Pod Save America - Elon Gets DOGE'd

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

As Tesla's losses mount, Elon Musk promises to step away from his work at DOGE and focus on his flailing car company. Trump and his top advisers flip-flop on China tariffs, even as Trump steers more cash into his own pocket by raffling off White House access to the top investors in his memecoin. Exclusive new polling shows Trump's weaknesses on immigration, even as the administration continues its crackdown and the courts push back. Jon and Dan discuss if Elon is gone for good or merely taking a sabbatical, whether DOGE will hold any sway without him, and how a high-profile exit from CBS's 60 Minutes is a troubling sign for media everywhere. Then, Jon and Dan sit down with Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run For Something, to talk about her new book for Crooked Media Reads, When We’re in Charge, a brilliant guide for young people looking to get into leadership positions. 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.

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Back home. Yeah. Dan's delivering the big speech at the Correspondence Center. And you're the comedian, right? And you're here for a bill signing in the Oval Office, right? Yes. I'm here for the EO, yeah.

It's really exciting. No, we're just in town for a couple days to catch up with some people. And I don't know. What do you think of DC since we have, I haven't been here in a year. Seems more ominous, but maybe that's just my own. I think that's in your head.

It is in my head. You could walk around and not know the democracy is collapsing around you, like the Lincoln still standing for now for now. We haven't left yet All right on today's show. We're gonna talk about Elon Musk who is leaving the White House to spend more time with his ailing car company We'll talk about what it means for his quest to break all the government services Americans rely on We'll also talk about Donald Trump's quest to make America poorer with his big dumb trade war and his quest to make himself richer with a new crypto scheme to literally sell dinners with Trump and White House stores to people who buy his meme coin. Shocking,

but not really. We've also got our hands on some exclusive new polling that lines up with a lot of other recent polls that show just how unpopular Trump's illegal deportations are with the public. And then our good friend Amanda Lippman, the co-founder of Run for Something, comes by to other recent polls that showed just how unpopular Trump's illegal deportations are with the public. And then our good friend, Amanda Lippman, the co-founder of Run for Something comes by to talk about her new book for Crooked Media Reads, When We're In Charge, which is a fantastic guide for young people looking to get into leadership positions.

But first, let's talk about the art of the deal, which hopefully all of you have read by now. It's required reading in America. It's required reading. Um, here's how it works. You win an election based largely on the perception that you'll lower prices and keep the economy growing upon taking office.

You start a massive trade war with the entire world that panics. The markets sends investors fleeing from the United States and threatens to plunge the economy into recession. Then you pause some of the tariffs, raise them on China, promise to make a bunch of deals, make no deals, and for good measure threaten to fire

the Fed chair who you appointed. If any of that sounds confusing, here's a sampling of what it was like to follow the Trump administration's statements on the economy just this week. You said that the termination of Jerome Powell cannot come fast enough. He says he won't leave it even if you ask him to. Oh, he'll leave. If I ask him to, he'll be out of there. No, I have no intention to fire him. According to this source in the room, what the Treasury Secretary said was no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable at 145 and 125 percent in terms of the relationship with tariffs with China. Let me be clear. There will be no unilateral relationship with tariffs with China. Let me be clear, there will be no unilateral reduction in tariffs against China. The president has made it clear, China needs to make

a deal with the United States of America. I'm not going to say, oh, I'm going to play hard ball with China. I'm going to play hard ball with you, President Xi. No, no, we're going to be very nice. They're going to be very nice. You got all that, Dan? One last kicker from this morning, a top Chinese official said there had been no talks and that the US must cancel all of its tariffs if it wants to deal. He quoted a Chinese proverb, the person who tied the bell must untie it. Nice. Do you think Trump's gonna untie the bell? And what do you make of all the back and forth? I think they, Trump was asked again right before we were recording about the Chinese

official who made those comments. And he was like, well, there was a meeting this morning and then maybe I'll reveal who it was at some point, but there's a meeting. So I think it's the fake news, the fake news, the story about the fake news, the fake news. Got it, got it, got it, got it. I have some questions about the Chinese proverb.

Yeah. How do you tie a bell? Yeah. Yeah. You can't, well, I thought it was going to be the person who rings the bell to unring the bell, but you can't unring a bell, which is the whole point of the original saying.

Right. I think they got to work on that. I think we should jack up the tariff a little more just for that. It's also possible things have gotten lost in translation here. That's true. I mean, this is insanity, but it's also

should be completely expected. Like this is what happens when you put in the White House, a erratic older man who hasn't had a new idea since Cheers was on the air. And then he surrounds himself with a bunch of yahoos who view their only job is to make the mad king happy. Yeah.

And so you end up with this pure chaos and it is like, there is no, there is no coherent policy. There is no coherent ideology behind the policy. There is no consistency between on a minute to minute basis. Like we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, East Coast time. By the time people listen to this on Friday morning, it's very possible and perhaps probable that there will be an entirely new

position on tariffs with China by the time you listen to this. It's a good bet. I mean, there's always been this axiom that the only real constraint on Trump is that he won't do anything that tanks the markets, but from liberation day onward, at least that hasn't been true. What do we know if anything about why he may

ultimately back down? Well, he, he is responding to the markets, right? And he has been since the beginning here. When he put the first tariffs on Canada, Mexico, market tanked, he took them off. Then he put new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, market tanked, they announced a bunch of exceptions that basically made them hollow shells himself.

Then he puts a global tariff, then he does the reciprocal tariffs on everyone, market tanks, takes those off, moves it down to 10%. But he keeps them on China. Market tanks, takes them off, or at least talks about taking them off to make the market go up. Talks about firing drone pal, market tanks.

Says he's not gonna fire drone pal, market gains again. And so he is responding to it. The problem is, is he does not, I mean, it's shocking, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't get that every time he takes the market and then changes his position, he's making the next time he changes his position less helpful.

Like the stock market will come back, the stock market always comes back, but every time he's inserting more uncertainty into the economy, which is going to depress everything, right? We got reports this morning that new home sales are at their lowest level since 2022 coming right out of the pandemic. And this is all happening because no one, not a major corporation, not a small business

that a family can make any decisions. They have no idea what's happening. Are things that go about things that we all need about to be exponentially more expensive in a few weeks? Or not, we don't know. Are we gonna be in a recession? Or not, we don't know. Is Jerome Powell gonna be in charge of monetary policy?

Or will it be someone from Fox Business? We don't know. And because of that, it is doing real damage to the economy that cannot simply be undone by another truth contradicting what Caroline Levitt said earlier that day. Yeah, the first reaction from the White House when this started was like, oh, who cares about the markets?

And that's just Wall Street, and we're focused on Main Street. And what they missed about that, aside from the fact that, you know, most Americans have at least some money in the stock market, most of their retirement, that the market is just responding to how they believe the economy is going to fare and the economic damage has already begun and we haven't even seen the worst of it yet, even if the trade war stops tomorrow, by the way, some of this

is priced in. But I do think that he met with this week the CEOs of Target and Walmart and Home Depot, and they reportedly told him that we are a couple weeks away from empty shelves, not just higher prices, they said that too, but empty shelves because there'll be such a supply chain issue, which is what we dealt with during the pandemic for reasons that weren't just some idiot's trade war. And IMF, they had originally predicted the inflation rate, the US was supposed to be 1.9% this year.

They've upped that prediction to 3%. There are truck plants in Maryland and Pennsylvania already laying off hundreds of workers because orders aren't coming in due to a lack of certainty. Manufacturers are already reducing headcount. Remember this whole thing, one of the rationales, one of the many, is that we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States, but it's actually making things more expensive and manufacturing's going to leave the United States

or at least lay off workers here. Yes, because they get the parts from other countries. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's affecting small businesses. It's like there is a small business that my wife uses to buy name tags for like the small, name tags for like kids clothes and lunchboxes and stuff like that.

They went out of business because of the tariffs. They sent an email out to everyone saying that they couldn't afford it because the tariffs because I assume they get the products from China. The other challenge I don't think they've really thought through is that, Oh come on now John. Is you know, doing a full trade war with the Chinese.

Chinese government, they've been authoritarian government for a long time. And so they can basically force their people to accept much more pain than maybe Americans are willing to accept. And so they can, I don't know that China's gonna be, I mean, from that wonderful proverb we heard, I don't know that China's gonna be backing down

anytime soon, because Trump looks like an idiot. Like it's causing Trump political pain. And I think they can, like obviously China doesn't wanna be in this trade war, but I think that they can probably last longer than Trump thinks they can. Of course, they absolutely can. Like there's no political pressure. Like she's not worrying about the YouGov daily tracking poll

and like how it's gonna impact the generic ballot. Like that's not a concern of his, so he doesn't have that problem. But there's a world where a normal competent president with a coherent economic and foreign policy would be marshaling the world to unite against China in this trade war. You would be working with the EU,

but also other Asian countries. But instead Trump has pissed off the entire world and now these countries are going to be in a position where they're going to be incentivized to cut specific deals with China. Well, and already there's reports that Japan is saying they don't want to be part of any deal that screws over China because that's a market for them.

China has reached out to the EU and has said, let's, let's form an alliance against the United States. Just as if we put it on the whiteboard. I'm fucking real. And again, this is like, like he could climb down from this whole thing tomorrow and pretend it's a big victory and say, we have the, we have, they're talking about now they're weeks and weeks and maybe months away from actual deals, but maybe there's a memorandum

of understanding they can have with India about the contours of a deal. So they're going to like, they could take something and say, oh, big victory, Trump wins, already economic damage. And I think it's going to be very hard to put this back in the box, even if he stops tomorrow. Yeah.

We're also, we're seeing a lot of new polling now on how Americans are looking at all this. I think you guys talked about that this week on Polar Cluster. Yep. I spoke with Molly Murphy, who is one of the smartest Democratic pollsters. She polled for the Harris campaign, but also for Alyssa Slotkin, Josh Stein, and a whole bunch of other candidates. And we talked about the state of politics, public opinion, but also about the polling. We have a clip. We just did a poll. We do polling with the Wall Street Journal. And we looked at the tariff

policies. We looked at how people think it will affect the economy and their costs, and a majority of Americans oppose the tariffs. 75% think it will cause their own costs to go up, and as you said, they voted for him to bring costs down. The nuance here with Trump is that when he messages this, he messages short-term gain. It's odd that he gets away, in some ways, with being honest with people, by saying short-term he messages short-term gain. It's odd that he gets away in some ways with being honest with people by saying short-term

pain, long-term gain. We've got some big problems. And so there's about a third of Americans who are sitting in this, maybe we're going to take on some short-term pain. If we see things get better, it will be worth it. But I think we all know that this isn't going to result in lower costs for people. It is not going to turn out that way. And those will be the fissures.

And that's really the imperative for Democrats to really take on and not let him get away with the messaging that he's currently putting out there. Let me expand upon what Molly said there, which is they, they have three groups of voters. There's a groups who are all pain, right? And that's mostly Democrats. People don't like Trump.

There is a group of people who are no pain. It's not going to hurt a short term. It's not going to hurt us long term. Right. Enjoy. Enjoy. It's great. Tariffs are great.

And that's Trump's base. And the middle is some pain, but some long-term gain. A lot of these folks are independents. Some of them are soft Republicans, but that's the group that Democrats are going to have to focus on when the long, the medium and long-term gain does not happen. Yeah. Short-term pain, long-term decline,

long-term global economic collapse. And look, I think that people may say, let's give them some time, weeks, months. It's understandable, more than almost 100 days in if you're a Trump fan, right? But I don't think people have the patience that they even tell pollsters they have because none of us have patience anymore

because of our screens and media and the way the world works. So I don't think in like a couple of weeks, if the shelves are empty at fucking Target, people are gonna be like, well, it's short-term pain. I just, I know something better is right around the corner. Well, people are against the tariffs and they're suffering almost no consequences of them yet. Right.

If you run a business, you're dealing with this, but like as a consumer, you're not yet paying higher prices in most cases and the shelves are not yet empty, we're not facing supply chain problems. So when that happens, it is truly stunning. It takes actual effort to both crash the economy and raise prices. Normally you raise prices as the economy is running too hot.

That's when inflation comes. And so he's put us in a position where we're gonna be potentially in a recession and we're gonna have inflation. That is like really impressive stuff from the guy. And just completely 1000% self-inflicted. He could have just come into office and not done any of this and the economy would be

just chugging along great right now. That is largely what he did in his first term. Like his major economic accomplishment was not fucking up Barack Obama's economy. Yes, that was it. He just did, they passed his tax cut. It didn't do really do anything other than enrich shareholders.

Yeah, he did, one accomplishment was adding to the deficit. Yes, he definitely added to the deficit. Making rich people richer. But in that period from 2017 to before COVID kicked in, basically just kind of chugged along, it was the same economy, and he didn't try to mess with it, this time he tried to mess with it,

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of Donald Trump's trade war on their personal finances. Donald Trump, who's very busy abusing impact of Donald Trump's trade war on their personal finances Donald Trump Who's very busy abusing his office to make himself richer? That's right, Dan. It's time for another Corrupt date you think that's gonna stick. I don't know. I mean it really will be up to us to make it stick Like we would just have to do it a lot then it would be there working We're in charge sort of if you have any questions or complaints just direct them to John love it We're in charge, sort of. If you have any questions or complaints, just direct them to John Lovett.

On Wednesday, a website hyping the Trump meme coin announced that Trump would host an exclusive dinner for the 220 people who own the most tokens to be held at a Trump club in Virginia, followed by a private tour of the White House for the top 25 investors. This caused the coin's price to jump 60%, which is money in Trump's pocket

because his family's company owns a majority of the coins. The website announcing all this, gettrumpmemes.com, fuck, says it has a leaderboard going for the people who've bought the most so far. You have to register to see it, which I have not had the time to do yet, but the copy says, the competition is fierce. Own Trump or watch from the sidelines.

Josh Dossie at the Wall Street Journal reported that even White House aides were surprised by the promotion And you've got some of the most corrupt goobers in the world in the White House and they're like, I don't know about that Are you in are you on the sidelines? I could not be further on the sidelines. I Guess you're not going to own Trump. Not in a financial sense, no. So I know that there's like a lot of people aren't familiar with how meme coins work. I was one of them until like, I don't know, a couple of months ago last year. It does seem like this is a case though of like blatant corruption that's not too hard

to explain and should make people, most voters pretty pissed. Yeah, you do not need to understand what a meme coin is to understand that this is Trump selling access to the White House, pure and simple. And to himself. Right, it's access to the president. So whoever spends the most money to put money in, it's quasi legalized bribery.

Whoever spends the most money will get to in, it's legal, quasi legalized bribery. Whoever spends the most money will get to get to the president to bend his ear for the, whatever their chosen policy goal is, or more likely pardon that they would like. And it's just, I wanna just explain this a little bit, which is Trump makes money here in two ways. One, he makes money, his company and his family

make money off the sale of every coin. So every one of these people who is buying one of these coins to meet Trump is paying him when they do it. And then they were inflating the worth of each individual coin. Trump's family owns a ton of them. So his net worth goes up.

And so whenever he does the rug pull and sells some of his coins, he will make a whole bunch more money because of this. You could not, this is just how gross this is, is if this was a campaign fundraiser, it would be illegal. You could not do this in the White House. You could not invite, ask people to give money for the specific purpose of getting a White House tour

or a meeting with the president of the White House. You can only, and that money doesn't even go to him. And you are not allowed to, and that would be have transparency about who did it. Obviously there's transparency here because there's a fucking leaderboard. Although it's not, I haven't seen the leaderboard, but I don't think it's giving name, occupation,

and state like the FEC does. So there's transparency if it was campaign financing, and none of that money could theoretically go to the president himself. He can't spend it on his own stuff. This is going directly into his bank account. We have people auctioning off time with the president in the White House to make him richer.

It is the most corrupt thing that any president, Richard Nixon included, has ever done, hands down, it's not even close. I was just thinking about this, and we should ask one of our strict scrutiny pals, but the Supreme Court decision about how the president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts that could be construed as within his official duties as president. It feels like this is outside of that. I don't know how you can,

I don't know how you can make, because I think that one of the examples people brought up was like, oh, could you just bribe the president for a pardon? And you could say, well, the pardon power is his power as president. But this is like, how is any of this related to any official act of the president? It's, I mean, it's obviously not.

It's clear, it's clearly not. I think he could be prosecuted for this. I would love to see the legal brief making the case. This is somehow adjacent to crypto policy, something the president is in charge of. Yeah, I mean, David Tax is going to get to work on that one. Yeah, this is bad. This is one that I think people should talk about. Everyone should know about this because it is-

Especially as you go to Target, the shelves are empty. You just lost your job at the manufacturing plant because they had to lay people off because all the uncertainty. And then you turn on the news and the Trump meme coin just jumped 60% because he's walking around the White House with the top investors. Just absolutely wild. I don't know.

It seems like you could make something out of that. All right. Speaking of rich assholes, the richest and the biggest made some news this week. Elon Musk, the shitposting sperm super donor who Trump brought in to wreck the federal government will be stepping away from his duties here in Washington, which is really why we're here for the Don't Away Party.

We were invited. That's right. I mean, you and he do have an online relationship. We do, yeah, so it's good to just to see him in person. Just heartbreaking, heartbreaking that he's leaving. Such a loss. We learned this on Tuesday after the, heartbreaking that he's leaving such a loss. We learned this on Tuesday after the news broke that Tesla's net income for the first quarter fell 71% and revenue dropped 9% from the same period last year. Is that good?

I'm not a business guy, but it seems like no. Elon made an appearance on the company's earnings call to offer his best guess as to why that might be and what happens now. Let's listen. As some people know, there's been some blowback for the time that I've been spending in government with the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. But the large slug of work necessary

to get the DOGE team in place and working in the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done. Next month, in May, my time allocation to Doge will drop significantly. I'll have to continue doing it for, I think probably the remainder of the President's term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back. Trump was then asked about this in the Oval Office on Wednesday night. Here's what he said.

Can't speak more highly about any individual. He's an incredible guy. He's a brilliant guy. He's a wonderful person. I've seen him with his family. I've seen him with a lot of his children. He's got a lot of children. And he was a tremendous help both in the campaign and in what he's done with Doge. I also know that he was treated very unfairly by the, I guess you'd call it the public, by some of the public, not by all of it. He makes an incredible car, makes everything he does is good. But they took it out on Tesla. And I just thought it was so unfair.

Poor Tesla. Tesla. Tesla. Note the past tense there. He was a tremendous help. We also learned that Elon and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, apparently got into a shouting match recently outside the oval about who would run the IRS. Because Scott Bessent wanted a competent, experienced professional to run the IRS.

And Elon wanted the random quote unquote whistleblower that, uh, yelled something about Hunter Biden and some scandal that I can barely remember at this point, who was just some like mid-level flunky. He wanted him to run the IRS. So they fought about that outside the oval. At one point, Elon called Bessent a Soros agent. So welcome, welcome to the IRS, so they fought about that outside the oval. At one point, Elon called Besant a Soros agent. So welcome, welcome to the club, Scott. First of all, how much of Tesla's problems, sorry, Tesla's problems are

attributable to the blowback that Trump was talking about and what other factors were in play, in other words, did we, the woke mob just score a big win? Yes, the big win for the woke mob just score a big win? Yes. The big win for the book. Bob, no Tesla probably has four problems. The first is the guy who runs the company has been doing everything, but run the company for a while now, usually a problem too. It's hard to know how much the political blowback impacted sales, but just common sense is the use of the consumer, the customer base for Tesla is generally well to do,

Maybe they should rename it Tesla. They could use a brand refresh, is generally well to do climate conscious liberals. People who probably aren't super into buying cars from a company run by a guy tweeting about replacement theory at three in the morning. Yeah, and these are the people who crawled across glass to vote for Susan Crawford in Wisconsin. Yes, exactly, exactly.

Three is the tariffs, they mentioned this in the call. It's hard to know exactly how much, that is going to affect them over the, over shortly in the near term here, but they get a lot of their parts from overseas. And the last thing is there's more competition in the EV market. There are just more companies making better cars.

And so if you have a choice between two pretty good EVs of similar price, are you really gonna pick the one from Elon Musk? Maybe not. Well, and I think especially orders for Tesla from Europe were way down. Yeah, this is true about that at home and abroad. And because the Europeans, you think,

we're mad at Elon, they're pretty mad because he goes over there and he's like, hey, true about that Holman of Rod. And because the Europeans, you think we're mad at Elon. They're pretty mad because he goes over there and he's like, hey, what about the Nazis? Yes. I did not really say that, but that was a shorthand for one of his many speeches over there in Europe. What do you make of Elon's departure? On the one hand, it was kind of expected.

He was designated a special government employee, which you can only be for a certain amount of time. But if you're longer than that, then it triggers like, you know, disclosure, disclosure, ethics stuff, all the stuff that Elon would want to avoid. So we knew he was going to leave at some point. But, um, you know, on the other hand, Trump's cabinet and most Americans have really come to dislike Elon. So what do you think?

It's weird that the American people and Pete Hegsath can agree on something. I think it's a pretty big deal. First, I think it's worth saying, is he really leaving? Like, when companies have a very bad quarter, they tend to want to announce something on the earnings call that suggests they have a plan to fix the problem. And so Elon saying he's returning, he's getting

out of government coming back solves the political backlash problem and the problem of the absentee landlord at Tesla. And so that that is a reason to give to minimize the market fallout right after the earnings call. And it actually, I think in this case did a little bit, solve some of those problems. So is he really leaving? It's not a super honest guy, I don't know. But if he is leaving, I do think this is the functional end of Doge.

He, I mean, who else is gonna have the power to actually do the things he's doing, right? To bully cabinet sectors. And so poorly. Yeah, do it absolutely poorly. Like everything he's doing is, it's incompetent, but it absolutely poorly. Like everything he's doing is, it's incompetent, but it is severe and it's very hard to get severe cuts in Washington.

And he's able to do those in the worst way possible. Don't get me wrong, because he is more powerful, both within, more powerful globally and more influential with Trump than anyone who serves in his cabinet. But if there's someone else running Doge, like what flunky is going to be able to end run Scott Besson to Donald Trump? No one.

We should also take a look at a Doge report card here. Elon, he originally set out to, he said he could get, he could find $2 trillion in savings, $2 trillion. Then he cut that down to 1 trillion. Now you know what they've saved? About 95 billion. So much less than what he wanted.

And that's not even counting the savings that are being held up in court. Correct. Yes. Right. And so what do you get for $95 billion in savings? Is that going to the, is the taxpayers saving a lot of money, getting a lot of rebates? No, that means about over 200,000 people lost their jobs

from federal government, including cancer researchers, veterans jobs, food inspectors, tax collectors, which is probably gonna undo the savings from Doge because now a bunch of rich people are gonna get to cheat on their taxes and not pay them to the federal government. So chaos around the social security administration, which then they had to pull back. Bunch of people died all around the social security administration, which then they had to pull back. A bunch of people died all around the world, thanks to him putting USAID in the woodshipper,

which he bragged about. Nick Kristof was tweeting about how, he tweeted at Elon this week about how there's a boy in Africa who was born with HIV, was kept alive by medicine that cost 12 cents a day. was kept alive by medicine that cost 12 cents a day. He's dead now. And you can look at reports of this all over the world. People have already died because of this. More people will die because of medicine that we took away and food that we took away that cost pennies a day, pennies a day.

So this is Elon Musk's Doge legacy. Pretty good, huh? Yeah, not great. Did you see Steve Bannon was out with a statement on this? Oh no, what'd he say? Elon Musk should be required to submit a certified inventory of all the fraud and waste he found while in government, and there should be full disclosure

of any non-governmental entities to have obtained sensitive federal data through Doge. Sounds like a Democratic member of Congress, Steve Bannon. Yeah, so I agree. I agree with Steve Bannon. All right, clip that, Elijah. Let's get a certified inventory of all the fraud and waste, because it's also supposed to be the most transparent

administration in history. Yes, of course. And they put everything on the Doge website only except when they don't. So good job at Doge, Elon. We really need a Doge, like an Elon in Memoria, Doge in Memoria. That's a good idea. God damn it. That would be good. Let really need a Doge, like an Elon in Memoria, Doge in Memoria. That's a good idea.

God damn it, why? That would be good. So let's do a- Anyone do content around here? Well, I was just posting over here. That's right. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform.

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Domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools included to ensure your domain remains online and protected. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Cricut to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That to squarespace.com slash cricket to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash cricket. Let's talk about deportations. There's been more churn in the courts on this. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Zinnis slammed the DOJ over what she called a, quote, willful and intentional refusal to comply with her order to return Kilmer or Abrego Garcia and accused the government of dishonesty and obstruction.

Then on Wednesday, in a totally separate case, a Trump appointed judge, Stephanie Gallagher, ordered the return of another wrongly deported man. This time, it was a Venezuelan asylum seeker whose removal violated a court settlement. Another unlawful deportation. Gallagher cited the Abrego Garcia case in her ruling and called the government's actions quote a breach of a contract. But Trump's not just losing in the courts, he's also losing in the court of public opinion. Multiple polls now have Trump underwater on immigration, which was his best issue, including

the latest Fox News poll that Trump was bitching about on truth social this morning. A YouGov poll found American support bringing Abrego Garcia back by nearly two to one margin and only 27% buy into Trump's claim that he's MS-13, a claim that the administration still hasn't even tried to prove in court. And we were just given right here at

Pod Save America, Dan, we were just given an exclusive new poll from the democratic research firm Tavern Research, which surveyed a huge sample of nearly 13,000 voters over the last few days. Couple of things that they found, the Abrego Garcia case has certainly broke through to most voters.

Voters disapprove of how Trump is handling it by a 14 point margin. Only 25% of voters believe Trump is following the law. Only 25% believe that it's okay for him to defy the court's orders. Getting down to 25%, usually he's got like 35, 40, uh, with almost anything he does. So he's down to 25%. Uh, and the most effective messages when talking about the case have to do with Trump defying the courts and in

doing so putting the due process rights of all Americans at risk. Those were the most effective message. What do you make of those numbers? Encouraging as an American. Yeah. Just that there are like Democrats, we talked about this last week, but Democrats are sort of taught to be afraid of immigration and that here we have not just the moral high ground with the political high ground and that we and the Democrats should make the arguments against these illegal deportations with confidence. You should need a poll to talk about these things, but if you do, you now have the polling to give, to put some stiff in your spine a bit. Yeah. I also think it's a good lesson in how polling should be used, because usually there's this argument like, should we follow the polls?

Should we not follow the polls? And as you know, like polling is just another useful tool to use depending on how you use it, right? And it is still true probably that most Americans want a secure border and want people who are criminals deported. And there's a limit to how many, even asylum seekers people want to take in

because they saw over the last couple of years that a lot of asylum seekers were sort of stretching public services in cities all across the country. And those views, I don't think haven't changed, but that is entirely separate from also believing that we should send people to a gulag or we should deport people without due process or any of the stuff that he's doing. And there's a nuance there that I think sometimes the intra-party fighting

among Democrats doesn't really get, at least online, obviously, but that like, two things can be true at once. And just because immigration is a good issue for Trump doesn't mean that no matter what he does around immigration, it's going to be popular. Yeah, it's, we all lost our mind on the politics of immigration from like 2022 until now. Yeah, are you really like 2016 on?

No, I think in the, during the Trump era, all we had to do, in the first Trump 1.0, all we had to do was point out that what Trump was doing was bad and cruel and stupid and counterproductive. And we actually quite effective at that. Like I was looking at the polling today, Trump was underwater on immigration for almost every single day of his first term. Just this idea- I guess I think, I'm sorry, I think the reaction from Democrats in the 2020 primary to the prior four years was an example of misreading

what the anger about Trump on immigration was all about. Yes, 100%. But for a long time, we had a very good message on immigration, which was border security, keep people safe, have a path to citizenship for people who have been here a long time, are a part of the community, have them go to the back of the line,

pay back taxes, whatever. Like there was a method that tested for that. To this day. Are you saying we're a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws? Just Barack Obama's message. Well, I mean, that position still to this day gets majority support.

And when we constrain the image only to the way that Trump wants to talk about it, like I think what we did wrong, and I think it's still keeping people from doing it from a lot of people from talking about this in the right way is we really accepted Trump's premise. Like he created, this is something the right Trump

and the right wing media did very successfully, which is they created this image of an, they took legitimate issues around chaos at the border of migrants coming here, securing asylum and turned it into an invasion by MS-13 and Trent de Arragua. They turned it into this idea that there was this wave of crime from migrants and undocumented immigrants that you were unsafe for them because of this.

And that wasn't actually the case, but we accepted that premise in our messaging, right? We were, like we said last week, we're trying to out tough Trump on the border as opposed to talking about how you do it. And he is suffering this. And if I was in the White House and, I was in the White House for a year for Trump,

which is really a hard thing to imagine, but if I were, these numbers would scare the shit out of me. Right? Like you have a two-pronged reason why you're president, the economy and immigration, and you're not underwater on both, and we haven't even hit the 100 day mark. I think it's also a lesson for Democrats that like,

if you pick fights about issues where, first of all, you think it's wrong, and it's urgent to speak out, but also you sort of sense that what the politician is doing, what Trump is doing is unpopular. Like you can have these issues break through, right? Like there could have been, when he sent Abrego Garcia to Salvador, when he's El Salvador to this president, when he deported us, we could have said, okay, you know what, since he's so strong on immigration, we just shouldn't talk about this. But if we didn't talk about it, if Democrats all decided not to talk about this and

not to make a big deal of it, then he probably still would be very popular in immigration, because most people in the country wouldn't know that it happened. Yes, we have agency here. This is the same thing happened. We just talked about Doge, right? At the beginning of Doge, it was like, wow, we got to be careful because a lot of Democrats and Republicans and independents, most Americans, they do want government to be more efficient and that's what he's doing, so maybe we should just be quiet. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's true. If Elon Musk was actually going in there and making government more efficient and

actually saving money on things that were wasteful, he wasn't doing that. So we should talk about it. And I just think that like Trump is not as strong as people think he is. And, um, he still has a lot of power and he's still very dangerous, but. The country right now is, is not particularly happy with them and his approval rating continues to fall. I think in the Pew poll this week was at 40 and that's probably an outlier. It's probably, it's probably around 44, 45, but it's still, his approval rating is at a lower point right now than

almost any president at this point in their first term, other than recent memory, other than him. Yep. I think he's actually, he's about to cross that line. He's I think in the average he is, uh, almost seven points underwater right now, and he's been dropping a point in a week for a while now. And this is not to say, okay, he's getting more unpopular.

Everyone can just be like, whew, relax and just wait for the next election and where it's thermostatic public opinion and everything's going to be fine. It's to say that like, we don't need to be afraid or we shouldn't be afraid because the more we fight, the more unpopular he gets. And so like, you know, courage is contagious here. You should go speak out. You should go keep fighting because when we do, other people in the country who aren't paying

attention realize like, yeah, he's, this is, this is bad. I don't like this. Which brings us to our last topic before we get to our conversation with Amanda on Tuesday, the longtime executive producer of 60 minutes, Bill Owens announced that he's stepping down saying he can't run the show independently anymore. This comes of course, after Trump called again for CBS to lose its broadcast license over

some recent segments on 60 Minutes, and after he filed a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS for the way the show edited its interview with Kamala Harris. And CBS News' parent company, Paramount, which is trying to close a major merger, is talking about settling. How big of a deal do you think this is? If I was writing a book, which I am not about the. You can announce it here if you want. I, I mean, you do have a publishing arms and maybe we should talk. No, if I was writing a book about the death of the traditional objective

media that dominated the 20th century in the first part of the 21st century, the lead anecdote would be what just happened with Bill Owens at 60 minutes. 60 minutes is the flagship new show in America. No, like so known for tough accountability journalism that if you worked at a company or a government agency and a 60 minutes producer called you, you wet your pants.

Like it meant you were in big trouble. And the fact that now even 60 minutes is being brought to heel by the court, it's corporate overlords means the entire model of big media owned by big corporations cannot function. There is an inherent and irreconcilable tension between companies with business before the federal government owning media companies trying to hold that federal government accountable.

Like this is the end of an era where we are right now. And again, it's like, I mean, Sherry Redstone and who's the one runs the Paramount, you know, trying to close a merger. So maybe it's just all about money for her, right? Maybe she just wants a deal. But I think it is, um, for other media companies that can for other people in media, for these colleges, for the law firms, like people should fight because. All, I think that all of the people that have capitulated so far are going to look, they're not going to be like, Oh, that was smart. They got away early. It's going to look bad. And, and if you, and again, just we were talking about the polling, like some of these media companies, if you ask people,

oh, should the government be able to sue media companies into oblivion or threaten them, pull their licenses because they said, they said things that the, uh, the, the, our ruler, Donald Trump, doesn't care for, that's not fucking popular. No one's gonna think that's a good idea. Yeah, there was very explicit polling on colleges and museums, that shows that what Donald Trump, using federal funding as leverage is quite a problem,

even with Republicans, but what is going on here is just, it's important to understand that, like there was a time in which CBS was a huge part of the revenue at Paramount. Yeah. CBS news in particular. See that is not true anymore. Right.

CNN is like, which is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, which is a company that by all reporting very much wants to either merge with another company or buy another company in all cases would need approval from the FCC. And so they are not willing to take on water for something that is even if it still makes money now they know is in in secular decline and it's never coming back. Yeah. And so the thing about like I don't think you're gonna be able to convince these major companies who to fight back like Sherry Redstone or some of these other companies like even Disney

Gave in on the George Stephanopoulos Defamation suit like the way you fight back here is you support independent media Yes, right and that is that can be ideological partisan media like what we have here pro-democracy media like what we have here Crooked media it could be like ProPublica and non-profit independent media but the future of media is going to look very different than it did before and it's going to be much is going to be smaller but independent from these big companies. Yeah that's right. All right so as you heard a new episode of Polar Coaster just dropped. Don't miss out on this exclusive series available only to friends of the pod. You can head to crooked.com slash friends and sign up today or subscribe directly through our Apple podcast feed.

If you subscribe by the end of April, you'll get a 30 day free trial. When we come back, we will talk to the founder of Run for Something and the author of the new book, When We're In Charge, Amanda Lippman. POD Save America is brought to you by Aura Frames. The number one thing your mom wants from you is to call her. This Mother's Day, you can give her a call AND give her an Aura digital picture frame.

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lets you share photos more securely than with email, which many other digital frames require. If I had not already given my mom an Aura frame for Christmas, I'd be doing it for Mother's Day. I'm sort of annoyed that this idea is off the table, but you should get one. They are great. My parents love their Aura frame. We are constantly uploading pictures of the kids to the frame at any time of day. It's very easy.

You just, you have an app on your phone, put the picture in and boom, it's on their frame. It's a great, great gift. Aura Frames was named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter and featured in 495 gift guides last year. So the next time you need to call your mom, you can also send her a new pic of you from that trip you're telling her all about right from your phone.

Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day for a limited time. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat Frame. That's auraframes.com promo code crooked. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply. Amanda Lippmann, good to see you in person. Nice to see you guys. Welcome back to the pod.

Congrats on the new book. Thank you. It's called When We're In Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. We're also psyched you chose to do it with Crooked Media Reads because we've all been big fans of yours for a long time. I am so excited to talk about it and it feels so right for this moment. Yes, it does. Well, so want to spend time on the book.

Thought we could start by checking in on Run For Something, which is the organization you launched after the first Trump administration with the goal of recruiting, training, helping younger candidates run for down ballot races all over the country. I'll admit that I was worried that after all the despair and fear that accompanied Trump's second win,

you guys would have a tougher time finding candidates to run. That hasn't happened. No, and I will admit I shared that concern, but since Trump won in November, we have had 41,000 young people all across the country raise their hands to say they want to run. Our overall pipeline has exceeded 200,000. That means 20% of the people who have ever signed up with Run for Something to say they want to run. Our overall pipeline has exceeded 200,000. That means 20% of the people who have ever signed up with run for something to say they want to run for office have come to us in the last five months. And how does that compare to the first? So in the first two years of Trump's first term, we had 30,000 people sign up. Wow.

We've already exceeded that. It is more people than I ever could have imagined. Like our goal for 2025 was 50,000. We're going to cross that in like a month. Are you seeing a different kind of person stepping up, different kind of candidate or, and where are they running? So we are getting people from all 50 states.

It's pretty commensurate with population, little more women than men, about 70 to 75% under the age of 40. So it's mostly young people. And we are seeing people step up for a lot of the issues we've seen over the last eight years. Housing, you know know cost of housing reproductive health book bans, especially in the last few years

Opioids continues to be a big thing we hear from people but especially in the last five months They are signing up and saying if my leaders aren't gonna fight for me I am gonna fight for me and I think that in particular is a really exciting attitude we're seeing new folks bring. That's awesome. I saw that you were running for something that's hosting an informational session for fired formal federal workers. That's what I was going to say. Fist out. Tongue clasped there.

Tell me a little bit about what is going on there. Do you think those folks make good candidates and what is sparking their interest to run? So we've seen hundreds of people sign up coming specifically from conversations around former laid off federal workers, or people who've had partners or friends or family, countless more beyond that. And I think these are folks who are already inclined towards public service. They have been working in the federal government,

not a glamorous job, all across the country, because as you guys know and as folks know, the federal government is not just a DC thing, it is everywhere. And I think for a lot of them, this is personal. They understand intimately how government works and affects people's lives. They're pissed at Trump and Elon Musk for firing them

or firing their friend or their family. And they've often not been allowed to run for office before. Like in most places, there's some nuance here depending on the type of office you run and what your job is, but generally speaking, federal government employees have not been allowed to run for office before. There's been some ethics violation, rules around that. They're now free to.

And they've got a lot of time on their hands and they got a lot of rage and they're channeling it into doing something really meaningful with it. So I think they're gonna be great candidates if even a couple of them end up getting on the ballot in 2026, the stories that they'll be able to tell both about why they're mad and how they've committed to their community are gonna be really powerful Are these like former scientists former all across the board or park rangers former scientists former fellows doing like weather research

You know from our VA people doctors and health care professionals who are working in the government all kinds of experts who've really like Done meaningful work and shown how government can make people's lives better, which most people don't get to hear their stories. You know, you touch on this, your book is largely about this, but the debate about the generational divide of the Democratic Party has been brewing for a long time. It's obviously picked up pace since this election,

since Biden's, the end of Biden's presidency. How do you think about generational split? Is it really age or is it style too, right? We obviously have folks like Bernie Sanders, who is much older, but is very popular with young people and probably campaigns and talks about politics in a way that makes young people excited. So talk to me a little bit about that split

and where you think it's going. Obviously, no generation is a monolith. We have seen older leaders like Senator Sanders rise to the occasion and really prove they can fight and communicate in this moment. That being said, I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the folks who have risen up, who have shown their backbone,

and who have proven they can communicate about that fight in this moment are some of the younger leaders. And I would say it is both age sort of, you know, Millennials and Gen Z folks, we'll give younger Gen X a little bit of credit here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But it is also like people whose political awakening has been since Trump, like people who first got into politics post 2015-2016 who have a very clear-eyed understanding of who the Republican Party is. It is not

Judge W. Bush's Republican Party. It's not John McCain's. It's not Mitt Romney's. It is Trump's. And they know who the opponent is and that these are not good faith partners in governance. And because they're comfortable online, like I like to joke, these are candidates and electeds who run their own Instagram accounts, which is pretty unusual. They understand how to express that in this moment. How do you think this next generation of leaders should be responding to Trump 2.0? How do we end what you've called the bad boomer leadership

that's taken over the Democratic Party? You know, I think it's a couple things. I think, again, being clear about who the Republican Party is and who they are not. I think being willing to channel whatever it is they're really mad about and communicate it. You know, we have this moment in which authenticity or this perceived authenticity is so important for candidates, and it is especially important for newer candidates who are trying to prove

themselves and build trust with voters. When we talk about like what messaging we should be on or like what fight should we take on, pick the fight that makes you the maddest and talk about it. Because if you're talking about the thing that you aren't actually that riled up about, it's going to come through and it's not going to connect with people. The other thing I would say is that especially in this moment, like being unafraid to have the conversation in as many places as possible. This is something I think people who haven't are relatively new to public service and to politics

can do a little bit better, not exclusively, but can do a little bit better because they are normal people who just happen to have fallen into public service as opposed to people who've been in office for 20 or 30 years and Like don't know what normal people talk about anymore. So I think that's one of the many distinctions We haven't talked about this in the pod yet, but I'm sure you've heard about DNC vice-chair David Hogg Pledging 20 million dollars to primary older Democrats in safe seats What do you think of the strategy any risks? in safe seats. What do you think of the strategy?

Any risks? Whether or not David as a DNC leader is the right person to do this is sort of a separate question. That I think the DNC is trying to handle as we speak. That seems like a them problem. I do think it is worth encouraging open primaries. Primaries are how we as a party decide what we believe.

Parties are where candidates get a chance to prove their mettle in sort of safe territory, especially in all these safe blue districts. That's where we get our Democratic leaders from. Like it's not a coincidence that much of the Democratic leadership is from New York, California, and Illinois. Like those are safe seats.

So the people who can rise there tend to be both the cream of the crop ideally, and can really ideally model what the party is standing for in this moment. I think if you're an incumbent who's doing a good job, you got a pretty high chance of winning a primary. Like incumbents have something like a 95% reelection rate.

If you are doing a good job in meeting your constituents where they are, you should have nothing to worry about. I think it's telling that some of these incumbents are a little spooked because they know they're not quite where their voters want them to be. Yeah, I'm very torn about this. I very much agree open primaries are good. We do, like, we 100% need a new generation of leadership and in a world in which most incumbents are going to win their election, then the only way you're going to, there's going to be there until they leave. Adam Schiff can be senator from California for the rest of his life at once. Right, like that is gonna be.

He could literally die in office as previous senators in California have done. I mean, there might be some past precedent there. But I guess- Either leave on your own or in a coffin. Yes. Cool slogan for the United States Senate. Absent a primary, I guess is the question.

But I guess one question I have is, and maybe things have changed recently, but a lot of the conversations I've had with various groups and people trying to fund efforts since election is it has been a tough environment to raise money. A lot of our donors are not necessarily the grassroots donors, but sort of the bigger folks who fund larger,

the larger progressive infrastructure are tapped out. They're frustrated they're not getting money. And so just in a world where we need run for something, we need invisible, we need swing left, we need more progressive media, more content, like what do you think about $20 million to this effort? I think it's a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend in a lot of federal races.

I also think most of these primary candidates are going to be funded by grassroots donors. They're not going to get a lot of institutional money. I will say run for something's budget this year is only $7.5 million and we're expecting to work with about 300 candidates in every state there's an election. We've already won, I think, 20 some odd races this year. There's a lot of ways that we could spend money in politics and there will always be more money even when I wish there were different rules around it. So if your goal is to get new leaders in that particular space that's certainly one way you could do it. I think my way is also really exciting. Another option

would be to donate to Run for Something. Yes I'll say it for you. Thank you. RunforSomething.net slash donate. You know five dollars goes Run for Something. I'll say it for you. Thank you, runforsomething.net slash donate. $5 goes a long way. I kind of think you just, we should all be consistent on it. If you're for primaries and competitive primaries, that's true for if you're worried about what the result may be. It's true if you want the result to be a different way.

And I think we're probably stronger as a party, especially the democracy party, if we're allowing this to happen. And it's really scary to trust voters. But like if we're empowering candidates to run good campaigns, then we should. And I think that's like the key here is we should give candidates,

and this is what Run for Something does, is empower candidates to make the best possible argument to their voters and then let voters decide. Even if voters sometimes make decisions I wouldn't agree with, that's voters call. Which has happened recently. Let's talk about your wonderful book, which isn't just advice for young people running for office.

It's for young people who are stepping into leadership roles or planning to step into leadership roles across business, nonprofits. What made you want to broaden the focus? So I know politics. I've worked now with thousands of candidates running for office. I knew I didn't know enough about what leadership looked like outside of this space. So when I was going in to write the book,

I put out a call to interview as many people from as many different kinds of spaces as I could. And I ended up having in-depth conversations with more than 135 different leaders from a variety of sectors. I talked to faith leaders and doctors and teachers. I talked to tech CEOs, I talked to the CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel. I also talked to the editor in chief of Teen Vogue.

I also talked to Maxwell Frost, member of Congress. And I heard so many themes echo across those conversations. The partner in the law firm in Chicago had a slightly different take on the 80 year old partner who she had to like do notes in the dictaphone for, as opposed to the rabbi who said the person she replaced in Wisconsin had never taken a day off in 30 years behind the pulpit.

And she was like, I'm a mom of two kids. Like I can't do that. But the themes were the same. And I think that to me was emblematic of the fact that, you know, across different sectors, across different spaces, really across the country, and even I talked to a few folks in Europe and in England. Details were a little different there.

They have better health care. The challenges that next-gen leaders, what I would collectively call next-gen leaders, millennials, and gen Z are facing are the same. And that we didn't have a playbook on how to solve them. So that's what I tried to write was the guide that honestly I wish I had had when I started Run for Something eight and a half years ago of like,

how do you do this in a way that is better than every boss I've ever had before? I was gonna say, how did your own experience with leadership roles at Run for Something and other places inspire what you wrote? You know, when I started Run for Something and other places inspire what you wrote? You know, when I started Run for Something, I was 26, about to turn 27, was single, was having a good time.

I had never run a company before, I'd never written a budget before. I'd managed people, I'd managed teams a few times, but I knew that if this was gonna last, if I was gonna build an organization that was sustainable and that would do this work for a long time, because it was important that I thought this work needed a long runway to succeed,

that I built a team and ran my company in a way that reflected that. So that was everything from how we could provide the best possible healthcare to people, how we could pay people as well as possible, how we could have work-life integration and work-rest integration. Like I didn't wanna work campaign hours for eight orrest integration. Like, I didn't want to work campaign hours

for eight or 10 years. Now, eight and a half years later, I have two kids, like a two and a half year old and a seven month old. I don't have the time to work 100 hour weeks anymore. I don't want to. But the work is still really important. So I write a ton in When We're In Charge

about my experience creating this organization that functions a little differently than any other political organization, although some now have come our way, including things like a four-day work week as really good health care, really good benefits, things like a sabbatical policy, but also, you know, transparency policies internally that allow us to really communicate with people in a way that brings them in and helps guide where we're going. And the challenges that I faced. When I went to take maternity leave with my first daughter and I Googled, how do I take maternity leave as the boss, all I could find was how to ask your boss for maternity leave. Which one, damning indictment of the United States. But two, really telling of what kind of resources there are for leaders who want to model the values we put into practice.

You and I have talked about this before since we've both had similar experiences here, but can you get into some of the challenges you faced being a millennial at the top of an organization with a lot of Gen Zers? It's so hard. And it wasn't just things that I faced. I heard this from all of the people I talked to. The similar kinds of demands for transparency that in the same way you can Google something

or get a Yelp review on something. We want that at work. We wanna be able to get every answer we want whenever we want it. I heard this from folks about things that they wanted work to provide something that work is not the right space to hold. And I write about this in the book of work cannot be your only source of identity, your only source of friendship,

your only source of your physical or mental health, your wellbeing, it is first and foremost an economic relationship. And ideally, as the leader, you are creating space where people have the time and resources to be full people outside of it. One of the challenges that basically every millennial and Gen Z leader I talked to named was that

they're managing millennials in Gen Z. And that is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, yes. We could do a whole other episode on that. Love our Gen Z staffers. It's for me and my therapist. Love you all. Great lesson in the book, We Don't Dream of Labor.

Can you unpack that a little bit and how it applies to what we're all going through right now? Okay, so the internet says this is a James Baldwin quote, but I cannot find any proof of that, so make of that what you will. The full quote here is that, I do not have a dream job because I do not dream of labor. I think that is so important, especially in this moment where we are looking to do so much more

than our work, that your job just cannot be everything. And a nightmare is a kind of dream too. Sometimes your dream job could actually be horrific. I think it is really on the shoulders of the person in charge, of the leader. And I write on how to do this to make it clear that you should have a place at work where you can do your job and know what success looks like and that you don't have to be miserable every day doing it, but it also doesn't need to be the only place you find fulfillment. Yeah.

It's hard. It's hard, especially in the business that we're all in, in politics, right? I know, when you care. Because it is a mission and you do care, but you've gotta separate it at some point. I talked to a pastor who really spoke to this Marshall Hatch in Chicago, who told me, I feel like my work is a calling,

but also there could be lots of calls. There could be lots of different ringtones in this call. It can look different, and that doesn't mean that there's a wrong way to love your job, but it can also be really dangerous when you love your job so much that it eats you up and spits you out. You talked about being a working mom now.

What have you learned about rest, not just for yourself, but as something leaders need to model for their teams? You know, so Run for Something has a four-day work week, which is the only way I was able to write this book, run the organization. At the time, I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant. I did that because we had Fridays. So all through 2024, I would spend Fridays, not resting,

but working on this in a way that was also really creatively fulfilling and gave me like a different kind of joy than my day job. I think a lot about what it means as the boss to model rest for my team. Like we really do take Fridays off. We don't have emails, we don't have meetings. When we're done with the day at around 5, 36 o'clock,

we log off. On weekends, yeah, like sometimes you might have to work on a weekend, like any job, sometimes you have to go to the event or like, you know, there's the emergency, whatever, but generally speaking, you can count on weekends to be your own. And I think about the way that the four-day work week, the clear boundaries about our time have made me a better boss, a better leader, but also such a better parent and a better partner. Like I am so much better at going into a full 48 hours of parenting after I got to spend Friday.

Yeah, maybe doing some book stuff or some writing, but also go to yoga class, get my nails done, see a friend, lounge on the couch and watch Grey's Anatomy for three hours. Like whatever it is, I'm a better parent and a better partner because of that. Like in politics, right? The culture, it like, it is the worst version of like, quote unquote, hustle culture, right? Like you're supposed to be working all the time. And if you're not working all the time, like in the way it's understood by so many people, if you're not working all the time, then either you're doing something wrong or you're not important enough to be working all the time.

So everyone's trying to work all the time. How have you been able to run a political organization, not on that sort of 24 seven treadmill that so much of politics and media seems to operate on? You can, can be very discerning here. My mission is urgent and important. Not every task and service of that mission is urgent or important. And so being really thoughtful and rigorous about prioritization, about how we're spending time in meetings or together, knowing that like, yeah, the couple of weeks before election day,

you might have to work a little bit more, but you cannot do this work year in, year out if you are burning the candle at both ends. Like you will hate yourself and you won't be as good at it. Like I don't think anyone who's working 100 hour weeks is doing that because those hours 60 to 100 are their best hours.

Like you're not getting your best stuff. I think it is so necessary for leaders to model those boundaries and also to staff in such a way that you don't have to ask that for people. Like I reject the premise that you have to be working around the clock to be getting the most possible things done. Like efficacy and humane compassionate leadership are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah. Last question, you talked to more than a hundred young leaders for the book. Was there a moment or a conversation that surprised you or changed how you thought about leadership? Oh, that's such a good question. I was surprised at how many things I heard in common. I was surprised, and maybe not, in retrospect it's not surprising at all, how many people would tell me, I want

to be myself in my role. I want to be authentic. I want to bring my real self, but like not my full self, but my real self to work. Because I actually don't think work is the right place for my full self. I want to be this. And because I actually don't think work is the right place for my full self, I wanna be this. And then I would ask them, great, do you think like you can be yourself with your team? And I memorably remember some of you like, oh, fuck no. Absolutely not. I think that tension, like that's the point of the book,

is how do you navigate that tension? How do you perform yourself authentically while still not performing yourself at all? And like, how do you post on social media when your team follows you there? And how do you be transparent? But also if you open the books too much, people are gonna see things

they're actually not prepared or able to see. And how do you think about your career? Like when the ladders that we have climbed no longer exist and the path that our parents or grandparents took has just been like blown up. How do you do that? Like those tensions, like I hearing that from so many people and in the last couple of weeks,

I've been going back to all the folks I talked to for the book to be like, hey, so excited, this is coming out, can't wait to send you a copy. And so many of them wrote back to me like, that conversation stuck with me. Like no one had ever really asked like, how does it feel to do this hard thing? And I'll say the final thing that really stuck with me. Like no one had ever really asked like how does it feel to do this hard thing?

And I'll say the final thing that really stuck with me and has been like sort of my mantra for much of them, honestly, the last eight years was how many people would tell me I feel like I am doing a hard thing and it is hard not because I'm personally failing but because like it is fundamentally a hard thing. Like I am trying to push a rock up a mountain and no matter how strong you are

or how high the mountain is, it's gonna be hard. And I, you know, we tell this to candidates when they're running for office, running for office is hard, no matter how good you are, our job is to make it a little bit easier, like around the logistics, leading in this moment in a way that treats people right, but also gets the job done is difficult

It is also like running for office so worth it It's so worth it both for me and for you and for all of us as leaders, but also for the people you lead I'm sure that's why one of the reasons that people appreciated the conversations with you and the question so much because Just being asked. Yeah, how are you feeling? How are you doing it? What does it mean to you? Like you don't ever get that question. Well, especially when you're in charge of folks, like it's not their job to ask you that question.

And like your partner or your therapist has probably heard it all more than that. So I think it's really important to take a step back and really reflect like, what kind of leader am I? Am I living up to the values I've laid out? Am I prepared to deal with the criticism that I will inevitably get? And am I doing this in a way that I can feel good about? Well, all the answers to all those questions are right in the book.

It comes out May 13. The book is When We're In Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. It's a fantastic book. You can preorder it now at cricket.com slash books or anywhere you like to get books. Amanda Lippman, good seeing you. Thanks for having me guys. Thanks for stopping by.

Good to talk to you. That's our show for today. Before we go, there was one quick breaking news development that we got that we should. Oh no, what happened? Well, we learned the full Chinese proverb, which we did not apparently have. It is, whoever ties the bell on the tiger's neck

has to untie it. Okay, I rescind everything I said that makes complete sense that there's a reason that's a proverb, and it was dumb of me to even question something that was, I assume, thousands of years old. I mean, I could do a five minute thing on who the fuck is tying bells on tigers next, but you know what, we're not gonna do it

because it's the end of the show. You know what, if we keep talking, someone's gonna tell us why that is and we have to do another correction. So let's get out of here fast. All right, thanks to Amanda Lippman for joining us. Everyone have a great weekend. We'll have a new show in your feeds on Tuesday.

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