Pod Save America - "Exhausted from Obstructing Justice."

Episode Date: May 22, 2017

Jon, Jon, and Tommy discuss Trump's semester abroad, the latest on the investigations, right-wing lies about a tragedy, and what's next for health care. With special guest: no one.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. And sadly, Tommy Vitor lost in New Orleans. Still on Bourbon Street. We have no guests today. This is the brain-dead edition of Pod Save America. You shall endure us for the next 40 minutes. We tried to get a couple guests. We just have so much to talk about.

It was planned this way forever. It's very freeing not having a guest. Very loose. Little housekeeping. Go listen to Love or Leave It from Friday. It was actually taped Thursday night. But given that the news just keeps getting worse, you can actually have the same conversation over and over again.

I listened to it on the plane home yesterday. What did you think? I fell asleep halfway through. It was a long weekend. I woke up... I feel like that's a NOLA issue, not an episode issue.

That's true. Credit to you for trying. I woke up during the rant wheel, I laughed a lot, and then we landed. It was great. Also listening with friends like these from Friday,

on Marie's podcast, and yeah, and that's it. And then you have Pod Save the World on Wednesday. I think you already recorded it, right? Do I still do that? Oh, yeah, I do. I've talked about Arwa Damon from CNN International Correspondent. She's based in Istanbul, so we talked a bunch about what's happening in Turkey.

Then we talked about some reporting she did behind the lines in Mosul when she was actually pinned down for 28 hours by ISIS fighters when she was with Iraqi security forces. She's an incredible reporter. Fascinating conversation. Excellent. Check it out. So, on Friday, as we were leaving for the bachelor party,

I tweeted, please no one release the pee tape this weekend. I'm taking off for my bachelor party, believing that big news would break. I thought we were going to avoid it, except when we were hanging out Saturday during the day, and one of my friends from high school showed me his phone, and it was a New York Times headline that said, Trump told Russians that firing nutjob Comey eased pressure from investigation. I thought that was, I couldn't even believe what I was reading. So apparently during Trump's meeting with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister,

the same meeting where he divulged highly classified intel about an ISIS operation. He also said, according to a document that had been prepared and circulated about the meeting, transcript of the meeting, quote, I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy. A real nut job. I face great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off. I face great pressure because of Russia that's taken off I mean my favorite part

of this is that he joked with Kislyak that he was the only one who hadn't met him confirming the everything Trump says is projecting and self-incriminating theory of the case the worst part is that he played down his personal concern about fighting in the Ukraine essentially telling them that do what you're

going to do in Crimea it's cool with me oh I didn't even hear all that part. It was just terrible. The bad policymaking is being kind of swamped by the fact that he's just recklessly committing obstruction of justice in most of the meetings on his schedule. Even on stuff that's unrelated, like tax reform meeting. Hey guys, I just want to pause this tax reform meeting

to say that I fired Jim Comey to stop the investigation. Wait, every time I do that, Pence kicks me under the table. Pence, what's your problem? So they asked the White House about this. Spicer did not dispute the account. So at least they've moved past the, they start by saying this is fake news. Then they say the real problem is the leaking of the info. You know, now they're just saying like, no, no, it happened.

But Spicer's quote was interesting. He said, quote, by grandstanding and politicizing the investigation, Comey created pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia. So their saying is the reason that Trump said this to the Russians, it was in a negotiating tactic. It was hurting our ability to conduct foreign policy.

That's why Jim Comey had to go. Is that the third or the fourth explanation? It's more than that. Because it has to, let's count them. It's first because Rosenstein said that Hillary had been treated unfairly. Then it was because he was showboating. Then it was because I'm obstructing justice. Now it's because, no, no, no. But then it was because showboating was obstructing, was making it harder for him.

Nope, you're right. We're at four. We're at four. We're at four. No, I believe there was a subtle intermediary where showboating was a separate issue for making it harder for the president to do his job. That's right. Fair. Word five.

I mean, so we now know that Trump, one, asked Comey not to investigate Flynn. Two, asked Comey for his loyalty. Three, fired Comey. Four, told Lester Holt he fired Comey because of the Russian investigation. Five, told the Russians that he fired Comey because of the Russian investigation. And also made Comey feel uncomfortable like he was on a bad first date or something by calling him and texting him, just checking in all the time. The whole thing just couldn't be more weird. Oh, yeah.

That was the story on Friday. I forgot about that one. The bad way of stuff. Where Comey hid behind the blue curtain. 6'8 Comey hid behind the blue curtain so Trump wouldn't call him out in a meeting. He was wearing Comey flush. That's a joke. A little joke from a show called Love It or Leave It.

You can check out right now. I mean, if it looks like a duck, you know. We're at that point right now. Matt Iglesias wrote a piece. He obstructed justice. He definitely obstructed justice. Matt Iglesias wrote this piece that I think came out this morning basically saying that like, it's hard because it's all right out in the open.

Like, basically, this is the stuff that's supposed to come at the end of the investigation after all the work has been done, and then you kind of put together this proof that he obstructed justice. But we kind of started with that, so it feels quite strange. Like, wait, we got to the end of the story

at the very beginning, but here we did. So, that happened. And at the same time the New York Times story comes out, of course, the competition between the New York Times and the Washington Post to see who can bring down this administration first. Two great athletes making each other better. It's great. And also doping. I don't know what that means. The administration official is now a target of the probe. Up until now, most of the targets of the investigation have been former Trump officials or people that were on the campaign like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, who's been fired.

So someone who's currently in the White House, someone, quote, very close to the president, senior advisor, Jared Kushner. I was making a joke. You missed my joke. I'm sorry. What were you about to say? Are you okay? I didn't know you were making a joke. I interrupted you before'm sorry what were you about to say are you okay I didn't know you were making a joke I interrupted you before you could get to the punchline

you know what it's done now you should have said here comes a joke and then I would have let you go don't interrupt the maestro okay he's conducting over there I want you guys to imagine

that John had not sent Jared Kushner and then I said I thought it was reckless that the Washington Post refused to name the guy but did say it rhymed with Barrett Kushner

I had thought about the rhyming thing nailed it but I mean it rhymed with Barrett Kushner. I had thought about the rhyming thing. Nailed it. But I mean, it could include current administration officials who have acknowledged contacts with Russian officials include Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. So we're not talking about like bumbling Carter Page accidentally landing in Russia when he meant to fly to Kiev or something like that.

It's not Mike Flynn looking to make a mortgage payment by taking a trip to on RT's dime. Yeah, exactly. Yashar Ali, who writes for the New York Magazine and Daily Beast, soon after the post came out said he can confirm it was Jared Kushner. He confirmed with four different people close to the White House. Things we know about Jared. Well, we know a lot about Jared. Very handsome.

He is, which is very annoying. He met with Ambassador Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, in late November. He's already acknowledged that. He's already said he met with the head of a Russian bank that has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014. And we know that he omitted those contacts with foreign leaders on his national security questionnaire. Oopsie doopsie. Oopsie doopsie. In other parts of that Washington Post story that were interesting, in addition to collusion, investigators are now looking at whether possible financial crimes were committed by people close to the president.

We also know that this has gone from a counterintelligence investigation to an actual criminal investigation. And a lot of people close to the White House are worried that investigators will now be taking more public steps, meaning that they're using grand juries to get testimony from people. So a lot of this is going to get out in the open now. And I believe a conspiracy theorist online did say that the Supreme Court released the impeachment eagle, which has been flagged over the Capitol. Was the impeachment eagle just your joke? Okay, I can't know which joke is anymore. It was really reported by Louis Mensch.

The other thing that happened this morning is Michael Flynn is pleading the fifth, which is a very smart legal strategy. I think pretty much every lawyer worth his or her salt would recommend you do that. When you're a criminal, it's best to not talk about it in an open hearing at Congress. Non-criminals plead the fifth, too. But, like, it's a terrible PR strategy. But it also just gets back to the point where, like, literally everything this administration does is hypocritical. Because they savaged the guy who set up Hillary Clinton's private server for taking the fifth. And you can find a tweet from every single senior

administration official being like, criminals don't plead the fifth about him. And now Michael Flynn is doing exactly that. Interesting Reuters story too, that the administration is now trying to actively undermine Bob Mueller via a little ethics rule. So the White House has been reviewing the Code of Federal Regulations, which restricts newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm's clients for one year after their hiring. Mueller's firm represented Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. I mean, think about what's at issue here. Paul Manafort. I mean, think about what's at issue here.

Logically, wouldn't it be that if your firm used to represent that individual that you might be finding something in their favor or that's sort of predisposed to help them? Presumably designed. It's designed because you're going to be too nice to them, not that you're going to be too hard on them. I thought it was a bit of a weird. It's so back ass words. It's just once again, seems like they're trying to obstruct something. Yeah. Could be justice. I also love the idea of a White House lawyer, like a Trump White House lawyer,

like finally discovering the code of ethics and being like, I don't know about this and about that. Oh dear. Don, hey, Don, we signed that shit? Oh my goodness. We were screwed. We can end this little worry here

because the Department of Justice can provide a waiver allowing Mueller to do this. And you know the Department of Justice in provide a waiver allowing Mueller to do this. And you know the Department of Justice. And that's why it has a sterling reputation. But what I don't understand is if, because Sessions has recused himself from the investigation, it wasn't clear to me whether the waiver would come from Sessions,

from Rosenstein. But he's now, Rosenstein's now a possible witness to obstruction of justice. So he'll have to step aside. Eventually it's just going to be some junior associate. Maybe his first day at the Justice Department. Just, you know, I came here to make a difference for my country. I'm in charge of it all. It does feel like if they tried to use this backwards ethics attempt to get rid of Bob

Mueller, that Congress would be like, come on, buddy. I mean, you've got this Congress. I know. I know. But like all of them have now leaned so hard into this investigation as their way of ducking off future questions about this issue that if suddenly they just upended the thing by saying there's an ethics problem for Mueller, it feels like that doesn't fly. I agree with that.

Can we go back to something? Because I couldn't quite understand this. I don't know if you guys have any other information on this. What financial crimes could they be looking for? Like, I don't understand. Tax evasion? I don't think we know. I don't even know if it's necessarily related to the campaign.

Right. It might be related to... But it is related to Russia, we know. Right, I mean, well, we know Flynn may have had a financial, definitely had a financial relationship because he got paid by RT, which is just being paid by Putin. Obviously, Carter Page has... Jared. We don't know what Jared's financial dealings are.

We just don't know. We don't know. Fascinating. And then, very exciting, very exciting, James Comey, our friend James Comey, will be testifying publicly after Memorial Day. Ooh. Circle that date on the calendar. We might have to have a special pod episode around the testimony. Do they meet after Memorial, like Tuesday or after Memorial, like the day they haven't set a date yet? I don't know. I don't think they set a date yet. I don't know.

I don't think they have a specific date. I haven't heard of one either. But that's probably, that's going to be very interesting. So here's some questions. Like, what do we do about this in the meantime? Like, we're sort of waiting around for either the New York Times and Washington Post to continue breaking incredibly crazy news at about 5 p.m. Eastern every day. Or we're just waiting for Jim Comey to testify after Memorial Day? Like, what else do we do? Do we keep up the pressure

until then? Do we keep talking about this? Do we just wait and let it sit? I mean, I just think, you know, the 123 four days of this administration have felt like a lifetime, but we're gonna have to prepare ourselves that independent or special counsels take a very long time. The average length of investigation is 1,154 days. Whitewater was 3,000 days. The Ron Contra was 2,500. These things, they have to set up, you know, entities to pay for these investigations, to hire all these lawyers, to get the thing ramped up, to interview people. So it's not going to happen quickly.

I think we need to not forget about all the other stuff going on. I mean, I do think, though, if if Jim Comey gets up there and testifies publicly that Trump did indeed tell him to lay off Michael Flynn, that Trump did try to obstruct justice in some way. I mean, like he's going to be asked those questions. But then what? I mean, he's already said it in a memo that was contemporaneous. We know about it. It's not like the world sort of ended. It's not like Congress found a backbone. Well, speaking of backbones, as Marco Rubio said recently, he's like, well, so far all we've seen is news reports of these memos and stuff

like that, which is true. I mean, once you have an FBI director, former FBI director, under oath saying it publicly, it seems like that's obstruction of justice, that's grounds for impeachment. And you're right, they might not this Congress won't act, but it seems like it's pretty close to there. Yeah, I mean, the other thing I was thinking about is that, look, we've been beating the Russia drum for months and months and months, but what's actually driven the Russian story has been non-political events, or at least saying that this Russia story is a big deal didn't matter at all until there was the Comey memo to the reports of what was going on inside the meeting with Russia. So what's happening on the Russia front that turned it into a real scandal on the that's

making people talk about impeachment and the 25th Amendment and all that had absolutely nothing to do with anything Democrats did, right? You know, remember that two week period where we had Schiff going after Nunes and Nunes going to the White House, like that drove the story, but it didn't elevate it to this level of, you know, what Trump actually did, what Comey actually did drove it to that level. So I'm really starting to come around to the argument that we need to be talking about healthcare, we need to be talking about Wall Street, we need to be talking about the actual economic issues people care about, not because the Russia story isn't important, but because that story is going to kind of take care of itself. And meanwhile, 13 dudes are writing the Republican health care bill.

Yeah, it's beyond our control. Yeah. That's basically it. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way. Let's talk about Trump's foreign trip. Adventures abroad.

His big reset. Can he regain his momentum? Axios thinks he's got traction. Guys, I'm trying. I really am. But this morning was... He didn't fall down the stairs. He managed to stay awake during his speech

and we didn't call Islam our enemy. I'm glad things went well when he landed in an absolute monarchy that allows no dissent or press access or women to attend the events. The all-male Toby Keith concert. It's just such a trite framing. It's like he leaves his legal troubles at home because now he's in Saudi Arabia where he can't be asked about legal, like, what are you talking about? It's also not how these trips work. Every trip I ever went on for four years in the White House, the entire focus of the press

stories coming out of it were about something else, something back home, some gaffe, some bullshit. Yeah. So the big, so he gives a speech in Saudi Arabia about Islam. The headline there really is that he just completely reversed himself on all of his campaign rhetoric I mean he got to a good place he said this is not a battle between different faiths or civilizations

he called Islam one of the world's great faiths which was different than during the campaign when he said Islam hates us that was a direct quote interestingly in the speech the draft of the speech avoided using the phrase radical Islamic terrorism it used Islamist instead but Trump screwed up and used Interestingly, in the speech, the draft of the speech avoided using the phrase radical Islamic terrorism. It used Islamist instead.

But Trump screwed up and used radical Islamic terrorism anyway. Instead of just saying he misspoke, senior officials said he did it because he was exhausted. He's an exhausted guy. He's like a tire boy. So it was a long flight. He also had to do several hours of obstruction of justice while on the plane. So that was a working flight he also had to do several hours of obstruction of justice while on the plane right so that was a working flight lots of redactions um she's like what it shows like yes trump is the incompetent one and like there's too much blaming of his staff sometimes they can't fix a lot of the issues that are but like what a stupid fucking thing for a campaign official

of her administration officials say he was exhausted yeah i mean but like also let's let our leaders be exhausted when they take overnight flights to foreign countries, then have to get up and give speeches. This was always the thing, like Hillary was always attacked. Jeb was attacked for being low energy. Hillary's people were so sensitive to any suggestion that she might get tired after flying to like 179 countries. It's just, it's silly. But the thing that drives me crazy here is this Islamist Islam discussion. It's like, it may be so frustrated for so long that I can hardly muster the rage anymore. But when we killed bin Laden, we found documents in his compound where he talked about rebranding Al Qaeda in part because we had been using more precise language and talking about a war against terrorists and not a war against Islam or religion or all Muslims.

war against islam or religion or all muslims republicans for years demagogued this their primary talking point against obama is that he wouldn't say radical islam he wouldn't name the problem and now the fact that they're walking back is showing that these eight years of criticism were just posturing it was just acting for fox news and for breitbart and it's infuriating it's and again stupid i don't want to pin this just on Trump. No, no, it's the whole establishment. Marco fucking Rubio, all of them. Every single Republican that ran for that nomination made that same criticism of radical Islamic terrorism. Trump gets into office,

H.R. McMaster's the National Security Advisor, and right away he says, that is a problematic phrase to use, we shouldn't use it. And so now they're not using it. And of course we all knew that. Of course we know it was stupid. Of course. And by the way, it's probably the first time anyone intelligent actually explained the issue to Donald Trump, first of all. Yeah, the turning that into an actual substantive point that Republicans viewed as central to their argument is another reminder of all the ways in which the Republican Party had kind of lost its way and become unhinged long before Donald Trump showed up. It was a completely empty, completely stupid argument.

It was without content. It was a way to call Democrats weak with no substance behind it whatsoever. They did it for years to the point where they convinced themselves of it. It allows us to debate this silly little shiny object while making no effort to actually solve the problem of extremism and the roots of it and everything else. It's also true for like this silly Obama bowed to the Saudi leaders. He went on an apology tour. Guess what?

Trump bowed a little bit before the Saudis. No one seems to care about that. But it's again, it's just it's just a concocted thing in the right wing apparatus. Despite all their complaints about the liberal media, they're able to create these narratives that stick for eight full years. It's a waste of all our time. And you know what? If we were a bunch of real partisan hacks like the assholes on Fox and the rest of them,

we'd sit here today criticizing Trump for bowing to the... Bow deeper than Barack Obama today. It doesn't matter. Oh, did you see that Donald Trump bowed to the Saudi king today yet again, giving up on his American first pledge? Is that a Rush Limbaugh? Who is that? That a Rush Limbaugh? That's a Rush Limbaugh. I think it's pretty good.

It's the first time I've ever tried it. I got thumbs up from inside the studio. Bill and Tanya are both nodding. Weak, dumb Trump. It's actually hard to do. It hurts your stomach. Meanwhile, Trump goes over there, and he's like, we're not here to lecture you. He's giving the Saudis a complete pass on human rights.

And Bush and Obama and others, they push them on human rights and opening up society and allowing freedom of expression. Because we actually think there's a link between oppressing people and ultimately turning to extremism. Roger Ailes is dead. Did Eric Trump kill him? That's what they do. That's the liberal Rush Limbaugh. Wait, I want to get back into the substantive human rights conversation. New character. I forgot what this show's about. No, and look, I think it's fair to say, Tommy, that we could never be perfect on pushing various countries on human rights

because sometimes you need to work with these countries on other things, right? So we didn't go as hard as we could at Saudi Arabia on some of these issues. We don't do it with China as much as we could because there's tradeoffs, right? But, like, at the same time, Trump not even mentioning it, Trump sort of went out of his way not to criticize them on human rights, right? Yeah, well, in fact, he said to them, we're not here to lecture you or give you a pass on human rights. And I just think it's an abandoning of US values and what we thought were universal principles that Obama talked about in the Cairo speech, they talked about throughout

the year in spring, that we should stand up for as a country. Instead, it's like, well, if you give a security cooperation, we're good. You give me a Toby Keith concert, we're buds, like, let's go. Yeah, I mean, look, both parties have been hypocritical on Saudi Arabia. Our Saudi Arabia, looking the other way, policy has been despicable. And there have been tradeoffs. And I think liberals have been very critical of the way in which we treat Saudi Arabia. And, you know, that's a reasonable debate to have, right? How hard should we push them?

How far should we go? And I would say, like, Barack Obama did more than most, but not enough. And now Donald Trump has abandoned it completely. And it's just holding a glowing orb. A glowing orb. I mean, I don't want to play politics about it because like, is it hypocritical or is it just that there's genuine difficult tradeoffs between human rights and our own security that you have to make when you do these things? You know, I don't know. I mean, I think, look, smart people disagree. That's what I'm saying.

You make choices and you also have different leverage in different countries. You know, there's certain countries you have to push on rhetorically. There's certain countries you can do more by working internally or quietly behind the scenes. I think reasonable people can disagree about whether we should have pushed the Saudis harder. They're certainly not good actors. The Wahhabi schools, the extremist schools

that have been feeding terrorism for decades are all from Saudi Arabia. So all that money comes from there. Do you think, by the way, it was a bizarre choice to give a big speech about Islam in Saudi Arabia and that to be their first stop? It seems like an odd setting to do that. I mean, I think it was. And the audience was like a bunch of like leaders and officials.

And it was just like. It was associated with the GCC conference, the Gulf countries conference. And I think there were 50 leaders in the room. So I think the setting actually makes sense. It's interesting that he went to Israel. He's there right now. Israel this early in his term when other presidents have waited a lot longer. Did you see, by the way, this is right before we started recording what he did in Israel when he was with Netanyahu, what he said about the meeting? It's so funny.

So he's up there in Netanyahu. It just happened. And someone said something about the story about him divulging classified info about the sources and blah, blah, blah. And Trump goes, I never mentioned the word Israel. I never said Israel. I never said Israel in the meeting. So now there's one or two. No one ever said he said Israel.

So no one ever said he said Israel. It was like, when I divulge secret Israeli information, I did not say Israel by name. Oh, shit. There's lots of beautiful little moments dripping out of this trip. Like my favorite anecdote was he walked up to Sc and he said love your shoes boy those shoes man and then and then of course i can't remember some i think it was lcc you are amazing mr trump you achieve the impossible because you have a unique you have a unique personality which is funny you have a unique personality that will allow you to achieve the possible. And Trump goes, I agree. Which I respect.

But we were talking about this before, that if you were telling a foreign leader how to deal with Donald Trump, you'd just say, go up to him and tell him, finally, somebody I can deal with, a real smart guy, you know what you're doing. My people know, you're the guy. You're the guy who can help us get these things done. Never been so impressed by an American president before. And that's what they're doing.

You just have to suck up to him. You can't talk about specifics because he's a dotty old racist and then you let your real, the real work goes on behind the scenes. You shake his hand, you let him touch a glowing orb, you tell him how great he is.

Off to Israel. And by the way, just a PSA to Twitter, not one of your orb jokes has been funny. Not a single one. You know what? I saw a bunch of orb shit last night.

I decided not to delve in. I don't know what happened with the orb. I don't care. I don't want to know. The orb was quite silly. Let's, you know, it is silly. I still don't understand the orb. It's an odd picture't care. I don't want to know. The orb was quite silly. You know, it is silly. I still don't understand the orb.

It's an odd picture. The jokes were bad. Hard to make a joke. It's a big hat on a hat. Right. You know? Right. As they say.

As they say. Well, we just mentioned earlier we should be talking more about health care and stuff like that. So there's a lot going on at home with both health care and the budget. The White House is releasing their official budget this week, today or tomorrow, but most of the details have leaked out. Actually, let's talk about the budget first, then we'll get to health care. So the budget is going to recommend huge cuts to Medicaid as if the House health care bill wasn't enough.

They're basically confirming that they want $800 billion cut from Medicaid, which means that they are putting their stamp of approval on the House health care bill. $800 billion cut from Medicaid would leave 10 million people uninsured. They also want to make massive cuts to the food stamp program, to children's health insurance, to kick kids off health insurance, to disability insurance, to pensions for federal workers. Social security disability insurance, which is, again, one of his key promises.

Yep. Pensions for federal workers, refundable tax credits for the working poor is on the chopping block. And they want to save money by throwing in work requirements for welfare. So, I mean, even Republicans in Congress are saying this budget is fucking crazy. I don't really know what the, what is the White House doing? That's so unpopular to do that. I don't know. It's like Mick Mulvaney, who's just a Freedom Cau caucus member that ended up now the omb director for the white house the

budget director has now just decided to go nuts because the dotty old racist in the oval office doesn't really know what's going on enough about what's going on it seems like an odd time for the white house to cook up a a budget plan that polls at like two percent and hand it off to a congress that's not going to want to touch that thing or do anything to implement. Yeah, they're basically putting themselves on the record for something that's not even going to ever pass. Go anywhere. And also, as always, it claims to balance the budget within 10 years. Of course, that's based on incredibly optimistic projections of growth, which have no bearing in reality, right? But that's a classic Republican lie. That's what Jeb Bush would do. That's what Mark Rubio would do. But also, keep in mind, it balances the budget in

10 years and cuts spending by $1.7 trillion, which is in part to make up for a new tax cut that is already accounted for because they're accounting for the spending in the AHCA. So they're like, we must balance the budget. But first, let us deepen the hole by getting rid of the estate tax and cutting all the taxes that were included as part of the HCA. And then we'll get to the children's health insurance. Meanwhile, while the Senate is, we'll talk about the Senate, their plan to write up a health care bill soon. But before that, Trump administration basically trying to do everything they can to screw up the ACA, America, the Obamacare already by threatening to get rid of the subsidies. As we know,

the Trump administration has to pay insurers subsidies in order for them to keep deductibles somewhat low for working poor and poor people who are buying health insurance. So Trump keeps telling advisors now he wants to get rid of the subsidies. If you do get rid of these subsidies, it will melt down the insurance markets. We know that. And so already there's a lot of uncertainty from insurance companies who have to plan their rates out ahead of time.

They have to do that in the next couple of weeks. And Trump's basically holding these subsidies hostage. Yeah, I think this is really important and really dangerous. And we need to adjust the way we talk about it. This isn't that Trump is trying to undermine Obamacare. He's trying to undermine the U.S. health care system. He's trying to drive up health care costs for, like, 7 million poor people to harm his political opponents.

It is as cynical and disgusting a thing as he's done in office, period. It also, I mean, at this point, too, if he does this and he ends these subsidies and the insurance markets start melting down, no one's going to blame. Nobody. No one's blaming Obama for this. They'll try. They'll try. They'll definitely try. Oh, yeah.

I mean, every day Trump talks about this. He says Obamacare is dead. It doesn't exist. It's a fallacy. He'll do an interview with Judge Jean Pirro. He'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was undermining the insurance markets. Yeah, I loved it.

It was great. But again, this is one of those things. I was obstructing justice and undermining the insurance market see i loved it it was great but again this is one of those things instructing justice and undermining insurance markets that was my day i've been very busy yeah it's one of these things though where this is something that's actually going to affect people it's not just some crazy thing trump says it's not a conspiracy it's not like a investigation thing it's people are going to suddenly see their premiums go up or lose their health insurance and they're going to see who's in office it's gonna be donald trump and a Republican Congress. You know, for years, for years, right, Republicans have engaged in a kind of brinksmanship with the government that basically put ideology ahead of the country,

right? That's what they did on the debt ceiling. They threatened the country with default. You know, they said it's a pretty nice economy. We've got therapy, shame, something to happen to it. Basically, they put a gun to the head of the economy and first Barack Obama negotiated. He negotiated with a gun to his head and decided thereafter that was a mistake and then decided he wasn't going to negotiate over that and that was the right decision. And it redounded to the benefit of the negotiations thereafter. This is the first time. This is now the next step of that process, which is Donald Trump isn't just going to put a gun to the head of the health care system. He's going to shoot it.

He's got a gun in his mouth. I don't know what he's doing politically. It's the dumbest thing he could possibly do. It's almost as if he's too incompetent for the job of president. Donald Trump sabotaging the health care system. The saboteurs strike again. It's liberal Rush Limbaugh at 744 in the morning. I just took three opiates and I am ready to rumble.

Oh, my God. Donald Trump refused to grab Melania's hand. Why? I'm going to get deeper. Oh my God. Oh man. Post-bachelor party edition is going well. I think it's going great.

This has been fun. I feel very sharp. Don't go anywhere. This is Pod Save America and there's more on the way. What do we know about the Senate bill so far? We know that McConnell has told people, McConnell's lieutenants have said he does want to vote on this thing. They think that it won't be very soon, but it won't be later than July. The general outlines of the plan

are they're working to make the tax credits in the House more generous. So they're trying to make the House credits closer to what the current Obamacare subsidies are. They're trying to wind down Medicaid more slowly. We've heard rumors of not doing it until 2020. It's basically kicking this whole thing into the next presidential election and trying to keep the pre-existing conditions protections in place. So basically, they are trying to undo as much of what the House did as possible while still having something that's not quite Obamacare. Yeah, it's it's. Well, so look, if we end up with something that's halfway between the House bill and Obamacare, that is still terrible. But we should just brace ourselves

for the coverage that will be about how moderate it is and how far along it's come thanks to the work of people like Murkowski and Collins and all the rest. It's just so silly because what would happen then is we would just have a bill that was like, Obamacare is basically still in existence. What the Republicans did was they just kicked some more people off their insurance and raised some premiums on some old and sick people. That was their replacement. Finally. It was just like, kick a few more people off health care in this country. So we will know the effects of the House bill. It looks like this new CBO score, finally, of the—

Better late than never, guys. Better late than never. What? Will come on Wednesday for the House bill. So that will provide a new round of fodder for all of us. They work a weekend, CBO score makers. Well, I guess the kind of thing is they blew their deadline and then it's like,

well, let's just take our time. Yeah, we're good. It's just chilling to read these stories about McConnell, though, because it's not just the 13 anymore, 13 senators he's allowing

to be a part of the process. He's bringing in all 20. He's kind of allowed a little bit of a reprieve because this is off the front burner because everyone's talking about Russia.

And you just know that guy is going to find something that he can pass and he can cook up and send over to the House. McConnell's smart. The process. And the process fouls are just the most galling part of this because none of it is public and no hearings will be open.

McConnell and Ryan are equally cynical but McConnell is as smart as Paul Ryan thinks Paul Ryan is. Yeah and look and I think it's going to be a challenge because all those things that you just said are right also this russia stuff will suck up a lot of the oxygen in terms of media coverage and it's going to be hard for like i think that all of us need to keep the pressure on congress as much as possible and you're

right a lot of this is going to go on behind closed doors and so it's going to be like the cbo score on wednesday is a big moment right that make headlines. That's something to organize around. But McConnell is going to try to keep this process as quiet behind closed doors as possible so that there's not a lot of attention on this. And they see the same numbers that we do. They know that the house is in jeopardy. They see the hourglass running out on the Trump presidency. And they know that if they're going to be losing a lot of seats, if they're going to pay a big price, they got Gorsuch through. They get this health care bill through. They get a couple more priorities through. Tax cuts for the rich go through. They'll have achieved something before, you know, the timer runs out. One interesting thing is that there's a couple of stories that some of these Democratic candidates in special

elections across the country are not running on Trump or Russia stuff. Some aren't even mentioning Trump, but they're running on the House Republican health care bill. So Rob Quist, that special election in Montana is Thursday. Everyone get ready for that. He's ending with spots on health care that do not mention Trump at all. He actually talks about how he has a pre-existing condition. He had a botched surgery that had left him with a pre-existing condition. And he has closed to within single digits of his opponent. So most people, we should say this ahead of Thursday, because we're going to have one of those days on Thursdays where there's a special election. And if he doesn't win, it's going to be like failure for Democrats.

Maybe Trump is all powerful and never going to lose. And all this thing is, you know, it's a hard election. The Montana special election is a very, very difficult. It's a statewide election in Montana, which is a Republican state. Not the most complicated thing in the world. Yep. But I think, I mean, the fact that we're getting close is amazing. Yeah.

Getting close is amazing. And we could still win. Exactly. We could still win. And even if he doesn't win, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't fight as hard as possible in races like that, you know? And he's running, and he seems to be running the right kind of campaign. It's populist.

It's focused on the issues, there's a lot of money in this race now. Yeah, the DCCC went in. He's done everything he could, you know? Thanks to us. Finger-picking guitars in the ads, beautiful settings, barbecues. That's what we're looking for. That's what Pod Save America's looking for. We're looking for strumming, vistas,

wins elections. So if you're in Montana, get out there and help Rob Quist. Maybe make some phone calls. This is it. This is the home stretch. It would be nice. It would be a nice win, but again, seats like Montana and Georgia. This would be great for Democrats to win these. They're good special election opportunities

for pickups, but there are, we said this before about Ossoff's race, there are about 80 seats that are more Democratic-leaning than John Ossoff's in Georgia. And we need 24 to win the House back. I mean, all we're learning is that every single district in America is going to be a swing district, but you're not going to win some of those districts. Right. And the deal is to just fight like hell for them.

One more thing I want to talk about before we end today is this fucking conspiracy theory that has been popping up now on the right with Seth Rich. Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was shot and killed late at night in Washington, D.C. A long time ago, back in, I think, July of 2016, right? So no one knows why he was killed, but they pretty much think it was a robbery gone wrong, right? So now it's popped up on the right. There's some conspiracy, right, that Rich might have leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. This has been debunked now a million times.

Yeah, I mean, it's been floating around for a long time. It's been floating. The idea that maybe he was the source of WikiLeaks, which would absolve all the Russia allegations. Because if they didn't do it, then Seth Rich did it, then how could possibly Russia have colluded or interfered? Right. it, then Seth Rich did it, then how could possibly Russia have colluded or interfered? Right. And so last week, a local Fox affiliate in D.C. ran a story about this

citing Rod Wheeler, who's a legal commentator for Fox, saying he had evidence that Rich might have leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Wheeler later said that Fox told him to say that. He had no real evidence, no info. Debunk the story. Seth Rich's poor, grieving family has been like, sent a cease and desist letter,

said this is not the case, said please stop talking about this. And Sean fucking Hannity and now Newt Gingrich have been floating that this Newt Gingrich called it an assassination. Sean Hannity has been devoting like a segment a night to this thing. So first of all, Dave Weigel in the post wrote a great takedown of all this and how ridiculous it is and how there's just no evidence for any of this. But even the point that Sean Hannity keeps making, which is if Seth Rich leaked the emails, there was no collusion. There were multiple hacks across different places. There's the DNC. There was the DCCC. There was John Podesta. There was a massive operation to hack these emails that goes well beyond Seth Rich. So it's like, first of all, just on its face,

the conspiracy theory doesn't even make any sense. There's no evidence for it whatsoever. And, you know, liberals, we have our nuts that are telling us things we want to hear, but they don't fly in private jets. You know, they don't make tens of millions of dollars. They just don't have the audience. They don't have the massive audience of a Sean Hannity. They aren't the former speaker of the fucking house. It is despicable. It's willful lying to their audience. And like, what's so frustrating is like Fox News is patient zero here. They're the source of the incorrect information. And now they are blasting it all over humanity. These disgusting lies, despite the fact that Seth Rich's family has sent a cease and desist to this creep private

investigator who was not paid by them or hired by them. He was paid by some random Texas businessman who believes in conspiracy theories. And these guys are like Sean Hannity. They're getting in bed and they're aided and abetted by Julian Assange and all these creepy, weird actors. RT, the Russian propaganda network. And they're absolutely fine with finding common cause with these people and spreading something they know to be a lie because it will harm Democrats. Sean Hannity is a very bad person. He's an awful person. Why is Newt Gingrich doing this?

Because he's a washed up piece of garbage masquerading in D.C. in a human suit trying to peddle a book. And like, he's aided and abetted by reporters

who cover the shit he says and book him on Fox News Sunday and these shows. I was going to say, the thing about Newt Gingrich is, yes, he is part of, he is still part of the official Washington club.

He gets the fucking contracts to go on cables. He goes to the cocktail parties. People invite them to their institutes and to different conferences. They make his wife an ambassador. So they can have a bipartisan conference with like, oh, look, Newt Gingrich and some Democrat are getting along. No, no, no. This is not about someone who has like a different theory on fucking tax reform or health care. This is someone who's peddling a dark, awful awful conspiracy theory and he should not be part of polite society

but you just it's just like stop you know but it's it's not unlike benghazi you know which it was that was a tragedy and the state department should have had more security to protect those people period it's also true that the intelligence picture changed about why it happened over time but fox and the right right wing establishment put years and years and years of effort and time and money into exploiting the deaths of American citizens for political gain. But I mean, you made an interesting point. You said Fox is patient zero for this. Like Fox is patient zero for all of this bullshit. They're patient zero for Trump. Like this is why I mean, I just keep thinking about this. Like if whatever percentage of the

country that watch that gets their news from Fox, that gets their news from Rush Limbaugh, who's joined the pod this morning, that gets their news from Breitbart and all these things, it's a critical segment of the population. And as long as they continue to watch these news sources and be fed these conspiracy theories, I don't know how this country gets past what has happened with Trump and stuff like that. I don't know how this country gets past what has happened with Trump and stuff like that. I don't know how to reach those people. We can talk about, you know, going to the Midwest and Democrats honing their message and all this. All that stuff is true. It has to do with globalization, economic inequality and stuff like that. But it's also true that we have a large segment of our media in this country that is feeding poison to a large part of the population. And I don't know how to I don't know how to break that.

Yeah, there's just no the other thing. Well, the thing before the election, there was this feeling like that the Fox News echo chamber was actually hurting them a bit. Right. Because it forces their primaries to the right. It forced them to adopt these crazy positions. They sound crazy. They sound deranged. It doesn't appeal to the majority of the country. And had Trump lost, it would have been the I believe the fifth of six time that a Republican had lost the popular vote. Well, he still did lose the popular vote in the era of Fox News, right? Fox News is good at inoculating millions of people against outside information, but it's not exactly a big tent. But here we are paying the price for the fact that it was a little too close for the comfort. And now their kind of derangement has spread into the White House in this sort of, I don't know, it's just the most depressing thing. That's it. We also have to watch. I mean, there's an interesting question about whether Fox News was a personality-driven organization with the Bill O'Reillys of the world, whether they can maintain their numbers after he's gone, after Roger Ailes is gone, after some of the crusty old

men start getting booted from the place. So far, I think Tucker Carlson's lost a huge piece of the audience share. I think CNN and MSNBC are doing better. So I mean, hopefully there's some hope. But what we've also seen is what were past as news shows like The Five and some of the other terrible programs they have have gotten as bad as the Hannity's of the world. Yeah. No, it is good news that Sean Hannity has slipped to third in the ratings. Sorry, Sean. Sean Hannity!

Can't do it anymore. Sean Hannity slipping to third in the ratings because he's a traitor to his country. Sean! But, you know, it's interesting what you said, Lovett, though. It is hurting the Republican Party, and it may not have hurt them electorally this time around,

and they may have been able to hold on to power for all the various reasons that we've talked about here. But it goes to show that it's hurt the Republican Party, but a damaged Republican Party that is run by conspiracy theorists and lunatics also hurts the Democratic Party and hurts the country overall. We actually need a healthy Republican Party in this country. Right. I mean, look, it's actually hurt their ability to govern, right? all the entire like we we actually need a healthy republican party in this country right i mean look you know it's actually hurt their ability to govern right i mean one consequence of the fact that we've like i was listening like to all the different kind of commentary this morning this was like ponderous look it's interesting the way donald trump's position seemed to have changed once he's entered the white house fascinating the way he no longer refers to them as insane

muslim murder men but now refers to them actually as a faith of peace. Interesting. I wonder why that, well, it's happening because there's an entire apparatus designed to lie to people, demagogue issues, and make it impossible for these people to govern like adults once they reach office.

I mean, that is why Donald Trump was not able to pass a Republican agenda in his first 108. He did not pass one. They could repeal some regulations. He could write some executive orders, but when it came time to govern, there's just no there there there. So this is ultimately in some ways a zero sum game. Right. A an apparatus of communication that hurts the Republican Party is good for Democrats.

But at a certain point, they are just hurting the country. Yeah. I mean, the most annoying thing is when everyone declares that the most recent thing Donald Trump did is a distraction from some other thing he did. But Fox News and these media organizations do create distractions. They create news stories out of nothing like Obama bowing to whomever or the apology tour or the Seth Rich conspiracy. And they distract everyone who's watching their channel from actual news that might impact them personally. That speaks to some sort of grievance, whether it's racial or economic or societal. And I do think it foments this split we've seen in the country and the divide we have. Yeah.

And there is a method to this madness, too, because the reason they're trying to talk about the Seth Rich conspiracy is they're saying, well, if it was the Democrats that actually had someone of one of their own assassinated, which is fucking crazy, then it could there couldn't be collusion between Trump and Russia. Right. So they're trying to, like, undermine the entire investigation with this silly story. But, you know, we'll get polls out in a couple weeks from now that show a good segment of the Republican base believes that there was something to this conspiracy.

And again, there is just no equivalent to this on the left. It does not exist. Rachel Maddow and Nancy Pelosi are not, you know, making up stories. I mean, look, maybe there's a bit of wisdom to Democratic Rush Limbaugh, you know? Maybe there's a little bit of a lesson there. And I think, like, this does all speak to the frustration that everyone in the Clinton orbit has felt for literally decades. Because that woman has been accused of killing Vince Foster and having a hit list and all these things by these same apparatuses. And we almost got numb to it.

Who was one of the people peddling the Vince Foster thing back then? Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich is a horrible human being. He is a disgusting piece of garbage. No one should invite him to any event or listen to him. I don't want to see another goddamn climate change commercial where he's sitting on a fucking couch with Nancy Pelosi. Like, he's gross.

You don't come back from that. You can have extreme policy views that we all disagree with, one thing. But, like, when you're peddling this kind of shit, you're out. I think what Justin Amash wants to do to the country would be terrible. But I believe he's an adult. He's sincere. He cares. He's trying to do...

He's using his position to put forward the policy agenda he believes will help the country. New Congress is just a vicious little creep. I'm going to ship his ass to Rome and get rid of him. Right, right. put forward the policy agenda he believes will help the country. New Congress is just a vicious little creep. I'm going to ship his ass to Rome. Get rid of him. Right, right. That was the point that I think actually Weigel made on Twitter, which is Callista is going to have a nomination hearing to become, I guess, the ambassador to the Vatican

because she's the most qualified person we could find to do that job. Whatever, who cares? It's not a real job. But some of these ambassadorships are not real jobs. It's throwing parties for priests. Whatever. But it's...

What exactly high-flying policymaking do you think the Vatican ambassador is doing? It's a tiny little city full of sexless old men. I don't even want to have this.

I feel like I'm a Twitter straw man getting the crap eaten out of him right now. But the point is, I hope that she gets asked about her husband's absurd rhetoric during the hearing

because she's only nominated because she's married him. Well, that'll be fun. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Is that it? That's it. Do you guys have anything else you want to talk about? Do you want to interject some other topics? I don't know.

No. All right, guys. Well, we'll talk to you on Thursday. Weather on the ones and twos. That's all the time we have for today. Pod Save America America signing off you