it was treated like the most, the greatest civility foul in the history of Washington. Because he said it in front of the justices. Oh, no. Not John Copper. Oh, the justices. Feelings got hurt because they opened the floodgates to billions of dollars to buy our elections.

Steel and blue eyes got glassy in that moment. Imagine criticizing that. Yeah. Yeah. I did think it was interesting. One of the pieces about why Bloomberg decided to run is that remember those New York Times polls in the swing states that Nate Cohen and New York Times did a while ago that showed that Trump was very competitive in those swing states, beating Elizabeth Warren and some and losing to Biden by narrow amounts and others. Apparently that polling came out, Bloomberg sat with all of his advisors and said, and they all decided, okay, we're going to spend even more outside the campaign on ads in these states. They're like, all right.

So they finished the meeting. And then apparently the next morning Bloomberg walks in and he's like, and they're like, okay, we ready to spend all this money. He's like, actually, I've thought about it. I think I need to run for president. Just to say, and he's like, so we are going to spend all that money on those those ads but also i'm going to run because i'm afraid we're going to lose now i mean it's the funny thing is that you know no one who runs for president is shy on ego right but the thing that i do think is compelling is that mike bloomberg of all people does not want to be humiliated so that's why it's like i don't know that i don't we don't know everything he has planned but i feel like he

knows something well i've been worried with this i I mean, like, is Mike Bloomberg the answer to that scary polling? You know, I have my doubts, but I do. And Bloomberg conducted similar polling in those states and found almost the same exact results as The New York Times and Nate, who is in, you know, 538 rates them in a pollster. So does he get a he gets a cheaper rate as a candidate on ads for the money he spends? But that won't apply to the $100 million. Is that going to be outside of the campaign? I don't know the answer. I don't know that either. Because there is a little bit of a like, you can't pretend to run for president to get a

cheaper ad rate. You got to really do it. You got to really put your heart into it. Do we really think that Mike Bloomberg, who's throwing around like $60 million in the first week, is worried about getting that much of a cheaper ad rate? I think, though, listen, first of all, everybody wants a bang for their buck. I don't care who you are.

Americans love a deal, all right? We love a deal. He doesn't want to pay full price for that Ivanka pendant. Absolutely not. Unlike Seema Verma. He will not. Everyone should just be a little worried. I mean, look, the fact that Bloomberg did all this polling

and they found that every candidate is losing to Trump in the states that matter should make us all really nervous. And I don't want to like, you know, offer up a bunch of unfocused anxiety here, but like, we're all going to have to work really hard and bring this party together. It's also, it's just also really interesting to me. This is a totally different point, but Jonathan Martin had an interesting piece on the state of the race in Iowa. And the thing that I keep, I keep my head around is that Elizabeth Warren has not spent any money on ads in Iowa. I don't get why. Just recently. I guess she finally just went up like this week.

What the fuck have you been waiting for? What's their money situation? She had a big quarter at one point. She did. But remember, but her cash on hand, she had a big quarter, but her cash on hand was. And she had a 10 million dollar transfer from the Senate. Transfer from the Senate office. I just think it's interesting to see what kind of money everyone's got.

Because we keep, not we keep forgetting, but I feel like sometimes Twitter forgets. I think that it's going to be very interesting to see the quarter Bernie has. Because he has still, with purely grassroots money, outraised everybody every quarter. And I think that like polling or whatever aside, if he's still raising like massive grassroots money more than anybody else, I think that means something. Well, I mean, we've been talking this whole time in 2020 about, you know, Biden versus an Iowa voter, Pete versus Warren. And like no one's really roughing up Bernie and he's doing his thing. No, it's like he had that heart attack and he's like just fading into the bushes and doing his like load.

Like he's been doing smaller events and really kind of just been like out of the fray except for that awesome fire starting video. Did you guys watch it? No. Oh, yeah. Bernie showed people how to light a fire in Vermont. And a wood burning stove. Yeah, it was really great. As people who come from cold places, Aaron and I really thought it was something. But I just think it's it's interesting. I think that, you know, the end of the quarter will be interesting to see sort of where he nets out and if his supporters give a shit about what any of the polling says. And, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I also just think, too, you look you look at what could happen and like, what does Mike Bloomberg's money on super Tuesday ultimately mean? If you start from a presumption, then it's very,

very hard to imagine him building a coalition that will make him the nominee. You start to see someone that makes it harder for someone else to get to above 50% of the delegates. And then, and then become a player at the brokered convention. And then, and yeah.

Nightmare. Paging Aaron Sorkin. To Alyssa's point earlier, I mean, the Des Moines Register had a piece over the weekend, or it was last week, about Bernie's Iowa strategy. And it does seem like they are just kind of running on a totally different track. Like, even, look, I wish I'd spent more time with Bernie and his team when I was in Iowa. But, like, when I'm at the Liberty and Justice Dinner with all the other campaigns, all his supporters were somewhere else. So it was like hard to talk to them and get a sense of what they think about Bernie. They seem to be

just focused on this crop of Bernie voters that they think if they turn out in sufficient numbers can win this thing for him or at least do well enough. And I don't know, maybe the polling is not capturing those people. It just makes it completely unpredictable well the interesting thing right that that poll that just came out that said he's leading in California yeah I was totally shocked I did not think that that I was like I had to read it twice because I'm like oh and that was the thing that made me think like he's just been like the tortoise man he's just like under going slow not doing a lot of big press stuff and just. I mean, the Super Tuesday calculations are very interesting, right? Because, I mean, you mentioned this 15 percent, Tommy, but basically the way this works is

if you can hit 15 percent in any of these congressional districts in any of these states, you probably pick up delegates below 15 percent. You don't. And so what Bloomberg is basically saying is, all right, not only are we going to spend money on television ads, but we're going to have ground operations in all these big states, which is something that is incredibly expensive and very few candidates are going, other candidates are going to be able to do that unless they have some momentum in those first four early primary states. So the Bloomberg people are thinking like, we don't even know if we're going to win

many of these Super Tuesday states, but if we can just keep getting delegates by spending enough money, you know, we'll be in the game. And then you try to think who else is going to have an operation that can compete in California, New York, Texas all at the same time. And it's like Bernie probably has that money. People to judge probably has that money right now sort of muscle memory in those states. But the one person who we definitely don't know if if he has the money is Joe Biden based on his fundraiser, last fundraising quarter, even though, you know, in a lot of ways he could be the strongest candidate because of his continued strong, strong support in the African-American community and with non-college educated white voters. The bet for non-Bloomberg candidates is that you go through these first four early primary states and if you do well enough, you capture momentum and enthusiasm and that puts you over the top versus this organizing that's already happening. It seems like a real open question whether that will work or whether

anyone will run the table in these early states to build that momentum. But certainly it would make me awfully nervous if I were Biden and I'm kind of betting on a mixed result in these early states to build that momentum. But certainly it would make me awfully nervous if I were Biden and I'm kind of betting on a mixed result in these early four states. Right. Especially because his money has been predominantly big dollar money, which means that he has a finite base of... Which was Kamala's problem. Which was Kamala's problem is that if you're someone who's counting on your big donors, you front load all that money. And so my guess, you know, for Kamala was that like her donors had maxed out four months ago for the most part.

And the grassroots money wasn't totally there, which in part is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because if you think that the person you're like, oh, I think that Kamala is great. But like, I also want to see Booker stay in the race. And I'm a donor who only has $50 to give. If you think she's got her big dollar money, you're like, I'm going to give my $50 to Booker. That's right. Smart point. I think that that's a problem for people.

And I wonder if that's going to be a problem for Pete going forward too. Kamala and Pete were both mixed, right? They had high dollar fundraisers and they had some grassroots support. I think Pete's probably had more high dollar than grassroots. But if the grassroots sort of melts away, then you're left with hoping that the high dollar donors in the party can fund this. But meanwhile, you're facing candidates in Warren and Bernie who have a lot of grassroots money and then self-funded billionaires like Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg. It's tough.

Cool state of campaign finance we've got going right now. You can't win after Iowa without grassroots donors. You don't have time to leave the campaign trail. That's right. In politics in New York City. You know, that was one of the interesting things in 2016 that I remember. I think it was the third or fourth quarter. Hillary had done over 40 fundraisers and Bernie had done two.

It's also worth, I think, too, being just a little bit reflective on actually the state of campaign finance and some of the unintended consequences, because it's not just Citizens United. It's that we created a bunch of rules that made people, made it that you couldn't get as much money per person. I think it's had positive effects, but it means if you're someone who doesn't have inherited wealth or wealth,

you may be building some sort of terminal. As far as I can tell, tell is a really good web browser. I don't get it. I mean, McCain-Feingold. Yeah, yeah. But it means that it really did cause a trend of all these really wealthy people being able to come in and be like,

well, you're going to have to go do all these fundraisers, but I can just write myself a check because everyone recognizes there's something is inherently unfair of saying to somebody, you can't spend your own money on your own speech, on your own campaign. So we really are. It's the campaign finance question that undergirds all of this is they're really hard. They're not they're not easy questions.

That's all. Yeah. And all we have to do is to fix it is just win the presidency, the Senate, the House, and then wait for a Supreme Court seat to open up. So in the meantime, this is what we got. And by the way, even when you do that, it's actually hard to come up with a solution that makes everybody happy that actually does what we want it to do. Well, because remember how many years ago, Favs, when we were working for John Kerry,

John Kerry was at the same point in his election as Kamala was. They were both not polling great, both out of money. but John Kerry mortgaged his home in Boston, and that's what got us through Iowa. And we thought when we heard the news that John Kerry was mortgaging his home, Alyssa and I sat at a restaurant and we're like, what's our next jobs?

No, we did. We went to Ruby Tuesdays and had a low-carb meal. We went to Filene's and bought sheets because we were sleeping on people's floors in Iowa and New Hampshire. Fall of 03. I was like, so when I see you again, what are we going to do? Where's the unemployment office? Why couldn't he get that ketchup money? That was

the ketchup money. They mortgaged their house, right? Yeah, in Boston. Because that was partly his. He can't just take her fortune that wasn't partly his. Because that's not how it worked. That's not how the laws work. Not how marriage works. He did have that house got married they didn't they didn't get the house did she did she make him sign a prenup oh that's interesting did teresa hines carry have a ruthless prenup oh that was awesome because the answer is yes anyway i think we've gotten to the end

of this conversation guys um alissa alissa thanks for joining us today please come back let's do this more often If you want Teresa Heine-Carrie's money You have to hit the side of the bottle At the exact right spot I can show you how You gotta tilt it Hit that 57

You hit the 57 That's exactly right What was the plane called? The Flying Squirrel? Yes it was called The Flying Squirrel Her private jet? Yes

Yeah that was a bad story Good times people Who did you work for again, Tommy? Yeah, John O'Reilly. There you go. Yeah, we're all covered in glory. This was very cool. All right, everyone.

Take care. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segwin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator,

and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.