Pod Save America - “Fired up and ready to Zoom.”

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

The President continues his purge of government officials who expose corruption, the Trump campaign uses a kitchen sink strategy to define Joe Biden, Barack Obama reminds us of what a normal president sounds like, and House Democrats pass an economic relief bill with some defections. Then Senator Sherrod Brown and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Connie Schultz talk to Jon L. about Senate negotiations over the next stimulus bill, and what it’s like to quarantine together.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Lovett talks to Senator Sherrod Brown and Pulitzer Prize winning writer Connie Schultz about negotiations on the next economic relief bill and what it's like to quarantine together. Before that, we'll talk about... By the way, we've already recorded that and it was delightful. I mean, it was a serious interview, but it was so nice to see them both.

Awesome. Before that, we'll talk about the president's latest abuse of power, the Trump campaign's attempt to define Joe Biden and the three trillion dollar stimulus package that passed the House last week. But first, love it. How's the show this week? We had a great love it or leave it. Adam Conover joined to judge the monologue and him saying what the fuck to a bad joke is one of the hardest laughs I've had in a while. And Patrick Radden Keefe talked about wind of change and conspiracy theories. Plus, we talked to listeners about what's bothering them. It was a great episode.

Speaking of Patrick, if you haven't yet started binging wind of change on Spotify, don't be the last one to do it. Everyone else is doing it. This is our new investigative series where Patrick Radden Keefe investigates a rumor that the CIA wrote a song that became the anthem for change at the end of the Cold War. Listen, rate, review. You'll thank us later. It's very, very good. Everyone's talking about it. All right, let's get to the news.

New York Times had a story over the weekend that I think sums up where we are pretty well. Here's the about it. All right, let's get to the news. New York Times had a story over the weekend that I think sums up where we are pretty well. Here's the subhead. Quote, by smearing his opponents, championing conspiracy theories and pursuing vendettas, President Trump has reverted to his darkest political tactics in spite of a pandemic hurting millions of Americans. A prime example of those tactics were on display Friday night

when the president accepted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's request to fire State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who was reportedly in the middle of investigating Mike Pompeo for using State Department staff for personal purposes, including dog walking and dinner reservations. And now we learned this morning, potentially for unilaterally approving billions of dollars in arms sales to saudi arabia over congress's objections um in response to a 60 minutes interview from another government official who he fired dr rick bright the guy who ran our vaccine development and then filed a whistleblower complaint trump tweeted quote this whole

whistleblower racket needs to be looked at very closely. It is causing great injustice and harm. So, Tommy, people hear this and might think, you know, Trump fires people for fairly corrupt reasons all the time. What's the big deal? What are your thoughts? Well, I mean, the first thing they should realize is that these inspector general positions are supposed to be within the agencies, but with independence, they're supposed to look at that waste, fraud, abuse of power, and then like identify and recommend fixes so that they can fix them. You often have an adversarial relationship with your inspector general, but that's a good thing. Trump has fired at least three of them with these late Friday night purges. And so the State Department guy is the latest. By the way, he's not some partisan hack. Steve Linick worked in the George W. Bush Department of Justice. So he's a career official. So House Democrats are trying to figure out what

happened. Some think Steve Linick was looking into Mike Pompeo's misuse of political appointees. You mentioned this earlier, but they might have been asked to perform tasks like get the dog from the groomer, pick up my dry cleaning, make me a reservation at a restaurant. Pompeo does have this record of treating the State Department like his own political travel agency, right? I mean, he took three official trips to Kansas, not a foreign policy hotspot, as he was thinking about whether to run for the Senate, to the point where the Kansas City Star wrote an editorial titled Mike Pompeo either quit and run for U.S. Senate in Kansas or focus on your day job. Pretty pointed. So they've previously called on him to be investigated for violating the Hatch Act. Now, this could be a little bit darker, though.

Eliot Engel said this inspector general was investigating Trump and Pompeo's decision to issue an emergency declaration that basically forced through an $8 billion arms sale, mostly to Saudi Arabia. And the reason that's a big deal is because under the Arms Export Control Act, Congress has to be formally notified for 30 calendar days to review these arms sales before they can be concluded. And so this end run, declaring a state of emergency because of the threat from Iran when the arms you're delivering won't be there for an entire year is absurd on its face, right? And it might have violated not just the notification requirements to Congress, but also the underlying law, which says these arms have to be for legitimate self-defense. And what the Saudis

have been doing in Yemen in this horrible civil war has not been that. It could also have violated the Foreign Assistance Act because these weapons are going to a country that has been deemed to be in violation of human rights. So look, if you hear the like making the political appointee making reservations or picking up the dog thing and you think that's like ticky tack bullshit, OK, you can believe that. But having the president United States fire the guy that's investigating you is the definition of abuse of power and corruption. And that's why this is such a big deal in its totality. So it's not just, hey, go walk my dog and pick up my dry cleaning. It's walk my dog, pick up dry cleaning and send a few rocket launchers to MBS.

Yeah, it's it's it's you walk my dog. I'm going to let Saudi Arabia walk America like a dog and all the dogs are walked. Yeah. Walk this Raytheon guy down to the Defense Department and get him a sweetheart. And look, this coincided with a huge story over in The New York Times over the weekend about the drastic uptick in arms sales to places like Saudi Arabia, because people like Jared Kushner and Peter Navarro are treating arms sales like a jobs creation program and not like something we should take very seriously because these are weapons of war. Love it. What was your reaction to the story? we should take very seriously because these are weapons of war. Lovett, what was your reaction to the story?

I think it's, you know, it's bad and I don't like it. But the larger, you know, look, you just sort of put it in the context. So he's firing IGs. You have Attorney General Barr at DOJ acting as Trump's personal lawyer. You have the administration rejecting Congress's ability to enforce subpoenas. You have the president rejecting law enforcement subpoenas. You have the president using pardons to protect himself. You have a larger Republican theory that the president's authority over the executive branch is total. And therefore, these sort of institutional checks are not necessarily valid. They also have them believing the president can

only be impeached for statutory offenses. So like specific breaking of the law. And when you find those examples of law breaking, they don't respect them and they don't acknowledge them out of cowardice. And you add all this together and you end up with a president that is above the law and it is incredibly dangerous. And I can only imagine how much worse it will get if we fail to remove him in November. These are all proof points of the stakes of the election. That's all. And look, don't take our word for it. You know, we're a bunch of partisan hacks. Here's Mitt Romney. Here's Mitt Romney. Quote, firings of multiple inspectors general is unprecedented. Doing so without good cause

chills the independents essential to their purpose is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power. I have to say, good for Mitt Romney. And that's a hell of a lot better than fucking Susan Collins, who had a little tweet storm about it. Susan Collins has always been like very into inspectors general as a concept. She wrote the best she could muster was, quote, the president has not provided the kind of justification for the removal of IG linic required by the law. That's all we got from Susan. You can imagine Susan Collins next to Rose and Jack as the Titanic sinks into the water. And the final words she says before the before the splashes, I'm deeply concerned about this iceberg.

I mean, yeah, look, Love It laid out, I think, a really scary, like big, big picture. But with just with these IGs, I mean, anyone who crosses Trump, one of these inspectors general who's supposed to be an independent watchdog has been fired. So the State Department one we just walked through. But over at HHS, that IG reported on severe shortages of coronavirus testing kits. That person was let go. The intelligence community inspector general was shit canned for forwarding along a whistleblower complaint to Congress, which he has to do. The DOD guy was fired just because he was called Obama era and he didn't want him overseeing the coronavirus stimulus program. So like this

is a purge. It's a purge of independence in the government, the people who are supposed to root out corruption. So you mentioned this, Tommy, but over the weekend, Democrats in Congress, Eliot Engel in the House and Bob Menendez in the Senate have opened an investigation into what they say may be an act of illegal retaliation, was the quote. So obviously, that's the right thing to do. I guess my question is, now that Trump, and this goes to your point, Levitt, like now that Trump has been impeached and acquitted, like how do Democrats make oversight matter? Because it's the right thing to do. But I sometimes I wonder, like, you know, we got an election in November. They can open investigations. It is the right thing to do. We should all want the truth. But how can you make it matter

politically or can you? I think it's a really hard question. And I think that this is an argument that Democrats have been having amongst themselves for years now between those who think it is not necessarily politically advantageous to make oversight a battle line in sort of our in our political campaigns and who worried over impeachment as being politically harmful to Democrats, even if it was the morally correct thing to do. And those who argue that that Donald Trump's greatest trick is convincing people he doesn't respond to incentives. And one of the lessons of impeachment is that the second that impeachment lever was removed, he became more brazen. And I don't think anybody really knows. I don't think anybody has the answer. It's a really difficult question. I think we have to kind of keep both things in our mind at once, right? That ultimately the only true way to achieve accountability here is to remove Donald Trump

from office, ideally win the Senate, you keep the House, and then you have the ability with those committees, with that power, to reverse some of his institutional corruption, attack some of the failures of the last three years, expose some of the injustice, which we'll have to do over the next couple of years, versus the importance right now of making sure there's a watchdog on Trump. And I don't think anybody who claims to know the right thing to do perfectly is being honest. I mean, I think impeachment and really everything since has shown the limits of Congress's ability to have effective oversight if the executive branch is just going to

give you the finger about literally everything and say no. So I think the key here is making corruption and Trump's, you know, Trump inherited a town that everyone thinks is broken and corrupt, right? People think Washington is bad and all politicians are bad, but he has made it exponentially worse. And I think the Biden campaign needs to know that Trump is already going to call Joe Biden corrupt, even though there's no evidence that that's true. They're going to attack his son for being corrupt. So they need to go on offense and they need to bring back some of the corruption greatest hits. Like, remember Tom Price, the head of the Health and Human Services secretary who resigned under pressure because he racked up 400 grand in travel bills for chartered flights and like, you know, completely undermining all the drain the swamp messaging. Like, tell a story about all these separate events. We'll get into this later. Tell a story about Ivanka Trump getting a bunch of trademarks from China, right? Like you can lay a narrative and educate people about stories that they may have missed at the time or that seem old to us now, but will be new to them today. I completely agree with that. And we've all seen plenty of research that shows the political value of making oversight about Trump's corruption, the corruption of his administration, and his sort of penchant to try to hide that corruption from the American people.

You know, a message that works that we've seen is, you know, Trump said he was going to Washington to clean up the swamp. He became part of it. People are bothered by his cabinet, his administration, and the corruption that they've been involved in. People are bothered by the fact that his family also could be self-dealing because of cozy business relationships and how they're using government to further those relationships. So I do think at this point, post-impeachment, oversight is, you know, it is the right thing to do. It has to be paired with an effective political message. I tend to think, like you said, Tommy, the more effective political message to voters has to do with corruption than Trump being an authoritarian and breaking all the rules and all that kind of stuff.

being an authoritarian and breaking all the rules and all that kind of stuff. I think average people don't like the idea that the State Department is using their tax dollars, you know, for sort of Mike Pompeo's personal errands and then trying to hide it from us. And so I think that like the Trump campaign is already going to go after Joe Biden for like a parent, you know, being like some kind of a swamp creature. Trump was the one who said he would clean up the swamp. He did not do it. He became part of it. We have to start repeating that message. So while he is working very hard to sort of protect corruption wherever it may exist, Trump's campaign has begun to draw some subtle contrast with his opponent, accusing Joe Biden of everything from pedophilia and dementia to serving as a Chinese agent

and conspiring with Barack Obama to stage a coup against Trump. Just, you know, just trying a few things out. Funny when you say it like that. It's I have to say he's an incredibly effective spy and international operator for someone with dementia. Yeah, true. You know, like they don't really go together. Like, you know, you'd think you'd get lost in his identities, forget to put the forget to put the mustache on that kind of thing.

Of these various attacks, it seems like the campaign has actually put money behind ads about Biden's age and those related to China, though, according to Axios, they'll soon be launching state specific attacks and ads that target Biden's record on Cuba and Florida, fracking in Pennsylvania and trade elsewhere in the Midwest. Lovett, why do you think they haven't settled on a line of attack, like a single line of attack? And I guess, do you think they need to? I would say two things. I think, one, it's a challenge. I think that, you know, the reason we've seen him go after Obama and try all these different things, I don't think they know which is their most effective message. And they're seeing the same kind of public polling we're seeing, and I'm sure they see internal polling that shows this uphill battle that Trump faces, a lot of reporting that shows

that. So I think they're casting about because they haven't landed on something that feels that works. The other piece of this too, is that Trump has been denied some of the platforms he uses to try things out. And that's a really big and important part of how he figures out what his message is. Like rallies, you mean? Like rallies or even using the White House. He has, I think, seen that using the White House briefing to be extremely directly political has not always been smart for him. He's not been doing that as much as you might have expected. So though, of course, he's being incredibly political about the response and treating it like a rally regards to himself. He has not made it a true anti Biden rally at times. So I think the combination means they

don't feel confident in any one of these lines of attacks. And we've even seen reporting, right, means they don't feel confident in any one of these lines of attacks. And we've even seen reporting, right, that Kellyanne Conway, you know, wasn't sure about the attacks on age. There's a dissensus, I think, amongst Trump's advisors. Tommy, what do you think? And which attacks sort of worry you the most? I worry about the China attack. I think a lot of people are angry at China. And if you can effectively tie Biden to China, that could be a good avenue for them. I worry about the age attacks, not because I'm worried about Joe Biden's mental capacity, but I'm worried about the optics of being stuck in your own home during the coronavirus. It just makes it hard to undercut this bullshit from the Trump

people. Now, the thing like listeners should know is that these guys are running ads in these deeply red parts of the country, like parts of Michigan, the Florida panhandle, Iowa, North Carolina. The fact that they're running TV spots attacking Joe Biden in those places shows that these are attacks made out of weakness and not out of strength. That doesn't make me feel better, but it just shows you the position they're in. But the thing that worries me the most is, over the weekend, Don Jr. posted a meme calling Joe Biden a pedophile. Eric Trump said Democrats are using the virus to prevent his daddy from holding rallies and that it'll go away later. Trump is saying Obama's treason is. These insane accusations are just flying left and right. And the press has not figured out how to cover it yet at all. And it's a huge problem, right? So like, I look, I know we're talking about it right now, but we're talking to a different audience about a different

angle here. So the New York Times like reports out this story about what Don Jr. posted. And ostensibly it's about negative campaigning or fact-checking this lie. But I think it failed because some people will hear the words pedophile and just have that lodged in their brain. Right. And then some people will hear them repeat the charges that Biden has, you know, been accused of unwanted touching. And I just think like at some point you can argue that these negative attacks are part of a strategy and that in and of itself is a story. But when Don Jr. is posting something on Instagram or like Donald Trump himself is flailing away in 100 plus tweets on Mother's Day, I do think the press has to be a

little more judicious about what lies they elevate, even in the context of trying to debunk them, because I think it often fails. I think that it's going to be very hard to make the race about anything other than the pandemic in order to recover, in order to get the economy back, in order to all this stuff, we need a sort of tough guy president who will stand up to China. And that's Donald Trump. He's strong. He's tough. He can go after China. And Joe Biden is weak and feeble and he can't because he's too tied to China. Like to me, that is sort of where they're going that still fits with what people are worried about, which is the economic fallout from the pandemic. I think all the other stuff on Biden, you know, it could, like you said, it is incredibly dangerous for Trump surrogates to go out there, including his

kids and call Joe Biden a pedophile and have the media cover it as it does. So, like, I don't think that's great at all. But I do think, like, they are going to, it is hard to make this election about anything other than what's on people's minds. That said, both the China and the age attacks give them an opening to sort of talk about that and talk about the response and how Biden's not the one to respond in the right way. Here's an example, right? This is an AP story lead. Accusations of a deep state conspiracy, allegations of personal and family corruption, painting an opponent as a Washington insider not to be trusted. It's 2016 again, or at least that's President Donald Trump's

hope. That is taking a bunch of lies and smears and framing them as a strategy and putting it as the lead of an AP story. And it just, look, I don't mean to just media bash, but it made me deeply frustrated for the Biden camp to read that because I agree with everything you're saying. I think that the salient attacks will be about China, will be about the coronavirus. But like, never forget that a lot of people saw things accusing Hillary of having a kill list or murdering people on Facebook and other places. And you can cut together a very unfairly edited video that makes anyone look like they have dementia or cognitive decline or whatever. And I worry about the way those attacks will sink in over time, if not properly rebutted as well.

I also do think one of the goals here too, is like, I think part of the reason that APA story is so damaging is they the Trump campaign wants to create 2016 too, and they want to do it in a very specific way. You know, you have Republican spokespeople out there saying some version of Donald Trump created the hot economy, pandemic happens, he's the one who can bring it back, right? So they're trying to basically start from a place of saying the pandemic didn't happen to us, the pandemic happened to me. Pandemic happens. He's the one who can bring it back. Right. So they're trying to basically start from a place of saying the pandemic didn't happen to us. The pandemic happened to him. And then the goal. Then where are you? Well, you're at a new baseline where now you're not comparing Donald Trump as president to a replacement. You're evaluating Donald Trump and Joe Biden side by side as people taking on what's going to come next. Right. And the goal

there is right. You try to recreate a 2016 comparison rather than judging Donald Trump on his failures and malfeasance and incompetence and, you know, feckless disregard for human life and what have you. And so to me, you know, the fear, right, is that you get that reset for Trump and then they play what they did in 2016, which is, you know, Hillary sick and dying. They brought Bill Clinton's accusers to the debate emails. You know, we forget how much noise and attacks and nonsense sort of permeated political coverage in 2016. And they'll just they're just desperately trying to recreate that environment. Yeah.

And I think the big question is, can they get that reset? Right. Because I think it's much harder to get that reset in the middle of a pandemic and economic recession when Trump is the president than it was in 2016, when you could say Hillary Clinton is part of the Obama administration that you just saw for eight years and that maybe you think didn't make enough progress. I'm someone new. Give me a chance. That is the big difference. Maybe they'll still get that reset with enough money and enough ads. But I think that's the challenge that they face. You're right. I suspect that is true, too.

And I think most voters will go into that booth, you know, thinking about coronavirus and thinking about the economy. But it is just very disconcerting to watch last week devolve into a conversation about unmasking because the DNI, this right wing hack, releases a list of Obama administration officials who did something that was perfectly legal and proper. Right. And now we have Trump accusing Obama of treason. And then dumb shit Don Jr. calls Biden a pedophile. And that turns into a New York Times story. It just like it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the ability for the body politics to filter out garbage from actual issues that matter. No, zero confidence. They've learned no lessons from 2016. Let's talk about what Biden should do here. The Washington Post says that, quote, Biden's advisors, aware of what Trump is preparing to fire at him, describe themselves as dead set against being triggered by his provocations or engaging with him on his terms. Voters will decide the election they believe in response to the crisis now

engulfing the nation, not the spectacle of Trump's Twitter feed. Do you guys think that's right? And how do you think Biden should respond? I think they're saying the right things. I think in reality, the choice about when and how to engage is more nuanced and difficult. But, you know, one of the lessons of the last election is whether you engage on a specific Trump controversy or not. It's not whether you take the bait at times. It's if you're going to take the bait, are you able to turn it to an exchange on your terms? You know, Donald Trump is saying X because he's trying to distract from Y. Donald Trump is making outlandish accusations because of his failure on the

coronavirus. Some of this, I think, becomes the kind of, you know, disciplined politics that because Trump is such a outlier has led people to kind of not treat in the kind of ordinary way. And I think at times it just requires a traditional hard political response. Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, look, I mean, I think that Biden people like taking a disciplined strategy is the right strategy. You have to choose to ignore some things because otherwise you'll go down a million rabbit holes. But I do think you need to figure out what's important and like preempt it. So I would like to see Biden, you know, running a positive ad track that talks about his bio and his character and his values, his work at the Obama White House, including on the stimulus in the financial recovery and the Ebola response that kind of

like give you a baseline of understanding who he is and why he'd be good at this. And then, you know, we all know that Trump is going to go after Hunter Biden. So let's see some negative attacks from these super PACs or from the Biden campaign about Ivanka Trump getting special trademarks for her businesses from the Chinese while working at the White House. Let's talk about nepotism and naming your son-in-law to a job where he's running pandemic response and what a disaster that has been. I think they did a great job highlighting all the times that Trump praised China and Xi Jinping about the coronavirus during that response and all the ways he has ducked responsibility. And it was a great preemptive strike.

And I think they should think about ways to do that on some of these other issues that the Trump people are just signaling that are coming like with tens of millions of dollars of negative ads. Yeah, I think you got to do two things. You got to neutralize the attacks on age and on China, and then you got to keep turning everything back to Trump and his response. Right. So on the age thing, I mean, you know, that is sort of the easiest to rebut is, you know, just the more times Joe Biden is on television showing energy, being conversational,

not being the guy from the clip that they're going to edit together and put a whole bunch of money behind. Right. So that just that's just going to require more Joe Biden being out there on China. I think you said it, Tommy, right? Like Trump believed China over our own intelligence experts, just like he listens to his political advisers over public health experts. like he listens to his political advisors over public health experts. And that's why we're in this mess. I think you can say Trump took the economy he inherited from Barack Obama and destroyed it because of his catastrophic coronavirus response. That that is the that is the other side of the reset that that he's trying for, right, that he inherited a great economy and then he fucking ruined it. And then you just got to keep turning it back to Trump, right? Like people are scared of getting sick. They're scared of not getting a job. They want to know why the guy they elected president can't fix either of those

things. That's it. That's the election. Why haven't you fixed it? Why are people still getting sick? Why are people still out of work? And like every time Trump tries some of this bullshit and they start lobbying all these charges, Joe Biden, the campaign has to just go back to and us and Democrats everywhere. Why haven't you fixed this shit yet? Why are people still getting sick? Why aren't they out of work? Why haven't you done anything? And if we can keep that drum beat up over and over again, then it's going to be very hard for Donald Trump to wriggle out of this, I think. But that requires, like we've all been saying, incredible discipline and repetition. And the media will not be allies in this. And look, it's not their job. It's not their job to get fucking Joe Biden elected president. But beyond that, they haven't figured out how to cover this. They're going to make this even more difficult,

which makes it even more important for Democrats to be disciplined about all of this. heard it years ago. It came from someone inside the CIA. And the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify, a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media, and Spotify. One other Democrat who offered what could be a frame for the election was Barack Obama, who delivered a pair of commencement addresses over the weekend, one for graduates of HBCUs and one for graduating high school seniors. Here's some of what he said.

More than anything, this pandemic has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they're doing. A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge. Doing what feels good, what's convenient, what's easy, that's how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way, which is why things are so screwed up. Love it. What'd you think of the speeches? And what do you think of the reaction, which was mainly framed as Obama taking on Trump? It is one of the great ironies of this era that when someone says something like,

as innocuous as, I think people should be nice, it is taken as a rebuke to the sitting president of the United States. Like the implication is always that simply by describing quotidian human virtue, just like the basics of treating each other with respect and looking out for other people is a rebuke to the president. And they always tell on themselves when they immediately realized who Obama is probably referring to. You know, Mitch McConnell criticized Obama for what he said. The most kind of it's a I think an important and good frame for the stakes in the election put in a way that is not snide or strident at all. It was a completely elegant and simple formulation of the larger stakes of an election like this. And of course, people respond as if Donald Trump isn't president and Donald Trump isn't saying the kinds of things he's saying every day. And I do think Trump's response and some of the other responses are a reminder that Barack Obama is still a potent force and will be

an incredibly valuable ally in the fall. Tommy, what'd you think? I mean, look, those speeches, first of all, they were just like really well done and nice to hear. Tommy, what'd you think? in the White House and like just seeing the Obamas interacting with kids and how much they inspired them, especially like low income kids. You know, it made me sad. It made me wish for a bygone era. But I also think what you saw over the weekend was that Republicans are very scared of Obama as a messenger. He is he has the ability to cut them down with kindness in ways that very few other Democrats have. He is wildly popular, especially with swing voters. And Republicans went to the mattresses to try to intimidate him somehow into not speaking out anymore, right? Like the Fox News rolled out that, you know, bag of shit, Karl Rove, who called it a political drive-by shooting, right? I think he chose those words

on purpose. Mitch McConnell was attacking Obama. The idiots on Fox and Friends were suggesting that Obama should have taken the high road after he was accused of treason by Donald Trump over the weekend, right? They are very scared of the impact a fired up, pointed Barack Obama will have on the campaign trail this fall. And they're trying to pretend that the right thing to do would be for him to be quiet because he's a former president and just ignoring the fact that the current president has been threatening to prosecute him for the last few days. Yeah, they are scared shitless of him. I was I'm happy that I was able to watch the speeches before reading all the coverage, because when you watch the speech absent any political coverage of it, you just see like a pair of really inspiring, motivational commencement addresses that also make reference to what's going on in the country right now.

How could they not? That's all we're all thinking about. And sort of a, you know, an obvious contrast, if somewhat subtle, with the person who's sitting in the Oval Office right now. It also goes to show that sort of like a little goes a long way with the press. When you when you make criticism like this, like, I always think of, you know, everyone, a lot of people now critique on I always think of, you know, everyone, a lot of people now critique on the left and elsewhere, you know, Michelle Obama's, when they go low, we go high. But basically that was Barack Obama going high and taking the high road,

but saying more than anything, this pandemic has finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many folks in charge know what they're doing. And then saying like, doing what feels good, what's convenient, what's easy. That's how little kids think. Like, that's pretty subtle. Yeah, that is the high road. And yet the effectiveness of Barack Obama is everyone knows who he's talking about when he says that. And it is still a devastating contrast with Donald Trump, even though he's nowhere near what Donald Trump is doing,

which is accusing his opponents of being criminals and saying they should be locked up and saying that they're pedophiles and saying they have dementia, right? Like, Barack Obama's like, could we just have a little more maturity? That's his critique. I also I also just like two quick points on this one, I think the speech also does a good job of making a connection between the character and decency of the people in charge and the character and decency of a government and how it helps people or doesn't help people, which is already which is always the next step you have to take.

And two, you know, we've talked a lot about the ways in which the media kind of falls into Trump's trap. But I think it's also worth pointing out that even in this sort of toxic political environment, you know, we talked about, you know, Biden making this point about China that I do think kind of broke through and became something Donald Trump was asked about it again and again. Barack Obama's giving these two commencements broke through and is part of the conversation to the point where Donald Trump is tweeting about it endlessly. So all is not lost. You know, the engine is still running. It's throwing off sparks. But but but the car goes. And I do think that if Joe Biden sort of mirrors,

which I think he has so far, if he mirrors that kind of message that Obama delivered, that is sort of the way to indict Donald Trump's leadership over the last four years in a way that reaches beyond only Democratic partisans, which is what he'll need to do to win the presidency. Because I think if you were the average voter who might be up for grabs or undecided or undecided about whether they're going to go to the polls or not, you hear something like what Obama said, you hear something like what Biden said, you don't see it as a partisan screed, like what Trump says. And yet, you still see it as an indictment of the current leadership, which is the exact sweet spot they need to be in. All right, let's talk about the next economic

relief bill in Congress. The House passed the HEROES Act on Friday, which includes the following, an extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits through March of 2021, another round of direct cash payments to Americans, a trillion dollars to save jobs and protect services in state, local, and tribal governments, $200 billion in hazard pay for essential workers, $175 billion in housing support, $75 billion in funding for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, student loan forgiveness, and $3.6 billion for expanded vote by mail, partly thanks to all of you who called to Congress. Only one Republican voted for the bill, but 14 Democrats voted against it. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Progressive Caucus,

who I spoke to last episode, and 13 Democrats from swing districts that flipped in the 2018 midterms, citing the bill's cost and inability to get bipartisan support in the Senate or from the White House. Both McConnell and Trump are opposed. Tommy, what is your reaction to these swing district Democrats voting? No. Are you sympathetic to the politics there? Yeah. I mean, look, I'd be curious to see what data informed their political decision. Like, as a general matter, I'm in favor of letting members of Congress who are in tough districts vote the way they need to vote, especially if the underlying bill is going to pass anyway. So, yeah, look, it didn't bother me that much. I don't think it's a huge deal. I don't think any voter is going to ever learn that this thing lost a bunch of votes.

And you can credibly call it bipartisan. But, you know, look, there's a lot of important stuff in there. There's money for states. There's money for testing. There's another round of stimulus checks. So I'm glad Pelosi did this. I'm glad she like put forward what the Democratic version of a relief bill should look like. And now we can fight over it with Republicans. Love it. What do you think? If your goal is to pass the most progressive version of a bill out of the House, then presumably your goal should be to lose some of the swing Democrats who don't necessarily go along with the most progressive vision, right? There's a there's a push and pull there. And I presume that the conversations between Pelosi and those Democrats said as much. So, you know, I don't presume to know the precise politics of each of

those districts. But and look, we talked at length about, you know, what people like Katie Porter have done to to be sort of unabashedly progressive while winning in some of these swing districts. But, you know, beyond that, I sort of agree with what Tommy said. I will say, like, I am sympathetic usually to sort of the specific concerns that frontline Democrats face. I think, you know, some of them are worried about voting for a bill with a huge price tag. I guess what I would say to that is you all just voted for a $2 trillion stimulus bill. Like, do you think that the attacks on the $2 trillion stimulus bill versus the $3 trillion stimulus bill are going to make that much difference? And also, like, again, my one of my biggest

concerns is that Democrats will underestimate the rage that voters are going to feel about the economy come November and are already feeling right now, looking around and seeing that bigger corporations, wealthier people are weathering this just fine and working people are getting fucked over. And Donald Trump is going to have an answer to this or going to try to have an answer to this by the fall. He's going to say China is taking advantage of us. He's going to be all anti-China. He's going to be populist about trade, all this kind of bullshit. He's when people are feeling angry about their economic circumstances, he's going to have an answer. And all I'll say is Democrats need to have a fucking answer on what, you know, to who's the enemy, who is to blame, why people should feel upset over the fact that they're still struggling and still out of work. And we need to like drawing the economic contrast with Republicans and Donald Trump is maybe the

most important objective for Democrats between now and November. And I do worry that if we're not all on the same page and now Republicans can say, well, that bill was just a big spending partisan bill because look at all the Democrats that decided not to go along with Pelosi. Like, I worry about that. And I wonder if they're overthinking it. But again, sort of like you said, Tommy, like I haven't seen any data on this, so I don't know what they're sort of dealing with in their districts. But it would be hard for me to imagine that there's a lot of people in those districts who are like, God, I just wish Congress wouldn't spend another trillion dollars as opposed to I really need help and I want someone fighting for me.

Yeah, look, I mean, I'm just going to give members their leeway because who knows, they know district better than I do. But I do think you can make that case without voting for that bill. I mean, back to Obama's speech, right? And he said that the people in charge are no longer even trying. I mean, if you look at Trump, he's pushing all the responsibility onto states to manage the coronavirus where he declared himself the wartime president. And now he's left governors to arm and equip the troops and do the fighting, right? And then the other person you can fight against is Mitch McConnell, who says we need to wait and see, and that he's okay with states going bankrupt. So I think

Democrats need to run on reopening the country, but do so in a way that has all these safeguards in place to help people as much as possible in the process, knowing that most of the country isn't going to, we're not going to open up completely, right? And that part of those safeguards includes testing and contact tracing, an expanded social safety net stimulus, and then, you know, protecting the Affordable Care Act. Because Trump is still trying to kill the ACA and the courts, Republicans voted to repeal it a billion times. And now in the middle of a crisis, you have John Cornyn encouraging his constituents to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, right? So run on that, run on gutting the social safety net in the middle of a crisis on not doing enough, on being cold and only helping businesses. I think you can do that whether or not you vote for this specific bill. It actually, I think, to both of

your points, honestly, it's like we're in an unprecedented economic crisis, an election that will be conducted in a completely unusual way. There will be Senate races. There will be an incredibly contentious presidential election. There will be massive voter turnout. The forces at play in the outcome of who keeps the House and what happens in these districts are so large and actually, in many cases, outside of what's taking place in that district, that the kind of massaging on these individual votes may ultimately be impossible to measure. And so really what it comes down to is, do you think that this bill is good? Do you think people need this help? Like maybe that will be the best thing to vote on.

Yeah. I mean, I do think bringing it back to what we talked about with Biden versus Trump, which is like Republicans haven't done anything to make you feel safer and they haven't done anything to protect your jobs. And then I do think you need an answer. Here's what Democrats want to do that is coherent, that you can repeat a lot. I guess the question now is what Democrats should do next. So there's already some talk that there could be a smaller compromise bill that includes state and local funding and unemployment insurance extension in exchange for expanded tax breaks and some legal protection for businesses. So the question is, should Democrats go for that compromise or stand firm and risk no bill getting passed at all?

Tommy, what do you think? I mean, look, this is hard to know until you see the final bill. But I think we need to be very wary about this liability protections piece, because we can't have a situation where you have a bunch of businesses forcing people back to work in potentially unsafe conditions, and then just washing their hands of any health problems that might emerge from it. I mean, I think that's, that that is risky and that needs to be scoped appropriately. I also just think that the PPP program was created with good intentions, but the execution has failed, right? I mean, a lot of people got loans based on their relationship with banks and not on need. A lot of businesses were given money to pay workers at a period where they couldn't

reopen. We need to just get money into the hands of individuals. And however we have to do that, I thought Pramila Jayapal's proposal that you talked about last Thursday was fantastic. Like that would be my focus if I were them, would just be to make sure that like this is a worker's first bill and fight like hell to scope everything in that direction. Love it. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, look, on liability protections, first of all, I do think that whatever happens, like this is a I think it's a contrast to be drawn.

This is what we're fighting for. This is what they're what they're fighting for. Look, we've already seen spikes in COVID-19 due to the unsafe conditions at places like meat processing plants. You know, Democrats cannot go along with a bill that ultimately results in people basically no longer being eligible for unemployment because they're technically allowed to work, being forced to go into a place that is unsafe where their boss can do whatever they want without fear of what happens if they don't protect their people. I mean, that's just not it's just it's it's it's not it's it's not it's morally it's morally unacceptable. It's just unacceptable. That's all. And like it's morally unacceptable. And it's like

do not give up that political issue for the fall. Like the liability protections are so incredibly unpopular. We have seen the polling. It is like 70% of people don't want to give these liability protections to these corporations. They don't want employers to be able to get customers and employees sick without any accountability whatsoever. And even a majority of Trump voters don't want that in the last poll that we saw. So like I really would be careful about this. Now, Pelosi has been saying, well, I would only be for some protections for companies who are shown to have followed like very specific safety guidelines by the CDC or whoever. And if the company has followed all those safeguards to the letter, then perhaps they get some kind of protection. So like, yeah, maybe there's some kind of a compromise there. Like I'd wait and see the language, but I'd be

very careful on this. They're very well, there could be a version of it that works, right? But that has to be backstopped by testing and contact tracing, something that Trump has just decided that he is going to push to the States. I just do think broadly, right? Like everyone is fucking sick of quarantine. You guys are, I am people who have no paycheck coming in. They're really scared, right? So Democrats need to be in favor of a safe phased reopening with a backstop for people who desperately need it in case they can't get their job. Right. But like, I do think our posture has to be for some sort of opening up. We can't be seen as impediments to opening up the economy or reopening the economy. We have to be seen as people who are actively working on the best way forward to do it safely. It is a safe

reopening that protects lives and livelihoods versus reckless reopening that does nothing for your health and nothing for your job. That has to be the contrast. And I also just would add to that too. I think, you know, you know, Rand Paul got correctly a lot of criticism for his, for his sort of bloviating during that committee hearing, but which time, you know, yeah. Uh, with, With, with Fauci is the one I'm speaking of, but you know, kids are out of school. And I think that there are a lot of parents doing their best to make sure their kids keep learning during that time. There are a lot of kids who aren't learning anything. They're out of school. They are not learning. They're in an endless summer. And the, the, the, the cost to those kids is going to be very, very large in terms of their ability

to catch up and how they're falling behind right now. And I do think that that's another place where I do want, I think it's important that Democrats start speaking more forcefully on behalf of those parents and on behalf of those kids. That's all. All right. When we come back, we'll have Lovett's interview with Senator Sherrod Brown and Connie Schultz. I'm now joined by a power couple, the senior senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown and Pulitzer Prize winning writer Connie Schultz. Her first novel, The Daughters of Erie Town, is out June 9th.

Welcome to you both. Thank you, John. It's so good to see your face. No, you're not holding up the book. Well, you know what? The good news is it's a podcast. How is quarantine going? How are you doing together? No, I mean, you can, you know, we have a good marriage and love each other and two great dogs and we have paying jobs and we can work at home. And, you know, we're pretty lucky. And I just know that, you know, the mental health issues and the financial issues and the, you know, the millions of people that go to work every day. And, you know, not just working in hospitals, but doing, you know, food service and deliveries and driving buses and working at supermarkets. And they go home every day go home every day anxious about what's going to happen to their families.

It's a tough, tough time for so many. On a much lighter note, I am glad to say that it turns out we like each other very much also because you can love someone and not want to spend so much time with them. So I'm really happy to hear that we actually do like each other that much. And John, we got the two dogs too. Did I mention the dogs? You did mention the dogs. No, look, it is a nice, it is a pleasant surprise to realize you can spend more time than you ever thought possible with a person and be willing to continue to do so, I would say. We plan to do that, by the way.

So Senator, right now the Senate's keeping a pretty normal schedule. You're going in and out of session. That means you have to go back and forth to Washington. Do you think that that's safe? And do you think that that's the right, I've already got it. And I know, I know how Connie feels about it. Do you think that there's a safer way to proceed? Yeah. First of all, we're McConnell is bringing us to Washington every week. I have no staff in the building. I'm not asking staff to come. But because we're in session, police officers and food service people and custodians are there. They don't come to work in black SUVs like Mitch McConnell. They get to work how they get to work, and they're potentially exposing themselves to that illness. At the same time, violating local public health orders, I might add, in Washington. And at the same time, McConnell's not doing anything

of real substance to deal with the coronavirus. He said there's no urgency. For a while, he said, let the cities and states go bankrupt. But clearly, we've got a lot to do, and we ought to be doing it. I think we can do it remote. We're doing our hearings remote in banking and housing. At your insistence. At my insistence. At your initiation.

And Senator Crapo, the chairman, Republican chairman, has been good about it, very cooperative. We've done it well. Tomorrow, we're going to have the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the Treasury in, and they're going to be remote. We're going to be remote. We can do that. We can do everything remote. But the most important thing is not about our going back

or not the most important thing is McConnell actually addressed these awful public health, housing, and economic problems. And also, can I just add this? You're not going to say this, but I'm going to. When he does go in a committee room, the Democrats are wearing their masks, Republicans take theirs off. And as we all know, if we don't all wear a mask, nobody is protected. And I find that obscene. And they bring in staff members more than Democrats do. And so these are people who work for them who are being ordered to show up in a place they have no business being right now. They should not be on the premises.

And they're not being protected by their bosses. I find all of this so objectionable. What Connie doesn't quite understand, John, is Republican senators, because they are U.S. senators, they can never get sick. Right, right, right. I love that he attempted to tell me what I don't understand. I am fully aware of what they perceive themselves to be. I'm also very willing to explain to them who they are not. And that is immune to this virus and not entitled to endanger the lives of others, including

not just staff, but their family members. I feel quite strongly about this. Connie, what do you think is propelling? In a larger sense, there is this kind of machismo, this sort of masculinity logic about masks signaling weakness, that somehow following public health officials' best recommendations is a sign that you're not tough. What is your response to that? Weakness is the fear of looking silly by wearing a mask. That is the weakness, that you care more how you look or you care more about what you think

you're projecting about yourself than you do about protecting other people. That is the weakness. We know who the strong people are. They're the ones who may be scared to death of this virus. And so they're wearing their masks, not because it protects them in public, but it's the least they can do to protect others. That is strength. Not that Donald Trump is an insecure old man or anything. No, no, not that you would suggest that. Senator Brown, right now, House Democratic leadership, Senate Republican leadership are reportedly not talking. What are the next steps for actually getting an additional stimulus bill? And I know that

you've been working on some rent issues, utility relief. What are your hopes for getting that done in the next package? Well, our hopes and our efforts are to put pressure on McConnell. Schumer and McConnell and Mnuchin ought to be negotiating with Pelosi. Whether we start with a House bill or just, oh, we just want to open the negotiations. The House bill is a great place to start. It does almost every major thing we need done. It does significant help, puts money in people's pockets. It's almost like McConnell and Trump, they don't trust local governments and they don't trust individual people. I want to put money in people's pockets, let them decide how to spend it to take care of themselves so they don't get evicted, so they can

take care of their kids, so they don't have to dip into any retirement savings they have. I want to put money in local governments. I don't want to tell the city of Cleveland or the city of Lima, Ohio or Dayton, Ohio, how to spend the money. They know what they have to do. McConnell doesn't, I mean, McConnell's sort of all things, all things power. He doesn't really trust local communities to do what they need to do the right things for themselves. And that's really a big difference, I think. Connie, another facet of this crisis has been the way that the economic immiseration has hit local journalism. The advertising revenue has gone. And this is a crisis that has added to an already long-running downturn for local journalism at a time when people are turning to local outlets to guide

them through complicated local regulations, questions about the way a state regulation or rule or guideline interacts with the federal, interacts with the local around going to the beach, going to the movies, going to the barber, whatever the different ordinances may be. What do you see right now as a way to help support local journalism at a time when places like the Plain Dealer and others have been gutted? Well, the Plain Dealer, I think we need to speak about specifically because it took full advantage of this coronavirus to lay off virtually everyone from the Guild. And the few who were left finally crossed over to what is called cleveland.com. So the Guild is dead at the plane dealer as of now

which means they have no rights to negotiate for wages and work conditions and it was so deliberate and um i this was where i launched my career as you know at the plane dealer and to watch what has happened to this newspaper and this time when we need the information most there are some good reporters still working there. The problem is a lot of people no longer subscribe to their local newspapers in part because many of the ones who do are older and they want to get daily newspapers

out at their front door. And that has changed as well. We really are going to have to look at how we fund local journalism differently. And there are some grants, there's some conversation about how that's going to happen. My concern is that not enough organizations are picking up the slack for it. Here in Cleveland, we have Cleveland's crane business, which has actually added reporters

to the coverage. I never thought I'd see that. A lot of my former colleagues are there now. The greater problem here is, I mean, you saw what Trump's doing with that video of that reporter who was, he had protesters coming perilously close to him without masks. They were threatening him and Donald Trump keeps tweeting it out in a celebratory way. So one of the first things I would ask everyone who listens to Pod Save America, because your

audience is so large, I know you get frustrated with mainstream reporters at times. I know you wish the journalism were better at times, but I want you to consider the risks they're taking right now to cover this president and the people he has empowered to be so abusive and sometimes dangerous. And I hope you'll show your support and I'll help you let journalists know when you see them doing it right. It's never mattered more. They'll do it anyway, but I can't begin to tell you how much it matters when they hear from you. Yeah. I mean, that footage is from News 12 Long Island. That's what I grew up watching. And News 12 Long Island is a down the middle local news outlet. They're being attacked because of the president's instigations, calling them the virus, trying to threaten these people.

Then you go look at what's on News 12 and it's a person showing people how to look up at the stars and teach their kids and just sort of the basics of local journalism that make people feel like they're part of a community. It's really shameful. And now the president's encouraging other people to do that to other local reporters. Think about that. So in opposite to what we've seen from Trump, you have a governor in DeWine who has behaved more responsibly than a lot of his colleagues at the national level. And I'm sure that there are, you know, the response is by no means perfect, but there's clearly a different incentive structure for someone like

the governor of Ohio, even though he's a Republican than there is for these national politicians. So, and it goes beyond just the temperament of this one person. Both of you, I'd put it to you. Why is it possible for a governor to operate the way he has when you have national politicians like Rand Paul and others viewing the politics as requiring basically a completely different kind of response? There's a couple of differences. I mean, a completely different kind of response? There's a couple of differences. I mean, DeWine is,

it just shows experience and character matter. And DeWine's been doing this for four decades. He's a man of character. He's a decent guy. He isn't, it's not a partisan thing because I supported what he's done. I will publicly say DeWine has saved Ohioans lives while Trump's actions and inactions first and then actions have killed more Americans.

One of the big differences is DeWine listened to his doctors, listened to the experts. Amy Acton is a 50-ish-year-old woman doctor out of Columbus, and she has been terrific advising him. We're concerned that DeWine now is opening up the economy a little too quickly without giving workers the protections. It's ultimately, we know there are going to be outbreaks at workplaces. We know that with all the kind of gatherings we see in bars and restaurants, but ultimately it's workers that are going to get hurt. And the workers are more often, they're more likely to be women they're more disproportionately people of color uh they're the

ones that get exposed and the governor's got to make sure they're protected he hasn't done that to the degree he needs to because he said he was not going to require it anymore that customers wear masks that we wear them in public well you're not protecting workers if you don't do that and i was so disappointed to see him do that because I have been, just as Sheri has, I've been publicly very supportive of Governor DeWine. I feel this is a real misstep and people keep reporting back to me. I mean, you know, I'm very active on social media and I'm a columnist. I'm always hearing from people who are shopping and they're giving me the

numbers of people they see in masks and the people they don't while all the workers are wearing them. But again, let's not forget, if not everyone is wearing a mask, no one is protected. And look what happened in South Dakota, the huge outbreak, the coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of workers, a meatpacking plant. Then the President of the United States finally gets around to using the Defense Production Act. Instead of using it to scale up testing and then contact tracing, instead of using it to have a national effort to get protective equipment to workers and to everyone else, he has used it to reopen that plant, not requiring the company to slow the line down. That's part of the problem in these meatpacking plants, not requiring the employers to take care of the employees and protect their health, not doing anything about the food supply, just saying, we got to reopen these plants and get

people back to work. And that in a nutshell represents what Trump has done all over the country with workers, or to workers. Senator, one last question on the politics of this. This crisis has, it's a health crisis, it's a democracy crisis, it's an economic crisis. Do you see this as changing how politicians campaign and how do you think it should change? What's significant, I think, that comes out of this is American public's greater, deepened, more deeper appreciation of the role of government and people that have spent their whole careers bashing government and saying government can do nothing right. provide dollars for public health, for communities to fight back. The private sector is not going to do all the things that we need done to keep people in their apartments, all of those things. So I think what comes out of this is a more progressive society where people recognize the role of government to do everything from climate change to dealing with racial disparities. We're more and more aware of the damage that is caused

by the great revealing, if you will, of the pandemic. And I think we will act accordingly, especially with a new president next year. Connie, you wrote a great piece about why it's important to still allow yourself to feel joy during a time in which there's so much hardship and so much pain. How do you think we can simultaneously hold guilt and grief and joy during a time in which we know how much pain and suffering there is? I almost think of it, thank you for your kind words about the piece, is I recall I said I didn't want to squander the joy that remains. and for years I've thought and talked about grief as that thing that sneaks up on you and it knocks on the door and

it's not going to go away until you let invited in and you get bored with each other it's almost as if we flipped it grief seems to be our um underlying emotion right over overarching maybe and that the joy can sneak up on us now and we have to let it in when it's banging at the door because I don't think it will wait around and it'll quickly flee and we are we are always more complicated than our worst burden just as we are always better than our worst mistake and I think that the importance of letting in these small joys that suddenly have taken on such larger meaning often is that because they sustain us and they remind us that this is not our forevermore, that it will not always be this hard. And it is really hard

right now. I mean, I've had tremendous losses myself recently. One of my oldest friends, almost 40 years, just died. And the thing is, the more I look for pictures of her as I was preparing to write about her, the lighter I started to feel because we had such a history together. These are the things we have to hold on to because we're more than just our grief. That was beautiful. Genuinely. One final question on a lighter note for both of you. And this is going to be tough.

All right. I'm going to ask you both to answer. It is a yes or no question. And I'm asking you to both to say your answer at the exact same time. Oh, you can ask us. I didn't mean we're going to. Here's the question. We'll play by the rules.

Here's the question. Is Senator Sherrod Brown doing his share of the dishes? One, two, three. Oh, my goodness. Yes, he does. He does. I cook. He cleans.

No kidding. Wait, wait, wait. I make breakfast. She cooks. Everything else. You know what? You just blew it by qualifying it because I cook all the big meals. He cooks all the stuff that really matters.

But he does bring breakfast to me in bed every single morning. He's home every single morning with French. You know, this, this, this, this pandemic's been tough because I'm home every single day. And he is a slob. So I get, I get no off days on this one. Oh, oh, oh, welcome to womanhood, my husband. Welcome. John, thanks for injecting that into our relationship. That was really nice. We love you, John. You and your very love share. I love you both. I am so grateful for you doing this. This was such a nice way to deal with some really hard topics. And I'm grateful for both of you for taking the time. Senator Sherrod Brown,

Connie Schultz. You reached out very early to check in on us. I don't know if you remember, you sent me a private message and I will never forget that. That's who you are. Well, thank you, John. But you ever, do you ever make her breakfast in bed? Oh, stop. Don't tell me.

I actually, I will tell you, I will tell you, all right, there is a dirty pan from which French toast was produced. All right. I will just say that. All right. It happened. That pan's been dirty for how long? Sorry, we're out of time.

Unfortunately, we just have to go. Okay. Love you. Bye-bye. Thank you. See you. Thank you both. Thanks.

Bye-bye. Thanks to Sherrod and Connie for joining us today. And we'll talk to you guys later this week. See you guys. Bye. See you, fellas. week. See you guys. Bye. See you fellas. See you gents. Bye.

Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited

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