Pod Save America - “Fighting words in Des Moines.”

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

The House prepares for the public phase of impeachment, Republicans move towards a defense of foreign interference, and the Democratic candidates make their best case to Iowa voters as the race gets incredibly close. Then Brian Beutler talks to Jon F. about Crooked Media’s new podcast on the impeachment process, Rubicon.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, I'll talk to our own Brian Boiler, who is now also the host of Crooked Media's brand new podcast on the impeachment process, Rubicon. Good. I need that because I'm confused. We are just spitting out pods left and right here, guys. A lot of good stuff. Watch your feet. Pods dropping.

But first, we're going to sort through a lot of news on the impeachment front ourselves and dig into a very busy weekend in the Democratic primary, particularly in Iowa, where caucuses are now less than 100 days away and the general election is now less than a year away. I'm going to throw up. I'm very nauseous. Lovett, how was the show this week? Great, Lovett or leave it. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Ronan Farrow did stop by. I had some tough questions for Ronan about his book, Catch and Kill, including the impressions he does of a certain podcast host who he makes sound like a gay snake. Oh, God. He does impressions of you in the audio book? He does. Oh, what a reason to listen to the audio book. I thought it was just like accents that were discernible like foreign accent well he does uh

the accent of a gay podcast host it sounds like a disney villain leave that right there sounds like i tried to it sounds like i tricked simba into leaving town i'm going to uh i'm going to ask Michael and Jordan to pull that clip for a future pod. Also, a reminder, Election Day 2019 is tomorrow, guys. Election Day. All over the country. That's exciting, at least. Tuesday, November 5th. If you haven't done so already, go to votesaveamerica.com

to find your polling station and make a plan to vote. This election is especially important if you live in Virginia, where Democrats have an opportunity to flip the legislature so that we have full Democratic control in Virginia, which means they can draw new congressional district lines in 2020 and unfuck the gerrymanders there. And, you know, also pass things like higher minimum wage, gun control, the Equal Rights Amendment, all kinds of great stuff.

So it's very important. Please go out tomorrow and cast your ballot. All right. Let's get to the news, guys. By the way, it's great to see you both. We haven't been here in a while. I've been gone for two weeks. My boys are back.

I don't live here anymore. I don't think. Tommy's been in Iowa. He's like Kamala Harris. He said,'t think. Tommy's been in Iowa. He's been. You know. He's like Kamala Harris. He said, fuck it. I'm moving to Iowa. I wish. Dude's got to go.

Dude's got to go to Iowa. All right. As soon as next week, House Democrats may begin holding public hearings on impeachment. And this week, they have already begun to release the transcripts of the testimony they've heard so far. week. They have already begun to release the transcripts of the testimony they've heard so far. They started today, among others, with former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. New polls from NBC and The Wall Street Journal and ABC and The Washington Post show that 49% of Americans believe that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while between

46% and 47% disagree. That is much higher public support for Trump's impeachment than Bill Clinton's or even Richard Nixon's until right before he resigned. Trump's approval rating also fell to some of its lowest levels in both the Post poll and a new Fox News poll. Of course, we know the picture is much closer and better for Trump in the battleground states that will decide to 2020. and better for Trump in the battleground states that will decide 2020. We received a reminder of that this morning when the New York Times and Siena College released a series of swing state polls in six states that will decide the election and showed it way, way too close between Trump and three of the top Democratic candidates, Biden, Sanders, and Warren. So guys, to start off, candidates, Biden, Sanders, and Warren. So guys, to start off, I should also say that we have a poll in the field right now with our friends at Change Research on messaging around impeachment that will give us even more detail. We'll be talking about that later this week. But overall,

how much do you think those impeachment numbers that I just read are movable? And what can Democrats do to move them or at least keep them steady as they start to plan and strategize around this very public phase of impeachment? I think that the numbers are hopeful, right? I mean, they have moved. People are, despite the fact that Fox News has a grip on the Republican Party, despite the fact that Sinclair Broadcasting has probably bought up half the TV stations in the key swing states. And that's part of why we're so screwed here. Sorry, I woke up feeling like Nate Cohn from The Upshot punched me in the face. I'm sure he's a very nice person, but those polls were brutal to read this morning. But there's another poll out by Ann Seltzer, a great pollster out of Iowa with Grinnell College, where they asked,

is it okay for political candidates in the US to ask for assistance from a foreign government to help them win an election? 7% said yes. 81% said it's not okay. So I think we need to continue to tell that story publicly. My guess is some people in the country have heard a lot about what's happening in Washington in the impeachment inquiry. Most have not heard much, especially these swing voters who we really need to win back. So that gives me hope that we can educate them through a public hearing process. It's going to take a lot of work though. Yeah. I mean, the country is basically evenly divided on the question of Donald Trump's impeachment and removal, and we haven't had a public hearing. So we're in a kind of, it's my catchphrase, liminal space between.

I haven't heard you say that before. Between a lot of kind of process and revelation and confusing information about private hearings versus public hearings. Information being leaked, damning transcripts, Trump's rebuttals, Fox News, and some of his intellectuals and bonies going hard to protect him. And that has led to a kind of even split inside the country. What happens when we go to public hearings? And for the first time, we hear some of this out loud, you know, on on the television, leading the nightly news, leading the leading the coverage. I just I just don't think we know. I know this has been portrayed as a trial right hearings

ultimately a trial in the Senate all that kind of stuff I do think that Democrats in the House should view this as a show they are putting on a show here and and look I should say all evidence so far points to the fact that they are they are treating it like this Adam Schiff's treating it like this Nancy Pelosi's treating it like this but this has to be these hearings have to be choreographed for maximum drama and maximum effect and look you know the democrats are talking about which witnesses they're going to they're going to call and colonel vinman and bill taylor and some of these sort of non-partisan public officials got a war hero in there right like they you know they're they're trying to figure out who are the most going to be the most compelling witnesses to call

i think the one challenge they're going to face is the republicans are going their strategy is to make this a partisan circus absolutely and to make this whole thing seem as partisan as possible and they're going to yell and scream when they can yell and scream and they're going to scream about process. And I think the Democrats on the committee have to keep in mind those voters that Tommy, you and I were talking about on the Thursday pod, the people who support the impeachment inquiry, but don't support removing him yet. those people are probably voters who do not pay as much of attention to any of this stuff as we do. They are probably more moderate voters. They are probably voters who don't love excessive partisanship as much. And I think the Democrats really need to treat this. They need to be sober. They need to talk about the facts. They need to not let the Republicans draw them into having some big fight on national television. Let Devin Nunes and all those House Republicans look like fucking maniacs on TV. And I think the Democrats on the committee should be

calm and collected and just stick with the facts. Yeah, I think that's right. I also I also do think political coverage in general is inaccessible in a fundamental way, in that the vast majority of coverage does not give you a previously on the news, you know. And so these public hearings are an opportunity to reset for people that have heard a lot, but maybe not internalized a lot of very complicated and important information delivered through filters that are constantly, you know, muddying it up and making it as sort of opaque as possible because you're presented with facts and you're presented with the Democratic take on the facts and you're presented with a fabricated critique of the facts.

And so I do think that these public hearings are the, you know, a reset where we should have a very simple, very clear laying out of what happened, why it was wrong, why it's important that we hold Trump accountable, that we talk about this soon, but this is where the Republicans are going to land, is why this is not only wrong, not only inappropriate, but impeachable. Yes. And this is very hard because what is impeachable? We've talked about this a million times is subjective. It was designed to be subjective by the founders, not completely subjective. Right. They had some some some guardrails around it but um democrats need to make the case that donald trump's abuse of power his his many abuses of power if they go down that road um make him unfit for the presidency and require him to be removed from office yeah i we i agree with love it we have to make the simplest, clearest argument we possibly can. I think we probably need to move away from this quid pro quo cul-de-sac and stop sweating that terminology. And then this is very difficult, but we need to make the case that impeachment does not require a crime. High crimes and misdemeanors doesn't actually mean a criminal act.

misdemeanors doesn't actually mean a criminal act. You have to go back to the founders and the way they talked about it at the time, but it can mean abuse of power. It can mean just being horrible at the job. It can mean a whole bunch of things. And we need to explain that to the American people and make them understand that this president is so egregiously abused the power that he was given by the voters, frankly, that it's worth tearing him out of Washington, D.C. and creating this disruptive process that you're right, John, I think that they're probably most of the country's probably predisposed to thinking that that's a terrible outcome. Shall I read from the founders, please? Okay, name one. George Mason. Okay. During the debate over the impeachment clause said this in defending the clause against a bunch of 29 year old know nothings are coming in with some dumb arguments rt if you agree he's like but it's just like

to argue with ben franklin ben franklin i'm 80 years old what am i doing here but anyway george mason said shall the man who has practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt? It's a simple idea, which is the powers of the presidency are vast. And if you can use them to keep the presidency and evade punishment because we have no means to hold the president accountable, we have no means to hold the president accountable. The president is above the law. And it is as clear as day in the founding of the country that this is what impeachment is for you can't rig the next

election and say oh the the voters should sort this out right like well that that's the problem that to me is the is the best argument here and joe biden like a month ago tweeted out a line that was like i believe the american people should choose the next president, not foreign governments. Right. And it's a very, very simple line. But I think that is one that will resonate with a lot of people. This idea that foreign influence in our elections, which George Washington worried about, the founders worried about, happened in 2016. trying to do it again. And so Republicans are not making great arguments right now, to say the least. But if you wanted to make a good argument, you would say, okay, maybe what he did was very wrong. We have this election in just a couple of months, or less than a year from now. Why don't we wait till that election? And if people truly believe he did something wrong, they'll vote him out then. And the answer to that has to be, we no longer have a guarantee that that is going to be a free and fair election

because the president united states are using the vast powers of his office to make sure that it is rigged in his favor by asking foreign governments to help him out right we forget how close this was to working right we you know this may have all this could have just worked and it's also worth remembering too that this that the call took place what days, days after, or even the next day after Mueller testified and Trump thought he did a mediocre job, so felt he was off the hook. Trump is a very simple creature. He felt emboldened because he thought he had beaten Mueller. And so he went right back to his dirty tricks. And if he feels emboldened because he overcomes this investigation, there's no telling what he will do to try to rig the election. Where are you guys on whether Democrats should focus exclusively on the Ukraine scandal

and keep the impeachment hearings on a relatively tight timeline versus sort of explore some of the other abuses of power, whether it's, you know, his obstruction of justice, his campaign finance crimes, his profiting off the presidency. Some have even pointed to the undermining of the Affordable Care Act as a place where you could find an access point to an impeachable offense. What do you guys think? I struggle with this a bit. I mean, I am worried about it feeling like a kitchen sink strategy. We just throw everything at him. But then I remember that, you know, he did commit a campaign finance violation by covering up the Stormy Daniels allegations.

And that should be vetted and understood by the American people. And then, you know, I also have felt like bringing in, you know, Mueller's work might just make people feel like this is all, you know, the two things are related somehow and that we're just, again, throwing everything we can at Donald Trump. But then I started reading some of the 302 forms, the FBI forms that BuzzFeed got through FOIA, and Trump clearly told his team to get Hillary Clinton's emails. And General Flynn, later his national security advisor, said he would ask intelligence sources to help him do it. So there's clearly some criminal activity happening all over the place. They are actually a piece of the same puzzle.

We could probably tell a bigger story about that criminality if we did talk about these things. But I'm genuinely torn. Yeah, I am too. You know, when I saw some of these revelations from these documents, I found myself thinking, why should we not take them seriously simply because of Barr's ability to spin the Mueller report and Mueller's and some of Mueller's odd choices as well, inure us to the to the crimes that Trump already has committed. At the same time, though, I'm also just very well aware of the fact that we are steeped in this Ukraine story. We are steeped in what the Mueller report represented. We understand it. We're at the beginning of trying to explain the most serious, biggest, ongoing crimes of Trump's presidency. The idea of adding to that the challenge of going back and explaining a whole bunch of others, I don't know. I just don't

know. I think that the Ukraine scandal should be the primary focus because it is the easiest story to understand but not just because of that but because of what we were just saying it is happening now there's new revelations there's new revelations and it can affect the uh sanctity of the 2020 elections right and so there is a there is a immediate threat to this. But part of what we're going to have to prove, because what Republicans are going to go to is, well, this was, you know, Trump really cares about corruption in Ukraine, right? We'll talk about all the excuses in a bit.

And so, yes, exactly. We have to prove intent. We have to prove that this is part of a long-running pattern, that Trump has abused his power. And I think what happened before the election, what happened after he was in office and obstructed Mueller, what he's been doing by profiting off the presidency are all of a piece that this man has been corrupt from the start and tried to cheat from the start and tried to get foreign

assistance to help win from the start. And he's done it over and over and over again. And I think so I think I think it should be ancillary to the to the main focus on start. And he's done it over and over and over again. And I think, so I think it should be ancillary to the main focus on Ukraine, but I think you should bring them in to start prove the pattern. Just one, just the counterpoint to that is that this intent frame, knowing his mental state at the time,

that is part of a legal argument, right? They're arguing that because they were trying to argue it wasn't a legal act because there was no corrupt intent. In the sense, you could say that us focusing on that intent is buying into their frame and setting an even higher bar from impeachment than, as Lovett read for us, than the founders intended. So I use the word intent. I didn't mean to actually use it in the legal sense because I do not think we should buy into the legal frame.

I do not think we should buy into the legal frame. I think part of the problem with the Mueller stuff was that everyone was a professional lawyer suddenly, and they were all trying to prove a certain crime. I'm talking about the court of public opinion here. And I think for people sitting at home to buy that Trump didn't just have a one-off with Ukraine here, but has been corrupt for quite a while and has been intending to do this for quite a while, I think for public opinion, it's important. I don't really care about the legal case. Yeah, I, I agree with that. I also think too, it's like we're stepping back and remembering that there is no one making an intent argument on planet Earth in good faith. No, there is no human being Trump included his lawyers, Hugh Hewitt, anyone. There's no person who believes Donald Trump has a passion for fighting corruption in Eastern Europe. Like there is no one who has ever bought that for even a second.

I don't know, though. Certainly none of the people making that argument. I think some of the people watching Fox News and listening to Hugh Hewitt might believe that the more they're told that. That's what I'm worried about. Yeah. I mean, look, you're right that the makers of the argument are complete fucking bullshit the republican senators are going to try to cling to this little fig leap of intent to say that it wasn't a criminal act and that's how they'll absolve him in the senate that's i think the play they're making well so republicans are already spinning

to axios that a victory for them is party unity so that they can claim this entire thing was a purely partisan exercise. And, you know, two different Sunday show hosts were asking their Democratic guests, first question to the Democratic guests, why are you moving forward with this if it can't be bipartisan? So how do Democrats deal with this? What is victory look like for us, knowing as we do, and as we've said many many times that we think the likelihood of him being convicted and removed from office is very very low yeah i mean i think it's also worth it's worth remembering too that like the views on the impeachment inquiry itself are an important marker for how the facts and

information are being received but no impeachment inquiry will be on any ballot right so i mean they're going to try to make this about process because they're very uncomfortable talking about are being received, but no impeachment inquiry will be on any ballot. Right. So, I mean, they're going to try to make this about process because they're very uncomfortable talking about the substance because the substance is damning and unequivocal. And so I think for Democrats, it's about not getting tied around the axle on these Republican arguments around process, which we should note flipped in a day from there should be public hearings to now there's going to be show trials in the House, right? Like, you know, private hearings are illegitimate, but public hearings are illegitimate. It's a it's an illegitimate partisan process because we won't participate and we won't

participate because it's an illegitimate partisan process. You know, again and again, they're going to there's no argument to be made against the Republicans here. We have to simply lay out the substance of what Donald Trump did as cogently and simply as possible, because what we have seen in the past four weeks or however long it's been, six years, 500 years, I'm not sure, of this impeachment inquiry, that Republicans feel okay attacking Adam Schiff, attacking the process. They feel very uncomfortable when they're asked questions about the substance of what Donald Trump did. Yeah, I mean, facts aren't partisan. Ethics aren't partisan. That frame from the Sunday show hosts, I don't know who said it or who asked those questions, but it's stupid in my opinion. I mean, we know that Trump is like buying off Republican senators votes by having fundraisers for them.

Hmm. Yeah, it seems kind of unethical. We know that Trump's plan and the Republican Party's plan is to attack the whistleblower and try to claim that this person, whether or not they know who it is, is a John Brennan, Susan Rice acolyte who had just been playing a very, very long game, waiting it out to take down Trump, right? Like their attacks are bad faith bullshit. We have to focus on the facts and not give a shit what anyone on the Sunday show thinks about needing a bipartisan vote. It's irrelevant. As you said in the top, like we're telling a story to the American people here. Yeah, I think Democrats, the answers weren't great either, by the way, from the Democrats on the Sunday shows.

But I think we should just say, look, we we can't force Republican senators to listen to their conscience, right? All we can do as Democrats, and one of the reasons we're doing this hearing and this impeachment process is what we can do is force every Republican politician in Congress to go on the record with whether they're cool with the president of the United States extorting foreign governments for help with his re-election. That's all we can do. Everyone should be on on the record and then the voters can make the choice in november based on that and i think we cannot fall into the trap of and look this is why we criticized nancy pelosi way back when for saying oh i don't want to do impeachment unless it's bipartisan right like the republican party right now the price of admission in the republican party is full 100 loyalty to donald trump right i mean so therefore by definition if you are

critical of donald trump as a republican you don't get to be really part of the republican party anymore look at justin amash he got kicked out it is bipartisan already it is bipartisan right justin amash is a republican he was forced out of the he was purged from the party because he wasn't 100 loyal to donald trump John Kasich thinks there should be impeachment. He's basically been excommunicated from the party, right? Every Republican out there, look at all the Republican strategists, all the Never Trumpers on Twitter. The governors in blue states. Right.

Any single person in the Republican Party who has disagreed at all with Donald Trump is shunned. Look what's happening with Mitt Romney, right? So by definition, there's no way that we can hope for some kind of bipartisan outcome it's not on democrats to fucking get republicans on board it is on republicans to let us know whether they are okay with the president extorting foreign governments yeah i think that's right john but i just saw i think that's right but i saw it this weekend and i'm like this is where it's gone next this is where it's this is when the media falls for this bullshit all what it reminds me of it reminds me look you, when Democrats were trying to pass Obamacare, there was a long dance to try to get several more moderate Republicans on board with some kind of a bill. Months and months of negotiations.

It delayed it, I think, for the better part of a year trying to get Republicans on board. The culmination is a center-left moderate proposal that brings in market-based ideas, that brings in ideas from the Heritage Foundation, that delicately balances the benefits to try to keep the cost down, all of that to try to get some kind of bipartisan basis for this bill. But what Mitch McConnell said from the beginning, what Republicans understood from the beginning, was that in Washington, if Republicans are obstinate, Republicans obstruct, then when there is partisan warfare and bills are voted on on a party line basis, that doesn't show you that there's something wrong with the Republican approach. That shows you that Washington is broken, that both sides are failing to come together. And it was very effective.

It was effective. It was incredibly effective. That's why he won the midterms. Yeah. Ask Merrick Garland. And it still works. And the Washington press corps plays along with that. So that's just, you know, I mean, I think. I mean, I saw analysis on the vote, right? won the midterms yeah and ask mary carland yeah and and and the and the washington press court plays along with that so that's just you know i mean i think i mean i saw analysis on the

vote right there's a house vote uh uh to uh go to the public phase in impeachment uh taking on the precedents from previous impeachments republicans uh vote no on bank democrats basically stay together they lose two people and what does it show you about the state of the impeachment inquiry it shows you that we're very divided. It shows the Republican Party is a cult. It's a cult of Trump. And when Mitt Romney dared to criticize Donald Trump, Donald Trump said he should be impeached for the sin of criticizing Donald Trump. That's where we are. Sadly for Donald Trump, that is not an option for U.S. senators, but we'll correct him later.

So we talked about this a little, but on Friday, the Washington Post reported that some Senate Republicans are weighing a strategy where they acknowledge that trump threatened to withhold aid to ukraine until their government announced an investigation of joe biden and his son but argue that it's not impeachable uh and they've offered a few different reasons why this is different than the process stuff you were talking about love it now they're getting into the substance uh one quid pro quos are normal in foreign policy two the investigation wasn't about the bidens it was just about corruption and three ukraine ended up getting the aid and they never announced the investigation wasn't about the biden's it was just about corruption and three ukraine ended up getting the aid and they never announced the investigation yeah um so look i walked into

the liquor store with my gun i didn't end up using it so everything i was caught yeah i was caught so i couldn't there was a cop there yeah i broke the knee but it got better so trump responded to the story last night by saying uh and tweeting false stories are being reported that a few republican senators are saying that president trump may have done a quid pro quo but it doesn't matter there's nothing wrong with that it is not an impeachable event perhaps so but read the transcript there is no quid pro quo uh he also said the democrats will be releasing fraudulent transcripts of witness deposition so crazy he's in a different place well even even his like even his closest defenders in the house said that the doctoring the transcripts comment

was madness madness you get to go like a court appointed reporter uh takes the transcript and then the person whose testimony is being represented in that transcript goes in and signs off on it i believe it's all done under oath it's like that is batshit crazy conspiracy theory stuff so how do democrats handle all of these arguments do they pick them apart one by one the substance of this pick them apart one by one well that's gonna take a that's gonna take a day that's gonna take you'll tell you you spent donald trump tweets something insane that he thinks of on the toilet in five minutes you spent two hours unpacking it you're three fucking arguments behind well forget about trump's arguments are, I mean, are completely crazy.

But like, let's start with Tommy, you know, the quid pro quos in foreign policy are normal. Yeah, that's why I like this sort of definitional cul-de-sac is annoying because yes, quid pro quos in foreign policy are normal, but the quo is not helping your reelection campaign, right? So that's why we're sort of stuck in these dumb definitional fights like we were with what is collusion, right? So that's why we're sort of stuck in these dumb definitional fights like we were with what is collusion, right? I think that ultimately, if like nine Republicans land on saying what he did was wrong and not impeachable, I actually think that really helps us in terms of the public argument phase of this and convincing these moderate Republicans out in the world who

don't know much about the story that what Trump did was wrong and that he shouldn't be elected. I would be fine with that. My goal in this process is not to get Donald Trump removed from office by the Senate. I don't think we're going to get there. But I think that them leaning into him doing the wrong thing would be pretty helpful. Yeah. I mean, no president has ever just engaged in a foreign policy decision purely. I mean, some foreign policy decisions are you know good for the country and the president's view and also probably good for that president politically absolutely no one most are most are right no one is engaged in foreign policy that

is just purely specifically for help with your re-election campaign i'm literally doing this just so i can help with my election campaign and the way we and and that goes to the second one which it wasn't about the bidens it was about corruption like donald trump cut foreign aid that was going towards cleaning up corruption in multiple countries there are no other countries where there are way more corrupt countries than ukraine that he has never asked for investigations to clamp corruption and even within ukraine there are a whole bunch of other corrupt things going on in ukraine and he didn't pay attention to any of them he never mentioned a word about any of them except for the

one company that happened to employ joe biden's son yeah i don't i don't think it was on the level just it's absurd on its face and and the whole ukraine ukraine ended up getting the aid and they never announced investigation you know you said obviously he released the aid right after the whistleblower complaint came out right after after the news of the whistleblower complaint existed so he got caught and then he released the aid and by the way zelensky announced that they were going to go back and review uh barisma the investigation into barisma so he did get the fucking announcement also they did do it one thing we're also learning forget what was happening publicly we know that once that after this call uh uh and on several other occasions the white house erupted because

because there were so many voices inside of the administration and the National Security Council, nonpartisan people objecting. Right. So, you know, Trump Trump went into this, you know, and his and his and he started getting abandoned from inside the White House because what he was doing was so pathological and unprecedented. So, you know, the idea that like, oh, you know, he didn't ever actually go, you know, he he they didn't ever fill up his bags with dollar signs with money. Well, yeah, like half his crew left. Right. Well, that's and this goes back to sort of telling the larger story. Trump wants it to be about one call, one call. Right. Like Democrats have and I think they're doing this with all the witnesses.

Democrats have to make the case that this is a government wide conspiracy that went from Donald Trump throughout the White House to the upper levels of the State Department, the political appointees at the State Department, the Justice Department, right? Like this is a concerted effort to basically extort a foreign government purely to help the President of the United States election. Yeah, Brian Boitler made this point on Twitter, and I think it's actually a good one, which is, when did the Ukraine scandal begin? It's hard to think about. Like, when is the actual moment that this idea was hatched? And you really can't pinpoint it. Well, we found out in some of the 302s that Tommy mentioned from the Mueller report that Paul Manafort, months before the election, was pushing the theory to people on the Trump campaign that it was actually Ukraine that interfered in the election and not Russia. And you know how hard it is for Donald Trump to make a new memory at this point? You have to fucking say it to him eight times.

Eight times Paul Manafort must have had to say it for it to kind of gel in there yeah this madness was seeded early and there's some question of whether constantine kalimnik who is the guy who worked for paul manafort in ukraine who is seen as a tie to russian intelligence was the one who gave the idea to manafort in the first place so god damn it damn it. And there's a great story in the Post this week about how Trump's sort of dislike of Ukraine goes back to when he first took office because he thinks the Ukrainians

screwed him somehow. Because Paul Manafort told him. And so he said, well, if they want to get into my good graces, they have to do a favor. We just know, look, he will go to his deathbed feeling aggrieved that he lost the popular vote and will look for anything to any flailing conspiracy theory to prove that his election was legitimate i think it's that simple that's right

all right let's talk about 2020 which which is now less than a year away. And with less than 100 days until the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic candidates were in Des Moines over the weekend for the Liberty and Justice Celebration Dinner, just after a brand new poll from the New York Times and Siena College showed Elizabeth Warren leading the field in Iowa at 22 percent, followed by Bernie Sanders at 19 percent, Pete Buttigieg at 18%, and Joe Biden at 17%. Very close among the top four candidates. Tommy, you were there. We will talk about the speeches in a minute, but this event is always a big test of a campaign's organization. So who did well on that front? Who didn't? What did you see on the ground there um so i think inside the stadium itself pete probably had the biggest uh presence in the arena they reportedly filled like 12 sections at the

wells fargo arena which looked huge and his people had these bracelets that lit up in unison during key applause line so it was it was a serious organization warren was out there as well they had a big impressive visibility outside and inside the arena. They were also everywhere in the arena signing up voters. The Warren team was. So I tweeted out a photo. I watched this Warren field organizer sprint up to the Leinenkugel beer area and start trying to sign up the three people behind the counter who were selling beer. Another Warren field organizer was signing up the janitor who was next to us.

They were everywhere and talking to voters. It was, it was impressive. Kamala also had like a big, impressive field team and advanced work in the stadium. And they had a big raucous section. So I think those were some of the, those are the highlights.

What about the, what about the lower lights? Well, I mean, Biden seemed like there were some sec, like, so I was in the arena early and i went to a section just to check out what it looked like and all over those seats were uh biden placards and thunder

sticks that said beat him like a drum and later when i went back to that section they had all been taken away and thrown in the trash so it seems like they couldn't fill all the sections they'd purchased which is probably not a great sign and then the other sort of odd thing is that Bernie Sanders didn't bring his supporters into the stadium. They had a different party somewhere down, it just felt like, once again, they don't want to play the game. And it only hurts him, at least optically in the room. him at least optically in the room yeah because you you would imagine that if bernie had a bunch of a whole section of all the cheering supporters that were at that other party then people i mean look no one sounds big yeah i was gonna say no one likes to admit that the perception of these things among people is a lot of times based on like crowd size and the and the cheers that you get at these events but that's sort of the way it is right and the and the and the cheers that you get at these events but that's sort of the way it is right and the bernie people know that i mean they did 20 000 plus uh at a

rally in queens with aoc and then a couple yesterday i think they had 10 000 plus in minnesota with ilhan omar like those are big badass awesome crowd events i just keep wondering when they're going to do those in iowa now that he announced i went to b Bernie's pre-rally, which was like great and focused on labor and impressive. And he announced that that AOC was going to come to Iowa and do events with him. So maybe, you know, they'll get there, but it's like you have 13,500 Democrats in a room. I would put on my best possible show for them. All right. So let's talk about the speeches. And we have a few clips from the leading contenders. Let's play a clip from Pete's speech,enders. Let's play a clip from Pete's speech and then let's play a clip from Warren's speech right after and then we can talk about both of

those candidates. We will fight when we must fight, but I will never allow us to get so wrapped up in the fighting that we start to think fighting is the point. The point is what lies on the other side of the fight. And what lies on the other side of that fight is the hope of an American experience defined not by exclusion, but by belonging. That is what we are here for, whoever. This is a time of crisis. And media pundits, Washington insiders, even some people in our own party, don't want to admit it. They think that running some fake campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe. But if the most weakly promised is business as usual after Donald Trump, then Democrats will lose.

We win when we offer solutions big enough to touch the problems that are in people's lives so i thought that um i thought that those two candidates had the sharpest messages um of of any of the candidates and they were messages essentially for each other yeah it was i think it was the sharpest argument pete's made and i thought it was one of the sharpest and not the sharpest argument elizabeth warren has made in this campaign they were aimed at each other there's more to the warren clip that it really felt like they had seen each other's speeches in advance because it was about you know if you it was some version of if you if you don't understand that we're in a fight you're not going to win that fight.

What did you think, Tommy? Yeah. I mean, so when I first watched Pete's speech in the room, they had been pushing this narrative so hard of Obama comparison that I kind of watched it through that framework, which it's, it's funny. It's like, it's not a fair comparison to make for any of those speakers. Cause Barack Obama is one of the best speakers the parties had had. You could give Mayor Pete Obama's voice and nothing else, right? It would probably improve the speech. But I watched it again this morning. It was a very good speech. It had a clear message, it had a clear argument. You can tell what his strategy was. I also think they put on a show and people in the room were really impressed impressed so i talked to a bunch of folks

just sort of walking around the arena who supported all kinds of different people and many of them mentioned pete's speech and they thought it was pretty strong so there were a lot of comparisons being made by some of the campaigns to obama's jj in 2007 and um partly because it was a big breakout moment for us and it helped sort of change the direction of the primary. So they wanted that comparison. And it struck me that Obama's speech in 2007 had three main themes to it. Changing Washington, showing political courage,

and bringing the country together. And both Pete and Warren hit the first theme about changing washington pete hit the theme about bringing the country together and warren hit the theme about showing political courage fighting and that's where they diverge and it was interesting that back in 07 obama was able to deliver a message that said both we can't be we have to be courageous we can't rely on poll tested slogans i mean it's so funny obama's line was you know the same old washington textbook campaigns just won't do in this election um you know telling people what they we think they want to hear instead of telling people what they need to hear just won't do right and warren's as we just heard was like

i'm not running some consultant driven campaign where we're too afraid to say we believe it. Warren's really echoed Obama's there. But then Pete's echoed Obama's when it was, what kind of country do we want after Donald Trump? I thought his best line was, which he's used before, the purpose of the presidency is not the glorification of the president. It's the unification of the country. Right. And Pete is speaking to a very real desire among the electorate even the democratic electorate to not have to engage in perpetual partisan warfare all the time elizabeth warren is speaking to a very real desire in the electorate

to fucking not be afraid to fight and change a system that is not working for people very well. And it's fascinating. And I'm fascinated to see, you know, which one of those arguments went out. Yeah. I also think, too, if you sat the two of them down together and had a conversation about actual change and electioneering and hard politics, there's probably more alignment there. And so really what we're hearing is, I think, more of an articulation of a message about change that they believe is most effective to win people over. You know, when Pete says, you know, it's about what comes after the fight, honestly, as someone just sort of an observer of politics, I just think, well, there's no point after the fight. Not really. I mean, I understand the tilting toward unity, towards harmony. I get the value of that. I get the importance of a

president who appeals to everybody. But once you won the election, you're either going to be fighting like fucking hell or you're going to be losing. And I think that's sort of what Elizabeth Warren is articulating. What Pete, I think, is saying underneath that is she is someone who is seen as polarizing, as antagonistic to people that we need to win. I won't be. So it's, I think, underneath the optimistic argument is, and I'm not saying this in a critical way, is a more cynical argument to voters saying, I know you like her. I know you like the fight. That's not how we're actually going to win. And we have to win. Yeah. I don't even know if it's cynical. Maybe that's the wrong word. Yeah. I mean, I just, I think there's...

Hard-nosed, let's say. How about that? Like, I think he's making an argument that it's not just about, like, fight. Because he also said, you know, you need to have fight sometimes, too, right? You almost need to get to specifics of the policies and the substance, because like you said, Pete burst onto the scene talking about how, you know, Republicans have sort of held Democratic norms hostage and we need to reform the Supreme Court and reform the filibuster and all the stuff that we've been talking about that we like. Right. So Pete sort of intuitively gets that. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren has like co-sponsored bills with Republicans during her years in the Senate to try to get stuff done. Right. So both of them are a little like that. More like like you said, more like the other one than they probably admit right now. But they're clearly both trying to, you know, be in their own lanes there.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think if you watch her speech and you just have like buzzword takeaways, it would be big structural change, big ideas and fighting. And I thought her speech got stronger as it went on. At the beginning, she did this sort of longer story about toasters and houses catching fire and how that compared to mortgage. And I just thought that was a little too low energy for the room. I agree. But when she got to the part at the end where fear and complacency does not win elections and the consultant-driven campaign, the place lit up. And like anyone who comes on the stage and tells you they can make change without a fight, like that got the

place rocking. And so, you know, there are two different theories of the case. I mean, I do think Pete is selling himself as more of a moderate uniter and she wants to blow up the system, maybe not as much as Bernie Sanders, but pretty close. I think what I found interesting about the way Warren started is she didn't start by yelling. She started in a kind of very conversational way. And she told that story. And it is a story that attacks one of the central weaknesses of her candidacy, right? This idea that, you know, you know, she's, she's setting her sights too high, she's too far to the left, but she articulates from beginning to end a simple, elegant story that begins with toasters catching on fire and ends with her creating a federal agency. And I found that I found that really compelling. And, you know,

not as a pundit, as a voter, when I got to the end of Elizabeth Warren's speech, she talked about hope and courage. I was moved. I was I was excited. I was amped up by someone who was articulating my feelings about where we are in this moment, a feeling of emergency and crisis. And, you know, I agree with that towards the end. But that's why I and look, I know why she started with that story. And I still believe that it's going to be a really important argument for her down the road, especially when she's getting a debate with Pete and Biden, to say, this is not pie in the sky. Look, I created a federal agency. What did you do? Right. That's a very important argument for her. But one of the things I've my one worry about Warren's message has been that it's not it, but it's so focused on that

that it doesn't talk about all of the other big issues. And starting with a story about a toaster at a big event like that, I think, plays into that issue. Yeah, the beginning didn't land for me. I thought she gave a good speech and that it got there and it got to a good place. I do think, you know, she was also trying to make an electability argument, which was,

we don't win by going small and trimming our sales. We win by going big and putting huge solutions forward that actually address the problems people have, which was well done and well said. Yeah. And by the way, I thought Pete, in articulating his defense of Medicare for all who wanted and for his was the biggest, He is really trying to do something very difficult, which we've talked about a long time, which is grounding a more moderate set of policies in a larger, big vision for the country. And I think this speech was really successful at doing it. It was the it was truly, I think, one of the best, if not the best speech I've ever seen. Well, and partly because they're not that moderate. best if not the best speeches i've ever seen well and partly because they're not that moderate right like you yes you can say they're more moderate but like every single one of these

candidates including joe biden which are about to play a clip of next um they all they're all proposing policies more progressive than barack obama and and mostly more progressive than hillary clinton in 2016 and we've sort of gotten a little far away from that i will say pete has gotten better and better at speaking and he was very confident up there and it's clear like they had practiced and they went in and they wrote something specifically tailored for this event. I also think though, like there's been a lot of talk about Biden versus Pete. I think that the Warren people are starting to look at Pete and get a little worried that he just went on a big bus tour right after that speech. And like, he's getting huge crowds. He's getting a look from a lot of people. Like there's some very

clear momentum on that campaign that's been building for a while yeah all right speaking of joe biden let's hear a clip from his speech we have got to we have got to beat this man it's not enough it's not enough that we just need him we've got to beat him soundly so we ever got knows we are not going back to a time when another president like him can hold that office. And we must beat him. And I will beat him like a drum

if I'm going to nominate. And he knows it. I want to start by praising the end of Joe Biden's speech in which he talked about get up and he was really invested in what he was saying. And he was and he was, I thought, the most the strongest I've seen him in any forum in a long time, arguing for kind of optimism, arguing for Americans, Americans,

America solving their problems. And it's it's an argument he's made before, but I thought he did it really, really well. I'm starting with the compliment because I thought the rest of the speech was a mess. And it actually part of the reason I was, I think, so receptive to Elizabeth Warren's ending, where she talked about hope and courage is because Biden said something in the speech that I found incredibly frustrating at this point in the fight against Donald Trump, which he said some version of the only thing that stands in our way is Donald Trump. And then I just think is not true. It's just not true. Well, in fact, he said, once Donald Trump's out of the way, we got a clear path to everything. And it's just like- What are you talking about? That is simply, it fundamentally doesn't understand the moment

that we're in and it is incredibly frustrating. And that's what I wanted to say about that. Yeah. The end of the speech was definitely stronger. He had a line near the very end that was like, the next president has to be ready on day one. You can't have on the job training. And I was like, Oh, that's a compelling, uh, message for Joe Biden. That makes sense with, you know, understanding who he is and his background, his record and the general electorate's, uh, abject terror about Donald Trump getting reelected, right? It's an electability argument as well. But the beginning of it was, it felt all over the place. The delivery was kind of off. He was sort of pacing too fast in the circle.

At one point he was talking about school shootings and he leaned over and said, hey honey, how are you? Or something like that. And it was just weird. He didn't have much of a presence in the room and that it manifests in a lack of applause and a lack of enthusiasm from supporters. It just like it wasn't a it wasn't a bad speech. Like I think people didn't watch it and think, oh, he's terrible. But I didn't think he did a lot for himself. Good speeches tell a story and make an argument. Pete Buttigieg's speech did that. Elizabeth Warren's speech did that.

Joe Biden's speech was basically his stump speech and i said this before i saw anyone's speeches on thursday on that pod that like the people i'm not gonna look too too kindly on the people who just go and give their stump at the liberty and justice and i heard that from people in iowa like they didn't they said to me don't show up and give your stump like don't do the same shit and the same story same jokes we want to hear a sharpened argument for why you're gonna win and we know because his campaign makes the case sometimes when he doesn't that joe biden has an argument joe biden has an argument for why he should be president right like you you talked about the on the job training right like we've noticed we've noticed it from him in different

moments and debates like there is a coherent argument that exists for joe biden and his candidacy and i think look maybe he doesn't maybe maybe the feelings of joe biden and his candidacy and i think look maybe he doesn't maybe maybe the feelings of joe biden among a large enough part of the democratic electorate are enough right the feelings of goodwill towards him over the last eight years are enough to carry him to the nomination perhaps um but he has not really made the case yet in in a really sharp way and he didn't i don't think during the dinner joe biden's candidacy has not really made the case yet in a really sharp way. And he didn't, I don't think, during the dinner. Joe Biden's candidacy has not been helped by Joe Biden as a candidate. It just hasn't.

I'm like, I'm getting very, it's a very frustrating thing because I do agree with you that there is a larger argument and a moving and powerful argument based on electability, based on his life experience, based on loss and wisdom gained through loss. There is a set of values that he could be defending. And I just, it's never really articulated, certainly not by him. And for, you know, it's a small thing. But in Biden's speech, he said some version of, you know, we learned two things. You know, Putin doesn't want me to be president, and Donald Trump doesn't want me to be the nominee. Okay. I understand that that's a pushback to the stories about Hunter Biden that we've been seeing for the past few weeks. But I was actually reminded something about what Mayor Pete said when he was first sort of talking about

his candidacy, about why he doesn't want to do potshots and all the rest. And he was saying, sometimes when we engage in that kind of game, we're actually giving into Donald Trump's terms of the debate. We're thinking about politics the way Donald Trump thinks about politics. And so at this moment, before the entire Democratic Party in Iowa, for you to stand up there and say, you should vote for me because Donald Trump's opinion is really important. It's really important that you know Donald Trump doesn't want me. Is this another opportunity to elevate Donald Trump at a moment when we're trying to elevate each other and elevate democrats like what why do you want to be president i know why donald trump doesn't want you to be president why do you want to be i think i think donald trump's scared of me is a

pretty i think it's fair i think that's a good argument i i know i this is a small thing i know i do under i understand that it's core to his electability argument i get that it was more just it's this moment to present yourself and it was so early in the speech for him to kind of, basically, that was the substance of his electability argument. And then he went into some kind of, you know, talking points about various policies, because he went into his stump, and then in the end, he ended in this optimistic way. And I just, in an event where we're sort of hearing about the visions of this candidate, because by the way, you know, Barack Obama's speech, you know, you can go into the specifics about what it did and what Warren did like that, and what Pete did like that and what and what Pete did like that.

But the reason that that speech was so effective is beneath the words was a person who was ready to be president and meet the moment, you know, and it was big and was big and it excited people and it inspired people. And it said, I know you're not sure about me, but when you listen to me, you can trust me and you can put your faith in me to be your champion in this election that is to come. And, you know, I see other candidates trying to do that. I don't see Joe Biden trying to do that. All right. Let's hear Bernie Sanders and then Kamala Harris right in a row, and then we can talk about both of them. Good policy is good politics. Now is the time to stand with the working and a government that works for all of us. To win, we are going to have to fight for what I know in my heart and in my soul to be true, which is the beauty of the diversity of who we are as a nation. We all have so much more in common than what separates us. And to win, and to win, and to win, we're going to need a nominee on that stage with

Donald Trump who has the ability to go toe to toe with Donald Trump, who has the ability to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in Iowa, you're looking at her. What do we think of those speeches? Bernie, it was a good speech. It's a good message, but it's a greatest hits message. You know, like it could have been 2016. And so he got like good, you know, nice applause from the people who are there supporting other candidates. But, you know, again, he didn't bring his folks in. So we didn't get this big raucous reception. And I don't know that that message in that moment builds support for your campaign that you didn't get in 2016. In fact,

given how much he got in 2016, you're probably already getting significantly less. I thought Kamala, her advance in field team did impressive work. Like people were pumped. You came away from that speech thinking like she's a fighter. There was an intensity to the message. The message was basically I can go toe to toe with Trump. She had this critique of Warren clearly about not representing corporations in legal work. And then they kind of walked it back the next day, which confused me.

Like if you're going to take a shot at warren take a shot um the the for the people formulation it sort of worked rhetorically it looked great in the room it's a little bit clunky but i mean you know look i think people were impressed by the delivery and that she's a fighter and like it generally was received well yeah i was impressed by the delivery i'm always impressed by her delivery. I think she delivered the hell out of the speech because she does that well. And I think she is very good when it comes to talking about her biography and, you know, what she's done in her life. I think she's very, very good when she talks about Donald Trump. I'm, you know, I'm, I think she got a little bit closer in this speech to having sort of a positive message of what she, how she sees the country.

And you heard her there talk about sort of recognizing the beauty of the diversity in this country and how we have more in common than we do different. But that also hasn't been her message from, you know, actually she did have that message sort of in her kickoff speech, which was really great. Then it sort of gets lost. Again, she's someone who's gone through a lot of different messages. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I was thinking about the Bernie speech, and it was sort of a version of his stump speech. There was a moment in 2016 where all of a sudden there was a real opportunity for Bernie to maybe even actually be the nominee. And it was a moment where the campaign seemed to shift.

You know, he was no longer wearing the button down collars. He got a bit more serious. He did more foreign policy. He was just sort of, he really made, it was a moment where he thought, okay, this is a person who's no longer running to change the Democratic Party. This person who now, I think, believes they have a chance to be the nominee. And I see Bernie out there now. And I just, if you were someone with a plan to say,

I'm going to, I want to take some of the support from other candidates and build a bigger coalition, I'd be looking for just a different version of his argument, an argument that reaches out to other parts of the Democratic coalition and says, like, I have a home for you. And I, maybe it's too late now. Maybe, maybe it wasn't a while ago. Maybe this is just Bernie is who he is. He's going to be who he is. And that's that. I don't know. But I just, I always think that with Bernie, there's this missed opportunity to be something bigger. And I thought that's what I took away from it, even though I think his stump speech is in a really good place as a speech.

Yeah. Any other thoughts on any of the other candidates? Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar? Yeah, look, I mean, so the thing to understand is that this was a long dinner and Klobuchar and Booker were near the end. They were not the very end, but they were near the end, which means lots of people had left, which just really sucks for them. Amy Klobuchar, I thought she did pretty well. Like something might be happening there. I think it's very hard for anyone outside the top tier of candidates to break through at this point. It's just a long shot. But she's had some good recent polling. She had a good debate. I went to an event that she did the night

before where she rolled out a big Iowa endorsement, this woman named Roxanne Conlon, who'd been a Democratic nominee for governor and senator, and talked to some folks there. It was a small crowd. But what they like about her is not just her moderation, but there's a cultural affinity for her that they feel like they get her. She's Midwestern. Yeah, she's Midwestern mom. Like they like her for that reason. And so something could happen there.

Booker, like he got the crowd pumped. He was super energized. It's more of this sort of inclusive, radical love message, which I think in a different year might be the right message for Iowa. If like Dave Weigel, I thought had a great line in the trailer and the piece he wrote,

which is that the negative phase of the campaign is still in demo mode. People aren't beating the shit out of each other yet. And I think if they were, Booker's inclusive message might work even better. It's hard for me to see if it's going to resonate quite yet. Yeah, well, it seems like it might start getting a little nastier after this weekend. Oh, yeah. I thought I thought so when I saw Kamala issue what was clearly an insult directed Elizabeth Warren and then not defend it. So I don't I don't totally I don't I don't know when this campaign starts to get tougher. I wonder if the next debate in November is going to be a little sharp.

All right. So one person who did not speak at the dinner was former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke because he announced shortly before the dinner that he'd be dropping out of the race. He did so because he said it became clear that his campaign didn't have, quote, the means to move forward successfully. In a Medium post, O'Rourke wrote, I can tell you firsthand from having the chance to know the candidates will be well served by any one of them. And I'm going to be proud to support whoever that nominee is. Guys, we all know Beto. We've liked him a lot since the Senate race. We thought he'd be a strong candidate at the beginning.

What do we think happened? I think that, first of all, winning the Democratic nomination is really, really hard. It's even harder when there's 20 people running. And it's even harder when you stumble pretty hard out of the gate between the Vanity Fair piece and the way he was covered on his first Iowa swing. And the fact that sometimes it seemed like they hadn't gotten all their ducks in a row before they announced. I didn't think at the time that that was going to be unrecoverable, but it may have essentially been that. And in a year where I think being part of the big national mix and scoring points and debates and just getting national attention was even more important than ever,

he didn't do a lot of big national press after that Vanity Fair piece. And I think it made it harder for him to get a look in Iowa, which is, again, not what I would have expected to happen, but it's what happened. So like, you know, he's a great person. I like him a lot. I think he'll have a future in the party that is bright, but like, it's really hard to win the nomination. I think he could have overcome a really sort of very, I think, inauspicious launch of his campaign. I think he could have overcome starting late and taking a long time to staff up. And I think he could have overcome taking some time to try to figure out where his place was in the field and what his larger message would be. It was not possible to overcome all three. And I do think, you know, we can talk

about tactics and all the rest. If he had had a clear articulated version of why he decided to launch his presidential bid from the start and made that case across Iowa, made it on television, wherever he wants to do television, he could have overcome it. But I think he did struggle in this very large and very crowded field with some really excellent candidates that span the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party to really articulate why he decided to get in because it was so late. Yeah, I mean, look, I think Beto is an incredibly kind, decent, inspiring, you know, politically courageous politician, and who really doesn't love the game of politics, and didn't want to play the typical game of politics. And that served him very well in a Senate race where he almost, you know, won, became the first Democrat in decades and decades to win statewide in Texas.

I think his problem is going to be, is going to end up being the problem of a lot of these candidates who fall by the wayside in the coming months. Which is, and I thought this at the very beginning of the race, like you said, Tommy, with 20-something candidates, it's always important to distinguish yourself in the field with the message, why me and why not everyone else in the field? Even if you don't say why not everyone else at first because everyone's being nice, there should be implicit contrast with almost everyone else you're running against and a story about why you. In a field of 20-something candidates, the most diverse fields of candidates we've ever had, it is even more important that on the day you announce for president, you have that message down. And if, if he had that message down and he had, um, a team around him when he launched,

which he ended up with a great team, you know, but it was like months after that launch, right? But if he had a message and a team from the start, he probably could have overcome a really bad launch. But the problem is when you don't have that message from the beginning, it's hard. And I think it's, look, and I think it's going to be hard when other candidates drop out, it will necessarily be because they couldn't nail that exact message. Why you? Why not everyone else? What's your story? Why are you in this race? Not just slogans, not just random lines, not just random issues that you jump on once in a while. Or riffs at the Iowa JJ.

It is a story about you and why you at this moment in time and where the country is and where the country needs to go. And we heard some of that message from a few candidates at the J.J. and we didn't hear it from a lot of others. Well, I also just think putting Beto specifically aside, it's also a dynamic of this race that you have Biden occupying, not dissimilar to role to what Jeb Bush did in the primary, which was it was a campaign that wasn't going particularly well, that wasn't really resonating that well, but did hold a big chunk of support for a long time that made it hard to be an alternative. Now, we can say whether you're being the alternative to Warren or being the alternative to Mayor Pete or being the alternative to Biden himself, what have you,

it has been really, really difficult for all but three or four human beings to find a place to push some space in the field to make a name for themselves been hard for everybody yeah um okay when we come back i will talk to crooked media's own brian boiler about his brand new podcast rubicon On the pod today, we have Crooked Media's editor-in-chief, Brian Boitler. Brian, what's up, man? Not a whole lot. How are you? I'm good. I should actually say I'm super busy, working real hard for Crooked Media, as always. As always.

Very, very full agenda. Well, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on today is because in addition to your role as Crooked Media's editor-in-chief, you are the new host of Crooked Media's brand new pod on impeachment called Rubicon. We wanted to launch a pod on impeachment. We looked around. We found the perfect host right here at Crooked Media, and that is you. What are you trying to do with this pod each week? And what do you think it can add to all the impeachment coverage that is out there right now? I'm glad you asked. So obviously,

there is no shortage of impeachment coverage, or even of impeachment podcasts at this point, I think. But we've – most of us at least at Crooked have been of the view since like well before the Ukraine scandal that drawing a line in the sand about Trump's abuses of power would be critical for both deterring Trump from cheating in his own reelection campaign and thus for like making sure that we have free and fair elections in this country. And we sort of recognize that if Trump wasn't challenged on the abuses of power he was committing before we learned all about the Ukraine scandal, it was just a short jump from there for him to come to the conclusion that he could get away with breaking election law to help himself get reelected. So we wanted to cover the impeachment from that lens. A lot of the impeachment coverage you'll see on television or another podcast will explain

the process to you. It will examine how the impeachment process might affect the horse race coverage between Democrats and Republicans. And it's not that we're going to avoid those topics, but we want to make sure that every episode is infused with the fact that doing this is the stakes of this are are absolutely critical to to democracy in the United States. Yeah, I would I would let everyone know that, you know, I listened to the first episode and you lay out in the opening couple minutes, just about all of the impeachable offenses that Donald Trump has committed since taking office. And I think it's as great of a summary as I've heard about sort of the story of impeachment

because I think, you know, we talked about this today on the pod as well. It's going to be super important for Democrats to not just nail him like they're nailing him in a trial with the right evidence, but to actually tell a story of, you know, Trump abusing his power, starting from when he was running for president up until right now. And I think making this making what he's done in the abuses of power all part of a pattern and part of a cohesive larger story is probably super important. I think that's right. So in that kind of opening few minutes of episode one, which we call the stakes for just this reason, right? We go into sort of the history of impeachment very briefly. But Trump's story is one of achieving

the presidency through corrupt means, right? He was aware that the Russian government was intervening in the election to help him win by committing crimes. And he committed crimes of his own to help himself win the election. And then when he became president, he obstructed justice to make sure that those – the details of those activities never came to light. So right off the bat, he's abusing the power of his office to try to hide the corrupt means by which he became president in the first place. And because he basically got away with that, he was extremely cavalier about using the presidency to funnel money into his own pockets him in 2020 that I think Democrats who had been reluctant because they weren't sure about the politics of impeachment kind of realized, look, like we might be scared of the – or unsure about the politics of impeachment. But if we don't do anything about this, then he's just going to cheat his way to reelection. He's just going to cheat his way to reelection. So they they made the call. And, you know, it seems like they very quickly uncovered that that he had already gone to very great lengths to corrupt U.S. foreign policy with the sole purpose who's a former Justice Department spokesman in the Obama administration. We've had Matt on Pots of America before. You guys sort of had a great debate, I thought, about, you know, what impeachment should cover,

just how many abuses of power it should cover and how long it should go. You know, has your thinking evolved on sort of the timeline around impeachment at all? I know, you know, we've gone back and forth on this, too. What did you what did you take away from the conversation with Matt? Yeah, I mean, I take Matt's analysis very seriously for the reason for the reason he said he's not just a Justice Department vet. He's a Democratic campaign vet. He's a political animal. He makes the best case for the strategy Democrats have adopted, which is a very aggressive but limited in scope impeachment where they really nail the case against Trump on the Ukraine scandal and basically put it to Republicans. Is this OK with you when we've proven – not that they need a beyond the reasonable doubt standard but they're going to meet that standard and then Republicans are going to have to decide whether they're OK with the president of the United States doing this kind of corrupt criminal activity.

My view on it – I don't think he changed my mind. He makes a better case for that kind of impeachment than most of the Democrats who actually will participate in the process do. And my view is that if Republicans show signs that they've, you know, they've had enough that they can't defend this conduct anymore, then it would be obviously irresponsible to just drag the impeachment process out longer than it needed to. You know, you don't want to leave Trump in office for one day longer than you absolutely have to. Right. But but until there's some signs that the Republican defenses are breaking down, that you should sort of layer other aspects of the investigation onto it that are just as uncomfortable. You know, it will not be popular for Republicans to vote,

not just on the Ukraine matter, but on Trump making the military spend money at his resorts. I mean, I don't see the harm in extracting more political pain from Republican senators if they are determined at the end of the day to let Trump get away with basically anything Democrats uncover. And there's abundant evidence of other kinds of corruption. Yeah. See, I keep going back and forth on it, because I am in agreement with you that the additional abuses of power, especially around Trump's corruption, are not very popular at all with voters. In fact, maybe even more unpopular than some of the Ukraine stuff. Yeah. But I also view everything through the lens of,

you know, America's shortening attention span, ever shortening attention span, especially most voters. And sort of how broken the media is as a way to, you know, fully communicate what's going on and not sort of both sides everything. And so I do have this concern that the longer it goes there is a possibility of impeachment fatigue yep and there's also the possibility that as republicans keep fighting back you know uh a lot of reporters and legacy media start saying okay well now the democrats are throwing this on and that on and is it really fair and you know all the bullshit they do yeah so i i i understand where the democrats are coming from in their desire the house democrats and their desire to go

to make it like one story that's easy to understand that they can hammer for a short period of time over and over again but you know i also see the value of um making sure everyone knows sort of the full uh breadth the full breadth of all of his abuses of power, because many of them are unpopular with voters. So I've thought about this a fair amount. And I am, you know, I am sympathetic to the concern that the political value of impeachment isn't indefinite. You know, like the amount of corruption is nearly indefinite. But that if you literally set about to try to uncover every last thing and make voters aware of every last detail, not only would fatigue set in, but just the basic capacity for people to keep track of all of it

would just come to dominate the whole impeachment story. But I don't think impeachment is like a tire that would pop, right? Like if Democrats keep pushing the envelope, I'm mixing my metaphors terribly here, but if Democrats keep at it and the returns to impeachment start diminishing, they can bring up the process to a close as quickly as they need to, especially because they're about at the halfway point of Ukraine as it is. I worry about two things with the settling on the rapid impeachment strategy from the outset. The first is that if you tell Republicans, hey, we're going to impeach on this one issue and we're going to try to get it done by the end of the year. Then you give Republicans almost like scheduling, right? They can tell themselves, OK, we need to figure out how to excuse this conduct and we need to just get through the month of December and then this will all be past us, right? And then we can get back to all the covering up for Trump.

All the corruption. Yeah. Secondly, once impeachment is over, Trump will go back to his prior strategy of basically defying all congressional oversight. So that will be it. There won't be – I mean courts are going to rule and there's going to be new revelations. And it's not like the story of Trump's corruption is going to come to an end. But Democrats' powers will wane significantly. will wane significantly. And Trump's power to corrupt the office for his political gain will be at its maximum because he'll have been acquitted for doing just that. So Democrats

will kind of be sitting ducks while Trump has his attorney general go launch fabricated investigations of Democrats or whatever, which is already kind of happening. And so keeping the impeachment power invoked through all of this is kind of a way of saying we can hit back too unless you're ready to take this seriously. That's still the way I think about it. But I will say that in episode one, Matt makes a very compelling case that Democrats are going for removal and they think that there's a chance that they can have Trump removed for this one offense. And if he's right about that, then he's right about the larger question. So what do you think about covering this week?

You know, right before we started talking, you know, two developments happen. One, the House Democrats are starting to release the transcripts of the depositions they've done so far, starting with former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and top State Department advisor Michael McKinley. The other development is, you know, most of the Trump administration officials who were called to testify this week are defying those subpoenas. John Bolton said he would come testify with a subpoena, but only if the courts basically tell him to. And there's also, there's a, you know, a court case right now where Bolton's longtime associate, Charles Kupperman, has been asking,

basically, I got a subpoena from Congress. Who should I listen to? The White House is telling me not to go or Congress who subpoena, who issued a subpoena. And the courts have to decide, but they've just, the judge in that case has just pushed oral arguments to December 12th, which sort of significantly extends the timeline for House Democrats. Have you been thinking about sort of how Democrats should deal with obstruction? Is that something you might cover this week? Yeah. So there's there's the question what Democrats should do. And and I think that we will most likely delve into that in this week's episode. I think that we will most likely delve into that in this week's episode. And then there's a question of what they're trying to hide and why. And so both Kupperman and Bolton but also the top White House national security lawyer, John Eisenberg, are all defying – are all I believe under subpoena and they're all defying subpoenas. And they are all figures who can speak to the extent to which Trump has corrupted national

security, right? Eisenberg is the lawyer who basically – who decided that he wanted to hide the Ukraine call transcript on this code word classified server to prevent it from getting out and he instructed at least one other White House national security official not to discuss what had happened on the call with anyone. So it seems like there was some effort to cover that up and the whistleblower complaint that got all this rolling suggested that that's not the first call summary or transcript that's been hidden on this server to hide politically embarrassing or possibly criminal evidence of crime

inappropriately. And all of these figures are the ones who would be able to speak to that, right? So that seems like significant, right? That may be why these are the officials that have really defied the subpoenas, followed Trump's orders not to testify, invoked really indefensible legal arguments for why they should be able to defy their subpoenas. And from there, you get into some interesting, I think, questions about what do you do when a president has corrupted foreign policy with at least one country. You know, I think about it in terms of like how we ended up with special counsel Robert Mueller, right? When there's a criminal investigation that the executive branch is too conflicted to

handle through its normal channels, you bring in a special counsel to try to eliminate the conflict of interest. Like how do you do that in a special counsel to try to eliminate the conflict of interest. Like how do you do that in a context of foreign policy? Can the Trump administration actually be trusted to conduct foreign policy with Ukraine or Turkey or Saudi Arabia at this point given what we've learned about how Trump deals with these regimes? And so that's an avenue of inquiry that I think is like very important and

central to the question of impeachment. And then there's the arguments that the actual officials are making about why they should be allowed to defy subpoenas, which I think have very legal merit as far as I understand the law around this. But they are going to basically – it seems like press their case in court. They've drawn a judge that seems interested in helping them run out the clock on impeachment. And so there's a question of what democrats can and should do to try to force their hands. And that's a question of should they hold these officials or others in contempt? If they use the contempt power, should they ask judges to enforce it or should they try to enforce it themselves using the inherent contempt power that really allows them to go grab people who are in contempt of Congress and force them to testify, you know, almost like a police action. I think that I think that that's the universe of questions that episode two will have to delve into, because as we see from the news like that's what's happening right now.

Yeah. Well, everyone should go check this out. So it's it's it's out every Friday. Every episode is sort of you. You know, you're breaking down sort of the news of the week a little bit. And then you're going to have a conversation with someone who can sort of illuminate some of these larger issues that we've been talking about today. I'm so glad you're doing it. It's a fantastic pod. So everyone go subscribe to Rubicon. I second that. Thanks to Brian for joining us today. And, you know, we'll see you later in the week. See you at the hearings, you know. See you at the hearings. Bye, guys.

Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segwin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.